Frequently derided as one of the worst movies ever made, Del Tenney’s 1964 beach blanket send-up gets more hate than it deserves. Yes, it is hindered with distasteful racist stereotypes. Yes, virtually every character in its 78-minutes is a stereotype, from biker hooligans to girl gangs to pipe-smoking scientists. The dialogue is clunky and it’s got more infodumps than an Ernest Cline novel. Even so, The Horror of Party Beach has plenty going for it, and not just as a B-movie to be riffed on.
The film begins with a scene straight out of a beach blanket teensploitation movie, complete with hot rods and sax-soaked surf soundtrack. Straightaway, we’re introduced to two of our 30-year-old teenage protagonists, Tina (Marilyn Clark) and Hank (John Lyon, billed here as John Scott). This pair of young lovers are drifting apart, with Tina a good-time-gal focused on hitting the bottle and Hank busy with his science experiments.
Immediately, we’re introduced to Party Beach‘s always-at-11 shooting-for-the-rafters acting style. Clark is clearly angling for her local Tennessee Williams adaptation, with lines like, “We’re not even speaking the same language anymore” and, “Oh brother, you ain’t seen living ’til you’ve seen Tina swing!”
Sadly, Tina doesn’t have much living left to do. Poor Tina!
Next, we see a barrel labeled “Danger Radioactive Waste” falling into the ocean next to a human skull. We’re then treated to a far-too-long transformation scene that’s like a Jacques Cousteau program scored by Karlheinz Stockhausen, as the skull sprouts scales and transforms into one of the film’s signature fish monsters over a wigged-out atonal electronic score. In the first five minutes, haters have already been proven so, so wrong.
After one of the film’s many, many musical performances – this time from The Del-Aires – featuring synchronized dancing, we’re treated to a synchronized fistfight between Hank and Mike (Agustin Mayor) the leader of a local motorcycle gang. Mike gets knocked into the sand but still rebuffs Tina, causing her to sulkily swim away to a rock jetty, where we’re first fully introduced to the movie’s fish people and their hot dog mouths when Tina and her sharp beatnik-striped top meet their end.
Even though it’s silly, the black blood slowly oozing into the surf is slightly chilling, in an original Night of the Living Dead kind of way. It’s also a sign that the film’s happy days have come to an end. Most of the rest of the movie is rather grim, fluctuating between a tense procedural and a surprisingly bloody meat grinder.
After Tina’s murder, we meet the movie’s last two main characters, Dr. Gavin (Allan Laurel) and Elaine (Alice Lyon), who we met briefly following the sand-kicking that kicked off Tina’s death. We also meet Eulabelle (Eulabelle Moore), Dr. Gavin’s housekeeper – who embodies every Black stereotype Hollywood had thought of so far – who’s convinced that voodoo is responsible for the murder. Elaine gets invited to a slumber party but declines because “they’re all the same.”
The slumber party scene is the moment when you truly know The Horror of Party Beach is a different kind of monster. In the movie’s most-referenced moment, 30-year-old teenagers get together to do what young women do when they get together – sing anti-feminist folk songs, sway and have pillow fights. They’ve even rigged up a bucket to pour water on the heads of some local sorority boys who, they have it on good authority, are planning a raid.
It’s not sorority boys who storm their cabin, though, it’s hot dog-mouthed sea zombies who proceed to massacre over 20 young women. That right’s, 20 dead, captured in grim black-and-white. The Horror of Party Beach is billed as lighthearted B-movie schlock but a lot of people die. Add in its grainy black-and-white film quality and atonal early electronic score and it’s legitimately grittier than some serial killer thrillers or slashers.
This slumber party massacre sets things racing towards the movie’s thrilling conclusion, when Dr. Gavin discovers the sea zombies (they’re actually referred to as sea zombies, but only for a moment), are actually half-plant/half-animal hybrids that require human blood to live, using only a tiny microscope, which he then divulges in one of his interminable expository monologues. Luckily, they also find a solution after learning that, 1) the fish people leave a trail of radioactive water and 2) they can be killed with Sodium, discovered thanks to Eulabelle’s superstitious clumsiness. The Horror of Party Beach concludes with a thrilling bang – a bunch of bangs, really – as Dr. Gavin battles one of the fish people in hand-to-hand combat and Hank arrives with a barrel of sodium just in the nick of time to save Elaine, naturally.
As you can surmise from the plot synopsis, cinema this is not. What it is is a Cramps song come to life, complete with slick, coordinated rockabilly dance numbers and one of the great ’60s movie monsters, however cheap and goofy-looking. Even beyond its B-movie, goofball charm, there are a few details that make The Horror of Party Beach worth watching. It’s filmed on the Eastern Seaboard, for one thing, with its principal filming location being the Shipping Point of Stamford, Connecticut instead of the beaches of Southern California where most of the Frankie and Annette rip-offs take place.
The Horror of Party Beach is nearly the entire cast’s only movie, as well. Some, like John Lyon, would appear in a few more pictures – most notably Del Tenney’s more highly regarded The Curse of the Living Corpse, also from 1964. Tina’s Marilyn Clark would play a hostess a few times in the ’70s – first on an episode of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” and then four years later in the movie Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws, but that’s it. Poor Tina!
It’s even the only celluloid appearance of its distinguished, pipe-smoking Allan Laurel.
Perhaps its most notable cinematic debut is the housekeeper, played by Eulabelle Moore. Despite this being her only movie, Moore worked for decades on Broadway, with many of the greatest directors of her time and some of the finest actors of the 20th-Century, including Marlon Brando (who never paid back money she lent him), Eartha Kitt and James Earl Jones. She even appeared in some Tennessee Williams’ plays, realizing Tina’s ambition. Eulabelle’s not a good role – and Moore deserved far, far better – but at least we have some evidence of her immense talent and spirit.
The Horror of Party Beach is not a good movie, but in many ways it’s a great movie. It’s got a killer soundtrack, including several groovy surf jams for your next beach party mixtape (“Elaine” and “You Are Not a Summer Love” by The Del-Aires are recommended); a remarkably edgy body count for its day; and at times gloriously gritty black and white production values. Like Tina, this movie deserves better than what it gets.
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