Mad Cowgirl (2006)
62KMad Cowgirl: Directed by Gregory Hatanaka. With Sarah Lassez, James Duval, Devon Odessa, Vic Chao. A woman, who is dying of a brain disorder, begins a surreal journey which descends into violence.
“What a damn shame! Never before I encountered a movie with such potentially brilliant story ideas, and yet somehow it ended up being an indescribably irritating and tragically dull mess! The main character, as well as most of the supportive ones, is probably the most fascinatingly eccentric person to ever lead a modern horror adventure and the situations she encounters are inventive and freaky as hell. Sounds terrific, but then what went wrong? I tell you what went wrong; director Gregory Hatanaka keeps on interrupting his own fabulous concepts with pseudo-artistic nagging and visual gimmicks that totally ruin the pace and the low-budget exploitation atmosphere. The young, intelligent and sexy Therese is the ideal woman. Therese is a nymphomaniac, desperately in love with a sinister TV-evangelist, but she also wonu0026#39;t say no to some lesbian sex or even an incestuous relationship with her crazy brother Thierry. Sheu0026#39;s a food inspector and he imports meat of questionable quality standards. Convinced sheu0026#39;s infected with the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after eating one of her brotheru0026#39;s Canadian steaks; Therese slowly loses her mind and starts to believe sheu0026#39;s the Kung-Fu fighting heroine of her own favorite grindhouse movie u0026quot;The Girl with the Thunderbolt Kicku0026quot;. The plot is so demented it becomes brilliant, like Tarantino on acid, especially when Therese considers herself to be on a mission to annihilate the Ten Tigers of Kwan Tang, or whatever theyu0026#39;re called. Itu0026#39;s a really regrettable to announce that according to me personally, at least the ingeniousness of the plot is brought down by experimental editing, exaggeratedly hectic camera-work and the directoru0026#39;s super massive ego. u0026quot;Mad Cowgirlu0026quot; is gory, sleazy and surrealistic, but it quite isnu0026#39;t the homage to rancid 70u0026#39;s exploitation director Hatanaka intended it to be. Itu0026#39;s more reminiscent to Gregg Arakiu0026#39;s u0026quot;The Doom Generationu0026quot;, only with even more nastiness and dementia. Sarah Lassez is a rather talented young actress and I hope sheu0026#39;ll be offered some better screenplays in the near future. Young cult icon and inexplicably cool dude James Duval is his usual confused self as Thereseu0026#39;s brother and Iu0026#39;m sure nobody expected Star Trek veteran Walter Koenig to appear in a production like this, and definitely not in the unconventional role of uncanny TV-preacher. The film contains loads of unexplained but rather fascinating little elements, like some of Thereseu0026#39;s acquaintances speaking foreign languages (and she being able to understand them) and brief flashes of Japanese news reports. Weird but too obviously wannabe-intellectual for no reason. u0026quot;Mad Cowgirlu0026quot; has quite a large fan-base and the most fanatic admirers will probably claim that I completely donu0026#39;t understand the underlying brilliance of Hatankau0026#39;s filming style, but whatever. The film could have been much better.”
