Tag: documentary

Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers

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I am quietly co-opting the title of the recent Netflix documentary, for a more general piece on the topic of Aileen Wuornos – arguably the first, and certainly the most infamous, female serial killers. Firstly, I do have some qualms about including her here. After all, she’s certainly not what you’d call an “action heroine”. But a girl with a gun? Definitely. Representing the dark side of that trope, absolutely. But that doesn’t, and shouldn’t, mean people like her shouldn’t be covered here. Especially when, as with Wuornos, they have inspired any number of cinematic works, ranging from the straight-laced documentary to the luridly sensational. Both directions have their own merits.

With that out of the way: was Wuornos, as is often claimed, “the first female serial killer”? That’s largely a matter of definition. There were certainly earlier women who killed indiscriminately, some in much greater numbers than Wuornos’s seven confirmed victims. The most famous would be Countess Elizabeth Báthory – herself the inspiration for many movies – who was accused of killing as many as 600 in 17th-century Hungary. But, in general, multiple murderers seem to have had different motivations depending on gender. Women are more likely to kill for profit; men for sexual gratification.

History precedes her

Indeed, the modern era killer with the highest possible number of victims is a woman – probably one you’ve never heard of. Mariam Soulakiotis, known as ‘Mother Rasputin’, was the abbess of a Greek monastery. She would typically lure wealthy women to the convent, torture them until they donated their fortunes, then kill the “donor”. She also had a scam involving a cure for TB, which inflated her numbers dramatically, albeit through negligent homicide. During her trial, figures of 27 murders and 150 negligent homicides were given, though some suggest the true total for which she bore responsibility was over five hundred. That figure would surpass the tally even of the likes of Pedro Lopez, the “Monster of the Andes”, often regarded as the most prolific serial killer. 

Here are a selection of other women, generally regarded as having killed considerably more than Wuornos’s seven victims – and mostly had cool nicknames bestowed upon them in the media. I’ve not included medical personnel like Jane Toppan, because that would be a whole other list.

  • 35 victims: Vera Renczi, Romania, “the Black Widow” – poisoned two husbands, multiple lovers, and her son with arsenic during the 1920s. But her existence is unconfirmed, and she may be an urban legend. 
  • 17 victims: Irina Gaidamachuk, Russia, “Satan in a Skirt” – pretended to be a social worker to gain access to the homes of elderly women, kill them with an axe or hammer, then rob them (pictured, right).
  • 16 victims: Juana Barraza, Mexico, “La Mataviejitas (the little old lady killer)” – A former pro wrestler known as “The Silent Lady”; like Gaidamachuk, she targetted old women, bludgeoning or strangling them during robberies.
  • 14 victims: Belle Guinness, USA – enticed men to visit her rural property through personal ads. Her crimes were only discovered after her supposed death in a fire, though her fate is unconfirmed.
  • 14 victims, Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, Thailand, “Am Cyanide” – Borrowed money to feed an online gambling addiction, then poisoned those to whom she was in debt. 
  • 13 victims, Tamara Samsonova, Russia, “the Granny Ripper” – Started killing at age 56. Murdered, dismembered, and in some accounts cannibalized, people in her flat.
  • 12 victims, Enriqueta Martí, Spain, “the Vampire of Barcelona” – Self-proclaimed witch that abducted, prostituted, murdered and made potions with the bodies of small children. That’s enough Wikipedia for me. 
  • 11 victims, Nannie Doss, USA, “the Giggling Granny” – Confessed to killing four of her husbands, her mother, her sister, her grandson, and her mother-in-law by arsenic poisoning.
  • 11 victims, Marie Alexandrine Becker, Belgium, “the Belgian Borgia” – Poisoned wealthy clients in order to supplement her income while working as a seamstress.
  • 10 victims, Jeanne Weber, France – Strangled ten children, mostly while babysitting them, though also including her own. In the most unsurprising verdict ever, found not guilty by reason of insanity. 

Damaged people damage people

If you ever want proof of the above, Aileen Wuornos’s early life would be it. She came from a broken home, her mother filing for divorce from her father shortly before giving birth to her daughter at the age of sixteen. When Aileen was three, her mother abandoned her, and she was taken care of by her grandparents. Who were both alcoholics. Aileen accused her grandfather of molesting her, and by the age of 11, she was sexually active, exchanging her favors for cigarettes and drugs. She became pregnant at 14, and was thrown out her grandparent’s house shortly after giving birth, living rough in woods and turning tricks to survive. 

