Killing Car

★★½
“Because ‘Killing Asian model of few words’ wouldn’t fit on the DVD sleeve.”

This is a surreal revenge thriller, which begins at a scrapyard where the bickering of a couple is interrupted by an Oriental woman (Tsang), who shoots them dead and takes a car. A series of similar encounters follows, which take a similar form: we are introduced to one or more characters; then the woman shows up, and kills them, leaving a toy car behind at the scene as a marker. This includes a photographer and her assistant; an antiques dealer and his girlfriend; the owner of a dance club, etc. Meanwhile, two cops are following the trail of corpses and Hot Wheels, and it gradually becomes clear that the woman’s actions are tied to a car accident the previous year, with which all her victims had a connection of some kind.

It’s a very chilly piece, with a central character about whom we know almost nothing for the great majority of the film, making it difficult to empathize with her murderous rampage. Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long before we realize that just about everyone else to whom we’re introduced, is going to get shot, so there’s no point in getting attached to, or even caring about them. The role is one that was written for Tsang, who never appeared in anything else, as far as I can tell: that probably says more than anything else. She’s not bad, and has a certain cold charisma that’s appropriate, but there just isn’t enough on which to hang any criticism of her performance. Certainly, despite a willingness to shed her clothes, she’s nowhere near as good as Brigitte Lahaie was in the other Rollin flick we’ve reviewed here, Fascination – interestingly, that appears to be explicitly referenced in one scene here, with a scythe being wielded in a very similar way.

It does remind me somewhat of Ms. 45 too, with a lead character who lets her violent deeds speak louder than her words, though the motive there was a good deal clearer, and placed up front. The highlight is probably an early gun-battle in an almost deserted fairground, which has an eerie, suspenseful quality that’s quite effective, and it’s interesting to see a Rollin movie which does not include female vampires, a staple of his work. However, on balance, I think a few more fangs, perhaps accompanied by a less willfully-misleading title, might not have been a bad thing.

Dir: Jean Rollin
Star: Tiki Tsang, Frederique Haymann, Jean-Jacques Lefeuvre, Karine Swenson

Running Delilah

★★
“Cast better than the material, in female version of Robocop.”

Agent Delilah (Cattrall) is undercover investigating arms dealer Alec Kasharian (Voyagis), and his connection to Palestinian terrorists [this was 1993, when people were concerned about such things]. At the behest of her handler Paul (Zane), she copies a floppy-disk containing vital information [I repeat, this was 1993, when an entire arms dealer’s business would apparently fit on a floppy!], but she’s discovered, shot multiple times, and left for dead. Paul drags her Swiss cheese-like body back to a secret government lab, where she is repaired, upgraded and generally enhanced in terms of speed, power and other abilities.

Initially, this is the subject of some emotional trauma, as she is understandably shocked to discover a Terminator arm where her own used to be. So she breaks out, roaming the streets, and proving to be a nasty surprise for sleazy low-lives. Though her creators probably need to work on the insulation thing, since her arm seems to short-circuit in the rain. That’s government work for you. Naturally, she eventually gets her act together, and the agency boss (Rigg) sends her and Paul out, to bring Kasharian to the justice he so richly deserves. This being a TV movie – or perhaps a pilot, it’s not clear – there are no prizes for guessing how this pans out.

And that’s the problem. No prizes, no surprises either, and precious little in the way of invention or inspired execution that could lift this up above the humdrum, with director Franklin (best known for Psycho II) unable to add enough impetus to proceedings. The only thing that redeems this are the decent performances from the leads, who manage to give this more impact than the material deserves – it was particularly cool to see Rigg, who played one of the prototypical action heroines. Emma Peel, in the mid-60’s. Any scenes that are memorable, such as Delilah shattering all the windows in a hotel, make absolutely no sense, and the parts that make sense, aren’t exactly memorable.

Dir: Richard Franklin
Star: Kim Cattrall, Billy Zane, Yorgo Voyagis, Diana Rigg

Sweet Justice (1993)

★½
“Well, that’s 1 Gb of disk-space I won’t get ba… [Delete] Oh, never mind.”

Sunny Justice (Carter) is a former soldier, who is somewhat estranged from her sister, but who returns to town when the sibling – who also happens to be the mayor – dies under mysterious circumstances [savaged by a dog]. Turns out she was about to blow the whistle on developer Billy Joe Rivas (Gorshin), who has both designs on the town, and who has been using his mine as a dump for toxic-waste. The local sheriff (Singer) had bedded both sisters, but he refuses to act, and federal authorities prove no willing, so Sunny calls up some of her old pals, who were part of an all-female Special Forces unit, to take matters into their own hands. Rivas doesn’t take kindly to having his money-making scheme interfered with, and calls in reinforcements of his own, using his East-coast mob connections.

Awful. Mind-numbingly awful. Carter is best known as the female lead in Tremors, one of our all-time favourites, but this is a terrible combination of bad acting, poor scripting and terrible action sequences. It can’t even make up its mind what it wants to be, with a couple of sex scenes that don’t even have any nudity. Meanwhile, the largest-breasted ex-Special Forces girl (Michelle McCormick) is working as a go-go dancer. Not that she shows any flesh either, though I was amused by the way the inevitable training montage is interrupted for an entirely gratuitous hot-tub scene.

None of the actresses are convincing as ex-soldiers, having arms like twigs, though there is sporadically some half-decent martial-arts action. My interest was briefly piqued when Sunny uttered the immortal line, “I want to put the squad back together,” but there are just too many moments worthy of scorn for this to last. The two dog-attack sequences could hardly have been less credible if they’d just lobbed a Chihuahua at the victims using a catapult, and the final battle consists almost entirely of stuntmen falling off roofs out of shot. I’m left to presume Cynthia Rothrock must have rejected this one, and she was entirely right to do so.

Dir: Allen Plone
Star: Finn Carter, Frank Gorshin, Marc Singer, Kathleen Kinmont

Dirty Weekend

★★★
“This is the story of Bella, who woke up one morning and decided she’d had enough.”

So opens this rare example of British grindhouse. We don’t generally do that genre – it’s just not us, all that violence. But there are odd exceptions, and this would be one. It’s the story of Bella (Williams), who relocates from London to the genteel seaside town of Brighton after splitting up with her boyfriend. However, her flat is overlooked by a window belonging to Tim (Sewell); he begins a series of increasingly-vile phone-calls to Bella, who is terrified at what might happen. A chance encounter with an Iranian clairvoyant (Ian Richardson – yeah, about that…) changes her ‘from a lamb to a butcher’, and she visits Tim in the middle of the night, smashing his head in with a hammer. Galvanized by this, Bella moves on to further “sanitation”, cleaning the not-so mean Brighton streets of other male scum. Meanwhile, a serial killer who preys on young women is gradually moving towards her location.

From the director of the controversial Death Wish, it’s as if Winner said, “Hah! You though that was bad? I’m going to make the heroine female and turn it into a war of the sexes, with every man a sleazy caricature. And it’ll include the Man from UNCLE as a perverted dentist!” It certainly turns your typical British film conceits upside-down, yet still retains that undeniable character: when Bella first sees Tim spying on her, she simply draws the curtains. Her transformation from mouse into avenging angel is impressively put-together, and no doubt Winner was influenced by Ms. 45, with Bella pulling on her stockings and acting out a gun-battle.

But the problem in this case is, Bella’s transformation doesn’t make a difference. In Ms. 45, the interesting moral dilemma was, that our initial sympathy for the central character proved misplaced, as she moved towards killing innocent men. Here, it’s just an ongoing series of repugnant, shallow stereotypes, and attempts to give them depth e.g. with McCallum, are a miserable failure. [Amusingly, one of the thugs she takes out in an alley would go on to greater things: Sean Pertwee has become a genre mainstay, in the likes of Dog Soldiers and Doomsday. Another, Christopher Ryan, was Mike in The Young Ones and has since carved a niche playing Sontarans in Doctor Who!] The subplot with the approaching serial-killer is a complete mis-fire too, and after achieving potential cult-classic level in the middle, it falls short. Still, it’s better than you might think, and is certainly one of a kind.

Dir: Michael Winner
Star: Lia Williams, Rufus Sewell, David McCallum, Michael Cule