Out for Justice – With a plot so simplistic Bruce Lee would have rejected it (you killed my best friend and you must be able to guess the rest), Stephen Seagal demonstrates a flair for languages, speaking in English, French & Italian but failing to ACT in any of them. To be fair, with dialogue like “chicken-shit fucking pussy asshole”, he has his work cut out. Plenty of loose ends – the Mafia run ‘around a lot without DOING anything – flail about like a pool ball in a handkerchief. And gosh, by coincidence, that’s exactly what Seagal uses to dispatch the inhabitants of a bar in which he’s “making enquiries”, LAPD style. Such brutality is the film’s only saving grace, odd flashes of wit being buried under dull melodrama. D-

Paradise – Obscure, early Phoebe Cates movie, which even I have to admit deserves to be forgotten about. A ‘Blue Lagoon’ rip-off set on land, as two kids have their families slaughtered by filthy Arabs (drag in those racial stereotypes) and manage to stumble across an oasis. However, they still have the twin problems of a) white slave traders who want to do unmentionable things to Phoebe and b) what to do with their genitals. Awful, a nice Basil Poledouris score and a lovely shower scene being the only redeeming merits, the BBFC having very unsubtly edited the solution to b) so that, whatever genitals are for, they’re nothing to do with sex. E-. It makes you realise that ‘The Blue.Lagoon’ could have been a whole lot worse. And speaking of which…

Return to the Blue Lagoon (William Grahat) Sellotape my hair to my •nipples, if it’s not a sequel to one of the most squirm-inducing movies of all time (ah, the things I watch in the name of TC). Actually, and I didn’t expect to be saying this, it’s not that bad. Ok, it’s no classic, still being sanitized, schmaltzy and saccharine, but it’s not THAT bad. The first section is salvaged by a surprisingly good performance from Lisa Pellikan as their mother, making the plot convolutions ALMOST plausible, and her death is not unmoving. Then, it’s virtually a straight re-run, with Milla Jovovich an entirely acceptable replacement for Brooke Shields as Miss Jailbait and Brian Krause subbing for, um…anyone remember? Their idyllic life of sun, sea, sand and writhing on the beach is terminated by civilization arriving. Or at least a ship’s captain, his daughter (who pounces on Krause like a hungry panther), and a crewman who demonstrates a startling lack of imagination by trying, of all things, to ROB Jovovich. Entirely predictable chewing-gum for the libido, I was pleasantly surprised – then again, I wasn’t expecting very much to start with. C

Roningai (Kazuo Kuroki) – A samurai version of ‘A Better Tomorrow 2’, with three renegades (one of whom even owns a restaurant!) against vast numbers of villains. The cause of the swordplay is a band of psychotic samurai who are going round killing prostitutes, to cleanse the world. However, when they kidnap one beloved by our three heroes and tie her to two bulls going in different directions, they have quite definitely Gone Too Far and we get a 3 vs. 120 swordfight which, while not gory, has the most vicious SOUNDING swordplay I’ve seen – or rather, heard. A grubbily historical feel (a bit like ‘Django’) and cool characters make this one to watch. B

This page, a subscribers only freebie, was produced on a wet Tuesday morning at work, to use up a couple of reviews I didn’t have room for in the full ‘zine, but was loathe to dump, and to provide a taste of colour, something that might be used more fully next issue. The picture on the other side is an example of Japanese culture which, curiously, the recent festival managed to miss…

Thanks to Kanji Bates for “technical assistance”!