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Reviews
Up Jumped a Swagman (1965)
Zany comedy trips- up Swagman
This Zany British comedy stars Frank Ifield(originally from Coventry, England), as a guitar-twanging hopeful from Down Under, who forsaking the Australian music Scene,tries to get a productive audition with Lever, a London music Publisher, played by the laconic Richard Wattis, who is out to fleece his clients. Frank's crazy interest, is Billboard girl Suzy Kendall. Severally there are various twists that involve Ronald Radd and the delicious Annette Andre;the latter thankfully tested her acting talents in more substantial roles. There is so much slapstick in 'Up Jumped a Swagman', that this film relies on daub and dash scenes; any plot veneer is soon submerged in a welter of actor destruction and over the top hamming. Not a movie then, with a coherent story-line; rather 12 integrated song fillers by Frank Ifield, who bravely tries to hold the embattled structure together.
The Golden Disc (1958)
Golden Disc Deserves To Be Judged By Its Era
This film is typically 1950's and deserves to be judged as from that era. It stars Lee Patterson, Mary Steele,and is used as a vehicle to showcase the talents of would-be teenage songster Terry Dene who performs four of the twelve songs.
The plot as with most 1950's and 1960's rock musicals is pretty thin.
Lee Patterson and his girlfriend Mary Steele with the help of her trendy aunt convert a creaky Coffee House to a kind of pre-disco joint where all the hormonal teenagers can flock to. The only customer in the creaky Establishment is the wonderfully morose Richard Turner, who even gets a look-in at the transformed Coffee Bar, which ends up by a sleight of imagination as a recording studio.
Of course the songs are a missmash of different music genres and are not all strictly rock in an age of the jukebox, long hooped dresses, jeans, trousers and sweaters effervescently proclaiming teenage love for this or that artist.
While other early British 1950's musicals stake their claim to be the first rock'n'roll movie, this one comes closest to depicting the birth of home-grown rock and is a proto version of the real thing as was performance-wise Tommy Steele. Without these pioneers how could the later and purer versions have learned to avoid the pitfalls.
No, we must applaud this movie which was a low budget affair, for trying to portray the helterskelter of youth if not the angst - that was left to a later era.