Category: Review

Negative

  By

★★½
“a.k.a. We’ve Got a Drone And We’re Gonna Use It”

This is a very cunning title. For when you Google “Negative film review”, all you get are a lot of articles about Bright. Hohoho. [In five years time, people will probably have to Google “Bright” to understand this reference] Actually, it refers to a photographic negative, casually taken by Rodney (Roché) in the park. What he doesn’t realize at the time, is that he has accidentally captured the face of Natalie (Winter), a former MI-5 agent who is on the run. She turns up on his doorstep, demanding he turn over the photo to her, but before she can leave, the two Colombian assassins after her, also show up, and she has no choice but to take (the thoroughly confused and largely unwilling) Rodney with her. Together, they head for Phoenix and a safe house owned by Natalie’s former associate, Hollis (Quaterman), with the Colombians in pursuit.

First things first. I was startled to learn some people apparently still take pictures on film requiring an actual darkroom to develop it: personally, this left the movie already feeling like a throwback to the eighties, about as out of time as Phone Booth is now. [References to The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy don’t exactly help there] Moving past that, it all feels rather too understated. Apart from some blood-spatter, we don’t get any real evidence of Natalie’s qualifications as a bad-ass until an hour into the movie – she’s more about evasion than confrontation, save for a drunk guy at a motel. This may have been a function of a relatively small budget – only $100K, and to the credit of Caldwell and its crew, the overall look generally doesn’t show it. [There are some interesting interviews with the director online, explaining how this was possible. They’re worth a read, since he seems a smart guy]

Resources may also explain why it’s pretty dialogue-heavy: two people in a car is about as cheap as it gets. Though the dialogue isn’t terrible, it just isn’t good enough to carry the film, which it needs to do. As the tag-line above suggests, you could play a drinking game based on the number of drone shots: it got the the point where, on more than one occasion, we accurately predicted the next such showing up. And the “Phoenix” the film depicts… Well, let’s just say, there were rather too many palm trees, and not enough cacti for that aspect to ring true. It offers little or no sense of place, with generic suburbia and desert, which feel like they could be anywhere West of the Rockies. 

Everything progresses much as you’d expect, if you’ve seen this kind of film before, eventually reaching the expected gun-battle against the Colombians. This unfolds at night, and it’s tough to figure out what exactly is going on. There’s likely a bigger problem though: by the time you reach it, I still hadn’t quite been given a real reason to care. While I’d like to see more from Winter (the story of how her character got to this point, might potentially have been more interesting than the one actually told), the film likely works better as a technical exercise than an emotional experience.

Dir: Joshua Caldwell
Star: Katia Winter, Sebastian Roché, Simon Quarterman

12 Feet Deep: Trapped Sisters

  By

★★½
“Drowning, not waving.”

There aren’t many films which will be reviewed both here and on aquaticsintl.com, a site offering “Commercial swimming pool and waterpark industry news” [their opinion: a “woefully inaccurate portrayal of pool technology”]. But then, if you see only one film about sisters trapped underneath a swimming-pool cover this year… Yeah, it’s highly likely to be this one. Eskandari deserves some credit for taking a paper-thin and highly dubious premise and almost stretching it out to feature length. But even he eventually runs out of steam at about the hour mark, and derisive snorting will take over from there. 

Siblings Bree (Noone) and Jonna (Park) are the victims, after trying to retrieve the former’s engagement ring from the bottom of the pool. Lackadaisical pool manager (Bell, recognizable to horror fans from the Saw franchise) closes the giant fibreglass pool cover on them – though I defer to the experts at aquaticsintl.com, who said, “There is no way that would possibly ever meet any ASTM standards for pool safety covers used in the U.S.” Having flagrantly disregarded ASTM standards, he then locks up shop, leaving the pair trapped underneath over a long holiday weekend. Their only hope is the pool’s cleaner, Clara (Farr), but she’s not long out of prison, and the felon sees Bree and Jonna as a moist, trapped meal ticket. Her demands to free them begin with the PIN for Bree’s phone, and escalate from there, as the sisters strive for their own escape.

This feels like a descendant of 47 Meters Down, which was the spawn of The Shallows, which called back to Open Water, all using drowning as the main threat. At least here, “being eaten” isn’t on the menu, and the story has to contrive a number of other elements to stretch things out. Thus we (eventually) get the truth about the death of Brie and Jonna’s father, and the latter’s jealousy about the former’s engagement leads to significant quantities of sibling bickering. Jonna initially comes across as quite the bitch, though we eventually discover there are reasons for her being a curmudgeon. Oh, and did I mention that Bree is a diabetic, who needs an insulin shot, like now?

Supposedly “based on true events” – I can hear derisive laughter from acquaticsintl.com as I write – you’d probably need an especially forgiving nature to get past the “I’m so sure” moments here, such as why they bother to tread water for much of the film, when they could just head to the shallow end and stand there [as well as getting much better leverage for their breakout efforts]. In the first half, things are executed with enough energy as to paper over the cracks, and the series of unfortunate events by which the two women end up trapped is more plausible than I expected. However, I can’t helped thinking it would have been much improved, had Bell returned as his Jigsaw character at the half-way point, and released some sharks into the pool.

Dir: Matt Eskandari
Star: Alexandra Park, Nora-Jane Noone, Diane Farr, Tobin Bell

It Stains the Sands Red

  By

★★
“Aunt Ruby goes on a trip.”

As the world goes through the zombie apocalypse, Molly (Allen) and boyfriend Nick (Mondesir) are elsewhere. Specifically, driving through the desert near Las Vegas, heading towards an airfield where they are going to catch a flight to Mexico – and, hopefully, safely. After their car gets stuck in the sand, Nick is attacked by a lone zombie (Riedinger), Molly flees on foot, striking out in the hopes of getting to the airfield, and pursued by the relentless creature. For it turns out the heroine is having her period, which allows the zombie to track her – and also lends a rather different meaning to the film’s title…

It’s the kind of idea which would have made a strong short film, but falls apart when stretched to feature length. To reach that duration, the story has to bolt on all manner of additional elements, most of which don’t work, while also leaving some gaping plotholes, through which an entire army of the undead could stumble. For instance, there are moments where the zombie is just feet behind Molly; then, in the next scene, she’s far enough ahead to be able to stop for a snooze. Given she seems to have no athletic ability and is clad in shoes which are as far from desert-traversing footwear as imaginable, it feels as if she’s teleporting ahead of her pursuer. Similarly, when she reaches her destination, the script is flipped, and this coke-snorting bitch suddenly becomes a devoted mother, desperate to return to Las Vegas and be re-united with her child. It’s a startlingly unconvincing development.

The aspect that perhaps works best is a surprising one: the relationship between Molly and her pursuer, in particular after he saves her from an unpleasant fate. It’s largely unwitting – just his nature in action – and requires more suspension of disbelief in the way he suddenly can apparently enter stealth mode. But it adds a nice wrinkle, albeit one which is rapidly discarded for the film’s change in direction over the final third. There, the film abandons any effort at inventiveness, and returns to the same furrow which has pretty much been ploughed into the ground [admittedly, where you would expect to find a furrow] by the multitude of zombie films, TV shows, books and games churned out over the past decade or so.

To the makers’ credit, they did at least realize they needed to find something new, a different direction which would help their creation stand out from the walking dead crowd. It’s unfortunate they managed to screw things up in almost every direction once they got past that decision, beginning with a heroine who is startlingly unlikable for the vast bulk of its running time. At one point, she whines at her pursuer, “You’re like every guy I’ve ever met a bar!” I couldn’t help thinking, that’s the kind of comment which says more about the person making it, than the target. You might find yourself rooting for the zombie.

Dir: Colin Minihan
Star: Brittany Allen, Juan Riedinger, Merwin Mondesir

Tomb Raider

  By

★★½
“The female movie version of Green Arrow“

SPOILER ALERT. The following discusses the plot in some depth, and includes spoilers for it. You have been warned!

It’s not great. It’s also not terrible. It’s just… average. This doesn’t break the so-called “video-game adaptation curse”, but nor is it a movie that you will passionately regret having seen – unless you paid too much to see it. Though I didn’t see it in 3D, it’s rather two-dimensional, and doesn’t feel like something which requires to be seen in 3D. It’s a rental – or even wait until it is shown for free on TV – more than a movie worth going to the cinema to see. I don’t regret having watched it, but nor would I regret not having watched it.

The above may all seem contradictory, but this belongs in the category of movies that are so mediocre, it’s very difficult to find strong arguments either for or against. It’s simply “there”. Comparable, maybe, to Tarzan or King Arthur. But then, I’d rate it higher than Wonder Woman, which I found more lackluster than this. So who knows, maybe you will love this, and wonder what I’m talking about?

For call me prejudiced, but I still prefer Angelina Jolie in the role. When I saw the original movie in 2001, I liked it very much, and over the years have found myself watching the Jolie films time and again. It may have something to do with the fact that these films are shown about every other month on TV! ;-) But there’s no denying, Jolie left her mark on the character and that Lara Croft was her star-making and maybe even image-shaping role. Vikander, who is being praised in so many online reviews… Well, I do admit that she is really trying, has some charm and was given the chance to display some humor, usually in her responses to serious questions – it seemed like her “defense” against answering those.

Heck, maybe she is even a better actress, though honestly, I think she lacks charisma. I don’t hold it against her that Vikander had hardly anything in common with “my” version of Alice in The Seventh Son – the movie adaptation of Joseph Delaney’s Wardstone Chronicles. But it can be argued that she hardly resembles how most people perceive Lara Croft in general. This is usually then countered by the gamers’ statement that “this Lara Croft is based on the rebooted games”, etc. etc. This one is more “realistic”, “human”, blah-blah-blah. But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t f___g care!

I loved larger-than-life Lara with her four big guns, her cool attitude, humor and cargo pants. I must admit I never played the new games, which were said to be quite grisly, bloody and violent. Honestly, the new Lara, doesn’t knock my socks off at all! And going by both the first reactions (and financial numbers), my feeling is, I’m not the only one seeing things this way. Perhaps the problem started with the new game’s conception (by Square Enix instead of the old Core Design games), to make Lara less a “female combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones” and more some kind of Lisbeth Salander/trauma survivor. Not an approach that meets my approval.

This is not Alicia Vikander’s fault, of course. She plays what she was hired for and does fine in that respect. Doing MMA-training (reminding me of Million Dollar Baby) or biking in London, she probably wins some audience members over, only to be let down by the script, the moment she boards the ship under the guidance of Lu Ren (Wu). He’s tasked with leading her to the last known destination of her father (West): a small island, full of evil white men forcing poor Asian men to do their hard work and open the tomb of – according to legend – an evil empress named Himiko.

Honestly, the MacGuffin of these movies has always been the least interesting aspect for me – that’s why it is a MacGuffin, Hitchcock would say. And it also doesn’t mean much here at all.

But let me step back. The beginning of the movie, the first 20-25 minutes, seemed fine. They built up an interesting character, a Lara who didn’t allow others to see her weakness, and could be saucy, funny, stubborn and nevertheless kind of likable. But after all these London scenes (which include in minor supporting roles, Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi – how did he get into the movie?), the film… hmm… How can I say it..? Became less interesting – at this point, I still want to withhold the evil word “boring”. I liked the interaction with Lu, and the big ship-wreck on the coast, which I know is taken directly from the game. But after Lara arrived on the island, the film for the majority of its subsequent running-time, dropped dead for me.

I don’t know how this happened, and don’t really feel inclined to start a detailed analysis here. It may have had to do something with Vikander insisting that main screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet made this a “serious” heroine story. Though it can be said that the new games, have a strictly serious (and even brutal) tone, too. Originally, the script was supposed to be much more jokey and contain quite a bit of humor. By cutting this element out, the movie may actually have bit into its own flesh.

I mean, we all know these old tropes, mainly established by the Indiana Jones movies in the 1980s. Heck, I still remember having seen Part III, to which this movie is surprisingly often compared, in the cinema. So, I think, this genre had its day a long time ago. But it may have been the hokiness and the fact that the stories were so overdone which resulted in these movies being so funny and enjoyable, like Roger Moore’s James Bond movies. The Jolie movies never took themselves completely seriously. Yes, they may have been campy but they were high-class camp. Going all in, as Jolie did with her over-the-top performance, made them entertaining romps of the genre.

This Tomb Raider doesn’t want that. TR 2018 wants to be taken seriously. It wants us to care for a whiny tween-brat who doesn’t sign the inheritance papers after her father has been lost for years, and suddenly decides (ignoring his strict wishes) to go looking for him. This Lara sometimes does things which seem downright dumb to me. But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, allowing that she is a beginner – though Vikander is already older than Jolie, when she starred in her first Tomb Raider movie!

So, she lands on this island of evil villain Matthias Vogel (Goggins). To my amusement, even in the German version, they pronounce his name how an American/British person would (for those who care, the right pronunciation in German would be Ma-tee-ahhs Foh-gehl). Despite fine acting on Goggins’ part, there’s nothing special about the role. This bad guy has no attitude, nor any real motivation. If they had given him personal reason – say, hoping to resurrect a dead wife with the powers of the dead empress – he could have been a potentially interesting, maybe even tragic, character. I’m speculating here, but my feeling is that in writing the script something may have fallen off the table. It would be nice to discover something – well, anything – more about this character. in deleted scenes on a future DVD.

As it stands, the character is like Orson Krennic in Rogue One: doing his job (for almost a decade?), wanting to leave this damn island and return to his daughters. This is disappointing. Heck, the Jolie-villains at least wanted to be masters of time and space, or annihilate the majority of humankind with a toxin so they could govern over the rest. That is what I call a villain, and may be one of the big shortcomings of this movie. Vogel and his minions are also trying to find Himiko’s grave… because that’s what his employer on the other end of the phone tells him to do. Our Lara escapes into the jungle to execute some urgently needed action-scenes that I’m quite sure are taken directly from the computer game. I give Roar Utaug this: they look good. But somehow they didn’t reach me emotionally, because at no time had I built up any identification with the heroine.

One of the most praised things about the game was the heroine being faced with disgusting creeps, absolutely merciless, killing and abusing people, so that young-Lara could then grab her bow and arrow and play Katniss with them. Here, Lara does some kind of mud-wrestling with a man who is larger and bigger than her, before drowning him in a puddle and screaming while fighting him. I guess the female audience is supposed to cheer her for doing so, relieved that the evil attacker got what he deserved. But, honestly, the scene left me as unenthusiastic as when a young Sean Connery stabbed one of Dr. No’s guards in his kidneys in the swamp. Really, I enjoyed it more when Angelina killed off a dozen well-trained mercenaries, who rudely interrupted her bungee-jumping exercises inside Croft Manor.

Lara than finds her father (West) who is wearing an Alan Quatermain/Sean Connery memorial-outfit – maybe not accidentally? That was the emotional climax for me in the movie, and I got a bit moist-eyed, seeing West in his cave, repeatedly mumbling opposite hurt Lara, “It’s not real, if you don’t pay attention, it will vanish again!” and Vikander’s reactions: that’s acting. The fact that they were able to touch me emotionally here – but only here! – proves they are both good actors, when the script gives them something to work with. I liked him sitting on the beach and her cutting his beard, though have to say I was equally touched in the 2001 movie when Lara met her (dead) father, played by Jolie’s real father, Jon Voight.

I still wonder why Matthias has previously claimed to Lara, that he killed her father. What was the intention behind that? And why did he think it was good she was there? He hardly could expect this young girl would have her father’s expertise. There are some real big plot-holes in the film; the best thing is maybe not to think too much about them, otherwise the whole story might fall apart. Just as unbelievable for me, was that this young woman, who last night had a hard time killing, suddenly takes up her bow and arrow and starts shooting men in the camp right and left. But then, this was one of the big selling points of the 2013 game – albeit taken right from The Hunger Games, n’est-ce pas? ;-)

Then it goes directly into the grave with Lara, Daddy, Matthias and some other unfortunate red-shirts replaying the best parts of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – only with less originality, suspense and emotional involvement. Honestly, I found this the least interesting part of the movie. I always wonder when reading some great praise for the reboot, if those guys/gals ever saw the original Indys, Tomb Raider 2001 – or at least that Tarzan movie from the late 90s/early 2000s. Because otherwise, I can’t see why anyone at all should think this so great. Really, I don’t understand it; these scenes were yawn-worthy, IMHO. I don’t know the game, but hope it was more exciting there, when we arrive at Himiko’s grave – 

We know how a big final climax should look from the Indy-movies, don’t we? Well, there’s probably something to say about going against expectations… But, you know what? There’s the Rule of Cool, cited by Kim Possible director Steve Loter, which says that you can do something because it’s cool, even though it may not be very logical. The original movies understood that. No matter how cheesy or even stupid you may have found them, there’s no denying the endings of both were cool and visually stimulating climaxes.

This, on the other hand… Himiko has no super-powers: Matthias even shows us a mechanism that lets her dead body sit up. She was the highly infectious “patient zero” for some kind of super-deadly virus, and the movie shows its effect on some of the redshirts. Probably, these scenes are meant to disturb but appear so toned down, we are not the slightest shocked. You want to surprise someone with villains who meet a terrible fate? Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark again. Heck, I’d say, all three of the eighties Indys directed by Spielberg. Roar Uthaug… not so much. I personally would have had Himiko call out a horde of zombies, to flood the island and have the living fight the undead army. And I don’t even like zombies! It would have been a (film-)logical, visually fitting climax; what we get here is far less, and terribly unsatisfying.

That’s something I feel about so many scenes of the movie. The foundations for something (excitement, humor, suspense) are there – but everything is then either seen before in other movies, or diluted to the point it didn’t trigger any emotional response from me. It’s frustrating. The ingredients for a great meal are there and the cook knows his job. But when it’s all put together in the pot and cooked, the dish at the end is very, very average. It’s not tasteless, you definitely can eat it, but it’s nothing special; you have eaten it before and it tasted better at thise other restaurants. In cinematic terms that’s Tomb Raider 2018 for you.

Daddy Croft ends up sacrificing himself and it doesn’t even touch me a one-hundredth of when Sean Connery survived at the end of Indy III. The villain dies a typical Disney death and I couldn’t care less. I knew nothing about him and he was less charismatic (sorry, Mr. Goggins) than the two villains of the Jolie movies. Maybe Paramount should have kept the film rights for Tomb Raider, instead of letting them fall into the hands of Warner/MGM? But the idea of replacing Jolie had been circulating for some time, when she was becoming a little bit difficult too deal with and the second movie didn’t make as much money as the first. And neither will this, even ignoring 17 years of inflation.

The film ends with Lara back in London, finally signing her inheritance papers, in the presence of Jacobi and Scott Thomas, only to find out that “Trinity”, the terrible organization that Matthias worked for, is tied to Croft Holdings. And for anyone who has not been in cinemas for the last 15 years, nor has seen the first Largo Winch movie, the film makes it clear that the voice on Matthias’s telephone belongs to Scott Thomas. Honestly, it should already be well-known that you do not let this woman occupy an executive position in your multinational conglomerate!

Obviously, this is an attempt to launch a new franchise of Lara fighting the evil minions of Trinity, but it remains to be seen if the returns qualify for a sequel. I think they may have been a bit premature and their efforts in vain. It tries to replace the memory of the old Angelina Jolie-led movies by being an adaptation of the successful computer game of 2013, but fails in this respect. Jolie was too iconic, too charismatic for that. My feeling is that she made Lara and Lara made her. Alicia Vikander – for all her good looks, acting talent and admitted charm – can’t hold a candle to her.

The will is there… but not the ability to do it. Yes, it’s nice to see Vikander pulling out a splinter from her stomach. But honestly, seeing Jolie punching sharks is somehow more impressive. Less is more they say, but sometimes over-the-top trumps everything else, I think! There are good actors here doing their jobs, some nice action scenes that are over too quickly, and a bunch of scenes that don’t work the way they should, because they simply don’t have the required little bit extra, that’s always needed.

Dir: Roar Uthaug
Star: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu

Blue Line

  By

★★½
“Behind the masks”

Small world. Well, small-ish. I used to work for the same online media company as one of the scriptwriters of this, though our paths there never crossed in any meaningful sense. That’s probably about as interesting a factoid i.e. “not very”, as this film. Indeed, outside of some gratuitous strip-club breasts, it feels like it could have strayed in from a slow weekend on Hallmark. Battered wife Lindsay (Ladd) teams up with longtime stripper friend Nicole (Moore), and commit a string of armed robberies around their local area in Connecticut, their identities hidden with Halloween masks and voice-changers. They’re building up towards a big score, which will involve relieving Lindsay’s abusive husband, Seth (DeNucci) of a crisp $1.8 million dollars in cash. But increasingly, sniffing around the robberies is Detective Broza (Sizemore), a city cop who has recently been transferred to the town: Nicole starts a relationship with him, ostensibly to see how the investigation is going. But is that her real motive?

There’s not very much logic to the script here. If the women are going to get away with $1.8 million, why are they bothering to hold-up convenience stores, especially since they torch the loot. Is this supposed to be some kind of practice? It’s entirely counter-productive, since all it does it bring down the full force of local law enforcement (which admittedly, is not much!), and puts potential targets on their guard. From the get-go, beginning with the raid on the store, and progressing through their  robbery of a private poker game (one of whose participants is, amusingly, former WWE and nWo star, Kevin Nash!), these appear to be there simply to try and enliven the cinematic proceedings, rather than because they make sense. Much the same goes for Nicole’s day-job as a stripper. This exists, purely for titillation (and not very much titillation at that; if Moore herself actually got naked at any point, I must have blinked and missed it).

I can, at least, see where the makers were trying to go with the relationship between Lindsay and Nicole: aiming for a twisted version on the “Thelma & Louise” partnership, with two contrasting personalities which have bonded, in part through common adversity. Ladd plays the quieter and more cautious member of the pair, clearly wounded by the dysfunctional relationship in which she’s trapped. Moore is, however, a bit more fun to watch, clearly perfectly willing to manipulate anyone necessary, including both her partner and Det. Broza. But the two items never quite gel with that T&L synergy, this duo eventually ending up as rather less than the sum of their parts. It might have been better if they’d concentrated on one or the other, combining the effective aspects of each character into one truly captivating person, rather than the slightly interesting ones, who struggle to hold the viewer’s attention, especially fighting to escape the gravitational pull of the more doubtful plot elements.

Dir: Jacob Cooney
Star: Jordan Ladd, Nikki Moore, Tom Sizemore, Tom DeNucci
a.k.a. The Assault

Rain Dance by D.N. Erikson

  By

Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

The saying, “You only live twice,” is supposed to be a metaphor, but for Eden Hunter, it ends up being very much a statement of fact. She’s a former con-artist, dragged back from beyond the grave by vampire warlord, Aldric. He puts her to work on a hidden island as his personal soul-harvester, with a strict quota per week. It’s not great work, but it’s steady – at least until Eden’s beach-front house is attacked by a werewolf with murder on its furry mind. She then finds herself seen by the FBI as their prime suspect after an old partner in confidence tricks turns up dead on her doorstep. But, wait! There’s more! She has to deal with the rain goddess – presumably, the source of the title – to whom Eden is also in thrall, and whose rules she just broke. A gang involved in robbing her boss of millions in gold bullion. Her dead sister. A serial-killer politician. Oh, and a talking cat.

Overall, the main problem is that this feels like Book 2, rather than Book 1. Rather than starting off at what might be considered the more logical point of Eden’s first death, it joins her career as a reaper, already well in progress, opening with the werewolf attack. There is a fair amount of information – and quite important data, at that – which is not provided to the reader until some distance into the story. As the paragraph above suggests, there’s not exactly a shortage of plot threads either: as a result, some of them inevitably end up feeling under-developed. The goddess, for example, seems to show up at the end, purely to provide an adversary for the heroine’s boss, and I’m still not sure about the point of the politician. Conversely, some things feel under-explained. The island is supposedly hidden… yet the FBI know where it is? Who delivers – oh, I dunno – milk to it? It has an awkward sense of being something which looked a good idea at the time, only was never thought through properly.

It’s probably not the book’s fault, but there was a sense of deja vu too for me. Only a couple of months ago, I read Fugitive of Magic by Linsey Hall. It was also a story told in first-person perspective, about a paranormal heroine accused of a murder she didn’t commit, who has to find the real perpetrator in order to prove her innocence. Having recently read that story, I didn’t find a revised version of it especially interesting. The main positive is Eden herself, who made for a decent central character. There was a nice moral sense of grey about her choices, with her trying to do the right thing, even though those choices were frequently constrained by the unfortunate circumstances which she inhabited. If we’d been brought along with Eden on her resurrection, rather than being dumped into the middle of it, this would likely have been a more worthwhile story.

Author: D.N. Erikson
Publisher: Watchfire Press, available through Amazon as both a paperback and an e-book.
Book 1 of 3 (to date) in the Sunshine & Scythes series.

Run Coyote Run

  By

★
“Coyote ugly.”

runcoyoteI must have masochistic tendencies. For having seen Bryan’s Lady Streetfighter, which I described as “Legitimately terrible, among the worst films I’ve ever seen,” I inexplicably decided to watch this half-sequel, half-remake, from the same director. It was Sunday and I was bored. What can I say? This isn’t quite as awful. Emphasis on the “quite,” however, for it’s still very, very bad.

That lack of quality begins right from the thoroughly confusing concept, which has the same actress as in Streetfighter (Harmon), portraying psychic Interpol agent Anne Wellington, who is the sister of the character she played previously, Linda Wellington. Anne is looking into the mysterious death of Linda, and discovers that her sister was close to acquiring a highly-incriminating cassette, in which an organized crime source spills the beans, naming names. Needless to say, the local mob are keen for this tape not to fall into the hands of the authorities, and send a hitman biker priest (Neuhaus) after Anne.

The whole “psychic” angle appears largely an excuse to re-use scenes of Linda taken from Streetfighter, which Anne sees in her dreams. This is perhaps credibly economical, and fits in with the plot. But those more familiar with the director’s work than I ever want to be, report that Coyote also includes footage out of other, entirely unconnected Bryan films. Perhaps he’s relying on the idea that nobody would notice – which makes sense, since it would require someone to watch more than one of his movies. Guess he under-estimated the hardiness of true bad-movie fans.

For, make no mistake, this is every bit as bad, as you would almost inevitably expect a film to be which consists of scenes taken from multiple different features, spliced together with entirely new footage. [I added the word “almost”, having remembered the incredible Final Cut: Ladies & Gentlemen, which puts together clips from 450 movies into a story that’s not just coherent, but also emotionally engaging] It peaks early, with an opening gun-battle and resulting car-chase that borders on the competent, for Bryan’s strength seems to be when he is not having to handle dialogue.

Or plot. Or acting. For it then plunges downhill thereafter, to a finale where the bad guys get blown up because they spend their time banging on a closed door, rather than – oh, I dunno – snuffing out the fuse on the dynamite which is sitting on the table beside them. Harmon’s thick, middle-European accent returns, and at least they made the effort this time to give her an overseas back-story, Shame they didn’t also make her a cyborg psychic Interpol agent, which would have helped explain her monotone delivery. If this does anything positive, it’s re-calibrating my genre scale: it’s comforting to realize that, 14 years into this site, I can still identify the garbage which borders on unwatchable.

Dir: James Bryan
Star: Renee Harmon, Frank Neuhaus, Timothy De Haas, William A. Luce

Revengeful Swordswoman

  By

★★½
“Can’t argue with the title, certainly.”

There’s no hanging around here. Virtually as we meet our heroine, Hsiang Ying (Lee), she’s getting tossed off a cliff by her kung-fu teacher, into a pack of wolves. Having survived that and made her way back – perhaps assuming this was all some terrible misunderstanding – her master then disavows her, announces he was the man responsible for killing her father, and locks her up in a cage. This all happens within, literally, three minutes of the film starting. Fortunately, a passing stranger sees fit to free her from the cage, and the ‘Heartless Lady’, as she becomes known, can go on her way, with the eventual aim of being exactly what the title suggests: revengeful.

Not much in the way of surprises either, although there’s no shortage of action, some of which might possibly be quite good. I am, unfortunately, not able to speak with authority, as there does not appear to be any version of this available which comes close to approximating the correct aspect ratio. This is “pan and scan” at its most annoying – and making matters worse, there’s no panning. You simply get the middle chunk of the screen, regardless of relevance. Which leads to a surreal moment later on, where there’s a discussion between two characters, both of whom have managed to be cropped out of the picture, leaving an entirely unoccupied frame. Antique still life: Chinese room, with conversation.

I might be inclined to give the film the benefit of the doubt, except for the hideous attempts at “comedy” – and, please, take the quotes there as necessary. For some reason, the script decides to give Hsiang a buffoon for a side-kick: he’s named “Clown” in the English dub, more in hope than an accurate reflection of any amusement gained from his presence. For virtually any scene in which he appears, will have you wishing the cropping of the print had been even more extreme. This reaches the pits in a scene at a brothel, where he and Hsiang are seeking information about their target, and is so painfully unfunny as to be borderline offensive. When one aspect of a film sucks so badly, it’s harder to believe it’s good anywhere else.

Yet, there are occasional moments – maybe no more than three or four consecutive seconds, when Lee is shot from far enough way that she fits completely on the screen – which are almost impressive enough to make you go. “I should try and track a good-quality copy of this.” Lee is fluid and graceful in motion, not dissimilar from her Hong Kong contemporary, Angela Mao, although the supporting cast here is more knock-off, and fails to make anything of an impression. In the end, this is all just too generic, from the title through the environment to, pretty much, the entire plot. As noted elsewhere, I watched this the same day as another film made in approximately the same time and place: the two have already merged into one Taiwanese blob of fu.

Dir: Artis Chow
Star: Judy Lee, Wen Chiang-lung, Man Kong Lung, Li Tung

Devour, by R.L. Blalock

  By

Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

Back when I was growing up in Britain during the eighties, I was a voracious reader of horror fiction. The two staples of my literary diet were the works of James Herbert, who occupied the more “literary” end of the spectrum, and Shaun Hutson, whose novels were about as subtle as a kick to the groin. This likely tends towards the latter end of the spectrum, being a straightforward tale of survival during the zombie apocalypse. It begins as Olivia Bennett is heading home from lunch with her husband, when the St. Louis freeway on which she is driving becomes one of the first killing zones.

With civilization rapidly imploding, and communications all but non-existent, Liv has to make her way through the increasingly dangerous cityscape toward Slag Stead, a farm on the outskirts which may (or may not) provide a safe haven, and where her husband may (or may not) be waiting. Making matters considerably more perilous, Liv also has to protect her toddler daughter Elli. On the one hand, Elli’s survival provides a considerable dose of maternal motivation. But on the other, she’s too young to understand that there are times when silence is not just golden, it’s essential for survival.

In the cyclical nature of horror, I can’t help wondering if we have passed Peak Zombie, as it were. The Walking Dead has now completed its eighth season, and seems increasingly to be struggling to keep things fresh. This goes back to the roots of the sub-genre: rather than man vs. man (or woman), against a zombie backdrop, the story here is almost entirely woman vs. zombie. Or, rather, zombieS, for the pack nature of the infected here is part of what makes them devastatingly lethal. They’re also fast, rather than the classic, slow-moving shufflers of the George A. Romero universe: zombie purists may be less than happy with that choice.

However, this approach does lead to a relatively repetitious approach to the story here: Sneak, slay, hide, rinse, repeat. There’s really only so many times you can describe Liv’s chosen weapon of a mallet, whacking a “feral” upside the head. While occasionally, Liv and Elli do cross paths with other survivors, I rarely felt that the subsequent interactions provided much in the way of additional depth: these additional characters felt dropped in merely to serve the plot. I did like Liv, and appreciated her relentless survival instincts – though for someone supposedly training to be a nurse, she seemed curiously squeamish, especially during the early stages [admittedly, she gets over it, and by the end is wielding that mallet with something bordering on enthusiasm].

Occasionally, Blalock does crib a bit too obviously from other genre entries. The sequence where the ferals attack and over-run a radio station closely parallels 1979’s Italian movie, Zombie, while the notion that they “sleep” at night was used in The Girl With All The Gifts. Admittedly, there’s precious little that’s truly new under the sun in the zombie world, but if you want to stand out from the rotting, flesh-gnawing masses, you need to offer something new, be it in content or style. This doesn’t do much of either, and while competent enough, is eminently forgettable.

Author: R.L. Blalock
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as both an e-book and a paperback.
Book one in the Death & Decay series

Fair Game (1982)

  By

★½
“Not to be confused with…”

In particular, not to be confused with the Cindy Crawford film of the same name. But for the purposes of this site, more importantly, not to be confused with the film of the same name, also from Australia, released four years later in 1986 and which became one of Quentin Tarantino’s inspirations for Death Proof. I say this, since I did confuse them, and got the wrong one. I have now rectified the error, and a review of the latter will be along really soon. We regret the mistake. No, seriously: look at the rating here. WE REGRET THE MISTAKE. It perhaps could also be confused with Hostile Intentions, which was watched the very same day, and similarly concerns three young women on a road-trip, that goes horribly wrong. [Interesting how often the “three women” trope shows up: Charlie’s Angels, Charmed… Hell, Destiny’s Child. Future article idea filed away!]

That I’ve spent 150 words without actually discussing the movie, likely tells you all you need to know about it. But if you insist…

Three schoolgirls – Jilly (Trengove), Joanne (Mack) and Liz (O’Loughlin) – head off for a weekend of fun at a beach-house owned by a relation. However, it’s not long before things start to get creepy, as their car is chased by a pair of mysterious black vehicles, driven by a group of local men. When they finally appear to elude their pursuers, and reach the sea-side, they meet their next-door neighbour, Pamela Wilkinson (West). She has a dark secret of her own to hide: she was part of a check forging scheme, but absconded with the loot from her last job. That puts her on the radar as well, and it’s not long before someone is (or someones are) lurking in the shrubbery nearby. What are their intentions?

It’s probably this split of focus which damages the film most. If it had stuck with Pamela or the schoolgirls, this could at least potentially have been a creepy thriller. The latter, for example, could have turned into a teenage version of Deliverance, which might have been a nice twist. Instead, just as the film begins to generate any degree of tension, for example, when the girls are being pursued by the black vans… It switches over to Pamela’s story, and effectively, has to start over. Then, when it gets going, we’re back with the schoolgirls – where were we again? Fitchett is so bad at meshing the elements together, it feels like you’re channel-hopping between two different movies, hoping (with steadily decreasing optimism) one or other of them will eventually make it worth your while to stick around.

Though West’s pedigree as Australian Penthouse‘s 1979 Pet of the Year is not in question, shall we say, the sleeve shown promises a great deal more salacious schoolgirl content than the film delivers. Again, it says a lot that, such are the film’s other flaws, even this level of blatant false advertising provokes no more than moderate irritation.

Dir: Christopher Fitchett
Star: Kim Trengove, Kerry Mack, Marie O’Loughlin, Karen West
a.k.a. Desolation Angels