How to Stuff a Wild Bikini

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>

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.

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.

This was the last of American-International's beach musicals that starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (although they'd try to continue for a few films without these two). Frankie and Annette are barely together even in the film--Frankie is more of a cameo than a major character in the plot.

Intriguingly, this musical is filled with "book numbers"--where the characters sing when they should be talking. Usually, the beach party movies just had people asking Frankie or Annette to sing at a party or at a nightclub. So, that's a change. The problem is that the songs aren't anything to write home about.

Further, the film betrays why the beach movies were losing their popularity: the surfing fad was being supplanted by a renewed interest in motorcycle culture. Only a year or two later, American-International would be making films like "The Wild Angels." This is a problem for a series where the stock antagonist, Eric Von Zipper, is a parody of Marlon Brando's biker hood in "The Wild One" (1954). The film shows a renewed interest in cycles--Annette's romantic interest, Harvey Lembeck, is an avid motorcyclist. The film tries to deal with this by transforming Von Zipper from a biker into the stereotypical 60s junior executive (a la "How to Succeed in Business"). But, you can see the structure starting to fall apart here.

There are fun moments though--particularly the opening credits (clay animation done by Art Cloakey, the creator of Gumby), and the wacky motorcycle race at the end of the film. Lastly, there's a fun cameo at the very end of the film by producer William Asher's wife...

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?