Beach Party Film - Other Films of The Genre

Other Films of The Genre

The success of the AIP movie series spawned many imitators. In 1964 Surf Party with Bobby Vinton and Jackie DeShannon was released, Ride the Wild Surf with Fabian, Barbara Eden and Shelley Fabares, and For Those Who Think Young with James Darren, Pamela Tiffin, Tina Louise, Bob Denver, Nancy Sinatra and Paul Lynde. Darren had co-starred in all three of the Gidget movies. Lynde also appeared in AIP's Beach Blanket Bingo in 1965.

Billed as "The First Horror Musical", The Horror of Party Beach (1964), filmed in Connecticut, offers an offbeat blend of music, bikers, and a rampaging monster created by radioactive waste.

The number of beach movie releases peaked in 1965. By this time, even Elvis Presley had a few entries in the genre. His 1961 release Blue Hawaii was immensely successful and one of his best-loved movies of all. Presley returned to the beach with Girl Happy in 1965 and again with Paradise Hawaiian Style in 1966. Many of the beach films were packed with well-known musical acts: A Swingin' Summer with Raquel Welch (who also performs one song) and music by The Righteous Brothers and Gary Lewis & The Playboys, Beach Ball with Edd Byrnes, The Supremes, The Four Seasons, and The Righteous Brothers, The Girls on the Beach with The Beach Boys and Lesley Gore, Wild on the Beach with Sonny & Cher and Daytona Beach Weekend with Del Shannon.

1965 was also the year in which producers began to extend the theme by producing teen-oriented musicals set in non-beach locations, often with scripts that blended music with non-comedic storylines. These included Village of the Giants (which merged the "beach" genre with science fiction), Beach Girls and the Monster (merging the genre with horror), One-Way Wahini (music and mystery set in Hawaii) and Get Yourself A College Girl, a relatively lavish MGM production set on a campus and featuring the first appearances in a U.S. produced teen musical by British Invasion acts The Animals and the Dave Clark Five.

With at least six beach films released in 1965, the genre reached the height of its popularity. That year the 1959-1963 Gidget film series was also remade into a television sitcom starring 19-year-old Sally Field as the titular California surfer girl. The show ran for one season (1965-1966). William Asher was chosen to direct the first 4 episodes plus episodes 6, 8, and 17.

Following in the trail of AIP's Ski Party, the ski-resort formula of replacing sand with snow was duplicated in Winter a Go-Go (1965) and Wild Wild Winter (1966), with music by The Beau Brummels and Jay and the Americans. Another 1966 release, Out of Sight, from Universal Pictures, was a multi-genre blend of beach film, hot rods, rock 'n' roll, and spy spoof. The cast included a pre-Land of the Giants Deanna Lund and music by Gary Lewis & the Playboys, The Turtles, and Freddie and the Dreamers. The Fat Spy (1966) starring '50s icon Jayne Mansfield, was another dual-genre parody of beach party and spy films.