Rock,
Rock, Rock!
(1956/Koch/Passport DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: B- Film: C+
Before
the advent of The Beatles and especially before MTV, there were many
attempts to put music on film outside of the Film Musical. As the
Rock genre came about, so did a teen film-going audience, so instead
of Soundie shorts, they tried short feature films. Alan Freed was
responsible for his own cycle if them in which he appeared as host,
which makes sense since he is THE disc jockey that put Rock on the
map before the anti-Rock establishment put him in his grave. Will
Price's Rock,
Rock, Rock!
(1956) is one of these films.
Running
just past a B-movie length of 83 minutes, the film features, Frankie
Lymon & The Teenagers (Baby
Baby,
I'm
Not A Juvenile Delinquent),
Chuck Berry (You
Can't Catch Me),
The Moonglows (I
Knew It From The Start,
Over
& Over),
The Flamingos (Will
I Be Crying),
Connie Francis and LaVern Baker (Tra
La La),
and Tuesday Weld (in her film debut) lip-syncing Francis. Of course,
there is no real narrative, so all one can do is wait (or in the case
of DVD, forward) to the music performance
desired. Chapter selection admits this by breaking all the songs
down as the chapter stops. Expect a big helping of Doo Wop
throughout.
The
full frame, 1.33 X 1 black and white image is scratchy and shows its
age, as who knows where the original camera materials are for this
film, but the print is not a disaster and is watchable. Though the
film is in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono and you can see lip-syncing
even when it is the actual artist on camera, many of the hits were
cut in mono anyhow. There is certainly room for improvement, but
stereo should not be assumed on any of the hits. The only extra is
an even more interesting look at Alan Freed's life called The
Alan Freed Story
that might be worth watching before
seeing the film itself.
-
Nicholas
Sheffo
