The Horror of Party Beach (1964)

On the open road we do begin, where a souped-up, sax-heavy tune blares over the car radio of a young couple driving to the beach, who soon find themselves overrun and surrounded by the local motorcycle club. 

And while the girl playfully flirts with these leather-boys, much to the boyfriend's annoyance, the driver gives his MG convertible some gas and soon leaves these cycle-riding hooligans in the dust.

Arriving at their destination at last, when Tina produces a bottle of liquor and takes a healthy swig, Hank yoinks it away and sternly warns to lay off the booze, which triggers a nasty spat that gives off a distinct impression they’ve had this fight before, but to recap:

Tina (Clarke) misses the campus big shot who liked to party, while Hank (Scott) says it’s time to grow up and start acting her age. 

Then, things get a little cryptic when Tina takes Hank to task about his plans for the future and some dubious lab experiments he’s been involved with; and if he doesn't shape up soon to her liking, Tina promises to try a few experiments of her own. Whatever the hell all of that means, but I’ve got a pretty good idea.

Thus, between you and me, [whisper/] I think Hank and Tina just broke up [/whisper].

Speaking of dubious experiments, we abruptly switch venues to a garbage scow puttering around just off shore, where something sinister is definitely afoot. As we can't help but notice the boat is carrying a butt-load of radioactive waste containers -- it’s final destination pretty damned obvious. And this is quickly confirmed when the unseemly crew starts chucking barrels over the side. 

Not to worry, though. I’m sure these containers are government safety tested and approved and won’t leak for a thousand eons -- he typed erroneously.

For as the first barrel hits the bottom, the plug-screw immediately plops out, allowing a slew of toxic sludge to spill into the bay. And when this swill eventually washes over an old shipwreck, we spy a displaced human skull that is quickly engulfed in the noxious plume. 

And after a long and rather clumsy in-camera transformation sequence, the skull eventually mutates into one of the goofiest looking screen monsters since Ro-Man the Robot Monster (1955) stalked the Earth:

Ladies and Gentlemen, thee "Horror" of Party Beach. 

Then, as this google-eyed and knock-kneed fish monster, it's mouth stupefyingly stuffed full of bratwursts, stands up and starts to prowl around, we switch back to the beach, where the local denizens shimmy and shammy to the rocking tunes of The Dynamic Del-Aires (-- only the greatest friggin' B-movie rock 'n' roll band of ever).

Now, as good as the band is, and no matter how goofy the monster looks, they both come up short when compared to the equally frightening misfires of rhythm attempted by the locals. Watch as men in short shorts and the beach bunnies flail around in some kind of stupor -- if you dare!

Joining them in this group seizure, Tina bumps Elaine Gavin out of the conga-line just as that motorcycle gang catches up and starts to make their presence known. And when Tina starts to flirt with them again, zeroing in on the hunky leader, Hank, now completely disgusted with her, leaves the scene to take in the other sights and cool off.

When Elaine (Lyon) follows him, offering a penny for his thoughts, we find out Hank works for her father, Dr. Gavin, a noted scientist of ... something, as they exchange some very stilted dialogue about his troubles with Tina -- until a rowdy commotion attracts them back to the others, where a tipsy Tina has decided to do a dance for the 'Leader of the Pack' that would probably get her arrested in several States.

When a jealous Hank steps in and cuts it short, saying they're leaving, the biker has other ideas as the scene quickly degenerates into a Charles Atlas ad when he sucker punches our hero, and then kicks sand in his face while he's down.

Hank retaliates, and as the inevitable rumble breaks out between the beachniks and the bikers, we can only watch dumbstruck; for, as unfathomable as this may sound, as disturbing as their (I’d hate to call it) dancing was, their fighting prowess and techniques prove even more inept. (I especially liked the part when the bikers use their leader as a human battering ram and run Hank over.)

But when the scrum pile gets out of hand, Hank and the biker decide to settle things mano-a-mano. And as the others move back and circle up to give them room, a few more, Shatner-inspired fighting moves follow until the lifeguards mercifully bring this "fight" to an end.

As things quickly settle and the main combatants shake hands and make nice, Tina tries to apologize to Hank but she's finally broken the last straw with him, making them official residents of Splitsville. She turns to the biker next, but he's seen enough, too, and also splits.

All alone, Tina celebrates her new found independence by stripping down to her bathing suit and swims out to a solitary outcropping of rocks just offshore.

Back on the beach, when the mighty mighty Del-Aires crank up "The Zombie-Stomp" (-- only the best friggin' B-movie rock 'n' roll song of ever), the locals try to dance again (-- scrod bless 'em). Out on the rocks, Tina listens and starts to sun herself -- not noticing that a certain mutated Sea Monkey has surfaced and is now stalking her -- and rapidly closing in for the kill...

A native of Mason, Iowa, at the age of 12, Del Tenney’s family moved to Los Angeles in early 1942 to better serve the war effort after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, thrusting America into World War II.

“I lived in Los Angeles all my school years,” said Tenney in an interview with Tom Weaver (Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers, 2006). “I went to Los Angeles City and State Colleges, got interested in theater at the age of sixteen or seventeen, became an actor, and actually made a living at it for most of my younger adult life.”

Del Tenney.

While in college, Tenney was a classmate with guys like Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, and Alan Arkin. And while he never broke out like they did, he would appear in several theatrical productions and would serve as an extra in Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953) and Stanley Kramer’s The Wild One (1953).

In 1954, Tenney left Hollywood for New York City, hoping to change his fortunes. “I had about eight dollars in my pocket,” said Tenney, who worked in a restaurant and as a detective to make ends meet while he tried to break into the Big Apple’s theater scene. “But I mainly supported myself by working in summer stock. You could make a decent living at it -- it was nothing to write home about, but I was [dramatically/] a dee-voted ack-tor. [/dramatically]. ”

And Tenney would stay in summer and winter stock for the next fourteen years, appearing in some 100 productions, catching on as an actor and general theater roustabout both on and off Broadway. During this period he also met fellow actor Margot Hartman.

Hartman was born and raised in New York City and studied acting at Bennington College. She began her professional career with the Arena Stage Company located in Washington DC. “I acted in a lot of plays,” Hartman told Mary Lou Bigelow (TGC 46, November 27, 1995). “In fact I’ve been acting most of my life in plays and otherwise.”

As to how she met Tenney, “We met while auditioning for a play at the Arena Stage,” said Hartman (Severin Films, 2018). “We stayed there for a year, and then spent a lot of time on the road. And that’s the way it went for a long time until we left [New York City] and moved up to Lakeville, Connecticut, where we joined a small rep company and Del went into real estate.”

The two would marry and have three children together. And by 1962, Tenney had decided to switch professions to something a little less time-consuming that didn't call for all-night rehearsals and extended road tours. Said Tenney (Weaver, 2006), “When you’re an actor, even though you have a job, you’re always looking for that next job -- always. At that point I decided I really didn’t want to be an actor anymore: the struggle was not worth it to me, and I really wanted something a little more secure.”

Margot Hartman. 

But the siren call was still there and, wanting to stay in the arts, with a desire to leave a more permanent legacy for his career in the same, Tenney began to also ingratiate himself into New York's seedier film scene. “I decided that I really liked the production end of the motion picture business,” said Tenney (ibid). “I’d always been on the outskirts as an actor, and I was fascinated by the technical aspects of filmmaking, editing, special effects and all that stuff.”

