Author: Jim McLennan

The Queen of the Pirates

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★★½
“Court in the act.”

queenofthepiratesSandra (Canale)  and her father fall foul of the local tyrannical Duke (Muller) after they refuse to pay his excise duty. Arrested, the arrival of the poor but noble Count of Santa Croce, Cesare (Serato), saves them from death – or a fate worse than in Sandra’s case, as the Duke has a profitable sideline, shipping local girls off to the Middle East. After escaping, they join up with a local pirate band, who agree to help target the Duke after Sandra bests their leader in sword-play. To gain the hand of the duke’s daughter, Isabella (Gabel), Cesare agrees to hunt down the “Queen of the Pirates” who has brought trade to a standstill, not knowing that his target is the same woman he helped save, and since then has had a secret longing.

Its storyline is more than slightly similar to the other Italian piratess movie we also covered here, Queen of the Seas, from the following year. This is slightly weaker, mostly because Sandra ends up taking a back seat to the heroic Cesare in the second half, though it benefits from a solid supporting performance by Gabel, who brings a genuine nastiness to her role as the spoiled heiress, who is perfectly happy to endorse Daddy’s white slavery operation, as long as it keeps her in jewels and pretty dresses. The shift in focus from Sandra is disappointing, not least because she can handle a sword pretty well – that’s clear right from the fight against the Duke’s excise-men, and reached its peak during the friendly duel against the pirate king. Really, given the era (1960) and Canale’s provenance as a former runner-up in Miss Italy, it’s genuinely impressive.

queenofthepirates2

From about the midpoint on, it is entirely predictable, and becomes much less interesting as a result, despite some efforts to suggest that Cesare might not really be smitten by the heroine – just pretending to be, in order to lure her in. There’s also some desperately unfunny attempts at comedy, courtesy of his squire, and the English dub appears to have been written by someone practicing for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, spattering every other sentence with gratuitous nautical vernacular. I can’t call it disastrous, and at 75 minutes, doesn’t outstay its welcome; there’s just too much queening and not enough pirating in this for me.

Dir: Mario Costa
Star: Gianna Maria Canale, Massimo Serato, Paul Muller, Scilla Gabel
a.k.a. La Venere dei Pirati

Le Avventure di Mary Read

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mary read

★★★
“Graded as a solid sea-plus.”

While best known for notorious horror film, Cannibal Ferox, director Lenzi’s career covered almost the entire gamut of genres, from spaghetti Westerns through Eurospy films and giallo, to war movies. He also did historical adventure films like this, starring Gastoni as Mary Read, a highwaywoman who takes a spot on a corsair ship run by the unfortunately-named Captain Poof (Barnes). After his demise in a sea-battle, Mary takes over the ship, leading daring raids on any and all who cross her path, on sea or land. Given Poof was working with the approval of the British crown, and supposed to be targeting only its enemies, this provokes a reaction, in the shape of Captain Peter Goodwin (Courtland), who is ordered to take care of Poof, unaware he has been replaced by Mary. However, complicating matters, he also knows her personally, having been locked up in prison with her back in England, and had a brief fling with Read at the time. Can he bring his former love to justice?

queen of the seasDespite its age – this was made in 1961 – it has stood the test of time fairly well, except for a romantic ending which is both predictable and unfortunate. This turns the heroine into exactly the subservient woman she spent the first 80 minutes not being. Up until then, it plays well ahead of its time, with Read taking no crap from anyone, and proving to be skilled both with a pistol and a sword, as well as her words. [And perhaps a needle, some of her costumes, particularly the red one, being quite spectacular] The production values are generally pretty impressive, especially in the naval sequences; they clearly had a couple of full-scale boats to work with, rather than miniatures. However, its recreation of what is supposedly “17th-century England” leaves a lot to be desired, unless the landscape and costumes of that era were a lot more, ah, Mediterranean than I was aware! I’m also rather hard pushed to swallow Read’s intermittent efforts to pass as a man: I guess eyesight was not as sharp back in the day.

