THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH

The Horror of Party Beach Movie Review

Time for a quick lesson in film and Americana history. In the early 1960's, surfing and hanging out on the beach became a huge favorite of the youth. This was the early days of teenage rebellion-- a sort of bridging between the James Dean and Jack Kerouac worshiping teens of the late 1950's and the hippies that would come along later in the 60's. From this, a new genre of music, dubbed surf music, was born, as well as what would be known as beach party movies. These movies would feature teenagers partying on the beach, surfing, driving muscle cars, and having a goofy good time, often set to the aforementioned surf music or poppier teenage stuff such as Frankie Avalon (who also starred in some of these films). At the height of these films' popularity, somebody must have had the idea of "Hey, what would happen if we made a beach party film, but also crossed it with Creature from the Black Lagoon?" and, voila, The Horror of Party Beach was born. The creation of the creatures is as generic as one can imagine--barrels of toxic waste are thrown into the water--but the result is a handful of sea creatures that look less Gill Man and more...

Hot dog eating master

The movie, made in 1964, certainly has elements of the beach party movies--we get extended scenes of teens on a beach, partying and dancing to the catchy tunes of live band The Del-Aires. Not content with what was already an odd combination of movie genres, the filmmakers also, just for the heck of it, I guess, decided to throw a bunch of other stuff in. We briefly have a motorcycle gang, resulting in one of the most hilariously bad fight scenes I have ever witnessed. Mention of zombies is thrown in, just because. Eulabelle (Eulabelle Moore), the maid of Dr. Gavin, the would-be hero, goes on and on about voodoo. There are feeble attempts at love stories, and apparently, to get a girl in this city, all you gotta do is just wink your eye. The movie is very enjoyable during the beach scenes and whenever we see the monsters, but you may lose interest when the focus shifts to the adults trying to figure out how to defeat the creatures and all the "scientific" mumbo jumbo is thrown at you. If you're a fan of catching movie mistakes, keep an eye out for all the times the scenes change from night to day and back again. Largely considered one of the all-time worst films, I found a lot to enjoy while watching The Horror of Party Beach--as somebody who generally prefers the rubber-suit monsters over the CGI ones, I loved the creatures in the film, I loved the beach scenes, and thought this movie was a lot of fun.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6

The Horror of Party Beach Movie Trailer