This is the first of AIP's "Beach Party" movies, but actually the fifth I have watched. Frankly, the main reason I was drawn to them was because of the cameos of famous stars – even here, we get Vincent Price, who appears through most of the running-time (playing a character called "Big Daddy"!) but spends it asleep slumped in a chair
waking up at the very end just enough to reference his last Corman/Poe appearance in PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961) and then return to his slumber! As would be the case with the other ageing Hollywood veterans (such as Buster Keaton, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre), his name is listed only during the closing credits, where the company also takes the opportunity to pump his upcoming release of THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963; which though advertised as the next Poe adaptation, it is actually derived from the work of H.P. Lovecraft!).
Anyway, here we get what would become the stock company of surfer studs and beach babes: Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (who, as always, spend more time trying to make one another jealous than they do together!), Jody McCrea as the goody "Deadhead", Morey Amsterdam as an eccentric local and, best of all, Harvey Lembeck's motorcycle thug Eric Von Zipper. That said, the real protagonist here is Bob Cummings (yep, who would have thought that he and Frankie would have subsequently gone to Europe to work for Harry Alan Towers and with the likes of Maria Rohm and Klaus Kinski?) as a scientist who, having been given the cold shoulder due to his youngish age, decides to hide his features behind a bushy beard (though he later takes it off)! He is intrigued by the phenomenon of modern youth, whose amorality he equates with Prehistoric Man, and so he has set out to study their habits, first from a beach hut through a telescope but then up close and personal (so much so that Annette becomes infatuated with him, though he is secretly loved by devoted secretary Dorothy Malone!). Of course, Frankie tries to interrupt their affair even if is he has himself taken up with a foreigner when Annette states that she would like to keep her virtue intact until marriage. She also catches the eye of the pompous Von Zipper but Cummings steps in and 'gives him the finger', that is to say, rendered immobile by the simple touch of an acutely sensitive nerve (which eventually becomes a running-gag and is resumed in subsequent outings as well!).
Neeedless to say, we get a lot of songs, energetic but silly dancing (especially from one particular girl, whose all-stops-out jives apparently so caught the imagination of the film-makers that we are treated to a {cringe-inducing} encore throughout the concluding credit roll and, if I am not mistaken, she gets similar showcases in some of the various follow-up films), comedy, romance and surfing acrobatics very little of which is appealing to this viewer and all of it feels so bland and dated that the series comes off now like the "Police Academy" of its day! For what it is worth, I have one more of these to watch, SKI PARTY (1966), which at least proposed a change of locale for novelty value...
Anyway, here we get what would become the stock company of surfer studs and beach babes: Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (who, as always, spend more time trying to make one another jealous than they do together!), Jody McCrea as the goody "Deadhead", Morey Amsterdam as an eccentric local and, best of all, Harvey Lembeck's motorcycle thug Eric Von Zipper. That said, the real protagonist here is Bob Cummings (yep, who would have thought that he and Frankie would have subsequently gone to Europe to work for Harry Alan Towers and with the likes of Maria Rohm and Klaus Kinski?) as a scientist who, having been given the cold shoulder due to his youngish age, decides to hide his features behind a bushy beard (though he later takes it off)! He is intrigued by the phenomenon of modern youth, whose amorality he equates with Prehistoric Man, and so he has set out to study their habits, first from a beach hut through a telescope but then up close and personal (so much so that Annette becomes infatuated with him, though he is secretly loved by devoted secretary Dorothy Malone!). Of course, Frankie tries to interrupt their affair even if is he has himself taken up with a foreigner when Annette states that she would like to keep her virtue intact until marriage. She also catches the eye of the pompous Von Zipper but Cummings steps in and 'gives him the finger', that is to say, rendered immobile by the simple touch of an acutely sensitive nerve (which eventually becomes a running-gag and is resumed in subsequent outings as well!).
Neeedless to say, we get a lot of songs, energetic but silly dancing (especially from one particular girl, whose all-stops-out jives apparently so caught the imagination of the film-makers that we are treated to a {cringe-inducing} encore throughout the concluding credit roll and, if I am not mistaken, she gets similar showcases in some of the various follow-up films), comedy, romance and surfing acrobatics very little of which is appealing to this viewer and all of it feels so bland and dated that the series comes off now like the "Police Academy" of its day! For what it is worth, I have one more of these to watch, SKI PARTY (1966), which at least proposed a change of locale for novelty value...