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Malibu Beach
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| Year: |
1978
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Director: |
Robert J. Rosenthal
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| Stars: |
Kim Lankford, James Daughton, Susan Player, Michael Luther, Stephen Oliver, Flora Plumb, Roger Lawrence Pierce, Sherry Lee Marks, Tara Strohmeier, Rory Stevens, Parris Buckner, Bruce Kimball, Bill Adler, Jim Kester, Diana Herbert, Walter Maslow
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| Genre: |
Comedy |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Summer's here and school's out, so Dina (Kim Lankford) can begin her latest job at Malibu Beach where she is to be the new lifeguard. She takes up her perch by the sea shore, and the current lifeguard wanders up to welcome her and tell her that she really shouldn't be wearing a bikini for this occupation, but her excuse is that she wants a tan. All the locals are at the beach, from her friend Sally (Susan Player), to two boys who are interested in them, Bobby (James Daughton) and Paul (Michael Luther), but the path to true love does not run smooth...
You can, however, be guaranteed that everyone will have a fine old time as they spend their summer messing around, but whether you enjoy yourself quite as much is dependent very much on your tolerance for watching them in a film that never goes anywhere in particular. Not that this is a meditative work on the aimlessness of life, it's simply the way it turned out, as it's actually a lighthearted teen movie that is pretty much an excuse to show young actors and actresses in states of undress and pulling pranks on one another.
These kind of things are ten a penny, particularly around this decade and the one that followed (the eighties was where the genre became especially refined), and there's very little to distinguish Malibu Beach from its peers. That said, if you want to wallow in a purely late seventies atmosphere of innocuous hijinks, then this will either bring back some memories or give you an insight into what life was like in California circa 1978. There are a few characters involved who we follow over the course of a few days and nights, but the main plot is concerned with whether Bobby can successfully romance Dina or if local bully Dugan (Stephen Oliver) will win her heart.
Actually, there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that Dugan will succeed (if you've seen the earlier film The Van then you'll recognise this chap from there), but he's present to create a spot of tension and give Bobby a rival so they can square up to each other every once in a while. Predictably, the musclebound Dugan doesn't have much success with his pursuit of the opposite sex, as we see when he tries to persuade the teens' mousy teacher Miss Plickett (Flora Plumb) back to his place and she ends up breaking off the encounter pretty decisively... but just wait, Dugan, you might get lucky yet.
There are not really any big stars in the cast, nobody who went on to worldwide fame, although some did well in television and there are a few "isn't that her from...?" vaguely recognisable faces here. Tara Strohmeier will be familiar to you if you watch a lot of low budget Hollywood exploitation, and here she is in a supporting role as a pushover, which will prompt more than one fan of this kind of thing to wonder whatever happened to her. She is also one of those providing nudity, the main reason people would pop along to their drive-ins to watch this, and in a moment of inspiration the writers invented a dog who steals bikini tops as a way of getting more half-naked women into their film. That's about the level of humour, and it probably wasn't any funnier when it was released, yet if it doesn't go anywhere significant it is easy to watch, though easier to forget. Music by Michael Lloyd.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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