Tag: cop

Silk

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★½
“Beware: Silk pulls the wool over your eyes.”

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.

Silence on the subject of the plot would have been well-advised too; it’s particularly woeful, involving drug smugglers and vigilante cops. Large chunks aren’t clear, and the sections which are, don’t capture the interest. The box tries to hype things up, with an amusing line in superfluous verbiage – another rule of exploitation is to beware blurbs with four adjectives in the same sentence (“…a chain of spectacular action footage, from screeching car chases to raging gun battles and blazing explosions of firepower.”) – but it’s a lost cause.

Special mention must be made of the appalling soundtrack, in particular the theme song, and although the setting is supposedly Hawaii, I strongly suspect the Phillipines is closer to the truth. But as the box art proves, this is not a film that can be relied upon to deliver what it promises. One can only wonder what Claudine St. James though of this adaptation inspired by her work.

Dir: Cirio Santiago
Star: Cec Verrell, Bill McLaughlin, Fred Bailey, Joe Avellano

Silk 2

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★★½
“She’s back! Except, thankfully, she’s not – it’s someone different.”

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.

After an opening third which is pretty dull and pointless, things do liven up – you get the impression someone actually thought about the script, rather than just spending an hour in Blockbuster, cribbing it off the back of other movies. The goods at the centre of things here are a set of Japanese scrolls which were guarded by a sect of warrior monks; on loan to a “Hawaiian” art-gallery (looks like the Philippines once more), they are switched for a set of fakes. The shenanigans that follow are not perhaps a surprise, yet they are carried out with sufficient energy to keep an uncritical viewer content.

I should point out that, as in the first film, the picture at right does not actually occur anywhere in the movie. Gabrielle does get one surprisingly decent fight sequence however [and I’m not saying that because of her loose-fitting robe, or the wildly gratuitous shower scene which precedes it]. More of such action would have helped – instead, this ends up as a passable, if not exactly memorable, waste of time.

Dir: Cirio Santiago
Star: Monique Gabrielle, Peter Nelson, Jan Merlin, Maria Clair

Tokyo Blue: Case 1

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★★
“Cops and robbers, Japanese style, with much T&A.”

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.

While there’s no denying the charms of the leading ladies, most of the time they’re displayed with precious little imagination, and their characters are far less appealing than their bodies. It’s also very hard to disapprove of the lecherous colleagues depicted by the movie, when the film is at almost the same mental level. Only in the last fifteen minutes, as Mika strives to rescue the captured Rin from an all-girl team of guards, do things start to perk up, with Mika becoming something of an avenging angel, slaughtering receptionists with effective skill and disturbing delight. Unfortunately, this only really goes to show up the first hour of this film, actually the third in the Metropolitan Police Branch 82 series, for the tedious waste of time it is. Best line in the enthusiastic but futile dub: “I’m a blueberry tart!”

[This review originally appeared in Manga Max]

Dir: Younosuke Koike
Star: Chieko Shiratori, Tomomi Kuribayashi, Keiji Matsuda, Hitomi Shimizu

Burn Up W

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★★★
“T & A = terrorists and armaments…as well as what you’d expect.”

This teeters infuriatingly close to greatness, but eventually succumbs to mediocrity because of a tendency to juvenile smuttiness, that fatally weakens what is, at heart, an intriguing story and setting. The Warriors are a special police group – mostly female, with one token (lecherous) man – sent in to sort out nasty cases. The main thread in the four episodes here, is a virtual drug which can turn the consumer into a mind-controlled killer – or, presumably, anything else desired.

Each episode has largely the same strengths and weaknesses. For example, one part builds to a gripping finale with the team trapped in their own station, but starts with a scene where heroine Rio is selling her used underwear, to a shop specialising in such stuff. Then her male colleague enters, trying to buy it direct from her. This is played for cheap laughs, but comes across as downright creepy to these (admittedly Western) eyes. Same with the last episode, which ends with an unarmed Rio facing a terrorist…who orders her to strip naked. And did I mention the nude bungee-jumping?

I, of all people, have few problems with gratuitous nudity, but when it brings an interesting storyline to a grinding halt and stops the action, even I have to draw the line. If I wanted to watch animated soft-porn, there’s plenty of it out there, and the creators here obviously have enough imagination that they don’t need to ramp up the jiggle factor – Rio is a character in herself, and I especially liked mad sniper Maya. Presumably aimed at the acned teenage boy market, anyone else will likely find themselves intrigued and irritated in equal measure.

Dir: Hiroshi Negishi
Star (voice): Yuka Imai, Maya Okamoto, Ryutarou Okiayu, Sakaru Tange

His Bodyguard

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★★
“Competent but hardly thrilling role-reversal of The Bodyguard.”

The imagination on view is exemplified by the title; changing a definite article is about as imaginative as it gets in this TV movie. Kapture, a veteran of Silk Stalkings, plays Jenny Farrell, the security officer at a pharmaceutical company who has to guard the only witness to a robbery, a deaf man (Natale) whom the villains want dead. Oh, and they’ve got inside help.

Save for an interesting diversion at a deaf school midway through, the story (by Dynasty veteran, Emma Samms) follows exactly the path you’d expect: hero and heroine begin antagonistically before falling in love (and into bed). Naturally, the police are not brought in, no matter how many rounds of gunfire are sprayed at the target, with Jenny instead preferring to run and hide in the mountains, where the bad guys can come and have the obligatory final shoot-out.

Kapture isn’t bad, but lacks any physical presence, and while there are attempts made to give her flaws, this just ends up making her character seem weak. It’s nice to see a challenging role for a deaf actor, but it feels like an exercise in political correctness – there’s no reason for him to be deaf, so it smacks of tokenism. While never particularly bad, it’s a remarkably even film, and never gets much beyond mediocre either.

Dir: Artie Mandelberg
Star: Mitzi Kapture, Anthony Natale, Michael Copeman, Robert Guillaume

Policewomen

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★★★½
“Hard-hitting early female cop flick, stands the test of time better than most 70’s movies.”

This is the kind of film Chris describes as “hokey”. I’m not quite sure what that means – the last to get the label was Deathstalker II, so I suspect it’s Chris-speak for “sucks”*. Luckily for the movie, she isn’t writing this review: I actually liked it, but spent the 70’s in the far North of Scotland, so the fashions do not evoke ‘Nam-style flashbacks. Chris denies, with some venom, ever having a pair of patchwork pants; I just find them quaintly amusing.

Anyway, if you ignore the stylings, it’s not bad. Currie plays Lacy Bond, a cop sent to crack an all-female crime ring, after overcoming the sexism of her colleagues. It’s pretty hard-hitting, with Currie showing impressive action skills (along with Jeanie TNT Jackson Bell as a gang-girl). Unfortunately, in the middle, she and a partner are sent to Catalina. Their “investigation” involves sailing, horse-riding, eating hot-dogs and falling into bed with each other, to a hideous easy-listening soundtrack; the film dies for 15 minutes as a result. Otherwise, for 1974 this is impressively feminist, with Lacy rescuing her partners, rather than the other way round, and it has brisk, crisp plotting, although it’s a shame the title gives away a major plot point.

The tag-line for the DVD has inexplicably been changed to, “Before James Bond…there was Lacy Bond”. But when Policewomen came out, there had been eight Bonds released and we were already in the Roger Moore era. Go figure.

* Chris has since confirmed this, with the qualification that ‘hokey’ implies a particularly flavoured subset of suckiness…about which I’m still vague!

Dir: Lee Frost
Star: Sondra Currie, Tony Young, Elizabeth Stuart, Jeanie Bell

Murders Made to Order

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★★½
“Leading contender for least helpful DVD sleeve of all time, for a reason.”

Look at the picture. Note the complete lack of an English language title; I’ve heard of directors taking their name off a movie, but never the film’s name. Also notice the undeniable presence of Cynthia Khan: she is in the film for the first three minutes (in a scene lifted from Nikita), then vanishes without plausible explanation. It’s almost as if she quit the movie after one day, being replaced by Shaw, but they kept the footage shot of her.

There’s a lot going on that makes no sense, but it’s forgivable since we only discovered later that this is a sequel to Sting of the Scorpion, which we hadn’t seen*. The heroine is Maggie, a cop released after two years in psychiatric care because she shot her boss, blaming him for the death of her boyfriend. He sends her undercover to infiltrate a gang responsible for a string of mob-related murders, a task which includes shooting herself up with drugs. Then, as revenge for Maggie’s attack, he hangs her out to dry.

A lot of this is wildly incoherent, badly-staged or just plain dull. However, Shaw provides a cold-hearted performance that is occasionally very effective, in a Jade Leung kinda way, and there are some moments which border on genius. For example, as Maggie comes off the drugs, a fanlight casts spinning shadows on her body, to fabulous effect; once she’s down, the fan spins slower. Shame the scriptwriter, director and voice actresses doing the post-synching were nowhere near as talented as the DP.

* – We did have it on DVD, but on sitting down to watch it, found the box actually contained the wrong film! Wouldn’t mind, except we already had a copy of Mission of Justice…

Dir: Lee Kwok-Lap
Star: Maggie Shaw, Waise Lee, Lester Chan, Fennie Yuen

Fallen Angel

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★★½
“Workmanlike but largely uninspired serial killer thriller.”

Paul plays Philadelphia detective Laura Underwood; while investigating a string of deaths in which men have fallen from buildings, she discovers they are all her high-school classmates. Someone is clearly delivering payback for old misdemeanours. That someone would be Vicky (Johnson); the film is upfront about this, and indeed, there’s very little that isn’t out in the open. We know the who and the why, which leaves the film short on suspense. Paul is hardly credible playing a cop either, and Hall as her ex-fiance Brian is simply irritating.

Fortunately, the script is better than you might expect, with some thought going into the actual detective work – a phrase used by the killer during one of her taunting calls, eventually leads to the discovery of her identity. Brian gets his just reward, and the obvious cliches we expected, never quite materialised, though it teetered precariously close on occasion. There’s also a nice circularity; the opening scene, in which Underwood disarms an abused wife, who is threatening her husband with a gun, is more significant than you’d think.

The film still plays too much like an ABC movie of the week, or perhaps a discarded pilot, and there’s no reason to feel anything at all for the victims. If this one has a moral, it’s likely less the oft-stated, “Never trust a man after midnight,” and more “Don’t climb over railings to have sex with suspiciously-blonde women on the edge of seven-storey drops.”

Dir: Marc S. Grenier
Star: Alexandra Paul, Vlasta Vrana, Michelle Johnson, Anthony Michael Hall

PB 82 (Police Branch 82)

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★★★
“Dirty Harry with breasts. And angst. And a partner scared of roaches.”

Okay, pardon me if I’m confused. What the IMDB says is the plot for Metropolitan Police Branch 82 is actually Tokyo Blue: Case 1. However, there are multiple parts to the series, and I think that this tape from ADV may be the first. Or perhaps the second. Not that it’s important, but just so you know. :-) Mika (Inoue) is a cop with a liking for her Magnum, who loses her partner while capturing the criminal Nezu (Yamato). He then escapes, and she gets a new partner (Tayama), who is more concerned with fashion than the down and dirty world of criminal detection, and also hates cockroaches to the extent of unloading a full clip on one in the police station. Mika rolls her eyes a lot at this, but in Mika’s past lurks a dark secret when she shot first and asked questions later.

As they chase after Nezu and his accomplice (Lilico), there is a load of naked flesh, portrayed in the enthusiastic yet restrained approach typical of Japan. It probably isn’t worth your while, and you kinda wish they hadn’t bothered. In between times, there’s also a lot of the usual “mismatched cops” routine, and it’s no more fresh or interesting here, than in all the Hollywood movies which use it. However, the finale, set in a deserted amusement park, is well-staged and imaginative, with an underwater fight which makes you wish for more of the same. Inoue’s performance also lifts this one up a notch, doing a good job of the “hard case with a soft centre.” It’s still a cliche, but she brings enough life to it to deserve credit.

Dir: Daisuke Goto
Star: Harumi Inoue, Mamiko Tayama, Yukio Yamato, Lilico

Picture Claire

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★★★½
“Bit of a tossed salad – in need of more tossing.”

Set over one day, more or less, in Toronto, this can’t make up its mind whether to be a tense thriller, or an art-house drama. The result is an uneasy blend, where most of the elements are fine, yet the overall result falls short of completely satisfying. Quebecois Claire (Lewis, spouting an irritating French accent, and shouting “Beelee!” a lot) travels to Toronto in search of a photographer with whom she had a brief relationship. She doesn’t initially find him, but ends up chief suspect in a murder committed by Lily (Gershon), and also the only person who knows the whereabouts of Lily’s film canister, which is being sought by a psychotic criminal (Rennie).

It’s definitely Canadian: Claire’s lack of English and Toronto’s ignorance of French, jab at provincialism in a country with two official languages. Still, it’s fast-paced, and Beresford’s use of split screens sometimes adds tension, as when Lily chases after Claire’s taxi, which is stopped at a red light. Of course, at others, the results look like a pointlessly frame-obsessed website. Either way, Gershon is particularly good, and you’re left feeling there’s much more to discover about Lily. This is made clear from her casual, broad-daylight garroting of the sleazy Eddie (Rourke) in a cafe, when she merely suspects him of a double-cross. How Lily got hold of that film-canister is probably a movie in itself.

Dir: Bruce Beresford
Star: Juliette Lewis, Gina Gershon, Callum Keith Rennie, Mickey Rourke