Starring Cliff Richard, Lauri Peters, Melvyn Hayes, and Teddy Green
Directed by Peter Yates
Music and Lyrics by various
We finish the summer season with one more dive into the Beach Party well. Here, however, we have a romantic shindig from across the Atlantic that actually predated Beach Party in the United Kingdom by seven months. Unlike the AIP films, with their barely-relevant music and wacky casts, this is a full-on musical, more like what Elvis was appearing in around this time. Cliff Richard was one of the biggest movie and recording stars in England during the early 60's. His previous musical, The Young Ones, was a huge hit, and ABPC wanted to keep his streak going. How does the story of four bus repairmen from London who run into everything from a mime troupe to a starlet on the way to the French Riviera compare to Elvis' movies and the other teen musicals on the other side of the pond? Let's begin with everyday England in black and white, before switching to glorious Technicolor, and find out...
The Story: Don and his friends Cyril (Hayes), Steve (Green), and Edwin (Jeremy Bulloch) make over a two-decker bus into an RV, complete with shower and kitchen. They want to flee the wet English summer and enjoy warmth at the French Rivera, but pretty much everything possible interrupts their holiday. They first pick up a girl singing group trio after they accidentally run them off the road, then a mime troupe led by The Great Orlando (Ron Moody).
In Paris, a boy named Bobby stows away in the bus. He turns out to be a she, American star Barbara Winters (Peters). Barbara's overbearing mother (Madge Ryan) and her driver Jerry (Lionel Murton) chase them from rugged Switzerland to hot, sunny Athens, each time finding a way to stop or detail them. There's the Yugoslavian farmers who think the boys want to marry their women, too. The Great Orlando helps them out in France, while they're lucky that Barbara is able to claim the locket the Austrian authorities claim they stole. Their luck runs out in Athens, when Mrs. Winters claims they've kidnapped her daughter. It's there that they relate their journey, and not only admit they've had a heck of a summer, but Don realizes how much he's come to care for Barbara, too.
The Song and Dance: I'm impressed. For a movie with a plot that fluffy, this wound up being a real treat. Richard falls somewhere between Elvis and Pat Boone, not quite so dangerous as the former in his early films, but more swaggering than the latter. The Technicolor blazes with the real and gorgeous scenery of a Europe on the move, dominated by that cherry-red bus that becomes increasingly scraped and battered the more wild encounters the boys have. American choreographer and later director Herbert Ross did the dances, assuring that they fit in well and radiate sheer joy.
The Numbers: We open with the boys building their mobile bus home as they sing "Seven Days to a Holiday" and dream of getting away from dreary England. They say "Let Us Take You for a Ride" after they run the girls' lavender roadster off the highway. We get two numbers from Richard's group the Shadows, the hit "Foot Tapper" and "Round and Round." Our second big dance number is an instrumental routine in a smoky French cafe, "Les Girls," where the girls and boys dance with grotesque African masks. Don sings about being "A Stranger In Town" to a bevy of well-dressed French beauties in his imagination...who turn out to be angry older women in reality.
"Orlando's Mime" is an elaborate series of skits revolving around Orlando as a hair cutter, in love with a girl who prefers a young artist. It ends with a bang...literally...that gets them out of the courtroom. "Bachelor Boy" is Don, the boys, and the Shadows declaring their desire to remain single during a rest stop. Don would rather have "A Swinging Affair," but so would Barbara, who eagerly dances with a group of young men. Everyone is "Really Waltzing" during a huge chorus number in an Austrian nightclub. In Austria, Don declares he's fallen in love with Barbara "All at Once."
Don and the Shadows put on their "Dancing Shoes" for a crying shepherdess. They want to get bread from her, but she thinks they say "bride." That gets the boys get caught up in that muddy "Yugoslav Wedding,' which comes off more like the European version of a hillbilly wedding here in the US. Don laments after Barbara returns to her mother that he'll be more careful "The Next Time" he falls in love. The boys finally end up at their trial, claiming their crazy holiday is "Big News."
Trivia: This was the second-biggest hit of 1963 in England, but flopped in the US, due to being released there two days after the assassination of John Kennedy.
In fact, Richard had only sporadic success in the US. He did manage to have some big singles over here, notably "Devil Woman" and "We Don't Talk Anymore" later in the 70's, but it never matched his enormous following in his native lands.
Jeremy Bulloch is best-known in the US for playing Boba Fett in the original Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Novice director Peter Yates went on to specialize in action movies like Bullitt and dramas like Breaking Away.
What I Don't Like: Did I mention that "fluffy" thing up there? While the story is of more consequence than it usually is in the average Beach Party frolic, it's still pretty goofy. If you're looking for a darker or more meaningful 60's musical, this isn't it. It also may not appeal to those who don't understand some of the more overtly European stereotypes, from that smoky French coffee shop, with its bongos and African gew-gaws, to them being held up at the Yugoslav borders by guards (Yugoslavia was a communist and Soviet satellite country at the time.)
The Big Finale: This wound up being a lot more fun than I figured from the simple premise. If you love Richard, early 60's rock, or big widescreen extravaganzas of the 50's and 60's, you'll want to head across the pond and take a wild summer holiday with Don and his friends too.
Home Media: Which makes it disappointing that the only place to find this currently in the US is on the Internet Archive (albeit in a pristine, glowing Cinemascope copy).
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