Fly Me

This film "Fly Me" from 1973 is one that doesn't take things to serious as the plot and story really doesn't have much background still it' a fun B movie of action and much skin with nude scenes. It really is about a trio of flight Stewardesses who leave L.A. and land and end up in Hong Kong to take on a group of crooked and immigrant smuggling Kung Fu kidnap type terrorists. The sex and nude scenes are good eye candy also one of the ladies becomes a damsel in distress with herself being kidnapped and tied up with her mouth taped! In the end feet and hands come to combat as these ladies serve more than flight meals! Overall good B flick that entertains a great example of 70's sexploitation.

When he started New World Pictures, one of Roger Corman's earliest successes was with the Nurses series of films. Starting with Stephanie Rothman's "The Student Nurses" in 1970, he made a series of light sexploitation films that would follow 4 young women, each with a separate plotline that included topical elements and nudity in films that managed to combine sexploitation with women's liberation. By 1973, he had made four of these, and was looking to take the idea in new directions. Stewardesses are an obvious choice.

Corman was also starting to make films in the Philippines. Jack Hill's early women in prison films had been shot there, and a country that had an existing film industry that was a lot cheaper than the US was attractive. He struck a multi-film production deal with Philippine producer/director Cirio H. Santiago, and this was the first film they made.

This film drops one character from the formula, and we follow three stewardesses very conveniently flying to Southeast Asia on a trip that ends in the Philippines. New stewardess Pat Anderson finds that her mother (Naomi Stevens) has bought a ticket and is accompanying her to keep an eye on her. She tries to romance young doctor Richard Young, while her mother gets in the way and complains about the food. The other two, Lenore Kasdorf and Lyllah Torena, run afoul of sex traffickers. By the end, both plots converge, leading to one issue with the film ... the comedic subplot crashes headlong into the sex trafficking plot resulting in a really abrupt shift in tone.

Generally, this one doesn't really work. It's an early experiment in making essentially a Philippine film disguised as an American one and the seams really show. It feels like entire scenes that might connect parts of the plot together just weren't shot, and some scenes seem to have been shot much later and just patched in. There's an opening sequence involving Dick Miller as a cab driver that was shot in LA by Curtis Hanson, and Jonathan Demme's directorial debut was shooting a really terrible martial arts sequence that's dropped in mid-film (and never really explained.

Santiago made more films for Corman and they are all better than this one, including another pass at the Nurses formula involving models. Philippine exploitation icon Vic Diaz pops up as a police man.

The controversial National Airlines ad-campaign of beautiful young stewardesses with the tagline "Fly Me" made the perfect title for a Roger Corman exploitation...

Another shot in the Philippines only here, instead of using harsh jungle terrain, it's more of a city-wide travelogue including a gorgeous fortress where one of the three main stewardesses does karate...

And not only is second-billed Lenore Kasdorf the most beautiful, she has the leading role while Corman's tall blonde first-billed Pat Anderson provides parenthetical comic relief...

An innocent girl (that had stripped in front of a cab driver) who, courted by a handsome doctor, is stalked by an intense Italian mother, fighting to keep her virginity intact...

Then there's hippie-hot Lyllah Torena, the most sexually-active and a potential game-changer: taken hostage by vicious slave-traders within minutes of their plane landing...

In a basic Asian-set exploitation lacking worthwhile action or comedy for either Lenore Kasdorf or Pat Anderson: two gorgeous cult starlets that, along with the audience, deserved a much better ride.

So-called martial arts scenes look like something some teenagers may do pretending to be karate experts. Plot virtually non-existent. Barely watchable grade Z film. There is zero reason to watch this unless you are a specialty 70s film buff (like I am) or are interesting in the nudity.

Movies like Fly Me aren't to be taken seriously. They are to be watched without thinking..the bad martial arts choreography and the nudity helps distract you from the bad acting and storyline. This movie is fun if you want a good laugh and to see what a great example of 70s sexploitation is.