Picasso Trigger (1988) and the Tropes of Andy Sidaris

Andy Sidaris was a prolific director who changed the way the entertainment world worked. Most of that came before his transition into film. He was a sportscaster who won Emmy’s for his work in broadcast sports. He directed the 1968 Summer Olympics, as well as Wide World of Sports. Some of the techniques he pioneered still get used periodically to this day, including his most famous, the honey shot. That shot involved the camera focusing on a good-looking woman in the crowd when there was some slow time during a broadcast. His success in the sports field would lead to his transition into directing scripted projects.

The beginning of Andy Sidaris’s scripted career was in scripted television. Start small and move up to bigger projects. He directed episodes of Gemini Man, The Hardy Boys, and Kojak while still doing some work in sports. In 1973, he made the leap into feature films with Stacey. He had directed a documentary feature about James Garner’s auto racing team, The Racing Scene, in 1969, but Stacey was his first foray into scripted feature films. He would follow that up with Seven, before essentially reimagining Stacey through a film called Malibu Express. That would be the film that ushered in the later part of his career, and the movies that would define it.

Malibu Express kicked off a series that has come to have three different, distinct titles. The one that Andy Sidaris gave it by the end was L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies, since it involved good looking women working for a spy agency called L.E.T.H.A.L. throughout many of the films. Fans gave it a couple different names, however. One of the names was Guns, Girls, and G-Strings, which titled a box set of all twelve movies in the series. The final name, and the one that most people called the series by, was Triple-B. That stood for Bullets, Bombs, and Babes. Three words starting with the letter B, Triple-B.

Following Malibu Express was the most famous of the Triple-B films, Hard Ticket to Hawaii. After that came Picasso Trigger in 1988. Picasso Trigger picked up some time after Hard Ticket to Hawaii. Donna (Dona Speir), Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), Jade (Harold Diamond), and Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) were back. This time, they teamed up with an agency, whose members included Travis Abilene (Steve Bond) and Pantera (Roberta Vasquez), to take down an evil crime syndicate. It was an action-packed ninety minutes of spy missions.

Picasso Trigger was the third film in the Triple-B series. As such, it contained a bunch of different tropes that would be a part of almost every Triple-B movie. Some of them originated in Malibu Express. Others came from Hard Ticket to Hawaii. By the time Andy Sidaris got to Picasso Trigger, he had a formula built from the tropes. He had perfected the formula. Audiences came to expect the tropes because of the formula. And there would be movie magic that came from Andy Sidaris’s use of the formula.

The first piece of the Andy Sidaris formula was to have a male character with the last name Abilene. This trope began in Malibu Express. The main character was Cody Abilene, a sort of detective for hire who was tasked with solving a mystery surrounding a well-off family. He went off to Hollywood sometime before Hard Ticket to Hawaii. His cousin, Rowdy Abilene, played a major part in the second Triple-B movie. When the time came for the third movie, Picasso Trigger, Rowdy was out, and Travis Abilene was in. The characters were interchangeable. They all served the role of male action hero in a series that was about the women being more dependable in action situations. They were so interchangeable, in fact, that they all shared some common attributes. They could not shoot at moving targets with a handgun. They possessed a boat called Malibu Express. They also liked the leading ladies of their movies.

Cody Abilene was a ladies’ man. He had a lot of women as friends and acquaintances and slept with most of them. They were as attracted to him as he was to them. But when it came to Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Picasso Trigger, there was something more specific that the Abilene men shared in their sexual ways. They shared Donna, the leading lady. Throughout Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Rowdy Abilene had a relationship with Donna. It felt like more than a simple sexual relationship. They seemed to care about each other beyond their bodies. They were an item. In Picasso Trigger, Travis Abilene hooked up with Donna a couple times, and that was it. He didn’t have the same connection that Rowdy had with Donna.

The character of Donna brought up another one of Andy Sidaris’s tropes. Well, maybe not the character. The actress playing Donna was the trope. Donna was played by Dona Speir. She was a Playboy Playmate who had been Miss March in 1984. Andy Sidaris usually cast Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets in his female action roles. Dona Speir was the main one from Hard Ticket to Hawaii until Fit to Kill, but the supporting cast around her was filled with other Playmates. Hope Marie Carlton, Cynthia Brimhall, and Patty Duffek also joined the series during Hard Ticket to Hawaii. They were Miss July 1985, Miss October 1985, and Miss May 1984, respectively. They were joined by Roberta Vasquez (Miss November 1984), Kym Malin (Miss May 1982), and Liv Lindeland (Miss January 1971 and Playmate of the Year 1972) in Picasso Trigger.

But to get the true origin of the Sidaris casting in the Triple-B series, Malibu Express must be looked at. This was the first movie of the Triple-B series and the one before Sidaris found his footing. It was before the tenure of Dona Speir. Malibu Express featured Playboy Playmates in many of the supporting roles, much like the later installments. Lorraine Michaels (Miss April 1981), Kimberly McArthur (Miss January 1982), Barbara Edwards (Miss September 1983 and Playmate of the Year 1984), and Lynda Wiesmeier (Miss July 1982) filled out much of the supporting cast. Some of them (McArthur and Edwards) were there simply to pad out the eroticism that Sidaris wanted. The others (Michaels and Wiesmeier) had supporting roles that actually meant something to the story.

