Black Scorpion II: Street Combat

Some people would have thought that one "Black Scorpion" film was quite enough. Indeed, some people, myself included, thought that one Black Scorpion film was more than enough, but enough people obviously disagreed with that analysis to persuade the producers to come up with a sequel.

The title character is essentially a female Batman, a crime fighting superheroine who (like Batman but unlike Superman or Spiderman) does not have any super powers but relies upon a combination of martial arts and advanced technology to overcome the bad guys. Just as Batman had his Batmobile, so the Black Scorpion (who in real life is a police detective named Darcy Walker) has her own high-tech car, the Scorpionmobile. In the first instalment she saw off one gang of supervillains; here she has to deal with a new crowd, including the giggling Gangster Prankster (an obvious rip-off of Batman's nemesis The Joker) and a woman calling herself Aftershock who aims to cause an earthquake to destroy the City of Angels (for which read Los Angeles).

The original "Black Scorpion" film was bad enough, but this one is even worse. Both were comedies based upon one single joke, namely that the superhero concept is something essentially ridiculous which can serve as the basis for camp humour using exaggerated characters and unrealistic plotting and dialogue. (The same joke served as the basis of that old "Batman" TV series from the sixties, and indeed as the basis of some of the entries in the more recent "Batman" film franchise). I have never been the greatest fan of superhero movies, but at least the likes of "Spiderman" and "Batman Begins" have shown that it is possible to make decent films within the genre by treating the concept with a modicum of seriousness and without resorting to camp, self-mocking humour. One-joke comedies quickly outstay their welcome; the first "Black Scorpion" film ran out of steam about halfway through, after which the whole thing quickly became tiresome. "Black Scorpion II" never had any steam to start with and is tiresome from the very beginning.

The standard of acting is appalling; Joan Severance as the heroine shows even more clearly than she did in the first film that she was cast on the basis of looks rather than talent, but the rest of the cast are no more talented and in most cases do not even have looks to recommend them. (Whoever thought Sherrie Rose made a seductive villainess was sadly mistaken). I was surprised to see Rick Rossovich cast as a "construction foreman"; in the late eighties he was regarded as a rising star after roles in "Top Gun" and "Roxanne", so it must have been something of a comedown for him to be cast in a bit part in a movie as dire as this one.

The one good thing that can be said about "Black Scorpion II" is that, although it was followed in 2001 by a "Black Scorpion" TV series, it was the last of its line in the cinema and did not spawn a "Black Scorpion III". One must at least be thankful for small mercies. 2/10

...but still not awfully good. Joan Severance is a pretty decent actress and at over six feet certainly looks comic bookish, but she is badly miscast as an action heroine. She works better in slower paced vehicles and lacks the nervous energy or athleticism necessary for a costumed vigilante. Severance comes off a little better here, thanks to the fact that the director went for an old school Batman approach, with kooky angles, zippy camera-work and cartoonish colors, which tend to distract the viewer from the fact that she is too statuesque and languorous to be a crime fighter. Frankly, she would have trouble beating a dazed sloth to the punch... The story is some comic book nonsense about finding a super villain with an earthquake machine, and this is actually an improvement over the first movie's straight revenge plot. The whole exercise is pretty absurd to start, so better to just go with that. As a live action cartoon, it's not bad entertainment, and the production values are adequate despite an obviously limited budget.

Just as in its prequel, this film shows a superheroine who is a sexy female copy of Batman. There is a black mask, there are gadgets, there is a special car, there is a dubious status of an ally of the police or of a criminal, the superheroine fights crime to avenge the murder of her father. If on one hand there are no scenes in this film so obviously copied from Tim Burton movies like in the prequel, on the other hand the first supervillain, Gangster Prankster, is a hybrid of the Joker and Two-Face. Argyle, the guy who fixes the Scorpion- mobile, though, came a decade before Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox in "Batman Begins". The film is nice enough for a B-movie, but visual effects are often worse than could be and action scenes are always awful. The whole movie is very cartoon-like and campy, more than Joel Schumacher's Batman movies from those years, closer to the 60's TV series. The mayor's henchmen, for example, are dressed like mobsters and always say the same thing at the same time. The street gangs (they were so recurrent in the movies from the 90's!) have youngsters with swastikas painted on their faces or necks. Sexploitation, what was in the core of the prequel, with amazing footage with Joan Severance, reappears in this sequel in more characters, like the Asian bombshell Giggles (Prankster's "harley quinn"), the model in jail in the unnecessary scene at 20'40'', the mayor's secretary Babette (played by Lara Harring!), and villainess Aftershock. Villains are campy but more interesting and less ridiculous than in the prequel, which was curiously more violent (though, Black Scorpion is much more violent against criminals, killing them when they are not a danger, in the second film than in the first, reminding more Judge Dredd than Batman even in his darkest versions). Though, the special electric attack of Aftershock may make male spectators feel as if it were with them.

If you've seen or are planning to see this film, chances are you've already seen the first. If not, I suggest you go see that, even if you only have the chance to see one of them. It's better and it basically lays the foundation for this film. This has more silliness and less style than the first, and one will be hard pressed to find someone, somewhere who wouldn't rather have seen the first, if given the choice(if the popularity-based ratings are anything to go by, at least). The plot is, much like the first, very simplistic and formulaic. It's pretty much ripped straight out of a 60's superhero comic book. The characters, most of them returning from the first film, continue to be comic relief and clichés, and a few of them, as little development as they have(in the first) actually go backwards as far as that goes. The villains both lack the originality of the one of the first film; both are rather obviously rip-offs of famous superhero villains(or super-villains, for short). The humor goes more towards the silly and campy, something the first one started nicely on. Fewer one-liners, unfortunately. The action is decent enough... it's slightly larger in scale than that of the first, but its uninspired filming costs a lot of intensity. There is more direct T&A in this installment, to appease the young males in the audience. Most of it is just there, for no actual reason, making it stand out embarrassingly. The dialog is poor, both as far as writing and delivery goes. The script has its share of clichés, but judging from the overall tone(and my experience with films that Roger Corman is involved in making), I would wager that it's fully intentional. All in all, an entertaining and fairly worthy followup to Black Scorpion. I recommend this to fans of the first and of comic book movies in general. I urge anyone to watch the first before trying their luck with this, though, and if you don't like what you see in that one, don't bother with this one. It's just more of the same. 5/10

What can you possibly say about "Black Scorpion II" other than that it was much worse than the first. The dialogue was banal, the action minimal, the plot barely existent. Even the camera shots, especially when the director chose to go into shaky slo-mo for the "action" sequences, was gawd-aweful!

I hope Sci-Fi does a better job with it's Black Scorpion TV series (debuting this Friday, 2/9).