- It Happened At the World's Fair sounds like the title of a 60's exploitation horror film and...well, in some ways it is. The terror begins when two lecherous pilots, Mike (Elvis Presley) and Danny (Gary Lockwood), start a fight while attempting to welsh on Danny's gambling debts. They leave town in a hurry, much as Mike rapidly ran out on a local girl (Yvonne Craig) he was aggressively seducing, only to get their plane repossessed upon landing. The increasingly desperate pair hitchhike their way to Seattle in the back of a kindly Chinese man's (Kam Tong) grocery truck. Do these sound like the sort of responsible citizens you'd trust with your precocious seven-year-old daughter? Hardly. Nevertheless, the naive farmer gladly hands off young Sue-Lin (Vicky Tiu) to Mike, and the two proceed to the Seattle World's Fair.
- Once at the fair, the real horror begins. There, Mike subjects a sensibly reluctant nurse (Joan O'Brien) to his unwelcome sexual advances, going to far as to pay a young child to injure him. Incidentally, that young child was played by Kurt Russell in what was easily the film's most enjoyable moment, albeit for reasons that had little to do with the film itself. In the meantime, Danny gets mixed up with a local smuggler (H.M. Wynant) while Sue-Lin bounces between being cared for by state family services and Mike. Ultimately, Mike places Sue-Lin in a situation where the smuggler actually takes her hostage at gunpoint. Ladies and gentlemen, would you believe that Mike actually sang a series of happy songs while these events were taking place?
- I somehow hadn't realized until seeing this film just how bad of an actor Elvis Presley really was. I'm not a huge fan of his musical career either, but the man had an undeniable stage presence. Onscreen, however, he proves to be a complete dud any time he's not fighting or singing. The film includes plenty of background footage of the actual 1962 Seattle World's Fair, some of which is interesting. Really that is the only non-Kurt Russell-related compliment I can deliver. The rest of the movie is Elvis and Gary Lockwood being utterly despicable to everyone around them, particularly the women. Indeed it happened at the World's Fair, but let's hope it never happens again.
- The director, Norman Taurog, is responsible for several films marking career low points for people like Buster Keaton and Vincent Price. On the other hand, films like Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine tend to be the high points of games of Balderdash.
