Tag: USA

Me, You, Madness

  By

★★
“American Psychette.”

I wanted to like this considerably more than I actually did.  The idea of a supremely self-aware female serial killer – not just comfortable in her psychoses, someone who actively revels in them? Colour me intrigued. Throw in any amount of eighties tunes, super-lush production design and photography, and this should have been right up my neon-lit alley. Yet, it very much runs out of steam. When perhaps the most memorable joke is an argument over the difference between a couch and a sofa… Yeah, there are some significant structural problems which need to have been addressed. 

The “heroine” (quotes used ironically) is hedge fund manager Catherine Black (Linton, also the writer), who has risen to the top with ferocious aggression. She has embraced her psychopathy, and in her beautifully appointed mansion, has multiple freezers full of dismembered bodies. Her next intended victim is Tyler Jones (Westwick), a con-man who is posing as an intended house-sitter. However, for the first time, Catherine finds herself unable to go through with her habitual slaughter, instead making an unexpected connection to the thief. Even after he absconds with one of her cars and a slew of her jewellery, part of her is still willing to forgive Tyler his trespasses, and brings him back by threatening to expose his previous crimes to the authorities. Yet will these new feelings of humanity and kindness be enough to overcome Catherine’s deep-seated and long-standing urges towards murder and cannibalism?

It appears this is Linton’s debut as both writer and director, and seems she bit off a bit more than she can chew. I think, in particular, it’s the script which is the issue. Crammed full of breaking the fourth wall and other advanced techniques, there’s no denying its ambition; unfortunately, Linton as writer doesn’t appear up to the task. Instead, she tries to run before she can walk, never managing to establish Catherine as a complex character. Indeed, it never puts enough effort into establishing her even as a murderous psychopath, until well after the point at which she has fallen for Tyler. That’s another problem, because the film doesn’t provide sufficient justification for thus: there’s precious little given to the audience that make us think, “I get what she sees in him,” rendering all that follows contrived and unconvincing.

While I certainly appreciated the nostalgic soundtrack, it does seem an odd choice given the contemporary setting – Linton was aged two when Blue Monday was originally released. Perhaps an older actress, such as a Naomi Watts or Catherine Zeta-Jones, would have been a better fit? But I guess, when you have decided you are going to be an actress, director and writer, and can find financing for it, then it’s full steam ahead. If much credit is due to her for seizing the opportunity, and there’s enough here to suggest a vision, it’s definitely too unpolished. She would likely be better off focusing on one area, rather than attempting to become a Jill of all trades.

Dir: Louise Linton 
Star: Louise Linton, Ed Westwick, Shuya Chang, Tyler Barnes

Monster Hunter

  By

★★★
“Incoming annoyed video-game geeks in 3…”

To be 100% clear, I have never played the video-game on which this movie is based. I honestly could not tell you anything about it. I suspect – and I am going out on a limb here – that it probably involves hunting monsters. That’s all I’ve got. This is probably both a benefit and a detriment to my appreciation of this film. I have absolutely nothing against which to compare it, and so went in with no expectations of how this “should” look or behave. On the other hand, I was left feeling as if some prior knowledge might have helped me get a better idea of what’s going on. Because beyond the broadest of broad strokes, I couldn’t tell you. Fortunately, I do not feel this significantly impacted the entertainment value it provided.

Basically, we have Captain Natalie Artemis (Jovovich) and the rest of her UN patrol, out in the middle of the desert, looking for a previously lost platoon. A massive sandstorm engulfs them, spitting them out into another world, populated largely by large, extremely carnivorous critters. Before you can say “No time to mourn,” Artemis is the sole survivor, and is rescued by Hunter (Jaa), who has managed to survive in the inhospitable terrain, since falling off a ship or something. Despite a lack of common language, the pair team up with the aim being to get Artemis back to the gateway through which she entered this parallel universe. The Admiral (Perlman), leader of a group of other hunters, also shows up, because….

Yeah, I suspect I am supposed to know who there people, monsters and things are – if you don’t, do not expect the script to provide much help. That said, this is absolutely the kind of film I can see myself clicking into whenever it’s on cable, on the basis of there being something cool and/or spectacular happening every five minutes, like clockwork. The sheer scale is where this is at its most effective, with the camera pulled back a really long way, showing the audience just how gigantic the monsters here are, and with the humans reduced to tiny specks – typically high-tailing it in the opposite direction. As a glorious rush of spectacle, it’s very impressive.

As a vehicle for Mrs. Anderson, it’s a bit less successful, simply because she is too often reduced to the edge of the frame. [She does, however, fare a bit better than Jaa, whom you would not know is one of the world’s best cinematic martial artists, between the editing and the staging.] As in the Resident Evil films, her character was created wholesale for the movie, and I imagine that will no doubt trigger the gamers. For obvious reasons, I’m entirely unconcerned, and an quite happy to continue endorsing the Anderson family’s efforts. Please continue to make big, dumb SF/horror flicks in which the missus gets to run around and beat things up, while becoming increasingly smudged.

Dir: Paul W. S. Anderson
Star: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Ron Perlman, Tip Harris

Crazy Mama

  By

★★½
“What’s the good of being an outlaw if you look like an in-law?”

This upper-tier B-movie, produced by Julie Corman, is notable for a handful of reasons. It includes not one but two Oscar winners. Director Demme would go on to receive one for Silence of the Lambs, and star Leachman had already won for her performance in The Last Picture Show. There’s also a small role here for Sally Kirkland, who’d be nominated for an Academy Award down the road. And perhaps most trivia-worthy are the presences in uncredited roles, of Bill Paxton and Dennis Quaid – both making their screen debuts.

It begins in the Great Depression, with mother and young daughter Shelba and Melba Stokes losing their man and the Arkansas farm. They head out West to California in search of their fortune. Fast-forward to 1957, according to the poster. Although it would appear to be a somewhat loose version, as far as historical accuracy goes, given the presence of Vertigo on a cinema marquee (not released until May 1958), or the repeated presence on the soundtrack of Money (That’s What I Want) – a song which came out in August 1959! Shelba (Sothern) and Melba (Leachman) now run a hair-salon, but they’re evicted from that too, after not keeping up on the rent. Shelba leads the family, now including Melba’s daugter Cheryl (Purl), on a cross-country road trip and crime spree, to raise the funds to buy the farm back. They progress from gas station hold-up to bank robbery and fake kidnapping.

Along the way, the gang expands to include various odd-ball characters, including a biker (played by Leachman’s real life son), a Texas mayor and an octogenarian biddy, and the law takes an increasing interest in their exploits. It’s almost relentlessly light in tone, though does take a darker tone towards the end, when one member dies in a fiery attempt to break through a police road-block. It ends in Shelba getting her wish, to confront the man who foreclosed on their farm a quarter-century previously, with the property now a country club. Though the results hardly seems worth the effort, and I was expecting a better resolution overall – the film basically ends as it began.

If a slight cinematic confection, it’s one whose period atmosphere had likely been enhanced by the passage of time. At the point of its release in the mid-seventies, the setting would be relatively recent, less than a generation in the past. Now, it all seems like another world – one curiously devoid of black people… Still, on the positive side, seeing things like fifties Las Vegas or the Wigwam Motel chain (a couple of branches of which still operate) is certainly a kick, and the soundtrack provides a cool selection of tracks from that time. There’s just not much on which to hang your hat, in the way of character or story development. Outside of one tasselled Vegas dancer and the road-block mentioned above, it’s not even pleasantly exploitative in the fields of sex and violence.

Dir: Jonathan Demme
Star: Cloris Leachman, Ann Sothern, Linda Purl, Jim Backus

Jessi’s Girls

  By

★★★★
“And not a Rick Springfield in sight.”

It’s about the year 1880, and Jessica Hartwell (Currie) is heading out West in a wagon with her preacher husband. They encounter the gang of Frank Brock (Frank); they repeatedly rape Jessica, before shooting her husband fatally, and leaving her for dead. She survives, returning to health with the help of prospector Rufe, who sports an unfortunate, obviously fake beard, yet also teaches the young woman how to shoot. For Jessi has vengeance on her mind, and to assist her in this path, she liberates three other women from the custody of Sheriff Clay (Lund). There’s outlaw Rachel (Jennifer Bishop); saloon girl Claire (Regina Carrol); and Indian Kana (the not-exactly Indian Stern), who had been a part of Frank’s gang until he abandoned her.

