Bitter Desire (2025)

Nathan Hill is back! And he's going back to the Erotic Thriller well after Lady Terror. I couldn't wait to check this out, and once Nate sent me the screener I tried to make it happen as soon as I could.

Bitter Desire has Nate as police officer Steve, who has his ankle broken by criminal Andy (Tass Tokatlidis). While he's at home recovering, the department is paying for physical therapist Harmony (Hao Dao) to help with the healing process--not to mention with this being an Erotic Thriller, Steve's wife Lexi (Shar Dee) is also committed to helping Steve's recovery, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Andy's in prison, and his girlfriend Sasha (Diana Benjamin) visits him, and he tells her she's gotta get revenge on the guy who put him in the clink, Steve. While she's staking out Steve and Lexi's house, she gets the crazy Grinchy idea to replace Harmony as Steve's physical therapist. The problem is, once she gets inside their house, she starts to develop feelings for Steve. Will she be successful in her diabolical machinations?

This is another great time from Nate and company. He gets what makes Erotic Thrillers fun, and while in the process of making the movie fun, everyone is in on the bit, but it's never too over the top (Stallone style) in its attempts to have that fun. The two keys for me are Shar Dee and Diana Benjamin, in this kind of Fatal Attraction paradigm both of the actors playing those parts have to be all in for it to work. The interesting thing about the Fatal Attraction set-up here though is Nate's character more emotionally cheats on his wife than actually doing it physically, and that takes the out the element we had in Fatal Attraction where it was like "Michael Douglas is the real bad guy here, isn't he?" Also, positive spoiler, no pets get the wrong end of our femme fatal character. As we're closing in on the holiday season and all the stress that can come with that, this movie is a fun 70-minute reprieve, and if you rent it on Amazon for $1.99, you also get to support indie creatives.

We're now at seven Nate Hill films here on the site, and there hasn't been a single one of these that I haven't had a great time with. This one, like Lady Terror, is not as overtly funny as ones like Revenge of the Gweilo or Jasper, and I think for us Americans where we often need to be hit over the head with humor to get it, it might not all translate, but it helps that I know going in that the goal of Nate's movies is for us to have a good time with them. I was thinking of some of his others, like I, Portrait, where I felt like the ending in that one didn't work for me, but in this film he nails the ending, and I won't say any more than that, because I don't want to spoil any of it for you, but that ending I think encapsulates a movie that's made with giving the audience a good time at the forefront, and that's the one thread through all of Nate's films that I've seen so far, and why I've found them all enjoyable.

Often in this Fatal Attraction paradigm, the male lead in the triangle is the one where the focus is, and while Nathan's character does play an important part, Shar Dee's Lexi and Diana Benjamin's Sasha were developed more. For example, they're the ones we see talking with their friends or co-workers, while Nate is only either alone or with one or both of them. In that sense, even though this has the structure of Fatal Attraction, what we get is more like a Joan Severance or Shannon Tweed-style woman-centered Erotic Thriller. And that's where your leads have to be all-in, even if the movie is all in fun like this one is, if they're not committed to it, it loses some of the magic that makes it all work. We have to believe that Steve loves his wife and is attracted to her, but also why he may be drawn to the new woman as well. Again, it may ultimately be all in fun, but the foundation needs to be solid for that work, and I loved how Shar Dee and Diana Benjamin were able to provide that foundation.

There are two main kinds of Erotic Thrillers, one is more about rich people, and maybe someone with lesser means is drawn into the world of the affluent; the other is the every day suburbanite caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and this film fits into that second category. How do we know which of the two we're watching? It's almost always establishing shots. The fancy mansion with its big driveway and pool out back, versus the sleepy suburban town with people walking their dogs and the paper boy delivering the morning news to everyone. I loved how this movie leaned into those establishing shots. Between scenes it was shot after shot giving us the banality of suburban existence: kitchen sinks, potted plants, toasters, etc. As I mentioned above, Nate's comedy is less hit you over the head with it, but he finds his moments, whether it's with those establishing shots here, or the constant getting in and out of his car in Lady Terror, and when it works, it adds another note of enjoyment to the proceedings. 

Finally, one of my favorite YouTubers is CityNerd. If you're not familiar, he's a former city planner that now makes urbanist YouTube videos about things like how bad train travel is in the US and how great it is in Spain, or how some Major League ballparks fit right into the fabric of their cities, while others sit in the middle of a massive parking moat. Anyway, he did a great 40-minute video on his trip to Melbourne, Australia, which I really enjoyed, but he was experiencing it as a visitor and trying to show us in America how we could learn things from Melbourne's urban fabric to improve our own cities. Anyway, the thing I like about Nate's movies is they also take place in Melbourne, and you know you're in Australia, but the lives he depicts and they way his characters live them, especially in these Erotic Thrillers, could be anywhere. I love a good shot of a koala as much as the next guy--and I wouldn't complain if Nate included some in his movies--but the point is, the Australia of his movies isn't a novelty, and we're not seeing it as a visitor, we're seeing it from the point of view of people who live there, which is something I really appreciate, because no American production would make a movie set in Australia and not have it be a novelty. This is a big reason why we need to support indie filmmakers more, because they give us stories we wouldn't otherwise get.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can rent this on Prime here in the States for $1.99. If you're looking to support indie creatives, this is a great, low-cost way to do it. Maybe on Small Business Saturday, after a day of shopping, you can fire this one up. You're only tacking on a couple extra bucks to the pizza and beer you'll be having with it--and maybe you can even defray the cost by skipping a topping or something. Either way, this is a great time, and with how the world is right now, we all could use a escape.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29458517

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

 

Model Behaviour (2013)

Nate Hill is back with another film of his he wanted us to look at, this one from 2013. It's one I'd had in my Tubi queue after seeing some of his others, but then Tubi took it away. Luckily Plex has it now so we can make it happen. In addition to us, Romey Norton at Film Focus Online has covered this as well.

Model Behaviour starts with the grizzly murder of a modeling agent. He's had his manhood cutoff, and is posed in a specific position. Detective Jordan Rhodes (Hill) and his partner Carla (Samira Amira) are on the case, and the prime suspect is blond bombshell Alexis (Stacey McMahon), one of the agent's former clients. Pictures of the crime were sent to a fashion magazine from her email account, which is suspicious, but not enough to convict, so Jordan needs to dig deeper. As he does that though, he gets tangled up with Alexis while everything else in his world starts to unravel around him. Will he get it together in time to solve the crime, or will he be consumed by the irresistible forces of these beautiful women?

This was another great one from Nate. We get a mix of early 90s Erotic Thriller, late 90s/early 2000s post-Seven disturbing serial killer mystery, and more modern police procedurals. From a personal taste standpoint, I think it's that third one, the police procedural, that had more of a negative impact, because he used more dynamic camera shots for that, with a lot of movement and zooms in and out, and I prefer more static shots, but I appreciated what he was going for there. As a fan of 90s Erotic Thrillers, this hits all the right spots, from Nate's lead as the guy who seems to have it all together, only to find out he doesn't, and Stacey McMahon as the femme fatale leading us all in circles; to smaller roles like John McCullough's police captain, who's exactly that police captain from all of these films, and Ruben Francis as the psychologist telling us all the things we expect the profiler to tell us about who might be the killer. All of it works for a fun time, what more can you ask for?

I think if I had seen this before Lady Terror I would've gotten that other film better, because this is Nate doing an Erotic Thriller in a more serious, straight ahead fashion, and I could juxtapose that with Lady Terror which was more tongue-in-cheek. The thing is though, as serious as this is, it never strays from the fact that it ultimately should be a fun time. And I think that's why Nate's work resonates so well with me, he makes the kinds of movies I enjoy watching. Like this film, it doesn't try to do too much, but it also doesn't mail anything in either, and that's an important combination. Nate and everyone involved know who their audience is, what they want, and do their best to deliver it. I know when I fire up a Nate Hill picture, I'm going to enjoy myself for the next 80-90 minutes, and in these times where we have so much available at our fingertips, it makes it easier when I'm deciding on the next thing to watch.

Stacey McMahon's Alexis was a real standout as the femme fatale. She does a great job of going from potentially devious with ulterior motives, to sympathetic and someone you want to root for, then back to devious. It's almost easier to be Nate's lead, because he's trying to piece things together, and we follow him on that journey. McMahon's job is to keep us guessing, and do it in a way that's always natural and organic. I was surprised to see that this was her first feature-length performance, and she hasn't done anything since, because her performance here was so strong. None of this works as well as it does without the job she does here, so if this is the only feature-length role she does as an actor, at least it was a good one.

This is one of many films Nate does where his character gets to hook up with very attractive women, but I've noticed the characters he plays often have a lot of bad crap happen to them too. They get seduced, double-crossed, hit over the head with vases, etc. That's another way that his films work though. He's the one making them, he could just as easily say "I'm getting the girl, and I'm also the best person ever and no one can beat me." We've seen so many vanity projects like that--which was why I didn't catch onto the fact that Lady Terror was tongue-in-cheek right away, I've seen that movie done seriously too many times--and I think that's why Nate told us on the podcast that some distributors don't like films written, directed, and starring the same person, they're afraid of some insufferable vanity thing; but Nate's films aren't that, his main characters are flawed and don't always have it all figured out, they don't always win everything, and that's refreshing compared to some of the other things we've seen over the years on the site.

Finally, as Nate's character's life is unraveling, the inevitable happens: the chief suspends him! "Give me your gun and your badge!" I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the US that whole thing is a bit unrealistic. First off, if the chief tried to suspend him, the Fraternal Order of Police would either protest, or they'd invoke an arbitration clause in their contract with the city, and once the arbitrator ruled in their favor, Nate's character would be back on the street in no time. I wish more movies used that more realistic approach. Like instead Nate's character being questioned by his fellow officers as things get more dire for him, they'd be like "how do we help cover this up for you? There are no Serpicos in this department!" "But I didn't do anything? I'm not guilty." "Sure you're not... just let us take care of everything and we'll get this behind us... just kinda stop the whole killing thing." "But I'm telling you I'm not the killer!"

Before me and my realism totally dismantles one of our favorite tropes, the "give me your gun and your badge" scene, why don't I wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on Plex, or buy it on DVD as part of a Hill triple feature with Jasper and Revenge of the Gweilo. If you're looking for a fun Erotic Thriller, this is a great bet.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2391622

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

I, Portrait (2021)

Friend of the site Nate Hill reached out to see if we could review some more of his films, starting with this one. Considering how much I enjoyed the first four I watched, that was a no-brainer. In addition to us, Romey Norton at Film Focus Online has covered this as well.

I, Portrait follows famous painter Carmen (Natalie Heslop), who has just married casting director Julian (Hill), and is looking to get back into painting after taking a break. The thing is, if she paints blindfolded, and focuses on what she's painting, whatever she paints becomes reality. Her husband indulges it, if only to have the blindfolding lead to some sexy lovemaking, but the next day Carmen's old friend Stephanie (Sienna Stass) shows up unexpectedly. Could the painting be connected? After getting the initial pleasantries out of the way, Carmen gets the sense Steph wants to hook up with her husband, which naturally would be upsetting to anyone, but when Steph decides to overstay her welcome, now things seem like they're turning downright sinister. Will Carmen get to the bottom of everything in time?

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It brought back memories of 90s Erotic Thrillers, but in a modern, Australian setting, which made it all more refreshing. I had some qualms about a few things, one of which is the ending, which I'll get to in a later paragraph so I don't spoil it for anyone, but there were some real inspired moments too. My favorite scene came when the three of them went out to eat after Stephanie arrived. No dialog, just music and shots of each of their faces, but in those shots, we could see how Stephanie was making eyes at Julian, how Julian was appreciating the attention, and how Carmen wasn't. It built tension and moved the plot in a really creative and organic way that I always love seeing. One of the qualms actually also highlighted something I liked about the film. As the tension was building to the end, there's a break where Carmen and Julian go to a club and listen to a singer, Leslie Lawrence, who's performing this haunting, but also apt song called "Rain." The problem for me was, it was the whole song, and at this point I want to get to that ending because of how well it's all built up! I felt like when I order food, and the app says it'll arrive at one time, but it's 30 minutes later. You can't leave your audience hungry like that! But the fact that that tension was built so well, and that song fit so well, was another aspect I appreciated, so it's a good problem to have. Speaking of songs, Nate's long-time collaborator Jane Badler sings the opening, "Yesterday's Tomorrows," which had a 90s feel and got me in the 90s Erotic Thriller mindset; and then "Secret Smiles," written by William Katt--yes that William Katt--and performed by "Billy Katt," who I assume is him too, so really cool to have him do one of the songs. If you're wondering why William Katt is tagged here, that's why. For me, even with the qualms, this is 80s minutes of Erotic Thriller fun, and well worth checking out.

