Lovely But Deadly

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.

Lovely uses sexual attraction to trap drug dealers. Once she exposes them she beats them up and leaves them for police.

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.

Lucinda Dooling plays high school babe Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt, who takes revenge on the drug-dealing scuzz responsible for the death of her brother; however, the real star of this film is the boom mic, which makes quite a few appearances from the top of the frame throughout. Such is the shoddy nature of Lovely But Deadly, a cheap, poorly acted, clumsily directed but unintentionally funny revenge drama that features gratuitous female nudity, bad disco dancing, unconvincing karate, a cat fight/food fight, a couple of terrible musical numbers, death by steam, and a character who refers to himself as Captain Magic.

Thoroughly cheesy and horribly dated, the film is far from great, but its nasty early-'80s trappings and sheer ineptitude make it reasonably entertaining nonsense if in the right frame of mind. My favourite scene was Lucinda and her all-female karate pals training, their uniform a short zebra patterned tunic paired with black tights - practical and stylish! The film also features some characters with really silly names, including football stud Mantis, pathetic nerd Cricket, wannabe pop-star Javelin and brutish thug Gommorah.

Just about worth wasting your time with if you're after a trashy laugh. 5/10.

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.