Author: Jim McLennan

Goodbye Honey

  By

★½
“Trucking terribly written.”

There is a good concept here. Unfortunately, rarely have I seen an idea so conspicuously derailed by dreadful execution. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though, and begin by focusing on the positives here. Dawn (Morgan) is a truck driver who is on a cross-country route, and pulls off the road into a remote, wooded location for an obligatory rest stop. Barely has she come to a halt, when a terrified young woman, Phoebe (Gobin), shows up outside her cab, demanding help. She claims to have been abducted, and been held nearby. But she managed to escape from her kidnapper, who is now hot on her heels, with evil intentions. However, is the new arrival speaking the truth or is she dangerously deranged?

It’s safe to say, you have my attention with this set-up, and Morgan is nicely unarchetypal as an action heroine, both in her middle-age, and a world-worn appearance which is about as unglamourous as you could imagine. She’s likely the best thing about this, and her performance was good enough to stop the whole thing from imploding entirely. This matters, because the script appears almost intentionally crafted to wreck any suspense or interest, resulting from both the premise or the lead performance. Within a few minutes of Phoebe’s arrival, Dawn has lost the keys to the truck and had her phone broken. Given the character is intended to be a highly competent, no-nonsense sort, this just doesn’t work. 

There are then two major mis-steps in terms of story-telling. A pair of stoner dudes show up, and the film grinds to a halt as Dawn has to deal with them. It’s painfully obvious they have nothing at all to do with Phoebe’s situation, and it’s embarrassing how shallow the writing for them is. Then, after they have mercifully departed the film, we get a lengthy, entirely superfluous flashback, telling us in detail how Phoebe was abducted, and what life was like in the cellar where she was kept for months. Guess what? We don’t care. It doesn’t matter, and adds nothing at all to the situation at hand. The final straw is the revelation of a connection between Dawn and the kidnapper, Cass (Kelly), which completely defies belief. I may have snorted derisively.

Inevitably it leads to him showing up and a confrontation between him and Dawn, where we learn the truth about Phoebe’s claims. Guess what v2.0? By this point, I didn’t care about then either. The film was on the screen, and I was looking in its general direction. But it would be a stretch to say I was paying any kind of attention, There is something to be said for a low-budget film cautiously writing its story within the limitation of what can be afforded: here, that’s a truck and a forest. However, the failure to convert that into anything meaningful or interesting thereafter, must also be laid at the door of the writers. 

Dir: Max Strand
Star: Pamela Jayne Morgan, Juliette Alice Gobin, Paul C. Kelly, Peyton Michelle Edwards

The Assault

  By

★★★★
“Assault on Shelter 13”

This was a very pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting much from this, especially after seeing Wynorski’s name – let’s be honest, he is best known for bargain basement soft-port. That said, he does occasionally hit one out of the park, such as the sublime Deathstalker II. This is definitely one of his better entries, even if it is, by and large, a low-budget version of Assault on Precinct 13.

Lisa Wilks (Ryan) witnesses the murder of her boyfriend by mob boss Blade, but is too scared to testify. Stacie (Randall), a detective on the force. is told to take care of her, and when Lisa says she’s too scared to go home, takes her to an isolated women’s shelter run by Stacie’s sister, Cindy (Dobro). However, Blade is intent on making sure Lisa doesn’t change her mind and sends his minions to storm the shelter and terminate the threat. However, he reckons without the pluck and resilience of the residents, bolstered by Stacie, as well as ex-army maintenance man, Mike (McCoy).

This has its share of questionable moments. The firing of a good twenty bullets from a hand-gun without reloading would be one, and then’s there’s the supposed two-minute countdown to the climactic explosion, which takes closer to six minutes to happen [I know, because I rewound and timed it]. But there’s a breezy energy which I found highly enjoyable, and the characters, if briefly sketched, are effectively drawn. For example, Toni (co-writer Melissa Brasselle) plays a Latina with a grudge against Stacie, for putting her boyfriend in jail. Or there’s Sandahl Bergman from Conan the Barbarian, as a paranoid schizophrenic, convinced the government is out to get her.

