Paradise

(Stuart Gillard, 1982)
It is a positively heroic quest to endure the ten thousand walking-camel shots that stand between the viewer and Phoebe Cates' teenage anatomy. And after the horndogs are thrown their meat, we are then forced to endure running commentary from a truly hateful pair of trained chimps, who eventually start clocking more screen time than the hairless bipeds. Since by then the human performers are down to Cates and the grotesque Willie Aames, this might seem like a small mercy, but believe me when I tell you that it is not. The protracted flight from danger, the narrative of sexual awakening, the abrupt resort to nuclear-family domesticity, and the 'climactic' battle scene are unified by a jaw-slackening contempt for the audience, lazily connecting the Blue Lagoon dots like grade-schoolers acting out Star Wars in their treehouse. It is so hopelessly bad that when they renege on the familiar not-really-dead trick ending, you actually resent it - not least because of the missed opportunity to take a machete to Aames.