Girls, Guns and G-Strings: ANDY SIDARIS – A Legend Of Cult Cinema

Article by Mark Longden

If you’re going to watch the movies of Andy Sidaris, you’ll require a mental divide of some sort, especially if you’re the sort of person who believes we should all be treated and viewed equally. While we all, as humans, like looking at pretty pictures of people of whatever gender floats our boat, at some point – usually about half an hour in – of one of his movies, even the most dedicated admirer of boobs will be thinking “any time you want to get back to the plot is fine by me”.

Below is the scene that first interested me in the work of Mr Sidaris. If you like it, read on, if you groan, then We Are Movie Geeks has many articles about decent movies to enjoy. Here it is:

Andy Sidaris got his start directing sport on TV. He was the original director of ABC’s “Wide World Of Sports”, which he did for over 20 years, and he also filmed several different Olympic games (including the infamous Munich Olympics of 1972). Although it’s difficult to read through the stream of profanity and insults of other filmmakers and actors, his interviews seem to indicate he was always interested in making movies. His first was a documentary about actor James Garner’s attempts to form a motor-racing team, but it was beyond my abilities to track down, and it doesn’t represent the person he was, I think.

Andy Sidaris

The bulk of his output was between 1985 and 1998; ten movies directed by him and two by his son Christian, featuring a regular cast of Playboy playmates and his friends. But he made two movies before that, “Stacey” in 1973 and “Seven” in 1979, which, although they’re not included, fit with the 12 on the “Girls, Guns And G-Strings” DVD box set.

Anne Randall in STACEY

“Stacey” stars Anne Randall, the first of his many Playboy playmates, but she’d been appearing for some time in normal mainstream-ish movies so separated herself from the pack by actually being a decent actor. She’s Stacy Hanson, a race-car driver / private eye, and she’s hired by a rich old lady to see if the freeloading relatives living at her house are worth putting in her will. There’s a sleazy cult leader, all sorts of adventures and of course Stacey takes plenty of showers and has a healthy amount of sex with her boyfriend / sidekick.

MALIBU EXPRESS

Sidaris remade it as “Malibu Express”, the first of the GGG movies, in 1985, with the gender of the main character switched and a few subplots added, but otherwise largely the same. Quite why he wanted to tell this fairly slight story twice, I have no idea (more on that later); the new star is a character with the surname Abilene, and the Abilene boys were a regular feature in his movies up to the break he took in 1993. Again, no idea why, it felt a little like a joke he eventually forgot why he was telling; from starring in this to being maybe 10^th billed in “Fit To Kill”, the Abilenes were a strange clan.

William Smith in SEVEN

This misses out “Seven”, from 1979. Even for a filmmaker as loose as Sidaris, this is a loose one; with a solid two-thirds of its running time feeling like a gang of buddies setting up a night out, not seven mercenaries plotting to kill seven mega-criminals. “Seven” features a character, “The Professor”, who’d go on to appear in a few of his future movies, making this the first official entry in the Sidaris-verse – yes, the fact I’ve spent time thinking about it makes me quite sad. Oh, and remember that scene from above? He did it in this movie first, then decided to make it 10000% more ludicrous in “Hard Ticket To Hawaii”; and just so you don’t think the direction of plagiarism is one way, “Seven” features the whole “guy with gun shoots guy with sword” scene that “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” used a couple of years later.

HARD TICKET TO HAWAII

From 1987’s “Hard Ticket To Hawaii” to 1993’s “Fit To Kill”, we were treated to a run of surprisingly entertaining movies. They all followed roughly the same template – a large group of hot women and a few hot men have to stop some criminals, usually in Hawaii but occasionally elsewhere, just always a location where the women can wear bikinis. They developed a recurring antagonist towards the end, a chap called Cane, but he switched ethnicity (from Pat Morita to RJ “son of Roger” Moore) and was almost part of the gang by the end. None of them are very good, if we’re being honest, but there’s a real sense of fun in most of them – except 1991’s “Do Or Die”, where the crushing weight of sexism ruins any enjoyment. Then, I’d guess that Sidaris wanted some time off, and his son took over the family business for a couple of years, writing and directing two movies so miserable, poorly made, edited, written and acted that I (along with everyone who watched them at the time) was begging for Andy’s return. Christian did introduce Julie K Smith to the Sidaris-verse, though, so he ought to be commended for that.

Julie Strain in Sidaris’ DAY OF THE WARRIOR

So Andy got back in the director’s chair, gave us a couple more movies with the next generation of crime-fighting bikini-wearers, then (according to an interview from the time) had funding for a movie called “Battlezone Hawaii” but never made it, and never made another movie again, dying in 2007.

Let’s talk Playmates. In all his movies from “Hard Ticket To Hawaii” to “Fit To Kill” is Dona Speir, who was actually an okay actress by the end of things. She played Donna (the first of many, many people who acted as characters named after themselves in these movies), and her sidekick for three movies was Taryn, played by Hope Marie Carlton. Now, here’s a story that’ll either have you going “so what?” or being vaguely disgusted with Sidaris – Carlton apparently kept having plastic surgery on her breasts, and after three movies told him she didn’t want to show them on camera any more. So what did Andy do? Did he support his friend or did he fire her immediately?

Dona Speir and Roberta Vasquez in GUNS

So, replacing her was Roberta Vasquez as “Nicole”, who was perfectly happy to disrobe almost constantly. With slightly smaller roles in the series were Cynthia Brimhall as singer Edy, Ava Cadell as Ava, and the wonderfully named Pandora Peaks. The men were so bland that even though I’ve seen 14 Sidaris movies in the last few months, I wouldn’t be able to pick any of them out of a lineup, and neither would you. Or Sidaris, I suspect – with the exception of Rodrigo Obregon, who was his most regular collaborator, almost always playing the bad guy.

Julie K. Smith in DAY OF THE WARRIOR

For the last handful of movies, we got Julie K Smith, who I think is a completely decent actress but must have the world’s worst agent because 80% of her career is in movies directed by either Sidaris or Jim Wynorski; and Julie Strain. Strain is beloved in B-movie circles but she seems a little…manufactured? Like she was designed by a committee rather than a real person. I don’t know? She’s also a terrible actress, or at least she was in this series. In case you were feeling forgiving, by the year 2002, when she was all of 40 years old (and looked 30) he was already planning to phase her out in favour of younger models. One of those younger models was Shae Marks, hired solely for the size of her breasts (I feel like I could’ve typed that sentence ten times during the course of this review).

So we’ve discussed his template, and the actors he used. The chief thing you’ll notice if you do something silly like, I don’t know, watch all of them in two weeks, is how often he re-uses ideas, either concepts or scenes he just repeats. I think this warrants the use of bullet points (these are all things that have appeared in at least two of his movies, and often five or more).

• Remote controlled devices with bombs strapped to them
• Two + hot tub scenes
• At least four people dying via explosion
• A shack with “fuel dump” crudely stamped on it, getting blown up
• A potential assassination target being identified by the lei they were wearing
• Helicopters
• Remote controlled helicopters passed off as real helicopters
• Cynthia Brimhall singing a terrible song to universal acclaim
• Comic relief assassin duo, who get blown up but don’t die
• Abilene family members being unable to shoot (okay, this is played for laughs)
• Local business product placement
• Transmitting “secret” messages via a radio DJ, when a phone call would work much better
• An ending where the entire cast is stood around drinking champagne

What I find interesting, from all the interviews with Sidaris I’ve read, is how he describes himself as a good storyteller. He appears unaware that he’s using the same handful of scenes in a different order, over and over again. Or perhaps he was just having a laugh, and didn’t care as long as he got to go to Hawaii once a year with a bunch of nude models to make a movie. Who knows?

There are two ways to get to see his particular ouevre – there’s the aforementioned “Girls, Guns and G-Strings” DVD set, which is bare-bones but very cheap; and there’s the “Andy Sidaris Collection”, which has commentaries and a fake movie-school special feature featuring Andy and several of his leading ladies.

Why am I telling you about the entire filmography of a director I’ve said wasn’t very good, and had some rather neanderthal attitudes towards women? Perhaps to show that even someone like myself – an avowed feminist – can find plenty to entertain them in his world. They’re fun, loose, often easy on the eye and not too challenging. The world needs filmmakers like Andy Sidaris, and I hope you enjoy his work as much as I have.