Key Players

Shannon Whirry as Carrie the good twin turned frigid wife and Terrie the bad twin turned hooker who considers payment merely a side benefit to the job.

Luca Bercovici as Clete Dyker a sleazy and crooked cop who is married to Carrie although the two seem to have nothing, and I mean nothing, in common.

Tom Reilly as Jake a private eye and former partner of Clete’s who gets beat up and sleeps with the woman he is supposed to be following. Smooth.

Also featuring Kristine Kelly and Sara Suzanne Brown as a therapist and hooker respectively who each end up in bed with Shannon…. rawr.

Overall Quality: (3 out of 5)

Folks used to current day “skinemax” movies, with their absolute lack of plot and porno-like emphasis on lengthy (to the point of tedium) sex scenes would be surprised at the quality of the some the early 1990s erotic thrillers. Many of these films owe more to movies like Double Indemnity (1944) than they do to Debbie Does Dallas(1978). Mirror Images II isn’t quite one of those, relying (especially in the early going) on rote couplings, but it is a lot better than might be expected. The second half is actually nicely plotted and has plenty of twists and turns, as well as a ton of steamy scenes that show off Shannon Whirry to her fullest.

This decent plot is surprising for two reasons. First, the movie is built on the creakiest premise possible — the good twin/evil twin bit. In fairness, the script tries to redeem this concept by at least providing a psychological mechanism to explain why the twins turn out so differently, and Whirry does a nice job of selling it, but really you can only do so much with the good twin/evil twin shtick. Second, the director is Gregory Hippolyte a.k.a. Gregory H. Brown a.k.a. Gregory Brown a.k.a. Greg Brown a.k.a. A. Gregory Hippolyte a.k.a. Alexander Gregory Hippolyte a.k.a. Alexander Hippolyte a.k.a….. or best known as Greg Dark the man behind the cult-fav porno New Wave Hookers (1985). From a porn director, you’d expect the worst tendencies of the erotic thrillers genre to be on display, rather than many of the best. He’s gone on to work in some mainstream projects, including directing some music videos for Britney Spears (!). And ultimately, say what you will about his career choice, but the man has some solid skills.

The movie starts off with the expected conflict between the two sister, spiced up by a disputed inheritance and by the evil twin’s seduction of her sister’s husband. Toss a private eye into the mix and stir. By the end of the movie, there is genuine tension. You can’t be sure who is on whose side, the webs and double-crosses spin fast and furious. What is especially interesting is that both Carrie and Terrie are strong, clever characters. Too often the women in these erotic thrillers are disposable silicone displays, and initially it looks that way here with Carrie being merely a put-upon wife and Terrie being a manipulated hooker. But it quickly becomes apparent that these gals are calling the shots. Again, you have to give Whirry some credit here. It is not easy to play strong leads when the plot requires you to shed your clothes every 5-7 minutes, but Whirry gives Carrie a hard coldness while playing Terrie alternately as playfully malicious and icily murderous. In the end, the plot is resolved by the twins on their own, with the male leads basically waiting for the result of the final confrontation.

That said, there are some parts of the movie that don’t work as thriller, though they do work, I guess, as erotic. The prologue features Whirry playing Carrie/Terrie as teenagers, and well, as much as I love Shannon Whirry, that’s a stretch. She was pushing 30 when the movie was made, and unless she was a really late bloomer was probably the kind of girl who could pass for 22 when she was 14. I wasn’t buying her as a teenager, regardless of the plaid skirt. The lesbian scenes were also lacking. In both cases, the actresses where obvious just going through the motions — I know that is the case for all the love scenes — but sometimes the result is more credible.

Shannon’s Screentime: (5 out of 5)

All Shannon Whirry all the time. There may be about 10 minutes of the movie where Whirry is not on screen, but basically she’s in virtually every scene. Playing two of the four leads is certainly conducive to lots of screentime. Whirry is an interesting actress in that regard. She has not been in a huge number of movies, but most of the movies she’s been in she’s been the lead and carried the production. She does a nice job providing the sisters with distinct personalities, but as is the nature of these things, Terrie, the villian, is more interesting and Whirry seems to be having more fun with her character. Until close to the end, Carrie is a pretty passive character and so tightly wound that even Meryl Streep would have trouble making her come to life.

Shannon’s Skin: (5 out of 5)

Um yeah. Whirry’s first nude screen occurs 2:48 into the movie. From then on, the longest she goes with her clothes on is about twenty minutes, but for the most part her nudes scenes are spaced about ten minutes apart. Lots of topless scenes. A few bottomless, including at least one frontal scene. She also have several nice little lingerie scenes, although she’s done that better in other movies — such as Body of Influence which I’ll review later. She does not do any real sexy teases or dances in Mirror Images II, but her many, many topless scenes make this probably the single best Shannon Whirry movie purely from the standpoint of nudity. She also looks about her best in this movie, though both sisters are a bit too made up for my tastes — the makeup work in this movie suffers from a bit of 1980s hangover with the whole blue eyeshadow and teased hair look.

Though Mirror Images II is out of print, if you are interested in this sort of movie, check out some of the following:

Key Players

Steven Seagal as Gino Felino, which rhymes with hero.

William Forythe as Richie Madano, a crack-smoking thug with a death wish.

Jerry Orbach as Capt. Ronnie Donziger, who tacitly approves Gino’s plan to be judge, jury, and executioner.

Gina Gershon as Patti Madano, Richie’s foul mouthed sister and nightclub owner.

Joe Sparato as Bobby Lupo, corrupt cop who keeps a stash of coke, stacks of dollars, and pictures of him have sex with a mob mistress all in his desk drawer at work.

Shannon Whirry as Terry Malloy, in a weepy role as Bobby’s other girlfriend who tips off Gino to Bobby’s double life.

Also watch for Julie Strain, Julianna Margulies, John Leguizamo, and Dominic Chianese.

Overall Quality: (3 out of 5)

I had forgotten what a solid little action movie this is. It has the usual Steven Seagal pretentions. He plays Gino Felino, a tough, incorruptible Brooklyn cops, who cares for children and puppies, and also speaks Italian and Spanish. The plot is a bit hard to follow featuring an upstart wannabe mobster, a crooked cop, a tailored don, and a hardboiled police captain, but no matter. The core of the movie Seagal’s fight scenes, which are sharp, quick, and brutal. You get broken bones, cracked teeth, and fractured skulls, with a leavening of gunshot wounds and impalement by various objects. Not for the squeamish, but fun for action movie fans. The final fight scene is a real letdown, unfortunately. Gino shoots all of Richie’s crew, and then just beats Richie to a pulp in a sadistic, one-sided brawl. Blah.

Shannon’s Screentime: (1 out of 5)

This was Shannon Whirry’s first movie role. She plays Terry Malloy, a cocktail waitress who tips Gino to a crooked cop’s double life. She probably doesn’t have more than 5 minutes of screen time, but she makes an impression. Gino refers to her as “the one with the nipples you could dial a phone with.” Unfortunately, she spends much of her time on-screen weeping first at the death of Bobby and then at the shock of discovering another woman murdered. Also, even more unfortunately, Shannon affects a really bad Brooklyn accent, which mercifully fades out after a few moments.

Shannon’s Skin: (1 out of 5)

Just cleavage this time around. But she does get a great little scene when Gino escorts her out of the nightclub. She’s wearing a bustier top, which is absolutely incapable of containing her busom. Even though Gino is getting a divorced, he does not fall for Terry’s obvious charms. Combined with his pony tail and beret, it makes you think maybe Gino is gay.

Anyway, the only actual nudity in a movie that features cocktail waitresses, several prostitutes, and mob mistresses is a quick shot of Julie Strain in a polaroid. Whirry, Strain, and Gina Gershon all in the same movie and we get no skin. What a shame.

Starring: Jewel Shepard, Pamella D’Pella, Susan Harvey, Chanel Akiko Hirai, Ed Crick, Vic Diaz, Ramon D’Salva, Bon Vibar, and Totoy Torres.

