First off, a word of warning. We are about to encounter a film about scuba diving. A lot of scuba-diving. Yaaarrggh! Batten the hatches, mateys, there be rough seas ahead.

We open with a psychedelic sequence of reversed color negatives and over-saturated color shots of some scuba divers swimming, to and fro, while the ultra fast credits roll by. (Hey, isn’t that Mickey Dolenz and a Mermaid swimming around in the background there?) Then we head ashore and meet our main characters, Stacey and Cheryl (Vickie Benson and Kristal Richardson), proprietors of a down on its luck scuba gear rental service. And as we jump into the plot, with both feet, Stacey convinces Cheryl there's some reward money to be made if they solve the disappearance of a local boy. The only clues are a lone witness -- another kid who was with him at the time -- and several peanut tins that the boys found washed up on the beach, and the other boy swears a man came out of the sea, snatched the missing boy, and then disappeared back under the waves.

Stacey has one of the labels from the tins, and on it is the address for the Scorpio Peanut Company. (Sounds kinda evil to me.) So Cheryl jumps on her bike and tracks the address down, while Stacey grabs her diving gear and hires Rick and Fuji (not listed in the credits, sorry fellas) to take her to the spot where the boy disappeared. Cheryl finds the Scorpio warehouse, ignores the no trespassing sign, and sneaks in. (Well, if you call walking right in the front door and heading upstairs "sneaking.") She wanders around and finds a radio room, and then listens as an operator radios out to "deep base." We cut to an underwater sea base where someone answers the call and they gibber, in code, about the "stuff". (Hey?! Where’s Captain Murphy?)

Meanwhile, Rick and Stacey find the spot and go over the side. Once submerged, they check their underwater radios. Hers works, his doesn’t; but she doesn’t realize it and they soon lose contact with each other. (Auugh. Underwater scenes with annoying voiceovers. Mayday! Mayday!) Stacey swims into a bed of kelp and disappears out of sight, and buried in that kelp, she finds the underwater base. Unfortunately, Scorpio security is a little tighter underwater than on land as several underwater cameras spot the intruders. Reporting this back to the warehouse (I assume the base of operations) that they’ve been breached, the order is given to capture and terminate the meddlers. Cheryl overhears this, and knowing she has to warn her friends, sneaks back out -- but someone spotted and follows her (- all - the - way - ) back to the dive shop. She tries the CB but is grabbed from behind and drug off, kicking and screaming.

Below the water, Rick (the idiot) is still outside the kelp bed looking for Stacey. She’s been captured, but before they drag her inside the base, she manages to release her emergency marker and it bobs to the surface. Rick continues to swim around until he runs out of air and surfaces. When Fuji picks him up, they spot Stacey’s marker. And does he dive back after her? Nope. He heads back to port and charters a plane so he can take infrared photographs of the ocean to try and find her. 

And fair warning, this quantum leap in plot logic is nothing compared to what lies ahead for you gentle viewer.

Inside the secret base, the three goons leave Stacey with the kidnapped boy by the airlock. (He’s tied up, but they don’t bother to tie her up.) They leave them alone and head to the radio room. Back at the warehouse, Cheryl is tied up in a storeroom but is able to hear the bad guys scheming in the next room. And then the story completely unspools all over itself as the leather clad, eye-patched adorned Countess Magda Von Cress (Rosanna Simanaitis), affectionately known as Madame X, reveals the plot. (Get a pencil and paper, it gets a little confusing, and try and keep up.) All stages of her master plan are proceeding: Her organization is using the underwater station to smuggle drugs into the country in peanut cans. (But wait, it gets better.) She’s selling the drugs to finance her operations to find the mythical Mayan Power Stone.

What’s a Mayan Power Stone. Well, according to her deceased uncle -- a famed Nazi scientist -- the Mayans discovered the secret of nuclear fusion. (Sure, why not.) He found the stone, and was taking it back to the Fatherland but his ship went down in a freak storm. (Oh, great, there’s a curse involved.) Since then, Madame X has dedicated her life and fortune to find the Power Stone and has several crews trawling the oceans where her uncle’s boat, The Intrepid, went down.

Cheryl also faces Madame X’s pet tarantula, but manages to shimmy out of her handcuffs and uses a (very handy) pair of bolt cutters to get her feet loose and escapes out a window and roars off on her motorcycle. Her escape doesn't go unnoticed and several bad guys race after her. She manages to shake the riders, who wipe out in the dunes, but a pudgy guy in a gyro-copter takes up the pursuit. As he blasts away with a machine gun (that he never reloads), just missing her (with the same bullet squibs over and over), the pilot herds her toward a cliff, overlooking the sea. Cheryl realizes this too late, loses control, and her bike runs over the edge. She manages to bail off and get a handhold on the cliff face but the copter keeps circling back and firing at her. She tries to scramble up the cliff but slips and falls into the water below (that looks amazingly deeper than a minute ago -- and where did all the jagged rocks go?). The pilot reports that the subject has been terminated.

Meanwhile, Stacey finds the drug stash (I though they sold all the drugs?), engineers an escape, leaving the kid behind(!), then gets recaptured and is finally tied up. Mining the entire base with explosives, the goons also shut down the life support system and gloat that the captives will probably asphyxiate before they blow up (that’s comforting), and then they leave.

Rick, on the other hand, has chartered a plane, taken the infrared pictures (IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!), has gotten those pictures developed, discovered the base in the photographs (is that what that big red blotch is, I thought it was a whale.), chartered another plane, and parachutes with full scuba gear on the target. (Wow. That guy is good.) He finds the underwater base, and the mines, and spies the bad guy’s escape boat. Grabbing one of the mines, he places it on the boat, but is spotted while swimming away and gets a spear through his leg. Fuji shows up, out of nowhere, and pulls him aboard to safety.

Stacey thinks they’ve stumbled onto something big. She’s heard the legend of the Mayan Codex, a/k/a the Power Stone, and it’s curse. With a quick check of the Underwater Almanac, they realize that Madame X is (wait for it) digging in the wrong place -- and the Intrepid is really somewhere off the coast of Aruba. Stacey convinces the reluctant Cheryl that fortune and glory await them, so they set off for Aruba to find their old friend Dusty. But little do they know, evil eyes have them under constant observation...

The girls find Dusty (Frank Alexander), and more importantly, his boat. They convince him to help out with the mission to thwart Madame X, but he warns it won’t be that easy because the Intrepid went down near Zombie Reef -- and Zombie Reef is rumored to be *gasp* haunted. They load up their equipment and set sail as a moronic, Carole King like theme song about the two girls kicks in and we pad out the film with some cheesecake shots of them lounging around the boat. But as they get closer to Zombie Reef, nervous Stacey feels they’re being watched. They are. What they think is a native fishing boat is really Madame X’s crew tailing them; the villainess believes the girls will lead them straight to the artifact.

So, it’s a really big ocean right? Right. Well, after searching for about two minutes, the girls find the hulk of the Intrepid. Madame X listens in on their radios and orders her divers into the water to find the Stone. The girls find a metal container "just like a container a professor would put a power stone in." (It’s the first one they spot -- so it has to contain the Power Stone. Right? Oh, brother.) Dusty leaves a decoy container for the bad guys to find, then they all retreat to his boat and escape. Once they reach safer waters, they open the container, but find not the Power Stone but a diary. Inside the remarkably dry pages they find out that the Mayans translated the secret of nuclear fusion onto a tablet, sealed it in a jar, and hid it in an underwater cave off the Yucatan Peninsula. It also warns to beware of the curse of Chok-Mol, the Mayan god of death.

So before you can say "show me some stock-footage of a Mayan pyramid", we’re in Central America, back in the scuba gear, and searching the hundreds and hundreds of underwater caves off the coast. Our heroes still haven’t given the X organization the slip, and soon the waters are flooded with divers searching for a cave with a jar in it. Amazingly, the bad guys find it first and steal the jar. But this pisses Chok-Mol off, and as an underground volcanic eruption engulfs the bad guys, the jar rolls free -- right into the arms of the good guys and they escape the volcano unscathed. Breaking open the jar, they only find a broken Spanish doubloon. But if you put the pieces together, it leaves a clue that leads them right back to Aruba (Arrrgghhh.) They do a little research and discover that a Spanish Galleon (I think the coin had the name of the boat on it), loaded with Mayan treasure, went down in a freak storm. (A freak storm -- or did Chok-Mol do the zombie-stomp on them?) They swipe the map from the public library, and guess what, the ship went down near the dreaded Shark Rock. (Where it’s rumored that sharks hang out.)

With the X-Organization right behind them, they set sail again. Luckily, there are only stock-footage sharks lurking around Shark Rock but that's enough to scare the bad guys away. This time, it takes them three minutes to find the shipwreck. As Dusty breaks out his heavy equipment and starts sweeping the ocean floor, the girls check the filter; but all they find are more coins and several crosses. Skunked again, they're about to give up when Stacey notices that the crosses they found match the ones on the map they stole. And all the crosses point to a certain island: The Isle of Death. (Zombie Reef? Shark Rock? Isle of Death? Who’s writing this crap?) Dusty points out that there’s a fort in the middle of the island where the Spaniards used to hide their gold.

So, it's off to the Isle of Death, and with Makumbo as their guide, they make their way through the treacherous jungle "where if the voodoo don’t get you, the giant leeches will." Alas there are no giant leeches and they make the ruins of the fort without incident. And after coming all that way, after a quick, cursory glance around, they quickly decide the power stone isn’t here. (You’ve come all the way here, look around a little for cripessake!) They’re about to give up again (Please-o-please-o-please give up!), but Makumbo opens his big mouth and says that pirates raided and looted the fort in 1702 and (say it with me) their ship went down in a freak storm (that Chok-Mol is one vindictive SOB) somewhere off of Seal Island. (Well, at least it sounds nicer than Shark Rock.)

So, now it’s off to Seal Island, and to make a long story short, they locate the wreck but only find evidence that the Nazis got there first. But get this: Stacey skipped this dive and called her friend, Brad. You all remember Brad, right, her friend who works for the CIA? Yeah, that Brad. (Uhmm--what?!?) The CIA has a file on the mystery scientist -- who is really Madame X’s uncle -- who translated the Stone -- that sunk on the Intrepid -- but was really in a jar 4000 miles away -- but the Spaniards got to it first 400 years earlier -- and took it to their fort -- but was stolen by pirates -- that was found by the Nazis  200 years later -- and is now on a sunken German sub off the coast of Bimini Island.

With no time to sail, Stacey and Cheryl fly to Bimini and take a dinghy to the spot where the sub went down. Madame X must have Dusty’s boat bugged, too, because they’re already there with a mini-sub, looking for the wreck. The girls do find the sub first but only manage to seal themselves inside it. Then X’s divers find the sub and the metal container containing the Power Stone. Putting it in a sack attached to the mini-sub, they head for the surface. Feeling the need to gloat, Madame X breaks in on the girl’s underwater frequency and thanks them for leading her to the Power Stone and leaves them for the Air Force bombs. But the girls manage to escape the sub through a torpedo hole, and swipe the sack off of the mini-sub. The girls surface and happily find Dusty waiting for them. (And how in the hell did he get there so fast?) Dusty hits the throttle as the countdown winds down. An Air Force bomber comes into view -- and it mistakes Madame X’s boat as it’s target and bombs it into oblivion! (Pyle! We're s'posed to be bombing a sub!)

And if it’s another clue saying they have to go to Bermuda and look for a wreck off Crawdad Cove, someone’s going to get hurt.

Inside, they find a chunk of metal about the size of a playing card. Stacey proclaims it the Power Stone (so I guess the Mayans used a real tiny typeface?). It’s all rusty, and they can’t read it, so Dusty gives them a jar of water to soak it in and goes below to find some steel wool. (So the stone is made of metal?) When Stacey drops it in the jar, it reacts violently with the water. Suddenly, their attention is drawn away from the bubbling jar when Madame X appears, with a spear gun, demanding the Power Stone. (How'd she get on the boat? Do not question the plot or face the wrath of Chok-Mol!) Dusty sneaks up behind her, but she dispatches him with ease. However, this proves a big enough distraction that Cheryl grabs the spear gun while Stacey gives her a kick to the stomach, causing Madame X to fall over the side and into the drink. A Coast Guard helicopter approaches and warns them they’re in a restricted area. Stacey and Cheryl wave them off and tell them to fish out Madame X.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold on! You mean to tell me I sat  through this entire, stinking, movie, and this flipping Power Stone, that you’ve been running all over the friggin' Caribbean to find, dissolves like a @#%* Alka-Seltzer tablet -- and all you can do is laugh about it. Sweet jeebuz. Someone IS going to get hurt.

There’s a strange synchronicity that tangles its way among the bad movie sites that litter the World Wide Web. My bosses over at Stomp Tokyo are about to review Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (a film I did last week) and in their previous review of Black Christmas, they mention Bob Clark’s involvement in The Bimini Code, a film that I pegged to be reviewed this week. (Weird I tells ya, weird.)

Don’t get me wrong. The IMDB is a wonderful resource but I warn everyone not to take it as gospel. (And for heaven's sake, don't take everything you read on this website as gospel.) I enjoy Bob Clark’s work, and frankly, The Bimini Code is just too damned incompetent and so poorly done that I don’t think he had anything to do with it. If anyone can prove me wrong, though, I’m all ears and will gladly admit that I’m wrong.

Okay, picture a film where Nancy Drew teams up with Trixie Beldon after they hit puberty, donned some bikinis, and decided to go on an adventure. The main thing I remember about those old mysteries is that they were always sticking their noses in places they didn’t belong. And you also know, no matter what happens, the girls are never in any real danger. (They do look awful cute in those bikinis though.)

Your brain synapses will start to misfire when you realize how the script is strung together. You get the sense that they filmed several sequences, realized the film wasn’t long enough, yet, so they extended the search some more. Finish another leg. Still not long enough. Okay let’s go over here. And I dare you to keep track of how many times the script contradicts itself. (Believe me you don’t have that many fingers and toes.) And then it dawns on you the amount of padding and clumsy stock footage shots the film has. (They show stock shots of a Mayan Temple and we cut to shot of heroes standing in front of a brick wall and viola, we're in the jungle.)

The script had some lofty ambitions and shows the influence of several films, most notably Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Deep and Thunderball. But the ambitions slowly drown in the juvenile approach, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was watching a failed TV pilot from the mid-80s. (You know, now that I think of it, this would be a perfect vehicle for those ghastly Olson Twins.)

If you still haven't gotten the feel of it yet, imagine that Andy Sidaris directed it -- but left out all the sex, nudity and violence. (That’s enough to make this jaded critic shudder.) To its detriment, this film is too juvenile and sanitized for it’s own good. Put it all together and then, and only then, will you realize how much this movie sucks.

And just when you think it might be over, it just keeps going and going and going...

Posted: 01/04/02. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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