The final trope in the casting area was Andy Sidaris putting himself in a bit role in each of the Triple-B movies. Malibu Express featured Sidaris as the driver of an RV who picked up Cody Abeline and his friend June Khnockers (that’s with an h) after a helicopter and car chase. He came back in Hard Ticket to Hawaii as the floor director of a sports show. In Picasso Trigger, he may have been reprising that Hard Ticket to Hawaii role. He was a man playing golf against Jimmy John (Wolf Larson), the host of that sports show. It was never explicitly said if his character was the floor director, now off work. Either way, he was there.

There’s a chain reaction thing here with the next trope. In the writing process of the Triple-B movies, a few things continually came up. One of those was sports. Andy Sidaris liked to toss sports into his movies. It made sense, coming from a guy who had directed so much sports content. Picasso Trigger had the golf scene, featuring two characters from the previous film. Hard Ticket to Hawaii had the sports show, where Jimmy John interviewed football players before a football conference. Malibu Express had some sports, as well. June Khnockers (with an h) was a race car driver. Her race car was a major part of the chase scene with the helicopter near the end of the film.

The sports didn’t stop there, though. There were important moments in Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Picasso Trigger that used sports as a weapon. In what was arguably the most famous scene from Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Rowdy Abilene weaponized a frisbee. The drug gang that was taking over Molokai killed a couple police officers. The main henchman, Shades, played frisbee with a woman on the beach every day. Rowdy crashed the frisbee toss and got into a competition with Shades over who could throw better. He quickly swapped frisbees for one lined with razor blades and tossed it into Shades’s neck, killing him. Picasso Trigger didn’t have as much setup to the use of weaponized sports equipment. After a dirt bike chase, Donna and Taryn cornered one of the henchmen. Taryn pulled out a boomerang, stuck a small bomb to it, and threw it at the henchman, blowing him up. It was the Picasso Trigger version of the frisbee moment from Hard Ticket to Hawaii.

One last bit of the story that Andy Sidaris put into his movies, for some strange reason, was remote-control vehicles. He must have been extremely fascinated by anything with a remote control in the mid-80s. They always seemed to be there. Okay, not always. There may not have been one in Malibu Express. But he didn’t perfect his style until Hard Ticket to Hawaii and each of the movies that followed used remote-control vehicles as pivotal parts of the storytelling. If they hadn’t been there, certain things in the story couldn’t have happened at all.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii began with a remote-control helicopter. Donna and Taryn flew their delivery plane to Molokai, where they dropped off a couple passengers and a snake. They walked around for a bit and heard a noise. It was an RC helicopter landing in the field behind them. They approached and found two cases of diamonds in it. This began the conflict between the women and the drug gang as the gang wanted the diamonds back, while the women wanted to stop the drug gang. The entire story hinged on a remote-control helicopter delivering diamonds.

Picasso Trigger doubled up on the remote-control mayhem. It began with a remote-control plane flying circles around Donna and Taryn’s rented boat. It dove down and exploded, blowing up the entire boat, and “killing” the women while they watched on from the beach. Later on, when Donna and Taryn stormed the base of some local thugs, Taryn strapped a bomb to a remote-control car and jumped it off a surfboard into a house, where a large explosion erupted. The car might not have been essential, ending up being a cool visual and nothing more, but the plane was something that pushed the story in a new direction. It was the event that pulled Donna and Taryn back into the spy world. Without the remote-control plane, they never would have been involved in the story.

Andy Sidaris was a writer and director who figured out a formula two films into a series and kept using that formula until the day he died. Malibu Express started things, but Hard Ticket to Hawaii figured out what a perfect Andy Sidaris movie was. From that point on, he kept using the blueprint he laid to churn out movie after movie. His final movie came out in 1998, ending the Triple-B series at twelve movies. He didn’t make another movie until he passed away in 2007. The series was done, and so was Andy Sidaris.

Some filmmakers find themes in their movies that they keep hitting home with time and time again. They find actors who they like to work with, and they stick with those actors. Andy Sidaris did that throughout his career, especially when it came to the Triple-B series. The movies wouldn’t be the same without Sidaris’s sincere way of sticking to what he knew and what he wanted. That’s perfectly okay. The twelve-film Triple-B series was a fun action series with equal amounts of bullets, bombs, and babes. Nobody makes movies like Andy Sidaris anymore, which makes his legacy all that much more important.

Now for a few notes:

• Andy Sidaris directed, and was featured in, Picasso Trigger, Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352), and Malibu Express (week 383).
• Picasso Trigger saw the third appearance of Keith Cooke, who was previously in Mortal Kombat (week 140) and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (week 140).
• Kym Malin was in both Road House (week 200) and Picasso Trigger.
• Ten people appeared in both Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352) and Picasso Trigger. They were Rustam Branaman, Cynthia Brimhall, Hope Marie Carlton, Harold Diamond, Patty Duffek, Wolf Larson, Richard LePore, Rodrigo Obregón, Erick Schrum, and Dona Speir.
• Finally, John Brown and Abb Dickcon returned from Malibu Express (week 383) to be in Picasso Trigger.
• Have you seen Picasso Trigger? What did you think? What are your feelings on the Triple-B series or Andy Sidaris in general? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can find me on Twitter if you want to suggest a movie for me to watch as part of a future Sunday “Bad” Movies post. Or you can put that suggestion in the comments. I’m always looking for movies that haven’t yet popped up on my radar.
• Head on over to Instagram for some Sunday “Bad” Movies fun all week long.
• To finish things off, let’s look forward. Another week, another movie. Next week, I’m veering back into horror. This one comes from the 1980s. Same year as Picasso Trigger, actually. 1988. I’ll be checking out Brain Damage. Not sure how I’m going to feel after it. You’ll find out next week. See you then.