Author: Jim McLennan

2024 in Action Heroine Films

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Let’s be completely clear. 2023 was a dismal year for the genre, probably the worst in the decade or so I’ve been doing these annual previews. Of all the films listed in last year’s piece, there was not a single one – of those which actually showed up – that was half-way decent. Mind you, I haven’t seen The Marvels yet. I kinda lost the will to live for that one, having failed to complete the necessary homework of all those TV series on Disney+. I’ll maybe get round to it… eventually. It was a dismal flop at the box-office, but still remains the closest thing to a hit for an action heroine this year, albeit barely reaching the year-end top thirty. After that? The holdover of Everything Everywhere All at Once was the only other in the top hundred. At #100.

Will 2024 be better? I think it might be, albeit partly because it would be hard pushed to be any worse. There is one obvious tent-pole entry, though I have some qualms about it, and below that, the usual slew of maybes and possibles. Let’s tear in, with the usual caveat that all release dates are vague, approximate and subject to change at a moment’s whim. I’ve also not included a few entries which are apparently scheduled for next year, but about which little or nothing is known, such as The Old Guard 2.

Ballerina (June 7)

Not to be confused with the Korean movie of the same name, this is the John Wick prequel, focusing on Eve, played by Ana de Armas. The storyline revealed so far seems largely boilerplate: “A young female assassin seeks revenge against the people who killed her family.” However, its presence in the Wick-iverse certainly elevates it, and the director is Len Wiseman, best known for his work on the Underworld franchise. So he clearly knows his way around an action heroine. Hell, he married one. :)

Breathe (TBA)

You had me at Milla Jovovich. “Air-supply is scarce in the near future, forcing a mother and daughter to fight to survive when two strangers arrive desperate for an oxygenated haven.” Neither mother nor daughter are actually Milla, however, so I’m going to presume she’s one of the strangers. While we’re on the topic of Jovovich, what happened to George R.R. Martin adaptation In the Lost Lands, starring her and Dave Bautista? It’s supposedly has been in post-production since last January, but the IMDb doesn’t even give it a year any more. Weird.

Christie the Movie (TBA)

This one is still listed as being in pre-production as of September, and the cast list on the IMDb doesn’t even mention the lead actress (which a still shows as Janessa A. Morgan). But what’s interesting is that this is based on cult series Get Christie Love! which originally aired on TV in the mid-seventies: we reviewed the pilot here. I’d certainly not mind seeing a movie version, but the general lack of information leaves me doubtful this will see the light of day next year.

Damsel (March 8)

Dieter brought this one to my attention, and after the trailer looked somewhat ho-hum for much of its running time, the end  – more or less, the still at the top of this article – did get my attention. It will star Netflix’s favourite young woman, Millie Bobby-Brown (of Enola Holmes), as “A dutiful damsel [who] agrees to marry a handsome prince, only to find the royal family has recruited her as a sacrifice to repay an ancient debt. Thrown into a cave with a fire-breathing dragon, she must rely on her wits and will to survive.” The last time we saw one of those subversive fairy tales, it was The Princess, and was great. So fingers crossed…

Echo 8 (TBA)

“An assassin flashes between a nightmarish dream and her reality at a secret underground organization. When her latest mission involves killing a grieving mother, she discovers her target is closer to home than she realizes-much closer.” This is a low-budget labour of love for star Maria Tran, who also co-directed (with her husband Takashi Hara), edited, produced and worked on the fight choreography.

Furiosa (May 24)

There it is. The prequel to the god-tier work which was Mad Max: Fury Road, though with Anya Taylor-Joy replacing Charlize Theron. The trailer for this came in for some criticism when it came out, in particular due to the shaky nature of some CGI elements. Given how the practical approach of Fury Road was one of its outstanding elements, this is understandable. Hopefully it’s something they can fix in post-production. My other concern is Taylor-Joy, who doesn’t have much pedigree in action, and based on the trailer, does not have the same physical presence as Theron. However, it is an origin story, and I would expect the character arc to reflect this. In George We Trust. This may end up being a rare cinema trip for us.

