Phoebe Cates and Willie Aames
play two young teens who are on a caravan between
Baghdad and Damascus in the early 19th century. The
caravan is attacked by marauders, and the two teens
end up as the only survivors. Their escape does not
please the Evil Arab Ransacking Dude, because he is
a white slaver, and the main reason he attacked the
caravan was to get Phoebe Cates in the first place.
Of course, before he sells her, he plans to
... well, you know.
The two teens miraculously live through their solo
trek in the desert, and they eventually settle down
and build magnificent living quarters out of palm
fronds and dates. Evil Arab Ransacking Dude pursues
them, and captures Cates, but Aames quickly rescues
her, and they run off to create an even more
impressive camp out of sand and coconuts. This time
they settle on the coast of the Mediterranean, which
is no simple matter when one considers the precise
route from Baghdad to Damascus. In this tropical
milieu they learn about sex, they adopt a family of
chimps, they encounter the Evil Arab Ransacking Dude
again, and ...
Oh, who am I kidding? Why bother with a summary?
There is really only one reason for this film to
exist - Phoebe Cates gets naked constantly. She
showers naked under several different waterfalls,
walks naked around the deluxe hut, swims naked near
colorful coral reefs, bathes naked in lagoons, wades
naked in the Mediterranean, has sex with Willie
Aames ...
I guess some of you may also enjoy looking at Willie
Aames naked. I know when I used to watch Aames and
Van Patten in Eight is Enough, I'd think to myself,
I gotta see willie and dick, if you catch my drift,
but that was a deeply troubled time in my life.
Strangely enough, my dream has been deferred once
more, since Willie's willie has been digitally
blurred in every scene on the Korean DVD I watched.
IMDb says that this was simply done in the DVD
mastering process.
Phoebe Cates certainly made an interesting, unique
contribution to cinema nudity. Basically, she spent
the entire year of 1982 naked (this film plus Fast
Times at Ridgemont High), and then kept her clothes
on for the rest of her career, which was only about
a dozen years. Then she retired to raise a family,
and wasn't really seen on screen with or without
clothing after 2001. So her entire collection of
nude scenes was packed into a single year. But what
a year! It is possible to argue that her nudity in
this film is the all-time summit of celebrity nudity
in film. She was 19 years old and as cute as a
button, she looked even younger and sufficiently
virginal to fulfill any man's schoolgirl fantasies
(no wonder this film went to DVD in Japan before any
other country!), her body was flawless and natural,
and there was no tease. She showed everything again
and again.
Besides Phoebe's flesh, there is one other positive
feature of this film: the locations and
cinematography are interesting. The director found
some beautiful locations in the desert, and the
cinematographer did as great a job on photographing
them as he did on photographing Phoebe.
The rest of the film? Well, the story is ridiculous
and maudlin, and their co-stars are a family of
chimps. The acting is terrible. The Arab guys are
one-dimensional villains. Phoebe herself is simply
not that good, but she seems like Siobhan McKenna
compared to Willie Aames. Come to think of it, the
chimps seemed like the Royal Shakespeare Company
compared to Aames. I notice that he moved to
Portland in 1986 or 87 and packed up his career as a
distinguished thespian, except for a couple of Eight
is Enough reunion shows.
In 1999, he made a bit of a showbiz comeback by
writing and directing and starring in Bible Man, "a
Christian video series designed for children ages
3-9," who are presumably too young to criticize his
acting. That series of videos then expanded into a
Bibleman road show, which Aames starred in until
2003, when he announced that he would be stepping
down from the part of Bibleman in the touring
production in order to "spend more time with his
family." I thought that meant "in his parents'
basement," but IMDB established that Aames and a
second wife lived in Olathe, which is somewhere in
rural Kansas.
He's now on a third wife, and Wikipedia says he made
a tiny comeback in 2017 playing a character called
Principal Reed in a Canadian sitcom called Date My
Dad.