Blast-Off Girls

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.

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.

Possibly one of the worst films ever made, I was thoroughly entertained. This is a 60's rock band film where they tried to cash in on the irreverence of films like Help and the TV show The Monkeys, only focusing on the dark side of the business, drugs and prostitutes.

The original score has several songs played badly, but they knew it - it was part of the plot. The lyrics are dark and cynical, which is a refreshing change from the happy pop songs of mainstream music oriented films of its day.

If you like a little high camp with your rock, this is the film for you. An out of place cameo by Col. Sanders of KFC fame is an added bonus.

By 1967, H.G. Lewis had stopped his gore career short with THE GRUESOME TWOSOME a year earlier. He directed a campy send-up of a rock group being used and humiliated by the music business called THE BLAST-OFF GIRLS that remained lost for years. Eventually, Something Weird Video unearthed it and released it. While it's all good campy fun, it could hardly be called essential Lewis.

The Faded Blue (a real-life Chicago garage band) star as The Big Blast, a Florida garage band who are conned into a business deal (without a contract) by big-time manager Boojie Baker (played disgustingly well by Dan Conway). Boojie uses beautiful women to con record executives and concert hall owners into letting the Blast play there and eventually makes them famous with a record on the Billboard Hot 100 called "Noise". When the group decides that Boojie isn't giving them enough money, they promptly drop him and he avenges himself by setting up a drug bust. But the group isn't finished with Boojie yet.

THE BLAST-OFF GIRLS suffers from one thing: the group isn't that good. When many of the "bad guy" executives say, "This group is just like any other", the audience can't help but agree with them! A multitude of garage bands erupted in the late 60s and it's hard to tell them apart. The Big Blast, if there ever were such a group, would have melted into the garage band sound without making much of a dent. Some of the songs heard are pretty good (like "Noise"), but others are overpowered by the annoying organ work. Of special note is the keyboard player, who is set up to be the comic relief and is pretty likable. As a matter of fact, the whole band are not bad actors and any viewer can identify with them. I was surprised to see Col. Sanders appear as himself, offering free fried chicken to the group in exchange for a performance outside his restaurant for dancing kids! Pretty cool stuff. Imagine anyone doing such a thing today for a low budget filmmaker! Besides The Big Blast is an unnamed garage band heard during the opening sequence that features the chief delinquent in JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT as the lead singer! They do a pretty good job, too, and I would have preferred the whole movie to be about them instead.

H.G. Lewis does what he can with a pretty slapshod storyline, but the film slows down too much when the band is off the screen. The background music really irks me, too. But BLAST-OFF GIRLS is kitschy fun that is worth seeing at least once. Lewis fans will die happy after seeing The Big Blast's stoned performance on live TV as only Lewis could do it! Recommended for one-time viewing and to anyone who ever was in a band or is now! Modern-day garage bands should really enjoy this! For a much better film on the same topic, though, seek out BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, which I enjoyed much more.

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.