He’s the King in disguise — seven of the best Elvis-inspired film performances

Baz Luhrmann’s new screen spectacular Elvis has entered the building. Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons to get you all shook up is the startling performance by relative newcomer Austin Butler as the man himself. He’s got the moves, the voice (“ah, thank you very much”), the quivering lip and charismatic beauty of the King down cold. So to celebrate the film’s release, let’s take a look at previous Elvii who have walked in those blue suede shoes.

Kurt Russell — Elvis: The Movie (1979)

If you think of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, the first films that spring to mind are probably The Thing, Escape from New York or even Big Trouble in Little China. But their first collaboration was the made-for-TV Elvis: The Movie. Only two years after Presley’s death, Russell takes on the role in a career-spanning biopic, though tastefully leaving out the last few years of his subject’s life. He makes a great Elvis: he looks the part, moves well and, perhaps wisely, lets country star Ronnie McDowell do the singing. The portrayal was successful enough for the TV movie to be recut and released in Europe as a theatrical release.

Don Johnson — Elvis and the Beauty Queen (1981)

Another TV movie, this time with future Miami Vice star Don Johnson donning the capes, wide belts and leather jumpsuits to portray late-era Elvis. Told from the perspective of beauty queen Linda Thompson (Stephanie Zimbalist), with whom Elvis spent the last years of his life, it’s a mushy tale of burning but doomed love as Linda can’t stop Elvis chowing on a combo of pills and fried peanut butter sandwiches. “We ate ’em because we were poor!” Johnson dolefully intones. The singing is once more done by Ronnie McDowell while Johnson does little more than wear the full regalia — all the time. The blinged sunglasses stay on even while he’s watching karate movies in the cinema.

Nicolas Cage — Wild at Heart (1990)/Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)

Now for suspicious minds this choice might seem like a stretch, but hear me out. Nicolas Cage’s Elvis obsession is so acute he even married Lisa Marie Presley for a head-spinning three months. And if that isn’t enough, check out his Elvis-inspired karate moves on his legendary 1990 appearance on the BBC chat show Wogan. The film he was promoting then, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, features Cage as Sailor, an ex-convict with a snakeskin jacket and a perfect Elvis timbre to his voice. He sings “Love Me Tender” at the end, just in case there was any doubt about his inspiration. And if that wasn’t enough, two years later Cage’s role in the romcom Honeymoon in Vegas would climax with Cage joining a team of skydiving Elvis impersonators to jump from a plane and into the arms of Sarah Jessica Parker.

Val Kilmer — True Romance (1993)

For Woody Allen in the 1970s, the fantasy mentor in Play It Again, Sam was Humphrey Bogart. By the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino gave Christian Slater’s Clarence a ghostly muse in the shape of Elvis Presley. This being a Tony Scott-directed Tarantino joint, Elvis isn’t here to hand out tips on romancing, but rather to urge him towards murderous revenge against Gary Oldman’s wicked pimp. With a Memphis Mafia coldness, Elvis urges Clarence to “put him down like a dawg!” Val Kilmer had already played rock god Jim Morrison and, perhaps more importantly, Nick Rivers in Top Secret. So it was a walk in the park, dressed in a glittery gold jacket and only partially glimpsed in a mirror, to give Elvis a dash of pulp-fiction revisionism.

Bruce Campbell — Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

Of course we all know that Elvis didn’t really die. In fact, according to Don Coscarelli’s film, he now lives in a retirement community, having earned his living for the past few years as a note-perfect Elvis impersonator. Evil Dead actor Bruce Campbell plays the King with broad comic charisma and certainly looks and sounds the part. The plot about an ancient Egyptian soul-sucker whom Elvis must combat with the aid of fellow retiree JFK (Ossie Davis) is suitably daft, but there’s also an abiding affection to the pastiche. If only this were the true story of the end of the King.

Jack White — Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

What makes more sense than a musician playing Elvis? Well, Jack White of The White Stripes did just that in a hilarious excoriation of the musical biopic. White’s Elvis is a mumblingly incoherent and violent sociopath who busts out karate moves at the blink of an eye and steals girlfriends without so much as a howdy-doody. White’s cameo apes those in more serious films such as Great Balls of Fire and Walk the Line, where Elvis turns up, is name-checked and wiggles off before he can steal the thunder of Jerry Lee Lewis or Johnny Cash or, in this case, the sublime Dewey Cox (John C Reilly).

Michael Shannon — Elvis & Nixon (2016)

It might have once seemed a stretch for Kevin Spacey to play a slimy villain like Richard Nixon, but that was nothing compared to Michael Shannon’s apparent miscasting as the King of rock’n’roll in his pills and paranoia period. This was a time when Elvis publicly declared himself a foot soldier in the war on drugs while in private bingeing on them. Focusing on the meeting between the president and the King in December 1970, the film is a chamber comedy, with the two most powerful men in America jealously trying to seize advantage over the other. Much of this centres around a bowl of M&Ms. Despite physically looking nothing like Elvis, Shannon manages admirably to find a character beyond the caricature: a man weary of the role he’s trapped into playing. A worthy addition.

Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Elvis’ is in cinemas from June 24