Lori Sutton | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

Come abroad, we’re expecting you….

Uhmm, maybe not this week, Love Boat.

Episode 6.25 “The Dog Show: Putting on the Dog/Going to the Dogs/Women’s Best Friend/Whose Dog Is It Anyway?”

(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on March 26th, 1983)

This week’s episode stressed me out.

The cruise line is co-sponsoring a dog show that is going to be held in Mexico. The dog that wins will not only receive $10,000 but will also become the new “face” of Honeycutt Dogfood. All the contestants bring their dogs onboard the ship and take the cruise to Mexico.

Seriously, imagine the scene. Hundreds of dogs on cruise ship, floating in the pool and running through the passageways — YIKES! I will admit that the majority of the dogs were cute. There was a white Samoyed dog named Tundra who was just adorable and who could do all sorts of tricks. But still, I spent the whole episode wondering what would happen if a dog accidentally jumped (or fell — oh my God!) overboard. What if one of the dogs had fleas and now, everyone on the boat had them too? Who was cleaning up after the dogs? And what about a passenger — like me, for instance — who wasn’t really a dog person and who bought a ticket without the knowledge that the ship itself would be home to hundreds of canines?

The storylines also made me anxious, just because none of them made much sense. (It was obvious that the main concern for this episode was getting as much cute dog footage as possible.) So, we had Isaac and Gopher buying Tundra from $8 but not realizing that she was a brilliant dog who could do hundreds of tricks. Isaac and Gopher sold the dog to the Captain and Vicki, just to then realize that Tundra was a sure winner in the dog show. Isaac and Gopher tried to convince the Captain to sell the dog back but it turned out the Captain already knew Tundra was a winner. Of course, as employees of the cruise line, neither Gopher nor Isaac nor Vicky should have been allowed to enter a dog in the show in the first place.

And then we had Isaac’s aunt Tanya (Isabel Sanford) running around with a Chihuahua while her husband (Mel Stewart) got jealous. And we had Pamela (Catherine Bach) realizing that Gary (Dirk Benedict) was the new owner of a dog that she had lost two years before. And then there was boozy Mrs. Honeycutt (Jo Anne Worley) boarding the ship and searching for her husband, not realizing that he wouldn’t be arriving until the ship reached Mexico. For his part, Mr. Honeycutt (Gordon Jump) spent most of this episode in Las Vegas with his secretary.

Finally, Harold Pack (Ray Buktencia), who worked in Honeycutt’s mailroom, boarded the boat with some forms from Mr. Honeycutt and was immediately mistaken for his boss. Pretending to be Mr. Honeycutt, Harold romanced a dog owner named Wendy (Heather Thomas). Imagine Wendy’s surprise when she learned Mrs. Honeycutt was on the boat and looking for her husband….

Oh God, I’m getting stressed just writing about all this.

Things worked out in the end. Mr. Honeycutt, having returned from Vegas, announced that there was a tie and all the dogs were winners! Harold protected Honeycutt’s secret and got promoted to Vice President. Pamela and Gary decided to own the dog together. Vicki got Tundra! Yay! I was happy about that. Tundra was adorable!

This episode was exhausting. Too many dogs, too many half-baked stories, too much overacting on the part of Isabel Sanford, it was just too much.

Other than being the protagonist of the 1985 film Malibu Express, just who is Cody Abilene (played, in the film, by Darby Hilton)?

He’s a private investigator. Judging from his accent, he’s from Texas. He drives a red sports car and he lives on a houseboat that he’s named the Malibu Express. He’s even got a painting of a caboose that stands on the docks next to his boat. (It all goes back to an old friend of his and how he wanted to “remember her caboose.”) He’s got nice hair and mustache and he looks like he could have had a career in 70s porn. Literally everyone that he meets wants to have sex with him. His best friend is a cop named Beverly (Lori Sutton). His girlfriend is a race car driver named Judy Khnockers (Lynda Wiesmier). “Khnockers … with an H.” Cody says that about a thousand times over the course of the film.

Cody loves his cars. Of course, it seems like he can’t go anywhere without running into three obsese rednecks who always demand that he race their son. (Their son is apparently a mechanical genius.) Cody always gives into their racing demands and he loses almost every time.

Cody also spends a lot of time talking to himself. Nothing he says is that interesting. I spent the entire movie waiting for him to say, “I hate pigs but yet I love bacon, what’s all that about?” He never did. I think the film would have been better if he had.

I should also mention that Cody is remarkably incompetent at his job. The movie opens with him at the shooting range, firing his gun and continually missing the target. Later on in the film, Cody’s accuracy will get better but he still always seem to be shocked whenever he actually hits his target. From what we hear in the film, it appears that Cody has the respect of his peers but I’m really not sure why. While he does solve the case, it’s mostly through dumb luck. Cody doesn’t find clues through detective work. Instead, he just kind of stumbles across them.

As for the case that Cody is investigating in Malibu Express … well, honestly, your guess is as good as mine. I watched the film and I could hardly follow the plot. Some of that is because this is one of those films that appears to have been edited with a chainsaw. But a lot of it is because the film’s plot has a make-it-up-as-you-go-along feel to it.

It starts with Cody being hired by the mysterious Contessa Luciana (Sybil Danning) to investigate who has been selling computer secrets to the Russians. Luciana has figured out that it has to be someone in the household of her friend, Lady Lillian Chamberlain (Niki Dantine). (Apparently, every aristocrat in Europe has relocated to Bel Air.) It doesn’t take long for Cody to discover that everyone in the house has a secret. For instance, one daughter is having an affair with a butler. A son-in-law is actually a drag queen. Another daughter has gotten involved with a sinister computer mogul.

The computer mogul sounds like a good lead to pursue but, before it occurs to Cody to do that, there’s a murder and Cody shifts his attention to trying to figure out who did the killing. But then suddenly, Cody’s being chased by three armed men so Cody shifts his attention yet again to trying to escape from them. Fortunately, the actual murderer doesn’t really seem to care that much about remaining undetected, which certainly works out well for Cody…

Malibu Express is an Andy Sidaris film. If you’ve ever seen a Sidaris film, you know better than to expect a nuanced or even narratively coherent film. Sidaris specialized in over-the-top B-movies with nonsensical plots, frequent nudity, and dialogue that was heavy on groan-worthy double entendres. Malibu Express was the first of his so-called triple “B” films (that stood for either Bullets, Bombs, and Babes or Bullets, Bombs, and Boobs, depending on who you ask). It’s definitely a flawed film. The plot makes no sense. The dialogue is often cringe worthy. The acting ranges from competent to awful. The editing … oh my God, don’t even get me started on how messy this film is.

And yet, it’s also an oddly likable film. If nothing else, the film seems to be aware of its flaws. It knows that it makes no sense and that Cody is incompetent and no one in real life would ever say 75% of the lines that are uttered in Malibu Express. It knows all of this but the film is determined to have fun and it’s hard to admire the film’s determination to full embrace the exploitation aesthetic. Watching Malibu Express, you can tell that Sidaris probably enjoyed himself will directing it. How much fun you have will depend on how much patience you have for Sidaris’s style of filmmaking.

Myself, I love over-the-top B-movies so I enjoyed it even if I couldn’t follow the plot.