Savage Beach (1989)

Savage Beach is the fourth of Andy Sidaris’s twelve Triple B (Bullets, Bombs, and Babes) movies. Like the previous two movies in the series it focuses on blonde bombshell DEA agents Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton).

It was shot mostly on location on Molokai.

Donna and Taryn operate an air cargo business as a cover. They have to fly urgently needed medical supplies to a remote island. They run into a storm and their Cessna is forced down. They’re lucky enough to make a crash landing on a tiny uninhabited possibly uncharted island. They were hundreds of miles off course so it could be quite a wait for a rescue plane.

They have the uneasy feeling that they are not alone on the island. Their suspicion is well-founded. And soon there are lots of people on the island, all of them almost certainly bad guys.

What our two heroines don’t know is that they have stumbled onto something very big and very secret. Something official, but now it’s been complicated by a criminal conspiracy. During the Second World the Japanese military hid a hoard of gold looted from the Philippines on a remote island (yes the same island where the girls’ plane crash-landed). The government of the Philippines wants the gold back. The US Government wants to help them to find the gold but there is at least one criminal gang after that gold as well.

And possibly more than one criminal gang.

Donna and Taryn have no idea what is going on but there are unpleasant men with guns running about the island, they’ve been captured and tied up more than once and shot at and they’re getting quite annoyed about it. One of the bad guys even calls Donna a bimbo. She can handle being tied up and having guns pointed at her but when you call her a bimbo you have crossed a line you should never cross.

This is a pretty good script by Sidaris. It sets up endless opportunities for mayhem and double-crosses. On the island we have our two blonde heroines, there are two gangs of murderous cut-throat bad guys and then there’s the strange old guy who might be a good guy or a bad guy. And there’s the beautiful dark-haired bad girl. We’re not sure which of the gangs she belongs to.

Some of the bad guys might be good guys and some of the guys who claim to be good guys might be bad guys.

Luckily the girls are well-armed. They have an automatic rifle and several pistols and Taryn has a crossbow that fires explosive crossbow bolts. Which of course means we’re going to get some explosions. But then this is an Andy Sidaris movie so you knew there were going to be explosions.

There is also, naturally, some martial arts action because why would you not add some of that to the mix?

It goes without saying that as well as lots of action this movie includes lots and lots of bare breasts (and some brief frontal nudity). How could you possibly add a nude scene to a scene with two girls in the cockpit of a Cessna in flight? Andy Sidaris manages it. He likes those kinds of challenges.

It doesn’t hurt that all of the women are extraordinarily attractive.

What really makes these Andy Sidaris movies so great is that Andy and his wife Arleen (who acted as producer) knew all the tricks of low-budget filmmaking. They knew how to get high production values and a very polished professional look without spending big bucks. They had their operation running like a well-oiled machine. Andy’s Triple B movies look a whole lot more expensive than they were.

For a low-budget movie Savage Beach really is beautifully shot.

They were also pretty good at casting. No-one would suggest that Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton were great actresses but they gave performances that were just perfect for this type of movie. And that applies to most of the cast members. They’re not angling for Oscar nominations but they’re entertaining.

All of the Triple B movies are available in a terrific DVD boxed set from Mill Creek, with excellent transfers. Most have now been released by Mill Creek on Blu-Ray. It’s the Blu-Ray release that is being reviewed here. Both the DVD and Blu-Ray releases include an audio commentary by Andy and Arleen Sidaris and they provide an astonishing amount of fascinating information on the shooting of the movie.

Savage Beach is absolutely top-notch entertainment. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed lots of Andy Sidaris’s earlier movies - Seven (1979), Malibu Express (1985), Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) and Picasso Trigger (1988). They’re all fun with Hard Ticket to Hawaii being the best.

Seven (1979)

Seven is a 1979 action-adventure movie directed by Andy Sidaris. The screenplay was based on an original story idea by Sidaris.

A major criminal syndicate is aiming to take control of Hawaii. They’re not aiming to take over organised crime in the state, they’re aiming to take over the entire state. There are seven major kingpins in this criminal conspiracy. A decision is made that this situation is so critical that it cannot be dealt with by ordinary law enforcement methods. The solution adopted is to hire notorious and ruthless assassin Drew Savano (William Smith), let him assemble a team of seven equally deadly killers and have them take out the bad guys. No nonsense about collecting evidence or building a case or making arrests. The government wants these bad guys killed quickly and efficiently.

Drew takes on the job, for a fee of seven million dollars (everything in this movie comes in sevens).

Drew assembles his team. Lengthy preparations are made. All seven bad guys have to be hit at exactly the same time. Of course not everything goes entirely according to plan.

After a very long buildup the mayhem begins and very satisfying mayhem it is too. Lots of gunplay. Lots of explosions.

Don’t try too hard to make sense of the plot. This is an Andy Sidaris movie. The plot is there to justify the action scenes.

Andy Sidaris is best-known for the series of movies he made between 1985 and 1998, starting with Malibu Express. Seven was made a few years earlier, in 1979, and it’s clear that Sidaris already had his formula all worked out. It was a formula from which he would never depart, because it worked. And in Seven the formula is not just there in embryo, it’s already fully developed. The formula is simple - exotic locations, lots of violent action, glamour, and bare boobs.

Sidaris believed very strongly in shooting on location in exotic settings. That involved spending some money but it was way to make a movie look much expensive than it actually was. The locations themselves provided the production values. It worked.

As for the second element, the action scenes had to be violent without being graphic and they had to be fast-moving. Rapid-fire editing was an essential ingredient. Ideally each action scene had to have something in it to make it memorable. In Seven that meant using a hang-glider for a scene that could just as easily have been done with a light plane because a hang-glider was more unusual and cooler. Or having a hitman who rides a skateboard. Or having an action scene involving an inflatable sex doll. These things involved very little expense but they made those action sequences more memorable. Adding helicopters and rocket launchers is always a sound idea.

Sidaris spent much of his early career doing sports shows for television. It was ideal training for doing action scenes.

The third element was glamour. Sidaris wanted an atmosphere that reeked of money, glamour and excitement. Hawaii Five-O had demonstrated that Hawaii provided just such an atmosphere. Hawaii was perfect Andy Sidaris territory. To reinforce the glamour he’d add fast cars, expensive yachts and plenty of beautiful women.

The final ingredient was bare boobs. If you’re going to have topless scenes it makes sense to find actresses who are going to look great topless. What better choice than to use Playboy Playmates? So that’s what he did. They not have been great actresses but in an Andy Sidaris movie that’s not a major problem. His audience certainly had no complaints on that score.

There are a few weaknesses here compared to his later movies. The main problem is that the initial setup takes much too long. Sidaris learnt a lot from Seven. The pacing is much better in the later movies.

The plotting also became somewhat crazier in the later movies, which was a good thing.

William Smith is terrific - he really sells Drew as a character. We like the guy but he really is ruthless. He’s a professional killer but he’s now one of the good guys. For seven million dollars I’d join the good guys as well. He’s up against some very nasty people. He’s no Boy Scout but this is not a job for a Boy Scout.

The other cast members mostly just have to look either heroic or sinister or glamorous which they manage to do very effectively. There are lots of villains and they’re all extremely villainous.

Mostly though an Andy Sidaris movie is supposed to be good-natured fun. The violence is frequent but too cartoonish to be disturbing. The topless scenes are good-natured and rather innocent. This is clearly a movie made by a guy who has no issues with women. There is one evil woman in this movie but there are lots of evil men. The Playboy Playmates are there to take their tops off but they are never made to look foolish.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray offers a very nice transfer with a few extras.

Seven is not top-tier Andy Sidaris but apart from it’s pacing issues it’s reasonably good fun. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed other Andy Sidaris movies - Malibu Express, Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Picasso Trigger.

Picasso Trigger (1988)

Picasso Trigger is an Andy Sidaris movie and a fairly typical Andy Sidaris movie. If you enjoy schlocky low-budget 80s action movies with plenty of T&A you’ll have fun with it. If you don’t enjoy such movies you won’t like it.

And when I say Sidaris’s movies are schlock I’m not kidding. They’re like a double serving of shlock with extra schlockiness sprinkled on top.

This one is a sequel of sorts to Sidaris’s wonderful Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987). The two glamour babe federal agents from that movie, Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), are back and they’re now targets for assassination.

The hero is yet another member of the Abilene clan. We’ve met Cody and Rowdy Abilene in earlier Sidaris movies. This time it’s Travis Abilene. Of course our first thought is, will this Abilene actually be able to shoot? The incompetent marksmanship of the Abilenes was a running gag in these 80s Sidaris movies. It turns out that Travis Abilene also can’t shoot worth a damn.