Griselda (January 25)

I’ve not typically included TV series in this feature, but feel this one deserves an exception. We’ve previously a number of films regarding drug-lord Griselda Blanco, both dramatizations of her life and documentaries. This is the former, being a Netflix miniseries, with Sofia Vergara in the lead role. This feels a bit of a double-edged sword. She’s Colombian, like Griselda. But she’ll always be Gloria from Modern Family to us. I think this one might be just a little more blood-spattered though, coming as it does from the makers of Narcos.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (February 2)

As with Griselda, the TV series remake of the 2005 movie of the same name deserves inclusion. Maya Erskine and Donald Glover star as the marriage couple who are also spies, though based on the trailer, it seems like it begins with them separate. The synopsis offers a different direction too: ” Two strangers land jobs with a spy agency that offers them a life of espionage, wealth, and travel. The catch: new identities in an arranged marriage.” Erskine isn’t exactly Angelina Jolie, so we’ll see.

Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scargiver (April 19)

The follow-up to part one looks set to continue the story of Kota, who has now assembled her band of rebels to take on the evil empire of the Motherworld. I imagine we can expect more of the same as what we’ve seen so far. Which would be spiffy visuals, albeit accompanying a plot which could use rather more originality. The jury is likely still out on whether Zack Snyder will get his desired cinematic universe of this. Didn’t work out too well for Army of the Dead.

Seize Them! (UK April 5)

The synopsis sounds promising: “Queen Dagan is toppled by a revolution led by Humble Joan . The Queen becomes a fugitive in her own land, and must face hardship and danger as she embarks on a voyage to win back her throne.” However, it is a comedy – the cast include Nick Frost and Jessica Hynes, both out of the Edgar Wright nexus. So how much actual action will be involved here is uncertain: I’m still going to watch it.

The Street Avenger (December 24)

“When a young girl being raised by a single father loses him to gang violence, she tries to take the law into her own hands and finds out being a vigilante is nothing like she reads about in the comics… This is a raw, action-packed adventure that shows the inner strength of a young woman that will stop at nothing to avenge her father.” Okay, I am interested. But let’s see if the makers can deliver on everything the promised in that synopsis…

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (TBA)

Another Netflix series, this will be an animated show, with Hayley Atwell voicing Lara. Not much information, beyond that the series “Follows heroine Lara Croft as she explores new territory.” There is a “First Look” video available, which is included as part of the watch-list below: the animations looks quite nice. Hopefully it’ll be an improvement over the underwhelming Alicia Vikander version of the character.

Trigger Warning (TBA)

Out of the “long in production” file comes this Jessica Alba vehicle, with the following synopsis: “A traumatized veteran who inherits her grandfather’s bar and faces a moral dilemma after learning the truth behind his untimely death.” Filming on this apparently wrapped back in October 2021, so quite what the hold-up, I don’t know. It’s supposed to be a Netflix release, but we’ll see.

As One

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★★★
“Ping-pong diplomacy.”

After the bombing of a South Korean jet by North Korean agents in 1987, relations between the two nations sank to perilously low levels. In an effort to help mend fences, the countries agreed to join forces and send a unified squad to the 1991 World Table Tennis Championship in Japan, to take on the all-powerful Chinese. The process was not without its bumps, as the South’s star player, Hyun Jung-hwa (Ha), and her counterpart in the North, Ri Bun-hui (Bae), struggle to overcome their differences and become a cohesive doubles partnership. Their respective coaches (Park and Kim) also have to learn to navigate shoals both sporting and political on the way to the gold medal match in Tokyo.

Since this is based on real events, it’s no spoiler (and certainly would not have been for the Korean audience) to say that the unified team triumphs in dramatic fashion. Indeed, the whole thing is more or less an exhibition of Sports Clichés 1 0.1, with moments which you feel have been needlessly juiced up for emotive purposes. For example, did the entire South Korean roster really kneel in the rain outside their hotel, after the North Korean players were withdrawn for breaches of the rules? Did Ri really collapse during the last few minutes of the final, before an inspirational speech from Hyun? I’ve been unable to confirm either incident and it feels like a case of the writers over-egging the pudding, dramatically speaking.

Fortunately, everything else is excellent, and it’s clear a lot of attention went into details, some of which may not be visible to a Western audience e.g. the North Korean players speaking with appropriate dialect and accents. What was impressive even to me, was that the actresses genuinely looked like they were professional table-tennis players. Months of training went into that, with the real Hyun being one of the coaches. Praise in particular to Bae, who had to learn how to play with her left-hand, to match the one used by Ri. Although CGI was used to “fill in” the ball during the actual tournament sequences, there were no doubles used for the actresses, and the results look close to impeccable – as good as any sports movie I’ve seen. 

Even away from the table, the performances are good, and if the melodrama is turned up little too high, the balance otherwise is nicely handled, with a mix of humour, human interest and patriotism which is effective. While the Chinese are depicted as the “villains” her – and it’s not exactly subtle! – there is very much a message of how sport can act as a unifying force for a country. That’s something I tend to agree with, which is why I have little time for those who use it in divisive ways, such as kneeling during the anthem. There’s no doubt the intent here is almost nationalistic, yet it still works well enough for non-Koreans – and for those who still call the game ping-pong.

Dir: Moon Hyun-sung
Star: Ha Ji-won, Bae Doona, Park Chul-min, Kim Eung-soo

Snowbound

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★★
“Snow up to much…”

Though not formally listed on the IMDb as a made for television movie, it has all the hallmarks of one, down to what look suspiciously like pauses into which commercial breaks could be inserted. It’s the story of work colleagues, Liz Bartlett (Schnarre) and Barbara Tate (Eleniak). The former is attacked in the company’s parking garage one night, and confesses to her friend that her former husband is stalking her. She fears for her life, having helped put him behind bars. So what is the most sensible thing for the pair to do in these circumstances? If your answer is, “Head off to a remote mountain cabin, in the middle on an impending blizzard”, give yourself two points.

Unsurprisingly, this does not work out well, and you can more or less tell where this is going, from the moment when the cabin’s host says “The owner was very specific about this: do not go into the gun cabinet, it’s in the lease.” Liz and Barbara will be getting a two-star review on their profile, because you should not be in the slightest bit shocked to hear, they do end up going into the gun cabinet. For it’s not long before sketchy characters start harassing Barbara in town, and we also learn that Liz was considerably less than forthcoming with the truth to her supposed BFF. This isn’t a surprise – at least, to the viewer – since we had previously seen her take a case of “camera equipment” on the trip, which we know actually contains a gun and a large amount of cash.

It’s all very much by the numbers, the overall vanilla flavour not helped by two leads who manage to look somewhat pretty, while creating almost nothing approaching memorable characters. Heck, I’d have settled for a depth roughly approximating the alleged snowfall. I say “alleged”, since considering there’s a supposed blizzard in action, sealing them off from the rest of civilization, I’m not sure I actually saw a single flake fall from the sky over the duration of the entire movie. It takes about an hour for Barbara to catch up to what we the audience already knows, and for the ex-husband to appear at the cabin.

Things do get at least somewhat interesting thereafter, with Barbara being forced into steps significantly outside of her comfort zone, in order to stay alive from those in pursuit of her. She’s helped by the fact that the pursuer may not exactly be the sharpest tool in the box, and engages in acts which certainly end up back-firing on them. It’s still all low-impact stuff generally, and not enough to distract you from Eleniak’s resemblance here to a slightly less wholesome version of Meg Ryan. Don’t expect anything along “those” lines either; again, I strongly suspect this was intended for Lifetime, rather than late-night on Cinemax. I’ve already forgotten about it, and feel no great sense of loss thereof.

Dir: Ruben Preuss
Star: Erika Eleniak, Monika Schnarre, Peter Dobson, Bill Mondy

Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire – Part One

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★★★
“Don’t call it Star Wars…”

Despite critical derision, this is actually perfectly serviceable pulp SF. Sure, it’s derivative as hell. But the critics getting all huffy about the similarities to Star Wars seem to have forgotten George Lucas only made his film, after failing to acquire the rights to Flash Gordon. This is Snyder’s equivalent to The Fifth Element, in that it’s a long-gestating SF idea, originally conceived well before he became a director. “The Dirty Dozen in space” was the high concept, although there is no denying the SW similarities, especially in the early going. I mean, young orphan on a backwater farming planet gets sucked in to galaxy-hopping adventures, joining a rebellion against an evil empire? Yeah, a little more originality would be welcome. 

It is a bit more “adult”, though the PG-13 certificate holds it back. I still want to see a hard-R take on the concept. Here, it’s limited to stiffer violence and a sprinkling of sexual assault. [An R-rated cut will follow: presumably with more blackjack and hookers.] The heroine is Kota (Boutella), rescued from a crashed spaceship and now living a quiet life on Veldt. That ends when Admiral Atticus Noble (Skrein) and his forces arrive, hunting rebels against the Motherworld. We know they’re the bad guys, because they shop for clothes at some kind of Nazi Outlet Mall. Soon, Kota and fellow farmer Gunnar (Huisman) are on galactic tour, seeking warriors who help defend Veldt, and joining up with the rebels.

