double session I: the horro beach party
In the 1960s, the beach party film genre was incredibly successful with teenagers in the USA.
The films, set on the beaches of California, were centred on the loves and jealousies of innocent heterosexual couples and their teenage friends. They sometimes featured well-known pop bands and the genre helped spread surfing and surf music.
Sparky New Jersey trio The Del-Aires played this
foamy music, so American filmmaker Del Tenney chose them to appear in the strange 1964 The Horror Beach Party. It was the first film to mix the surf and horror genre and came up with a never-before-seen hybrid. This wave and rock ‘n’ roll cum blood fest has frequently been called the first musical horror film.
This hybridity is also showcased in the monsters themselves. Basically, some nuclear waste spillage makes its way to the sea where it finally reaches the corpses trapped in a sunken boat on the sea bed. The substance seeps into the bones of the dead and revives them as fish-like anthropomorphic zombies. Amazing, really! These zombies’ favourite pastime is killing the bikini-clad girls partying on the beach so they can drink their blood. Unbelievable stuff! The Del-Aires’ best-known song is in the film, the great garage-surf Zombie stomp (Norton Records released a compilation of the band a few years back under the same famous name). The band played six songs in the album. The film cost $120,000 to make and grossed $1 million dollars at the box office, and the unusual East Coast setting was the reason why the band appeared in the film. The film was set on the Atlantic Coast, very unusual for the surf film genre, so the producers looked for a cheap local teenage rock ‘n’ roll band for the film. Another weird fact for the film: it was filmed in black and white. It was also released as a comic. It premiered as a double bill along with William Castle’s Living Corpse. The slogan that appeared on the posters for the film read: ‘Weird atomic beasts who live off human blood’.
To the toxic spill, zombie blood thirst, the Del-Aires you have to add the other lewd elements to get a fuller idea of the film. There’s sexual promiscuity, voodoo, motorcycle gangs, non-stop sensual dancing as well as the heat of drunken teenage bodies. Well, you know, the kind of film that you will never see (or maybe you will...) at the surf film festivals here. A film that is as exciting as it is cheap.
The films, set on the beaches of California, were centred on the loves and jealousies of innocent heterosexual couples and their teenage friends. They sometimes featured well-known pop bands and the genre helped spread surfing and surf music.
Sparky New Jersey trio The Del-Aires played this
foamy music, so American filmmaker Del Tenney chose them to appear in the strange 1964 The Horror Beach Party. It was the first film to mix the surf and horror genre and came up with a never-before-seen hybrid. This wave and rock ‘n’ roll cum blood fest has frequently been called the first musical horror film.
This hybridity is also showcased in the monsters themselves. Basically, some nuclear waste spillage makes its way to the sea where it finally reaches the corpses trapped in a sunken boat on the sea bed. The substance seeps into the bones of the dead and revives them as fish-like anthropomorphic zombies. Amazing, really! These zombies’ favourite pastime is killing the bikini-clad girls partying on the beach so they can drink their blood. Unbelievable stuff! The Del-Aires’ best-known song is in the film, the great garage-surf Zombie stomp (Norton Records released a compilation of the band a few years back under the same famous name). The band played six songs in the album. The film cost $120,000 to make and grossed $1 million dollars at the box office, and the unusual East Coast setting was the reason why the band appeared in the film. The film was set on the Atlantic Coast, very unusual for the surf film genre, so the producers looked for a cheap local teenage rock ‘n’ roll band for the film. Another weird fact for the film: it was filmed in black and white. It was also released as a comic. It premiered as a double bill along with William Castle’s Living Corpse. The slogan that appeared on the posters for the film read: ‘Weird atomic beasts who live off human blood’.
To the toxic spill, zombie blood thirst, the Del-Aires you have to add the other lewd elements to get a fuller idea of the film. There’s sexual promiscuity, voodoo, motorcycle gangs, non-stop sensual dancing as well as the heat of drunken teenage bodies. Well, you know, the kind of film that you will never see (or maybe you will...) at the surf film festivals here. A film that is as exciting as it is cheap.
