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Plot: disgraced janitor is the only one who can thwart a terrorist plot.

There was more to Hawaiian low budget trash specialist Albert Pyun than cyberpunk, chop sockey martial arts, and post-apocalyptic nonsense. He never shied away from occasionally trying to do something topical and timey. He was early to the virtual reality craze of the early 1990s with Arcade (1993) and, for example, the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong in Hong Kong 97 (1994). Blast was his woefully underwhelming contribution to the cycle of Die Hard (1988) plagiates that was winding down by that point. To give on idea of just how dour and dire the American low budget action filmmaking scene was around this time Andy Sidaris was making far better, or least nominally more fun, romps with Day Of the Warrior (1996) and Return to Savage Beach (1998), respectively. Old Andy could always be counted upon to hire a spate of beautiful women and his movies were set on sunny Hawaii, also not important. We have spilled a lot of blood on Pyun’s most enduring properties and some select titles here and there over the years but we were nevertheless saddened to hear of his passing on November 26, 2022, age 69, after many years of suffering from dementia and multiple sclerosis. While Pyun actively stopped filming in 2018 due to debilitating health the throne he vacated was usurped by Rene Perez and Neil Johnson, specialists in the kind of stuff he used to excel at.

There are those things that are better avoided. Like things that could potentially damage or ruin your career. One of these things was Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997). When offered the role Bridgette Wilson kindly declined to return and played a supporting role in I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) instead. Linden Ashby and Christopher Lambert were given copies of the script as well and they too refused to return. While Wilson actually went up a rung on the Hollywood ladder Ashby and Lambert found themselves in a different kind of hell, the one called Albert Pyun. Of the two Christopher Lambert ended up in the much better Mean Guns (1997) whereas Linden Ashby supposedly landed here to consolidate his status as upcoming action star. Unbelievable as it may sound, Ashby was at one point during the latter half of the nineties poised as the next big action star. Admittedly, he was very good in Mortal Kombat (1995) and Pyun used a torn-from-the-headlines real-life event as the basis of his script for Blast.

Which event? The 1996 Centennial Olympic Park terrorist bombing. To call something as unabashedly drab as this speculative fiction is far too generous. Besides the always charming Ashby regular Pyun warm bodies Andrew Divoff, Tim Thomerson, Thom Matthews, Norbert Weisser, and Yuji Okumoto do their usual spiel, which is really filling up space. Divoff, to his credit, would play a similar role in Air Force One (1997) later that year. Kimberly Warren, Jill Pierce, and Tina Cote were put to much better use, and actually given something to do, in the thriller Mean Guns (1997). Oh yeah, and 23-year-old Shannon Elizabeth – just two years before her big break in American Pie (1999) – stars as one of the hostages. Blast was filmed over a quick twelve days in April 1996 at the state-of-the-art Twin Towers Correctional Facility for around $700,000 and it looks like it too. Famous former and current inmates of Twin Towers include The Game, Paris Hilton, Steve-O, adult performer Ron Jeremy, and predatory film producer Harvey Weinstein. Mean Guns (1997) definitely is the better of the two. Which, while saying not much, unfortunately, says more than enough.

The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. At a pre-Olympic event which the President is scheduled to attend the women’s swimming team is preparing. A group of terrorist headed up Kalal Omodo (Andrew Divoff) infiltrate and seize control of the Aquatic Center with help from a mole and Omodo’s head of security Moses (Jill Pierce). The cell sends a broadcast across the globe that bombs have been planted all over the Olympic buildings, that they hold the US swim team hostage at gunpoint and, in an ultimatum, they vow to start killing hostages one by one if their demands aren’t met. Remaining somehow out of bounds is Jack Bryant (Linden Ashby). Since sustaining debilitating injuries the former Olympic Taekwondo champion has fallen on hard times and is now a recovering alcoholic. He’s currently slumming it up as a janitor but is hired as a last-minute staffer. Once informed of the hostage situation the Mayor (Barbara Roberts) throws together an improved crisis management meeting with help of an FBI agent (Yuji Okumoto), the police commissioner (Tim Thomerson) and a city aide (Tina Cote). Also sitting in is paraplegic wheelchair-bound Native American Interpol counter-terrorist specialist Leo (Rutger Hauer). From a distance the panel tries to assess and diffuse the situation. Only after his black co-worker Bena (Sonya Eddy) is killed and team trainer Bill (Thom Mathews) tries to strike a deal with terrorist leader Omodo does Bryant realize the building has been taken over by hostile armed forces. Things take a turn for the personal when he learns that his ex-wife Diane Colton (Kimberly Warren) is among the hostages. Will Bryant be able to thwart the terrorist plot?

