Tag: wilderness

7 Women From Hell

  By

★★½
“Circling hell”

About the only review online I found for this, said it “may be the worst movie released in 1961.” I can only presume the writer of that statement has never seen The Beast of Yucca Flats. Even if I admit its weaknesses, Seven is nowhere near the same league of badness. Indeed, it starts off well, depicting the sudden invasion of Papua New Guinea by Japanese forces in 1942, with “enemy” civilians being herded into interment camps. The ones on the women’s side are a multi-national bunch, including Australian Grace Ingram (Owens), several Americans including Janet Cook (Craig), a German widow Ann Van Laer (Sylvia Daneel), Frenchwoman Claire Oudry (Darcel), and mixed-race nurse Mai-Lu Ferguson (Pilar Seurat). 

Initially, life is just about tolerable, with the camp commandant being mostly reasonable. But after he is killed in a bombing raid, his sadistic deputy takes over. When one of them knocks out a guard who tried to rape her, the women escape with the help of the camp doctor. But life on the outside is little better, especially with the Japanese in pursuit. Let’s just say, it doesn’t stay at seven women for very long. Without a compass, their odds of finding their way to safety are slim. Fortunately, they come across a downed American airman who has one. The bad news: he tells them their intended destination has already been abandoned. Then they meet the estate of German-Argentinean farmer Luis Hullman (Cesar Romero). Though is he as friendly as he initially appears to be?

It is important to realize this is very much a product of its era, when Hollywood was supremely disinterested in action heroines. We were still several years before even the arrival of Honey West on televisions, and there were few cases at the time where a female-led story-line would not be driven primarily by romance. It’s on that basis that the rating above has to be seen, cutting it some slack for the time in which it was made. By modern standards, sure, it’s fairly weak sauce. But the climax, where the women discover the truth about Luis and take action, feels progressive for the time. These women are – again, for the era – remarkably independent. They don’t need to be rescued by men: indeed, they’re the ones doing the rescuing of the airman.

The weakness is mostly on the character front, as outside of their nationalities, the protagonists are not given anything like an adequate amount of depth. The script doesn’t seem to know what to do with them once they are outside the confines of the prison camp either, at one point resorting to a bathing scene which had me rolling my eyes at the indignity of it all. Credit for not making the Japanese irredeemably villainous, though I’m not convinced the shooting location of Hawaii is an adequate stand-in for Papua New Guinea. Definitely not the worst movie released in 1961, by quite a considerable margin.

Dir: Robert D. Webb
Star: Patricia Owens, Denise Darcel, Margia Dean, Yvonne Craig

Spoor

  By

★★★
“Call of the wild”

Janina Duszejko (Mandat) is a former engineer, who now lives in a small rural Polish town. She has a deep love of nature and animals. This is a belief not shared by many of the local population, who treat animals as a resource, put there for their benefit – an attitude which brings them into conflict with Duszejko. After her two dogs disappear, she goes to the authorities, but they blow her off. However, the man she suspects most, turns up dead – just the first in a series of mysterious deaths, that may be related to Jaroslav Wnetzak, a local businessman with a finger in a number of shady pies. Subsequent corpses include the police chief, who owes Wnetzak money.

With the help of Dyzio (Gierszal), an IT consultant working for the police, Duszejko is able to investigate things. She also begins a romantic relationship with visiting Czech entomologist Boros Schneider (Krobot), after he discovers Wnetzak’s body in the forest, months after the businessman had disappeared. Things come to a head when Duszejko is arrested following the death of the mayor, having been the last to have seen him alive. But what exactly is going on? Is this those shady business dealings gone wrong? Or are the animals taking revenge on those who have hunted them? While I can’t say much more, you can probably get some kind of hint to the situation, simply from the fact that it’s being reviewed here. And perhaps the poster.

Holland is a veteran director, with over 40 years of features in her native Poland, plus episodes of US shows including The Wire, The Killing and House of Cards. You can tell, since this is confident and assured, as well as providing some truly beautiful and atmospheric shots of the countryside, imbuing it with a mystical quality. Animals loom out of the mist, almost like prehistoric creatures [hey, wild boar were driven extinct in Britain during the 1600’s], and the humans may not be that much more evolved. The lines are deliberately blurred at a couple of points, such as in Wnetzak’s brothel, where the women are dressed as cats, bunnies, etc. or at a costume ball which Duszejko attends as the big, bad wolf.

She makes an interesting character: clearly smart, yet her fierce devotion is certainly a weakness, and perhaps her undoing, especially when the police, etc. blow her concerns off.  However, at 128 minutes, there feels too much slack. The subplot involving the entomologist in particular, seems to bring things lurching to a halt in the middle, just when the mysterious deaths ramp up, and should begin driving things forward. I’d have moved this element towards the beginning, part of establishing Duszejko’s character. It doesn’t serve any essential part in the main plot, requiring it to be in the position where it takes place. However, the majority of the film still works, and represents a thought-provoking and well-crafted entity for the majority of its length, that does a decent job of mixing in its message.

Dir: Agnieszka Holland
Star: Agnieszka Mandat, Patricia Volny, Jakub Gierszał, Miroslav Krobot

The Ledge

  By

★★½
“Falls off sharply.”

Despite the above, there are some strong positives to be found here. First off, the Serbian mountain landscapes are beautiful, and the cinematography does them justice. Free climbing, the focus here, is an innately tense pastime, with the risk of serious injury or death present at any second. Again, the photography gets this over well, with some of the shots capturing the heights involved, to the point of almost inducing vertigo in the viewer. Finally, Ashworth is entirely convincing in her portrayal of free climber Kelly. She has the right, well-defined physique, muscled particularly around the shoulders, and exudes a quiet confidence in her own abilities, which is what you would expect. That’s the good news. 

Unfortunately, there’s the rest of the film, beginning with a plot that would be overachieving if it reached the level of dumb, and is little more than a series of eye-roll generating cliches strung together. Kelly and her gal pal are prepping for a weekend’s climbing on the anniversary of a tragic accident which claimed the life of Kelly’s fiancé, just as he was about to propose to her. Four jocks roll up at the next cabin, and before you can say “date rape”, the pal has fallen off a cliff, and is finished off by the group’s leader, Josh (Lamb). Becky happens to video that, and as they chase her, starts climbing the rock face to escape. The only way out is up, except Josh and crew take an alternate route up. It leaves Becky stuck on a narrow outcrop, with bad guys above, and a thousand-foot drop below.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention the snakes, which according to the movie, are a bigger threat to rock climbers, than plummeting to your doom. Or the conveniently abandoned tent on the ledge, just a few feet below a far better site. The whole thing is littered with this kind of contrivance. Worse still is Josh – by which I mean, both the character, and the ridiculously hammy performance by Lamb. It comes over as a douchebag version of Ryan Reynolds, and could not be more an Obvious Psycho, if he had been running a motel and talking about his mother a lot.

Some scenes are effective, mostly the simpler ones, pitting Becky against the implacable combination of the rock-face and gravity. If only the makers had realized what they have, does not need to be dressed up in painful and artificial ways to generate excitement. All you need is some initial device to get Becky onto the wall; everything thereafter is needless window-dressing. This includes the back-story of Becky’s boyfriend, and the convoluted saga of Josh’s love-life off the mountain, neither adding an iota to the entertainment value. Ford also directed Never Let Go, which used its exotic location and isolated heroine to slightly better effect. But if I never see Lamb’s irritating hamminess ever again, I will be entirely fine with that.

Dir: Howard J. Ford
Star: Brittany Ashworth, Ben Lamb, Nathan Welsh, Louis Boyer

Panther Girl of the Kongo

  By

★★½
“The (serial) end is nigh.”

This was the second-to-last of Republic’s sixty-six serials and, to be honest, it shows. Having watched Jungle Girl recently, the recycling here of its action footage – particularly, of the heroine swinging through trees – felt embarrassingly obvious. In the studio’s defense, the contemporary audience might well have forgotten, the source having originally come out fourteen years earlier. However, that doesn’t excuse the fairly threadbare plot, which is laid out inside the first ten minutes of the opening episode, then goes almost nowhere for the rest of the serial. The only point of note is the use of giant crayfish. Yes, coming out the year after classic giant insect movie, Them!, Republic opted to go there.

Rather than radiation, these are the product of mad “differently sane” scientist, Dr Morgan (Space), who has developed a growth hormone which causes the creatures that consume it to achieve massive, rapid growth, and apparently renders them impervious to the inverse-square law too. You’d think that kind of thing would be a fast ticket to fame, fortune and Nobel prizes. But it turn out, Morgan is instead embedded deep in the African jungle, using his creatures to try and scare off the local tribe, so he and his minions can get unhindered access to a diamond mine on their lands. Caught in the middle is wildlife photographer Jean Evans (Coates). When she catches the monster on film, she sends for help from big game hunter Larry Sanders (Healey), and they have to fend off both hormone-enraged crustaceans and Morgan’s thuggish henchmen.

It might have worked better as an 80-minute B flick. I have to say the miniature work by the Lydecker brothers, does a good job of making the crayfish look gigantic. However, there’s no need to have them roar, and the interaction with the human characters is basically limited to a single claw grabbing an appendage from out of shot. Morgan’s tactics appear to be limited to getting his minions to shepherd the creatures towards the locals, with a small side-dish of preventing word of the beasts getting out. Rinse and repeat: you’ll likely get bored and drift off before the end, despite another case of dynamite being carelessly left around.

Jean is certainly the most firearm happy heroine, blazing away almost as soon as we see her. Though it’s never explained why she is also so adept at swinging through the jungle, etc. She gets her titular name as an honorific, after saving the villagers from a rogue black leopard, and I guess she is isn’t a cat person. For at another point, Jean engages in hand-to-hand (or paw?) combat with a lion, in order to prove her “magic” is good, and not responsible for the monsters. Obvious stunt doubling is obvious here, even if admittedly someone is still getting closer to the lion’s jaws than I’d want to. But this certainly does not live up to the poster proclaiming it “The most exciting serial ever filmed!”

Dir: Franklin Adreon
Star: Phyllis Coates, Myron Healey, Arthur Space, John Daheim

Arisaka

  By

★★★★
“The wilderness strikes back.”

The heroine here, Mariano (Salvador), has to count as the baddest bitch I’ve seen in quite a long time. In terms of being a sheer, unstoppable force, she’s right up there with Jen from Revenge. There’s an absolute moral compass at play here, which combines a stoic refusal to harm the innocent, with utter ruthlessness when it comes to punishing the guilty. And she is judge, jury and especially executioner, when it comes to determining who’s who. Of particular note, most action heroines tend to kill only when directly threatened. Here however, once Mariano has decided you’re on the wrong side, death can come for you at any moment, without the need for any further provocation.

She is a Filipino police officer, part of a convoy taking the vice-mayor of a town to testify against a drug cartel. In particular, he’s going to name names of those in authority who are working with the cartel. Naturally, this can’t be allowed to happen, and it’s no surprise when the convoy is ambushed. Mariano is the sole survivor, and takes possession of the official’s cellphone, which contains the incriminating evidence. It’s not long before Sonny (Confiado), the cartel leader shows up, demonstrating a ruthless approach to the situation, and none too happy to discover he’s one short in the corpse department. He and his lackeys, including one of Mariano’s colleagues (Acuña), enter the jungle in pursuit of the wounded fugitive. She gets help from a young indigenous girl (Romualdo) and her family, but doing so exposes them to Sonny’s brutal wrath.

That’s when the gloves come off, thanks in part to Mariano being led to a stash of World War 2 weapons, left behind when local soldiers were trying to escape the Japanese. I’ll admit to raising an eyebrow at this. Would such weapons really be in perfect working order, after 75 years in a tropical jungle? Hey, I’m no expert. [Despite running this site, I haven’t even touched a gun since moving to Arizona in 2000!] With that as a given though, what follows is some remarkably splattery head-shots, as Mariano works her way through Sonny’s henchmen, and up to the inevitable confrontation with the man himself.

Interspersed in this are flashbacks to her back in the big city, being ordered to shoot someone entirely on the say-so of her boss, to prove her loyalty to her colleagues. That is about the extent of insight into Mariano’s character the film offers, but it’s enough to work, since actions here definitely speak louder than words. Indeed, the audience is likely better off than the heroine, getting subtitles for the native dialogue, a language which Mariano doesn’t speak. The intent is typically clear enough, even if a few scenes did leave me a little uncertain as to their purpose. Overall though, the result is an engrossing and always interesting watch, which doesn’t hold back, and takes no prisoners. Much like its central character.

Dir: Mikhail Red
Star: Maja Salvador, Shella Mae Romualdo, Mon Confiado, Arthur Acuña

The Tiger Woman

  By

★★½
“A leopard which changes its spots.”

Am I the only person irrationally annoyed by the title of this 12-episode serial? It takes place in South America, where the only tigers are in captivity. And look at the picture of the heroine. LOOK AT IT. In what universe is that a tiger? I mean, the ears are a nice touch, but it’s very obviously not tiger stripes. Though it has been pointed that in its location, the jaguar is known as el tigre. Which might make sense if there was any other jot of Hispanic culture to be found here. [GWG readers: “Get on with it!”] Oh, alright… if you insist.  

As mentioned, we’re in South America, where two competing oil companies are seeking to establish their territory. The Inter Ocean Oil Company are the current occupants, and have been working in association with the indigenous population, under their white queen (Stirling), known as the Tiger Woman. But if they don’t strike oil soon, their franchise will expire. A predatory, far less friendly (but unnamed) company, is standing by, to make sure that doesn’t happen, allowing them to take over. But Inter Ocean has sent top troubleshooter, Allen Saunders (Rock Lane), to work with the Tiger Queen and block their enemy’s attempts. Those get more desperate as the deadline approaches and Inter Ocean appear to be succeeding. Complicating matters is the Tiger Queen’s original identity as missing heiress, Rita Arnold, something her enemies want to use to their advantage.

The heroine is something of a step forward from Jungle Girl, with Rita/Ms. Tiger at least making an occasional effort to get involved in the fisticuffs (copious, to the point half the oil company’s profits must have gone on replacement furniture). However, it’s rare for this to last more than a few seconds, and it seems she’s as fragile as cut crystal. Run into a wall? Knocked out. Trip on the carpet? Knocked out. Looked at askance by a bad guy? Probably knocked out. I swear, there are times where it feels like she spends half her screen time unconscious.However, as in Jungle Girl, there are odd moments which rise above, though I’m not sure the aeroplane spin would be a move familiar to white goddesses from the sky.

She does have a regal presence (perhaps due to Sterling’s background as a model, before she turned to acting), even if her throne looks a bit like it was built out of banana boxes. Ms. Tiger is also reasonably brave, always willing to put herself in danger when necessary for her tribe – or, probably more relevantly, necessary for cliff-hanger purposes.  I was less impressed with the plotting, especially the shenanigans of the villains, which seem almost random, rather than well-conceived to their particular aims. For instance, they’re supposed to kill Rita, then get someone else to impersonate her and claim the inheritance. If that’s the best plan you can come up with… you need to bring in some kind of outside consultant. Again, it feels as if everything they do is for cliff-hanger purposes, not as a means to an end. It gets kinda repetitive after a while.

Still, this was a big hit, and led to Republic fast-tracking another vehicle for Sterling. Only a few months after this was released, production started on Zorro’s Black Whip, in which she would get to be more of a proper lead.

Dir: Spencer Bennet and Wallace Grissell
Star: Linda Stirling, Allan Lane, Duncan Renaldo, George J. Lewis
Subsequently re-released in 1951 as Perils of the Darkest Jungle, and in a cut-down TV version in 1966 as Jungle Gold.

Huge Shark

  By

★★★
“Girls with flare-guns”

Over in my non-GWG life, I’ve been on a bit of a kick of Chinese animal attack movies lately. These are kinda their version of SyFy original movies, though usually do have slightly better production values. I mean, how can you resist titles like The Bloodthirsty Bees or Big Octopus? Most are disposable fun, but I was surprised to find this one qualified for inclusion here. Two reviews out of one viewing? I’m fine with this. Especially, as initially it didn’t look particularly relevant, or even interesting. Four people on a boat trip, all of them ending up (largely through a series of poor choices) in the water. There’s the title creature in the area, so they opt to head for a nearby small boat, left abandoned because its occupants became a shark appetizer.

I didn’t like this very much at the start, with 3/4 of the characters being far more irritating than anything else. I was expecting the only man, Zhou Tianming (Huang), to be the focus. But, in a pleasant surprise, the film does not hang around, and disposed of him quickly. Indeed, barely by half way (although at only 68 minutes, this is never going to outstay its welcome), we are down to just one person left. The good news is, it’s the only non-irritating human, Shen Xin (Zhao). She’s a doctor and also comfortable in the water, being a good surfer and swimmer. These skills will be helpful, and the rest of the film is a marked improvement.

It is obviously inspired by things like The Shallows, particularly in the way Xin ends up stuck on a small, rocky outcrop. But I particularly liked the way the director did not feel the need to jazz things up thereafter, with flashbacks or the heroine bonding with a passing seagull. There’s nobody for Xin to speak to, so the rest of the film has almost no dialogue, and the silence adds to the tension. That’s especially the case during the night scenes, which are lit just well enough to make it seem that shadows are lurking everywhere around the rock, without requiring a pair of night vision goggles. 

It’s not hard to figure out where it’s going, especially after she gets her hands on a can of petrol and a flare gun. Though the kicker at the end – there’s usually a final moment in these films, where you think the creature is dead, then see its eggs or whatever – was definitely an unexpected treat. Overall, there’s half a good movie here, with Zhao making an effective and appealing heroine, once she gets the chance to be (translation: once everybody else in the film gets eaten). I understand the need to demonstrate the threat the shark poses. But I would really not have minded in the slightest, if they’d cut out all the soap-opera stuff about Tianming dumping his girlfriend, in favour of showing more from Xin’s battle for survival.

Dir: Huang Zhaosheng
Star: Zhao Yihuan, Huang Tao, Hong Shuang, Luan Mingyuan

Perils of Nyoka

  By

★★★½
“Serial thriller.”

After the success of Jungle Girl, Republic looked to repeat the process the following year. However, despite bringing back the heroine, they were able to avoid paying Edgar Rice Burroughs again, because Nyoka was not a character who appeared in the original novel. It may also be why she has a different surname here, and her father is missing, rather than killed. Republic used a different actress too: Kay Aldridge replaced Frances Gifford, who was unavailable. Aldridge had recently seen her contract with 20th Century Fox expire, though had some qualms: “I did it with the attitude we had in that day that to make a B-western or a serial was a comedown for a featured player at Fox. It was a comedown in one way, but it was a comeup in another way because I was the lead. They paid me about $650 a week, which was pretty good money at the time.” Still, it proved her most popular role, though she retired from acting just four years later, to get married.

With a title clearly nodding to 1914’s The Perils of Pauline, this operates at a particularly breathless rush, even by serial standards, over its 15 episodes. The main plot has Nyoka Gordon in search of the Tablets of Hippocrates, both because they offer a cure for cancer, but in order to help find her father, who vanished mysteriously in the African wilderness years previously. Well, I say “African”. There’s really no effort at all made to make Southern California look like anything other than Southern California. Anyway, she’s joined in her quest by Dr. Larry Grayson (Moore, best known as TV’s Lone Ranger) and other scientists, but opposed by the evil Vultura (Gray) and her native minions, who wants the tablets for herself. Actually, from a modern perspective, Vultura probably has more of a claim to the artifacts than the tomb-raiding Westerners, Nyoka’s protestations about them belonging to “humanity” notwithstanding.

This was the first serial I had watched since Zorro’s Black Whip, and I really appreciated the relentless pace with which things moved forward. There’s literally never a dull moment, despite the usual overlap: opening of each episode recaps the previous cliffhanger, then details how (usually) Nyoka gets out of the peril in question. These escapes were a bit varying in quality: some of them were clever, others were more or less cheats, e.g. falling from a great height into a pool of water that wasn’t there previously.

But the show never gives pause to consider such things, moving on to the next treachery, chase or fight sequence. Of particular note is the antagonist also being a woman, and Vultura is every bit as smart, driven and hands-on as Nyoka. There’s potentially an alternative version of this where she is the heroine. It’s definitely an improvement on the “ignorant savages” portrayed in Jungle Girl. Indeed, Nyoka v2.0 is also a clear upgrade on the original, being much more self-reliant, certainly the equal of the men.

Admittedly, the pace is maintained at the expense of just about everything else. When you have perhaps 15 minutes in which to cram a recap, escape, move the plot forward and then set up the next cliffhanger… there’s never going to be much chance to get in a lot of character development. Everybody here is more or less what they appear in episode one, and there’s hardly anything in the way of an arc for anyone across the four hours. Hard to complain though, since it is for understandable reasons. What matters here is not any backstory, it’s a simple matter of hooking the audience into coming back the following Saturday for the next episode. Having shotgunned as many as five episodes back-to-back, I can’t argue with its success on that front.

I also feel I should mention the animals. Fang, Nyoka’s dog, is perhaps the smartest canine I’ve ever seen on a show: to be honest, he’s more intelligent than some of the human characters, and does a remarkable amount, especially considering his lack of opposable thumbs. There’s also a little monkey, belonging to one of her sidekicks, who chips in, while Vultura keeps a pet gorilla. That, however, is a guy in a not particularly convincing suit. Though considering it gets into fisticuffs with Dr. Grayson, I can understand why they didn’t want to use a real primate for that! Their cute presence do make me wonder if this was aimed as much as kids as adults. Though given the amount of violence – there are corpses everywhere, albeit bloodless ones – it feels a little inappropriate for children by modern standards.

The show proved popular enough to be re-released a decade later, under the rather confusing title, Nyoka and the Tigermen. A few years further down the road, it was converted into a 100-minute TV movie, Nyoka and the Lost Secrets of Hippocrates. Normally, hacking out such a large amount of content would render any cinematic product incoherent. But I can see how it would be possible here, though I dread to think how adrenaline-crazed that end product might be!

Dir: Bill Witney
Star: Kay Aldridge, Clayton Moore, Lorna Gray, Charles Middleton

Jungle Girl

  By

★★½
“You can take the girl out of the jungle…”

This is nominally based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1932 novel of the same name, also known as The Land of Hidden Men. Though there’s very little beyond the title in common. The book was set in Cambodia, and told the story of explorer Gordon King, who finds a civilization which has been lost for a thousand years. This… isn’t. It is instead the story of Nyoka Meredith (Gifford), the daughter of a doctor working with the Masamba tribe in the middle of Africa. “Nyoka” is Swahili for snake, and she seems to spend most of her free time swinging through the forest on vines.

But there’s trouble in paradise, as ne’er-do-wells Slick Latimer (Mohr) and Bradley Meredith (Bardette) show up, hoping to get their hands on the tribe’s stash of diamonds. Their plan involves Dr. Meredith’s twin brother, who just got out of jail. They knock off the doctor, replacing him with his sibling, who feigns “amnesia” to explain the holes in his memory. They also team up with disgruntled witch-doctor Shamba, who was displaced from his tribal position by Western medicine. But Nyoka, along with Jack Stanton (Neal) and Curly Rogers, stand in the way of the villains. Though naturally, they will have narrowly to dodge death – I’m guessing, fourteen times, give or take.

While this was the first serial in the sound era to have a female lead, it’s a little disappointing in this regard. It feels like, over the course of the 15 episodes, Nyoka is more rescued than rescuing, though it does work both ways. In terms of getting into the action, there’s more than one occasion where she just yells “Look out!”, then lets the menfolk get on with punching each other. However, Nyoka still has her moments, such as in Episode 5, where she dives into a gorge and goes hand-to-hand with a crocodile, in order to save a native child. I did appreciate the lack of any romance here. Despite the obvious candidacy of Jack, everyone is too busy narrowly dodging those deaths, I think, for emotional entanglements.

Considerably less progressive is the portrayal of the natives. I guess we should be happy Shamba is at least played by a non-American, Frank Lackteen being Lebanese-born. But the native boy saved from the crocodile? Born in Minnesota (the actor, Tommy Cook, was still active almost eighty years later, playing a senator in an episode of Space Force!). Even aside from the blackface, add patronising lines like “It took a white man to figure it out,” and there are a lot of elements which have not aged well, to put it mildly. Some of the plot threads are also a bit implausible, such as Jack and Curly building an impromptu refinery in the native village, to convert crude oil into airplane fuel. I’m fairly sure it’s not that easy.

One of the stunt co-ordinators on this was the legendary Yakima Canutt. He would go on to choreograph the chariot race in Ben-Hur, though there’s none of his renowned equine stuntwork here. Helen Thurston was the main double for Gifford, though for the scenes where she’s swinging from vine to vine, a male stuntman (David Sharpe) took over. Apparently, Gifford said he looked better in the costume than she did! The series was so successful it became the first Republic serial to be re-released, six years later. A lot of the action footage from this was reworked into 1955’s Panther Girl of the Kongo, but we’ll talk more about that in its own review.

Dir: William Witney and John English
Star: Frances Gifford, Tom Neal, Trevor Bardette, Gerald Mohr

Resilience and the Lost Gems

  By

★★
“Lost and found”

I certainly admire the aim here; there’s aren’t enough action-heroine films which are aimed at a family audience, especially with a young protagonist. We’ve had The Golden Compass, Enola Holmes and Abigail, but they are pretty rare. This is a considerably lower-budget entry than those, though make no mistake, it still certainly qualifies here. Its 11-year-old heroine, Resilience O’Neil (Finn) – known for obvious reasons as Rizzie – has no apparent fear, whizzing around the Utah desert on her mini-bike, until a flash flood separates her from her parents and younger brother. She then has to survive on her own, fending off wolves, haboobs and a pair of predatory creeps, while making her way back to civilization to get help for her family.

What’s weird is, the titular gems are all but irrelevant. In the opening twenty minutes, there’s a lot of talk about them, and their loss 150 or so years ago. But apres le deluge, they are almost entirely forgotten, and what we have instead is a straightforward wilderness survival story. To be honest, this is a considerable improvement over the thoroughly unconvincing historical re-enactments in the beginning, complete with sepia tinting and fake film scratches. The flood is staged surprisingly well, to the point I was convinced everyone concerned was sure to be dead. Finn seems to do a lot of her own stunts too, and not just on the bike. There’s a sequence of her clambering down a rockface which had me looking up the number for Child Protective Services. Decent dronework and the pleasant Utah scenery also stopped me from turning this off entirely.

For much, much worse are both the script and the performances. There’s hardly a line here which doesn’t seem forced and/or unnatural, and as noted above, the lost treasure thread is set up at painful length, before being abandoned for an hour. Then there’s the stuffed chicken carried around by one of the villains, who in addition are so incompetent as to pose no credible threat at all. I will give Kiara a pass; it’s her debut, and few actresses her age would be able adequately to put over the emotions necessary here, after the apparent loss of her family. [Natalie Portman in Leon remains the gold standard]

However, none of the adults are any better, either engaging in wild over-acting or resorting to a dull monotone when delivering their dialogue. It doesn’t help that there are issues with some of the audio, which varies wildly in quality, and is occasionally indecipherable. As a result, you’ll find yourself gritting your teeth just about every time anyone opens their mouth. This is probably the first time I’ve felt that a movie would have been better off, filmed as a throwback to the silent era – just pit Rizzie against the natural world, without chit-chat. I admit it would have been considerably more challenging as a project. Yet even if unsuccessful, I think I’d have preferred that approach.

Dir: Brian Finn
Star: Kiara Finn, Don Shanks, Adam Johnson, Gisi Hong
a.k.a. Resilience and the Last Spike