Bikini Beach

1964's "Bikini Beach" was the third entry in the AIP series kicked off by "Beach Party" and "Muscle Beach Party," which began shooting Apr. 20 with much of the regular gang intact, such as Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello as Dee Dee, John Ashley as Johnny, Jody McCrea as Deadhead, Candy Johnson, Donna Loren, and Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper again leading The Rat Pack. It's no day at the beach when aging property developer Harvey Huntington Honeywagon (Keenan Wynn) targets the group for their free wheeling obsessions with surfing and sex, using his highly intelligent ape Clyde (Janos Prohaska) as evidence that the IQ level of today's teens has descended to the primate level. Meanwhile, Frankie has a rival for Annette, a visiting pop star from Sussex whose given name is Peter Royce Bentley, better known to the screaming girls as 'The Potato Bug' (a dual role for Avalon while foreshadowing Peter and Gordon), given to fits of laughter when not shaking his head to the tune of 'yeah yeah.' Don Rickles trades in his persona of Jack Fanny for that of Big Drag, who runs a drinking hangout at the beach as well as announcing the drag racing winners, his hobby is throwing globs of paint on canvas to produce art that 'has no price on it, I mean, it's priceless!' This comes in handy for the climax, as a stranger in red cape and black hat echoes Vincent Price in his guise of Sears art connoisseur (previously seen as 'Big Daddy' in "Beach Party"), but actually turns out to be Boris Karloff in a tip of the hat to his old friend, deputizing for the late Peter Lorre. Throw in a werewolf growling in a pool hall and all the ingredients for the best of the series are in place, if only it didn't drag during the drag racing at Pomona (fortunately, this does feature curvaceous Annette actually sporting a navel baring two piece bikini, to the chagrin of Walt Disney). Janos Prohaska dons the same ape suit for the John Carradine episode of LAND OF THE GIANTS ("Comeback"), best remembered as the Horta and the Mugato on STAR TREK. The British Invasion spearheaded by The Beatles proved the death knell for Frankie Avalon's singing career, his disdain on display with his outlandish yet savage response as Potato Bug (curiously, his final AIP release would be shot in England in 1968, "Horror House" intended as the screen farewell for a dying Boris Karloff). Karloff, just after narrating the one reeler "Today's Teens," proves he knows where it's at by returning for the final entry, "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini," in which the beach party moves inside a haunted house to gyrate around the swimming pool. The end credits not only give Boris his due as 'The Art Dealer' but also show veteran actress Renie Rialto at age 63 doing her best to keep up with the bump and grind of shapely Candy Johnson.

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

O.K., O.K., I must take some exception with the two prior reviews in this thread. Bikini Beach has a lot more going for it those pieces implied.

First, Frankie Avalon finally earned his AIP pay in this picture. While I really don't care for his 60s greaser college kid character in most of the other beach Party movies, here his dual roles (as "Frankie" the surfer who takes Dee Dee (Annette) for granted and as English invasion artist the "Potato Bug") are enjoyable to watch. He shows his reach as an actor far beyond what one would expect in a B movie like this.

Secondly, for anyone interested in the history of drag racing, the strip scenes are interesting; textbook mid 60s drag environment. Few if any other examples of that are available in American film.

Third, the music. Much better than what was in the movie that preceded it ("Muscle Beach Party" was one of the weakest of the series in terms of music) and many that followed. In Bikini Beach, you get to hear Annette sing a duet of a Styner-Hemrick ballad ("Because You're You") with Avalon that is good (if you have a copy of her Bikini Beach LP, her solo version of this song on it is arguably one of the most hauntingly beautiful recordings she ever made). The "house club band" at Big Daddy's in this film is the Pyramids, arguably one of the better now-forgotten west coast groups that played the role of the house band in these movies. Their instrumental version of "Fingertips" is classic early 60's surf instrumental. And a very young Stevie Wonder actually appears at the end.

Fourth, the infamous Candy Johnson (the fringe-wearing, wild blond go-go dancer character who, with the swish of her hips, could put a man in a daze and send him flying through the air) finally comes of age in this movie, the club fight scenes actually feature her. As do the closing credits, where she fractures the camera lens at the end.

Does all this make "Bikini Beach" a work of art? Heavens. no, but it's a heck of a lot better than Muscle Beach Party, Pajama Party, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and the Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. In other words, out of the seven AIP Beach Party Movies, this is definitely in the top two or three (only bettered by Beach Blanket Bingo and arguably Beach Party).

One of the funniest beach party movies made by AIP (or anybody), with a great cast and pretty funny script with no story involved. Such as it is involves the arrival of the Potato Bug (Avalon in a double role), a John Lennon-esque Britisher that all the beach girls swoon over. Annette seems to decide the endless summer might never end, and jumps ship to the Bug. Frankie and the Bug have to drag race it out at Don Ricle's aptly named "Big Drag" -- Rickles is anything but a drag, constantly mugging with the lines they throw him and everyone else's too. Frankie Avalon's double performance may not go down in history as the modern equivalent of John Barrymore, but it's all good fun worth a hundred minutes of my lifetime. Looks like Mike Myers might have been watching this one pretty closely too.

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.