Author: Jim McLennan

The Huntsman: Winter’s War

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★★★½
“Now with 43% fewer dwarves, and 99% less Kristin Stewart.”

I did not see Snow White And The Huntsman: my tolerance for Kristin Stewart went after Chris decided we should watch all three Twilight movies [to her credit, a decision she bitterly regretted]. So I can’t say how this compares to its predecessor. On it’s own though, it brings us a trio of kick-ass heroines, some truly awesome visuals, and Stewart at a “made in a factory than also manufactures peanut products” level. If not without its problems, I’ll take that as a foundation, every day and twice on Sundays. There are two stories here: Queens Ravenna (Theron) and Freya (Blunt), sisters who part ways after Freya’s child is killed, with the betrayed Freya heading to the frozen North to rule her empire with a will of iron. Ravenna goes on to magic mirror blah poison apple blah blah dwarves – you know that bit – before apparently being killed.

Meanwhile, Freya’s army is spearheaded by a mixed gender platoon of soldiers, trained from young children under her sole commandment: do not love. Naturally, that doesn’t work, with Eric (Hemsworth) and Sara (Chastain) falling for each other and trying to elope. They’re caught, Sara apparently killed, and Eric tossed off a cliff. He survives, going on to become Snow White’s Huntsman in the original movie. Fast forward a few years, and he’s sent to recover Ravenna’s magic mirror, which has been stolen while in transit to a place where its evil power can be contained. However, Freya is also after it, believing she can use the mirror to reclaim her sister’s kingdom and expand her own.

huntsmanWhile Chastain kicks surprising amounts of butt, the love story here is likely the least interesting aspect of the film, though it has some competition down at the bottom with the comic-relief dwarves (look, we love Nick Frost as much as the next people… but this was like watching a beloved uncle get falling-down drunk). Far more interesting is the Freya/Ravenna dynamic: both actresses go full-bore into their roles and it’s quite glorious to watch, helped by some quite incredible costumes, and use of special effects that enhance the atmosphere, rather than just being used for shock and awe. Ravenna’s entrance – technically, re-entrance – is just spectacular, and likely won’t be beaten this year. I was surprised the budget was as low as $115 million, because it looks as good as anything I’ve seen, to the point when I’m seriously considering a Blu-Ray purchase (and I’ve got maybe a dozen of those, so that’s rare indeed).

It’s a shame this wasn’t more successful. Maybe it helps I haven’t seen Frozen either, to which I’ve seen a number of reviews compare this. Admittedly, the story needs more focus, and should have decided whether to be a prequel or a sequel. Hemsworth and Chastain should not have bothered with unconvincing Scottish accents either. Yet it overcomes these issues with sheer force of will from the actresses involved. All three have some pedigree in the action genre; Theron and Chastain most obviously, but even Blunt played one of Boudica’s daughters, back in 2003. They take the material more seriously than it likely deserves (unquestionably, more seriously than Hemsworth, Frost or the other male actors), and their gravitas helps drag the viewer along with them. And even when it can’t quite pull that off, you can still admire the pretty pictures.

Dir: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Star: Chris Hemsworth, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, Charlize Theron

Jessie Graff: From Chick Fight to American Ninja Warrior

Video

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“Being strong doesn’t make you manly or unfeminine. It just means you can do more things.” — Jessie Graff

At the risk of touting our own hipster cred, we’ve been fans of Ninja Warrior for long before it hit the mainstream on NBC – we first wrote about it here, and the women who competed on the show, back in 2007, when it was screening on the late, lamented cable channel G4. Since then, America has gone from having tryout for the Japanese original, to its own, entirely independent version of the show – on which both men and women compete, with no mercy to the latter. Success has, understandably, been hard to come by. One of the few to have completed the course is Jessie Graff – even after the qualifying course was toughened up for this season, she still was able to make it through, as you can see below:

But Graff is not just a game-show competitor. She’s a stuntwoman, whose credits include everything from The Walking Dead to X-Men: First Class. She’s also a black-belt in taekwondo, and held the women’s pole-vault record during her time at the University of Nebraska, before moving to Hollywood – initially seeking to follow a career in acting, before her physical abilities led her into the stunt world. She first appeared in 2013, as part of the show’s fifth season, wearing a chicken costume, for reasons we’ll get to. Despite not appearing to take the course as seriously as many of the male competitors, she qualified for the regional finals at her first attempt.

A bad knee injury sidelined her for 2014, perhaps preventing her from becoming among the first woman to complete a qualifying course – that prize went to  Kacy Catanzaro. But it allowed Graff to focus on improving her grip strength, a necessity for a number of the obstacles, and in season 7 last year, she became the only female competitor that series to qualify for the national finals in her own right. This season, as the above video shows, she’s seeking to go even further. Now, we sit on the couch, with our Doritos, and cheer on all the women, from Catanzaro through Michelle Warnky and Meagan Martin. But Graff’s sense of fun – most obvious in her choice of attire – is what had particularly endeared her to us.

If you need further evidence of that, I present you the video below, in which she and fellow stunt-woman Tree O’Toole recreate the “chicken fight” sequence from animated series Family Guy, as a live-action fisticuffs extravaganza. Bonus credit: cameo appearance (at around the 2:20 mark) by veteran stunt-woman Jeannie Epper, who mentored Zoë Bell. Watch it, and Graff wearing a chicken dress on her American Ninja Warrior debut later that year, will make a great deal more sense!

The Wrong Car

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★★
“The first Uber paranoia film?”

wrongcarI was kinda amused by the concept here, which tells the story of law student Trudy (Savre), who is drugged and raped after getting into what she thinks is a “NetCar” – a thinly-disguised Uber – vehicle, only to find it driven by a predator who waits near venues for vulnerable (read, “drunk”) young women, who are expecting the Uber… sorry, the “NetCar” they ordered to show up. The police are, as typical in this kind of TV movie, powerless to help, and it’s up to Savre and her roommate, Gretchen (Raisa) to track down the perpetrator. To that end, Trudy becomes a NetCar driver herself, seeking to stop the rapist before any more women fall victim to him. Her new career puts Trudy in the way of further danger, after a pair of gangbangers get into her car, yet also brings her potential romance in the cute, well-off shape of investment advisers Donovan (Davis).

My amusement was partly due to family history, as Chris was (for a couple of months) an Uber driver for some extra money. Turned out not to be worth her effort for the return – but nor was her life as a driver anywhere near as exciting as Trudy’s. Chris was never hijacked by anyone, to go pick up one of their friends who’d been shot, for instance. Nor did she meet any cute, well-off investment advisers. Not that she told me, anyway. For this is a neo-Luddite scare story, about the dangers of a technological innovation, which carefully ignores things like, for example, the fact that anyone who calls an Uber car can then see exactly where it is on the app – so would surely know, even if utterly drunk, it was not pulled up in front of them. But why let that get in the way of a made-for-Lifetime slab of misandry?

For, make no mistake, that’s what it is: there is literally not a man in the film who is what I would call a decent human being, being a selection of sexists and creepers, when not actually rapey. After a couple of movies from Lifetime that have actually been solid (Big Driver and Deliverance Creek), this was definitely a step back into the cliches for which their previous output was somewhat notorious. That said, as a pulpy pot-boiler of entertainment, it’s competently created, with Savre a credible enough heroine who has a nice arc after her assault, going through the various stages of reaction on her way to deciding Something Must Be Done. It’s not too hard to see where this is going to end up, and the script in general offers few, if any, surprises – one, to be precise. Yet I can’t deny a certain gratification is provided by the final resolution, though I’d probably still have preferred justice involving a more “bullet to genitals” approach. Probably not very Lifetime-friendly that, though…

Dir: John Stimpson
Star: Danielle Savre, Jackson Davis, Francia Raisa, Christina Elmore
a.k.a. Black Car

I am Grimalkin, by Joseph Delaney

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★★★½
“How to keep a head of the pack.”

grimalkinThis is the ninth novel in Delaney’s Wardstone Chronicles series (known as The Last Apprentice in the USA), and full confession: I haven’t read any of the others. I generally wouldn’t start reading a series so far in, but I was recommended this, on the grounds that it worked as a stand-alone piece, and certainly qualified for inclusion here, in a way the rest of the saga didn’t. Can’t argue with that assessment: while I sense you would likely get significantly more from the book if you have read its predecessors, Grimalkin makes a heck of a bad-ass.

As we join the story in progress, she is carrying round the severed head of The Fiend [who appears, more or less, to be Satan] in a bag, having separated it from his body after he killed her child. However, she is being pursued by a host of his acolytes and the kretch, a creature spawned for the specific purpose of tracking and killing her. They are intent on retrieving the head and re-uniting it with the rest of him – which will cause all hell to break loose. Fortunately, Grimalkin is a witch herself – and not just the cauldron-y, hubble-bubble kind, but the assassin of her coven, a position obtained by killing the incumbent. Normal witches? Don’t stand a chance. Custom-created hell-spawn with a poisonous bite and armoured eyelids? Now, you’re talking.

Actually, even that would probably be a light challenge, Grimalkin’s talents being so well-honed. However, having created this Superwoman (and I’m thinking more Nietzsche than Jerry Siegel), Delaney makes the smart move of then dialing it back, weakening his protagonist early on, which brings her down to the level where she could be taken out. And, since she’s not the central character of the series – Tom Ward doesn’t even appear –  there’s a genuine sense Delaney could dispose of her; he certainly has few qualms about disposing of just about everyone who assists her, at a rate of which George R.R. Martin would approve. This story is, more or less, an extended chase sequence with occasional pauses for reflection, and flashback to learn how Grimalkin reached her position, teamed up with Thorne, her apprentice, etc. It makes for a rather breathless pace, but certainly keeps the reader’s interest.

There are times when it does become a little too “young adult”-ish for my taste – I took to rolling my eyes, every time I read another occurrence of “I am Grimalkin!” But credit Delaney for not attempting to shoehorn in any element of Twlight-esque romance. Because that would be utterly inappropriate for a character who can say, “Cowardice and courage are just labels—words invented by foolish men to bolster their egos and denigrate their enemies. In battle we should be cold, clinical, and disciplined.” While there was a movie version of the first novel (albeit one largely ignored, even by fans), this entry is probably close to unfilmable, simply because Grimalkin is pure, undiluted anti-hero, which is very difficult to make work on-screen. I’d like to see them try, yet amn’t holding my breath there. All told, I certainly enjoyed this one, yet am not sure if I’ll bother with the other, Grimalkin-free entries. It just wouldn’t be the same.

Author: Joseph Delaney
Publisher: Bodley Head, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a physical book.
a.k.a. The Last Apprentice: Grimalkin The Witch Assassin

Painkiller Jane – TV Series

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★★
“The pain and strain, stays mainly in the Jane…”

painkiller1Originally created as a comic-book by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada in the mid-nineties, it told the story of its heroine, Jane Vasko, who became effectively immortal after an incident left her with superhuman regenerative powers. She can still be hurt, certainly – even knocked down – but she heals at a phenomenal rate, rendering her nearly unstoppable. Over the years since, she has crossed paths with a number of other characters, including Hellboy and Vampirella, and the show became a TV movie on SyFy in December 2005, starring Emmanuelle Vaugier as Jane. The film was also used to gauge interest in a potential TV series, and one duly emerged in April 2007, albeit with Kristanna Loken now in the role, and effectively pretending the movie didn’t exist. For example, Jane went back from being a soldier to the law-enforcement agent of the comic, albeit a DEA agent rather than an undercover cop, and the cause of her abilities also became rather less opaque.

Unfortunately, it still wasn’t very good, especially in the early episodes. This is actually my second attempt to review the show: after eight episodes or so in the my original effort, I realized I had entirely abandoned watching them, and simply had them on in the background while I did something else. The return effort proved my attention span was made of sterner stuff, though I admit that I might not have watched every single frame of every single show. But I did make it through to the end, which teases a second series that never materialized, SyFy deciding it would not renew the show in August, with half a dozen episodes remaining to be screened.

painkiller2Certainly, from a 2016 viewpoint, it seems overly familiar, treading territory we’ve seen, with variations, in X-Men, Heroes and Alphas, among others. The core concept here is the “neuro” – someone who has developed an inexplicable paranormal talent which might be anything from invisibility through mind control to fire manipulation. Jane encounters one such on a drug bust at a nightclub, and as a result, is recruited by Andre McBride (Stewart), who leads an undercover team dedicated to capturing and neutralizing neuros. The rest of the team are the usual bunch of shallow stereotypes e.g. computer wiz Riley Jensen (Roberts), ex-military muscle Connor King (Danby), etc. but Jane is “different” in that her first mission results in her neuro-esque ability being awakened, after she is defenestrated from a high-rise window. I say “neuro-esque,” since there’s an ongoing vague debate as to whether she should be chipped and shipped off to NICO, the internment camp set up for the “special”.

After that, however, the show rapidly became not much more than a series of “neuro of the week” episodes, effectively abandoning much real interest in its heroine and her abilities. To some extent, I can understand this: once you’ve established that she is, literally, bulletproof, what more can you do? There’s not much sense of threat. But outside of sporadic examples, the creators didn’t make sufficient use of Vasko’s abilities, which could certainly have come useful, as the most extreme example of “taking one for the team” Nor do they bother to give her much life outside the disused subway station which is her team’s super-secret lair. There’s a brief friendship with the girl next door, which comes to a sudden end with so little impact, it feels like the actress involved must have demanded a pay rise or something. Then there’s a boyfriend, and at least that relationship does end up having a point – like the rest of the show, however, it takes far too long to get there.

For after initially setting up an evil corporation as the Big Bad, the series seem to forget about them completely for the next 20 episodes, before suddenly blowing the dust of the company for the final episode. It seems likely that never-realized second season might have gone in that direction, though if that was always the intent, seems very odd to start off as they did. The budget was apparently jacked up for the final three episodes, allowing for the cast and crew to travel to Hungary and the NICO facility, where it turns out there have been various dubious medical experiments going on, involving reversing the chips implanted to disable the neuro abilities. There are some interesting moral questions raised in this arc, and it’s a shame the show chose to ignore them, until after it had been given the ace.

painkiller3

That isn’t to say the show was entirely worthless up to that point. There were a few episodes which actually made use of the concepts and developed them in interesting ways. The one I liked most was Playback, about a neuro who could reset time to the beginning of the day. He was being used to plot the assassination of a visiting foreign politician, gradually refining his plan to negate the countermeasures of Jane and her team, as if this were Groundhog Day. Jane’s ability to take damage came in handy here, and the script was well-thought out, both in problem and solution; while they couldn’t foil the neuros plan, they could make the rest of his day such a bad one, he was compelled to rewind one more time. More of this smart invention would have been welcome, but the show instead seemed to run out of ideas almost immediately. I mean, a handful of episodes in, and you’re already going down the “ghost hunters” route? Why not just have a musical episode and be done with it?

AS in most things she has done – hell, even BloodRayne – Loken is fine, and seems to embrace the action aspects with enthusiasm. I’d say that gives her the edge over her predecessor, Vaugier, and the series likely solidifies her position on the B-rung of action actresses [“Can’t afford Milla Jovovich? Give me a call!”] It’s the writing that is the key weakness here, often giving the impression that they were making things up as they went along, never a good thing. Still, it may not be the end for Jane. In July 2014, it was announced that Palmiotti was producing an independent feature film version, with the Soska Sisters signing on to direct. While I’m not sure about them as a choice [I saw their horror film American Mary, and found it very much over-rated], and I haven’t heard anything much regarding the project since, it’s interesting that adapting Painkiller Jane appears to be every bit as difficult to kill off as the character herself!

Star: Kristanna Loken, Rob Stewart, Noah Danby, Sean Owen Roberts

Unholy Rollers

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★★★½
“The Adventures of Grandmistress Karen on the Wheels of Steel”

unholyWinner of Most Unexpected Credit goes to this roller-derby exploitation flick, out of cheapie producers American International, because the opening credit proclaim, “Supervising Editor – Martin Scorsese.” Yep. THAT Scorsese, the year before anyone much noticed him with Mean Streets, worked on what would now be called a “mockbuster” – Scorsese later describing it in Scorsese on Scorsese as “the rip-off of the Racquel Welch movie about roller-derbys, Kansas City Bombers“. However, it ended up trailing in to cinemas in Bombers‘ wake and, according to its editor, “was destroyed.” That’s a shame, as there’s a nicely gritty feel to this, which rings true. It certainly acknowledges that the action and fights in roller-derby may be staged, but – as we’ve seen in the local roller-derby scene – the inter-personal dramas are entirely real. It also reminded me of the independent pro wrestling world, of which we’ve had some experience, promoter Mr. Stern (Quinn) harping on about showmanship, perpetually aware of the need to give his audience what they want.

