Sunday, January 30, 2022

Dateline Diamonds


First off, if you're looking for movie with The Small Faces, this ain't it. Even though The Small Faces are touted on the front cover, they have hardly any presence in the film. They're shown a couple of times getting out of a van, once for a photo shoot, and when playing at the final concert, they get about a minute of screen time with the rest of their performances being heard in the background.

The plot: The Small Faces manager is an ex-con who gets blackmailed into smuggling diamonds to the Radio London ship (as seen in the fictionalized "Pirate Radio" movie"). The best part of this is the blackmailer looks like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.



The Chantells get more screen time than any of the musical acts. They appear three times, twice  singing "I Think of You" and once singing "Please Don't Kiss Me".


Kiki Dee, the first female singer from the UK to be signed to Motown's Tamla label, and best known as an Elton John duet partner, sings "Small Town". Also performing in the film were Mark Richardson singing "What 'ma Going To Do" and Rey Anton and Pro Forma singing "First Taste of Love". 

The Small Faces have four songs featured: "I've Got Mine", "Don't Stop What You're Doing".  "It's Too Late", and "Come On Children". 

Final comments: All the performances were lip synched except, it appears, in their brief on screen time, that The Small Faces were playing live. Most people rave about the safe cracking portion of the movie and while it was interesting and detailed, I really didn't get much out of the scene; which is also what I got out of the movie: NOT MUCH!



No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.