User reviews

Karin Mani stars in "Alley Cat", and is absolutely the only reason to see this somewhat rare exploitation female revenge flick. She stalks and attacks several scum types who mugged her grandparents. Everyone else, including Mani's love interest cop, the generic hoods, and incompetent judge, are easily forgettable. In the beginning there is some surprising sexual humor that helps, but technically the film is too dark in many places, and the acting by all is far from even marginal. Enjoy a pair of totally gratuitous shower scenes, and that's about it for "Alley Cat". In the end, all that really counts is Karin Mani and her sexy overbite. - MERK

A young woman with karate skills takes on a group of killers when trouble comes too close to home. Released in 1984 but the movie looks as if it'd been sitting on the shelf for awhile. Nonetheless, it's a fun film and some scenes actually (and somewhat accidentally) exhibit great atmosphere. You won't believe the karate skills demonstrated in this movie. Karin Man does well for what she's given & looks great doing it.

Despite a very low budget, which shows in the bad acting, dialog and poor photography (some scenes are too dark), this has the energy of the best exploitation pics and is surprisingly entertaining. The lead character (Mani) is a tough karate fighter and repeatedly kicks in the faces of several gang members throughout the movie. She doesn't hesitate to speak her mind, even in court where it gets her into trouble, and is an early example of the tough heroine in films, still rare today. There's also an abundance of female skin revealed, including inside a women's prison; this picture has all the right ingredients for this type of picture. This is pretty much a version of "Death Wish"(74) with a female instead of Charles Bronson. Justice is shown to be blind, as far as the law & the court system, and this 'cat-fighter' has to make her own rules. There's also a fight scene between two cops which, while it has you chuckling at the lame dialog, is still exciting. Most of the gang members, grimy & scummy, are also funny, in that stupid fashion.

Cheapshot little actioner is a swell ride for fans of films about chicks who kick ass. A winsome girlie has a confrontation with a couple of small-time car thieves...she beats the crap out of them, bruising their little egos. They enlist the aid of their scar-faced gang leader in a nasty vengeance plot, but this little lady has more mean-streets machismo than they bargained for! Before long, she's on a karate-chopping revenge rampage of her own. This flick is admittedly pretty small beans, but there's enough sleazy action and jiggly feminine exposures to keep most trash film lovers pleasantly amused.

Production quality...pretty low. Performances...kinda stale. Just overlook the obvious flaws here, and you may find yourself having some mindless fun with ALLEY CAT.

5/10

The lead's exceptional karate skills are the reason to see this. That and her shapely, well-worked out body--obviously martial arts training has served her well in more than just strength-building. And she's not the only one. All the meat here is choice, and even the guys, even the bad ones, are good-looking. Otherwise it's a cheapo grrl-power revenge flick. YouTube lists it as "Fighting Karate Lady Alley Cat Film". Says it all.

The amusing "Alley Cat" is a watchable low budget variation on the time honoured "Death Wish" premise with a female lead. It never really catches fire, but it remains a mild diversion anyway - a crude, formulaic, sleazy, cheesy diversion that does deliver some of the requirements of the exploitation genre.

Karin Mani stars as Billie, a young woman living with her grandparents who works herself into a righteous fury when the old folk are targeted by criminal scum. The grandmother is fatally stabbed during a mugging and Billie becomes consumed with the idea of revenge. She meets cute with a nice guy cop named Johnny (Robert Torti) who indulges in some of his own vigilante tactics.

Mani's clearly got what it takes when it comes to the ass kicking department, but in general isn't terribly appealing; Torti scores more strongly in terms of likability. (However, Mani looks so good sans clothes that it's doubtful many people are going to care that much.) Much of the acting is amateurish yet entertaining. Lovely Britt Helfer has a memorable bit as a hooker whom Johnny intimidates into giving up information. Both Jon Greene and Michael Wayne have fun roles as a jerk cop and the prime antagonist of the piece, respectively. Wayne, who sports a scar and is thus named "Scarface", is actually named Krug in the movie, which will amuse any fan of "The Last House on the Left".

There's enough nudity to keep people happy as well as the required shower scene since a plot twist has Billie sent to prison (there's a message in here about the complete unfairness of an incompetent judicial system). One of the cons also makes lesbian overtures towards Billie. The fight scenes aren't the most slickly staged but are basically enjoyable. And the silly music score is just icing on this cake.

It's easy to see why this might be somewhat obscure for its genre but if you're a die hard addict of trash cinema you could certainly do a lot worse.

Seven out of 10.

One of those el cheapo action adventures of the early 1980s that used to fill video rental stores solely to be taken out by adolescent boys in the hope of a cheap thrill.

