I saw 'Train Ride To Hollywood' on cable TV as a kid a couple of years or so after it was in the theaters, and it is the weirdest musical I have ever seen. Some scenes in this movie made me cringe, and other scenes were flat-out painful to watch. What redeems 'Train Ride To Hollywood' is the music.
Bloodstone were a great band, and their interpretations of old songs and their own material blended seamlessly here. The "Rock and Roll Choo-Choo" and "Money (That's What I Want)" scenes stand out for Bloodstone's ability to assert themselves as ROCK AND ROLL musicians, reclaiming rock and roll as black music and delivering memorable performances (the "Money" scene gives us Willis Draffen doing a Chuck Berry duck walk to put the exclamation point on rock and roll as black music while Harry Williams delivers an astonishing vocal).
I would have changed the storyline considerably by getting rid of one character (the snooty director who keeps getting pied) and possibly coming up with a different one instead, and also rewriting the murder "mystery" subplot, but hey, too late. The two non-Bloodstone performances that stand out are Guy Marks as Humphrey Bogart and Roberta Collins as Jean Harlow, whose take on the 1930s blonde legend is haunting. Collins could have had a great career if her hard partying hadn't ruined her.
Bloodstone were a great band, and their interpretations of old songs and their own material blended seamlessly here. The "Rock and Roll Choo-Choo" and "Money (That's What I Want)" scenes stand out for Bloodstone's ability to assert themselves as ROCK AND ROLL musicians, reclaiming rock and roll as black music and delivering memorable performances (the "Money" scene gives us Willis Draffen doing a Chuck Berry duck walk to put the exclamation point on rock and roll as black music while Harry Williams delivers an astonishing vocal).
I would have changed the storyline considerably by getting rid of one character (the snooty director who keeps getting pied) and possibly coming up with a different one instead, and also rewriting the murder "mystery" subplot, but hey, too late. The two non-Bloodstone performances that stand out are Guy Marks as Humphrey Bogart and Roberta Collins as Jean Harlow, whose take on the 1930s blonde legend is haunting. Collins could have had a great career if her hard partying hadn't ruined her.