Wild Guitar

I'm worried. You see, after seeing this movie, I've just decided that Arch Hall, Jr. is my role model, and frankly I don't think that's a very healthy thing.

The thing is that I've never been known for my looks and personality. But Arch Hall, Jr. is as ugly as a canker sore, and has a personality (at least in this film) that grates like a table saw cutting through a nail. But he gets to play the teen idol singing star (even though he plays guitar like a gibbon wearing boxing gloves and sings like he's just stubbed his toe) and _he gets all the chicks_! Wow! Maybe there's hope for me yet.

Of course, it didn't hurt that his daddy was the producer and screenwriter, and that he acted under the sure and steady hand of director Ray Dennis Steckler (of TISCWSLABMUZ fame). Nor did it hurt that he was surrounded by actors so insanely moronic as to render young Arch suave and sophisticated-looking.

Aww, who am I kidding? I'm many things, but I'm no Arch Hall, Jr.

Well OK, maybe not the best movie ever, but definitely the best rock 'n' roll movie ever. Or at least the best r'n'r movie of 1962. How about the best 1962 r'n'r movie that has an Olympic figure skating scene? Settled.

This is one of those films that's so bad it wraps around the scale back to the good side. IMDb voters must have a collective colon blockage if they can't appreciate the magnificence of this picture. It truly breaks all the laws (and I suspect deliberately so, knowing the bizarre, tongue in cheek humour of director/co-star Steckler).

First you have an anti-antihero: a punk who comes motoring into town looking like Brando on a bad hair day, but as it turns out, he's about as square as a boyscout, polite as a busboy and has babyface cheeks you just want to pinch and say oogyboogyboo.

Next you have a bunch of felonious thugs who are so endearing & hilarious you want to make them the best man at your wedding. We have a goofy chick who suddenly breaks into a world class ice skating routine. And finally--here's the clincher--totally out of left field we have director Steckler himself playing the role of "Steak", a psychopathic headcase who would make Jeffrey Dahmer turn in his meat cleaver. This movie has it all!!

The story itself gives us a hyper-cynical satire of the filthy entertainment industry, but it's packaged in a neat, wholesome, early-Elvis type show. Still, there are indeed some moments of dark lucidity, especially in a particular scene where a drunk Willem Dafoe-looking fellow gives us a powerful prophecy of how all rock sensations die in LA. Throughout the film, we get camera shots from bizarre angles & creepy closeups, again giving us the impression of a bad acid trip. But somehow the film manages to stay squarely in the realm of campy fun.

So I can't make up my mind... Is this film so bad that it's good? Or is it so groundbreakingly good that it's bad? In either case you need to check it out. If nothing else, you will remember it forever.

Incredible-looking drive-in item with Arch Hall Jr. playing a singer-songwriter-guitarist from South Dakota who comes to Hollywood hoping for his show business break. The story is naïve, the continuity and writing have problems, a sub-plot involving three stooges who hang out at a coffee shop is dire, and yet this generally unpolished picture really does look fantastic. The assured black-and-white cinematography is by Joseph C. Mascelli, who even gets a wistful teenage moment out of an ice-skating sequence wherein the rink's spotlights are shining directly into the camera lens. Arch Hall Jr.'s notorious father co-wrote the screenplay under a pseudonym, but Arch Sr. doesn't have a good ear for give-and-take dialogue, nor does the sluggish direction by Ray Dennis Steckler (a.k.a. Cash Flagg) ease up on the awkward hesitations. However, one can almost believe a kid like Arch Jr. could be a star; with his bottle-blonde pompadour and dimply semi-smile, he looks like Michael J. Pollard's kid brother. Arch has a not-bad singing style patterned after the teen idols of the day (such as Ricky Nelson) and he downplays the goofy general handling for a winning effect. The plot attempts to give the woeful a-star-is-born formula a modern spin--and it surprises by being not half-bad, especially for fans of 1960s underground cinema. ** from ****

Your typical 'wannabe rock star finds fame, gets his ethics tested, but finds his heart too' story.

Arch Hall Jr. was very likable in the lead. Supposedly, he was a musician first and only made films because his father talked him into it. I think he's a retired cargo pilot in Colorado now.

Arch Hall Sr. 's role as the manager was basically a sleazier version of himself.

Steckler (aka Cash Flagg) as Steak was fun to watch too. Because he and Hall Jr. were supposed to fight in the end, and Hall Jr. was visibly larger, he played the Steak character as an evil sleaze too. This way no one felt sympathy for this little guy getting beat up by a big guy. R.D.S is a professional even if it's all low budget.

Nancy Czar looked great too. She was also the lone survivor of that plane crash that killed most of a figure skating team a few years before.

Classic 60's rock movie. It belongs in a time capsule.

Formula plot about a small time boy Bud Eagle, Arch Hall Jr, from North Dakota coming to Hollywood looking to make it big in the world of Rock & Roll music.

Meeting cute Vicki Wills,Nancy Czar, who gives the starving and broke Bud her lunch to eat at a local diner she tells the naive and shy out of towner that's she to appear at the local amateur hour TV show that evening and invites him to come along.

Just like in the movies, damn I keep forgetting this is a movie, the person thats to appear with Vickie on the stage gets stage fright and runs out of the theater and now the shows MC Hal Kenton, Paul Voorhees, is forced to put the startled North Dakotan with Vickie on stage! Bud ends up knocking the crowd dead with his wild guitar and high-pitched voice to becomes an instant Rock & Roll success and teenage idol.

The movie "Wild Guitar" has it's moments with a bunch of Bowery Boys wannabes, that's really aiming high in Hollywood, who kidnap Bud only having him turn the tables on them and then using the three jerks Weasel Stupid & Brains,Bill Llyod Jonathon Krle & Mike Trelbor, to shake down his manager Mike McCauley,Arch Hall Sr, for $15,000.00. The kidnappers end up losing the ransom money when Mike's top henchman Stake, Ray Dennis, breaks into their hideout. After what has to be one of the most insane and crazy slug-feasts this side of the World Wresteling Federation the three take off after dropping Stake but forgetting to take the ransom money with them!

Bud who fell in love with Vickie has the devious and scheming Mike split them up because he felt that she would hurt his career by making him not available, as a boyfriend or husband, to the millions of frenzied young girls and teeny-boppers, calling themselves Eagle Feathers, all over the USA in Bud Eagel fan clubs who are just wild and crazy about him.

Hiding out in Madge's,Marie Denn, diner as a dishwasher Bud gets in touch with his All-American football hero brother Ted, Al Scott, back in North Dakota for help and the two set up his manager Mike McCauley together with his #1 henchman Stake with of all things a gift that Mike gave him to improve his music and singing.

Even though the movie "Wild Guitar" is both corny and cheaply made it did show how things in the music business is done in regards to taking an up and coming Rock & Roll singer, who's not too sharp when it comes to his or her financial future, and how after he's no longer popular and not putting cash in the till he's then drop like a case of the Black Plague.

There's a very effective scene in the film where Buds, after he was held captive and almost raped by Mike's sexy dancer Daisy/Virginia Broderick,having a heart to heart talk with another Mike McCauley discovery former Rock & Roll phenomenon Don Proctor, Robert Crumb, with him telling Bud what he's in store for with a sleazy crumb like his former boss McCauley as his manager.