THE VELOCIPASTOR (2019) **

Sometimes, I think Grindhouse did more harm than good.  Yes, it is one of the best movies of the century.  Yes, it gave Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino a platform to pay tribute to the exploitation films of yesteryear while still allowing them to make pictures that were very uniquely their own.  However, because they purposely made certain aspects of their films look cheap and incompetent, it gave cheap and incompetent filmmakers an avenue to make movies in the Grindhouse mold where they could chalk up their shortcomings to the retro aesthetic.  Like, “I know it’s bad, but it’s SUPPOSED to be bad!”

First, The Asylum perpetrated the Sharknado series upon the world.  Pretty soon, the trickle-down effect led to any old low budget filmmaker who could secure a deal with a video company making would-be cult movies on super cheap budgets.  The thing is, the old exploitation flicks were fun DESPITE their shortcomings.  These newfangled readymade Grindhouse films use their shortcomings as a crutch.  

Part of the fun of Grindhouse was the fake trailers that appeared before the movies.  I think The VelociPastor has all the makings for a great fake trailer.  It’s all about a mild-mannered pastor (Greg Cohan) who, while traveling in China, cuts his hand on a mystical dinosaur tooth and becomes a bloodthirsty raptor by night.  Along with a hooker/med (and law) student (Alyssa Kempinski), he hunts down and eats only the people who DESERVE to be eaten. 

This premise could’ve easily supported a three-minute trailer.  It might’ve even made for a decent seven-minute short.  Seventy minutes (which is barely feature length) is just way too much time to spend on the already flimsy set-up.  The filmmakers even take to adding inconsequential flashbacks and tossing in too many supporting characters to get the film up to seventy minutes.  (The introduction of the drug-dealing Ninjas late in the game feels especially tacked on.)

There one or two funny moments that revolve around the film’s nearly nonexistent budget.  That’s not quite enough to make it worthwhile though.  Still, as far as these things go, you can do a whole lot worse.  At least it moves at an agreeable pace and the performers are in on the joke.  Overall, The Velocipastor is proof that the fake Grindhouse genre deserves to be extinct. 

MARTIAL LAW 2: UNDERCOVER (1992) ** ½

Jeff Wincott replaces Chad McQueen as karate-chopping cop Martial Law.  This time out, he gets promoted to detective.  On his first day on the job, his friend, a fellow detective, is killed by dirty cops who are in the pocket of a sleazy businessman named Spenser (Paul Johansson).  Martial Law gets his girlfriend/partner (Cynthia Rothrock) to go undercover as a bartender in Spenser’s nightclub to collect evidence.  Together, they get justice for his buddy and bring the bad guys down.  

Martial Law 2 is a decent enough Kung Fu flick that plays almost like a remake of the first movie.  However, it feels like a step down in just about every regard.  I like Jeff Wincott a lot, but he doesn’t have the same swagger that McQueen brought to the role.  Another stumbling block is that the villain is really weak this go-round.  I know it’s hard to top David Carradine, but Johansson isn’t intimidating in the least and makes for an instantly forgettable villain.  I did like the fact that they cast the usually villainous Billy Drago as Wincott’s Yelling Captain, although the casting kind of tips off what happens with the character later in the film.  (I could’ve done without seeing him participating in a softcore sex scene too.)  We also get a bit part by Subspecies star Denice Duff as the dead cop’s widow.  

The overly familiar plot wouldn’t have mattered if the action wasn’t such a mixed bag.  I liked the opening sequence where Wincott goes undercover dressed as a bum and disrupts a biker gang from making an arms deal.  Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, Rothrock, who’s disguised as a hot dog vendor, shows up to back up her partner and Kung Fu some bikers.  Wincott’s big barroom brawl with the gang later in the film is also kind of fun.  

Director Kurt (Bounty Tracker) Anderson handles the fights in a capable manner, but overall, they lack the panache of the first movie.  Even the underground fighting scenes are weak when it comes to choreography and execution.  The best sequences are the ones in which Rothrock gets to kick a little ass.  That’s mostly due to her spunky performance than the staging of the fights though.  In the end, Rothrock’s charm is nearly enough to carry Martial Law 2:  Undercover across the finish line.  I just wish she had more to do throughout the rest of the film.  

