This movie was released as Catch Us If You Can in the UK and released as Having A Wild Weekend in the U.S. I first saw this movie when it had its original run in the movie theaters. I could never remember anything about it, other than the fact that I had seen it. Also, having nothing to do with this review: I once saw The Dave Clark Five live. They put on a great show and it's the only time that I've seen a drum solo that wasn't boring. Usually, when the drum solo starts, everyone would know it was time for a bathroom break. This was definitely NOT the case with Dave Clark. Now, back to the movie.
Even though the poster and the trailer (see below) both mention drama, they both play up aspects that would leave you to believe that this is a similar movie to "A Hard Day's Night". Having A Wild Weekend (HAWW) is definitely not a clone of that movie. The Dave Clark Five (DC5) obviously didn't want to copy The Beatles and do a light hearted romp starring the DC5 as themselves and they definitely succeeded with this movie.
HAWW begins with the DC5 all living together in an old church and some of the action here is definitely reminiscent of "A Hard Days Night". However, when the lads arrive at their job, we find that they are all stuntmen working on a commercial. This is interesting since Dave Clark had originally been a stuntman before teaching himself to play the drums and forming a band to raise money for his football team. This makes me assume that Dave Clark had some input into the script.
Dave Clark's character is named Steve, but all the other members of The DC5 (Mike Smith, Lenny Davidson, Rick Huxley, and Denis Payton) have the same names as their characters. I really didn't understand why a movie that was made basically to promote The Dave Clark Five would use a different name for the band's leader. This just seemed very strange to me, especially since all the other band members went by their own names.
The plot: At the filming of a TV commercial for "Meat For Go", Steve and Dinah,"The Butcher Girl" (Barbara Ferris in a part supposedly designed for Marianne Faithfull), have a spot where they drive off in a sports car, instead of going back for another take, they just keep going. It seems Dinah (The Butcher Girl) has her eye on an island where she can get away from it all and Steve agrees to help get her there. Dinah's agent decides to use the event for publicity and tells the media that Steve has kidnapped Dinah.
Steve and Dinah meet some interesting people on their journey. The first is a group of beatniks/hippies who having been wandering the countryside and are now hiding out in what appears to be an abandoned village. When Steve goes to get the car, he sees an army storming the place. This at first appears to be a training exercise at an abandoned village, but the army rounds up the beatnik/hippie group and carries them off at gunpoint. I never fully understood how this scene was suppose to play out. I am assuming that the makers of the movie were trying to illustrate that if you try to live free, the government/man/whatever will stop you if they can. I may also be reading too much into this scenario.
Since the army has bombed their car, Steve and Dinah set off walking. They get picked up by an older married couple who at first appear that they are going to be sexual predators, with the wife after Steve and the husband after Dinah. However, it turns out, they are actually just bored with their humdrum life and are looking for a little excitement, which they get in helping Steve and Dinah outwit everyone who is chasing them. I'm assuming this was another point the movie was trying to make about everyday life being so dull.
Steve and Dinah do finally make their destination and Dinah finds that it is a disappointment. She remarks that the journey was the important part, anyway. It's revealed that she has pulled this same type of stunt several times and was only really interested in the adventure. It appears that she has feelings for Steve, but is more than willing to go back into her own life with all the new publicity her romp has caused in the press. This appeared to be the final theme, the importance of the journey, not the destination, fitting in with the U.S. title of Having A Wild Weekend. While HAWW was making some of its thematic points as discussed above, it would occasionally bring the rest of the DC5 into the movie. Every time they show up, the movie then turns into a light hearted romp ala "A Hard Day's Night". The juxtaposition of the seventy five per cent serious side of HAWW, coupled with these twenty five per cent lighter scenes, made for a movie that really didn't satisfy me on either level.
After seeing it again, these many years later, I can understand why I didn't remember much about HAWW. I'm sure I went to the theater thinking I was going to see a madcap British comedy featuring the DC5, not knowing that what I was really going to see was a downbeat British drama. As a matter of fact, even now, my brain wasn't really that happy watching HAWW, since I had still assumed that it was going to be a mod/pop 60s comedy; however, I found out that I was sitting through a mostly dull drama. At least the songs on the soundtrack were good!
Having A Wild Weekend is currently out of print in the U.S. It is available as a region 2 dvd from Amazon UK (if you have a region free player). I purchased my copy from a collector's site.
