by Stephen Vagg
Part three of our series on Beach Party movies looks at the year 1965, when the genre peaked and cannibalised itself.
One of the problems in exploiting a film “cycle” is judging how much to milk it – do you simply grab as much cash as you can as soon as you can? Do you play a longer game? When do you diversify? How do you diversify? And so on. Not easy – just ask DC executives.
American International Pictures (AIP) knew it hit a mother lode with the beach party movies, but studio owners Sam Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson had been through this before with juvenile delinquents, aliens, peplums and other cycles – they knew the good times wouldn’t last forever, especially with other miners staking claims on Mount Teen Audience. So, Arkoff and Nicholson decided on a two-prong approach: milk the beach party cow as quickly as possible, but also see if they could spin off into a new direction.
Thus, AIP lined up a swathe of beach party and beach party-linked movies for 1965. Official ones would be Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, but there would also be slight variations, including Ski Party, Cruise Party, and Jet Set Party, along with a follow up to Pajama Party (Pajama Party in the Haunted House), plus The Girl in the Glass Bikini and a musical horror spoof called Tentacles; there was also a service comedy, Sergeant Deadhead, and a spy spoof, Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which might lead to their own franchises. Spoilers: this schedule didn’t exactly pan out.
Beach Blanket Bingo saw a return of most of the key players from AIP’s Bikini Beach (discussed in Part Two): director-writer William Asher, co-writer Leo Townsend, stars Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, co-stars Harvey Lembeck, Jody McCrea, John Ashley, Don Rickles and Donna Loren. We don’t know what happened to Candy Johnson – maybe she asked for a raise or something, but Pajama Party was her last effort for the series. However, Bobbi Shaw and Buster Keaton joined from Pajama Party. New stars included Deborah Walley, who was then married to John Ashley in real life and whose resume included Gidget Goes Hawaiian and several Disney movies, so she fitted right in on AIP land.
The main plot of Beach Blanket Bingo focused on a manger (Paul Lynde) promoting a singer via fake stunts including a kidnapping – according to Tom Linsanti, the leading expert on these films, the singer was meant to be played by Nancy Sinatra, who turned it down as her brother Frank Sinatra Jnr had recently been kidnapped in real life; the part was instead taken by Linda Evans, pre-Big Valley. The other plots had Frankie and Annette go sky diving, Deborah Walley chase after Frankie, and John Ashley chase after Annette, Jody McCrea romance a mermaid (Marta Kristen, this instalment’s foreign temptress), and Harvey Lembeck’s Eric Von Zipper and his gang causing chaos.
Beach Blanket Bingo is a grab bag as a movie. It has an odd feel: things like John Ashley playing a rival to Avalon rather than his friend; Walley’s fake rape allegation against Avalon after he spurns her (this story lasts two scenes, as if the filmmakers knew it was a bad idea the minute they introduced it); Frankie sings this weird ballad and his character seems particularly obnoxious; Don Rickles does some unfunny nightclub act schtick; columnist Earl Wilson plays himself, as if anyone cares. On the bright side, Paul Lynde is hilarious, the romance between Jody McCrea and Marta Kristen is very sweet (so much so it’s unsatisfying that he ends up with Evans), Bobbi Shaw and Buster Keaton are fun, and there’s a gloriously silly silent film era homage chase at the end complete with a lady tied to a log as it approaches a buzzsaw. Jody McCrea gets a lot of screen time in this one as if AIP were building him up – and indeed, he was briefly announced to play Sergeant Deadhead later in in the year, but something happened because that idea was dropped.
Box office receipts on Beach Blanket Bingo were not as high as earlier entries, the film not making Variety’s list of most popular movies of 1965. This was, in part, due to the fact that there were so many other beach party movies in cinemas at the time. Most notably, Beach Blanket Bingo came out the same month as Girl Happy, Elvis Presley’s entry into the beach party genre. Elvis, of course, had helped kick off the cycle with his hugely popular series of musicals, notably Blue Hawaii. Girl Happy is probably Elvis’ most beach party-esque movie, although in fairness, its influence was more Where the Boys Are than AIP, since the plot involves Elvis heading to Fort Lauderdale to keep an eye on a tycoon’s daughter (Shelley Fabares, channelling Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas and doing it very well, too). Girl Happy is one of Elvis’ most fun, silly movies, just before the quality of his movies went into terminal decline.
