FEMALE MERCENARIES II: MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

I checked out the TUBI offering, MAD DOCTOR OF ZOMBIE ISLAND, thinking it some sort of nineties throwback to the Philippine "Doctor Moreau" films of the seventies and eighties. As is often the case, the story behind the movie is more interesting than the movie.

TUBI lists the date as 1995. Thanks to the perspicacity of the site-runners on MONDO DIGITAL, this review makes clear that the filmmakers came out with a 1995 movie with "female mercenaries" and "zombies" in it, and that the film on TUBI is actually 2008's FEMALE MERCENARIES II, a rough sequel to the 1995 film movie. I'd never heard of any of the productions associated with director Gary Whitson and his company WAVE Productions, and that's because WAVE's camcorder productions were almost exclusively circulated via mail order-- reason being that they were more heavily invested in fetish scenarios than even regular DTV films about sexy mercenaries.

Though the introductory crawl makes it sound like two female freedom fighters, Karen and Tracy, will return from the first film to battle evil, they alternate screen time with various other heroines with some sort of agenda against the main villain, so there's no clear focus on any heroine or group of heroines. Rather, the narrative emphasis-- if one can call a bunch of poorly coordinated scenarios a narrative-- is on an evil scientist, sometimes billed only as "Gabrielle" (Pamela Sutch). Gabrielle isn't responsible for the zombie apocalypse-- that was caused by a meteor strike on Planet Earth-- but she does like to create lots and lots of clones of herself and other women, some of whom are her opponents, making the alleged story even more confusing.

The aforesaid scenarios include lots of upper-body nudity, fistfights, bondage, and even a lingering quicksand death. There are no outstanding fights and the women are at best moderately attractive and bereft of acting talent. Since there are barely any men in the story, I suppose MERCENARIES would pass the Bechdel Test, since the girls are all too busy fighting each other to bother talking about men. This movie's greatest value is that if one goes through the rigor of watching it, I predict the watcher will gain a new appreciation for the Aristotelian unity of FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND.