This is a totally wacky 70s flick with "stewardesses battling kung-fu killers". The story follows the misadventures of three flight attendants as they travel to the far east. Toby (Pat Anderson) is a newbie going on her first overseas trip (her prior flight experience was the Des Moines-Omaha route... crop dusters have been known to travel greater distances!). She tries dating a doctor she met on the flight, however her overprotective mother (Naomi Stevens) tags along and runs interference every chance she gets. Andrea (Lenore Kasdorf, a lovely Jaclyn Smith prototype) searches Hong Kong, Tokyo and Manila for her boyfriend and is constantly tailed by kung-fu thugs. Sherry (Lyllah Torena) is kidnapped after a yacht party and held captive for a prostitution ring. Everything (bizarrely) comes together in a quick 71 minutes, with numerous fun moments sprinkled throughout. These include Toby going straight from the beach to the airport and stripping to change into her uniform in the back seat of a taxi, providing a pleasant "distraction" to the cab driver (GREAT way to start a flick, by the way!); Andrea fighting off several attackers, including a blind man firing a deadly poison dart from his cane; Toby's numerous attempts to sneak away with her love interest, and a hysterical sequence where Toby's mother goes to great lengths trying to get themselves booked onto a "charter flight tour", not realizing the company is really a front for the prostitution ring at the center of everything. One other note... some of the music might sound familiar to anyone who has seen THE STUDENT NURSES, PRIVATE DUTY NURSES or NIGHT CALL NURSES (three earlier New World Pictures releases). Totally goofy fun that any 70s exploitation/cheesy drive-in movie fan will enjoy.
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morrison-dylan-fan29 June 2012Checking up on Ebay for any rare Drive-In flicks that were currently going for a low amount,I was happy to notice this terrific-looking Drive-In Bubblegum Pop movie being one of the last search results,which led to me deciding to see how far this Drive-In could fly!
The plot:
Barely making it in time for her first flight as a newly appointed stewardess,Toby, (with her protective mother following close behind her) joins fellow stewardesses Andrea and Sherry and gets set for her first ever flight,where despite the attempts of her mum,Toby gets the attention of a "bone doctor" who is very keen on spending more time with Toby after the plane has landed.
Despite Toby and the two more experienced stewardesses each expecting to have some time to relax after the plane has completed its destination,they each soon begin to relies that their initial plans will turn out to be a far from smooth flight.
View on the film:
From the first five minutes of this film,director Cirio H. Santiago makes his three beautiful leading ladies bring a real shine,to an otherwise very disappointing Drive-In movie,with Pat Anderson, (co-star of the terrific,under rated film Dirty'O Neil) Lenore Kasdorf (who later featured in Starship Troppers!) and Lyllah Torena, each being very charismatic and also doing well to bring attention to some moments in Miller Drake's (who has since gone on to do special fx work for some of the all time biggest films!) screenplay that makes each girl pretty distinctive,(From one being a Kung-Fu fighter,to the other having trouble with an over protective mother.)
Sadly,despite having a Kung-Fu fighting stewardess and an easy on the eyes cast who seem prepared to turn this movie into pure Power Pop fun,Santiago instead decides to ruin any of the "pop" feel that the film may have had going for it,by making all of the events which take place after the plane's landing move at an annoyingly slow paced,which is matched by Santiago's dull,still camera moves,which only come to life during the short bursts of Kung-Fu action that give hints of what this film could have been. -
dwremy28 August 2019Movies like Fly Me aren't to be taken seriously. They are to be watched without thinking..the bad martial arts choreography and the nudity helps distract you from the bad acting and storyline. This movie is fun if you want a good laugh and to see what a great example of 70s sexploitation is.
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You get a strong hint early on that this is probably not going to be a good movie when it clearly says (right there in the opening credits) "directed by Ciro Santiago". But compared to the rest of the oeuvre of the infamous Filipino exploitation hack, this is actually not too bad. It's a slight improvement over the similar Santiago film "Cover Girl Models" and it's definitely better than a lot of his other swill like "Vampire Hookers".
This is a "stewardess-spolitation" flick focusing on the various misadventures of a trio of sexy American stewardesses in the Far East. The main story, featuring Lenore Kasdorf, is similar to "Cover Girl Models" with a mixture of half-ass spy antics and half-ass kung-fu fighting. The second story is pure comedy as the Italian-stereotype mother of the newest and most virginal stewardess (Pat Anderson)has tagged along on the trip and goes to great lengths to stop her bubble-headed daughter from getting together with a handsome "bone doctor". The third story though is actually quite sleazy, approaching something out of the European "Black Emanuelle' series, as the third stewardess (Lillah Toreno)gets involved in drug trafficking and falls into the hands of a white-slavery group and ends up tied-up naked and even raped at one point (off-screen).
