Kona Coast

An underrated actor who shot to fame via a 1950s TV show and eventually settled into a career playing bad guys and heavies, Richard Boone doesn't get the credit he deserves much of the time. His role as Paladin, a traveling gunman in Have Gun Will Travel, was ahead of its time during the show's six-year run. He specialized playing some truly bad dudes in his movie roles, but even his good guys had an edge to them that screamed 'Don't mess with me!' I grew up watching him as Sam Houston in John Wayne's The Alamo and as the vicious leader of a brutal gang in Big Jake so I've always been a fan.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, Boone often got his best work as part of a bigger ensemble.  He could play both good and bad, almost always making his characters interesting to watch, keeping you guessing as to what they're really up to.  They weren't always good movies, but they can't all be winners, right? With that, I can introduce 1968's Kona Coast, a movie with Boone in the lead. This movie was awful, just plain awful. I watched it mostly for Boone's presence, but even he can't save this one.

A goods transporter and a known and respected man in Hawaii, Sam Moran (Boone) is someone who is not to be tangled with. He always gets the job done no matter the difficulty. Sam gets a call one day from a young woman clearly stoned out of her mind. She turns up dead on the shore one day, needle tracks up and down her arm.  The police (no Steve McGarrett in sight) are curious why he's so interested, Sam revealing the young woman is his estranged daughter. Who gave her the drugs? Sam intends to find out, and he doesn't have any of the limitations on him the police do. Who is responsible? A man named Kryder (Steve Ihnat), a rich, spoiled nut who organizes parties where girls are given the chance to pump their systems with as much drugs as they want. Watch out, Mr. Kryder, here comes Sam Moran.

My first thought when this showed up on TCM's schedule in August was a positive one. Richard Boone gunning for the bad guys who killed his daughter? And it is in Hawaii? Translated to me, that sounded like an early version of Death Wish with a tropical setting as opposed to dirty early 1970s New York City. I was even more encouraged when the IMDB rating came in at a low 4.4 out of 10. I love a good bad movie. Well, it is bad. But it's not even bad enough to enjoy for some laughs. I couldn't have been more wrong about this movie. I ended up fast-forwarding through huge chunks of an already short 93-minute movie.

The reasoning for that goes two ways. Made in Hawaii in 1968, the movie does serve as a very cool, very stylish look at Hawaii in a different time. As a fan of the original Hawaii Five-O TV series, I'm a sucker for that so I did enjoy seeing all kinds of cool different locations in Hawaii.  The bigger issue is that the story never really develops into anything.  I counted three different montages of Boone's Moran walking around, talking to people, "investigating," and serving as our tour guide for 1968 Hawaii.  That would be fine in most situations, but not this one. Instead, Moran ends up on one of the smaller Hawaiian Islands where he can't get back to Honolulu.  Party detour! That whole murder investigation of his daughter gets put on hold while he parties, drinks and carouses with a whole bunch of different ladies.

Now if you couldn't tell from my lead for the review here, I'm a fan of Richard Boone.  This movie would not be a great introduction to Boone's otherwise pretty solid career.  Like the movie itself, his Sam Moran character is just surreal.  For one thing, he wears a ridiculous looking yellow windbreaker the whole movie with some short shorts.  That's quite a look for anyone, much less an angry, pissed off gunning for his estranged daughter's murderers.  That isn't enough though. The "script" calls for Sam to be all that is man. It gives him this animal magnetism that attracts women left and right (ex-wife Vera Miles, young and beautiful Gina Villines) without any rhyme or reason. Surreal is all I can come up with. Then, snap your finger, he's pissed off again and looking for revenge.

Writing this review is making me realize how bad this movie really was.  Sometimes you watch a bad movie and realize, but I always think about it some, maybe realizing it wasn't as bad as I originally thought. With Kona Coast? Not so much. It's awful.  Joan Blondell, Chips Rafferty and Kent Smith all got roped into this dreck in supporting roles, making me question how bad they needed the work. This was just bad. Weird 1960s psychedelic scenes, drifting, meandering storyline, wasted cast, and basically only worthwhile to see Hawaii.  It's hard to mess that part up.

Kona Coast <---trailer (1968): */****