If all fairly basic, that’s not a bad thing. I got significant Chronicles of Riddick vibes, though it had a stronger central character. This isn’t necessarily Boutella’s fault, more a result of there being so many to handle here. Editing would have helped: for example, there’s one lengthy animal training scene which feels like it wandered in from Avatar. As you would expect from Snyder, it looks very nice, certainly an improvement in this area over Army of the Dead. There is a similar theme – you could call it’s predecessor “The Dirty Dozen in Vegas, with zombies”. But outside of Kota, not many of the characters here make much impression. Save perhaps the regrettable Oirish accent sported by mercenary pilot Kai (Hunnam).

It does suffer from part-one-itis – the inevitable lack of any conclusion, with nothing of significance being decided. Even the apparent death of a major character ends up being a fake out. But it does rather better than, say, Dune, in terms of narrative division. The action is generally nifty too: Boutella has had her moments before, and gets to build on that experience here, especially in her final battle against Admiral Noble. Doona Bae makes a good impression as cyborg swordmistress Nemesis, not least in a hellacious fight against – and this is a phrase I did not expect 2023 to bring me – an arachnid Jena Malone. Bottom line is, I was entertained for two hours, and have enough interest in seeing part two in April. Good enough for me.

Dir: Zack Snyder
Star: Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein,  Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman

[This review originally appeared on Film Blitz]

Evangeline: Memoir of a Teenage Serial Killer, by KC Franks

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

When I see “Reader discretion is advised,” on an Amazon page, I tend to take it with a grain of salt. I’ve been enjoying media at the outer edges for longer than most readers here have been alive, and so am not easily shocked, disturbed or offended, to put it mildly. I’m ussure this quite managed to do any of those, but I will definitely say this: yes, reader discretion is advised. This is a rough, nasty and often unpleasant read. But it’s dealing with rough, nasty and often unpleasant topics, so the approach is entirely in keeping with the subject matter and not inappropriate.

The “heroine” – and I use quotes advisedly – is Angeline Gottschalk, a teenage girl who lives in rural Nebraska and has a truly unfortunate life. Her mother is mentally ill, she’s bullied at high school (in part due to having a stutter), and her stepfather, a local deputy sheriff, has bee abusing Angeline in the most vile ways imaginable since she was aged eleven. Eventually, Angeline’s psyche snapped, and split off an alternate personality as a way of handling the abuse – basically, acting as her psychological stunt double. Evangeline, as the other part of Angeline is named, calls herself “Defender of the weak. Champion of the abused. Bold. Fearless. And extremely pissed-off.” But the title of the book is arguably more accurate: serial killer. 

Oh, her targets are more than a little Dexter-like, to be sure – beginning with the stepfather, who will not be abusing anyone, ever again. But Evangeline then decides to target the deserving, in her mind, sex offenders who live in the local area. Rather than just being a stand-in for Angeline in the darkest hours, she begins to act independently, setting up a conflict between the two personas, which only one can win. For Angeline wants nothing more than to be left alone – ideally with her crush, Caleb Quinn. Except, Caleb’s brother, Billy is one of her biggest tormentors, and he has friends whose intentions and actions a) are even worse, and b) make them prime targets for Evangeline’s brutal methods of summary justice.

As you can perhaps guess, it’s all going to get very messy, both in the emotional and blood-spattered senses. The writing style feels a little rough and ready, almost bordering on the literary version of torture porn in some scenes. Franks tears into the violence with much the same glee that Evangeline tears into her victims: male readers may find themselves crossing their legs uncomfortably from time to time. There’s a near-total lack of empathetic characters in this: even Angeline is little more than a human piñata for life’s torments. Still, it’s sometimes good to peer over the edge into the abyss of humanity’s darkest depths, and this book certainly delivers on that. A stand-alone novel is fine. Any concept of a series here would not be something of interest.

Author: KC Franks
Publisher: Seven Crows Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Stand-alone novel.

