Love Goddesses of Blood Island (1964)

Directed by Richard S Flink
Starring Launa Hodges, Billy Rogers, Carol Wintress, Dawn Meredith
Unrated
USA

"Do it, Desiree! Rip out her black heart!"

One of the more bewildering films in the Something Weird catalog - and that's saying something - Love Goddesses of Blood Island is a nudie-cutie without the nudies. It's also a hardcore gore film, one of the very first ever made. If you thought Werewolf in a Women's Prison was an odd genre mash-up, well, this one is infinitely odder. Essentially a lost film, a 20 minute highlight reel of Love Goddesses' more gruesome moments was tacked onto SW's Floridian horror double-feature DVD of Death Curse of Tartu and Sting of Death in 2002. At the time, those lunch-loosening clips were the only evidence that this insane movie even existed, until last year when Frank Henenlotter's cabal of garbage-pickers unearthed a twice-as-long chunk of the film for his Sexy Shocker series. At 47 minutes, this version is still missing a reel or two, but it does manage to tell the whole terrible tale. And given the glacial pace this beast moves at in this truncated form, perhaps we should be thankful we don't yet have an extended director's cut to slog through.

The awesomely named Richard Flink was the visionary behind this gory little messterpiece. A building contractor by day who also ran his own drive-in theater, the enterprising Mr. Flink was clearly inspired by his neighbor HG Lewis and the massive success Lewis's groundbreaking splatter bum-out Blood Feast experienced when it shocked and awed drive-in goers across America throughout 1963. Why not shoot his own version? Blood Feast actor William Kerwin was brought in to cobble a script together. The original title was Six She's and A He (that title - complete with misplaced apostrophe - is on the opening credits of this version), and was most likely influenced by some overwrought EC comic. There is a chance that the full version contains something resembling a sub-plot, but none is offered here. The film simply spits up an absurd premise and flounders around in it for a half-hour or so.

Said plot involves hapless astronaut Fred Rogers (Bill Rogers) - no relation to the beloved kiddie show host - who is forced to abort a mission and ends up floating aimlessly on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Eventually he washes up on the shores of Blood Island, a tropical paradise occupied by exactly six young women in gold lamé bikinis. The women drag him through the sand to their temple - quite obviously the pool area of a low-rent Miami Beach resort - where they feed him grapes, bananas, and roasted pig.

Then they shave him with a machete and inform him that he will not only toil in their fields all day long, but he will be forced to make savage love to all the girls in succession for the next six nights. Should he fail at this mission, he will end up like the last dumb motherfucker who washed up on Blood Island. Smash cut to: a mannequin head on a pike, covered in what looks like Vaseline, tomato sauce, and a cheap wig.

The women are heavily armed with spears and knives, so Fred is forced to accept this terrible fate. But first, he gets to listen to the amazing love goddesses theme song while watching the girls clumsily dance around the pool. The pool, by the way, is filled with milky water. Just what the hell is in that thing? Party time over, Fred gets to work plowing the fields and, later, boning all these weirdo chicks.

All the girls are clearly insane, but man-hating Rebecca (Carol Wintress) is especially sadistic. In one of the most demented scenes I've ever witnessed, she has a flashback to her encounter with the last sap that washed up on shore.

"I was the one who cut off that man's head," she nonchalantly tells Fred, referring to the rotting noggin-on-a-stick glimpsed in the film's opening. And then we see how it happened.
Rebecca is dressed in what looks like a space-girl outfit, complete with a teased-up pompadour. She circles around a man dressed in military gear. He is tied down to a concrete slab. As he squirms and screams in terror, Rebecca stabs him in the abdomen with an oversized knife. After opening a sizable hole in his belly, she jams her fist into the cavity and starts yanking out ropy intestines. Then she tears out the man's heart and shows it to him. After mercifully passing out, Rebecca uses the knife to hack off the dude's head. She leaves it there on the slab, dead eyes staring into the abyss.

