Tag: USA

She-Wolves of the Wasteland

  By

★½
“After the apocalypse, civilization will collapse. Fortunately, off-road vehicles and hair-care products will remain in abundant supply.”

I remember seeing this under its original title back in the 1990’s, and being unimpressed by it then. Fooled into acquiring it on DVD under its new name, time has not been kind to this distaff version of Mad Max. Phoenix (Kinmont) finds herself taking care of Keela (Sanders), who is pregnant with a male child – a rarity, in a world which, thanks to biological war, is populated almost entirely by women. Overseeing things is the Reverend Mother (Howard) and her sidekick Cobalt (Khambatta), who are intent on keeping control. And, boy, can they hold a grudge, since Keela goes from utterly flat, to giving birth, to being the mother of a kid at least four years old, in the space of about two minutes cinematically. Not quite sure what the villains are doing during this time: presumably ruling over an empire populated entirely by extras from a Duran Duran video,

This is feeble, in just about every way imaginable. The action is laughably inept, the script makes no sense at all, and the production values are entirely unconvincing. The actresses, bless their hearts, try to do the best they can, but Meryl Streep would be hard pushed to deliver the dialogue they’re given here. The makers throw in an entirely gratuitous waterfall sequence to provide the nudity the leads presumably wouldn’t do, and while there are occasional aspects that show imagination was not entirely absent [the tribe inspired by a cargo cult of television], these are few and far between. Despite one of the most inspired covers in recent history – almost worth the price of this budget DVD by itself – I struggled to remain conscious after the first 20 minutes. Even for devoted fans of badfilm such as ourselves, this is tough to handle.

Dir: Robert Hayes
Star: Kathleen Kinmont, Persis Khambatta, Peggy Sanders, Sheila Howard
a.k.a. Phoenix the Warrior

Princess of Thieves

  By

★★
“The Middle Ages – sanitized, for your protection.”

Back before Pirates of the Caribbean made Knightley a household name, and even before Bend It Like Beckham made her an obscure name, as a fifteen-year old she shot this Disney TVM, which rewrites history wholesale from the very start. It begins in 1184, claiming this is the reign of Richard the Lionheart – this must come as a surprise to Henry II, since he didn’t die until 1189. It also introduces Philip, Richard’s supposed illegitimate son, out to replace the evil King John; in reality, Philip may not have existed and certainly left no mark on history. However, the film needs a romantic lead, so there you go. Of course, the whole Robin Hood mythology is more a block of clay, that writers and film-makers have seen fit to mould as they wish.

Here, when Robin is arrested trying to link up with Philip (Moyer), it’s his daughter, Gwyn (Knightley), who puts together her own band of merry men, with the aim of both rescuing her father and putting Philip in his rightful place on the throne. Archery contests and the Sheriff of Nottingham (McDowell) ensue, until Philip, under an assumed name, joins her posse, and the inevitable romantic attraction begins. This is much to the chagrin of Froderick (Synnott), Gwyn’s longtime companion from when she grew up in a monastery [her dad being off crusading with Dick]. However, since he has a crap haircut, it’s clear Frodork doesn’t have a chance with the perfectly-complexioned Gywn and her immaculate teeth.

It is largely bland, unthreatening and unsatisfying, yet not entirely unwatchable. Knightley – only 15 when she made it – clearly has star potential, and her archery experience must have come in handy for her later role in King Arthur. Early on, there is an almost Mulan-like feel, with Gwyn defying her father and dressing as a boy. However, the more the film proceeds, the more she is shuffled off to the side in favor of Philip, who is much less interesting a character, especially from this site’s point of view. McDowell is as reliably evil as ever, while Jonathan Hyde does his best Alan Rickman impression as King John, yet, inevitably, comes off as a poor imitation. If this isn’t worth paying money for, as a Saturday afternoon diversion on TV, it’s tolerable.

Dir: Peter Hewitt
Star: Keira Knightley, Stephen Moyer, Malcolm McDowell, Del Synnott

Hook ‘n’ Shoot: Revolution

  By

★★★
“Pretty much the first of its kind – with all that implies.”

These days, the notion of women participating in mixed martial-arts is no longer seen as particularly outlandish, with names like Tara LaRosa, Yuka Tsuji and Megumi Fujii among the top fighters [as with pro wrestling, the best fighters are out of Japan]. However, this wasn’t always the case: In April 2002, in Evansville, Indiana, one of the first all-women events in America took place. The fights took place under Shooto rules, with two five-minute rounds [though only one fight ended up going into the second]. Here are quick recaps of the seven bouts on the DVD.

  • Ruth Meija -vs- Erica Montoya Over in 2:32 with an arm-bar, but pretty one-sided. Montoya was in complete control and also landed some hard shots on her opponent.
  • Olga Bakalopoulas -vs- Shannon Hooper A better fight, with more well-matched opponents. Hooper wanted to stand and punch, but it was Bakalopoulas who came out on top; she managed to knock her opponent down (albeit more by luck than anything) and applied a keylock submission for victory in a little more than two minutes.
  • Jennifer Irons -vs- Jessica Ross A triangle choke submission ended this one at 1:48 in favor of Ross, even though she was giving away a fair amount of weight. Ross is more of a grappler, but got some good blows in, and also showed decent ground skills.
  • Tanya Vlahac -vs- Angela Wilson This was a barn-burner, with both women trading hard punches. Vlahac also dropped Wilson with one particular punch, but Wilson used her judo skills to bring her opponent down, and then took control, hitting Vlahac until the referee stopped the fight.
  • Shelby Walker -vs- Tara LaRosa LaRosa pounded her opponent into submission, after taking her down. From there on, it was an onslaught of punishment, and I can’t say I’m surprised that LaRosa went on to make a name for herself in the field. Sadly, Walker died, apparently from an overdose of pain medication, in 2006.
  • Angela Restad -vs- Mayra Conde Almost all the early offense here was by Conde, with Restad simply trying to survive on the ground. However, as round one wore on, Restad came back, with some solid knees and combinations. The second round continued in a similar way, with Conde having the advantage on the floor, but Restad landing good blows. Conde almost got an arm-bar, but Restad escaped and almost got a choke of her own. This ended in a majority draw – two called it even, one gave it to Restad. A fair result, but the best fight of the night,
  • Debi Purcell -vs- Chris Van Fleet Purcell was clearly the better fighter, and had the edge from the start with a powerful punch. However, Purcell also showed good submission skills, and got under the guard of Van Fleet, taking her down for a relatively quick victory, forcing her opponent to tap at 2:42, with a Rear Naked Choke.

Obviously, the scarcity of female mixed martial artists in the US posed something of a problem to the promoters, with the matches apparently made mostly on weight alone. The Restad-Conde match is the only one whose outcome is not certain inside about 30 seconds, and that one is one of the best MMA bouts I’ve seen, male or female. The special features on the DVD include additional interviews with the fighters, who mostly come across as smarter than you might expect, and also Erin Toughill, who was present but not taking part. Two more volumes are available in the series; on the basis of this one, I’d be interested in watching them, but not buying them unseen.

Dangerous Acquaintances

  By

★★★★

It’s been at least a decade since I read this – probably more – but it is still a thoroughly-enjoyable read, and a major improvement in just about every way (plotting, art, pacing, imagination and characterization) over the first stab. Of particular note is the solid way in which the two separate threads of the story are woven together. While on holiday, Kei and Yuri bump into Shasti, a former colleague of theirs in the WWWA. She was actually an android, who went rogue after a criminal’s personality was implanted into her, part of a (failed) experiment to see if it would help with his capture to have her think like him. She’s now apparently leading a group of “freedom fighters” who are planning to hijack a luxurious space-liner, crammed with VIPs and new technology. Has Shasti gone all political? Or, if not, what is she up to?

She’s certainly a formidable opponent, even when outnumbered 2-to-1: she’s stronger, faster and more resilient than both Kei and Yuri, thanks to her cybernetic upgrades. However, it’s her attitude which really rubs our heroines the wrong way from the beginning, her multiple artificial personalities making her capable of kicking your ass brutally one second, then apologizing humbly for doing so, the very next. And that’s before she gets the “upgrade” to the character of an amoral, psychopathic career criminal. The body-count thereafter is large, and messy to the point that it’s a good thing this is a black-and-white comic. However, this lends a real sense of threat to proceedings, giving a sense that Kei and Yuri are themselves in danger – rather than just the local civilian population, as is usually the case.

There’s not as much reliance on the original comics – no Mughia, Lovely Angel ship or Bloody Card – with the Toren and Smith developing their own world instead. I’d really love to see this turned into a movie, and with the advent of CGI, it would no longer be prohibitively-expensive as it was when the story originally came out. It has some lovely twists, plenty of action and a great antagonist for our heroines to take on. An adaptation worthy of the name.

Story: Toren Smith and Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren

In Her Line of Fire

  By

★★
“Lesbian Action in the Jungle [suitable for all ages].”

This is a competently-made but ultimately forgettable film – it feels very much like a TVM, albeit for one of the slightly-more liberal channels. Hemingway plays Secret Service agent Lynn Delaney, who has to look after the Vice-President, when their place crashes in the Pacific. Of course, in the way things only happen in Hollywood movies, the island to which the struggle is a rebel outpost, and the VP is a former soldier, with more-than adequate combat skills of his own. Which extend to more than shooting people in the face, Dick Cheney please note. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of tension with female journalist Sharon Serrano (Bennett), who is also among the survivors; this includes tension of a sexual kind, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Like I said: one of the slightly-more liberal channels. However, it’s nice that no big thing is made of this; you’re not whacked over the head with anyone’s sexual orientiation, as in D.E.B.S. [Curiously, even the nods in this direction are edited out from some releases]

“Her mouth irritates me.” That was Chris’s dismissal of Ms. Hemingway and, for once, her snap judgement would have saved me from enduring this. For it is directed and written with a stunning lack of energy, imagination, invention or enthusiasm – basically, anything that’d make it worth watching. This is apparent very early on, when the villain’s henchman are, once again, unable to shoot for peanuts. Yes, I suppose they are a rag-tag guerilla outfit, whom their mercenary leader (Millbern) is supposed to lick into shape, but they still basically get their asses handed to them by one Secret Service agent and a politician. No-one is allowed to develop their characters beyond a single dimension, with Serrano perpetually whiny, and Delaney perpetually furrowed. While Hemingway’s mouth may not, particularly, have irritated me, just about everything else in this vapid confection did.

Dir: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Star: Mariel Hemingway, David Keith, Jill Bennett, David Millbern

Rise: Blood Hunter

  By

★½
“Sadly disappointing and largely toothless.”

The main obstacle to this even reaching average is probably a first-half structure that is, for no readily apparent season, entirely fractured. Scenes appear entirely out of order, with no explanation: why is our heroine now waking up in a morgue? And the problem is, what the film has to offer is so pedestrian, you can’t be bothered to start putting the pieces together. Liu plays Sadie Blake, a journalist investigating the shady underground side of goth culture, who ends up finding a clan of vampires are on top of the food chain, just before becoming one of their victims. However, instead of taking her undeath lying down, she vows revenge and, accompanied by a rogue cop (Chiklis, you’ll not be surprised to learn), begins working her way up said food-chain.

Despite the combination of two potentially incendiary grindhouse themes, in vampires and revenge, the gore and nudity feel more reigned back than they should be. And the vampires here, under leader D’Arcy, are a bunch of wimps whom certain slayers would have disposed of between commercial breaks, with a merry quip. Sadly, Blake is no Buffy, despite her crossbow, and even the action sequences appear to be choreographed by a sloth. It’s aiming to be post-modern in its approach to vampirism; they have few special powers, and I don’t think anyone actually used the V-word. However, part of the reason the monster has survived so long is because of the alluring facets of the mythos, and the film doesn’t come with anything as interesting, to replace what it excised.

The prurient will likely be drawn in by the prospect of Lucy Liu getting her kit off, and they’ll likely enjoy the sequence where she’s hung upside-down, topless. You’ll also get Marilyn Manson and Mr. Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey, formerly of 98 Degrees: I leave it up to the reader to decide whether these cameos are a discouragement or incentive to watch. The “unrated, undead” DVD includes about 25 minutes excised from the theatrical version, which also ran a good bit more chronologically – for once, I’m left longing for the rated version, since what we have here is an overlong mess.

