Wild on the Beach

OMG! haha. There are no words to adequately describe how really bad this movie is. I gave it a 3 rating only because it's so much darned fun to goof on. The acting is third rate; the story is second rate; and everything else goes downhill from there. Even the dancers who are supposedly dancing the Frug, the Swim, and other 1965 period dancers are bad.

The oddest element is the incidental music played while people are talking. It's impossible to describe! I guess it was meant to be funny — a la Ozzie & Harriet, perhaps, but it's just so bad and has no real connection to the scenes in which it is played.

Sonny & Cher's performance is typical, but the song, "It's Gonna Rain Outside" is laughable.

This would have been perfect for the old 80s show MST3000, which goofed on bottom-budget movies like this. These days it's probably best for stoners who may or may not recall 1965.

Frankie Randall (who?) and Sherry Jackson try a mean imitation of Frankie Avalon and Annette in this dreary,black and white rip-off of the beach party flicks.There's too much plot,(something about sharing a beach house,disliking each other,rousing the ire of the local college board,until the happy ending.) Frankie sings alot (songs you'll never hear again),Sherry Jackson does a nice Annette pout but it's all for naught.Sonny and Cher and the Astronauts do a brief guest bit,there's some lame comic turns (one guy is always losing his contacts,etc.),stuffy adult reactions to the kids,no beach scenes,no babes in bikinis,just alot of plot.Even boys and girls forced to share the same house isn't presented in a spicy way.Everyone is too hostile.I saw this picture when it first came out and thought it was great but I grew up!

Laughably awkward teen-opus, filmed on the cheap in black-and-white, concerns young male and female college students battling each other over the rights to a swanky beach-house. It's the boys against the girls! (Wouldn't it makes things more interesting for these kids if the pad were co-ed?) Worth a quick peek for the musical cameo by Sonny & Cher down at the local hot-spot (they sing the growly slow-burner "It's Gonna Rain"), but their bit comes early--at the 22-minute mark--leaving nothing but godawful acting and teenage contrivances for the next hour. Positively painful! "Wild on the Beach" makes the A.I.P. "Beach Party" flicks seem Oscar-caliber by comparison. * from ****

If 20th Century Fox was hoping for a series of beach films to rival American-International Pictures Beach Party series, then why didn't they splurge for color? It would seem that was a given in these situations.

Taking the place of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are road company leads Frankie Randall and Sherry Jackson. Randall was a good singer, but surely was no actor and Jackson had a lot of trouble convincing people she was an actress because they couldn't get past her voluptuous figure. She could give a performance, but not here. I guarantee you will have heard of no one else in the cast save two.

Randall plays a young man attending Beach University in Florida and he's been given permission by one Captain Sullivan to live at his beach house while attending. A couple of weeks before the semester starts in walks Sherry Jackson the captain's niece who informs Randall and his many house guests and party guests that she is the new owner. But since the will hasn't been probated yet It's all up in the air.

In the meantime the mean old party pooper dean of the college wants this coed cohabitation put to an end.

Upon this plot several forgotten acts of the era do their thing. However the film also featured the yet unknown Sonny and Cher. We all have to make our start somewhere so Representative Bono and entertainment legendary diva Cher begin their careers here in a pale imitation beach film.

Only reason I can think of to see this film.

Way outdated plot (old-timers don't like the idea of boys and girls living together in the same house), brainless script, terrible songs that the producers apparently thought "the kids" would think was cool but definitely weren't, a bland leading man whose singing and acting are on the same level (lousy), chintzy production values (to be expected from a Lippert picture) and some of the unfunniest "comedy" bits (consisting mainly of old people tripping and falling down) in recent memory all combine to make this cheap "Beach Party" ripoff barely watchable. At least the "Beach Party" movies were shot in color so the audience would see nice shots of the beach and the ocean; this thing is shot in black-and-white, so the few scenes where you actually see the beach are bland and uninteresting.

Just about the only things this mess has going for it are Sherry Jackson, who was adorable as a child actress and grew up to be an absolute knockout; and a couple of shots of some cute girls running around a beach house in their nighties. That's it. Period.

Don't waste your time.