Griselda

★★★★
“Calor blanco”

This is far from the first time we’ve covered films, series or documentaries about Griselda Blanco, the drug boss who ruled Miami with a lead fist in the eighties. There was Colombia narconovela La Viuda Negra. Lifetime TVM Cocaine Godmother, starring the not exactly Colombian, Catherine Zeta-Jones. And there was factual retelling, Queen of Cocaine. Now, we get the highest-profile version, made by Netflix and starring probably Colombia’s best-known actress. Albeit best-known for her role in long-running sitcom, Modern Family. We saw her here previously in the underwhelming Hot Pursuit, but this is a very different kettle of fish. Concern was understandable. Would she be up to the dramatic lifting required for such a heavy and complex role?

Yes. That’s the short answer. She does a fine job of depicting a character whose defining trait, in this rendition, is single-minded determination. It’s an aspect apparent from the start, where she flees her abusive husband in Medellin. Griselda arrives in Miami with her three kids, and little more than the clothes on her back. Oh, and the kilo of top-shelf cocaine, swiped from her spouse. Through sheer refusal to take no for an answer, she finds a buyer and convinces him to give her a shot [she meets him in Miami’s Mutiny club – Chris was actually a member there back in the day!]. When he stiffs her, she reels in a Colombian supplier, convinces him to front her 100 kilos, then creates her own market and network of dealers.

It’s kinda inspiring, weirdly. Early on, the series can be seen a twisted version of the American dream, where an immigrant can come to America, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and anyone can achieve success if they work hard. The reality is, Blanco didn’t arrive in Miami seeking asylum from domestic abuse, but fleeing increased law-enforcement heat for drug trafficking in New York. Not exactly what Vergara described the show as, depicting “How beyond all odds, a poor uneducated woman from Colombia managed to create a massive, multi-billion dollar empire in a male-dominated industry, in a country that was not her own.” You go, #girlboss! #slay!

Often literally. For her chosen profession here is thoroughly illegal, and the hard work involves ordering brutal violence against your rivals and enemies. This might be a cause for concern. But who are we to quibble? The makers have said they didn’t want to make a hero(ine) out of her. Neither did Brian de Palma, and yet, you can buy Scarface T-shirts. The market decides for you, and the way it depicts the violence for which Blanco is responsible seems more like an attempt at plausible deniability. It’s the usual double standard of Hollywood: making disapproving noises, while also depicting Griselda strutting glamourously out of the Mutiny, blood spattered on her cheek from a recent victim. 

Griselda has a strict zero-tolerance for anyone who thinks she is a soft mark because she’s a woman. Especially in the early part of her career, was quite willing to wield a baseball bat or gun to that end. Later on… well, she had people for that sort of thing. But as we head into the second half, things get progressively darker. Griselda starts to become paranoid, suspecting the people around her – an attitude not helped by her taste for smoking crack. She believes there’s an informant in her circle, and takes brutal action against those who she thinksit might be. Things peak at a birthday party for Dario (Guerra), her third husband. It ends in Griselda letting loose with her gold-plated MAC-10 (top).

The irony is, there’s no informant: just good police work. For on the other side of the law, the series gives us June Hawkins (Martinez, bottom), intelligence analyst and detective in the local police force. She was also a real person, one who played a significant role in the pursuit and capture of Griselda, being one of the first to realize a woman had taken over the drug trade in Miami. I suspect her role was likely inflated somewhat, in order to act as a counterpoint to her target: co-creator Doug Miro admitted about the character, “There’s a fair amount of artistic license.” That applies to the whole series, though I’m not inclined to complain.

It is a fairly straightforward rise-and-fall, charting first Griselda’s path up to the top, when she was earning $80 million per month. This is followed by the slow but likely inevitable collapse, as her business rivals and law enforcement catch up with her. We know how the story eventually ends – in a pool of blood outside a Medellin butcher’s shop. The series doesn’t bother going all the way to the end. It finishes with Blanco released from jail, sitting on the beach. But it’s not a happy ending, having just been told that she has lost almost everything for which she worked: three of her four sons have been murdered. Conventional morality wins out in the end.

In terms of production value, this is definitely several slices above the other efforts, even if Los Angeles stood in entirely for Miami (the latter no longer resembling what it was at the time). Of particular note is the make-up work on Vergara. It must have been a challenge, because events unfold over a significant number of years: your lead is, obviously, more or less fixed at a point in time. Initially, there’s little of note, but it gradually builds up, in a way that’s so subtle you might not notice. Until, by the end, you suddenly realize the character no longer looks like the actress. Though still rather prettier than the real Griselda.

I highly doubt this will end up being the final or even the definitive version of the Griselda Blanco story. The last surviving son, Michael Corleone, filed suit against Netflix, and reports indicate he has his own version of the family story he would like to tell. For now, however, this is the best adaptation of her life. If obviously skewed towards a questionable message of feminist “empowerment” which the makers wanted to send, Vargas’s strong performance holds the strands together and makes for a captivating experience. 

Dir: Andrés Baiz
Star: Sofía Vergara, Alberto Guerra, Martin Rodriguez, Juliana Aidén Martinez

Night Train

★★
“Not trucking good.”

Danielle Ryan’s quest for a movie worthy of her talents meets another swing and a miss. I guess you have to give credit to this one: it is at least trying to go in a different direction, making the Mexican cartel the good guys. For as well as their… less salubrious activities, they’re shipping pharmaceuticals into the US, and undercutting Big Pharma, by selling them to the needy at lower prices. #SoBrave Needless to say, this can’t stand, so word comes down to FBI supervisor Connoll (Sergei), who puts agent Jaylynne Jackson (Baird) on the case. Except, you wonder how much he wants to help, since she is an alcoholic burnout, with PTSD resulting from her stint in the military.

The target is Holly McCord (Ryan), who might also be a vet – to be honest, my attention kinda lapsed. She is trucking the imported drugs to the distribution hub in Las Vegas, using her souped-up vehicle. But only because it gives her access to the medicine her sick son needs. Her contact, Renzo Romeo (Haapaniemi) was initially unconvinced, but McCord’s ability to get the job done showed him she isn’t just a girl – a point the film practically belabours. That, however, can’t stop Holly from getting ensnared deeper in the crime web, as Jaylynne closes in, both ends threatening to destroy everything Holly cares about. Which is basically her son, so she decides to make a break for the border with him and Renzo.

I’ll take misleading posters for $400, please, Alex. I am fairly sure – despite the attention thing mentioned above – that Holly never picks up a gun at any point, even during the final face-off with Jaylynne. Indeed, in terms of action, this is considerably more subdued than you’d expect. I was thinking there would at least be some hot car chases here, and the movie largely fails to deliver on that front either. It’s more of a thriller than an action film, and doesn’t work particularly well as that. If it had kept to the battle between noble criminal and ignoble cop, it might have worked, since both characters are interesting – even if Jaylynne would, in reality, have been tossed out of the FBI.

However, the film throws too much extraneous stuff in there which is either not needed, or plain bad writing. I mean, if you have to use a sick child as maternal motivation, that’s simply lazy. We also get Holly’s relationship with her father, Jaylynne’s PTSD, the creepy attraction the Las Vegas head has for Holly, etc. etc. When the two women finally meet in the desert, the battle-hardened FBI agent ends up falling to her knees and weeping, then letting Holly go, after a stern lecture from the smuggler. No, really. The words,”Who writes this crap?” may have passed my lips at that point. Some day, Ryan (and, indeed, Baird) will hopefully find a script that matches her abilities. Today is not that day.

Dir: Shane Stanley
Star: Danielle C. Ryan, Diora Baird, Paul Haapaniemi, Ivan Sergei

Wingwomen

★★
“A wing and not much prayer.”

Netflix describes this as “Charlie’s Angels meets Lupin, with a dash of Killing Eve.” Um. About that… While I haven’t seen Lupin, I can confidently state any similarity to the others is tangential at best. For example, the only thing this really has in connection with Charlie’s Angels, is that there’s three of them. But here, it’s more like 2.25, since the third member is largely useless. It’s almost entirely the story of Carole (Laurent) and Alex (Exarchopoulos), two thieves who work for the enigmatic Marraine (Adjani). But Carole has discovered she’s pregnant and wants out of the business. Marraine is not happy, but agrees, providing Carole does that hoariest of film clichés: One Last Job.

This involves stealing a piece of art from a church, and they ordered to bring a getaway driver on board. She is Sam (Bresch), and is entirely pointless. Carole does the actual thieving, and Alex is a crack shot. But Sam? I can only presume she’s there to fulfill some kind of diversity quota. Because she has no talent past driving, and at no point in the movie subsequently is a quick getaway required. The same goes for other elements. There’s a John Wick-like thread where Alex’s bunny is killed. But the film forgets all about it for an hour, before suddenly remembering. Only to dispose of it in a scene, that seems to exist more so Carole and Sam can do a spot of flamenco.

Laurent has been here before, albeit a while ago. Back in 2011, we reviewed Requiem pour une Tueuse, in which she played an assassin who goes on… [all together!] ONE LAST MISSION! So it’s ironic to see her now directing a movie based around the same trope. It is very focused on the Alex/Carole dynamic, and that might be where the Killing Eve comparisons come from. But there’s nothing remotely adversarial about things here. It is nicely handled, the pair possessing the easy dynamic that only results from long familiarity and comfort with each other. However, this arguably sits closer to Thelma & Louise than anything, and certainly is more intense than you’d find on the male side of the genre. 

To be honest, Laurent seems to prefer this aspect to the action. For instance, she cuts from the meat of a fight between Alex and an assassin, to (presumably!) his tarpaulin wrapped corpse being dropped into the ocean. The stuff which is present, is not especially memorable. Even the art heist turns into more of a comedy of errors, as the target has become the location of a movie shoot. While there are some cool ideas – the stunningly well-disguised hideout in the middle of a forest being one – this feels like a relationship drama disguised as an action movie. It’s especially so at the end, when it almost topples over into hysteria. Give me an Alex solo film instead, and I would probably have been more interested and entertained.

Dir: Mélanie Laurent
Star: Mélanie Laurent, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Manon Bresch, Isabelle Adjani
a.k.a. Voleuses

Queen of Cocaine (2023)

★★★★
“Just the facts, ma’am.”

We’ve written about Griselda Blanco before. In particular, we reviewed telenovela La Viuda Negra, which was loosely based on her life and compared it to the facts. We also covered Cocaine Godmother, in which Catherine Zeta-Jones took on the role of Blanco in a bio-more-or-less-pic. She remains a fascinating character, so you won’t be surprised that when I heard about a new documentary concerning her life, it went straight to near the top of my watch-list. I was a little concerned, since it came out as a “Tubi Original”. I’ve been burned by some of these before, and so was expecting a lurid, shallow TMZ-style expose which played fast and loose with the truth. 

To my pleasant surprise, that’s not the case at all. Obviously, there’s a certain allure here, but it doesn’t needlessly glamourize or condemn its subject, and instead manages to do a good job of painting both sides, and depicting Griselda as a surprisingly complex character. This is particularly clear at the end, when her youngest son – named, amusingly, Michael Corleone – says of his mother, “Yes, it’s a legacy of violence. But she was a woman that had to become savage in a world that wasn’t made for her.” Then Detective Diaz, who headed the Miami task force charged with bringing her down, counters, “We have this bitch from hell who decides she wants to be meaner and more powerful than anybody else… Violence. Arrogance. Greed. That is her legacy.” Take your pick!

It covers Blanco’s entire career, from growing up poor in Cartagena, through her (illegal) emigration into America, where she got into the drug business, and built an empire which brought her a fortune estimated (likely conservatively) in hundreds of millions of dollars. With this came enemies on both sides of the law, but Blanco almost seemed to feel she was invulnerable, and continued acting with impunity, until first the authorities and then her foes, eventually caught up with her. They’ve got some very good interview subjects, with Michael in particular standing out. His description of how he witnessed his father being gunned down on a Colombian street is chilling.

Cops, journalists and even other criminals also chip in, and it’s edited skilfully together to tell a complex story with clarity. Another interesting character I’m going to have to look into is Jemeker Thompson-Hairston, the “Queen of crack” who served time alongside Blanco in federal prison. One of the key players in the eighties crack epidemic, she’s now an evangelist, and came over as very well-spoken and thoughtful. I do have to say, something about narrator Elena Hurst’s voice kinda grated on me. Perhaps it was the way she’d apparently adopt an outrageous Spanish accent, any time she said the subject’s name: “Greez-hel-dahh”. Overall though, this manages to be both informative and entertaining, even if it is perhaps helped by having a story it would be difficult to screw up.

Dir: Victoria Duley
Star: Michael Corleone Blanco, Bob Palombo, Raul Diaz, Dr. Amy Shlosberg

The Irish Connection


“Drop this connection.”

Dear lord, this is a chore. From an opening conversation which unfolds mainly in quotes from Gone With the Wind, Scarface and other, better movies, it was painfully obvious for what writer-director Patrick is aiming. This is supposed to be a Guy Ritchie-esque caper, in which a parade of quirky characters from the underworld jostle for possession of… something.  Hilarity will surely ensue, as they trade foul-mouthed banter, get into and out of sticky situations and generally act in an amusingly inept manner. Except, hilarity most definitely does not ensue. I don’t think I broke into a smile once, with the whole concept being dead on arrival. Malta does look quite nice as a holiday destination though.

The heroine is agent Aureille Fleming (Coduri), though quite who she is an agent of, or why she is involved, never becomes particularly clear. The objects in question are some high denomination bearer bonds, and the film feels obligated to open with a caption explaining what these are. They have been stolen by a man known as The Priest, who flees from Ireland to Malta, and heavily-pregnant crime boss Alice (Spencer-Longhurst) wants them back. Everyone half-competent apparently being otherwise engaged, she sends hapless brother Rory (Robinson) and her husband Casper to the Mediterranean to retrieve them. Fleming – and, yes, it IS a painfully obvious 007 reference – is there to stop the bonds from falling into Alice’s hands, because… I don’t know. Maybe it was explained. I just don’t care.

At times this feels more like a fancy dress party than a film. People dressed up as nuns. People dressed up as clowns. People dressed as priests. This probably isn’t surprising, considering that it feels like Patrick is cosplaying as a film-maker. There’s little or no evidence to indicate he knows how to construct a coherent or interesting narrative. Instead, he proceeds by simply dropping in scenes which, I gueaa, are supposed to be “amusing”, without rhyme or reason. I called Aureille the heroine above, though there’s precious little to make her so. I presumed she is supposed to be the “good guy”, because there are no other credible candidates for that role, so she earns it by default.

I might have forgiven this had the action been up to a decent level. However, the cover is blatantly lying to us about this as well. I do not recall any moment at which she was on a motor-cycle, let alone wielding a gun. Admittedly, it’s possible my attention had wavered to such a degree I didn’t notice. I’m not sure I remember anyone being shot, and must have blinked and missed the helicopter. She throws a few lacklustre punches, and that’s close to the sum total of the action. A genuinely feeble excuse, it would not surprise me if this had been a tax write-off exercise. It’s the only way I can realistically explain the painful level on which this operates.

Dir: Danny Patrick
Star: Rosa Coduri, Flora Spencer-Longhurst, Jack Bence, Shane Robinson

I’m Your Woman

★★★★
“Taking action”

Hearing that James Gunn, new head of the DC movie department at Warners, just recently announced David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan as the new actors to play Superman and Lois Lane in the next “Superman”-movie, I felt the need to find out more about these new actors. For Brosnahan I chose the movie I’m Your Woman, an Amazon Prime production from 2020. For one thing, she played the main role, and secondly a two-hour movie is much quicker to watch than a series like The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel. Sure, for that series she got two Golden Globes, one Emmy and two Screen Actors Guild Awards – but my time is a bit limited. Also, I prefer gangster movies over a dramedy show.

I’m Your Woman takes place in the 1970s. Although a year is never specifically mentioned, the dresses, suits, hair styles and the ugly interior design speak for themselves. Jean (Brosnahan) plays the wife of gangster Eddie (Bill Heck). She knows that he’s a gangster but not what he exactly does. In material terms, while there is everything that she could wish for, she is obviously unfulfilled, as she would have liked to have a child – but it didn’t work out. A big change in her life happens when Eddie one day brings home a baby, declaring that it is now theirs. Jean is more than a little over-burdened with the new task, for taking care of anything or anyone, least of all a baby, is something she never had to do.

Very soon her life changes even more dramatically, when one night Eddie doesn’t come home. Instead, she is given a large amount of money and told to go with Cal (Kene), a friend of Eddie’s. She is not told what has happened, so her subsequent escape and isolation in a foreign house remains a mystery to her for quite some time.  As one can probably already guess from the above, the movie is not excessively an action movie with a whole lot of bang-bang. That said, it nevertheless earns its place in the “girls with guns” category, even if this element shows up quite late in the game. For most of the movie, the heroine (and by extensions we, the audience) are left in the dark concerning the why, what and how. Only slowly are we given that information, with light eventually being shed on the background of what happened and the fate of Eddie.

I think this makes it quite an unusual movie as – in contrast to many other movies – we are not immediately brought up to speed with an info-dump, so that we tie ourselves emotionally to Jean. As a result, the fear and tension she experiences are really palpable to us, too. We don’t know who Cal is and why he is helping her, or why people are after Jean. In my opinion, the movie is particularly successful in showing a female perspective, as part of something that would otherwise potentially have been just an ordinary gangster story. In the beginning, Jean does whatever she is told, while at the same time also trying her best to be a good mother to the little baby, even if her knowledge in this respect is also just rudimentary.

It’s only when she realizes that, unless she leaves behind the passive role that she has occupied for such a long time and becomes active, the hunt for her will never end. After that, she is able to change her life and save her new found friends, including Cal and his family. In that respect – and I know how this sounds – this movie can actually be called an emancipation drama. For once this is real, in contrast to the kind of what many modern movies understand under that expression. Also, the story can be seen as offering a historical comment on 1970s paranoia, and in particular how everything seemed to be chaotic at this time. Jean has to come to terms with the notion that those people who try their best to protect her, might have just as little a clue as she has.

I liked this movie, filmed in Pittsburgh, very much. The inherent tension can be felt for the entirety of the movie and it always feels and sounds like the 1970s. Wikipedia tells me the movie was only in theatres very briefly before Amazon Prime released it online. Rachel Brosnahan gives a first-class performance here though the whole production is top-notch. I regret that, too often, quality content like this flies under the radar, while we are distracted with yet another of these big dumb blockbusters Hollywood is constantly pouring over us. I feel Brosnahan is an actress of whom I would like to see more. That appears not to be problem, with plenty more of her work apparently available on Prime.

Dir: Julia Hart
Star: Rachel Brosnahan, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Arinzé Kene, Jameson Charles

Paradise Highway

★★½
“Mother trucker.”

I spent much of the first thirty minutes here going “That can’t be Juliette Binoche.” Yet, it is, the French actress looking thoroughly unglamorous and very convincing in her portrayal of white trash trucker Sally. Her brother Dennis (Frank Grillo, whose role isn’t as big as the poster would have you believe) is in prison, and under pressure from even sketchier parties, so Sally has been delivering packages for said parties as she criss-crosses the country. He’s about to get out, so this will be her last run. She’s still shocked to discover the item in this case is a very young girl, Leila (Finley), though she has no alternative but to comply. Except, the hand-off goes violently wrong, the intended recipient ending up dead in the dirt. Sally flees with Leila in tow, and tries to figure out what to do. In pursuit are both the girl’s “owners”, and the authorities, led by federal agent Sterling (Monaghan) and ex-agent Gerick (Freeman), who is now an FBI consultant.

If you’re think this seems like a cross between the various versions of Gloria and The Transporter, you would be about right. Things unfold almost entirely as you’d expect, with the relationship between Sally and Leila going from suspicion and mistrust to affection. Nor will you be surprised to discover that Sally has a background of abuse herself, giving her a particular reason to want to protect the child from the thoroughly unpleasant fate for which she was slated [The film never details it, but a scene where Sterling and Gerick find the traffickers’ den gives you enough of an idea] The problem is we don’t need this justification: wanting to protect a child should be the natural response of any right-minded individual. As a result, this set-up is largely a waste of time, and in a film which runs an overlong 115 minutes, is certainly unnecessary.

Much the same goes for the way the film splits its focus between the two pairs: Sally and Leila, or Sterling and Gerick. I couldn’t help feeling they should have stuck to one or the other, instead of what feels almost like an even split, leaving both somewhat under-served. The agents don’t seem to have a particular purpose, except perhaps to indicate that not all agents of the system are bad – despite the way it has clearly and monumentally failed Leila. It’s always a pleasure to watch Freeman act, and that remains the case here. Indeed, the goes for Binoche: all the performances are good enough for their roles, and make the relationships the best thing about this. They just seem to exist in a vacuum, servicing a plot that doesn’t manage much more than a shadowy antagonist until the very end. There are too many under-developed elements, such as the posse of other women truckers, who exist purely to come to Sally’s aid, as and when necessary. This big-rig looks imposing, yet is running empty in terms of any emotional payload.

Dir: Anna Gutto
Star: Juliette Binoche, Hala Finley, Morgan Freeman, Cameron Monaghan

Double Threat

★★½
“2-for-1 is not always a great deal.”

If Ryan looks familiar, that’s because she is. She starred in Survivor – no, the other film by that name – and also 626 Evolution, making a fairly decent impression in the former, and let down significantly by the approach of the latter. There, she was billed as Danielle Chuchran: not sure if the name change is a result of marriage, or simply a realization that “Ryan” is a lot easier to remember. Whether you will want to is a different matter: she’s likely the best thing in this, and when it appears, the action is decent. There just isn’t enough of it, and the stuff between the set-pieces ranges from mediocre to cringeworthy.

It begins in a convenience store, where Jimmy (Lawrence, who a very long time ago, was one of the kids in Mrs. Doubtfire!) is chatting up the pretty clerk, Natasha (Ryan). Two armed mem show up: before Jimmy can blink, Natasha has killed them both, grabbed her bug-out bag and exited. A stunned Jimmy decides not to stick around, and drives off, only for Natasha to pop up in the back. Turns out the store was a front for the mob to launder money, and she had skimmed $600,000. They – in particular, the boss’s son, Ellis (Joy) and his top fixer, Ask (Olivieri) – are out to make an example of her. Yet there’s one big twist which might work in her favour: Natasha has a split personality. 

There’s Nat, the sensible, quiet one. Then there’s Tasha, the unrepentant bad-ass who can take very good care of herself. Jimmy has to try and figure out what to do, and with whom, when all he really wants to do is get to the ocean and scatter the ashes of his late brother. Meanwhile, Ellis is bickering with Ask, and being brow-beaten with his father. If this all sounds like a lot: it is. The film basically tries to do too much, and ends up doing little of it justice. It’s the male characters who drag it down: Jimmy is vanilla pudding, while Ellis is a whiny little puppy. Just pit Ask against Nat and Tasha, and be done with it.

Ryan does know how to handle herself in action. The best sequence has her taking on two thugs in hand-to-hand combat, while Jimmy fails to figure out how to operate a gun. This is imaginative and well-done, using her agility, speed and flexibility to counter their strength. On the other hand, then there’s the bit where she steals a bow and a horse from some LARPers and… Sorry, I’ve lost the will to type it out. The film needs to pick a tone and stick to it, Stanley not being able to pull off the shifts necessary. That’s even aside from qualms about the glib use of mental illness as convenient plot device, Nat or Tasha showing up exactly when needed. I hope Ryan can find a better vehicle for her talents, since she deserves better. 

Dir: Shane Stanley
Star: Danielle C. Ryan, Matthew Lawrence, Kevin Joy, Dawn Olivieri

Swamp Women

★★★
“Marsh ado about nothing.”

One of the earliest films directed by Roger Corman, it’d be a major stretch to call this a good film, yet I can’t deny I found it entertaining. It definitely has better female characters than most movies of the mid-fifties. Four women break out of jail and head into the swamps, in search of stolen diamonds which were previously hidden in the Louisiana swamps. Except, one of them is an undercover police officer, Lee Hampton (Mathews), who had been inserted into prison to join the gang and lead the escape, in the hope of recovering the loot. After the car breaks down, they hijack a boat owned by an oil prospector, Bob, and his girlfriend, taking them hostage as they head deeper into the bayou.

Things unfold more or less as you’d expect, though not exactly how Lee would have planned. There’s dissension in the ranks, fighting between the women for the attentions of Bob, encounters with native wildlife, and copious amounts of stock footage. The last is both of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and expensive elements like helicopters, helping pad the running-time, though it still comes in on the underside of seventy minutes. By all accounts, there was hardly a corner which Corman left uncut, such as the women doing their own stunts. Mike Connors, who played Bob, said, “The girls in that picture had it much worse than I did… They had to trudge through the mud, the swamps, pulling this rowboat, and I was sitting in the rowboat high and dry.”

Characterization beyond Lee is largely limited to the colour of the women’s hair – blonde, brunette, or redhead – though Josie (Marie Windsor, the star of Outlaw Women) is effective as the de facto leader of the group. It is nice there’s no attempt made to give them boyfriends or husbands. They make their own decisions, and follow through with them, entirely on their own terms. This brand of mid-fifties feminism results in more than one instance of them rolling around in the swamp, cat-fighting each other. Somehow, their hair, clothes and make-up miraculously seem to escape any kind of damage in these brawls, and return to pristine condition for the next scene.

On the way to the finale, Vera (Garland) tries to sneak off with both the jewels and Bob, paying the price for her treachery. The authorities manage to lose track of the group, and Josie grows increasingly suspicious of Lee’s resistance to violence. The leader eventually orders Lee to kill Bob; the shots fired in the ensuing fracas are enough, conveniently, to attract the search party, while Vera and Lee battle through the forest and – inevitably, into the water. It’s all entirely ridiculous, and the scope for parody makes it easy to understand why it was MST3K‘d. Yet even at this early stage, Corman clearly understood that the worst crime a B-movie can commit it is to be boring. For all its flaws, Swamp Women is never that.

Dir: Roger Corman
Star: Carole Mathews, Marie Windsor, Beverly Garland, Jill Jarmyn

Siren of the Muncy Hole, by James Halpin

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

The main theme of this book appears to be, “How far will a mother go, to protect her daughter?” Based on what we read here, the answer to that question appears to be, “Very, very far.” The heroine is Sherica Daniels, who initially appears to have somewhat lucked out and escaped a nasty and abusive relationship. Her husband, drug addict Roy, has just died following a pair of botched armed robberies. That should leave her and teenage daughter Ashlynn to get on with their lives. Not so fast. For it’s only a short while before Roy’s drug dealer, Tokie, shows up. He’s demanding Sherica pays her husband’s debt – and more, because he believes she knows where the unrecovered loot from Roy’s robberies was hidden. When she fails to convince Tokie otherwise, he abducts Ashlynn.

The police are limited in what they can do, for Ashlynn has substance abuse issues of her own, and tells the authorities she wasn’t kidnapped. Sherica knows otherwise. She sets out to track down and rescue her daughter, from a man who turns out to be not just a drug dealer, but also a pimp. Though how do you rescue somebody who doesn’t want to be rescued? Especially when you have no experience, few resources – though Sherica does have her late husband’s .357 Magnum – and your only ally is a gas station clerk, a refugee from the Yemen. The answer is mostly tenacity: the heroine simply won’t sit back and accept any other outcome, except for getting Ashlynn back.

The style here is occasionally a tad clunky. I found myself having to reread some sentences several times to figure out their meaning, such as, “After all, you can’t live your life thinking back about what you should have done if only you’d known something you could never have known in the first place. You just can’t.” Uh… Sure, I guess? Despite the cover, it is also very restrained on the action front. There is only one such sequence, and most of its content unfolds over little more than a minute in real-time. Though it is spectacularly gory, and partly makes up for in intensity, what it might lack in duration.

The book’s main plus point is probably the character of Sherica, who is not your typical heroine. Her situation largely sucks, mainly as a result of poor choices, yet Halpin still manages to make her sympathetic. The fierce devotion to her daughter, and desire to give Ashlynn a better life, goes a long way in this regard. While told in flashback, there are hints at the downbeat way things will turn out throughout and the significance – indeed, even the meaning – of the title only becomes clear at the end. I’m not entirely convinced a situation like this would [and I’m skirting spoilers here!] conclude in the manner described. Yet it’s just plausible enough, and this is more about the journey than the destination.

Author: James Halpin
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel