Purely Joyful Movie!

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)* 1/2 (ouout of 4) Frankie (Frankie Avalon) is serving in the Navy on a beautiful island when he gets worried that Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) might not be being faithful so he goes to Bwana (Buster Keaton) for a potion. Back in the states Dee Dee finds herself desired by a man while a bikini salesman (Mickey Rooney) is looking for the next big model.HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI would bring the original Beach Party series to an end and while it's better than SKI PARTY there's no doubt that the series had ran its course and the final two pictures were rather lame to say the least. In fact, this last installment only has a few scenes of Avalon who was apparently cut out of the original screenplay when he asked for a pay raise.The film's biggest problem is that it really doesn't have much of a story and instead we've just got a bunch of half-brained scenes that don't add up to much. The Avalon stuff is just lame and the Funicello stuff isn't much better as they had to shoot her in full clothes (while everyone else is in bikinis) because she was pregnant in real life. Rooney gives an energetic performance but poor Keaton isn't given much to do.For the most part this was a decent series but there's no doubt that the final two movies were made just to try and milk whatever success was left. Neither film were all that good so sadly the series came to a bad end.

Frankie Avalon, on naval-reserve duty in Tahiti, does not trust Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) to stay faithful, so he hires Bwana (Buster Keaton), a witch doctor, to help. Bwana conjures up a floating bikini, "stuffs" it with Cassandra, and sends her to distract advertising executive Ricky from Dee Dee.What to make of this beach movie from American International... it has Mickey Rooney, which is good... and Buster Keaton, which is very good (how AIP convinced him to play these roles is beyond me). And most interestingly, we have the Kingsmen performing.I liked the running gag with the pelican, but was just confused by the "Healthy Girl" song. And why they even cast a pregnant Funicello is a mystery. I am not knocking her for being pregnant, but it is weird to cast someone pregnant in a beach movie -- she is sitting on the sand in baggy clothes, quite in contrast with everyone else.

This is the final film to feature Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as Frankie and Dee Dee, and it is also the worst. Avalon had grown weary of playing an over-aged teen-ager and wanted to do something more with his career and at the same time Annette Funicello had recently married and was starting a family. In fact, Ms. Funicello was very pregnant at the time the film was released. Also, Avalon was in the middle of filming Sgt. Deadhead and couldn't appear in the entire film. The solution, bring in Dwayne Hickman as Rick, an advertising executive, to keep Dee Dee busy while Frankie was off on military duty. This was a big mistake. These best thing about the "Beach Party" films was the chemistry between Avalon and Funicello and this film falls flat on its face because the two are on screen together for only a minute (not counting the duet they sang via split screen). After this film was completed, the two retired from the genre, Avalon to attempt more serious roles and Funicello to raise her family. However, Samuel Z. Arkoff tried to keep the series rolling a couple of more years before he finally gave up the ghost, and not the one in the invisible bikini.

This was the last of American-International's beach musicals that starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (although they'd try to continue for a few films without these two). Frankie and Annette are barely together even in the film--Frankie is more of a cameo than a major character in the plot.Intriguingly, this musical is filled with "book numbers"--where the characters sing when they should be talking. Usually, the beach party movies just had people asking Frankie or Annette to sing at a party or at a nightclub. So, that's a change. The problem is that the songs aren't anything to write home about.Further, the film betrays why the beach movies were losing their popularity: the surfing fad was being supplanted by a renewed interest in motorcycle culture. Only a year or two later, American-International would be making films like "The Wild Angels." This is a problem for a series where the stock antagonist, Eric Von Zipper, is a parody of Marlon Brando's biker hood in "The Wild One" (1954). The film shows a renewed interest in cycles--Annette's romantic interest, Harvey Lembeck, is an avid motorcyclist. The film tries to deal with this by transforming Von Zipper from a biker into the stereotypical 60s junior executive (a la "How to Succeed in Business"). But, you can see the structure starting to fall apart here.There are fun moments though--particularly the opening credits (clay animation done by Art Cloakey, the creator of Gumby), and the wacky motorcycle race at the end of the film. Lastly, there's a fun cameo at the very end of the film by producer William Asher's wife...