Storylines
The AIP storylines typically revolved around boyfriend and girlfriend Frankie (Avalon) and Annette (Funicello) trying to make one another jealous with newcomers, as they and their friends had adventures (on and off the beach), with someone breaking into song every few minutes.
The first film, Beach Party, has a more adult point of view featuring a romantic sub-plot between Anthropology professor Robert Orville Sutwell (Robert Cummings) and his secretary Marianne (Dorothy Malone). Sutwell initially rents a beach house to research an academic paper on the tribalistic mating rituals of American teenagers.
The main cast usually had running roles (though their character names sometimes changed from picture to picture), and with the exception of Muscle Beach Party, the villains of the story were usually biker Eric Von Zipper (played by comic actor Harvey Lembeck as a parody of Marlon Brando in The Wild One) and his inept gang the Rat Pack, or "Rats & Mice" (which included Alberta Nelson, of Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and The Andy Griffith Show).
Read more about this topic: Beach Party Film