Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

bill_golden Of course this is a very bad movie by most conventional standards, but it did have a couple of redeeming qualities. First, the basic storyline, while a bit convoluted, does contain a kernel of authenticity: many artists of that era were blatantly ripped off by crooked managers, producers, promoters, record companies, etc. The scene in the ice skating rink I thought was surprisingly effective, in fact it almost didn't fit. And the closing shot of the teens doing the twist on the beach brought back memories of that era, since I was a kid growing up in Southern California at the time, and yes, people of all ages did the twist.

markwood272 "Wild Guitar" was the first film I have seen in the Ray Dennis Steckler oeuvre. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience thanks to TCM.Arch Hall, Jr. plays a young musician whose career is managed by a character resembling Bob Marcucci or "Colonel" Tom Parker. The manager is played by Arch Hall, Sr., using the name William Watters. The elder Hall ran the production company that made "Wild Guitar", and he did in fact promote his son's career. The movie imitated life, generally, specifically – and strangely!Nothing to add to all that has been said except– The straight-from-the-can Cheez Whiz organ for the music textures the soundtrack in a wonderful 60's way. A pop culture time machine worthy of Proust!And – "Wild Guitar" got me thinking about a much praised French language work released two years earlier:Both films offer takes on fame and celebrity in the early 1960's. The male leads in both possess odd facial features and portray star-struck characters. The acting is wooden, especially from the female leads. The directors in each movie play parts. The plots in both films feature absurd crimes. Location shooting on city streets is used. Some shots look as if the cinematographer, equipped with a hand-held Arriflex, had been turned loose on Hollywood Boulevard or the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. Some sequences are quite artistic. Example: the (improbable) night skating sequence in "Wild Guitar". Editing in both is rough, the continuity laissez-faire. Low-end production values predominate, so low that immediately after production the star of the European film believed the movie was so bad he thought it would never be released. The credits display poverty row or no-name production companies' logos.Each film still has a substantial following today, half a century later, and each is enjoyed retrospectively via cable and DVD, as well as at revival showings at theaters. Both remain topics of film journal essays.Are the cynics right? Is a movie's reputation mostly a matter of marketing, of packaging, of its distribution channels. . .? Give the Halls French dialogue with English subtitles. Show their movie on the art house and festival circuit. Dub that foreign art film into English and peddle it to drive-ins and late night TV shows. Jean-Luc Godard might be recognized today only as a European precursor to Ray Steckler, with "Breathless" nothing more than the French "Wild Guitar"!

rooprect Well OK, maybe not the best movie ever, but definitely the best rock 'n' roll movie ever. Or at least the best r'n'r movie of 1962. How about the best 1962 r'n'r movie that has an Olympic figure skating scene? Settled.This is one of those films that's so bad it wraps around the scale back to the good side. IMDb voters must have a collective colon blockage if they can't appreciate the magnificence of this picture. It truly breaks all the laws (and I suspect deliberately so, knowing the bizarre, tongue in cheek humour of director/co-star Steckler).First you have an anti-antihero: a punk who comes motoring into town looking like Brando on a bad hair day, but as it turns out, he's about as square as a boyscout, polite as a busboy and has babyface cheeks you just want to pinch and say oogyboogyboo.Next you have a bunch of felonious thugs who are so endearing & hilarious you want to make them the best man at your wedding. We have a goofy chick who suddenly breaks into a world class ice skating routine. And finally--here's the clincher--totally out of left field we have director Steckler himself playing the role of "Steak", a psychopathic headcase who would make Jeffrey Dahmer turn in his meat cleaver. This movie has it all!!The story itself gives us a hyper-cynical satire of the filthy entertainment industry, but it's packaged in a neat, wholesome, early-Elvis type show. Still, there are indeed some moments of dark lucidity, especially in a particular scene where a drunk Willem Dafoe-looking fellow gives us a powerful prophecy of how all rock sensations die in LA. Throughout the film, we get camera shots from bizarre angles & creepy closeups, again giving us the impression of a bad acid trip. But somehow the film manages to stay squarely in the realm of campy fun.So I can't make up my mind... Is this film so bad that it's good? Or is it so groundbreakingly good that it's bad? In either case you need to check it out. If nothing else, you will remember it forever.

MartinHafer Wow. The father-son team of 60s dreck films (Arch Hall Sr. and Jr.) have made another movie with Ray Dennie Steckler--a man who might have had even less talent than the Halls! The Halls have combined for such great films as EEGAH! (which made the list of 50 Worst Films by Harry Medved) and THE NASTY RABBIT. Steckler is responsible for the worst-named films of the era, RAT PFINK A BOO BOO and THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES as well as the incredibly bad LEMON GROVE KIDS MEET THE MONSTER. Both Steckler and Arch Hall, Sr. directed, produced, wrote and acted in many of their films, while Arch, Jr. was an actor and teen singing heart-throb...of sorts. All of their movies are really bad low-budget affairs but there is a certain goofy kitchiness that make them appealing to bad film fans. It's hard to imagine all three combining their talents (such as they are) to make this film--just like the did for EEGAH!.The film is a modern morality tale about success in the rock 'n roll world. A goofy hick (Hall, Jr.) comes to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a success. In the silliest success story in history, Hall becomes a star in only one day! And unfortunately for him, he comes under the sway of the sleaziest thief in the industry (Hall, Sr.) and his nasty sidekick (Steckler). Will our rather dim hero fall prey to the allure and glitz of "the easy way" or will he get out before it's too late? And, when out of the blue, three total morons kidnap Junior, will he escape with his miserable life? Arch Hall, Jr. did an okay job as the young guitar star. While he'd never me mistaken for Fabian or Frankie Avalon due to his doughy face and acting limitations, his singing is adequate and his great hairdo make up for any deficiencies. He's good for a low-budget film, though--and probably about the best Steckler and Hall, Sr. could afford! As for Hall, Sr., he was actually very good and was the best actor in the family...as well as in this film. He was believably sleazy and convincing as the promoter. Steckler also came off fairly well in the film because he played a relatively "normal" person--not the arrested adolescent he played in his next few films but more of a laconic heavy--for which he was better suited. Concerning Nancy Czar as the female lead, well her skating is very nice...'nuff said (gimme a break--I'm trying to be nice here).By far the worst acting in the film were the three moron kidnappers. Rarely, even in stupid low-budget films, have I seen more annoying and pathetic acting as these three cretins did in the film. Obviously they were meant to be comic relief, but apparently they thought this entailed behaving as if they'd all suffered traumatic brain injuries. In fact, they were the worst and most amateurish thing about the film. We are talking cringe-inducing bad! Overall, despite the film's many, many limitations, considering the very small budget and modest pretenses, it's a very good film for the genre. This shows that Steckler and the Halls would have been best suited to avoiding monster films--which were by far their worst outings. This does NOT mean WILD GUITAR a good film--just good for a craptastic drive-in type film--plus, it's a lot of fun and a decent film considering its budget.By the way, just a few years later, Hershell Gordon Lewis remade this film as THE BLAST-OFF GIRLS. I have no idea whether or not he had permission to do this--I strongly suspect he just "borrowed" the story...a bit. It's much, much, much less interesting than WILD GUITAR and features the worst music I've ever heard. If you need to watch one graze-z rock 'n roll fable, make it WILD GUITAR.