Author: Jim McLennan

Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69 trailer

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Readers will know how Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS is one of our guiltiest pleasures – and so, Werewolf Women Of The S.S. was about our favorite part of Grindhouse. While we wait for that to get made, Wild Eye Releasing didn’t, and have brought us Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69, which had it’s world premiere on May 24th in New York. Here’s the trailer. At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious, it’s Not Safe For Work. And we wouldn’t have it any other way!

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Hook ‘n’ Shoot: Revolution

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★★★
“Pretty much the first of its kind – with all that implies.”

These days, the notion of women participating in mixed martial-arts is no longer seen as particularly outlandish, with names like Tara LaRosa, Yuka Tsuji and Megumi Fujii among the top fighters [as with pro wrestling, the best fighters are out of Japan]. However, this wasn’t always the case: In April 2002, in Evansville, Indiana, one of the first all-women events in America took place. The fights took place under Shooto rules, with two five-minute rounds [though only one fight ended up going into the second]. Here are quick recaps of the seven bouts on the DVD.

  • Ruth Meija -vs- Erica Montoya Over in 2:32 with an arm-bar, but pretty one-sided. Montoya was in complete control and also landed some hard shots on her opponent.
  • Olga Bakalopoulas -vs- Shannon Hooper A better fight, with more well-matched opponents. Hooper wanted to stand and punch, but it was Bakalopoulas who came out on top; she managed to knock her opponent down (albeit more by luck than anything) and applied a keylock submission for victory in a little more than two minutes.
  • Jennifer Irons -vs- Jessica Ross A triangle choke submission ended this one at 1:48 in favor of Ross, even though she was giving away a fair amount of weight. Ross is more of a grappler, but got some good blows in, and also showed decent ground skills.
  • Tanya Vlahac -vs- Angela Wilson This was a barn-burner, with both women trading hard punches. Vlahac also dropped Wilson with one particular punch, but Wilson used her judo skills to bring her opponent down, and then took control, hitting Vlahac until the referee stopped the fight.
  • Shelby Walker -vs- Tara LaRosa LaRosa pounded her opponent into submission, after taking her down. From there on, it was an onslaught of punishment, and I can’t say I’m surprised that LaRosa went on to make a name for herself in the field. Sadly, Walker died, apparently from an overdose of pain medication, in 2006.
  • Angela Restad -vs- Mayra Conde Almost all the early offense here was by Conde, with Restad simply trying to survive on the ground. However, as round one wore on, Restad came back, with some solid knees and combinations. The second round continued in a similar way, with Conde having the advantage on the floor, but Restad landing good blows. Conde almost got an arm-bar, but Restad escaped and almost got a choke of her own. This ended in a majority draw – two called it even, one gave it to Restad. A fair result, but the best fight of the night,
  • Debi Purcell -vs- Chris Van Fleet Purcell was clearly the better fighter, and had the edge from the start with a powerful punch. However, Purcell also showed good submission skills, and got under the guard of Van Fleet, taking her down for a relatively quick victory, forcing her opponent to tap at 2:42, with a Rear Naked Choke.

Obviously, the scarcity of female mixed martial artists in the US posed something of a problem to the promoters, with the matches apparently made mostly on weight alone. The Restad-Conde match is the only one whose outcome is not certain inside about 30 seconds, and that one is one of the best MMA bouts I’ve seen, male or female. The special features on the DVD include additional interviews with the fighters, who mostly come across as smarter than you might expect, and also Erin Toughill, who was present but not taking part. Two more volumes are available in the series; on the basis of this one, I’d be interested in watching them, but not buying them unseen.

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles

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★★★½
“Could do with some more action, yet still more than acceptable.”

