The Series Project: L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies (Part 3)

 

Welcome back, my fellow lovers of breasts and explosions, to the third and final week of The Series Project overview of Andy Sidaris’ famed L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies series. This will be a halcyon goodbye to these films. I feel a strange attachment to the cheesy, impenetrable stories. I like the clockwork regularity of the bare breasts, and will miss their reliability. The bad acting, in most cases, is only charming. I feel like Dona Speir, Julie Strain, Rodrigo Obregón, and Sidaris himself should be leaving signatures in my yearbook. Have a great summer. It’s so hard to drift apart. They’ll insist that we hang out during the summer, these movies, but I know the truth. We’ll all be too busy looking forward to college and finding our new adult selves to really stay in touch. We’ll eventually drift into our own lives, and lose contact. Luckily, I bothered to buy the entire series on DVD (they come in a box set, natch), and I can always pop in Hard Ticket to Hawaii (film #2), or Hard Hunted  (film #7), and the magic will return. And there is magic in this series. True schlocky, busty, explodey magic.

But before I get too melancholy, I’ll celebrate the fact that we still have four films to discuss. Sadly, these final four aren’t as good as some of the earlier glory days of the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies, and, indeed, two of them were repurposed by Andy Sidaris’ son Christian Drew Sidaris. While Drew is a fine director of badly acted schlock action, he doesn’t have quite the same flair as his father, or the same surprising attention to canon.

By the way, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. For two weeks, you’ve probably been itching to know what “L.E.T.H.A.L.” stands for. Well, I’ll tell you. It stands for the Legion to Ensure Total Harmony and Law. And while the acronym, as I have stated in previous weeks, wasn’t mentioned until the 11th film in the series, the 12th actually bothers to declare that all the lady spies we’ve been following this whole time have indeed been working for the government-sponsored L.E.T.H.A.L. Liken them to S.H.I.E.L.D. Only with more shower scenes, softcore sex, and sexier costumes. Also Julie Strain. Is it me, or could Julie Strain be hired as an Avenger without any superpowers or secret identity, and still kick ass? I bet she could drink anyone under the table, anyway. Plus her costumes are way better than some seen in the pages of comic books.

Something I’ve noticed about this series: When I talk to friends about it, and begin describing any of them in any detail, my friend will pipe up that they have seen at least one of these. I don’t know how often they played on cable, but these movies in particular seemed to enjoy regular rotation late at night. I’m willing to bet that if you had cable TV from 1987 ‘til about 1994, and you stayed up late, after your parents had gone to sleep, you probably watched one or two of these without even knowing it. You remember the explosions, and, more importantly, you remember the breasts. Oh the breasts. The magical, magical breasts.

But to the series. Many critics of this series (and there are a few of us lurking out in the darker corners of this big ol’ internet of ours) often agree that the series ended with Fit to Kill, the 8th film in the franchise, as it was the last film to feature Donna (Dona Speir) and either Nicole (Roberta Vasquez) or Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton). Yes, the 9th film in the series does start with an almost entirely new set of characters, but, now having seen all 12 of these films, I can safely say that they are all, technically, canonical, and they all have connective tissue. More so if the “twin theory” I posited last week holds any credence (in brief: I posited that, since many actors die in one film, only to come back as a good guy in the next, that the world of the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies is populated with identical twins, triplets, and quadruplets).

I will now walk you through the final four films in this wonderfully low-rent, straight-to-video-and-cable-TV series of explosive softcore action flicks. Let us to…

 

Enemy Gold (dir. Drew Sidaris, 1993)

 

First Breast Occurs: 10:04

Number of Breasts: 19

So, yeah, all our previous characters are gone, and we’re staring fresh. We’re not even in Hawaii anymore. Bruce Penhall, who previously played Bruce in the last five films, has returned, but is now playing a character named Chris Cannon. He may be another identical twin brother, but this Chris character dresses exactly the same as Bruce (he has the same icky propensity toward open vests without a shirt), and acts the same. My theory is that Chris is Bruce, but assigned a new identity by L.E.T.H.A.L. Chris tools around with a character that may as well be an Abilene (this is the first film in the series without a character named Abilene) named Mark Austin (Mark Barriere). These two lunkheads are our main characters.

