The Beach Girls and The Monster - Uninspiring Beach Party

Here's one of the most unsettlingly pointless scenes ever conceived and put on film. Seriously. The scene makes so little sense in and out of its context it forces you to question the very foundations of reality cognition. Not really, but nevertheless. It is so null and void that after a while it seems like a glimpse into a parallel dimension. Your brain can't help but try to salvage wasted time and turn the thing into something at least remotely coherent and meaningful. And then it just gives up and accepts the ominous meaninglessness of the piece.

The scene originates from the 1965 film "The Beach Girls and The Monster". The film itself is a typical representative of a "beach party" film genre.

The scene goes like this: the first section is just a bunch of people dancing on the beach in the middle of the night. They are dancing away all the worries and woes. There is a kaleidoscope of little moments - random pairs of people dancing or enjoying the atmosphere, people playing music instruments, people being pranked with funny signs, slinker glasses and exploding tubes, women shaking hips, waving hands. Lots of lusty women shaking hips shots.

As the dawn approaches, the scene transitions into a more intimate setting. Two characters run away from the group and share a kiss. They find a desolate place to indulge themselves in passionate cuddling. That's when the creature starts slowly approaching them.

The creature looks like a man in the carnival suit and it would have been fine if it was like that in the film. Instead, this man in the suit is supposed to represent a mutant monster. We get another shot of the pair kissing but no monster to indicate the approaching threat.

Then the film cuts back to the party in the middle of the night right when the music stops and it seems like there is going to be an orgy. Except it is not and we get an acoustic number - a romantic ballad built on concrete cliches reinforced with saccharine rods.

Over this soundtrack we get more people kissing or preventing other people from kissing. No monster approaching though. After the song concludes, one of the character pulls out a lion mask and enacts a flirting exchange with one of the girls. It mentions a monster in a mocking fashion. It evolves into a singalong that describes what is going to happen when the monster comes around. And then everybody go surfing.

In the meantime, the pair that went away to cuddle joins them. But the girl forgot something in her bag and she asks her boyfriend to bring it back. That's when the monster attacks. The boy tries to fight the monster. It looks like the most awkward and unmenacing double arm wrestling bout.

At the same time, the man in the suit walks on the beach and sees what's happening. He cries for help but nobody reacts. Then monster continues to fight the boy until he finishes him off with a lethal blow. The monster moves on from the subtly mutilated body of a boy to continues his savage mayhem. The end.

Yes. I did this transcription.

"The Beach Girls and The Monster" came out right in the middle of the genre popularity in 1965.

It had all the right credentials. The surf footage was shot by Dale Davis of "Walk on the Wet Side" fame (who would go on to direct the ultimate surf film "The Golden Breed"). The theme song was written by Frank Sinatra Jr. The girls were pro Watusi dancers from Whiskey A Go Go.

But it also tried to broaded its appeal by implementing elements of the horror genre into a beach party film. If being 50s straightforward monster horror. So its logline would look like this: "people having a good time, looking good over a cool surf rock soundtrack. But this time there is a monster let loose and he wrecks havoc on the unsuspecting victims."

And it fails spectacularly. But it doesn't really matter.

Beach party films were not as much a narrative pieces as an ambient ones. They were all about the atmosphere, the vibe. The plot was there to reinforce the vibe, nothing else. It is about people enjoying life, overcoming the worries of the reality, experiencing a good time, looking good and being nice over a cool surf rock soundtrack.

Beach party films were throwaway disposable products designed to capitalize on the target audience segment by offering something relevant to their preferences. It was presented as an alternative to so-called "daddy's cinema". Despite its blatant cynicism and extreme vacuousness, for a while beach films were consistent money makers in the mid 60s and the genre helped to cement the status of surf rock in the popular conscioussness. "The Beach Girls and The Monster" is one of the few bizarre oddities of this era. It is a clueless cash grab so incompetent it becomes sublime in its clumsiness.