Tag: vigilante

Act of Vengeance

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★★½
“How do you feel about forming a rape squad?”

By pure coincidence, I watched this the same day as Asking for It, and despite this being close to fifty years older and very, very dated, it’s still the superior movie. It ain’t great – or even good, to be clear. But as the poster suggests, it has no other aim than being a straightforward rabble-rousing group vigilante flick. Vengeance was released hot on the heels of Death Wish, which came out just a few weeks earlier in the summer of 1974. Here, Linda (Harris) is a victim of a serial rapist, who wears a hockey mask (six years before Jason in Friday the 13th) and makes his victims sing Jingle Bells (!).

‘The police are less than helpful, all but blaming her for the attack. However, when attending an identity line-up, Linda is able to meet other victims, and they band together to form a support group for women. Initially, this is through a phone helpline, accompanying victims to the police station, etc. They also take a self-defense class from a woman with a black belt in karate, Tiny (Lada Edmund Jr., who would go on to become, allegedly, the highest-paid stuntwoman in Hollywood). The women then escalate to taking direct action against a man who date-raped a woman, coating his dick in permanent blue dye (!!). But the group’s actions have drawn the attention of Mr. Hockey Mask.

His behaviour escalates as a result, attacking and strangling to death one of their friends, and he then begins targeting the squad specifically. He lures the women to an abandoned zoo – apparently, with some vague intention of pulling a five-for-one special, though the film is vague on the details. This is a bit of a problem throughout the film, with a number of points at which characters act in ways which are more necessary for the plot to happen, than in any way real people might behave. I’m also startled by the apparent complete lack of firearms in seventies America. Then there’s the film’s desire to be both empowering and sexy, e.g. the women plan their activities while lolling around topless in a hot-tub (!!! – and that’s enough exclamation points, I think).

Certainly, the assaults that pepper the early going in the film are likely more disturbing now, because they almost seem intended to be titillating – they are the reason why the film is still unavailable in the UK without cuts. The film is on better, and certainly more entertaining ground, when they are actively engaging with the enemy, such as a pimp roughing up one of his stable of women. There’s no moral ambiguity or depth to be found here: this is a bludgeon of a film, which likely would be unable to spell the word “subtlety.” It may be most effective as a time-capsule of the mid-seventies, and does showcase how society has probably improved since them – at least slightly. 

Dir: Bob Kelljan
Star: Jo Ann Harris, Peter Brown, Jennifer Lee, Connie Strickland
a.k.a. Rape Squad

Asking For It (2021)

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★
“Just say no.”

Not to be confused with the other film of the same title, it’s likely significant it took me over three years to cover this, after mentioning it in the earlier review. I suspect I kept seeing the spectacularly bad reviews and finding more enjoyable things to do. That cat-litter box ain’t gonna clean itself, folks. Eventually, though, I bit the bullet, and… Well, by the end, a bullet would have been welcome. For debut director O’Rourke has made a rape-revenge film, without managing either to build on the tropes of the genre, or find anything new to say. It’s the kind of film which could only have come out of the brief period when #MeToo was considered relevant.

It has not aged well. In particular, casting Ezra Miller as a men’s rights activist, because they (to use preferred pronouns, albeit sarcastically) are now spectacularly cancelled. Instead of watching the movie, I recommend instead going down the Wikipedia rabbit-hole for amusement. My favourite sentence: “Miller believed people criticized their relationship with Iron Eyes because she is “an apocalyptic Native American spider goddess” who, along with Miller as Jesus Christ, will bring about an Indigenous revolution.” Alright then. Mind you, those reviews I mentioned suggest the film was poorly received at the time too. I suppose I should discuss it. I’d rather not. Can’t I just continue lobbing snark grenades from afar? [Monty Python voice: Get on with it!]

Joey (Clemons) gets date-raped. Through Regina (Shipp), a regular at the diner where she works, she is introduced to an all-female vigilante group, the Cherry Bombers. Their mission is to make any abusive men pay – naturally, they are the judge, jury and executioners of what constitutes “abuse”. The group’s Public Enemy #1 is Mark Vanderhill (Miller) who, conveniently, is about to stage a major rally for his Men’s First Movement. Oscar Wilde once described fox-hunting as “The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” That’s entirely appropriate for this film too. Vanderhill is a pantomime villain, and the Cherry Bombers are an all-you-can-eat buffet of alphabet soup and minority groups, smugly sure of their righteous mission. I’m not sure who I hated more. 

