Mad Monster Party?

Mad Monster Party?
March 8, 1967
Rankin & Bass
Comedy, Musical, Horror, Children's
DVD
C+

This was a Halloween perennial on '70s TV, so there's a certain nostalgia for me, although I don't think the movie has aged too well.  The weakest aspect is the script, cowritten by former MAD editor Harvey Kurtzman, whose writing I've never cared for.  No, the "Mad" in the title doesn't refer to the magazine, although the character design is by Jack Davis.  The look and sound of the movie are generally solid.  Boris Karloff, as the voice of Baron von Frankenstein, has much more to do than he did in Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and he gives a fine performance.  Gale Garnett, who has a proto-Kathleen-Turner breathiness, gives the character of Francesca intelligence, wit, and even occasionally warmth.  Phyllis Diller is basically doing her usual schtick-- as the Monster's Mate, she calls hubby "Fang"-- and the design of her character is definitely based more on her than on Elsa Lanchester.  Allen Swift voices everybody else, doing some of them as celebrities: Felix as Jimmy Stewart, Yetch as Peter Lorre, and the Invisible Man as Sydney Greenstreet.  (Like Stewart's It's a Wonderful Life character in childhood, the adult Felix works in a pharmacy.)

The other aspect of the sound (other than the sound effects, which appear cartoon-style onscreen as they occur) is the music, which I'd argue is the best thing about the movie.  My favorite tune is "The Mummy" song, performed by skeletons in red Beatle wigs, but with a garage-band sound.  The background music is catchy and there aren't really any weak songs.

As for the horror genre, the movie isn't particularly frightening, nor meant to be I think.  It is a children's movie, although it has some surprising content, from Francesca falling for Felix because he slaps her (it comes across as more parodic than offensive) to the ka-boom nuclear explosion that wipes out Frankenstein's island at the end.  Well, not the very end, as that references the ending of Some Like It Hot.  (I wonder, why all the SLIH references in '65 to '67 movies?  Had it started appearing on TV around then?  Or had it taken the culture that long to catch up with its outrageousness?)  Oh, and there's a cat fight in their underwear for Francesca and the Monster's Mate.  The movie is like MAD Magazine in that it seems to be aimed at children, teens, and adults, different levels all at once.  (And there are veeblefetzers.)  I just wish it was funnier and better paced.

The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini

The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini
April 6, 1966
AIP
Comedy, Horror, Musical
VHS
C

Although this has the director, Don Weis, of Pajama Party, and the writer, Louis M. Heyward, of Pajama Party and Sgt. Deadhead, it never reaches the delightful outrageousness of either movie.  It's not for lack of throwing a very eclectic cast and plot elements together, since we get:

• As primary heroes Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley, and Patsy Kelly
• As secondary heroes, what's passing for the teen crowd these days, headed by a no longer studly but now scaredy-cat Aron Kincaid and a supposed to be mousy Nancy Sinatra, who gets only one song
• A musical number, with dancing on beds and bad rhymes, by petite Italian singer Piccola Pupa sort of as herself
• As primary villains, Basil Rathbone, his sexy but nearsighted daughter named Sinistra, a now bitchy and American Bobbi Shaw in a harem outfit, an Indian named Chicken Feather, Jesse White again as J. Sinister Hulk, and of course Mr. Robot Monster himself, George Barrows, as Monstro the gorilla  (I used to own Robot Monster, but lost it long ago and never got around to replacing it.)
• As secondary villains (and the only carryovers from Beach Party, which now seems a long three years ago), Von Zipper and his gang, who spend most of the movie hardly interacting with the rest of the cast
• Boris Karloff, in a somewhat larger role than his cameo in Bikini Beach, as The Corpse, whose will and hidden fortune bring everyone to his decrepit but stately mansion
• The thirty-years-dead title character, played by Susan Hart in an unflattering blonde wig and a non-'30s-compliant bikini (not invisible in any suggestive way), and given annoying mannerisms and unexplained changes in size (the special effects are unimpressive)
• The Bobby Fuller Four performing "Swing A-Ma Thing" in what looks like a Wham-O commercial
• A torture chamber populated by robots
• A muddied theology, where if you're bad you go to Heaven as an angel, while if you're bad but reform you become a child

I can't decide which is more or less appealing, the sloppiness of this movie or the relative slickness of Ski Party.  Both movies come across as misogynist, especially towards poor Deborah Walley, who in this one is repeatedly dragged to and from a buzz saw while tied to a log and wearing a skimpy nightie.  It's not funny and is at best irritating, since no one bothers to untie her for several minutes.  (At least Puss 'n' Boots rescued Sugar Kane when they had the chance, and they didn't even like her.)  Deborah is sort of paired up with Tommy, but they're much more fun, separately and together, in It's a Bikini World.  I guess if you're an AIP Beach Party completist, you may as well watch this, at least to see how much damage adding horror (rather than just cameos by horror stars) to the mix and taking out Frankie and Annette can do.  Not that F & A are any guarantee of entertainment, but I'll get to Fireball 500 tomorrow....

