Having a Wild Weekend (aka Catch Us If You Can) - (1965)
For a time, The Dave Clark Five were considered among the chief rivals to The Beatles. They were always a step behind, however - the second British Invasion group to hit the States, the second to land on Ed Sullivan, and the second to put out a promotional film with artistic ambitions in excess of what one would expect from a pop group.
After The Beatles hit a home run, financially and critically, with A Hard Day's Night, the Dave Clark Five followed with Catch Us If You Can, subsequently retitled in America as Having a Wild Weekend. I presume the film was re-titled because their album was similarly re-titled - likely because the record company wanted to sell the album as a party theme album, and perhaps because they failed to recognize that Catch Us If You Can is probably the group's best song.
It's easy to see that Having a Wild Weekend (I'll use the American title) is inspired by and intended as something of a challenger to A Hard Day's Night. At its worst, the movie comes off as imitation. Where it is most interesting, however, is in its artistic ambitions (or pretensions, depending on how you see it). The film marked the feature debut of one John Boorman - who would go on to direct such films as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, The General, and on and on (some misses on the resume, but also some classics).
Boorman is plainly inspired by the French New Wave and is attempting to adapt the aesthetic to a promotional film for a band. No doubt the band was willing to go along with it because after A Hard Day's Night they could not simply roll out a complete goof.
The story revolves around Dave Clark playing a stuntman in a commercial who is non-plussed by the work he's doing as he just wants to escape and hang with his boys and have fun. The commercial is for a butcher's campaign and features Barbara Ferris as the face of an absurdist "meat for go" campaign that serves as a parody of mindless marketing and consumption. Ferris also wants to escape so she joins Clark in running away from the film shoot and setting out on a journey through the city and countryside as the duo interact with strange/interesting characters and run from the police and the ad agency.
Boorman seems somewhat disinterested in the music group itself and takes the thing as an opportunity to tell a story about youth, rebellion, relationships, and fitting in among a world filled with absurdity. As the movie appears to be at some cross-purposes - the desire to make an artistic statement crossed with the desire to make a party movie to sell more records - the film is all over the place. The first half features Boorman obsessing over cityscapes and city lights whirring by, a disorienting urban playland.
The film then abruptly (perhaps as it reaches the suburbs and countryside) descends into a mélange of wacky chases punctuated by relationship drama. The duo stumble upon a middle-aged couple out of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which then places our young duo into some contemplation about their own relationship (or lack thereof). Eventually, the film shifts into a philosophical debate about life and whether the point is to reach each desired destination or to focus more on enjoying the journey.
Boorman's film, written by Peter Nichols, doesn't work entirely and is quite disjointed and uneven. But it is ambitious, and in that it has much to like and enjoy. And if nothing else, it is quite the artifact - a time capsule into Boorman's artistic foundations, a time where Baby Boomers were just starting to enter their phase of youthful rebellion, and when English-language filmmakers were fighting to keep up with the New Wave filmmakers that were sucking up so much oxygen. The film is too derivative and too disjointed to love completely, but also too interesting to ignore.
Within a few years, the Dave Clark Five's cheery, preppy pop music would go from being a step behind The Beatles to having been lapped several times over. They broke up in 1970 rather than adapt. Boorman's 17th feature film is scheduled to premiere next month at Cannes.
Having a Wild Weekend is presently available for streaming on Warner Archive Instant, but it is in the "Leaving Soon" department, so catch it if you can.
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