The more time that I spend studying the ins and outs of film history, the more that I’ve become fascinated with mid-century American films in the 1950s and 60s. A good number of the videos I’ve worked on in the last handful of years have centered around exploring the strange corners and practices of that time period, so many of which I think are as fascinating as ever, and this video is one of the first that I made in that series, centering in on one of the oddest subgenres that’s surely existed: the Beach Party movies.

This video received a Vimeo Staff Pick and appeared on Sight & Sound’s Best Video Essays of 2018 list.