Seaside Swingers

I like silly 1960's pop music films and I was looking forward to enjoying this one and giving it a well deserved ten but.....it was fairly bad so just worth a five.

No decent tunes and the dance sequences were far too long and were just a bit of padding. Jumping on the pop music film boom of the time which would have disappointed paying customers who would have expected it to be a good watch.

Bad acting from almost everyone and no redeeming features. I did discover that Nicolas Parsons was young once which came a surprise as I thought that he was born old.

The "high spirited teens" were obviously in their twenties and not teenagers. One unusual feature for a pop film of 1964 was that there was no smoking in any scene, or if there was I missed it.

Not worth watching not even for nostalgia.

I vividly recall my grandmother watching Freddie and the Dreamers cavorting about dressed as chefs on her new television and telling us all how much she liked him.

Seen today the biggest surprise the thing offers is the presence of Nicolas Roeg's name on the credits. Butlins at Clacton provides an attractive backdrop, the choreography by Gilliam Lynne is lively, but it's aggressive energy rapidly gets tiring and it seriously shows it's age when the hero sings to himself in blackface.

John Leyton signally fails to build on the profile he recently earned from 'The Great Escape while Mike Sarne is aptly dismissed as "White Fang, king of the woolpack" as the Honorable Timothy Gilpin. But Ron Moody and Michael Ripper make a surprisingly charming singing duo (we're expected to believe that Ripper was once a boy soprano), while Liz Fraser is always good to see.

This is cross between Hard Day's Night and Summer Holiday which does nothing to threaten the dominance of either in the British 60's rock 'n' romance genre. I'll let others explain the finer points of casting and score. What I find so fascinating about "Seaside Swingers" is the bewildered holiday camp extras who thought they were going to have an uneventful and typically overcast two weeks at one of Butlin's more drab properties and ended up unwitting props in a third rate musical comedy about some rather aged looked teenagers trying to make a splash in the prepubescent world of rock 'n' roll.

The holiday camp must be seen to be believed. Americans will find it unbelievable that people actually spent the only two weeks they got each year going to what amounted to an overcrowded compound where the only entertainment was guessing how far apart the family would have to sit from each other in the "canteen" or large feeding area (which features prominantly in this film). The chalets referred to by the campers were extremely small motel-style rooms which were your base of operations at the camp.

For a real soak in the British invasion style this is just the ticket but fast forward through the "Crazy Horse Saloon" number. It's atrocious.

John Leyton's father worked like a dog to keep him in school, but while waiting for his proposed career to begin, he's trying to break into show business as a singer. He applies to a holiday camp, and gets the job -- as a children's entertainer. Disappointed but game, he struggles, making friends with the other young people working there, hoping for a break.

It's one of those British musicals of the early 1960s with every sort of pop music from music hall to blackfaced performer, all the way up to the early stages of what would become acid rock, in a series of performances that take up almost half of the movie's 94 minutes. The staging of the musical numbers varies from straightforward to expansive in the hands of choreographer Gillian Lynne and DP Nicholas Roeg, and the cast includes Ron Moody as an Italian singing teacher, sort of, Liz Fraser as a good-hearted secretary, Nicholas Parsons, and Michael Ripper. I don't recall any of the songs making their way across the Atlantic, but the variety and competence of most of them made watching this one a pleasant experience.

Despite the hype at the time of its release, this musical offering was never particularly good and, if you are expecting to hear any classic sixties tracks, then go and buy a CD. For the most part the music consists of numbers which you would be disappointed to find on the 'B' side of a single. The dancing is similarly uninspired - the usual (for the time) jumping up and down and from side to side with arms outstretched, rather like a manic aerobics session. The love triangle and older versus younger generation plot is simplistic. The acting is variable with stalwarts such as Ron Moody, Liz Fraser and Michael Ripper there to balance the less able pop artistes. However, as a piece of sixties nostalgia,particularly with its holiday camp setting, the film is well worth a look and Freddie and the Dreamers are always value for money.