THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH (1964)

 

DIRECTED by Del Tenney (and if THAT'S not the most "rock n roll" sounding name I've ever heard, I don't know what is...)

SCREENPLAY by Richard Hilliard

STARRING - John Scott as Hank Green

Alice Lyon as Elaine Gavin

Allan Laurel as Dr. Gavin

Eulabelle Moore as Eulabelle

Marilyn Clarke as Tina

Agustin Mayor as Mike

Damon Kebroyd as Lt. Wells

PLOT - Party Beach - where all the hip, young swingers go to party the summer away. A place full of music, glamour and fun...oh - and there's something else the tourist guide books don't tell you about...the monsters.

Because little do our partying hepcats know but there's recently been a chemical spillage and the toxic waste has started to mutate creatures from the deep. Creatures from the deep who are rising from the calm blue waters to kill...

PERFORMANCES - Horror Of Party Beach features a stellar cast of top name character actors...No, I'm lying - it doesn't.

What it does feature are a bunch of B-movie actors that really don't get a hell of a lot to do. Take our two "leads" for instance - John Scott as Hank and Alice Lyon as Elaine. We mainly see them in the extended opening scene which is essentially one huge beach party (complete with cheesy 50's style "doo-wop" band). Hank turns up to the beach, gets dumped by his girlfriend for being a "square" (he is), gets into a fight with a local bike gang and then meets up and starts flirting with Elaine - who's the daughter of a local scientist and is the standard virtuous "home coming queen" style female lead that you normally get in these type of films. 

Hank is very buttoned down and sensible and so is Elaine...and then you don't really see much of them for the rest of the film. They drop by to feed a few lines to the friendly neighbourhood scientist - Dr Gavin (Allen Laurel - who's your typical pipe smoking B-movie scientist) - and that's about it until the final scenes where Hank saves the day. They really don't even reach two dimensions as characters let alone three.

In fact the best character and performance (very low bar that it is) comes from Eualabelle Moore as...wait for it... Eualabelle (was this just a coincidence that she had the same name as her character or is because they just couldn't be arsed to come up with a name for her ?). 

Eualabelle is the domestic maid in Dr Gavin's house and her characterisation probably dates this film even more than the 50's style rock and roll soundtrack (which itself was out of date when this film was released in the 60's). Eualabelle is every inch the stereotypical black housemaid - think the housekeeper in the Tom and Jerry cartoons and you're on the right track. Her main purpose seems to be, at first, to highlight that she thinks the sea mutants are down to the work of voodoo (because ALL black people believe in voodoo, right ?).

However, despite all this racial stereotyping, Eualabelle is the one who actually (accidentally) discovers the one weakness that the mutants have, so really she's the only character that's actually integral to the plot in any way, so that's something at least. Moore does the best with what she's given and at least tries to give her character a bit of dignity.

SFX -  As to be expected from a drive-in B-movie it's "men in rubber suits" monster time all the way.

With their googly ping pong ball eyes and a mouth that looks like they're giving oral to a tin of hot dogs, these fellas are particularly cheap and cheesy looking.

They've also got a really bad posture - it can't have been easy for the actors to see where they were going in these costumes.

To be fair they do look slightly better under darker lighting conditions (but not by much).

SEX & VIOLENCE - Here's where it gets interesting. The sex is very tame as you'd expect, just lots of beach babes in bikinis jiggling about to dated music. It's glam but not graphic.

The violence starts out being VERY tame. Hank's girl starts giving the leader of a bike gang the glad eye. For starters, just take a look at the "motorcycle hoodlums" involved...

Not exactly the local chapter of the Hell's Angels are they ? They look more like the entrants in a Buddy Holly lookalike contest.

Hank, being the upstanding Charles Atlas type that he is, has a fight with the gang leader. This is probably the most polite brawl I've ever seen in a film. They posture, roll about on the floor for a bit and then realising he's met his match in Hank the leader gracefully shakes hands with him and all is forgiven. If only all grievances were so easily sorted - mankind would be living in a golden age global utopia.

BUT...Then we get to the actual horror scenes and (for their time) they're really, REALLY VIOLENT !

The mutants only ever seem to attack women and when they they do absolutely nothing is held back. Blood spurts, gore oozes all over the place - all in gloriously shot black and white and usually in extreme close-up.

At one point the creatures break into a girl's dorm and massacre every single person there, and we get shots of their lifeless corpses. It's like a crime scene photo and is actually pretty shocking and disturbing considering the rest of the movie's goofy tone.

It's easily on a par with the original Night Of The Living Dead in the gore stakes.

RATING - In every conventional sense this is NOT a good movie. The acting's terrible, the soundtrack's dated even by 1964 standards and the monsters are more likely to make you die of laughter instead of fright, but I always really enjoy it whenever I watch it - it's got a nice summery atmosphere and some very impressive gore for the era. Perfect for the "Summerween" portion of spooky season.

For sheer entertainment value alone I'm giving this 4 sea mutants out of 5.

ART - 

In 1984 the short-lived UK horror comic 'Scream' completely ripped off this movie's storyline for a strip called The Sea Beast, actually the monster in this was a LOT better than the creatures in this movie...