Tag: grindhouse

Hell on Route 666, by Dan Leissner

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

At the very end, of the characters says to Cat, the heroine, “Will someone PLEASE tell me what this was all about!” I can kinda sympathize with them: I think it’s safe to say this defied expectations, though I must stress, in a good way. It’s close to 12 years since we were first introduced to Cat; not sure what Dan has been doing in the interim, but I was delighted to find a second volume had finally arrived. Re-reading our review, I probably should have been less surprised: the original managed to have a plot combining “black militants, white supremacists and aliens from outer-space.” I had managed to forget the last, so was expecting merely another funky escapade of seventies style, sex and violence.

Yes… and no.

Initially, it seems almost like a cross between Dennis Wheatley and Russ Meyer, with Cat investigating and infiltrating a Satanic cult based around heavy metal group 666, whose teenage fans are being mind-controlled into committing increasingly heinous crimes in the name of the Devil. But the further on we go, the more outrageous things get. 666 are entirely discarded, with a Devil-worshipping rock-band becoming positively mundane. We end up heading for territory that’s more like the Book of Revelations adapted by H.P. Lovecraft – oh, yeah, and throw in a demonic version of Bumblebee from Transformers, because… Well, just because. Except, Lovecraft wouldn’t have a kick-ass heroine like Cat, breaking limbs and hearts with equal confidence. Or an all-girl commando platoon. Or quite so many pairs of tight jeans, inevitably worn low on the hips…

I did have some issues in the opening third, mostly because Cat wasn’t all that likeable, to be honest. Not sure if I’ve changed, she’s changed or the world has changed, in the twelve years since the first novel. Probably a bit of each. She seems to spent an inordinate amount of time stoned, dressing/acting to attract the male gaze, yet simultaneously resenting it. “Jeez! What a bunch of low-lives,” is a sentiment she expresses at one point; “Shit! Just look at them… bunch of no necks and beer-bellies. God, I hate this crap!” at another. Apparently, she’s the only one allowed to overtly express any sexuality. She certainly has no qualms about seducing a boy of “barely 16”. Reverse the genders there, and it would play rather differently, to be sure.

It was only later, I realized, perhaps this might be deliberate – expressing a darker side to Cat may be why the Satanists were so keen to bring her over to their team. However, I prefer my heroines a bit less… whiny! Still, even in this difficult first third, Leissner packs a wallop, particularly with his chilling descriptions of the mind-controlled terrorism. And the deeper we get, the more Cat relies on her actions to define her. That, and the continually escalating apocalypse make for a real downhill avalanche of a read, one that eventually becomes entirely unstoppable. Dan promises we won’t have to wait until 2031 for the next installment. He’d better live up to that, or I’ll be swinging past to know the reason why.

Author: Dan Leissner
Publisher: Midnight Marquee Press, available through Amazon, for now only as a paperback. I received a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.
Book 2 of 2 in the Cool Cat series.

Sheborg Massacre

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★★★½
“Australiens”

From the director of From Parts Unknown, and offering a similar pastiche of cult elements – in this case, alien invasion films rather than combining wrestling and zombies. It works rather better: Armstrong seems to have better restraint here, letting the entertainment value flow more naturally, rather than feeling the need to force his hip credentials on the viewer. Dylan (Duff) is a self-proclaimed anarchist, a rebel whose father is running for mayor. She and her pal, Emma (Masterman) get involved in a plot to liberate the inhabitants of a puppy mill, only to find themselves embedded in the middle of an alien invasion. It’s up them, along with geek Velma (Monnington) to save the day and prevent the cyborg queen (Wilson) leading the invaders from powering up.

This feels a bit like the very early works of Peter Jackson – Bad Taste in particular – with a spirit that sits somewhere between “can do” and “screw you.” The nods to other movies are copious, not least the poster (right), which is straight retro fire: Emma is an almost shameless clone of Dianne from Shaun of the Dead, while Velma, equally obviously given her name, is right out of Scooby-Doo. But the film takes these elements, and meshes them together into something a bit more than that. Not least, you’ll rarely find a B-movie with quite as many strong female characters on both sides of the script. I’d like to have seen more of the queen – she spends most of the film off-screen, operating through her minions. Yet those minions are no less bad-ass than the heroic trio of women fighting them, particularly the former puppy farm overseer, up against whom Dylan has to go on a number of occasions.

