Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

zardoz-13 Rookie director Ray Dennis Steckler's musical romance "Wild Guitar" chronicles the rags-to-riches rise of a naïve, young singer from South Dakota who suffers at the hands of producer Mike McCauley (Arch Hall, Sir.) who deceives him from the start. Good looking Bud Eagle cruises into Hollywood on his motorcycle with a suitcase of clothes, a guitar, and fifteen cents. At a café, our blond protagonist meets a dancer who is about to go on stage and shake her fanny. When the guy scheduled to perform chickens out, Bud takes his place without argument and strums a tune before the cameras. The crowd mobs him after he performs his first tune. Before he realizes it, Bud (Arch Hall, Jr. of "Eegah") buys into everything that the unscrupulous Mike tells him. For example, Mike explains the ropes to Bud in one scene when he says, "This is something I want you to get straight. You don't believe what you read, only what I tell you." Everybody tries to tell Bud that he is being taken for a ride before he is too dumb to know any better. Meanwhile, the gal he met at the café, Vicki (Nancy Czar) pines for him. They spend an evening skating before Mike's henchman lines up a dame for him. Vicki intrudes on them and flees in horror because Bud appears to be two-timing her. Three incompetent kidnappers with a shotgun abduct Bud. Everybody seems to know the kidnapping is a publicity stunt except the fans. Eventually, Bud wises up and pulls a fast one of Mike. Indeed, this is the surprise of surprises of this modest movie. A clean-cut kid shows up at Mike's office and demands $20 or he will spill it to the press that the abduction is a hoax. He tells Mike where Bud is hanging out. Earlier in the action, Mike gave Bud a small reel-to-reel tape recorder. Bud uses it to record Mike without Mike's awareness that he is being recording. Bud cuts a new deal with Mike so that he will no longer we exploited. Incredibly enough, the black & white photography was lensed by Joseph C. Mascelli who wrote the best technological book about cinematography entitled "The 5 C's of Cinematography." Even more incredibly, the great Vilmos Zsigmond served as the second unit photographer. Zsigmond won an Oscar for his lensing of Spielberg's "Close Encounters of a Third Kind."

Bolesroor "Wild Guitar" stars Arch Hall, Jr., a kind-of rockabilly Cabbage Patch Kid come to life, as a singer who hits Hollywood with nothing but a suitcase and a guitar. He stops off at a diner to stare longingly at the food he cannot afford and is offered a hamburger sandwich and some french-fried potatoes by a beautiful young girl who feels sorry for him. She agrees to be his de facto girlfriend until he can find someone better, and even offers him a chance to sing on a local television show, where he is discovered and offered a contract that will make him rich and famous for the rest of his life. All this on his very first day in Hollywood!Okay, so at this point we can see that reality is not a priority here, but "Wild Guitar" is a fun teen movie with some decent moments. If you're like me you know Arch Hall from the MST3K classic "Eegah!" in which Arch spent most of the film cruising around the desert in his neato dune buggy yelling, "ROXIE!" You may also know that his father Arch Hall, Sr. (whose stage name is William Watters) was the producer and co-star of "Eegah!," and "Wild Guitar," and the mastermind behind the low-budget film factory known as Fairway Studios. Senior- who once had a promising acting career before he left Hollywood to tend the family business- had an idea about turning Arch into a teen idol with a record contract and a series of B-movies like this. It didn't quite work out but the films they made are good silly fun, like this one.Nancy Czar as Vicki is unbelievably sweet and beautiful. Watch how expressive her eyebrows and jaw are in the opening diner scene; this is a face that the camera just loves. I've done some research but I cannot figure out why she wasn't more famous or in more movies. (NOTE: If you've seen "Eegah" you may have wondered why Arch sings a song called "Vicki" to his leading lady in spite of the fact that she's named Roxie. The song appeared in "Wild Guitar" first and was evidently recycled to try to sell a few more records!) There's also a romantic ice-skating sequence which shows off Nancy Czar's considerable skill and astounding flexibility. Afterwards Arch and Nancy walk through the late-night Hollywood streets, and although this is by no means Artistic Cinema, the scene does capture the innocence and joy of young love.Arch is no DeNiro himself, but he's fun and enjoyable enough as the naive singer snagged in the dirty world of the music industry, and this film might have been a lost drive-in classic if it weren't for one thing: the kidnapping sequence. About two-thirds in the movie takes a detour from which it never recovers when three "funny" goons kidnap Arch Hall and hold him for ransom. These Bowery Boy rejects employ every bad gag in the book as they bumble their way badly through routines even The Stooges couldn't save. "Dis guy is a wise guy, boss- you want I should give 'em a knuckle sammich?!?" And it's not just awful... it's eternal. The extended sequence keeps piling on lame joke after lame joke until you might actually consider jamming ballpoint pens into your ears to end the pain.Sadly, the movie never recovers from these lowbrow hijinks, and what could have been a sweet teenage timepiece just becomes a waste of time. A shame.GRADE: C-

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.

dougdoepke ( Of course, the 9 stars is a register on the Inspired Bad Movie scale, not to be confused with Just Plain Bad Movies.)The movie should be titled Wild Hair since Hall Jr.'s blond thatch shape-shifts faster than Pampas grass in a windstorm. Bad films like this are not made, instead they mutate somewhere in a Petrie dish to menace the world. We're in Ed Wood territory here, the land of inspired bad movie-making. Just when you think the acting, directing, and dialogue can not get worse, they do. This is what happens when a determined band of no-talents sets out to commit a movie and does. The story itself is not exactly from Shakespeare, nor even from the guy down the block. An innocent hick arrives in Hollywood to find True love, Show-Business success, and Real values. Pity poor Hall Jr. who resembles nothing so much as the Pillsbury doughboy. Stuck with a face fashioned by a wine press, it seems he was forced into show-business by an ambitious father who should have been jailed for child abuse. The lad strives manfully, but the genes are against him. His high point comes half-way through in a cavernous stage left over from a 30's horror film. Posing there as a teen-idol with what can only be described as a battleship pompadour, he warbles a top tune from hell, while flitting around somewhere beneath is one of those girls who acts like she''s celebrating her brand-name underwear. I guess she was supposed to add an artistic touch. Together, however, they're beyond surreal. I could go on, especially about the three mental cases whose comic relief makes the Bowery Boys look like brain surgeons, but you get the idea. Yes, this is a bad movie classic, but at least not one of those big-budget prestige films that Hollywood used to turn out by the bucket-load that were supposed to impress you even as you slumbered along. Those were truly bad movies, easily forgotten. But inspired awful movies like Guitar can never be forgotten. Hats off to Arch Hall Jr. for quitting the business at just the right time. Hats off too, to whoever decided to debunk the artificial world of teen idols. You can bet no studio of the time with its record company sub-division would have dared anything so revealing about its bread and butter. I say we stand the Oscar statuette on its head, and hand one out to Wild Guitar for Best Bad Movie of 1962. It may be 50 years too late, but somehow that seems fitting.