Author: Jim McLennan

Guerilla Girl

  By

★★½
“Freedom fighter, terrorist or borrower of other people’s cosmetics? You decide…”

Not to be confused with the (rather tedious, IMHO) bunch of New York feminist artists, this is about Isabel, the well-educated daughter of a middle-class family, who opts to toss it all away and go into the jungles of Colombia to fight the revolution with FARC, the insurgents who have been rebelling against the government for more than 40 years. She undergoes training, both political and military, and has to adapt to an environment radically different from the one she knew before. It’s not always successful, and you wonder how she’s ever going to become a “freedom fighter” when she can’t even take part in the slaughter of a cow. [shown, below right – PETA activists will really want to avoid this one. Trust me.] But she soldiers on – pun not intended – and by the end, seems to be adjusting better to the prospect of spending the rest of her life on the run.

You could certainly criticize the film for an uncritical portrait of FARC – questions raised, such as their involvement with drugs, are quickly dismissed, though most independent observers believe this is a major source of funding for the group. However, once sense the film-makers didn’t want to go down that avenue, and since they were out in the jungle, with a group of heavily-armed insurgents, I can hardly blame them for letting that angle slide. Instead, it lets the film speak for itself, and FARC does sometimes come across as little better than kids playing soldiers: one, particularly memorable part of the training, consists of recruits running around, waving wooden guns about and shouting “BANG!” at imaginary opponents. They also have a startlingly bad ‘national anthem’, which sounds more like the fight song from a third-rate community college.

The film’s main weakness is the lack of any real narrative thrust. Now, obviously, in a documentary, this kind of thing is not always possible, but usually there’s a goal or some sense of purpose. Here, events simply unfold, and the vast majority of them are simply not very exciting; the height of drama is an argument about shampoo with another female recruit. There’s not really much of a character arc for Isabel, and despite some impressive cinematography, I can’t really say I learned much about Colombia, FARC or even the heroine. More insight, less documentary, would have been preferred.

Dir: Frank Piasecki Poulsen

Nightmare at Bitter Creek

  By

★★
“Made for television, and no better than you’d expect from that.”

Nita Daniels (Wagner) and her three girlfriends take a horseback trip up the mountain, expecting to meet their husbands at the top. However, the trip becomes a nightmare, as four members of the ‘Aryan Survivalist Brigade’ are holed up there, and decide to take out the women and their alcoholic guide, Ding (Skerritt). Initially, Ding takes the fore, but when he is injured it’s up to Nita and her pals to fight back. This TVM struggles, largely because of the lack of justification for the white supremacists: the entire party they attack are about as Aryan as they come, so why, exactly, should they be targeted for elimination? It would have been far more plausible had the party been ethnically-mixed, or even their guide been black – or, heck, Jewish.

Instead, the threat here is…well, a bit crap, really. They’re all but entirely faceless, clearly no good at marksmanship, and even the biggest of them is no match for a hungover Ding. Understandable, the TV-movie limitations restrict how “nasty” they could be shown, but there’s no sense of threat. It probably doesn’t help that the best actor in the film is Buster the dog, probably because his motivations are the most clear. The four women rarely get beyond the most shallow of caricatures, without any background to make you care for them – but I must admit, things do pick up significantly in the last twenty minutes, as the heroines find themselves trapped in a canyon, and Allison (Cassidy) needs to grow a spine if she’s to save her friends.

It’s not a terrible concept; this just needs to be executed with more conviction, and the medium of the television movie is probably not the right one for the story. That doesn’t permit the necessary level of dread, which would be something no TV company would want to show, especially back in 1988, when this was made. Finally, a small note on truth in advertising. Of all the facets depicted on the sleeve (right), there are certainly no bears and no lynchings. Nor is there any mention of the Confederacy or the Ku Klux Klan. Skerritt and Wagner, I will give you, but I’m not quite sure what the middle image on the right is supposed to depict.

Dir: Tim Burstall
Stars: Lindsay Wagner, Tom Skerritt, Constance McCashin, Joanna Cassidy

Resident Evil: Extinction

  By

★★★
“Extinction event.”

Has it really been three years since the last installment? Guess so. Therefore, about time for the most durable of the video-game to movie franchises, to pop up with another entry. Things continue to go from bad to worse as far as Planet Earth is concerned, with the T-virus, which spread from the complex to Raccoon City last time, now infecting the entire world. A few survivors roam the wastelands, such as in a convoy led by Claire Redfield (Larter), unable to stay in one place too long, because the zombies will locate them. Meanwhile, Dr. Isaacs (Glen) is working on reversing the virus, or at least making the zombies docile – though his approach to scientific teamwork leaves a little to be desired, shall we say. He also has a pit where he disposes of his raw material, an aspect that reminded me of the original Aeon Flux short films.

Into this comes Alice (Jovovich), who vanished off the grid, when she realised the Umbrella Corporation were tracking her. She gets lured in by a fake distress call, but after disposing of some zombie dobermans, eventually joins Redfield’s crew, just in time to save them from an attack by zombie crows [Mulcahy clearly having been inspired by The Birds, though I can’t help wondering how they got the cool contact lenses into the avian predators’ eyes.] They hear rumours of sanctuary in Alaska, and decide to head there – that requires a refuelling stop in what’s left of Vegas. However, Umbrella have been alerted by Alice’s burgeoning psychic powers and have left a nasty surprise…

S’ok. Mulcahy is no stranger to franchise cinema, having done the first couple of Highlander films, and the harsh desert lighting and exterior landscape is a nice contrast to the usual, dark, claustrophobic approach adopted by most Z-flicks. His experience is of particular use in the action sequences, where he does a better job of avoiding the cinematic excesses, in which Alexander Witt indulged, too frequently, last time up. The script is merely workmanlike: it feels too much like a series of cool set-pieces joined in the editing bay, rather than springing organically from the storyline.

The main problem, I feel, is that giving Alice mental powers detracts from the physical side of action, which has always been a major part of this series’s appeal: watching Jovovich kick zombie butt. The Las Vegas battle is unquestionably the highlight of the film as far as that goes, with Alice adopting a no-nonsense, slice-and-dice approach, that’s a gleeful joy to watch. After it, however, things go somewhat wonky: the entire Redfield subplot is airily waved away, and then there’s the inevitable boss level fight – this time against the Tyrant [if you’ve played the games, you probably know what that is, which puts you one-up on me], a somewhat rubbery, tenticular beast that is not among Patrick Tatopoulos’s best work.

Compared to the fight against the Nemesis in Apocalypse, this is a major disappointment, largely consisting of them hurling psionic shock-waves at each other. I’m sorry. This isn’t the Resident Evil I signed up for. I signed up for the one with the knock-down, drag-out punchfests, not the Harry Potter-esque BS. There’s a nice sense of symmetry, in that the battle ends in the corridor with the laser protection system, but the mechanism with which it ends is disappointing, rather than having Alice beat the Tyrant. Certainly, the lamest climactic battle of the three films.

Things do perk up at the very end. As in the first two films, there’s a grand final shot, which leaves you eagerly anticipating the next part – in this case, presumably called Resident Evil: Globapocarnarmagediediedie. Certainly, I wouldn’t be averse to seeing a fourth installment, though I would be inclined to send the makers a stiff memo before they begin production. Item #1. Try and come up with some ideas of your own. As well as the above-mentioned Hitchcock thievery, the film also borrows wholesale from Day of the Dead, Mad Max 2 and Mad Max 3, plus Alien: Resurrection. #2. After the apocalypse, the survivors will have plenty of Sony products with which to work. Really. Ease off on the unsubtle product-placement.

#3. Where was Jill Valentine? Okay, we’re kind of fond of Oded Fehr (he’s very good in Sleeper Cell), who does return as Carlos Olivera. And Larter, whom you’ll recognise from the first couple of Final Destination films, isn’t bad in her role, with a couple of kick-ass moments (left); there’s a possibility RE4 may concentrate on her. However, Sienna Guillory was better than either of them, and her unexplained absence this time is disappointing. Guess she asked for too much money or something. Finally, and most importantly, #4: skip the mental telepathy nonsense, no matter how much Milla Jovovich may want to wrinkle her forehead and lob psychic blasts at things. Just make her kick ass. The ending does give plenty of scope for development: without giving too much away, Alice could become the Swiss Army Knife of dispatching undead, with a variety of useful options. Overall, while some way short of perfect, this isn’t bad – and after some serious disappointments in recent years, it’s just good to see an action heroine back at the top of the box-office.

Dir: Russell Mulcahy
Star: Milla Jovovich, Iain Glen, Ali Larter, Oded Fehr

"After some serious disappointments in recent years, it’s just good to see an action heroine back at the top of the box-office."

Women of Ninja Warrior

  By

★★★★
“Proves that action heroines come in all shapes and sizes.”

With somewhere north of two hundred cable channels to surf through, a show has about ten seconds to grab our attention. When we spotted Ninja Warrior on G4 Tech TV, I thought it would probably be one of those anime series. I couldn’t be more wrong. It’s actually a sports entertainment series from Japan, where competitors go through four assault-course type stages, of increasing toughness. It’s pretty brutal; in the decade the show has been on the air, only two of the 1,800 entrants have made it all the way to the end. However, it’s presence here is due to the spin-off for female competitors, which is being broadcast, also on G4, as Women of Ninja Warrior; the Japanese title Kunoichi translates, more or less, as “female ninja.”

It’s gone through six tournaments since its 2002 debut. Most participants in WoNW are Japanese, obviously, but Kyra Gracie, member of the famous Brazilian fighting family, plus Romanian Olympic gymnasts Catalina Ponor and Oana Ban, have also entered – with mixed results, shall we say! It plays almost like a straight-faced version of MXC. The original Japanese commentary is sub-titled, albeit badly: even non-speakers can tell it’s often out of synch or poorly-translated, and sometimes reveals the fate of a contestant before it happens. The vast majority clearly take it seriously – though perhaps not quite as seriously as the men, where it appears half the contestants have built replicas of the obstacles in their back-yards, in their quest for glory.

The tests here, however, are aimed more at agility than strength, such as Domino Hill (top, right) a precarious test of balance on increasingly-unstable block. They certainly remain extremely challenging: the first tournament was so brutal, that only two competitors made it past stage one, and neither survived the first obstacle on stage two. Only one woman has ever completed the course, the “Queen of Ninja Warrior”, G-Rockets dancer Ayako Miyake, and she has done it an incredible three times, despite adjustments made after each tournament. That’s hasn’t stopped Miyake, who has whizzed up the final stage (bottom, left) without apparent problem, netting her the grand prize of two million yen (about $20,000) per show, and making the tiny (5’2″, 90-pound!) dancer something of a celebrity. She’d be great as Kei if they ever did a live-action version of Dirty Pair Flash.

As a show, it is simply phenomenally watchable, especially for such a simple concept. You just get sucked in, cheering the competitors on as they give their all, struggling against the fiendish contraptions to avoid being dumped into the icy waters at Mt. Midoriyama – literally, as the contests often take place in December, with the second enduring snowy outbursts! It’s such genuine emotion and exertion on view. Okay, some of the wipeouts are spectacular, in a “F___ me! Rewind that!” kinda way, but while that may lure you in initially, you eventually find yourself rooting for them not to fail, which is where it differs from MXC. High-fives were exchanged when Miyake cleared stage four for the first time, and we realised that we actually cared. Few TV shows – and even fewer “reality” ones – have ever had that effect on us.

Movin’ Too Fast

  By

★★★
“It’s like Thelma and Louise. Meets The Hitcher. In Wolf Creek.”

Yes, while there may not be a lot new here, the combination is at least somewhat interesting, and it’s put together solidly enough. Two students, Nina (Alexander) and Melissa (Terry) are on a cross-country drive, when they get stopped for speeding. Melissa makes a pass at the cop, but it’s an encounter that goes badly wrong, and she ends up beating him up with his own night-stick. When the duo get back on the road however, they find themselves being pursued by a police-car, which clearly has very bad intentions: with gas running low and – inevitably – no cellphone service to be found, can they survive?

Despite the lack of names in the cast, there was clearly some significant cash involved in this project; some fairly brutal destruction of automobiles, and helicopter footage too, help give this a sense of quality. We were rather less contrived by the dialogue, which sometimes seemed so artificial and contrived as to be utterly forced. There were a few moments when the plot had us rolling our eyes too, such as when the girls, wandering around in the middle of nowhere, stumble onto a house that happens to be…well, let’s just say, “What are the odds against that?” The villain, for reasons necessary to the plot, remains entirely anonymous and that makes him a far less scary adversary that, say, Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher, who gave absolute evil a very human face.

Still, when things get rolling, especially in the final third, there’s a good sense of momentum and “anything can happen”, which overcomes many of the shortcomings. The final showdown would seem a bit of a cheap ripoff from Death Proof…except that Movin’ dates back to 2005, so actually pre-dates Tarantino’s grindhouse homage. Which is interesting, given QT’s fondness for wholesale thievery in the plot department. Indeed, that also means it pre-dates Wolf Creek, though you don’t deserve a free pass just because your movie failed to find distribution for two years. Overall, though, not too bad, and despite some eye-rolling, we were entertained enough.

