Bikini Island

Finalists for the coveted title of Swimwear Illustrated cover girl travel with photography crew to a secluded island for a shoot, become trapped and are then systematically bumped off by a mysterious killer.

All the elements needed to please B/trash/exploitation fans are here and accounted for-- bad acting, stupid dialogue, sex watched through peepholes, endless modeling sessions set to cheesy rock songs, death by bathroom plunger, a van driven over a cliff, nudity, breast-bouncin' volleyball games with slow motion high-fives, a snake eating a mouse and ridiculous multiple suspects, including a gross Arabic (?) motel manager named "Frab" (read it backwards) who keeps caged chickens in his bedroom and sucks on his bottom lip while oggling stolen pictures of the beauties.

However, we the viewer are slightly caught off guard when we realize the painstaking work it took the scriptwriters to justifying the eventual triumph and survival of lead blonde starlet Annie Kelly (Holly Floria). She's nice enough to lend out her string bikinis and suntan oil to the others and thus, dammit, she deserves to live!

Incidentally, the soundtrack to this movie is great! Thanks for finally giving us a song about "Little teeny weenie, French cut bikinis," that was so deserve.

Score: 4 out of 10

Okay, you don't expect a movie with a name like Bikini Island to be intellectually stimulating or filled with great acting or an actual plot, but you wouldn't think it would be boring, would you? This movie is boring. The starlets are attractive, and costumes and acting are kept to a minimum. The plot is simple: Swimsuit magazine sends models with sleazy photographers and manager to a remote island paradise for a photoshoot. The girl chosen for the cover gets an additional $100,000. The girls start disappearing one by one. Most of the people who die are smothered to death with a toilet plunger, believe it or not. Every cliche you can imagine is trotted out, but very little is ever done with them. I had trouble caring who died or who was doing the killing. Very little effort was spent developing personalities for the models, and the manager, female escort and photographers were pretty much stereotype characters. This movie offers nothing new, there are better swimsuit models dying on an island movies out there.

What does it want to be? Comedy? Drama? Slasher? Peepshow? Hard to decipher, so it chooses them all. The alarming thing at beginning before the film begins to roll; it reads "Base in part of a true story". Okay. Just what was true? That's the puzzle.

For the 15th anniversary swimsuit edition of a major sports magazine five girls are selected to travel with the photography crew to an exotic island to take the cover shoot. One of these lucky girls will be cover girl and $100,000 to go with it. Everything is going smoothly, until one by one the girls start vanishing and even the crew to only leave a note behind explaining their disappearance.

"Bikini Island" is trashy, hackneyed b-grade fodder that takes quite awhile before breaking out and setting up its blaring red herrings. Although the scenery; attractively voluptuous models wearing very little and posing for the camera does help you take your mind off its sluggish pace and thin build-up. Plenty of nudity, strutting around in bikinis, numerous photo shoots accompanied by bouncy music fuelled montages and the obligatory beach volleyball game caught in slow motion. The female cast might easy on the eyes, but not particularly on the ears with second rate performances. Although Holly Floria had an affable persona and Sherry Johnson is decent as the crews' stern assistant. The males don't fair any better either and are portrayed as weirdos or sleaze-bags. The clichéd creepy hotel owner, the gawking make-up artist, the playing playboy boss and the unhinged photographer who gets a kick out of feeding mice to his python. Quite a group.

It might be trying to be tongue-in-cheek, but it's not that clever that it simply turns out rather absurd. Very jarring in its mood shifts. What starts off like a boy's wet dream with frat boy humour turns into a strangely twisted who-dun it formula halfway in and the deaths are amusedly lousy in their quick concession. Like death by plunger!? Chuck in POV shots, peephole peeping, suspicious actions and sinister instrumental flourishes when it was using its sexed-up music soundtrack.

The title really does sum it up; risqué and cheesy entertainment.

"Come to think of it. Everything turns me on."

Look, no one is going to watch this movie hoping to be uplifted by the plot or blown away by the cinematography. This is, let's face it, in the T and A category of movies. So one would expect a little T and A, right? And that is just what you get....a little. Very little. The T and A in this movie should be short for TeAse. Because while the film-makers have every opportunity, and set up even more, to show a fair amount of nudity, they really show very, VERY little, and that is a shame. Because, while the actresses are extraordinarily attractive, and fun to look at, most viewers who are going to bother with this movie are going to want to see some more of them than what is shown.

It's only the beauty of the models (especially the main character) in this movie that made it worthy of even three stars. The film-makers themselves, for using so many clichés of the exploitation genre, but not even delivering on the exploiTAtion factor, should get zero stars.

Save yourself the trouble and the hour and a half of your life you'll never get back and go find something else on cable.