★★
“Run Goldine Run”
And Frankenstein Created Woman? That might have been an alternate title, with German scientist Dr. Serafin (Jurgens) in the role of the creator – he’s a man with a dubious past, and whispers of involvement in Nazi experimentation. Now “rehabilitated” to the US, in what may be a medical version of Operation Paper Clip, he uses an unholy mix of pharmaceuticals and extreme training methods to convert his own daughter, Goldine, into a 6’2″ athletic superwoman, with the aim of completing an unheard of triple crown at the upcoming Moscow Olympics, winning the 100, 200 and 400 metre gold medals. To fund this work, he brings in a consortium of businessmen who aim to capitalize on Goldine’s success with advertising, merchandising, etc. Brought in to advise them, as Goldine is prepared for her first public events, is agent Jack Dryden (Coburn), who gradually realizes the one person not wholeheartedly committed to the entire proceedings, is the runner herself.
This is a curious period piece, which almost feels like it’s set in an alternate universe – as history turned out, Russia invaded Afghanistan and the United States ended up boycotting those 1980 Olympics entirely. This does have some interesting things to say about parents who force their own ambitions onto their offspring, without considering their childrens’ desires, or even best interests, and also about the “shamateurism” of the Olympics. However, this is countered by some odd aspects such as Goldine’s vibrator-based press conference training, whose mere description appears to have strayed in from an entirely different movie. The film would also have benefited from a greater focus on the heroine, and what she wants out of life; that’s an area left almost entirely unexplored, with Goldine left more as a palimpsest for the demands of others.
Even if a couple of inches short of the necessary height at 5’11”, Anton, a former Miss California, certainly makes a striking figure, and the film wastes no opportunity to show off her… er., striking figure. Though when you see her competing, many of those against whom she races were actual athletes, and the difference between their, much more heavily muscled physiques, and her wispy frame is obvious. Bill Conti’s score occasionally threatens to overpower everything, most notably during the musical training montage number, also sung by Anton. However, even if its more of a “Good effort!” than an Olympic champion, it remains one of the few sports movies with a focus on the women’s side of the stadium.
Dir: Joseph Sargent
Star: Susan Anton, James Coburn, Curt Jurgens, Leslie Caron
I never really think of the Dutch as the organized crime type, but this film convinces me otherwise, based as it is on actual events from just before World War II. Oss is a town in the Southern half of the Netherlands and, it appears, everyone there is on the take one way or another, from insurance scams to larger scale shenanigans, all the way up to the mayor and the local priest. The federal government has sent military police to the town to keep order, but that only rankles the locals, for the cops are Protestants and they are Catholics. Johanna (Hoeks) hopes to escape a life of crime, planning to open a restaurant when her husband, Ties (Schoenaerts), gets out of jail. But it’s not as easy as it seems. Her spouse is happy to pimp her out, and local boss and Ties’s uncle, Wim de Kuiper (Musters), drags him back into his old ways. When Ties tries to force Johanna to have an abortion, she hatches a plan to have him killed by her lover (and client), Jan, although the plan only puts her deeper in the clutches of de Kuiper. But when she discovers just how low he is prepared to go, she decides he and the rest of his cronies are going down.
The back-story behind how this was made is, in some ways, more interesting than the film itself. The star and co-writer was working as a stripper, and came up with the idea, almost as a coping mechanism to handle some of the creeps with whom she had to interact. Funding came from a customer at one of the clubs. But, unfortunately, it turned out that the money he was “investing” was actually being embezzled, leading to a two-year crawl through post-production – it still hasn’t received an official release in its American home. Made in 1997, it looks like a fossil from an earlier, much scuzzier era, with both its grimy New York locations and feel harking back to the work of Abel Ferrara.
2013 was perhaps a landmark for women in action films. with the top slot at the American box-office going to Jennifer Lawrence in Catching Fire. But also present in the top five was this, which kicked Katniss’s arse for critical acclaim, snaring 10 Oscar nominations to Fire’s… Well, none at all, actually. That’s probably a little starker contrast than is accurate – they are respectively 97% and 90% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes – but it is interesting to compare the two films and their approach. In Gravity, the sex of the lead character simply isn’t very relevant: you could switch it to being a man, and you wouldn’t need to change much, not even the name – Ryan Stone. I’d be unsurprised if told that, like Salt, this was originally written for a male lead. Indeed, it also fails the infamous Bechdel Test of feminism, passing none of its three criteria – though this says more about Bechdel’s uselessness than Gravity, I feel (Run Lola Run also goes 0-for-3, and it’s not the last thing it has in common, as we’ll see).
If the first Queen Bee movie was a fairly effective romp through the genre, that’s a lot less the case fot the follow-up, with Ike largely floundering around, as Maki, the leader of the Pearl Gang, who finds herself embroiled in a battle with another crew, the Black Lilies and their leader, Yuri (Kazama). Their spat is interrupted, when the Kuroji clan of yakuza throw their weight behind the Black Lilies. However, the triumph of the Lilies is short-lived, as they find out that they are about to be forced into life as prostitutes, for the benefit of their new allies, ending their life of freedom in the ‘hood. There are also subplots in which Yuri’s former boyfriend, Eizo wants to be a top racing driver, bringing him into conflict with the yakuza as well, and a suitcase filled with stolen guns.
Reiko (Ike) is leader of the Athens Gang, a low-level all-girl gang, who specialize in car thefts and rolling naive salarymen with the lure of hot sex. They’re part of a hierarchy, which includes a male gang under whom they loosely operate, who are in turn on the fringes of a Yakuza group. There’s also a motor-cycle gang and its leader (Taki) who don’t obey anyone, and that independence is really what Reiko wants, even though her group is obliged to follow certain rules, such as not getting attached to any man. Things are disrupted by the return of former leader Jun (Kagawa) from reform school: will Reiko be able to hold on to her position? It’s just one of a large number of plot threads here: you also get the blackmail of a pop star; a hitman agreeing to one last mission; a gangster estranged from his wife and daughter; sex on motorcycles for no apparent reason; a journalist with a nose for scandal; and, of course Reiko failing to follow her own rule about no attachments.
It has now been almost a quarter-century since GLOW was cancelled in 1990, and there still hasn’t been anything quite like it on television in the Western world: a pro wrestling federation entirely populated by women wrestlers. The brainchild of David McLane, and funded by Pia Zadora’s husband, the owner of the Riviera casino in Las Vegas, GLOW was a marvel of eighties low-budget television, mixing self-effacing comedy (it depicted McLane as having his office in a phone booth) with larger-than-life characters such as Matilda the Hun, and of course, wrestling matches. This documentary tells the story of the federation’s rise and fall – largely through the eyes of the women, as McLane and Matt Cimber, the show’s director, both declined to be formally interviewed (which is a shame, as it would definitely have provided another dimension for the film).