Skunk-Ape!

The concept behind Monster Beach Party (2005) - a 1950s-style teensploitation monster movie can be made just as cheaply in the 2000s.

It stars Claire Johnson, Cynthia Evans, and Mary Kraft as a Bangles/Go-Gos 80s girl group (that's a lot of decades...), the Violas. The movie starts with them singing "Shout, Stomp, Scream". After the show, when they are loading up their gear, a fan (Travis Young) tries to chat them up, but they politely blow him off. 

Meanwhile, two deputies in a small beach town are investigating a call about a smelly pile of debris on the beach. They find a small girl wandering with a dazed expression and discover her family brutally killed. The girl won't speak, until she screams: "Them!".

Wait, no, that's Them!

One deputy calls in his nephew, Jonathan Michael Green, who is a scientist, to help out.

Anyhow, the next day we find the Violas cruising along in their aqua station wagon on their way to a gig in Florida. Their car breaks down outside the very town the killings took place in, and get a ride into town by the (very handsome) scientist. And it turns out the town's garage is owned by Young, the fan from the last gig. The girls don't really want to stay in a town with mysterious murders going on, but they don't have any money to fix the car. Young offers to fix it in exchange for them playing at his party that night. The Florida gig is cancelled due to hurricane, I think - which isn't a plot point, but it should have been.

It's no spoiler to let on that the killings are caused by a bipedal cryptid, known to folklore as a Skunk-Ape, a smelly sasquatch. It's also not much of a spoiler if I tell you Claire Johnson, the guitarist and lead singer of the Violas, has sworn off men, but is getting interested in Young. It would be a spoiler to tell you why she swore off men, but they reveal it in a song ("He gave her syph-syph-syph-syphilis...").

I was prepared not to be impressed by this movie. The Coming Attractions on the disc looked terrible. But it was actually a lot of fun and kind of sweet. The Violas are a decent band, and I loved the great psychedelic rave-up at the end of "Hands OFf My Man." Maybe not as great as the Del-Aires in Horror of Party Beach (the first horror-musical), but who are? The men who court Johnson are all respectful, not gross. The sheriff and his deputies are almost as much fun as Ed Wood's cops. All in all, I recommend it.