Psycho Beach Party
A movie so bad, it's... bad.

Is that a target we see?

Psycho Beach Party is a film on the defensive, a project so dedicated to the idea of being really, really bad that criticism seems almost superfluous. The garishness, the hackneyed direction, the terrible over-acting -- all make for a rough movie-going experience, sure, but in the world of writer/director Charles Busch, they're, like, supposed to. Or so they purport. Psycho Beach Party is so set on being awful (in a hip, ironic way, of course) that it forgot to be good, or even enjoyably inane at that. Picture a John Waters film without any wit, creativity, or style, and you're left with the dry, uninspired tedium of Psycho Beach Party.

A spoof of 1960s surfer movies -- which, you know, we really needed in the new millennium -- adapted from the Busch play of the same name, Psycho Beach Party tells the story of Chicklet (Lauren Ambrose), a Gidget wannabe who also happens to have multiple personalities. When a series of murders take place near the Malibu shore, Chicklet, along with several other of her flamboyantly gay cohorts, is suspected. This plot strives to be a fusion of 1960s surfer movie cliché and Hitchcock-style murder mystery, but it only comes across as dated, contrived, and dull.

"Quick! We've got to leave now, or our agents will find us!"

What's worse is not only that it's impossible to care about what is happening but that you shouldn't -- the film is so desperate in its attempts to be campy, kitschy, cool, that we're all just supposed to sit back, wink knowingly, and withhold judgement. (Not to mention nausea.) It tries so damn hard -- "Look, it's an innocent teenager swearing abrasively!" "Look, those two all-American guys are really gay lovers!" "Look, that woman is really a man, and it's Charles Busch, at that!" -- to shock, or, I guess, to amuse, that everything reeks of effort and results seem almost irrelevant. Psycho Beach Party is utterly devoid of original ideas, and any possible redeeming qualities are drowned in the film's own smugness. Ambrose's performance, for example, would be a great one -- she's amusing and shows a lot of range -- if it wasn't so ham-fisted and overdone. Then again, you can hardly fault her, as this kind of mocking exaggeration is actually what the film is going for. It's not her problem, it's the movie's. The same can be said for terrible turns by Nicholas Brendon or Thomas Gibson, two other actors who are far above the material.

What's a man like him doing in a movie like this? Don't ask us.

As it stands, Psycho Beach Party is yet another low point for 2000, which is generally shaping up to be one of the worst years for genre movies in a long while. The second sorry attempt to combine comedy and horror to appear this summer (see -- or don't -- Scary Movie), Psycho Beach Party slides even further by virtue of its noxious production values and inept direction. Again, this is the kind of thing that's supposed to be bad -- the cardboard sets, the stiff camerawork -- but it's hard to parody something that you know little about. In other words, it's hard to make a mockery of a bad movie when you're a bad filmmaker yourself, and all the smugness and irony in the world isn't going to change that.

DROOL FACTOR: Nada. Not even Nicholas Brendon in a bathing suit can save this one. Too much hair gel, and too much pity.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Charles Busch, in drag.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Lauren Ambrose, making out her way through the male Buffy cast (she last starred in Can't Hardly Wait with Seth Green) has an interesting, if very poorly written, role. Still, nothing to write home about.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Psycho Beach Party releases nationwide this August.

We welcome your comments on The 11th Hour and this review. Please send letters to: letters@the11thhour.com