Roller Blade (Donald G. Jackson)

Suzanne Solaris,Shaun Michelle,Jeff Hutchinson

I have a theory that New World Pictures exists, not to make movies, but as psychotherapy for mentally disturbed film directors, allowing them to act out their fantasies on celluloid. For example, Michael Lehmann, director of “Heathers”, exorcised the ghost of his unpleasant schooldays by killing a few teen bitches. Tom de Simone used “Reform School Girls” to pursue his lingerie fetish and in “Hellraiser”, Clive Barker showed a deep, unconscious desire to be reincarnated as the meat department in Sainsbury’s.

If this theory holds true, Donald G. Jackson must be the most warped and twisted of the lot of them, as “Roller Blades” is a story of post-apocalyptic, roller-skating, warrior nuns. Not only that, but to judge from the large number of Smiley badges being worn, this could well be the first ever case of an exploitation movie FOR acid casualties, BY acid casualties. Only the fact that it predates The Second Summer of Love by some time prevents the ‘cuffs going on and Mr. Jackson getting charged with being in possession of an offensive mind.

The story (written, naturally, by Donald G. Jackson) takes place in ‘The City of Lost Angels’ during ‘The Second Dark Age’, though it looks like a shopping-centre car park on early-closing day to me. We meet the Sisters of the Holy Order of Roller Blades, led by Mother Speed and their ally Marshal Goodman (who talks in a weird mix of skate-speak and Middle English – only the fact that he IS a marshal stops me from being able to make a joke about his mother having been frightened by a hi-fi catalogue). Also, we meet their enemy Saticoy, who looks like Gordon the Gopher with an especially nasty skin disease (SFX by Donald G. Jackson) and is capable of speaking without moving his lips, and of moving his lips without speaking, though since all the sound is post-synched, he is no worse off than the rest of the cast in this respect.

Out of the west arrives the Bimbo with No Name (costume by Donald G. Jackson), currently acting as a hitwoman for Saticoy in exchange for batteries for her Walkman – she slits the throat of one of his employees who was trying to defect. Three of the nuns (I use the term loosely) are caught by Saticoy and their comrades mount a rescue mission. Their philosophy, quoted by the Mother Superior, is “All weapons and techniques of battle are converted into tools of love”. Precisely how this applies to their favoured butterfly knives is not immediately clear (I don’t think you can get arrested for “being in possession of an offensive tool of love”), but it turns out they use them, and some mysterious Power (as in all exploitation pics, it’s obviously Power with a capital P), to heal – this is demonstrated on a poor Sister with a slit throat.

The Bimbo With No Name is given her next mission – to infiltrate the Sisters and steal the crystal which is the source of their Power. She does this by seeking sanctuary there, adding realism to her plea by letting herself get roughed up a little by a gang of skate-punks, the Spikers, on the way. Not TOO much – she eventually kicks them in with, literally, both hands tied behind her back.

The Sisters let her in and agree to show her the ropes (and the chains, and the whips – oops, wrong nuns, that’s ‘Racconti Sensuale’). She is given a name, Sister Fortune, and Sister Sharon agrees to take on the task of training her. The first stage of this is a ceremony to “cleanse the soul”. Yea, verily thou knowest that when two or three bimbos are gathered together in the name of Exploitation, and thou hearest talk of cleanliness, we are talking Shower Scene City. And lo, this is the case; before you can say “Hail Mary”, they’re in the jacuzzi soul-cleansing.

Meanwhile, Saticoy has kidnapped Marshal Goodman’s son, Chris, for no good reason. This takes place in the Devil’s Playground, which also looks like a supermarket car- park to me. One wonders what the set designer was playing at – probably too busy writing the script, directing, producing, costume designing, etc. Yep, it’s DGJ again. Sister Fortune’s training progresses rapidly, since it consists of sod all apart from a bout of sparring with butterfly knives. During the course of this session, the Spikers come along and retain their 100% beaten record by getting their asses kicked in rapid time. She is then ordained in a ceremony, with no clothes on (above).

We’ll move on, tho’ not without a hint of regret. Sister Fortune steals the crystal of Power and exits stage left. Enter Marshal Goodman, having discovered his son’s disappearance. He seals off the convent to prevent any of the Roller Blades coming to help him find Chris. The logic there escapes me for the moment but he clearly thinks butterfly blade bearing bimbettes are likely to do more harm than good. Sister Sharon, seeking to undo the wrong she feels responsible for (the notion of free will is clearly not in the Roller Blades’ theology textbook), escapes the convent and the blockade, pausing only to greet the Spikers in the customary way, by beating them up.

Sister Fortune goes to give the power crystal, sorry, Power crystal, to Saticoy (now revealed as a man in a leather ice hockey mask wearing a ‘Smirk’ badge – the mangy sponge creature really IS just a hand-puppet) – he reveals his plans to use the Power crystal to ignite the “acid fuel” in his rocket and leap across the chasm (possibly the San Andreas fault?) to a weapons store on the other side, which he can then loot for use against the Roller Blades on his return. This gives Sister Fortune second thoughts about letting him have the Power crystal (typical religion – gives you a bloody guilt complex!) and she double-crosses him.

Sister Sharon encounters some Oriental warriors and engages in a spot of roller-fu; meanwhile, in another match-up, there’s a shock result as the Spikers finally get to beat someone up. Saticoy and his hand puppet have some fun undressing a bimbo wrapped in Bacofoil – Sooty never got up to that sort of thing, I’m sure. The Marshal arrives to rescue his son who is suspended over a vat of Triple-C 934 – scary, huh?

Sisters Fortune & Sharon fight – the former wins but is shot by one of Saticoy’s guard who takes the crystal and gives it to his master. The Spikers go back to their old ways, ending the season with a played five, won one record. I think I got distracted slightly at this point – my notes read “Sister Sharon takes her top off, Chris is rescued”, but I’m sure there was more to it than that, and also that those two events were not logically connected.

Anyway, Saticoy tries his leap and doesn’t make it, plunging into the chasm. Since he took the Power crystal with him, you’d expect this to be a bit annoying for the Roller Blades, but Sister Sharon has discovered that “the Power lies within”. Damn good job too. The End.

This film certainly has interesting similarities to other movies: “Mad Max”, “Bad Taste”, “Surf Nazis” and “Rollerball” all have some resemblance to “Roller Blades”. Unfortunately, it steals the wrong bits – if it’d had the characters, gore, poor taste and good acting of them respectively, we’d be laughing; instead we have a film that’s worth watching once, anyway, to see how a man can take an obsession and use it to make a movie, though admittedly not a very good one. That there’s a market for this sort of thing is clear from the fact that it spawned at least one sequel, the only Incredibly Bad Film I can think of to have done so. I have yet to see it myself – if it’s half as trashy and pointless as this one is, then it’s worth 75p (which is what it cost me to rent “Roller Blades”) of anyone’s money. Whether it’s worth much more, though, is a question I prefer to leave unanswered…

February 17th, 1990
Ashton-under-Lyme, Manchester

We arrived in Manchester Piccadily about 5.50 and noticed that the last train to Ashton went at quarter past six from Manchester Victoria – one lightning dash across town later, we discover the small letters ‘SX’ did not refer to the late, great ‘Shock Xpress’ but meant Saturdays Xcepted (no-one said BR’s employees could spell!) and we hung round for a while, finally catching a bus there instead. The driver wondered why we were off to Ashton (it obviously wasn’t the centre of the universe) and got a vague answer about films, no-one wanting to go into detail about Nekromantik’s plot.

Arriving in Ashton, the first step was to find the cinema. Possibly in revenge for my not having enclosed an SAE when I sent off for the tickets, I hadn’t been sent any info on where the festival was taking place – fortunately, the bus driver could point us in the right direction. The second step was to find the nearest pub. While perhaps not the most lively setting (the walls being plastered with LP covers for a group called Fivepenny Piece, whom I’d never heard of, but who’d managed to acquire a pair of gold discs), with bitter 25p/pint less than London at 86p, it was more than tolerable, especially once other weirdos started turning up. We stayed in there for most of the evening, making a brief sorty out for food and discovering the entire town was closed, except for McDonald’s.