Dir: Sebastian Gutierrez
Star: Lucy Liu, Michael Chiklis, James D’Arcy, Carla Gugino

6 Angels

  By

★★★
“Like The Prophecy, made for 75 cents and without Christopher Walken.”

Poverty-row production though this might be, I can’t bring myself to hate this as much as it perhaps deserves. While it’s ambitions are far beyond its means [the DVD sleeve promises ‘female warriors in awesome fights’ – let’s just say, it was probably a mistake for me to rewatch Crouching Tiger the same day!], writer-director Almeida does, at least, have an imagination. After 12 years in a coma, Taileen (Fabre) finds herself reborn as one of The Circle, a group of six angels, three good and three evil, who keep the balance of the world. However, Ezekiel (Mazzola), the leader of the devil’s team, plans to wipe out the holy trinity, in order for his master to reign, and Taileen soon finds herself the only thing standing between the forces of darkness and their goal.

Really, if you’re going to offer religious apocalypse, you’d probably better have a budget that could not be described as ‘loose change’. The action is often teetering on the edge of laughable, and the film doesn’t even play by its own rules. In an early scene, Taileen learns she can only be killed by a “profane blade”, but the devil’s advocates still blaze away at her with mundane guns, even after they’ve learned she can stop bullets with her mind. Despite this, there are enough elements that worked to keep me interested: Stiga (Kastel, menacing the heroine in the pic at lower right) comes over nicely, both dressing and acting like a slutty version of Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix. I also have to credit Scott Buckley’s excellent, sweeping and orchestral score, which appears to have strayed in from a far bigger movie. That really yanks the film up by its boot-straps.

Things build to a final showdown in a warehouse, where the makers finally locate their supply of fake blood, which has been largely notable by its absence for the first hour, and it is quite effective. I do wonder why the angels, on both sides, don’t make better uses of their powers, though must also say, said powers are also somewhat crap: if I was responsible for holding the balance between good and evil, I’d want something better than the ability to turn into a fat guy. Overall, one would quite like to see this remade as a big-budget work, because the ideas here are good; with a good effects studio – and significantly better fight choreography – this has a lot of potential. However, Hollywood appears too busy remaking mostly-mediocre Asian horror to notice. We are therefore stuck with a cheap version, whose flaws likely distract too much from its merits for this to find a wide audience.

Dir: Luis Almeida
Star: Allison Fabre, Greg Mazzola, Jasmine Kastel, Rolando Millet

Dark Queen

  By

★★
“So bad, it’s borderline painful – yet we will remember this, albeit for all the wrong reasons.”

Let me be perfectly clear: one of the above stars is purely for entertainment value, since this is one of those movies which is so bad as to become enjoyable, purely on that level. There is hardly an aspect of this film which is not badly-executed: the script is badly thought-out, the performances are almost without exception woeful, and the continuity has to be among the worst of all time. One actress goes from a colored top and no bra, to a bra, to a white top and no bra, in successive scenes, while another enters a pool in a bikini, comes out topless, and five second later has the top back on and is dry. We laughed like drains, I tell you. Oh, you want the plot? Mousy scientist Helen (Kitchen) is trying to find a brain chemical that will unleash humanity’s psychic powers, using imprisoned serial-killer Horn (Marks) as her source. Even though the resulting chemical is green and glowing, in a way not seen since Re-Animator, she decides to test it on herself. This unleashes her alter-ego, Cassandra, who embarks on a plot to enslave mankind to her will. It’s up to her assistant Gary (Klitzner), along with a homicide detective (Rivers) to stop her.

Where to start? Kitchen is about the least-appalling thing the film has to offer, struggling bravely with two roles so under-developed that an Oscar nominee would have problems making them watchable, and occasionally manages to look like something other than a low-rent Xena. We’re convinced Klitzner is gay, which makes his success with just about every one of the laideez in this film, utterly implausible. Meanwhile, Marks’ psychopath chews scenery at a fearsome rate, making the later works of Anthony Perkins a masterpiece of understated subtlety in comparison. Our son strolled in while we were watching this, and was quite taken with Rivers [right, bottom] and her breasts – at that moment, being unveiled for his pleasure. He gave the breasts two enthusiastic thumbs-up, but then, he didn’t stick around for the rest of the movie. Score one for the wisdom of youth there.

