Operation Bikini (1963)

Nice effects though.

Admirable film.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Before Frankie Avalon was dealing with the kind of bikinis one sees on the beach in those Beach Party films, his agent got him to this turkey of a film where before the Bikini atoll was a site for the atomic bomb testing it was a small contested bit of real estate in the Pacific War.Tab Hunter leads a squad of marines including Avalon with Jim Backus as a gunnery sergeant on Captain Scott Brady's submarine on a mission. Said mission is to find a sunken American submarine near Bikini Atoll and blow it up before the Japanese take it and find that newfangled sonar it has.Among the perks are some lovely Polynesian beauties that some of the men indulge. Avalon does not, instead he has these silly out of place dream sequences where we get a couple of songs.It all gets done after a fashion. Operation Bikini was made on the cheap in black and white, the better to take advantage of some real Pacific combat footage.One really silly excuse for a war film.

1. the new B&W sequences are sharp and clear 2. Bachus is repulsive as usual 3. Tab's dialog laughable: "That's what he said when we left-like 3 hours ago." 4. some location work showing a seaplane entering the water and taking off is credible. Then the Jap soldiers get rousted out of a tent and march into the jungle. 5. Showing Frankie in his berth sans shirt while dreaming was cool. 6. Some Japanese extras got some work. 7. Tab's girlie-fight was wasted in costume. 8. The blocking and dialog is so bad it makes the acting seem OK (kidding). ("Watch out for the girls") 9. Frankie is a knockout in A shirt listening to Crosby doing an impression of his dad. 10. the songs are forgettable-thank God. 10. But the cinematography is great !

1st watched 6/16/2002 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Anthony Carras): Unfocused war movie that tries to throw in video clips from Frankie Avalon and dancing girls in bikini's at the end to lighten it up? If it would have been a war adventure from beginning to end it would have been better. This film is basically about a special mission being sent to Bikini Island in the south Pacific to rescue a sunken U.S. submarine(for what reason I wasn't sure). A miniature romance begins with Tab Hunter and an island girl, but she gets killed in the next scene, and supposedly Frankie is enticed in his dreams by a seductive island girl and is tempted by her in his song while his girl is at home waiting for him(of course this is just a setup for his singing - he never encounters the temptation). Silly little things like this, and Jim Backus trying to throw in lame humor when his character really doesn't seem like he should have any, is also silly. This movie reminds me of something the studio chopped up and sold for what it wasn't about, to try and make some money(which I hope it didn't). Bottom line this is a lame attempt at a war movie with a couple of lame songs song by Mr. Avalon.

Operation Bikini is a unique entry in filmmaking history. AIP knew they had a bankable star in Frankie Avalon, but they hadn't quite found the right formula for him, so they stuck him in this war programmer about the Submarine Service. Also along for the ride are Jim Backus, Jody McCrea, Tab Hunter, and a bunch of other familiar faces. The film is basically Beach Party At Sea, and is surely the only film bold enough to feature Frankie singing schlocky pop songs in between explosions and two fisted action. Not only does Frankie sing, he does it whilst projected in black and white against a proto-psychedelic colour background of nubiles and nymphets. Your jaw will drop. Save one last gasp of indignation for the truly tasteless ending which could only have come from the over-heated imagination of Samuel Z. Arkoff.