Attack of the Bikini Ghost

In our quest to watch the worst of the Beach Party movies (that is, all of them), we watched The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). I guess we figured it used the same green-screen bikini gag as How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, so why not?

It starts with a framing story (added in post). Boris Karloff arises from a coffin, to be told by the much younger Susan Hart that:

1. He's dead.
2. He's not going to heaven unless he can do a good deed in 24 hours. But he can't leave the tomb, so Hart must do the work for him. 

They decide that his good deed will be to make sure that his lawyer, Reginald Ripper (Basil Rathbone) doesn't steal the inheritance, but lets the rightful heirs (people Karloff had cheated while he was alive) get what's coming to them.

The will will be read at midnight, and anyone not present forfeits their share. Rathbone brings in some henchmen to make sure everyone clears out: Jesse White as J. Sinister Hulk, Benny Rubin as the Indian that Buster Keaton usually plays, and his girlfriend, Bobby Shaw. 

The heirs are Tommy Kirk and Deborah Walley, two teens destined to become closer, and Patsy Kelly, an older woman who is "with it". In fact, she invites her son, Goo Goo (Aron Kincaid) and a bus full of teen partiers, to hang out at Karloff's spooky mansion. One of the kids in Nancy Sinatra, in. love with Goo Goo. Also, the Bobby Fuller Four is there to give her a backing band. 

Hart shows up now and then as a green-screened presence in a bikini that shows the background through it. She does some kind of mischief that would have happened anyway and doesn't affect much, becasue, like I said, post-production. Since Rathbone's henchmen aren't doing a very good job scaring off anyone, they call in Eric von Zipper and the Rats. 

OK, most of this is just a shitty version of the regular Beach Party movies: Tommy Kirk and Deborah Walley as cut-rate Frankie and Annette, Sinatra and Bobby Fuller Four doing less than their best, Buster Keaton missing for the racist comic character. Karloff shoehorned in any old how. BUT! When everyone is gettingready for bed, Kincaid puts on a striped nightshirt. If you've seen the MST3K version of Attack of the Eye Creatures, you remember one of the greasy drifters wearing similar bedwear. So we had a couple of good snickers at that. Then he opens a closet, and out jumps - an Eye Creature! 

So now it's our favorite.