The Video Vacuum

Scotty (Grant Cramer from Killer Klowns from Outer Space) is a blonde beach bum that gets evicted from his rat-hole apartment.  It’s OK though because he’s got a hot girlfriend who doesn’t mind the fact that he’s homeless.  Scotty runs into a trio of obnoxious forty-something rich dudes who pay him to find hot beach babes they can party with.  When one of the geezer jag-offs put the moves on Scotty’s girlfriend, he gets P.O.ed and has to win her back from the lecherous asshole.

Hardbodies is a Skinamax classic.  The film has a special place in my heart mostly because I have warm memories of catching it on Skinamax in the middle of the night as a youngling.  I also remember ogling the video box more than once at the local video store as a lad too.  (Whenever my parents weren’t looking that is.)  That haze of nostalgia probably added a Half Star or more to the movie.

Basically, if you’ve seen one 80’s T & A Sex Comedy, you’ve seen ‘em all.  The only way to judge them is by the T & A, the sex, and the comedy.  There are scads of boobies on display (almost 50 bare exposures), and a lot of sex to be found in Hardbodies, but there aren’t a heck of a lot of laughs.  That’s fine by me though because the hooters you do see are Grade A cantaloupes. 

You know a lot of people told me when I was growing up that I looked liked the red-headed freckle-faced geek sidekick (Courtney Gains from Children of the Corn) from this movie.  Sure, I did have red hair and I did have freckles, but that’s where the similarities end.  All I have to say about that is that the geek gets laid at the end of the movie, so there.  

The old geezer with the Waylon Jennings beard gets the best line of the movie when he wakes up with a hangover and says, “My liver is staging a major coup d’etat.” 

Hardbodies 1 was a better than average 80’s T & A Sex Comedy.  While it was no Blazing Saddles in the “comedy” department, it delivered more than its fair share of T & A.  Hardbodies 2 on the other hand only features about half the amount of ta-tas and about a third of the laughs.

I don’t even know if the plot is relevant here but I’d like to at least address how dumb it is.  What happens is that Scotty (not the same guy from the first movie) and his buddy (not the same guy from the first movie either) are now skin flick movie stars who go to Greece to film their latest picture.  Suddenly and incoherently, the “real” movie switches randomly back and forth to the “reel” movie.  Why this was done, I have no idea.  Maybe the filmmakers realized that they only had enough plot for half a movie so they decided to film the crew for the other half of the flick.  Whatever the reasons were, the results are just plain stupid.

Another thing that bugged me about Hardbodies 2 was the fact that the filmmakers didn’t give a shit about continuity.  All of a sudden the beach bum guys from the first movie are now softcore porn stars.  I guess the director thought the audience wouldn’t notice because the characters were being played by two completely different actors.  Since I watched both Hardbodies movies back to back, this blatant disregard for continuity was jarring to say the least.  The only two returning cast members from the first film are the Waylon Jennings look-alike and Roberta (Caged Heat) Collins.  That’s like making Wrath of Khan and re-casting the Kirk and Spock roles and having Sulu and Chekhov being played by the same guys.  (Okay, that analogy’s not like 100% accurate, but you get the idea.)

As stupid as most of the movie is, Hardbodies 2 was actually watchable due to the fact that it had a couple nice up-and-coming Hardbodies in it.  First and foremost is Fabiana Udenio.  If you don’t know her, she was the chick who played Alotta Fagina in Austin Powers.  She looks really hot in this, as does a young and yummy Brenda Bakke.  Both ladies would go on to do several more sequels in their time (Udenio:  Robocop 2 and Bride of Re-Animator.  Bakke:  Hot Shots Part Deux and Under Siege 2:  Dark Territory.); all of them better than this one.