Tag: USA

Girlfight

  By

★★★★
The story of a girl who “didn’t make the cheerleading team”.

The opening shot zooms in on Rodriguez with her head down; slowly, she raises her head, and stares into the camera with ferocious intensity. If this renders the rest of the film largely redundant, it’s not really anyone’s fault. In Michelle Rodriguez, the makers have the perfect person to play Diana, a pissed-off, troubled/troublesome) teen, who finds that violence does solve problems after all. Okay, that’s not perhaps the message the authors intended, but when Diana finally lays into her father, it certainly seems that way.

However, that’s typical of the honesty the film shows: uplifting, without sugar-coating the harshness of life or the toughness of training. Though it’s hard to remember a time when Rodriguez’ stare wasn’t a cliche (see S.W.A.T.), the rawness of her emotion shines out, and getting someone with little screen experience turns out brilliantly in the end, even if it could have backfired badly, and completely sunk the picture. Rodriguez certainly puts the fear of God in me, that’s for sure. While the rest of the cast are much lower-key, and barely memorable, they do their jobs adequately, in roles that are little more than cliches e.g. ex-boxer turned trainer.

However, by making Diana’s boyfriend a boxer too, it adds a significant spark, even if the “Gender Blind” boxing tournament that pits them against each other for the climax, is contrived, ludicrous, and can be found nowhere in the real world, AFAIK. Yet the film brings you along so well, that it’s easy to take that final step, which provides more than adequate closure for Diana – if not necessarily anyone else.

Dir: Karyn Kusama
Star: Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon, Santiago Douglas

Elektra

  By

★★½
“Sai It Ain’t So…”

True story. A friend of ours has a job as an intern in Los Angeles, and coming round the corner at work one day, he literally bumped into Jennifer Garner. He immediately started apologising profusely (he’s an uber-nice kid, who wouldn’t say “Boo!” to a fly) but she wouldn’t have any of it and began cursing him out in the nastiest of ways. Garner finally stalked off, while he continued to apologise – just before vanishing, she turned round and gave him the finger. So now we know: Jennifer Garner = bitch.

Despite this, it gives me no real pleasure to report on the failings of Elektra. It was a pleasant surprise, and says a fair bit about Daredevil, that the studio chose to pursue her character as a spinoff, rather than following up with a sequel. I hoped that they’d do a good job, capturing the dark passions and conflicts of the character, whose incarnation in works like Frank Miller’s Elektra: Assassin is truly memorable. [Interestingly, the screening was preceded by a trailer for another Miller adaptation, Sin City, which looks at least stylistically accurate] Unfortunately, what we have here is another shallow dumbing-down, offering little more than another straightforward good vs. evil battle.

The first issue is, of course, that Elektra died in Daredevil. No problem: we have a Yoda-like character, Stick (Terence Stamp), who can bring characters back from the grave. Yet this causes more problems than it solves: sure, Elektra’s back, but now, death, where is thy sting? Any threat to life is now no more inconvenient than in a video game: press X to continue. Anyway, after getting booted from Stick’s training camp in her second life, Elektra becomes a freelance assassin. However, when assigned to target a father (Visnjic, who remains miraculously just stubbly throughout) and his 13-year old daughter, Abigail (Prout), she suddenly has second thoughts.

This is kinda fortunate, since the pair turn out to be lynchpins in a battle between good (Stick and his allies) and evil. The latter are a group called The Hand, led by villain Roshi (veteran Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, from Mortal Kombat), who sends his son Kirigi (Lee) and his interesting-ability acolytes after Elektra and her wards. They can do stuff like make their tattooes come to life, kill things with a touch, or withstand shotgun blasts. Poor Elektra is just very, very good with weapons, which comes across as rather weak in comparison.

The aim is clearly to put Elektra across as an emotionally-scarred individual, who connects with Abigail, seeing herself in the teenager, and has enough baggage for an entire convention of shrinks. However, all we get in terms of her psychology are some clumsy flashbacks and a touch of pointless OCD which feels like it strayed in from Monk. Even after her agent (Colin Cunningham) both offers the trio shelter, then bravely stays behind to give them time to escape, his sacrifices don’t merit the slightest subsequent mention. Superheroes: they’re just so damn ungrateful.

There is entertainment, mostly lurking in the background. A moment with impact sees Typhoid (Natassia Malthe), the girl with the poison touch, kiss Elektra; the pair fall to the ground surrounded by a shower of dying leaves. It feels almost like it could have been inspired by the work of Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers), and is at least less obviously stolen than the “House of Flying Bed-Sheets” battle later on. It’s also interesting to see Mark Houghton as a chief bodyguard in the opening scene: he made his debut against Yukari Oshima in The Outlaw Brothers, back in 1987.

The fight scenes are actually pretty good too, though the editing occasionally borders on the incoherent, and there just aren’t enough of them. What about Roshi? After sending out his son, he vanishes entirely from the picture, leaving the result disappointingly like a Bond film where 007 never gets to meet Blofeld, and is left dispatching minions instead. I guess they were perhaps hoping to save that confrontation for a sequel, but having just seen the first week’s box-office returns (Elektra took in several million dollars less than Catwoman), doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.

 In terms of quality, this is probably about the same as the recent version of The Punisher, and that started from a lower point, the comics adapted there being basically a hyperviolent revenge fantasy for teenage boys. Frank Miller’s work on Elektra was truly for mature readers – in both the sense that its intricacies require a sophisticated mind to unpick, and the intense nature of its images. Instead, we get this PG-13 rated Elektra, that simply rolls out the usual comic-book cliches without sufficient enthusiasm or invention. It’s polished until the surface positively gleams, but is just a thin layer of precious gold, over a heart of basest metal.

We should have guessed: January is a bad time to release an action movie, and Garner’s absence from publicity (allegedly due to a viral infection or “nerve damage” – though that’s actually what our intern friend suffered at her hands) was another warning-sign. So was the fact Daredevil wasn’t that good. Regardless, it doesn’t bode well for a year where adaptations of comic-books come thick and fast, with February’s Constantine next. And after the failure of Catwoman, it unfortunately seems to be strike two for big-budget action heroines.

Dir: Rob Bowman
Stars: Jennifer Garner, Will Yun Lee, Kirsten Prout, Goran Visnjic

Women’s Extreme Wrestling

  By

★
“Horrible. Makes you yearn for the subtlety and wit of GLOOW.”

In my collection, I have DVDs from six different American wrestling federations, plus others from Japan. This is, by far, the most tedious and badly-put together. There isn’t an aspect here that even reaches bearable: the wrestlers are almost without exception incompetent, the announcers are juvenile jerks, and the presentation is truly dreadful. Shot at WEW’s first two pay-per-views at Viking Hall, Philadelphia on February 22nd and April 6th, 2002, it is frankly a mystery how the company didn’t immediately fold. But rising from the remnants of GLOOW, it uses some of the same “talent” plus porn stars, and still seems to be offering its X-rated mix of sex and violence – though this DVD entirely lacks the nudity promised by the commentators, which has presumably been edited out. Really, all the naked female flesh in North America wouldn’t have helped this – the only thing that’s “extreme” is some bad language, and while I could be wrong, personally, there’s more to being extreme than a potty-mouth.

The number of blown spots and flubbed moves here is almost uncountable, and the live audience seemed severely unimpressed: applause was sporadic and outnumbered by chants of “You Fucked Up!”, a nostalgic throwback to ECW days that brought a smile to my face. But I digress. GI Ho, Laree and Weed have some skills. As for the rest, I think every single woman at our local federation, IZW, could use them to mop the floor. Time is short, so let us gloss rapidly over the two commentators, who have the combined mentality of a single 13-year old, and finish on the incoherent presentation. For example, a tables match manages to edit out the actual breaking of the tables entirely; disc four contains repeats of half the disc one matches; and you don’t even get to see who won the final bout, since the DVD ends in the middle of it! The 4-disc set may run 210 minutes, and seem good value for money, but don’t be fooled. Setting ten bucks on fire and ramming it down your own throat would be more entertaining.

Star: Alexis Laree, Amanda Storm, Tai ‘Killer Weed’, Psycho Bitch

Female Suicide Bombers

  By

★★★
“A shallow look at a very complex subject.”

This photograph shows 18-year-old Ayat Ahkras from the Dheisheh refugee camp on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Ahkras killed herself, two others and injured about 20 people when she detonated her explosives outside a Jerusalem supermarket in March 2002.

