TAKE ONE DEADLY HORROR FILM AND TWO JIGGLE MOVIES AND STAY HOME
Seattle Post-Intelligencer - October 14, 1986
Author: William Arnold P-I Film Critic
It used to be that movie distributors saved their lowest exploitation films for the summer audience. But with the vast number of hungry multiplex screens and an overall glut in exploitation production, the dogs of August now pop up all year long.
This week, for instance, a vacuum in the release schedule has invited a trio of summer-style exploitation pictures to hit town - a horror film, the long-delayed ''Deadly Friend''; and two beach pictures, ''Malibu Bikini Shop'' and ''Hardbodies 2.''
The first of these, Wes Craven's ''Deadly Friend,'' is a fairly routine ''teen-age Frankenstein'' movie reportedly bumped from the summer's schedule because of last-minute exhibitor anxiety over the failure of the previous summer's cycle of teen-age Frankenstein movies.
Based on a book by Diana Henstell, the film is about a teen-age genius (Matthew Laborteaux, of TV's ''Little House on the Prairie'') who implants an artificial-intelligence chip into the cortex of his brain-dead girlfriend.
In true Frankenstein tradition, the girl-monster soon runs amok and, faster than you can say Boris Karloff, is twisting off the head of her abusive, sicko father and doing in the grouchy neighbor who had earlier stolen her basketball.
Under the direction of horror veteran Wes Craven, this film treads the narrow line between satire and playing it straight rather well, and is always technically a cut or two above the level of the average exploitation horror vehicle.
But the film is so predictable and so unremarkable in every way that anyone who thought Craven's ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' heralded the advent of a daring new horror -movie talent will find ''Deadly Friend'' a considerable disappointment.
Over in the next auditorium we have something called ''Malibu Bikini Shop,'' which was filmed in Santa Monica and Venice, and has nothing at all to do with Malibu (the title on the print I saw did not even mention Malibu - it was called ''The Bikini Shop'').
In any case, the film is a jiggle comedy about two odd-couple brothers who inherit a bikini specialty shop that is in rather (you should pardon the word) shaky financial condition, and have to mount a massive bikini promotion to save the place from extinction.
In its heart of hearts, this movie is an old-fashioned late '50s ''nudie'' and exists as an excuse to show topless and scantily clad women in a variety of peekaboo, teasing poses and situations.
But the young cast is surprisingly appealing; the script is never really vulgar. Director David Wechter has worked in a couple of very stylish video- style fantasy sequences. And a good supporting cast of Hollywood veterans (among them Frank Nelson, Kathleen Freeman and Jay Robinson) all help make this innocuous little movie a lot more tolerable than its title and premise might imply.
There are, however, no such redeeming features to ''Hardbodies 2,'' a sequel to last year's ''Hardbodies'' and the second summer T&A movie of the week.
Loosely a comedy about an American movie company filming on location in the Mediterranean, this one is straight, soft-core pornography that goes out of its way to be crude and vulgar every chance it gets.
Like ''Malibu,'' the dominant visual motif is the bare breast, but instead of teasing his audience, director Mark Griffiths absolutely overwhelms it with breast montages.
Indeed, his movie is virtually a documentary on the mammary organ - and one that is so overdone and thoroughly unimaginative that even the most dedicated connoisseurs of skin will probably be bored by it.
Memo: MOVIE REVIEW
(1) ** Deadly Friend, directed by Wes Craven. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin. Cast: Matthew Laborteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett. Warner Bros. Several theaters. Rated R.
(2) ** Malibu Bikini Beach, directed and written by David Wechter. Cast: Michael David Wright, Bruce Greenwood, Barbra Horan, Jay Robinson, Frank Nelson. International Cinema. Several theaters. Rated R.
(3) * Hardbodies 2, directed by Mark Griffiths. Written by Mark Griffiths and Curtis Scott Wilmot. Cast: Brad Zutaut, James Karen, Alba Francesca, Roberta Collins. Cinetel Films. Several theaters. Rated R.
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