Alley Cat

Nothing about this should work. Nothing whatsoever. The first bad sign was reading that this movie was directed by not one, not two, but THREE different men, and they all combined to use one synonym, and two never directed again. All of that is evident in every frame of Alley Cat. Hell, this movie is so jumbled and messy, there's even different qualities of film stock. The script meanders from scene to scene like someone who got up from their couch to do something but quickly forgot what it was, so they wander around the house hoping that the act of movement will job their memory. There was a part where, in the span of four sequential scenes, it flip-flopped from day to night with each one, with all the subtlety of rapidly flicking a light switch. Supporting characters come and go, like the grandfather, who disappears entirely about a half an hour in, or the best friend whose contributions to the film amount to being in the car on the way home from the funeral and bringing some boxes from the grocery store so someone (not sure who) can move. In a movie proposing to be a one-person-army-against crime movie, there's a good 6-8 subplots, several are nothing but filler, and the ones that do contribute don't so much conclude as they die of neglect. Lead Billie is supposed to be battling this street gang, but there only ever appear to be four guys in it, tops, because she keeps beating up the same guys over and over. To describe anybody in the supporting cast as a caricature would be like saying cave paintings from primitive humans are Pixar animation. The genre of the movie changes depending on the scene, and all of them have the commitment put into them of a student doing homework in a class they're failing. The description on any site, including this one, reads like a Death Wish clone: "a jogging martial artist stops thieves from stealing her car, but they kill her grandmother, so she takes to the streets to clean up the town herself". Except that "cleaning up the town" is maybe 18% of this movie. There's also family drama with grandpa. And a meet-cute and romance with a rookie cop. And the rookie cop's travails with his older, corrupt partner. And the injustices of the court system. And a women-in-prison movie. And a kung-fu action movie. And an exploitation movie. I'd say this movie does more juggling than an ambitious clown, but that would also insinuate that Alley Cat successfully juggles. These genres start and stop on a dime, sometimes within a single scene. I have so much tonal whiplash, I need to see a chiropractor today. The score. Lord almighty, the score. It's like they took a hundred different samples of incidental music, put them in bingo balls, and placed the music at a random draw, sometimes blending them in the same scene. When lead character Billie ("played" by Karin Mani, and we'll get to that) brings her grandfather home from the hospital, the music starts off sounding like a Russian tragedy is about to kick off. For about six seconds. And then, it blends into the demo audio from a 1983 Casio keyboard. During the climactic final chase between Billie and the leader of the gang that killed her grandmother, the music alternates between a tune more appropriate for hold music for a miniature golf course, and music you'd expect to hear during a scene of a woodland fairy leading a gruff warrior through a dense forest. The acting ... oh my. OH MY. This movie isn't so much acted as it inflicted. The supporting cast, including the leader of the gang, almost doesn't deserve to be mentioned. They seem to have been given the direction of "be [whatever the role is]" and left to figure it out on their own, and they collectively decided not to. But Billie and Johnny (the cop boyfriend) deserve special notice. Johnny, played by Robert Torti, is probably the best actor of the bunch, but as much of a compliment as saying stab wound #3 out of 30 is the least injurious. He's trying to do whatever the script tells him to do, but the script keeps changing Johnny's character. He is, at various points, a doofy rookie, an over-eager horndog, a bashful gentleman, a good man out to fight corruption in the police, and a hardcase torturing a prostitute to get her to talk. All of these fit like a children's shoe on a grown adult. Torti is trying, but he's too average to be taken seriously as a tough guy, too young to be the idealistic warrior for justice, and too dorky to be a ladies' man or a gentleman. He's trying, but the notes he needs to hit are beyond his capabilities. Which is more than I can say for Karin Mani. Yes, she gets her own section. She has eight credits to her name. Four of them were prior to this, and she was a TV background player or unnamed role in all of them. And then, she not only gets the lead here, but is an associate producer (?!?). It's like they called up someone from a YMCA pick-up basketball league and put them on the Lakers. Like Torti, she is given about a dozen acting hats to wear and none of them fit, but here because she is too unrefined. Not that Alley Cat is a demanding role, but still. This isn't a case of her being a raw diamond that needs to be polished up; this is having a clod of dirt pulled from the mineshaft walls and not knowing if there's a diamond in there at all. Her broad but flat performance doesn't just fail to evoke the emotion of the moment, it fails to see where the emotion might exist on the horizon. Whether the movie calls for her to be sweet, serious, indignant, relaxed, or dangerous, it fails so spectacularly to be recognizable as human, I have to wonder what the results would be if Karin Mani took the Turing Test. It makes one wonder, then, if her getting the role was due to her willingness to get naked on screen and her disproportionately huge breasts. No joke, Karin is topless in her first thirty seconds on screen. Not one but two prolonged shower scenes, one with full frontal. For all the criticism Sydney Sweeney gets for getting topless, she's got nothing on Karin Mani, who racked (heh) up more nudity in one movie than Sweeney has in her career. I like women, don't get me wrong, and Karin is easy on the eyes, but it hits a point of diminishing returns. Especially because this movie is, at its core, an exploitation movie. So, get used to nudity. Porky's looks like The Bridges Of Madison County compared to this. A women's prison shower scene. It's almost impressive how much the movie bends and contorts to find a way for a woman to get naked. There's a part where Billie stops a rape in a park by two guys associated with the gang she's after. Later on, the main bad guy (named, no joke, Scarface) breaks into the would-be victim's apartment to intimidate her into not testifying (and to assault her again). Is there any reason for this woman to have slept naked and parade around the house turning off the TV and turning on the lights and looking around still completely undressed? Nope, but Alley Cat doesn't care. She's a woman and she's attractive, so she's dropping trou. Key words, "almost impressive". It really isn't, it feels shoehorned in at every turn. I could go on. The slap-dash editing that feels like it was done with a first-year film student trying to decipher notes written in handwriting worse than a doctor's signature. The TV-movie-of-the-week reliance on exterior establishing shots that are slow zooms. The fight choreography that has all the grace of a newborn giraffe on roller skates. The sound design that has every punch sound like someone slapping a leather couch with a wet ham. The dialogue that only resembles human speech in that is in English. I could go into great detail on all of these. How the three directors leave this movie feeling like the movie is in a constant tug of war with itself, but never actually going anywhere. But I need to get back to my opening sentence, because at this point, you've read several hundred words that elaborate on how this movie is broken. To save you the time, here is how I opened this review: "Nothing about this should work." "Should" is the important part here, because of the implication. It SHOULDN'T work. But it does. Don't misunderstand, I'm not gonna say, after all that, that Alley Cat is some misunderstood masterpiece. It isn't. This is trash. Cheesy, D-grade trash. If this didn't have more nudity than a Playboy video centerfold, it would surely be a candidate for a RiffTrax double-feature alongside Samurai Cop. But somehow, these elements come together and make something magical. This is a movie where the whole somehow makes up for and becomes more than the sum of its parts. Because the parts are all zeroes, yet somehow, this movie is a positive integer. It's cinematic junk food all the way, but it knows it is. It has zero ambitions beyond being anything but cheap trash (and maybe a tax shelter or a money laundering operation) to excite and titillate. It doesn't want to explore deep themes. It probably doesn't even know what that means. It's here to feature a woman with a Barbie doll figure kick some butt and show off said figure in equal measure, and to that effect, it fulfills its goals. Do I recommend it? Only if you are in the right frame of mind and enjoy the occasional trash movie. If you can't clear those bars, don't try. But for the sheer audacity of this movie and how it knows exactly what it is and leans into it like a NASCAR driving turning left, I came away having had a good time.