And to those ends, using his theater connections, Tenney landed a few bit parts in some early Burlesque films and Roughies, where he was soon drawn behind the camera, which garnered him a few assistant-director credits for the likes of Satan in High Heels (1962), Orgy at Lil's Place (1963), and a few stag loops.

The Tucson Citizen (April 18, 1963).

“Very low-budget pictures, down and dirty stuff,” said Tenney (ibid). “Back then there was no such thing as hard porn; it was all soft porn. In those days it was pretty risque stuff; today you’d look back at it and wouldn’t blink twice -- they’d show it on television now!”

While learning the trade with these vintage sleaze-noirs, Tenney crossed paths with Richard Hilliard, another fledgling filmmaker, who had churned out his own little opus dedicated to sexual-dysfunction gone homicidal with The Lonely Sex (1959). And together, these two decided to collaborate on a feature in the same grisly vein based on a screenplay Tenney and his wife had been working on.

The script, under the title Black Autumn, was initially inspired by the unsolved mystery behind the disappearance of Paula Jean Welden, who had attended Bennington College a few years before Hartman, and whose case had become a bit of a local urban legend. See, in December of 1946, Welden seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth without a trace while out for an innocuous walk along a nearby and clearly demarcated woodland trail. A body was never found and speculation on whether she just ran off, committed suicide, had an accident, or met with foul play remains unresolved to this day.

The incident would also serve as inspiration for author Shirley Jackson’s novel Hangsman (1951) and her short story The Missing Girl (1996). This in turn inspired Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel Shirley, which was later adapted to film in 2020 by Josephine Decker. Jackson, of course, also penned The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House, one of the best ghost stories ever written and later adapted by Robert Wise as The Haunting (1963).

The Bennington Evening Banner (February 4, 1947). 

Said Tenney (ibid), “We thought that would be a good basis for a relatively scary murder mystery -- which is basically what [the movie] turned out to be.” All told, it took about five to six months to get the script into shape, which takes most of its cues from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), resulting in a stark and grisly thriller shot in glorious black and white.

And while it appears to be a cheap-jack, regional exploitation piece on the surface, the devil, as they say, is in the details. For when you start peeling back the layers you’ll find a movie with some interesting ideas, with a steady and stylish eye behind the camera, and a fearless attitude as the independent feature aggressively pushed well beyond what mainstream Hollywood could / would allow on screen at the time.

The Hartford Courant (May 23, 1963). 

The film would be financed by Hartman’s father, Jesse Hartman, who would pony up $42,000, and would be shot in the Tenneys’ hometown of Stamford, Connecticut, under the banner of Del Tenney Productions. And he would find distribution through Felix Bilgrey’s Victoria Films, who mostly specialized in importing foreign films like Louis Malle’s most excellent Elevator to the Gallows (alias Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, 1958) and soft skin flicks like Wild for Kicks (1960) and Traveling Light (1961).

But speaking honestly, I think Tenney and Hilliard’s film would fit right in with the French New Wave’s cinéma vérité with its noirish, police procedural vibe mixed with some prescient European gialli-like flare – nudity, sexual promiscuity, and a lot of graphic violence and blood; but you have to remember the giallo hadn’t even really been invented yet with Blood and Black Lace (alias 6 donne per l'assassino, 1964), with it's eerily similar garbed killer, not coming out until the year after Tenney’s film was released, making it a bizarre mash-up of Hitchcock, Jack Webb and Mario Bava.

Bilgrey would demand a few reshoots to “sex things up” a bit. And once the film was completed to his satisfaction, he would initially release the feature as Violent Midnight (1962), but then switched the title to Psychomania when it started spreading to drive-ins all over the country -- not to be confused with Don Sharp's Psychomania (alias The Death Wheelers,1973).  Said Tenney (Severin, 2018), “We made our money back, and a little bit of a profit.”

Tenney would serve as a producer on the film, Hilliard would direct, and Hartman would have a starring role. Strangely, the screenplay was not credited to either of them but to Robin Miller. “I don’t even know who that is,” laughed Tenney (Weaver, 2006), who said he had hedged his bets and hid under a pseudonym, unsure of how the film would land. And while Hilliard was the credited director, Tenney didn’t hesitate to step in when needed.

“Most of the action stuff I did,” said Tenney (ibid). “Having my theater background, I found out as we went along that I could work with the actors better than he could.” Tenney probably deserved at least a co-directing credit but he graciously gave it to Hilliard. “We really worked together on Psychomania, but I gave him the credit for directing it.”

Meanwhile, Alan V. Iselin was a regional entrepreneur whose family ran a string of drive-in theaters out of Albany, New York. Seeing the business the locally produced Violent Midnight / Psychomania was pulling in, Iselin, wanting to expand into film production, like a lot of other theater chain-owners at the time, looking for a bigger piece of the box-office pie, sent out feelers to Tenney through a mutual acquaintance about the possibility of making another film for him.

Alan V. Iselin. 

And after a little negotiating, in May, 1963, the two struck up a partnership with the newly minted Iselin-Tenney Productions, with both agreeing to co-finance a proposed double feature for $50,000 each. And taking their cue from American International Pictures, who were raking it in with Roger Corman’s Edgar Alan Poe adaptations -- House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) -- and Bill Asher’s Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beachnik films -- Beach Party (1963), Bikini Beach (1964) -- the two decided a similar twin bill in the same vein was in order.

Also like American International, these two films began life as just a couple of titillating titles Iselin had cooked up: The Curse of the Living Corpse and Invasion of the Zombies, for which a script was then concocted to fit said titles. Tenney and Hartman would team up again on Curse of the Living Corpse -- this time under the alias of Alan Bodian, while they hired Hilliard on to tackle the script for Invasion of the Zombies.

“I asked what do you need [for the script]?” said Hartman (Severin, 2018). “And Del said we need a murder a reel. We needed a different [murder] that was bigger than the last one. We were very much into costume stuff. And Curse was a different person got murdered, each one in the family, and you had to figure out who did it. So we just thought of the most gory details we could think of and shot around those details. And we had a wonderful time!”

Said Tenney (ibid), “I decided that I was going to try an experiment: to shoot these things back-to-back. We built a sound stage in a studio here in Stamford, the old Gutzon Borflum Studio.”

Images courtesy of GIggster. 

Now, the Gutzon Borlum Studio was actually part of the Gurzon Borlum estate. Borlum was an American sculptor, who famously oversaw the construction of Mt. Rushmore. He had passed away in 1941, sadly before his most ambitious work was completed in 1942, and the estate was currently owned by, you guessed it, Jesse Hartman, who gave his daughter and son-in-law free access to it -- along with ponying up the lion’s share of their half of the budget. “He gave us the place and we turned [Borglum's sculpture studio] into a mini-sound stage.”

Said Hartman (Severin, 2018), “It was all stone -- the whole thing; walls like a castle. And the house itself was a wooden interior all attached to a small bungalow, which we used for makeup, and we all slept in there, slept on the floor. We built the sets right in the [large studio].”

The main house had already appeared in Violent Midnight / Psychomania, and the grounds also gave them 10 acres of wilderness, a river, and a bog to play with; a near perfect setting for their period murder mystery to be set in.

And so, with a script laid out, The Curse of the Living Corpse would be shot first, which sees an elderly patriarch who, suffering from catalepsy, was deathly afraid of a premature burial while still alive. Ergo, he left strict instructions on how he should be buried, you know, just in case. Only his greedy heirs skip over the fine print in an effort to speed up their inheritance shares.

But at the reading of the will, for defying their father’s final wishes, they are all now cursed from beyond the grave “to die of what they fear the most.” And so, one by one the heirs fall to their grisly predestinations. But is it really the old man back from the dead? Or is one of those heirs out to increase their share exponentially?

Nowhere near as bad as you’ve heard (-- or as bad as Tenney would have you believe), The Curse of the Living Corpse is a cheap but moody and atmospheric thriller. For the cast Tenney turned to some of his old theater friends, who pulled double-duty to appear in the movie. At the  time of shooting, Robert Milli was playing Horatio to Richard Burton’s Hamlet, and Hugh Franklin was co-starring with Albert Finney in a production of Luther.

“Everybody we had working on these subsequent films we met through those experiences [on the stage],” said Hartman (Severin, 2018). People like Candice Hilligoss, who had worked with Hartman on the Arena Stage and had starred with Tenney in a couple of productions.

Tenney had also seen Hilligoss in Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962), a strange, eerily atmospheric little bugaboo of a movie. He had originally wanted her to be in Violent Midnight but she turned him down. He also wanted the actress to be in Invasion of the Zombies, too, but, being five and a half months pregnant at the time, Hilligoss declined the second feature.

In a separate interview with Weaver (Attack of the Monster Movie Makers, 1994), Hilligoss revealed that she was the one who got a then unknown actor his first ever movie role. “I got Roy Scheider his part in Curse of the Living Corpse,” said Hilligoss. “We had done a couple of shows together at the Arena Stage. [And I told him] a friend of mine is putting together a movie. You look evil enough. I’ll suggest you for the villain.”

Tenney agreed, thinking Scheider looked like a young George C. Scott. Scheider, of course, would eventually break out in the 1970s, with roles in Klute (1971), The French Connection (1971), and the role he will always be best remembered for, whether he liked it or not, Sheriff Martin Brody in JAWS (1975).

The schedule and budget allowed for 17 shooting days on each film. “The goal was to get six or seven minutes of the film a day,” said Tenney (Weaver, 2006). “Two takes were rare, and three was unheard of!”

In the interim between wrapping production on Curse of the Living Corpse and the start of shooting on Invasion of the Zombies, Iselin had sent out his press kits and screened a rough cut of Curse of the Living Corpse to several national distributors to see if anyone was interested. And as a complete surprise to everyone involved, 20th Century Fox took the bait.

“Fox saw Curse of the Living Corpse, which has some good things about it,” said Tenney (ibid). “We told them about Invasion of the Zombies, which I was just starting at that point; and they said if Zombies was decent, they would distribute both of them -- but they’d have to see it first.”

And so, with suddenly a lot more money on the line, Tenney and his wife started retooling Hilliard’s script, which was sort of an inverse riff on Universal’s Monster on Campus (1958). “It started as an evolutionary story about atomic waste speeding up evolution, changing a fish into a man who becomes a monster -- big, tall, no hair, features changed,” said Tenney. “That was the original idea.” But this was eventually jettisoned for a more standard irradiated monster on a rampage plot that only science could stop.

To help punch things up and add some more bikini tops and bottoms, “Alan and I tried to work the music into it, The Del-Aires (-- whom we’ll be addressing in a sec), and all that stuff, and tie in some kind of a beach-blanket (bingo) beat,” said Tenney. “We wanted to bill it as ‘The First Horror Monster Musical.’”

Neither Tenney or Hartman could remember who exactly changed the title from Invasion of the Zombies to The Horror of Party Beach (1964), but whoever did was a bona fide genius. Again, it was all academic at the moment. And once the cameras were ready to roll, things got off to a very rocky -- and nearly tragic -- start.

The motorcycle gang that appeared during the credits were members of the Riverside chapter of the Charter Oaks MCs, true One-Percenters, whom Tenney referred to as the Hells Angels of Stamford. Anyway, Tenney hired them for the opening scene to ride in formation behind one of his lead actors, Agustin Mayor (alias Tony Gregory), who was not one of the MCs.

Said Tenney (ibid), “Well, as you know, people go crazy when a camera starts. This guy from the back of the pack, a crazy, decides he’s going to do something different than what was planned. He puts the pedal to the ground, passes the lead guy, clips his handlebars and knocks him over!” But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“You’ve got to understand, there are forty of these motorcycles coming up behind them! Anyway, they start crashing off the road and into the woods and somersaulting, and one of them smashes into a car! Well, to make a long story short, four or five of the bikers end up in the hospital, and one of my lead actors is among them.” (For the record, evidence in the finished film shows it was only about ten bikers.)

The big fear was that Agustin had broken his back. Luckily, the injuries weren’t that severe but were ultimately severe enough to knock him out of action for several months. And so, a major rewrite was suddenly thrust upon the production as the lead biker, who wasn’t around long enough to garner a character name, was supposed to have a more substantial role, ala Harvey Lembeck's Eric von Zipper.

Not helping matters further was how two cop cars wound-up crashing on the way to the scene of the massive pile-up, which drew the ire of Stamford’s city fathers down on the production. “We even had to shut down shooting for a few days,” said Tenney.

Thankfully, Tenney had made each member of the MCs who appeared in the film sign a release, relieving him of any legal or financial responsibility for any damages done to bike or rider for the duration of the shoot. But the damage was done. Thus, Tenney used this delay to tear up his script and start over again, again. Also, turns out the MCs weren’t quite done with him yet either.

One night, “I was working with the editor and rewriting the script because one of my lead players was out of commission. All of a sudden I hear these motorcycles roaring in the distance, getting closer and closer,” said Tenney (ibid). “Sure enough, they pull up in the driveway and walk in with their leather jackets and their long hair and beards, smelling like a fish market.”

Said Hartman, who was at the scene with their children at the time (Severin, 2018), “Del feared they were gonna kill us for hurting some of their men.”

And so, terrified they were looking for some kind of biblical payback, with notions of taking the damages out of his hide, well, turns out those bikers had an ulterior motive for this unannounced visit: “All they wanted to do was see the film!,” said a relieved Tenney (Weaver, 2006). “I had shot [the crash] from three different angles, so they sat there all night running this footage over and over and over until I wanted to throw up.”

After that, the rest of the shoot went off without much of a hitch even though it lasted a little longer than those 17 allocated days, as Tenney shot in and around Stamford, with Shippan Point off of Long Island Sound serving as the titular Party Beach. 

And once the film was finally wrapped and slapped together in editing, the only question that remained was whether or not 20th Century Fox would find the film good enough to pass muster.

But between you and me, I honestly don’t think Fox had any idea of what was about to hit them when their proposed second feature suddenly veered off its 'fun in the sun' course and entered some virgin territory during the shockingly blunt and violently graphic monster rampages; exemplified by the inaugural attack on Tina, which is deftly juxtaposed with scenes of general corniness back on the beach, where the music and dancing drown out her screams, leaving an unsuspecting audience completely gob-smacked by the carnage its witnessing. 

For, to the audience's surprise, instead of laughing, Tina screams at the monster when it pounces on her. And as the gangly thing moves in for the kill, the tone of the attack -- the entire picture, for that matter -- shifts gears into something perversely grotesque as the monster caresses / slashes the hapless girl to ribbons.

And once this dastardly deed is done, and the audience -- their eyes now fully open -- realizes they're in for something a little different, the satiated monster returns to the water, leaving the desecrated body behind that eventually washes ashore, bringing the party at Party Beach to a very abrupt end.

Despite several eye-witness accounts, the police don’t put much stock in the notion that a monster killed Tina, and feel it must have been a shark attack. (Insert "We’ve got to close the beaches" joke here.) But when that theory doesn't pan-out forensically, the lead detective, Lt. Wells (Kebroyd), consult with Dr. Gavin and have him run a few lab tests on some samples they recovered at the crime scene -- and samples of what, exactly? Hello? Movie?

Dr. Gavin (Laurel), meanwhile, is in the midst of one of those awkward father-daughter talks with Elaine before heading to Tina's funeral. Seems Elaine is feeling a little guilty because Tina’s body isn’t even cold yet but she's already got the hots for Hank.

And it's at this point I'll pause and say, as the heroine, Elaine is the creepiest one I’ve ever encountered. But turns out this condition is hereditary, as dear old dad gently pats her on the head and says not to worry her pretty little head over such morbid things and is sure it will all work out in the end.

Later, while Gavin works through the evidence in his basement lab, his fretful maid, Eulabelle (Moore), tries to convince him the killer has got to be a voodoo-fueled zombie. Laughing at this sad saddled stereotype's silly superstitions, the good doctor slowly walks her through the Rational Explanation Process until they're interrupted by Elaine, who came down to say goodnight before turning in.

Here, her father is a little surprised to see her, thinking she was supposed to be at a slumber party. Well, she was, but Elaine didn't feel like going and is promptly scolded for neglecting to inform the hosts of her decision.

Thus, after Elaine dials up and apologizes to her friends for skipping out, said slumber party reaches a fever pitch in the form of an all-girl pillow fight, pushing this movie to a whole new level of awesome!

This gaggle of girls have also gotten wind that the local fraternity is planning on crashing the party and rig-up an unpleasant, ice-cold surprise for them dangling over the door. With that done, the party continues until they hear someone prowling around outside.

Dowsing the lights, everyone quiets down and waits to spring the trap. But it isn't the Alpha Betas lurking about; no, it's a whole horde of sea creatures! (E'yup, there’s more than one of those pigeon-toed critters! And in all kinds of varieties. More on these myriad manifestations in a bit.)

Alas, the bucket of water over the door does little to deter them, leaving the pajama-clad victims completely defenseless in the dark against the coming wholesale slaughter. 

Confusion reigns as the creatures break-in from all sides and start buzz-sawing through the girls, slashing and biting, ripping and tearing, and consuming whatever they manage to render. And those the monsters don't tear apart and kill, are carried back to their watery lair to snack or snog on later.

As reports of this vicious attack go out over the airwaves and do a Sit-n-Spin on the local newspaper's front page, with the few survivors testimony, the authorities can no longer live in denial over the monster's existence and promise a worried public that all is being done to find and destroy these creatures, including rounding up a bunch of experts, led by Dr. Gavin, to help resolve the problem.

But before they can even convene, we have another, deadly interlude when three gals from New York temporarily misplace themselves, stop for gas, and get directions back to the freeway. 

Unfortunately, they ask the wrong gas pump jockey (Tenney), who gives them some very confusing directions that involve a dubious short-cut through Fingle's Quarry. Then, to make their long trip even longer, these ladies (Grubman, Harris, Laurel) suffer a blow-out near the abandoned quarry and are soon overcome by an awful stench emanating from the stagnant pool of water in the basin.

Turns out something's gotten a whiff of them, too, as several creatures emerge and pounce as the girls try to swap out the spare. One of this trio manages to survive the attack by taking refuge in the car's trunk, I think, while the others are carried off to a watery grave.

Meanwhile, back at the Gavin residence, still confused about her feelings for Hank and perhaps wracked with a little survivor's guilt, Elaine is still depressed despite Eulabelle's best efforts to cheer her up.

As she fondles her teddy bear (-- like I said, creepy), Elaine notices Eulabelle carries a doll, too -- a voodoo doll. When Elaine scoffs at such nonsense, Eulabelle slowly walks her through the 'Don't Knock the Supernatural' speech, but is interrupted when Hank comes calling in his best 'Chitlins Forever Ya'll' accent, wanting to take Elaine out for a ride.

She accepts, but when they return to the beach for the Moonlight Dance on the pier, the scene is far from jumping. To help get things started, Elaine makes a special request to the band for a slow song, and then the magical music of the Del-Aires brings our couple together. (Awww ... It was meant to be. It just took one slow song -- and several ghastly murders -- to make it happen.)

Back in town, when their ride doesn't show up, two young ladies decide to take the risk and walk home from the from a store. Little do they realize but a monster is already stalking them! But as it closes in for the kill, their ride pulls up. (The driver played by Tenney again.)

Now, observe how the monster is about six inches away, in full view, and under a streetlight, but neither the gals, nor the driver, can spot him and his outstretched claws. (What?! They thought it was a tree or something?!) Whichever or whatever, the girls safely pile in and drive away, none the wiser.

Outraged at missing out on a meal, the monster stumps along the storefronts of an empty street, where it mistakes a mannequin for the real thing and breaks through the glass, but only manages to lop its own hand off on the resulting shards before retreating.

Delivering the severed appendage to Dr. Gavin for analysis, after the obligatory sci-babble is safely tucked away, he announces the creature is some kind of mutated sea anemone. He's also deduced since its cellular structure is so unstable, it needs to replenish itself with human blood to stay alive. The thing isn’t dead, he extrapolates, but it isn’t really alive either. 

If that's so, Elaine points out, then Eulabelle was right all along: they are the undead; and, being zombies, are going to be awfully difficult to kill. Once that point is given time to properly sink in, the gathered ensemble hear something approaching and kill the lights. 

To their relief, it's only Eulabelle, who sees the ghastly severed hand, flies into hysterics, and accidentally knocks over a cask of chemical powder. And when that powder hits the soggy appendage, the hand promptly explodes in a flash of light, leaving a smoldering pile of ash in its place.

Here, Eulabelle's apologies are quickly shushed so Gavin can congratulate her for discovering how to kill the creature. Apparently, the cask contained sodium -- "a metal that reacts violently with water." But even though they've found the creature's Achilles Heel, they still have no clue where to find them.

Meanwhile (-- and stop me if you've heard this one before), two drunks are run out of a bar, and when they smash their cars into each other in the parking lot, decide to walk to the next nearest watering hole and celebrate their wreck. Even in their extreme stupor, these yahoos can still hear someone following them, but spot no one, and continue to stumble along until they come upon a truck parked on the side of the road with its headlights on.

Always helpful, when one of the drunks jumps in to shut the lights off, he sees the driver is still behind the wheel. He then discovers half of the driver’s face is gone, bails out in a panic, and circles back to where he left his buddy, only to find something has killed him, too! And in keeping with the buddy-buddy theme, the monster obliges the last man standing by adding him to the menu, too.

After this latest round of murders, a hilarious, double-exposure montage of monster attacks follows, including one gal getting attacked in a swimming pool. And while several policemen drive around and come in and out of buildings (-- triggering my Ed Wood-sense), and the local newspaper headlines get stuck on the spin-cycle, decrying more monster attacks, Dr. Gavin and Hank feverishly sweat over their equipment as more nubile young women scream and get carried off to their watery doom in the depths of Fingle's Quarry.

But when Hank discovers the leftover tissue from the hand is radioactive, the quarter finally drops for Dr. Gavin, who then walks Hank through his 'Eureka Moment." Taking it all in, Hank makes a correlation with the Floating Pig (-- now, Hank, that's no way to talk about Elaine). He then explains this is the name of the garbage scow that's been dumping hazardous material from the college into the bay.

Pinpointing the exact dumpsite on a map, they realize it's very close to where a fishing boat recently sank with all hands lost. Putting it all together, Dr. Gavin believes the radioactive monsters must be the mutated reanimated corpses of those dead sailors. He then hits upon a plan to use Geiger-counters to detect and zero-in on the monster's hidden lair.

Thus, while Dr. Gavin, Elaine, and Wells start scouring and scanning every pond, creek, and riverbed for any trace of the dastardly beasties, Hank is sent to New York City to pick up an industrial size vat of sodium.

Meanwhile, after a long and fruitless day of searching, Gavin returns home and asks Eulabelle if Elaine has made it back yet. She hasn't, and when Eulabelle offers his daughter went to test Fingle’s Quarry its like a slap in the face as Gavin gets angry and scolds himself for not realizing it sooner: Fingle’s Quarry is the deepest body of water around -- and it’s right were those three girls from New York were attacked and killed.

Telling Eulabelle to call the police and relay all of this, Gavin gathers up what little sodium he has left in the lab and heads out to save his unsuspecting daughter -- who, at this very moment, is gathering a water sample at zombie ground zero.

Here, she realizes her Geiger-counter has started ticking too late, and is rapidly picking up the beat! Retreating from the water, just as the monsters start to surface, Elaine manages to trip and get her foot stuck in a rock (-- don’t ask). 

As she screams and struggles, the monsters creep ever closer -- there appears to be about ten of them all told -- Elaine manages to free her foot and limps away, too slow, as the monsters close in for the kill!

Meantime, on his way back from New York, the police intercept Hank and his garbage can full of sodium, and then provide him an escort to the Quarry, where Dr. Gavin arrives just in time to save Elaine by giving the nearest creature a face full of caustic minerals. Alas, that was all he had; and as the monsters keep on coming, he throws himself between them and his daughter and takes a beating.

Luckily, for the both of them, the cavalry soon arrives; and using chunks of sodium like hand grenades, start pelting the advancing horde, who are quickly flash-fried when struck. Hank nails the monster on top of Gavin, but as it flashes and burns up, the victim gets a little scorched, too. 

Once he's dragged to safety, the others continue to pelt the creatures; and after several tense moments, punctuated by some ear-splitting musical stings on the soundtrack, all the monsters go up in smoke. 

In the aftermath, the injured Gavins are helped back to the waiting patrol cars as an all clear goes out over the police band.

Several days later, when Hank calls on a recuperating Elaine, Eulabelle shows him to her room. Saying he just saw Dr. Gavin, who is fine and will be getting out of the hospital in about a week, the two lovers embrace as the camera pans just to the left to reveal a voodoo doll on Elaine’s nightstand.

A voodoo doll that bears an uncanny resemblance to Tina. That’s full of pins. Like I said: CREEPY.

It was production designer Robert Verberkmoes, another theater-rat chum of the Tenneys, who came up with the … rather unique look for those kooky, pigeon-toed, knock-kneed, google-eyed and bratwurst-bogarting mutated protozoan zombie fish-men for the totally bitchin’ The Horror of Party Beach.

Details are a little sketchy about the evolution of these atomic boogeymen as to why Verberkmoes' first, shambling mass-of-sponges, blood worms, and strategic seaweed attempt failed to pass muster with his producer. This has always puzzled me over the years and led to a lot of conjecture on their origin given the evidence we see on screen.  

As I said, by my eye, there appears to be three variations on the mutation: the Bratwurst version, the more brutish ones that kinda look like the Cookie Monster's demented cousin (pictured above), and a third that reminds one of the water-logged undead pirates from John Carpenter's The Fog (1980).

Now, I have a running theory where I believe the Bratwurst version came into being well into the production, or might've even been done after for later pickups and inserts to punch things up. These O.G. critters do still show up in the finished film, and can be seen munching on a hand during the slumber-party massacre. But notice how you never see the Bratwurst version in the same shots as these other variations? 

Also of note, during the attack on the stranded motorists, there's a brief edit where we see one of the gals retreat into the trunk, where one of the lesser heralded versions gets their hand stuck in the slammed lid. Was this the original source for the severed hand? Replaced by a later scene with the Bratwurst monster tearing apart the store mannequins? Which is an amazing scene by the way. 

In fact, the entire attacks on both the slumber party and the stranded motorists shows the other versions doing most of the damage. And note how during the attack on the three girls, the only real interaction with the Bratwurst version comes at the end, where we never see the character's face as she is assaulted first by a different creature while blonde, and then a brunette is  carried off by the Bratwurst. Which is why I contend the Bratwurst version actually came later, and were inserted in to make it look like they had been there the whole time.

Even during the climax, note how none of the characters interact with any of the Bratwurst version. Gavin wrestles with the Cookie Monster creature. In fact, the only major player to interact with the Bratwurst version at all was Tina, which very easily could've been done as a reshoot. Has anyone else noticed this? 

Again, just a theory.   

"Robert Verberkmoes was a very interesting, funny guy," said Tenney during the commentary for Dark Sky Film's 2006 release of The Horror of Party Beach. He had a very interesting approach to it. Instead of doing big teeth to tear people apart lets do hotdogs and have them gummed to death. I don't know if it works or not but that's beside the point [now]." 

Thus, it was Verberkmoes who made the fateful decision to stuff the replacement creature's gaping maw with 'hot-dogs' instead of fangs. All told, the budget for their creation was around $400.  “I didn’t like the monster suits he came up with, but he thought it was funny -- campy -- that people were gummed to death with hot dogs instead of sharp teeth,” said Tenney (Weaver, 2006). “I didn’t think it was particularly funny, but I let him have his way.” 

Said Hartman (Severin, 2018), “It was absolutely ludicrous to think they were going to kill or do much damage with those [rubber claws and teeth].”  

Cobbled together with patterned rubber scales, glue, ping-pong balls, and the dismembered fingers of several pairs of rubber gloves, two functioning “zombie” suits were finished for the production. Said Tenney (Weaver, 2006), “The monsters’ heads were well above the heads of the actors inside; the actors had to look out through a hole in the neck, if I remember correctly. And those suits were very hot -- we shot that in the summer time.”

“It was well before its time,” said Hartman (Severin, 2018). “I think that was the charm of the film. It was very funny. The suit was made of rubber, so every time we shot [in the quarry or bay] they would get filled up with water.” All told, three of the Bratwurst version were constructed. And from what I could tell, one each of the other versions. It’s kinda fun to watch the stuntmen trying to move around in the Bratwurst costume, while their top heavy, bobble-headed craniums constantly careen around, wigglin’ and wobblin’ and barely staying attached.

In his commentary, Weaver called Verberkmoes’ Paul Blaisdell-like efforts a lot better than they needed to be. And once seen, as incredulous as they appear, these ungainly critters do leave a lasting -- and some would argue, permanent -- impression on many a viewer. One of the suits was lost during the promotional tour, but one remained at the Tenney house, broken out by his children every Halloween, until it eventually fell apart, too, and finally met its fate at the local landfill.

Trying to keep a straight face while defending themselves against this maladroit menace, John Scott and Alice Lyon’s Hank and Elaine sorely lack the charisma and chemistry of Frankie and Annette. And when you dig a little deeper, it’s easier to understand why.

See, John Scott was a stage name and his real name was John Lyon, who had a sister named Alice. Alice Lyon. Yeah. Our two romantic leads were actually siblings. The Lyons were the children of an American ambassador. Alice was a roommate of Margot Hartman’s while the two of them attended Bennington. 

Scott had appeared in a couple of those skin flicks Tenney had a hand in: The Orgy at Lil’s Place, would later appear in The Sexperts: Touched by Temptation (1965), and had served as an assistant director on The Curse of the Living Corpse.

As for Alice, The Horror of Party Beach would be a one and done. The Monthly Film Bulletin called her “the most expressionless and inanimate heroine of all time.” (That tracks.) At some point a decision was made to completely over-dub her character, and never quite in sync, which didn’t help her already rather wooden performance. But the Tenneys didn’t have the heart to tell her, and she didn’t find out until the film’s New York City premiere and was reportedly mortified. 

Scott, meanwhile, did most of the heavy lifting with his prominent chin and jawline. He reminds me a bit of James Franciscus with a Don Sullivan chaser. Affable, and relatively harmless.  

“I was never really a director as such,” admitted Tenney (Weaver, 2006). “What a director means to me is you get the best out of the actor you hired. And let them do their thing, You tell them where to move and so on, but you don’t tell them how to act.”

It’s honestly too bad that Alice and Marilyn Clarke didn’t switch roles. That would’ve been a two-fold benefit. First, it would’ve gotten Lyon out of the picture early, she’s just not very good; and second, even though they weren’t together very long, Clarke, who can actually act, did spark some chemistry with the dunder-headed Scott. Of course, that means we would’ve been denied Clarke’s take on bad girl Tina, which was not only great, but made her the one I definitely would’ve saved from her grisly fate.

I believe Allan Laurel’s Dr. Gavin was also dubbed over and the voice sounds vaguely familiar but I can’t quite place it. (It almost sounds like Arch Hall Sr.’s alter-ego, Nicholas Merriweather.) Then again, it appears everyone might've been dubbed over. That, or they couldn't get the sound to sync properly. Laurel is fine as the human exposition dump, but his character fails just about everywhere else. 

And Eulabelle Moore was the most seasoned cast member, too bad her character was such a caricature. Sadly, Moore would pass away not long after the film wrapped.

"It was a spoof on the beach party and horror movies of the time, " Tenney told James O’Keefe in a later interview for The Stamford Advocate (March 1, 2013). As for the crowd populating Party Beach, dancing, flailing, and joking to the music, Tenney would recruit locally. "I think we bought them lunch or something.”

“Everybody was in the spirit of things,” added Hartman (Severin, 2018).

Said Weaver (Severin, 2018), “The scenes in the AIP movies looked so different. Sun-splashed, everything nice and bright and catchy colors. Next to the AIP beach movies, this Connecticut beach looked like Siberia on a rainy day.”

Providing the kickin’ soundtrack for the film was The Dynamic Del-Aires, or just The Del-Aires for short.

“Rock ‘n’ roll was just beginning,” said Patterson, New Jersey, native Ronnie Linares (Severin, 2018). “I had to have a guitar. I was saving my money, saving glass soda bottles for a nickel trade-in.” But his parents would surprise him and gave Linares a guitar as a graduation present. The only problem was, “I didn’t realize I would have to learn to play it. I didn’t want to learn, I just wanted to hold it and wiggle like Elvis. That guy was making money and the girls loved ‘em. It just seemed like the natural thing to do.”

(Clockwise L-R): Osborne, Linares, Jones and Becker. 

Linares would learn to play the guitar and in 1957 he started The Treble Tones, who got a single released through B-Atlas Records, featuring the songs “Treble Rock” and “The Crawl.” Both were instrumentals, with “The Crawl” definitely showing a low-fi, reverb-heavy Link Wray influence.

Alas, The Treble Tones just weren’t meant to be. But Linares quickly regrouped and started jamming with bassist Gary Robert Jones, keyboardist and sax-player Bobby Osborne, and drummer John Becker in the basement of Archie Block's linoleum store, where The Del-Aires were officially born.

“I was only fifteen at the time and this was back in '58,” said Osborne in an interview with Yours Truly for 3B Theater (1999). “Ronnie Linares and the other guys were playing at Lippy's Casino, while I was playing sax and keyboards at The Cha-Cha Club and they asked me to join them.”

“They didn’t care if you were under age in Patterson, New Jersey,” said lead singer Linares (Severin, 2018). “There were some 20 bars we could play music in, so we always had an avenue to play.”

Block would eventually become the band’s manager, starting his own label, Block Records, which released “So Far So Long" and "Someplace." But where the band really started developing a following was with their live shows. And as the legend goes, these shows were pure anarchy.

Said Osborne, “Ronnie was a wild man and I'd jump up on his shoulders and blow the sax and we'd walk out into the audience. I tell you, John Becker was a helluva drummer. He was a big fan of Buddy Rich and would do these amazing drum solos and then kick over his equipment -- before Keith Moon made it famous.”

The band soon signed on with agent Noel Kramer, who booked them into bigger venues like The Peppermint Lounge in New York City and The Atlantis Club at Coney Island. Kramer also invited some A&R reps from Coral Records to come see a show, who liked what they heard and signed the band, leading to the releases of “Elaine”, “Wiggle Wobble”, “Drag” and “My Funny Valentine.” And it was because of Kramer that they wound up in The Horror of Party Beach.

“It was through the booking agent,” said Osborne (3B Theater, 1999). “Del Tenney was looking for a band for his movie. We auditioned and got the gig.”

As for how filming went, “We were just involved for about two or three days of shooting,” recalled Osborne (ibid). “They brought us up to Stamford, Connecticut, and put us in a hotel room. We did the shoot out at the beach and that was about it.”

“I don’t know how successful [the Del-Aires] were,” said Hartman (Severin, 2018), “but they were successful enough. The dancing on the beach was so primary; the dream was to sell the music right along with the film.”

The production would incorporate “Wiggle Wobble”, "Drag" and “Elaine” into the film. It’s unclear if this was serendipitous with Tenney’s lead character or if the name was changed to match the song. Edward Earl and Bill Holcombe, more theater friends, would pen the original songs “Joy Ride”, “Summer Love” and the immortal “The Zombie Stomp”, where footfalls fall with an awful clomp, which were all performed by the Del-Aires. 

Earl and Wilcombe would also compose the obnoxiously dissonant instrumental soundtrack. And while no soundtrack album was issued back in 1964, in 2012 Norton Records released The Del-Aires album Zombie Stomp, which contained both original songs, even some from The Treble Tones days, songs from the film, and a few covers. It was reissued in 2018 and is available to stream on several online sources. 

“We thought we were on our way to the big time,” said Linares (Severin, 2018). “We were bigger than we were (before the movie), but it seems to have a life of its own. There’s a saying in music, 'the song has a life of its own.' And that movie seems to have a life of its own.”

Sadly, it wasn’t long after wrapping on the film that the Del-Aires would break up. “We did a couple of drive-in gigs to help promote the movie and attended the premiere at New York’s Paramount Theater and signed a ton of autographs.” As for the break up, Osborne stressed that it was amicable. “I think our last release for Coral was "I'm Your Baby.” We were young. Music was changing. The Beatles were just starting to hit big and we all just wanted to go in a different direction musically.” Rock on, gentlemen.

Due to the accident, the shoot for The Horror of Party Beach stretched past the allotted 17 days and that $100,000 total budget crept up to around $120,000 by the time post-production came to an end. Then came the moment of truth: the screening for Fox.

