A Swingin' Summer

Those user votes gotta be kiddin'! It was a few years back on an idle summer Saturday night that I caught this film on the USA Network cable channel. More happens in the tag line -- "Spread Out the Beach Towels...Grab Your Gals...it's gonna be A SWINGIN' SUMMER!" -- than in the entire film! The most strenuous thing the characters do is lay out those beach towels, and then its just unimaginative bickering along with coupling and uncoupling and recoupling serving as the plot. The only thing worse than the dialogue are the gawky jerky movements exhibited by the actors during the various musical numbers -- that's dancing?!? Anyway, yeah, the Righteous Brothers drop in, but by far the kickiest part of the movie is when Raquel Welch jumps on stage shakin', twistin', turnin' -- it's practically a revelation! In any case, it's more than this dreadful film deserves.

...with the proviso that it's not very good either. A SWINGIN' SUMMER is a low budget, feel good effort that features a number of notable musicians of the day doing their thing, while a slimline storyline sees a bookish girl transformed into a fun-loving beauty. It's a little like the later teen sex comedies along the lines of MALIBU BEACH, although much tamer and not as much fun.

Raquel Welch (ONE MILLION YEARS BC) is the star attraction here in her debut feature (she'd acted before, but not been credited for it). Her acting remains iffy, but her looks are certainly memorable. A SWINGING' SUMMER does away with niceties of 'normal' cinema by not bothering with characterisation or a proper script, instead summoning up a party atmosphere throughout.

Some of the music acts are fun, particularly a nice turn from the Righteous Brothers who do their thing right at the climax. The setting is one Lake Arrowhead, and the stand-out set-piece involves two guys slugging it out in one of the most poorly-shot fight scenes ever. Elsewhere there's a whole lot of bad dancing and cheesy acts, and not much in the way of real reasons for viewers to tune in.

When two young men named "Rick" (William Wellman Jr.) and "Mickey" (James Stacey) find out that their plans for working at Lake Arrowhead during the summer have been canceled they decide to organize festivities there themselves. But to do that they need money and when they can't come up with it Rick's girlfriend, "Cindy" (Quinn O'Hara) decides to secretly bankroll them through her father. Yet even with the money there is a lot of work which keeps Rick and Cindy apart and leads to serious trouble between them. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this wasn't one of the better beach movies made during this time-period. There wasn't much comedy and the characters lacked development. Even so Raquel Welch (as "Jeri"), Mary Mitchell ("Shirley") and the aforementioned Quinn O'Hara were definitely nice on the eyes and I suppose that should count for something. Accordingly, I rate this movie as just slightly below average.

Cheapjack fun-in-the-sun teen opus from United Screen Arts probably had worse acting, directing and cinematography than most television shows from the same era. Two guys and a gal from Los Angeles take a car trip up to Lake Arrowhead for summer jobs, but the plug has been pulled on the village's big music concert; the trio comes up with the cash to put on a show themselves (unwittingly taking money from the girl's wealthy father), featuring happening acts like Gary Lewis, the Rip Chords and the Righteous Brothers. James Stacy brings some low-keyed cool to the witless proceedings, but co-stars William Wellman Jr. and Quinn O'Hara act about as well as they dance (not a compliment). The main reason to see the film isn't the top-billed stars, anyway--that honor would go to Raquel Welch, who gets an "introducing" credit as a kissless sexpot in black-rimmed glasses who quotes Freud. Welch (whose future husband, Patrick Curtis, is listed as the associate producer) didn't possess the show-biz savvy at this point to transcend the third-rate material, but she makes the most of it, and even gets her own song. The music acts add some bounce, but the location is poorly photographed and the 'dramatic' macho one-upmanship seems to come out of nowhere. *1/2 from ****

The threadbare plot of A Swinging Summer is just an excuse to have some of the rock and roll performers of 1965 come up and strut their stuff and use the film to sell some records. It's also quite the promotional film for the resorts at Lake Arrowhead which I'm guessing was losing a bit of its crowd to the California beaches.

William Wellman, Jr., James Stacy, and Quinn O'Hara after having some summer jobs shut down on them have this idea to promote their own rock and roll shows and make money for college tuition. After being told by Allan Jones that they have to come up with a big bond type guarantee Quinn O'Hara goes behind Wellman's back and says her rich dad will cough up the dough, but don't tell Wellman as he's quite the alpha male. Upon this lay all the romantic complications for Wellman and O'Hara and the rest of the film.

Which is just an excuse to see The Righteous Brothers, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Donnie Brooks and a few others long forgotten. At least this film is a record of sorts for them.

Who knows what enticed Allan Jones to do two brief scenes at the beginning of the film. But I wish they could have worked a song in for him as he's far more my taste.

But early Sixties music fans should love A Swinging Summer.