DVD review: Savage Beach

Last weekend me and Carola went to another flea market. Here I found some good stuff again and I also picked this DVD: Savage Beach. Yes not Savage Streets this time, but Savage Beach. An action movie from 1989 by Andy Sidaris. The DVD art work made the movie look really trashy and sleazy so I decided to pick it up. And the same evening we gave it a watch.

Bullets, Bombs and Babes it says on the front cover of this DVD. And I think that pretty much sums up this movie. The movie is about 2 women, Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), who are both federal drug enforcement agents. They get assigned the task of bringing a vaccine by plane to Knox Island. But it not all works out like it supposed to and the girls have make an emergency landing because of a severe storm. But this doesn't go all that smoothly and the plane gets broken. They are now stuck on what they think is an deserted island. But things are not all what they seem to be and the girls soon find themselves in a whole lot of trouble.

So yeah, if you've read the plot you might think that this film is actually at least an "okay" movie. But I can ensure you it's not. It's bad, it's really really bad. The acting is just horribly bad. Both main female characters are both former Playboy playmates and were obviously not hired for their acting talents. But rather to show some skin. There is just a lot of nudity in this film, and most of the time very unnecessary. For example the 2 girls made a stop with the plane, but it was raining very hard, so of course they get wet. But after that they have to fly further and decide to change their clothes while flying. And yes they do both change their clothes at the same time behind the steering wheel, so nobody is flying the plane. And it's not like it's sexy or anything either. It's just nude for the sake of being nude. The movie has quite a few of these moments. Also it just feels like the girls are just flying the plane for half of the movie.

Their also some other random weird stuff going on. For example when the girls are flying the plane the windows of the plane are really dirty. Like they could hardly see anything. Also at one point on the deserted island the girls paint camouflage on their faces. And what do you know, in the next shot the camouflage is gone never to be seen again. The movie is also full of bad dialogue, dumb jokes and things that plain don't make sense at all. But it does have some nice action scenes in it. I thought the film started pretty good with a shoot out during a drug bust. There are also some pretty decent fighting scenes. But nothing to impressive.

Andy Sidaris directed this film, I have to say that I wasn't familiar with his name at all. Turns out he was a big name on network TV in the US directing NFL for TV in the 70's. He even won an Emmy. After that he only made trash movies like Savage Beach. Yeah that's right, he's done a ton more of these Bullets, Bombs and Babes films. In fact that seems to be the only kind of films he has ever made. Savage Beach even got a sequel: L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies Return To Savage Beach.

The DVD I have is the Dutch release by Atlas International. I have to say that the video and audio quality was actually surprisingly good. I thought it would be another cheap ass VHS transfer. But it isn't. The film even is in 16:9 widescreen. On the front cover it already very promptly says that the DVD contains 40 minutes of extras. I also was rather surprised by that. But if you thought the movie was bad, wait until you see the Behind The Scenes/Interviews extra that is on this DVD. Oh man I can't stop laughing even thinking about it. For the most part it's Andy Sidaris and Julie Strain (who doesn't play a part in this film, only the sequel) talking about the sequel Return To Savage Beach. There  is some home video footage shown of how Andy Sidaris and his wife have the model of the plane, that is used for the exterior flying shots in Savage Beach, hanging in their home. And also the people who made the model are there wearing Santa Claus hats, hmmm okay. The rest of it is just work print footage of Return To Savage Streets with Andy and Julie giving some commentary. There are some interesting things explained by Andy and Julie which gives you some insides in the process of making a film. But there is also some strange things in there for example they are talking about plants and where they got them. And Andy just keeps telling you to buy the rest of his DVDs. Also the footage of this extra is all in segments. But some of the segments contain the same footage  of the previous segment for the first couple of minutes. So you will be seeing some things twice if you can sit through this crap. The DVD also contains trailers for 12 different Andy Sidaris films which is quite substantial. I always like when they put this many trailers on a DVD.

As I already said, I think this film was quite bad. But it is bad in a "it's so bad it's good" kinda way. This is a fun movie to watch with some friends and just laugh at all the painfully bad stuff going on. When I bought this film I knew I didn't have to take this one seriously. I just expected it to be a bit more trashy in a good way. I watch a lot of bad movies and I can really enjoy them. But I don't think I will rewatch Savage Beach anytime soon, although I had a good time watching it. I do recommend this version for its video and sound quality.