The first blu ray release of one of Presley's Paramount flicks hit the market on April 21, 2020. The company opted for "King Creole", which easily was the best musical drama Elvis made.

Video

Paramount used a 4k scan of the original negatives and transfered it to 1080p/AVC MPEG-4. Very few times bits of speckling appear on the screen, but otherwise the image is crystal clear. The blacks and whites and all the shadows in-between are beautifully captured and most of the movie looks as if it was shot yesterday. I dare to say, that a b/w movie from 1958 cannot look any better.

Audio

In contrast to the Warner releases Paramount offers a solid 5.1 soundtrack. Due to the age of the film there is not much going on in the rear, but the mix opens some space and sounds very natural. Unfortunately the volume of the musical numbers is a tad louder than the volume of the dialogues. The Mono 1.0 soundtrack is better balanced, but sounds a bit compressed due to the source. But both versions sound very clear with no distortion whatsoever.

Extras

There is a six minute feature of Leonard Maltin, a movie critic talking about "King Creole".