Country of Beauties

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★★½
“Still a better movie than Wonder Woman 1984.“

This Taiwanese production takes place on an island where women have been separate from men for 23 generations, developing more or less your stereotypical Amazonian society. Men are rejected, male babies tossed out to see to sink or swim (typically the former) and they have build a giant, albeit largely unconvincing, statue of their founding ruler, which fires cannonballs out of its eyes. This is not inappropriate, since the current occupant of the throne, Queen Nadanwa (Yeung). has a harsh line in anti-male rhetoric (“All men are dangerous!”), accompanied by castration. Her subjects dress either in flimsy white robes or shiny battle armour, and engage in gymnastic or circus-related forms of entertainment.

Nadanwa’s antipathy initially seems not wrong, as the island is raided by rapist pirates, who are barely fought off by the women. However, it turns out there is another island nearby, occupied only by men – the survivors of the sea-dispatched male babies mentioned above. They’re more chill, and just want to get back to both sexes living in harmony. The ruler’s sister Chung Ah (Fong) has been having a secret affair with their leader, Lu (Wong). Needless to say, queenie is not going to be happy about this. However, she does eventually realize that some men might just have their uses, such as increasing the power of her eyeball cannons, in order to defend her realm from the pirates.

You may be thinking this could perhaps go through male rape for comedic purposes, a hunt for treasure, light lesbian canoodling and end in a mass battle between the Amazons and the buccaneers, with the island of men coming in to save the day. This will, in all likelihood, be accompanied by an upbeat and poppy soundtrack, which could not possibly be more eighties if it was sporting AquaNet and leg-warmers. Well, I’m not going to spoil it for you. Nadanwa also keeps a tiger as a pet, which fits with her general philosophy, I guess. Though it must be said, these Amazons do seem weirdly incompetent, needing male help not just in the armaments category, but when giving birth. You’d think they might have figured out the basics after 23 generations. 

There are some reasonable moments of scale here, though things like the battles against the pirates are more notable for the number of participants than their combat ability. The problem is mostly one of tone, and it’s hardly alone there, in Taiwanese productions from this decade. A lot of the attempts at comedy have not aged well, if they were ever funny to begin with. In a movie which also includes wholesale child genocide, sexual assault of both genders, and genital mutilation, you’re not exactly looking for light relief. Although Yeung is her usual reliable self as a leader, this falls short of the likes of Golden Queens Commando., and only just scrapes over the bar set at a height of “acceptable entertainment.”

Dir: Yang-Ming Tsai
Star: Fong-fong Fong, Don Wong, Elsa Yeung
a.k.a. Island Warriors

Zulm Ka Badla

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★★★
“The family that slays together…”

In recent years, the gap in cinema between Bollywood and Hollywood has closed dramatically. The likes of Indian blockbusters such as RRR (technically Tollywood rather than Bollywood) can stand, in terms of technical competence, beside their American equivalents. It’s mostly due to a dramatic improvement from Asia, because it wasn’t always the case, as we see when we go back to the mid-eighties for this slice of vengeance served cold. It looks pretty rough if you compare it to what Hollywood was making at the time, and in many ways feels like it’s about twenty years older than it is. I still found it more watchable than I expected, but then, I’m somewhat used to the style of Indian cinema. Newcomers might find this a bumpy ride.

It begin with an attack on military official Colonel Rajesh, in which he and his wife are killed by JK (Kapoor) and his men. Their son is missing, presumed dead, leaving young daughter Geeta (Raj) the only survivor. She is adopted by Rajesh’s friend, Inspector Verma, and grows up in his house, eventually marrying the cop’s son, Anil (Rakesh), who has followed his father into the police force. Geeta has learned to take care of herself, as we see when she handily disposes of some ruffians on the beach. But it’s only when she accidentally sees a photograph given to her husband, that her long-repressed memories of the attack surface, and an insatiable thirst for revenge is born.

On the action level, let’s be honest, this is a bit crap, with Geeta doing little more than semi-competent kicking, but being made to look like she is flying through the air, in a way a cheap seventies chop-socky movie would reject as poorly executed. [It seems Geeta is actually pregnant at this point too!] However, this is made up for by some quite intense drama, not least that her brother survived, albeit with amnesia and is now one of JK’s lieutenants. He feels a bond to Geeta, though can’t quite figure out why. There are the inevitable musical numbers, too; most are at least semi-integrated into the plot, Geeta using her seductive skills to get close to her targets. Though might I suggest that, when a woman sings a song at you whose lyrics include the lines. “Now I’ve decided either to kill you or die myself,” that caution might be the best approach.

