Day Of the Warrior (1996)
Plot: The Agency master computer is compromised. LETHAL Ladies are on the case.
When is trop too much? How about now? The eleventh installment of the LETHAL Ladies franchise Day Of the Warrior, the first of two with the franchise name as a prefix and potential red herring, is a father-son co-production pooling resources from Skyhawks Films and Malibu Bay Films. All is not well in camp Sidaris and the introduction of yet another team of federal agents only adds to the aggravation. Shae Marks joins the ranks as yet another The Agency operative with disproportionately enormous proportions and Carolyn Liu makes her overdue return. At this point the LETHAL Ladies series was so deep in the grip of franchise decay that it was reduced to nothing more than a cartoonish series of annoying ticks, visual gags, and lame puns. The adage used around these parts goes that with great boobs comes great responsibility. Sure, the cleavage is as deep and impressive as ever – but that never was an indicator of anything; let alone quality. As the cupsizes continue to increase it seems neither of the Sidaris have apparently learned anything from the past.
Day Of the Warrior is not the long-desired return to the verdant lush jungles and sun-baked palmtree-lined beaches of Hawaii after Enemy Gold (1993) and The Dallas Connection (1994) took the series both figuratively (and quite literally) into a detour by setting up base in, of all things, the Lone Star state of Texas. To its credit Day Of the Warrior is a multi-state spy adventure that proves that Sidaris the elder possessed more of a cinematic eye than his only marginally talented assistant director son Christian Drew. A herald of woe is the sheer shape and size of things: be they the boobs, the guns, or the explosions – staggering is one way of describing them, smothering is another, ridiculous is probably closest to the actual truth. It is also in Day Of the Warrior that the audience at long last learns what secretive government agency, mysteriously referred to as just The Agency in the past 10 episodes, all these Hawaiian and Texan covert operatives have been working for. They are part of LETHAL, or Legion to Ensure Total Harmony and Law. In all The Dallas Connection (1994) was more fun than Sidaris the elder’s return to his flagship series.
In keeping with age-old tradition Andy Sidaris introduces Playboy Playmate of the Month (May, 1994) Shae Marks - an "actress with a figure that would make a grown man cry" according to the Guns, Girls, and G-Strings book that Sidaris would later pen on the series – to the now-regular cast of Julie Strain and Julie K. Smith. Remember those fargone, simpler times when Sybil Danning and Lynda Weismeier from Malibu Express (1985) and Ava Cadell and Stephanie Schick from Do or Die (1991) were the most extreme of outliers? Raye Hollitt was a bodybuilder and part of the original American Gladiator. She appeared in Playboy (February, 1996) but never made it to Playmate. Tammy Parks on the other hand got her start in softcore erotica slog from Gregory Hippolyte and low-budget thrillers from Jim Wynorksi, Fred Olen Ray, and the likes until she graduated into hardcore pornography in 1996. The main bad guy this time around the Warrior is played by Marcus Alexander Bagwell. Bagwell was a professional wrestler that started out under his own name in GWF Major League Wrestling (1991) and Clash of the Champions (1992-1994). He was then employed at World Championship Wrestling (WCW), before it was usurped by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) where his contract was extended and World Wrestling All-Stars (WWA). Over the years he appeared as The Handsome Stranger and Buff Bagwell and formed tag teams with, among others, Lex Luger. Suffice to say (and to nobody’s surpise) he's as oiled up as any of the women in Day Of the Warrior are.
In the LETHAL offices Tiger (Shae Marks) notices a breach of security and that their secret database containing sensitive information on covert personnel has been compromised. The identities of four deep cover agents have come into the open and the safety and success of their operations hang in the balance. Tiger reports her findings to department chief Willow Black (Julie Strain). Willow schedules a meeting with chief of operations Jordon (Justin Melvey) and The Agency official Dietrich (Ted Prior) to assess the situation. Jordon agrees that they must put together a taskforce to extract their covert operatives, or at least warn them to the current predicament. To obtain the proper firepower Willow meets up with her aide Fu (Gerald Okamura), who moonlights as an Elvis impersonator, and informs him of the situation. Tiger and Willow trace the breach to the Warrior (Marcus Alexander Bagwell, as Marcus Bagwell), a former CIA operative that has since established a criminal empire for himself. For his personal enrichment the Warrior busies himself with diamond smuggling, art theft, as well as producing adult entertainment as a front business. Cobra (Julie K. Smith), currently engaged in a diamond transaction, is the first The Agency must warn.
