With a title like "Summer of '63" one might expect an exploration of the rise of Beatlemania or perhaps an overview of the beach party movie genre, but clearly not so. The short opens with a doctor explaining how a number of diseases now have 'absolute cures', but I never would have expected to hear the words 'polio', 'gonorrhea' and 'syphilis' in the same sentence. Well I suppose the mention of polio was supposed to make viewers a bit more comfortable with the topic of sexually transmitted disease.
The story goes on to describe the escapades of four young men who embark on a summer fling at a town called Seaview, right after one of them has just become engaged to his girlfriend. Winding up with a floozie at one of the local dives, Jim does the deed (off screen) and winds up with a 'small sore', this after his buddies play loose lips in the presence of Jim's girlfriend Judy, thereby blowing up that relationship. When Jim seeks out advice over his affliction, he doesn't immediately mention that he's also made the rounds with his buddy's gal pal Kathy, but the implication is clear. This bout of syphilis is going to be making the rounds.
The brief flick has all the earmarks of some of those early exploitation flicks from the Thirties and Forties, and it looks quite amateurish today even though it was made as late as 1972. But the lesson still applies for modern day viewers, so in between the guffaws and bad sex jokes, there's at least some semblance of a reasonable takeaway here. In some ways though, the biggest jolt for this viewer was watching what the party boys had to deal with to open their cans of beer at the beach. Pop-top cans weren't invented yet, so they actually had to carry around a can opener! Back in the day, we'd say 'pass the church key'.
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