Beach Party
Pop star Frankie Avalon and former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello  inaugurated the beach movie proper (after Gidget tested the waters) with this  celebration of surf, sand, rock & roll music, and, of course, sex. Frankie  carries Annette (named Doris in the film) over the threshold of a beach cabin as  she whispers "It's just like we're married." "Exactly!" he smiles before  tripping over a dozen friends camping out on the floor. Well, not quite, as it  turns out in the boys-against-girls contest of one-upmanship and jealous  tantrums. Frankie woos the pneumatic Scandinavian Eva Six and Annette flirts  with frumpy anthropologist Bob Cummings (wearing a beard that would scare  Grizzly Adams). Meanwhile he secretly studies the mating rituals of the beach  tribe with his eternally frustrated assistant Dorothy Malone. Harvey Lembeck  (fromStalag 17) is the aging juvenile delinquent Eric von Zipper, a  spastic motorcycle gang leader, while Morey Amsterdam recites silly beat poetry  in a Chinese mask and surf rocker Dick Dale plays bongos and wears a gold  earring. Look for bit parts by Beach Boy Brian Wilson (as a surfer) and Peter  Falk (as a biker) and a cameo by Vincent Price. This first beach romp is about  as sophisticated as a Keystone Kops farce (it ends with a slapstick free-for-all  that wouldn't be out place in the silent era), but it's dumb, fluffy fun with  lots of hunky boys and pretty bikinied girls shaking their booties and making  out.--Sean Axmaker