Starring: Tommy Kirk, Del Moore, Peter Duryea, Robert Donner, Ulla Stromstedt, Jim Begg, Sue Casey, Brian Cutler, Lyle Waggoner, Little Richard, Carol Conners, The Cascades. Writer: Clyde Ware. Producers: Bond Blackman and Jack Bartlett. Director: Lee Sholem. Released in 1967.
Original air date: October 13, 1990
The 1960s beach party movies – there’s a film genre nobody misses. The formula is simple: feature lots of pretty women in bikinis (no complaints here, actually), a bunch of Aryan-looking guys in boxer-brief swimsuits (no thanks), a lame plot masquerading as a mad-cap comedy, a bunch of goofy adults, crappy music played by half-decent musicians, and Tommy Kirk. Bam! You’ve got yourself a beach movie. These were huge back during the early 1960s, when the Beach Boys ruled the radio waves when the Beatles took a break between singles.
Unfortunately for the genre, but fortunately for us, “Catalina Caper” was the last film of its type. “Catalina Caper” was released in 1967, at time when audiences no longer clamored for lame plots and Tommy Kirk. The Summer of Love, with music by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and the drug-influenced Beatles, took center stage. Even the Beach Boys made the great leap forward a year earlier with “Pet Sounds.” Musicians such as Little Richard found they no longer had an audience. And nobody wanted to see another beach party movie, at least one that included bad music and lacked gratuitous nudity. Yes, “Catalina Caper” marked an end of sorts. Especially for Tommy Kirk. His career disappeared right around this time.
“Catalina Caper” is crappy film, alright, and it makes for an interesting challenge for the cast and crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Much of the time, the show focused on bad movies that tried hard and were meant to be taken seriously. Here is a film that winks at the audience and is marketed as a comedy. Fortunately for MST3K, nearly all the film’s jokes fall flat and there’s plenty to mock. In fact, I laughed out loud many times, and the movie is watchable enough to make this a fun episode. Still, MST3K didn’t really feature many more intentional comedies in the coming seasons. Although there is “Valley of the Giants” in the fifth season. Big shocker – it stars Tommy Kirk, as well.
Like most beach party movies, the plot is sometimes incomprehensible and inconsequential to dancing women in their bikinis. An Arizona college student, Don Pringle (Tommy Kirk), follows his buddy, Charlie Moss (Brian Cutler), home to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of southern California. On the island, Charlie promises plenty of girls and partying on the beach, and Don quickly meets a foreign girl (Ulla Stromstedt) on the island, lovingly referred to as Creepy Girl by Tom Servo. Meanwhile, an ancient Chinese scroll is stolen by fat dude wearing what appears to be a Crayola crayon suit who goes by the name of Laurence (Jim Begg). His effeminate boss (Del Moore) plans on copying the original artwork and selling the fake to a Greek art collector. But an insurance investigator with the “hilarious” name of Fingers O’Toole (Robert Donner) is on the case. All these plots and more collide with predictably unfunny results. Let the laughs commence…
The films packs a lot into its 84 minutes, with plenty of dancing, music and scuba diving fight scenes reminiscent of a bad “Thunderball” outtake. And Joel and the robots pack a lot of great jokes in, as well. We get plenty of remarks about the island’s 100 percent white people population (“Ah, the clean smell of kids who know they rule the world” – Crow) and lots of laughs out of Fingers O’Toole’s bumbling antics (“Wait, it’ll get funny…” – Joel).
When a scene of people dancing around a bonfire comes on the screen, Crow shouts out “Throw another Beach Boy on the fire!” When several of the beach babes peer out at the ocean on a boat, Joel quips, “Hey look, they’re standing four abreast!” Later, during another dance sequence when many of the teenagers look like they’re having seizures, Crow says in science film narrator’s voice, “Girls become provocatively aroused by the shamed males of the village.”
My favorite riffs come during the musical numbers that appear at random. Near the beginning, as Don and Charlie are taking the ferry over to Santa Catalina, Little Richard spontaneously appears to sing one of his worst songs, “Scuba Party,” complete with his trademark, falsetto “woooooooooooooo!” “Prince, I hope you’re watching this,” Servo says. They all then a have a great time pointing out that Richard looks really stoned, and sing “Nazi Party” over “Scuba party” to all the very white people on the boat. Later, a forgotten band, The Cascades, sing a song at a yacht party. “I’m going to quit the band and start a career in music,” Servo says mocking one of the musicians. “I think they sent the wrong people to ‘Nam,” Crow adds.
Speaking of the movie’s musicians, The Cascades still perform around the country, probably at crappy locations like town fairs and the Hampton Beach half-shell. The song they sing, “There’s a New World,” is written by the Kinks’ Ray Davies. Carol Connors performs a song later in the movie, looking quite beautiful in a black bikini. She became famous when she was only 16 as a member of Phil Spector’s Teddy Bears, where she sang lead on “To Know Him is To Love Him.” We all know about Little Richard and, needless to say, this isn’t his finest hour.
As for the actors, Tommy Kirk is best known for his Disney films and beach party movies. After “Catalina Caper,” his career took a dive. Now, he mostly does conventions. Del Moore, the fey crime boss, gets confused by the MST3K crew with Don Adams, another effeminate actor, in a future episode. And Lyle Waggoner plays a bad guy. He’ll become more famous on the “Carol Burnett Show” and appears in “Women of the Prehistoric Planet” (MST3K #104).
For the most part, the sketches are pretty funny. The Mads design new tank tops, literally wearing tanks for tops. It’s pretty appropriate considering the film’s content. Joel creates the tickle bazooka. Later, Joel discusses the 1960s with the bots, which is a brilliant and hilarious monologue – “People smoked openly on The Tonight Show!”, “Women were called girls!”.
Kevin Murphy as Servo gets center stage by singing an original song, an ode to Creepy Girl. There will be plenty more opportunities for Murphy to flex his singing muscles as the show progresses.
TV’s Frank’s Tupperware party with the Mole People isn’t funny at all and drags on too long, as does the final sketch about the movie’s convoluted plot. But overall, I laughed at what the sketches brought to the episode.
“Catalina Caper” is a fun episode to watch, mainly because it’s a goofy film, has a high production value, and the gang looks like they’re having a good time. It also makes you want to pull out a good Little Richard album at the end of the day!
Rating: ***
Side note: This episode is available on Rhino’s Volume 1 box set, although I think it might now be out-of-print.
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