Hilfe, die Bombe ist weg!

I saw this film just the once, when it first came out and I was in my teens. I remember it being on a par with Cliff's other films - enjoyable, colourful, escapist nonsense, enhanced with some good songs.

But what has happened to it? The Young Ones, Summer Holiday, and Wonderful Life have all featured regularly on British TV and have had video and DVD releases, yet Finders Keepers has disappeared almost without trace (this is also true of Cliff's subsequent films Take Me High and Two A Penny, but they weren't musicals: Finders Keepers is.

The film's songs are all good. Written by the Shadows, they are mostly cheerful and plot-relevant, and they include the haunting This Day, a ballad performed while boating through subterranean caverns, I think. The soundtrack is well worth a listen.

Personally, I'd welcome an opportunity to see the darn thing again.

Addition: I have acquired a somewhat under the radar DVD of Finders Keepers - dubbed from an off-air VHS taping, I suspect. The songs are, indeed, all very good. The rest of the film, alas, is not. The plot is ludicrous, the script is poor, people behave in all sorts of illogical ways, and even the British comedy stalwarts are ill-treated by what they are given to do (I never thought I would report that John Le Mesurier wasn't very good but, sadly, it is so). And the editing of the climactic musical number is shambolic.

Yes, the plot is so thin you could floss your teeth with it. Yes, the pop idols can't act and the songs aren't the best. But if you accept the fact that this is a silly movie from the silliest decade of all, you'll waste an enjoyable 90 minutes on this film. Especially if you're a fan of Cliff Richard, the Shadows, and/or spy spoofs. Come on, who wouldn't want to see the boys gallavanting around a Spanish fiesta disguised (for no good reason) as a roving guitar troupe?

This is the Cliff Richard & the Shadows movie that was made at the time when the Beatles & their ilk were all the rage.

In response, this film has Cliff Richard with his hair combed forward and moves The Shadows to a more prominent role as songwriters, actors, and singers.

The movie is very colorful and beautiful to look at, has the vintage mid sixties madcap feel, mid sixties styling, and is clean cut & wholesome.

Those looking for deep meanings & complicated plot lines had better stick to other movie genres. This is teenybopper stuff.

What's secretly special about this film is The Shadows' vocal contributions which are in league with those on their excellent SHADOW MUSIC album.

This film was lame and I should have known it would be a drag from the opening scene. The band is on a hay wagon railroad car and the footage and special effects are horrible. None of songs by the band stand out and the plot is weak. Robert Morley is one of those actors who always seems to always find his way into bad films.

I can't bear to give Cliff Richard less than a 6 - I refuse.

"Finders Keepers" from 1966 is another film for Cliff's fans. He and the Shadows, playing themselves, go to a job and find the hotel deserted. An atom bomb has been dropped by mistake into the ocean and until it's found, no tourists, no fishing, no nothing. At the hotel there are spies and agents who want to find the bomb for their own purposes.

You want to talk about a bare bones plot, there it is. Cliff Richard is absolutely adorable. Over here in the States, we were all very busy with Beatlemania and the rest of the British invasion - for some reason, Cliff never caught on over here, though he was certainly popular everywhere else. Just one of those odd things - possibly the press claiming he was the British Elvis is what did it, as we had the original.

Richard is nothing like Elvis, of course. Too clean-cut, boyish, and wholesome, and though he could take on an Elvis style, his actual style was smooth and bright. No one just filmed him from the waist up, broke his records, or talked against him in church pulpits.

Here he and the Shadows perform with lots of energy, though the songs maybe aren't great. And they do stupid antics that the kids probably got a kick out of.

It's nowhere near as good as "A Hard Day's Night," and probably this film is best compared to one of Elvis' travelogues - beautiful scenery, some music, a cute guy and pretty women.

Richard just tried to be himself in these films, and that was more than enough. I think Presley deserved better films - he was more sexual and more intense. But for Cliff and the Shadows, while not as good as earlier films, this is a pleasant watch.