The series of beach movies starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello began just as I was becoming a teenager. I found them fascinating at the time that kids (OK none of them were really kids) were all just hanging out at the beach with no adult supervision. Man! Did I ever wish I lived in California instead of upstate South Carolina!
Beach Party was the first in the series and it not only begat its own sequels, but also copycat movies from other studios. So many movies of this type were made that four years later the genre was played out and came to an end; although in 1987, Frankie and Annette would appear together once again in Back To The Beach, which is more or less a parody of the original movies.
Beach Party contained all of the elements that would show up in the future movies in the series. Frankie and Annette always sing a few songs, either solo or together. In Beach Party Frankie and Annette sing "Beach Party", Annette sings "Promise Me Anything (Give Me Love)" and "Treat Him Nicely", and Frankie does a rocking "Don't Stop Now". There's always a musical guest and in this movie that slot is filled by Dick Dale and The Deltones who perform "Swingin' and a-Surfin'" and "Secret Surfin' Spot". Also look for Dick in several other scenes where he plays the bongos and appears to be a member of the beach gang....maybe they had originally planned for Dick to be a regular in the series.
Other elements that you would continue to see as the series rolled along: Frankie talking to the camera/audience; Frankie and Annette having a spat, then try to make each other jealous, but they always get back together before the end of the movie; an older comedian who runs a business the kids frequent, Beach Party has Morey Amsterdam, this role would later be filled several times by Don Rickles; and Candy Johnson doing her wild shimmy dancing, she's credited in Beach Party as Perpetual Motion Dancer.
Beach Party also introduced us to the worst motorcycle gang anyone has ever seen - Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper with his gang The Rats and The Mice. He always made me think that his character was Brando from The Wild One run through the minds at Mad Magazine. In Beach Party, Eric Von Zipper also learns "The Finger", which somehow he always manages to work only on himself.
The main plot to hold all of the elements in Beach Party together is about an anthropologist (Bob Cummings) who with his assistant (Dorothy Malone) is studying the beach gang as if they were a wild tribe with their own language and mating rituals. If you think about it, Beach Party was made to appeal to young people, but the movie is actually making fun of them with this plot....but then this movie was written by Lou Rusoff who was 52 at the time.
I've watched several other beach movies in the recent past (reviews forthcoming) and so far I have found Beach Party to be the dullest of the bunch. I laughed only a couple of times during the movie and it also didn't seem to have the playfulness and light heartedness as some of the sequels that came later. One final thing to mention, Vincent Price makes a very small appearance in Beach Party, basically as a promotion for another American International picture he was starring in, The Haunted Palace.
Sam Katzman was well known for being able to get a fad (which rock and roll was considered to be at the time) to the big screen before the fad had faded away and also for being able to do it on the cheap. He is often criticized that a lot of the movies he produced had weak plots and bad acting. I personally think everyone owes him a debt of gratitude for capturing some of the early rockers and rhythm and blues singers on celluloid. Rock Around The Clock was Katzman's first music exploitation movie and after the success of Rock Around The Clock, he produced more music exploitation movies using "rock and roll" (Don't Knock The Rock, Jukebox Rhythm, Get Yourself A College Girl), "calypso" (Calypso Heat Wave), "the twist" (Twist Around The Clock, Don't Knock The Twist), "folk music" (Hootenanny Hoot), "British Invasion" (Hold On with Herman's Hermits) and even a couple of Elvis Presley movies (Kissin' Cousins, Harum Scarum).
Rock Around The Clock is generally considered the first rock exploitation movie by Katzman or anyone else. It was made to capitalize on the success that the song,"Rock Around The Clock" had received as part of the soundtrack in the movie Blackboard Jungle. Although it's hard for us today to look at Haley and see a "rock and roll" performer, he was huge during the years of 1954-56. Around 1957 his popularity declined when Elvis and other artists came along, who not only "looked like rockers" but also seemed to have "rock and roll" embedded within themselves.