Mission of Justice (which also starred Wincott) was a sort-of sequel that was released later in the year.

AKA:  Karate Cop.

MARTIAL LAW (1991) ***

Chad McQueen stars as a karate-kicking cop nicknamed “Martial Law” who’s trying to bust David Carradine for running a stolen car ring.  Chad’s girlfriend (Cynthia Rothrock) is an undercover cop who occasionally helps him bust heads whenever he gets in a jam.  Complications arise when Chad’s juvenile delinquent little brother (Andy McCutcheon) winds up boosting cars for Carradine.  When Carradine takes out Chad’s brother, he goes out for revenge.

Martial Law is pretty routine stuff, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining.  The stellar work by the three leads helps to elevate it above the ranks of forgettable ‘90s Kung Fu cop thrillers.  McQueen does a fine job as the macho karate cop.  He gets a great introduction during the opening scene where some armed thugs take people hostage in a jewelry store.  Chad shows up disguised as a pizza delivery guy, and proceeds to kick their asses all over the shop.  

Rothrock’s character is a bit underwritten, but it’s interesting that the filmmakers were able to combine the stereotypical partner and girlfriend characters into one person.  She gets a few good Kung Fu sequences (including squaring off against Benny “The Jet” Urquidez in a stairwell), which helps make up for her lack of characterization.  Cynthia also gets a fun scene where she and McQueen team up to take down some goons in a nightclub.  

Carradine seems to be having a blast hamming it up as the smooth-talking villain.  I also enjoyed seeing him taking on Professor Toru Tanaka in a to-the-death match inside a parking garage.  And it’s Carradine who gets the best line when he tells McQueen’s brother, “I take care of my friends… and my enemies!”

Director Steve Cohen has a workmanlike style that suits the material.  He films the fight scenes clearly and gives the performers plenty of room to do their thing.  His next flick, the fun “Rowdy” Roddy Piper/Billy Blanks team-up, Tough and Deadly, was even better.

FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION (2008) ** ½

Female Convict Scorpion is director Joe Ma’s moderately entertaining, but frustratingly uneven updating of the classic Female Prisoner Scorpion series.  Anyone unfamiliar with the old films should be able to accept and enjoy it at face value.  However, for die-hard Female Prisoner Scorpion (and Meiko Kaji) fans, it’s a bit of a disappointment.    

Nami (Miki Mizuno) is forced into killing her boyfriend’s family in front of him and is sent to a hellhole prison.  There, she is routinely beaten and degraded by the warden, not to mention the deranged inmate Dieyou (Nana Natsume).  She eventually trains herself to fight, gains the upper hand, and is able to defeat Dieyou and her minions.  As punishment, she is tortured and left for dead by the guards.  Nami is eventually found in the woods and nursed back to health by a Kung Fu teacher (an extended guest appearance by a grizzled looking Simon Yam) who gives her the tools she needs to exact revenge on the people who wronged her.  

The structure of the film is solid.  The bare bones for a terrific revenge thriller are there.  However, Ma’s style often gets in the way of the fun.  He relies too heavily on a lot of unnecessary cinematic gymnastics, and all the quick-cut editing, dissolves, and slow motion (even during the simplest of scenes) detract from the overall impact.  

Ma seems to take more inspiration from the revenge thrillers of the early aughts than the grindhouse foundations of the original series.  You can definitely feel the influence of Oldboy and Kill Bill at work here (which is fitting since Kill Bill took so much inspiration from the original Female Prisoner Scorpion films).  It’s also a little lax when it comes to delivering the goods on the traditional Women in Prison scenes.  We don’t get any cavity searches or shower scenes, but we do get to-the-death mud wrestling matches where the winner receives a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, so that at least is novel.  The ever-escalating shower fight between Nami and Dieyou is a real showstopper too.

It's hard to top Meiko Kaji from the original movies.  (Likewise, the new version of Kaji’s classic theme song, “Urami Bushi” isn’t a patch on Kaji’s version.)  Mizuno doesn’t even try, which works to her advantage.  Whereas Kaji was brooding, sexy, and savage, Mizuno is quieter, and more reserved.  Although she suffers from comparison to Kaji, Mizuno makes the role her own and her take on the character suits this new version nicely.  It was also fun seeing ‘70s Bruce Lee imitator Bruce (The Clones of Bruce Lee) Liang popping up as one of the villain’s henchmen, who gets a solid swordfight with Mizuno on top of a speeding truck.  The bloodletting is copious too, which certainly helps.

Some of the fights feature excessive wirework, which makes some of the battles look needlessly cartoony.  The third act subplot involving Nami’s boyfriend being hypnotized to forget his memories of her, and their subsequent rekindled romance doesn’t really work either.  Despite never reaching the heights of its original inspiration, Female Convict Scorpion is nevertheless a decent (if flawed) Kung Fu revenge saga.

Yam gets the best line of the movie when he tells Mizuno:  “This sword hasn’t tasted blood in a while.  Feed it well.”

AKA:  Sasori.  AKA:  Prisoner 701:  Sasori.  

THE MARINE 5: BATTLEGROUND (2017) ** ½

WrestleMania was this weekend.  While I haven’t followed wrestling in a long time, I still watch WWE’s DTV action movies on a semi-regular basis.  To celebrate this year’s WrestleMania, I figured I’d watch a WWE flick I haven’t seen yet.  After much deliberation, I finally settled on The Marine 5:  Battleground.  The fact that I haven’t seen The Marine 4, and have only hazy recollections of the three previous Marines didn’t stop me from checking it out.  Turns out it was a hair or two better than you’d expect.

The Marine (Mike “The Miz” Mizanin) is now working as an EMT.  On his first night on the job, he gets a call to an abandoned amusement park where he finds a gunshot wound victim in dire need of medical attention.  Unfortunately for him and his partner (Anna Van Hooft), their patient just pulled a hit on the leader of a nefarious biker gang, and his loyal legion of motorcycle-riding marauders are in hot pursuit.  

The set-up is actually pretty great.  It’s basically Assault on Precinct Beverly Hills Cop 3.  Too bad much of the action takes place in a parking garage.  Although it never quite lives up to its potential and features very little amusement park action (probably due to budget constraints), we do get a great scene where The Miz squares off with a biker baddie in a haunted house ride.  It’s also odd that the finale takes place in an office building that’s under construction.  I guess they couldn’t get a permit to film on the rollercoaster.  

Luckily, the fight scenes are handled well enough.  The camerawork isn’t of the shaky-cam variety, and the editor resists the temptation to cut the fights to ribbons.  They also feature all the wrestling moves in everyday places you’d expect from one of these things.  I particularly liked the fight scene where The Miz tussles with a badass biker babe (WWE wrestler Naomi) that STARTS with him sizzling her with defibrillator paddles, which annoys her more than anything.  Naomi has a striking appearance and is more than capable in her fight with The Miz.  Hopefully, she’ll get her own WWE DTV action vehicle somewhere down the line.

They’ll never be another “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, that’s for sure, but as wrestlers-turned-action-heroes go, The Miz isn’t too bad.  What he lacks in charisma he makes up for in physical prowess.  I probably wouldn’t miss the chance to see him in The Marine 6 (which is a thing that actually exists).  

MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN (2019) ***

If you’re like me, and you’re a nut for all things Alien, you should enjoy this documentary that chronicles the inspirations behind director Ridley Scott’s legendary 1979 film.  Despite the wealth of material already out there, this flick still manages to find some new nuggets of information revolving around the creation of Scott’s modern classic.  That said, it also feels curiously unfinished, and will undoubtedly leave you wanting more. 

The most involving stuff details the inspirations behind Dan O’Bannon’s screenplay.  The motion comics versions of the old EC Comics science fiction tales are particularly enlightening.  It’s also fun seeing clips from ‘50s sci-fi movies like It!  The Terror from Beyond Space, which Alien cribs from quite a bit.  We also get to see how O’Bannon’s work on John Carpenter’s Dark Star and his collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky on the aborted film adaptation of Dune informed the conceptualization of Alien. 

