Frankie and Dee Dee's chaste romance is threatened by the arrival of British mop-top heart throb, 'The Potato Bug' (a type of beetle...get it?) who is also a world-champion drag racer, so the two suiters face off at 200 mph in 'rails' on Big Drag's (Don Rickles) strip. This, the third film in the silly but iconic 'Beach Party' cycle, has all the usual elements - sand and surf, lots of photogenic youngsters in skimpy outfits, breezy if not memorable 60s party-rock'n'roll and love ballads, groovy slang, lots of slapstick comedy (Eric von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and the Rats are back), and a preposterous plot, this time involving a duplicitous retirement-home developer (Keenen Wynn) obsessed with proving that the beach crowd are less intelligent than his pet chimp (played by professional furry Janos Prohaska). Avalon plays both Frankie and the Potato Bug (although I suspect that a double must have been used when the two characters shake hands, if not, the split-screen is remarkable) and despite rumors, Disney's buxom starlet Annette Funicello (Dee Dee) bares her navel in a bikini (once again she has an unflattering (IMO) 'piled-high' hair-do - perhaps because she was only 5' 1"). The background players are the usual gang, including Deadhead (Jody McCrea ) and Candy (Candy Johnson), the hyperkinetic dancer with the weaponised hips. While the music in general is unremarkable, the pretty and talented Donna Loren sings a bouncy 'Love's a Secret Weapon' and the film closes with 14 year-old 'Little Stevie Wonder'. I wasn't sure if I could sit through 90 minutes of The Potato Bug's excruciating 'British accent' but Avalon was clearly parodying an American parodying Brits parodying themselves (in the Terry Thomas vein), so I decided to wince and watch. Like others in its canon, the film is heavily padded with slapstick scenes that must have seemed pretty juvenile even in a teen-oriented comedy (notably the go-cart chase and the climatic fight-scene that, a decade before the 'chop-socky' era, includes references to karate and savate) . There are some interesting cars and vintage drag-racing clips for gear-heads and, as a piece of fictional Americana, the film's exuberant foolishness makes it hard to really dislike (plus, the great Karloff has a cameo and the explanation behind the inexplicable appearance of a werewolf in Von Zipper's hangout is unique to say the least).
Review of Bikini Beach
