Wild Guitar

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 ****

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.

Wild Guitar has great economic story telling. It only takes Arch Hall Jr an afternoon to become a singing sensation. He arrives in Hollywood and before he has a chance to even tune his guitar he's making his TV debut. By nightfall he's hooked up with a crooked manager and is well on his way to becoming an overnight sensation. Personally I think the cherub faced Hal Jr has more talent in his left pinkie than all the American Idol winners combined. He doesn't really play a wild guitar however. The skating scene nicely showcases Nancy Czar's talents on blades. It also reveals why Arch Hall Jr would never be up for the lead part in The Bobby Orr Story. Unless of course, his dad produced it.

This was the historic collaboration between Arch Hall, Sr, who wrote the script, and first-time director Ray Dennis Steckler. It's not on the level of Steckler's future bizarre works, but still has enough strange artistic choices to keep Stecklerites interested.

Lunk-headed Bud Eagle (Eegah's scrunchy-faced teen dream Arch Hall, Jr), spastically rides his motorcycle into Hollywood to become a star and before the night is over he's stumbled onto a variety show, played his guitar, and gotten tons of offers to cut records, be on TV, and sleep with comely starlets. Unfortunately, he gets signed by crooked agent Mike McCauley (played by Arch Senior) and his evil henchmen Steak (Steckler) who sets Bud up in the house from `Eegah', the one with the oven in the living room. They also give him a new guitar to replace his crummy one, but I'm not sure which guitar is the titular wild one. Mike goes about getting Bud some gigs: `Bud Eagle? For five hundred dollars? You're talking- you're crazy! Five THOUSAND is more like it! He's the hottest thing in the country!'

The weird thing is, Mike and Steak insist on doing shady business deals to make Bud a star, like creating fake teenage fan clubs and trying to start an `Eagle feather' fad. But what the hell? They're doing all these under-handed things to make money, but they don't have too. I mean, Bud got all those offers, right? So why don't they just take the offers and make money? They also constantly try to sabotage Arch's relationship with weird-faced diner-denizen Vicki. Bud's response it to squeeze out the love ode `Vicki' as heard in `Eegah'. While he sings, Steckler's wife Carolyn Brandt `dances' around the stage.

Steckler's next movie was his `Citizen Kane', `The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb', while The Halls continued their downward spiral, with Hall, Sr, insisting his son was star material in flicks like `The Sadist', `The Nasty Rabbit', and `Deadwood ‘76'.

This was featured on `Teenage Theatre', a video series produced by Johnny Legend (who sings the Teenage Theatre song) and hosted by antediluvian `teen' Mamie Van Doren, who more recently frightened movie goers in `Slackers'.

At times the marriage between the Arch Halls and Ray Dennis Steckler seems to have been a bit rocky. This movie may rank as Ray's most `coherent,' (or least experimental) because of the heavy hand of Arch Sr. as producer, or because of Steckler's insecurity, or Arch Jr.'s need for more guidance, or some combination of all three. Arch Jr.'s frustration shows through in certain scenes, such as the one in which he plays opposite the criminal `lemon grove kids' and seems to be asking `what, am I supposed to direct this thing myself?' It's too bad, because everyone here does some of their best work, but never in unison with what anyone else is doing.

Arch Jr. never wanted to be in show biz – that was his dad's idea. It turned out that, while he didn't sing or write music especially well, he actually did have a talent for acting (as proven in `the Sadist'), but the roles his dad lined up for him were a poor school for a young actor. `Wild Guitar' may have been one of his best opportunities – he plays a young kid who winds up manipulated into being a star by a devious producer played by: his dad! One of the reasons this movie manages to ring true in spite of its campiness and naivete (and typical Steckler ad-libbing) is because Arch Jr. as Bud is truly playing himself. The fact that the world in which he moves is bizarre and unreal just makes the real part of the story – Arch himself – seem that much more compelling.

Ray Dennis Steckler, who later went on to direct such classics of surrealism as `Rat Fink a Boo Boo' and `The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Died and Became Mixed-Up Zombies' was obviously kept on a leash for this film, but not so much that he didn't manage to sap it of the kind of drive-in sensibility that characterized `Eegah' and `The Choppers.' He plays a typically Steckleresque character in `Steak:' a psychopathic thug employed by the villainous producer who only eats Steak. Steckler sneers so much in this film his face must've hurt at the end of each shooting day. I'm still not sure whether Harvey Keitel's character in `Mean Streets' was consciously imitating him with the `match trick' or not, but Steckler did it first. Other Steckler influences include the above-mentioned criminals, whose grasp of English and crime are equally weak, the extended Carolyn Brandt dance-sequence and the leggy `Daisy,' brought in by Steak to help Bud forget his girl troubles.

Less easy to place is the responsibility for the quite convincingly sweet (and noticeably cross-eyed) love-interest, Vickie Wills, portrayed by the obscure Nancy Czar. Nancy must have been an Olympic skater, because the main `love scene' of the movie is an extended skating sequence, with Arch Jr. hobbling helplessly along as Nancy literally skates circles around him. Nancy never worked for Steckler again, but was in the painful `What's Up Front' with Arch Sr., so may have been a friend of the Halls. I think the young couple manages more chemistry than we see in any other Arch Hall film, with the possible exception of the demented `Sadist' and his gal.

`Wild Guitar' is a must-see for fans of classic low-budget `naïve cinema.' While it never plumbs the incoherent depths of Steckler's later work, nor soars to the heights of the best films of the period, it manages to hold interest, to entertain, and at times to surprise with its fresh and honest approach to filmmaking. It manages to flip back and forth from startlingly `bad' to rather `good' and doesn't make the mistake of laughing at its audience when it should be laughing at itself. On the whole, a very enjoyable film – for the right people.