Dir: Eric Chambers
Stars: Marquita Terry, Layla Alexander, Matthew Glave
a.k.a. Lost in Plainview

Charlie’s Angels (original TV pilot)

  By

★★½
“Once upon a time, there were three little girls…”

I suppose my main surprise is how pedestrian this was. Action? Hardly anything to speak of at all, despite the credit sequence which shows them training as police officers. The story has them going undercover at a vineyard, whose owner vanished seven years ago, and is about to be declared legally-dead: his ex-wife (Muldaur) and the sleazy foreman will clean up…unless the daughter, also missing, shows up. Of course, the Angels play both a fake daughter (Smith) and the ‘real’ thing (Jackson) – the former is designed to be exposed, in order to get herself involved with the wife and foreman, and reveal what’s going on. Quite cunning, really.

Cunning, yes – exciting…not so much, unfortunately. It plays mostly like the TV movie it is, and is never more than fluffy, warm-hearted entertainment at best. It’s somewhat interesting to note the presence of David Ogden Stiers as another of Charlie’s henchmen, a role later dropped for the actual series, where Bosley was deemed sufficient for all normal purposes. However, the biggest shock is perhaps an unknown Tommy Lee Jones, playing a childhood friend of the heiress, who threatens to expose the Angels’ plot. He probably gets more screen time than Fawcett-Majors, who is barely used at all in this episode: she gets one real scene of note, an entertaining performance as a backwoods bimbo luring the bad guys into buying her land, on the basis they think it’s loaded with oil.

Otherwise, it’s hard to say why this became one of the most successful series of its time, running for five seasons and 110 episodes, as well as spawning [albeit twenty years later] a pair of Hollywood motion pictures. Even those expecting a full-on jiggle-fest will be very disappointed, as the costumes here are more functional than anything: the most skin is shown by whichever of Charlie’s babes is handing him a drink – and I have to say, the whole concept of women unquestionably accepting orders from an unseen Father-figure seems more creepy and patronising than anything else. The 1970’s were a different time, however, and it’s not really fair to judge work from another era by our own standards of morality. On the other hand, this is only sporadically entertaining and slowly-paced, and that seems an entirely reasonable criticism.

Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey
Stars: Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smith, Diana Muldaur

Cool Cat, by Dan Leissner

  By

★★★★
“Sex, drugs and funk ‘n’ soul, in a throwback to the future of action heroines.”

My review of this is somewhat delayed, because the book spent two months inside what remained of our car, after a nasty accident on the freeway. It was finally rescued, and the next chance I got was actually on a plane going to Las Vegas – fortunately, it appears as though the book was not cursed, and I survived that trip intact. Chris actually got to read this one first: she made note of Leissner’s frequent usage of the word “Undulating”, to describe everything from the landscape to the heroine’s figure. Me? It’s a good word, one you don’t get to use too often, so more power to him there. The heroine in question is Cat Warburton, the semi-estranged daughter of an industrial tycoon, who works as a secret agent for an agency of uncertain origins. Her intended vacation goes awry, and she finds herself knee deep in a plot involving black militants, white supremacists and – this’d be a spoiler if it weren’t mentioned on the back cover – aliens from outer-space. She’ll need all her talents, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, to survive.

It’s clear the style is intended to reproduce pulp potboilers of an earlier year: it’s never made clear what era it’s set, but I’d say mid- to late-70’s, if pushed. It’s equally cinematic though, set to a Motown-esque soundtrack, and half the fun is working out who’d play the various roles: Charlize Theron for Cat? Or Uma Thurman? Sybil Danning, twenty years ago, would have been perfect. Though whoever it’d be, would have to be entirely comfortable with their body, since there’s hardly a scene where Cat is not showing more or less flesh. That brings me to one of the odd points: there’s an awful lot of sadistic torture scenes, almost all the victims being female characters – this sits uneasily with the generally liberal viewpoints on sexual liberation, drugs and race.

However, qualms about such sequences aside (and the elderly matron beside me on the plane seemed quite intrigued by them), the plot does also career a little too far out of control towards the end. The whole “alien” angle seems superfluous at best, and I’d probably have preferred it not be invoked at all, since the rest of the plot stands on its own quite nicely – it feels as if Leissner doesn’t have enough faith in his own script. Still, as soon as I picked it up, I was hooked, and even once I got off the plane, was reading it every chance I could get. It’s enormous fun, and Cat is a great heroine, whose skills are beyond compare: she’s smart, strong, independent, and capable of kicking your ass, with or without weapons. Exactly the kind of heroine, Hollywood would never be able to cope with, in fact.

By Dan Leissner
Publisher: Midnight Marquee, $20.00
The book is available on Amazon.com

Mr. Hell

  By

★★
“Twenty-five minutes too long, despite some nice concepts.”

