Tag: wip

The Yard: seasons 1 + 2

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★★★½
“Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

I really must get round to reviewing Wentworth. The Australian women-in-prison drama certainly deserves coverage here, and has provided some of the best television we’ve enjoyed in the 2010’s. I keep intending to do so, but suspect that will now likely have to wait until after the show comes to a conclusion, following its ninth and final season in 2021. In the meantime, however, I do get to review the Turkish remake of the show. If you’ve seen Wentworth, this version is perhaps as unnecessary as any Hollywood remake of a familiar foreign film. Yet there are enough differences – both in story and culture – that I didn’t mind too much.

The central character is Deniz Demir, a married woman whose husband is shot in murky circumstances, and is sent to prison while the investigation proceeds. There, she falls in with one of the jail’s two “queen bees”, long-term inmate Azra Kaya (Moray). Azra is engaged in a power struggle with her rival, Kudret Ozturk (Kose), the matriarch of a criminal family on the outside. Initially, Deniz is simply trying to keep her nose clean and her head down, while waiting for resolution to her case. However, it’s never as simple as that, and she soon finds herself in deep trouble, especially after being found standing over the corpse of the facility’s warden, holding the apparent murder weapon. Meanwhile, things on the outside are equally troublesome, as Deniz’s teenage daughter, Ecem (Akar) has started a relationship with Alp – who just happens to be the son of Kudret.

When compared to Wentworth, there are some interesting differences, both in content and style. The melodrama here is definitely cranked up several notches: after one tragic moment, it feels like Deniz spends the next six episodes weeping in her cell. However, what you won’t see here is any lesbian canoodling, or even insinuations of such things, I imagine in deference to the still fairly religious nature of Turkey. What this version does, and particularly well, is use music as background to the drama as it plays out. This begins with the domestic clash which opens proceedings, and draws out of a broad tonal range, from 17th-century classical (Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament gets used to great effect in the final episode) through to Turkish contemporary pop songs.

I read that, apparently, it aired in Turkey in 2½ hour chunks. Netflix has, wisely, cut these up into 45-minute episodes. It also managed to ruffle the feathers of some authorities, who proclaimed – before it was shown, naturally – that the show would “Feed into public perceptions that prisons impose torture [on inmates]… The promotion of such perceptions of prisons serve the purposes of some terror organizations.” I wouldn’t say it was as good as that… But it’s certainly not bad at all, and if I weren’t aware of its inspiration, this could well be looking at a seal of approval. As is, I do have to ding it slightly for familiarity, and would still point you in the direction of the original instead.

Dir: Yüksel Aksu, Hülya Gezer and Safak Bal 
Star: Demet Evgar, Ceren Moray, Nursel Kose, Eslem Akar
a.k.a. Avlu

The Woman Prisoner No. 407 series

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★★½
“Cat’s entertainment.”

An apparent knock-off of Japan’s Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion and its sequels, there’s some uncertainty about the origins of this. I’ve seen it called Korean, Taiwanese or even from Hong Kong. While the cast suggest Taiwan, the director is from Korea, so that’s where I’m going to tag it. Indeed, it’s not quite clear how connected the two entries are: while they share a director and two leads, the plots don’t seem to connect up. Even the IMDb synopsis go to different countries. For the first, it says: “Kang-hie recalls from her cell how she was used by Japanese detectives to track down and destroy the Korean independence fighters. She manages to escape from prison during a break and proceeds to hunt down her former lover who was a Japanese agent.” The second? “Japan conquers China just before WW2 starts. Chinese women are captured and placed in concentration camps, where they are tortured and humiliated. Some try to escape incurring enormous risks, and death if they fail.” Insert shrug emoticon here.

Disentangling the plot for part one required me to deal with subtitles that barely even approach English, and were frequently vanishing off the side of the screen. I’m still not sure whether Don Wen Yue and Dwarn Tien Yu were the names of two different characters, or just sloppy mis-spellings of the same person’s name. Either way, the IMDb synopsis above seems rather inaccurate, unless you squint considerably. Don is an inmate at a Japanese prison-camp, where she is being harshly treated with the aim of making her give up a microfilm which her captors want to obtain. Her status as the daughter of a diplomat is of no help, apparently. However, help is on the way, as it turns out a newly arrived inmate has actually been inserted into the camp into order to assist Don in busting out – along with quite a few friends. Though escaping is only the beginning of their struggle for freedom.

