Wild Guitar (1962)

Please don't spend money on this.

Just perfect...

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Maybe it was my insomnia. Or my Chihuahua's. Whatever the cause, neither of us could tear away from Wild Guitar recently aired on TMC. For the first half-hour I just sat slack-jawed not only that this movie was being telecast, but that it ever got made or saved. Then, when I regained control of my thought processes, I knew I should stop watching, but it was too late. It must be what crack addicts experience: You know it's rotting your brain, and you just want more. In addition to this addictive quality, if you still miss the raw sexuality and sheer athleticism of Peggy Fleming, as I do, there's a not-to-be-missed scene that could have been shot in Grenoble, albeit six years later. I guess Wild Guitar was just ahead of its time, on the ice anyway. I gave the movie a 2 out of 10, but my scoring belies my action. I watched it through to the final credits.

Yes, film fans, this one has it all and less. I want Arch Hall's hair. He had great hair. His singing could have been OK if he had a great producer like Leiber-Stoller or Phil Spector or Chet Atkins, but the soft ballad, high reverb with a Twist song and Rock and Roll format doesn't work. This movie needs a screamer like Little Richard to make it believable. Arch looks great in my opinion but many think he is not attractive. I think everyone will agree he is very likable. His dad acts OK but perhaps a script would have helped. I liked very much seeing Hollywood Boulevard in several scenes as it was in 1962. Much of that look still exists today. The cars are not as great now. Now, let's start a major debate. What was the worst part of this movie? Was it the background music? The ice skating sequence? The foreground music? The fight scenes? The three guys who wanted to be funny or maybe they were auditioning for the Bowery Boys Tour? This story has to be true. Nobody could make this up. I recommend it as a double feature especially with Arch Hall, JR in The Sadist. He actually could act quite well if he were given something decent to portray.

( Of course, the 9 stars is a register on the Inspired Bad Movie scale, not to be confused with Just Plain Bad Movies.)The movie should be titled Wild Hair since Hall Jr.'s blond thatch shape-shifts faster than Pampas grass in a windstorm. Bad films like this are not made, instead they mutate somewhere in a Petrie dish to menace the world. We're in Ed Wood territory here, the land of inspired bad movie-making. Just when you think the acting, directing, and dialogue can not get worse, they do. This is what happens when a determined band of no-talents sets out to commit a movie and does. The story itself is not exactly from Shakespeare, nor even from the guy down the block. An innocent hick arrives in Hollywood to find True love, Show-Business success, and Real values. Pity poor Hall Jr. who resembles nothing so much as the Pillsbury doughboy. Stuck with a face fashioned by a wine press, it seems he was forced into show-business by an ambitious father who should have been jailed for child abuse. The lad strives manfully, but the genes are against him. His high point comes half-way through in a cavernous stage left over from a 30's horror film. Posing there as a teen-idol with what can only be described as a battleship pompadour, he warbles a top tune from hell, while flitting around somewhere beneath is one of those girls who acts like she''s celebrating her brand-name underwear. I guess she was supposed to add an artistic touch. Together, however, they're beyond surreal. I could go on, especially about the three mental cases whose comic relief makes the Bowery Boys look like brain surgeons, but you get the idea. Yes, this is a bad movie classic, but at least not one of those big-budget prestige films that Hollywood used to turn out by the bucket-load that were supposed to impress you even as you slumbered along. Those were truly bad movies, easily forgotten. But inspired awful movies like Guitar can never be forgotten. Hats off to Arch Hall Jr. for quitting the business at just the right time. Hats off too, to whoever decided to debunk the artificial world of teen idols. You can bet no studio of the time with its record company sub-division would have dared anything so revealing about its bread and butter. I say we stand the Oscar statuette on its head, and hand one out to Wild Guitar for Best Bad Movie of 1962. It may be 50 years too late, but somehow that seems fitting.

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.