A Swinging Summer, independently made and released, is a “lake party” movie, set on Lake Arrowhead outside Los Angeles. This stars James Stacy, an actor immortalised by Tim Olyphant in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and also known for being married to Connie Stevens and Kim Darby, losing a leg in an accident, getting arrested for child molestation, and trying to kill himself by jumping off a cliff in Hawaii and failing because he hit a ledge on the way down. Stacy’s female lead is Quinn O’Hara but the show is stolen by Raquel Welch in her first sizeable role as a nerd with a body like, well, Raquel Welch. The script is co-written by Leigh Chapman, a female scribe who’s become a bit of a cult figure in recent years (deservedly, she was great). Director Robert Sparr died in a plane crash a few years after this.
A Swinging Summer so impressed Columbia that it put the film’s stars – Stacy and William Wellman Jr – and producer (Reno Carell) into a winter beach party, Winter a Go Go. This is a bright, energetic film with an unfortunate comic Chinese cook, decent ski footage and a wedding at the end.
At least two black and white beach party films came out in 1965. Bob Lippert’s dull, nearly beach-free Wild on the Beach, which we mentioned in Part Two, is not worth seeing unless you’re a completionist. But Beach Girls and the Monster is absolutely terrific: it’s another attempt to cross beach party movies with horror flicks, like The Horror of Party Beach, and just as terrible. There’s a man in a bad rubber suit going on a killing rampage, some odd melodrama with Maria Montez’s old co-star Jon Hall (who directed!) as a scientist whose younger wife is sleeping around, and a music score that includes a song from kidnap victim Frank Sinatra Jnr. It is hugely bad and great fun.
Paramount released two Beach Party style films that year, both of which it had picked up from different independent financiers, although they shared the same writer (Sam Locke), some cast members (Aaron Kincaid, Dick Miller) and had plots involving raising money. Oh, and both had a connection to the Corman brothers. These were Girls on the Beach and Beach Ball.
Gene Corman produced Girls on the Beach, financed by theatre owners the Levin brothers. The plot was about three girls raising money for their sorority who romance three boys; to impress the girls, the boys pretend to be the Beatles – by this stage the British Invasion had hit. The weird thing is, the film features appearances from The Beach Boys and Lesley Gore and you spend the whole second half going, ‘why didn’t they make this plot about trying to get The Beach Boys and/or Lesley Gore?’ The songs are great, it’s hard to tell the characters apart, it’s bright and colourful.
Gene Corman’s brother Roger financed Beach Ball, which is even more entertaining than Girls on the Beach. It stars Edd Byrnes, aka Kookie from 77 Sunset Strip, who’d just made The Secret Invasion for Corman; he adds some sleazy B list star power to the cast in what is a cheery movie with great music (NB. we can’t stress enough that the standard of music in beach party films was consistently high – not so much because the composers were geniuses, but more because they had so many guest appearances from top acts. Beach Ball alone features The Supremes, The Four Seasons, The Walker Brothers, The Hondelles and The Righteous Brothers). Again, it’s hard to tell the characters apart at times – this was a lesson the AIP knock-offs never learned from AIP beach party movies, which generally had distinctive characters. However, it’s a lot of fun – it’s a personal favourite of beach party historian Tom Lisanti.
The quality of Girls on the Beach on a low budget impressed AIP, who hired Gene Corman to produce Ski Party. This was technically the studio’s sixth beach party movie, although there’s no recurring characters from earlier entries in the series, so aficionados consider it separate. Ski Party used much of the AIP stock company but had a new writer (Robert Kaufman) and director (Alan Rafkin) and more of a conventional plot, being a knock-off of Some Like It Hot. Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman (star of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis who’d signed a three picture deal with AIP) play two college guys who pretend to be women on a ski trip to discover more about women, particularly Deborah Walley and Yvonne Craig. Various shenanigans ensue, including studly Aron Kincaid falling for Hickman in drag, Swedish Bobbi Shaw (especially sweet and likeable) chasing after Avalon, Annette Funicello making a cameo as a college professor making out with one of her students (Annette’s most saucy screen appearance), and Lesley Gore singing “Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows”. The “am I watching this or is this a fever dream” cake is taken by James Brown, who plays a ski patrol man singing “I Feel Good”. Don’t believe us?
There’s lots of fun in Ski Party, as well as the inevitable dodginess from a 1965 Hollywood movie about the differences between men and women. A delighted AIP signed Aron Kincaid to a contract, put Hickman into How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, and assigned its writer and the team of Avalon and Hickman to Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which was going to be the studio’s big film of the year. However, when Ski Party was released to cinemas it turned out to be a commercial disappointment. This would have worried AIP, which had How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Sergeant Deadhead, Dr Goldfoot and Pajama Party in the Haunted House in the pipeline.
