Malibu Express (1985)

malibu-express-1 Director Andy Sidaris is possibly the greatest thing a filmmaker can be: an unrepentant horndog with a sense of humor. At 54, an age when most auteurs become indulgent bores, Sidaris (a longtime television director for ABC Sports) was just STARTING a series of independently produced flicks all about big boobs and big guns. Cleavage and espionage. Plots that stretch believability and hourglass figures that stretch out tight outfits. I can’t decide what I like more about the ultra-entertaining Malibu Express, its cast of Playboy Playmates who can’t stop dropping their tops or how intentionally funny it all is.

Now the plot is more complicated than The Big Sleep and JFK combined, but that’s okay. It’s some stuff about a computer manufacturer selling government secrets and a muscleman butler blackmailing his employer. Forget it. Every time you try to figure it out, Sybil Danning saunters onscreen in a dress that’s probably illegal in thirty-seven countries. malibu-express-2

At the center of it all is hilariously bad private detective Cody Abilene (Darby Hinton), a Chuck Norris-lookalike and good Texas boy living a dream life. He drives a Delorean, lives on a yacht, and gets laid more than Wilt Chamberlain. AND he’s a character in an Andy Sidaris movie. Cody can’t go to a convenience store for peanut brittle WITHOUT a Playmate in the parking lot begging him for a ride on his rocket. Sure, the film gets a lot of comic mileage over how Cody is so bad with a gun that he’d miss an elephant in an elevator, but did James Bond ever have the basketball-breasted Lynda Wiesmeier pleading with him to mount her WHILE he’s in the middle of a high speed car chase? I don’t think so.

This thing delivers. A late night cable TV classic.