Tag: wip

Death Row Girls

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★★
“Despite the poster, more WiP than GwG.”

Misaki (Hoshino) is in prison for stabbing a policeman to death, but is taken from her jail to a remote island. There, she joins the rest of the hand-picked prisoners, who are there to be trained by a mysterious government organization, and moulded into operatives who can be used to protect national security. Most of the inmates just want to make things easy, sleeping with the guards in exchange for privileges, but Misaki is made of tougher stuff, and won’t buckle down to the authorities. While she begins plotting how to escape the island, she needs to overcome a number of problems, not least having no idea about where it is, and whether the small boat they stumble across will be capable of getting them to any other land.

There’s definitely elements of Nikita here, not least the sequence where Misaki tries to take the facility head hostage. Except that, where that breezed through the training inside 25 minutes, it is, more or less, the entire focus of proceedings here. Hoshino snarls nicely as an independent and feisty bad girl, yet neither she nor any of the other residents are in the slightest bit convincing. I’d normally avoid using a phrase like “runs like a girl” as unnecessarily demeaning… except here, where it’s entirely accurate. I can see absolutely no chance – zero, zip, nada – that any credible group would select her, or the rest of the inmates, as potential trainees.

The film does deliver the expected helpings of gratuitous nudity and moderate violence, as things bumble along towards the climax, where Misaki has to battle her jail friend, to the death. Winner gets to leave, loser…well, will be dead, so shouldn’t worry themselves about it. It’s not exactly the best knife-fight you’ve ever seen, and the ending leaves a good deal to be desired in terms of tying up the loose ends as well. The 84 minutes passed reasonably enough though, and it’s reasonably competent, albeit by the genre’s fairly-low standards.

Dir: Sadaaki Haginiwa
Star: Aki Hoshino, Emi Kitagawa, Ren Suzuki, Ami Natsui
a.k.a. Female Prisoner 1316

Female Slave Ship

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★★★
“Could have lived more fully up to its promise later, when the Japanese taste for pinku films had really awakened.”

It isn’t terribly ahead of its time, but one senses this could have done better later in the career of leading lady Mihara – she’d go on to movies such as the unforgettably-titled School of the Holy Beast. Here, however, exploitation largely stops at the title, with no sex to speak off [a cutaway to a gramophone needle is as salacious as it gets], female flesh is strictly limited to underwear, and the violence consists of bloodless gun-battles and a plethora of backhand slaps. With admirable equality, these are administered both to the square-jawed Japanese office hero, Lt. Suguwa (Sugawara), and the dozen women on whose ship he ends up, as World War II winds towards its end.

He was carrying crucial radar plans, when his plane is shot down. He gets picked up by a white-slaving vessel, taking a dozen women to Shanghai for sale – most are hookers, but there’s also Rumi (Mitsuya), who thought she was signing up as a combat nurse. Oops. Operations are overseen by the “queen” (Mihara), who is clearly a bad girl, since she smokes and sits with her legs crossed. However, the plan is derailed when the boat is hijacked by pirates: the girls, under Sugawa, mount a rebellion, but they are, frankly, a bit crap at it, and the pirates reverse the coup inside two minutes. It turns out the Americans wants Sugawa and the plans, so the pirates head for an island, to cut a deal with a Chinese spy for the officer, and auction away the curvier cargo. Can Sugawa and his bevy of beauties escape, despite the queen’s efforts to play both sides?

While not unentertaining, as noted above, it’s a film that would likely have been more successful made in 1970 rather than a decade previously. That said, Mihara is an excellent villainess, right from the first time we encounter her, as Sugawa tries to stop Rumi from getting a whipping for having the temerity to go on deck. She’s far more fun that the bland hero, and the film’s needle moves appreciably toward “Interesting” whenever she’s on screen. Unfortunately, that’s not often enough.

Savage Sisters

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★★½
“Bit of an exaggeration, but Fairly Unpleasant Sisters likely wouldn’t have sold.”

This Philippino phlick doesn’t quite have the courage of its convictions, and is never quite sure whether it wants to be sexploitation or serious drama. The poster promises a lot more than the film actually delivers, which is a shame, as the performances from the three leading ladies are nicely judged – as well as refreshingly multicultural. Two of them (Caffaro and Ortiz, one Caucasian, the other “Oriental”) are sent to prison, but when their torturer (ex-Bond girl Hendry, who initially comes over almost like a Black Ilsa) discovers they may know the whereabouts of a million bucks in cash, she helps spring them, and the trio head off, along with a local hustler (Ashley).

Double-crosses abound, and it all ends in a massive gun-battle on the docks. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Black Mama, White Mama – also directed by Romero, and with Sid Haig as a slimeball – took a very similar route, two years previously. This is marginally more competent, though the attempts at comedy largely don’t work, and sit uneasily alongside the torture sequences, for example. But in the absence of Pam Grier, Hendry steps up nicely, in a role that could easily have been mere caricature, and delivers the right amount of amoral gung-ho.

Nobody’s going to mistake this for great art; even as exploitation, it’s not particularly…well, exploitative, earning its R-rating more through bad language than anything else. But it keeps moving, and is worth a look if you stumble across it on late-night cable.

Dir: Eddie Romero
Star: Gloria Hendry, Cheri Caffaro, Rosanna Ortiz, John Ashley

Bad Girls: season four

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★★★★
“Back behind bars, and back on track.”

badgirls4The real strength of Bad Girls is the almost limitless possibilities of the scenario; if ever things are in danger of getting stale, it’s easy to lob in fresh characters to get the pot stirred up and create whatever angles you want. Exhibit A: new governor, Neil Grayling (Gadds), whose arrival gave the show a whole new direction, at least among the staff – and particularly Jim Fenner, who discovered a whole new viewpoint of sexual harassment. Not that it really made him see the error of his ways, of course.

Obviously, within the general prison population, life went on as before. Well, that’s if “as before” means murder, suicide and escape attempts, a birth… And – with the departure of Helen and Nikki at the end of Series Three – new lesbian couple, Cassie and Roisin, though their whining grew increasingly tiresome as the series went on. Truth be told, there also wasn’t a great deal of light in this season; after a while, you yearned for something to take the weight off. Even the two Julies seemed on a downward spiral.

However, the strongest point of the show this year was the full-flowering of Yvonne Atkins (Henry), who has become the focus around which the series revolves, and one of the best female characters in any TV series. It started with her being set-up for murder, but by the end, we were aware there was much more to this fabulously complex character, underneath the hard shell. Every scene with her in it was a delight to watch, and kept the show a shining jewel in the crown of British television. The cliffhanger at the end (who lives? who dies?) had Chris scurrying immediately for Ebay, and series five.

Star: Linda Henry, Jack Ellis, James Gaddas, Isabelle Amyes

Black Mama, White Mama

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★★
“A P-movie: Prison, Philippines and Pam Grier.”

The biggest shock this has to offer is likely the opening credit, “based on an original story by Joseph Viola and…Jonathan Demme“. Yep, future-Oscar winner Demme, director of Silence of the Lambs, came up with this story, though if truth be told, it’s largely a ripoff of The Defiant Ones, which also had a black/white pair of prisoners escaping jail chained to each other. Here, it’s moved to the Philippines, where revolutionary Karen (Markov) and drug-lord moll Lee (Grier) are both wanted by their respective parties, albeit for entirely different reasons: Karen to help broker an arms deal, Lee because she stole forty grand. While being transported to the city, the two break free and head off across country, encountering nuns, drunk drivers, lecherous handymen and dogs – dressed in skimpy prison tunics, naturally…

Actually, if they’d stuck to this unwilling pair and their bickering, that gradually turns from animosity into mutual respect, the film would likely have been a damn sight better. You can see why Grier became a star, and Markov’s screen presence is almost equally obvious. However, the film instead diverts its energy into subplots involving the rebels or Ruben (Haig), a local slimeball who agrees to track the escapees. Both subplots seem more like excuses for bad T&A, largely involving ugly Phillippino actresses. Ditto the lengthy shower scene near the beginning – while our heroines are still in jail – though it shows the prison staff are equally as sexually frustrated as the inmates. Of course, it ends in a massive gunfight on a dock, between all interested parties. It’s cheap, campy and passes the time, albeit only just.

