HEY, LET'S TWIST!

 

Hey, Let's Twist! is the fictionalized story of Joey Dee, The Peppermint Lounge, and of course, The Peppermint Twist (just like any other twist, but it has the word peppermint).

Of course, Joey Dee and The Starliters are the main draw in Hey, Let's Twist!, but the film also features several other musicians. Teddy Randazzo who not only appeared in several other early rock movies (The Girl Can't Help It, Rock Rock Rock, and Mr. Rock and Roll), but is also a noted songwriter ("Going Out of My Head", "Hurt So Bad") and he has also been inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame. A couple of other actress/singers/songwriters to look for in the movie are Jo Ann Campbell ("I'm The Girl From Wolverton Mountain") and Kay Armen ("Be Good to Yourself"). And as long as I'm mentioning people to look for, keep an eye out for 18 year old Joe Pesci performing with The Starliters in the last part of Hey, Let's Twist!

 I really was expecting Hey, Let's Twist! to be a light-weight story built around Joey Dee and a slew of twist songs. To my surprise, the film was a decent family drama built around Joey Dee and a slew of twist songs. Besides the direction of Greg Garrison (The Dean Martin Show), two other reasons can be attributed to making this a better film than I thought it would be. The main reason is because of the two adult leads - Papa (Dino Di Luca) and Angie (Kay Armen), they both did such great acting jobs that it lent an air of believability to the story line. The other reason, in my opinion, were the authentic looking sets, which as with the aforementioned actors also helped with adding realism with the story. And just as a final note, Joey Dee wasn't that bad of an actor either. Although at times (other that when he was on stage) he was relegated to more of a background role, when given the opportunity, he was no slouch in portraying himself on film.