Her life from there through the late eighties, was an all-you-can-eat buffet of more or less petty crime (theft, check forgery, robbery) and suicide attempts. There was also a bizarre marriage at age 20 to the 69-year-old president of a Florida yacht club. This proved short-lived – likely mercifully for everyone – being annulled after nine weeks. In 1986, she met motel maid Tyria Moore in Daytona Beach, and the pair moved in together. But in November 1989, Wuornos killed her first victim, 51-year-old store owner Richard Mallory. She later claimed this was in self-defense, after Mallory attacked her. There may have been some truth in this, because he had been convicted of attempted rape, albeit back in 1957. 

However, it’s stretching credulity to accept this also applied to all of the six other men she shot dead, between May and November the following year. Naturally, such a spree did not go unseen, with an increasing media frenzy, especially after a witness reported it was two women she had seen abandoning a victim’s car. Fingerprint evidence – obviously, her dabs were on file in Florida due to her criminal record – helped the net tighten on Wuornos. After the arrest Moore, who had fled to her family home in Pennsylvania, agreed to turn state’s evidence against her lover, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. 

In January 1992, she went on trial for the murder of Mallory. After a two-week trial, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. Wuornos subsequently pleaded “no contest” (effectively guilty) or guilty to five other murders, with one left uncharged because the body was never found. She also received the death sentence for those killings. Her attitude and explanation changed dramatically over the years. At some points she stoically maintained the self-defense claim. But at other times, she admitted her guilt, saying in court, “I am as guilty as can be. I want the world to know I killed these men, as cold as ice. I’ve hated humans for a long time. I am a serial killer. I killed them in cold blood, real nasty.”

The wheels of justice ground slowly, as they tend to do in these cases. It was more than a decade after receiving her first death sentence, that Aileen Wuornos was executed, in October 2002. It had taken so long, the state of Florida had switch from the electric chair to lethal injection as the preferred cause of death. Anyone hoping for closure from her final words would likely have been more confused than anything: “Yes, I would just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I’ll be back, I’ll be back.” To date she has not, in fact, come back. 

However, approaching a quarter century since her execution, the ghost of Wuornos still haunts society in a variety of ways, remaining a topic of dark fascination. There have been books, there have been TV investigations, and even an operatic adaptation of her life. There have, naturally, been movies, at all levels. The best-known is 2003’s Monster, which won Charlize Theron an Academy Award for her depiction of the killer. But we also have seen the more lurid Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman. Below, we’ll cover the first fictional retelling of Aileen’s story; a documentary which came out not long after her death; and as evidence of the ongoing interest in Wuornos, a Netflix film about her, released just last October. 

Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story

★★
“Undercooked and overdressed.”

Less than eleven months after Wuornos was convicted on her first murder charge, this TV movie was broadcast on CBS. If you’re at all familiar with the facts of the case, this won’t have much to offer. It does go a little bit deeper into the police procedural, in the shape of Capt. Steve Binegar (Grimm) and investigator Bruce Munster (James). Interesting that it does depict the FBI’s indifference to the case, the investigation basically being left up to the local cops. This gives credence to an article I read, which quoted an unnamed profiler with the bureau as saying there was no such things as a female serial killer. However, said local law enforcement comes up largely smelling of roses.

I’ve a feeling this may be because some members of the police were actively involved in the production, a fact which caused them some trouble due to the conflict of interest. There were, according to The Selling of a Serial Killer, re-assignments as a result, though nothing more formal appears to have happened. This may also have been based on the story Wuornos’s girlfriend Tyria Moore sold, though I’ve not been able to confirm this. The main problem is simply that a TV movie is a profoundly inappropriate medium in which to tell the story of a serial killer prostitute. Particularly one who was a lesbian, though you would be hard-pushed to work that out here. Aileen/”Lee (Smart) and Tyria (Overall) seem much more like room-mates than lovers.

The limitations of the form mean that we don’t really get to see much of… anything, to be honest. The formative influence of Wuornos’s appalling childhood is only seen in a couple of murky flashbacks. The killings themselves come nowhere near the description of them by the authorities as brutal. The closest we get to the grubbiness required for an authentic portrayal is probably the chaste shower scene in which Aileen examines her wounds, behind which we get entirely inappropriate sexy sax music. Though let’s face it: as the picture above proves, Smart and Overall are both far too conventionally pretty, despite being somewhat uglified up. I did laugh at how even the witness sketch impressions of the pair were prettier than the ones actually used by the police. 

As long as you’re fine with an obviously watered-down idea of the story, this isn’t terrible. The actors generally do a good job: I’m not familiar with Smart, but there are points when she is able to capture the body language and mannerisms of the real Wuornos effectively, and her performance does balance between making Aileen sympathetic and demonizing her. I also liked James, an actor I know more from villainous roles such as his replicant in Blade Runner. Seeing him here as a smart detective certainly felt against type. But the whole endeavour feels like a jar of “hot” supermarket salsa. You expect to get something spicy, only to find it has relentlessly toned down for mass-market consumption. 

Dir: Peter Levin
Star: Jean Smart, Park Overall, Tim Grimm, Brion James

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

★★★★
“Lethally blonde.”

This is Broomfield’s second documentary around the topic of Aileen Wuornos, having previously made Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. It’s a glorious doc – one of my all-time favorites – but is more tangential, being about those around Wuornos, seeking to exploit her situation for their own personal gain. He thought he was done with the topic, but he was called as a defense witness during Aileen’s final appeal against the multiple death sentences, largely because among those exploiters was her lawyer at the time, Steve Glazer. But around appearing in the witness box, Broomfield decided to make a second documentary, this time focusing on the woman at the centre of proceedings, all the way up to her execution by lethal injection in October 2002.

What I love about Broomfield’s work is, he goes where the story leads him. Some documentarians – and I’m looking at you, Michael Moore – go into production with An Agenda (caps used advisedly). They then craft the end product towards that agenda. To me, that’s less a documentary than propaganda. Broomfield seems to have a much more open mind, and the results sometimes end up going in unexpected directions. Here, it’s clear that he has sympathy for Wuornos, but doesn’t pull any punches about her personality and mental state. He presents footage both of her claiming self-defense and absolutely confessing to having committed cold-blooded murder. The scary thing is, Wuornos appeared to me to be highly credible in each, contradictory situation. Maybe I’m just easily fooled. Sobering.

Certainly, there is evidence of Aileen’s anger issues. During his final interview, we see how she can go from calm discussion to volcanic ferocity in short order, for little or no reason, and storming out while flipping Broomfield the bird. If there had been a firearm to hand during this outburst… Yeah, watching this, the idea of her killing seven in less than a year definitely seemed possible. Rage and easy access to guns is a dangerous combination. But as the film proceeds, it appears Wuornos’s mental situation deteriorates into frequent surges of paranoia, claiming mind-control weapons are being used on her, and that the cops knew who she was after the first murder, and let her continue killing so they could exploit things in the media. 

Should someone so clearly ill in the head be executed? Political considerations – it being an election year, with the governor wanting to appear strong on crime – appear to have overridden any judicial concerns. A cursory mental exam pronounced her fit to die, and the sentence was duly carried out. On that day, Broomfield was interviewed by the media (a classic case of the snake eating its own tail). He said, “Here was somebody who is has obviously lost her mind, has totally lost touch with reality. We’re executing a person who’s mad, and I don’t really know what kind of message that gives.” As someone not averse to the death penalty, this documentary certainly made me pause for thought, and that alone proves its quality. 

Dir: Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill

Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers

★★
“More of a propamentary.”

This would likely have benefited had I not watched Life and Death the previous night, because any comparison does not work in this documentary’s favour. Titled on the print just Aileen, forgetting that awkward serial killing thing, this is less balanced, and skews heavily towards Wuornos as victim – of the legal system, her clients and life in general. “Actually, she was made, and that’s chilling,” said co-director Turner, apparently opting to ignore the concept of free will. The bias is apparent, in the way the film concentrates heavily on Wuornos’s first murder, that of Richard Mallory. While that is the only one where there was a full trial, it’s also the only one where I think there’s credible evidence to support her claim of self-defense. The film barely mentions the other six victims.

I won’t argue that prosecutors did everything they could to obtain a conviction. That would be… their job? The footage of a reporter quizzing lead prosecutor John Tanner about Mallory’s sexual assault conviction in the fifties, just made me wonder, how the heck Wuornos’s team didn’t pick up on this? Checking the background of the victim for something like that seems like Defense Lawyering 1.0.1. In general, though, Turner and Cunningham are largely re-treading the same ground as Nick Broomfield: indeed, some footage here appears to be repurposed from his films, or at least comes from the same sources. I was a little surprised how this largely glossed over Wuornos’s upbringing, which I’d have to consider a huge factor in her issues.

The new stuff is mostly from Australian film-maker Jasmine Hurst, who corresponded long-distance with Wuornos for year, and interviewed her in 1997. I felt she was the whole endeavour’s weakest aspect. Her adoration for the killer is wildly improper from that start, Hurst drooling over Wuornos: “She’s like the trifecta. Gay, female, sex worker. And killing white men.” Hey, it is the Netflix trifecta, anyway. Later on, Hurst delivers this doozy of a statement: “It didn’t matter to me at all if none of the men had raped her. Those men may not have raped her in the moment, but they are icons of previous rapists that she didn’t fight against.” That the makers saw fit to leave that comment in the movie, says a lot about their agenda.

For, make no mistake, an agenda is what we have here, and what differentiates it most sharply from Broomfield’s work. Turner and Cunningham aren’t seekers after truth. They are convinced they know it, and want to drag the viewer to agree. That’s why we get comments on Reddit about the film like, “I feel so dumb for falling for the Aileen is evil stuff. This doc changed my mind completely.” More than one thing can be true, y’know. Yes, she did not receive a fair trial. Yes, she had a rough life. But she was also evil, and an incredibly angry sociopath. Not that you’d know it from the footage here, almost all showing Wuornos at her most serene.

Dir: Emily Turner, Kirsty Cunningham

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

  By

★★★★
“Lethally blonde.”

This is Broomfield’s second documentary around the topic of Aileen Wuornos, having previously made Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. It’s a glorious doc – one of my all-time favorites – but is more tangential, being about those around Wuornos, seeking to exploit her situation for their own personal gain. He thought he was done with the topic, but he was called as a defense witness during Aileen’s final appeal against the multiple death sentences, largely because among those exploiters was her lawyer at the time, Steve Glazer. But around appearing in the witness box, Broomfield decided to make a second documentary, this time focusing on the woman at the centre of proceedings, all the way up to her execution by lethal injection in October 2002.

What I love about Broomfield’s work is, he goes where the story leads him. Some documentarians – and I’m looking at you, Michael Moore – go into production with An Agenda (caps used advisedly). They then craft the end product towards that agenda. To me, that’s less a documentary than propaganda. Broomfield seems to have a much more open mind, and the results sometimes end up going in unexpected directions. Here, it’s clear that he has sympathy for Wuornos, but doesn’t pull any punches about her personality and mental state. He presents footage both of her claiming self-defense and absolutely confessing to having committed cold-blooded murder. The scary thing is, Wuornos appeared to me to be highly credible in each, contradictory situation. Maybe I’m just easily fooled. Sobering.

Certainly, there is evidence of Aileen’s anger issues. During his final interview, we see how she can go from calm discussion to volcanic ferocity in short order, for little or no reason, and storming out while flipping Broomfield the bird. If there had been a firearm to hand during this outburst… Yeah, watching this, the idea of her killing seven in less than a year definitely seemed possible. Rage and easy access to guns is a dangerous combination. But as the film proceeds, it appears Wuornos’s mental situation deteriorates into frequent surges of paranoia, claiming mind-control weapons are being used on her, and that the cops knew who she was after the first murder, and let her continue killing so they could exploit things in the media. 

Should someone so clearly ill in the head be executed? Political considerations – it being an election year, with the governor wanting to appear strong on crime – appear to have overridden any judicial concerns. A cursory mental exam pronounced her fit to die, and the sentence was duly carried out. On that day, Broomfield was interviewed by the media (a classic case of the snake eating its own tail). He said, “Here was somebody who is has obviously lost her mind, has totally lost touch with reality. We’re executing a person who’s mad, and I don’t really know what kind of message that gives.” As someone not averse to the death penalty, this documentary certainly made me pause for thought, and that alone proves its quality. 

Dir: Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill

Girl Fight: A Muay Thai Story

  By

★★★
“How to get punched in the face.”

When you think of the martial art form known as Muay Thai, New Jersey is probably not the first place to come to mind. But it’s in the town of Toms River, on the Jersey Shore, that Prairie Rugilo set up an all-women’s gym with the aim of teaching students Muay Thai. It began as occasional classes she taught in the Brick Police Athletic League, but demand allowed her to set up her own, dedicated space. If you don’t know, Muay Thai is described here as “the art of eight limbs”, which personally, raises more questions than it answers. What are the other four limbs? Was it developed by Thai spiders? Let’s just call it a form of kickboxing, and move on.*

Rugilo and her girlfriend, Jaime Phillips, a detective sergeant with the Ocean County Sheriff’s Department, train their students in the style. For some, it’s just a way to get fit, but others want to put their skills to practice in the ring, and this documentary follows two in particular: DeAna Mendez and Hazelle Dongui-is. We see them going through the preparations, their first fights, and the aftermath. Though the film seems least interested in the actual bouts, where it feels like we get to see more of the audience, than any coherent footage of the action.

But that’s actually ok. Rugilo loses more fights than she wins, and her students achieve mixed results too. For example, Mendez loses her first bout, and has a chance at redemption yanked away, because her opponent has to withdraw after Lasik surgery. She ends up going to another gym where she can train along with her young son (an issue with that whole “women only” thing). Dongui-is is the most successful, but we see least of her. What I did find particularly fascinating was a strong emphasis on the mental elements. Rugilo reckons her first loss is largely because her opponent was switched out at the last minute, and she couldn’t get into the right head-space. It seems the result can be decided before you enter the ring.

