Beach Party
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Beach Party (1963) was the first of the Beach Party films, aimed at a teen audience. It was directed by William Asher and written by Lou Rusoff. The main actors included Robert Cummings, Dorothy Malone, Frankie Avalon, and Annette Funicello.
There are arguably two surf movie genres. The first type would be the sporting documentary pioneered by Bud Browne (e.g. Hawaiian Holiday) in the 1940s and early 1950s, later popularized by Bruce Brown (e.g. The Endless Summer) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, then later perfected by Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman (e.g. Five Summer Stories) in the 1970s and beyond.
The second type would be the campy entertainment feature, also termed "beach party films" or "surfploitation flicks" by true surfers, having little to do with the authentic sport and culture of surfing and representing movies that attempted to cash in on the growing popularity of surfing among youth in the early 1960s, pioneered by the Gidget series.
