Tag: USA

Set It Off

  By

★★★★
“Even-handed blaxploitation, mixes brawn and emotions to good effect”

After a couple of less-than-perfect entries in the ‘robbery girls’ subgenre, this came as a refreshing blast, with decent characterisation and a storyline that goes past the painfully obvious. Mind you, the moral remains the same – crime doesn’t pay – but at least the road taken to get there is interesting and complex. These women all have their own reasons for wanting to rob banks: getting back at society for perceived injustice, supporting a child, or simply for kicks. Interestingly, you can see both their point of view and society’s, the latter most clearly in a surprisingly sympathetic cop, Strode (John C. McGinley). The results are more a product of tragic circumstance than anything else.

We’ve seen elsewhere this can easily slip into cliche; for the most part it doesn’t, despite a lack of character development. Only Stony (Pinkett) and her relationship with a bank executive really counts – and if you can’t see where that’s going, you’re not paying attention. Still, there’s plenty to admire, not least a delightful homage to The Godfather. One way or another, we care about everyone, from extremely out lesbian Cleo (Latifah) to the brains of the gang, Frankie (Fox). The action isn’t ignored either, most notably the whirlwind event that is their first robbery; at the end, I discoved I’d been holding my breath. Despite dialogue which sounds occasionally as if it was in a foreign language, this definitely goes beyond a black audience.

Dir: F. Gary Gray
Star: Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise

Chopper Chicks in Zombietown

  By

★★
“Life’s a bitch and then you see this movie.”

The Cycle Sluts motorcycle gang roar into town, to the consternation and distaste of locals, who drive them off. This decision is regretted soon afterwards, when they come under siege from the walking dead, raised to work in the local mine – a plot stolen from Hammer’s Plague of the Zombies – by the local mortician (Calfa) and his midget assistant. Luckily, the girls are still near, and can assist the townsfolk, including Billy Bob Thornton, who plays a redneck hick, proving it’s possible to be stereotyped before getting famous.

There are two kinds of Troma films: those with fab titles that are fun to watch (Rabid Grannies), and those with fab titles that are unendurably tedious, e.g. Surf Nazis Must Die. Despite a few nice moments, this one leans toward the latter. As a biker movie, it’s pretty tame, though some effort is put into given them background for the characters, and Catherine Carlen is undeniably fun to watch as Sluts leader Roxy. As a zombie pic, it’s nothing special either, there’s no real sense of threat and only the odd effective moment of gore. It works best as a dark spoof, such as when they lure the ghouls into church, using a group of blind orphans singing O Holy Night as bait. The midget (Ed Gale) gets most of the best lines: “If God had wanted me to do normal stuff, He would have made me look like normal people.”

The horror comedy is a tricky genre to pull off properly, and this doesn’t manage it, being neither horrific nor funny enough. File beside Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters and Femme Fontaine: Killer Babe For The CIA in the Troma catalog.

Dir: Dan Hoskins
Star: Catherine Carlen, Jamie Rose, Lycia Naff, Don Calfa

Barbarian Queen

  By

★★★
“Not exactly family viewing, yet energetic in a dumbly fun way. Lana Clarkson, RIP…”

With the untimely death of Lana Clarkson (legal advisers suggested we not use “murder by a crazed record producer”), this takes on a certain poignant quality, especially when she uses lines like, “I’ll be no man’s slave and no man’s whore.” Clarkson pioneered sword-swinging feminism well before Xena, and while no-one is going to mistake this for high art, it gallops along at a fine pace – lasting barely 70 minutes, it could hardly do otherwise.

Clarkson plays Amathea, whose wedding day is rudely interrupted when her village is burned and groom (Zagarino) captured into gladiatorial slavery. She sets out to rescue him, along with sidekick Estrild (Shea, who’d go on to direct Poison Ivy), and traumatised sister Taramis (Dunlap). Sneaking into the villain’s city, she teams up with the local rebels and convinces the gladiators they have a chance at freedom. They also get get caught and tortured. A lot. Chuck in numerous rape scenes and you wonder what audience it’s aimed at. But the heroines are better than you might expect; despite some 80’s hair, there are some convincing bits of action, in particular a fight by a river. Amathea’s method of convincing the torturer to free her is also unique in cinematic history, as far as I’m aware (if I’m wrong, please, let me wallow in my ignorance).

Producer Corman continues his ability to find cheap talent, though the “destined for greater glory” name is heard and not seen – the music comes from Christopher Young, who’d go on to score films such as The Shipping News. James Horner’s Battle Beyond the Stars work also crops up, but when you write for Corman, you expect this kind of thing.

Dir: Hector Olivera
Star: Lana Clarkson, Katt Shea, Dawn Dunlap, Frank Zagarino

Backflash

  By

★★★
“Interesting characters, in search of a better setting.”

