COOL WORLD (1992)

COOL WORLD (1992)

Directed By Ralph Bakshi

Starring: Kim Basinger, Brad Pitt, Gabriel Byrne

I'm a long-time admirer of the work of Ralph Bakshi. Like many of my favorite filmmakers, he seems to be a victim of forever seeking financing for his visions. But, when he does get his hands on some dough, his work lacks the subtle charm that a low budget brought to his earlier work. Arguably, the money behind COOL WORLD was probably the most Bakshi ever worked with.... too bad little things like a plot that a viewer could easily follow didn't come along with the package.

COOL WORLD sadly possesses moments, scenes, that are...well...cool. But, as a whole, the film fails, with unlikeable characters and a chaotic structure that tends to frustrate.

Paramount Pictures (the film's distributor) was obviously looking for the next WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?. What they got was Bakshi's id on screen, attempting to pigeonhole itself into an all-important PG-13 MPAA rating (gotta reach the biggest audience you can). And, if one is familiar with Ralph's previous work it's not a comfortable fit.

The story centers around Frank Harris (Brad Pitt), a returning G.I. from the horrors of World War 2 who only wants to give his mother a ride on his motorcycle, which ends in a crash that kills dear old mom and thrusts Frank into the Cool World, which is basically Toontown populated by ink and paint degenerates.

No...waitaminnit...the plot involves a cartoonist named Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) in present day (1992) Las Vegas, who after a jail sentence for the murder of his cheating wife, returns to his hometown. Deebs' COOL WORLD is an underground comic book sensation, featuring paper hussy Holli Would (animated and live-action Kim Basinger) and her gang of 'toon lowlifes. He thinks that he's just having screwy dreams whenever he finds himself there, and from said dreams he draws inspiration for his work....

Around the 35 or 40 minute mark in this film, dear reader, one begins to suspect that even Bakshi himself doesn't even know what story he's trying to tell. Very rarely does a film frustrate me enough to physically interact with it, but at this point I verbally exclaimed, "The plot's broke. It's friggin' broke, the pieces ain't fitting together and flowing...", which was followed a few minutes later (under my breath) with a very exhausted and cynical, "...and no one cares."...

Anyways, unbeknown to Jack, the Cool World actually exists, and Holli has plans for him of a carnal kind. The law of Cool World is: "Doodles" (toons) don't have sex with "Noids" (humans), or,....something bad will happen, I guess. They don't really explain why boning would be bad, and the only ill effects that it seems to have is that it turns doodles into noids (Holli becomes real) and later it causes the participants of aforementioned intercourse to flicker painfully between real people and cartoon clowns.

Holli and Jack do the deed, because Holli has a weird Marilyn Monroe fetish and thinks that all of Monroe's films are real. There's a subplot in there somewhere all about a doodle scientist who has created a spike that allows doodles and noids to crossover and back and forth between the real world and the Cool World...he's also responsible for Frank Harris accidentally crossing over, but if you make it this far into the film, you won't really care.

Speaking of Frank, he's become the law enforcement of the Cool World and is partnered with a stogie smoking bug that wears a derby named Nailz (our "comedy relief", ladies and germs). Harris is seemingly eternally young now, thanks to his enviroment, and even dating a doodle..and both are sexually frustrated because they can't go beyond heavy petting.

Holli freaks out while in the "real" world, tries to steal the spike and bring about the animated Rapture, only to be stopped by Frank and cartton superhero Jack (don't ask). Harris is killed in the attempt to save the world, but is resurrected as a doodle and everyone lives happily ever after. Kinda. Who cares? Obviously not folks going to the box office, because the general audience of 1992 reacted much the same way I have to COOL WORLD, with a loud "WTF?!?!"...

On a technical level, COOL WORLD is pretty awesome to watch, especially if one tempers their viewpoint with the knowledge that this is all pre-CGI wizardry. One gets the feeling from the visuals Bakshi presents that he was aiming for a stoner audience, during a decade in which the "trip" movie had fallen outta vogue somewhat.

COOL WORLD does something amazing. It attempts to be raw and edgy, but falls short, coming off just plain crude. The film's all flash, no substance...and, doesn't even fulfill that naughty thrill that comes from seeing animated acts of depravity (for that, go look up any of Bakshi's earlier stuff), but still leaves the viewer feeling dirtier for having seen it. Watch COOL WORLD....then take a nice hot shower. Too bad no amount of hot water will wash away the sadness of having lost 101 minutes of your life sitting through it.

-The HONG KONG CAVALIER

Massacre at Central High (1976)

Directed by Rene Daalder
Starring Derrel Maury, Andrew Stevens, Robert Carradine, Kimberly Beck, Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith
Rated R
USA

You’re the new kid. You’re buds with one of the members of the innermost, most powerful clique at Central High. But you’re a rebel. A loner. You don’t go for this clique-stuff, no sir.

So what happens? Massacre at Central High, that’s what.

Vets of 70s drive-ins, early 80s cable, or the days of VHS and Betamax may remember this cult classic, the first feature from writer-director Rene Daalder whose credits-listing as “Renee” might cause some to think mistakenly it’s a woman at the helm. (It’s a man, baby.)

Holland-born Daalder got his start working with Russ Meyer (Supervixens, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens), who is described on Daalder’s website as the person responsible for the Dutchman’s “initiation in all things American.” (Just imagine that for a moment, if you will.) Sounds like Daalder worked as a cameraman for Meyer and co-wrote an ultimately unproduced script for Meyer as well.

As far as its theatrical life is concerned, Daalder’s low-budgeted drama came and went without a whole lot of fanfare. This despite the praise of several critics including Roger Ebert who cited it as one of the better films of 1976, then heralded it again as a “Guilty Pleasure” a few years later on an episode of “At the Movies,” the PBS version of the show Ebert co-hosted with Gene Siskel. Danny Peary also singled it out for analysis in his second Cult Movies reader.

In the decades since, Massacre has been frequently mentioned as an influential, early example of the ultra-violent high school revenge flick, with several later films -- 1989’s Heathers, in particular -- clearly demonstrating its influence. It’s getting-back-at-the-bullies premise is also sometimes evoked in discussions of real-life high school massacres, most especially the one that occurring at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999.

The title cries exploitative horror, though there’s certainly more going on here than your typical grindhouse fare. It fact, the movie ultimately goes beyond the simple revenge formula to try to present a kind of Animal Farm-type allegory about power and its effect on us. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the film entirely succeeds in advancing some sort of coherent “message” about such. But it does get you thinkin’ -- perhaps more than you might expect to do when watching a film with such a title.


As the opening credits roll, we see the new kid, David, running on the California beach, accompanied by a melodramatic tune declaring “You’re at the crossroads of your life.” Weird “flash-forwards” are intercut here, previews of some of the violence to come.

Soon we’re at school with David, effectively played by a brooding Derrel Maury. With David we witness the three bullies -- Bruce, Paul, and Craig -- in the hall roughing up Spoony, a pre-Revenge of the Nerds Robert Carradine for having drawn a swastika on a locker.

“It’s a social protest,” Spoony explains. “That’s very sixties,” says Bruce, and the rough-housing continues.

That opening exchange does set up what seems like a kind of conflict between an earlier, idealistic time (the 60s) and the more practical, self-interested present (the 70s) where all that “summer of love” crap no longer flies. In any event, David makes a bad first impression when he seems to object to Spoony’s abuse.

Eventually David ends up in a student lounge, a space seemingly ruled by the bullies along with David’s friend Mark, played by Andrew Stevens, a familiar face that fans of movies about girls might remember from 1982’s The Seduction (starring Morgan Fairchild).

Actually, the whole campus is pretty clearly under the bullies’ dominion. It’s a weird world, Central High, where no teachers are ever shown, nor do we meet any parents or other adults for pretty much the entire film.


“This place is a fucking country club,” is how Mark describes the scene to David. “Gotta be able to change your whole style here,” he instructs. “You gotta drop that loner shit.” It’s pretty obvious from the eye-rolls that David isn’t comfortable with his friend’s advice.

The first half-hour rapidly establishes the dynamics of power at Central High while also introducing the female cast. There’s Mark’s girl, Theresa, played by a fetching Kimberly Beck (the final girl in 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). Lani O’Grady, one of the sisters on “Eight Is Enough,” is there, too, as Jane, along with the ever-sweet Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith, the cult-film fave who plays Mary.

The girls are aware of David’s unwillingness to accept the school’s firmly established power structure, but aren’t optimistic he’ll be able to continue to do so for long. As Jane says, “they get to everyone sooner or later.”

David keeps steaming as he watches the fellas rough up more nerds.


Meanwhile, David also laments at the attitude of his friend, Mark, who seemingly endorses such behavior. The nerds don’t care much, either, for David’s attempts at helping them. “Don’t you people ever fight back?” asks David incredulously.

The bullying turns even uglier as the troublesome trio grab Mary and Jane and pull them into an unoccupied classroom for what appears to be an afterschool gangbang. (Again, the viewer wonders, where the hell are the teachers?).


David decides he can’t sit back and watch any longer, and summarily whips all three in satisfying fashion.

Somewhat surprisingly, David and Theresa subsequently enjoy some dimly-lit skinny-dipping at dusk, which Mark finds out about later but doesn’t seem too bothered by. As it turns out, that little bit of fun is but a momentary respite for our protagonist, who soon receives a painful response from the bullies that leaves him crippled.


David tells no one of what happened to cause his now-permanent limp. “Ratting on people is not my style,” he explains. (Of course, in this world without adults it isn’t clear to whom he would do the ratting, even if it were his style.)

No, David’s style involves revenge. The violent kind. The middle third of the film is then taken up with his dealing with the bullies one by one, employing novel, slasher-film-style methods with each.


Along the way, Mark and Teresa make love on the beach (another dusky, hard-to-see encounter), after which Mark wonders if he, too, will fall victim to David’s wrath.

The film does not end with David’s revenge, rather continuing on into a third act, which is why I think critics like Ebert found the film more interesting than your typical drive-in offerings. (That, or perhaps Ebert’s own connection with Russ Meyer predisposed him toward giving the Daalder-directed Massacre more attention than he otherwise might have.)

“What goes around comes around,” says a newly-emboldened Spoony, sort of ironically summing up the new order. One soon realizes that with the bullies out of the way, something not-so-nice seems to be happening to the nerds as a result. “Suddenly this school is rife with opportunity,” says Arthur, who works in the library, as he tries to convince David that the two of them (brawn & brains) can become Central High’s new leaders.

David doesn’t like it. Not one bit. What happens? More nasty surprises.


Oh, and more stuff gets blowed up.


Will leave aside the particulars of how things turn out, other than to point out one much better-lit, campage-a-trois involving Jane, Mary, and Spoony. Spoony’s not such a nerd after all, it seems!


At under 90 minutes, Massacre at Central High gallops along at what to me seems a much-too-fast pace for any deeper messages to be absorbed (or plot twists to be accepted). Still, it's an entertaining ride, as well as a modest achievement with some historical significance. Definitely worth checking out for those with an interest in high school melodrama, “bully comeuppance” flicks, ultraviolence and/or explosions, Rainbeaux Smith, or all things '70s.

- Triple S

Teenage Twins (1976)

Directed by Carter Stevens

Starring Brooke Young, Taylor Young, Leo Lovemore, Eric Edwards

X

USA

"It's wrong. You know it's wrong. What would mom say?"

Filmed in 3 days with what can only be a minuscule budget, Carter Stevens' Teenage Twins may not be considered his finest hour (even according to him), but I can only imagine that, for those in the know, this film is easily his most notorious (and arguably most profitable). If you are curious as to why this may be, let me just say this: real-life twin sisters Brooke and Taylor Young (playing Prudence and Hope, respectively) perform full-on, unsimulated, incestuous sex acts together. If this little tidbit didn't make you throw up in your mouth a little or encourage you to write a letter to your congressman, then please read on.

