New Zoo Revue (1972)

Note: We're moving TV Shows About Girls over to MAG for double the laffs and jiggle!

Directed by Tom Belcher
Starring A hot chick in a miniskirt, a dude in a mustache, a hippo, an owl, and a frog.
Genre: Kid's stuff
USA

"Understand?"
"Nope."

I used to really hate this show as a kid. Honestly, it was one of the worst parts of growing up in the 70's. Well, besides the poverty and domestic violence. It debuted in 1972 and ran on UHF channels really early in the morning, just after Romper Room, if I remember correctly. It was clearly geared towards toddlers and pre-teens, but even so, it still seemed like everyone involved was slightly retarded. Also, the hippy platitudes and gentle life-lessons were useless to most of us – seriously, the 70's were fucked, and even us kids had more to worry about than how to deal with grumpy asshole know-it-all owls, man. However, the show had one major hook that made it all worth it: a hot chick in a mini-skirt.

New Zoo Revue was created by real-life husband and wife team Doug Momary and Emily Peden. They also starred as Doug and Emmy Jo, respectively, on the show.

They lived in some Sid and Marty Krofft-ian wooded nightmare hellscape with giant puppet people, including the aforementioned douchebag owl, a brain-dead, googly-eyed frog named Freddy, and perhaps the most repellent kid TV character ever, a melodramatic, gluttonous lady hippo with a hick accent named Henrietta. Henrietta was like that one aunt you'd dread seeing every Christmas, the one who smelled like hairspray and medicine who tried to pass off hard candy as a snack. So all the loony muppets would run around causing chaos, and then Chuck Woolery – dressed up like an elderly mailman, for some reason – would deliver some letters, and then Doug and Emmy Jo would sing a folk song. Does this sound like fun to you? New Zoo Revue was like the dentist and bullies and brussel sprouts all rolled into one half-hour block of childhood misery. And they made TWO HUNDRED EPISODES.

But like I mentioned, Emmy Jo would usually wear mini-skirts, and even at six years old, I knew that was a treat. So I watched. Also please remember, there were literally five channels back then. It was either this, the Galloping Gourmet, some bullshit about President Ford, or the Dinah Shore show.  And Dinah never flashed any leg.

Anyway, a few years back, cheapo DVD company Brentwood released a six-DVD set of New Zoo Revue's first season (59 episodes!) so I thought I'd revisit the show 30-something years later to see if I'd like it any better. To be fair, I never made it past the pilot, so perhaps it got really fucking good twenty or thirty episodes deep. But I doubt it. Here's what goes down in the very first episode.

Freddy meets up with Charlie, who is experimenting in strange new food hybrids. He needs Freddy to build him a box to plant these unholy creations, but Freddy is too stupid to make a box. Charlie suggests he just start really early in the morning, because that's when brains work the best.

So, Freddy gets up at 6AM and starts running around the neighborhood pestering people about how to build a box. Naturally, his first stop is Doug's. Doug basically tells him to go to hell, so he just shows up at Charlie's with a bundle of sticks and hopes for the best. Charlie sings him a tune about using his brains, but you can tell he's super-pissed at this point.
“So start using your brains,” he says, after the song is over, “Or we have nothing more to say to each other.”
“Can I still say hello to you in the street?”
“No!”

Honestly, fuck you, owl. Freddy was doing you a favor in the first place.

So then Freddy goes over to Henrietta's place and tells her about Charlie. She thinks the solution is food. Food's not going to make Freddy any smarter, hippo.

Also, look at her. Just look. Don't you just want to punch her? By the way, I'm pretty sure Delta Burke ripped Henrietta off wholesale for her role in Designing Women. Seriously, watch 'em side by side one day – it's the same character.

Anyway, all of the hippo's non-stop chattering about sassafras and cornbread freaks Freddy out – clearly, this one has some kind of disturbing food fetish – so he bails. As there's only about twenty feet of soundstage on this show, he quickly runs into Doug and Emmy Jo. EJ's in a very modest outfit for this one – clearly, this was before they realized the show needed more skin. Still, she looks like a flipped-out Parker Posey in that get up, so...not bad!

