Harum Scarum

Elvis Presley stars as Johnny Tyronne, an action-film star and a favorite with women, who travels through the Middle East on a publicity tour for his latest picture. A gang of assassins, impressed by the adventures he performs on screen, abducts him and expects him to carry out a killing on their behalf. He refuses to go through with it and instead works against the plotters, while a princess in the desert kingdom takes an interest in him.

Gene Nelson directed the film, his second behind the camera after Kissin' Cousins the previous year. Gerald Drayson Adams wrote the screenplay, Sam Katzman produced, and Four-Leaf Productions made it. Mary Ann Mobley plays Princess Shalimar, with Fran Jeffries, Michael Ansara, Jay Novello and Phillip Reed in supporting roles. The film is a musical comedy mixing crime and romance, and it runs eighty-five minutes.

Released in December 1965, the film cost about two million dollars and took roughly the same amount at the worldwide box office, so it did not return a profit on its production cost. Audiences have rated it low: on IMDb it sits at 4.6 out of 10 from around two thousand one hundred votes, and on TMDB it holds 4.8 out of 10 from roughly thirty-four votes.