Rock Around The Clock's plot revolves around the birth of "rock and roll" and points you to Bill Haley as the originator of the sound. While we all know that's not true, the plot of the movie can only exist by accepting that premise. Steve Hollis (Johnny Johnston) tells members of a Big Band that he has been representing that "big band music" is washed up. The band fires him, after which Steve and one member of the band, Corny (Henry Slate), decide to drive to New York. Along the way they stop in a small town where they find the town listening and dancing to Bill Haley and His Comets. They can't figure out what type music they are listening to "since it isn't boogie, it isn't jive and it isn't swing, it's sort of a combination of all of them". Once they find out it's a music called "rock and roll" Steve sees the next big thing and wants to sign the band plus a brother/sister dancing duo (who will be required to show kids how to dance to "rock and roll").
The rest of Rock Around The Clock revolves around getting the band and dancers signed and onto a national stage. There's a subplot about a romance between Steve and the female dancer (Lisa Gaye) that causes some trouble with a big booking agent whose daughter (Alix Talton) wants to marry Steve. Once Steve finds out that they have been blackballed by the booking agent, he turns to an old friend, Alan Freed, to help them get a foothold on entertainment bookings and of course everything works out fine by the end of the movie.
Rock Around The Clock not only had performances throughout the movie by Bill Haley and The Comets, who it appeared did have a pretty good rockin' stage show, but also The Platters who sing "Only You" and "The Great Pretender", Tony Martinez and his band do four Latin numbers, and Freddie Bell and His Bellboys sing "We're Gonna Teach You To Rock" and "Giddy Up Ding Dong".
A last note about Freddie Bell and His Bellboys, they recorded a version of "Hound Dog" in 1955 and in 1956 Elvis (who was doing a not very successful Las Vegas appearance at the time) saw Freddie Bell and His Bellboys singing it in their Las Vegas show and was moved to record it himself. This is interesting to me on two levels: Freddie Bell and his group have always looked more like a lounge act than a "rock and roll" act to me, and also the fact that Elvis would eventually wind up many years later in Las Vegas singing "Hound Dog", the song that he had "discovered" there and made famous.
This movie is the sequel to Live It Up, which I have previously reviewed. Be My Guest picks up with Dave (David Hemming) Martin's parents moving to Brighton Beach where they have inherited a guest house. They take the train, but Dave wants to drive his own car and plans to meet them there. Unfortunately, on the way his car conks out on him and he winds up taking the train the rest of the way into Brighton. On the train he meets a young American girl, Erica (Andrea Monet), who is going to Brighton to audition as a dancer. Her audition falls through and Dave, without the approval of his parents, brings her to the guest house as a non-paying guest. Even though Dave is going to work for the local newspaper, he still has a desire to be a musician; but his parents have convinced him that's not the career track for him.
We get our first musical performance in the movie when Dave and Erica are watching TV and we see Jerry Lee Lewis backed by The Plebs (whose members included Terry Crowe and Mick Dunford of The Nashville Teens and Danny McCulloch who would later join The Animals) singing "My Baby Don't Love No One But Me" I believe this is an unreleased song that can only be heard in this movie and I have included a youtube clip at the end of this review.
In the meantime, Dave's two buddies, Ricky (Steve Marriott) and Phil (John Pike), have taken a job in the food/beverage car of a train. They do such a bad job that they get kicked off the train at the end of the line which, of course, just happens to be Brighton Beach. Dave lets them stay in one of the guest house's cabanas, but this is against the law and causes trouble for Dave's father. They eventually wind up staying in the guest house....as you can tell, the guest house isn't doing very well, since it's just filling up with non-paying guests! Erica, Ricky and Phil try to help drum up business for the guest house, but everything they do seems to go wrong: from hanging a big sign that violates the local ordinance to Erica handing out flyers that are misconstrued as a come-on for sex.
A music promoter has come to Brighton to discover new talent with a plan to replace Liverpool's Mersey Beat with The Brighton Beat. The boys re-form their group The Smart Alecs and write a song called "Be My Guest" so they can enter the talent contest. The talent contest has been rigged by the promoter and his girlfriend, but the boys find out about the plan and foil the duo. Everything winds up on a happy note with the boys' song becoming a hit and the guest house being full of paying guests....who are all coming to town to check out The Brighton Beat.
