This year’s summer blockbusters seem a little light on beach activity (although, technically Christopher Nolan’s new Troy story The Odyssey is kind of a beach movie).
Beach-based movies tend to be the setting for fun and frolics, or rollicking surfer action, or, in the case of Weekend At Bernie’s, putting sunglasses and a hat on your boss’s dead body, and then carting it around the beach to convince everyone he is still alive, so the mob don’t kill you.
Weekend At Bernie’s is a very strange film.
With the recent heatwave vastly increasing all manner of beach-related fun, Cult Movie Guernsey would like to take this opportunity to recommend some beach/beach-adjacent movies that you may not have come across before. It’s worth pointing out that all are available to stream, buy or even watch on YouTube, although today’s final recommendation takes a little more effort to track down, but is definitely worth it.
Normally, first up would be Jaws, Cult Movie Guernsey’s favourite movie of all time, but let’s go for the path to the beach less travelled, while playing All Saints’ Pure Shores on our headphones.
Blood Beach (1981)
This classic straight-to-video 1980s horror had the brilliant tag line, post Jaws, that read ‘Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water... you can’t get there.’
Yep, killer sand. The cops are baffled. The audience is certainly baffled. And those cops definitely struggle when trying to put together a photofit picture of the suspect, as the sand keeps leaking out the side.
The movie does go on to reveal a very low budget special effects monster actually under the sand that’s doing all the munching, and that’s definitely part of the movie’s charm. Featuring a cast including Rocky Balboa’s brother and Cult Movie favourite John Saxon, this is a classic example of a really great fun Jaws rip-off. As low budget granular-based murder mayhem goes, you can’t knock this one for a lack of originality.
Blue Hawaii (1961)
Elvis Presley movies tend to struggle to get taken seriously. Cult Movie Guernsey has a real soft spot for the good ones, and Blue Hawaii is one of the best. True, it’s not King Creole or Jailhouse Rock, but Hawaii has never looked more inviting as the King spends his days strumming guitars, flying helicopters and wearing Hawaiian shirts so loud they must be used to guide aircraft into land. Elvis is so cheekily handsome in this one it’s actually quite difficult to look at him at times and not swoon, and, as a result, he gets away with murder (not literally, there’s no killer sand in this one) with the ladies, until, as always in an Elvis movie, his heart is stolen by the stunning Joan Blackman.
Featuring the brilliant track Rock-A-Hula Baby, the complete bizarre track Slicin’ Sand, which sees Elvis doing a type of sand-based movement that seems part karate, part early 80s robot dance, and the classic Can’t Help Falling In Love With You, and also starring the then 36-year-old Angela Lansbury off of Murder She Wrote, as 26-year-old Elvis’ mum, Blue Hawaii is a feelgood, beach-based ton of fun, even if some of Elvis’ methods at getting a young lady tourist to behave have, ermmm, not aged that well.
Spring Breakers (2012)
Or Disney Channel alumni go crazy bonkers in the summer.
The beach in Spring Breakers is not a place of relaxation, it’s a pulsating, neon-lit plateau of complete chaos. All manner of beach-based debauchery turns up, rendered even more explosive by the lead roles featuring fully ‘committed’ performances from the cast of High School Musical, Barney And Friends and Hannah Montana, who are required at the end to gun everyone down in slow motion, while wearing pillow cases with eye holes to see through on their heads.
Machine guns suddenly turn up. Bikinis appear, disappear, partially reappear and at times, seem to have their own sub plots. Every single artistic decision and shot seems to have been dipped into melting ice cream first with someone shouting, ‘SPRING BREAK FOREVER!’ every 30 seconds through a megaphone at the actors. James Franco turns up with metal teeth, cornrows and recites really, really odd poetry. It’s hypnotic, really unsettling at times and Cult Movie Guernsey is a huge fan.
Big Wednesday (1978)
Big Wednesday is the rare surf film that isn’t just about riding waves, it’s about riding the chaos of incoming adulthood at the same time. John Milius, director of cult movie classic Red Dawn and the patron saint of cinematic testosterone, gives us a sun-bleached coming-of-age tale where the ocean is moody, the friendships are messy, and Jan Michael Vincent off of Airwolf looks like he’s been carved out of bronze by a particularly horny sculptor.
The film tracks three friends as they stumble from carefree surf days into the realities of adulthood and Vietnam. Yet Big Wednesday never loses its mythic, wave-chasing centre. It treats surfing as a saviour and friendship like the only thing worth clinging to when life decides to body slam you into the sand. This is the drunk, unpredictable big brother of that other surfing masterpiece, Point Break.
Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
Beach Blanket Bingo deals with the standard old beach movie plot of what happens if Sugar Kane, a singer, is unwittingly being used by her unscrupulous agent to publicise her latest album by skydiving. But it isn’t really her skydiving, it’s Bonnie. And Frankie saves Bonnie from a skydiving disaster, so he takes up skydiving to impress her. Then Zipper and his gang of not-very-scary bikers turn up, there is a big punch-up, then dancing on the beach, then Frankie Avalon off of Grease sings lots of really catchy Sixties numbers on the beach, including the completely brilliant title song. Then Buster Keaton turns up. And then a mermaid. Then they all sing and dance on the beach again.
Beach Blanket Bingo is a cinematic cheese dream. It’s so mental you’d think someone might have paused for breath before signing off on the script. Well, you say script. And there is much ludicrously enthusiastic Sixties go-go dancing in this movie, involving people shaking their behinds so much I’m surprised there wasn’t a health warning at the start. Plus, outrageous over-the-top fighting, singing, more very enthusiastic dancing, skydiving and young people going nuts before appearing to learn a hastily crafted on moral message, that no one appears to take remotely seriously.
No wonder people were frightened of teenagers in the Sixties.
If you do one thing this weekend, at least watch the trailer for this movie on YouTube. You will never get that theme tune out of your head.
Beach Blanket Bingo was such a massive hit in the Sixties, that there is a brilliant parody of it in an episode of The Monkees (possibly the greatest TV show of all time, in the opinion of Cult Movie Guernsey). And if there’s one band that needs playing on your way to the beach, it’s The Monkees.
Cult Movie Guernsey returns to The Mallard at the start of September, but please feel free to go old school and follow Cult Movie Guernsey on Facebook for the odd cult movie film recommendation and updates for future showings.
