Tag: s

Shira: the Vampire Samurai

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★★
“Blade-ette”

I could have sworn I’d seen this before, to the point where I almost skipped over it on Amazon Prime. But on checking, appears not. Did I watch it, and just not review it? Or does it only seem very familiar? It’s clearly trying to be a low-budget, female version of Blade, with its half-vampire heroine taking on her cousins, with their plans against humanity. In this case, Shira (Jason) is bitten by a vampire in medieval Japan, but somehow ends up not going full-bloodsucker herself – apparently because she tried to commit suicide first. The film bounces back and forth between then and the present day, where she has become a vampire hunter, along with her Scooby gang. Yet she has also come to the attentions of Kristof (Zmed), who owns a strip-club for reasons that, I’m sure, are entirely necessary to the plot. He and his former Nazi death-camp vampire scientist assistant want to use her in a breeding program to create a new race of super-vampires, who can go out during the day. Shira, naturally, is having none of this.

This probably would have worked better if it had decided whether it wanted to be Shira’s origin story or not. Either stick to the feudal Japan setting or the modern one: instead, the constant bipping between the two is thoroughly confusing rather than enlightening. A better-written script would have handled her creation in a brisk five minutes, then have allowed more opportunity to develop the contemporary portion, which comes off as rather under-cooked. Not helping matters here are the slew of supporting characters, most of whose purpose and motivations are never adequately explained. The whole thing feels almost as if this was a trilogy, edited down to feature length, with little regard for a coherent narrative. As a result, subplots are left sticking out at a variety of awkward angles.

For example, Shira is being pursued through the centuries by Kenji (Klein), a samurai with a grudge. What is the serum Shira apparently has to take on a regular basis? And a descendant of Professor Van Helsing also shows up, to no particular purpose. On the plus side, the fight scenes are copious and surprisingly well-choreographed. Admittedly, with regard to the latter, it probably helps that I watched this immediately after the dire Hollywood Warrioress, which would make anything look good in comparison. So, amend that to be “seem surprisingly well-choreographed,” perhaps. And if you don’t like this one, there’ll be another along in a couple of minutes. It builds to a “homage” to Enter the Dragon, with Shira chasing Kristof through a hall of mirrors. Because…  Hell if I know. Why not?

It makes about as much sense as the rest of the film, e.g. why does Shira’s boyfriend (Dwonzh) spend so much time with his shirt off? Pondering these enigmas may well provide as much amusement as the movie itself.

Dir: “Simon” (Jeff Centauri)
Star: Chona Jason, Adrian Zmed, Louis Klein, Lawrence Dwonzh
a.k.a. Vampire Shadows

Sanyare: The Last Descendant, by Megan Haskell

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Nuriel Lhethannien, known as Rie, is an orphan human in a multi-verse, populated by elves, vampires known as sidhes, trolls and a host of other magic creatures. She has a job as a messenger for King Othin, the ruler of the Upper Realm. But when she’s attacked by assassins from the Shadow Realm, she’s in deep trouble. For such is the enmity between the realms, that Othin decreed, “Anyone in contact with the Shadow Realm, in any way, would be executed.” To save her own life, Rie has to become even more of an outlaw, and journey down below, seeking to find the truth about who attacked her and why.

The Shadow Realm is no more keen on Upper Realmers, and Rie’s boss, Rolimdornoron, demands she be arrested and returned for punishment. Fortunately, Rie’s heritage provides some unexpected assistance, along with the combat training given by her foster father, the head of Othin’s guard. She’s also helped by Prince Daenor, who has issues of his own to handle in the intrigues of the Shadow Realm court. Oh, and a small flock of highly carnivorous pixies.

It’s a solid read, which might have benefited from slightly more fighting and less talk. My opinion there is likely skewed by the lack of any real climax in that department – perhaps a result of this being the opening volume. Action-wise, the book peaks about 40% in, when Rie and Daenor have to battle their way past the guards of a master smith who made the weapons used to attack the heroine. And there are a lot of guards. It’s an especially good sequence; I was waiting for anything similar to show up the rest of the way, and was disappointed. Things instead ended in something closer to a royal courtroom, before a reveal which I found a bit too obvious. Let’s say, the title alone is a bit of a giveaway to the fact that Rie’s “orphan” status is not quite what it seems.

The political machinations are well-handled, dancing on the fine line between complex and convoluted, and I appreciated the way Rie drags herself up by her own boot-straps, despite humans being seen as “second-class citizens” by many elves. The romantic feelings she has for Daenor are also somewhat conspicuous, yet they manage to avoid getting in the way of the story – it helps they’re largely unrequited, at least, in this section [score one for opening volumes, yay!]. I reached the end somewhat interested in seeing where things go, though likely not quite enough to justify any immediate further purchase. With her skills apparently continuing to blossom, and some new friends (and relations) in very high places, there hasn’t been enough sense of a threat to Rie established to leave me interested in finding out more. I don’t feel as if my time was wasted, however.

Author: Megan Haskell
Publisher: Trabuco Ridge Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Sanyare Chronicles series.

The Stolen

  By

★★
“98 minutes robbed from my life.”

