Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Scott LeBrun Hilarious goof ball schlock film possesses just the right ingredients to qualify as good entertainment, if not exactly a good film. You've got parties, babes, a lot of dancing and digging it, the beach, an upbeat rock group, a motorcycle club (who never actually really do anything), and an early "dangers of dumping radioactive waste" creature feature with some of the most ridiculous creatures to be seen in movies of this ilk. It's deliberately campy stuff, with absurd dialogue to spare and priceless, unconvincing performances from everybody involved. When radioactive sludge is dumped into the ocean, it contaminates a human skeleton and turns it into a great big shambling fishy beast with googly eyes and hot dogs in its mouth. (Somehow a whole lot of other creatures are created as well.) The beasts mostly like to prey on not-too-bright young women, but if dopey drunk GUYS happen to be around, well, they'll make pretty good victims too. In all honesty, I don't see how people can truly hate something like this. Directed with sincerity, if not quality, by '60 schlock purveyor Del Tenney, it never sets out to be that serious, although some of those attack scenes are kind of intense. A highlight in this regard is when two of the monsters descend upon some gals having a slumber party. One's gotta love the stiff and inane acting from the no-name cast: John Scott as square-jawed hero Hank Green, Alice Lyon as his leading lady (who definitely looks too old for her role), Allan Laurel as our resident scientist with all the answers, Marilyn Clarke as Hanks' shallow ex-girlfriend, and the memorable Eulabelle Moore playing a maid with the same name. Personally, this viewer feels that "The Horror of Party Beach" can easily take its place alongside other low budget nonsense films from the same period. Yeah, of course this is a bad film, but it still has an irresistible bad movie charm going for it. At the very least, you just can't go wrong with that steady stream of silly, harmless pop songs such as "The Zombie Stomp" and "Wigglin' Wobblin", now can you? Five out of 10.

Anders Twetman I usually enjoy cheesy monster movies, not that they offer much of an actual thrill, it's the cheese I'm after. This one, being some 50 years old, seems to be a bit of proto monster movie. It has all the basic elements; the stupid premise for the monster being there, toxic waste and all; the beach party with lots of girls in bikinis, just for the sake of girls in bikinis; a monster sneaking up on some unimportant person and killing her as an introduction; the drunk guys getting killed; the science guy saving the day and so on. The main problem is not the content, it's the execution, the pacing is slow, many of the important scenes happen off camera, there is a ton of plot contrivances and the version I managed to get hold of was of really poor quality, it was sometimes impossible to see what was going on. These things add up to make an interesting film a bad one.

jadedalex 'The Horror of Party Beach' contains so much unintentional humor that I find it an enjoyable bad movie.There are far too many 'bad' movies, but for me, the ultimate test is the question....'would you sit and watch this again?'I can answer wholeheartedly 'yes' to Del Tenney's masterpiece.First off, there is enough gratuitous T and A to satisfy any red-blooded lecher (considering the 1964 date). Second, there is a laughable sixties' surf group, the cleverly named 'Del- Aires'.Third, you have the histrionic performance of Eulabelle Moore playing a character named 'Eulabelle'. She out-Mantans' Mantan Morland's 'Charlie Chan' efforts and sets race relations back decades. Mr. Morland's performances were way back in the forties, so there is an excuse, albeit a lame one, for his 'comic' relief.But Tenney has curiously added an 'unstuck' in time effect with this film. Although made in 1964, it seems to hearken back to the fifties and even the forties, with the inclusion of the inept rock group and the aforementioned Ms. Moore's performance.And fourth of all, what really makes it for me, are the laughable monsters themselves. Moving slowly and lugubriously (a la 'The Creeping Terror'), these mutants from the sea look like refugees from a hot dog eating contest. It seems like the monsters are encumbered by many Johnsonville brats stuffed in their mouths.Yes, this is a bad movie. But I wouldn't mind grabbing a hot dog, popcorn and a coke and watching this fun romp again!

robert-temple-1 Why on earth would I review a film as worthless and ridiculous as this one? There is only one reason. It is because it was the only feature film in which my old friend Eulabelle Moore appeared, and I want to put on record on the database a few facts about her, and give her a tribute. It is now 45 years since Eulabelle died, and I must be one of the last people left alive who knew her. I was a teenager at the time. Eulabelle and I spent many, many hours talking together, and there was a time long ago when I could have related the entire story of her life. As I seem to recall, she had come up from the South to New York during the Depression, where she tried to start a new life. She never married and had no children, and was pretty much a loner, despite having many fond friends and acquaintances, as she was extremely gregarious when in company, but she was naturally a solitary person. She got into acting late in life, and appeared in her first Broadway play at the age of 33. In those days of segregation, she tended to be type-cast as the black maid, which after all were often the only parts available for black women on the stage. She soon became a favourite character actress on Broadway and was frequently described as the Hattie McDaniel of New York. Everyone who has ever seen 'Gone with the Wind' remembers Hattie McDaniel, who went on to appear in film after film with her wonderful sense of humour, colourful language, and no-nonsense approach to keeping her 'white folks' in order and under control whilst pretending to be their servant. Eulabelle never played things with as broad strokes as Hattie, but was far more subtle and sophisticated. I believe they met a couple of times but were not friends. I suspect that Hattie was no great brain, but Eulabelle was extraordinarily intelligent and sophisticated in her way. In our endless conversations late into the night, she always spoke with such compelling intelligence and insight that it was a joy to learn the lessons of life from her morality tales. She carried her skillet (old iron frying-pan) with her everywhere she went, along with a miniature portable stove and pan to boil her vegetables in. She was an expert at survival by cooking for herself in boarding house rooms. One of the reasons she and I 'bonded' was that I have always been as attached to my skillet as she was to hers, since the one from which I have had my fried bacon and eggs for breakfast all my life goes back to the 17th century and was used by my Leonard ancestors almost daily since they made it in their own iron works, the first in America, at Taunton, Massachusetts. It has been in continuous use in the family for over 300 years, and looks it! (Isn't it strange, the objects which survive?) Eulabelle loved hearing about my skillet, and having skillets in common really meant something to us. It also meant a lot to her that it was my grandmother who started the American craze for black-eyed peas, which Eulabelle loved. Eulabelle was an expert at cooking her soul food, but I did teach her one trick, how to cook barley as rice. She and I had many a feast on it, she raved about it, and she couldn't have been more thrilled at this 'new soul food' which I had recommended to her and which 'even we black folks down South had never heard of nor thought of eating like that, but I wish we had'. On Broadway, Eulabelle had been directed by Elia Kazan twice, Otto Preminger, Robert Rossen, and George Abbott. She had appeared in plays by Thornton Wilder, Moss and Hart, and Tennessee Williams, and a play based on a novel by Eudora Welty, and had acted with Tallulah Bankhead, Frederic March, Montgomery Clift, E. G. Marshall, Uta Hagen, Anthony Quinn (as Stanley Kowalski in 'Streetcar'), Marlon Brando (as Stanley Kowalski; the ibdb database is in error by not recording this one, and Eulabelle used to call him 'that boy' and told me what it was like to work with him, and how he never repaid some money he borrowed from her), David Wayne, Eartha Kitt, Wendell Corey, James Earl Jones, Calvin Lockhart, and Colleen Dewhurst. The stories she had to tell were endless. She had a bad heart when I knew her, and this may have been the reason why she died at the age of only 61 in 1964. I did not know of her death for some time, so missed her funeral. I may well be the last friend of Eulabelle's who is left. No one should think she talked like she does in this film, where she had to play a typical housemaid in an apron who talks folksy, and where she has to say things like: 'It's the voodoo, that's what it is!' How Eulabelle would have laughed to think she would be remembered for such inane conversation and for playing up to the stereotype of the stupid servant. She was one of the liveliest and most interesting people I ever knew, never a dull moment, a mind as sharp as a whip, and a heart of gold. But I can imagine the satisfaction which she would have experienced from pocketing the check for appearing in this rubbishy horror film, as she was always poor, and needed to pay the rent. Good old Eulabelle. Now she is freed from paying rent, and freed from the constraints of having skin with a colour which confined and delimited her life and her work. She may have been 'only a black character actress' to some people, but to me she had more character than any role she ever played.