By James Hollis Smith

Summer is almost here. Almost. But Mr. Skin knows that you're sick of waiting.

The weeks between Spring Break and School's Out are, in a way, the cruelest ones. You've been teased by the bevies of reveling collegiate beauties in exotic ports as they party just prior to finals and yet, back home, a nip remains in the air and, unfortunately, only in the air as it's still to frigid for your local freakies to lose their sweaters and let fully fly.

We feel your pain. Fortunately, home video provides a plethora of comforts in the form of flicks dedicated to bikini babes, beach bunnies and surfing sexbombs that will carry you from these final weeks of wintry woe into the opening strip-downs of the summer season. The following are some of our very favorites.

Kowa-bunghole!

CORVETTE SUMMER (1978)
Bikini Babe:Annie Potts
Summer Summary: Luke Skywalker turns in his landspeeder for a bitchin' 'vette in this summer ode to muscle cars and sock-stuffed bras. When some baddie steals the corvette stingray that Ken (Mark Hammill) and his friends built in shop class, he sets out on an odyssey to find it. Along the way he hooks up with hooker-in-training Annie Potts, gets attacked by a chain-wielding freak, and even gets to kick Danny Bonaduce's ass! Annie's every boy's favorite dashboard ornament for many reasons, not the least of which is her custom-built van (complete with waterbed), to ensure all dreams are wet. Annie's not yet a hooker, so she's still got that girl-next-door shine, and you want to polish her!
Sink or Swim:Corvette Summer is a rare opportunity to catch Designing Women's Annie Potts in a state of undress, so it's worthy eye candy for that reason alone. Besides, it's your last chance to see Luke before he got his mechanical hand! "Use the choke, Luke!"

THE BIKINI CAR WASH COMPANY (1992) (Picture: - )
Bikini Babes:Suzanne Ager,Kimberly Bee,Rikki Brando,Sara Suzanne Brown,Neriah Davis,Kristi Ducati,Missy Warner
Summer Summary: When a nerd takes over his uncle's unsuccessful carwash for the summer, a busty entrepreneur (Kristi Ducati) sees her chance to make a killing. She and her friends will wash cars in their bikinis, showing off her and her girlfriends' delicious curves. Thus began a straight-to-video goldmine. This movie was so successful that it spawned one official sequel and twelve thousand imitators. Kristi Ducati uncorks her best nudity since Sorceress and Neriah Davis shows us that you can wash a car even quicker without wearing that cumbersome bikini. Now that's the kind of initiative that might get her a big promotion!
Sink or Swim: Late-night-cable staples Neriah Davis and Missy Warner look delicious in and out of their bikinis, but the real treasure here is the criminally underused Kristi. Sporting one of the best bods in movie history, Ms. Ducati is a teenager's semen-soaked bedroom-wall poster come to life. Thanks to appearing in Meatballs 4, Intimate Obsession and this juicy gem all in rapid succession, Kristi ensured that 1992 was the year of Ducati!

THE BIKINI CAR WASH COMPANY II (1993)
Bikini Babes:Melissa Barrick,Rikki Brando,Sara Suzanne Brown,Neriah Davis,Kristi Ducati,Missy Warner
Summer Summary: They're baaaaaaaaaack! Everyone's favorite carwash was up and running again with this sequel that manages to cram in even more nudity and twice the musical suds-soaked montages of the original! This time, the ladies advertise their 40,000-watt chests on a TV station, where lingerie replaces bikinis, and nudity soon replaces lingerie. If water goes well on bikinis, what goes well on lingerie? Champagne, of course! How else would you celebrate a business merger? There's some sort of plot dealing with a corrupt executive who buys (then wants to bulldoze) the carwashes, but he's not a problem for long once Kristi, Neriah, Missy, Sara, Melissa and Rikki pop their tops! There's even a safe-sex message as condoms are used with the frequency of an OCD hand washing.
Sink or Swim: All the girls are back, but one new addition brings just the right amount of spunk-inducing trunk to the table: Melissa Barrick. You may remember her (or at least her twin-cam engines) from The Pamela Principle (1991), where Melissa had us standing on more than our principles, but the beauteous babe brings out the heavy firepower here, and manages more mamm-time than any other car-washer on board!

GLITCH! (1988) (Picture: 1 - - 3)
Bikini Babes:Laura Albert,Christina Cardan,Teri Weigel,Marjean Holden,Becky Mullen
Summer Summary: Two morons holed up in a mansion with nothing but beer and bikini babes to satisfy them? Yes, it's the '80s all right, when more of these thinly plotted mammsterpieces got produced than ever. Thank God! We dare you to keep all hands on deck while Playmate-turned-porn bait Teri Weigel turns on her doggie-style charm in the bathtub. A topless Teri ensures that the poor guy in the tub just gets dirtier and dirtier. Not only does Al Bundy dream girl Teri show off her then-recent breast job, but former Gorgeous Lady of Wrestling Becky Mullen is the definition of poolside-poon perfection!
Sink or Swim: So bikini-clad babes by the pool don't do it for you? Not happy with topless hotties in hot tubs? Well, how about a rib-tickling performance by Isaac from The Love Boat? That's right, Ted Lange is onboard (with a salt-n-pepper beard and a nasty attitude) as a Nevada tough guy. I don't think we're in Puerta Vallarta anymore, Toto!

HARD TICKET TO HAWAII (1989)
Bikini Babes:Hope Marie Carlton,Dona Spier
Summer Summary: James Bond had one problem, and it was right between his legs. Who wants to watch a super spy riding jet skis, shinnying up drainpipes and hopping in-and-out of the sack unless it's a woman? Wise, old sage Andy Sidaris realized this and began an outlandishly sexy, Hawaiian espionage series of flicks featuring more nude Playboy playmates and Penthouse pets than you can shake your martini at. Hard Ticket was the second installment in the Sidaris spy canon, but it's really the first, since it introduces Hope Marie Carlton and Dona Spier, Andy's two stellar super agents. The vixens battle evil while trying to track down some missing diamonds, a killer snake and a face-scarred baddie. But we all know the real plot: Hope Marie and Dona romping topless through hot tubs, choppy surf and shower stalls. Viva la Andy!
Sink or Swim: Campy storylines and bodacious babes are one thing, but there are moments in this script that are pure brilliance! Dona tells a topless and showering Hope Marie that she's getting soft, Hope Marie retorts: "I'm supposed to be soft. I'm a woman." And when Dona brags of her man having four inches, Hope Marie points out that four inches is not a lot. "But I measured him from the floor up," Donna replies. Brilliance.

BIKINI BISTRO (1995)
Bikini Babes:Amy Lynn Baxter,Marilyn Chambers,Isabelle Fortea,Joan Gerardi
Summer Summary: Filmed on a g-string budget and lacking the campy charm of the Bikini Carwash franchise, Bikini Bistro has one strong element that even the Carwash films lacked: Penthouse pet Amy Lynn Baxter! Add to that, porn-vet and Ivory Snow-box covergirl Marilyn Chambers, and you've got a May-December one-two punch that's hard to beat. Amy Lynn's vegetarian business is foundering and she has just four days to come up with the cash to pay the landlord or she'll lose it all. Marilyn comes along and has the idea of serving customers in bikinis. Sound familiar? Who cares? The Monkees already proved originality has nothing to do with rock. And these bikini babes rock!
Sink or Swim: Though Amy Lynn's figure may be seen to longer advantage in the T&A treats Broadcast Bombshells, Affairs of the Heart and Golfballs!, she nonetheless manages to turn a storeroom-boff quickie into a outer-body experience. And what a body it is!

THE BLUE LAGOON (1980)
Bikini Babe:Brooke Shields (and her amazingly buoyant body double)
Summer Summary: This film is perhaps the first strong case made for body doubles. Beautiful Brooke Shields drives us so crazy with her pouty lips and electric eyes, that by the time skinny-dipping rolls around we're in a flesh-hungry frenzy, ready to devour Brooke's nude, aquatic and delicious double. Who wouldn't want to be stranded with the hottest castaway since Ginger Grant? Even with Christopher Atkins's acting chops as dull as a child's scissors (and a script that seems as if it were translated from Esperanto), nothing can stop Brooke from turning even this celluloid shell game into surf-and-turf gourmet meal. This long-legged creature from The Blue Lagoon is so delectable it's scary!
Sink or Swim: Bearing in mind that before this film, our Brooke was a mere child in Pretty Baby, and after this film she morphed into the fully-clothed sitcom slapstick stumbler of Brenda Starr and Suddenly Susan, The Blue Lagoon is clearly the high-water-mark of Brooke's career. And just look at those coconuts.

