Surf Party (1964)

We all know Frankie Avalon and Fabian made beach movies, but who would have guessed that Bobby Vinton "The Polish Prince", made a beach movie? Believe it or not, he was a pretty good actor, too.... definitely a notch above Fabian. 

Surf Party follows the adventures of three young women who travel from Arizona to Malibu in a trailer with the sole purpose of hitting the beach and learning to surf. They picked a certain stretch of Malibu coastline because the older brother of Terry (Patricia Morrow), one of the girls, lives in Malibu and is a local "surf king." They meet Len (Vinton), who works at the local surf shop, and he gives them private surfing instructions... which naturally leads to Terry falling in love with him. Trouble ensues when they discover that Terry's brother isn't the hotshot others make him out to be and instead is a sponger and a bad influence of the surfers. When Len warns Terry about him, she walks away from him which makes Len "Mr. Lonely" with a capital L. 

Surf Party was released in 1964 and, judging from its title, was hoping to capitalize on the fame of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello's first sunshine success Beach Party. This movie should have been called Surf Tension instead because it doesn't have much of a party-feel to it and is more dramatic than most drive-in surf flicks. The acting from most of the youngsters is on the bland side but they were doing the best they could with the minimal script they were working with. Bobby Vinton's acting ability was surprisingly good. Too bad he wasn't given more film roles and better scripts. 

Most of Surf Party is made up of musical interludes from the record-charters of the day including The Astronauts, The Routers and Jackie DeShannon, who plays one of the three girls. Surf Party took only a month to film and a week to forget. It could definitely have benefited from color filming. You don't have to go out of your way to track this picture down unless you are a Bobby Vinton fan and, even then, you may be disappointed as he only sings one song in the film - If I Were an Artist.