Tag: l

Lethal Panther

  By

★★★½
“And then there’s the (Godfrey) Ho…”

Things we learned from this movie:

  • Being a prostitute is a healthier career for women than being an assassin – “unless the men have AIDS”.
  • Your neighbours will never call the police, even when a lengthy gun-battle breaks out on your property.
  • The CIA operates openly on American soil, and has apparently replaced the Secret Service in investigating counterfeit money.
  • The best way to give a woman an orgasm, is to fill a condom with milk, prick a hole in the end, and squirt it onto her panties. Who knew.

Any questions? In the loopy world of Category 3 Hong Kong films, which cover pretty much every bizarre scenario imaginable, Lethal Panther remains on the outer edge. I’m not quite sure how the makers got someone with a decent track record like Sibelle Hu to appear: I suspect she was sent a script for a completely different movie, probably entitled Lady Super Cop Goes to Manilla or something, since she only has about two scenes with the other lead actresses. I would imagine that her reaction, on seeing the finished product, must have been something similar to that experienced by Helen Mirren at the premiere of Caligula – and was presumably followed by a stern note to her agent the next morning.

The story centers on two assassins, one from Vietnam (Yuen), the other from Japan (Miyamoto), hired to come to the Phillippines and kill the head of an underworld gang that’s making a killing with counterfeit dollars. They’re employer is the boss’s nephew, who wants to take over operations: when that mission is accomplished, he then turns the two hit-women on each other, to tidy up the loose ends. They end up injured and recuperating at the home of a friendly prostitute, where they discover they are not so different. However, fate intervenes, in the shape of one’s brother, who returns from France. Meanwhile, a CIA agent (Hu) is looking into the funny money, and when her target is gunned down at a wedding, switches her attentions to the killers.

The formula here is straight-forward: an action scene about every ten minutes and some gratuitous nudity every twenty. And when I say ‘gratuitous’, I mean it; the last item listed in the first paragraph counts as the most bizarre use of dairy products Chris or I have seen in a very long time [Chris is floating Carmen Electra’s milk-bath in The Chosen One as a credible contender, but I don’t recall the specifics there]. None of the other sex scenes reach quite the same level of insanity, but they give the film a sleazy quality that it probably would have done better without.

The action is even more copious than the nudity however, and not bad, though one suspects a fair amount of doubling for the main actresses is going on. Despite Ho’s reputation as a complete hack [some of his films consist entirely of footage spliced together from other movies], he knows the right buttons for action heroine fans, and how to push most of them. On what I strongly suspect was a poverty-row budget – you don’t go to the Phillippines for the scenery – the movie delivers an impressive quantity of action, mixing firearm-toting and martial-arts battles to decent enough effect. All of the actresses get their moments to remember: a massacre in a restaurant and a supermarket shoot-out stand out in particular, as well as the roof-top fight between Hu and Yuen.

Y’know I just mentioned the poverty-row budget? Perhaps the area this stands out in most is the soundtrack, which appears to be a combination of stock music, and cues ripped wholesale off from other movies. Ho is far from the first Hong Kong director to do this [I still remember my jaw dropping when a chunk of the Heathers soundtrack showed up in Flying Dagger], but you really wonder, at what point did it seem a good idea to lob John Carpenter’s theme from Halloween into the mix for one scene? And, no, the moment in question does not involve a masked maniac stalking sexually-active teens – albeit probably only because Godfrey Ho didn’t think of the idea. Or, more likely, stored it away for an entire feature on this theme.

It would be easy to dismiss this as exploitative crap. Very easy, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, either. But it kept us entertained, even if a good chunk of the amusement was to be found in the steady stream of sarcasm directed at the screen by Chris and I, as the more ludicrous aspects unfolded. Still, Ho clearly possesses absolutely no pretensions to be anything above what he is, and delivers a B-movie experience that we likely will remember for some time, especially when we head past the milk in the supermarket.

Dir: Godfrey Ho
Stars: Yoko Miyamoto, Maria Yuen (as Maria Jo), Sibelle Hu, Alex Fong
a.k.a. Deadly China Dolls

Lady Gangster

  By

★★★
“An archetypal forties B-movie; a straightforward tale, briskly told.”

Having watched both Transformers and Miami Vice over the past week, it’s nice to see a film that doesn’t hang around: coming in at sixty-two minutes, Lady Gangster has hardly a line of dialogue that does not propel the story forward. Based on the play, Ladies They Talk About (previously a 1933 film starring Barbara Stanwyck), this centers on Dorothy Burton, member of a gang of bank-robbers. She takes the rap for one of their jobs, and goes to jail, but is also the only one who knows where the loot is hidden. Childhood friend Kenneth Phillips (Wilcox), now a renowned broadcaster, tries to help Dorothy get parole, but she has also made an enemy inside the prison, who is just as keen our heroine does not get released, and her former gang colleagues have their own interests, needless to say.

Made in 1942, there really weren’t very many films of that period which features female protagonists in this kind of role, and it deserves credit for that. The first half, in particular, is remarkably watchable today, though the plot does find itself badly-convoluted later on. There’s a lot to get through, and the film gallops on at such a heady pace, it feels almost like a trailer for itself. Made post-Hays Code, that obviously forced the makers to tone things down as far as content goes; despite the head warden’s protests that the jail is “neither a country club nor a concentration camp”, it’s certainly closer to the former. Emerson is great as the heroine – she’d go on to a long television career – and Jackie Gleason (The Honeymooners) also turns up as the gang’s getaway driver. Despite a daring escape from jail, she ends up taking a back-seat to Phillips and his two-fisted heroics at the finale, which is something of a shame, but undoubtedly a result of the era. Certainly remains a decent effort.

Dir: “Florian Roberts” [real name: Robert Florey]
Star: Faye Emerson, Frank Wilcox, Julie Bishop, Roland Drew

Lady Vengeance

  By

★★★★
“Revenge is a bitch…”

This film may need two viewings. First time up, I was irritated by an apparent lack of coherence – which was particularly annoying, since the non-linear storyline seemed almost completely superfluous. Second time round, it bothered me less though remained, perhaps deliberately, disorienting, and I still doubt the need for it. But the re-view left me better able to appreciate the great central idea, a chilling meditation on justice, revenge, the thin line between the two, and the effects on those who become involved. The final part of Park’s loose trilogy (after Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy) is the story of “kind-hearted Geum-ja” (Lee), who spends 13 years in prison, for the heinous murder of a young child. Except, she isn’t guilty, and spends the time forging alliances which will help with her new goal: revenge on the real perpetrator (Choi).

The pace is stately, rather than adrenalin-driven, yet there’s no denying its place here. Much credit to Lee for a great performance in a complex character, capable of huge sacrifice in her quest for redemption: she cuts off a finger in front of the victim’s parents, and has to be physically restrained from removing more. Yet it seems that her charity and good deeds, such as donating a kidney to a fellow prisoner, may be part of her vengeance. And then, when her goal is within grasp…she steps back to allow others, perhaps better-motivated, to take her place. Or is the opportunity that she offers a poisoned chalice? The questions asked have no easy answers; neither proponents of capital punishment, nor those opposed to it, will find it comfortable viewing. By the end, there are no victims left; everyone is guilty – to use the old Sex Pistols line, no-one is innocent.

he DVD was released by Tartan Video USA on September 26th, and includes an interview with Park, a ‘making of’ documentary, and no less than three commentaries. Nice job! For more information, visit the Tartan Video USA site.
a.k.a. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Dir: Park Chan-Wook
Stars: Lee Young-ae, Choi Min-sik, Kim Si-Hu, Nam Il-Woo

License to Steal

  By

★★★★½
“Thieves Like Us.”

This is an largely over-looked gem, featuring the future Mrs. Samo Hung (Godenzi – they married in 1995) in a role and performance which are so excellent, as to make you wonder why she apparently quit the cinema the following year [though she does have a cameo in Mr. Nice Guy, appearing in the cooking show audience]. She first came to attention in Eastern Condors and, despite a lack of training, developed a graceful, fluid style of action that works well. Her best known vehicle is She Shoots Straight, but for my money, this is even better.

She plays Hung, one of three sisters who are the business end of a family of thieves. Their guardian decides to pass the clan on to Hung, but another sister, Ngan (Aurelio, also from She Shoots Straight) wants control – she fixes a job so that Hung is captured, then takes over operations, using brute force and murder rather than skill and agility on their robberies. Three years later, Hung’s sentence is ended, but her sister immediately frames her again: to avoid jail, Hung agrees to co-operate with the police and work towards capturing her sister. She discovers Ngan has been hired to steal Napoleon’s death-mask, and the film climaxes with the two sisters battling each other inside the warehouse where the treasure is guarded.