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini – essentially Beach Party Part 6 – hit cinemas the month after Ski Party. This film, directed by William Asher, has become legendary in its way, mostly due to its title, some hilariously obvious KFC product placement, and the fact that Annette Funicello is so clearly pregnant. There are some familiar faces – Funicello, John Ashley, Jody McCrea, Harvey Lembeck, Bobbi Shaw and Buster Keaton – plus a new bombshell (Beverley Adams), and some veterans (Mickey Rooney, Brian Donlevy). Frankie Avalon is in it too, but only briefly: the plot has him in the navy, sending a stork via a witchdoctor to watch over Annette, who’s romanced by Dwayne Hickman. Hickman matches well with Annette, and they’d be a nice couple in a regular movie, but his character is not into her and she’s not into him, not really, and Hickman doesn’t make friends with Ashley or McCrea, creating an unsatisfactory core to the film. At heart, the beach party movies were about love and friendship and it’s missing in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. The Claymation credits are interesting and there’s a bright cameo at the end from Asher’s then-wife Elizabeth Montgomery, spoofing her role on Bewitched. The film did poorly at the box office, and it’s not very good.
Made and released immediately after How to Stuff a Wild Bikini was Sergeant Deadhead, an attempt by AIP to “evolve” its beach party vibe into the world of service comedies. The service comedy was a very old timey genre for AIP, but the studio possibly figured it was time to dust off those jokes and situations as soldiers started being shipped off to Vietnam. The plot was about a soldier accidentally blasted into space who becomes a hero, and develops a big head, so a lookalike is brought in. Oh, and it’s a musical.
Sergeant Deadhead was stuffed full of Beach Party alumni – Deborah Walley, John Ashley, Buster Keaton, Bobbi Shaw, Donna Loren, Les Baxter (music), Guy Hemric and Jerry Styner (songs), Louis Heyward (writer). There were also smaller part actors who had been in a lot of AIP movies like Mike Nader, Patti Chander, Luree Holmes and Mary Hughes, and Dwayne Hickman makes a cameo.
According to Sam Arkoff’s papers at Loyola Marymount University, the actor originally pencilled in to play Sergeant Deadhead was Jody McCrea, which is interesting – McCrea’s character in the first three Beach Party films was “Deadhead”, so Sergeant Deadhead may have originated as a Jody McCrea/Deadhead spin-off vehicle; McCrea’s character was renamed “Bonehead” for Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, indicating AIP wanted to differentiate him from Sergeant Deadhead. The latter movie doesn’t appear to exist within the Beach Party universe, however.
Another star announced for Sergeant Deadhead was Tommy Kirk, who would’ve been ideal. Kirk would have also been ideal for How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and Beach Ball – and, indeed, the actor was originally announced for those films as well, along with a John Wayne Western, The Sons of Katie Elder. However, in December 1964 Kirk was arrested for drug possession which coincided with him being replaced on all the above movies. Anyway, Frankie Avalon stepped in to play Sergeant Deadhead.
(Aside: Disney’s The Monkey’s Uncle starring Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello was filmed prior to Kirk’s arrest; it came out in August 1965 and was a monster hit, showing Hollywood that the public didn’t care. Kirk’s career was back on track – until derailed for good by his drug addiction.)
Sergeant Deadhead has some decent moments – Avalon and Walley make a nice team – but it isn’t a very good movie, maybe a little better than How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. AIP films did well when they paid homage to silent era movie comedy – the anarchy of the latter felt very much at home in movies from Hollywood’s feistiest studio. However, Sergeant Deadhead was more a throwback to old 1940s establishment army comedies: the cast includes names like Ceasar Romero, Gale Gordon and Eve Arden, and the director was old time journeyman Norman Taurog. Everyone was capable of good work, but in the case of Sergeant Deadhead, the mix didn’t work. During filming, AIP announced a sequel, Sergeant Deadhead goes to Mars, but plans for this were cancelled when the first film bombed.
In December 1965, Sam Arkoff announced “the bikini beach style has had it” – the cycle was over. There would be no Cruise Party, Jet Set Party, or The Girl in the Invisible Bikini. (Also announced, but never made, was The Big Chase, which was going to be a silent comedy vehicle for Buster Keaton – that might’ve been postponed due to Keaton going off to Europe to make War, Italian style and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and then, er, dying.)
So, the beach party film cycle was all over. But also, it wasn’t – because there were still some movies in the pipeline. And there were a few more twists and turns to go.
To find out more, stay tuned for the fourth and final part of this series.
