If you are looking for a VHS or R0 DVD copy of the film contact me.
Are diamonds really a girl's best friend?
Cast | Formats | Notes | Pictures | My Summary | My Review

Cast

Formats

VHS - NTSC / DVD

Notes

• Malcolm's character is the only one with a first and last name.

• Rated R - Running Time 103 minutes

• DVD has nothing extra on it.

Pictures

Malcolm as Bechtel
VHS Front Cover
VHS Back Cover

My Summary

    A man and his wife arrive at the New Orleans airport and are picked up by limo. As soon as they are off they realize that they have been kidnapped. The couple are taken to an abandoned area and thrown out of the car. Joseph Bechtel punches the woman in the face and goes for the briefcase handcuffed to to the mans' wrist. He tells him to give him the key or he'll kill her. The man refuses and Bechtel shoots her in the head. His two thugs then work the man over. Betchel and his French girlfriend/partner/assassin Giselle take off and let his thugs take over. They pound on the man, throw him off a bridge, chop his hand off and set him and the limo on fire while he is still alive.
    The briefcase contains $8 million worth of diamonds and Bechtel has a buyer in Chicago for them. He only has to wait a week for him to arrive. Meanwhile Jill  is the British representative for the diamond company and she goes to New Orleans to retrieve them. She has gotten a divorce and is looking for a change of scenery. She gets in one day early and is to team up with a local ex-cop turned private investigator Deghy the next day. She decides she would rather check in with him early.
    He is having a major party on his boat and by the time she arrives he has passed out with a blond he just had sex with. People are still lying around and when she sees him she is instantly repulsed by his dirty, drunken demeanor. She runs back to her cab, but he has left her luggage and taken off and to make matter worse it has begun to rain - hard.  He and his partner, Herbert, which have been together since Vietnam agree to take her to her hotel. On the way they get a flat tire. He carries her bags to her room where he hopes to score. She will have none of it. Jill calls her boss, Mr. Pinkrose, up in London telling him to get rid of Deghy, but the contract is already inked. The worst part is their gemologist is in a coma and if he can't ID the diamonds, they can't keep them. Pinkrose then decides to come to New Orleans to help out.
    The next day they get together and he is all cleaned up and she is instantly attracted to him as are most women in town. The head to the crime scene and look over the car for evidence. Deghy climbs down a hill to pick up something and Jill falls down in coming to see. They then go to a local bar checking for leads. Deghy finds out one of their missing leads has died. He then decides to forget the rest of the day. He has bet his buddy $100 that he can score will Jill and decides to introduce her to Tequila. The three of them spend the day taking shots until she is totally plastered. He takes her back to the hotel and drops her on the bed. He like what he sees when her dress goes up.
    Deghy finds out a prisoner has seen the whole murder and recognized one of the thugs as Franco (Robert Z'Dar). He goes to see the Police Sergeant to see what he knows, but suspects he is corrupt. He calls Jill from the station to tell her what he knows so far, but Sgt. Gersi (Larry Manetti), is listening to the whole thing. He is really on Bechtel's payroll and is of no help. The next day she awakes totally nude and her clothes are strewn all over. She knows she has had sex with him, but can't remember anything. After she calls she jumps in the shower and goes to meet him.
    Gersi has tipped Bechtel off and a woman dressed as a nun rams an ice pick through the witnesses' ear in the jail while she is talking to him. There is a witness to this, Shelby (Larry Linville). She threatens him and leaves, but he grabs her jail pass and spots a tattoo on her left ankle with the name Giselle on it. Deghby has an old friend on the force, Morier (Joe Estevez), who informs him about Shelby. Bechtel find out about Morier and Shelby and wants them dealt with. Shelby is a whore monger who has faked an injury to try and sue a department store. When Franco confronts him he claims he doesn't have the pass any longer.
    Deghy and Jill decide to stake out Shelby and video tape him and use the tape to bribe him to get the killer's jail pass. They let the air out of his tire and wait in a nearby dumpster with a video camera. After getting dumped on the get the evidence they need for the bribe.
    They meet Shelby at a bar later that night. He gives them the pass and the information about the tattoo. Before they can give him the tape a man drips over Shelby's foot. He then goes to punch Shelby in the face and misses - hitting another man. A full scale bar brawl breaks out and they are in the middle. Bottles break, people are throw over the bar, tables break, and eventually Deghy throws one of the guys through a window. The police come and arrest the last two guys fighting in the street while Jill and Deghy go back to his boat.
    Deghy calls his Lieutenant buddy and he runs the info on Giselle, she is out on parole and working at a nearby jewelry store. Deghy tries once again to seduce Jill, but she says they just aren't right for each other. She reminds him of the nurse Betty story Hebert told her happened in Vietnam. Deghy supposedly got a political slogan tattooed on his ass and she asks if he did. He tells her she can find out on her own. The two go in an Deghy purchases a ring while Jill sneaks in the back. She sees nothing back there except a very expensive safe. She asks if they have diamonds and Giselle says no. There is no reason to have an expensive safe without expensive jewelry. The place is obviously a front. Deghy asks for a receipt so he can compare the handwriting on the jail pass.
    They go back to the boat and he convinces Herbert to act as a gardener and hide a camera in the place pointing at the safe to record the combination. The plan works and Deghy sneaks in there that night and steals back the bag of diamonds from the safe. He returns to the hotel quite smugly to find Mr. Pinkrose has finally arrived. Jill lays the bad news on them that their gemologist has died and they have no way to claim the diamonds because British law says they must be confirmed. Deghy doesn't care since he isn't British, he can sell them in the US and get the money back. While Jill and Pinkrose discuss this, Deghy calls up Bechtel to taunt him that he has the diamonds. Bechtel flips out when he finds out, but doesn't know who Deghy is.
    The next day Bechtel and his minions pick up Shelby and take him to a cemetery. The want that jail pass. When he confesses he gave the pass to Dehgy, they kill him. Deghy has a plan. He goes to Bechtel's place and forces a confession out of him that he stole the diamonds. Now he things he is scott free to go and sell them. He goes back to the boat and he, Herbert and Jill celebrate. Not for long though as Bechtel's thugs go there and grab them.
    They take them back to Bechtel's and hang Herbert from a noose and tell Deghy to tell him where the diamonds are or they'll kill Herbert. Deghy fights back, but is beaten down and Herbert is hung. Jill and him are thrown into a basement room. They find a snake there and are able to use it to surprise Franco and make their escape after a fight.
    Meanwhile, Bechtel and the girl have taken off. Jill and Deghy go after them, but are thwarted by Gersi in a car pursuit that involves much crashing. Bechtel gets away and the two go to the police the next day. The police capture Bechtel on the way to Costa Rica, but without the diamonds. Jill realizes her career is over if she doesn't return with them. he convinces them to go to his cabin in the woods and do some fishing.
    After they get there a package arrives with fishing poles. Inside the poles are the diamonds. Not long after Bechtel's three thugs show up and a shootout ensues. Deghy guns down two of them outside while Franco grabs Jill inside. Deghy tricks Franco by throwing him the diamonds and shoots him with a gun he had in his back waistband. The pair then celebrates by having sex around the fireplace. The last shot shows the tattoo "Nixon can kiss my ass" on his butt.