"When your time comes," Becky warns Fred, "I'll again be chosen to use the knife."
Fred responds by staring off into space. I can sorta understand his reaction. She does have a tendency to drone on.

Desiree (Dawn Meredith) is Fred's next mate-for-the-night, but as they embrace for the ritual lovemaking, she whispers to him that she'll help him escape, as long he takes her with him. She explains that, like him, she accidentally washed up on the island. In her case, she escaped from a 'Japanese concentration camp' the year before, and has been trying to get away from these screwy broads ever since. Together, the two formulate a foolproof plan while dutifully humping for the benefit of the love goddesses peering in on them from the dark recesses of the jungle.

There's a good chunk of film missing here, so when we abruptly cut to the next scene, the effect is much like the on-purpose missing reel gag in Planet Terror. A bunch of horrible stuff has clearly gone down, but knowing exactly what is not at all necessary. All we really need to concern ourselves with is how currently-fucked Fred is. Tied to a totem pole, our blood-soaked hero writhes and screams as the girls - including his co-conspirator Desiree - circle him and stab him with spears. Eventually they tire themselves out, and while the other girls fall into a stab-induced trance, Desiree gives Fred the signal, and they haul ass out of there.

They make it all the way to the beach (burlap, Astroturf, and a couple buckets worth of sand) before the island's queen bee Aphrodite (Launa Hodges) shows up. Desiree wrestles on the Astroturf with her and eventually knocks her brains out with what is supposed to be a rock, but is very clearly a sponge. And then that maniac Rebecca shows up, and she blunders her way into a jaw-dropping gore-death.

With the remaining girls hot on their heels, an exhausted Desiree and a badly wounded Fred limp towards his raft, desperate to get off this cursed island. Will they escape the manicured clutches of the Love Goddesses?

There's no way around it: you simply must see this film. Yes, it's terrible, nonsensical and mostly tedious, but it's also completely and utterly insane. From the loony clarinet-driven space-age bachelor-pad ditties blaring away on the soundtrack, to the seriously awkward bikini dances and the actually-sorta-shocking lashes of proto-splatter, at times Love Goddesses seems like it was somehow beamed in from another planet or an alternate dimension, or something. How could anyone in 1964 dream up something so visceral, so maddeningly random, and so confusingly chaste, all at the same time? Why show a graphic disemboweling, but no sun-warmed breasts? Why shoot half the movie at an actual beach, and then the other half - including beach scenes - on a hilariously shoddy and unconvincing set? And what's in that fuckin' pool?

Unfortunately, we may never know the answers to these questions. The folks at Something Weird ran into a dead-end when they went looking for Mr. Flink. He produced 1965's hippies vs. jellyfish monster opus Sting of Death, but gave up the movie business shortly thereafter, and has yet to resurface. No one else involved with Love Goddesses is either still alive or willing to discuss it. So, this is pretty much it. 47 completely disorienting minutes of z-movie delirium courtesy of Richard S Flink, building contractor and cinematic visionary. That blistering Miami heat can surely fry a man's brains.

Availability: Love Goddess of Blood Island is available on DVD from Something Weird.

- Ken McIntyre

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988)

Directed by David DeCoteau
Starring Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer, Buck Flower
Rated R
USA

"Goddamn that fuckin' imp."

A sort of Holy Grail for 80's cheese-seekers, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is very much a product of its time. Over the top titles were all the rage (See Surf Nazis Must Die, Flesh Eating Mothers, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, etc), and it certainly had that. Mall culture was at its zenith, and it took place at a mall. Nerds were the heroes of the day, and Sorority's got three of them in lead roles. Most importantly, there were three major female horror stars at the time - Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer, and Linnea Quigley - and this film featured all three. Plus, it had bowling. And a foul-mouthed imp. How could you not like this movie?

Three quintessential 80's nerdboys - Calvin (Andras Jones), Keith (John Stuart Wildman), and Jimmie (Hal Halvin) - are sitting around their dorm room one listless night, chugging Bud, watching splatter flicks, and reading skin mags. To relieve the boredom, Keith mentions that he knows where the new pledges for the Tri Delta sorority are being initiated, so our three bungling heroes head out to peep some coed flesh. And they get quite an eyeful.

Taffy (Brinke Stevens) and Lisa (Michelle Bauer) are the two pledges in question. The cabal of sadistic sorority sisters include Rhonda (Kathi O'Brecht), Frankie (Carla Baron), and queen bee Babs (Robin Rochelle, RIP). In a fetish-baiting scene, Babs paddles the girls, and then sprays them with whipped cream.

Afterward, they take a well-deserved shower. The fellas are Scooby-dooing outside the sorority house the entire time, running from one window to another, taking in all the kinky girl-on-girl action.

Eventually Babs catches on and nabs them. In one of those only-in-an-80's-movie plot developments, their punishment for peeping - and the final step of the pledge's initiation - is to break into the bowling alley down at the mall and steal a trophy. Figuring this is a great way to get to know Taffy and Lisa a little better, they boys agree, and away they go.

Getting in is surprisingly easy, since the absent-minded janitor (Buck Flower) has locked himself in a closet, and has left the front door unattended. However, they are not the only surprise guests at the closed alley. A spandex-suited cat burglar named Spider (Linnea Quigley), is already inside. So is Babs, Rhonda, and Frankie. They're in a control booth, watching the action through video cameras.

Meanwhile, Buck is still stuck in the closet. He bangs and bangs on the door, but it will not budge.
"Fuck," he grunts, "that's stuck tighter than a nun's cunt."

Jimmie grabs the biggest trophy he can find, and the gang prepare to split. Spider's part of the gang now, too. Evens up the girl/boy ratio. But then he drops it, and smoke begins to pour out of it.
"Holy shit," mutters Spider.
"No," says Calvin. "Unholy shit."
They peer over the cracked trophy as it hisses and pops, and are stunned to find a wisecracking latex imp huddled inside. From the get-go, the pint-sized, big eared monster seems less than trustworthy, but he is offering free wishes to thank the kids for releasing him from his bowling trophy prison, so a few of them take him up on it. First is Jimmie, who wants money. The imp gives him a pile of gold bricks. So, he's psyched. Then there's Taffy.

Brinke Stevens is the only 80's scream queen that was ever capable of pathos. Even in light-hearted romps like this, there's a palpable sadness to her characters. Taffy might be one of the saddest. When it's her turn for a wish, she asks to be prom queen. The imp outfits her in a lacy white dress. She spins around and around in it, deliriously happy. Later on, of course, the dress is revealed to be nothing more than tattered garbage bags, and poor Taffy is forced to fight demons dressed like a deranged hobo for the rest of the film.

Keith wants to bang Michelle Bauer, naturally. He is granted his wish, and innocent young Lisa is suddenly transformed into a hot-to-trot vixen who just wants to fuck. She drags him into a locker room (I'm not sure why there's a locker room in a bowling alley, but then it's not really my business), and gets to work. There really is no downside to this particular wish, except that it turns out Keith is afraid of sexually aggressive women. Lisa quickly disrobes and then spends the next ten minutes trying to yank the clothes off a squirming, panicked Keith. I'm not sure what the cautionary tale is in this particular bit, but no matter: Michelle Bauer is the undisputed queen of maneater roles, and she's both hilarious and dead-sexy in this short-but-boner-popping scene.
"Keith, I have your pants!"
Indeed you do.

