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6
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8 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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In
the mid-1980s and into the '90s, was there a single
video rental store in America that did not
carry this film? I severely doubt it. It was
perfect fodder for an all guy, all night, "drink-and/or-toke-yourselves-into-oblivion-watching-movies"
party.
Lowbrow humor, a little action and a lot of T
& A courtesy of some Playboy Playmates made
Malibu Express a
repeat offender at such parties, especially when
the video stores in your podunk little town wouldn't
carry porn.
This 1985 release was the first of B-movie
auteur Andy Sidaris' action/sex/comedy formula
pictures — "Bullets, Bombs and Babes"
being the standard ingredients. He'd still be
making them into the late '90s; such epics as
Hard Ticket To Hawaii
and Picasso Trigger
were all over cable TV and on the rental shelves.
Every one of them is a ludicrous, horribly acted
rip-off of James Bond movies and whatever action
flicks were popular at the time, only with copious
unadorned boobage trotted out every 5 or 10 minutes
or so. Often Sidaris' Triple-B formula seems concocted
by a 13 year-old who's seen all the 007 films
and spends a lot of time jerking off to his Old
Man's not-so-well-hidden Playboy mags. But you
know what? It works. If you can enjoy cheesy
B-movies because of their awfulness — not
in spite of it — and don't mind looking at naked
women with big, round, fleshy gazungas... ripe,
juicy melons so firm and creamy-pink...
Ahem... Anyway,
back to the movie. Right —
Malibu Express. Where
was I?
Darby Hinton
(Firecracker) is
studly Magnum P.I. wannabe Cody Abilene,
who narrates our story in the manner of Dashiell
Hammett writing for The Dukes of Hazzard.
Scion of a wealthy Texas family, cowboy Cody lives
aboard his daddy's yacht, the Malibu Express,
moored
at the Santa Barbara marina in California.
He works as a private detective from this floating
poontang palace, spending as much time
— if not more — banging
bodacious babes as busting bad guys. He's
brought in on a case by the CIA, one centering
on computer technology being smuggled to the Russians.
(Seeing those old early-'80s PCs is kind of amusing
now.) His CIA contact acquaints him with top agent
Countess Luciana (Howling
II's Sybil Danning), an Italian aristocrat
with mammoth mammaries. (Why doesn't she work
for the Italian Secret Service, then? No accent,
either... But who cares? Just look at those jugs!)
The Countess beds the cooperative Cody before
briefing him on the case.
Suspicion has fallen on the mansion of Lady
Lillian Chamberlain, a wealthy Bel Air socialite,
as a conduit in the tech smuggling pipeline. As
the Countess is an old family friend, she'll bring
Cody with her to stay at the mansion as her guest
for the weekend. Luciana tells him that, as a
stranger, he'll be less conspicuous than she'd
be snooping about the place. (???) Once there,
Cody soon discovers that the shady butler, Shane
(Brett Clark, the "hot dog" guy from
Bachelor Party) is
getting it on with Lady Chamberlain's niece Liza
(Playboy Playmate Lorraine Michaels), her effeminate
nephew (and closet drag queen!) Stuart (Avenging
Angel's Michael Andrews), and Stuart's
horny wife Anita (TV soap star Shelley Taylor
Morgan, who probably wishes this wasn't listed
in her filmography). The duplicitous domestic
is blackmailing all three with compromising photos
and secretly recorded sex tapes. When Shane is
found murdered outside his bungalow, Cody starts
his own investigation into who snuffed him. The
killing is tied in to the smuggling operation,
of course (despite the pointless red herring of
a gangster threatening Shane over gambling debts),
and soon Cody has a trio of thugs (led by Rocket
Attack U.S.A.'s Art Metrano) threatening
him and dogging his every move. Car chases and
shoot-outs ensue. And while all this is going
on, Cody finds time to boink not only the Countess,
but an impossibly foxy junkyard owner (Hinton's
then-wife), an athletic blonde police detective
(Lori Sutton) who's helping him with the case,
and two curve-a-licious Playboy Playmates (Barbara
Edwards, Kimberly McArthur) who've dropped anchor
alongside the Express. (Other characters
do some boinking of their own as well.) Even the
ladies who don't get our hero in the sack
(a phone sex operator, a female stockcar racer)
manage to show us their breasteses. Unfortunately
the film also finds the time to bring us the Buffingtons,
a clan of white trash poltroons who challenge
Cody to a series of street races in the name of
family honor. They show up three blasted times
in the movie, padding it with painfully unfunny
humor. (Can we puh-leeze get back to the
titties?!!)
Malibu
Express
is perhaps
a perfect time capsule of all-American mid-'80s
exploitation filmmaking. The VCR boom was just
cranking up as the drive-ins inexorably went the
way of the dinosaur. Sidaris, who really doesn't
make very good films but at least tries, zeroes
in on the targeted consumer (i.e., drunken men
and teenage boys) with plenty of boobies and softcore
sex scenes in between the chases and gunplay.
When he attempts to be funny (the Buffingtons
— ugh!) or slickly serious (the absolutely
ludicrous resolution to the films' so-called mystery),
Sidaris invariably fails. What remains is tasty
T & A served between thick slices of Velveeta.
To me, cheesy laughs and naked female flesh always
make for a satisfyin' combo.
Strangely
enough, my favorite scene in the film doesn't
feature any nude women: the
killing of Shane
(Chapter 7 on the disc). Now
Sidaris' movies are rarely funny when they're
actually trying to be; the stupid bits with the
Buffingtons are ample testimony to this. I can't
possibly believe that we're intended to take Shane's
murder (mostly) seriously but the way it was filmed
and its importance to the plot leaves little doubt
that it is. And it's friggin' hysterical.
A stocking-masked intruder enters Shane's cottage
while he's watching some of his homemade porn.
Shane is stabbed with a knife, then falls to the
floor, groaning. The intruder steals his videotapes
but is tripped up by Shane when attempting to
leave, dropping them. While the killer stops to
collect the tapes, Shane picks up a camera and
snaps a photo of his assassin, taking the time
to open the drawer of a nightstand, drop the camera
in, and close it. Of course the killer sees
all this, pulling out a silenced pistol and shooting
Shane in the chest for his efforts. As Shane lies
moaning — he's still not dead — the killer goes
to the nightstand to retrieve the camera. On the
way out Stocking Mask puts another bullet into
Shane, this time in the head... but like
they say in the old Timex commercials, he can
take a licking and still keep on ticking!
Staggering to his feet, Shane picks up his
portable television and follows the killer
out the door, as if to throw the still-plugged
in set (talk about a long power cord!) at
his murderer. Later Cody and Luciana find
his body on the lawn, TV still running.
Was
Sidaris drunk when he wrote that scene? There's
gotta be some excuse...
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Malibu
Express
looks and sounds pretty good on DVD, certainly
better than it ever did on VHS. The print used
for the disc's open-matte, fullframe transfer
occasionally shows its age and displays slightly
muted colors, but in general I'm quite satisfied
with it. Extras
are fairly substantial, if only in quantity rather
than quality: an optional
video introduction by Sidaris, Mr. Universe Joe
Brown, and legendary softcore amazon Julie Strain
(who can't resist showing us her hooters); a photo/still
gallery; talent bios for Andy and Arlene Sidaris;
and an audio commentary by the husband-and-wife
filmmaking team. (The latter is a mostly boring.)
It also comes with the Andy Sidaris Film School,
in which Sidaris breaks down both an action scene
and a nude scene using raw footage, explaining
how the various elements (master and close-up
shots) are later edited together to form the final
product. (The examples used here are from Return
To Savage Beach.) Also on deck are three
short featurettes, with Sidaris regulars Cynthia
Brimhall and Suzi Simpson — who are not in Malibu
Express, by the way — and bodybuilder Brown,
who is. By far the best extra is the full slate
of Sidaris film trailers (12 titles in all), which
can be played individually or as one long promo
reel. 2/23/04
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| UPDATE
The disc reviewed here went OOP sometime in 2005.
However, it was later reissued by Brentwood Home
Video in November of that year as part of the Andy
Sidaris Box Set, Vol. 1, which also includes
Hard Ticket to Hawaii
(1987) and Fit To Kill
(1993). As far as I'm aware it uses the same transfer
and comes with the same extras described above. |
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