High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Beach party movies were an American 1960s genre of feature films created by American International Pictures (AIP) with their surprise 1963 hit, Beach Party, and copied by virtually every other studio. Precursors to the genre were Columbia Pictures 1959 release Gidget, starring Sandra Dee as a teenage surfer girl, and 1961's Gidget Goes Hawaiian. American International's films took the Gidget idea and added more music, a lot more bikinis, and removed nearly all references to parents. The films helped popularize surfing, surf music, and often included on-screen performances by well-known pop groups. The films were originally intended as a low-budget imitation of both the Elvis Presley musical and the Doris Day bedroom farce, aimed at the teen market, but they ended up taking on a life of their own.