Having enjoyed several very good Mexican movies in the recent past ("Amores Perros", "Y tu mama tambien"), this poor attempt of a suspense movie is a complete disappointment. Christian Gonzalez, the director, seems to enjoy the damsels-in-distress stories. Previous work "La Banda del Antrax" and "Ritmo, traicion y muerte" also deal with kidnapping and bound girls. This last effort, seemingly with better budget, may be even worse than the earlier films. This is probably due to the fact that he tries very hard to produce a somber, dark suspenseful film attempting to emulate the old Hollywood formula of the tough cop who is retiring only to be back for duty for one more assignment. Sadly the movie has a pitiful script and second class actors that just can't even come close to resemble a good American cop made-for-TV movie. Alexis Ayala plays Benjamin Solero who nabs a drug lord at the prologue of the movie. A dark scene, over a card game, with painfully slow dialog and a ridiculous, hard to believe, easy capture by one man of a major criminal surrounded by bodyguards. As with the rest of the movie there is not one iota of good action. He just pulls a gun and declares "I am a federal agent" and the camera cut to the party celebrating his heroics and where he announces retirement. Well, not so fast. The drug lord arranges the kidnapping of the daughter of the judge who is to sentence him. The college girl is lured to a trap and the drama is suppose to growth from the premise that Benjamin will rescue the girl. Unfortunately, aside from several scenes of the girl in a variety of bondage conditions, there is no drama or intensity to anything happening on the screen. Cop brakes with wife, cop gets no help from the officials, cop entangles himself with Carolina the only witness of the kidnapping and solves magically the whereabouts of the girl by obtaining clues from a drunken police informer who he helped in the past. The movie totally collapses in the last 30 minutes. The convoluted script involves dream sequences which are suppose to mesmerize the audience but end up with a disjointed anticlimactic ending where the girl, all of a sudden has been rescued (how, does not seem to be important) the cop has killed the kidnapper inside a train cargo vehicle (how and when he got there are not important either). The editing is atrocious, the soundtrack is offensively loud (and irrelevant given the absolute lack of action scenes) and the acting amateurish at best. I am sure there will be more coming from Gonzalez. I suppose he can only improve from this bottom of the barrel suspense movie attempt. But, then again, I may be wrong.
Reviews
6 Reviews
Mujeres de media noche
(1990)
A strange mixture
2 January 2005
Warning: Spoilers
MUJERES DE MEDIANOCHE
In the late 80's and mid 90's there was a profitable soft porn mainstream movie industry in Mexico. During these years Roberto "Flaco" Guzman made a career playing a typical low middle class, barely employed individuals whose main attribute was the sex-loaded double talk language and devotion to sexy barely clad babes. He made 16 films in 1990 and "Mujeres de Medianoche" is just one of many with the basic core values: a friendly, streetwise fast talking extroverted who gets involved in all kinds of troubles with women and bad guys. These are essential skin flicks, soft-porn mass production movies to serve the populace. Make them laugh, give them half naked women and do not bother with much else in terms of script or cinematography. SPOILERS "Mujeres de Medianoche" is unusual in the sense that this is a violent serial killer story within an inane comedy involving Anacleto Delgadillo (Roberto Guzman). The movie opens with the serial killer butchering a prostitute with a set of six knives plunged in her chest. The story then moves to an antique store where Anacleto works. He is abused by his supervisor yet he always ends up with the upper hand with the owner and with the two female store clerks. The employees of the store agree to pay for a gift to the owner (Jose "Tun Tun" Ruiz). A mix up in the mail ends delivering the telescope, meant to the owner, to Anacleto. He and his friend Leandro start watching girls on the building across. It is between Anacleto, Leandro and his wife that most of the humorous double-talk occurs. This includes Leandro being abused by his Cuban wife who beats him any chance he misbehaves. Anacleto falls in love with a girl (Miss "G") who works as a model. As the story develops the camera cuts to three additional victims of the serial killer, who is named "El descuartizador" (the ripper) by the local media. The girls are tied up and tortured before he kills them with one or more knives. Anacleto suspects that one of the neighbors in the building, which he keeps monitoring with the telescope, is the killer but he cannot prove it and he ends up in jail for misleading the authorities. Miss G, falls for Anacleto for no other good reason that he is a nice guy who was worried for her. She bails him out of jail. Miss "G" has been working as a model for the killer. He finally decides to get rid of her. Anacleto looks on the telescope as he ties her up and runs to her rescue. The climax has our hero fighting bare hands with the killer until he gets shot by the cops. The movie finishes when "Miss G" tells Anacleto her name: Gloria Aside from Guzman and Cesar Bono (Leandro) who have comic charisma, the acting is very poor, particularly that of the leading lady Michelle Mayer and the killer (Roberto Ballesteros). The cast of starlets is pleasant to the viewer who wants to watch sexy kittens in different stages of nudity. As noted this is a movie made in haste as mass production and lacks artistic value in all categories. What I found incomprehensible is the total disregard for the offensive violence of the serial killer acts amidst a stupid story made for cheap laughs. There is no drama or evidence of concern for the crime topic or the acts of sadism, including an upside down suspension of one of the victims. It seems as if the director and the "script writer" (who also was a producer) use this element of their story just as an another excuse to show skin (including full frontal nudity in the third victim).
