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Hard Ticket To Hawaii (1987)

DVD Cover (Ventura Distribution - Alternate Cover)
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In Molokai, two undercover drug enforcement agents are after a vicious drug kingpin, but on the way, they will also have to deal with a contaminated giant python. --IMDb
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Review by bluemeanie
Added: January 23, 2009
Does anyone remember Andy Sidaris? He was a writer/producer/director in the 1980's and 1990's who was responsible for a lot of that soft core stuff Cinemax would show late at night -- his films always fell into that one classic sub-genre -- 'chicks with guns'. Most remember him from the film "Savage Beach", which came out in the 1990's and was likely his most popular hit. But "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" is easily his masterpiece, for all the wrong reasons. It might be the best film ever made...in the worst way. I could watch it every single day and never grow tired of a single moment therein. It's campy, ridiculous, takes itself way too seriously and features some of the best worst performances in film history. In short, it's an absolute miracle of a film.

The film is set on, you guessed it, the Hawaiian Islands. Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) are two Drug Enforcement Agents who fly a cargo plane back and forth from Honolulu to their island, where they live topless and ready for action. Their teammate, Rowdy (Ronn Moss) seems to call all the shots, is a great martial artist and has a wonderful sense of himself. For starters, there is a snake that has been contaminated by a group of cancer infected rats. This snake gets loose on the island and causes all sorts of drama. Then there's Seth (Rodrigo Obregon), the bad guy of the film who gets shot in the face and just won't die. There's a sideplot that involves some sort of sporting event taking place on the island, a man gets his head cut off by a Frisbee with razor blades on it and Rowdy blows a man apart with a bazooka. And then, at the end of the film, a large snake comes bursting out of the toilet amidst a shower of white and blue angelic light.

Most of this film is Donna and Taryn walking around topless and making suggestive remarks to Rowdy. In fact, there are so many perverted sexual references, it's difficult to keep count. The dialog is bad, but they meant for it to be good, as when the snake bursts through the toilet and Rowdy says, "Just when you thought it was safe to take a pee". Or how about when Seth says, "If brains were bird shit, you'd have a clean cage". The bad guys are so over the top, the heroes are so bad ass bitchin' that you just can't believe it and the snake is so fake that it makes you wonder if they borrowed it from Ed Wood's widow. The film was released in 1988, but I thought it had been made in the 1970's and was shocked to learn otherwise. It has this fondness for camp and for stupidity that was more common with films from the 1970's. Alas, I was mistaken.

This film is incredible. You will laugh non-stop throughout and want to watch it again and again because it is just so wonderfully awful. The acting is wooden throughout, the plot line makes no sense and never does anything, and the ending of the film is just hysterical -- just absolutely hysterical. It made me download all of Sidaris' other films and let me just say that this guy is the master of schlock, plain and simple. You'll love the opening title sequence which involves printed pieces of paper taped onto various crates in a warehouse. And you'll love the scene where Donna and Taryn connect, topless, about Donna's father and how he died saving her. And you'll be weeping for joy when the two tourists are discovered viciously mutilated by the cancer infected snake. There is so much to love here, especially the scene where Donna and Taryn are getting ready to fly their plane and have to make sure all the knobs are in the right order, followed by the song "Hard Ticket to Hawaii" which might be the single greatest pop song ever record for a film. A masterpiece, absolutely. 10/10.
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