Das Mädchen vom anderen Strand

Frankie Avalon, on naval-reserve duty in Tahiti, does not trust Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) to stay faithful, so he hires Bwana (Buster Keaton), a witch doctor, to help. Bwana conjures up a floating bikini, "stuffs" it with Cassandra, and sends her to distract advertising executive Ricky from Dee Dee.

What to make of this beach movie from American International... it has Mickey Rooney, which is good... and Buster Keaton, which is very good (how AIP convinced him to play these roles is beyond me). And most interestingly, we have the Kingsmen performing.

I liked the running gag with the pelican, but was just confused by the "Healthy Girl" song. And why they even cast a pregnant Funicello is a mystery. I am not knocking her for being pregnant, but it is weird to cast someone pregnant in a beach movie -- she is sitting on the sand in baggy clothes, quite in contrast with everyone else.

Fairly desperate "Beach Party" entry (the sixth in the series!) has Annette Funicello contemplating a new boyfriend while Frankie Avalon is overseas. Enter...Dwayne Hickman? Frankie actually has a rather large cameo role for not receiving a livelier billing, and there's a cute ending, but these kids are starting to look more mature and their hijinks are starting to get musty. Annette sings two solo numbers and a duet, and she's perky and attractive despite being covered up to conceal her real-life pregnancy. The rest is mediocre, particularly leading man Hickman (eternally bland) and supporting player Mickey Rooney (game but charmless). ** from ****

This is the final film to feature Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as Frankie and Dee Dee, and it is also the worst. Avalon had grown weary of playing an over-aged teen-ager and wanted to do something more with his career and at the same time Annette Funicello had recently married and was starting a family. In fact, Ms. Funicello was very pregnant at the time the film was released. Also, Avalon was in the middle of filming Sgt. Deadhead and couldn't appear in the entire film. The solution, bring in Dwayne Hickman as Rick, an advertising executive, to keep Dee Dee busy while Frankie was off on military duty. This was a big mistake. These best thing about the "Beach Party" films was the chemistry between Avalon and Funicello and this film falls flat on its face because the two are on screen together for only a minute (not counting the duet they sang via split screen). After this film was completed, the two retired from the genre, Avalon to attempt more serious roles and Funicello to raise her family. However, Samuel Z. Arkoff tried to keep the series rolling a couple of more years before he finally gave up the ghost, and not the one in the invisible bikini.

My 12 year old watched this with me this morning (it was raining) and she was laughing at the old fashionedness of the movie. I would have rather watched a better example of the "beach movie" but we still had fun.

At one point Mickey Rooney tells one of the bikini clad girls how cute she is and goes to chuck her on her chin, and on the way to her chin, his hand clips her right breast. My daughter said, "Hey, did he just touch her boob?" Well, we have TIVO and rewound the movie. Yes he did. How'd that get by the censors?

But the musical scenes were hysterical for her, and we both agreed that Annette looked way too old to be hanging out with all of the bikini girls! And why wasn't she screaming when she took that motorcycle ride?

I purchased the DVD version of this movie and would like to inform other 'Beach Party' movie lovers that MGM has done a great job on the video and sound. I have in the past had to suffer through very low quality VHS copies of the Beach Party movies, where I wound up throwing away the tape and putting a VHS tape that I recorded off TV into the box. That won't be the case here! (even if I could record a DVD) As for the movie ... Well, it is my least favorite of the Frankie and Annette Beach Party movies ... And I think I'm in the majority there. But if you love the Beach Party genre of movies you have to have this one too and you don't need me to tell you about it.

<standing salute to MGM>