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Review

From the director of The Disco Years in the Boys Life collection comes this marvelously campy tale of shaking bikinis, gay muscled surfers, a wannabe surf babe with a split personality, a mom with an agenda, and a few severed body parts.

Captain Monica Stark (Busch) is called to investigate a recent rash of gory Malibu murders and she's got quite a mystery to solve! Psycho Beach Party is a send-up of two Hollywood genres: the beach movies of the fifties and the psychological thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock whipped-up into a frothy madcap romp. Heading the cast is writer/playwright and well known gender illusionist-performer Charles Busch. The script is chock full of witty one-liners and double entendre for the whole family! Robert Lee King's skilled direction is fun, fresh, and sassy with something for everyone. Two of these fifties surfer dudes are gay, but it's before Stonewall and they haven't quite figured out what to do! (We could show them a few tricks) It's a surfer movie with plenty of shirtless hunks, it's a fifties comedy with dozens of witty jokes with two meanings and it's even got campy gore with a few extra hands making an appearance.

"Fun, fun, fun! PSYCHO BEACH PARTY discovers a post-Freudian nightmare world of repressed violence and kinky sex bursting to get out."
Stephen Holden, New York Times