A Swingin' Summer
                              
Director: Robert Sparr
Year: 1965
Rating: 5.0
After five actors you have never heard of being listed in the opening credits, they get around to "And Introducing Raquel Welch as Jeri". This was her first credited role in a feature film after appearing in a few TV episodes and being uncredited in the Elvis Presley film, Roustabout. And of course, they put her in a bikini. Over in Europe, Raquel was featured on the posters and marketing - clearly having a better understanding of who the real star of the film was. Europe had a bit of a love affair with Raquel and she was in three European films in the 1960s. The Japanese poster had her right up front. In the American poster it has her touted in small letters as "The Palace Billboard Girl". Born in Chicago as Jo Raquel Tejada, her father hailed from Bolivia and her cousin became the first female President from Bolivia. The family moved to San Diego and she made a bee line to show business stopping along the way to marry her high school steady, James Welch. They had two children and show business must have felt far away, But, after separating from her husband, she got a job as a weather woman on a local TV channel and moved to Texas with her kids to be a model. But show business was still her goal and she moved back to L.A., got an agent and began getting small parts that became bigger parts.



This was definitely a step up for Raquel. She isn't the star but she is the one you will remember or perhaps I am projecting. The film is not a good one; mindless like a currant bun, empty like a mourning widow's sex life. It was jumping on the beach movie fad though actually shot at Lake Arrowhead. There are plenty of girls in bikinis though and the camera leers at them like a flasher on a subway. It is to put it mildly obsessed with certain anatomical parts of the female form and zeroes in on them like a bomber sighting its target below. The film actually ends with the camera zooming in on a girl's shaking her rear end as she dances.  And there is a lot of dancing in the film as the bands play rock and roll. Not a bad line-up - The Rip Chords (surf group), Donnie Brooks (in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame), Garry Lewis and the Playboys disappointingly only doing instrumentals - where was Diamond Ring - the Righteous Brothers and yes, Raquel singing I'm Ready to Groove.



Plotwise - three college students - James Stacy (co-starred with Raquel later in Flareup), William Wellman Jr (son of the famous director) and the red-headed buxom Quinn O'Hara (won the Miss Scotland contest in California) - decide to put on a show to pay for college.  A few problems arise and that is about it. Raquel as Jeri plays a nerd with horn-rimmed glasses who is into psychology and decides to study Stacy as a subject. She tells him that she has decided he will be her summer fling. He runs away. Then that she wants to have sex with him. He runs away faster. She is in a yellow bikini that should come with blinkers. Finally, she rips off a dowdy red dress to show her in a sleek bathing suit,  tosses her glasses away, undoes her hair and goes on stage to sing. He isn't running anywhere.