Alley Cat (1984)

Cinematic villains love to cackle, and few bad guys cackle more or better than those from Hong Kong genre cinema and English-speaking exploitation cinema.  Show me a martial arts film made anywhere from the Sixties up to about the year 2000 that doesn’t have one (usually either followed by or while simultaneously stroking a ludicrously long, stringy beard), and I’ll show you a cigar box full of four-leaf clovers.  American action films typically have a gang of lowbrow guttersnipes who all think things like rape and murder are the funniest things in the world.  I can’t tell you where this tradition started, but I know that it swiftly became a staple/cliché that carries through to today.  The idea is that the villains have a sense of superiority, and their haughty laughter shows this to their enemies and victims.  Likewise, it’s meant to show the audience that these characters are vile.  The things they find uproariously hilarious are things a normal human being finds odious and tragic.  It also removes the films further away from reality, because these guys are so heightened in their reactions to everything, they become cartoonish.  Take Edward Victor’s Alley Cat, for example.  The iniquitous Bill/Scarface (Michael Wayne, an actor who only appeared in this one film but could very easily have been the Anthony James of films that only had $1.22 to spend on casting) brays when he thinks of what he’s going to do to our heroine Billie (Karin Mani), and his underlings follow along, because being a scumbag is fun (conversely, this is also meant to be menacing for the same exact reasons).

Billie chases a couple of thugs away from her car with her Karate skills (and it should be said that either Mani actually knows martial arts or the stunt-doubling is impressive, maybe both), but their boss Scarface decides to teach her a lesson by stabbing Billie’s grandmother.  Billie decides to take this rather personally.

Alley Cat is a standard revenge film in every way, and that includes its philosophy of disproportionate responses.  Billie kicks the stuffing out of Tom (Tim Cutt) and Mickey, who run off crying to Scarface.  To show her who’s boss, these jerks follow Billie’s grandparents and assault them, leading to Grandma Clark being comatose and, eventually, dead.  The average man might have just forgotten about having their ass whipped by a woman, been thankful they didn’t wind up in the pokey, and gone about their felonious business elsewhere.  Not these guys.  Every affront must be met with five times the violence and viciousness.  Billie, however, is just like them.  Yes, she starts off defending her property and family or helping a stranger, but she quickly discovers that the adage about if you can’t beat them, join them, holds true when it comes to thugs.  Inevitably, she does to the bad guys what they tried to do to her, tracking them down and killing them (I assume; there’s only one definitive onscreen death).  Yet, we side with her because we repeatedly see her attacked (honestly, I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t give up jogging at night if they were assaulted even half as much as Billie is) for no real reason.  She goes from defensive to offensive, but morally, she’s correct.  The justice system we rely on also lives up to the rule of disproportionate responses.  After Billie rescues a woman from a rape using a handgun, she is arrested for a variety of crimes which she did violate, but that any decent cop would let slide, all things considered.  The judge who presides over every single case that Billie is involved in chucks her in jail for contempt of court (where she makes a few friends for life).

This leads to the idea of misogyny that pervades the film.  Every man in the film either hates women or is ineffective (read: a pantywaist).  All the men on the street want to have sex with every woman they see (willingly or not).  Billie is chased and set upon multiple times in the park, and the men who do this have nothing but sex and violence on their minds.  Scarface’s girlfriend is treated like the piece of meat she is.  He calls her “Miss Blowjob,” and the two are not above throwing things at each other.  He puts her down and reminds her constantly that she’s nothing but a warm hole.  She puts up with it likely because she’s been beaten down and is now simply inured to the fact that this is the way of things.  Boyle (Jon Greene), a beat cop, is the one who gives Billie a hard time about her need to carry a gun when she goes out at night.  He delights in handcuffing her and charging her with every single thing he can.  Boyle also has a hooker (Britt Helfer, whom you likely remember from Raw Force or the soap opera Loving, but, either way, is physically impressive, just to play my own pig card for a moment) he bangs while on duty (and, we can infer, without paying for her services).  The single male who isn’t a complete swine is Johnny, the cop Billie meets cute with at the hospital and who quickly becomes her boyfriend.  At first, Johnny is the paragon of virtue, standing up for the little guy and attempting to keep Billie out of danger while trying to bring the bad guys to justice by the book.  even he has a level of sexism about him, trying to show Billie how to do Karate without knowing she’s working on her black belt.  What Johnny finds out, however, much like Billie did just slower, is that to get justice one must get one’s hands very dirty.  You can’t clean up a Jell-O wrestler without getting some on you, so to speak.  As in all movies of this stripe, the system is moribund, if not five weeks gone, allowing the misogyny perpetrated on the streets to corrupt the decency it’s supposed to stand for.  The choice left for victims is surrender or vigilantism.

Alley Cat has some good things going for it.  Being an exploitation film, it is loaded with beautiful women who don’t mind doffing their clothes onscreen.  There are action scenes every few minutes.  There is a layer of grime all over it; you can almost feel the grit on the characters and smell their b.o.  What it gets wrong is that it is unfocused.  Did we need the lengthy sequence of Billie in prison?  Did we need the lengthy sequence of Johnny tormenting the Helfer character for information?  Did we need the random jogging assault attempts that have nothing to do with the main story?  No, to all.  Yes, they each satisfy for this type of film, but they are all extraneous.  You could argue that they are necessary as illustrations of systematic misogyny, but they distract from the main narrative.  Maybe that’s the point?  Maybe the filmmakers wanted to do a more holistic approach to a Woman’s Revenge film?  It’s possible.  But, at eighty-two minutes, the tangents drag down the pacing, and they made me think that the filmmakers simply didn’t have enough story to fill out that time frame.  Fair enough, because the distractions do what distractions are supposed to do.  But they also remind the viewer that time is dragging by.

MVT:  Mani can keep a movie together and handle physical action, and, with a better script and some better direction, I believe she could have been a genre luminary.

Make or Break:  The finale drops what scant subtleties the film had and digs into its genre trappings full bore while displaying exactly what Billie has become.

Score:  6/10       

Angels of the City (1989)

I’m in a pretty crass mood today, so I’m just gonna run with it, and this week’s selection most assuredly abets this.  A learned man (it may have been Friedrich Nietzsche) once sad that pimping ain’t easy.  I would imagine not.  While I don’t know scoot about this career choice, I know that it would have to involve, on some level, accounting, something with which I have only a passing acquaintance.  What’s the tax allowance for birth control and transportation?  Could the whole thing be written off as entertainment expenses?  I would guess that the logistics alone would be murder, too (assuming one offered a delivery-type service).  Who needs how many “friends,” and where, and when?  What if the pimp overbooks?  And I’m sure collections are a whole other pain in the ass.  I had a paper route for about five years when I was a kid, and I can tell you with confidence that many people don’t ever want to pay for services rendered (and that was only about $1.50 per week back then), even when they’re satisfied with them.  That’s if the tricks pay the pimp directly.  Getting the money owed from your “workers” is probably a lot like how the IRS feels when reviewing a person’s tips reported for the fiscal year.  I mean, pimping is almost like work.  Of course, it ain’t easy!

Cinematic pimping, on the other hand, is really easy.  You get to wear great clothes (everything from tailored suits to plumed, fuzzy hats), ride around in nice cars, drink champagne constantly, and be surrounded by hot women who act like you’re the bee’s knees (totally not because of the money or because they’re in fear for their lives, I’m sure).  All you have to do is relax and alternate your moods between threatening and saccharine (the really great thing here is that you can still call absolutely everyone “bitch,” whether they work for you or not).  Pimps in film are arguably more pimp-ian than real pimps.  Just look at Fly Guy from I’m Gonna Git You Sucka versus Iceberg Slim, if you doubt me (alternately, see Roy Scheider’s turn in Klute for something a bit more verisimilitudinous).  You’re basically a gangster, just without the family ties that prove so vulnerable to folks like the Corleones.  So, when dueling pimps Gold (Michael Ferrare) and Lee (Renny Stroud) go toe-to-toe over whose territory is whose in Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs’ (you know him better as Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington on Welcome Back, Kotter) Angels of the City, you know that one of them is getting paid, and the other is getting laid out.

While Gold and Lee hash out their differences, college asswipes Mike (Brian Ochse) and Richie (Rusty Gray) hire a prostitute while wasted.  Meanwhile, their girlfriends Cathy (Kelly Galindo) and Wendy (Cynthia Cheston) are forced to dress up like hookers and collect one hundred dollars off a john (but, hey, it’s still, like, their choice if they want to actually sleep with some guy for it, and stuff) as part of their initiation into the Delta Delta Delta (Can I help ya, help ya, help ya?) sorority.  Never thinking that they could have just gone out for the night and then handed their sorority sisters the money and said that they did what they were supposed to do (because no one is monitoring them), these two idiots get embroiled in the middle of the heated pimp turf war.  After about ninety minutes, the credits roll.

Angels of the City was shot on video, and this is something that can blow up in even the best filmmaker’s face.  Audiences tend to think of one of three things when watching something in a video format: home movies, institutionals, and porn.  One of these things is actually likely to excite a viewer.  Now, I understand that there were and are a great many features shot on video, and some of them are very good, and the format even has a healthy cult following.  I have nothing against it, personally.  My philosophy is that any way a filmmaker can get their vision put together and shown to people, do it.  Nonetheless, I also think that there are standards and a certain level of quality that even the cheapest production needs to have (even if that quality is trash level; there’s still something to be said for it when it’s done right).  Hilton-Jacobs shows glimmers of hope throughout the film.  The basic premise is solid and holds some promise (the idea of buying and selling flesh objects from the male and female sides of the coin, the harsh realities of the streets contrasted against the sequestered safety of college life, the pimp war with the unwitting kids in over their heads/fish out of water element, etcetera).  Some of the set ups and compositions are solid, evocative, and downright professional.  The action is choreographed and edited well enough (though not quite up to the highest standards of PM Entertainment, the erstwhile kings of low budget action cinema).  The big problem is everything else that is not either technical or philosophical.  Read: ninety-five percent of the movie.

With that in mind, then, let’s dig into the film’s faults.  First and foremost, the film is confused about who its protagonists are.  During an overextended college classroom scene (we will come back to this, trust me), the film sets up the two main couples and even possibly a few other students who may take part in the plot.  The scene immediately following this focuses on Mick and Richie slavering and all but high-fiving about fucking (you’ve likely heard guys actually talk like this and just wanted to immolate them).  These two dicks then go to a sleazy motel with Carmen, the hooker they picked up at a bar.  We are then treated to an extended scene of Mick and Carmen doing it in POV, with Mick gurning and mugging the entire time (in my opinion, the only way to save this acting choice would be if Carmen did the same thing; she doesn’t).  Meanwhile, the girls are attending their candlelit sorority meeting, get dressed up like strumpets, and hit Hollywood’s underbelly.  The amount of time spent with the two guys is disproportionate to their importance in the film.  We already got the message that they’re complete douchebags (in fact, the movie goes to great lengths to show us that every male in it is one).  We don’t need to follow their idiotic escapades, since everything following from them is tangential, at best.  

Second, Angels of the City follows a pattern of setting Wendy and Cathy running into “colorful” locals and then running away from them.  They are accosted by a crackhead/alcoholic that would make Dave Chappelle wince and are “saved” by Maria, who bums a smoke and then exits (we will come back to this, trust me).  They meet a homeless man who tells them about the hardships of his life and then exits.  They meet some young punk who takes them to meet his gang of juvies.  The girls are robbed before being chased, first by the kids, and then by a large dog (yes, really).  They go to a private club (go ahead and guess what the password is), where Wendy makes out with the owner before he’s shot.  This is in between their various run-ins with Gold and Lee.  What it all boils down to is a very serious lack of coherence and focus on the part of the screenwriters, one of whom just so happens to also be Hilton-Jacobs and none of whom ever got the point of the old saw “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

Which brings us to problem number three, and the one which contains the most SPOILERS.  This movie juggles tones in nonsensical fashion.  It wants to be a fun exploitation/action picture.  It wants to be a broad comedy.  But worst of all, it wants to be a deep, meaningful treatise on how the dregs of society are overlooked and abandoned.  After the events of their fateful night, Wendy is now a vegetable, and Cathy visits her and tries to talk to her at the hospital.  You know, deep, meaningful shit.  Gold is still after Cathy, and she has a live-in cop guarding her, who, to no one’s surprise, is also a douchebag, and takes great joy in hearing her fight with Richie.  Capitalizing on her vulnerability in the creepiest way possible, the cop has sex with Cathy, and the impression we’re given is that it is the best fuck of her sweet, young life.  Bear in mind, the audience just met this guy.  It is conceivably the emptiest sex scene ever committed before a camera (I am including porn loops in this category) made all the more ridiculous by the emotional weight it’s supposed to have (yes, really; we’re meant to get something out of this aside from various shots of Galindo’s admittedly nice breasts).  Finally, Cathy does her project for the aforementioned Sociology class, where she talks about Maria, the runaway kid who has the entire “shitty life moments” checklist befall her (junkie, hooker, abusive boyfriend, ad nauseum).  This is delivered aurally and visually with all the conviction and meaningfulness the rest of the film has served up ice cold (i.e. none).  Once again, Hilton-Jacobs and company find a way to completely misplace the big dramatic resonance they thought would give this shit show some value outside of its exploitable elements.  Trying to think of something witty to sum up Angels of the City is just fruitless, since I’ve already devoted more time and effort into discussing this turd than it will ever deserve.  Have a nice day.

MVT:  The few moments of professionalism on display.

Make or Break:  Mick and Richie spend some time with Carmen.

Score:  1/10

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

Way down in the lower depths of Jailhouse 41 (it’s not actually called that in the movie), the eponymous Scorpion (aka Matsu, played by Meiko Kaji) lies chained, subject to the sadistic whims of the cycloptic warden Gorda (Fumio Watanabe).  After enduring humiliations from both guards and fellow inmates alike, Matsu and six other prisoners make good their escape.  But their flight to freedom will prove more harrowing than their stay in the penitentiary.

Meiko Kaji is one of those cultural icons revered more for their looks (i.e. the act of looking, not their physical traits, though she is also a striking beauty) than any thespian skills.  This isn’t to say she can’t act, but from what I’ve see, she’s rarely called upon to do more than clench her jaw and glare.  And she does both spectacularly well.  Here in Shunya Ito’s Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (the second entry in this influential series), the entirety of her performance is physical.  She doesn’t speak at all until near the film’s end, and then it’s only two lines of dialogue.  Nonetheless, we know exactly what’s going on in her head at all times (it helps a bit that this generally boils down to three emotions: hatred, suspicion, and pity).  This is Matsu’s strength.  She doesn’t mince words because there’s nothing left to be said.  The ultimate pragmatist, Matsu sees the world for what it is – a merciless, misogynistic shit hole – and deals with it in the same way that it has dealt with her.  All of this is reflected in her eyes.

