“This latest exhibition of stupidity is over, so let’s break it up.”

Drake’s rating: If you’re a fan of MG automobiles, you might want to skip this review

Drake’s review: Honestly, I was heading right down the road to review Angel III, the penultimate chapter in the saga of Molly. But then I took a wrong turn and ended up taking a trip to the beach instead. And this wasn’t just any beach, either. In fact, I ended up on Zuma Beach, an NBC TV movie that premiered on the network way back in September of 1978.

Now beach movies were still popping up here and there in the late ‘70s, with Crown International in particular making sure that the drive-ins had titles like Malibu Beach to bring in the kids. And it seems like NBC wanted a piece of the action as well, putting together a flick that, by all rights, should have been nothing more than a forgotten attempt at casting Suzanne Somers in a lead role. Which it still kind of is. But thanks to the casting department, Zuma Beach is full of names and faces that were just on the verge of becoming well-known to moviegoers across the globe.

Somers herself plays Bonnie Katt, a singer whose career has seemingly seen its best days pass already. Depressed, she drives her little MG to the beach, where the humidity fries the electronics and the gaskets all fail at once, dumping oil all over the parking lot.

Oh, sorry. Right, this is a movie, not real life, so in fact Bonnie’s MG is a reliable little convertible that draws the attention of Steve (Ben Marley, Jaws 2) and his friend Billy (Perry Lang, Spring Break), who are themselves heading down to Zuma Beach to get in some fun in the sun before the summer’s over. Which sounds pretty good to Bonnie since she’s not getting any writing done in any event,* so it’s off to the beach for her as well.

But if she’s looking for a bit of privacy and seclusion, Bonnie is hitting the wrong surf spot as this place fills up with recognizable faces pretty quickly. Firstly, we have David (Mark Wheeler, Backdraft), the local B.M.O.C.** who is rebounding after a breakup with Nancy (P.J. Soles, Halloween). Nancy herself is still hung up on David, but she’s also fallen under the sway of J.D. (Michael Biehn, Tombstone), who happens to be David’s number one rival and kind of an all-around jerk.

Less interested in soap opera dynamics and more interested in tanning are Beverly (Rosanna Arquette, After Hours) and her cousin Cathy (Kimberly Beck, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). And less interested in tanning and more interested in staying sharp is Burt (Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People) who will be taking over as the full-time lifeguard after the summer ends.

Bonnie gets the attention of the guys, of course, which would probably be a bigger ego boost if they knew who she was. Unfortunately, it seems that Bonnie’s records just aren’t hitting that teenage demographic. Debbie Harry she’s not.

Still, Bonnie ends up connecting with quite a few of the kids on a friendly level. Advice is given, volleyballs are served, and sand castles are built. Which is about as daring as Zuma Beach gets since this is a prime-time TV movie from the late ‘70s.

Somers is good here, though. Showing that she had range beyond that of the ditzy airhead she was typecast as in Three’s Company, she plays Bonnie as just a bit melancholy. Her career is in free-fall and she doesn’t quite know how to course-correct, so she surrounds herself with a beach full of younger people just to get away from her problems. But at the same time she stays outwardly chipper, enjoying both the attention she gets as well as the general companionship of the kids.

That’s as deep as Zuma Beach gets, since the movie was a fairly light piece of fluff slotted into a mid-week slot, but it really doesn’t need to be any deeper anyway. The kids cavort, David and J.D. compete, and it all ends with the big volleyball game between the high school guys from Malibu and Van Nuys. But we all saw that coming, right? Can’t have a beach movie without a volleyball game, after all.

Zuma Beach rolls right along at a pleasant pace thanks in large part to prolific director Lee H. Katzin, who was working from an original script by John Carpenter, a guy you just might have heard of once or twice around these here Mutant Reviewers parts. Katzin keeps the narrative flowing as the characters mix, match and intermingle, and he keeps Somers as the unquestionable lead around whom the rest of the characters gravitate.

Zuma Beach is a harmless little flick that’s mostly notable for its cast of up-and-comers, but at the same time it’s a decently fun watch, content to fill the screen with swimsuits and suntans for ninety minutes and then let you go on with your evening.

Which, in 1978, either meant going to see Star Wars again or wondering when your sister’s MGB would start working again and move out of the driveway.

*Bonnie obviously doesn’t have a publisher hefting a Mutant Thwack Stick™. Lucky Bonnie.

**Big Man on Campus. Alternately, Big Mutant on Campus, but that seems to be a regional acronym. That region being the Mutant Offices.

Intermission!

• J.D. claims he would never try to steal another guy’s girl. I think we all know J.D. is full of it.
• Texan Cathy knows how to roll a joint! She must be from Austin.
• And then she goes all Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” on her cousin. Maybe she’s from Dallas.
• And there’s Tanya Roberts, just a few years before The Beastmaster. Like P.J. Soles, she was only a few years younger than Suzanne Somers, but since there’s no alcohol on Zuma Beach, no one’s checking their IDs.
• Burt’s smoking and dreaming about cold beer. He might not be lifeguard material.
• Building a giant sand castle isn’t the worst way to spend your day.
• I think that game point volley takes up about a quarter of the run time.
• Yeah, don’t piss off Kimberly Beck. She hung out with a much tougher crowd in Massacre at Central High.
• That was my attempt at blatant self-promotion. I get paid by the click and I’m on target for a record year of nearly forty-two cents.
• The kids throw the lifeguard into the ocean. This would be a really embarrassing time to find out he couldn’t swim.
• Bonnie heading back to her MG. Man, I hope it starts.
• Why, yes, I have worked on MGs, thanks for asking! And, yes, it was a traumatizing experience!