Tag: n

Ninja Girl: Assassin of Darkness

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★½
“Non-ninja, not noteworthy.”

ninja girlCall me picky or pedantic, but to me, a movie titled Ninja Girl: Assassin of Darkness, should contain a reasonable amount of girl ninjaing, along with, one would hope, some assassinations. Running through a dark room once with a sword doesn’t cut it. Unfortunately, the makers of this appear to take a different view, feeling that their story, about a ninja girl sitting around feeling sorry for herself and bumping uglies with her Manchurian Candidate boyfriend, is more interesting. They’re wrong.

The setting here is modern Tokyo, apparently now a hotbed of espionage. The Japanese government defends against these by using ninjas, whose skills are passed on, not through years of training, but by heredity. After their father – one such ninja – is killed, sisters Naomi (Shou) and Sayaka are left to fend for themselves, unsure which, if either, of them has received the ninja gene, because it will only be discovered when the recipient is “awoken.” Naomi is by far the less stable of the two. After being dumped, she spends all the time sitting around her apartment, blacking out and occasionally attempting self-harm: seriously, that’s it, she says, “I know my sister and my room.” But her life is changed when she bumps into Mitsuyoshi, who opens a window into her sorry, sad life. Except, every so often, he gets phone-calls which cause him to drop everything – including, amusingly, a naked Naomi – and go out on missions.

Eventually – and I’m talking about 70 minutes into an 80-minute film – things do eventually lead to some activities which at least border on the ninja-esque. However, Shou’s talents in this area are about as feeble as you’d expect from a porn-star whose works, Google informs me, include titles such as Openly-Displayed Squirting Orgasm. Though I suppose you could argue that’s a bit of a ninja skill, in and of itself. There is little or no information about this one, which doesn’t seem to have an IMDb entry: it was made in 2006, according to the copyright, and apparently on a budget consisting of the spare change left over after purchasing a bowl of ramen noodles. The actress who plays Sayaka is not bad, with one scene where she and her sister are talking, that does actually manage to put over some emotion. I also get the sense the next part, now Naomi is “awakened”, might not be so bad. But as is, the bulk of this opener is uninteresting talk, with occasional interruptions for bad action.

Dir: No clue
Star: Nishino Shou

Naked Avenger

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½
“Setting a new low, in just about every conceivable way.”

nakedavengerStar Jill Kelly is an adult actress. I mention this, because it seems highly likely that most of her 300+ other works – perhaps The Butt Sisters Do Philadelphia or Sodomania: Slop Shots 5 – are likely better scripted, filmed, edited and generally well-made than this dreadful piece of crap. I should have known, given Donald G. Jackson’s involvement – he’s probably the worst film-maker I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, and I speak as someone fully familiar with the works of Ed Wood, Andy Milligan, J.P. Simon and Uwe Boll. They are all pretenders beside Jackson, and even though this barely runs an hour, your patience will be sorely tried. And by “tried”, I mean at the level where gnawing a limb off to escape will seems credible.

The threadbare excuse for a plot concerns an international sex trafficking organization. This is apparently run by about three people out of a junkyard in Hicksville, with the women acquired by hanging out in the parking lot of strip-clubs, or picking up conveniently hitch-hiking strippers. The latter is what brings our heroine (Kelly) into the picture, with her driver (LeBreck) opting to pause on the way back to “sample the merchandise”. She breaks free, which leads to the excruciating middle section of the movie. This intercuts the chief pimp (Mizrahi) on the phone, with her wandering through the woods, naked save for a pair of shoes, carrying a gun. Phone-call. Wandering. Phone-call. Wandering. Then, just for variety… Nah, I’m kidding. Another phone-call and more wandering.