Freddy tells them he thinks he might be an idiot, so Emmy Jo teaches him a cruel but necessary lesson. It might also be a metaphor for sex, I don't know.
Doug: “Freddy, your brain is working all the time. But that doesn't mean you're thinking all the time.”
Emmy Jo (plucking a flower and holding it out to Freddy): “Freddy, look at this flower.”
Freddy: “It's pretty.”
Emmy Jo: “Now touch it.”
Freddy (touching the flower): “Ouch! There's a thorn there!”
Emmy Jo: "See? That's your brain sending messages to your nerves, telling you what to feel. So, Freddy, what would you like to do with the flower?”
Freddy: Gosh, I guess I'd like to give it to you.”
Emmy Jo: “Why?”
Freddy: “Because you're pretty.”

A decade or so later, Brett Michaels would have a flashback to this conversation while banging triplets in the back of a tour bus, and would turn it into a chart-topping hit.

Anyway, it turns out Freddy is incapable of making a box (no big deal, so am I), so Charlie vows to never speak to him again. Emmy Jo takes the elevator up to Charlie's treehouse and sings a pretty excruciating Judee Sill rip-off folk jam about having patience for numbskulls to him.

BTW, no offence to Judee Sill, who had some amazing jams – like Crayon Angels. Love that one.

Plus, sometimes she played topless. I think she became a nun later*. Anyway, the point is, Emmy's song was terrible.

And then everybody laughs at Charlie for being a jerk. The end.

Um, so like I said, they pretty much repeated this scenario 195 more times before they were through. Plus repeats. And every episode started and ended with that hypnotic “Comin' Right at You” song. If you grew up in the 70's, it is drilled deep into your skull, and it will never go away. It'll probably be the last thing you think of before you die.

In summation: hot girl, horrible show. This pattern would repeat itself many times throughout my life – in fact it's still happening now – anybody catch that fucking train wreck Perfect Couples with Olivia Munn? – but it all started here with Emmy Jo and flippy hairdos and mini-skirts. So, thanks? Curses? Dunno.

PS: Doug and Emily are still married and run a successful (?) production company now in Las Vegas. Most of the stuff they do seems excessively weird, like this propaganda piece for the coal industry that's got talking dogs and cartoon dinosaurs singing calypso tunes and all sorts of bizarre shit. I think it's for schools? Good to know Doug's still cranking out stuff for kids that make actual kids want to strangle themselves.


THE NEW CRUSADERS from Douglas Momary on Vimeo.

New Zoo Revue Season 1 is available on Amazon for like, 7 bucks. They'd probably take buttons or old  subway tokens for it, too.

PPS: Here's an outtake with lots of cussing. If I actually got to see this as a kid, it would have changed my life forever. Awesome.



* Actually, she died of an overdose. Same difference. She was amazing. RIP Judee.
- Ken McIntyre 

The Hottie and the Nottie (2008)

Directed by Tom Putnam
Starring Paris Hilton, Joel Moore
Rated PG-13
USA 


"I love midget mimes."

This film will live on in infamy for its hilariously meager first-weekend take at the office: a mere $25,000 after playing for three days in 111 theaters. I am proud to say I was $7.75 worth of that haul. Of course, I had a good reason for seeing it. Total Film, a magazine I write for, asked me to review it. Hey, a buck’s a buck, Jack. Interestingly, I had to drive 20 minutes to some cavernous theater on the lip of the highway to see it. This does not sound unreasonable on paper, but I live in Boston, where there are movie theaters everywhere. The Hottie and the Nottie, apparently, was not allowed within city limits. So is it as bad as it seems? Dunno. Good and bad is starting to get very fuzzy in my head. Here’s the story, at any rate:
Joel Moore – the Shaggy-esque sad-sack from Hatchet – plays Nate, an unlucky-in-love doofus who decides to track down his long lost love from first grade. Cue Paris Hilton, said lost-love, running on the beach in slow-mo as guys propose marriage and freak out. Now, there’s no doubt that Paris Hilton is a pretty girl, but she’s sorta twiggy, you know? I don’t think she’d elicit that sort of reaction in real life. I mean, she’s no Tawny Kitaen. But anyway, she has an ugly friend  (Christine Lakin) who’s she’s very attached to, so Nate has to find the uggo a date before Paris will go out with him. Meanwhile, the ugly girl is slowly undergoing a makeover as the film goes on, and guess what? Yes, she’s actually just as hot as Paris after various treatments and surgeries.

