Written by Linda
February 07, 2009
I have to say that I had more guffaws-per-minute during Psycho Beach Party than any movie I've seen in quite awhile. While it spoofs one of our culture's most low-brow clichéd movie genres, the 1960s "Beach Movie", the mockery is so on-target that it is actually affectionate.
Our heroine is enthusiastic Florence, the cute-as-a-puppy tomboy who just wants to learn how to surf with the boys. Beach stud Kanaka (Thomas Gibson) decides to give her lessons, much to the bafflement of the other surfer boys. Kanaka's got other motives though, as he is one of the first to realize that newly-dubbed "Chicklet" actually has multiple personalities, including one of a dominatrix sex-vixen. In the meantime, people start being murdered one by one. Is the murderer Chicklet, who blacks out when her personality flips? Is it Kanaka, who has a mysterious past? Is it the B-movie starlet Bettina Barnes, whom adopts the beach boys?
The plot is really quite secondary to the style of the film itself. The director obviously did his homework by watching the old flicks. The dialogue is completely corny (Kanaka often speaks in rhyme), peppered with modern saucy innuendo that is spoken completely deadpan. Themes of the old beach movies are copied and exaggerated to comic effect, like a drawn-out scene where two surfer boys playfully wrestle in the sand until they are splashing each other with tanning oil and rubbing it all over each other's bodies. There are hilarious awkwardly-edited sequences, showing an obvious lack of continuity. And the fact that the female police detective on the trail of the killer just happens to be played by a man (Charles Busch, who wrote the original stage play).
Psycho Beach Party, if it had been done poorly, could have easily run out of steam and worn out its welcome early on—but I found myself chuckling right up until the end. It is camp with a capital "K"—extremely entertaining with lots of hearty "laffs"!
