Black Cat (1991)

Black Cat is a 1991 Hong Kong action movie although it was actually a Hong Kong-Canada co-production. It was shot in Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. Stephen Shin directed.

This is very very obviously a rip-off of Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita (1990). The premise is identical. Besson’s is the better movie but Black Cat is not without its virtues.

In a roadside diner somewhere in the U.S. a Chinese girl named Catherine (Jade Leung) has a run-in with a trucker. Catherine explodes into extreme violence and mayhem ensues. The cops arrive but taking Catherine into custody involves more mayhem and leaves a cop dead.

A very big very butch female guard at the local lock-up decides to give Catherine a beating. Catherine beats the daylights out of her. Catherine makes a daring escape which involves the expenditure of hundreds of rounds of small-arms ammunition before she is finally gunned down.

But Catherine isn’t dead. She’s been rescued. By the C.I.A.. They have a use for her. She’s an ultra-violent uncontrollable vicious sociopath but she’s a formidable killing machine. All they have to do is put a chip in her head so they can control her and they’ll have a super-assassin.

C.I.A. agent Brian (Simon Yam) will train her and be her controller. Her name is now Erica. Her code-name is Black Cat.

So yes, so far it’s a direct copy of La Femme Nikita.

Erica has been saved from what would have been about 80 years in prison but she is now a puppet. She’s an efficient assassin but in the past she has aways killed in the heat of the moment. In the heat of battle so to speak. Killing in cold blood isn’t quite so easy. But she learns how to do it.

The C.I.A. are very much the bad guys. As in real life most of their activities are in fact criminal. They’re like an organised crime syndicate but with fewer ethical scruples.

Then Erica falls in love. She had almost forgotten that she was a woman. But having a relationship is awkward when you’re a professional killer, especially for an outfit as sinister as the C.I.A.

Her early missions go smoothly. Then something goes wrong. Maybe it was bad luck. Maybe there was a leak. Maybe she was set up. Maybe it’s all part of a hopelessly complicated C.I.A. operation. In this world of paranoia you can never tell if you’re betrayed or not.

And while Erica gets lied to she does her share of lying as well.

There are some rough edges. The early scenes are supposed to be in America and everyone speaks English but the English dialogue was clearly written by someone who was not a native English speaker. It all just sounds bizarrely wrong.

The uneasy relationship between Erica and Brian lacks some of the subtlety and complexity of the equivalent relationship in La Femme Nikita.

The action scenes are superb. They’re wildly unrealistic. On her first mission Erica is up against about 140 bodyguards armed with machineguns. Naturally they don’t have a chance against one girl with a handgun. When she is pursued by the cops early on the cops are just wildly spraying gunfire in her general direction with no concern at all that dozens of innocent bystanders could get hit. But this is Hong Kong action cinema so you just accept it.

What matters is that the action scenes have hyper-kinetic energy and a real sense of urgency. Overall the visuals are impressive, creating the right mood of twistedness and paranoia.

Jade Leung does a fine job. Erica is a strange girl and she gets that across.

Simon Yam is very good also. From the start he’s a bit sinister but we’re not quite sure just how sinister he might turn out to be.

Compared to La Femme Nikita this movie is much more cyberpunk. It’s not the high-tech stuff (we never find out what the chip in her head actually does) but it’s more of a cyberpunk feel.

Black Cat isn’t as good as La Femme Nikita but it’s exciting and action-packed and it’s highly recommended.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray looks great and includes a bunch of extras.

Here's the review I did of La Femme Nikita a while back.

Jennie: Wife/Child (1968)

Jennie: Wife/Child, released in 1968, is a prime slice of hicksploitation. Robert Carl Cohen and James Landis are the credited directors with Landis writing the screenplay.

Things are pretty tense down on the Peckingpaw farm. Albert Peckingpaw (Jack Lester) is a sour bad-tempered old man and he’s convinced that his cute 20-year-old wife Jennie (Beverly Lunsford) is not to be trusted where men are concerned. He’s probably right. In fact he’s definitely right.

Of course it would help if he showed Jennie a bit of affection and allowed her to have a social life and have some fun. That might have satisfied her.

