Bikini Beach

This is probably the best of the "Beach Party" films. The series pretty much hit its peak here and after this it was all downhill. Annette Funicello is her level headed best and Frankie Avalon is still her lunkheaded boyfriend who only can think about surfing. The thing I think is a little ironic about this film is the fact that Avalon in his portrayal of Potato Bug takes a swipe at The Beatles. Many forget that Avalon was one of the hottest singers in America until the "Fab Four" arrived the same year this film was released. After that it was downhill from there. The other shining moment in this film has to belong to Harvey Lembeck as the perpetually dimwitted leader Eric Von Zipper. This was his defining role and this film was his funniest yet.

We red-blooded males who followed Annette Funicello's career from the time she was a nubile Mousketeer will be especially enamored of "Bikini Beach," a superior entry in the, admittedly, mediocre "Beach Party" series. For once, Annette gets to play smart, sexy and slightly dangerous, possessing more than a passing interest in sex. Gone, thank goodness, is her usual "Doris Day with mild PMS" persona. I have a strong suspicion this is closer to the "real" Annette, here. I certainly hope so. Even Annette's singing is very good. I wish AIP would've sprung for the bucks to give "Bikini" better choreography. Annette, a trained dancer would have impressed even more. Annette's swimsuit is even more revealing than usual, about as close to a bikini as "Papa Disney" would allow her to wear.

While the script, as usual, plays as if it were cribbed from the back of a cereal box, the gentle ribbing of British rock stars, modern art and drag racing are a welcome change from the usual "Beach Party" dross. Martha Hyer is along and provides some classy, mature-sexy glamor. "Bikini" even has a cameo by a very young Stevie Wonder. While Frankie Avalon won't win any acting awards, his alter-ego, "Potato Bug" is certainly a less annoying character than Mike Meyers' execrable "Austin Powers". Even Don Rickles is along, playing a character named "Big Drag," a gentle pun on Don "Big Daddy" Garlits, a well-known drag racer and auto customizer of the era. Too bad, Rickles doesn't get to cut lose with his usual wise guy humor. Guess AIP was too cheap to spring for that.

While no work of art, "Bikini Beach" is more than just watchable. It's actually, at times, enjoyable. I give "Bikini Beach" a weak "6".

Annette Funicello is probably the most over-dressed beach bunny to ever hit the sands, but she's a stitch in her scenes with Frankie Avalon (as surfer Frankie) and pop-singer The Potato Bug (Avalon again, in a Beatle wig, funny teeth and English accent). Their repartee makes this a charming piece of Americana, but the thing is so stuck in a sterile time-capsule it's nearly impossible to believe that teenagers once got a charge from it. Drag-racing is the newest craze, and the beach gang gets shown up once Keenan Wynn puts a chimp successfully behind the wheel of a hot rod. For racing aficionados, we get a glimpse of the Mantra Ray, a $50,000 all-aluminum experimental "dream rod" with a King Cobra Ford engine. Annette poses prettily beside it... ** from ****

I'm sure with a bit of irony Frankie Avalon played dual roles in Bikini Beach. The first is his usual beach loving self and the second with blond wig page boy style is that of invading British rocker. Frankie would go on for years as actor and nightclub performer. But that quartet from Liverpool signaled he and his generation of performers of the Elvis era were passing into history.

Two people invade the beach space in this film. One is the Avalon alter ego, British rocker Potato Bug who makes a play for Annette Funicello. The other is Keenan Wynn who brings a chimpanzee to start a campaign that these beach kids and their music are as intelligent as his simian. Wynn is channeling his Alonzo Hawk character from his Disney films. Wynn enlists the really brain dead Harvey Lembeck and his motorcyclists to assist in turning the beach into a senior citizen retirement community.

Bikini Beach is so old that among the musical guests is listed Little Stevie Wonder. Everybody on the film looks like they're having a good time making it and they bring a nice infectious spirit to the proceedings.

This sequel to MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964) is only slightly better: much of the teen cast returns, as well as Don Rickles (but, having now forsaken muscle-men for drag-strip racing) and even Stevie Wonder. We do get a number of new faces – eminent publisher Keenan Wynn (with a practiced simian in tow, he's intent on demonstrating that the youth of today have regressed to pretty much its primitive state!) and schoolteacher Martha Hyer constituting more or less the normal people (they start out as opponents but gradually come to understand and love one another), Harvey Lembeck as the overage leader of a motorcycle gang called Eric Von Zipper (actually, this character had already featured in BEACH PARTY [1963]: here, he's prone to falling victim, by his own hand, of Peter Lorre's paralysis-by-touch technique seen at the end of the previous film) and Timothy Carey (appearing very briefly as a pool-playing eccentric who has a werewolf, fitted with a leather jacket, for a sidekick!).

There's even a second role for Frankie Avalon – doubling as a legendary mop-top and gap-toothed (essentially a cross between The Beatles and Terry-Thomas!) British singer/racer…and, then, there's that great final gag involving Boris Karloff (seen a couple of times from behind throughout but only revealed at the very end as an art dealer interested in Rickles' abstract collection, quipping that he ought to tell his pal Vincent Price – noted for his taste in fine art and at the time also contracted to AIP – about it!). It's these quasi-surreal elements – including the monkey driving Wynn's car (to the recurring consternation of two traffic cops) as well as a dragster, and even doing a bit of surf…but extending to the final credits as blonde-with-powerful-hips Candy Johnson is joined in her wild dance by an aged member of Wynn's old folks' home! – which render the film that much more enjoyable than its predecessor. Otherwise, we get a lot of the same shtick as before – though the beach scenes themselves are thankfully downplayed here; the climax, then, involves a Keystone Kops-type chase which culminates in yet another gratuitous bit of brawling slapstick (this time occurring at Rickles' pseudo-beatnik joint).

Again, the songs are far from classics but, all in all, the film retains some interest (not least in the contribution of cinematographer Floyd Crosby, production designer Daniel Haller and composer Les Baxter – all of them synonymous with Roger Corman's contemporaneous horror films based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe!) in particular for characterizing the transition between two trends in youth-oriented pictures i.e. the Juvenile Delinquent films of the 1950s and the Counter-Culture efforts (advocating drug use and Free Love) that would prevail soon after