817 - HORROR OF PARTY BEACH

Genre:  Teen Horror / Teen Beach (1964, B&W)

Don’s Synopsis:  This is a Can’t Miss recipe for a Bad Movie: take elements of two bad genres, the Teen Horror genre and the Teen Beach genre, mix them together and a very bad movie is the guaranteed result.  In short, this is a very, very bad movie featuring the worst element of two bad genres and a few other bad elements it invents on its own.  The movie begins as a boat is going about 30 feet offshore to dump radioactive waste – that’s right: radioactive waste!  Of course, some of the waste seeps out when the cork on the barrel falls off. (Don’t they know that they should always use mushroom corks for radioactive waste – regular corks just aren’t good enough!)  This radioactive material turns a harmless skeleton (Jimmy Hoffa?) into a horrifying Sea Creature… no, not really – it turns into a goofy-looking fish-headed humanoid thing with about a dozen hotdogs stuffed in its mouth.  While all of this is going on, the local teens are having a beach party with an enjoyable, though rather generic sounding surf band fronted by Ernie of My Three Sons.  A fight breaks out over a girl between a biker who’s about as tough as my great-grandma and a guy named Hank, who will be the main male character in the movie.  Of course, the fight eventually ends and the girl goes out into the water to get away from everything, a desire the Sea Creature obliges for her.  The girl is now also a radioactive Sea Creature and the first thing the two Creatures do is go on a panty raid at a girl’s slumber party (woo-hoo!).  Now there are more creatures and the scientist father of Elaine, the main female character in the movie (who lusts after Hank), is searching for a way to destroy the monsters.  Of course, the stereotypical Aunt Jermina maid of the scientist’s house is the one to discover that pure sodium destroys the monsters.  So now everyone is searching for the location of the monsters, while the monsters still continue to kill more people left and right (the monsters really don’t seem that difficult to find).  Since a movie like this requires the main female character to be in peril, it’s Elaine who finds the location of the monsters, but she scratches her foot on a rock and, of course, can’t move.  Her scientist father and Hank predictably arrive in time to rescue her and end the horror at party beach.

Don’s Review:  Looking closely at the deceptive title of this movie: there was no Horror (besides the movie being horrible) and there wasn’t much of a Beach or a Party as the beach and party part of the movie was completely forgotten about 10 minutes in.  So the real title of this movie should have simply been “Of” because it’s the only accurate thing in the title: the movie was at least made “of” something (exactly what, I don’t want to know).  Bad movie, though, is redeemed by some decent riffs by M&tBs and a few decent host segments as the Mads are now in ancient Rome pretending to be gods.  So this is a decent, middle-of-the-road episode that’s worth a look.

Don’s Rating: 

Forrest’s Synopsis:  There is a party, and there is a beach, but no horror to be found in this lame, monster movie that's more lame than my hackneyed opening to this synopsis.  The story begins at some beach (I guess the Party Beach of the title), and because of some nuclear waste, or something or other, dumped into the ocean, the Horror begins.  The bones of pirates (I think) grow into the bastard offspring of the Creature From The Black Lagoon and terrorizes a small suburban neighborhood somewhere in the North Eastern part of the United States.  People die - not that we care about them anyway - and there's bad acting, bad special effects, bad dialogue and bad, bad, badness all around - that is until a stereotypical black woman accidentally finds something that can kill the Horror - SODIUM!  That's right.  So, this one guy goes to New York, buys sodium, comes back and - after the most confusing montage ever, and the most confusing multiple cuts of a woman falling to the ground ever - kills the monsters with sodium.

Forrest’s Review:  As you may tell, I am not quite as articulate as Don when it comes to writing synopsis, so you're going to have to excuse me.  However, I don't really think a movie like this deserves even a second of a person's time, because it's just so bad.  It's movies like this that just depress you, make you want to get up and do something with your life before you die.  And this movie is so inept, so devoid of anything good, almost an attempt to make something bad, unmemorable and flat out cheesy. Some of these old monster movies seem to be made with the honest intention to scare the viewer, but I can't see any intention of that in this movie.  The riffing was pretty good on this one, as I remember I'd laugh out loud occasionally and even though the movie was almost unbearable, it did have some kind of cheesy saving grace to it.  The host segments were reasonably amusing, I laughed my ass off with Mike and the Bots' song: "Sodium" and I think this is one of the better episodes about the Roman-Times story arc with Pearl and Observer.  So I think this is a good episode, and I wish I could rate it higher, but it's a bit unmemorable, even though I remember having a good time.

Forrest’s Rating: