What a gloriously stupid movie. Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Andy Sidaris’s magnum opus from 1987, is not the most watchable shitty movie of all time, but it is a contender for the ‘so bad it’s good’ championship belt. It’s a subtle distinction, I know. But, if boxing can have dozens of belts, why deny such granular categorization to misfit movies?
Written and directed by Sidaris, Hard Ticket is very self-aware. There are no pretensions of narrative weight, or, since this is an action flick, realistic violence. This is a bloody flick, to be sure, but it’s how the blood is spilt that is hooey (see, skateboard scene, frisbee scene).
Then, there are the protagonists and the people that play them. Perhaps there were dreams of Hollywood greatness dancing around in their heads, but Sidaris knew better. He crammed his flick with a martial artist sporting a silly haircut (Harold Diamond), a lantern-jawed future soaps star (Ronn Moss), and not one, not two, not three, but FOUR Playboy Playmates (Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, Cynthis Brimhall, and Patty Duffek). Somehow, only three of them were featured topless, in a movie with so much gratuitous nudity it will make Gen Z viewers shrink into their hoodies.
Speir and Carlton are the stars, and their characters are hilarious. Donna (Speir) is an undercover DEA agent posing as the pilot of a small cargo airline in Hawaii. Her co-pilot, Taryn (Carlton), is in the witness protection program, having testified against the mob in Las Vegas. There’s no polite way to put this: these two are bimbos. 
They are intentionally portrayed as stereotypical dumb blondes who are somehow competent at their jobs. Speir and Carlton deliver lines and kick ass with unstudied and untalented awkwardness, only looking comfortable in scenes where they lounge around topless. I guess that makes sense, as being in b-movies was the side hustle, and being naked was the day job.
Moss and Diamond are another pair of agents, who provide the film’s muscle when the action is too intense for Speir and Carlton to carry. Of this pair, all I can say is that Moss was the one with decent acting skill. Although, in this flick there was only so much room for it. He was a giddy schoolboy when he got to make out with Speir or shoot a gun, and his boyish enthusiasm is part of the joy of watching this flick.
So far, I’ve spent over four hundred words without even hinting at the plot. That’s because the plot does not matter. I have notes on this flick and I’m still having trouble recalling the salient plot points. There are gangsters and diamond smuggling. That much I remember. And, for some reason, there is a subplot featuring a gigantic snake. The production didn’t use a real snake. It’s very much a rubber sleeve with someone’s arm in it. Sometimes the snake swoops in like a deus ex machina to screw things up for good guys and bad guys alike, yet this device isn’t needed at all to resolve things. The heroes do just fine on their own.
So bad it’s good. For many makers of b-cinema, such an assessment is an insult to their talents and abilities. For Sidaris, it seems to have been a badge of honor, if I’m reading the tone of Hard Ticket to Hawaii correctly. It’s shameless in a way that feels intentional. But also not in a disingenuous way, like some facile attempt to get the room to like you. This feels like an earnest effort to make the kind of exploitation sleaze that Sidaris himself liked to watch. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but I would swear that this movie was made with care and attention to detail, as is seen in the final result. This shitty gold stinker smells like roses, and breaks into the top 50 of the Watchability Index, displacing Tenement at #35. It’s essential viewing for the connoisseur of filth.