It’s no surprise that Pop Screen keeps going back to the 1960s – in many ways, that decade saw the birth of the pop movie as a recognisable genre. That doesn’t mean that every film became a classic, although the film we’re looking at today became a cult classic of the most disreputable type. Famously described by Mark Kermode as “the Plan 9 from Outer Space of musicals”, Robert Hartford-Davis’s Gonks Go Beat mixes cheapo science fiction, musical comedy and Romeo and Juliet into a bewildering stew.
Following the attempts of an intergalactic mediator to reconcile the warring nations of Beatland and Balladisle, it has a roster of musical stars including Lulu, a pre-Cream Ginger Baker, the Nashville Teens, and several other artists who are even more obscure than the Nashville Teens, and Charlie off Casualty. It almost defies description – except for the fact that Mick from our sister podcast Behold! is here, valiantly attempting to summarise the truly inexplicable.
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Lulu in Gonks Go Beat
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