Cover Art

Credits

Director: Scotty JX Starring: Veronica Zemanova, Kathy Lee, Kobe Kaige, Susana Spears, Erica Campbell, Lilian Tiger, Marketa Morgan, Hana Black Screenplay: Scotty JX Country: USA

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Frequent visitors to Digital Retribution might be familiar with my undying love for the Actiongirls franchise. I've reviewed many an Actiongirls flick for these pages, and I love 'em. I love 'em all. Simple as that. The basic gist, for those who haven't been keeping up, is that the world is in post-apocalyptic phase, ruled by gangs of bikers who are hell-bent on repopulating the world with their own kind, and who use women as breeders in order to do so. The Actiongirls aren't so keen on this, and fight back, mainly through the awesome crime-fighting power of their boobs. Oh, and high calibre weaponry. It's a good thing.

So my teaser from the back cover is that this film is going to include: Cheerleaders from Hell, Nude Bus Riding, Naked Quad Bike Racing, Political Freak Shows, Angry School Girls, Babes With Flamethrowers, Babes on Tanks and much more. I'm sold! One Actiongirls please barkeep! Oh, how I wish… Come with me (no, not like that!) as I watch and review Actiongirls.com Volume 5 – this is real-time reviewing, folks. I wonder if that makes me an Actionreviewer? As I look like the comic-book store guy from The Simpsons, I'd say not.

So we start off proceedings with no hint of plot, but with a rather buxom and botoxed scantily clad girl (Australian Penthouse Pet of the Year Kobe Kaige) who gyrates nicely with a large handgun. This does tend to set the scene for what is to come; unrelated vignettes (if you'd call them that) of wonderfully semi- and/or naked women. I'm loving this already. Can't quite see how it all relates back to this whole idea of fighting back against the oppressors, but I guess you can't have everything – it's not like I was putting this on expecting Ken Loach-style realism.

And we're on with the Nude Bus Riding – woo-hoo! Again, the whole fighting back thing? Who cares? Why are you complaining at the lack of action? You're looking at hot, and by this I mean truly stunning, women, usually covered with little more than a thin layer of baby oil, some brandishing automatic weaponry. I do not understand your problem. Although, I did have to ask, who's keeping the buses running in a post-apocalyptic world? Maybe the director was simply trying to find some piece of everyday life that had poles for hot broads to rub up against. Surely he wouldn't do that? Personally though, I've never been spontaneously aroused by public transport. Heh, call me crazy.

I've got to say though, and it's only a small criticism, the scenes without action really do tend to drag. Maybe that means I'm weird, I don't think I've ever really thought about that before – that staring at the kind of naked woman I'll never even get to meet, let alone do it on, would get dull, but there you go, we all get old sometime.

Then we get the Babe with Flamethrower – yay! She's not really firing it at anyone, just kind of letting loose with it indiscriminately, but it's all good; oddly enough she appears to have a bit of a gimp henchman on deck, too.  And then she goes for a bit of a spin on a tank – well it's important to get a bit of fresh air, now and then, healthy-like. 

We then proceed into a moment that had me in mind of House of 1000 Corpses, with some Actiongirls menacing some girls dressed as bunnies. Well, they're naked with bunny ears on anyway. This sequence features some truly diabolical overacting from all concerned, and kind of made me wonder what the fuck was going on, as the Actiongirls were rather obviously going to eat their prey (and not in the good lesbonic way) – I was left a little baffled, to say the least. I really do think I'm over-analysing these films.

I was similarly non-plussed by the quad-bike sequence; I mean I was interested, but left wondering what the fuck was going on again. It sort of struck me that the series might have hit a bit of a creative plateau, and that maybe the various sequences were becoming…well…videoclips at best. This feeling is becoming stronger as the film progresses.

Honestly, I do think the…ahem…thrust of the series has moved beyond its original premise. Apart from anything else, when you're 7 sequences into an Actiongirls film and there's been precious little gunplay (practically none, in comparison to prior instalments), you have to start worrying. I mean the girls themselves are still amazing-looking, the boob quotient is probably higher than ever, but something is definitely missing, and that's action. The reason I watch these films is that they feature Actiongirls – please note the emphasis on the first two syllables. You can watch any old flick and see hot semi-/naked women (movie-makers are not renowned for using ugly chicks in their films), but the point of these films were that the girls were armed and dangerous – that was the schtick that sold the flick. This instalment was just basically soft-core dancing to industrial-metal with none of what made earlier Actiongirls films so enjoyable, and made them stand out.