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.

I only really know cult film-maker Alan Ormsby for his starring role in the delightfully scuzzy cheapie CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, but he also directed a trio of low rent films back in the day. Two of these are interesting - the Ed Gein-inspired DERANGED and the West Indian slasher POPCORN - while the third is THE GREAT MASQUERADE, which I saw under the title MURDER ON THE EMERALD SEAS.

Sadly, this film turns out to have a pitiful storyline about a cop who has to go undercover in drag in order to find out who's been murdering women via some grisly knife slayings. The acting is largely contained on board a ship filled with partygoers, which occasionally gives this a Columbo-style feel, but sadly 95% of the running time is packed with dumb comedy that really makes it a chore to sit through.

The film's lead - who appears to be Aaron Eckhart's lookalike brother - is a small-time cop required to dress up in drag to board the ship. Why he must do so is never really answered, nor is the situation funny. The laughs are sparse and never amusing, and although Vinegar Syndrome has marketed this as an exploitation movie, there are just a couple of scenes of nudity so fans of that type of film will be disappointed too. MURDER ON THE EMERALD SEAS is a very odd choice for high definition release.