It's a Bikini World

It's a Bikini World
April 14, 1967
Trans American
Comedy, Musical, Romance
VHS
B-

Although this was made a year and a half before it was released, it doesn't feel as dated as The Cool Ones.  I attribute this to some degree to writer/director Stephanie Rothman.  She must be at least partially responsible for the more feminist than usual take on the "battle of the sexes," with Deborah Walley allowed to not only combine her usually alternating tomboy and glamorous personae but also holding her own in the athletic contests against the partially cast against type Tommy Kirk as a conceited jock.  They're named Delilah Dawes and Mike Samson respectively.  Get it, Delilah and Samson?  She doesn't emasculate him, or cut his hair.  Instead, he tricks her into thinking he's his nerdy brother Herbert.  (It's a geekier character than Kirk's Merlin Jones, although still within his usual range.  One of his outfits clearly looks like it inspired Peewee Herman's gray suit.)

Another notable thing about the movie is its cartoony style, visual and otherwise.  Not only are there moments that become cartoons-- either changed to drawings and/or featuring speech bubbles-- but there are times when the action is sped up.  When a glass pane is run through without shattering and then rematerializes and breaks, it could be an AIP moment, but Rothman does it with a different feel.  And, while I said I don't like racing movies, I meant stock-car racing.  I enjoy the wackiness of the "cross-country race" that includes not just skateboarding, speed-boating, and swimming (22 miles!), but camel-riding, hitchhiking, and of course dresser-pushing.

There are also some offbeat lines, most notably those of Sid Haig as promoter Daddy.  (Another take on Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.)  My favorites are "Greetings, surfers, hodads, gremmies, and independents," "Fuschia #1, Fuschia #2, or Fuschia #3?  Also known as Groovy Grape," and, after Delilah is unimpressed to have won decals, "And of course the admiration of us all."  Jack Bernardi, who plays the publisher Harvey Pulp (ha ha) was also in Beach Ball.  I don't think I've seen William O'Connell in anything else, but I like how he plays McSnigg the photographer likes he's Dick York's less inhibited brother.  Suzie Kaye, who's Pebbles here, would be Sally in Clambake.  And, yes, that's Bobby "Monster Mash" Pickett as Woody.  Jim Begg again doesn't have much to do, but he does wear his "Crayola hat" from Catalina Caper.  (I'll get to that when I do MST3K on my TV blog someday.)  Russell Johnson appears briefly in an Attack of the Crab Monsters clip.

And, finally, there are the musical acts, ranging from the Animals doing "We Gotta Get out of This Place" to another band singing such juvenile lines as "Liar, liar, pants on fire, your nose is longer than a telephone wire," while yet another band manages the "Yummy Yummy Yummy, I've got love in my tummy" trick of bringing out suggestiveness in a song that compares love to peanut butter and jam.

I have a soft spot for this movie, but I must admit it's not as much sheer fun as The Cool Ones.  (With this one, you can catch your breath between the WTF moments.)  Still, I'd put it on a level with Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo.  Some say that this was the last gasp for the '60s beach movies, but I say that in some ways it remained a bikini world.

Spinout

Spinout
December 14, 1966
Comedy, Musical
MGM
VHS
B-

The Medveds selected this as one of their 50 Worst Movies of All Time, when it's not even the worst Elvis movie.  (But then, they also picked Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!, which isn't even the worst Bob Hope sex comedy.)  It is the most entertaining of my '66 movies, an admittedly dubious achievement.  It has some things in common with Girl Happy, notably a romance with Shelley Fabares, and Elvis leading a music combo that features Jimmy Hawkins.  In that movie, the music cues told us that Elvis's pals were three blind mice, while here they are stooges named Larry, Curly, and...Les?  Les is a tomboy drummer, played by Deborah Walley, so already we can see that the formula's being mixed up a bit.  (Since she's a redhead, it's like she's the grandmother of the Kim character in Scott Pilgrim.)   Les has an unrequited crush on Elvis, and there's a Helen-Gurley-Brownish writer pursuing Elvis, too.  In the end he "marries all of them," to other men.  (I think he means he gives them away, although this may be a very early case of people getting married by Elvis.)  Along the way, there are some songs that range from romantic to silly, Elvis lines that include the word "kosher" and a Don Adams imitation, and Carl Betz, Shelley's TV dad, playing her attractive big-screen dad.  Oh, and some racing, but it isn't as boring as in most movies, because it focuses on the competition between various characters, rather than the racing per se.

