Category: Review

No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings

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

“I’m just you without the guilt.”

As we recently discussed, the first book and first season of the TV series had some major differences. The second book does make a significant effort to narrow the gap. Indeed, by the end, we have almost got to the same point as at the end of the TV show, albeit by a rather different route. Then, just when I was expecting this to wrap up and set the stage for the second season, Jennings drops a major bomb. I have to say, well-played: I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as stunned by a twist in a novel before, yet thinking about what had gone before, it made perfect sense. I’m really curious to see whether the TV show follows suit, because if so – nothing will be quite the same again.

To that point, we had more of the cat-and-mouse games between the international assassin codenamed “Villanelle” [though these days, it’s basically her real name, with her true identity buried deeply in the past], and harried MI-5 operative Eve Polastri. The latter is struggling to balance her increasing obsession with Villanelle, and a husband who would greatly prefer it if she was not jetting off to Venice or Moscow at a moment’s notice, leaving him to open a tin of beans. Eve is very much a desk jockey, and not exactly suited to go head-to-head with a ruthless killer. Can wits and persistence counter cold-blooded psychopathy?

It was the twisted relationship between the two which separated the first book and the TV series, with the show having much more development in this area. Jennings said his approach to the second book was altered by the strong reaction of fans to the TV version, and you can tell: there are a couple of scenes which can only be described as fan service, apparently inspired by one notorious broadcast line [Villanelle’s confession to Eve, “I think about you, too. I mean, I masturbate about you a lot.”] This angle really doesn’t fit, considering Eve finished the first book literally tooling up to kill Villanelle, and I found it an abrupt and jarring shift in tone.

The rest of it though, is really well-done, from the explanation of The Twelve’s intent through to Eve’s dogged piecing together of her target’s identity. I read the whole thing in about 30 hours, which is far from my usual leisurely pace. Staying up late, waking up early, in front of the TV… I ripped through it, powered by Jennings’s great eye for description; particularly in terms of locations. Whether it’s attending a conference of neo-Nazis on an Alpine mountain-top or shivering in a cell, deep in the bowels of the infamous Lubyanka prison, the reader feels there.

The balance of the book also feels improved. The first was mostly about Villanelle, with Eve almost feeling like a supporting role; this time, it’s much more even. Indeed, the contrasts in the transitions between the two lead characters form some of the book’s most memorable imagery. For example, we jump from Villanelle prepping the ground by seducing her next target, Rinat, to following Eve on her way home from work:

“The sun is low in the sky, half obscured by oyster-pink cirrus clouds. Rinat turns to beckon to the waiter, but he’s already standing there, as patient an unobtrusive as an undertaker. In the bus, moving at a snail’s pace up the Tottenham Court Road, the only person to give Eve a second glance is an obviously disturbed man who winks at her persistently. It’s a warm evening and the interior of the bus smells of damp hair and stale deodorant.”

This bone-dry dark wit is fairly common, and the style with which Villanelle operates can only be applauded, making up for in quality of mayhem perhaps what the book lacks in quantity. I suspect she would make a fine Bond villain, with an eye for the grandiose and demonstrative over the purely functional [There’s an idea: with all the talk about diversity for 007, why have we never had a Mrs. Blofeld?] In the absence of that, Sunday nights can’t come quickly enough.

Author: Luke Jennings
Publisher: Mulholland Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 2 of 2 in the Codename: Villanelle series.

The Executioners

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★★½
“Home of the hits”

“I realized that there was no such thing as a boundary between good or evil, black and white, right or wrong. All I learned is that this world is divided by the executed and executioners.” The above is spoken by a character toward the end of this, and explains the significance of the title, though your mileage may vary as to how convincing it is as an explanation. Four young women go to a country house by a lake, which holds dark memories for one of them. Belle (Dallender, known here from I Spit on Your Grave 2) watched her father die of a heart attack there, after he rescued her from drowning, and has been plagued by guilt ever since. There’s also Kay (Burn), a writer who is working on a “story of home invasion, mixed with supernatural elements.” And, wouldn’t you know it? Barely has the trip started, before three men burst in and take the group hostage.

There then follows some fairly nasty brutality and sexual violence, which seems especially dubious since the director has made energetic (and, let’s be honest, not unsuccessful) efforts to sexualize the attractive women – both before, and even more questionably, after that scene. The victims continue wandering round in their underwear for no good reason, when any real person would have quickly reached for their clothes. However, the tables are turned, with the three attackers turning out to be a bit crap at the whole home-invasion thing. With them tied up, it’s time for the quartet to mete out their own brand of justice – something which Belle, especially, is very keen to do.

This is where things get at least somewhat interesting, and rather meta. For it turns out the home invaders were not acting on their own initiative. They had been hired to attack the house, by person or persons then unknown, and were live-streaming their actions through bodycams back to their employer. Who is lurking in the woods nearby, and may or may not be ready to intervene on behalf of their employees. The scripting in this section is mediocre: one woman’s break for help and fate is so rapidly glossed-over as to be inconsequential, and one of the attacker becomes an ally with little more than “I’m gonna trust you with a gun. Remember, we’re not the enemy.”

As the poster suggests, Serafini is going for the grindhouse aesthetic. I’m just not sure how well he nails this. The nasty and repellent elements, he seems to have a good handle on, and Dallender impresses in her role. Yet the films in that field which have stood the test of time offer more than that, and it’s there where the film seems to fall short most obviously, with this likely making little or no lasting impression. The eventual explanation raises more questions than it answers, and doesn’t appear to make a great deal of logical sense. If you like your meat raw and bloody, this one may be more to your taste than it was to mine. If only they’d named all the characters after Disney princesses.

Dir: Giorgio Serafini
Star: Natalie Burn, Jemma Dallender, Rachel Rosenstein, Anna Shields

Tarnation

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★★½
“The Dead Evil.”

Following on after From Parts Unknown and Sheborg Apocalypse, this is my third encounter with what Armstrong calls “Neo pulp.” All three have strong heroines at their core, which is something I can get behind. But I suspect his approach works best when he builds out his own universe, as in Sheborg. Here, the inspiration is the classic horror of The Evil Dead trilogy (particularly Evil Dead 2), which is a bit of a double-edged sword. You need to have seen those films to get the references – and, in Armstrong’s defense, I suspect most viewers of his work likely will have. The problem, and there’s no escaping this, is Sam Raimi did it better, leaving this feeling almost like an Asylum-style mockbuster. Turning Ash into Ashette and hanging an Evil Dead poster on the wall of your cabin isn’t enough.

Most obviously, Masterman isn’t Bruce Campbell. While fine in Sheborg as the sidekick, she doesn’t have the presence necessary to drag the viewer along on her journey to a blood-drenched hell and back. Oscar (Masterman) is a wannabe singer, fired by her band, who heads off to a remote cabin with her best friend and friend’s boyfriend. Of course, anyone who has ever seen any horror movie will be unsurprised when things go wrong, in particular her BFF being possessed by some kind of entity. Though there’s a lot of… stuff going on besides. Said stuff includes a flying demon with a unicorn’s head, a boxing kangaroo, a rap battle, and insects crawling out of places insects were never meant to go. And blood. Lots of blood.

There’s no arguing the energy here: when the film gets going, it pretty much doesn’t stop thereafter. However, I’d have traded a sizeable chunk of that energy for coherence. Or a sense of escalation. Or anything to help negate the feeling this consists of Armstrong and his team throwing whatever ideas they could come up with, on the screen, in the order they came up with them. Some of those ideas are fun, and you marvel at the low budget inventiveness. which makes a hole in the floor with a rug on it, a portal to the netherworld. Others don’t work, outstay their welcome, or have execution so flawed they should have been strangled at birth.

As a result, the energy becomes increasingly wearing on the soul, to the point that Oscar discovering the magic words to restore normality are, “Klaatu Barada Necktie,” provoked a tired eye-roll rather than the intended mirth. As loving recreations go, it’s certainly not bad; however, if I wanted to watch a blood-spattered story about a weekend spent at a cabin in the woods gone horribly wrong, I’d watch The Evil Dead and its sequels. Hopefully, Armstrong can develop something that shows off his unquestionable talent, imagination and ability to squeeze every penny out of the budget, on its own canvas, rather than painting on top of someone else’s masterpiece.

Dir: Daniel Armstrong
Star: Daisy Masterman, Emma Louise Wilson, Danae Swinburne

Hellcat’s Revenge

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★★½
“Mums of Anarchy”

The leader of all-girl biker gang the Hellcats is brutally beaten and murdered, by Repo (Kosobucki). Her replacement, Kat (Neeld), tries to get to the bottom of the killing, and take vengeance on the perpetrators. Complicating matters is Repo’s position in the Vipers, another motorcycle club with whom the Hellcats have previously had generally friendly relations. Part of that is due to Kat’s on-again, off-again relationship with their leader, Snake (Kabasinski); he also has the advantage of being cosy with some of the local cops, who divert confiscated drugs back to the Vipers for resale. But was he aware of – or did Snake perhaps even order? – Repo’s actions?

This is a mix of elements that work well, and those that don’t. The characters and performances aren’t bad. Neeld nails the right “do not mess with me” attitude – even if it seemed as if some of her tattoos were rubbing off on occasion! – looking and acting the part required, as well handling the action required better than I anticipate. And normally, a director putting himself in his own film is a red flag which screams “vanity project”, yet Kabasinski is equally solid in his role. Though disturbingly, he reminded me of Axl Rose some of the time. To varying degrees, this compatibility extends throughout the cast, e.g. the cops look like cops. You’d be surprised how often that is not the case in low-budget films.

Yet other aspects come up short. Most obviously: for a biker movie, it has a remarkable lack of… well, bikes. In fact, while I may have blinked and missed it, I don’t think there is a single shot of a Hellcat on, or indeed anywhere near, a motorcycle, at any point in the film. There’s also an ambivalent approach to female nudity. While there are plenty of that low-budget staple, the strip-club scene, the men involved are strikingly bored by it. Which may be the point: yet if they’re not interested, why should viewers be? And Neeld remains resolutely clothed. If you’re going to tout having a Playboy cover-girl in your B-movie… Well, it’s not unreasonable to expect a bit more than (admittedly, impressive!) cleavage.

There are other problems: the scenes don’t flow into one another, and some seem to have needless padding in them. Here’s an example: in one sequence, Kat is being briefed by her lieutenant Stone at a railway station. Six words of meaningful dialogue are preceded by twenty seconds of Stone walking along the platform to reach her boss. In terms of content, there’s simply isn’t enough here for the length, not least because we know from the start who the perpetrator was, significantly reducing the mystery. Sure, there’s a twist, though since even I could see it coming, it won’t be sitting beside The Sixth Sense in cinematic history. Given the obviously limited resources, this still isn’t bad, and I’d not mind seeing more of Neeld. However, my attention was held only intermittently throughout, rather than consistently.

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Lisa Neeld, Len Kabasinski, Deborah Dutch, Mark Kosobucki

Angel Warriors

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★★½
“Jungle boogie.”

After reading some particularly scathing reviews of this, e.g. “stunningly atrocious”, I was braced for something truly terrible, and I guess was therefore pleasantly surprised. Oh, don’t get your hopes up: this is still not very good. It’s just closer to mediocre than dreadful. A group of five “extreme backpacker” young women, go to Thailand for a trip into the unexplored jungle, alongside a video crew. However, it turns out the video crew thing, is just a cover for a mission sent by an evil industrialist to separate the local tribespeople from their precious natural resources. After they witness a massacre, the girls become part of the problem, and team up with the natives to fight back against the corporate raiders.

Let’s start with the positives, which include crisp photography, making good use of the South-East Asian locations. Some of the action isn’t bad either, especially when Andy On, leader of the bad guys, and Chou get involved. The latter plays a soldier who used to be a comrade of the brother of Bai Xue (Yu Nan, who was in The Expendables 2), the leader of our backpacker babes – when not running some global multinational company, apparently. That last sentence more or less exemplifies the problems with the script, which manages both to be needlessly complex, and painfully underwritten. I mean, do we really care that Bai Xue’s cousin Dingdang sells outdoor clothing on the internet? We probably have to, because that’s about the limit of the development we get for her. Having one heroine, or at most two, would certainly have helped.

Certainly, the less we saw of most of their model-wannabe performances, the better, and the skimpy costumes seem designed mostly to provide an all-you-can-eat buffet for the local insect life. Yu is about the only one to do anything approaching actual acting, rather than the shrill shrieking which is the only “extreme” thing about their characters. Not making things any better are the additional subplots tacked on to the story, such as the one involving a tiger, mixing an actual cat with unimpressive CGI, or the remarkable plant capable of curing any poison which the subtitles call, I kid you not, “blah blah” grass. I don’t think I’ve seen such lazy, “We’ll come up with something later” writing since (the not dissimilar in overall plot, now I think about it) Avatar named its mineral “Unobtainium”.

The narration in poorly-written pidgin English is another cause for complaint, being so over-used it goes from quirkily endearing to actively annoying.  And those who care about such things (which does not include me), might object to having a Chinese actress playing the Thai jungle princess. Yes, there’s no shortage of things to complain about, and re-reading the above, can see why this was critically eviscerated. However, it’s mostly low-key irritants: the unquestionably slick production values help elevate it from cinematic crap to merely cinematic fast-food, being largely forgettable and thoroughly disposable.

Dir: Fu Huayang
Star: Yu Nan, Mavis Pan, Collin Chou, Shi Yanneng

Fallen Sun: The Great War, by Harule Stokes

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

While not perfect, I think this one will probably end up sticking in my mind longer than most of the books I read. For one, it helps being a stand-alone and complete work, rather than the first of a multi-volume set. While I understand the rationale behind the latter – that’s where the bread and butter of writing income is made – it was refreshing to get a beginning, middle and proper end, without a cliff-hanger or opening for sequels. It was also different in content, rather than being yet another book which drops fantasy creatures like elves or vampires in a contemporary setting. I’ve seen enough of those this year, thankyouverymuch.

Instead, this takes place on a planet in the late stages of a brutal war between the Northern Alliance and Keynosa. Both sides have developed artificially-enhanced super soldiers, known as Fingers of God (FoG) or Guardians on their respective sides. It’s a brutal process, which few survive, and even those who do, risk an eventual collapse into psychosis. Beyond that, the two sides have different approaches: the Northerners exploit technology, while the Keynosians use biological weapons, in particular transforming the planet’s flora into lethal agents. After a long struggle, the Northerners are making a push for victory. However, their opponents are now also using their technology against them, which could potentially tip the balance of the conflict back to Keynosa.

The protagonist here is Jocelyn Martinez, a former teacher who is now a FoG. Her closest allies in the force are Ophelia, another FoG who is beginning to crack at the seams, and Patricia, a sniper who is still human. Like all soldiers – on both sides – they’re treated like mushrooms by their leaders. For instance, it turns out the anti-psychotic drugs FoGs need to take, interact badly with RX, the weedkiller sprayed in vast quantities to negate the Keynosian bioweapons. It’s hardly as if the FoGs need such problems, above and beyond mere survival. Yet as the end of the war approaches, the question looms: what do you do with  ultimate soldiers once peace breaks out. Making matters worse is Frank Sun, a FoG who went violently insane previously, but has now been released back on to the battlefield for the last push.

Initially, it’s all somewhat confusing, with much not immediately explained. It’s worth persevering, as Stokes does a very good job of getting inside Jocelyn’s head, and depicting the apparent contradictions therein. She’s capable of savage brutality, and the horrors of war are certainly not glossed over; yet Joceleyn is also tremendously loyal and willing to put herself in harm’s way for her comrades. The story also does a good job of switching perspectives, although the heroine encountering the “enemy” and finding – what a surprise! – they’re not so bad, was rather too obviously handled for my tastes. Fortunately, both the book and Jocelyn achieve redemption with a rousing final battle, and it’s almost enough to make me wish this had been another “Part one of” book. Almost…

Author: Harule Stokes
Publisher: Wave One Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book.

Viking Siege

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★★★
“Tree’s company…”

This has the potential to be truly bad, and you need to be willing to look past ropey production values, a possibly deliberately shaky grasp of period (unless “Daisy” really was a popular girls’ name in early medieval times…) and uncertainty as to whether or not this is intended to be a comedy. Yet, I have to admire its “everything including the kitchen sink” approach: throwing together elements from genres as disparate as Vikings, zombies, aliens, sword ‘n’ sorcery and female vengeance shows… well, ambition, at the very least.

The story starts with a group of women, led by Atheled (McTernan), infiltrating a priory. They seek revenge on the monks, because of a sideline in human trafficking which has cost the women dearly. Their plan for vengeance is somewhat derailed by a local lord turning up, and entirely derailed by the arrival of a horde of Vikings, in turn hotly pursued by what can only be described as demonic shrubbery – not for nothing are they referred to and credited as “tree bastards.” To survive through the night is going to take an unholy alliance between the various parties, as well as some captives in the basement – fortunately, those include someone who can speak Viking (McNab). Given their radically different goals, this will present problems of its own.

Wisely, for budgetary reasons, action is largely constrained to the main hall of the priory, with occasional forays outside. This set-up is very Night of the Living Dead, and the tree bastards are also infectious, albeit not quite in the traditional zombie sense. However, it’s in the creatures that the film’s limited resources are most painfully obvious, with them being little more than obviously blokes in masks. Although the boss shrub does occasionally look impressive, when shot from the right angle, it feels a bit much, and is a case where less might well have been more. Just make them nameless berserkers, you’d have much the same impact and save yourself a lot of time, money and effort.

The chief saving grace are the performances. McTernan has the inner steel to go with her crossbow bolts; her colleagues, Seren (Hoult) and Rosalind (Schnitzler) in particular, are very easy to root for; and the nameless translator has perhaps the most interesting character. It’s these that kept me watching, such as in the atmospheric scene when the backstory of the tree bastards is explained. Though told rather than shown, it’s delivered with enough energy to prove more effective than some other elements (martial arts? gunpowder?), which had me sighing in irritation.

To be perfectly clear, it’s a case where you need to go in with your expectations suitably managed, i.e. keep ’em on the low-down. Based on the blandly generic DVD sleeve and title, I probably wouldn’t have even bothered, and certainly would not have expected any action heroines. As such, this was a pleasant surprise, and it kept me more entertained than I feared it might. My advice is, treat it as a loving tribute to a whole slew of B-movie genres, no more and no less.

Dir: Jack Burton
Star: Michelle McTernan, Rosanna Hoult, Samantha Schnitzler, Adam McNab

Tomboy

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★★½
“Female empowerment! (And boobs)”

Crown International were an independent movie studio, who operated from the sixties through the eighties: we’ve covered some of their work before, such as Policewomen and Malibu High. While specializing mostly in drive-in fare, they did occasionally break out, and this was one of their bigger hits: it reached #5 in the box-office on its opening weekend [during Beverly Hills Cop‘s run of thirteen straight weeks at #1; it was a different theatrical universe then!]. Which is kinda odd: it’s a frothy concoction that’s both ahead of its time, in a no-nonsense heroine who takes crap from nobody, and remarkably retro in its gratuitous (and inevitably female) nudity.

Russell plays Tomasina “Tommy” Boyd, the daughter of an astronaut, who is great at sport, and works as a car mechanic. Nobody particularly takes her talents seriously, and if there’s a theme here, it’s of Tommy having repeatedly to prove herself in the facing of those who doubt her. One of the customers at the garage where she works is millionaire scion Ernie Leeds Jr. (Douglas, Kirk’s son), whose family sponsors racing driver Randy Starr (DiNome). Tommy has long had a crush on Randy, but discovers he can be a bit of a dick, and certainly won’t accept she’s every bit as good as him on the track – unless she can prove it by beating him

It takes quite some time for that plot to show up, and until it does, the scenes of Tommy getting one up on the local male chauvinist sleazeballs are lightly amusing, although possess all the weight of a soap-bubble. These angles are a bit at odds with the nudity, mostly courtesy of Tommy’s ditzy friend, Seville (Somers), who wants to be a movie star – though her career here appears to consist of not much more than a donut commercial. Russell’s most memorable contribution to the exploitation, is when she falls into a river on a date with Randy. She changes her top in front of him, with a complete lack of self-consciousness that’s as much laudable as erotic.

This has got to be one of the flimsiest theatrical vehicles I’ve ever seen, and criticizing it is like trying to punch a cloud of steam: “fluff” doesn’t even begin to do justice to its lack of weight. I’ve no clue who was the intended audience here. Tommy’s arc of self-confidence and personal discovery would be suitable for something on the Lifetime Channel – or even Disney. Yet the gratuitous flesh is aimed right for the wheel-house of a teenage male audience, who would presumably not exactly be captivated by the more empowering aspects. Maybe this makes it the ultimate date movie, with something for both halves to appreciate?

Somehow, though, it did find an audience, taking $14.1 million, over $36 million in 2018 prices – not bad for a film, which rather obviously didn’t cost a great deal to make (for comparison, Brazil, released the same year, took just under $10 million). This is certainly one of those cases where you can say, “They don’t make ’em like this any more.” Whether that’s a bad thing or not, I’m less sure.

Dir: Herb Freed
Star: Betsy Russell, Jerry DiNome, Kristi Somers, Eric Douglas

Hell on Route 666, by Dan Leissner

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

At the very end, of the characters says to Cat, the heroine, “Will someone PLEASE tell me what this was all about!” I can kinda sympathize with them: I think it’s safe to say this defied expectations, though I must stress, in a good way. It’s close to 12 years since we were first introduced to Cat; not sure what Dan has been doing in the interim, but I was delighted to find a second volume had finally arrived. Re-reading our review, I probably should have been less surprised: the original managed to have a plot combining “black militants, white supremacists and aliens from outer-space.” I had managed to forget the last, so was expecting merely another funky escapade of seventies style, sex and violence.

Yes… and no.

Initially, it seems almost like a cross between Dennis Wheatley and Russ Meyer, with Cat investigating and infiltrating a Satanic cult based around heavy metal group 666, whose teenage fans are being mind-controlled into committing increasingly heinous crimes in the name of the Devil. But the further on we go, the more outrageous things get. 666 are entirely discarded, with a Devil-worshipping rock-band becoming positively mundane. We end up heading for territory that’s more like the Book of Revelations adapted by H.P. Lovecraft – oh, yeah, and throw in a demonic version of Bumblebee from Transformers, because… Well, just because. Except, Lovecraft wouldn’t have a kick-ass heroine like Cat, breaking limbs and hearts with equal confidence. Or an all-girl commando platoon. Or quite so many pairs of tight jeans, inevitably worn low on the hips…

I did have some issues in the opening third, mostly because Cat wasn’t all that likeable, to be honest. Not sure if I’ve changed, she’s changed or the world has changed, in the twelve years since the first novel. Probably a bit of each. She seems to spent an inordinate amount of time stoned, dressing/acting to attract the male gaze, yet simultaneously resenting it. “Jeez! What a bunch of low-lives,” is a sentiment she expresses at one point; “Shit! Just look at them… bunch of no necks and beer-bellies. God, I hate this crap!” at another. Apparently, she’s the only one allowed to overtly express any sexuality. She certainly has no qualms about seducing a boy of “barely 16”. Reverse the genders there, and it would play rather differently, to be sure.

It was only later, I realized, perhaps this might be deliberate – expressing a darker side to Cat may be why the Satanists were so keen to bring her over to their team. However, I prefer my heroines a bit less… whiny! Still, even in this difficult first third, Leissner packs a wallop, particularly with his chilling descriptions of the mind-controlled terrorism. And the deeper we get, the more Cat relies on her actions to define her. That, and the continually escalating apocalypse make for a real downhill avalanche of a read, one that eventually becomes entirely unstoppable. Dan promises we won’t have to wait until 2031 for the next installment. He’d better live up to that, or I’ll be swinging past to know the reason why.

Author: Dan Leissner
Publisher: Midnight Marquee Press, available through Amazon, for now only as a paperback. I received a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.
Book 2 of 2 in the Cool Cat series.

The Invincible Swordswoman

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★★★½
“Women are vicious. This is very true.”

We’ve previously written about Pearl Ling Chang’s mad Wolf Devil Woman: this is considerably more straightforward, yet is perhaps the better for it. The villain is General Ma Tang, who is imposing a brutal reign of terror on the region under his control, largely through his masked band of kung-fu masters. He ruthlessly takes out all those who oppose him, leaving the country in a state of fear. There remains a small band of rebels, who have evidence of Tang’s misconduct, but need someone who can take it to the authorities. The leading candidate is Pai Yu Song (Chang), a woman whose father was one of Tang’s victims, so has every reason to help, and whose martial arts skills are legendary.

Unfortunately, Pai has vanished, so before anything else can happen, she has to be located. There are quite a few people keen to do so, on both sides and even for entirely separate reasons. Leading them is the one-eyed Tu Yueh Pian, who still holds a candle for Pai, despite an unfortunate rape accusation which led to the loss of his eye. [Hey, it happens] Fortunately, there is an upcoming kung-fu tournament, to which everyone knows Pai is going to show up. The resulting sequence occupies a good chunk of the middle, and is impressive for its sheer scale, since the battleground is a gigantic set of spears and bamboo spikes, on which the participants must balance. Impalements ensue, for obvious reasons.

Finding Pai is just the first step. Even after she’s convinced to work with them, and is given the evidence, the journey is not without incident, shall we say. Indeed, the entire plot is more or less a saga of deception, impersonation and hidden agendas, right up to the final battle. There, we discover that Tang’s own martial arts skills are not be sniffed at. He proves capable of just about beating his opponents without even needing to get up from his throne, which whizzes around the palace courtyard like a kung-fu Dalek. This final battle is where everyone gets to show off their skills to best effect, and is embedded below.

Chang is largely notable by her absence over the first half, yet even when not on screen her presence is still a driving force, and when she shows up, there’s no denying her skills (there’s another heroine here, who is also good, and whose fighting triggers the quote at the top. I haven’t been able to locate her name for sure. It may be Frances Fong). That was something of a surprise, since Wolf Devil Woman didn’t exactly showcase them. Here, there’s no doubt, Chang is capable of holding her own, and makes it even more of a shame we don’t get more chances to appreciate them – there’s likely almost as much fighting screen-time for Tu. Still, one of the more impressive Taiwanese productions I’ve seen. The original title translates as “Cold Moon Orphan Star Needle Not Love“, and yeah, it’s kinda like that.

Dir: Chen Ming-Hua
Star: Ling Chang, Yuen Hua, Zung Hua, Chin Meng