Mad Cowgirl

Oh my God! This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It is nothing but a continuous string of incoherent flashes of random images. This is a very low point in cinema history.

I gave up on the movie not even halfway through it. I couldn't stand the torture anymore. There was too much dribble and showing things that had nothing much to do with the main story.

And the acting in this movie, non-existent! It was horrendous at best. And the movie comes with stupid dialogue to go along with the lack of portraying any acting.

The cover looked promising, but just goes to prove that looks can be deceiving.

I advice you to stay well clear of this movie unless you like the type of movies that make little sense and just go on an on forever without getting anyway.

Therese, a young health inspector, breaks off her marriage and indulges herself in a variety of obsessions to take her mind off her loneliness. When she's not inspecting restaurants and butcher shops, she is erotically masticating large amounts of red meat, religiously watching a cheesy Kung-Fu show, engaging in casual sex, or having and affair with her favorite skeezy televangelist. Her compulsions spin out of control and her downward spiral turns lethal when she discovers that her meat-packing brother may have given her meat that may have been infected with mad cow disease.

Whoa. Where to begin with this one?! First off, Sarah Lassez is fantastic in the lead role. She displays incredible range. She's believable when she's breaking down and hilarious when she's imitating her favorite TV Kung Fu heroine. I don't really want to know how much red meat she consumed during the shooting...but let's just say she really knows how to take meat in her mouth. The supporting cast also fares well. Cult favorite James Duvall plays Therese's brother who may or may not have a crush on big sis. Devon Odessa (Sharon from My So Called Life!) is fun as her religious best friend with problems of her own. The film is uniquely shot (think "CrazyBird KatiePerson" but with a bit more talent behind the camera...and in the editing room) and the content is thoroughly repulsive.

As fascinating as it is to watch, some of the messages are muddled. It is obvious director Gregory Hatanaka is trying to draw a parallel between red meat and sex, but it's never really clear why, except to make the viewer feel icky. Perhaps I need to re-read Carol Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat? There are some other weird situations (for example, her doctor speaks Sinhala and she responds in English) that make the film a bit difficult to get through. Still, it is worth seeing for its performances and originality. I really haven't seen anything like this out there. And if you're thinking about becoming vegetarian but are too, uh, chicken to make the transition, definitely check this one out. It'll make it easier.

Whoa. I can't believe I actually watched this piece of crap all the way through. I kept watching hoping that at some point it would stop being boring, but it was boring all the way through .... all the way to the end .... which was also boring! I mean really, just because this movie has two scenes of nudity and "blood" does not make it automatically worth watching. This is one of those movies where the "blood" effects are soooo cheesy, you really don't feel scared or disgusted because it just looks so fake. And the two scenes where the heroine "bares her chest" are nothing more than that: The heroine just shows us her breasts while looking at herself in the mirror ..... seriously, the producers could have paid this actress a lot less if they excluded such boring and unnecessary nudity.

Oh yes, and all this movie sets out to do is to show us what a slut the heroine is! I mean, she has sex with no less than 12 guys! (relax, it hardly even qualifies as "softcore porn").

I don't want to spoil the movie for you since I think that would be very unfair, but take my advice: THIS MOVIE IS BORING TIME WASTING GARBAGE! JUST BECAUSE IT'S "UNIQUE" OR "ORIGINAL" IT DOES NOT, I REPEAT, DOES NOT MEAN IT IS WORTH WATCHING! STAAAAAY AWAAAAAAY! Needless to say, anyone who was stupid enough to act in this movie probably doomed their career as an actor ... and rightly so, I've never seen any of the actors in this movie appear anywhere after it! Ha! Although Sarah .... oh heck I don't know the heroine's name .... did a good job acting in this movie, alas, she doomed her career as an actress for acting in such a terrible piece of movie junk.

Remember people, this movie is not worth your time, it's just as bad as Alvin and The Chipmunks 1 & 2: Total CRAP.

I'm come to the conclusion that there needs to be a new rating added to the system: APC, "Artsy Poser Crap". Characteristics: No straightforward plot development, completely unlikeable and undeveloped characters, elements tossed in for no reason at all, designed with smirking, jaded "Film Appreciation 201" grads in mind. That's right, I'm completely unimaginative, totally bogged down in traditional petite bourgeoisie story telling methodology--probably even (gasp!) straight, gender-preference-wise. But see, here's the thing: when I see a movie I like, it's because it succeeds by having a real story, real characters and real atmosphere. It doesn't have to toss together a bunch of disjointed shots and rambling dialog adorned by a hodge-podge score, then hope no one notices the absolute emptiness that results--or else is too afraid of being labeled as "unappreciative of art" to admit it.

Well, at the risk of being so pigeon-holed--"Cowgirl" is crap. Phony, jumbled crap. Interesting idea completely ruined by someone who apparently thought he would make "art".

So, please, Hollywood: APC. For those of us who prefer or creativity to have both content AND form, instead of cinemagraphic cuisinart.

Patooie.

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 won't say no to some lesbian sex or even an incestuous relationship with her crazy brother Thierry. She's a food inspector and he imports meat of questionable quality standards. Convinced she's infected with the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after eating one of her brother's Canadian steaks; Therese slowly loses her mind and starts to believe she's the Kung-Fu fighting heroine of her own favorite grindhouse movie "The Girl with the Thunderbolt Kick". 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 they're called. It'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 director's super massive ego. "Mad Cowgirl" is gory, sleazy and surrealistic, but it quite isn't the homage to rancid 70's exploitation director Hatanaka intended it to be. It's more reminiscent to Gregg Araki's "The Doom Generation", only with even more nastiness and dementia. Sarah Lassez is a rather talented young actress and I hope she'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 Therese's brother and I'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 Therese'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. "Mad Cowgirl" has quite a large fan-base and the most fanatic admirers will probably claim that I completely don't understand the underlying brilliance of Hatanka's filming style, but whatever. The film could have been much better.