The first chunk of this is painfully prosaic, with sadistic guards (though for a while I wondered if one of them was Yukari Oshima; certainly looks like her, but the era of the movie makes it unlikely). foiled escapes and generally the kind of shenanigans you would expect from the genre. There’s not much invention, and it’s hardly more than PG-rated. Things actually improve a bit once they escape, and it becomes a wilderness survival film. The women have to avoid the threats, not just of the guards in pursuit, but also crocodiles (or alligators, not that it matters) and even a killer plant which tries to wrap its tentacles around them. I’m a sucker for a good killer plant moment, and have to admit that this scene is likely responsible for about half a star of the rating above. There’s eventually an energetic battle on the beach after some betrayal, though it all feels too little, too late.

Moving onto part two, things have… changed. Part one ended with its sole survivor sailing off in a boat. This opens with its two heroines, Kuan Mou-Hua (Yip) and Kao Chuan Tze (Heo), back running through the jungle, apparently escaping from… something. I actually watched this part first, and initially presumed the specifics were all explained in the previous installment. I can now confidently state: nope. Like so much here, even down to the location, it’s unclear. Perhaps the untranslated captions shed light on this; the dubbing (the version I saw was in German with English subs!) certainly doesn’t.

Their bid for freedom is foiled, and they’re returned to captivity under their Japanese masters. Kuan is a bit of a flight risk, and the warden, Kato (Chen), decides the best thing to do is bump her off. However, rather than direct action, which would presumably cause too much paperwork, he’d rather she be killed in an “accident”. When plans to drop the pair off a cliff during their transfer fail, he tries to entrap them into escaping, drown them in a water tank, and finally burn them alive. [I guess the latter does at least prove somewhat successful, in that multiple prisoners are killed. Just not the ones they want]

With the aid of sympathetic guard , Kuan escapes – albeit without her friend, who commits suicide rather than going through further Japanese torture. Sorry: that probably merits a spoiler warning, I guess. Harried by their pursuers, Kuan and Lee make their way through the countryside – including probably the longest handcar chase in the history of cinema. So there’s that… Rather than slide into obscurity, her burning obsession is to take revenge on Kato. For he is about to escape punishment for all his crimes, including the death of Kao, being in cahoots with the judges. This burning quest to carry out vengeance, while relatively minor (it only plays a significant role in the last 15 minutes), is another element which echoes Prisoner Scorpion.

It’s all blandly forgettable: I watched it on Saturday, and by Monday, I’d forgotten so much, I couldn’t remember enough to write about it, until a swift re-view at 8x speed. This second screening largely confirmed its mediocrity, and the movie is in significant need of more, across the board. In particular, more energy: especially in its central performances, which wants someone like Meiko Kaji, around whom the plot can be anchored. Though I won’t lie, more sex and violence might have been no bad thing either, as it’s almost impressively tame. It has plenty of opportunities for nudity, right from an opening gratuitous swimming scene – it just chooses to pass them by. Viewers would likely be best off doing the same to this movie – and to be honest, perhaps the entire series.

Dir: Shin Sang-Ok
Star: Karen Yip, Heo Jin, Bong-jin Jin, Chen Hung-Lieh
a.k.a. Girl in the Tiger Cage and Revenge in the Tiger Cage

The Archer

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★★
“An arrowing experience.”

Lauren Pierce (Noble) is an expert archer, leading her high-school team. However, after she rescues a friend from sexual harassment, she finds herself on the wrong side of justice, and is sent to “Paradise Trails”, an incongruously-named juvenile detention facility, where harsh discipline and indefinitely extended sentences are the order of the day. And wouldn’t you know it, the place is run by a former Olympic archer – Bob Patrice (Sage) and his creepy son, Michael (Terry). It’s not long before Lauren is plotting an unofficial departure, along with new friend Becky (Mason), who knows the truth about what’s going on behind the scenes. When they get evidence proving it during their exit, they become the hunted as Bob and Michael will go to any lengths to stop the truth from getting out.

