Review: Rise of the Black Bat

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2014
Images from the Internet

 

Rise of the Black Bat
Directed by Scott Patrick
Tom Cat Films / Brett Kelly Entertainment
80 minutes, 2012 / 2014
www.tomcatfilms.com
www.mvdvisual.com

I know this is going to sound cliché, but I love indie films, especially indie horror films. I also love comic books and superheroes. During the time when I was seven and comics were a dime, my dad would buy a buck’s worth every two weeks for three years for both me and my brother (my brother and I? Screw it) which we would read while we waited in lobby of a convalescent hospital for my parent to visit my grandfather. Batman was always my favorite. Here, this may rattle your cannoli: we had Spiderman #1, Fantastic Four #1, Hulk #1, and so many others, which my dad ripped up because we read them after lights out. But I digress, and please continue after you pull your chins off the floor…

Around the time of Batman’s first appearance in the 1930s (decades before I was born, thank you), there was another character which was similar in a book called, yep, the Black Bat. He looked similar to Batman, as he had the black everything including a cowl, but without the ears, no utility belt, and a long black leather coat instead of the cape (which seemed impractical to me, even as a kid).

This film is based on that other character, rather than the one we know so well. Mickey Spillane-ish hard-boiled District Attorney Tony Quinn (Jody Haucke) is trying to bring down seemingly untouchable Crime Boss Oliver Snate (Leo Frost), so on the verge of getting the bastid, Snate has Quinn blinded via an acid attack. With the help of some guy who for some unrealistic reason has become his servant, Silk Kirby (Richard Groen) and a revenge-minded socialite, Carol Baldwin (Dixie Collins), he goes to “the Orient,” where apparently all medical staff is non-Asian. While there he has a series operations. The result of all this is that he now has the power of sight in the dark as green vision, which we only get to see in use once.

Apparently without any kind of training, he dons the black clothes, grabs a gun, and goes after the bad guys.

You may have noticed my snarky under tone in this. There is a reason for that: simply put, this is a bad film. No, not “so bad it’s good” bad, just bad. The acting is atrocious, that’s true, but the overall fault lies squarely on Trevor Payer, the writer, and especially on Scott Patrick, the director. The dialog is terrible; in fact, there were three separate places where I said what the characters were going to say before they did. It’s that predictable. There are way too many holes in the story, such as lack of training as I mentioned earlier, that the people are unbelievable, and there is absolutely no sense of character development, even with more exposition than action (mostly through first-person narration in trying to sound like, well, Spillane).

The film, which is a mere 80 minutes, with proper editing should have been about half of that. For example, a woman is chased by two muggers down an alleyway for nearly 4 minutes. There’s another scene where a shot on a nurse talking in stilted dialog is seen in a (purposefully) fuzzy unedited one-shot talking to a doctor and not really saying much for another few minutes. Then there’s the 80 shots fired in a short distance back and forth before anyone falls. And that includes a machine gun.

There is no nudity, but there is a four-person bikini contest where they prance back and forth in front of the camera for a reaaaaaally long time while the sound of clapping (obviously looped as you can hear the break) is annoyingly constant. There’s also no blood or SFX despite the occasional shooting, or even redness on the face or eyes of Quinn moments after acid is supposedly thrown in his face. The only effects, other than the cartoonish city overview during the credits, are the flash of the gun muzzles and the sound of the gunfire repeated aud nauseum. Though there is the one time they miss it and the gun just clicks, which made me laugh. No, it was not running out of bullets, because the next shot fires as it is supposed to do.

If this is going to be a franchise, I can tell you now that I am not going to watch any of the sequels.

Review: Isis Rising: Curse of the Lady Mummy

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2014
Images from the Internet

 

Isis Rising: Curse of the Lady Mummy
Written and directed by Lisa Palenica
Tom Cat Films / Platinum Assassin Films
80 minutes, 2012 / 2014
www.tomcatfilms.com
www.mvdvisual.com

That was no lady, that was your mummy! (Sorry…)

Okay, just a few corrective notes before I get into the review itself. The myth of Osiris is one of the most durable from all Middle Egypt, strong enough to replace Ra (sun god) as the main religion of Early Egypt after papyrus was introduced and could carry the story faster and further.



The Isis of myth

Osiris and Isis were not just husband/wife and brother/sister, but were also twins, the children of Nut (sky goddess) and Geb (earth god). Their brother was Set, who was also married to his own twin, Nephyhys (absent from this film). Director/writer Lisa Palenica does get it right that Set kills Osiris and chops him into pieces, but Isis and Nephyhys find all the parts except one (yes, that one), and after shaping a phallus out of mud, she is impregnated with their son, Horus, the most popular god of the period (he has a bird head; the “eye of Horus” is one of the most common cultural symbols to last the ages, along with Isis kneeling with her feathered arms outspread). After Horus is – er – created, Osiris becomes the Lord of the Underworld (not Hades, just death). Unlike the prologue here, Isis is not killed. Hey, it’s the prologue, so get over the spoiler alert, okay?

 

Osiris and Isis (Rai in a painted-on bra) of the film

Yeah, I’m a fan of the myth. Been to Egypt for a college class and wrote a forty-page paper on the changes of funeral traditions as the technology of the writing medium changed (from pyramids to mastabas to papyrus). I’ve even stood in the Temple of Horus in Memphis, so I’m going to be a little bit harder about the myth.

After the prologue, when the modern story actually starts, we meet a bunch of archeology students and their professors as they search for the “black magic” Book of the Undead (filmed at the Mesa Museum in Scottsdale, AZ), which is also what Isis is supposed to use to raise her dead hubby/bro and an army to take over the world. This collection of students includes a couple of horndog jock surfer type dudes (Michael Alvarez, Joshua DuMond), one of whom even wears his baseball cap backwards. Really? Have you even seen an archeology student? They don’t have time for that kinda stuff. Then there are their girlfriends, including one with bleached blonde hair and lots of cleavage (the director of this epic, of all people) and another who is slight and toothsome in a cute way, and equally horny (Shellie Ulrich). Then there is the brilliant older but horny Asian student (Jiang Song), and the shy but horny nerd (Robin Daniel Egan). Mentoring them (i.e., using them) is the horny older professor (Randy Oppenhiemer) and the handsome and not horny prof-head-of-his-field (Seth Grandrud, during his best Fernando Lamas). Add the lonely and horny museum curator (Judith Eisenberg), and the perv voyeur (aka horny) security guard (“bear” porn actor James Bartholet), and you have more hormones floating around that you would think to find at a research project that would normally go to the top of the class, rather than the remedial ones.

 Of course, Isis rises (diminutive porn actress Priya Rai), even though it’s never really explained how. Rai makes some brief appearances here and there with overflowing bras, but mostly she does that cliché thing where she enters someone via mist from her mouth, and takes over their body.

I need to make a comment here, which I know should fall under the view of suspension of disbelief, but when one of the students inevitably finds the Book of the Undead, it is an actual book, with a front and back cover, spine, printed gilt letters on said cover, typeset text and equally sized pages. Of course, this is not possible since books didn’t really exist in this form until after Johannes Gutenberg’s press during the 15 Century, in Europe, not Egypt. Papyrus was the mode of discourse when the story of Isis and Osiris was spread, but at the time when they were supposed to exist, the best it could have possibly been was chiseled on stone walls. In actuality, since they were beings from the beginning of time (not during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt), there would most likely have been no writing at all yet. The Egyptian Book of the Dead in its earliest form (Ra-inspired First Kingdom) would have been wall carvings.

Okay, I think I got that out of my system now, so I can focus on the film itself. Thanks for your indulgence.

With all the sexual tension and implied scenes, there is no nudity, and little bloodletting. There are a couple of cool SFX of limb removals, and kudos for that (done digitally, I’m certain), but the scene where a head is removed looked good except for the edit in the film where it jumps slightly between the head being attached and the head being detached. Still, made me smile.

Shellie Ulrich and a dude

Most of the time, the writing is actually okay, but every once in a while, it totally works, such as after one of the bodies is found legless. The acting here is thin, but Ulrich comes out as the cream of the crop. She freaks out, but not in a cartoon or wooden way. By far the best actor in the batch. Actually, Song does pretty well, too. Among the worst? Well, Rai comes across as fake as her boobage, but shhhh, we won’t talk about that.

Come to think of it, I am wrong. The most wooden actor in the batch is the one who plays Set (Wilman Vergara Jr.), who performs like one of the extras in an Italian sword and sorcery film from the mid-60s. Over the top and yet emotionless all at the same time.

But let’s talk about the shell of the film. Considering most of the cast and some incredibly fakey looking painted brick walls, this is a pretty well shot feature, and for someone of Palenica’s age, experience, and tongue ball, she actually does pretty well in telling a story. A bit of text editing may have been helpful, but there are a few really fine moments of dialog that not only forward the story, but show some promise of things to come. Yeah, she needs to dump some of the cliché characters that are hard to like (the testosterone macho assholes for example), and the overt sexuality that doesn’t really lead to anything, but with the right guidance, Palenica could be quite good for the genre.

Director / actor Lisa Palenica

A large-ish central cast isn’t just blood fodder; it works better if the viewer has some connection or care for a character. And some of the tones just need some tweaking to help with that. I applaud that Palenica has a history of having porn actors do straight roles, and I applaud expanding niche acting to cover numerous genres.

The only extra is the trailer, below.

As time goes on, I get the feeling that Palenica may have a career. As well as editing, I would also like to humbly recommend she AD under a more seasoned director, even an indie genre one, and get another perspective. It could help her grow. For example, I know of a singer who wanted to play guitar, and the advice she received from a well-known, international musician, was to practice scales, and ask any guitarist she met on tour to show her one thing, and one thing only. By that means she has built up a series of moves that makes her a tremendous guitarist now. I’m thinking Palenica could use that from other directors to build upon. Then, hopefully… watch out!