GB
1965
1hr 28mins
Dir: Jeremy Summers
Starring: Gerry Marsden and Mona Washbourne
A pop band forms for a music competition
This musical film featuring Gerry and the Pacemakers followed a popular genre of the time. It is frequently considered by many to be their equivalent of The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night (qv). It is arguably a better spectacle too, but this will largely depend on which band one prefers. Unfortunately, whereas A Hard Day’s Night has gone down in folklore as a valuable piece of Beatlemania, readily available and often shown, Ferry Cross the Mersey has never been shown on television, nor released on video. It features a classic ‘Keystone Kops’-style comedy sequence towards the end with a hearse speeding through the streets of Liverpool, and at one point being chased through the docks by a Class 03 diesel shunter with a match wagon, a rare loco type to be captured on film. There are brief glimpses during this sequence of box vans and cattle trucks in the yards, but the footage is rather poor.
