Get Yourself a College Girl

Wow, this film is a real doozie as far as beach and party movies of the 60s was concerned...the acting is grade Z and I cant imagine the producer paid any of the actors more than a few thousand bucks apiece to make this "gem".....Mary Ann Mobley, Chris Noel, Nancy Sinatra, Joan O'Brien are the eye candy in this typical teenage boy loves girl fluff that was going around in mid 60s movies ala all the beach party fluff from Frankie and Annette...if it made tons of money for American International pictures you would guess other producers would hire young starlets for penny ante salaries to continue this stuff. The producer had no script except to hire some popular English singing groups for cameos like the Dave Clark Five and the Animals and some struggling bands like the Standells.....this film did not require any acting ability to speak of....this compounded by wooden, painted mountain scenes in the background of a ski lodge and phony cotton snow on the ground at a California ski lodge gives you an idea of the budget. Mary Ann Mobley is a stitch...she pretends to hate a music producer who wanted her to pose in a skimpy outfit but then falls madly in love with him in one 20 second scene at the ski lodge....ugh!!! All Nancy Sinatra can do is stand by a doorwall at the lodge and act like she is a smitten newly wed and mumble in sexy tones about being married....a four year old could recite her dialogue....actress Chris Noel though departed after this film and went to Vietnam according to legend and met and fell in love and got married to an army officer.....she also did a radio pop music show on the airways for the soldiers in Vietnam in the latter 60s......all in all if you can stand grade zero acting and poor sets you will like this teenage scruff.

As the song lyrics gush in the opening credits "Come on along and join the Swinging Set" as you watch this quite silly, but fun film about Terry (played by Mary Ann Mobley), a student at Wyndam College for Girls who writes songs under a pseudonym and already has her first hit single, a ditty called "Help Stamp Out Men!". When the college board finds out about her songs (with lyrics like "She knows all there is to know from A to Z about S - E - X") they want to expel her for bringing "scandal" to the school - so Terry and her gal pals agree to have "nothing to do with men" on their Christmas holiday ski vacation in Sun Valley. But, oh no, they are soon being chased around the resort by Terry's music publisher (Chad Everett) and a French artist who want her to pose for a publicity painting wearing nothing but guitar and baby doll nightie!

Actresses wearing bikinis and shorty nightgowns who can *barely* act combined with fake-looking snow scene backdrops, poorly lip-synched song performances, and handsome, but oh so boring young Chad Everett makes this sound like a pretty bad movie - but that's all completely part of the campy, nostalgic, 60s fun here! Yes, this film is a bit of fluff, but quite enjoyable. It is full of swinging party scenes at places like the Go Go Club, with kids dancing the Swim and Watusi, and lots of great, live performances by such groups as The Animals and The Dave Clark Five, and one of my favorite parts of the movie, Stan Getz along with the jazzy, cool girl performance done by Astrud Gilberto singing "The Girl from Ipanema" . Worth seeing for the music alone.

Just wanted to say, that when I was about 14 years old this movie was in UK as The Swinging Set. I was working in the sweet shop of my village cinema and had opportunity to watch it about three times in a week as I could take a seat for the main feature after my shift, in those days we always had an interval after some kind of short movie or a small feature or documentary. So I guess I just loved this movie for what it means to me about those days. I though Chad Everett the bees knees. So to anyone else out there who was young when these folk were young and singing to us Hello and welcome to Nostalgia City. I particularly remember too, the part played by Nancy Sinatra. Not much else as it is so long since I saw it, but I did so enjoy it.

The acting and production values of this movie are about on a par with something like Don Knotts' The Reluctant Astronaut or one of those sixties Disney movies starring Haley Mills. Or one of the Ronald Reagan Bonzo movies. Not awful, but definitely in the "B" movie category.

The music is what makes this movie worth watching. Stan Getz's performance of the Girl from Ipanema, with a very deadpan vocal by Astrud Gilberto, is one high point.

The Dave Clark Five is also deadpan, wooden even, and it is easy to see why they didn't surpass the Beatles as some in the sixties thought they might. Classic performances by the Standells and the Animals are here too.

Along with Stan Getz, the Jimmy Smith Trio provides some great jazz.

A fun look into what middle-aged Hollywood screenwriters thought the younger generation was up to. Well worth watching. The studio is missing an opportunity by not releasing this film on DVD. I had to buy mine bootleg on an on-line auction.

A somewhat better sex-on-the-slopes comedy than, say, "Ski Party" (which was nothing more than "Some Like It Hot" for the "Beach Party" crowds). Mary Ann Mobley has been forbidden to associate with men, but she is swamped with possibilities while vacationing with her prep-school girlfriends at a ski-resort. Pal Nancy Sinatra has been secretly married, and uses the time away to get 'acquainted' with her husband (each of her scenes features Nance in a new nightie, answering her door in perpetual states of marital bliss). Of the musical cameos, my favorite was burly Stan Getz playing behind Astrud Gilberto (WOW!). This sequence alone should snare jazz fans. As a movie per se, the plot is irrelevant and the characters one-dimensional, but as your basic one-box-of-popcorn time-filler it has humor and color. One could do worse! ** from ****