This is now five films for Nate on the site, and I initially planned to rank them, but this one kind of throws the idea of ranking them out the window. It's more serious than the other four I've reviewed, but what I think I loved most was how, as serious as it was, it didn't forget to include the fun, which is the best part of the Erotic Thriller. I joke about how when I saw Lady Terror, I didn't get the humor in it and had to watch some of Nate's other films, but I wonder if I'd seen this one before that if I would've gotten it more too, because here he isn't as much tongue-in-cheek, it's more straight ahead, and the fun is the fun you find in a well-made Erotic Thriller, so it would've made a good comparison point. One thing I think I would've liked more out of this one though, is if his character was kept out of things a bit more. I think there's an idea of a love triangle, but really it's more about the tension between Carmen and Stephanie, and Julian worked better for me as another vessel for that tension between them.

Speaking of which, the performances by Natalie Heslop and Sienna Stass really made this for me. None of this works if they both weren't all in, not just on the sexual stuff, but the tense interactions and the physical confrontations too. When Stephanie first shows up at the door, we gotta know that she's bad news, and then get the anticipation of the tension that will come as Natalie starts to pick up on that bad news. There were a few moments where I think that could've even been played better. For example, after the dinner date with Julian, the two go horseback riding, and then Natalie offers to do Stephanie's make-up. I think we needed something more there, whether it's Natalie doing Stephanie's make-up to make her look plainer compared to how she looked when they all went out to eat, or maybe she has insecurities, and she purposefully makes Stephanie look hot so it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in her mind that Julian will cheat. Right after that scene, Carmen's friend Kelly shows up, and Carmen rudely introduces Stephanie to her as "this is Stephanie, she's from the country," not, "this is Stephanie, she's my old friend from high school." If there could've been some more palpable tension during the make-up scene, like there was at the dinner scene, that rudeness, and then Stephanie's response, would've worked better. Again, that's a minor qualm on what were two great performances.

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

If you're reading after this, you've been warned, but I needed to talk about the ending, and I didn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen this yet. I don't know that it would ruin the film for you, and you may disagree that it was even an issue. Leading up to the end, it was great. As I mentioned above, the tension was building, then we get the confrontation, which was everything you want in an Erotic Thriller showdown. But then, as the fight goes to the pool, Julian wakes up from his concussion, and joins the fight, ultimately helping Carmen hold Stephanie's head underwater and drown her. It was too cold blooded an ending, I need the baddie to somehow either die by their own hand, or leave the heroes no choice, and here once they'd sufficiently restrained her, drowning seemed excessive. Now, Nate mentioned a possible future film where he marries the characters from his films into one universe, and if the plan is to say actually Carmen and Julian let Stephanie up and called the cops, and then maybe Phillyda Murphy's Candace Knight breaks her out of the mental hospital she's confined in and the team up to try to take out Jasper, I'll take all this back. Short of that though, it just didn't sit as well with me as the rest of the film.

END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!!

Finally, if you've been rockin' with us for any amount of time, you know I'm a bit of a transit geek, so when I saw a Melbourne commuter train in the beginning I was stoked. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia page--which I did during the commercials on Plex--told me that Melbourne's transit underwent a similar period of being diminished in favor of the car as it did in the US, but starting in the late 90s, there's been a resurgence there, supported by the government, that we haven't had here yet. They also farmed out the service to a private company, which we're starting to see here now as well with Brightline service. Anyway, beyond my geekiness, I thought the inclusion of the commuter train was important to the story too. Trains often portend ominous events, and this one appeared at the same time we first saw Stephanie, so it was all kind of Hitchcockian in that way; on the other hand though, the fact that it was a commuter train, something people take to and from work every day, brought home Nate's theme of his stories, how everyday people can find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and while Julian would never take a commuter train, using it in the background as that metaphor allows Nate to reinforce that theme. It's just more really great stuff that I love seeing in a movie.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Even though IMDb says this is on Tubi, as far as I can tell it's no longer there, so Plex is the best option here in the States, or you can rent it from Prime--which isn't a bad way to support indie creatives either. This is just a fun Erotic Thriller, it's not trying to be anything more than it is, but with the cast and crew fully invested, it fulfills exactly what you want when you fire it up on your streaming device. Can't wait to see what Nate's got for us next!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6831966

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Jasper (2011)

I first got wind of this film when I watched Jay Harangue's interview with Nathan Hill, the film's star and director, and Nate told Jay this is the one he needed to see. Considering I've now seen three of Hill's movies, Lady Terror, Revenge of the Gweilo, and Alien Love, and I enjoyed all three, if he was recommending this one, I needed to check it out too. In addition to us, Jay Harangue has covered this on his YouTube channel, and Romey Norton covered it on Film Focus Online.

Jasper has Hill as the eponymous hero, a private dick who was just about to retire, when a lady of the night (Sandy Greenwood) calls in his services to find her kidnapped son. No sooner do they get it on, when a couple of baddies show up, take her, and give Jasper a knock upside the head. When he comes to, he realizes he's the only one who can save her and her son, so he loads up on Red Bull and gets after it, going from hooking up with women every place he goes, to getting beaten up every place he goes, but at each stop, he gets clues that bring him closer to the truth. The question is, will there be anything left of him when he finds it?

Like Nate's other films, this was a ton of fun. I like Gweilo best, but this is pretty close. It plays on all the tropes of the Noir-ish thriller, and almost hits you over the head with them, but there's still the right amount of playing it straight that makes it work. A big part of that is all of the women who play opposite Hill, they're all in, and if they weren't, the veneer of playing it straight layered over the goofiness and tongue-in-cheek vibe that makes this whole thing so much fun would break down. I also like how Hill mitigates the low-budget limitations of the film with the goofiness that everyone is playing straight, because it sets Jasper in this surreal world that's just real enough to be believable--and this surreal aspect is furthered by the video game animations of the character in the opening credits. 75 minutes, free on Tubi, and a fun time, it's a perfect combination.

I could say Nate's done it again, but this is actually the oldest of his films that I've reviewed, so the other ones were more doing it again. Either way, I just love how he nails this spoof of hard boiled detective films, but in a way that no one but us as the audience is in on the joke. I also loved that as the hero, he both gets all the girls, but also gets beaten up the whole time. In many cases his attempts to hook up are interrupted by the baddies coming to beat him up, which makes it all the more fun. Because he's directed many films, he has a clear voice and tone in his films, and with this being the fourth one I've seen, I can tell early on that I'm watching a Nathan Hill film. When he was on the podcast, more to discuss his latest film, Alien Love, he did get into this one some too, and mentioned that because he's an actor himself, as a director he's able to get a lot of buy-in from the cast, and that's something I think really comes through in the finished product.

Of those many performances, I think my favorite was Sarah Howett, who played Sara the Boxer. Obviously as a professional in real life, she was really skilled, but the screen presence was solid too, especially for her not having acted as much. It looks like she hasn't done much since this, and what she has done haven't been big parts. One name that comes to mind when seeing her is Mimi Lesseos, who had a nice career in the 90s with a few leading roles in DTV actioners. I don't know how much DTV action is shot in Australia, but I think some of the ones coming out of England right now could use her, especially since she also does stunt work. Another name that stood out was Candice Day as Coffy, who's actually played a few Coffys in her short film career, but on the pod Nate explained that in this instance it was an homage to Pam Grier's Coffy, which Tarantino was also a fan of, and as a fan myself, I thought that was really cool. It was a short, but fun scene.