Haha, this is the "ugly" girl. Hollywood is crazy.

You’ve seen this story enough times to know what happens next. It’s tried and true stuff done on a low-budget with actors that mistake opening-night gusto for passion. Well, expect for Paris, who tones it down so low she appears to be visibly napping through several scenes.

The whole thing is shabby and clunky and shallow. Paris wears too much lip gloss, and they ugly up the other chick so much with moles and dirty band-aids and face-crust that I almost gagged a few times in the first half. It was still better than Cloverfield, though. And it had a happy ending. I like happy endings.

- Ken 

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Directed by Irvin Kershner
Starring Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones
Rated R
USA

“I'm completely out of control!”

I was nine when this much-hyped film came out in '78. I remember seeing the TV spots and correctly pegging it as 'grown-up stuff'. Well, now I'm pretty much 'grown-up', so I figured it was high-time I checked it out. Laura Mars is a “psychological thriller” about a controversial and very successful fashion photographer (Faye Dunaway, as the titular Mars) whose ultra-violent fashion mag spreads closely resemble a series of unsolved murders that occurred in NYC a couple years prior. Even worse, a new spate of murders – all models this time, and all of them friends/associates of Laura's – is underway, and Laura keeps having episodes wherein she catches POV glimpses of the murders.

Tommy Lee Jones co-stars as the detective on the case. He eventually falls in love with her, which muddies up the investigation considerably. Also, there's a good baker's dozen of potential killers/red herrings all around her, including Raul Julia as her rape-y ex-husband and various loony assistants and hangers-on, including creepout character actors Brad Dourif and Rene Auberjonois. Eventually, all the could-be killers get eye-stabbed to death, which brings us to the shock-twist ending. Of course, anyone who's ever seen a movie, ever, in their entire lives, will have already guessed the ending in the first five minutes. But hey, life's a journey, not a destination.

So, bad news first: Eyes of Laura Mars is pretty dull. Dunaway is pretty much sleep-walking through the whole thing, the surprise ending is hardly a surprise, and for an R-rated film, it's pretty tame. I mean, it's about an eyeball killer, and there's no eye-gore? Also, it mostly just looks and feels like an extra long episode of any generic cop show of the era. Jones could easily be replaced by Kojak or Ironside or Starsky and/or Hutch, and none would be the wiser.

There are, however, a few meager rewards for your time and effort: Laura's apocalyptic photo-shoots are pretty cool, there's some brief-but-tasty model nudity, Barbara Steisand's overwrought disco-dirge theme song is awesome (Babs was originally slated to play Laura, but backed out somewhere along the way), there's some random zaniness along the way (what's with the out-of-nowhere dwarf?), and there's some nicely gritty shots of pre-Disneyfied NYC. Also, John Carpenter wrote the script. That seems notable.

So, there you go. My nine-year old instincts were correct. The Eyes of Laura Mars is definitely for grown-ups. Boring grown-ups. If you're looking for primo Dunaway, stick with Bonnie and Clyde or Chinatown and leave this bloodless thriller on the shelf.

PS director Kershner followed this up with The Empire Strikes Back!

- Ken 

The Last Seduction (1994)

Directed by John Dahl
Starring Linda Fiorentino, Bill Pullman, Peter Berg
Rated R
USA

“Hey, it's me. Your designated fuck-boy.”

