ALLEY CAT (1982) Limited Edition Blu-ray
Director: Victor Ordonez, Ed Palmos, and Al Valletta
Vinegar Syndrome Archive #14

Rapists and drug pushers soon discover that this alley cat is actually a ferocious tiger in Film Ventures’ ALLEY CAT, out on limited edition Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

When a pair of car thieves (NEW YEAR'S EVIL's Tim Cutt and Kevin Velligan) are soundly thrashed by karate-kicking Billie (Karen Mani, AVENGING ANGEL) and her gun-toting grandfather Charles (Jay Fisher, THE POWER), their drug dealer boss William Krug (Michael Wayne) – aka “Scarface” – decides to show them how it’s done: by beating and stabbing both grandpa Charles and grandma Kate (Rose Dreifus). Billie meets cute with rookie cop Johnny (Robert Torti, TV’s THE DREW CAREY SHOW) – she actually breaks his nose – who is sufficiently attracted to Billie to want to help her. Kate is left in a coma, but Charles is able to finger Krug; however, this amazingly falls by the wayside when Billie herself is arrested by Johnny’s corrupt senior partner Boyle (Jon Greene, MANIAC COP) for carrying a concealed weapon when she rescues hooker Karen (Marla Stone) from a rape attempt by the same pair of thugs who tried to steal her car.

Although Boyle’s written testimony of the arrest is damning to Billie, Johnny’s vastly differing testimony and the incompetence of the “day late and a dollar short” district attorney (Robert Dennis, CAFÉ FLESH) gets Billie off with a fine and year of probation. When Karen fails to show up in court to testify against her attackers after a visit from Krug, they are given a smaller fine and probation and Billie is found in contempt of court and jailed when she speaks out against the ruling. While Billie wins respect from her fellow inmates with her fighting skills and fends off the lesbian attentions of cellmate Sam (Moriah Shannon, D.C. CAB), Johnny plays dirty to get the judge to commute her sentence. Billie is released only to learn that her grandmother has died. Johnny is closing in on Krug and hoping to bust him for drug dealing; however, Billie has vigilante justice on her mind.

Although “Edward Victor” is credited solely as director in the opening credits, the end credits list Victor along with producer Victor Ordoñez and actor Al Valletta (SOLE SURVIVOR) as directors. The extras for the earlier DVD release revealed that “Edward Victor” was actually Filipino director Ed Palmos and that the production that ran into money problems and was shut down; however, the claim that Film Ventures finished the film after acquiring it are cast into doubt by the extras for this release. Film Ventures' input may have been in post since the score was put together by the company's in-house music supervisor Igo Kantor while the "editorial consultant" credit of Emmett Alston (NEW YEAR'S EVIL) may either suggest he did the initial edit or finessed it for Film Ventures.

The editing and possible reshooting is similarly patchy and sometimes abrupt. It looks like either Alston or the original editor tried to apply some Peter Hunt-type “jump cut” edits during one of the fight scenes, and it does not work at all. The jail scenes introduce a brief “women in prison” angle, and the lesbian come-on scenes in the shower and the cell are prime exploitation; and yet they could also have been introduced to pad the short-ish running time. It also seems that a female jogger can expect to get assaulted on a regular basis in Los Angeles public parks based on the recurring scenes here (so much so that in the last one it seems as if Billie intentionally went there looking to blow off some steam by pummeling a pair of anonymous creeps). The fight scenes suffer from poor coverage and editing; however, Mani and Torti acquit themselves well in the action scenes and are likable – if sometimes uneven – leads while Wayne and Greene are suitably vile.

The music score is all over the place, sometimes sounding like a 1970s TV action show and sometimes 1980s softcore. IMDb credits Filipino composer Quito Colayco – who later scored Alston’s TIGERSHARK – but the film credits only cite “music supervision” by Kantor and Doug Lackey (SWAMP GIRL). Writer/producer Robert E. Waters started his career with the Filipino-shot Cirio H. Santiago films EBONY IVORY AND JADE, COVER GIRL MODELS, DEATH FORCE and VAMPIRE HOOKERS. Actors Mani, Torti, Greene, Wayne and Claudia Decea – who plays Billie’s neighbor Rose – are listed as associate producers. Requiring no emotional investment or identification (visceral or otherwise) with the injustices suffered by the good guys, ALLEY CAT plays like the undemanding cousin of SAVAGE STREETS (or VIGILANTE with a female protagonist).

Following the film's theatrical release, ALLEY CAT went to tape via Vestron and that same master turned on fullscreen DVD from Madacy Entertainment when they licensed the Liberty International library that included the Film Ventures title. Scorpion Releasing subsequently licensed the film from the rechristened Liberation Entertainment in 2013 for a widescreen DVD that included an interview with Kantor. Licensed from Multicom, Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a 4K scan of the 35mm negative element used for the earlier DVD transfer. The newer transfer better delineates detail during the night exteriors and some of the faint in-camera scratches evident in the earlier transfer are less apparent, making the best with current technology as Scorpion had at the time of their transfer of a film shot on a low budget in which not all of the exterior locations may have been permitted. The mono soundtrack is cleanly conveyed in a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 default track (a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 track is also included) with clear dialogue and scoring. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the film and extras.

In "Walking the Alley" (13:07), co-director Al Valetta reveals that he was teaching a class that the director Palmos – whose wealthy family funded the film – enrolled in his course to learn about directing actors. Valetta was hired to work on the film as a dialogue coach and assumes that his suggestions for blocking the scene might have led to his co-directing credit which he did not discover until the film's premiere.

In "We Hustled" (14:27), actor Torti admits that the film is not on his resume but that he had used it as a young actor to get more work, and that he was credited as a producer to get around the Screen Actor's Guild rules about working on non-union productions (a hearing was held nevertheless and he stood his ground about the very rule they created about actors who were also producers or investors being allowed to work on such productions). He has pleasant memories of the production apart from Mani breaking her arm during one of the fight scenes and having to hide it during later scenes including their love scene. Although he notes that he has not seen the film recently and would rather see it remastered than on VHS, one wonder if he really is dreading seeing it again. The disc also includes the film's theatrical trailer (1:23). The cover is reversible and the strictly limited edition comes with a foldout poster and a custom-designed VHS-style bottom loading slipcase in keeping with the Archive line. (Eric Cotenas)

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