Hard Ticket to Hawaii is a 1987 cult classic directed by Andy Sidaris, whose oeuvre of films has been summarized by Sidaris himself as “Bullets, Bombs, and Babes“ (or Boobs). It exists in a lineup of other low-budget passion projects and B-list titles, like David A. Prior’s Deadly Prey (1987), Woo-sang Park and Y.K. Kim’s Miami Connection (1988), Amir Shervan’s Samurai Cop (1991), and most (in) famously, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (2003).
When I discuss Hard Ticket to Hawaii’s “accidental feminism”, it is in the context of a panoply of misogynistic, macho, often violent cult films. For example, in The Room, the sex scene is so excruciating to film that actress Juliette Danielle Worden refused to film a second one. In Deadly Prey, the protagonist’s wife is kidnapped and tortured to manipulate him.
None of these films have female protagonists; most only have one female character. Against this backdrop of white guys doing martial arts, awkwardly throwing footballs, and mercenaries slaughtering people in the woods, Hard Ticket to Hawaii stands out: tacky and crude but also playful and strangely earnest.
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In Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), pilots for Molokai Cargo, stumble across a cache of diamonds meant for gangster Seth Romero (Rodrigo Obregón). Donna, along with her himbo colleagues, Rowdy (Ron Moss) and Jade (Harold Diamond), is an operative of “the Agency”, while Taryn is a civilian in a Witness Protection Program. Romero and his gang try to retrieve the diamonds while Donna and Taryn try to figure out the puzzle, pulling in assistance from Rowdy and Jade.
There is also a “contaminated snake made deadly by toxic cancer-infested rats” running loose on the island. In the end, the bad guys and the snake are blown up, and the Agency team relaxes on a yacht, debating possible legal loopholes that will allow them to keep the diamonds.
Hard Ticket to Hawaii creates a fantasy for its audience, operating at two levels. The first is the obvious fantasy aimed at the male viewer: a world full of beautiful blondes with long legs whose aviation uniforms include hot pants and low-cut tops.
Beneath this voyeuristic imagining, however, I see a fantasy open to the female viewer, one in which the beautiful Playboy models are highly skilled government agents, smarter and more talented than their male counterparts. In Hard Ticket to Hawaii, a woman can fight off the bad guy and then relax into the well-muscled arms of her affectionate but dopey love interest.
Like in a romance novel, the women are the main movers of the plot and find career success, personal fulfilment, and love. Unlike a romance novel, women are not the primary audience of Hard Ticket to Hawaii or any of Sidaris’ other films.
I describe this as “accidental feminism”; I see it as a direct but unintended byproduct of the film’s sexist agenda. That is, in creating a film that so entirely and explicitly objectifies women, Sidaris has accidentally created situations that demand feminist narrative solutions.
Hard Ticket to Hawaii Is Not Paradise All the Time
To be clear, Hard Ticket to Hawaii is incredibly sexist. I characterize the film as sexist rather than misogynistic because these scenes come across as joyfully uncomplicated. The director wanted to film attractive, blonde, buxom women running around in Hawaii. It goes almost no deeper than that.
There are numerous scenes where female characters, most played by former Playboy models, take any excuse to appear topless. The most laughably egregious example of this is a scene in which Donna and Taryn head for the jacuzzi to figure out what to do with the mysterious package they found in a remote-controlled toy helicopter. “I do my best thinking there,” laughs Donna.
They step into the jacuzzi, bare-breasted, examine the diamonds, decide on a plan of action, and leave the hot tub again. This all takes 40 seconds.
However, a few scenes do exhibit nastier forms of misogyny. One example is near the end of Hard Ticket to Hawaii, when Jade rescues his love interest Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) from the gangsters. Edy has been tied up and gagged. Her boyfriend comments on the set-up, calling it “kinky sex” before releasing her. This scene evoked an unpleasant groan from the audience I watched it with: his “joke” situates the good guy boyfriend in the same abusive position as her kidnappers and torturers.
In another scene, a sportscaster, played by director Sidaris, is accused by his date of “practically raping” her the previous night. He shrugs and replies, “That was last night, Charlotte, this is today.”
All of which is to say that as I go on to discuss the elements of “accidental” feminism in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, I am doing so with awareness of the much larger sexist paradigm that shapes the film. It is a sexist film. It objectifies all its female characters. It was created by a man who built his career on filming beautiful women for ratings. Any readers who read Hard Ticket to Hawaii as misogynistic, chauvinist, and/or irredeemable because of these elements will find no argument from me.
The Film’s Female Spies and Heroes
Yet, there is something more to it. To start with, unlike many major mainstream motion pictures, Hard Ticket to Hawaii easily passes the Bechdel-Wallace test. The Bechdel-Wallace test is not evidence of a lack of sexism or misogyny: there are plenty of terrible films that pass it. It is intended as a basic test of how few films can manage even its simple precepts. Nonetheless, Hard Ticket to Hawaii contains more dialogue between two women that is not about men than many other such films of this ilk.
Donna and Taryn are competent, professional, and motivated. They have powerful, masculine-coded jobs (a pilot and an operative of a secretive Agency). They have complex backstories that inform their motivations and decisions. Taryn is in Hawaii with a new identity. Donna is a career agent, inspired by her father, an operative of the Agency before her. We hear that he died while saving her life, a memory that clearly drives Donna to strive for excellence in her own career.
Donna resists Rowdy’s attempts to prevent her from working in drug enforcement and “controlling her life”. She fixes the cut telephone wires at her house, and when questioned about how she did it over the phone, replies, “With tools! … No, Dickson, I’ve never been mistaken for a man. Have you?” We see a depth to the characters of Donna and Taryn that we don’t see in the men.
Donna and Taryn are action heroes, cast from the James Bond mold. Taryn, specifically, is a big fan of the British spy; one wonders if her dream is to be with him or to be him. Her love interest in Hard Ticket to Hawaii is football player Jimmy John Jackson (Wolf Larson), the male version of the blonde arm candy that her hero Bond would seduce. He is also a character so fascinatingly dull he gets a monologue about vitamins.
The climax of Taryn’s character arc is when she is encouraged by the other operatives to stay behind as they raid the gangsters’ house and rescue Edy. She is a civilian, after all, and not a trained agent like the others. Taryn refuses, saying, “I wouldn’t let my friends down. I’m in.”
Donna’s hero moment in Hard Ticket to Hawaii is quite different. It occurs at the end of the film when she is attacked by Seth Romero in her home. This scene mirrors the first time the gangsters attacked Donna and Taryn in their home, when Donna’s shaky shooting left Romero only scratched.
In the reprise, Donna is alone. She removes her makeup, washes her face, and relaxes, becoming vulnerable. She is metaphorically removing her armour. It is at this moment that her home is invaded and she is attacked by Romero. Donna, startled and afraid, nonetheless fights off Romero; first with a hastily loaded harpoon, then again with his own knife. Unlike other fight scenes, she is unprepared for this one.
Donna’s victory over Romero is unglamorous and unsexy, taking place in the domestic, private realm of a bathroom. Being attacked by a man, while alone at home, conjures a deep-rooted fear in many women. It is the setup for so many movie plots: the murdered woman, the serial killer’s victim, the foolish blonde in a horror movie.
Inverting this trope, Donna fights off the villain, surprised and unprepared though she is. Rowdy appears at the end to “save” her, but she has already dispatched Romero (with the help of the contaminated snake exploding out of the toilet) and has rendered the snake harmless to boot. Her self-reliance creates narrative catharsis for the female viewer; Donna doesn’t need Rowdy to save her. Nor do we.
Empowered Women Draw the Line
As I said, Hard Ticket to Hawaii is a sexist film. It is also occasionally self-aware of its sexism, with puzzling results. Sidaris both wrote and directed the film, creating uneasy moments where a breezy, cheerful objectification of attractive women exists side by side with predatory and uncomfortable examples of the same.