Here's what I just realized about the 90's: they looked like cable TV. It didn't feel that way at the time, but looking back on it, it's pretty obvious. Premium cable, mind you, but on an off-night. Like a Tuesday at 2AM. We had computers, but all they could do, really, is generate lists of phone numbers, and ladies wore nice jeans, but they were very high-waisted, and some folks were bad, but even at their worst, they weren't, you know, 2001 Anthrax-in-the-mail bad. The Last Seduction might be the penultimate 90's-as-cable document. It's yet another neo-noir film, produced midway through a  ceaseless wave of the things (Two Jakes, Bound, LA Confidential, The Grifters, Miami Blues, Red Rock West – which was also directed by Dahl – Romeo is Bleeding, The Usual Suspects, etc etc.) spurned by a sudden resurgence in interest for hard-boiled fiction from the 40's and 50's. Who knows why that happened? We were all into swing dancing for a few minutes back there, too. It was a whole retro-thing. A craze. That's what happens when you don't have the internet to distract you.

So anyway, The Last Seduction stars Linda Fiorentino as one Bridget Gregory, a scheming, goth-y femme-fatale with a wicked tongue, who rips off her boyfriend (Bill Pullman) for a hundred grand and high-tails it out of NYC. She lands in the sleepy upstate burg of Beston to hole up until the heat's off, but ends up embroiled in a torrid affair with an ambitious yokel, Mike (Peter Berg).  While she enjoys having dumpster sex with our boy Mike, she knows she's gotta get rid of him at some point. Always on the hunt for an angle, she stumbles on a brilliant idea to destroy both of her man-problems in one fell swoop. It involves lots of whiskey and cigarettes.

The obligatory twisty climax is pretty fun (and ridiculous), but it takes a long while to get there. Just how long depends on how much you can take of Fiorentino's relentless scowling and bad-girl snark. I mean, she really does try her best to be the sexiest monster the 90's could possibly offer, but unfortunately, that particular decade wasn't evil enough for girls like Bridget, so it never feels like more  than goofy late-night cable TV time-slot filler.

I did like her classy tea-cup boobs, though.

- Ken McIntyre 

Pets (1974)

Directed by Raphael Nussbaum
Starring Candice Rialson, Teri Guzman, Joan Blackman, Ed Bishop
Rated R
U.S.A.

With a notorious ad campaign suggesting a misogynist and/or S&M-themed romp through familiar sexploitation territory, Raphael Nussbaum’s Pets is in fact a more complicated -- and ultimately more intriguing -- mid-seventies grindhouse entry. Adapted from a sequence of three one-act plays by Richard Reich first performed in Greenwich Village five years before, Nussbaum’s film integrates the three similarly-themed tales into a single narrative, offering its audience an opportunity to contemplate and perhaps even challenge traditional notions regarding the relative power of the sexes.

What at first appears a fairly typical compilation of scenes alternating between sex and violence eventually turns into kinda-sorta-statement criticizing man’s treatment of woman as somehow less than human -- that is, as like the “pets” of the title. Hard to get too carried away with talk of Nussbaum’s artsy-fartsy pretensions here, though, as the many hallmarks of low budget, amateurish filmmaking -- crude editing and lighting, literally out-of-focus shots, small lapses in narrative logic, etc. -- should ultimately keep us from getting too high-falutin’ about “messages” and whatnot.

Drive-in diva Candice Rialson stars as the wayward teen Bonnie. One of the grindhouse-era’s more memorable figures -- in both senses of the word -- Rialson was said to have provided the inspiration for Bridget Fonda’s Melanie in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 throwback Jackie Brown.


As it happened, 1974 would be a breakout year for the sleepy-eyed, adorable blonde, a year in which she’d follow Pets with starring turns in a trio of sexploitation titles (Candy Stripe Nurses, Summer School Teachers, and Mama’s Dirty Girls). Soon after she’d land bit roles on TV series and in a few mainstream features like The Eiger Sanction and Logan’s Run. She’d end up back in the B’s, however -- most notably in the notorious, talking-vagina opus Chatterbox! (1977) -- before retiring from the silver screen for good as the decade came to a close.

After a suggestive opening montage showing a bird, a tiger, then Rialson each in cages, we jump into a familiar-seeming ’70s drive-in opening with Bonnie and her abusive brother driving about the L.A. streets. Their talk suggests he’s tracked her down after she’d run away. And -- like a hard-to-tame animal -- she seems anxious to escape back into the wild once again.

Bonnie complains she’s hungry, and they stop at a burger joint, a visit that ultimately results in Bonnie’s brother offending a carful of toughs to the point they decide to teach the “jive-ass honky” a lesson.


As they beat her brother, Bonnie escapes, and the opening credits roll over the sappy title song (“Searching”) in which Bonnie is introduced to us further (“in this wicked world some folks call me evil girl / they’ve got it wrong and they don’t know”).


Bonnie spends the night on the beach, then the next day meets up with Pat (Teri Guzman), yet another wild child on the loose. The pair catch a ride with the affluent-appearing Dan Daubrey (Brett Parker) who has been out for a jog on the beach, the group sharing the space in the vehicle with Dan’s dog, Bibi.

By this point we’ve already seen other canines milling about, and indeed such visual reaffirmations of the film’s title and themes will continue throughout. As they drive, Pat surprises both Dan and Bonnie by pulling a gun and ordering Dan off the highway onto a dirt path.


They tie Dan up with the belt of his robe and shoestrings, take his wallet, then Pat gets him to give up his home address, the location of some cash that can be found there, and his keys. As Bonnie ties up Dan, Pat compares him to Bibi, saying his wife has two dogs, “the four-legged one -- that’s the one she loves and kisses -- and this schmuck.”

Pat leaves in Dan’s car (with Bibi) to go loot his home -- his wife is out getting her hair done, he’s explained -- while Bonnie watches him, gun drawn.


The pair talk, their conversation revealing Bonnie’s dissatisfaction with her young life. We cut away to follow Pat as she visits Dan’s home and robs him of cash and more, the Daubreys’ gardener oddly unconcerned thanks in part to Pat distracting him.


As Pat drives back, Bonnie and Dan continue to talk. She does a seductive dance, then reveals to him the gun is just a water pistol. We see Pat cruelly toss Bibi off a cliff after the dog bites her. She then returns and she and Bonnie leave, but then only Bonnie returns, apparently to check whether or not Dan kept his promise to lie there for a half-hour.

Soon Bonnie figures out Pat has left her, taking the car and all of the loot she hauled. Bonnie and her captive talk a little more, then she gets the idea to have a little fun.

“What do you want, lapdog?” she says to Dan. “You’re sweating, you’re hot.”


Dan tells her to untie his hands and he’ll show her what he wants, but Bonnie has another idea. “No, I’ll show you,” she says with a snarl. “Helpless. The way I’ve always been.”

The pair then make sweet, sweaty seventies love on the grass, after which Bonnie grabs her panties and shoes and skips away -- in enchanting slow motion -- to continue her adventures.


We move with Bonnie into the middle third of the film, leaving everyone else we’ve met thus far behind for good. Caught stealing an apple from a fruit stand, Bonnie’s luckily helped out of a potential jam by an artist, Geraldine Mills, who takes an interest in the beautiful runaway as a possible subject for her paintings.


The pair swiftly bond and Bonnie agrees to Gerry's proposal to work for her, posing as a model for various works while living in Gerry's spacious Malibu home.


Eventually the pair start a sexual relationship. Gerry becomes somewhat controlling of Bonnie, insisting on long hours of posing and not tolerating Bonnie’s leaving the home unattended. Bonnie sometimes calls Gerry "slave driver," and clearly becomes increasingly restless as time passes. However, at other times, Bonnie affectionately refers to Gerry as “Mommy,” a further reference to their unequal relationship.

An exhibition of Gerry’s work at a local art gallery proves successful, with the gallery’s owner, Vincent Stackman, in particular taking an interest in Gerry’s work. And in Bonnie, too.


