Ha ha, hepcats, it’s Burl, here to boogie with you on the
beach again! Yes, I can’t seem to help visiting the beach on a pretty regular
basis, at least cinematically, ha ha! Because here I am to chat about Beach Ball, another of the non-A.I.P.
sun ‘n’ surf-stravaganzas! In fact it shares much with The Girls on the Beach, and would make such an ideal companion
piece with the picture that if you double-billed them, you’d have trouble
remembering which was which only a few hours later!
Just like GotB, we
have a group of fellows and a group of ladies (faux-nerds this time, ha ha),
and with the beach (and sundry other locations) as a backdrop, the picture
chronicles their inevitable coming together! It seems we have a battle of the
bands, and our boys are a group called, ha ha, The Wigglers! There are three
Wigglers and their manager, the kooky and superannuated Edd Byrnes! Two of the
Wigglers are handsome guys: Bango the drummer is played by Robert Logan, well
known from Born to Race, Scorpion and Snowbeast, and Jack the guitar player is played by Aron “Cannonball” Kincade! There’s a sax
player in this trio too, the goofy one of the group, and he’s played by none
other than Don Edmonds, who also appeared in Home Sweet Home and Wild,
Wild Winter, but happens to be the director of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS too! Ha ha, what a strange career he had!
The girls, meanwhile, are so close to the ones from GotB that I suspect it might actually be
the same quartet, ha ha! The plot is all the kids getting together to help the
Wigglers keep their instruments from being repossessed by the persistent Mr.
Wolf, so that they can play in the big Best Band Contest! Lots of terrific
performances pop up at the flimsiest excuse, from people like The Righteous
Brothers (whose hits I’ve never liked, but I liked the band here!), The Four
Seasons, The Hondells and the terrific Walker Brothers! And of course the grand
climax to the music is The Supremes, featuring a truly amazing hairdo on Diana
Ross! Of course, ha ha, somehow The Wigglers come out on top of them all in the
contest!
The running gag involving Mr. Wolf is that he keeps getting
caught up in all the fun fun fun, or else is dosed with nitrous oxide, and always
ends up in some mildly compromising position in the morning, being frowned at
by cops! The cops in this case are one guy I didn’t recognize, and the great
Dick “Smokey Bites the Dust” Miller!
Ha ha, he’s as terrific as ever here, taking it smooth and easy and grinning as
if stoned!
After a great scene where a beatnik mechanic turns the boys’
car into a spacemobile, there’s a speed chase! Then come endless scenes of
farce, filmed on the sly at a car show, and then, as in GotB, the lads end up dressed as ladies! It’s a silly picture, but
it has many, many scenes of pretty ladies shaking their bottoms to the beat,
and lots of fine music, and many activities (car racing, skydiving, skindiving,
and even a little surfing, ha ha!); and of course it has Dick Miller, which
automatically makes it a must see! I’m going to go ahead and give Beach Ball two and a half wigglers!
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