Terror on the Beach (1973)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A family has set out to spend some family time on the beach, just like old times together. The dad is a gentle man, not smart on mechanics but his son knows a little bit about it because this family will need it. As they are driving along on the back-roads there is suddenly two vehicles around them: a guy with a life-sized plastic doll in a convertible and two in a sand-buggy. The thugs end up running the family off the road and the trouble begins.You don't have to wait long for the hippy thugs to show up, only about 2 minutes into the film. This film does not waste time trying to develop the characters of the family members in the beginning, they develop them throughout the course of the film. The thugs are just thugs, not much to develop with them.Really not a good film but it's an okay watch if you are super bored.3/10

****SPOILERS*** Unusual film depicting the free and peace loving hippies of the 1960's and early 1970's as a bunch of ruthless criminals who terrorize this family, the Glynns, who are out to have a good time on the beach fishing and getting a sun tan. It's Pop the head of the family Neil Glynn, Dennis Weaver, the peace loving adult who at first tries to make peace with the hippie marauders without much success. The hippies who drive around the beach like a bunch of Hells Angels in dune-buggies who think of Neil as a weakling and unmercifully take advantage of him at every opportunity. Neil's son Steve, Kristoffer Tabori, feels unlike his pop that you have to meet fire with fire to deal with these wild hippies who seemed to be overdosing on both beer and weed making them far worse then they are.It takes a while for Neil to realize that trying to be nice to thee hippies isn't what's going to work or keep them from possibly massacring him and his family. It's then that he reluctantly decides to take the gloves off and meet them man to man or, in the case of the weaker sect members of of the hippie gang, man to woman. This leads to the final showdown on the beach with what looked like a martial arts and boxing expert Neil rubbing the head or top dog hippie Jerry's, Scott Hylands, nose in the dirt and having his fellow hippies, men & women, too scared, in seeing what their up against, to come to Jerry's aid.Obviously influenced by the Charles "Sweet Charlie" Manson and his hippie clan's massacre of some half dozen people five years earlier the movie's depiction of hippies or the hippie movement seemed a bid odd since it come out at Manson's trial that he and his gang warn't hippies at all. They including "Sweet Charlie" Manson were a bunch of ex-cons and burned doubt druggies who's only love was for starting up a race war between blacks, whom they framed in their murder spree, and whites! Hardly something that any peace loving hippie would do.

Hippie band menaces suburban family camping at the beach.A made for TV quickie— it's not even hard to spot the commercial pauses. Probably took them no more than 5 days to shoot. One thing for sure-- they didn't have to build any sets. No sir, no phony surf or projection screens here; it's all genuine SoCal coastline.However, the storyline is something else, more like a respectable person's bad dream about stereotyped hippies. So why does the Manson-like band harass good citizen Weaver and his family. Unless I missed something, we're never told, which sort of blows a hole through the middle of the plot. I guess we're to assume it's a culture clash with hippies as the inexplicable bad guys. My guess is the script was a rush job without time to plug the holes.In fact, just what the band is trying to do remains murky throughout. They taunt and leer, drive recklessly, trash the campsite, and even tip over the camper. But who knows why—just hippie fun, I guess. Meanwhile, citizen Weaver finally goes from suburban Milktoast to enraged righteousness, and we wonder what took him so long. I'm sensing a parable here that sort of fits in with the Charles Bronson vigilante movies of the time-- Death Wish (1974)-- where low-life's rape and murder Bronson's family triggering his own murderous rage. But of course, that's much too brutal for a TV movie. So we get low-life vandals, instead.Anyway, the narrative manages some tension as the provocations mount; the acting is good; and I almost got a sunburn from watching. Then too, the bickering father-son, mother- daughter, amount to a realistic touch. But unless you want a time-passer or just don't like hippies, skip it.

I can't believe I waste my time watching this garbage! I did because Leonard Maltin gave it an "AA" rating, and for TV movies this is usually a reliable indicator of some quality entertainment.The acting was OK, but whoever wrote it should be forever denied access to any medium of communication. The plot is ludicrous, the motivations of the "bad guys" totally absent, and the various family interactions silly and shallow. For example, Dad preaches that violent reaction to aggression is BAD, but he turns out to be an "admirable" person NOT because of his "ignore the idiots" philosophy, but because he's pretty good with his fists...The ONLY message I was able to glean from this pap was that the nuclear family is Good and alternate living arrangements are Bad. Oh, and Bad people happen to Good people.