The Horror of Party Beach (1964)

After the absolute endurance round that was Creeping Terror last month, a movie which I summarised quite neatly as "toe curlingly tedious and bonecrushingly boring", it's time to move on to the next entry on my list. So far the 60's decade of this tour through the worst movies ever made has given us some of the most ludicrous excuses for cinema I've witnessed yet. The 60's movies so far genuinely being the worst of the worst. A new level of bad. So it's fair to say at this point I've abandoned any hope of redemption for any of the movies produced this decade. I mean, in comparison; No Orchids for Miss Blandish, a very early post on this blog and a movie from the 40's that inexplicably found it's way onto the worst movies list, is a fucking cinematic masterpiece. And just when I thought you literally couldn't get any worse than Beast from Yucca Flats, along came Creeping Terror so there is no depth, no depth in terms of suckiness that these movies will not sink to. Why even cling on to any hope at this point? Do I genuinely believe that Horror of Party Beach will, in retrospect, actually transpire to be a decent, semi-watchable experience? No. At this point? No. No I don't.

Hank (John Scott) and Tina (Marilyn Clarke) arrive the beach and immediately decide to have a massive argument, resulting in Tina storming off and attracting the attention of Mike (Agustin Mayor), leader of a biker gang, during a lovely rock and roll dancing scene. Drawn back to see what the commotion is, Hank discovers Mike and Tina dancing and a scuffle breaks out featuring some uh... slightly over the top fighting moves... but once Hank has Mike beat and the fight is over Tina storms off into the ocean for a swim. Unbeknownst to everybody however is that only moments before some evil unknown people dumped a whole bunch of drums of "radioactive" waste just off the bay causing a whole bunch of mutated fishmen to invade the coastline! But first; another music number! The Zombie Stomp! I'm slightly biased but this 60's rock and roll band, if it's actually them playing these songs in the movie, are pretty decent! But as The Zombie Stomp plays out, poor Tina gets horrifically mauled and mutilated by one of the fishmen when she stops take a breather on some rocks. And when Tina's bloodied corpse washes up on the beach it interrupts the next musical number which has, so far, been the best thing about this movie. With that party officially over, we move on to a new setting where Dr. Gavin (Allan Laurel) assumes charge, on instruction from the Police, to investigate the cause of Tina's death, with his Maid convinced that it is "the voodoo"...whilst his daughter, Elaine (Alice Lyon) who had a sort of on-off thing with Hank earlier at the beach decides to bail on a slumber party she was invited to, which is just as well as during the night, two fishmen from the beach rock up and absolutely slaughter everyone inside, taking 2 of the girls captivate when they leave. As news sweeps across the city of the girls deaths at the hands of the sea creatures, 3 ladies on their way to New York get attacked and presumably murdered on the side of the road when they break down with a flat tire. Picking up Elaine, Hank heads back to the beach for some... morbidly curious reason... and hooks up with the band who play cool songs from the beginning and we get another nice music number (ok, I googled it and they're called The Del-Aires and yes they wrote and performed all the songs!) and at the end Hank, seemingly trying to move on from the brutal death of his ex, finally hooks up proper with Elaine. I think. Following that, after a fishman just narrowly misses out on killing some poor lady again, he... or it... smashes the window of a nearby clothes store, believing the mannequin to be a woman, and this somehow causes an entire fishy fin hand to be severed off... the resulting hand finding it's way to Dr. Gavin off camera who, after analysing it concludes that the creatures are a cross between humans and sea anemones who are so complex, they require human blood to survive. As the team argue amongst themselves they are interrupted when they mistake Dr. Gavin's maid; Eulabelle (Eulabelle Moore) for one of the fishmen, returning to claim it's severed limb presumably. and when Eulabelle accidentally knocks over a beaker and completely destroys the severed limb, the team discover that sodium is the only element that can destroy the sea creatures. Following a scene where two drunken blokes get gobbled up after they discover a broken down truck that also got attacked, we have a scene where Dr. Gavin and Hank discover that the creatures bodies are radioactive and because of their radioactivity can be tracked to where they are hiding. As teams across the city split up to find a radioactive lake, Hank sprints to New York and collects a whole lot of sodium! Elaine meanwhile has made her way to a local quarry where she discovers the water there to be radioactive beyond the scale. Dr. Gavin, learning that his daughter was last reported to be heading in that direction suddenly has an epiphany that it must be the location of the fish creatures and dashes out the door with bell jar of sodium in hand, instructing the Police to intercept Hank and re-direct him to the quarry on the way. Back at the quarry lake, Elaine takes a tumble, injuring her leg, and is unable to escape when an entire gang of fishmen emerge from the lake. Escaping to cover Elaine is able to survive long enough for Dr. Gavin to arrive on the scene who finds her immediately and eradicates one of the fishmen immediately with his bell jar before... engaging in hand to hand combat with another one... fair enough? As Dr. Gavin begins to struggle, Hank and about half the Police Force, presumably, rock up at the quarry and armed with chunks of sodium begin to reduce the army of fish people to cinders and as the last fishy merman is reduced to ash and smoke Hank helps Elaine back to the car. The following morning as the radio reports the death of the sea creatures Hank and Elaine embrace and finally kiss to the lovely sounds of the Del-Aires in the background.

