“Cool, baby, cool! The Blockbusters are still blowing an instrumental, but in about an eight of a lick I’ll swing you in there and you can wail for all them cats. And you’ll gas ‘em, baby, you’ll really gas ‘em.”

Drake’s rating: Movie bars always have something going on

Drake’s review: This was not supposed to be a review of Rock All Night. I had watched, and written a review of, a tiresome Chris O’Donnell adventure flick called Vertical Limit, but was then unpleasantly surprised by the fact that Justin had reviewed that very movie just last year. And considering that it’s very plainly spelled out in our Mutant Contracts that there’s a moratorium on certain actors appearing on a less than annual basis,* in a fit of pique I tore up my review.

Of course, I had written it on my laptop, so first I had to print it out before tearing it up. But be assured, there was pique involved throughout the whole process.

Which brings us to the fact that I needed to fill some digital paper with some digital ink, and the faster the better. Of course, when one needs a movie to review with some alacrity here at MR, there’s one name that we can all rely on, and that’s Roger Corman.

Let’s face it, the King of the Bs turned out an incredible amount of cult-worthy schlock in his lifetime, so simply opening the Corman catalogue to a random page is a surefire way to find something of interest. And what do we have here but a little flick directed by Corman himself, from a script by regular collaborator Charles B. Griffith and starring a young Dick Miller, another longtime Corman associate. So right away, this looks and sounds like a Corman movie.

Miller plays Shorty, a small guy with a big mouth who gets himself tossed out of a ritzy nightclub where The Platters are on stage. With seemingly nowhere else to go, Shorty ends up at a local bar, where he becomes an irritant to more than one customer. But Shorty’s not the only story here. Local talent agent Sir Bop (radio DJ, psychologist and actor Mel Welles, Attack of the Crab Monsters) has a young singer named Julie (Abby Dalton, CyberTracker) just waiting in the wings to get an audition as a singer, while a boxing promoter shows up with his next hopeful and a reporter hangs out and makes small talk with the bartender.

All of this is really up Corman’s low-budget alley, as he’s able to weave through the customers and tell their stories while Shorty provides sardonic narration, casting aspersions and citing character flaws with a knowing sneer. Frustratingly, under a modern light he could well come across as one of those “I’m just telling it like it is” guys, who have no idea what they’re talking about but feel the need to interject their baseless opinions anyway. Miller’s Shorty just narrowly avoids that pitfall, simply because he’s a fairly perceptive judge of character and spends more time reading people than shooting his mouth off.

That trait comes in handy when a pair of hoods show up and take over the bar. Jigger (Russell Johnson, the Professor from Gilligan’s Island) and his partner Jerry held up a grocery store close by just minutes ago and fled to the bar to hide out. Unfortunately a witness to the robbery spots them and Jigger shoots him, and then holds the patrons hostage while he tries to figure out what his next move is going to be.

Unlike the Professor, though, Jigger is not exactly a thinker. He’s more of the trigger happy sort than the guy who could make a radio out of two coconuts.

Rock All Night definitely feels like it was influenced by John Huston’s Key Largo, albeit on a minuscule budget and with only two sets. Still, a solid cast works in this movie’s favor and Corman wisely keeps the action, as well as the dramatics, on a small, personal scale. It’s a nice break from some of the elements more commonly associated with Corman like latex monsters and obvious blue screens.

Rock All Night isn’t necessarily a Corman classic, but it is a good showcase for the emerging talents of a young Dick Miller. Perhaps not so surprisingly, it was also an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. Watching it closely, with an eye on Miller and an ear for his dialogue, you can see how snippets of it would bleed through into Tarantino’s work years later.

How you feel about this is up for grabs. While I’m A-OK with it, I think I may have just talked Justin out of ever watching Rock All Night.

*O’Donnell, obviously, and Josh Hartnett’s name is unsurprisingly on the list as well. I’ve been pushing for a Chris Pratt addendum, but my attempts have so far been unfairly dismissed.

Intermission!

• The Platters were a big musical draw at the time, but only available for a single day of shooting, so they’re only in the first scene singing two songs. Nevertheless, they were figured prominently in the movie’s advertising.
• So much slang from Mel Welles!
• Rock All Night was based on a TV episode called “The Short Guy” that was featured on The Jane Wyman Show. Corman bought the story rights and had Griffith extend it to movie length. Well, B-movie length.