Female suicide bombers might perhaps not fit into the generally-perceived definition of “action heroine”, but they have much the same quality of transgressive behaviour – women acting in ways outwith the norm. And, of course, heroism depends on your point of view; one thing this documentary does, is show the cult on the West Bank that surrounds their martyrs. The thin line between “terrorists” and “freedom fighters” is illustrated perfectly by the scene of small children carrying posters of suicide bombers. On the other hand, most of the program skims irritatingly across the surface, not least because host Lisa Ling is a puffcake journalist, uninterested in asking – or perhaps, too scared to ask – the hard questions. Her interview with the mother of Wafa Idris, the first West Bank female martyr, is a masterpiece of shallowness; she doesn’t even bother to follow-up on the answers, let alone challenge the assertions.

Even more annoying is its desire to cram the motivations for all female suicide bombers into the same hypothesis: abused or brainwashed women, who have broken the laws of society, and in particular, religion, so find suicide the only way out. They dig through the histories, looking for evidence to justify their theory: oh, Wafa was infertile and divorced, that must have been it. But this hardly even counts as an explanation: how many women get divorced without committing suicide? It’s actually fairly patronising, the clear implication being that women are incapable of consciously sacrificing their lives for a political or social cause. I think Joan of Arc, Emily Davison (the suffragette who threw herself under the King’s horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby) and Violette Szabo might care to argue with that conclusion.

The film also concentrates the great majority of its efforts on Palestinian bombers; the Tamil Tigers merit only a brief mention, even though they have been using female martyrs for far longer, to a greater extent (almost 40% of their suicide bombers are women) and with greater impact, including the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi in 1991 – unmentioned by the program, despite it supporting their theory, is the fact that his killer had been raped by Indian soldiers. On the other hand, the Tamil struggle is secular rather than religious, making it hard to apply the same hypothesis of guilt-stricken women opting to go out with a bang. However, I do give the program credit for piqueing my interest in the topic; expect a full article sometime in 2005… [Said article has been delayed indefinitely, as I couldn’t get a good handle on how to approach the topic. I made a lot of notes, then basically gave up. Will maybe dig them out sometime…]

National Geographic Channel documentary, December 2004

Mulan (animation)

  By

mulan1★★★★½
“Here be drag-ons…”

Disney movies are not the usual place to find action heroines: their classic woman is a princess, who sits in a castle and waits for someone of appropriately-royal blood to come and rescue her from whatever evil fate (wicked stepmother, poisoned spinning wheel, etc.) that has befallen her.

The first inklings of a change to this traditional attitude came in 1991 with Beauty and the Beast, where Belle was an independent-minded young lady who rejected the advances of the handsomely square-jawed hero, because he was an idiotic jerk. Unfortunately, the moral was somewhat diluted by the end when – and I trust I’m not spoiling this for anyone – the Beast turns into a rather convincing facsimile of said handsomely square-jawed hero. So, looks are everything, after all… Much more successful was their 1998 attempt, Mulan, recently released for the first time on DVD, which took a traditional Chinese legend about a girl who dresses as a man to join the army, and converted it into the traditional Disney animated feature format, complete with songs and amusing sidekick. Given the studio’s previous track record (hey, why bother paying writers to come up with new stories, when there’s public domain ones to rape?), qualms here are understandable. Perhaps most memorably, Disney gave Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid a happy ending, though turning Quasimodo into a lovable Happy Meal probably comes close – that whirring sound you hear is Victor Hugo spinning in his grave.

And, yes, liberties were taken, though to be fair, you expect this in any screenplay – especially one whose story originally appeared in a poem written by an anonymous Chinese author around the 5th or 6th century AD. [The poem also appears on the DVD, but without any attribution or context; you’d be forgiven for thinking it was written by a Mousketeer] From here sprang a whole raft of tales, with different eras, locations or surnames, largely dependent on the author’s feelings, but having several common threads. The story takes place over more than a decade, and Mulan’s identity isn’t discovered until she has finally returned home and resumed her normal life.

