Nome in codice: 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.

While never having heard about this 1988 movie titled "Picasso Trigger" from writer and director Andy Sidaris, I opted to sit down and watch it here in 2022, as I had the opportunity to do so after having seen the 1988 movie "Hard Ticket to Hawaii".

And I will say that "Picasso Trigger" definitely is right in the spirit and essence of the "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" movie, so if you enjoyed that one from Sidaris, then you will also enjoy this 1988 movie. I will admit that the movie was watchable enough for what it was, which is some typical late 1980s cheese, for better or worse.

It was actually fun to see the majority of the cast from "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" return to reprise their roles and characters in "Picasso Trigger", so it made for some sense of continuity. It should also be said that the acting performances in "Picasso Trigger" were adequate enough.

Visually then "Picasso Trigger" was an okay movie. I mean, it wasn't the best of special effects, and the usage of painfully obvious dummy stand-ins whenever an explosion was imminent was just hilarious.

If you enjoy 1980s cheesy action flicks, then you will definitely enjoy "Picasso Trigger".

My rating of "Picasso Trigger" lands on a five out of ten stars.

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.

Once again, this Sidaris film seems to have everything: a fit and quite believable as an agent Dona Speir, an incredibly adorable Hope Marie Carlton (on a scale of 1 to 10, her smile is a 12), a gorgeous Roberta Vasquez, international locations (Paris, Las Vegas, Texas, Hawaii, etc.), LOTS of explosions, outrageous gadgets, etc. The mix should have been explosively hot, but sadly it's only lukewarm. The execution of the formula is mechanical, as if Sidaris was simply ticking off action scenes from a list. There are very few funny lines (the best belongs to Speir: when she's accused of being jealous, she says "there is not a jealous bone in my body - check it out for yourself", and she disrobes!) and the one fight scene, involving Harold Diamond, is terrible. But to end this comment on a positive note, John Aprea gives a slick performance as the arch-villain of the story. (**)

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.