Tag: USA

Rana, Queen of the Amazon

  By

★
“Should come with a box of moist towelettes.”

ranaThere are times when watching a film raises existential questions. Who are we? Where are we going? Or, in this case, why the hell did I start this damn website if it means I have to watch stuff like this? I knew, going in, it would be cheap, but I was hoping for something light-hearted, a tribute to the “jungle girl” serials of the forties. Hell, I’d have settled for a micro-budget version of The Perils of Gwendoline, a film which manages to be both innocent and incredibly trashy at the same time. Instead, what I got was something that was badly-made and, frankly, creepy. I think the sequence which drove this home was when American agent Alexandria Solace (Murphey) was running through the “Amazonian” forest [quotes have rarely been used more advisedly] when she falls into a pool of quicksand. And spends the next, seven minutes, thrashing around in the mud, trying to climb out, in painfully obviously pandering to a certain, specialized fetish market. Not being part of said target audience, it was the longest seven minutes of my life. There was also rather too much… strangulation going on – to similar purpose, one imagines.

The feature is divided into three “episodes”, so does seem to be aiming for a serial approach, with titles being “The Jungle Woman versus the Nazis”, “The Jungle Woman and the Flowers of Death” and “The Jungle Woman and the Fangs of Death”. Though would it be churlish of me to note that there is only one actual Nazi? That would be Ilsa Von Todd (Krause, who has gone on to a semi-respectable career in B-horror), whom we first see plotting to take over the world with her army of mind-control zombies. [Actually, we first see her putting on her stockings. V-E-R-Y  S-L-O-W-L-Y] Though she hasn’t exactly got very far – the army count reaching precisely “one” – it’s apparently deemed sufficient threat for the US to send agent Solace down to the Amazon to stop her. Which she does, with the help of Lana, and after significant amounts of thrashing around and unconvincing fisticuffs between the three of them and the zombie.

However, no sooner has Von Todd been returned to the United States, than she escapes and heads back to the jungle, to take revenge on Lana in the second installment. Beginning with the quicksand scene mentioned earlier, this involves also involves Lana being tied up and struggling against her bonds for an extended period, before finally escaping through the kind of ludicrous deus ex machina which does, I guess, also harken back to cliffhanger serials. The finale sees [sigh] Von Todd escaping from federal custody again, but don’t ask me any details, since I had lost the will to live by this point. I do seem to recall a “snake” at one point which was clearly a green sock puppet.  I may have hallucinated this. The best thing I can say, is the theme song is kinda catchy. Otherwise, let us never speak of this again.

Dir: Gary Whitson
Star: Pamela Sutch, Tina Krause, Dawn Murphey, Laura M. Giglio

13 Frightened Girls!

  By

★★★
“Candy is dandy.”

3_13-frightened-girls-three-sheet-1963Though he produced Rosemary’s Baby, the legendary William Castle is best known for his gimmicky horror flicks such as The Tingler or House on Haunted Hill, which sought to enhance the cinematic experience with things like “Emergo” [a plastic skeleton on wires that flew out into the audience]. They’re awesome. This title sounds like another one – not least because it evokes his own 13 Ghosts from three years previously – and the poster (right) does little to dismiss that belief, but it is actually closer to Spy Kids. Not that Castle abandoned his eye for publicity, generating it here by an “international contest” to find the titular baker’s dozen, who could play the daughters of diplomats from 13 different countries. However, the film itself is played straight, and while undeniably dated, is so in an generally adorable matter. Who knew the Cold War – for this came out less than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis – could be such fun?

The heroine is Candy Hull (Dunn), 16-year-old daughter of an American diplomat stationed in London, who attends an exclusive private school with the other diplo-daughters. They all hang out quite happily, entirely unfazed by the political shenanigans of the adults, more concerned with typical teenage girl things, such as boys and being popular. Candy, however, has her heart set on the embassy’s chief spy, Wally Sanders (Hamilton, whom you may recognize as the mayor in Jaws!). Through her friendship with Chinese girl Mai-Ling (Moon), she stumbles into, and defuses a plot to frame her father (Marlow) for the murder of a Russian liberal, leaving the evidence for Wally under the nom-de-guerre of “Kitten”. Wally is amazed, and Candy discovers that being a teenage girl with “diplomatic immunity” is a great cover to hear gossip and not have anyone pay you attention. However, her success eventually brings her notoriety, and the Chinese call on “The Spider” to find and kill the spy who has been leaking all their secrets.

