Beach Blanket Bingo

With the days getting shorter and colder weather finally having arrived to my portion of the world, I decided to the other of the beach movies that I had on my DVR, Beach Blanket Bingo.

Once again, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are romantically paired, this time as Frankie and Dee Dee. I haven't seen all of the beach movies, so I don't know all the supporting characters, but apparently several of the cast members from previous beach movies return, albeit not quite in the same roles that they played in other movies. Among their beach bum friends is Jody McCrea as Bonehead, even more of a beach bum than anybody else in the cast and slightly off, but in a good way.

The basic plot, if you will, since I don't the plot is really the point of American International's beach movies, has a skydiver jumping out of a plane over the beach and parachuting into the ocean. The kids on the beach see a boat, and figure that the boat will pick her up, which is probably safer than all of them going out to rescue her. The boat does pick her up, but there's a catch. Bonnie (Deborah Walley), the jumper, is replaced by an identically outfitted Sugar Kane (Linda Evans, yes that Linda Evans), who jumps back into the ocean. It's all a publicity stunt. Sugar Kane's manager, Bullets (Paul Lynde), is trying to promote Sugar's new record, and needs somebody to "rescue" her for the stunt.

Frankie is the one that rescues her, and they briefly become a romantic item, not that Frankie is really interested in Sugar. And the teens really should have been more cynical and realized that this was a publicity stunt from the way Bullets talks. Instead, they're wowed by her jumping, and vow to take up jumping from jump school operator Big Drop (Don Rickles), his instructor Bonnie, and pilot Steve (John Ashley, who in real life was married to Deborah Walley at the time the movie was made). Bonnie wants more attention from Steve, so she pretends to like Frankie to try to get him into a love triangle that will get Steve to stand up for Bonnie.

As for Sugar, she and Bonehead become friends when Bonehead gets rescued out in the ocean by what he thinks is Sugar. Instead, it's actually Lorelei (Marta Kristen), a mermaid, and yes, with a tail and everything, but one who can fake legs and spend half a day or so out of the ocean on dry land. Naturally, nobody believes Bonehead really saw a mermaid. And Sugar Kane and Bonehead being a bit of an item gets Eric von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck), leader of the biker gang, jealous. They, with the help of South Dakota Slim (Timothy Carey), kidnap Sugar Kane, leaving everybody to believe that Bonehead accidentally left Sugar to drown out in the ocean.

Yeah, the plot is nutty, but then I don't think people watched the beach movies for the brilliant plots. Instead, the teens watched it for the music, although I think by the time Beach Blanket Bingo was released tastes were radically changing thanks to the British Invasion. Any grown-ups who might be part of the audience would watch for the cameos, which included Buster Keaton here, in his end-of-life comeback. Frankie Avalon is talented, but the song he's given to sing is really quite dated, sounding more like a late-50s ballad.

Still, Beach Blanket Bingo succeeds at what it sets out to do, which is to provide an hour and a half or so of light fluff and the opportunity to think about another summer coming up.