Movies - Beach Party film

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	Movies - Beach Party film

"Beach Party" movies were an American 1960s genre of feature films which often starred Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. They were originally intended as a low-budget imitation of both the Elvis Presley musical and the Doris Day sex comedy, aimed at the teen market, but they ended up taking on a life of their own. The "classic" series was produced by American International Pictures, and imitated in turn by numerous other studios.

Ironically, Annette Funicello was still under contract to Walt Disney in 1963 and Disney's lawyers threatened to sue AIP if their now voluptuous star appeared in Beach Party, or any of the other films, in a bikini. AIP capitulated — an unimaginable act for the company prior to this, before the stakes were raised. Annette would not only not wear a bikini in the films, she would spend a surprising ammount of her screen time repressing the sexuality of the other kids, an odd angle indeed for the once exuberantly permissive and exploitative AIP.

In another rather ironic twist, none of the principal actors were actually teenagers. Frankie Avalon was 26, married and had children when he made "Beach Blanket Bingo.

Many of the movies were made at Paradise Cove in Malibu, California. Ironically, to meet the release schedule, most of the movies had to be filmed during the winter months—when hardly anyone wanted to run around a beach in a swimsuit, or go in the water.

The storylines typically revolved around boyfriend and girlfriend Frankie and Annette 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 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 usual "villains" of the story were 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 The Andy Griffith Show).

Another feature to the series was its unending series of cameo appearances by longtime actors (such as Vincent Price, Elsa Lanchester, Boris Karloff, Dorothy Lamour, and Peter Lorre in his last film appearance), plus musical guest-stars like Stevie Wonder, Donna Loren, The Kingsmen, and surf-n-car groups The Pyramids, The Hondells, and Dick Dale and his Del-Tones. Original songs performed by the cast were largely written by Gary Usher and Roger Christian, or by Guy Hemric and Jerry Styner.

Toni Basil served as choreographer for many of the movies' dance sequences (also appearing onscreen), and several future or up-and-coming stars (Teri Garr, Don Rickles, Bobbi Shaw, Dan Haggerty, Meredith MacRae, and members of the Beach Boys) appeared in supporting roles or as extras. Silent-movie star Buster Keaton had featured roles in several of the movies. Don Weis and William Asher directed most of the series, with Asher's then-wife Elizabeth Montgomery making a voice cameo in Bikini Beach
, and appearing on camera in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini
.

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