A few years ago the esteemed Arbogast of Arbogast on Film kicked off a self-described floating blogathon called "The One You Might Have Saved," in which he put out a call for other writers "To come forward with those doomed characters from horror movies whose plight or personality so moved the writer that he or she wished they had the power to breach the fourth wall of cinema and save that person from his or her tragic fate." For quite some time I had kicked around the notion of who I would choose but just never got around to putting keystrokes to blogosphere. However, the man has once more put out a call for those we might have saved, which means it's high time I got off my butt and finally get this done.
So who did I choose? I chose Marylin Clarke's doomed bad girl Tina from The Horror of Party Beach.

Why her? Well, she's sassy...
And brassy...

Brazen...

And bold.

A girl who wasn't afraid to take a walk on the wild side...

And do her own thing.

A righteous rioter who wasn't ready to rein it in and take the domesticated ride on the yellow bus to Squaresville but opted, instead, for a fast, free-wheeling trip on the road to Ruination.

Of course, this wild and brazen and recalcitrant streak put a target squarely on her back. The rules for such things weren't cast in bedrock back in 1964 but they were definitely an itch in somebody's pants, which is why this round hole in a world of square pegs had to go to make way for the heroine proper -- who, in contrast, is duller than dirt and might as well have been a store mannequin -- and serve as a painful lesson to those who would follow in her wake.
Feh.
And when all this behavior finally burns the last straw with her [now] former beau, she casts him off like her cute top and Capris...

And celebrates her new found independence with a swim and little me time on a solitary outcropping...

Where her fate is quickly sealed in a scene that is 50% hilariously ludicrous because of what attacks her...


And 50% morbidly perverse as the google-eyed and knock-kneed horror slashes/caresses the poor girl to death.



And in the end, with our bad girl "properly" punished, and the homogenizing, white-bread vestiges of the Eisenhower era safely defended for just a little while longer, most folks are left with this indelible image as a reminder of those irredeemable who veer too far off course.

As for me? Nah...

To me, she'll always be the one that got away.