"Ocker" comedy from Australia's answer to Russ Meyer
13 January 2010
Director John Lamond is kind of like the Aussie version of Russ Meyer (in the recent documentary on the Aussie exploitation industry "Not Quite Hollywood", Lamond is interviewed in a strip club). True, he doesn't share the latter's fetish for giant breasts. However, I would maintain that the enduring cult appeal of Russ Meyers has less to do with his talentless, big-breasted actresses (after all there's plenty of those around, especially in the post-silicone era) than with the fact that he was a genuinely TALENTED director. Lamond isn't quite in the same class as Meyer, but he's certainly competent. In his long career he did horror movies ("Nightmares") and straight "Emanuelle"-style erotica ("Felicity"), but his specialty was "ocker" sex comedies like this one.

Graeme Blundell plays "Martin", a pilot with a very peculiar problem: every time he is about to have sex he has a sneezing fit and loses his erection. A ridiculous amount of attractive women try to help him out, but all to no avail. After a mishap involving an older female relative of his boss, he is sent to work at a low-rent airlines called "Pacific Banana" where he is teamed with another pilot (Robin Stewart), who is such a ladies' man that he is engaged to BOTH of his shapely stewardesses (Dehorah Gray and Alyson Best), but still has time to "cheat" on them everywhere he goes (he has the proverbial opening in every port). Eventually,the Pacific Banana crew end up at the island resort of "Candy Bubbles" (Luanne Peters), and the well-endowed "Candy" and her gang of sexy female employees try to "cure" Martin. But will they succeed, or will it be up to his employer's nubile, pig-tailed daughter (Helen Hemingway),who follows "Martin" around like a puppy dog, but he never notices (perhaps because of her pig-tails) that she's absolutely gorgeous. Hmmm, I wonder?

Let's just be honest. NOBODY would watch a movie like this if the female cast wasn't constantly taking off their tops (and sometimes their bottoms).The plot is obviously stupid and it's rarely very funny. Still, it has a few other things going for it. It was filmed on-location in Tahiti and the scenery is absolutely gorgeous--unlike his modern-day equivalents, Lamond knew the difference between bare breasts and production values and he obviously spent a little money on this. The calypso-flavored theme song (credited to actresses Peters and Gray) is a catchy and funny with lyrics that keep changing to comment on "Martin's" unusual predicament. It's also nice to see Graeme Blundell, who was in the very first big "ocker" comedy "Alvin Purple" in the early 70's, and English actress Luann Peters, who was minor Hammer starlet and appeared in Pete Walker's "The Flesh and Blood Show". This isn't great, but if you just want to see an Australian "ocker" comedy this is as good as any.
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