I first saw Having a Wild Weekend back when it first came out over 50 years ago, and again today for the second time. Even though I was a Beatles-obsessed pre-teen from the first time I saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show in Feb. 1964, and dragged my parents to take me to see A Hard Days Night when it came out the same year, I still liked other groups of that era including DC5. I bought their album HAWW with my allowance money when it came out.
But I'll never sit through this 'movie' again, ever. It's a blatant rip-off of AHDN but nowhere near as good, endearing, or enjoyable. It's more like one overly-long music video, which of course hadn't been invented yet.
Dave Clark as the lead 'actor' had maybe 5 lines total and was more wooden than a cigar store Indian statue, never showing the least bit of emotion about anything. Barbara Ferris as Dinah was blah - vapid and wishy-washy at best. The only reason I gave it more than one star was because of the moody black and white 1960s England cinematography and a few of the DC5 songs that still sound pretty good even though they're a half-century old.
As for the underlying deeper-meaning theme that other reviewers mention here, it was only hinted at and never fleshed out enough to be more than meaningless blips on the radar screen of the annoyingly endless, mindless, shallow, silly romp that was the major part of the movie; that culminated in exactly zero/zilch/nothing at the end. Meh.
2 out of 10 / Grade D-
But I'll never sit through this 'movie' again, ever. It's a blatant rip-off of AHDN but nowhere near as good, endearing, or enjoyable. It's more like one overly-long music video, which of course hadn't been invented yet.
Dave Clark as the lead 'actor' had maybe 5 lines total and was more wooden than a cigar store Indian statue, never showing the least bit of emotion about anything. Barbara Ferris as Dinah was blah - vapid and wishy-washy at best. The only reason I gave it more than one star was because of the moody black and white 1960s England cinematography and a few of the DC5 songs that still sound pretty good even though they're a half-century old.
As for the underlying deeper-meaning theme that other reviewers mention here, it was only hinted at and never fleshed out enough to be more than meaningless blips on the radar screen of the annoyingly endless, mindless, shallow, silly romp that was the major part of the movie; that culminated in exactly zero/zilch/nothing at the end. Meh.
2 out of 10 / Grade D-