1964's "Bikini Beach" was the third entry in the AIP series kicked off by "Beach Party" and "Muscle Beach Party," which began shooting Apr. 20 with much of the regular gang intact, such as Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello as Dee Dee, John Ashley as Johnny, Jody McCrea as Deadhead, Candy Johnson, Donna Loren, and Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper again leading The Rat Pack. It's no day at the beach when aging property developer Harvey Huntington Honeywagon (Keenan Wynn) targets the group for their free wheeling obsessions with surfing and sex, using his highly intelligent ape Clyde (Janos Prohaska) as evidence that the IQ level of today's teens has descended to the primate level. Meanwhile, Frankie has a rival for Annette, a visiting pop star from Sussex whose given name is Peter Royce Bentley, better known to the screaming girls as 'The Potato Bug' (a dual role for Avalon while foreshadowing Peter and Gordon), given to fits of laughter when not shaking his head to the tune of 'yeah yeah.' Don Rickles trades in his persona of Jack Fanny for that of Big Drag, who runs a drinking hangout at the beach as well as announcing the drag racing winners, his hobby is throwing globs of paint on canvas to produce art that 'has no price on it, I mean, it's priceless!' This comes in handy for the climax, as a stranger in red cape and black hat echoes Vincent Price in his guise of Sears art connoisseur (previously seen as 'Big Daddy' in "Beach Party"), but actually turns out to be Boris Karloff in a tip of the hat to his old friend, deputizing for the late Peter Lorre. Throw in a werewolf growling in a pool hall and all the ingredients for the best of the series are in place, if only it didn't drag during the drag racing at Pomona (fortunately, this does feature curvaceous Annette actually sporting a navel baring two piece bikini, to the chagrin of Walt Disney). Janos Prohaska dons the same ape suit for the John Carradine episode of LAND OF THE GIANTS ("Comeback"), best remembered as the Horta and the Mugato on STAR TREK. The British Invasion spearheaded by The Beatles proved the death knell for Frankie Avalon's singing career, his disdain on display with his outlandish yet savage response as Potato Bug (curiously, his final AIP release would be shot in England in 1968, "Horror House" intended as the screen farewell for a dying Boris Karloff). Karloff, just after narrating the one reeler "Today's Teens," proves he knows where it's at by returning for the final entry, "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini," in which the beach party moves inside a haunted house to gyrate around the swimming pool. The end credits not only give Boris his due as 'The Art Dealer' but also show veteran actress Renie Rialto at age 63 doing her best to keep up with the bump and grind of shapely Candy Johnson.
Review of Bikini Beach
