Tag: revenge

The Last Stratiote, by LeAnn Neal Reilly

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

“Sharp scent of hot blood
blooms beneath darkening skies.
Justice rends March night.” –Elira Dukagjini

Full disclosure: The author offered me an advance review copy of this novel, with no conditions on how I reviewed it.

laststratioteStratiote is simply the Greek word for soldier; but it was a term particularly applied, in the 1400s and 1500s, to Greek and Albanian mercenaries who fled from their homelands to escape Turkish invaders and hired out to fight, first against the Turks for the Venetians and later in other European wars as well. So the title might suggest a historical novel; but our setting is actually mostly in contemporary Boston (which has an Albanian immigrant community). Its roots, though, lie in the small country of Albania (and neighboring Kosovo), the poorest and least modernized part of the poor and not-very-modern Balkans.

Our titular “last stratiote” is Elira Dukagjini (a.k.a. a “certified Albanian whack job”). Born and bred in a part of the world that’s been a seething cauldron of religious and ethnic hatreds for centuries, that aspect of her heritage is very prominent in her attitudes. Her little sister and two cousins were lost to her when they were kidnapped into sex slavery, and she herself was the victim of a brutal gang rape that left her female organs too damaged to bear children. Not being of a gentle or forgiving disposition, she’s channeled her rage and vengefulness into becoming, among other things, a vigilante on a blood vendetta against sex traffickers.

This brings her into contact with our other two main characters, symbolically-named James Goodman, an ICE agent (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the branch of Homeland Security which is in charge of combating sex trafficking), and Mirjeta, the woman he loves, who fled the horrors of her Albanian homeland as a teen, but who, as the book opens, has been snatched by those who would drag her back there. The complex relationship that develops between these three characters is at the heart of the book, but they’re well-supported by a full cast of strongly-drawn characters. (In particular, you gotta love Zophie!)

Given that action-heroine types often function in and are shaped by a rough milieu, they’re often rough-edged. But Elira vastly pushes the envelope on the “rough” idea; if characters like Red Sonya or Jirel of Joiry are likened to a Brillo pad, she’s an industrial-strength metal sander. She’s not simply tough, hard-drinking, and sometimes potty-mouthed; she’s also bisexual, very promiscuous, a cocaine addict (yes, so was Sherlock Holmes, whom I like, but he didn’t have access to modern knowledge of how harmful drugs like this are; Elira does), and capable of dishing out mayhem that causes trained cops to vomit. Hanging out with her, as a reader, yanked me WAY out of my comfort zone.

But by following the Muse to create this character and let her be who she is, Reilly helps us to learn to empathize rather than judge; and I did come to empathize. Elira isn’t essentially evil (though sex traffickers unlucky enough to meet her might think that she is, before they died!), and underneath the grunge and capacity for savagery, she’s a hurting woman to whom the world hasn’t been very kind. Like all of us, she’s on her own unique journey; and by the end of the book, she’s a lady I honestly liked, respected, and straight-out admired. If you read the book, you’ll find out why; and you might feel the same way. You’ll for sure never forget her!

This novel has a lot going for it. Reilly’s writing skills are top-notch; she handles language very well in bringing out the exact effects that she wants, and she knows the perfect way to handle scenes that in lesser hands could be a challenge. She’s done her homework very well, even to the point of being able to write dialogue in Albanian (with English translations), and she knows her Albanian history and geography, etc., even to the point of identifying the tribal groups (Elira and Mirjeta are Ghegs, the main group in the north, as the Tosks are in the south). Her wide reading allows her to enrich the book with literary allusions; Elira’s quite a fan of Shakespeare, among other things, and enjoys composing haiku poetry. (And I’m anxious to find the translation of the Scots dialect in the Robert Burns quote!). There are also quite a few contemporary pop culture references, but they’re not just thrown in as a cheap way of faking texture; they’re actually used to make points in discussion. And there’s really powerful, creative and effective use made here of symbolism, and a unique take on the vampire mythos.