Eventually headed queue-wards, and stood around for a while in an orderly fashion, until one of the organisers shouts out ‘Those of you with reserved tickets go to the front of the queue’. Great, we thought, having already got ours, and we joined the charge to the front. Uh-uh. That was ‘reserved’ as in ‘paid-for-but-haven’t-picked- up-yet’. Eventually, we got inside and found seats, downstairs with the plebs – not bad for leg-room, though after 20 hours of occupation there’s no such thing as enough. A brief sortie upstairs to grab the program and near compulsory T-shirt (which were damn good value – six quid, printed front & back) then we were off…

HOT LOVE (Jorg Buttgereit) – Made by JB before ‘Nekromantik’ (more on which later, I guess!), this short film is a simple tale of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy rapes girl & kills himself, girl gives birth to baby, baby mutates into monster and kills girl and lover with a broken bottle. Not bad going for half an hour, and almost standard Buttgereit fare! The FX, though cheap, are imaginatively used (true of the film in general) and the fact it’s in German is no problem. As with a lot of Jorg’s work, it’s a little difficult to tell where the man is being serious – for the sake of his sanity, I hope it isn’t very often… SOCIETY (Brian Yuzna) – Reviewed in TC2, so no point in saying more about it here; the first hour is just as dull as last time, though it makes more sense now, and the last thirty minutes are still seriously OTT.

I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTOR-CYCLE (Dirk Campbell) – This was made by the same folks who are responsible for the TV series “Boon”, and stars a lot of the same people. According to John Wolskell, the co-producer and co-writer of it, they “set out to make a film with loads of blood and that was lots of fun”. Right on both counts – IBaVM is an outstanding entry in that difficult genre, the horror-comedy, and will be a well-deserved success if the reaction here was anything to go by – it was generally regarded as the hit of the festival. The title says it all; a Satanist is trying to summon a devil when proceedings are interrupted by a gang of Hell’s Angels who kill him. Thanks to the demonist bleeding into his motor-bike’s tank, it becomes possessed and at night, goes around seeking blood and revenge against the Hell’s Angels. This happens after it’s sold to a dispatch rider (Neil Morrisey), who has to fend off the bike, the Hell’s Angels, his girl-friend (Amanda Noah), and the police while trying to get a priest (Anthony Daniels) to turn it into an exorcised bike [ Ouch! ].

The effects, from Bob Keen’s Image Animation, are highly arterial, with the (severed) head count close to double figures – add in fingers, legs & a bisected nurse and we’re in messier territory than ever reached by Hammer. And it’s Hammer who are the closest in spirit here – although without any sexual overtones, the bike is a true ‘classic’ vampire, repelled by garlic & crucifixes and fearful of day-light; with nearly every surface capable of slicing, crushing or mutilating, it’s one mother of a machine. If the film has a problem, it’s that it tries to cram in TOO much – one or two chunks, such as a dream sequence involving a talking turd, are funny but add little to it. However, given the probably low budget (the makers &l31were very coy about it, in case it prejudices negotiations with distributors) it’s a lovely piece of work and hopefully will get a theatrical release, possibly with Blue Dolphin, the company who distributed “Bad Taste”.

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5 (who cares?) – After the delirious Renny Harlin induced excess of NoES 4 this entry, subtitled “The Dream Child”, returns to familiar territory. Far too familiar, in fact, as I could tell inside five minutes who &l84was going to survive, with a 100% success rate. A series of annoying American teenagers get offed by Robert Englund regardless of what passes for a plot. A few mildly impressive & totally gratuitous effects are the twitches of the corpse – this is definitely stillborn.

THE STEPFATHER II (Jeff Burr) – Not having seen the original, I was worried I might have been lost here but there’s no problem as we soon find out the stepfather was a guy who went around joining families and then slaughtering them. Why? He’s a psychopath, next question. What does he do in this one? Goes around joining families and then slaughtering them. What happens at the end? Three guesses. Any more of a review would be difficult since I was asleep for most of it, though what I did see possessed some dark humour. I won’t be making an effort to see the bits I missed.

MONKEY SHINES (George Romero) – See TC2 again. I went out for a lie-down though I ended up chatting to some other ‘zine editors; Paul Higson (Bleeder’s Digest) and Dave Flint (Sheer Filth), the latter of whom is the undisputed number one of fanzine sleaze. Popped back in to see the audience jump at the end, and they did!

