Atomic Blonde

... Played with a reserve as icy as the cubes she tosses into her many glasses of vodka (seriously, people drink and smoke in this movie like it’s Barfly), Lorraine herself comes in with only a few shreds of backstory and remains enigmatic throughout the film, which some might find off-putting but, hell, isn’t that how James Bond has operated for 26 movies?

Read the rest of the review at Vegas Seven...

The Wild World of Batwoman

What do you get when you combine go-go-girls, seances, "happy" pills, hearing aids, bare midriffs, lecherous middle-aged men, "Oriental languages," chocolate milk, the Watusi, mad scientists, pool parties and government surveillance?

The Wild World of Batwoman, that's what!

Another flick that operates on an Ed Wood-level of competence, The Wild World of Batwoman is an odd hodgepodge of leftover plot points and cheap sets. It makes the 60s Batman television series look like Game of Thrones..

There's an odd opener of two blondes (one of whom looks a lot like Amy Schumer) and a brunette in baby doll nighties blathering about strawberry yogurt and vampires--apparently this bit was tacked on when the producers were sued for copyright infringement (Who knows why they wouldn't want their intellectual property associated with such a fine work of art as this?) and the movie had to be retitled She Was a Hippy Vampire, although this is all we will hear of vampires. Picking up scraps is part of the the aesthetic of The Wild World of Batwoman--the monster shots are cut in from another movie, there's also street footage of what might be Sweden.

Batwoman is played by une femme d'un certain age with a cockade of Siouxsie Sioux hair, a bustier and a Batman symbol drawn on her cleavage--with eyebrow pencil, I'm guessing. The Batgirls seem to be a random assortment of go-go dancers and cocktail waitresses who recite a lot of Girl Scout-like oaths and "fight evil with all sincerity." We see a guy get mugged, a Batgirl get roofied and kidnapped--the Batgirls' crime-fighting skills seem to be limited to the Frug, the Pony and calling for help. Compared to them, Yvonne Craig's Batgirl is Imperator Furiosa.

So, one of the Batgirls is kidnapped by a couple of motley henchmen and an inept mad scientist with the standard creepy deformed assistant. It turns out they are in the service of Batwoman's arch-enemy, Rat Fink--no idea if he's related to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's Rat Fink or the Rat Pfink of Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo. Apparently he is trying to get hold of some magical hearing aid that can eavesdrop on anyone, anywhere. And it's also an atomic bomb. Or something.

You know the Ajax company that occasionally pops up in the Disney universe, employers of incompetent ghost exterminators and spluttering ducks? They are too high-end for The Wild World of Batwoman, hence they use the knockoff, factory seconds version...

So, there's much rushing back and forth and escaping and getting kidnapped. The mad scientist keeps dispensing happy pills to everyone, because somehow there's not enough footage of Batgirls (and the occasional hunchbacked assistant) endlessly go-go dancing in midriff tops. That's what the happy pills make you do: Gyrate like it's inpatient talent night on American Bandstand.

Then our plot takes another bizarre turn as suddenly Batwoman needs to contact the spirit world (by holding hands around a table, these folks being too cheap to spring for a Ouija board) to tell her where the bad guys' lair is. Which is odd, because Batwoman has already been to said lair, but "it was dark" and she just can't find it now. Huh? Is it in one of those subdivisions where all the streets are named for types of cacti and all of the houses look alike? Which is actually entirely possible--like the "torture chamber" of Olga's Girls was obviously someone's basement full of random stuff, the "lab" in The Wild World of Batwoman is clearly a garage down to the shelves of cardboard boxes and side door entrance.

The Wild World of Batwoman is dopey and illogical but amusing nonetheless. It's girl power at its goofiest--actually, Amy Schumer's next movie should be a low-budget piece of superchick schlock with Neil Sedaka's "Bad Blood" as a theme song. All the girls will be non-supermodels--Melissa McCarthy, Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, Niecy Nash, Jinkx Monsoon, Fran Liebowitz, holographic LaWanda Page. They can let Jennifer Lawrence be their Lena Dunham, maybe bring John Waters out of retirement...

Rock & Rule

Most movies are augmented by their soundtracks. Rock & Rule exists as an excuse for one.

In the spirit of Heavy Metal and Fritz the Cat, this Canadian animated musical extravaganza is justly best-known for featuring the music of Blondie, Cheap Trick, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Earth, Wind & Fire. Unfortunately Rock & Rule came a little late to the party, was buried by its studio and didn't do so well at the box office. Then it hovered in limbo until about 2005 until it finally got a reissue.

So, we have our heroes, a struggling rock band, which is either Cheap Trick with Debbie Harry or Blondie with Robin Zander, depending on whose outfit wrote the particular track. The band itself is never named.

 And we have our villain, ossifying rock god, Mok, whose songs are courtesy of Lou Reed and/or Iggy Pop, depending on what mood he's in.

Oh, and the movie brings up this sort of half-assed effort at post-apocalyptic mutant society in the opening and then just kind of leaves it there. Sure, there's a club manager who looks kind of like a rat and is kind of rat-like, I guess; Omar aka Robin Zander looks vaguely like a dog, but acts nothing like one; Angel just looks like Debbie Harry and acts like a human.

So, the plot is that Mok wants to raise a demon that will make him all-powerful or at least boost his sales--"You must remember that my last concert was not... completely sold out."--but he needs a magical voice for the summoning. He's been scouring the world and the last place he looks is a dive bar in Ohmtown, where the band--again, nameless band--is playing a gig. Omar does a surprisingly rockin' Cheap Trick number that gets their power cut. Then Angel/Debbie takes over with her keytar and plays a pretty badass Blondie song. Omar stalks off, his delicate feels hurt, but Mok knows he has found the voice.

Mok gets the rest of the band loaded on something called Edison Balls, which is some kind of drug--Edison Balls? Really? Then he tries to convince Angel/Debbie to join him, but she refuses because she's gonna stick with her band--which, if it was so important, you think someone would have found a name for said band by now. I mean, I think I've been in a half-dozen bands that were just names.

Anyway, Mok asks Angel to join him, she refuses, he dopes her up with a rose full of roofies and then whisks her off to Nuke York in his blimp because what is more supervillain than a blimp? And the rest of the band sobers up and steals a cop car to give chase. (Usually the stealing and the sobering happen in the opposite order, but who am I to judge?)

 While they bumble around, Angel/Debbie manages to spring herself with the help of Cinderella, a zaftig roller derby girl who is on her way to the "hottest anti-gravity disco in town!"

 Rock & Rule may initially seem to play into the old damsel in distress routine with Angel/Debbie, but upon further consideration, she's no pushover. She insists on playing her own songs; the band follows her, not Omar Zander; she says no to Mok; she springs herself and keeps taking the initiative straight through to the end. Compare this to the males around her (Mok and Omar) both of whom are totally ego-blinded and can't tie their shoes without flunkies cheering them on.

 

Anyway, Angel/Debbie does still wind up at "Carnagie Hall" for Mok's big gig. But the demon summoning somehow goes wrong and Mok simply blows out all the power in Nuke York. He decides to return to Ohmtown--which had loads of electricity as the name may indicate--to try again, with the goofballs of nameless band again in pursuit....

With its angelic singer in the clutches of a demonic rock has-been, Rock & Rule is more than a little reminiscent of Phantom of the Paradise. Rock & Rule has an outstanding soundtrack, but suffers from a lack of plot--the episodic nature of Heavy Metal at least meant that by the time you got bored with one ridiculous premise, it had moved on to the next one. Also, Debbie Harry and Robin Zander should totally have duetted more, as their voices blend really well. Ultimately, Rock & Rule has some nice images, but works better as music than a movie--which is weird, because they never actually released that soundtrack after all...

Liquid Sky

When I was in high school, this movie put the zap on my head but good.

Ah, yes, New York City in the 80s. The downtown Scene of Liquid Sky, with its strangely unmelodic music, unwearable outfits and motionless dancing does indeed seem like Bohemia as imagined by an alien or emigre (or a suburban teen). And, of course, there's models, neon, Eurotrash, drugs, parties, fashion, philosophy, soap opera actors, performance art and multiple wardrobe changes. And, yeah, aliens.

