★★
“Cover not necessarily representative.”
While technically a 1993 release, the copyright date on this is five years earlier. That seems about right, because a more eighties movie, you would be hard pushed to find. The hair! The synth score! The fashions! But, to be fair, this makes it ahead of its time in some ways. It definitely predates Heathers, with which it shares a number of elements in common. It takes place in small-town Texas, where Lincoln High School is home to a group of female vigilantes called The Sisterhood. They take it upon themselves to act as moral enforcers, punishing with violence those who sleep around, take drugs, etc. Their latest recruit is Misty (Greene), recently arrived in town.
However, Misty is barking mad, the result of a lifetime of indoctrination by her evangelical and fundamentalist minister father. While The Sisterhood go no further than beating up those they find guilty, Misty is… more enthusiastic. The predatory lesbian gym teacher? Stabbed and pushed off a roof. The rapist football player? Suffocated and left dangling from the goal-posts. Detective Bill Griffin (Campitelli) doesn’t know what to make of it. Not least because his wife, Molly (Gebron), is currently undercover at the school, trying to bust open a drug ring. You’d think that might have merited attention from The Sisterhood, but apparently not. I guess they are too busy holding quasi-Satanic initiation ceremonies, which look they might have strayed in from the director’s cut of Spinal Tap.
Molly isn’t exactly convincing as a teenager, despite dressing from the “Sexy Punk Rocker” aisle at Party City. But that’s alright, because the pupils at the school also look closer to their mid-life crises. Naturally, she ends up becoming one of the targets for Misty’s big finish, after she gets kicked out of The Sisterhood for being too extreme. There is certainly a lot to unpack here, and it definitely feels like there are a plot or two in excess of what the director could handle. In more skilled hands, this would definitely have had potential as a cult classic, mixing religion, morality and violence. But this was apparently Watkins’s debut, and little of the potential is realized.
He doesn’t even have the decency to deliver gratuitous nudity. I mean, staging a meet for the drugs outside of a topless bar? Sheesh. That’s your B-movie license revoked, right there. Greene is likely the best thing here, selling both of her personalities effectively: shame this was her only film. The rest of the cast vary from competent enough to “Was there really nobody else available for the role?” It is just in desperate need of executing its ideas with considerably more energy than Watkins can bring. Lean into the insanity more, play up the exploitation elements (for despite the title, it is neither brutal nor furious) and this would have the potential to become one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite movies. Someone needs to remake it along those lines.
Dir: Fred P. Watkins
Star: Lisa-Gabrielle Greene, Tom Campitelli, Annette Gebron, Karen Eppers


Bella Thorne’s struggle to appear in a film which reaches three stars on this site, continues unabated. While probably not helped by my tendency to confuse her with Kristen Stewart, that’s five attempts now. Although, for a minute here, I thought this might be the one where she finally cracked it, with a potentially interesting first half. But it could not sustain itself, and as the final credits rolled, and I saw Guinevere Turner’s name as the co-writer… Yeah, it all made sense. I mean, she wrote
By pure coincidence, I watched this the same day as
Not to be confused with the other
This is a nasty and grim piece of work, after which you will probably feel like taking a shower. However, I actually mean this in a (grudgingly) complimentary fashion, because it’s clear that director and co-writer Hyett was aiming for exactly that. Well done, I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though, and this is not a film I have any interest in revisiting. It takes place in an unnamed part of the Balkans (though my money is on somewhere in Serbia), during the ethno-religious wars which tore apart the region in the late nineties. All manner of highly unpleasant things went on: here, it’s a brothel in which kidnapped women are forced to service militiamen.
This takes place in the ski resort of Park City, during the event it’s best known for: the Sundance Film Festival. Beginning with a plummet from a chair lift, the town is plagued by a series of “accidents” – quotes used advisedly. For they are actually the work of a female vigilante calling herself the Sword of Justice, and dedicated to punishing men for their crimes against her gender. On the other side is Belle Bannon, a former Marine, who had anger issues even before going into the military. Now a hunting guide and member of the ski patrol, she is determined to find and stop the killer.
Watching this one, I had a
I guess some credit is due here for going against type, at least. Molly Reese (Stack) is not your typical vigilante. She’s actually a doctor who works in an emergency room, and suffers a debilitating mental blow when her husband and daughter are both killed in an accident. She subsequently goes to a very dark place psychologically, telling her therapist she has thoughts about killing people. This is particularly unfortunate, after she is unable to save a local mob-boss, and his gang decide she is to blame. For Molly gets to put all those murderous impulses into action, under the guise of self-defense, and then proceeds to take the fight to the gangsters, all the while becoming increasingly unstable.
Written, directed by, and starring husband and wife team Sam and Johnna Hodge, this is the kind of film it would be easy to deride as poverty-row garbage from the bottom drawer. There’s precious little plot, some of the performances are painfully amateur, and it seems to exist mostly as a show-reel for spraying around corn syrup with red food colouring in it. And yet… If Chris and I made a movie – something we have discussed – it might well end up being not too dissimilar to this. On the other hand, if we had a spare $55,000 lying around – the budget here, according to the IMDb – we’d probably go on a nice holiday instead.
It appears that Korean educational establishments seem to have the same problems as Japanese ones – at least, going by the way they are depicted in the respective country’s movies. I certainly would not want to be a teacher in either country. Here, Mooyoung High has an award-winning anti-bullying policy. It’s a complete fabrication, as both staff and pupils are fully aware. The roost is run by Han Soo-kang (Lee), whose parents hold so much influence, he can do whatever he wants. And what he wants to do is run a reign of terror with his clique. He already drove a substitute teacher to commit suicide, and is now focused on subjecting Go Jin-hyeong (Park J-w) to daily torture.