My Review

    OK, so this film sucks. It starts out with the look, feel and sound of a porno film, but it isn't even close. Even though it is crap, it is low budget crap, so it has lots of laugh value. This is a great film to watch with a bunch of people and goof on.
    Let's start with the box. On the side is a head shot of Shannon which isn't anything we see in the film. They took the head from this picture and superimposed it on someone else to make the cover. The cover features a woman with giant breasts in her underwear with diamond earrings and a necklace. The tag line is "Are diamonds really a girl's best friend?" None of this has anything to do with the film!? It is so obviously not her and there was no scene like that AND there was no diamond jewelry in the film either. It is a pathetic attempt at a sexy enticing cover.
    The team of Yanni Deghy  and Jill have the chemistry of oil and water. They are so lame, especially officer Yanni with his giant hairy mustache and Billy Ray Cyrus hairdo. All the girls are supposed to be hot for this turd too! It is never explained in the film that he is an ex-cop, only on the box. And there is no explanation of what the hell Jill's job is except the box says she is an inspector?! If she is a detective then no wonder why the stuff got stolen in the first place.
    The dialog and acting are laughable. After a while they begin to "rub off" on each other. He says "bloody", she says slang terms. Really stupid stuff. Also Larry Linville should've been ashamed of himself. He got huge playing Frank Burns in M*A*S*H, but here he is a joke. I think the only reason he took the role was because he had a few different naked women writhing around on him. There was no explanation of what he was doing in the jail at the time of the murder either. It also didn't make any sense that they left him alive in the first place - why leave a witness? She just killed a guy IN the police station!! So one more wouldn't matter and what did it matter if he had the jail pass? It wouldn't be like she would fill out her real name or anything. When they film Shelby for some reason they have to hide inside a dumpster to do it - of course it is the world's cleanest dumpster. Why couldn't they just hide BEHIND the dumpster!? No, they have to go inside of it. There are a couple of totally crude jokes there. One involves a couple who just had sex dumping their garbage on Jill's head including the just used condom which Deghy removes bare handed!!?! Later when Malcolm captures them they are put together in a room with no door!? There's no lock or anything. When they escape Malcolm leaves his car with the keys in it for them! Even more totally pointless is the cop is driving by and sees them. This begins the worst car chase sequence ever filmed. It is god awful laughable junk.
    They make this big deal about all the money in diamonds and when they finally show them the bag is small enough to fit in Deghy's shirt pocket. There is a gratuitous shower scene early on where you get to see every inch of Shannon, surely a highlight to most of the male audience. In fact you see more of her there than the extremely unerotic sex scene at the end.
    Tons of things didn't make sense. One scene they go back to his boat and both are sitting around in skimpy bathing suits at night - for no reason. The diamond store is a total front, but they let some strange guy in the back to water two plants because he says he is the gardener and the other guy was sick!? They go through all this trouble to get Malcolm to admit he stole the diamonds and what good will that do!? And then 5 minutes later are so busy celebrating that they get captured again. Herbert is hung, but when they come back he is fine, he didn't even come close to dying. They go through all the crap on why they can't take their own diamonds back home, but then mail them to themselves at a remote cabin?! Why didn't hey just carry them in their pocket?! The shootout at the cabin was equally lame - the bad guys are out in the open, not using any cover so they can get shot. The sex scene ending was totally useless and boring. It was so tiresome to hear the back and forth bantering that you could care less if they ever hooked up.
    On to Malcolm. There is no explanation about how or why his character is so powerful or how he got to be that why. He is just there. I have to say it was fun to watch him though. He plays the role totally crazy. He is very violent - punching, shooting, threatening, screaming an even making out with the French chick. They even start to have a bedroom scene together, but are interrupted. Malcolm only has around 10 scenes, but they are every 5-10 minutes, so it seems like he is there the whole time. He must've known the movie was shit, so he really took to hamming it up as the villain and it works at this level. He screams his head off at Deghy that he is going to kill him and it is really funny. At least he doesn't die in this one. His capture isn't shown either, I guess they ran out of money - it is just described. And why does he speak with a British accent when everyone else around is French?
    Besides Malcolm's performance there is nothing good about this film - the acting, the filming, the dialog - all crap. Typical with the low budget stuff he does. I have no idea what anyone was thinking before, during or after this film was being made. It doesn't look like they took more than a week to film it. I recommend this film if you go in expecting nothing and have friends around to make fun of it. I wouldn't recommend watching it by yourself though.

Rating: 5/10

This page © 2001-08 by Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net