On the importance of keeping your elbow straight when firing a gun…
Author: Jim McLennan
La Femme Musketeer
★★★
“The Four Musketeers: The Next Generation.”
While not the first film to give D’Artagnan a daughter – the fairly self-explanatory D’Artagnan’s Daughter got there a decade before, with Sophie Marceau in the role – this is still entertaining enough, though at 171 minutes, probably too long. Valentine (Amy) heads to Paris to join the King’s guards, only to find herself framed for murder after coming into possession of a letter that could bring down the monarch. Fortunately, the other Musketeers also had children who followed in their father’s footsteps, so she has help as she tries to thwart the evil plans of Cardinal Mazarin (Depardieu) and his henchman Villeroi (Pirae).
If its origins as a two-part TVM are largely apparent, there’s enough fun to be mined from the experience here to keep things going, not least Michael York reprising the role of D’Artagnan, which he played in the 70’s classic movies. Their offspring are similarly nicely-drawn caricatures, and Amy has a feisty quality about her that’s fitting, though quite how she is mistaken for a man escapes me. The film does try to do too much, plotwise; believing the letter isn’t enough to sustain it, the script also throws in a Spanish princess, travelling to Paris to meet with King Louis, and perhaps stop the war between the two countries. This requires much searching of the French countryside [actually, Croatia] and drags things out to no great purpose. On the other hand, the lack of any serious romance to bog things down any further, came as a pleasant surprise.
Amy holds her own in the swordfights, even if Boyum is overly fond of playing with the film speed, and often needs to move the camera back a bit further. We were looking forward to a nice catfight between her and Nastassja Kinski, who plays another one of Mazarin’s minions, with a nice line in poisoned hatpins. Don’t get your hopes up; instead, the climax pits Valentine against Villeroi. The accents on display are also all over the place: Depardieu is the only one who sounds French, obviously – except, his character is actually Italian! If you can cope with that, and the inherently nonsensical nature of the central concept, you should be okay with this.
Dir: Steve Boyum
Star: Susie Amy, Marcus Jean Pirae, Gérard Depardieu, Casper Zafer
She-Wolves of the Wasteland
★½
“After the apocalypse, civilization will collapse. Fortunately, off-road vehicles and hair-care products will remain in abundant supply.”
I remember seeing this under its original title back in the 1990’s, and being unimpressed by it then. Fooled into acquiring it on DVD under its new name, time has not been kind to this distaff version of Mad Max. Phoenix (Kinmont) finds herself taking care of Keela (Sanders), who is pregnant with a male child – a rarity, in a world which, thanks to biological war, is populated almost entirely by women. Overseeing things is the Reverend Mother (Howard) and her sidekick Cobalt (Khambatta), who are intent on keeping control. And, boy, can they hold a grudge, since Keela goes from utterly flat, to giving birth, to being the mother of a kid at least four years old, in the space of about two minutes cinematically. Not quite sure what the villains are doing during this time: presumably ruling over an empire populated entirely by extras from a Duran Duran video,
This is feeble, in just about every way imaginable. The action is laughably inept, the script makes no sense at all, and the production values are entirely unconvincing. The actresses, bless their hearts, try to do the best they can, but Meryl Streep would be hard pushed to deliver the dialogue they’re given here. The makers throw in an entirely gratuitous waterfall sequence to provide the nudity the leads presumably wouldn’t do, and while there are occasional aspects that show imagination was not entirely absent [the tribe inspired by a cargo cult of television], these are few and far between. Despite one of the most inspired covers in recent history – almost worth the price of this budget DVD by itself – I struggled to remain conscious after the first 20 minutes. Even for devoted fans of badfilm such as ourselves, this is tough to handle.
Dir: Robert Hayes
Star: Kathleen Kinmont, Persis Khambatta, Peggy Sanders, Sheila Howard
a.k.a. Phoenix the Warrior
Princess of Thieves
★★
“The Middle Ages – sanitized, for your protection.”
Back before Pirates of the Caribbean made Knightley a household name, and even before Bend It Like Beckham made her an obscure name, as a fifteen-year old she shot this Disney TVM, which rewrites history wholesale from the very start. It begins in 1184, claiming this is the reign of Richard the Lionheart – this must come as a surprise to Henry II, since he didn’t die until 1189. It also introduces Philip, Richard’s supposed illegitimate son, out to replace the evil King John; in reality, Philip may not have existed and certainly left no mark on history. However, the film needs a romantic lead, so there you go. Of course, the whole Robin Hood mythology is more a block of clay, that writers and film-makers have seen fit to mould as they wish.
Here, when Robin is arrested trying to link up with Philip (Moyer), it’s his daughter, Gwyn (Knightley), who puts together her own band of merry men, with the aim of both rescuing her father and putting Philip in his rightful place on the throne. Archery contests and the Sheriff of Nottingham (McDowell) ensue, until Philip, under an assumed name, joins her posse, and the inevitable romantic attraction begins. This is much to the chagrin of Froderick (Synnott), Gwyn’s longtime companion from when she grew up in a monastery [her dad being off crusading with Dick]. However, since he has a crap haircut, it’s clear Frodork doesn’t have a chance with the perfectly-complexioned Gywn and her immaculate teeth.
It is largely bland, unthreatening and unsatisfying, yet not entirely unwatchable. Knightley – only 15 when she made it – clearly has star potential, and her archery experience must have come in handy for her later role in King Arthur. Early on, there is an almost Mulan-like feel, with Gwyn defying her father and dressing as a boy. However, the more the film proceeds, the more she is shuffled off to the side in favor of Philip, who is much less interesting a character, especially from this site’s point of view. McDowell is as reliably evil as ever, while Jonathan Hyde does his best Alan Rickman impression as King John, yet, inevitably, comes off as a poor imitation. If this isn’t worth paying money for, as a Saturday afternoon diversion on TV, it’s tolerable.
Dir: Peter Hewitt
Star: Keira Knightley, Stephen Moyer, Malcolm McDowell, Del Synnott
Pistol Opera
★½
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?”
I don’t think I have ever been quite so flummoxed by a girls-with-guns film. To say it’s not quite what I expected is an understatement, but it’s also my first experience of Seijun Suzuki, who is one of the icons of Japanese cinema. The basic plot centers around Stray Cat (Esumi), the current #3-ranked assassin; there’s a guild who decide such things, but they are on the edge of anarchy and Cat gets the assignment from her manager (Yamaguchi) to target the #1, Hundred Eyes. However, there are a lot of people with their own agendas, not least Sayoko (Han), a young girl who wants Cat to teach her the ways of murder.
On the basis of this, I’d file Suzuki somewhere between David Lynch and Guy Maddin, for large chunks of this make no sense. Characters deliver long, rambling monologues of no real significance to the camera [one particularly vague one involves flags], in front of a surreal landscape that is as much self-consciously artificial as it is realistic. It is apparently a reworking of the director’s own Branded to Kill, except with a female protagonist. More than 30 years – plus, it would appear, a truckload of drugs and a severe case of Alzheimer’s – passed in the meantime, and it’s clear Suzuki did not spend it working on the plot.
Sure, it looks lovely, but the girls-with-guns experience is not founded upon Art with a capital A. It’s something that should head directly for the lizard-brain, to deliver a heady payload of taboo-breaking violence. I have no objection to the artistically surreal in cinema generally [Peter Greenaway is a personal favourite]. However, there still needs to be something coherent and interesting behind it, otherwise you might as well just eat a large pizza and go to sleep – the imagery will be just as good, and it’s a better use of your time. In 1968, Suzuki got fired by major studio Nikkatsu, who said that they “could not afford to cultivate a reputation for making films understood only by an exclusive audience,” and that his “incomprehensible and thus bad films would disgrace the company.” Frankly, I’m in full agreement with the studio.
Dir: Seijun Suzuki
Star: Makiko Esumi, Sayoko Yamaguchi, Mikijiro Hira, Yeong-he Han
Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69 trailer
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!
Hook ‘n’ Shoot: Revolution
★★★
“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
★★★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
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
★★★★
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