Alley Cat (1984)

Yeah, this is how I spend my Coronation bank holiday weekends, (OK, its the only one I've ever experienced, but if there's another one, I'll do the same thing): watching trash.  And yes, I clearly have a penchant for low budget urban vigilante movies.  Alley Cat (1984) undoubtedly sits several rungs of the low budget ladder lower than Ghetto Blaster (1989), that I looked at last time.  It certainly doesn't have the budget to stage the sorts of action sequences that the later film boasts, but it makes up for it by working its way through just about every cliche in the urban vigilante movie genre.  This time around, our vigilante is a woman - martial artist Billie (Karin Mani), who opens the film foiling an attempt by gang members to steal her car, then loses her grandmother to the same gang in a mugging gone wrong.  Naturally, she wants justice, but the system can't deliver it, clogged up as it is with bent and lazy cops, inept prosecutors and biased judges.  Things get complicated when she stops two gang members from raping another woman and finds herself prosecuted for having an unregistered firearm.  While the two scumbags get off after the victim is intimidated into refusing to give evidence, Billie ends up in Jail for thirty days.  At which point the movie lurches into women-in-prison type exploitation, complete with cell block fights and predatory lesbians.  Obviously, the prison guards can't control any of it because they are part of the system and - you've guessed it - the system sucks.  Out of jail and aided and abetted by a sympathetic young cop (and would be boyfriend), who is disillusioned with the system, she gets the goods on the gang and takes them all down using her martial arts skills.

Released under the banner of Film Ventures, (always a good sign for lovers of exploitation), Alley Cat was actually a Filipino production (although filmed in LA) that ran into financial difficulties and was bailed out by Film Ventures.  Boasting no less than three directors, (credited collectively as 'Edward Victor' - for two of them it would be their only directorial credit), Alley Cat, while sometimes looking more than a little rough around the edges, is actually quite well put together, moving reasonably smoothly through its plot.  Overall, the scuzziness of its locations adds to an air of  'shot-on-the-streets' authenticity to proceedings.  The script is basic but functional, although it is less than subtle in ramming home its message - 'the system sucks' - at every available opportunity, with frequent angry monologues from the lead characters.  Performances, likewise, are just about adequate for this sort of film.  As already noted, the film can't muster the sorts of action sequences - car chases, explosions, gun fights - that graced the similar Ghetto Blaster, but it does feature a number of well staged fight sequences, where the heroine can show off her martial arts skills (the strongest part of her performance).  Bars get trashed and bad guys get thrown off of roofs during these sequences.  The fact that Alley Cat has, ostensibly, a feminist agenda underlying its vigilante plot, it is still an exploitation film made by men so can't resist including a few nude sequences  - all essential to the plot, of course.  All-in-all Alley Cat is pretty entertaining while it is on, although its apparent determination to include every exploitation trope it can think of - avenging angel vigilante, corrupt cops, women-in-prison, gang violence, even a cold turkey scene - tends to dilute its central message.  Worth watching if, like me, you are a sucker for urban vigilantes.