“I was afraid 20th Century Fox was going to see it for the piece of crap that it was,” Tenney told Weaver. But he had a plan to distract them. “The day we were going to screen it for the Fox head of distribution, I had a guy who had played one of the monsters secretly putting on a monster suit in the bathroom while we were getting ready to project.”

Now, I believe the original plan was to have the creature crash the screening, but this plan fell apart when one of the executives excused himself to use the restroom before the film even started. Waiting in the projection room, they suddenly heard a commotion and a man cursing and screaming. Apparently, the executive had stumbled into the very bathroom where the stunt performer was dressed and waiting for his cue. "It scared the bajeezus out of ‘em.”

The exec stormed back into the screening room and cursed Tenney out, claiming he almost gave him a heart attack. Said Tenney, “Everybody in the place thought that this was one of the funniest things they’d ever seen in their lives.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer (March 22, 1964).

Both Tenney and Hartman firmly believed that this misfired stunt was what got The Horror of Party Beach over the hump with Fox, who agreed to distribute both of their pictures. The studio made 50 prints and would open it up regionally, starting at several drive-ins in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Tenney, Hartman and Iselin would attend the world premiere of their double-bill at the Fort Worth-Twin.

Said Hartman, “Here is this big screen, a huge screen with our film up on it; and it was like, ‘We did that..?’ It was, for us, hysterical. I don’t know what else to call it.”

The Horror of Party Beach and Curse of the Living Corpse would famously outdraw Fox’s bigger in-house productions of PT 109 (1964) and Move Over, Darling (1964), released the same month, making nearly twice as much at the box office. Thus, 50 prints soon became 500 prints and the psychotronic twin-bill went nationwide.

To help promote the film, Iselin borrowed a gimmick from William Castle's Macabre (1958). Said Hartman, “You had to sign the Fright Release before they would let you in the theater in case you might be frightened to death.” The Fine Print:

“WARNING: Because the two films are packed with horror and frightening action and suspense, the management feels that the public should be warned in advance so that the faint of heart may take the necessary precautions. At the same time, the theater is seeking protection by issuing a ‘Fright Release’ certificate to absolve the management of all responsibility of death by fright.”

Also included in the film's promotional kit was a record featuring well-known horror host Zacherly, which was to be played in the lobby, encouraging people to see the films. Theater owners were also encouraged to stock and display "Shock Pills" and smelling salts that were to be used in case anyone got too frightened and fainted.

And though the posters and promotional materials for The Horror of Party Beach staked a claim at being the first Horror Monster Musical that’s not quite true. Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies?! (1963) made the same claim; and since it came out a year earlier, it should rightfully bear that distinction. However, The Horror of Party Beach can lay an undisputed claim as the first ever Monster Panty Raid Movie -- although I should point out those co-eds were still inside those panties they were stealing, ‘natch.

Critical reaction back in the day was both sparse and on the negative side. “A radioactive vampire-zombie-sex-maniac would be disturbing enough,” opined Newsweek. “But musical numbers like ‘The Zombie Stomp’ by the Del-Aires push this 20th Century Fox release over the bottom as the worst movie of the last 12 months.”

The Waterloo Daily Courier (May 22, 1964). 

Added a flabbergasted Monthly Film Bulletin, “There have been some comical monsters in previous horrific B pictures, but nothing quite so hilarious as this assembly of sea-born brutes. Their rig-out is so phony as to become almost fascinating, particularly a cluster of what looks like sausages in their mouths.” Eugene Archer of The New York Times (April 30, 1964) agreed, saying “A dozen of the most ridiculous looking monsters we’ve ever seen … After the first couple of homicides, the rest of the victims linger around the disaster area, waiting for the worst. Audiences lured into theaters may ask themselves the same thing.”

Meanwhile, “There is no more suspense in The Horror of Party Beach than there is in a Mickey Mouse cartoon,” said Wanda Hale for The New York Daily News (April 29, 1964). “This one is so painfully amateurish you don’t care what goes on, only that they get it done in a hurry.”

The Valley Evening Monitor (April 26, 1964). 

And according to Kevin Kelly of The Boston Globe (May 14, 1964), “The ‘Horror’ has to do with a clutch of monsters generated underwater by atomic pollution which overtakes a rock ‘n’ roll beach party. There’s a good deal of gore to keep time with the grunt ‘n’ groaning. The sounds come either from the monsters or the teenagers; I’m not sure which.” As for the film’s director, “I’d recommend him quick to a psychiatrist.”

Even Kevin Thomas, the patron saint of schlock when it came to mainstream critics, took the film to the woodshed for The Los Angeles Times (June 5, 1964), saying, “They needn’t have bothered with the Fright Release for The Horror of Party Beach and Curse of the Living Corpse, because the only deadly thing about this dull double feature is the boredom. It isn’t even good for laughs … Directed by Del Tenney, the films are technically competent but thoroughly unoriginal. Sea monsters are as old as time, and so are corpses that seem to come to life. It’s a tossup as to which is the least interesting of the two.”

The Grand Island Independent (June 12, 1964). 

All told 20th Century Fox made out like bandits with this cheap independent pickup, raking in millions. And Iselin and Tenney didn’t do so bad on their cut either. Tenney would estimate that he made nearly a million dollars off the deal. “It was one of those fluky things,” said Tenney (Weaver, 2006). “The pictures made a lot of money. Unfortunately most of the money Alan and I made went to taxes. That’s the way it worked in those days.”

Like Hitchcock, Tenney would also make several uncredited cameos in all of his films: breaking up a bar fight in Violent Midnight; serving as a double for the masked killer in Curse of the Living Corpse; and he showed up not once, or twice, but three times in Horror of Party Beach; once as the gas jockey who gives the wrong directions; secondly, he’s the man buying a paper to read about the latest monster rampage; and finally, he was the father who picked up the girls on the way home from the store.

But Tenney swore he was not trying to ape Hitchcock. “It was always a case of the ‘actor never showed up’ or ‘we needed somebody on the spot,’” said Tenney (ibid). As to why he refused any writing credits: “Credits?! I didn’t care about credits, nobody cared with these things. They were always done kind of tongue-in-cheek and you never know how they were going to turn out. And, obviously, they are not the greatest films in the world.”

Well I, for one, would beg to differ. As would others. As Weaver put it, “Horror of Party Beach had pretty girls in bathing suits, a beach party, sports cars, radioactive waste, bikers, rock ‘n’ roll, a rumble, and monsters. To ask any more of it, kinda strikes me as unreasonable.”

After its initial theatrical run, for the longest time, The Horror of Party Beach was only available in a severely truncated version; a version where almost eight minutes of footage was removed to make it more Standards and Practices friendly when Fox packaged it off to TV.

Said Hartman, “I mean, these days it wasn't at all very gory. And I think we used Bosco’s (chocolate syrup) for blood -- or something like that.”

The film was also adapted into a fumeti-style comic by Wally Wood and Russ Jones for James Warren; the same publisher who produced Famous Monsters of Filmland and the Creepy and Eerie horror magazines. Taking still pictures from the negative, the artists then laid word balloons over the action. Some artistic license was taken for the publication, however, as the bratwursts were removed from the monster’s mouth and replaced with a vicious set of fangs.

Thus, for the longest time it was only in this publication where a person could see all the excised gore. Beyond that, we were stuck with washed-out prints that had degenerated so badly you couldn't even see what was going on during the night scenes, which bled over to some unwarranted grief and calls of ineptitude on the filmmakers part.