BIKINI DRIVE-IN (1995)
Bikini Babes:Michelle Bauer,Deborah Dutch,Nikki Fritz,Becky LeBeau,Tane McClure,Ashlie Rhey
Summer Summary: Well, here it is: the best of the Bikini Carwash rip-offs! Leave it to shlockmeister par excellence Fred Olin Ray to combine multi-position sex scenes, men in rubber suits, movie spoofs, a bumbling sheriff and borderline-retarded Mafia hit men into a B-movie bouillabaisse that's long on fun and short on clothes! Scream queen Michelle Bauer plays you guessed it, a scream queen. Nikki Fritz plays a bespectacled nerd whose sex appeal goes unnoticed until she puts on her bikini. Apparently this nerd received a boob job in between visits to the optometrist! With cinematic satire worthy of Amazon Women on the Moon, and wacky cameos from such Hollywood Z-grade luminaries as Conrad Brooks and Forrest J. Ackerman, Ray does the unthinkable: He makes a film that's watchable even when the lens isn't filled with breasts!
Sink or Swim: Salacious sexbombs abound in this glorious goosebumper, but one TA-teaser manages to stretch D-cups ahead of the rest: Becky LeBeau, listed here as Sharona Bonner! The buxom boobtastic babe not only dances in her bikini for the drive-in customers, and topless for a DJ, but she straps on the mistress-worthy leather for a titillating SM cowgirl-riding segment we've been waiting our whole lives for! You can't spell LeBeautiful without LeBeau!

BLUE CRUSH (2002) (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3)
Bikini Babes:Kate Bosworth,Sanoe Lake,Michelle Rodriguez
Summer Summary: What do you get when you cross Big Wednesday with S Club 7? Why, you get surfing hotties that break their boards and flex their gourds! Captivating Kate Bosworth plays a surfing prodigy who still hasn't recovered from her near drowning and doesn't have the guts to grab a really big wave anymore. But when she hooks up with an NFL hunk, she's on her way to recovery. Got that, girls? Rich men equal success. Now, onto the important stuff: There's some nice anonymous groin-grinding in a local dance club and hefty bikini screen-time throughout. Girlfight's Michelle Rodriguez is especially spicy in her bikini top and daisy dukes. One of the film's most magical moments is when Kate reenacts the Flashdance underneath-the-shirt bra removal. Art imitates art in the most tasty ways!
Sink or Swim: Although we all thought we'd get more than an eyeful of Kate's Bustworth as a porn pixie in Wonderland, Kate turned in an oddly skingy performance, which ensures Blue Crush remains the best bet to see this gnarly nubile in all her next-to-nude magnificence.

BIKINI SUMMER II (1992)
Bikini Babes:Avalon Anders,Melinda Armstrong,Carrie Bittner,Tracy Dali,Maureen Flaherty,Jessica Hahn
Summer Summary: Why are some sequels better than their originals? Godfather 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Bikini Summer II. All right, maybe that's a reach. But have you seen Avalon Anders? Swedes just know how to wear a thong! And how about Tracy Dali? There's a 10-minute scene focusing on nothing but her in the shower! If those nuggets aren't enough to whet your appetite, how about the fact that this film was written and directed by Jeff Conaway? That's right, Bobby from TV's Taxi! One look at this film leaves little doubt that our handsome-yet-vacuous friend remains a "hack." Given the poor box-office profits, we can only hope he was on the meter.
Sink or Swim: Yes, the bikini babes are back and yes, they show off their floatation devices with pride, but the big story here is a stunt-casting coup in the form of then-notorious Jessica Hahn! Jess plays a wife whose husband enjoys kinky sex with anyone else but her. Luckily, she has the home-shopping network to keep her company. Guess the Christian network was off the air?

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