Chuck Berry Movies

This 1987 documentary presents the life story of influential singer, songwriter, and musician Jerry Lee Lewis, whose pioneering brand of country-blues-boogie shook the world of rock & roll. Nicknamed "The Killer," and a cousin of notorious televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, Lewis displayed a prodigious eclectic musical talent, absorbing and reworking blues, gospel, Al Jolson, rockabilly, and Hank Williams. This biography features interviews with Lewis and a lineup of performing artists and celebrities including Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Roy Orbison, Dick Clark, and Mickey Gilley. Highlights include concert footage of Lewis performing some of his greatest hits, such as "Great Balls of Fire," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," "Breathless," and "Crazy Arms." ~ Steve Blackburn, All Movie Guide

Set in 1964, a group of four Toronto teens enter a battle of the bands to win an opening spot at a Beatles show. Led by an Italian teenager (Joseph Dimambro), the band just might be successful. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

A Musical-Educational-Informative video all in one! Cab Calloway is featured with his band in this compilation of vintage films. Beginning in 1935 with "Jitterbug Party" to a 1937 feature film, "Manhattan Merry-Go-Round, and a tune called "Mama I Wanna Make Rhythm." Skip to 1942 for four "soundies," "Blues in the Night," "Minnie the Moocher," "Virginia, Georgia and Caroline" and "The Skunk Song." This musical ride comes to the end of the line with several 1950 tunes, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "Minnie the Moocher" and "St. James Infirmary." ~ All Movie Guide

A high school class reunion turns bloody when a former student seeks revenge on his classmates in this black comedy. That mayhem would strike this 20-year reunion seems preordained, given that the name of the school is Lizzie Borden High. Little did anyone expect, however, that this trouble would come from Walter Baylor (Blackie Dammett), a social outcast who was the victim of a humiliating senior year practical joke. Now, two decades later, Baylor has escaped from a mental institution to kill off his tormenters one by one. Class Reunion was the first produced screenplay by John Hughes, a National Lampoon writer who would eventually find a highly successful career as a writer, director, and producer of teen-oriented movies. His debut was exceptionally inauspicious, however, as the film's uncertain mixture of gore and low comedy was met with critical derision and audience indifference. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

This lively musical comedy pays tribute to the birth of rock & roll in the late 1950s and the instrumental role played by disc jockey Alan Freed who helped bring the new sound into vogue. Much of the story centers on the daring deejay's attempts to put on the very first live rock & roll stage show at the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn. To do this he must overcome the protests of concerned and angry parents, conservatives, and local police. Several performers of the era appear in the film including Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten) was the first of German director Wim Wenders' films to be lensed in part in the United States. Phillip (Rüdiger Vogler) is a roving German reporter who, after a chance encounter with an elusive American woman, reluctantly accepts temporary custody of little Alice (Yella Rottländer). Phillip takes Alice in hand on a trek across Germany to locate the girl's grandmother. The plot takes second place to Wenders' fascination with the contrast between the neon-and-billboard ambience of the U.S. and the rolling hills and industrial pockets of Deutschland. Alice in the Cities was the first of Wenders' "road trilogy"; the follow-ups were Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976), both also starring Rüdiger Vogler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In 1972, John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, made a strategic and historic week-long guest appearance on the hit talk/variety television program The Mike Douglas Show hoping to get their counterculture message across to middle America. Day three, February 16, 1972, features Lennon meeting his hero, rock & roll pioneer Chuck Berry, for the first time. Other guests include Peace Corps/Action Corps Director Joseph Blatchford, macrobiotic restauranteur Hillary Redleaf, and musician/biofeedback engineer David Rosenbloom. Douglas sings "I Whistle a Happy Tune." Berry performs two songs with Lennon, Ono, and the Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band: "Memphis" and "Johnny B. Goode." Ono and Lennon also sing "Sisters, O Sisters," and Douglas croons "Losing My Mind." Highlights also include the music video for the song "Crippled Inside" from the Imagine LP. In the video, artist Andy Warhol makes a cameo appearance. Besides the ongoing performance art pieces from the previous days, there are also demonstrations of how to cook macrobiotic Hiziki Eggrolls, and how to create musical sounds via Alpha Wave biofeedback. ~ Steve Blackburn, All Movie Guide

