Apparently, the only manacles they could find were left over from the making of King Kong. (Sorry about the quality of these clips -- they were made at a time when my cable reception was very poor.)Apparently, the only manacles they could find were left over from the making of King Kong. (Sorry about the quality of these clips -- they were made at a time when my cable reception was very poor.)
Copyright 2008 by Pat Powers
Mercenary featured a brilliantly conceived DID scene that could have been one of the most memorable DID scenes in movie history -- if it weren't for the bad direction, bad editing, bad lighting and the great, big, painfully obvious loosie manacles.
Here's the setup. Oliver Gruner is a professional mercenary who's been busily shooting up a desert encampment filled with bad guys after getting their confidence by letting them capture him, imprison him and beat him senseless. (Hey, Ginger used the same technique in The Abductors.) After escaping he heads for the private quarters of the chief thug, for no apparent reason.
Throughout this scene, there's either too much light or too little, and never a chance to really ogle the DID. What were they thinking?
The chief thug is enjoying a little quality time with a naked, chained (well, sorta chained) DID, played by Patricia Skerjotis. Rape, it's called in places other than bad guy encampments. In bursts Gruner. The bad guy withdraws (literally) from Skerjotis and goes for his trusty AK47. But Gruner jumps him too fast and kicks the AK47 out of reach -- near Skerjotis. But unfortunately, she's chained at the wrists, and the manacles that chain her are only twice the diameter of her hands, so how can she possibly free herself and reach the AK47?
Gruner and the thug tussle about on the floor while Skerjotis struggles with her bonds in front of the fire. How can she possibly let go of them? They are so large and round! And what about those chains? They must mean something...
Gruner and the thug find a couple of broadswords lying around and proceed to have a death-defying swordfight with them. Who will win? Certainly not the audience.
Finally, she frees one of her hands by cleverly letting go of the manacle and reaches for the AK47, which is still out of her reach. She reaches REALLY HARD for it nonetheless. But to no avail.
If only she could somehow manage to let go of the manacle, she could reach that gun!
The obvious thing would be for her to reach around with her free hand and help her still-imprisoned hand to, er, um, let go of the manacle. But this never occurs to her. She doesn't get freed until she manages to work her wrist free of the manacle by letting go of it with her unaided hand.
Gruner, no whiz at swordplay, has lost his sword to the thug and is about to get some experience being a shish-kebob. Skerjotis grabs the AK-47 and is about to teach the thug what it feels like to be penetrated nonconsensually by bullets, but the thug gives a flick of his sword and Skerjotis collapses dead. (Kinda makes you wonder how guns ever managed to beat out sword in the weaponry department.) This gives Gruner the chance he needs and he leaps on the thug and, after much grunting, sweating and hitting, kills him.
Freed at last, she reaches for the gun ... bad move for a DID whose name in the credits is simply "Kurdish woman."
It's kinda sad that the DID is raped and killed and all, but this movie has no time for sentimentality, because a whole TON of people get killed in it and you can't maintain an onscreen killing schedule like that if you stop and get teary-eyed over every other corpse you make.
What could have been ... this great DID image passes in a flash. All the elements were here, they just didn't use them properly.
The really sad thing about this loosie is that they had all the makings of a great classic DID scene in place -- all they had to do was film, light and edit it properly. We've got the naked, terrified damsel chained naked by a roaring fire. We've got two bull-necked, iron-jawed steroid abusers fighting it out to the death with broadswords in an exotic middle-Eastern setting. But the scene is edited in lightning-like flashes -- there's no lingering on the Skerjotis' sumptuous body, no closeup of her face to establish her beauty or give some idea whether she's terrified or bored. Just a lot of lightning-quick cuts from one scene to the next. What's more, the dimness of the lighting further obscure the scene. It's kinda hard to see what's happening. If I hadn't had to use the slo-mo on my VCR to do the vidcaps, I'd have difficulty describing it.
But we had some clues about the prospects of this scene, because two other great DID scenes are blown earlier in the movie. In the very beginning of the movie, Gruner wipes out a cantina full of thugs while rescuing a DID who's been kidnapped, played by Jaime Pressley. Yes, THAT Jaime Pressley, or more correctly, THIS Jaime Pressley:
Mmmmmmmm ... babe-a-licious...
Here's what they did with the opportunity to show Pressley as a DID:
Yeah, that blood on the upper lip really does something for her, doesn't it?
Later in the movie, there's a nice, imaginative scene with a DID chained with a collar around the neck in a cell. A snarling, slavering Rottweiler is chained in the same cage, restrained only by a collar and a chain. Then the bad guys set acid to drip on the chain while the DID watches in horror as the chain grows weaker and weaker.
Unfortunately, the DID is John Ritter.
Here, take your Loosie award, Mr. Director. Writer Patrick Highsmith did everything he could to deliver you a great script but you ... you loosied it up!
Nice breasts, too.
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