Compare, for example, the jacuzzi scene where Taryn and Donna solve a puzzle with the one in which Ashley (David DeShay), the maitre d’, introduces a waitress to a table of customers by presenting her breasts while touching her neck and chest. “I believe you met these two and the beautiful young lady that brought them here today,” he leers. The waitress is visibly uncomfortable, leaning away with an expression of distaste, and the table of customers laughs nervously.
Another peculiarly self-aware scene is the softcore love scene on the beach between Taryn and Jimmy John Jackson. Jackson jokes about being a British spy, showing his awareness of Taryn’s desires. Donna radios them, asking what Taryn is doing. “I’m pretending to be a mere receptacle for Jimmy John’s desires,” she replies.
This joke serves as an ironic commentary on the typical role of Bond girls, mirroring the one she played in her romance with Jimmy John Jackson just a moment before. She recognizes that function but also subverts it, drawing attention to it, making it a joke, and later by being the cool spy and action hero herself.
These examples act as a particular litmus test for Hard Ticket to Hawaii’s sexism: how far is too far? Sometimes, it is perfectly fine to ogle women’s breasts and engage in sexualized banter. Sometimes, it isn’t. Sometimes, a woman will act like she’s an object for a man’s desire… but ultimately it’s just pretend, a game she’s playing for her own desires, but it’s set aside when there’s work to do.
Hard Ticket to Hawaii Complicates Female Identity
Thus far, I have focused primarily on the film’s protagonists: Donna, Taryn, and, to a lesser extent, Rowdy. Now, let’s consider another example, which both furthers and complicates my interpretation: Michael/Michele (played by Michael A. Andrews). Michele first appears as one of many attractive blondes, working behind the bar at Edy’s. We soon learn that she is a member of Seth Romero’s gang, working as a spy to learn about the Agency’s plans.
One particular scene with Michael/Michele offers a rich text for examining Hard Ticket to Hawaii’s ideas about gender and womanhood. In a narratively superfluous but deeply comedic scene, Michele goes into the back room of the restaurant to change. Before she can, one of the other female workers arrives after a swim. She poses topless in front of Michael/Michele, extolling the virtues of daily exercise in order to “keep these puppies firm”.
The camera focuses on Michele’s reaction, barely taking the opportunity to linger on the woman’s nude body. While the conversation is about breasts, for once, they are not on display to the audience. Instead, Michele takes the audience’s place, appearing bored, unimpressed, and impatient with her half-naked colleague. Even the artful Japanese figure on her sweater seems to be rolling its eyes.
Michele also delivers the greatest burn in the entire film. The other waitress says, “A healthy body and mind are very important.” Michele deadpans, “I see you’re…ah…halfway there.”)
On first viewing, Michele’s skepticism about the coworker’s breast-forward priorities creates a moment of resistance to the boob-positive message of the rest of the film. Her response questions the centrality of female physical features in definitions of womanhood.
Immediately afterwards, however, Michele removes her dress, wig, and makeup and changes into male clothing. Michele is revealed to be Michael, one of Romero’s gangsters. Hard Ticket to Hawaii takes pains to show us that Michael/Michele are played by the same actor.
It is remarkable that in a film with some truly terrible design choices (the snake puppet is comically bad), Michael/Michele’s disguise is so thorough and so convincing. This cross-dressing is so narratively unnecessary that I am at a loss to explain it (were it not for the fact that so much of Hard Ticket to Hawaii defies explanation).
In this light, the scene with the topless coworker becomes even more complex. Depending on Michael/Michele’s identity, different interpretive possibilities emerge. Is Michele’s reaction that of a disinterest of a gay man in drag presented with a naked woman? Or the discomfort of a trans person whose body does not align with that of her female colleague? Is he a man who cross-dresses purely for professional purposes? This is perhaps the most straightforward interpretation, situating the character in a cinematic tradition of cross-dressing, along with films like Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959), Chris Columbus’ Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria (1982), to name but a few.
