Sayonara Cinema

SUPERBAD (2007) With two weeks left until high school graduation, best friends Seth and Evan are coming to grips with the fact that they will not be going to college together, and try to devise the perfect plan to get girlfriends for the summer with the sole purpose of learning to become masters of bedroom pleasuring before they become freshmen in the Fall. A sketchy plan comes to fruition when their annoying tag-along friend/nuisance Fogell gets a fake ID the same day that one of Seth’s lustful crushes asks him to come to a party she is having, and he offers to buy some booze.

That afternoon, Fogell attempts to purchase said alcohol, and when Seth and Evan think that Fogell is being arrested (though he is really just talking to two cops about a robbery), the co-dependant pair set out on epic journey into the night to score some booze in order to gain access to the party that should bring them into manhood. Meanwhile, Fogell sets out on his own fantastic adventure when he becomes a backseat companion to two of the coolest cops to ever hit the beat. [Read The Rest Of My Review at Geeks Of Doom]

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]