Tropical Lust

Ned Morehead, a hack who directed (somehow) one very fine feature in 1987 "Street Heat", also made this fiasco, a movie so poorly done it would be called "unreleasable" had it been subjected to a screening for prospective distributors.

Set in Hawaii, it relies on a preposterous gimmick of having the lead players all assigned multiple roles, with lousy wigs and even a very phony beard employed. In the early reels this was extremely confusing, especially regarding star Porsche Lynn whose hair color (and character) changes from scene to scene.

Add to this rickety premise some horrendous editing and the sound of the director giving commands left on the soundtrack and you have a prime example of incompetency. Whenever I tried to adjust to the movie's inadequacies, another mistake would rear its ugly head.

Nominal story line concerns half a million dollars hidden at a club named The Flying V. A beautiful and unsung transgender actress Dana Douglas is found dying in the surf, telling our leads (Robert Bullock and Porsche Lynn) about the money belonging to her gangster lover who threw her overboard his boat. She expires, but comes back in a different role later in the movie.

Bullock and Lynn part but become rivals in their search for the money. At first Bullock, unrecognizable behind a phony beard, plays a Frenchman named Jean Paul, while Porsche is also unrecognizable in a dark wig. He reappears clean shaven and without an accent as Dave, while Porsche shows up as her usual self named Alexandra.

Nothing much makes sense in the shambles of a story that follows, with plenty of sex scenes and zero continuity. Final showdown in which most of the cast come together (including the dual role characters) for a hurried and clumsily directed "ironic" conclusion.

If pornography were permissible, this could become required viewing in film school classes to illustrate how many things can go wrong if you're not careful while trying to shoot a feature film.