Muscle Beach Party's title track easily outlines the 1964 movie's silly plot involving the fleeting trend of 90 lb. weaklings and beach hoppers, "Taking vitamin pills/to give the honeys a thrill."
Just as the film's plot is good-natured, if predictable, teeny-bopper fun, the music is all by-the-numbers surf-pop fare. While films of this
Frankie Avalon and
Annette Funicello series occasionally feature cameos by the likes of
Dick Dale and
Stevie Wonder, the soundtracks themselves tend to underline the fact that these movies were churned out as family friendly Disney flicks dressed up with innocuous rock & roll accents. Ballads such as the syrupy "A Girl Needs a Boy" are typical of the interchangeable songs that are inserted into these films. These lonely numbers inevitably turn up in the plot as
Frankie and
Annette are fighting or otherwise longing for each other from afar before ultimately reuniting for a happy ending. As fluffy as the numbers are, they could just as easily be performed by
Lesley Gore or a similarly saccharine singer. Fittingly, "I Dream About Frankie" appears later on the disc as a fairly obvious rip-off of the melody of "It's My Party." "Custom City" is the most blatant attempt to mimic the
Beach Boys, while the riotous "Surfer's Holiday" offers some amusingly goofy lyrics such as, "The guys are hot doggers/And the girls are cute." And let's face it; this is what the album is all about. Just as the films are fun because they're over-the-top candy-colored confections full of silly slang and '60s fashion, the songs are good when they're silliest. On this note, the strangest song is easily "Scrambled Egghead (Merlin Jones)." The mostly spoken word number finds the title character explaining to
Annette that his hair is a mess because of a lab mishap that caused him to become permanently electrified. Oh, and he can also hear peoples' thoughts, of course. It's one of those surreal musical side trips that made the experimental '60s great. It's hard to imagine a modern teen film indulging in something so outrageous. As a standalone album, it has some entertaining moments, but
Muscle Beach Party is likely more appealing to listeners who have seen the goofy '60s beach flick it's attached to. ~ Karen E. Graves