Sergeant Dead Head is what happens when American International Pictures forces the Beach Party formula to enlist in the military. With nary an Annette in sight, Frankie Avalon bumbles his way through the title role, pratfalling all over the U.S. Air Force’s Smedley Missile Base. It’s exactly the kind of locale you don’t want the accident-prone, where one might, say, plop his rear on the panic button sitting uncovered atop the general’s desk.

Despite never have expressing love for her, Dead Head is engaged to fellow enlistee Lucy (Deborah Walley, It’s a Bikini World). The nuptials are at risk when Dead Head catches a nap in a rocket, only to wake up as the spacecraft — commandeered by a chimpanzee in an astronaut suit and paid in bananas — lifts off (in black-and-white footage, mind you). It’s even stupider than it sounds …

… and gets stupider than that, because when he’s back on Earth, Dead Head and the chimp have somehow switched brains. Now he’s a stone-cold cad!

Avalon gives it his all, coming off like a cartoon character living in a cornball sitcom — purely on purpose, with frequent Jerry Lewis director Norman Taurog at the helm — even more so than the great Buster Keaton, who does his phys-com shtick! With lots of no-harm explosions and flowing water, Sergeant Dead Head hasn’t a mean bone in its body, but I’m afraid it doesn’t have much of a heart, either. Although every bit as colorful as its AIP brethren, the movie lacks that special something: unadulterated charm. And that’s with a cast that includes Eve Arden, Harvey Lembeck, Dwayne Hickman, John Ashley, Pat Buttram, Gale Gordon, Fred Clark and Cesar Romero, some of whom sing and dance.

Oh, did I mention this is also a musical? But its songs are lifeless and lackluster, plopped in like flung wall spackle to highlight how bereft of effort Louis M. Heyward’s script is. I can’t help but wonder if the movie was greenlighted just to get in the “JAMES BOND WILL RETURN”-style plug of the then-forthcoming Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine in the end credits, because Heyward and Academy Award-winning Taurog clearly saved the goods for that one. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

It’s not like Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer is the only actress who could headline the Catholicism comedy Yes, God, Yes, but she’s perfect for the role. Dyer may be in the middle of her 20s, but her diminutive stature goes a long way in selling the illusion that her character, Alice, is stuck in the throes of her teen years — aches, angst and all — at the dawn of this new millennium, when “A/S/L” became the new “What’s your major?”

Appropriately mousy (church mousy, perhaps?), Alice is a good girl headed down what her parents, pastor and private school faculty no doubt would term a bad road — one paved straight to hell. When an afternoon AOL chat with a stranger suddenly turns saucy, the supremely naive virgin notices a feeling markedly distinct from her puppy love for Leo in Titanic: sexual arousal. With the scrunched face of the curious, she begins exploring those feelings at a church retreat, including masturbation with her cellphone — not by looking at pornographic material, but by enjoying the vibration that results from each wrong move in the built-in game of Snake.

Yes, God, Yes holds some precedent with 2004’s Saved!, starting with its female lead experiencing a crisis both cataclysmic and catechistic, but the satire here isn’t nearly as savage. Nor is it as sharp, best exemplified by a running joke that has Alice not understanding the crude meaning of “tossing salad.” As it’s played, the gag isn’t highly offensive, but also simply isn’t funny; writer/director Karen Maine so greatly misjudges its value — as both laugh line and story point — that her debut feature opens with a title card defining the sex act, like a big-screen adaptation of Urban Dictionary.

Maybe it was a move for pure padding; Yes, God, Yes is based on Maine’s 2017 short, and feels it. In all of 11 minutes, the same-named piece achieves near-greatness and a more consistent performance from Dyer, because the story doesn’t stray into tangents. In the expanded form of 78 minutes, tonal changes abound, with initial acidity all but neutralized by the addition of Alice delivering a patronizing speech more attuned to the pat rhythms of TV sitcoms. While I get Maine wanting to grant Alice an awakening of empowerment to go hand in hand with her sexual one, it rings false and unearned. Ten Hail Marys, please. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.