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.

Muscle Beach Party

Muscle Beach Party
March 25, 1964
AIP
Comedy, Musical
DVD
C+

Released the same day as Merlin Jones, this shows Annette's hair looking closer to its usual black, although still with strong red highlights, in some scenes more than others.  It also shows Annette/Dee Dee surfing with Frankie, which is a rarity in these films.  (Annette hated the beach in real life.)  And we see Frankie smoking again, including right after he surfed and as he's singing.  (The Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health came out in January of that year, and we will see a gradual decrease in onscreen smoking, but not yet.)

The songs, including the very weak retread of "Don't Stop Now," "Running Wild," as a tribute to Cappy's Place, are for the most part less memorable in this entry, except for "Happy Street" sung twice by 13-year-old Little Stevie Wonder, who'd had a hit with "Fingertips" but was not yet the star he'd become.  If I could use more tags on these posts, I'd tag him, since he'd appear in the follow-up, Bikini Beach.  And I'd tag Morey Amsterdam, who's back as Cappy, although given less to do this time.  Instead of Vincent Price as Big Daddy, we've got Peter Lorre as Mr. Strangdour, one of his last roles, although the credits promise him in Bikini Beach.

Instead of Bob Cummings and Dorothy Malone, we've got Luciana Paluzzi as an Italian contessa and Buddy Hackett seriously miscast as her sarcastic business manager S. Z.  I can't help wondering if the movie might've been improved if Hackett had swapped roles with Don Rickles, who plays wimpy Jack Fanny, manager of a group of musclemen.  This is a parody of Vic Tanny, although everyone calls the character by his full name, so that they can say, "Fanny."  (This naughtiness seems mild compared to the scene where one of the beach guys says either "Let's bug out of here" or "Let's get the f*** out of here.")

This time William Asher not only directed the movie, but he cowrote the script with Robert Dillon, and they'd team up for Bikini Beach as well.  There's some de ja vu here, with jokes being recycled (some not for the last time, as with "You can say that again"), not to mention redone situations like a fight scene at the local teen hangout, but the movie is most notable for what's missing: Eric Von Zipper.  The musclemen just aren't as interesting as the "carbon monoxide commandos."  I'm still using the "Ratz & Mice" tag though, because Alberta Nelson appears as a muscle girl and Bob Harvey (the slightly craggy-faced guy) as a sound-man.

Jody McCrea is still Deadhead, but John Ashley is now known as Johnny instead of Ken.  Candy returns as Candy, now a "secret weapon" who knocks men off their feet and/or surfboards with her fringed go-going.  Donna Loren is introduced as Donna, helping to make the last third of the movie better than the first hour.

Other new additions to the Beach Party crowd include Linda Benson, Guy Hemric, Mary Hughes, Duane King, Darlene Lucht, Linda Opie, and Salli Sachse.  Duane Ament, Roger Christian, Mickey Dora, John Fain, Ed Garner, Ashlyn Martin, Valora Noland (changing from "Rhonda" to "Animal"), Luree Nicholson (now using her married name of Holmes), Lorrie Summers, Gary Usher, Delores Wells (with her character's name changed from "Sue" to "Sniffles"!), and my fave Mike Nader (he this time with a few slangy lines) return.

Future Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty plays muscleman Biff, and he'd show up in Girl Happy the next year.

Beach Party

Beach Party
August 7, 1963
American International Pictures
Comedy, Musical
DVD
B-

Not bad start to the most famous teen-movie series since Andy Hardy, this is meant to be taken a bit less seriously than the Gidget movies, if not so absurd as the later BP movies would get.  This one has Frankie talking to the audience, Annette (as auburn-haired Dolores) singing advice to herself, and a not fully worked out scheme of love and jealousy.  Is Dolores really just after Professor Bob Cummings to make Frankie jealous, or is she genuinely attracted?  Why does Frankie find it hard to tell Dee Dee (and no, I don't know why it's not Do Do with that spelling) he loves her but he can absent-mindedly say it to Ava (Eva Six)?  Why don't we get any duets with Frankie & Dee Dee, other than the title tune?  And who's the girl with the sexy eyes that has all that chemistry with Frankie in his "Don't Stop Now" number?

Meanwhile, Cummings and the witty Dorothy Malone play an appealing middle-aged couple.  Morey Amsterdam is the sort-of-beatnik running the local hangout, here called Big Daddy's, after the mysterious figure who's revealed to be Vincent Price, there to plug his AIP horror movies.  And of course there's Harvey Lembeck as a brainless Brando (a not so wild one), Eric Von Zipper.  Other than Andy Romano, who plays sidekick J.D., his motorcycle gang of Ratz & Mice are, in alphabetical order, Jerry Brutsche, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, Alberta Nelson (blonde Mouse), and Linda Rogers (auburn-haired Mouse).

John Ashley plays Ken here.  Jody McCrea, who plays Deadhead, is the son of actor Joel McCrea.  (Confusingly, Meredith MacRae is the daughter of Gordon and Sheila MacRae.  She's probably best known for the sitcom Petticoat Junction.)  Valora Noland, who plays Rhonda here (although I'm sure Annette calls her Wanda at first) would in Muscle Beach Party become the first of several actresses to play "Animal" in the series.  Candy Johnson is the fringe-wearing dancer Candy.  Dick Dale (of the Del Tones) plays Dick, and even has his name called out at the beginning of the fight scene (see below), so he can play bongo accompaniment.

Some of the rest of the "Beach Party crowd" in this movie includes musicians Roger Christian and Gary Usher, as well as, in alphabetical order, Duane Ament, Pam Colbert, Mickey Dora, John Fain, Ed Garner, Ashlyn Martin, Laura and Luree Nicholson (yes, the daughters of AIP co-producer James H. Nicholson), Bobby Payne (who would go on to The Muppet Movie, as Robert Payne), Lorie Summers, and Delores Wells.    My personal favorite is Mike Nader, not so much for this movie as his later appearances, especially in Beach Blanket Bingo.  Here he's the tall, thin brunet in a gray sweater in the first Big Daddy's scene.  Brunette yoga girl Sharon Garrett would be a go-go girl in Speedway.

William Asher would go on to direct the rest of the basic series of five.  (I'll discuss the matter of what counts and doesn't, as we go along.)  This first entry not only builds on what the Gidget movies brought to the table, but introduces what would soon be its own traditions, including the big silly fight at the end (this time with a seemingly endless supply of cream pies).  Later entries would get more sci-fi/fantasy, while this one has a moment or two of surprising early '60s realism.  (What kind of cigarette are Frankie and his besties Ken and Deadhead passing back and forth?)  I didn't like the sort of rape joke-- Dee Dee is calling for help from Von Zipper, so Rhonda says, "It's just Dee Dee and that man"-- but otherwise the movie is pretty inoffensive.

"As for their sex life...."  Nonexistent?  Limited to horizontal necking?  We'll never know for sure.