The comic book opening graphics are well enough. Ten minutes into the movie, a swinging go-go chick with personality and dressed in a bikini-dancing outfit hops out a hot number in front of the stage of a club called “The Dungeon,” owned by “Daddy” (Sid Haig). The Dungeon is actually the “Haunted House” (with prop monsters), a most popular discotheque on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1960s. The stage area was partly built up like a scary face of a monster – with weird eyes and nostrils – and the bands worked out of the toothy, wide open Dragon Mouth. The dancer in front of the stage-face was normally dressed like Batgirl. Anyway, at the height of the bikini girl’s dance – during “Walk On (Right Out of My Life),” sung by Pat and Lolly Vegas (later Redbone) – a white mist erupts out of the face’s nostrils. Hmmm. The male customers are generally fully clothed or wear shorts although several guys dance shirtless with trousers (Are they supposed to be he-men?) But the females mostly dance in bikinis. After all, it’s a bikini world.
Oh yes, the plot. Mike Samson (Tommy Kirk is a Samson?) has the male lead. Kirk may be the most unlikely leading ladies-man in movie history since Algie the Miner (1912 silent movie). Mike, supposedly athletic but with a nonathletic body form, is a lady-killer with a gigantic ego. He spots comely Delilah Dawes (Deborah Walley) strutting on a beach one cloudy day (among many such days in this film), and becomes hooked. But his ego turns her off. The solution? Simple. Just don a pair of horned-rim eyeglasses and short pants, and act goofier, or like a nerd (his alter-ego smart brother, Herbert). You just know that the lovely Delilah will be unable to see through the disguise, although Mike’s appearance has not changed, and despite his occasional slip-ups:
Delilah: “Where do you live?” Herbert (Mike): “Oh, it’s easy to find my couch … I mean, uh, my house.” Delilah laughs obliviously.
Anyway Delilah digs intellect, and fills out her bikinis and tight white shorts quite well. By then Walley was already a mother. Before long, in the fall of 1967, she would have a role as the daughter/daughter-in-law of the “The Mothers-in Law” TV show. Mike’s clueless sidekick, Woody (which is a good description of his brain), is played by Bobby “Boris” Pickett (of “Monster Mash” renown, #1 in October 1962). Woody’s girl is Pebbles (Suzie Kaye), who, like Deborah Walley, was in several bikini beach movies. That Suzie doesn’t just get a two-by-four and whack Woody to knock some sense into him shows remarkable composure, although she deservedly slams a pie into his dopey face. By the way, how do these beach folks support themselves? How old are they supposed to be? In the unlikely premise that they are supposed to be OLDER students going back to summer-school, they are never seen in class. Maybe there’s so little time for study!
The climax involves a cross-country race managed by Daddy. With some of the strangest race segments in US history, it consists of such activities as changing clothing, swimming one pool lap, furniture moving, hitch-hiking, speed-boating, camel riding, staying on motorcycles through an operating car wash, maybe even swimming across the Pacific (!), etc. Is Mike really a horse’s ass? You will know what’s meant when you see him in a trailer. Who will win, Delilah or Mike, and will they ever come together? Uhhh.
Moving onward from the plot, the film has a continuity problem. Events were to occur over the summer, but the overcast beach is anything but the hot season. Then we see residential streets with trees changing color from green to yellow (obviously autumn). At night, during a city drive, there are Christmas decorations everywhere. It must be the late fall of 1965. But you may ask, wasn’t the movie released in 1967. Yes, but it had to have been made much earlier, and then held back. Here’s why.
A redeeming characteristic is the Rock ‘n’ Roll artists who were very popular at the time. But their featured songs were all released in 1965, not 1966-1967:
• Toys – “Attack” (peaked #18 on Billboard in January 1966). • Gentrys – “Spread It on Thick” (peaked #50 in February 1966). • Castaways – “Liar, Liar” (peaked #12 in August 1965). • Animals – “We Gotta Get out of This Place” (reached #13 on Billboard in September 1965).
“Chas” Chandler, the very tall bass-guitarist of the Animals, departed the group before the middle of 1966. He later managed Jimi Hendrix. And, in September, 1966, the Animals disbanded entirely (Eric Burton did start a new band in 1967). Yet we see Chas and Hilton Valentine and the rest perform in a movie that was released in 1967. Was this the first time in history that a beach movie featured music that was a year-and-a half off the charts, and with a long-disbanded band? This writer has not researched older automobiles, but it must be certain that there is not a 1967 model in the picture.
The year 1967 featured California’s first “Human Be-In” and the Monterey Pop Music Festival. “Somebody to Love” by the Jefferson Airplane was on the charts in April 1967. The bikini beach genre was already bygone. Only Elvis could still get away with movies with early-to-mid 1960s haircuts and styles. So why was this film released by B-movie linchpin AIP (its subsidiary) in 1967, long after it was made? Who knows? But you may ask, “Does the movie have some entertainment value despite its silliness?” It surely does … for three reasons. First, the Rock ‘n’ Roll artists are a time capsule. Also, a hairy Sid Haig appearance is usually worth a howl. And the gals will be attractive forever. Ahhh …
