Girls, Guns and G-Strings: Return to Savage Beach

I do not like how speculatively she’s looking at that gun.

Here we are! The final installment of the Girls, Guns, and G-Strings collection! Just as a side note here, the series has been awful glib about that Oxford comma, and I’ve probably been inconsistent about applying it as well. The only reason I bring this up is because I liked to pretend this series was about Girls on one hand, and then Guns wearing G-Strings on the other.

Cast: This one is a lot more direct than previous installments, as it’s more or less a direct sequel of both Savage Beach and Day of the Warrior.

Julie Strain, Julie K. Smith, Shae Marks, Marcus Bagwell, Cristian Letelier, and Gerald Okamura are all back as the same characters they played in Day of the Warrior. Rodrigo Obregon plays Rodrigo Martinez (remember how bad Sidaris is with names), the same villainous filipino officer from Savage Beach. Ava Cadell is back in her first appearance since Fit to Kill, playing sexologist and spy radio personality Ava. Carolyn Liu is back as Silk, although she has fuck all to do here.

The role of Doc Austin is now played by Paul Logan, and there’s barely a difference in the actor’s sub-porn level acting ability.

Non-Actor Quotient: Other than previous mentions Strain, Smith, Marks, and Bagwell, Miss September 1993 Carrie Westcott plays Sofia. Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and at the time husband of Julie Strain, plays Ava’s engineer Harry the Cat. Supposedly he’s in the last one, but I didn’t see him.

IMDB Plot Keywords: treasure, softcore, sexploitation, glamorized spy film, spy film

IMDB User Lists Appearing On: Semi-Legit Films with Porn Stars, THE BEST MOVIES WITH LOVE MAKING EROTIC SEX SCENES, Anarkrite’s movies, Series – Lethal Ladies, *beep*

Synopsis: This is the last of the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies series, and it feels like Sidaris was running on fumes. Paint fumes, specifically. He makes a half-assed effort to tie everything together, but judging by the way Return to Savage Beach plods along — like a fat tourist running to the buffet seconds before it switches from breakfast to lunch — he barely cared.

The Legion to Ensure Total Harmony And Law is tracking a group of terrorists outside of Dallas. This entire series takes place within a short drive of two houses: probably Andy Sidaris in Molokai and Drew Sidaris in Dallas. Tiger and Tyler put a stop to that, muttering their dialogue like they’re trying to hear Little Bill stage whisper it from offscreen.

A woman we later learn to be Sofia dons some red leather and rollerblades (like you do), and sneaks into L.E.T.H.A.L. headquarters pretending to be a pizza delivery person giving out free samples. This totally works, because there are only three people in the building who, due to cutbacks, are forced to share two brain cells between them. Sofia steals a map to the titular Savage Beach, which for some reason still has the gold from the Philippines the Japanese stole in WWII. We get a flashback recap, and it explicitly states that Donna Hamilton and Taryn Kendall (this is the first time she gets a last name!) were L.E.T.H.A.L.’s first agents. All this does is make me miss the relatively solid acting chops of Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton. Rodrigo Martinez, the leader of the bandits (who was blown up by Taryn), was close with Tyler’s dad for some reason. Martinez fell to the Dark Side of the Force, but first gave Tyler a medallion that would be destined to block a bullet. They don’t say that, but that’s literally the only reason you give a medallion to a character.

Meanwhile, Martinez is in his headquarters wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask. Yeah, it’s weird, but Sidaris isn’t done fucking with us. At this point, he’s just interpreting Rorschach blots through the medium of film. Martinez explains that bandits used Savage Beach for years, but for some reason never dug up the fucking gold? Maybe it’s because of that weird Japanese guy, Warrior? Remember him? Well, the movie doesn’t, because he’s not mentioned. Anyway, Martinez and Sofia have this weird love scene where he dresses up like a cross between Zorro, the Phantom of the Opera, with just a smidgeon of Spanish-language Buzz Lightyear, and she’s in some lingerie so complicated you’d need Hans Gruber’s entire gang to get into it.

For no real reason, Willow Black brings in the Warrior from the last movie (not the Warrior from the original Savage Beach — remember, Sidaris is not good with names) who is a good guy now. They at least remember he used to be evil, so that’s more than all the other roles that switched. They even retcon that federal agent Warrior wrestled to death (he was trying to create the most ‘90s scene ever, in hopes to finally unhorse that one Saved by the Bell where Jessie takes trucker uppers) into a serial killer. Yep, a serial killer. And apparently L.E.T.H.A.L. hired Warrior to do it. They didn’t mention it in the last movie because fuck you, you should be masturbating right now. The only upside is Warrior has a pencil-thin goatee, a greasy Caesar cut, and some solid late ‘90s douchebag wear. He’s really in this movie only so Willow can bang someone. The resulting sex unironically references Showgirls’s infamous Dolphin Sex scene, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the series.

Tiger and Cobra are going to fly to Savage Beach ahead of Martinez because this is an homage to the earlier (and better) Sidaris movies. Meanwhile, Doc, Tyler, and Willow will sail there. Fu and Warrior will stay behind to guard… something. It doesn’t matter. Ninjas, led by Sofia, attack Tyler and Doc and kidnap Tyler. Doc does karate like he’s worried his mom will show up in the middle of his yellow belt test.

The heroes reconnect on Savage Beach (although Tyler has to repeatedly kick an overweight ninja to escape, and yes, it’s as funny as it sounds), with Doc wearing a Bruce-inspired ensemble of a leather vest and light jeans, and Willow dressed like a slutty gladiator. Sofia reveals herself to be an agent of Interpol and she busts out an accent that has to be the least convincing French thing I’ve seen since the croissanwich.

“With this cache of black leather vests, I can rule the world!”

The heroes get the treasure back to Molokai, and set up a sting on Martinez. The sting consists of characters explaining the plot of the movie we’ve just watched, then throwing in their origin stories. Long story short: the guy we thought was Martinez was actually his nephew Carlos (seriously), who murdered Rodrigo and impersonated him. Nope, there’s a final reveal where it turns out Rodrigo is fine after all and he’s a good guy now too. The end.

Yakmala? The best Andy Sidaris movies feel like they were written by a fourteen year old on the inside of his Trapper Keeper who was making explosion noises with his mouth the whole time. This has moments of that breathless inanity, but for the most part, it’s a slog of commuting and parking. It even commits the worst sin: making you pine for better movies, and it’s not like they were all that great to begin with.