Dir: Eddie Romero
Star: Pam Grier, Margaret Markov, Sid Haig, Lynn Borden

Ebony, Ivory & Jade

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★★
“Plus Teak and Porcelain…but not forgetting Milo.”

As well as its questionable use of the apostrophe, the cover kinda implies that three girls are involved here, which is only true for a small fraction of the running time. It starts off with five female athletes, including rich heiress Ginger, being kidnapped in the Philli…er, “Hong Kong”, and held for ransom. Their subsequent frequent attempts to escape are hampered by a difficulty in grasping the idea that, when you knock someone out, it’s okay to take their gun. But not everything is as it seems with regard to their “kidnapping”.

Oddly, there’s some primitive attempts at social commentary here, not least the conflict between black and white within the athletes, and the fact that one of their escape attempts is aided by a Communist rebel. We were also amused by the extremely crude product placement for “Milo”, which I presume is some kind of beverage popular in the Philippines – if not, perhaps, Hong Kong.

However, despite all this, and funky 70’s music which often seemed in danger of toppling over into either Bond or The Avengers theme, it gets tedious fast. This is not least because the electricity for the production must have been cut off half-way through, leaving the viewer to peer into murky gloom for the remainder. The doubling for the women’s stunts is often painfully obvious, and I bring to your attention the PG-rating this received in 1976, so don’t expect gratuitous nudity. Over at badmovieplanet.com, they have the sleeve blurb from when it was known as Foxforce. Truly hysterical, in both senses, save your time and money: read that, rather than watching the film.

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Rosanne Katon, Colleen Camp, Sylvia Anderson

Bad Girls: season three

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★★★½
“Too much soap and not enough opera, but still entertaining.”

The third series hit the ground running, Michelle Dockley taking evil warder Jim Fenner hostage, after stabbing him in the stomach with a broken bottle (to loud cheers here), and Nikki Wade breaking into jail, having gone to see Helen Stewart. However, in the middle, Michelle and Denny headed to Spain, with Fenner’s help. After a really grim episode, in which they took Sylvia Hollanby and her husband hostage (it felt like Last House on the Left 2), the show seemed to lose impetus, and spent the second half spiralling round a series of love triangles: Nikki/Helen/Thomas, Di/Josh/Crystal, Di/Gina/Mark. Chuck in two “surprise pregnancies” and, while soap-opera has always been part of the show, this was overkill.

The loss of Michelle was particularly apparent. An attempt to introduce a new “evil slut” prisoner was a failure; Maxi, leader of the Peckham Boot Gang, simply came across as a pale imitation. However, there was still plenty to enjoy, and the series finished strongly, with the arrival and departure of Victoria O’Kane (a great guest spot for 70’s icon Kate O’Mara), Nikki’s appeal, plus Michelle and Denny’s Butch & Sundance moment in Spain. The end of this series saw a couple of major departures, and the show will have to work hard to fill the gaps in the roster – we look forward to seeing whether the makers are up to the challenge.

Stars: Mandana Jones, Simone Lahbib, Linda Henry, Jack Ellis

Scorpion: Double Venom

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★★½
“Two helpings of trash for the price of one; but you get what you pay for…”

The DVD holds two films, Sasori: Joshuu 701-gô and Sasori: Korosu tenshi, only tangentially connected to Shunya Ito’s Sasori series (the best-known is Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41) – it also has a heroine who breaks out of jail, and that’s about it. Here, nurse Nami Matsushima (Komatsu) gets ten years for killing the guy who kidnapped and murdered her sister, though just before he dies, he reveals he had an accomplice. In jail, she faces the usual perils (thuggish cellmate, bisexual warden) and meets a girl on death row, framed for a murder committed by a politician – though she killed a prison guard too, so may deserve to die! As execution looms, Nami plans to save her friend. In part two, after her escape, she gets involved with a hitman, and goes back into the prison, in order to rescue his girlfriend.

While not avoiding nudity (it seems like a made-for-Japanese-cable film, complete with pauses for ads), these lack much of the sadism often seen in the WiP genre. Komatsu brings a fine earnestness to the role, but the films are barred from greatness by startlingly idiotic plotting. For example, judicial hanging causes death by a broken neck, not asphyxiation and, in any case, Nami’s resuscitation technique is bizarre beyond belief (the credits list a medical advisor – I plan to stay out of Japanese hospitals). While undeniably dumb, the opener is at least entertaining; the second film is largely just dull, save a final twist that really has to be seen to be beli…no, actually, you still won’t believe it. *** for the first part, ** for the second.

