The Horror Of Party Beach (1964)

 The Horror Of Party Beach

Beach parties, 1960s surf rock, cute girls in bikinis, and atomic monsters from the sea murdering young girls on the coast of Connecticut, and all part of a low budget b-monster film with tons of blood (chocolate syrup); what is there not to love about The Horror Of Party Beach.   This film was absolutely everything I wanted it to be!  It is a b-horror drive in classic, originally shown as a double feature with The Curse Of The Living Corpse.   

The Horror Of Party Beach was directed by Del Tenney who was born in the north-central Iowan town of Mason City, which was also home to Meredith Wilson who wrote the Music Man.  Del Tenney's family then moved to California, and he then moved to New York City to study acting and became an actor.  Then wanting to get into film making, he was approached by a drive-in theater owner in Albany NY that approached him about doing some low budget horror films, and that theater owner had connections with Twentieth Century-Fox, and thus was born The Horror Of Party Beach.   The screenplay was written by Richard Hilliard, and was distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox.  The film was originally scheduled for a very limited run, but was so successful that it ended up doing a much larger run.  Though it was a successful film, it was quite hated by the critics, many have labeled one of the worst films of all time, and Del Tenney has been referred to as the Ed Wood of Connecticut.  

The Horror Of Party Beach stars John Scott as Hank Green, Alice Lyon as Elaine Gavin, Allan Laurel plays her father Dr. Gavin, Eulabelle Moore plays the Gavin's housekeeper Eulabelle, Marilyn Clark plays Tina, Damon Kebroyd plays Lt. Wells, the Charter Oaks M.C. plays the Motorcycle Gang, and the New Jersey based surf-rock band The Del-Aires plays themselves, and also do the musical numbers for the film.  Honestly I kind of loved the Del-Aires songs, especially Zombie Stomp.  I honestly enjoyed the cast of this film, I felt like the characters were pretty likable characters, and though they were a bit generic, they worked really well for a low budget b-horror film.   

This film is everything I wanted it to be, I love the cheesy rubber suit for the monster, I love the style of it, I love that it is black and white when other films of its time and era were in colour.  The music is great, and the acting isn't too bad.  This is a low budget schlock film, that never pretends to be anything more than that, it is the type of late night creature feature that made me fall in love with movies.   I have so many happy memories of watching creature features like The Horror Of Party Beach with my mom as a kid, it was so much fun, we would laugh, and eat snacks, and just have a great time.   This isn't the kind of film you watch if you are looking for high quality, classy films, this is just a good cheesy low budget film, that gives as many laughs as it does frights.   Honestly the critics who hate this film and rank it among some of the worst films ever made, must have been expecting something more than they should have going into this, this film is silly and fun, don't expect anything more than that.  This is in a way an early horror and pop-culture spoof movie, goofing on the popular beach party films, and also goofing on the 1950s creature features.   It is hard to say that this film is bad, unless you were expecting it to not be bad, which seems like a silly thing to do, with a name like Horror Of Party Beach, you know you are in for a silly schlocky creature feature, that is in it for the laughs as much as it is in it for the horror and gore.   Like this is the kind of film that I would expect out of a company like Troma (though they would have added a ton of nudity and even more gore).   

The Horror Of Party Beach is everything I expected it to be, and I absolutely loved every second of it.  I love creature feature films, where the creature is so obviously a man in a rubber suit, and the effects are obvious, and where the budget is low.   I don't know if it ranks as one of my favourite films, or even if it ranks as a must-see, but I do feel like if you enjoy low budget creature features that don't take themselves too seriously, then this is a must-see film.   This film even inspired one of my favourite songs by the punk band The Sloppy Seconds, with their song "Horror From Party Beach", wherein the lyrics layout the plot of the film.   Speaking of which, the plot is pretty simple, nuclear waste is dumped off of a boat, and leaks in to the water onto the skeletons of a shipwrecked boat.  Those skeletons become the creatures.   They need human blood to live, and so these radioactive creatures start killing the locals of the coastal Connecticut town and draining them of their blood.  It is discovered that Sodium kills the creatures, and the creatures can be found because of the radiation that they excrete.   So the scientists and the cops are in a race to destroy them before they can continue killing all of the local teenagers.   

If you have not yet seen The Horror Of Party Beach, I highly recommend checking it out.  If you appreciate the art of low budget horror films like I do, then this film is great.  If you love laughing at the absurdity of low budget schlock films (which Mystery Theater 3K has shown us is a pretty popular hobby among film viewers) then this film is an absolute delight.  The Horror Of Party Beach is only bad in all of the right ways, making it an amazing film!