1963-1964
Del Tenney has a reputation as a hack director, built largely upon his 1964 monster musical “The Horror of Party Beach.” It’s the one with the creature who “? to quote Gilda Radner in “It Came from Hollywood” “? looks like he has a bunch of hot dogs in his mouth.
As B-movies go, “Party Beach” wades as C-level, but Tenney’s other movies “? all three or four of them “? are improvements. Roughly half his filmography is preserved on two discs in the triple-feature “The Del Tenney Collection.”
“Party Beach” is one of them, and it’s a mindless way to idle away a lazy Saturday afternoon (with liberal use of the fast-forward button), but spend time with 1964’s “The Curse of the Living Corpse.” It’s an effective chiller
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2008.