Lady Justice has arrived and with a cover looking like some kind of glamour-shot of a small claims paralegal that you'd see on a billboard in the mid-west, how could I not drop everything for it?
The opening scene is by far the best. Our leading lady, played by Suzy Milano, in a mall trying on all kinds of different outfits and modeling for herself in the mirror. I love a good fashion montage, and I absolutely LIVE for a bad one.
So sansual.
It's explained in a series of intertitles that we'll experience this movie with a new technique called 'Mondo-Vision' so we can interact with Suzy ourselves AS the killer. WHOA, this must be pretty high tech.
Serial rapist and killer, Frank Beaver, just got out of jail on a technicality. He targets strippers, and can't wait until he can rape and kill again. We know this because he keeps saying it. "Oh I just can't wait to rape and kill some more women" or something like that. He hasn't even stepped off of the courthouse property before spotting a woman (Suzy) changing a flat tire. He offers to help her in attempt to gain her trust, she's so grateful that she gives him a ride home, even stops at a fast food restaurant to buy him a diet pepsi to thank him. While she's in the restaurant, he notices a gun in her glove compartment. He steals it to use against her at the right moment. She gets back in the car and they have more small talk, she reveals that she's an exotic dancer and he gets an audible boner. At some point he can't take it any more and he whips out the gun and tells her to pull over. She makes a run for it and tries to lose him in an abandoned warehouse. This scene, long and fruitless, was when I realized that "Mondo-Vision" was literally just his first person perspective. IE: the camera is the killer, FAR from a new technique in 1997, and not even worth mentioning.
A few minutes later Suzy runs out of the warehouse and the killer runs after her. He fires, she goes down. He's mad he didn't get to assault her first, but celebrates her killing as a small victory. His excitement is short lived as he starts feeling woozy, he falls to the ground just in time to see Suzy getting up and walking toward him. The gun was filled with blanks.
When he awakens, he's tied to a table and Suzy is smugly lounging in a beach chair drinking a glass of wine. She explains that she's the sister of his last victim and that his diet pepsi was drugged. He whines and pleas, she taunts him with multiple weapons.
.
She balks about how the justice system has failed her sister, and gives him a little knick with a chainsaw set to the classic lounge song "Topsy Part 2", but then it all abruptly stops. Here I thought I was in for some good serial killer goring, and instead I get more inter-titles...
WHAT. Now Suzy, er, Evelyn is going to jail?
Luckily, she was found not guilty, PHEW! I was really worried for a second. But like, WHAT ABOUT FRANK BEAVER? Evelyn's not done with him yet. She decided to fight fire with fire and become a lawyer. lol.
SIMPLE AS THAT.
WHAT IS IT?
Frank gets put away for GOOD and Evelyn puts her life of exotic dancing behind her so she can now make important telephone calls while reading the paper.
Just when you think the endless title card stampede is over, there's one more message from the director...
Lady Justice is pretty unique, not because of "Mondo-Vision", because of it's strange by-the-books morals and filtered through this very specific Judge Judy aesthetic. Milroy Pictures is new to me, but I already have another lined up for a future review and I'm looking forward further understanding what this extremely low-fi company is about. All of the movies seem to be linked by a theme of organized crime, spies and the justice system. Lady Justice certainly had it's weaknesses, but weirdness will always prevail here at Atomic Caravan. So I embrace it with loving tenderness.
