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What is the quintessential tiki movie? |
The Blue Kahuna
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 01, 2011
Posts: 380
From: Points East & West
|  Posted: 2013-06-05 8:23 pm Permalink
So what is the quintessential tiki movie? What makes it tiki movie?
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Bay Park Buzzy
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Apr 07, 2006
Posts: 3007
From: West Bay Park, San Diego, CA
| Posted: 2013-06-05 8:53 pm Permalink
Before John-O names off a bunch of 1940's crap we'll never get around to watching, I cast my vote for:
Bikini A Go Go!
Plot is basically a guy who owns a bikini shop finds a magic tiki pendant in a shipment of bikinis
Coolest part is they use a HIP Originals God of Wisdom as the magic tiki
The guy leaves the bikini shop with the tiki to meet his fiance. He plans to give it to her as a gift, not yet knowing its magical powers. Back at the shop, his two female employees disrobe and engage in a romantic interlude for several minutes. At dinner, he gives the tiki to his lady:
Suddenly, the tikis magic powers kick in
The tikis effects are soon evident, as his once fridgid wife seems to loose all inhibitions:
Then a bunch of other stuff happens with some secret agents and spies and the woman ends up with the Bikini store girls:
Still under the tiki's influence, they have hot tub relations:
I don't really remember what happens after that scene, but I'm sure all the plot lines are resolved satisfactorily in the end.
I never get tired of this movie! Best thing: NO exotica!
Buzzy Out!
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RevBambooBen
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 12, 2002
Posts: 7784
From: Huntikington Beach
| Posted: 2013-06-05 9:08 pm Permalink
What about the " House of Buzz??"
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Atomobile
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Oct 09, 2003
Posts: 174 | Posted: 2013-06-06 10:10 pm Permalink
Wild pictures. That is my friend Stacy Burke in the first picture with the movie title, and again in the girl 3-way (the blond on the right). I'll have to ask her about this movie sometime!
Unfortunately I don't think there is a SINGLE movie out there I would consider the definitive "Tiki" movie. If anything comes close, it would be the promotional film made in 1963 for Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room. I don't know where or if it was show, but I know part of it was shown in the 1965 special celebrating Disneyland's 10th anniversary. I have reason to believe that the film was much longer as I've seen so many Disneyland attraction promo films get re-used (and re-edited) for Disneyland TV specials. I've seen examples of these rare, longer films, but not the Tiki Room one unfortunately.
Louis
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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 11549
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
| Posted: 2013-06-08 12:25 am Permalink
I have always maintaind that the one film that best captures the spirit of Tiki (though ethnographically not 100% Tiki) is "I am Cuba":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-IGICoMOso
(beginning at 00:55, but don't skip the opening camera move - a classic)
...and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNPTu7gAYxo
Here I mention the connection to Trader Vic's:
Havana Before Castro
It stands as a great irony of 20th Century pop culture that the film that best portrays the look and atmosphere of the late 50s/early 60s Tiki lounge is a movie that was directed and shot by RUSSIANS in CUBA as an ANTI-CAPITALIST propaganda film condemning the colonial chauvinism of American tourists 
The thing is, one can tell how much FUN the Russian artists had shooting these scenes. The result was that in Communist Cuba and Russia the film was a flop: The Cuban critics deemed it too cliche, the Russians too seductive. Decades later, after the miss-understood Russian director and cameraman had passed away, Francis Ford Coppola re-discovered it as a cinematic gem. When I first came upon the nightclub scenes, I thought I was seeing an artfully styled contemporary music video, not something shot in 1964 !
[ This Message was edited by: bigbrotiki 2013-06-08 14:53 ]
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The Blue Kahuna
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 01, 2011
Posts: 380
From: Points East & West
| Posted: 2013-06-08 04:50 am Permalink
That was interesting . . .
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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 11549
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
| Posted: 2013-06-08 05:56 am Permalink
"Interessante? No es interessante, Senor..." AMAZING! FASCINATING! ...just like the city of Havana, used as a playground for so many different political and cultural currents of the 20th Century:
Spanish colonialism, descendants of African slaves, American capitalism with cocktail culture and midcentury modernism, Russian communism - all in a nutshell, a mini history of the last century!
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MadDogMike
Grand Member (7 years) 
Joined: Mar 30, 2008
Posts: 8202
From: The Anvil of the Sun
| Posted: 2013-06-08 06:44 am Permalink
Si, los dos peliculas son muy interesantes!
