Cinderella's Revenge (2024)

This is a film we covered on the pod back on episode 157, when the film's screenwriter and friend of the site Tom Jolliffe was on to discuss it with us. At that time, the film had a limited theatrical release that included a theater in the Philly suburbs, so I was able to get out there and see it then on the big screen. Now it's finally on Tubi here in the States, so I figured it was time to review it here too.

Cinderella's Revenge has Lauren Staerck as our eponymous hero. After her father is framed by her stepmother and executed by a couple of bounty hunters, she's forced to live a life of toil and abuse at the hands of the stepmother and her stepsisters. When a ball is announced for the prince to find a mate, initially Cinderella is stuck at home, but a visit from her Fairy Godmother (Natasha Henstridge) changes all that, allowing Cinderella to go and be the belle of the ball. This only enrages her stepmother and stepsiblings even more, but instead of taking it lying down, Cinderella asks her Fairy Godmother for help again, and she gives Cinderella the strength to exact bloody revenge on all who have wronged her.

 

This was a lot of fun, a great mix of comedic, lighthearted moments, and gory, horror ones. When one of the stepsisters saws off her two smallest toes to try to fit into Cinderella's shoes, it was definitely a cringe-worthy moment for me, which is what a movie like this wants, but Tom reminded me on the podcast that that was taken from the original version of the story--not something we'll see in the Disney adaptations. Adding to the levity, Natasha Henstridge was great as the Fairy Godmother, off-beat, caring, and perhaps a bit sinister. This is juxtaposed with Stephanie Lodge's villainous stepmother, who is never not menacing and vile; and the two stepsisters, played by Beatrice Fletcher and Megan Purvis, who were more silly in their performances--Purvis in particular reminded me of Tracy Ullman. Then all of this is tied together by Lauren Staerck, who we really have to become invested in early on so we can be there to root for her when she starts the killing spree. It all works in a fun, 85-minute package, and while you can't see it in the theater anymore, Tubi is as great a place as any to check it out.

 

The big name in this is Natasha Henstridge, who we've seen here two other times, first in '07 with the Pyun/Lambert flick Adrenaline: Fear the Rush, and then in '08 with Riders aka Steal, with Stephen Dorff and Bruce Payne. 16 years feels like a long time between posts for her, but in looking over her IMDb bio, the only thing I see that we probably should've reviewed is 2016's Home Invasion with Scott Adkins and Jason Patric, but it was dumped from Tubi before I had a chance to catch it, and it's been lost to me ever since. I was surprised to find out that she's not that old, as she was only 21 when she did Species, and 22 when she did Adrenaline: Fear the Rush and Maximum Risk. So how do we get here, from Species to low-budget films like this--even if this one was produced by Mark L. Lester? In her IMDb trivia, she said she wasn't good at choosing movies, and turned down Independence Day and Men in Black for those two movies I just mentioned. That's the start, right? Then two underperforming films, Species II and Ghosts of Mars, a success in a supporting role in The Whole Nine Yards, only to see that sequel not do as well, and now we're doing She Spies. (Which I have to admit I was a fan of.) Seeing her here, where she's bringing a lot of great stuff to the table, we can see where she could've shined in bigger films. Maybe if Elektra didn't do so poorly, Marvel wouldn't have waited until Captain Marvel to make another female-led adaptation. And maybe we could still see her in something like that, but in the meantime, we can enjoy her work here.

 

That's right, Mark L. Lester produced this, he of Commando, Showdown in Little Tokyo, The Base films, and many others. Somehow I missed that he also produced The Gardener, the Gary Daniels film I reviewed recently. Over the last ten years or so, he's stopped directing and turned his attention to producing low-budget films like this--the one he did before this was Ouija Witch, which is also on all the free streamers here in the States. This kind of stuff is fun for sure, but what the world needs is another balls-to-the-wall actioner! Call up Dolph, call up Dacascos--hell if Arnold won't answer your calls, at least call Vernon Wells--and let's blow some shit up! And you've got the screenwriter you need, Tom can give you 90 pages. At the very least, just consider it, and if not for us, please, do it for the kids.

Obviously as the DTV Connoisseur, I don't see movies in the theater that often, let alone review ones I've seen at the theater on my site, so this was a unique experience, but one I hope to have more often. Yes, with me not having a car it's a bit of a hike up to Warrington where this was showing, but it was a fun adventure and worth the trip to support an indie low-budget release like this, and I would happily do it more often if more films like this were showing in the area. For low-budget distributors considering limited releases of their films, one benefit I hadn't considered was the exposure you get from people coming to see other things. At the time this was playing, the new Ghostbusters movie and The Fall Guy were also playing, so anyone coming to see those would see the poster for this and, even if they didn't come back and see it, would have been exposed to it, so when they saw it months later as they're paging through Tubi, it might be enough to have them give it a try among all the other options on there.

 

Finally, we live in a world of expansive movie universes. The MCU is perhaps the most well known, or DC, but Star Trek and Star Wars also come to mind, or even the Fast and Furious. What about fairy tale characters though? They're all public domain, so anyone can use them. Maybe you make a sequel to this, introduce Hansel and Gretel in it, give them their own movie, then go from there, building to a major film with all the characters from the previous films fighting two or three big baddies. And because these stories have been changed and fudged and passed around for centuries, like this one here, you can do whatever you want with it. I think we might have something with this...

But for now, it's just Cinderella's Revenge, and you can get it on Tubi here in the States. I had a really fun time with it, and I think it's worth checking out, especially if you're looking for some off-beat horror to pass the time. Kudos to everyone involved, including Tom, who wrote a great screenplay here. Again, you can check out my conversation with him on this on episode 157 in the archives.

 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28087226

 

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/

 

Riders aka Steal (2002)

I first came into contact with this film at 3am on Spike TV. I fell asleep for a bunch of it, but I had intended to put it on the blog back when I started it a year and a half ago. I was reintroduced to it recently by the women at Bruce's Angels (you can find a link to their site under the section Other Great Sites), because it starred their homeboy, Bruce Payne. It was definitely better when I watched the whole thing.

Steal has Stephen Dorff as a guy who leads a band of extreme adrenaline junkies in committing some major cash heists. Bruce Payne plays a police lieutenant on their trail, and Natasha Henstridge is on his task force. As you can imagine, whenever Payne's involved, things aren't what they seem, and to make matters worse, Dorff's gang has stolen twenty million dollars in untraceable bonds. Now they've got Payne and the people whose bonds they stole after them. They may be in a little over their head.



This was a pretty sweet flick. The action was almost nonstop, which I'm sure most of you know is something I need in my bad movie. The plot was sufficiently nuanced without getting in the way: a rare find in a movie of this caliber. The car chases and explosions were really solid, again proving to these Hollywood blockbusters that you don't need a lot of CGIs to entertain us. Give me a rig driving on the side of it's wheels in slow motion, or some Rollerbladers jumping a police car, or an armored vehicle exploding in flames with Bruce Payne saying "That had to hurt", and I'm plenty happy.

I've always dug Stephen Dorff, especially when he was the head baddie in Blade, one of the best vampire movies ever (along with its two sequels). I think Dorff would've made a better Dracula in the third one, to be honest. Anyway, as far as this film goes, he fit his role perfectly. Cocky, smooth talking, calm under pressure, but willing take care of business without a moment's hesitation. There was some question as to whether he or Natasha Henstridge is the protagonist, and the ending clears it up for you. I won't give it a way. What I will be doing is looking for more Stephen Dorff films to post.



Something must be wrong if Dorff beat out Bruce Payne for the coveted paragraph after the What I Thought paragraph. I'm sure my friends at Bruce's Angels know what that is without me saying it, but I'll let everyone else in: no English accent again. Come on! Really? Lt. MacGruder worked better as a character with a bad Brooklyn accent than he would've with a too sweet British one? In my mind, that horrible accent he tried to perpetrate did more to ruin the impeccable pin-striped suit he was wearing than if I'd emptied a mustard container on it. It just made him look abominable. This is my deal: how can you cast Bruce Payne, and not realize how awesome he was in Warlock III and Highlander: Endgame? What do you think makes him so awesome in those movies? His accent!

What makes this all the more frustrating is Payne's character was actually a pretty cool baddie for a pretty cool movie. The accent would've worked if Harvey Keitel was playing the role. But he wasn't, and I feel that using the fake Brooklyn accent diminished what would've been such a home run. Instead it was a ground rule double, and the runner was stranded on second. Don't get me wrong, a double is way better than a lot of the strike outs and weak grounders back to the mound that I review here, but it's hard to take when what seems like so simple an error to avoid was committed.



