1982’s Beach House is a cheapo teen sex comedy that was clearly created by psychics. Though at first glance it seems like a shitty attempt to rehash the winning formula from blockbuster hits like Animal House and Porky’s, it is actually a shitty attempt to pre-hash the winning formula from a blockbuster hit that wouldn’t materialize until almost 30 years later: Music Television’s The New Jersey Shore.
It’s about a bunch of people who aren’t from New Jersey, most of them Italian, who rent a Beach House adjacent to the shoreline in the state of New Jersey where they sit around and have idiotic conversations and hook up, and - brace yourself - there’s a character named “Snooky”. The spelling is different, and it’s a dude, but still! Still!
As visionary as it was, Beach House is not without it’s flaws. For one thing, the camera isn’t always in focus. And then there’s the acting. I know (from watching Music Television’s The New Jersey Shore!) that real-life guidos tend to be a bit muggy, but it seems as though the director of Beach House must have yelled at the actors between each take, “No, no, no! Be more EYE-talian! Haven’t any of you guys ever seen Rocky?” It’s like one of those Saturday Night Live skits from they inevitably do in the last half hour of any recent episode, where the cast-members bust out their nuanced NOO-YAWK accents for a fake talk show called “Bronx Chat” or something. (EDIT: upon googling, it turns out this off-the cuff example is depressingly close to a real SNL skit called “Bronx Beat”!)
The plot is exactly like West Side Story, so that’s good: a bunch of kids from Brooklyn and a bunch of kids from Philly wind up renting different floors in the same shore house and a culture clash ensues. Inevitably, members of the two warring factions have a taboo love affair, or something. To be honest, I missed about a half hour of the middle of the movie and when I came back it had inexplicably turned into some kind of shitty thriller, with a creepy weirdo chasing one of the female characters through a darkened amusement park.
So why am I writing about a movie I haven’t even watched in its entirety? Because of the music, man! The soundtrack is by Adam Roth, who would later go on to be a member of the Del Fuegos and do work with Dennis Leary (the evergreen “I’m an Asshole” from No Cure For Cancer). The songs are representative of my current musical obsession (you know, late-70’s power pop). How good is the soundtrack to Beach House? Well, there’s a punked-up rendition of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” that’s so good they threw in a scene where all the characters play baseball for no reason whatsoever. It’s that awesome.
OK, maybe I’m overselling this, but the last scene, where the band plays on the beach while all the characters dance in the sand, is the best music video ever made. Do I recommend watching Beach House? Not really. But LISTEN to the fucker!