If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like had Kurt Vonnegut, Tobe Hooper, and Terry Southern collaborated on a satirical pseudo-documentary about the nuclear annihilation and refounding (by one Kennedy and two robots) of the United States of America, well, this is as close as you’re ever going to get. Co-director and writer Wheatley is Tex Kennedy, who emerges from his fallout shelter two decades after the president (Seymour!) announces that 17 American cities have been reduced to radioactive rubble, and “God help us all.” While no luck on the God front is forthcoming, everything else is. So Kennedy and the aforementioned cyber-valets Yul (Parker) and Quincy (Whitty) begin the long, post-apocalyptic trip from Los Angeles to Florida (hence the “beach party” titling), where Kennedy, having become Vice-King of New America in the interim, hopes to restore the country to its former glory while engaging in the kind of road trip that would drive even mad Max around the bend. This being a National Lampoon film (presumably a negative pick-up on their part) the whole thing reeks of epic tomfoolery. Imagine if the Usual Gang of Idiots from Mad magazine had deconstructed Philip K. Dick’s oeuvre instead of creating the godawful Up the Academy and you’ll get the barest sense of how far out there this Beach Party truly is. The film mixes Shakespeare – the villainous rival to Kennedy’s throne is named Yorick (Reznick) – with a heaping helping of ultraviolence and some of the most sublimely stupid gags National Lampoon has yet attached their name to. This goes for not just the storyline, which is held together by both old-fashioned title cards and the inclusion of Jack Webb-esque voiceover narration, but also the production design (Six-String Samurai meets The Road Warrior) and assorted dollops of beyond-the-pale animation. There’s even a hysterical historical overlay, with the descendants of contemporary politicos meeting and grappling in this comedy-ripe future-shock hellscape (at one point Javier Castro, Fidel’s distant relation, arrives via – what else? – a raft). It may not be a great film, per se, but it is wholly original and very rarely does it sink into outright tedium. And that alone means that Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell is, in its own deliciously subversive and self-reflexive, meta-ironic manner, vastly more entertaining than 90% of the current crop of Hollywood comedies. Paint it black, indeed.
This article appears in October 19 • 2007.