StuOz An all American family of the early 1970s runs into problems when young thugs appear.Not a lot of terror here, maybe "Disaster On The Beach" would have been a better title. Young people might struggle with this flick as it is not the sort of movie we see today. So if you are expecting strong violence, swearing, rape and drug taking: you will not get it here!I am a middle aged male who totally enjoyed enjoyed Terror On The Beach. However, I admit there was one scene where I was expecting a rape or even a sexual advance from the thugs (to an attractive girl in swimming cloths), but got nothing?? What was that all about?? Were the thugs gay or something?Also, at times the musical score sounds like it belongs in a 1960s sci-fi TV series, rather than a movie like this.But the flick held me from beginning to end and it was perfectly casted.

blankenshipdk The blaring title pretty much says it all and when we see the opening scene of the happy all American family tooling down the highway in their camper van, we realize that it's only a matter of time before things go awry. Of course, they do post haste when a band of evil hippies equipped with a vintage fire truck and a dune buggy show up, and as if precursors to a Mad Max event, send the camper off the road, thus initiating a chain of scenarios constituting said terror. Once the terror starts, the hysteria reaches high volume, meaning that not only scenes involving the diabolical hipsters are melodramatically hyperbolic, but also the familial interactions. Actually, the acting in this movie is solid, featuring a fine cast despite the one dimensional qualities of the bad guys. The build up is fairly suspenseful, although like my wife said, the family is apparently masochistic as they repeatedly expose themselves to abuse when all they really need to do is drive to another beach. The climax includes a ridiculous premise involving removing the electrical system from the van which is used to blind the hippies at night during an assault ... perhaps their pupils are dilated from excessive pot smoking. The narrative may have been more compelling if the subtext of " all hippies are bad " had been dropped in favor of fleshing out the freaks as substantive 3-D characters. Despite its shortcomings, I enjoyed this flick, although maybe for the wrong reasons, however it was entertaining for the most part. In the end the vanster family drives off victorious with not a scratch on the camper even though they rolled it a couple of times during evasive maneuvers from the Mad Max Mansons.

merrywater I tend to adore the ABC movies of the week: to me they represent the originality of plots back then. Pictures nowadays seldom come up with something new. Horror pictures always deal with haunted houses and dead kids. Or else they're Japanese rip-offs.This movie can boast of having a two-faced atmosphere: summer vacation leisure mixed with insidious peril.A middle-class family goes on a camping trip, and repeatedly become the victims of an eerie hippie gang's pranks. The pranks keep getting more and more physical until they reach the level of attempted murder.Dennis Weaver was perhaps type-casted as the upright, rather naive family man that believes that if you don't react on bad changes, they'll conveniently disappear clear out of sight. Nevertheless, he was an excellent actor, and this picture offers quite a number of interesting twists. A hilarious scene is when the family hears a cry further down the beach, and Weaver gets the sight of a body in the water. When he's ran out to it, he founds out that it's actually an inflatable sex doll dressed in his daughters underwear!

lazarillo I remember this one from when it played on TV when I was about five, but I saw it again recently on the Fox Channel. Dennis Weaver is the main star playing basically the same role he played in "Duel"--a mild-mannered, middle-aged guy whose manhood is tested when he suddenly finds himself in an escalating, completely irrational conflict--except that instead of facing a psychotic truckdriver, Weaver this time is menaced by a bunch of annoying hippies. He also has his whole family with him, so the movie is also similar to both the earlier "Hot Rod to Hell" and the later "The Hills Have Eyes", except that instead of JD hotrodders or crazed cannibals the villains are, uh, a bunch of annoying hippies. And that's the problem. These guys are not exactly the Manson family--all they do is eat the family's food, shake their camper, make strange sound effects with stereo equipment, and do weird things with mannequins. Basically, they "freak the squares." But since the movie is told entirely from the point of view of the "squares" who are being "freaked", it's all ridiculously melodramatic and reactionary. There is no real violence and no sex (although it does feature a young Susan Dey in a bikini). Oh well, what do you expect from a crappy 70's TV movie?