I did like Rugilo, who has an impressive attitude, and takes victory or defeat in her stride. I loved her speech at the end: “You know life isn’t always gonna go our way. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always happy, but we learn to overcome those setbacks… We can just learn from them and get stronger and be a better person on the other end of it.” That’s empowering, even as a I sit here on my couch with a bag of Doritos. You may well leave this with a little more respect for those willing to get in the ring, and be punched in the face. And a little less interest in ever doing anything like that yourself.

Dir: Matthew Kaplowitz
Star: Prairie Rugilo, Jaime Phillips, DeAna Mendez, Hazelle Dongui-is

* – I subsequently found out the eight limbs are two each of the hands, elbows, feet and knees. Never say this site is not educational.

Fight to Live

  By

★★★½
“One tough mother.”

Bec ‘Rowdy’ Rawlings is an Australian mixed martial-artist, who fought in the UFC for a bit, and then became the first woman to win a bare-knuckle boxing world title. This documentary covers her life, from growing up as a teenage tearaway, through motherhood transforming her character, her discovery of mixed martial-arts, a disastrous and highly toxic first marriage, and escaping that to become eventually the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship federation’s Women’s Featherweight World Champion. Phew. That’s quite a lot to get through in less than eighty minutes. The film does a decent job of covering its bases, through interviews with Bec, and her family and friends, plus no shortage of archive footage of Rawlings, both in and out of the ring.

Everyone in it, but Bec in particular, comes over as down-to-earth: it might be an Aussie thing. Certainly, she makes for an interesting contrast to the more… outspoken American and male MMA fighters, like Conor McGregor. Rawlings seems almost humble, speaking of the respect she has for anyone tough enough to get in the ring. Admittedly, this is likely in contrast to her early years when she was very much on the path to delinquency. Particularly awkward, since her sister was a police officer, who remembers getting a radio call describing a suspect, and knowing immediately that it was her sibling. But parenthood flicked a switch, and Bec realized after having her first son Zake, she needed to take responsibility for her actions.

However, life took a darker turn in her relationship with fellow MMA fighter, Dan Hyatt. For three years, he abused her, both physically and mentally. At one point in the documentary, the interviewer asks for specifics of what he did, and… Well, to be honest, it feels unnecessarily invasive, and almost exploitative: I didn’t feel like the details added anything. Eventually, she was able to escape the situation, and it certainly appears to be a case of “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” While the recovery process took a number of years, she can now look back on the horrors of that period in her life, and as Rawlings says, it happened to her, but does not define who she is, an awesome attitude.

To be honest though, I was more interested in the sporting side of the documentary, which follows Bec as she prepares to defend her title belt in Cancun, Mexico, against Cecilia Flores. She won – hey, it’s on her Wikipedia page – although it’s a little odd that this fight took place back in February 2019, but the film basically ends there, with only a couple of captions covering the five years between then and its release. I had, again, to check Wikipedia for more up-to-date information. After spending time fighting for Bellator, she’s now back fighting for the BKFC, winning her last (at time of writing) bout in January 2025. More power to her, both in the ring and as a mother.

Dir: Tom Haramis
Star: Bec Rawlings, Adrian Rodriguez, Mal Van, Jacqui Rawlings

Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story

  By

★★★½
“Intermittently awesome.”

Regular readers will already be aware of the long history of stuntwomen, going back a hundred years to the serial heroines of the silent era. But there’s still a lot to be learned from this documentary about these fearless, and largely unsung, daredevils. Narrated by Rodriguez, it’s mostly a series of discussions between OG stuntwomen, like Epper, who was Lynda Carter’s double in Wonder Woman (and who passed away earlier this year), and members of the current generation, such as Amy Johnston, of Lady Bloodfight fame. The anecdotes shared by the former are an often fascinating insight into the struggles to be taken seriously, in a time when many directors would rather slap a wig on a stuntman.

In comparison, the modern equivalents seem a little bland. It almost feels like the adversity through which Epper and her contemporaries went, reinforced their characters. I mean: doubling for Pam Grier, as David did, feels like it would be rather more of an influential experience than doubling for Scarlett Johansson. Not that this stops some of the modern stuntwomen from complaining about inequalities in the business. To be honest, this aspect does come off as a little whiny in nature. Rather more inspiring are statements like, “I didn’t want to be respected for a girl. I didn’t wanna be good for a girl. I just decided I was gonna be really good.” That’s the kind of attitude which I respect more than blaming sexism and racism. 