There’s also no threat of execution when her deception is found out – Chinese culture may perhaps actually have a more tolerant approach to such things, though this is admittedly going only by the likes of Peking Opera, and a good chunk of Brigitte Lin’s career. And, of course, both the romantic angle and amusing sidekick were modern additions. This contrasts sharply with one version of the original, which has the Emperor hearing of Mulan’s exploits, and demanding she becomes his concubine. Mulan commits suicide in preference to this fate, an ending that, for some reason, didn’t make it into the Disney adaptation…

Perhaps the surprising thing is that there haven’t been more movie adaptations of the story – contrast the literally hundreds of movies based on Wong Fei-Hung. There have been a couple, most notably 1960’s The Lady General Hua Mu Lan, directed by Yue Fung, and starring Ling Buo as Mulan (real-life husband Jing Han played General Li). Before that was Maiden in Armor starring Nancy Chan, made in 1937, largely as propaganda to rally the Chinese against the Japanese. The most recent version was in 1999; Yang Pei-Pei’s 48 episode TV series starred Anita Yuen as Mulan [photo, right]. However, over the past couple of years, no less than three versions have been rattling around in development hell. The most eagerly anticipated one stars Michelle Yeoh as Mulan, with Chow Yun-Fat co-starring. The director is uncertain (Peter Pau and Christophe Gans are most often mentioned) and production still hasn’t started, even though it was announced back in July 2001; recent reports now have it scheduled to begin filming early next year.

Stanley Tong has also been working on The Legend of Mulan; the original plan was to shoot this in English, with Lucy Liu and The Rock as Mulan and the Hun general respectively, but this may have fallen through; with Tong now working on the next Jackie Chan film, this one seems to be on the back-burner. Finally, a Korean version, with either Jeon Ji Hyun (My Sassy Girl) or Zhang Zi-Yi, was scheduled, but not much has been heard about this lately. The Disney version, on the other hand, just came out on DVD for the first time – in part, I suspect, to act as marketing for the forthcoming, inevitable Mulan II. The trailer for the sequel is on the Mulan DVD, but Lady and the Tramp II, The Little Mermaid II, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and Aladdin II should give you an idea of how wonderful Mulan II will be. [It’s going straight to video, of course, but it does at least have Ming-Na Wen. No Eddie Murphy though.]

That’s a shame, because the original still has a great deal to offer. Unlike many Disney films, the songs don’t bring proceedings to a grinding halt and are notably absent from the second half of the film. Indeed, the transition is deliberately abrupt: a band of happy, singing warriors is stopped mid-verse when they come across a burnt-out village which the Huns have exterminated (right). It’s a simple, but highly effective moment, where silence says a lot more than any words. [At one point a song for Mulan about the tragedy of war was considered, but this was dropped, along with Mushu’s song, Keep ‘Em Guessing – both decisions which can only be applauded.]

Obviously, in terms of action, it’s hamstrung by the G-certificate (though the British censors insisted on a headbutt being removed to get the equivalent ‘U’-rating), but allowing for this, it’s still got some exciting scenes, and the first encounter between Mulan and the Hun army is fabulous by any measure. It also avoids the pitfall of many a Disney film – making the villains more memorable than the main characters. [Everyone remembers Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmatians; but can you name the hero?] Here, Shan-Yu is almost a caricature, but does what’s necessary quickly, allowing the other characters to be developed more completely, and compared to other Disney heroines, Mulan may be the most well-rounded human being.

Of course, Eddie Murphy comes close to stealing the show as demoted family guardian, Mushu. Unlike Shrek, where the competition for laughs with Mike Myers was painfully clear, Ming-Na Wen is content to be the straight “man”, and the film benefits as a result. Murphy’s accent is entirely anachronistic, naturally, but that’s half the fun – interestingly, the American DVD offers the option of a Mandarin soundtrack, which is a nice option. We did try it for a bit, but the Chinese Mushu just didn’t have the life and energy of Murphy, and we soon switched back. [HK singer CoCo Lee plays Mulan, while Jackie Chan is the voice of Shang in both this and the Cantonese versions] The tunes are perhaps not quite “classic” Disney, in the sense that they don’t stay in your brain for years after, to explode at the most inappropriate moments. They’re still fairly hummable though, and Jerry Goldsmith’s Eastern-tinged score compliments the similarly Oriental-flavoured animation well. The makers clearly did a lot of research, thought it does have to be said, the film does not exactly portray Chinese culture in a particularly good light; Mulan, the heroine, is shown as rebelling against it in almost every way. One reviewer describes its basic theme as, “a woman with western values overcoming the oppression of a backwards Chinese civilization.” Ouch.

However, personally, I’d say the value of having a clearly non-Caucasian heroine (a first for any Disney film) outweighs relatively minor quibbles about subtext. It may be the last great hand-drawn animated feature from the studio which invented the genre, and all but defined it for sixty years, so I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this as an empowering and highly entertaining tale for children – of any age, but especially those too young to read subtitles. There aren’t many action heroine films our entire family loves, but Mulan is definitely high on the list.

