Tag: d

The Draka and the Giant, by Liane Zane

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

Liane Zane brings her Elioud Legacy trilogy to a rousing and powerful conclusion in this novel, which was actually my favorite of the three. (Full disclosure at the outset: Liane, who’s a Goodreads friend of mine, generously gifted me with a paperback ARC, because she knew I’d really liked the two earlier books. No promise of a good review was offered or requested; this book amply earned that on its merits.)

This is definitely a series that needs to be read in order. Our story here opens in medias res, and readers who begin here won’t have much knowledge of the premise or the situation –nor, especially, of the characters and their relationships. You really need the context of the first two books to fully appreciate this one. (With that context, though, it becomes a wonderful capstone to the arch the author has crafted!) However, for the benefit of readers who haven’t read either of those books nor my or others’ reviews of them, and who may not have seen the book description either, the titular “Elioud” are human-angel hybrids (matings between the two races having begun before the Flood, and some unions –or rapes of humans by fallen angels– supposedly continuing to occur). Depending on their degree of angelic inheritance, Elioud may have special abilities that most humans do not, and may be quite long-lived (as in, centuries) as well. Those who are aware of what they are may choose, like other humans, to knowingly serve God or Satan (or, also like many humans, to imagine that they can just ignore that whole conflict and be neutrals). But for those on one side or the other, the term “spiritual warfare” may be a lot more literal than it is for most believers.

Near the beginning of the series opener, the three heroines of the trilogy, a close-knit trio of cross-national friends in their early 20s, all of them both working for their respective countries’ intelligence services and involved on the side in a sub rosa vigilante operation of their own against sex traffickers and predators, met three long-lived Elioud warriors, who revealed to the ladies that they also have angel ancestry. Together, the six of them were involved in fighting the nefarious plots, continued across the first two books, of the fallen angel Asmodeus, who’s now set himself up as a cult leader for a sect of brain-washed humans who call themselves bogomili, after a medieval heretical sect (but who are a lot more malevolent and murderous than their earlier, peaceful namesakes). The other aspect of the series plot is that each member of these two trios felt a strong attraction to a member of the other one. It wasn’t hard to predict that each of the three novels would focus on one of these pairs, and that the course of their romance would be an important plot strand. So here, Beta Cerna and Andras Nagy take center stage.

For me, in the previous books, these two characters had always seemed the least interesting and appealing, largely because I didn’t really know them. Indeed, Beta (short for Alzbeta –she’s Czech) is hard to get to know. She’s a “lone wolf” with very few friends, and a brusque manner that can come across as practically feral. And because Andras is big, strong and taciturn, and mostly inclined to obey orders, it’s easy to fall into the trap of subconsciously dismissing him as not very smart or sensitive (though that’s a great mistake!). But here they come into their own; we see them as the complex and special people they truly are. The previous book ended with Beta arousing a sleeping, half groggy Andras for an unexpected sexual encounter in his bed –and then vanishing before morning. When this book opens, none of the other five main characters have seen her for three years (so it’s now 2018). But we soon learn that there’s been more of a reason for her disappearance than her commitment issues. Much is going on, and Asmodeus (and his fellow demon Yeqon. whom we met in the second book) are exponentially ratcheting up their plans, which won’t bode well for humanity if they come to fruition. But the Archangel Michael (directed, of course, by God, though here He operates offstage) has plans too….

Many of the strengths of the preceding books are evident here also. Zane realizes the settings well (events take place in several European countries), and flavors the narrative with glimpses of the various customs, languages, folklore and cuisine of the nationalities represented. Her characters are round, vivid, dynamic, and distinct (every one of the six main characters have their own unique personalities, rather than being clones of the others, but the supporting characters are also clearly drawn). There’s a strong good vs. evil conflict (with a recognition that we wage this conflict in our own hearts, not just with other people), with high stakes and a lot of dramatic tension. Though this isn’t commercial “Christian fiction,” it’s fiction written by a Christian (the author is a practicing Roman Catholic) and the basic message is Christian. (As in much supernatural fiction, the angels vs. demons conflict is a metaphor for the spiritual conflicts of the real world.) My one quibble here is that our heroes and heroines don’t pray much in crisis situations (and they’re up to their eyeballs in the latter, which would do wonders for my prayer life!). But that’s a fairly minor point. It was also actually easier for me to achieve “suspension of disbelief” here than in the first two books, despite the continuing murky points of angelology/demonology, and the ramping up of Elioud powers here (the mating of two Elioud warriors enhances their abilities). Perhaps that’s because by now I’ve gotten more used to my Elioud friends and their fictional world. :-)