This was leagues ahead, light years ahead of any of the aforementioned 60's movies I've covered so far. I mean, that says more about them than it does about this movie, because it still wasn't great... but it pissed all over Creeping Death. An actual coherent plot, some genuinely decent creature effects (even if by modern standards they did look a bit goofy), cool music from a groovy rock and roll band, this was an actual movie! And it was... mostly ok... I guess? I mean, the acting got a bit ropey, and sometimes it got very ropey... and it stunk of low budget worse than a rotten bucket of fish, but it didn't feel tortuous to actually sit through! Hell, I think I could actually watch it again?

But don't take my lavishes of praise on it too seriously. This was still a slightly wiffy movie really and alot of that was borne out of the fact that most of the people in it really seemed like they were acting for the very first time. Alice Lyon was vanilla as you like, mostly wooden, mostly bland serving no purpose other than to be a love interest from John Scott's character; Hank and a damsel in distress in the closing 15 minutes. John Scott himself was, mostly passable but mostly forgettable as a male lead and made no real indelible impression on me. The characters really felt mostly surplus to requirement to be honest and there was a significant lack of development to make you really feel like you had to root for them.

And the fishmen, genuinely looked good for the time even if they were just people in suits. They were good suits though, and good masks. Whether this would have been genuinely unsettling in 1964, I'm not sure and by modern standards they mostly came across a little bit goofy actually, but you knew what they were: they were fishmen. And despite making some really over the top grunts and snarls every time they were on screen, they were... ok. Could have gone worse.

But where this movie does recover some points is in the soundtrack. I'm a Buddy Holly fan, a Kinks fan so I'm slightly biased, given, but the songs performed by The Del-Aires certainly helped to make this movie more credible, and they were good songs! Which is important! The background music, the sinister orchestral music, that played every time the creatures were on screen was also decent and the first time it played genuinely unsettling. But by the 8th or 9th time it played out in the movie, it's effect had worn off slightly, but broadbrushly speaking, the movie was soundtracked well, and it came as a pleasant surprise! I honestly want to find the soundtrack, if it exists and listen to it!

The cinematography as well was decent enough, although they really cheapened out with any attack scenes and it got a bit confusing and difficult to understand what was going on, presumably this is because of budgetry reasons, but as badly shot as those scenes were, the movie found a few moments to make up for it a bit with some decent and interestingly framed shots. And for the large part the movie was pieced together and paced pretty competently enough. I've certainly seen worse.

Although as good as the aforementioned elements were, the movie ultimately boils down to a very much paint-by-numbers monster movie that was mostly sub-par when compared with, well, virtually any other 60's monster movie. And it's further hampered by the fact that 60% of the movie is spent using scenes where not a lot is going on really... and despite only clocking in at just under 78 minutes there was still a bit of padding going on and un-necessary scenes that could have otherwise been cut had they needed to trim the run time.

So in an ironic twist of fate, I am actually mildy surprised to discover this movie isn't in fact a steaming, pungent turd, as I expected, and is in fact, an almost competent piece of cinema. I mean, aside from it's notorious status as "one of the worst movies ever made", apparently, it's otherwise nothing remarkable and is a bang average 60's horror monster movie. Had it not found itself in such illustrious company I doubt it would even register a mark amongst fans of the genre, but instead, owing to that nefarious reputation it now finds itself standing out against all those other movies. And... I'm not entirely sure why. It wasn't good as such, no. The acting was bland, the monsters impressive for the time in my opinion but not outstandingly impressive as such, the plot pretty much run of the mill - paint by numbers creature feature, but bad? Well uh, no? No I don't think so? If your definition of bad is: the absence of good then maybe? The soundtrack was cool? But I couldn't see anyone coming away from this and thinking "God, what a steaming pile of fucking horse shit." So after some consideration it earns itself at least a star because The Del-Aires were enjoyable and another star because I didn't want to rip my own brain out whilst watching it. Unlike some of the other 60's movies I've covered. 2 out of 5.