Twenty years after the party
The 1985 reunion party of the Beach Party cast (and other related AIP pictures) The top row has Dwayne Hickman (some remember him as Dobie Gillis), Frankie Avalon and Fabian. The bottom row has Deborah Walley on the far left and Annette Funicello on the other end. Third from the left in the white dress is Susan Hart (from GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI and DR GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE).
Watching some of those Beach Party movies all these decades later, a couple of funny things jump out. First, this may be the first real wave of Baby Boomer culture. Before that, we have teenage movies that featured bikers and rebels and hot-rodders but they were mostly the tail-end of the generation born before WW II. By 1962, say, movies were starting to be aimed at and cast with kids born as part of the postwar explosion of babydom. The Beach Party movies had that surge of optimism and fun-loving that flicks from the 1950s mostly didn't show. These boys and girls just wanted a good time while they were young and healthy and hormones boiled in their blood. The odd aspect is that there is no depiction of exactly what was drawing the Beach Party characters to this scene (aside from surfing itself). That is, sex and drugs. I don't think you ever see any of the characters drink a beer, do you? Certainly, no joints are ever shown. There's a certain amount of smooching and chasing each other up and down the beach, but is there any explicit sign that these kids are having sex at all? Do we see a couple come out of a room together or even wake up on the beach cuddled all night? Not that I recall. Despite all the tanned flesh on display, the movies are surprisingly innocent. (In what's onscreen at least).
I'm not the first to notice this, but the comic relief is a motorcycle gang of hopeless goof-ups, led by Harvey Lembeck. Is this the Boomers' reaction to Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONE? Is he seen as outdated? I would guess that if somehow James Dean's agonized character from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE turned up on the AIP beach, by the end of the movie he would be dancing with Bobbi Shaw and waxing a surf board, co-opted by the change in culture.
Watching some of those Beach Party movies all these decades later, a couple of funny things jump out. First, this may be the first real wave of Baby Boomer culture. Before that, we have teenage movies that featured bikers and rebels and hot-rodders but they were mostly the tail-end of the generation born before WW II. By 1962, say, movies were starting to be aimed at and cast with kids born as part of the postwar explosion of babydom. The Beach Party movies had that surge of optimism and fun-loving that flicks from the 1950s mostly didn't show. These boys and girls just wanted a good time while they were young and healthy and hormones boiled in their blood. The odd aspect is that there is no depiction of exactly what was drawing the Beach Party characters to this scene (aside from surfing itself). That is, sex and drugs. I don't think you ever see any of the characters drink a beer, do you? Certainly, no joints are ever shown. There's a certain amount of smooching and chasing each other up and down the beach, but is there any explicit sign that these kids are having sex at all? Do we see a couple come out of a room together or even wake up on the beach cuddled all night? Not that I recall. Despite all the tanned flesh on display, the movies are surprisingly innocent. (In what's onscreen at least).
I'm not the first to notice this, but the comic relief is a motorcycle gang of hopeless goof-ups, led by Harvey Lembeck. Is this the Boomers' reaction to Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONE? Is he seen as outdated? I would guess that if somehow James Dean's agonized character from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE turned up on the AIP beach, by the end of the movie he would be dancing with Bobbi Shaw and waxing a surf board, co-opted by the change in culture.