Harley (Esposito) comes out of prison, and links up with timorous video store owner Ray (Patrick), who must impersonate her boyfriend in order to collect $2m stashed in a safe-deposit box. The cash was swindled from mob money-shuffler Gin (Meaney) – understandably he’s keen to get it back before his boss notices. You will not be surprised to hear that hardly anyone in this film is quite what they seem.

Indeed, even the places aren’t what they appear. The second half is set in Williams, Arizona which, by obscure coincidence, I visited three days before discovering it was in this movie. Or rather, a substitute that in no way resembles Williams. Okay, 99% of viewers wouldn’t notice, but it shows a lack of attention to detail; see also the motel where Ray’s smoking room clearly has a “No smoking” sign on the door. Must try harder, folks.

This borderline entry lacks action, though the heroine’s demolition job on a henchman is brisk and brutal. It’s her attitude which qualifies it for inclusion here, creating an underlying sense that things are always about to go off. The plot provides the expected twists, though Jones cheats by editing to hide information from the viewer. What really rescues the movie are the characters, who all have their quirks, most notably Meaney’s gangster with a Christmas fetish. Chuck in Melissa Joan Hart as a fake mortician, and Michael J. Pollard playing a bank security guard, and these are people worthy of your time. Shame the same effort wasn’t applied elsewhere in the film.

Dir: Phil Jones
Star: Jennifer Esposito, Robert Patrick, Mike Hagerty, Colm Meaney

Sugar & Spice

  By

★★★
“Bring it On crashes head-first into Set It Off.”

“Get ready to cheer for the bad girls,” goes the tag-line, and despite an exterior fluffier than candy-floss, the message here is actually extremely subversive: crime does pay. This sets it apart from most other crime-chick flicks, which almost inevitably end in death, destruction and more conventional morality. Guess being a comedy allows you a certain latitude in such things. Head cheerleader Diane (Shelton) gets pregnant courtesy of jock Jack (Marsden); finding it impossible to make ends meet, she takes inspiration from Point Break and convinces her friends to rob the bank where she works. But they’re witnessed by Lisa, a girl on the B-squad…

Written, produced and directed by women, this fully hits its stride only after the robbery. There’s one shot of the team walking down a school corridor in slo-mo, while their fellow pupils, fully aware of their exploits, scurry to get out of the way. Backed by Juno Reactor’s entirely appropriate Pistolero, it’s fabulous, and you wish they’d developed the post-crime scenario further, not least because the ending is extremely limp. Before the raid, it’s a hit-and-miss satire with some excellent jabs, but too much shallow emoting and hugging. Though award bonus points for casting Sean Young as a jailed mother, and the character quirks keep it from becoming too dull.

Certainly not the best high-school studio satire ever (Heathers or Election), it’s likely the only one post-Columbine to feature semi-automatics, albeit in watered-down fashion. According to Mena Suvari, “It was really frustrating, because the movie we all signed on to do was very dark and very offensive, and while the finished movie is still that to a degree, it’s completely different.” One can only imagine what the original would have been like.

Dir: Francine McDougall
Star: Marley Shelton, Mena Suvari, James Marsden, Rachel Blanchard

Confessions of a Psycho Cat

  By

★★★½
“The Most Dangerous Game: distaff version.”

psychocatThis 1968 film is totally loony, but none the less entertaining – the subsequent addition of (extremely subdued) sex-party footage to spice it up and increase the running time, is really the film’s weakest ingredient. For the plot is intriguing enough as is: a rich but loopy socialite (Lord) offers three men $100,000 each, if they can survive her hunting them through New York for 24 hours. Easy enough to do, you’d think, but the neat thing is the way the villainess/heroine (it’s hard to say which, really!) uses her targets’ weaknesses to lure them into her sights. For example, one is a former championship wrestler and she taunts him with accusations of cowardice until he charges into her apartment. That victim is played by Jake La Motta, who was the real-life inspiration for Raging Bull, and his demise is entirely fitting, if amazingly surreal.

The acting on view is pretty basic, but does the job, and it lures the viewer in nicely. Lord chews the scenery with extreme prejudice, and there’s a fabulous flashback where we discover the origins of her character’s madness. These help tide you over the frequent and tedious nudity, though amusement can be had by seeing how crudely these scenes have been inserted. It all ends grimly, as you’d hope, and for a cheap exploitation flick, it’s really quite memorable. The DVD from Something Weird also offers other delights, including trailers for Ride the Wild Pink Horse and Olga’s House of Shame, plus an entire second-feature, Hot Blooded Woman, which is so awful as to be unwatchable. In comparison, Psycho Cat is a fine idea, ripe for a Hollywood remake – perhaps starring Liz Hurley or Angelina Jolie…

Dir: Herb Stanley
Star: Eileen Lord, Ed Brandt, Frank Grace, Jake La Motta

Convict 762

  By

★½
“In space, no-one can hear you dream…”

A good idea – even if one borrowed about equally from Pitch Black and Aliens – gets sucked into the void and drained of all life, thanks to some of the most turgid direction imaginable. A ship with an all-female crew has to land on a prison planet for fuel, but finds only two people left. Which is the mass murderer? Can they find out before they get picked off, one by one…?