While some of this is quite fascinating, the concentration is a bit off.  Although they do discuss the character of Ripley and her importance as a strong female in cinema, the film strangely glosses over Sigourney Weaver’s personal contribution.  (She’s also conspicuously absent from the interviewees.)  Also, we get a long scene detailing the creation of the chestburster (there’s a deep dive into the work of Francis Bacon, whose paintings inspired the chestburster, although it seems a bit superfluous) but no mention of Carlo Rambaldi’s work on the Alien suit itself.  H.R. Giger is rightly lauded for his creature design and being largely the inspiration behind the film’s look.  However, no credit is given to Rambaldi for bringing the monster to life, which is odd.  The filmmakers also have to resort to borrowing interview footage of Scott and O’Bannon from other, better docs. 

Still, those are mostly just quibbles in an otherwise informative and entertaining documentary.  There’s enough cool shit here to warrant a watch, especially for Alien fans.  Sure, I wish it was a bit more exhaustive, but at its best, it’s a fine tribute to the legendary Dan O’Bannon. 

AKA:  Memory.

BAD BLACK AND BEAUTIFUL (1975) ***

A woman turns to sassy and strong attorney Eva Taylor (Gwen Barbee) to help her boyfriend beat a murder rap.  Almost immediately, you’ve kind of got to love Eva.  For starters, there weren’t many (in any) women of color attorneys seen on the silver screen in the ‘70s, let alone as the main character.  She’s certainly the only attorney I know of who has a large poster of W.C. Fields hanging in her office.  Because of that alone, she’d be the first lawyer I’d call if I was in a jam!  

Bad Black and Beautiful is a sloppy but charming bargain basement Blaxploitation action drama with some good ideas, a progressive stance, and some of the most slipshod filmmaking I’ve seen in a long time.  Sure, there’s not much here in the way of craftsmanship, but that’s kind of what I dug about it.  It’s just as scrappy and independent as its main character. 

Let me give you an idea how awesome this movie is:  Not only is Eva a well-respected lawyer by day, she’s a race car driver by night!  We know that because of the blurry stock footage of a race followed by a brief shot of her getting out of a car and being handed a trophy.  Incredible.  

Seriously, the way writer/director Bobby Davis repurposes stock footage would make Ed Wood envious.  For instance, when Eva’s client tells her about her boyfriend’s stint in Nam, her narration is played over a bunch of grainy unrelated war footage.   The best scene though is when Eva and her boyfriend get in a plane.  Sure, most movies would resort to using stock footage for a simple scene of a plane taking flight, but how many use stock footage of planes for the scene where the heroine introduces her boyfriend to the Mile High Club while surf music plays on the soundtrack?  

Oh, and did I mention her boyfriend is ALSO the star reporter of the local newspaper AND her rival on the stock car circuit? 

As fun as most of Bad Black and Beautiful (there’s no comma on the title screen) is, it does stall out a bit in the second half when the focus shifts to a private detective character who helps Eva search for a missing prostitute.  It’s here when too many unnecessary supporting players and superfluous subplots start to gum up the works.  During this section of the film, Eva disappears for long stretches at a time, which doesn’t help either.  (It sometimes feels like two unfinished movies cobbled together.)  The good news is there’s plenty of nudity to keep you from being bored.  

The second half is also padded with musical performances, which are at least good for a laugh.  Barbee sings a number in a bar with all the soul of a Lawrence Welk backup singer.  The awfully dubbed blues number is pretty funny too.

My favorite bit though might be the over the top romantic interlude where Eva and her boyfriend feed the ducks, have a picnic, and ride a seesaw together.  Just when you think it can’t get any nuttier, along comes the jaw-dropping courtroom shootout finale.  I kind of wish there had been more action throughout the picture (we do get a crummy Kung Fu scene though), but there’s so many laughs to be had here that I can say without a doubt that fans of no-budget Blaxploitation will thoroughly enjoy Bad Black and Beautiful as much as I did.

AKA:  Mob War.