As you're watching this, you might notice there's a lot of Red Bull. Jasper drinks it a few times, it's conspicuously sitting on a tray of food in a hotel room, and a bar has stacks of it in a cooler. I asked Nate about that, and he said he asked Red Bull about them helping to fund the film with product placement. The product came, he placed it, but the money didn't follow. It's a lesson to filmmakers trying to get funding this way, that if the product comes, the money isn't guaranteed. A film this brings to mind is Deadly Prey with the New York Seltzer product placement. Considering the van that the baddies drive had a crack in the windshield, I wonder if the same thing happened. David Prior or David Winters were like "sorry fellas, we wanted to fix the cracked windshield, but the New York Seltzer money hasn't come yet!" The Red Bull product placement does end up being a fun element to the movie, just too bad the money wasn't there for them.

Finally, speaking of Red Bull, I have a thing for energy drinks. I don't exactly love the energy or the crash after, but I love how they taste. If I go in the store and see a new flavor of Red Bull, or Monster, or Ghost, or whatever, I have to get it, even if I've already had coffee that day. This might sound like a problem, but luckily energy drink companies don't release new flavors that often, so I can go through the refrigerated case at 7-11 and say "oh, I've already tried the Red Bull Winter Edition," or the Monster Guava Paradise, or the Ghost Sour Apple Sour Patch Kids. You might think that all of the Red Bull in this movie would be right up my alley, but it's just regular Red Bull, I've had that however many times before. It's when I see that they have a new flavor that I get geeked up. Just talking about this makes me want to run to 7-11 to see what other flavors they have.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream Jasper, along with many of Nathan Hill's other films, on Tubi here in the States. It's well worth it, this is a lot of fun, and streaming free on Tubi is a great way you can support indie at no cost to you. And for the podcast episode where Nathan talks about this and his other films, you can find that in our podcast archives, episode 183. It was a great conversation, and well-worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1691862

Looking for more action? Check out my new novella, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Alien Love (2024)

Nathan Hill is back! We had a great time with Lady Terror and Revenge of the Gweilo, so I was excited when he reached out to see if we'd cover his newest film. In addition to us, YouTube channel Jay Harangue has covered this as well.

Alien Love has Hill as Ryan Van Hill-Song, an astronaut in a world where astronauts are rock stars. When he finally gets his big chance to go into space with NASA, something goes wrong--he goes radio silent for 60 seconds! Luckily a NASA special agent has informed his wife Sadie (Ira Chakraborty) that there's nothing to worry about, even if he ventured all the way out to Australia to tell her. When Hill gets home, everything seems fine at first, but then she discovers her husband's not himself. He's jogging a lot, and sometimes has a larger-than-normal erection. Unfortunately she doesn't catch all these red flags before he impregnates her with his alien seed. As her world unravels, she's fortunate that she kept the NASA special agent's card--though he's already onto everything and has sent some folks out to take care of it.

This was a lot of fun. There were definite laugh-out-loud moments, like when Hill and Chakraborty are sitting at a cafe, he in a NASA T-shirt and Kennedy Space Station hat, and a young woman rushes up to their table and asks if he's an astronaut, then asks for his autograph. Hill's character's transformation is a lot of fun, from his ambling around the neighborhood with what could loosely be termed "jogging," to when he goes to a bar and orders champagne and hooks up with Demz Lato--who I swear I've seen in other Hill films before, but she's not listed on any I've seen. I also really liked Ira Chakraborty as the wife who thinks she's got it made with her astronaut husband, but then slowly sees that her life is falling apart. Unlike Hill, who could ham it up a bit as he was becoming more alien, Chakraborty always had to play it straight, which I can't imagine was always easy, but she pulled it off. 75 minutes, free to stream on Tubi, and a fun time, what more could you want?

Even though Hill didn't direct this, he co-wrote and produced it, so it still has the feel of one of his films. Unlike Lady Terror, where I missed initially that I should be laughing with the film, this one I could feel it right away; but I can also still see how people could miss it, especially us Americans who sometimes need to be hit over the head with the humor. The thing I loved about Alien Love was how his approach to making these movies can mitigate the budgetary limitations. If you don't have the budget for an expensive outer space set, if your hero astronaut is playing it straight but we know it's for laughs, the lower-budget set enhances that sense. If your stars are newer to acting--and based on the fact that very few have photos on their IMDb page, that's probably the case here--playing silly-ish dialog straight is a great way for them to be serious while we're having fun with the content of what they're saying and not that they're inexperienced as actors. I'm really glad Nate reached out to me to cover his films, because they're a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see what's next!

As you're reading this, you might be thinking "isn't that the plot to The Astronaut's Wife?" I'd actually forgotten that movie existed, but yeah, it definitely is, the same way Lady Terror was like the Haim/Feldman flick Blown Away, and Revenge of the Gweilo took elements from Drive. That's part of how Hill works, he pays homage to other films, and then puts his unique twist on them. What was crazier to me was that this year marks 25 years since The Astronaut's Wife came out, which explains why before watching this I'd forgotten about it. That was a time when R-rated movies were more common. If a studio were to remake The Astronaut's Wife today, it would have to be PG-13, though maybe now with the success off Deadpool and Wolverine, maybe R-rated movies in wide theatrical release will come back. If not, at the very least Nate can bring them back to us in his own special way.

This movie has a lot of flying saucer imagery, which made me wonder when flying saucers were first invented. According to Wikipedia, it was a sighting reported by a pilot in 1947, which then led to myriad other reported sightings. From there, 1950s sci-fi movies and TV shows made heavy use of it, so much so that now if we see a flying saucer in a movie, TV show, or even commercial, we know right away that that means aliens, the same way the opening wah-wah to "Let's Get It On" tells us something we're going to see is alluding to sex. The propagation of sightings makes sense too. It's like how one Karen's Facebook post about two people of color in the Hobby Lobby parking lot being potential traffickers will lead to thousands of Karens across the US thinking traffickers are targeting them in Hobby Lobby parking lots too. It's a fascinating thing about us humans, how one person sees something and then a bunch of us think we see it too, and popular media can exacerbate it, turning things into phenomena faster. In the 70s Sci-Fi imagery started to change, and the flying saucer became less ubiquitous, meaning maybe we'll also be released from the fugazi trafficking paradigm we're seeing in every third DTV actioner or Lifetime thriller--though to be fair, flying saucers were actually fun, as evidenced by how much fun they were in this film.

Finally, I don't know why, but whenever I see the film's title, Alien Love, I get Zapp's "Computer Love" stuck in my head. They aren't the same thing, I mean I guess they're both three syllables for the first word and "love" for the second, but that's it. After watching this I was making dinner, and our fluffy cat Luca was hanging out with me, so the whole time I was singing "Computer Fluff," which makes even less sense. It was really ahead of its time though, predicting how we'd all end up using computers to meet romantic partners. Zapp had some great hits, like "More Bounce to the Ounce" or their cover of the Smokey Robinson song "Ooh, Baby, Baby," and then in the 90s their music was a huge part of the West Coast hip hop scene. Here's to you Roger Troutmann and the rest of Zapp, you were great ones--now I just need to get "Computer Love" out of my head!

With that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States. It's a lot of fun, and it's only 75 minutes. What better way to support indie creatives? Thanks again to Nate for having us review it, I really enjoyed it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28434918

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Revenge of the Gweilo (2020)

Even though we're currently in Hall of Fame month, I figured we'd take a short break from it so I could get this one reviewed. After watching Lady Terror for director/writer/actor/producer Nathan Hill, I wanted to have a better context of him as a filmmaker, so I saw this was on Tubi around the same time and figured I'd give it a look. Unfortunately though I got backed up with work and other things, and fell behind on getting it reviewed, so we're finally making it happen now.

Revenge of the Gweilo has Hill as Joseph Lucky, an ex-cop whose fiancee is murdered by some Asian organized crime assassins. Instead of letting the law take care of it, he takes the law into his own hands, and goes on a rampage full of martial arts and explosions, on the warpath for revenge. The baddies, led by the villainous Ishtar (Tritia DeViSha) will not go down that easily though. It'll take everything Lucky's got if he's going to take them all down and get the revenge he so desperately seeks.

This one was a lot of fun, and provided that context I needed to get more of the humor in Lady Terror. The humor in this one was a little more obvious, but also with more of an action background myself, I got more of what he was going for, especially with all the nods to Drive, one of my favorite films. To me, this is what Samurai Cop 2 should've been, and if they ever decide to make a Samurai Cop 3, Hill should be the one tapped to direct it. While this is a send-up of action movies, it doesn't hit you over the head with it, which is refreshing to me. It's like he's cleverly crafting a film in the mold of a Samurai Cop or Miami Connection, which is something I didn't think was possible, and I know Brett and Ty at Comeuppance have said you can't manufacture a cult classic. I think Nathan's pulled it off though, and for a free streamer here in the States on Tubi, it's definitely worth checking out.

A big part of why this works so well is, as funny or as silly as it might be in parts, Nathan Hill comes into this film with a cohesive vision of what he wants this movie to be. That doesn't mean things don't change in the process, or that elements he wanted to look a certain way he needed to compromise on due to various limitations that come with making films independently, but the film has a tone and a feel that's consistent throughout. Without that baseline, I don't know that any of this works as well as it does. Even if he did add things in later in the process, nothing feels like it was just dumped in. I think compared to Lady Terror, where he also had that consistency, but there were elements he was going for in that like the repetition of getting in and out of a car that didn't land as well for me, this one as a whole resonated better with me, perhaps because as an action fan I saw more of what he was going for. In either case, that clear and consistent tone is so important, and the fact that Nathan doesn't compromise on that means that whatever other elements he has to compromise on due to the limitations of working on a small budget don't hurt the overall enjoyment of the film.

As much as you need a great hero in an action film, you also need a great baddie, and that's where Tritia DeViSha comes in. Like everything in this movie, she needs to be funny, but not over-the-top or too in your face about it, and she does that here--again, keeping to the tone the film was going for. Going back to that comparison to Samurai Cop 2, where we had Bai Ling as the baddie, in that film she was expected to turn the dial up to 15 and just go, which was too much. Had that film gone with this approach to the baddie for her, I think it would've worked better. Samurai Cop 2 felt like a bunch of stuff was tossed into a blender, while here everything felt much more intentional, including Tritia's performance. We still got that a lot of what she was doing was being played for laughs, but she was also still very much the baddie, and really gave Nathan's hero stakes to overcome--which again, while it's all meant to be funny, we need things like stakes to hold it all together.

With an action film, it's always going to be judged by the action in it, and while this was played for laughs, it was fun to see the way the fight scenes were carried off. Nathan Hill is an accomplished martial artist, and unlike the mugger in Lady Terror, it looked like the baddies he fought in this were trained as well. Probably the most fun fight scene was the one he had with a sumo wrestler, which again married humor with actual stakes to make it really entertaining. According to the IMDb trivia, he almost broke his back filming those scenes, and I feel like you can see when that moment is when you watch it. I can imagine choreographing a fight between a sumo wrestler and a non-sumo wrestler probably presents all kinds of challenges, and there was a sense of danger in watching this, like at any moment Hill could be seriously injured, so I wasn't surprised to hear that he actually almost was.

Finally, the film starts with the Chinese New Year Festival in Melbourne, Australia's Chinatown. I'm always a fan of Chinatowns, and love going to the Chinatown here in Philly, or visiting ones when I travel. One thing that was cool about this shot here, is there's a 7-11, and the Chinatown in Philly has one near it as well. Growing up in Maine, the Chinatown we had closest to us was in Boston--though according to Wikipedia Portland used to have one too--but I never really went until I was older, so it's possible the first Chinatown I ever went to was in London. Anyway, the one in Melbourne looks really nice, and I'd like to visit sometime--though I feel like I should at least finally get to the one in New York before I fly half-way across the world to visit one.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can find Revenge of the Gweilo on Tubi here in the States, and I think it's on Prime in the UK. Definitely one to check out, a great merging of comedy and action, it was a lot of fun.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4110978

Looking for more action? Check out my new novella, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

Lady Terror (2023)

Producer, actor, and director Nathan Hill came to me to see if I'd review his newest film for him. It's based somewhat on Blown Away, a film I did way back in August of 2007, when the site was very new. Now here we are, 16 years later, covering an indie film inspired by it, something I would not have predicted if you'd asked me back in 2007. It's always fun to do streamers for filmmakers though, and I was excited to see how this one went.

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!