by Stephen Vagg
Part two in Stephen Vagg’s series on the Beach Party films, examines 1964’s entries in the franchise – Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, and Pajama Party – plus attempts from other studios to replicate AIP’s success.
Sam Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, head of movie studio American International Pictures (AIP), had many flaws, but these did not include failing to cash-in on a trend.
Beach Party hit cinemas in August 1963 and by December, its first sequel, Muscle Beach Party, was already in production; sequel number two, Bikini Beach, commenced shooting in April 1964, and Pajama Party in August 1964.
Other studios got in on the act and by the end of 1964, audiences had the chance to see Ride the Wild Surf, Surf Party, The Horror of Party Beach and Get Yourself a College Girl. (NB. A lot of the information here comes from Tom Lisanti’s definitive history of this subject, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959–1969.)
This article will discuss those films, which marked the popular peak of the beach party genre.
First, Muscle Beach Party and Bikini Beach aka Beach Party 2 and 3. Both films saw the return of key members of the team from Beach Party: director-writer William Asher, writer Robert Dillon, stars Frankie Avalon (Frankie) and Annette Funicello (Dee Dee), support actors Jody McCrea, John Ashley, and Candy Johnson. “Rhonda”, Dee Dee’s man hungry friend, was now called “Animal” (names of regular characters in the series were all over the place – we’ll use the actor names more often than not in this piece) and was played by Valera Noland and then Meredith McCrae. Morey Amsterdam was back for Muscle Beach Party but not Bikini Beach – we don’t think anyone missed him when he left. Harvey Lembeck (Eric Von Zipper) and his bikers weren’t in Muscle Beach Party, but they were missed, so they were back for Bikini Beach. Both films had an AIP horror star cameo at the end – Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff respectively. Both movies had plots where the teens clash with middle-aged people, and deal with a foreign temptress.
The antagonists in Muscle Beach Party were body builders led by Jack Fanny (played by Don Rickles), who want to take over the beach, and a foreign temptress, the Countessa (Luciana Paluzzi) who sets her cap at one of the body builders (Pete Lupus) and then Frankie. And… that’s kind of it. Muscle Beach Party feels short of a story strand or two, like one of the muscle men flirting with Annette Funicello, or some wacky crooks, or a surfing competition or something…
It’s also a surprisingly gloomy film with a (relatively) lot of angst. Dee Dee wants Frankie to settle down, but he doesn’t want to. The Countessa wants to sponsor Frankie’s singing career, and all the gang think that he’s up himself for considering this. Then, Frankie realises that the Countessa is willing to pay all his bills and have sex with him and that’s bad because… patriarchy, we guess. William Asher later emphasised how the Beach Party films were good clean fun, and they mostly were, but not slabs of Muscle Beach Party, which is the most serious of the series (maybe Frankie Avalon asked for the chance to ACT or something?). There are nods to the adult world – Frankie has a cigarette after a night time swim, and the Countessa and Animal are clearly sexually active.
We really like the opening credits and the musical numbers. There’s one from Little Stevie Wonder (as he was then known – the series did have some diversity in its musical acts, which isn’t a lot, but is something) and Donna Loren (a singer for Pepsi who popped up in various movies in the series to sing songs that for some reason they didn’t want to give to Annette Funicello). Dick Dale gets to surf, and Luciana Paluzzi is charming,
Far more enjoyable was Bikini Beach, which returned to the Beach Party formula of including everything but the kitchen sink. It follows the first film’s template closely: a middle-aged man investigates the kids (in this case millionaire Kennan Wynn who wants the beach for a retirement home), the middle-aged man falls for an age-appropriate blonde (Martha Hyer), one of the leads is pursued by a foreigner (in this case Dee Dee who is chased by a British pop star, the Potato Bug), Eric Von Zipper and his bikers cause chaos, there’s lots of sport (in this case drag racing as well as surfing). Don Rickles returns from Muscle Beach Party although in a different role, the manager of the local hang out. Dick Dale didn’t come back for this one, but he was replaced by the Pyramids, and Little Stevie Wonder returned from Muscle.
In contrast to Muscle Beach Party, there’s no angst in Bikini Beach – a key subplot involves Wynn’s pet chimpanzee doing everything teens can (i.e. drive cars, go surfing) and Frankie Avalon plays two roles, Frankie and the Potato Bug, who is reminiscent of Austin Powers. According to Asher, the script was originally written for a group, and the filmmakers had their eye on the Beatles but then they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and priced themselves out of the market, forcing a script re-write. Avalon is clearly having the time of his life in the dual parts.
