Cover Girl Models

Enjoyable, brief 'n' breezy drive in fare from New World that serves as quite a good companion piece to "Fly Me". "Cover Girl Models" follows a trio of luscious young women - Barbara (Pat Anderson), Claire (Lindsay Bloom), and Mandy (Tara Strohmeier) - as they have misadventures funny, serious, trashy, and action packed. The difference is that in "Fly Me" the ladies were stewardesses; here they're fashion models. They travel with photographer Mark (John Kramer) to Asia for a series of shoots; the fun starts when a valuable roll of microfilm is secretly sewed inside one of their dresses. "Cover Girl Models", running a respectable 74 minutes, has all the ingredients to make it easily digestible stuff for exploitation fans. It's mostly effective as a showcase for the charms of these babes, as they strut their stuff and we get a good look at those bodies; there's a healthy dose of bare breasts. The screenplay is by Howard R. Cohen, whose other credits include "The Unholy Rollers", "The Young Nurses", "Saturday the 14th", and "Deathstalker", and prolific Cirio Santiago is the producer / director; he'd previously worked with actress Anderson on "Fly Me" and "T.N.T. Jackson". This being shot in the Philippines, there's naturally a role for the ever welcome Vic Diaz, and Ken Metcalfe, two guys familiar to fans of Filipino cinema. There's also a very nice cameo for Mary Woronov, appearing quickly early on and giving us an eyeful of some lovely legs. The music score by D'Amarillo is often extremely amusing and Santiago keeps the story moving along well, preventing it from ever getting boring and treating us to the usual not-terribly-well- staged fight scenes; the climactic shootout is a hoot. This is the kind of thing where it doesn't matter how forgettable it may be in the end, it's pretty fun for the duration. Seven out of 10.

When the name of Cirio H. Santiago is listed, you know it'll be bad exploitation trash. If you're lucky it's action-packed and entertaining bad exploitation ("Death Force", Equalizer 2000", "Stryker"), but most of the time - alas - it's just plain bad exploitation; - period ("Demon of Paradise", "Future Hunters", "Vampire Hookers"). Based on my 2/10 rating, it's needless to say "Cover Girl Models" belongs in the plain bad category. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about this dull flick. A photographer takes three beautiful models to Hong Kong for a series of nudie shoots (and that's exactly the footage Santiago uses as filler for about ¾ of the film) and they accidentally become involved in a criminal espionage network. Mary Woronov has a sexy cameo at the beginning and Vic Diaz appears as one of the bad guys, like in every flick ever shot in The Philippines, but nothing helps to make it even remotely interesting. Maybe it was a must-see in the late 70s, because our leading ladies Pat Anderson, Lindsay Bloom, and Tara Strohmeier have luscious curves and show plenty of bare skin, but you can find that all around the internet nowadays.

Though it's competently-made (for the most part), this otherwise tacky action-comedy from producer Roger Corman and New World Pictures is meant to be a sexy T&A spy flick--but neither the T nor the A is very enticing. In a cameo as the leggy editor of Ultra magazine, Corman-mainstay Mary Woronov gives the picture its best five minutes. She sends her photographer to Hong Kong to shoot three girls for the next cover; he's assigned two professional models and another girl of his choosing--a naïve, clumsy fashion assistant with a bad perm. The movie cobbles together stray ingredients--a roll of secret microfilm, a travel agent trained in karate--with fashion shoot montages (in slow-motion!), as well as the three ladies in and out of their clothes. Frankly, I kept waiting for Woronov to fly to Hong Kong to give this turkey a kick in the A. NO STARS from ****

"Cover Girl Models" is one film without much of a plot it's just a vice a feel good story of action and skin with some sexy nude female scenes and sex. Three Young fashion models go to Hong Kong with hopes of shining in a fashion show only to be crashed upon by bad guys. The action is okay still the eye candy of attractive ladies and skin scenes dominate. Overall a cult picture to watch if you enjoyed this kind of stuff from the 70's otherwise it's nothing really great.

"They're fast. They're beautiful. They're deadly. They have to be....to survive". That's the tagline of "Cover Girl Models" on my VHS cover, and based on that and on the names of Cirio H. Santiago and Pat Anderson (who kicked a lot of butt the same year in the same director's "T.N.T Jackson"), I was expecting an action film with tough girls. Disappointingly, there is very little action in this movie and nearly all of it is done by men (yawn). In truth, nothing much happens throughout the film, there are endless filler sequences, the main plot is murky, the various subplots are introduced and then dropped, and even the shootout climax is weak. The girls are infectiously cute and occasionally nude, but neither them nor the exotic locations (Hong Kong and Singapore) can stop the 70-minute running time from feeling more like 2 hours! (*)