It’s a weird mix, cutesy with some fairly grim moments, such as Candy having to yank a blade out of a corpse, and a non-zero body count: I’m not sure who the target audience was for this. Some aspects do seem strange to contemporary eyes. Candy is perhaps too “grown-up”, and her crush on him now seems wholly inappropriate, their relationship causing Chris to mutter “pedophile!” under her breath on multiple times – not least when Wally threatens to spank her! But given the tenseness of the times, it’s far less polemic than it could be, not painting all Reds as bad, and it’s clear that whatever may have changed over the past 50 years, teenage girls clearly haven’t. Dunn makes for a plucky heroine, and there’s genuine tension here on occasion.

Dir: William Castle
Star: Kathy Dunn, Murray Hamilton, Hugh Marlowe, Lynne Sue Moon
a.k.a. The Candy Web

 

Free Fall

  By

★½
“It’s like Die Hard! Except, in a skyscraper!” Wait, what?

free fallI’ve no problem with Die Hard clones, because the original is a brilliant concept, beautifully executed: it’s one of my all-time top movies, of any genre. This certainly isn’t the first effort to try and port this into the action heroine genre, but it may well be the worst. And that’s quite some effort, considering previous attempts include one starring Anna Nicole Smith. It’s less star Butler’s fault, than a script which staggers from cliché to idiocy, and sloppily amateur execution, apparent in captions that spell “allegations” with one L and refer to something called the “Securities Exchange Commission.” Jane Porter (Butler) is an up and coming executive with Gault Capital, whose world is shattered when her manager apparently jumps to his death from the top of their building. I say, “apparently,” because it’s entirely unsurprising when Jane finds a USB stick and, in blatant violation of every security protocol, slaps it into the side of her work PC [the company I work for, just had a training course on precisely why this is a Very Bad Idea]. Ooh, look: her manager had found evidence of financial irregularity! Who can Jane turn to? And why not wait until she’s the only person in the building?

Which I could have forgiven had this been the springboard to some Die Hard-esque action, and the film certainly foreshadows this, with the first time we see Jane, she’s pounding away on a punch-bag. Except the script then has her spend the meat of the movie’s running-time stuck in an elevator, while the hitman (Sweeney) sent to to “tidy up” the mess, tries to figure out how to get at her. If there’s one thing duller than being stuck in an elevator, it’s watching someone else be stuck in an elevator. I’m surprised I have to state this, but the makers of this are apparently under the impression that it’s actually the height of tension. Boy, are they mistaken there. The potential inherent in the office location and a battle of wits between a smart heroine and a lethal adversary is instead frittered away in scenes spent, for example, watching the latter looking for a key to open the elevator door. I kid you not, and stand corrected: there seem to be a number of things duller than being stuck in an elevator, and this film is intent on showing them all to me.

Even the makers seem to realize this was a misstep suddenly generating another character out of thin air, an elevator repair man, about whom we are given no reason to care beyond a painfully obvious scene establishing his family. He then gets to fight the bad guy for a bit, while the supposed heroine stands around inside the elevator. While she does eventually get to go toe-to-toe with him – and isn’t a bad little battle – it’s far too late, and comes well after the point where doctors would have given up on this patient and turned its body over to the family. Both the title and tagline are good summaries of viewer interest.

Dir: Malek Akkad
Star: Sarah Butler, D.B. Sweeney, Ian Gomez, Malcolm McDowell

Preservation

  By

★★★
“Why we don’t camp: Reason #134.”

preservationIt was supposed to be a nice weekend of camping for husband and wife, Wit (Schmidt) and Mike (Staton), perhaps allowing them to rekindle a spark which has become lost in Mike’s career, though Wit is trying to pluck up the courage to tell him she’s pregnant. Hopes of either are derailed, when their trip becomes a three-way, as they are joined by Mike’s brother, Sean (Schreiber), recently discharged from the Army under circumstances that he won’t talk about. Unfazed by discovering the camp ground that’s their destination is closed, they proceed, Wit learning the ropes of hunting from the two brothers. But the next morning, the three wake up to find themselves stripped of all supplies, down to their shoes, and with a black X written on each of their foreheads. It’s clear somebody – or somebodies – is out to get them, and Wit is going to have to dig very deep and find a way to overcome her civilized sensibilities if she is to make it out alive.

It’s a fairly straightforward survival horror, pitting (mostly) Wit against a trio of masked adversaries, who communicate solely through their mobile phones, also using them to record their kills, in what appears to be a none-too subtle jab at modern culture. Though it is, at least, refreshing to see a modern genre entry which does not include a scene of a character looking at their film and sighing, “No signal…” The transition of Wit, from a vegan who is unable to take an animal’s life – albeit one that’s a trained trauma nurse, and so not exactly fazed by the sight of blood – into a ruthless killing machine, prepared to do anything necessary to survive, is well-managed, with Schmidt, best known for her role in Boardwalk Empire, making for a solid heroine.

Less effectively handled are the relationships between her and the two men, to the extent that neither are necessary to the movie at all. They’re disposed of with relatively little effort, arguably leaving the first half of the film as a waste of time. Nothing much comes, for example, of Sean’s apparently blossoming PTSD, nor do we find out the reason for his discharge. Additionally, early on, it does seem like the attackers have a supernatural aspect, as shown in their ability to absorb punishment and keep on coming, as well as whisking the trio’s tents away without even waking them. Yet this turns out clearly not to be the case, leaving these earlier instances of invulnerability unexplained, and there are too many echoes of another movie with similar themes, Eden Lake. The film is a great deal better when it’s just Wit against the wildlings, and when it reaches there, it’s actually impressively brutal. Just a shame it takes longer than it should to find its footing.

Dir: Christopher Denham
Star: Wrenn Schmidt, Pablo Schreiber, Aaron Staton, Cody Saintgnue

Survivor (2015)

  By

★★½
“Run Milla Run”

I have low standards for Milla Jovovich movies. If they exist, I am more or less okay with them, providing they contain a modicum of her kicking ass. She has gained enough goodwill from the Resident Evil series and Ultraviolet, that she gets some slack with regard to other projects. On that basis, when I say this is… alright, I suppose, those with less tolerance for Jovovich should probably take it as a warning. She plays security expert Kate Abbott, recently transferred to the US Embassy in London, where she detects a strange pattern of a co-worker taking over specific cases involving issuing visas to scientists. At a birthday dinner for said worker, while waiting for him to arrive, she pops out to get a present, thereby narrowly dodging a bomb blast that kills her colleagues. In the aftermath, she encounters the man responsible, an international assassin known as the Watchmaker (Brosnan), who has been engaged to cover up the tracks. Blamed for the explosion by the authorities, Kate is forced underground, and is left with the usual option in such cases: find the real perpetrator and ensure they don’t get to complete their nefarious plan to commit a terrorist attack in New York and profit from the ensuing financial instability.

survivorProbably the best thing about this is seeing a lot of London locations with which I’m deeply familiar, but when an action film’s most memorable moment is “Hey, we’ve seen movies in that cinema!”, it’s rarely a good sign. There is an awful lot of running around, Kate scurrying from one location to the next, with the Watchmaker, her embassy colleagues and British police in more or less hot pursuit. Though funnily, despite the frequent shots from security cameras, Kate doesn’t make the slightest effort to change her appearance. At least buy a frickin’ hoodie, for heavens sake: I can only presume the makers decided against this, because it would rob audiences of Milla’ finely-chiselled cheek-bones. Seems legit. The script is just as contrived in other areas, and if either US or UK authorities were half as competent as the Watchmaker appears to be, this would have been over in 15 minutes. Which might not be such a bad thing, and would certainly have saved us from a spectacularly contrived finale on top of a skyscraper near Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

Do not expect copious amount of butt-kicking from Jovovich, either, though she does at least get plenty of aerobic exercise. A couple of quick fight scenes are about all there is, and don’t even expect gunplay, since as soon as she gets her hands on a gun (above), she dumps it into a trash-can. The only action moment to stick out the restaurant bomb-blast, which is quite hellacious in terms of impact, and frighteningly well-staged. Otherwise, there is little or nothing here we haven’t seen often before, and even given the low bar I have for Millamovies, this one struggles to meet expectations.

Dir: James McTeigue
Star: Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Dylan McDermott, James D’Arcy

Cybergeddon

  By

★★½
“Putting the delete in CTRL-ALT-DELETE.”

cybergeddonComputer security is part of my day-job, so I’m always amused by Hollywood’s efforts to depict it, particularly in thrillers. For the truth, which also creates the main problem with the entire “hacker” sub-genre, is that it may sound enthralling, but watching someone else type is among the most tedious things imaginable. While the effects may be very significant, the journey to get there is, frankly, dull as ditch-water. Any realistic cinematic depiction of cyberterrorism would be worse than watching paint dry. It would be more like listening to a description, of someone else playing a video-game, about watching paint dry. Here, the makers try to jazz things up by depicting cyberspace as a 3D network made up of data panels, sliding around each other like a virtual Rubik’s cube, with bad data showing red. Despite dropping buzzwords like “Stuxnet” to show the writers know what they’re talking about – or, at least, have read Wikipedia – that isn’t enough.

Yet it’s not a bad idea. The heroine is a former hacker (Peregrym) whose past was buried, to the extent she’s now a tech analyst for the government. Her name is Chloe Jocelyn – and that’s a mistake, for it immediately reminds us that there have been other federal geeks called Chloe, and this one isn’t fit to boot up the computer of that Chloe. We first see her impersonating the daughter of Russian technomobster Gustov Dobreff (Martinez) to lure him into entrapment, but that isn’t the end of the matter. For when he escapes custody, and starts his plan to bring down civilization as we know it, by hijacking a billion devices or so, he frames Chloe as revenge, by using code that was originally written in her black-hat days, thereby exposing her past. She’s blamed for the intrusions, arrested and knows that the only way to prove her innocence is to find the real culprit, with the help of former sidekick, Rabbit Rosen (Gurry). But Dobroff isn’t sitting back, and kidnaps Chloe’s mother to use as additional leverage against her.

This was originally a web series for Yahoo! and released in nine chunks of 10 minutes, which explains both the frantic pace and the strongly episodic nature. [I presume Symantec were a major sponsor, given the painfully obvious product-placement for Norton Anti-Virus, including an utterly superfluous trip to Symantec’s corporate HQ!] Despite my snark above, Chloe is actually fairly interesting, and Peregrym brings her to life well, but it’s a character which needs more development before dropping her into a scenario such as this. The story also had its share of “I’m so sure” moments: I strongly suspect federal custody is not as easy to escape as Chloe makes it seem, and I doubt they’d let a hacker keep her mobile phone either! While its brisk pace helps the flaws become too problematic in motion, and the supporting characters, particularly Rabbit, are nicely drawn, there’s nothing at all in the story which is new or unpredictable. The end result is only somewhat more fun than resetting your Gmail password.

Dir: Diego Velasco
Star: Missy Peregrym, Kick Gurry, Olivier Martinez, Manny Montana

Barely Lethal

  By

★★½
“Barely entertaining.”

barelylethalI could hear Chris’s eyebrows raising when the title here rolled: what kind of film was this? Fortunately, the arrival of Samuel L. Jackson reassured her ruffled eyebrows – and is that Sansa Stark as well? Alright, then: if you insist… It turns out to be a mash-up of two genres: the ‘teenage killing machine’ and the ‘high-school drama’, and is every bit as awkward as that sounds. Since being orphaned, Megan Walsh (Steinfeld) has been brought up as an assassin in a remote location, under the tutelage of the appropriately-named Hardman (Jackson), and with another trainee, Heather (Turner), a fractious rival. However, Megan begins to wonder what she’s missing in “real life”; after a mission to capture evil nemesis Victoria Knox (Jessica Alba), ends with Megan plummeting into a river, and presumed lost by her employers, she opts to start a new life. She becomes an ‘exchange student’, falls for the local hot kid (Mann), ignores the AV geek (Cameron) who falls for her – the usual sort of drama. After an incident at school goes viral, Hardman realizes his top agent is not as dead as he thought, and worse still, Knox has broken out of custody, and has revenge on her mind. Can Megan handle all that and still make it to Homecoming?

It’s an interesting idea, not least because Megan bases her knowledge and understanding of the world on the likes of Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You. A satirical skewering of the difference between those and reality would be welcome, or even something darker in tone, along the lines of Heathers, with Megan’s lack of moral compass letting her clean out the dregs of the school with no qualms. However, the film seems less interested in satire, than going through the same cliches: it doesn’t help that Mann resembles a cross between Justin Beiber and Robert Pattinson. There’s nothing new or remotely interesting about this aspect, and it brings the film to a grinding halt. That’s something of a shame, as the action plot is nicely-handled, with some decent set-pieces. Jackson and Alba are old hands at this kind of thing, and I’d far rather have seen a film concentrating entirely on their struggles with each other, using the likes of Steinfeld and Turner as proxies.

It’s hard to say who the target audience is for this, or at least find one which would be satisfied by both aspects. Those who enjoy the school drama are likely to be uninterested in high-jinks out the back of a plane. Certainly, those who are looking for action – raises hand – will find themselves bored to tedium in the middle of this. At the end, Chris turned to me and said, “I didn’t think this would be your sort of film.” I think she has a point. I’m perhaps three decades or more, and a sex-change, from being able to appreciate this.

Dir: Kyle Newman
Star: Hailee Steinfeld, Thomas Mann, Dove Cameron, Sophie Turner

Angel of Fury

  By

★★
“Never mind the action quality, feel the quantity!”

angel of furyJust to confuse matters, there are actually two Rothrock flicks by this title: in 1993, the year after this, the same title was used as an alternative name for Lady Dragon 2, starring her and Billy Drago. There is no Drago to be found in this entry. Indeed, there is not much to be found except for an abundance of mediocre action, and a surprising degree of violence aimed at children. There’s no denying the almost non-stop volume of fights and chases: however, it’s like a copious, all-you-can-eat buffet consisting entirely of vanilla pudding: you’ll likely walk away unsatisfied.

Cynthia plays Nancy Bolan, the head of security for a tech company, who is charged with delivering a special computer to the company’s Indonesian offices. No soon has she arrived than she is attacked, and the computer stolen. But that’s okay, because it turns out there are actually three computers, two of them decoys, and they have a large explosive payload which goes off if someone tries to access them without the deactivation code. They are being sought by ‘Bolt’ (O’Brian), a terrorist who wants them because…. Mumble mumble something terrorist? And he is prepared to stop at nothing, even involving the little moppet befriended by our heroine, who is taken to what appears to be an Indonesian Disneyland knockoff, featuring some guy dressed as a rat. Fortunately, there’s also Nancy’s former squeeze (Barnes), who was so attached to her, he left Nancy believing he was dead for three year. I’ve had girlfriends like that too.

This does possess some certifiably insane moments, likely none more so than Nancy riding a motorcycle straight at a car, leaping through the air, kicking the driver through the windshield which triggers it to roll over out of control, while she walks away. Sadly, is is filmed in such an amateur way, the results are nowhere near as awesome as that sounds, since it just looks stupid and unbelievable. Such is the approach for much of the rest of the movie, right from the start where the bad guys apparently do have guns, yet don’t use them when they first fight Nancy, only when they’re subsequently chasing after her boat on jet-skis. While there are occasional moments where you do see what Rothrock is capable of, these are sporadic at best, and a pale imitation of her best work in Hong Kong. Director Anwari was also responsible for Virgins From Hell, which was at least amusingly bad. For much of its running time, this is simply a large helping of that vanilla pudding mentioned earlier.

Dir: Ackyl Anwari
Star: Cynthia Rothrock, Chris Barnes, Peter O’Brian, Zainal Abidin
a.k.a. Triple Cross

The Trail

  By

★★★½
“God told me to do it.”

thetrailI’m not religious, and “faith-based” films normally have me running a mile, though I confess a certain guilty fondness for the more extreme, Revelations-based work [I mean, have you ever read Revelations? The things that go down are certifiably insane. This is what Hollywood should be making, not Noah or Moses stories]. But it was only at the end of this, with a final title quoting a Bible verse, that I realized The Trail likely falls into the category, as shown by the alternate title; fortunately, it’s very much understated, and can be appreciated even by godless heathens like myself. Amelia (Jandreau) is on her way to California as part of a wagon train with her husband (Brown), when they decided to split off on their own, he believing he knows a short cut. Unfortunately, they are attacked by Indians, and Amelia is left, on her own, in the middle of nowhere, to try and make her way through a vast, unforgiving wilderness.

