The Ghost Goes Gear

One of my friends lent me the DVD of THE GHOST GOES GEAR, since I tend to get a kick out of 1960s rock 'n' roll comedies. The good news is that The Spencer Davis Group, in what I believe is their only film of this type, is very likable and even shows a bit of a flair for knockabout comedy (their drummer is particularly fun to watch, and young Stevie Winwood, while quiet, is certainly easy on the eyes). The bad news is that what little plot there is, nonsense about the boys' Upper Class Twit manager and his haunted family estate (interestingly the ghost haunting it is smilingly played by Roger Daltrey lookalike Lorne Gibson, who also sings in the film with his group The Lorne Gibson Trio), takes up an inordinate amount of screen time and makes a typical SCOOBY-DOO episode look like the best of Hitchcock! When the jokes are funny, it's a happy accident of delivery and timing -- otherwise, the flick's pretty much just an excuse to string together musical numbers featuring all-but-forgotten British folk and pop acts of the time (including Mr. Acker Bilk!). If you love The Spencer Davis Group, though, you'll find it worthwhile to turn on the commentary track -- and not just because it drowns out the rest of the film! :-) Spencer Davis and Martin Davis (no relation :-) tell lots of funny off-the-cuff stories about the film's creation and the folks involved, and even they cheerfully admit that the film is, er, flawed and that most of the folks in it barely even qualify as footnotes in British pop history. So if you're in the mood for a curiosity and you've got a pal who can loan this DVD to you (so you don't have to spend actual money on it :-), THE GHOST GOES GEAR is worth one viewing, especially if you gather a bunch of friends who love to do a DIY MST3K number on such films (like my hubby did when we watched it :-)!