This isn’t solely a novel of action and intrigue. James Goodman was a philosophy student, and there are some major philosophical/theological discussions here that touch on issues naturally suggested by the story. What moral claim does the idea of “Blood Law,” the need for blood vengeance in kind for genuine wrongs, have on us? How far does it go, and what effect does it have on the avenger? What place does forgiveness have –and does it demand pacifism in the face of aggressive evil? And what does the Roman Catholic spirituality that Elira was raised with have to contribute to those questions? There are Moslem villains here who are engaged in really vile deeds; does that mean we’re justified (as the author’s fictional Code Red hate group claims) in hateful words and actions towards all Moslems?

Of course, would-be guru Jacob Stryver here isn’t the most lucid or reliable philosophical guide –and isn’t meant to be! That can mean that some of Goodman’s discussions with him aren’t always 100% easy to interpret. But other than that, most of the few negative points I saw in the book are very minor quibbles. Some plot points I thought weren’t completely smooth; but in the main, Reilly crafts her plot very well, with pieces of it coming together like a jigsaw right up to the end. And a real page-turner it is!

Note: The f-word appears here at times, along with some other profane and scatological bad language. There are a couple of short sex scenes that may be more explicit than some readers prefer, and an instance of implied female-female oral sex, in a quasi-public place, that a male character stumbles on and watches for several minutes feeling titillated. However, the author doesn’t attempt to titillate the reader, and none of this content is there for its own sake or for shock value.

Author: LeAnn Neal Reilly
Publisher: Zephon Books, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Undercover Girl

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★★
“A kinder, gentler era. Particularly for heroines.”

AlexisUndercoverDespite a good central idea, this founders on failing to have the courage of its convictions. The heroine’s appearances are book-ended by a boyfriend (Egan) who reckons she’d be better off in an apron than a police uniform, and colleague Mike Trent (Brady), who treats her with hardly any more respect – Chris watched the end of this one with me, and her sole comment (not including various derisive snorts) was, “I would not have fared very well in the fifties…”

Christine Miller (Smith) is the young lady in question, whose father is gunned down by a mobster after spurning a payoff. Christine feels guilty about this, because her father ran up debts to put her through school, and is left with a burning desire to take vengeance on those responsible. Enter Trent, an LA detective who is trying to roll up the entire gang,  but their wary nature has led to him being unable to gather any evidence. He thinks a women, posing as a drugs buyer, might have better luck, and is convinced that with the right coaching, Christine is the right one for the job – over qualms that she might not be able to control her emotive impulses, because she’s a girl ‘n’ stuff. He sends her to bond with Liz Crow (George), a former Chicago criminal who became addicted to her own supply, and is now in rehab, seeking information which will establish a solid background for Christine’s undercover persona.

That done, she moves into a boarding house opposite a low-level connection to the gang, and starts trying to work her way up the food chain. It’s not without issues, as her target remain suspicious, and her cover  is stretched the the limit, for example, when her boyfriend happens to bump into her, calling Christine by her real name within earshot of a lurking gang member. As such, it concentrates more on attempting to craft tension than action, along with a lengthy (too long, it might be said) depiction of the relationship between Christine and Liz. But it doesn’t really work, leading instead to a lengthy climax which appears to consist mostly of people running around a building constructed entirely out of staircases, landings and doorways, shooting at each other with the accuracy of Imperial Stormtroopers. It’s just not something which has aged well, and will leave you mostly with an appreciation of how far cinematic heroines have come in the sixty-plus years since.

Dir: Joseph Pevney
Star: Alexis Smith, Scott Brady, Richard Egan, Gladys George

The Lady Assassin (2013)

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★★★½
“A new territory of action heroines opens?”

ladyassassinThe first Vietnamese action heroine film I’ve seen is a credible effort, albeit one that is weakened by a couple of obvious flaws. Firstly, the middle section spends far too much time sitting around chatting (particularly in the hot-tub, though to Western eyes, it’s a peculiarly PG hot-tub, with the clothes remaining on), and the occasional game of beach volleyball is about the only concession to action. Secondly, the actresses are much too spindly for the sword-swinging fights they are called on to do here; I’m guessing they are models, but someone really needs to buy them a good meal or two. However, the premise is solid and the central performances are fine. There’s also a rousing finale which lasts a solid 20 minutes, with a surprisingly high body-count, and it’s always best to save the best for last, so your audience leaves the movie with a good final impression. In this case, it certainly upped the grade by at least one-half star.

The main setting is a group of four women, led by Kieu Thi (Thanh Hang) who operate a tavern by the sea, that offers rest and sustenance to passing travellers, with a side menu of more salacious offerings, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. They also have a further sideline: robbing and murdering those they deem appropriate, particularly including corrupt officials. They’re in for a shock though, as the cargo being transported by their latest victims is a young woman, Linh Lan (Tang Thanh Ha) . Her life is spared by Kieu, who realizes that they share a common goal, her and Linh seeking vengeance on the evil general Quan Du, who murdered both of their families. He’s very difficult to get to, but Quan Du has a particular fondness for virgins – while this may rule the more “experienced” Kieu out, it leaves Linh as the perfect assassin, if only she can be trained in the necessary skills.  Time for some wire-fu powered beach volleyball – and the sequences here are better than Beach Spike, at least. But not everyone in and around the tavern is who they seem, and neither might they need to find Quan Du, if he comes to find them first…

The action is a bit of a mixed bag, and that’s putting it mildly. Even in the same sequence, it’ll combine poorly-done CGI and questionable wirework, with stunningly well-executed shots and long takes of acrobatic action. Perhaps it works better seen in 3D, as originally intended, or perhaps that aspect simply acts as a distraction [something we’ve seen often enough in Western 3D films]. But overall, the balance is positive, helped by Thanh’s undeniable screen presence. Outside of her and Tang, the rest of the cast are closer to eye-candy, and this might be one of those cases where more is less. However, for an apparent first stab at the sub-genre of historical action heroines, I’ve seen an awful lot worse, and I’ll have to see if I can find anything else from the local movie industry.

Dir: Quang Dung Nguyen
Star: Tang Thanh Ha, Thanh Hang, Kim Dzung, Anh Khoa

Sweetwater

  By

★★½
“Sweet but mostly sour.”

sweetwaterLife in the old West was tough. It was particularly tough if you were a woman, such as Sarah Ramírez (Jones), struggling to make an honest living with her farmer husband Miguel (Noriega), having escaped life as a prostitute. This movie shows it to be especially tough, after Miguel has had his throat slit by batty preacher Prophet Josiah (Isaacs) – it doesn’t help he has the hots for Sarah, apparently taking the “love thy neighbour” line very literally, and runs the local area as if it were his own personal fiefdom. Fortunately, she has an unusual ally in Sheriff Jackson (Harris). The lawman shows up, looking for two people who disappeared on a journey which took them right across Josiah’s territory, and is about the only other person willing to stand up to the lunatic religious fringe. Finally, Sarah has had enough, and embarks on her vengeance against, not only Josiah, but anyone else who has wronged her, such as the shopkeeper who spied on her in his changing-room.

That final clause kinda illustrates the main problem here: an unevenness of tone which veers between the deadly serious and the ludicrously comic. That’s even the case for some individual characters, particularly Jackson; one minute, he’s waltzing by himself in the town’s main street, the next he’s carrying out forensic analysis, decades ahead of its time. While an intriguing character, the movie might have been better off concentrating on him or Sarah: they may share a common enemy, yet they hardly share a scene until the end, where Jackson’s sole purpose appears to be to provide a second firearm for our heroine. As for the ending, “Is that it?” will likely be your reaction, though in the film’s defense, I sense the emptiness of revenge is part of the point: once you’ve taken it, bringing to an end something which has consumed your life, what then?

I enjoyed the performances here, however: Jones’s understated style works towards her, while Isaacs and Harris both put over an unhinged air of barely-repressed violence. There are some fine moments, depicting Sarah’s willingness to use any means necessary, luring two of Josiah’s men to their doom by bathing in a river [pics from the scene “leaked” out: in no way was this a shallow publicity grab, I’m sure…]. The look of the film is also well done, with good use made of the New Mexico landscapes, and as the picture above shows, the heroine’s colourful garb is an interesting contrast – must have been hot and uncomfortable as hell to film in that. But the good intentions aren’t enough to overcome the lurches in tone and content, and the result is, frankly, a bit of a mess.

