★
“Sucker punched”
This 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
Roger 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.
Life 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.
I 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.
Star Jill Kelly is an adult actress. I mention this, because it seems highly likely that most of her 300+ other works – perhaps The Butt Sisters Do Philadelphia or Sodomania: Slop Shots 5 – are likely better scripted, filmed, edited and generally well-made than this dreadful piece of crap. I should have known, given Donald G. Jackson’s involvement – he’s probably the worst film-maker I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, and I speak as someone fully familiar with the works of Ed Wood, Andy Milligan, J.P. Simon and Uwe Boll. They are all pretenders beside Jackson, and even though this barely runs an hour, your patience will be sorely tried. And by “tried”, I mean at the level where gnawing a limb off to escape will seems credible.
The character of Catwoman has had a mixed history over the years in other media than the printed page. TV has had the Julie Newmar & Eartha Kitt versions, a nod in Birds of Prey, and a teenage version of the character can be seen in the Gotham series which premiered last month. In film, we had Lee Meriwether in the sixties incarnation then, perhaps most famously of all, Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns [albeit only after Annette Bening, Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore all were linked to the part]. Then, there was Halle Berry’s Catwoman, still talked about in hushed tones as perhaps the worst comic-book adaptation of all time, and which arguably did more damage to action heroines than any other big-budget movie in history. Despite the massive success of the Batman reboot, it took eight years before the character would appear in another film, Anne Hathaway playing Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises.
I first became aware of this novel through an article back in February about MMA champion Ronda Rousey and 
In the slasher genre of horror, the perpetrators seem almost exclusively male: Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, etc. Women can play an important role, and we’ve covered some of them here before – but it’s much more often as the “final girl”, than the one wielding the machete. However, it’s often forgotten that, in the original Friday the 13th movie, the killer was not Jason, but his mother, so there is some precedent for the female antagonist. See also Nurse 3D, American Horror Story: Coven or perhaps best of all,