These are simple traits, yet prove entirely usable for plot purposes. We don’t need or want much more than this – it’d only get in the way of the action. There’s certainly no shortage of that, with wave upon wave of faceless minions storming the house, as the inhabitants try to board it up and repel any who make it through their barricades. At points, it feels almost like Night of the Living Debbies, with the thugs playing the role of the zombies. This being a Wynorski movie, there is the contractually obligated strip-club scene. However, showing unexpected restraint to keep its PG-13 certificate, the employees go no further than their undies, and are even strippers necessary to the plot, as that’s where we first meet Stacie, working undercover to expose a protection scam.

You do have to take as read the casual approach for the authorities, the first hour spent dispatching a apparently procession of cop cars into the area, who then either fail to notice anything, or vanish off the grid – because they’ve been mown down. Blade’s tactics, too, seem a bit questionable, especially considering how out-gunned the women are. But as a PG-13 actioner, I found this thoroughly entertaining, moving relentlessly forward, and making the very most of its limited resources.

Dir: Jim Wynorski
Star: Stacie Randall, Matt McCoy, Carrie Dobro, Leslie Ryan

Okay Madam

  By

★★★
“Okay enough to work”

This probably falls into the category of lightly amusing, rather than anything more. But I can’t say I was ever bored, and it’s assembled well enough technically that I can’t complain. The heroine is Mi-Young (Uhm), a former North Korean agent, who defected, changed her looks through plastic surgery, and now lives a quiet existence, with a part-time job selling pastries in the local market. She’s married to Seok-Hwan (Park), a computer repairman, and their life is frugal as far as wealth goes. Seok-Hwan, however, is wins a promotion run by a soft-drink company, getting them and their young daughter a trip to Hawaii.

It turns out the North Koreans still have an interest in ‘Magnolia’, as Mi-Young was formerly known, and need her (specifically, her iris) to unlock some nuclear protocols. They learn she will be on the plane to Honolulu, yet are just not sure which passenger she is. So they hatch a plan for former partner Cheol-Seung (Lee) to hijack the craft, identify and abduct Magnolia, and parachute out, blowing up the aircraft in their wake. Mi-Young is fortunate enough to be in the bathroom when things kick off, so is able to avoid immediate detection. On the other hand, she’s now separated from her husband and child. Both she and Seok-Kwan will need to rely on their skills – long-dormant in the case of Magnolia – to defeat the hijacks before they can execute their explosive intentions.

This one initially slid past me entirely; looking at the poster, it’s very easy to overlook the gun held by the heroine. And, to be honest, this is as much a comedy as hard-hitting action. In that mix, it’s a bit reminiscent of My Wife is Gangster [damn, that came out 20 years ago?], with a reliance on culture clashes or inappropriate actions and speech for its humour. However, it did work pretty well, helped by a good number of interesting side characters. For example, there’s a paranoid air steward who wants to be a hero; an irritable congressman; and an actress who is initially suspected of being Magnolia, due in part to her action movie filmography. Though some of the cultural stuff definitely flew above my head, a decent amount is sufficiently global to work.

The cramped surroundings of the aircraft – even if Business Class is like the African savanna in comparison to the economy spaces we occupy – make a interesting setting for hand-to-hand combat, and help excuse the lack of guns. We’ve seen former singer Uhm before here, starring in Princess Aurora, and she acquits herself well in this. While I suspect some doubling for the more athletic moments, it’s done competently enough to pass muster. I would prefer to have seen more action, in fact, and a little less of the dramatic elements, though that’s more likely my problem than that of the intended audience. I will likely never watch it again, yet don’t feel it was a waste of 100 mins.

Dir: Cheol-ha Lee
Star: Uhm Jung-Hwa, Park Sung-Woong, Lee Sang-Yoon, Bae Jeong-Nam 

Black Crab

  By

★★★
“Let slip the slogs of war…”

Rapace seems to be turning into a female version of Ryan Reynolds. By which I mean, it seems that hardly a month goes past without a new Netflix Original coming out starring her. Ryan had 6 Underground, Red Notice and The Adam Project. Noomi has given us What Happened to Monday, The Trip and, now, this. Still, much as with Reynolds, I’m happy to see her working regularly, and while the results may be a bit variable, they’re usually worth a look. This is no different, though I’m not sure whether its story, driven by a (largely generic) war in the Eastern half of Europe, is helped or hurt by its timing. On the one hand, it gives this a certain “ripped from the headlines” topicality. On the other, I largely watch movies to escape everyday life, not have my nose rubbed in it.

