"She Gods Of Shark Reef" -1958.

You know you're in for at least a little bit of B-movie fun when you see the name "Roger Corman" come up at the beginning of the movie. Corman is still making movies and has FOUR (!) movies coming out in 2013. The Golden Boy of low-budget cinema, Corman has either directed or produced some of the best-known B-movies ever churned out: Attack of the Crab Monsters ('57), Little Shop Of Horrors ('60), House of Usher ('60), Piranha! ('78), Attack Of The Giant Leeches (one of my faves, '59), and both Death Race 2000 ('75) and it's remake Death Race (with Jason Statham), not to mention the original The Fast And The Furious ('55). You can't swing a dead cat by the tail and not hit a wonderfully crappy movie he had a hand in. A hand in the movie, I mean. Not a hand in the dead cat, although I wouldn't put it past him. And best of all, he looks a little bit like an older, clean-shaven me.

The plot: well, first a little back story....Roger Corman, always the cheapskate, filmed two movies at the same time while cast and crew were on the island of Kaua'i, in Hawaii. The second movie was "Naked Paradise". Now, "She Gods" was about two men plotting to rob pearls and find a boat to escape a tropical island after a different robbery gone wrong. However, "Naked Paradise" was about THREE guys looking to find a boat to escape a tropical paradise after a robbery gone wrong. Totally different movie. Even though the main hottie, Lisa Montell, played the main hottie in "Naked Paradise" as well. And it featured an extended scene of the same hula dancer in both movies.

By the way, see that hot blonde wearing only flowers on the poster? Yeah, she's not in either film. There are sharks, though.

Jim, who's a dick, cons his buddy Chris into helping him on a heist. Things go south (pun!) and they take it on the lam, only to be swept away by a typhoon and deposited on the beach of an island inhabited only by hot, young, scantily-clad pearl diving girls. Damn! Of all the rotten luck! The girls are kept in line by an older woman who wouldn't know a smile if it kicked her in the teeth, and she isn't any too happy to have men on her island. Jim convinces Chris to help him steal the pearls the girls have accumulated, but Chris has a change of heart after rescuing Mahia from being sacrificed to the Shark Gods. This too displeases the old crone (who looks suspiciously like my librarian from grade 3). I won't ruin it for you (for once) but things get cookin' and people get "om-nom-nom"ed by sharks. I'm not telling who, though!

That's Jean Gerson playing the keeper of the virgins. Her credits include "Woman Selling Chestnuts" in Spartacus and "Slave Woman With Donkey" in The Ten Commandments. Plus she was in this! Don Durant, on the left, played Jim, the handsome but unscrupulous cad. That's Bill Cord on the right, playing Chris, the dipstick with a good heart who keeps getting sucked in to Jim's illegal schemes. Chris eventually falls in love with Mahia, below, one of the "She-Gods".

Things I learned from this movie: 1- Not all She Gods are created equal, 2- if you happen to have a private island loaded with a metric *bleep*-ton of pearls, be sure to leave the pearls in an unlocked and unguarded hut, 3- if you piss off a librarian (or an old woman who just looks like a librarian) she will feed you to the sharks, 4- pearl diving virgins speak only in the third person, 5- watching bad movies in colour is preferable if there are scantily-clad young women in the picture, 6- you know the movie is old when they refer to Hawaii as a "territory", 7- I really, really want to go to Hawaii one day, virgins or no virgins.