Prudence and Hope are twin sisters who share a peculiar bond with each other: straight-laced Prudence and her freewheelin' sister, Hope, share each others sexual arousal. This odd gift/curse does not sit well with Prudence, but Hope is pretty down with it. Guess who wins.

Concurrently, the teen's stepfather, Gerald (Leo Lovemore) has just got a hold of the Necronomicon, a legendary magical tome said to possess great powers. One of the sisters is the "Harlot Virgin" that they need for an incantation for eternal life. And of course, a gang bang is required for full results.

The film is super cheap looking (many scenes were filmed in Stevens' own house) and the acting is virtually non-existent but if referring back to the second half of the first paragraph of this review does anything for you, then this is required viewing. Other highlights include biblical masturbation, white man afros, and an ending so out of nowhere that it has to be seen to be believed.

After Hours Cinema brings this Golden Age classic to light for the first time on DVD October 12, 2010 as part of their Teenage Twins Collection 3 film/2 DVD set. Also included in this set are Rollerbabies and Punk Rock, 2 other earlier efforts of Mr. Stevens. The prints come from the only known existing film elements, so this is as nice as the films will probably ever look. There's plenty of print damage, but it really doesn't detract from the movie much at all. To round things out in this package, there's some audio commentary and interview segments as well.

This film, of course, is not for everybody, but if you like your porn on the taboo side, are merely curious, or are a connoisseur of classic and groundbreaking adult films, this is a must add to your collection.

- Jeremy Vaca

Vampirella (1996)

Director: Jim Wynorski

Starring: Talisa Soto, Roger Daltrey, Richard Joseph Paul and Corinna Harney

When I was a kid, I loved the publications produced by Warren Magazines...EERIE, CREEPY, and VAMPIRELLA were basically all a growing boy (who was also a comic book fanboy) could get when you were too young to purchase PLAYBOY in the days before newsstands were hip enough (or had the good taste) to carry HEAVY METAL magazine.

This isn't exactly the first time an attempt had been made to adapt the property. Hammer Films went into pre-production on a Vampirella film in the 1970s, with publicity photos announcing Barbara Leigh in the title role, but when Hammer went under, these plans were scrapped (great article about that unproduced film to be found HERE).

Now, I wasn't expecting much going into this flick. I was aware that it was a Roger Corman production with a incredibly small budget (according the film's director, Jim Wynorski, around 1 million bucks). What I didn't expect was that I'd walk away entertained. There's a lot of charm packed into this cheap little movie.

Talisa Soto portrays the space vampire Vampirella, who's step-father and the rest of the members of the high council on Draculon (a planet where instead of water, they have oceans of blood) are murdered by Vlad (The Who's Daltrey hamming it up), a bad guy General Zod-wannabe who goes to Earth and lives out his Anne Rice rock star fanatasies. Vampi follows, but is marooned on Mars for about 30,000 years until she hitches a ride on the Space Shuttle. She gets to Earth, saves a computer nerd from getting mugged, then hooks up with a top secret government organization bent on destroying vampires, where she discovers Vlad's evil plot to black out the sun.

No...really.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. Trust me.



For one thing, the film doesn't seem to take itself very seriously. The plot is pretty tongue in cheek, as well as fairly decent adaptation of Vampi's black and white Warren magazine origin. Amidst the GALAXY OF TERROR and BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS stock footage, you'll find Angus Scrimm as Vampi's step-father, Daltrey in make up and a cape, and be sure to look for director John Landis (Animal House, The Blues Brothers, American Werewolf in London) as one of the astronauts who find the sleeping Vampi on Mars.

My only problem is: I don't buy Ms. Soto in the title role. Sure, she's a decent enough actress who does her best to pull off a role that's literally just a red swimsuit and fangs, but, I had always envisioned Vampirella as being a little less naive as Soto's performance leads to believe the character is, and....well....a heck of a lot more busty. Now, this is just my opinion, but the artistic representations of Vampi over the years have presented her as practically spilling out of her costume, where as Soto doesn't even seem to fill it up.