The surviving Beach Party crowd include Frank Alesia, Patti Chandler, Ed Garner, Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, and Salli Sachse, as well as relative newcomers Christopher Riordan and Sue Hamilton Williams.  They're given very little to do, other than dance by the pool that the D but S mansion has.  Besides Von Zipper, all the Ratz & Mice return:  Brutsche, Fife, Harvey, Macchia, Nelson, Romano, and Ross.  The part of the gardener was the last role for silent star Francis X. Bushman.  Benny Rubin, the forgettable Buster Keaton substitute, would play a waiter in The Shaggy D.A.

Bikini Beach

Bikini Beach
July 22, 1964
AIP
Comedy, Musical
DVD
B

This is one of the most enjoyable of the Beach Party movies, even if there's a bit too much drag-racing, and the older couple of Martha Hyer as pro-teen teacher Miss Clements and Keenan Wynn as publisher (of The Bikini Bugle) H. H. Honeywagon III don't have plausible chemistry in the way that Cummings and Malone did in Beach Party.  (A "honeywagon" is a mobile toilet unit near a film set.)  The music is generally better, not just Little Stevie Wonder making a brief return, but also the Pyramids, probably the only bald interracial band of the mid-'60s.  Donna Loren sings "Love's a Secret Weapon," which is the first of several songs in the series that seem inspired by dialogue in previous movies.  Frankie and Annette get their first romantic duet, "Because You're You," and it's very sweet.  Most memorably, Frankie, in his role as the British pop star the Potato Bug, a weak but likable Beatles parody, sings a couple songs, with "yeah, yeahs" and McCartneyesque oos.

Instead of Frankie trying to make Dee Dee jealous, Annette casually makes him jealous with, yes, the Potato Bug.  Partly for this reason, and partly for her relatively revealing and polka-dotted wardrobe, she seems to be having more fun than in previous entries, where she too often sat sulking at a table at the teen hangout as Frankie frolicked with other girls.  This time the hangout is Big Drag's Pit Stop, with Don Rickles as Big Drag.  ("I used to be in the fanny business, but that's all behind me now.")  He paints Jackson-Pollock-ish modern art, which catches the eye of an art dealer, played by this film's horror vet guest star, Boris Karloff.

This movie marks the return of Von Zipper and his gang, and we see that a year later (this is set in the summer, while Muscle BP was set over Easter vacation), he's still affected by the "Himalayan suspenders trick," able to accidentally give himself "the finger."  Frankie remarks that Von Zipper is stoned again, I think in the earlier sense of "drunk" or maybe "unconscious," although you can't be sure with these movies.  There are also cops (played by actors who've done a ton of TV although probably not any other of my movies) who are suspected of drinking on the job.  And there's the sound of a toilet flushing.  (Pajama Party would outdo this though.)  Also, there seem to be more shots than usual of the California coast, as well as a not too convincing small town that the chase scene goes through.  (One street is full of New-York-like brownstones.)

With a talking bird, a surfing "chimp" (Janos Prohaska in a costume, as he'd appear on Gilligan's Island, among other TV shows), and a "teenage werewolf monster," the movie verges on sci-fi/fantasy, but doesn't clearly cross over as later entries would.  Asher again cowrote the script with Robert Dillon, so I'm guessing that it's the addition of Leo Townsend that made the overall difference.  (Asher and Townsend would team up for Beach Blanket Bingo, without Dillon.)

Frank Alesia, Patti Chandler (the girl who keeps walking by the camera in a bikini and heels), and Keenan's 23-year-old son Ned join the Beach Party crowd, while John Ashley, Jody McCrea, Linda Benson, Roger Christian, Mickey Dora, Johnny Fain, Ed Garner, Guy Hemric, Luree Holmes, Mary Hughes, Duane King, Darlene Lucht, Meredith MacRae (as the new "Animal," and getting to utter one of the first onscreen uses of the word "groovy" since the '30s), Linda Opie, Salli Sachse, Gary Usher, Dolores Wells (still "Sniffles"), and of course Mike Nader return.  (Here, Nader really establishes his role as the guy who has mishaps happen to him.  You just know that he'll be the one whose chair is yanked right out from under him when he's smooching a girl, and it's of course his surfboard that Clyde borrows.)

Allen Fife joins the Rat Pack of Andy "J.D." Romano (who we learn has to read to Von Zipper, who never went past the 3rd grade), Jerry Brutsche, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, Alberta Nelson, and Linda Rogers.  Ronnie Dayton, who plays the Potato in the shots he shares with Frankie, would become one the Beach Party crowd in subsequent films (and had done stunts in the earlier two entries).

Old Lady #2 Renie Riano would play a maid in Pajama Party.  Timothy Carey would reprise his role as South Dakota Slim in Beach Blanket Bingo.  Meredith MacRae's mother Sheila plays a secretary here, as she would in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.  Elizabeth Montgomery, whose Bewitched would premiere that fall, was Asher's new wife and she does the French-accented voice for the Lady Bug.  She would have a cameo in a later entry.