Malibu Express (1985)

This is the first film I've watched from my Andy Sidaris 12-film box set (aptly titled Girls, Guns and G-Strings) and if I had any sense it would probably be the last (sadly, I have very little nous when it comes to my choice in film, so it looks like I have my work cut out for me). Sidaris's formula is simple: dumb action films with dumb heroes and sexy women. The men boast big 'taches, big guns and big muscles; the women sport big hair, big tits, and unfeasibly tiny outfits. But while this might sound like B-movie heaven, in Sidaris's hands, it all proves rather tiresome, the deliberate trashiness becoming really boring, really quick.The plot to Malibu Express comes second to the macho posturing and female nudity, so I won't go into detail, other than to say that it's about industrial espionage and it's crap—not that the action is much better, consisting of poorly choreographed fight scenes, unconvincing shootouts, and the occasional car chase. Even worse is the comic relief, which comes in the form of a family of obnoxious, obese hicks who repeatedly challenge cowboy private eye Cody to drag races—imagine Enos from The Dukes of Hazzard, crossed with Sheriff J.W. Pepper from Bond, the Beverly Hillbillies, and those bikers from Every Which Way You Can, and you still won't come close to how inane and irritating these characters are.The women are, of course, all attractive (fat hillbilly mother and wheelchair-bound matriarch aside), all over-sexed, and all over the hero, meaning that there are regular bouts of soft-core sex. With such regular titillation on display, it soon loses its novelty factor. Who would have thought that big tits could become tedious? I had more fun keeping a mental tally of the shower scenes and marvelling at the treasure trove of now defunct technology that is on display throughout the film (Cody drives a Delorean, and is mighty proud of his pager and micro-cassette Dictaphone; bad guy Shane opted for Betamax to record his sex sessions).Malibu Express's wall-to-wall hot totty means that, according to my strict(ish) code, I am compelled to give the film a 4/10; Sybil Danning topless always earns another point, making it a 5 in total, but on no account take that rating as a recommendation.

Darby Hinton stars as a private eye (Who looks like a cross between Chuck Norris and Tom Selleck) who investigates espionage, murder and all kinds of fun stuff while getting laid lots and lots of times. Malibu Express is probably for what it's worth the best movie from Andy Sidaris on a technical level. Of course in my opinion his only other watchable movie was Hard Ticket To Hawaii, anyway Malibu Express has some okay action sequences (Even though Hinton's martial arts sequences are badly staged) and features tons of nudity which is the film's main selling point. The story is completely plot less and extremely hard to follow mainly due to the fact that none of the plot threads are ever pursued in a way that would make this work as a mystery. In fact the ending merely explains the outcome because the movie forgets to connect the dots earlier. Basically this is a plot less and rather goofy affair which works better as comedy than it does as action or mystery.* * Out of 4-(Fair)

Although "Malibu Express" is officially the first film in the Andy Sidaris "Bullets, Bombs and Babes" series, it's clear that he still hadn't perfected the formula that would dominate his later work. The film has a male lead, and most of the women are portrayed as nymphos / sex objects. Of course, I know that in an Andy Sidaris film the women have a tendency to remove their clothes at the drop of a hat, but they also have a tendency to shoot people, blow things up, etc. Apart from one scene, of a crackshot policewoman embarrassing the hero who is a lousy shot, there is none of that in "Malibu Express": in other words, there is no empowerment to balance the exploitation. The film is a low-rent cross between James Bond, "Smokey and the Bandit" (country music, hicks and car races) and Agatha Christie (there is a murder in a household and everybody is a suspect). It's really not very good - Sybil Danning's exceptional body is one of the few redeeming virtues - but I guess it's better than "Howling II", where Sybil's body was the only redeeming virtue. (**)

This movie is the 80s to me. Cheap and tawdry but also earnest and full of heart. Frankly me and friends liked seeing topless girls and were too young to see them any other way. Yet this movie also had a lot of humor and action. I can still watch it because the lead guy was genuinely personable. The world depicted in this movie exists on its own terms. A cross between the world of MacGyver and John Holmes. There were dubious sequels to this film, but the same cast was not used. While Hard Ticket to Hawaii had one or two moments of fun, they never had the down home feel of this Malibu. I must tell you it still makes me laugh. Now for different reasons. It is both an embrace and a condemnation of the high rollers of the 1980s. The crude attitudes about gays and even a semi rape wouldn't fly today, but it stands as a record of a more ignorant yet more laid back time.