But now, thanks to the fine folks at Dark Sky Films, all three pictures -- Violent Midnight, The Horror of Party Beach, and The Curse of the Living Corpse -- have been cleaned up and restored to their original versions -- the last two in their proper, widescreen aspect ratios. And I encourage all of you who've only seen the edited and degenerated versions -- or the one Mystery Science Theater 3000 lampooned (S08:E17) -- to give The Horror of Party Beach another shot. For, when you put those eight minutes back in, you take an already highly entertaining piece of schlock and turn it into one of the greatest gonzo movie classics of all time!

“We looked at all these pictures as a kind of off-Broadway filmmaking,” said Tenney, who literally gathered his friends together, converted a barn into a theater, and put on a show. But the true secret of the film’s success both artistically and economically, in all of Tenney's Stamford Trilogy actually, is that Tenney and his crew took the time and effort to make their 40 or $50,000 budgets seem like $60,000. Whether it be the initial transformation scene shot dry for wet, shooting through an aquarium filled with fish to pull the gag off, or the aggressive camerawork, always moving when it didn't really need to, the film overachieves beyond it's limitations.

Now, that may not seem like much but if you took a straw poll of equally budgeted genre films of the era, and then do a little compare and contrast, I think you'll see what I'm getting at. Just because it's cheap doesn't mean it can't be made better with a little focus, ingenuity, and effort -- a "keep it simple, stupid" attitude -- whose main goal was to give the viewer what they paid to see without the usual bait and switch. 

Audiences always seemed to appreciate that kind of effort, which is why Tenney and guys like Richard Cunha -- She Demons (1958), Frankenstein's Daughter (1958) -- are two of my favorite purveyors of whackadoodle cinema. Unfortunately, they seem to remain unjustly unheralded by everyone else. Cheap and tawdry on the surface, but nasty and startlingly effective underneath. And sadly, both men’s exploitation movie careers would prove all too short.

Apparently, Fox was so pleased with their box-office results they wanted an immediate follow up. Iselin would cook up two more titles, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and Voodoo Bloodbath. But Islelin was no longer interested in a partnership and wanted to be the sole producer, with Tenney reduced to the hired help. Tenney, obviously, balked at this demotion, and so, it was eventually decided that Iselin would tackle Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965), while Tenney would write, direct and produce Voodoo Bloodbath.

But things went awry right away when Fox set forth an edict saying Tenney would have to shoot it as a union picture, meaning he could no longer lean into his theater friends, which kinda sucked the fun out of it all. And given the jungle setting he would have to abandon his comfort zone of Stamford for Key Biscayne, Florida. Tenney would later claim the entire shoot was a disaster, with the majority of cast and crew coming down with malaria. And when he spliced it all together, he didn’t like what he saw. And neither did Fox, who would pick up Curse of the Voodoo (1965) instead.

 The Grand Island Independent (June, 1975).

Thus, Voodoo Bloodbath would sit on a shelf, unseen, for nearly six years until Cinemation’s Jerry Gross unearthed it in 1971, paying Tenney $40,000 so he could pair it up with David Durston’s I Drink Your Blood (1971), which was kind of The Crazies (1973) if The Crazies was The Rabies. Anyhoo, rechristened by Cinemation’s crack publicity team as the totally nonsensical I Eat Your Skin (1971) Gross would release the film in a legendary “Two Great Blood-Horrors to Rip-Out Your Guts!” drive-in double whammy. I mean, who wouldn’t want an order of Skin Chips and Dip, Flesh Fries, and a gallon of Gang-Greene Grog? YUK!, indeed.

“That was my so-called ‘big’ picture’ -- it was a fiasco,” said Tenney (Weaver, 2006). “I knew it was time for me to get out of the business -- I could see investing $100,000 but I couldn’t see sinking two, three million into a picture. Then it stops being fun and it becomes big business. So I got away from low-budget filmmaking -- but I will say that it was quite a wonderful, rewarding experience.”

After Voodoo Bloodbath didn’t work out, Tenney seemed content to call it a career back in '65. He took what profits were left from the films and invested in his real estate venture Hanover Realty and The First Stamford Corp, which he eventually grew into one of the largest privately held commercial real estate companies in the State of Connecticut while also dabbling in building houses down in Florida. 

But Tenney and Hartman could never quite give up the theater and continued to produce and act in plays. They were also philanthropically instrumental in keeping several regional theaters going with their patronage. They would endow The Hartman Theatre in Stamford, which featured the last stage appearance by Henry Fonda.

Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, Tenney suddenly got the itch to make movies again. With his wife they would form Del-Mar Productions, which resulted in three direct to video films: Clean and Narrow (2000), an effective neo-noir; Do You Wanna Know a Secret? (2001), a retread slasher; and the gothic melodrama Descendant (2003), which saw Tenney return to the director’s chair for the first time since 1965. 

Tenney and Hartman would serve as executive producers on all three films, and would take small parts in most of them. They would also co-write Descendant, where, for once, they claimed their screen credits. All were solid efforts. There were even some rumblings of a possible return to Party Beach for a sequel. "Our agents wanted us to do it,” Tenney admitted to O’Keefe. “It probably won't be our next film, but there is a possibility we will do it."

Alas, that would never come to be. Maybe for the better. Then again, maybe not. After that brief resurgence, the Tenneys would once again retreat from filmmaking, the exact reason unknown. Tenney would pass away in 2013, and Hartman in 2020, and together, they left quite the legacy.

Over the years Tenney would admit that the enduring popularity of his films both surprised and confused him, especially The Horror of Party Beach. "It's amusing, but it is a terrible movie, " said Tenney (O’Keefe, 2013). "But it turned into a cult thing, and people have fun with it."

Said Hartman (Severin, 2018), “[Del] was really very proud of the films, because they didn’t go away like stage performances do. He had more acclaim than you’d think over, especially, little pictures like these.” 

As for showing up as one of the Medved’s 50 Worst Films of All Time, or getting lampooned by many a horror host or wise-cracking robots, “Those kinds of things don’t bother me,” Tenney told Weaver. “I didn’t make these films for art, I made them because I thought it would be fun and we could make some money on ‘em, which is exactly what happened. When people ask me how I could admit that I made these bad movies, I just tell them that I cried all the way to the bank."

As Tenney himself said during the commentary, “You can't be logical in a film like this. You just have to go along with it." Thus and so, whether it’s the inexplicable google-eyed monsters, the surprising explosions of gore, or the thunder and twang of the infectious songs by The Del-Aires, The Horror of Party Beach is a total blast, Boils and Ghouls; a true cinematic romp that has some unexpected bite to it.

Yes, the acting is terrible, the plot somewhat asinine, but to simply write it off as just another B-Movie also-ran is completely wrong-headed -- especially if you've only seen the edited version. To me, the plusses far outweigh the minuses; and for those of you who are as of yet uninitiated to this thing, I say, come for the goofy-assed monsters, but stay for a pretty damned entertaining movie.

Originally posted on December 22, 1999, at 3B Theater.

The Horror of Party Beach (1964) Iselin-Tenney Productions :: 20th Century Fox / P: Alan V. Iselin, Del Tenney / D: Del Tenney / W: Richard Hilliard / C: Richard Hilliard / E: Richard Hilliard / M: Wilford L. Holcombe / S: John Scott, Alice Lyon, Marilyn Clarke, Allan Laurel, Eulabelle Moore, Agustin Mayor, Damon Kebroyd, Carol Grubman, Dina Harris, Emily Laurel, Sharon Murphy, Diane Prizio, Wayne Tippit, Daniel Walker