Black Scorpion II: Aftershock [1997]

A Corman-backed quickie, sequelising his franchise wannabe superheroine before rushing her into a TV series. The Black Scorpion [Joan Severance] is a leather-clad dominatrix-looker with a long whipping ponytail [like a scorpion] and a morphing car called the Scorpionmobile; by day, she's an honest cop called Darcy. The film has some of the tilted angles and garish colour of the '60s Batman, but also a cynical skid row attitude - the Mayor is corrupt and foolish, there are gratuitous nudie dances, the heroine and villainness explicitly dress like pervo-bait, etc. The first film set up the characters and situations, and this tries for some development in the relation of Darcy [Joan Severance] to her macho cop partner [Whip Hubley], with whom she begins a relationship but doesn't let in on her dual identity. However, she does unmask to appeal to the inner sane person of cracked villainness Aftershock [Sherrie Rose], reminding her that she used to be a public-spirited seismologist until the Mayor [Matt Roe] sabotaged her earthquake-damping machine.

The quake angle is an excuse to use yet more of Corman's verité footage, though the film is set in the semi-fictional City of Angels on the 'San Angelo fault'. The secondary villain is actually nastier than Aftershock, a black variation on both Joker and Two-Face called Gangster Prankster [Stoney Jackson], whose crazed patter is more ethnic than any mainstream superhero movie would manage these days [though Garrett Morris is around as the Scorpion's stalwart African-American mechanic sidekick]. A pre-Mulholland Dr Laura Harring has a bit as the Mayor's bimbo – presumably she'd have been in the frame for the lead villain role if the film didn't want a brunette vs blonde match. Typical low-rent carelessness: Hubley has two different character names in the end titles.
KIM NEWMAN

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