Lady Avenger

THE STORY: This movie is just one of those flicks that you watch and don't think too hard about. Its a no-brainer that there are parts of it that will make little sense. the story was simplistic, the acting mediocre and the look of it was cheap. That doesn't actually make it bad, though.

Maggie Blaire is released from prison temporarily to go to her brother, Jeff's, funeral. Her brother was killed by a gang of vicious drug dealers. Maggie's homecoming isn't a joyous one. Her mom is on heavy medication and her stepfather, Jack, is a dickhead. Jack doesn't have much time for Maggie and the feeling is mutual. The police think Jeff's murder is drug related, but Maggie doesn't believe it...most of her friends like Kevin and Annalee don't either. Jeff kicked his drug habit according to them.

Since Maggie is only guarded by one fatass female guard on the trip she makes a [unwrite]ing real easy escape after the funeral and with Kevin's help tries to track down the people that killed her brother. Now unless you've never seen a cheapass "fugitive" type movie before you'll start seeing the clues right away. Jack is a jerk, the camera spends way too much time on him as he gets his wife's medication. So we know he's drugging her for a purpose. Annalee is too helpful...so she must know something she's not telling Maggie. None of the other characters are highlighted very much so its gotta be someone close to the family. The kicker comes when we find that Jack needs to pay off a loan to keep his business. We don't exactly find out what the business is, but we just find out he needs cash badly and that he's been trying to get his wife to sign away some property she owns.

Well, Maggie finds this out too, in a roundabout fashion. Jack has been in cahoots with some pretty wimpy drug dealers and Annalee has been in on it all along. Maggie, being a Lady Avenger, kills all of the henchmen. Then she goes after Jack. Jack tries to use the mother as a hostage to force Maggie into giving up, but he's not really a smart criminal and Maggie is. Unfortunately that shortcoming is why he'll never be a smarter criminal. Maggie introduces his brain to sunlight via the hole she blows in his head. Since Jack's drug dealings are what landed Maggie in prison in the first place, she's freed when the truth comes out. The End.

Or is it? Would it be that easy for Maggie to regain her freedom? After all, she may have been innocent of the original charges, but what about the murders she committed? Yeah, they were drug dealers and they were responsible for Jeff's death but Maggie killed them in COLD BLOOD. It wasn't self defense when she shot the three stooges of the drug world. It wasn't self defense when she turned Ray into a human shish-kabob. Maggie still broke several laws....I guess the DA in this Movie Universe just doesn't give a damn. I guess I can buy it. OJ got off and that was real life!

Maggie was played by Peggie Sanders. I have no idea who she is. But Annalee was played by Michelle McClellan, who looks really familiar to me. No doubt I've seen her in other b-movies. McClellan's role in all this was easily sussed out...she's topless in every other scene.

Best Lines: "He's got a severe case of assholism!"-Maggie comments about her stepfather.

"I lied."-Maggie, in a line stolen from Commando. This is Maggie's response to one of the Hoodlums when he reminds her that she said she wouldn't kill him.

"Jesus, does everybody in this family carry a gun?!"-Annalee when Jack almost shoots her.

"You know, I learned something in jail...there happens to be two kinds of people, Jack...[unwrite]ers and the [unwrite]ed...and you happen to be [unwrite]ED!"-Maggie gets her revenge.

1.) Why are all female prison guards big fat chicks? Its not like this hefty woman is going to be able keep up with Maggie if she makes a run for it. As a matter of fact, when Maggie does make a break for it the big fat chick can barely get her super-sized ass off the ground after Maggie knocks her down.

2.) Where do I start with this one? Maggie and Kevin are attacked by a group of hoodlums for absolutely no good reason. As a Lady Avenger, Maggie leaves a lot to be desired. (This flick needs Cynthia Rothrock!) The hoodlums beat the living crap out of Kevin, but Maggie manages to fight them off, more through luck than any skill. I guess it helped that the hoodlums didn't bother to hit her at all when they were putting the smackdown on Kevin...it also helped that they damn well made sure she got to hit them with the bat one of them dropped. But then we get into a pointless car chase scene....one of these days I'm going to go driving through the city at top speed to see if the cops actually will chase me...'cuz no cops seem interested in this high speed chase. But the kicker is the end of the chase. Maggie and Kevin and their pursuers run into two parked cars. This scene assures me of two things; cars in movies can jump things kind of like the Mach 5 from Speed Racer and cars in movies are soaked in lighter fluid! When the impact comes both cars go flying through the air, magically defying gravity and burst into flames! Fantastically Maggie and Kevin are relatively unharmed after crashing at high speed in a car that was engulfed in fire!

3.) I don't know what's more amazing...the fact that Maggie gets her mitts on a hand grenade, the fact that she pulls the pin out with her teeth, or the fact that the grenade had about as much power as firecracker.

4.) Yeesh...maybe Maggie does really belong behind bars. She doesn't display any angst over killing anyone that gets in her way. When she confronts Ray she has absolutely no hesitation in lighting him afire with her flame thrower. (Where she got it I don't know....I guess she went to the Ridiculously Dangerous Weapons section at her local Wal-Mart.) You gotta be pretty mean to roast a guy to death and stand there smugly as he screams in agony!

NUDITY AND SEX: Maggie is topless in a sex scene with Kevin. annalee is topless a lot and aparently she has a lot of sex and she likes to be on top.

HUH?: What was Maggie in jail for in the first place. We get to find out early on that its drug-related and that she's probably innocent. We find out that she took the heat for her brother...but we never find out exactly what the charges were. In the overall framework of the movie it doesn't make too much of a difference, but I'd like to know. That information would have been helpful in defining Maggie's character for the audience.

Maybe I missed something, but we really don't know why Jeff was killed to begin with. Did he discover Jack's double dealing? Was he just in the way? I'm not sure, and that's bad. Jeff's murder is the catalyst for everything else that happens in this movie. A reason for it would have been nice.

Its hard to tell what's going on sometimes because the interrelationships of the characters aren't well defined. The bad guys seem to all know each other, but why? Who are they? Why is Annalee involved? Does she even have a job?

How can Maggie not get caught by the police? she's a fugitive and she's tooling around town on her motorcycle in the same clothes without trying to disguise herself for about a week! She uses this time to kill various people, yet the police aren't able to catch her. Yeah, there's a padded out chase scene with her and the cops, but still...Is it that easy to just avoid the authorities even if you stay in the same general area for days? Who is she, Hannibal Smith's little sister?*

Jack's master plan at the end would never have worked anyway. He forces Maggie's compliance by threatening to shoot her mother. He wants Maggie to hide the drugs in a locker and then turn herself in. Um...Jack...if she does that what makes you think she won't tell the cops that you made her do it by holding a gun to her mother's head? what makes you think that the mother isn't going to tell the police what happened. See where I'm going with this? There's no way Jack can hide his guilt in all of this. If he kills Maggie then he's going to have to explain why bullets from his gun also killed Annalee. If he kills the mom, Maggie will mutilate him.

THE TALLY: Peggie Sanders is easy on the eyes. Heck, I thought she was a real hottie. That helps because she sure ain't no Meryl Streep. This flick ain't too bad for those of us looking for a little rainy day entertainment. The Inferno awards it three devils for being silly, cheap and fun to watch.

* Hannibal Smith, played by the late George Peppard, was the leader of the A-Team in that old TV show. The A-Team had a knack for avoiding capture even though everyone knew who the were and they operated out of the same area time and time again.