In 1965’s The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, the recently deceased Hiram Stokely (Boris Karloff) is informed that he has just 24 hours to perform a good deed and get into Heaven. He also has 24 hours to keep Basil Rathbone from stealing his estate. Hiram teams up with the ghost of his his dead girlfriend (Susan Hart) and together, they help Hiram’s real heir throw a pool party!
I know, I know. That makes no sense. Go with it, it’s the 60s and it’s a party. The film is silly even by the standards of the typical beach party film but it features Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone somehow managing to maintain their dignity and Nancy Sinatra singing a song. (Dean Martin’s daughter, Claudia, also makes an appearance.) Even more importantly, this is a film that epitomizes an era. Released in 1965, this was the last AIP beach party movie and it’s a product of the innocent, fun-loving early 60s that would soon be replaced by the violent turmoil of the late 60s. Hiram was probably happy that he got out when he could.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991! The series can be streamed on YouTube!
This week, Degrassi Junior High becomes Degrassi High!
Episode 1.1 and 1.2 “A New Start”
(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on November 6th, 1989)
It’s a new school year and, due to the Junior High burning down, all of the Degrassi kids are enrolling at Degrassi High! Along with finally getting to go to a new school, they also finally get a new theme song and title sequence.
Just going to a new school isn’t going to stop the drama, of course. Joey is still trying to make the Zit Remedy into something more than a mediocre garage band. Snake and Wheels are still politely listening to Joey’s plans. Caitlin and Joey are now dating but there’s a smarmy junior named Claude Tanner (David Armin-Parcells) who really seems to appreciate the blonde streaks in Caitlin’s hair. (Caitlin, it should be noted, does have the best hair in the school.) Arthur and Yick Yu, who both appear to have had major growth spurts over the summer, are growing apart. Alexa is not happy when Simon’s recent success as a male model makes him popular with all of the other girls at the Degrassi High. For neither the first nor the last time, Alexa dramatically gives Simon back his ring while Simon responds with genuine confusion. We even meet the new homeroom teacher, who assigns the students to read Lord of the Flies. (If you’ve seen the entire series, including the sequels to the original Degrassi High, it’s hard not to smile at the first of many references to Lord of the Flies.)
Dwayne Meyers (Darrin Brown), the bully who beat Joey up during the second season of Degrassi Junior High, is now attending high school and, as soon as he sees the new students, he decides that it’s time to bring back initiations. Soon, students are getting covered in white paste, tied to flag poles, and being otherwise ritually humiliated. Dwayne especially has it out for Joey. Unfortunately, for Joey, Mr. Raditch has found a new job as DHS’s vice principal and he doesn’t have much sympathy for Joey’s predicament.
That said, the main storyline here involves the Farrell Twins. I have to admit that I groaned a bit when I discovered this was going to be a Farrell Twin episode because the twins were always the weakest characters on Degrassi Junior High. However, I have to say that Angela and Maureen Deiseach actually did a pretty good job in this episode. Erica Farrell (Angela Deiseach), having lost her virginity at camp over the summer, discovers that she’s pregnant and considers getting an abortion. Her twin sister, Heather (Maureen Deiseach), is opposed to abortion and, at first, refuses to go with Erica to the clinic. After talking to Spike, who also opposes abortion but who, as a single mother, also understands Erica’s fear, Heather finally shows up at the clinic to support her sister as she walks through a throng of protestors.
Eventually, unwanted pregnancies would occur so frequently on Degrassi that they would become something of a cliche, as would the inevitable decision to get an abortion. A New Start is one of the better pregnancy episodes, handling the storyline with sensitivity but also bringing nuance to its portrayal of the abortion debate. Especially when compared to how heavy-handed the show would get in its final seasons, it’s really interesting to see how intelligently and respectfully both the pro-life and the pro-choice positions are presented in this episode. The episode makes clear that there are no easy answers and there’s also no easy villains, which is something that Degrassi itself would forget during it’s four seasons on Netflix. As Erica and Heather enter the clinic, a protestor holds up a plastic fetus, an image that was considered to be so controversial that PBS actually censored it when this episode aired in America.
(At least this episode actually made it to America, albeit in edited form. The next Degrassi pregnancy episode would sit unaired for three years.)
