EDITOR’S NOTE: Malibu Beach was on USA Up All Night so many times: June 7 and November 11, 1989; April 6 and 7 and October 6, 1990 and April 12 and August 24, 1991.

Malibu Beach is not Malibu Bikini Shop, Malibu Hot Summer, Malibu Summer and it most certainly is not Malibu High, one of the most deceptively mean-spirited movies of all time.

That dog with a bikini in his mouth on the poster? He’s in this movie. He’s the pet of Dugan Hicks (Steve Oliver, who worked as a “cab driver, roughneck, bounty hunter, and fitness instructor to the stars”), the kind of sort of bad guy of this movie. Yes, the same Dugan Hicks from The Van. I just freaked out — do we have a Crown International cinematic universe?

Well, our lead character and lifeguard Dina (Kim Lankford, Street Corner Justice, The Octagon) lives in the same house that Laurie did in The Pom Pom Girls. I do believe that this shared reality exists.

Crown International movies are great because they say, “We have girls, a beach, some hunky guys, some music…what are we missing? A plot? What if they just all hang out for 90 minutes and occasionally have sex instead?”

This is the kind of movie that has a shark attack — it was a beach and 1978, you know? — and no one gets killed. It barely gets in the way of the breasts and beer and disco and weed. It also has Susan Player (Invasion of the Bee Girls, The Pom Pom Girls) and Tara Strohmeier (The Student Nurses, Truck Turner, Candy Stripe Nurses) in its cast and that’s a good thing.

Director Robert J. Rosenthal also wrote — you guessed it — The Pom Pom Girls and The Van and only directed one other movie, Zapped! He was joined on the writing of this movie by Celia Susan Cotelo, his co-writer on those two aforementioned Crown International movies.

As I prepare these articles, I often read through what other people think. I just read review that referred to this movie as a waste of time and how sad for people who don’t just want to watch a mindless hour and a half of dogs stealing bikini tops while young love blooms on the beach with no responsibility or worries of tomorrow.