Hold On!

This film is not to be missed, because it is surely a candidate for the worst film of all time. It has the look and feel of the Batman TV series, but is nowhere near as interesting or funny.

The humour is purile at best and the music defies belief. And I like 60's music. After watching this turkey, EVERY modern film looks like Citizen Kane.

If the budget for this film was more than $100, I want to know what they blew it all on.

Somebody, somewhere, in 1966, got the idea to make a movie featuring the English rock-n-roll band Herman's Hermits. That somebody should be interrogated at length. This movie was obviously a crass attempt to cash in on the evolving music phenomena of Merseybeat and its earth-shaking success, "Beatlemania." The curious thing is that the music of Herman's Hermits was certainly unique, then, and remains enjoyable now. Imagine hearing rock-n-roll music that actually has melodic structure, played by young men with no residue of anger or 'angst.' Imagine that.

The plot is tissue paper thin. In fact, it is as if the script was written with invisible ink. The whole "we're gonna get a rocket named after us" theme is just plain ... screwball. It would be nice if the comedic elements in this movie could be called "screwball." But that isn't really what's going on here ....

In 1966 there were no "infomercials" on television. That was a concept dreamed up later, when independent TV stations and then cable networks found that they had time they could sell for these thirty-minute repeatable information commercials. However, "Hold On" seems to double as an extended commercial for the band.

So there's the story of this movie: "Hold On" seems to have been cloned from a "beach blanket bingo" template, being as it is set in California and there's just oodles of opportunities for pretty young things to cavort in the bikini suits of the day. How clever.

Being a fan of the music of the 1960's, I found this 'confection' to be very pleasing, even if overloaded with sugar and syrup.

Merseybeat and the "English invasion" of the 1960s was most assuredly an epochal event in the musical culture of the United States, and what is so strange, is that both the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and some other amazingly successful bands of that time began by listening to American music, 'rhythm & blues,' to be specific, and reinterpreted some of the great popular music of that genre into what later came to be called "Blue-eyed Soul." It remains one of the great mysteries of sociology as to why Merseybeat and the English invasion was so perfectly right for American pop culture in those years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and before the turmoil caused by the Viet Nam conflict. But then, there were many mysteries abounding in the 1960s.

The Hermits never really passed the final examination for inclusion in that august group of English rockers who re-made rock-n-roll music, but they had a strange and distinctive sound. This movie is fun for that reason, and for "eye candy," as in Shelley Fabares.

"Hold On" is cotton candy film making. But the music still rocks ... sweetly and gently ....

I found Hold On to be fascinatingly inappropriate. The filmmakers obviously wanted to cash in on the British Invasion and the success of the Beatles movies, but they clearly were totally out of touch with the youth culture of the time. They made a movie in 1966 starring one of the most popular groups of the 60s, and everything about the film screams the 50s: the writing, the direction, even the incidental music on the soundtrack. I don't blame Arthur Lubin, who was 65 years old at the time and a veteran of 1940s and 1950s films and 1950s and 1960s TV shows. That's exactly what Hold On reminds me of: a peculiar blend of a 1950s movie and a 1960s TV show. It has the look, the sound, even the feel. The producers should have hired someone who had a better feel for the pop music culture of the 1960s. Imagine the Beatles dropped in the middle of a beach party movie, or a Rock Hudson/Doris Day film. Except, of course, the Beatles could act.

There are a lot of comments on what a ridiculous movie this was. And those comments describe this movie perfectly. Yes, it's true. But get real! This movie is supposed to be ridiculous. The plot of the movie is about an English band who tour the United States. (In 1966, the English Invasion still ruled the radio and British groups were still being mobbed by screaming fans!)

Herman's Hermits come to the States and are greeted by wild screaming fans. The frenzy gets so far out of hand that NASA gets swamped with demands that the name of the latest rocket to be launched be changed to "Herman's Hermits".

Most musicals involve a screwball plot. HOLD ON is no exception. Only a complete idiot would expect a "meaningful plot" in a movie like this. It is pure escapist entertainment played up to a ridiculous level.

I saw the movie in 1967, which was a long time ago. So I don't remember if there were any bad guys in the plot of not. What I do remember is that the real plot of this movie is the showcasing of the latest (in 1966) sounds by Herman's Hermits, who at that time were close to taking second place to the Beatles in popularity.

I gave the movie a 7 because it was a movie from the mid 1960s that may be outdated by today's standards. Some of the comedy of the time may not be so funny today. Think BEWITCHED (1964 TV series) versus BEWITCHED (2005) and you'll get the drift.

In the 1950's and 1960's, MGM made a slew of teen-exploitation pictures, some of them okay, some laughably bad.

"Hold On" is neither the best nor the worst of these, and it does have some redeeming qualities. First on the list of redeeming qualities, of course, would be the presence of Herman's Hermits, who were white-hot in 1965 and 1966. The songs are, for the most part, pretty good (the notable exception being "The George and Dragon"); "Wild Love," which closes the film, feels like it should have been a hit but wasn't. "Make Me Happy," sung by co-star Shelley Fabares backed by the Hermits, is a masterpiece of mid-60's girl-enslaving-herself-to-boy songwriting, and is sort of funny today as a result.

The plot, as other writers have noted, is preposterous, and involves not only a NASA spacecraft, but a subplot involving fainting girls and another involving a (never-seen) supersonic transport capable of whisking Herman from Los Angeles to Cape Kennedy in something like an hour. And the cast is full of familiar television faces of the '60's, which was cheap of MGM at the time, but has a certain charm now.

Like "A Hard Day's Night," the film attempts to give us the feeling of a period where rock stars made girls scream and faint. We get only glimpses of that, but it drips with other period detail. "Look, there's a '65 Plymouth!" "Look at her hair." "I remember dresses like that." All in all,"Hold On" stands as a rather contrived piece of film-making, but an interesting period piece.