Catalina Caper

Catalina Caper
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Lee Sholem
Produced by	Jack Bartlett Bond Blackman
Written by	Sam Pierce (story) Clyde Ware
Starring	Tommy Kirk
Music by	Jerry Long
Cinematography	Ted V. Mikels
Edited by	Herman Freedman
Production company	Executive Pictures Corporation
Distributed by	Crown International Pictures Warner Bros.
Release date	1967 (1967)
Running time	84 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Catalina Caper (also known as Never Steal Anything Wet) is a 1967 comedy musical mystery film starring Tommy Kirk. It is one of the last (if not the last) in the beach party film genre. This entry blends the beach format with a standard crime-caper comedy. It was shot on and around Santa Catalina Island, California.

The film was also featured in the second season of the movie-mocking television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K).

An ancient Chinese scroll is stolen from a museum in Los Angeles and teenage Don Pringle (Kirk) arrives on Catalina Island simultaneously. Although approximately half of the film involves swimsuit-clad adolescents dancing on yachts in several different dance montages, Pringle and his friends investigate the scroll's theft and discover that the parents of one of the boys is responsible—also while attempting to woo a mysteriously depressed young woman Katrina Corelli (Ulla Strömstedt) from her vaguely threatening boyfriend Angelo (Lyle Waggoner). After wrestling the scroll away from Angelo and his cohorts, bent on more dangerous results (in an underwater scuba diving action scene), the boys secretly return the scroll to the museum to the relief of the repentant parents.

Both Never Steal Anything Wet and Scuba Party were titles planned for the film, before the makers decided on Catalina Caper (see Music section below).

The movie was made by Executive Pictures Corporation, which had been formed by Bond Blackman and Jack Barlett. It started filming in September 1965. Tommy Kirk was signed to a four-picture contract of which this was to be the first. (However he did not wind up making any of the other films.)

Kirk appeared in four other films in the beach party genre: Village of the Giants (1965); two AIP features, Pajama Party (1965) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966); and It's a Bikini World (1967). Sue Casey, who plays Anne Duval in this film, was seen earlier as one of the female leads in another beach party film, 1965's The Beach Girls and the Monster.