Now she’s got her eye on the Peckingpaws’ hunky young farmhand Mario Dingle (Jim Reader). Mario is terrified. He wants nothing to do with her. He knows that she’s trouble.

But Jennie wants some lovin’ and she’s determined to get some.

Mario is as dumb as a rock but it’s not his brain that interests Jennie.

Jennie is not just starved of carnal pleasures. She’s starved of affection. She’s also sick of not having pretty things. She’s become more reckless in her flirting with Mario.

And she becomes enraged when she discovers that Mario visits a whore regularly.

It’s more and more difficult for Jennie and Mario to keep their hands off each other, with Jennie being the one pushing the issue more energetically.

They think they’re being discreet but they’re not discreet enough. And maybe Albert is a bit sharper than they’d thought.

You know where things are certainly going to go from here but that’s not quite how it plays out. James Landis’s script is a bit cleverer than you might expect.

There are some quite neat slightly unexpected plot twists, and the characters behave in the unpredictable irrational ways that real people behave, rather than like characters in a cheap exploitation movie.

The acting is quite effective. Jack Lester as Albert is not as cartoonish as one expects. He’s menacing but there’s some nuance here.

Beverly Lunsford as Jennie is as cute as a button but her performance is also not too bad. She doesn’t make Jennie too sympathetic but nor does she make her too unsympathetic.

It’s worth pointing out that Jennie is no in fact a child. She’s twenty. She’s a grown woman, although emotionally she is perhaps a tad immature. She’s been married to Albert Peckingpaw for four months so she never was a child bride.

By 1968 sexploitation movies were becoming considerably more risqué but this movie is very tame with just some brief mild nudity. It’s not really sexploitation. There’s not much violence. It’s more of a hicksploitation movie aimed at the drive-in circuit.

Although it’s a sound film it uses intertitles, presumably to enhance the melodrama flavour. There are also songs interspersed throughout the action which give an odd but interesting feel.

Most online reviewers start from the assumption that movies such as this are junk that can only be appreciated as “so-bad-it’s-good” or camp which says a lot about the inability of most online reviewers to comprehend anything offbeat or truly unconventional. Jennie: Wife/Child does have an offbeat vibe but it’s clearly intentional rather than the result of incompetence. It’s an overcooked melodrama but with a darker rural noir edge.

It’s also a very competently made movie with some nice cinematic sequences. The cinematography is by the great Vilmos Zsigmond which is another reason not to dismiss this film as junk.

One should always try to approach movies with an open mind. This movie is a case in point. This is actually an extremely good extremely interesting movie with an ending that is not at all what you’re going to be expecting. Highly recommended.

Something Weird paired this film with the swampsploitation potboiler Common Law Wife (1961) and the two movies do have a similar feel. They’re fairly close in feel to the swampsploitation classic Louisiana Hussy (1959) and they have some affinity with Russ Meyer’s southern gothic hicksploitation masterpieces Lorna (1964) and Mudhoney (1964).

The Something Weird DVD actually includes three movies - Common Law Wife, Jennie: Wife/Child and Moonshine Love (1969). All three are worth seeing, making this one of Something Weird’s best-ever DVD releases. Common Law Wife and Jennie: Wife/Child have since been released on Blu-Ray by Film Masters.

Orgy of the Dead (1965)

Orgy of the Dead, released in 1965, is promoted as an Ed Wood Jr movie. He did not direct it but he did write the screenplay, based on his own novel.

While he has a huge cult following it has to be admitted that Wood’s reputation as a staggeringly incompetent director is richly deserved. The movies he directed are not just shambolic but all too often boring. On the other hand he really did write some very cool very entertaining screenplays. The Violent Years (1956) is a totally crazed juvenile delinquent movie which has to be seen to be believed. So the fact that Orgy of the Dead was written by Wood but directed by someone else makes it quite enticing.

And this movie plays to Wood’s strengths as a screenwriter - his talent for excruciatingly awful dialogue, his total inability to construct an even moderately coherent plot and his tendency to waft off into delirious lunacy.

This movie was in fact directed by Stephen C. Apostolof using the pseudonym A. C. Stephen.