In the late 80's and mid 90's there was a profitable soft porn mainstream movie industry in Mexico. During these years Roberto "Flaco" Guzman made a career playing a typical low middle class, barely employed individuals whose main attribute was the sex-loaded double talk language and devotion to sexy barely clad babes. He made 16 films in 1990 and "Mujeres de Medianoche" is just one of many with the basic core values: a friendly, streetwise fast talking extroverted who gets involved in all kinds of troubles with women and bad guys. These are essential skin flicks, soft-porn mass production movies to serve the populace. Make them laugh, give them half naked women and do not bother with much else in terms of script or cinematography. SPOILERS "Mujeres de Medianoche" is unusual in the sense that this is a violent serial killer story within an inane comedy involving Anacleto Delgadillo (Roberto Guzman). The movie opens with the serial killer butchering a prostitute with a set of six knives plunged in her chest. The story then moves to an antique store where Anacleto works. He is abused by his supervisor yet he always ends up with the upper hand with the owner and with the two female store clerks. The employees of the store agree to pay for a gift to the owner (Jose "Tun Tun" Ruiz). A mix up in the mail ends delivering the telescope, meant to the owner, to Anacleto. He and his friend Leandro start watching girls on the building across. It is between Anacleto, Leandro and his wife that most of the humorous double-talk occurs. This includes Leandro being abused by his Cuban wife who beats him any chance he misbehaves. Anacleto falls in love with a girl (Miss "G") who works as a model. As the story develops the camera cuts to three additional victims of the serial killer, who is named "El descuartizador" (the ripper) by the local media. The girls are tied up and tortured before he kills them with one or more knives. Anacleto suspects that one of the neighbors in the building, which he keeps monitoring with the telescope, is the killer but he cannot prove it and he ends up in jail for misleading the authorities. Miss G, falls for Anacleto for no other good reason that he is a nice guy who was worried for her. She bails him out of jail. Miss "G" has been working as a model for the killer. He finally decides to get rid of her. Anacleto looks on the telescope as he ties her up and runs to her rescue. The climax has our hero fighting bare hands with the killer until he gets shot by the cops. The movie finishes when "Miss G" tells Anacleto her name: Gloria Aside from Guzman and Cesar Bono (Leandro) who have comic charisma, the acting is very poor, particularly that of the leading lady Michelle Mayer and the killer (Roberto Ballesteros). The cast of starlets is pleasant to the viewer who wants to watch sexy kittens in different stages of nudity. As noted this is a movie made in haste as mass production and lacks artistic value in all categories. What I found incomprehensible is the total disregard for the offensive violence of the serial killer acts amidst a stupid story made for cheap laughs. There is no drama or evidence of concern for the crime topic or the acts of sadism, including an upside down suspension of one of the victims. It seems as if the director and the "script writer" (who also was a producer) use this element of their story just as an another excuse to show skin (including full frontal nudity in the third victim).
Female Inquisitor
(1987)
Give up the booty or I kill you with sexual ecstasies
14 November 2004
This is a skin flick Japanese movie with very little if any cinematic value. Likely to be shown late at night in Showtime if it was made in the USA. However in contrast to the typical skin flick in Showtime this one has minimal production investment and the actresses are not very attractive. The worst part is the ridiculous script involving a theft and the attempts from the band of robbers to recover their booty they had lost somehow. To extract the information from the snatchers, the two female leads, use their sexual power to cause such sexual ecstasy that no one can resist. Indeed, the two guys who snatch the money withstand beatings and torture but can't resist the sexual torment. There is a laughable 'special' bed where the people having sex forward intense signals enough to torture the guy wearing a head piece wired to the bed to torture him. There is an unusual torture of a woman with eels threatening to find their way into any cavity of her body by bathing the eels with sake!. There is some contorted explanation of this unique power which is a pretext to show gratuitous sex scenes. These scenes lack eroticism or any artistic value. Overall soft core trash here, in Japan or anywhere else for that matter.
