Cover Girl Models follows the usual Corman formula, following the misadventures of three beautiful girls. This time they’re not nurses or stewardesses but models and they’re off to South East Asia for a fashion shoot.
Mark (John Kramer) is a photographer for a magazine that is aimed at liberated women but all Mark wants to know from editor Diane is how much cleavage is required in his photos.
He already has three models lined up but decides he can’t work with one of them. He finds a replacement when his assistant Mandy (Tara Strohmeier) falls into a swimming pool and he notices what’s beneath her wet T-shirt. Along with Claire (Lindsay Bloom) and Barbara (played by Pat Anderson who also appeared in Fly Me) they set off for Hong Kong.
Barbara inadvertently gets mixed up with international spies when microfilm is hidden in the lining of one of her dresses. The spies try to kidnap her but she gets rescued by a Chinese kung fu-fighting travel agent (yes, this is a kung fu cover girl models movie). We tend to suspect that whatever he is he’s probably not a travel agent.
Claire is trying to sweet talk a movie producer to further her film career. She doesn’t actually have a film career but she really wants one.
Mark decides he kinda likes Mandy and he’s going to make her a big-time model, but then she runs into a photographer from a leading Asian fashion magazine who has the same idea. It’s quite possible that Mark is really more interested in getting Mandy into bed than in her potential as a model. He’s that kind of guy.
At some stage just about every female in the movie becomes a target of kidnappers. That seems to be the one big idea that scriptwriter Howard R. Cohen had so whenever he’s not sure what should happen next he throws in a kidnapping attempt.
This is standard Corman fare. There’s some nudity, some humour and an action/mystery sub-plot.
Cirio H. Santiago obviously believed that the art of film directing consisted in getting the camera in focus, which he manages to do most of the time. Well, a lot of the time anyway. Pacing is a concept to which he had apparently never given any thought. The script is thin and not terribly coherent and tends to wander about in circles.
There are spies from at least three different countries and there’s a revolutionary army in there somewhere as else.
At the end we get an extended action sequence which is actually quite decent, with gunplay taking the place of kung fu. The three girls are caught in the middle. They’re no action heroines but they do have a highly developed sense of self-preservation. The plot doesn’t exactly resolve but hey if you have enough shooting the viewer isn’t going to care if all the plot strands are not neatly tied up.
Do the girls find true love? Do their dreams come true? Well, not exactly, but it was a learning experience for them. Who knew that modelling could be so dangerous?
As with Fly Me the movie’s biggest asset is Pat Anderson. She’s gorgeous and likeable and as an actress she’s perfectly adequate for this type of movie.
The transfer is pretty decent if unspectacular. There are no extras.
Cover Girl Models has plenty of flaws. It would be difficult to describe this as a well-made movie but Corman knew his market and made sure that all his movies contained the ingredients that the market demanded. It’s no cinematic masterpiece but if you set your expectations fairly low it’s an acceptable time-waster and the girls are very pretty and if you’re in the mood it’s kinda fun. Worth a look if you’re going to buy the Lethal Ladies 2 collection anyway (The Arena being almost certainly the reason you will buy it).
No comments:
Post a Comment