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Category: Borovnisa Blervaque

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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).

Published on Leave a comment on Nemesis (1992)

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Plot: disgraced bounty hunter ponders the human condition while killing people

Nemesis was the only of the original quadrilogy to have any discernable talent in front of, and behind, the camera. Albert Pyun wasn't always the schlockmeister he eventually turned into. In 1992 he was a halfway promising action movie director. Above all else Nemesis is stylized in its adrenaline-pumping mix of martial arts, dystopian science fiction, and Hong Kong heroic bloodshed. Elevated beyond mere pulp thanks to a tight script that intelligently borrows from James Cameron, John Woo, and Paul Verhoeven Nemesis attempts, no matter how daftly shot and generic, to say something, anything, about the human condition. While there might not be much flesh to its metallic bones, the machine beneath it is rock-solid.

The screenplay, written by Rebecca Charles and an uncredited David S. Goyer, paints a dystopian future vision reminiscent of a William Gibson novel. In the distant future of 2027 Japan and America have merged, economically and politically,  and man and machine have become intertwined. Cybergenetics and human augmentation have become everyday commodities. Information terrorism is the order of the day. LAPD officer Alex Rain (Olivier Gruner) is tasked with intercepting data chip smuggler Morico (Borovnisa Blervaque), resulting in massive collateral damage and the woman’s head being blown off. Rain is chased, and eventually killed, by chief gunwoman Rosaria (Jennifer Gatti). In a scene mirroring the resurrection of Alex Murphy in RoboCop (1987) Rain (or what remains of him at any rate) is taken to the Marshall Islands where he's re-assembled through bio-engineering and synthetic reconstruction. The then-partial cybernetic Rain is sent to apprehend Morico in Baja, New Mexico. Rain is debriefed by his android handler Jared (Marjorie Monaghan, a less square-jawed Megan Boone) and her blonde partner (Marjean Holden). His old mentor LAPD Commissioner Sam Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) deems Rain fit for new field operations. Instead he decides to retire to New Rio De Janeiro as a black market mercenary.

Rain's rest is short-lived as his explosive reputation and predilection towards violence puts Farnsworth, now at a genexus between man and machine, and his henchman Maritz (Brion James) on his tail. Both men have other plans and coerce him into accepting a mission to track down his former handler Jared, who has since gone rogue. To get Rain to do their bidding they install a small explosive charge in his heart. Now forced to cooperate against his will Rain tracks Jared down to Shang Loo, Java where he comes to the realization that in a society where humanity has been rendered obsolete, a war between the last bastions of mankind and the industrialist machines is looming. Jared, who has shed her android skin and exists in a permanent state of digimortality, has fallen in with the Red Army Hammerheads, the last faction of assorted humanity that refuses to bow to their cyborg oppressor. The established order has been strategically mechanized by the cyborgs. They seek to subjugate, and eventually demanufacture, all of humanity. Now a peon in a much larger conflict Rain is forced to choose an allegiance. Helping him with that are Hammerhead leader Angie-Liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), Jared's sometime-accomplice Julian (Deborah Shelton) and Max Impact (Merle Kennedy), a slender female who either practices capoeira or parkour and looks something of a 90s counterpart to Analía Ivars, albeit with a far less pronounced bosom. Rain ponders the soul of a new machine and thus becomes their Nemesis.

The star of Nemesis was Parisian kick boxer Olivier Gruner, who had worked as a consultant on the Jean-Claude Van Damme action romp Lionheart (1990). Pyun had conceived Nemesis at the end of a three-picture deal with Cannon. The project originally went under the name Alex Rain with both Kelly Lynch and Megan Ward being attached to it as lead stars. The project was put on hold as Pyun tended to other obligations and several years and rewrites later it resurfaced in its current form. Imperial Entertainment, duly impressed by Pyun's ability to helm marketable product within the allotted time and budget, was given the green light. The caveat was that Nemesis had to be a vehicle for their new discovery: Olivier Gruner. Unfortunately Nemesis didn't launch Gruner into stardom, instead he found himself working in low-budget action and science-fiction ever since. Which is all perfectly understandable since Gruner is probably a worse actor than Van Damme, Steven Seagall and Michael Dudikoff combined. 

Nemesis was Albert Pyun's first feature of note after his initial success with the sword-and-sorcery flick The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and the Jean-Claude Van Damme post-apocalyptic action yarn Cyborg (1989). It also is one of Pyun's best looking productions by a wide margin. It seamlessly weaves together Hong Kong action, some martial arts, and American action movie clichés into an admittedly slick, hyper-stylized whole. Nemesis has an impressive cast including future Pyun stock talent Tim Thomerson and Yuji Okumoto as well as character actors Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brion James, Jackie Earle Healey, Branscombe Richmond and a very young Thomas Jane. There's no shortage of bodacious, gun-toting, short-skirted women with the likes of Borovnisa Blervaque, Jennifer Gatti, Marjorie Monaghan, Marjean Holden, Deborah Shelton, and Merle Kennedy. Like any good pulp title Nemesis is simultaneously stylish and completely derivative of better properties - but it's also prescient of the Hong Kong action and cyberpunk trend of the 90s predating The Matrix (1999) by over half a decade. It isn't for nothing that some of its scenes were replicated in big-budget Hollywood productions years later.

