Sunburn (1979)

Farrah Fawcett-Majors plays Ellie, a New York model who’s hired to pose as the wife of hotshot private investigator Jake Decker (Charles Grodin).

Together, they investigate a $5 million insurance claim after the death of a businessman in a suspicious car accident in Acapulco, Mexico. They are joined by an old buzzard local detective called Marcus (Art Carney).

Joan Collins co-stars as a deliciously adulterous wife with a voracious sexual appetite spiced with a touch of kinkiness, who operates her parties as if they were a supermarket for men.

Ellie is kidnapped by the Mexican Mafia, and Jake and Marcus dress in combat fatigues and break her out of a waterfront warehouse by parasailing behind a ski boat (seriously).

There are lots of cliches in this comic adventure which exists primarily to display Farrah’s hair and teeth.

Importantly, we never wonder how the man died in Acapulco or whether he committed suicide. We wonder what outfit Farrah will wear next.

She appears at a swim party in a dress with more slits than Julius Caesar’s toga; she changes into a bathing suit complete with beads and a bottom wrap which she did not bring to the party; and when she rents scuba diving equipment at a diving school, she emerges in a wetsuit that’s cut like a Playboy bunny outfit, unzipped almost to her navel.

When she’s not modelling, she’s in bed, looking winsome and vulnerable. Farrah logs enough sack time in Sunburn to qualify as a footnote in the Guinness Book of Records.

Ellie
Farrah Fawcett-Majors
Jake
Charles Grodin
Marcus
Art Carney
Nera
Joan Collins
Crawford
William Daniels
Webb
John Hillerman
Mrs Thoren
Eleanor Parker
Mark Elmes
Keenan Wynn
Karl
Robin Clarke
Joanna
Joan Goodfellow
Gela
Jack Kruschen
Fons
Alejandro Rey
Vasquez
Jorge Luke
Dobbs
Seymour Cassel
Mamie
Joanna Rush (as Joanna Lehmann)
Kunz
Alex Sharp
Milan
Bob Orrison
Dr Kellogg
Delroy White
Mrs Kellogg
Christa Walter

Director
Richard C. Sarafian