Clocking in at a brisk 85 minutes, there’s not much chance to pause for breath. This helps paper over holes in the plot, such as the Governor of Florida apparently not bothering to mention to anyone, that his party was raided by a woman pirate. But I like the way Read is portrayed as smart, for example, out-thinking Goodwin and getting him to fire on a supporting ship – she wants to destroy his reputation as much as anything else. However, this makes the final resolution all the more implausible, and I’d far rather have seen her sail off into the sunset, perhaps with Ivan (Longo), the crew-mate who seems to carry a torch for her. I guess this wasn’t quite far enough ahead in its thinking.

Dir: Umberto Lenzi
Star: Lisa Gastoni, Jerome Courtland, Walter Barnes, Germano Longo
a.k.a. Queen of the Seas

Nautical But Not-So Nice: Women pirates through history

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pirate2“I couldn’t love a man who commands me – any more than I could love one who lets himself be commanded by me.”
— Jacquotte Delahaye

For the purposes of this article, we are defining “women pirates” somewhat loosely. You don’t necessarily have to be wielding the cutlass yourself, though such a hands-on approach is certainly appreciated. Staying safely on shore and commanding a bunch of scurvy swabs [am I doing this Piratespeak right?] is perfectly fine. However, we do draw the line at plausible deniability. For instance, in the era of Queen Elizabeth I, piracy was barely discouraged if the victims were Spanish, with “privateers” like John Hawkins operating with the more or less tacit approval of the crown. But, at least nominally, it was still a hanging offense.

Among the earliest examples of piratically-inclined ladies was Queen Teuta of Illyria, known as the Terror of the Adriatic, though she was more a commander of pirates than one herself. She inherited the throne of the area which would become 20th-century Yugoslavia, around 230 B.C. after her husband died, and gave local buccaneers the green light to go raiding in her name, up and down the Adriatic. However, these predations eventually brought her to the attention of the Roman Empire, who dropped the hammer on Teuta in no uncertain fashion, sending a 20,000 strong army over for a cup of tea and a chat. She ended up stripped of most of her territories, though was at least allowed to keep her life and, nominally, her title.

pirate1Alfhild

The 12th-century work by Danish author Saxo Grammaticus called the Gesta Danorum, was also a source when we  covered Viking warrior women a few months back – and, of course, the line between “piracy” and “extremely enthusiastic foraging” is a thin one. But Grammaticus also mentions, mostly in passing, others such as Wigbiorg, Hetha. Wisna and Princess Sela. The last-name was sister to the King of Norway, Koller, and Saxo calls her, “a skilled warrior and experienced in roving.” [She was killed by Horwendil, the father of Hamlet]

The most interesting is perhaps Alfhild [various spellings of her name exist, e.g. Alvid, Awilda], from Volume VII. According to the chronicler, she was such a babe, her father, a King of the Goths called Siward, kept her locked up, protected by snakes – and further decreed that if any suitor tried to reach her and failed, his head would be forfeit. Understandably, this limited her teenage dating exploits. Eventually, one brave warrior, Alf, succeeded. However, Siward still gave his daughter freedom of choice in the matter – and Alfhild promptly spurned his advances, spurred on by her mother:

Alfhild was led to despise the young Dane; whereupon she exchanged woman’s for man’s attire, and, no longer the most modest of maidens, began the life of a warlike rover. Enrolling in her service many maidens who were of the same mind, she happened to come to a spot where a band of rovers were lamenting the death of their captain, who had been lost in war; they made her their rover captain for her beauty, and she did deeds beyond the valour of woman.

But Alf eventually got his girl, though it took “many toilsome voyages” – proving that the term “playing hard to get”, takes on a whole new level of meaning when your fiancee is a Scandinavian pirate queen.

Jeanne de Clisson

Alfhild’s historical existence is uncertain, with Grammaticus writing a long time after her supposed exploits. That isn’t the case for our next seafaring lady, with contemporary French documentation offering supporting evidence. Jeanne was born in 1300, and first married at the age of 12, as was not uncommon for the era. After her husband died, she married again, but to little better end, as this second spouse was executed in 1343, on suspicion of collaborating with the English, against whom France was at war. Jeanne swore revenge on King Philip VI, sold her estates and began attacking his forces across Brittany. When the heat in France got too much, she relocated to England, and with help from King Edward III, created the Black Fleet.

For the next thirteen years, these boats, painted black and with red sails, hunted French ships in the English Channel, killing their crews, but leaving a few alive to spread the legend of “The Lioness of Brittany”, as de Clisson became known. Her reign outlasted Philip, who died in 1350, but Jeanne was clearly having too much fun, and continued her assault. Legend has it she especially enjoyed capturing French noblemen, and would personally behead them with an axe. She eventually married for a third time, and retired from the seas. [Note: she should not be confused with another medieval bad-ass, Jeanne de Montfort, though both operated around the same time, and supported the English in their war against France]

pirate3Sayyida al Hurra

Moving into the Middle Ages and the 16th century, we see the likes of Irish sea-queen Gráinne Ní Mháille, about whom we wrote previously. But equally notable was this Islamic pirate, whose full name we will only give once, for reasons which will soon be obvious: Sayyida al-Hurra ibn Banu Rashid al-Mandri al-Wattasi Hakima Tatwan. “Sayyida al Hurra” is actually an honorific title, apparently meanimg “the woman sovereign who bows to no superior authority.” She operated particularly around the Straits of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, after the last Moorish outpost in Spain fell in 1492. She and her husband relocated to northern Morocco, and ruled over the city of Tétouan, which they had helped rebuild.

Following the death of her husband in 1513, the widow took over the reins, but also used the proceeds from trading to begin assembling her forces.  Her fleet set sail in 1520, attacking any Portuguese ships with the misfortune to meet them, and not just looting them, but taking hostages who could be ransomed for even more plunder – much of the evidence for Sayyida comes in the form of documents concerning these negotiations. But, as far as she was concerned, these attacks were as much an act of political rebellion as financial acquisition, harassing the Christians who had driven her and her family out of Granada. Such was her success that she was able to form an alliance with an even more well-known name, Barbarossa, carving up the Mediterranean so that each had their own territory. Her fleet operated for two decades, Spanish papers from 1540 recording a raid on Gibraltar, in which “they took much booty and many prisoners.” She was eventually deposed by her son-in-law two years later, and vanished from the historical record.

Jacquotte Delahaye and Anne Dieu-le-Veut

As we move in to the 17th century, pirate location changes. Previously, it had been based around the centres of civilization – in the apocryphal words of bank robber Willie Sutton, “because that’s where the money is.” But as the era of exploration blossomed, focus shifted toward the arena that would become most linked with pirates in popular culture: the Caribbean, as trade to/from the New World flourished.

These two operated there, and Delahaye was perhaps the first “true” pirate of the modern era, who has become a figure of legend. She was reportedly (let’s just take that word as read in this section!) the daughter of a French father and Haitian mother: the latter died in childbirth, and the former’s murder led to Delahaye’s entry into the world of piracy. She apparently faked her own death to escape those who pursued her, but her subsequent return to the fray earned this redhead the nickname of “Back from the Dead Red”. She is said to have led 100 pirates, and took over an island in 1656, turning it into a “freebooter’s republic”, a mini-Tortuga – she was killed defending it from the Spanish several years later.

Anne Dieu-le-Veut (Anne “God wills it”) appears to have a thing for pirates, marrying three of them. The story goes, she won the heart of the third, Laurens de Graaf, by challenging him to a duel to avenge the death of husband #2. When he accepted, and she wouldn’t back down, he proposed to her, in admiration of her courage. The two operated as equals in the piratical exploits, and attacked English-held Jamaica in 1693, but a couple of years later, Anne and their children were captured by English forces at  Port-de-Paix in Haiti. They were held hostage for three years before being released [presumably ransomed] and Anne largely disappeared from the historical record thereafter.

Anne Bonney and Mary Read headline the golden age of piracy

“Had you fought like a man, you need not be hanged like a dog.” — Anne Bonny

Bonney,_Anne_(1697-1720)It was not long after the turn of the 18th century that piracy in the Caribbean reached its peak, with the period from 1716 to 1726 considered the apex. as  multiple colonial powers – Dutch, British, Spanish and French – jostled for position. But with resources also required for conflicts back in Europe, local representatives were largely reliant on their own recruitment efforts, and were typically none too fussy about where ships or sailors came from, or exactly how they operated. It was in this environment that two of the most famous female pirates of all time are found. While they were initially independent and separate, they ended their careers fighting alongside each other as part of the crew of another renowned name, John Rackham, a.k.a. Calico Jack.

Anne was the daughter of a Irish lawyer who emigrated to America when she was young. She reportedly demonstrated a fiery temper, stabbing a servant at age 13, then married minor pirate James Bonney, and moved with him to Nassau, a sanctuary for pirates supporting the English crown. There, she met Rackham, became his lover and eventually abandoned her husband – according to lore, disgusted by James having turned informant. She never saw the need to disguise her sex, but was apparently among the first to realize that new shipmate “Mark Read” was not exactly all he claimed to be. For Mark was actually Mary Read, though she had been brought up as a boy since she was very young, part of a plot to fleece money out of her grandfather. Read, however, continued the deception after leaving home, and served in the British military before eventually marrying another soldier. When he died, she set sail for the West Indies, but the ship was captured by pirates, and “Mark” was pressed into service, reverting to the illusion of manhood.

Some time later, she ended up becoming part of Calico Jack’s crew, and things became murky. Some say Bonney took a fancy to the young “man”, or that Jack grew jealous of their relationship, before matters were settled peacefully, and both allowed to remain part of the crew. This didn’t last long though: in October 1720, the ship of pirate hunter Jonathan Barnet attacked Rackham’s vessel. Whether through drink or cowardice, most pirates failed to put up a fight, leaving Bonney and Read to lead the defense. According to Daniel Defoe, the creator of Robinson Crusoe, who also wrote a book called The General History of the Pyrates, “none kept the Deck except Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and one more; upon which, she, Mary Read, called to those under Deck, to come up and fight like Men, and finding they did not stir, fired her Arms down the Hold amongst them, killing one, and wounding others.”  However, they were overpowered and, along with Rackham, taken to Jamaica. There, they were tried, convicted and sentenced to death – leading to the quote above, reputedly Bonny’s last words to her man. The two women both claimed to be pregnant, allowing them a stay of execution. For Read, it was a temporary escape as she died of a fever in prison. Bonney? History has no record of either her execution or her release. Make up your own ending.

Ching Shih

Ching_ShihBut it’s the other side of the globe which saw perhaps the most successful female pirate of them all. Some estimates have her in command of up to 1,800 ships and 80,000 crew, her territory covering much of the China Sea in the early years of the 19th century. It’s one hell of a character arc. She was originally a prostitute in the City of Canton, but was captured by pirates, and married one, Zheng Yi, in 1801. He came from a long line of buccaneers, and forged a coalition of rivals into one entity, the Red Flag fleet. Zheng died in 1807, but his widow used her own phenomenal negotiating and political skills, not just to hold the fleet together, in the face of circling rivals seeking to take advantage, but to increase its strength even further. She bedded her husband’s adoptive nephew, Chang Pao – who, some say, was also his lover.

She is particularly remember for a rigorous pirate code, which punished disobedience harshly, and helped forge a force which basically ruled the waves. The Chinese navy couldn’t defeat her. Even the colonial superpowers in the area, the British and Portuguese, were unable to restrain Ching’s fleet. In the end, the Chinese government basically said, “Look, just stop, and we’ll give you amnesty for everything you’ve done.” There was some friction over the authorities’ demand that the pirates kneel to them – something Ching Shih refused to do. But a compromise was reached whereby a government official would act as witness at her wedding to Chang Pao, so could be acknowledged without loss of face. She lived up to her end of the bargain, becoming one of the very few ever to retire from piracy with both life and loot intact. Ching opened a gambling house back in Canton, where she lived for more than three decades, before dying at the ripe old age for a pirate, of 69. Well played, madam.

 

Women pirates in the movies

There have been a number of attempts to depict women pirates over the years, in . Some are fully reviewed elsewhere on the site, as listed at the end. But there are others worth at least a mention in passing.

buccaneers girl

  • The Spanish Main (1945) – Binnie Barnes takes on the role of Anne Bonny.
  • Buccaneer’s Girl (1950) – Yvonne de Carlo stars as a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a pirate.
  • Against All Flags (1951) – Errol Flynn falls in love with pirate captain “Spitfire” Stevens (Maureen O’Hara), even as he is on an undercover mission to take down her organization.
  • The Golden Hawk (1952) – French sea captain Kit Gerardo (Sterling Hayden) seeks the pirate responsible for killing his mother, and meets female buccaneer Captain Rouge (Rhonda Fleming).
  • The King’s Pirate (1967) – A remake of Against All Flags, with Doug McClure and Jill St. John playing the two leads.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) – Likely inspired by Ching Shih, the third entry included Mistress Ching (Takayo Fischer), a pirate queen who retired to enjoy her incredible wealth.
  • Black Sails (2014) – Anne Bonny is portrayed in the Starz series by Clara Paget.

One worth mentioning never got off the ground. In the early 1990’s Paul Verhoeven was working on a film called Anne Bonny: Mistress of the Seas, based on John Carlova’s book. It had a stellar cast, with Geena Davis attached, plus Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as Calico Jack and Mary Read. However, Pfeiffer soon lost interest, saying, “I had two meetings with Paul Verhoeven… Both conversations were about how much skin I would show.” She may have had a point, one studio exec describing Verhoven’s concept as ”a sex film that, oh, by the way, had a couple of ships in it.” Pressed to take it mainstream, the director left in July 1993, citing “creative differences”, and the studio turned to Davis’s beau Renny Harlin instead. However, Verhoeven agreed to return, only for Davis to bail, allegedly due to the studio ditching her man. She and Harlin went on to make Cutthroat Island, a megaflop which basically killed the entire pirate genre for a decade. Verhoeven was left without a star, and eventually, a film, sniping, “The studio didn’t dare to make a movie about a woman.”

There’s another project which was announced a year ago, but of which little has been heard since. In February 2014, news broke of a “limited series” biopic from Steven Jensen’s Independent Television Group, about Ching Shih called Red Flag, starring Nikita‘s Maggie Q as the Chinese pirate. Said Q, “It’s exciting to have the opportunity to share Ching Shih’s real-life story with audiences that are both familiar and unfamiliar with her prominent history.” But since then? Nothing since March, when it was announced that Francois Arnaud would be the male lead. The silence may not be terminal at this point, and the project is still listed as “in development” on IMDb, but I’d have though something further would have happened by now…

See also

Deaf Mute Heroine

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★★★½
“Silent but deadly.”

deafmuteheroineThe physically disabled hero has long been a staple of martial arts, to the extent that is is sometimes referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as “cripsploitation”. The One-armed Boxer, The Crippled Masters, Zatoichi – it’s a genre that survives more recently than you may think, with Mat Fraser, recently seen in American Horror Story: Freak Show, starring in 2009’s Kung Fu Flid. While this is rarer for heroines, they are not immune, with Japan giving us the Crimson Bat series, reviewed elsewhere on this site. This is another entry, Wong playing the titular heroine, Ya Ba, who is unable to speak or hear, but can still fight a mean battle, assisted by reflective wristbands that let her see who’s sneaking up from behind, in lieu of hearing them.

She comes into possession of a set of pearls, taking them off some robbers with extreme prejudice. However, this brings down the wrath of Miss Liu (Huang), leader of her own gang, and whose brother was one of the robbers. While her first attempt to kill Ya is unsuccessful, Lui’s poisoned flying daggers do injure her. Ya is found and nursed back to health by kindly cloth-dyer Yang Shun (Ching); romance blossoms, and the pair marry, with Ya figuratively hanging up her wristbands;  she actually puts them away in a box. That’s relevant, because her husband ends up entrapped into responsibility for a friend’s gambling debt by Liu, and she demands he steal Ya’s wristbands as payback. That opens the way for Liu and about five billion henchmen (count may be approximate) to launch their attack. But that’s not the only threat she faces, since lurking in the wings is another talented master, with a previously relationship to Ya and who was left with a nasty facial scar for his pains.

The fights are good. Really good. As in, the final battle between Ya and Lui (below) may be the best of the era I’ve seen between two women – like most of the action here, it’s fast, hard-hitting and imaginative, weakened only by some unsubtle wirework. The film is also bloodily messy, to a somewhat surprising extent, and both Wong and Huang make for highly-effective characters, the latter making up for the former’s silence.  However, the movie grinds to a halt in the middle, as the focus shifts off Ya to her husband, who is both a great deal less interesting and almost unlikeable. The film is also hampered by poor availability: while the version I watched was as close to complete as possible, that required a combination from three different sources, including one print dubbed into German(!) and another which was sub-VHS quality with a large logo in one corner. That helps leave this short of getting our “seal of approval,” but if a good copy ever becomes available, we might re-visit it. For as I said to Chris, what’s not to love about a wife who never says a word?

Y’know, our couch really isn’t so bad, when you get used to it. :)

Dir: Wu Ma
Star: Sally Wong (a.k.a. Helen Ma), Shirley Huang, Ching Tang, Wu Ma

The Mini-skirt Mob

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★★★
“Hell hath no fury like a blonde scorned.”

miniskirtIt’s not much of a stretch to imagine this coming out of Japan, as an early ancestor of the pinky violence genre. Though that would probably require the additional of significantly more nudity, since it proves surprisingly coy on that front, without a nipple to be found. The central character is Jeff (Hagen), a rodeo star who has just married Connie (Jackson). This does not sit well with his old flame, Shayne (McBain), who heads an all-girl gang, The Mini-skirts. Together with a group of male bikers (who include cult legend, Harry Dean Stanton), they harass the newlyweds, on and off the road, until a tragic accident leads to the death of one of the bikers. Then, the gloves come off, with Jeff and Connie besieged in their caravan by Shayne and her crew. However, they find an unlikely ally in Shayne’s sister, Edie (McCormack, who had previously been nominated for an Oscar as the tiny psychopath in The Bad Seed). While she stepped aside from Jeff when Shayne decided she was interested, Shayne is now sniffing around Edie’s current man, Lon (Jeremy Slate) and Edie has no interest in stepping aside again.

It’s an interesting set of power dynamics here: Shayne is the one who runs things here, manipulating others – Lon in particular – to do her bidding without the slightest qualm. For instance, after Lon has brawled with Jeff to the point where the latter has pulled a rifle on the gang, as far as Lon is concerned, that’s the end of the matter. But Shayne casts aspersions on his manhood, basically goading him into further action. She has also the whip-hand in her relationship with Edie, who is initially happy to follow along, clinging to her big sis’s coat-tails, until the scales fall from her eyes and she realizes how far Shayne is prepared to go in her quest for vengeance against the man who has – oh, the horror! – found love in the arms of another woman, Or, as Shayne puts it, “You need a real woman, Jeff – not a mouse.” Rodents are something of a running theme, it appears: she also tells a touching story of a visit to a zoo with Jeff, where she watched a snake hunt and swallow alive a mouse. Who said romance was dead?

It’s Jackson, using so much hair-spray she doesn’t need a motorcycle helmet, who keeps this watchable – even when the biking scenes, juvenile delinquent hi-jinks and Budweiser product placement begin to wear thin, and that doesn’t take very long. However, the siege of the caravan racks up the tension, and brings an unexpected and quite nasty death, albeit one clearly accomplished through thoroughly unconvincing stunt-doubling. That, and a finale where Connie shows an equally unexpected streak of malice, left me suitably entertained, though it would certainly be a stretch to call this anything more than throw-away drive-in fodder.

Dir: Maury Dexter
Star: Diane McBain, Ross Hagen, Sherry Jackson, Patty McCormack

They Call Me Macho Woman!

  By

★★★
“A B-movie, and entirely unashamed of it.”

macho womanLurking behind what has surely to be one of the worst titles in cinema history (truly a Troma creation), to my surprise, this is actually a solid enough little low-budget flick – albeit one that is straightforward to the point of idiocy. Widow Susan Morris (Sweeney – blonde, so definitely not the woman on the cover!) is out in the wilds. looking for a house where she can get away from it all. Unfortunately, she crosses paths with the monstrous Mongo (Oldfield, who reminds me of someone, but I can’t work out who) and his gang of drug-peddlers, and they do not take kindly to the interruption. It isn’t long before Susan has to find herself a new realtor. And that’s the least of her worries, as she finds herself perpetually in peril from the gang, who have every intent of raping and then killing her. Or maybe killing her, then raping her. They don’t seem too fussy about that. But everybody has their breaking point, and when they push Susan too far, she snaps, and takes the fight to her attackers.

Yes, it’s dumb. Yes, it’s cheap. Yes, it makes little or no sense, in particular her sudden transformation from plucky but largely ineffective heroine [who can’t even stab someone in a way that causes them more than moderate discomfort] into a warrior woman, capable of embedding a shiny axe in your head from 15 paces. But, you know what? It’s never boring, and I’ve sat through more than my fair share of low-budget crap that figures talk is cheap – so we’ll pad things out with lots and lots of that, before getting to anything approaching the meaty stuff. No such bait and switch here. We open with Mongo demonstrating his favourite weapon, a headpiece with a spike attached, which makes him look like a disgruntled unicorn, and after little more than five minutes of backstory involving Susan chatting to the real-estate agent, things kick off. And once they do, they don’t stop kicking until the final credits roll after 81 briskly entertaining minutes, as she is harried from one peril to the next, with laudable diligence (if variable competence) by Mongo and his henchmen.

Few involved here show any degree of acting talent, yet this shortcoming doesn’t matter very much, since we’re dealing with broad caricatures – let’s face it, subtlety would be a waste of time. There are some ludicrous mis-steps, such as the sequence where Susan escapes by running over the heads of the gang, which appears to have strayed in from a Jet Li movie. In what world does this even make sense? It could also have done with ramping up the exploitation elements considerably: much of the violence is implied (though the guy getting impaled on a nail was nicely done) and there’s no nudity. If talk is cheap, breasts are almost as inexpensive, and much more appreciated. It would also have helped if the stuntman used to stand-in for Sweaney, had been given a wig that matched her hair: hers is wavy, his is curly, and the difference is obvious. Yet I can’t bring myself to hate this, despite its obvious flaws. I was satisfactorily entertained, even without the use of alcohol.

Dir: Patrick G. Donahue
Star: Debra Sweaney, Brian Oldfield, Sean P. Donahue, Mike Donahue
a.k.a. Savage Instinct

The Huntresses

  By

★★★
“Charlie’s Korean, Medieval Angels”

During the Joseon era in Korea, a trio of bounty hunters, Jin-Ok (Ha Ji-Won), Hong-Dan (Gang Ye-Won) and Ga-Bi (Son Ga-In), work with their agent, Moo-Myung (Ko Chang-Seok), capturing wanted bandits. But they get a different task, after a King’s envoy carrying an encoded message is the latest courier to go missing, and are charged with bringing him in. Needless to say, it’s not a simple task, and they find themselves facing a host of players opposed to the King receiving the message, which would threaten the fragile relationship with the Chinese emperor. But there’s also a personal angle, as Jin-Ok finds herself face-to-face with the man she remembers as having killed her father.

Huntresses-Poster-5Huntresses-Poster-1Huntresses-Poster-4

Early on, it becomes abundantly clear that this is not intended to be taken entirely seriously, probably from the time one of the heroines whips out her yo-yo, and takes out an entire platoon of enemies, Sukeban Deka style. Indeed, it’s probably the comedic elements that work best, such as the constable who follows him around, convinced his camo skills will stop him being seen – in a rarity for the humour often seen in Eastern films, it’s a joke which could have been used more, rather than being driven into the ground as normal. However, it feels that this lack of seriousness was taken by the makers as a reason to slap together the story, which lurches from set-piece to set-piece without any sense of logic or narrative flow – and don’t even get me started on the whole “dramatic amnesia” suffered by Jin-Ok.

It’s also fairly obvious the actresses aren’t doing very much of their own action, putting them behind Drew Barrymore et al, and in another galaxy, far, far away, from the participants in another cinematic cousin, The Heroic Trio. Ha probably comes off the best of the three, but there’s an awful lot of scenes which consist largely of close-ups of the actresses flailing wildly, intercut with wide shots from behind of someone competent. However, it still passes the time easily, particularly after all the parties involved end up in the port city of Byeokrando – or, at least, a convincing CGI imitation thereof. This allows plenty of scope for some impressive bits of combat, regardless of who’s actually doing them, as well as exploding pagodas, and other chunks of mass destruction. It also helps that the performances are solid from just about everyone concerned, which shores up the flimsy constructs of the storyline.  I’m informed that the Korean title translates as “Three Beautiful Musketeers of Joseon,” and that’s probably an accurate an overall summary as the preceding 400 words.

Dir: Park Je-Hyun
Star: Ha Ji-Won, Gang Ye-Won, Son Ga-In, Ko Chang-Seok

Miss Conspirator

  By

★★
“A tale – and heroine – of two halves.”

miss conspiratorChun Soo-ro (Go) is a painfully shy, introverted young woman, who is a little more than a bundle of neuroses. At the airport to see off her sister, she encounters a nun, who asks Soo-ro to deliver a package to her boyfriend – a concept which, personally, would set my alarm bells ringing! However, on her arrival, Soo-ro finds the intended recipient dead, and ends up fleeing the scene, in possession of both a large quantity of drugs, and the cash that was intended to pay for them. For obvious reasons, both the White Tiger and Sa gangs, the participants in the deal gone very, very wrong, are rather upset, and go on the hunt for her. For they believe Soo-ro to be the nun, who is unable to disagree, having been killed in a traffic accident. Fortunately, a cop working undercover takes pity and agrees to protect Soo-ro, although his resulting actions lead to exposure – and, meanwhile, the prospect of getting his hands on so much cash leads his boss to stray from the path of true justice. Fortunately, some unexpected hydro-shock therapy leads to a startling transformation in our heroine’s character, and she arranges a meeting between all the interested parties.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but this left me almost entirely cold. Or maybe not, since this wasn’t particularly well-received in its native Korea either, I’m not averse to the “fish out of water” idea – one of my favorite book growing up was Robert Scheckley’s Game of X, about a complete novice who finds himself embroiled in espionage, and I was hoping for something similar here. Unfortunately, this is certainly not funny, only sporadically exciting, ridiculously implausible, and the transition from shrinking violet to ice-cool superwoman is so abrupt as to be entirely disconcerting, almost as if someone switched out movies on you at the 80 minute mark.

From what I’ve read, it seems to have been intended as a showcase for Go, making her feature debut after becoming one of Korea’s best-known TV actresses – mostly for playing roles closer to her later character here. She isn’t bad in the role, and considering how irritating the performance here could have been, the fact that it isn’t deserves some credit. However, “not being irritating” is hardly what you’d call a ringing endorsement for any movie. Things do perk up a little after Soo-ro blossoms into her femme fatale version, and you can’t help thinking this would have been a much better version had the change happened about an hour earlier. Or better still, if it had taken place immediately after the animated opening credit sequence which is one of the movie’s few memorable sequences.

Dir: Park Chul-kwan
Star: Go Hyun-jung, Yoo Hae-jin. Sung Dong-il. Lee Moon-sik

Undercover Girl

  By

★★
“A kinder, gentler era. Particularly for heroines.”

AlexisUndercoverDespite a good central idea, this founders on failing to have the courage of its convictions. The heroine’s appearances are book-ended by a boyfriend (Egan) who reckons she’d be better off in an apron than a police uniform, and colleague Mike Trent (Brady), who treats her with hardly any more respect – Chris watched the end of this one with me, and her sole comment (not including various derisive snorts) was, “I would not have fared very well in the fifties…”

Christine Miller (Smith) is the young lady in question, whose father is gunned down by a mobster after spurning a payoff. Christine feels guilty about this, because her father ran up debts to put her through school, and is left with a burning desire to take vengeance on those responsible. Enter Trent, an LA detective who is trying to roll up the entire gang,  but their wary nature has led to him being unable to gather any evidence. He thinks a women, posing as a drugs buyer, might have better luck, and is convinced that with the right coaching, Christine is the right one for the job – over qualms that she might not be able to control her emotive impulses, because she’s a girl ‘n’ stuff. He sends her to bond with Liz Crow (George), a former Chicago criminal who became addicted to her own supply, and is now in rehab, seeking information which will establish a solid background for Christine’s undercover persona.

That done, she moves into a boarding house opposite a low-level connection to the gang, and starts trying to work her way up the food chain. It’s not without issues, as her target remain suspicious, and her cover  is stretched the the limit, for example, when her boyfriend happens to bump into her, calling Christine by her real name within earshot of a lurking gang member. As such, it concentrates more on attempting to craft tension than action, along with a lengthy (too long, it might be said) depiction of the relationship between Christine and Liz. But it doesn’t really work, leading instead to a lengthy climax which appears to consist mostly of people running around a building constructed entirely out of staircases, landings and doorways, shooting at each other with the accuracy of Imperial Stormtroopers. It’s just not something which has aged well, and will leave you mostly with an appreciation of how far cinematic heroines have come in the sixty-plus years since.

Dir: Joseph Pevney
Star: Alexis Smith, Scott Brady, Richard Egan, Gladys George