The movie opens with young couple Bob and Shirley heading down the highway in search of a cemetery. Bob writes horror stories and cemeteries provide him with inspiration. They crash their car and do indeed end up in a graveyard, but a very lively one.

Bob and Shirley find themselves prisoners of the Emperor of the Night, his beautiful but sinister consort (the Black Ghoul) and his army of ghouls.The ghouls are beautiful girls who have earned eternal damnation for greed or lust or other assorted sins. What fiendish tortures await Bob and Shirley? In fact all that happens to them is that they have to watch almost-naked pretty girls dancing. The Black Ghoul threatens them with dire fates which never eventuate.

Technically the film is quite polished considering the minuscule budget. The camera remains in focus, the lighting is handled competently and it looks like it was made by someone who understood at least the basics of filmmaking.

The Emperor of the Night is played by Criswell, a fascinating character in his on right. He was a popular TV personality (even a semi-regular on the Johnny Carson Show) famous for his predictions which were of course simply outrageous jokes. He knows this movie is intended to be jokey and goofy and he has a lot of fun.

If you want to appreciate this movie you have to understand what it isn’t. It isn’t a low-budget horror B-movie. That’s not what it’s trying to do so there’s no point in complaining that as a horror movie it just does’t work. It’s best not to compare it to movies Ed Wood directed in the 50s, like Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Those movies were trying to be very low-budget horror or sci-fi movies.

There’s no point in getting impatient about all the nude dancing and wondering when the horror content is going to kick in. It isn’t going to kick in. Nude dancing girls is what Orgy of the Dead is all about.

Orgy of the Dead is a very typical mid-60s American sexploitation movie of the nudie-cutie type - a lighthearted feel, quite a bit of goofiness and plenty of female flesh. This being 1965 there is no frontal nudity but there’s an abundance of bare breasts.

And Orgy of the Dead belongs to a sexploitation sub-sub-genre that enjoyed a certain vogue in the 60s - nudie-cuties with some tongue-in-cheek horror movie trappings. It belongs with movies like The Joys of Jezebel (1970) and Harry Novak’s Kiss Me Quick! (1964) and House on Bare Mountain (1962).

You have to judge Orgy of the Dead as a nudie-cutie. And as nudie-cuties go it’s not great but it’s OK. It doesn’t have the charm of Russ Meyer’s The Immoral Mr Teas (1959) or Doris Wishman’s Nude on the Moon (1961) or Hideout in the Sun (1960). It doesn’t have the madcap inventiveness of The Girl from S.I.N. (1966) or the cheerful goofiness of Henry’s Night In (1969).

But it does have lots of bare-breasted dancing lovelies.

Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-Ray release looks fabulous and includes quite a few extras.

Bikini Airways (2003)

Bikini Airways is a 2003 made-for cable skinflick. It’s a sex comedy but essentially it’s a skinflick. But it is directed by inspired low-budget cult auteur Fred Olen Ray so that makes it a more enticing prospect. And Ray knew how to get surprisingly good results on almost non-existent budgets.

It benefits from a basically good central idea.

Terri (Regina Russell) suddenly finds herself the owner of an airline. Which is not as great as it sounds since the airline employs a total of two people and is on the verge of bankruptcy. There is no money, but plenty of debts.

Terri knows that the only thing that can save the airline is publicity, preferably free publicity. Her boyfriend is a photographer and he specialises in nudie stuff. He suggests that hot near-naked babes would provide perfect publicity. And he is sure he can persuade his three gorgeous regular models to lend their talents to the scheme.

Having three bikini babes manning the check-in counter attracts attention but no customers, but the boyfriend still has one idea left. A young oil tycoon, Gary (Brad Bartram), had a bachelor party planned for the day before his wedding but since he has to get to Miami in a hurry for the nuptials there’s no time to have that party. But what if Terri’s airline could fly Gary and his friends to Miami and he could have the bachelor party on the way, on the plane?

Those three bikini babes will provide the entertainment.

The entertainment they provide is in the form of lots of hot steamy sex. These girls have a lot of energy and a lot of imagination, and no inhibitions at all.

There is, lurking in the background, an actual plot of sorts. It involves two relationships heading for the rocks and the chance of finding true love in unexpected places.

Comic relief is provided by the broken-down chief pilot Captain Sam and his incompetent co-pilot Dave. Captain Sam spends most of the flight taking photos of the sexual gymnastics taking place in the passenger cabin. We do have serious doubts about their piloting abilities.

This is a softcore film but the sex scenes get pretty raunchy and there are lots of sex scenes. Fred Olen Ray doesn’t have the genius of a Radley Metzger when it comes to shooting sex scenes but he does know how to make them steamy and sweaty.

Overall this is a good-natured movie. The photographer boyfriend is a bit of a jerk but he’s not evil, it’s just that he can’t keep it in his pants. And he is exposed to some pretty extreme temptation. You can’t entirely blame him for having it off with one of the Bikini Airways babes. Gary’s two friends get it on with the other two babes, but the girls are after all being provided as the in-flight entertainment.

And Terri and Gary take quite an interest in each other.

It’s all cheerfully naughty and nobody really gets hurt.

The acting is at best passable but let’s face it the cast members were chosen for their willingness to take their clothes off. Jay Richardson as Captain Sam is quite good fun. Regina Russell is likeable.

If you accept Bikini Airways for what it is, a skinflick with some amusing moments, and you don’t have a problem with naked girls and lots of sex scenes it’s rather enjoyable. Recommended.

The Retromedia Blu-Ray looks very nice. Extras include another much less interesting made-for-cable skinflick.

Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)

Count Yorga, Vampire had quite a cult following at one time. It’s a “vampires in the modern world” movie. I saw it years ago and was decidedly unimpressed. It’s now time for a rewatch on Blu-Ray.

The movie opens with a séance conducted by the mysterious Count Yorga (Robert Quarry). The object is to contact the spirit of the mother of Donna (Donna Anderson). The mother had been Count Yorga’s girlfriend. Donna’s friends are very sceptical about the séance but Donna believes.

Donna is now under the Count’s hypnotic control.

Paul (Michael Murphy) and Erica (Judy Lang) have an encounter with the Count.

Erica is not well. Her physician Dr Jim Hayes (Roger Perry) diagnoses pernicious anaemia.

Dr Hayes is a blood specialist. He immediately suspects vampirism.

Dr Hayes persuades Donna’s friends that Count Yorga is a vampire who must be destroyed.

Unfortunately they turn out to be less than skilful vampire hunters. They equip themselves with sharpened broomsticks and crude improvised wooden crosses.

They do not inspire confidence.

They don’t know if they’re up against a single vampire. They do know that they will have to deal with the Count’s manservant/bodyguard who looks like a mad scientist’s assistant. We expect him to be named Igor but in fact he’s named Brudah (Edward Walsh). He’s dumb but he’s scary.

The stage is set for a showdown between the vampire and the amateur vampire hunters.

Count Yorga’s lair in his mansion looks reasonably impressive. It really is a great location which is utilised to the fullest.

The vampire makeup effects are adequate. There’s some gore but it’s fairly tame.

The visuals overall are OK but not exactly inspired.

This is a very low-budget movie and it does look rather on the cheap side.

This an extraordinarily un-erotic vampire movie and if you’re making an un-erotic vampire movie you’re pretty much missing the point of the whole vampire mythos. Intriguingly this movie was apparently originally intended to be a softcore erotic vampire film which might have been rather more entertaining.

Robert Quarry makes a moderately good vampire but doesn’t quite have the charisma that actors like Christopher Lee and Louis Jourdan brought to the role.

The other performances are adequate but unexciting.

This was an exciting time in the history of the vampire movie. European directors were totally redefining the genre with moves like Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1970), Jean Rollin’s Requiem for a Vampire (1971) and The Nude Vampire (1970), José Larraz’s Vampyres (1974) and the underrated Paul Naschy vampire flick Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973). The Japanese were getting into the act as well, with The Vampire Doll (1970).

By comparison Count Yorga, Vampire seems old-fashioned, stodgy and clunky. It is in fact just another (unauthorised) retread of Dracula but with the action moved to 1970 California. The Count has been renamed, he comes from Bulgaria rather than Transylvania and a blood specialist takes the place of Van Helsing but it’s the exact same story.

This was of course the same approach that Hammer took with Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), relocating Dracula to early 70s Swinging London. But the Hammer film is more professionally made, it has more style, it’s more fun, it has Christopher Lee and it at least tries to take advantage of the idea of an ancient vampire suddenly finding himself in a world of rock’n’roll, miniskirts, flared jeans, sexual promiscuity and mind-altering substances.

Count Yorga, Vampire simply does not take any advantage of its contemporary setting.

This is not by any means a bad movie. It’s just that if you want a fairly straightforward Dracula adaptation then Hammer’s Horror of Dracula is superior and if you want a “Dracula in the modern world” move than Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972 does it better and in both cases Christopher Lee is a much better Dracula than Robert Quarry. Count Yorga, Vampire really doesn’t offer anything special. Worth a look but set your expectations fairly low.

I Am a Nymphomaniac (1971)

I Am a Nymphomaniac (Je suis une nymphomane) is a 1971 French softcore erotic film directed by Max Pécas who also co-wrote the script.

Carole (Sandra Julien) is a rather innocent very sexually repressed girl living in a provincial town in France. She’s a virgin and she gets nervous if her boyfriend Eric (Alain Hitier) makes even the slightest attempt at physical intimacy.

One thing I liked is that this film doesn’t resort to crude clichés like childhood trauma to explain her previous sexual repression. Her childhood was not nightmarish. It was just boring. Her parents did not mistreat her. They were just dull and conformist and very repressed. Her life was simply stifling.

Then Carole has an accident. She falls down a flight of stairs. She suffers no serious physical injuries but something very serious has happened to her brain. She is now a nymphomaniac! She can’t stop touching herself and she can’t stop thinking about the pleasures of the flesh.

She is of course appalled. Even thinking about such things is wicked.

She now feels like a scarlet woman and she will of course have to leave her home and go to Paris. That’s where wicked women go.

After her boss’s nephew seduces her boss sends her to Paris to work for his sister. Murielle (Janine Reynaud) runs an art gallery so we figure that she is probably sexually depraved. Which turns out to be the case. Murielle seduces her and then sets her up with decadent Roman businessman Bruno (Michel Lemoine).

Carole naturally seeks medical help but while she is assured that nymphomania is curable it sounds like it will be a long cure. She decides to try religion but that doesn’t seem to help.

As a nymphomaniac she’s a bit of an under-achiever. But any sexual urges at all have always horrified her and they still horrify her. She is consumed with guilt. After a bizarre carnival sequence she tries to slash her wrists.

Then kindly handsome young doctor Michel (Patrick Verde). He is sure he can cure her. He moves her into his apartment. Yes, you might think that’s a bit ethically dubious but even though Carole is smokin’ hot and perpetually horny he is never tempted by her. He’s a doctor. No doctor would take advantage of a patient in a situation like this. Even when she takes her clothes off and starts climbing all over him in bed he isn’t tempted. Doctors are so dedicated!

The story is played very very straight. The temptation would have been to take a tongue-in-cheek approach but that temptation is resisted.

In an odd way the fact that it’s played so straight makes it feel more wild and crazy than it would have been had it been played overtly wild and crazy. It’s extremely difficult to believe that the audience is expected to take all this nonsense seriously. Carole is subjected to a battery of physical examinations to determine whether she’s a true nymphomaniac.

Of course it’s also possible that Pécas was trying to avoid censorship problems, much as early 60s American sexploitation movies would offer lots of salacious material but add a preface in which a respectable doctor would warn us that this is a serious film addressing a problem that threatens the nation’s youth and the moral fibre of society. In other words Pécas may be offering what exploitation filmmakers called a “square-up” - presenting titillation in the guise of a public service.

In fact I’m convinced that Pécas is winking at us and assumes that we are not going to take anything in this movie the slightest bit seriously.

The acting is mostly OK. Sandra Julien is gorgeous and is able to sell us on the idea that Carole is a sweet innocent girl tortured by her lusts. The standout performer is the always amazing Janine Raynaud as the cheerfully depraved Murielle.

The sex scenes are tame but they’re artfully and imaginatively shot in a manner reminiscent of Radley Metzger’s style.

I Am a Nymphomaniac is most interesting for its odd subtle off-kilter feel. I enjoyed it and I recommend it.

I’ve reviewed a much earlier Max Pécas movie, Daniella By Night (1961), a spy thriller romance staring Elke Sommer and the excellent classy sophisticated juvenile delinquent movie Sweet Violence (1962), again with Elke Sommer.

Fast Company (1979)

Fast Company is a lighthearted romantic action thriller drag-racing drive-in movie directed by David Cronenberg. This is definitely not the sort of thing one associates with Cronenberg.

This is a Canadian movie shot entirely in Canada.

Cronenberg was just finding his feet as a director at this time. This is a movie he did for a pay cheque but he is in fact a drag-racing fan.

Lonnie Johnson (William Smith) is a well-known popular drag racer. He drives the fastest dragsters, the “fuelers” which run on nitromethane and alcohol. Or he did, until his car exploded. Now he has to drive a “funny car” (front-engined dragsters with fibreglass body shells). Which means that his protégé Billy Booker (known as Billy the Kid) misses out. Lonnie feels bad about this. He likes Billy. But Lonnie had no choice. He races for the FastCo team and his boss Phil Adamson (John Saxon) insists.

We know Adamson is going to be the bad guy because he’s played by John Saxon. And Saxon is in full-on nasty slimy super-villain mode.

Lonnie’s chief rival is Gary "The Blacksmith" Black (Cedric Smith). Gary resents Lonnie’s success but while he’s hyper-competitive we should not jump to the conclusion that he’s going to be a bad guy.

Lonnie’ girlfriend is Sammy (Claudia Jennings). She’d like him to give up racing and she knows he won’t but she loves him anyway.

Billy the Kid is sleeping with Candy (Judy Foster), who is a kind of drag racing equivalent of a Formula 1 grid girl. Adamson is trying to force her to sleep with clients.

Adamson has plans to get rid of Lonnie because Lonnie won’t grovel to him but he has to have a plausible justification for firing him.

It all comes to a head with a big race for the Funny Car championship.

There’s some satire here about the corrupting effects of commercialism in sport but FastCo is not a giant corporation. Adamson has a private plane but it’s not a LearJet. It’s a little single-engined Cessna. FastCo and Adamson are just not big enough or important enough to be truly sinister, which makes the satire lighthearted and amusing. Despite his ruthlessness and unscrupulousness Adamson is ridiculous rather than truly scary.

There’s plenty of cool drag racing action. There are crashes and there are exploding dragsters. Lonnie is nicknamed Lucky Man because of his extraordinary knack for walking away unscathed from spectacular crashes. There’s some suspense. There’s an over-the-top villain. There’s a bit of humour. There’s a lighthearted feelgood vibe. There’s some romance. There are bare boobs. This is a total drive-in movie.

One thing I like about it is that it takes these people seriously. Drag racing is their life. The movie isn’t mocking them. Lonnie isn’t a ridiculous figure. Sammy isn’t made to seem ridiculous for loving him. Candy isn’t made to seem ridiculous for loving Billy. These people have a passion and they follow it. They are doing what they love. Sammy respects Lonnie for that.

With motor racing there’s always the sneaking suspicion that the attraction for the spectators is the possibility of witnessing a fiery crash. It’s a kind of primitive ritual - men courting violent death. It’s a dance of death. It’s interesting that although on the surface Fast Company doesn’t seem at all Cronenbergian 17 years later Cronenberg would deal with similar themes in a very Cronenbergian way in Crash. And while Fast Company doesn’t deal with the erotic aspect of this attraction overtly we do see some very hot babes who are obviously at least to some extent keen to have sex with men who may be marked for death.

John Saxon is delightfully fiendish. William Smith makes a good sympathetic hero. He’s not perfect but basically he’s a good guy. Claudia Jennings, a fine actress, is very good but isn’t given enough to do.

Fast Company is a fine above-average drive-in movie.

This movie looks great on Blu-Ray.