It’s an amusing gimmick which gives an otherwise impossibly handsome and brave hero a human weakness.

This movie starts with a major crime kingpin apparently assassinating all the federal agents whom he blames for his brother’s death (his brother having also been a crime kingpin).

Travis Abilene acquires a sidekick, the sexy and glamorous Pantera (Roberta Vasquez). Travis and Pantera had been sweethearts back in high school. It doesn’t take long for the sexual attraction between them to blaze up again.

It gradually becomes apparent that the chief bad guy has another agenda in addition to revenge. The plot is complicated with lots of double-crosses. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but it provides plenty of opportunities for acton scenes.

This is the standard Andy Sidaris formula. It was shot in glamorous exotic locations such as Las Vegas and Hawaii. Sidaris believed (correctly) that this was a good way to make very low budget movie look more expensive than it was. There’s lots of gunplay. There are plenty of explosions. There are gadgets. There are chases involving everything from helicopters to speedboats to surf skis to hovercraft. There are lots of bare breasts and a few bare bottoms. It’s fast-paced and silly and fun. The formula worked for Sidaris and it works for me.

The acting is OK for a movie that doesn’t exactly have much in the way of in-depth characterisation. It doesn’t have any characterisation at all. What matters is that the heroes look like heroes, the villains look like villains and the mindless thugs look like mindless thugs.

Pretty much every female cast member was a former Playboy Playmate. They’re not great actresses but they weren’t cast for their acting abilities. They’re there to look like glamorous babes and they do that very successfully. What’s nice about these early Sidaris movies is that the girls don’t look like walking advertisements for silicone. They rely on what Nature gave them and that proves to be more than ample.

The nudity serves the same purpose as everything else in the movie - it’s there quite frankly for entertainment value. And it’s approached in the same spirit as everything else in the movie - lighthearted and cheerful and rather innocent. There’s none of the embarrassed sniggering quality to the sex and nudity that you encounter in too many movies. Picasso Trigger is sexy but it’s not really sleazy.

The gadgets are typically Sidaris - amusing and clever and they cost almost nothing. The stuntwork is reasonably good.

It has to be admitted that this movie does not quite recapture the magic of Hard Ticket to Hawaii. It doesn’t quite have the same zing.

Picasso Trigger is still a lot of fun. That’s all it was ever intended to be. Make sure you have lots of beer and popcorn on hand. If you’re in the mood for fun it’s highly recommended.

The DVD in the Mill Creek boxed set offers a lovely transfer. The most notable extra is an audio commentary by writer-director Andy Sidaris and his wife Arlene(who was the producer). Their audio commentaries are always a treat.

I've also reviewed Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) and Malibu Express (1985).

Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) was Andy Sidaris’s follow-up to the very successful Malibu Express and he obviously has the formula humming away perfectly by now. We get girls, we get boobs, we get guns, we get stunts, we get action. We get a totally insane over-complicated plot containing lots of elements that make no sense. It’s movie magic.

A couple of Hawaiian cops are about to bust a marijuana plantation. It’s routine. It’s a small scale operation and the cops don’t care about it. Those growing the weed will get hit with a small fine and the cops will get a small pay-off. It’s no big deal. Nobody’s going to get hurt. Except that the cops find they’ve stumbled into a much larger operation, and they get blown away by shotguns.

Meanwhile glamorous blondes Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) are about to take off in their Cessna, bound for Molokai. They’re taking a honeymooning couple to a secluded romantic spot and they’re delivering a live snake to a wildlife park.

Donna and Taryn supposedly work for a tiny air cargo company. Donna is actually an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency. Taryn has been placed in Hawaii as part of the witness protection program. There’s a contract out on her. I have no idea why she’s been placed with a DEA agent. I’d have thought that would be a good way for her to attract attention which is not exactly the aim of a witness protection program. While Taryn is a civilian she seems to consider herself to be a kind of honorary DEA agent. And she has martial arts training.

Donna and Taryn spot something very curious. It’s a toy plane. Only it’s not a toy, it’s a very expensive very sophisticated remote-controlled model helicopter. And it’s carrying a cargo. Two goons show up to collect the cargo but the girls fight them off. And now the girls have the cargo.

The cargo comprises two very small crates of diamonds.

Donna decides she needs to do some serious thinking about it so she does what any woman would do in such a situation. She takes off her clothes and jumps into the jacuzzi with Taryn. Donna explains that she does her best thinking in a jacuzzi. Did I mention that Donna is a blonde?

That live snake is also going to be a problem. It’s the wrong snake. The snake the girls delivered to Molokai has been contaminated with toxins. It’s certain death if it bites you. And the snake has escaped from its crate.

The two girls are going to need some help on this case. Luckily fellow DEA agent Rowdy Abilene (Ronn Moss) is at hand, with his buddy Jade (Harold Diamond). I assume Rowdy Abilene is supposed to be the brother of the hero of Sidaris’s earlier Malibu Express, Cody Abilene. Cody and Rowdy are both legendarily lousy shots. It must run in the family.

Rowdy knows he’s a lousy shot. That’s why he doesn’t rely on a handgun. His weapon of choice is a four-barrelled rocket launcher. With a rocket you don’t have to hit the bad guy right between the eyes.

The bad guys, led by the sinister killer Seth Romero (Rodrigo Obregon), make numerous attempts to kidnap the girls to find out what happened to those diamonds. Taryn is the only one who knows where they are. The girls fall into the hands of a sadistic lady bodybuilder.

While this is happening the mutant killer snake goes on a bit of a rampage.

There’s also a sumo wrestling scene, for no reason whatsoever.

This movie is mostly just pure entertainment but it does offer an important warning about an important social problem - frisbee-throwing. Frisbee-throwing isn’t a harmless pastime. Frisbees can be deadly weapons in the wrong hands.

Andy Sidaris understood perfectly how to make movies like this. You find some nice locations that you can use, preferably for free. Things like fancy restaurants, high-class golf clubs. That makes a cheap movie look expensive. If you can get the use of a plane or a helicopter at a bargain price you use it. You save every penny you can. You keep the action going at a relentless pace. You make sure the actresses are topless as frequently as possible. The plot doesn’t have to make sense as long as it keeps the action moving along. Watching an Andy Sidaris movie is like a masterclass in low-budget exploitation film-making.

The acting is both terrible and absolutely perfect. All the cast members know what is expected of them. It doesn’t matter if the acting is bad as long as it isn’t boring. When casting an actress the most important question to be asked is - has she been a centrefold? If the answer is yes, you cast her.

The stunts are done extremely well. Sidaris knows how to shoot an action scene. The special effects (the mutant killer snake) are incredibly cheesy but in a good way.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii is totally silly, very exciting and wildly entertaining. Highly recommended.

My copy comes from the Mill Creek 12-movie Andy Sidaris DVD boxed set, Girls, Guns and G-Strings. The transfers are excellent and there are plenty of extras including audio commentaries by Andy Sidaris and his wife Arlene (who produced most of his movies). Sidaris comes cross a totally crazy totally charming guy. This DVD set is so good that I can see no reason whatever why I would want to upgrade to any of the more recent Blu-Ray releases.

Malibu Express (1985)

I have a shocking confession to make. I have never seen an Andy Sidaris movie. I know, I’m embarrassed about it. The reason is simple. For me cult movies has always meant cult movies from the 1930s to the 1970s, and especially the 60s and 70s. The 80s has been largely unexplored territory for me. And the 90s has been almost totally unknown territory. I now intend to correct this shocking omission and I’m going to start with Sidaris’s 1985 offering Malibu Express which seems to be one of his better known movies.

Cody Abilene (Darby Hinton) is a PI. Cody likes being a PI but mostly he seems to like girls. Early on we get one of those clichéd scenes in the gunnery range where the hero demonstrates what a crack shot he is with a pistol, usually amazing the instructor with his prowess. But in this case the cliché is wittily turned on its head. It turns out that Cody is a lousy shot. It’s a promising start.

Within the first few minutes we also get lots of boobs. That’s also a promising start, given that the Andy Sidaris formula seems to be action, humour and boobs. That’s not such a bad formula really.

Early on we also get a scene at a racing track with fast cars. I don’t think it has anything to do with the plot but fast cars are cool, especially when driven by gorgeous babes such as June Khnockers (that’s Khnockers with an “h”). Gorgeous babes who disrobe as soon as they’ve finished driving. I’m liking this movie already.

This is not just a private eye movie, it’s a spy movie as well. Those dastardly commies are stealing American computer technology. Someone has to infiltrate their organisation but it has to be someone unknown to the bad guys’ intelligence services. Cody is selected. He isn’t exactly qualified for the job but maybe that will be an advantage. Nobody is going to suspect a laid-back girl-crazy cowboy like Cody.

