One night back in 1978 or 1979, my TV sitcoms of the day had just ended, and the nightly movie began. The show opened with a rocking little tune and this kept me from switching the TV off, but I wasn’t paying too much attention to the show on the screen until the female lead in the movie appeared. She was just GORGEOUS! I was immediately captivated, and focused my whole attention onto what turned out to be a pretty darn entertaining movie!
The movie was an old Tony Curtis film that came out in 1967 called DON’T MAKE WAVES, and the beautiful actress that knocked me out was none other than Miss Claudia Cardinale! The movie also featured Sharon Tate, a funny cameo by Jim Backus as himself, and that real groovy theme song was sung by none other than Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of the Byrds!!
The story was about a young man named Carlo (Tony Curtis) who comes to town looking for work. He crosses paths with the klutzy Laura (Claudia Cardinale) who accidentally sets fire to his car, which has all his possessions in it! She tries to make it up to him by letting him stay with her until he can get back on his feet. Thus he is thrown into her world of Muscle Beach He-men, Sexy Beach Bunnies and a multitude of Wheeling and Dealing job opportunities!
This was back in the days before convenient video rentals, so I had to wait until some TV station decided to air the movie again! Of course, whenever it DID get shown again, you can bet that it was a banner celebration for me, and every time I watched it, I loved it more and more!
To this day, DON’T MAKE WAVES is still not available in DVD… The only thing I’ve been able to get it is released in VHS tape, so I’m not even able to watch the movie in widescreen! Oh MAN, I’m crossing my fingers for the day this terrific movie gets a decent DVD release treatment!
