'DIAMOND HEAD'.....CHARLTON HESTON LORDS IT OVER PINEAPPLES AND PEOPLE ALIKE

 Diamond Head (1962).....efficiently goes about its business of being an overheated widescreen, Technicolored soap opera.....a Hawaii "Peyton Place", with a sprinkling of  racial animosity that powered the Texas-set classic "Giant". 

           Set amidst a vast Pineapple plantation, the film takes place in 1959 as Hawaii's on the verge of statehood.  The new state's powerbrokers tap the all-powerful Prince Of Pineapples 'King Howland' to become their first U.S. Senator.

             Of course they would. 'King' is played to jaw-clenching perfection by the master of  cinematic all-powerful, arrogant self-righteous bastards....Charlton Heston.  Nobody outplays Heston when he's in his full Alpha Male, My-World-And-The-Rest-Of-You-Just-Live-In It  dominance.......

             Much trouble in paradise, though. King's college graduate sister Sloane (Yvette Mimieux) plans to marry Hawaiian native hunk Paul (James Darren). King, a profound white supremacist against race mixing, won't hear of it. He'll have no native boy dipping his swarthy organ into his blonde  little sis,  even though he himself enjoys secretly boinking lovely native girl Mai Chen (France Nuyen). And Mei ,by the way, is carrying King's child.....

            To stir up this bubbling stew even more, throw in Mai Chen's worthless, layabout brother Bobby (Marc Marno),who plans blackmailing King about his upcoming love child. And then there's also Paul's smoldering, dour brother Dean (George Chakiris, fresh from "West Side Story"), a doctor nursing a lifelong crush on Sloane. 

             Oh my, the complications pile up. Tempers are lost, passions aroused, leading one participant to turn alcoholic (who could blame 'em).....and not every character makes it out this mess alive.......that is, if anyone cares, one way or the other.

             I wish I could tell you this film is a glorious, unintentionally funny guilty pleasure....(along the lines of Preminger's "Hurry Sundown"). But no. Nothing but indifferently acted, machine-tooled, connect-the-dots melodramatics, with not a single memorable moment or scene in sight. 

           Its one and only burst out of standard mediocrity comes courtesy of its rushed and ridiculous finale scene. Only then does "Diamond Head" attain the laughable idiocy that would have rendered the rest of it so much more fun to watch........

            Strictly for soap opera addicts and Charlton Heston completists. For anyone else, BQ recommends you bid it 'aloha'.....1 star (*).(And the one star's only for frequent shots of Yvette Mimieux in a bathing suit.....)