Directed By: Cirio H. Santiago

Ah yes, a tale of two directors. While Jonathan Demme used Caged Heat to move into mainstream pictures, Cirio H. Santiago has spent his whole life making exploitation movies. Santiago is, in fact, one of the great men of exploitation films, having directed and produced movies in the women-in-prison, blaxploitation, rape-revenge, forced-to-fight, martial arts, and post-apocalyptic genres. Maybe the B-Masters Cabal should do a retrospective of his work at some point.

This is an absurd movie in many ways, but also quite entertaining. It begins at what seems to be a cultural show in an Asian country. The king is sitting on a dais, watching a group of native dancers. On his left sits his daughter, dressed in traditional garb, on his right, a redheaded American, who everyone assumes is his mistress. In the middle of the performance, a group of spectators suddenly produces anti-American banners and begins to riot. The king watches this anxiously, but his security forces seem to be containing the demonstration. Suddenly, one of the performers pulls a gun and shoots the king. In the ensuing pandemonium, the king is whisked off in an ambulance with his mistress, while his daughter (Princess Marga, played by Chanel Akiko Hirai) is eventually captured by an angry mob. The ambulance drives directly to an American Air Force base, where we learn that the whole thing was just a charade, and that the “mistress” is really CIA agent Amanda Kelly (Jewel Shepard). As we learn later, the king was about to be overthrown, and the CIA planned the whole fake assassination to exfiltrate the king more easily. Marga is the only flaw in the plan. She’s been captured by the mob, and the new government wants to try her for treason in her father’s place. She is sent to the Rock, an island prison. It is now Amanda’s job to infiltrate the prison, and with the help of friendly guards get Marga out.

Strip searched!

Getting into the prison is the easy part. Amanda books a flight out of the country. At the airport, a drug-sniffing dog singles out her luggage. Naturally, the authorities find the drugs she placed in her suitcase. Unfortunately, another American, Lucy (Susan Harvey) happens to be talking to Amanda when all this goes down, and she get swept up by the authorities as well. It turns out that Lucy is transporting illicit pornography. (Hey, Lucy, ever hear of the internet? You don’t need to carry that stuff with you on planes anymore.) Both Lucy and Amanda soon find themselves incarcerated at Rock Island Penitentiary. Their first experience is chilling; they witness the guards beating the daylights out of an attempted escapee. Their second experience is not much better, as Amanda (and presumably Lucy too, although that isn’t shown) is strip-searched by the Warden Chen (Vic Diaz) and his captain of the guards.

Once in the general prison population, there is a confrontation in the lunchroom as several of the inmates harass Lucy. Amanda comes to her aid and tangles with Paula (Pamella D’Pella) who is both the toughest gal in the place and also the warden’s mistress. Amanda and Paula remain at each other’s throats throughout the movie; the two can’t seem to be in the same place at the same time without coming to blows. The next time they see each other Paula grabs Amanda from behind and with a knife at her throat gets a grudging apology out of Amanda. Considering Paula is a hardened con, Amanda gets off pretty easy.

Mud wrestling in the prison yard

The next day, the princess arrives at the prison. Most of the inmates revere the princess, but some are less than friendly, which is sort of understandable considering that most of them have been put in prison by her father’s government. Paula tries to throw a rock at Marga, but Amanda steps in and stops her. The two get into a wild fight, with some of Paula’s minions jumping in. Amanda is a heck of a brawler. She even gives one of Paula’s girls a straight kick to the chest that looked painful even if it was a stuntwoman taking the blow. Lucy jumps in to knock out one of the women Amanda has knocked to the ground. Amanda and Paula continue fighting, until by the end they are rolling around in the mud. They only stop when the guards turn a high pressure fire hose on them.

In any case, Amanda soon finds Marga and informs her about the planned break out that evening. Marga is understandably suspicious of this CIA agent who also orchestrated the mock assassination of her father, but she agrees to go along. Lucy, by contrast, refuses to try to escape for fear of retribution. Smart girl that Lucy… well, as smart as you can be if you’re a porn smuggler.

Amanda hanging by her hair

That evening, the captain of the guards comes to Amanda’s cell with a couple of his co-conspirators and gets her and and Marga out. Their escape starts out okay, but soon they meet resistance. They manage to get over the wall despite being shot at by the guards, but instead of getting away easily, they end up being chased through the woods in the rain toward the beach where a boat is supposed to be waiting. Unfortunately, when they get to the beach, they are ambushed by the warden and his men. It turns out that one of the guards betrayed them. The captain of the guards is executed and the turncoat becomes the new captain. The warden then rapes Marga, and orders Amanda hung by her hair as punishment. Now, I admit, I’m not an expert in this sort of thing, but can you really hang someone by their hair? Admittedly, she has a lot of hair, and she’s pretty slim, but it seems to me that this is probably not physically possible.

Bruised and battered, Amanda is returned to her cell. She tried to cheer up the beaten down Marga, and admit that she too has been raped (although it isn’t clear if it happened at the Rock or elsewhere). That night, Marga watches Paula shooting up the heroin she receives from the warden in exchange for sexual favors. Because Marga is a busybody, she confronts Paula, who basically tells her to buzz off. The next day in the shower, Paula and her girls grab Marga and shoot her up with drugs, which probably teaches Marga to keep her mouth shut, although given how scarce dope is in this place, you’d think Paula would find some other way to teach Marga a lesson. BTW, Marga never really does show any ill-effects from this attack.

The next day, all the women are out doing hard labor. Well, at least, they’re supposed to be at hard labor but considering how most of them are just scratching at the ground with their picks and shovels, I can’t imagine that they are actually accomplishing much. Anyway, Paula decides to continue her feud with Amanda by coming at her with a pickaxe. Amanda parries the initial blow, and soon the two beating the hell out of each other. Fact is, in a different world, Jewel Shepard could have been an action star instead of being best known as the star of Hollywood Hot Tubs 1 (1984) and 2 (1990). Paula’s friends also get into the act attacking Lucy and Marga. Lucy can take care of herself and she beats off her attacker, but Marga is soon on the ground being choked. When the guards break up the fight, they rough up Marga, and Amanda come to her aid by recklessly punching the captain of the guards. The guards overpower her quickly, and the captain whips her for hitting him.

More punishment… this time whipped

Amanda is like a Timex, she takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Despite being hung by her hair, brutally whipped, and beaten several times, she’s still thinking about how to get out. Those CIA agents are tough. Working to her advantage is the fact that the warden’s got a thing for her. He rescues her from hard labor the next day and propositions her while a fuming Paula looks on. Amanda agrees to meet him that night, assuming that if she gets him alone she’ll be able to overpower him and take his gun once he’s undressed.

Amanda now gets a visitor, a priest. Well, not a real priest, but rather her CIA boss. He informs her that that king has, um, had a heart attack, but he makes it clear he was liquidated for making too many demands. With the king out of the way, there’s no need to bother about breaking Marga out. He tells her that she’ll have a boat waiting for her that night if she can get over the wall, but that there is one room for her. Amanda refuses to leave Marga in by herself.

That night, the captain comes to get Amanda for her date with the warden. The warden has special surprise planned for her. Paula is already there, and the warden is trying to arrange a little interracial, lesbian action. Luckily for Amanda, but unfortunately for the viewer, this never comes to pass. First of all, Paula freaks out at the thought of having to get intimate with her archenemy. Second, Amanda never shows. When the guard comes to get her, the ever resourceful Lucy flashes him her boobs, and while he’s gawking, Amanda quickly disarms him. She frees Lucy and Marga, and the three of them run toward the wall, dodging rifle fire the whole way. As they approach the gate, it explodes from outside, and Amanda’s boss waves them through (even though he’d earlier told Amanda that she had to get over the wall on her own).

Now, it’s time to kick ass…

The three women and the CIA guy race through the jungle to the beach. They get there and along with another CIA agent jump in a small powered dinghy and set out to sea. The escape occurs in the dead of night, but in the next scene it is bright daylight and the warden is pursuing the dinghy in a large powerboat (you’d think the CIA would have a larger ship waiting just off the beach, but apparently not). The powerboat runs them down, and the escapees all end up in the water with the warden and his men circling around them and firing into the water. Just as all seems lost, Amanda propels herself out of the water and fires a grenade at the boat, blowing it up.

…and Amanda gets revenge!

Arriving on shore, Marga is quickly arrested. On a TV we see her being executed. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know what happened really. That’s right, it was a mock execution, and Marga is alive and well, and ready to fly to the states with Amanda and Lucy. A happy ending after all.

Now, this is a great women-in-prison movie. You’ve got all the elements, imprisoned innocents (Marga and to a lesser extent Lucy), an infiltration, a couple of escape attempts, some shower scenes, great catfights, and a lecherous warden. The plot is absurd, but it holds your attention, and it actually makes some sense as long as you don’t think about it too hard. And really, if you wanted to do some hard thinking, would you watching a women-in-prison movie in the first place?

Starring: Jerry Trimble, George Takei, Ted Markland, Laura Albert, Vic Diaz, Romy Diaz, Roland Dantes, Nick Nicholson, Steve Rogers, Bert Labra, John Crank, Ramon D’Salva, Zernan Manahan, Jim Moss, Ned Hourani, and Ron Asinas.

Directed by: Cirio H. Santiago

Uh, you mean I need to act too?

Is kickboxing a real sport? Don’t get me wrong, I admire its grace, and I respect the fighting skills of renown kickboxers, but does anyone really follow kickboxing? Are there kickboxing fans? Kickboxing groupies? How does one become a kickboxer anyway? What sorts of honors do kickboxers strive for? Olympic gold? Big-money endorsements? I ask mostly because it seems to me that kickboxing is mostly important as a recruitment channel for acting-challenged, lunkheads looking to break into low-budget action movies. The minor leagues for b-movies, so to speak. Amazingly, some of them, like Jean-Claude Van Damme actually manage to break out of the genre in a minor way. That said, video store shelves suffer under the weight of dozens of former kickboxers and their direct-to-video fare.

I have to admit, I had high hopes for this one. Not only is it set in the prison, but it was distributed by Roger Corman and directed and produced by Cirio H. Santiago, the tag-team champs of exploitation fare. Santiago is the director of a highly rated movie on this site, Cage Heat II: Stripped of Freedom (1994). Unfortunately, in this one Santiago has blond-haired dolt Jerry “Golden Boy” Trimble as his lead rather than the talented and foxy Jewel Shepard. The good news for “Golden Boy” is that if he ever decides to make a career move into gay porn, he’s got a perfectly serviceable nickname. The bad news is that he’s a terrible actor. As I watched him on screen, I was torn. Is he jawdroppingly bad? Laughably awful? Or migraine-inducingly painful to watch? I think it might be some combination of all three, and only your individual constitution will determine whether you find the experience amazing, funny, or agonizing. He’s incredibly wooden, and worse, talks like a whiny teenager, which is not exactly ideal for an action star.

Check out the big red boots on Chavez (left). The two guys on the right look bored… I can’t blame them.

The plot is paint-by-numbers all the way. When we first meet John Merill (Trimble), he is a recently discharged Navy SEAL interviewing for a seaman job in the far east. He gets the gig, but as he’s walking to his ship, he hears a woman screaming for help. Merill stands around like a big dope for a while, giving the bad guys time to corner the woman and tear her blouse providing a bit of gratuitous nudity. Finally though he intervenes and orders her five attackers to let her go. Well, since this is a kickboxing movie, you know what happens next. Merill mixes it up with the bad guys. We get lot of spinning kicks, flying kicks, and none-too-convincing punches. The bad guys have an amazing tendency to get thrown through the air and land on fragile pieces of furniture that seem to appear out of nowhere… but it does make for an impressive sight when these pieces of painted plywood shatter explosively as a bad guy lands on them. The fight goes on and on, and in the process we get introduced to Live by the Fist physiology. The short version is that the ability of these guys to inflict pain is well below their ability to withstand it. So Merill will execute a gorgeous spinning kick and drive his boot into the side of the bad guy’s head, and the bad guy will just take a step back and be ready to throw a punch. Not only will the guy not be knocked down, he won’t even have a cut or even be dazed really. It sort of reminds me of 10 year old boys, who as you probably know, fight with each other all day long without hurting each other. This sort of fun and games usually ends around 13 when suddenly the boys get strong enough to really hurt each other…. except in movies like Live by the Fist where a spinning kick to the ol’ noggin has virtually no noticeable effect.

Um, can you knock a blockhead unconscious that way?

While Merill is beating up on various henchmen (and getting pounded in return), the leader of the bad guys (Chavez played by Chris Aguilar) tracks down the woman whose assault began the whole brouhaha to begin with. Although Merill is fighting with his men, Chavez decides that now would be a good time to resume his attempted rape by tearing off the rest of her clothes. Luckily, Merill finishes off the others just in time. He approaches Chavez and the girl, only to have Chavez spin her around and hold a knife to her throat. This, of course, allows for more gratuitous nudity… and also some gratuitous violence as Chavez cuts her throat (although we don’t see it on screen. Too gory for Santiago?). Wow, is he a bad guy or what? You can’t argue with that kind of compelling characterization. Okay, so Merill and Chavez mix it up, until suddenly Chavez ends up dead. The climactic moment is so ineptly blocked and filmed that it wasn’t until Merill explained what happened later that I realized Chavez had fallen on his knife during the struggle. As Merill surveys the scene, he suddenly gets clocked on the back of the head with a metal bar…

…when he comes to, he’s surrounded by cops and he has the bloody knife in his hand (which seems like shoddy police work to me; aren’t they supposed to disarm suspects?). Needless to say, Chavez’s men accuse him of murdering both their boss and the girl, and on the basis of this credible testimony, Merill gets send to the pokey.

This guy was also an extra in Jaws 5: Shark in Prison (1989).

The prison is, surprise, surprise, set on an island where escape is impossible because of the shark-infested waters blah blah blah. Although, this seems like a small, barren island when we first see it, the prisoners are hard at work making gravel, and for some reason they have a large fleet of trucks to maintain, so I’m not really sure what the deal is. The warden is played by Vic Diaz, who reprised the role in Caged Heat II. Here he just sort of mumbles vague threats. We know he’s a bad guy because he’s always scheming to set the prisoners against each other and he’s also stealing from the prison accounts, but really his heart isn’t in it. Merill tries to protest his innocence to the warden, but that only gets him a blow to the ribs from the head guard for talking back. Merill starts to mention his government, but the warden cuts him off, “there are no extradition treaties….” And, um, even if there were, what difference would it make? I mean, it isn’t like he’s on the lam from the U.S. justice system. Which doesn’t stop Merill from interjection, “I’m an American citizen.” This earns him a deserved blow to the head for being cluelessness.

Ah, Sulu, Sulu… investments go bad?

As often happens in these movies, the warden’s schemes backfire. Here, the warden decides to put Merill in the same cell as Uncle (George Takei… I guess things have been tough since the original crew got put out to pasture). Uncle is a prison lawyer and troublemaker, and the warden is hopeful that the ostensibly homicidal Merill will take care of Uncle, if you know what I mean. Merill, of course, isn’t a bad guy, so this scheme is flawed to begin with. Worse, some of Chavez’s buddies are on the inside, and looking for revenge against Merill for Chavez’s death, so Merill is just looking to survive and doesn’t really have time to kill Uncle, even if he were so inclined.

Um, Sacker, dude, I’d get that mole checked out. It doesn’t look good.

The prison is divided into gangs. The whites are led by the execrable Sacker (Ted Markland) who reminded me of nothing more than one of those ageing bikers you see on the road on weekends… complete with the long, thinning hair. All he needed was a fat chick on a Harley to complete the picture. Though racist, Sacker and his gang are more interested in lazing around and getting doped up than waging a race war. The Asian prisoners are led by Alvarez (Romy Diaz), whose performance brings to mind a Mexican bandito more than anything else. Although Sacker and Alvarez preach racial hatred to keep their men in line, both men work with the warden and each other (as usual in movies, hypocrisy is depicted as somehow worse than honest racism). Also in the mix is a human rights group, and its comely hands-on investigator Helen Ferris (Laura Albert). Ferris is a tall, attractive brunette; when we first saw her, some of the people watching the movie with me speculated about when she’d get naked… surprisingly she doesn’t. Her task is to investigate the numerous deaths among the prisoners as well as allegations of fraud made in anonymous letters she’s received. Ferris has access to the prison because of connections to the regional governor, who was close to one of the murdered inmate’s family (not close enough to get the kid out, however). She arrives and threatens the warden. Speaking of the inmates, he tells her, “force is the only language they understand.” She replies, “And how much force is it going to take for you to understand I don’t take no for an answer?” Wow, tough talk from the human rights lady. What is she doing to do? Issue a white paper? Hold a press conference? Print up some bumper stickers for activists to put on their beat up Volvos? Organize campus protests? The warden is surprisingly cowed by her empty threat.

Her roles include: “Blond Stripper” in The Jigsaw Murders (1988), “Nude Dancer” in Angel III: The Final Chapter (1988), and “Strip Joint Girl” in Road House (1989). Here Laura Albert stays conspicuously fully clad… can you say rip off?

Before leaving says she will return in a week to conclude her investigation. The logic for all of this remains unclear throughout the movie. Considering how Merill was railroaded into prison, it is hard to imagine that the regional governor would want to go through the trouble of allowing a human rights group access to the prison simply to get the warden. I mean, couldn’t he just remove, kill, or imprison the warden on a whim? And anyway, my guess is that the corrupt warden would be quite careful to give the governor a stake in the continuation of the enterprise.

The human rights group’s scheduled return drives the plot, because in the week before they come back the warden tries to discover the mystery letter writer while Uncle tries to recover a lost ledger that will prove the warden’s corruptness once and for all. The mysterious ledger is, of course, one of the most hackneyed plot devices possible. I mean, why would the warden want to detail his theft in a single slim, easily lost or stolen, volume? Is he concerned about being audited by some IRS for criminals?

It turns out Jerry Trimble is reigning World Underwear Kickboxing Champ.

I won’t go into all the other plot points. I mean, does anyone really care that Merill is asked to join the racist white group and refuses; or that he has to fight off numerous assaults from both the whites and Asians as a result; or that he befriends a slight prisoner who brings water to the inmates while they work… a prisoner whose sole purpose is to be murdered later? Yawn. The fights get repetitive after a while, what with their time-eating function, and the inability of the participants to actually harm each other. Plus, Merill has this annoying tendency to throw away whatever weapon he’s holding… I guess he doesn’t want to have an unfair advantage as he fights for his life.

Merill heads for the box.

Okay, cut to the finale. By this time, Merill has found the lost ledger hidden under some slats in “the box” – literally a metal box in the main yard used as punishment for unruly inmates. How did the ledger get in the box, and how does it get out? Who knows? By this point, we also know that Uncle is the source of the anonymous letters to the outside (wow, who’d a thunk it?). Uncle keeps talking about what a hellhole the prison is… but you know what? It really isn’t. The cells are pretty roomy; the inmates get fed enough to keep any of them from looking malnourished. Yeah, the guards sometimes hit the prisoners when they talk back, but we don’t get even one scene of gratuitous beatings or torture. The prisoners are forced to work, but for the most part they aren’t under close supervision. At one point, Merill gets into a running fight with a half-dozen guys, and the guards don’t even show up for a good five minutes. In fact, as far as movie prisons go, this is one of the more benevolent and easy-going. The Turkish jail in Midnight Express (1979) makes this one look like Club Med by comparison.

Sulu gets a knife in the gut.

The human rights people return. The warden claims that this is all just a big misunderstanding, and promises to introduce them to the letter writer who he says will recant his accusations. The warden is still hopeful at this point that Uncle will accept his offer of parole in return for withdrawing his charges. Unfortunately, Uncle refuses to play ball, so the warden has him killed, with Alvarez putting a knife into his stomach, drawing a gusher of blood. The warden then tries to buy time. He sends the human rights folks over to the guest house to “freshen up,” although the very next scene has the warden leading the human rights investigators to lunch in the prison mess with all the prisoners (!). I am not sure what happened here. Bad scripting? Or did the scene at the guest house get cut? In any case, the meal with the prisoners is sort of surreal scene. The prisoners, of course, go wild at the sight of a women, and the warden is barely able to quiet them. He seats the whole group at a head table in front of the mass of prisoners. Is he trying to intimidate the human rights group? Maybe. But why bother? Since the human rights people don’t know who sent the letters, the warden could just dress up one of his guards in a prison uniform and have him recant. More likely this whole scene is just because the filmmakers needed a way to get all the main characters into a room together.

Alvarez wields a mighty torch.

Just as everyone is sitting down to this pleasant supper (which sort of reminded me of last Thanksgiving at the in-laws), Merill arrives with the news that Uncle has been killed, thus setting off a riot of sorts. It is hard to describe what happens next because the action is incredibly confused. The prisoners begin to riot. As they do, the human rights people try to make their escape. At the same time, Sacker and Alvarez decide to try to settle the score with Merill once and for all.

In the meantime, Merill is mixing it up with Sacker and Alvarez. They go round and round. At one point, Alvarez attacks Merill with a burning torch. Finally, Merill managed to knock them both down to the ground just as the warden, human rights people, and prisoners arrive. Merill pours gasoline all over the room and threatens to incinerate everyone. He finally manages to coerce a confession out of Sacker and Alvarez, although I am not sure why they were so worried since Merill would have killed himself if he had dropped the torch anyway. They might have called his bluff. Anyway, they confess, which sends the prisoners into a tizzy to avenge Uncle’s death. Still, there is no proof that the warden was involved in any wrong-doing until… you’re not going to believe this… until Uncle comes back from the dead, with a gaping stomach wound, and the ledger in his hand. That’s right, we’re asked to believe that after being stabbed and left for dead, Uncle managed to crawl out to the yard, get into the locked box, dig out the ledger, and then track down all the main players in a deserted part of the prison… all with a ragged stomach wound. Wow! That Sulu is one tough SOB. Well, not that tough. His mission complete, he conveniently dies.

Uncle comes back to life.

As the warden stammers in anger and the prisoners kill Sacker and Alvarez, Ferris grabs the ledger and makes a run for it pursued by armed guards. The warden wants to keep the human rights people from escaping, so he orders his guards to shoot them down! Um, how’s he going to explain that one? And if he was willing to do that, then why was he so worried about them in the first place? He actually plugs a couple of them in the back. In the meantime, Merill is duking it out with prison guard Vargas (Roland Dantes). Merill finally gets the upper hand, and joins up with Ferris. In order to escape, they need to get over the prison’s ten foot walls. Conveniently, a random prisoner shows up just in time to give them a boost over the wall, although he gets conveniently shot before they can pull him over thus avoiding the awkward question of who the hell this mysterious prisoner was. The funny thing, of course, is that it is easy to picture what happened. With the cameras already set up and ready to shoot, they realized that Merill and Ferris couldn’t get over the wall by themselves, so they had a random extra enter the scene, help them over, and get shot for his troubles.

A speedboat pulls away on a darkened sea. Who says b-movies don’t have exciting endings?

On the other side of the wall, they make a run for her helicopter, which is conveniently parked with the engines still running. A couple of guards are still in pursuit including one armed with what I thought was a shotgun, but which turns out to be a grenade launcher considered how he incinerates the chopper with a single shot. Oddly, that’s the only grenade he fires. Anyway, with the copter in flames, Merill and Ferris head for the powerboat conveniently moored at the beach. This time, there are no grenades to stop their escape and they pull away unmolested.

The movie ends with some idiotic banter about how Ferris will vouch for Merill and get him a new trial… although considering the evidence against him — the bloody knife and eyewitness testimony — I wonder how he’ll fare even then. Ferris is surprisingly composed considering that the three other members of her team were gunned down in cold blood right in front on her. I doubt many Marines would be in such good shape, much less your average human rights activist.

More exciting kickboxing action… well, at least, pickaxe combat.

The problem with these kickboxing movies is that the kickboxing ends up being more important than the plot. That would be okay if the fight sequences were well executed, but they are really sort of desultory frankly. I’m sure Jerry “Golden Boy” Trimble is a terror in the ring, but that doesn’t come across on film. Combine the weak action sequences with a lack of sex or humor, and well, it isn’t a pretty sight. Still, the acting is just bad enough and the plot is just clichéd enough that this is almost in the “so bad it’s good” category. Almost.

Now, a love of bad movies requires three things: (1) A sense of humor; (2) an appreciation for the absurd; and (3) an eye for the little things. Live by the Fist is a great movie for would-be b-movie fans to cut their teeth on because it is obviously bad. In fact, it is so obvious in its badness that even the video cover is laughable. Let me quote from it at length and comment.

A barbaric bug strength test.

“World kickboxing champion Jerry ‘Golden Boy’ Trimble… is imprisoned for a murder he did not commit. Behind bars he discovers the world’s most barbaric prison.” Now, as I’ve mentioned before, it really isn’t that barbaric. “It is a world where men are judged by their ability to fight, riot, kick… and kill.” Actually it isn’t. The men are judged mostly by their ability to join a clique. But beyond that Uncle seems to do quite well just on brains.

“When Jerry befriends an elderly prisoner and refuses to join the prison’s bloody rituals of violence, he is marked for death by the brutal prison warlord ‘Khan.’” You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned Khan in my review. Know why? Because there is no Khan in this movie… at least not among the major characters. And there are no “bloody rituals of violence.” The closest thing we get to a “bloody ritual of violence” is a scene where they glue two bugs together and bet on which one will right itself first. Sure, Merill gets attacked several times, but it isn’t like there is any organized form of violence in the prison. Now, the funny thing is that Jerry Trimble did have a bit part in a movie with a character named Khan, namely King of the Kickboxers (1991), but Trimble’s role in that one is pretty small.

Shower combat. That’s gonna hurt when he lands.

“Forced to abandon his Zen philosophy on non-violence, Jerry must live by savagery. Jerry must live by action. Jerry must… Live by the Fist!” Zen philosophy of non-violence?! He was a Navy SEAL! A professional warrior. And he never shows any evidence of non-violence.

How does this sort of thing happen? Was the box designed first and the movie filmed afterwards? Was someone just asleep at the switch? Anyway, I just thought it was pretty funny. An extra little gift from Roger and Cirio.

Rating: (2 out of 5)

Starring: Bernadette Williams, Jennifer Lane, Taffe O’Connell, Catherine March, Margaret Magick, Gina Alajar, Elizabeth Oropesa, Efren Reyes Jr., and Jose Mari Avellana.

Directed by: Cirio Santiago

Nguyet and Denise meet the warden in Caged Fury (1984).

This is the 1984 Cirio Santiago version of Caged Fury, not to be confused with the 1948 version which is apparently about a “Psycho lion tamer [who] uses the big cats to commit murders” in a circus. It also should not be confused with the 1993 porn flick Caged Fury which starred such adult film luminaries as Tiffany Minx and Peter North. Furthermore, this movie should not be confused with the 1989 women-in-prison movie of the same name that starred Erik Estrada (!) in addition to porn stars Janine Lindemulder, Ron Jeremy, and Julia Parton in minor roles. Okay, so just to recap, this is a review of the 1984 movie… the one without circus animals or porn stars (as far as I know).

Caged Fury is not strictly speaking a women-in-prison movie. There are women. They are captured and held against their wills, but they are in a brainwashing camp in Vietnam rather than in an actual prison. (I say this, of course, to head off the potential firestorm of protest from you WIP purists out there.) That said, the whole brainwashing thing is really sort of given short-shrift. It almost seems as if they started out planning to make a low-budget rip-off of the Charles Bronson thriller Telefon (1977), but got side-tracked into a WIP movie instead — and hey, I know how that can happen. You start up with a thriller, but before you know it, you’ve got captured women, shower scenes, torture sequences and escape attempts. Indeed, this movie definitely has the feel of something made up on the fly out of bits and pieces of better of movies with the captive women theme holding the whole mess together.

One of the more curious aspects of this movie is that Kay here is listed in the credits as Ray Dunning played by Bobby Greenwood.

In any case, the movie opens up in Hawaii. We know it is Hawaii because the movie tells us so, but I sorta suspect the scene we’re seeing was actually shot in the Philippines. I don’t know why. Let’s call it intuition. We go to a hotel room. A 40-something woman, Kay Dunning, picks up the phone. The voice on the other end says, “The apples are dying.” The woman stiffens up, her face blank. Moments later there is a knock on her door. She opens it, and a bellhop hands her a package, which she dutifully opens to reveal a vest. Mechanically, she slips on the vest, and over it a nasty looking pantsuit that really could pass for a pair of PJs. Dressed in this awful attire, she goes down to the lobby of the hotel. Despite her blank stare, no one notices anything amiss as she makes her way into a ballroom where she is apparently scheduled to give a speech or a press conference or something. In any case, none of this comes to fruition because instead of proceeding to the podium, she reaches into her top, and pulls a pin, which sets off the explosives in her vest, killing herself and everyone in the room.

Now, it really may not seem fair to deconstruct this sequence. Shooting fish in a barrel, right? But, that said, I have to admit I found it amusing to contemplate everything that went into this bomb blast. The bad guys (whomever they might be) would have had to kidnap this woman and brainwash her. But they’d have to do it in a way such that she had no memory of it and was able to function normally otherwise. This isn’t quite as easy as brainwashing someone to make a declaration in front of a TV camera under controlled circumstances. Anyway, they’d then have to have a way to track her, or even direct her to a specific location where they wanted an explosion. Then, they’d have to find a way to call her and get her a bomb-vest when the time was right. Doesn’t this seem like a lot of work? Instead of doing all that why couldn’t the bellhop just plant the bomb and detonated it by remote? Why go through the whole kidnap/brainwash scenario? Yeah, sure, it adds to the “terror” factor, but hell, once the bomb exploded, it would have been just as easy to claim it was detonated by a brainwashed newswoman as to actually brainwash a newswoman. Plus, you know, it seems to me that if you are going to go through the trouble of creating brainwashed suicide bombers you wouldn’t want to throw away such a valuable asset blowing up a ballroom in a cheap hotel. There have to be more valuable targets, no?

Location, schmocation, a little paint and cardboard is all you need to set a movie anywhere in the world.

No matter. The movie now shifts to Vietnam. We “know” it is Vietnam because there are a few handwritten signs in Vietnamese (or at least some approximation of it), and an occasional drawing of Ho Chi Minh. An attractive blond woman is tossed into the back of a jeep along with an Asian women. The blond is Denise (Bernadette Williams in her only film as per IMDb), and although she’s the star of movie we don’t learn her name for another 19 minutes of screen time. The Asian woman is Nguyet (Gina Alajar)… we don’t learn her name for another 38 minutes. One thing I find both amusing and frustrating about b-movies is how often they leave characters’ names up to the viewer’s imagination, so one is often forced to think of the characters as First Blond or Kung-Fu Chick or Mustache Guy. Is it really so hard to run the Expositron™ for a few moments when you introduce a new character in order to orient everyone?

Denise asks Nguyet what she’s in for. Nguyet replies that her crime was to marry an American and try to escape from a labor camp. She also claims to be only 16… which really doesn’t seem plausible from her appearance, much less the history she provides. The movie was made in the early 1980s, and nothing in it suggests that it is set earlier, so this whole thing about marrying an American seems odd. Were there really many Americans in Vietnam in the early 1980s? And if so, wouldn’t they be by definition tolerated by the regime? It isn’t as if she fell in love with a random American businessman or tourist since obviously U.S.-Vietnam relations were pretty chilly back then. Nguyet also adds in that she’s been horribly mistreated by her captors… beaten, and, and… tears. You get the picture. Hyuget is obviously the fragile one.

They arrive at a camp set deep in the jungle. The girls meet Col. Van Duc (Jose Mari Alvellana) who runs the camp. He speaks with a British accent, which is sort of an odd touch since Vietnam was never a British colony. He’d have probably learned his English from Yanks. According to the Colonel, the girls are “here to learn.” “This is not a resort,” he adds helpfully in case Denise thought she’d won a trip to Club Med. He then warns them against escaping. They are “quite isolated’ and “surrounded by uncharted jungle.” Blah blah blah. He tells them that they are basically free to roam around the camp, and that there is only one rule (although this turns out to be a lie), “Obey. Do what you are told.”

You call this a resort? The shower is nothing more than a glorifed garden hose… oh wait, the colonel explicit warned that it wasn’t a resort. That explains it.

Following this rousing introduction we get one of the most desultory shower scene in movie history as Nguyet and Denise stand naked under thin streams of water. Though Nguyet has already demonstrated her fragility, Denise is surprisingly stoic considering how vague everything has been so far. Talk about going with the flow, Denise in these early scenes is not angry or scared or really even anxious. In any case, following the shower, Denise and Nguyet are brought to a barracks. On the way, Nguyet panics and makes a break for it, but the guards grab her and slap her around. Nguyet is as skittish as Denise is passive, but even that doesn’t quite explain her sudden and obviously fruitless attempt to bolt.

I was expected the usual “meet the cellmates” scene once they got to the barracks, but only one character bothers to introduce herself, a tall brunette named Linda Baker (Jennifer Lane). Actually, to tell the truth, the scene is so ineptly blocked that I thought Denise was introducing herself, but I later deduced that Linda was the brunette. The girls ask Denise what she’s in for, and she replies vaguely that she “trusted an American.” Denise, it turns out, is Canadian… although this issue does not really come up again. The girls explain that this isn’t a prison, but rather a brainwashing camp. Denise doesn’t believe it, basically dismissing it as a UL. Although why she would is not clear considering that the Colonel told them it was, in fact, a re-education camp. The other girls support their contention by pointing out that the girls in the other barracks who have been there longer walk around with blank expressions on their faces… although around this point, I was wondering if maybe they’d just had the misfortune of being forced to watch Caged Fury themselves.

Actual footage of an attempted Reagan-era detente with Vietnam.

At this point, director Santiago cuts away from the gals. We meet Mr. Hartman (Ken Metcalf), who is presumably a spook of some sort. He’s meeting with an Asian woman (Chinh, played by Elizabeth Oropesa) who is a Vietnamese foreign ministry official. She has a deal for him. If he’ll turn over General Dang, a Ho Chi Minh protégé who has since defected to the United States, she’ll free the 20-odd girls they have in captivity. If he doesn’t agree, she threatens to send him the girls one at a time… as human bombs. Dum dum dum. He promises to consider her offer. This all seems almost plausible until you think about it. I mean, would the United States really even consider giving in to such naked blackmail? Well, maybe. I mean, around this time, Reagan was agreeing to trade arms for hostages held in Lebanon, so anything is possible.

An early Vietnamese music video

Back in the camp, we see a woman getting brainwashed. Apparently brainwashing is as easy as repeating “pull the pin” while flashing a picture of a middle-aged man on a screen and occasionally administering an electric shock. While this is going on, Linda is snooping around. She peers in at the brainwashing session, but is quickly discovered. She flashes some decent kung fu skills, downing a couple of guards quickly before being overwhelmed by the others.

How come that damn Alan Alda gets all the good gigs?

Back in the barracks one of the women prisoners is making eyes at one of the guards. As far as I can tell, we never actually learn her name, but I deduce from the credits that her name is Honey (Taffe O’Connell). She looks alarmingly like a pasty, flabby version of Loretta Swit… okay, a pastier, flabbier version of Loretta Swit. She does get topless a couple of times, so this movie might be useful to anyone with a “Hot Lips” fetish. The guard sneaks into the barracks and the two start fooling around. Apparently she trades sexual favors for provisions of various sorts (sort of a weird spin on the William Holden role in Stalag 17). Whether she was a ho before arriving at the camp is never quite established, but she is quite unapologetic for fraternizing with the enemy. The other guards are surprisingly tolerant of her paramour as well. While this is going on, Nguyet comes back to the barracks, having been beaten for her previous attempt to run.

Van Duc preps Linda for questioning.

We now turn our attention to Linda. She gets brought before the camp commandant. He asks her if she’s a spy. She denies it. (We later find out she is, although whether her imprisonment in the camp is a deliberate infiltration is never established.) “We cannot converse like this,” he decides, tearing open her blouse. He shoves her back into a chair, and his henchmen bind her arms and hands. Col. Van Duc, then attaches two electrodes to her breasts and a third… well, use your imagination. Interestingly, the Colonel eschews the traditional placement of the electrodes on the nipples in favor of the more original placement on the upper slope of her breasts. I focus on this for two reasons. First, of course, because I’m a pervert. But second, and more importantly, because I sort of wondered why they did it that way. I have two guesses: (a) because that way we could get a torture scene and still have visible nipples, or (b) because the actress objected for some reason. Either way, it is a little glimpse behind the scenes of this sort of movie. Just think how many decisions of this sort go into every movie, not matter how awful. Anyway, now fully wired, the questioning resumes. Linda proves to be a tough cookie, and refuses to break.

Little known fact: Vietnamese “re-education” camps often featured harmonious outdoor spaces for the inmates and guards to socialize.

The scene ends and we return to the barracks. The gals are planning an escape. Apparently, the treatment they’ve received pushes them over the edge. The planning comes to a screeching halt when one of the girls notes that, after all, they are quite isolates and in the middle of uncharted jungle to coin a phrase. Well, d’uh. All of this cogitating and plotting gives Denise a hankering for a breath of fresh air. She steps outside and walks to a gazebo (!). She’s joined by guard Pram (Efren Reyes, Jr.) who tries to shoo her back to the barracks because it is almost lights out. They sort of make goo-goo eyes at each other, and it almost seems like the movie is trying to introduce a romantic subplot here. But before anything can happen, she has to return to the barracks, just in time to listen to Linda tediously recounting her recent nightmare.

Back in Hanoi, or wherever, some foreign ministry types are discussing the American response to the trade offer, which apparently was positive, although all of this is left quite vague. One of the Vietnamese argues against it, claiming the girls are too great an asset to give up. Then comes the devastating O’Henryesque twist… it turns out the brainwashing isn’t working. They got lucky with the first gal, but haven’t been able to duplicate the results since. As they make plans to trade the girls, they also order the camp commandant to redouble his efforts to brainwash the girls before the trade occurs. Back at the camp, Col. Van Duc breaks up a volleyball game. He throws the ball in the air and a guard shoots it — which reduces the entire stock of volleyballs in Vietnam at the time by 13%. The commandant announces that he has been too lenient, and that he won’t tolerate any spying or escape attempts, a reference to the escape plots the girls have been discussing. It turns out that there is an informer among the girls, but who?

We seem to find out in the next scene when Honey goes to visit the warden. She prances around apparently trying to seduce him in much the same way she seduced the other guard. She asks for preferential treatment. The warden looks at her disdainfully, “You have no brains to wash.” Still, she seems willing to trade info, or anything else, for a softer life in the camp. When she gets back to the mess hall, Denise confronts her. The two of them give us the beginning of a catfight, although it doesn’t get far.

Linda kicks a little ass.

The fight gets broken up without any broken bones. Denise storms out and runs into Pram. They go for a walk. They talk. It turns out, he never wanted to be a soldier; instead he wanted to be a writer. Denise is a writer. Wow! What a coincidence. The weird part about this scene is that I think the filmmakers really expect us to believe that these two are falling in love on the basis of a couple of 1-2 minute conversations. It would be much more believable if Denise were obviously trying to manipulate him and he was merely trying to get in her pants, but instead these two are soon looking at each other like long lost lovers… which, for that matter, would also have been more interesting in a Casablanca sort of way.

Well, for reasons that are never made clear, soon after this latest interlude with Pram, Denise gets dragged off to see the camp commandant. Like Linda, she gets the three electrode treatment. Is this in response to her dalliance with Pram? Her fight with Honey? Just a belated welcome? As with most other things in this movie, that is left unclear. One good things comes out of this torture for Denise, however, in that when the guards finally bring her back to the barracks, Pram feels sorry for her and agrees to help her escape. Denise, despite her suspicions that there might be a spy in their midst proceeds to spill the beans to the other girls.

Nguyet snaps at a voyeuristic guard.

Before the escape can begin, we get another shower scene. Again Denise and Nguyet stand sullenly under low-flow showerheads. I have to say that “sullen” is indeed the right word to describe Denise, who throughout the movie seems to be going through the motions. You can almost see the wheels turning in her head as she wonders why she gave up low-paying but respectable summer stock to try her hand at movies. The shower scene is broken up when Nguyet notices a guard peeping at them. She screams and tries to shut the window, which merely prompts the guards to rush in and drag her off. Denise is luckier. When she returns to the barracks, Pram is waiting to take her away.

Denise and Pram blast through the camp gates… real stealthy.

Their escape has to be one of the most ineptly planned breakouts in prison movie history. First of all, Pram shows up to pick her up at her barracks, despite the possible presence of an informer. Second, they try to escape in broad daylight. Pram tosses Denise into the back of a truck, behind a bunch of barrels. He climbs into the passenger seat up front, and one of his buddies agrees to drive. What is the buddy’s motivation? Pram, at least, is in love… or something. But this other poor schmuck is just along for the ride. Why? Third, when they get to the gate, they have no good reason for being in the truck, so the guards naturally get suspicious. As a result, they have to blast their way out. How’s that for a well planned escape? They are not even through the gates before they’ve alerted everyone within 50 miles. Personally, I think I would have planned it differently. Maybe Pram could have stashed a truck in the jungle beyond the perimeter. Then, he could have met Denise after dark and they could have snuck past the guards to the truck. At least then, they’d have a chance of getting out undetected.

Luckily for Pram and Denise, Caged Fury follows the laws of movie bullets. Even though a dozen guys with submachine guns open up on the truck, neither Denise nor Pram gets hit. Denise, remember, is sitting in the back of an open truck with wooden sides, and is only protected by a couple of barrels. Even more amusingly, Pram is actually hanging off the side of the truck returning fire. Still better, Pram seems to hit some of the guards every time he pulls the trigger, while their fire never touches him. It made me wonder what they teach in Vietnamese creative writing workshops, because for a would-be writer, Pram sure seems like a kick-ass soldier. I also wondered if Pram felt at all guilty about butchering his former compatriots in order to help some Canadian woman he just met escape.

“I regret that I have but one life to give to get my buddy laid.”

The escape continues…. The truck tears down a narrow jungle road and the camp guards chase after it. After more gunplay, the truck slows to a halt, the driver dead. Pram tosses him onto the road and climbs behind the wheel. Neither Pram nor Denise ever mourn this guy’s valiant sacrifice. I mean, is there anything more noble than a guy taking a bullet so his buddy can get a little tail? Ominously, the camera lingers on fuel pouring out of a bullet hole in the gas tank (at least the truck doesn’t explode). Sure, enough, a few more miles down the road, the truck comes to a sputtering halt… actually, it just stops, I guess they didn’t want to make the effort of foleying in sputtering noises. Pram and Denise disappear into the jungle by the side of the road. Soon the pursuing guards pull up and plunge into the jungle after them.

Pram and Linda take advantage of a lull to consummate their love.

Apparently, the camp guards aren’t very good trackers because our heroes soon elude their would-be captors. They stumble upon a house, and are invited to spend the night by an elderly peasant. On a mat in the old man’s house, Denise puts out. I hope it was good, because the next morning they wake up to find the house surrounded by guards alerted by the old man. Pram gives Denise a gun and goes out to confront the bad guys. Again, for a wannabe writer, he’s a heck of a warrior because he Rambos about half the guards. He tries to lead them away from the house, but no such luck. In the end he runs into one of his buddies, lowers his guard, and gets shot. Meanwhile, back in the house Denise pulls her gun, but doesn’t have the guts to pull the trigger… which is probably a good thing because outnumbered as she was, it would have been suicidal. They lead her outside, and show her Pram’s lifeless body, a development she almost immediately accepts with the same bored resignation as with everything else that has happened to her. The best part of the scene? The power lines and telephones poles clearly visible in the background in this supposedly empty jungle. When they return to the camp, the commandant punishes Denise by hanging her by her hair, which clearly demonstrates that the Colonel is a fan of women-in-prison movies in addition to being educated in England and a perpetrator of violence against sporting goods.

It wouldn’t be a women-in-prison movie without the heroine hanging at least once by her hair.

Meanwhile, half-way across the globe, Mr. Hartman is meeting with General Dang at a “Free Vietnam” rally. Hmmm. I’m thinking this probably isn’t the best place to discuss the possibility of Dang returning to Vietnam in return for a couple of dozen captive women, especially since Dang has to figure that if he goes back he’ll be killed. In any case, I’m not sure what the point of all this is, since I don’t think we ever see Dang again… which doesn’t stop Hartman from meeting up a little later with the foreign ministry woman to arrange a trade. They agree to fly Dang in by chopper and make the exchange at some sort of neutral site. None of this is well explained, but as best as I can figure, the Vietnamese don’t want to give away the location of the camp because otherwise why not just fly the choppers right to the camp? It also isn’t clear whether the Dang agrees to return, is kidnapped, is tricked, or even whether he’s even in the helicopters when they fly to the rendezvous point. It is possible that the plan is to trick the Vietnamese with a decoy, but as I say, this is all rampant speculation since the movie explains none of it.

Alright, now back at the camp again, the guards untie Denise. When she’s brought back to the barracks, she moans, “They knew.” Presumably, the spy thing again. Although in this case, it seems to me that it hardly required an act of espionage to bust up her and Pram’s ill-conceived escape plan. In any case, before the girls can mount a full-blown mole hunt, they are herded into a couple of boxcars for the ride to the rendezvous point. We get a couple of obvious day-for-night shots here, all the more obvious for their lack of justification. I mean, why not just set the scene in the daytime?

Nguyet pays for her treachery

Although things seems like they are going well, there is trouble brewing. At a rest stop, one of the girls overhears some of the guard talking about how the girls are just bait, and that once they have Dang back in their possession, the women will go right back to the camp. Nguyet and Honey get sent off to try to figure out where they are in order to plan an escape. This quickly degenerates into an impromptu escape attempt as the women burst from the prison car and try to run. Disorganized and scattered, they are all quickly tracked down. The result is an orgy of drunken rape and assault as the guards abuse the would-be escapees. The scene is presented in slow motion, with several shots superimposed on one another. It is almost surreal actually. In the midst of all this, Honey spots Nguyet sharing a cigarette and a laugh with one of the guards, thus fingering her as the spy. Now you may be wondering why the Vietnamese government would bother infiltrating a spy into a bunch of miscellaneous women prisoners. The answer, of course, is that the Vietnamese are a bunch of evil commies, and that is what evil commies do.

Denise and Jackie surprise a couple of hung over guards.

When the train starts moving again, Honey tells her story. Nguyet tries to deny it, but the timing is too obvious. Before every disaster, Nguyet was conveniently absent, including before Linda’s snooping expedition, Denise’s attempted escape, and the final mass break out. Nguyet tries to back away from the vengeance-minded women, but they grab her and toss her from the moving train. Then, fortified with anger, the women decide to try to escape once again. Linda climbs out the open door and onto the roof of the moving train. Other women burst through a door into the guards’ room. One-by-one the women overpower the guards, who are hungover and exhausted from a night of rapine. This, by the way, is a staple of this sort of movie. The women always recover from being assaulted right away, while the assailants are usually left exhausted and vulnerable. One could easily write a book on the meaning of this cliché.

The climactic final chase

Before long, the women have control of the train, and suddenly a movie that started off as a riff on Telefon turns into a low-grade rip-off of Von Ryan’s Express (1965). The women blast through the meeting point and continue down the track. The Vietnamese pursue in APCs and jeeps, while the American choppers appear overhead. Though the footage is looped several times, the chase scene really isn’t half bad as the helicopters try to keep the Vietnamese away from the train, while the Vietnamese try to blast it off the tracks. The helicopters are armed with air-to-ground missiles… which is odd because you’d think the Vietnamese would have made sure to specify that they would only tolerate unarmed helicopters. Anyway, the Americans manage to chase away the APCs, without actually hitting any of them. Presumably, Santiago had enough budget or pull to borrow the military vehicles, but not enough to blow them up. Finally, once the Vietnamese have been forced back, the train slows and the women run to the chopper… all except Denise and Jackie (Catherine March) who have stayed behind at the train manning a machine gun to provide cover. With the helicopters on the ground picking up prisoners, the APCs now make another charge at the train. Believe it or not, there is actually some tension as they approach. At the last minute, the helicopter takes off. Dangling a rope ladder, it hovers over the train. Denise and Jackie grab hold and climb to safety, just in time to leave the Vietnamese looking up at the sky impotently as the ‘copters pull away. Cue credits.