There’s a certain sweet spot which a film of this kind needs to find, located between taking itself too seriously and not seriously enough. You need to be aware of your own limitations, acknowledge them and work around these, and generally, this does a good job. For instance, what the film may lack in quality for its special effects (the mask on the queen is particularly half-assed), it makes up for in the sheer volume of blood, goo and alien slime which ends up hurled everywhere – not least over its characters! The action style is also interesting, with editing used well to enhance the impact of the fights, when it’s clear the skills of some participants are… limited.

It’s not perfect, certainly: you’ll still need a tolerance for low-budget cinema, and ideally a love for and knowledge of, the kind of content which is its inspiration. You may find the pacing uneven, especially in the second half, and certain elements just don’t work, such as the shoehorning in of a punk band whom, I can only assume, are present because they are mates with the director. It’s certainly not because they have any acting skills. However, it remains the kind of film which I’m prepared to cut significant slack, and after the underwhelming nature of Parts, I’m now highly interested to see what genre Armstrong mines for his next “neo-pulp” effort.

Dir: Daniel Armstrong
Star: Whitney Duff, Daisy Masterman, Louise Monnington, Emma-Louise Wilson

Lizzie Borden’s Revenge

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★★★
“It’s just a bunch of hot chicks in their nighties, playing Truth or Dare.”

It would, certainly, be easy to look at the poverty-row production values here, and dismiss this contemptuously as a bad film. I mean, the very first shot supposedly sets the scene at the infamous New England house in 1892, where Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. But take a look. I’m fairly sure the trash cans to the right of the house are not of 19th-century vintage. And I am almost certain the palm trees on the left are not native to Massachusetts either. Given this, the awful use of CGI blood, etc. if you were to dismiss the film as the kind of sloppy work that gives B-movies a bad name, I wouldn’t argue.

And, yet… The line of dialogue which is the review tagline above, shows impressive self-awareness, while  the storyline seems deliberately cheesy: A bunch of sorority sisters on campus lockdown stage a seance. As one of them says, “With a blood relative of Lizzie Borden sitting right in the centre of our circle, something is going to happen, I just know it!” No prizes for guessing what. To quote the film once more, “We conjured up the ghost of Lizzie Borden and now her lesbian ass is haunting our sorority house?” [This isn’t for titillation: okay, not just for titillation: one theory about Borden involves her relationship with actress Nance O’Neil]

It is at its most amusing when pushing this knowledge of horror tropes, such as when the dwindling band of sorority sisters refuse to split up, leading to a conga line through the house. The characters in question may be stereotypes – the bimbo, the nerd who spouts bizarrely incoherent lines such as “A statistically higher chance of probability”, the troubled one, etc. – but most of the performances are decent enough, and it’s all impressively gynocentric. [This movie would pass the Bechdel Test, though perhaps indicates once more the uselessness of that ludicrous metric.] The men are relegated to minor roles of no real importance, and are, if anything, even more two-dimensional than the women. They also don’t shed their clothes as much: at the risk of stating the obvious, I am fine with this.

Ricci, who plays Lizzie’s descendant Leslie, is an adult star of some renown, yet is perfectly adequate here. Overall, I’ll confess this kept me considerably more amused than I expected from the early going, when the performance of the actor playing Mr. Borden almost had me reaching for the off button (it may have been saved by the always welcome presence of cult icon and scream queen Brinke Stevens, playing his wife). Certainly, you have to get past the shoddier, cringe-inducing aspects; having a taste for the trashy end of cinema is also necessary. However, director Devine is a veteran of horror as well as exploitation genres, and inserts enough sly nods to its conventions and cliches, that I was entertained. 

Dir: Dennis Devine
Star: Veronica Ricci, Shanalynne Wesner, Jenny Allford, Mindy Robinson

Maniac Nurses

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★★½
“Nurse! The screens!”

That this Belgian flick starts off with a dedication to Ilona Staller (a.k.a. Italian porn star, Cicciolina), artist provocateur Jeff Koons, and Traci Lorde, likely tells you it should not be taken too seriously. Certainly, the amusement to be found largely requires the viewer to be aware of the genres to which this is a homage. This is best exemplified by the Ilsa trilogy, yet there are also aspects borrowed from women-in-prison and Naziploitation in general. The more you’re familiar with those, the more you’ll get out of this: if you’re not, this will seem just a bad movie. A really bad movie.

The plot, such as it is, takes place in a facility of indeterminate, yet likely medical, purpose overseen by the evil and sadistic Ilsa (Brown) – actually, let’s just take “evil and sadistic” as read for the rest of the characters, since it applies to pretty much everyone. There’s her second-in-command, Greta (Farago), who is increasingly jealous of the attention Ilsa pays to the younger, prettier Sabrina (Makay), who spends her time reading poorly-drawn comic books when not engaging in random acts of carnage.