It should be entirely clear which series the distributors of Dark Queen are hoping you’ll mistake their film for an entry in. In reality, this is not fit to lick Natasha Henstridge’s boots; it’s really much closer to Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, yet as such, is still a dismal failure – that whirring sound you hear is Robert Louis Stevenson spinning in his grave. However, even as it fails on just about every cinematic level, fans of bad cinema may find this has its merits. However, even there, it may still divide opinions: I had rather more fun with this than Chris [she, on the other hand, liked the midget-vampire movie, Ankle Biters, which I found almost unwatchable]. You can certainly sense where they were aiming with this; however, the execution is, frankly, so awful as to drain any potential from it, almost entirely.

Dir: Ken LaVan
Star: Tian Kitchen, Sean Klitzner, Michael Marks, Sheyenne Rivers

Gunslinger

  By

★★
“Despite the director, nothing memorable in this quickie.”

While Corman is better known now as a producer of schlock-horror, he has tried his hand at just about every genre in his time. This was his last stab at the Western, with Garland playing Rose Hood, who takes over as the marshal of Oracle, after her husband is gunned down. However, she incurs the wrath of local saloon-owner Erica Page (Hayes, best known for the title role in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman), who is running a property-acquisition scheme, based on her hopes for the railroad to come to town. She brings hired killer Cane Miro (Ireland) up from Tombstone, only for him to fall for his intended victim, who is unaware of his mission. Which is surprising, since he is dressed from head to toe in black – even at age seven, when I used to watch The Virginian with my father, I knew this indicated an utterly irredeemable nature.

Garland and Hayes are generally decent enough, but the dialogue, especially between Rose and Cane, is painful to listen to. It’s clear the writers are aiming for wittily romantic banter, and fail miserably, on every level. Shot in seven days, Corman didn’t even let Hayes breaking her arm, falling off a horse, stop the shoot – he filmed some closeups while they waited for an ambulance. Hey, it’s not like the actress was going anywhere. While both Garland and Hayes are fine in their roles, none of the potentially transgressive elements here are exploited, and the poverty-row aspects are so painfully obvious as to be a distraction.

The film does finally get a certain momentum going in the final reel, where all the forces in the town end up gunning each other down; viewers, by that stage, may have resorted to looking for whatever entertainment can be found on their mobile phones. Cult favourite Dick Miller briefly appears as the Pony Express rider, and three years later, Garland would become one of the first TV action heroines, as undercover cop Casey Jones in Decoy. This film, however, would go on to get torn a new one by MST3K during their fifth season; that is likely a significantly better source of entertainment.

Dir: Roger Corman
Star: Beverly Garland, John Ireland, Allison Hayes, Jonathan Haze

Biohazards

  By

★★★

If you thought the novel was a quick read, I got through Biohazards during lunch, and that’s only with 30 minutes. Still, being a comic-book, we must cut it some slack, though I can’t say I find action (and there’s a lot of it here) is something that works very well in panel form, lacking the true sense of motion you get in cinema. That said, I still didn’t hate this first entry in the trans-Pacific entry, in which Kei and Yuri are sent to investigate the kidnapping of an industrialist’s mind by his rival [literally: it’s on a chip]. Adding a little spice, both companies are knee-deep in dubious bioweapons, so who is the real villain here?

It’s another different style, in some ways perhaps more Japanese than classic DP, though still with something alien to it, as if the artist had learned from one of those “Draw Manga” books. Which is less a knock on Warren than it probably sounds, being more an acknowledgement of how influential the Dirty Pair comics are [there was a time when manga was not to be found in Borders, y’know]. The in-jokes are actually more restrained than I remembered – and expected, after the very first page has a security guard singing the theme to Magnum of Love’s Destiny, a movie from the City Hunter series. But that was about it, unless “Power up the synthesizer, Neil” is a Rush reference? Hard to be sure…

There are some interesting nods to the original novels, such as Mughi’s ability to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum, and Yuri’s Bloody Card weapon is almost exactly as described in Great Adventures. That may be the weakness here, in that Warren and Smith seem less intent on bringing anything new to the characters, than being faithful to the original texts. As the series progresses, however, that would become less of an issue, but while the first, this is certainly not the best, or most representative, of the US comics.

Story: Toren Smith and Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren