HONEY GLAZE

Dan (Ed Dunn) is a middle-aged man perusing the shelves of his local video superstore. He picks out a copy of Disney's Fantasia and makes his way home to present it to his daughter, Honey.

On his journey home, Dan is attacked by would-be assassins in black balaclavas. But Dan fights off his attackers and reaches his destination, much to the delight of his child-like, house-bound daughter - who in actual fact is in her thirties.

Dan, you see, is a government agent. He is caught up in a convoluted plot involving a scientist and an elusive microchip that houses the world's most powerful computer virus, both of which are keenly sought after by criminal mastermind Dr Sum Thaim (director Michael Legge).

When Dan is slain, Honey herself becomes involved in matters as she - along with her father's fellow agent, Dash Hope (Robin Gabrielli) - set out to avenge the old guy's murder.

Before long though, hapless spy Hope has been captured by Thaim's henchmen and taken back to the evil genius's lair. Enter Nurse Tarika (Cherry Lynn Zinger), Thaim's sexy sidekick, to chance her charms on the witless agent.

But never fear, Honey is not too far behind, kicking her way through more of Thaim's masked thugs in a daring bid to save her sidekick's skin.

A confrontation with Thaim follows, and for a short while it would seem that Glaze and Hope are about to perish. But in true James Bond style, our heroes will always outwit their genial villains in the final frame ...

The plot thickens hereon in with numerous chase scenes, bad gags (I mean, really BAD), wise-cracking robots and a mutual appreciation developing amidst the mayhem between Tarika and Hope.

Although Lorna Nogueira is presumably meant to be the star of this piece (she plays the title role), she isn't really given enough to do - and lacks the charisma one would expect to see in a central character.

The film is very much a platform for Legge to indulge in his own OTT performance - dodgy European accent, eye-patch and all. Legge does have a knack for delivering comedy - even if it is often the dumbest, most cringe-inducing comedy imaginable - and it's fair to say his performance dominates the screen. The rest of the cast are, generally, nondescript.

However, it's his script that will divide audiences. Boldly steering clear of nudity, gore or gratuitous profanity, Legge instead opts (as he did with LOONS and CUT-THROATS) for infantile humour to propel his story.

And more often than not in this case, it fails to hit it's target. If you think men putting on fake Russian accents is funny, you'll love this. If you laugh at the immature sight gags and smutty innuendo of ALLO ALLO, you no doubt need (nay: deserve!) to own this film.

As micro-budget films go, the acting was above-average and there were some interesting editing techniques applied. The camera work was professional, as was the lighting. But ... I want to be entertained. And this, this just wasn't my cup of tea. At all!!

Having said that, the one-liners do come thick and fast and a few of the sight gags are quite quirky. Legge has obviously put a lot of thought into this, as is evident on his very entertaining (and informative) audio commentary track.

Picture quality is fine - reasonably clean and clear, considering the low-budget origins. No video artefacting to speak of. The film is presented in it's original full-frame ratio, and has a 2.0 mono soundtrack.

As always with Sub Rosa releases, the extras are what make the disc genuinely interesting.

First up is the aforementioned commentary. Thorough and engaging, Legge is easy to listen to - and the film is infinitely more interesting with his asides to refer to!

BRAINDRAINER is a feature-length extra (again written and directed by Legge). A homage of sorts to the B-movie sci-fi movies of the 50s, it's actually of more interest to genre fans than HONEY GLAZE is likely to be. Much of the same cast and locations, houses etc are used that have been seen in other Legge efforts. Seems to be an earlier production than HONEY though ...

HONEY GLAZE is also represented by a brief Behind The Scenes featurette (on video) and a preview trailer of little interest. Oh, and then there's the stock text pages detailing the background and intentions of Sub Rosa Studios.

The disc is Region 0 NTSC encoded, and housed in a black keepcase packaging. Both HONEY GLAZE and BRAINDRAINER have 6 chapters apiece (activated via a colourful static menu page).

Not a bad release from Sub Rosa - more extras than the film probably merits. In summary, perhaps this is the most telling comment of all: my one lasting impression of HONEY GLAZE was remarking on how haggard and overweight Legge had become since appearing in (the superior) LOONS!

Oh dear, I am a bitch!

Review by Stu Willis