(1965/American International Pictures) DVD / VHS
Rave Reviews
“A cheap laugh riot, with lots of bongos, murders and girls in bikinis!”
—Michael Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film
“Maintains the philosophical depth and production values of 60s beach bimbo fare … a hybrid horror with acres of flesh!”
—VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever
“A movie for morons … about as scary as one of those rubber baby toys that squeak when you squeeze them.”
—Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Plot, What Plot? Jon Hall was once one of Hollywood’s most handsome leading men, costarring with his female equivalent, Dorothy Lamour, in a series of exotic sandals-and-sarongs hits, including Hurricane and Aloma of the South Seas. But by the time Hall directed and starred in Beach Girls and the Monster, both his career and his looks had seen better days. An attempt to combine elements of drive-in horror movies, those horrible Frankie-and-Annette Beach Party films, and the plotless rock ’n’ roll romps that were popular at the time, Beach Girls is a great big mess, obviously made on a teeny-tiny budget.
As the film begins, you may think your DVD player is malfunctioning: Surely the feature can’t start with a random shot of four bikini-clad babes bop-dancing on the beach with no setup, no master shot, no nothin’. But since nothin’ is what they spent on this little know-nothin’ gem, nothin’ is what they figured we’d expect. About the only name you might recognize superimposed over the wriggling, jiggling bimbos is Frank Sinatra Jr., who did the music …
The plot, such as it is, begins with a group of teenagers having a hot dog hootenanny on the beach when one couple runs off to be alone. The blonde girlfriend, who practically has the words “First Victim” stamped on her forehead, tosses sand at the guy and runs laughing into a cave. Little does she know, the cave is home to … The Monster! Okay, the “monster” actually looks like a ten-cent baby bathtub toy of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with googling eyes made from goofballs. But before you can say “Bye-bye, Bimbo,” the monster has offed the girl and taken off on a wild killing spree. A killing spree which, due to budgetary constraints, consists of three further attempts to imbibe bimbo burger—only two of them successful.
Despite all this horror, and further contributing to it, is the teens’ insistence on continuing to hold hot dog parties and dance sessions on the beach—at night. At one of these, the bikini babes bop to a truly bizarre tune called “There’s a Monster in the Surf,” performed by a hand puppet of a severed head called Kingsley the Lion. Its lyrics, written by the “actors” who perform it, include such brilliant rhymes as, “Everybody’s sleepin’, monster comes a creepin’ Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Clearly intended to be odd, this one song is so far off the charts in its lunacy that it achieves a surreality that has likely left zombied-out late-night TV viewers dazed for decades.
After much wasted screen time diverting suspicion to a crippled sculptor as “the man in the monster suit,” all is resolved when the monster turns out to be Hall himself, nursing a grudge against “those surfers that hang around the beach all the time.” When the teens are defended by a cop as being “a nice bunch of kids just trying to find themselves,” Hall snorts: “They’ll find themselves in your jail one day! The boys are nothing but a bunch of loafers and the girls are little tramps! They contribute absolutely nothing to a decent society!”
Hall’s reward for speaking the truth, and possibly saving the world from a sequel to this film? Two cop cars chase him through an obviously rear-projection Malibu, still wearing the body suit of the monster. Finally, his fancy little MG sports car crashes through a guardrail overlooking the ocean—and on its way over the cliff (thanks to the magic of stock footage) the 1956 MG turns into a 1937 roadster before bursting into flames. And when the cops arrive to survey the wreck, yet a third blatantly different vehicle is seen overturned in flames.
Although Robert Silliphant, cowriter of The Creeping Terror, was brought in to do “additional dialogue,” the final proof of just how low-budget this film is is the fact that the producers couldn’t even afford to pay for a pithy last line, something everyone expects from a movie like this. Instead we fade out on the stock footage of the burning car, and a cheapo THE END title appears. But we bet what you’ll still remember for days (or weeks!) is the “Monster in the Surf” song. Weird, man, weird!
Dippy Dialogue
Dick (Walker Edmiston): “Bunny’s dead—doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Vicky (Sue Casey): “What should it mean to me??”