A shirtless man and a topless woman wearing a lei are found in the ocean in a lifeboat by men on a fishing boat. The woman is dead and the barely alive man tells their story in flashback. William Stanton floated on a lifeboat for nine days after surviving a tanker ship fire and washed up on a small, seemingly deserted island. But there are inhabitants: a couple dozen women, topless except for their strategically worn leis. The ruler of the women, Queen Kealoha, is not happy to see Stanton as this is a sacred island where no men are allowed except for an annual festival where men are allowed to come and have sex to propagate the race (though oddly, we see no babies or children on the island). The last time men stayed, they caused trouble and supposedly hid some treasure that was never found. However, a different festival is coming up which involves the choosing of a woman for the Sea God. This year's choice, Nani Maka, is excited about the rite, but Stanton realizes that this is basically a human sacrifice—she'll dive into the ocean and drown to ensure that bad storms stay away from the island. Stanton and Nani grow close and the queen's not happy, wanting Stanton to leave, but when a small band of native men attack on the beach, Stanton shoots them dead, saving the women's lives, and he is allowed to stay. He teaches the women a game, kissing, which is kept innocent, and which Nani isn't impressed by: after kissing her, Stanton says, "Isn't that fun?" and she replies, "I like swimming better." Eventually he falls in love with Nani and she with him, and he tries to talk her and the queen out of holding the sacrifice, but no dice. So instead he proposes to make the leap with her. The night before, the two have a homemade wedding ceremony so they can have sex (all we see is the post-coital cuddling), and when they dive, he leads her to an underwater cave where he finds the hidden treasure. Pocketing some jewels, they try to swim out to his lifeboat but she gets bitten by a giant clam (Wikipedia says this can’t happen) and dies. Stanton is left bereft with just his jewels. The end.
This was released as what they used to call a "nudie-cutie," featuring some nudity in a relatively innocent context as opposed to a "roughie" which included rape and crime and violence, and it was shown in adults-only engagements. But I would guess even back then, the raincoat crowd would have been disappointed. The women are indeed all topless but they wear multiple leis designed to mostly cover the breasts. In an early scene when a bunch of women go running across the beach, it's quite comical to see them grab hold of the leis to keep them in place. Still, some sideboobs and even nipples do get exposed—oddly, the print I saw on YouTube, which was otherwise pristine, blurred most but not quite all of the nipple presentations. Aside from the tame kissing, no sex is shown. Still, this was fairly successful (it was sometimes given the title Naked Island) and is considered by fans to be a prime example of tikisploitation, films which partook of the lost tropical island fantasies of Americans. The director, Barry Mahon, has an interesting backstory; in real life, he was involved in the incident that was fictionalized on film as The Great Escape. The only pro onscreen is Eddie Dew (Stanton), pictured at top left. According to IMDb, he would have been around 50 when he made this but looks more like mid-30s. He's a perfect sub-B-lead, moderately handsome with a decent if unremarkable physique and able to say his lines with some moderate amount of conviction. I guess I'm damning with faint praise, but he's the reason I didn't bail halfway through. The women with speaking lines are awful, especially the queen who seems to be reading much of her dialogue from cue cards. Nani Maka is played by a real-life hula dancer named Nani Maka. Her big dances around the Sea God statue are not only uninteresting but ineptly shot. Worst (or best) of all is the Sea God, a cheap-looking and wildly goofy prop that looks like it was rejected from a Roger Corman movie (see right). At an hour, it's harmless and sorta fun, with a hypnotic atmosphere of goofy amateurishness that sucked me in. [YouTube]
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