The Beach Girls and the Monster, Surfer Beauties Clawed to Death

A confession.  I watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes...for the movie!  If you are like me, 1965's "The Beach Girls and the Monster" is a film for you.  Directed by John Hall, who filmed many of the scenes in his house, our film today has lots of bikini clad surfer beauties dancing and jiggling.  Add music by Frank Sinatra, Jr., and an extremely campy seaweed strewn creature, and we are ready to party.

As Bunny, fresh from jiggling to a lot to surfer music, frolics on the beach, she wanders away from her friends.  Clad in a polka-dot bikini, she is attacked and torn apart by a sea monster.  Her friends are momentarily depressed, but soon will jiggle and dance some more.  The cops bring a foot print mold to Dr. Otto Lindsay (Jon Hall) who tells them the culprit is a mutant South American fish..but the tramps in bikinis deserved their fate.  The prude that he is, Otto is married to the skank and gold-digger, Vicki (Sue Casey).  Vicky is sultry and even tries to seduce her stepson, Richard (Arnold Lessing) and his best friend, Mark (Walker Edmiston). Actually everyone in the film has a motive to kill Vicky.  Even when Richard's GF Jane (Elaine DuPont), clad in a leopard  skin bikini, arrives, Vicky keeps playing the seductress.  

Otto, dislikes the surfer/bikini crowd as he sees their culture taking his son, Richard.  Otto always hoped Richard would become a scientist and help out in the lab.  The cops are searching for the culprit, but they are seeking a man.  As the parties on the beach continue, a surfer gets shredded.  Not believing in monsters, the cops blame Richard's friend Mark for the killings.  Richard and Jane then embark on their own investigation and find the creature's lair.  Meanwhile, Otto catches Vicky in infidelity.  We know that Vicky's fate will be a bloody one, the only question...which is answered...is will she be killed by a person or a sea monster?  Unusual plot twists manifest, though they never take away from the jiggling and bikinis.

Lots of fun indeed, and one may say "The Beach Girls and the Monster" is a guilty pleasure.  There are some terrific musical numbers that will bring you back to the more pristine days of the 1960s.  Beach damsels in great peril, hunks unable to save them, a mad scientist, and a plotting seductress is an all too ignored recipe in modern cinema.  Available on YouTube, enjoy this classic as the summer ends.