I know that summer is winding down for most of us already, with kids already heading back to school in some places, but around here we don’t say summer is over until the first of September so I am watching summer movies for the month of August.
This week I am writing about Beach Blanket Bingo from 1963.
I started this movie and immediately decided I might not be able to make it through it. Ultimately I decided to push through it so my readers never have to.
And so I’d have some funny material for my blog.
I suffer for my blog readers. What can I say?
So here is the plot of the film – um….there isn’t one. I don’t think so anyhow.
There is just Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon jumping out of an airplane for whatever reason, kids (who actually look anywhere from 30 to 40 years old) dancing half-dressed on the beach, a lot of singing for no apparent reason, perverted old men chasing young girls, and some bumbling bad guy in a “motorcycle gang” who’s goal is to – er – I am truly not sure. Kidnap a pop singer I think.
Oh and a mermaid. There is a mermaid.
There is also a singer who is in love with Frankie’s character and Annette is jealous of.
I watched the movie and still had to go search online for a summary so I know what in the world happened.
Online it said this: “Frankie (Frankie Avalon) and the gang are hitting the beach for some good old-fashioned shenanigans. To get the party underway, the manager (Paul Lynde) of pop singer Sugar Kane (Linda Evans) decides a skydiving publicity stunt will really do the trick. As Frankie and the others are pulled into the plan, things get out of control. Throw in Bonehead (Jody McCrea) falling in love with a mermaid (Marta Kristen) and a kidnapping biker (Harvey Lembeck), and the party’s just getting started.”
Do the trick of what? I have no idea.
This movie was the fourth one in an eight-movie series with the first one released in 1963 and the last one being released in 1987 (yikes). From what I can see each movie had the actors playing different characters with unique plots. (Or what were supposed to be plots).
Three of the movies were released in 1964 and three in 1965.
So I looked this particular movie up on Wikipedia and it said this (there are spoilers but don’t worry…I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to rush out to watch this one), “A singer, Sugar Kane (Linda Evans), is unwittingly being used for publicity stunts for her latest album by her agent (Paul Lynde), for example, faking a skydiving stunt, actually performed by Bonnie (Deborah Walley).
Meanwhile, Frankie (Frankie Avalon), duped into thinking he rescued Sugar Kane, takes up skydiving at Bonnie’s prompting; she secretly wants to make her boyfriend Steve (John Ashley) jealous. This prompts Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) to also try free-falling. Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and his Rat Pack bikers also show up, with Von Zipper falling madly in love with Sugar Kane. Meanwhile, Bonehead (Jody McCrea) falls in love with a mermaid named Lorelei (Marta Kristen).
Eventually, Von Zipper “puts the snatch” on Sugar Kane, and in a Perils of Pauline-like twist, the evil South Dakota Slim (Timothy Carey) kidnaps Sugar and ties her to a buzz-saw.”
So….yeah…ahem. There you go. The scene with the buzz saw? Completely psychopathic material. It got very dark at that point I thought.
I did like at least one exchange between characters.
The manager of the pop singer says, “I didn’t catch your name, boy.”
And Frankie shoots back, “I didn’t throw it.”
When I first started the movie and saw Don Rickles was in it I thought, “The only thing that will save this movie is Don Rickles.”
As I got more into the movie, though, my thought was, “Not even Don Rickles can save this movie.”
But there is one stand-up act he performs in the middle that actually does save the movie…more about that below because is it just me or did Annettee always look like she was 40 even in her late teens?
She was 18 in this movie but seriously looked like 40 to me, or at least 30. Even Frankie looked old(ish) to me but he was 25 in the movie. Did you know he’s still alive? I didn’t. I knew Annette was gone – she passed away from complications of MS several years ago. I remember because my mom and I were talking about her since she was more from my mom’s era than mine.
Of course, I am teasing a bit about how old they looked. Everyone else in the movie probably was in their 30s or 40s, though. Even Rickles noticed. According to information I read online, he even broke character at one point while pretending to be in a nightclub act, teasing Frankie and Annette by asking why they were in the film, because they were so old. I must have missed this when I first watched the movie because I went back to watch it again and cracked up for the first time watching the movie. I absolutely love how you can tell how the cast is actually laughing for real – it’s so authentic.
The movie is supposed to be goofy fun so I tried to cut it some slack, but … oh my ….it was hard to struggle through most of it. The campy sound effects didn’t help anything and then there were these scenes interspliced into the movie of an old man chasing (literally) a young woman in a bikini. Weird.
I thought it was interesting, or unsettling I guess, to read that the pop singer was originally going to be played by Nancy Sinatra but she dropped out because part of the plot of the movie was a kidnapping and her brother, Frank Sinatra Jr., had only recently been released after he was actually kidnapped at the age of 19. A ransom was paid by his father Frank Sinatra to have him released.
John Ashley plays Steve, the husband of the sky-diver, in this movie (and was her actual husband in real-life) but usually played Frankie’s friend in other movies. One reviewer said the movies were about friendship ultimately and it was weird to see Ashley not playing Frankie’s friend in this particular movie.
There is plenty of music in these movies from Frankie and Annette and several other real-life artists including, Donna Loren and the Hondells and I have to admit the music really isn’t that bad.
The pop singer for the movie was portrayed by Linda Evans but she lip synched songs sung by studio vocalist Jackie Ward.
A 12-page comic book was produced by Dell Comics and released at the same time as the movie.
Frankie later said of the movie, “That’s the picture of mine that I think people remember best, and it was just a lot of kids having a lot of fun — a picture about young romance and about the opposition of adults and old people. There’s nothing that young people respond to more than when adults say `These kids are nuts,` and that’s what this movie was about. It was also fun because we got to learn how to fake skydive out of an airplane.
I thought it was also interesting to read that a skit on the Carol Burnett show with the cast and Steve Martin was based on the movie. I recently saw that clip and knew it was based on one of these movies but not which one.
I watched the movie on Amazon Prime. It’s free right now with a Prime subscription.
If you are interested in another fun review about the movie I enjoyed this one on Funk’s House of Geekery.
Next up in my Summer Movie Marathon is:
Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation (August 15)
Summertime (August 22)
Having A Wonderful Time (August 27)
Clambake (August 29)