While director Adamson was best known for his horror films, some of his work has been covered here before: The Female Bunch and I Spit on Your Corpse! This is his best entry yet, which is straightforward, short on pretension and all the better for it. It certainly doesn’t hang around; we’re barely a few minutes in before the reason for revenge is under way, and it’s not easy viewing. It sits particularly uncomfortably, since just a few minutes earlier, the audience was enjoying the sight of the lead actress (also seen in Mama’s Dirty Girls) skinny-dipping. For the film doesn’t forget the sex in exploitation. Jessi is surprisingly quick to forget her late husband and bed the Sheriff, with most of the other female cast similarly disrobing at some point.

On the other hand, there are occasionally surprising elements, such as Tana’s refusal to help a wounded Apache; often, films lump all native Americans together, forgetting that tribes were sometimes disparate groups, who hated each other. It’s a decision which causes conflict – of the muddy, cat-fight kind – between her and Claire, a diversion on the otherwise fairly straight arrow journey towards the expected and likely inevitable confrontation with Brock. This, along with other forms of more brutal attrition, do mean that by the time Jessica arrives at her target’s hideout, the film’s title is no longer accurate. Indeed, Jessi is back to ploughing an almost solitary furrow on her mission, made all the more hazardous by Frank knowing she’s on her way.

The supporting actresses are not exactly given more than simple sketches, yet manage to make them feel like actual people. The focus is firmly on Jessica, and I liked Currie in the role, with her managing to portray both a vulnerable side and a steely determination that will not be swayed from her intended path of retribution. Her coolest moment is probably at the end, lighting sticks of dynamite off her cheroot and tossing them to great effect. Admittedly, when it comes to the finale, Brock and his men tend to demonstrate all the shooting skills of Imperial Stormtroopers, and you wonder how they ever managed to rob anyone. A great ending though, with a twist I did not see coming, providing the icing on the cake of a unexpectedly pleasant surprise.

Dir: Al Adamson
Star: Sondra Currie, Ellyn Stern, Geoffrey Land, Ben Frank

Scarlett

  By

★★½
“Better red than dead.”

I was looking forward to this one quite a bit. Lyde is no stranger to these pages, having a track record of low-budget action heroines to his name: Survivor, 626 Evolution and a couple of entries in the Mythica franchise, including the best of them, Mythica: The Iron Crown. The star here, Melanie Stone, was also a big part of Mythica, where she played Marek the necromancer, so I was excited to see what their reunion might bring. And… s’okay, I suppose. In particular, you will need to be in a very forgiving mood as far as the plot goes. The heroine is Scarlett (Stone), a nursing student at odds with her father, Cal (Krause), a single parent who keeps her on a tight leash and has trained Scarlett in all manner of unusual skills, from martial arts to pursuit evasion. For we know, and Scarlett doesn’t, that her father is a globetrotting spy, who is concerned his pigeons might come home to roost one day.

Turns out, he’s right to worry, and he is kidnapped by people who want a bioweapon he is holding, so they can sell it to the highest bidder. Scarlett has to turn her skills to practical use, locate the people who abducted her father and release him. Except, her first attempt instead frees Sean (McConnell), an associate of her father who had also been kidnapped by the bad guys. Somewhat reluctantly, he teams up with Scarlett as her investigation brings her ever closer to a face-off where she’ll exchange her father for the vial of bio-nastiness. One of the numerous problems with the story is, the twist in the second half is blatantly obvious. I’m usually easy to fool, but spotted it quickly. Even worse, Chris wandered in about half-way and within five minutes, had also nailed it. That Scarlett was apparently oblivious, doesn’t quite jibe with her supposedly razor-sharp abilities, that let her easily out-think and out-fight the professionals the rest of the time.

Stone is not bad, clearly doing a lot of her own action, to decent effect; even simple things like a foot-chase, which sees her leaping fences in a way which would have many actresses calling for a stunt double. However, it feels as if she takes a back seat to her father as things proceed. While Krause is actually surprisingly good, he’s no Scott Adkins – and to be honest, we’re not here for him, but the action promised by the sleeve, which puts Scarlett front and centre. I think this might have worked better had they been a fully-functional and active father-daughter partnership before his abduction (the end vaguely hints at that as a possible future direction). As is, the repeated flashbacks needed to cover her training makes for a bit of an awkward structure, not adding much to  proceedings.  The film is a good idea, and the low-budget is well enough disguised not to be a problem. The script, however, is well below par, and ends up taking the whole endeavour down with it.

Dir: John Lyde
Star: Melanie Stone, Brian Krause, David McConnell

Strider

  By

★★★½
“The loneliness of the long-distance runner.”

This is certainly a borderline entry for the site, in terms of “action”. There’s running. Lots of running, through the very scenic, beautifully photographed New England countryside. And that’s about it. if you’re expecting fisticuffs, gun-play or mayhem… look elsewhere. That, I must stress, doesn’t make this a bad film. Admittedly, it falls close to Generic Sports Movie 1.0.1. Teenager Jody Sue Brightwell (Friedman) is spotted by a “between jobs” track coach, Hannah Dalton (Alexander). as Jody Sue runs on the road, largely to escape the problems of her everyday life – such as an absent mother and her two, hell-spawned younger brothers. Hannah sees raw talent and agrees to take her on, with the goal of getting her ready for the Pinnacle Games, where a good performance could open the doorway to a professional career.

Of course, between here and there, various problems get in the way.  The doubts of her father (Lewis), who knows Jody Sue’s past history of giving up. The approach of Hannah to training, which gives no quarter to anyone’s feelings. Jody Sue’s new boyfriend, Tim (Schneider), who wants to support her, yet ends up being a potentially fatal distraction to her chances. Really, there are only two ways this can go at the end. Jody Sue can triumph in the Big Race, or not, and both are almost inescapably cliched. Either way, along the road (literally, in this case), relationships will be tested, lessons learned, and limits tested. If you’re looking for anything groundbreaking in the story… again, look elsewhere.

But this is absolutely one of those cases where the journey is more important than the destination. Crucially, the characters here all feel incredibly genuine. Thanks to both a solid script and performances that are all good or better, they speak and behave in ways which make them feel real. They’re all – well, with the exception of the Hell-spawn – nice folk, trying to do the best they can. There are no villains here, and while that does limit the scope for dramatic conflict, it makes for an engaging experience. These are people with whom it’s a pleasure to spend time, and that’s perhaps rarer than you’d think in cinema. Despite occasionally awkward gaps in the narrative – why, exactly, is Hannah apparently unemployable? – you should find yourself caring about them as events unfold.

Helping matters, the technical aspects are excellent. The film looks incredibly crisp, as mentioned above, with some great aerial photography work, and the soundtrack does a very good job of enhancing the overall experience. Finally, I actually watched the second half of this while getting in my daily miles on the elliptical in the living-room. It seemed appropriate to be running, while watching a film about running, right? But for whatever reason, I ended up cracking through more calories than I had for several months. I guess this can truly be considered an inspirational movie…

Dir: Mark Lewis
Star: Yelena Friedman, Maggie Alexander, Scott Lewis, Josiah Schneider
[The film is currently available on Amazon Prime]

Savage Creatures

  By

★★★
“Vampires vs. Zombies”

Is it possible for a film to try and cram in too much? This might be guilty of that, being simply too full of ideas. It begins with a serial killer mother and son pair, who are also cannibals, to boot. They think they’ve found their next victims, when they pick up a pair of young hitchhikers, Ursula (Steadman) and Rose (Brown). However, the psychos are in for a shock, because their targets are actually a pair of vampires, centuries old. But, wait! There’s more! Weird meteorites have landed on Earth containing alien creatures, that devour human souls. Those they infect turn into aggressive, zombie-like creatures, that can only be terminated by destroying their pineal glands. And I haven’t even touched on Father Cooper (Travis), and his “nun with a gun” associate, Sister Gigi (Smith, right).

You certainly can’t fault this for its inventiveness, and some of the ideas work very well. For example, the soul-stealing aspect of the aliens fits nicely with the vampires; they’re immune to this, because they have no souls. The two leads have good chemistry, exhibiting the easy rapport you’d expect, from people who have known each other for hundreds of years.Yet, they both have their own traits, and feel like individuals. It’s perhaps this angle which feels most pushed out by all the other stuff, and it is a bit of a shame. The idea of vampires dealing with an alien invasion or the zombie apocalypse is strong enough to carry a film. All the other stuff piled on top, feels kinda superfluous, operating as a series of distractions, rather than adding dimensions to proceedings. That’s especially true, given the relatively short running time of only 75 minutes. 

Ursula and Rose provide a no-nonsense response to their predicament – or, more accurately, series of predicaments. Their fangs are far from their only weapon; indeed, they’re not much use when it comes to destroying pineal glands. Semiautomatics work much better, and the pair wield them with some enthusiasm. For a low-budget entity, the technical aspects are pretty decent. The model alien which gets dissected with cutlery by our heroines (technically, one of them; the other has a bit of a weak stomach) being a particular highlight. 

The other main issue is a lack of escalation. Rather than plot threads being developed, they get replaced. As a result, we reach the end, and almost nothing has been resolved. The aliens are still invading, as the vamps hit the road again. They don’t even seem too fazed by the thought of their food supply being zombified. After all, as one of them points out, there are enough blood-banks in the country to keep them going for a good century. It’s one last piece of invention, in a film that hardly needs it. Yet it seems churlish to complain about too much of that, and this remains a pleasant slice of energetic horror/SF, powered by two heroines with whom it’s fun to spend time.

Dir: Richard Lowry
Star: Victoria Steadman, Kelly Brown, Greg Travis, Kannon Smith

Cry for the Bad Man

  By

★★½
“Play Freebird!!!“

Despite a very brief running time of only 70 minutes, this still manages to seem talky and overlong. That’s a shame, as it manages to waste a good performance from a genre veteran, playing an action heroine who is not your typical one. The former is Camille Keaton, who is having a bit of a B-movie renaissance in her career, forty years after starring in the notorious rape-revenge film, I Spit on Your Grave. And the latter? Well, Keaton is now in her seventies, but based on this, is still capable of wielding a mean shotgun. And clearly, of taking no shit from anyone. Indeed, you could almost read this as the sundown years of her Grave character, Jennifer Hills.

Though here, she is Marsha Kane, a widow who is faced with fending off predatory offers on her property from local ne’er do wells, the MacMohan boys: Wayne (Peeler), Derrek (Dooley) and Billy, operating on behalf of the family patriarch, Bill. He wants Marsha’s house, and is going to let a little thing like her complete disinterest in selling stand in the way. So he sends his kin to make not-so-subtle hints, knowing the local police are in the family’s pocket. When the threats don’t work either, the boys return at midnight for a more physical approach, only to discover quickly that Kane is more than able to fend for herself. However, her daughter (Konzen) shows up, offering the MacMohan’s potentially useful leverage against her mother.

The title seems to be taken from a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, about the firing of their manager, so I’m not sure of the relevance here. But what could, and probably should be a small-scale version of Assault on Precinct 13, fails to achieve anything like the necessary degree of tension. It instead, collapses in on itself, as the script prefers to concentrate on largely uninteresting chit-chat and extremely slow creeping down poorly-lit corridors. That’s when it isn’t blundering into plot-holes. For example, when the MacMohan brothers arrive for their midnite escapade, they’re greeted with gunfire, injuring one. The smart thing to do would be to back off, call their pals at the police station, and have Mrs. Kane hauled off to prison for attempted murder. Property secured! Meanwhile, on her side, why stop with one? They are literally standing in front of the door, arguing about what to do.

This wastes Keaton, who has a quiet strength about her, as well as hints of a past that were less than squeaky-clean. Though, again – who keeps a copy of their police mug-shot in a box of souvenirs? It also goes to show that action heroines come in more shapes and sizes – and ages – than Hollywood would perhaps recognize. Even when they had Helen Mirren in Red, she was still undeniably glamourous. That isn’t the case here, and it’s all the more refreshing for it. Just a shame it wasn’t put to the use of a considerably better storyline.

Dir: Sam Farmer
Star: Camille Keaton, Scott Peeler, Karen Konzen, Eric Dooley

The Serpent

  By

★★
“You’ve got to tell him about the other bombs inside the kids.”

Wait, what? Other bombs? Inside kids? Less than two minutes in and I am already incredibly confused – because before the line above, there was no mention at all of bombs or kids. All we’d had is Detective Franklin (Wade) get a weird call at a shooting from someone promising to tell him the truth about what happened. He gets into his car, and Lucinda Kavsky (Skova) pounces from the back seat. Here is their exchange, in full.

“Who the hell are you?”
“Lucinda Kavsky, CIA. I will tell you everything I know about this case. Okay?”
“Well, hot damn if I don’t believe that story. How’d you get into this mess? Y’know, I think you’re going to have to contact Rodney Williams of the CIA, there’s no other choice.”
“I’ve already sent all the proof to him.”
“Well, you’ve got to tell him about the other bombs inside the kids.”

Yes, time of death is, exactly one minute and 58 seconds in. I have never seen a movie go from zero to completely inexplicable so quickly. A few seconds later, Franklin says, “Your explanation’s good enough for me.” No. It’s not. I can’t help feeling as if there was a large chunk of exposition edited out between the second and third lines, and the film never recovers. We do eventually discover that there is a plot to create bio-weapons by implanting chips of some (ill-defined) kind into kids. Kavsky stumbled into it when she took over a mission for a friend, and has been hunted ever since by those – both inside and outside the CIA – who are seeking to keep it secret.

It’s a straightforward story, and one which would have benefited enormously from a straightforward telling. Instead, we end up with what feels like a Russian doll-like series of flashbacks, including a five-year (!) period spent by Kavsky in prison. Quite what the bad guys were doing during all this time, is – like so much else – never explained. It makes about as much sense as the high numbers of British accents sported by supposed CIA operatives, not least Lucinda herself.

The action is no great shakes, except for one sequence where she is helping a doctor remove one of the chips from Avy (Heath) a subject she has rescured, when her phone is tracked to the hospital and an assault launched. The resulting battle is… Well, realism isn’t its strong suit, shall we say. But it’s done with enough enthusiasm to give it at least a fighting chance of overcoming any credibility issues. Otherwise, it’s about what you’d expect from a former model who is also making her debut as both writer and director. All credit to Ms. Skova, whose cheekbones alone should count as lethal weapons, for actually making a damn movie. But you’d have to be extremely charitable to consider this as more than entry level, especially when it comes to the script, which is simply far too serpentine for its own good.

Dir: Gia Skova
Star: Gia Skova, Travis Aaron Wade, Nigel Vonas, Violet Heath

Bit

  By

★★★½
“The Lost Girls”

There are times when I am bracing myself, going into a movie. Here’s the synopsis for this one: “A transgender teenage girl on summer vacation in Los Angeles fights to survive after she falls in with four queer feminist vampires, who try to rid the city’s streets of predatory men.” Given my long-standing aversion to message movies, this seemed like 90 minutes of my worst nightmare. What had I let myself in for? But this proved to be surprisingly accessible – even for those of us who are neither transgender nor queer, and are enrolled in the Camille Paglia school of feminism.

It reminded me of We Are The Night, about a similar group of female “party vampires” who embrace a newcomer to their ranks. Though as the tagline above suggests, I guess both movies owe a large debt to The Lost Boys. To be honest, if I hadn’t read the synopsis, I wouldn’t know the heroine, Laurel (Maines) is intended to be transgender. There is discussion of some previous trauma before she leaves home after graduating, but it’s never her defining characteristic. Her new pals are relentlessly feminist, to the point of misanthropic. According to their leader, Duke (Hopper), the prime directive is: “You never, ever turn a man. Men can’t handle power. They have it already, and look what they’ve done with it.”  Yet her own handling of power is highly questionable: she admits to using it for “indiscriminate” killing, and compares their group to terrorists. By the end, Laurel is openly challenging that unbreakable rule – as she should.

Their two performance are the glue which holds this together, in particular as it depicts the slowly developing conflict between Laurel and Duke. The script also plays a part, revealing the truth about Duke’s origins and powers – and the more we learn, the more questionable the leader becomes. Yet there are also moments of dry humour, which stop this from becoming a grim fairy tale. For instance, Duke telling Laurel, “The first rule of Bite Club…” When this triggers little more than a derisive snort from the new recruit, one of her lieutenants pipes up, dead-panning, “Juggalos was taken.” This kind of thing fits in: I suspect in such a scenario, the vampires would not take themselves entirely seriously.

The flaws tend to be when the film does occasionally topple over into self-importance. The worst offender is probably Vlad, the master of their species. While the film opens with some snarky comments about Twilight, his performance is far more hammy than anything delivered in that franchise. There’s a badly underdeveloped plot about vampire-hunters, which is little more than “Boys are stupid”. I could also have done without a soundtrack which appears to be the writer-director’s iPhone on random, or the gratuitous Death Valley Girls concert [I can only presume they’re pals of his, given some free publicity in the movie]. All told though, this was considerably better than my prejudices would have had me believe going in. The lesson here appears to be, don’t judge a film by its synopsis.

Dir: Brad Michael Elmore
Star: Nicole Maines, Diana Hopper, Zolee Griggs, James Paxton