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How To Stuff A Wild Bikini (1965) Starring Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney, Buster Keaton, Harvey Lembeck, Beverly Adams, Jody McCrea, John Ashley, Patti Chandler, Bobbi Shaw, Mary Hughes.

Directed by William Asher.

Running time: 93 Minutes.

Rating: Not Rated

The title suggests sexist rubbish. The film beneath it does not disappoint.

An indescribably smarmy and cocky beach boy (Avalon) on a Pacific island for Naval service (though he is hardly doing much for the Navy) becomes unnecessarily jealous that his girlfriend Annette back in America might be cheating on him with another guy. With the help of his own fling, and a wise, old witch doctor (Keaton) he is able to conjure up a spy in the form of a shapely, red-haired beach maiden named Cassandra. Cassandra also happens to be attractive enough, theoretically, to distract any of the other guys around Annette.

One wonders why Beach Blanket Bingo needed a sequel let alone multiple sequels. Like the first one wasn't bad enough for people? With cardboard cutout characters like Frankie and Annette, one longs for the comparative depth of Gidget and Moondoggie.

This was at the height of the cold war and you have a bunch of people on a beach. Their only concerns seem to be the tans they are working on and attracting the opposite sex. Maybe that is the point. Escapism comes in many forms.

Some movies are critic proof. That does not necessarily mean that they are so bizarre that critics can't figure them out. Sometimes it means that the flick in question is geared specifically towards an audience that never reads movie reviews. This is the same kind of audience whose modern equivalent went to see that awful DUKES OF HAZZARD movie.

Hollywood greats Mickey Rooney, Buster Keaton and Harvey Lembeck at least got paycheques from this unfunny, sanitised nonsense without even a hint of sincerity behind it. I can't imagine they took any pride in the cinematic result of the work they were asked to do for the money. Keaton depleted his legendary reputation from the silent film era with every "talkie" he did.

When I first moved to Toronto in the early 1980s one of the few channels I got was City TV and this type of rubbish was a regular feature of its "Great Movies" programming. Flicks like this one, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians and They Saved Hitler's Brain convinced a whole generation of kids like me to go outside and play after seeing just a few minutes of them. It is about as tacky as a leopard skin couch, a satin Elvis portrait or an ashtray that says "park yer butt here".

My own review of this title is an example of when I really don't like writing movie reviews. I never saw it in its entirety until I won a DVD copy in a contest a friend's party. It was a chore to sit through the rest of this silliness even after only 20 minutes in.

Repetition and variation is the essence of style in art. The repetition aspect in relation to this is that it is the same beach movie being made over and over again in a half-hearted attempt to cash in on past box office bonanzas. The variation aspect is that in some of them the actors are different. For instance, Avalon has merely a bit part in this displaced as the male lead. But he has NOT been displaced as the male lead by Tommy Kirk. The setting and story is essentially the same. This cinematic treadmill of stupid teenage fun is tolerable only in parts.

Learn more about this author, Jason Daniel Baker.
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