In the seventies, movies like Pink Flamingos and The Rocky
Horror Picture Show revolutionized cult comedy by scandalizing Z-grade
genre pictures. In essence, they were parodies of parodies, but they felt fresh
because they piled up offenses that the movies they lampooned never dreamed of
committing. A decade later, writer/actor/drag queen Charles Busch staged a play
called Psycho Beach Party that he and
director Robert Lee King adapted into a movie in 2000. Coming some
twenty-five years after Pink Flamingos
and Rocky Horror, the movies that
established its brand of self-conscious camp, Psycho Beach Party ends up feeling like a parody of a parody of a
parody. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though this slasher/surfer movie
take-off about a schizophrenic surfer girl is a definite mixed bag of stuff. Interior
scenes are nicely stylized with comic-book color and lighting, while exterior
scenes rely way too much on natural light, the actors’ faces often slashed up
with shadows. Since the script isn’t really that funny—at least for the first
hour of the picture—a lot depends on the cast. The ability to rise to high camp
isn’t in every actor’s bag-of-tricks. Some of the cast, such as Nicholas
Brendon as the beach hunk and Thomas Gibson as the surfer king, don’t quite
sell it. Others nail it: Lauren Ambrose as the personality-shifting surfer,
Beth Broderick as her prim mom (who ends up really heisting the show), Amy
Adams as the sex kitten, Kimberly Barnes as a sci-fi movie star, and Busch as the
cop captain investigating the murders of people with disabilities.
That premise (likely pulled from the classic noir The Spiral Staircase where it wasn’t
played for laughs) would be just one of many dicey elements in a John Waters
movie, which loads up the outrageousness until it all ends up in a glorious wad
of laughable absurdity. The problem with Psycho
Beach Party is that it isn’t outrageous enough to mute the ugly nature of
the killer’s crimes. Busch and Lee King dole out the offensiveness too
judiciously. Their movie should have been bloodier, crazier, louder, nastier, and
more vulgar. Psycho Beach Party ends
up feeling like it was made by a John Waters who pulls his punches. The real John
Waters would never do that.
Even though the script and tone are highly flawed, Psycho Beach Party still manages to be
fairly fun because the actresses and actors seem like they’re having a lot of
fun playing hooky from their day jobs on TV series such as Sabrina, the
Teenage Witch (Broderick), Dharma and Greg (Gibson), Beverly Hills, 90210 (Kathleen Robertson), The Drew Carey Show (Jessica Bergere), and Buffy the
Vampire Slayer (Brendon—actually, he doesn’t seem like he’s having much fun).
Shortly before getting her own regular small-screen stint on Six Feet Under,
Ambrose is also having a blast doing Florence “Chicklet” Forrest’s various
personalities, although her impersonation of a black woman doesn’t play well,
especially in a movie of wall-to-wall white people.
The other terrific thing about Psycho Beach Party is its vibrant period sets and costumes. Those
colors get a chance to pop in Strand Releasing’s new blu-ray, though detail is a
bit muted. Overall, the movie looks fine and natural, but it does have the occasional blemish. Considering all the familiar faces in the cast—and the fact that Adams and
Ambrose went on to major careers— some sort of current-day retrospective would
have been a cool bonus. So would a bit of footage of the original stage play in
which Busch played Chicklet, but there’s only a music video featuring Nashville
rockers Los Straitjackets and a commentary track by Busch and Lee King, both
ported over from the DVD. In the informative commentary, the filmmakers get
into the movie’s casting, influence, music, and so on, though it’s a little dry
for a movie as goofy as Psycho Beach
Party.
