Roger Corman takes his little gang to Hawaii for a vacation and a movie. It's something of a tradition for filmmakers to do this (Ford with Donovan's Reef and Hitchcock with To Catch a Thief in Monaco), but usually people are a bit more established before they can pull it off. I watched the little video that Corman made for a retrospective on this film, filmed for Trailers From Hell, and Corman, all smiles and warmth, tells of marketing, production issues (filming in the bay rather than on the ocean), and his cast without ever mentioning the story. That seems to be the guy to a T.
A trio of crooks, led by Zac (Leslie Bradley) and filled out by Mitch (Dick Miller) and Stony (Jonathan Haze), accompanied by Zac's girl, Max (Beverly Garland), have hired the boat owned by Duke (Richard Denning) to take them to the Big Island where they will attend a luau like good tourists do. However, the trio quickly make for a banana plantation afterwards, steal the payroll, and set the place on fire before getting back to the boat and setting said with their captain none the wiser.
This being a Roger Corman movie, characters tend towards thinness and there's an effort towards four-quadrant filmmaking (before anyone had coined the term), so the film ends up a mix of action, tough-guy preening, and a love triangle. That triangle develops between Zac, Max, and Duke, of course. Zac, being the head hood, is prone to anger and hits Max. Max is a drunk who's co-dependent on Zac. Duke is the good guy who sees a pretty girl being pushed around by a bad guy. This is not hard to predict.
The main plot of the film takes a bit to develop (really, the film feels like a series of subplots strung together, but it's decently done), and it involves Duke trying to run away with Max. However, their plan is foiled by an oncoming hurricane which forces them to turn back. The group all huddled in a house as hurricane winds pelt the building from the outside is a surprisingly effective little pressure cooker. It just doesn't last very long.
I think the bones of a good movie, even a really good movie, are here in the script by Charles Griffith and Mark Hanna. It's essentially a gangster movie, western (the lack of law, leaving things up to the one good man in the area), and vacation movie all wrapped up in one, liberally taking elements and conventions from all of these movies to cobble something together. That it's somewhat cohesive is actually kind of remarkable.
I like it when Corman films in color because he never gives his black and white photography the kind of attention it needs, so seeing Hawaii through his confident eye in Naked Paradise is nice. Things look good, and once again actors are committed to their roles in a silly, cheap film, but at least there are no rubber monsters without any articulation that need to be gawked at.
Is it good? I wouldn't go that far. The situation is too scattershot. The characters are too thin, mostly just dominant characteristics rather than fleshed out people. However, it looks good, the minor business with the supporting characters, especially Miller as Mitch and his obsession with a local girl, Lanai (Lisa Montell) which has some bite to it, is solid, and everyone's committed. Corman, in retrospect, seemed most proud of the fact that he figure out how to film on the water in Hawaii without serious production issues. You shoot in the bay with calm waters while positioning the camera so that you see the ocean in the background of the actors. He was the king of finding cheap ways to get the most out of his resources to sell a picture as quickly as he could. And in that regard, Naked Paradise, is a success.
As a film to entertain? He's made worse. It's alright.
