Dynamite Chicken is a potpourri of skits, old film footage, comedy sketches, spoken word segments, on the street interviews, music and comedy sketches, and lots and lots of naked dancing women. All of these diverse elements are held together with interspersed bits of comedy from Richard Pryor.
Even though the the announced cast listed
at the first of the film leads you to believe the movie will have appearances by Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters
and Howling Wolf, they are only seen briefly in archival footage. The only real performance is by Joan Baez who sings a short song. John Lennon and Yoko Ono appear in a clip from The Bed-In and Sha Na Na has a very very short bit in the movie.
Dynamite Chicken is a movie that belongs to its time period (late 60s, early 70s). Viewed in 2013, it now seems terribly dated. If you can view it with the mindset of that period, you might get some enjoyment out of this film. For myself, even being a child of the 60s, I found only Richard Pryor's comedy to be entertaining, the rest of the movie was a pain to get through.
If I was giving Beyond The Doors a grade, I would have to grade it CRAZY AS HELL. Although I got my copy from a private individual and it didn't include any artwork, I cribbed the following liner notes on the video from the internet: "Jimi Hendrix: The king of rock. A pleasure seeking superstar who blasted his way into college campuses with his music, drugs and erotica. Dead at 27. Janis Joplin: A free spirited symbol of the sixties who was a hard drinking, hard lovin' texas mama who gloried in tearing at her throat as she sang. Dead at 27. Jim Morrison: Founder of The Doors. His performances turned into orgies and his beautiful poetry became dark, eerie rock, protesting against the ravaging of the earth. Dead at 27. Their music got them killed! Why? How? Where? They were too powerful - they had to be silenced! Assassinated for the good of America? Find out why. "
The movie begins with a trio of men out hunting ducks. One of the men is shot by his buddies (shades of Dick Cheney). His son is bequeathed a briefcase and it contains an almost finished book by his father showing the reason he was murdered...he was going to blow the lid off the government conspiracy to silence the "three pipers of Rock and Roll". Most of the rest of the film is told in a flashback style as the movie shows us all three musicians and how they were eventually killed...well except Morrison who faked his death and entered a monastery, where he died a natural death. Why were they killed? It seemed Jimi was sympathetic to The Black Panthers, Morrison spoke out against the Vietnam War....and Janis, I never could get a clear reason they killed her, since she never really did anything political in Beyond The Doors.
Of the three actors, I thought Gregory Allen Chatman did a pretty good Hendrix when he was acting, as far as music ability it appeared holding a guitar was something foreign to him and most of the time the camera captures him only from above the guitar (a trick I guess they took from Ed Sullivan only showing Elvis from the waist up). Riba Meryl as Janis Joplin reminded me of a mix of Stevie Nicks and circa 1980's Elayne Boozler, however her song styling wasn't bad. Bryan Wolf was recognizable as Morrison since he had on tight leather pants, other than that, he looked more like Tommy James and Peter Frampton combined into one person, but once again his song styling was up to par.
Speaking of the songs, there is only "original" music in Beyond The Doors. I put original music in quotes since all of the songs sound similar to the music originally performed by Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison. I actually found this a plus for the movie and commend whoever did the songwriting. One last note on musicians - none of the backing groups looked like any members from the original bands.... one drummer even resembled Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals and one even looked like Freddie Prinze!
The main reason for the elimination of Joplin, Morrison and Hendrix is Richard Nixon wants to be re-elected and is afraid of the youth vote and the power these three could wield if they so chose. This brings us to a small joke in the movie where a photo of Nixon is hanging on the wall and, once straighten, Herbert Hoover asks an agent how it looks and the agent replies "a little crooked".
There's a lot of craziness in Beyond The Doors such as Hendrix playing Woodstock indoors, Joplin being killed by injecting oranges with dope and then staging an overdose scene, and Morrison dying in the monastery due to what I guess old folks would call consumption (what they don't have penicillin in France?). However, the craziest to me was the inclusion of The Plaster Casters. Their appearance had absolutely nothing to do with the film and I assume someone thought it would air some believability to the movie. Sorry filmmakers, it was much to late by the time the Plaster Casters arrived for anyone to think they were watching a documentary.
