Tag: USA

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

The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries, Volume II, by Karen Koehler

  By

★★★
“Truly a book of two halves, Brian.”

Coincidentally, a year after the first collection, I find the time to read volume two; this contains two stories rather than two-and-a-fragment, but weighs in at about forty pages or so longer. Same price though, I am pleased to note… The first, Legion, takes our FBI agent and her semi-vampiric colleagues off to the post-flood city of New Orleans where a demonic force has been unleashed, which is capable of transferring its presence from one body to another. Hmmm…sounds not unlike Fallen, perhaps? That aside, I did enjoy this one thoroughly: the pace is good and, if the eventual destination of the entity is not perhaps a surprise (it’s quite close to the pair, shall we say), it makes for some great set-pieces. The best of these involves a church where the possessed victim is resting up, which results in a hellacious battle that’s genuinely exciting. The story elements are tidied up nicely too, leaving this a self-contained and effective tale.

However, despite the second story possessing a great title – The Phantom of the Soap Opera – I was much less engaged by it. The set of a daytime TV drama is plagued by mysterious ‘accidents’ of an occult nature, which leads to the pair re-uniting in order to investigate, triggered by a call from an old friend of Scarletti’s. There is just not enough meat on the bones of this one, though perhaps Koehler wasn’t happy with it either, since there is a lot of back-story added here. Indeed, to such a degree that it burdens the main characters, and its relevance to the main plot is doubtful. I’m also growing rather disillusioned by Blackburn’s relationship to the Jackal, the full vampire who saved her life in volume one; Koehler is treading dangerously close here, to the cliches which eventually sank the Anita Blake series.

Another small peeve was a surprising number of typos in the volume, such as “a traveling bad slung over one shoulder.” Though I’m far from immune to these myself [even if you can only have the ‘u’ in ‘colour’ when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, dammit], and I did smile at one, when Blackburn was served by a “gun-chewing waitress.” I’d be sure to leave her a good tip. Overall, not quite as good as the first compilation, though that’s largely down to the second story – individually, Legion rates a ****, but Phantom only **, getting stuck in a morass of its own making. While that leaves the review ending on a disappointing note, Blackburn remains an engaging heroine, and if Koehler can get back to more action-oriented writing in the next volume (as she showed herself eminently capable of in Legion), I’ll be waiting eagerly.

Hard Candy

  By

★★★★
“More threatening than girls with guns: teenage girls with scalpels. Gentlemen: cross your legs.”

This is almost unbearably creepy, in two different directions: however, it’s almost impossible to discuss this film in any meaningful way without spoilers, so you have been warned. The danger of online predators is well-known, and when fourteen-year old Hayley (Page) agrees to meet photographer Jeff (Wilson), who is in his thirties, alarm bells are ringing. They reach a piercing level after she goes to his house, starts drinking vodka and flirting outrageously. However, the tables are abruptly turned: she’s spiked Jeff’s drink, and he wakes to find himself tied-up, and entirely at Hayley’s mercy. He soon finds out that’s a quality she is very definitely not inclined to provide.

So, who do we sympathize with? The paedophile? Or the psychopath? Pick your poison, and it’s the kind of bravely ambivalent film I love, for Jeff is far from the usual cliched portrayal of a child-molester: rather than a sleazy old man in a dirty mac, he’s charming, well-spoken and educated. Which makes him far more dangerous, of course. Though he meets his match in Hayley, and it’s a brilliant performance by Page. We have absolutely no idea whether any of what she says is true, regarding herself (is she 14, or is that part of her act?), her family or even the apparently-damning evidence she finds of Jeff’s paedophile tendencies. The last is perhaps an error on the film’s part, since it’s at its best when we’re less certain as to whether Jeff deserves the horrible fate Hayley has in store.

Oh, yes: horrible. Armed only with a medical textbook, a bag of ice and some sharp objects, she prepares to make sure that Jeff will not bother any other little girls again. Cue the film’s second, and most critical, mis-step, as it pulls a punch which would have made this an instant evil classic – you sense Takashi Miike, whose Audition this most closely resembles, might not have backed off. From here, the film does stray into implausible territory, with Jeff spurning several chances to escape, or overpower Hayley [who looks about 95 pounds]. However, that doesn’t really diminish from a film that has the guts to ask a lot of questions which seem to have easy answers, and then confront us with a reality that makes things more complex than we’d wish.

Dir: David Slade
Star: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson

Lady Gangster

  By

★★★
“An archetypal forties B-movie; a straightforward tale, briskly told.”

Having watched both Transformers and Miami Vice over the past week, it’s nice to see a film that doesn’t hang around: coming in at sixty-two minutes, Lady Gangster has hardly a line of dialogue that does not propel the story forward. Based on the play, Ladies They Talk About (previously a 1933 film starring Barbara Stanwyck), this centers on Dorothy Burton, member of a gang of bank-robbers. She takes the rap for one of their jobs, and goes to jail, but is also the only one who knows where the loot is hidden. Childhood friend Kenneth Phillips (Wilcox), now a renowned broadcaster, tries to help Dorothy get parole, but she has also made an enemy inside the prison, who is just as keen our heroine does not get released, and her former gang colleagues have their own interests, needless to say.

Made in 1942, there really weren’t very many films of that period which features female protagonists in this kind of role, and it deserves credit for that. The first half, in particular, is remarkably watchable today, though the plot does find itself badly-convoluted later on. There’s a lot to get through, and the film gallops on at such a heady pace, it feels almost like a trailer for itself. Made post-Hays Code, that obviously forced the makers to tone things down as far as content goes; despite the head warden’s protests that the jail is “neither a country club nor a concentration camp”, it’s certainly closer to the former. Emerson is great as the heroine – she’d go on to a long television career – and Jackie Gleason (The Honeymooners) also turns up as the gang’s getaway driver. Despite a daring escape from jail, she ends up taking a back-seat to Phillips and his two-fisted heroics at the finale, which is something of a shame, but undoubtedly a result of the era. Certainly remains a decent effort.

Dir: “Florian Roberts” [real name: Robert Florey]
Star: Faye Emerson, Frank Wilcox, Julie Bishop, Roland Drew

Hood Angels

  By

★½
“You’ll be a right Charlie if you bother with this one…”

I think I can safely say that this films fails miserably on just about every level. Now, I am probably not the target audience for this unashamedly ‘urban’ movie, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the works of Pam Grier. This, on the other hand… Three women (Brown, Nurse and Sha – though I’ve my suspicions that one of them might just be a man) are arrested under dubious circumstances, but are bailed out to investigate the murder of one’s brother, a rising rapper. They get employed at his record-label, the questionably-spelled Murda Boi records, to scope out the suspects. Was it his partner in the label? The sleazy CFO? Or the mail-room man?

I can cope with bad acting, if the action makes up for it. I can cope with bad action, given an interesting storyline. I can cope with a pedestrian script, as long as the performances enliven proceedings. when each aspect is more hideously inadequate than the next…I was reduced, for entertainment, to seeing how far I could jab my thumbs into my own eyeballs, without making them pop. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. However, even the 99 cents I paid for this DVD would appear sufficient to have funded most of the production – with probably enough left over to buy acting lessons for the performers most in need of them [including two-thirds of the leading laideez – Brown is tolerable in this regard]

But I think it’s probably the action sequences which are the nadir of this film’s elements, carried out at the pace of a Vicodin-addicted sloth, and with the originality and fluidity of a Republican National Congress. The DVD cover and tagline are particularly wide of the mark, since only one of the trio holds a gun at any point, and that’s just to take it away from a villain. Okay, given the price, I wasn’t exactly expecting…well, anything. However, I haven’t been so underwhelmed by a movie in a very long time. That’s 85 minutes of my life I’ll never have back.

Dir: Paul Wynne
Stars: Kenia Brown, Allison Nurse, Kita Sha, Erica Goings

Nightmare at Bitter Creek

  By

★★
“Made for television, and no better than you’d expect from that.”

Nita Daniels (Wagner) and her three girlfriends take a horseback trip up the mountain, expecting to meet their husbands at the top. However, the trip becomes a nightmare, as four members of the ‘Aryan Survivalist Brigade’ are holed up there, and decide to take out the women and their alcoholic guide, Ding (Skerritt). Initially, Ding takes the fore, but when he is injured it’s up to Nita and her pals to fight back. This TVM struggles, largely because of the lack of justification for the white supremacists: the entire party they attack are about as Aryan as they come, so why, exactly, should they be targeted for elimination? It would have been far more plausible had the party been ethnically-mixed, or even their guide been black – or, heck, Jewish.

Instead, the threat here is…well, a bit crap, really. They’re all but entirely faceless, clearly no good at marksmanship, and even the biggest of them is no match for a hungover Ding. Understandable, the TV-movie limitations restrict how “nasty” they could be shown, but there’s no sense of threat. It probably doesn’t help that the best actor in the film is Buster the dog, probably because his motivations are the most clear. The four women rarely get beyond the most shallow of caricatures, without any background to make you care for them – but I must admit, things do pick up significantly in the last twenty minutes, as the heroines find themselves trapped in a canyon, and Allison (Cassidy) needs to grow a spine if she’s to save her friends.

It’s not a terrible concept; this just needs to be executed with more conviction, and the medium of the television movie is probably not the right one for the story. That doesn’t permit the necessary level of dread, which would be something no TV company would want to show, especially back in 1988, when this was made. Finally, a small note on truth in advertising. Of all the facets depicted on the sleeve (right), there are certainly no bears and no lynchings. Nor is there any mention of the Confederacy or the Ku Klux Klan. Skerritt and Wagner, I will give you, but I’m not quite sure what the middle image on the right is supposed to depict.

Dir: Tim Burstall
Stars: Lindsay Wagner, Tom Skerritt, Constance McCashin, Joanna Cassidy

Resident Evil: Extinction

  By

★★★
“Extinction event.”

Has it really been three years since the last installment? Guess so. Therefore, about time for the most durable of the video-game to movie franchises, to pop up with another entry. Things continue to go from bad to worse as far as Planet Earth is concerned, with the T-virus, which spread from the complex to Raccoon City last time, now infecting the entire world. A few survivors roam the wastelands, such as in a convoy led by Claire Redfield (Larter), unable to stay in one place too long, because the zombies will locate them. Meanwhile, Dr. Isaacs (Glen) is working on reversing the virus, or at least making the zombies docile – though his approach to scientific teamwork leaves a little to be desired, shall we say. He also has a pit where he disposes of his raw material, an aspect that reminded me of the original Aeon Flux short films.

Into this comes Alice (Jovovich), who vanished off the grid, when she realised the Umbrella Corporation were tracking her. She gets lured in by a fake distress call, but after disposing of some zombie dobermans, eventually joins Redfield’s crew, just in time to save them from an attack by zombie crows [Mulcahy clearly having been inspired by The Birds, though I can’t help wondering how they got the cool contact lenses into the avian predators’ eyes.] They hear rumours of sanctuary in Alaska, and decide to head there – that requires a refuelling stop in what’s left of Vegas. However, Umbrella have been alerted by Alice’s burgeoning psychic powers and have left a nasty surprise…

S’ok. Mulcahy is no stranger to franchise cinema, having done the first couple of Highlander films, and the harsh desert lighting and exterior landscape is a nice contrast to the usual, dark, claustrophobic approach adopted by most Z-flicks. His experience is of particular use in the action sequences, where he does a better job of avoiding the cinematic excesses, in which Alexander Witt indulged, too frequently, last time up. The script is merely workmanlike: it feels too much like a series of cool set-pieces joined in the editing bay, rather than springing organically from the storyline.

The main problem, I feel, is that giving Alice mental powers detracts from the physical side of action, which has always been a major part of this series’s appeal: watching Jovovich kick zombie butt. The Las Vegas battle is unquestionably the highlight of the film as far as that goes, with Alice adopting a no-nonsense, slice-and-dice approach, that’s a gleeful joy to watch. After it, however, things go somewhat wonky: the entire Redfield subplot is airily waved away, and then there’s the inevitable boss level fight – this time against the Tyrant [if you’ve played the games, you probably know what that is, which puts you one-up on me], a somewhat rubbery, tenticular beast that is not among Patrick Tatopoulos’s best work.