Tokyo Decameron
(1996 Video)
An inept Japanese Red Shoe Diaries wannabe
23 October 2004
Warning: Spoilers
A low budget movie with three stories full of sadomasochism overtones. The stories are supposed to have interesting twists but none of the scripts truly delivers. The female leads are attractive, but none of them stunning and unfortunately none have good acting talent. Accordingly some of the 'hot' scenes are lifeless and lack enticing sexuality or eroticism. After all, the movie is all about disturbing sex themes. All the stories are directed by K. Kobayashi and therefore he maintains the same rhythm and tone. Other films made of different stories have different directors (think 'Spirits of the Dead', 'Tales from the Crypt') have the benefit of different stylistic approaches which enhance the overall result of the movie. Although all stories have a similar theme they are not interrelated (such as in 'Amores Perros'). There is little, if any depth, to any of the individual stories.
The first story 'Two Women Named Mariko' tells of the master-slave relationship of two women. Mariko A, who likes to dress in military garb, humiliates Mariko B and has open group sex with four male soldiers. When Mariko B starts a gentle relationship with one a guy, the dominatrix punish her in front of his love interest. The twist in the story is a tired one. The submissive Mariko is en reality the one calling the shots.
'Lesbian Dream' is the worst of the three. Four lesbians get together in a country house and play with a submissive girl. They take turn in humiliating her. Awful acting and annoying characters do not help the weak twist in the story. A dead man is in their garage. Enter some flashbacks and end up with a framing scheme of one of the dominants and the submissive girl, which again turns out to be a deceitful naughty girl.
'The Man in the Pillory' is perhaps the best of the three. Here a woman is exerting revenge on a man she believes raped her sister and led her to commit suicide. There is again a master-slave relationship between the woman and her captive. The twist in the story is that the captive is not as innocent as we are led to believe.
Overall a cheap B-level soft-core sex-oriented movie with poor acting and minimally interesting but poorly developed stories.
The first story 'Two Women Named Mariko' tells of the master-slave relationship of two women. Mariko A, who likes to dress in military garb, humiliates Mariko B and has open group sex with four male soldiers. When Mariko B starts a gentle relationship with one a guy, the dominatrix punish her in front of his love interest. The twist in the story is a tired one. The submissive Mariko is en reality the one calling the shots.
'Lesbian Dream' is the worst of the three. Four lesbians get together in a country house and play with a submissive girl. They take turn in humiliating her. Awful acting and annoying characters do not help the weak twist in the story. A dead man is in their garage. Enter some flashbacks and end up with a framing scheme of one of the dominants and the submissive girl, which again turns out to be a deceitful naughty girl.
'The Man in the Pillory' is perhaps the best of the three. Here a woman is exerting revenge on a man she believes raped her sister and led her to commit suicide. There is again a master-slave relationship between the woman and her captive. The twist in the story is that the captive is not as innocent as we are led to believe.
Overall a cheap B-level soft-core sex-oriented movie with poor acting and minimally interesting but poorly developed stories.
The Belt
(1989)
"9 1/2 weeks" euro-rip off
17 August 2003
This is a really bad european movie trying to copy the formula that worked for the Adrian Lyne film "91/2 weeks" (1986), including a touch of SM as an erotic turn on. A young James Russo does a lame Mickey Rourke imitation including the perennial unshaved appearance. Here the main characters get sexual excitement from slapping each other as foreplay and subsequently from Russo using the belt (la cintura in italian) to whip her prior to sex. There is the plagiarized scene in the dark alley, under the rain, with the characters making love standing and wet. However, there is very little chemistry between Russo and Elidora Bagliadori (attractive woman but with a sexuality that never gets close to that of Kim Bassinger).
The movie has a boring subplot of Russo describing all what happened between them to a female judge in a court of law. The version I saw is dubbed and that makes it even worse, specially in the supposedly erotic scenes. This one is even worse than other US-made sequels to the original 91/2 weeks.
The movie has a boring subplot of Russo describing all what happened between them to a female judge in a court of law. The version I saw is dubbed and that makes it even worse, specially in the supposedly erotic scenes. This one is even worse than other US-made sequels to the original 91/2 weeks.
Euro-trash
23 November 2002
After I finished watching this pitiful movie, I understood the term "Euro-trash.' There is not one redeemable value in this pseudo erotic attempt of a movie. A young girl supposedly is corrupted by a couple of well to do perverts in a single visit to a luxury island. This movie made in 1969 and therefore full frontal nudity of women seems to be the maximum thrill Jess Franco was shooting for. This is mixed with a single scene of lesbian love, a single scene of soft sadism and very lengthy boring dialogue. The script is a joke, and the "acting" is terrible and the sound track unbearable. Yes, I had to fast forward many times just to make it to the end. If Ed Woods was the worst director ever in Hollywood, he met his match in Jess Franco who made a string of trashy pictures around sado masochistic fantasies loosely inspired by De Sade's opus. The only recognizable actor was Christopher Lee who delivers a lifeless performance with ridiculous lines.
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