Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

bill_golden Of course this is a very bad movie by most conventional standards, but it did have a couple of redeeming qualities. First, the basic storyline, while a bit convoluted, does contain a kernel of authenticity: many artists of that era were blatantly ripped off by crooked managers, producers, promoters, record companies, etc. The scene in the ice skating rink I thought was surprisingly effective, in fact it almost didn't fit. And the closing shot of the teens doing the twist on the beach brought back memories of that era, since I was a kid growing up in Southern California at the time, and yes, people of all ages did the twist.

markwood272 "Wild Guitar" was the first film I have seen in the Ray Dennis Steckler oeuvre. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience thanks to TCM.Arch Hall, Jr. plays a young musician whose career is managed by a character resembling Bob Marcucci or "Colonel" Tom Parker. The manager is played by Arch Hall, Sr., using the name William Watters. The elder Hall ran the production company that made "Wild Guitar", and he did in fact promote his son's career. The movie imitated life, generally, specifically – and strangely!Nothing to add to all that has been said except– The straight-from-the-can Cheez Whiz organ for the music textures the soundtrack in a wonderful 60's way. A pop culture time machine worthy of Proust!And – "Wild Guitar" got me thinking about a much praised French language work released two years earlier:Both films offer takes on fame and celebrity in the early 1960's. The male leads in both possess odd facial features and portray star-struck characters. The acting is wooden, especially from the female leads. The directors in each movie play parts. The plots in both films feature absurd crimes. Location shooting on city streets is used. Some shots look as if the cinematographer, equipped with a hand-held Arriflex, had been turned loose on Hollywood Boulevard or the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. Some sequences are quite artistic. Example: the (improbable) night skating sequence in "Wild Guitar". Editing in both is rough, the continuity laissez-faire. Low-end production values predominate, so low that immediately after production the star of the European film believed the movie was so bad he thought it would never be released. The credits display poverty row or no-name production companies' logos.Each film still has a substantial following today, half a century later, and each is enjoyed retrospectively via cable and DVD, as well as at revival showings at theaters. Both remain topics of film journal essays.Are the cynics right? Is a movie's reputation mostly a matter of marketing, of packaging, of its distribution channels. . .? Give the Halls French dialogue with English subtitles. Show their movie on the art house and festival circuit. Dub that foreign art film into English and peddle it to drive-ins and late night TV shows. Jean-Luc Godard might be recognized today only as a European precursor to Ray Steckler, with "Breathless" nothing more than the French "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.

sol Formula plot about a small time boy Bud Eagle, Arch Hall Jr, from North Dakota coming to Hollywood looking to make it big in the world of Rock & Roll music.Meeting cute Vicki Wills,Nancy Czar, who gives the starving and broke Bud her lunch to eat at a local diner she tells the naive and shy out of towner that's she to appear at the local amateur hour TV show that evening and invites him to come along. Just like in the movies, damn I keep forgetting this is a movie, the person thats to appear with Vickie on the stage gets stage fright and runs out of the theater and now the shows MC Hal Kenton, Paul Voorhees, is forced to put the startled North Dakotan with Vickie on stage! Bud ends up knocking the crowd dead with his wild guitar and high-pitched voice to becomes an instant Rock & Roll success and teenage idol.The movie "Wild Guitar" has it's moments with a bunch of Bowery Boys wannabes, that's really aiming high in Hollywood, who kidnap Bud only having him turn the tables on them and then using the three jerks Weasel Stupid & Brains,Bill Llyod Jonathon Krle & Mike Trelbor, to shake down his manager Mike McCauley,Arch Hall Sr, for $15,000.00. The kidnappers end up losing the ransom money when Mike's top henchman Stake, Ray Dennis, breaks into their hideout. After what has to be one of the most insane and crazy slug-feasts this side of the World Wresteling Federation the three take off after dropping Stake but forgetting to take the ransom money with them!Bud who fell in love with Vickie has the devious and scheming Mike split them up because he felt that she would hurt his career by making him not available, as a boyfriend or husband, to the millions of frenzied young girls and teeny-boppers, calling themselves Eagle Feathers, all over the USA in Bud Eagel fan clubs who are just wild and crazy about him. Hiding out in Madge's,Marie Denn, diner as a dishwasher Bud gets in touch with his All-American football hero brother Ted, Al Scott, back in North Dakota for help and the two set up his manager Mike McCauley together with his #1 henchman Stake with of all things a gift that Mike gave him to improve his music and singing. Even though the movie "Wild Guitar" is both corny and cheaply made it did show how things in the music business is done in regards to taking an up and coming Rock & Roll singer, who's not too sharp when it comes to his or her financial future, and how after he's no longer popular and not putting cash in the till he's then drop like a case of the Black Plague.There's a very effective scene in the film where Buds, after he was held captive and almost raped by Mike's sexy dancer Daisy/Virginia Broderick,having a heart to heart talk with another Mike McCauley discovery former Rock & Roll phenomenon Don Proctor, Robert Crumb, with him telling Bud what he's in store for with a sleazy crumb like his former boss McCauley as his manager.