You get a strong hint early on that this is probably not going to be a good movie when it clearly says (right there in the opening credits) "directed by Ciro Santiago". But compared to the rest of the oeuvre of the infamous Filipino exploitation hack, this is actually not too bad. It's a slight improvement over the similar Santiago film "Cover Girl Models" and it's definitely better than a lot of his other swill like "Vampire Hookers".
This is a "stewardess-spolitation" flick focusing on the various misadventures of a trio of sexy American stewardesses in the Far East. The main story, featuring Lenore Kasdorf, is similar to "Cover Girl Models" with a mixture of half-ass spy antics and half-ass kung-fu fighting. The second story is pure comedy as the Italian-stereotype mother of the newest and most virginal stewardess (Pat Anderson)has tagged along on the trip and goes to great lengths to stop her bubble-headed daughter from getting together with a handsome "bone doctor". The third story though is actually quite sleazy, approaching something out of the European "Black Emanuelle' series, as the third stewardess (Lillah Toreno)gets involved in drug trafficking and falls into the hands of a white-slavery group and ends up tied-up naked and even raped at one point (off-screen).
The dramatic shifts in tone here may be kind of off-putting to those expecting just a sexy, light-hearted romp, but they also serve to make the film more interesting than the usual "stewardess-spolitation" fare (it's especially interesting the way Santigo eventually manges to tie these three disparate plot-lines together). The female cast here is generally strong. Lenore Kasdorf was a familiar TV actress in the 70's, so it's fun to see her in somewhat racier fare. Lillah Toreno, on the other hand, was pretty much exclusively known for sleazy fare like the Gary Graver softcore porn "roughie", "And When She Was Bad". Pat Anderson appeared mostly in other films like this--the two most famous being Santiago's "Cover Girl Models" and the New World favorite "Summer School Teachers". The male cast is less memorable, but the ubiquitous Dick Miller appears in the early scene as a cab driver who repeatedly runs off the road while Anderson's character changes out of her bikini in the back of his cab, and the ever slimy Victor Diaz plays a corrupt Asian official. On the downside, the movie is even more horribly cheap than usual--we know we're supposedly in the Tokyo Airport at one point only because "Tokyo Airport" is written on a frickin' chalkboard in the background! Still, for the stewardess-sploitation genre, this is slightly above average.
