Frankie, away on temporary duty with the Naval Reserve in the South Pacific, worries that Dee Dee may find another man while he is gone (after all, he has certainly been getting cozy with the island girls himself), so on the recommendation of one of his gal pals, he gets the help of a witch …
Read the full post →“<em>How To Stuff a Wild Bikini</em> (American International, 1965)”
A formerly timid alumnus, now a famed band leader, comes to the aid of his alma mater when the founder’s grandson, a former rival in romance, threatens to force the college to close, claiming there is no money to keep it going. The plot is no great shakes, and the acting is atrocious, but those …
Guys who find that the women at Alpine College won’t go out with them because of advice from the dean’s secretary, Susan Benchley (Chris Noel), recruit surf bum Ronnie Duke (Gary Clarke) to woo her, though she already has a fiancé, the captain of the school’s ski team (Steve Franken). Ronnie pretends to be the …
Read the full post →“<em>Wild Wild Winter</em> (Universal, 1966)”
Early Wheeler & Woolsey vehicle is flawed but nonetheless entertaining. The loosely constructed plot has the boys as phony fortune tellers who get involved with a wealthy woman and her daughter, a fortune-hunting nobleman, and also gypsies, but what plot there is serves more as a vehicle to move from musical number to musical number, …
Gloria Jean, Deanna Durbin’s successor at Universal, plays a teen eager to secure success for the drummer she adores (Mel Tormé) and his band, piling up schemes to win a contest, to gain his affection, to thwart those who would co-opt his talent for their own ends. Patric Knowles portrays her long-suffering but somewhat scattered …
Read the full post →“<em>Pardon My Rhythm</em> (Universal, 1944)”
Snow takes the place of sand — at least for most of the movie — in this variation on the beach movie theme, with Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman as college kids who join a ski club outing in order to be near the girls they hope to romance (Deborah Walley and Yvonne Craig). The …
Read the full post →“<em>Ski Party</em> (American International, 1965)”
Credit a post at the blog Fists and .45s! for turning me on to the espionage comedy with music Out of Sight. Released in 1966 and starring John Daly as a butler impersonating his secret agent boss, the movie owes a good deal to American International’s beach movies, I’d say, extending even to including musical …
Read the full post →“<em>Out of Sight</em> (Universal, 1966)”
Pia Zadora stars as Dee Dee, who just wants a chance to sing with a band, though her jerk of a boyfriend, who has a Stray Cats-like rockabilly group, doesn’t want her to do so. She gets her chance, however, when aliens arrive and decide to perform at the local high school cotillion — if …
Read the full post →“<em>Voyage of the Rock Aliens</em> (1984)”
College student Eddie (Eddie Cantor) and his buddy Ricardo (Robert Young) are booted out of college just before graduation because of a prank. When Eddie innocently becomes involved in a bank holdup, the crooks force him to leave the country and go to Mexico, Ricardo’s homeland, and, to try to put a clever detective off …
Read the full post →“<em>The Kid from Spain</em> (Goldwyn / UA, 1932)”
RKO tried something different with stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with Carefree, the team’s penultimate movie for the studio. Here, Fred plays Tony, a psychiatrist induced by friend Stephen (Ralph Bellamy) to try to convince Stephen’s fiancée, Amanda (Ginger Rogers) to go through with their planned wedding. She has already called it off more …
