Tag: western

Hell’s Fury: Wanted Dead or Alive

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★½
“There’s nothing like a good Western. And this is nothing like a good Western.”

Eryn Cates (Hague) returns home to Texas from finishing school in New York, to find her family farm teetering on the edge of foreclosure [maybe if they hadn’t spent all that money to send her to finishing school in New York…]. In a misguided attempt to help things, her brother tries to rob a stagecoach carrying payroll, but is injured. The attempt fails, but local mogul Mortimer (Harris), who holds the loan on the Cates farm, sees a chance and pockets the loot. Two Texas Rangers, including the young and handsome Flint (Hagenbuch) show up to investigate the robbery, but it’s up to Eryn to save the family property, take on the mantle of the bandit, fend off the unwanted advances of Mortimer and engage in pseudo-romantic banter of the least interesting or convincing sort with Flint.

It’s not very good, and the problems start right from the format: it was shot on low-definition video, which gives everything a harsh, modern look that really doesn’t suit the genre. Hague is equally unsuited for the role, and never succeeds in putting across any significant degree of emotion. And quite why there’s a kung-fu master in an early scene, I have no idea: he crops up once, and then is never seen again. It’s not as if Eryn exactly wields nunchakus against Mortimer’s minions. There are some cheap laughs to be had, not least the town dance where the band appear to play the same eight bars of The Streets of Laredo for six minutes straight, but most of this is just terribly pedestrian.

The DVD cover blurb claims, “The Quick and the Dead tips its cowboy hat to True Grit in this action packed Western gun battle.” Hmm. The tubes of the Internet deny any such phrase, though since Independent Film Quarterly [or “Quartly”, as the blurb has it] appears to be that endangered species, a print magazine, we can’t definitively claim fabrication here. What I can say with certainty, is that the apparent provider of the quote, Stuart Alson, has crafted a far greater work of fiction in that single sentence, than anything the writers here manage to conjure up in their 72, almost entirely tedious minutes.

Dir: Alan Chan
Star: Hannah Hague, Adam Hagenbuch, Ron E. Harris, Richard L. Olsen

Gang of Roses II: Next Generation

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★½
“Why? No, really: why?”

There are films which get a sequel because they’re successful. There are films which get a sequel because they are good. And then there’s a sequel to a film which was sub-mediocre, and appeared to vanish without causing even a ripple after its straight to video release in 2003. As a measure, nine years later, it hasn’t even reached 750 votes on the IMDB. Yet, we get this: a sequel that is neither needed, nor demanded by the public, and which manages to be even more boring and badly-constructed than its predecessor. Most movie-makers acquire at least a measure of technical skill as their career progresses, bur La Marre seems to have forgotten what little he knew a decade ago.

La Marre and Lamont Clayton are the only returning names from the original here – there’s a claim that Cassie is an member of the gang of female outlaws there, but neither actress Charli Baltimore nor her character seem to have been in it. She’s sitting in jail with the combination to a military safe, and for some reason, divulges the plan to break the safe to her cellmate Collette (Pratts), about two minutes after they’re introduced. Cassie is killed during an escape attempt, but Collette, with her knowledge, slides in to the gang, who then sit around a hotel room for what feels like ever. Eventually, they head to the town of San Juevo, and prepare for action, not knowing they are being stalked by Lee (Casseus) and his gang, out for revenge on the women. Yes, even though they are completely different ones from the first film. That’s the level of coherence you can expect from this.

Somewhat of a troubled production, apparently, with Taylor and La Marra getting into a brawl on set. Sure that improved the creative atmosphere immeasurably. But even the cheapest publicity stunt couldn’t have saved this wretched mess, which has exactly two decent scenes: one with one of the Roses speaking to the pastor of the San Juevo church, and another interacting with a little girl. That’s it. The action is horribly staged – the film budget couldn’t even run to fake blood, it seems – and it’s a merciful release that the film runs 15 minutes less than I was braced for. The balance is made up with La Marre’s entry to the 2012 World’s Least Amusing Out-takes competition. It’s a sure winner there: the only possible award for which this possesses any chance.

Dir: Jean-Claude La Marre
Star: Teyana Taylor, Eurika Pratts, Claudia Jordan, Gabriel Casseus

Yakuza Hunters: Revenge Duel In Hell

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★★½
“The Good, The Bad And The Hardly Ugly.”

If its predecessor (reviewed here as Sukeban Hunters) echoed the tropes of pinky violence, this one seems to have much more in common with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns. A mysterious stranger with a dark past rides into town, only to find that the violence they sought to escape has no intention of leaving them alone, and they must once again put on their weapons to fight for…something or other. Here, it’s returning Yakuza hunter Asami (as before, conveniently played by…Asami), who comes back to visit her old master, now a bar-owner, Inokuma (Kato), who arranges for her to stay with Miki (Yoshiyuki), who used to be a bit of a Yakuza hunter in her younger days. But all is not well, for the evil Shoryu clan are intent on turfing everyone out so they can build a casino. When that turns out to include both Inokuma and Miki, with extreme prejudice, Asami must take on both their minions and the hired uber-killer Akira (Miwa), who proves she is more than a match for most.

It certainly hits the ground running, the Shoryu members wielding a chainsaw in a deeply brutal fashion on both male and female victims, but overall, it’s just a tad less worthy than the original – there were times, particularly with regard to the audio, when the cheapness just seemed too much to handle. On the plus side, most of the gore effects are practical, rather than CGI, which was a welcome surprise after watching several genre entries from the Sushi Typhoon stable, and the action sequences are occasionally surprisingly impressive, most notably when Asami battles two Shoryu henchmen, in what’s effective a single take for each fight. However, the final battle – which, it’s no spoiler to say, is between Asami and Akira – is a disappointment, with flaky CGI and a really dubious conclusion.

Supposedly set three years after part one, I’d guess it was more or less filmed back-to-back, though there’s enough continuity issues to make me steer clear of calling this a “sequel” – not least, Asami possessing several more fingers than she should. I can see what the makers were aiming for [not least the soundtrack, which shamelessly adopts the spirit of Ennio Morricone], but they’ve picked a much harder target this time. They don’t have the necessary ability to pull it off, and the results don’t make up for the shortfall in skill with adequate energy.

Dir: Shinichi Okuda
Star: Asami, Yumi Yoshiyuki, Sakichi Kato, Hitomi Miwa

Hannah’s Law

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★★★
“A straightforward tale of revenge, Western style.”

In 1866, the young child Hannah Beaumont (Canning, best known for her role in The Vampire Diaries) watches as the rest of her family is slaughtered by outlaw Frank McMurphy (Pyper-Ferguson). Twelve years later, Hannah is now getting her long-awaited revenge. Having been trained to shoot, ride and collect the bounty on wanted men by Isom Dart (Danny Glover in a small role), she is now reeling in the members of McMurphy’s gang, one by one. When McMurphy hears about this, he gathers up his entire posse and rides to Hannah’s base in Dodge City to finish off what he started, a decade before. Can Hannah – with the aid of the town’s deputy marshal, Wyatt Earp (Holt) and her other friends, come out on top?

Well, there’s really not much doubt about that, this being a Hallmark Original Movie. Which means, as well as good winning out, there will be no sex or bad language, and severely restraint is exercised on the violence front. That said, knowing this going in will help defuse much sense of anticipation, and if you can get past the feeling this belongs to a far kinder, gentler age of cinema, it’s not a bad time-passer. Canning doesn’t quite look the part, being too willowy to be convincing, but that really only attracts the attention during the occasional hand-to-hand scene – firearms are a great equalizer for size and strength. She does manage to exude the required amount of steely determination, which is likely more important for this role.

Director Talalay’s name may be familiar to GWG fans; she directed the flop Tank Girl back in 1995. From the IMDB list, this looks to be her first return to the action heroine field since, and she has her moments, not least the first encounter between McMurphy’s gang and the very alone Hannah in Dodge City. Credit also to Kennedy, who plays Doc Holliday by shamelessly channeling Val Kilmer from Tombstone, yet still comes across as a memorable character. However, the presence of both Glover and Kimberly Elise as black gunslinger Stagecoach Mary, imply a racial blindness to the era that one suspects is more based on modern hopes than historical accuracy. Still, while the net result is not particularly memorable, and is clearly more interested in fulfilling expectations than confounding them, it succeeds in reaching its modest goals, in a way that some previous entries in the genre could only envy.

Dir: Rachel Talalay
Star: Sara Canning, Greyston Holt, John Pyper-Ferguson, Ryan Kennedy

6 Guns

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★★★½
“Hannie Caulder with less cleavage. And no Christopher Lee.”

The Asylum studio are infamous for producing ‘mockbusters’ – straight to DVD look-alikes of big-budget movies, designed to benefit from their publicity budgets. These have included their own versions of Sherlock Holmes and War of the Worlds, but they do make their own original works, including cheesy delights such as Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, starring 80’s popsters Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. They come in for a lot of flak as a result – some justified, some not, for this is neither mockbuster nor cheesy, and is surprisingly solid, if you want a straightforward Western tale of revenge. Selina Stevens (Mears) has to watch as her husband and two young sons are killed by Lee Horn (Mead) and his gang; she is brutally raped and left for dead, beginning a decline into alcoholic despair. Having reached bottom, she meets bounty-hunter Frank Allison (Van Dyke), and asks him to teach her how to shoot – conveniently, just as Horn’s crew start to make their way back to town. The townsfolk’s repeated affirmations that they feel safer with Frank around, might have been a bit premature.

Ok, ‘original’ might be a bit of a stretch, as the storyline is more than a bit reminiscent of Hannie Caulder [which I must get round to reviewing at some point], though sensibly reins back the glamour Raquel Welch provided there. On its own merits, however, this is based on a solid trio of central performances, with Mead particularly memorable as the black-hearted thug – in an interesting twist, it’s revenge which also triggers his initial assault on Stevens’ family. Selina’s transition to a gunslinger is nicely handled; she doesn’t exactly become a sharpshooter – but when opportunity presents itself, can shoot a fairly stationary target at shortish range, which is credible. Against this its low-budget nature is highly-obvious, with the “town” inhabited by about 12 people, and the action in general could have been spliced in from any randomly-selected 1950’s oater.

This remains a decent tale, satisfactorily told, with interesting characters, good performances and more than a local resonance, given its placedropping of Arizona names. And in case you’re wondering, no, there are not six guns in the movie, despite the title [depending on the count, there might be five or seven…] Still, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that this doesn’t fall in the upper echelon of the studio’s movies: this kind of thing should escape from The Asylum more often.

Dir: Shane Van Dyke
Star: Sage Mears, Barry Van Dyke, Geoff Meed, Greg Evigan

Sweet Justice (1993)

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★½
“Well, that’s 1 Gb of disk-space I won’t get ba… [Delete] Oh, never mind.”

Sunny Justice (Carter) is a former soldier, who is somewhat estranged from her sister, but who returns to town when the sibling – who also happens to be the mayor – dies under mysterious circumstances [savaged by a dog]. Turns out she was about to blow the whistle on developer Billy Joe Rivas (Gorshin), who has both designs on the town, and who has been using his mine as a dump for toxic-waste. The local sheriff (Singer) had bedded both sisters, but he refuses to act, and federal authorities prove no willing, so Sunny calls up some of her old pals, who were part of an all-female Special Forces unit, to take matters into their own hands. Rivas doesn’t take kindly to having his money-making scheme interfered with, and calls in reinforcements of his own, using his East-coast mob connections.

