Kona Coast

Creepy men drug up young Dee Carol during a party with lots of beautiful girls. In a haze, she calls her estranged father, charter boat captain Sam Moran (Richard Boone). A few days later, her dead body washes up on shore. Sam investigates by himself without help from the police. Soon, he's beaten up and his boat is burned.

It's a revenge B-movie filmed in Hawaii. Death Wish would come a few years later. That's what this premise wants to be. Sam needs to start killing these creeps one by one. It needs to go full Death Wish, but it's more a Surface Wound Wish. The investigating is not much, but it still has Hawaii.

Think below average "Hawaiian Eye" episode on location and you pretty much have this awful movie. Compared to it any rando episode of "Magnum P. I." or "Hawaii 5-0" will look like Citizen friggin Kane. The story is so uninteresting that after twenty minutes the question in my mind shifted from "How did Sam's daughter die?" to "Will Dick Boone ever doff that ratty yellow windbreaker?" And speaking of Boone, he has rarely been this lifeless. He seems, with the full cooperation of his buddy, director Lamont Johnson, to have fully embraced the Aloha spirit of "Aint no big deal, brudda". But he is not alone in the Lousy Acting Dept. Joan Blondell supplants Paul Newman in "Mackintosh Man" as the winner of Worst Australian Accent by a Yank award and Chips Rafferty, whose Aussie accent is considerably better because he hails from Broken Hill and not Brooklyn, a la Blondell, decides, in the absence of directorial control from Johnson, to engage in some serious dying burn victim scenery chewing. Hell, even Vera Miles hams it up in her initial meeting with old flame Boone. And that is where I pulled the plug on this bilge. Cannot stand to see a fine actor like Miles, who starred in John Ford's two best films, doing bad work. C minus.

A man tries to bring the people responsible for his daughters death to justice.

Kona Coast starts badly and just gets worse. Underpinning the whole sorry mess is Richard Boone a thoroughly unlikeable lead who spends a fair proportion of the movie dressed in an alarming yellow jacket and shorts. I have rarely seen as shockingly bad a lead performance as the one dished up by Boone in this film.

An incredibly lousy script, pathetic dialogue, an appalling soundtrack and shockingly lame unbelievable characters are just a few of the flaws hurled at the poor unsuspecting viewer.

I've seen a lot of films and rarely give a film 1/10 but this mess has absolutely no redeeming qualities at all. How I managed to sit through the full running time is anyone's guess. How this appalling garbage currently has a rating of 4.9 (76 votes) is a cause for concern.

Avoid.

It's Richard Boone as you've never seen him before! Usually an evil villain in westerns, in this Honolulu-set movie, he's an islander in every sense of the word. He wears tropical shirts, he has blonde highlights in his hair from the sunshine, he hula dances with babes in bars, and he seduces women on his yacht. It's no wonder he co-produced this movie himself! It's clear this isn't exactly an A-tier movie, but I couldn't stop watching it. He was laughing and grinning in every scene; how rare is that? Vera Miles also gets to play a different part. She has a tearful monologue about her sordid life, right after a steamy kiss scene with Richard - pretty different from her Disney movies like Follow Me, Boys!

Richard Boone lived in Hawaii for several years, so that probably explains why he wanted to be a part of this movie. However, as much fun as the ancillary scenes are, the plot is actually a drama. Richard's daughter dies of a drug overdose, and rather than rely on the incompetent and disinterested police, he takes matters into his own hands. He enters the seedy drug world and tries to kill the men who got his daughter hooked. As a parent, you totally understand his anger and resignation that he has nothing left to lose. If you're not a parent, you can just appreciate the scenery and relaxed Hawaiian energy. Although this movie shows that bad things do happen in Paradise, you can still have fun while seeking revenge.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. The entire opening sequence shows a drug-induced party, and the camera swirls, shows double vision, and uses quick editing that will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

Kona Coast is good drama fare One of the simplest movies to follow and get behind, allowing that you don't follow it too closely. Kona Coast stars Richard Boone (Have Gun, Will Travel) as crusty old Hawaiian fisherman Sam Moran whose daughter washes up OD'd on the beach. Forget the cops, Sam's gonna deal with the lily-livered punk who got his kid strung out. Unfortunately, his own boat is torched when he gets too close, critically injuring an old fisherman buddy of his. Now this old guy wants to die at home "Take me to Kona, Sam..." Using his buddy's crew of three young, distrustful hippie types,including a girl, who seem to be as surly as he is, Sam takes his friend, and his friends' boat to Kona Coast, which is kind of like the Long Beach of the islands; dirty, but people still party. Sam is enough of a thorn in the side of the new luau/drug king to get the guy's attention as he sends his thugs numerous times to mess him over. Sam Moran, it seems, makes friends easily, and enemies three times easier than that! I think it's because he takes a certain percentage of lip off of people. What's the percentage? Well, i'm not sure i got it exactly, but i think it's pretty near...ZERO, my friend. You cross this guy, he hurts your ass. No freakin' joke. He'll slap you, punch you, spank you and sometimes when he's telling you how worthless you are, you can FEEEL the booze on his breath. I have loved this film ever since i was a kid and i think that's one of the aspects i liked about it. He said what he meant, dam the consequences. Some jackass strung his daughter out and killed her. And this same jackass was now screwin' with him. Something definately has to give, and it does. When this baddie (played with comic evil flair by Steve Inhat)gets his, it just plays right. It's raw, it's real, and it makes us all feel better. Joan Blondell plays the sister of Sam's dead friend. I didn't like her in the movie as Sam's friend was from Australia with this thick as syrup accent and his sister was from Queens or something. Whatever. I did like Sam's love interest played by an actress whose name i can't remember. She whined a lot but i think i had a crush on her anyway. Nice hair. This movie is unavailable on video and will probably always be. A shame. It was VERRRY 60's and VERRRY islandy. If you have a copy of it or more info, write.