Operation Bikini (1963)

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet.  What in the hell was that 90 minutes I just watched?

Operation Bikini is on the surface supposed to be about a team of underwater demolition experts who head out on board a submarine to the Japanese held Bikini Atoll, where another sub carrying a prototype radar device was sunk.  Their mission: destroy the sub and the radar device.  Simple enough, right?

Well, you'd think so.  Only somebody decided they'd stick Frankie Avalon in there doing some kind of Sinatra impersonation, not just once either! What? Huh? And this little psychadelic dream sequence is in color where the rest is black and white? WHAT?

OK so if you try and pretend you didn't just see Frankie's little dance numbers you can swallow it down as a mediocre adventure flick.  Taken in that respect its not too bad.  Except for a couple of racy moments that must've been gasped at in theatres in '63.

Then there's the ending.  Blow up the sub and we all go home, right?  Not exactly.  Then there's a very serious narration about how the Bikini Atoll will be remebered, and its connection to the nuclear age, and...and...

...and what it'll be remembered most for is a swimsuit! And then the credits roll with these two bikini-clad hotties (I suppose for '63) frolicking on the beach (in color again no less) doing freeze frames in various suggestive (again for '63) poses.

WHAT?  Errr, uhhhh.  Sure! Why not! Nothing like closing out a action packed war movie with a little skin, right?!  Ugh.

Technorati Tags: operation bikini, 1963, war movie review, frankie avalon, jim backus, tab hunter, submarine, demolition, what the hell

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Description

A Navy demolition team must destroy a sunken submarine before the Japanese get to the top-secret equipment aboard the vessel.

Two-piece bathing suits don't show up until the closing credits, so anyone expecting Operation Bikini to be a precursor to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is going to be disappointed at the sight of Jim Backus in swabbie gear. Still, you could do a lot worse than kill 83 minutes with this standard-issue World War II actioner set in the South Pacific theater, aimed at the teen audience favored by American International Pictures, and released just as the British Invasion was hitting the American pop-music charts. Frankie Avalon does his latter-day Sinatra thing as a lovesick submarine crewman (complete with full-color dream sequences as he sings about "The Girl Back Home"--the movie's only blatant promotional gimmick), and Tab Hunter does hunk duty as a demolitions expert assigned to blast a sunken U.S. sub on the Bikini atoll (site of later atomic bomb testing) before Japanese salvagers can steal its prototype radar equipment. That's pretty much it for plot, but it's aided immeasurably by lively dialogue and a cast of familiar '60s faces, from the aforementioned Backus (a year away from Gilligan's Island infamy), Gary Crosby, Scott Brady, and Michael Dante. Director Anthony Carras was moving up after editing several of AIP's biggest hits (he only made two other films), and while this routine programmer is hardly distinguished, it's a perfectly acceptable example of Kennedy-era entertainment, when WWII heroics still lingered in the memory of an increasingly youth-oriented nation. --Jeff Shannon

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Related posts:

1. Radio Bikini (1988)
2. The Great Escape (1963)

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 5:30 am and is filed under 1960s, Reviews, World War II Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.