Lady Death:
The Motion Picture

A cult comic that overcame tremendous odds to stay alive becomes an immobile movie that dies on the screen

	Lady Death: The Motion Picture
	Voiced by Christine M. Auten, Dwight Clark, Mike Kleinhenz, Chris Patton, Andy McAvin
	ADV Films
	80 mins.
	MSRP: $29.98 hybrid DVD

By Tasha Robinson

s Lady Death begins, a ridiculously voluptuous, scantily clad woman named Lady Death (Auten) is about to lead an army of misshapen demons in a war against Lucifer. But first she takes a moment to remember how the situation came about. A flashback to 1478 Sweden shows Lady Death as her former self, a blond, wide-eyed, mortal innocent named Hope, in love with a curly-haired fop named Niccolo (Patton). Unfortunately, Hope's father, Matthias (Kleinhenz), is a ruthless mercenary who press-gangs local men into his army, supposedly in service to God.

At least, he seems to be a mercenary—until a local priest, tired of the claims on God's behalf, leads a torch-and-scythe-wielding mob against Matthias' castle. Then Matthias reveals that he's actually Lucifer (which apparently comes as a huge surprise to the townsfolk, who never noticed that Matthias had purple skin, pointy ears and vivid red eyes, nor that he talked incessantly about collecting souls rather than soldiers). Then the castle explodes.

Hope and the priest seem to be the only survivors, which doesn't stop the priest from claiming that Hope would've died if she weren't in league with her demonic father. She's promptly sentenced to burn at the stake as a witch. But first Lucifer's demonic jester, Pagan (McAvin), appears and teaches her a prayer that she can use to call on her father and join him in hell. She refuses at first, but as the flames consume her, she succumbs and recites the words. The next thing she knows, she's being tortured in hell.

Her father eventually summons her and taunts her with the captured souls of Niccolo and Hope's mother, which he keeps in a globe above his throne. But Hope refuses to serve hell, so Lucifer throws her through a window and off a cliff, casually proclaiming "You'll be back." Sure enough, once Hope claims her birthright as Lucifer's daughter and learns to channel her natural power—and once a training montage gives her sword skills and telekinetic powers, not to mention bigger hair, bigger breasts and much smaller clothes—she's ready to go back and give the devil his due.

A simple and silly story

Brian Pulido's Lady Death comic has had an erratic history—it bounced from publisher to publisher as two small presses handling it, including Pulido's own imprint, went bankrupt. (The latest incarnation is due out in 2005 from Avatar.) But it still managed to rack up several complete story arcs and bring in a number of talented artists, including Jim Cheung and Ivan Reis. The series' main draw was its colorful, elaborate bad-girl art; the mildly convoluted anti-hero plot was secondary.

But Lady Death: The Motion Picture ditches both the plot and the art. The script (from a treatment by Pulido and a script by Carl Macek) is simplistic and awkward, full of melodramatic, unintentionally comical lines like "Foolish girl! Death facilitates the pleasures of hell, but it is no excuse for invading my land!" The cast heightens the melodrama with overly emphatic, exaggerated line readings. And the animation looks like standard Saturday-morning fare, apart from the vivid, cartoony blood sprayed across everything.

But above all, the movie's plot is cut-and-dried to the point of idiocy. Most comic-book supervillains who create their own nemeses do so either with a purpose in mind or by accident. Lucifer, however, deliberately spawns a rebellious daughter whose power, he claims, "knows no equal in heaven or hell." Then he mistreats her, discards her and goes back to lounging boredly on a giant throne, surrounded by nearly naked demonettes. He doesn't seem to have a clue, let alone a plan. He's not only not a worthy opponent for a proper vengeful superhero, he's barely a sentient one.

And since he doesn't have any plans, the plot doesn't have any twists. So the minimal, obvious story is filled in by lengthy sequences in which the flavorless animation is put to the test, as Hope is tortured at length, or menaced by wolves at length, or demon armies clash at length, or whatever seems necessary in order to pad the film out to 80 minutes. The result is a lumbering, lumpy, bloody mess that might, at best, have a little appeal for gorehounds and the most die-hard superhero fans.

I was hoping Lucifer at least had some kind of trick in mind when Niccolo reappeared to face Lady Death, but nope, apparently he was as obvious, clumsy and lacking in forethought about that plot as about everything else. This Lord of Lies couldn't lie his way out of a wet paper sack. — Tasha

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Also in this issue: The Grudge, The Machinist, Drawn Together and Lost in Space Season Two DVD

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