Spider is having none of this, and decides to just bail. The skittish Calvin joins her. Good thinking on their part - already, the wishes are going sour. Jimmie's gold turns out to be nothing but hunks of wood sprayed with gold paint. Taffy's dressed in rags. Keith's terrified of Lisa's vagina. Up in the control booth - or whatever is - things are also going awry. The sorority sisters had nothing to do with the imp at all, and yet they get a dose of Imp-juice (or whatever; it looks like a bolt of lightning), which turns Rhonda into a budget Romero zombie, and Frankie into the monster's bride. And then they pick up axes and start chasing the other kids around.


Taffy, already crushed because of the dress, quickly runs afoul of zombie Rhonda and Bride-of-Frankensteined Frankie. They snatch her up and snap her in half. Keith, crazy-legging his way out of sex with Lisa, runs into the terrible two as well, and they French-fry his face. The imp corners Babs and turns her into Elvira, for whatever reason. And then I think she death-lesbos Lisa. I'm not sure how that works, but that's what happens.

Around the one-hour mark, Buck's crazy ol' janitor finally gets around to explaining the current wave of mutilation. Thirty years ago, at this very alley, a terrible and much-abused bowler named Dave McCabe started bowling perfect games. Soon after, everyone who'd done him harm began turning up dead. "Awful dead, all tore-up", even. Naturally, Dave got popped for the murders and was promptly sent to prison, but he went to the gas chamber claiming that he'd used black magic to become a better bowler, and that things just got out of control. It was the imp that had done all the killin'.

"That is about the stupidest damn story I've ever heard," says Spider. It is pretty close.

Buck tells the kids they've got to get the imp back in the trophy, or his reign of terror may never end. And so, the plucky Spider and her hapless geek-pal Calvin run around the alley, battling the monster girls and chasing the imp.

There are poorly staged fight scenes, a girl-on-fire gag, and even a low-speed car stunt in an empty-parking lot at 3AM. And, as was the standard for the 80's, an improbable-but-satisfying ending. Roll credits.

While the towering trio of scream queens is a rare treat (well, sorta; there's always Scream Queen Hot Tub Party and Nightmare Sisters) and the goofier-than-usual tone is hard to dislike, Sorority Babes is still marred by a couple of annoying factors. For one, every print that's surfaced since '88 (if, indeed, there's even more than one) has been too dark. You literally have to squint half the time just to see what's going on, especially in scenes that feature the imp. Also, there's no real standout moments, no classic and/or unforgettable scenes. What most people remember about the film in Buck's semi-demented, sandpaper-throated mumbling - and you can find that in dozens of films - and the three actresses. Again, nice to see 'em all in one place, but they spend 40 minutes together in a bathtub, naked, in Nightmare Sisters. So, it's not really about that, either. We don't not go back to Sorority Babes because it's good or because it's particularly memorable, we watch it over and over because it represents a time and place in the world when many of us were blissfully unaware teenage numbskulls, when even the simplest pleasures kept us enthralled.

An imp trapped in a bowling trophy would not pass muster in this thorny modern world, but in the 80's - pre-cell phone, pre-internet, when Casios seemed like magic and a VCR was a gateway to narcotic wonderment - yeah, sure. Imp in a bowling trophy, why the fuck not? And here is the most important part - spoiler alert, by the way - at the very end of the film, nerdboy Calvin vrooms off into the sunrise (it was a long night) on the back of Spider's motorcycle, having accepted an invitation to 'her place', presumably for a good boning. Imagine, a world where you fight ancient evil at the mall, and afterward, you split to have savage 80's sex with Linnea Quigley, the most lusted-after b-queen in history? That is the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy for aging cult-goons like myself. It still sounds like the best night ever to me.

The quintessential 80's movie is different for everybody who lived through the decade, really. High school zeroes prefer the Breakfast Club or Revenge of the Nerds, former mall-queens love Dirty Dancing and Footloose and Flash Dance, some dig Back to the Future or Nightmare on Elm Street or New Wave Hookers, but for many trash-film fans growing up in the era, this one managed to encapsulate all of their interests and desires into one adorably cheeseball premise. Girls, monsters, bowling, the shopping mall. An 80's movie-nerd paradise. For that reason, it will remain a beloved cult item until we're all dead. And after that, who gives a fuck?

