CREEM: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine (2020)
Boy Howdy! Another rock-doc about Detroit? We’re still coming down from the high of Detroit’s Suzi Quatro’s career chronicle with the Australian-made Suzi Q. And how can we forget Louder Than Love, the chronicle on Detroit’s famed The Grande Ballroom? Before the D.I.Y punk ethos of Britain in the late ’70s, that D.I.Y spirit began […]
Sing Street (2016)
Before becoming a writer and director, John Carney played for the Irish band The Frames. In fact, the lead singer of that band, Glen Hansard, starred in Carney’s best-known film, 2007’s Once alongside his partner in the band Swell Season, Markéta Irglová. Made on a budget of around $150,000, it ended up earning $23.3 million worldwide. […]
Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Alan Freed Story (1999)
Based on John A. Jackson’s book Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, this is the warts and all story of Alan Freed, who may have invented rock and roll — or at least popularized it — but lived fast and certainly anything but scandal free. Director Andy Wolk […]
Starstruck (1982)
Journalist Stephen Maclean was raised by his mother as she worked in a Melbourne pub and had an early career as a child actor. He wanted to make an Australian musical and ended up working with Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, the 1994 version of Little Women) and production designer Brian Thomson (The Rocky Horror […]
Mister Rock and Roll (1957)
Charles S. Dubin was blacklisted but still ended up being a TV director of some reknown five years afterward. He’d go on to direct 44 episodes of M*A*S*H*, as well as TV movies like The Deadly Triangle and the 1979 remake of Topper. Here, he’s putting together a jukebox musical featuring Mr. Rock and Roll himself, Alan Freed, […]
Big Meat Eater (1982)
What is it about science fiction/horror musicals and why we love those so? The more cult — beyond Rocky Horror, there’s Shock Treatment, Voyage of the Rock Aliens and The Apple — the better, right? Allow me to present Canada’s 1982 entry to the strange symphony, Big Meat Eater. Director Chris Windsor co-wrote, co-edited and co-wrote the soundtrack along with […]
The Phynx (1970)
The Warner Archive is the gift that keeps on giving, because before it started making burn on demand DVDs, this movie has such a limited release that few people had seen it. I know I’d been hunting for it for years, as it perfectly hits on so many of the things that I adore. It […]
American Hot Wax (1978)
Floy Mutrux wrote the musical theater productions Million Dollar Quartet, Baby It’s You! and Heartbreak Hotel after a career in films, including directing Aloha Bobby and Rose and The Hollywood Knights. He’s also written scripts for movies like Freebie and the Bean and Two-Lane Blacktop. The strange thing is, this movie failed at the box office while its soundtrack went to #31 […]
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