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(This has been much rewritten - it's not likely to be published in anything close to this form.)
"Sizzle Beach U.S.A." brings us to the beaches of Malibu, a frequent staging ground for teen sex shenanigans. Janis Johnson, an aspiring singer with a strange, crooked smile, is driving to L.A. to make it big; along the way she meets fellow naïve Midwesterners Cheryl Riley, a pert-nosed, big-chested blonde, and Dit McCoy, a short ‘n’ kooky brunette who has just co-inherited a beach house with her cousin Steve. Dit invites the other two to stay with her at the beach house; and the rest of the movie details the trio’s romantic and employment-related adventures over the next few weeks.
Cheryl is a fitness freak, who, in true 70s style, is shown munching wheat germ and gulping down raw eggs. Jogging on the beach, she meets a rich, middle-aged broker who looks like John Hillerman. He charms her into dinner and helps her find a gym teacher position at a local high school. It seems certain that he’ll prove too good to be true. In short order he’s demanding Cheryl marry him, but, wanting at least a few years to taste the swinging 70s Malibu lifestyle – and who can blame her? – she refuses, and when he issues a stern “marriage or nothing” ultimatum, she dumps his moustachioed ass pronto.
In the meantime, though the house seems like it should be bigger than that, Janis has been forced by a lack of sleeping space to bunk with cousin Steve. Thankfully, Dit’s prediction that Steve would not turn his nose up at the prospect of three pretty girls as roommates has proved well founded. (Steve, though doughy and unattractive, is evidently a master stickman and is first seen romancing his fake-breasted prostitute neighbour in the beach house’s tiny, frumpy master bedroom.) Slowly, and only after a replay of a stock sitcom situation dramatized also in "Starhops" (the noises of an innocent but difficult task undertaken by two members of the opposite sex overheard by others in an adjacent room and mistaken for the grunts of coitus), Janis and Steve’s initial mutual dislike evolves into a highly unconvincing romance. Steve is some sort of music producer and takes songbird Janis to a studio he knows, where a reptilian impresario named Von Vitale promises to put her in his singing contest.
As all this is going on, Dit, a Colorado girl and horse lover, is out seeking riding lessons. She comes upon a ranch owned by the young Kevin Costner and managed by his assistant, a Corvette-driving, cigar-chomping midget in a serape. Costner hides the fact that he’s the owner (and owns a number of other ranches besides) so that Dit may come to love him for himself, not for his dogies and lariat and rancher’s millions. Love blooms as they ride. Dit is also an aspiring actress, and installs herself in what the film assumes is a trenchant satire of modish Method acting classes. “Be a banana,” the supercilious instructor demands, then hypocritically chastises Dit for unpeeling her zipper top. “We do not remove our clothes in class!”
The three stories intertwine lazily as the movie progresses, and the near-imperceptible nod in the direction of a plot comes when Von the slimeball impresario’s contest turns out to be fixed. We are reminded about this at regular intervals as the end of the film approaches. Coincidentally, the lascivious midget is friends with Von, and he tips Costner off to the fix. To remind us of Von’s epic sleaziness, we are treated to a fantastic party scene at which Janis is given some pot to smoke, which in turn gives director Richard Brander an excuse to mount the single worst stoned-POV scene ever shot. No flashy optical effects or coloured lights, just good, old-fashioned slowed-down voices, tromboning focus and the rinky-dinkiest prism filter of all time.
Costner and the midget take care of the fixed contest by stealing the clothing of the people who’d been earmarked by Von to be the winners. Naturally Janis wows the room with her laid-back folky style and wins the contest handily. And that’s the end.
Sizzle Beach U.S.A. was released in 1986, as Costner was on the brink of the superstardom he later wielded so dubiously. But records indicate it was actually made in 1974, and, adding further to the temporal confusion, the Farrah-style feathered hairdos make it seem to take place in around 1977. Costner himself wears a cowboy hat, but looks about twelve. It’s hard to say why the movie might have been shelved for a dozen years: it’s not a good movie, but it’s a movie with breasts, and, like its cohorts, would have done just fine at the drive-ins.
Whatever the reason, as a belatedly released before-they-were-stars embarrassment-fest, it fills its own minor and pointless niche in the pop culture cubbyshelf. More importantly, it delivers on the Malibu scenery, the nuggets of Hollywood eccentricity, the frequent shots of waves crashing on a beach. And best of all, it’s a lean and mean delivery system for 70s nostalgia, well able to make you weepy for your old days of beachside living that never actually happened. On that level, it’s a masterpiece: what Gone With The Wind must be to people who unaccountably wish they’d been born during the Civil War.
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