Beach Babes From Beyond

Director: David DeCoteau
Produced: Karen L. Spencer
Script: Alexander Sachs
Cast: Joe Estevez, Don Swayze, Joey Travolta, Burt Ward, Jackie Stallone, Linnea Quigley, Sarah Bellomo
Year: 1993
Running Time: 75 mins
Cert:: 18
Award:: Adult Video News Awards (1994) best alternative adult feature film.

Title page of the DVD tells you everything you need to know about this film. Topless women caressing their thighs and breasts and running fingers through their hair. This is a fun bikini movie, probably one of the best produced for the sub-genre I’ve seen. However all characters have no development through the entire film. All are rather one dimensional and more a caricature.

Basic premise: teenage daughter steals or should I say ‘borrows’ her father’s ride. In this case a spaceship and decides to go planet hopping with a couple of sexy female friends. They ultimately end on the Californian coast, befriend a group of young firm men and end up entering a bikini contest in the hope of saving a beach house (owned by Uncle Bud) from demolition. However, a garment designer and ex-girlfriend of Uncle Bud stands in the way of their success.

This film has everything you want and desire from a sexy, Grindhouse movie. Plenty of random nudity for no plausible reason and cheesy anti-male put downs,”…He must have a small… Cranial capacity…” Do these films objectify women or men? I’d say yes and yes. No one gets off lightly. All are objectified, ridiculed, misunderstood and seduced. It seems if you’re a man with pecks then you’re dumb. You can’t have both brains and brawn in this genre. Women have the upper hand with both brains and sex appeal.

The production values are not too bad. The sound mostly clear and at only one point does the dialogue play second place to the score or more specifically the sound of the ocean waves crashing on the sun drenched beach. Though at times you’d wish you hadn’t heard the poor dialogue, “…This is a swimsuit photoshoot not Hustler…” I don’t think so. This film is far more than a swimsuit photoshoot. It’s a credit to the early 90’s genre. Another example of the suspect dialogue; at one point the garment designer binds one of the sexy space gals Nina to a chair (so we even get a little light bondage) and later the garment designer shares a dinner with her lawyer and plots the demise of both the ‘Beach Babes from Beyond’ as well as her ex lover Bud, who the babes are trying to help.

Lawyer: To money.
Garment designer: To power.
Lawyer: To lust…
Garment designer: To therapy.

Whilst I’d score the movie relatively average for the genre it belongs to but even with the relatively good production values I have to score this film poorly over all. For starters, at 75 minuets in total, it just ain’t long enough. Though the reason for this is due to the edit (see my review of the DVD extras). Coupled with that is the fact that half the time we are offered nothing more than time padding. Though when the padding is sexy, semi-naked nubile women playing with themselves or having extremely soft core sex, the padding is enjoyable.

For the teenage boys hoping to watch this film, you might just want to look at your mother’s catalogue, the swimsuit pages of course and not home furnishings! If you don’t sit down with your mates, after a few beers and throw in the DVD and press play. Then you’ll miss the top notch performances from such Hollywood dynasties as Stallone (not Sylvester), Swayze (not Patrick), Travolta (not John) and more, including Burt Ward of ‘Batman‘ original TV series fame. Now you know he has the, how shall we say, appendage for the Adult Film Industry. Though not needed for this partiular movie.

Gonads man. Go see the film. Enjoy it. Revel in its cheapness. You know you wanna.

DVD extras

Extended scenes
The extended scenes are from an uncut version that was never released on home video. The scenes are taken from VHS so the production values are rather poor. However, they certainly ramp up the senses of sexiness and nudity. It would have been a very, very different film and review. Baby oil and erect nipples abound. Cunnilingus, head and full on penetration are heavily suggested in a soft core kind of way.

Original videozone
Review of other titles from the Videozone catalogue.

Full moon trailer park
Selection of 10 cooky, off beat, trash horror films and Sci-Fi flicks. My favourites of the trailers being ‘The Tourist Trap’. Great looking trash horror and ‘Castle Freak’. Anything from Stewart Gordon is worth watching.

Original trailer