Who would I cast as the Daughter of Draculon, you might ask? Well...Julie Strain seemed to fit the bill quite nicely when she donned the costume in some mid-1990s photo shoots.....'Course, this is just the ramblings of a self-proclaimed boob lover, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

Even so, VAMPIRELLA is a lot of fun...the type of fun you get from a film that lacks budget, but makes up for it with ambition. Plus...it's got Daltrey in a cape. So, there.

- HONG KONG CAVALIER

Electra (1996)

Directed by Julian Grant
Starring Shannon Tweed, Joe Tabb, Katie Griffin
Rated R 
USA
"I'm stimulating your erogenous zone, whilst probing your subconscious."

Shannon Tweed has been in some pretty oddball projects over the years; to say the least. That's probably a given when you've worked with Jim Wynorski or dated Gene Simmons (or been on Nash Bridges) but it's hard to imagine anything she's done topping Electra in terms of the sheer unlikeness of it ever being written, let alone filmed.

It's hard to imagine many films at all standing up to Electra in that regard, though. In the world of utterly questionable scripts, Electra is a class of its own. It's one of those films that really makes you wonder about the process that lead to its being made in the first place. But we'll come back to that in a second, because in order to understand the confusion, it's necessary to look quickly at the plot.
Electra revolves around a Captain America-like super power serum, and the evil wheelchair-bound billionaire Marcus Roach (Sten Eirik) who wants it. However, the only person who has the serum is Billy Duncan (Joe Tabb), the son of its late inventor, who lives with his step-mother, Lorna (Shannon Tweed). He's not likely to give it up easily, so Roach cooks up a plan: seeing as the serum is sexually transmittable, he'll use the bubbling sexual tension between step-mother and son and convince Lorna to have sex with Billy, thus passing the powers to Lorna, who can then pass them on to Roach. And that's pretty much it, in a nutshell.

Even if you manage to ignore the plot holes that come up simply from that summary (they can't just give him a handjob?) there's still so much that doesn't make sense. Most pressing is the restatement of our above question: how the hell did this film get made? And while I don't have an answer to that, there's a few observations to be made based on its crew, and some possibly dodgy conclusions to be drawn.

Firstly, this was the début film for writer Lou Aguilar, and I'm going to assume the script originated with him for that reason. Canadian Damian Lee (best known as the writer of Jesse Ventura vehicle Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe) polished the script or provided some kind of rewrite, and picked up an executive producer credit for his efforts (or maybe rewrote it as executive producer). Helder Goncalves worked as production accountant on Abraxas, but grabs a full producer credit on Electra. Also, Julian Grant made his début as both a director and producer on Electra - his only previous work in movies was as a second unit director.
Oh, and Ashok Amritraj was the film's executive producer, but he seemingly had some kind of open-chequebook policy in the '90s. A lot of awful films were made with his involvement (Battlefield Earth, for one) and funding, so he's altogether different.
Anyhow, that all probably seems like a lot of irrelevant crap, but after watching Electra it's hard to let go of those pesky questions, and the credits just seem to raise more. To wit: what made Aguilar think that the ideal premise for his first foray into movies was that of a woman trying to have sex with her step-son to gain super powers? What was it about that premise that attracted Grant so strongly that he wanted to produce the film, as well as direct it? Did Goncalves get dragged into this through his connection to Lee, or was it the other way around? Either way, why get involved at all? And how do you pitch a film about about a woman trying to have sex with her step-son to gain super powers to Amritraj?

Like I said, I don't have answers, just a lot of questions. I think you'll have to admit though: they're pretty reasonable questions. At least one of those people really, really pushed for this to be made. Just ponder that for a moment.

And then, just to add another layer of confusion to the mix, consider the fact that it's never entirely clear what the hell the film is trying to be - superhero action? Sexy comedy? Edge-of-your-seat thriller? It's far from softcore - there's nudity, but only waist up. Maybe it was an attempt to bring incest fetishism to a mainstream audience? Who knows. Perplexing stuff.

