Author: Jim McLennan

Female Terrorists

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Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that “A petite, blond-haired, blue-eyed high school dropout who allegedly used the nickname Jihad Jane was identified Tuesday as an alleged terrorist intent on recruiting others to her cause… LaRose, who lived in suburban Philadelphia, allegedly recruited men and women in the United States, Europe and South Asia to “wage violent jihad,” according to an indictment issued in Pennsylvania.” It’s the latest example of an area in which I find myself treading particularly carefully on this site: female terrorists.

I don’t want anyone to think that I advocate, in any way, “real” violence; long-time readers will know of the issues even the perception of such has caused in the past, and I dread to think how many alarms went off in Homeland Security with the Googling required for this piece! But there is still something transgressively – if not appealing, let’s go with “intriguing” – about the concept of a woman resorting to violence for political or social reasons. It seems such a contradiction, for the supposedly-gentler sex, the one which nurtures life, to use such means, that it demands further investigation. Of course, the word “terrorist” is more than somewhat laden with underlying meaning. In reality, the line between “terrorist” and “freedom fighter” is one largely determined by whether or not you support the regime under attack, and the historical record tends to be written by the winners in such struggles. I draw no such lines here: I am more interested in the people in question than the causes they espouse.

What follows is a selection of some of the interesting characters from history, starting more than 130 years ago, and going almost to the present day. I have deliberately excluded suicide bombers from the list, even though these have played an important part in history – for instance, it was a female Tamil Tiger who killed former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. It just doesn’t seem as interesting to me, to blow yourself up for a cause, when compared to a longer-term commitment to it. I have also excluded some obvious names: Palestinian Leila Khaled, because she has been covered before on the site – and will be covered again in the future, since her autobiography is on my reading list – and also Patty Hearst, since it seems questionable whether she was truly acting of her own volition.

1. In the late 19th century, a number of women were among the active leaders of the Russian nihilist organization Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), best known for their assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1981. That was organized by a woman, Sophia Perovskaya, with another female member of the Executive Committee, Vera Figner (left) also participating. Four years previously, Vera Zasulich (right) shot and seriously wounded Colonel Theodore Trepov, the hated governor of St. Petersburg.

2. Daughter of an English baronet, and married to a Polish count, Constance Markiewicz was an unlikely revolutionary. But her political commitment, to causes including women’s suffrage and Irish independence, was deep. She was a Lieutenant in the Irish Citizen’s Army and during the 1916 Easter Rising, Markiewicz was appointed second in command at St Stephen’s Green in Dublin She supervised the setting-up of barricades, and was in the middle of the fighting, wounding a British army sniper. After being released from prison, she became rhe first woman elected to the British Parliament, though did not take her seat.

3. In Cuba, Celia Sánchez (right, with fellow revolutionary Haydée Santamaría) became one of the earliest members of the 26th of July Movement, joining the struggle after the coup against President Batista in 1952. After Fidel Castro was jailed, she became the rebel leader in the mountainous Sierra region of eastern Cuba, and was called by Castro, “the greatest guerrilla fighter and the most outstanding leader of the Cuban Revolution.” was one of the first women to assemble a combat squad during the revolution[. She was tasked with making all the necessary arrangements throughout the southwest coast region of Cuba, for the Granma landing, and was responsible for organising reinforcements once the revolutionaries landed.

4. Considered a key figure in the Algerian struggle for independence from France, Hassiba Ben Bouali joined the FLN (National Liberation Front) while studying at the university in Algiers, and became the liaison officer of Ali La Pointe, deputy chief of FLN military operations for the city. She was active in the manufacture and transport of bombs around the city, as part of a campaign now known as the Battle of Algiers, which began on September 30, 1956 when Bouali and two other female FLNmilitants, carried out a series of bomb attacks on civilian locations. She was killed the following year when French forces bombed their hideout.

5. Tibetan Buddhist nun Ani Pachen fled to a monastery at age 17, after overhearing plans to marry her off, but returned in 1958 after her father died, inhering leadership of her clan. She led a guerrilla campaign, overseeing 600 fighters on horseback against the Chinese occupying forces and their tanks, which only ended with her capture in late 1959. She then spent the next 21 years in prison, and after her release in 1981, continued to protest against the Chinese occupation, until forced in exile in India. She said in a 2000 interview, “My father taught me to ride and to shoot. I used to race horses when I was a teenager. They didn’t have separate races for girls. I raced my horse against men.”

6. Fusako Shigenobu (left, with colleague Kozo Okamoto) was one of the founders and leaders of the Japanese Red Army. She is now serving 20 years for kidnapping embassy workers during a 1974 Japanese Red Army operation, she is also believed to have played key roles in other hijackings and bomb attacks. Reputedly ordered the murder, by burial alive, of a pregnant woman colleague for being “too bourgeois.” Another left-wing radical, Hiroko Nagata, while acting as vice-chairman of the United Red Army, directed the killing of 14 members of the group by beatings or hypothermia, during a 1972 purge. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

7. At only 22, Dora María Téllez was third in command for a 1978 operation which seized control of the Nicaraguan National Palace in Managua, taking the entire congress hostage and helping trigger the fall of the Somoza regime. The following year, Sandinista units under her control fought Somozan forces for six straight weeks, before finally capturing Leon, the second-largest city in Nicaragua. Subsequently became a respected historian, but as recently as 2004, was still barred from the United States as a terrotist.

8. Donna Maguire, once called Europe’s most dangerous woman, travelled to Europe in 1989 as part of an IRA active service unit, an is suspected by authorities of a bombing at a British Army barracks at Osnabruck on 19 June, the killing of a British soldier in a car bomb attack several days later, as well as the murders of two Australian tourists mistaken for off-duty soldiers, and a British soldier in Dortmund. Was eventually found guilty of attempted murder, explosives offences and spying on British Army bases in Germany with intent to sabotage. Sentenced to nine years, she was released immediately due to time spent in prison on remand. A family friend said of her: “She was an ordinary girl on the surface, but underneath she was as hard as nails.”

9. During their struggle for independence from Spain, Basque separatist group ETA had some infamous women members. These include Maria Dolores Gonzalez (“Yoyez”), who was later assassinated by the group as a reprisal for having left. Also high in their power structure was María Soledad Iparragirre, known as ‘Anboto’, whose exploits allegedly included the murder of a Spanish army Lieutenant and a car bomb explosion against a military bus, that killed seven.

10. Nelly Avila Moreno, known as ‘Karina’, surrendered to Colombian authorities in 2008 (right), after a long career as a legend in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). One army intelligence source said, “To become a FARC leader you have to been utterly ruthless and vicious, even more so if you are a woman. Karina was both.” As a result of her battles, she was blind in one eye, lost a breast, had bullet wounds along an arm and had combat scars on her face. The 45-year old was in charge of FARC’s 47th Front, which had up to 350 members operating in the northern province of Antioquia. Sentenced to 33 years in jail, she was released in 2009 to serve as a “promoter of peace.”

  • The Baader-Meinhof Complex

    ★★★

    Director Edel is probably best known in the West for the embarrassing Body of Evidence, though would rather be remembered for the much better, if incredibly depressing, Last Exit to Brooklyn. This is certainly nearer to the latter, depicting the rise and fall of the Baader-Meinhof group, also known as the Red Army Faction, the terrorist gang whose actions sent Germany into a state of nervous anxiety in the late 70’s. They started off at the end of the sixties, when Europe was in a state of political flux, but became more radical, engaging in bank robberies to fund their activities and then escalating to bombings, assassinations and kidnappings. The leaders were eventually caught – and I trust this isn’t much of a spoiler – dying mysterious deaths in jail, officially called suicide, but suspected by some as being extra-judicial execution.

    It’s a generally interesting, but also flawed, approach to the subject matter, because it tries too hard to be even-handed, both humanizing the group, while also being sympathetic to the establishment they sought to bring down. It’s hard to do this, while still generating much emotion, because the viewer is left not really knowing for whom they should “root”. In addition, former journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Gedeck – the picture, above, is the real Meinhof) is initially the focus of the movie’s attention, but the way things unfold (and I’m manfully avoiding any spoilers there) mean that things inevitably have to shift away from her in the latter stages. The movie also faces the inevitable problem of any film based on actual events: reality rarely, if ever, follows a three-act structure, and as a result, either the facts or the drama have to suffer – here, it seems to be the drama, with the story not so much building to a climax as petering out.

    That said, the performances are good, particularly Wokalek as Gudrun Ensslin, who has been described as the intellectual head of the RAF. What makes it suitable for inclusion here is the way that both Meinhof and Ennslin are depicted as the driving forces, the engine-room of the Red Army Faction. Andreas Baader (Bleibtreu – who was also the ineffectual boyfriend in Run Lola Run) is depicted as a hot-head, and something of a hypocrite, with a taste for fast cars. It’s clear that Ensslin and Meinhof are the ones that run the group – Baader was, in fact, a high-school dropout and one of the few RAF members who did not attend university. I have vague memories of hearing reports about the group as I grew up; while it was good to have the large blanks in my knowledge filled in, this felt more like a Discovery Channel re-enactment of the RAF’s history, rather than offering anything truly cinematic.

    Dir: Uli Edel
    Star: Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Uhl

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Contract Killers

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★★
“If they come out with the pilot episode, I wouldn’t mind seeing it, but otherwise, I don’t think I’ll tune in next week.”

This feels more like a mid-season episode of Alias than anything else, and not much more than a filler episode at that. I say this, because so little effort is put into developing the characters, it’s as if the makers reckon everything had already been established in the previous seven installments. And since there are no such episodes, this leads to a very low level of interest in the proceedings as they unfold. It centers on “Jane” (Farrell), a CIA killer who finds herself on the receiving end of a burn notice, and forced on the run, as she tries to find out why she’s been targetted for elimination by her boss. This takes her Trinidad, where she finds an unlikely partner in the vacationing Lars (Willis), and hunted by another hired hitman, Pernell (Giles, for whom we have a soft spot, from his days working with infamous B-movie mayhem merchants, The Asylum).

Technically, it’s competent enough. If nothing too stunning, the action is fairly frequent and reasonably well-filmed, and Farrell does bring a certain hard-edged competence to her character. The main problem is that the script gave me absolutely no reason to care about her, or anyone else who taking part. The only element of backstory provided for Jane, is 30 seconds of exposition thrown away somewhere in the middle; it doesn’t result from anything, tie into anything, lead into anything and is ignored for the rest of the movie. It wouldn’t necessarily have taken a great deal of effort; I’m not demanding her entire lifestory, just some quirks to suggest there was actually a human being present, not simply an asset being pushed from scene to scene by the director. Almost exactly the same problem affects the other characters: no depth, no humanity, no purpose.

On the positive side, there’s some nice use of locations, and a certain sense of paranoia, even if that might be because the central purpose of the bad guys (it involves a software program they’re going to use to attack the financial markets) is never entirely clear. Or maybe I’d given up paying attention by this point, the movie having finally lost its battle for my attention. Maybe it could be rescued with 15 minutes of “Previously, on Contract Killers…” at the start. Wouldn’t bet on it though.

Dir: Justin Rhodes
Stars: Frida Farrell, Christian Willis, Rhett Giles, Nick Mancuso

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

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★★★

Director Edel is probably best known in the West for the embarrassing Body of Evidence, though would rather be remembered for the much better, if incredibly depressing, Last Exit to Brooklyn. This is certainly nearer to the latter, depicting the rise and fall of the Baader-Meinhof group, also known as the Red Army Faction, the terrorist gang whose actions sent Germany into a state of nervous anxiety in the late 70’s. They started off at the end of the sixties, when Europe was in a state of political flux, but became more radical, engaging in bank robberies to fund their activities and then escalating to bombings, assassinations and kidnappings. The leaders were eventually caught – and I trust this isn’t much of a spoiler – dying mysterious deaths in jail, officially called suicide, but suspected by some as being extra-judicial execution.

It’s a generally interesting, but also flawed, approach to the subject matter, because it tries too hard to be even-handed, both humanizing the group, while also being sympathetic to the establishment they sought to bring down. It’s hard to do this, while still generating much emotion, because the viewer is left not really knowing for whom they should “root”. In addition, former journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Gedeck – the picture, above, is the real Meinhof) is initially the focus of the movie’s attention, but the way things unfold (and I’m manfully avoiding any spoilers there) mean that things inevitably have to shift away from her in the latter stages. The movie also faces the inevitable problem of any film based on actual events: reality rarely, if ever, follows a three-act structure, and as a result, either the facts or the drama have to suffer – here, it seems to be the drama, with the story not so much building to a climax as petering out.

That said, the performances are good, particularly Wokalek as Gudrun Ensslin, who has been described as the intellectual head of the RAF. What makes it suitable for inclusion here is the way that both Meinhof and Ennslin are depicted as the driving forces, the engine-room of the Red Army Faction. Andreas Baader (Bleibtreu – who was also the ineffectual boyfriend in Run Lola Run) is depicted as a hot-head, and something of a hypocrite, with a taste for fast cars. It’s clear that Ensslin and Meinhof are the ones that run the group – Baader was, in fact, a high-school dropout and one of the few RAF members who did not attend university. I have vague memories of hearing reports about the group as I grew up; while it was good to have the large blanks in my knowledge filled in, this felt more like a Discovery Channel re-enactment of the RAF’s history, rather than offering anything truly cinematic.

Dir: Uli Edel
Star: Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Uhl

Cops and Robbers, by Thad Brown

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[What follows below is the opening of one of the stories in The Smoking Gun Sisterhood, a collection by Thad Brown. Our review of the book can be found here.]

“Are we really, really sure we want to do this?” Brittany’s soft-voiced question hung in the air for a moment, as Lizzie thought seriously about it herself, realizing that it might be the most momentous question she’d ever decided in her twenty-four years. She shifted her tall, lithely-built body on the car’s back seat as she looked over at the speaker beside her. A year older than Lizzie, Brittany as usual affected more attempt at elegance in her dress than her friend did with a plain T-shirt and jeans; the black-haired young woman wore a partly buttoned white blouse over her low-cut tube top, with an imitation silk scarf and a chain necklace which, if not expensive, was at least gaudy. (Granted, her black mini-skirt was no longer in the height of fashion –but then, shopping at thrift stores and yard sales wasn’t exactly like buying clothes at Nieman Marcus.)

But for once, the older girl’s face didn’t wear the usual arrogant expression that caused many people to dismiss her as “stuck-up,” and with which she usually faced a world that, as she put it, hadn’t ever done much but crap on her. Behind her, through the glass, Lizzie could see the low brick building at which they’d just pulled up, and, in the distance beyond, the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies that circled their city. On the building’s door glass the letters read “FIRST NATIONAL BANK.” Resting on the car floor between Brittany’s legs, the Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun her dad had brought back from the first Gulf War, and which she’d lifted from her parent’s attic, wasn’t visible from the sidewalk.

Art by Rich Smedley

Riding shotgun in the front, twenty-one-year-old Shelley, Lizzie’s other close friend from their public housing building, was finishing the cigarette she’d obviously lit to steady her nerves, smoking it in deep drags and exhaling in the quick breaths of a person tightly griped by tension. Her chest was bare except for a low-cut tube top that went well with her thick, short-cut coppery-red hair. (Brittany had protested the younger woman’s scanty attire: “Jeez, girl, we don’t want to attract attention! You’re going to stick up a bank, not do a pole dance down where you work!”

But, as Shel had pointed out, she didn’t even own any clothes that weren’t revealing, except her winter stuff –and wouldn’t a parka attract more attention, in mid-summer?) Like Brittany’s, her face, its sharp, rather angular features hardened by more troubles than many people saw in twice her years, was expectantly turned to Lizzie, who knew that though she wasn’t the oldest of their trio, she was the one the others looked to as a leader –especially now, in this scheme that had been hatched in one of their late-night gripe sessions around her kitchen table. The weight of the responsibility knotted her guts, along with nagging guilt and roiling fear.

She took a deep breath, and spoke slowly. “I’m sure of what this money can mean, to me –to every one of us. And I’m sure that we’ve planned this just as well as is humanly possible –we’ve been talking about it for two months, and casing the place for three weeks. This is the perfect time to hit it; there won’t be many people inside. We’ll go in with our guns out, take charge of the situation from the get-go, and be in and out before anybody gets hurt. That guard’s not even going to try to draw, not with three guns already pointed at him; he’s not nuts.” The assurance in her voice belied her own nagging doubts on that score; she’d lain awake half of last night wondering what would happen if he did, or if one of the bank’s customers turned out to be packing heat.

Both she and Shel had taken their weapons out to a box canyon in the mountains near the city several times, and practiced shooting at rocks and pine cones until they could pretty well hit what they aimed at. (Brittany hadn’t; but as she said, if she couldn’t hit a mark with a machine gun, practice wouldn’t help her.) If that happened, she believed that she could handle the emergency, and hopefully just wound rather than, God forbid, kill, or be killed …but there was always that chance. Swallowing hard, she continued. “I’m sure that I’m not going to get cold feet now, we’ve all put too much hope into this for that.”

Turning her head slightly, she faced the car’s owner and driver. About Lizzie’s age, Jackie Fitch was blonde as well, though her hair color came from a bottle while Lizzie’s was natural. Not part of their tight-knit threesome, to Lizzie’s mind Jackie was the weakest link in this plan; but back in their teens, she was the only girl who’d joined the boys from the projects sometimes when they’d blocked off the street outside and drag raced their cars –and whenever Jackie’d raced, she’d won. An oversize pair of imitation dice hanging from her front-seat mirror symbolized her luck; they might need all of it today. “Keep that engine running,” Lizzie addressed her, “and when we get back here you take out like a bat out of hell. Just don’t run into anybody while you’re doing it.”

Jackie snorted, her eyes inscrutable behind dark glasses. “Any fool who can’t keep from hitting people at ninety miles an hour hasn’t got any business doing ninety.” A mirthless smile flickered briefly on her tough features. “Don’t worry about my driving, girlfriend; just see to it that I get my six hundred bucks.” They’d each promised to pony up two hundred for her from whatever their shares of the take amounted to.

“You’ll get it.” Not owning a watch, Lizzie looked at the bank’s outdoor clock. At noon, the bank’s manager would walk out from the shelter of his office into the main room, with his vault keys on him, ready to leave for his lunch. “Get ready,” she told her partners. Undoing the striped bandanna that held back the glorious mane of her more than shoulder-length hair, she shook her tresses out of her green eyes, folded the cloth into a triangle, and tied it point down over her nose and mouth.

Brittany and Shel followed suit, the former with her scarf and the latter with a good-sized handkerchief from the back pocket of her leather pants. Shel, Lizzie knew, had the .50 caliber Desert Eagle from her dad’s drawer. Her hand shaking slightly, she reached into her purse for her own weapon, an unregistered .44 revolver she’d bought cheap years ago out of the back of somebody’s truck, for personal protection. She’d drawn it once, to face down a would-be mugger; but she’d never imagined then that she’d ever be drawing it for a reason like this. With her other hand, she lifted three gunny sacks from the car floor.

The bank’s clock registered noon…

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

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★½
“Street-fighting Tears”

I usually have no problem going on about GWG movies at some length. Hell, I even managed 750 words on DOA: Dead or Alive, and for that one, I had to re-read my review to remember what it was about. But when I got to the end of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, my first thought was, “What the hell am I going to write about this?” It seemed likely the only way I’d get to 750 words, would be by repeating the title one hundred and twenty-five times. For the film is ill-conceived, poorly cast, badly written and directed by the man who managed to make Jet Li look bad, not once but twice, in Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave.

I am not a difficult man to satisfy, especially in the area of Hollywood action heroine flicks. I’m so pleased they are making the effort at all, that as long as it is in focus, and the dialogue largely audible, I am generally a happy camper. Not so here, because SF:TLoC-L [I trust you appreciate how I am not gratuitously padding my word-count?] commits the cardinal sin for the genre. It’s boring – to the extent that I actually dozed off for a bit about two-thirds of the way in. So, full disclosure: this review is based on only about 90% of the movie. It’s possible the ten minutes I missed were sublimely good, so amazing they redeemed the entire rest of the movie. However, I would be inclined to bet against that outcome, as somewhat unlikely.

I think my major issue is that the movie seems to be aimed at a mentally-challenged eight-year old. There’s way too much voiceover, which is usually the sign of a director who can’t trust the script or his skills to put over the necessary content or emotion. And it also insists on Spelling Out Everything For The Audience, which is equally irritating. Case in point. Chun-Li (Kreuk) helps a guy being beaten up on the subway: he has a mysterious cobweb tattoo. Then, later, when she’s going through Chinatown searching for someone to translate a scroll, she encounters a man in the street with the same tattoo. Not two minutes later, the same design shows up on the scroll, but Bartkowiak insists on flashing back to both the subway and street guys and their tattoos. Well, duh…

The plot starts with Chun-Li growing up, and her father is abducted by Bison (McDonough) to help with his plans for… whatever. World domination, prob’ly. As an adult, Chun-Li is now a pianist, though the scenes of her in concert are incredibly badly-faked. The arrival of the mysterious scroll has her heading off to Bangkok, where she links up with Gen (Shou), who completes her training. Conveniently, Bison has just returned to Bangkok, where he grew up, and is now planning to take over a large swathe of the city, regardless of the views of the inhabitants. Interpol agent Nash (Klein) and local cop Maya (Moon Bloodgood) are out to stop him, and find Chun-Li’s presence as much a distraction as a help.

And I believed Street Fighter II was a fighting game. Silly me. It’s far too talky: all mouth and no trousers, to borrow a good ol’ British phrase. The fights themselves, choreographed by Dion Lam, aren’t bad, though the welding of some of the Street Fighter moves into the game doesn’t work – Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick, for example, just looks silly. But otherwise, they aren’t awful; there’s a nice brawl in a bathroom between our heroine and Bison’s henchwomen. However, particularly in the first hour, there just aren’t enough of them, and what should be a fast-paced slugfest becomes bogged down as Chun-Li meanders her way, with a somewhat concerned expression, around the slums of Bangkok [which actually look surprisingly liveable. You want real slums, try Mumbai].

However, the casting executive who thought a member of the Black-Eyed Peas was suitable to play Vega should be taken out and flogged mercilessly. This is not sarcasm. It’s not someone who looks like a member of the Black-Eyed Peas. It is a member of the Black-Eyed Peas. His martial arts skills are almost as unconvincing as Chun-Li’s piano-playing. Almost. Klein is equally inept as Nash – the witty banter between he and Maya hits the floor with a resounding clunk, due to the complete lack of chemistry between the two actors. Similarly, McDonough has none of the charisma necessary for Bison. Say what you like about the Van Damme Street Fighter movie, and the venom is probably dripping from your lips there, it did at least have Raul Julia.

In fact, this movie pretty much makes the original look Oscar-worthy in most ways. The best depiction of the game still remains the manic sequence in Jackie Chan’s City Hunter where he and Gary Daniels went toe-to-toe in a variety of epically-silly costumes. Chan made a much better Chun-Li than Kreuk could ever hope to, and any future list of “10 Crappiest Video-game Adaptations of All Time” (admittedly, the main issue here is stopping after just ten) will be judged largely on how highly this ranks. Is that 750 words yet?

Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Star: Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neal McDonough, Robin Shou

The Smoking Gun Sisterhood, by Thad Brown

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★★★★
“Admiring and respectful celebrations of gun-packing women as kick-butt heroines, for readers of both genders who appreciate heroines of this type.”

Art by Rich Smedley

The rise of self-publishing has provided an opportunity for authors to distribute their product directly to the public – it’s no longer necessary to have a contract or even a publishing house. This is, frankly, a double-edged sword: just because you can write a book, doesn’t mean you should write a book. But it also offers a better chance to reach the public for niche publications like this, a short-story collection which falls squarely into our wheelhouse, featuring a wide range of action heroines [and at least one action villainess]. Some of the ten titles might help to give you a fairly good idea of what to expect: Biker Angel; Cops and Robbers; Sisters, Dark and Light.

It has a certain throwback ambiance, feeling at times like you’re reading a collection from the sixties than a modern publication. That’s not a criticism, just an observation, and might be partly because the sexual angles present in some stories are far more hinted at than explicit, and partly because there a square-jawed and certain morality present, largely without shades of grey. Brown has a nicely cinematic tone to his writing – it’s very easy to visualize proceedings in my mind’s eye as they unfolded, and the three entries mentioned above would all have potential as movies. My favorite was probably Sisters, Dark and Light, which pits an FBI agent against a kidnapper whose sadistic streak is frankly disturbing. I also enjoyed the two Capta and the Cop stories, set in the same universe, yet heading in opposite directions.

Perhaps my main criticism is a couple of the stories feel in need of expansion, almost like they were trailers more than features, albeit for movies that I’d still want to say. I did notice a few typos, though any regular readers here will know I’m hardly anyone to complain, and the packaging is too bland – it’s the kind of collection that is crying out for a pulp-styled illustration on the front. Otherwise, it certainly comes recommended to action heroine fans. There’s plenty of variety in scenarios, and even the least of the tales is still fun to read. I think the overall attitude of the stories is what makes them work: it’s the author who described them with the quote in the ‘brief’ section of the header. Having read the book, I’d say it’s perhaps a little po-faced (they’re more entertaining than that makes them sound!), but it’s not far from the mark. If you enjoy this site, I think you’ll get a kick out of these tales.

Update: August 2010. Thad tells me there is now a new edition, which has all the typos corrected, as well as having page numbers, a table of contents, and even has the messed-up line breaks in the preface fixed. He adds, “I wasn’t able to do a cover with a pulp-style illustration that you said it cried out for; I’d wanted to import Rich’s biker picture that inspired “Biker Angel,” but Lulu’s software just wouldn’t cooperate! I did install a different cover image, a smoking revolver on a russet -sort of dried-blood-colored-background, which I thought was pretty cool.”

Update: December 2013. After one regular publishing deal fell through, the last I heard from Thad was that the collection “has now been accepted for publication by Pro Se Productions” and “should be available for purchase in both paperback and e-book formats sometime around mid-2013.” Checking their site, no sign at this point.

Update: April 2014. A little delayed, but we’re delighted to announce the book is now available through Amazon. You may recognize the quote. :)

Update: November 2014. It’s now available in e-form on Kindle, for only $2.99!

[The opening of one of the stories, Cops and Robbers, can be found here, as a taster for the book. 

Les Aventures Extraordinaires D’Adele Blanc-Sec trailer

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Luc Besson has always been one of the directors most intimately connected to action heroines: most obviously in Nikita, The Messenger, and Angel-A, but his other works, such as Leon and The Fifth Element also contain GwG elements. He has been largely absent from the director’s chair of late, except for his trilogy of kid-flicks based on the Arthur books, but returns to the field in April with Les Aventures Extraordinaires D’Adele Blanc-Sec, which translates as The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (if you hadn’t worked that out). Based on a series of comics, it follows the heroine through her exploits at the turn of the century, which appear to involve… Well, here’s the official synopsis:

The year is 1912. Adele Blanc-Sec, an intrepid young reporter, will go to any lengths to achieve her aims, even sailing to Egypt to tackle mummies of all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, in Paris, it’s panic stations! A 136 million-year-old pterodactyl egg on a shelf in the natural history museum has mysteriously hatched, and the bird subjects the city to a reign of terror from the skies. But nothing fazes Adele Blanc-Sec, whose adventures reveal many more extraordinary surprises… Set in the carefree world before World War I, Adele Blanc-Sec’s adventures see the brave young woman fearlessly battling crooks, corrupt politicians, demon worshippers and mad scientists.

Given Besson’s skill with action (I just watched Leon again this afternoon, and it remains one of my all-time favourites), I’m fairly hopeful for this one. The trailer is below: it opens in Europe in April.

Bitch Slap

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★★★★
“Smack my bitch up.”

There are some films which I like, and where if you don’t agree with me, you are an idiot – such as Shaun of the Dead. However, there are movies where I can see, understand and accept why people dislike them, even if I may strongly disagree. Bitch Slap would be one of the latter. Looking at the the IMDb ballot results, the top number of voters have given it one out of ten. However, the next-most have given it 10/10. Between them, those two extremes represent more than 40% of the total votes. Much the same thing – albeit to a somewhat less rabidly-partisan degree – happened here in GwG Towers.

Chris has a certain firmness of opinion. When she has made up her mind about something, it’s pretty hard to get her to change it. She will purse her lips, fold her arms and stick to her guns. You could argue whether this strong will is a character quality or a flaw, but it certainly led to her early exit from Bitch Slap. Here’s an approximate timeline of the comments from the seat on the couch next to me:

  • 5 minutes: “Would you rather watch this alone?”
  • 5:30 minutes: “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather watch this alone?
  • 10 minutes: “Is this a porno?”
  • 20 minutes: “Could this get any more stereotypical?”

It was not long after this – I think it was when the lesbian canoodling started – she suddenly remembered she had a vitally-important task to perform elsewhere. Judging by the sounds emanating from our office, that task appeared to involve Facebook poker.

Of course, to me, complaining about the film being stereotypical is missing the point. It’s supposed to be a frothy melange of cliches, thrown into the cinematic melting-pot and the heat turned up to ‘High’. The opening credit sequence, with its clips of “bad girls” such as Tura Satana and Christina Lindberg, gives you some idea of what to expect, and it hardly pauses thereafter, growing increasingly more breathlessly frenetic. Not often have I seen a movie suffering from a more chronic case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Diso… Ooh, look! Shiny, pretty things!

Speaking of which, it centers on three women, with about as divergent personalities as it’s possible to imagine. There’s Hel (Cummings), a con-artist with a secret identity; the psychotic Camero (Olivio), who starts off the movie insane, yet somehow manages to get even more loopy as things progress; and, finally, Trixie (Voth), the “innocent” one, whom you’re not quite sure about. The heroic trio end up out in the desert, with Gage (Hurst) tied up in their trunk, seeking… Well, part of the plot revolves around that issue, so I’ll leave that out of the summary. From there, the story of how they reached that point is told in flashback, and event also unfold moving forward, as they try to locate their obscure object of desire before the infamous, deadly “Pinky” shows up.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Others are after the same prize, such as Hot Wire and his GoGo Yubari clone (Japanese, schoolgirl, killer yo-yo), Kinki (Minae Noji). There’s also a good deal of tension, sexual and otherwise, between the three heroines: are any of them quite what they seem? I imagine my usage of the phrase “secret identity” above might have given some of the game away there. It hardly counts as a spoiler either, to say that it all ends (eventually) in a brawl between Camaro and Hel, in the middle of a desolate wasteland, which has become steadily more wasted and bullet-ridden over the course of the movie.

The Laydeez of Bitch Slap

Director Jacobson certainly has a solid pedigree in the action-heroine world, at least at the televisual end of the spectrum. His resume includes episodes of La Femme Nikita, Cleopatra 2525, Xena: Warrior Princess and She Spies, a good number of which have a similarly self-parodying approach to their subject matter as seen here. However, while the excess is somewhat greater, this only really extends to some potty-mouth lines and digital blood. Despite all the tension and canoodling mentioned earlier, Cummings shows a lot more skin for Jaconson as the hero’s wife in Spartacus: Blood and Sand. If you’re going for camp excess, as appears to be the case, you need to be a good deal more…well, excessive.

The main weak link is the leads, who don’t have the chops – physical or acting – to pull this off. I to wonder whether it might have been a good deal better if stunt co-ordinator Zoe Bell, Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor had been the stars of the film, rather than merely cameos. They have all previously shown the necessary combination of martial ability and screen presence necessary for the parts here. Not that the actresses here are “bad”: however, when you’re spitting out Satana-esque lines like, “Ram this in your clambake, bitch cake!” you’d better have the F-sized volume of charismatic fire-power to pull them off, and they fall short of the level needed for this to achieve classic status (Olivo probably comes closest to the necessary level of conviction, spitting our her dialogue with a perpetual sneer).

Having got those criticisms out of the way, the rest of the film is very solid entertainment – providing, as noted above, you can get your brain lined-up with what it’s trying to do (and if you can’t, which is understandable, it’s basically unsalvageable). Alcohol will probably help the neurons go in the correct direction, as will an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, and tolerance for trash at an industrial concentration. The litmus test is probably the slow-motion water-fight which breaks out among the three laydeez early on: if you greet that with a smirk of guilty pleasure (as charged, m’lud), rather than, oh, bailing for the Facebook poker lobby, you’ll probably be fine.

Jacobsen also does a good job with the visual style, providing a perfect match for the lurid, frenetic approach of the script and character. There’s a lot of green screen work, which lends proceeding a hyperreal feeling, and the pace means that there’s hardly a dull moment. Not sure the storyline makes a great deal of sense, I admit, and it feels as overstuffed as a giant bean burrito (you know the kind, the ones you regret buying about one-third of the way through, but just can’t stop yourself from finishing). The fractured plotline has been compared to Tarantino, but personally, there’s a good deal less annoying self-indulgence than Quentin usually inflicts on the audience: for example, Camero doesn’t bring things to a grinding halt, just to witter on about comic-books.

All told, it’s refreshing to see something which is so avowedly politically-incorrect, and proud of it. The film is at its best when wallowing in the gutter, unashamedly down and dirty, and with a broad grin upon its face – credit to all those involved for having the guts not give a damn about the nay-sayers and one-voters. It’s not going to trouble the more-evolved areas of your brain very much, and will tug on the heartstrings even less, but for the times when you don’t want anything more than the cinematic equivalent of a one-night stand, this will certainly do the job perfectly well. Certainly the most full-on, and arguably the best, of the genre to come out of Hollywood in the past five years.

Dir: Rick Jacobson
Star: Julia Voth, America Olivo, Erin Cummings, Michael Hurst

"Certainly the most full-on, and arguably the best, of the genre to come out of Hollywood in the past five years."

Babes With Blades

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This month’s offering certainly falls into the category of “stumbled upon.” I started off looking on YouTube for the Resident Evil 4 trailer, and somehow drifted from there to Babes With Blades. There appear actually to be two troupes by that name: one from Britain, under Cecilia Fay, and the other out of Chicago – the latter appears to be more theatrically-based, with the last production listed being an all-female version of Macbeth. The UK version is more…well, see the video below. They appeared on Britain’s Got Talent – yes, the show that gave the world Susan Boyle – and even Simon was impressed. Rule Britannia!

SexyKiller

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★★★★
“Being the adventures of a young womman whose principal interests are fashion, ultra-violence and Cindy Superstar.”

When it comes to horror movies, the line between clever and too clever is often a thin one. While a certain degree of self-awareness is good in the horror genre, it’s easy to topple over into smugness, where you stop working with the genre, and end up laughing at it with a self-superior attitude. SexyKiller manages to avoid this fate: director Marti and writer Paco Cabezas both have a love for the genre, that shines through in just about every scene. It centres on Barbara (Gómez), a medical student at a college being terrorized by the Campus Killer, a murderer who is taking out the trash in spectacular ways. It’s giving nothing away to say that Barbara is said psychopath, but no one-believes her. Even her bare-faced statement to the police, when they knock on her door looking for the killer – “You’ve found her” – gets nothing more a droll laugh from the officer in question.

Her career of beautifully-accessorized slaughter is eventually put on hold, thanks to fellow student Tomas (Camino), for whom Barbara falls, mistakenly believing him to be a fellow psycho. He has also invented a machine to read thoughts, and it’s turned onto some of her victims, in an effort to find out their last memory – presumably, of who killed them. As this, it’s not entirely successful. But what it is very good at, is bringing them back from the grave, though with a minor side-effect. Involving flesh-eating. Yes, from being a blackly humourous serial-killer flick, it’s now a zombie movie, and it’s not long before the campus Halloween party is under siege, and Barbara’s unique skill-set becomes extremely useful. Mind you, her sociopathy is still an issue, and she has absolutely no qualms about feeding those she dislikes to the undead horde.

Interestingly, in the IMDB ratings, it currently scores more than two points higher among women than men – while the sample size is still small, that’s rare for the genres of serial-killer or zombie flicks. I just loved the unashamed nature of it all: Barbara is perfectly comfortable with who she is, and is in no need of redemption, by Tomas or anyone else. The fourth wall is continually broken, and Marti uses a whole bunch of tricks, from flashbacks to musical numbers, to get his point across and make his anti-heroine sympathetic, in which he succeeds marvellously. Even if Gómez occasionally looks a bit too much like a pissed-off version of Mena Suvari, and the sex and violence quota are not quite as high as they could have been, this is a great way to start the New Year. [Seen at the Phoenix Fear Film Festival]

Dir: Miguel Martí
Star: Macarena Gómez, César Camino, Alejo Sauras, Ángel de Andrés