Lady Battle Cop

Lady Battle Cop (aka Onna batoru koppu)

1990
Akihisa Okamoto

The rip-off… excuse me, cash-in… wait, I mean homage, is staple of exploitation cinema. The popularity and cultural impact of Robocop (1987) is almost immeasurable. The iconography and way Robocop frames the excesses of the 1980s is pitch perfect and it’s no wonder that countless imitators appeared soon afterwards; e.g. R.O.T.O.R. (1987), The Vindicator (1986), The Demolitionist (1995). Lady Battle Cop fuses Robocop with the Japanese tokusatsu tradition of costumed heroes (Ultraman etc.), and creates something uniquely weird in the process.

Neo Tokyo is under siege from an international crime syndicate called The Cartel. The Cartel employs a number of thugs including a powerful psychic named Amadeus. The Cartel’s hit squad takes out a scientist and seemingly kills his girlfriend, a notable tennis player, in the process. A few months later, the scientist’s friend, a cop named Sanjo, discovers a feminine looking cyborg is stalking the streets of Neo Tokyo with an eye on destroying The Cartel.

Amadeus while watching Robocop 3.

To say Lady Battle Cop is quirky is underselling it. For starters, our hero is a professional tennis player, something which seems to have no bearing on the plot, but does provide a song lyric for the ages: “Woman are made for tennis.” Lady Battle Cop is equipped with a leg holster, a rocket launcher in her wrist, and of course, hydraulic high heels. Despite all this, she pales next to her arch-foe, Amadeus, a grimacing maniac who possesses psychic powers, but only when he doing a ridiculous pose. Amadeus blows everyone off the screen every time he appears, and the movie uses him liberally.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Lady Battle Cop is that it never feels like she gets the upper hand on her foes. Most of the fights consist of her getting kicked around and shot for the majority of the time, and then only through luck, does she dispatch an enemy. If she were presented as a hard luck hero out of their their depth, like say, John McClane from Die Hard (1988), this would make sense, but the movie props her up as an stoppable force of cyborg vengeance. Even low-level flunkies from The Cartel give her a lot of trouble.

Things people say when trying to hunt down a VHS copy of this movie.

One thing that Lady Battle Cop does successfully bring over from Robocop, is that film’s mean streak. Although not as graphically violent as that film, Lady Battle Cop has no qualms about killing virtually anyone who appears on screen. Rooms full of scientists, innocent bystanders, and even seemingly safe supporting characters are susceptible to a hail of bullets. Yet, this high body count never makes the movie feel grim.

Lady Battle Cop makes a number of odd acting and musical choices to alter its path from just being another Robocop clone. It is violent and mean, but still somehow tonally light as a feather. Lady Battle Cop is definitely worth the time to seek out and enjoy. Thankfully the film exists in it's entirety on YouTube, so here's your chance to find out if women are made for tennis.

The Green Slime

The Green Slime
1968
Kinji Fukasaku

Flora isn’t a terrifying name for an asteroid, but that isn’t stopping this one from threatening Earth. Enter Commander Jack Rankin (Robrot Horton) and Commander Vince Elliot (Richard Jaeckel) who manage to stop bickering over Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi) long enough to fly over to the asteroid and blow it up. Sadly for them, someone brings back a hitchhiker to their space station, Gamma One. The asteroid contained pools of a strange green slime that, once in the presence of radiation, mutates into one-eye monsters with flailing electric tipped tentacles. Cue the music!

Let us just get this out of the way; the best and most memorable thing about The Green Slime is its theme song. It is funky and catchy; it will haunt you for the rest of your life. You will sing it while driving; you will sing it in the shower, it will loop endlessly in your head while you are trying to write a movie review. Please enjoy it in all its glory.

"Commander, I'm just going to come out and say it: This is space poop. We are standing on space poop."

As for the film itself, it doesn’t quite live up to the goofy joy of the theme song. The movie takes itself far too seriously. I am all for a film taking an outlandish premise and playing it straightforward, but that doesn’t mean there is room to have fun. The Green Slime plays out its premise with a grim determination that is more fitting for a moody film like Alien (1979), rather than a brightly colored space adventure.  The second crime this film commits is not getting to the aliens quickly enough, it would rather spend far too long on the posturing of its two leading men. This might be an attempt to give the characters some depth, but they are both jerks, so who cares? Bring on the self-replicating monsters that electrocute people.