Thinking about it, the latter element also applies equally to everyone else here. As does Sabrina’s fondness for lingerie. Anyway, when not hijacking cars on the nearby roads, or hunting those unfortunate enough to camp in the woods, these maniac nurses are torturing their victims. Yet Greta’s jealousy eventually leads her to reveal the (not very) shocking truth about Sabrina’s origins. This triggers the most casual of rampages by the latter, in which she wanders round the facility at a moderate pace, gunning down everyone in her path.

The most notable artistic element here though, is the narration – something which may have been added by distributor Troma, since he is not mentioned in the film’s credits. If you’ve seen the opening of Faster Pussycat, this is basically that kind of over-ripe exposition, yet goes on for virtually the entire duration. It’s surreal, borderline insane and likely further evidence this is intended as a thoroughly self-aware pastiche of cult, B-movies, whose incoherent narrative is a deliberate stylistic choice. As such, it’s almost bulletproof, critically speaking. When a film is intended to be terrible, saying it is, doesn’t have much impact.

While the actresses here are certainly easy on the eye, their performances are virtually non-existent – although in their defense, they could have been Meryl Streep, and would still probably not have survived the dubbing. Again: this is quite possibly intentional. Yet, even as I certainly got the joke, it was one which out-stayed its welcome. The genres in question are ripe for parody – and I speak as a fan of them, more or less. If done right, you get the glory of something like Reform School Girls, which had energy, invention and Sybil Danning. This needs more of all three. Particularly Sybil Danning.

Dir: Leon Paul De Bruyn [as “Harry M. Love”]
Star: Susanna Makay, Hajni Brown, Celia Farago, Nicole A. Gyony
a.k.a. Maniac Nurses Find Ecstacy

Beach Volleyball Detectives

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★★★
“So, illegal underground beach volleyball matches?”

The above line of dialogue is a perfect litmus test for what you’ll think of this. If your reaction is a derisive snort, this pair of hour-long items – I have qualms about calling them anything as high-minded as “feature films” – is probably not for you. And I cheerfully admit, snorting is probably the default, and understandable, reaction. If, on the other hand, you are giddy with anticipation at the very thought, then I probably cannot recommend it highly enough.

It’s one of those cases where the title pretty much explains the basic idea. Three young, photogenic members of the Foreign Affairs Department, led by Haruka, get paired up with Wakana, a equally young and photogenic visiting policewoman from Hawaii, after they discover blueprints for a mini-nuke, capable of wiping out everything in a 100-mile radius. To find those behind the scheme, the four law-enforcement officials have to go undercover at the training camp for an international volleyball tournament, and figure out which of their opponents – Chinese, Russian or Indian – are after the blueprints.

This manages to be incredibly tacky, while also remaining remarkably chaste. There is no actual content here which would be worse than PG-rated. But it’s all shot in a way that resembles Russ Meyer in heat: focusing on the actresses’ erogenous zones, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else in the frame. Which makes sense, considering the director’s filmography includes what I can only presume are far more explicit titles, such as her debut, Chronic Rutting Adultery Wife. And who can forget Miss Peach: Peachy Sweetness Huge Breasts? Meanwhile, the writer is Takao Nakano, who gave the world – and this site – Big Tits Zombie.

It also turns out that, much like the Force and duct-tape, beach volleyball has a light side and a dark side. These are, respectively, White Sand Beach and Black Sand Beach. This mystical philosophy may help explain the superpowers on display here. For instance, the Indian team can levitate, the Russian player can turn into multiple mirror images of herself, and the Japanese and Chinese have a whole slew of super-powered moves, up to and including “Intercontinental Ballistic Missile No. 1”. I should mention, all these different nationalities are played by Japanese ladies, though in deference to her cultural heritage, the “Russian” does wear a headscarf. The Chinese are defined by their frequent spouting of Socialist dogma, such as “Go ahead and vote on it, you silly democratic people.”

The execution is woefully inept, The matches play like a low-rent version of Shaolin Soccer, right down to the ball turning into a dragon, a result of the appropriately named “Dragon Spike” move. Except, here, the CGI might barely have passed muster in the 1980’s. What passes for “combat” is hardly any better, if at all. Yet this incompetence actually becomes part of the trashy charm, and there’s a surprising amount of plot here. Our heroines have to handle not just their enemies, but also betrayal from within, and jealous fights between Haruka and Wakana over the attentions of their coach, with the help of a Yoda-esque monk, Harlequin. It’s all undeniably goofy, yet I was amused and entertained – likely more than I should probably admit…

Dir: Yumi Yoshiyuki
Star: Arisu Kagamino, Sakurako Kaoru, Chihiro Koganezaki, Kaori Nakamura

Strip Club Massacre

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★★
“Secondary staged carnage.”

After Megan (Watson) loses her job, boyfriend and the roof over her head in the same day, she decides to head off to Atlanta, where friend Amanda (Riggs) puts her up for a bit. Amanda’s boyfriend (Rollins) is manager at a strip club, and gives Megan a job as a cocktail waitress. But after realizing the gap in earnings between those employees who keep their clothes on, and those who don’t, Megan decides to make the jump into strip-tease. This rapidly brings her into conflict with Jazz (Brown), another stripper who rules the club through terror and intimidation, along with the help of her cronies. She takes it upon herself to make Megan’s life hell. However, she can only be pushed so far, before Megan and Amanda, push back.

A classic grindhouse title, which somewhat delivers on its premise: nearer to the “massacre” than the “stripclub” side, I’d say. Indeed, it’s rather more restrained in terms of nudity than I’d have expected. The gore, on the other hand, is plentiful in volume, if not necessarily quality: some of the special effects count as “special” in roughly the same way as “special education”. The story is basic to the point of simplistic: Megan is somewhat sympathetic, yet you’re never brought along on her descent into psychotic violence. It’s more like a switch is suddently flipped: I can imagine the film-makers thinking, “Right, 15 minutes to go, enough of this characterization nonsense, time for the rampage sequence.” It’s still about 20 minutes too much, and this perhaps needed a better outside hand, to cut down on what often feels self-indulgent fan fiction.

The most interesting character in all this is probably Jazz. If Brown looks familiar, you should probably be somewhat ashamed of yourself. That’s because she was previously known as Misty Mundae, and starred in a large number of films with titles like Gladiator Eroticus, Lord of the G-Strings and Spiderbabe. About which, I know absolutely nothing. :) She has now moved on from such things, and clearly knows her way around a script in a way that Watson (understandably, this being her feature debut) doesn’t. Jazz thus becomes hateable, in the same way Megan should have been likeable. She’s a vicious, coke-snorting bitch, who treats the club as if it were high school, and Jazz head cheerleader. A great villain, they should have made the film around her.

As a result, Jazz’s death is about the only one which packs any kind of emotional impact – it’s not too dissimilar to one I saw in La Esquina del Diablo, actually. The rest are mostly exercises in sloppy gore – as noted, some of which work, others which don’t. For instance, the (male) death by crowbar rape is perhaps more likely to put you off tacos than anything. [They could at least have used a fireplace implement, and had Megan cheerily quip, “How’s that for strip poker?”] And why does Amanda enthusiastically join in the mayhem? No credible explanation is ever offered. It’s all very clearly a small-budget effort, made with more passion than anything else. Unfortunately, outside of Brown, it does little to escape the obvious limitations imposed by its resources.

Dir: Bob Clark
Star: Alicia Watson, Erin Brown. Courtney Riggs, Stefan Rollins
a.k.a. Night Club Massacre

I Spit On Your Grave 2

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★★★
“Model prisoner.”

This sequel is almost entirely unrelated to the original, beginning with a new, fresh character who will be tortured within an inch of her life, before escaping and roaring back for revenge. However, it manages to be a little more coherent, even as it replaces the redneckophobia of the original, with much more straightforward xenophobia.

The victim here is Katie Carter (Dallender), a wannabe model who takes advantage of a free photography portfolio session, offered by sleazy, Eastern European cameraman Ivan (Absolom) and his assistant, Georgy (Baharov). The latter becomes obsessed with her, and won’t take no for an answer. When Katie’s screams alert her apartment building’s caretaker, he’s stabbed by Georgy, leaving Ivan to clean up the mess. Still, it’s nothing that a large crate, stamped “Bulgaria”, can’t solve… When Katie discovers what’s awaiting her in Sofia, she’ll wish she’d been the one left in a pool of blood.

The narrative here is a bit more coherent. For instance, an early scene establishes that Carter is no shrinking violet, being a Midwest girl who knows a thing or two about hunting vermin. We also get to see more of the period between her escape, and her returning to take action – she survives with the help of a kindly local priest. He’s about the only Eastern European character here who is not an utter scumball, and in that aspect, I was reminded a fair amount of the first Hotel movie.