 

"Delicious, delicious, oh, how boring."

So, our heroine is Margaret, is the classic pretty girl from a good suburban family who has turned into into a warpainted, substance-huffing scenster fashionista/victim. Or, as her girlfriend, Adrian the midget performance artist calls her, "an uptight WASP cunt from Connecticut." Margaret has no comment on being called this. Margaret has no comment on anything: She hasn't given a fuck in so long she's forgotten what giving a fuck even feels like.

 The ladies reside in a neon-bedecked apartment with a view of the Empire State Building. Back when you could afford that sort of thing on a petty drug dealer's salary. Now you'd have to be a real lowlife criminal to pay that kind of rent. Like a stockbroker or something.

 

We also meet some of the rest of our cast, classic New York characters all. The junkie artist who talks about Cocteau while he shoots up and sponges off of his girlfriend. The trust fund brat aka that "guy on the dance floor who's offering all the chicks cocaine." The professor who uses pretentiousness as both lure and repellant. The woman who has seen every scam and still falls in blind love with her eyes open. The nasty fashionista who says shit like "Frankly, this bird-of-paradise routine is done every day in Vegas--and better." The slumming Upper East Side matron who is tolerated for her wallet. The drug-huffing ambiguously gendered pretty boy...

Douse his hair in Clairol blue-black #124 and he's about half the guys i dated in my twenties. And, well, if it was an actual male, of course. For the hook here is that Anne Carlisle plays both Margaret and her nemesis, Jimmy, the male model.

Carlisle is slightly reminiscent of a wooden Tilda Swinton. After this, she went on to flounce through a bit as a transsexual in Crocodile Dundee and a five-minute guest spot on Miami Vice as a stewardess girlfriend of Don Johnson who dies when one of the coke-filled-condoms she's drug-muling ruptures. And a rather odd Liquid Sky-themed Playboy shoot.

So the upshot is that aliens land on the roof of Margaret and Lesbian Midget Performance Artist's apartment. Somehow the aliens feed off of some chemical produced in people's brains when they have orgasms (or get high). Now, consider that Margaret is frigid, but everyone wants to bang her. You can see the passive-very aggressive direction this is going...

Aside from the fiercest warpaint since Ladies and Gentlemen: The Fabulous Stains (okay, that was after, but whatever), Liquid Sky is also distinguished by its relentless whistle-screech-ring Fairlight synth soundtrack.The music was composed by director Slava Tsukerman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Carlisle (And you thought multi-tasking was a millennial thing. You wanna see a holocracy, go to the set of an indie film in the 80s or 90s where everybody just fucking did everything. You'd haul half your apartment to some set somewhere and wind up cooking a mess of beans and rice for two dozen people. You'd rewrite your dialogue and then carry light kits up from the basement in three-inch heels and sequins.)

Liquid Sky remains an incredible time capsule of New York City and the East Village when it was full of intellectuals and artists and punks and weirdos and every now and then a Ukranian granny. Sure, the story is daft, but the plot is really just an excuse for wild outfits, weird dialogue and scenes that trap this moment in time and this particular species of urban hispter on video like prehistoric fossils in amber. Take the climactic photo shoot...

 

This, of course, culminates in the scene in which Jimmy and Margaret taunt each other before the crowd of giggling, shade-throwing voyeurs. He sneers at her for being "old" and "ugly," while she somehow manages to be more insulting in calling him "the most beautiful boy in the world."

One, they're the same person, so ugly and beautiful are illogical. Two, Margaret making "beautiful"--a word that everyone else throws at her--into an insult says something about how powerless being admired for surface can  make one feel. And, three, is #2 why she wins this? Well, that and she blows him--and you know what happens when someone gets off around Margaret, who has finally realized that having everyone you fuck dematerialize is kind of an impressive power to have. Also, another fine example of the "go fuck yourself" via drag, as also seen in Female Trouble.

And, well, i'll always have a soft spot for Liquid Sky for its influence upon me. You think i'm kidding? Fine. Here's "Margaret" in New York City circa 1982..

And me, in Poughkeepsie, circa 1986...