Bikini Beach has maybe the best music in the series – the songs are consistently strong, even the mock Brit pop ones sung by the Potato Bug. Despite all the big close-ups of bikini clad backsides, there are even some scenes that you could argue involve female empowerment – Potato Bug’s woman (Danielle Aubrey) kicks Deadhead (Jody McCrea) in the face, Animal is very sex positive, Candy Johnson propels men by shaking her body, and all the girls take part in the final brawl at the end.
There are some AIP in-jokes (a teenage werewolf in a pool hall is a reference to that studio’s big hit, I was a Teenage Werewolf), and other film in-jokes (Timothy Carey plays “South Dakota Slim”, a dig on The Hustler’s “Minnesota Fats”). Incidentally, Bikini Beach was the first AIP film to feature no smoking – the studio banned it from their movies in April 1964 following the surgeon general’s report.
A bit of trivia – AIP intended to make another film called Bikini Beach, a co-production with the producing team of Julian Wintle and Leslie Parkyn in Britain. The film was going to be about an American girl and English girl who go to finishing school in Switzerland (or Spain) and find love and romance. We got this information from the Sam Arkoff Papers at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, which is a terrific resource if you’re into researching AIP. We’re guessing that they decided not to make that film and repurposed the title for the beach party series. Commercially, it was the right decision: Bikini Beach was a huge hit and would be (spoilers) the most financially successful of the Beach Party franchise.
All this cash had not gone unnoticed by other studios, who decided to send their film crews down to the beach. In fairness, Columbia’s Ride the Wild Surf was more inspired by Where the Boys Are than Beach Party, focusing on three boys going surfing in Hawaii and finding romance. The film was meant to star pop singers Fabian alongside the duo Jan and Dean; however, a friend of Jan and Dean’s was involved in the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jnr so the duo were cancelled, we guess, and replaced in the film by Tab Hunter and Peter Brown. (Aside: Jan and Dean didn’t have much luck with beach party movies. Paramount put them in one filmed in 1965 called Easy Come, Easy Go alongside Terry Thomas, but there was a train accident during filming in which Jan and director Barry Shear were injured so the film was cancelled, and the title repurposed for an Elvis Presley movie. End of aside:)
Back to Ride the Wild Surf. The movie had a strong cast: Barbara Eden, Shelley Fabares, and Susan Hart were the love interests, other actors playing surfers included Robert Mitchum’s son Jim and Aussie Olympian Murray Rose. Filming was tricky – original directors Jo and Art Napoleon were fired and replaced by Don Taylor (with Phil Karlson stepping in for a bit when Taylor had to duck out due to a family emergency). Still, the resulting film was pretty good, an attempt to seriously look at surfing with some great footage.
For Those Who Think Young was from Frank Sinatra’s production company. Originally called A Young Man’s Fancy, the film’s title was changed to match a Pepsi advertising slogan. Sam Arkoff of AIP called this “the most ridiculous, hidebound, stupid concept I can think of. To put a middle-aged slogan on a youth picture. What kid would go to see a film called For Those Who Think Young?” Half the film is a perfectly acceptable beach movie with rich James Darren (Moondoggie from the Gidget trilogy) pursuing poorer Pamela Tiffin, and beatnik Bob Denver running around with his girlfriend Nancy Sinatra. But the other half is a vehicle for unfunny comic Woody Woodbury. Maybe we’re being unfair. Put it another way: don’t miss this if you’re a big Woody Woodbury fan.
Robert Lippert, a low budget producer who had a deal with 20th Century Fox, made Surf Party. This starred Bobbie Vinton (the guy who sang ‘Blue Velvet’), directed by low budget expert Maury Dexter. It has good moments but is weighed down by melodrama and focusing on the male characters when the women are more interesting. It’s also in black and white.
Fox also released The Horror of Party Beach, which crosses beach party movies with The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was made by actor Del Tenney as part of a two picture deal, which included The Curse of the Living Corpse. Horror has become a camp classic over the years, often popping up in ‘80s books about the worst movies of all time. There’s a moody scientist hero who always wears swimmers, a black servant who blames it on voodoo and the monster really knocks up a large death toll of victims (in one sequence, if not mistaken, he kills 20 girls). The film is violent and silly, with a decent number in ‘The Zombie Stomp’, and absolutely worth watching if you like your bad horror flicks, but not if you like beach party films.
Far classier was Get Yourself a College Girl, a Where the Boys Are knock-off heavily influenced by Beach Party. It’s from legendary producer Sam Katzman who, like Robert Lippert and AIP, knew when to jump on a trend. The movie is set at a winter resort with Beach Party style songs and dances – this was the first of the “beach party” style films set in the snow, of which there was to be a surprisingly large amount. It’s a really fun, energetic movie that might’ve been a minor classic with a little more care, although it was at least done through MGM, benefiting from studio gloss. Like a lot of films written by Robert E. Kent, it’s a little bit feminist (please note, “a little bit”): Nancy Sinatra is in this one too and her character seems to have a lot of sex and is not punished. The cast, led by Mary Ann Mobley and Chad Everett, is full of energy and music acts include The Animals and Dave Clarke Five and someone singing “The Girl from Ipanema”.
The most successful “changed at the last minute to a Beach Party movie” from 1964 came from AIP. According to studio schedules, the studio was developing two films throughout the year: Pajama Party, to star Annette Funicello and Deborah Walley; and The Maid and the Martian, to star Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello about a Martian who falls in love with an Earth girl. Eventually, the two concepts merged into Pajama Party, which is kind of a Beach Party movie but also different.
Most of the action takes place at a mansion next to the beach rather than the beach, the male hero of the plot is a Martian rather than a teenager and is played by Disney star Tommy Kirk rather than Frankie Avalon; Annette Funicello is still the female lead but she starts the film dating Jody McCrea, who is kind of like his Beach Party character but clearly not. There’s no John Ashley and Don Weis directs instead of William Asher, but they do have Donna Loren, Candy Johnson, and Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper, plus Don Rickles and Frankie Avalon appear in cameos. There’s also a foreign temptress: Swede Helga, played by Bobbi Shaw, a stunning and talented comedienne who would be a new breakout star.
Tommy Kirk was a child actor who had successfully made the on-screen transition to adulthood, most notably in a series of popular movies for Disney (for seven years straight, the top twenty box-office hits of the year would include at least one Disney film featuring Kirk). The actor had been fired from the mouse house due to his homosexuality while making The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in 1963, but news of that had not leaked out to the general public, and Kirk’s career was still flying high when Merlin Jones became a surprise massive hit. That film co-starred Annette Funicello, who made a number of Disney movies with Kirk (The Shaggy Dog, The Horsemasters, Escapade in Florence), so it was natural AIP would sign him for Pajama Party. Avalon was off making I’ll Take Sweden with Bob Hope at this time, but still appeared in a cameo.
Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello have genuine chemistry, although it was probably a bad idea to have him pretend to sing, and the story of their romance isn’t much: it feels as though it needs another scene or beat. Annette takes all her chances and Don Weis gives her a big production number to sing and dance in.
There’s plenty of plot in Pajama Party – Kirk is sent from Mars to prepare an invasion of Earth, and Jody McCrea has an aunt, Elsa Lanchester, who is being ripped off by a gang of criminals including Helga (the aforementioned Bobbi Shaw) and Chief Rotten Eagle (Buster Keaton). There’s also a woman who shimmies a lot and causes chaos with her bikini – not Candy Johnson (though she’s in the film too) but Susan Hart, who James H. Nicholson put under contract after seeing her in Ride the Wild Surf.
The most charming thing about Pajama Party is the fact that it’s a valentine to old Hollywood. In addition to veterans like Lanchester and Keaton, Dorothy Lamour pops up to perform a really fun number in a dress shop (where the dancers include a young Teri Garr and Toni Basil) and many of the gags embrace the spirit of old silent comedies. Keaton, only a few years away from death but still in there swinging, gets plenty of chances to show off his abilities; he and Shaw form an engaging double act, which would be repeated by AIP in several more comedies.
Pajama Party turned out to be unexpectedly crucial to AIP’s future. Susan Hart impressed James H. Nicholson so much that he wound up leaving his wife to marry her; this led to Sam Arkoff taking a majority control of the studio, a contributing factor in Nicholson leaving the studio in 1971. The film’s script was written by Louis B. Heyward, a TV writer, who became a key executive at the studio, running AIP’s English operations in the late 1960s.
During 1964, AIP announced it would make Rumble, starring Frankie, Annette, John Ashley and Harvey Lembeck, directed by William Asher from the novel by Harlan Ellison! The film was going to be a spoof of West Side Story – and, we assume, all those juvenile delinquent films AIP itself made in the 1950s (several of which starred Ashley). However, Rumble was never made. This was not uncommon at the studio – for instance, throughout the 1960s AIP frequently declared it was going to film When Sleepers Wake from the novel by HG Wells and The Gold Bug from the story by Poe, but neither eventuated. In the case of Rumble, AIP probably figured it was safer to keep Frankie and Annette by the beach. And why not? 1965 would see the genre explode like never before.
