Tag: USA

Miss Meadows

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★★★
“There are bad people in the world and they shouldn’t be around the good people, especially the little ones,”

miss meadowsA young woman is walking down the street. A truck pulls up alongside her, and the driver starts talking to her, at first nicely, but gradually more crudely. When she spurns his advances, he pulls a gun. However, the woman pulls her own weapon from her handbag and shoots him dead. Welcome to the world of Miss Meadows (Holmes), where bad behaviour is countered with lethal force. It’s an offshoot of the “urban vigilante” film, where someone goes off the rails in response to rudeness and the perceived failures of modern culture, rather than a direct threat. Falling Down was perhaps the first example, also seen in Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America. Both those were rather more acerbic than this, gynocentric entry, which perhaps has more in common with John Waters’ Serial Mom. At one point, a cop calls Miss Meadows a “Pulp Fiction Mary Poppins,” and that’s a fairly accurate high-concept here.

She’s a somewhat nomadic first-grade substitute teacher, with a past which clearly contained a defining trauma, who has long phone calls with her mother (Smart), and seeks to protect her local community from an influx of criminal elements. But when she meets and falls for a cop (Dale), who gradually realizes the woman he’s seeing may also be the killer his colleagues are hunting. And he’s not the only person who discovers the secret behind her facade. Meadows is an wonderful and engaging concoction, a throwback to an earlier era of politeness and courtesy, and its that contrast to her ruthless approach, tap-dancing her way to mass murder, that drives the film. It’s not entirely successful; the storyline, overall, relies too much on good fortune and convenience [every fast-food restaurant I’ve been in has surveillance cameras; the one here, not so much], and also tends to the obvious – a priest who molests children, there’s a shocker. It would make for a far ‘edgier’ film, if there was more grey involved in her targets, even at the risk of losing some of the audience. Killing paedophiles and murderers is an easy option, weakening the moral dilemma posed here.

But I thoroughly enjoyed Holmes’s performance; I hadn’t seen her in anything since Thank You for Smoking, back in 2005, before she became most famous for being Mrs. Tom Cruise. She takes a character that possesses two distinct, largely-opposing aspects, and nails it: Miss Meadows is, at once, charming and, clearly, barking mad, with a grip on reality that, we discover, may be a great deal looser than it initially appears. Concentrating more on these psychological aspects – perhaps instead of the rather implausible romantic angle – might have boosted this film out of the “quirkily forgettable” niche into which it is instead dropped.

Dir: Karen Leigh Hopkins
Star: Katie Holmes, James Badge Dale, Callan Mulvey, Jean Smart

Mankillers

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★★
“Big guns, and even bigger hair.”

mankillers - vhs1I remember bumping into this one back in the 90’s, on VHS [kids, ask your parents!]. Stumbling across it again recently, I wondered why I had ever bothered – but then I discovered the cornucopia of lurid video sleeves used to lure unwary buyers into purchasing or renting it, and it all made much more sense. I can’t remember exactly which one was on the British video releaase, but I think it was a slight variant of #2 (below, left), over a gratuitous background of exploding fireballs. There are times when I miss those days of prowling the local video store, or market stalls, picking up cinematic “gems” based entirely on their covers. And then, I watch something like this, and remember how few of those purchases ever came anywhere close to living up to their promotional material.

Much as in Naked Avenger, this focuses on an international white-slavery ring, inexplicably appearing to be operated out of a run-down junkyard in some backwoods community. The chief perp in this case is John Mickland (Zipp), a former government agent whose inside knowledge means he can easily counter all “official” efforts to bring him down. So, the government turns to Rachael McKenna (Aldon), who visits a local prison to recruit a “grubby half-dozen” of ne’er-do-wells whom she can lick into shape, in order to form a squad that can head into Mickland’s lair and take down his operation. Quite why they have to be women, is never explained: if there’d been some element of subterfuge, such as infiltration by pretending to be merchandise, that’d have made some sense. Instead, it’s not much more than a traipse through a forest, and a gunfight which follows: since there’s no apparent interest in capturing anyone, would have been more logical just to call in an air-strike. But then, I suppose, we wouldn’t have got the lengthy training montage. And, let’s face it, that’s basically just an excuse for hot-pants and crop-tops, as well as some of the eightiest hair I’ve ever seen. Seriously, the film needs a widescreen release, so we can appreciate the full majesty of the coiffeurs on view.

Not least, because there is precious little else to appreciate. This is such a painfully poverty-stricken production – though it looks like Avatar in comparison to Naked Avenger, that when the action comes, it looks more like little kids playing soldiers. When it comes down to McKenna going one-on-one with Mickland, it becomes somewhat more interesting, largely because the latter is as hard to kill as Jason Vorhees, and is capable of taking multiple bullets, yet can still drive away. Lucky that our heroine came prepared, even for this eventuality. However, getting to that final point will tax the patience of most viewers – as well as their hairdressers.

Dir: David A. Prior
Star: Lynda Aldon, William Zipp, Edy Williams, Gail Fisher
a.k.a. Death Squad

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Maleficent

  By

★★★★
“Maleficent Bastard.”

kinopoisk.ruThis idea seems insane on the surface: take one of the classic villainesses of all-time, and tell the story from her point of view? How could that possibly work? But then, you think about it a bit, and the possibilities become apparent – not just in the fairytale arena, but in others as well. What about a Bond movie from the perspective of Goldfinger? A horror movie through Freddy Krueger’s eyes? One of the first things you realize, is that casting is particularly key: here, you need to have a lead who can take a character that has been universally loathed by generations, to the point where it’s in our cultural DNA, and turn it around, to become the sympathetic focus. The other essential aspect is the motivation: what happened to make them the way they are, and justify their subsequent “evil” actions? You have to bring the audience along on that character’s journey – and, bear in mind, this is a Disney film, so the scope for any kind of explicit content is close to nil. Yeah, we were right the first time, there’s no way this will ever succe…

What? Angelina Jolie as Maleficent? Suddenly, the idea doesn’t just make sense, it became more a case of, why did nobody think of this before? Virtually from the first photos of Jolie in her uber-goth get-up, it was clearly perfect casting: Jolie was Maleficent and Maleficent could have been no-one else. That extends through the finished product: whenever Jolie is on screen, the film ramps up at least another gear, if not two, because you know something’s going to happen. She doesn’t even necessarily have to do much: there’s a relatively early scene, where she’s walking across the countryside, and behind her, stone fences are being shredded, as if by an unseen tornado. That, combined with Jolie’s expression, playing out on a face whose cheekbones could cut glass,  completely sells the premise of what follows. Though we can’t shortchange Linda Woolverton’s screenplay which, as mentioned above, is a crucial component. The torment through which the heroine goes, is about as thinly disguised a date-rape metaphor as you’ll ever see in a Disney film, and works impeccably.

The set-up has two kingdoms, a human and a fairy one, living in… Well, I wouldn’t say peace, but cordial disdain is perhaps close to it. This lasts until the monarch of the former, King Henry, casts envious eyes over his neighbour, only for his invasion attempt to be humiliatingly destroyed by its queen, Maleficent (Jolie) and her fey army. He promises his daughter’s hand to anyone who kills the queen, and this opens the door for Stefan (Copley), who had been a friend of Maleficent’s growing up. Their friendship blossomed into more during their teenage years before they drifted apart. However, his ambition overwhelms his friendship; he drugs Maleficent, cuts her wings off using iron (poisonous to fairy folk), and uses this as proof to secure his position as heir. The queen throws up an enchanted forest between the two kingdoms, but doesn’t forget the wrong done to her, and when King Stefan has a baby daughter… Well, you know how Sleeping Beauty goes from there, I trust.

maleficentiExcept, there’s one very significant twist. Chris and I took a pie break an hour in, and she complained the film’s direction was “obvious.” Yes… and no. It was clearly pointing in the Prince Charming and happy ever after directions, but I’m delighted to report this is then subverted into something entirely different, and which packs a much greater emotional wallop. There was sniffling coming from beside me on the couch before the end, let’s just leave it at that. If there’s a Disney moral to be found in the (mostly awesome) ending, it’s perhaps not just the value of forgiveness over revenge, but that when someone offers you the former, it’s often wisest just to take it. Oh, and another important lesson: if you go plummeting off battlements with a creature that has wings and can fly, there’s really only going to be one loser in that scenario.

While Jolie and the story are uniformly excellent, that’s not to say the film is without problems. First-time director Stromberg is better known as an art director, and this is painfully apparent whenever the heroine isn’t on screen. The lengthy sequence where Princess Aurora (Fanning) is growing up in seclusion, tended to by a trio of fairy godmothers, Bibbety, Bobbity and Boo – okay, I made that last bit up – is, frankly, dull. Aurora herself is such a cloying goody two-shoes, she makes the original animated version of Maleficent seem like a paragon of subtlety and depth. and the fairoic trio are about the most grating efforts at comic relief I’ve seen since the last Adam Sandler movie. I was also not very impressed with some of the creations in fairyland. More than one of these second-rate CGI creations, look like they were designed to shift merchandise rather than serve any genuine purpose for a mature audience: think along the lines of Jar-Jar Binks with wings.

These are issues which would probably sink many a lesser movie, but Jolie and the story are strong enough to keep you engrossed, through to a spectacular, dragon-infused finale which the last part of The Hobbit will have to go some to beat. It’s easy to understand why this is, at time of writing, the third-biggest worldwide film of 2014. Depending on how Mockingjay Part 1 goes, it could remain the biggest action-heroine movie of the year, which would be an amazing feat, given muted prerelease expectations of around $150m domestic (it took 60% more). Regardless, Maleficent certainly cements Jolie’s role as the reigning queen of our genre, from Tomb Raider through Mr + Mrs Smith to Salt and on to this. If the reports of her retirement from acting, to concentrate on directing and writing instead, prove to be true, Jennifer Lawrence, Eva Green or anyone else will find it very difficult to fill the abandoned pair of glass slippers.

Whoops, wrong fairy-tale. :)

Dir: Robert Stromberg
Star: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley

"Virtually from the first photos of Jolie in her uber-goth get-up, it was clearly perfect casting: Jolie was Maleficent and Maleficent could have been no-one else. That extends through the finished product: whenever Jolie is on screen, the film ramps up at least another gear, if not two, because you know something's going to happen."
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Goldengirl

  By

★★
“Run Goldine Run”

goldengirlAnd Frankenstein Created Woman? That might have been an alternate title, with German scientist Dr. Serafin (Jurgens) in the role of the creator – he’s a man with a dubious past, and whispers of involvement in Nazi experimentation. Now “rehabilitated” to the US, in what may be a medical version of Operation Paper Clip, he uses an unholy mix of pharmaceuticals and extreme training methods to convert his own daughter, Goldine, into a 6’2″ athletic superwoman, with the aim of completing an unheard of triple crown at the upcoming Moscow Olympics, winning the 100, 200 and 400 metre gold medals. To fund this work, he brings in a consortium of businessmen who aim to capitalize on Goldine’s success with advertising, merchandising, etc. Brought in to advise them, as Goldine is prepared for her first public events, is agent Jack Dryden (Coburn), who gradually realizes the one person not wholeheartedly committed to the entire proceedings, is the runner herself.

This is a curious period piece, which almost feels like it’s set in an alternate universe – as history turned out, Russia invaded Afghanistan and the United States ended up boycotting those 1980 Olympics entirely. This does have some interesting things to say about parents who force their own ambitions onto their offspring, without considering their childrens’ desires, or even best interests, and also about the “shamateurism” of the Olympics. However, this is countered by some odd aspects such as Goldine’s vibrator-based press conference training, whose mere description appears to have strayed in from an entirely different movie. The film would also have benefited from a greater focus on the heroine, and what she wants out of life; that’s an area left almost entirely unexplored, with Goldine left more as a palimpsest for the demands of others.

Even if a couple of inches short of the necessary height at 5’11”, Anton, a former Miss California, certainly makes a striking figure, and the film wastes no opportunity to show off her… er., striking figure. Though when you see her competing, many of those against whom she races were actual athletes, and the difference between their, much more heavily muscled physiques, and her wispy frame is obvious. Bill Conti’s score occasionally threatens to overpower everything, most notably during the musical training montage number, also sung by Anton. However, even if its more of a “Good effort!” than an Olympic champion, it remains one of the few sports movies with a focus on the women’s side of the stadium.

