A Swingin' Summer

This forgotten, parenthetical beach bikini movie actually takes place on a lake... Arrowhead, to be exact... where two guys and a girl take over an abandoned low-rent dance-festival, which is pretty easy given that pretty redhead Quinn O'Hara has her rich dad secretly funding it... A secret since her good-looking boyfriend William Wellman Jr. Has too much pride to want anyone's help...

Well that's the plot, and there's hardly any urgency except for a quick breakup when a rich jerk eyes the girl while a scheming rich lady nabs the guy - plus a water-skiing bully and a few 11th hour thugs...

But with cute and skinny girl-next-door Mary Mitchell as O'Hara's flirtatious, perpetually hungry friend and future iconic bombshell Raquel Welch initially wearing glasses, strategically hiding her perfect body while (for reasons unexplained) jotting notes about the main character's sidekick James Stacy (who's still first billed), A SWINGIN' SUMMER is more about the good times than those attempting to ruin them...

A fairly decent time-filler residing between the glossy Frankie/Annette flicks, and, despite the misleading title, it came out right before hippies were too darn hip for this kind of lightweight, old fashioned (even then) entertainment.

Despite the other reviews on this movie, I thought this picture was great. This picture opened in the summer of 1965 starring William Wellman as Rick, James Stacey as Mickey, Quinn O'Hara as Cindy and the debut of Raquel Welch as Jeri. Rick, Mickey and Cindy are on there way to Lake Arrowhead for summer jobs when it comes across the radio that the Pavilion will be closed and that they no longer have work. The kids decide to ask Mr. Johnson if they could run the Pavilion themselves with Mr. Johnson getting half the profits. Therefore, the gang gets things started when Turk decides that he wants Cindy and decides to provide the pavilion with plenty of trouble. Now as far as the debut of Raquel Welch it was a slam-dunk. Her body was enough to make you see through the entire movie. Her Stage scene was out of this world. Based on Raquel Welch alone I have no problem giving the movie 10 weasel stars. If you like watching Raquel Welch you love this movie because this was Raquel Welch first ever movie and all you can from there is a Star was born.

When two young men named "Rick" (William Wellman Jr.) and "Mickey" (James Stacey) find out that their plans for working at Lake Arrowhead during the summer have been canceled they decide to organize festivities there themselves. But to do that they need money and when they can't come up with it Rick's girlfriend, "Cindy" (Quinn O'Hara) decides to secretly bankroll them through her father. Yet even with the money there is a lot of work which keeps Rick and Cindy apart and leads to serious trouble between them. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this wasn't one of the better beach movies made during this time-period. There wasn't much comedy and the characters lacked development. Even so Raquel Welch (as "Jeri"), Mary Mitchell ("Shirley") and the aforementioned Quinn O'Hara were definitely nice on the eyes and I suppose that should count for something. Accordingly, I rate this movie as just slightly below average.

This is a fun-enough teenage romp. I'd love to see this in widescreen, along with another release from United Screen Arts, ONE WAY WAHINE.

When the picture opened at two Seattle drive-in theaters, Raquel Welch appeared in person at both theaters one Saturday night. Of course, she was pretty unknown at that time. About a year later, ONE MILLION YEARS BC would thrust her onto the map forever. I wish I had attended one of those drive-in shows.

Those user votes gotta be kiddin'! It was a few years back on an idle summer Saturday night that I caught this film on the USA Network cable channel. More happens in the tag line -- "Spread Out the Beach Towels...Grab Your Gals...it's gonna be A SWINGIN' SUMMER!" -- than in the entire film! The most strenuous thing the characters do is lay out those beach towels, and then its just unimaginative bickering along with coupling and uncoupling and recoupling serving as the plot. The only thing worse than the dialogue are the gawky jerky movements exhibited by the actors during the various musical numbers -- that's dancing?!? Anyway, yeah, the Righteous Brothers drop in, but by far the kickiest part of the movie is when Raquel Welch jumps on stage shakin', twistin', turnin' -- it's practically a revelation! In any case, it's more than this dreadful film deserves.