The Setup

As the second year of the Cavalcade winds to a close, we are rocking straight through our second 1-off theme month of the year with our November selection of “Girls with Guns”. Being bracketed by the Halloween and Holiday events, we have no worries of bridging or continuity, making it that much easier to simply grab some flicks and have a blast!

The idea is a simple one. Take a standard action movie script that nobody wants to film. Change the protagonist’s gender from male to female (and if you can somehow make it work, a prostitute). BOOYA: Box-Office Gold. Frank Miller would later turn this into a religion in almost all of his creative work. Despite the name, the genre does not require the protagonist to carry an arsenal of firearms or be a card-carrying member of the NRA. Rather, the only requirement is that said protagonist be of the XX chromosomal variety, and kick some serious ass.

Getting its start in the 1960s with the Shaw Brothers flick Come Drink with Me, the first Hong Kong action movie with a female lead. Nowadays, with more movies being based off of video games and comics (where a female protagonist is much more common), a number of action franchises have been built around ass-kicking-mavens-of-pain. Resident Evil, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, and Underworld-just to name a few.

The Formula

Being that the genre crosses all kinds of action flicks, there are very few elements that are formulaic to every one of them. However, there are a few:

• The heroine has something to prove. It doesn’t matter if the bad guys are gangsters or a horde of bio-infected-flaming-radioactive-zombies, on some level its more important to her that she prove she can kick their asses than it is to achieve whatever goal for which said ass-kicking is required (like say-survival)

To be fair, it’s very likely that this is because of the next trope:

• Nobody takes her seriously. Did she walk in out of the desert carrying the severed head of a mutant acid-farting-dragon, or did she single-handedly build a post-apocalyptic death machine out of Detroit steel and gardening implements of destruction? Doesn’t matter. At some point, some idiot will dismiss her for bein’ a girl…and promptly get his misogynistic ass beaten like a jelly-filled piñata.

Seriously guys. If a chick walks in toting an M61 Vulcan Gatling Gun, I don’t care if she’s a playboy model wearing nothing but soap bubbles and a g-string: I am going to fucking listen to what she has to say.

The Menu

The Booze

To be honest, we have no idea. Our first instinct is to go with traditionally girlie drinks, like Cosmopolitans and Coors Light -But we did Martinis last month, and we already stock a supply of bottled water.

The Food

Aside from Lady Fingers, we figure we’ll throw down some hummus and crackers. Yeah we said it, hummus is for girls.

The Movies

Depending on the writers, this genre skews widely from being about empowerment (Frank Miller) to being all about exploitation and misogynistic-boy-fantasy (Frank Miller).  In our primary selections, we decided to hit a bit of both.

Yes Madam! (1985): Michelle Yeoh’s 3rd film, and the first that put her on the map. Co-starring Cynthia Rothrock, who would later go on to be a direct-to-video action maven. Plot involves a microfilm, kicking people in the face, and oh…shooting them.

Angel (1984): High school student by day, hooker by night! What did we tell you? Yeah. They made 3 of these, the continuing plot being she turns out to be a vice-cop or something. Did we mention hookers?

Fully expecting Angel to get voted off the island, we’ll also have a selection from the Suggested Alternatives section.

Suggested Alternatives

Doomsday (2008): We mentioned this one back in the Post-Apocalyptic event, and even had it on hand to screen at one of our earliest parties. This is because it is just so rock-sauce awesome. Zombies, Apocalypto-punks, and jousting knights in shining armor round out a flick where Rhona Mitra kills EVERYONE.

Barb Wire (1996): Because we have no sense of pride (or shame), we can completely recommend this cyberpunk bad-girl picture featuring the “talents” of Pamela Anderson.

Yo-Yo Girl Cop (2006): Why? Because it’s such a weird idea. In the future, the fight for justice will be fought with high-tech YO-YO’s. Seriously, this sounds awesome.

Press Kit