Enemy Gold

Another cheap and silly thriller from the Andy Sidaris stable, this one actually made by his son. Julie Strain, the pneumatic scream queen of the 1990s, co-stars. The story is about the usual wooden good guy agents battling criminals and at the same time uncovering a cache of civil war gold, leading to more action. The only emphasis is on pin up models wearing very little, and it's all rather silly, although fairly well shot for its budget.

You know, it takes a big man to do a good job at a hard task. But it takes an even bigger man to admit he what he cannot do, and then strive to do what he does best. That is Andy Sidaris in a nutshell. True, while he'll never be the next Steven Speilberg, he is truly a master at the task which is presented to him: B-movies. I have only seen three of his films and can tell this already. Enemy Gold is one of them. This film is a slap in the face to those who say that the exploitation of Sex, violence, and rock-&-roll are wrong, and then rubs the slap down with a little ice. What I'm trying to say is, that this movie, while not entirely wholesome, is still a good movie, no matter how you slice it. The enormous juggs are just a way of keeping peoples attention.

Having worked as Second Unit Director on a fair few of his father's trashy T&A action films, Drew Sidaris finally gets a crack at writing and directing his own feature, Enemy Gold, which sees a trio of government agents suspended from work by a corrupt official, discovering a stolen horde of Civil War gold while on vacation, and fighting for their lives against a vengeful Colombian drug-lord and his cohorts.

Sidaris Jr. starts afresh with new characters, a (mostly) new cast and a change of location, but doesn't exactly break new ground, using the 'hot women, guns and explosions' formula that has proved so successful for his old man; but despite his best efforts at emulating dear dad's style, Drew clearly hasn't been paying enough attention to the finer details...

Unforgivably, it is a whole 10 minutes before he gets any of his ladies naked (Andy would never have allowed that); 20 minutes have gone by before there is a gratuitous hot-tub scene; and the film is almost over by the time we get the movie's sole soft-core sex scene. Worse still, Drew offers no radio-controlled scale model action, no comedy hit-men, and no squib-tastic bullet hits.

Kudos to Drew for casting Playboy playmates Suzi Simpson and Tanquil Lisa Collins, both of whom are stunning, and also for having Julie Strain (as assassin Jewel Panther) wave a sword around by firelight, wearing nothing but a few leather straps, but pretty much everything else about this film fails to entertain, making it one of the weakest films in my Girls, Guns and G-Strings box set (so far).

This movie is in a league of its own. Caught this on Beer Goggle Vision on Spike TV at 2am, and it reaches the final frontier of B rated (C rated) movies.

The conversion between the producers of the movie must have went something like this.

Exec 1: "Hey, so we got these two playboy chicks, maybe we should make a movie with them"

Exec 2: "Ok, but we will need a plausible story line that will work with their gigantic breasts, and lack of acting ability"

Exec 1: "True, I've got just the thing. Let's stick in Bruce Penhall and Mark Berrier into the movie. Next to them Suzi Simpson will look like Elizabeth Taylor."

Exec 2: "Fantastic, but whats the plot"

Exec 1: "Lets go with the usual. Special agents fighting a drug lord. They find some diary, and look for gold"

Exec 2: "Brilliant!"

Exec 1: "We can call it Enemy Gold"

Exec 2: "I like it! Also, we can get the one of the A Team directors to helm the film"

Exec 1: "Okay, lets start shooting tomorrow. I want this in theatres next month"

So yeh, that sums it up. If you need a good laugh, grab some smokes, some beer and some friends and you got the night made.

"Enemy Gold" marks a turning point in Andy Sidaris' filmography: his son Christian is sitting in the director's chair, and Dona Speir, Roberta Vasquez and Cynthia Brimhall are gone. The female lead this time is Suzi Simpson, and she is quite a find (I wonder why Sidaris didn't use her again): she has a great body (no matter what angle you look at it from), combined with a sweet, innocent face and a cute smile; she is appealing in the same way that Hope Marie Carlton was, plus she fights a bit more than other Sidaris heroines. Tai Collins, as a higher-in-command agent, is another total knockout, and Julie Strain, as an assassin-for-hire, is like a mythological Amazon come to life. Looking at this woman is much better than listening to her - her delivery turns her character into camp. The pacing of the movie lags in the second half, and when it's all over you have the feeling (as with other Sidaris movies) that it could have been much better. But what is there on the screen is still enjoyable - some of the lines are funny and all of the women are sexy. (**1/2)