Tiki Oasis is to “Poly-pop” devotees of aloha shirts, hapa-haole ditties and tiki bars, as Comic-Con is to fans of comics, cosplay and sci-fi.

The 18th annual tiki festival will be held Aug. 8-12 at the Crowne Plaza hotel in San Diego. This year’s theme is “South Seas Cinema,” the movie genre that “celebrates tropical islands, mostly Hawaii, as seen in film, and celebrates the island lifestyle in a romantic and mysterious way,” said Otto von Stroheim, who co-produces the annual exotica extravaganza with his wife, Baby Doe.

This year’s convocation of the tiki tribes includes Hawaiian swing band Kahulanui, which hails from Big Island; a Miss Tiki Oasis pageant; a sarong and muumuu-oriented fashion show; and a marketplace featuring wood carvers’ and ceramicists’ depictions of tikis, those pre-missionary Polynesian gods this lollapalooza is named after. Amid seminars on how to mix tropical cocktails, various symposiums will focus on South Seas movies such as “Mutiny on the Bounty,” “The Hurricane” and “South Pacific.”

Bishop Museum Historian DeSoto Brown will lecture on “‘Hollywood’s Pacific War,” which describes how World War II in the Pacific was depicted in movies such as 1953’s “From Here to Eternity.”

He will also deliver “Modern Hawaii,” which he describes as a “PowerPoint presentation in the guise of a 1950s-’60s promotional film.” It will look at “how Hawaii today is modern and American, while retaining touches of its exotic past,” Brown said.

Matt Locey — who co-founded the South Seas Cinema Society with Brown in 1989 and has worked on TV/movie productions including the original “Magnum, P.I.,” “Pearl Harbor” and the reboot of “Hawaii Five-0” — will present “South Seas Musicals.” According to the part-Hawaiian film fan club president, his symposium will include classic dance numbers featuring Tinseltown legends like Bing Crosby in 1937’s “Waikiki Wedding;” Eleanor Powell in 1939’s “Honolulu;” and Betty Grable and Hilo Hattie in 1942’s “Song of the Islands.”

First-time festival attendee Brown confessed, “having Hawaiian ancestry, I’ve potentially conflicting feelings … When I was a kid, I watched this stuff happening for real, and was amused and intrigued, but sometimes annoyed at how phony it was. Yet at the same time I could feel, and still can feel, the allure of the fantasy of the exotic Pacific — even though I know very well that it never was really like this.”

At Tiki Oasis, “I’ll get to see how all this plays out,” he said.

For information go to tikioasis.com.

Former Makaha resident Ed Rampell co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book.”