‘Hard Hunted’ – A Bad Review

The Facts
Distributor: Sony Films
Running Time: 97 minutes
Year of release: 1993
Director: Andy Sidaris
Production Studio: Malibu Bay films

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The Trailer

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Hard Hunted

Andy Sidaris.

If you don’t know who this man is, then you have no business looking at boobs, because I’m certain he copyrighted leering at them in the 1980’s.

He is a master at redirecting attention to the female form, mostly by simply pointing a camera in their direction, and as such his movies can be just as distracting as he intends for them to be. However, with Hard Hunted, I think Andy Sidaris himself has fallen prey to his own antics, as it doesn’t appear he was paying particular attention when creating it. And unlike some of his other films in which he clearly revels in his lust for tits and nonsense, here it seems he had his face buried in a pile of classic Playboy’s when the camera was running.

The words ‘erotic action adventure’ feature on the cover of Hard Hunted, which unfortunately are three concepts they forgot to include in the movie. But considering that one of the girls on the cover doesn’t even appear in the film, then lets chalk it up to Andy Sidaris and his changeable attention span.

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Sea legs (and boobs)

Hard Hunted opens with a low-budget yacht and some early 90’s trumpet. Aboard the glamorous vessel is a rich looking dweeb and several pairs of lingerie-encased boobs, and if you happen to be familiar with this particular directors brand of movie-making, then your essentially looking at Andy Sidaris’ campaign yacht should he ever run for President.

The cutaways of the film’s credits are interspersed with slow kissing and taking of turns to sexily sway backwards and forwards, and I can’t help but wonder what Arlene Sidaris (Andy’s wife and the producer of this film) had to say about all of this. But I am impressed that the movie has broken out of the gate with some serious heavy-petting, yet has remained surprisingly self-restrained with showing any actual breasts, but maybe Arlene was on set that particular day, who knows?

We are shown a buoy with flames shooting out of it, and one of the crews efforts to lift it out of the water.

Once the credits are over, we cut to Rich-guy and his lady-friend who are eating lunch. One of Rich-guys crew passes him a black container (presumably retrieved from the buoy)…

…inside which contains a solid blob of Ghostbusters ectoplasm.

Lady friend says…

“A gift from your friends in China?”

To which Rich-guy responds…

“This is the most valuable artifact in the world.”

Really?

It looks like it was sneezed out of an irradiated pig, but whatever you say. You’re the guy with the boat and supermodels, what would I know? So, Dweeb-man leaves his lunch, and Chinese McChesty writes something on her wine glass with her finger, and then walks away. Some other lady walks over, breathes on the glass and reads the word ‘SAFE’.

And that’s the end of that scene. A bit fucking weird so far, if I’m being honest. We then cut to an obnoxious, multicoloured luau…

…and a very beautiful head-case who is singing and dancing and generally embarrassing herself. She is also booty shaking in the presence of children and the elderly, and someone that looks like Ellen Degeneres. It’s weird, but is made even more uncomfortable by everyone seeming to enjoy her terrible lip-syncing and chest-thrusting. Eventually she packs it in and leaves everyone alone.

We are then shown the exterior of a radio station, which contains someone called ‘Becky’ who is serving coffee to the radio host.

A different scantily-clad lady arrives, removes a pistol from her garters (?) and sexily delivers her radio show.

Back on the boat, one of the ladies pours a sachet of white powder in to Rich-asshole’s apple juice and…

…3.2.1…boobs.

I’d say that now would be a fine time to begin a ‘gratuitous-female-bosom count’.

Back at the radio station, the DJ-lady begins to broadcast the first of her bizarre coded messages, that seem to feature as some kind of thin excuse for a plot device in this film. This particular message is destined for some guy who is listening from his car radio, and I’m already beginning to feel lost with things. And comically over-sized breasts not withstanding, this film is as slow as shit so far. Seriously film, we’re ten minutes in. Do something.

If it was indeed a coded message, it was an instruction for him to go windsurfing (?)

Back on the boat, some shenanigans happen as the lady from before (I made no effort to remember anyone’s name, nor did the film encourage me to) attaches a sparkler and some yellow Play-Doh to the SAFE…

…which makes a barely audible pah-fizz sound instead of an explosion, which was hilariously anticlimactic, to say the least.

The posh snot-enthusiast is sleeping soundly following his being drugged, but boat-lady has failed miserably in remembering the presence of the crew on board what is a fairly small boat. Therefore Captain-man, confused as to where his stash of emergency sparklers has gone, slooooowly investigates. He of course, is killed. Which makes me question the need to drug the other guy first if they were willing to murder innocent people. This is especially confusing given that killing everyone instead of sneaking about would have prevented Boobs McBuoyancy from having to have sex with him.

But after stealing the contents of SAFE and jumping overboard, she rendezvous with the windsurfer guy, which like many things in this film is completely pointless, as he simply windsurfs next to her as she swims back to shore by herself. Once safely back on land, off comes the clothes.

Whilst she is explaining to windsurfer-man that she needs to leave town, I’m busy trying to figure out why the movie has left the Chinese lady on board the boat. Were they not working together? Well, no one seems to care so I don’t either.

Shower-boobs phones the radio station for help, but instead of them having a private conversation about the criminal activity they just performed, they broadcast it on air. What?

Yes.

So, more coded messages are being discussed live on air between the radio station lady and shower-boobs, except they are hardly ‘coded’ at all, as pretty much anyone in Hawaii with a radio could figure out what’s going on. At one point they even discuss where would be a suitable hiding place, which they agree upon and then describe its precise location, again, live on air.

After arriving at the airport, windsurfer-man asks her what the hell is going on. Shouldn’t he already know? You just assisted her in armed robbery and first degree murder. Maybe you should have asked this question before obeying subliminal messages from strangers.

By way of explanation, she shows him a bright green faecal paperweight…

…and tells him it is the key to world domination. This goes nowhere near satisfying his curiosity, but not everything is at a loss as it did make me laugh so hard that I had trouble breathing.

On a plane she gets, and fucks away off.

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what is ‘boobs’?

Cut to Phoenix, Arizona, where two ladies are posing in the middle of nowhere…

…and the film makes no attempt at explaining who these people are, or what they are doing. Oh sorry, they are sunbathing apparently, as they won’t shut up about how much they are enjoying it. With that scene woefully unexplained, the movies cuts to Washington DC, where a boardroom full of concerned looks…

…begin discussing the plot.

Apparently, the handful of goop that was stolen earlier on is a nuclear trigger belonging to the Chinese military. Again, what? Look movie, I know you need some kind of threadbare excuse to sticks tits all over the place, but is this the best you’ve got? Fine, whatever, but let’s get real here. If this…

…is what a top secret Chinese nuclear weapons component looks like, then I’d say China was drunk at the beginning of the nuclear arms race, or is quite brilliantly probing the abilities of American Military Intelligence whilst sniggering under its breath.

During this high-level meeting, we are told that if the phlegm-statue falls in to the hands of the Iraqis then it will be bad news all round, as at this point in that country’s history they apparently have been importing pants-shittingly massive amounts of Lithium-6, and if they got their mitts on the nuclear trigger, they would have everything they needed to create a nuclear weapons stockpile. This is of course is fucking absurd, so I attempt to call the movie’s bluff and check Wikipedia for Lithium-6, as I’m certain this film is full of shit and has made it up. Plus I’m also certain that any actual research that was put in to this movie was focused on how to prevent tsunamis after exporting so many giant breasts to one area of the planet and fucking up the tides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_lithium#Lithium-6

Oh fuck you, film.

One of the assembled army-men gets rather impatient after the phone rings. He answers it and says;

“We were not to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency.”

Any bets on it being an emergency? And sure enough, it’s the chick from K-BOOB Hawaii FM, who if anyone has yet to figure out, are super-secret agents and not (just) the lusty porn stars we were hoping for.

Meanwhile, back on board what we can now assume is the main bad guy’s boat, everyone is recovering from last nights shenanigans. The windsurfer-man shows up, who according to both me and the bad guy, is the most useless double agent ever. For some reason Bad-Guy decides not to kill him, instead throwing him off the boat, which is where he would have had to go anyway to retrieve his surfboard.

Pointless.

Bad-guy tells his Chinese girlfriend that he has a “reliable Asian contact” in Arizona to deal with things. Cut to that guy who is murdered in every single movie he’s ever appeared in.

Asian-man is at an airfield applying sunglasses to himself and standing next to a (no shit) heavily armed gyrocopter with stealth cardboard panelling.

And yes, it would be adorable if it wasn’t so insanely stupid. It’s just fortunate that Asian-man happened to be in that particular part of the country and not showing off his dinky airplane at a convention somewhere. But then if Shower-boobs had been given coded messages to fly to Delaware instead, then maybe Bad-Guy could have called on the services of a different Asian guy with a stealth hot-air balloon.

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editing 101, with andy sidaris

It was around this point that the film began to fuck with me, and not in the pleasurable way. This began with the film cutting to one of the ladies (I have no idea which) driving around Washington DC in a car with no vehicle registration.

But then…cut back to the two frolicking ladies in the middle of nowhere, this time in slow-mo. What the hell is going on? Is this a flashback? The shitty synth music never stopped during the transition so I’ll assume it is. Bizarrely, it cuts back to the Asian helicopter guy who is now flying somewhere.

Cut to – the girl driving.

What?

Cut to – the helicopter.

(?!?!)

Cut to – the frolicking ladies.

AHHHHHH!!!!

And yes, all this mess of editing fails completely at explaining anything, but I’m sure it was good practice for whatever first year film student was responsible for it. I’m assuming the Stealth-mobile is on its way to blow the two sunbathing whoever-they-are’s to silicone ribbons, but by now this film could cut to a documentary about polar bears and it would be just as comprehensible.

But true enough, the two women have set up a nearby gazebo, and hearing the incoming threat…

…oh wait, I’m wrong.

They look up to see the illegal white VW approaching that I fucking swear to God was in Washington DC three minutes ago, but is somehow now in Delaware, or Phoenix, or wherever the fuck this crap is happening. Maybe I just assumed it was Washington DC, but either way, this is miles from anywhere. How did the driver know they were there? How did the helicopter guy know as well, or is he on his way to Washington to blow up the President? I’m as lost as it gets. But I do remember someone mumbling something about a tracking device earlier, but I was too busy counting breasts and didn’t think I’d need the information. So fine, maybe it’s partially my fault.

The girls recognise the driver (makes for one of us) as helicopter-man approaches, and by this stage something better fucking well explode or else this shit’s over. Asian-Michael Vincent finally arrives (second place, with a 2000 mile head start, to an early 90’s VW Golf) and begins to open fire. This proves a mild irritant to the bum-bag wearing VW lady…

…which swiftly leads to a mild being killed.

The two other girls present assume possession of the green blob and take out the tiniest pistols their handbags could accommodate, as Helicopter-man blows up their gazebo and a table full of camping equipment.

Let me just get something straight here, now that I think I have a handle on things…The dead lady drove the whole way there to be killed by someone who was not looking for her.

Yes, I’m right.

I think.

Of course, the two other girls now have the nuclear slime-figurine, but the bad guys are now aware of this. Wouldn’t no-license-plate-lady have been slightly better off not magically knowing where in the middle of the wilderness these two girls had gone sunbathing, instead staying in whatever the fuck part of America she was in the first place? My head hurts.

Anyway…Asian-man chases the girls who are frantically shooting cap-guns from their speeding dune-buggy.

All this hoopla attracts the attention of the local law enforcement, who hide behind a cardboard sign and start shooting at the gyrocopter.

…which returns fire.

I should also point out that by this stage the gyrocopter has fired five of its four rockets and has two remaining. Small detail.

The girls escape, and arrive (after changing clothes) at an airport to use the phone (?) After not being able to get through to their boss in Washington (just drive there, it’s only three minutes away) they decide that Standard Operation Procedure for this kind of situation is to fly to Hawaii (also – ?).

We next see ‘Raven’ (the name of the dinky gyrocopter) parked inside someone’s office…

…next to a poster of an actual stealth aircraft.

Asian-man phones his boss who is still on his boat (and most likely terrified of dry land), when head Bad-Guy says,

“I need trusted friends around me Raven. You and your mighty aircraft must come to Honolulu.” – Actual quote

But wait a second. Asian-man wrote his own name on the side of his gyrocopter? That’s not very stealthy. But I think we can forget that this aircraft is anything close to being “mighty”, as it’s so fucking flimsy that it can be pulled along with one hand.

Meanwhile, the girls finally get in contact with their boss who is himself flying to Hawaii…

…which I can assume is the real centre of strategic military planning in the United States.

I start to notice little creases in some of the production value at this point, as not only is the jet this guy is supposed to be flying in clearly a wreck dumped in a field somewhere, but the soundtrack to this scene can’t decide if it wants to be in the movie or not, as it keeps stopping and starting. Could this be a coded message instructing me to watch something else?

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Won’t someone think of the boobs?

Back in Hawaii, the secret agent talk-show host is still revealing state secrets in the form of relationship advice, given topless from a jacuzzi.

Some shenanigans with the double agent guy happen…

…leading to this guy…

…kidnapping one of the girls (the blond one) who is tased and flown away. The movie has still left sense waiting outside in the rain however, as the bad guys go to the trouble of kidnapping the lady instead of simply taking the candle-wax blob that they can clearly see her carrying.

Whatever.

This predictably leads to a shoot-out.

On board the plane containing the noticeably un-tied up blond girl, the head Bad-Guy talks to her over a walkie-talkie and describes this…

…as art.

Moron.

But their mistake at not being able to throw her out of a plane properly takes them by surprise, as she helps herself to a parachute and blows up the airplane with a grenade. None of this is as exciting as it sounds. Plus, why the hell did she take the luminous gallstone with her when she bailed? Why not just leave it on the plane to explode with everything else? This movie could have been over by now and I’d be in bed dreaming of a microlight with tits.

However, the creeping unease at the lack of excitement in this movie is redeemed by one of the most hilariously delivered swear words ever.

Bravo, dumbass.

Hero-girl lands gracefully on a beach, but still knocks herself out on a rock, which sucks for her and me, as it means this hasn’t ended yet. Back at the heroes radio station, Becky is now topless and is doing what she does best…

…as the heroes begin searching for their friend who, in which has no relevance to the story, now has amnesia and is being held captive by a man wearing an eye-patch.

The film risks almost coming to a screeching halt as a horribly long period of not very much begins. It’s bizarre – As if the movie was filmed in sequence but the director got bored of things and handed everything over to someone with narcolepsy. But the film truly loses all will to live as it introduces two hackneyed and risible characters called (no shit) ‘Wiley’ and ‘Coyote’, who show up with their (again, no shit) ACME brand hovercraft and sub-machine guns.

I was truly beginning to believe that within the six years between Andy Sidaris’ Magnum Opus Hard Ticket To Hawaii and when this film was made, that he had either lost his spark, or simply stopped caring. And given how the second half of this film pans out, I’m inclined to believe both.

Honestly, having a pathetic Roadrunner gag in this film was the most playful thing he could come up with? What are you six years old? Come on man, a few films ago you had a cancer-infected snake monster eat peoples faces, as people shot blow-up sex dolls out of the sky with rocket launchers.

Get your shit together.

Wiley and Coyote (yawn) attempt an ambush on two of the heroes in their hovercraft, but because they are supposed to be ‘zany’ and ‘hilarious’ they spin around instead whilst missing every shot. This allows our heroes to attach some explosives to a fucking fishing rod which they fling on to the hovercraft. As this scene is taking place, the soundtrack has become the wacky and bumbling variety. Think – the music that accompanies Bulk and Skull’s ‘comedic’ hijinks in Power Rangers.

It’s dreadful.

But what happens next speaks volumes to the problems that this movie has developed.

After the heroes toss over the explosive, one of the Wiley Coyote duo jumps overboard, leaving the other guy to fluster and panic. This moron then looks straight in to camera…

…and the hovercraft is blown to pieces.

However…

…we then hear a scream fade in slowly, and the guy with the helmet who was just engulfed in the above explosion lands in the water completely unharmed, aside from the obligatory scorch marks and shredded clothing.

That’s right.

The movie just became so direction-less and bored of what it was doing that it told itself, and its audience, to fuck off by becoming a cartoon for children. And look, at no point was I under the impression that Hard Hunted would be high art of any sort, but I at least thought it would stick to the themes and tones it had set up until now. But instead, this drastic thematic change comes so out of nowhere, and is so horribly unwarranted, that it completely changes both how the film wants to be observed as a film, and how I myself observe it as a piece of accidentally hilarious entertainment.

It is so staggeringly incongruous that what was simply a very dull stretch of storytelling has now become a very legitimate reason to switch it off entirely. I felt insulted by it to be frank – as if it had disregarded the time I myself had put in to watching it. Yes, it didn’t help that it was already going downhill fast, but seriously Andy, what the fuck?

As I now struggle to care about what is happening, DJ-Lady has resorted to basically explaining the plot over the radio, and everyone is wearing one less layer of clothing, despite it being night time.

Two characters wander out to sea to have sex, and possibly for the first time since I ever noticed my own genitals, I bare witness to a sex scene that irritates me so much that I want it to stop.

As the movie approaches its ‘zenith’, the double-agent guy convinces amnesia-lady that they are lovers…

…and for FUCK SAKE we have yet another sex scene that comes so soon after the last one that they use exactly the same woodblock/piano noises to accompany it.

So, in what I can only describe as being a woefully lazy excuse to end a film, Asian-man lands his helicopter and holds the heroes up at gunpoint until they give up the nuclear-spooge. However, instead of shooting them there and then, he gets back in his gyrocopter and then tries to kill them.

He flies around shooting, until this happens…

The coast guard then arrive which SCARES AWAY the head Bad-Guy, leaving the heroes drinking coconut water and hinting at a sequel. Yes, that might have been what the film had in mind, but by now I know that the only reason they didn’t have a proper showdown was because they either couldn’t afford, or couldn’t be bothered, to blow up a boat.

The End.

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In conclusion

Well this didn’t turn out as planned. The first half of the movie was stupidly enjoyable. The second half was just stupid, and not one bit enjoyable. Not least of which because of how shit so much of it looks. Everything shot on location in Hawaii is noticeably colourless and dank, coming across like it was recorded during either hurricane season of a forest-fire. And why on earth was so much footage needlessly recorded at dusk?

This lack of vibrant imagery was not just in colour tone, but also in theme and content. Lacklustre explosions, sparse and unexciting action sequences, and dreary looking people mill around in between long expanses of boring nothingness. As an example, the pervasive inclement weather detracted from the sun-bleached bosoms, which may seem like a crass and petty observation, but this movie should have been colourful in both its visuals, and it’s titilation. But instead it was as dull as dishwater.

Even the bewbs couldn’t make up for things, as they were..well…just there. Not to mention sex scenes that were either filmed in the dark, or excruciatingly awkward. Back in 1992 I probably would have lost my eyesight at this kind of T&A, but now it just looks slow and dreary. Especially given that one sex scene in particular is five minutes of a woman nibbling on a man’s chest hair in slow-motion. No thanks.

Just one reasonably awesome and over-the-top action scene would have injected much needed life-blood in to this half-hearted mess, but after becoming a literal live-action Loony Tunes episode half way through, there was nothing that could have redeemed it. And the sad thing was, even at the half way point, I knew it wouldn’t even try. It lacks the carefree insanity of Hard Ticket To Hawaii in every way, missing the endearing stupidity of exploded sex dolls and cancer-infected rats.

Events that would otherwise have been unintentionally hilarious yet earnest mistakes, were revealed instead to be what they in truth were. Namely – glaring examples of lazy film-making.

Why did that mistake happen? That was hilarious!

Became instead…

They aren’t fucking trying.

…and it’s interesting how a change of perspective like that can turn what should be an entertaining Bad Movie in to a painful chore. But once you realise the film-makers genuinely don’t care, then why should I? It really does ruin things.

Bad Movies are only ever truly hilarious when you know, or at least believe in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that they were made with some passion and genuine effort. But Hard Hunted wasn’t, and it gives up on trying to prevent the veil from being lifted, revealing underneath an unfortunate attempt at recapturing lightning in a bottle.

I was so excited when I remembered that I owned an Andy Sidaris film that had sat forgotten amongst my pile of crap, but as things progressed, I realised that this was nothing like the fantastical, bombastic, 90’s explodorama I had pictured in my head, which can only be my fault for building my own hype. Especially when I should know better. Shame on you film, and shame on me.

So, as much as I feel like my ‘mammary-counter’ was wasted on Hard Hunted, it would be wrong for me to take it out on the boobs, so…

Ten.

There was ten boobs.

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