Beach Party Film
Beach party movies were an American 1960s genre of feature films created by American International Pictures (AIP) with their surprise 1963 hit, Beach Party, and copied by virtually every other studio. Precursors to the genre were Columbia Pictures 1959 release Gidget, starring Sandra Dee as teenage surfer girl Gidget and James Darren as her beau Moondoggie; 1961's Gidget Goes Hawaiian starring Deborah Walley as Gidget; and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) starring Cindy Carol as Gidget. American International's films took the Gidget idea, added more music and far more bikinis, and removed nearly all references to parents.
Another precursor to the genre was Where The Boys Are, in 1960, which was significantly more serious but still aimed at the same audience. Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii in 1961 is also the same basic architecture. These films helped popularize surfing and later, surf music, and they often included on-screen performances by well-known pop groups.
The films were originally intended as a low-budget imitation of both the Elvis Presley musical and the Doris Day bedroom farce, aimed at the teen market, but they ended up taking on a life of their own.
Although termed "beach party film genre," several films of the genre do not actually include surfing, or even scenes on the beach. Some critics define a "classic" AIP series of seven films produced by American International Pictures - whereas others, including Stephen J. McParland in his 1994 book, "It's Party Time - A Musical Appreciation of the Beach Party Film Genre," include the AIP films Ski Party, Sergeant Deadhead, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and Fireball 500 in the genre, along with non-AIP, non-beach product such as C'mon Let's Live a Little, Wild Wild Winter and Village of the Giants. In fact, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini is defined here as a "classic" beach party film - although a beach is never seen onscreen.
Read more about Beach Party Film: Storylines, Running Gags, Cameo Actors, Musical Groups and Future Stars, Production, The "classic Series", Other Films of The Genre, End of The Genre, Influence On Popular Culture and Parodies
Famous quotes containing the words beach, party and/or film:
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)