Una Merkel, of The Bank Dick and The Road to Zanzibar, has one of her last roles, as Mrs. Radley.  Dave Barry (not that Dave Barry) was much more memorable as Beinstock in Some Like It Hot than he is as Harry here.  Christopher Riordan, who was a latecomer to the AIP Beach Party series, appears in a small role.  Victoria Carroll was the shoeshine girl in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, and she plays Award Girl here.  (She's probably best known as Mel's girlfriend Marie on Alice.)  Nancy Czar was in Girl Happy and Winter A-Go-Go.  Arlene Charles was also in Winter AGG.  Phyllis Davis and Deanna Lund were models in The Swinger.

Warren Berlinger, who plays fainter Philip, and Diane McBain, who's writer Diana St. Clair, would be in another racing movie, Thunder Alley.  Dodie Marshall, who plays Susan, the girl who takes the drumming spot, would do Elvis's Easy Come, Easy Go, Will Hutchins ("Officer Tracy," the friendly gourmet cop) Clambake, Sheryl Ullman Speedway, and Thordis Brandt Live a Little, Love a Little.  James McHale plays Shorty and would do The Love God? Two of Elvis's real-life friends, Red West, who was in Girl Happy, and Joe Esposito, who'd be in Clambake, play members of Shorty's pit crew.

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.

Ski Party

Ski Party
June (?) 30, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical
DVD
C

This may be the low for the AIP Beach Party and Spin-Offs series.  (It's been awhile since I've seen The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and there are the "racing" movies with Fabian coming up, so I'm not going to commit myself just yet.)  Alan Rafkin has mostly directed for TV, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the script is by Robert Kaufman, who also wrote AIP's Dr. Goldfoot movies, which I've never cared for.  There are serious problems with this script, most notably the fact that Frankie*, and to some degree his sidekick Dwayne, won't take no for an answer when it comes to kissing+ (Yvonne's character laughs as she tells of Dwayne tying her up with hair ribbons on their first date!), dress in drag (in what Dwayne acknowledges onscreen is a Some Like It Hot rip-off) in order to spy on girls (oh, and to learn to ski on the bunny slope, not exactly on the level of having a Chicago mob chasing after you), and worst of all drive a mentally ill man further into insanity.  And then in the end, Deborah's character is the one who apologizes!  Deborah wonders what Yvonne did wrong and the future Batgirl replies, "Guilt by association."

There are really only two reasons to watch this movie, and they may not be enough for all but the completist.  One, there's more of the AIP fourth-wall-breaking than we usually get, by both Frankie and Dwayne.  (The latter had practice on Dobie Gillis.)  At one point, Frankie asks what the average age of the audience is, and Dwayne replies 15, so they have to leave the slumber party.  There's also one of the odder cameos at AIP, Annette Funicello playing a hot 35-year-old professor.  (A TILF?)  IMDB says this movie came out in June, but I'm not sure where it actually falls in the Series & Related chronology.  Since I'm reviewing Winter A-Go-Go later today, this seemed like the best place for it.  And, no, AIP never made Cruise Party, as the end credits promise/threaten.

The other good thing about this movie is the music, no, not those darn Hondells, who sing the forgettable title song, but Leslie Gore doing her hit "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows," and the fabulous James Brown and the Famous Flames.  The soul band shows up just before the hour-mark, Yvonne says she has all their albums (since she's cooler than the rest of the cast, I believe her), and then we get a poorly dubbed but wonderfully choreographed rendition of "I Got You (I Feel Good)."  Then they leave, unfortunately, taking most of the energy with them.  Even getting back to the beach at the end doesn't help.

The returning Beach Party crowd includes Patti Chandler, Jo Collins, Mickey Dora, Ed Garner, Mike Nader (given a couple lines), Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Christopher Riordan, and Salli Sachse.  Bobbi Shaw is again Swedish but seems a bit more fluent than usual.  Aron Kincaid plays a blond stud like he did in Beach Ball, although he ends up falling for Dwayne's alter ego, "Nora."  (Since this is a feeble answer to Some LIH, he gives Nora his pin.  Dwayne/Nora seems to return his feelings, but later claims to have been kidding.  Uh huh.)  Mikki Jamison and Bill Sampson were in Beach Ball with Aron, as was Dick Miller, who this time plays the taxi driver.


*This time, none of the characters have the performers' names.  I just don't care enough to type them all out.  One girl is named "Indian" for inexplicable reasons.

