''Back to the Beach'' is a 1987 American
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
starring
Frankie Avalon
Francis Thomas Avallone (born September 18, 1940), better known as Frankie Avalon, is an American actor, singer, and former teen idol. He had 31 charting U.S. ''Billboard'' singles from 1958 to late 1962, including number one hits, "Venus" an ...
and
Annette Funicello, directed by
Lyndall Hobbs
Lyndall Hobbs (born 1952) is an Australian film director and producer.
Life and career
Hobbs was born in Australia in 1952. She spent many years in the United Kingdom, during which time she directed the documentary film ''Steppin' Out'' (1979) ...
. The original music score is composed by
Steve Dorff. The film generated a total domestic gross of $13,110,903. It received a "two thumbs up" rating from
Siskel and Ebert
Gene Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) and Roger Ebert (June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013), collectively known as Siskel & Ebert, were American film critics known for their partnership on television lasting from 1975 to Siskel's dea ...
.
The film is an open parody of the
beach party films made popular in the 1960s, especially those in which Avalon and Funicello had appeared. The plot is merely the means of connecting the various sight gags, homages and in-jokes. All character names are taken from those earlier films.
The film's soundtrack included covers of several well-known beach tunes, along with new songs by such artists as
Aimee Mann
Aimee Elizabeth Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter. Over the course of four decades, she has released more than a dozen albums as a solo artist and with other musicians. She is noted for her sardonic and literate lyr ...
and
Private Domain.
Plot
Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are a husband and wife living in
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
— far from the surf and sand of their earlier lives together. Frankie is a stressed out car salesman and former "Big Kahuna" of the surf scene in
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
while Annette bottles her own sense of angst up in a bevy of shopping. Together they are raising a son, Bobby, who is in the throes of rebellion against his seemingly square folks.
One day, the family decides to take a vacation to
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
. Deciding to stop in California to visit their daughter Sandi (
Lori Loughlin), Frankie and Annette are appalled to learn that she has been living with surfer Michael (
Tommy Hinkley
Hiram Thomas Hinkley (born May 31, 1960) is an American actor. He made his feature film debut in the comedy '' Back to the Beach'' (1987), and subsequently appeared in the Academy Award-winning short film '' Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall'' ( ...
). The family misses their flight to Hawaii, and ultimately end up staying in California, much to the chagrin of Frankie. Frankie and Annette get caught up with the lives of their old friends and their old beach, and thus their last beach adventure begins.
Along the way, Frankie must work together with a new generation of younger surfers while nearly ruining his marriage by dallying with
Connie Stevens
Connie Stevens (born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia; August 8, 1938) is an American actress and singer. Born in Brooklyn, New York City to musician parents, Stevens was raised there until age 12, when she was sent to live with family friends in r ...
— one of several pop-culture icons appearing in the film, including
Fishbone
Fishbone is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1979, that plays a fusion of ska, punk, funk, metal, reggae, and soul. AllMusic has described the group as "one of the most distinctive and eclectic alternative rock bands of the lat ...
,
Don Adams
Donald James Yarmy (April 13, 1923 – September 25, 2005), known professionally as Don Adams, was an American actor. In his five decades on television, he was best known as Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) in the television situation comedy '' G ...
,
Bob Denver
Robert Osbourne Denver (January 9, 1935 – September 2, 2005) was an American comedic actor who portrayed Gilligan on the 1964–1967 television series ''Gilligan's Island'', and beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on the 1959–1963 series ''The Ma ...
,
Alan Hale Jr.
Alan Hale Jr. (born Alan Hale MacKahan; (March 8, 1921 - January 2, 1990) was an American actor and restaurateur. He was the son of actor Alan Hale Sr. His television career spanned four decades, but he was best known for his secondary lead role ...
,
Edd Byrnes
Edward Byrne Breitenberger (July 30, 1932 – January 8, 2020), known professionally as Edd Byrnes, was an American actor, best known for his starring role in the television series '' 77 Sunset Strip.'' He also was featured in the 1978 film '' Gr ...
,
Jerry Mathers
Gerald Patrick Mathers (born June 2, 1948) is an American actor best known for his role in the television sitcom '' Leave It to Beaver'', originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963, in which he played the protagonist Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver, the y ...
,
Tony Dow
Anthony Lee Dow (April 13, 1945 – July 27, 2022) was an American actor, film producer, director and sculptor. He portrayed Wally Cleaver in the iconic television sitcom '' Leave It to Beaver'' from 1957 to 1963. From 1983 to 1989, Dow repr ...
,
Barbara Billingsley
Barbara Billingsley (born Barbara Lillian Combes; December 22, 1915 – October 16, 2010) was an American actress. She began her career with uncredited roles in ''Three Guys Named Mike'' (1951), '' The Bad and the Beautiful'' (1952), and '' Inv ...
,
Dick Dale
Richard Anthony Monsour (May 4, 1937 – March 16, 2019), known professionally as Dick Dale, was an American rock guitarist. He was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music scale (music), scales and experimenting with reverb eff ...
,
Stevie Ray Vaughan,
O. J. Simpson, and
Pee-wee Herman
Pee-wee Herman is a comic fictional character created and portrayed by American comedian Paul Reubens. He is best known for his films and television series during the 1980s. The childlike Pee-wee Herman character developed as a stage act that q ...
. In the end ''The Big Kahuna'' overcomes his own fears and proves that he is still the king of the surfers, as he takes back his title and saves the beach from a gang of beach punks led by Zed (Joe Holland).
Cast
Production
The film was the idea of Frankie Avalon and was in development for a number of years. He hired several screenwriters and shopped the screenplay around town. Paramount was attracted to the project but did not like the script. Because
Orion Pictures owned the rights to the original AIP
"beach party movies", Paramount wanted to make (in the words of one spokesperson) "an entirely original screenplay not based on any prior beach movies. It parodies all beach movies."