The closest cousin is Nicolas Roeg’s brilliant Walkabout, not least because Jandreau bears more than a passing resemblance to Walkabout‘s star, Jenny Agutter: both have a similar pale beauty, and habit of opening their mouths just a smidge. The similarity is also in the relationship Amelia strikes up with a young indigenous child (Nash) she meets, that proves crucial to her chances of survival, echoing the one in Roeg’s film. However, the take here is a good deal less earthy and primitive in its themes, and Amelia is a good deal less dependent, instead being a lot more pro-active, which is why it merits coverage on this site, being equally a story of self-discovery and survival against the odds. Indeed, perhaps its main weakness is, rather too much against the odds: while there’s not much idea of the overall timeframe here, she survives blizzards clad only in a light dress (the kid is sensibly wearing furs), and doesn’t seem to do much hunting or gathering beyond a tiny fish. Maybe that’s supposed to represent the power of her faith?

Despite throwing this on late at night, it managed to hold my interest better than you think it might, considering the lack of conventional action sequences: it’s more or less 95 minutes of Amelia versus the great outdoors. It helps that the heroine is given an inner strength of character – again, I presume in hindsight, this is a religious thing – and determination to overcome any obstacle, sometimes with inventiveness, such as when she turns her wedding dress into a fishing-net. The landscapes are fabulous, and the photography does both them and the heroine justice, capturing the latter with an almost luminescent glow. As a different take on the era, eschewing the obvious characters and situations, it’s worth a look if you’re in a more contemplative mood.

Dir: William Parker
Star: Jasmin Jandreau, Tommy Nash, Shannon Brown
a.k.a. Let God

Solo

  By

★★
“…and this is why we don’t camp.”

soloGillian (Clark) takes a job as a summer-camp counselor, only to discover that part of the training involves her spending two nights, by herself, on an island in the middle of a nearby lake. That isn’t an ideal sitation for Gillian, since she’s troubled by nightmares of her past, and is unsettled to discover a previous trip by campers to the island, ended when a young girl sleepwalked her way to tragedy. Her spirit is still supposed, according to camp counselor lore, to roam the island, etc. etc. There may be less parapsychological threats to Gillian’s safety, although are they real or just her paranoia playing up? She finds a broken doll, and then finds a tent, with photos of young women taped to the roof inside. Ok: it’s probably not just her paranoia then. The potential culprits include Fred (Clarkin), the creepy owner of the camp, who was part of the previous expedition; his creepy son, Marty (Love), called “Martian” by the other councillors, for reasons that are obscure; and apparently friendly fisherman, Ray (Kash), who shows up and offers first-aid, after Gillian gashes her leg.

Clark is a decent heroine, although one perhaps too defined by her vulnerabilities. The main issue is a script that is astonishingly dumb. For instance, as with any modern wilderness horror, it has to deal with The Cellphone Issue. Here, it does so by Gillian being forbidden from taking hers on to the island, which is kinda neat. Except she does. But there’s still no signal. So she swims out into the water, the phone in a plastic bag held between her teeth, and tries to send a text. When that doesn’t work, she hurls it away in a fit of pique. At some point later, the phone unilaterally decides to send the text. But the recipient doesn’t bother doing anything significant with it. WHAT WAS THE POINT? They should simply have stopped at her being forbidden to take hers on to the island. It’s this kind of inanity which plagues much of the proceedings here, with people behaving in ways that don’t seem credible.

This is just about plausible for the villain – after all, you are a loony stalking camp counselors in the middle of a lake,  critical thinking may not be your forte. However, the second half of the film, consists of little more than four people stumbling around, making poor decisions. Much though you want to root for Gillian, and she does find a decent amount of inner fortitude at the end (Let’s just say, “Anchors aweigh!” and leave it at that), the overall feeling is that everyone deserves to be voted off this island.

Dir: Isaac Cravit
Star: Annie Clark, Daniel Kash, Steven Love, Richard Clarkin