Sunday, March 20, 2011

Rock, Rock, Rock (1956)/King Kelly of the USA (1934)/Rock 'n' Roll Revue (1955)/Rhythm and Blues Revue (1955)

   This is one of those relics of film from before the days of MTV.  There was really no other way to get the acts you'd hear on the radio out to most of America other than to make a movie featuring a ton of acts.  The plot of this is ludicrously simple; a teenaged girl wants to go to prom with her boy but has to find a way to make money to buy a dress after her square of a dad cuts off her allowance.  There are a ton of stars from the 50's, including Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon and the Teen-Agers.  He was the Justin Beiber of that decade, rocking a stage at 13.  He died at 25 from a heroin overdose, so Justin has a lot to live up to...

  Well, at least this is an original musical.  Although its existence means that I movie I really liked called Call Me Madam is basically a shameless rip-off.  That makes me a little sad.  But no one has ever heard of this and CMM starred Ethel Merman, gay icon, so I feel a little better.  Edgar Kennedy is a follies producer who falls in love with a princess on a transatlantic cruise.  Her country is flat broke (their only export is mops), so her father intends to marry her to some old guy from a neighboring country to pay off the mortgage.  Kennedy has to save the kingdom and save the girl from a loveless marriage.  He accomplishes precisely one of those.  Guess which.  

The dialogue is pretty crisp and overall this is a fun little movie.  Call Me Madam has catchier songs, better dancing, more recognizable stars, and it's in color, though, so I'm not going to be trading it out for this one any time soon.

  I'm going to put both of these together since they're basically the exact same movie.  Hell, they even used the same cut out pictures on the posters.  It's the exact same thing as Rock, Rock, Rock up above only they didn't even bother to string even a flimsy plot through it.  They're basically just music/comedy variety hours.  Man, TV really was a game-changer.  

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