There are some moments which definitely stretch disbelief. After Geeta is forced on the run, she disguises herself as a nun, and it appears that slapping a wimple on your head and wearing glasses is an impenetrable disguise, which neither her foster father nor husband can penetrate. However, at least they don’t try and pass the thoroughly attractive Raj off as a man (I’m talking to certain Hong Kong films here!). Her brother helps, by breaking the final target out of prison, so they can unite and take revenge together. Which is nice. Naturally, they’re not allowed to get away with it in eighties Bollywood movies, making for a rather bittersweet ending. If it’s all more than a little shaky around the edges, its heart is both large and in the right place.

Dir: Chand and K. Prasad
Star: Anita Raj, Danny Denzongpa, Rakesh Roshan, Shakti Kapoor

Rise of the Machine Girls

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★★★
“Rage against the Machine Girls.”

A decade after the splattery joy which was The Machine Girl, we get this – not quite a sequel, not quite a reboot. Creator Noboru Iguchi helped on the script, but hands the directorial reins over to another, and… Well, it’s amusing and moderately entertaining, rather than the jaw-dropping and ground-breaking spectacle which was the original. Part of this is simply the passage of time: what was fresh and original at the time, has now become much more familiar. There is still no shortage of invention here, but it does seem  haphazard. It’s less a story, than a series of skits, albeit ones heavily drenched in gore – unfortunately, a lot from blood group CGI-minus.

It takes place in a futuristic dystopia, where the poor are left to sell whatever they can to make ends meet, including their children, limbs and internal organs. Sisters Ami (Nagimiya) and Yoshie (Kanon)  are both a bit short in the body-part department, but make a living as idol performers. Less the singing kind, more as combat performers, though they yearn to be one of the more kawaii (cute) variety. Yoshie moonlights as a vigilante, taking out the organ traffickers she feels responsible for her plight. This brings her the wrath of Aoyama Dharma (Negishi), leader of the local ring, who captures Yoshie. Fortunately, help for Ami is available, in the form of wandering assassin, Matsukata (Sakaguchi) , ranked the #5 hitman by his company.

There are certainly some cool moments here. The pregnant killer… though pregnant with what, I can’t even begin to describe. Or the Battle Bust Sisters, who are exactly what you think they would be from their name, e.g. one sibling’s bosom is capable of inflating into a pair of large, bullet-proof airbags as a defensive mechanism. But it never manages to gel cohesively, and I occasionally even got the feeling that new director Kobayashi was frankly bored of the whole endeavour. For instance, there’s what should have been a glorious, extended one-shot when Matsukata and Ami storm the Dharma HQ, dispatching minions with fists, swords and head-shots. But half of it is played out in fast-forward, entirely negating the point of the whole exercise.

There are some dry jabs at things like idol culture, fans being admonished pre-performance, “If you must jack off, please do so in your pocket.” [This is somewhat ironic, given the copious number of panty shots present!] It seems to lack a forceful personality at its heart, with neither of the sisters having the same presence of Ami v1.0 from the original. Negishi does deliver an enjoyably villainous performance, chewing scenery in a way that’s fun to watch. I certainly wish they had gone with a more practical approach to the effects; while some things obviously need CGI (those airbags mentioned earlier), there’s really no excuse for ever using it to fake arterial spray. It’s fun, but forgettable, and probably won’t stray across my screen again.

Dir: Yûki Kobayashi
Star: Hina Nagimiya, Hanakage Kanon, Tak Sakaguchi, Kimono Negishi

Inmate Zero

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★★½
“Death sentence.”

Zombies and jail aren’t quite as new an idea as you might think. The Walking Dead had a major arc which took place at a prison, the facility’s fences now more useful for keeping things out than in. And back in 2005, The Asylum released the (surprisingly decent) Dead Men Walking, about a zombie outbreak at a maximum security jail. But this is, as far as I know, the first to combine zombies with the women-in-prison genre. Admittedly, it skews considerably more toward the former. However, there’s no denying its place on this site, with its heroine being ex-Special Forces soldier Stone (Chanliau), now held in a black site in the North Atlantic.

She’s there because she allegedly killed a US Senator and his family, whom she was supposed to be bodyguarding. While there is rather more to that story than this, it doesn’t particularly matter. What matters is that she’s now on death row in the women’s wing, awaiting execution. After being attacked by another inmate, she’s moved to the prison infirmary, where she’s joined on the ward by someone from a different area, where dubious medical experiments are being carried out. That person then dies. If you noticed the Z-word in the first paragraph, you will be utterly unsurprised to hear they do not stay that way, and it’s not long before being behind bars is probably the safest place to be, for both prisoners and guards.

On the plus side, you have the advantage of the occupants largely being the hardest of hardened or vicious criminals. These are people for whom human life is cheap, and so the action required to survive are not something over which much sleep will be lost. The brutality is well up to the standard you’d expect for the genre, and the effects seem mostly of the practical kind, which I always prefer over CGI. It’s a solid enough location, offering no easy way out, with the authorities hovering, and ready to wipe everyone out (as in Return of the Living Dead) should it prove necessary. The minor pieces are this in place for a decent enough entry, albeit one which missed the sell-by date on the zombie craze by most of a decade.

The problems, however, are in… well, just about everywhere else. The script is a series of cliches, joined with dialogue where cliched would probably be an improvement. The characters never get past stereotypes, whether its sympathetic guard Brooks (McGinley), queen bee Butcher (Joseph) or cowardly warden Crowe (Garda). The zombies probably show more depth, and their actions are largely limited to shrieking and gnawing on faces. The further into this you get, the more apparent it becomes that imagination stopped at the overall scenario, and does not extend to constructing interesting roles or giving them lines which could credibly be spoken by actual people. Been a while since I’ve seen a film with such a gap between the technical elements and the artistic ones.

Dir: Russell Owen
Star: Jess Chanliau, Philip McGinley, Jennifer Joseph, Jane Garda
a.k.a. Patients of a Saint

Brenda Starr

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★★½
“A bit lacking in Starr quality.”

No, not the eighties version of Brenda Starr: that is well known, and justifiably much derided, to the point it didn’t even reach the necessary level for inclusion here. But neither was it the first version of the comic-strip to reach the screen. Well, at least the small screen. There had previously been a 1945 series, Brenda Starr, Reporter, though some reports describe this as nearly action-free. But the late seventies saw two television efforts: as well as the one under discussion here, three years later in 1979, there was an unsold television pilot movie (now apparently lost) in which Sherry Jackson played the intrepid girl journalist. In contrast, this appears to have been intended as a stand-alone from the get-go. While I’m sure ABC wouldn’t have minded had this been successful enough to become a franchise, it suffers from much the same problem as all the other adaptations, with a heroine that’s too passive to pass muster

However, as TV movies go, this isn’t terrible. It hits the ground running, with Brenda (St. John) investigating the case of reclusive millionaire Lance O’Toole (Buono), who arrives in Los Angeles and goes straight to hospital, apparently being taken down by voodoo magic. Starr is tussling for the scoop with her nemesis, fellow reporter Roger Randall (Buono), though he’s a mere TV anchor, and so the subject of her disdain. Meanwhile, other rich people – including her paper’s owner – are getting blackmail letters demanding $5 million, after the death of O’Toole. Brenda gets a tip and heads for Brazil, the apparent source of the voodoo practices (though let’s be honest, this is one of the least convincing depictions of South America you’ll see!). There, she finds that, things aren’t quite as they seem. O’Toole is far from dead, and in fact is working on creating a new world order, with Ms. Starr scheduled as his queen. Randall is also hot on the tail of the story, though he is arguably even less action-oriented than Brenda.

About the peak of the action is St. John – or, more accurately, her stunt double – climbing out of a bedroom window and down the shrubbery to the ground. However, there was a surprisingly high body-count; we were perplexed by the rather callous way in which the heroine quickly abandoned one deceased travelling companion, without even the courtesy of checking him for a pulse. While she’s no Lara Croft, I didn’t mind St. John’s performance, and that just about kept me watching. The plot feels like something cribbed from a lesser Bond movie of the time – this may be a positive or a negative, depending how you feel about the Bond movies of the time. But Buono, probably best known as King Tut in the sixties TV version of Batman, chews the scenery in suitably agreeable fashion opposite the heroine. At barely 75 minutes (did they have a lot more commercials in those days?). this can’t be accused of outstaying its welcome, even if 75 minutes more is likely long enough for it to be forgotten again.

Dir: Mel Stuart
Star: Jill St. John, Jed Allan, Victor Buono, Joel Fabiani