This gripping film is well worth going out of your way to see because Phoebe Cates has a couple of nude scenes, discrete but still nude scenes.
Obviously ripped off from Brooke Shields' "Blue Lagoon," this story strands Cates and Aames in a rocky desert paradise, a cavern all ecru and cream, with a built-in shower. They're threatened by aggressive Arabs who live in a patriarchal world in which women -- or even teens like Cates -- are no more than chattel.
Nice photography and stunning locations. Israel. The local Arabs look dusty enough but the wardrobe and grooming for the principals doesn't take any chances. Aames wears a loose vest and has a modish 80s hair style. Cates is all in chiffon or whatever it is, pink, fluffy, and contour covering, as befits a proper young lady in 1900 or whenever the story is set, although she lifts those hampering skirts up to her bare knees while trudging across the sand.
Aames, a church-going lad who can't act, has an encounter with a belly dancer, which apparently leads him to speculate about any of his body parts that he may have been neglecting, because on his way back to camp he stops to peek in Cates' window (carelessly left often) while she's bathing her upper torso. We are now 13 minutes into the film and already there are hints of rahat lokum to come. The voyeurs by this time are jumping up and down in their seats and we don't want them to think they're forgotten.
And, in fact, Phoebe Cates is pretty much unforgettable. She might pass muster as an actress but that's not the point. She was seventeen when this was shot. Her figure is flawless. Her slightly chubby, kewpie-doll face has a tiny, upturned nose, as if drawn with a set of plastic French curves, and she usually holds her pulpy lips parted, baring a set of glistening incisors. Any normal man would want her to bite him savagely.
Lost in the desert, fearful of the Arab raiders, they find themselves at a seaside resort surrounded by date palms and citrus trees, fronted by the Mediterranean Sea, and furnished with another gentle waterfall. They adopt a "funny" young chimpanzee who makes faces and shrieks with chimpanzee laughter. He also takes good direction and plays with himself, in the vulgar sense, on cue.
Shortly, they are reduced to wearing the scantiest of home-made loincloths and bras. It's an almost perfect reprise of the scenes from "Blue Lagoon" of 1980, or even the 1949 version, or the original novel of 1908 by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. We've seen enough of poor Aames by now to realize his future is going to be limited to used-car commercials. He has all the phones of a nice middle-class kid from El Cerrito and the same acting skills.
Little did they know that true love lay just around the corner -- or rather it would have, had this been a carpentered environment. As it is, it must necessarily lie amid the daisies and scarlet poppies that are always found in the middle of the desert.
She gets pregnant, their camel dies, and they are stuck among the sand dunes when they're attacked by the vicious Arab throat-cutter. But not to worry. I mean, they never worry, so why should we?
Obviously ripped off from Brooke Shields' "Blue Lagoon," this story strands Cates and Aames in a rocky desert paradise, a cavern all ecru and cream, with a built-in shower. They're threatened by aggressive Arabs who live in a patriarchal world in which women -- or even teens like Cates -- are no more than chattel.
Nice photography and stunning locations. Israel. The local Arabs look dusty enough but the wardrobe and grooming for the principals doesn't take any chances. Aames wears a loose vest and has a modish 80s hair style. Cates is all in chiffon or whatever it is, pink, fluffy, and contour covering, as befits a proper young lady in 1900 or whenever the story is set, although she lifts those hampering skirts up to her bare knees while trudging across the sand.
Aames, a church-going lad who can't act, has an encounter with a belly dancer, which apparently leads him to speculate about any of his body parts that he may have been neglecting, because on his way back to camp he stops to peek in Cates' window (carelessly left often) while she's bathing her upper torso. We are now 13 minutes into the film and already there are hints of rahat lokum to come. The voyeurs by this time are jumping up and down in their seats and we don't want them to think they're forgotten.
And, in fact, Phoebe Cates is pretty much unforgettable. She might pass muster as an actress but that's not the point. She was seventeen when this was shot. Her figure is flawless. Her slightly chubby, kewpie-doll face has a tiny, upturned nose, as if drawn with a set of plastic French curves, and she usually holds her pulpy lips parted, baring a set of glistening incisors. Any normal man would want her to bite him savagely.
Lost in the desert, fearful of the Arab raiders, they find themselves at a seaside resort surrounded by date palms and citrus trees, fronted by the Mediterranean Sea, and furnished with another gentle waterfall. They adopt a "funny" young chimpanzee who makes faces and shrieks with chimpanzee laughter. He also takes good direction and plays with himself, in the vulgar sense, on cue.
Shortly, they are reduced to wearing the scantiest of home-made loincloths and bras. It's an almost perfect reprise of the scenes from "Blue Lagoon" of 1980, or even the 1949 version, or the original novel of 1908 by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. We've seen enough of poor Aames by now to realize his future is going to be limited to used-car commercials. He has all the phones of a nice middle-class kid from El Cerrito and the same acting skills.
Little did they know that true love lay just around the corner -- or rather it would have, had this been a carpentered environment. As it is, it must necessarily lie amid the daisies and scarlet poppies that are always found in the middle of the desert.
She gets pregnant, their camel dies, and they are stuck among the sand dunes when they're attacked by the vicious Arab throat-cutter. But not to worry. I mean, they never worry, so why should we?