Deadly Daphne's Revenge (1987)

DEADLY DAPHNE’S REVENGE

WRITERS: Screenplay by Richard Gardner and Tim Bennett

DIRECTOR: Richard Gardner

STARRING: Anthony Holt as Charlie Johnson

Laurie Tait Partridge as Cindy Langley

John Suttle as ?

Alan Levy as ?

Richard Gardner as Steve

QUICK CUT: A woman goes hitchhiking for the weekend and makes new friends with the men who pick her up.

THE MORGUE

Cindy - A young girl who is constantly running off to get away from parents, school, life, whatever. She’s got a huge chip on her shoulder, and is just looking for a place to belong.

Steve - A teacher and step brother to Charlie. He’s a nice enough guy, will protect younger people like ant good teacher, but he’s maybe a bit TOO friendly with the kids.

Charlie - A racist, a loudmouth, a rapist. Just the worst.

This isn't very deadly, there's barely any Daphne, and the revenge is questionable.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! July is here, and I decided to finish up my first Toxie Triple Pack with the last movie in that set, the rather dire Deadly Daphne's Revenge. Yeah, I’m spoiling my thoughts on it a bit early here. Let's get this over with.

The movie opens up on the titular Daphne somewhere, and she finds a cat, as a radio broadcast describes how she just escape from custody. She's considered dangerous, as she absconds with the fluffy kitty.

We fade to an RV listening to the same broadcast, and Steve asks the driver Charlie if that was the black girl that worked for him a few years ago.

This is all we'll see of Daphne until almost the end of the movie, enjoy it while she's here.

And Charlie immediately establishes he's trash by throwing around racial slurs and stereotypes. We are not even two minutes into the movie, can we slow it down a tad?

Fortunately, Steve calls him out on it, so they do at least acknowledge this is not acceptable behaviour. But oh, this is just the beginning. I don’t mind bad people being trash, but oof, Charlie does it at such a rapid clip, it just gets to be too much. And I am trying not to sound like Britta saying she can excuse racism, but…

They stop to pick up some beer and a girl who's hitchhiking. Cindy is in a near constant state of rage issues, but I don't entirely blame her.

Charlie agrees to take her to San Diego, but turns off to head to his cabin instead, under the guise of picking up some supplies. But oops, it's late, we might as well spend the night! And yes, this is all a ploy to make it with a hot young girl. Ew. Oh, and did I mention she’s underage?

Is this the real life, or just my friend’s RV?

The girl can tell what Charlie has in mind, and Cindy asks Steve to protect her. He agrees, knowing how Chuck can be.

Everyone gets drunk and they're having a grand old time, even Cindy lightens up a bit. Which is probably Charlie's plan. But when he starts getting hands on, Cindy cools right off, and they get into a yelling match.

Chuck is about to get violent, but Steve holds him back. Cindy heads upstairs, and Steve tells our future president to cool off downstairs.

Everyone drunkenly passes out, and Steve is sure Charlie is out cold 'til morning. He agrees to stay with Cindy just in case, but once she's asleep, he heads to a room all his own.

Yeah, Steve is a pretty okay guy, he's got Cindy's ba...oh for. He just said she's partly responsible. Sigh, just as I was starting to like someone in this movie, he goes and victim blames.

Also, they start making out and leading to implied sex, mostly at Cindy's insistence, so there's no accounting for taste, I guess. It's at least concensual, but being 17, this still feels real skeezy.

He’s had a lot of practice tucking kids in.

Charlie gets woken up by an unexpected thunderstorm, and he wakes up his right hand yes man, Bobo. They stumble upstairs and find Cindy all alone. Long story kept from needlessly dwelling on it, they force Cindy to have sex with both of them.

If the rape isn't enough for you, Charlie makes sure to throw some racism into his pillow talk. I am shocked - SHOCKED! - to find such sleaze in a Troma movie!

Cindy runs off into the night, passing by a shadowed Daphne, and the guys wake up the next day like nothing ever happened. Steve asks where Cindy went, and Charlie lies, saying they didn't do anything, and hey, she was yelling about how Steve left her, like all men do!

We cut to some time later, and Cindy is talking to a lawyer, and he suggests pressing charges against all four men, since they don't know what all went down aside from Cindy's word. And Steve could have been in on things. So, all men suck in this movie, huh?

The cops show up to bring Charlie and Bobo in for questioning, and the movie kinda turns into a bit of legal shenanigans for the rest of things. I'm gonna try and breeze through this, but we'll see how that goes.

