It's a Bikini World

Skateboarding champion Tommy Kirk (as Mike Samson) poses as his own bookworm brother "Herbert" in order to woo pretty bikinied Deborah Walley (as Delilah Dawes). "It's a Bikini World" begins with a great instrumental opening and graphics sequence, which was usually a strong suit in American International's "Beach Party" movies. That series was sputtering to an end, and this film follows the formula well enough, but audiences were moving on...

The Animals, The Toys, The Gentrys, and The Castaways are lip-syncing highlights...

Although Mr. Kirk performs well fully clothed, he is obviously not in shape to play the muscle-toned, athletic "Samson" on the beach. As his "Delilah", Ms. Walley (still) fills her bikini well. Kirk and Walley had appeared in original "Beach Party" spin-offs. The second-tiered players fall in line: Bobby "Boris" Pickett (as Woody) provides Kirk with a foolish-looking, older beach pal. Suzie Kaye (as Pebbles) is a shapely sidekick for Walley.

*** It's a Bikini World (4/14/67) Stephanie Rothman ~ Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley, Bobby Pickett

As a fan of the original beach party flicks, it was sad and disappointing to discover this rarely seen bit of cinematic fluff. By the time it was released, the genre had run its course and this was in no way going to revive it. It took the original pairing of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello to resuscitate it in Back To the Beach, a fond look back at the genre.

Deborah Walley, who co-starred in some of the original beach party movies gets to star here along with Disney alum Tommy Kirk, who really should have hit the gym before running around with his shirt off. The movie has a poverty row feel about it. The jokes fall flat and the hipster lingo and characters are just embarrassing, as they probably were in the late 60's.

The only reasons to see this are for an early film appearance by Sid Haig who has recently had a career resurgence of sorts with his turn as Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses and its sequel The Devil's Rejects; and of course for the music and the groups. They are still pretty cool, and the only way this film got 3 stars from me.

Stick with the original beach party movies, they are way more fun.

I caught this movie on cable one day and actually really enjoyed it. I even looked for the movie to buy but I'm assuming it's not out on DVD.

Mike is your stereotypical male chauvinist. He has to be the best at everything and when a girl comes along and challenges him at different events, he feels he must beat her. He also ends up falling for her and pretends to have a dweeby twin brother named Herbert. The girl falls for Herbert and Mike has to figure out how to tell her who he actually is.

There is also a cameo by The Animals and a groovy skateboard race scene.

First, the positives - this movie contains some decent musical performances. Sure, they appear to be just lip syncing to the actual recording, but it's still nice to see The Animals and especially one-hit wonders The Castaways in color. We also get to see Sid Haig in one of his first bigger roles.

Overall, though, this film feels more like the last gasp of the beach movie genre than anything else. I hadn't realized they were still making these films as late as 1967, and judging by the lack of enthusiasm from the cast, they can't believe it either. There are some attempts to bring a looser, avant garde approach to the film. Or maybe it's just bad film-making. There are several seemingly random montages with overdubbed voices moving the plot forward. I'm willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and assume this is intentional, but for all I know, it could be sloppy editing to cover scenes that should have been shot or bad writing.

The film has a downbeat feel to it, nothing like the bright, perky style we're used to with beach movies. The skies over the beach seem gray and the cast seems to be struggling with depression. I'm left with the impression that by this point, pot had clearly taken over as the drug of choice on film sets, making a Frankie and Annette style of film an uphill struggle at this point.

This is a different kind of flick because it doesn't have Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Also, the score is probably more different than the ones used in the Avalon/Funicello epics. However, this film is not on the same league with those films. The only thing that I really enjoyed was watching the Castaways perform their garage/punk anthem "Liar, Liar". You pretty much can tell that this film was done on even more of a shoestring budget than the AIP films. Tommy and Deborah are sure no Frankie and Annette.