Bad language here is minimal. There are some references to lewd and disgusting sexual behavior (Asmodeus and Yeqon hang out in Amsterdam’s red-light district, and their sexual attitudes are what you’d expect from demons), and one instance of premarital, though not casual, sex; but Zane doesn’t emphasize the former any more than she has to, and the latter is explicit only up to a point. (Basically, the romantic content is quite wholesome, and a wedding –I’m not saying whose!– is one of the more moving scenes in the book.) This is definitely the most violent book of the series, though, with two major pitched battles and a body count through the roof, not all of the casualties being bad guys. However, fans of action thrillers won’t mind this, and fans who like their heroines tough will love Beta. (She’s a deadly accurate shot with both a pistol and a long gun, but her favorite weapons are her chain whip and her karambit, a hooked originally Indonesian knife modified as a switchblade, which she finds it soothing to flick open and closed when she’s nervous, the way some people tap their foot. :-) )

While this is, like the others in the trilogy, a thick, substantial novel, at 525 pages it doesn’t feel a bit overly long; I was immersed and interested immediately, and stayed so for every page. It’s also a highly evocative read emotionally, with some beautiful writing and imagery in places (and some very grim images as well). I’d enthusiastically recommend it to fans of supernatural fiction with Christian themes, of action thrillers or action heroines (or heroes), and of paranormal romance.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Dinosaur Hotel

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★½
“Should have gone extinct”

Roughly ten minutes into this, it was clear I’d made a terrible mistake. I’ve seen my share of wretched creature features in my time, and this is down near the bottom of the barrel. It does have an interesting, if totally ludicrous idea. Five women are invited to a remote hotel, to take part in a game-show, competing for a prize of £100,000. Among them is struggling single mother Sienna (Wunna) who, unable to find a baby-sitter, takes her two kids with her. As the cover ever so subtly suggests, the game has carnivorous dinosaurs roaming the hotel and grounds, and “winning” simply means not getting eaten. Naturally, Sienna’s two kids also disobey Mum’s instructions not to leave the room.

There are only two things stopping this from being any good. Unfortunately, those are the budget and a complete lack of film-making ability. Wunna isn’t bad, as the competitor on whom the movie focuses. There were points at which I found myself teetering on the edge of actually giving a damn about her, and the other women are competent enough to pass muster. However, it was a horrendous mistake to have Sienna’s two kids played, it appears, by her two real kids. Professional child actors are bad enough; amateurs like these (“What. Was. That?”)  are completely unwatchable. The Games Master (John) delivers his lines with more emotion, and he’s a robotic eye in the sky.

I suspect the two issues mentioned above interact with each other. By this I mean, the depiction of the dinosaurs is so inept, it hamstrings the director in terms of what he can do. Shot of extinct, hungry reptile. Shot of contestant looking terrified, and probably screaming. Thoroughly unconvincing shot of reptile eating contestant. Rinse. Repeat. There’s no sense of escalation or real development, beyond one of the competitors being a plant. Oops, I’ve spoiled it. Sue me. There’s a (rather unconvincing) gun found at one point, and that might have been an interesting way to develop things, with various “power-ups” being available. The writer couldn’t be bothered, apparently.

Mind you, the same goes for just about every other aspect of the script too, including the logistical one of how no-one has apparently noticed dinosaurs roaming rural England. As a result of this laziness and general incompetence, everything unfolds in utterly predictable fashion. The dinosaurs refuse to eat the children, and the film can’t even be bothered to play by its own rules. It has repeatedly been stressed that as far as winners go, to borrow a line from Highlander, there can be only one. Then, at the end… Nah, never mind. And that’s aside from the question of how the winner is going to get paid after the person running the event has been eaten. Oops, more spoilers. But if you still wish to watch this, after everything I have said above, a) I have failed at my job as a critic, and b) you deserve whatever results.

Dir: Jack Peter Mundy
Star: Chrissie Wunna, Chelsea Greenwood, Alexander John, Ruby Wunna

District Queens

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★★
“Queen of the East.”

The latest stop in our ongoing tour of female-driven urban crime movies brings us to the nation’s capital in Washington, where the police are celebrating just having taken down a leading light in the city’s organized crime industry. Now, they set their sights on a new target: the gang led by Racine Robinson (Vaughan) and her two daughters, Kat (Crosby) and Candy (Bethea). These might prove a tougher nut to crack, since the Robinson crew have a harsh, zero tolerance policy to anyone who messes with them in the slightest, yet also gathered local support during the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, Racine is so popular in the neighbourhood, a run for political office is not out of the question. However, she has rivals, who have more than a passing interest in seeing her taken out of the picture – albeit for very different reasons, in order to make room for them to rise up.

This is a real grab-bag of elements, ranging from those which work very well, to those which are almost unmitigated disasters. To start on the positive side, there’s a callous disregard for human life here that’s genuinely disturbing. Even if the CGI splatter is far from convincing, head shots abound. And unlike some entries, the women in this one have no issue getting their hands dirty, for even the most trivial of reasons e.g someone tossed water at them. The guns they tote on the cover aren’t just for show. There are plenty of strong female characters on both sides of the law, from the Robinson family through Police Commissioner Stallworth, to dirty cops who have no issue shooting someone in cold blood and planting a gun on them. Perhaps the most impressive is Jada (Simmons), who looks like she actually would pop a cap in you for looking at her the wrong way. Even if there are points where I wondered if I was watching a black Russ Meyer movie, there are worse things as influence.

These good points are, unfortunately, outweighed heavily by the other side of the scale. Some of them are par for the course, such as the way the movie appears a vehicle for the makers to tout their pals’ music, businesses or whatever, in a painfully obvious way. The shaky technical elements are also unsurprising, with a “police station” that is little more than empty rooms. Audio is, as usual, the main culprit: there are points where two sides of the supposed same conversation will sound radically different. The main problem though, is a script which has no idea of the direction it wants to take, once it has set out its pieces on the chess-board. Scenes happen, with little or no connection to each other, and supporting characters drift in, drift out or (more often) get gunned down, without ever establishing relevance. Throw in embarrassingly amateur lesbian canoodling, without delivering any actual nudity, and you have a film which swings wildly from “That’s actually well-done” to “How could they include this without cringing?” every couple of minutes.

Dir: Roosevelt Jackson
Star: Rochelle Vaughan, Kathleen Vaughn Crosby, Stacie Bethea, Sasheen Simmons

Don’t Say Its Name

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★★
“Snow better than mediocre.”

I was going to start this with a warning to try and avoid reading other reviews of this before watching it, because it felt as if, without exception, they all included spoilers for a significant plot-point, that wasn’t actually revealed until deep into the movie. Heck, the IMDb synopsis does it too. However, having sat through the entirety of this bland piece of indigenous folk pseudo-horror, all I can say is “Meh.” You do you: it’s probably not as if it’s going to have much impact, because it’s hard to spoil something which already smells past its best before date.

It takes place on a remote Canadian reservation, where the body of a local activist is found on a road, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Local sheriff Betty Stonechild (Walsh) is trying to investigate, with the limited resources available to her, and deputizes former soldier, now a local tracker, Stacey Cole (McArthur) to help her. It’s not long before other bodies start appearing in more mysterious circumstances. For example, a surveyor for a mining company, looking to move into the area – something to which the car victim was vehemently opposed – is brutally slain, within feet of a work colleague. He can offer no clues as to what happened, beyond reporting an odd smell and a crow circling menacingly overhead, immediately beforehand.

The problems start with the characters, where both Stonechild and Cole are right out of the box of overused tropes. The former is a single parent, trying to bring up a teenage nephew, for reasons that may have been explained, but which failed to make any impact on my recollection. The latter, worse still, is affected with the kind of PTSD common to movies, which has no effective impact on them, and appears to exist solely as an excuse for lazy writing, instead of developing a rounded personality. The rest of the players are similarly underwhelming. While the film is clearly sympathetic to the local native population, its messaging is clunky at best, reaching its worst point during what feels like a five minute YouTube rant.

The positives are mostly on the technical side, with some nice photography of chilly yet beautiful locations, and decent use of both practical and CGI effects. The two heroines have decent chemistry, and at least we don’t have any unnecessary romantic threads, for either of them: Cole’s way in particular of dealing with unwanted attentions is laudably brusque. It’s not enough to salvage a plot, which spends too long getting to where it wants to be, and isn’t particularly interesting once it gets there. It does offer one amusing moment, after they find the creature responsible and discover to their bemusement it is impervious to their bullets. Otherwise, there is precious little here to stick in the mind, and it feels more like a drama with an agenda, dressed up in genre trappings to become a sheep in wolf’s clothing

Dir: Rueben Martell
Star: Sera-Lys McArthur, Madison Walsh, Julian Black Antelope, Samuel Marty

Date a Bullet

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★★★½
“Sympathy for the devil.”

Alright, this needs some background first, so I’ll try my best to give the necessary information. Date a Bullet is a two-part spin-off movie from Date a Live. This was originally a light novel series, that became a manga and then an anime series. The last-named started in 2013 and is currently in its fourth season: it also previously got a pair of OVAs and one movie. This is the second film, though is essentially two episodes that were put together, and released in cinemas as a movie, despite a very short length of 50 minutes.

Date a Live was (and still is) as bonkers a basic premise as anime shows can be. A catastrophe 30 years ago causes spirits to appear in our world – until now, always in the form of beautiful girls. What are the odds? If the spirit is stressed or aggravated, she causes earthquakes and natural disasters. A little advice from me: how about the defense services NOT attack at the very first sight of such a spirit? Just an idea… A secret organisation protecting mankind from them has figured out a new way of dealing with these girls. The young, naive student Shido has to approach them, built up confidence and go on a date with them. When he kisses them he “seals in” their powers by doing so. This usually results in the spirit stopping being dangerous and moving into Shido’s home (where are his parents?). For the remainder of the episodes he is busy, trying to cope with school, the emotional needs of the girls and cooking for them all.

I guess there’s something that show wants to teach young Japanese men how to deal with girls. The whole secret organisation’s spaceship team (lead by Shido’s younger sister?) is trying to figure out the best of three responses for Shido when talking to the girls, and usually chooses the worst possible. Hilarity ensues. But somehow I couldn’t feel anything for Shido except for pity, dealing with all these girls wanting so many different things from him. It can’t be easy to be one of those beloved students in what we call nowadays a “harem anime”. There are plenty more of these where this comes from! The show is based on the idea of a so-called dating-app or game that helps train your dating skills before going into the wild, where untamed femininity can overwhelm an innocent, anxious Japanese boy. The idea is not the worst: I could have used such a tool when I was younger!

But this is a different beast, because it deals with the extraordinary character of Kurumi Tokisaki (Sanada), who is really different to all the other girls Shido met in the main show. Usually, meeting a girl spirit meant that, to cut a long story short, Shido would kiss the girl, or she, enchanted by Shido’s friendliness would kiss him – it has to be voluntarily. She’d join his harem, while they all crave his attention, everyone wanting a piece of him, his time, physical contact and so on. Not Kurumi. When she first appeared in the show, she seemed the girl spirit of this half-season, so to speak, but then quickly turned the tables.

While the other girls might be complicated and have problems, like feeling unloved, being shy and, in one case, not even being into men, there always was a solution. Kurumi is… different: Shido soon found out she was there to sexually arouse him, so she could “eat him”. We can argue about the not-so subtle subtext: male Japanese anxiety about a sexually demanding and active woman. In the very same episode, some boys make sexually charged comments about her, she lures them into the shadows… next the blood is dripping from the walls.

Yeah, cute-looking Kurumi in sexy red-black lingerie is a killer, a femme fatale and if I’m not mistaken (correct me if I’m wrong), falls into the popular category of the “yangires”, female psychotic anime characters that can go on a bloody rampage at the slightest provocation. She is the killer shark among Shido’s girl. But then, she never becomes part of his actual haremm because they never kissed. Innocent Shido would have been dead meat. There may be a hint of Kurumi being abused in her former life; it could just be me, trying to read between the lines.

In a show that follows the usual rules of harem anime, a character like this is almost a provocation, riding roughshod over those unwritten rules. Kurumi is a force to be reckoned with. Her left eye features the yellow dial of a clock: with her magical calling of “Zaphkiel”, an angel that can manipulate time and appears as a giant dial, she can actually turn time around. By shooting her gun into her own head she can replicate herself and create as many clones of herself as she wants. Magically she appears to be independent, she can appear wherever and whenever she wants.

For most of the show she has been the “punch clock villain”, someone you could expect to appear sooner or later in the show. Though she seems to soften her attitude to Shido, after her first encounters with Shido, where he unsuccessfully tried to reason with and find an emotional angle on her – that worked with the other spirits. In one episode, she goes on a date with him, only to be shot by a superior version of herself at the end, This clone was obviously trying to fulfill her supressed romantic desires. In a late season 3 episode, she even helped him travel back in time to prevent a catastrophe that would send one of his girlfriends on a later revenge trip against the other girl spirits.

Okay. On to Date a Bullet , which is exceptional in the Date a Live universe as it tells a story with Kurumi as the main character. There’s no Shido to be found here, none of the harem girls or supporting characters appear, It’s as if you took a bad Bond girl and gave her a solo movie. So, quite unusual! So, what’s the story? Kurumi finds herself in an alternate world where she is told she is in a battle royale. The winner gets a wish, and might even be able to return to her own world. As she is being told by a small girl who functions as comic relief, that the combatants are all “half-spirits”, Kurumi in her no non-sense manner declares her in quite clear terms that she considers herself a full spirit, not a half one. Then there is the character of the White Queen, an especially dangerous ghost she will sooner or later have to face.

The movie is well-made, though the DVD is definitely too expensive for just ran 50 minutes. It’s entertaining enough, though as expected, too short to build up much tension. But it also serves mainly to show that Kurumi has a heart, too. Flashbacks show a younger Kurumi when she was alive and in school with the one friend she had, Sawa Yamauchi, dreaming of how it will be when she will have a boyfriend. While you can easily guess who the White Queen is, Kurumi shows during the story how tough and no-nonsense she is. She is thankful for help, but this doesn’t mean she’s so naive as to trust you immediately. She has a softer side, too, saving a little cat that plays a special role in the story, and at the end seems to have found a pet that might accompany her in future. Though why she killed her best friend in the past, remains unanswered.

The film helped understand the character a bit better and gave her the limelight she deserves. I wouldn’t say we know everything about Kurumi Tokisaki now though. The character stays interesting and as Date a Live with its funny situations and cute/sexy girls is something of a guilty pleasure for me, I look forward for a dubbed version of season four, and discovering what kind of role Kurumi will play in it.

Dir: Jun Nakagawa
Star (voice): Asami Sanada. Asami Seto, Kaede Hondo, Mariya Ise

Dune Drifter

  By

★★
“Any similarities are purely coincidental. “

This is likely an admirable effort in terms of its budget. The IMDb estimates it costs $100,000 and it looks like Price squeezed every cent – or, since it’s British, penny – out of that. To give you some idea, also per the IMDb, “Sections of the film were shot during the Covid-19 United Kingdom lockdown with just the occupants of the director’s flat. The director’s girlfriend doubled for any actors and WhatsApp voice notes from cast members were used for any extra lines of dialogue.” This is the kind of thing that can only be respected. Which is why I feel a little bad about having to give this an underwhelming review, because… truth be told, it’s kinda boring. 

It takes place in a future where Earth is at war with an alien race, the Drekk. A platoon of two-man fighter craft are on their way to the planet of Erebus. However, they emerge from hyperspace into the middle of a battle. The ship, crewed by Yaren (Aitkens) and Adler (Sparrow), is damaged and forced to crash land on the planet’s surface. Yaren is badly hurt in the process, and to make matters worse, they are not the only craft which had to make an impromptu descent. There are a number of Drekk present in the area as well, posing an additional problem as Adler tries to attract help and, when that fails, locate the necessary parts to repair her ship and let it take off for home.

This sounds rather more interesting than the reality, which involves a lot of Adler wandering around, talking to herself. She occasionally encounters Drekk – though never more than one, and I’ve a strong suspicion they were all the same actor (Dwyer-Thomas). They’re not particularly alien either, that notion hardly enhanced by the Drekk sporting what look uncannily like army surplus gas-masks. The most effectively unearthly element may be Erebus, whose part is played very impressively by the black rock landscapes of Iceland, where the film spent a week shooting. But I think things take too long to land on the surface. There’s an excessive amount of chit-chat between the ships on the way to their destination, none of which is relevant to the meat of the story. 

Despite its setting on an alien planet, the title isn’t an attempt at a Dune knockoff, unlike the previously reviewed Planet Dune. Indeed, Price regrets using the name, precisely for that reason. Other moments provoke some eye-rolling: the Drekk exhibit stormtrooper like accuracy, while it’s nice to know that future spaceships appear to run on Linux circa 2012, and can use spare parts from craft belonging to alien races. Lacking any sense of escalation, the story doesn’t so much reach a climax as just end. While Sparrow portrays the heroine with a no-nonsense approach, prepared to do whatever is necessary to survive, a good attitude can only take a movie so far. The budget here is less an issue than the script.

Dir: Marc Price
Star: Phoebe Sparrow, Daisy Aitkens, Simon Dwyer-Thomas, Alistair Kirton

Daughter of Don Q

  By

★★★
“No relation to Maggie, presumably.”

Lorna Gray, the lead here, had been the villainess in Perils of Nyoka, but graduates to the role of protagonist. This is notable for its contemporary, urban setting, without any of the “jungle girl” trappings of previous Republic serials. Heroine Dolores Quantero  (Gray, although now billed as Adrian Booth) is a thoroughly modern woman, who happens to be proficient at jiu-jitsu, and also no mean hand with a longbow. The former is of rather more importance than the latter, which only really crops up during one episode. Perhaps this feistiness is genetic, since Dolores is a descendant of Don Quantero, a heroic historical figure [the title of this may be a nod to 1925 silent film, Don Q, Son of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks].

Another member of the family, Carlos Manning (Mason) becomes aware of a land grant given to their ancestor by the Spanish crown, which will allow him to claim ownership of large tracts of property. However, the rights would be divided among all the Don’s descendants, so Carlos decides to start bumping off other family members. The process begins with the attempted theft of a heirloom from Dolores’s house which details the Quintero genealogy. This alerts her to the plan, and along with journalist Cliff Roberts (Alyn), she looks to protect her relatives and get to the bottom of Carlos’s scheme, dodging retaliatory efforts to lop her off the family tree.

While I liked the modern scenario, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, both in terms of story and in Dolores’s character. Even by the low standards of serial villainy, Carlos’s plans seem both ridiculous and ill-conceived. I was particularly unimpressed by the attempt to have Dolores shot with a harpoon gun while dangling in a net, apparently because it would look like a “vendetta killing.” Yeah, between two gangs of whales. The serial even seems to have a bottle episode consisting largely of footage taken from previous parts, with the heroine and hero describing their previous brushes with death. Considering there are only 12 chapters to begin with, this recycling of previous peril is disappointing, as is the apparent inclusion of action footage from earlier serials, such as The Masked Marvel.

However, some of the more imaginative elements do work, such as Dolores going undercover as the target in a knife-throwing act, and some of the supporting characters are surprisingly memorable. That the heroine knows and uses martial arts may also be close to a first for Hollywood, even if it’s a few basic throws at most. Despite this, she does still have a tendency to fall unconscious too easily, and sit back when things kick off – though we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for the fight where she takes a chair to the face! While overall entertaining, the finale is particularly disappointing in terms of her passivity, with Cliff speeding to her rescue, as the crate she’s tied up in, is about to be thrown off a high bridge. I’d rather she had rescued him, or at least herself. I guess jiu-jitsu and archery was as far as Republic were willing to go, in the way of female empowerment.

Dir: Spencer Gordon Bennet and Fred C. Brannon
Star: Lorna Gray (as Adrian Booth), Kirk Alyn, LeRoy Mason, Roy Barcroft

Debt

  By

★★
“In need of repossession.”

This is one of those cases where you can see what a film is trying to do. It just isn’t very good at doing it. In this case, the central character is Gina (Killips), who works as a collector of debts for the mysterious and reclusive “Max”. This is for reasons that become clear towards the end – yet, like a lot else in the film, it doesn’t actually prove to be of much significance. Her latest job involves locating a very large sum of money which went missing from his organization. Suspicion falls on Myles (Orille), and Gina is tasked with finding out whether he was indeed responsible and if so, what he did with the loot. To this end, Gina inserts herself into Myles’s life and comes under increasing pressure from her boss, Simon (Rumley), to get results for Max. But Gina is increasingly disenchanted with her profession, and also increasingly convinced of Myles’s innocence.

What this is aiming at, is depicting a “realistic” portrayal of an enforcer like Gina. This means meaningless chit-chat about whether Gina will or will not be able to make it to a neighbourhood barbecue. Guess what? We. Just. Don’t Care. It’s the kind of thing which could have been put over by a better film-maker in a couple of shots, without the need for characters actually to have a conversation about it. Still, this is what you expect from a man making his first feature, and also choosing not only to direct, but also write and edit the thing as well. Oh, yeah: while also acting as location manager and stunt co-ordinator. That’s spreading yourself perilously thin. Of all those areas, I’d say the editing comes off best, assembled together things in a way that’s coherent and does the most with what Fairman the director has given Fairman the editor.

The rest? Well… not so much. The fights are unimpressive at best, in particular a woeful one where Gina faces a drunk guy behind a bar. This, being the opening demonstration of her talents, should have established her bad-ass credentials. It looks like the result of five minutes of preparation, and even if nothing else is quite as poor, you only get one chance to make a first impression. On the location front, I was amused by the way the fights were very careful staged to avoid property damage; you’d think they could at least have brought their own coffee-table to go through. The script, as noted, tries to do too much, especially at the end, where it attempts a double-twist, but doesn’t stick the landing. The main positive is, I think, Killips. She hits the appropriately world-weary note for the character of Gina, and manages to handle even the chattier scenes in a way which kept them just interesting enough.

Credit is also due to Fairman for getting out there and actually making a feature, especially one with a strong heroine. Hopefully, next time, he’ll get the help he needs to deliver a more polished product.

Dir: Dave Fairman
Star: Ashley Killips, A.J. Orille, Phil Rumley, Eric Hergott

Dead Shot by Ethan Johnson

  By

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

I did get through this, but there were times when it was on thin ice, and it certainly didn’t work for me. At first, it seemed the heroine, Diana, was maybe eight or nine, going by the way she acts, and how her survivalist father treats her. [The first sentence is, “Diana Fellner stood over her suitcase, clutching a worn teddy bear”] Turns out, she’s actually 23. He abandons her at a roadside diner, for reasons that never become clear, and she is suddenly forced into adult life. With the help of a waitress at the diner, she ends up heading for Newark, and despite her lack of paperwork, gets a job in a shop. Then, all hell breaks loose, with a massive, coordinated series of terrorist attacks and subsequent riots, on what becomes known as Arbor Day. Diane turns vigilante, using the skills her father provided, and after the carnage, ends up joining what’s left of the police force. She has to overcome blatant sexism and a dangerous new world on the streets, as she finds herself – and also deal with her past catching up with her.

I think there was one particular moment where Diane jumped the shark for me. It’s on Arbor Day, when she basically executes a police officer, who has taken exception to her style of summary justice. The lack of real justification for the act, and any significant guilt or regret apparently felt by Diana after it, was rather troubling. Indeed, many of the events on that day themselves seem severely implausible. At the end of chapter 2, her father says, “I’ve got to teach you how to shoot,” for she has never fired live rounds, just a BB gun, before her abandonment. Yet she later proves capable of eliminating an entire mob of gang-bangers, virtually single-handed. Given she was brought up in a remote rural lifestyle, and kept almost in isolation, how did Diana become such an apparent expert in urban combat and pacification techniques? 

The world-building is a bit spartan as well. There’s not even any theories offered as to who was behind the events of Arbor Day – maybe that proves relevant in further volumes? – and the sudden collapse of society into anarchy and chaos seemed more convenient than plausible. I remember 9/11 and the country actually came together after those attacks, rather than immediately descending into The Purge. Diana – who inexplicably changes her name to DianE at the end, as if that’s a radical change – doesn’t seem to be a very nice person, with an apparent zero tolerance for anyone else’s flaws. However, it has to be said, the supporting cast are more annoying than endearing, so the reader is left with, basically, no-one likeable in the book. That isn’t necessarily an impossible block to overcome. However, Johnson doesn’t have the ability to do so, and I was left with no interest in going further.

Author: Ethan Johnson
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Diane Pembrook novel series.

The Devil to Pay

  By

★★★★

“The hills have eyes. And hands, apparently.”

In the Appalachian Mountains, the residents are fiercely, even ferociously independent. They live by their own rules, known as the Creed. It’s a harsh, Old Testament version of law, which replaces conventional society. The lifestyle is well explained in a quote from a census taker which opens the film: “They want nothing from you, and God help you if you try to interfere.” It’s in this world that Lemon Cassidy (Deadwyler) lives with her young son on their smallholding. Her husband has gone off, but this seems not abnormal. At least, until Lemon gets a summons from Tommy Runion (Dyer), matriarch of her clan. Turns out Mr. Cassidy had owed her, and agreed to carry out a task in payment. His disappearance means the debt falls on Lemon, and if she won’t do Tommy’s bidding… Well, see the film’s title. 

The deeper Lemon gets, the more apparent it becomes she is not intended to get out alive, becoming the patsy in a long-running feud between the Runions and another mountain family. Escaping the fate intended for her will require guts, tenacity, a commitment to violence (when necessary) and the unlikely help of a local religious cult, who are… A bit different, even by the high standards of that term in Appalachian society. We have seen this kind of society before, such as in Winter’s Bone. However, what we have here is so alien, it almost beggars belief that this forms part of the contemporary United States of America. Indeed, some elements, such as the cult, are so out there, it’s positively distracting, taking attention away from the core storyline and characters. I must admit, there were several points where I felt additional explanation – in a format suitable for foreigners like myself – would have been quite welcome. 

The husband and wife duo of the Skyes also wrote Becky, one of 2020’s most effective works, and the script here is similarly impressive. It avoids the typical hillbilly stereotypes; while these people may be different to us city folk, they are clearly not idiots. But the key to the film’s success is Deadwyler, who is extremely good in her role. She’s black, and initially I did have qualms about this; given the setting, I wondered how much her character would be defined by her race. The answer? Not at all, and no-one else even mentions it, the material again choosing to avoid the easy route in its source of conflict. This is simply a non-issue, which you quickly forget about entirely,  and the film is all the better for that. Plaudits must also go to Dyer. She only has a few scenes, yet crafts a scary presence in a woman who can go from discussing the finer points of biscuit making, to threatening to bury you alive in a sentence or two. It’s a casual approach to violence, which makes it all the more frightening. 

Dir: Lane Skye, Ruckus Skye
Star: Danielle Deadwyler, Catherine Dyer, Jayson Warner Smith, Adam Boyer
a.k.a. Reckoning