Out-of-time and of-its-time 1965 British musical fantasy

This mid-60s British pop musical is quite the obscurity, and though the story of strife between neighboring Beat Land and Ballad Isle, and the Romeo and Juliet subplot aren’t particularly original, there’s a lot to love here amidst the cheap studio sets. Sure, the soft-rock pretty boys of Ballad Isle would get their asses kicked by American Graffiti’s John Milner, but the R&B played by the inhabitants of Beat Land (and the bikini-clad dancers they inspire) are top gear. The soundtrack (which is just now being reissued on CD) features some gems by Lulu, Graham Bond, The Nashville Teens and more.

The film’s awash with wonderfully off-beat British characters, starting with a Clarence-the-Angel styled flunky named Wilco Roger sent by the Space Congress of the Universe to settle the inter-island dispute. There’s an Oz-like “Mr. A&R” who lives in “The Echo Chamber” and explains that he’s “… the sole survivor of a race of people who used to be employed throughout the world by business known as recording companies.” Ballad Isle features clubs like the Boom Bar, The Diminished Seventh and Diskey A Go Go, and the island’s prison sentences it inhabitants to a term of drumming. The latter leads to a fantastic scene of nine drummers playing in unison on full kits! The drums themselves are luscious in their vintage sparkle and faux-finishes.

The opening rave-up with Ginger Baker and Graham Bond is superb, as is the staging of an instrumental played by band members driven in a fleet of mid-60s British top-down sports cars. Elaine and Derek redeem Ballad Isle with the Everly Brothers styled “Broken Pieces,” Lulu and the Luvvers groove to “The Only One,” the Nashville Teens show they had more than “Tobacco Road” up their sleeves, and the climactic musical battle between the two islands pits literal guitar armies against one another. There are some great ‘65 fashions and vintage instruments (check out Bond’s orange-and-black Vox Continental organ), and even the buttoned-down Ballad Isle has policewomen wearing black tights.

Much like the Lawrence Welk show of the late-60s and AIP’s Beach Party films, Gonks Go Beat, is a time capsule of an idealized world that was a couple of strides out of step with its own times. The real-life rock musicians cast as inhabitants of Beat land seem quite bemused by the cultural scrubbing, but as anachronistic this was even at the time, it’s now itself part of the historical record. Anyone who loves the British Invasion will enjoy this nostalgic bit of fluff. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]