THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956)

For those of you who don't know, the Ten Commandments are ten rules listed in the Christian Bible that it says humans should live by.  A few of them make sense like "Thou shalt not kill." (yeah, no shit!) and "Thou shalt not commit adultery.", but others like "...the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates..." are just silly.

Anyway, although the title of the film is THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, there's actually very little Commandments action going on.  Nope, the vast majority of the movie is about a dude named Moses.  Moses was born in Egypt way the fuck back in the day.  Around the time that he's hatched there was a prophecy that a great deliverer would be born to lead the slaves out of bondage.  So, the guy who owned all of slaves, the evil Pharaoh puts out a decree that all newborn male slave children shall be murdered.  Goddamn!  Moses' mother places lil' baby Moses in a basket and sends him afloat down the Nile river.  As Fate would have it, within one minute of being yeeted into the Nile, the evil Pharaoh's adult daughter (of all people) finds Moses and raises him as her own child.  Awww.  The End.

Oh sorry, that's actually just the beginning of the film!  Moses soon grows up to look like Charlton Heston and it's down to him and the Pharaoh's legitimate son, Yul Brynner, as to who will take over once the Pharaoh dies.  Things are looking pretty good for Moses, but then he fucks up and before you can say "I really wish Twenty One Pilots would cover Phil Collins' 'One More Night'" Moses is now a slave himself!  What the fuck?  Talk about a rags to riches and back to rags again story.

For being an older film THE TEN COMMANDMENTS is still very entertaining.  Yeah, it's as historically accurate as DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?, but who cares.  Solid acting by an impressive cast (I think Anne Baxter is the highlight of the movie), great sets, an insanely huge amount of extras, animals all over the place, wildly imaginative story, badass costumes, strong direction, groundbreaking special effects and a quick pace that makes the 220 minute runtime fly by.  I've seen TTC a few times over the years and I'd gladly watch it again right now.  My only real gripe is the ten plagues of Egypt stuff is passed over way too quickly.  It shows a little bit about water turning into blood and the hail storm, but it completely skips over the frogs and boils and locust!  Lame.  Still, it's easily worth multiple watches.  Check it out.

BEACH PARTY (1963)

Twenty-something-year-old teenagers Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello have had enough of high school.  It's summer now and school can eat a bowl of fuck cause they are here to parr-tee!!  Frank is looking to get up in those guts, but Annette ain't having none of it.  So when Frankie rents a beach bungalow for them to use as a summer fuck shack, Annette secretly invites along 30 or so of their closest cockblocking friends.  Frankie is upset by this and sets out to make Annette jealous by acting like he's interested in a local sexpot.  Annette returns his childish behavior by acting like she's hooking up with their neighborhood peeping tom/anthropologist (Robert Cummings) who's secretly writing a book about teenage sex rituals.

During all of this, there's lots of dancing, singing, surfing and weird 60's shenanigans.  I enjoyed the hell out of all of it, but my most pleasant pickle surprise came from Eric Von Zipper and his motorcycle gang, The Rats.  They were hilarious.

Anyway, I thought BEACH PARTY was a lot of fun.  Perfectly silly story, quick pace, great music, pretty girls in bikinis, Dick Dale wearing an earring, Von Zipper cracking stupid jokes nonstop, energetic dancing, Vincent Price cameo, Joel McCrea's son Jody in a supporting role as Deadhead, awesome 60's hair styles, humor so corny it's actually kinda funny, beatniks questioning traditional values, continuity errors galore, innocence, a pie fight and a dancing girl during the end credits that I really enjoyed.  Recommended.

Part 2 - Muscle Beach Party (1964)
Part 3 - Bikini Beach (1964)
Part 4 - Pajama Party (1964)
Part 5 - Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
Part 6 - How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)
Part 7 - The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966)
Part 8 - Back to the Beach (1987)