Glen here...
...with another review from THE MIDDLE MAN.
Regular Coaxial readers may remember THE MIDDLE MAN from his advanced reviews of Farscape and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, both of which previously appeared on this site. Now, THE MIDDLE MAN is turning his attention to a babe filled Roger Corman opus named Black Scorpion. Uncharacteristically, an entire season of this series has already been filmed, the whole of it is currently being shopped around to potential distributors (people who wanna show it).
I had trouble with a scorpion once. I had put my little boy down for a nap in his room while waiting to leave for a mid-afternoon appointment. After he'd been asleep for a few minutes, I wandered back into his room to collect some dirty clothes. What followed was one of those illogical, priceless, "parent moments": he just looked so peaceful and cute and snugly in bed, I decided to curl up next to him for a few moments.
I fell into a very deep sleep.
About thirty minutes later, I feel someone gently shaking my shoulders. Not really interested in waking up, I attributed this to one of those freaky involuntary muscle spasm / convulsion things which sometimes happen when people are falling asleep. But muscle spasms don't have voices.
"Daddy - wake up" said an impossibly soft, almost ghost-like whisper. It was my little son.
Somehow, this sunk into my instinctive sub consciousness, and I began to crawl my way out of an extremely relaxed rest. I managed a quiet "What is it?"
I don't know..." he offered. Then silence, as if he was considering something. This became alarming. "Don't move daddy."
I thought a little more. Either the kid has gone insane and pointed a gun at my head, someone else has a gun pointed at my head, I have somehow managed to roll onto a cliff face during my sleep and am now teetering on the edge of an abyss, or...
My eyes snapped open, but I remained frozen. After a few moments, I felt a tingling movement across my stomach - like a feather being run across my torso. A whopping chill ran through my body as I realized this was, most likely, a really lousy circumstance. Without moving my body, I contorted my neck so I could glance down the length of my body. There, doing some sort of bizarre little happy dance around my naval, was one of the biggest scorpions I had ever seen. Big enough to grab an F-16 in its pinchers. Big enough to kill an elephant. Actually, it was about half the length of my pinky finger. But I have a long pinky finger!
For a moment I was frozen in amazement - I wondered what would happen if I laid there long enough. Would it leave and never come back? Would it use its scorpion telepathy (which they must certainly have) to call its little scorpion friends in for some sort of wigged-out orgy on my chest? Finally, my mind turned to tactics: how to remove this little beast from my body without being torn to shreds by its evil ugliness. Before I had a chance to act:
The scorpion looked up at me, its tail snapped into position, swinging over its head in attack stance as the little demon went for my neck. Being ever the macho he-man I am, I screamed like a sissy girl and jumped to my feet - flailing around wildly while shaking my shirt. My enemy flew across the room, landing by my little boy's television.
Any mundane ground insect would have cowered upon witnessing my body stretching to full extension - all 6 feet, 2 inches of it. But not this guy. This little creep was either feeling The Force, or on crack. Either way, his tale whipped around again as the death-bug made another Hail Marry for my jugular. I grabbed a nearby Taco Bell Godzilla cup, and like a professional bartender, flipped it over with one hand - bringing the mouth down over the scorpion! I heard is little body slam into the side of the cup. He was trapped!
Now, you may ask, why didn't I simply crush the little f**ker? And a fair question it is. The answer reveals a dark and sinister side of me most people never get to see. In my mind, I had been violated by this bug. It had endangered both me and my little boy. It had offended the sanctity of my house. I was genuinely pissed off at this thing. As such, I decided to do something uncharacteristically mean-spirited. I was going to let it sit in the cup until it stung itself to death. Yes, that's right, somehow I had gotten the idea that scorpions sting themselves to death when in captivity.
So there he sat for five days. Covered by the cup, which was pressed down into the carpet by an entire set of World Book Encyclopedias. He was dying, writhing in pain from the juices of his own poison. I felt vindicated. Finally, after my little boy decided to move back into his room (he wouldn't sleep in his room for nearly a week because of "the ugly bug"), I went to unveil my diabolical handiwork. I couldn't wait to see that shriveled mass of arrogance and aggression withered into a dried-up husk of a shell.
I removed the World Books, and triumphantly lifted my "Godzilla Hails a Cab" cup. Before I had raised it an inch, out races the devil-bug for a re-match! This guy hadn't stung himself to death (no, I don't know where I got the idea he would do that), this guy didn't seem hungry, starving, or low on energy. This guy had the juices of Hell pulsing through its system - and he was seriously pissed of at a mortal named Glen. What happened next...well...is a whole other story.
