Catch Us If You Can (1965)

British rock band the Dave Clark Five gets to do its own version of A Hard Day's Night with Having A Wild Weekend. The film is replete with many of their well known hits of the day just as the Beatles' classic.Front man Dave Clark works as a stuntman and the other members of the group are his flat mates. They have quite a pad too. While working on a commercial model Barbara Ferris who has become the British symbol via the ad campaign for meat just gets tired of it and she and Clark decide to just split for a bit.Nothing more to tell other than this was the first feature film directed by John Boorman who would go on to do many more hit films including a favorite of mine Zardoz. Fans of the group you will love this as much as Fab Four fans love A Hard Day's Night.

Made as a vehicle for the Dave Clark Five with the intent of capturing the success of the Beatles' Hard Days Night, this movie starts out looking like a surprisingly stylish knock off but turns out to be something very different; a melancholy and sometimes lyrical satire or mid-60s England.The band plays stunt men working on an ad campaign with it girl Barbara Ferris. While Hard Days Night was an ensemble, this movie soon becomes a road picture of Dave and Barbara headed to a deserted island. In rock-movie style they do wacky things, but they also find themselves traveling past rusted war machines and hobnobbing with stoners.It is very much a mid-60s English movie, generally reminiscent more of Richard Lesters' "The Knack and How to Get It" than his earlier "Hard Day's Night."The relationship between Barbara and Dave is neatly expressed in an early scene where Barbara imagines Gatsby-like parties on the island while Dave considers what supplies they would need. She is about the journey, he is about the destination, and his matter-of-fact manner contrasts with Barbara's poetic nature (at one point she says a deserted hotel "smells like dead holidays."The weakness of Catch Us If You Can is that it wavers between a surreal and satiric melancholy and the wacky burlesque of scenes like costume part that runs riot. While this feels more like a real movie than a band vehicle - unlike Hard Day's Night, which for all it's brilliance was a fairly plotless excuse for a bunch of songs), the band vehicle moments come through, most notably in the insistence of keeping the rest of the band around without every establishing their characters. While episodic and uneven in tone, the film should be considered a mid-60s counter-culture classic.

I remember what a big deal the city of Kenosha made when "A Hard Day's Night" played at the Orpheum downtown theater. "Having a Wild Weekend," on the hand, blew through the area before I had a chance to see it. I think I have watched the movie from start to finish maybe four times in forty years. I like the film but it's no "A Hard Days Night."1) The Beatles were far superior to the Dave Clark Five musically by the time the two movies were released.2) Ringo as a leading character is vastly more enjoyable than Dave Clark's moody Steve. 3) The Beatles played their film for comedy while the Dave Clark Five went for mood.4) The 4 Beatles had distinctive characters while the Dave Clark Five had one leading man and 4 bland supporting actors.5) A hard day's Night moves rapidly while "Having A Wild Weekend" drags much of the time.However, I still like "Having a Wild Weekend." Dinah was a cute little number and Steve had James Bond-like qualities. The costume party scene was a rave. The hippies being rounded up by the British army was a foreshadowing of the near future.

Richard Lester directed, 'A Hard Day's Night'. which came out the year before this Boorman classic and has cast a heavy shadow over it ever since its release. The fact that 'Catch Us If You Can' is a better movie matters not for, Dave Clark Five were not The Beatles. The whole look of the Boorman film is great, properly anticipating the changes in architecture and advertising and the spot on script by Peter Nichols, is faultless. We see the 'kids' gambolling about like clowns or tearing about in their mini-moke or jaguar cars, but always noticing in the background, at the end of the street, along the pavements, the bewildered look of passers by. Straight out of the fifties, with their hats and scarves and overcoats, properly reflecting that whilst the youngsters were pushing for something/anything in the early 60s, for the adult population, even of London, it was all more than a little strange, something from another world, that will soon go away. I remember liking this upon its original release and whilst connecting with it and considering it an exciting first film from a new director, it did seem a shame the songs weren't better and it was far from cool to admit any liking for Dave Clark and his 'bang bang' drumming. So the film has been ignored, which is sad, because now were both films played side by side, the Beatles film music probably wouldn't seem that much better. Another shame for me is that the lovely Barbara Ferris seemed to go down with the film too, here she has a lot of work to do playing off Mr Clark, who carries himself well enough but knows his limitations. See this film for its excellent picture of UK c.1964/5 and for the sheer joie de vivre and the marvellous free flowing cinematography.