Do I like British teen pop movies, pre- "A Hard Day's Night"? I can't answer that question, since this is the first one I have ever seen; however, I certainly enjoyed Live It Up (released in the U.S. as "Sing and Swing"), even though it had a few spots that made absolutely no sense with the rest of the movie.
The plot centers around a group of boys (David Hemmings, Heinz Burt formerly of The Tornados, Steve Marriott, John Pike) that work for the GPO (General Post Office) and in their spare time dream of becoming famous rock stars with their band The Smart Alecs. They even mention once during the movie that they would like to be as famous as The Beatles. They cut a demo, but it gets lost, the band has a "bust up" over this, but eventually all works out in the end. A pretty simple plot that allowed not only The Smart Alecs to perform, but since the movie was revolving around music, allowed the insertion of other musical groups. To make things even better The Smart Alecs song "Live It Up" was actually good enough that it could have been a hit in real life.
Record producer Joe Meek wrote all of the songs in Live It Up and according to the commentary, all the artists in the movie, except for Kenny Ball, were from his stable of performers. Joe Meek is known as the Phil Spector of England and is best known to us here in the U.S. as the producer of The Tornados "Telstar", the first record by a British group to hit #1 in the U.S. Hot 100 charts.
It was nice seeing the parents and adults being supportive of the kids in Live It Up. The U.S. versions of this same type of movie during this period seemed to always have the parents degrading that evil rock and roll. Even the most resistant character to his son pursuing a music career here is Hemmings' father, who has given him 30 days to finally break into the business or to get a "real" job. When Hemmings wants to give up early, his father shows his support by insisting his son take the whole 30 days and not give up.
In this day and age, it was odd to see the young guys smoking during their scenes, but I guess in the early 60s, this didn't look out of place. The motorbikes and the messengers reminded me of "Quadrophenia" in which the lead character was a messenger. According to the commentary the time period of Live It Up is just a little bit before the Mods vs Rockers riots era. I imagine Pete Townshend had seen this movie in the UK and I wonder if it had any influence on him when he wrote his rock opera "Quadrophenia".
The commentary on the DVD is very strange, they did one commentary for both Live It Up and for its sequel "Be My Guest". About 1/2 way through the commentary, they stop talking about this movie, Live It Up, and start talking about the sequel Be My Guest. I stopped listening to the commentary, since I know it will also be on "Be My Guest", which I plan on watching in the future. I'm not much for listening to commentaries, but this one gave me a lot of insights into the UK during the time period of this movie.
There is one very odd part in the movie that was never mentioned in the commentary, but nonetheless sticks in my mind. The teen girl (Jennifer Moss) who was a brunette and had been trying to attract the attention of Hemmings changes her hair color to blond. After a short trip to find the missing demo tape, she suddenly is a brunette again. One of the other boys asks has she done something different with her hair, but she ignores him. Later Hemmings says with his back to the camera(making it appear this was a voice over) "I'm glad you lost that wig, I never did like blonds". I can only guess that this blond hair was going to be part of the plot, was abandoned and covered up with the above explanations.
Some of the musical numbers are worked coherently into the plot, but on a few occasions, a musical number just suddenly appears between scenes with no rhyme or reason. I'm not sure if this was poor editing, time restraint, or just "let's get another performance into the movie", but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of Live It Up.
The musicians featured in Live It Up: Steve Marriott (The Small Faces and Humble Pie) had been a child actor who had received raves for his earlier stage work in Oliver. His previous acting pays off well here since he is quite good in every scene he is in. You can also spot future Deep Purple and Rainbow guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in the group the Outlaws (photo above), Jennifer Moss plays David Hemmings girlfriend, Gene Vincent who had moved to the UK because of tax problems in the U.S. does one song, Heinz Burt played the lead singer of The Smart Alecs, the Australian singer Patsy Ann Noble, Sounds Incorporated, Kim Roberts, and Andy Cavell and The Saints all perform one song each, Mitch Mitchell who would later play drums in The Jimi Hendrix Experience, plays Andrew (listed in the credits under his birth name John Mitchell) and Dave Clark of The Dave Clark Five listed as David Clark is credited as Recording Man.
This movie was on a TCM Underground double feature with College Confidential. While College Confidential wasn't a great movie (see my review below: click here) it wasn't all that bad. However, I looked forward more to seeing this second feature, since I'm pretty sure I had seen it when I was younger. We didn't have music videos back in those dark days and unless you got to see rock acts live or on Ed Sullivan, you pretty much relied on teen movies that featured music to actually see the acts you heard on the radio.
Get Yourself A College Girl turned out to be a disaster of a movie. It had a plot similar to what you might have seen in later years on "Love American Style", but this movie wasn't up to the level of that TV series. Check out the trailer at the end of this post, as you can see they are much more interested in showing you what music acts will appear in the movie rather than very much about the plot.
The plot: It seems that Terry (Mary Ann Mobley) is secretly a successful pop songwriter, but she has kept this fact quiet at the exclusive girl's school she attends. When her publisher Gary Underwood (Chad Everett) unwittingly exposes her, the college is SHOCKED! This is where the movie started going downhill for me. It was 1964 and I find it hard to believe there would have been any such uproar. They acted like it was 1914 and good girls didn't write songs (especially songs that might have the word sex in them). A word about the song that she supposedly wrote (Get Yourself A College Girl), there's no way it was a pop or rock song, when it's later played in the movie as an instrumental it sounds like something from "Fiddler on The Roof".
Back to the plot, the girls are going on Christmas vacation at a ski lodge. Terry and her friend Sue Ann Mobley (Chris Noel - photo on left) plus their dance teacher, Marge Endicott (Joan O'Brien) all promise to stay away from men during the vacation, so they won't bring further disgrace on the school. (I guess I don't have to tell you how that works out.) Lynne (Nancy Sinatra) is also along for the trip to meet her husband, who she only sees a few times a year. A hard thing to keep straight with this group is that Joan O'Brien as the teacher doesn't look any older than the other actresses playing the students.
The grandson of the founder of the college Senator Hubert Morrison (Willard Waterman, best known as "The Great Gildersleeve") and his obviously gay assistant Gordon (James Millhollin) decide to check out the students on vacation. The Senator winds up "digging" the kids and dancing the Watusi (when he had seen the students dancing earlier, he had imagined them as African Natives dancing). His pants come loose, he gets photographed and is going to lose the election unless the kids rally around him. (If you can't guess the outcome, find out where you left your brain.)
While all of this is going on, Terry who hates Gary has a skiing accident and is stuck in the snow. Gary forces his kisses on her and they immediately fall in love. There's also another subplot about Sue Ann falling for a French painter. The only subplot that is fairly amusing is that Lynne (Nancy Sinatra) stays shacked up in her room with her husband. Every time they go by to check on her she is in a daze and has on a different nightie, it appears that she has been "screwed silly". That's the only explanation I can come up with for her dazed look, since I don't think they were in their room smoking weed.
The first couple of musical performances by The Dave Clark Five (“Whenever You're Around") and The Animals ("Blue Feeling") are pretty tepid; however, they both get to come back near the end of the movie with a couple of pretty good songs. The Standells (pre "Dirty Water") get to do a couple of songs (“Bony Maronie” and “The Swim) near the middle of the movie.
The best musical performances are both by jazz groups - Stan Getz with Astrud Gilberto doing "Girl From Ipanema" and The Jimmy Smith Trio doing "Johnny Come On Home". The movie also includes two oddball performances - The Rhythm Masters doing a hot Dixieland number ("Beat Street Rag") and then following their song performance with tap dancing (yes, tap dancing) and a Vegas Lounge Act - Freddie Bell and the Bellboys with Roberta Linn (“Talkin' About Love").
The Dave Clark Five come back near the end of the movie and have a much better performance with “Thinking of You". They're followed by The Animals also having their better performance with "Round and Round". I guess it goes without saying that all of these performances are lip sync. The strangest part of these performances was that both groups had to carry their equipment on stage before starting their songs.
Even though character actors Willard Waterman and James Millhollin both brought a little bit of zing to this otherwise dull movie and I was glad to catch most of the musical performances (the Freddie Bell and The Rhythm Masters were both so out of place they just made me laugh), I was still relieved to see "The End" on the screen and know that I would never have to see Get Yourself A College Girl Again.
This movie was released as Catch Us If You Can in the UK and released as Having A Wild Weekend in the U.S. I first saw this movie when it had its original run in the movie theaters. I could never remember anything about it, other than the fact that I had seen it. Also, having nothing to do with this review: I once saw The Dave Clark Five live. They put on a great show and it's the only time that I've seen a drum solo that wasn't boring. Usually, when the drum solo starts, everyone would know it was time for a bathroom break. This was definitely NOT the case with Dave Clark. Now, back to the movie.
