William Asher knew comedy pretty well, what with working on Our Miss Brooks and directing so many episodes of I Love Lucy and his wife Elizabeth Mongomery's sitcom Bewitched. Critic Wheeler Winston said that Asher made all the Beach Party movies - Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and this movie - "to create a fantasy world to replace his own troubled childhood." He had moved from Hollywood to New York City when his parents divorced and he was abused by his alcoholic mother. Of this era and these movies, the director said, "The whole thing was a dream, of course. But it was a nice dream."
Asher claimed that this movie was written for The Beatles, who got too big after Ed Sullivan, so they changed the story.
Rich white old man Harvey Huntington Honeywagon III (Keenan Wynn) is closing down the beach because he's got money and he hates teenagers. He also has a trained ape named Clyde who is played by animal human acting machine Janos Prohaska, who was also the Horta, the Mugato and Yarnek on Star Trek.
Beyond the love story between Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) and Frankie (Frankie Avalon), there's also British rock star and drag racer Peter Royce "The Potato Bug" Bentley (also Frankie Avalon) who plans on stealing away Dee Dee. The way Frankie acts, she's all for it.
Ah, the cast in this. There's Don Rickles as The Pit Stop owner Big Drag, singer Donna Lauren, Little Stevie Wonder - yes, that Stevie Wonder - as well as Timothy Carey (he plays South Dakota Slim in this and Beach Blanket Bingo), Martha Hyer as Vivian Clements, Harvey Lembeck returning as Eric Von Zipper, a pre-Blood Island John Ashley as Johnny, Jody McCrea as Deadhead, Candy Johnson the Watusi girl (who inspired the song "I Want Candy"), Meredith MacRae as Animal, Playboy Playmate of the Month for June 1960 Delores Wells as Sniffles, the band The Pyramids, Alberta Nelson and, oh yes, Boris Karloff as an art dealer. He's playing the role that Peter Lorre was to take on in this movie, but sadly Lorre died of a stroke. Vincent Price read his eulogy.
Karloff's role is based on Vincent Price's commercials for "The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art," which was sold at Sears. Seeing as how this was an American-International Picture, nearly everyone would assume that the art dealer would be Price. When he reveals himself as Karloff, it's a joke on a joke and explains why he says, ""I must tell Vincent Price about this place."
Drag racer "TV" Tommy Ivo, (given that nickname because he was a Mouseketter with Funicello; he's in this racing the four-engine "Showboat"), West Coast Go-Kart Champion Von Demming and Don "The Snake" Prudhomme all show up to drive in this movie and the cars in this are just as big of stars, including Dean Jeffries' "Manta Ray," the Greer, Black and Prudhomme fuel dragster "Freida" and Larry Stellings' "Britannica."
I have a strange weakness for the AIP Beach Party movies. I realize the world was falling apart at the time - it always is - but they give me a fake nostaglia for a place I have never been and that never existed in the first place. Yet it feels like a place where I want to be, even if real life me hates the beach.
Asher claimed that this movie was written for The Beatles, who got too big after Ed Sullivan, so they changed the story.
Rich white old man Harvey Huntington Honeywagon III (Keenan Wynn) is closing down the beach because he's got money and he hates teenagers. He also has a trained ape named Clyde who is played by animal human acting machine Janos Prohaska, who was also the Horta, the Mugato and Yarnek on Star Trek.
Beyond the love story between Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) and Frankie (Frankie Avalon), there's also British rock star and drag racer Peter Royce "The Potato Bug" Bentley (also Frankie Avalon) who plans on stealing away Dee Dee. The way Frankie acts, she's all for it.
Ah, the cast in this. There's Don Rickles as The Pit Stop owner Big Drag, singer Donna Lauren, Little Stevie Wonder - yes, that Stevie Wonder - as well as Timothy Carey (he plays South Dakota Slim in this and Beach Blanket Bingo), Martha Hyer as Vivian Clements, Harvey Lembeck returning as Eric Von Zipper, a pre-Blood Island John Ashley as Johnny, Jody McCrea as Deadhead, Candy Johnson the Watusi girl (who inspired the song "I Want Candy"), Meredith MacRae as Animal, Playboy Playmate of the Month for June 1960 Delores Wells as Sniffles, the band The Pyramids, Alberta Nelson and, oh yes, Boris Karloff as an art dealer. He's playing the role that Peter Lorre was to take on in this movie, but sadly Lorre died of a stroke. Vincent Price read his eulogy.
Karloff's role is based on Vincent Price's commercials for "The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art," which was sold at Sears. Seeing as how this was an American-International Picture, nearly everyone would assume that the art dealer would be Price. When he reveals himself as Karloff, it's a joke on a joke and explains why he says, ""I must tell Vincent Price about this place."
Drag racer "TV" Tommy Ivo, (given that nickname because he was a Mouseketter with Funicello; he's in this racing the four-engine "Showboat"), West Coast Go-Kart Champion Von Demming and Don "The Snake" Prudhomme all show up to drive in this movie and the cars in this are just as big of stars, including Dean Jeffries' "Manta Ray," the Greer, Black and Prudhomme fuel dragster "Freida" and Larry Stellings' "Britannica."
I have a strange weakness for the AIP Beach Party movies. I realize the world was falling apart at the time - it always is - but they give me a fake nostaglia for a place I have never been and that never existed in the first place. Yet it feels like a place where I want to be, even if real life me hates the beach.