SALUTE OF THE JUGGER (David Peoples) – Most Mis-quoted Title of the Year; at various times I’ve heard Juggler, Jugular and Juggernaut and it was always ‘to’, and never ‘of’. This marks Rutger Hauer’s return to trash cinema, following his foray into real movies with the very good, but trash-free “Legend of the Holy Drinker’ (for which, see TC3). Here, he’s back to looking cool and kicking ass, in a post- apocalyptic society which looks a bit Mad Max-ish. The Juggers are teams of warriors who travel the land taking part in The Game to win their living – this is a cross between American football and all-in wrestling, with the object being to wrest a dog’s skull from the opposition and drop it onto a stake at their end of the pitch. There is a plot about Hauer having been thrown out of one of the cities and one of the top teams, but it’s secondary to the sequences of The Game being fought – these battles are possibly the best I’ve seen and are astonishingly well staged with relentless barrages of blows from all the competitors. Although the lack of much else and the heavy use of a gravel pit as a location are certainly deficiencies, I’ll still be heading back to see it again.

SUNDOWN (Anthony Hickox) – ‘Waxworks’, also by Hickox, was an uneven film about, surprisingly, a wax museum; one of the segments was a vampire story, well up in the running for the bloodiest scene EVER. He’s expanded up to an entire film about blood suckers, yet the amount of red stuff here is minimal – in this modern age, vampires have started creating artificial blood (and also using UV cream to let them go out in the day!). This causes friction with traditionalists who believe in hunting their prey; civil war looms. Into this comes David Carradine, as the inventor of the artificial blood, his family, and Bruce Campbell as Van Helsing, out to continue his ancestor’s work. Cue a long stream of mostly obvious jokes about garlic, as Carradine fails to believe his family’s tales until just before the final battle. ‘You’ve been watching too many horror films”, he says, a sentiment that brought a ripple of agreement from the, by now, VERY tired audience! Enjoyable rubbish is the best way to describe this one; the odd new idea and humorous situation keeps it all ticking over and Bruce Campbell is excellent. If at the end you feel as if you’d eaten a stick of candy-floss, it’s stlll a pleasant way to spend ninety minutes.

THE KISS (Pen Densham) – This one was a late replacement for “Phantom of the Opera”, which Medusa failed to come up with. Its cinema release was pretty limited, though, as the company seemed unsure of the target audience; it was introduced as having elements of “The Witch” and “The Omen”, and I can perhaps see a resemblance to “To the Devil a Daughter”, or am I being Kinski-ist again? The film centers around two sisters; Felice (Joanne Pacula), who’s been in Africa and is now a successful model into black magic, and Hilary, now married with a teenage daughter, Amy (Meredith Salenger). Hilary is killed in an auto accident and Aunt Felice comes to stay, but Amy has bad vibes about her, which get worse when ‘accidents’ start happening to Amy’s friends.

Although not especially messy in the 18-rated version we saw, the director racks up a fair bit of tension towards the end which cover up the plot deficiencies. Pacula and Salenger are both very pretty (when the latter asked “Am I old enough for sex yet?”, the ripple round the cinema suggested the male members of the audience thought so!), and I stayed awake throughout, which is more than I did for the preceding and following movies! Well crafted all round, though the Chris Walas special effects aren’t up to much (the man is very good at Gremlins, but does EVERY movie {bar “The Fly”} he does have to have them?). A film with a good chance of crossing over to a mainstream audience.

LEVIATHAN (George P. Cosmatos) – Why does Amanda Pays only appear in films with slimy creatures? “The Kindred” had the a slimy genetic experiment, this has a slimy undersea monster and “Max Headroom” had, er, Max Headroom. The next film in the Jacques Cousteau season (we’ve still got Roger Corman’s “Lords of the Deep” to come) steals a lot from “Alien”, a fair bit from “The Thing” and a tad from “Jaws”, adds Peter Weller and comes up with a workmanlike movie that is the best of the submarine bunch I’ve seen, though that’s not saying much. Workers in an undersea mine discover “Leviathan”, a sunken Russian ship that isn’t supposed to be there. The reason it’s not marked is it’s holding an especially nasty creature which wiped out the crew before it was scuttled – before you can say “Nostromo”, it’s chewing through the workforce, mutating them as it goes. Out with the weaponry – circular saws, chainsaws and flamethrowers, all of which do no good. Their employer writes them off as a tax loss (icky things at the AGM would be embarrassing), the escape capsules are blown by the doctor to save the rest of humanity from the creature, and it’s exciting climax time. Totally predictable (5-4-3-2-1-SHOCK!), but I find it impossible to actively dislike – the acting is decent, the dialogue is plausible (one up on “The Abyss” there!) and Amanda Pays gets damp.

