The Bikini Carwash Company (1992)

The “naughty night” Cinemax era of the 90s was still a holdover of the early 80s era of sex comedy I do recall succinctly as a teenager. There has always been big business in woman in bikinis or nothing at all.

There will always be an audience for it, even if films like “The Bikini Carwash Company” (1992) and its sequel (a year later) feel as if they are more or less a time capsule from a bygone era. Not that there hadn’t been softcore content on Cinemax even as recent as the mid 2010s before they eventually let these kinds of films fade out. All that was left was Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski directing softcore parodies on sci-fi plots after the more serious erotic films quit being produced.

The internet, of course, had a lot to do with that because you can find all the porn you want, explicit and going further than anything on Cinemax ever dared. I do admit that while watching “The Bikini Carwash Company” it felt, oddly enough, innocent in comparison to what you might find on a porn site today.

The ladies featured heavily in “The Bikini Carwash Company” are more or less of the Girls Gone Wild variety, actresses hired for their willingness to bare all physically despite not necessarily having the acting chops to bare anything artistically. With sound effects like honking horns and kazoos for the braindead guys that are lucky enough to be in the company of the bikini gals of the film and serious continuity edit issues (like one moment an actor is wearing his glasses, and a second later he’s not, then a second after that he is again), as well as the very limited amount of creativity in what hangs one pop your bikinis off to expose your cleavage and naked body to the next “let’s toss buckets of water on each other or squeegee boobs against windows” sequences, “The Bikini Carwash Company” doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what is advertised.

 It is a late night for me here after a week of stress and I needed something that didn’t require anything from me except a willingness not to take the film at all seriously. Sometimes, I need my dumb midnight smut movie fix. Sony Movie Channel surprisingly showed this, much to my surprise, and I do remember seeing this around maybe 1995 or 1996. It was on ALL THE TIME in the late 90s. It was quite the mainstay. The audience for a 1AM excuse to offer simulated sex and wet bodies in bikinis and undress is niche but I guess we’d be surprised at just how many might look for such a diversion. And if you lived in the late 80s and early 90s Sunny Cali Hair Band Rock & Beach/Boardwalk public scene, “The Bikini Carwash Company” just might be a nostalgic trip back to a time that perhaps wasn’t such a drag as life is today.

There was clearly hedonism on steroids back here. Granted, there are plenty of night life club sex and decadence out there (well, that is on hold for the foreseeable future in this fucked up virus shutdown). I was a bit surprised that there was so much simulated sex in this film…this, from memory, was more like a wet t-shirt contest stretched at the length of a full movie rather than a softcore comedy. Bodies do grind and gyrate in a state of faux coitus, but even here there are continuity errors (a sex scene before with clips repeated later on).

Buck Flower, of all people, was somewhat responsible for this…he was one of the writers! The plot genesis: Joe Dusic is Jack from Iowa, coming to Southern California to take temporary control of a struggling carwash while his allergies-besought uncle is away for health treatment, receiving help from Kristi Ducati and her girls (in need of a surplus after losing their savings in a product that went bust).

There is a district attorney wanting to close the carwash because of its lewdness (gals in bikinis (and often even less) washing cars has to be stopped). There is a twist involving a flasher running around that is absolutely ludicrous but perfectly fits this kind of silly nonsense…a DA seriously wants the carwash shut down but he’s hiding quite the secret.

 It does appear that those involved in this film were having a fun time, if that is any consolation for what will no doubt repulse plenty today. If you pine for days of yore, maybe this off-Hollywood low budget trash will suit your fancy. I have no clue why the film has moments where the camera mimics the eyes of an android on overload.

The Sony Movie Channel quality is less than stellar but it is quite clear that the film was modestly budgeted (that is putting it mildly) to begin with. Not that quality film is important when you are just interested in seeing lots of T&A. You literally have people being washed in the car wash instead of vehicles, perhaps a fantasy of those who wrote “The Bikini Carwash Company”. Never seen so many soapy sponge baths. Oh, and expect some club rock band’s constant contribution to the nude carwash scenes. I guess in a lot of ways this is a Playboy video made by others for that kind of leering market…the actresses hired pose a lot, especially at the end when the “plot” is seemingly concluded.

I am trying to wrap my head around how this was made 28 years ago!

*Ducati tricks Dusic with a contract that gets her and her girls a lot of money, but the bikini carwash actually makes everyone involved a profit. Not to mention, they fall for each other and have hot sex at the end.

*If the film does one thing right, it presents a California as quite a sunny and alluring place while Ducati is shot quite ravishing.

*There is a lot of “bare tits streaking” and even public sex, right on a car on the outside of the carwash as well as nude beach sunbathing. Annnnnnndddddd RENEGADE ROCK RADIO!!!!!