SPARKS FLY

The Blue Jean Monster, d. Kai-Ming Lai (Hong Kong, 1991) 

A grumpy police officer dies when he is buried under steel bars and cables while pursuing a Triad gang, only to be reanimated as a supernatural entity who lives on electricity and has a burning desire for revenge against the criminals who were responsible for his death. 

It's all over the place, as you might expect from a film that could be described as a horror comedy sci-fi action movie. The best bit is at the end, when sparks fly, and all the bad guys die.

TENSE AMBIANCE

I was struck (unlike that dinky target) by this sequence in the 2011 Japanese film Schoolgirl Apocalypse, particularly the subtitles. Despite what you might reasonably suspect from a Japanese film about young women, there's nothing prurient about this film, in which awkward schoolgirl Sakura has her life turned upside down by murderous zombies (are there any other type?), then has to battle against them (and self-doubt) in order to survive. Naturally, her aim improves very quickly indeed.

WORKING AT THE CAR WASH

Force of nature Pam Grier gathers information in Sheba, Baby (1975).

COFFY CREAMS

Coffy, d. Jack Hill (1973)

There is no-one better at revenge than Pam Grier. She uses her intelligence and charm and prodigious physical gifts to full effect in the pursuit of shooting villains in the head, in the groin, anywhere villains don’t like to be shot, which is pretty much everywhere.

In Coffy, Pam is targeting the sort of low life scum who put her sister in an early grave, the pimps and pushers of the world, mostly men – men who think Coffy is there to be fucked when, in fact, she’s actually there to fuck them. And she gets away with it, too, not exactly unscathed but certainly unpunished, a recurring feature of Blaxploitation, where the official forces of law and order as administered by ‘The Man’ don’t really apply.