With Chad Stahelski only netting a “special thanks” credit the action direction and choreography is nothing to get particularly excited about. Linden Ashby acquits himself well enough, but imagine what this could have been with an actual action director on board. In recent years Stahelski has risen to fame as a director on his own with the very lucrative (and ongoing) John Wick (2014-) franchise. Not only is the action direction and choreography on the lame side of terrible, none of the kills really mean anything. In Die Hard (1988) every character had a function, was given enough background, and every kill represented a milestone in the trajectory of the main character. Here none of the goons can be told apart and since the villains wear the same blue uniform as the main character at times it’s hard to tell exactly who did what to whom. Divoff plays the bad guy well enough, Ashby has charisma to spare, and the women are uniformly beautiful – but Pyun’s script (under his usual Hannah Blue alias) is skeletal, to say the least. None of the emergency committee members are given so much as a name (“the mayor”, “the police commissioner”, “FBI agent”, “city aide”, etc) which seems pretty… basic?

Pyun always had a bunch of pretty women in his stock company and here Jill Pierce, Tina Cote, and Kimberly Warren embody the 90s definition of hot. Only Warren has a role with some weight whereas Pierce and Cote are stuck in thankless decorative parts. You’d imagine that Pyun would put more focus on either Jill Pierce or Tina Cote but no such thing ever really materializes. For shame, Al, for shame. Tina Cote, whose presence usually lights up any of Pyun's more banal output, has a part so insignificant that it's easy to forget that she's in this at all. Kimberly Warren was the greatest Pyun babe to never go anywhere. Warren is given little more to do than standing around, and occasionally looking misty-eyed. At least Pyun was wise enough to get her white T-shirt wet. Jill Pierce was the reason to see Mean Guns (1997) even if she was only in there for a brief second or two here she has a slightly bigger role. Why Pyun never made her, Cote, or Pierce into his action muse as he did with Kristie Phillips in Spitfire (1995) is a question for the ages. Why we never got a The Doll Squad (1973) or Charlie's Angels (1976-1981) imitation with these three ladies boggles the mind. In retrospect the biggest star here is probably Shannon Elizabeth who was a two years away from making it big and would become a pillar on American television afterwards.

For the most part Blast is a case of wasted (or at least unfulfilled) potential. Nemesis (1992) was the perfect storm and Albert Pyun was never able to recreate that magic. If Blast is shorn of anything it’s Pyun’s usual style and swagger. The Hong Kong aspirations of Nemesis (1992) are nowhere to be found. The gun pyrotechnics are disappointingly flat lacking in both urgency and impact. None of the individual fights carry any weight and have something of an underrehearsed feel. The Twin Towers Correctional Facility was an incredible location but it isn’t used to maximum effect. Say what you will about former Pyun alum Jean-Claude Van Damme but he was at the height of his success and power by 1997, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) was two years old by this point – and even though Steven Seagal begun his decline he was still considered a legitimate action star. Albert Pyun was in the habit of making stars out of the unknown and rehabilitating disgraced (and fallen) action stars but he himself never ascended (or transcended) his low budget roots. Nor was he able to legitimize himself with a big budget production. Blast is emblematic of Pyun as a director and at every point effortlessly fails to deliver that what its title would have you believe. Under Siege (1992), Speed (1994), or Con Air (1997) this most certainly is not. Hell, it doesn’t even come within an inch of Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995). Had it been half as cartoony as Air Force One (1997) then at least it had been fun. Alas, it is not.

Plot: American heiress returns to the old family seat in Scotland.

To understand where from Huntress: Spirit Of the Night came and how it relates to the genre from whence it sprung a look at the history of gothic horror and the current trends surrounding it is in order. At least since the early seventies the erotic aspect became more emphasized with Mediterranean (primarily Italian, French, and Spanish) titles as The Night Of the Damned (1971), Vampyros Lesbos (1971), The Devil’s Wedding Night (1973), Black Magic Rites (1973), Vampyres (1974), and the early work of Jean Rollin. A decade’s worth of erosion had led the subgenre to succumb to its erotic aspect with the most infamous examples the nearly-identical Malabimba (1979), and Satan’s Baby Doll (1982) from the Bianchi brothers, Andrea and Mario, that went as far as to include hardcore inserts. On the other end of the spectrum was The Red Monks (1988) from Gianni Martucci that was neither atmospheric nor erotic despite featuring plenty of disrobed Lara Wendel and aging Eurocult queen Malisa Longo. All focused heavily on the exposed female form, and the softcore revival of the eighties (Tinto Brass in Italy and the Cine-S movement in Spain) and nineties (the king of late night cable Zalman King in North America). It briefly re-emerged in Hollywood with prestigious big budget offerings as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), the Anne Rice adaptation Interview with the Vampire (1994) and The Haunting (1999) before Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) and the meta-slasher revival made it instantly redundant.

