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Posts Tagged ‘Max Bacon’

I’m getting into these 1960s pop exploitation films. Next up is PLAY IT COOL from 1962. It was Michael Winner’s first feature film, and stars Billy Fury as a pop singer called Billy Universe. The plot is an excuse to visit a series of clubs and see Helen Shapiro, Bobby Vee, Shane Fenton & The Fentones, Jmmy Crawford and Danny Williams.  As ever, bit parts are by British comic actors. It is black and white. In reverse of normal practice, they colourized the lobby cards. In the end, it goes to show what a huge leap forward “A Hard Day’s Night” was, just eighteen months later.

play-it-cool

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Review added in the 60s Retrospectives series of Privilege from 1967. It starred Paul Jones, fresh from Manfred Mann and Jean Shrimpton. The director was Peter Watkins, who won the 1967 Best Documentary Academy Award for “The War Game” (which he’d made in 1965, but it got banned). Privilege was his first feature film, a dystopian satire about a manipulative government-sponsored cult based on pop star Steve Shorter (Paul Jones). It’s a film that was criticized heavily at the time, but whose reputation has grown.

privilege-1

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