Life is a Beach #4: Spring Break (dir by Sean S. Cunningham)

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I think I may have made a mistake. When I started reviewing beach films, I did so because it’s currently spring break for thousands of college students across the country and, right now, they’re all probably having a good time on the beach. Unfortunately, what I didn’t consider was that watching and reviewing these films would make me start to wish that I was currently there with them.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I want to go hang out on the beach and party and flirt and get high and live for the moment and … well, no, actually, that’s exactly what I wish I was doing right now. None of the beach films that I’ve watched so far have been good exactly but they do all get at a larger truth.

We all need some sort of spring break.

That’s certainly the theme of the 1983 comedy, Spring Break.

The heroes of Spring Break

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Spring Break is that, unlike Malibu Beach and The Beach Girls, it was not produced by Crown International Pictures. It certainly feels like a Crown International movie. The film is a largely plotless collection of scenes, all of which take place over the course of spring break in Ft. Lauderdale. It starts out as a comedy and then gets strangely dramatic towards the end. It features a lot of nudity for male viewers but luckily, it has two hot guys for me so it all works out in the end.

Two nerdy students, Nelson (David Knell) and Adam (Perry Lang) go down to Florida for spring break. Nelson does this despite the fact that he had promised that he would spend spring break working on his politically ambitious stepfather’s campaign. When Nelson and Adam’s picture ends up in the paper, Nelson’s stepfather (Donald Symington) sends his operatives down to Florida to basically kidnap Nelson and drag him home. Along the way, the stepfather also somehow gets involved in a plot to take over the motel where Nelson and Adam are staying.

Uhmmm…what?

Yes, it doesn’t make much sense but then again, the plot is never that important in these type of films. What is important is that the motel is overbooked and, as a result, Nelson and Adam find themselves roommates with two hot guys from New York, Stu (Paul Land) and O.T. (Steve Bassett).

One thing that I did like about this movie is that it didn’t waste any time pretending that Stu and O.T. wouldn’t become best friends with Nelson and Adam. Instead, the four of them start bonding as soon as they meet and they were all best friends within the first 15 minutes of the film. Yay for another successful bromance! But seriously, it is kind of sweet.

And it’s also fortunate because, once Nelson is kidnapped and held prisoner on a boat by his stepfather, who better to rescue him than two guys from Brooklyn?

Yes, it’s all pretty stupid but, as far as teen sex comedies from the early 80s are concerned, this is one of the better of them. At the very least, Knell and Lang are both likeable and Land and Bassett are both hot and that really is about the best that you can hope from a film like this. Add to that — and this is a theme that I seem to keep returning to as far as these beach films are concerned — Spring Break is a time capsule. Though Spring Break was released before I was born, I feel like, having seen it, that I now have some firsthand experience of what it was like to be alive in 1983.

So 80s….

As I mentioned at the start of this review, Spring Break feels like a Crown International Picture but, actually, it was released by Columbia Pictures. And it was directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who is probably best known for directing the original Friday the 13th! Harry Manfredini even provided the music for both films. That said, the fun-loving teenagers of Spring Break come to a much happier end than the ones at Camp Crystal Lake.

Life is a Beach #3: The Beach Girls (dir by Pat Townsend)

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“You louse! You hussy!”

“What’s a hussy?”

“Who’s loud?”

— Typical dialogue from The Beach Girls (1982)

As you may have guessed from the combination of the film’s title, the film’s poster, and the film’s dialogue, the 1982 comedy The Beach Girls is yet another production from Crown International Pictures.

And if you had any doubts, The Beach Girls quickly erases them by not only featuring the exact same songs that were heard in both The Pom Pom Girls and Malibu Beach but by also reusing a good deal of beach footage that originally appeared in Malibu Beach. Remember that dog in Malibu Beach that kept stealing everyone’s bikini top? Apparently, the folks at Crown International really liked that dog because all of his scenes are awkwardly inserted into The Beach Girls.

In between all of the Malibu Beach footage, The Beach Girls tells the story of three girls who have a nice beach house for the summer and who proceed to throw a party. That is literally the plot of the entire film. Two of the girls — Ginger (Val Kline) and Ducky (Jeana Tomasina) — are up for anything while their best friend, the shy and intellectual Sarah (Debra Blee), desperately needs to relax and have a good time. Fortunately, there’s a sensitive musician at the party. His name is Scott and he’s played by James Daughton, who was also in Malibu Beach. With Scott’s help, Sarah starts to come out of her shell, which largely means that she starts to progressively wear less and less clothes.