NEKROMANTIK (Jorg Buttgereit) – Looking through old TC’s, I find I’ve often mentioned it, but never reviewed it; now seems as good a time as any. Like “Hot Love”, it’s an eternal triangle – only this time, one of the members is dead. Rob (Daktari Lorenz) works for a company who clean up the bodies after car accidents, etc. – he likes to take bits of his work home with him for his girlfriend (Beatrice M) to play with. This story really starts when he gets a whole male corpse for a bit of three-in-the-bed (in case you’re wondering, the answer is a piece of metal pipe!); unfortunately, shortly after that Rob is fired and Betty runs off with the corpse. Rob tries other ways of getting sexual satisfaction; he kills a cat and bathes in the entrails; he watches a stalk and slash movie, but has to walk out; he takes a hooker to a cemetery and can’t do anything until AFTER he’s killed her for laughing at him. Finally, he realises the way to ultimate release can only be found through his own death…

The whole film is bizarre, to say the least, yet thanks to the sympathetic portrayal, the most disturbing thing is the killing of a real rabbit in a dream sequence (just about permissible, in contrast to say “Cannibal Ferox”, as it was done without cruelty, to illustrate the processes that have turned Rob’s mind) – in the rest of the film, it’s easy to feel sympathy for the man without having to share his deviation. Thanks to Lorenz’s performance and a haunting score, it’s a movie you can appreciate, if not enjoy. Exploitation it isn’t.

And there it ended. Pretty smoothly running (save the projector suffering moral qualms in the middle of ‘Nekromantik’, which led to a five minute pause) and with nearly all the films worth watching, I reckon I’ll be there next year. As I write this, the Glasgow re-run of it has hit some trouble, the city fathers slapping an injunction on them with just 3 days to go, preventing them showing uncertificated films, which wipes out half the programme. How the organisers, Messrs. Dalglish & Bryan will cope is yet to be seen – it’s a real kick in the teeth after all their hard work but I’m sure they’ll do the very best they can.

< Lights go out >
PENFOLD: Aargh! What’s going on?
DM : I don’t know, I’m a bit in the dark myself! Stay close.
< Bump >
DM : Not that close.
< Swishing, dragging noise >
DM : Penfold?
P : Yes?
DM : Pick your feet up.
P : If I do that, I’ll fall over.
DM : Oh good grief, Penfold. I mean don’t
make that dragging sound.
< Sound continues >
DM : Penfold, why are you holding my hand?
P : I was just going to ask you that.
DM : And take those silly fur gloves off!

What great dialogue! No, I mean it. You see, it’s one thing to fill a cartoon with visual jokes and impossible coincidences, but in their absence your characters sound like they’re just talking to each other. Unless, of course, your lines are brilliant and delivered with the timing and loveable excess of, say, David Jason and Terry Scott! No go back and read the “script” again and see what I mean! Even better, do it with a friend.

After that rather oblique introduction, you are probably wondering why I consider the “Danger Mouse” series (originally called “Danger Mouse to the Rescue”) to be among the best cartoons made. Not technically flash or thought provoking perhaps, but with that quality that marks out only the great cartoons – universality. All ages and all backgrounds find DM entertaining. This is probably why Thames TV, who bought all the programs, insisted on showing it at 5 o’clock or earlier so that it missed the huge (cult) audience it should have attracted. I went to a Cosgrove Hall afternoon presentation around the time that their next major undertaking (“The Wind in the Willows”) was in full swing. The audience was, er, a little older than I expected! Looking at the scripts and storyboards, my initial impression was of a cartoon made on a low budget (most of the cost was hiring David Jason for the sound takes) and with whatever resources were at hand (like the xeroxed London panoramas from colour supplements or taping a friend’s souped up Mini blasting round Chorlton). It was obvious that the exceedingly small team thoroughly enjoyed working on DM and that they did what made them laugh. Considering that there was no money to paper over any “dull” bits with deep backgrounds, FX or animation trickery (cf. any Japanese product bar “Akira”), this is what, in the final analysis, makes it all work. And why not (Sorry Barry!).

