The Horror of Party Beach (1964)

Sea creatures created from radioactive sludge terrorize a beach community.

Director:

Del Tenney

Writers:

Richard Hilliard (screenplay) (as Richard L. Hilliard), Ronald Gianettino (additional dialogue)

Stars:

John Lyon, Alice Lyon, Allan Laurel

Cast

Complete credited cast:
John Lyon	...	Hank Green
Alice Lyon	...	Elaine Gavin
Allan Laurel	...	Dr. Gavin
Eulabelle Moore	...	Eulabelle
Marilyn Clarke	...	Tina
Agustin Mayor	...	Mike
Damon Kebroyd	...	Lt. Wells
Munroe Wade	...	TV Announcer (as Monroe Wade)
Carol Grubman	...	Girl in Car
Dina Harris	...	Girl in Car
Emily Laurel	...	Girl in Car
Sharon Murphy	...	1st Girl
Diane Prizio	...	2nd Girl
The Del-Aires	...	Vocal Group
Charter Oaks M.C.	...	Motorcycle Gang

Storyline

While the hot-rodders and motorcyclists are having a rock-and-roll beach party, a barrel of radioactive material is unloaded from a passing ship, plunges to the bottom, and splits against a jagged rock. A black liquid oozes out and covers a shapeless mass on the ocean floor, which suddenly moves and becomes an encrusted vicious monster. Soon there are several monsters who must have human blood to survive. Tina is the first victim, and football hero Hank Green and airhead Elaine Gavin enlist the aid of her science-professor father, Dr. Gavin, to find and capture the killer. Not working fast enough to prevent the attack on 20 teenagers at a slumber party or the killing of three girl motorists, Dr. Gavin finds an arm lost by one of the monsters and discovers that only sodium will destroy the monsters, whose composition is mostly water. Can they gather enough salt in southern California to put an end to this horror?

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Plot Keywords:

sea monster | monster | sodium | radioactive material | mutant | 

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Taglines:

WEIRD! Ghoulish atomic beasts who live off human blood! (original poster)

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Genres:

Horror | Musical

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

1 June 1964 (USA)

Also Known As:

Invasion of the Zombies

Filming Locations:

Gutzon Borglum Studios, Stamford, Connecticut, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$120,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Iselin-Tenney Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

78 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

A promotional sign was posted at every theater showing this film which stated: "FOR YOUR PROTECTION! We will not permit you to see these shockers unless you agree to release the theatre of all responsibility for death by fright!" Moviegoers actually had to sign a "Fright Release" before they entered the theater.

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Goofs

Pure sodium is a highly reactive metal. It is kept stored in oil or gasoline (not loose in tubs, as portrayed in the movie), as the moisture in air is enough to trigger a violent exothermic reaction.

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Quotes

Dr. Gavin: Of course! This creature needs the ordinary necessities of human life - proteins, fats, sugars and so forth. But since his organs are so decomposed it needs the only food which can keep it alive.
Hank Green: Blood?
Dr. Gavin: Human blood. If a human body - a drowned person - were attacked by tiny sea plants which became parasites and completely infiltrated that human body before it had a chance to decompse, would the body be considered dead or alive?
Hank Green: Dead?
Dr. Gavin: No - it's still alive. But it's changed into a - well, is it ...
[...]

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Alternate Versions

All TV prints and at least one old VHS release have the more gory scenes cut out, most notably shots of the body of the first woman attacked by one of the monsters after it surfaces on the beach shore, and the slumber party massacre, which abruptly stops after the monsters burst inside. There is one old VHS release that does include all the gore intact.