Dir: Ryouji Niimura
Star: Chiharu Komatsu, Tomoro Taguchi, Daisuke Ryuu, Aya Sasaki

Prisoner Maria: The Movie

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★★★½

Despite its title, Prisoner Maria: The Movie has a different set of influences altogether. First up heroine Maria is only a prisoner for a few minutes; the most obvious reference point is Nikita, and it’s not alone. As documented elsewhere, Luc Besson’s film has spawned a TV series, one remake, and a host of unofficial clones, all on the theme of a female criminal forced to become a government assassin. This tape is not the first Prisoner Maria adventure, and things have changed somewhat over time: her bosses have become kinder, and no longer use death-threats against her child to convince Maria they’re serious. She also gets a car to ship her around, rather than having to sprint back to beat their deadline: run, Maria, run! Now, she does the hits merely in return for access to her son, but it’s more poignant and altruistic than in Nikita, which was largely driven by pure self-interest.

Given the ongoing nature of the series, the set-up and background are understandably sketchy. However, it’s enough, and Maria (Noriko Aota) is swiftly hunting a serial killer who is a potential embarrassment to the government, since he’s a politician’s son. Were it this simple. it’d be a very short film – even as is, it’s only 75 minutes – and so she’s soon embroiled with the Taiwanese mafia, a nosy cop, and a particularly mad doctor, whose hobbies include mind-control, white slavery, organ bootlegging and saying typically mad-scientist things, such as “I am God! What’s wrong with God changing the minds of people?” It’s not giving much away to hint that a bad end awaits.

Based on a manga by Shigeru Tsuchiyama and Shintaro Iba, this is cheerfully shallow stuff, although the occasional sequences of abuse may have more liberal viewers twitching — the depiction of the serial killer at work is unlikely to survive any British release. Aota wears a selection of tight dresses and short skirts, and performs her action scenes creditably enough, though the likes of Michelle Yeoh will not be losing any sleep. In addition, some thought has clearly gone into the story, which is perhaps where it wins out most convincingly over Scorpion’s Revenge.

For the core of exploitation is countering the inevitable budgetary limitations. Usually it’s through something like nudity, which has been described as the cheapest special effect. However, just as cheap is imagination, and it tends to be this which lifts the better kind of trash cinema above the pack. When Scorpion’s Revenge leaves the familiar confines of the prison setting, it runs out of ideas, while Prisoner Maria does its best to keep the audience interested throughout. It also boast a stronger core concept, and that’s why it has the potential for a series, whereas Scorpion’s Revenge fails to get through one film – as for a series…I think not.

[A version of this article originally appeared in Manga Max]

Dir: Shuji Kataoka
Star: Noriko Aota, Tetsuo Kurata, Koji Shimizu

Bad Girls: season one

  By

★★★★
“Guilty of being a solid and thoroughly entertaining drama.”

Women-in-prison is not a genre greatly within our remit, since they’re often just an excuse for a bit of soft-core masochism. There are occasional exceptions, however, and this is one, with its origins as a network TV show forcing restraint of the more exploitative aspects, as well as permitting the characters to develop more fully than in a movie.

This is especially necessary, since at first glance they are your usual cliches: slimy warder, do-good governor, lesbian with a heart, wrongly imprisoned innocent, etc. However, over time, we get to see more facets, and the acting is, without exception, impressive. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we particularly warmed to the villains, Jack Ellis as Fenner, a guard who deals out privilege in exchange for sexual favours, and Debra Stephenson as the psychopathic Michelle Dockley.

Credit to the writing too, which maintains a fine balance, most notably the episode which switched between a funeral and attempts to brew up home-made wine. You truly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But why does almost no-one ever get out of jail, except in a body-bag? Could probably stand a little less of the unresolved sexual tension between Nikki (the good dyke) and Helen (the nice governor) – I’m no fan of it, gay or straight – but I suspect this side will run and run, and we’re happy to put up with it.

Star: Mandana Jones, Simone Lahbib, Debra Stephenson, Jack Ellis