Is it me, or does it seem backward to feature male protagonists in this series? As I have previously stated, the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies series, for all its objectification and outright pervy breast fetish, actually poses as a feminist polemic, allowing the women to kick all the asses and take all the names. Indeed, in previous chapters, the men were all comparatively bumbling, occasionally taking out the bad guys, but usually being led by the women. In Enemy Gold (which is an awesome title, by the way) the only main female characters are, respectively, a boring Gal Friday sidekick and a prowling evil assassin. I kept waiting for Becky Midnite (Playboy Playmate Suzi Simpson) to do something of significance, but it was not to be. Indeed, when we first see her, the camera follows her (in true Sidaris fashion) into a bathroom where we see her change outfits. This and having sex with Mark are the only things she’ll do in the film.

The story is rather simple compared to the labyrinths we’ve seen in previous chapters (Drew also wrote). An evil drug lord named Santiago (Rodrigo Obregón) has decided to get revenge on L.E.T.H.A.L. for constantly messing with his drug operations. In addition to occasionally sending hired killers after them, he has also hired the evil assassin Jewel Panther (Julie Strain), who does indeed sleep with her victims before killing them. Indeed, she often ties them up first. That’s very sporting of her. Or was all that The Dallas Connection? To be perfectly honest, this film is already slipping away from my memory, and I watched it only a few days ago.

Meanwhile, the boys’ boss Dickson (Alan Abelew) suspends them for botching some minor technical facet of a recent arrest. I don’t recall the exact reason for their suspension, but I recall that it was kind of a limp one. Chris and Mark, along with Becky (who was, incidentally, hired as their sidekick earlier in the film) decide that this is the perfect opportunity to seek out some buried gold, left behind by Confederate soldiers in Texas after the Civil War. They have an old diary in their possession that tells them where the buried gold may be. It doesn’t take us long to see that these two wide-eyed and flat characters are a shirtless, hunky modern-day version of Tom & Huck. Becky, then, must be… Becky. Jewel Panther kills people in the periphery, and occasionally goes after them.

There is one twist in the film, when it’s revealed that Dickson is actually working for Santiago. We also have the appearance of Kym (Kym Malin, credited only as “Cowboy’s Hostess”) who works at a Dallas stripclub, and who gives Chris and Mark some clues. Malin used to play a legit L.E.T.H.A.L. agent named Kym, but doesn’t seem to be playing the same character here. Either Kym is deep undercover, then, or this woman is yet another identical twin. Cowboy’s, by the way, is a real-life nightclub in Shreveport, Louisiana, and, in previous films, was the front for sexy L.E.T.H.A.L. agents who would pose as strippers in between (and often during) spy gigs. In Enemy Gold, Cowboy’s is a front for the bad guys. I like to think that Santiago used his cunning to take it over.

The film is so forgettable, though, that I forgot how it ended. I think Jewel Panther got blown up, and Santiago got away. Or maybe it was the other way around. I know Strain will be back in the next film, anyway. A shame she won’t be playing the same person, as I relish the idea of a character named Jewel Panther. Jewel Panther, dude. How come so few action movies these days have wicked assassin villainesses with names like Jewel Panther? Here’s one thing that stuck out in my memory: When Mark and Becky have sex, the porn music sounds uncannily like the theme song to Growing Pains. 

That’s pretty much it for Enemy Gold. I guess I could comment on the bad acting, but I’ll save that sentiment for…

 


 

The Dallas Connection, a.k.a. Deadworks (dir. Drew Sidaris, 1994)

The First Breast Occurs: 4:00

Number of Breasts: 24

So about that bad acting. Andy Sidaris seemed to have a talent for allowing his actors to incorporate their own interests and personalities into the roles they played. I’m guessing that’s why Cynthia Brimhall (Edy from parts 2, 3, and 5-8) got to sing in so many of the films. Or why Dona Speir (from parts 2-8) got to play such a strong woman; she probably requested that kind of role. I’m also guessing that Julie Strain was completely comfortable with the nutty half-naked super-assassin roles she played. (Have I mentioned that I really like Julie Strain? She gnashes and snarls like a wildcat. She’s not the best actress, but you can’t take your eyes off her.) Drew Sidaris, by contrast, seems to have written stronger stories and then cast the films later, making for some pretty stilted and rotten performances throughout. The Drew chapters are probably the best-written, but feel like a slightly weakened departure from the series I’ve grown used to.