Dir: Logan Miller
Star: January Jones, Jason Isaacs, Ed Harris, Eduardo Noriega
a.k.a. Sweet Vengeance or Sherif Jackson

 

"There are some fine moments, depicting Sarah's willingness to use any means necessary. The look of the film is also well done, with good use made of the New Mexico landscapes. "
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Lady Whirlwind

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★★½
“Because Lady Moderate Breeze wouldn’t sell as many copies.”

deepthrustI’m not saying this is a bad film. But when I watch one called Lady Whirlwind (though here is as good a place as any to acknowledge the wonderfully tacky alternate title featured on the poster at the right), I expect a good deal more lady whirlwinding. The focus is instead on Ling Shi-Hao (Chang), beaten and left for dead after trying to leave a gang. Wisely, he decides to continue with his death, hiding out in the country for three years with girlfriend Hsuang Hsuang (We). This anonymity is shattered by the arrival of Tien Li-Chun (Mao), who wants a word with Ling, along with ripping the beating heart out of his chest. For it turns out, he was a bit of a bastard who jilted Tien’s sister, leading to her suicide. Hence, when he thanks Tien for saving him, she replies, “I just didn’t want somebody else to kill you.”

Ling admits he deserves his fate, but asks for a stay of execution, so he can first take revenge on his former colleagues (who include Sammo Hung in an early role). Tien is clearly pretty laid-back about the whole vengeance thing, since she’s nowhere to be seen during the lengthy training montage that follows, after Ling helps a Korean herbalist, bitten by a snake, and is taught the deadly Tai Chi Palm style. Will that help him beat the bad guys? And will Tien then stop lurking off-screen and goddamn do something?

There’s certainly no shortage of action, though in comparison to some other Mao films I’ve seen recently, the fight scenes doesn’t seem as smoothly choreographed and frankly, get a bit boring – it also suffers too much from the “we’ll attack you one at a time, while everyone else circles about aimlessly” trope, common to many movies of the time. Indeed, I must admit, there was one of Ling’s battles in the middle where I actually fell asleep: never a good sign where a martial-arts films is concerned. The frequent use of musical cues definitely not composed for the film is also rather distracting: one, in particular, will be particularly familiar if you’ve watched James Bond movies, but other sources say the pillaging also includes the works of Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann. Hey, if you’re going to steal, do it from the best, I suppose.

Mao does have some good fight scenes, particularly going one-on-many with a copious line of henchmen. But you wonder why she’s so apparently disinterested in her revenge, particularly at the end, which is entirely ludicrous, and all but negates everything that happened over the previous 80 minutes. Not one of her best, with not enough going on beyond her usual graceful performance, to merit your attention.

Dir: Huang Feng
Star: Chang Yi, Angela Mao, Pai Ying, June Wu
a.k.a. Deep Thrust

Raven Hawk

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★★★
“But is it Raven Hawk or Ravenhawk? “

ravenhawkThe sleeve and the IMDB seem to differ. Either way… In 1979, young Native American Rhyia Shadowfeather is forced to watch as her parents, opposed to the building of an industrial plant on native land, are killed in front of her. Rhyia, sent catatonic by the shock, is framed for the murders and sent to an asylum. 12 years later, the van transferring her to another facility crashes, and the adult Rhyia (McLish) is presumed killed. Except, of course, she’s still alive, and seizes the chance to extract vengeance on those responsible, who have profited from the plant, which was constructed after the opposition was disposed of, and is now belching pollution into the environment. Top of the food chain there is Philip Thorne (Atherton), but on Rhyia’s trail is federal marshal Del Wilkes (Enos), who may be on thin ice, investigating on the reservation.

McLish is a former bodybuilder, who was a two-time Ms. Olympia, and was featured in Pumping Iron II: The Women. Pyun seems to have something of a “thing” for those – see also Sue Price in Nemesis 4, but at least McLish doesn’t the same neo-alien look to her. Chiseled out of stone, certainly, but cinematographer George Mooradian does a good job of simply making her look fit. Indeed, credit Mooradian for a film that looks an awful lot better than most TV movies, taking full advantage of the spectacular landscapes and scenery (both physical and biological!). Some of it was shot here in Arizona, in and around Page, most notably the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge from which one of her targets topples; it’s a long way down, since the bridge was the highest arch bridge in the world when it was completed in the late fifties.

Probably wisely, the script doesn’t give McLish many lines, leaving the chat to the rest of the cast, a solid bunch of character actors, including Mitch Pileggi (The X Files). The story generally works well, the villains growing steadily more and more disturbed as the body count grows, Shadowfeather apparently able to vanish like a ghost. It is a little heavy on the “tormented and put-upon Indians” angle – yeah, I get it, give them a casino or something and let’s all move on. Disappointingly, Shadowfeather is also robbed of her ultimate vengeance, a strange scripting decision that significantly devalues everything which has gone before. However, it remains generally solid, and you’re left with a vague sense of disappointment that McLish didn’t keep on with the action flicks. She’s certainly no worse here than a certain other body-builder was, in his early genre efforts.

Dir: Albert Pyun
Star: Rachel McLish, John Enos III, Ed Lauter, William Atherton

Legend of the Poisonous Seductress: Female Demon Ohyaku

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★★★
“I’ll no longer be a man’s toy, even if it kills me. I’d like to kill all men who abuse women with power and money.”

female-demon-ohyakuWell, you can’t argue with a title like that, can you? This proto-pinky violence film has many of the elements later developed more fully: a wronged woman is sent to prison, only to escape and seek retribution on those responsible for putting her there. In this case, it’s a period setting with part-time circus performer, part-time prostitute Ohyaku Dayu (Miyazono) finally getting the courage to break away from her sordid lifestyle, with the help of honourable thief Shinkuro (Murai). He’s planning a raid on the local mint, to steal the raw gold they use, and punish corrupt local officials.

However, a treacherous colleague betrays them, for a bureaucratic promotion, and Ohyaku is sent to prison – and, not even a women’s prison. It’s a men’s prison, that doubles as a gold mine. Fortunately, she falls under the protection of Bunzo the Iron Barbarian, which keeps her safe until she can work her wiles on the warden and his bisexual wife (Mishima), the latter of whom is obsessed with getting to tattoo Ohyaku, Our heroine chooses the Hannya demon as the subject – for good reason, as she eventually escapes jail to set about her revenge, and also complete Shinkuro’s raid.

The first and last third of this are truly effective, doing an excellent job of setting up the characters and resolving all the plot threads respectively. You can’t help but empathize with Ohyaku, her predicament and the steely resolve, maintained through some extreme tribulations, to take revenge for her lover – who is nicely drawn as well, Murai coming over as both charismatic and moral, despite his chosen profession. However, it sags badly in the middle third, from her arrival at the prison until her escape; it’s a section which either should have been shortened considerably, or needed more to happen.

Despite being made as late as 1968, it’s shot in black-and-white, which gives it a retro feel. It’s certainly a lot tamer, particularly in terms of nudity, than the technicolor tidal-wave that would be unleashed a couple of years later. Still, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, enhancing the impact of things like a trickle of blood down Ohyaka’s forehead. Some of the torture on view is certainly imaginative, such as being hung by the neck, with your feet just touching a metal plate enough to stop you from strangling. Then a fire is lit under the plate… Damn. Also of interest, the presence of the legendary Tomisaburô Wakayama, best known as the hero of the Lone Wolf and Cub series (a.k.a. Shogun Assassin), as a sympathetic gang boss.

The first in an apparent trilogy, this manages to overcome the weak middle section and leave me interested in following Ohyaku’s subsequent adventures. Miyazono may not have the impact possessed by some of other other pinky violence stars, yet the better-than-average script helps balance that out, and this has stood the test of time better than many of its era.

Dir: Yoshihiro Ishikawa
Star: Junko Miyazono, Kunio Murai, Koji Nanbara, Yuriko Mishima

Loves Her Gun

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★
“A cautionary tale. And you’re cautioned not to watch this movie.”

lovehergunPerhaps surprisingly, given the nature of this page, I’m not inherently averse to the idea of gun control. I lived in Britain until I was in my thirties, which seems to work fairly well without the whole “right to bear arms” thing. It probably made sense in 1776, but certainly wouldn’t be high on my to-do list if I was writing the constitution now. However, I now live in a country with 300 million guns or so, and I’m pragmatic enough to accept that the genie is out of the bottle here: any attempt to impose it at this point, would only impact law-abiding citizen and weaken their ability to defend themselves against criminals who would still have their weapons. Gun control works – but only if you already have it. Anyway, I mention all this to establish that I’m not averse to a movie which makes a well-reasoned argument against guns. Unfortunately, this is about as far from well-reasoned as imaginable. The facile scaremongering here leaves this mild-mannered Brit, who has touched a gun once in his life, with a strong wish for the makers of this, some day, to find themselves in need of some well-armed help.

Walking back to her Brooklyn apartment, Allie (Dunn) is the victim of a swift but brutal mugging. It’s the last straw for her, and she bails out of the city the next day, hitching a ride to Texas with a touring rock band and its “charismatic” leader, Clark (Barrero). She stays in his house, and gets a job working alongside local landscaper Sarah (Bisagni), but it unable to shake the PTSD caused by the attack. Sarah introduces Allie to the joy of firearms, eventually leading to her purchasing her own weapon for personal defense. However, the presence of the gun turns Allie into a raging Charles Bronson, as we see when she charges into a local domestic dispute, all a-firearmy. From here, it’s painfully if illogically obvious where this is going to end up. Oh, look: Allie getting her hands on a gun turns out to be A Bad Idea, in an incident a third-grade English teacher would mark down as poorly considered. This is my unsurprised face.

The end credits proudly proclaim that the dialogue was largely improvised, which might be okay, if it didn’t seem they also made the story up as they went along too. There are a number of interesting ways this could have gone. Unfortunately, the film chooses none of them, preferring to drive a path through Austin’s hipster scene, populated by “wacky” people, apparently expelled from Portland for being too smug and self-centred. Marslett seems more interested in them than his lead and her story – Dunn is actually not bad in the role, her character at least not leaving me with violent urges. So, we get lengthy, pointless scenes of a tubing trip down the river, or a party where people write their hopes and dreams on pieces of paper, stuff them into a Yoda piñata and sets fire to it. Very deep. Perhaps worst of all, Clark’s band, The Karate Kids, perform behind mannequins posed into the crane-kick move from the film. Was that idea improvised as well? Because I can’t think of any other explanation for it being such complete shit. Hang on: turns out it’s the director’s band. Explains a lot…

So much of the running-time here is completely wasted on these self-indulgent excuses for film-making, of interest only to Marslett and his cronies in Austin’s scene. The net result, is that Allie’s transformation from scaredy-cat into vengeful vigilante is so fast as to be utterly implausible. They needed to establish the more problematic side of her personality earlier, rather than making it seem as if purchasing a gun immediately causes psychosis since that’s what guns do. There’s a brief spell, where Allie is taken shooting by Sarah, that does catch fire, capturing something of the awe-inspiring power firing a gun can create, but it’s soon forgotten – because we have to go to the Yoda party! Even to a neutral in the debate like myself, this is a facile and simplistic approach to a subject which deserves a far more complex exploration, from people who aren’t fascinated by an aimless, slacker lifestyle that’s entirely uninteresting or noteworthy.

Dir: Geoff Marslett
Star: Trieste Kelly Dunn, Francisco Barreiro, Melissa Hideko Bisagni, Ashley Rae Spillers

Savaged

  By

★★★
“The Crow-ette”

savagedZoe (Adrienne) is driving across country to meet her long-distance boyfriend, Dane (Samuel), when she has the misfortune to stumble into a pack of four rednecks, engaged in their favourite pastime of hunting the local Indians. When they stab one to death right in front of her, it’s clear things are going to end badly for her: and they do, as she is raped, brutalized and left near-dead in a shallow grave. But a conveniently-passing shaman finds her; though his efforts to save her are unsuccessful, the spirit of a dead chief enters Zoe. For, it turns out, he was killed by the ancestors of these same rednecks, and he sees in Zoe the chance to extract his long-awaited and brutal revenge. However, there’s a time-limit involved: since she’s still technically dead, decomposition is setting in…

There are a couple of interesting wrinkles here, first that Zoe is deaf. This disability doesn’t play much part in proceedings, which is actually kinda cool: it’s just another aspect of her character. What is rather more relevant, is that Dane is black, so when he heads out in search of her, and crossed the path of the rednecks, it soon becomes very apparent that it isn’t just native Americans they dislike. All of which simply adds impetus to your enthusiasm for them to get their comeuppance, and that certainly happens. The “revenge” part of this rape-revenge flick starts with the possessed Zoe in a bar, yanking someone’s intestines out like they were tickets from an arcade game, and impressively, somehow manages to escalate from there. She gets to wield a variety of traditional weapons, such as a bow & arrow or spear, on the way to the slightly-less traditional tomahawk vs. chainsaw finale.

This only comes close to working if you don’t think about it too much: ideally, at all. Otherwise, you’ll be left wondering about questions like why the shaman didn’t do the sensible thing and call 911; too often, the supernatural aspects are used as an alternative for plot logic. Have to say, though, Adrienne is very good as Zoe, though in some ways, it’s a shame she has to be possessed by a male ghost to get her revenge. I’d have been perfectly happy for her to be intestine-yanking on her own terms, and Dane could also be excised from the plot entirely. Still, the further this heads into excess e.g. point-blank target practice, the more entertaining it is, and the practical effects are more than good enough to counter some distinctly ropey CGI work. As the title of this piece suggests, more than one review has compared this to The Crow – and that’s a reasonable parallel, considering its similar mix of soft-core spirituality and hard-core violence.

Dir: Michael S. Ojeda
Star: Amanda Adrienne, Tom Ardavany, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Marc Anthony Samuel

Asian School Girls

  By

★★
“This is at least better than Transmorphers.”

asianschoolI have a lot of time for The Asylum. I met head honcho David Michael Latt back in 2002, when Sharknado was not even a twinkle in his eye, and have been following the studio’s rise to pop-culture icon ever since. They’re best known for their “mockbusters”, designed to cash in on bigger-budget title – including the sublimely-titled Snakes on a Train, which didn’t really have much in common with Samuel L. Jackson’s opus – and also cheesy monster movies, typically involving over-sized or over-aggressive species. This doesn’t fall into either category, and to be honest, isn’t one of their more successful efforts. While obviously not intended to be taken entirely seriously, based simply on a title which had me looking over my shoulder before clicking it on Netflx, it isn’t self-aware enough to succeed as a knowing parody. Nor is it competent enough to stand on its own merits.

The heroines are four – yes – Asian school girls, whose illicit evening out in a nightclub is derailed when they are drugged and raped. After the police are unable to take any action, one of them subsequently commits suicide, and the other three decide to locate and take revenge on the perpetrators, working their way up the chain of supply. Naturally, this requires them to go undercover at a strip-club. It’s not long before the dead bodies are piling up, and the police, led by a dogged detective (Johnson) with a personal interest in the case, are closing in on the perpetrators. Nor is the douche who runs the market in unconscious jailbait happy at their actions, and kidnaps the trio, locking them up in a basement cage where they will be perpetually on-call to service his customers.

There are a couple of directions this could have taken, but the unwillingness to commit to a specific mode of operation – parody or serious? – leaves it coming off as half-hearted and a pale imitation of genuine Japanese imports like Hard Revenge Milly. One moment it’s acknowledging its silliness e.g. the strip-club MC’s dead-pan announcement that as well as Asian School Girl night, it’s also Plushies and Furries, the next, it has a rape scene that is genuinely unpleasant. It’s clear they aren’t “real” school girls – Scarlet is more tattooed and pierced than your typical merchant seaman – but Aotaki, as the fiery Hannah, is the only one to deliver a performance that makes you believe, yes, they could be capable of slicing off dicks. The rest of the cast lack the necessary intensity to sell the concept, and while I can look past the obvious flaws in plot logic, this certainly falls into the category of a film which fails to live up to its poster.

Dir: Lawrence Silverstein
Star: Sam Aotaki, Catherine Kim, Minnie Scarlet, Andray Johnson