Going into a film called MONSTER FROM BIKINI BEACH I have few expectations. Those expectations are a rubber monster, bikinis, cheesy beach music, buckets of fake blood effects and plenty of gratuitous nudity. This flick from a company called Trash Film Orgy Productions delivers about five of those things in the first minute and a half of the flick. I’d love to say that once the flick takes off it never lets up but its more like a rickety roller coaster. When it takes off down the hill look out but man it shakes like its coming apart on the way up each hill.
Using a bit of dramatic irony the monster is revealed in the first two minutes while the characters on screen scramble to solve the gruesome murders. The only one who suspects the killer is anything other than human is a hot shot kid photojournalist called Scoop (Galen Howard). He teams up with Channel 13’s hot young news anchor Raquel Van Vander Zander (Stephanie Hyden). The other principals are a couple of crooked cops, Sammy Payday (Stephen Vargo) and Charlie Snaps (David Ainsworth). The film follows Scoop and Van Vander Zander and the monster for the main narrative and a secondary story involves the two crooked cops running around doing crooked cop stuff.
The cops drive around shaking people down and beating people up. Their scenes invariably begin with
them driving somewhere while, totally divergent to the rest of the film’s style, Sammy provides an overly serious noir-like voiceover. This parallel plot line intersects the main monster narrative once in awhile but it mostly meanders all over the place. All of this shit plot twists and turns its way to a final set piece battle where the “semi-aquatic monster” (I laughed every time I heard that for some reason) attacks the Annual Psychedelic Freak-Out-A-Thon because the monster “won’t be able to resist all those hot go-go dancers.” Semi-aquatic monsters make more semi-aquatic monsters by fucking hot go-go dancers apparently and this monster has a thing for hot blondes.
The budget is so low that the local Camaroville reporter and cameraman are equipped with a stick made
to look like a microphone and an ancient TV camera. As for special effects they are all practical-CGI actually costs money and its cheaper to sling buckets of stage blood at walls. They’re not horrible and the filmmakers didn’t over exert themselves beyond simple slash and gore so the effects come off fine. Plus when a dummy is thrown over a bridge you know you’re having a good time. The dubbing is so whacked out there is a part where the detective is comforting a go-go dancer named Honey “Boom Boom” Stacks and his lips are moving but there are no words… despite this for the most part the sound isn’t horrible, its just very flat.
The humor isn’t over the top and its not as annoying as would be expected. The acting is bad but not horrendously so-well except maybe for a couple actors. Everyone delivers their lines with little if any affect but you can tell they are all having fun with it. The last line of the flick is “monsters are for reals” but watching a flick called MONSTER FROM BIKINI BEACH I could not really get pissed at that even.
This is not for everyone. Not by a long shot. But if you’re like me and dig low budget, low brow, low neckline/no neckline flicks then check this out. As I mentioned before I wanted a few things: beach tunes, beach babes, bikinis, boobs, blood and a rubber monster. I can’t complain because MONSTER OF BIKINI BEACH delivered all of it within 90 seconds and followed with much more. Why aren’t there more go-go dancing horror flicks? It should be no surprise that a flick with “bikini” in the title is released by Retrovideo.
Originally published at Slashers, Starlets and Sleaze https://www.ssshorrorreviews.net/2013/04/indie-flix-monster-from-bikini-beach.html
