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COME HAVE A SURF PARTY WITH ME!

Besides airing The Pleasures Seekers all this month, Fox Movie Channel is also broadcasting the rarely seen Surf Party (1964) a low-budget b/w beach movie starring Bobby Vinton and Jackie DeShannon that was released shortly after Beach Party starring Frankie and Annette. Below is my review from my book, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969:

Surf Party is realistic, albeit melodramatic, look at the surfing craze and Malibu surfers in particular. It is also an obvious rip-off of Beach Party without the zaniness. There is some neat surfing footage featuring pros like Mickey Dora and Johnny Fain but the flat black-and-white photography doesn’t do it justice though it buoys the story. The female leads all do well but Bobby Vinton and Kenny Miller fail miserably trying to pass themselves off as surfers.

Though screenwriter Harry Spalding’s script about three gals who come to Malibu to learn to surf and to the brother of one of the girls is a bit overemotional at times, he gets praise in for injecting surfer slang and tips on how to surf into it. Too bad producer Maury Dexter couldn’t get anybody other than Bobby Vinton to deliver the lines. If AIP had hired him for Beach Party there wouldn’t have been a series of films. Worse than Vinton is the pudgy Kenny Miller who was way too long in the tooth to be playing a twenty-year-old. However, Miller has a pleasant singing voice and does well with his solo. Only Jerry Summers as the leader of the renegade surfing crew makes an impression though we never once see him shoot the curl but just hit the sheets first with his older woman benefactor and then with his sister’s girlfriend.

Dexter had better luck with his female cast. Pat Morrow sports a bitchin’ flip hair-do and makes a nice heroine. Unlike Annette she even gets her bathing suit wet! Jackie DeShannon plays the dippy blonde to good affect while dark-haired Lory Patrick gives a sympathetic performance as the good girl who goes all the way only to regret her actions. Only downside with these gals is that they wear one-piece or very modest two-piece swimsuits. There’s not a bikini wearer in the bunch!

The music in Surf Party is a mixed lot because it throws in different styles (even Gospel!) to try to appease everyone. The best songs are the ones delivered by The Astronauts (see clip below) who aggressively try to obtain a surf reverb sound and The Routers with “Crack Up.” Director Maury Dexter gets kudos for his surfing footage and actually gets shots of the actors out in the ocean on their boards. Rather than use the dreaded blue screen for close-ups, Dexter put Kenny Miller and the others on a speedboat and filmed them as if they were surfing. Though this approach isn’t always convincing it is more creative than putting the actors in a tank with a fake backdrop. Dexter also gets praise for getting Mickey Dora out of the water and giving the surfer the most screen time than in any of his other pictures.

With a bigger budget and more convincing male leads, Surf Party could have been considered one of the best Hollywood surf movies of the period instead of just a Beach Party rip-off.

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THE ZOMBIES HAVE INVADED!

Click below to view a very rare clip of The Zombies promoting Otto Preminger’s cult mystery thriller, Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) starring Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley and Keir Dullea. The then popular group appears in the movie seen on a TV screen in a crowded London pub singing “Just Out of Reach.”

Bunny Lake’s ad campaigned aped that of Hitchcock’s Psycho by saying ticketholders would not be allowed into the theatre once the movie began. I guess this was The Zombies’ effort to get young audiences to see the film but they are so grating it probably drove moviegoers away!

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SHE CALLED ME A LITTLE TRAMP!

David Weisbart who produced The Pleasure Seekers later was also the producer of Valley of the Dolls (1967) that features an infamous over-the-top bitchy ladies room scene with Patty Duke as the pill popping Neely O’Hara fresh out of rehab and Susan Hayward as Broadway diva Helen Lawson.

So it is no surprise that his Pleasure Seekers also has a catty confrontational ladies room scene. Click below to watch Gene Tierney as Brian Keith’s icy wife confront pleasure seeker Carol Lynley after spying the little hussy canoodling with her husband in the back of a taxi on the way to a private cocktail party. It is the best acted scene in this lightweight movie with the most bite to it. And dig Carol’s slinky dress, which looks more like a slip. No wonder she is called a little tramp!

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A SEEKER OF PLEASURE

The Fox Movie Channel finally answered by prayers to Saint Gidget (the Goddess of All Things Starlets) and all this month is airing the wide screen version of The Pleasure Seekers (1964) starring Ann-Margret, Carol Lynley and Pamela Tiffin as three single gals looking for romance in Madrid. Annie shakes her big red mane only as she can do and snares poor but handsomely brooding doctor Andre Lawrence; Lynley moons over her married boss Brian Keith and ignores her true feelings for playboy reporter Gardner McKay; and Tiffin naively falls for rich womanizer Tony Franciosa who promises marriage but only wants to bed her.


Although the movie is light and bouncy, beautifully filmed on location and featuring an Oscar-nominated musical score, all was not moonlight and roses on the set per Pamela Tiffin. Below is an excerpt from my interview with her from my book, Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema:

“Making The Pleasure Seekers was strange. Nobody connected with anyone. When working people are very competitive or are only after money, it is agony to work with them because they bring their hang-ups to the set. I tried to make friends with Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley. But I think both of them at that time weren’t interested in friendship with another woman. Carol was especially reserved and aloof. In retrospect, I recall that she just had a baby and therefore was entitled to be private.

I don’t know what Gardner McKay’s problem was but he didn’t talk to any of us. Tony Franciosa was very hostile–especially to Jean Negulesco [the director]. During a car scene, he got mad at Negulesco and drove off with me in the car. He drove for over two hours at break-neck speed out of Toledo, Spain. I thought he was going to kill us both! During another scene, Negulesco wanted Tony to change his tie. He took Negulesco, who had to be near 70, by the neck and threatened him. Brian Keith though was very nice and I never spoke with Gene Tierney because I was in such awe of her.”