Tag: m

The Mini-skirt Mob

  By

★★★
“Hell hath no fury like a blonde scorned.”

miniskirtIt’s not much of a stretch to imagine this coming out of Japan, as an early ancestor of the pinky violence genre. Though that would probably require the additional of significantly more nudity, since it proves surprisingly coy on that front, without a nipple to be found. The central character is Jeff (Hagen), a rodeo star who has just married Connie (Jackson). This does not sit well with his old flame, Shayne (McBain), who heads an all-girl gang, The Mini-skirts. Together with a group of male bikers (who include cult legend, Harry Dean Stanton), they harass the newlyweds, on and off the road, until a tragic accident leads to the death of one of the bikers. Then, the gloves come off, with Jeff and Connie besieged in their caravan by Shayne and her crew. However, they find an unlikely ally in Shayne’s sister, Edie (McCormack, who had previously been nominated for an Oscar as the tiny psychopath in The Bad Seed). While she stepped aside from Jeff when Shayne decided she was interested, Shayne is now sniffing around Edie’s current man, Lon (Jeremy Slate) and Edie has no interest in stepping aside again.

It’s an interesting set of power dynamics here: Shayne is the one who runs things here, manipulating others – Lon in particular – to do her bidding without the slightest qualm. For instance, after Lon has brawled with Jeff to the point where the latter has pulled a rifle on the gang, as far as Lon is concerned, that’s the end of the matter. But Shayne casts aspersions on his manhood, basically goading him into further action. She has also the whip-hand in her relationship with Edie, who is initially happy to follow along, clinging to her big sis’s coat-tails, until the scales fall from her eyes and she realizes how far Shayne is prepared to go in her quest for vengeance against the man who has – oh, the horror! – found love in the arms of another woman, Or, as Shayne puts it, “You need a real woman, Jeff – not a mouse.” Rodents are something of a running theme, it appears: she also tells a touching story of a visit to a zoo with Jeff, where she watched a snake hunt and swallow alive a mouse. Who said romance was dead?

It’s Jackson, using so much hair-spray she doesn’t need a motorcycle helmet, who keeps this watchable – even when the biking scenes, juvenile delinquent hi-jinks and Budweiser product placement begin to wear thin, and that doesn’t take very long. However, the siege of the caravan racks up the tension, and brings an unexpected and quite nasty death, albeit one clearly accomplished through thoroughly unconvincing stunt-doubling. That, and a finale where Connie shows an equally unexpected streak of malice, left me suitably entertained, though it would certainly be a stretch to call this anything more than throw-away drive-in fodder.

Dir: Maury Dexter
Star: Diane McBain, Ross Hagen, Sherry Jackson, Patty McCormack

Miss Conspirator

  By

★★
“A tale – and heroine – of two halves.”

miss conspiratorChun Soo-ro (Go) is a painfully shy, introverted young woman, who is a little more than a bundle of neuroses. At the airport to see off her sister, she encounters a nun, who asks Soo-ro to deliver a package to her boyfriend – a concept which, personally, would set my alarm bells ringing! However, on her arrival, Soo-ro finds the intended recipient dead, and ends up fleeing the scene, in possession of both a large quantity of drugs, and the cash that was intended to pay for them. For obvious reasons, both the White Tiger and Sa gangs, the participants in the deal gone very, very wrong, are rather upset, and go on the hunt for her. For they believe Soo-ro to be the nun, who is unable to disagree, having been killed in a traffic accident. Fortunately, a cop working undercover takes pity and agrees to protect Soo-ro, although his resulting actions lead to exposure – and, meanwhile, the prospect of getting his hands on so much cash leads his boss to stray from the path of true justice. Fortunately, some unexpected hydro-shock therapy leads to a startling transformation in our heroine’s character, and she arranges a meeting between all the interested parties.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but this left me almost entirely cold. Or maybe not, since this wasn’t particularly well-received in its native Korea either, I’m not averse to the “fish out of water” idea – one of my favorite book growing up was Robert Scheckley’s Game of X, about a complete novice who finds himself embroiled in espionage, and I was hoping for something similar here. Unfortunately, this is certainly not funny, only sporadically exciting, ridiculously implausible, and the transition from shrinking violet to ice-cool superwoman is so abrupt as to be entirely disconcerting, almost as if someone switched out movies on you at the 80 minute mark.

From what I’ve read, it seems to have been intended as a showcase for Go, making her feature debut after becoming one of Korea’s best-known TV actresses – mostly for playing roles closer to her later character here. She isn’t bad in the role, and considering how irritating the performance here could have been, the fact that it isn’t deserves some credit. However, “not being irritating” is hardly what you’d call a ringing endorsement for any movie. Things do perk up a little after Soo-ro blossoms into her femme fatale version, and you can’t help thinking this would have been a much better version had the change happened about an hour earlier. Or better still, if it had taken place immediately after the animated opening credit sequence which is one of the movie’s few memorable sequences.

Dir: Park Chul-kwan
Star: Go Hyun-jung, Yoo Hae-jin. Sung Dong-il. Lee Moon-sik

Minty: The Assassin

  By

★★
“Walking in a Minty wonderland…”

mintyWhen a film clearly doesn’t take itself seriously, and in particular, when it almost takes delight in acknowledging its own flaws, this does convey a certain immunity to criticism. “Yes, we know this is crap,” it seems to be saying. “So what?” But on the other hand, it’s hard to be a parody of comic-book fan-service, when you actually are comic-book fan-service. The heroine here is Minty (Madison), an assassin who works for a man known only as Big Boss (Parker, channeling the spirit of Michael Clarke Duncan). When he is kidnapped by Dr. Brain Bender (Joslin), an evil scientist – really, how could he be anything else with that name? – and his vampire sidekick, Double Delicious (Taylor), Minty, powered by chocolate, has to fight her way up through the levels of the Cock Tower [sic], defeating Bender’s other minions, up to where Boss is being held. While Bender can’t beat Minty himself, he transfers his mind into DD’s body, and there’s only one way for our heroine to prevail…

If you guessed the answer is “lesbian canoodling,” give yourself two points.

It’s very much a mixed bag here. Some moments fall entirely flat, and the film often isn’t as funny as it thinks it is. This is in part because most of the supporting characters don’t have the acting chops to pull off the satirical aspects, which is a lot harder than it looks. “Broad comic mugging” seems to be the main direction provided by Baldovino, and that rapidly becomes more tiresome than entertaining. However, there are some scenes which do work well. I particularly enjoyed Minty going up against a Bruce Lee look-alike (the fight here was nicely put together and edited), while there’s also an animated interlude featuring Minty being chased through a Prince of Persia-style level by a psychotic rabbit. This ends in an arterial way that feels like it comes out of a particularly twisted Tex Avery cartoon.

Unfortunately, the finale then gets itself bogged down in soft-core shenanigans with poor continuity e.g. in one shot, Delicious is topless, the next, she’s wearing butterfly-shaped pasties. [Look, you’re either willing to get undressed or you’re not. Have the courage of your convictions, and don’t change your mind mis-scene] Admittedly, it’s preceded by Dr. Bender explaining that the goal of all fanboys is to see the heroine naked, so this is simply delivering on that promise. But blatant foreshadowing doesn’t make it any more interesting or entertaining, and the movie doesn’t at all make it clear that Bender is actually a fanboy who has somehow come across into Minty’s comic-book world for nefarious purposes. Maybe there’s a director’s cut somewhere that explains all this. Instead, as seen here, it’s a probably over-ambitious and occasionally entertaining mess, not without its charms, yet some way short of being charming enough.

Dir: Eugene Baldovino
Star: Elina Madison, Chip Joslin, Tabitha Taylor, Anthony Ray Parker

Miss Meadows

  By

★★★
“There are bad people in the world and they shouldn’t be around the good people, especially the little ones,”

miss meadowsA young woman is walking down the street. A truck pulls up alongside her, and the driver starts talking to her, at first nicely, but gradually more crudely. When she spurns his advances, he pulls a gun. However, the woman pulls her own weapon from her handbag and shoots him dead. Welcome to the world of Miss Meadows (Holmes), where bad behaviour is countered with lethal force. It’s an offshoot of the “urban vigilante” film, where someone goes off the rails in response to rudeness and the perceived failures of modern culture, rather than a direct threat. Falling Down was perhaps the first example, also seen in Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America. Both those were rather more acerbic than this, gynocentric entry, which perhaps has more in common with John Waters’ Serial Mom. At one point, a cop calls Miss Meadows a “Pulp Fiction Mary Poppins,” and that’s a fairly accurate high-concept here.