Dir: Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook
Star: Ming-na Wen, Eddie Murphy, B.D.Wong, Soon-Tek Oh

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

  By

★★★★
“Apocalypse NOW…”

The history of cinema has provoked many furious arguments as to which is better. Dracula or Frankenstein? Moore or Connery? Alien or Predator? And now we can add another to the list: tank-top or bustier? For we have not one, but two action heroines here, both finely-honed killing machines, with slightly different though similarly-slutty tastes in clothing. That really tells you all you need to know about this sequel, which never lets practical issues like plot – or costume – get in the way of the gratuitous violence.

Numerous reviews have complained about the lacklustre scripting, poor characterisation, etc to be found here. Hello! It’s based on a computer game! And a proper one, about shooting zombies, not wussy nonsense like finding jobs or raising children, fans of The Sims please note. Plus, it’s a sequel to boot, and if you expect sensitive drama from any film whose title contains the words “Evil” and “Apocalypse”, you simply need to get out more. It’s called expectation management, people.

The tactic here was simple and clear. Keep all the good stuff from the original, e.g. Milla Jovovich, zombie dobermans, and throw a few new elements in, this time including some stuff which, unlike Jovovich’s character, Alice, actually has a significant connection to the game. Hence, you get Jill Valentine (Guillory), a special forces chick who, in most other movies, would be the heroine, but is here largely to show you how Alice v2.0 has been improved beyond human. It’s reminiscent of how Ripley, by Alien Resurrection, had partly been transformed into what she was fighting, and Alice is now faster, stronger and cooler than she was last time – which is something of an achievement in itself.

The story more or less picks up immediately after the events of the original, with the zombiefying T-virus now loose in Raccoon City – hence an almost infinite supply of the undead. The Umbrella Corporation quarantine the place, but the daughter of their top scientist is still inside. He tracks down the human survivors inside and tells them if they rescue his offspring, he’ll get them all out of the city before it’s turned into a mushroom cloud. But just to spice things up, the top Umbrella creation, Nemesis, is now also loose in the city, using it as a testing ground.

There are, I will admit, absolutely no surprises in the plot at all. When someone comes up to “rescue” a small child who is facing resolutely away from the camera, you know that little girl will inevitably turn out to be a zombie. But guess what? I really wouldn’t have it any other way. Much like Shakespeare(!), this kind of film isn’t about unexpected twists in the plot, it’s about the execution, and that’s where this film delivers solidly.

Or at least, mostly solidly – let’s get the criticism out of the way first. Witt wants to stick the camera right in there, when what we want to do is fully appreciate the grace and athleticism of the heroines, not suffer from motion sickness. Also: hello, “R”-rating? Presumably this was for the language, topless undead hookers, and Milla’s scarily-large nipples (Chris pointed out they’re almost larger than her breasts), because it certainly wasn’t for the gore. These monsters were almost bloodless, even when shot through the head or exploded by hand-grenade – the latter would seem dangerous when you’re dealing with a highly-infectious, fluid-borne disease, but I’m quibbling here.

 Otherwise, the film takes the right pieces and puts them together in the right order, which is a good deal more than we’ve come to expect from any big-budget Hollywood action movie [Yes, I’m talking to you, Van Helsing and LXG]. The Nemesis monster is one creepy-looking dude, and Alice’s encounters with him are the stuff of nightmares. Another highlight is the return of the lickers, in a church through whose stained-glass windows Alice comes crashing on a motorbike, at the start of one very cool sequence. [Incidentally, to answer the “Why did she do that?” question raised by many reviewers, I assume she was attracted to the scene by the gunshots.]

As mentioned, the undead attack canines are also back, and just as bad as before; this time, it’s mostly Valentine who has to deal with them, at least until the end, when Alice effortlessly one-ups her rival yet again. We briefly muttered “catfight!” under our breath, and it’d certainly have been fun to see Jill and Alice go toe-to-toe, but the outcome of that would be so predictable – Alice would win, without even breaking sweat – that its omission is understandable. The supporting characters do their job adequately; Mike Epps is the comic relief, something not really present in the first film, and manages the tricky task of doing the job without becoming annoying. Oded Fehr is somewhat irrelevant as a soldier also after the scientist’s daughter, while Sandrine Holt, playing journalist Terri Morales, is understandably overshadowed by Jill and Alice. On the Umbrella side…blah evil corporate drone, blah misunderstood scientist blah, blah. We don’t care – and nor should we.

