Sayonara Cinema

PSYCHO BEACH PARTY (2000) In a small town near Malibu Beach, innocent girl-next-door Florence becomes friends with the local surfers, and quickly catches her eye on surf guru Kanaka. But no sooner does her friendship with the group starts to solidify than they start dying off at the hands of an unknown killer. The group also meets up with a B-movie actress who has taken up residence in a beach house that is supposedly haunted. As residents continue to drop off like flies, each of the survivors becomes a suspect under the iron gaze of the militant police captain Monica Stark. When Kanaka discovers Florence’s secret - that she has a split personality - Kanaka fears that she may be the killer but also finds himself inexplicably attracted to her dark alter ego. And at the annual beach luau, as the local teens gather to dance the night away hoping to stay alive, all will be revealed!

This film, which is actually based on a stage play of the same name and rewritten for the screen by the play’s writer Charles Busch (who also plays the police captain), has been touted as a mix of the 60’s beach blanket movies with the 70’s slasher. However, Busch is clearly more interested in sending up the beach party movies and their go-go style than making anything resembling a horror movie. Following Busch’s script, director Robert Lee King explores the homo-erotic undertones of the surf movie culture, the commie fears of the McCarthy era, and the pure sexual energy of youth without fear of being blacklisted. King saturates his movie with a dripping and over-the-top style of the sixties beach movie with loving tribute to the clothes, the cars, and drive-in culture of the era, and even goes so far as to have the actors “surf” in front of a projection screen. [Read the rest of my review at Gorezone]

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