The story for this one is, like Enemy Gold, comparatively clear, and could easily be the plot of a James Bond flick. Heck, a few of the James Bond movies weren’t as clear as The Dallas Connection. Black Widow (Julie Strain), perhaps Jewel Panther resurrected, perhaps another twin sister, is now leading up an effort to assassinate four high-profile scientists, each of whom has one quarter of an important McGuffin that can alter a war satellite or something. It’s not important what the four disks do, really. It has something to do with a peacekeeping satellite called IWAR. Black Widow is tooling around with a guy who looks a lot like Stephen Dorff (Ronald Marcus) to me. Black Widow has a shtick of sleeping with guys before killing them, and actually has sexual accoutrements and sexy outfits. This seems like a lot of effort to go through just to commit murder, but I would never impugn a sexy assassin her awesome action movie tropes.

Also on her assassination team is Cobra (Julie K. Smith) and Scorpion (Wendy Hamilton), a pair of busty butt-kickers who will, later in the film, seduce our heroes. Keep an eye on Cobra. She’ll be in the rest of these movies. She also has Fu (Gerald Okamura), a thick-bodied fiftysomething kung-fu guy whom you’ll probably recognize. Fu is actually something of a badass.

The heroes are still Chris and Mark (Bruce Penhall and Mark Barriere), and they’re just as boring as last time. I couldn’t hear a lot of their dialogue because I spent the bulk of their screentime screaming at them for not being Donna and Taryn. It may seem strange to you that I’m so attached to Donna and Taryn, but you’ll understand once you’ve seen 10 of these things. Heck, you just need to see Hard Ticket to Hawaii, really, to understand.

Anyway, the story. Three scientists are being killed for their McGuffins, and it’s up to our heroes to track down and protect the fourth and final McGuffin-possessor, one Dr. Antonio Morales (Rodrigo Obregón). The four McGuffins are given to Chris, Mark, Mark’s girlfriend, and the stringy bossman, and they are sent into the world to be hunted down. Becky, by the way, is now gone, and Mark is now dating the pretty Samantha Maxx (Sam Phillips from Dollman and Angel 4: Undercover). Sam will become jealous when Scorpion seduces Mark for his piece of the McGuffin, even though she doesn’t have sex with him. Chris, on the other hand, will actually get to have sex with Cobra in a hot tub. I think this scene provides the second instance in the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies series wherein a woman appears fully frontally nude.

I kind of liked the story, and Julie Strain is having her usual amount of fun as Black Widow. There’s a cool scene where Fu and Black Widow actually kill guys you don’t expect to die. Fu breaks the guy’s neck. It’s pretty shocking. Eventually Cobra and Scorpion retrieve disks, and it is revealed that Dr. Morales (no surprise here) is actually the mastermind behind the assassinations. These movies all, to one degree or another, seem to posit that all Latinos are wicked supercriminals. Rodrigo Obregón is in 11 of these movies, and played a bad guy in nine of them. The other two times, he played a Russian and a drag queen.

Sadly, this one, like Enemy Gold, just doesn’t have the same level of chaotic fun I’ve grown used to. Indeed, a lot of the charm is lost when I can actually follow the story. In true Sidaris fashion, at least, Cobra turns out to be an undercover cop, and she didn’t actually kill her scientist target at the beginning. It’s that kind of vague switcheroo that I’ve come to expect. By the film’s end, Dr. Morales is arrested or blown up, Scorpion goes to jail, and Cobra joins up with L.E.T.H.A.L. Everybody toasts to their success. Almost every one of these films, by the way, ends with a champagne toast. I may have mentioned that before.

Andy Sidaris returns for the next film, however, and we are mercifully back to oblique plots, and we’re given one of the series’ most colorful villains. Let’s look at…

 


 

Day of the Warrior (dir. Andy Sidaris, 1996)

First Breast Occurs: 1:52

Number of Breasts: 22

So just as Enemy Gold and The Dallas Connection form their own sort of mini-arc within the series, so too do Day of the Warrior and L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies: Return to Savage Beach. Indeed, by the time we get to the 12th and final film, we’re tying up the series with connection to several of the previous films. I think Andy Sidaris made this a conscious effort. It was his series, his characters. I can’t find any information as to why Drew Sidaris took over the series for two films, or what sort of creative germ was involved in the new conceits and characters. I think, with no small amount of consternation, that Andy Sidaris may have been sick and wanted to retire, but was active enough to direct the final two films in the series.

These final four films, by the way, feature way more sex than any of their predecessors. There are still the trademark Sidaris nonsexual undressing scenes, but the number of actual softcore sex scenes has increased exponentially. So prepare yourself for long plot intermissions while oiled-up and attractive men and equally oily and breast-augmented women kiss gently and caress each other’s nude bodies to the strained tones of Casio-composed sythno-saxaphones. Really. There’s no actual thrusting or grunting or orgasms in this universe. Sex is, as far as I can tell, entirely constructed of soft focus, light touches, and heaving chests. There is a charm to this half-neutered version of sex. Sidaris proves, once again, that his sexual fantasies are of a nonsexual adolescent variety that hover around the plastic chest area. Anything that is directly gynecological is politely shied away from.

Day of the Warrioris, finally, the film that gives the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies series its name. And, thanks to a few lines of retroactive dialogue, we finally know for certain that the vague government organization that we’ve been following this whole time is indeed L.E.T.H.A.L., which is, again, the Legion to Ensure Total Harmony And Law. Donna, Taryn, Nicole, Ava, Edy, and all the rest are, officially, L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies.

The plot for Day of the Warrior possesses the usual Sidaris lack of opacity. How refreshing. The bad guy this time is a greasy professional wrestler named Warrior (WCW champ Marcus Bagwell, a.k.a. Buff Bagwell) who is secretly running several criminal enterprises simultaneously. He’s running guns, he’s dealing drugs, and he’s bootlegging porn. Well, he’s not really bootlegging it, as he actually shoots his own original content with adult actors that he treats well. That’s what we call “making pornography,” which is a legal operation in most states. But whatever. Porn has a reputation for shadiness, so Warrior has a hand in it. When one of his underlings misbehaves, or if he catches a Fed secretly hiding out in his inner circles, he prefers to kill them by dressing in his stretchy wrestling pants, greasing up his chest, applying Indian warpaint to his face, and suplexing them to death. No other words than “awesome” here. 

Julie Strain is back, this time playing Willow Black, the head of L.E.T.H.A.L. This is the fourth character she’s played, and the first good guy. Quadruplets! Cobra (Julie K. Smith) is back, this time masquerading as a stripper, but not at Cowboy’s. Fu (Gerald Okamura) is also back, this time as a good guy who moonlights as the world’s worst Elvis impersonator, Elvis Fu. He lip-synchs to “Braggin’ on Me,” which is most certainly an experience to be endured. There is a pair of dull male leads again, this time in the form of Doc Austen and Tyler (Kevin Light and the pseudo-British Cristian Letelier), but it’s Cobra, her new associate Tiger (Playboy Playmate Shae Marks, who is lovely, despite some truly unnecessary breast implants), and a beefy guy named Shark (Darren Wise) who do all the investigating.

To dupe the bootleg porn leg of Warrior’s criminal enterprise, Cobra and Shark pose as would-be porn stars. Again. Nothing illegal here. The cameramen are, in a baffling turn of events, secretly usurped by a pair of bumbling would-be assassins (Cassidy Phillips and Richard Cansino). Yeah, we’ve seen these unfunny comic relief guys before, and I, just as badly, want them to suffer grievous bodily injury. They do get blown up, but just like Cansino and Chu Chu Malave did in parts 6 through 8, they survive to annoy another day.

Someone gets punched in the boob. Someone uses a boob to punch someone. Andy Sidaris makes sure to include yet another R/C car with a bomb on it. I had missed those. There’s a truly curious scene wherein a villainess character is confronted with an owl. It hoots at her. She claims to hate owls. It hoots again. This owl, mind you, is not even an animatronic owl. It’s clearly just a stuffed prop. Bubo from Clash of the Titans looked more natural. The hooting is clearly a person making hoot noises in ADR. She eyeballs the owl with utter disdain. Later, she is given a bazooka. She bazookas the owl. Why did I just watch an evil blonde lady blow up a hooting owl prop? That poor li’l owl. Never hurt anyone.

Anyway, the villain kidnaps Julie Strain and Fu and tries to fight them to death. Julie Strain headbutts him into submission. Julie Strain’s skull will save us all.

Not much else to say about Day of the Warrior. The villain is over-the-top. So few movie villains these days have a good gimmick like that anymore. When I make my own Andy Sidaris film, the villain will have an awesome gimmick. I don’t know what that will be yet. If you were a supervillain, what would your kill gimmick be? 

But it’s time to approach the last chapter. We draw to a close with…

 


 

L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies: Return to Savage Beach (dir. Andy Sidaris, 1998)

First Breast Occurs: 4:34

Number of Breasts: 24

So we have had several miniature story arcs throughout this series. Sidaris must have sensed that Return to Savage Beach was going to be the last of these films, as it attempts to incorporate several of the arcs and bring them to a close. While it’s not to most fun of the series, it does feel like a good cap on a 12-film series well done.

So we’re still following Cobra (Julie K. Smith), Tiger (Shae Marks), Tyler (Cristian Letelier), Doc (Paul Logan), and Fu (Gerald Okamura) all from the last film, but we also have back Silk (Carolyn Liu) and Ava (Ava Cadell) from films 6-8. Julie Strain is back as Willow Black, and most of her scenes are spent with a fellow named Harry the Cat, played by her real life husband Kevin Eastman, probably best known for co-creating the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Cobra and Tiger and Willow are up to their old tricks, but we have the welcome return of KSXY, the radio station first seen in Hard Hunted, and which gave out secret messages to spies in the field using sexual porny talk as code.

We’re also back in Molokai, and Molokai Cargo is still in operation. If you’ll recall, that was the front for Donna and Taryn back in films 2-4. What’s more, the characters really do return to the very same Savage Beach from Savage Beach. In an odd way, we’re making this series all the more epic.

The bad guy is Rodrigo Obregón again, this time playing Rodrigo Martinez, the usual brand of supercriminal, wearing a really goofy-looking Phantom of the Opera mask over the left side of his face. Martinez, by the way, was his character in Savage Beach. So many recurring characters! We learn in a flashback that Obregón’s character did not die as we previously thought, but survived on Savage Beach with horrible burns. He managed to salvage an abandoned plane, fly to safety, and devote his life to acquiring Filipino artifacts and returning them to their home country. The gold from Savage Beach, you see, was a Filipino treasure. And now there’s a new treasure, and various people are after it.

There’s Rodrigo, there’s the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies, and there’s a mysterious third party named Sofia (Carrie Westcott) who has broken into L.E.T.H.A.L. headquarters (disguised as a sexy pizza woman!) to steal an old-fashioned floppy disk, revealing the location of Savage Beach. For a Sidaris film, the story is pretty straightforward. Luckily, we have plenty of intermissions wherein women strip. Tiger and Tyler are now seemingly dating, and Cobra has her man. Return to Savage Beach features one of the single most gratuitous sex scenes I’ve seen outside of hardcore porn: When the good guys accomplish an important goal, Cobra implies that it’s now time to enact her boyfriend’s favorite sex fantasy. We then see the fantasy in the guy’s head. Evidently, he wants to role play as a sexy robber, with Cobra posing as a sexy cop (named Officer Naughty). He then wants to be handcuffed to a stripper’s pole, whipped lightly, and caressed in an inimitable softcore fashion.

Oh yeah, you know who else is back? Warrior (Marcus Bagwell). Yup, the villain from the last film is, in true Sidaris fashion, now a hero. Perhaps Sidaris is trying to make a profound comment on how people can be reformed, and the virtues of acceptance and forgiveness. Evidently Warrior, even though he was a greasy, certifiably insane, oiled up wrestlemaniac, was really a good guy at heart. Well, not really. Get this: he killed a Fed in the last film, right? Well it turns out (snort) that the Fed in question was secretly a serial killer, who had murdered dozens. Warrior, for killing off this serial killer, was let out of prison and allowed to join L.E.T.H.A.L. Good way to make use of a random extra from the previous film, anyhow.

Return to Savage Beach features a lot of reused footage, actually. We get to see Donna and Taryn (Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton). We see previous fights. Some of it is repurposed for this film, but some is just plain ol’ flashback. This looks as cheap as it sounds, of course, but I give credit to Sidaris for wanting to continually expand on the myth of his series. And I think he succeeded. This is the longest film in the series (at a whopping 97 minutes), and features so many of the Sidaris trademarks (undressing montages, R/C death, Obregón, double-crosses, reused actors, light planes, repurposed alliances) that it’s hard not to see the film as a grand finale. The song that plays over the credits is called “Which Ending Does This Story Have?” We can never be sure, Andy. We can never be sure.

The ending, by the way, is a 15-minute speech, explaining how closely connected this film is with the others. It’s borderline metaphysical. Obregón explains his plans and who he is. Then, without any warning or logic, Return to Savage Beach goes all Scooby-Doo on us, and pulls off the bad guy’s face, revealing a different villain underneath! Seriously. Like a rubber mask. Who is underneath? Why none other than Old Man Withers! The guy who runs the haunted amusement park! Just kidding. It’s actually Martinez’ nephew about whom we had never spoken of before. Ever. It turns out… it was just some guy!

