Blast-Off Girls

Blast Off Girls, despite the title, didn't have too much to do with girls. Instead, this film showcases a male rock band, trying to hit the big time in the music biz, during the late-60s. The band goes through quite a bit, as they struggle to become well-known pop stars. They have to contend with a ruthless, greedy manager, internal squabbles amongst the band members, living on a meager income, their own drug abuse etc., etc.

Though this movie is not the most exciting rock film in the world, it's entertaining in a hokey sort of way. The band plays some pretty decent garage/psychedelic rock, and they give-off an energetic vibe. There are many scenes in this film, that show the band frolicking merrily outdoors. In this way, the movie is similar to an episode of the Monkees. For those who are nostalgic about the late-60s rock scene, this movie will suffice.

If you are going to waste 2-3 hours of your life watching these movies, might as well check out Blast-Off Girls for the Colonel Sanders (yes, THAT Colonel Sanders) cameo. You can actually hear him talk.

Other than that, these movies are almost interchangeable. In fact, at first I thought I was accidently restarting the same movie twice.

This movie is about a weasley looking, sheisty talent agent/promoter who thinks he's found pay-dirt when he comes across a funky looking band called the Big Blast.

Thinking there really dumb he goes about booking gigs for them, changing their image with tacky looking suits that would make you want to puke. Soon they get fed up with it and demand more money, so what does the greaseball do, he sets them up on a planned "dope" bust. He hires a goon to pretend to be a cop to snare them, and then blackmail them to work for the weasel promoter for free. Whats even more crazy is he hires young awesome looking lasses to disrupt the gigs to create hype for the band. What a con!!

This film is filled with great gigs of the band jamming, lots of cool pot parties with groupies. This movie is by far the best from the 60's about rock 'n roll bands trying to make it in the big black world.

For me, H.G. Lewis movies have always been a mixed bag. Sometimes they're a lot of fun and sometimes they are excruciating. This would fall in the latter category.

The story involves a sheisty band manager (and "whitey mack" wannabe), Boojie Baker (played by Dan Conway), who goes from one garage band to the next, forming them into a profit for himself. The type of manager who believes in taking as much credit and percentage as possible and leaving his band with virtually nothing. Conway turns in a good performance, yet considering the repetitive nature of the plot and several other elements, it becomes grating.

Boojie's first group gets the hint right away, when he tries to screw them out of their earnings, and they proceed to take a hike. He bounces back and hits the jackpot, with his next anti-stellar group of morons. A group that continues to get conned over and over by Boojie's transparent tactics, until 10 minutes towards the end of the picture when they finally discover an escape clause (an escape clause being a metaphor for a small rock on the same gravel road they've been traveling on all along).

H.G. Lewis' films were never known for great music, and this one might have the worst. If you thought the theme from "JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT" sounded like "White Rabbit" performed by an orchard of adam's apples liquefied in a blender, then you ain't heard nothin' yet. Wait until you hear Boojie's band, The Big Blast, pump out the same song over and over and over and over. Not even a song really, just a chorus that's sung so many times that it literally sounds like a broken record. Here's a taste... "The next time that you want me, I won't run to you. The next time that you need me, I'll tell you that we're through. The next time, the next time, the next time that we're through(?!)" Just imagine hearing that same jam session in nearly every other scene. Not since Jean-Luc Godard's "SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL", have I seen a film that thrives on such lyrical overkill.

What's even more grating is that the band members never truly gel with one another and the music suffers because of it. At times, it seems as if each member is singing different lyrics to the same chorus, all at once. For example, when they're singing "...the next time...", it sometimes sounds like "...run and hide...". And, in a more interesting number, "Go BLANK Yourself, My Friend", some of them sing "Go BLANK Yourself, A Friend". My initial thoughts were that this was a band of non-actors attempting to perform music, when in fact, according to the credits, this was a real band. Ugghh.

In conclusion, if you want a far out ride that contains little emphasis on girls and couldn't provide a spark with a dry match in a hay barn, then "THE BLAST-OFF GIRLS" is for you! Otherwise, I'd recommend Arch Hall, Jr's "WILD GUITAR", which deals in the same subject manner and is a lot more fun to watch.

True to Saint Herschell's form, Just for the Hell of It seems to have been filmed simultaneously with his uber-biker-chick flick, She Devils on Wheels. Much of the same cast, including two Teutonic tons of love, are on hand, but mostly to use up excesss film stock. Just for the hell of it, "teenage" hooligans with receding hairlines and middle-age spreads engage a reign of small-town terror that mostly involves wrecking a beatnik coffee house, if a beatnik coffee house was constructed of flattened refrigerator boxes stapled together and set-decorated by Carol Brady. In one scene they steal an inattentive mother's infant and stash it in a trash can. Yes, they terrorize cripples freshly emerging from the hospital.