Looking around, there seemed to be two kinds of reviews for this: those who ‘get’ what’s intended here, and those who clearly don’t – partly, no doubt, powered by the fact that this wasn’t screened in advance for critics. Hell hath no fury like Roger Ebert forced to pay for his supersized bag of candy…  How you react to the film will likely be similarly split; given you’re on this site, I suspect the odds are in favour of Apocalypse, for its strong intuitive grasp of the ingredients necessary in a good action heroine, and its delivery thereof. Sure, the plot is some way short of perfect, and more/better-filmed fights would have been welcome, but the makers do a sound job of distracting you from the flaws, and there’s enough worthwhile stuff that will stick in your mind, to put it in the top quarter of this summer’s popcorn flicks.

Dir: Alexander Witt
Star: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Mike Epps

"Enough worthwhile stuff that will stick in your mind to put it in the top quarter of this summer’s popcorn flicks."

Blood Gnome

  By

★★
“BDSM, invisible monsters and Julie Strain. Who could ask for more? Well, actually…”

If you’ve been thinking, “What I want is a cheap monster movie set in the fetish community,” this one’s for you. Crime scene photographer Daniel (Bilancio) discovers his video camera can see ugly little creatures, which have been slaughtering S+M fans as they engage in their games. Turns out they belong to Darlinda (Walton), an evil dominatrix who keeps a tentacled monster in a box; it gives birth to the little critters, and she uses the placentas to make a drug. Can he convince others of their existence before his girlfriend (and nice dominatrix, contradiction in terms though that may seem) Divinity (Pursley) gets eaten at the big S+M party? Which, despite a sleeve to the contrary, is actually the only scene in which Strain and the Porcelain Twinz appear.

Trying to get others to take a threat they can’t see seriously, rather than thinking you’re mad, is a neat concept. Unfortunately, it’s only used in a couple of scenes, and instead we get any number of bondage sequences which, unless you’re into that kind of thing, will likely prove extremely tedious. Darlinda does kick butt to a surprising degree (which is why it’s included here) – according to the making-of documentary, Walton is a stuntwoman, though her other IMDB credits appear to be zero. The creators cheerfully admit to its “microbudget”, and I suspect the DVD commentary is probably more interesting than the film itself. Certainly, the lack of explanation offered for almost anything is disappointing, though the gore, toothed monster vagina, and copious breasts do fully justify the movie’s R-rating.

I love cheap films that make up for in imagination and with what they lack in budget – after all, that quality costs nothing. As its inspired title shows, Blood Gnome is not totally bereft in these departments, but the over-riding interest in leveraging events into an S+M setting, for no visible reason, hampers and damages the result considerably. Change that, put some more thought into the script, and the fun B-movie trapped here might just have clawed its way out.

Dir: John Lechago
Star: Vincent Bilancio, Melissa Pursley, Ri Walton, and Julie Strain (but only just…)

Velvet Smooth

  By

★★
“That’s Ms. Smooth to you…though that’s the last word to describe this atrocity!”

Let’s be perfectly clear about this: at least one, possibly more, of the points awarded to this movie only apply if you, like us, are connoisseurs of the trash aesthetic. If you delight in bad acting, poor action and technical ineptness, this is for you. Otherwise…consider yourself warned. Not to be confused with Jeannie TNT Jackson Bell, this was Johnnie Hill’s only film – and when you’ve seen it, you’ll understand why. She plays Velvet, a private investigator brought in, along with her two female sidekicks (also adept in martial arts, even if we are redefining the word “adept” here), when someone starts encroaching on a crime lord’s territory. Who is behind this? And who is behind them?

From a story point of view, it’s actually not too bad, with a bunch of twists that keep things interesting. In every other way, however, it plunges into the Marianas trench of quality; witness, in particular, the boom-mike, beginning at 27:47 minutes in, which gets screen time that most actresses would kill for. The fight sequences are woeful; half are shot from such long range, you can barely see what’s going on, and the rest…well, when you see them, you’ll know why the makers opted for the long-range technique. The foley work is especially inadequate, in particular, the sound of a drum that accompanies every punch to flesh. On at least two occasions, we had to rewind the DVD repeatedly, because we literally didn’t believe what we were seeing – and not in a “Michelle Yeoh, train, bike, Supercop” way.

