BEACH PARTY

After the Roger Corman directed Edgar Alan Poe films of the early 1960s proved to be box office gold for low budget studio American International Pictures, the company was eager to find another cheap-to-exploit genre to see if lightning could strike twice. Producers James H. Nicholson and Lou Rusoff struck upon the idea of a teenage "sex" comedy built around the then burgeoning surf craze that was sweeping the nation. Featuring a cast of pretty young women and handsome young men, a handful of authentic surf tunes by Dick Dale and the Del Tones, and some first rate production design by Daniel Haller (who worked as a cinematographer on several Roger Corman films), BEACH PARTY (1963) looks and sounds better than it had to in order to be successful. But that's a big plus for this kitschy, campy teen comedy that served as ground zero for an entire sub-genre of films in the 1960s.

Following in the wake of the wildly successful BEACH PARTY, AIP gave audiences MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964), BIKINI BEACH (1964), PAJAMA PARTY (1964), BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965), SKI PARTY (1965), HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (1965), SERGEANT DEADHEAD (1965), DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE (1965), THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966), FIREBALL 500 (1966) AND THUNDER ALLEY (1967). Most of these films starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and even when the narratives didn't take place on a Southern California beach, the films all followed the same routine, formulaic plots.

BEACH PARTY sets the template for this short-lived cycle of films. It focuses on the fun and frolics enjoyed by a group of teenagers (most of the actors were in their twenties or older), who populate a beach (and beach houses), for a period of days. The kids have no visible means of support, no jobs, no references to families of any kind. They exist only to have fun, fun, fun in the summer sun.

Anthropologist Robert Orville Sutwell (a bearded Robert Cummings) and his knock-out assistant Marianne (Dorothy Malone), rent a beach house to observe the mating rituals of this new tribe of American teenagers. The focus of their observations are Frankie (Frankie Avalon) and Dolores (Annette Funicello). Dolores makes a play for Sutwell to make Frankie jealous while Frankie takes up with German bar maid Ava (Eva Six) to fight back.

The supporting cast includes Chuck Woolery look-alike John Ashley as Ken, Jody McCrea as Deadhead (think Archie Comics character Jughead), veteran comic actor Morey Amsterdam as bar owner Cappy, and Harvey Lembeck as klutzy motorcycle gang leader Eric Von Zipper ("You stupid!"). Sexpot Yvette Vickers has a non-speaking part as a girl practicing yoga and the identity of "Big Daddy" (which is revealed at the end of the film), is a nice surprise and a clever bit of cross promotion for other AIP films.

Directed by William Asher, BEACH PARTY is a squeaky clean romp that delivers lots of music, dancing, teenage romance, and slapstick comedy (it ends with a pie fight!). A great film? Hardly. But it's an interesting and semi-important one because of what came next. If you're going to see one of these '60s "Beach" movies, you might as well start (and end) with this one.