Eventually, she makes her way through the woods and there are some horribly constructed gunfire sequences. I wouldn’t even call them “gun battles,” because you never get the sense the participants are in the same zip-code. There’s no logic or continuity here. At one point the heroine is recaptured, wearing a shirt and about to be locked up; the next scene, she’s back, wandering naked and free again, without explanation. There are no real performances to speak of either, because the amount of interaction between the participants is negligible, and as mentioned above, if you want to see Kelly naked, there are many, many places you can do so to a far greater extent. These offer the additional benefit, that you won’t be subjected to the pathetic excuse for film-making present here. Between them, Kelly and the occasionally catchy electro soundtrack give this half a star; these are absolutely the only redeeming features to be found, and utterly pale in comparison to the flaws.

Dir: M.T. Bird + Scott Shaw
Star: Jill Kelly, Robert Mizrahi, Daren LeBreck

The Naked Killers

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★★½
“Because ‘Topless killers’ wouldn’t sell quite as well, I guess.”

naked killersNot to be confused with the Hong Kong exploitation classic Naked Killer, this 1977 Spanish film is set mostly on a Pacific island inhabited solely by a veteran Japanese soldier, Yamato, who thinks World War 2 is still going on, and three women, whom he rescued from a plane crash when they were small children. He has raised them in military style, to defend the island against any “invaders”, and it’s not long before these show up. They come in the form of a boatload of treasure-hunters, who have heard that a Japanese freighter carrying gold wrecked itself on the island’s shoals. Adding an additional layer of complexity, the crew, a collection of ne’er-do-wells apparently chosen at random from the dockside, are planning a mutiny, unhappy with captain Paul, and old salt Walter, who knows the island’s location. This leads to a rather unusual alliance between Yamato and his adopted daughters with Paul and Walter, as they fight for survival against the latter’s former employees.

It’s more than a little bizarre, not least because the actor playing the soldier is very obviously not Japanese at all. I was thoroughly confused when he called himself a Japanese officer, until I realized this was made not long after the last Imperial Army holdout. Teruo Nakamura, having surrendered in December 1974. The other unusual aspect is making him more than somewhat sympathetic: perhaps this is due to Spain’s position in the war, which leaned toward the Germany-Japan Axis under General Franco, who had died not long before this was made. He’s shown very much as a father figure, loyal to a fault (which is why he stuck to his post for 30 years after everyone else gave up) and utterly honourable. Witness his face as one of the mutineers tells him the Japanese emperor is now shining the shoes of the American president every morning, or his embarrassment as he tries to breach the subject of s-e-x with his nubile foster family. It’s kinda endearing, despite this still being the worst case of yellow-face I’ve seen since Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

The film’s original title translates as The Island of Burning Virgins, which is one of the most awesome titles in exploitation history. Naturally, they spend an impressively hygienic amount of time frolicking in natural pools – though I do have to wonder, where the hell did they get their thoroughly modern bikini costumes? And they’re naturally delighted when the handsome captain shows up, happy to demonstrate to them what this s-e-x thing is actually about. However, they are not mere puppets, laying some rather nasty jungle traps for the “invaders”, and with hand-to-hand skills that are occasionally surprising. It is, of course, extremely silly, very dated and questionable in a whole number of ways. However, it certainly isn’t boring, and compared to certain jungle girl films I’ve seen, can only be appreciated for that.

Dir: Miguel Iglesias
Star: Sita Sadafi, Roxana Dupre, Inca Maris, Alejandro del Enciso

Nina: Crazy Suicide Girl

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★★
“Well, it’s certainly different. Note: different, not necessarily good”

NinaPosterThis micro-budget Italian offering seems to go about things almost entirely in reverse. Rather than establishing the characters, then dropping them into a scenario, this starts with Nina investigating a missing girl, Anna. The disappearee seems to have some connection to the dodgy “Xstasy” video company, fronted by Cesare Mazza (Guerra), and behind that, an apparent Satanic cult under the leadership of Marcus (Visconti), who is actually a woman. Apparently, they take the offcasts of illegal Eastern Europeans from the porn shoots, and sacrifice them to their demonic master.

But what’s never really addressed in any real detail is Nina. Is she a cop? A private detective? An assassin for hire? And what exactly did she do to merit the title of, and I quote, “Crazy suicide girl.” Must have been something pretty cool and interesting, right? We never learn. She does point a revolver at her temple and pull the trigger, but since we have no clue if it’s loaded or not, I’m finding myself underwhelmed there. She does torture someone with a blowtorch to extract information from them. But I had just finished watching 24: Live Another Day, and let’s be honest, that isn’t enough to turn Nina into Jack Bauer in a dress.

I did quite like the heroine, who has an off-center attitude to her and a look which is not conventionally pretty. But the film probably needs to decide what it wants to be, and stick with it, rather than trying to combine aspects of the hard-boiled detective thriller, Dennis Wheatley adaptation, soft-porn and action heroine genres. Because, the scripts doesn’t handle any of them particularly well. For instance, the “detecting” aspects are so conveniently simplistic as to be an embarrassment, right from when Nina discovers a porn DVD in Anna’s bedroom. Another problem is an almost total lack of motivation for anyone involved here, from Nina through Cesare and up to ‘Marcus’: they seem to exist purely because the plot demands they do.

There’s no shortage of nudity and the gore effects are fairly plentiful, if characterized more by enthusiasm than quality. But it’s only at the very end, which hints at a sequel with the potential to be more interesting than this film, that you get some idea of what this was trying to accomplish. It’s a shame there wasn’t less of a gap between intent and execution, pun not intended.

Dir: Christian Arioli
Star: Irene Giordano, Mauro Cipriani, Gabriele Guerra, Stefania Visconti

Nurse 3D

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★★★½
“A hot mess. And de la Huerta is not bad either.”

Nurse 3D“My name is Abigail Russell. I look like a slut, but don’t be fooled—this is merely a disguise to lure the dangerous predators who walk among us. This is their jungle, their breeding ground, and tonight I am on the hunt. These are the cheaters, the married, lying scum. They are like diseased cells cultured in alcoholic petri dishes that destroy unsuspecting families and infect millions of innocent vaginas. There is no cure for the married cock—only me, the nurse.”

Even Lionsgate didn’t know what to do with this, the film sitting on the shelf for about two years, before being quickly released without much fanfare. And, to be honest, you can see why, because it’s the kind of lurid, nonsensical trash that gives real cinema a bad name. As such, we naturally adored it. As the introductory monologue above should make clear, Abigail Russell (de la Huerta) is an angel of vengeance, who prowls the streets looking for cheating husbands, luring them in, and then wiping them out. She does so, believing she is saving their families from finding out the terrible truth. In reality, she is a nurse who is nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake, and when the colleague (Bowden) she is supposed to mentoring spurns Abigail’s friendship, in favour of a man, she sets out to destroy the perceived betrayer’s life.

de la Huerta is perfect, combining a body to die for, with a face best described, with my usual literary eloquence as “kinda weird.” Imagine an alien imitating a human being and you’ll be in the right area; that apples to the way she speaks too, which seems – and I’m fairly sure this is entirely deliberate – as if heavily drugged. Combine this off-kilter central performance with some of the ripest dialogue spat out by a character since Joe Eszterhas was in his prime, plus stylistic comic-book depiction by the second-unit director of Resident Evil: Extinction, and you’ll be in the right area as far as knowing what to expect. But it goes above and beyond in just about every area, although this is something of a mixed blessing: the most interesting stuff is Abigail’s predatory lifestyle, which is genuinely unusual and disturbing (for any male, at least; Chris spent much of this section nodding her head in approval!). When it turns into a remake of Single White Female for the middle portion, things becomes over-familiar, and de la Huerta just doesn’t have the same acting chops as Jennifer Jason Leigh. [Not that many actresses do]

Things perk up nicely for a grand guignol finale, which sees Abigail roaming the corridors of the hospital, dispatching anyone who gets in her way, and even some who don’t, with manic abandon. Naturally, as with all good horror, it ends with a set-up for a potential sequel, and it’s one we wouldn’t mind seeing. In a genre where all the icons are male, e.g. Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, etc. Nurse Abigail Russell is potentially the most interesting female candidate for some time. And while I can certainly see why this isn’t for all tastes – indeed, “taste” is about the least applicable word for this – we appreciated its clearly satirical intent and were happy to go along for the ride.

Dir: Doug Aarniokoski
Star: Paz de la Huerta, Katrina Bowden, Corbin Bleu, Boris Kodjoe

"My name is Abigail Russell. I look like a slut, but don't be fooled—this is merely a disguise to lure the dangerous predators who walk among us. "
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Naked Vengeance

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★★★
“In which we learn that small-town folk are dicks.”

nakedvengeanceWhile clearly knocking off I Spit on your Grave – not least in the underwater castration scene – this did at least have the good grace to wait for a bit, coming out seven years after Meir Zarchi’s infamous grindhouse pic. It’s one of the many pictures churned out by Roger Corman’s New World company, with the Philippines doing an admirable job of standing in for California, directed by Santiago, who’s no stranger to the GWG genre, with the likes of TNT Jackson and Ebony, Ivory and Jade also in his filmography.

The heroine is small-time actress Carla Harris (Tranelli), whose life is torn apart by tragedy, when her husband is killed after trying to intervene in an assault. With the law powerless to do anything, she heads off to the town where she grew up, to recuperate with her parents. However, the locals are unimpressed by her “big city” ways, in particular the men, after she rebuffs their crude advances. A drunken raid on her home, led by the local butcher (Garaz), ends in tragedy, and Carla in a catatonic state at the local hospital, apparently with no memory of the night’s events. Key-word there: “apparently”…

Yeah, it’s not exactly a spoiler that she’s soon tracking down those responsible, and disposing of them with extreme prejudice. It would have been cool – if, admittedly, fairly implausible – had she kept faking her illness and apparently remaining in hospital, while sneaking out to take her vengeance. But it’s only about two kills in before the ruse is discovered, and the rest of the film has her trying to complete the mission before the local cops, led by Sheriff Cates (McLaughlin) can track her down. I liked the pacing here: while it’s only about seven minutes in before Carla is burying her husband, the film then takes its time demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the police, and how she is now out of synch with the Neanderthal attitudes of the town where she grew up. Then: BANG. The assault is a nasty piece of work, but Santiago doesn’t linger too much there, before getting on to our leading lady’s retribution.

The problem is more one of plausibility, particularly in the second-half, where Carla seems about as indestructible as Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees. Car crashes, fires, impalement, all barely seem to slow her down with barely a scratch, and like those horror icons, she’s not interested in simply killing her victims, the stalk is just as important as the slash. Of course, it helps that her victims are equal idiots to the horny teenagers in Friday the 13th. I mean, that’s a woman you raped undressing and coming towards you. How much do you have to think with your pecker, for that not to set off all kinds of warning bells? Disengage your own brain’s higher-order functions here – and maybe your ears for the startlingly-bad theme song – and you’ll have a better time.

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Deborah Tranelli, Bill McLaughlin, Kaz Garaz, Ed Crick

Nude Nuns With Big Guns

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★★★
“If you liked the party scene in Ms. 45, you’ll love this…”

Surely one of the great B-movie exploitation titles of all-time, this inevitably can’t live up to the expectations that generates, though in the early going, it makes a half-decent effort. Certainly, it’s more entertaining than Guzman’s previous Run! Bitch Run!, though it does suffer from some of the same mean-spirited unpleasantness. The heroine is Sister Sarah (Ortega), who has been a long-term victim of the Catholic Church, which is portrayed here as the embodiment of just about every evil imaginable, being neck-deep in drugs, prositution and other equally-dubious activities, with their partners, the Los Muertos biker gang. Finally, Sarah has a vision from God, telling her it’s time to clean house: she starts at the bottom, and works her way up to Chavo (Castro) and Father Carlittos (D’Marco). Along the way, yes, there is no shortage of nude nuns – or other women – though, to be honest, the guns aren’t actually all that big…

Given the title, you have a certain obvious set of expectations. This kind of thing can be enormous fun, as the likes of Machete or Hobo with a Shotgun prove. This doesn’t quite reach the same level of gleeful abandon, and while Ortega holds her own (admittedly in a role that doesn’t require much in terms of emotional breadth), the rest of the cast are acceptable at best, and painfully wooden at worst. After a high-octane and hugely-promising start, the middle section struggles much harder to keep the audience’s attention with anything other than the gratuitous nudity – it’s entirely obvious where things are heading. As in Bitch, the filling here includes some stuff which edges precariously close to rape fantasy, and if you’ve read much of this site, you’ll know that when it comes to rape-revenge movies, I like them to be firmly weighted toward the latter. There’s one particularly dubious and pointless scene of an elderly nun being assaulted, that came close to offending even my broad palate.

However, once the vengeful aspects return to being the focus, rather than Chavo, the film improves again. Though I do feel the villains could have received rather more comeuppance: their fates seem almost trivial, in comparison to what they have dished out over the course of the movie. Ortega does make an impression, and a title like this is, in many ways, entirely review-proof: anyone complaining it is sleazy and tacky, can’t have been paying much attention when they decided to watch it! At least it can’t be accused, like many B-movies, of not delivering on the sleeve’s promise.

Dir: Joseph Guzman
Star: Asun Ortega, David Castro, Aycil Yeltan, Perry D’Marco

Naked Fear

  By

★★½
“The Naked Prey”

The concept of “hunting humans” has been popular cinematic fodder for over 80 years, since The Most Dangerous Game came out in 1932. This isn’t the first specifically to target women – the Roger Corman produced The Woman Hunt did so in the seventies – but the prey in that needed male help to accomplish much, which isn’t the case here. The heroine is Diana Kelper (DeLuca), whose new dance job turns out not to be quite as expected – she’s more or less coerced into working as a stripper, unable to leave until she pays off the debts to the man who brought her in. The only way to do that is to turn tricks on the side, but her first client is Colin Mandel (Garfield), who is interested in a longer-term relationship. Specifically, one where he can take his female victims into the remote wilderness, where they wake up, unclothed and eventually on the wrong end of a crossbow bolt or bullet. However, with Kelper, he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

It’s a good concept for a movie – all the more striking when you discover real-life serial killer Robert Hansen basically did the same thing for real, up in Alaska – and much credit to DeLuca for a performance which retains her character’s dignity, more than you’d imagine from the pretty lurid plot-line. The problem is mostly the script. The two obvious flaws are, firstly, it takes too long to get to the interesting stuff (from both exploitative and less prurient views), instead, meandering around pointless subplots such as a new local cop (Shiver), who has suspicions about all the missing persons reports, but blah blah blah. And secondly, way too much idiocy is required by Diana for reasons of plot. For example, at one point, she completely has the drop on her tormentor, having knocked him out with a rock. Obvious things to do would include, keep on smashing his skull, taking his weapon, or at least removing his boots and clothes for your own use, since you are buck-naked. Nope: she just runs off. Really?

There’s some discussion over the ending: some have said it feels tacked on, but I liked it, and felt it pointed towards a potentially more-interesting sequel, with Diana swapping roles and becoming the hunter rather than the hunted. But it isn’t quite enough to salvage the overall movie, with the weaknesses noted above enough to negate the more positive elements.

Dir: Thom E. Eberhardt
Star: Danielle DeLuca, J. D. Garfield, Arron Shiver, Joe Mantegna

New Female Prisoner Scorpion: Special Cellblock X

  By

★★★½
“And we bid a fond farewell to Nami, and a third different actress.”

The comparisons of Takigawa to Lazenby above proved appropriate in another way, both being canned after one entry playing the iconic title character, which is probably just as symptomatic of something. The replacement here as Nami Matsushima is Natsuki, who seems to go back toward a more taciturn heroine, closer to the original. But it’s, effectively, another reboot, with not even a nod to the previous entry. In this case, the heroine is a nurse, framed for her involvement in the hospital murder of a politician who was threatening to expose corrupt practices.

The film starts with her being sent back to jail after a failed escape attempt: that resulted in the rest of the inmates being punished, and they’re none too pleased to see her brought back. There’s also a pragmatic guard who is happy to keep the inmates supplied with cigs and chocolate in exchange for peace, but his position is threated by the arrival of a new head of “security”, with a much tougher stance. After trying to expose the abuse to a visiting dignitary, he ends up in hot water, and teams up with Nami, the pair going on the lam through the mountains, chained to each other – it’s a bit like Black Mama, White Mama, with characters forced to work together for their mutual benefit.

In some ways, this feels like a combination of the first two movies: it has the “woman wronged by the man she loves” theme of the original, and then the “escape through a blasted landscape” plotline from its immediate sequel. There’s also the usual helpings of abuse, though the sexual content here is significantly toned-down, with Natsuki barely showing a nipple. On the other hand, the S&M seems more intense, most notably a scene where multiple prisoners are bound and hung up, to be brutally beaten. By this point, I’ll confess that my interest in that aspect, never exactly great, was all but non-existent. Things did perk up post-escape, with some excellent cinematography, as the pair struggle through the deserted landscape [it’s easy to forget how concentrated the Japanese population is, leaving some areas almost desolate]. Of course, it ends with another vengeful confrontation for Nami – not for the first time, on a roof.

The paucity of original ideas to be found here likely indicates why the series went into dormancy thereafter. As a way to wrap up, however, it works fairly well, particularly if you consider it as a “greatest hits compilation” from the preceding entries. While Natsuki still falls short of the intensity brought to the role by Kaji, she is an improvement on Takigawa, and this moves at a brisk enough pace to sustain interest, even in a viewer looking for less prurient aspects.

Dir: Yutaka Kohira
Star: Yoko Natsuki, Masashi Ishibashi, Hiroshi Tachi, Takeo Chii

New Female Prisoner Scorpion 701

  By

★★★
“Reset! Reset!”

Just goes to show that the “cinematic reboot” is not a 21st-century invention, e.g. Batman or James Bond. For a mere three years after Meiko Kaji showed her sting as Nami, the studio reset the series, giving it a new director, new (and much more talkative) lead actress, and returning Nami Matsushima to a happy, criminal record-free young women, with a loving boyfriend. Except, of course, he turns out not to love her quite as much. Things start to collapse after her sister uncovers evidence of major government corruption, and passes it to Nami, shortly before being kidnapped. After Nami uncovers the truth – her sister is killed and she is framed for the murder, with the help of her boyfriend, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Initially an easy mark for the tough girls in her cell, Nami soon develops her mean streak. And she’s going to need it, because the politician behind it all is looking to tidy up the loose end she represents, by killing her and making the death look like a suicide. Name turns the tables, in incendiary fashion, and it’s clear that she’s one loose end that won’t be quietly disposed of.

Y’know how On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a really great Bond film, with a crappy Bond, Lazenby being the merest shadow of Connery? That’s the situation we have here. The film would be perfectly serviceable, but with every (largely superfluous) word, gesture and action, the viewer can’t help but be reminded of Kaji, who simply fits the character being depicted here, far better. Not that Takigawa is a bad actress. It is just that Kaji made such a strong impression in the role, anyone else playing the character is almost bound to seem like a pale imitation in comparison. Without Kaji or the surrealist touches brought to the previous entries by Shunya Ito, there really isn’t much to distinguish this from the rougher end of the pinku genre, with Kohira appearing to take particular interest in the rape.

The sections after Nami breaks out are the best, in terms of style, and it’s hard to put your finger on any problems: “competent” is likely a good word for this. But probably the most damning indictment, is that I watched the film, wrote most of the review, and then realized almost nothing about the second half had stuck in my mind at all. I ended up having to pull the movie up, just to convince myself I hadn’t been called away to dinner half-way through or something. I hadn’t: it had just failed to make any significant impression on me.

Dir: Yutaka Kohira
Star: Yumi Takigawa, Ryoko Ema, Nobuo Kaneko, Ichiro Nakaya