Gonks Go Beat

Incredibly rare, mid-60's rock and roll sci-fi obscurity. So rare, most film books don't even LIST the title.

A recent screening of the sole surviving print at Hollywood's AMERICAN CINEMATEQUE, shows that the film is no great shakes, but worth seeking out for the completists.

GONKS tells the story of an Alien who comes to earth to settle a dispute between the two great nations of our future planet. One nation loves rock and roll, the other, ballads. The Alien befriends a bizarre former Record Exec (Mr. A & R) who looks suspiciously like Buddy Holly (if had he lived to join Elvis in Vegas!). The pair hatch a scheme to set up a Romeo and Juliet-like romance to bring the warring nations together.

It works, but not before a bunch of mediocre rock songs and warbled ballads are sung, cheap stage-bound sets are trampled and the audience's patience is worn thin. Meanwhile, on planet Gonk, a bunch of hand puppets runs amok. Gonks were furry toys popular in England at the time.

The biggest highlight is a thrilling 9 Drummer jam session (led by Ginger Baker and Alan White) held in a prison cell (don't ask). Otherwise, it's fairly dull with only a little schlock value.

CARRY ON regulars Kenneth Connor and Terry Scott co-star with Are You Being Served?''s Frank Norton as Mr. A & R. The recording artists include Lulu, The Nashville Teens and the Graham Bond Organization (which included Baker and Jack Bruce).

I watched this film in February 2017 on British TV (for details see below for others who may wish to watch it).

I have to say it is pretty awful. A sci-fi movie giving a retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story. Strange eh !

For people who "grew up" in the 1960s (like me) it is hard for people today to realize that watching pop groups at the time was difficult (we did not have 30 music channels on Sky as we have today for example).

So a number of films were made trying to cram as many pop groups in as they could. However most of the singers / bands / songs in this film are forgettable (yet another bland pop song rhyming "walk" with "talk", probably the most obvious rhyme you can come up with).

I am a fan of "bad" movies and I have to say this is right up there with the best / worst (alongside Dean Martin in his Matt Helm movies). If you are a fan of bad movies do try to catch it.

This film was shown on British TV in February 2017. It is on the TV channel "Talking Pictures" which is available on most platforms in the UK (Freeview, Sky, Virgin). The channel shows mostly lost or historical films and is a great place to watch films that may never have been shown on TV before (from all eras - 1930s up to 1990s).

Ever since Chuck Berry crowed "Roll Over, Beethoven!" in the mid-fifties there have been many in the pop world, both fans and performers, who have regarded themselves as being in a state of cultural war against all other musical genres. The rivalry between the "Mod" and "Rocker" sub-cultures of the early sixties- a rivalry which often involved actual violence- was partly based upon differences in musical taste, with the Mods favouring jazz and the Rockers (as their name implies) rock-and-roll.

"Gonks Go Beat" dramatises another of these musical culture wars, that between pop and what was rather patronisingly known as "easy listening". Unlike the Mods-versus-Rockers clashes, this one did not actually lead to fighting in the streets, but nevertheless generated a surprising amount of ill-feeling. There are still people, now in their sixties or seventies, who consider their youths to have been blighted by the fact that the Beatles' famous double A-side of "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields" was kept off the top of the charts by Engelbert Humperdinck's "Please Release Me". I well remember the disgust of my female teenage contemporaries from the seventies when their idol, Donny Osmond, was replaced at Number One by Perry Como, a man old enough to be his father. It would not have mattered if the Beatles had been bested by the Rolling Stones or Osmond by, say, David Cassidy. What mattered was that pop, the music of youth, progress and freedom, had lost out to "easy listening", the music of the conservative older generation.

The central premise of the film is that, at some far-distant date in the future, Planet Earth is dominated by two mutually hostile powers, Beatland and Ballad Isle. Each of these two nations is defined by its attitude to the youth culture of the sixties. Beatland is a land of long, or longish, hair- very long hair was not as fashionable in 1965 as it was to become a few years later- polo-neck sweaters, jeans, sunglasses and, of course, hip and trendy beat music. Ballad Isle is a place of short hair, button-down shirts, pressed slacks and floral dresses. Its inhabitants, of course, only listen to ballads. (The old word "ballad", once little used except by devotees of folk-poetry, had been pressed back into service to mean an easy-listening song).

The story is a variant on the "Romeo and Juliet" storyline (but without the tragic ending) in which a Beatland boy, Steve, and a Ballad Isle girl, Helen, fall in love. It also features Wilco Roger, an interplanetary ambassador who has been sent by the galactic powers-that-be to try and reconcile the two warring factions. For the uninitiated the "gonks" of the title were a type of stuffed toy very popular in the sixties and seventies, both with children and occasionally with adults. (Ringo Starr was a noted collector). They feature prominently in the title sequence but do not play a major role in the film itself, although Wilco is frequently threatened by the powers-that-be with exile to Planet Gonk- evidently a dreadful fate- should he fail in his mission.

When "Gonks Go Beat" first came out, it did not prove very popular either with young or old. The older generation would have dismissed it as silly kids' stuff, and the youngsters would not have liked the way in which the rather anodyne Steve and Helen, the ostensible protagonists, are overshadowed by middle-aged actors like Kenneth Connor, Frank Thornton, Terry Scott and Arthur Mullard, all well-known comedians or comic actors of the period. They would probably also have been bored by all those ballads which make up around half of the 16 musical numbers. Both generations would have combined in deriding the absurd plot, the indifferent acting, the low quality of the dialogue and the cheap, wobbly sets. It has been named as a contender for the title of "worst British film ever made".

The various musical acts featured were mostly, even at the time, obscure; others who may have been well-known at the time have slipped into obscurity since. Probably the best-known performer to a modern audience would be Lulu, a little-known teenager in 1965 but one who shot to stardom later. Despite this, however, the musical numbers are generally cheerful and tuneful, if not particularly memorable; none of them are likely to turn up on a "Great Hits of the Sixties" compilation album.

The film's main virtue is that it never takes itself too seriously. Fifty-odd years on from the date when it was made, it may be a dated period piece but its endearing silliness reminds us of just why pop music had such a following in the sixties; it was fun. Nobody could call "Gonks Go Beat" a well-made film, but it can be a curiously enjoyable one, more enjoyable than many films with much higher technical standards. 5/10

This is a totally weird 60s rock-n-roll musical send-up of Romeo and Juliet centering on two squabbling islands: Beatland and Ballad Isle. Intergalactic ambassador Wilco Roger is summoned to resolve the differences between the communities, employing the tactic of uniting a Beatland boy and a Ballad Isle girl; if he is unsuccessful he faces exile to Planet Gonk (inhabited by some strange doll-like creatures that apparently were based on a popular toy of the time). Despite the presence of Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Graham Bond and Lulu, the music here is nothing special. The music by the Beatlanders is typical of mid 60s rock rave-ups (watch for the lead singer/guitarist for The Long and the Short doing his best "Enzyte Bob" impression during their number "Love is a Funny Thing"!) , while the music favored by Ballad Isle consists of some of the sappiest ballads imaginable (the best way I could describe them would be to imagine the late 50s light pop group The Fleetwoods on Prozac). We're also treated to musical sequences featuring a band playing instrumental rock while driving down a deserted airstrip and a nine drummer prison jam session (neither of which serve much purpose other than padding the movie's run time) and a wacky "battle" sequence between both factions with musical instruments used as weapons. All this leads to the Golden Guitar contest pitting both islands against each other (which usually ends in a draw). Lulu's song "I'm the Only One" is pleasant but not exactly memorable, and The Nashville Teens' "Poor Boy" comes nowhere close to matching their hit "Tobacco Road". The bargain basement budget is readily apparent in the cheap set designs and the minimal special effects (watch for Wilco Roger ducking into the cloud of smoke as he makes his first entrance). If there was anything resembling a highlight here it would be the opening credits sequence featuring the Gonks grooving among construction paper/contact paper animation (to the song "Choc Ice", sung by Lulu with her voice altered almost to the point where she starts sounding like Cartman); it's pretty much all downhill after that.

GONKS GO BEAT is a very strange, low budget British sci-fi oddity. It's a musical re-working of the Romeo and Juliet storyline, with a unique sci-fi twist; an alien is sent to a futuristic Earth (which looks remarkably like the 1960s) where mankind is divided into two warring tribes. His goal is to bring the two tribes together through music and romance.

The description above doesn't really do justice to the sheer oddness of this production. It's basically a musical in which one number plays after the other from beginning to end. Stars like Lulu show up to contribute a number and then disappear. In between the songs, we get some random trappings of the sci fi genre, with respectable actors pretending to be aliens and Kenneth Connor delightfully mugging as the alien ambassador. My favourite scene is the convoy of cars with guitarists sitting on top and playing away - great stuff. What, might you ask, is a gonk? The answer is that they're cheesy soft toys that play a minor role in the proceedings, just adding to the bizarre feel. The film as a whole is weird, quirky, and very, very cult.