This rollicking music film is a compilation of two previous films from the mid-1960s, The T.A.M.I. Show and The Big T.N.T. Show. Chuck Berry hosts the acts which include some of the greatest R&B acts and rock & roll acts of that generation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In 1964, television director Steve Binder was given the task of staging the Teen-Age Music International Show, a concert event which would showcase some of the biggest rock and pop acts of the day; Binder and his camera crew then captured the proceedings on video tape, and the results were transferred to kinescope film and released to theaters as The T.A.M.I. Show. While The Beatles were otherwise occupied with making their own movie, the roster of performers otherwise reads like a "who's who" of early-60's rock -- original guitar hero Chuck Berry, three of Motown's biggest stars (Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and The Supremes), two leading British Invasion acts (Gerry and the Pacemakers and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas), garage rock legends The Barbarians, teen angst goddess Leslie Gore, and surf music pioneers The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean (the latter of whom also served as hosts). Closing the show is a veritable "Battle of the Bands" between two of the most exciting stage acts in rock history, James Brown and his Famous Flames (Brown's dancing still inspires awe nearly 40 years later), and The Rolling Stones (who look young and green, but are already blessed with a near-deadly charisma). Regarded by many aficionados as one of the very best rock and roll movies ever made (despite a video transfer that's not quite up contemporary technical standards), The T.A.M.I. Show has unfortunately never been released on home video (and most current prints don't feature The Beach Boys' performance, which was trimmed due to a legal dispute), though highlights from the movie were combined with excerpts from the pseudo-sequel The Big T.N.T. Show and released as on a compilation video entitled That Was Rock. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Go, Johnny, Go! was second and last of a proposed trio of jukebox movies built around and co-produced by DJ Alan Freed. He plays himself in this rags-to-riches tale, told in flashback, of a young rock & roll singer named Johnny Melody (Jimmy Clanton), whose rise from life in an orphanage where no one wanted him to his "discovery" by Freed through an unsolicited demo recording sent to the disc jockey's office is told in 75 minutes, in a dramatic time frame that's impossible to determine. Along the way, Johnny meets a girl (Sandy Stewart) with whom he falls in love, and nearly gets himself arrested when it looks as though everything has turned against him. The plot is a threadbare reprise of the kind of juvenile delinquency-with-music stories that Elvis Presley had been doing, but it offers glimpses of several very worthwhile (and a couple of legendary) music acts of the era who were otherwise undocumented on film: Jimmy Clanton himself, who was one of the best white singers to come out of that New Orleans R&B/rock & roll sound; Sandy Stewart, who was (and is still, 40-plus years later) a serious vocal talent; Chuck Berry, in a pair of performing clips that are brilliant; Ritchie Valens, in his only film appearance, doing a hot rocking number called "Oh, My Head"; Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows; the Cadillacs, in a pair of killer comic-relief numbers; Jo-Ann Campbell; and Jackie Wilson, showing how little Michael Jackson actually brought to performing that was new more than 20 years later. No, Go, Johnny, Go! isn't A Hard Day's Night, but it is a lot of fun to watch, and is easily the best of Freed's handful of feature films, before his downfall in the payola scandal. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

To anyone born between 1935 and 1949, Mr. Rock and Roll can mean only one person: Visionary disc-jockey and concert producer Alan Freed. Made a few years before Freed ran into deep doo-doo during the Payola investigations, this ramshackle film purports to show how Freed brought R&R to the masses in the mid- to late 1950s. While the legendary deejay sits before a microphone taking requests from his faithful audience, the film cuts away to such musical artists as Lionel Hampton, Ferlin Husky, The Moonglows, Brook Benton, LaVern Baker, Little Richard, Clyde McPhatter, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Chuck Berry and Shaye Cogan. A few cheap laughs are provided by ex-boxer Rocky Graziano and the nightclub comedy team of Fisher & Marks. Though it hardly advances the art of cinema, Mr. Rock and Roll is a must-see cultural time capsule. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A 6 volume rock 'n' roll video series with Volume 5 featuring artists Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers and Big Joe Turner. ~ All Movie Guide