★★★½
“Proof that the female action heroine’s appeal is at least a couple of millennia old.”
This intriguing piece of archaeological detective work began with the discovery of an opulent grave in the paupers’ section of a Roman-era cemetery in London. Piecing together the clues, the conclusion was reached that, while it could have been a follower of Isis, this was most likely a gladiator’s grave – which was something of a shock, as the occupant was female…
From here, we head into a discussion of how Roman life centred round the amphitheatre and how the gladiatorial games developed. While there wasn’t a great deal of new information here, it was interesting to see a connection made between the rise of the female participant linked to Boadicea’s revolt, which had taken place a decade or two earlier. This would have no doubt opened the Roman mind to the possibilities of broads with swords. Similarly, in Rome, the absorption of the Amazonian legend (originally a Turkish story) could have led to the introduction of the gladiatrix.
Narrated by – who else? – Lucy Lawless, the documentary is hampered by an over-enthusiastic visual style during the battle recreations. At times, these were so hyperactive as to convince me that I was watching clips from the 2001 version of The Arena. While understanding the need to avoid becoming a sequence of talking heads and shots of ruins, the attempts to jazz the inserts up prove more of a distraction than an enhancement. I’d have welcomed more speculation on the life of the gladiatrix too. Still, great to hear a little about the ancestors of Michelle Yeoh and Pam Grier!
Dir: Jeremy Freeston
Discovery Channel documentary, December 2001
Proof positive that a lack of narrative coherence is no barrier to a good time, She makes about as much sense as you’d expect from a film where the soundtrack veers wildly from Rick Wakeman to Motorhead. It’s post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery, with Bergman as She, the immortal goddess ruling a tribe of Amazon warriors. For reasons which are never explained, She ends up tagging along with hero Tom as he searches for his kidnapped sister. Hey, even Immortal Goddesses need some time off, I guess.
One of the primary rules of exploitation cinema, is never to trust a movie with painted box-art. And, verily, no scene like the picture at right occurs in the film. Indeed, the whole film is sold on sizzle rather than steak, and will probably leave you feeling more than a little hungry. Verrell looks the part, though her slicked-back hair is rather too cliched and obvious, and she does appear to be doing her own action. Her lack of acting ability is painfully obvious, however, and Santiago is wise to keep her dialogue to a minimum.
Despite the title, this movie rarely pits Ecks (Banderas) vs. Sever (Liu). The two spend more of the film teamed, up taking on the evil duo (Henry and Park) who killed Sever’s family and have kidnapped Ecks’ son – perhaps a spoiler, but anyone who didn’t see that one coming, was probably run over on the way to the cinema.
Was the world really crying out for a sequel? I guess Silk proved profitable enough for Gabrielle to replace Verrell as the titular cop, three years later and without any explanation. I’ve liked Gabrielle since her barnstorming double role in Deathstalker II, but even I have to admit she’s not really well-cast here, with her voice inappropriate for a supposedly tough crimefighter. Mind you, anyone would have problems with cliched aphorisms of the “Crime doesn’t pay” kind demanded by the dialogue.
Purely on a historical level, this 1985 film merits attention since it started the whole action-heroine genre in Hong Kong cinema, which thrived for the next decade, producing some of the finest entries ever made. It also was, effectively, the start of the careers of Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock. Interesting to see how they’ve since headed in opposite directions: Rothrock to low-budget erotic thrillers, Yeoh to the Academy Awards.
Released five years before Jennifer Garner was even born, there are some odd similarities between this 1960’s time-capsule and Alias:
As you can probably surmise from the title, this is most emphatically 
You know where you stand with this film inside five minutes, from the moment policewoman heroine Mika Hino (Shiratori) is made to strip off by bad guys hunting for a key – which she naturally is keeping in her lingerie. Mind you, this pales in comparison with where partner Rin Kakura (Kuribayashi) hides her gun… The problem with this tape is that such intimate details are far more interesting than the plot, a tired and severely uninteresting search for a master counterfeiter.
Season Six was in trouble from the start, with the titular heroine (literally) dead and buried. Bringing Buffy back from beyond was a problem always likely to perplex, because once you start resurrecting characters, nothing is a threat any more. Although this was handled moderately well, the show really started to fall apart after the musical episode. This demonstrated one thing beyond all reasonable doubt – why the cast are actors. From then on, most of the stories seemed to have been cribbed from daytime soaps. Buffy has sex with Spike, feels bad about it, then does it again. Xander and Anya’s on-off-off-on-off wedding and relationship. Willow and Tara were no more solidly committed, and the clumsy “magic=drugs” story arc was the sort of thing I’d expect to see on Charmed. In addition, the main bad guys for 90% of the series were a trio of geeks, minor bit players from previous episodes, who were about as threatening as flies, albeit rather more annoying.