Daddy-O

Well what can you say about Daddy-O, it really isn't good at all, I don't even know how to rate it, though there are worse movies out there. This film actually has a story, plot, action and a decent ending. The problem, IT"S ALL GOOFY!! And I don't think the director meant it to be that way, but it is.

Dick Contino is our hero, an aged teenager who wears skin tight shirts and extremely hiked up pants (with the belt buckle to the side)Anyway he's accused of killing his friend Sonny while racing a peroxide queen who becomes his main squeeze. Anyway he investigates Sonny's death because the LAPD are too lazy to do it themselves. He gets involved with running drugs for doughy guy and squinty (which again the LAPD don't bother to investigate)Lots of things happen which will take too long to explain but in the end the bad guys lose, Dick gets his girl and pants stay hiked.

Oh, Lordie, is this a wonderful movie. The only JD movie that compares is High School Confidential. You'll watch it again and again, consumed with envy at Dick Contino's sheer studliness and convulsed in laughter at some of the worst continuity in modern history.

Hot rods! Well, a T-Bird and a TR-3. Hot sex! Well, more naked Bruno VeSota than is probably good for you to see. Steamy dialogue! Well, "Want some?" was pretty hot in 1959. Juvie crime! Well, Dick Contino was no more a teenager than he was a Soviet cosmonaut, but he WAS running dope for Big Bruno.

And it DOES feature Bruce, the gym rat. Watch this movie, ponder this movie, and remind yourself that someone, the actor, the director, the writer, SOMEONE had to invent the incredible bundle of character twitches that is Bruce.

Daddy-O Notes: Dick Contino is alive, well, still studly in his early seventies, and the living master of the show accordion. You can buy current Dick Contino CD's and promotional merchandise, you can see him live in person. According to one interview, Dick is famous for, and I quote, "humping" his accordion as he plays. Oh, that I should live so long. Does he still hike, hike, hike hike his pants up?

Jack McClure, who played Bruce, was also in "Friendly Persuasion." At one point the poor deluded fellow might actually have thought he had a career going.

When the movie came out, my little brother and I, absolutely forbidden to see this or any other immoral movies about juvies and their chicks, were enthralled by the ads that ran constantly on the radio. One featured a woman's voice shouting, "Daddy-O! Look out BEHIND you!" and a stock sound clip of a skidding car's squealing tires. When MST beat up on Daddy-O I taped it (naturally) and watched it over and over - kids, that line is NOT in their version. Is there a "long" version, a la Wicker Man? A director's cut?

Ghod, when it comes to sheer entertainment value, they just don't make 'em like this any more. All this movie lacks is beatniks, a polar bear on a tricycle, and a coupon for free beer.

This film is extremely dated. It's a typical youth-gone-amok movie that populated drive-ins in the 1950's. Dick Contino, he of the big pecs and mediocre singing voice, does the best he can to save this film. however, it's not enough. Sandra Giles, who played Jana, was definitely chosen for her large chest and blonde locks, and not her acting ability. The guy with the coke-bottle thick glasses really was an offensive stereotype. The main problem is that Daddy-O's character really doesn't give you a lot to like him; the heroine Jana gives you even less to like her.

Avoid this one unless you're watching the MST3K version. "got to keep your pants up!"

This is a fun movie. It's bad enough to laugh at but not so incomprehensible as to be completely frustrated by it. Contino is a hoot as the lead and VeSota is actually pretty decent. A staple of Corman films, VeSota is not really a terrible actor, just is laden down with flat, character roles. The Guy who runs the gym though, Bruce, is just so GOOFY that it defies belief. It seems his permanent expression is to squint through thick glasses with a gawking mouth.

Has a pretty bad soundtrack too, filled with Contino songs. The rest of the score was done by John Williams. Yes, THAT John Williams, the same who did Jaws, ET, and Star Wars.

Daddy-O is another in a very long line of Juvie D / rock and rollers that tried to look like an Elvis picture from a distance. Shot for only $100 grand on cheap sets and with few professional actors, the film makes King Creole look like Cabaret. Daddy-O would be just another badly dated grade Z picture but for one thing: Dick Contino's Blues. James Ellroy watched this clumsy oldster and then wrote a richly detailed -and thoroughly speculative - account of Contino's participation in the film while tracking a serial killer! The story is an action comedy masterpiece and to actually watch Daddy-O after reading DC Blues is like finding lost gold. The movie is admittedly pretty bad. Contino plays a singing truck driver (get it? Elvis drove a truck before he became famous) who meets a platinum bad girl out on the highway and finds his life spiralling downward. The songs are terrible, a shame really since Contino had a legitimate reputation as a musician, and the characters range from bland to dislikeable, with the exception of the myopic gym manager who is flat out wacky. The crime plot involves drug running, supposedly, although by the hour mark no drugs have actually been moved anywhere. With little story or character interest to engage the audience, there is not much to do except laugh at the dated hipster expressions, groan over the awful song numbers and wonder why Contino's pants are up near his ribcage. But watching the movie as a story within Dick Contino's Blues makes for a rich experience. The viewer sympathizes with Contino for having to take work which was so obviously beneath his musical talents, owing to the damage his reputation suffered following an accusation that he was a draft dodger. (He wasn't but the papers failed to tell the whole story.) Contino himself was not a good enough actor to save a film this hokey, plus he was five years older than Elvis and getting too long in the tooth to be a convincing Juvie D. But wondering how he found the time to play amateur sleuth amidst all of this - assuming that any part of Ellroy's crazy caper was even a little bit true - makes this a truly special movie.