The last three winners of a beauty contest held by a millionaire (Roberts Blossom) have been murdered. To curb this, he plans to hold this year's contest on a cruise liner called the Emerald Seas. The cops decide the best course of action is to send someone undercover in drag and officer Dave Collins (Robert Perault) has just the right figure for it. This is a real oddity. According to The Miami Times, it shot in Florida in the fall of 1973 with a budget of $300,000 with Alan Ormsby at the helm. It premiered with a PG rating in 1974, but somewhere along the line someone shot several nude scenes that end up released as Murder on the Emerald Seas (which is the one Vinegar Syndrome put out). It creates kind of a schizophrenic movie. Most of the comedy falls pretty flat (example: two old ladies accidentally sniff cocaine and they throw "booooing!" sounds on the soundtrack) but the cast is really giving their all. Probably best are Lee Sandman and John DeSanti as a coupla Italian mobsters. It is also funny to see Blossom in a comedic role with the knowledge he did ther serial killer pic Deranged (1974) for Ormsby and Jeff Gillen the same year. Oddly, Henny Youngman and Johnny Weissmuller show up in cameos.