And, what they want is Karen Walker (Jennings), who quits her job in a canning plant after one too many bouts of sexual harassment, and tries out for the Los Angeles Avengers. Making the team, her no-holds barred approach to competition wins over the fans, much to the disdain of current audience favourite, Mickey Martinez (Rees). Karen’s rise is, correctly, perceived as a threat by Mickey – though only has herself to blame, having led the rest of the team in humiliating the rookie at a bar, after she rebuffs Mickey’s sexual advances. Karen is rescued by the captain of the Avengers’ male squad, Nick (Warela), and they begin a torrid, hot-cold affair, in part due to Nick’s marital status. As the tension between Karen and Mickey grows, Stern senses an opportunity, and transfers the veteran to the Avengers’ hated rivals, the San Diego Demons. setting up a show-down between the two, which touches off Karen’s fuse, in no uncertain terms.

Roger Ebert called Jennings, “the hardest, most vicious female performance in a long time,” and you can see why: there’s not much effort here to make her likeable, and that’s a good part of the appeal. She’s all spiky, defiant attitude, and any attempts to make her conform simply result in greater rebellion. Meanwhile, the cheapskate nature of the whole operation is made clear before the opening credits, with a brutalized rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner. Jennings is clearly doing a good bit of her own skating, with a lot less protection than Ellen Page had in Whip It, Throw in the funky retro-sounds of Louie and the Rockets, and you’ve got something which makes for an entertaining time, even if many of the supporting performances are basic at best, and the film doesn’t so much end, as crash headlong into the end-credits. Still, this is a case where lack of polish perhaps works for a film, as much as against it.

Dir: Vernon Zimmerman
Star: Claudia Jennings, Betty Anne Rees, Louis Quinn, Jay Warela

Camino

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★★★½
“Flash, bang, wallop – what? A picture!”

caminoFollowing up on their successfully crunchy collaboration in Raze, director Waller and star Bell head into the jungle and back to the eighties – an era before cell-phones and digital cameras – for this story of one woman’s fight for survival against a band of Colombian rebels, led by Spanish immigrant, Guillermo (Vigalondo). In this case, the woman is Avery Taggart (Bell), a lauded war photographer whose latest mission is to cover the enigmatic yet charismatic Guillermo, whose mission initially appears as much philanthropic as military. Keyword: initially. For Avery stumbles into the rebel’s darker side, witnessing, and worse, photographing him carrying out a drug deal, then slitting the throat of an inconveniently-passing local child. Knowing this revelation would destroy him, Guillermo blames Avery for the murder, and sets out after her with his group, intent on preventing the incriminating film from getting out of the jungle. However, it won’t be easy: Avery has picked up a few survival skills from her life during wartime, and some of Guillermo’s foot-soldiers are unconvinced by his explanation.

I think the first surprise here is the opening chunk, before she goes into the jungle, which has Bell delivering the most intense acting of her career. Quite a discomforting performance too, it has to be said, and I did wonder if I was watching the right film for a bit. Fortunately, we’re eventually on the right track; nobody will exactly have rented this to watch Zoë emote in a hotel room, surprisingly impressive though it is. The action here is brutal: while the body-count is relatively small – compared, say to Raze – nobody dies quickly here at all, with demises which seem to stretch out forever. The peak is probably the first fight, in which Avery is stalked by Guillermo’s psychopathic lieutenant. This turns into a knock-down, drag-out brawl that is relentless and hardcore. Nothing after can quite compare, to be honest. The ending of the main story thread is, entirely deliberately, understated and almost casual, though a coda delivers a satisfactory payoff.

You do wonder how a photographer is able to do more than hold her own against jungle-hardened soldiers; I was half-expecting a further appendix scene where Avery turned out to be a CIA agent of some kind. [Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded!] Vigalondo makes for a decent villain, if a little too verbose; had this had actually been made in the mid-80’s, rather than just set there, it would have been a perfect role for Klaus Kinski, and Nacho puts over a similar mix of thinly-disguised psychopath. The jungle almost becomes a supporting character here, abetted by an unusual, crunchy yet chewy soundtrack from electronic project Kreng. The film might have benefited from some editing and the script an additional polish. But, as expected, it’s Bell’s show and she delivers the convincing mix of elegance and physicality we have come to appreciate, like a tightly-wound spring inside a camera case.

