It was the first direct imitation of AIP's hit Beach Party,[1] which was released six months earlier, and showcased several musical acts onscreen.

Arizonans Terry (Patricia Morrow), Sylvia (Lory Patrick), and Junior (Jackie DeShannon) drive to California's Malibu Beach to take a vacation, learn how to surf, and find Terry's brother "Skeet", Malibu's Big Kahuna bad boy (and a former football star whose career was ended with a skull injury).

Wayne Neal (Richard Crane), the decidedly "anti-surf" police sergeant, is on Skeet's back, waiting for him to screw up so he can either throw him in jail or out of town.

Neal, Skeet decides to return to Arizona with Sylvia when he realizes how much he loves her, and the girls enjoy the rest of the vacation with their boyfriends.

The Astronauts was a Colorado-based surf band[9] that had a Billboard Top 100 hit in 1963 with their song "Baja," composed by Lee Hazlewood.

Gordon also formed The Marketts and wrote their million seller "Out of Limits" and "Surfer's Stomp", which was one of the early successful surf songs released in 1961.

Jackie DeShannon performs two songs in the movie, "Glory Wave" and "Never Comin' Back", with Patricia Morrow and Lory Patrick (both written by Haskell and 'By' Dunham).

Ken Miller performs "Pearly Shells" (written by Lani Kai, Jericho Brown and Dunham).

Dunham and Haskell also wrote "Great White Water", which is heard as source music on a jukebox in the sequence at Casey's Surfer restaurant.

"[21] Upon release, Eugene Archer of The New York Times wrote "Flaming youth may be passé, but you'd never know it from Surf Party...It's only the attitudes that seem archaic, as they bounce into passionless love affairs, take reckless surfboard risks in pointless tests of courage and display an alarming lack of inhibitions and not a trace of social responsibility.

There is some neat surfing footage featuring pros like Mickey Dora and Johnny Fain but the flat black-and-white photography doesn’t do it justice though it buoys the story.