MST3K Top 25: #23, "Horror At Party Beach"

When you think of MST3K, you probably think of a black and white 50s/60s scifi movie being riffed on by three figures in profile. There's a reason for that - they did a lot of black and white sci movies, but, well, they aren't good. They're also short, and pretty repetitive and frequently burdened with a whole lot of sexism. I mean, yes, Jack Frost has the father reassert his "natural" manly leadership, but it's based on traditional Slavic folklore - bad gender dynamics are to be expected, and the setting is pure fantasy.

And, holy crap, every time I watch this movie, I forget just how racist it is. First, though, the plot. Sorry, the "plot."

In a small coastal town, kids are partying on the beach while, out at sea, people dump nuclear waste overboard which immediately causes a human skull to mutate into a giant humanoid figure that looks like someone jammed a clam on top of an old-timey diving suit and then jammed a bunch of hot dogs in its mouth.

The first victim of these monsters is, of course, the girlfriend of our main protagonist, a blue-eyed, blond-haired scientist-type. The rest of the movie is taken up with the scientists coming up with enough clues to figure out how to kill the monsters while they run around killing young women. Almost exclusively young women. Frequently really dull-witted, under-dressed young women. Yeah, it's pretty darned skeevy.

Eventually they figure out that the creatures are vulnerable to elemental sodium, get a bunch of the stuff and ... throw it at them? Frankly, their delivery system appears to be government-issue clips of sodium exploding, as it is wont to do when exposed to water.

With a running time of less than 80 minutes, they still manage to make a movie where basically nothing interesting happens. There are a few things though:

1. The costumes are gloriously derpy. This isn't unusual for a scifi movie from this era, but they're given long, loving shots, in close-up, and more than once.

2. The initial scene where our hero and his girlfriend encounter what Crow calls, "Jean Paul Sartre's biker gang." They're almost entirely non-threatening, are built up as villains for an entire scene and then just ... disappear after their one confrontation with the hero.

3. The science talk. It's long, it's boring, it's deeply implausible and I just love all of it.

Less loved are the scenes with the black housekeeper. They're dreadfully, horribly racist. Seriously, just gross.

The host segments are excellent here, especially their surf rock spectacular, "Sodium," but otherwise there's not much here to recommend the movie.

Rating: C-. This is a cookie-cutter black and white monster movie and it's just not a whole lot of fun to watch without commentary.