Surf Party

"Surf Party" (1964) is essentially a musical version of "Gidget" (1959), with stuntman Jerry Summers in the Big Kahuna role and singer Bobby ("Blue Velvet") Vinton playing Moondoggie. Terry Wells (Patricia Morrow) and her two girlfriends (think three Gidgets) tow a travel trailer to the beach where her black sheep older brother Skeet (Summers) holds court as the hottest surfer.

Len (Vinton) runs the local surfboard shop (like Bear in "Big Wednesday" but not as spiritual) and interfaces with the resident fuzz (Richard Crane). Milo (Ken Miller-a sort of poor man's Nick Adams) is a gremmie (overeager novice) who aspires to membership in the surfer lodge; the rite of passage being a dangerous ritual called running the pier. Junior (singer Jackie DeShannon) serves as a love interest for the hapless Milo.

But the main story centers on adoring little sister Terry. This is her coming of age story and she is romanced by Len while learning (with the rest of the beach crowd) some unpleasant things about Skeet. Morrow was quite a beauty with a lot of natural charm. She would become relatively famous a couple years after this film, playing one of the main characters on television's "Peyton Place".

The production design is pure 1964 southern California but Skeet's beach house is a far cry from The Big Kahuna's hut. One glance at his bedroom furnishings will have you thinking Ed Wood, but all of this is eventually explained.

Like a standard musical these characters will burst into song at the drop of a hat and there are several numbers by actual singing groups. The Routers play "Crack Up". The Astronaunts play "Fire Water" and the title song. Almost everyone gets a song. Obviously this stuff is dated but some is rather good and even the worst is not unpleasant.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

I understand that film producers are greedy, lazy SOB's, and when they see a way to make an easy buck they jump at it. Such was the case with this film Surf Party which failed miserably from the get go with the horrible songs included in this film and the lousy doo wap singers who couldn't act if they had trained with Lee Strasberg or Stella Adler.

I did not laugh once, and the film quality must have been put together with minimal editing and no concern for the final product being released to theaters. It was definitely rushed to get released as a black and white film while the surf party movies starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon were so highly appreciated and accolades for their fun beach party mood and great songs sung by real singers with great voices.

I hate to rain on this Surf Party and singer Bobby Vinton's first film but it is a bummer and only deserving of an IMDB rating of 5 out of 10. I gave it one IMDB rating notch up from two (4) as the film did have the lovely Patricia Morrow included in some swim suit scene(s).

This film begins with a young lady by the name of "Terry Wells" (Patricia Morrow) driving with two of her friends "Junior Griffith" (Jackie DeShannon) and "Sylvia Dempster" (Lory Patrick) from Arizona to the California coast to visit Terry's brother "Skeet Wells" (Jerry Summers). Upon their arrival, they meet a young man named "Len Marshal" (Bobby Vinton) who owns a surfboard shop near the beach and tells them where they can find a trailer park for their camper. Not long afterward, they also meet another young man named "Milo Talbot" (Ken Miller) who takes them to the local clubhouse where Skeet hangs out. It's then that the three young ladies learn that Skeet is the leader of a group of surfers who have built up a bad reputation with many of the local residents--with the local policeman named "Sergeant Wayne Neal" (Richard Crane) being the most outspoken critic. What the three young ladies don't realize, however, is that their presence will soon become a catalyst for all kinds of trouble involving everyone just mentioned. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that, even though this film is listed as a comedy, there really wasn't much humor to be found here at all. Lots of dancing and singing--but no real comedy that I could see. Likewise, although I don't normally have any problem with movies filmed in black & white, I have to say that movies of this specific type are much better in color as it enhances the overall effect. That being said, while I don't consider this to be a terribly bad "beach movie" necessarily, I don't believe it compares favorably to some of the others produced during this time, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

sitting in your folks' Town and Country wagon at the drive-in with a girlfriend and a couple other friends, watching this idiotic little piece of duck fluff called Surf Party? It's 1964, the Beatles have just landed, the Maddox and Turner Joy are--or are not--getting shot at in the Gulf of Tonkin, JFK is dead (that fracture will hurt forever), LBJ is going to win this fall.

America's sauce is strong, and surfer movies are all the rage.

What was that like, living in a bygone era, where no one could imagine the bodies stacking up like cord wood, Watts, MLK and RFK bled out, Tet, Panthers, Nixon, Kent State; what horrors the following years would bring.

Armstrong and Aldrin were still rookies. Nobody in your circle knew what pot smelled like. Heroin was only a problem for "Negroes." A sugar cube was for coffee.

What would it be like to step into that way-back machine . . .

And forget?

Hey. Let's be honest: How can you NOT like a beach party movie from the mid-'60s? Nobody expects "Last Summer at Marienbad"... It's going to be free and breezy, some forgettable songs, more-forgettable comedy, and comely girls DARING to wear bikinis in a long-ago age when young American females were expected to be more abdominally modest in their attire. "Surf Party" is interesting on a couple of levels. It's one of the first rip-offs of the Frankie/Annette AIP beach-blanket bonanzas; those films, directed by William Asher, had just kicked off the previous year (1963) after Hollywood long toyed with the beach-party genre in romps like "Gidget", "Where the Boys Are" and the wonderfully obscure "Love in a Goldfish Bowl" from 1961. Somehow, though, none of the studios pulled the trigger before American International Pictures released "Beach Party" and thereby established what instantly became a turgidly static formula: Girl and boy meet on the sand, frolic without sex, break up and get back together, through it all sporadically grooving to some c-grade musical acts. (Many of these films relied, unfortunately, on hastily assembled side-men "groups" playing awful, tin-pan-alley stuff.) This one avoids that grating pitfall with legitimate musical talent on hand, although Jackie DeShannon's intractable acting style all-but negates her singing performances.

"Surf Party" is standard fare in that it's a movie aimed at young people but evidently made by middle-aged guys who know little about '60s youth. There's a smirky, bemused treatment of teen-age interests, serving only to freeze the movie in awkward, uninformed detachment - like a birthday-party performer trying to entertain kids by showing them the elements of algebra.

But this is different: "Surf Party" is in black and white - in fact, it may just be the only beach party movie not in Sea-and-Ski color. Worth a look, if only because its probable pre-Kennedy assassination (even pre-Beatles) filming gives it a lost-innocence appeal missing even from later Pepsi-Generation navel bombardments. Bobby Vinton is... well... Bobby Vinton. However, Patricia Morrow is quite watchable, and brings more acting "heft" than these movies generally demand.

Here's a double bill, in case you're sitting around without a life: Pair up "Surf Party" with "Catalina Caper", the late-1967 swan song of the surfin' safari flicks.