She’s a somewhat nomadic first-grade substitute teacher, with a past which clearly contained a defining trauma, who has long phone calls with her mother (Smart), and seeks to protect her local community from an influx of criminal elements. But when she meets and falls for a cop (Dale), who gradually realizes the woman he’s seeing may also be the killer his colleagues are hunting. And he’s not the only person who discovers the secret behind her facade. Meadows is an wonderful and engaging concoction, a throwback to an earlier era of politeness and courtesy, and its that contrast to her ruthless approach, tap-dancing her way to mass murder, that drives the film. It’s not entirely successful; the storyline, overall, relies too much on good fortune and convenience [every fast-food restaurant I’ve been in has surveillance cameras; the one here, not so much], and also tends to the obvious – a priest who molests children, there’s a shocker. It would make for a far ‘edgier’ film, if there was more grey involved in her targets, even at the risk of losing some of the audience. Killing paedophiles and murderers is an easy option, weakening the moral dilemma posed here.

But I thoroughly enjoyed Holmes’s performance; I hadn’t seen her in anything since Thank You for Smoking, back in 2005, before she became most famous for being Mrs. Tom Cruise. She takes a character that possesses two distinct, largely-opposing aspects, and nails it: Miss Meadows is, at once, charming and, clearly, barking mad, with a grip on reality that, we discover, may be a great deal looser than it initially appears. Concentrating more on these psychological aspects – perhaps instead of the rather implausible romantic angle – might have boosted this film out of the “quirkily forgettable” niche into which it is instead dropped.

Dir: Karen Leigh Hopkins
Star: Katie Holmes, James Badge Dale, Callan Mulvey, Jean Smart

Mankillers

  By

★★
“Big guns, and even bigger hair.”

mankillers - vhs1I remember bumping into this one back in the 90’s, on VHS [kids, ask your parents!]. Stumbling across it again recently, I wondered why I had ever bothered – but then I discovered the cornucopia of lurid video sleeves used to lure unwary buyers into purchasing or renting it, and it all made much more sense. I can’t remember exactly which one was on the British video releaase, but I think it was a slight variant of #2 (below, left), over a gratuitous background of exploding fireballs. There are times when I miss those days of prowling the local video store, or market stalls, picking up cinematic “gems” based entirely on their covers. And then, I watch something like this, and remember how few of those purchases ever came anywhere close to living up to their promotional material.

Much as in Naked Avenger, this focuses on an international white-slavery ring, inexplicably appearing to be operated out of a run-down junkyard in some backwoods community. The chief perp in this case is John Mickland (Zipp), a former government agent whose inside knowledge means he can easily counter all “official” efforts to bring him down. So, the government turns to Rachael McKenna (Aldon), who visits a local prison to recruit a “grubby half-dozen” of ne’er-do-wells whom she can lick into shape, in order to form a squad that can head into Mickland’s lair and take down his operation. Quite why they have to be women, is never explained: if there’d been some element of subterfuge, such as infiltration by pretending to be merchandise, that’d have made some sense. Instead, it’s not much more than a traipse through a forest, and a gunfight which follows: since there’s no apparent interest in capturing anyone, would have been more logical just to call in an air-strike. But then, I suppose, we wouldn’t have got the lengthy training montage. And, let’s face it, that’s basically just an excuse for hot-pants and crop-tops, as well as some of the eightiest hair I’ve ever seen. Seriously, the film needs a widescreen release, so we can appreciate the full majesty of the coiffeurs on view.

Not least, because there is precious little else to appreciate. This is such a painfully poverty-stricken production – though it looks like Avatar in comparison to Naked Avenger, that when the action comes, it looks more like little kids playing soldiers. When it comes down to McKenna going one-on-one with Mickland, it becomes somewhat more interesting, largely because the latter is as hard to kill as Jason Vorhees, and is capable of taking multiple bullets, yet can still drive away. Lucky that our heroine came prepared, even for this eventuality. However, getting to that final point will tax the patience of most viewers – as well as their hairdressers.

Dir: David A. Prior
Star: Lynda Aldon, William Zipp, Edy Williams, Gail Fisher
a.k.a. Death Squad

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Maleficent

  By

★★★★
“Maleficent Bastard.”

kinopoisk.ruThis idea seems insane on the surface: take one of the classic villainesses of all-time, and tell the story from her point of view? How could that possibly work? But then, you think about it a bit, and the possibilities become apparent – not just in the fairytale arena, but in others as well. What about a Bond movie from the perspective of Goldfinger? A horror movie through Freddy Krueger’s eyes? One of the first things you realize, is that casting is particularly key: here, you need to have a lead who can take a character that has been universally loathed by generations, to the point where it’s in our cultural DNA, and turn it around, to become the sympathetic focus. The other essential aspect is the motivation: what happened to make them the way they are, and justify their subsequent “evil” actions? You have to bring the audience along on that character’s journey – and, bear in mind, this is a Disney film, so the scope for any kind of explicit content is close to nil. Yeah, we were right the first time, there’s no way this will ever succe…

What? Angelina Jolie as Maleficent? Suddenly, the idea doesn’t just make sense, it became more a case of, why did nobody think of this before? Virtually from the first photos of Jolie in her uber-goth get-up, it was clearly perfect casting: Jolie was Maleficent and Maleficent could have been no-one else. That extends through the finished product: whenever Jolie is on screen, the film ramps up at least another gear, if not two, because you know something’s going to happen. She doesn’t even necessarily have to do much: there’s a relatively early scene, where she’s walking across the countryside, and behind her, stone fences are being shredded, as if by an unseen tornado. That, combined with Jolie’s expression, playing out on a face whose cheekbones could cut glass,  completely sells the premise of what follows. Though we can’t shortchange Linda Woolverton’s screenplay which, as mentioned above, is a crucial component. The torment through which the heroine goes, is about as thinly disguised a date-rape metaphor as you’ll ever see in a Disney film, and works impeccably.

The set-up has two kingdoms, a human and a fairy one, living in… Well, I wouldn’t say peace, but cordial disdain is perhaps close to it. This lasts until the monarch of the former, King Henry, casts envious eyes over his neighbour, only for his invasion attempt to be humiliatingly destroyed by its queen, Maleficent (Jolie) and her fey army. He promises his daughter’s hand to anyone who kills the queen, and this opens the door for Stefan (Copley), who had been a friend of Maleficent’s growing up. Their friendship blossomed into more during their teenage years before they drifted apart. However, his ambition overwhelms his friendship; he drugs Maleficent, cuts her wings off using iron (poisonous to fairy folk), and uses this as proof to secure his position as heir. The queen throws up an enchanted forest between the two kingdoms, but doesn’t forget the wrong done to her, and when King Stefan has a baby daughter… Well, you know how Sleeping Beauty goes from there, I trust.

maleficentiExcept, there’s one very significant twist. Chris and I took a pie break an hour in, and she complained the film’s direction was “obvious.” Yes… and no. It was clearly pointing in the Prince Charming and happy ever after directions, but I’m delighted to report this is then subverted into something entirely different, and which packs a much greater emotional wallop. There was sniffling coming from beside me on the couch before the end, let’s just leave it at that. If there’s a Disney moral to be found in the (mostly awesome) ending, it’s perhaps not just the value of forgiveness over revenge, but that when someone offers you the former, it’s often wisest just to take it. Oh, and another important lesson: if you go plummeting off battlements with a creature that has wings and can fly, there’s really only going to be one loser in that scenario.

While Jolie and the story are uniformly excellent, that’s not to say the film is without problems. First-time director Stromberg is better known as an art director, and this is painfully apparent whenever the heroine isn’t on screen. The lengthy sequence where Princess Aurora (Fanning) is growing up in seclusion, tended to by a trio of fairy godmothers, Bibbety, Bobbity and Boo – okay, I made that last bit up – is, frankly, dull. Aurora herself is such a cloying goody two-shoes, she makes the original animated version of Maleficent seem like a paragon of subtlety and depth. and the fairoic trio are about the most grating efforts at comic relief I’ve seen since the last Adam Sandler movie. I was also not very impressed with some of the creations in fairyland. More than one of these second-rate CGI creations, look like they were designed to shift merchandise rather than serve any genuine purpose for a mature audience: think along the lines of Jar-Jar Binks with wings.

These are issues which would probably sink many a lesser movie, but Jolie and the story are strong enough to keep you engrossed, through to a spectacular, dragon-infused finale which the last part of The Hobbit will have to go some to beat. It’s easy to understand why this is, at time of writing, the third-biggest worldwide film of 2014. Depending on how Mockingjay Part 1 goes, it could remain the biggest action-heroine movie of the year, which would be an amazing feat, given muted prerelease expectations of around $150m domestic (it took 60% more). Regardless, Maleficent certainly cements Jolie’s role as the reigning queen of our genre, from Tomb Raider through Mr + Mrs Smith to Salt and on to this. If the reports of her retirement from acting, to concentrate on directing and writing instead, prove to be true, Jennifer Lawrence, Eva Green or anyone else will find it very difficult to fill the abandoned pair of glass slippers.

Whoops, wrong fairy-tale. :)

Dir: Robert Stromberg
Star: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley

"Virtually from the first photos of Jolie in her uber-goth get-up, it was clearly perfect casting: Jolie was Maleficent and Maleficent could have been no-one else. That extends through the finished product: whenever Jolie is on screen, the film ramps up at least another gear, if not two, because you know something's going to happen."
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Maisie Undercover: Shadow Boxer

  By

★
“Sucker punched”

maisieThis review is more in the nature of a warning than a critique, since it would be easy for someone to look at the cover (right) and think that this might be a movie about – oh, I dunno, boxing? It seems a reasonable expectation, given the following synopsis:

After her partner is mercilessly gunned down, sexy, streetwise cop Maisie turns in her badge and turns to the relative safety behind the bar of a hip new joint she names Dames. It doesn’t compare to the rush of danger she gets on the streets but it keeps her out of trouble – until trouble finds her in the form of a guy, a dead girlfriend and a probable Mob connection. Now that familiar adrenaline is pumping again as she goes deep undercover with the hot and hardened women who make up the volatile world of female boxing. Will Maisie solve the murder before someone else is “knocked out?”

While none of the above is technically a lie, I should probably have done a little due diligence, and perhaps noticed that the first word on the cover is “Sexy.” For this is actually soft-core porn, with the plot little more than a thin excuse to link together the sex scenes, which take place with such regularity you could set your watch by them. And you’ll certainly be checking your watch with a high degree of frequency. Not that I’m averse to pornography by definition – indeed, not too far down the line, I’ll be writing about a hard-core version of Nikita – but it’s all about expectations. I watched this one on a chilly Tuesday morning, fortunately when Chris was out of the house; however, I still had a somewhat tricky conversation with my son. “Isn’t 9:30am a bit early for porn?” he said sardonically. Why, yes. Yes, it is. Though I’m pleased at least to see he does appear to have picked up my tendency for ironic commentary during his college years.

I supposed I should briefly mention the film, which could have been interesting. White even has some potential, as former cop turned private eye Maisie Calloway [a character she played in two other films the same year, which I will not be rushing to see]. She has a bumpy past, separated from her cop husband, and whose partner was, as the synopsis says, killed – apparently in a previous movie, because it plays no significant part here. Indeed, the storyline is far more of an afterthought, treated as if its of no real concern. I suppose that’s fair enough, but if you’re going to make soft porn, you should at least have the honesty to promote and sell it as soft porn, and not pretend it’s something which the film most definitely isn’t.

Dir: J.W. McHausen
Star: Charlie White, Joey Ray, Nick Manning, Nicole Oring
a.k.a. Twisted Temptations

Maidroid 2: Maidroid vs. Hostroids

  By

★★★
“Maid in Japan”

maidroidPart one was deemed by the qualification panel as falling short of the necessary minimum level for inclusion here, being a mix of poignant drama about an elderly man whose lifelong companion’s battery is running down, and porn. The sequel, however, just about does enough to qualify, albeit while retaining a hefty dose of the latter aspect – and you don’t need to have seen part one either. Here, disgruntled scientist Professor Uegusa (Horiken) hatches a plan to destroy the appearance-based culture of romance, and to finance this sends out his “hostroids”, attractive male androids, in a variety of guises, e.g. office manager, door-to-door salesman, etc. to seduce woman and bilk them of their savings. He also sends them to kill rival researcher Dr. Kouenji, who had been building a countermeasure, in the form of a maid android, Maria (Yoshizawa). Before his death, Kouenji sends Maria to geeky student Shotarou (Haraguchi), but she isn’t ready, needing her “love circuit” activated before she can attain her full potential needed to defeat Uegusa and the hostroids. Can Shotarou manage that final step before the hostroids take him and Maria down?

After a fairly wobbly opening period, where it looks like the balance is going to tilt firmly towards the fleshly, this recovers nicely, demonstrating a nice sense of absurd humour, and with good lead performances from Yoshiwaza and Haraguchi. Shotarou comes over as likeable but lonely, rather than dysfunctional, and (whether by accident or design!) Yoshisawa’s stilted performance is perfect for Maria – a name which is an obvious nod to perhaps the first cinematic female robot, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It poses an interesting moral question too: you would think Shotarou would be right behind Uegusa’s plan, but the moral appears to be, that there’s something for everyone. Admittedly, it is somewhat undermined by Maria being emotionally attached to whoever is the first person she sees after being activated, but let’s not get into a discussion of free will in artificially created life-forms, shall we?

The action is limited, this clearly not being Yoshisawa’s forte, but is enlivened by imagination; for example, her maid head-band transforms into a lethal sword, and the hostroids have drill weapons that are… Well, I trust there’s no need for a diagram. After the film hits its stride (which takes maybe 15 of its 64 minutes), this manages to achieve a nice level, acknowledging the obviously prurient interests of the viewer, without pandering to them excessively. In a surprising twist, I actually found myself… Well, I wouldn’t go as far as “caring about”, but let’s say, “not entirely disinterested in” the protagonists and their fate, which is a rare occurrence in a movie of this kind. Maybe it’s just seeing this after the hell of Cat Girl, but by no means was this as terrible as I thought it might be.

Dir: Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Star: Akiho Yoshizawa, Daisuke Haraguchi, Hiroshi Hatakeyama, Horiken

Miss Robin Crusoe

  By

★★★
“Crusoe is not consent”

miss_robin_crusoe_poster_03A solid re-telling of the Robinson Crusoe story by Daniel Defoe, it switches things up by turning the hero into a heroine, Robin Crusoe (Blake, best known as saloon owner Kitty Russell from Gunsmoke). Taken to sea by her captain father as a cheap alternative to a cabin-boy, she is the sole survivor of a shipwreck, and stranded on a deserted island [albeit one apparently well-stocked with make-up and hair-care products]. The first half follows the story fairly closely, as she rescues Friday (Hayes) from her captors, and works on a boat with which she hopes to escape the island. But things then diverge, with the washing up of another survivor, Jonathan (Nader). With Robin having been severely soured on men by her previous ship-board experiences, one showing up on her island paradise is the last thing she wants, and she’s disinclined to trust the new arrival. But there’s another problem: the boat can only hold two people.

It’s much more effective before he shows up, with the two women holding their own against the perils and terrors of life with courage. A couple of moments which stand out are Friday gazing at the sleeping Ms. Crusoe (which, along with the former’s jealousy toward Jonathan implies an almost Sapphic aspect, decades ahead of the year this came out, 1954). and the spectacular manner in which the natives dispose of their other captive: Eli Roth’s Green Inferno will be hard pushed to match the concept. After Jonathan arrives, the film becomes much weaker. Oh, it starts innocently enough, with him popping over to borrow a saw, but you just know that Robin is going to end up falling for him – indeed, rolling around on the beach in a manner clearly inspired by the previous year’s From Here to Eternity. But getting there, requires him to push his attentions on her, in a way which would now certainly be considered sexual harassment and, on some campuses, likely assault. That aspect of the movie has not aged well at all.

While chunks of this are severely sound-staged, there are times where filming was clearly done on location, and things are a lot better for it. The score also punches above it’s weight, coming from composer Elmer Bernstein, before the first of his 14 Oscar nomination – perhaps thank Senator McCarthy for that, as this was around the period Bernstein was blacklisted from major motion pictures for his “Communist tendencies.” On the other hand, the finale ends up being a disappointing combination of macho heroism and deus ex machina that is a good deal less satisfying than the film merits. Still, the overall product is a good deal better than I expected going in, though falls short of the impressive standards set early on.

Dir: Eugene Frenke
Star: Amanda Blake, George Nader, Rosalind Hayes

Modesty Blaise (TV pilot)

  By

★½
“Modesty blasé“

modestyblaise1982It seems that around every two decades, someone decides it’d be a good idea to adapt Modesty Blaise. First up, in 1966 was a wretchedly camp adaptation, so bad I can’t bring myself to watch it again, starring Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp. In 2003, there was My Name is Modesty, which was a good deal better, but appears to have been a quickie intended to allow Miramax to hang onto their rights to the character. In the middle, dating from 1982, ABC took a shot at creating a TV series inspired by Peter O’Donnell’s anti-heroine, but it never went further than this 50-minute pilot. In it, Modesty (Turkel) and her trusty if no longer Cockney sidekick, Willie Garvin (Van Bergen), rescue a student from an attempted abduction. Turns out, she’s the last piece in activating a cryptographic device, that Debbie DeFarge (Seymour) intends to use to crack the stock-market. Federal intelligence agent Gerald Tarrant (Curtis) requests Modesty’s help to recover the device, so she and Willie head down to Mexico to stop DeFarge’s evil plan.

I think the kindest thing you can say about this is, maybe it made more sense in 1982. This certainly isn’t the Modesty I imagined, one whose history on the streets may be in the past, but is never entirely buried beneath the surface. Turkel is striking enough visually, and I was amused to see her rip open her skirts, the better to fight villains, but she doesn’t have any kind of edge or darkness to her character. That’s somewhat understandable – after all, American network television in the early eighties was hardly renowned for pushing the envelope – but, why bother adopting Modesty Blaise if you want something so utterly bland and neutered? Van Bergen is even more mis-cast: when writing the script for the original film, O’Donnell said he was thinking of Michael Caine as the ideal actor for the role, who is about as far from Van Bergen as imaginable.

After the moderately exciting opening, there is an awful lot of sitting around and chatting, whether it’s in Modesty’s house, or after they’ve been captured by Defarge’s minions (including renowned pro wrestler, Professor Toru Tanaka). The final five minutes sees a brief flurry of activity, as they try to stop the computer from executing Defarge’s buy and sell orders – though the computer in question resembles, in shape and size, a washing machine rather more than anything you’d see in a finance house these days. The cutting-edge technology shown here has not aged well either, with Blaise able to rescue the Western financial world by picking up another phone connected to the same line, thereby disrupting the device’s ability to communicate. Yeah, that degree of planning is not exactly going to get Defarge honored by the Supervillains Academy. Wikipedia claims Sparks wrote the theme song, but that definitely isn’t them on the pilot, and I suspect their version was for a different, unconnected attempt to adapt the show.

Should you be interested, I’ve embedded a video copy of the show below. Not great quality, but I can’t say even watching this on Blu-Ray would make it bearable. Roll on 2021 or so, and the next scheduled adaptation. We know Quentin Tarantino’s a fan, and Neil Gaiman as well, with the latter having written an unmade script based on I, Lucifer. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm.

Dir: Reza Badigi
Star: Ann Turkel, Lewis Van Bergen, Keene Curtis, Carolyn Seymour