Author: Jim McLennan

Martial Angels

  By

★★★½
“HK spin on Charlie’s Angels, with more babes but less humour.”

martialangelsAs the title suggests, this owes more than a little to a certain big-budget blockbuster of early 2001, especially in its storyline of a plot to steal software in order to ransom a kidnapped boyfriend. It differs in a heroine who is a former career criminal, a broader range of characters (I think there were seven “angels” in all – but they kept moving around, so it was hard to be sure) and a much darker feel, particularly in the creepy subplot about the lecherous cracksman (Terence Yin) they have to bust out of jail, who takes a shine to one of the group. On the lighter side, the token lesbian Monkey (they’re all nicknamed after animals) has to woo a programmer, played by exploito-director Wong Jing, which is more in keeping with its American inspiration.

While not particularly memorable, especially compared to Ford’s classic Naked Killer, this is untaxing fun with a decent quantity (if not perhaps quality) of action. It even actually contains guns, sadly absent from Drew Barrymore’s PC version. Save Westerner Rosemary Vandenbroucke, who is probably a foot taller, you may find the seven angels blurring together, and you can see why Heroic Trio was wise to stop at three. But this film provides a comfortable place to nestle if you’re not looking for anything to stretch the brain.

Dir: Clarence Ford
Star: Hsu Chi, Kelly Lam, Julian Cheung, Sandra Ng

American Rampage

  By

★
“Gratuitous nudity + gay director = bad idea.”

While not averse to the idea of gratuitous nudity in movies, this movie presents some of the most startlingly unattractive examples I’ve seen in some time – but then, director Decoteau is now making (more or less openly) gay-interest movies, so his judgement in such things is highly suspect. Even the heroine, Detective Samantha York, is…well, let’s be kind and say “homely”, though this could count as refreshing realism, given LAPD officers don’t win many beauty contests. I would like to think, however, that they are better shots; York couldn’t hit a barn if she was standing inside it.

This may help explain why she goes through cop partners at a rate of almost one per gratuitous nude scene (brief appearances by 80’s scream queens Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer may interest some). She is supposed to be unravelling a drug cartel, but any narrative drive is completely lost when the brother of one of her late partners embarks on his own rambling quest for revenge. The most fun we had was watching star Kary J (sic) stumble over her dialogue – no wonder the IMDB chooses to ignore her contribution. That, and one blood-squib spatter onto the lens provide the only moments of interest. Watch out for my copy, coming to an Ebay near you, soon.

Dir: David Decoteau
Star:Kary J, Thomas Elliott, Troy Donahue, Otis P. Longhorn

Hit Lady

  By

★★
“This hit lady’s more of a miss…”

Things the movies teach us, #285: if you are a criminal, do not agree to do “one last job” before retiring, because it never works out that way. I guess assassin for hire Mimieux doesn’t go to the cinema enough, or she’d have known this, rather than letting herself get talked into that OLJ, in this case, killing a union leader. To make it look like an accident, she has to get close to him, only to find herself falling in love with her target – a common hazard of the job, going by how often this happens in films. From here, it’s all downhill, as her identity is compromised, and she has to flee.

Coming in at a slim 74 minutes (presumably 90 with commercials!), this TV movie was made in 1974, and has a lot of aspects which are now horribly cliched, but were perhaps a little fresher in its own time. Mimieux also wrote the script, and part of the problem is the extremely low body-count: we only see her kill once, so the persona of a ruthless hit-woman is never established for its subsequent challenge. Some fabulous 70’s fashions though, despite Mimieux’s fondness for wooly hats, and the ending is surprisingly grim. While I must confess that I did spend much of the second half playing Brickout on Chris’s mobile phone, this is probably still somewhat more watchable than your average 27-year old TVM.

Dir: Tracy Keenan Wynn
Star:Yvette Mimieux, Joseph Campanella, Clu Gulager, Dack Rambo

Blood: The Last Vampire (animated)

  By

★★
“Buffy goes East – and gets out of bed on the wrong side.”

Don’t believe the running time: listed at 83 minutes on the DVD sleeve, this is actually under 50, a nasty piece of marketing to make you think you’re getting a full-length movie. Not sure whether an extra 25 minutes would help or harm here: there is certainly room for development, but equally, there is an awful lot of slack which seems designed only to show off whizzy digital animation. Saya is a vampire. She’s also a killer, tasked by…well, it’s never quite made clear who, but she hunts down bat-like monsters who can take human form. The only way to kill them is to make them lose a lot of blood. Very quickly. Being trapped forever in her teenage years, she’s ideally placed to go undercover at a school and investigate mysterious occurrences there.

Set in 1966 for only one tangentially-connected reason, you’re never given enough information to care about Saya or any of the other characters. Mystery is one thing; obscurity another. She is perpetually pissed-off, which while initially appealing, does wear thin before long. I liked how some people spoke English, others Japanese, though this did have me fiddling with the DVD remote, since I thought I was watching a wretched dub. The Western characters seem horribly drawn; was this deliberate, or perhaps our faces just don’t suit anime style? As a standalone item, this is unsatisfying, despite some spectacular gore that will make you sit up and take notice. Give it another five episodes, and you could probably edit a decent feature out of this, but as it stands, it’s worth no more than a rental.

Dir: Hiroyuki Kitakubo
Star (voice): Youki Kudoh, Rebecca Forstadt, Joe Romersa

The Powerpuff Girls

  By

★★★★½
“Pre-school superheroines kick serious tongue-in-cheek butt.”

This sprang virtually fully-formed from the twisted mind of McCracken back in 1992, as a student film: even then, he intended it as a series, with most the characters, both heroines and villains, already present. The main change was to the title, the Cartoon Network balking at presenting a show called The Whoop-Ass Girls, and so the “can of whoop-ass” which was originally part of their make-up, was replaced by Chemical X.

The heroines number three: Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, attendees at Pokey Oaks Kindergarten who just happen to have amazing superpowers – flying, laser-eye beams, incredible strength, you know the sort of thing. Each episode sees them take on a monster which threatens to destroy their home city of Townsville, or a diabolical plot by the likes of Mojo Jojo, super-intelligent simian who is perhaps their most common foe. There’s never any doubt over the outcome; the PPGs will win, and (no matter what the title says) there will be large quantities of animated whoop-ass.

Yet despite this predictability in the plot, the series continues to amaze and delight, with great characters on both sides of the law, fantastic imagination, and fabulous lines like, “The Bubbles you know is dead – I’m HARDCORE now…”. Plus there’s a whole series of riffs on pop-culture – what cartoon show would do a shot-for-shot remake of a scene from The Big Lebowski…just because? It also manages to be moral without being overly preachy, and has retained its sense of the absurd throughout. If there’s a weakness, it’s the same as any episodic show: some eps work better than others, and there are certainly dull moments. But when on-form – which is more often than not – there isn’t a more enjoyable 22 minutes of television to be seen.

Creator: Craig McCracken
Star: Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong, E.G.Daily, Roger L. Jackson

The Viking Queen

  By

★½
“Uneven historical action: early example of woad rage?”

Hammer were best known for their horror movies, but tried virtually every genre save Westerns at one time or another. This Roman “epic” is loosely based on the life of Boadicea, who led a revolt against the Romans in the first century A.D. They get the name of her tribe right (the Iceni), and some basic facts, such as her suicide after capture, but change her name to Salina and sprinkle in some wild inaccuracies. Despite the title, there are no actual Vikings to be found, and we also get the Druids worshipping Zeus, a Greek god!

The low budget is painfully obvious, particularly in the battle scenes, where you can almost count the participants, and the lack of sets beyond tents. In between times, however, it’s not such a disaster, with a script that pits merchants, Druids, Britons and Romans against each other, and allows for infighting, treachery and backstabbing galore. The main thrust is the budding romance between Salina (Carita – her only screen role, one source indicating she went back to being a hair-dresser) and Roman governor Justinian (Murray), who fall into a lake before falling into each other’s arms, to the chagrin of people on both sides.

Salina eventually has to strap on the armour herself and go to war, but her lack of experience (in both acting and action) is painfully obvious. The likes of Hammer regular Keir, as Justinian’s treacherous second-in-command, perform with commendable endeavour; it isn’t really enough to save this half-baked effort from failing on most levels.

Dir: Don Chaffey
Star: Carita, Don Murray, Andrew Keir, Donald Houston

Assault of the Killer Bimbos

  By

★
“Thelma and Louise without the talent.”

killerbimbosTo its credit, this 1988 film did at least predate Ridley Scott’s girls-with-guns flick. To its debit, it is vastly less successful on just about every level, though at least the script avoids Callie Khouri’s feminazi-claptrap which almost sank T&L. Although both films have two women on the run, here, they (Whitaker and Kaitan) are innocent of the crime for which they are sought – the murder of a sleazy club-owner – though legally speaking, their kidnapping of a waitress (Souza) is probably rather questionable.

This thrown-together threesome is the film’s sole redeeming grace, all the actresses bringing at least some life to their characters, and the interplay between the veteran, the novice and the downtrodden wage-slave is not painful to watch. If only the rest could be said for the male actors, who are without exception abominable and drain the life out of the movie every time they open their mouths. Caricature is one thing; bad writing and bad acting, quite another.

The film limps along into “Mexico” before the trio resolve their problems, Kaitan (or her body double) flashes her tits occasionally, and we, as an audience, can only contemplate how this one was obviously made in the following order:

  • Come up with the title.
  • Get the financing.
  • Hire cast and crew.
  • Book locations.
  • Arrive at locations.
  • Anything else we need?
  • Oops. Write a script.