Beyond The Doorswas badly acted, badly scripted, and badly filmed, but I still enjoyed it for it own unique craziness. However, if you're not a fan of bad movies, you might want to skip this one.
I've had this DVD for quite some time, but put off watching it, since I really wasn't expecting it to be very good. While it's not the greatest biopic I've ever seen, Hendrix is far from the worse. Wood Harris plays Jimi Hendrix and does a competent acting job, although I never believed I was watching anything more than an actor pretending to be someone else.
The plot of Hendrix is built around an interview he is supposed to be doing on the last day of his life. This allows exposition from Jimi to move the movie through the various years of his life. We first see Jimi as a young boy living with his single father and a brief glimpse of his mother and her problems. The film then skips to Jimi getting out of the Army after breaking his ankle. Hendrix then follows Jimi through his early years of performing in different bands. One specific instance shows us Jimi being fired from Little Richard's band, because he felt Jimi was getting too much attention with his guitar playing and theatrics. Little Richard also claimed Jimi copied his pencil thin mustache. All of this moves pretty fast, since they're trying to fit Hendrix's lifetime into 100 minutes.
Jimi gets his big break when Chas Chandler (formerly the bass player for The Animals) sees him performing in a club and convinces Jimi to come to England, where he will manage him. In England, the one thing Jimi really wants to do is jam with Eric Clapton. After some persuasion from Chas, Clapton agrees to let Jimi jam with Cream (Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce) on stage. This goes so well, Chas tells Jimi that he should form his own power trio and they recruit Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell and The Jimi Hendrix Experience is born.
The rest of Hendrix takes us through the ups and downs of his wildly successful career: We get a look at Jimi playing The Monterey Pop Festival. A short snippet with Jimi as the opening act for The Monkees. A look at the dissolution of The Experience. A quick stop at Woodstock with Jimi performing "The Star Spangled Banner". A very short looks at his free form jazz group, Sky Church, and the formation of Band of Gypsies featuring Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on Bass. During all these phases in Jimi's career we get an inside look at his excessive drug taking and womanizing, his struggle to control and expand his own music, and the toll the road took on him.
There were two parts of Hendrix that I thought could have been done a little better. First, between a lot of scenes, we get shown "real life" clips (Beatles, Monkees, Woodstock, Kent State, Martin Luther King assassination, etc) to establish time and place. Unfortunately, a few of these scenes included people/events in the wrong time line. The other thing that jarred me out of the movie was Wood Harris' guitar playing. The movie, with some careful camera work, manages most of the time to hide the fact that Harris wasn't really playing the guitar and they used someone else's hands in any close-up shots. The trouble came when, in some wide shots, you could definitely see Harris' hands and the actual music being played didn't match.
Hendrix was denied the use of any original material that Jimi had recorded, so the movie is filled with covers of Jimi's covers - "All Along The Watchtower", "Hey Joe", "Wild Thing", etc. This worked out pretty good for the most part, but it did leave me wanting to hear "Are You Experienced", "Purple Haze", etc. I will say that Harris did a really good job of lip synching....whether he was lip synching his voice or someone else's I haven't been able to determine. IF you're a diehard fanboy of Jimi Hendrix, then you probably won't like this movie. IF you want a pretty decent overview of Jimi Hendrix's life, then I would definitely recommend Hendrix.
When I first saw Monterey Pop, I'm sure I thought it was cool and far out and maybe even groovy. Re-watching it these many years later, for the most part, I have a completely different attitude about the movie.
First up were The Mamas and The Papas doing "California Dreaming" and as much as I enjoy their harmonies on the record, in this performance they just didn't have it together. Canned Heat was up next with some white boy blues doing "Rollin and Tumblin" and this song still held up after all of these years. Third in the movie were Simon and Garfunkel singing "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)". I've never been a big fan of this duo, either together or solo, but I have to admit their harmonies were as good live as on the record. Next came jazz with Hugh Masekela performing "Bajabula Bonke (Healing Song)", since I 'm really not a fan of jazz, I was very thankful when this song was over. I know I used to like Jefferson Airplane, at least their first few albums, but their first song "High Flyin' Bird" was terrible and their second song, "Today", on which Grace Slick, sang lead wasn't much better....but at least it was better.