This is almost two plots for the price of one, as on the police side, you have the investigating cop (Ng), who has to keep an eye both on his new partner (Ngai Sing) and a swordplay-novel obsessed nephew (Yuen Biao), who both want to help, but together are as much a distraction as an assistance. This lends itself to the usual goofy and unsubtle HK comedy – for example, Ng stripping to his boxers after believing there’s a bomb hidden in them – though these aspects don’t grate nearly as badly as I’ve seen elsewhere. There are also a bunch of cool moments to the plot which are probably unnecessary, in the larger scheme of things, but are thoroughly satisfying, and suggest someone actually thought the script out, again something not always the case in HK action cinema.

Godenzi is great, putting over a great combination of coolness and charisma, with a confident attitude that’s wholly justified. It’s established in the first scene that she knows how to push her sister’s buttons, and this comes back into play right at the end. Aurelio, a Filipina powerlifting champion, is a little less adept at acting, but is well-cast as the villainess, with a good sneer. There’s one amazing, politically-incorrect exchange between the characters, when they meet for the first time after Hung’s release from jail. Ngan sneers, “You look plump,” to which Hung replies, “Better than you, with sunburn like a nigger!” Ah, the 1990’s…

But this one is less about offensive banter, than action scenes which are top-notch, from the opening practice duel between the sisters, through to the final battle – this time for real. It’s particularly inventive as, early on, the sisters have to fight each other without making a sound, to avoid alerting the guards The highlight is, however, probably an amazing fight in a car-park – one of the top locations for mayhem in HK films, right up there with restaurants and warehouses – where everyone bar Aurelio gets involved. Her role as top villain there is delegated to Billy Chow, who went toe-to-toe with Jet Li in Fist of Legend, and he’s one hell of a formidable opponent. The action choreography is credited to Lee King-chu, but I suspect producer Samo Hung had more than a little involvement.

There is little or no depth here, only really what Godenzi brings to the table. But there is, equally, little or no intent of depth either: this was created purely as entertainment, nothing more, and on that level it succeeds admirably. It’s a real shame Godenzi chose not to follow a career as an action actress since, on this showing, she could well have ended up as big a star in the field as Michelle Yeoh.

[A note on spelling. The sleeve says ‘LicenCe’, but the print goes with the S. The former is also grammatically inaccurate, so I’ve gone with the S spelling throughout this article.]

Dir: Billy Chan
Stars: Joyce Godenzi, Agnes Aurelio, Richard Ng, Alvina Kong

Lady Jayne Killer

  By

★★★
“Unquestionably flawed but cheesily energetic fluff.”

Memo to self: don’t tell your wife the star of a film was in Playboy. Chris’s interest, already somewhat on thin ice, evaporated entirely, pretty much the moment I made that mistake, and I almost had to handcuff her to the bed to prevent a sudden trip to the supermarket. The concept here is kinda cool: Mom Emily (Eleniak) vs. anti-Mom Jayne (du Page). The latter is a hitwoman for the Mob, with 20 kills to her credit when she decides to abscond with a million in cash. She ends up hitching a ride beside Emily and her 16-year old son Kerry (Lelliot) on their way to San Antonio, with the former owners of the money in hot pursuit. And the cops. And the FBI. Then Kerry – when not fantasizing about Eleniak in the shower [cue Chris’s neo-departure!] – decides to solves Mom’s financial problems with thievery of his own.

I certainly don’t blame them for changing the title from the amazingly bland original – though suspect a colon got lost somewhere on route… And this is contrived: with a cellphone, and more than enough ready cash, Jayne could easily hire a limo – or even take a cab to San Antonio. So why use Emily – then hang around, even after their car breaks down? That sound you hear is the film whistling loudly and putting its fingers in its ears. And despite a strict and straight-laced parent, underage Kerry still sports a Superman tattoo on his arm. This kind of sloppy attention to production detail damages a film which is sometimes smarter than it may appear.

For instance, Emily’s line that her son is knows about every woman who has appeared in Playboy is nicely self-aware, given Eleniak’s familiarity with the staples therein. :-) But she stays dressed here, leaving the lingerie to Du Page, and Kerry’s interaction with the babe dropped into his life are amusing – hey, in his shoes and at his age, I’d be a gibbering fool too. The plot twists its way, albeit predictably, towards the final battle between Mom and anti-Mom. As a time-passer, I found it by no means awful: while it’d have been nice if Emily had snarled “Get away from him, you bitch,” when she found Jayne holding a gun to Kerry’s head, I guess you can’t have everything.

Dir: Mark L. Lester
Star: Erika Eleniak, Julie du Page, Jeremy Lelliot, James Remar
a.k.a. Betrayal

The Last Man on Planet Earth

  By

★★★½
“After World War III, there will be no more long queues for the restroom.”

