Beach Movies

The rise of Surf Music in the early 60s, coupled with the general surfing craze that was sweeping the USA, inevitably began to spawn movies, with Beach Party (1963) starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello doing particularly well.

Four more films followed in quick succession, utilising the same stars, crew and concept: Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965).

William Asher, the director of American International’s first three beach movies, was once asked about the company’s shift from gang-wars to beach bashes and said: “our audiences welcome clean sex. They are bored with juvenile delinquency.”

The chicks all looked like centrefolds from Nugget or Escapade and the guys all straight out of the Hardy Boys. And of course, no one smoked, drank or touched each other (except when playing volleyball).

Horror Of Party Beach, The (1964) In the same year that Dr Martin Luther King received the Nobel Prize, audiences queued up to see Horror Of…
Pyramids, The Bonafide Long Beach surfers and Poly High students, The Pyramids, formed in 1961 The band scored a hit in 1964…
Ski Party (1965) This amiable, if vastly inferior take on Some Like it Hot (1959) from American International is set in a ski resort…
Beach Ball (1965) "Those surf ridin', skin divin', sky jumpin', drag racin', beach bashin' boys and their bikini beauties . . . in…
Dick Dale Richard Anthony Monsour - known professionally as Dick Dale - was the first real surfer to actually make surf music,…
Beach Party (1963) "It's what happens when 10,000 kids meet on 5,000 Beach Blankets!" An anthropologist studying the sex habits of young people…
Pajama Party (1964) One of those kitsch 1960s Californian beach party movies which began with Beach Party (1963). In this one, Tommy Kirk plays a…
Fireball 500 (1966) Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello star here in their first non-beach party movie. Avalon plays stock car driver Dave Owens…

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