Compared to the fight against the Nemesis in Apocalypse, this is a major disappointment, largely consisting of them hurling psionic shock-waves at each other. I’m sorry. This isn’t the Resident Evil I signed up for. I signed up for the one with the knock-down, drag-out punchfests, not the Harry Potter-esque BS. There’s a nice sense of symmetry, in that the battle ends in the corridor with the laser protection system, but the mechanism with which it ends is disappointing, rather than having Alice beat the Tyrant. Certainly, the lamest climactic battle of the three films.

Things do perk up at the very end. As in the first two films, there’s a grand final shot, which leaves you eagerly anticipating the next part – in this case, presumably called Resident Evil: Globapocarnarmagediediedie. Certainly, I wouldn’t be averse to seeing a fourth installment, though I would be inclined to send the makers a stiff memo before they begin production. Item #1. Try and come up with some ideas of your own. As well as the above-mentioned Hitchcock thievery, the film also borrows wholesale from Day of the Dead, Mad Max 2 and Mad Max 3, plus Alien: Resurrection. #2. After the apocalypse, the survivors will have plenty of Sony products with which to work. Really. Ease off on the unsubtle product-placement.

#3. Where was Jill Valentine? Okay, we’re kind of fond of Oded Fehr (he’s very good in Sleeper Cell), who does return as Carlos Olivera. And Larter, whom you’ll recognise from the first couple of Final Destination films, isn’t bad in her role, with a couple of kick-ass moments (left); there’s a possibility RE4 may concentrate on her. However, Sienna Guillory was better than either of them, and her unexplained absence this time is disappointing. Guess she asked for too much money or something. Finally, and most importantly, #4: skip the mental telepathy nonsense, no matter how much Milla Jovovich may want to wrinkle her forehead and lob psychic blasts at things. Just make her kick ass. The ending does give plenty of scope for development: without giving too much away, Alice could become the Swiss Army Knife of dispatching undead, with a variety of useful options. Overall, while some way short of perfect, this isn’t bad – and after some serious disappointments in recent years, it’s just good to see an action heroine back at the top of the box-office.

Dir: Russell Mulcahy
Star: Milla Jovovich, Iain Glen, Ali Larter, Oded Fehr

"After some serious disappointments in recent years, it’s just good to see an action heroine back at the top of the box-office."

Movin’ Too Fast

  By

★★★
“It’s like Thelma and Louise. Meets The Hitcher. In Wolf Creek.”

Yes, while there may not be a lot new here, the combination is at least somewhat interesting, and it’s put together solidly enough. Two students, Nina (Alexander) and Melissa (Terry) are on a cross-country drive, when they get stopped for speeding. Melissa makes a pass at the cop, but it’s an encounter that goes badly wrong, and she ends up beating him up with his own night-stick. When the duo get back on the road however, they find themselves being pursued by a police-car, which clearly has very bad intentions: with gas running low and – inevitably – no cellphone service to be found, can they survive?

Despite the lack of names in the cast, there was clearly some significant cash involved in this project; some fairly brutal destruction of automobiles, and helicopter footage too, help give this a sense of quality. We were rather less contrived by the dialogue, which sometimes seemed so artificial and contrived as to be utterly forced. There were a few moments when the plot had us rolling our eyes too, such as when the girls, wandering around in the middle of nowhere, stumble onto a house that happens to be…well, let’s just say, “What are the odds against that?” The villain, for reasons necessary to the plot, remains entirely anonymous and that makes him a far less scary adversary that, say, Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher, who gave absolute evil a very human face.

Still, when things get rolling, especially in the final third, there’s a good sense of momentum and “anything can happen”, which overcomes many of the shortcomings. The final showdown would seem a bit of a cheap ripoff from Death Proof…except that Movin’ dates back to 2005, so actually pre-dates Tarantino’s grindhouse homage. Which is interesting, given QT’s fondness for wholesale thievery in the plot department. Indeed, that also means it pre-dates Wolf Creek, though you don’t deserve a free pass just because your movie failed to find distribution for two years. Overall, though, not too bad, and despite some eye-rolling, we were entertained enough.

Dir: Eric Chambers
Stars: Marquita Terry, Layla Alexander, Matthew Glave
a.k.a. Lost in Plainview