Let’s get one thing straight: The Beach Girls and the Monster is not a good movie. It’s not even a good bad movie. It’s the cinematic equivalent of sunstroke—dizzying, disorienting, and most importantly, completely avoidable. Directed by and starring Jon Hall (a man whose acting range appears to stretch from “disinterested dad” to “slightly tipsy seaweed enthusiast”), this 1965 misfire blends beach party kitsch with horror tropes like someone trying to fuse surf wax with a chainsaw.
What results is a film so awkwardly stitched together, it might as well have been made by Frankenstein’s B-team. It’s not scary. It’s not funny. It’s just… wet. And not in the good, ocean-spray way. More like “someone spilled Monster Energy on a VHS tape and dared the ghost of Ed Wood to direct it.”
The Plot: A Wet Sock of a Mystery
Some surfers and their barely-conscious girlfriends are hanging around the beach when—BAM!—one of them is murdered by what appears to be a monster made of kelp, papier-mâché, and broken promises. The sheriff, clearly phoning in his shift, takes a plaster cast of the footprint (which looks suspiciously like a flip-flop melted in a microwave) and consults the resident oceanographer, Dr. Otto Lindsay (Jon Hall), who claims it might be a “fantigua fish.” Yes. That’s a thing. Apparently.
From there, the film turns into a bizarre mashup of family drama, half-hearted Freudian metaphors, and a creature who lumbers around like he’s late for his shift at a Halloween store. The suspect list is short and the audience is tipped off early that the monster may not be a monster at all—but possibly just an angry marine biologist in a wetsuit and unresolved parenting issues.
There’s Richard, the brooding son who doesn’t want to work in Dad’s sea-mutation lab anymore. There’s Mark, the sculptor with a limp, a tragic backstory, and the ability to make rubber masks and lion puppets. There’s Vicky, the alcoholic stepmother who spends most of the film dramatically lounging and looking like she just wandered off the set of a failed Tennessee Williams play. And then there’s Kingsley the Lion, a puppet so jarringly out of place, it feels like a cry for help from a crew member trapped under a surfboard.
The Monster: Soggy and Sad
Let’s talk about the monster. He’s got the menace of damp lettuce and the mobility of an elderly cat in a burlap sack. He stalks his victims (well, he wobbles toward them in slow motion), kills them (with what appears to be a pool noodle painted to look like seaweed), and leaves behind clues like strips of rubber and a strong sense of regret. When he’s finally unmasked as Dr. Lindsay, it’s less of a twist and more of a mercy killing for the audience.
The reveal raises so many questions: Was he trying to scare his son into becoming a marine biologist again? Was he just mad about beach parties? Was he allergic to the Watusi? We’ll never know. Because seconds after the big reveal, he crashes a stolen car and burns to death like a bonfire of bad ideas.
The Acting: Wading Through Plywood
Every performance in this film is flatter than the surf on a windless Tuesday. Jon Hall, who directs himself with the enthusiasm of a man explaining insurance deductibles, stares through most scenes like he’s doing long division in his head. Sue Casey, as Vicky, overacts like she’s auditioning for Real Housewives of the Abyss. Walker Edmiston, to his credit, gives us the only spark of life—unfortunately, it’s while voicing a lion puppet and dying dramatically with a rubber knife in his chest.
The rest of the cast deliver lines like they’re competing in a deadpan contest held underwater. Emotions range from mildly bemused to “do I smell toast?” And in case you’re wondering: no one in this movie can dance. Not even The Watusi Dancing Girls, imported from the Whisky a Go Go, who shimmy like they’re being held at gunpoint by a director who just discovered beatnik culture.
The Soundtrack: Surf, Saxophones, and Screams for Help
To its credit, the soundtrack slaps. It’s the kind of reverb-heavy surf guitar that deserves better than being slapped onto a film where the highlight is a puppet named Kingsley. Dale Davis’s actual surf footage is spliced in for no reason other than to remind us what fun looks like, and it only highlights how joyless everything else is. You’ll be tapping your foot while silently praying for the sea monster to just eat everyone and roll credits.
The Verdict: Drown It
The Beach Girls and the Monster is a film that dares to ask, “What if Frankie and Annette’s beach party was interrupted by a middle-aged man in a moldy gorilla suit?” and then somehow makes that idea boring. It doesn’t succeed as a horror movie, a beach party movie, or a mystery. It barely succeeds as a movie.
And yet, in all its foamy, sun-drenched confusion, there’s something almost admirable in how earnestly it flails. Like a lifeguard trying to resuscitate a jellyfish, this film tries—oh, how it tries—to thrill you. It just doesn’t succeed. At all.
Final Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Surfboards
One for the music. Half a board for Kingsley the Lion. Zero for the monster. Burn this VHS, sprinkle the ashes in the tide pool, and let the sea take back what it should never have given.