Sometimes, you just have to sit back and let the DVD sleeve do the talking. “The notorious serial killer, Harry Eugene Loveless AKA Mr. HELL roamed from town-to-town and job-to-job, brutally murdering his victims, with the demonic intention of removing the ‘windows to the soul’ – their eyes! Mr. HELL mutilated Dr. Karl Matthews at a government laboratory where biological weapons were secretly being developed. The daughter’s precocious daughter, Tyler, who discovered her father’s body with his eyes missing, was then pursued by Harry through the lab’s subterranean tunnels. During the chase, Harry was accidentally destroyed by toxic industrial acid, and his remains flowed into a storage container. Was this the end for Mr. HELL?

Fourteen years later, we find a grown-up Tyler, now a security guard at the lab soon scheduled for demolition. during the lab’s closing process, incompetent waste removal workers unwittingly release Harry’s toxic essence. Mr. HELL is back, and on the hunt! Complicating matters, a group of mercenaries led by Dominique Horney, invade the laboratory to steal a hidden vial of deadly bacterium to sell to terrorists. This small private army may be prepared for a few security guards, but not for Mr. HELL! As for Tyler, will she survive the band of professional killers and defeat, once again, the diabolical butcher, Mr. HELL?!”

Phew. Enough going on there for two films at least. And that’s the problem: they’d have been better off dealing with the entire first half in a five-minute flashback, but it drags on and on – Chris bailed for the Land of Nod before the mercenaries turned up. I stayed conscious…well, mostly, but it was a struggle, not least because of the horrible performance by the grown-up Tyler (Morris), who is thoroughly unconvincing. Scoggins is better, and there are a number of other, decently-strong female characters, for which the makers deserve credit – it’s nice to see the heroine in a horror film not needing to be rescued. However, just about every other aspect is inadequate, from the special effects through dialogue which is far too often trying to be clever, rather than genuinely smart to an atonal score that grates horribly for the vast majority of the time.

Most low-budget horror films do keep their running time as short as possible; cheaper that way. Mr. Hell run 102 minutes, which is positively epic for the genre. They should have let Mr. Hell – sorry: Mr. HELL – loose on the script to slice ‘n’ dice it, as it’s in serious need of tightening. The ‘deadly bacterium’, for example, is no more than a Macguffin, thrown away for the benefit of a poor ‘melt’ effect at the end. With better writing, and a better lead actress, this could have lived up to the potential of the synopsis. Unfortunately, it only does so very sporadically, and despite our love for the genre, I can’t recommend this overall.

Dir: Rob McKinnon
Star: Amy Morris, Jett Texas Elliott, Larry Cashion, Tracy Scoggins

Beautiful Beast

  By

★★★
“The Beast is yet to come…”

Debate raged over this one. Chris reckons lead actress Shimamura was, at some point, a man. I’m not quite so convinced, but the mere thought certainly gave the sex scenes here an added edge of creepiness. Given the lengthy such sequence which occurs about five minutes in, I feared this was going to be no more than an itty-bitty titty-fest. Fortunately, after getting that out of his system, director Ikeda (Evil Dead Trap) settles down and delivers a gritty bit of nastiness, occasionally teetering on the edge of sadistic.

Ran (Shimamura) comes to Japan, and makes an immediate impression by assassinating a Yakuza boss and his associates, while they dine in a restaurant. Escaping the scene, she hides out in the restaurant owned by Yoichi (Yamato), and thanks him for covering for her with her body. About three hours later – or maybe it just seems that way – she moves on with the rest of her mission, which is to extract revenge on those responsible for the death of her sister. To this end, she works at the same hostess club as her late sibling, and waits for opportunity to present itself. However, the remaining target (Hakruyu), aware of his peril, kidnaps Ran’s friend Chun Li, and uses her to lure Ran out of the darkness.

The results are clearly inspired by the Zero Woman series, also about an angst-ridden hitwoman, and certainly have their moments. The finale, unfortunately, is not one of them, where instead of the bullet-propelled shootout against an entire Yakuza gang, we get something a lot less entertaining. The movie also features one of the most extreme instances of a boom-mike appearance that I have ever seen [it’s when Chun Li returns to her apartment to pick up some cash. At least, I think it’s a mic, since we couldn’t come up with any other credible suggestions]. Otherwise, however, it was less soft-pornish than we feared, and is played straight up and down, with the gangsters appropriately boorish, yet not stupid. More action would have helped, yet not without its merits. But if anyone can confirm or deny Chris’s theory about Shimamura, we’d like to hear from you…

Dir: Toshiharu Ikeda
Stars: Kaori Shimamura, Hakuryu, Takeshi Yamato, Takanori Kikuchi