The whole thing feels entirely like a vehicle for O’Rourke to tout his creds as an “ally”. The end credits even include a lengthy statement about native land and its use, for additional right-on points. And yet, O’Rourke was arrested for punching a trans woman in 2022. Awkward. I am equally sure these beliefs in no way qualify him as a movie-maker, and there is precious little indication here of relevant skill. Not in O’Rourke, nor the thirty-six credited producers of various kinds. Bandwagon much? At one point, a movie marquee in the background has screenings listed for Thelma & Louise and Switchblade Sisters. Unless “There’s nothin’ I love more than watching grown men squeal” (an actual line here) is your idea of moral philosophy, those are films for which this is not fit to make a sandwich. 

Dir: Eamon O’Rourke
Star: Kiersey Clemons, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexandra Shipp, Ezra Miller

The Seasoning House

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★★★
“Sour and bitter in flavour.”

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.

Working for the man who runs it, Viktor (Howarth), is a deaf-mute girl, whom he has named Angel (Day). She was also abducted, and could only watch as Goran (Pertwee) and his men killed the rest of her family. In some small amount of good fortune, Viktor has taken a shine to Angel, and so her duties are of the housekeeping kind, rather than being raped on a daily basis. But the things she sees, as she scurries around the air-ducts of the decrepit building, are the stuff of nightmares. Things come to a head after a platoon show up, assaulting the closest thing to a friend she has, Violeta (Walton), who already had her pelvis broken during a previous session. For the soldiers’ commanding officer is Goran…

This is where, mercifully, the worm turns, with Angel using her secret passages to avoid capture, as she takes out Goran’s men. The first, in particular, is a spectacularly brutal death by pointy object, which feels extremely cathartic. Thereafter, it does a decent job of not having her go toe-to-toe with larger and stronger opponents. The cramped spaces of the air ducts act as a great leveller in this regard, right up until the end. Well, almost the end. Because the final act has her trying to get help from the locals, and is a fraught endeavour in itself. I was reminded in this aspect of a certain other horror movie, though I don’t want to be any more specific there. 

The first hour in particular is a little too close to torture porn for my taste. It’s not necessarily especially graphic, though not pulling its punches. However, it still makes for uncomfortable viewing, and the abuse seemed, to me, to go on beyond what was necessary to make its point. A lot of credit to the production designer, who created sets which feel like you can taste the dirt and the sweat. Effective stuff, without question. Again: not to my particular taste, and I would have preferred it if more time had been spent on Angel making Viktor, Goran and the other bastards get their extremely well-deserved just deserts. Instead, I’ll be over in the corner, turning on this fire-hose.

Dir: Paul Hyett
Star: Rosie Day, Sean Pertwee, Kevin Howarth, Anna Walton

The Sundance Revenge, by Mike Pace

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

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. 

However, it’s complicated by the fact that the Sword of Justice has close ties to some very unpleasant and dangerous people, involved in the local drug trade, led by Danny Pagano. He does not take kindly to Belle’s investigation, and the closer she gets to the target, the more he feels threatened. It all leads to a plan for a mass chemical attack on the town’s water supply, with the aim of targeting a law-enforcement officer investigating the gang. Belle, along with help from a descendant of The Sundance Kid who now works for the DEA, needs to find a way to stop this, end the Sword of Justice’s vigilante campaign, and survive a final face-off deep underground, in a disused silver mine. 

To get the bad out of the way first, this desperately needs an editor to tidy this up. It feels as if, in the first draft, it was originally written in the first person, but was then changed to the third person. However, the update seems to have been executed sloppily, meaning there are still multiple sentences where the perspective is inconsistent, changing in the same sentence, e.g. “they had the place to ourselves.” Elsewhere, exact sentences get repeated a page or two apart, or we learn Pagano is from Denver, but shortly after that, Belle tells him to head “back to Phoenix.” Normally, I’m oblivious to this kind of thing; this is the first time I’ve felt compelled to mention it, which should give you some idea how prevalent it is.

On the other hand, that I still not only finished it, I was adequately entertained, is a clear positive. You get a good sense of place, and the silver mine is an excellent, spooky location, used more than once. It’s an interesting twist to have an ex-military heroine whose mental problems are not the result of PTSD, and Belle is someone you’ll find it easy to cheer on. I’m not entirely convinced about the logic of poisoning a whole town to nail one person, even if you do try and blame it on an industrial accident. But it does certainly up the stakes, and things are fairly non-stop thereafter. Falls an earnest bit of proof-reading short of a solid recommendation. 

Author: Mike Pace
Publisher: Foundations Book Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Belle Bannon series.

Hot-Blooded Angel

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★★
“Luke-warm vigilantes.”

Watching this one, I had a very strong sense of deja-vu, to the point I started looking for a previous review. Turns out, none such existed, because I think my previous encounter with it was on one of those dodgy, “pirate” YouTube channels, under the different name of Scarlet Strike. I skipped writing about it, since I wasn’t able to determine any information off that, such as cast and crew. Because, it turns out, that wasn’t its real title. A month later, I watched this official copy one morning, while Chris was taking our new cat to the vet to be neutered. There were points where I suspect the cat had the better day. 

Ok, it was not quite that bad, but coming the morning after Lamb Game, the gap in quality was palpable. It takes place in Chinatown, so I guess… not in China? A dubious businessman, Mr. Ba is seeking to knock down all the small businesses and family homes for the usual property development reasons. Standing against him are a pair of orphan sisters (Feng and Sun), who run a sweet shop, as well as the “Guardian Angel” (Xu), a masked vigilante who keeps the area safe from predators of all kinds. Basically, it ends as a team-up, especially after Ba decides to kidnap one of the sisters for use as leverage. The other sister and Guardian Angel then have to go rescue her from his headquarters. 

From a technical point of view, it’s competent enough. However, the characters all seem the epitome of blandness. There is what appears to be an effort to inject some kind of romantic interest in the shape of honest cop, Officer Wu (Huang). However, there’s absolutely no chemistry between him and any of the three female leads, so I’m not sure why they bothered. There are also a series of confusing flashbacks to childhood, though I’m uncertain to which character they refer. I’m still trying to work out whether the Guardian Angel is intended to be a long-lost sibling. Between her and Ba’s pair of minions, it appears Chinese orphanages may be a hot-bed of martial arts training. 

Looking at the poster, it’s either generated by AI or bad PhotoShop. The former would make sense, if only because the script could be from the same source. The action is rarely better than mid-tier, and there’s a lengthy section in the middle where it vanishes entirely. Instead, we get some genuinely bad attempts at comic relief, and it’s at that point I would have happily swapped places with the house feline. A brief spurt of fighting towards the end briefly reawakened interest. However, we suffer through a poorly-conceived finale involving a device, not previously mentioned, that can decrypt Mr. Ba’s hard-drive, and a coda which feels longer than the one at the end of Return of the King. This one certainly coughs up a hair-ball. 

Dir: Jin Xin
Star: Xu Dong Dong, Feng Yan Yan, Huang Tao, Sun Wen Xue

American Woman

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★½
“Doctor in the house.”

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. 

It’s an interesting concept, and the potential is there: a doctor using her medical skills in ways of which the Hippocratic Oath would not approve. As noted, she doesn’t initially look like a crazed vigilante, and that might have been leveraged to good effect. However, the execution here is flat-out terrible, in a variety of ways. Stack as the protagonist isn’t particularly one of them, though her descent into insanity is largely depicted by Molly pulling increasingly deranged faces, and steadily worse hair-styles. It’s everything else. For example, the gangsters, who could not be a more shallow cliche of Italians if they tried. We know they are gangsters, because the restaurant where they hang out plays Nessun Dorma on a loop, I kid you not. 

Their competence leaves a huge amount to be desired too, perpetually losing fights – both gun and hand-to-hand – against a middle-aged physician with no previous experience. This makes them largely useless as villains, since they’re no threat. Though Mikey (Rosing), the one mostly in charge of hunting Molly, at least looks the part, ponytail and all. However, the actual battles are terribly staged, such as a lengthy gun-battle in a bowling alley, where none of the bullets seems to hit anything at all. There’s another member of the gang, Vito (Zambrano), who seems to have a thing for Molly. Don’t worry, since this proves to be of no significance. It’s all unfocused and poorly structured, up until an ending so abrupt, it suggests everyone involved suddenly realized they’d made a terrible mistake.

Probably the worst thing in the movie though, is Mollie’s neighbour, David (Tyler). I’m not sure if this depiction of a mentally-challenged individual was intended to provide humourous relief. If there’s blackface and brownface, is there such a thing as “retardface”, where someone pretends to be intellectually disabled for comedic purposes? Even if Tyler is genuinely like that (doubtful), it’s horribly exploitative, and would be among the most cringe-inducing portrayals of the year. It sums up a severely misbegotten adventure, that might have worked better as a short. It certainly has “Not ready for first feature” written all the way through it. Although for writer-director Siegel, the only way from here is up. 

Dir: Artie Siegel
Star: Katelin Stack, Joe Rosing, Frank Zambrano, Vic Tyler

Redhead

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★★
“Better dead than redhead.”

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. 

Autumn Blacksmith (Hodge) survived being abducted and tortured by infamous psychopath Oscar Sawyer (Stinnett), finally escaping after killing him. However, the experience left her severely traumatized, and the slightest unfortunate interaction with any man is sufficient to push her over the edge into a murderous rage. Cue the corn syrup. Rinse, repeat for 90-odd minutes, until the end credits roll. Occasional hallucinations of Sawyer returning from the grave to haunt her, and a brief attempt by her therapist (Holland) to check in, offer a small touch of variety. The West Virginia cops, led by Detective Rogers (Robinson), are not exactly Sherlock Holmes. Then again, locals are remarkably chill about Autumn’s spree. The bartender where she kills her first victim says of him, “He was always an asshole.”

I was reminded of Michael and Anne Paul, another husband and wife film-making duo. They made Roman’s Bride, where the red-headed wife also goes on a killing spree. I think that worked a bit better, because its lead actress had an innocence about her, that provided an interesting contrast to her savagery. Here, Autumn is more blatantly mad, to the point you wonder why any man would try to chat her up. As a viewer, you’re never brought along on the journey into insanity. The way some of the local community end up assisting with, or even active participants in, her murders could have been used to provide another twist to the narrative. Nah. Open another bottle of Karo instead. 

Technically, it’s okay: the camera gets pointed in the right direction, it doesn’t succumb to underlit scenes, and the audio is fine. The soundtrack, also by Sam Hodge (not a surprise), has a nice throwback vibe, sounding like it was ripped off an eighties video nasty. But there is no real sense of progression or development, and the ending feels particularly sudden, going to the end credits immediately after she has disembowelled her final victim, a peeping Tom. We’re very little forward from where we were after her first murder. A sequel is in production though, so it appears there was enough of a market for this kind of thing. Will I watch it? [Sighs heavily] Yeah. I suspect I probably will.

Dir:Johnna Hodge, Sam Hodge
Star: Johnna Hodge, Ashley Stinnett, Will A. Holland, Travis Robinson

Brave Citizen

  By

★★★½
“Bully for you…”

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.

Into the school comes replacement teacher So Si-min (Shin). Initially, she appears meek and submissive, to a fault. But her background is the complete opposite. She’s actually a former boxer, who missed out on an Olympic spot because… of reasons, shall we say, and is also well-versed in a number of other martial arts. When she sees Han brutalizing Go, she steps in, though manages to defuse the situation without violence – at least, initially. Since she wants to become a permanent member of staff, she can’t unleash her skills on the bully openly. So she dons a cat mask, in order to beat Han up. The resulting humiliation drives him mad, and he vows to find and defeat the kitty vigilante, by any means necessary.

There’s a good deal to enjoy here, in particularly the performances by leads Shin and Lee. The former captures a multi-faceted personality in So, who has a strong inclination towards justice, but is aware of the need for restraint – again, at least, initially. I enjoyed how the film is basically romance-free. She has a friend who is a cop. but there’s no indication this is anything but platonic, and the film doesn’t waste any time pretending otherwise. On the other side, Lee makes for an easily hateable villain. Han is entirely aware that he is untouchable by the authorities at the school, and struts about arrogantly, like a psychotic peacock. Right from the first scene, you’ll be very keen for him to get his just deserts. 

It does, probably, take slightly too long to get there. While there’s no romance, the film does tend to stray off into subplots that we could have done without. The main one is So’s strained relationship with her father, dating back to the Olympic try-outs where… yeah, I can’t say that aspect rang particularly true, or added much to proceedings. The action is moderate: the cat mask leaves me wondering how much of it was being done by the lead actress. But even if it wasn’t her, it’s still fairly well-handled. The story develops mostly as expected – if you’re anticipating a final face-off in which her real identity is exposed to the school, you won’t be far wrong. But it doesn’t feel clichéd, and most of the 112 minutes go by more than pleasantly. 

Dir: Park Jin-Pyo
Star: Shin Hye-sun, Lee Jun-Young, Park Jung-woo, Park Hyuk-kwon

Damsel: No More, by P.S. Power

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Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

It’s rare that I can pin-point so exactly, the moment at which a book jumped the shark. But in this case, I can. I came across a paragraph which was so striking in its badness, I actually put the book down, to ponder what the heck I just read. It did not improve on several repeat attempts, and thereafter, I was simply unable to enjoy the book. Oh, it hadn’t been any great shakes to that point, but it became a genuine chore, and if I did not want to write this warning review, would certainly have become a DNF. Here we go:

Instead, she got out of the car, let Veronica lock up and secure the used towel in the back, in the trunk, which had a change of clothing in it, which the woman grabbed, carrying it with her. Since she still had chemicals all over her, that made sense to see to.

I am not exaggerating when I say that my eleven-year-old self would have been embarrassed to assemble those words in this order in a story. That this book is somehow rated over four stars on Goodreads makes me weep for the literacy of the population at large. The cover is what lured me in. The concept isn’t bad. But the execution is like being trapped inside the head of Kim Kardashian, and I would not wish that on my worst enemy. The heroine is Hannah de Peyser, a rich, vacuous heiress, who has had enough after the fourth time she gets kidnapped. “She might not be a hero, but she isn’t going to be anyone’s victim, not any longer. The damsel is gone, and in her place is a force to be reckoned with.”

Except… not mentioned, is that this is a bad superhero caper, with the world populated by caped crusaders with various powers. Our heroine initially has no such ability, but develops over the course of it, the ability to remote view people. If you’re thinking this could easily be used as a crutch to escape bad writing… No comment. She’s also apparently good at convincing people, including really stupid scenarios, such as that they are coated with an explosive that will blow up if they return to the United States. I feel like I lost measurable IQ points reading that chapter. 

In regard to action, so far, she has spent almost all her time training in VR, with the actual action highlight being her foiling a robbery at a truck stop. There is a lot of space spent discussing thing like a “third gait,” which is apparently a better way of running. I did not sign up for a kinesiology lecture, but apparently some people did: again, four-plus stars on Goodreads. I somehow ground my way through the pages to an underwhelming ending. Do not hold your breath for any more reviews.

Author: P.S. Power
Publisher: Orange Cat Publisher, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 8 in the Damsel series.

Abigail (2023)

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★★★½
“Heathers: the seventies remix.”

This is now the third film with the same title to be reviewed on the site: no vampires or Russian sorceresses to be found here. This does get an extra half star for genuinely surprising me. In the early stages, I had a strong feeling I knew exactly where this was going to end up going. Men bad, white people bad – and white men? Well, they’re the worst of all. Call it a spoiler perhaps – we’ll get to those – but that is definitely not how this unfolds. It takes place in 1976 Alabama, where teenager Abigail Cole (Cantrell) and her mother Eve (Lynch) have just moved from California. It’s clear this was to get away from “something”.  Exactly what is unclear, but it seems to have had something to do with Abigail’s father.

She makes friends with Lucas (Reed-Brown), who lives next door and is the victim of bullies at school. Initially, Abigail’s behaviour is positively heroic, defending Lucas from his tormentors. Though the film never makes mention of it, Lucas is black. You feel this might have been an issue in seventies Alabama, but the insults hurled at Lucas are entirely of the f-word rather than the n-word, an interesting choice. Anyway, Abigail proves more than capable of taking care of both of them, wielding a baseball-bat, fire extinguisher and axe-handle to good effect.

[Spoilers] However, things are entirely upended when further incidents make it abundantly clear that Abigail is not a heroic vigilante, defender of the oppressed, so much as a psychopath who revels in the opportunity to use violence against others. I did not see that coming. From this point on, just about everything is reversed, because the character for whom you’ve been rooting the entire time, is now the villainess. Conversely, the local cop, who seemed the epitome of racist law-enforcement, turns out to be sympathetic to Lucas and his apparent plight. However, things only cascade further into darkness as we continue on. The truth about Abigail’s missing father comes out, and the body count continues to increase, as efforts are made to clear up the previous corpses. [End spoilers]

There are some plot-holes here: given Abigail and Lucas were hauled into the principal’s office for an incident involving one bully, they would (Lucas particularly, even if Abigail was discounted through seventies sexism) surely be prime suspects in his subsequent disappearance. However, I am prepared to cut it some slack, due to the glorious one-eighty pulled off in the middle, which can only be applauded. Credit in particular to Cantrell’s performance: I’m sure if you go back and watch it again, you would be able to spot the clues to her personality in the earlier scenes. However, I’ve a feeling the impact would likely be less on subsequent viewings, where you know what’s coming. This is likely to be a “one and done” for me, which is why it doesn’t get a seal of approval. Albeit a highly satisfactory “one”.

Dir: Melissa Vitello
Star: Ava Cantrell, Tren Reed-Brown, Hermione Lynch, Gene Farber