Awful. Mind-numbingly awful. Carter is best known as the female lead in Tremors, one of our all-time favourites, but this is a terrible combination of bad acting, poor scripting and terrible action sequences. It can’t even make up its mind what it wants to be, with a couple of sex scenes that don’t even have any nudity. Meanwhile, the largest-breasted ex-Special Forces girl (Michelle McCormick) is working as a go-go dancer. Not that she shows any flesh either, though I was amused by the way the inevitable training montage is interrupted for an entirely gratuitous hot-tub scene.

None of the actresses are convincing as ex-soldiers, having arms like twigs, though there is sporadically some half-decent martial-arts action. My interest was briefly piqued when Sunny uttered the immortal line, “I want to put the squad back together,” but there are just too many moments worthy of scorn for this to last. The two dog-attack sequences could hardly have been less credible if they’d just lobbed a Chihuahua at the victims using a catapult, and the final battle consists almost entirely of stuntmen falling off roofs out of shot. I’m left to presume Cynthia Rothrock must have rejected this one, and she was entirely right to do so.

Dir: Allen Plone
Star: Finn Carter, Frank Gorshin, Marc Singer, Kathleen Kinmont

True Grit

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★★★½
“Forty years later, the Duke has become the Dude, with a small Duchess.”

Based on the original source material – which was very much focused on John Wayne – and the trailers, you’d be forgiven for thinking of this as just another macho Western. However, I read some pieces which suggested that wasn’t the case, with the story [as in the original novel] told from the viewpoint of teenage girl Mattie Ross (Steinfeld), who hires drunken Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to hunt down the outlaw (Brolin), who killed her father. That is indeed the case – despite Steinfeld getting an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, while Bridges was listed for Best Actor. Go figure.

For Ross is one of the most impressive teenage girl characters to appear in a recent Hollywood film, being resolute, smart, brave and resourceful: that’s clear from the scene where she completely out-haggles the businessman with whom her father had been dealing. You can almost imagine Mattie growing up to become Marge Gunderson in the Coen’s Fargo: there’s much the same dogged determination, in a form which causes those who oppose Mattie to severely underestimate her. More in tune with her age, I was also reminded of Lyra Belacqua from The Golden Compass, whose heroine also found herself with an unenviable task, and had to man girl up and get through it. Here, from the moment Mattie plunges into the river on her horse, while Cogburn and Texas Ranger LeBoeuf (Damon) watch from the far side, she’s in a completely different, alien world.

I was much less impressed with Bridges’ performance. Fair enough that he chose not to try and reproduce Wayne’s iconic role: however, the route in which he chose to do so is unfortunate, not least because it’s largely inaudible. He mumbles every line so badly, you’re largely reduced to picking words out where you can, and trying to work out what he said by the other characters’ replies. It’s only right at the end that he comes across as being much more than a drunken buffoon, and it’s difficult to fathom why Ross picked him rather than LeBoeuf, who projects a far more compelling air of confidence. With Wayne, there was a sense of faded, decrepit glory: Bridges’ version of Cogburn is less a has-been than a never-was.

That said, there’s something refreshing about the way this is…well, not refreshing. By that, I mean there is little or no attempt to re-invent or “reboot” the Western genre: it’s lasted for approaching a century, so the basic tenets don’t really need changing. So while there are some understated moments of humour, e.g. the last words of the men about to be hanged, the focus is clear: Mattie and her goal of extracting justice on the man who killed her father. It’s a simple story, well told.

Dir: The Coen Brothers
Star: Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin

Zorro’s Black Whip

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★★★
“Masked woman with a whip? Despite being almost 70 years old, still better than Catwoman.”

This 12-part serial from Republic was a spin-off from the success of Zorro – though despite the title, the Z-word is never mentioned. It moves the legend from Spanish California to Idaho in the 1880’s, just before a vote to decide whether it would become a state. Villainous Dan Hammond (McDonald) begins a violent campaign to prevent this, and is opposed by local newspaper owner Randolph Meredith, who has a secret identity as The Black Whip, a masked vigilante. When he is shot dead, his sister Barbara (Stirling) takes up the cape and whip, along with the help of undercover federal agent, Vic Gordon (Lewis). Together, they foil Hammond’s increasingly-desperate plots as voting day nears, and escape from 11 precarious positions. Well, it is a serial, after all…

Within the harsh limitations of the format, it does its best. In less than 15 minutes per episode, they have to fit in opening credits, a recap, replay the previous cliff-hanger, resolve that, set up the next cliff-hanger and finish with the closing credits. It leaves precious little time for plot or character development, which may explain why all the bad guys wear black hats. Seriously. They could reduce crime by 90% simply by banning the sale of non-white headgear, or so it would appear. Vic does most of the heavy lifting, action-wise, brawling frequently; Barbara generally stands back and uses her whip, which makes sense. Though, to be honest, the villains are remarkably oblivious to the Whip’s feminine curves: they’re blinded by their own sexism, at one point rejecting a suggestion Babs is the masked marauder, saying, “She couldn’t be! The Black Whip’s got to be a man!”

While clunky, sporting a dreadful ending for Hammond, and truly a product of its time (1944), the action is frequent and competent, thanks to the second-unit work of the legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, who was the inspiration for much of John Wayne’s on-screen persona, and is best-known for staging the chariot-race in Ben Hur. The horse-work here is still outstanding: Babe DeFreest was the double for Stirling, and can be seen riding with her here. You could edit this down into a somewhat hyper feature, which would still be complete nonsense, yet given its age, is far from unwatchable.

Dir: Spencer Bennet and Wallace Grissell
Star: Linda Stirling, George J. Lewis, Francis McDonald, Hal Taliaferro

Cat Ballou

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★★★½
“They’ll never make her cry…”

Aspiring teacher Catherine Ballou (Fonda), heads home to see her father in Wyoming, but finds him engaged in a struggle over his land with a land baron, and threatened by the villainous Tim Strawn (Marvin). She sends for legendary gun-fighter Kid Shelleen (also Marvin) to come protect them, only to find he is less legendary gun-fighter, and more alcoholic bum, incapable of saving himself. Strawn shoots Cat’s father and, when justice fails to be served, she heads off to a nearby outlaw town, where she vows to bring the land baron down and take revenge herself.

Originally a ‘serious’ novel – the same author, Roy Chanslor, also provided the source material for another proto-feminist Western, Johnny Guitar – this was turned into something light and frothy in tone. It provided a career breakthrough for Fonda, making her a star at age 28, and did much the same for Marvin, whose double role got a Best Actor Oscar, and helped lift him up after decades in TV and supporting roles. Unlike Paint Your Wagon, he wisely leaves singing to the pros e.g. Nat King Cole. This was a precursor to Fonda’s cult role as another fringe action heroine a couple of years later, as Barbarella. As there, she is less action-oriented than I’d like, though we have to bear in mind the era. She unquestionably drives the plot along, but when it comes to things like the train-robbery, she generally steps to one side, leaving things up to her male colleagues.

That said, she shows guts and bravery, as is shown in the scene immediately after the death of her father, where she goes to confront Strawn. It’s a poignant scene, where she realizes that the entire town is against her, and vows “You’ll never make me cry!” – and is in marked contrast to her first encounter with him on the ranch, where Strawn’s mere presence is enough to start her screaming. It’s a nicely-drawn arc, and the ending leaves me wishing there’d been a sequel. Still, nothing quite lives up to the delightfully pre-credit sequence, where the Columbia logo transforms into the rootin’, tootin’, six-shootin’ animated version of Cat Ballou shown below. That would be the movie I want to see.

Dir: Elliot Silverstein
Star: Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman

Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)

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