How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)

You would have had to have grown up with these incredibility corny movies to find them even mildly interesting. I did. But the one take-away was when the native girl says to Frankie " here on the island, we have a saying 'if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with". Now, did I hear that correctly? Sure enough, next scene, 'Cassandra" says the exact same line at the beach party. Now did Stephen Stills really get this line from Billy Preston for his first solo hit single? "Love the One You're With" Or did he watch this movie five years earlier and forget where he first heard this line?

Frankie Avalon off doing his Naval Reserve training in those innocent days before Vietnam is wondering whether Annette is being true to him back at the beach with all those other hunks around. He's stationed on a tropical Pacific Isle with lots of other curvaceous cuties around. He asks one of them to bring him to the local witch doctor for help. The witch doctor sends a pelican out to spy on Annette back at the beach.So help me this is the beginning of the story. But it's not a half bad film, in fact it gets down right satirical at times. In addition to Frankie, Annette and the rest of the beach crew, some Hollywood old timers got some work in this film and they get a chance to overact outrageously. They include Brian Donlevy and Mickey Rooney as a pair of scheming advertising executives along with Dwayne Hickman who's their schemer in training, Harvey Lembeck as a Marlon Brando type motorcycle gang leader and Buster Keaton as the witch doctor.I'd try to see How to Stuff a Wild Bikini if for no other reason than to see all these players ham it up. Though in some spots the pelican gives the best performance in the film.

This was the last of American-International's beach musicals that starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (although they'd try to continue for a few films without these two). Frankie and Annette are barely together even in the film--Frankie is more of a cameo than a major character in the plot.Intriguingly, this musical is filled with "book numbers"--where the characters sing when they should be talking. Usually, the beach party movies just had people asking Frankie or Annette to sing at a party or at a nightclub. So, that's a change. The problem is that the songs aren't anything to write home about.Further, the film betrays why the beach movies were losing their popularity: the surfing fad was being supplanted by a renewed interest in motorcycle culture. Only a year or two later, American-International would be making films like "The Wild Angels." This is a problem for a series where the stock antagonist, Eric Von Zipper, is a parody of Marlon Brando's biker hood in "The Wild One" (1954). The film shows a renewed interest in cycles--Annette's romantic interest, Harvey Lembeck, is an avid motorcyclist. The film tries to deal with this by transforming Von Zipper from a biker into the stereotypical 60s junior executive (a la "How to Succeed in Business"). But, you can see the structure starting to fall apart here.There are fun moments though--particularly the opening credits (clay animation done by Art Cloakey, the creator of Gumby), and the wacky motorcycle race at the end of the film. Lastly, there's a fun cameo at the very end of the film by producer William Asher's wife...

I purchased the DVD version of this movie and would like to inform other 'Beach Party' movie lovers that MGM has done a great job on the video and sound. I have in the past had to suffer through very low quality VHS copies of the Beach Party movies, where I wound up throwing away the tape and putting a VHS tape that I recorded off TV into the box. That won't be the case here! (even if I could record a DVD) As for the movie ... Well, it is my least favorite of the Frankie and Annette Beach Party movies ... And I think I'm in the majority there. But if you love the Beach Party genre of movies you have to have this one too and you don't need me to tell you about it.<standing salute to MGM>