Sergeant Deadhead

Sergeant Deadhead
August 18, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical, Sci-Fi
VHS
B

The same day that you could first see Annette singing about her ambition to be a monkey's aunt, you could watch Frankie "being shot up with a monkey."  (In each case, it's actually a chimp.)  Outdoing his double role in Bikini Beach, Frankie plays the title character, who undergoes a personality change while up in space (with the "monkey"), but he also plays Sgt. Donovan, a patriotic lookalike.  Much of the usual AIP crowd is around (see below), but we also get officers played by Fred Clark, Reginald Gardiner, Gale Gordon, Cesar Romero, and best of all Eve Arden, who has perfect comic delivery and even gets to sing a very Ardenic song, "You Should've Seen the One That Got Away."  She's named Lt. Kinsey, and the movie has a lot of tasteless but amusing sex humor, much of it involving the Frankies and Deborah Walley (as Lucy) at her sexiest.  The movie succeeds at some of what John Goldfarb attempted, including political satire.  Not that this is sophisticated wit-- after all it's still AIP-- but it is very funny.  After I don't know how many viewings (although none in recent years), I still giggle helplessly whenever I listen to Pat Buttram as the irritable, Southern-accented President.  ("If I had my spurs on, I'd kick you in the shins!  I'll sic the dogs on ya!")  I'd go with a B+, like Pajama Party (also penned by Louis M. Heyward), but the first 15 or 20 minutes are a bit slow (Buster Keaton, in his last AIP appearance, is given some unfunny slapstick), and, alas, there's no title song.  On the other hand, I love the sheer goofiness of a military band that can only play "Jingle Bells."

John Ashley is cast against type as a nerd with sinus trouble, while Jody McCrea (who used to be known as Deadhead) is nowhere in sight.  Other beach folk who've joined up include Ray Atkinson, Bruce Baker, Patti Chandler,  Jo Collins, Sue Hamilton, Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Janice Levinson, Stephanie Nader, and Salli Sachse.  This time Mike Nader is teamed up for comedic purposes with Norman Grabowski, as air policemen.

The recasting of the Ratz and Mice is less obvious: John Macchia and Andy Romano as Marine MPs, Alberta Nelson as a WAF, but also Jerry Brutsche as the newspaper vendor and Bob Harvey as the bellhop.  (Both Jeromey and Robert find Lucy "Va-va-va-voom!)  As for Harvey Lembeck, he's still inept and menacing, as the man who breaks out of the guardhouse using exploding fountain pens.

Bobbi Shaw is now American and named Gilda.  Donna Loren is another WAF and gets a torchy solo at the wedding reception.  Dwayne Hickman has a brief appearance but gets a special thank-you in the end credits. Romo Vincent, the tuba player, would be Jack Happy in The Swinger.  Newsman Ed Reimers plays himself here but would be an announcer in The Barefoot Executive, which, yes, also features a chimp.

Beach Blanket Bingo

Beach Blanket Bingo
April 14, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical, Fantasy
DVD
B-

This is a lot of people's favorite Beach Party movie and it's easy to see why.   The script is again by director William Asher and Leo Townsend, so the formula was fully worked out but not yet stale.  The guest stars are recognizable, especially in retrospect Linda Evans as Sugar Kane.  (Yes, the same spelling as Marilyn's character in Some Like It Hot.)  Frankie & Dee Dee get another nice duet, this one more uptempo and in a round.  (Annette's hair by the way finally looks its natural black, no visible red highlights.)  The title song is the catchiest in the series, and the first half of the movie is pretty solid.  The Bonehead (McCrea, no longer Deadhead, but close enough) & mermaid (Marta Kristen) romance is actually sweet and funny.  And, yes, my fave Mike Nader, now named Butch, gets a bunch of lines (including saying the word "groovy" at least three times, as in "Let's dig this groovy chick"), some stuntwork, and a bit of a romance himself.  (With either Patti Chandler as Patti or newbie Donna Michelle as the latest Animal, I think the latter.  Patti Chandler seems to be one of the end-credits dancers.)  Don Rickles, now Big Drop, gets a seemingly improvised scene where he insults Frankie and friends like he's in Vegas, while Paul Lynde goes through the entire movie powered by deserved snark.  (His sidekick is Earl Wilson as himself, not having aged much in the eighteen years since Copacabana.)

All that said, I find the movie in the middle range of the series, about equivalent to the first entry.  Part of the problem is that Donna Loren gets only one song, while Linda Evans gets two.  (And Linda's are dubbed!)  More seriously, the movie has two plot threads that just don't work.  One is the kidnapping of Sugar by Von Zipper and his Rat Pack, which leads to her rekidnapping by South Dakota Slim, again played by Timothy Carey.  The other is the Bonnie & Steve jealousy subplot.  The two skydiving instructors who work for Big Drop are played by then spouses Deborah Walley and John Ashley.  Now, I don't have a problem with Ashley playing someone outside the Beach Party crowd (especially since it means an expanded role for Mike Nader), and I find Walley a welcome addition to the AIP family.  They have good chemistry together, as do she and Frankie.  But this is my least favorite of her AIP roles because Bonnie not only tries to make Steve jealous with Frankie, she rips her blouse and tries to convince everyone that Frankie attacked her!  The only good thing to come out of this plotline is Annette's line "Don't you 'I love you' me!"

