Lovely But Deadly

The film starts out strong with a great scene of the female protagonist beating the crap out of a drug dealer and forcing him to OD, leading me to think this was going to be some sort of personal revenge flick. Instead, while revenge is a factor, it's a little less personal as she aims to take down the entire system and put people in jail. Ho hum, but drugs are a pretty big problem in her high school. How big? Well, gangsters are sending their thugs into the school to beat up students, cheerleaders are getting pimped out, and the drug consumption is apparently so high it needs to be brought in by boat in multiple crates on a regular basis. Or so we are led to believe, although I tend to wonder how anyone even managed to graduate in a situation like that. It grows increasingly ridiculous as the film goes on and comes completely unglued by the time it ends, but it's still fun, dumb stuff. Some decent chest meat on display and I actually liked a couple of the fight scenes--especially the beat-down at the beginning. Could have been better, but it's still good exploitation junk.

One scene in 'Lovely but Deadly' has rightly become legendary among those who go for this sort of thing. Lucinda Dooling, her startlingly cut (for 1981) muscles rippling, subdues the high school pusher, forcing him to take an overdose of his "own medicine," all the while speaking to him in the calmest, sweetest tones imaginable, absolutely in control.

The rest of the film is good cheesy fun -- best watched with some buddies and a six pack -- but the one scene is dangerous erotica. We have never really had a genuinely tough movie heroine who caught on with the general public (although Kathy Long, Jillian Kesner and Lucinda Dickey certainly had the stuff) and "Lovely But Deadly" stands as the one claim Dooling might have had for this title.

Lucinda Dooling portrays Mary Ann "Lovely" Lovett, an over-age High School student who uses her martial arts skills to battle the vicious drug ring responsible for the death of her younger brother. Although the film is ultra low budget, the fighting scenes amateurish and the acting non existent, this little film is a real find. Backed by an energetic "James Bond-like musical score, "Lovely" is powered by charm and enthusiasm. The cast of unknowns tries hard and the script is on occasion entertaining, if not witty. Although to be honest, a bigger confrontation between Lovely and the drug ring's mastermind at the very end would have really improved the final product.

Lucinda Dooling's acting mainly consists of grimacing at the camera, but shows enough presence that I was disappointed to find she has only made a handful of screen appearances.

I fear that this was what passed for Hollywood trying to be 'feminist' in 1981, and while it was a step above Charlie's Angels in that, it missed the mark by a good bit.

The movie opens with an utter looser drowning himself in the ocean while high on drugs, and oh boy, are we lucky he didn't live long enough to breed a bunch of children as stupid and whiny-faced as he was; to me, this moment was most likely to win my applause. (please don't rescue him, I thought, pretty please?)

Then his sister goes on a revenge spree toward the drug dealers (as if tuna boy hadn't decided to and chosen to and hunted down dealers and spent his own money on drugs, but whatever, let's not blame him in any way). And she kicks ass, in a vaguely pretty sort of way. Some of the other actresses are exploited more by the director, but the lead remains dressed and serious throughout.

It all hangs together within the sphere of reality in this film, which bears no resemblance at all to the reality that you and I inhabit, or that we inhabited in 1981, but I suppose in these days of 50% of movies being about superpowers, I shouldn't be complaining about this level of unreality.

I almost want to give it a third star for the character name "Mantis Manajian," which is the most original thought the screenwriters had. The extra star I did give is because the lead and her kickboxing girlfriends can kick high. Good for them.

But it's a bad, bad film.

Just like you may drive by a multi-car crash pile up on the highway and you witness first hand the carnage, fire and overwhelming smoke clouds, you just can't take your eyes off of the scene. So does the film Lovely But Deadly wreak of a Grade B film but you will find yourself glued to how corny this film really is.

This is a perfect Drive-In cinema special with continuous corny dialogue and characters names like Lovely, Javelin, Mantis, Gommorah, and Cricket.

Oh, and the film is also filled to the brim with chick fights and plenty of action by the film starlet Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt (Lucinda Dooling) kicking the macho men's butts. One hilarious fight scene takes place around the 25 minute mark between Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt and three (3) male thugs dressed in fencing gear with swords. This choreographed fight scene appears to me as if Miss Lovely moves step by step on a "numbers map" slowly stepping from numbers 1 through 1,000. She tries hard to make this scene look realistic and so do the three thugs and maybe just maybe the film editors forgot to remove the "Slow Motion" edit during this perilous fight scene.

All in all the film may fail miserably as Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt fights the good fight to put the bad drug dealers behind bars who were responsible for her brothers drug overdose induced death. Having said that the film tries Sooooooo hard to be taken seriously that you just won't be able to look away.

For that reason I rate this film a 5 out of 10 IMDb rating.