Rapace plays Caroline Edh, who was split up from her daughter in the war’s early stages and has never been able to find her in the years since, as the conflict has turned her homeland into a meat-grinder. Now a soldier, she gets talked into a perilous mission that could turn the tide of the war, with the promise that her child is on the far end of it. She’ll be part of a group of six, skating across a treacherous frozen archipelago in enemy territory, to deliver a package – with the usual, stern “Don’t dare open it” warnings – to a research facility.

I do wonder why they sent a group: it’s not as if the package is large. One person, the quickest skater going undercover, could potentially slide beneath the radar, when a platoon of soldiers attracts more attention. I suspect it’s simply so the various perils, of thin ice, enemy combatants and unfriendly locals, can thin the herd of the operation. Some of them are so thinly-drawn, the makers might as well have slapped a red shirt on them, and been done with it. However, it’s still an impressively filmed, brutal slog of a journey, across a hellish landscape, which will have you reaching for a warm blanket and cup of cocoa. This likely reaches its peak when the group stumble into an ice graveyard: it’s quite the imagery.

We are, of course, here for Rapace, who learned to skate and broke her nose during filming. Despite one of the ugliest hair-styles in her filmography, her performance, along with the visuals, keep things adequately interesting, when the plot and supporting characters often fail to do so. In particular, the last half-hour (though it runs 114 minutes, so there’s quite a lot before that point) is almost entirely predictable, with the big twist actually weakening the lead character, by making Edh seem too gullible for her own good. Consequently, the subsequent redemption feels a bit too much of an uphill struggle. And even a novice like me knows that skating uphill is a tough ask…

Dir: Adam Berg
Star: Noomi Rapace, Jakob Oftebro, Dar Salim, Ardalan Esmaili

Confessions of a Homicidal Prostitute: Demonatrix

  By

★½
“Nice title. Shame about the film.”

I must confess I have not seen Confessions of a Homicidal Prostitute, to which this is a sequel. It’s marginally possible, I suppose, that the character development, story and nuance were present there, and explain why these are all but entirely absent in its successor. I would not, however, be prepared to bet on it. I suspect the original was every bit as mean-spirited as this: and “suspect” is all I’ll ever do, because I won’t be making any effort to track it down. In fact, I probably wouldn’t watch it if my aged mother begged me to on her death-bed. Too harsh? Perhaps. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flat-out uglier film, in terms of largely repellent people being extremely unpleasant to one another, shot in a way that exacerbates its grimness. In its defence, that may be the point. Again: may. It could also just be torture porn of the lowest-rent kind.

From what I can gather, Lilith (Baun) is the titular hooker; I’m not sure if the weird contact lens she wears in one eye is a tribute to Christina Lindberg and her eye-patch in Thriller: A Cruel Picture? Anyway, she apparently got pushed over the mental edge by abuse, and responded to violence with violence. Here, she introduces gal pal and fellow prostitute Eve (Shenk) to the lair where Lilith carries out her torture and slaying. Eve is remarkably blasé about the whole, potential “accessory after the fact” thing, and politely declines to get involved, saying “I don’t think I could stomach it… Not for me!” This reluctance lasts about 30 minutes into the film, where she gets brutalized by the vicious Jackson (McGinnis). All of a sudden, she’s rather more gung-ho, a tendency encouraged by Lilith (“The empowerment you feel after you kill this bastard, will be indescribable”). After initially both being caught and tortured by Jackson, the pair are able to turn the tables on their captor, taking their revenge and sodomizing him with a metal pole.

They then begin a two-woman killing spree, washing the scum off the streets. There’s a montage sequence here, which is quite effective, and rescues the film from receiving the dreaded one-star rating. But otherwise, we’re dealing with content which is cheap and poorly-executed, and possesses little or no emotional impact at all. Weirdly, given the topic and grindhouse-oriented title, the only nudity present is extremely fake penises being abused. Otherwise, it’s remarkably chaste. Though, to be honest, I’m fine with the lead actresses keeping their clothes on. No worries there. I’m good. With special effects that are largely unconvincing, this doesn’t even work as a gore flick, and there’s no sense of development of plot or characters. I got to the end with no sense of.. well, anything. I was neither entertained, educated or appalled. Overall, it’s the kind of film where I wonder if I’ve spent more time writing this review, than was actually spent making the movie.