The talent show part of the plot allowed for the inclusion of different musical performers throughout the film: The Nightshades do "Be My Guest", The Zephyrs perform "She Laughed", Joyce Blair sings "Gotta Get Away Now", and Kenny and The Wranglers do "Somebody Help Me" plus the Nashville Teens (photo above) sing " Whatcha Gonna Do" . It was a big surprise when the first group we see in the movie: Slash Wildly and the Cut-Throats (actually The Zephyrs), appeared on screen to see how much longer the hair styles were in 1965 than in the previous movie, Live It Up, which was made in 1963 Just like Live It Up, I really enjoyed this British Teen Music Comedy, with Be My Guest being a little more polished in its execution and plot structure. The commentary for this movie and Live It Up are the same on both discs. The commentary covers Live It Up for the first 45 minutes or so and then there's about 20-25 minutes of commentary about Be My Guest...strange setup...but a good commentary that is well worth a listen. I would recommend these two films to anyone interested in this period of UK music/fashion/teens and would also suggest watching both movies as a double feature.
This movie is like many that came before it and many that would come after it: existing primarily to showcase a group of rock and roll performances, that are surrounded by a plot to hold things together. The best part of Go, Johnny, Go! is that Chuck Berry not only gets to perform but also gets to act. The film never makes it clear, but as far as we can tell, he is either Alan Freed's best friend or partner, since they are always hanging out together. Another plus is the lead actor, Jimmy Clanton, who can actually sing (not always the case in these movies); however his acting ability and character's attitude is on par with Elvis' in "Wild In The Country". Jimmy was from Louisiana and you can hear the influence of his home state in a couple of his songs in the movie, while his other songs in the movie are done in a typical teen ballad style.
The opening credits roll as Chuck Berry plays "Johnny B. Goode" in the background. Go, Johnny, Go! opens with Alan Freed having a stage show going on and we see The Flamingos singing a scorching version of "Jump Children". Johnny (Jimmy Clanton) is hanging out backstage with Alan Freed and Chuck Berry and when Johnny goes on stage to sing "Angel Face", Chuck gets Freed to tell him the story of how Johnny almost landed in jail instead of becoming a big star.
Go, Johnny, Go! then flashes back to when Johnny had got out of the orphanage to perform in a gospel group (did Clyde Edgerton watch this movie and get an idea for Killer Diller?). When the choir director leaves the room, Johnny sings "Ship On A Stormy Sea" and you can hear some of his swamp pop roots even in this song. The choir director returns and says he'll have to send Johnny back to the orphanage (Man! they don't cut you any slack at this church). Johnny instead sets out on his own and gets a job as an usher.
We see Johnny doing some ushering, but mostly rocking along to the acts on stage and this winds up getting him fired from his job. They do let Johnny stay on and see the rest of the show and even give him his own seat. During this segment of the movie we have performances by Harvey (Fuqua of The Moonglows) doing "Don't Be Afraid To Love Me", Jo-Ann Campbell singing "Momma Can I Go Out" and Eddie Cochran doing "Teenage Heaven". Freed tells the crowd he's looking for a new star who he will name Johnny Melody. Johnny, thinking this will be his big break, waits for Freed out back of the theater where he meets Julie (Sandy Stewart) who was in the same orphanage as him. He brushes her off telling her he has just enough money for a demo and no time for dating. When Freed finally comes out, Johnny gets the brush off as Freed tells him that the whole thing is just a publicity stunt.
The movie switches to Julie, who is also an aspiring singer, and she's in the recording studio singing "Playmates". Johnny arrives at the same studio and barely has enough to pay for studio time and desperately needs a backup female singer which, of course, Julie agrees to be. Johnny/Jimmy Clanton then sings " My Love Is Strong" (this song would fit great on any Swamp Pop collection). Johnny gets his song to Freed's office, but the only information he includes with his recording is that he is the future Johnny Melody. Chuck pushes for Freed to find out who Johnny really is but Freed is tired of fooling with the whole thing and goes off with Chuck to watch him perform on a TV show and we get to see Chuck doing "Memphis, Tennessee".
Johnny is hanging out with Julie at her adopted parents house watching Chuck on TV. Julie is trying to assure Johnny that he has plenty of time to make it by pointing out that Chuck probably didn't make it until he was 27 or 28 and Johnny delivers one of my favorite lines in the movie "Who wants to wait until they're middle-aged". Johnny explains to Julie that he's barely been making a living by playing his trumpet and this leads to Johnny playing his horn while Julie plays the piano. Her adoptive parents come home and we find out they're "hip" squares as the foursome take off for the "The Krazy Koffee Kup" to catch some late night tunes.
