DON'T LET IT GET YOU

“A light-hearted comedy with music. Set in Sydney and Rotorua, the story centres around ‘The Rotorua Festival’, a young drummer (Gary Wallace) and his girl Judy Beech (Carmen Duncan). Howard Morrison plays himself and as such comes across on screen as naturally as if he were sitting right opposite you. Rim D. Paul, Eddie Lowe and the Quin Tikis are seen in many mad-cap situations; also more serious ones, as when Eddie Lowe and Kerri Summers sing ‘Why am I Alone Now’. Kiri Te Kanawa is delightful and the expressions on the children’s faces when she sings to them in a Maori meeting house are truly unique. Gerry Merito, Herma and Eliza Keil, Gwynn Owen, Lew Pryme and the Impacts are seen in various zany situations throughout the film. William Broadhead (Harry Lavington) and Mrs. Beech (Alma Woods) are the villains of the story. They join forces to part Gary and Judy. To sum up ‘Don’t Let It Get You’ can best be described as a tonic film that doesn’t let the blues get you. When it finishes, you feel as if the time has gone too fast and you leave the theatre wanting to see it all over again.” (from Pacific Films press material)

“A fast-moving, tuneful film, made with enough cinematic savvy to reflect, for the eye, the jumpy rhythms that crowd the soundtrack. DON'T LET IT GET YOU is a coup for the director-cameraman team of John O’Shea and Anthony Williams. Locationed mainly in Rotorua, a New Zealand tourist mecca with geysers, boiling mud pools and Maoris (the country’s native Polynesian people) the pic, though shot in black and white, is an interesting eyeful from the opening frames. It reinforces the good visual impression registered by the pairs’ earlier “Runaway” which otherwise came to grief by lame script and worse acting.” (Variety, 23 November, 1966)

“DON'T LET IT GET YOU (1966) deals with popular entertainers, many of whom, including the star, are Polynesians. There is no reference at any stage to racial groups and integration is taken as a norm of life in New Zealand. Set in the Maori centre of Rotorua, the film presents its star as a swinging international star (which, in real life, he is) and places many of its musical numbers against backgrounds of Maori carvings, decorations, and meeting houses” (John O’Shea, Don’t Let it Get You - Memories, Documents, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1999, pg.70)

Made on a budget of $54,000. Caltex contributed $2000 to this film and “Runaway” in exchange for having a sequence filmed in one of their service stations.