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.

This is certainly a different type of 'pop' musical film. It features one of the hottest groups of the day (seven top ten hits in the US) but takes a jaded and disillusioned view of the concept of 'youth culture'.When Dinah and Steve break 'free' (nothing in this movie is what it appears to be) they encounter early hippies who have rejected society and its crass materialism for life on the road but seem to have found nothing but a kind of aimless boredom spiced with drug use. (I was very surprised to hear mention of heroin in 1965.) Their chosen guru is so spaced out he can hardly think straight (and we never hear the end of his rambling tale about a dead cat or discover if it has any point).Their next encounter is with "an old married couple". This phrase normally signals contentment and affection. The film's couple is riven by jealousy, sexual predation and rejection of the present for an idealised past.Finally meeting Louis, an old childhood friend and mentor of Steve's, they find him running a fake 'Western ranch' holiday resort in the Devon countryside. Steve angrily dismisses him and his dreams as shabby fakery.As you can see, this is far from 'A Hard Day's Night' (in fact the film's titles both imitate and parody the scene of The Beatles running around a playing field).Despite some negative comments here I think this film is well worth watching more than once to catch all the strands running through it. As actors the Dave Clark Five have - probably thankfully - little to do but be chirpy and quirky. Dave Clark himself rather overdoes the moody saturnine bit - that's best left to the real James Deans of this world.The performance to watch is David de Keyser's Leon. He is a cynic who is painfully aware of his own cynicism, a man who realises the shallowness of the world he works in and the vulgarity of those he has to work with. He also harbours a genuine affection for Dinah which he can't express. He is protective in a way, but exploitative at the same time. He also envies Dinah's youth and spontaneous nature. When he says "maybe" he will join her on her next escapade, we know he won't and never could. It is a subtle and rather moving piece of acting.Leon seems jealous of Steve's relationship with Dinah but, another of the films contradictions, there is no relationship. Steve is merely helping Dinah to reach her island. He is impatient with her shallowness and the way she seems willing to be distracted by people he sees as frauds (the hippies, Louis's ranch). The only time they kiss is when Dinah kisses Steve for the press cameras - just before he turns his back on her for the last time.One of the film's other strengths is the photography, capturing the urban landscape of London's flashy new office blocks and the bleak winter countryside and adding much to the film's atmosphere.This is a minor film - but compelling.

Recently I bought the DVD of "A Hard Day's Night", and spent a whole weekend watching and re-watching it. You might gather from this that I love the movie, as indeed I do, so what I'm going to say now may very well shock you: "Catch Us If You Can" is a better movie. Of course it wouldn't exist without the pioneering example of "A Hard Day's Night", which changed youth/pop movies for ever, but it really is a better movie.I'm always inclined to see it as the final instalment of an early- to mid-60s trilogy of movies that began with Ken Russell's "French Dressing", and continued with Michael Winner's "The System". (I'm tempted to extend this to a tetralogy, with Richard Lester's "The Knack" as the last instalment. But, unlike the other movies, "The Knack" was a critical and commercial success - Palme D'Or at Cannes, and all that.) There's a continuity of mood, if not theme, between these movies, a strange mixture of exhilaration and wistfulness. The "phoney" 60s, a sort of hangover of the late 50s, lasted in Britain until about 1962 (although there were intimations of what was to come in Anthony Newley's "The Strange World of Gurney Slade"), but the Satire Boom, followed quickly by the Beatles, ushered in the real 1960s."Catch Us If You Can" takes a number of audacious risks from the very start: the Dave Clark Five are not a pop group playing themselves, but a team of stuntmen working on a series of TV commercials; their songs are performed off-screen as the soundtrack to the on-screen action; the movie insists strongly on the wintry season in which it was filmed: the frozen milk, the unbearably cold conditions of the meat warehouse, the orange growing safely inside the glass conservatory, the snowy countryside.There is little of the lightness of mood of "A Hard Day's Night". "Catch Us If You Can", like its saturnine hero, Steve (Dave Clark), is strangely downbeat and melancholy. Not even the kittenish Dinah (Barbara Ferris) is capable of raising Steve's mood of dejection for very long. Absconding from the commercial they are filming, Steve and Dinah make an erratic Pilgrim's Progress across the West Country en route to an island, off the coast of Devon, that Dinah is contemplating buying. On the way they meet a group of proto-hippies (the term would not be in widespread use until the middle of 1966) squatting in abandoned buildings on Salisbury Plain, and a bickering middle-aged couple living in the opulent surroundings of Bath's Royal Crescent. In a sense, all of these people are in flight from the modern world.The ultimate source of Steve's dejection is Leon Zissell, the svengali-like advertising executive, who is quite evidently besotted with Dinah. Zissell casts his shadow wherever the absconding couple might find themselves.Guy and Nan, the bickering middle-aged couple, seem somewhat sinister at first, but they show themselves to be essentially good-hearted. Both are collectors, and we initially assume that Steve and Dinah are to be added to their collections. Actually, Nan collects old clothes, while Guy collects old phonograph recordings, photographs, etc., ("The pop art of yesteryear"). Anyone viewing "Catch Us If You Can" nearly forty years on will see how it has now been added to Guy's collection itself, a clever and telling touch. (Touching, too.)The Austin Powers movies, funny and clever as they often are, have seriously distorted younger people's perceptions of the 1960s. Amidst all the "grooviness" there was always a quieter, more reflective aspect to the 60s (e.g. "Blow-Up"), and "Catch Us If You Can" captures this. Clear your mind of preconceptions: this movie is NOT a failed attempt at re-making "A Hard Day's Night", but a brilliantly successful attempt to make something quite different - a thoughtful, grown-up film that stands the test of time.