Wild on the Beach

If 20th Century Fox was hoping for a series of beach films to rival American-International Pictures Beach Party series, then why didn't they splurge for color? It would seem that was a given in these situations.

Taking the place of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are road company leads Frankie Randall and Sherry Jackson. Randall was a good singer, but surely was no actor and Jackson had a lot of trouble convincing people she was an actress because they couldn't get past her voluptuous figure. She could give a performance, but not here. I guarantee you will have heard of no one else in the cast save two.

Randall plays a young man attending Beach University in Florida and he's been given permission by one Captain Sullivan to live at his beach house while attending. A couple of weeks before the semester starts in walks Sherry Jackson the captain's niece who informs Randall and his many house guests and party guests that she is the new owner. But since the will hasn't been probated yet It's all up in the air.

In the meantime the mean old party pooper dean of the college wants this coed cohabitation put to an end.

Upon this plot several forgotten acts of the era do their thing. However the film also featured the yet unknown Sonny and Cher. We all have to make our start somewhere so Representative Bono and entertainment legendary diva Cher begin their careers here in a pale imitation beach film.

Only reason I can think of to see this film.

There is nothing wild about this movie, and there is no beach. Aside from a few stock footage scenes of surfers, there are no beach scenes whatsoever. This is not an Annette movie, but a cheap rip off. The only redeeming value of this movie to the Beach Genre is the music, which features Sonny & Cher and the Astronauts. No longer available on VHS or DVD, you'll have to find a copy on ebay, expect poor quality.

Saw this 4/29/15 via cable on demand. A strange, generally bad movie directed by bad director Maury Dexter. Yet, as Voltaire discovered in Shakespeare, sometimes there are pearls in the manure pile. "Wild on the Beach" earns the comparison to fertilizer with e.g., the Sonny and Cher segment, which manages to combine awful music with clumsy cinematic execution. The pearl? The segment featuring the number "Run Away from Him" sung by Cindy Malone. The bit reminded me of some of the great songs and visuals in "Just for Fun" (1963). Ms. Malone's song would have benefited from Nicolas Roeg's lensing in that movie, but still the segment is surprisingly powerful, and of such high quality it seems out of place in what is in all other respects a thoroughly awful film.

Yes, Sonny and Cher are in it. They perform one number, but do not engage in any comedy. Speaking of comedy, what passes as humor in this film is unfunny and depressing. Justin Smith, a character actor who mostly worked in TV, gets saddled with unfunny comedy material. Making it even more horrible is the worst background music ever used for a film. It is absolutely unlistenable. The credit (?) for the score goes to Jimmie Haskell, who wrote and orchestrated for movies, TV, and albums. I hope for Mr. Haskell's sake that this job was farmed out to a ghost writer. And then there's Frankie Randall. Randall is a fine jazz pianist who made a few albums in the 1960s and was championed by Frank Sinatra. Later he became a regular attraction and entertainment director in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. He still performs and records today. As tasty as his piano and vocal stylings are, he always seems to be a bit under pitch. This problem is evident in this film and is accentuated by pop musical material which is foreign to Randall's style. He also seems a bit uncomfortable as an actor. I guess Lippert saw him as an alternative to Frankie Avalon, but Avalon is adept at comedy and can make poor pop songs sound like Cole Porter. Randall is only effective when interpreting the REAL Cole Porter songs.

If you ever needed proof of the superiority of AIP's Beach Party series, here it is. Lippert couldn't even bring themselves to shoot this in colour, and they certainly couldn't afford stars of the magnitude of Frankie and Annette. The only saving grace of this tiresome take on teenage life in the mid 60s is, not surprisingly, the music. Sonny and Cher appear performing It's Gonna Rain, a garagey b-side that belies their pop leanings. The Astronauts are on hand performing a sub-Elvis number and the film's highlight, Here Comes Speedy Gonzales, and Sandy Nelson pounds out a little teen beat while a rather tuneless (and nameless) band backs him up.