Dir: Joseph Sargent
Star: Susan Anton, James Coburn, Curt Jurgens, Leslie Caron

Maisie Undercover: Shadow Boxer

  By

★
“Sucker punched”

maisieThis review is more in the nature of a warning than a critique, since it would be easy for someone to look at the cover (right) and think that this might be a movie about – oh, I dunno, boxing? It seems a reasonable expectation, given the following synopsis:

After her partner is mercilessly gunned down, sexy, streetwise cop Maisie turns in her badge and turns to the relative safety behind the bar of a hip new joint she names Dames. It doesn’t compare to the rush of danger she gets on the streets but it keeps her out of trouble – until trouble finds her in the form of a guy, a dead girlfriend and a probable Mob connection. Now that familiar adrenaline is pumping again as she goes deep undercover with the hot and hardened women who make up the volatile world of female boxing. Will Maisie solve the murder before someone else is “knocked out?”

While none of the above is technically a lie, I should probably have done a little due diligence, and perhaps noticed that the first word on the cover is “Sexy.” For this is actually soft-core porn, with the plot little more than a thin excuse to link together the sex scenes, which take place with such regularity you could set your watch by them. And you’ll certainly be checking your watch with a high degree of frequency. Not that I’m averse to pornography by definition – indeed, not too far down the line, I’ll be writing about a hard-core version of Nikita – but it’s all about expectations. I watched this one on a chilly Tuesday morning, fortunately when Chris was out of the house; however, I still had a somewhat tricky conversation with my son. “Isn’t 9:30am a bit early for porn?” he said sardonically. Why, yes. Yes, it is. Though I’m pleased at least to see he does appear to have picked up my tendency for ironic commentary during his college years.

I supposed I should briefly mention the film, which could have been interesting. White even has some potential, as former cop turned private eye Maisie Calloway [a character she played in two other films the same year, which I will not be rushing to see]. She has a bumpy past, separated from her cop husband, and whose partner was, as the synopsis says, killed – apparently in a previous movie, because it plays no significant part here. Indeed, the storyline is far more of an afterthought, treated as if its of no real concern. I suppose that’s fair enough, but if you’re going to make soft porn, you should at least have the honesty to promote and sell it as soft porn, and not pretend it’s something which the film most definitely isn’t.

Dir: J.W. McHausen
Star: Charlie White, Joey Ray, Nick Manning, Nicole Oring
a.k.a. Twisted Temptations

Wonder Women

  By

★★★½
“On Her Insurance Company’s Secret Service”

wonderwomenRoger Corman’s New World Pictures weren’t the only ones using the Philippines as a factory to churn out B-movies in the seventies, as this 1973 entry, from Arthur Marks’ General Film Corproration shows. Dr. Tsu (Kwan) and her posse of henchwomen are kidnapping athletes, the not-so-good doctor having perfected the ability to do brain transplants. She’s now selling this as a service to rich, old people, who can become young again. However, after kidnapping a jai-alai star, the insurance company on the hook for the half million dollar policy hires Mike Harber (Hagen) to investigate. As he starts nosing around and making waves, first the local gangster boss, then Dr. Tsu, send their minions out to stop him. Needless to say, this is of limited success, and he is soon on his way to the remote island where Tsu operates, to take down her operation.

If this feels like a low-budget Bond ripoff, you’re just about right on the money, down to the “let me tell you all my plans before I kill you” scene – at one point, I expected Tsu to yell, “No, Mr. Harber – I expect you to die!” But it is highly refreshing to have a female mastermind, especially one that excels in the areas of medicine and technology, traditionally a male evil overlord preserve: I’m hard pushed to think of any equals of Dr. Tsu, particularly from the era. Maybe the closest parallel would be Rosalba Neri, in Lady Frankenstein from two years earlier? Back that up with her multinational, all-female associates and she’s definitely decades ahead of her time, socially as well as technologically. In comparison, Harber comes over as a bit of a Neanderthal, whose solution for pretty much everything involves shooting at it, hitting it over the head – or occasionally hitting it over the head with his gun.

