Cover Girl Models

Before Roger and wife Julie Corman's full-fledged New World production SUMMER SCHOOL TEACHERS, tall blonde beauty Pat Anderson and intense brunette Rhonda Hopkins played COVER GIRL MODELS...

Which wasn't made but distributed by Corman, who sent many production companies (including his own) to the Philippines for low-budget exploitation ranging from female prison flicks to what COVER GIRL MODELS quickly shapes into...

A kind of James Bond flick with chicks in the lead, and not really a spoof since the microfilm plot involving villain Vic Diaz vs helpful karate hero Tony Ferrer can get dangerous while the most lightweight aspect's in Corman regular Tara Strohmeier (quickly replacing the diva-like Hopkins): beginning as a naive, endearingly sweet and clumsy model's assistant before becoming one herself, attached to handsome photographer (and her TRUCK TURNER co-star) John Kramer...

Yet the real scene-stealer's future spunky TV-actress Lindsay Bloom (who'd play Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer's secretary Velda), not fitting as much as either Pat Anderson or Tara, both usually game for lots of Corman nudity...

During the central overseas photo-shoot and fashion show, Bloom's quirky peroxide-blonde keeps trying to land a role for a fat-cat producer, who said models cannot be actresses, a kind of in-joke since she's particularly natural and effective: accidentally going undercover before winding up a hostage to gun-wielding thugs...

Making COVER GIRL MODELS both a three-women Corman style sexy-adventure (actually produced/directed by Cirio H. Santiago) and a crime flick exploitation hybrid, that, backed by a groovy xylophone lounge-jazz-score, works much better than intended or expected.

This movie is quite simply horrible.

I only watched it because Mary Woronov was in it. Barely in it.

It's mostly shot overseas -- Singapore. No on can act and the story is just too silly to keep your interest.

Besides Mary, there is another woman, whose name I can't place but whose face is familiar from Grind house flicks of the 70's.

Unfortunately this movie isnt really grindhouse by any standard. It's just a dull exercise in bad acting, bad directing and bad writing.

I'm not familiar with the director but apparently, based on some other reviews, he has a history of making slow tiresome movies.

For the most part, I do not like the movies of Cirio H. Santiago, even though they are exploitation movies. Though I love exploitation movies, I find Santiago's exploitation movies to be cheap and dull. To be fair, "Cover Girl Models" is a little slicker and more polished than what you usually get from Santiago. However, he was unable to pull off in the end fooling the audience to thinking the Filipino filming locations were actually Hong Kong locations. He does throw in some ample toplessness from the female cast, which is welcome. And the movie is well photographed, looking very nice on the DVD. But exploitation fans will probably fall asleep before the end because the movie, except for a couple of genuinely exciting kung fu sequences is extremely dull. If you want to see a good Santiago movie, watch "Eye Of The Eagle 3".

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.