Woeful down market attempt to cash in on the Death Wish phenomenon by substituting a moderately attractive woman for the visually challenging Bronson. Acting is terrible, sets are cheap, the baddies are, well, bad. Identification with any of the characters is unlikely.

Only redeeming feature is modest amount of gratuitous female nudity, a smattering of which is full frontal. Other than that, you can leave it...

What a great line! This movie could have been block buster with a little more funding. Great idea with a karate butt kicking actress! Check it out. Worth a gander!

ALLEY CAT is a low budget American thriller clearly devised as a gender reversal twist on the DEATH WISH franchise. The heroine is a young woman blessed with martial arts skills who finds herself tangling with a gang of rapists and murderers when her grandparents are accidentally bumped off by the villains. She then cuts a swathe through the lower elements of the local nightlife.

It's simplistic stuff indeed but not without a simple verve to see it through. Various sub-plots have been added in in order to increase the running time, including a dull romance between the heroine and some Jewish guy and a brief sojourn in prison which manages to include the usual prison clichés despite not occupying much screen time.

It's quite artificial stuff but not without merit. Sadly the action sequences are poorly shot and conceived; if they'd been decent then this might have been an acceptable little thriller, but as it stands they're quite boring. The cast is full of those types of actor that you've never heard of before or after and most of the film takes place at night which means a lot of night scenes where you can't really make out what's going on.

I appreciated that there was a little ambition as far as straightforward revenge 80's exploitation goes; it posits itself as a kick-ass woman vigilante movie (Frank Miller I bet woulf approve, and if it had been set in NYC Is half expect Daredevil to show up), but then it becomes a woman-in-prison movie for 15 minutes. It may not be much, yet what's fascinating is that the lead Karin can't escape being assaulted anywhere. In this world, it's not just men that can be villainous rapists but women too... That is if they're already behind bars. It still seems significant in some way, whether the filmmakers understood it or not, that there's another level of commentary with just those scenes. Bottom line, there is no shelter in this Hollywood.

I also liked this lead, albeit the amount of nudity makes it so that I might question if anyone ever tries to pull this out as some hidden-cum-underrated feminist treasure. It's a movie made for men AND women, it's not exclusionary really, and she certainly has a gigantic load of her own agency. On the other hand, frankly, if I were to show this to, say, my father in law (a B movie diehard for decades), he'd probably find a couple other reasons to dig this. That said, she does the role well and did the work necessary for it (I imagine she was a sruntwpman either before or after this too).

Anyway, good exploity times! PS: I advise my many female friends on social media who I've seen over time complain about men who pull the kind of crap the men do visavi hitting on others... Learn all the martial arts.

An apparent vanity project for Karin Mani (who?), as a hottie Charles Bronson going around wiping up the 'scum' that mugged her parents, or grandparents or something, and impressing young hunks with her karate skills. In a pivotal scene she intervenes to stop a rape and a moron cop throws HER in jail, so after a couple cool shower scenes and some abortive prison-dyke seduction she has to take the law into her own hands blah blah blah. I guess there were a lot of movies like this? The script is dumber than usual if you can believe that. Mani comes off as exactly the kind of showbiz type that would co-produce her own Death Wish starring role, and I find that type sporadically endearing, but the movie is an ungainly apparatus. Competent actors would be wasted on the scumbag roles here, and would actively undermine the fantastic mincing-incompetent DA and a judge that has got to be the producer's uncle.

This isn't some lost classic or anything, but for a female led revenge flick it gets the job done. Lots of nudity and some laughably bad fighting mixed with a goof soundtrack and blasé plot make for a fun B movie worth a watch.

This movie begins with a woman named "Belinda 'Billie' Clark" (Karin Mani) being woken up in the middle of the night by her neighbor and told that two thugs are trying to steal her car tires. So she immediately dresses and confronts the two men responsible. However, rather than stopping they attempt to physically assault her instead. However, this soon proves to be a big mistake as she possesses superlative martial arts skills and easily turns the tables on them. Not only that, but her grandfather also appears and upon shooting a gun at them causes them to immediately run away. Not long afterward these two hoodlums report back to their boss who is not at all pleased with them and decides to take matters into his own hands by robbing Billie's grandfather and fatally stabbing her grandmother in the process. If that wasn't bad enough, the next night Billie attempts to stop a rape on another woman by those same two thugs and for her efforts she is arrested by a corrupt cop and booked on bogus charges while the real crooks escape justice--at least for the time being. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie certainly had potential but it was somewhat limited by the cheap production values and some rather weak combat scenes. Likewise, although Karin Mani turned in a decent performance, most of the other actors weren't nearly as good. In any case, although I don't consider this to be a good film by any means, it wasn't totally bad and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Doing a little research on this movie, I uncovered evidence that this was a troubled production, with both multiple directors and a temporary shutdown in the middle of shooting. The behind the scenes turmoil ended up on screen. The story is kind of a mess. There are characters that disappear for long periods of time (or disappear with no explanation.) There are scenes that seem to provide no real purpose except maybe to make sure the movie gets to an acceptable running time (though it's only 82 minutes long.) But even if there hadn't been problems behind the scenes, there would still be some big problems with the movie. Karin Mani looks nice, but she simply cannot act very well, and her martial art sequences are not the least bit exciting or well choreographed. In the end, what we have here is a movie that had great trash potential but will not satisfy even the most forgiving B movie fan.

Karin Mani's tires get pulled off her car, but she beats up the thieves. Her grandparents are mugged and killed by the same hoods. Fortunately for her, she's a ninja in a tank top and Capri pants, so they don't stand a chance in this awful little movie.

There's a lot that wrong, from the idiotic lines to the robotic acting, so let's talk about the foley work, with every background noise way too loud. Fortunately it covers up the dalogue.

The camerawork doesn't stink.

This movie is really bad. the lead actress did such a poor acting job and the martial art moves are worse than amateur. total waste of time!

Well I think you can and should compare this to a degree. Yes Karin Mani is not as charismatic as our own Charles Bronson. But she can kick ... people as good as he could. And why shouldn't she? There is not much when it comes to story anyway .. but that is not why you are here for.

You are here for the action and maybe the nudity. In the first scene she changes clothes to go out of the house. Was it necessary to show us that? Probably not - but do most people who watch this mind? Also a big and strong no. Fight choreography is nice ... nothing more and nothing less.

Please humour me if you will, for a minute while I read you the back of the ALLEY CAT VHS box. It says that:

In this part of the city every street is a dead end- on every corner something to buy- in every alley another way to die- To survive you're got to be the best- just like the Alley Cat. Alley Cat- this lady owns the night. On the streets where even the predators become victims she knows how to survive- Cross her and you've run out of luck. Alley Cat- This animal is aroused.

Now isn't that one of the most pathetic blurbs you've ever heard in your life? Whoever wrote that must be insane if they thought such a awful description could tempt us into viewing the video. Yet unfortunately, whichever faceless individual was responsible for that tragic use of English was doing their job only too well.. the movie contained within the little plastic case IS as bad as it sounds, and then some.

Karin Mani plays the title role, and the script basically tells her during every given scene to either a) Pout like a goldfish b) Kick male butt or c) Show off her feminine 'attributes'. No complaints about the latter, but in terms of the other two.. let's just say she isn't much of an actress, and is even less convincing as a martial arts expert. But even Meryl Streep with Cynthia Rothrock's body (what a scary thought) would fail to save this movie. The unfolding of the plot is boring beyond belief, as we get one ineptly directed fight sequence after enough, pausing only for hysterical courtroom shenanigans and the occasional gag-inducing love scene with the interestingly named Robert Torti. The camera-work also follows a similar path of shame, with far too many unneeded close-ups and continuity errors abound.

The part that I think really sums this scum-bucket of a movie up is where our heroine is sexually assaulted, and finds herself testifying in front of a corrupt judge while her rich-kid rapist leers at her from the box. Not only does he get off scot-free despite the overwhelming evidence against him, but she herself is then jailed for daring to protest about the verdict in front of his Honour. Behind bars, she then has a group shower, a lesbian crush, a couple of cat-fights and a nice, sweaty game of volleyball before being released on bail to continue her battle. This ten-minute section has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and the screenplay grinds to a halt to encompass it. I can only imagine the producers wanted to add a bit more T&A to the mix, and came up with this needless sub-plot as a means to achieving that end.

Which kinds of begs the question, is this an exploitation film, or a serious drama? Neither, is my response to that.. it isn't sleazy or camp enough to appeal to fans of Troma-style cinema, and it certainly doesn't make the grade as an exploration of one woman's fight against the system.. purely because it is so appallingly made. So who on earth would want to see it? Lunatics, I guess.. or IMDb reviewers who stay up till 3pm and watch any old rubbish on the box while trying to get to sleep. Sadly on this occasional I failed, and the horrors will stay with me for quite some time. Don't make the same mistake I did. Have a hot milk, or something.. 1/10

I had bought this movie as a limited edition from Vinegar Syndrome, and all I knew about it was that it was a revenge story from the 80's with a female lead. My heart sank when I read the box: Produced and written by Robert E. Waters (Vampire Hookers). Now there's a movie that fails to deliver on its outrageous premise implied by the title. AND it was made in the Philippines during the 70's exploitation heyday! Thankfully, the more modestly-titled Alley Cat does deliver on being much more sordid.

