The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell

(Jonny Gillette & Kevin Wheatley, 2006)

A joyfully insane comic-book style comedy-horror / adventure-quest in which a host of bizarre characters (including, but by no means limited to, the descendants of JFK and Castro, a pair of not-too-bright androids, a deadly female cannibal, a genetic super race, and the spawn of Satan) battle for political control of post-nuclear-holocaust ‘New America’—all of which madness is presented in the form of a historical documentary from an even more distant future.
As an exercise in low-budget film-making, this is an incredible piece of work. It’s creative, original, funny, visually distinctive, packed full of ideas, and massively entertaining. The entire cast invest an admirable amount of energy in their performances, with co-director Wheatley playing the lead character of Tex Kennedy like a mutant conjunction of Jack Black and Bill Hicks. Something about the style of the film (specifically: the frequent interjections of the narrator; the quick cut-aways to illustrative diagrams, photos, etc.; and the highly amusing bickering among characters) reminded me of the US TV sitcom (which hasn’t had anything like the respect it deserves in the UK) Arrested Development (but then again, maybe this was just a subliminal effect of the presence of Tony Hale, who plays Buster in AD). It might also be possible (given the large cast of weird characters and the overall ‘adventure-quest’ feel) to describe Beach Party... as a kind of post-apocalyptic splatcore version of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But enough of trying to explain the inexplicable. The bottom-line is: You should watch this film. It is good.

The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell @ IMDb