This 4th movie in the beach film series is quite peculiar. It essentially begins with some Martians sending one of their agents named "Go Go" (Tommy Kirk) to Earth in order to gather some intelligence on the human race prior to a full scale invasion. As luck would have it he is transported to a house near the California coast where a group of young men and women are having fun on the beach playing volleyball during the day and participating in a pajama party during the night. The leader of the group is a young man known as "Big Lunk" (Jody McCrea) who has a girlfriend by the name of "Connie" (Annette Funicello) and a rich aunt by the name of "Aunt Wendy" (Elsa Lanchester). Because of her wealth some con-men led by "J. Sinister Hulk" (Jesse White) have devised a scheme to break in and steal Aunt Wendy's money from her safe. Throw in a motorcycle gang led by "Eric Von Zipper" (Harvey Lembeck) who love to cause chaos along with an assortment of other strange characters and things begin to get pretty hectic in no time at all. Now, while I thought there were some scenes which were somewhat entertaining I must admit that the abundance of characters and the various sub-plots caused the movie to lose focus and harmony. Even so, I liked the performances of Buster Keaton (as "Chief Rotten Eagle") and the aforementioned Annette Funicello. Likewise, having a beautiful and scantily-clad actress like Bobbie Shaw (as "Helga") certainly didn't hurt the movie in any way. Neither did replacing the typically frantic dance routine performed by "Candy" (Candy Johnson) with a more sensual performance by "Jilda" (Susan Hart). Unfortunately, these few good parts simply weren't enough to balance out the jumbled plot and lukewarm script. Accordingly, in comparison to its predecessors I feel compelled to rate this movie about the same as "Muscle Beach Party" but not as high as either "Beach Party" or "Bikini Beach".
Review of Pajama Party