The film starts, as all good movies do, in a strip club. Karen ( Lara Daans) is doing some kind of thrusty chair-based striptease while Gina (Dyanne DiMarco) wanders around with a tray. After a while, she tells crowd member Ron Thatcher (Ronn Sarosiak) to meet her out back in ten minutes. Then has some trouble attempting to take her bra off before throwing it at him. He's already waiting when she comes out, and they have a conversation about Ron. He is, he says, from Rochester, and he sells computers. But it turns out that it's some kind of trap, and Karen beats him unconscious and he's dragged off by a van. Gina joins her outside and they smoke.

Ron's taken somewhere else in the city where he finds he's a prisoner of Roach, who looks really disturbingly like what would happen if John Lydon and John Lithgow somehow became one person. Not only is this creepy, but also distracting because it turns out that when you combine John Lydon and John Lithgow, the resulting creature has the hair of a balding mid-1970s-era Art Garfunkel with added '90s grunge rock greasiness.

Anyways, then Karen and Gina stab Ron with a syringe, and Roach and his scientist buddy Dr Bartholomew (Ed Sahely) watch. Frankly, it's probably easier just to show you the result than try and explain it:

So yeah, that happens. It's not really clear why they picked Ron - he was either so vital that Gina and Karen had to work undercover in a seedy bar to get him, or they just work there on the side. In any case, it's a pity to get rid of him so fast - Ron is far and away the most convincing piece of casting in the whole film. I look at him and his goatee and I think, 'That is a man who sells computers in Rochester'.

Roach almost has Bartholomew killed, because the damn guy still can't make the super power potion right, and Roach needs it to restore his legs. "Though the factory explosion left me a cripple," he says for no apparent reason, "what remains of me is still human." Okay, cool. Bartholomew responds directly to this by telling him about Dr Arthur Duncan, who's dead, but injected the serum he invented into his son Billy to cure his "rare form of anaemia".

Then Bartholomew goes on about a whole lot of other plot details, including: Arthur's first wife died of the same anaemia, and he married Lorna, "his worst student at Tech" who's "just a farm-girl". Also, Roach can't analyse Billy's blood because Arthur put a "failsafe toxin" in there, which sounds like a real thing. However, luckily, the "essence" of the serum can be sexually transmitted.

"So...sex is the key?" Roach asks, possibly rhetorically. "All we need is the right keyhole."

Of course, it's not going to be that easy - Billy swore to his father on his deathbed that he'd keep the serum secret, and part of that means no unprotected sex. Roach is going to need something to work with, so he strokes Gina's breast and tells her to put it under level one surveillance. So some guys go and do that while Lorna and Billy are out, and they do a super subtle job of it too.

But where are Billy and Lorna? Why, they're down the farm, wearing denim and cutting down things.

Also flirting strangely: Billy tells Lorna he thinks she's the prettiest woman in town in the middle of talking about his girlfriend, and calls her "ma" a lot. Then Lorna spends too long looking at Billy's pecs and a tree almost flattens her. Fortunately, Billy's super powers allow him to push her out of the way and they head home so Lorna can take a bath.

He stands at the open door, because she asks him to make sure she's okay, and then she grills him about his sex life and whether he uses protection. "I'm not ready," he whimpers. "That's nice Billy. Shouldn't do anything you're not ready for," she replies and takes her top off. Then she washes herself really thoroughly and Billy stands there and watches for a full minute before he finally gets uncomfortable and wanders off.

Just to add to the overall unsavouriness, Roach is watching the whole thing form his limo. "I think we've found her weakness," he chuckles, despite never having suggested he had any interest in her weaknesses, sexual or otherwise.

Billy's moping out on the porch alone for a while until a fully-clothed Lorna joins him. Billy explains that whole bath thing happened because the serum makes him feel powerful: "it makes me feel like I can do anything I want - even things I'm not supposed to want." Lorna doesn't quite get it, so she has to ask what he means. Eventually, they decide just to pretend the whole thing never happened and hug. Lorna has some kind of significant facial expression and the camera lingers on this for quite some time.