Just when it looks like the party might be on the verge of concluding, six garbage bags of weed wash up on the beach. That comes in handy once all of the uptight authority figures start to show up and demand that the party end. Fortunately, the super weed inspires everyone to just relax and have fun. Not even the eventual arrival of the Coast Guard can stop this party…

The Beach Girls is pretty much your typical Crown International teen sex comedy. The main thing that distinguishes it from The Pom Pom Girls and Malibu Beach is that the main characters in The Beach Girls are all female. And while the three main characters all still required to spend a good deal of the film undressed, this is a rare teen comedy where the guys are just as likely to get naked as the girls and where the girls have as much fun as the guys. As a result, there’s little of the misogyny that lay underneath the surface of The Pom Pom Girls and, to a lesser extent, Malibu Beach.

Don’t get me wrong. The Beach Girls, which is currently available Hulu and has also been included in a few Mill Creek box sets, is hardly a great or even a good film. It’s pretty much a standard sex comedy where both the characters and the jokes are predictably dumb. But, when taken on its own modest terms, it’s an inoffensive little time capsule.

Plus, the film’s beach house is really nice! Seriously, that’s one thing that I love about films from the 80s. Even the low-budget comedies always take place in the nicest houses!

Life is a Beach #2: Malibu Beach (dir Robert J. Rosenthal)

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I started my 2-week miniseries of reviews on beach movies by taking a look at 1963’s Beach Party. For my next review, I will be jumping forward 15 years and taking a look at 1978’s Malibu Beach.

Just by comparing the two films, you can tell that a lot changed during those 15 years. As opposed to the euphemism-spouting surfers of Beach Party, the teenagers that hang out on Malibu Beach know exactly what they want and they’re not ashamed to say it. What Beach Party could only hint at, Malibu Beach has the freedom to make explicit. The film’s poster claims that “everything can happen on Malibu Beach” and, in theory, that’s certainly true.

And yet, at the same time, Malibu Beach has more in common with Beach Party than you might think. Ultimately, they’re both about the same thing: celebrating the idea of being young and having freedom. Both films are a bit of a chore to try to watch today but are interesting as cultural time capsules. Beach Party had no plot. Malibu Beach has no plot. Beach Party featured some oddly generic music. Malibu Beach features the same three generic songs being played over and over and over again. Beach Party features Erich Von Zipper and his motorcycle gang. Malibu Beach features a muscle-bound bully named Dugan (Steve Oliver). Beach Party featured a cameo appearance from Vincent Price. Malibu Beach features a dog that steals bikini tops. Beach Party was produced by American International Pictures. Malibu Beach was produced by Crown International Pictures.

That’s right! Malibu Beach is a Crown International Picture and anyone who loves 70s exploitation knows what that means. Malibu Beach is a cheaply produced film that was made to exploit then-current trends and bring in a lot of money. Like a lot of Crown International Films, it’s technically a pretty bad film but it’s so sincere and honest about what it is that it almost feels petty to be too critical of it.

Oddly enough, Malibu Beach pretty much feels like a remake of a previous Crown International Picture, The Pom Pom Girls, the main difference being that, while the visual style of The Pom Pom Girls was almost oppressively ugly, Malibu Beach at least features some pretty beach scenery.

Much like in the Pom Pom Girls, the heroes of Malibu Beach are two high school jocks, one of whom, Bobby (played by James Daughton, who, that same year, also played the evil Greg in National Lampoon’s Animal House), is dark and brooding while the other, Paul (Michael Luther), is skinny and dorky.

Much as in The Pom Pom Girls, one of the heroes has a nemesis for no particular reason. Seriously, I never could figure out why Bobby and Dugan hated each other but they certainly did. What’s odd is that, whenever there’s a confrontation between the two of them, Malibu Beach suddenly gets extremely serious. Bobby and Dugan glare at each other and speak through clenched teeth. Suddenly, there’s no music on the soundtrack and all we can hear are seagulls above and the tide rolling in and it all feels very ominous. I sat through Malibu Beach expecting either Dugan and Bobby to be dead at the end of the film, that’s how seriously their conflict is portrayed.

Also, much like The Pom Pom Girls, Bobby and Paul each have girlfriends. Paul is dating the spacey Sally (Susan Player). Bobby, meanwhile, is romancing the new lifeguard, Dina (Kim Lankford). Dina has a big scene where she tells Bobby that she can’t handle being caught in the middle of his increasingly intense rivalry with Dugan. Again, it’s a deadly serious scene and it’s just so strange to see it there, awkwardly dropped in between scenes of a bumbling cop smoking weed and a dog stealing bikini tops.

Finally, the main similarity between The Pom Pom Girls and Malibu Beach is that the exact same three songs appear in both films! Obviously, somebody at Crown International, really loved those three songs.

