Silk 2

My review was written in January 1991 after watching the film on MGM/UA video cassette.

Hawaiian actioner "Silk 2" has an all-new heroine, but it's business as usual in the chasing-around department. This is a mnor video title from Roger Corman's Concorde stable.

Monique Gabrielle, mis-advertised as former "Playmate of the Year" (she was a Penthouse mag model, not a Playboy gatefold girl), takes over the title role of a Honolulu cop from Cec Verrell in a drastic contrst of body shapes and hairstyles.

She's out to solve the mystery of missing Japanese scrolls that no-goodnik Jan Merlin is using as part of an insurance scam at his art museum. Along the way she teams up with friendly tourist Maria Claire and bland action hero Peter Nelson.

Pic's high point is a self-homage by Filippino director Cirio Santiago to his 1974 classic "TNT Jackson", with Gabrielle having a high-kicking martial arts fight in topless format, just like Jeanne Bell did so long ago. The slow motion sex scene of Gabrielle and Nelson in bed is shot in blurrr-o-vision, however.

Since Cec Verrell didn't reprise her role as Silk(She was doing "Hunter" playing Iris in the episode, "City Under Siege"), so another actress has taken her place as the tough cop. This time around, it's a case of counterfeit scrolls. She gets supported by regular people who help her avenge her slain partner. A art expert, and a college student who is traveling. They were unwilling at first, but they have proved themselves by helping the cop.

There was more sex appeal in the film than the first one. Makes it less boring. The action is still there. So nothing was lost in the film, but getting the scrolls was only the challenge. Mild to say that.

2 out of 5 stars.

So SILK 2 is a sequel to a film starring Monique Gabrielle as an ass-kicking female cop tacking down criminals in the Philippines. I've never actually seen that film, but this sequel must be one of the cheapest and most obscure movies in the career of prolific Filipino director Cirio H. Santiago. It's very much a typical cop film of the 1980s, with nods to the likes of COBRA as Gabrielle tackles corruption and criminality at the highest levels. There's a small amont of action, a lot of bad dialogue and wooden acting, and a totally gratuitous shower sequence which scream queen Gabrielle manages to be wooden during.

This movie was really bad: Monique Gabrielle is my favorite scream queen of all times (one of my favorite women on the screen, in fact), but her too brief shower scene is not enough to heaten up a terribly boring actioneer, too slow and too talky for his own good.

Monique looks beautiful as always and she tries hard to be an actress (she has a very sexy voice), but it is not good enough to be a tough cop as she should be in this movie.

All in all, a waste of time from start to finish

"Silk 2" replaces Cec Verrell with Monique Gabrielle in the title role. This has both its advantages and its disadvantages: Monique lack's Cec's muscle tone, her voice is a bit too soft to be taken seriously in such hardcore lines as "Silk, what do you think you're doing?" - "What needs to be done!", and she is very obviously doubled for many of her stunts (even for diving off a boat!). But she IS gorgeous, she does have some moves, and, in the film's most memorable sequence, she takes a shower, complete with full-frontal nudity, and then, wearing only a barely-tied bathrobe, she fights a home intruder, kicking him all around the place while her breasts are bouncing up and down! The whole thing doesn't last more than a minute or two, however. Anyway, the film has some of the trademark Cirio H. Santiago amateurishness (check out that laughably fake head that gets shot in the opening scene!), but at least its plot is more coherent than the one of its predecessor. In fact, I thought the villain had a pretty neat plan and I almost wished he could get away with it! ** out of 4.