Returning members of the Beach Party crowd are Frank Alesia, Duane Ament, Ray Atkinson, Linda Benson,  Linda Opie Bent, Pam Colbert, Ronnie Dayton, Mickey Dora, Johnny Fain, Ed Garner, Guy Hemric, Luree Holmes, Mary Hughes, Darlene Lucht, Laura Nicholson, Salli Sachse, and Ned Wynn.  There's also newcomer Stephanie Nader, but I don't know if she's related to Mike.

Dark-haired, frowning Myrna Ross replaces auburn-haired, smiling Linda Rogers in the Rat Pack, and Von Zipper refers to her and Alberta as Puss 'n' Boots.  (Alberta is Puss, I guess because she has seniority.)  Jerry Brutsche (still Jeromey, and continuing the Duck Soup sidecar rip-off), Allen Fife, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, and of course Andy "J.D." Romano (still reading the newspaper to Von Zipper) are all back.  Buster Keaton is now playing "Buster" and dressing like he did in the silent days, while Bobbi Shaw, as "Bobbi," is still Swedish and spends the entire movie in the gold & mink bikini she bought at Aunt Wendy's dress shop.

The Hondells would do some other teen flicks I own, but they're not very memorable here or elsewhere.  Jackie Ward, who dubs Sugar's singing voice, would also sing in Charlotte's Web.  Paul Lynde would rock the house in that movie, as Templeton the rat, and in the meantime he would get a TV gig as Uncle Arthur on Asher's Bewitched.

"Into groups of two"?  Math isn't their strong point.

Gidget Goes Hawaiian

Gidget Goes Hawaiian
June 21, 1961
Columbia
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B+

This is an utterly delightful sequel, improving on the original in every regard.  No offence to Sandra Dee, but I think this is a great debut for Deborah Walley, then almost 20.  She could actually surf and this would be far from her last beach movie.  She's spunky in a different way than Dee, more obviously tomboyish, and she actually comes across as more innocent.  (Ironic, considering her AIP roles.)  She even has a bit of chemistry with James Darren, who stops being a jerk for the last 20 or 30 minutes of the movie.

Instead of just a triangle, we get a nine-sided group of teens and post-teens, with various pairings possible, although if the movie does have a weakness, it's that two of the guys and two of the girls are forgettable.  The other girl, Abby, is played by the deliciously feline Vicki Trickett.  (She's even scared of water, which pays off in her "punishment" at the end.)  Moondoggie's main rival is Michael Callan, playing a charming dancer, Eddie Horner.  (He gets saddled with a Broadway-Melody-Ballet-like number, but it's shorter and more bearable.)  Joby Baker actually plays a different character in this one (not just his nickname, since Judge has never met Gidget or Moondoggie before), and he adds to the hokey comedy.  Not that the film isn't genuinely funny much of the time.

It helps that Gidget's parents and Abby's are played by respectively Carl Reiner, Jeff Donnell (she nicknamed herself after "Mutt and Jeff," not after Moondoggie's birth name), Peggy Cass, and Eddie Foy, Jr.  They get a lot of screen time and they deserve it.  Not only do they all know how to make the most of out of their lines, but they manage to make Gidget's suspicions of wife-swapping plausible.  Yes, wife-swapping, although it's not called that.  She has a vivid imagination, and when Abby spreads rumors that Gidget sleeps around (not that it's called that), Gidget imagines herself as, in order, a streetwalker, a fan-dancer, and an unwed mother!  The movie is surprisingly outrageous, and even has jokes about suicide.  Yet it never comes across as sleazy.  Even when Moondoggie, Eddie, and Judge are singing the title tune and 'Doggie emphasizes, "When the Gidget goes Hawaiian, she goes Hawaiian all the way," it's suggestive, not tasteless.

This is the most fun movie of the '60s so far.  I will note in terms of continuity, that this is allegedly set the summer after the first movie, making Gidget almost 18.  Jeff pinning her is changed to this year rather than last.  I'll talk more about chronology when we get to Gidget Goes to Rome, also written by Ruth Brooks Flippen.

Donnell would return as Mrs. Lawrence for GG to Rome, but Foy would be "Beachgoer Wanting to Use Phone."  Don Edmonds, who plays forgettable guy Larry, would do Beach Ball.