News of the accusations hits the newspapers, and the four guys scramble around to cover their asses. Charlie gets more defensive, Steve stands his ground, and Bruce probably takes the biggest hit, with clients canceling work with him. He takes it all so poorly he eventually takes his own life.

Uncle Phil is gonna throw Charlie out of the offices like he’s Jazzy Jeff.

Really not a fan of the movie focusing on how this as affecting the men, ruining their careers, when Cindy is the victim, but eh.

Steve heads back to the cabin for a few days to clear his head, after the school board puts him on suspended leave, and Charlie gets to work on a plan to make this all go away.

He heads over to see a mob friend of his, and has a hit taken out on Cindy. Oh yeah, that won't seem suspicious at all.

But oops, the joke is on him. Cindy is feeling guilty about her actions causing Bruce to take his life, and she drops the case.

When Charlie hears the news that the charges are being dropped, he has a bit of a panic, what with the hit and all. He grabs Steve and tells him to find Cindy, keep her safe, while he does what he can to call off the hit.

But there's some difficulty in calling off the hit and oh noooo, they can't call it off. The rapists might get in trouble. Oh nooo.

Steve meets with Cindy, they chat a bit, and we have the great line of how that night was a series of errors they are all responsible for. Sigh.

Makin' my way downtown, walkin' fast, hitmen pass and I'm homebound

Cindy doesn't take the news she has a hitman after her well, but Steve calms her down, and they head to the cabin to lay low. Ah, full circle. It's almost literary.

While we wait for the hitman to arrive, or anything interesting, Steve tells Cindy the reason Charlie is the way he is. See, this all goes back to Daphne. Charlie had an affair with her, Daphne didn't take the breakup well, and she killed Charlie's son. Charlie beat her up, she went to a state hospital, his wife left him, taking a large chunk of his assets and...cool story bro, but still racism.

There is 15 minutes left to this movie. For something called "Deadly Daphne's Revenge", I must once again point out, she sure has not been in this movie, or gotten much revenge.

Showing up 80 minutes late to the movie with Starbucks

Meanwhile, the hitman is lining up his shot, and gets killed by Daphne, so at least she finally showed up.

Charlie arrives at the cabin the next day, with Bobo in tow, and they talk about a few of the large raccoon sightings around the cabin. Steve thinks it might be Daphne, so Charlie does what Charlie does, and decides to answer things with violence.

He drags Bobo out into the woods to track his ex mistress down, and they find her dog first. And if you didn't already think Charlie was an awful person, he shoots the dog just for funsies.

Charlie tosses the gun to Bobo so he can go toss the body into the river. Class act, all the way.

Do it, Bobo! Spare us all a lot A LOOOT of trouble!

But fortunately, Bobo doesn't need to fire, as Daphen bounds out of the forest, and stabs Charlie about a half dozen times. Behold! Deadly Daphne's Revenge!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Not the worst for a low budget Troma flick. Could use a bit more depth, but it’s perfectly fine.

Audio: It’s a bit soft at times, and muffled, but you can hear all the racisms.

Body Count: A very light movie on that account, and very little revenge.

1 - After 37 minutes, Bruce commits suicide
2 - The assassin gets assassinated by Daphne
3 - Daphne has her revenge and stabs Charlie to death.

Best Corpse: Charlie, easy win here. Purely for karmic reasons.

Blood Type - F: An almost bloodless movie.

Sex Appeal: Light nudity, but they do try and hide it at times

Drink Up! Every time someone commits a racism

Movie Review: I mean, I’ve made my thoughts on this plot pretty clear. I don’t like the focus being on his this affects the men more than it focuses on Cindy. I’m not a fan of the Daphne ex machina plot device of the titular character. Her only purpose is to be there to kill Charlie at the end. This is a rape/revenge movie, where the rape and the revenge are two largely separate plot points. It’s a sleazy uncomfortable watch, which isn’t as bad as things like, say, “Chaos”, but it’s still not very fun. Overall, even though the story is a mishmash of ideas, and focuses on the wrong things, for a movie of this level, it’s at least shot and directed competently, and the acting isn’t the worst. The best things I can say about this movie is “Well, it could be worse”. Oh, and the endless blaming of Cindy and STILL having her hook up with Steve is just…yeah, no. One out of five beers

Entertainment Value: This was a slog. I did not have fun at all. The lone highlight was seeing James Avery for all of three minutes. Charlie is deeply unpleasant, the plot is a mess, and no one is bad enough to be entertaining. I just spend most of my time with this movie covering my face in embarrassment. Two out of five RVs.