The storyboards were amazing! Every box and every caption was funny. There was a spontaneous quality about the jokes that made them fall off the page. Like the Pirate King whose singing mates are driving him nuts; “Last time I picks up a crew in Penzance”, or the idiot narrator who sounds like a moonlighting cricket commentator; “Will Danger Mouse and Penfold come round in time to save the world, or will you get lucky!”. Only a fool would consider this a “children’s program”.

Then why am I surrounded by fools? DM certainly doesn’t take itself seriously, and the plots are more versatile than ‘Road Runner’! Watch carefully and you will discover you are laughing at some very subtle satire. Who is the target? Naturally, the English and their public schools, respect for authority, honour and fair play, viewed as if by the child in each of us. The first appearance of Count Duckula, the Hammer vampire duck with a speech impediment, is nothing less than Daffy Duck in a green cape. But where Daffy would do just about anything to get his hands on a million bucks, Count Duckula wants to be on television! Naturally, he is upstaged by Yorick’s skull while reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy…

I was going to expound my theory that DM owes less to Disney than to Monty Python, but with lines like “try Superman – Wednesday is his day off”, a mickey take (sorry!) that only the English would ever find funny, who cares?

So what does our Monocular Mouse, the World’s Greatest Secret Agent, resident of a five bed semi-detached pillar-box in Mayfair actually DO? Well, when he’s not fighting the rotter Baron Silas von Greenback and his evil scheme to reduce the world’s population of elephants into sugarcubes, receiving mumbled orders on the videophone from Agent 57 (Colonel K), swapping puns with a prune juggling vampire parrot or saying “Penfold, shush”, he is probably making mushroom pizza.

If this sounds like a lot of fun, well it is! And if you haven’t seen it, shame on you! Have I made a fool of myself writing this? [No more than normal – The Ed.] Well, if the editor can write serious articles on Sybil Danning… If you’ve got a brown Florence Nightingale sometime, you might like to know that there are three Danger Mouse videos! You’re just going to have to hang around the Childrens’ Section (ho ho). Plug. Plug (plug) plug, plug…

Time for some more dialogue…

DM : I think this clock is some sort of time machine!
P : Er, DM, a clock IS a time machine.
DM : Not that sort of time machine, the sort that takes you THROUGH time.
P : Oh, like that Doctor.
DM : Who?
P : Can’t remember.

I had this nice little opening paragraph all ready for Switzerland, saying how dull a place it was and how it wasn’t surprising it was the only country in Europe with a ‘Z’ in its name (a title now shared with Bosnia and Herzegovina). Unfortunately, it was rather blown out the window when I wander into the biggest department store in Zurich and find, nestling next to each other on the shelf, copies of ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘Ilsa, Harem-Keeper of the Oil Sheiks’, two films not (legally) available in the liberated, interesting United Kingdom.

Switzerland clearly has it’s benefits. Nestling as it does between France, Italy and Germany, it seems to take some of the elements of each country and combine them into something uniquely Alpine. Perhaps it’s the money that does it, though this does lead to problems as well as benefits. For example, the first day in Zurich was hot and sunny, so I passed most of it down in a park by the river, soaking up some of that sunshine vitamin. Later, back in Britain, they had an item on News at Ten about the Swiss drug problem – apparently, the Swiss have the highest incidence of AIDS per capita in Europe, thanks to a large number of rich young people who aren’t happy with the opportunity to see an uncut copy of Zombie Flesh Eaters. “And this is what the locals call Needle Park, frequented by all the local heroin addicts”, ran the report – yep, you guessed it, the same park I’d spent a lovely peaceful afternoon in. It says something for the politeness seemingly inherent in the Swiss race that even their junkies are undetectable.