Malibu Beach is one of those films that was obviously made to appeal to hormonal teens at a drive-in but, by today’s standards, it’s rather tame. It’s currently playing on Hulu and it’s also available in several of those Mill Creek box sets that we all know and love. Is the film any good? No. Do I recommend it? Not really. But, much like Beach Party, it is a portal into the past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp9NtaOzd1k

Life Is A Beach #1: Beach Party (dir by William Asher)

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It seems a little bit strange that today was, for many people, the first day of Spring Break.

First off, it was cold and rainy today and, whenever I found myself glancing out a window and being confronted by the gray weather, it was very hard for me to imagine having any fun on a beach.

Secondly, for reasons that I never quite understood, the University of North Texas’s Spring Break was always a week after everyone else’s. As a result, I’ve been conditioned to think of Spring Break as starting during the third week of March.

I always looked forward to Spring Break, despite the fact that we always got out a week late. In fact, it was kind of nice to know that, when my friends and I got down to that year’s beach, the most obnoxious of the alcoholic frat boys would already be back in Oklahoma. I’ve always loved the beach, which is odd because I’m scared of drowning. Fortunately, you don’t have to swim to look good in a bikini.

Now, of course, I’m an adult and I don’t get a Spring Break. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t relive the fun of it all by spending the next few days watching and reviewing beach movies!

For instance, earlier today, I discovered that the 1963 film Beach Party was available on Netflix. I watched the first 40 minutes during my lunch and then, as the day progressed, I watched the rest of it in bits and pieces until finally, nearly 8 hours after starting the film, I finished it. Needless to say, this is absolutely the worst way to watch a film like Beach Party. Beach Party was designed to be a film to be enjoyed but not thought about. It’s the cinematic equivalent of fast food. Watching Beach Party in increments of 2 or 3 minutes at a time is a bit like buying a Wendy’s bacon cheeseburger and not eating it until the next day.

(Or so I assume. I would never do that because, seriously, Wendy’s makes the best bacon cheeseburgers!)

It feels kind of silly to try to describe the plot of something like Beach Party but here goes: Frankie (Frankie Avalon) and Delores (Annette Funicello) are two teenagers in love. Or, at the very least, Delores is in love. Frankie, however, has a hard time saying it. Frankie and Delores are planning on spending the weekend at a beach house where, Frankie tells her, it will be just like they’re married. Though it’s never explicitly stated (like many films from the early 60s, Beach Party is all about the euphemisms), Frankie is obviously expecting that he and Delores will finally be having sex in that beach house. However, Delores had the same idea so she invited all of their friends to stay at the beach house as well, specifically to keep her from giving in during a moment of weakness.

Meanwhile, Prof. Robert Sutwell (Robert Cummings) is also hanging out on the beach. He’s an anthropologist who has a rather prominent beard. He’s studying the sex lives of teenagers. Since they’re adults, Robert and his assistant Marianne (Dorothy Malone) are actually allowed to say the word “sex.”

Speaking of which, that’s one thing that nobody on the beach seems to be doing. Robert is too obsessed with his work, Marianne is too frustrated with his lack of interest, Frankie is too busy surfing and singing, and Delores says she’s not interesting in “being a woman” until she’s married. There’s constant flirting going on, of course but, for the most part, these teenagers make the spring breakers from From Justin To Kelly look wild. (One can only guess what would happen if any of them ever ran into the spring breakers from Spring Breakers….)

That said, I do think that I did spot Frankie and his friends passing around a joint during one scene. According to some comments at the imdb, it was probably meant to be a cigarette that Frankie was sharing with his friends Ken (John Ashley) and Deadhead (Jody McCrea) but it sure looked like a joint to me. Plus, Frankie was listening to beatnik poetry at the time and we all know those crazy kids loved the poetry and loved the marijuana.

Oh! And did I mention that there’s a motorcycle gang in this film? Because there so totally is. The Rat Pack is led by a guy named Erich Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and they pretty much show up whenever the film starts to run out of ideas…

Now, it may sound like I’m being pretty critical of Beach Party but actually, I thought it was fun in a time capsule sort of way. This is one of those films that is so obviously a product of the time in which it was made that watching it is a bit like getting to take a ride in a time machine. Everything about this film — from the dialogue to the cultural attitudes to the clean-cut teenagers to the music to the bizarrely modest bikinis — practically screams 1963. As a secret history nerd, I loved the part of Beach Party.

Add to that, Vincent Price has a cameo! That’s always fun.

Anyway, Beach Party is currently available to be watched on Netflix and Hulu. If you can’t get to the beach this year, you can always watch Frankie Avalon getting high in Beach Party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkhGmZPJIHY