Based on Charles Busch’s hilarious long-running stage play, Robert Lee King’s the outrageously surfadellic late-night-HBO-mainstay Psycho Beach Party is a wickedly funny genre mashup, turning high camp into high art with a double entendre-loaded pop culture stew of Frankie & Annette beach antics, Douglas Sirk melodrama and ‘80s slasher carnage. Chicklet (Can’t Hardly Wait’s Lauren Ambrose), a wannabe surf-girl with a split personality, becomes the primary suspect after a string of humorously gruesome Malibu murders terrifies the teen set. When the clues take her seaside, the fun and suspense really begin. Featuring a young, bikini-clad Amy Adams, Dharma & Greg’s Thomas Gibson as a burnt-out guru, Buffy’s Nicholas Brendon as a sexy surfboy and playwright/drag legend Busch in a juicy role as the fabulously stylish homicide detective.