Dir: Anita Rosenberg
Star: Elizabeth Kaitan, Christina Whittaker, Tammara Souza

Prehistoric Women

  By

★★½
“Blondes vs. brunettes in the African jungle.”

You need to be in a fairly forgiving mood to sit through this daft premise, yet it’s never boring or particularly irritating, largely thanks to Beswick as the queen of a tribe of brunettes, somewhere (and, indeed, somewhen) in the African jungle, who has enslaved all the blondes. Michael Latimer is hunter/guide David Marchant who arrives in the midst of it all, after a questionable event with a rhinoceros idol, and finds himself lusted after both by the Queen, and blonde slave-girl Saria. She is played by Edina Ronay who, as Chris pointed out, bears some resemblance facially to a chimpanzee…

The men, meanwhile are a serious third on the food-chain; at least the blondes get to see daylight. When Marchant spurns the queen’s advances, he’s cast into the cells with the others of his sex, only for Saria to convince him they need an “inside man” if their upcoming rebellion is to be successful. Oh, and did I mention the “devils” who take a sacrificial blonde every once in a while? Or the tribal dancing? Or even veteran villain Steven Berkoff (Beverly Hills Cop and Octopussy), in his first credited movie role? [Want another Bond tie-in? Beswick was one of the gypsy fighting girls in From Russia With Love!] Plenty going on, to be sure, even if little of it makes sense off the back of the cigarette-packet where it was likely written. Former Miss Jamaica Beswick is great, scornfully regal, single-minded, and deserving of a better movie to be in. Latimer keeps a straight face – which is more than we did – and if it’s painfully obvious that this one never came anywhere near the African continent, it’s Saturday morning entertainment of a very acceptable nature.

Dir: Michael Carreras
Star: Martine Beswick, Michael Latimer, Edina Ronay

My Wife is Gangster

  By

★★★½
“Love, knife-wielding Korean mobsteress style…”

Another slightly clunky Korean title (see also Guns & Talks), but the first forty minutes or so of this are about the driest comedy/action you could ever hope to see. In order to fulfill the wish of her terminally-ill sister, mob boss Eu-jin (Shin), or “Mantis” as she is known, decides she to get married. Of course, she needs an especially stupid husband who won’t realise her true occupation, and finds one in Soo-il (Park), a civil servant with a 0% success rate on his blind dates. Their courtship, pre-nuptials and wedding (the last interrupted by a rival gang – a “martial arts demonstration”, as a fast-thinking sidekick calls it) are executed perfectly, largely thanks to Shin and her expressions of shock and horror at the mating game.

After this, the film does lose its way a bit, drifting without much direction or aim; there’s a bit of humour, a bit of action as her rival White Shark tries to muscle in, and a good chunk of pathos due to the deaths of two major characters, none of which really sit well with each other. A more consistent approach would have helped, and there’s no doubting director Cho’s talent for comedy. However, it perks up again with a rousing finale, pitting Mantis against a large number of thugs, which doesn’t end as you’d expect – though, being honest, neither does it perhaps end as you’d want. Still, you can see why it has reportedly been bought by Miramax, as the concept is great, even if the execution goes mildly off the rails.

Dir: Cho Jin-Gyu
Star: Shin Eun Kyung, Park Sang-Myeon, Ahn Jae Mo, Kim In Kwon

Beyond the City Limits

  By

★★
“Promising concept gets bogged down in man-hating chick-anery.”

“It was a nightmare to shoot: the producer and director were constantly fighting… It was completely unorganised. Alexis [Denisof] was also in it and he and I would go into each other’s trailers and go, “We’ve made a huge mistake, this is the worst thing ever!” It just went terribly, terribly wrong.” So says Hannigan: wouldn’t say it was that bad, but it certainly ain’t good, either.

After the girlfriends (Hannigan & Kinski) of two Russian crooks get dumped, they sabotage a casino heist as revenge, then take it on themselves, with the security manager’s assistance. This crime is easily the most interesting part of the film, as things go awry and must be dealt with. Wish it had turned up an hour earlier, instead of the “men are utter bastards” whining that occupies the first two-thirds. The presence of Sophie B. Hawkins, both on screen and the soundtrack, doesn’t reduce the irritant factor any.

Why do they need police assistance? Why the random voice-overs? Why is Esposito’s cop ex-husband (Field) suddenly chased by other officers? This film doesn’t so much finish, as end, and most of the cast, save Russian psycho Brian McCardie, act as if drugged – perhaps literally in Hannigan’s case, since she plays a junkie. [Just like in American Pie, she seems keen to leave Buffy far behind, though she’s bisexual here too]. The US retitling is obviously intended to invoke Set It Off: that such a lame ploy is deemed necessary is all you need to know.

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Alyson Hannigan, Nastassja Kinski, Jennifer Esposito, Todd Field
a.k.a. Rip It Off