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Frankie (Frankie Avalon) is on Navy reserve duty on Goona Goona island, and as he has good fun with a native girl (Irene Tsu), he gets worried that his girlfriend Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) back home might do the same - so he visits witch doctor Bwana (Buster Keaton), who organizes for Frankie to have a bird's eye view on Dee Dee - literally, as he magically sends a pelican over to the beach Dee Dee and the gang usually hang out who monitors her movements and lets Bwana see what's going on. And what's more, he also sends over bikini girl Cassandra (Beverly Adams), a bombshell that will turn the heads of all the men - and away from Dee Dee, too. Now as it happens, ad man Peachy Keane (Mickey Rooney) is looking for the perfect girl-next-door to participate in a couples motorbike race together with his posterby-next-door Ricky (Dwayne Hickman) to promote motorbiking among average Americans, and of course his eyes immediately fall on Cassandra, and since Cassandra really likes Ricky, it seems a done deal. There are just two problems, for one Cassandra is totally clumsy and might be a liability in the race, and also Ricky has set his sights on Dee Dee. And Dee Dee of yourse at first doesn't want to have anything to do with Ricky as it's not in her nature to cheat on her boyfriend, but by the by she lets her guards down. Enter Eric von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and his gang of evil bikers, and Eric doesn't just want to participate the bike race, he wants to do so with Cassandra - and for a change, Eric is part of the solution, not the problem, as only with him, Cassandra isn't a total klutz - so Peachy, also under pressure from his boss B.D. (Brian Donlevy), tries to make the all-American boy out of Eric to actually drive for his team. This of course frees Ricky to ride with Dee Dee, to which she eventually agrees. Now winning the bike race should be a zinch for Eric, as he's pretty much a professional when it comes to bike-riding, and yet Peachy sees it fit to acquire the services of North Dakota Pete (Len Lesser), toughest man on the beach, to provide the racetrack with all sorts of booby trap - which in the race in truest Wile E. Coyote fashion all spring on Eric of course - and yet he and Cassandra win the race, only to be disqualified because it was actually Cassandra who steered the bike across the finish line. So it's Ricky and Dee Dee who are declared winners, and are to go on a countrywide tour to promote motorbikes - but when Dee Dee insists that they marry first, Ricky gets cold feet and decides to go after Cassandra instead - which is when Frankie is magically sent back to the beach to have his happy ending with Dee Dee ...

Elizabeth Montgomery makes a fun cameo appearance as The Witches' Witch, a very direct allusion to her TV series Bewitched.

There's much that isn't exactly perfect about How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, like the insistance to shoot most outdoor scenes in the studio, this way never really creating a beach feeling, or the many sight gags that could have done with a little more diligence, the script that just doesn't seem 100% thought through and at times seems little more than a hanger for a few gags, not all of them good or well-executed, and much of the story is just too far-fetched even for a mindless beach party movie. And that all said, seen through a nostalgic lense, the film's actually really good fun - sure you better turn your brain off, and a beer to watch it with doesn't hurt either.

By the way, the last of the Frankie & Annette Beach Party movies until1987's Back to the Beach (a soft re-boot in 2021's lingo). Also, the reason that Frankie Avalon, lead of all the previous films in the series, was rather sidelined in this one, allegedly had something to do with a salary dispute.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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