The girls make a last minute escape.

You know, I really wanted to like this one. The whole Von Ryan’s Express bit was pretty good, and I liked the Stalag 17 (1953) “spy among them” aspect (although it could have been developed more effectively). But the brainwashing-Telefon business turns out to be just a red herring, and the prisoner trade plotline a distraction. The Denise-Pram romantic sub-plot is just awful. Ultimately, the movie has too many moving parts, and they just don’t hold together well. Also, the acting is stiff even compared to other entries in the genre.

Still, this isn’t a bad entry in the genre, but it isn’t very good either. That said, I should note two items I noticed in the closing credits. First, casting credit is given to Jim Wynorski, who, as you know, has made dozens of b-movies, although none in the WIP genre as far as I can tell. More importantly, for those of you interested in technical details, the movie was filmed in Imperious Color™.

Mike Mayo

1070 words

20 August 1994

Roanoke Times & World News

METRO

10

English

(Copyright 1994)

Shannon Whirry is the sexiest woman in home video.

Admittedly, that is the opinion of one videophile with a notorious taste for guilty pleasures. But I’m not the only one who thinks so. Two years after its release, Whirry’s video debut, “Animal Instincts,” is still on the New Releases shelf of at least one Blockbuster store. Why? Because it’s still a hot renter. Movies that have such “strong legs” retain their newness.

But why has that one been so popular? After all, there are dozens of “erotic thrillers” out there; films that are much more explicit. What sets this one apart? The answer is a successful combination of star and story which, in the time-honored Hollywood tradition, the producers are trying to repeat with a sequel.

When I first saw Whirry at the recent VSDA convention, I didn’t recognize her. She hadn’t been listed in the advance publicity, and in person, she’s not particularly prepossessing. But when she turns on the charm while signing autographs, she can light up the room. She’s also opinionated and articulate about her profession.

“I’ve wanted to be an actress since I was 13 years old, and I stepped off the stage in my first play,” she said. Right after high school, she went to New York and spent eight years going to acting classes and trying to find work wherever she could.

“Then Steven Seagal came to town with ‘Out for Justice.’ I went to a cattle call and ended up winning the role. I was Terry Malloy, the cocktail waitress. Because the strike was on in New York then, all filming shut down the day I was supposed to start. They took me off to L.A. I filmed there and I never went back.”

It was the same cattle-call process with “Animal Instincts.” “I liked the script, thought there was a lot I could do with it. I thought it was an interesting character if done the right way. She was a sympathetic character, but she could have played as a slut and that wouldn’t have been interesting at all. But I really saw where it could go. I took it and the rest is history.”

But what made it work? What made it sexy?

“All I do is my characters. I’ve made the choices before I do them. I know who they are and I know what’s going on, and all I do is live it through them. I don’t try to be sexy because that’s a trap. As soon as you try to be sexy, you aren’t sexy. The times I’ve tried, it hasn’t worked. So I just have a good time and do what I’m supposed to do.”

It’s paying off. She has more video originals coming up – “an action romance and a black comedy next with no nudity” – and a role in the upcoming ABC mini-series “Texas Junction.”

And what of the new film?

“Animal Instincts 2″ is about what you’d expect of a sequel. It repeats the key ingredients that made the original a hit in a more coherent story, about a woman who becomes involved with a voyeuristic neighbor. Like the first film, it uses the confessional – to a priest or a psychiatrist or perhaps someone else – as a framing device.

If it lacks the freshness of the original, then writer Daryl Haney and veteran director Gregory Hippolyte understand one important fact about this kind of story. It’s not really about sex; it’s about sin, and that’s an infinitely more interesting subject.

Special to the Journal Sentinel

976 words

5 February 1998

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

All

1

English

© 1998 Journal Sentinel Inc.

She slinked into Verdi’s Espresso Bar in Milwaukee’s East Town. Every guy’s head in the joint turned to catch a glimpse. She was one hot tomato. A real looker with a great pair of pins.

Apologies to crime novelist Mickey Spillane, who popularized much of this street vernacular 50 years ago with his first “Mike Hammer” novel, “I, The Jury.” Spillane could have just as well penned those words to describe actress Shannon Whirry.

A blonde, blue-eyed femme fatale on the cusp of full-fledged stardom, the Green Lake High School graduate and Wisconsin native made her annual pilgrimage back to the state to visit with family and friends. In Milwaukee, she squeezed in a promotional interview for her latest project, the syndicated television series, “Mike Hammer: Private Eye.” Whirry (pronounced worry) enlisted her mom, Sherry, to navigate the streets of Milwaukee and to accompany her to the interview.

It doesn’t take a super sleuth such as Hammer to get the skinny on Whirry. In the course of the interview, we learned that she owns a fixer-upper home in the Hollywood Hills; packs a pistol for protection (she owns a 9mm and can rival Annie Oakley as a sharpshooter); lives with her boyfriend of five years, Chris, a cop; does not side with the actress Hunter Tylo, who was bounced from “Melrose Place” for becoming pregnant; and has no plans for marriage or children.

For the newest incarnation of the venerable sleuth, Stacy Keach reprises the part of Mike Hammer, a character that seems to fit him like an old gum shoe. He has played Hammer in several made-for-TV movies and in two different series on CBS.

In the latest version, Whirry plays his trusted secretary, Velda. The show airs Sundays at 11:05 p.m. on Channel 58.

Whirry has established a cult-like following in kick-butt and sexually steamy feature films and cable movies, such as “Out for Justice,” “Animal Instincts” and “Dangerous Prey.” The part of Velda would seem like a safe career retreat for an actress who likes to take chances. Not so, she said.

“Velda as created by Mickey Spillane has always been sexy and smart,” she said between sips of her latte. “I have no problem being sexy as long as they let me be smart. I think it’s a terrific role model when you can be sexy, smart and professional.”

She makes no apologies for the roles that have required her to appear in various states of undress, leaving little to an audience’s imagination.

“If a part called for any type of nudity, I at least made sure that the woman was smart and powerful. The roles that have required nudity have either been good or interesting or they have presented me with an opportunity to work with actors I respect. I’ve never just whipped off my top and run down a hallway.”

Whirry’s body of work is especially interesting when you consider that she is a seriously trained actress.

After graduating from Green Lake High, she was one of 300 people (out of 3,000 applicants) accepted at New York City’s prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts. For six years in the mid-’80s, Whirry hopped from one off-Broadway role to another, eventually winning a Jean Dalrymple Award for best supporting actress for her role in “The Latest Craze.”

A cattle-call audition and her casting in the 1991 Steven Segal action flick “Out for Justice” launched her film career.

Despite her dramatic training, Whirry does not deny that her physical attributes circumscribe the range of acting opportunities open to her.

“I’m not going to be able to play a shrinking violet,” she said. “That’s not who I am and when people look at me that’s not what they see. Why deny what I am and where my strengths lie. I like playing strong women. I’m a strong woman, and that’s what I like.”

All of which leads us to a discussion of the recent jury verdict in favor of Tylo, who was hired to play a seductress on “Melrose Place” and was fired by the show’s producers after she became pregnant.

“They didn’t hire her pregnant. They didn’t want her pregnant. To me, they were within their rights to let her go,” Whirry said. “She hadn’t even become an established character on the show. She was hired to be the ingenue. That takes away when you’re eight months’ pregnant. If she was trying to get pregnant, she should not have gone for that type of work or she should have waited a year until they established her character.”

With no plans for marriage or children, Whirry may not be likely to find herself in a similar situation.

“If you would have asked me when I was 5 years old and long before I became an actress, I would have told you that I’ve never wanted children,” she said. “Children require a great deal of time and nurturing. I don’t think it’s fair with my lifestyle of long work days and travel to raise a child.”

Same can be said about marriage.

“Part of my non-belief in marriage is that both my mother and father have each been married three times, and Chris’ (her boyfriend) mother was married four times. We don’t come from people who have stayed married, so why believe in the institution?”

Call her independent or opinionated it doesn’t matter. It’s no “Mike Hammer” mystery that Shannon Whirry knows what she wants out of life.