GIRL HAPPY

Shelley Fabares and Elvis Presley

GIRL HAPPY (1965). Director: Boris Sagal.

Club owner Big Frank (Harold J. Stone) is afraid of what might happen if his 21-year-old daughter, Valerie (Shelley Fabares), goes to Fort Lauderdale for vacation, so he hires singer Rusty Wells (Elvis Presley) to be her secret chaperone. In the meantime, Rusty does his best to romance the more voluptuous Deena (Mary Ann Mobley), but his burgeoning feelings for Valerie get in the way. Girl Happy seems inspired by Where the Boys Are, made five years earlier, which had similar hijinks occurring in Fort Lauderdale. Cliche follows cliche as Elvis and his combo -- Joby Baker [Looking for Love], Gary Crosby [Mardi Gras], and Jimmy Hawkins -- warble some pleasant if minor songs, the snappiest of which is "Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce." Nita Talbot shows up briefly as a sexy dancer, Jackie Coogan is a cop, and Fabrizio Mioni romances both Valerie and Deena as an Italian exchange student. This is another in a long line of crappy Elvis Presley musicals that are often indistinguishable from one another. Presley performs nicely, but his character is rather negative. At first thinking that Valerie is unattractive, he immediately pronounces her a "loser." Fabares has a nice enough figure, but she was clearly told: "shoulders back, chest thrust forward." Peter Brooks [The Girls on the Beach] offers some fun as the intellectual Brentwood Von Durgenfeld, who in movies like this only elicits scorn, especially regarding his preference for brains over beauty. His scene with Nita Talbot provides the movie's only laugh, however.

Verdict: Elvis schlock with a couple of decent tunes. *1/2.

THE GIRLS ON THE BEACH

THE GIRLS ON THE BEACH (1965). Director: William Witney.

"I saw them on Ed Sullivan. Lovely boys -- but they could certainly use a haircut."

It turns out that the treasury of the Alpha Beta sorority is depleted, and a big mortgage payment is due. How can the girls raise the money to save their house? Some of the young women enter a cooking contest; Patricia (Lori Saunders) enters a beauty/talent competition; Arlene ((Anna Capri) gets nerdy, bright Stu (Peter Brooks) to help her with puzzles that pay; and Selma (Noreen Corcoran) and her pals get completely hoodwinked by three horny guys who promise them that they personally know the Beatles; the fab four will raise the money they need by singing at a show. Yeah, right. The Beatles, of course, never appear in this movie, but we do get the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore, who sings "It's Gotta Be You" and "Loser in Love" in the movie's most memorable sequences. Martin West plays Duke, the leader of the trio who "know" the Beatles, and Aron Kincaid and Steven Rogers are his pals; the funniest scene has them trying to duck out of the sorority house by dressing in drag. Sheila Bromley plays Mrs. Winters, the house mother who's given away all of their money; Arnold Lessing is Patricia's disapproving, hypocritical boyfriend, Frank; and there are cameos by Bruno VeSota [The Cat Burglar] and the ever-lovable Dick Miller [A Bucket of Blood] . Lana Wood appears as Bonnie. The gals try to imitate the Beatles with dismal results. William Witney directed a lot of lively cliffhanger serials such as The Crimson Ghost.

Verdict: Utterly amiable junk. **1/2.