American-International Pictures struck a gold mine with 1963's Beach Party, a fairly inane comedy buoyed by the popularity of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Other studios assembled teen party movies about Palm Springs, or more serious surfing epics, but inside of two years the fad was on its way out. A minor attempt to combine the beach party vibe with a crime thriller is 1967's Catalina Caper, an independent production filmed in 1965 but held back from release for a full two years. By that time beach 'n' surf epics had become obsolete, supplanted by more exploitative movies about motorcycle gangs and youth rebellion. The semi-comic Catalina Caper stars Tommy Kirk as a scuba diver hired to recover a precious Chinese Scroll lost overboard near Catalina Island, for a crook (frequent Jerry Lewis foil Del Moore) who seeks to sell a fake to a Greek millionaire. The producers lined up a score of models and dancers to be various girls in bikinis, and hired Little Richard, The Cascades and Carol Connors to perform songs. The film's original title 'Never Steal Anything Wet' is also the title of a tune sung over the main titles by Mary Wells. The show had other difficulties in the commercial market. Former Disney star Tommy Kirk, outed as gay, had been dropped by Disney and was in the later stages of a career tailspin. Variety praised the animated main titles by the Murakami-Wolf company but called the film an insubstantial effort that failed to capture the fun of A.I.P.'s Beach Party pictures. It was finally released by Crown International, an exploitation distributor.

By Glenn Erickson