Kauai: A getaway, yes, but minus the killers

— -- The Hawaiian island of Kauai, long famous as a Hollywood backdrop, is getting ready for another close-up in the thriller A Perfect Getaway, opening today.

But the R-rated movie's premise — honeymooning hikers grapple with serial murderers on Kauai's treacherous and isolated Kalalau Trail — is generating negative buzz from residents who fear it will portray the Garden Isle as a haven for psychopaths.

"We're just trying to remind people this is fiction," says Sue Kanoho of the Kauai Visitors Bureau. "The last time I looked, we didn't have any dinosaurs here (Jurassic Park was filmed on the island), and (Disney's) Lilo and Stitch don't live here, either."

Ironically, most of A Perfect Getaway was shot in Puerto Rico. But the trailer's opening scenes of the honeymooners admiring the Na Pali Coast's knife-edged cliffs from a helicopter "are pretty spectacular and really show off the beauty of the island," Kanoho says.

Though her office won't be promoting the new film, Kanoho is already talking up October's 50th anniversary of another movie that used the Na Pali Coast to scenic advantage: Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific.