Year:  1961
Rating: 5.0

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Everybody, let's twist! By the beginning of the 1960's rockabilly and guitar driven rock was beginning to fade out and a new wave of fancy boys with velvet voices and smooth clean looks were taking over the music scene - artists like Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Bobby Darin. Even Elvis had gone soft drifting away from his rock songs towards Hollywood and romantic ballads. Rock was dying (until The Beatles reinvigorated it again), but there was a slice of dance music that had a beat and kept the nation dancing. The Twist. The song was released by Chubby Checker in 1961 at the behest of Dick Clark (whose wife gave Chubby his name as a play on Fats Domino) and it became a craze for a couple of years. It only began to lose its popularity when even middle-aged squares were doing it. Checker later complained that the song ruined his career because that is all people associated him with but it has kept him going until today. Interestingly, the song was first sung by Hank Ballard a year earlier and though it is perhaps superior to Chubby's, it didn't catch on - the difference probably being the promoting skills of Dick Clark.


That is where this film comes in. Trying to cash in on the popularity of the dance, the film was cranked out in a few weeks by Columbia for the paltry price of $250,000 and it made over six million dollars. The title is not a coincidence - it is a remake of Rock Around the Clock from 1956 - substituting Bill Haley and The Platters with Chubby Checker and Dion. In either case like with most of these rock films, it is the music that carries the day much more than the plot. This one has more of a plot than a few that I have seen lately in this genre but it won't exactly thrill you.


Music manager Mitch says goodbye to his rock band because as he tells them, rock is dead. He drives back to New York and stops off for the night in a small out of the way town where everyone is sandpapering their shoes. That strikes him as odd so he follows them to a club where a band headed by Clay Cole is playing twist music and a girl with a body that has a better curve than a major league pitcher shows everyone how to twist. Bingo. Mitch sees the next big thing - and brings them east. So the conceit of the film is that the Twist was invented out in a foot loose type of town.


Besides Chubby and Dion singing three songs each, there were also songs by The Marcels and the 16-year old Vicki Spencer, who later was to sing for the Bubble Gum Machine. Clay Cole is played by Clay Cole who was a popular DJ and TV host of music shows at the time.