Rain's escape from a goon-infested hotel in Shang Loo was copied verbatim in the daft Len Wiseman actioner Underworld (2003). In Wiseman's movie a leatherclad Kate Beckinsale shoots her way through several floors to her escape. The look of the agents, and the wardrobe of the female assassins during the opening shootout, would be copied by Wachowski siblings in their 1999 science-fiction hit The Matrix. Nemesis isn't without its share of humor either. In a surgery scene aped from The Terminator (1984), Julian is forced to do ocular inspection on Alex, "Now this is gonna," she starts, "sting a little?" Alex matter-of-factly asks. "No," Julian remarks prior to starting the procedure, "it's gonna hurt like a motherfucker!" Nemesis then shifts gears and foreshadows its first sequel with a jungle segment redolent of Predator (1987). Farnsworth, replaced in the interim by a cybernetic infiltration unit programmed to execute Rain, gives chase. After a protacted chase sequence that forms much of Nemesis’ second half the metallic endoskeleton of Commissioner Farnsworth grapples onto the airborne plane in a scene that simultaneously rips off Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s The Terminator. Rain drops Farnsworth in a volcano because no B-movie is complete without a live volcano.

Beyond mere gun pyrotechnics and lifting from better movies Nemesis has a thought or two in its head. Much like Rick Deckard from Blade Runner (1982) and the hardboiled detectives from Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe novels Alex Rain waxes faux-philosophically about the nature of his rapidly eroding humanity and the state of his eternal soul. These bouts of existential fear are somewhat offset and ineffectual as they often happen when Raine is in process of gunning people down en masse. As Jared puts it at one point, “It took them 6 months to put him back together. Synthetic flesh, bio-engineered organs. It always scared him that they might take out his soul, and replace it with some matrix chip.” In the second half of the movie everybody, on either side of the divide, keeps telling Alex that he’s, “more machine than human”. While Pyun would remain prolific through out much of his career seldom, if not ever again, would the screenplays (written either by himself or his associates) aspire to these kinds of ambitious conceptual heights. Nemesis is completely and entirely derivative, but in that rare good and intelligent fashion.

Nemesis is, to put it mildly, sparkly. Director of photography George Mooradian and Pyun love to shoot everything beautifully lit and in soft focus. Everything has the cinematography of a sex scene even when it is anything but. Sparkly is very much Pyun's calling card. There's an outspoken adoration for Hong Kong action cinema with the completely over-the-top gunplay, inexplicable explosions, and reducing enemies to a splatter of sparks, wires and exposed circuitry. Pyun often gets carried away with his depictions of trench-coated, bespectacled people shooting at each other in slow-motion and in soft focus. Pyun realizes he is no John Woo and probably never will be, but he tries. Albert Pyun was always prone to stealing from the best and never hid his adoration for his superiors. Nemesis transcends its derivative nature by the sheer amount of starpower involved.

The women are universally and uniformly beautiful. Jennifer Gatti and Borovnisa Blervaque completely steal the opening gambit set piece that has them systematically obliterating an already blasted out industrial wasteland to bits. Certainly a scene that inspired many a video game in terms of multiplayer arena matches. Blervaque was a French model who appeared in music videos from Richard Marx and Eddie Money with Nemesis being her only cinematic credit of note. She was born Myrtille Blervaque in Paris, France but changed her name to Blueberry and later to just Blue when she started modeling. Marjorie Monaghan looks the part, but her acting certainly isn't worth the price of admission. Marjean Holden is barely a character worthy of the mention but her pairing with Monaghan is at least effective, no matter how minuscule its overall importance. Pyun treats the viewer to a leering look of Deborah Shelton’s well-formed, sweaty posterior, but makes sure to give the ladies something as well by showing Olivier Gruner and Thomas Jane in various stages of undress. Much like Cat Sassoon in Angelfist (1993), Julian’s globes remain sturdily in place no matter how she moves.


Nemesis is a highly stylized, action-packed and breakneck paced genre exercise that pays homage to many, often better realized, productions – but remains strangely watchable despite hardly ever being coherent as far as the storyline and characters are concerned. It manages to avoid most trappings of low-budget action cinema and lends itself to repeated viewings. Nemesis has all the gunfire and explosions than one could reasonably ask for. It was followed by three, largely unrelated, in-name only sequels with Sue Price taking over from Gruner, all of which were unfortunately penned by Albert Pyun. Alas, Nemesis is a lone high-water mark in a franchise that never lived up to its promise and potential.

As of 2017 a fifth installment is in production (with no involvement from Gruner) called Nemesi5: the New Model from director Dustin Ferguson. In Nemesi5: the New Model Price returns as the aged mentor to the titular new model Ari Frost (Schuylar Craig). For this fifth episode Pyun served as executive producer. As a stand-alone piece Nemesis is derivative and the franchise would never reach the level of competence on display here again. That the franchise took a turn for the worse after its two original screenwriters bade their farewell speaks volumes of just how strong and efficient the first Nemesis was. The continuing and continued existence of the Nemesis franchise is puzzling enough by itself, especially in the light of Ferguson taking over the dystopian cyberpunk action mantle from Pyun...