cult film freak: MAURY DEXTER YOUTH-AT-THE-BEACH TRIPLE FEATURE TREAT

Bobby Vinton teaches Patricia Morrow and friends to surf YEAR: 1964

SURF PARTY: Bobby Vinton plays a nice guy who runs a surf shop, and gets the last song in this, the second Maury Dexter B&W teen movie and first bonafide beach movie, and by far, the best: Well written and character-driven, this SURF PARTY has three babes driving to the beach in a trailer to meet one of the girl's brothers, Skeet, a champion surfer and leader of a grungy pack of beach bums...

Patricia Morrow in Surf Party

Though this blond-haired girl-next-door sister is intentionally played down next to the two bikini girl types (songwriter Jackie DeShannon and Lory Patrick), Patricia Morrow stands out as the legend's passive yet still energetic, and completely adorable sister: Eventually she has to talk sense into both a smitten Vinton and her troubled, mysterious older brother (played by future MAGNUM FORCE to MIDNIGHT RUN stuntman Jerry Summers)...

Patricia Morrow

All the girls wind up with a dude: one the token dip i.e. a "gremmie" (Ken Miller) trying hard to be part of the surf club even by risking his life, which initially cold-hearted Skeet can care less about. In most movies about youth at this time, there's always a snoopy yet ultimately friendly cop. Since no real laws are broken except loitering the beach, this particular detective gets in the way but it doesn't matter. The kids, each with their own distinctive personalities, make up for the built-in flaws of a b-surf drive-in flick that, although desperately needs some color, has more to offer than even the famous ones.

Year of Release: 1963

THE YOUNG SWINGERS: Technically Maury Dexter's first "surf flick" but with hardly any beach... only youth and lots of music...

Although a horribly unfunny young comic tells a joke about being near the Pacific Ocean on stage at a Hootenanny nightclub that a vicious old lady wants to tear down while her cute blond niece falls in love with our whiny leading young dolt. Meanwhile, the only real musician... other than an extremely dated folk duo... is Gene McDaniels, whose track "Compared To What" played in both 1990's cult movies BOOGIE NIGHTS and CASINO (though he sings another tune here). Basically, these SWINGERS desperately need a beach to have a good time at so we can too. The whole film's really just a showcase — going back and forth from the club's music-filled exterior to a stuffy office in an awkward, uninteresting fashion. In fact, THE YOUNG SWINGERS doesn't feel like a Maury Dexter movie at all. With limited locations and dull characters, it's simply no fun i.e. this bad isn't good at all.

Indoors mostly in Wild on the BeachYEAR: 1965

WILD ON THE BEACH: A cross between SURF PARTY and YOUNG SWINGERS has three girls arriving at the beach; and there's an uptight niece played by brunette beauty Sherry Jackson: A rudimentary twist has her uncle's death leaving her a beach party-pad that'd been used by several rowdy (albeit polite) local guys...

The year is 1965, and from the mention of college love-ins and sit-ins, it underlines a progression from the other Maury Dexter beach flicks as the plot involves a grouchy college dean (played by Booth Colman from RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA) who lays down an edict that only kids with housing can attend the local University. So the boys trick the girls — then they all wind up in the same house, making things more plot-heavy than fun, funny or the kind of breezy fare Maury Dexter pulls off nicely when there's a good story and interesting characters. And the plot is repeated so often, he must have thought young audiences suffered from short-term memory loss...

Young Swingers: ** Wild on the Beach: **1/2 Surf Party: ***1/2

The soon-to-be STAR TREK episode's perfect robot girl Sherry Jackson plays it sweet, sincere and a follower-of-rules, but there's no one more spontaneous and/or free-spirited enough for her to play off. The leading man is a weak conniving dolt, so her vulnerabilities are in vain, and uncomfortably at that.

The best scene has a singer playing herself, though she's hardly famous even then — the extremely gorgeous, short yet wonderfully voluptuous male fantasy of Cindy Malone (who played LuLu on the Adam West BATMAN) singing a great little tune called "Run Away From Him" with a fantastic echo/reverb sound; she's auditioning for Dexter's longest-running stock actor, Russ Bender. This groovy track's even better than the introduction of a new duo that plays along with the movie's stock band, The Astronauts — enter Sonny and Cher singing, "It's Gonna Rain." But overall, the kids, lacking WILD, don't spend enough time ON THE BEACH — so the title means close to nothing.