The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini was released by American International Pictures on April 6, 1966
Director: Don Weis
The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini Cast: Deborah Walley, Tommy Kirk, Aaron Kincaid, Quinn O’Hara, Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Harvey Lembeck
Musical Guests: The Bobby Fuller Four
This was a tough one to sit through. Its reputation as being so bad it put an end to the beach party franchise kept me away for 54 years. In fact, it’s one of those films that is so bad it’s now considered a cult classic. Well, it’s hardly a classic, but it is the last beach party movie, so it can’t be ignored in spite of the fact that the whole thing takes place in a landlocked haunted house.
The ghost story goes like this: an old dead dude, who must do a good deed to get into heaven, enlists the aid of his ghost girlfriend to stop a plot by his crooked attorney to steal his bequeathments away from the rightful heirs. The two rightful heirs are joined at the conventional haunted house by the second string beach gang and the usual assortment of baddies including the attorney and his henchman, an Indian, a belly dancer, a gorilla, and the Von Zipper gang. The beach party crew gets an assist by the blu-glow ghost in an invisible bikini.
The notion that this film killed the beach party series is only partly true. The beach party films were exploitation films made fast and cheap to capitalize on whatever was popular with teenagers at any given time, and with that crowd, times changed fast. By 1965, ticket sales were already diminishing. In an effort to goose this golden goose for all it was worth, AIP simply tried to mix two of their most popular genres, horror and beach flicks, and the effort came up short. Though the script and performances were no worse than any of the previous beach party films, by 1966, the whole charade had been played out. What few bright spots there are feature the baddies, the babes, and the band.
As weak a vehicle as this may be, it does preserve some of the last performances of screen legends Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone as well as screen notables Patsy Kelly, Benny Rubin, and Francis X. Bushman. The standard beach party production numbers, which are not without an element of charm, include those of Nancy Sinatra, Scottish vixen Quinn O’Hara, and Italian pop star Piccola Pupo, who both did the beach babe boogaloo as well as any of the yanks. This last time out, filling the role of house surf band vacated a few years earlier by Dick Dale and the Deltones, was the Texas rockers, the Bobby Fuller Four, who did a very credible job with the awkward material they were given. But in the end, this film is mostly notable for marking the end of an era, and not too much more. Worth a watch just to be able to say you did it.