It’s a premise with promise, but all the opportunities for tension get thrown away so badly, that the end result is simply dull and plodding. One example will suffice – when they’re exploring the planet, the guard left on board is attacked. Rather than rush to her rescue, in a thrilling race against time, the rest of the crew stroll back at a leisurely pace, all but pausing to admire the scenery. I fell asleep: not once, but three times…

On the plus side – and I confess to struggling here – it’s nice how the fully female crew is not deemed worthy of comment, nor is it exploited in obvious fashion. The actors do what they can, but Drago is such a scenery-chewing psycho, he’s either the world’s most obvious murderer, or the world’s most obvious red herring, and neither would come as any surprise. Let’s lay the blame for this one firmly at the door of Bercovici and sell the tape quickly on Ebay, before anyone sees this review.

Dir: Luca Bercovici
Star: Shannon Sturges, Billy Drago, Frank Zagorino

Black and White

  By

★★★½
“Training Day meets Basic Instinct”

Gina Gershon showed previous action heroine potential in Face Off; here, she moves a little further up that line with an effective whodunnit in which she plays a thoroughly unconventional homicide cop with a shady past. Cochrane is her rookie partner, who begins to suspect she may be the serial killer who is taking out the local garbage. There’s almost inevitably a sense of disappointment in twisty thriller like this one; when the film-makers reveal the real culprit, the viewer tends to feel let down. Black suffers less from this than most, though still requires some suspension of disbelief. The script, by the director and (one assumes, his brother) Leon Zeltser, crackles along nicely, with convincing dialogue and good pacing, revealing information at just the right rate to keep the audience guessing.

Must confess, seeing Gershon play a heterosexual takes some getting used to – c.f Bound and Showgirls – but she does an excellent job here, even if her best line remains the sexually ambivalent “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t want to fuck me?” The rest of the cast back her up well, in particular, Ron Silver, as Mr. Internal Affairs (and ex-lover), delivers his usual slimy turn, while Cochrane hits the right notes of bewilderment. Gershon’s character comes over more as a coiled spring than a loose cannon. Even sitting at a bus-stop, she looks primed to explode, but never really does. This lack of action is about the only thing stopping this from getting the seal of approval – otherwise, for the most part, this is a solid and effective thriller.

Dir: Yuri Zeltser
Star: Gina Gershon, Rory Cochrane, Ron Silver, Alison Eastwood

Toughwoman World Championships

  By

★★
“Just like the real thing – every bit as corrupt and tacky as professional boxing!”

If you’re not familiar with the Toughman concept, a brief summary: two amateur fighters, box it out for three one-minute rounds. The short duration means tactics are largely reduced to whaling away big-time, which makes a version of the sport suitable for the post-MTV generation. This pay-per-view special was a knockout tournament, with 16 female entrants from across the U.S…which naturally had me carping about the “world” in the title (clearly from the same parochial mind-set as “world series”).

Credit where credit is due, and that must go to the participants, who (mostly) carried themselves with a fair bit of dignity and grace; you could only admire their heart, tenacity and grit. It was gratifying to see that participants hadn’t been chosen on the basis of looks, though I do have to say that no-one weighing 275 lbs really deserves the nickname ‘Pretty Woman’. But that’s just my opinion, and I certainly wouldn’t argue the point with her. :-)

I said “mostly”; the sole exception was Leah Stuker, an arrogant ex-stripper. She didn’t even deserve to win her first-round bout – okay, one bad judging decision can be excused. She also got the decision in her next two bouts – let’s be charitable, and say they were close enough to be arguable. But in the final, against veteran Becki Levy (above, right), she barely landed a punch…and still triumphed. Perhaps her arrogance was because she knew all along she was going to win, providing she remained conscious. I wouldn’t have minded it being staged if, like the WWF, the other contestants had been in on it. They obviously weren’t, and were giving their all in the cause of a sham. Levy, Nicky Eplion, Cassandra Gieggar, even Paula ‘Pretty Woman’ Soap – they all deserved victory more than Stuker. I note with interest that Stuker had been the poster-girl on the Toughwoman site since before the contest took place. Just a coincidence, nothing to worry about…

It didn’t help that in-ring announcer (and Toughman owner) Art Dore and corner-interviewer Jimmy Smith both left trails of slime behind them in their interactions with the contestants. Outside, things were slightly better: Larry Michael was informative and non-patronising, but then, sitting next to Christie Martin would keep anyone in check. To Martin’s credit, she seemed to be seriously biting her tongue about the final result – I would personally have been delighted to pay a further $19.95, and see her give Stuker the serious kicking she deserved. It all left a bad, bad taste in the mouth, and pretty much guarantees I won’t buy any more of their PPV’s. Hey, if I want to see pre-arranged fights, Wrestlemania’s coming up…

From Leah ‘the Katz’ Stuker, 2nd May 2004
This is 2002 Toughwoman World Champion Leah Stuker – I was told how your site dogged me out. Well, why don’t you see it from my point of view. Yes, I had won and was very surprised that I won, until I watched the video after I got home. Then I saw how it was possible: if Becky deserved that fight, then she should have been doing some hitting, because the whole time, all she was trying to do was sit on me.

What’s really shitty is, I went in there to fight and win just like everyone else, and I had no-one sponsoring me, no-one training me, no-one but my family to back me. Then they decide to give me the name ‘stripper’ – something I did ten years before this, and the only reason they knew about that is because one of the corner men had seen me working a month before a fight I won in Montana. So all my family and friends got to see my name rubbed in the mud on national TV. I got 50 questions about that from my Dad, thanks to that asshole Art. If you read anything, my name was Leah ‘the Katz’ Stuker, not ‘the stripper’.

Needless to say everything I learned, I learned from the streets, books or even watching some TV bouts. How many girls can say they went in there with no formal training and no boxing coach whatsoever – just heart and strength! As for the pix on their website, I was told to get some done, because all the girls fighting were getting them posted on the site. I got some done, but they didn’t like the ones I sent – and since they paid the photographer, they picked which ones they liked.

If I knew I was going to win this thing, I sure would have gotten a lot less bruises and asked for a little more money, because 4 fights in 2 hours is not what I wanted to do. And if I was their “poster child” how come I never heard from Toughman or Art Dore ever again after this bout? Why did I get paid and never get any thing after this point, including this pro contract that I was supposed to get? Not one person from Toughman said they would ever have me go pro.

Since you were so sure I was on their side and so sure this fight was staged, then come to my house and tell my kids the 4 to 6 hours in the gym a day were for nothing; the learning I did on my own was for nothing; everything I did was for nothing. Leaving them for almost a week was for nothing since I am a very devoted mother and leaving them was the hardest thing I ever had to do!! Tell them that: because even if you assholes don’t think I deserved it, my boys think I am their biggest hero.

I cross a bunch of hurdles everyday and never look back to see if I knocked any down, only ahead to make sure the path is still there. Here’s to all who think I didn’t win – I won fair and square, have got the money, trophy and jacket to prove it, and am now back to being a single mother raising her boys on her own.

[With hindsight, it looks as if we were harsh on The Katz – though we still don’t feel she deserved to win, and suspect the organizers decided the winner beforehand (likely based on factors outside the ring), it seems that Stuker was trying every bit as hard as any other competitor and was an innocent victim – we apologise for suggesting otherwise. It sounds like she got screwed over too, and deserves sympathy for the treatment she received. Besides, any woman bringing up kids on their own is a heroine every single day…

Road Kill

  By

★★½
“Woman Bites Dog.”

Advertised with the fetching slogan, “Guns don’t kill people – she does”, this is a film about a film, specifically the graduation documentary being made by Alex (Palladino), who has the good fortune to live opposite hitwoman, Blue (Rubin). She just happens to be going on her final job, and agrees to let him and sound-man Lars (Jayne) come along. On the way, however, things come out of the closet about Blue’s background, and Alex finds himself crossing the line between documentarian and instigator.

There are certainly good ideas here, but not enough to keep you interested – Alex is a bland, uninteresting character with little to reveal beyond him almost becoming a pro-baseball player. Blue is better, but the details and mechanism of her job, its origins and her motivations are never made clear either. Lars is actually the most interesting character, a flakey artist with lactose intolerance, who doesn’t believe in daylight saving time. Lovely. There’s also a loan shark who specialises in student loans and a barman missing a toe. Oh, if only Alex were half as entertaining.

Rubin, given the chance, does a good job, though it’s only in the final confrontational scene that we get to see what she is really capable of doing. Until then, the job of assassin seems little more interesting than that of a travelling salesman – she drives cross-country, pop-pop, and drives home again. It’s all rather too prosaic, making it hard to see why Alex (or, indeed, the viewer), would want to get so involved. It certainly isn’t the glamour or the excitement.

Dir: Matthew Leutwyler
Star: Jennifer Rubin, Erik Palladino, Billy Jayne