They're called T & E movies--the "E" stands for "explosions"--and they've been cranked out for years now by the Hawaii-based husband-and-wife team of Andy and Arlene Sidaris. He's a former Emmy-winning director for ABC Sports, while she wrote and produced TV's "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew
Mysteries"; together, they've been responsible for a series of distinctive action-sexploitation spectacles starring a recurring cast of delectable federal agents who enjoy hot sex and deadly danger in equal doses. Part Playboy video, part gun-lovers' wet dream, the typical Malibu Bay Films
production plays a few theaters but more often reaches salivating fans via home cassette.
The 1992 entry DO OR DIE gets off to a strong start before settling down to the usual exhibit of blazing bullets, squealing tires and luscious bodies. Two of the latter, undercover-agent babes Donna Hamilton (Dona Speir) and Nicole Justin (Roberta Vasquez) are kidnapped and brought before
Kaneshiro (Pat Morita), a shadowy crimelord the pair has crossed too often. He doesn't kill them, but coolly warns that he's dispatched six separate teams of assassins who will most assuredly send the curvaceous cops to that big hot tub in the sky.
Released to their certain fate, the imperiled ladies call on their cohorts for backup. There's Shane Abilene (Michael Shayne), virile adventurer who can't shoot accurately with anything smaller than a grenade launcher (can there be some subtle bedroom metaphor at work here?); hunky Colonel Richard
Estaban--listed as "Estevez" in the closing credits, but in any case played by Erik Estrada; Edy (Cynthia Brimhall), who has huge breasts; Atlanta Lee (Stephanie Schick), who has huger breasts; CIA hardbody Bruce Christian (Bruce Penhall); and a stud named Lucas (Bill Bumiller) to make sure
everyone has a partner for the abundant lovemaking that ensues in between the chase scenes. One would think that characters running for their lives would have more urgent plans than coitus, but this is a Sidaris film, so there.
It's quite possible to mix frisky sex and action--witness the James Bond series--but DO OR DIE disappoints when the assassins attack. The fearsome hit men (and women) are a dull bunch, defeated with tired regularity and little suspense. Even Kaneshiro loses his menace; the narrative periodically
visits him in his supervillain pad where he wastes valuable scheme time luxuriating in sensual massages from Asian wench Silk (Carolyn Liu). His computer screen shows the successive hit teams vanquished, video-game fashion, and finally he himself is cornered with minimal fuss.
The role is an impressive change of pace for Noriyuki "Pat" Morita. Best known as Arnold Takahashi on TV's "Happy Days" sitcom and the kindly martial-arts master in the KARATE KID series, he makes an effective, all-powerful bad guy until the screenplay turns him into a campy hedonist. The other
familiar face, Estrada, is no stranger to the Sidaris team; he was the heavy in the previous installment, GUNS, ultimately blown to bits by a rocket launcher. Resurrections and reversals are nothing new to the series, though, and heroine Roberta Vasquez portrayed a doomed temptress in perhaps the
best of the whole lot, PICASSO TRIGGER.
To liven things up the plot turns travelogue, roving from Hawaii to Arizona to Louisiana to Dallas for different showdowns. The Arizona interlude, set during a radio-controlled-aircraft fly-in, provides some diverting sights (both gunfire and evildoer Ava Cadell, who has huge breasts and a
Cinemascope derriere). But the Bayou locations look oppressively overcast and dreary, even if they do provide an excuse for a country-and-western musical number that gives the girls yet another chance to shake their formidable tambourines. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
