Psycho Beach Party
Sep. 25th, 2007 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
revieloutionneSo. I've been meaning to see Psycho Beach Party for ages. I've been interested for at least a year, finally downloaded and burned the thing a few months ago... finally got 'round to watching it tonight.
It is amazing beyond my wildest dreams.
I thought it was going to be a bad 60s surfer movie, made a few years ago, with more modern thoughts about sex sprinkled in. With the intentional bad and all, and it would be good in spite of that.
No, it was just flat-out a bad 60s surfer movie, made a few years ago, with more modern thoughts about sex sprinked in. It was good because of that.
That's right, it's not any sort of send-up of bad 60s surfer movies, it just is one, and it doesn't apologize, and it certainly doesn't update the "surfing" effects. And it actually works as a thriller. You've got the obvious-therefore-not-but-maybe-anyway candidate, and then about four other legitimate possibilities and then the reveal throws you a bit, but the film has such infectious glee in what it is that even though it doesn't quite make sense, it's not like anything else did either, so you go with it.
Plus? There's a dance battle to die for. (Even if that is, like, the only time nobody does.) (Okay, there are other deathless times, too. But still.)
Oh, and how I wish I could have seen the original off-Broadway play of it. It's from that amazing bygone era when all you needed for a theatrical movement was a performance space, a man or two in drag, bright colors, cheap tickets, a bit of enthusiam, a lot of sex, some drugs, and a lack of funds. (Upon further consideration, the last two items may be one.)
It is amazing beyond my wildest dreams.
I thought it was going to be a bad 60s surfer movie, made a few years ago, with more modern thoughts about sex sprinkled in. With the intentional bad and all, and it would be good in spite of that.
No, it was just flat-out a bad 60s surfer movie, made a few years ago, with more modern thoughts about sex sprinked in. It was good because of that.
That's right, it's not any sort of send-up of bad 60s surfer movies, it just is one, and it doesn't apologize, and it certainly doesn't update the "surfing" effects. And it actually works as a thriller. You've got the obvious-therefore-not-but-maybe-anyway candidate, and then about four other legitimate possibilities and then the reveal throws you a bit, but the film has such infectious glee in what it is that even though it doesn't quite make sense, it's not like anything else did either, so you go with it.
Plus? There's a dance battle to die for. (Even if that is, like, the only time nobody does.) (Okay, there are other deathless times, too. But still.)
Oh, and how I wish I could have seen the original off-Broadway play of it. It's from that amazing bygone era when all you needed for a theatrical movement was a performance space, a man or two in drag, bright colors, cheap tickets, a bit of enthusiam, a lot of sex, some drugs, and a lack of funds. (Upon further consideration, the last two items may be one.)
