Bop Girl

I don't know how to score this movie. If you're like me, once you start watching it, you'll just sit back dumbfounded by the whole premise that Calypso music could have ever been a serious threat to rock and roll as a popular form of music. And how is this determined? Why, how else? A guy with a decibel meter goes to a club showing a rock and roll group, and another club with a calypso band, and he measures the volume of the applause! The applause registers higher at the calypso club so it's 'sorry, rock and roll, calypso's got you beaten'. Yeah, that's how I'd measure it.

Hmm. Does anyone remember any calypso bands? Any calypso hits? Ever been to a calypso concert? I can think of zero, zero, and zero respectively. (Well, actually, maybe that Harry Belafonte thing about 'daylight come and me wanna go home' would count....) However, if you give me a little time, I can probably jot down a couple hundred rock / rock & roll bands, just as many songs, and a couple dozen concerts that I attended. I have to say, I think that guy's decibel meter, scientific as it looked, was not a valid way to measure the popularity of a music form in a culture. Slightly wrong, it was.

Anyhow - this movie has a thin plot and plenty of excuses to make you listen to calypso bands to make sure you know how much you (are supposed to) like calypso music. Oh, yeah, mon! Not. I can almost feel myself blacking out, it's got to be like being violated in some way, letting this movie inflict this tropical racket on your ears! Ow, help.

I have read a couple of reviews in movies history books,and both seem to agree Bop Girl goes Calypso is a lost movie.....no known copies of the movie are available for evaluation.If this is true,and someone out there has a copy,please let us know and start burning the copies for all of us to enjoy this camp classic! Also,I have also read that the movie was originally titled Bop Girl,and the goes Calypso was added at the last minute to cash in on the then recent Calypso craze.Apparently,from some still photos of the picture that i have seen,there were more rock and roll acts in the movie than there were actual Calypso acts.But no matter.This looks like it was another good example of the low budget music movies of the fifties aimed for the teenage audience.It would be great to see Judy Tyler in the starring role,since she only appeared in one other movie before her death.

This is not a "lost movie" but was in fact shown on TCM in March, 2008. It could have stayed in the vaults. As is usual with this type of film, the primary value is in being able to see 1950's rock groups do their stuff. The rock groups are shuffled off, though, and replaced by, ready now, calypso acts, because rock and roll will soon be dead after 1957, to be replaced by the irresistible rhythms of the Caribbean. I wonder how that turned out? Otherwise the production values are pretty low, the plot (a term I use very loosely) is thin and any pleasure in watching this attempt at entertainment bottoms out pretty quickly. You do at least get to see Judy Tyler, the original Princess Summerfall Winterspring of Howdy Doody, who starred with Elvis in "Jailhouse Rock" and then tragically was lost in a car accident months later.

This story is a "B" picture, simply about a rock and roll singer who is told by a professor with a kind of applause meter at a night club tells her that rock and roll is fading out and calypso is the new hot genre of music to pursue. The title character is Jo Thomas, played by Judy Tyler, one of her few roles (she passed away young from a road accident). The film lets you listen to various groups at nightclubs, encompassing jazz, rock and roll, r & b and, of course, calypso. The story line is thin, but for someone who was born after the film was made and was raised on rock, the film is enjoyable due to the fairly solid performances of each act. As a matter of fact, I was surprised to find I've never heard of these acts, some were very good. Ms. Tyler is fairly engaging, and though the interaction between the main characters is fairly pedestrian, its still a fun film. It showed up on TCM, which is where I watched it. You can do much worse than this film, and all of us have. I kind of enjoyed it. Check it out.

Bop Girl Goes Calypso (1957)

* (out of 4)

Excruciating mix of drama and music has Robert Hilton (Bobby Troup) warning people that rock and roll is on its way out and that calypso is the next big thing. No one believes him except for singer Jo Thomas (Judy Tyler) and soon the two are dating while trying to make the newest thing work. BOP GIRL GOES CALYPSO was just one of many "rock" musicals to be released in the 1950s and it's perhaps the worst one I've seen. Now to be fair, none of these musicals were all that good but the majority of them at least featured some interesting acts and a decent story but that's really not the case here. Music wise, Nino Tempo is about the best thing in the film and sadly this music is on so early that it leaves you a long time remaining with many less interesting acts. I think the biggest problem with this thing is that there's really no story to speak of. Instead of any real story we've got a very silly and unbelievable love story that has no sparks and we also have two leads with very little chemistry for one another. Tyler, on her own, isn't too bad as she manages to carry a tune and the "performance" is better than average. For the most part the music isn't all that good and if rock was really on its way out then nothing here would make you believe that. The cinematography isn't that bad for such a low-budget film but this here isn't strong enough to where it's going to keep viewers interested. Music buffs might want to check it out as a curiosity but that's about it.