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Sweet Beat (1959)
Terrible but at least some decent songs!
Having just viewed this along with Rock You Sinners this Brit music film is slightly more dated than "Sinners" as if the makers were saying "don't listen to that nasty rock and roll", it seems our heroine in the film is not only a singing star of the future but in fact a beauty queen as well, utterly hilarious footage of good old Butlins holiday camp at Clacton On Sea confirms the queen status, however her enthusiastic boyfriend knows some good connections in London to get her a recording contract, and get it she does but only after a seedy American agent whisks her off to New York intent on having her for his own dirty deeds when in fact he is already married.
So much is crammed into this 64 odd minutes that it's hard to keep up with just how easy it is to get caught up in the bad old world of music in the 50s.
Some downright bad songs are reeled off along with some very good one's such as The Five Satins, but some nice old London location work look's good, certainly not the worst film of the genre and it passes the time nicely but don't expect anything less than a very very low budget film
Rock You Sinners (1958)
Never thought I'd see or hear anything so bad as this!
Well it has been well documented by a previous writer just how bad this movie is, one simply cannot fathom just how shockingly awful this is, first off I would like to apologise to our American friends for ripping off their music and having to listen and watch moronic British act's sing out some of the worst music I think I have ever heard in the name of rock and roll one after one there is a monotonus file of so called "artists" some of who are so embarrassing I had to turn away from the screen, none more so than Don Sollash who must have given the worst ever song committed to film followed closely by the gentleman who sings Rock and Roll Calypso...twice!. My all time worst Brit music movie has always been The Golden Disc which is the Butcher Brothers at their best but this movie was produced by Small Productions, how apt a name, but perhaps Brainless Productions may have suited them better. The two lead "actors" are way too old to be digging RnR and too posh as well, so if you like your movies real bad then this is a must for you!
A Place to Go (1963)
Gritty brit flick
Some excellent and vivid location work around Bethnal Green in London is the setting for this slice of "kitchen sink" life.It portrays a family struggling to keep their heads above the water as the man of the house Bernard Lee loses his job for being too mouthy at work, he then takes to the streets as an escapologist in order to get money for food on the table, quite often embarrassing himself and his family in the process. Meanwhile his son played by 60ts singing star Mike Sarne is fed up being on the breadline and turns to local gangster John Slater to do a robbery at the factory he works at, it goes wrong but he manages to get out of it in a hurry, meanwhile Sarne's love interest played by the lovely Rita Tushingham certainly is'nt an easy catch. All in all a really good slab of realism directed by the excellent Basil Dearden. Recommended.
It's All Happening (1963)
So dated even for 1963
With the Beatles taking over Britain in 1963 it's hard to imagine just what the makers of this film were trying to do, is it just a twee sentimental story of Tommy the orphan, is a love story or is it a pop movie?, if it's the latter then the film falls apart after the first reel, grade c acts such as Shane Fenton who as the above writer states went on to become a superstar in the 70s as Alvin Stardust is the only saving grace in this movie for me, it is incredibly dated even for 1963 when this type of film was well on the way out and teenagers just did'nt want to dig squares like the movie recording artists are, I have a feeling this was made possibly a couple of years earlier as it had no say on what was going on in 63 at all. A fairly dire film with some toe curling songs, avoid at all cost unless you like this sort of garbage.
Beat Girl (1960)
Remarkably bad!
On viewing this film on DVD (which was an atrocious copy but legal disc)it just goes to show how bad British film makers were at this time, as always London is portrayed as a seedy underbelly of sex, vice and moronic teenagers, fair enough but the makers of this film might have hired a decent scriptwriter!.
Some of the dialogue is priceless especially from Adam Faith as the leader of this group of silly teens, he spouts the most inane sayings like "play down girl! play down girl!"...or something like that to our hot hot teen lead player who of course does not get on with rich Daddys new French wife (were'nt they all in that period!)and goes on the warpath against her and Daddy being a real naughty little lady hanging out with all these grubby coffee drinkers around seedy Soho clubs.
Before the end of this film...if you can stick with that long you will probably have make an appointment with your doctor to get your toes uncurled, if thats not enough the theme tune (by The John Barry 7)will drive you nuts as its played what seems like every time they go in to a club.
Unless you are a fan of really bad movies you would be wise to steer well clear of this rubbish, if you are a fan then may I suggest a double bill with another British pop turkey The Golden Disc, what a pair of....erm classics that would be!
Diamante Lobo (1976)
Horrendus!!!
Well what can one say about these type of movies that has'nt been said a hundred times before, some are good, some are bad and some are just plain weird, this is just plain terrible!.
Our hero Lee is a god loving priest in a town where the sheriff (Boone) does'nt want any trouble so mean hombres that ride into town cause mayhem and slap the local saloon girls around, someone gets shot and they ride out of town unchallenged, but Lee has other ideas he goes after them and brings back the bad guy of the gang to justice, I have to say that the actor who played this bad guy act's like sheer parody of what a bad guy in a western should be, I suspect he had been watching Blazing Saddles before hand.
Meantime precocious teenager Lief Garrett is torn between his saloon gal mom and his best friend Lee, luckily Lee gets shot halfway through the film....but wait we've discovered he has a twin brother who is a top gunslinger and weepy Lief brings him back to town to sort out the bad guys, who I must add are run by Jack Palance who in my opinion seemed to be taking the mickey out of his part, a quite astonishingly bad performance by Jack who mugs his way throughout the movie and has the most ridiculous accent's I've ever heard in a "western", but wait our saloon gal mom the god awful Sybyl Danning had been raped by Palance many years before and....well you know what's coming next...is Garrett's daddy, on finding this out Palance gives one of the worst "i'm a dad!" scene's ever committed to film.
Of course it comes out well for everyone in the end but by 1976 these kind of movies were well past they're sell by date and this one gives spaghetti Westerns AND "b" movies a bad name.
Le gladiatrici (1963)
Preposterous!!
Having just viewed this god awful movie I cannot go on without a comment. As a long term fan of sword and sandal movies I try to hunt down just about everything from that era, however this is the first time I have had to watch it bit by bit, yes it's so bad it's hilarious. Our hero Thor, a real bad acting performance from British actor Joe Robinson see's him up against Amazonian women who rule the land with an iron fist enslaving men and even having their own female gladiators to kill each other in the arena. From the very start it is quite clear that the writers of this nonsense must have came straight from a school play. Our hero Thor lives in a neat little underground cave with his black "servant", homo erotic overtones by the score when he gives his master an err...massage to sort his bad shoulder you know you are in for some fun, the servant...what ever his name is!, is portrayed as a bungling oaf and with the silly music that accompany's him is all there to see just how degrading it is, I will refrain from going over the plot but you really must see some of these scene's for yourselves, the first one is when Thor is discovered by the Amazon women and the line is "we are here to capture you Thor and take you back" or when his servant is captured by the queen who is luckily for him is also black puts him on a revolving pedestal and tells him to flex his muscles all over his body, she is so smitten by him in an instant he has some sort of African garb on and is to be her husband and king, the ensuing fight between him and Thor who is trying to change his mind on this is utterly hilarious.
This movie makes greats like Santa Clause Conquers The Martians and Plan 9 From Outer Space like cinema masterpieces!.