Wednesday 31 December 2014

Savage Beach (1989)



This is actually the fourth Andy Sidaris film, but for some reason the box set has it in the third slot, so I decided to watch it next.  That will cause some minor continuity issues, but given that Rodrigo Obregon plays ten different characters across ten different Sidaris films (and dies in most of them), I don't think continuity is really a major concern.

The film opens with a group of four female agents - all provocatively dressed of course - staging a covert investigation of a dockside warehouse.  Why they sneak in when they have a warrant I couldn't tell you, but it illustrates the blithe lack of concern for logic that will permeate the whole script.

Following the traditional (at least in Sidaris-land) topless hot tub celebration of a successful drugs sting, two of the ladies - returning 'stars' Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton - are tasked with flying a planeload of emergency medicine to a distant island.  Distant and remote.  Distant and remote and in the middle of a massive storm.  Did I mention that it was the middle of a massive storm at a distant and remote location? Because the film sure will.

"The Marshall Islands are less than seventy square miles of land in five thousand square miles of ocean." we are informed in one of Sidaris's little info dumps.  Sometimes his movies come across like wikipedia with boobs.

Anyway, while the ladies prepare for their flight (and inevitable crash landing on the distant and remote shores of Savage Beach), we get introduced to a group of US military officers who are assisting the Philippine government to recover some treasure stolen by Japanese forces in World War Two.  Except that the Philippine representative is actually a communist insurgent, and one of the two US guys is an imposter.  Dun dun dun!

Anyway, assuming you have a couple of brain cells to rub together, you've probably figured out that the two groups are going to end up on the same island, along with the communist insurgents.  Oh, and a Japanese survivor.  Because of course there is a Japanese survivor.  He'll be popping up from time to demonstrate that he has a katana, before running off again.

I mean that pretty literally.  There'll be two characters talking, then "Hey, look at my Katana!" *run away*.

So obviously this is all nonsense, with gratuitous nudity attempting to cover for the goofy plot points, hysterically awful dialogue, and terrible acting.  But it is kind of fun nonsense, at least partly thanks to Hope Marie Carlton.  She's no better an actor than anyone else, but whereas they seem all too aware of how bad both they and the film are, Ms Carlton appears to care not one whit.  For her complete lack of self-consciousness, I salute her.

I can't really recommend this to anyone who isn't an aficionado of truly trashy movies, but if you do fit into that group, you may just find it delightfully stupid.

No comments:

Post a Comment