Close...but no go.

20th Century-Fox's Cinema Archives vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released The Young Swingers, the 1963 Beach Party musical knock-off directed by Maury Dexter, and starring Rod Lauren, Molly Bee, Gene McDaniels, Jack Larson, and The Sherwood Singers. I doubt the low, low budget The Young Swingers was shot in any kind of widescreen process, but by '63, pretty much anything showing up in theaters was expected to be matted off during projection to a minimum of 1.66:1, so, this panned-and-scanned transfer is problematic, to say the least. Now, I've reviewed other Cinema Archive panned-and-scanned titles (I seriously doubt they're the original open mattes, as Fox acknowledges right up front, anyway) that looked okay cropped on my wide monitor (ironically, Dexter's Raiders from Beneath the Sea), and others that didn't cut it (ironically again, Dexter's Surf Party). Unfortunately, The Young Swingers falls in the latter category, with the resulting image looking too tight (tops of heads crowded at the top of the frame, and information lost at the bottom--not to mention an unnecessarily grainy, blown-out image). So, you'll have to get your hootenanny thrills somewhere else. Skip The Young Swingers