Shae Marks | Through the Shattered Lens

“I was born for water sports!”

— J. Tyler Ward (Christian Letelier) in Return to Savage Beach (1998)

Never let it be said that I’m not a completist!

About a month ago, I decided that it would be fun to write up a review of Hard Ticket To Hawaii that I could schedule to publish while I was on vacation. At the time, I really should have realized that this would probably lead to me also watching and reviewing all of the sequels (and the one prequel) to that film. And that’s exactly what happened!

1998’s Return to Savage Beach is the final chapter of the story of the world’s most inept intelligence agency, L.E.T.H.A.L. (That stands for Legion to Ensure Total Harmony and Law, which is almost as Orwellian a name as Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council.) Once again, security at L.E.T.H.A.L’s Dallas office has been breached. This time, it done by a woman named Sofia (Carrie Westcott), who randomly showed up and passed out slices of drugged pizza. Of course, everyone ate the pizza. After all, why would a bunch of national security professionals be suspicious of a total stranger handing out food? After everyone’s unconscious, Sofia steals the file on Savage Beach.

Don’t remember Savage Beach? Savage Beach was a previous Andy Sidaris film, in which two other undercover agents ended up on a desert island and discovered a hidden treasure of World War II gold. If you still don’t remember the film, don’t worry. Return to Savage Beach contains several minutes of flashbacks from Savage Beach.

Return to Savage Beach also features a handful of flashbacks to the previous Sidaris film, Day of the Warrior. That’s because The Warrior (Marcus Bagwell), who was previously established as being a homicidal maniac, is now suddenly one of the good guys. Apparently, one of the people that he murdered in the previous film was actually a serial killer and, as a result, he was only given three months in prison. Now, he’s out and he’s the newest L.E.T.H.A.L. agent. He’s an expert on lost treasures and that’s a good thing because it turns out that there’s even more treasure on Savage Beach than anyone realized.

L.E.T.H.A.L. is determined to get that treasure, which means that Willow Black (Julie Strain) has to assign her best agents to the mission. (Of course, the best L.E.T.H.A.L. agent is the equivalent of a bigamist who tells his second wife that he’s working for the CIA as a cover whenever he has to go on vacation with his other family.) And so, Tyler (Christian Letelier), Cobra (Julie K. Smith), Tiger (Shae Marks), and Doc Austin (Paul Logan) are sent to explore Savage Beach.

However, L.E.T.H.A.L. is not the only organization returning to Savage Beach. The evil Morales (Rodrigo Obegron) is determined to get the treasure as well. Morales wears a Phantom Of The Opera-style mask because he claims that he was horribly scarred when he was blown up during his last trip to Savage Beach. (Cue more flashbacks.) Morales not only has Sofia working for him but he also employs three ninjas who wear kabuki makeup.

Maybe you’re getting the feeling that Return to Savage Beach is not a serious film and it most definitely is not. Like most Sidaris films, Return to Savage Beach is cheerfully aware of its own absurdity. Towards the end of the film, after about a dozen or so outlandish twists, one of the L.E.T.H.A.L. agents even exclaims, “How many endings can this story have!?” The song that plays over the end credits asks the exact same question.

All in all, Return to Savage Beach is a pretty dumb movie. I compared the acting in Day of the Warrior to Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly playing Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell in Boogie Nights and that’s even more true when it comes to Return to Savage Beach. At times, the stupidity of it all is amusing and, at other times, you just find yourself checking the time.

Return to Savage Beach was Andy Sidaris’s final film. All in all, Sidaris directed thirteen films (12 dramatic features and one documentary). Some of them were really bad. Some of them were amusingly over-the-top. One of them, Hard Ticket To Hawaii, has become something of a mainstay on TCM Underground. Good or bad, Sidaris definitely had his own style. In the end, no one would ever mistake any of his films as having been directed by anyone other than Andy Sidaris.

“Bring him in from the cold? That’s real spy talk. I love it when you do that.”

— J. Tyler Ward (Christian Letelier) in The Day Of The Warrior (1996)

Here’s two good things about the 1996 Andy Sidaris film, The Day of the Warrior:

First, a good deal of the film takes place in Dallas. As I’ve said before, I’m always happy to see my hometown in a movie, regardless of whether the movie is good or terrible. The Day of the Warrior not only reveals that a division of the Legion To Ensure Total Harmony And Law (a.k.a. L.E.T.H.A.L.) operates out of Dallas but also that it’s apparently headquartered on the top floor of the Bank America Plaza. Willow Black (Julie Strain, who had previously played a villain in three separate Sidaris films) is the new head of the Dallas branch. Apparently, her job largely consists of working out on the treadmill in her office.

The other good thing about The Day of the Warrior is that one L.E.T.H.A.L’s top agents is named Doc Austin (Kevin Light). Unlike the Abilene cousins that appeared in Sidaris’s previous films, Doc appears to actually be good at his job. For one thing, he can actually shoot a gun and his dialogue isn’t exclusively made up of painful double entendres. But my reason for liking Doc Austin is because he shares his first name with my cat and his last name with one of my favorite cities.

Anyway, the film itself is pretty stupid but you probably already guessed that as soon as I mentioned that it’s an Andy Sidaris film. The latest international super villain is a guy named the Warrior (Marcus Bagwell). The Warrior used to be an agent with the CIA but, when the Cold War ended, he discovered that he was out of a job. Because The Warrior’s mother was half-Native American, he decided to start wearing war paint and launched a career as a professional wrestler. However, The Warrior’s wrestling career was really just a cover so that he could safely travel the world and set up his own black market operation. He deals drugs. He sells weapons. He dabbles in human trafficking. “The SOB is even into pirating porno flicks,” Willow says. The Warrior takes the whole professional wrestling thing pretty seriously. At one point, he gives orders to his henchmen while standing in the middle of a wrestling ring.

(It’s also established that The Warrior lives in “north Dallas.” You probably actually have to be from Dallas to get the joke but, as far as Sidaris humor goes, it’s a good one.)

LETHAL has several agents working undercover in The Warrior’s organization. Apparently, they’re so deep undercover that not even Willow Black knows how to get in contact with them. (To be honest, that would seem to be kind of counterproductive but I’m not an international super spy so what do I know?) However, The Warrior has employed a computer hacker known as Hard Drive. (The Warrior calls him “Mr. Drive.”) When The Warrior manages to compromise LETHAL’s computer systems, Willow and her agents not only have to track down the people undercover but they also have to stop whatever it is that The Warrior is planning to do.

(The Warrior’s ultimate scheme was never easy to figure out. He seemed to spend most of his time flexing his muscles.)

As for the undercover agents, Doc Austin is investigating drug dealers in South Texas. Scorpion (Tammy Parks) and Shark (Darren Wise) are trying to infiltrate The Warrior’s Vegas-based porn operation. Fu (Gerald Okamura) is working as an Elvis impersonator. Cobra (Julie K. Smith) is working as an exotic dancer in Beverly Hills because of … reasons, I guess? Another agent, Tiger (Shae Marks) teams up with a pilot named J. Tyler Ward (Christian Letelier) because it’s not a Sidaris film without someone flying a plane over the bayous. To be honest, it seems like most of these people are just hanging out. I wouldn’t necessarily trust any of them with any national security secrets.

Anyway, this is pretty much a typical Sidaris film: stuff blows up, everyone gets naked, and there’s a lot of bad jokes. Even by the standards of a Sidaris film, the acting is incredibly bad. Remember those scenes in Boogie Nights where Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly played Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell? That’s about the level of talent that we’re talking about here. To illustrate, here’s a typical scene from Day of the Warrior: