Tag: USA

Agent 5

  By

★★½
“Sleepless in Seattle”

Coincidentally, this one-man production was watched immediately after another, also put together toward the north-west corner, around the USA/Canadian border. But Carter Johnson is relatively restrained compared to Shadow of the Lotus‘s Jeff L’Heureux, Johnson’s name only appearing ten times in the end credits. While not dissimilar in low-budget approach, Agent 5 likely comes out just on top of the two, due to better pacing and sleeker look.

The titular heroine is Jada (Lemos), an assassin for a shadowy group which brought her up and trained her to kill, after the death of her parents. However, her programming is broken after she’s assigned the target of a whistleblowing doctor, whose elimination has been ordered by the pharmaceutical company which employed him. He convinces her to spare his life: although nearby colleagues still complete the job, before his death, he gives her the folder of incriminating data, information which could save thousands of lives. When Agent 5 goes public with it, her own employer decides she must be eliminated for her treachery, and the call goes out that she is to be located and killed. Easier said than done, though, especially when the target has decided to take the battle to her boss.

The action is competent. Nothing especially memorable, yet those involved are wise enough to know their limitations, and operate within them, rather than pushing the envelope and coming up short. Plotwise, there are some wobbly aspects: as with Lotus, the director being the writer probably hampers seeing such deficiencies. Jada exerts no effort to make things difficult for her ex-employer. If I was the subject of a brigade of assassins, I’d have moved to another country (or at least another state), drastically changed my appearance and gone as far off the grid as possible. Agent 5 does none of this, and keeps driving around town – likely for the prosaic reason that it would have posed production difficulties. Her “defection” also needed additional work: as it stands, she goes from apparently dedicated killer to rebel on the strength of a thirty-second conversation. Showing her as already disgruntled and with thoughts of quitting, would have made this much more plausible.

Originally developed as a short web series back in 2012, the main strength for the feature-length version is on the visual side. The technical quality of the footage here is so slick, it’s all but indistinguishable from a fully professional production (from what I can gather, it’s more of a high-end hobby effort for most involved). If only the same could be said about the performances, which are the biggest problem. Not so much Lemos – I’m not the only person to think she could perhaps be mistaken for Kate Beckinsale under certain lighting conditions. But the rest of the cast are all over the place, things likely reaching their nadir in the male “newscaster,” whose acting is so spectacularly awkward, I rewound it, purely for amusement purposes.

Dir: Carter Johnson
Star: Cindy Lemos, Ben Andrews, Andrew Tribolini, Roy Stanton

The Breadwinner

  By

★★★
“Burka-to-back.”

Around the turn of the millennium, Parvana (Chaudry) is an 11-year-old girl living in Kabul, Afghanistan – then under the strict religious rule of the Taliban, in the aftermath of the Russian retreat. Her father is arrested and taken off to prison, leaving his wife and children without a male guardian. Which is kinda important, because under Taliban law, women are not allowed out in public unaccompanied. With no other option, Parvana cuts her hair and dresses as a boy in order to be able to get supplies for her family. Teaming up with another boy-who-isn’t, Shauzia (Bhatia), they find work. Parvana starts saving for the bribes necessary to see, and hopefully win the release of, her father; Shauzia is saving up for her long-held dream of seeing the ocean. Of course, it’s never that easy, especially post-9/11, when the country is invaded by America and its allies.

A well-drawn exercise in paradox, it’s interesting to see liberal Hollywood attempt to juggle two of its favoured topics: feminism and Islam. Though in the end, this more or less says “Screw it,” and comes down firmly on the side of the former. For if you didn’t hate Islam before this film… you probably will by the time it’s over. Technically of course, the villain here is fundamentalism, in the malevolent shape of the Taliban; yet, this is the only kind of religion depicted in the movie. It’s not even clear if Parvana and her family are Muslim; they certainly don’t go to a mosque, and their existence seems entirely secular. On that basis, I’m quite surprised the film hasn’t been called out for Islamophobia, but I guess those gatekeepers were probably too busy nodding approvingly at the message of feminist liberation.

Moving on from tdubious socio-political messages which I can take or leave, as an animated feature, I liked this rather better. It intertwines Parvana’s efforts, both to contact her father and simply survive, with her telling the folk-tale of The Elephant King – making its hero her brother, who was previously killed by a land-mine left over from the Soviet occupation. The two threads use different yet complementary styles of animation to separate the “real” world from Parvana’s story, and it’s an effective way of depicting them. Parvana, too, makes for a solid heroine: brave and loyal to her family, while being too innocent and young to know the awkward questions she isn’t supposed to ask e.g WHY women aren’t allowed to go out unaccompanied.

Twomey was co-director of Oscar winner The Book of Kells, and it’s nice to see some animation that isn’t intent on being 3D and photo-realistic, so much as serving the story and the characters. It is sometimes a little hard to put aside the obvious intent as social propaganda, but I’ve never been one who felt you had to agree entirely with a film’s politics, in order to admire its artistic qualities. The latter are decent enough here to make for a worthwhile, if slightly too earnest, viewing experience.

Dir: Nora Twomey
Star (voice): Saara Chaudry, Soma Bhatia, Noorin Gulamgau, Kawa Ada

Shadow of the Lotus

  By

★★
“Give the man a hand!”

We know very well that, on low-budget films, people have to wear many hats. Hell, my IMDb entry began when a film I was supposed to be helping my wife produce, had an actor drop out. You can only respect those who can turn their hands to multiple jobs. And, yet… There’s a point at which it become self-defeating, because nobody can be good – or even competent – at so many positions. Lotus appears to have set new records in this area, with Jeff L’Heureux having his name listed in the end credits at no fewer than thirty different points, from director to make-up artist. That’s wearing an entire department store’s worth of hats, most apparent in the running time. For this is an 85-minute movie which runs for 124 minutes. L’Heureux the editor desperately needed to have had a word with L’Heureux the director and L’Heureux the writer about that.

There are two crime triads: the Black Lotus and the Red Dragons. Sarah (Huang) works for the former, but when she attempts to leave the organization, is shot, set ablaze and left for dead [Memo to self: if ever I become an evil overlord, I will not set my enemies on fire within easy rolling reach of the Pacific Ocean…] Naturally, she’s still alive, and comes back to begin disrupting the somewhat precarious plans of her former gang to form an alliance with the Dragons – I guess with the goal of forming some kind of super-triad under Gensho Woo (Geoff Wong). In the process, she encounters and subsequently teams up with local cop Claire (Neale), who has been trying to work things from the legal end. Sarah, needless to say, has no such limitations…

As noted, this is desperately in need of severe trimming, with hardly a single scene which does not go on for too long, where not altogether superfluous. This is particularly apparent in the early stages: it feels like an hour before things actually get going, with endless chit-chat between the players that’s blandly uninteresting. Things do improve in the second half, even if I found myself irrationally irritated by the way Sarah held her gun sidewise, like an amateur gangsta wannabe. The main plus is former colleague Jade (Macalino), who gets the chance to unleash her inner psycho. You could perhaps argue her performance is rampant over-acting, yet it’s still a heck of a lot of fun to watch, and the film is the poorer for Jade’s eventual departure.

L’Heureux is clearly inspired by, and trying to reproduce, the style of classic Hong Kong cinema from the likes of John Woo. That’s laudable enough an aim. Though the action is competent, it does fall short of these lofty goals, mostly lacking the passion and intensity which Woo’s actors brought to his films. This was never a function of their cost – admittedly, having Chow Yun-Fat was just a slight help to him there – though in defense of this, it appears to have been the director’s first feature. Plenty of room to improve next time, especially if he gets the help he needs to avoid spreading himself thinner than margarine on toast.

Dir: Jeff L’Heureux
Star: Vicky Huang, Melanie Neale, Alex Law, Candice Macalino

Lady Death: The Movie

  By

★★
“Death warmed up.”

My first viewing of this was on a day off from work, when I was down with some sinusy thing, and dosed up on DayQuil. So I chalked my losing interest and drifting off to the meds, and once I felt better, decided this deserved the chance of a re-view. However, the result was still the same: even as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed viewer, I found attention lapsing. For this animated version of a mature comic, might as well be a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode. Which is a shame. I wanted to like it, since the creator of Lady Death, Brian Pulido, is something of a local comics legend here in my adopted home state of Arizona. This should have been better.

In 15th-century Sweden, Hope (Auten) is the daughter of Matthias (Kleinhenz), a mercenary who is actually an incarnation of Satan. When this is exposed, the innocent Hope is burned at the stake by religious zealots: there, she makes a literal deal with the devil, and agrees to re-join her father in Hell, where he has also taken her fiance, medical student Niccolo. However, once she is in the underworld, she rebels against his authority. With the aid of Satan’s former swordsmith, Cremator (Mungle), she obtains ‘Darkness’, a weapon Cremator had forged after slaying Asmodeus. Hope – or Lady Death, as she is now known – begins to amass an army and plot her demonic father’s overthrow.

All of which sounds considerably more interesting than the execution here, which is blandly uninteresting in just about every level, beginning with its depiction of hell. Even by the standards of 2004, this is low-quality animation. One of the strengths of the medium is it’s limited only by imagination: you don’t need to worry about the costs of building sets or whatever, it’s just what you draw. Yet there’s no indication here of any thought having gone into the setting. Hell is, apparently, a poorly-lit and generic cave system, populated by entities that look like Jabba the Hutt or Tim Curry in Legend. Much the same vanilla complaint can be leveled at voice-acting that’s desperately in need of more energy, save perhaps McAvin as Lucifer’s “jester,” Pagan.

But it’s perhaps the script which is the weakest element here – and considering the screenplay was written by Pulido, that’s especially disappointing. I’m only somewhat familiar with the comics, yet they seem to have a rich and fully-developed mythology. Could have fooled me based on this, where the Devil is basically an idiot, who has to make every mistake in the Evil Overlord handbook, to allow his adversary to triumph. Though this version of Lady Death appears considerably more heroic than in the source material, the question of why a “good girl” would want to reign over hell is never addressed. All that’s left is in an impressive bit of central character design, because there’s no doubt she is a striking creation. She’s someone who deserves a significantly better fate than this entirely forgettable prod with a blunt stick.

Dir: Andy Orjuela
Star (voice): Christine Auten, Mike Kleinhenz, Andy McAvin, Rob Mungle

Amazon Hot Box

  By

★★
“Neither Amazonian nor Hot.”

Is it possible for a homage to be too accurate? This could be the problem here. It’s clear that Bickert has a deep affection for the “women in prison” genre – yet, again, possibly too much so. For this is less a parody or a pastiche than a loving re-creation, and doesn’t understand that a lot of these movies… well, to be honest, they suck. Badly acted, poorly plotted, thinly-disguised excuses for porn. And that’s the good ones. If you’re going to make a homage to them, you can’t do so with the knowing winks to the camera that we get here. Because the best examples – from Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS through to the glorious Reform School Girls – played it entirely straight. You may not take them seriously: but, make no mistake, they took themselves very seriously indeed, or at least gave that impression, and played it totally straight-faced. Here, it’s more like watching WiP cosplay.

Penny (Carlisle) is arrested while on an ecological mission in the fictional “South American” country of Rattica [quotes used, since the state of Georgia is a thoroughly unconvincing stand-in for anywhere Latin] and dispatched to the prison run by evil warden Inga Von Krupp (Church, sporting an accent considerably more Russian than German, though I suspect #ThatsTheJoke). There’s the the similarly evil inmate Val (Risk), and somehow, Rattica’s newly-instituted President, Jett Bryant (Bryant), is also involved. As is Agent Six (Jordan Phipps), a secret agent sent into Rattica to… Well, I’m not quite sure what her purpose is, because it’s one of the film’s numerous, largely uninteresting threads, which Bickert fails to weave into an interesting cinematic carpet.

Part of the problem is, the film needs to figure out where it wants to focus. Initially, it seems to be on Penny, but it seems to get bored quickly of her – I can’t blame it, to be honest, she’s blandly uninteresting – and drift onto Inga and her mad scientist collaborator for a bit. Then we get zombies thrown in, because…? Inga does at least have a midget sidekick, but like most of the cast, Church desperately needs to up her energy and intensity. All the bits lifted from elsewhere, e.g. the inmate standing on an ice-block in the middle of the dinner table, can’t conceal that this is largely bereft of its own ideas, and the execution is generally too limp to succeed. Even the gratuitous female nudity is severely limited. So what’s the point?

Oh, I know what they were trying to do. I’ve seen more than my fair share of these movies, to the point it’s a running joke in our household. So it isn’t a question of not getting it. I get it. I just don’t get it, in the sense of not seeing what the aim is here. For this plays like a third-generation, washed-out VHS copy of the movies it’s emulating. Why bother with this rather lame, tame wannabe, instead of the real thing?

Dir: James Bickert
Star: Kelsey Carlisle, Ellie Church, Tristan Risk, Jett Bryant

Curvature

  By

★★★
“Time out for fun.”

Helen (Fonseca) is struggling to come to terms with the sudden, unexpected death of her scientist husband, who was engaged on a top-secret project with his partner, Tomas (Morshower). Then things get truly weird: she experiences the mother of all blackouts, missing an entire week, and shortly afterward, Helen receives a phone-call warning her to get out of her house… from herself. It turns out, husband and Tomas had come up with a limited form of time-travel. As a result of this and subsequent events, there are now two Helens running around this point in. And future Helen appears to be considerably more militant. She leaves present Helen a sniper rifle as a gift, as well as stocking up on things like pressure cookers – and you can safely assume she’s not preparing a nourishing casserole. Present Helen decides future Helen needs to be stopped. But the more she uncovers, not least about the circumstances of her husband’s demise, the more she understands why future Helen is intent on carrying out her take on Project Mayhem.

I love me a good time-travel movie, and this is just that – a good time-travel movie, rather than a great one, like Retroactive or Run Lola Run. It manages to keep its two heroines in the air, revealing information at a decent rate, and also to balance brain and brawn. To the latter end, the heroine has to solve puzzles left behind by her other self to clue her in – without doing so to Tomas or the others seeking to shut the Helens down. On her side is work colleague Alex (Avery), though to be honest, he seems there mostly as a proxy for the audience, so Helen can explain stuff to him. Against her is Kravitz (Lanipekun), a crypto-federal agent – for it seems the defense industry has its own plans for the technology in question. That said, if it were really all that important, you’d think more than one guy might be sent in pursuit. Whatevs….

A bonus point is awarded for gratuitously casting Linda Hamilton in a small role as Helen’s former mentor. For, of course, Hamilton was part of the original “Going to the past to save the future” franchise: Terminator. Here, she doesn’t get to do much; it’s still a nice nod to one of the film’s influences. However, it feels as if the film couldn’t quite work out how it wanted to use time-travel. There’s a nice get-out which explains why future Helen didn’t come back and prevent her husband’s death. But beyond that, it’s more mildly engaging than deeply engrossing, as one Helen gradually closes in on the other Helen, and Kravitz closes in on them both. To be honest, I’d rather have focused on future Helen, since she seems the one actively involved in changing the world, rather than reacting to it, as present Helen does. Though scripting that version might have caused too many headaches – both for the writer and the viewer.

Dir: Diego Hallivis
Star: Lyndsy Fonseca, Zach Avery, Glenn Morshower, Alex Lanipekun

Miss Bala (2018)

  By

★★½
“Cultural appropriation”

As the lazy joke goes, I preferred this film the first time I saw it, when it was called… Well, actually, it was called Miss Bala then too, this being a remake in (mostly) English of the Mexican movie from 2011. Its remake status probably explains why both protagonist and cartel boss antagonist are American citizens: convenient to avoid those pesky subtitles, yet it also allows the director to avoid blaming poor, downtrodden Mexico – in an interview, she pinned the drug business on “American demand, and of course, American guns.” Calling that a gross simplification is an insult to gross simplifications.

It keeps a similar structure to the original, albeit with tweaks necessary to get a Yankee involved. Rather than a beauty pageant contestant herself, Gloria (Rodriguez) is a Los Angeles make-up artist visiting her friend in Tijuana. After witnessing a nightclub shoot-out after which her friend vanishes, and making an incredibly stupid decision to tell the first cop she sees about it (really, I’ve spent one weekend in Mexico and know better than that), she ends up under the thumb of Los Estrellas, a cartel run by Lino Esparza (Córdova) – hey, also brought up in America! After unwittingly dropping off a car-bomb that blows up a DEA safe-house, Gloria also ends up under the thumb of Brian Reich (Lauria), a federal agent who makes her operate as an undercover mole inside the gang.

When Chris discovered the director of this was responsible for Twilight, she paused and then asked with a concerned expression, “They’re not going to turn into sparkly vampires, are they?” Fortunately, they don’t. Yet the adjustment in story is almost as problematic, because it seriously weakens Gloria’s motivation to comply. Rather than having her direct family be threatened, it’s just some friend and her little brother; we’re given no reason to understand her desperate willingness to do anything to save them. There’s also the sudden transformation into a heavily-armed beauty queen at the end, where one quick session of “Fire at them from the pointy end” training apparently turns her into the evening-gown clad angel of death shown in the picture.

Hardwicke even complained the film’s poor reviews were due to male critics preferring the more passive heroine of the original. Uh, no. It’s more that the 2011 version didn’t go full Peppermint – and with less justification. It was because its original heroine was atypical which made it work better. The remake manages to reproduce the flaws, while weakening the best element: depicting the futility of struggling against immensely powerful forces on both sides of the law, which really don’t care, save for how they can use you for their own purposes. Depressing, maybe; yet it had a realism this version could use, wanting instead to be both empowering wish-fulfillment and gritty narcocinema. Hardwicke should have swallowed her faux-feminist outrage, and just given us 90 minutes of Rodriguez shooting shit up in a long dress.

Dir: Catherine Hardwicke
Star: Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Matt Lauria, Ricardo Abarca

Killing Joan

  By

★★
“Eating crow.”

Joan Butler (Bernadette) is an enforcer for mob boss Frank (Foster), with a zero-tolerance policy for those who disrespect her – whether they are on her side or not. When this eventually causes some of her gang to turn on Joan, she’s brutally beaten to a pulp, and apparently killed. However, she rises from the dead, now a figure who lives in the darkness, and one who has acquired the power to manipulate shadows. She sets about her mission of revenge against Frank and those who killed her. This is much to the distress of her on/off boyfriend Anthony (Celigo), a social worker. But her feelings for him and desire to protect the unfortunates with whom he works, puts them all at risk, when Frank realizes they represent her weak spot.

There are worse films to rip-off than The Crow, and Bartoo is far from the first person to have gone down this route, even in the girls-with-guns genre: see also Mohawk and .357: Six Bullets for Revenge, for examples of the vengeful resurrectee. The problem is, taking as your inspiration a film which is widely regarded as a cult classic: what you produce is, almost inevitably, going to suffer in comparison. That’s certainly the case here, with most of the flaws coming from a script which can’t be bothered to offer any more than the halfest-assed of explanations for her resurrection. It also provides no internal consistency. At times, the reborn Joan is returned to ethereal form by light; at others, not so much. Even the shadow tendrils which are her power, are inexplicably absent in the film’s opening scene, a flash-forward of things to come.

It’s a bit of a shame, since the version of Joan with a pulse is actually a somewhat interesting character, who takes no guff from anyone – especially men. This comes off as a natural trait, probably essential for survival in her line of work. Yet the sense of sisterhood hinted at in the early scenes is rapidly abandoned, in preference for a series of eyebrow-raising twists, where we discover half the people in the film have mystical powers. It builds instead to a disappointing battle against Frank’s sidekick, Donna (Katarina Waters, who wrestled in WWE as Katie Lea Burchill), which is more a showcase for mediocre visual effects and poor fight choreography than anything. Then we get a crappy “love conquers all” finale, that the film singularly fails to pull off – The Heroic Trio, this definitely is not.

Bernadette is probably the best thing about this, and is certainly the only performance to make any impression. Though thanks to the writing, even she can only move the needle from irredeemably tedious to largely uninteresting. Amusingly, she seems to be making a career out of revenge-seeking vigilantes, since the actress can also be seen in the recent sequel, I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu, playing the daughter of original victim Jennifer Hills.

Dir: Todd Bartoo
Star: Jamie Bernadette, Teo Celigo, Erik Aude, David Carey Foster

Assassination Nation

  By

★★★½
“Girls just wanna have fun…”

I don’t often get political here. Really, I watch movies to escape from that kind of thing. But in this case, since the movie itself is basically a cinematic manifesto, I’m going to wade a little bit out into the cesspool of contemporary politics. You have been warned. :)

There’s something called “The paradox of tolerance” which I’ve been hearing about a lot over the past couple of years. This says that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant will eventually be destroyed by the intolerant. This is frequently used by the left, for example, to justify punching Nazis (or those they say are Nazis): if you don’t stand up to the intolerant, it will destroy you. However, there’s a reason it’s called a paradox – because it makes no logical sense. To me, it is hypocrisy in action, demanding tolerance for the people you say deserve it, while refusing it to those you consider unworthy.

That’s what you have here. One cast member called it, “A war on toxic masculinity, at all costs.” The moral problem is, the cost shown here is little if any better: toxic feminism, if you like. The heroines are four teenage girls: Lily (Young), Sarah (Waterhouse), Bex (Nef) and Em (Abra), living in the town of Salem. Someone starts leaking the private data of citizens, beginning with the homophobic Mayor, who turns out to be thoroughly gay himself. He ends up committing suicide at a press conference, Budd Dwyer-style. That’s just the first case: half the townspeople are similarly exposed, and when the evidence points at Lily as the culprit, the witch-hunt goes into top gear, in a style more reminiscent of The Purge. If the girls are going to survive the night, they’ll need to fight fire with (gun)fire.

There are moments where the style overwhelms the substance. Sometimes, this isn’t a bad thing. A single take of a home invasion, shot from outside the house, and swooping around, up and down, is quite amazing and incredibly effective – it reminded me of Dario Argento at his best. On the other hand, a party where Levinson uses split-screen implodes into incoherent confusion. Truth be told, most of the scenes with the girls interacting with each other or their contemporaries, are a bit of a mess. This is far more on point when it offers a scathing critique of social media, and there are moments when it is refreshingly incorrect. For example, the introduction features a litany of “trigger warnings”, for everything from transphobia to the male gaze.

Of course, it isn’t as smart as it thinks it is, being a one-sided argument, apparently largely formed in a bubble of Occupy Democrat Facebook posts and /r/politics. I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes at things such as it taking place in Salem – ‘cos witch-hunts, y’get it? –  and that’s often the level of subtlety you get here. Still, this complete lack of nuance can only be admired, especially when it results in heroines who watch Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess for fashion inspiration, as shown above. Politically, it may be highly problematic – though it had its moments, such as a trans character who is not used as a banner of the film-maker’s progressive attitudes. And it’s not so overbearing that I couldn’t appreciate its merits. Even from the point of view of my impeccably “male gaze”, it remained entertaining trash, though if you take any of it seriously, you’re probably making a huge mistake.

Dir: Sam Levinson
Star: Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, Abra

Betrayed Women

  By

★★★
“You’re a nice guy, Mr. Darrell. But here’s the hitch. I ain’t a nice girl.”

First, let me just say: that poster is a true work of art. Seriously, how can anyone look at that and not want to see it? Even knowing there’s no possible way it could deliver on what is promised, it’s among my all-time favourite posters. With that out of the way, we’d better move on, since for a 70-minute film, there’s a great deal going on. Honey Blake (Michaels) becomes the latest inmate at the infamous State Prison, after her gangster boyfriend, “Baby Face”, is gunned down by the law. She’s there barely five minutes, before she’s getting put in solitary for back-talk, etc.

Also in the slammer is Nora Collins (Knudsen), who is due to be released in a couple of months, and is in a surreptitious relationship with prison inspector Jeff Darrell (Drake). He’s trying to improve the lot of the inmates, but is getting push-back from hard-bitten Head Matron Ballard. Finally among the prisoners, is Kate Morrison (Mathews), who holds the secret of where $50,000 in robbery loot is stashed. She’s none too pleased with Honey’s taunts about Kate’s boyfriend having just got married, but after bonding through the traditional cat-fight, the pair plan and execute a daring escape. Taken along as hostages are Nora and Jeff, along with Ballard – who proves to be singularly unsuited for a trek through the swamps, pursued by the authorities and their blood-hounds. Kate’s boyfriend is making a beeline for the same spot, so felons, escapees and the law are all on an inevitable collision course.

The critical and commercial success of Caged in 1950 (including three Oscar nominations), led to a slew of imitators in the years that followed. Most – including this one – were considerably cheaper and more down-market, but this one benefits from the fast pace mentioned above, and also a great central performance from Michaels. It’s obviously a product of its era, and so is considerably tamer than most of its ilk: there’s nothing here which would raise eyebrows even on the Lifetime network. [A WiP film the whole family can enjoy!] However, many of the genre tropes are still there: not just the cat-fight, also the lecherous guard and even a fire-hose, turned on Kate after a failed escape attempt.

Michaels is a joy to watch, and I’ll have to track down some of her other work. How can you resist titles like Wicked Women or Blonde Bait? Her impact here creeps up on you. It was only in the final showdown, as she hunkers down inside a farm-shed with her hostages, surrounded by the police that I realized two things. Firstly, I genuinely didn’t know if she was going to live, or go down in a blaze of glory like her lost love, Baby Face. Secondly, I actually cared about the outcome. And no, I’m not going to spoil it. The star retired from public life the following year, declining all interviews about her career in crime flicks, and eventually died, here in Phoenix, in 2007. Even then, she shunned the limelight, requesting no obituary or funeral service.

Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Star: Beverly Michaels, Carole Mathews, Peggy Knudsen, Tom Drake