Ed Bishop, a character actor with a lengthy and varied resume from TV and film, plays Vincent, whose unending creepiness immediately begins to challenge the ladies’ space on the screen for our attention.

Victor wants to buy Gerry’s painting, they agree to terms, and he leaves. “He’s a very wealthy young man,” explains a gallery patron to Bonnie. “But a very strange fish!”

Cut to fish frying in a pan. Gerry is making lunch for her and Bonnie, and Victor happens by unannounced, ostensibly to get his painting. He catches Gerry and Bonnie acting as a couple in the kitchen, which embarrasses Gerry. An uncomfortable meeting follows in which Gerry makes plain his interest in Bonnie.


At one point he and Bonnie discuss painting, including nudes, and Vincent lectures her about how “the great artists of the past, they never completely painted their models in the nude... [because] they believed that by revealing everything a woman lost her mystery.”


Vincent finally leaves, and his visit and interest in Bonnie has appears to stir up some conflict between the women. Bonnie is becoming more agitated and difficult to control, even earning a slap from the dominating Gerry for her insouciance. She complains to Gerry about desiring a man, and asks her why she doesn’t like men.

“I like men,” explains Gerry. “Just as I like dogs until they try to bite me.”

They make up, but are soon interrupted by an intruder breaking into Gerry’s home. Gerry pulls a gun on the man, named Ron.


Ron explains he’s hungry and was just looking for food. He’s willing to work for it, and Bonnie pleads on his behalf. “The windows really need washing,” she weirdly argues, going on about how they need “a man in this house” to fix the sink and do other chores. “We haven’t needed a man,” insists Gerry, who gives Bonnie the gun while she calls the police.

Bonnie ushers Ron into her bedroom, then tells Gerry he’s gotten away. Soon they all retire for the night, and we realize it is as though Bonnie has captured for herself a hound dog with which to play.


The next morning Gerry discovers the pair and how Bonnie has betrayed her. She swiftly decides to put down Bonnie’s “pet.”


“You killed him!” cries Bonnie in horror. “No, Bonnie -- you killed him,” she clarifies.

Soon Bonnie is on the run again, hastily leaving the house by foot. She runs along the beach where dogs seemingly roam free so as to remind us again of Bonnie’s animal-like character.


She ends up back at Vincent’s gallery and while it isn’t clear at first we soon discover she’s hiding there. Gerry comes to the gallery looking for Bonnie, but Vincent covers.

We move into the third and final act. Vincent buys clothes and jewelry for Bonnie, including a bracelet unsubtly inscribed “Vincent's Pet.”


Vincent takes Bonnie to his secluded “house on a hill” where she first meets Lila, Vincent’s cat. He then takes her to his basement to see “where Lila and her friends” live. We hear animal noises, look for a moment upon Bonnie’s alarmed expression, then leave the scene.

Soon Vincent invites Gerry to his house, too, luring her with the bait of his knowledge of Bonnie’s whereabouts. Lots of awkward discussion follows between the pair. Gerry thinks he's trying to seduce her, but Vincent insists “I don’t seduce women… I make them my pets!”


He further outlines to her his warped view of the sexes. “You see, I sometimes see in my mind’s eye a zoo. Not with the usual animals, no. In my zoo there would be only women!” Gerry predictably reacts with disgust, but Vincent has it all worked out.


“They’d adore it! I assure you,” he insists. “Imagine it... they’d have no responsibilities, they'd be well taken care of, they'd be fed regularly, splashing about in the water, playing in the sun, being mated regularly….” He goes on, his vision seeming to make little literal sense but in a figurative way alluding to a not uncommon chauvinistic worldview.

Having had enough, Gerry tries to leave but he keeps her with a promise to show her Bonnie -- whom, he explains, he has “tamed.” Gerry assumes he’s slept with her, but his answer is unclear (“Would you blame me if I have?”). He explains it was Bonnie’s idea that he bring Gerry there, and soon he produces the young beauty.