In the supporting cast, de Aragorn gets the best role, as lead henchperson Linda, who gets to brawl with Harber, destroying a hotel room, before leading him in a car chase through the streets of Manilla – again, something you didn’t see women doing very often at all in the 1970’s. And it’s a heck of a chase, with any number of moments that suggest the makers pretty much blew off niceties like closing streets or obtaining official sanction for the sequence, and just shot around whatever happened to be going on. Mention also due to cult veteran Sid Haig, who shows up as what appears to be Dr. Tsu’s accountant, and decides at the end to get out while the going is good, after another quirky character performance. Accompanied by Carson Whitsett’s funky score, the net result is something that’s not actually much, if at all, less fun than the same year’s Live and Let Die, and treads a nice line between self-parody and self-aware.

Dir: Robert O’Neill
Star: Ross Hagen, Nancy Kwan, Maria de Aragorn, Roberta Collins
a.k.a. The Deadly and the Beautiful

Sweetwater

  By

★★½
“Sweet but mostly sour.”

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

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

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

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

 

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

  By

★★★
“Crusoe is not consent”

miss_robin_crusoe_poster_03A solid re-telling of the Robinson Crusoe story by Daniel Defoe, it switches things up by turning the hero into a heroine, Robin Crusoe (Blake, best known as saloon owner Kitty Russell from Gunsmoke). Taken to sea by her captain father as a cheap alternative to a cabin-boy, she is the sole survivor of a shipwreck, and stranded on a deserted island [albeit one apparently well-stocked with make-up and hair-care products]. The first half follows the story fairly closely, as she rescues Friday (Hayes) from her captors, and works on a boat with which she hopes to escape the island. But things then diverge, with the washing up of another survivor, Jonathan (Nader). With Robin having been severely soured on men by her previous ship-board experiences, one showing up on her island paradise is the last thing she wants, and she’s disinclined to trust the new arrival. But there’s another problem: the boat can only hold two people.

It’s much more effective before he shows up, with the two women holding their own against the perils and terrors of life with courage. A couple of moments which stand out are Friday gazing at the sleeping Ms. Crusoe (which, along with the former’s jealousy toward Jonathan implies an almost Sapphic aspect, decades ahead of the year this came out, 1954). and the spectacular manner in which the natives dispose of their other captive: Eli Roth’s Green Inferno will be hard pushed to match the concept. After Jonathan arrives, the film becomes much weaker. Oh, it starts innocently enough, with him popping over to borrow a saw, but you just know that Robin is going to end up falling for him – indeed, rolling around on the beach in a manner clearly inspired by the previous year’s From Here to Eternity. But getting there, requires him to push his attentions on her, in a way which would now certainly be considered sexual harassment and, on some campuses, likely assault. That aspect of the movie has not aged well at all.

While chunks of this are severely sound-staged, there are times where filming was clearly done on location, and things are a lot better for it. The score also punches above it’s weight, coming from composer Elmer Bernstein, before the first of his 14 Oscar nomination – perhaps thank Senator McCarthy for that, as this was around the period Bernstein was blacklisted from major motion pictures for his “Communist tendencies.” On the other hand, the finale ends up being a disappointing combination of macho heroism and deus ex machina that is a good deal less satisfying than the film merits. Still, the overall product is a good deal better than I expected going in, though falls short of the impressive standards set early on.

Dir: Eugene Frenke
Star: Amanda Blake, George Nader, Rosalind Hayes

Cold Blooded

  By

★★½
“Give the policewoman a big hand!”

coldbloodedCop Francis Jane (Palmer) is assigned to guard jewel thief Eddie Cordero (Robbins), who was shot while being captured, and is now cuffed to his bed in an all but deserted wing of a local hospital. What should be a tedious task turns out to be far from it, as his former colleagues, led by crew leader Louis Holland (MacDonald) show up. They are eager both to discover the location of the stolen goods, and extract revenge for the death of one member, which they blame on Cordero, but which he swears was the act of a corrupt cop. The resulting assault leads to an uneasy alliance between policewoman and criminal, as they try to avoid his former colleagues. But is Cordero as easy-going and affable as he seems? Or does he have a hidden agenda of his own?

The film was basically the result of the producer having access to a deserted hospital, and getting a script written to fit the location. That’s not necessarily a bad idea, but it’s just one aspect of a storyline that requires too much suspension of disbelief. Another is the inordinate number of occasions one character or another is knocked unconscious by someone else, for exactly the amount of time necessary to the plot. Or, perhaps most obviously of all (at the risk of a spoiler), getting your hand sawn off by an untrained civilian not only does not lead to major blood loss, here, it’s the kind of injury you pretty much shake off, and which is little more than a minor inconvenience the rest of the way. Now, I guess there’s some precedent (127 Hours showed dismemberment can be non-lethal), but combined with the other issues, it’s a combo-breaker fatality as far as this story is concerned.

The characters deserve better. There’s a nice dynamic between Jane and Cordero, the latter frequently needling the cop that they’re not so different, and MacDonald makes for a fine villain, capable of conveying threat with a look or a few words. Lapeyre is obviously going for Reservoir Dogs, with a story that’s less about a crime and more about back-stabbing treachery in its aftermath, building to a confrontation in an operating theatre, with one participant strapped to the table, about to undergo the film’s second bout of impromptu surgery. But it never captures anything like the same sense of grit, playing more like a nasty, bloody cartoon. About all it’s missing is a few falling anvils and a pair of Acme rocket-powered roller-skates.

Dir: Jason Lapeyre
Star: Zoie Palmer, Ryan Robbins, William MacDonald, Sergio Di Zio

The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent

  By

★★½
“Corman gonna Corman.”

viking_women_and_sea_serpent_poster_01I can see why, purely for reason of brevity, the title above was preferred to the full one of The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, even though the latter is more accurate. For the Sea Serpent has a supporting role here, met once on their way in, and again on the way out – it’s much more about what happens in the middle. Three years after their men left, the women of the Stannjold clan leave their shores under the command of Desir (Dalton), trying to find out what happened to them. Encounter #1 with the monster leads them to be shipwrecked on the same shores of the Grimault tribe as their menfolk, whose king, Stark (Devon), has set them to work as slaves in his mines. After initially appearing to welcome the women, it becomes clear that Stark has plans for the new arrivals as well. Viking high-priestess Enger (Cabot) has her own agenda, however: having set her eyes both on Desir’s husband and, for more immediate and pragmatic reasons, Stark, she sabotages Desir’s first attempt to free the men.

Sometimes derided as among the worst movies of all time, it really isn’t that bad – it wasn’t even the worst movie I saw yesterday. Certainly, it’s guilty of biting off far more than it can chew. If the claims on the (quite lovely) poster above, of “fabulous” and “terrifying” are dubious, it’s the “spectacular” one that is widest of the mark, with a budget even the legendary Roger Corman subsequently admitted was woefully short of delivering on the concepts. [It didn’t help the scheduled lead actress demanded more money on the first day of shooting, so was fired, and replaced by Dalton] While Stark, for example, may be king of all he surveys, that appears to encompass about 12 men and a stretch of coastline obviously far more California than Scandinavia. And let’s not even get into rear-projection which dreams of reaching the heights of “utterly unconvincing,” or a sea-serpent which… Sorry, my supply of derogatory epithets falls entirely short of doing it justice, so best I don’t bother.

However, even if they look more like fashion models than Vikings, and act in some ways like giggly high-school girls, it’s still more laudable than, say, Mars Needs Women. The heroines here are actually portrayed as fairly competent – let’s face it, they survived without any men for three years – and brave, being willing to set sail in search of, and then attempt to rescue, their other halves. Both Dalton and Cabot are engaging, with the blonde naturally the good girl, though even the slutty one has an eventual crisis of conscience and is prepared to make a brave sacrifice for the greater good. At 71 minutes, it certainly can’t be accused of outstaying its welcome: while certainly dated, cheap and silly, this is definitely not boring, and its heart is in the right place.

Dir: Roger Corman
Star: Abby Dalton, Susan Cabot, Bradford Jackson, Richard Devon
[a.k.a. The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent]