Malibu Express (1985)

Andy Sidaris was a sports television director in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first director of Wide World of Sports on ABC and has been credited with pioneering many of the techniques that are still in use throughout sports programming. He claimed to have come up with the instant replays and the slow-motion replay. The one thing he for sure came up with was the honey shot, where the camera person would find an attractive woman in the crowd and zoom in on her. That will come back into play in a minute.

In the 1970s, Andy Sidaris ventured out into dramatic directing. He directed episodes of Kojak, as well as some Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. That didn’t mean he left sports behind. He was working on Monday Night Football for ABC during the decade, as well. To top it all off, Sidaris had also begun a film career with the 1969 release of The Racing Scene, a documentary about James Garner’s racing team.

Going back to the honey shot that Andy Sidaris came up with, it came together with the dramatic direction in the 1973 film Stacey. He cast a Playboy model in the lead role. The whole thing ended up becoming a mostly forgotten exploitation film with murder, affairs, and homosexuality. It pushed some boundaries for 1973. That was only a taste of what would come through the rest of Andy Sidaris’s career. He doubled down on the action, sex, and murder. Seven came out six years later, but it was six years after that when he would start a series of films that would become his most famous.

Malibu Express came out in 1985. It was a pseudo-remake of Stacey, with a few differences. One of them was to add more sex into the story. There were a few new characters added as well, with two of them being split parts of the main character from Stacey. Cody Abilene (Darby Hinton) was a special agent who frequented the race track to see his good friend, race car driver June Khnockers (Lynda Wiesmeier). Contessa Luciana (Sybil Danning) contacted Cody to investigate treason at the mansion of Lady Lillian Chamberlain (Niki Dantine). The events that unfolded involved Lillian’s niece Liza (Lorraine Michaels), her nephew Stuart (Michael A. Andrews), Stuart’s wife Anita (Shelley Taylor Morgan), and the housekeeper Shane (Brett Baxter Clark). When one of them ended up dead, it was up to Cody and policewoman Beverly (Lori Sutton) to figure out who committed the murder and why.

The Triple B series of films began with Malibu Express. Each of the Bs in Triple B stood for one of the elements that Andy Sidaris would put into each of the subsequent films in the series. The first B stood for bullets. Each movie was filled with gun action. The second B stood for bombs. There were explosions sprinkled into the movies along with the gunplay to heighten the action. The final B represented babes. Like the lead star of Stacey, many of the women that were in Malibu Express and the subsequent Triple B movies were Playboy or Penthouse models. Bullets, Bombs, and Babes. Three Bs. Triple B. It was also later called L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies.

Bullets were a major part of Malibu Express. There were various shootouts sprinkled throughout the film. One of them took place on Cody’s houseboat, the Malibu Express. Yes, that’s the title of the movie. Cody had to fend off the henchman of the guy who was selling technology to the Russians. He would later run into a couple more henchman while investigating the Chamberlain beach house for clues about the murder. He and Beverly got into a shootout with them. There was one other shootout near the end of the film when the first group of henchmen returned to kill Cody for a roll of film he had confiscated. Three major shootouts, one Triple B film.

There was a twist with the bullets part of Malibu Express, though. Cody Abilene was an inept action hero. He thought he was better than he was. The problem was that he couldn’t hit a moving target. His introduction to the movie involved him at a shooting range. He set the target to move and missed every shot. During the shootout with Beverly, she had to shoot the henchman even though he assured her that he could do it. He missed every single time he tried to shoot them. It paid off by the end of the movie, however, when June Khnockers (that’s a silent h) opened her top to make one of the henchman freeze in his tracks. Cody was able to shoot him because he had stopped moving. This gag came back in Hard Ticket to Hawaii when Rowdy Abilene could only hit moving targets with a rocket launcher. The Abilene family was just a bunch of bad shots.

That brings things to the second B in the Triple B title: bombs. Technically, there weren’t any bombs in Malibu Express. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a substantial explosion. One of the henchmen enjoyed using live grenades when he was tasked with killing someone. In the climactic chase scene, Cody Abilene hit him with a race car. The henchman fell to the side of the road and blew up from a live grenade. It was the one explosion that made the film fit into the Triple B descriptor.

Finally, there was the Babes aspect of the Triple B series classification. From the earliest moments of Malibu Express, there was nudity and sex. Cody went to a racetrack to see his friend June Khnockers (still a silent h), who immediately took her top off as soon as she was out of her car. He went on to have sex with two women, May (Barbara Edwards) and Faye (Kimberly McArthur), who moved into the boat next to his; Contessa Luciana; and Beverly. Shane, the housekeeper, had sex with Liza and Anita. June tried to have sex with Cody during the car and helicopter chase near the end of the film. She also flashed people two other times. There was the as-of-yet unmentioned Sexy Sally (Suzanne M. Regard), who got some sort of naked whenever she was on the phone with Cody. He turned her on that much. And, of course, there was the woman who worked at the car lot (uncredited, but from what I can find, the actress was Alex Hinton). Cody asked for the fastest thing on her lot. She took her top off and said it was her. Cody later said she raped him.

That was a lot of sex and nudity for one action movie. It was like a James Bond film on Viagra. Making the naked women even more fitting of the Babe nomenclature was the fact that there were Playboy models in the mix. Lynda Wiesmeier, who played June Khnockers (the h is still silent), was a Playboy model in the 1980s. She was the Playmate of the Month in July 1982. Lorraine Michaels was the Playmate of the Month in April 1981. Kimberly McArthur got to be Playmate of the Month in January 1982. Barbara Edwards did even better in Playboy, being the Playmate of the Month in September 1983 and Playmate of the Year for 1984. That’s some Playboy influence within this exploitation action movie.

The Triple B series would span twelve movies from 1985 until 1998. Andy Sedaris would helm them all. Each movie would end up playing about the same, in terms of components, but the results would be a little different every time. There was a varied quality between the movies. Hard Ticket to Hawaii, the second film, has been remembered as the best of the series. They all include three things, though. They have bullets. They have bombs. And they have babes.

Andy Sidaris came from the world of sports broadcasting. He made his name there, pioneering many of the techniques that are still in use to this day. When he found success there, he decided to transition that success into feature films. He made a name for himself in feature films as well. People are still talking about the work he did. He built a legacy by using beautiful women. Honey shots and Triple B films. That’s the legacy of Andy Sidaris.

Here are a few notes for this post:

• Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352) was mentioned in this post. It was another Triple B film made by Andy Sidaris.
• Regis Philbin had a small cameo in Malibu Express. He was previously seen in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Jack and Jill (week 101), Sextette (week 141), and Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
• Two actors from Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352) appeared in Malibu Express. One was Michael A. Andrews and the other was director Andy Sidaris.
• Finally, John Alderman returned from New Year’s Evil (week 318) to appear in Malibu Express.
• Have you seen Malibu Express? Have you seen any of Andy Sidaris’s movies? What do you think of them? Let me know your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.
• Those two outlets are also good places to find me if you have a movie that you think I should be checking out for this blog. Give me all your suggestions. I’m waiting.
• If you want to get more of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram. There are new pictures and videos going up there all the time.
• Next week has a little bit of history behind it. The new James Bond movie was supposed to be coming out. The 1960s version of Casino Royale was scheduled to line up with it. Then the whole COVID-19 pandemic happened and No Time to Die was pushed to later in the year. For that reason, I pushed back covering Casino Royale. I swapped another movie into the schedule instead. That movie was 3 Musketeers, produced by The Asylum. It’s time for that one. I’ll see you next week with the post.

How Wrestling Translates to Movies and Russell Madness (2015)

Since November, Covid-19 has been consuming the world. It wreaked havoc on China, Italy, and the Princess Diamond before spreading around the rest of the globe. Now North America is directly feeling the effects as the virus infects people at increasing daily rates. Pubic spaces have been closed down. Even movies and television have felt the effects, with many productions being put on hold for the unforeseeable future. One of the few things that hasn’t been greatly affected by it is the WWE.

Vince McMahon has kept his wrestling shows afloat during a time when most other people are practicing social distancing. The audience is gone, but the show must go on. Monday Night Raw, NXT, and Smackdown on FOX continue to produce new episodes while most other shows have shut down until the pandemic passes. The most likely reason is the amount of money that can be made by pushing on. The other could be the inherent entertainment that comes from watching wrestling stars.

People have tuned in week after week, for decades, to watch wrestlers duke it out in the ring. They’ve seen things like Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III, the Montreal Screwjob, the first Tables Ladders and Chairs match, the Finger Poke of Doom, and the growth of women’s wrestling to the point that there have now been three women’s Royal Rumbles and a women’s main event at Wrestlemania 35. That’s not nearly everything, and that’s only covering the WWF/WCW/WWE television wrestling.

Wrestlers have also branched out into acting in films and scripted television shows. Their faces have been plastered all over posters and home video packaging. And with their presence in movies comes some influence that wrestling will have over the storytelling. That influence doesn’t only come in the form of WWE Studios producing movies like The Marine, 12 Rounds, and The Call. There are many ways that the wrestling background of the performers will influence what happens in the movies.

One of the most common influences that a wrestling star can have over a story is for wrestling to be involved. Sometimes the wrestler will be brought in to fill out a wrestler role in a wrestling story. Other times there will be some wrestling thrown in, simply because a wrestler was available to be in the movie. Whatever the case, there are an abundance of movies featuring wrestlers that also feature people getting into the ring to battle it out and see who is superior.

No Holds Barred, which featured Hulk Hogan in a leading role, was a movie about TV companies competing for wrestling ratings superiority. Fighting with My Family was a biopic about Paige and what it took for her to find WWE success. It featured Dwayne Johnson playing himself. Ready to Rumble was based around the WCW and featured much of their roster. The television show GLOW was about a women’s wrestling show from the late 1980s and featured appearances by many wrestlers from WWE, TNA, and Impact Wrestling. One of those wrestlers was John Morrison, who played a wrestling trainer in season one. He would also appear in this week’s movie.

Russell Madness was a 2015 release that featured a talking Jack Russell Terrier named Russell (Sean Giambrone). He was up for adoption in a pet store for too long, so they were going to send him to the pound. Russell ran away to avoid the terror of pound life. He managed to find the Ferraros, a family that recently inherited the old family business: a classic wrestling arena. The family watched as Russell, trained by a monkey named Hunk (Will Sasso), stumbled into wrestling stardom. He even had a rival, the human wrestler nicknamed “The Hammer” (John Morrison), and discovered that the strongest tag team was family.

Movies filled with wrestling aren’t the only times when wrestling becomes a part of the storytelling. There are times when the story is something other than wrestling, and some sort of wrestling match makes its way in there. Look no further than The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power to find that. The whole franchise had been seeped in wrestling, with Dwayne Johnson in the first film and Dave Bautista in the third. It was the fourth film, however, that brought the wrestling ring into things. While trying to obtain a map, the female protagonist was forced to win it through a wrestling match against an opponent played by Eve Torres, a former WWE wrestler. It came out of nowhere, was only relevant for that one scene, and exited the movie just as quickly. It was as though they had a wrestler and needed to force a wrestling scene in there.

Moving on from the literal in-the-ring wrestling, the many action movies featuring wrestlers have infused their action with wrestling moves. Most of the time, it’s basic wrestling-style grappling. A few throws here, a grab and throw there, an interlocked tumble in the end. The choreography of the fights look more like wrestling than fights in other movies. In The Marine 5: Battleground, most of the fights happened between wrestlers. This allowed for more wrestling moves to be utilized as Mike Mizanin fought the likes of Naomi, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, and Heath Slater. And, for the most part, that action worked because the wrestlers knew what they were doing and the fights were choreographed to accentuate their wrestling skills.

The fisticuffs can get even more specific when the moves specific to those wrestlers get thrown into the choreography. Dwayne Johnson has repeatedly executed The Rock Bottom in action movies in which he has been featured. Going back to Russell Madness, John Morrison basically performed his Starship Pain finisher, minus the butt bounce on the top rope, on Russell to finish their first match. John Cena gave Fred his finisher, The Attitude Adjustment, in Fred: The Movie. Goldberg performed a Spear during Santa’s Slay. The list could go on and on. The fact that a wrestler is in a movie usually leads to those wrestlers performing the moves that they were known for in and around the ring.

The final big influence that the casting of wrestlers has over the way a story is told comes in the form of character types. There are three basic character types for wrestlers. This doesn’t mean that all wrestlers in movies fall under these three groupings. Most of them do, though. One is that the wrestlers play wrestlers. That was kind of covered in that first little bit about wrestling being a part of the story when wrestlers are involved in the acting. The second grouping is the charismatic person. It could be an action star spouting off one-liners, or a comedic role where they crack jokes. The final grouping is the tough terror, where the wrestler plays a big menacing type of person. There are a few performances that don’t fall in those three categories, but most fit right in there.

Many wrestlers have played wrestlers. It could be a movie like Ready to Rumble where the World Championship Wrestling stars played themselves throughout the film. Diamond Dallas Page played a heel version of himself, while the remaining WCW Nitro roster appeared as themselves to fill out the rest of the wrestling matches in the film. Or a wrestler playing a wrestler could be like John Morrison in Russell Madness. He came in to play The Hammer, the rival wrestler to Russell, the Jack Russell terrier. It wasn’t John Morrison playing himself. He was playing another wrestler. But he used his wrestling background to play the character.

