Cover Girl Models

Enjoyable, brief 'n' breezy drive in fare from New World that serves as quite a good companion piece to "Fly Me". "Cover Girl Models" follows a trio of luscious young women - Barbara (Pat Anderson), Claire (Lindsay Bloom), and Mandy (Tara Strohmeier) - as they have misadventures funny, serious, trashy, and action packed. The difference is that in "Fly Me" the ladies were stewardesses; here they're fashion models. They travel with photographer Mark (John Kramer) to Asia for a series of shoots; the fun starts when a valuable roll of microfilm is secretly sewed inside one of their dresses. "Cover Girl Models", running a respectable 74 minutes, has all the ingredients to make it easily digestible stuff for exploitation fans. It's mostly effective as a showcase for the charms of these babes, as they strut their stuff and we get a good look at those bodies; there's a healthy dose of bare breasts. The screenplay is by Howard R. Cohen, whose other credits include "The Unholy Rollers", "The Young Nurses", "Saturday the 14th", and "Deathstalker", and prolific Cirio Santiago is the producer / director; he'd previously worked with actress Anderson on "Fly Me" and "T.N.T. Jackson". This being shot in the Philippines, there's naturally a role for the ever welcome Vic Diaz, and Ken Metcalfe, two guys familiar to fans of Filipino cinema. There's also a very nice cameo for Mary Woronov, appearing quickly early on and giving us an eyeful of some lovely legs. The music score by D'Amarillo is often extremely amusing and Santiago keeps the story moving along well, preventing it from ever getting boring and treating us to the usual not-terribly-well- staged fight scenes; the climactic shootout is a hoot. This is the kind of thing where it doesn't matter how forgettable it may be in the end, it's pretty fun for the duration. Seven out of 10.

"They're fast. They're beautiful. They're deadly. They have to be....to survive". That's the tagline of "Cover Girl Models" on my VHS cover, and based on that and on the names of Cirio H. Santiago and Pat Anderson (who kicked a lot of butt the same year in the same director's "T.N.T Jackson"), I was expecting an action film with tough girls. Disappointingly, there is very little action in this movie and nearly all of it is done by men (yawn). In truth, nothing much happens throughout the film, there are endless filler sequences, the main plot is murky, the various subplots are introduced and then dropped, and even the shootout climax is weak. The girls are infectiously cute and occasionally nude, but neither them nor the exotic locations (Hong Kong and Singapore) can stop the 70-minute running time from feeling more like 2 hours! (*)

This film is classed as a thriller; it is the story of three young fashion models away on location in Hong Kong, who somehow become mixed up in an international espionage ring. Apart from being difficult to follow, this story was absolute punk and hopefully the scriptwriter involved was subsequently advised to take an early retirement. Nevertheless the film features some delightful vacation scenery which brought back memories of holidays I would not want to forget, as well as the group of charming models who provide various fashion shows of their very attractive summer outfits. What more should one expect? The cinematography was generally fully adequate, and at this level there was very little to criticise. I would not want to keep watching it, but I can enjoy an occasional re-run with complete equanimity. However, the primary reason why my copy of this film occupies an important place in my collection of DVD and VCD disks, is its unusually short running time (73 min.). I am often glad to have a few short films that run for not much more than an hour available for the entertainment of the children of guests who cannot stay very much longer than this. Since most home videos were originally produced as films intended for showing in movie houses, most tend to run for 90 min. or more, and very few meet my 75 minute requirement. Because Centrefold Models helps to fill this important gap I am rating it more highly than I might otherwise have done at 4/10.

For the most part, I do not like the movies of Cirio H. Santiago, even though they are exploitation movies. Though I love exploitation movies, I find Santiago's exploitation movies to be cheap and dull. To be fair, "Cover Girl Models" is a little slicker and more polished than what you usually get from Santiago. However, he was unable to pull off in the end fooling the audience to thinking the Filipino filming locations were actually Hong Kong locations. He does throw in some ample toplessness from the female cast, which is welcome. And the movie is well photographed, looking very nice on the DVD. But exploitation fans will probably fall asleep before the end because the movie, except for a couple of genuinely exciting kung fu sequences is extremely dull. If you want to see a good Santiago movie, watch "Eye Of The Eagle 3".

Though it's competently-made (for the most part), this otherwise tacky action-comedy from producer Roger Corman and New World Pictures is meant to be a sexy T&A spy flick--but neither the T nor the A is very enticing. In a cameo as the leggy editor of Ultra magazine, Corman-mainstay Mary Woronov gives the picture its best five minutes. She sends her photographer to Hong Kong to shoot three girls for the next cover; he's assigned two professional models and another girl of his choosing--a naïve, clumsy fashion assistant with a bad perm. The movie cobbles together stray ingredients--a roll of secret microfilm, a travel agent trained in karate--with fashion shoot montages (in slow-motion!), as well as the three ladies in and out of their clothes. Frankly, I kept waiting for Woronov to fly to Hong Kong to give this turkey a kick in the A. NO STARS from ****