EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert is a concert documentary that grew out of the 65 boxes of unseen Las Vegas performances discovered by Baz Luhrmann while researching his 2022 biopic Elvis. As I have little interest in ‘the King’ I approached with a heavy heart. But now? I’m abundantly interested. In fact, I’ve shifted from indifference to thinking that if I could see one musical artist live at their peak it would have to be him. He’s that electrifying. A warning, however: it’s a 12A. ‘Elvis picks up a bra thrown on to the stage during a concert performance and puts it on his head,’ notes the BBFC. I wish I’d had the chance to throw a bra that he’d put on his head. Hopefully, it would have been one of my nicer ones that day. They are of varying quality.

This has not been a half-hearted endeavour. The boxes, which contained 59 hours of footage, were in a Warner Bros vault down a salt mine in Kansas. It cost $100,000 just to go looking – which Luhrmann paid out of his own pocket. The negatives were at the point of perishing. And there was no audio, so the original sound had to be found elsewhere and synced. They engaged Peter Jackson and the team who had undertaken restorations for projects like Get Back, the Beatles archival docuseries. They also discovered a 45-minute interview that had never been heard before – although, if you’re not a fervent completist, you will find it all new anyway. Still, good work, fellas.

Elvis was in residence at the International Hotel in Las Vegas from 1969 to 1976. He was in his thirties and, even though the Beatles were soaring, he was still bringing it. (Thankfully, the film does not go near the sad, fat pantsuit years.) He was, at this time, such a sublimely beautiful physical specimen you can overlook the mutton chops and very obviously dyed black hair that would, usually, be deal breakers.

I wish I’d had a chance to throw a bra that he’d naughtily put on his head

The film contains no talking heads. Instead, it’s that interview playing as we switch from the concert to the rehearsals for the concert, where, miraculously, we see him goofing around with his band and backing singers. Alongside this are excerpts from press conferences and star-studded after parties. There is no discernible chronology. It might give us a few minutes of footage of Colonel Tom Parker, as ‘Devil in Disguise’ plays, then it’s back to a performance. I’d have liked more narrative structure. I was often at a loss as to what happened when. But this is, principally, Elvis, commanding the stage, spectacularly.

Hopefully, you’ll catch it at an IMAX cinema where you can see every sequin and every pore and every droplet of sweat while the music throbs up your legs. His raw, instinctual musicality is phenomenal and the energy he puts into every song is extraordinary. There is a rendition of ‘Polk Salad Annie’ that cuts between various performances, rising to such a crescendo that even his backing singers, who are doing this night after night, appear thrilled. ‘Suspicious Minds’, ‘Hound Dog’, ‘In The Ghetto’: it’s all here.

It’s also fascinating to see the audience at the time. They are mostly middle-aged, moneyed, sedate but there’s always a few who become so overwhelmed that they throw a bra that he’ll naughtily put on his head. There’s no sense that he will one day die on a toilet. He is endlessly aware and mischievous, playing the crowd as if it were another instrument.

The film is a mix of images, like a collage or dreamscape, flitting from here to there, which does mean, unfortunately, we never actually get to see a song in full. However, if you Google ‘Polk Salad Annie, Live, Las Vegas’ you can watch it in its entirety and see exactly what I’m talking about.