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.