Malibu Express (1985)

It’s confession time. Up until yesterday, I’d never seen a film by Andy Sidaris. Sidaris (R.I.P.) was a true king of trash, and I’m really not sure why it’s taken me this long to get around to him. For those who aren’t familiar with Sidaris, here is a brief career history taken from Wikipedia:

Sidaris was best known for his Bullets, Bombs, and Babes series of B-movies produced between 1985 and 1998. These films featured a rotating “stock company” of actors mostly made up of Playboy Playmates and Penthouse “Pets”, including Julie Strain, Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, Cynthia Brimhall, Roberta Vasquez, Julie K. Smith, Shae Marks, and Wendy Hamilton. Several of his films were done wholly or largely in Shreveport using many local actors or actors with local ties.

Before the B-movies, Sidaris was a pioneer in sports television. He directed coverage of hundreds of football and basketball games, Olympic events, and special programs and won seven Emmy awards for his work in the field. His best known work was with ABC’s Wide World of Sports; he was the show’s first director, and continued in that post for 25 years.

Sidaris pioneered what he called the “honey shot”, close-ups of cheerleaders and pretty girls in the stands at sporting events. He won an Emmy Award in 1969 for directing the Summer Olympics. He expanded into dramatic television in the 1970s, directing episodes of programs like Gemini Man (1976), CBS’s Kojak (mid-1970s), ABC’s The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (late-1970s) and ABC’s Monday Night Football.

He expanded into film, specializing in action flicks featuring gun-toting Playboy Playmates with titles like Fit to Kill and Savage Beach. Most of Sidaris’ “Triple B” series (later given the title L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies) focused on the adventures of a team of secret agents and were mostly filmed in Hawaii.

Last week, I picked up Mill Creek’s Girls, Guns and G-Strings set, which features twelve films (!) by Sidaris. Rather than jump straight into Hot Ticket to Hawaii (I’ve been desperate to see that one), I thought I’d start with the earliest film in the set – 1985’s Malibu Express.

 

MALIBU EXPRESS
USA, 1985, Andy Sidaris

The first thing I thought when the opening titles of Malibu Express began was “Russ Meyer”. Comparing Meyer and Sidaris may seem kind of superficial – yes, they both like tits (Russ prefers more cartoonishly big ‘uns obviously), hammy comedic action and, at least if this film is any indicator, barren locations. But it wasn’t so much the content that reminded me of Meyer, but the attitude. The opening titles of Malibu Express involve a woman with absurdly long fingernails typing the credits into a computer and occasionally casting knowing glances at the camera. This tongue-in-cheek delivery lets us know from the beginning what we’re in for, and, with the Sidaris name all over the credits, it gives the film an auteurist edge. Much like Meyer, whether you like the films of Sidaris or not, there’s no denying that this is a Sidaris film. The similarities between the two directors pretty much end there. Sidaris doesn’t have Meyer’s impressive visual chops, nor an ounce of his films’ smarts. But who cares? Malibu Express is ludicrous fucking fun.

The story of Malibu Express is as paper-thin and simple as it is convoluted and drowning in too many characters. I won’t bother to go into to much detail – it’s all pretty irrelevant. Our hero is Cody Abiliene (Darby Hinton) – a moustachioed private detective who is good with the ladies but can’t shoot a moving target to save himself. Cody is hired by the government to investigate something to do with computer technology being sold to Russians (ahhh, 1985). He begins his investigation with some rich family. Each member of the family has something to hide, and most of them seem to be having an affair with Shane (Brett Baxter Clark), the butler. When Shane winds up dead, Cody must work out who pulled the trigger. Along the way, he also gets challenged to car races repetitively by a hillbilly family called the Buffingtons… ahem.

Malibu Express tries very hard to be funny and, admittedly, sometimes it is. But the biggest laughs come from Darby Hinton’s brilliantly horrible performance as Cody. The entire film is needlessly narrated by the lead who garbles out his lines with unbelievable weakness. The writing isn’t exactly great to start with, but Hinton manages to ruin every joke he’s required to deliver with his pathetic mumbling. Best of all is a reoccurring joke where Cody references Dirty Harry – awful, awful stuff. Sidaris works well with Hinton’s limitations making Cody a reasonably rubbish hero. While women inexplicably throw themselves at Cody (one even “rapes” him), in our introduction to Cody, we witness his terrible marksmanship skills – a great way to introduce such a protagonist!

Sidaris also scores major kudos for knowing exactly what his audience wants. Sidaris ensures that every female who appears in Malibu Express gets their top off. Honestly, the amount of tits in this film is quite overwhelming. The film rarely goes five minutes without a boob popping out. I’ve read some reviews where Malibu Express is referred to as softcore porn and, it must be said, the excuses for the appearance of mammaries are like something out of the most cliched of 80s and 90s porn…

80s girls with giant 80s boobs aside, Malibu Express does not have a whole going for it. I won’t lie. The music that sounds like a bad Dukes of Hazard episode grated the bejesus out of me. The film runs way too long and has a few too many lame twists. But thankfully, the poor scripting leads to amazing moments of exposition that when taken out of context are hilarious:

Malibu Express is also a little light on action, which makes me feel that perhaps this film would be more suited to Pierre’s regular article Tits, Nerds and Apple Pie rather than Tough Guys. However, when the action does kick in, it’s extremely entertaining. Sidaris blesses us with helicopters, two musclebound idiots, exploding fat guys, lots of gunfire and squibs. In fact, for all the grating qualities of Malibu Express, it’s never boring. From start to finish, my face was stretched into a hideous grin that would occasionally crack open to release a belly laugh. And honestly, you probably shouldn’t even be bothering to read this if you can’t appreciate movies that features scenes like this: