Beach Party (1963)

beach-partyMovies don’t get more lightweight than the first Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello Beach musical. It’s ninety minutes of safe Technicolor camp. Frankie and Annette are a teenage couple who get into an argument and then spend the rest of the movie conniving to make each other jealous. Frankie hooks up with blonde Hungarian hourglass Eva Six while Annette gets close to 52 year old Bob Cummings, a nerdy anthropologist who’s studying the ways of modern teenagers. It all culminates in a pie fight, of course. Dick Dale and the Del-Tones play the resident beach band. Vincent Price makes a cameo. Television director William Asher shoots this one in wide CinemaScope because it’s the only way to fit Annette’s 36-22-36 figure and Eva Six’s amazing 40-22-38 in the same shot.