The Contessa Luciana (Sybil Danning), who works for some high-powered intelligence agency, has recruited Cody for this mission. She explains his mission to him, but first they have sex. A girl has to get her priorities right. The Contessa suspects that somebody in the household of Lady Lillian Chamberlain (Niki Dantine) may be involved. It’s a very odd household. Lady Lillian lives there with her son Stuart, his wife and Lady Lillian’s daughter. The chauffeur, an oily character by the name of Shane (Brett Clark), is having sex with both Lady Lillian’s daughter and daughter-in-law and he’s blackmailing them.

Shane and the women are mixed up with a shady computer industry guy.

Pretty soon there’s a whole assortment of goons gunning for Cody. Luckily he gets some help from one of his many girlfriends, a lady cop named Beverly (Lori Sutton).

Then there’s a murder in the Chamberlain household. There’s an important clue to the murderer’s identity, a clue that Cody initially fails to spot.

There’s lots of mayhem. Lots of unarmed combat and lots of gunfights. There are a couple of extended gunfights that are quite cleverly done, making use of an important fact established at the beginning of the movie - Cody is the world’s worst pistol shot. He fires hundreds of rounds in the course of the movie and he just keeps missing. It’s an amusing reversal of the usual action movie cliché that the hero is always a better shot than the bad guys. Cody would have been dead several times over had Beverly not been on the scene. She actually can shoot. Cody isn’t bothered by the fact that a woman has to get him out of trouble. Later on, in a similar situation, June Khnockers has to get him out of trouble. She doesn’t carry a gun but she has a much more effective weapon (actually she has two of them).

Cody has so much easy-going self-confidence that his male ego isn’t the slightest bit fragile. He doesn’t mind that a woman can shoot better than he can and he doesn’t mind when a weird hillbilly family keeps inveigling him into drag races which Cody keeps losing. It’s a nice touch that makes Cody a very likeable character. It’s not that he’s a bad PI. He’s quite smart and he picks up some very obscure clues. He’s brave and resourceful. He just can’t shoot.

It’s rather cool that the hero drives a DeLorean. You can’t get much more 80s than that.

While I had never seen an Andy Sidaris movie I had heard of him and I’d formed the impression that his movies were total trash. It tuns out that my impression was correct. Malibu Express really is total trash. But I love cinematic trash as long as it’s entertaining trash and Malibu Express is very entertaining trash indeed. This is high-grade top-quality trash with an incredibly high fun content.

Sidaris wrote the script and it has some genuinely funny moments. There’s some amusing dialogue. When the two babes who are neighbours of Cody find out he’s a PI they tell him, “We heard you were a private investigator. We wanted to know if you’d investigate our privates.” Sidaris knows the right ingredients for a movie like this. Lots of action, lots of humour, lots of nudity (T&A only) and lots of simulated sex. And the ladies really are lovely and this movie is genuinely sexy in a fun way.

You can’t complain that the nudity is gratuitous. Everything in this movie is gratuitous.

Darby Hinton is pretty good. He has charm and charisma and he’s likeable. Sybil Danning doesn’t get enough to do but what she does she does well. The rest of the acting is pretty bad, but it’s bad in a good trash movie way.

Sidaris understood the essentials of low-budget film-making. You don’t need a story that makes much sense and you should never delude yourself that you’re doing anything other than making pure entertainment. You need to make your movie fast-paced and you need to load it with entertainment value. Entertainment value means action scenes, humour and babes. He was also a firm believer in location shooting in glamorous surroundings. It makes a cheap movie look a lot more expensive than it really is.

I bought the Mill Creek Andy Sidaris DVD boxed set, Girls, Guns and G-Strings. Amazingly good value and it even includes commentary tracks and the transfers are quite acceptable. Most of these movies now seem to be on Blu-Ray but I thought the bargain DVD set would be a good introduction to the cinematic world of Andy Sidaris.

Malibu Express comes with an informative and very amusing audio commentary by Sidaris and his wife and collaborator Arlene. It’s one of the best audio commentaries I’ve come across in years - Sidaris doesn’t take himself the least bit seriously and he clearly had a great time making his movies. His enthusiasm is infectious.

Malibu Express isn’t a great movie in conventional film-making terms, in those terms it’s not even a good movie, but it is a great exploitation movie. It’s just non-stop fun. Highly recommended.