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Connections

Featured in Celluloid Bloodbath: More Prevues from Hell (2012)

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Soundtracks

Elaine
Written by Ronnie Linares
Performed by The Del-Aires

User Reviews

Eulabelle Moore's only feature film

Why on earth would I review a film as worthless and ridiculous as this one? There is only one reason. It is because it was the only feature film in which my old friend Eulabelle Moore appeared, and I want to put on record on the database a few facts about her, and give her a tribute. It is now 45 years since Eulabelle died, and I must be one of the last people left alive who knew her. I was a teenager at the time. Eulabelle and I spent many, many hours talking together, and there was a time long ago when I could have related the entire story of her life. As I seem to recall, she had come up from the South to New York during the Depression, where she tried to start a new life. She never married and had no children, and was pretty much a loner, despite having many fond friends and acquaintances, as she was extremely gregarious when in company, but she was naturally a solitary person. She got into acting late in life, and appeared in her first Broadway play at the age of 33. In those days of segregation, she tended to be type-cast as the black maid, which after all were often the only parts available for black women on the stage. She soon became a favourite character actress on Broadway and was frequently described as the Hattie McDaniel of New York. Everyone who has ever seen 'Gone with the Wind' remembers Hattie McDaniel, who went on to appear in film after film with her wonderful sense of humour, colourful language, and no-nonsense approach to keeping her 'white folks' in order and under control whilst pretending to be their servant. Eulabelle never played things with as broad strokes as Hattie, but was far more subtle and sophisticated. I believe they met a couple of times but were not friends. I suspect that Hattie was no great brain, but Eulabelle was extraordinarily intelligent and sophisticated in her way. In our endless conversations late into the night, she always spoke with such compelling intelligence and insight that it was a joy to learn the lessons of life from her morality tales. She carried her skillet (old iron frying-pan) with her everywhere she went, along with a miniature portable stove and pan to boil her vegetables in. She was an expert at survival by cooking for herself in boarding house rooms. One of the reasons she and I 'bonded' was that I have always been as attached to my skillet as she was to hers, since the one from which I have had my fried bacon and eggs for breakfast all my life goes back to the 17th century and was used by my Leonard ancestors almost daily since they made it in their own iron works, the first in America, at Taunton, Massachusetts. It has been in continuous use in the family for over 300 years, and looks it! (Isn't it strange, the objects which survive?) Eulabelle loved hearing about my skillet, and having skillets in common really meant something to us. It also meant a lot to her that it was my grandmother who started the American craze for black-eyed peas, which Eulabelle loved. Eulabelle was an expert at cooking her soul food, but I did teach her one trick, how to cook barley as rice. She and I had many a feast on it, she raved about it, and she couldn't have been more thrilled at this 'new soul food' which I had recommended to her and which 'even we black folks down South had never heard of nor thought of eating like that, but I wish we had'. On Broadway, Eulabelle had been directed by Elia Kazan twice, Otto Preminger, Robert Rossen, and George Abbott. She had appeared in plays by Thornton Wilder, Moss and Hart, and Tennessee Williams, and a play based on a novel by Eudora Welty, and had acted with Tallulah Bankhead, Frederic March, Montgomery Clift, E. G. Marshall, Uta Hagen, Anthony Quinn (as Stanley Kowalski in 'Streetcar'), Marlon Brando (as Stanley Kowalski; the ibdb database is in error by not recording this one, and Eulabelle used to call him 'that boy' and told me what it was like to work with him, and how he never repaid some money he borrowed from her), David Wayne, Eartha Kitt, Wendell Corey, James Earl Jones, Calvin Lockhart, and Colleen Dewhurst. The stories she had to tell were endless. She had a bad heart when I knew her, and this may have been the reason why she died at the age of only 61 in 1964. I did not know of her death for some time, so missed her funeral. I may well be the last friend of Eulabelle's who is left. No one should think she talked like she does in this film, where she had to play a typical housemaid in an apron who talks folksy, and where she has to say things like: 'It's the voodoo, that's what it is!' How Eulabelle would have laughed to think she would be remembered for such inane conversation and for playing up to the stereotype of the stupid servant. She was one of the liveliest and most interesting people I ever knew, never a dull moment, a mind as sharp as a whip, and a heart of gold. But I can imagine the satisfaction which she would have experienced from pocketing the check for appearing in this rubbishy horror film, as she was always poor, and needed to pay the rent. Good old Eulabelle. Now she is freed from paying rent, and freed from the constraints of having skin with a colour which confined and delimited her life and her work. She may have been 'only a black character actress' to some people, but to me she had more character than any role she ever played.