You’ve got to admire any film – particularly a TV movie – that provokes diverse reviews. This, then, not only “was obviously written and made to appeal to a lesbian slumber party,” it’s also a “manifestation of heterosexual panic.” Such even-handedness can only be applauded. Of course, as usual, the truth falls somewhere in the middle. After an errant bioweapon kills almost all the male population off during WW3, the survivors decide that for humanity to survive, the “man” must be taken out, and use cloning techniques to end male childbirth. However, renegade scientist Hope Chase (Bowen) creates one (Francis) without those nasty violent tendencies. But when he escapes and finds his way to Washington, the authorities, led by FBI Agent Hastings (Tomita), are ordered to hunt him down, as a threat to the new world order.

There are some painful clunkers here: calling the man “Adam”, dodgy model FX, and an ending that, far from the “shocking climax” promised by the sleeve, was correctly (and in detail!) guessed by Chris with half an hour to go. It would also benefit from more thought beyond the obvious: what about Earth outside the US? And what would such a world really be like? [Here, it’s almost unchanged – I suspect for budgetary reasons] But if it only has half a brain, that’s still more than most TVMs manage, and bonus points are due for predicting both terrorism on American soil and war in Afghanistan – and this back in 1999, when most people thought Al Qaeda was the guy running the local 7-11.

Tamlyn Tomita comes out best as the FBI agent; she gets nice lines like, “I bet you’re one of those closet heteros, aren’t you?” and manages to avoid the usual stereotypes – or, at least, twist them in interesting ways. Bowen is less effective, but DeYoung is entertaining as the scruffy rebel, ranting against the “Lesbian Conspiracy” that has sent the male sex packing. Overall, this isn’t great SF, or great TV, but it’s edgier than I expected – and as the opening reviews suggest, is likely to peeve both the politically correct and incorrect about equally.

Dir: Les Landau
Star: Julie Bowen, Paul Francis, Tamlyn Tomita, Cliff DeYoung

The Lost Angel

  By

★★
“If Dirty Harry had a daughter…with issues.”

The daughter of Clint does her best in this police thriller but, despite one decent twist, and a couple of half-decent scenes, this collapses under the weight of too familiar a storyline and some rampant overacting. Inspector Billie Palmer (Eastwood) is assigned to catch a killer who has promised a victim a day for 20 days, and is living up to their promise. Events centre around a local deaf priest (Rhys-Davies), but she also must deal with a disgruntled suspect whom she shot, a traumatic incident in her past, and a suspiciously knowledgeable informant. Oh, and a laughably gratuitous sex scene that appears out of nowhere, 80 minutes in.

It’s as if the film-makers didn’t believe any single thread would hold our interest, and decided instead to shovel them on without real logic – hey, if you don’t like this plot, don’t worry, there’ll be another one along in a minute. Which is a shame, since a couple of the ideas have potential, and if better developed, could have made for a decent movie. However, there’s no way any police officer, special crimes or not, would get away with behaving the way Palmer does; in particular, her method of interrogating Goth red herring, C.Thomas Howell (chewing every bit of scenery within reach), is not in the manual, except perhaps at Club Lapdance.

Despite this, ah, no-nonsense approach, which extends to most aspects of her detective work, there’s a reason this one has been sitting on the shelf for the past couple of years. Eastwood does have some of her father’s presence, but needs to make a significantly better choice of material if she is to reach the same level of stardom.

[This film was released by MTI on DVD, April 26th – for more details, visit their website]

Dir: Dimitri Logothetis
Star: Alison Eastwood, Nickolas Celozzi II, Judd Nelson, John Rhys-Davies

Lipstick & Dynamite

  By

★★★★
“Lives up to its subtitle: The First Ladies of Wrestling”

I first heard about this film last spring, at the Cauliflower Alley Club convention in Las Vegas, a get-together for retired wrestlers and their fans. Two attendees, Banner and Martinez, talked about their part in the film, and we were immediately intrigued; a year later, I’m pleased to say this largely lives up to expectations. It takes you back to a time before pro wrestling was synonymous with the WWE, and the characters here are fabulous. They’re led by Gillem, now in her 80’s, occasionally difficult to understand (they subtitle her comments) but with a life that went from the ring to lion-taming. She’s merely one example, and the results are fascinating.

That’s not to say this is perfect film-making. There’s too little structure – a vague thread about an upcoming reunion is about all – and the film jumps about in history with little apparent purpose. There’s a vaguely misanthropic bent too, in that almost all men are rapists, abusive fathers or cheating husbands; it’d also have been nice to have the women wrestlers better located, culturally, in the era of which they were part. We get some priceless What’s My Line? footage, and we’d love to have seen more of this. Instead, it’s mostly talking-heads, and no matter how interesting, this eventually gets old . Much of the actual footage of bouts comes off the Wrestling Women USA DVD from Something Weird, and there’s also chunks from Pin Down Girl, neither of which are memorable.

But in the end, the subject is an inspired choice, and the film certainly does the topic justice. You’re left with profound respect for ladies who went against the mores of popular society and stepped into the ring, often sacrificing their health – and in one case, their life – for our entertainment. This documentary is a fitting tribute to these marvellous women.

Dir: Ruth Leitman
Star: Gladys Gillem, The Fabulous Moolah, Ida May Martinez, Penny Banner

Lady Terminator

  By

★★★
“She came from the past, to destroy your future. Or something like that.”

Watching the unstoppable female killing machine in this 1988 Indonesian film might make Terminator 3 seem less original – except most of the concept here, as well as entire scenes and exact lines of dialogue, come directly from the original Terminator. There are admittedly twists, such as the incorporation of local folklore figure, the Queen of the South Seas. She gets miffed at her lover, and vows vengeance on his descendants. A century later, a scuba-diving anthropologist (who reminds us with lines like, “I’m not a lady, I’m an anthropologist”), gets possessed, and goes after a great-granddaughter (Rademaker).

However, it’s amazing how close 80% of this is, as said unstoppable female killing machine (Constable) runs amok, with no concern for collateral damage and apparently infinite ammo. Heroine defended by macho human (Hart)? Check. Assault on a cop station? Check? Impromptu eyeball surgery and “Come with me if you want to live”? Check x 2. Admittedly, Arnie never bit anyone’s dick off with his vagina, and most of the special effects here are primitive, to say the least. Hence, the rating above is a composite: fans of wacky, weird cinema will love it, those expecting sophistication or polish will hate it, and there’s not likely to be much middle ground.

Mondo Macabro’s DVD does full justice to the film, with a good-quality print, an amazing trailer (under its alternate title, Nasty Hunter) and background info including a fine 25-minute documentary on the region’s exploitation films. Having reviewed Indo-“classic”, Special Silencers in 1991, it’s nice to see the rest of the world catching up, and appreciating the delights – take that how you want – of Indonesian cinema. Though given recent events, the footage of huge waves crashing on the shore is perhaps the most horrific thing in the whole endeavour.

Dir: Jalil Jackson
Star: Barbara Anne Constable, Claudia Rademaker, Christopher J. Hart

Last Stand

  By

★★½
“The godlike genius of Lloyd Simandl strikes again…”

Okay, ‘godlike genius’ is stretching it a lot, but if you arrive at this unofficial Escape From New York remake knowing what to expect (low budget, mild sleaze, lame action, recycling of footage from other movies), it’s still entirely possible to enjoy it. After America breaks into feudal states, escaped drug lord Kragov (Matacena) runs Washington DC, rounding up women of breeding age and shipping them to Utah(!). Though our capital appears now to be populated entirely by middle-Europeans, with not an African-American in sight (like a lot of Simandl’s work, it was filmed in the Czech Republic).

Into this comes Kate Major (Rodger), a soldier doing time for killing her CO. [The prison footage looks very like that in Fatal Conflict, made by Simandl the same year. Damned if I’m gonna check though!] Krakov has found the nuclear football, giving him access to all US missiles, so she must switch it into safe simulation mode before he can work out the codes, and also rescue the head of the UN’s son (Barker), who leads the resistance – all ten of them. It’s complete nonsense, of course. Krakov violates many ‘Evil Overlord’ rules (if I become an Evil Overlord, anyone who has something to tell me, and me alone, will be made to do so via CCTV) and Major should simply kill him. There’s also no reason why Major – released from 20-to-life hard labour – doesn’t just head off in the opposite direction at top speed, rather than putting her life at risk.

Luckily, the villains, Kragov and sidekick Tanya (Brozova) are a good deal of fun, even if Kragov’s lines are often unintelligible; Brozova would be great as Ilsa if they ever revive She-Wolf of the SS. Barker is unforgivably bland, but Rodger does have a certain spark and presence, though gets little chance to show it here. The sum of all this is undeniable trash; you may, or may not, regard that as any kind of endorsement. As an aside, keep an eye out for the graffiti on the walls, including comments like ‘Give Idaho Back to the Serbs’…

Dir: Lloyd Simandl
Star: Kate Rodger, Josh Barker, Orestes Matacena, Katerina Brozova