Wonderful character development!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

First the good: the soundtrack is very good; with instrumental surf and "film noir jazz". Shame that the movie doesn't reach any real heights at all. I only give this one five stars because of the good soundtrack. The movie itself rates a four at absolute best. Thin plot with a bizarre motivation for the monster. Very mild horror with some fairy tale elements such as an evil, nympho, stepmother and the crippled genius. Watch for the music and, of course, the Sixties gogo dancing teens. Ignore the movie going on around the good music.

Clocking in at barely over an hour,The Beach Girls And The Monster combines a monster who gently massages people to death,45 year old men playing teens and some of the worst acting ever caught on film. The plot is decent(for a 50 year old b-movie) but like most they fill a lot of time with nothing.The filler isn't on the absurd level of say Teenagers Battle The Thing(which was 59 minutes with 25 minutes of nothing)but it's too much.The movie could have been 15 minutes shorter with nothing missing.For some reason they made a big deal out of Frank Sinatra Jr. doing the music.I always considered him sort of a joke.Anyway,it's a good song but it's just one song over and over and over.If you value your time,don't watch this movie.

***SPOILERS*** Jon Hall must have been desperately in need of money to get involved in this beached whale of a movie where he not only starred in but also directed. Hall as famed Oceanologist Dr. Otto Lindsey is trying to get his son Rich,Arnold Lissing, to follow in his footsteps as an expert on marine biology. Rich in fact has been spoiled by the biology or hard bodies of the local teens and collage students. Rich in fact wants to live a care-fee life on the beach dancing singing, which he does badly and off key, and fooling around with the sexy girls who spend all day and night wiggling their curvy busts and shapely behinds at him. It's just then that this monster emerges from the deep and starts knocking off all of Rich's friends. The monster looking like someone wearing a Halloween mask and covered with seaweed is suspected to be something out of the pre-historic age that somehow survived by being in a state of suspended animation. That's until the nuclear tests of the 1950's and 60's in the Pacific Ocean borough it back to life.All the evidence of the monster murderous activities seem to point at Rick's best friend the disabled, due to a car accident, Mark, Walker Edmiston, who was at the scene of its latest murder beach boy Tom,Dale Davis. ***SPOILER***As Rich soon finds out his dad Dr. Otto has been somehow involved in these beach murders since he found his ungrateful wife Vicky Sue, Rich's step-Mon, fooling abound with the young men on the beach while he was working hard in his study. One of them being Rich's friend Tom! Did Dr. Otto Lindsey somehow bring this sea monster to life to do his dirty work? Or better yet did he do it himself and have the so-called sea monster take to rap for him!***SPOILERS*** Out of control ending as Dr. Otto Lindsey is caught in the act of murdering Tom and then takes off in Rich's girlfriend's Jane, Elaine DuPont, car in what turned out to be a ride straight into hell. Wounded during his fight with Tom Dr. Otto had trouble controlling the wheel and finally lost control and fell off a cliff totally immolating himself. That's what we were shown at the end of the movie but strangely enough his body was never discovered opening the door for a part II version of the movie. Sadly enough Jon Hall never lived to make it passing away by shooting himself in December 1979 while suffering from the ravages of terminal cancer.

Someone or something murders a babe at the beach, but the babes keep coming back to shake their booties to music of some sort coming from somewhere. This is the only film I know where the babes shake booties while sitting down. That seems remarkable. The beach babes wear conservative bikinis. The older babes in the bedrooms or is it boudoirs wear clothing taken from old Sears catalogs. The beach girl dancers are from the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. They do know how to shake what needed shaking in the fashion of the time.Jon Hall acted, directed, and supervised the cinematography. The cinematography looks good. Actors playing adolescents look much older, but then maybe the characters are not teenagers. Somehow this is not as bad a film as it seems—it is not pretentious like "The Graduate" and not exactly a cliché the way many American International films were. It is not even silly like "The Last Time I Saw Archie." The near final scene where a woman walks into the beach house almost works. The trailer is good, except for the shadow of the mike.