Writer-director
James Komack
James Komack (August 3, 1924 – December 24, 1997) was an American television producer, director, screenwriter, and actor. He is best known for producing several hit television series, including ''The Courtship of Eddie's Father'', '' Chico and ...
shared the same agent as Avalon; when he became attached Paramount agreed to finance. Komack stated:
I met with Ned Tanen Ned Stone Tanen (c. September 20, 1931 – January 5, 2009) was an American film studio executive. The films he produced were some of the most popular films of the 1970s and 1980s, including the 2 key Brat Pack films '' The Breakfast Club'' and ...
(Paramount's production chief) and we agreed it would be about a middle-age marital life crisis which, through a series of happy events, allows the couple to recapture their youth and renew the relationship. Eventually, they wanted a picture I couldn't deliver. They wanted to camp it up and I felt it wasn't necessary.
Eventually Paramount hired
Lyndall Hobbs
Lyndall Hobbs (born 1952) is an Australian film director and producer.
Life and career
Hobbs was born in Australia in 1952. She spent many years in the United Kingdom, during which time she directed the documentary film ''Steppin' Out'' (1979) ...
to direct; she had never made a feature before but had directed numerous music videos. Various writers were hired, seventeen in all, including Jeff Buhia & Steve Zacharias, Robert Kaufman, David Obst and Bill Norton Jr. This cost an estimated $2 million in writer's fees.
Funicello called it her favourite filmmaking experience since ''
Babes in Toyland''. However it was during the making of the movie she first started developing symptoms of MS.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
gives the film a rating of 76% from 17 reviews.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for this film was released in 1987 on CBS Records (CK-40892). Track listing (key performers in parentheses):
# "Catch a Ride" (
Eddie Money
Edward Joseph Mahoney (March 21, 1949 – September 13, 2019), known professionally as Eddie Money, was an American singer and songwriter who, in the 1970s and 1980s, had eleven Top 40 songs, including "Baby Hold On", "Two Tickets to Parad ...
)
# "
Pipeline
Pipeline may refer to:
Electronics, computers and computing
* Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on
** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...
" (
Stevie Ray Vaughan &
Dick Dale
Richard Anthony Monsour (May 4, 1937 – March 16, 2019), known professionally as Dick Dale, was an American rock guitarist. He was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music scale (music), scales and experimenting with reverb eff ...
) (This track also appears on the Stevie Ray Vaughan album ''Solos, Sessions & Encores'', and on ''King of the Surf Guitar: The Best of Dick Dale & The Del-Tones'' (Rhino 1989).)
# "Sign of Love" (
'Til Tuesday
Til Tuesday (often stylized as til tuesday) was an American new wave band formed in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The band, consisting of Aimee Mann (lead vocals, bass), Robert Holmes (guitar), Joey Pesce (keyboards), and Michael Haus ...
&
Aimee Mann
Aimee Elizabeth Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter. Over the course of four decades, she has released more than a dozen albums as a solo artist and with other musicians. She is noted for her sardonic and literate lyr ...
)
# "Absolute Perfection" (
Private Domain)
# "
Surfin' Bird
"Surfin' Bird" is a song performed by American surf rock band The Trashmen, containing the repetitive lyric "the bird is the word". It has been covered many times. It is a combination of two R&B hits by The Rivingtons: " Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" and "Th ...
" (
Pee-wee Herman
Pee-wee Herman is a comic fictional character created and portrayed by American comedian Paul Reubens. He is best known for his films and television series during the 1980s. The childlike Pee-wee Herman character developed as a stage act that q ...
)
# "Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun" (Marti Jones)
# "Jamaica Ska" (Funicello &
Fishbone
Fishbone is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1979, that plays a fusion of ska, punk, funk, metal, reggae, and soul. AllMusic has described the group as "one of the most distinctive and eclectic alternative rock bands of the lat ...
)
# "
Wipe Out" (
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he help ...
with
Dweezil Zappa
Dweezil Zappa (born Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa; September 5, 1969) is an American rock guitarist and occasional actor. He is the son of musical composer and performer Frank Zappa. Exposed to the music industry from an early age, Dweezil deve ...
and
Terry Bozzio
Terry John Bozzio (born December 27, 1950) is an American drummer best known for his work with Missing Persons and Frank Zappa. He has been featured on nine solo or collaborative albums, 26 albums with Zappa and seven albums with Missing Perso ...
)
# "California Sun" (Avalon)
# "
Wooly Bully
"Wooly Bully" is a song originally recorded by novelty rock and roll band Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs in 1964. Based on a standard 12-bar blues progression, it was written by the band's frontman, Domingo "Sam" Samudio. It was released as a sin ...
" (Dave Edmunds)
Two other songs, "We'll Go on Forever", sung by the cast, and "I Hate You" (from ''
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home'') are not included on the album.
Proposed sequel
In her memoirs Funicello wrote that she and Avalon were preparing a sequel where their characters go on safari in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
, but that her illness meant she pulled out. However she did agree to go on a "Back to the Beach" tour with Avalon on stage.
[Funicello p 202-203]
References
External links
*
*
*
*
{{Beach Party series
1987 films
1980s musical comedy films
1980s sports comedy films
American musical comedy films
Beach party films
Films directed by Lyndall Hobbs
Films scored by Steve Dorff
Films set in California
Films set in Ohio
Paramount Pictures films
Pee-wee Herman
Films with screenplays by Peter Krikes
Films with screenplays by Steve Meerson
American surfing films
1987 directorial debut films
1987 comedy films
1980s English-language films
1980s American films