Literary rating: ★½ Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½ I don’t subscribe to the belief that authors need to be the same sex, race, religion or whatever as their characters. A good author can put you inside the head of their heroine, even if they’re a different species, an extra-terrestrial, or whatever. But… Continue reading| Girls With Guns
★★½ “Chastely sleazy.” There’s an interesting idea here, at least. As a young child, Elena (Ayala) has to watch as her mother and brother are killed by crime boss babe Maeve (McComb), after her father (Pardo) made the ill-advised decision to try and steal from her. It’s particularly awkward, since… Continue reading| Girls With Guns
★★★½ “Light pink(y)” Made by Toei, this is very much a straightforward “pinky violence” film in concept, telling the story of the Wildcats and, in particular, their leader Maki Hyuga. What separates this – in ways both good and bad – from the pack is that Maki is played by… Continue reading| Girls With Guns
★★★★ “One of the all-time classics of the women-in-prison genre.” This archetypal “women in prison” film is lifted above its colleagues in the genre, most of which are little more than crude exploitation, by being pretty damn sophisticated exploitation. The two main factors are Ito’s great sense of visual style,… Continue reading| Girls With Guns
★★ “Largely ignoble.” Marshall has been involved in our genre back to 1998, when he wrote Killing Time. Since then, there have been some classics (The Descent), but the trend has been gently downhill. Of late, he seems to be doing a lot of work with wife Charlotte Kirk (a… Continue reading| Girls With Guns