In the seventies, movies like Pink Flamingos and The Rocky
Horror Picture Show revolutionized cult comedy by scandalizing Z-grade
genre pictures. In essence, they were parodies of parodies, but they felt fresh
because they piled up offenses that the movies they lampooned never dreamed of
committing. A decade later, writer/actor/drag queen Charles Busch staged a play
called Psycho Beach Party that he and
director Robert Lee King adapted into a movie in 2000. Coming some
twenty-five years after Pink Flamingos
and Rocky Horror, the movies that
established its brand of self-conscious camp, Psycho Beach Party ends up feeling like a parody of a parody of a
parody. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though this slasher/surfer movie
take-off about a schizophrenic surfer girl is a definite mixed bag of stuff. Interior
scenes are nicely stylized with comic-book color and lighting, while exterior
scenes rely way too much on natural light, the actors’ faces often slashed up
with shadows. Since the script isn’t really that funny—at least for the first
hour of the picture—a lot depends on the cast. The ability to rise to high camp
isn’t in every actor’s bag-of-tricks. Some of the cast, such as Nicholas
Brendon as the beach hunk and Thomas Gibson as the surfer king, don’t quite
sell it. Others nail it: Lauren Ambrose as the personality-shifting surfer,
Beth Broderick as her prim mom (who ends up really heisting the show), Amy
Adams as the sex kitten, Kimberly Barnes as a sci-fi movie star, and Busch as the
cop captain investigating the murders of people with disabilities.
