A Swingin' Summer

Those user votes gotta be kiddin'! It was a few years back on an idle summer Saturday night that I caught this film on the USA Network cable channel. More happens in the tag line -- "Spread Out the Beach Towels...Grab Your Gals...it's gonna be A SWINGIN' SUMMER!" -- than in the entire film! The most strenuous thing the characters do is lay out those beach towels, and then its just unimaginative bickering along with coupling and uncoupling and recoupling serving as the plot. The only thing worse than the dialogue are the gawky jerky movements exhibited by the actors during the various musical numbers -- that's dancing?!? Anyway, yeah, the Righteous Brothers drop in, but by far the kickiest part of the movie is when Raquel Welch jumps on stage shakin', twistin', turnin' -- it's practically a revelation! In any case, it's more than this dreadful film deserves.

When two young men named "Rick" (William Wellman Jr.) and "Mickey" (James Stacey) find out that their plans for working at Lake Arrowhead during the summer have been canceled they decide to organize festivities there themselves. But to do that they need money and when they can't come up with it Rick's girlfriend, "Cindy" (Quinn O'Hara) decides to secretly bankroll them through her father. Yet even with the money there is a lot of work which keeps Rick and Cindy apart and leads to serious trouble between them. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this wasn't one of the better beach movies made during this time-period. There wasn't much comedy and the characters lacked development. Even so Raquel Welch (as "Jeri"), Mary Mitchell ("Shirley") and the aforementioned Quinn O'Hara were definitely nice on the eyes and I suppose that should count for something. Accordingly, I rate this movie as just slightly below average.

This would be a really fun movie for anyone who grew up in the 60s. Many of the 60s dances are seen, such as The Swim, The Watusi, The Pony and, of course, The Twist. A valuable record of a fun slice of American pop culture. Watching the Righteous Brothers sing "Justine" was just fantastic (despite sound issues). In her first featured film role, 24-year-old Raquel Welch also makes her singing debut with a sizzling song and dance solo. Sure, the movie is a bit campy, but sometimes girls (and guys) just want to have fun. Right, Cyndi?

The only problem is that I could not find an original 2.35:1 aspect ratio to watch. All the streaming services had letterbox for the opening credits, but then unfortunately switched to one of the most awful 4:3 TV crops I've ever seen. It ruined most of the dances. Instead of picking somebody, anybody, upon whom to focus, you get half a body on the left and half of another body on the right. They might as well have coined a new dance, "The One-Cheek Sneak."

...with the proviso that it's not very good either. A SWINGIN' SUMMER is a low budget, feel good effort that features a number of notable musicians of the day doing their thing, while a slimline storyline sees a bookish girl transformed into a fun-loving beauty. It's a little like the later teen sex comedies along the lines of MALIBU BEACH, although much tamer and not as much fun.

Raquel Welch (ONE MILLION YEARS BC) is the star attraction here in her debut feature (she'd acted before, but not been credited for it). Her acting remains iffy, but her looks are certainly memorable. A SWINGING' SUMMER does away with niceties of 'normal' cinema by not bothering with characterisation or a proper script, instead summoning up a party atmosphere throughout.

Some of the music acts are fun, particularly a nice turn from the Righteous Brothers who do their thing right at the climax. The setting is one Lake Arrowhead, and the stand-out set-piece involves two guys slugging it out in one of the most poorly-shot fight scenes ever. Elsewhere there's a whole lot of bad dancing and cheesy acts, and not much in the way of real reasons for viewers to tune in.

This forgotten, parenthetical beach bikini movie actually takes place on a lake... Arrowhead, to be exact... where two guys and a girl take over an abandoned low-rent dance-festival, which is pretty easy given that pretty redhead Quinn O'Hara has her rich dad secretly funding it... A secret since her good-looking boyfriend William Wellman Jr. Has too much pride to want anyone's help...

Well that's the plot, and there's hardly any urgency except for a quick breakup when a rich jerk eyes the girl while a scheming rich lady nabs the guy - plus a water-skiing bully and a few 11th hour thugs...

But with cute and skinny girl-next-door Mary Mitchell as O'Hara's flirtatious, perpetually hungry friend and future iconic bombshell Raquel Welch initially wearing glasses, strategically hiding her perfect body while (for reasons unexplained) jotting notes about the main character's sidekick James Stacy (who's still first billed), A SWINGIN' SUMMER is more about the good times than those attempting to ruin them...

A fairly decent time-filler residing between the glossy Frankie/Annette flicks, and, despite the misleading title, it came out right before hippies were too darn hip for this kind of lightweight, old fashioned (even then) entertainment.