I guess it’s inevitable that even such a shallow genre as blaxploitation would be a target for cheap knock-offs, made by the talentless. About the only point of vague interest is a guest slot for the wonderfully-named Emerson Boozer, 2-time Pro Bowl running back for the Jets. It’s clear why his acting career didn’t take off, and in general, you wonder how such shoddy work could ever have been considered adequate. The old saw – this movie wasn’t released, it escaped – comes to mind. I think it’d have been better if Velvet Smooth had been held in Alcatraz.

Dir: Michael Fink
Star: Johnnie Hill, Owen Watson, Frank Ruiz, Emerson Boozer

Last Stand

  By

★★½
“The godlike genius of Lloyd Simandl strikes again…”

Okay, ‘godlike genius’ is stretching it a lot, but if you arrive at this unofficial Escape From New York remake knowing what to expect (low budget, mild sleaze, lame action, recycling of footage from other movies), it’s still entirely possible to enjoy it. After America breaks into feudal states, escaped drug lord Kragov (Matacena) runs Washington DC, rounding up women of breeding age and shipping them to Utah(!). Though our capital appears now to be populated entirely by middle-Europeans, with not an African-American in sight (like a lot of Simandl’s work, it was filmed in the Czech Republic).

Into this comes Kate Major (Rodger), a soldier doing time for killing her CO. [The prison footage looks very like that in Fatal Conflict, made by Simandl the same year. Damned if I’m gonna check though!] Krakov has found the nuclear football, giving him access to all US missiles, so she must switch it into safe simulation mode before he can work out the codes, and also rescue the head of the UN’s son (Barker), who leads the resistance – all ten of them. It’s complete nonsense, of course. Krakov violates many ‘Evil Overlord’ rules (if I become an Evil Overlord, anyone who has something to tell me, and me alone, will be made to do so via CCTV) and Major should simply kill him. There’s also no reason why Major – released from 20-to-life hard labour – doesn’t just head off in the opposite direction at top speed, rather than putting her life at risk.

Luckily, the villains, Kragov and sidekick Tanya (Brozova) are a good deal of fun, even if Kragov’s lines are often unintelligible; Brozova would be great as Ilsa if they ever revive She-Wolf of the SS. Barker is unforgivably bland, but Rodger does have a certain spark and presence, though gets little chance to show it here. The sum of all this is undeniable trash; you may, or may not, regard that as any kind of endorsement. As an aside, keep an eye out for the graffiti on the walls, including comments like ‘Give Idaho Back to the Serbs’…

Dir: Lloyd Simandl
Star: Kate Rodger, Josh Barker, Orestes Matacena, Katerina Brozova

The Killing Club

  By

★★★½
“Girl-power, through accidental death and penguins.”

When Jamie (Bowen) accidentally kills her unpleasant boyfriend, it seems her life is over. Luckily, the first person on the scene is Laura (Lords), a latent psychopath who seizes the chance to fulfill her lifelong ambition: killing men who treat women badly. As she says, “Ridding the world of irredeemable men is what I was born to do.” Neither Jamie nor the third initiate into their little secret, Arlene (Maxey), are quite as enthusiastic, but despite this, Laura sets to work with a vengeance, and things start spiralling out of control.

As a black comedy, this works pretty well, even if it’s more a mid-grey than true black; it tries to have its cake and still keep Jamie sympathetic. The necessary convolutions weaken things substantially, and you can’t go at the genre anything less than full-throttle. There is one glorious moment, involving penguins, which reaches the necessary level of dark absurdity; otherwise, Lords is the only one to grab onto her part and go for it with the necessary gusto. She delivers even the most banal lines, such as ordering food in a diner, with remarkable zest, though I leave readers to consider the irony inherent in a former underage porn starlet playing someone out to kill abusive men…

And, make no mistake: the men here are shallow and loathsome. I think writer Amy Kiehl (who cameos as a waitress) must have had some very bad experiences with the male sex; one character goes from his introduction, to us yelling, “Die! Die!” at the TV, to his demise in under five minutes. If why Jamie hasn’t genuinely murdered her boyfriend is never explained, a certain amount of comedic exaggeration is par for the course in this kind of film. It’s a pleasant diversion, rather than anything more or less satisfactory.

Dir: Antoni Stutz
Star: Julie Bowen, Traci Lords, Dawn Maxey, Neal McDonough
a.k.a. You’re Killing Me