Lady Terror has Hill as Jake Large, a lawyer in Australia who spends a lot of his time exiting buildings, entering his silver Honda, driving to new buildings, exiting the Honda and entering the buildings, only to exit and start the process over again. His romantic life isn't going so hot, so when exotic dancer Candice takes a shine to him, he's all in, to the point that he'll even entertain killing her stepfather, a Danny Trejo look-a-like who's as bad as it gets. But does Candice really like him? Or is she just using him to kill her stepdad? And if she is using him, is he in too deep to get out now?
This movie was a lot of fun, if I'm understanding it the way I think it's meant to be understood. While it's a dedication to and inspired by Blown Away, it also plays on a lot of tropes and conventions in low-budget 90s Erotic Thrillers, and mocks what feels like could be a vanity project on the part of Hill. But this is where two things come into play that made it hard for me to get there: I've seen too many legitimate vanity projects that were serious in doing the same things Hill was doing tongue-in-cheek; and as an American, I think if the humor's too subtle, I won't always get it. Like one scene where Hill gets jumped by kid that the stepdad hires to attack him. He blocks the kid's punch from behind, then dispatches him with his martial arts prowess, saying "I've been sweeping legs since the 80s." Yes, I get now that Hill was playing that whole thing for laughs, but I've seen guys play that same kind of thing totally straight. Once I got it though, there's almost a genius in the way Hill executes this film. He essentially creates a "that kind of movie," a term the guys at Comeuppance use to describe films like Samurai Cop or The Room. They've always said, you can't manufacture a cult classic, and while I don't know if this is a cult classic, Hill has succeeded in crafting something here that you could watch along with one of those, and it's just as fun. Beyond Hill, the rest of the cast was great too, in particular I liked Phillyda Murphy as Candice, she was great as the Erotic Thriller femme fatale; also Simay Argento as the woman working in Jake's office who's also studying to be a PI; and of course Anton Kormoczi as the Danny Trejo look-alike stepdad--his reaction to being shot by Hill is one of the best parts of the film.
To get a better context of Hill's film making style, I watched another one of his films, Revenge of the Gweilo, which felt more obvious to me as a tongue-in-cheek send-up of action films, which in turn made the humor in this more apparent. Also, he did an interview with Jay Harangue, who has a great YouTube channel where he breaks down movies like this and pokes fun at them, and the fact that Hill would do an interview with someone who spent 11 minutes taking the piss out of his work had me intrigued, and sure enough there was a better sense that things I thought were serious actually were done more in jest. For example, there's the scene where Hill kills the stepdad, first shooting him in the stomach, then trapping him in an SUV and setting it on fire. I was like "how am I supposed to root for a guy who burns someone alive?" and the answer was "you're not supposed to root for him, you're supposed to get a kick out of it." And seen through that lens, I definitely did get a kick out of it.
One of the things that stood out was the frequency with which Hill's character was entering and exiting his car and driving places. He said on the Jay Harangue interview that in doing he was trying to replicate the vibe of lockdown during COVID, where people just ran errands and went home. The thing is, that wasn't my experience, I lived in a city in the US, my wife and I don't drive, and things were happening here like Black Lives Matter protests that turned violent, resulting in curfews and an enhanced police presence; or MAGA-heads cruising up and down Broad Street trying to intimidate us into not voting for Biden in 2020--which we did in droves, crushing Trump here in Philly. We also had the aftermath of that tumultuous presidential election, where the loser, instead of conceding defeat, was trying to find ways to circumvent the loss to stay in power. We'd never seen anything like this before in the US, but it wasn't the kind of mundane experience Hill described for himself in Australia. I think this is a risk anyone runs when they put too much of a personal experience into the vibe of a film and expect it to resonate with everyone. I get what he was trying to do, but working on the noir-ish vibe he was also going for, I could've gone for some shots of him driving, maybe arm on the window frame, trying to look cool in his silver Honda. With the humor he was able to bring in other parts of the film, I think it could've been really funny to see him do something like that.
That this is based on Blown Away is fitting, because back in 2007 I expected Erotic Thrillers to play a bigger part of the site--as I expected comedies, horror, and sci-fi to also be a bigger part of the site. What happened though, soon after I started the DTVC, was the action films got more engagement, which led to me doing more and more of those, and leaving these other genres behind. That was never my intent though, and for Hill to come to me 16 years later to have me look at this film, it reminded me how big a part Erotic Thrillers played in my love of DTV and low-budget film. To be fair, Blown Away was one I didn't entirely care for--how did everyone in that have expert-level bomb making abilities?--but they're fun in their own way, even if they don't completely work, and if anything, Hill captures the fun in this film, which I really appreciated.
Finally, despite how much we saw Hill's character getting in and out of his car, as an American I couldn't get used to him driving on the right side of the car. Look at that image above, what is the steering wheel doing there? And I don't even drive, but as a lifelong passenger I'm used to sitting in that seat while the other person drives on the left-hand side. In a way, it gives the film an alien, exotic feel, like I'm really watching a foreign indie flick. There are two things about Australia that have always scared me: one, the flight there from the East Coast US, my back and knees are hurting just thinking about it; and big spiders, if Australia has big spiders I'm out; but having experienced the driving on the left in England and almost getting hit by a car there, it does worry me if I'm ever in Australia that I may look the wrong way when crossing the street, while a distracted guy driving from one woman to another in a silver Honda might hit me. I think other than Simon from Explosive Action's shopping trips for his films and metal albums that he posts for his YouTube channel, the last time I saw something take place in Australia was a series Netflix did on sex in the digital age, where a guy in Australia had a thing for a webcam lady in the US, and he flies her out to Australia to meet him. Nothing happened between them, but it sounds like a ripe story for another Erotic Thriller--and spoiler alert, maybe she dies crossing the street while trying to run away from a giant spider!
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get Lady Terror by renting it on Amazon Prime. I think it's worth it to support an indie film like this, but if that's outside your budget, Nathan has a bunch of other films on Tubi here in the States, including Revenge of the Gweilo and I, Portrait, two of his more recent films. Thank you again to Nathan for sending me this screener, this movie was a lot of fun, and I look forward to checking out more of your films.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13464766
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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