Beach Party (1963)

BEACH PARTY  (1963)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Asher
    Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Bob Cummings,
    Dorothy Malone, Harvey Lembeck, Jody McCrae,
    Morey Amsterdam, John Ashley, Eva Six,
    Meredith MacCrae, Vincent Price, Candy Johnson
When I was a kid, we all watched "The Mickey Mouse Club". My favorite Mouseketeer was Darlene Gillespie, but the one most of the boys liked the best was Annette. Annette was cute and adorable and filled a sweater in a way that young boys tended to notice. Fast-forward a few years, and those boys were a little older, and so was Annette, and now she was filling a swimsuit (but somehow never a bikini) in a series of "Beach Party" movies, and you gotta believe the boys were still paying attention. "Beach Party" was the first of those films. It's silly and innocuous, all surf and sand and boards and babes and kids doing the twist to music by Dick Dale and the Deltones, and Frankie Avalon, of course, and Annette. Yeah. Definitely. You could ask the boys back then. They'd tell you. Annette.