Summer Holiday (Cliff in Color! The Technicolor Musicals of Cliff Richard, 1961-1964) (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Peter YatesRelease Date(s)
1963 (February 17, 2026)Studio(s)
ABPC/Warner-Pathé/AIP (Indicator/Powerhouse Films)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
Part of Powerhouse Films’ Cliff in Color! The Technicolor Musicals of Cliff Richard, 1961-1964, Peter Yates’s Summer Holiday (1963) is the best of the three films included (the others being The Young Ones and Wonderful Life). The first half-hour is downright outstanding before the picture loses some of its free-spirited energy—a combination of overlength, more conventional musical components, and in the way it diverts from its core charms. Still, it was hugely popular in its native Britain, the second-highest grossing movie there that year after From Russia with Love, though in the U.S. it was dumped into the market by distributor AIP and quickly forgotten. It deserves to find a bigger audience in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Filmed in CinemaScope, the movie opens in black-and-white, in dreary, rainy London before switching to bright color as double-decker bus mechanics Don (Cliff Richard), Cyril (Melvyn Hayes), Steve (Teddy Green), and Edwin (Jeremy Bulloch) plan their summer holiday, converting a bus into a mobile home, intending to drive it across the European continent to the South of France. Along the way, though, they pick up three wayward English girls—Sandy (Una Stubbs), Angie (Pamela Hart), and Mimsie (Jacqueline Daryl), a singing trio named “Do-Re and Mi”—and agree to drive them to their gig in Athens. Don, Cyril, and Steve soon hook up with the girls, while defiant swinging bachelor Don is content to love ’em and leave ’em. They also pick up a stowaway, a 14-year-old boy who is soon revealed as a runaway American pop star Barbara Winters (Laurie Peters), whose controlling, stage-door mother, Stella (Madge Ryan), along with manager Jerry (Lionel Murton), plots to capitalize on her disappearance.
Often compared to Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard remains Britain’s third-top-selling artist in UK singles chart history, after the Beatles and Elvis himself, in singles alone selling a staggering 21.5 million. His trio of Technicolor musicals are similar likened to Elvis’s movies, but in fact are far superior, particularly this one, to all but a tiny handful of Presley’s vehicles. During the first 30 or so minutes, the film has a vibrant energy, visual style, and tone approaching the work of Jacques Demy soon after, particularly The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967): the boys renovating a dilapidated bus in a factory to Seven Days to a Holiday, Richard crooning Summer Holiday while driving across France, etc. (In a neat touch, Richard’s backing band, The Shadows, effectively “shadow” the gang across Europe, turning up everywhere in a running gag.) The carefree group spirit—unlike Elvis in his movies, where his characters were often moody and volatile, as if a one brawl-minimum was written into each contract—is infectious and through all that sun and color, British teenagers in 1963 could vicariously ride along with them. The choreography, by future director Herbert Ross, likewise anticipates the overall style of dancing in Demy’s film.
Richard and Laurie Peters were young and especially appealing, he just 22 and she just 19. Indeed, the entire gang is eminently likeable, especially bobbed Una Stubbs (making her screen debut), Jeremy Bulloch and, in a kind of coarse but ingratiating way, Melvyn Hayes. The overall tone is less like an Elvis movie or even a Frankie & Annette Beach Party movie than the wholesome “Young Guy” (Wakadaisho) film series starring Yuzo Kayama, made in Japan at this same time. The film works best when it sticks with the group as they drive across Europe, overcoming minor obstacles along the way.
The picture begins to derail, albeit slightly, once they encounter a group of itinerant entertainers, led by French mime Orlando (Ron Moody, later of Oliver!). Arrested for allegedly using the bus as a public transport, they all have to convince a local magistrate (David Kossoff) that all of them, including our protagonists, are polished performers, and they improvise the kind of stage show—complete with elaborate sets, props and costumes—that wouldn’t be out of place in a big MGM musical. This shifts the film into fantasy and conventionality that drains its appeal some. (Moody seems to have been cast for his strong resemblance to Marcel Marceau.)
Later, the business with Barbara’s conniving mother takes more attention away from the movie core characters, and these scenes are trite and distracting. One musical number, the lively Bachelor Boy (somewhat ironic, given Richard’s lifelong bachelorhood) was added weeks after production had ended; it’s a good addition, but overall, at 107 minutes, Summer Holiday is overlong. Judicious trimming to around 85 minutes would have resulted in a much better picture.
Most of the film was shot with the principal actors on location in Greece, apparently that country doubling for France and Switzerland in some scenes, though there’s also extensive 2nd unit photography in France and elsewhere. The sight of an emblematically English double-decker tooling along the Champs Élysées is visually arresting and the bus almost becomes a character all by itself.
Powerhouse Films’ Region “A” release of Summer Holiday presents the film in its original CinemaScope (2.35:1) format via a 4K restoration. The presentation is splendid overall with excellent color and clarity, even the process shots look better than earlier home video incarnations. The LPCM mono audio also comes across better than ever, and comes with optional English subtitles.
Supplements consist of a 2002 audio commentary track with director Peter Yates and film historian Jonathan Sothcott; a new featurette called A British Phenomenon, a 16-minute look by composer/writer Neil Brand into the career of Cliff Richard; a 2019, 10-minute appreciation by musician Bob Stanley; a one-minute excerpt from a Pathé newsreel of Richard learning how to drive a double-decker bus; two minutes of newsreel footage of the film’s premiere; two different Super-8 digest versions, a trailer and an image gallery.
Summer Holiday is a particularly fun movie, recommended especially for a dark and dreary rainy day.
- Stuart Galbraith IV