Alan and Chuck are already at the club and we get to see The Cadillacs do two staged performances "Jay Walker" and "Please Mr. Johnson" and Jackie Wilson do "You Better Know It". Chuck is still pushing for Freed to find Johnny and as luck (or a convenient plot twist) would have it, when Julie finally convinces Johnny to go talk to Freed, he has just left.
Freed goes back to the radio station and plays Johnny's song every 15 minutes waiting for him to call in and identify himself. Unfortunately, Johnny is so mad at Freed that he refuses to listen to Freed's show and doesn't hear the announcement. Johnny wants to know what Julie wants for Christmas and she tells him that she wants him to have a hit record, but he pushes for a real present and she tells him about a pin she saw at a jewelry store. Johnny tries to pawn his horn but has no luck and decides to smash in the jewelry store window and steal the pin (conveniently there are a pile of bricks nearby).
Julie, alone in her room, is thinking about Johnny and sings "Heavenly Father", after which she turns on the radio and hears Johnny's song and that Freed is looking for him. She rushes to the studio, but Freed has left and gone to an "after hours" jam session at Henry's Hideaway. Here we get to see Freed on drums backing up Chuck singing "Little Queenie". After Freed gets off stage, Ritchie Valens (in his only film appearance) sings "Ooh My Head". Julie finds Freed and tells him about Johnny and they both go on a search for him. Freed convinces the police that he is drunk and is the one who broke the window. Instead of going to jail, Johnny goes on to become a big star and the movie returns us to the present where we also find that Johnny will be marrying Julie in the near future.
Killer Diller takes the characters from Clyde Edgerton's novel and simplifies them to deliver an entertaining movie with a message. Tricia Brock the Director/Screenplay Writer of Killer Diller works mainly in TV and her production of Killer Diller has all of the earmarks of an After School Special: troubled young man finds himself and makes good; a group of outcasts all work together for a common goal; acceptance of someone who is "different" into the group; finding out that "different" people may have something to offer you that you don't recognize at first look. Wesley (William Lee Scott), a young man in and out of trouble finds himself in a halfway house at a Baptist College. Wesley is to be the new guitarist for the halfway house's gospel band. At first, Wesley is surly and doesn't get along well with the other members of the house. Through a misadventure, Wesley happens upon Vernon (Lucas Black) an autistic young man who drives an invisible Plymouth. When Wesley finds out that Vernon is a virtuoso on the piano, he convinces the other members of the halfway house to join him and Vernon in forming a blues band. This doesn't sit well with either Vernon's father (the excellent W. Earl Brown) who is overprotective of the boy or with the director of the halfway house, Fred Willard. No need to fear, everything works out in the end as the band (The Killer Diller Blues Band) is a hit. The halfway house director uses the blues band to garner more funds for the college, while Vernon's father learns to let go and allow his son be his own man. The above description of the movie may sound a little "sappy", but the plot plays out quite nicely. While Killer Diller isn't the greatest movie you are ever going to see, it's still a fairly entertaining 95 minutes that's anchored by great performances from Lucas Black and W. Earl Brown. The biggest disappointment with the movie was that I rented it because it showed Taj Mahal in the cast (he's listed sixth in the credits). Sadly, Taj Mahal only shows up as the movie opens and as the movie closes. Although the movie never gives a full explanation, it appears that Taj was Wesley's mentor and left him his guitar when he died.
In 1978, when Sextette was made, Mae West was an iconic figure like Bogart and Monroe. The passage of years has dimmed her status somewhat, but I tried to view Sextette in the context of the year it was made. I'm almost sure that I saw this movie in the theater, but the passage of years has also dimmed my memory. I'm sure we were thrilled to see such an icon back up on the big screen in 1978, especially since Sextette threw a couple of bones to the younger generation by including Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, and Keith Moon among the cast.
Unfortunately, viewing Sextette today all I could see was a creepy looking old woman (I apologize to the memory of Mae West) delivering Mae West's one-liners. While I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to know exactly how the movie was shot, I do know that the make-up used on Mae West caused light to bounce off her face making it appear blurry and washed out at times. I'm not talking about close-up shots where they could put Vaseline on the lens, I'm talking about scenes with other actors where you can clearly see their faces. Instead of achieving the desired effect of making Mae's face look younger, it actually achieved the opposite effect. Another thing that added to Mae looking older was her costuming (credited to Edith Head), it looked like Mae was always wearing something straight out of one of her 1930s movies.
The basic plot of Sextette is that Mae and Timothy Dalton have just wed and they are on their honeymoon. Unfortunately, their plans for the bedroom keep getting interrupted. Mae is kept busy trying to make sure World Peace happens (I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP!), while Timothy Dalton spends most of his time trying to convince people he's not gay. A side note: while Dalton had yet to play James Bond (he had been offered the part several times already) in Sextette it turns out that he's a spy.
As the movie rolls along we get different dance/song numbers and different guest stars showing up throughout the movie. Keith Moon probably has the best guest starring role as a wardrobe dresser, he's flounces about while Mae tries on different dresses delivering one of her famous one-liners with each one. Ringo Starr shows up later in the movie as a movie director, an ex-husband of Mae's, trying to shoot a rehearsal love scene. I thought I had missed Alice Cooper, but he doesn't make his appearance until almost the end of the movie where he sings a disco-like number: "Never Never". Two other music performers of note have brief parts: Van McCoy (who also wrote and sings the theme song "Marlo") appears as one of the peace delegates and Keith Allison of Paul Revere and The Raiders has a very brief scene as a room service waiter, cleverly named Keith. One last music connection that should be noted is Dom De Luise who sings The Beatles "Honey Pie" next to a cardboard cutout (that looks almost as lifelike) of Mae West.
After watching several movies built around rock/country music with the plot secondary to the music, it was refreshing to see this light romantic comedy where the musical performances are integrated into the plot. Unlike some of the similar movies from this time period, The Girl Can't Help It (GCHI) could easily exist without the music acts and still be entertaining.
A gangster (Edmund O'Brien) wants to reclaim the limelight from his golden years of fame. His plan is to make his girlfriend (Jayne Mansfield) into a famous pop singer, then he'll marry her and as the husband of someone famous he'll have his name back in the newspapers. Of course, in today's world O'Brien would be counting on getting his own reality show. O'Brien hooks a washed up press agent (Tom Ewell) into his plan and everything is set to go. Only a couple of problems: Jayne can't sing, she'd rather be a housewife, and as if we didn't know this was going to happen - Jayne and Tom fall in Love.
Using the construct of the music business enables GCHI to include musical acts as part of the story. The very first music act we see in the movie is Nino Tempo (No April!) performing in a nightclub where Tom is sitting alone drinking. As the movie rolls along we get perfomances from Little Richard, Eddie Fontaine, Johnny Olenn, The Chuckles, Abbey Lincoln, Julie London, Gene Vincent And His Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, The Treniers, Fats Domino, The Platters, and Ray Anthony
Tom gets a phone call at the nightclub to come talk about a job. Since Tom recognizes the address to be in a ritzy part of town, he agrees and that's when he first meets up with O'Brien and gets drawn into the plan; but more importantly, this sequence also includes the first appearance of Jayne Mansfield. She throws open some connecting doors and the director frames her in the doorway. With her perfect hourglass figure, I can only imagine the audience "gasping" when they first saw her on the big screen. Frank Tashlin, the director, who previously directed cartoons, has been quoted as saying "big breasts were some of the funniest things going". GCHI has a lot of of cartoon elements, including a great sight gag sequence as Jayne makes the Iceman's ice melt, the Milkman's milk explode and another man's glasses crack. The below photo from the movie seems to combine Tashlin's thinking about big breasts and a sight gag into one shot.
As with any movie with so many great music acts, everyone will have their favorite(s). I especially liked Little Richard and Fats Domino, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that they are both already two of my favorite performers and I'm thrilled anytime I get to see them. There really wasn't a bad or boring musical performance with any of the acts, which isn't always the case when so many performers are included in one movie. Julie London appears in a sultry dream sequence singing "Cry Me A River" that is still embedded in my brain.
GCHI is available in a DVD box set that includes "The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw" and "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?' OR You can rent it through Netflix OR catch it on The Fox Movie Channel, since it seems they show it at least once a month (sometimes more than once a month!)
