Beach Party Movies

Beach Party/Bikini Beach

Over the weekend, I decided to rewatch all the Beach Party movies, the American International teen film series that started in 1963 starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Here’s the list, with IMDB links.

Beach Party
Muscle Beach Party
Bikini Beach
Pajama Party
Ski Party
Beach Blanket Bingo
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini

Beach Party/Bikini Beach

If you’ve never seen them, go read about them and check out the cast lists. There’s something weirdly eye-catching about all of them. For instance, as the first one opens, Frankie and Annette are pulling up to a beach house, just the two of them. They’re talking about how being alone together is just like being married, only it’s really code for sex. They’ve gone away together to do it! Only Annette’s gotten cold feet, so she’s invited about 20 of their friends to crash with them. And then she wonders why Frankie takes up with the local hot foreign blonde.

The second and third have Don Rickles as a beach neighbor, first running a gym and then a bar. (It’s for the kids, he says. We don’t have cigarette machines or serve alcohol, only beer and soft drinks. Different world back then.) The third also has Frankie playing a dual role as the Potato Bug, a British pop star whom all the girls go crazy over. One IMDB reviewer calls it the best of the group, and I think they’re right.

Muscle Beach Party/Ski Party

After that, the series is pretty clearly looking for new inspiration. Ski Party is simply terrible (featuring a Bosom Buddies-like drag plot for Frankie and Dwayne Hickman), and Pajama Party is a misnomer, since they’re still in bikinis by the pool until the last third of the film. Frankie’s not even in that one (although he lends a vocal cameo), replaced by Tommy Kirk as a Martian sent to find out more about Earthlings. It also has Buster Keaton, of all people, as an American Indian stereotype accompanied by a Swedish dumpling who wears little and says nothing but “Yah, yah”.

Elsa Lanchester and Dorothy Lamour also guest-star, and the latter does a oddly catchy musical number about dance styles called “In My Day, We Never Did It That Way”. She’s still got the moves, and I think two of the backup dancers are Toni Basil and Teri Garr!

Pajama Party

If you watch them, be generous. Realize that the second through fourth all came out in one year, 1964, which meant they were quickie productions. The songs are frothy fun, though, and the movies provide a wild glimpse into what people thought teen life used to be like. You’ll also to get to see a very young “Little Stevie Wonder” and a creepy-looking Dick Dale lip-synching in movies two and three.

But the strangest number of all is the short little ditty from Pajama Party in which Annette sings about how stuffed animals are better than boys. “A stuffed animal never talks back.” “A stuffed animal is more than a toy.” “A stuffed animal never says no.” …. ummm… how big is her stuffed lion?

The girl in yellow is Susan Hart, who married one of the American International co-founders, and in pink is Donna Loren, the singer and Dr. Pepper girl.

It seems that many of these movies are being re-released next month in the Frankie & Annette MGM Movie Legends Collection. Sadly, given the title, they had to leave out Pajama Party (now out of print), but you do get two racing films in its place, and it’s a great value.



7 comments

  • Rob S.

    Oh, that is one creepy lion.

    “Just as I suspected. Connie… you’re in love with George!”

    All I could think was: Of the Jungle?

  • John

    Yeah, my wife and I love these movies too. What surprised us, though, were how fun they were despite the obvious negatives one could say about them and, also, how subversive they were, as well. For instance, there is a subtext through several of them that pretty much accuses rock and roll of the time of being an adult swindle that crass businessment are trying to rook the teens with and bluntly state that the teens will make up their own minds. I always thought that attitude was pretty ginchy.

    These movies also turned me onto Annette’s fun music – there’s an excellent box set in existence. She’s not the greatest singer, lord knows, but she rocks pretty well – and her ska song with Fishbone in the “Back to the Beach” movie is totally excellent.

    Plus, they’re just so bizarre, they come from their own place. They are not derivative of anything . . .

    Good call!

  • Rob: Bwa ha ha! George is the Martian, by the way.

    John: Great points! I’m watching Beach Blanket Bingo now, and that’s the one where the manufactured singer (Sugar Kane, played by a very young Linda Evans, and managed by a slimy Paul Lynde) gets the worse of it. In between the skydiving and partner-swapping.

    Musically, I recommend Summer Beach Party as a great sampler CD containing tracks from all the films. Except the BBB theme, for some reason. Oh, and “Stuffed Animal”, which is on The Best of Annette.

  • John

    Beach Blanket Bingo has the GREAT closing credits with Buster Keaton and some bikini girls, right? My favorite is the one for Muscle Beach Party, which has a bongo-beating Little Stevie Wonder performing with Candy Johnson dancing around him. Now that one is so cool!

    Have you ever seen The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini? It was the very last of these films – it’s totally weird, like three movies combined into one. Eric Von Zipper is in it, though!

  • I’m crazy about those beach movies. “Beach Blanket Bingo’s” my favorite of the bunch. Could never figure out why Jody McCrea’s character kept changing names from movie to movie — sometimes called Goo Goo, sometimes Bonehead, and sometimes Deadhead. And then Frankie appropriated his name for the 1965 AIP Army comedy, “Sgt. Deadhead.”
    Eric Von Zipper also makes a cameo in one of the Vincent Price “Dr. Goldfoot” movies.
    I found it cute that Elizabeth Montgomery plays a witch, complete with nose twitch, in “How To Stuff A Wild Bikini.” Montgomery’s husband, William Asher, directed the beach movies as well as the Bewitched TV series. Gumby’s Art Clokey did the animated titles for “How To Stuff a Wild Bikini,” incidentally.
    I thought “Back To The Beach” did a nice job of revisiting the concept.

  • I’ve still got Wild Bikini to watch, and I don’t have Invisible Bikini, although I think I’ve seen it. I don’t remember much about it, though. I think I need to hunt down Back to the Beach… all I remember from that one is Pee-Wee Herman.

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