Dir: Josh C. Waller
Star: Zoë Bell, Nacho Vigalondo, Francisco Barreiro, Sheila Vand

Byzantium

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★★★½
“Pride and Prejudice and Vampires”

byzantiumOk, that’s probably not strictly accurate, but there is more than a hint of it, in the way this manages to combine period drama with Gothic horror trappings – while also depicting the same characters in the present day. This slipping back and forth in time is somewhat distracting, and there are points where you wish they had just picked an era and stuck with it. The heroines here are a pair of mother and daughter vampires (Arterton and Ronan), who have been more or less on the run for about two centuries. For the mother, Clara, was a terminally-ill prostitute who stole the secret of vampirism from her client, Captain Ruthven (Jonny Lee Miller) in the early 19th century. She not only became immortal herself, she turned her daughter, Eleanor – an act strictly against the tenets of The Brethren, who are kinda like the vampire union, who put out a death-warrant on the pair. In the present day, this means Clara – still turning tricks to provide for Eleanor – has occasionally to decapitate people with a garrotte, should they turn out to be hunters sent by The Brethren.

The pair end up wintering in a boarding-house on the sea-front of a largely deserted seaside town (I got a strong whiff of Harry Kümel’s Daughters of Darkness, which had Ostend instead of Hastings for its “experienced” female vampire and her acolyte). Eleanor is increasingly dissatisfied – and who wouldn’t be after two centuries stuck in perpetual adolescence – and seems almost to half a self-destructive streak, including writing essays at school about her vampiric life, which naturally cause concern to her teacher! She also builds a relationship with young, ill waiter Frank, something of which Clara also disapproves. There’s a good, dynamic contrast between the two leads. At the time, Ronan was fresh off both Hanna and than Violet + Daisy, though she is the cerebral of the pair here, careful only to drain the blood of those who are ready and willing to accept death. In comparison, Arterton is far more animalistic and instinctual, making this an interesting warm-up for her subsequent role in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

This isn’t Jordan’s first entry in the vampire genre, having previously directed Interview With the Vampire, and the two aren’t dissimilar, both being as much about the relationships as actual blood-sucking. I wish I’d learned more about the back-story of Clara and Eleanor; there would seem to be a rich history there, that’s almost entirely unexplored, with virtually nothing about the 190 years between the latter’s turning and the present day. Has Eleanor been a sullen teenager all that time? Dear God, I thought I was a saint, handling the resulting sulkiness for less than a decade, as our kids went through it. Decapitation by garrotte sometimes seemed a good approach to parenting. However, at least Eleanor doesn’t sparkle, although there’s an amusing nod to other vampire lore, as she watches one of the classic Hammer movies from the genre. If not developed fully enough to be a classic itself, there’s still enough new and/or well done here, to make this better than your average random Netflix selection.

Dir: Neil Jordan
Star: Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton, Daniel Mays, Sam Reilly

L.A. Bounty

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★★★
“Deeds, not words.”

labountyI’ve been doing this site for 13 years, and it’s amazing that this is the first “real” Sybil Danning movie I’ve covered (save her appearances in Malibu Express and Grindhouse), For she was one of the first action heroines I ever noticed, back in the golden era of VHS which was the eighties, when I was at college. Battle Beyond the Stars, Phantom Empire, Reform School Girls…. While I’d be hard pushed to call many of them cinematic classics – or even good, by normal standards – Danning, whose picture can be found in the dictionary beside the word “statuesque”, made an impact in them all. She seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough, when an accident during rehearsal effectively ended her action career, leaving her with severely herniated discs in her back, and LA Bounty as her swansong.

She plays bounty hunter of few words, Ruger, an ex-cop who has been holding a grudge against those who killed her partner and got away with it. In particular,. that’s Cavanaugh (Hauser), an import-export businessman who has a number of other, shadier sidelines. His latest involves kidnapping a candidate for mayor of LA, only for Ruger to interrupt the process. As a result, the victim’s wife could identify the perps, so must be disposed of, only for Ruger to come to the rescue once again, intent on being the heavily-armed fly in the ointment, as she works her way up the chain of lowlife scum, towards Cavanaugh.

It is a bog-standard actioner from the period, with eighties hair, eighties fashion, an eighties soundtrack, and lots of bloodless gunplay. But two things salvage it from absolutely forgettability. And, no, that isn’t a set-up for a reference to Sybil’s breasts [impressive though they are; as a teenager, I must have worn out my copy of The Howling II…], for I mean Danning and Hauser, who are nicely constructed as polar opposites. Ruger is a women of very few words; the IMDb says it’s a a total of 31 during the entire film, but that doesn’t diminish much from the badassery of her character. At the other extreme, Cavanaugh runs his mouth at hypersonic velocity, and you get the sense he is capable of going from playful puppiness to psychotic rage in the blink of an eye. The contrast is well-conceived and nicely-executed, building to an extended finale around the villain’s warehouse where Ruger has to fend off everything from clockwork explosive birds to a giant, stuffed polar-bear.

As mentioned, while you’d be hard pushed to argue this was unjustly overlooked at the Oscars or whatever, it’s workmanlike enough. If the material has seen better days and the budget seems to be missing a zero, it’s improved enough by the two leads to leave you wondering where Danning’s career might have gone, if fate hadn’t dealt her such a crappy hand.

Dir: Worth Keeter
Star: Sybil Danning, Wings Hauser, Blackie Dammett, Henry Darrow

Sweet Home

  By

★★★½
“Hogar, dulce hogar…”

sweethomeA straightforward yet effective cross between a slasher film and Die Hard, sees Alicia (Garcia-Jonsson) plan a birthday dinner for her boyfriend, Simon (Sevilla) in an almost deserted apartment building. However, she stumbles into a plot to evict the last remaining tenant… in a body-bag. Trapped inside the locked tenement, the young couple become the target, first for the evictors, and then their boss, the Liquidator (Tarrida), as they seek to cover the tracks of their murderous work.

Three sentences, and that’s basically the entirety of the plot covered, since most of the film is an extended stalk ‘n’ slash, with Alicia, in particular, seeking a way out. It’s absolutely her story, because Simon is wounded relatively early in proceedings, and ends up close to a non-factor in proceedings – for one reason or another. Even though there’s a sense of Garcia-Jonsson acting mostly in her third language (she was born in Sweden, most of her career has been in Spain, yet her dialogue here is mainly English), it doesn’t harm the film, because Martinez is a firm believer in showing, rather than telling. That’s just what something like this needs, with gratifyingly few pauses for exposition after things kick-off. In particular, things are ramped up with the arrival of the Liquidator, who disposes of bodies with the aid of liquid nitrogen and a hammer. This is about as wince-inducing as it sounds.

As well as a fairly monstrous villain, who is quite prepared to dispatch his supposed allies if they prove more trouble than they are worth, the main appeal is seeing Alicia use her wits to survive, clambering in, around and through the maze of corridors and service passages in the building, as she tries to stay one step ahead of those hunting her down. The claustrophobic setting, enhanced by a thunderous deluge coming down outside, which has cleared the streets of everyone else, generally work for the movie too. Reading other reviews, seems I’m not the only person to detect notes of John Carpenter, with this in particular evoking feelings of Assault on Precinct 13 crossed with Halloween. Though it has been a very long while since Carpenter has directed anything as shallowly entertaining as Sweet Home.

On the other hand. the floor-plan of the house, an important factor in proceedings, seems more than a little inconsistent. This may be less an apartment building, and more a Klein bottle, for there were times when I was thought Alicia was on an upper level, only for her to open a door and suddenly be back at ground level. However, if you’re prepared to let that aspect slide, along with the occasional moments of less-than-sensible behaviour (almost inevitable, given the genre), this is an energetic and enthusiastic romp, which will likely have you quoting various John McClane-isms over the course of proceedings. But it’s safe to say that Die Hard did not end in a climax which had Bruce Willis in the basement, unconscious, dotted lines drawn on his limbs, in preparation for easy separation by Alan Rickman and his hacksaw. More’s the pity, perhaps.

Dir: Rafa Martínez
Star: Ingrid Garcia-Jonsson, Bruno Sevilla, Oriol Tarrida, Jose Maria Blanco