Speaking of eyes and reflections, Jailhouse 41 is rife with them, and not only from Kaji.  Gorda’s dead, false eye attempts to consume and violate Matsu’s soul.  His eye, Matsu’s eyes, and Oba’s eyes (the contagonist or secondary antagonist, if you wish, played by Kayoko Shiraishi) all give off the same look throughout the film but with different meanings.  Matsu’s deadpan stare is a retreat into herself, a fortification against the external world, and a coiled trap waiting to be sprung.  Her fellow prisoners misread her limp inactivity as acquiescence and apathy, when, in fact, it is anything but.  Gorda’s eye is a metaphoric monster and the ugliness inside the male psyche, the male id unleashed.  He’s a lecher and a brute, not above using his status and his staff to destroy the women in his charge.  When first we meet him, he’s one year into his attempt to drive Matsu insane (it can be argued that he’s wasting his time, because she already is, in a sense).  The blacked-out lens of his glasses reveals for the audience the cruelty and alienation in the man, as we espy the horrors he subjects others to in it.  His false eye, when it’s finally popped out of his head, presents not just a victory but also a portal to an alternate reality, a looking glass world where the events of the narrative never took place (and if you think about it, this shot is similar to the first shots of the film which focus on Matsu’s eyes, and the entire film can be seen as a pure dream/nightmare sequence from her perspective).  Finally, Oba’s gaze is pure bestial fury (she’s even honest enough to admit this – “I know I’m a beast!”).  She hates everyone and everything, a nihilist preferring the solitude of her rage to what sisterhood she may form with the other escapees.  Everyone is an enemy, because they’re different from her, and she’s paranoid enough to believe that this matters (not without some reason).  This comes through crystal clear in her baleful gaze (often cast from under her eyebrows).  

These three viewpoints form a worldview of how these women (all seven of them, but, by extension, all women) are seen and treated.  In one of several fantasy sequences, the crimes of the escapees are described.  The women kneel, dressed in matching outfits (like their batik prison uniforms, this unifies them) before a field of blackness.  The camera glides past each as a narrator (in, I’m guessing here, Noh Theatre style) sings of their sins.  While they are all guilty of their individual crimes, it is stressed that all of these women were driven to commit them by men.  This tableau is presided over by an old woman.  She was found, alone and deranged and clutching a knife in a death grip, in an abandoned village.  She, too, has been cast off by the world of men, and it has destroyed her.  She is a portent of what will happen to all of the protagonists, but it’s Matsu who refuses to accept this fate.  Later, we see a reenactment of Oba’s crime.  In it, the local villagers surround her, net her, and beat her.  Oba transforms into each of the escapees, tormented by the people who put she and them in this position.  Again, it’s Matsu who stands up defiant, the ideal of feminine individuality in the film.

Jailhouse 41 is as gorgeous and carefully crafted as any film from Japan at this time (it does bear some stylistic clichés of the era, but they fit for the nightmare quality of the picture) while being as enthralling as any exploitation movie made.  For as sleazy as it is, however, the tone is grim.  This isn’t light fare, though it certainly has heightened moments.  Its exploitation elements are more condemnatory than titillating.  The film is designed to provoke some thought, not erections (or at least I found nothing sexy here).  What I did find was excellent filmmaking for any level of budget or genre constraints.

This will likely be the only film from the Arrow bluray box set that I review.  This is not because I don’t like the others in the series (they’re all fantastic in their own ways), but they do tend toward a certain formula (this one being the exception) which would make further reviews redundant.  Then again, who knows?  Maybe I’ll come back and want to dip my toes and pen in these waters somewhere down the road.  Anyway, the set is outstanding, packed with the usual quality supplements in which Arrow excels.  There has been talk about the color timing on these films, and I have to say that the level of blue in this film is noticeable, but I also feel that it adds to the atmosphere of the piece.  I also know that Arrow stated that this coloring is due to the level of restoration they performed on the original materials, so if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

MVT:  Ito displays a deft hand, stylishly and narratively.

Make or Break:  The scene where the prisoners are punished for an attempted riot proves their breaking point, and it may be the viewer’s, as well.

Score:  8/10