Daddy-O

This movie was soooo bad it was actually good. Aside from the shirts changing from scene to scent you should watch and pay attention to the cars. They also change from scene to scene, especially in the beginning of the movie during the famous car crash. Also the singing had to be the most made of, badly performed sequence on film. I have never seen a movie with so many glaring mistakes but I think that is the magic of this film, it kept you interested in seeing what else could be phonied. I could not stop watching once I started just to see what new and exciting adventures were just around the bend. Can I get a copy of this great movie somewhere?

Daddy-O is another in a very long line of Juvie D / rock and rollers that tried to look like an Elvis picture from a distance. Shot for only $100 grand on cheap sets and with few professional actors, the film makes King Creole look like Cabaret. Daddy-O would be just another badly dated grade Z picture but for one thing: Dick Contino's Blues. James Ellroy watched this clumsy oldster and then wrote a richly detailed -and thoroughly speculative - account of Contino's participation in the film while tracking a serial killer! The story is an action comedy masterpiece and to actually watch Daddy-O after reading DC Blues is like finding lost gold. The movie is admittedly pretty bad. Contino plays a singing truck driver (get it? Elvis drove a truck before he became famous) who meets a platinum bad girl out on the highway and finds his life spiralling downward. The songs are terrible, a shame really since Contino had a legitimate reputation as a musician, and the characters range from bland to dislikeable, with the exception of the myopic gym manager who is flat out wacky. The crime plot involves drug running, supposedly, although by the hour mark no drugs have actually been moved anywhere. With little story or character interest to engage the audience, there is not much to do except laugh at the dated hipster expressions, groan over the awful song numbers and wonder why Contino's pants are up near his ribcage. But watching the movie as a story within Dick Contino's Blues makes for a rich experience. The viewer sympathizes with Contino for having to take work which was so obviously beneath his musical talents, owing to the damage his reputation suffered following an accusation that he was a draft dodger. (He wasn't but the papers failed to tell the whole story.) Contino himself was not a good enough actor to save a film this hokey, plus he was five years older than Elvis and getting too long in the tooth to be a convincing Juvie D. But wondering how he found the time to play amateur sleuth amidst all of this - assuming that any part of Ellroy's crazy caper was even a little bit true - makes this a truly special movie.

Truck driver, singer and high trouser enthusiast Daddy-o is a real hip cat. He hangs out at a pizza parlour where he acts moody, sings deep songs like rock candy and dances aggressively with women while repeatedly pointing out to them that if they weren't a woman he would punch them, right in the face. Because their driving is substandard.

While Daddy-o is racing against a pointy breasted stranger his best friend gets run off the road and killed. How close were they? Some people have brothers, daddy-o had this guy. That's how close these two were, though they are only seen to exchange five lines of dialog in the entire movie.

Naturally Daddy-o isn't best pleased and after a run in with a myopic gym manager he drifts into some shady business delivering dope for a fat man who inexplicably spends all his time in the gym. Maybe he isn't getting any thinner because the gym doesn't have any actual gym equipment that I could see.

There are two reasons that I can think of to watch this movie, hence the two star rating. The first is that the songs are just so crap they have to be heard to be believed, most of them just have the same line repeated endlessly like Rock Candy which goes "rock candy, rock, rock, rock candy, rock, rock candy." (repeat 50 times).

The other reason for tuning in to this highly dated yarn is the way the script can't decide if Daddy-o is a mean moody type or a fun loving hipster liable to burst into song at any moment. It probably doesn't help that the teenage rebel looks about 40 either.

Pretty funny, pretty awful too though.

Well what can you say about Daddy-O, it really isn't good at all, I don't even know how to rate it, though there are worse movies out there. This film actually has a story, plot, action and a decent ending. The problem, IT"S ALL GOOFY!! And I don't think the director meant it to be that way, but it is.

Dick Contino is our hero, an aged teenager who wears skin tight shirts and extremely hiked up pants (with the belt buckle to the side)Anyway he's accused of killing his friend Sonny while racing a peroxide queen who becomes his main squeeze. Anyway he investigates Sonny's death because the LAPD are too lazy to do it themselves. He gets involved with running drugs for doughy guy and squinty (which again the LAPD don't bother to investigate)Lots of things happen which will take too long to explain but in the end the bad guys lose, Dick gets his girl and pants stay hiked.

An entertaining little potboiler with rock, drag racing, beautiful girls, and a score by John Williams (yes, THAT John Williams, apparently), DADDY-O – if not, like, the most, cats, it's at least an above-average 1950s exploitation picture.

Dick Contino is Phil, a truck driver who moonlights as a rock 'n' roll singer at the local teen club (just like young Elvis, man). He meets a gorgeous woman (Sandra Giles of LOST, LONELY & VICIOUS) who loves hot cars and fast men and who challenges him to a midnight race through Griffith Park. Phil is arrested for drag racing, and in fact is under suspicion for vehicular homicide, because a guy named Sonny (who just happens to be Phil's best friend) was killed in the park that night. Phil is cleared of that charge, but in trying to uncover the real killer, puts himself and his new sweet-patootie in danger from drug runner Sidney Chillas (Bruno Ve Sota).

Favorite moment: Phil asks his sweetie if she'd like to hear him sing; she says, "Your singing can't be any worse than your driving." He immediately proves her wrong by ripping into a song called "Rock Candy Baby" that'll make you long for the melodious and lyrically mesmerizing "Nobody Lives on the Brownsville Road" from EEGAH! or even "Do the Jellyfish" from STING OF DEATH.

Second favorite moment: Phil "quietly sneaking" from a back alley into a gym to look for evidence in Sonny's death; he makes more noise than Keith Moon.

Least favorite moment: Nude, sweaty Bruno Ve Sota, hot from a steam bath, getting a rubdown. It's like watching somebody try to sculpt a replica of Mt. Rushmore in jello.

Second and third least favorite moments: Phil (who has adopted the professional name of "Daddy-O") sings "Angel Eyes" and "Wait'll I Get You Home". For some reason, his pants are pulled way, way up, so that his belt is roughly in the middle of his chest. This apparently helps him hit the high notes.