The double-pilot. Probably deserving of a place on the FAQ is, “Why don’t you include Sarah Connor?” The reason is simply that she was a supporting character in the first two Terminator films; one essential to the plot, that’s for sure, but clearly over-shadowed by her male counterparts in both movies. The TV series finally moves Connor (Headey) front and center, and also adds an additional action-heroine dimension, in the shape of Cameron Phillips (Glau), a schoolmate of John Connor’s who turns out to be a new model of Terminator, sent back to watch over him. The show starts in 1999, a couple of years after the events of Terminator 2, but soon shifts to the present day; it thus largely ignores the timeline of Terminator 3, in which Sarah Connor was reported to have died of leukemia in 1997.

The concept, as explored in the first two episodes, is very familiar: Sarah must protect son John (Dekker), so he can lead the human resistance after Skynet declares war on us. Skynet sends its unstoppable robotic henchmen back in time to take him out, but she also has an unstoppable robot of her own – this Terminator is more advanced than Arnie’s, being capable of ingesting food. However, there is further development, with the interesting idea that the future John Connor has sent back other humans, to provide a support network for Sarah in her struggle. It is only brushed against in the opening two hours, but may be developed in further episodes. There is also an FBI agent (Jones), who has been hunting Connor since her escape from the mental asylum, and her former fiancee, on whom Sarah bailed.

Glau and Headey both have action experience, from their roles in Serenity and 300 respectively, and they bring the necessary resilience to the role. Glau has a balletic grace and flexibility which helps make up for her obvious lack of size, and while there is clearly some body-doubling done, it’s mostly well-handled and the editing of the fight sequences is above-average. We also liked the deadpan portrayal she brings to the role. Headey does not yet exhibit the ferocious passion which Hamilton brought to her role, so that’s something we want to see develop, and we also hope they do not get bogged down and become a ‘Terminator of the Week’ show. It seems that time-travel may be a significant part of the story, and this would open up an almost infinite range of possibilities. This was a solid, entertaining opening, and fingers crossed the rest of the series can build on the potential.

The rest of the series If there’s an unfinished feel to the show, that would be because it was. Thanks to the writer’s strike, the final four episodes never made it to the screen, and the storylines will be incorporated into the upcoming second series, confirmed by Fox in April. While not perhaps the makers’ fault, it undeniably had an effect, basically leaving us to turn to each other at the end [which involved a car-bomb] and go, “Is that it?” The rest of the series, however, wasn’t so terrible, though it did feel somewhat stretched. The main plot threads were extensions of the pilot: a) the Connors trying to stop Skynet from becoming active, in particular through locating a chess computer called The Turk, and b) evil Terminator Cromartie trying to stop them. There’s also c) an FBI agent (Jones) who is trying to piece together the pieces, trailing both parties, and d) the arrival of Derek Reese, the brother of Kyle and therefore John Connor’s uncle.

The extra time available to a TV series does allow for expansion, perhaps most notably that Skynet does more to try and affect the past than just send back Terminators – it is supposed to be a super-intelligent system after all. On the other hand, the action elements are significantly reined back, perhaps in association with budget restrictions. However, I particularly liked the SWAT assault on Cromartie in the final episode, set to Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around, which I’ve loved since they used it in the opening to the Dawn of the Dead remake. Needless to say, that goes about as well for the SWAT team as you might expect. Glau is particularly good, with her character actually developing in unexpected ways, such as discovering a taste for ballet.

However, there has been a fair bit of sniping regarding Headey, comparing her physical presence unfavourably (the word “weedy” gets used a good deal) with Linda Hamilton’s. Said one such critic: “There are two issues here: having a toothpick-thin, feeble-looking Sarah Connor is a crime against the iconography of the character; and presenting a clearly emaciated actress as a heroine is a crime against women.” Headey’s response was blunt and to the point: “It’s a TV show, for God’s sake!” – and I’m inclined to agree. We’re dealing with a series about time-travelling robots here, folks. If you seek role models for your body here, there’s probably no hope for you. Here’s to the second series, especially if there’s more ass-kicking from Headey and Glau.

Dir: David Nutter and others
Star: Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau, Richard T. Jones

Half an interview with Julien Magnat, of Bloody Mallory

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First, some background. This interview was originally conducted by email all the way back in April 2006, with the director of Bloody Mallory. I sent him a whole bunch of questions, and he replied with the the first half – however, I didn’t get the second batch, then all hell broke loose with the Serial Shooters, which took down the site, etc. and I never did get a chance to follow up. The other day, a workmate of Chris’s borrowed the Mallory DVD, and I suddenly remembered the interview. I managed to resurrect the first set of responses [dredged off the hard disk of the computer before my current one] and found them still fascinating to read, with some really great answers; so, here you go…

Were you a big movie-fan when you were young? What was the first film to make an impression on you?
Definitely. The movie that brought some kind of ‘epiphany’ on me was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I know Raiders is a better film, blah, I don’t care: I could watch and rewatch Temple of Doom every day till I die and not get bored of it. I was also really into Nightmare on Elm street movies as a teen, I actually think of this series of movies as my ‘filmschool’. So many talents emerged through these films – Angelo Badalamenti, Johnny Depp, Wes Craven, Renny Harlin and Lisa Wilcox, my all-time favourite actress and muse, whom I had the pleasure to work with on my final studies film called Chastity Blade. Definitely a ‘girl with guns’ movie! That short film got me an academy award nomination in 2001 and I cherish that film above everything else because Lisa’s in it and it’s like my childhood inspiration paid in the end…

Did you try your hand at making films while growing up?
I never owned a Super 8 camera, nor a video one. I think I was more of a reader/writer and I guess I kinda fell in love with storytelling while reading Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederic Brown (best short stories)… I was also really into Marvel Comics and action figures. I still collect superheroines nowadays, and they do come handy whenever I’m struggling with a storyboard.

You went to school in Wales and Reading – how did you end up across the Channel?
I got a two year scholarship to study an international baccalaureate in Atlantic College. This school is part of the United World Colleges. Their aim is to bring together students from all over the world so that they learn how to live together and hopefully make the world a better place. It was such a crazy, wonderful experience filled with idealism and stuff which may sound like a sect but wasn’t. I met my best friends there and learned how to speak english. Sort of, anyway…

The school was located inside the St Donat’s Castle, it was like Harry Potter but for real. I shot my first movie there, it was called In the Gaze of the Beasts and edited over the soundtrack of Freddy movies… I was 17 at the time. I went back to France the following year, flunked the examination for the Belgian national Film school, waisted a year and decided to cross the channel again and study film & Drama at Reading University. Reading is the most fucking depressing town ever built, and I cannot believe I stayed there for 3 years. Yikes. But the degree was interesting, I did some TV reviews on a TV channel, met Kelly Smith, with whom I like to co-write stuff, and I escaped to London as often as I could.

Your first film was the short, The All New Adventures of Chastity Blade. How did this come about?
Well, after I finally got my degree and fled from Reading, I managed to get in the French National Film school. It was quite weird because I only applied there to please my parents. This school (La Fémis) is incredibly arty-fartsy and I thought they’d never take someone like me. But they did and as much as it was great to be able to do this school, it was actually really hard for me. I had no friends there, no-one remotedly interested in what I liked (action heroines and genre films). The other students were all into Bresson and Godard and Nouvelle Vague stuff and I was like, hell-low, it’s been 50 years now, get over it… You see, in Reading, we studied world cinema, from avant-garde american stuff to silent cinema, it was a broad spectrum of things, from Hitchcock to Maya Deren, etc. Whereas in France, it’s all centered on French cinema. Very self-centered.

So when I finally wrote the script of what would become my final studies film – with the help of my friend Kelly from Reading – it was like a manifesto of what I liked and what I wanted to vomit at all these people who were all so intellectual and anal about everything. That’s how Chastity Blade came about. The story was about a quirky american housewife walking into the Pulp, fictive 1930’s Paris of her favourite books, Chastity Blade. It was Indiana Jones meets Freddy meets The Neverending Story in 30 minutes. I sent the script to my muse Lisa Wilcox for the hell of it, and she loved it so much that she agreed to come all over to Paris from LA to act in it, for free. When I went to pick her up at the airport, it was like the best day of my life and I still grin now when I recall this moment. Of course my school freaked out when they realized I was gonna shoot a genre movie in english. In In-GLICH!!! In a French film school!!! They tried their utmost to stop me, to cancel this film, to force me to give up. Anyway, then the Academy Award thing happened and from that moment, I was like, their best student, and when the Prime Minister or anyone else important came to the school, they were showing him Chastity Blade. How absolutely laughable but hey, that’s how school works I guess but it amused me a lot at the time.

There always seemed to be a good genre ‘scene’ in France (I fondly remember magazines like Mad Movies from my teenage years!) but is that still the case?
Yes. And L’Ecran Fantastique too. Great magazines. I have written for L’Ecran Fantastique in the past and still do occasionally. I used to love Mad Movies but the team changed and now it’s just not the same anymore. When they came on the shoot of Bloody Mallory, I was so happy cause I used to read Mad Movies from front to end cover, I used to love that stuff. Anyway the journalist’s first question was not on my film, it was: “What subject did you pick at the National Film School’s entrance examination because I didn’t get in and I wanted to know why you got in…” He was totally bitter and aggressive and I was, really, really disappointed. And of course, 2 months later, they totally thrashed my movie. I can live with Cahiers du Cinema thrashing my first feature, but when it’s your favourite magazine from your childhood, it kinda hurts a lot.

It totally devastated me, out of all the crap reviews that I got in France for that film. So I don’t read Mad Movies anymore, not out of a grudge, just because it kinda spoiled the fun for me. Thank god, I had a much better coverage abroad and a great article in Fangoria. There’s a saying in France that goes, “You’re never a prophet in your own country”. I don’t think Bloody Mallory is an unforgettable masterpiece, but I certainly don’t think it deserved all the evil critics it got here in France. Then again, the very same magazines who used to thrash the early films of Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson are now saying how they always knew his talent from earlier on. I’m not comparing myself to these two geniuses, I’m just pointing out at how things usually work here.

Where did the core idea for Bloody Mallory come from?
I was meant to do another movie instead, a French take on Scream, a very 1980’s slasher movie with ugly, suburban teenagers stalked by a mirror-masked killer, but that wasn’t going very well. Anyway, I had to come up with about 10 different pitchs before the production company that had signed me on agreed on something. And it was Bloody Mallory. I have no idea how I came to write that one, it just came out like this, zap. I had the name ‘Bloody Mallory’ in my mind for a couple of years. I have a lot of action heroine names floating in my mind and it’s funny how the plot usually come afterwards. Chastity Blade was just like that, a name, and then I created a story around it. All I remember is that I was pretty angry at the time because I just had my heart broken by someone, so Bloody Mallory herself was pretty unlucky in love and truly pissed off at the whole world.

Many reviews compare it to ‘Buffy’ – ass-kicking heroine, fighting supernatural evil, backed by her friends and their different skills. Do you think that’s fair?
I was a Buffy fan but to be honest, Bloody Mallory owed much more to Xena than than Buffy in my mind. I loved Xena, I loved the zany scripts mixing seriousness with uber camp stuff, I loved the lesbian angle, and I think Josh Whedon used a lot of Xena stuff in Buffy. I was worried by that Buffy comparison, and purposedly wrote Mallory herself as a more experienced woman, who had already gotten married, i.e. I didn’t see her as a teenager. Unfortunately, the producers wanted me to work with younger actors, and I couldn’t convince them otherwise. I think it might have been quite a different film with let’s say, a 35 year old Mallory. When I agreed to work with younger actors, I kept telling everyone “Everybody’s gonna call this ‘Ze French Buffy’…”

What other films, series, books, etc. influenced you?
Well Manga and Japanese characters like Cutie Honey, but also X-men. When you don’t have a fifth of a quarter of the budget of ‘X-men’, you’ve got to find a different way to make a movie work so I opted for a ‘Manga’ look, with flashy colors and kitsh elements, such as the pink convertible hearse. I’m so proud of that one, I just love the idea of a pink convertible hearse! I liked the idea of a super brigade. Talking Tina, the psychic girl, was named after that great Twilight Zone episode. Vena Cava, as you pointed out in your review of my film, is a homage to singer Diamanda Galas whom I love and whose sense of humour and philosophy definitely inspired me for the character. Vena Cava’s line to the Pope that goes ‘Give me sodomy or Give me death’ is actually a song by Diamanda Galas. I’m not crazy about using too many references but it was my first feature so I guess it’s the moment when you want to show what ‘school’ you’re from, i.e. , what movie inspired you. There are a couple references to Ringu and of course, the trap scene with the crushing wall is a total rip off/wink to the trap room of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Organized religion doesn’t exactly come out of this looking good – not least the Pope! How much does this reflect your own feelings?
How many lives would have been saved had Religion never existed? I can’t believe people think that the Pope or anyone else for that matter has a right to tell them that they can do or can’t do. Jesus certainly never mentioned a Pope in the Bible, did he, and even if he had, he didn’t write the bloody thing himself so… I personally think that if there’s a heaven and hell, the previous Pope isn’t listening to angels singing right now. His condemning of contraception in these times of epidemic Aids was genocidal . Thousands of people died in Africa just because of this position he took. And now people want him to become a Saint? I’m quite amazed and appalled at was Bush is doing too in America, funding aids-related organizations only if they promote abstinence and christian principles of faithfulness, while printing in sex education books for teenagers that ‘condoms’ don’t protect you from Aids. Bloody Mallory is just a B-movie, but I think B-movies allow you to say a couple of controversial things that you wouldn’t be able to say in a normal movie. I mean, in the movie, the Pope is basically an evil bastard and the reincarnation of the Devil! I wish we could have done a proper fight with him and the Drag Queen…

It’s also definitely a script that puts women to the front. Was this a conscious decision?
Yes. I always envisioned Bloody Mallory and her team as a slightly male-bashing, independent women who might have sex with men just for sport, but who would never attach themselves to anyone. Had the movie been more successful and fuelled a bunch of sequels, Bloody Mallory would never stay with the same guy. Just like James Bond and his girls. I also like the haunting romance with her dead husband, that gives her something to look at, so that she doesn’t need anyone else, maybe. I don’t know… Again, I love Wonder Woman and Xena and I feel super-heroines really don’t need men anymore to survive dangerous situations.

[To be continued? Maybe, if Julien sees this – the email address I had for him no longer works – perhaps we can get this completed…as long as he still has the questions, because I don’t!]

Dangerous Acquaintances

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★★★★

It’s been at least a decade since I read this – probably more – but it is still a thoroughly-enjoyable read, and a major improvement in just about every way (plotting, art, pacing, imagination and characterization) over the first stab. Of particular note is the solid way in which the two separate threads of the story are woven together. While on holiday, Kei and Yuri bump into Shasti, a former colleague of theirs in the WWWA. She was actually an android, who went rogue after a criminal’s personality was implanted into her, part of a (failed) experiment to see if it would help with his capture to have her think like him. She’s now apparently leading a group of “freedom fighters” who are planning to hijack a luxurious space-liner, crammed with VIPs and new technology. Has Shasti gone all political? Or, if not, what is she up to?

She’s certainly a formidable opponent, even when outnumbered 2-to-1: she’s stronger, faster and more resilient than both Kei and Yuri, thanks to her cybernetic upgrades. However, it’s her attitude which really rubs our heroines the wrong way from the beginning, her multiple artificial personalities making her capable of kicking your ass brutally one second, then apologizing humbly for doing so, the very next. And that’s before she gets the “upgrade” to the character of an amoral, psychopathic career criminal. The body-count thereafter is large, and messy to the point that it’s a good thing this is a black-and-white comic. However, this lends a real sense of threat to proceedings, giving a sense that Kei and Yuri are themselves in danger – rather than just the local civilian population, as is usually the case.

There’s not as much reliance on the original comics – no Mughia, Lovely Angel ship or Bloody Card – with the Toren and Smith developing their own world instead. I’d really love to see this turned into a movie, and with the advent of CGI, it would no longer be prohibitively-expensive as it was when the story originally came out. It has some lovely twists, plenty of action and a great antagonist for our heroines to take on. An adaptation worthy of the name.

Story: Toren Smith and Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren

In Her Line of Fire

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★★
“Lesbian Action in the Jungle [suitable for all ages].”

This is a competently-made but ultimately forgettable film – it feels very much like a TVM, albeit for one of the slightly-more liberal channels. Hemingway plays Secret Service agent Lynn Delaney, who has to look after the Vice-President, when their place crashes in the Pacific. Of course, in the way things only happen in Hollywood movies, the island to which the struggle is a rebel outpost, and the VP is a former soldier, with more-than adequate combat skills of his own. Which extend to more than shooting people in the face, Dick Cheney please note. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of tension with female journalist Sharon Serrano (Bennett), who is also among the survivors; this includes tension of a sexual kind, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Like I said: one of the slightly-more liberal channels. However, it’s nice that no big thing is made of this; you’re not whacked over the head with anyone’s sexual orientiation, as in D.E.B.S. [Curiously, even the nods in this direction are edited out from some releases]

“Her mouth irritates me.” That was Chris’s dismissal of Ms. Hemingway and, for once, her snap judgement would have saved me from enduring this. For it is directed and written with a stunning lack of energy, imagination, invention or enthusiasm – basically, anything that’d make it worth watching. This is apparent very early on, when the villain’s henchman are, once again, unable to shoot for peanuts. Yes, I suppose they are a rag-tag guerilla outfit, whom their mercenary leader (Millbern) is supposed to lick into shape, but they still basically get their asses handed to them by one Secret Service agent and a politician. No-one is allowed to develop their characters beyond a single dimension, with Serrano perpetually whiny, and Delaney perpetually furrowed. While Hemingway’s mouth may not, particularly, have irritated me, just about everything else in this vapid confection did.

Dir: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Star: Mariel Hemingway, David Keith, Jill Bennett, David Millbern

Rise: Blood Hunter

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★½
“Sadly disappointing and largely toothless.”

The main obstacle to this even reaching average is probably a first-half structure that is, for no readily apparent season, entirely fractured. Scenes appear entirely out of order, with no explanation: why is our heroine now waking up in a morgue? And the problem is, what the film has to offer is so pedestrian, you can’t be bothered to start putting the pieces together. Liu plays Sadie Blake, a journalist investigating the shady underground side of goth culture, who ends up finding a clan of vampires are on top of the food chain, just before becoming one of their victims. However, instead of taking her undeath lying down, she vows revenge and, accompanied by a rogue cop (Chiklis, you’ll not be surprised to learn), begins working her way up said food-chain.

Despite the combination of two potentially incendiary grindhouse themes, in vampires and revenge, the gore and nudity feel more reigned back than they should be. And the vampires here, under leader D’Arcy, are a bunch of wimps whom certain slayers would have disposed of between commercial breaks, with a merry quip. Sadly, Blake is no Buffy, despite her crossbow, and even the action sequences appear to be choreographed by a sloth. It’s aiming to be post-modern in its approach to vampirism; they have few special powers, and I don’t think anyone actually used the V-word. However, part of the reason the monster has survived so long is because of the alluring facets of the mythos, and the film doesn’t come with anything as interesting, to replace what it excised.

