Starring Edd Byrnes, Chris Noel, Robert Logan, and Gail Gilmore
Directed by Lennie Weinrib
Music and Lyrics by various
We're celebrating the end of the summer season this week with the two of the three Beach Party imitations Paramount released in the mid-60's. Beach Ball debuted at the height of the craze in September 1965, when the AIP Beach Party films were doing turn-away business at drive-ins and every studio had begun their own beach-set musicals. Seeing the profits, all of the major studios and many minor ones also started throwing rock acts and their young contracted stars into odd stories revolving around surf parties. How does Paramount's second shot at the teen market look today? Let's begin with shots of surfers hanging ten as the party starts and find out...
The Story: The Wrigglers (Robert Logan, Aron Kincaid, and Don Edmonds) are a rock group who would love to make good, if they didn't owe Mr. Wolf (James Wellman) at the local music store $1,000 for their instruments. Their ambitious manager Dick Martin (Byrnes) goes to Susan (Noel), the head of the college credit union, to try to get alone. He feeds her a sob story about wanting to return to college, until Susan and her friends Augusta (Mikki Jamison) and Samantha (Brenda Benet) see the boys having a party and Dick admits they have no intention of returning to college.
The girls tear up the check, but change their minds after Dick and the guys say they'll return to college when they can make the money for their instruments. The girls try to give them the money, but Dick gets offended. They do manage to get them a spot in a big car show with a $1,000 prize. The boys end up getting in touch with their feminine sides when they get into trouble with Wolf and having to out-run the local cops.
The Song and Dance: In this case, the song is the only thing that's really of any consequence. Paramount lined up an impressive array of guest-star acts for such a silly film, including the Four Seasons, the Righteous Brothers. and in their first movie, the Supremes. There's also some nice cinematography during the few scenes actually shot on the beach.
Favorite Number: Appropriately, we kick off with this film's big hit, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons with their smash "Dawn." "Surfin' Shindig" is the first of four numbers from The Wigglers...and the only thing that makes this different than their later songs is Dick insisting that the boys speed it up, leading to them ending with sped-up film. The Righteous Brothers really get rocking at the party that so offends Susan and her girls with "Baby, What You Want Me To Do." "We've Got Money" is the Wigglers' second song at the party they hold when they think they have that credit union check in the bag. We also get an instrumental version that's once again sped up after the ladies leave.
Actual surf rock group the Hondells take us back to the beach with "My Buddy Seat." "Doin' the Jerk" by the Walker Brothers provides the backdrop for the boys evading the cops and ending up in drag. The Supremes pick up next as Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard wriggle their way through the title song and "Surfer Boy" in elegant white dresses and extremely strange hairdos. I don't think the audience was expecting a drag-act Wigglers to turn up onstage, singing "I Feel So Good." The ladies certainly didn't!
What I Don't Like - This is dumb even by the standards of B teen drive-in fodder. All of the terrific music acts in the world can't make up for a ridiculous script, leads that are dull (the ladies) or annoyingly obnoxious (the men), and the cheap production by Roger Corman (one of his very few ventures into musical territory). Byrnes does well enough for a last-minute substitute for Tommy Kirk, but his character is grating and sleazy.
The Big Finale: Only of interest to the most ardent fans of classic rock or Motown. Anyone else will want to stay very far away. There's far more enjoyable beach parties out there.
Home Media: It helps that at press time, this can only be found in a washed-out copy on YouTube that seems to have been taped off VH-1 two decades ago. (That said, host Frankie Valli's comments before and after commercial breaks actually make the movie slightly easier to watch and helps put a lot of the idiocy in context.)
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