Manchurian Candidate sleeper agent Laurence Harvey directed and starred in Welcome to Arrow Beach. Then he died. Whether from embarrassment remains unknown. Es posible.
Wayward hitchhiking hippie girl Robbin (the Relentless Meg Foster in an early role) skinny-dips in the ocean, albeit trespassing on private property to do so. The landowner, middle-aged madman Jason Henry (Harvey), puts down his peeper binoculars long enough to introduce himself to Robbin and invite her to a steak dinner at his estate. He lives there with his pretty — and pretty protective — sister (Joanna Pettet, Double Exposure), who confesses to their naive guest, “Jason’s very fond of succotash.”
And for dessert? Possibly a rag soaked in chloroform. See, as an epigraph spills and spoils in the film’s opening frames, Jason’s not merely a Korean War veteran, but a full-fledged cannibal. Who can tell us why? Certainly not R&B/telethon legend Lou Rawls, crooner of Arrow Beach’s Sammy Cahn-penned theme song, “Who Can Tell Us Why.”
Harvey’s movie isn’t so much ham-fisted as spit-roasted, with his own arm subbing for the stick. Perhaps sensing he wasn’t long for this world, and thus applying a “fuck it” attitude, he’s unafraid to get his hands dirty — figuratively or otherwise — as his silver spoon-fed character increasingly unhinges himself from the frame of reality. And Pettet, forever underrated, makes one helluva match as a sibling of questionable behaviors herself.
Rather amusingly, the pic feels a decade too late and a half-decade ahead of its time, straddling both sides of the border between Hollywoods old and new. On one hand, you’ve got grizzled ol’ Stuart Whitman (Cuba Crossing) as the law; on the other, ’70s star Jesse Vint (Macon County Line) as one of the lawless. No matter which side Welcome to Arrow Beach favors, it certainly marks the first time I’ve heard a physician pronounce “Quaalude” as “kwah-lude.” It’s hip to be square, but not that square. —Rod Lott