Opening with a claim about being “inspired by true events,” apparently that means the “kids for cash” scandal from Pennsylvania. While there’s nothing wrong with that as inspiration, it’s probably a mistake for the makers, apparently to want to make a serious statement, while adopting the tropes of the juvenile delinquent and women in prison genres. Brutal wardens; sadistic guards; lesbian subtexts… This all makes it kinda tough to take seriously, whatever statement they’re trying to make. And even that’s kinda muddied, beyond “sending kids to jail for bribes is bad.” Not much to argue with there. Probably more questionable, is the way every man here is an utter bastard. It gets kinda tiresome.

The main problem, however, is simply taking too long to get anywhere. The final 20 minutes or so, have Lauren and Becky trying to get through the wilderness around the facility, with Bob and Michael in pursuit. It’s well-crafted and tense, even if it builds to the inevitable final, bow-powered confrontation between Lauren and Bob, which you can see coming from a long way off. Unfortunately… it’s the final 20 minutes. The first hour are a real slog to get through, particularly the chunk after Lauren’s arrival at Paradise Trails. The script doesn’t have any real idea about where it needs to go or what it wants to do, once the basic concepts are established. As a result, it and the characters simply rotate gently in the wind, as interest evaporates gently.

There’s not even any real logic in the concept. Lauren is supposedly a “straight A’s” student with no previous record. Could have fooled me, going by the hyper-aggressive way she beats up on her pal’s boyfriend. That shows experience in the kicking of ass. Been nice if her ability to defend herself had come into play in the facility a bit more. Except, acknowledging women’s ability to be violent might have gone against the narrative apparently being peddled here. In that light, even the heroine’s use of a bow seems like some kind of liberal cop-out to avoid giving her the far more effective force multiplier of a fire-arm.

Dir: Valerie Weiss
Star: Bailey Noble, Bill Sage, Jeanine Mason, Michael Grant Terry

Amazon Hot Box

  By

★★
“Neither Amazonian nor Hot.”

Is it possible for a homage to be too accurate? This could be the problem here. It’s clear that Bickert has a deep affection for the “women in prison” genre – yet, again, possibly too much so. For this is less a parody or a pastiche than a loving re-creation, and doesn’t understand that a lot of these movies… well, to be honest, they suck. Badly acted, poorly plotted, thinly-disguised excuses for porn. And that’s the good ones. If you’re going to make a homage to them, you can’t do so with the knowing winks to the camera that we get here. Because the best examples – from Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS through to the glorious Reform School Girls – played it entirely straight. You may not take them seriously: but, make no mistake, they took themselves very seriously indeed, or at least gave that impression, and played it totally straight-faced. Here, it’s more like watching WiP cosplay.

Penny (Carlisle) is arrested while on an ecological mission in the fictional “South American” country of Rattica [quotes used, since the state of Georgia is a thoroughly unconvincing stand-in for anywhere Latin] and dispatched to the prison run by evil warden Inga Von Krupp (Church, sporting an accent considerably more Russian than German, though I suspect #ThatsTheJoke). There’s the the similarly evil inmate Val (Risk), and somehow, Rattica’s newly-instituted President, Jett Bryant (Bryant), is also involved. As is Agent Six (Jordan Phipps), a secret agent sent into Rattica to… Well, I’m not quite sure what her purpose is, because it’s one of the film’s numerous, largely uninteresting threads, which Bickert fails to weave into an interesting cinematic carpet.

Part of the problem is, the film needs to figure out where it wants to focus. Initially, it seems to be on Penny, but it seems to get bored quickly of her – I can’t blame it, to be honest, she’s blandly uninteresting – and drift onto Inga and her mad scientist collaborator for a bit. Then we get zombies thrown in, because…? Inga does at least have a midget sidekick, but like most of the cast, Church desperately needs to up her energy and intensity. All the bits lifted from elsewhere, e.g. the inmate standing on an ice-block in the middle of the dinner table, can’t conceal that this is largely bereft of its own ideas, and the execution is generally too limp to succeed. Even the gratuitous female nudity is severely limited. So what’s the point?

Oh, I know what they were trying to do. I’ve seen more than my fair share of these movies, to the point it’s a running joke in our household. So it isn’t a question of not getting it. I get it. I just don’t get it, in the sense of not seeing what the aim is here. For this plays like a third-generation, washed-out VHS copy of the movies it’s emulating. Why bother with this rather lame, tame wannabe, instead of the real thing?

Dir: James Bickert
Star: Kelsey Carlisle, Ellie Church, Tristan Risk, Jett Bryant

Betrayed Women

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★★★
“You’re a nice guy, Mr. Darrell. But here’s the hitch. I ain’t a nice girl.”

First, let me just say: that poster is a true work of art. Seriously, how can anyone look at that and not want to see it? Even knowing there’s no possible way it could deliver on what is promised, it’s among my all-time favourite posters. With that out of the way, we’d better move on, since for a 70-minute film, there’s a great deal going on. Honey Blake (Michaels) becomes the latest inmate at the infamous State Prison, after her gangster boyfriend, “Baby Face”, is gunned down by the law. She’s there barely five minutes, before she’s getting put in solitary for back-talk, etc.

Also in the slammer is Nora Collins (Knudsen), who is due to be released in a couple of months, and is in a surreptitious relationship with prison inspector Jeff Darrell (Drake). He’s trying to improve the lot of the inmates, but is getting push-back from hard-bitten Head Matron Ballard. Finally among the prisoners, is Kate Morrison (Mathews), who holds the secret of where $50,000 in robbery loot is stashed. She’s none too pleased with Honey’s taunts about Kate’s boyfriend having just got married, but after bonding through the traditional cat-fight, the pair plan and execute a daring escape. Taken along as hostages are Nora and Jeff, along with Ballard – who proves to be singularly unsuited for a trek through the swamps, pursued by the authorities and their blood-hounds. Kate’s boyfriend is making a beeline for the same spot, so felons, escapees and the law are all on an inevitable collision course.

The critical and commercial success of Caged in 1950 (including three Oscar nominations), led to a slew of imitators in the years that followed. Most – including this one – were considerably cheaper and more down-market, but this one benefits from the fast pace mentioned above, and also a great central performance from Michaels. It’s obviously a product of its era, and so is considerably tamer than most of its ilk: there’s nothing here which would raise eyebrows even on the Lifetime network. [A WiP film the whole family can enjoy!] However, many of the genre tropes are still there: not just the cat-fight, also the lecherous guard and even a fire-hose, turned on Kate after a failed escape attempt.

Michaels is a joy to watch, and I’ll have to track down some of her other work. How can you resist titles like Wicked Women or Blonde Bait? Her impact here creeps up on you. It was only in the final showdown, as she hunkers down inside a farm-shed with her hostages, surrounded by the police that I realized two things. Firstly, I genuinely didn’t know if she was going to live, or go down in a blaze of glory like her lost love, Baby Face. Secondly, I actually cared about the outcome. And no, I’m not going to spoil it. The star retired from public life the following year, declining all interviews about her career in crime flicks, and eventually died, here in Phoenix, in 2007. Even then, she shunned the limelight, requesting no obituary or funeral service.

Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Star: Beverly Michaels, Carole Mathews, Peggy Knudsen, Tom Drake

Locked Up

  By

★★★½
“Trash of the highest order.”

Do not mistake the above rating for suggesting that this is a “good” movie. By most normal standards, it would hardly qualify. But what we have is a throwback to the glory days of exploitation, in particular Filipino women-in-prison flicks like The Big Doll House or Black Mama, White Mama. Here, schoolgirl Mallory (McCart) is sentenced to two years in Thailand juvenile detention after whacking a rich bitch classmate bully upside the head with a pipe (below). At first, the place seems almost like a holiday camp. Then, her guardian leaves, and Mall is taken out the back to the real facility, a cesspool of degradation and brutality, where the inmates are exploited in ways both sexual and violent. 

All the tropes of the genre are there. A sadistic warden (Weiss, apparently delivering her lines phonetically – which is actually perfect for her emotionally-dead character). Gratuitous shower scenes. A predatory lesbian, Riza (Maslova), who is naturally the one whom Mallory must eventually battle in the prison’s fight club, a death-match with freedom on the line for the winner. A nice lesbian, Kat (Grey), who takes Mallory under her wing and trains her in martial arts, as well as engaging in a lengthy session of canoodling with her. No prizes for guessing this was the scene where Chris walked in. [I swear, my wife has some kind of tingly, Spidey-sense for sleaze…] A prisoners’ revolt. Cohn, who also plays Mall’s guardian, adds his own grindhouse spin too, such as the scene where she captures a rat and eats it raw, after the warden off cuts her regular food.

In case any of the proceeding is in any way unclear, this is not high art. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed this for its melodramatic excesses and unrepentant approach to wallowing in what many would term the cinematic gutter. [Wrongly, I’d say, although that’s a topic for a separate, five-thousand word essay…] It helps that the performances are mostly on the nose; I especially enjoyed watching Maslova, who positively slithers her way around every scene in which she appears. At first, I was inclined to dismiss McCart, who in the early going, appeared to have one expression: permanently aggrieved. Then I realized, if anyone has good reason to be permanently aggrieved, it’s Mallory, since she’s pretty much a punching-bag for life, from the first scene to the last. By the end, I was rooting for her, every punch.

I would like to have seen more of the fight club, not least establishing Riza’s bad-ass credentials, and having Mall take on others as a build-up to the grand finale. There are also some unexplained story elements too, such as the question of why Mallory wants nothing to do with her father. Yet this is the kind of film where such things as the plot matter little, if at all. I stumbled across this accidentally on Netflix and had a blast. However, more than for most movies I review here, that comes with this caveat: your mileage may vary.

Dir: Jared Cohn
Star: Kelly Ann McCart, Kat Grey, Maythavee Weiss, Anastasia Maslova

The Feral Sentence by G. C. Julien

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

The handling of this story is a little different from the usual novel. Julien adopts an “episodic” approach, with the story initially released in novella-length installments (seven of which have come out to the point of writing), some with cliffhangers. In structure, this is almost like the movie serials of old. Book 1, reviewed here, compiles parts 1-4. It’s set in 2087, when the authorities have gone back to a retro version of penal punishment: exiling criminals to a remote tropical island, from which there’s no escape, and where prisoners can pose only a danger to each other. 18-year-old Lydia Brone is sentenced to three years for killing her mother’s abusive boyfriend, so is dropped off (literally – out of a helicopter offshore), and left to make her own way on Kormace Island.

She is almost immediately captured by one of the existing tribes, under the control of long-term inmate Murk. To survive, the women have implemented their own society, with each being assigned a role necessary to the survival of the group. Brone is initially made a needlewoman, but after an attack by the “Northers”, a rival tribe, she’s re-assigned to learn archery. Daily life is not without conflict, with Brone being shaken down by another inmate, and eventually she realizes that attempts at practicing non-aggression can simply get you tagged as an easy mark. However, it turns out, there are much bigger problems at hand, with her entire new “family” coming under threat.

It’s an interesting, if somewhat uneven, character arc for Brone (she abandons use of her own first name quickly), as she evolves, mostly out of necessity, from scared teenager to battle-hardened warrior for the tribe. I say “uneven”, because it feels slightly inconsistent. At one point, she appears to say she was almost obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness, hygiene, etc. yet this is rapidly discarded, and he has few apparent problems adapting to a primitive lifestyle. I’d also have welcomed background information about the outside world: what brought us to the point where this solution was adopted? It has been running for decades, going by how long Murk has been there, and the apparent one-way nature of the place would seem to raise obvious questions. Do none of the women have friends or relatives on the outside waiting for them?

Julien does a good job with drawing the rest of the inmates, creating a set of characters whom are generally distinguishable, even if their back stories have a certain “society’s to blame!” similarity [not many of the prisoners accept full responsibility for the consequences of their actions, there’s always some excuse]. The episodic approach also means, almost out of necessity, a constant stream of incidents: there is, literally, never a dull moment here. The ending, admittedly, falls a bit awkwardly between two stools: it’s neither a satisfactory conclusion, nor dramatic enough to lure you into the next volume. This remained entertaining, however, and the almost complete lack of romance – for obvious reasons! – was a refreshing change from some recent entries.

Author: G. C. Julien
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book.
Book 1 of 3

The Muthers

  By

★★½
“Jolly rogered.”

This is a strange cross-breed between a blaxploitation flick, a pirate movie and a women-in-prison film. Then again, a lot of the seventies films coming out of the Philippines tended to be at least somewhat bizarre, and this is likely no exception. The titular gang are pirates, led by Kelly (Bell) and Anggie (Katon), who roam what appears to be the Caribbean, going by the mention of Santo Domingo, but is actually in the Eastern hemisphere, boarding and robbing unsuspecting vessels, and fighting with a rival band of brigands using their kung-fu skills. However, Kelly’s sister goes missing, and is tracked down to a coffee farm belonging to the evil Monteiro (Carreon), which he runs in the manner of a pre-Civil War Southern plantation. Our heroines go undercover, only to discover getting out will be tougher than getting in.

It starts off in fine form, coming over as a modern, urban version of a sixties swashbuckler, and it’s a shame it didn’t stick to this premise, which would have offered something rather innovative. Instead, from the time Kelly and Anggie – yes, there is apparently an extra “g” in there – show up on the farm, it goes down too well-worn a path, with sadistic guards, fellow inmates who cozy up to their captors, and showers. Lots of showers. After the expected breakout attempts, recaptures and punishments, things eventually end in an equally expected riot, enlivened somewhat by the unexpected return appearance of the rival pirates, as allies of Monteiro,

muthersBoth Bell and Katon had worked with Santiago before, in T.N.T. Jackson and Ebony, Ivory & Jade respectively, and make a decent impression here. I’ve read a few other reviews that rip into this for poor-quality action, yet I can’t say I hated that aspect too much. Sure, there are times, particularly for any acrobatic moments, where the doubling is not exactly well-concealed. But there are other times where they’re putting in their fair share of effort, and should be appreciated for that. It is, if not quite tame, rather less sleazy than some on Santiago’s offerings. At first, I thought this was because I was watching it on Turner Classic Movies (yes, a refreshingly broad definition of “classic”!), but turns out to be fairly mild. Mind you, Bell’s ultra skin-tight top doesn’t exactly leave much to the imagination there!

On the whole though, I’d have preferred if it had stuck with the pirate theme present at the beginning, which was a good deal fresher than the rote WiP fodder served up in the middle. Maybe I’m just grumpy because I did lose a bet with the wife: on seeing a guard tower overlooking the workers’ huts, I predicted it would later explode in a giant fireball, as a guard falls from it. I am disappointed to report that this simple pleasure was with-held from me. Sheesh, what is the world coming to, when a film from the golden age of Phillsploitation can’t even deliver on this expectation?

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Jeannie Bell, Rosanne Katon, Trina Parks, Jayne Kennedy

Angels With Golden Guns

  By

★½
“Virgin on the ridiculous.”

The beautifully lurid sleeves above and below probably give you some idea of why this one fell across my TV. They probably also explain the sarcasm dripping from Chris’s lips, during the three minutes she remained in the room. I can’t really argue with her on this one: it’s an entirely incoherent mess, though I have to say, I was entertained somewhat more than the one and a half star rating above would imply. The latter is a reflection of quality, and that I could only recommend this, even in the loosest of terms, to fans of bad movies who are feeling significantly masochistic.

The plot, and I used the term loosely, focuses on a white slavery ring, that seems to specialize in the bulk abduction of models who, in between being rented out to sleazy individuals. are then held in a remote jungle compound, from which there is no escape. We know there is no escape, because they try – quite why the captives don’t wait until the rather more escape-friendly location of their renting-out, is never clear. But, hey, this gives the warden who oversees them the chance to yell a lot, and there is also the opportunity for what may well be the biggest cat-fight in cinema history, so that’s nice. Meanwhile, a detective is also investigating the gang from the other direction – when not pretending to be gay, in a disco sequence which is either extremely tolerant or very homophobic, I’m not sure which.

According to what I’ve read, producer Joseph Lai inherited a film studio which had a lot of abandoned movies in various states of completion, and made his career out of finishing them – usually with little regard for continuity or logic – and marketing the results by focusing heavily on the sizzle. I can’t vouch for the veracity of this, yet it certainly goes a long way towards explaining the results here, which includes a strip version of Play Your Cards Right (Wikipedia advises me that US visitors should read that as Card Sharks). Matters are not helped by English dubbing that seems to have assigned accents at random, and music stolen from other, much better movies – I’m fairly certain Goblin didn’t give Lai permission to use chunks of their score from Suspiria, anyway.

Not that it’s an inappropriate choice, for this does capture a similarly incoherent, dreamlike quality – I suspect less through artistic vision, more a result of scenes that appear completely out of nowhere, bear exactly no relation to anything that has happened, then vanish without any further reference to them or their participants. If Andy Sidaris was Chinese, and entirely out of his gourd on magic mushrooms, this might be the sort of thing which would result. Just do not take that as any kind of recommendation.

Dir: “Pasha” (Shan Pa)
Star: Eva Bisset, Gigi Bovee, Emma Yeung, Hok Nin Lau
a.k.a. Virgin Apocalypse
or Terror in a Woman’s Prison
or, entirely inexplicably, Anger

Vendetta

  By

★★★
“Ripe for a remake starring Zoë Bell.”

vendettaMovie stunt-woman Laurie Collins (Chase) is out for the night with her sister, Bonnie, until the latter accepts the company of a young man. When things get more than a bit rape-y, and Bonnie ends up shooting her attacker dead. She is convicted of second-degree manslaughter, much to the chagrin of her sister. Worse is to follow after Bonnie is sent to prison, as there, she then falls foul of the jail’s top dog, Kay Butler (Martin). Bonnie soon turns up a corpse, with the incident written off as suicide, due to the heroine found in her veins. But Laurie doesn’t believe a word of it, and deliberately commits grand theft auto, among other crimes, in order to be sent to the same prison, where she can find those responsible, and make them pay for what they did to Bonnie.

Starting with a film-within-a-film scene which had me wondering if I was watching the wrong, post-apocalyptic movie, it’s a nice idea to have the heroine be a stunt-woman, and gives a credible explanation for her physical talents. This 1986 film is also ahead of the curve in making, in explicitly making the facility a “for-profit” prison, something which would eventually become an issue almost three decades later. That said, this does appear to be a rather cushy penal establishment, where inmates are well compensated for their work, and there is both a swimming-pool(!) and a video-arcade(!!). It doesn’t skimp on the exploitational aspects, with the shower scenes typical for the genre, and the rape of Bonnie is genuinely nasty.

In this, it shares something of the same look and feel as Reform School Girls, made that year, right down to the presence of an blonde, obvious Ilsa-lookalike in charge, though Collins’s Miss Dice is far more sympathetic  than Sybil Danning’s Warden Sutter. [Coincidentally or not, both films also feature the Screamin’ Sirens’ song, “Love Slave”, during a scene of sexual abuse.] The main weakness here is likely Chase, who seems rather unconvincing in terms of physical presence, though does acquit herself half-decently in the action scenes. Her Laurie just doesn’t quite feel like the kind of character who would go to such elaborate lengths to extract brutal vengeance – and it’s a damn good thing she wasn’t sent to another facility. You can contrast her character with that of Martin, who definitely feel like the kind of scum that would rise to the top inside.

There is a certain bleakness to the ending [spoilers follow]. After Laurie has completed her revenge, with the help of Miss Dice, the warden turns to her and says, “Did it bring Bonnie back?”, then adding, “You have the rest of your life to think about that.” It’s somewhat disconcerting for the viewer who has been brought along on Laurie’s quest, suddenly to have the moral carpet yanked out from under them like this, instead of any closure. If the hairstyles haven’t aged well, this philosophical ambiguity has.

Dir: Bruce Logan
Star: Karen Chase, Sandy Martin, Kin Shriner, Roberta Collins