Elvis Presley's 33 films were so formulaic their scripts could be said to follow the glassy outline of a laboratory test tube.

And the chemistry between Elvis and his on-screen romantic interests?

As predictable as an acid-base reaction.

But it still came as a surprise to Mark Griep to learn The King played a chemist in 1967's "Clambake" — a discovery made all the more abrupt because this detail oddly was missing from the movie-box description.

"I was shocked," he said. "Completely amazed."

And pleasantly so. Griep, a 45-year-old associate chemistry professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is both an avid Elvis fan and a chemist.

The find was significant for another reason, though: Griep collects movies with chemistry themes.

After six years of searching and compiling, "Clambake" is one of hundreds of movies he has found on the subject, and he has focused his powers of distillation in search of trends and hints of a bigger picture.

This semester, he is teaching "Chemistry in the Movies" — a first for UNL — to explore the image of chemists in film.

Presley's flattering portrayal of a chemist may have helped take the nerd stereotype out of this brainy occupation (if only for 100, hip-swinging minutes), but in general, filmmakers have not been kind to chemists, Griep said. They often are shown as bumbling and well-meaning or sinister and maniacal. And the reality of the science often is a half-baked afterthought.

Chemist characters, he said, tend to fall into one of four categories: wacky inventor, industrial researcher, chemistry professor or Dr. Jekyll. More specifically, the Dr. Jekyll persona dominated chemistry movies before the 1940s while those after, such as "The Absent-Minded Professor" (1961) and its 1997 remake "Flubber," have favored the nutty professor.

In addition, many chemistry films often wind up on the comedy shelf, he said, unlike physics or other science films, which usually fall into the science fiction category.

"You know it's fake, and that's why it's funny," he said. "But comedies are not viewed as seriously, and that's why I think chemists get a bad rap."

While some of the movies are based on a portion of reality, he said, it usually serves only as a jumping-off point for more absurd claims. His personal favorites are the ones that sprinkle chemistry — real or fake — throughout the film.

As an amateur historian, he also is interested in weaving together a story about the earliest chemistry films.

For instance, he's trying to unravel why the word "monocaine," never mentioned in H.G. Wells' 1897 book "The Invisible Man," shows up in the movie of the same name to refer to the fictional invisibility drug.

Griep doesn't know how the screenwriter came up with "monocaine," but he suspects it is derived from the word "cocaine," a drug whose name and effects were well-known by the time the movie was made in 1933.

The four students enrolled in the one-hour class are science majors. As part of the course work, they must choose a chemistry movie from Griep's collection, show the key chemistry clip to the class and explain the science.

Abraham Zabih, 19, a chemistry major from South Dakota, agrees with Griep the image of chemists has suffered at the hands of movie-makers. But he takes comfort in the belief that educated people know real chemists aren't evildoers in the Hollywood sense.

"Ultimately, I don't think it gives them a bad reputation because the world knows that they're working for the good of humanity, not the bad of it," Zabih said.

Besides watching every movie on his list at least twice with his wife and artist, Marjorie Mikasen, Griep has read nearly 30 books from UNL's film studies library and scoured lists of movies on the Internet. Eventually, he hopes to see his own book on the library's shelves.

As the project's scope has grown, the chemistry department has helped by kicking in enough money to buy about 75 percent of the movies in the collection.

"I naively thought I'd find 60 of them and catalog them, and I'd be done," he said. "Now I'm up to about 1,000."

To his knowledge, he is the only one collecting movies specifically about chemistry, though there are people who collect other types of science movies, Griep said.

He recently compared notes with Victoria Gilman, the creative force behind a new Web site called "Reel Science." The site posts science movie reviews and recommendations for members of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific organization.

Gilman wanted the site to be entertaining, she said, but she also is concerned about the accurate portrayal of scientists, especially when young people's interest in chemistry is declining.

"When you're using science as a horror tool, even when the characters are trying to do the right thing, there are still ways to make science look bad," she said.

Still, the contributors to the site know how to have fun. Reviewer Rachel Sheremeta Pepling recommends "The Killer Shrews" (1959), whose venomous vermin turn out to be dogs with strap-on fangs and "bad toupees." "This movie is not for intelligent discussion of the science … or, ahem, special effects," she wrote. "It's for making fun of all these things."

And while bad science doesn't offend Griep, it can drive some scientists mad.

At a recent talk at UNL, an exasperated Lawrence Krauss exclaimed, "That's it! I can't take it anymore!" as he abruptly turned off a ghost fight scene from an episode of "Star Trek."

In the scene, a brawling ghost is slammed against walls, struck with a fist and falls heavily to the floor — obeying physics laws that only a mortal would be bound by, the Case Western Reserve physics chairman told the audience.

But the science in movies and the image of scientists has improved, said science communication expert David Kirby at the University of Manchester in England. By the 1990s, science consultants were used on science movies about 60 percent of the time, a number that now has reached about 95 percent, he said.

Griep suspects even "Clambake" had a science consultant, saying it was not a coincidence Elvis' varnish formula — known as GOOP in the movie — resembles a real molecule.

"Like most science movies, they've become more technical," Griep said. "The level of realism is so much higher. Even the technical jargon is better."

Still, he admits to reveling in its misuse, including made-up chemical reactions and names.

"In contrast, the public knows that it's gobbledygook," he said, "At some point they decide to go along with it and suspend their disbelief."

Just not long enough to believe Elvis the Pelvis would have been better remembered as Elvis the chemist.