Alley Cat

Possibly the worst fight scenes ever filmed. This lady could not hurt a fly in real life and it is made clear here. Too many times when she "taps" guys with her foot instead of kicking them. Ignore the great reviews here and just DO NOT overlook the obvious flaws. THANK GOD for fast forwarding. I plan to cancel Amazon Prime this week, mostly due to their absurd and unreasonable price being just raised yet again for no justifiable reason makes that decision easy, but this Alley Crap makes it an even easier decision.

A young woman with karate skills takes on a group of killers when trouble comes too close to home. Released in 1984 but the movie looks as if it'd been sitting on the shelf for awhile. Nonetheless, it's a fun film and some scenes actually (and somewhat accidentally) exhibit great atmosphere. You won't believe the karate skills demonstrated in this movie. Karin Man does well for what she's given & looks great doing it.

Karin Mani's tires get pulled off her car, but she beats up the thieves. Her grandparents are mugged and killed by the same hoods. Fortunately for her, she's a ninja in a tank top and Capri pants, so they don't stand a chance in this awful little movie. There's a lot that wrong, from the idiotic lines to the robotic acting, so let's talk about the foley work, with every background noise way too loud. Fortunately it covers up the dalogue. The camerawork doesn't stink.

What a great line! This movie could have been block buster with a little more funding. Great idea with a karate butt kicking actress! Check it out. Worth a gander!

This movie begins with a woman named "Belinda 'Billie' Clark" (Karin Mani) being woken up in the middle of the night by her neighbor and told that two thugs are trying to steal her car tires. So she immediately dresses and confronts the two men responsible. However, rather than stopping they attempt to physically assault her instead. However, this soon proves to be a big mistake as she possesses superlative martial arts skills and easily turns the tables on them. Not only that, but her grandfather also appears and upon shooting a gun at them causes them to immediately run away. Not long afterward these two hoodlums report back to their boss who is not at all pleased with them and decides to take matters into his own hands by robbing Billie's grandfather and fatally stabbing her grandmother in the process. If that wasn't bad enough, the next night Billie attempts to stop a rape on another woman by those same two thugs and for her efforts she is arrested by a corrupt cop and booked on bogus charges while the real crooks escape justice--at least for the time being. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie certainly had potential but it was somewhat limited by the cheap production values and some rather weak combat scenes. Likewise, although Karin Mani turned in a decent performance, most of the other actors weren't nearly as good. In any case, although I don't consider this to be a good film by any means, it wasn't totally bad and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

This movie is really bad. the lead actress did such a poor acting job and the martial art moves are worse than amateur. total waste of time!

ALLEY CAT is a low budget American thriller clearly devised as a gender reversal twist on the DEATH WISH franchise. The heroine is a young woman blessed with martial arts skills who finds herself tangling with a gang of rapists and murderers when her grandparents are accidentally bumped off by the villains. She then cuts a swathe through the lower elements of the local nightlife. It's simplistic stuff indeed but not without a simple verve to see it through. Various sub-plots have been added in in order to increase the running time, including a dull romance between the heroine and some Jewish guy and a brief sojourn in prison which manages to include the usual prison clichés despite not occupying much screen time. It's quite artificial stuff but not without merit. Sadly the action sequences are poorly shot and conceived; if they'd been decent then this might have been an acceptable little thriller, but as it stands they're quite boring. The cast is full of those types of actor that you've never heard of before or after and most of the film takes place at night which means a lot of night scenes where you can't really make out what's going on.

One of those el cheapo action adventures of the early 1980s that used to fill video rental stores solely to be taken out by adolescent boys in the hope of a cheap thrill. Woeful down market attempt to cash in on the Death Wish phenomenon by substituting a moderately attractive woman for the visually challenging Bronson. Acting is terrible, sets are cheap, the baddies are, well, bad. Identification with any of the characters is unlikely. Only redeeming feature is modest amount of gratuitous female nudity, a smattering of which is full frontal. Other than that, you can leave it...

An apparent vanity project for Karin Mani (who?), as a hottie Charles Bronson going around wiping up the 'scum' that mugged her parents, or grandparents or something, and impressing young hunks with her karate skills. In a pivotal scene she intervenes to stop a rape and a moron cop throws HER in jail, so after a couple cool shower scenes and some abortive prison-dyke seduction she has to take the law into her own hands blah blah blah. I guess there were a lot of movies like this? The script is dumber than usual if you can believe that. Mani comes off as exactly the kind of showbiz type that would co-produce her own Death Wish starring role, and I find that type sporadically endearing, but the movie is an ungainly apparatus. Competent actors would be wasted on the scumbag roles here, and would actively undermine the fantastic mincing-incompetent DA and a judge that has got to be the producer's uncle.

The amusing "Alley Cat" is a watchable low budget variation on the time honoured "Death Wish" premise with a female lead. It never really catches fire, but it remains a mild diversion anyway - a crude, formulaic, sleazy, cheesy diversion that does deliver some of the requirements of the exploitation genre. Karin Mani stars as Billie, a young woman living with her grandparents who works herself into a righteous fury when the old folk are targeted by criminal scum. The grandmother is fatally stabbed during a mugging and Billie becomes consumed with the idea of revenge. She meets cute with a nice guy cop named Johnny (Robert Torti) who indulges in some of his own vigilante tactics. Mani's clearly got what it takes when it comes to the ass kicking department, but in general isn't terribly appealing; Torti scores more strongly in terms of likability. (However, Mani looks so good sans clothes that it's doubtful many people are going to care that much.) Much of the acting is amateurish yet entertaining. Lovely Britt Helfer has a memorable bit as a hooker whom Johnny intimidates into giving up information. Both Jon Greene and Michael Wayne have fun roles as a jerk cop and the prime antagonist of the piece, respectively. Wayne, who sports a scar and is thus named "Scarface", is actually named Krug in the movie, which will amuse any fan of "The Last House on the Left". There's enough nudity to keep people happy as well as the required shower scene since a plot twist has Billie sent to prison (there's a message in here about the complete unfairness of an incompetent judicial system). One of the cons also makes lesbian overtures towards Billie. The fight scenes aren't the most slickly staged but are basically enjoyable. And the silly music score is just icing on this cake. It's easy to see why this might be somewhat obscure for its genre but if you're a die hard addict of trash cinema you could certainly do a lot worse. Seven out of 10.