Significantly, most of the people involved with Sorority are still working today, over 20 years later. Although he appears to be concentrating mostly on gay-themed films at this stage in his career, director David DeCoteau has a long and winding resume full of fun junk like this: Dr Alien (1989), Beach Babes from Beyond (1993), Creepozoids (1987), and of course, Nightmare Sisters (1987). Linnea, Michelle, and Brinke are all still going strong: Brinke appeared in ten films in 2009 alone. Genre legend Buck Flower had a hell-for-leather run through the lower-rungs of the movie business, acting, writing, producing, and growling his way through hundreds of brain-boiling B & Z movies before his time finally ran out in 2004. Producer Charles Band is still a major figure in indie-film, and his Full Moon production company continues to crank out nutball opuses like the Gingerdead Man series. Soundtrack composer Guy Moon has racked up an armful of Emmys over the last two decades for his work in children's television. Even the voice of the Imp, Dukey Flyswatter, managed to carve out a niche for himself. When he wasn't acting in cult-films like Surf Nazis Must Die, he was fronting shock-rockers Haunted Garage. A bonafide Hollywood legend, Dukey still pops up in odd places here and there, and is plotting out both a Haunted Garage resurrection and a stageplay as we speak. Carla Baron joined the surprisingly lengthy list of former cult actresses turned (ahem) "psychics". Unfortunately, Robin Rochelle, a glamazonian, scene-gulping, b-goddess-in-the-making most remembered as the Final Girl in the original Slumber Party Massacre, committed suicide in 1996, after a long battle with alcoholism.

Sorry, I don't really know how to put a positive spin on that one.

Availability: Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is available on a too-dark DVD and a too-dark VHS. Totally fucks up Michelle Bauer's full-frontal scene. But what are you gonna do?

- Ken McIntyre

The Best of Benny Hill (1974)

Directed by John Robins
Starring Benny Hill, The Ladybirds, Sue Bond, Rita Webb, Jackie Wright
Unrated
UK

“Those hot pants of hers were so damned tight, I could hardly breathe."

Reruns of the Benny Hill Show were a staple of the UHF channels here in Boston for most of the 80's. At the time, we were awash with crazy bullshit like Loose Screws and Slumber Party Massacre II, so there were plenty of other places to find pretty girls in their underthings. As a result, I never really paid much attention. The few times I did watch, I usually came away more confused than anything else. There is something completely inscrutable to a lot of Benny Hill's more well-known bits. For example, he liked slapping people in the back of the head a lot. One good wallop might have been suitably hilarious, but he'd do it twenty times, as if it would be exponentially funnier with each repetition. Perhaps it was, to British audiences in the early 70's, but it just seemed odd to an American teenager. Then, of course, there was his signature: the short, silent film, sped-up for extra hilarity. I really don't understand how that was funny in any era.

Still, it's been a couple decades since I watched Mr. Hill, and having spent a dizzying amount of hours recently diving into other Brit sexploitaion films of the era - see Confessions of a Pop Performer, Zeta One, What's Up Nurse, etc - I figured it was high time to give him a second chance, and to answer that burning question: Yeah, sure, boners are popped, but is Benny Hill really funny?


The Best of Benny Hill collects bits and sketches from the early days of Benny's show - 1969-1974. There was a previous incarnation of the BHS that ran on the BBC in the 1950's, but that has so far remained unavailable. The version most of us are familiar with ran on Thames Television from 1969 to 1989, and aired in just about every country in the world. Since a goodly amount of the humor was both physical and obvious, a working understanding of English was not particularly necessary. You don't even need subtitles to get the old blowing-up-a-woman's-tits-with-a-bicycle-pump gag, after all.