Rarely has such promise been so spectacularly and vigorously squandered. For this starts well enough. In 19th century New Zealand, English ex-pat Charlotte (Eve) is settling into a new life with her husband and newborn child. This is upturned when a midnight raid leaves her husband dead and the baby kidnapped. Months later, after everyone else has moved on, she gets a ransom demand in the mail, and she tracks its source to Goldtown. This remote outpost is truly an Antipodean version of the Wild West, a rough-edged mining town run by Joshua McCullen (Davenport). Braving all manner of threats – not least, that the only other women there are prostitutes – Charlotte makes the perilous journey to the frontier settlement in search of her son.

So far, so good. The landscapes and photography on the way there are gorgeous, yet threatening, and Charlotte is built up nicely, possessing a strength and inner steel which belies her “English rose” appearance. Both her late husband, and the guide who accompanies Charlotte (also bringing to Goldtown a batch of fresh hookers!), have laid the groundwork, both theoretical and practical, for her to learn the use of firearms, that great equalizer of force. The foundations were apparently being created for her to put her training to good use, when she finds out what happened to her child.

Then she arrives in Goldtown and the film goes to hell in a hand-basket, almost as soon as Riff Raff from Rocky Horror (O’Brien) shows up to portray the manager of the local brothel, sporting an accent of entirely indeterminable origin. For a good chunk, Charlotte appears to forget entirely what the purpose of her trip is. Even when she remembers, her investigative approach initially consists of little more than roaming the town, yelling at miners about her minor. When the truth about who is behind the abduction is revealed, it doesn’t make much sense: the motive for their acts, in particular, is more “it needed to happen because film,” rather than anything springing organically from the nature of their character.

Eve does makes for a heroine with potential. There’s something of the young Nicole Kidman about her, and it’s a good character arc for Charlotte. She transforms from a passive lady of the manor, to someone forced to sleep in a dormitory with a bunch of whores (the most acidic of whom, the severely mis-named Honey, is played by the film’s writer, Emily Corcoran), and fend off men who, somewhat understandably, believe she is also pay-to-play. However, the film likely reveals the culprit too soon: doing so eliminates what little sense of suspense present, and it’s not hard to guess how things will develop thereafter.

Such speculation will likely be accurate, and the film does at least deliver the expected payoff at the end, in the form of an armed confrontation between Charlotte and the kidnapper. By that point, most viewers will likely have given up caring much, beyond being reminded of New Zealand’s picturesque qualities.

Dir: Niall Johnson
Star: Alice Eve, Jack Davenport, Richard O’Brien, Graham McTavish

Split Lip

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★★★
“Split decision”

Definitely a mixed bag in this independent work about an assassin on the run from her employers after she botches a contract. Seay is thoroughly compelling as Set, proving that less can sometimes be more when it comes to dialogue. She’s a woman of few words, yet the strength of her emotions still comes through in her performance. I think it’s the eyes. Unfortunately, the makers appear not to have had enough confidence to let her silence stand on its own. Instead, they fill the gap with the inane burblings of Samuel (Laballe), a young man who sees Seay, and decides she’s a battered woman in need of rescue.  He quickly discovers that isn’t the case, as she ends up rescuing him from one of the killers sent on her trail. However, his sister Dana (Cné) is unimpressed with her brother’s new friend, and turns Set in to her boss, Karlton (Brown).

There’s some nice stuff floating around the fringes as well. In most action films, the hero or heroine takes little more than cosmetic damage over the course of proceedings. That isn’t the case here: every encounter leaves Set more banged up, with the titular injury being just the start. The make-up department has a field day, shall we say. I also liked the occasionally chivalrous conduct and hierarchical structure of the assassins’ “guild”, with its different factions and approaches. In his opening monologue, for instance, Karlton makes clear that the services in which he specializes. are all about getting up close, personal and messy – “What we have to offer, is a message.” And, of course, being shot partly here in Phoenix is always a plus for me, though there’s not much in the way of local atmosphere to speak of.

Yet there are just as many problems, not limited to my strong desire to strangle Samuel every time he opened his mouth. In particular, Set’s actions largely seem illogical, and occur only because they are necessary to the plot e.g. staying in the same hotel room after her location has been discovered. Right from the start, it’s clear the only possible resolution involves either her death or tidying up the mess she created. Running off to Phoenix makes no sense in either direction – especially when her destination is at the suggestion of her boss, who makes no attempt at concealing his intention to have her hunted down. Only after an hour and twenty minutes and several entirely unnecessary tanks of fuel, does our heroine finally do, what made obvious sense from the very beginning.

The action is plentiful and quite well-staged, with the general absence of guns (save for an Indiana Jones-like moment near the end) making sense, given Carlton’s apparent distaste for them. Credit to Seay for doing her own stunts, and everyone else for making it look like she knows what’s she’s doing with her fists, despite a lack of size that becomes something of a running-joke. All told, this is a decent and worthy indie effort, which held our interest – though one undeniably in need of a better script.

Dir: Christopher Sheffield
Star: Dorée Seay, Chris Labadie, Maryam Cné, Dejean Brown

Sheena

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We recently wrote about the movie version of the Sheena story, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, but that was not the most recent adaptation. For Sheena would eventually return in form of another TV-series that ran for two seasons and 35 episodes from 2000-2002. It’s quite likely that producers Douglas Schwartz and Steven L. Sears hoped to cash in on the trend of action-adventure TV-shows that were then popular thanks to series like “Hercules” and “Xena”. Sears himself was enjoying quite some success with “Xena – Warrior Princess” which he wrote several scripts of and partly co-produced.