The prurient will likely be drawn in by the prospect of Lucy Liu getting her kit off, and they’ll likely enjoy the sequence where she’s hung upside-down, topless. You’ll also get Marilyn Manson and Mr. Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey, formerly of 98 Degrees: I leave it up to the reader to decide whether these cameos are a discouragement or incentive to watch. The “unrated, undead” DVD includes about 25 minutes excised from the theatrical version, which also ran a good bit more chronologically – for once, I’m left longing for the rated version, since what we have here is an overlong mess.

Dir: Sebastian Gutierrez
Star: Lucy Liu, Michael Chiklis, James D’Arcy, Carla Gugino

Doomsday

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★★★½
“McResident Evil”

Basically every review I read of this has started off by stating it’s a cross between…well, perm any three from Mad Max, Escape From New York, Aliens, I am Legend, 28 Days Later and Resident Evil, depending on how well-informed the writer is about the action and horror genres. That’s fair enough: there’s no denying that Marshall has chosen here to create a film that is as much as compilation of influences as anything, and this therefore falls short of his previous work, The Descent, which went places few recent horror films have gone. However, most reviews sniffily stop there or, worse still, engage in petty cinematic snobbery: witness Jeff Otto of ReelzChannel.com – I’m not going to do him the honor of linking to the piece – who says, “Not pre-screening this one was a smart move on Universal’s part. It has no need for critics because the people who will enjoy this movie are very unlikely to possess the cognitive skills or attention span to read a review anyway.” I came up with several witty rejoinders to that, but opt instead for the tried and tested one of, fuck you, Jeff Otto. For sometimes you don’t want something that pushes the boundaries of cinema; the films listed in the first paragraph are (mostly) classics, and if you’re going to steal from anywhere, steal from the best.

In the near future (next week, actually at the time of going to press), Glasgow falls prey to the Reaper virus, which is exactly what it sounds like. The government in London deal with the problem by building a 30-foot wall along the border and sealing off Scotland – which is basically the approach taken by the government to problems in Scotland since, oh, about 1707. [Hello, born there!] 30 years later, however, the virus breaks out in London, and all of a sudden, the information that people are still alive in Scotland, suggesting they found a cure, is now of more than academic interest. To get the cure, they send Eden (Mitra) up North, to find Kane (McDowell, appearing in about two scenes, then taking his salary and leaving), who might just have the solution. However, things do not go as planned, needless to say, not least because Glasgow is inhabited by nothing but psychopathic thugs with poor dress sense and bad skin, stuck in the past. So, no change, then. [Hello, not born there – East Coast Scotland, represent!]

It’s clear that Marshall has a strong interest in action-heroines, having not only directed The Descent but also written Killing Time. Mitra also has something of a track record, having been one of the live-action Lara Crofts for Eidos a few years back. Here, however, she comes across as more of a Kate Beckinsale wannabe – my first reaction when I saw the trailer was this it was Kate. That works better in Underworld or Resident Evil, where the setting gives us reason to believe that the central character has special powers of one kind or another; as a straight-up action heroine, Mitra is just not physical enough to convince. This may perhaps explain the limited amount of physical action she does; a fight against another woman warrior, appears to have been edited with a weed-whacker, but another, in which she goes one-on-one with an armored knight, is pretty decent.

It all builds to a monumental car-chase, though you have to suspend disbelief there, as apparently Bentley cars will start right out of the crate, even if they’ve been sitting there for thirty years. You can also plough them through an exploding bus, amongst a litany of other torments, and they’ll come out the other side with barely a scratch. Again, if you’re going to ground your film in the ‘real world’, admittedly a questionable concept given the plot synopsis above (and I haven’t even got to the more outrageous elements yet!), then mis-steps such as these should be avoided. They’ll just give the more moronic end of the critical fraternity – paging Jeff Otto – blunt objects with which to whack your film about the head, as they ride off on their high horse. They only bothered me slightly, since I was already in full-on disbelief suspension, and since the resulting car-chase was cheerfully destructive, I’m inclined to give it some slack.

There’s also a certain point at which it’s clear that Marshall is operating tongue in cheek: it may be the sign on the Glaswegian bus which reads ‘Out of Fucking Service’, or in the castle where Cane and his followers have regressed to medieval times, yet have left up another sign, this one saying ‘Gift Shop’. Or that two of the soldiers in Eden’s party are called Miller and Carpenter: the directors of Mad Max and Escape From New York being George Miller and John Carpenter, of course. Or the elaborately choreographed ritual of human flesh-eating, like an Archaos show [there’s an 80’s reference for you!], set to a song by punk icon Siouxsie and the Banshees. Though the immediately-preceding use of Fine Young Cannibals was, I admit, a bit much. Still, let go, don’t expect the atmosphere of The Descent – this is much closer in tone to Marshall’s preceding Dog Soldiers – and just enjoy the gloopy violence or slabs of black humour which pepper the film, and you’ll have a more than adequate time.

Dir: Neil Marshall
Stars: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Craig Conway, Malcolm McDowell

6 Angels

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★★★
“Like The Prophecy, made for 75 cents and without Christopher Walken.”

Poverty-row production though this might be, I can’t bring myself to hate this as much as it perhaps deserves. While it’s ambitions are far beyond its means [the DVD sleeve promises ‘female warriors in awesome fights’ – let’s just say, it was probably a mistake for me to rewatch Crouching Tiger the same day!], writer-director Almeida does, at least, have an imagination. After 12 years in a coma, Taileen (Fabre) finds herself reborn as one of The Circle, a group of six angels, three good and three evil, who keep the balance of the world. However, Ezekiel (Mazzola), the leader of the devil’s team, plans to wipe out the holy trinity, in order for his master to reign, and Taileen soon finds herself the only thing standing between the forces of darkness and their goal.

Really, if you’re going to offer religious apocalypse, you’d probably better have a budget that could not be described as ‘loose change’. The action is often teetering on the edge of laughable, and the film doesn’t even play by its own rules. In an early scene, Taileen learns she can only be killed by a “profane blade”, but the devil’s advocates still blaze away at her with mundane guns, even after they’ve learned she can stop bullets with her mind. Despite this, there are enough elements that worked to keep me interested: Stiga (Kastel, menacing the heroine in the pic at lower right) comes over nicely, both dressing and acting like a slutty version of Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix. I also have to credit Scott Buckley’s excellent, sweeping and orchestral score, which appears to have strayed in from a far bigger movie. That really yanks the film up by its boot-straps.

Things build to a final showdown in a warehouse, where the makers finally locate their supply of fake blood, which has been largely notable by its absence for the first hour, and it is quite effective. I do wonder why the angels, on both sides, don’t make better uses of their powers, though must also say, said powers are also somewhat crap: if I was responsible for holding the balance between good and evil, I’d want something better than the ability to turn into a fat guy. Overall, one would quite like to see this remade as a big-budget work, because the ideas here are good; with a good effects studio – and significantly better fight choreography – this has a lot of potential. However, Hollywood appears too busy remaking mostly-mediocre Asian horror to notice. We are therefore stuck with a cheap version, whose flaws likely distract too much from its merits for this to find a wide audience.

Dir: Luis Almeida
Star: Allison Fabre, Greg Mazzola, Jasmine Kastel, Rolando Millet

Resident Evil movie in a nutshell

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Fans of the Resident Evil games may be less than enamored of their tranlation to the big-screen, but the series has been one of the most popular girls-with-guns franchises of the past decade. It has spawned two sequels, which is a damn sight more than most video-game films [or, indeed, action heroines] managed. Been a while since I watched the original, but if you have, you’ll likely get a kick out of this month’s Youtube offering, which condenses the entire movie into less than three minutes.