Do or Die (1991)

"Do Or Die" begins with a colorful tribal dance. Hawaii was always one of the favorite locations to shoot for Sidaris. This time, a gangster boss challenges the Lethal Ladies team: He'll send 6 pairs of killers against them, and to make it impossible for them to hide, he uses a computer tracking device. "This is gonna be easy", one of the killers says - of course a fatal mistake. Among the playful variety of assassins, my faves are the cooks from New Orleans who work on their accent and try to poison our heroes - a brilliant comedy interlude in between the sex and the violence. Of course Dona Speir and her friends have some gadgets as well, including a small model helicopter which can fire missiles. Boom, there goes another villain, and I can't say I regret one minute I spent with this entertaining production. This is the 6th out of my 12 reviews for the works of Andy Sidaris, in chronological order.

This movie is so hopelessly inept, that if it was played in a more tongue-in-cheek manner it might have been considerable fun. Now, it's just corny. The sex scenes are reasonably stylish, but are arbitrarily thrown into various parts of the film, usually under the least likely circumstances. As for the action, there isn't even one minute of genuine danger or suspense. If the villain, played by Pat Morita(!) wasn't so show-offy, there wouldn't have been a movie, either. Don't do it. (*)

(Spoilers Ahead.)This movie is so bad it is good. This movie is one of the worst movies of all time, on a par with Plan 9, but Ed Wood didn't have the money these clowns have. And frankly, Ed's story is almost better. This one is so ridiculous...Ok, how about this for starters? For no reason you can figure out, you're on Hawaii and you're at an outdoor party for a children's charity. Someone out of nowhere approaches two girls sitting at this party to tell them there is someone waiting for them outside. It is Pat Morita. He has his back to them. He tells them he knows they are high-level operatives for the US govt and that they are responsible for ruining his business, and now he intends to kill them, but he's going to make a game out of it, and the game will start tomorrow.With no further ado the two girls run off, pack their bags, get into some kind of trendy vehicle, and make it for the airport. They're not running from Pat Morita; they have never said if they know who he is; they're playing his game without question.The romp continues, through, among other places, a sandy airfield where so-called 'QSA' model airplanes are flown for an audience. Note that this demonstration has absolutely nothing to do with the story or the characters in it - it's just there, and then suddenly it's gone.Every so often you cut to a new scene with a couple of po' white trash out of nowhere who are sitting around wherever they may be doing whatever they might be doing, and somewhere they have a small black plastic box with a short antenna and two coloured lights on top, one red and one green. And then the green one will start blinking and one of the characters will say 'they're almost here!' and that's it. How are these two girls being tracked? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? The girls fly from Hawaii to the continental US, through Las Vegas, and then for no good reason end up the final 45 minutes of the movie around Shreveport Louisiana.It's brilliant. It's so bad it's good. This movie should be used in university film classes as a cookbook of how not to make a movie. And it is probably being used for those purposes already. Every scene where Estrada blows somebody up has to end with fifteen seconds on his white toothy grin - it's too much. And there is a classic scene where Estrada kills a bad guy with baseballs. But perhaps one of the worst is when Estrada is having sex with the odd girl out in a swimming pool somewhere. Suddenly she starts ripping her hair back and fro, and of course there is a strong back light on her, and this creates a spectacular visual effect, but what does this have to do with the story or the characters? It's so bad you will laugh. And then after that, Estrada grabs the girl up in his arms, and the girl twists so her feet are away from the camera so she can make more fabulous visual effects by kicking her feet into the surface of the water. You get the picture. Get the movie.I won't tell you how the good guys finally discover how the bad guys have been tracking them across the planet for the past hour and a half, but it has something to do with a 'laser microchip.' And not once in those ninety minutes did anyone wonder how they were being tracked. This movie has the worst screenplay ever written. It is one of the worst, perhaps the worst, movie ever made.There are those who say this is 'soft porn' or basically 'T&A', but don't believe them. There's as much real sex in this movie as there is in Donald Duck. Rent the movie, see it, because you know you are going to be in for a treat - a movie so bad it is good.

When given the choice of "DO" (as in watching this flick) and "DIE" (as the title declares)...after serious consideration, the latter would probably be far less painless. The movie is really brainless, grade z stuff that wouldn't get breathing rates faster, at a drive-in cinema for teenage daters. Spies in bikinis...a very unique concept...I'll pass that one along to the boys at Langley, the next time I see them.I have to applaud Pat Morita, for trying a new role as the villain, but it just doesn't work. He's about as menacing as Barney Rubble. Erik Estrada (in post-CHIPS days) has also been pretty badly type-casted-which isn't fair-as a goodie-good.All in all, if I'd paid more than .39 cents for this rental, I would be rather be perturbed at myself. Now, if I could only get back 90 minutes of my life...