Initially, I thought it was going to spend the entire film in New York, and that might not have been a bad thing. Monroe is good at capturing the “urban jungle” aspect of the city, in much the same way as Abel Ferrara. There are a number of elements early on that brought Ms. 45 to mind, with that classic of the rape-revenge genre also having a sequence in a photographer’s studio. Dallender has the kind of willowy steel look as Zoe Tamerlis, too. It’s a shame it didn’t retain that approach, instead of becoming some kind of cautionary tale about foreign travel.

Once it leaves that setting, however, and scurries off to Sofia, the film becomes less interesting, more or less going down the same path as the original. Indeed, some of the beats are exactly the same, e.g. the heroine appears to find sanctuary in an authority figure, only to have that yanked away from her. Some of the resulting unpleasantness is hard to watch – please note, I’ve seen more than my fair share of cinematic nastiness, so I do not squirm easily – and that applies on both sides of the brutality. But its impact is never more than a visceral shudder. To be truly effective, it needs to pack an emotional punch as well, and in the main, that’s not present. It’s technically solid, and that may be part of the problem; it perhaps should be a little less polished, and rougher around the edges, in line with the content.

Dir: Steven R. Monroe
Star: Jemma Dallender, Yavor Baharov, Joe Absolom, Aleksandar Aleksiev

I Spit On Your Grave

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★★½
“The Hills have thighs.”

Having been pleasantly surprised by I Spit on Your Grave 3: Vengeance is Mine, I thought I should rewind and catch the first two films in the series, see if they were also above expectations. Sadly, the answer is “not really”. The first, in particular, suffers as a direct remake of the notorious original, directed in 1978 by Meir Zarchi (originally released, to little attention, as Day of the Woman). It fails from our perspective for much the same reasons, mostly through being more interested in the rape than the revenge. Though there is a certain, nasty inventiveness to the latter, which salvages the final third.

Writer Jennifer Hills (Butler) moves into to a remote cabin she has rented, in order to have peace and quiet while she pens her next book. Before she has even arrived there, she has crossed paths with the local rednecks, a trio led by Johnny (Branson). Things escalate from there, until the trio – along with the “developmentally-challenged” local plumber, burst into Jennifer’s house, and brutally assault her. She manages to flee, seeking sanctuary, only for things to go from bad to worse. But she is just able to escape with her life, falling into a creek and vanishing from her assailants.

At this point, she effectively vanishes from the film as well, which is part of the problem. There’s a logical gap here, in need of explanation. Who takes care of her? And if she’s working on her own, how is a skinny little thing like Jennifer, whose background is entirely in writing (rather than – oh, I dunno – construction), capable of dragging around the unconscious bodies of the men as she takes her revenge? I mean, she suspends one of them up in the air, dangling over a bathtub like a trussed chicken. That’s not trivial. I did enjoy the imagination in the savage vengeance, which does surpass that of the original. We get a face dissolving, fish-hooks and the ol’ rape by shotgun. Jennifer is not messing around, shall we say.

It’s a shame the film didn’t emphasize the intellectual angle a bit more. Initially, it seems that Hills’s brain is the threat to the locals, who have no idea how to handle or even interact with someone who is clearly their mental superior. However, any efforts in this direction are rapidly abandoned, in preference for her simply being physically attractive. Post-attack, too, it doesn’t really appear she’s using her brain, so much as feral cunning. It certainly does go a long way to explaining how royally screwed-up Jennifer is by the time Butler revisited the character (under a different director) in Part 3. Yet, it’s also clear that the lengthy depiction of the abuse suffered by the character does as much to detract from as emphasize the reasons for that damage.

Dir: Steven R. Monroe
Star: Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Daniel Franzese, Rodney Eastman

.357: Six Bullets for Revenge

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★★
“As the crow lies…”

It wasn’t until the end, when the credits ran and I saw someone’s name I knew, that I realized this was actually a local production, shot here in Phoenix. Maybe I should have been paying more attention, or maybe that just speaks to the bland lack of place present in this low-budget Crow knock-off. For, despite the poster which is obviously riffing off another comic-book movie, this one is clearly inspired by Alex Proyas’s cult classic. I am, however, pleased to report that the lead star here did actually make it through the entirety of production with a pulse, so they come out ahead of their inspiration in that department.

On their wedding night, Eric – yes, as in Eric Draven – and Jade (Love) have their nuptials rudely interrupted by a gang of thugs belonging to Lyle Barnes (Ames), due to Eric having skipped out on them with Jade and, more importantly, fifty grand. He is killed; she is brutally assaulted and wakes up the next morning beside his corpse, with one though on her mind: vengeance. She trades her wedding ring for a gun at a pawn shop, and with the assistance of a mysterious stranger, Hammer (Williamson), begins a relentless pursuit of those responsible for her husband’s demise, all the way up the chain of command to Barnes.

The problem with being such an obvious copy, from the page-flipping opening credit sequence, to the black, feathery wings worn by Jade as she goes about her business, is you’re inevitably going to be measured at every step against your inspiration. And when you are going up against an undeniable cult classic, it’s unlikely to be a positive comparison. If this had taken the same basic elements, but gone in its own direction, I’d likely have been more tolerant of its flaws, most notably fight scenes which are ploddingly assembled – apparently from flat-packs with an Allen wrench. And a low budget is absolutely no excuse for the apparent lack of originality, which is the main problem here.

Fred Williamson’s presence helps elevate things, but it’s clear they only had him around for a couple of days, and his character’s departure from the film is every bit as abrupt as his arrival [though I was amused by him being called Hammer, that basically being what Fred calls himself!] If he had lurked in the background for the entire movie, providing motivation and guidance, it would have been better. William Katt, playing a sleazy pawnshop guy, also stands out, but Love’s performance isn’t enough to overcome an ill-considered costume, which feels like it came off the remainder rail at Hot Topic. The grindhouse aspects offer a welcome dose of grime, and is perhaps the one area where this does manage to surpass its predecessor, with the film offering copious female nudity (from just about everyone bar the heroine, who may have been body-doubled). This probably isn’t quite enough to justify it as a viewing experience.

Dir: Brian Skiba
Star: Laurie Love, Brian Ames, Krystle Delgado, Fred Williamson

Violent Instinct

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★★½
“Mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

Valerie Graves (Osborne) is a powder-keg in her mid-twenties, barely surviving from job to job, and troubled by violent dreams. At a party, she meets Andy Cheney, who runs a locksmith company, and who offers her an admin job there. She eventually discovers the company is a front for far more questionable business, and eagerly accepts Andy’s offer of working on that side, collecting debts and enforcing his authority on those lower down the food-chain. But when one of her missions ends up hitting too close to home, she decides she’s going to quit. Her boss doesn’t take kindly to that, and stiffs her of the final payment she needs to set up life somewhere else. Which, needless to say, does not sit too well with Valerie.

This is a seriously grubby and downbeat spiral, which deserves credit for being largely unremitting and consistent in tone. However, that isn’t enough, in itself, to make for interesting viewing, not least because there’s little here to which the viewer can hitch their attention. Valerie is not a nice person. Which isn’t necessary a show-stopper. as that deficiency in warmth of character, can be made up for in a number of different ways. A charismatic lead, compelling back-story or interesting arc over the course of the film, would all help give reasons to watch. Unfortunately, none of them are present here: at least, not in sufficient quantities to take the audience along.

Osborne isn’t bad in  the central role – though she makes about the least convincing interior design consultant (her apparent initial job!) I’ve ever seen. She’s certainly different from the stereotypical mob enforcer you might expect, and have seen elsewhere. Valerie is roughly equal measures of tattoos, piercings and spiky attitude, with no genuine relationships to speak of, save for Tina (Ryan). And she’s probably even more anti-social and depressed than the anti-heroine, which I guess makes them perfect for each other. But I can’t say I was even remotely convinced by Rowley and his crew as supposedly hardcore gangsters. It’s often a problem with micro-budget movies, that the makers operate from a small circle of available talent, in a certain type. There’s a struggle when they need to fill roles outside that type, and this definitely hampers them here.

There are two versions of this floating around. This review is based on the 79-minute producer’s cut, which was edited down from the 124-minute version called Primordial. Among the apparent changes were some quite significant ones, including taking an ambiguous final scene and transplanting it to the start of the film, where it becomes a dream sequence. It also “shortens or removes many of the humorous scenes”, which is likely a good thing, given that the remorseless intensity is likely the film’s strongest suit. Still I’m not convinced enough I’ve missed out, to track down the longer version. Though must confess, I am somewhat intrigued by “the fish hook sex act” apparently included in the extended cut…

Dir: Eric Widing
Star: Marylee Osborne, Erin R. Ryan, Christopher Rowley, Adam Clevenger
a.k.a. Primordial