JANUA-RAY: WILD GUITAR (1962) **

(Originally posted July 17, 2007)

If you’re an Arch Hall, Jr. or Ray Dennis Steckler fan, have I got a movie for you!  Hall stars as Bud Eagle, a naïve (okay, stupid) country bumpkin who gets a recording contract and is exploited by an unscrupulous promoter (Arch Hall, Sr.).  He almost loses his best gal and masterminds his own kidnapping to get out of the limelight.  All the usual rags to riches clichés are used.  If you’re a Steckler completist (like me) you have to check it out.  Not only does he direct this one, he also co-stars (under his usual pseudonym Cash Flagg) as “Steak”, Hall’s bodyguard.  Hall also sings his tender love ballad (Excuse me for falling in the floor in a fit of laughter after typing Hall and “tender love ballad” in the same sentence.) “I Love You Vicki”, which he also sang in Eegah!  Mystery Science Theater 3000 deemed this too bad to make fun of, but you’ll have fun with it.

JANUA-RAY NOTES:  

1) Severin really outdid themselves with this transfer.  This is the best the film has ever looked.

2) The opening scenes really give you a great glimpse of what Hollywood was like in the early ‘60s.

3) Steckler’s staging of the dancing and music numbers is quite good.  He’d later perfect his craft in his next film, the immortal The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

4) I liked seeing posters for Hall’s other movies, The Choppers and Eegah! on the wall in the coffee shop.

5) I think what prevents Wild Guitar from really working is the fact that so much of it is unearned.  Bud becomes an overnight sensation less than overnight, and the number that catapults him to stardom isn’t very good at all.  I know this is just a hollow riff on your average rise and fall of a teen idol movie, but the whirlwind way it all goes down just isn’t very believable.  Not that believability is something crucial in a Ray Dennis Steckler flick, but still.   

6) Another problem is that much of the movie hinges around Bud being incredibly naïve to advance the plot.  Did I say, “incredibly naïve’?  I meant “rock stupid”.  If you thought he was dumb though, wait till you get a load of the guys who “kidnap” him.  They make the Bowery Boys look like rocket scientists in comparison.  

7) I think the script Steckler had to work with would’ve made for a good first draft.  Had it been beefed up a bit and the stock situations hadn’t been so damned predictable; Wild Guitar might’ve been a decent little flick.  

8) Steckler provides some good moments, both behind and in front of the camera.  He does a nice job directing Bud and Vicki’s date at the ice skating rink, and he’s fun to watch as Bud’s bodyguard, “Steak”.  He often steals scenes by just hanging out in the background and picking his nails.  

9) The final number, “Twist Fever” is a lot of fun and hints at what the film could’ve been had it not gotten bogged down with all the dull showbiz melodrama.  As it is, Wild Guitar is too tame for its own good.