Despite the title, there are other aspects of this movie that got me interested in it. One main reason the movie didn't do so well at the box office was because they were making a 1965 movie in 1967. By the time this movie was released, The Beatles had finished doing official concerts in under a year, the hippies were beginning to organize the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" had pushed sleaze into Oscar territory, and "The Graduate" did more to speak for the kids than any leftover wannabe beach party movie.
Cliff Donner (Gil Peterson) was an early '60's swinging sixties pop singer whose career went into the toilet when some managers suggest he performs some old 1940's music. Think Ricky Nelson going Bing Crosby, and you'll get the idea. Years later Cliff is driving to Palm Springs and stops at a night club owned by Stanley Krumley (Robert Coote), a man he knew from England who ran a club there, and talks him into singing along with The Leaves.
Would-be pop singer Hallie Rodgers (played by the uber-cute Debbie Watson), is struggling to make it big in the music business but has to settle for being a go-go dancer on "Whiz-Bam," an obvious imitation of "Hullaballoo." Frustrated with having the powers that be stall her career, she breaks out of her cage and has an unauthorized duet with the lead signer of Patrick and the East Enders (played by Glen Campbell). The producers are pissed at her, but the kids dig it, and the Whiz-Bam dancers noticed this. Even Patrick notices it, and when a stagehand insults their audience, and the girl is fired, both the Whiz-Bam dancers and the band threaten them "West Side Story-"style (I wish I were kidding!).
Though despondent over being fired, some of her fellow Whiz-Bammers take her to that bar in Palm Springs where Cliff and The Leaves are performing. Suddenly, a guy in his late-20's who looks a lot like Iggy Pop (No, really!) decides he wants to put the moves on her, and he won't take no for an answer. The commotion this guy causes stops the show, Cliff comes to the rescue and throws everybody out, until he recognizes her from the show. He decides he wants get her foot in the door with the dance that everyone on in the audience was doing which he dubbed "The Tantrum." However she wants him to make a comeback in return for his promotion of her.
Then there this whole elaborate number where Gil, Debbie and the Whiz-Bam dancers perform the song "High" in the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Leave it to a non-Californian such as myself to be flabergasted over the fact that such a transit system can exist in Southern California, and with a ski lodge too. After it's all over, Krumley tells them that he's about to give the two of them a big break through his brother Tony Krum, a wannabe Phil Spector played by Roddy McDowall. Naturally as expected from these movies, the two fall in love, but Tony Krum wants to be the one who decides when and how they do so. This creates a major kink in their relationship, but Krum doesn't care, and Donner sees what's going on, and poor Miss Rodgers wants to keep both her man and her career. He even goes so far into getting Gil to get involved in a demoltion derby as part of his promotion. One might think this might be more of an attempt to capitalize on movies such as "Fireball 500."
So who else among the dancers are in this movie besides the lovely Ms. Garr? Well, you have a short guy with a goatee, a guy who looks like Howdy-Doody, another guy with a Peter Tork haircut, an Asian-American woman, one token black guy, some other blondes, including one with roots, and a lot of other extras. Sadly I don't recognize them all, although I've heard some names of a few of those people, so maybe I should.
There's a line from the docudrama on the making of "Sweet Sweetback's Badassssss Song" where Mario Van Peebles (playing his father) claimed that in the late-1960's the times were changing, and Hollywood wasn't. Actually there were movies that reflected what was going on (or what people thought was going on), and how people felt about it, and even if this wasn't one of them, it was still farily enjoyable. Let's be honest though; this movie is not only not cool, it's corny, and doesn't know it's corny, unlike, say for instance, "Enchanted." Incidentally, Garr's career started to take off after this movie when she went from being a nobody dancer to roles in a certain episode of "Star Trek," and the 1968 Monkees movie "Head," and the rest is history. So a little art imitating life gives this movie a couple of extra points.