The one upside of this seriousness is that once the creatures do manage to swarm all over Gamma One, there is a feeling of actual threat to the characters. The fact that it comes from floppy-armed rubber monsters creates the core of absurd enjoyment that keeps the film from being a total slog. The little cyclopoid monsters are more cute  than menacing, but they do managed to deliver some gruesome deaths to any crew members unfortunate enough to wander into tentacle range. The green horrors make the cutest sounds too.

"That better be a laser gun digging into my hip, mister.".

For a Japanese production, the miniatures and models are, at best, passable. They lack attention to detail. The whole film is shot in a flat workman-like manner that limits the dramatic tension. I do rather like the psychedelic look of the slime infested asteroid. The whole movie would have benefited from more outlandish visuals, but our stay on Flora is short lived, and the movie returns to the dull gray confines of Gamma One for the remainder of the story.

The premise, the music, the monsters, all these elements could have come together to create something memorable, and indeed all these individual elements are fun, but they never congeal.

The Boneyard

The Boneyard

1991
James Cummins

Alley Cates (Deborah Rose) is a burned out psychic who is hauled out of retirement to help the police with a strange case. Traveling to the Boneyard, a fortress-like morgue, Alley is told about a crazed mortician who was found with the corpses of three children in his basement. The Boneyard is run by one Ms. Poopinplatz (Phyllis Diller), a no-nonsense battle axe, who only has affection for her poodle. It soon becomes evident that the corpses aren’t just corpses, they are hungry ghouls. Our heroes find themselves locked in the Boneyard and under constant siege from the little demons.

To be honest, I avoided The Boneyard back in the 1990s, because I was already tired of horror-comedies. The late 1980s had seen a glut of them to diminishing returns. When The Boneyard proudly displayed its killer poodle monster on the cover, I just rolled my eyes and moved on. I wasn’t in the mood for it, and I forgot all about it over the years. Later, after spying it on the shelf of my local video rental store, I decided to give it a chance. I was happy I did, there are certainly some silly moments to be found, but there is some legitimate horror, and a great unconventional protagonist as well.

The Wood Paneling Yard just didn't have the same scare factor.

The Boneyard is a real horror film despite what the cover would have you believe. It’s a base under siege story, as our heroes search for a way to escape being locked in with monstrous undead children. The child monsters or kuei-shen are horrible quick little beasts that gleefully tear people apart. Their design is great and they are both threatening and evoke a strange sympathy once their origin is revealed. A couple later entries are less successful, the killer poodle monster and another giant undead thing. They are a bit too cartoonish for what has been a relatively straight forward film, but the actual physical costume and effects for these creations are excellent.

Phyllis Diller is surprisingly great in her role as the loud and stubborn Ms. Poopinplatz. She plays the part with hardened sarcasm that hides a real world-weariness underneath. I had feared she was just going to be zany and over-the-top, but she makes this brash character come alive. Deborah Rose is an atypical heroine, you rarely see a middle-aged heavy-set woman as anything other than an object of ridicule or a victim in horror films, so it’s actually startling to see Alley placed front and center as the hero of the story. Her backstory is tragic and the movie doesn’t back away from showing you the source of her pain and how it drives her reluctance to get involved.

This really should have been the movie's theme song.

The Boneyard stands as a great example of why I adopted a policy of watching everything I can no matter how dire the reputation. This is a film I ignored only to discover later that it has a lot of hidden strengths and unexpected touches that made me really appreciate it. The Boneyard contains a number of pacing flaws that keep from being truly great, but its quirks and personality more than make up for that. A great find, and I’m very glad I gave it a chance, you should check it out too.

The Creeping Flesh

The Creeping Flesh
1973
Freddie Francis

Dr. Hildren (Peter Cushing) recounts a tale that involves him returning from New Guinea with the skeleton of a being that is decidedly not human. The doctor investigates the skeleton believing it to be a source of physical evil, and with it, he can generate a vaccine against human wrongdoing. His daughter, Penelope (Lorna Heilborn), is busy uncovering the truth about her mother, a revelation which tempts Dr. Hildren to use his new found vaccine…

The underlying story of The Creeping Flesh is fascinating. The possibilities that arise from this ancient advanced being that could be a source of real physical evil makes from some cosmic tinged horror. While the film never becomes directly Lovecraftian, it does draw a little bit from that well of vast dread. I can see this movie having some influence on Alien (1979) by opening its mystery with an oversized and distorted skeleton. I also see a touchstone for Prince of Darkness (1987), with a long forgotten source of human evil that is on the verge of awakening to herald the end of the world.

