It was supposed to be a win-win, with Guam gaining a toehold in the film industry and two Hollywood moviemakers getting the island government's backing for their new kung fu franchise.
"Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon" was the first of at least two action flicks that producer John F.S. Laing and director Albert Pyun planned to shoot on Guam as part of an unusual deal with the U.S. territory's economic development agency.
But instead of generating jobs and a box-office bonanza, "Max Havoc" triggered the biggest battle on the Pacific island since the Son of Godzilla tangled with giant insects in 1967.
Guam officials contend that Laing snookered them into putting up $800,000 to guarantee a bank loan on which he later defaulted. Laing counters that they broke their promises of financial support and caused his company to lose $1.5 million.
Territorial Sen. Ben Pangelinan splits the blame, accusing the filmmakers of peddling "the glitz of Hollywood" to star-struck officials who were all too eager to buy it.
"If somebody on Guam wanted to meet Carmen Electra, there are a lot cheaper ways than backing a film in which she had a three-minute part," said Pangelinan, a lonely voice of dissent when the plan was hatched three years ago.
In the resulting 90 minutes of cinematic chop sockey, Swiss-born Mickey Hardt stars as a champion kickboxer-turned-sports-photographer drawn into a web of intrigue on Guam. The plot revolves around women in bikinis, clashes with Japanese assassins, a coveted jade dragon filled with cremated remains and a sinister "grand master" played by David Carradine. Electra has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo as a beach vendor.
"The whole thing was just bad all the way around," said Ralph Coon, a Pasadena lighting technician who worked on the movie. "This thing was really destined to wind up in the cutout bin of some truck stop on the way to Barstow."
What sets "Max Havoc" apart from other low-budget, straight-to-video gobblers is how and why it came to be filmed on Guam, a remote locale 1,500 miles south of Japan and 6,000 miles from Hollywood -- with no moviemaking infrastructure.
Although the island has been the backdrop for "Son of Godzilla," the 1962 war movie "No Man Is an Island" and some Japanese commercials, "Max Havoc" marked Guam's most concerted effort to fetch Hollywood dollars.
