Summer is finally here, and nothing evokes the spirit of the season like sand, sun, sweat, and surf. Here, in DECIDER’s A Brief History of Beach Movies, critic Glenn Kenny charts the evolution of one of the most iconic and idiosyncratic genres in cinema… We’ve witnesses innocence found and lost, and even seen how revisionists reinvented the genre...
The beach is ostensibly a carefree place, and it’s also a place where “carefree” means, literally, that no one cares. Blake Edwards’ manic, scabrous 1981 Hollywood takedown S.O.B. is perhaps best known as the picture in which Julie Andrews reveals her “boobies.” But it’s also one of the darkest visions of California ever. At its opening, a man jogging on the beach collapses from a heart attack and his corpse lies on the beach for pretty much the whole movie, attended only by his frightened dog. The fellow is played by Edwards’ own physician Dr. Herb Tanney, who cameos in most of the director’s pictures from the ’70s through the ’90s. The movie also features Robert Webber, one of the squares in Don’t Make Waves.
The blandly titled 1983 Spring Break returns to Fort Lauderdale, aka Where The Boys Are country. Title notwithstanding, it’s a decidedly low-rent affair that, while inspired by Porky’s, can’t commit fully to its raunchy aspirations. (The director was Sean S. Cunningham, the producer of the Friday the 13th films, not to mention the original Last House on the Left.) One-time Seventeen magazine cover model Jane Modean plays the chaste-up-to-a-point heroine, but the lascivious interest is mostly provided by recreations of wet t-shirt contests. My friend, 1983 Penthouse Pet of the Year Sheila Kennedy, appears alongside the subsequently vanished Tammy Lee Leppert in these scenes, and she recalls “back in the day, spring break itself was raw. We were mixing with the genuine college kids, partying, drinking, and all kinds of mischief.” I myself visited Ft. Lauderdale in the mid-80s, trying to sell a spring break expose of sorts. I remember the “anything goes” contests at the bar called The Candy Store, and practically wading through all the spilled beer and urine on the floor there. This sort of thing is not depicted here.
Nor is it present in Where The Boys Are ’84. This remake ditches all the “learning” from the original — not a date rape in sight — and keeps things frivolous. Sex is a given with the girls in this picture. The movie opens with one of them in bed with a guy. To get by in Lauderdale, says a sex-crazed character played by ace skater Lynn Holly Johnson (who also played a would-be Bond seducer in 1981’s For Your Eyes Only), “all you need is a bikini and a diaphragm.” A young Christopher MacDonald is pretty hilarious (in hindsight, that is) as a would-be filmmaker who says, “Spielberg would shit,” as he gets some beach video. Russell Todd plays the future amour of Lisa Hartman Black’s character; he’s a pop songwriter while Hartman Black claims to be “strictly classical” but somehow they make it work.
A personal note: In the early ’80s some cronies of mine tried to package a beach movie of their own and actually signed Jane Modean and Russell Todd — not to contracts, but they gave letters of agreement allowing their names to be used for the purposes of drumming up a budget. (Also signing on were great bands like The Raybeats and The Waitresses.) The sizzle sheet was distributed among a lot of indie production entities and my cronies were a little put out to see their proposed stars carrying other beach movies not to long after their idea failed to catch on.
But life goes on, and the success of these films no doubt inspired OGs Frankie and Annette to star in 1987’s Back to the Beach, in which they play…Frankie and Annette, married parents of Sandi, played by Lori Laughlin long before the idea of bribing college officials on behalf of her kids was even a gleam in her eye. The motley cast actually almost outdoes any of the vintage beach movies. Dick Dale’s guitar provides the twang as Connie Stevens, Edd Byrnes, Gilligan Bob Denver (who appeared in a lesser ‘60s beach picture called For Those Who Think Young) and more nostalgia evoking personages swing through. Pau Reubens in his Pee-Wee Herman guise also turns up. As does Fishbone. But it’s not nearly as odd as it might sound.
The new century has given us three distinct variants on the idea of Pretty People In The Water: 2002’s Blue Crush, starring Kate Bosworth, is in one sense a Gidget variant in that it highlights young cuties on surfboards. Director John Stockwell, who I once heard in a press conference talking about how he didn’t like working with theatre-trained actors because they asked too many questions, drills down on pictorialism — taut bodies, waves as blue as Trump’s new pool, and not much on the mind except, you know, winning against strong odds. Costarring are Michelle Rodriguez and a lot of real-life surf luminaries.
The hedonists of Harmony Korine’s perhaps deliberately ridiculous 2012’s Spring Breakers don’t have that much on their minds. Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine cavort in various states of undress in St. Petersburg, Florida (Fort Lauderdale having taken multiple long-term municipal steps to rid it of Spring break kids forever) while James Franco gives perhaps his goofiest pre-scandal performance.
As for 2017’s Baywatch, it stars The Rock, Zac Efron, and Alexandra Daddario, and was co-written by founding members of the comedy troupe The State. Do the math.
Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface, published by Hanover Square Press, and now available for at a bookstore near you.