I SAILED TO TAHITI WITH AN ALL GIRL CREW

Gardner McKay

I SAILED TO TAHITI WITH AN ALL GIRL CREW (1968). Written, produced, and directed by Richard L. Bare.

When he's drunk, Terry O'Brien (Gardner McKay of Adventures in Paradise) makes a bet that he can sail to Tahiti with an all-girl crew and arrive before his opponent, Josh (Fred Clark). If he loses, he has to give Josh his boat, the Samaran. His international crew consists of Liz (Diane McBain); sexy ex-stripper Marilyn (Edy Williams of The Naked Kiss); Monique (Jeanne Rainer); the cook and aspiring dancer Tamaya (Bebe Louie); and Janet (Arlene James). One of these women has viciously stabbed a man and is on the run, and there's a stowaway named Jimsy (Mary O'Brien), a tomboy who wants to join the crew and has a crush on Terry. If the movie weren't bad enough, we also have irritating Pat Buttram as a lawman on the hunt for the aforementioned stabber. Richard Denning [The Black Scorpion] plays a commodore who decides to choose the winner with a photo finish. The gals are pretty; glib if charming McKay is as handsome as ever; there are some nice yachts and pretty blue water; and one clever bit, when Tamaya keeps eggs from rolling off the counter by putting them in her bra cups. There's maybe one other laugh in what seems like a not-very-expensive home movie. I guess McKay beat Elvis to the punch because you can just see Presley warbling tunes and romancing women on the way to Tahiti -- I mean, this was an irresistible plot for the "Pelvis." I Sailed to Tahiti has no songs, but there is an Hawaiian dance number.

Verdict: I kept expecting Sonny and Cher to show up any minute and do the frug. *1/2.

THE NAKED KISS

Bald and Beautiful: Constance Towers

THE NAKED KISS (1964). Produced, written and directed by Samuel Fuller.

A prostitute named Kelly (Constance Towers) comes to a small town, Grantville, after a violent incident with her pimp, and briefly hooks up with a hypocritical cop named Griff (Anthony Eisley of The Mighty Gorga). Griff wants Kelly to "get out of town" and go across the river to an establishment of ill repute run by Candy (Virginia Grey). Instead Kelly gets a job working at an institution that helps disabled children. Kelly then meets the hospital -- and the town's -- chief benefactor, the romantic and cultured Grant (Michael Dante). Despite at least one red flag, Kelly finds herself falling for Grant, but he has one highly disturbing secret. The Naked Kiss is superior to Fuller's earlier Shock Corridor, and full of equally controversial material. Of course it's not the first movie to have a hooker for a heroine, and not even the first to look into the subject of pedophilia (Never Take Candy from a Stranger came out four years earlier in Britain). The movie has a very interesting script, but, unfortunately, it descends into melodrama that only cheapens it. Towers is more effective and not as overwrought as she was in Corridor; Eisley is perfectly cast as the slimy Griff; Grey is terrific as ever; and Dante, while his character is essentially a charming if one-note villain, has his moments as well. Patsy Kelly appears as a nurse in the institution. The Naked Kiss, whatever its flaws, certainly has some interesting scenes. There's the opening with Kelly assaulting the pimp who shaved her hair off as her wig falls off of her head and she's revealed to be bald; Kelly's smack-in-the-face purse assault, this time on madame Candy; Kelly's landlady (Betty Bronson of The Locked Door) talking about the soldier she intended to marry but who never came home from the war; and especially the poignant scene when all of the children sing the plaintive melody 'Tell Me Why." Towers, who years later co-starred with Yul Brynner in "The King and I," reveals a lovely voice in this sequence. Edy Williams, who dated Dean Martin, appears briefly as a hooker. In Grantville, the movie theater's marquee reads "Shock Corridor."

Verdict: Good story, but too lurid and superficial. **1/2.