This is only the second film of Natasha Henstridge's I've reviewed, the other being the Albert Pyun/Christopher Lambert sci-fi flick Adrenaline: Fear the Rush. Looking at her imdb profile, she actually hasn't done that much that qualifies for a spot here at the DTVC, which is kind of surprising to me. I guess having watched her in She Spies back when I was up late doing grad school work, I figured DTV was right up her alley. I'll see if I can get Species III up, but there ain't much after that. Kind of too bad. As far as this goes, she's not in it that much, so if you're watching it for her, you can take it or leave it.

I'd say rent this. If the only real issue I can take with it is Bruce Payne's bad Brooklyn accent (and believe me, that's a REAL issue), then there's probably not much to stop anyone without that particular hang-up from having a good time with it. It tends to pop up on places like Spike late at night, and if you see it there, you could do a lot worse at that time. To quote Depeche Mode "Just like a rainbow, you always set me free."

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0282552/

Adrenalin: Fear the Rush (1996)

Many readers have e-mailed me asking why I don't give as much attention to bad movie directors as I do bad movie actors and actresses. I must admit that this is a serious lack of sound judgment on my part, and I am now, starting with this blog, attempting to remedy that issue.

It came to my attention that Albert Pyun has directed multiple films which the DTVC reviewed. Not only that, but he's responsible for a couple classics like Cyborg and MST3K's Alien From LA. When I went to imdb to look up info for the film I'm reviewing here, I saw his name and thought: "That sounds really familiar". As it turns out, he's something of a Direct to Video Martin Scorsese... or maybe Paul Verhoeven.



Adrenalin: Fear the Rush takes place in a future that's now the past (i.e. 2007), where a bunch of people are infected with a virus, and those that aren't have walled themselves in. Our story is set in Boston or Bucharest (it's not really clear) in one of the zones outside the walled in area. Some mutant that looks like a dude from The Hills Have Eyes is killing people, and beat cop Natasha Henstridge is called in to save the day. She sucks, her partner's killed, so now DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert is called in with some other people (one of whom is the android that gets his head knocked off in Omega Doom-- also a Pyun film, go figure). They don't do much better, until the very end, when they finally use their guns and shoot him.

Between the title and cover, one might get the impression that this film is pretty silly. I'm here to tell you that the movie delivers. It's that silly. The biggest issue for me was the "is it Boston or Bucharest" thing. The police cars are marked "Policias", and everyone has what looks to be Romanian flags on their shoulders. By the same token, the film is adamant that we're in Boston in 2007 AD.



That's another thing I love about the futuristic bad movie: when they put the date up as being whatever time AD. As opposed to what, BC? I've always wondered if they feel it adds a level of sophistication to their otherwise lackluster film. For me it's more of a sign post that lets me know what direction the movie's taking me, and that I should buckle up, because it could be a bumpy ride.

Natasha Henstridge plays a cop who for some reason doesn't shoot the mutant thing when she has a chance in the first twenty minutes of the film. She had a gun, and he didn't, and she had a clean shot at him. I understand that Pyun didn't want her to kill the baddie in the opening moments, because there'd be no film left after that. Just the same, I need a better reason for a trained cop to not a shoot a mutant that's just killed and mutilated a baker's dozen's worth of people beyond simply "if you kill him now, we'd have no more movie".



Lambert is great in this. It may not be his best effort, but his voice is in full effect, and he looks hilarious in this shielded riot helmet thing. In the immortal words of Shakespeare "What, is my beaver easier than it was?" (King Richard III). In your case, Lambert, it was sillier than it was, and it made up for the fact that you didn't have the great hair you had in Beowulf and Druids. Even better, at the end, he survives something like seven gunshots to his torso. Don't ask me how.

This film is twenty kinds of silly, despite being a tad on the brutal side in terms of violence. I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're a Lambert completist (which I'm not). Your best bet is to rent it whenever your local video store has a two-for-one deal. I did it recently with Steven Seagal's Submerged, and I felt like I got my money's worth with both. So did my friends.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115471/