It’s not a great way for the Farrell twins to start the school year but it’s proof that, even as Degrassi Junior High becomes Degrassi High, it will continue to “go there.”
The 1966 film, The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini, asks the question, “What can you do if you want to have a beach party but you don’t have a beach?”
The answer: “Find a pool!”
Seriously, a pool is just as good as a beach and fortunately, Chuck (Tommy Kirk) has a pool where his friends can hang out and listen as Vicki (Nancy Sinatra) sings a song. It’s in a big old mansion and hey, it might be haunted. It used to belong to Hiram Stokeley (Boris Karloff) and he’s dead now so he certainly won’t mind, right?
Well, what if he’s not dead!?
Oh wait, actually, he is dead. But he’s still hanging around. It turns out that he needs to do at least one good deed in order to get into Heaven. (Isn’t starring in Frankenstein enough? I mean, c’mon…..) It also turns that Hiram only has 24 hours to do that good deed or it’s off to Hell for him. Maybe he could figure out a way to help Chuck and his family win his fortune! Hiram enlists the help of his long-dead girlfriend, Cecily (Susan Hart). Cecily, we are told, is wearing an invisible bikini but we just have to take the film’s word on that because it’s invisible and, seeing as how Cecily’s a ghost, it’s always possible that only reason she’s transparent is because she’s a spirit. I mean, seriously, who knows how ghosts work?
Anyway, it’s not going to be easy for Hiram and Cecily to ensure that Chuck inherits that fortune, largely because Chuck and all of his friends are idiots. The other problem is that Reginald Ripper (Basil Rathbone), Hiram’s lawyer, is determined to win that money for himself and, if you have any doubt that he’s a bad dude, just check out his name. GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT NAMED REGINALD RIPPER! Fortunately, even though Reginald graduated from law school and is played by Basil freaking Rathbone, he’s still an idiot and he comes up with the stupidest plan possible to get Chuck and friends out of the house.
He’s going to make them think that it’s haunted!
(But it is haunted….)
Reginald’s plan is to have his evil associates, J. Sinister Hulk (Jesse White), Chicken Feather (Benny Rubin), and Princess Yolanda (Bobbi Shaw), pretend to be monsters and ghosts in order to scare all of the teens out of the house. He also enlists his daughter, Sinistra (Quinn O’Hara), to help but Sinistra isn’t really bad. She’s just extremely near-sighted and someone thought it would be a good idea to name her Sinistra.
And then the bikers show up! This is one of AIP’s beach party films so, of course, there are bikers. Eric von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) shows up and pretends to be Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Of course, at the time this film was made, the real Marlon Brando was filming Arthur Penn’s The Chase so I’m going to guess that Harvey Lembeck probably had more fun pretending to be Brando than Brando was having being himself….
Anyway, this is a stupid movie even by the standards of the AIP beach party films. It’s also notably disjointed. That probably has something to do with the fact that Karloff and Susan Hart weren’t actually added to the film until after the movie had already been shot. Apparently, AIP felt that the first cut of the movie was missing something so they said, “Let’s toss in a little Karloff!” Of course, Boris Karloff was such an old charmer that it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t ever really interact with anyone other than Susan Hart over the course of the film. You’re just happy to see him.
So yeah, technically, this is not a good film but, at the same time, you kind of know what you’re getting into when you watch a movie called The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini. The jokes fall flat. The songs are forgettable. But the whole thing is such a product of its time that it’s always watchable from an anthropological perspective. Add to that, you get Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone, doing what they had to do to pay the bills and somehow surviving with their dignity intact. Good for them.
American-International Pictures, never ones to shy away from jumping on a trend, released a pair of secret agent spoofs starring the one and only Vincent Price as the evil supervillain Dr. Goldfoot. AIP president James H. Nicholson himself allegedly came up with the story, wanting to use the film as a showcase for wife Susan Hart, a beautiful woman of limited talent. The first was DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE, an endearingly goofy little movie co-starring SKI PARTY’s Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman. The two even use the same character names from that previous film, Tod Armstrong and Craig Gamble – only reversed, with Frankie as Craig and Dwayne as Tod!
Mad scientist Goldfoot, an obvious cross between James Bond nemeses Dr. No and Goldfinger, is Price at his campy best, carving up large slices of ham as the malevolent meanie. His fiendish plot is creating an army of…
Through the Shattered Lens 