Dir: Emir Skalonja
Star: Casey Baun, Krystal Shenk, Paul McGinnis, Richard Ruiz

Banshee

  By

★★
“Blows a cylinder”

This one is slightly unusual among action-heroine films, in that it was both written and directed by women: Kirsten Elms and Kari Skogland respectively. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly an advert for their gender; after a brisk start, it falls apart, and becomes a ridiculously implausible movie, in a completely different genre from where it started. That’s a real pity, because where it started, had a lot more potential than where it ends up. It begins with Sage Rion (Manning), a young but highly-talented thief, taking a bet with her partner, as to who can boost a classic car quickest. She picks a 1966 Dodge Challenger, but inadvertently leaves her ID at the scene of the crime.

Back at her house, she finds a note telling Sage to return the car, or the owner will kill her partner, whom he has kidnapped. She does, even though this puts her in deep water with her employer, for having taken and returned the Dodge in defiance of his orders. And this is where the script goes, not just off the road, but through the crash-barrier and down an embankment into a ravine. For Sage is the recipient of a severed head, and gets framed for the murder of her partner. This forces her on the run, taking shelter in the apartment of hooker friend Brenna (Williams) as the police hunt her. However, rookie cop Fitz (Lombardi) thinks there may be more to it than that. Sage hunts down the owner of the Dodge herself, discovering in the end he is a mad DJ serial killer, who kidnaps and tortures his female victims for the sounds they make, which he incorporates into his mixes.

You may want to read that sentence again. Slowly.

What, pray tell, was wrong with the fresh idea of a young, cocky girl car thief, that it was deemed necessary to apply all this sub-Se7en nonsense to it? It was doing perfectly fine as is. She’d been established as a solid character, with some endearing quirks – for instance, she won’t sleep with any man, unless he first volunteers to cook for her. It would have been interesting enough, to see how she’d handle dealing with her irritable and prone to violence boss. Instead, that angle gets all but discarded when the movie moves on to the “lunatic disk-jockey”. It briefly re-appears, only to be ended in a largely ridiculous method of closure.

The other elements of the film are banal and by the book. You have Fitz and his grizzled partner, who suspects the worst of Sage, for no particular reason (I mean, they could easily figure out the head was severed elsewhere?). And the serial killer is little more than a walking set of cliches, who kidnaps Brenna in order to get to Sage, because… Oh, I dunno. I’d largely lost the will to live by that point in proceedings. So much potential here, only for it to be so completely wasted.

Dir: Kari Skogland
Star: Taryn Manning, Romano Orzari, Michael Lombardi, Genelle Williams

Sick Nurses

  By

★★★½
“Nurse Fetish will see you now…”

This is certainly an odd animal. It takes place in and around a Thailand hospital, where one of the physicians, Dr. Tar (Jarujinda), has a lucrative side-scam in selling bodies to… well, if it’s not clear who, there appears to be sufficient demand for them. He is in cahoots with a group of seven nurses, but one of them, his girlfriend Tahwaan (Wachananont), finds out he is having an affair with her sister, Nook (Rujiphan). After she threatens to go to the police, Dr. Tar and the other six nurses kidnap and kill Tahwaan. However, her spirit comes back from the grave, to take brutal vengeance on those responsible for her death. Naturally, the peeved ghost starts with the characters who bore relatively minor culpability, working her way up to Nook and the not-so-good doctor.

Yeah, if you’re into nurse uniforms, this is pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet of attractive young women wearing these. Even outside that, there are plenty of scenes of them wearing less clothes than everyday expectations. Though, in line with general Thai morality, there’s no actual nudity – even when one of the victims takes a lengthy shower, she does so with her clothes on. Kinda weird, and the “grindhouse” tag here should be read as referring to violence rather than sex. For the meat of the film are extended stalk and slash sequences, in which Tahwaan – or, at least, a malevolent entity taking her form, with darker skin – pursues her targets relentlessly.

Sadly, the final dispatch is typically off-screen, a contrast to Western horror where the kill typically provides the money shot. Here, there is instead good, twisted imagination shown in the lead-up to those points, such as her ability to “control” her victims, or strangle one with her hair. The peak moment is likely the sequence4 where one woman’s lower jaw drops off, then her tongue falls out and is eaten by her cat, a scene which definitely upped the grade here by an extra half-point. Whatever you say about Tahwaan, she has clearly put some effort into planning the demises of those who wronged her.

