When I reviewed "Where the Boys Are", a 1960 film about a group of college girls spending a spring break on the beaches of Florida, I pointed out that its coyly suggestive attitude to sex meant that it could only have been made during the not-quite-permissive era of the early sixties; it would have been too suggestive for 1940 or 1950 and too coy for 1970 or 1980.
"The Beach Girls", which deals with a similar theme except that here the beaches are in California rather than Florida, shows us just how a film on this subject would have been made in the early eighties. Sarah, a young college student, rents a beach house from her uncle, hoping to use the break for some serious study. While there she is joined by her friends Ginger and Ducky, who are far more interested in having fun than in studying. ("Ducky" is presumably a nickname, although it is never explained how she came by it or what her real name is. The scriptwriter must have been unaware that in Britain at this period "ducky" was an offensive slang term for a male homosexual). At one point one character even uses the phrase "where the boys are", suggesting that the film was conceived as a deliberate updating of its 1960 equivalent. ("Where the Boys Are" also has a major female character with an odd, unexplained nickname, "Tuggle").
There are two main differences between the two films. "Where the Boys Are" is not a pure comedy; it starts off as one but introduces a more serious note towards the end when one of the girls is sexually assaulted. There is nothing remotely serious about "The Beach Girls". And "The Beach Girls" is, of course, much more sexually explicit, although even here there is a limit to its explicitness. The film-makers are always careful to stay on the right side of the thin dividing line between a sex comedy and a porno. There are plenty of explicit sex references (to say nothing of explicit drug references) but no explicit sex scenes; plenty of bare breasts and bottoms on display, but nothing full-frontal.
There are a number of strands to the plot. One involves Sarah, a seemingly plain, frumpy girl who only has to take her glasses off and let her hair down to reveal herself as just as drop-dead gorgeous as any of her glamorous friends. (Spot the cliché!) Even when Sarah has let her hair down in the literal sense, however, she takes a lot longer to do so metaphorically; her main aim is to find True Love when everyone else is just looking to find True Sex. Another strand deals with the attempts of Ginger and Ducky to seduce (among others) Sarah's uncle and a third deals with the world's most inept drug-runners being pursued by the world's most inept coastguards and with what happens when their supply of cannabis goes missing. There is also a running joke about an accident-prone handyman and another about a Peeping Tom who is always spying on the girls with a telescope.
As with most movies of this nature, however, the plot is not really important except as a means of achieving the film's one true end, which is to show as a group of pretty girls, and equally pretty boys, wearing as little as possible. The one exception seems to be Sarah, who spends most of the time fully dressed, only briefly stripping down to a one- piece swimsuit. Perhaps the actress Debra Blee signed up in the belief that this was going to be a quite different sort of movie; she certainly acts like it.
It would be fair to say that you would not expect to find major acting talents in low-budget sex comedies like this one. The trouble with "The Beach Girls" is that you can't even find minor acting talents in it; most of the cast appear to have no talent at all. Val Kline, who stars here as Ginger, appears to have made no other films at all, and I can understand why. Most of her lines were nearly inaudible. Jeana Tomasino as Ducky is only slightly better, but she did at least go on to appear in a few other films, doubtless helped by her status as a Playboy model.
The scriptwriters were just as talentless as the cast; the plot lines are feeble and the attempts at humour all fall completely flat. What I found most offensive about it was the running assumption that drug taking is good healthy fun and that if everyone sat around all day smoking pot the world would be all the better for it. In fairness to the film-makers I suppose that the strains of cannabis available in the early eighties were less potent, and therefore less harmful, than modern ones.
Today, fifty-odd years after it was made, "Where the Boys Are" has taken on a certain period charm. The passage of more than three decades has not done the same for "The Beach Girls". All it has today is a certain period charmlessness. The seventies may be remembered as the decade that taste forgot, but films like this one serve to remind us that tastelessness did not end with the decade. 2/10
"The Beach Girls", which deals with a similar theme except that here the beaches are in California rather than Florida, shows us just how a film on this subject would have been made in the early eighties. Sarah, a young college student, rents a beach house from her uncle, hoping to use the break for some serious study. While there she is joined by her friends Ginger and Ducky, who are far more interested in having fun than in studying. ("Ducky" is presumably a nickname, although it is never explained how she came by it or what her real name is. The scriptwriter must have been unaware that in Britain at this period "ducky" was an offensive slang term for a male homosexual). At one point one character even uses the phrase "where the boys are", suggesting that the film was conceived as a deliberate updating of its 1960 equivalent. ("Where the Boys Are" also has a major female character with an odd, unexplained nickname, "Tuggle").
There are two main differences between the two films. "Where the Boys Are" is not a pure comedy; it starts off as one but introduces a more serious note towards the end when one of the girls is sexually assaulted. There is nothing remotely serious about "The Beach Girls". And "The Beach Girls" is, of course, much more sexually explicit, although even here there is a limit to its explicitness. The film-makers are always careful to stay on the right side of the thin dividing line between a sex comedy and a porno. There are plenty of explicit sex references (to say nothing of explicit drug references) but no explicit sex scenes; plenty of bare breasts and bottoms on display, but nothing full-frontal.
There are a number of strands to the plot. One involves Sarah, a seemingly plain, frumpy girl who only has to take her glasses off and let her hair down to reveal herself as just as drop-dead gorgeous as any of her glamorous friends. (Spot the cliché!) Even when Sarah has let her hair down in the literal sense, however, she takes a lot longer to do so metaphorically; her main aim is to find True Love when everyone else is just looking to find True Sex. Another strand deals with the attempts of Ginger and Ducky to seduce (among others) Sarah's uncle and a third deals with the world's most inept drug-runners being pursued by the world's most inept coastguards and with what happens when their supply of cannabis goes missing. There is also a running joke about an accident-prone handyman and another about a Peeping Tom who is always spying on the girls with a telescope.
As with most movies of this nature, however, the plot is not really important except as a means of achieving the film's one true end, which is to show as a group of pretty girls, and equally pretty boys, wearing as little as possible. The one exception seems to be Sarah, who spends most of the time fully dressed, only briefly stripping down to a one- piece swimsuit. Perhaps the actress Debra Blee signed up in the belief that this was going to be a quite different sort of movie; she certainly acts like it.
It would be fair to say that you would not expect to find major acting talents in low-budget sex comedies like this one. The trouble with "The Beach Girls" is that you can't even find minor acting talents in it; most of the cast appear to have no talent at all. Val Kline, who stars here as Ginger, appears to have made no other films at all, and I can understand why. Most of her lines were nearly inaudible. Jeana Tomasino as Ducky is only slightly better, but she did at least go on to appear in a few other films, doubtless helped by her status as a Playboy model.
The scriptwriters were just as talentless as the cast; the plot lines are feeble and the attempts at humour all fall completely flat. What I found most offensive about it was the running assumption that drug taking is good healthy fun and that if everyone sat around all day smoking pot the world would be all the better for it. In fairness to the film-makers I suppose that the strains of cannabis available in the early eighties were less potent, and therefore less harmful, than modern ones.
Today, fifty-odd years after it was made, "Where the Boys Are" has taken on a certain period charm. The passage of more than three decades has not done the same for "The Beach Girls". All it has today is a certain period charmlessness. The seventies may be remembered as the decade that taste forgot, but films like this one serve to remind us that tastelessness did not end with the decade. 2/10