Fly Me (1973)

Excellent but underrated film

Best movie of this year hands down!

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Checking up on Ebay for any rare Drive-In flicks that were currently going for a low amount,I was happy to notice this terrific-looking Drive-In Bubblegum Pop movie being one of the last search results,which led to me deciding to see how far this Drive-In could fly!The plot:Barely making it in time for her first flight as a newly appointed stewardess,Toby, (with her protective mother following close behind her) joins fellow stewardesses Andrea and Sherry and gets set for her first ever flight,where despite the attempts of her mum,Toby gets the attention of a "bone doctor" who is very keen on spending more time with Toby after the plane has landed.Despite Toby and the two more experienced stewardesses each expecting to have some time to relax after the plane has completed its destination,they each soon begin to relies that their initial plans will turn out to be a far from smooth flight.View on the film:From the first five minutes of this film,director Cirio H. Santiago makes his three beautiful leading ladies bring a real shine,to an otherwise very disappointing Drive-In movie,with Pat Anderson, (co-star of the terrific,under rated film Dirty'O Neil) Lenore Kasdorf (who later featured in Starship Troppers!) and Lyllah Torena, each being very charismatic and also doing well to bring attention to some moments in Miller Drake's (who has since gone on to do special fx work for some of the all time biggest films!) screenplay that makes each girl pretty distinctive,(From one being a Kung-Fu fighter,to the other having trouble with an over protective mother.)Sadly,despite having a Kung-Fu fighting stewardess and an easy on the eyes cast who seem prepared to turn this movie into pure Power Pop fun,Santiago instead decides to ruin any of the "pop" feel that the film may have had going for it,by making all of the events which take place after the plane's landing move at an annoyingly slow paced,which is matched by Santiago's dull,still camera moves,which only come to life during the short bursts of Kung-Fu action that give hints of what this film could have been.

You get a strong hint early on that this is probably not going to be a good movie when it clearly says (right there in the opening credits) "directed by Ciro Santiago". But compared to the rest of the oeuvre of the infamous Filipino exploitation hack, this is actually not too bad. It's a slight improvement over the similar Santiago film "Cover Girl Models" and it's definitely better than a lot of his other swill like "Vampire Hookers".This is a "stewardess-spolitation" flick focusing on the various misadventures of a trio of sexy American stewardesses in the Far East. The main story, featuring Lenore Kasdorf, is similar to "Cover Girl Models" with a mixture of half-ass spy antics and half-ass kung-fu fighting. The second story is pure comedy as the Italian-stereotype mother of the newest and most virginal stewardess (Pat Anderson)has tagged along on the trip and goes to great lengths to stop her bubble-headed daughter from getting together with a handsome "bone doctor". The third story though is actually quite sleazy, approaching something out of the European "Black Emanuelle' series, as the third stewardess (Lillah Toreno)gets involved in drug trafficking and falls into the hands of a white-slavery group and ends up tied-up naked and even raped at one point (off-screen).The dramatic shifts in tone here may be kind of off-putting to those expecting just a sexy, light-hearted romp, but they also serve to make the film more interesting than the usual "stewardess-spolitation" fare (it's especially interesting the way Santigo eventually manges to tie these three disparate plot-lines together). The female cast here is generally strong. Lenore Kasdorf was a familiar TV actress in the 70's, so it's fun to see her in somewhat racier fare. Lillah Toreno, on the other hand, was pretty much exclusively known for sleazy fare like the Gary Graver softcore porn "roughie", "And When She Was Bad". Pat Anderson appeared mostly in other films like this--the two most famous being Santiago's "Cover Girl Models" and the New World favorite "Summer School Teachers". The male cast is less memorable, but the ubiquitous Dick Miller appears in the early scene as a cab driver who repeatedly runs off the road while Anderson's character changes out of her bikini in the back of his cab, and the ever slimy Victor Diaz plays a corrupt Asian official. On the downside, the movie is even more horribly cheap than usual--we know we're supposedly in the Tokyo Airport at one point only because "Tokyo Airport" is written on a frickin' chalkboard in the background! Still, for the stewardess-sploitation genre, this is slightly above average.

This is a totally wacky 70s flick with "stewardesses battling kung-fu killers". The story follows the misadventures of three flight attendants as they travel to the far east. Toby (Pat Anderson) is a newbie going on her first overseas trip (her prior flight experience was the Des Moines-Omaha route... crop dusters have been known to travel greater distances!). She tries dating a doctor she met on the flight, however her overprotective mother (Naomi Stevens) tags along and runs interference every chance she gets. Andrea (Lenore Kasdorf, a lovely Jaclyn Smith prototype) searches Hong Kong, Tokyo and Manila for her boyfriend and is constantly tailed by kung-fu thugs. Sherry (Lyllah Torena) is kidnapped after a yacht party and held captive for a prostitution ring. Everything (bizarrely) comes together in a quick 71 minutes, with numerous fun moments sprinkled throughout. These include Toby going straight from the beach to the airport and stripping to change into her uniform in the back seat of a taxi, providing a pleasant "distraction" to the cab driver (GREAT way to start a flick, by the way!); Andrea fighting off several attackers, including a blind man firing a deadly poison dart from his cane; Toby's numerous attempts to sneak away with her love interest, and a hysterical sequence where Toby's mother goes to great lengths trying to get themselves booked onto a "charter flight tour", not realizing the company is really a front for the prostitution ring at the center of everything. One other note... some of the music might sound familiar to anyone who has seen THE STUDENT NURSES, PRIVATE DUTY NURSES or NIGHT CALL NURSES (three earlier New World Pictures releases). Totally goofy fun that any 70s exploitation/cheesy drive-in movie fan will enjoy.

A trio of sexy young stewardesses have all sorts of misadventures as they travel all over the world: klutzy eager beaver rookie Toby (an endearingly daffy performance by busty blonde babe Pat Anderson) romances handsome doctor David (likable Richard Young) while being forced to contend with her meddlesome overbearing shrew of a mother (a hilariously histrionic Naomi Stevens), perky expert martial artist Andrea (the lovely Lenore Kasdorf) searches for her missing boyfriend, and poor Sherry (the cute Lyllah Torena) gets abducted by a nasty narcotics and prostitution ring run by the nefarious Donald (a perfectly slimy Ken Metcalfe). Prolific Filipino exploitation feature director Cirio Santiago, working from a blithely trashy script by Miller Drake, crams the wildly colorful and eventful 71 minute running time with abundant delicious female nudity (the first topless scenes occurs barely a minute into the movie!), seedy subplots, a funky-groovin' prog-rock score, amusingly dumb lowbrow humor, several uproariously inept chopsocky fight scenes (the blind assassin with the cane that fires deadly poison darts is a total riot!), and a rousing all-out action-loaded conclusion. Moreover, Santiago maintains a nonstop zippy pace and a light, bouncy tone from start to finish. The three female leads are all quite attractive and appealing, with Anderson the stand-out of the bunch. Popping up in nifty minor roles are Vic Diaz as crooked cop Enriquez and Dick Miller as a friendly cab driver. Of course, this flick is completely silly and ridiculous, but that's exactly why it ultimately sizes up as an absolute sleazy hoot.