Muscle Beach Party/Ski Party (1965)

The second film in the Beach Party series returns Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello to the land of endless summer and back-projection surfing. It's as giddy as the first movie. Two inane subplots are added: Frankie is wooed by a wealthy bombshell (knockout Luciana Paluzzi), and Don Rickles trains a team of bodybuilders. The usual Beach Party trademarks are in place, including real surfing footage (much improved from the first film), Candy Johnson's shimmy dancing, and Annette's modified bikini with mesh-covered cleavage. Music is provided by Dick Dale and a rockin' Little Stevie Wonder, with most of the songs penned by a triumvirate of surf-music royalty: Brian Wilson, Roger Christian, and Gary Usher. As Frankie says, "Now you swing with me on that, or you don't swing at all." We swing.

Ski Party transfers the Beach Party vibe to snow, with a Some Like it Hot ripoff thrown in. Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman go in drag to discover what girls really want, but Deborah Walley and Yvonne Craig put them in the deep freeze. It's surprisingly fun, with deranged musical appearances by James Brown and Lesley Gore. The outdoor stuff was filmed at Sun Valley. Annette Funicello cameos as a sex-ed instructor. --Robert Horton Amazon.com

SLAY RIDE

Ski Party is probably the worst movie ever shown on A.M.C. This 4:30 a.m. stinker has no budget, no plot, no acting; just gall and nostalgia. Yet,many Americans seem to be buying and enjoying it. No wonder so many people are in deep debt and/or out of work. They're likely more idiotic than the films they buy. October 10, 2007

More 1960's Fun In The Sun (And Snow) With Frankie And Annette

While I'm the first to admit that the Beach Party films in general would never be contenders for any Academy Awards I can't help but love their breathless innocence, catchy songs, and silly, but fun storylines. They certainly recall a much more innocent time when such things as surfboards, rock and roll music, beach parties, beefed up surfer guys and gals in cute bikinis where the "in thing", for teenagers the world over. MGM's Midnite Movies double features here have brought together two fun entries in this series from the early 1960's, "Muscle Beach Party", from 1964 which was a follow up to the very successful earlier "Beach Party", and the rarely seen "Ski Party" from 1965 which allows the cast to actually wear more clothes for a change and transfers the usual action to a snow setting. While I feel "Muscle Beach Party" is the more fun of the two both are filled with all the great squeaky clean characteristics one comes to expect from the "Beach" films. Of course these stories were never better put across on screen than when they were in the hands of "eternal teenagers", Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. These two much loved performers had a terrific chemistry on screen together and despite the fact that both were certainly no longer teenagers when these films were made, they managed to really show life as we would like to remember it as being back in the hazy days on the beach in the 1960's. February 18, 2007

Hey, Jack Fanny

This movie is a classic. Good clean fun. A corny movie to be sure but that's part of its charm.

The array of stars is great - Frankie and Annette (of course), Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett, Morey Amsterdam, etc. This movie is a classic simply because of its age. Even the "kids" in this movie are in their mid-sixties now! (I don't think I would want to see any of them shaking their bottoms on the beach today. Sorry.)

Don't just gloss over the Muscle Boys. There are some real turkeys in there (sorry, Grizzly) but you also have two of the greatest bodybuilders to ever participate in the sport - Chester Yorton and Larry Scott. Each one has over a dozen titles including Mr. America and Mr. Universe. Chet Yorton is one of only three men to beat Arnold Schwarzenegger in competition (1967). It's worth having the movie just to see these guys in their prime.

Last but not least, how cool is the movie debut of Stevie Wonder?! And he's been a star ever since.
March 10, 2006

Buy this dvd for Ski Party...

I bought this double-sided dvd just to get Ski Party. Until this dvd was released, Ski Party was not available on home video. For years, I had a vague memory of seeing a movie as a kid (on my parents' black and white tv set) that included a scene with a bunch of college students on a bus singing a song. I tried to hunt down the movie and eventually learned it was Ski Party. I then learned it wasn't available on home video...until now! So I bought this dvd basically to get Leslie Gore singing "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows". But to my delight, I discovered that Ski Party contains two other outstanding musical numbers:

a) I Feel Good - James Brown
b) The Gasser - The Hondells

Every so often I pop the dvd into my player and just watch the above three songs. But the dvd would have been worth it just for the Leslie Gore number alone. October 1, 2005

Not without a RING, you don't!

Let's begin with some ground rules: Annette Funicello, America's Sweetheart, is beloved by all, but especially me. Lest anyone construe any remark made by me as "criticism", and then decide to chime in with their own digs at Ms. Funicello, rest assured this will result in being punched in the face, by me. So, on we go.

"Muscle Beach Party" is the second installment in the wildly popular "Beach" series of movies of the 1960's, each one made for about five dollars by director William "Bud" Asher, creator of such fine television shows as "Return to Green Acres" and "I Dream of Jeanie: 15 Years Later". As in the first film, "Beach Party", Frankie Avalon is "Frankie" and Annette Funicello is "Dee Dee", young lovers who enjoy nothing as much as a good surf weekend.

The movie opens with Frankie and Dee Dee leading a caravan of jalopies piled high with middle-aged Hollywood extras playing teenagers on their way to the ocean for some sun, sand and surfing. No sooner do they arrive than Dee Dee starts harping on Frankie for not having any ambition in life other than surfing. At the beginning of their SURFING VACATION.

In the first shocking twist, the boys and girls are all sleeping together in the SAME HOUSE. Luckily, sensible Dee Dee is armed with a clothesline and an antique quilt, to block off the "girls area" (which is tastefully provided with frilly curtains and soft lighting) from the "boys area" (which looks like a sub-saharan mud shack). A couple of the "faster" girls bristle at Dee Dee's prudishness and try to sneak over to the boys' side, only to find that ALL the boys have already fallen asleep! Ha ha, aren't boys stupid?

Next day, all the kids head out to stand on their surfboards while someone sprays water on them and a movie of the ocean plays in the background. Their fun is disrupted by the arrival of "Jack Fanny" (artfully played by Don Rickles) and his "Muscle Boys", who are all wearing pink square-cut swim trunks with matching capes. Pink. Capes. Fanny. What this movie could use is some more sub-text.

Also, there's an Italian heiress on a boat offshore, who has something to do with Buddy Hackett. I'm not sure exactly what, I nodded off for awhile. The heiress flies a helicopter over to the beach and picks up the head muscle man, "Flex Martian" (Peter Lupus of "Mission: Impossible" fame, who would later doff his pink trunks for Playgirl ) and takes him back to the boat, causing no end of worry for Mr. Fanny.

(Attention smart-alecks: I KNOW a vessel at sea is called a "ship", and a "boat" is a vessel in inland waters. Lay off.)

Frankie, still miffed at Dee Dee, heads off for a late-night surf with a LIT TORCH IN HIS HAND (I'm still not quite sure what that was supposed to accomplish - to scare off sharks? - or the logistics of riding a surfboard while holding a flaming piece of driftwood. ) While he's gone, Dee Dee takes the opportunity to sing a plaintive teen ballad. Now, I'm the first to tell you that Annette never had the strongest singing voice, but honestly, it sounds like she was standing in another room with a tin can clamped over her mouth when they recorded this one. Help a girl out, sound engineers!

Frankie returns to shore to enjoy a smoke, just in time to meet the Italian heiress, who hears him singing, forgets all about the captive muscle man she has holed away on her yacht, and decides to fall in love with Frankie. Oh, and arrange a recording contract for him. Now, Frankie Avalon is reasonably attractive, I GUESS, but I've seen Peter Lupus' Playgirl spread, and take it from me, she's a FOOL!

Anyway, action shifts back and forth between a teen hangout run by Morey Amsterdam, where Dee Dee and Frankie's respective posses engage in a sort of proto-"serving" of each other, and Jack Fanny's Home for Wayward Boys, where the muscle men are now wearing tank tops with their names - Rock, Biff, Tug, Sulk, Riff, Mash, and Clod - emblazoned with rhinestones on their chests. I might also mention that there are two muscle GIRLS, "Lisa" and "Flo", who are treated with contempt throughout the film.

Of course, everything works out okay in the end, with Frankie giving up fame and sex with a foreigner, for the promise of someday getting it on with Dee Dee, who has the biggest breasts on the beach, but isn't about to give it without a ring on her finger. `Atta girl!

The cast is filled out by a bevy of beach party regulars, including John Ashley as "Johnny", who is always much more respectful of Dee Dee that bad boy Frankie; Jody McCrea as "Deadhead", so named not because he is a tripped-out Grateful Dead groupie, but rather an abject moron; Valora Noland as "Animal" - one can only wonder where THAT nickname came from; and Candy Johnson as "Candy", who looks about 60 years old, has the beer gut and stick legs of a boozehound, wears a pants-suit made of what looks like red cheerleading pom-poms, and STILL manages to drive the kids into paroxysms of ecstasy when she does the frug on the beach.

The real thrill of any beach movie is seeing what big stars are down on their luck enough to take the job. Besides the aforementioned Rickles, Hackett, and Amsterdam, we are "treated" to the dulcet tones of the ever-present Dick Dale and the Dell Tones. You may think that all beach music of the sixties is happy and perky, a la the Beach Boys. If you do, you've never heard Dick Dale. His voice sounds like he's just spent the weekend smoking clove cigarettes and drinking absinthe, and he looks like somebody's "cool dad" who decided to spend the weekend with "the gang".

A young pre-"Grizzly Adams" Dan Haggerty is one of the Muscle Men, "Riff". Despite being shaved and oiled, one can see the beginnings of the beefy good looks that would make him King of the Wilderness.

Peter Lorre plays some sort of ex-muscle man who creeps around and spies on people. Apparently he died four days after this movie premiered. From shame, one would guess.

Last but not least, this movie introduces us for the first time to "Little Stevie Wonder", who serves the dual role of being the only black person AND the only person with a physical disability on the beach. Little Stevie, backed by the Dell Tones, sings a joyous Gospel-influenced number that the white children go crazy for - at least, they go crazy for it during instrumental breaks. While Stevie is actually SINGING, they return and sit politely in their seats, patting their knees in time to the music. Just like Talent Round Up Day on the Mickey Mouse Club!

Now, take the above review, substitute "Annette Funicello" with "Dwayne Hickman", "Little Stevie Wonder" with "James Brown", "beach" with "ski lodge", "Italian heiress" with "Yvonne Craig", and "Jack Fanny" with "Frankie and Dwayne dressing in drag", and you've got the gist. Annette has a cameo as a sex-ed teacher (!), but otherwise the reason to own this disk is for the beach-party side. August 19, 2005

More reviews at Amazon.com ...