A rehash of a fairly plot-less "Rock Around The Clock" (1956), "Twist Around The Clock" functions only as a ninety-minute advertisement for the then-popular song "The Twist" and all products related to same, including the career of singer Chubby Checker.
Musical staging is cheap-looking, tacky, and lacks imagination. The dreadful dialogue lacks subtlety and subtext, and even includes the 1950s teenage word "daddy-o". Characters are all stereotyped. Acting is borderline amateurish. Sloppy direction reeks of early 1960s sitcoms. B&W photography is acceptable but conventional. The worst musical number is something called "Merry Twistmas"; get it?
Lip-synching of lyrics is obvious, and conveys the impression that singers practiced all of five minutes. The entire production comes across as opportunistic, quickly done, and phony.
The one thing I did like was Dion's legit performance midway through of his musical hit "Runaround Sue", a credible rock-n'-roll song.
My impression is that the producers simply copied the script of "Rock Around The Clock", adding "The Twist" as the main change. After all, in the intervening five years, no one would ever know this film is just a rip-off of an earlier musical advertisement. For modern viewers, "Twist Around The Clock" serves as a cultural time capsule back to the age of dinosaurs ... daddy-o.
Musical staging is cheap-looking, tacky, and lacks imagination. The dreadful dialogue lacks subtlety and subtext, and even includes the 1950s teenage word "daddy-o". Characters are all stereotyped. Acting is borderline amateurish. Sloppy direction reeks of early 1960s sitcoms. B&W photography is acceptable but conventional. The worst musical number is something called "Merry Twistmas"; get it?
Lip-synching of lyrics is obvious, and conveys the impression that singers practiced all of five minutes. The entire production comes across as opportunistic, quickly done, and phony.
The one thing I did like was Dion's legit performance midway through of his musical hit "Runaround Sue", a credible rock-n'-roll song.
My impression is that the producers simply copied the script of "Rock Around The Clock", adding "The Twist" as the main change. After all, in the intervening five years, no one would ever know this film is just a rip-off of an earlier musical advertisement. For modern viewers, "Twist Around The Clock" serves as a cultural time capsule back to the age of dinosaurs ... daddy-o.