When they aren’t playing wrestlers, the wrestling stars get split into the other two camps of performances. Dwayne Johnson has played many a charismatic action hero in movies like The Rundown, the Fast and Furious franchise, Rampage, Jumanji, and San Andreas. Dave Bautista has done much the same with Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy and his part in Hotel Artemis. Hulk Hogan did his charismatic protagonist stuff in No Holds Barred, Mr. Nanny, Santa with Muscles, and Suburban Commando. John Cena used his charisma to make Blockers and Bumblebee into audience favourites. Part of what makes the wrestlers’ charisma pop so well on screen is their background in microphone work and ridiculous comedy bits in their wrestling careers.

Then, on the flip side, there are the performances by wrestlers that rely much more on their physical presence than their personalities. Think of someone like The Big Show being used in Jingle All the Way. Sure, he got to give a tough guy line, but the only reason he was in the movie was to be a muscle-bound Santa bent on destroying Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or you could look at Dave Bautista and his use in The Man with the Iron Fists. He was an unstoppable muscle man who could turn to brass when he was hit. That’s all. He was there to be the muscle.

When wrestlers make their way into movies and television shows, things tend to get geared around their appearances. The stories become about wrestling if they weren’t already. Wrestling matches get thrown into the movie when they don’t necessarily fit. Fight choreography becomes infused with wrestling moves, especially those of the wrestlers in the movie. And the character types are tailored specifically to the assumed strengths of the wrestlers. They make their performances, and therefore their films, fit into what they can do.

There are numerous movies out there featuring performers who came from wrestling. If you wanted to, you could spend the entire pandemic at home, going through the hundreds upon hundreds of movies with wrestlers in them. Or you could watch wrestling on television. Wrestlemania 36 is coming up in a couple weeks and there doesn’t look to be an end to wrestling on television, even with more and more lockdowns being put in place. When the rest of television has ceased to have new episodes, wrestling will be the only new thing left. This is a weird, weird world.

Here are some less weird notes:

• The Scorpion King movies (week 380), Jingle All the Way (week 160), The Marine (week 30), The Marine 5: Battleground (week 237), Santa’s Slay (week 263), and Santa with Muscles (week 211) were mentioned in this post.
• Russell Madness was directed by Robert Vince, who directed the Buddies movies (week 270).
• Michael Teigen was in Russell Madness. He was previously in In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220), Snow Buddies (week 270), Space Buddies (week 270), and Far Cry (week 364). Welcome to the Five Timers Club.
• Michael P. Northey made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week. He was in Alone in the Dark (week 152) and Catwoman (week 174).
• Fred Willard also made his third appearance in Russell Madness, after appearing in Date Movie (week 164) and Fifty Shades of Black (week 219).
• The last third appearance was by Nicholas Harrison, who was in Jingle All the Way 2 (week 160) and Snow Buddies (week 270).
• Two other actors from Jingle All the Way 2 (week 160) were in Russell Madness. They were Matty Finochio and David Milchard.
• Charles Robinson returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Russell Madness. His first appearance was in Santa, Jr. (week 107).
• Kaitlyn Maher made her second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week. She was previously heard in Free Birds (week 209).
• Will Sasso voiced Hunk in Russell Madness. He also had a role in Movie 43 (week 243).
• Milo Shandel was in Cop and a Half: New Recruit (week 340) and Russell Madness.
• Russell Madness marked the return of Chris Coppola to the Sunday “Bad” Movies, following his first appearance in Far Cry (week 364).
• Finally, Sean Giambrone made a fairly quick return by being in both The Emoji Movie (week 373) and Russell Madness.
• Have you seen Russell Madness? What did you think of it? What do you think of wrestling being portrayed in movies and TV? How do you feel about wrestlers transitioning into acting in movies and TV? You can tell me all about your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments.
• If you have any suggestions for things that I should be watching for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can find me in the comments or on Twitter and let me know about them. I’m always looking for movies I might not otherwise know. It brings some variety to the schedule.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram and is usually updating with pictures, video clips, and all around bad movie fun. Check it out.
• In next week’s post, I will be revisiting a franchise that I’ve seen something from before. Last year, I saw a movie called Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352). I soon learned that it was the second movie in a franchise from Andy Sidaris. I’ll be checking out the movie that came before it. Malibu Express is next up and you’ll read all about it next Sunday. See you then.