Thunder in Paradise (1993)

Movie rating: 2/10

Nostalgia will only get you so far. Debuting as a direct-to-video movie in 1993 and then a TV series that ran for one season before its cancellation, Thunder in Paradise stars Hulk Hogan as Randolph J. “Hurricane” Spencer and Chris Lemmon as annoying sidekick Martin “Bru” Brubaker, two ex-U.S. Navy SEALs now working as mercenaries. Based out of a tropical resort on the Gulf Coast of Florida, the pair engage in missions with the help of their high-tech boat Thunder, basically a more boring aquatic version of KITT from Knight Rider. Meanwhile, Spencer has to deal with raising his young stepdaughter Jessica (portrayed here by Robin Weisman, recast after the first few episodes) and Bru tries to woo former model Kelly LaRue (Carol Alt), now owner and manager of the beachfront Scuttlebutt Bar & Grill.

There’s potential here for a decent show, assuming you’re willing to embrace the cheese and can enjoy an escapist action series starring Hulk Hogan. That was my perspective heading into the first Thunder in Paradise feature, which can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube and later became a two-part episode in TV reruns. I was never a huge fan of Hogan, and less so than ever following numerous scandals involving sex tapes and racist remarks. However, I occasionally watched pro wrestling as a kid and had vague memories of this show. I also watched the trailer for his movie Suburban Commando countless times on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II VHS. When I finally saw the former, even as a kid I knew it was terrible, so I wasn’t expecting anything great with Thunder in Paradise. But I was hoping for some good campy fun.

The TV show intro effectively promises just that and tickled my nostalgia bone. Unfortunately, that’s about as good as this gets.

Save your time and just enjoy that intro instead of sitting through the movie itself, which is alternately dumb, tedious, and juvenile.

The biggest problem is Hogan himself. I knew he was a bad actor, but that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker when it comes to action vehicles. Chuck Norris, memorably described by Plexico Gingrich at Ruthless Reviews as “the only actor I’ve seen outside of porn who can’t even walk convincingly”, still managed to be entertaining by giving his audience what they want: brutal violence, cheesy one-liners, over-the-top villains, and stupid right-wing political content. If Thunder in Paradise has offered more of these elements, it might have been decent enough as a brainless action movie.

The movie gets off to a good start, as Spencer and Bru go into action to save the wife and son of a Cuban “pro-democracy activist” (read: counter-revolutionary gusano) in Florida that the cartoonishly evil Cuban government wants to hold hostage, to force his return to the island to face trial and execution. The notion that we should cheer for right-wing Cuban exiles who want to reverse the gains of the Cuban Revolution and turn the country back into a U.S. imperialist puppet state is the kind of dumb reactionary content I’ve come to love ironically in old-school action movies.

On the other hand, the sequence when Spencer rescues the Cuban exile’s wife and son can’t help but pale next to a similar sequence, the climax of Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Commando. The reason is because where Commando is a hard-R action flick that shows the results of its onscreen violence, Thunder in Paradise is a TV show aimed at kids and adolescents. So Hogan and Lemmon fire lots of guns and rocket launchers at Cuban soldiers, there are lots of explosions, but we never see anyone killed. That’s a problem, because depicting combat and warfare without showing the bloody results turns war into a video game and is the most insidious kind of militarist propaganda. Still, the Cuban raid is entertaining enough.

The movie really starts to go downhill after that. For the next hour or so, most of the screentime is taken up by a painfully stupid plot where the snobbish, yet gorgeous English owner of the beachside hotel, Megan Whitaker (Felicity Waterman), has to marry within days or she’ll lose the hotel to her fiendish uncle Edward (Patrick Macnee in a glorified cameo). Coincidentally, Spencer is something of a father figure to Megan’s daughter Jessica. With Thunder under threat of being repossessed if Spencer and Bru don’t pay $93,000, Megan offers to pay the cost if Hogan will marry her. Suffice it to say Hulk Hogan’s strengths are not in romantic comedy. The movie grinds to a halt as we go through this plot thread.

Women throw themselves at Spencer throughout the movie when he isn’t lifting heavy weights, winning arm-wrestling competitions, defeating bullies, and going on daring combat missions. Did I mention every scene set on or near the Florida beach is full of attractive women in bikinis who all look like models? Thunder in Paradise, as anyone who’s watched it will not be surprised to learn, was produced by some of the same creators behind the Baywatch TV series, and it shows. The camera’s ogling of bikini-clad models and lengthy shots of them running in slow motion get so gratuitous that—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—it makes the Fast and Furious movies look tasteful and subdued in comparison.

Halfway through the movie, we finally meet our generic villain David Kilmer, played by Sam J. Jones of Flash Gordon fame. I don’t even remember if he was given any kind of background other than wanting a necklace that Hogan pulls out of a dead shark (!) and presents to Jessica as a gift (after washing it off, we’re told but not shown). Turns out the pieces of the necklace form a treasure map, though the only indication that there’s anything of value at the place where “X” marks the spot comes from Kilmer saying the necklace is worth millions of dollars. Even he seems unsure why.

It’s only when Spencer, Bru, and Megan make their way to the island that the movie picks up again, but by that point it feels like too little, too late. There are some terrible fight scenes before that, with punches that don’t even appear to connect and characters flying around in ways that defy the laws of physics. Hogan is frequently battered and thrown through various structures, but never hurt.

There is no reason for Megan to accompany the two mercenaries to the island other than at this point owning 51% of Thunder. Her functional role is to provide comic relief and eye candy. Megan complains the entire time and doesn’t do anything useful other than looking good in a bikini (this movie is not exactly the most progressive in its depiction of women).

At some point, Kilmer kidnaps Jessica and Kelly. Later he decides to throw them both in chains into the water for no reason other than hey, he’s evil. But at least it seems like Megan is warming up to Spencer, in classic romantic-comedy fashion, after he saves her and her daughter. Maybe this sham marriage will lead to true love after all!

Spoilers follow.

It does not. By the end, Megan still has nothing but disdain for Spencer. They pretend to consummate their marriage while Uncle Edward looks on through the camera he installed in their room. It’s weird and unsettling for a show otherwise so juvenile.

None of the actors make much of an impression, including Hogan. When they do, it’s bad. Chris Lemmon (yes, the son of Jack Lemmon) is an irritating unfunny sidekick only slightly more tolerable than, say, Rob Schneider. The moment when he confesses his attraction to Kelly while she’s working at the bar feels more creepy and desperate than anything. Then at the end when he rescues her, she kisses him. There’s no buildup, but apparently they’re a couple now.

I don’t know if the producers planned Thunder in Paradise as a TV show from the start or just as a direct-to-video feature film. But in terms of setting up further episodic adventures, this movie completely fails. The main premise of Spencer and Bru being mercenaries is poorly developed. Jessica is Spencer’s stepdaughter in the rest of the series, but that might have worked better if he and Megan had fallen in love by the end instead of still disliking each other. Not that it seems to matter anyway: four episodes into the series, Jessica was recast and Megan written out of the series entirely. Apparently Megan is killed offscreen between episodes, which just makes it even more pointless to have so much of this pilot movie focused on her.

About the only good things I can say about this movie is that there’s beautiful scenery, entertainingly cheesy music (check out the theme song “Kissed by a Hurricane”), some cool underwater sequences, and so-bad-it’s-good campiness that offers a few cheap laughs. Most of it is just dull. Hulk Hogan has been persona non grata for the last several years due to his recent scandals. But even in his heyday when he was hoping to be the next great action star, Thunder in Paradise makes clear why Hogan never approached the movie stardom of contemporaries like Schwarzenegger, or even later wrestler-turned-actors like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Hogan was a terrible actor who made consistently terrible films and TV shows. Judging by this lame effort, I’m amazed the series made it through a full season.