Another slight weakness is, it’s quite easy to lose track of who’s who, especially once you get past the main participants, and people you recognize. Not that there is much chance of failing to recognize Jessie Graff, of Ninja Warrior fame. Though it’s a little surprising Zoë Bell – arguably the best-known of modern stuntwomen, albeit a crown perhaps now passed to Graff – doesn’t merit more than a passing mention. It’s fun simply being a fly on the wall as Graff hangs out with her colleagues, bouncing on her trampoline, or watching renowned stunt driver Evans fake drag-racing with her son, and doing handbrake turns on the roads around their property. As Rodriguez enthuses, “I love that your neighbors are cool with all this.”

It is a little weird that the two male directors talked to are Paul Verhoeven and Paul Feig. Verhoeven is his usual entertaining self, but Feig comes over as almost smugly “right-on”. Mind you, if you’ve seen his painfully earnest Ghostbusters remake, you’ll understand his mindset. The documentary does take a rather chilling turn, though justifiably so, discussing the risks faced by all stunt performers, including fractures, concussions, paralysis and even death. It’s easy to overlook, especially now when we assume everything is green-screened or CGI. Some of the stories from the veterans, of the days when safety standards were… less stringent, shall we say, are staggering. You should certainly leave this with a deeper appreciation for those will to risk their lived and limbs, purely for your entertainment.

Dir: April Wrig
Star: Jeannie Epper, Debbie Evans, Michelle Rodriguez, Jadie David

Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa

  By

★★★
“Top of the world.”

Reaching the summit of Mount Everest once is a remarkable achievement, done by only a few thousand people in history, with hundreds having died in the attempt. But what about climbing the world’s highest peak on no less than ten occasions? Such is the achievement of Lhakpa Sherpa, a woman from Nepal who had to overcome remarkable adversity in a number of ways to complete this feat. This documentary is the story, both of her tenth (and most recent, to date at least!) ascent, and of her life. It’s an impressive story of fortitude, though never really answers my most burning question. I can understand wanting to climb Everest once. But why do it so many times?

Lhakpa was born in 1973, and grew up when girls weren’t allowed to go to school. She carried her brother there, two hours each way, but wasn’t allowed to learn herself. This didn’t stop her from breaking with local tradition in a number of ways. She had a child outside of wedlock, and also became a mountain porter as a teenager, another position reserved for men – she cut her hair short, so her gender would be less apparent. In 2000, she became the first Nepalese woman to reach the top of Everest and survive. The same year, she met climber Gheorghe Dimarescu and the pair married in 2002. They climbed together, and had two daughters, Sunny and Shiny. But there was a dark side, with her husband’s vicious temper turning their relationship abusive, until she left him in 2012.

I do feel the film rather overplays this element of Lhakpa’s life. While it’s obviously significant, it almost seems to robs her of agenda, forcing the viewer to see much of the events through the lens of his behaviour. The structure may enhance this. Rather than unfolding chronologically, there are two parallel streams, one depicting her tenth attempt to reach the top, while the other slowly fills in the background of her life, and the two never quite seemed to mesh effectively for me. Her attitude in dealing with life’s obstacles is amazing, and leave a remarkable impression, such as how Lhakpa worked in a Connecticut supermarket, while raising her two daughters, before returning to her home country.

It does appear her profile has been raised by her remarkable, and largely under the radar, achievements. The documentary shows her finding a sponsor who will fund expeditions: I don’t know if she still works in Whole Foods! I hope not, because she deserves better, with the simple facts of her story being immensely empowering to anyone, and a lesson that any dream can be achieved. But I did not feel that this film really provided much more insight into the person, than a reading of her Wikipedia page would have offered. I was left with questions, such as about her first child, which the film didn’t want to address, and it felt like some outside viewpoints (even Lhakpa’s family) would have benefited the end product. It remains worth a watch: just don’t expect more than a surface portrait.

Dir: Lucy Walker
Star: Lhakpa Sherpa, Sunny Dijmarescu, Shiny Dijmarescu

Take the Ice

  By

★★
“Just about skates by.”

There’s no doubt that women’s sports very much plays second fiddle to their male equivalent, though the gap varies from sport to sport. The WNBA is experiencing a surge of popularity, though the NBA is still a financial behemoth. This documentary focuses on ice-hockey, and the debut season in 2015 of the first professional women’s competition in the US, the National Women’s Hockey League. Though semi-professional is closer to the truth: the league could only afford to pay its players around $15,000 a year, meaning almost all of them had to have day jobs, from teachers to paralegals to engineers, to cover the expenses. Commissioner and founder Dani Rylan spends most of her time seeking sources of finance, though finds the men’s league less than thoroughly supportive.

To be honest, I can’t blame them. There’s a vague sense of entitlement coming off the NWHL, not realizing they are largely competing with the NHL for the same fans and money. Why should the NHL help a rival start-up, just because they have women players? That’s the harsh reality here. I respect Rylan for putting in the work and starting the league, but this is capitalist equality in action. There were points at which I wanted to reach into the TV set and remind the NWHL, nobody has a “right” to funding in the world of professional sports. You have to earn it, whether you are male or female, and doing so starts with the quality of your product.

It may have been a mistake to start with just four teams, because with all of them making the playoffs, the entire regular season felt kinda pointless. And how did Boston end up with eight members of the US national team, while none of the other franchises had more than a couple? Wasn’t there some kind of a draft to balance the teams? Unsurpisingly, the Boston Pride won the inaugural championship – without, it seems, too much trouble. The film does make some effort to make this less of a procession, by telling the story of Denna Laing, a player on the Boston team who suffered a spinal injury during a game, which left her paralyzed.

I felt these elements, concentrating on the players and their stories rather than the business, worked better, but were frustratingly brief, except for Laing. There’s not enough of a narrative in the game-play to sustain things, and I suspect I’m an outlier, in that most other people watching the documentary probably will already be well aware how the first season ended. The league is still going, albeit under different ownership, although it’s interesting the film didn’t come out for more than six years after the season covered by it. I’ve been to ice hockey games, both here and back in the UK, and at various levels. But I’d have to say, in contrast to, say, Perfect, there is not much here likely to make a fan, if you weren’t one already.

Dir: Rachel Koteen
Star: Dani Rylan, Denna Laing, Anya Battaglino, Kaleigh Fratkin

Good Ol Girl

  By

★★★
“It’s… complicated.”

This documentary takes a look into the lives of three women in Texas, who are all operating in the male-dominated world of ranching. Some were born into it, while others came to it through choice. In particular, Mandy Dauses falls into the latter category, having left her East-coast home because she felt that Texas represented the best chance to fulfill her ambition of becoming a ranch manager. On the other hand, Sara Lemoine Knox is struggling to balance what she feels is an obligation to carry on in the family business, with her own goal of becoming a lawyer. Meanwhile, Martha Santos is looking to find work in that line, but without her own property, is finding it a challenge.

It’s a way of life which is gradually becoming more endangered for both men and women. For example, Martha’s family used to own land near Laredo, but they sold it to satisfy the ever-increasing appetite for land on which homes and businesses could be built. Similarly, Sara’s heart really isn’t in farming, even though she was given her first property, covering 160 acres, at the age of 12. Even beyond their chosen (or imposed) profession, they have other ambitions. Mandy desperately wants to start a family, but at age 37, time is running out for her. Though during the course of the documentary, she does discover she is pregnant. These are all imperfect lives, and that’s probably the point, offering an non-idealized take that’s radically different from the fictional, romantic version of cowgirls.

Dauses likely represents the most interesting and complex of the characters. On the one hand, she’s clearly a strong, independent woman, who moved half-way across American in pursuit of her dreams. On the other, she still cooks dinner for her long-term boyfriend, John, who expects a meal to be ready on the table when he comes home (regardless of the fact that she has her own job, too). Outside of the story of her pregnancy, however, there is not much sense of development. This is more a snapshot of the three women’s lives at this moment in time, without any narrative. When the end credits roll, nobody is particularly in a different place from there they were at the beginning.

This is not to say there’s any need for forced drama, but there’s not even much sense of time passing. Contrast, say, documentary series Clarkson’s Farm, which had a much more compelling narrative, simply through covering an entire year. Of course, it had the advantage of more time to tell its story, but the dramatic moments here, such as coming across a dead cow in the middle of giving birth, have no particular emotional resonance. Instead, it’s most interesting when you are shown the difficult task the women have to balance the various forces (internal or external) in their lives, looking to achieve harmony. The film probably needed to do a better job of that itself, if it wanted to have a lasting impact.

Dir: Sarah Brennan Kolb
Star: Mandy Dauses, Sara Lemoine Knox, Martha Santos, Joyce Gibson Roach

Queen of Cocaine (2023)

  By

★★★★
“Just the facts, ma’am.”

We’ve written about Griselda Blanco before. In particular, we reviewed telenovela La Viuda Negra, which was loosely based on her life and compared it to the facts. We also covered Cocaine Godmother, in which Catherine Zeta-Jones took on the role of Blanco in a bio-more-or-less-pic. She remains a fascinating character, so you won’t be surprised that when I heard about a new documentary concerning her life, it went straight to near the top of my watch-list. I was a little concerned, since it came out as a “Tubi Original”. I’ve been burned by some of these before, and so was expecting a lurid, shallow TMZ-style expose which played fast and loose with the truth. 

To my pleasant surprise, that’s not the case at all. Obviously, there’s a certain allure here, but it doesn’t needlessly glamourize or condemn its subject, and instead manages to do a good job of painting both sides, and depicting Griselda as a surprisingly complex character. This is particularly clear at the end, when her youngest son – named, amusingly, Michael Corleone – says of his mother, “Yes, it’s a legacy of violence. But she was a woman that had to become savage in a world that wasn’t made for her.” Then Detective Diaz, who headed the Miami task force charged with bringing her down, counters, “We have this bitch from hell who decides she wants to be meaner and more powerful than anybody else… Violence. Arrogance. Greed. That is her legacy.” Take your pick!

It covers Blanco’s entire career, from growing up poor in Cartagena, through her (illegal) emigration into America, where she got into the drug business, and built an empire which brought her a fortune estimated (likely conservatively) in hundreds of millions of dollars. With this came enemies on both sides of the law, but Blanco almost seemed to feel she was invulnerable, and continued acting with impunity, until first the authorities and then her foes, eventually caught up with her. They’ve got some very good interview subjects, with Michael in particular standing out. His description of how he witnessed his father being gunned down on a Colombian street is chilling.

Cops, journalists and even other criminals also chip in, and it’s edited skilfully together to tell a complex story with clarity. Another interesting character I’m going to have to look into is Jemeker Thompson-Hairston, the “Queen of crack” who served time alongside Blanco in federal prison. One of the key players in the eighties crack epidemic, she’s now an evangelist, and came over as very well-spoken and thoughtful. I do have to say, something about narrator Elena Hurst’s voice kinda grated on me. Perhaps it was the way she’d apparently adopt an outrageous Spanish accent, any time she said the subject’s name: “Greez-hel-dahh”. Overall though, this manages to be both informative and entertaining, even if it is perhaps helped by having a story it would be difficult to screw up.

Dir: Victoria Duley
Star: Michael Corleone Blanco, Bob Palombo, Raul Diaz, Dr. Amy Shlosberg

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo

  By

★★★
“Cowgirls behind bars.”

Well, this is certainly the first film I’ve reviewed here which drops both into the “women in prison” and the “sports” category. It takes place in Oklahoma, where since 1940, they have been staging an annual prison rodeo event in McAlester. The competition takes place in an arena built just inside the walls of the State Penitentiary, and includes competitors from facilities across the state. In 2006, the event was opened to female inmates as well, and this documentary (while not absolutely focused on just the women, also including 13-year rodeo veteran and convicted murderer Liles) is about their preparation for the 2007 event, training on a rig pulled back and forth by fellow inmates, and climaxing with the event itself.

What stood out in particular was how normal most of the inmates seemed, though my perceptions there were likely skewed by the more, ah, dramatic depictions of life behind bars. You’d be hard pushed to pick the likes of Brooks, Witte and Herrington out of a line-up at the local PTA, though some of the stories they tell are startling – as much for the casual air with which they admit to dealing drugs or violent robbery. The rodeo gives them a bit of relief from the crushing boredom of life inside, though it’s very much a privilege. Brooks is kicked off the squad when caught in possession of contraband, reportedly unauthorized lipstick, an incident which also puts her release on parole in doubt.

While regular rodeo typically limits female involvement to the less dangerous events, such as barrel racing, there’s no such restriction here. The women inmates take part in bull and bronco riding, as well as the particularly fraught event called “Money the Hard Way”, where the first person to pluck a ribbon tied to a bull’s head wins $100. The beast is clearly no respecter of the fairer sex, sending both men and women into the air with a strictly gender-neutral approach. The comparisons of the event to gladiatorial combat seemed particularly apt here. Yet this feels more like a backdrop to the lives of the prisoners, and I found myself Googling their names in hopes of recent updates.

As with most documentaries, it’s not tidy, with loose ends a-plenty, and if I was both informed and reasonably entertained, I can’t say I reached the end with any life-changing revelations. It feels quite “safe” and conventional as a film of its genre, and Beesley clearly is not interesting in challenging narratives, least of all the self-reported ones of the women’s lives. While they do largely accept responsibility for their crimes, it’d be interesting to hear an outside perspective on those. Not mentioned in the film: the event was canceled in 2010 due to a state budget shortfall. It hasn’t returned since, mostly because the arena has now fallen into disrepair, despite support from the warden, local community and state governor for that. Whether it ever will is uncertain, leaving the documentary a record of an odd slice of Americana that may be forever gone.

Dir: Bradley Beesley
Star: Jamie Brooks, Brandy Witte, Danny Liles, Crystal Herrington