Product Details

• Actors: Robert Cummings, Dorothy Malone, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Morey Amsterdam
• Directors: William Asher
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• DVD Release Date: September 5, 2000
• Run Time: 98 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792846788
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,096 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Beach Party" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

• This is item 1 in The Beach Party Series.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Pop star Frankie Avalon and former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello inaugurated the beach movie proper (after Gidget tested the waters) with this celebration of surf, sand, rock & roll music, and, of course, sex. Frankie carries Annette (named Doris in the film) over the threshold of a beach cabin as she whispers "It's just like we're married." "Exactly!" he smiles before tripping over a dozen friends camping out on the floor. Well, not quite, as it turns out in the boys-against-girls contest of one-upmanship and jealous tantrums. Frankie woos the pneumatic Scandinavian Eva Six and Annette flirts with frumpy anthropologist Bob Cummings (wearing a beard that would scare Grizzly Adams). Meanwhile he secretly studies the mating rituals of the beach tribe with his eternally frustrated assistant Dorothy Malone. Harvey Lembeck (from Stalag 17) is the aging juvenile delinquent Eric von Zipper, a spastic motorcycle gang leader, while Morey Amsterdam recites silly beat poetry in a Chinese mask and surf rocker Dick Dale plays bongos and wears a gold earring. Look for bit parts by Beach Boy Brian Wilson (as a surfer) and Peter Falk (as a biker) and a cameo by Vincent Price. This first beach romp is about as sophisticated as a Keystone Kops farce (it ends with a slapstick free-for-all that wouldn't be out place in the silent era), but it's dumb, fluffy fun with lots of hunky boys and pretty bikinied girls shaking their booties and making out. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Frankie, Annette, and Dick Dale!, September 7, 2000

By	Charles Phelps (McKinney, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This first in the series of "Beach" movies made by AIP back in the 60's is my personal favorite of the lot. Bob Cummings is delightful as the bewhiskered professor studying the strange and primitive tribal rituals of the beach dwellers. Frankie is "cool" when he sings in a finger-snapping Bobby Darin kind of way. Annette is voluptuous and just as sweet as ever. Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) is hilarious as he deals with his gang (The Rats & The Mice-a bunch of stupids) and gives himself the finger.

Most important is the appearance of the King Of The Surf Guitar, Dick Dale with his Del-Tones. You want real California surfer/beach scene authenticity? Just watch the sun-tanned, earring-wearing Dale playing his left-handed, upside-down strung, reverb-drenched Fender Strat and wailing about jumpin' in his woodie and hot-doggin' on his board at his "Secret Surfin' Spot" where the "gremmies and the hodads never go". Priceless. Dated? Of course. Entertaining? You betcha! You like Dick Dale? Get this film. The fact that Frankie and Annette were hip to him moves them up a few notches on the "cool-ometer". Hooting!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the film that started it all....., September 22, 2002

By	Byron Kolln (the corner where Broadway meets Hollywood) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

BEACH PARTY was the movie that defined a generation....the California beach scene that was the epitome of cool in the sunny 60's.

Dolores (Annette Funicello) and Frankie (Frankie Avalon) head down to the coast for a summer of swingin' and surfin', only to have their romantic getaway spoiled by Frankie's loud-mouthed friends who have decided to tag along.

When a stuffy, whiskered anthropologist (Bob Cummings - LUCKY ME) and his curvy assistant Marianne (Dorothy Malone) decide to study the teens' partying habits, they end up with more than they bargained for when Professor Sutwell becomes a pawn in Dolores' game to get Frankie jealous and propose to her!

There are fantastic cameos from Eva Six, Morey Amsterdam and even Vincent Price (in a shameless promotional grab for AIP's "The Pit and the Pendulum").

See the gorgeous Candy Johnson shake her moneymaker! Hear the delightful Annette sing the tender ballad "Treat Him Nicely", and roar with laughter at the antics of Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and his "Rats"!

Followed by numerous sequels including "Bikini Beach", "Pajama Party", "Beach Blanket Bingo", "Muscle Beach Party" and "How To Stuff a Wild Bikini".

The DVD includes both full-frame and widescreen versions of the film as well as the trailer. (Double-sided, single-layer disc).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars And Wild Man Dick Dale, August 19, 2006

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Funny how when this series started it must have been aimed at adults as well as teens, for the central love story is the one between The Professor and Mary Anne--no, not the ones from Gilligans Island, though it's an odd coincidence isn't it--but the adult anthrolopogists played by Robert Cummings and Dorothy Malone. For an Oscar winner, Malone doesn't have much to do here, but when she's prowling around the Professor's apartment alone, manning his directional signals and playing a 45 on his hifi, she goes absently sexy, swinging her hips to the music, singing along to Annette's prerecorded vocal to "Promise Me Anything, Give Me Love." Some sophisticated sound editing in this sequence produces the effect that Malone is sometimes singing on the record, her voice noticeably less processed and more "musical" than Annette's super-produced studio squeak (that we all love anyhow). I will say that neither Malone nor Annette is very well served by the makeup department, who must have shot their wad trying to make Eva Six look exactly like Marilyn Monroe in the first reel of LET'S MAKE LOVE. But poor Annette with that crazy hairdo that looks as though she'd slept all night under an anvil, while Dorothy Malone looks like her skin is the shiny pink of a china pig.

Anyhow the plot is all about the Professor trying to get tenure and finish his book about the sex lives of the surfing youth. It's pretty funny and most of the ironically dimwitted scholarly comments about the "tribe" of the surfers seem right on today. He takes Annette as his protege, but she mistakes his interest in her tribe for a personal interest, and to make Frankie jealous she reciprocates by "dating" him even though he must be twice her age or more. It's a little eerie, and Dorothy Malone calls it "Lolita love," which isn't far from the truth.

Valera Noland, as Annette's best friend Rhonda, gives her usual animated performance. Whatever happened to her? But most of all, who is the dancer (not Candy Johnson) who wears her hair tied back with a headband and a tight sweater with big green stripes who dances around Frankie during the "Don't Stop Now" number--the one who stares him down with a seductive smirk at every turn? She resembles a really, really sexy version of Jane Fonda and her dancing could make a dead man stand up straight for once. Don't you think it strange how, in the Beach Party movies, Jody McCrea plays the southern goofus "Deadhead," okay, he doesn't play him well, but to me he IS Deadhead, and then when AIP decided to make "Sergeant Deadhead," Jody must have figured this was his big break, only to discover that this time out, Frankie was playing Deadhead? What a bitter blow to the most nibble-able torso in the movies of the 1960s!