"Oh, I really hope that this is a finger..."

It’s shame this wonderful premise gets sidelined for a much less interesting, although probably much much more cost effective subplot involving Dr. Hildern’s daughter, Penelope. Penelope is a recipient of a ‘vaccine against evil’ that of course goes wrong, turning her into an amoral monster who casually murderers on a whim. Watching Penelope’s descent at the hands of her well-meaning father isn’t dull, but the whole story dominates the central part of the film. If the plot could keep the evil skeleton narrative simmering in the background with more skill, this would work just fine. However, it feels like that element is dropped for too long. There’s a notable rise in the energy of the film when it finally turns back to it's original question for the finale.

As always, Peter Cushing turns in a tremendous performance as a man caught between his research, protecting his daughter (and himself) from the truth of a tragic past, and a not so hidden rivalry with his brother. Christopher Lee has limited screen time here as Hildern's brother, but he makes the most of it, layering on a sinister graciousness. Lorna Heilborn makes Penelope’s change from innocent and distraught girl to psychotic murderer work by demonstrating just how much joy inflicting pain brings her.

Something is seriously wrong with this Viewmaster

The film looks great, filled with gloomy autumn images, and dark claustrophobic interiors. Director Freddie Francis does an amazing job of making the ambulatory skeleton look menacing, mostly by concentrating on its looming shadow as searches for its target.  There is a very limited about of gore on display, most of the titular creeping flesh is rendered in stop motion and a few simple prosthetics.


This was the last film made by Tigon, a British film company that produced a number of notable horror films, such as The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Witchfinder General (1968). While it is not up to the standards of those two films, The Creeping Flesh is very enjoyable in its own right.

Queen of Blood

Queen of Blood
1966
Curtis Harrington

In the far-flung future of 1990, an international space agency receives a distress call from a downed alien craft. The vessel held an alien ambassador who was sent to Earth, but has crashed on Mars. A rescue crew eventually finds a lone alien survivor, a beautiful green feminine creature who doesn’t speak or eat food. She does, however, smile a lot and has a rather hypnotic gaze. Once the astronauts find out what she does actually eat, they are faced with a dilemma, do they kill her, or do they look for a way to satisfy her unquenchable thirst for blood?

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) is often cited as the main influence for Alien (1979), but after viewing Queen of Blood, I would say it was just as important an influence, maybe even more so. Whereas, It! captured the idea of a space crew being trapped on-board a ship with a deadly alien, Queen of Blood immerses itself in body horror, an element which is key to the success of Alien. While Queen of Blood certainly never reaches the grotesque heights of its descendant, there is a quiet horror in the vampiric nature of the alien who appears humanoid but is most decidedly not human.

"His reception is bad, I'm going to jiggle his antenna."

Roger Corman funded this film and several of his productions from this era reused footage from Soviet science-fiction films. Queen of Blood takes a few of its space scenes from Mechte Navstrechu (1963), largely the beautiful model effects. It has definitely whet my appetite to see some more of that original film. Queen of Blood is mostly confined to the interior of a single ship. The set designs and costumes are pretty typical for the era, the sole exception being the Alien Queen’s astounding fancy space helmet and her pointy beehive.  Her make-up is a simple light green body paint, but there are a few sequences where her eyes light-up in an eerie manner that is unexpectedly effective.

It’s always a treat to see Dennis Hopper and John Saxon on screen, and here we even get to see them together for a brief period. Their approaches to the film couldn’t be more opposed, we see John Saxon attacking each scene with a seriousness and gravitas that the material might not deserve, but is so much the better for it. Hopper on the other hand, can be seen barely keeping from laughing, but there is still an undeniable charm and energy in his performance. Florence Marly plays the (mostly) mute Alien Queen and she does marvelous job of creating a character who is remote, alluring, horrifying and ultimately pitiable.

"My eyes are up here, pal."

Queen of Blood is an interesting watch for the fact that it sits firmly in the tradition of the gaudy pulp-styled SF of the 1960s, yet starts to show hints of more serious minded horror/SF hybrids that would come later. Not only is it an interesting proto-horror/SF film, it’s also a well-made and entertaining b-movie in its own right. Kino Lorber has recently put out a vibrant looking Blu-ray that is well worth seeking out