Fugitive Rage

After seeing the T&A flick 'Scorned 2' co-starring Wendy Schumacher, I wanted to give 'Fugitive Rage' a chance. Now I largely wish I hadn't. This dtv actioner provides another opportunity to whip out those boobs and be joined by common faces however it's also super cheap. A wafer thin plot, lots of awful dialog and a minuscule amount of action. Director Fred Olen Ray's typical seal of quality.

Tara McCormick (Schumacher) guns down gangster Tommy Stompanato (Jay Richardson) after he's beaten his murder charge in court for killing her sister. She's sent to prison, but he survives. Tommy juggles having her whacked from inside and completing an arms dealing when a government spook O'Keefe (Tim Abell) tells Tara he can get her out of prison if she agrees to finish the job she started.

Unnecessary side-plot has Tara become friends with fellow inmate Josie (Shauna O'Brien) and make it part of her deal she gets out too. Odd thing is it doesn't lead to Shauna (an ex-PH Pet) getting naked herself. Schumacher has her boobs exposed in prison and the requisite sex number with Abell. Neither are killer, but these and Nikki Fritz as a sexy nurse are the only time this flick shows any signs of life.

Ross Hagen appears as another mobster and Toni Naples (Sorceress) the prison warden, but 'Fugitive Rage' is just going through the low budget motions. Few lackluster guns fired and a cheaply shot car flipping over and exploding. Schumacher mildly believable as a kickass ex-cop, but martial arts pieces she's involved in are hardly choreographed very well. Easily skippable.

Watchable paint-by-numbers action flick utilizing the female assassin shtick. Personally, I'm a fan of this sort of generic dumbassery, so I found it pretty enjoyable and scores extra points for it being made in 1996, a time when these sort of movies were starting to phase out into the unwatchable crap that passes for action nowadays. Nothing you haven't seen before but there is one scene that made me laugh out loud. After subduing one of the main bad guys, the leading lady tells her partner, "If he moves, shoot him!". She walks away and the guy starts trying to talk his way out of it and, instead of listening, the partner goes, "You moved!" and shoots him dead. Awesome! How many of these kinds of movies have you seen where you are saying "Just shoot the guy!" only for him to escape and cause more problems? Well, this movie finally showed some rare common sense and did what we all wanted! It's worth watching just for that!

This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's not a B series movie, but a C or D series. Maybe a Z series! The plot is copied from n movies, the acting is laughable and the action is badly filmed. At the same time, I laughed so much seeing it that I spent a not so bad time. If you'll see the movie, notice how bad is the acting. Don't miss the fight in prison (notice how they stop for a little time between each kick, like they were preparing themselves for the next one). When the two mobsters try to get Tara with the car, they almost stop the car, so she can climb over. The movie is full of stuff like. It's really a laughable movie.

This is not a movie to take too seriously and anyone expecting anything like a serious crime drama would be advised to stay away. Here we have our heroine, played by Alexander Keith, jailed for shooting a scumbag gangster, beating up the jailhouse bullies, before being recruited by a government agent. With a price on her head by the stricken mobster the scene is set for her to wipe out the bad guys to say nothing of sorting out a couple of hillbilly types in a bar. The film is full of comic-strip violence of the kind where countless blows are struck to the head without leaving a mark. The shadowy agent has an eccentric minder played by a veteran actress, certainly one for the connoisseurs. It may be daft but apart from a clumsily executed and redundant sex scene, never dull.

This time around it's not a Badham, or a Besson that tackles the now-popular female assassin formula, but B-movie great Fred Olen Ray. Ray has given us some truly terrible movies (1994's `ATTACK OF THE 60 FOOT CENTERFOLD') and some okay movies (like this one, and `POSSESSED BY THE NIGHT'). All in all Ray shows what he can truly do here in this VERY stylish thriller. Basically, Tara McCormick (Wendy Schumacher, one of the best looking women in Hollywood, and a good actress on top of that) is arrested for an attempted murder, and is recruited by the government to become a hit woman. The acting, for the most part, is subtle, and not over-done, like most of these movies. The action is right on the mark, and there's plenty of it. Basically, it functions not only as a good `NIKITA' clone, but also as a successful B-movie that over-comes its budget and delivers quality.