Now, if the scorpion crawling across my torso looked anything like this:
...I likely would not have screamed like a panzy idiot when sighting her on my body. In fact, I probably would not have jumped to my feet (or resisted) at all. And I sure as hell wouldn't have been able to cover her with a Godzilla cup.
ABOVE: an image of Michelle Lintel as the real-world personification of the title character Black Scorpion.
BELOW: THE MIDDLE MAN's review of Roger Corman's Black Scorpion.
Hiho, Middle Man with a report on a new series most of you probably have never even heard of.
It`s been some time since the two TV movies that Corman produced for Showtime, so let`s do a quick recap: Darcy Walker is a cop in Angel City. By night she becomes the leather-clad, high-heelded, baddie-kicking superheroine Black Scorpion.
In the TV movies she was played by beautiful Joan Severance, who despite usually doing tons of nudity in her other movies, used a body double for the sex scenes.
TV movie number one (Black Scorpion battles the Breathtaker) was a lot of fun, despite the low budget (rumored to be around 1 mil. US). There were some cool design ideas, and the action scenes were tough and well choreographed.
Even though they kept the director and the writer (Craig Nevius, who also scripted the never-released Fantastic Four movie), TV movie number two sucked like the Schumacher Batmans compared to the work of Burton. Flashy photography and odd camera angles couldn`t mask incredibly lame action sequences, kiddie-proof storytelling and an over-abundance of villains (Aftershock and Gangster Prankster among them). Overall, though, the movies were way better than the other crap Corman produced for the cable channels around that time.
Well, here is the series. As a novelty, Corman financed it without presales, and now shops the finished show around. I watched three eps, and here are my thoughts:
Almost none of the original actors return, even though Corman originally planned to have at least Garrett Morris (as a sidekick mechanic) and Stephen Lee (as the Chief) on board. Joan Severance is replaced by the much younger newcomer Michelle Lintel, who looks like a reject from shows like Baywatch and Pacific Blue, but handles the limited acting task quite capably.
Most of the props (costume, car) look similar to the TV movies, and there is a reason for that (more later). The scripts are basic at best. Some supervillain with odd abilities pops up, threatens the city for some reason, and battle Black Scorpion. To fill up the 46 minutes, there is some comic relief with stupid cops (awful) and some soap opera stuff with Darcy and her new partner (that`s actually okay). But I have to be fair: most TV superhero shows were worse, and at least the writers (mostly Nevius again) know what the fans want: action, babes, and cool supervillains.
The music is way too synthetic for my taste, it sounds exactly like the cheap syntheziser soundtracks of Cormans 80`s movies. The fight scenes have bad choreography, and most of the car scenes are speeded up, which looks really odd (especially if they don`t slow the film down in time, and Darcy gets out of the car like she sat in a hornet's nest).
The look of the show is very cheap, and most of the effects are extremely simple. It looks like one of the earlier syndicated crime shows (anyone remember Night Heat?). The opening credits must be the oddest I have seen in a long time, and I doubt they`ll make it into the series at all: an animated version of the scorpion / frog legend! Hmmmmm.
Well, what else is there? Ah yes, it`s a Corman show, and he knows how to sell his stuff. That`s why we get TONS of stock footage from older Corman movies (he uses every trick in the book to justify them with flashbacks, news footage, and general mayhem). Hardly any explosions or flight scenes were done for the series, it`s all lifted from other projects. Also, a lot of the scenes are lifted from the two TV movies (that`s why they kept the props). And basically EVERY female part is played by ex-Penthouse Pets and Playboy models (sex kittten Shae Marks even has a really stupid recurring role). So if you ever wanted to see if Victoria Silvstedt or Lisa Boyle could act - here`s your chance. And since Corman knows that the babes are a major draw for his show, most of the official site (blackscorpion.net) features cutes pics.
So there.
All of the above should amount to a resounding "skip it", but oddly it doesn`t. The show knows that it is cheap trash, and that makes it low-level fun. It never aspires to be more than it is, and on its limited level, it delivers.
Sure, a higher budget would`ve been nice to spice up the fights and the effects, but considering how bad (and expensive) superhero shows usually are, this is not so terrible. And Michelle Lintel really tries to the best with what she`s got ("This is the chance for my big break" is written all over here face).
If you remember, I recommended Farscape. This is NOT Farscape. It`s cheap and tacky. Check it out at your own risk. But prepare to be surprised. Maybe.
Keep a sixpack in reach...
Black Scorpion in costume.