Finally a stand-out performance when Janis Joplin backed by Big Brother and The Holding Company perform "Ball & Chain". It was a thrill to see someone so young with so much soul but sad to think of her life being so short. One thing to watch for is when Janis finishes her song and runs offstage, you can see how happy she was with her own performance. Even though Eric Burdon & The Animals diddled around a little too much before getting into the main part of "Paint It Black"....I understand it was 1967 and some diddling was expected, if you wanted to be taken seriously....once they got things rolling it was a great performance. Unfortunately after seeing a couple of good performances, The Who were up next, with "My Generation". I never got that stutter thing in the song and especially always thought the fake trashing of instruments was goofy. They were still worth watching for one reason - Keith Moon pounding the hell out of his drums. To make matters worse, The Who were followed by probably the worst performance in the movie with Country Joe and The Fish doing "Section 43", a terrible waste of film and my time.
Getting the movie back on track was Otis Redding, backed by Booker T and The MG's, showing everyone how it's done with "Shake" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long". Otis is followed by another stand-out performance with The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing "Wild Thing", although the guitar burning elicits the same response in me as when The Who trashed their instruments. The Mamas and The Papas redeem themselves with their second song performance "Got a Feelin" and then the movie closes out with a l-o-n-g Ravi Shankar performance "Raga Bhimpalasi", this finally bored me enough that I had to use the FF button to get to the end of the movie.
I often wonder, does it seem strange to today's younger generation that there was such controversy over a pre-fabricated group that didn't play their own instruments. As the years have rolled on, there's been several hit bands put together under the same premise without any controversy. However, the late 60s were a different time in music: Wanting to be hip and cool and artistic instead of rich and famous were the norms not the exceptions; and of course, casting four young men, two of whom were actual musicians, into a scenario that caused them to appear fake to their peers was just asking for trouble.
Speaking of peers, unlike a lot of my own peers, I never had any trouble with The Monkees. They had a lot of great singles and their TV show was nice light entertainment. Of Course, having Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Neil Diamond writing songs for you gives you a big step toward having a great rock/pop song. Add in the promotional value of being on a weekly television show and showcasing some of these songs and you have a fast track to a hit song. Anyway, I never saw The Monkees as any more of a manufactured money making machine than KISS. Both groups have entertained me in their own ways and that's good enough for me.
I actually did see The Monkees once in concert in 1969, well I saw THREE Monkees, since Peter Tork wasn't touring with the band at the time. It has always surprised me that Peter was the first to initially quit the band, knowing how much Mike Nesmith disliked being a Monkee. While I don't remember anything memorable about the show, I don't recall being disappointed in the concert. I do remember that there were a few teenyboppers in the audience, but they were so few that they really stood out. The Monkees were almost upstaged by their opening act Sam and The Goodtimers (previously the backing band for The Ike and Tina Turner Revue....and with that pedigree there's no wonder they were so good). Sam and The Goodtimers also were the back up band for The Monkees during this concert, although Mike played guitar for the whole show and Mickey did a drum solo. Otherwise, Davy and Mickey just sang and banged on some tambourines from time to time.
Daydream Believers - the Monkees Story (DB) covers the group from their conception until the end of their TV show. As with any biopic, you can't look at this as a documentary. The movie is made to be entertaining with facts taking only a secondary role. The first part of DB is about the show's conception and casting for the parts, while the rest of the movie mainly concerns itself with The Monkees desire to be seen as real musicians and their struggle to gain control from the studio over their own music. What I came away with is that Davy and Mickey would have been happy just being actors playing musicians, even though they did join forces with Peter and Mike. Peter was your typical California airhead, always into TM or any other "groovy" fad and Mike was sort of a hard to get along with ass. I'm not saying any of these are correct, just that's what DB showed me about each of the characters.
All the actors did a good job with their lip synch, which sometimes is where these music biopics have a real problem. Another plus, while none of the actors were exact doubles, all four of the actors had enough of a resemblance to their real life counter parts to give an air of believability to the movie. Besides The Monkees, the only other musicians featured in DB were Jimi Hendrix (who unsuccessfully was an opener for The Monkees on one of their tours) and a brief segment where The Monkees meet The Beatles, although I only noticed John Lennon in this scene, mainly since he has a speaking part, but the credits also show Paul and George as characters.
The DVD is a real bargain since it's loaded with extras: Besides the movie and the trailer, there are three separate twenty plus minute interviews with Mickey, Peter, and Davy. I watched all three of these and found that I like the TV Mickey, Peter, and Davy MUCH better than I like the real life actors. There are also three separate commentaries by Mickey, Peter, and Davy, but by the time I had watched the interviews, I really didn't want to hear anything else these three might have to say. IF I decide I need anymore Monkees in my life, I'll stick to the TV show or the music.
Back when me and my friends were "hip", we didn't think a lot about The Turtles. Their songs were pleasant enough, but when it came time to buy an album (because you know, 45's were for like teenyboppers) we went with Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The Doors, The Mothers of Invention, Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, etc. Years have passed and I realize that I only liked some of those groups/artists because it was the "hip" thing to do. After watching My Dinner With Jimi, I now have more appreciation for The Turtles, although I still think that they are a better "singles band" rather than an "album band".
I knew nothing about this movie, but ran across the title one day while scrolling through Netflix. The description "Howard Kaylan found fame as the lead singer of the 1960s band The Turtles, as depicted in this autobiographical screenplay. We meet Kaylan (Justin Henry) and his bandmates just as they triumph with their single "Happy Together." The band then heads off to England, where their friend Graham Nash (Steven Soldevilla) introduces them to The Beatles and Kaylan later dines with Jimi Hendrix (Royale Watkins) -- an event that changes his life." intrigued the hell out of me. I not only put it on my rental list, but moved it straight to the top. My Dinner With Jimi did not disappoint, it was everything and more that I thought it would be.
My Dinner With Jimi begins with The Turtles at a magazine promo shoot. John Corbett is the photographer in an almost non-recognizable role. We get introduced to each of The Turtles as they get their photos taken. The magazine writer who is at the shoot to do the accompanying story tells them: "Hope your looks don't hold you back." This goes with some of the commentary on the dvd when Howard Kaylan says he could always buy nice clothes, but it he good never buy "thin".
The Turtles are experiencing their biggest hit single "Happy Together" (which knocked The Beatles "Penny Lane" out of the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100). They're playing the Whiskey A-Go-Go and The Doors are their opening act. There's a great scene after the concert when The Turtles go to Canter's Deli. At the deli we find Frank Zappa and Mama Cass Elliot sitting at a table together, plus Jim Morrison is drunk and walking on tables and being a general goofball. I was also delighted to see the late Wendie Jo Sperber, my favorite actress from from I Wanna Hold Your Hand, in the role of Louella the waitress.
One section of My Dinner With Jimi concerns how Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman are about to get drafted and they get advice on how to flunk their physicals. The advice mainly has them taking massive amounts of drugs plus not sleeping or bathing before they go and being as uncooperative as possible at the draft board. The draft board sequence in My Dinner With Jimi ranks right up there with Arlo Guthrie's in Alice's Restaurant.
When The Turtles get to England they hook up with their friend Graham Nash, who also has Donovan hanging out at his house. Everyone gets stoned and they listen to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which won't be released until the next day. After listening to the album Graham takes them to The Speakeasy Club so they can meet The Beatles, who they idolize. Look for the real Howard Kaylan in a cameo as the greeter/doorman at the club.
Inside the club The Turtles find Paul McCartney under the table taking photos, Ringo Starr being his usual laid back self, and George Harrison seeming to be a little embarrassed by the antics of Paul and the sharp tongue of John Lennon. Lennon is drunk and full of insults for The Turtles. Jim "Tucko" Tucker is really crushed by The Beatles and flees the club followed by the other Turtles. There is some conflicting information about Tucker in the movie and what is on the commentary. What truth I can glean is that he definitely did leave the Turtles and didn't play music again. Whether it was due to his disappointment in meeting his heroes or the fact that he couldn't take touring is unclear.
Howard remains behind and before he can reenter the club, he's approached by someone wanting his autograph. He's shocked to find out that it's Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. In tow with Brian is Jimi Hendrix and the three go back into the club for a meal, but Brian gets sidetracked by some girls and Howard winds up alone with Jimi. I'll let you watch the movie yourself to see how this dinner goes, but will tell you that it starts great, but ends badly.
Since the title is My Dinner With Jimi, it's appropriate that one of the strongest performances in the movie comes from Royale Watkins portrayal of Jimi Hendrix. He really captures that cool laid back vibe that Hendrix always seemed to emit. Although Royale has made a handful of movies and TV shows, he's best known as a stand up comic.
The commentary made a big deal out of how they tried to make everything look as close to possible to how it looked in real life, including the club The Speakeasy. They even used Howard's old house in one scene. While I will agree that everything had the right look of the late 60s, I'm puzzled about the bad wigs and especially about the sideburns used on Justin Henry who plays Howard. In the recreation of The Turtles appearance on The Smothers Brothers Show, the sideburns can actually be seen coming loose. This is the only minor quibble I have with My Dinner With Jimi. Overall, I found the movie very enjoyable and would highly recommend it to anyone.
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.
I knew before I started watching this movie that it was about Frankie Lymon's three wives (played by Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon) and their fight over the rights to the song "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" and any other monies owed to Lymon's estate. Even knowing that, I was disappointed that the movie had so little about Frankie Lymon and so much about the wives. I came away from the movie not knowing much more about Frankie than before I watched Why Do Fools Fall In Love.
One problem is that the story is told in flashbacks from three different viewpoints. Each wife has her own idea about who Frankie was, giving the movie viewer no clear cut picture of him. The only things I gathered from this movie about Frankie was that he started out street corner singing; he was a real ladies man; he was generous with his money; he was a drug addict; and he did a lot of splits during his musical performances.
The movie starts out in black and white with the actor playing Frankie (Larenz Tate) and The Teenagers performing. This immediately established Tate as Frankie with the viewer and even though he didn't look much like Frankie, he had the dance moves down enough that it sets in the viewer's mind that he was really Frankie Lymon. After the opening, Why Do Fools Fall In Love goes to color for the rest of the movie except for the closing scene.
Why Do Fools Fall In Love was released theatrically in 1998, but plays more like a VH1 movie biography. It just didn't have the feel of anything but a cheaply thrown together movie and that's not blaming any of the actors, since everyone in the movie played their parts more than adequately with Larenz Tate as Frankie being the standout.
The best part of the movie was Little Richard who plays the part of Little Richard in the courtroom scenes (in flashback scenes he's played by Miguel A. Nunez). The real Little Richard does his Little Richard act of acting outrageous and hamming it up in the courtroom. Little Richard also gets to do one musical number near the end of the movie, plus add a coda to the movie about how musicians always get cheated.
Other musicians portrayed by actors in Why Do Fools Fall In Love are The Platters with Zola Taylor (one of Frankie's wives), The Shirelles, The Kinks (during the Hullabaloo segment) and for some unexplained reason Jimi Hendrix is shown leaving Morris Levy's (owner of Roulette Records) office.
One thing that didn't ring quite right was when Frankie goes to L.A. to live with Zola it's 1965 , but in the movie it appears they tried to make it look more like 1967, The Summer of Love. One other flaw that I found with Why Do Fools Fall In Love was that Frankie was just 13 at the time of his success and we never see a young teenager in Tate; he looks more like a young man throughout the whole movie. On the other hand, it would have been shocking (even if more realistic) to see someone that looked like a teenager going through the difficult things the wives explain about Frankie.
Even though the movie never purported to be about Frankie Lymon's life, I'm still left wishing that it has been more about Frankie and less about the wives and their viewpoints of what Frankie was like. Frankie's life would make one hell of a movie....think about it...working at the age of 10, hustling prostitutes for extra income for your family shortly after, having sex with women twice his age, marrying three different women, going AWOL from the army, being addicted to heroin from the age of 15, being cheated by your agent and recording company, getting off heroin but later dying from an overdose at the age of 25 by celebrating what you think might be a comeback. NOW, there's a movie!
