Lady Avenger

David DeCoteau graduated from the Roger Corman school with an advanced degree in hucksterism. As one of Corman’s most teachable but also least talented students in terms of filmmaking, he did not rank among Hollywood’s distinguished filmmakers, though he did create for himself a stable position in the ranks of ultra-cheap trash that was hopeless with respect to craftmanship. Just as in the case of Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama of the same year, this time he again serves up an exemplary direct-to-VHS fraud, where the perfect cover of the cassette works like a Trojan horse via which viewers let this shitty flick invade their screens. Fortunately, this movie is significantly less boring thanks to the female lead’s ridiculous lack of acting ability. Her strenuously pinched expressions make every scene a bitter spectacle. Unlike his master, DeCoteau did not have sufficient presence of mind or budget to cast in the lead role a physically fit actress whom viewers would believe could stand up to the movie’s gallery of inept bad guys. Peggy McIntaggart is so ineffectual that not even the desperate attempt to stylise her as a hard-ass with a Rambo-esque headband and sunglasses helps (not to mention the fact that it seems they preferred not put her on cassette cover, where it is quite possible a different woman is hiding behind those sunglasses; at the very least, she has a noticeably different costume than that worn during shooting). However, DeCoteau otherwise tries to maintain at least a basic supply of genre attractions, so in addition to regularly placed anti-erotic scenes with bare breasts, he mainly invested in action scenes, which, in line with common practice, were shot by the second crew, while the car chases exhibit a much higher level of craftsmanship than the rest of the film made by DeCoteau himself. That doesn’t exactly mean they are anything to write home about and the chase scenes are interesting rather as evident manifestations of a poor budget, such as shooting in out-of-the-way industrial areas (whereas the movie is otherwise set in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood). But one explosion during a car crash is utterly perfect – it is a euphoric superlative in the case of films bearing David DeCoteau’s signature. (10.01.2021)