The next day, I was faced with a difficult choice. I could spend my cash on a copy of ‘Ilsa, Harem-Keeper…’ or be ultra-touristy and buy a ticket up the highest railway in Europe. Both appealed, but in the end, the weather decided for me; the clouds descended, and I don’t shell out 40 quid to see the inside of a ping-pong ball so Ilsa, and a few interesting slabs of techno-pop vinyl, won the day.

The weather continued to worsen and I cut my losses, heading for the South of France on the night train from Geneva. I spent most of my final day sitting on trains going round in circles in a desperate attempt to save money, though I did make a detour out to Lichtenstein, a country so small you can miss it on the train if you go to the toilet. I had done exactly this previously, making it the only country in the world I have ever urinated on from one end to the other. Contents: one pretty schloss, one giant Post Office – apparently stamps for collectors are the second biggest industry (philately will get you everywhere, it seems).

An hour and a half in Geneva killed the rest of my time nicely, most of it spent in another video shop, using my French dictionary to translate the titles (this being the Gallic part of Switzerland). It did have ‘chainsaw’ (‘tronconeuse’ if you’re wondering), but balked at ‘mort vivant’ for ‘living dead’.

On, and into France proper. To be perfectly honest, not a great deal of note happened over the next three days. I lay in the sunshine, got HIDEOUSLY sun-burned (I still bear the scars even now, 5 months later) and drank a lot of Orangina. Oh, and I braved the French cinema to see a Nastassja-film I’d discovered, quite by chance, was on locally.

This wasn’t my first experience of ‘les flicks’ (as I don’t think the French call them, except possibly in “‘Allo, ‘Allo”) – I’d first seen “Evil Dead 2” in a Parisian cinema a few years ago. That was OK; at least it was subtitled, the sound- track being in English, so I knew what was going on – this one was dubbed into FRENCH, with the voices originally having been Italian.

It cost me 35F, or about 3.50, which is comparable with a provincial cinema over here. Half the fun was seeing a completely different set of adverts to the ones we get (great irrelevant mysteries of our time: in the Bacardi cinema ad, why are the characters clearly shown building a nicely Satanist pentangle?). The one I remember most clearly was for an ice-cream called ‘Extreme’ (I think it was) – over a backing track of the Siouxsie and the Banshees track “Rawhead & Bloodybone”, it had enough sexual innuendo to make even the Flake lady blush in shame.

I just about managed to understand the film, though I imagine I lost a lot of the subtle nuances. I reviewed it in TC3, so I won’t bother to repeat that here, suffice to say it had everything I want from a Nastassja Kinski movie i.e. lots of her.

Time to head home; I wanted to try and see another football match while I was down there, to complement the German one, but it just didn’t work – the games were played on Saturday evening, which made it impossible for me to get back to Nice in time to catch a train. I also failed to achieve another ambition – at some point, I want to go on the TGV since 160 mph through the French countryside will make a nice change from a tenth of that speed up to London Bridge. Through Customs,avoiding questions about Ilsa films and Cicciolina comics, to home. How did this trip compare to last year? Not quite as good, I fear. Berlin was certainly worth a visit but it’s getting to the stage where I’ve done most of the rest of Western Europe. Maybe I’ll still be under 26 when they open up the East to holders of the Inter-Rail pass – THAT would be a trip worth making…

It is one of those interesting, but probably meaningless, coincidences that the two Austrian-born actors to have achieved international renown are both best known for movies where they kick ass first, and ask questions later. Though thinking about it, given that perhaps the best known Austrian in history was also known for something similar, albeit in a far worse scale, perhaps there is something about the Austrian nation that breeds ‘hard cases’.

Mr Hitler is not the subject of this article, however, and neither is former Mr. Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger. The person we are interested in here has carved a niche for herself in the ‘women-with-weapons’ genre, and time and again has shown herself capable of single-handedly taking an otherwise tedious & dull movie and licking it into shape. Who can it be, except for Sybille Johanna Danninger?

Born in Wels, Austria in 1950, her father was an American GI and she was educated in New Jersey at a Catholic school before returning to Austria to work as a dental assistant in Salzburg [ I know this sounds implausible, but it’s the only way to fit together the different life-stories discovered in my research! ]. It was here that her movie career began with a series of soft porn flicks, which seem to be totally unavailable – she’s better at suppressing her early embarrassing moments than Nastassja is! ‘The Three Musketeers’ in 1973 marked the start of her rise from obscurity – since then she’s been perpetually busy, at least 30 films have included her 5 foot 7 inch tall, 125 pound figure ( and either a 36- or 40-inch bust, depending on which magazine you read! ), though these include a lot of cameo roles such as ‘The Tomb’ ( cf TC4 ).

Sybil is at her best when playing her cool, silent types up against scenery chewing of the highest order. Thus, in “L.A. Bounty” (which she came up with the story for and co-produced, as well as doing a lot of her own stunts), she says exactly 30 words in the whole film, balancing Wings Hauser’s voluble psychopathic drugs dealer nicely. Similarly, “Reform School Girls” has everyone carving up the ham bar Sybil. On the other hand, where she is forced into ‘out of character’ roles, she remains competent, but totally unremarkable. Witness “The Prince and the Pauper” – hidden behind a frumpy costume as the cowering wife of a thief wasn’t our Sybil at all.

As an example of her ability to carry a movie on her own, you need look no further than “The Howling II”, one of the worst sequels it has been my misfortune to see (though III-V are apparently worse – I haven’t bothered with them!). With only Christopher Lee giving any assistance, she strolls through the appalling plot and hideous acting with a dignity and style that almost made the whole thing worth while. In “Phantom Empire” (top), she does much the same job, and also stakes her claim as a contender for Cleavage of the Century – the word “statuesque” comes easily to mind!

FILMOGRAPHY

The sheer quantity of work she’s been in is impressive – 60 films is a rough total though with her early work, things get hazy since she doesn’t talk about them, and titles vary. The list below may contain some that are also appear under a different name, though I’ve weeded these out as far as possible – I assume “The Long, Swift Sword of Siegfried” and “The Erotic Adventures of Siegfried” are the same movie!

• 1971 – Come, My Dear Little Bird
  The Long, Swift Sword of Siegfried
  – AKA The Erotic Adventures of Siegfried
  Freedom For Love
  Blood
  Naughty Nymphs
  Only In Denmark

• 1972 – Bluebeard
  Run, Run, Joe
  The Immigrants
  Fire of Love
  The Secret Carrier
  The Stewardess Report
  The Housewife Report
  The Vacation Report
  Pharmacist’s Daughters
  – AKA Swedish Love Games
  – AKA Passion Pill Swingers
  Bed Career
  The Loves of a French Pussycat
  The Eye of the Labyrinth
  The Love of the Great Bear
  Sam’s Song
  Loreli
• 1973 – What is Hard is Good
  Porcelain Wedding
  Operation Lady Marlene
  The Three Musketeers
  The Four Musketeers
  The Odessa File (European version only)
• 1974 – The Twist
• 1975 – God’s Gun
  Albino
  – AKA Whispering Death
  – AKA Night of the Askari
  Death In The Sun
• 1976 – Operation Thunderbolt
  – AKA Entebbe: Operation Thunderbolt
• 1977 – The Prince and the Pauper
  – AKA Crossed Swords
• 1978 – Meteor
  Airport ’79 – The Concorde
  – AKA Airport ’80 [!!]

• 1979 – Cuba Crossing
  – AKA Kill Castro!
  – AKA The Mercenaries
  Cat in the Cage
  The Swap
  Separate Ways
  Nightkill
  The Man With Bogart’s Face
  Battle Beyond The Stars
• 1980 – Day of the Cobra
  The Salamander
  How to Beat the High Cost of Living
• 1981 – Julie, Darling
• 1982 – The Seven Magnificent Gladiators
  SAS: San Salvador
  Hercules
  Chained Heat
• 1983 – Jungle Warriors
  Private Passions
  – AKA Claire
  They’re Playing With Fire
  The Immoral Minority Picture Show
  Malibu Express
• 1984 – Young Lady Chatterly II
  Panther Squad
  The Howling II
  – AKA Your Sister is a Werewolf
  The Tomb
• 1985 – Warrior Queen
  Black Diamond
  The Wild Life
• 1986 – Reform School Girls
  Amazon Women of the Moon
  Phantom Empire
• 1987 – Pompeii
• 1988 – The Talking Walls
• 1989 – L.A. Bounty