Unfortunately, the “Sheena” show was nowhere near as captivating as “Xena” was. Sheena (Nolin) is far from the “cute but a bit naive” version that Tanya Roberts played. Here, Sheena is more a kind of eco-terrorist, fiercely protecting “her” jungle of Maltaka – so you’d better behave if you go there! Along comes Matt Cutter (Nelson) with his constantly ironically snarky companion Mendelson (Quigley). Cutter is out for the quick buck, leading tourists in the jungle, trying to forget his former career as a CIA-agent (!). But after clashing with Sheena in the beginning they quickly establish a working relationship – usually meaning Sheena will draw the poor man into another harrowing adventure of hers.

Obviously, there are plenty of terrible things that can happen in the jungle, be it big game hunters, terrorists, military coups or tribal wars that have to be prevented. While the show quite obviously had a very limited budget – I couldn’t escape the fact after some time that they always filmed at the same five locations – I give the film makers credit. They tried to make their show as diverting as possible as they could, with the time and money they had at their disposal.

Sheena has changed quite a bit from her previous version; she is no dumb blonde in the jungle, she reads Tom Clancy and romantic novels, has her own cave, is trained in the mystical art of transforming into any animal with whom she has eye-contact (I immediately had to think of the old TV-show “A case for Professor Chase” when seeing this) by Shaman Kali (Moorer) and has absolutely no qualms about killing off evil-doers in the jungle – and there are plenty over the course of the show).

Usually she transforms into what she calls the “Darakna” – which essentially means she puts black mud on her body and gloves, with bone claws on to slash her enemies to death. Don’t worry: it’s neither bloody nor (after the first time they show it to us) very exciting. I just wonder if, by doing that, she also immediately became super-powered. though she already is a strong fighter. Or if it just made the killing easier for her, as she then wasn’t “quite herself” (to quote Norman Bates!).

It seems the producers were going for some kind of developing love story – differently to “Xena”, there are no overlapping story-arcs, just stand-alone episodes. But if so, they blew it. It seems all the efforts of Cutter were in vain, after early in the second season, Sheena has sex with a random stranger after a couple of unsubtle compliments from him. A couple of episodes later, we are asked to believe that Cutter gets together with an Asian women he once met in a training unit at the CIA. Oh, and we have to suffer through the usual episode where Sheena meets her “first love,” or the one where a special-mission leads Cutter’s ex-wife into the jungle.

Nolin and Nelson never have much chemistry with each other, that would let them appear as anything more than good friends. There’s no Xena-Gabrielle spark here, if that’s what you were hoping for! So if you thought we were getting the Sheena-Cutter-happy ending no one was asking for, you’d be wrong. Cutter says good-bye to another beautiful blonde at the beginning of the last episode, who thanks him for “showing him the world”, and the rest deals with a tribe mistaking constantly monotonously babbling wanna-be-snark Mendelson for a wise, old leader with the same name. The series ends as unspectacularly as it began.

That said, while the show (like most shows of its ilk at the time) is underwhelming compared to “Hercules” and “Xena”, I do think the screenwriters really tried to come up with as inventive stories as possible, given the fact that the “adventures in the jungle” was already a genre as dead as a door-nail. There are some good ideas here: plants that raise certain hormones in your blood, making you love-struck as well as murderous (therefore having Cutter and Sheena try to kill each other); a female black Rocky in the jungle, faced with countless attacks by her opponents; a kind of “X-files”-episode, with the audacity to play that show’s musical theme a couple of times in the episode; or the dangerous giant ants that eat anything. setting Cutter and Sheena in quite a distressing position.

There are also some “guest stars” though you shouldn’t expect the A-class of actors here. I noticed Grand L. Bush (whom I know from a minor role in the James Bond-movie Licence to Kill some 11 years earlier), make-up specialist and occasional actor Tom Savini (From Dusk till Dawn) and the Tarzan of the 60s, Ron Ely in a villain role. At least the team tried, though you hardly ever can speak of three-dimensional villains here. You also have to forgive the typical 90s CGI-morphing and masks that were terrible, even in better and more prestigious TV shows of the time than this one.

All in all, “Sheena” is not a great show but given its limitations I would say the people in charge tried to do their very best. Though while I could still binge-watch “Xena” today, “Sheena” is something that I would probably only watch again if I woke up at 2 a.m. and regular TV didn’t offer anything better at that time.

Creators: Douglas Schwartz and Steven L. Sears
Star: Gena Lee Nolin, John Allen Nelson, Kevin Quigley, Margo Moorer

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle

  By

★★★½
“How I stopped worrying about jungle ridiculousness, and embraced my love for scantily-clad jungle girls!”

It’s actually astonishing how much info one can dig up on a specific subject when you put your mind to it. So, where to start? Let’s see…

Quite recently, the big success of Wonder Woman made Hollywood aware that you actually can make money with comic book heroines. after so many years where the common wisdom – also in the comic book industry – was that “heroines don’t sell”. That the success of almost any given product might also depend on the quality (and of course “enjoyability”) of its execution, seems to have escaped those of such a mind-set. But sometimes it may also just have something to do with the right timing; sometimes the era is not ripe for this or that, or something isn’t en vogue or contemporary anymore – that’s also a factor that one always should take into consideration.

One of the properties which has become interesting for Hollywood again after WW’s success, is the old comic heroine, Sheena. Millenium Films, who were also recently considering a new Red Sonya movie have been rumored to considering a film with said heroine. Which is enough reason for me to revisit the movie Sheena, Queen of the Jungle from 1984!

The first important thing to mention here, is that when we talk Sheena, we are essentially talking Tarzan territory here. So, if one you have a problem in essence with jungle warriors hanging from trees and lianas, or being on a first-name basis with virtually any animal in Africa, you won’t be able to experience the charm a movie like Sheena offers. For the movie already has lost you. I’m saying this, because when Sheena came out, it was torn into pieces by critics. They may have been just a bit too cynical or overly critical, for an innocent entertainment movie that never was intended to be deep and meaningful.

Wikipedia tells me that the movie “was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards (Worst Picture, Worst Actress, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Musical Score) but reportedly did find some cult success on home video and DVD.” I say: Sheena is harmless fluff that can be enjoyed when in the right mood – maybe with a beer and a pizza or some ice cream on a rainy Saturday afternoon. And in any case it’s many times better than Halle Berry’s Catwoman! My point is: When is something “good entertainment” and when is it downright “cinematic trash”? I myself have no answer to that. We accept the most lunatic premises in every Marvel movie at regular intervals and don’t feel the need to second-guess its logic.

The year after “Sheena”, another fantasy movie with an absolute ridiculous premise was released, about immortals that are fighting each other over centuries, hacking off their heads to consume their life energy to finally receive some dubious prize after the grand finale came out in cinemas. It flopped equally hard. But, over time, Highlander became a big hit on home video, and its own franchise that has a devoted fandom and stands in line for its own remake right now. So the question here is: What makes the one movie a “good” movie and the other not? My guess? Sometimes it just depends who watches a movie and if it was a financial success or not. It’s not always a question about quality: too often you can find many good “logical” reasons to critique a movie negatively, even though it may not be that bad (or, at least, any worse than others of its kind) at all.

But let’s jump a bit back in time: I love those flashbacks! Sheena started as a British (!) comic strip in 1937, co-created by Will Eisner (The Spirit), and debuting in the US in 1938. That was a good 3 years before Wonder Woman appeared for the first time, which essentially makes her the first female comic book hero ever. The character is essentially a female version of Tarzan, strongly taking inspiration from a 1904 book, “Green Mansions” by William Henry Hudson. In this, a cynical rebel from civilization meets cute feral girl Rina in the South American jungle. The book was filmed in 1959, starring a pre-Psycho Anthony Perkins and Audrey Hepburn, produced by her then-husband Mel Ferrer. But as Rina and Sheena have very little in common, we won’t go into more detail here.

Sheena was successful as a comic strip,so much so that she got her own TV show a couple of years earlier, in 1955 starring Irish McCalla as the main role. I’ve not seen this series, so can’t judge it but there are some episodes of it as a bonus on my Sheena DVD box-set (ordered from the US for a reasonable price!), so sooner or later I will have to have a look at them, too. The Sheena character then seemed to be dormant for many years until she was suddenly re-awakened with the 1984 picture. The logic according to the producer was quite strange: Raiders of the Lost Ark had been a great hit, cementing the reputations of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as “can’t do wrong” filmmakers, and everyone in Hollywood was trying to find a way to climb on board the fantasy-adventure cash-train.

This led to some very different films and series during the eighties, ranging from the Conan movies with Schwarzenegger bringing Robert E. Howard’s pulp hero of the 1930s (and the later Marvel comic book version) on the big screen, to resurrecting Africa explorer and adventurer Alan Quartermain, in the form of action-comedies starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. The producer of Sheena just figured – and it’s not such a bad assumption at all – that since 1980’s audiences were interested in all those old heroes from the 1930s, it was therefore logically to bring a contemporary version of Sheena into cinemas.

Here’s the resulting story in a nutshell: Reporter Vic Casey (Wass) and his camera man Fletch (Scott) are filming on an official event when they witness the murder of King Jabalani of the African country Tigora. The shaman of the free-living Zambouli tribe (played by Princess Elizabeth of Toro, who was the first East African woman admitted to the English bar, and briefly Idi Amin’s foreign secretary in Uganda!) is accused of the murder and thrown into prison but freed by Sheena, a white girl that she adopted and raised, after Sheena’s parents died years ago in an earthquake.

Fascinated by this unusual woman who can command wild animals with her thoughts, and in possession of evidence that can prove how the murder was actually committed, Vic follows Sheena into the jungle. They’re unaware of the fact that the real ring-leaders, Prince Otwani, brother of the deceased king, and Countess Zanda, the dead king’s wife, are on their trail with an army of mercenaries on their trail.  They conspired to kill the king to get possession of the Zambouli land, whose soil is Titanium-rich and has special healing abilities, and now need to kill the pesky witnesses.

The movie was directed by John Guillermin who already had some experience in this territory having directed Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure in 1959, including a young Sean Connery in a supporting villain role and the Dino de Laurentiis mega-production of King Kong in 1976. He also was once on the short-list to direct the first Bond movie, Dr. No, but lost out to Terence Young. The script was written by David Newman and Lorenzo Semple Jr., also indicating the filmmakers were relying on people with experience in the genre. Semple had been responsible for the sixties Batman TV show and movie. He got a credit for unofficial Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again (though, according to sources nothing of what Semple wrote for that movie made it into the final script), and did the similarly comic-book inspired Flash Gordon at the start of the eighties. Meanwhile, together with his wife, Newman reportedly re-wrote the final script that would be turned into the movies Superman and Superman II.

The music by Richard Hartley is something the viewer really has to get used to; this was the era of synthesizer soundtracks (even Jerry Goldsmith would get into that for a certain time) and the score here reminds me of similar sounding music by the then-popular Tangerine Dream. It often comes across as too bland and unfitting – it feels deeply wrong when something that sounds almost romantic is played in scenes were people die or get killed. I wonder how this movie might have played with a classic Goldsmith, James Horner or John Barry soundtrack. and is again a reminder of what a pivotal role music plays in a movie.

The actors… Well… There’s not so much to say about the actors: Tanya Roberts (“3 Angels for Charlie“, the original TV show) is definitely the most well-known here which already tells you enough. Her performance has been often mocked and ridiculed, but I don’t find it terrible. If you play an orphan that has grown up in the jungle. it seems logical that most things from civilization must appear for you like magic e. g. binoculars. The dialogue could have been better here and there but hey, at least we are miles away from Johnny Weismueller  Tarzan-talk.

My personal feeling is that reviewers had fun putting the whole thing down as some kind of “dumb blonde” joke, ignoring completely that Sheena is definitely not an idiot: she knows her way around the jungle, how to ride, command the animals in battle, etc. The recent Tarzan movie with Alexander Skarsgard, Christoph Waltz, Margot Robbie and Samuel L. Jackson did much the same and there weren’t any big complaints about these similar animal scenes (apart from their bad CGI), or how to become invisible in the jungle and make an ad hoc bow and arrow out of the material Mother Nature provides.

Of course the movie shoots itself in the foot a couple of times. Sheena is quite often objectified, even though it’s played for laughs thanks to the awkward reactions of the man accompanying her. Those prudish boys from civilization! But gosh, I’m really the last ever to complain about a naked Tanya Roberts taking a bath in a river or watching her climb up a mountain or a tree with very small panties on… Of course this was fan-service (did such a thing exist in 1984?) and I don’t mind. This is not really so bad: anyone who ever saw the tedious Bo Derek version of Tarzan – which essentially played like a soft-porn-tease-movie with a bit of drunken Richard Harris thrown in for good measure – will probably agree.

Roberts plays Sheena as some kind of nature child and that’s fine. There is something enormously cute to this innocent ethereal spirit, who doesn’t know about the evils of civilization and is limited to what she has experienced up until then in the areas of her territory. I think that innocence is  the direction the movie is consistently aiming for, especially at the end. Additionally, there are some Rousseau-esque ideas about the noble savage going on here, though you can take or leave those. 

One thing worthy of criticism in regard to Roberts’ acting is, she seems to overdo it a bit here and there. It’s much the same complaint frequently levelled against her when people discuss her performance in A View to a Kill, the James Bond movie which she was offered due to this film. So there was at least one positive result of Sheena! Sure, I wouldn’t have ever hired her for a Shakespeare play and her status as a possible star evaporated very quickly after Bond. But I just don’t think she is as terrible an actress as a lot of people think.

The only other actor known to me here is Ted Wass, playing the reporter who follows Sheena into the jungle and falls in love with her. Wass appears terribly bland and uninteresting for me, like a stand-in for a much better actor, but as he essentially has the “Jane” role here, I didn’t really care. The movie I know him from was Curse of the Pink Panther, where he was an American police man chosen to find the missing Inspector Clouseau. As Peter Sellers had already died, this was obviously Blake Edwards’ attempt to continue the series with another actor in a similar role. But Wass appeared very awkward; you can’t just replace Peter Sellers like that.

There’s not much else to say about this movie. It came, it flopped in cinemas and was forgotten but in retrospect it’s not that bad. I definitely find it a better movie than the recent Tarzan movie with Skarsgard, and 1000 times more entertaining than Bo Derek’s Tarzan the Ape Man trash audiences had endured a couple of years before. My feeling is that Sheena. though definitely not a lost classic from the mid-80s. makes for decent entertainment if in the mood for a jungle adventure. Seeing it on a big TV screen actually makes it look quite cinematic as the beautiful landscapes of Africa were nicely captured here – as well as the natural beauty of Mrs. Roberts!

I do think there was not really an audience for this in its day. I really do think today’s generation of girls and females are much more interested in the comic book movie genre and that male comic book fans in the 1980s may have consciously avoided movies like this. But I do think that – given the right attitude – Sheena makes a good combo with Supergirl, or perhaps Clan of the Cave Bear. Most would give this movie 2 stars, but for me it’s not that far from beloved trash like One Million Years BC and give it a generous 3½ stars. I simply like the movie, not least the ending in which Vic leaves Sheena in Africa, despite his love for her, knowing that our modern world would just corrupt and destroy her beautiful character. It’s an astonishing and thoughtful bitter-sweet ending for a movie that hardly wants to be more than just two hours of easy entertainment.

I say it again: Critics were overly harsh to this little Africa adventure. Maybe there’s just something in Tanya Roberts acting that triggers that kind of reaction?

Dir: John Guillermin
Star: Tanya Roberts, Ted Wass, Donovan Scott. Princess Elizabeth of Toro

Sheena

“Sheena” would eventually return in form of another TV-series that ran for two seasons and 35 episodes from 2000-2002. It’s quite likely that producers Douglas Schwartz and Steven L. Sears hoped to cash in on the trend of action-adventure TV-shows that were then popular thanks to series like “Hercules” and “Xena”. Sears himself was enjoying quite some success with “Xena – Warrior Princess” which he wrote several scripts of and partly co-produced.

Unfortunately, the “Sheena” show was nowhere near as captivating as “Xena” was. Sheena (Nolin) is far from the “cute but a bit naive” version that Tanya Roberts played. Here, Sheena is more a kind of eco-terrorist, fiercely protecting “her” jungle of Maltaka – so you’d better behave if you go there! Along comes Matt Cutter (Nelson) with his constantly ironically snarky companion Mendelson (Quigley). Cutter is out for the quick buck, leading tourists in the jungle, trying to forget his former career as a CIA-agent (!). But after clashing with Sheena in the beginning they quickly establish a working relationship – usually meaning Sheena will draw the poor man into another harrowing adventure of hers.

Obviously, there are plenty of terrible things that can happen in the jungle, be it big game hunters, terrorists, military coups or tribal wars that have to be prevented. While the show quite obviously had a very limited budget – I couldn’t escape the fact after some time that they always filmed at the same five locations – I give the film makers credit. They tried to make their show as diverting as possible as they could, with the time and money they had at their disposal.

Sheena has changed quite a bit from her previous version; she is no dumb blonde in the jungle, she reads Tom Clancy and romantic novels, has her own cave, is trained in the mystical art of transforming into any animal with whom she has eye-contact (I immediately had to think of the old TV-show “A case for Professor Chase” when seeing this) by Shaman Kali (Moorer) and has absolutely no qualms about killing off evil-doers in the jungle – and there are plenty over the course of the show).

Usually she transforms into what she calls the “Darakna” – which essentially means she puts black mud on her body and gloves, with bone claws on to slash her enemies to death. Don’t worry: it’s neither bloody nor (after the first time they show it to us) very exciting. I just wonder if, by doing that, she also immediately became super-powered. though she already is a strong fighter. Or if it just made the killing easier for her, as she then wasn’t “quite herself” (to quote Norman Bates!).

It seems the producers were going for some kind of developing love story – differently to “Xena”, there are no overlapping story-arcs, just stand-alone episodes. But if so, they blew it. It seems all the efforts of Cutter were in vain, after early in the second season, Sheena has sex with a random stranger after a couple of unsubtle compliments from him. A couple of episodes later, we are asked to believe that Cutter gets together with an Asian women he once met in a training unit at the CIA. Oh, and we have to suffer through the usual episode where Sheena meets her “first love,” or the one where a special-mission leads Cutter’s ex-wife into the jungle.

Nolin and Nelson never have much chemistry with each other, that would let them appear as anything more than good friends. There’s no Xena-Gabrielle spark here, if that’s what you were hoping for! So if you thought we were getting the Sheena-Cutter-happy ending no one was asking for, you’d be wrong. Cutter says good-bye to another beautiful blonde at the beginning of the last episode, who thanks him for “showing him the world”, and the rest deals with a tribe mistaking constantly monotonously babbling wanna-be-snark Mendelson for a wise, old leader with the same name. The series ends as unspectacularly as it began.

That said, while the show (like most shows of its ilk at the time) is underwhelming compared to “Hercules” and “Xena”, I do think the screenwriters really tried to come up with as inventive stories as possible, given the fact that the “adventures in the jungle” was already a genre as dead as a door-nail. There are some good ideas here: plants that raise certain hormones in your blood, making you love-struck as well as murderous (therefore having Cutter and Sheena try to kill each other); a female black Rocky in the jungle, faced with countless attacks by her opponents; a kind of “X-files”-episode, with the audacity to play that show’s musical theme a couple of times in the episode; or the dangerous giant ants that eat anything. setting Cutter and Sheena in quite a distressing position.

There are also some “guest stars” though you shouldn’t expect the A-class of actors here. I noticed Grand L. Bush (whom I know from a minor role in the James Bond-movie Licence to Kill some 11 years earlier), make-up specialist and occasional actor Tom Savini (From Dusk till Dawn) and the Tarzan of the 60s, Ron Ely in a villain role. At least the team tried, though you hardly ever can speak of three-dimensional villains here. You also have to forgive the typical 90s CGI-morphing and masks that were terrible, even in better and more prestigious TV shows of the time than this one.

All in all, “Sheena” is not a great show but given its limitations I would say the people in charge tried to do their very best. Though while I could still binge-watch “Xena” today, “Sheena” is something that I would probably only watch again if I woke up at 2 a.m. and regular TV didn’t offer anything better at that time.

Star: Gena Lee Nolin, John Allen Nelson, Kevin Quigley, Margo Moorer

Sólo quiero caminar

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★★
“Oceano’s quatro”

We watched this Spanish film, by coincidence, on the same night as Ocean’s 8, and the Hispanic entry came off as a poor imitation, even though it was made a decade earlier. A four-woman gang’s attempt to steal from Russian mobsters in Spain falls short, though only a single member of the crew is arrested. One of those who escape, Ana, marries Mexican drug-lord Felix (Yazpik), only to discover over the ensuing months, he’s an utterly abusive bastard. After she is pushed out of a car at high-speed, ending up in hospital, the other three, including her sister Aurora (Gil), the one who was caught, decided to take revenge on Felix. The plan is to start by stealing first his data then move on to his money, the loss of which will cause his new Korean partners to kill him. However, his right-hand man, Gabriel (Luna), begins to suspect the women – yet his qualms about Felix’s increasingly brutal ways help lead to increasingly split loyalties.

This isn’t as good as the above synopsis – or the German DVD sleeve on the right! – might make it sound. Instead, it’s a two hour-plus mess, with far too many scenes serving purposes that are either poorly explained or entirely non-existent. Aurora’s time in prison, for example, is virtually irrelevant, except for another scene showing what bastards men are [she is eventually released thanks to the provision of sexual favours to a corrupt judge; one of the themes here seems to be that men are degenerate sleazeballs]. And when the heist goes into motion, there’s absolutely no sense of structure, which would allow the audience to follow along. Why is that tunnel being dug? Does anyone know what’s going on? And then there are the “Koreans”, who are very clearly speaking Chinese. Not sure if this was casual racism, or just extremely sloppy film-making.

Despite the above critical evisceration, it’s not entirely without merit. There’s something of a Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese feel to this, not least in the conspicuous use of music to punctuate proceedings. That includes both usual Hispanic entries like Los Lobos, to entirely unexpected content, such as Patti Smith’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. Those inspirations are also reflected in Yanes’s unstinting eye for violence. The scene where Felix takes a hammer to the hands of a victim is nasty – yet necessary, bringing home beyond any shadow of doubt how evil he is. When things are in motion, Yanes seems to have a decent handle on how to shoot and edit things, and I liked most of the performances here as well, from a fairly well-known cast. It’s just a shame the script seems to consist of pages torn from a better movie, thrown up into the air and placed in random order. The struggle simply to follow what was happening, entirely sucked the life out of my initial enthusiasm for this.

Dir: Agustín Díaz Yanes
Star: Victoria Abril, Ariadna Gil, José María Yazpik, Diego Luna
a.k.a. Just Walking or Walking Vengeance

Slay Belles

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★★★
“Not-so silent night”

Not to be confused with RuPaul’s 2015 album (I kid you not), this starts off on shaky territory. I mean, a director who credits himself as “Spooky Dan Walker”, and three edgeladies as heroines, wannabe YouTube stars who think dropping F-bombs every second sentence is cool? I was thanking my lucky stars this had a running time of 76 minutes. This trio of urban explorers head off to an abandoned theme park in the middle of nowhere called Santa Land, only to find it not as abandoned as expected, with a giant horned monster, Grampus, roaming the area, operating as the devil’s Christmas ambassador to naughty children. Or adults, which is where Alexi (Klebe), Dahlia (Slaughter) and Sadie (Wagner) come on to its menu. Fortunately, Santa Land’s owner is there to help: who else but Mr. Claus (Bostwick) himself?

And that’s really where the film becomes considerably more fun. Because it plays fast and loose with the whole mythology of Christmas, depicting Santa as a hard-drinking, cursing biker who gave up the business because toys started being mass-produced. It’s a winning performance from Bostwick, who hand-waves away the girls’ questions about how he operated with increasingly irritated dismissals of “Magic!” This irascible charm seems to rub off on the heroines, who shift from irritating to endearing, and develop distinct personalities beyond their colour co-ordinated outfits and wigs, as they buckle down to fight Grampus and save… Well, less Christmas, and more the world in general.

It becomes increasingly self-aware as it goes on, poking as much fun at the world of Internet “celebrities” as endorsing it, e.g. the trio insist on taking selfies with the temporarily captured monster. There’s good support from Richard Moll as a local cop, and in particular, Diane Salinger as a local barmaid, who ends up playing a pivotal role, despite (or, more likely, because of) her clear aversion to the festive season. It all ends in a quite unexpected fashion which, if a bit too abrupt, fits nicely in with the slaying of sacred cows – or sleighing of sacred reindeer, perhaps – which has gone before. It certainly seals the three heroines as the pro-active leaders of the film, despite a shaky section in the middle where it looked like a boyfriend was going to end up saving the day. Not so fast, white knight…

I have to say, the Grampus suit itself is incredibly well done, a latex marvel that must have been hell to apply and perform in. While there are some elements which feel under-developed, such as the Ghoulies-like fur-balls which attack in act three, Walker keeps things moving at a brisk enough pace to get away with it most of the time. If not quite the silliest festive film which I’ve seen this year (that would, of course, be Santa Jaws), this deserves to be filed alongside other anti-Christmas movies, such as Gremlins. It’s no Die Hard, of course; then again, who is?

Dir: Dan Walker
Star: Kristina Klebe, Susan Slaughter, Hannah Wagner, Barry Bostwick

The Serpent’s Fang, by Ryan Mullaney

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

“Cara Loft, Room Trader…”

This book comes with a fairly lengthy note at the end, in which the author explains how he came to the idea here. Five words are all that were necessary: “I ripped off Lara Croft.” Because this is the closest I’ve yet seen to the literary version of an Asylum mockbuster movie, such as Tomb Invader. Globe-trotting locator of lost artifacts? Check. Remarkable gymnastic abilities? Check. Orphan? Check. I think it was when I read “Simone started to tie her hair into two braids”, that the eye-rolling began in earnest.

The story begins with her discovery of a lost city in Cambodia. While Simone Cassidy is recovering from that, she is recruited by a secretive quasi-governmental organization, to help them recover the titular blade. This ancient Aztec dagger is laden with legendary mystical energy, and the government want to stop it from falling into the wrong hands, those who would misuse its powers [not something a government would ever do, of course…] Initially reluctant, our heroine is lured into joining up with the promise of information about her parents – who, wouldn’t you know it, were also treasure hunters, before their untimely death. Cue more eye-rolling.

Naturally, they’re not the only ones after it. There is also Heather Severn and her colleagues at SWANN. Do not ask me what that stands for, because we are never told. We don’t learn much about their aims and motivations either, other than that they are “A private organization skilled in tactical combat.” They work for Felix Enderhoff, a private collector of artifacts who wants the Fang… because for him, it appears to be like Pokemon, and you gotta catch ’em all. When word seeps out that a clue to the location of the blade has been found in Mexico, he dispatches Heather and her team, aiming to beat Simone and her quasi-governmental colleague, Lincoln and April, to the punch.

From there, it’s a race through Mexico City to the clue, some gratuitous library-fu, then off into the jungle, and on towards the goal. The main thing we discover is that SWANN are actually more than a bit crap at tactical combat, failing on numerous occasions to take out Simone and her team, despite heavily out-numbering them, and Simone having virtually no fighting experience. Though her psychological qualms about using violence are actually one of the book’s few redeeming merits, and certainly fit in better than her pathological fear of… automobiles? While a result of the car crash which killed her parents 25 years earlier, all I could think of was an Indiana Jones-like line: “Cars. Why did it have to be cars…”

It’s all not very interesting, with little here you won’t have read or seen before. You don’t get much insight into either Simone’s character or the world which Mullaney wants to build. The Fang is no more than a McGuffin, and even when its powers are revealed [Felix, like all megavillains, simply has to be there at the denouement], they’ll provoke little more than “is that it?”. The book itself will probably do the same.

Author: Ryan Mullaney
Publisher: Sunbird Books, available through Amazon, only as an e-book.
Book 1 of 3 in the Treasure Huntress series.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

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★★★
“Competence. It’s VASTLY over-rated.”

A breezy yet slightly odd mix of comedy and ultra-violence, this drops Audrey (Kunis) and her gal pal Morgan (McKinnon) into the middle of a spy caper, after Audrey’s boyfriend Drew (Theroux) dumps her, only for Audrey to discover he was a CIA spy. He tells her she must deliver a statuette to a Viennese cafe, or the world will be in great peril. After the peril rapidly arrives, heavily-armed, she and Morgan head off to Europe, with no idea of who they can trust. In hot pursuit – whether for reasons good or bad – are MI6 agent Sebastian Henshaw (Heughan), and the agents of “Highland”, a criminal syndicate also very keen to get their hands on the statuette and what it contains. A whirlwind tour of European cities follows, including Budapest, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.

I’ve rather more time for Kunis than McKinnon; I have previously found a little of the latter’s shtick tends to go a long way e.g. the Ghostbusters reboot, and that’s the case again here. There’s not just much of a character arc for Morgan: she starts the film off being loud and obnoxious, and more or less maintains the same, honking note throughout. Audrey is more restrained, both as a character and in Kunis’s performance, and I found that worked considerably better, to the point the film might have been fine with just her as the lead on her own. Although that might have made the obvious comparisons to Spy all the more apparent. As is, it lacks quite the same level of supporting presence given there by Miranda Hart and Jason Statham.

Surprisingly, it maybe works better as an action film than a comedy, despite Fogel’s almost non-existent work in the area previously. [Some second-unit magic being worked?] Drew and Sebastian do much of the heavy lifting, yet not all of it. In this area, there’s a great car chase, and I enjoyed the supporting role of Ivanna Sakhno as Russian gymnast-assassin Nadejda, as well as Gillian Anderson as Henshaw’s deadpan boss. Nadejda also has one of the drollest comic moments: ordered to assassinate “two dumb American women,” she’s confounded by discovering just how many dumb American women are present in Europe. The hitwoman ends up battling Morgan on a trapeze. Because Morgan went to circus school. As you do. Yeah, the script here will occasionally make you roll your eyes like that.

The end hints at some kind of franchise, which has the potential to be more fun than this origin story, the pair becoming fully-fledged agents on their own, rather than operating in the shadows and under the protection of their male counterparts. There’d be something to be said for a film featuring a pair of spies who simply pretend to be those “dumb American women” for cover purposes, while actually being smart and entirely competent. Such a film likely would need to feature someone else other than McKinnon, however. I’d be perfectly fine with that.

Dir: Susanna Fogel
Star: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan. Justin Theroux