1h 20min | Comedy, Musical, Romance | 1965 | Color, ws
Director: Robert Sparr
Stars: James Stacy, William Wellman Jr., Quinn O'Hara, ..., Raquel Welch, Allan Jones.
Michael Blodgett ... choreographer
Watched online, poor print: blurry, pan/scan cropped then stretched to ws again.
7 songs in the Soundtracks, 2 performed by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, 1 by the Righteous Brothers, 1 by RW, 1 with no performer. It seems like GL&P did more songs than that; they're all instrumental, no lyrics. GL does look like his dad.
RW is the bookworm; she looks a bit more Latina with glasses and her hair bound. This is her 4th of 37 film credits, the first where her character has a name.
AJ (b. '07) appears in 1 scene that I saw, and did not sing. He still looks good at this age.
This was a chore to watch, especially with the awful print.
The plot is about the male duo of JS & WW trying to make a go of the dance hall at Big Bear/Lake Arrowhead. But they're college kids, and have only $200 to start, but need $1k. QH, gf of WW, has rich daddy, and she arranges the financing without WW's permission.
They have no problem booking acts, hence the songs performed.
They run into various opposing locals. 1 challenges JS to a contest of chicken on water skis, where they somehow ski toward each other. Another hires some gangsterish thugs to attack WW during the dance. Other impromptu fights have happened before these.
Elvis films have plenty of fist fights, and maybe this was trying to imitate that. But here they got plenty dirty during a fight in shallow water, and with the extreme closeups caused by pan/scan cropping, then distorted by the widescreen stretch, it was extra unpleasant. During this fight, I really noticed that no one was calling for calm or for the fight to end. A bunch of people were standing there passively. And during the game of chicken, when 1 of them got knocked on his behind, looking unconscious, I cringed when they lifted him into the boat, wondering what modern rescuers would secure (neck/back).
So this is really unpleasant in many ways.
WW is really handsome, as is JS. I've seen JS previously, and his future motorcycle accident looms large in my mind, since he loses an arm and a leg.
indie, dir. Sparr; 5-