The three share a drink. “She should be behind bars,” says Bonnie of Gerry, referring to the latter’s shooting of Ron the intruder.


More suggestive talk follows, then Bonnie leaves the two. Vincent then resumes his mad-philosopher-type talk to Gerry, declaring he’s going to “possess” her.

“You can’t possess me!” Gerry objects. “I’m a woman, not an animal.” “Women treat men like animals, don’t they?” he responds before launching into an anti-women’s lib rant about women trying to “take over the world… giving us orders.”

“I’ll show you what you’re made for!” he says. “Possession by a man!” At last he takes her downstairs to see Lila and her friends, too -- a collection of animals ranging from rodents to a tiger, all female, and all in cages... including Bonnie!


Gerry is horrified, but when she says how she wants to rescue Bonnie from her captivity Vincent has a ready response.

“To make her your pet, again?” he asks pointedly.

Will Vincent succeed in taming Gerry, too, to add to his bizarre collection? The finale provides some resolution -- and a surprise twist -- if not a coherent conclusion to the argument about sexual politics the story has introduced.


There are several reasons to satisfy one’s curiosity and give Pets a look. Despite the film’s many technical flaws, the performances by Bishop, Blackman, and Rialson are all above grindhouse standards, with Rialson’s unique ability to switch back and forth between vulnerable and vengeful suiting her well in this particular role.


And while there might ultimately be as much affirming of male dominance going on here as there is questioning of it, Pets does nonetheless recognize that there’s at least an issue to be debated when it comes to the ongoing battle of the sexes. Not to mention offer a few suggestions of how humans might in fact be more like animals than we care to admit.

- Triple S

Hard Ticket to Hawaii/Picasso Trigger (1987/1989)

Directed by Andy Sidaris
Starring: Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, Harold Diamond, snakes, model airplanes, razorblade frisbees, and tits-lots of tits.
Malibu Bay Films 

Andy Sidaris (RIP) was just as obsessive and accomplished a film maker as Russ Meyer, with  (sadly) none of the hipster accolades or high brow literary dissection, but that might all change with his comprehensive 12 volume DVD series. Sidaris had a lurid but imminently marketable vision of a bleach blonde Shangri-La, with bikini-stretching government agents and their muscle-tearing Kung-Fu sex toys taking on the most vague forms of machine gun evil imaginable in lush landscapes of extravagant beauty, and this 80's born Sidarisian wonderland found a happy home in the blurry-eyed world of late night cable television. Still does, in fact. Click on anything form USA to Cinemax at 2 AM, and the next popped top is most likely Andy's doing. What makes his films so watchable, even after many repeated viewings, is their complete lack of pretense, their campy absurdity played as straight as humanly possible, and of course, the chicks. His unwavering faith in "Bullets, Bombs, and Babes" became such an exact science, that the DVD booklets come with a handy guide for how many of the three B's are included in each chapter. And of course, at least one and sometimes all three come rolling in without fail, every time.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii is his first film in this gonzo series. Try and keep up with me on this. Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), two chesty blondes that couldn't possible exist in any other time than the cocaine and silicone fueled 80's, are government agents. I'm guessing the US government, but God knows what division hired and trained these two. They're working undercover as cargo plane pilots, secretly ferreting out dope smugglers and the like. Right off the bat, they're up to their bra-stuffing tits in trouble, as not only is a contaminated snake running amuck, thanks to their inept handling of clearly marked snake boxes, but they discover a sinister cabal of diamond smugglers and dope dealers on the far side of the island. I'm not sure how much you have to worry about diamond thieves that attempt to move their stolen ice by model plane, but they do have plenty of machine guns. But before we get ahead of ourselves, I must explain the snake. See, he's been shot up with some kind of cancer, and if bitten, his victims will be infected as well. That particularly nasty fact doesn't even matter much, since the serpent is so berserk, he just tears his prey up into bloody shreds, as a couple of hapless honeymooners soon find out. Anyway, Seth Romero (Rodrigo Obregon), the drug dealer whose as mean as the contaminated snake is on to our bubbly supergirls, thanks to an entirely unconvincing transvestite bartender/spy, so they call for back-up, and some old pals show up, including a pony-tailed Kung Fu guy (Harold Diamond) and a weapons expert (Ron Moss) who rigs up the most implausible looking incendiary devices you've ever seen. Like a skateboard bomb, for example, or a razor-tipped frisbee. Between showers and skinny dipping and drunken revelry, the unlikely team of undercover Feds concoct a scheme to bring down the bad guys- it involves motorcycles and bazookas, with a surprise appearance by that goddamned snake-and it all ends in a flurry of explosions and kicking. Of course, the good guys win, and the girls live to blunder and jiggle another day.

Despite the over-reaching tongue-in-cheek plot contrivances and the gratuitous nature of...well, everything, "Hard Ticket" is a seriously well-crafted film, aided greatly by the amazingly lush location and Hope Carlton's Playboy bunny charm. I wanted to kick the pony-tailed guy's teeth in the second he showed up on the island, but that was probably part of the plan as well. The DVD has a host of extras, including Andy and gravity defying miracle of nature Julie Strain clowning around in an impromptu intro, a complete set of trailers, a still gallery, and some handy b-movie making tips from Sidaris. The whole thing is a blast, both literally and figuratively speaking, from start to Finish.

Picasso Trigger is Hard Ticket's high concept follow-up, featuring many of the same players including lethally blonde agents Donna and Taryn and their Kung Fu fighting pal. First, though, their is intrigue in Paris to ponder as vaguely sinister arch-criminal Salazar decides to turn his back on his evil ways and give back to the city that he's taken so much from, donating a priceless painting of a big blue fish- The Trigger, naturally, to some swanky museum. But wouldn't you know, as soon as he strolls out, his new life as an honest citizen sprawled out in front of him, he's assassinated by some dirty sniper. Or is he? Well no, he isn't. Saddam himself must of have picked up some pointers from this film, as Salazar has merely dispatched an unlucky look-a-like to take the bullet for him so that he concentrate on his life's work without interference. His life's work being revenge on the g-string wearing secret agents that killed his brother- you know, the diamond/drug guy from Hard Ticket to Hawaii.

And so, the team gets back together, amidst much crazy talk of snuff films and a few sub-Vegas vaudeville T&A acts, to take on the Picasso Trigger and his swarthy henchmen. PT contains much of Hard Ticket's plot elements- including the Mcguver-esque weaponry. This time out, you get missile launching crutches and a boomerang bomb. The latter you could think about for days- if it's got a bomb attached to it, why the Hell would you want it to fly back? The model airplane hijinks are back too, as a payload bearing craft blows up Taryn and Donna's rather boss cigarette boat. It all ends in a climactic showdown at Salazar's remote hide-out, and in lieu of no cancerous snake, a well-placed surfboard helps out the cause. Explosions and a hot tub after-party ensue.

Being a sequel- or at least a semi-sequel- Picasso Trigger is more formulaic than its anything can happen predecessor, but Sidaris wisely upped the ante on the cheap thrills quotient by littering the film with no less than 7 Playmates, and all of them find the time to get at least half-naked somewhere in the mix. All in all, it's another righteous display of 80's excess, as loud and as implausible as the decade it was made in. The DVD contains much of the same extras as "Hard Ticket", with the addition of some sexy Julie Strain out-takes from some of her films further along in the series. The best part of it all is watching Andy himself living it up with Strain at his side, flashing freely and declaring her love for the T&A auteur as his long-time muse and business partner, wife Arlene, looks on, bemused at the whole silly affair. He's obviously a man that lives the dream and for that- not to mention all the tits and bazookas- Sidaris deserves a rousing round of applause.

Or just buy his movies, either way.

PS: Andy passed away in 2007. I was honored to speak with him a couple times, and I am happy to say that he was a prince of a fellow. He will be missed. Bazookas are just no fun  without him.

- Ken