Yeah, it’s pretty dumb. But we were given closure. How astonishing that so much care and thought should go into the memories, continuities and affections of these oft-forgotten and disposed-of action nudies. This time, when everyone toasts, and we look around at all the faces, new and old, we want to wish them a good summer. We’ll visit Hawaii again. We’ll always have Hawaii.

Rest in peace, Mr. Sidaris. You have done well by us.

 


 

Series Overview:

Here’s how to make your very own Andy Sidaris movie in ten easy steps:

 

1. Start with the Hot Women

Make sure they’re busty and willing to strip on camera. Get the breasts out early and often. Ensure the actresses that they won’t have too many sex scenes. They will have a few, though, and they’ll have to be kinda greasy. If the actresses are Playboy Playmates or Penthouse Pets, so much the better. Dress them in short shorts, or any other sexy outfit, but tall cowboy boots are a must. Make them spies and/or martial arts experts. Go to a real-life strip club and have them strip. They can be spies on the side. Dress them in whatever your imagination desires, which usually means thong bikinis and leather vinyl. High heels will do, but better to go with the boots. Shoot them undressing a lot. You can cut an undressing scene anywhere into your film, so get to the nudity as soon as possible.

 

2. Set Your Film in Hawaii

You can visit L.A., Dallas, the bayous of Louisiana, or Las Vegas as well, but most of the action should be in Hawaii. You can use all of them simultaneously, provided each of the characters has a briefcase with a satellite dish in it. You’ll have to get that prop.

 

3. Get Badass Weapons and a Lot of Stuff to Blow Up

Rocket launchers are a must. Be sure to blow up at least one helicopter, at least one boat, and at least one free-standing human being. This can be achieved with grenades, but explosive-tipped crossbow bolts are preferred. Get plenty of guns. Plenty of them. Give everyone a gun. All sizes and shapes will do.

 

4. How Will Your Characters Get Around?

Well, in light plans and Cessnas, of course. You’ll have the requisite car or jeep (also options for explosion), but light planes are the real way to go. If you have access to weird-looking small planes or gyrocopters, use them. When not using light planes, the characters can use other exotic forms of transport: hovercrafts, submarines, fancy yachts, etc. If you can afford it, blow these things up.

 

5. Invest in R/C

You must (and this is very important) include one or two scenes with a remote control plane or helicopter or car. The R/C vehicles are fun to film, fun to use, and a fun way to sneak a bomb into a house or shack. Doesn’t matter if it’s for the heroes or the villains. You must use R/C vehicles. 

 

6. Get the Plot Right-ish

Have it be a spy story wherein a bunch of sexy female spies are working, in various locales, to stop a single charismatic bad guy. Cast whatever high profile actor you can find. Don’t worry about reusing them later. You can get away with that. If the lead villain is Latino, so much the better. If you can get Rodrigo Obregón, do it immediately. Stress that there is a vast criminal network that connects Hawaii to Vegas. Bad guys can turn good, but good guys will never turn bad. The actual story is secondary to the right story beats. The film must end with a champagne toast.

 

7. Name a Character Abilene

It couldn’t hurt. Have the good guys be friendly and open with each other. They must go skinny dipping in hot tubs to stress this. They must also meet at a casual commercial location like a restaurant or a radio station to regroup.

 

8. Cast Hot Men

As for the men, they should, like the women, be models and/or bodybuilders. They need not be able to act. They should be very fit, and always coated in shiny, shiny grease. They should not wear shirts too often. When they carry a gun, it should be shoved really far down the front of their blue jeans. Holsters are for the weak.

 

9. Include a Few Transvestites

Transvestites are fun. (This isn’t one of them.)

 

10. Compose All Your Music on a Casio Keyboard

Why waste extra money on a whole orchestra?

 

Follow these instructions, and you’ll be golden. Be sure to name your movie something threatening, but vague. Include the words “death,” “hard,” “gun,” or “kill.” I look forward to the flood of ideas that will come from the passionate Sidaris fans out in the world.

It’s been a long strange journey. And I’m glad I took it. Thanks for joining me, friends. See you next summer. Which, in my case, starts next week with a Series Project article on the Alien/Predator series. See you then.

 

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