There is something special about trashy summer movies. These movies evoke a carefree time of adventure while also serving up some mindless humor and sometimes gore. Recently I saw Jaws: The Revenge (1987) for the first time and it was great. There’s the best of these kinds of movies like Piranha (1978) and then there are the worst like Beach Babes From Beyond (1993).
David DeCoteau has helmed some pretty great cult movies that fit nicely into the “so bad it’s good” department like Sorority Babes In The Slime Ball Bowl-O-Rama (1988) and the infamous A Talking Cat !?! (2013). Beach Babes From Beyond has plenty in it that’s really dumb and poorly done but nevertheless hysterical. Nicole Posey’s absurd alien teen slang is truly amazing and is only further enhanced by her straight and earnest delivery. Then of course there’s Burt Ward who seems perpetually confused and out of place as if he just heard his Zappa sessions for the first time in thirty years.
What gets in the way of enjoying the spectacular crap of the film are the long scenes of soft-core sex. Every ten minutes or so there’s five minutes worth of HBO Max style erotica. In a movie like Beach Babes From Beyond one expects everything to halt now and then for some soft focus fun but it’s just so unmotivated and frequent. There isn’t much plot to Beach Babes From Beyond to begin with so to dilute that is a risky affair. If the movie were 65 minutes and fifteen minutes of soft-core sex scenes had been cut I would have enjoyed this movie so much more.