Unlike many other subgenres gothic horror never truly went extinct and Huntress: Spirit Of the Night (released as either Huntress or Spirit Of the Night before coalescing into its current form, in addition to rolling into some North American markets as The Beast Inside Her) is very much the logical next step from Jim Wynorski’s The Haunting Of Morella (1990), and Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (1992). This little seen Charles Band produced ditty is not only a contemporary reworking of Cat People (1942 and 1982) with a lycanthropic bend and a dash of A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973). Huntress: Spirit Of the Night (simply Huntress hereafter) was originally intended to be made in 1986 under Band's previous studio Empire Pictures. David Schmoeller was attached to write and direct with Pino Donaggio providing the score. In 1988 Empire collapsed and Band moved back from Italy to the US. It was released around the same time as Stuart Gordon’s Castle Freak (1995) and is one of Full Moon’s more enduring features despite not spawning a franchise. Huntress is helped tremendously by having Borovnisa Blervaque - the sultry babe from the opening gambit of Albert Pyun’s Nemesis (1992) - as its headlining star. Blervaque was easily the best thing about Nemesis (1992) (although there certainly was no shortage of explosive action and good-looking actresses in that one) even though she had a scant few lines and was the only female in the cast not to lose her clothes. Three years removed from that Borovnisa apparently was no longer encumbered by such inhibitions and she, along with softcore queen Jenna Bodnar, is probably the only reason why Huntress has attained any sort of longevity and is considered something of a minor cult hit. Bodnar was among the regulars in 90s late night television and in a blitz career that lasted a mere 8 years (from 1995 to 2003) and saw her starring in some 18 titles. She’s often forgotten among more illustrious names as Shauna O'Brien, Shannon Tweed, Julie Strain, Kari Wuhrer, Maria Ford, Landon Hall, Shannon Whirry, and Wendy MacDonald.

Tara (Jenna Bodnar, as Jenna Bodner), an architect, has come to her ancestral home of Brecon, Northern Wales to attend the funeral of her father Kenneth Wexford (Mircea Cojan). Her father had sent her to America out of fear for animal attacks in their rural environs. Tara’s plan is to get her father’s belongings and affairs in order and then return to America. Through her butler Geoffrey (Constantin Cotimanis) she obtains a diary containing her father’s recorded thoughts, newspaper articles, and photographs and deducts that a panther was behind said attacks. A local witch cursed the female populace with carrying the panther’s spirit when her pet animal was shot by a Brecon local. At the funeral service she runs into her childhood friend from France, Michelle (Borovnisa Blervaque, as Blair Valk) who has power of attorney over the Wexford matter and will stop at nothing to enrich herself by selling the estate to interested parties. To lower her guard Michelle invites Tara to a party that will also be attended by her old crush and Michelle’s current boyfriend Alek Devane (David Starzyk). Once the necessary wine has been consumed and Michelle has spiked Alek’s drink with aphrodisiac they almost end up in a threesome, but Tara hesitates despite her urges.

There’s commotion in town because of the persisting animal attacks and a torch and pitchfork-wielding mob has gathered to find and kill the animal. Inspecting the estate she finds a naked young girl (Alina Turoiu) hiding in the wine cellar. The sight awakens her primal instincts and as she tears the clothes off her body she witnesses the spirit leaving the girl’s body and taking up residence in hers. Its presence not only gives chaste and sexually repressed Tara superhuman sense and agility but, more importantly, whets her dormant sexual appetite and latent carnal desires. In town antique dealer Tyrone Bodi (Charles Cooper) believes in the panther legend but Michelle is quick to brush him off as just another old and superstitious coot. Now acclimated to her new surroundings Tara expresses her wish to stay but Geoffrey and Bodi worry about her well-being and the village’s ancient curse, respectively. It’s around this time that Tara meets American expat Jacob (Michael Wiseman) who’s photographing wild life in the area for a magazine. She accepts his offer to pose for him and willingly sheds all of her clothes as well any inhibitions she still has. Tara’s change of heart gets in the way of Michelle (who’s in the habit of lounging on the piano naked) forcing her to resort to more drastic measures to get her hands on the Wexford estate.

