I had just seen another Roger Corman film, "The Death Artist" less than a week before this was on, and I found that film very funny and entertaining. I have also seen another Corman film, "Sawbones," which was quite entertaining in itself, so I had high hopes for this one and it very, very much let me down.
The only "good" part of "Black Scorpion" is a cheesy villian called "the Breathtaker," who looks and acts about a serious as the villians in "The Power Rangers," and I guess is supposed to want to take over the city by spraying toxic chemicals or something silly like that. It sounds dumb, and is, and even "The Breathtaker" had his dull moments(like what was with all of his bumbling villian apprentices, especially two annoying female wrestlers, and where, by the way, did he get the power to fly?), but he was better than anything else in the movie. My only major problem with him was not even necessarily related to the character itself, but I must wonder why different actors were used to play The Breathtaker and the, uh, person behind the Breathtaker's mask? Did whomever was in charge of casting think that one or the other of them couldn't pull off the effect by themself? Was the voice of the Breathtaker too "ugly" to have his face revealed, which more or less makes his human counterpart some himbo cast only for his looks? Because that's not very fair to either of them, but I suppose even that discrepancy with "Black Scorpion" did not TOTALLY ruin the film for me...
What ruins "Black Scorpion" is its stupid title character, some bimboey "police officer" named Darcy, (Joan Severance) who, as a cop seems to masquerade as a prostitute with some..."real" prostitute until her daddy(Rick Rossovich, who, as a result of utterly cheap casting looks about the SAME AGE as Severance)is for some reason gunned down by the local DA, and Darcy gets canned(or suspended?) for police brutality after she goes to confront him in jail. A combination of seeking justice for her father's death and letting down her dull prostitute friend inspires Darcy to become the "Black Scorpion," a female superhero that goes around saving...other prostitutes, or at least not-very-properly-dressed people from bad folks, who all seem to somehow be connected to the Breathtaker. I really didn't know how the Black Scorpion's saving the world connected to the Breathtaker, except somewhere in the middle half, Darcy/The Black Scorpion suddenly realizes that he must have been involved in her father's death. Abruptly after that, it suddenly jumps to "who is the Breathtaker?," so what was the point of all of that other junk? Who knows and the character of "Darcy," her charisma-free boyfriend and prostitute friend, and pretty much everyone else were not interested enough for me to make any kind of exceptions to not-very-well developed writing. If people want to make a stupid, intentionally campy film, they can at least make it a WELL-WRITTEN stupid, intentionally campy film, as "Sawbones" and "The Death Artist" proved to be. What went wrong with this one?
