Lovely But Deadly (1981) User Reviews

It's like driving by a multi-car crash pile up on the highway

[Ed-Shullivan · 5/10 · 27 June 2023]

Just like you may drive by a multi-car crash pile up on the highway and you witness first hand the carnage, fire and overwhelming smoke clouds, you just can't take your eyes off of the scene. So does the film Lovely But Deadly wreak of a Grade B film but you will find yourself glued to how corny this film really is.

This is a perfect Drive-In cinema special with continuous corny dialogue and characters names like Lovely, Javelin, Mantis, Gommorah, and Cricket.

Oh, and the film is also filled to the brim with chick fights and plenty of action by the film starlet Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt (Lucinda Dooling) kicking the macho men's butts. One hilarious fight scene takes place around the 25 minute mark between Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt and three (3) male thugs dressed in fencing gear with swords. This choreographed fight scene appears to me as if Miss Lovely moves step by step on a "numbers map" slowly stepping from numbers 1 through 1,000. She tries hard to make this scene look realistic and so do the three thugs and maybe just maybe the film editors forgot to remove the "Slow Motion" edit during this perilous fight scene.

All in all the film may fail miserably as Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt fights the good fight to put the bad drug dealers behind bars who were responsible for her brothers drug overdose induced death. Having said that the film tries Sooooooo hard to be taken seriously that you just won't be able to look away.

For that reason I rate this film a 5 out of 10 IMDb rating.

Boom Boom Boom.

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 10 August 2018]

Lucinda Dooling plays high school babe Mary Ann 'Lovely' Lovitt, who takes revenge on the drug-dealing scuzz responsible for the death of her brother; however, the real star of this film is the boom mic, which makes quite a few appearances from the top of the frame throughout. Such is the shoddy nature of Lovely But Deadly, a cheap, poorly acted, clumsily directed but unintentionally funny revenge drama that features gratuitous female nudity, bad disco dancing, unconvincing karate, a cat fight/food fight, a couple of terrible musical numbers, death by steam, and a character who refers to himself as Captain Magic.

Thoroughly cheesy and horribly dated, the film is far from great, but its nasty early-'80s trappings and sheer ineptitude make it reasonably entertaining nonsense if in the right frame of mind. My favourite scene was Lucinda and her all-female karate pals training, their uniform a short zebra patterned tunic paired with black tights - practical and stylish! The film also features some characters with really silly names, including football stud Mantis, pathetic nerd Cricket, wannabe pop-star Javelin and brutish thug Gommorah.

Just about worth wasting your time with if you're after a trashy laugh. 5/10.

Lamely but divertingly (Useless but interesting)

[freydis-e · 3/10 · 16 June 2017]

The review contains small spoilers but a movie like this has no big surprises anyway. The acting and screenplay are poor throughout and the pointless musical interludes excruciating. The idea, a high-school senior battling a drugs organisation alone because the cops are useless and the school staff corrupt or ineffective, is certainly interesting. But as the film 'progresses', it turns out that's all there is to it.

Little-known Lucinda Dooling in the lead isn't bad at all (though she doesn't have much competition). In a powerful opening scene, she overpowers a minor drug dealer and holds him helpless, while calmly forcing him to eat his own stash. A strong and disturbing representation of a schoolgirl, which promises a lot, especially as the movie is full of sleazy sexist characters, crying out for the same treatment or worse. Sadly it's all downhill from here. Dooling copes OK in her fight scenes, which are reasonably well-staged, but they are poorly thought out: at one point three heavies run away from her, later the same men overpower her easily – just whatever the 'plot' requires; there's a lot of shooting, but no-one ever hits anything; when women fight men, it's all kick-ass karate, when the same women fight other women, it's all ineffective rolling around, mostly in plates of messy food.

The long action finale is particularly poor, with endless running around, shooting and missing, and driving speedboats in circles, all for no reason, and the hero is given no worthwhile opponent at the end. But to be fair to an otherwise somewhat sexploitative movie, she never needs rescuing, and has no male assistance at any point.

If you can find this going cheap, it's worth the price to watch those terrific first five minutes and imagine what might have been. (Or watch it on Youtube – it was there at time of posting this review.)

Literally "EVERYBODY was Kung Fu fighting" those days

[Clarence Abernathy · 26 March 2002]

An all-white moralistic remake of "Coffy" (the 1973 Pam Grier blaxploitation classic), presenting karate-ing cheerleaders and highschool girls, evil drug dealers, a little catfight and lots of unintentional laughs. The opening credits of "Lovely But Deadly" are presented over a static shot of a high-school dance in 1981. The music, being performed and orchestrated in a 007-like style, sounds outdated, exaggerated and does not fit in the cheesy late 70s sets in the background. The sweet rotten smell of campiness instantly rushes in. "How low can they go?.../ How high can they fly?" - that's what the title song lyrics say and that's what you're starting to ask yourself. "Lovely But Deadly" is about a young lady named Mary Ann Lovett (an admittedly real cute brunette named Lucinda Dooling) and her friends just call her Lovely. In the beginning, her brother drowns in a ridiculously far fetched drug-related accident. Angry as hell, Lovely decides to stop drugs in her high school, starting with killing "Captain Magic," the only really likable character so far, who has some incredible dialogue before Lovely stuffs drugs down his throat and he dies. Dead too quick. The next bad guys will be treated to better visual effect: let's get some martial arts action into the movie. Well, Lovely and all the other girlie fighters have obviously been trained in the secret arts by just watching a half-minute-preview of some Hongkong flick. So we get to see sheer incredibly clumsy fight scenes. Well, after all "everybody was Kung Fu fighting" those days... Talking of music: There is also a Rock Band in the movie, because Lovely's cheesy boyfriend is the lead singer of a band of smartasses who, during a class and out of the blue, are performing (poorly dubbed) a truly "electrifying" love song. All in all, a genuine classic of poor white drive-in trash. Yet probably too bad to ever get some cult approach.

Indie action time

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 22 August 2018]

LOVELY BUT DEADLY is an indie action revenge drama with a youthful female lead. She's a cheerleader who loses her brother to a drug overdose, only to discover that half the squad are also addicts. She decides to square up to the drug pushers and fights back using her karate skills to take them down. Sadly, this is an inept little movie that's only good for laughing at rather than being wowed by. The action scenes are slow and poorly staged although the main actress certainly puts a lot of effort in; the supporting performances are quite amusing. Altogether this reminded me of the Thai action flick CHOCOLATE albeit nowhere near as good as that.

She can kick and stuff drugs down your throat!

[Aaron1375 · 2/10 · 2 June 2020]

A film that dares to show us how drugs are running rampant in a typical high school and the only way to stop them is to learn a couple of basic karate moves and go back to high school even though you are obviously well past high school age and kick everyone's butt and shove drugs down their throats! Well that is the message I got anyways. Of course, when you need some major butt kicking done, it has to be done by a woman who is skinny with no muscle mass whose best asset is not her mind as she was clueless her boyfriend was in on the action! How did that get by the woman from Idaho?

The story, a dude gets all high on drugs and decides to swim for tuna and he drowns. Of course, in a film like this, the person who took the drugs is never to blame, so it must be the person that was sought out and sold the drugs! So in comes Lovely, who could not pick a worse nickname when dealing with dirt bags and she knows how to kick and that is enough to fight off drug dealers with guns, hired goons and all manner of tough guys; meanwhile, she for some reason has the hardest time taking down a cheerleader at an informal party.

Just a stupid revenge film with not enough revenge going around and too much going to parties and just kind of hanging around. It kind of starts out fast and then dies down and then the action starts up again and we get to see lots of running and a boat chase scene that makes the one in the Joe Don Baker film Final Justice seem exciting. The girl playing Lovely is cute, but does not give off the air of someone who can beat up anybody who is relatively healthy.

So, the film just was not all that good to me. If it had at least maintained the energy it had for the first portion of the film it could have been a bit more tolerable, but it just slows down way too much. I also was not aware that if a major drug dealer is a high school football player, then the cops cannot touch him and that young men can own their own shipping company, yet turn to a drug dealer to help finance their music career instead of just selling the company. Just a crazy mess of a movie, but I suppose it's a little lovely.

Unrealistic but gee, those women can all kick real high

[grnhair2001 · 2/10 · 17 December 2021]

I fear that this was what passed for Hollywood trying to be 'feminist' in 1981, and while it was a step above Charlie's Angels in that, it missed the mark by a good bit.

The movie opens with an utter looser drowning himself in the ocean while high on drugs, and oh boy, are we lucky he didn't live long enough to breed a bunch of children as stupid and whiny-faced as he was; to me, this moment was most likely to win my applause. (please don't rescue him, I thought, pretty please?)

Then his sister goes on a revenge spree toward the drug dealers (as if tuna boy hadn't decided to and chosen to and hunted down dealers and spent his own money on drugs, but whatever, let's not blame him in any way). And she kicks ass, in a vaguely pretty sort of way. Some of the other actresses are exploited more by the director, but the lead remains dressed and serious throughout.

It all hangs together within the sphere of reality in this film, which bears no resemblance at all to the reality that you and I inhabit, or that we inhabited in 1981, but I suppose in these days of 50% of movies being about superpowers, I shouldn't be complaining about this level of unreality.

I almost want to give it a third star for the character name "Mantis Manajian," which is the most original thought the screenwriters had. The extra star I did give is because the lead and her kickboxing girlfriends can kick high. Good for them.