The dramatic shifts in tone here may be kind of off-putting to those expecting just a sexy, light-hearted romp, but they also serve to make the film more interesting than the usual "stewardess-spolitation" fare (it's especially interesting the way Santigo eventually manges to tie these three disparate plot-lines together). The female cast here is generally strong. Lenore Kasdorf was a familiar TV actress in the 70's, so it's fun to see her in somewhat racier fare. Lillah Toreno, on the other hand, was pretty much exclusively known for sleazy fare like the Gary Graver softcore porn "roughie", "And When She Was Bad". Pat Anderson appeared mostly in other films like this--the two most famous being Santiago's "Cover Girl Models" and the New World favorite "Summer School Teachers". The male cast is less memorable, but the ubiquitous Dick Miller appears in the early scene as a cab driver who repeatedly runs off the road while Anderson's character changes out of her bikini in the back of his cab, and the ever slimy Victor Diaz plays a corrupt Asian official. On the downside, the movie is even more horribly cheap than usual--we know we're supposedly in the Tokyo Airport at one point only because "Tokyo Airport" is written on a frickin' chalkboard in the background! Still, for the stewardess-sploitation genre, this is slightly above average. -
When he started New World Pictures, one of Roger Corman's earliest successes was with the Nurses series of films. Starting with Stephanie Rothman's "The Student Nurses" in 1970, he made a series of light sexploitation films that would follow 4 young women, each with a separate plotline that included topical elements and nudity in films that managed to combine sexploitation with women's liberation. By 1973, he had made four of these, and was looking to take the idea in new directions. Stewardesses are an obvious choice.
Corman was also starting to make films in the Philippines. Jack Hill's early women in prison films had been shot there, and a country that had an existing film industry that was a lot cheaper than the US was attractive. He struck a multi-film production deal with Philippine producer/director Cirio H. Santiago, and this was the first film they made.
This film drops one character from the formula, and we follow three stewardesses very conveniently flying to Southeast Asia on a trip that ends in the Philippines. New stewardess Pat Anderson finds that her mother (Naomi Stevens) has bought a ticket and is accompanying her to keep an eye on her. She tries to romance young doctor Richard Young, while her mother gets in the way and complains about the food. The other two, Lenore Kasdorf and Lyllah Torena, run afoul of sex traffickers. By the end, both plots converge, leading to one issue with the film ... the comedic subplot crashes headlong into the sex trafficking plot resulting in a really abrupt shift in tone.
Generally, this one doesn't really work. It's an early experiment in making essentially a Philippine film disguised as an American one and the seams really show. It feels like entire scenes that might connect parts of the plot together just weren't shot, and some scenes seem to have been shot much later and just patched in. There's an opening sequence involving Dick Miller as a cab driver that was shot in LA by Curtis Hanson, and Jonathan Demme's directorial debut was shooting a really terrible martial arts sequence that's dropped in mid-film (and never really explained.
Santiago made more films for Corman and they are all better than this one, including another pass at the Nurses formula involving models. Philippine exploitation icon Vic Diaz pops up as a police man. -
goods11630 January 2020So-called martial arts scenes look like something some teenagers may do pretending to be karate experts. Plot virtually non-existent. Barely watchable grade Z film. There is zero reason to watch this unless you are a specialty 70s film buff (like I am) or are interesting in the nudity.
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BandSAboutMovies11 March 2023Despite being directed by Cirio H. Santiago (so many movies to pick from, but today I'd mention Vampire Hookers and Wheels of Fire), Roger Corman didn't want this movie to look like it was shot in the Philippines. That's why it has that opening with Toby (Pat Anderson, Bonnie's Kids) getting picked up by Dick Miller and taken to LAX. It was shot by Curtis Hanson. Some of the kung fu scenes were shot by Johnathan Demme, so man, three directors!
There's also Sherry (Lyllah Torena) who juggles men at every destination and sneaks drugs everywhere she goes, which ends up getting her trapped in white slavery. Then there's Andrea (Lenore Kasdorf), who is kung fu fighting through Hong Kong while Toby is hounded by her mom (Naomi Stevens) and pursued by a hunky doctor (Richard Young, who was the man who gave Indiana Jones his hat at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).
In case you were wondering, yes, Vic Diaz shows up. As a cop, no less!
Yet another in the series of Roger Corman female occupation movies, this one is quite episodic and ends, as one imagines, with all the ladies meeting up to save one another's days. I imagine most people were watching this through steamed up windows at a drive-in in 1973 and weren't thinking of the story structure or multiple directors. -
Reasonably engaging drive-in concoction about three extremely delectable stewardesses - Toby (Pat Anderson), Andrea (Lenore Kasdorf), and Sherry (Lyllah Torena) who have misadventures comedic, dramatic, and action packed in various exotic locales. It starts out as a pretty lightweight romp but gets more serious - well, so to speak - as it goes along, as Sherry is revealed to be part of some criminal activities that soon involve Andrea as well. Meanwhile, sweet and naive Toby tries to have a love life, as she is pursued by a handsome bone specialist doctor (Richard Young) but her enormously overbearing, stereotyped mother (Naomi Stevens) keeps spoiling all of her fun. Now, the mother character is funny for just a bit but wears out her welcome before very long, detracting somewhat from the entertainment value, but overall "Fly Me" is decent, breezy exploitation fare from the prolific Filipino director Cirio Santiago, as it works the element of intrigue into its rather busy story and juggles its assorted story threads for a reasonably well paced 73 minutes. It gets off to a great start with luscious Anderson in a hurry to get to the airport and giving a cab driver (Dick Miller, in a great cameo) an eyeful as she dresses during the (eventful) ride. We all get an eyeful of the lovely ladies along the way, so there are absolutely no complaints in that department. The movie is clunky and crude, but then that actually adds to its charms. The martial arts scenes (credited to David Chow) are amusingly inept. Towards the end, Santiago and company treat us to concurrent scenes of climactic action. The performers - for the most part - are fun to watch, especially the three starring babes. (Anderson and Santiago would work together again on "T.N.T. Jackson".) Young, whom you may recognize as having also been in "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" is likable enough, and actors Ken Metcalfe and Vic Diaz, familiar faces to fans of Filipino cinema, make brief and welcome contributions. Maybe not particularly memorable, but that doesn't really matter; the movie is perfectly acceptable entertainment while it lasts. Trivia note: Jonathan Demme (credited with "film direction") was the second unit director, and Joe Dante is credited as dialogue director. Seven out of 10.
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Woodyanders29 April 2008A trio of sexy young stewardesses have all sorts of misadventures as they travel all over the world: klutzy eager beaver rookie Toby (an endearingly daffy performance by busty blonde babe Pat Anderson) romances handsome doctor David (likable Richard Young) while being forced to contend with her meddlesome overbearing shrew of a mother (a hilariously histrionic Naomi Stevens), perky expert martial artist Andrea (the lovely Lenore Kasdorf) searches for her missing boyfriend, and poor Sherry (the cute Lyllah Torena) gets abducted by a nasty narcotics and prostitution ring run by the nefarious Donald (a perfectly slimy Ken Metcalfe). Prolific Filipino exploitation feature director Cirio Santiago, working from a blithely trashy script by Miller Drake, crams the wildly colorful and eventful 71 minute running time with abundant delicious female nudity (the first topless scenes occurs barely a minute into the movie!), seedy subplots, a funky-groovin' prog-rock score, amusingly dumb lowbrow humor, several uproariously inept chopsocky fight scenes (the blind assassin with the cane that fires deadly poison darts is a total riot!), and a rousing all-out action-loaded conclusion. Moreover, Santiago maintains a nonstop zippy pace and a light, bouncy tone from start to finish. The three female leads are all quite attractive and appealing, with Anderson the stand-out of the bunch. Popping up in nifty minor roles are Vic Diaz as crooked cop Enriquez and Dick Miller as a friendly cab driver. Of course, this flick is completely silly and ridiculous, but that's exactly why it ultimately sizes up as an absolute sleazy hoot.
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There are a lot of elements in this film, which you normally don't see in a single movie, for the good reason that they usually don't go together in a satisfactory way; but here, they work fairly well, especially in the sense that they capture a number of themes from the 1970's.
You need to be patient in watching this movie! The pacing is often slow by American standards, and the plot twists are often only minimally explained, if at all. In that, and in other ways, this resembles the Euro-spy films of the 1960's. So, why watch it?
The three stewardesses are all good looking, and they aren't shy about displaying their impressive charms in this film. Lenore Kasdorf and Pat Anderson have the best roles. Lenore shows not only her beauty, but her impressive acting skills, which were to lead her to a long and successful Hollywood career. Pat does well in a role that has a comic emphasis, and she is very endearing, and believable. She comes across as very natural. The actress playing Pat's mom is highly accomplished and funny, and had me laughing out loud. Her first-rate acting helps this movie, a lot.
The movie has scenes that are humorous, sometimes shocking--sexploitation-wise--and with some kung fu type action. The kung fu is pretty mild stuff, but at least the movie is trying; one of the three girls has had a lot of kung fu training, though that background of hers is never explained.
There are some nice visuals of Hong Kong, which are colorful and fun. -
This film "Fly Me" from 1973 is one that doesn't take things to serious as the plot and story really doesn't have much background still it' a fun B movie of action and much skin with nude scenes. It really is about a trio of flight Stewardesses who leave L.A. and land and end up in Hong Kong to take on a group of crooked and immigrant smuggling Kung Fu kidnap type terrorists. The sex and nude scenes are good eye candy also one of the ladies becomes a damsel in distress with herself being kidnapped and tied up with her mouth taped! In the end feet and hands come to combat as these ladies serve more than flight meals! Overall good B flick that entertains a great example of 70's sexploitation.