Beach Balls(1988)

While visiting their favorite music store one afternoon, Charlie (Phillip Paley) and Scully (Steven Tash) spot Keith (Douglas R. Starr) entering the store. They find out from him that a show he and his band, Severed Heads in a Bag, had planned for Saturday night that was going to be attended by a record company agent from New York City has been cancelled after the hosting venue suddenly closed, and he is unsure about what to do now since every other place in town is booked that night. Charlie gets to thinking about holding a party at his house so the band can do their performance at it (and hopefully use the party as a means of getting closer to his crush, Wendy [Heidi Helmer]), since his parents are in New York City attending a rally for decency sponsored by a famed televangelist. However, knowing that his sister Kathleen (Leslie Danon) will snitch on him to them, he decides to remove her from the picture by distracting her with Wendy’s brother Doug (Tod Bryant), a lifeguard that she has been crushing on. The next day, he steals her diary, and in her handwriting, he writes down how much she desires Doug and how she would want their dream date to play out. He then meets with Keith while he is hanging out with Wendy at a local bar and convinces him to hold the show at his house, and Keith promises to spread the word and get a crowd to come. Charlie then visits Doug and reads off the false diary entry to him, and he specifically states that Kathleen wishes to do the date on Saturday night and be taken to a seaside motel along the Pacific Coast Highway so she can have sex with him there. Doug later calls Kathleen and asks her out, and she accepts.

Shortly after Doug picks up Kathleen and drives off, Charlie, Scully, Wendy, Scully’s new girlfriend Toni (Amanda Goodwin), and Keith and his band get the party organized, and a big crowd turns up soon after. Charlie’s probation officer Sugarman (Rafael Mauro) suddenly shows up at the door drunk and asks Charlie if he can speak with him, despondent over his wife leaving him days earlier, and Charlie spends some time trying to keep him away from the booze until he dumps him off on Scully, who introduces him to meditation and ultimately gets him into a healthier state of mind and being. However, Charlie gets upset over Wendy being enamored with Keith, despite the fact that she herself has seen that he is not a relationship kind of guy. While his band is taking a break, Keith heads into a bathroom with Wendy and tries to get frisky with her, but she drives her knee into his gonads and yells that she wanted to get to know him better as a person and is not some sort of groupie, and Keith informs her that he just likes groupies. Keith soon meets with Charlie and informs him that his time alone with Wendy didn’t go well, so Charlie finds Wendy and consoles her. As they talk, they finally grow much closer, culminating with them admitting the feelings they’ve always had deep down for one another and kissing. Spurred by how Wendy doesn’t feel good about having been misled the way she was, Charlie tells her all about the set-up he performed on Doug and Kathleen, and they both call up every motel along the Pacific Coast Highway so he can reveal his deception to them. However, they are unsuccessful in locating them.

As this happens, Charlie’s enemies Babcock (Charles Gilleran), Mollusk (Gary Schneider), and Gina (Tami Smith) arrive, and Babcock and Mollusk find Charlie and Wendy and the former holds them up with a gun, demanding to know where he keeps his money since they need it for a problem Mollusk is having with his mother. As Charlie hands over whatever cash he has, the antagonistic lifeguard Dick (Morgan Englund) starts a fight with Keith that quickly escalates into a full-scale, house-wrecking brawl among the partiers. Suddenly, Mollusk’s beastly mother shows up with her pitbull Fifi and screams out for Mollusk, and the sight of them sends all of the partygoers running. Mollusk gets some of the money off of Babcock before he runs off with Gina and pays his mother, but Babcock loses the rest while he is fleeing and the unnamed twin sisters (Tami & Terri Barber) featured in the movie find it and take it for themselves. Meanwhile, Doug ends up speeding off in terror from a motel he stops at after the homosexual front desk clerk comes on to him, and he stops a short time later and tells Kathleen that he has drawn the conclusion that he might be homosexual himself since one was just attracted to him. To help him out of his “moral confusion”, Kathleen has sex with him right there in the car.

After checking over the house for any serious damage, Charlie finds out from Keith that he can’t play guitar anymore due to injuring his hand in the brawl, and the record company guy still hasn’t shown up yet. Suddenly, Charlie’s parents return home early (according to a random radio broadcast, the rally ended prematurely when the televangelist was discovered to have been involved in illegal activities), and his father and an unknown man – soon introduced as Al (Mick Kleber) – come inside carrying his mother, who is sedated. His father explains that she suffered a nervous breakdown after the televangelist got busted, but on the flight home, Al – who was sitting next to them – gave her some sedatives that he had on him. Charlie is then officially introduced to Al, and he finds out that Al is the record agent that the band has been waiting on. The band sets up their stuff again and does their performance, but with Charlie substituting for Keith on guitar since he is a skilled player himself and knows the band’s songs.

A day or two later, Doug and Kathleen are now dating each other (though Doug has become something of a henpecked boyfriend), and Charlie and Wendy are hanging out at the beach with Scully and Toni. Scully and Toni soon take off to go surfing, and they run into Sugarman, who is a happier man and about to do some surfing himself. Keith comes up to Charlie and tells him that Al wants to sign him and his band, but on the condition that Charlie joins them. Charlie happily accepts the offer, but before Keith departs for elsewhere, he asks him to apologize to Wendy for how he treated her at the party, so he does, and she forgives him. Moments later, Charlie and Wendy start kissing just as the sun begins to set.