How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)

Here’s my last “Buster beach-party movie” review.  As expected, all sorts of craziness ensues.

Frankie (Frankie Avalon) is with the Naval Reserves in the South Pacific, and while he’s been having a good time with all the girls on the island, he’s starting to worry that Dee Dee (Annette Funicello,) his girlfriend back home, might take the same approach to “faithfulness” as him (or, to quote A Little Night Music:  “Fidelity is more than mere display. / It’s what a man expects from life! / Fidelity, like mine to Desireé, / And Charlotte, my devoted wife.”)  He makes a twofold arrangement with a witch doctor:  one, that he’ll get daily reports on Dee Dee’s behavior thanks to a magically-deputized pelican charged with keeping an eye on her, and two, that the witch doctor will conjure up an extra-beautiful girl to keep all the other boys from looking Dee Dee’s way.  Unfortunately for Frankie, a new guy in town isn’t taking the leopard-print bikini bait and is only interested in Dee Dee.  Will she stay true?

Interesting that Frankie Avalon really only plays a supporting character in this movie – despite being half of the “main” couple, he’s separated from the action, and the film mostly centers around the sparks between Dee Dee and new guy Ricky.  Neither guy is particularly a prize (Frankie continues to canoodle with island girls while he wrings his hands about whether Dee Dee is stepping out on him, and Ricky is undeterred by Dee Dee repeatedly telling him she has a boyfriend,) but Ricky is the one who’s there trying to win Dee Dee over.  It’s just different from the usual approach in these films.  Other than that, though, it’s kind of business as usual:  magic spells, supernaturally-created girls, an ad-campaign contest to find “the boy and girl next door,” a random biker gang, and so forth.

Buster plays Bwana, the aforementioned witch doctor.  This isn’t nearly as bad as his character in Pajama Party – while he speaks in broken English and practices “witchcraft,” it isn’t made clear if he’s specifically supposed to be a Pacific Islander, and the race of the other island characters is similarly-ambivalent – but it’s still not the best.  Granted, that whole angle for a plotline is pretty tired.  Not regarded as such in that era, but still.

Anyway, as per usual in these movies, he gets a bit of clowning around to do.  This time around, it comes about mostly through Frankie paying Bwana in “torpedo juice,” a.k.a booze.  Buster has plenty of good strong-liquor reaction shots, including getting knocked clean off his feet a few times.

It still amuses me so much that this is even something that happened.  These movies are so far from what I would’ve expected anyway – they’re just so weird! – and the fact that they randomly feature Buster Keaton!  Even weirder.  Apparently, though, Buster enjoyed making them and contributed a lot of gags, and the young actors in the cast loved working with him.  Whaddya know, huh?

Warnings

Suggestiveness, drinking, a little slapstick violence, and some racial insensitivity.