Interestingly, although this collection leads off with it, the immortal "Yackety Sax" theme by Boots Randolph was not introduced until the end of Best Of's era, in 1974. It has since been appropriated by anybody who's ever come to the conclusion that their dumb comedy skit will be even funnier if they sped everything up. Hint: it will not.

There is no context to The Best of Benny Hill, it simply rolls out a bunch of bits, leading off with the tiresome under-cranked camera routine. In this one, Benny runs a whacked-out hospital where the doctors constantly attempt to bed their female patients. Even in 1969, these gags were ancient, and the only interesting thing about the grabby sketches at this point is women in them. Benny managed to snag some startling beauties for his television show, including Cheryl Gilham (Tiffany Jones, Confessions of a Sex Maniac), Jenny Lee Wright (Madhouse), Sue Bond (The Yes Girls, Secrets of Sex), and many other notable 'crumpets' and 'dollybirds' of the day, many of whom, due to Benny's hijinks, ended up in their underwear. Although the saucy bits are a lot tamer than I remember - at least at this early stage in the show's history - hot British chicks in their bloomers works, no matter how lame the comedy is.

Further along, however, we do start to see glimpses of Hill's comedic talents. Some of the sketches are timeless enough that they could appear, verbatim, on Saturday Night Live this weekend, and they'd still be just as valid and funny. In particular, there's a bit where Hill plays a French film director on a pretentious British film-chat show. The stuffy host gushes about Hill's avant-garde films, and Hill explains, in a dead-on French accent, that none of his choices were actually artistic. For example, his latest film was not shot with a handheld camera for the intimacy of the shots, but because the tripod broke. Stuff like that. There's also a series of lightning-fast bits that have Hill directing a movie and dealing with idiotic actors.
"What's that in the road...a head?" Asks a big-eyed blonde in one scene.
"No, dear," Benny-the-director explains. "It's 'What's in the road ahead."

Benny's show often featured popular singers and bands of-the-day, but all the performances in Best Of are by Benny himself. Although he always played these numbers for laughs, in at least one, a pop-psych number called "Garden of Love", he actually reveals himself to be pretty effective warbler. It's definitely a highlight of this collection.

There are also a few bits here that most definitely do not stand the test of time. While the show was clearly influenced by psychedelic music and fashions - there's even a too-brief bit with Benny skulking around a flower-powered disco, wearing an orange afro and peeking up go-go dancers' miniskirts, there's also a host of oddball "mod" sketches like one where Benny and a woman (Charmaine Seal) dance around wearing bizarre masks that would clearly throw anyone in the grips of an LSD trip into a sheer bugfuck panic; even stone-cold sober in 2009, it's a weird and creepy bit.

Ultimately, it's a mixed bag here, although it does contain at least two classics. My Dinner with Charlotte Fudge is a brief-but-uproarious bit where Benny is a guest on a fashion show that happens to take place at a dinner table. The host (Eira Heath) - Miss Fudge, I presume - attempts to update us on this season's racy styles, from micro-minis to see-through blouses, while a drunken Benny offers witty zingers in a blotto slur. Very funny stuff.



Then there's the collection's centerpiece, Tommy Tupper in Tupper Time. When we first meet star-of-stage-and-screen Tommy, he's zooming around in a sports car with a dramatic-looking brunette.

After accidentally mangling his ride and unceremoniously ditching the dame, Tupper walks into the studio and starts his talk show. He almost immediately loses all control of the situation, and things quickly devolve into mayhem. I've got to give it to Mr. Hill, that bit is fuckin' funny.

In summation: sometimes tedious, sometimes hilarious, The Best of Benny Hill is nonetheless an accurate representation of the show's earlier days. As the times became more permissive, so did Mr. Hill's show, and the 80's version offers much more for skin-fans to ogle. Still, the best bits are worth fast-forwarding through the worst bits. Who knows, they could be even funnier that way.


PS: Benny died of a heart attack in 1992. At the time, he had $20,000,000 in the bank, but still didn't own his own car. He was an interesting guy, that Benny.

Availability: Turn on your TV, man. Benny's on their somewhere.

- Ken McIntyre

Werewolf in a Women's Prison (2006)

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Bikini Carwash Company (1992)

Directed by Ed Hansen
Staring Kristi Ducati, Rikki Brando, Joe Dusic, Kimberly Bee
Rated R
USA

"One more word, and I'm going to hold you in contempt."
"In contempt of what, a car wash?"

Any film written, produced, and directed by booze-swilling pussyhounds Buck Flower and Ed Hansen is bound to be a little thin in the plot department, but Bikini Carwash Company - which is, easily, Hansen's most successful feature - doesn't even pretend to be anything other than a mindless series of wet-chicks-in-bikinis montages. There's nothing about it that would warrant more than a day of filming. For all I know, Hansen shot it in real time. I can hear the conversation now:
Buck: "Ed, we ain't got much bread for this one. We're gonna haveta get it done pretty quick."
Ed: "No problem, Buck ol' pal. I can get it done in two."
Buck: "Two weeks?"
Ed: "Haha, what? No man, two hours."
Buck: "Shit, then we'd have money left over for the dog track!"
Ed: "My thoughts exactly. Now pass that bottle, Buck."

You know you're in for special treat when the credits make you do a spit-take. Sure, computer graphics weren't nearly as realistic in '92 as they are now, but the opening sequence - a bus riding a virtual highway towards a giant pair of boobs - is hilariously primitive.

The story, such as it is, involves Iowa-raised bumpkin Jack (Joe Dusic) who wanders onto the beach one day and starts poking at scantily clad nubiles, asking about the "Sunshine Carwash Company". Eventually, one of them points him in the right direction, and he meets up with his uncle Elmer (Patrick Wright, The Cheerleaders), who owns the carwash and is suffering terribly from allergies. He wants college-boy Jack to run the place for the summer so he can see a doctor and get healthy. When Jack arrives, he is shocked to see a van full of naked strippers - one of Elmer's few regular customers. Elmer hands him the keys and then splits, leaving Jack with a failing business and a pile of bills.

Jack's luck changes when he meets Melissa (Kristi Ducati). Melissa and her friends pooled a pile of money together and invested in an edible bikini company, but she forgot to refrigerate their product, and it all melted. Now they're ruined, and she needs a quick way to make some cash. When Jack stumbles onto her and her gang of jiggle-bunnies and explains his situation, Melissa gets a bright idea. That's right, a bikini car wash. Jack will make enough dough to keep the carwash afloat and pay for Elmer's expensive allergy treatments, and Melissa and her friends can make their money back. And, you know, the rest of us can watch them wash cars topless. So, everybody wins.

Jack agrees, partly because he thinks it's a viable business model, and partly because he desperately wants to bang Melissa. After an effective bikini-tease in her sex-shack, Jack happily signs the dubious contract she hands him, and they get to work.

Day one of the Bikini Car Wash starts off with an early morning workout, in bikinis, set to blaring spandex rock.

Once the girls are suitably limbered up, Rita (gorgeous Neriah Davis) hooks the rubes by waving them in off the boulevard, and once they pay the admission fee, the girls wet their cars down and then proceed to wash windows with their tits and buff the chrome with their asses. Naturally, lines start forming around the block. It should be noted, by the way, that despite being called the Bikini Carwash, the girls are usually topless. Where do they think they are, Europe?

As you might imagine, Jack soon gets a visit from the cops - and the assistant DA, sniveling worm Donovan Drake (Matthew Cory Dunn). Seems there's been an inordinate amount of fender benders outside of the carwash, not to mention all the reports of naked antics. Drake wants Jack arrested and the place shut down immediately, but Melissa makes a phone call, and high-powered lawyer Bobbie Canova (Kimberly Bee) shows up and completely confuses him.

And then a flasher shows up, which throws everyone into chaos and causes Melissa to point awkwardly towards the camera.

And then, because Hansen just can't himself, there's a stripper routine inside the carwash.

At some point later, Judge Hawthorne shows up to inspect the joint, and in what I'm sure Hansen imagined would be the comic highlight of the movie, his wife (Landon Hall, Cyberella) runs afoul of a vacuum cleaner and ends up stripped to her underwear. While this is happening, a horror movie scream is looped on the soundtrack to signify Mrs. Hawthorne's dismay. Unfortunately the actress has her mouth closed the entire time.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, if this is a Flower/Hansen production, then where's our old pal John F Goff? Well, he's here, too. He's the DA. Turns out, he's also the flasher, and he's been running around town with his dick out because he hates women, especially his mother. So that was weird. Goff hauls ass out of there, but he's cornered by the van strippers (who, in classic Hansen fashion, look like actual worn-out old strippers), who tie him down and give him a forced lapdance. And then he gets hauled off to jail.

For whatever reason, this whole debacle sexually stimulates the formerly impotent judge, so, emboldened by his hard-on, he declares that the carwash can stay open. Bobbie Cordova thanks him, and then her dress gets sucked off by the vacuum, causing her and the judge and everyone else to laugh hysterically. In most cases - certainly in any given episode of the A Team or Speed Buggy, this is when you would call it a day and roll the credits. However, we are still only at the hour mark. What other naked nuttiness could possibly await us?

Well, first Bobbie has a couple longhaired dudes soap up her ass. And then Melissa and Jack go back to the sex shack and fuck. And then there's a bikini photo shoot.

So that eats up fifteen minutes. And then, finally, Uncle Elmer comes back to work. Turns out they found a cure for his allergies - edible underwear. Yes, you read that right. Just like Melissa was trying to sell at the beginning.
"If somebody invests in that stuff, they'll make a fortune!" Says Elmer.
It's like a fairytale, only with silicone and Aquanet.

Much like Fred Olen Ray's Bikini Drive In, Bikini Carwash Company seems impossibly anachronistic. There is nothing 90's-esque about the movie, including the incessant flash metal soundtrack. The clothes, the hair, the language, all of it seems lifted straight from 1985, almost as if Hansen was attempting a period piece. But then again, this probably wouldn't have worked with a grunge soundtrack. On the surface, it seems like a stereotypical Ed Hansen film: the ridiculous set-up, the Hanna Barbara sound effects, the intrusive strip sequences, the incessant roar of the soundtrack, z-hero cameos (Jim Wynorski works at the carwash, porn star Missy Warner is the first girl Jack harasses at the beach), and of course, John F Goff. But all the slow-mo and quick-cutting sequences featuring wet girls and their soapy tits are much slicker than anything Hansen ever did before. And when you consider that his next film was Takin' It Off Out West - one of the most primitive films we've ever reviewed - well, I think cinematographer Gary Dean Orona handled a lot of this film himself, probably when ol' Ed was sleeping one off. Not surprisingly, Orona directed the sequel himself.

Perhaps Bikini Carwash Company's slickness is what makes it Hansen's biggest hit. Or maybe it's all the tits. At any rate, it ruled late night Cinemax for years, and is fondly remembered by most of the teenage losers that saw it back then. It never reaches the exquisite depths of the junkfilm abyss that Hansen plunged to in, say, Party Favors, Party Plane, or Takin' It All Off, but it's still pretty awesome/bad. And yes, boners will most assuredly be popped.

By the way, most of the girls returned for Bikini Carwash Company II and, for some reason, Meatballs 4.

Availability: Bikini Carwash Company is available on DVD. For $100.00!
Also on VHS.


Link: Neriah Davis - who still looks amazing, even without the giant pile of hair - has her own website. Sign up for her newsletter and she'll email you a saucy pic every Monday, which sounds delightful.

- Ken McIntyre