Catch Us If You Can (1965)

Hoping to cash in on the success of A Hard Day’s Night (1964), producer David Deutsch hired first-timer John Boorman – who later directed Deliverance (1972) – to bang out a quick pop confection starring Britain’s hugely successful Dave Clark Five.

Instead, Boorman delivered this moribund film where drummer Clark plays permanently miserable TV stuntman Steve, who runs out on a Meat Marketing Board advertising campaign, steals an E-Type Jag and escapes the city with the campaign star, Dinah (Barbara Ferris) – a vivacious but bored model – for a few strange days on the run.

Dinah tells Steve of her dream of buying an island in Devonshire, so they turn the car in a westerly direction . . .

Pursued by a rabid caravan of advertising agency sharks and reporters, the couple encounter junkie beatniks on an army firing range, vampiric swingers in Bath (Yootha Joyce is superb), and crushed dreams (finding the island of Dinah’s dreams, they discover it’s only an island at high-tide).

Meanwhile, Dinah’s mentor, Leon Zissell (played with sleazy jadedness by David De Kayser), exploits the runaways for maximum publicity by announcing that Dinah was kidnapped.

It’s a downbeat, plodding and existential affair with the same three DC5 songs repeated ad nauseam (with incidental music from Basil Kirchin) and no actual plot or purpose to speak of – and a dubious sequence involving a romp in a Roman bath.

It’s hard to see how Clark’s non-plussed, miserable performance added to his pop idol status.

The film was retitled Having A Wild Weekend for the US market.

Steve
Dave Clark
Lenny
Lenny Davidson
Rick
Rick Huxley
Mike
Mike Smith
Denis
Denis Payton
Dinah
Barbara Ferris
Louis
David Lodge
Guy
Robin Bailey
Leon Zissell
David De Kayser
Nan
Yootha Joyce
Whiting
Robert Lang
Duffle
Clive Swift
Grey
Hugh Walters

Director
John Boorman

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