Arguably Huntress is probably the earliest example of the kind of late night softcore dreck that Jenna Bodnar would excel at. Our weakness for ginger women is perhaps not as well-documented as it might be and while we were drawn to Huntress because of Borovnisa Blervaque, Jenna Bodnar is no slouch either. Bodnar has the curls and curves and, like Jessica Moore in Italy before her, she was not shy about wielding either when and where it matters. She acquits herself wonderfully well especially in light of how she had done but two features prior. Blervaque is the more athletic of the two and by and large more in line with the icy and mysterious beauties of European weird cinema. Being the nominal star Bodnar is who Huntress understandably gets the most mileage out of. To their credit Blervaque and Bodnar can be seen entirely nude, including full frontal. Likewise, Bodnar can hardly be called the stereotypical late night softcore starlet. For one she isn’t blonde (she would adopt that in her later oeuvre) and while she certainly has the curvaceous body her pneumatically-enhanced curves (she’s no Cat Sassoon, thank fuck) aren’t as startlingly, blindingly obvious.

Borovnisa Blervaque is barely recognizable from her turn in Nemesis (1992) four years earlier. Why Pyun chose Sue Price over her for any of the Nemesis (1992) sequels is a question for the ages. The opening gambit showcased her potential of becoming a low budget action star, but none such thing ever materialized. None of which stops Huntress from inventing enough excuses for Blervaque to disrobe and cavort around in the nude. The piano scene, while brief, does a lot with very little. Bodnar has her somewhat legendary nocturnal seduction scene that has her writing and gyrating around clad only with the sky. Believe it or not, the biggest star here is actually David Starzyk. Starzyk would build an extensive career as the perennial guest star on just about every major American television series. Huntress is decent but there are plenty of other softcore flicks that do this thing better. Huntress is out to titillate and is a resounding success. As a horror, gothic or otherwise, it’s completely bereft of both tension and scares. Not to mention that it never shows its monster.

There’s something fundamentally different about how European and American filmmakers frame and photograph nudity, especially of the beloved female kind. Whereas Europeans see the naked body as a canvas the median American director is deadly afraid of offending the frail sensibilities of a general audience. Compare this to Vampyros Lesbos (1971), The Devil’s Wedding Night (1973), Black Magic Rites (1973), Vampyres (1974), or even Top Sensation (1969) and the difference couldn’t be more stark. Europe is generally more relaxed and liberated when it comes to sexuality and on-screen nudity. Despite its acres of skin Huntress is desperately, terminally afraid to truly explore the exposed female form as a canvas and, as such, never gets really steamy to any notable degree. That Huntress was filmed by a puritan American is maddeningly obvious. Moreso Mark Manos a year or so hence would direct a bunch of videos for Playboy – and that’s exactly what this looks like. An extended, 90-minute Playboy video, with all the good and bad that entails. Besides the usual boob fondling, neck-kissing and writhing of glistening naked bodies you’d expect of a softcore romp the horror element is practically non-existent or pityingly underdeveloped. Unlike Annik Borel in The Legend of the Wolf Woman (1976) Bodnar won’t be turning wolf and Huntress hardly, if ever, turns up the sleaze. If nothing else, it’s painfully clear from Huntress how far and how deep the gothic horror had fallen. While it certainly has the fog-enshrouded, shadowy atmosphere thanks to its lush Romanian locations there’s very little to actively stay awake for. It’s far from the worst in the Full Moon Features catalog and this is well before the puppets and gimmicks became Band’s entire raison d'être.

Huntress is pretty much a product of its time. The nineties were notoriously unkind to horror (a few exceptions notwithstanding) and late night softcore erotica was always a pretty toothless affair to begin with. At any earlier decade in b-cinema history this would have been a recipe for success, or at least nominal fireworks. Joe D’Amato’s Eleven Days Eleven Nights (1987) and Top Model (1988) was better than this. Even Black Cobra Woman (1972) did more with less. The Legend of the Wolf Woman (1976) was sleazier and any Paul Naschy El Hombre Lobo feature from any decade prior actually qualified as a horror. Imagine what José Ramón Larraz, Joe D'Amato or even Jesús Franco could have done with a premise like this. It’s faint praise indeed that it featured an actress who was in a minor home video hit and one that was about to become a regular warm body on late night cable television. It’s even fainter praise that Huntress has the good fortune of making The Haunting Of Morella (1990) look expensive. Then again, that one had Lana Clarkson and Nicole Eggert disrobing. As much as we have a weak spot for Borovnisa Blervaque, her career never went anywhere beyond guest roles and “Yugoslavian girl” in Critical Decision (1996).