Kona Coast

Creepy men drug up young Dee Carol during a party with lots of beautiful girls. In a haze, she calls her estranged father, charter boat captain Sam Moran (Richard Boone). A few days later, her dead body washes up on shore. Sam investigates by himself without help from the police. Soon, he's beaten up and his boat is burned.

It's a revenge B-movie filmed in Hawaii. Death Wish would come a few years later. That's what this premise wants to be. Sam needs to start killing these creeps one by one. It needs to go full Death Wish, but it's more a Surface Wound Wish. The investigating is not much, but it still has Hawaii.

This unsold pilot screams "Bad 1960s TV" from the short-skirted, beehive-haired go-go dancers to the music track, which sounds like a collection of stings pulled out of the library for the NBC Mystery Movies ("Columbo", "MacCloud" and "MacMillan and Wife"). It probably was proposed for the package. Based on these criteria, you shouldn't bother.

However the main cast goes through its paces as if they are doing something real and the Director of Photography, Joseph Lashelle, offers us many a dazzling image shot in gorgeous Technicolor. Is the sky anywhere that brilliant a blue? My advice is to turn off the sound and enjoy the pretty pictures.

A man tries to bring the people responsible for his daughters death to justice.

Kona Coast starts badly and just gets worse. Underpinning the whole sorry mess is Richard Boone a thoroughly unlikeable lead who spends a fair proportion of the movie dressed in an alarming yellow jacket and shorts. I have rarely seen as shockingly bad a lead performance as the one dished up by Boone in this film.

An incredibly lousy script, pathetic dialogue, an appalling soundtrack and shockingly lame unbelievable characters are just a few of the flaws hurled at the poor unsuspecting viewer.

I've seen a lot of films and rarely give a film 1/10 but this mess has absolutely no redeeming qualities at all. How I managed to sit through the full running time is anyone's guess. How this appalling garbage currently has a rating of 4.9 (76 votes) is a cause for concern.

Avoid.

To the other reviewers here, I would add:

Cons: The dialog is contrived, the acting is poor, and the story is sophomoric. This all adds up to "hokey" as an apt description for this movie that must have escaped as opposed to being released. It's a miracle that Boone was even able to get Blondell and Miles to be in it. They must have needed to pay some bills.

There was one scene in which the goons hired by the bad guy beat him up next to a phone booth, and the police arrive not more than five seconds after he hits the ground! How's that for response by our boys in blue? What this adds up to is a hokey film, so save your time (and money if you thought of buying the DVD).

Pros: The scenery is nice. A lot has changed in the 40+ years since the filming of this movie, but those who have been to Kailua-Kona will recognize some of the views along Alii Drive.

Just happened to wake up at 3am last night and went to watch satellite TV to try and get back to sleep and this came on. This film was so bad that it was compelling viewing and as a result I couldn't get back to sleep!

A quite poor script, and dreadful acting by ALL concerned, but worst of all was the plot which has been explained by previous posters so I won't repeat it here. The film attempts to potray emotion and dignity and utterly fails - not even the funeral of one of the main characters made you care. The characters are completely devoid of any depth or meaning, and you really don't give a damn about what happens to any of them.