Once the Warrior gets wind of the situation he dispatches his second-in-command Manuel (Rodrigo Obregón, as Rodrigo Obregon) and partner Kym (Raye Hollitt), as well as two bumbling henchmen Chaz (Cassidy Phillips) and J.P. (Richard Cansino) to neutralize the The Agency threat. The security breach threatens to expose the cover of Doc Austin (Kevin Light), Cobra’s boytoy, as well as Scorpion (Tammy Parks) and Shark (Darren Wise) who have been investigating the Warrior’s porn producer front. After the required traveling back-and-forth Chaz and J.P. are taken out with all the prequisite oversized guns and ridiculous explosions by Tiger and her man J. Tyler Ward (Cristian Letelier). After their initial failed operation Kym kills Manuel as she’s conspiring with Ron (Ron Browning), who is loyal to the Warrior. In the end a desperate confrontation between forces of the Warrior and The Agency ensues. In the woods of Texas on the Day Of the Warrior the criminal underworld will be dealt the final and fatal blow… Things will explode and ridiculously oversized breasts will jiggle.
The humour also has seen brighter days. There are at least three accounts of a big-chested lady agent saying “I gotta get something off my chest,” wherein in two instances their tops drop. Willow Black dryly remarks, “I worked at Disneyland. I was one of the rides” and at one point knocks Fu out cold with her massive mounds. Tiger, played by Shae Marks when her plastic pleasuredomes were at their most colossal, confides in her partner that, “everything I touch has a way of exploding!” Tiger lives up to her name by frequently donning tigerprint textile, however little that may be. Cobra, whose silicon sweaterpuppies already featured up, front, and center in The Dallas Connection (1994), spends a day at the pool after a recent mission, defending herself from an assailant hitman with the immortal line, “I hope he doesn’t clog up my filter.” Cobra carries a familiar cowskin case and Doc Austin can’t shoot straight despite not being an Abilene. What is a movie with a wrestler without a wrestling match? The Warrior challenges Willow Black in the arena, but sadly isn’t knocked out by her gigantic globes. Ah, the Andy Sidaris puns and visual gags aren’t what they used to be. Oh well. Strain wears an American flag bikini because these films were always a wee bit nationalistic and jingoistic. Nationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel – and what’s a more quintessential (and stereotypical) piece of Americana than an Amazonesque, curled brunette gyrating seductively while holding an oversized firearm while decked out in the tiniest stars and stripes bikini in your favorite colors red, white, and blue that barely can contain her oiled and glistening, jiggling, and utterly massive mounds?
Andy Sidaris’ earlier spy-action romps always had their tongue firmly planted in cheek. Day Of the Warrior has the same fun-loving attitude as the earlier outings with Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, and Roberta Vazquez but reduces everything that made those pieces of shlock loveable to lame puns and visual gags. Sidaris clearly loves beautiful women, and he loves them even more if they happen to have gigantic globes. The final stretch of the LETHAL Ladies franchise had Julie Strain, Julie K. Smith and Shae Marks as part of the regular cast and thus ensured that there was no shortage of comically large breasted women. Carolyn Liu, last seen around these parts in Fit to Kill (1993), is the sole reminder of better days. The only question is: where are all the sunny Hawaiian locales that used to be the bread-and-butter of this series? Why is there no hot tub scene? Why was everything so phoned-in, Andy? What happened?
Day of the Warrior is comically overcooked. There was never anything particularly sophisticated about Andy Sidaris’ brand of lowbrow spy-action and Day Of the Warrior doesn’t help any. It’s a sad day for everyone involved when the two Julies, Strain and K. Smith, become the best thespians of the lot. It’s always good seeing Carolyn Liu and Richard Cansino back in the fold. Liu would also figure into Return to Savage Beach (1998) with her classic character Silk. From the onset in Day Of the Warrior it is rather evident that Andy Sidaris had seen better days. “The L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies are back!” screamed the original (not exactly visually stimulating) promotional poster/cover (we prefer the vastly more glossy and colorful Mill Creek Entertainment reimagining), but how true is that, really? Not much. The real LETHAL Ladies are Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, Roberta Vasquez, and even Cynthia Brimhall – neither of whom are anywhere to be found. Not even in a cameo. In their place is reluctant action girl Shae Marks. While it heart is definitively in the right place Day Of the Warrior misses the mark more often than it hits it. Marks typically is blamed for the decline, but the brunt is not hers to carry and certainly not hers alone. By 1996 any and all of the flair had been sapped from the LETHAL Ladies and the insistence of daft Texas locales didn’t help in the slightest. They in fact exacerbate it. This used to be a sun-soaked Hawaii jetset spy-action series and it concludes in dawdry Texas woodlands with abnormally large chested Playmates in the most downright insulting excuse of a plot? This ought to have been far better than what it ended up being. Has it come to this? For shame, mr. Sidaris senior and junior. For shame.
