C’mon Baby...

C’mon Baby...

movies

LET.THE GOOD TIMES ROLL (Metromedia)

“I like music my parents hate,” exclaimed a friend of mine. “That’s why rock’n’roll is great!”

This kid prides himself on being a punk king, a true rock’n’roll chauvinist. The peak of punk occured, of course, in the later fifties. Since then, MOR standards have been playing the chart-busters of yester-year — Beatles, Elvis, Neil Diamond — as standards, not golden oldies. But there’s a glory in forbidden fruit, especially when listened to loudly. Everything alien to “grown up” behavior — recklessness, weirdness, fun - is embodied in the teenage. Sweet wild abandon, not freedom — J.D.s didn’t feel free. The excitement is in the illegal action.

Rock’n’roll was illegal then, evert immoral. Rock’n’roll was therefore exciting. And it still is: just as the mayor of Jersey City had banned rock from the municipality in 1957, governors and state legislatures now ban rock festivals each summer.

Rock was also visceral, or better, carnal. “It’s the beat, The Beat, THE BEAT! I know how it makes you feel — evil!” says Jimmy Snow, rock’n’roll sjar become preacher in an opening sequence of Let the Good Times Roll.

Good times? That’s debatable. The 50s weren’t so hot for blacks, commies or drips. (The sixties were.) But they were great for the average American adolescent, the heroic outlaw, rock’n’roll stars. The Birth of a Nation — A Generation of Communication.

Take a look at the beginning of this movie. Atom bomb explodes. (Cut.) Elvis swivels on the Ed Sullivan show. (Cut.). . . Let the Good Times Roll flashes a decade by, with images that tear your memories loose, spatter them in cinemascope at incredible speed, conjuring every stored emotion from the crevasses of your past by playing the songs that tell the stories and showing the stories that made the songs.

“I won’t tell you, you’ll see it,” producer Jerry Isenberg said, in between enthusiastic explanations. That’s how I feel, too, after seeing it. I don’t want to spoil the experience by delineating its details. Whtit it is is important, incredible, but not explicit on the screen.

Let the Good Times Roll is Richard Nader’s rock’n’roll revival shows: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Shirelles, the Five Satins and Danny and the Juniors. It’s the irrepressible 1972 audience in Detroit and Long Island — moms, dads, brothers and sisters dancing, singing, screaming, clapping and stomping. It is also AIP movies, high school yearbooks, the Eisenhower Era, TV.

“It’s a heavy trip,” Isenberg says. “It started two years ago when I went to one of Nader’s shows. I didn’t know what to expect. Then, all of a sudden I’m 17 again. I start flashing back: backseats, sock hops, pegged pants and ponytails. My whole life was going by in front of me. My heart and soul. That’s what we’re trying to do here. The way the concert affected me, the inside of my head, is on film. It’s a totally emotional movie — not intellectually created, although a lot of thinking is behind it. For example, there are psychological premises we worked from — music triggers memory. The music controls of the impact of the images. Different songs have different emotional content.”

The Five Satins sing the Coasters’ “Charlie Brown” on stage while “Charlie Browns” file past: Brando in The Wild One, Nixon pumping gas, Khruschev doing the Bristol Stomp at the UN. Truman. McCarthy (Joe not Gene). The Shirelles sing “Dedicated to the One I Love,” which is “nostalgic, political and comical” all at once. When the lines “Life can never be/ Exactly what you want it to be” come on, newsreels of Little Rock and other civil rights marches cross the screen. Then “It’s something everybody needs” and back to the sweetheart images. The picture has the feel of a documentary but avoids making any significant point — just expressing a 50s impression, through entertainment. A Rockumentary?

The Shirelles are a good example of the thought that went into the placement of each song and act in relation to the whole. Their first number, “Soldier Boy” is done very camp. So another song is shown before it. Why? “We’re not camping the 50s. People don’t like to be mocked. You can’t have fun with my memories. They’re emotion-laden. The comedy is created instead by juxtaposition of music with reality. It’s fun. We can’t tell the audience they’re assholes for liking “Soldier Boy,” even though it’s a simpy song.”

I know what he means, even if they’ve gone overboard with sensitivity. At the Miracles farewell concert, the group did a medley of oldies. When they got to my favorite, “Shop Around,” they goofed and spoofed. It was heartbreaking and slightly insulting.

But the current 50s craze burlesques the age. Sha Na Na are gimmicky, exaggerated buffoons. You can’t take it too seriously and mournfully, mind you, but how about a sense of history? It’s all lasted because of the discontent with 70s music, the general boredom while awaiting the rock Messiah.

There was considerable concern in releasing Good Times. Would the 50s fad fade away? Fortunately, the approach is timeless. The roots of rock, classic songs and legendary singers from an important and peculiar decade are interesting whether you experience them directly or not.

The film is being edited by AbelAddidge-Levin, who did Mad Dogs and Englishmen and Elvis on Tour. What a job! There are 4,000 stills, the concerts, newsreels, a huge amount of TV and rock movie footage, off-stage film of the stars, miscellaneous 50s home movies. All this has to be compiled into something cohesive. Exasperated, Sid Levin says, “It’s the most difficult movie I’ve ever made.”

Their “split screen” technique, kind of a documentary throwback, is used perfectly here. The montages change so rapidly, the film’s rhythm is like subliminal suggestion. When two pictures are the same, they’re not just two different angles, they’re reversed so that Bo Diddley looks at himself and when Chuck Berry kicks his leg up, it looks like he’s leaping in the air. Nine of Bo’s feet in a row looks like a Rockettes chorus line. The humorous imagination Elvis On Tour hinted at is a dominant aspect here. The split screen is us$d, says Levin, “like punctuation. It has meaning, it’s not just an effect. I love the unexpected — not for shock value, but the germane. Let the Good Times Roll is controlled madness.”

Then there are the personalities themselves. There’s something terribly sad about men in early middle-age, already ten years past their prime, still doing the same old songs — especially when they’re playing to 40 year old greasers, eternal high school Peter Pans still stuck with their old act.

Nostalgia may bring back memories of wonderful old times, but it’s just plain sad when it represents a complete dissatisfaction with, and disaffection from, the present. It reflects stagnation. Levin sensed that, and attempted to portray a warm sadness rather than the desperate and pathetic nostalgia which could have emerged.

Each performer is shown backstage, at home, through hidden and visible cameras. Bo Diddley, poking at his all-black leather outfit: “I’m black on black. Black is beautiful. Black is evil.” Little Richard: “Get that soul brother off the drums. He don’t know what he’s doin’. I just want the white one.” Chubby Checker, being called on stage: “I gotta pee!”

Sid Levin spent time with them all. Chuck Berry took him on a charming tour of St. Louis, his hometown and the dirty old “dingaling” man he is. The Five Satins did a Mr. Bojangles dance routine in a parking lot. Bo cooked Southern fried chicken. “Bo’s black. The rest are colored,” Producer Isenberg says.

The phenomenon of the whole thing is astounding. But the fact that the completely white audiences are watching all black stars is curious. Some of the stuff seams like Watts tax material. But it is distinctively prideful, not patmy-proud-back stuff. Probably because it’s yesterday-today in style. Times may not have been simpler or better then, but they sure seem that way sometimes.

Robbie Cruger

THE VAULT OF HORROR

Directed by Roy Ward Baker Cinerama Releasing

(A Metromedia/Amicus Production)

The theme of The Vault of Horror is, as you might suspect, classic. Five men (what, no women!) in a well-furnished vault (i.e., Levittown meets Dante) expressing aloud their most gruesome fears concerning their own demise. Each fantasy seems too real to be just fantasy, and in fact, it all comes true because each of the men is already dead. You don’t find that out until the end, but when you do it doesn’t matter, because you’ve already gotten your money’s worth and then some.

The film is based on the E.C. comic book of the same name, published in the early fifties by the Mad Magazine whiz-dolts, William Gaines and A1 Feldstein. Each tale is really a different story in itself, with different casts. All of them are first-rate, featuring name actors and precisely constructed sets.

The first of five sections is “Midnight Mess,” featuring Daniel and Anny Massey as brother and sister (as they are in real life). They inherit a bundle, but Rogers (David), the greedy thug, wants all of it, and does sis in bloodily. Too bad he didn’t know she was a vampire (you might have seen her fanged vision on the TV ads).

After doing the deed, he seeks comfort in a really classy restaurant, where each luscious course seems to be a reddish liquid of some kind. Then it hits him: he’s chomping on plasma pudding and corpuscle stew. Sis comes back, and they tap his neck as the main course for the next meal.

The “Bargain in Death” section features Michael Craig and Edward Judd as Maitland and Alex, two bright crooks with an insurance scam. Maitland feigns death, gets buried alive, Alex is to dig him up and they’ll split the insurance dough. Naturally, Alex cops out once Maitland’s in the coffin, but Maitland is discovered by a pair of med students, who just happened to need a fresh body for an experiment. Maitland jumps out alive, but not for long: the gravedigger drives his pickaxe through Maitland’s scheming skull.

Curt Jurgens (Lord Jim, Nicholas and Alexandra) is Sebastian, an American magician touring India in search of new material in “This Trick’ll Kill You.” He finds a live one: a dark beautiful Indian girl who does an Indian rope trick, with nothing up her sleeve. He lures her up to his hotel room, and she gets it — a knife in the back. The rope turns on Sebastian, choke, choke.

“The Neat Job” features two star performers: Terry-Thomas and Glynis Johns. T-T is Critchit, an obsessively neat English aristocrat, who marries untidy Eleanor. He makes life miserable for her, even though she tries her best to be neat. The first time she expresses her anger, it is with a> hammer, through Critchit’s third eye. Bye, Critchit!

The final section is “Drawn and Quartered,” the old semi-Dorian Gray move with a neat twist. Tom Baker is Moore, a bearded penniless artist on a tropical island. He finds out that the art critic who panned his work is making a fortune selling those same paintings, so he takes his troubles to the voodoo man. He gets his revenge by drawing portraits of the people he hates and then, whatever happens to the picture, happens to them. Revenge is swift but he forgets about his self-portrait. A workman’s pail defaces the painting and Moore dies from his own brush.

Vault of Horror is the sequel to The House That Dripped Blood, Asylum and Tales from the Crypt. Everything in this Max Rosenberg/Milton Subotsky production is thoroughly professional, from the horrorific make-up (dig the acid murder in the last tale) to the visual style, which gives you what a good horror comic should: action in every panel.

There’s an implied undercurrent of respectable drunkenesss throughout the film. Isolated camera shots and stage arrangements feature centrally located bottles of Black and White (the beverage of the red-haired rape murderer in Frenzy) in two of the stories and bottles of Johnny Walker Red in the others.

Roy Ward Baker’s direction is what’s called taut, which means you don’t nod out unless you really OD’d before you got to the theatre. What’s best about Vault of Horror, and the other Rosenberg/Subotsky shock-schlock efforts is that this pair is in fact consciously aware of the cultural intersections that link horror movies and rock’n’roll. They’ve been partners since the fifties; their previous non-horror masterworks include Disc Jockey Jamboree, Lad A Dog and the immortal Frankie Lymon/ Moonglows/Chuck Berry et. al. flick, Rock, Rock, Rock. Do yourself a favor and buy some thrills.

Wayne Robins