But while they're still busy hugging out their problems, Billy's girlfriend Mary Anne Parker (Katie Griffin) rocks up. She's got a new truck, and Billy is super excited to go for a ride. He heads inside briefly to put some clothes on, and Mary Anne and Lorna have a conversation. There's some small talk and searing glances, but then things get a little tense because Mary Anne's dad has the hots for Lorna, and Lorna's not really into that because all she wants is Billy.

Billy comes back and is apparently oblivious to any tension between the two whatsoever, even when Mary Anne shoots another searing glance at Lorna before driving off.

Roach, Karen and Gina are still driving around. They're getting close to the farm though, so Roach tells Karen to order in an assault team: "no guns". While she's busy on the phone, Roach asks Gina to "relax" him, so she gives him a blow job while humming 'Rock-a-bye Baby'.

Early the next day, Billy wakes up Lorna and tells her that they need to leave. "Why?" she asks.

"I don't know. There are men outside," Billy replies. He's got a plan despite not knowing what's going on, so Lorna heads for the hills while Billy stays around to fight some guys and also Gina. This goes on for some time, but even after Billy's knocked out Gina, Lorna is still being chased by a guy who runs like a moron. She tips, and he almost captures her, but then she kicks him in the shins and bashes his head in with a stone.

Billy's long gone by the time Gina shows up at the farm, and she's unhappy to find the place littered the the crumpled bodies of the assault team. "Where's the boy? Where is he?" she asks one, and then punches him in the stomach before he can answer. Then she breaks the neck of one of the others. Then, just to top it all off, she refuses to give Gina a helping hand up off the ground. Vicious.

Eventually, Lorna makes it to Mary Anne's house, where she collapses into the arms of Mr Parker (John Stoneham). And Billy hears his dead father narrate about using force or The Force or something while he also runs like a moron.

Then Billy uses his super powers to hip and shoulder a van off the road.

Pulling the driver from the wreck, he manages to find out that Roach has a lab five hours drive away. However, before he can act on that news, he's attacked by Karen, who does some backflips and fly kicks him in the head. That's not even close to enough to take out Billy though, and he uses his powers of tying knots really fast to secure her to the bottom of the van. "I'd love to, uh, stick around, but you look a little tied up," he quips before running off. Then Gina shows up and stares at Karen and they both sigh a lot.

Fortunately, Billy's loping idiot run takes him to the exact same road Mary Anne happens to be driving down, and they both escape to the safety of her dad's hunting shack. Mr Parker and Lorna aren't nearly as lucky: Parker's dimwitted helpers bring in Gina and Karen after finding them pretending to suffer car trouble. "You some kind of cheerleaders?" Mr Parker asks. "Yeah sure," Gina replies flatly.

Despite having spent the few minutes prior trying to seduce Lorna, Mr Parker invites them to show some of their cheers. Turns out, though, their cheers just involve killing Parker and his two helpers and then kidnapping Lorna.

Meanwhile, Billy and Mary Anne make out on a rug for a while until Billy freaks out, pushes her away and then explains the situation with the serum. "You might as well give me what you've got," Mary Anne suggests, but they're interrupted by a call from the police, who give them the bad news about Mr Parker. And boy are they angry, so they head off to find the lab.

Naturally, that's where Lorna is - strapped to what appears to be a horizontal crucifix. Roach tries for a while to get her to straight-up admit she desires Billy, but she's having none of it, so Roach flicks a switch and some lights flash a bit.

"What are you doing?" asks Lorna.

"Stimulating your erogenous zone, whilst probing your subconscious," comes the reply. Turns out that means he can create some kind of televised visualisation of her inner-most thoughts because, uh, computers. And what are her inner-most desires? To brutally murder Mary Anne with an axe and then force herself on Billy after pinning him to a tree with the same axe, naturally. "Admit it! Admit you want Billy inside you!" cries Roach.

Following her dramatic admission, she's then brainwashed by Gina and Karen through their use of a vibrator, or something.

While that's happening, Roach eats a handkerchief or maybe some underwear.

Billy and Mary Anne turn up soon after, but Mary Anne's left in the truck with one of Billy's super pills and instructions to "maybe one day" give it to someone she trusts. It doesn't take long for Billy to find Lorna, but he doesn't realise she's been brainwashed, leaving him open to the old "lick the face and stab the neck with a tranquilliser ring" trick.

When he wakes, he's on the same crucifix Lorna was, and Roach is right there next to him. "What did you do to my mother?" Billy yells.

"I helped define her as a woman," Roach sneers. "A difficult thing in our feminist age."

Mary Anne decides, for some reason, to attempt to run into the lab too, but gets caught before she even makes out of the parking lot. This just gives Roach one more piece of leverage, but it's still not enough - Billy would rather die! "If your mind won't cooperate," Roach says, "maybe your body will." So he treats Billy to three minutes of topless fondling between Gina and Karen. That's just the warm-up, though - Lorna, in leather fetish gear of her own now, is ready to indulge herself, at Roach's suggestion.

With all that ready to get underway, Roach decides it's time to get rid of Mary Anne, and he sends Gina and Karen to kill her. Unfortunately, he didn't notice her taking Billy's serum pill. The resulting fight sees Mary Anne rip out Gina's heart and throw it into Karen's mouth before putting Karen's head through a window. So that's pretty cool. "Heartless bitch," spits Mary Anne.

Back at the crucifix though, things are starting to get way out of hand. Firstly, it starts spinning, which is actually pretty nauseating. Then, Lorna forces herself upon Billy, but tells him that she's got a plan to get them out - he just needs to keep playing along. That is, needs to keep having sex with his step-mother on a spinning crucifix while an evil villain in a wheelchair watches. Sure, why not? But then this happens:

It was all a trick! And to make matters worse, because she's not anaemic, she's even stronger than Billy. So, leaving Billy tied up, she goes off to find Roach, in order to have sex with him so that he can also have super powers. First though, he's got a speech prepared: "For seven years, I've been less than a man; but you're more than a woman. Only you can restore my lower half and make me more than a man. Come - we'll be the Adam and Eve of a new superior race, and they'll worship you as their queen. You are no longer Lorna Duncan: you are Electra, my supreme seductress! Work your magic on me!" So they have awkward fully-clothed sex in a wheelchair.

But before they can finish, Mary Anne manages to rescue Billy and they both burst in, only to find that Electra can shoot lightning. Fortunately, Mary Anne can absorb it, so she challenges Electra to a fight while Billy chases after Roach.

What follows is fifteen minutes of mid-air catfighting, wheelchair flamethrowers, mind-controlled guns, shapeshifting, and a virtual-reality headset containing "billions of gigs of information". It's really quite a finale.

Electra is, of course, utterly bonkers. Gloriously and brilliantly though, in the way only a barely-competently made film can be. There's more ideas than anyone seems to have known what to do with, and a lot of them don't have a place anywhere near this movie. The ending, particularly, feels like everything was thrown at a wall, and left to see what would stick.

But it's rarely dull, which is a genuine accomplishment. Whether it's Joe Tabb's country-boy poker-faced portrayal of Billy, Dyanne DiMarco's hilariously dour performance as Gina, or Sten Eirik and his bizarre hair, there's always something to capture your attention. Hell, the whole movie is probably worth it just for the first few scenes with Billy and Lorna - the significant looks exchanged between the two are nothing short of amazing. You can almost see the gears working within the actors' respective heads in their attempt to figure out the kind of smouldering expression appropriate for step-mother and son to share.

As a result of those kinds of weird moments, the whole sorta-incest bit is often quite creepy; even by late night TV standards. It's probably not nearly as shocking as it thinks however, and the resulting combination of the acting, actors, half-arsed action and totally insane plot make for an unexpectedly watchable piece of trash action cinema.

- Alistair Wallis