The Bikini Car Wash Company 2 (Gary Dean Orona, 1993) Review

Find more exploitation reviews here.

“Hasn't money always turned you on?” Despite having the character and plot depth of a puddle on a summer's day, 1992's The Bikini Car Wash Company – like a Playboy magazine without the articles – proved to be enough of a hit to deserve a sequel. But how do you expand upon such a meaty concept as bikini girls washing motor vehicles? With lingerie, that's how!...

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

“Who says underwear can't be fun?” Having made a smashing success of the bikini car wash business model in the previous film, Melissa (Kristi Ducati, Sorceress) has built a multi-million dollar franchise of twenty such locations and is on the brink of signing a profitable merger with Interglobal. However, sleazy corporate suit Sanders (Larry De Russy) is aiming to pull a fast one, breaking his promise to Melissa and the girls to keep the car washes operating and instead tear them all down to slap up some condominiums!

“It's boring here; all these stupid rules and a dress code!” Refusing to sleep with the skeezy Sanders, Melissa winds up getting herself and her gal pals fired, so it's out of the none-more-nineties power suits and back into the familiar feel of a sun kissed bikini to clear their heads. What on earth will Melissa, Sunny (Sara Suzanne Brown, Secret Games 2), Rita (Neriah Davis, Meatballs 4), and Amy (Rikki Brando, Buford's Beach Bunnies) do to get their own back? Well, isn't it obvious? Take over a religious TV station and sell lingerie over the phone!

“Do you feel the thrill of legal work coursing through your veins?” If they can scrape together $4 million by Friday, the girls will be able to buy back their company and save it from Sanders and his army of bulldozers just waiting to spoil everyone's fun – and doom the state of California to dirty cars forever. With the help of goofy office nerd and wannabe film director Derek (Greg Raye), they soon find their footing with a series of salacious scenarios, including a Roman orgy and a sexy sex-ed class hosted by Beckie Mullen (Hard Hunted), but will they really be able to beat the big bosses and notch up one for the little guys?

“I didn't know that if you got electricity wet that it'd start a fire – did you know that?” A major flaw of the original film was it's lack of interest in developing even the merest sliver of meat on its skeletal screenplay, preferring to slap together one cheapo rock montage after another of pretty ladies soaping up cars (and each other). Even its sense of humour took a back seat to its preponderance on 'wank intervals', at least servicing its Skinemax audience well on that front. The sequel, however, written by returning scribes George 'Buck' Flower and Ed Hansen along with Bart B. Gustis, discovers the miracle of not only story structure but that of character arcs and conflict! It may be a movie about scantily clad business babes flogging sexy undies to bored married couples over the telephone, but there's even an end of act two low point and personal betrayal, gosh darn it!

“I love the Gettysburg Address!” Even the film's sense of humour is much improved over its predecessor, albeit still very much in the same sub-Mad Magazine mould of cartoonish sound effects, the giant ID badge of the Federal Communications Administration agent, or the 'in case of emergency break glass' box of condoms that is continually being smashed open. Mind you, if all the televised action is 'simulated', why would anyone require such a steady stream of rubber johnnies? Many of the giggles are to be found in the little details, from Sunny's “notebook of doom” to the ever-decaying state of the TV station's management hierarchy and the catastrophically ditzy Rita.

“I'm a Republican! Don't put me in here!” However, in one of the true head scratchers of our time, one can't help but wonder where are all the bikinis and car washes in this Bikini Car Wash sequel? There's a great deal of lingerie, that's for sure, and quite a lot of telesales-related flim-flam … perhaps The Lingerie Telesales Company would've been a more fitting title? But then, to be fair to it, having bikinis and lingerie in one film? Now that's how you broaden the horizons for a sequel, is it not? While there's a few glimpses of the sunny and colourful bikini car wash enterprise dusted here and there, the bulk of the film instead focuses on drab grey and beige offices and the interior of a television studio, sapping some of the sauciness of the much more in-your-face randiness of the original movie, which had all the subtlety of a mountain of Hustler magazines cascading from one's closet at an inopportune moment.

“I bought the wife a mean pair of skivvies.” Despite a surprising disinterest in fulfilling the specific promise of its title, The Bikini Car Wash Company 2 nonetheless makes improvements across most areas, even if it's slightly more coy than it's progenitor. I mean, ten minutes before anyone takes their clobber off? Now that's restraint! Even the generic rock music littered about the soundtrack dials down the obnoxious cheesiness, and good Lord, is that a camera crane being put to good use? While there's maybe an over-reliance on fisheye lenses, director Gary Dean Orona (The Great Bikini Offroad Adventure) took what had been (often literally) a naked excuse to play with oneself and slapped on a bit of polish and spark, regardless of how few sporty motors got a busty bit of scrub-a-dub-dub action.