Friday 6 March 2015

Return to Savage Beach (1998)



Here's a little tip for film-makers, courtesy of this movie: having one of your characters exclaim "how many endings will this story have?" does not actually make it okay to have twenty seven different endings in your film.

So we have finally reached the last Andy Sidaris film.  He (and his son) released twelve flicks in fourteen years.  Not a bad effort in terms of quantity, though the less said about quality, the better.  I'm not sure why he stopped.  Possibly he just felt ready to retire, or maybe the budgetary needs of his action-oriented films (however weak that action was) meant he couldn't compete with the rise of the cheaper-to-film erotic 'thriller' and erotic parody.  Whatever the case, it marks the end of an era.  A trashy, schlocky era, but an era nonetheless.

The three main women from Day of the Warrior all return in this film, and are as always provided with many opportunities to remove their clothing.  Marcus 'Buff' Bagwell also returns, once more playing 'the Warrior', though in true Sidaris style he has now come over to the side of the good guys.  As he explains to Julie Strain's character, Willow Black: the 'federal agent' he slew in the previous film was actually a serial killer, and he's served three months for his thefts, so all is forgiven.

You might expect Willow to point out that Warrior attempted to kill her, too, and feel a little conflicted about this, but she seems far more interested in having awkwardly choreographed simulated sex with him instead.  It is an Andy Sidaris movie, after all.

The plot, as the title suggests, calls back to earlier Sidaris film Savage Beach.  This allows Sidaris to include a chunk of recycled footage from the earlier film as the agents narrate the events of that flick to each other.  The new parts of the plot meanwhile are all pretty standard Sidaris stuff, with lots of flashy vehicles and topless ladies sprinkled through it as normal.  He does actually manage to shoot a sex scene that approaches being sexy in this film, though, so I guess we have to give him some points for that.

I'll miss the weekly dose of cheese that has been Sidaris movie night, but I suspect my handful of readers will not!

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