Don't Knock the Rock / Rock Around the Clock

"Maybe it's the way you sing…or the beat…or somethin'," muses a teenage girl as she tries to explain why kids love rock 'n' roll. If these two 1956 flicks don't make you want to move your feet, clap your hands, and say "Yeah!", then you must be just too square to care. There have certainly been better rock movies (Jailhouse Rock, one of the best, came along the very next year, and all bets were off after 1964's A Hard Day's Night), but Don't Knock the Rock and Rock Around the Clock, both directed by Fred Sears, have enough great music (by Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard, the Platters, the Treniers, and lesser known but still worthy talents like the Bellboys and Latin bandleader Tony Martinez)—not to mention some marvelously entertaining choreography—to overcome the transparent formulas and haste to cash in on the rock phenomenon that led to their creation in the first place. In Rock Around the Clock, a former big band booking agent happens on Haley and his band in a small farming town and helps them hit the big time while the agent's former girlfriend, herself a New York agent, tries to sabotage the deal. In Don't Knock the Rock, a reluctant rock star (played by '50s crooner Alan Dale, a good singer but not much of a rocker) tries to convince the uptight cubes in his hometown of Mellondale that this so-called "depraved" music really isn't doing the kids any harm. Even though Haley, Richard, the hip and hilarious Treniers, and others are lip-syncing, their music fairly jumps out of your speakers; these cats were having a ball, and tunes like Haley's "See You Later Alligator," "Razzle Dazzle," and, of course, "Rock Around the Clock" (which had actually debuted a year earlier in Blackboard Jungle) feature great playing (guitarist Franny Beecher was a master), a riotous stage show, and wonderful dancing, especially by the siblings played by Lisa Gaye and Earl Barton. Both black-and-white films are remastered with digital sound. Recommended. [Note: a companion double feature Twist Around the Clock / Don't Knock the Twist is also available.] (S. Graham)