Billie (Karin Mani) is awoken in the middle of the night to be notified somebody's stealing her tires! So, she proceeds to go out and threaten the two thieves. When they don't comply, in turn, she kicks their asses. Which sets in motion all the revenge. These thugs are part of a bigger group of thugs, who seem to be nothing more than a gang of low-level car thieves (get a gander at all the s#!+boxes they drive around in). So, to get revenge on Billie, they attack an elderly couple(!) related to her. This sets Billie on fire. Personal Bias: I love ass-kicking women.

It is hilarious to watch this kind of petite Asian woman handily beat down all these thugs. I especially liked all the scenes where they're getting their asses handed to them by a petite Asian woman in front of other guys (who keep their distance, or run away). There's a bar room brawl, a rape, a whole WiP angle, and other shenanigans. It is especially amusing to watch the thugs get beat up in front of their fellow thugs.

I had to dock this movie a star based on just how lame this gang is. Bad enough they're handily beaten up by a girl, but these guys came off as particularly wussy. Their "leader" (with the rather obvious moniker of Scarface) ACTS all tough, but when the chips are down, proves himself to be just as much a man as his cohorts. Low-level car thieves, indeed; Not one of them packs a gun. Karate vs. A gun, with a group, I gotta think the gun has an advantage. Yeah, we see chains and knives and, uh, building structures(?) swing above her when she ducks, and below her when she jumps. I mean, these guys really had it coming.

Possibly the worst fight scenes ever filmed. This lady could not hurt a fly in real life and it is made clear here. Too many times when she "taps" guys with her foot instead of kicking them. Ignore the great reviews here and just DO NOT overlook the obvious flaws. THANK GOD for fast forwarding. I plan to cancel Amazon Prime this week, mostly due to their absurd and unreasonable price being just raised yet again for no justifiable reason makes that decision easy, but this Alley Crap makes it an even easier decision.

Action & Adventure.Billie Clark is twenty years old, very pretty, and without a care in the world,until a brutal street gang violates her life, and she turns into an ALLEY CAT bent on revenge! When the gang attacks her grandparents house and her car, Billie uses her black belt prowess to fight them off. But at the same time she earns their hatred, and she and her grandparents are marked for vengence.When her grandparents lose their lives to the brutal thugs. Billie becomes like a cat stalking her prey-and no prison,police force,boyfriend,or crooked judge can get in the way of her avenging claws. She's a one-woman vigilante squad,a martial arts queen,a crack shot with no mercy. She's the ALLEY CAT.Watch for the dramatic ending versus the Gang leader! Rated R for Nudity & Violence, Other Films with Karin Mani: Actress - filmography,Avenging Angel (1985) .... Janie Soon Lee , "From Here to Eternity" (1979) (mini) TV Series .... Tawny, Filmography as: Actress, Stunts - filmography,Avenging Angel (1985) (stunts)P.S. She should have been Catwoman in the Batman Movie!

In ALLEY CAT, Billie (Karin Mani) catches a pair of creeps in the act of stealing the tires off of her car. Karate and gunfire ensue, putting the bad guys to flight. Unfortunately, these street thugs are working for an even bigger loser known as William "Scarface" Krug (Michael Wayne). Scarface, in addition to being an idiot, is also a sadistic, murdering psychopath.

Soon, Scarface and his fellow goons hunt down and attack Billie's grandparents! These feeble fossils are no match for Scarface and his crew. With no legal justice forthcoming, Billie must -eventually- take action herself, bringing down the hurt on the street trash.

Fairly slow-building for a revenge film, CAT even takes a detour into "Women In Prison" territory at one point, complete with obligatory shower scene! Then, there's Billie's clunky romance with a cop. By the time the true vengeance rolls around, it's almost a side issue.

This movie's one saving grace is Mani herself. Her character is the only one that comes across as more than a block of wood with a face painted on it. She's also beautiful, and spends a great deal of her time missing her clothes.

THE MAIN MESSAGES OF THIS FILM: #1- Night jogging attracts scumbags like flies, so, just don't do it, unless you're a karate expert! #2- Saloons are great places to meet people and destroy property! #3- Cops are either wide-eyed rookies or jaded old turds. There is no in between! #4- Guys nicknamed "Scarface" are usually not very nice! #5- Karate solves almost every problem, and those it doesn't solve aren't worth making a movie about!...