As the 70s approached their end, Adamson continued to mine the cultural landscape for material, expanding the possibilities from work he had done in the western, horror, and blaxploitation genres and into the teen beach comedy, a pornographic futuristic science fiction rock opera, and, most surprisingly when moving into the 80s, more family friendly films (but that is for another day).
There is very little reason to spend much time thinking or energy typing words on Sunset Cove, a film apparently riding the coat tails of Animal House or foreseeing things like Porky's and Screwballs that would follow (and in this way it is a little impressive that Adamson seemed to predate the bigger onslaught of the "teen hang-out sex comedy" that would be coming). And while Adamson did previously dabble in the sexploitation genre, Sunset Cove remains the only example of him moving into the world of teenagers. The simple premise about a bunch of teens who band together to stop their greedy mayor and some wealthy land developers from demolishing their beloved beach to build some condominiums exists mainly to string together a series of immature pranks, verbal jousting, and boys and girls in various states of nakedness. Otherwise there is very little happening of any kind of interest, and Adamsons' direction comes across as numbing and aimless, relying on several extended montages to pad the running time (including an extremely long protest scene with the repeated "catchphrase" of "save our beach!" carrying us along, including an original song with the same name (not surprisingly, the original title of the picture was Save Our Beach). There is a late in the game surprise when John Carradine appears as a lawyer who aids the kids in getting out of a legal jam, but the film primarily meanders until its ending. Characters never get outside of the realm of the "stock figure", the soft core scenes more laughable than anything erotic, and none of the comedy lands in any way. But Adamson gets the job done (in a production that appears to have been quite smooth and without any interesting tidbits compared to some of his other joints), adds another notch to his rather lengthy post of genres he has worked in, and everyone on-screen goes home with some kind of check while viewers go home with a lost ninety minutes.
Making Sunset Cove an even sadder venture is that it is from the same year as Adamson's occasionally interesting horror film Nurse Sherri (written about elsewhere) and the year after Cinderella 2000, perhaps his most outwardly bonkers and insane film. In the year 2047, sex has been outlawed and the government uses robots to monitor all possibly sexual activity. The film mainly follows the Cinderella template, with Cinderella being abused by her incestuous stepsisters and sex-hungry stepmother before finding herself at the. Prince's ball, whose parents host the party in the hopes of him finding a wife who stirs his sexual passion.
The film is actually a quite enjoyable adaptation of the fairy tale, with nine musical numbers that make it somewhat surprising that the film has yet to gain some cult sing-a-long following on the midnight movie circuit (at least when midnight movies are able to be screened again), particularly the centerpiece Fairy Godmother montage tune (apparently titled "You Gotta Grab It", though its chorus of "we all need love!" is quite catchy). Adamson remains clever when it comes to marketing, and the film works without its overtly graphic content as if he tried to consider alternate screening potential for the work. Some can be excised completely, as in the quite curious orgy between Snow White and six of the seven dwarves (Angelo Rossitto as the "Doc" dwarf apparently refused to shoot the scene and so the sequence is framed with him leaving the room). But one can feel some actual interest from him into this one, and it is a quite ambitious and rather "big" work in comparison (and arguably the last time this would be the case, though there would still be some relatively charming work to come).
Sunset Cove
Dir. Al Adamson
87 Minutes
USA
1978
Starring: Jay B. Larson, Karen Fredrik, John Durren, John Carradine, Steven Fisher
*1/2/*****
Cinderella 2000
Dir. Al Adamson
103 Minute
USA
1977
Starring: Catherine Burgess, Jay B. Larson, Vaughn Armstrong, Erwin Fuller, Renee Harmon, Eddie Garetti
***/*****
October 1st, 2020