Review: Chantal

Mousy small-town girl Chantal (Misty Mundae) arrives in Hollywood with stars in her eyes and hopes of acting glory. Instead she’s immediately preyed upon, tricked, used, and abused by the more low-rent individuals in the entertainment industry. These include photographers (Darian Caine, Andrea Davis, and Julie Strain) as well as a hardened call girl played by Julian Wells.

 

Back around the early to mid 2000s, I was a bit of a hired gun over at the long-defunct Film Asylum website (not to be confused with my other former gig at The Horror Asylum, which I believe is under new management). It seemed like whenever a new Seduction Cinema or E.I. Independent Cinema film was released, I was volunteering for the review gig. If you’ve heard of those labels and have read enough of my reviews on here, it’s probably obvious why I was the man for that job: Lots of ladies who prefer the company of other ladies is a shared theme. They weren’t high-brow entertainment and weren’t trying to be, but they often got the job done and maybe making you chuckle a time or two as well.

 

So recently I got a bit nostalgic for some of that Misty Mundae (now known as Erin Brown apparently) and Darian Caine action, and turned this 2007 item on. Written and directed by Tony Marsiglia (“Lust for Dracula” and “Sin Sisters”, both of which I watched and reviewed before this blog existed), this was one I had missed back in the day, and it turns out that it’s actually somewhat decent. However, it’s also the polar opposite of the sexy good time I was expecting, and may not be the strength of anyone involved here, either. Rather than the usual goofy, sexy horror/sci-fi spoofery one normally associates with E.I. Independent Cinema and Seduction Cinema, this one’s your usual ‘innocent girl goes to Hollywood and encounters disappointment and degradation’ softcore exploitation film. It’s ugly and depressing – Mundae’s character eats actual garbage at one point, whilst some of the sex she has isn’t consensual. However, I gotta be truthful: From an artistic merit standpoint, it’s the best thing to come from E.I. Independent Cinema and Seduction Cinema I’ve seen. Marsiglia and his cast commit to the sleaze and it’s effective for what it is going for and its budget. Is there an audience for this? I genuinely don’t know.

 

The performances from Mundae, Caine, Andrea Davis, and Julian Wells are all solid. The one and only flaw I can attribute to the film is Mundae’s extreme naivete even after much abuse and degradation is frankly ridiculous. Still, this is a sleazy exploitation company – a low-budget, shooting-on-video one at that – doing something outside of their goofy, T&A box and actually doing a rather OK job of it. I’m not going to quite recommend it – it’s still not quite a good film – but it’s much better than usual from an artistic perspective. I do have to wonder though: Are these the people you want making a film on this subject? It did occur to me throughout my viewing that perhaps, jolly decent effort or not, this was perhaps a doomed exercise from its inception. I mean, the fans of this company and its stable of actresses clearly weren’t looking for something like this (hand raised right here), and yet they’re the only people who will have seen the film or ever will. I’m not sure how well this one did financially, but I suspect it probably wasn’t as popular as their sexy spoof films or splatter movies. So I appreciated the effort here but was somewhat perplexed at the same time.

 

It's no “Erotic Adventures of Van Helsing”, but there’s good intentions and some merit here. Just be prepared for something far more serious-minded than the usual Misty Mundae outing, and frankly it’s a little bit of a jarring mix that might leave you a bit unsure of how you feel about it.

 

Rating: C+