I know this is a bit off topic for movie critique but I like the way they used the hanging giant bamboo as room dividers in I Am Cuba. Looks like the movie failed miserably at showing how unattractive capitalism was  Seems that the race lines were more blurred in 1964 Havana than in 1964 US
Buzzy, can you make a Mystic Tiki of Weyamoa with special powers? That might come in handy 
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[ This Message was edited by: MadDogMike 2013-06-08 07:22 ]
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The Granite Tiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jul 02, 2005
Posts: 817
From: Nashua, NH
| Posted: 2013-06-08 07:26 am Permalink
I like "Tiara Tahiti" with James Mason. It's now on YouTube in segments. (don't mind the German subtitles at the beginning, they go away)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZH-jMN19Cg
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Hearn
Grand Member (first year) 
Joined: Jan 30, 2008
Posts: 121
From: Washington DC
| Posted: 2013-06-08 07:37 am Permalink
How about Mutiny on the Bounty (Marlon Brando version)
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MaukaHale
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 07, 2012
Posts: 623
From: The base of the Volcano
| Posted: 2013-06-08 07:44 am Permalink
One of my favorites is the 1951 version of "Bird of Paradise" in technicolor. Starring Lois Jourdan and Debra Paget.
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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 11549
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
| Posted: 2013-06-09 04:37 am Permalink
Here is my take take on this matter: Folks tend to forget (or have never been aware of) that until the mid- to late 50s, the Tiki was not used much in Polynesian pop as image or name. As the memory of my publications is fading into the background, all kinds of things Hawaiian, bamboo, cocktail or South Seas are being called "Tiki" now. But why would one call a film that was always called a "South Seas movie" a "Tiki movie" now? These are related but different cultural genres to me.
What defines Tiki style and makes it unique is the fact that, yes, it was informed by all that Polynesian pop which came in the decades before it, but it was a new urban American phenomenon, defined by the juxtaposition of modernism and primitivism, by the two antipodes co-exisiting together. AND it was a cultural current unrecognized by the media, that is why there is practically NO film footage that adequately portrays "Tiki style" out there, and no clear "Tiki Movie".
Around the time Tiki became popular in the late 50s, and definitely by the early 60s, TV was becoming the new medium, while Hollywood movies were repeating themselves. That's why there is "Tiki TV", with series like "Hawaiian Eye" and "Adventures in Paradise", using Tikis as major props ( though with many of the plots repeating time-worn South Seas cliches )
[ This Message was edited by: bigbrotiki 2013-06-09 04:39 ]
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naugatiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jan 02, 2004
Posts: 858
From: Port Angeles, Wa
| Posted: 2013-06-09 2:56 pm Permalink
[quote]
On 2013-06-05 20:53, Bay Park Buzzy wrote:
Before John-O names off a bunch of 1940's crap we'll never get around to watching, I cast my vote for:
Bikini A Go Go!
Looks like it's been also released under the title
Curse of the Erotic Tiki
"Curse of the Erotic Tiki"
When the Mystic Tiki of Weyamea turns up at the little shop known as The Bikini a Go-Go, all sorts of mayhem break loose! It seems whoever wears the necklace loses all of their sexual inhabitions and literally can't control themselves!
The sexy comedy builds rapidly as an Evil Villain-ess unleashes her Robot henchmen to bring back the Tiki at any cost!
Starring:
Beverly Lynne (pictured)
Stacy Burke (pictured)
Nikki Fritz (pictured)
Cailey Taylor (pictured)
Jay Richardson
Eric Warren
John Swipe
It's nice to know tiki "borrowing" isn't limited to mugs
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Atomic Tiki Punk
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jul 19, 2009
Posts: 7048
From: Costa Misery
| Posted: 2013-06-09 3:25 pm Permalink
To be serious for a moment (why are you rolling your eyes?) I agree with Sven
we are really loosing focus on what is "Tiki" vs disparate yet associated influences
I know of no movie I would call a "Tiki Movie" & I watch a lot of movies
But the ones that do capture the essence of classic Tiki are:
The Apartment: all the scenes in the Tiki Bar/Chinese restaurant just capture the atmosphere so well.
Hell's Half Acre: it is a Noir where most of the action goes down in a classic Tiki bar filmed on location in Don The Beachcomber in Waikiki.
The Blue Gardenia: More Noir from Fritz Lang and a nice turn from Raymond Burr and to many "Polynesian Pearl Divers"
Where Danger Lives: Like John-O likes to say "Robert Mitchum is Tiki"
Bachelor in Paradise: Bob Hope in a Mid-Century modern comedy with a great scene in a Tiki bar
Add to the list Donovan's Reef & Blue Hawaii just for fun ,this is just off the top of my head......
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Thurston Howell IV
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Apr 08, 2013
Posts: 106
From: Hervey Bay Australia
| Posted: 2013-06-09 4:30 pm Permalink
OK here's my 2 cents worth. What could be more 'tiki' than the scenes in Kim Novac's exotica boutique in Bell Book and Candle?
And I know it's old hat but the whole of the footage in South Pacific where Billis takes Lt. Joe Cable (of Cable, Cable & Cable) to the bore's tooth ceremonial is quintessential polynesia pop. That little hut in the hills where Liat is presumably deflowered by Joe Cable could be your perfect tiki bar and in fact many years later I tried to recreate the pivoting doors of that hut in my own tiki space - in this photo.
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