Picasso Trigger

Just watching the credits for Sidaris' flicks reveals where he gets his cast. Everyone is from Playboy, Penthouse, or Playgirl. What the heck, everyone wants a chance to act. At least none of these folks gave Sidaris any headaches about doing nude scenes!

The movies are popcorn, not meant to be taken to seriously. Just sit back and watch a bunch of occassionally naked women and guys kill some nefarious bad guys.

My review was written in May 1988 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.

"Picasso Trigger" is a campy action picture jampacked with beautiful women and musclebound hunks. In regional release since February, pic is likely to arouse considerable interest in ancillary markets.

Filmmakers Andy and Arlene Sidaris' gimmick is that all seven "Picasso" leading ladies are former Playboy magazine models. Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carltpon encore from the previous opus from the Sidarises: "Hard Ticket to Hawaii", as two government agents stationed in Molokai. They're called in to join the international team to stop Salaza, a/k/a/ Picasso Trigge (John Apriea), who's sent his henchmen to assassinate the agents who got his brother.

Organized by L. G. Abilene (Guich Koock), who is one of the marked men, team is headed by Travis Abilene (former soap star Steve Bond) and includes a mothley group of figting experts (including Harold Diamond, antoher "Hard Ticket" alumnus) and bombshells (Cynthia Brimhall, Kym Malin, Patty Duffek). Also on board is the voluptuous but suspicious-looking foreign agent Pantera (Roberta Vasquez), who coincidentally was Travis' sweetheart in college.

With many cute gadgets, inlcuding toy plane, car and dynamite-laden boomerange, injected into the action, the film plays firmly tongue-in-cheek as a omic strip approach to international intrigue. All the characters and thesps arfe larger than life, with silly bon mots peppering the dialog. Episodic format, with too much time addrfessed to side issues or rounding up the team, is a drawback.

Acting is variable, with most of the cast used to posing rather than reading liens. Bond, recently miscast in a West German period piece "Silent Night", is convincing as the hero who can't shoot straight, allowing his lovely co-stars to assert themselves in the killing and self-defense departments. Speir and Carlton are enthusiastic, uninhibited heroines with newcomer Vasquez making a strong impression as the villainess.

Playboy fans will be glad to see Liv Lindeland again, looking great and delivering a couple of funny lines (her film career peaked wih a character role in "Save the Tiger" 15 years back).

Tech credits including numerous explosions ar fine, with atmospheric location photography in Hawaii, Texas and Louisiana.

This film essentially begins with an international crime lord known as "Picasso Trigger" (John Aprea) being assassinated in Paris by a colleague named "Miguel Ortiz" (Rodrigo Obregon) who wants to take over his underworld empire. Not only that, but Miguel is equally determined to kill everyone who anything to do with the death of his brother some time before. To that extent, one of his first attempts is against both "Donna" (Dona Speir) and "Taryn" (Hope Marie Carlton) were vacationing on a boat just off the coast of Maui. Fortunately, as luck would have it, the two of them had just gone snorkeling just minutes before a remote-controlled airplane bomb slams into their boat and blowing it up. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, a colleague of Miguel by the name of "Mr. Schiavo" (Nicholas Georgiade) has also targeted several agents who have been investigating his white-slavery racket as well. To that effect, with so many of his agents being either killed or narrowly escaping assassination attempts, the man in charge of these agents by the name of "L. G. Abilene" (Guich Koock) decides to turn the tables and go after Miguel Ortiz. What he doesn't know, however, is that there is more to these assassination attempts than he realizes and there is one person within his agency that has a secret agenda of their own. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this sequel to "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" was, in my opinion, a little bit better than its predecessor as both the acting and the script showed a slight improvement. Likewise, the presence of several attractive actresses like Cynthia Bremhall (as "Edy"), Roberta Vasquez ("Pantera"), Kym Malin ("Kym") and the aforementioned Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton certainly didn't hurt either. On the other hand, much like the previous picture, the plot lacked depth and needed a lot more suspense or intrigue as the numerous action scenes were simply not sufficient to maintain interest for an extended period of time. At least, I didn't think so. Be that as it may, while this wasn't a bad action film by any means, it had its faults and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Picasso Trigger, the third film in Andy Sidaris's Malibu Express series, is par for the course in terms of nudity and violence, with the obligatory big breasted babes disrobing at regular intervals to get fruity with the musclebound hunks, and lots of baddies being shot, blown up, or impaled. Luckily, this one proves to be slightly more entertaining than the last entry (Hard Ticket to Hawaii) thanks to Sidaris adopting a more deliberate Bond-style approach, one that comes complete with an international villain and silly gadgets (designed by 'Q'-alike boffin, The Professor) to go with the usual array of chase scenes, explosions and exotic locations.

The plot (yes, there is a plot!) sees government agents Travis Abilene (Steve Bond), Jade (Harold Diamond), Donna (Dona Spier), Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) and Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) joined by Paris operative Pantera (Roberta Vasquez) to bring to justice the gang who have been bumping off their colleagues. However, everything is not as it first seems, with Travis and Co. eventually discovering that they have been set up by bad guy Salazar AKA Picasso Trigger (John Aprea) to help him eliminate his competition.

Picasso Trigger is no means a great film—Sidaris's direction still leaves a lot to be desired, the action scenes being far less thrilling than they are unintentionally amusing—but with plenty of sexy Playboy-standard babes getting naked, crap martial arts, a pointless sub-plot about snuff movies, crazy gimmicks such as an exploding boomerang (which would surely come back and blow YOU up?!?) and a rocket-launching crutch (programmed by pocket calculator), blatant product placement (even the local Hovercraft Hire company gets in on the action), and VERY LARGE CAPTIONS to let us know what day of the week it is, this is worth a go when you don't want to have to think very hard.

Dona Speir confessed in an interview (DVD bonus) she didn't understand the movie after reading the script and she figured it out only after she watched the final product 4 times. She isn't the only one, I suppose. I blame this confusion on the villain who keeps hidden most of the time so you wonder who's actually fighting whom and why. The killers' messages are quite poetic: "The ones with the flower have been scattered this hour", one writes to notify the others that his job his done. "I've got a black belt in shotgun", another lady says after she shot a kung fu fighter. The Dutch DVD I've got uses the tagline "Moorden is een vorm van kunst" ("Killing is an art form", I think it translates) - and these cynical tidbits just to demonstrate "Picasso Trigger" is somewhat more violent (and with less nudity) than other movies of the Lethal Ladies series. I loved the exploding boomerang as a weapon or when 1 of the heroes fires about 20 times at 1 bad guy and misses him every time. Playboy's Roberta Vasquez in her first appearance for Andy Sidaris slips into a pair of ripped jeans, showing beautiful legs, beautiful dark eyes, beautiful... everything! Note: this is the 3rd out of my 12 reviews for the works of Andy Sidaris, in chronological order.