To some extent, this is just a variation on the common Asian trope of the long-haired ghost girl. The twist here is that we are on Tahwaan’s side, especially once we find out the truth behind her death. It’s definitely a novelty to have someone seeking revenge for their own murder, rather than the more common in our genre, some kind of sexual assault. The plot is clearly nonsense; nobody notices any of the earlier victims are missing, for example, and I’ve no clue what the “13 o’clock” stuff was about. Yet I can’t deny, I found myself having an increasingly fun time, as things escalated, growing more bloody and twisted. Nook shows some fight before eventually allowing the “heroine” to reach her inevitable final target of Dr. Tar. It’s likely no spoiler to say, the confrontation doesn’t end well for him, though perhaps not quite as I wanted.

Dir: Piraphan Laoyont, Thodsapol Siriwiwat
Star: Chol Wachananont, Wichan Jarujinda, Chidjan Rujiphun, Kanya Rattanapetch

El Monstro del Mar!

  By

★★★
“Catch of the day.”

I could have sworn I’ve seen this before, but a search of the reviews suggest otherwise! This is an Australian pastiche of a couple of different things. Perhaps the most obvious influence is Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, in that it’s the road misadventures of a trio of delinquent women – two brunettes and a blonde. The leader, Beretta (Scarlet) looks something like a cross between Tura Satana and Bettie Page. We’re less than ten minutes in before their psychopathic nature is revealed, in the brutal killing of two men who stop to offer them roadside assistance – I did like the way the film, shot in black-and-white to that point, explodes into full colour when the violence starts.

They turn out to be hitwomen, hiding out in a beachfront house after completing their latest job, where they cross paths with – further nods to Pussycat – a grumpy old misogynist in a wheelchair, and an innocent young girl, Hannah (Capri). But where it diverges significantly from the Russ Meyer classic is… Well, as you’d expect from the title, the presence of a sea-monster, whose hunger has been impacting the town for decades (including Hannah’s parents).. Yeah, I don’t remember one of them in Pussycat. Then again, that did take place in the desert. It doesn’t actually get any screen time until the half-way point, and the film is quite chat-heavy to that point, save one blood-drenched flashback sequence.

While it’s undeniably a low-budget creature across the board, the atmosphere, assisted by some good use of filters and colour in general, has a Lovecraftian feel to it that was unexpected and well executed. In the second half, there is an increasingly gloomy and oppressive feeling, as the trio stumble across a series of body parts, eventually losing one of their own to the monster, while Hannah rebels against her grandfather. Inevitably, it all ends in the surviving duo taking the fight to the monster and its many tentacles, assisted by Hannah, after they learn the truth about what has been going on. It’s a very moist battle, with body fluids flying on both sides, though I was a bit disappointed we never get to appreciate the full scope of the beast.

It does make for a rather awkward combination, with the two halves of the movie never quite meshing. I kept expecting the fact they were hitwomen would show relevance, but it never amounts to anything: they could simply have been tourists on a seaside vacation. The same goes for the apparent wild swings in era; the cars at the start look sixties vintage, but have very eighties cassette players in them. and any period feel is all but discarded on arrival by the water. However, even if the elements here never go together as you feel they should, they work well enough on their own. If you’re in the mood for a genre fondue, which throws everything into the same pot, you could do worse. Scarlet may not quite be Tura Satana, but then – nobody is.

Dir: Stuart Simpson
Star: Nelli Scarlet, Kyrie Capri, Karli Madden, Kate Watts

Loss Prevention

  By

★★★½
“Missing this would be your loss”

After a series of recent films which… well, let’s just say, left a little to be desired, it was a real palate-cleansing pleasure to encounter this. Oh, make no mistake: this is no classic. But, considering the budget was supposedly under $20,000, this operates within its limitations very nicely. The makers sticks to what they can do, and what it does, it does more than adequately. In particular, the movie is populated with a good number of interesting characters, that are fun to watch. The central one is Nik (Uhl), a young woman who dropped out of college and is now scraping by, working behind the bar at The Soggy Weasel, the pub belonging to her father (former wrestler Snow).

However, her slackerish lifestyle is rudely interrupted when one patron drinks too much, and has to be separated from his keys. Unfortunately, the key-chain also holds a flash drive of industrial espionage data, which he was supposed to hand over to Boland (Wells), the operative of a rival company. Boland is unimpressed, and will go to any lengths to retrieve it, providing the bottom line is deemed sufficiently profitable. Fortunately for Nik, also on hand is Brooke (Albert), a thoroughly competent operative of the company who is the data’s rightful owner, and she takes on the defense of Nik and her father. Not that Nik is averse to getting her own hands dirty, as things turn out.

It does take a little while for things to kick off, as we get introduced to the characters. Nik is more than slightly sarcastic, so can only be respected as such, and also a thoroughly unrepentant lesbian – both combine in an entirely unrepeatable comment about breath mints. But Hollywood could learn a lot about depicting sexual identity from this, which makes absolutely no attempt at moral posturing in this area. Instead, it’s far too busy providing a fast-paced gallop around the city of Louisville, ending up in Brooke and Nik mounting an assault on the headquarters where Boland is holding her father hostage. Yet there’s a twist or two to come, with things not quite ending in the massive firefight you’d expect – another way in which this manages to confound expectations.

In its depiction of corporate warfare, this is rather sophisticated for a low-budget action flick. In particular, Boland’s actions are entirely determined by an accounting of the expected profits and loss. For instance, is it cheaper to buy someone off, or kill them, with all the resulting collateral expenses? It absolutely is not personal with him, just a question of what will balance the books most profitably. The same is true, to a slightly lesser degree, for Brooke – if I heard a late line of dialogue correctly, her surname in the film is Shields! This is an approach which plays into the unexpected finale, when Nik comes up with a solution which satisfies everybody. Well, almost everybody… This has not one, but two, action heroines who are fun to watch, and was considerably better than I expected

Dir: Brian Cunningham, Matt Niehoff
Star: Abisha Uhl, Al Snow, John Wells, Lauren Albert

Suga Babies

  By

★½
“The drugs do work”

As usual, I begin with the normal disclaimer, that I’m about as far from the target audience as you could imagine. For this is an inner-city story about a drug war between three rival gangs in South Carolina: the Guardians, the Dynasty and the GeeChees. That said, however, there have been other films, with not dissimilar themes, which I have enjoyed. Most obviously, I am not the target audience for Pam Grier’s seventies output either. But those still kick ass. Even among the modern entries, there have been ones like Candy, which have felt authentic in their depiction of urban life. This, on the other hand, feels more like a no-budget hip-hop video.

About the main positive is that nobody makes a particular fuss about the Guardians being an all-girl gang, under the loose leadership of Naomi (Mott). They’re just part of the landscape, and everyone accepts that. The cause of the war is a new drug called sugar. In an odd twist, this actually makes people who take it better. We are told it literally cures cancer. I genuinely LOL’d at that. However, the interest of the authorities is limited to a spokesman for Big Pharma, who expresses concern at the street muscling in on “their” turf. It might have been interesting if it turned out Big Pharma had secretly released the drug to the GeeChees for distribution, as a test of its effectiveness. Sadly, not much is done with the concept, with this largely being an excuse for more black-on-black crime.

Indeed, that social crisis is expressly referenced during one of the multiple sequences of “The Buzz”, some chat-show. These really add very little, and the same goes for the supposed “courtroom” scenes. As well as being woefully unconvincing, I don’t think I ever worked out quite who was on trial, or for what. It’s all horribly disjointed, for example a lengthy scene that’s just multiple people picking up drugs from a motel room. Add in sequences which genuinely are no-budget music videos, and the dramatic pickings became painfully thin. There’s just one scene that has any impact. Mouse (McCoy) gets picked up by the Guardians and is found to be dealing sugar for the GeeChees. Her impassioned explanation that she did so because sugar helped her family, is certainly the movie’s emotional high-point.

According to the IMDb, the director had made eight feature films since her first in 2020. That’s an admirable work ethic, to be sure. But I can’t help thinking that churning out fewer movies might lead to an increase in their quality, because this definitely feels rushed, in almost every aspect. Maybe this is what the target audience wants? But it would be patronizing to believe their standards can be satisfied with this kind of thing. On the other hand, this wasn’t even the worst thing I watched today (hello, Battered), at least reaching a bare minimum of technical competence. However, that’s scant praise for any movie.

Dir: Felicia Rivers
Star: Diamond Mott, Patrice Jennings, Shakeela Koffey Scott, Samantha McCoy