Thunder Alley

Thunder Alley
March 22, 1967
AIP
Drama
DVD
C-

This is more of a drama than Fireball 500, although Annette does get a nice solo.  (Fabian again doesn't sing.)  Much of it is boring, but I was surprised by the relative depth to Annette's character and Diane McBain's, with the two rivals bonding despite their competition over Fabian.  McBain and Fabian have a racy (no pun intended) scene in a motel, racier than Frankie's with Julie Parrish.  They're both topless in bed, although she's got that movie-only thing of the sheet pulled up to her armpits.  There's also a wilder-than-a-beach-party party where one girl dances in her bra and miniskirt while another strips to nothing.  (We see her clothes flying but no actual nudity.)

Fabian is as bland as ever, but Warren Berlinger gets to be a "nice guy" turned wrong, and Jan Murray is pretty good as Annette's money-grubbing but good-hearted father.  However, the guys just aren't as interesting as Annette, who's out of character but still likable, even as she does amateur psychoanalysis, stunt driving, drunk driving, and man-stealing.

Surviving Beach Party crowd members are Ronnie Dayton, Guy Hemric, Luree Nicholson Holmes, Mary Hughes, Salli Sachse, and Rosemary Williams (the English girl in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini).  As in F500, they're not given much to do.

Announcer Sandy Reed was in F500 and would be in Speedway.  Baynes Barron also did F500 and would be in C.H.O.M.P.S.  Maureen Arthur, who plays Babe, would have similar blonde bimbo roles with a humorous side in How to Commit Marriage and The Love God?  I don't think I have any other Michael Bell movies, but he did make two memorable appearances as sleazeballs on Three's Company.

"So I said, if I sing in a movie, how can I be taken seriously as an actor?"

Fireball 500

Fireball 500
June 7, 1966
AIP
Drama, Musical
DVD
C-

When this movie started, I got my hopes up for a moment that Art Clokey had directed it, as I joked on my How to Stuff a Wild Bikini post.  Alas, it's just a bit of Claymation in a humorous opening that fails to set the tone for what is essentially a drama with some wisecracks and songs in it.  If Sgt. Deadhead and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini are sort of cousins to the basic Beach Party series, this is a more distant relation, despite the cast and a script by director Asher and his frequent BP cowriter Leo Townsend.  I find racing boring, so it was guaranteed I wasn't going to like this.  Also Frankie flirts unsuccessfully with Annette, and they're mostly paired with much less attractive (personalities as well as physically) people: he with Julie Parrish, who was Dee Dee in Winter a-Go-Go, although I don't think she was wearing the unflattering blonde wig there; Annette with a very wooden Fabian, who once again doesn't sing.  Annette and particularly Frankie do, and he gets a surprisingly good, sort of Elvisy song, "My Way."  The movie is set in the South, with not only the Californian scenery unconvincingly trying to pass, but also people like the formerly Brooklynese Harvey Lembeck.

The movie has more "adult" content than the Beach Party series, with not only drinking and moonshining, but Frankie and Julie spending time together in a motel, he without his shirt, as she grabs his butt.  There's belly-dancing, with costumes that look suspiciously like Bobbi Shaw's circus outfit in Invisible Bikini.  Also, the fist fights aren't played for laughs, and Mike Nader's character dies.  (You will see it coming as soon as he has a brief bonding moment with Frankie.)  I vaguely remember trying to watch either this movie or its successor, Thunder Alley, on TV years ago but getting bored and giving up.  They're both on my DVD collection of "Frankie & Annette" movies, although this barely qualifies as an F & A movie and I think Thunder doesn't even have Frankie.  Bottom line, if you like racing or are a hardcore AIP completist, watch this with lowered standards.  All others, beware.

Besides Nader, some of the Beach Party crowd shows up, although not given much more to do than in Invisible Bikini.  Ed Garner (presumably aged up) plays the farmer, Sue Hamilton his daughter.  Beach girls turned race fans, including Fabian's "eager beavers," are Linda Opie Bent, Patti Chandler, Jo Collins, Mary Hughes, Luree Nicholson Holmes, and Salli Sachse.

Chill Wills, who plays Annette's uncle, was in It's a Gift more than thirty years earlier.  Renee Riano was the maid in Bikini Beach.  Len Lesser, who was North Dakota Pete in How to Stuff, is a man in the garage here.  Announcer Sandy Reed and Baynes Barron, Agent Bronson here, would also appear in Thunder Alley.

Dear Brigitte

Dear Brigitte
January 8, 1965
Fox
Comedy
VHS
C+

Although this has the same director, screenwriter, and studio as Take Her, She's Mine, I think it's a weaker film.  I don't know how much of this can be blamed on the book it's based on, Erasmus with Freckles (1963), but the movie feels as if it was both immediately dated and too early.  Billy Mumy (now 10 but still passing for 8) plays Erasmus, who's a mathematical genius with a huge crush on Brigitte Bardot.  She shows up late in the film (not at all worried about stalkers, although they were a real life problem for her), and is as lovely as ever, but I always got the impression she was more of a '50s star, and of rather racy movies at that, and it seems odd that a boy as young as Erasmus would have a crush on her, as opposed to, say, Sandra Dee.

Speaking of Gidget, Cindy Carol again follows in Dee's footsteps, this time as Jimmy Stewart's teenage daughter.  Carol is just as whiny, and as poor an actress, as she was in Gidget Goes to Rome, and there's an odd moment when she calls her father a "square" because he's not obsessed with money like she is.  Part of the weirdness of this movie is that Stewart is playing a proto-hippie-- a poetry professor who lives on a houseboat, hates math and science, and is worried about the nuclear generator on campus, as well as about what "this campus will be like in five years"-- and it's not only strange casting, but it seems like it would have worked better in a '70s or '80s movie.

Oh, and there's also a gambling subplot, with the usually upright John Williams as the unscrupulous Peregrine Upjohn.  Glynis Johns, as Stewart's wife, is given a bit more depth than she got in Mary Poppins, while Ed Wynn again supplies whimsy, this time talking to the camera, "like in that movie Tom Jones."  (In case you were wondering why Frankie Avalon keeps doing it in the Beach Party movies.)  Fabian plays Cindy Carol's boyfriend, but, no, he doesn't sing.  (The idea of him crooning "Dear Brigitte" as a title song, a la all those James Darren "Gidget" songs, is not without appeal.)

The always versatilely accented Jack Kruschen plays the Austrian (I think) psychiatrist Dr. Volker.  Louise Lane, who plays the saleslady, was "Jazzy Dame" in Auntie Mame.  Harry Carter, who was "Man Departing Plane" in Take Her is a reporter here; James Brolin again plays a college student; Pitt Herbert, who was a police sergeant there, is the bank manager here; Gene O'Donnell, Frank there, is Police Lt. Rink here; and Charles Robinson, who was Stanley, is now George.  As in Pajama Party, Jesse White plays a crook, this time bookie Cliff Argyle.

Paula Lane and Jane Wald would shortly be in John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!  Lyn Edgington would soon do Girl Happy.  Richard Lane, who's the racetrack announcer here, would be the roller rink announcer in The Shaggy D.A.  (As far as I know, none of these Lanes are related.)

"Technology is a great threat!  Oo, nifty instant photo!"