There are longstanding associations in film between queer identities and villainy, and Sidaris is not immune to or above using a lazy trope in his storytelling. The film never addresses directly or indirectly how the audience should understand Michael/Michele’s identity. By virtue of its silence, Hard Ticket to Hawaii creates space for multiple interpretations, including queer and trans readings of the character. Like everything to do with gender in this film, Michael/Michele resists simplification.
Gun=Phallus=Power: Yes, This Metaphor Again
The power of Hard Ticket to Hawaii‘s female characters is articulated visually through the metaphor of weapons. The women are each shown with increasing “firepower”; the growing size of each weapon is associated with increased power and dominance. At the beginning of the film, Donna attacks Earring with a throwing star, a small, discreet weapon that connects to the film’s vaguely Asian motifs. Taryn is weaponless.
When they are attacked by Seth Romero and his gang the first time, Donna shoots him in the face, but the bullet “just scratches” him. She is furious with herself for losing control. Later, she fights Romero with a harpoon gun and a knife, and the battle against the gangsters culminates with Donna shooting down their helicopter with a big ol’ bazooka.
Weapons, and especially guns, function as metaphorical phalluses, the seat of masculine power. The bazooka belongs to Rowdy, and the ongoing joke is that he’s such a hopeless marksman that he needs a bazooka to hit a moving target. As the helicopter lifts off, Rowdy passes it to Donna, taking her gun instead. Rowdy, however, is not emasculated by Donna taking over the larger gun. Hard Ticket to Hawaii depicts no sense of shame or embarrassment on Rowdy’s part for choosing this action.
One imagines Sidaris wanted to capture an epic final shot to the battle with the gangsters: the hot blonde taking out the chopper with a big ass gun. The metaphorical exchange of power is the accidental feminist undercurrent, only possible because of the aesthetic principles of Bullets, Bombs, and Babes.
When Donna hefts the bazooka and makes the shot (the moving target that Rowdy was perennially unable to hit), she officially and visually becomes the one in charge in their relationship. There is an interesting contemporary parallel to this in George Miller’s 2015 film, Mad Max. After missing two shots at the oncoming War Boys and with only one bullet left, Max hands the gun to Furiosa and offers his shoulder as a mount. She takes the shot and doesn’t miss.
Sidaris underlines this message of female empowerment in the final scene of his film, where Donna and Rowdy confront Mr. Chang (Peter Bromilow), the drug kingpin. Sidaris films them from a low angle, guns pointed just past the camera. Donna’s gun is noticeably longer than Rowdy’s; he shoots a small glance at it, and then at his own.
This moment is his acknowledgement of the change in their dynamic and her position of power. He also acknowledges it verbally, thanking her for shooting Mr. Chang since he probably would have missed. It’s a far cry from the beginning of the film when Rowdy was trying to keep Donna out of danger.
Ultimately, Hard Ticket to Hawaii is an outrageous, funny, sexy, and cocaine-fueled romp. (I wasn’t even able to talk about the weaponized frisbees, the blow-up doll-wielding skateboarder, or the side plot about football players swearing on live TV). It reeks of 1980s patriarchy: big boobs, blonde hair, and short shorts.
However, in the film’s undergrowth, like that snake that slithers throughout, are empowering feminist and even progressive moments. Hard Ticket to Hawaii may be, in its unlikely way, a realistic depiction of the way society and culture engage with gender and feminism; “It’s not paradise all the time.”
Works Cited
Levin, Josh. “The Man Who Invented Sports Television’s ‘Honey Shot’”. Slate Magazine. 7 July 2014.
Luther, Jessica “Beyond Bodice-Rippers: How Romance Novels Came to Embrace Feminism”. The Atlantic. 18 March 2013.
Ragsdale, Melissa. “Are Romance Novels Feminist? 7 Ways The Genre Promotes Female Equality”. Bustle. 22 August 2016.