[Self] Babes & Swords

After my first trip from Saudi, I was going through some DVDs in KL and came across Chanbara. The cover promised a kickass (double) sword-weilding babe in bikini plus a cowboy hat, roaming across the remnants of Japan killing zombies while looking for her lost sister.

Touching storyline right? Not to mention Chanbara was supposed to have some other companions too. 1 was a biker chick with a shotgun and 1 more was some chick with some weapon too (sorry -memory blurred out).

With all that juicy action, the deprived soul that I was should have soaked it all up right? Well no actually, I couldn't finish it despite having loaded the DVD 5 times separately.

The effects were so bad and the acting was grotatious that I've not managed to finish the simple 80~90 minute affair. I really couldn't continue on and stopped where Chanbara faces her sister gone evil and biker chick dies (I think, like I said - forget the memory blurred out).

Despite this, I do hope to finish Chanbara sometime in the future ... maybe attempt #10 should do the job.

And then, 2 weeks back from my second Saudi trip - I went to watch Blood. Cool poster I thought, a morbidly pissed off looking vampire chick with murderous cold eyes and an equally frosty blade to hack, slice and dice the vampires and monsters that dared stray into her violent path.....

Now, I was told it would be better as it starred that Korean girl from My Sassy Girl in it, and it after all had the credits from the people who did Hero + Crouching Tiger.

I really hoped it would restore my faith in the movies of the genre of "Babes with Swords". But no, Blood was just damn bad!!

The lighting was crappy, the effects were crappy, the American dialogue and American actors were crappy, the action was clumsy (and crappy), the storyline if it existed would even be lucky to be called crappy!! Blood was in fact far worse than Chanbara.

Chanbara was low budget and crappy, but it was honest and tried to do its best. But Blood obviously has money pumped into it and still came out (drum roll) ... CRAPPY!! I dozed off in the 15th minute, woke up30-40 mins later, dozed off again, and then staggered out of the cinema with my 2 other brothers. 3 guys and we couldn't stomach the (drum roll) ... CRAPPINESS !!!

"Gosh No!", you say ... "Does it mean all movies with babes & swords are just bad?"

Answer: Nope, there's a rare gem that will always stand out.

Partially coz Uma's in it, and yep Kill Bill is the lone standard of this genre that excels. The only other I can think that comes close would be Milla in the red dress killing zombies in Resident Evil 1 (but no sword so we have to sadly disqualify her).