But it's a bad, bad film.

Lovely but Deadly

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 31 July 2023]

Mary Ann "Lovely" Lovitt (Lucinda Dooling, The Alchemist, Surf II) has gone back to school to get revenge for the drug overdose death of her brother. Yes, twentysomething teenagers, martial arts, bad drugs and more await in this film directed by David Sheldon, the writer of Grizzly and the director of Devil Times Five. He also co-wrote this with Lawrence David Foldes (Young Warriors) and Patricia Joyce.

Stay for fistfights with cheerleaders in the locker room and an appearance - as one of the bad guys! - by former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rick Moser as drug dealing football player Mantis Managian (he even dates Pamela Jean Bryant from H. O. T. S.). Mel Novak is his boss!

Dooling is great in this and I've seen it described as a white girl version of Coffy, which pretty much says it all.

Lovely But Dumb As Hell

[blurnieghey · 5/10 · 31 August 2022]

The film starts out strong with a great scene of the female protagonist beating the crap out of a drug dealer and forcing him to OD, leading me to think this was going to be some sort of personal revenge flick. Instead, while revenge is a factor, it's a little less personal as she aims to take down the entire system and put people in jail. Ho hum, but drugs are a pretty big problem in her high school. How big? Well, gangsters are sending their thugs into the school to beat up students, cheerleaders are getting pimped out, and the drug consumption is apparently so high it needs to be brought in by boat in multiple crates on a regular basis. Or so we are led to believe, although I tend to wonder how anyone even managed to graduate in a situation like that. It grows increasingly ridiculous as the film goes on and comes completely unglued by the time it ends, but it's still fun, dumb stuff. Some decent chest meat on display and I actually liked a couple of the fight scenes--especially the beat-down at the beginning. Could have been better, but it's still good exploitation junk.

High School Kung-Fu & Drugs Musical

[Coventry · 4/10 · 18 July 2023]

Several hours after watching "Lovely but Deadly" I'm still somewhat flabbergasted, and I cannot quite figure out what exactly I have been watching... This movie doesn't make any sense, but not in typical terms of idiotic plot or illogical narrative structure. It doesn't make sense in a way that my brains cannot process how misfit the lead characters and the high school setting are in relation to the plot.

"Lovely but Deadly" (although the VHS-copy I watched overwrites the original title with "Deadly Avenger" in a totally different style and font than the rest of the opening credits) deals with a tough girl who joins a high school to expose the drug-dealing network that caused her younger brother to die from an overdose. The synopsis sounds like normal exploitation material, but the execution is not. You'd expect for a rebellious ghetto-girl go undercover in a gritty ghetto-school and battle against vicious ghetto-thugs and corrupt coppers, but no sir! The girl is question is a cute and slender cheerleader - albeit with some serious Kung-Fu fighting skills -, the school is a traditional all-American and upright high school in a sunny Californian coastal community, and the thugs are average looking jocks, school paper journalists, musicians, and well-dressed prominent locals.

One could state the unusual cast of characters and settings are original surprise-aspects, but no. It feels unnatural and impossible. The film balances back and forth between being a mixture of "High School Musical", "Porky's", "Class of 1984", and a cheap James Bond rip-off. On the bright side, this flick is never boring (apart from the too many full-length songs) and features a few totally absurd highlights, including a catfight during a fancy house party, a speed boat chase that results in an (exaggeratedly massive) explosion, a quarterback who shameless says to a girl that she has to wait 15 minutes because he just had sex with another girl, spontaneous nudity from random and nameless cheerleaders, and a poor kid who gets steamed (!) to death. Familiar faces in the cast include Richard Herd and Irwin Keyes (in his usual role of brainless goon). "Lovely but Deadly" is not a good film, not nearly, but worth discovering for fans of unusual exploitation.

A Real Gem

[Mark-129 · 9/10 · 14 December 2001]

Lucinda Dooling portrays Mary Ann "Lovely" Lovett, an over-age High School student who uses her martial arts skills to battle the vicious drug ring responsible for the death of her younger brother. Although the film is ultra low budget, the fighting scenes amateurish and the acting non existent, this little film is a real find. Backed by an energetic "James Bond-like musical score, "Lovely" is powered by charm and enthusiasm. The cast of unknowns tries hard and the script is on occasion entertaining, if not witty. Although to be honest, a bigger confrontation between Lovely and the drug ring's mastermind at the very end would have really improved the final product.

Lucinda Dooling's acting mainly consists of grimacing at the camera, but shows enough presence that I was disappointed to find she has only made a handful of screen appearances.

glorious cheese -- and a very sexy scene

[chris919 · 6/10 · 20 June 2006]

One scene in 'Lovely but Deadly' has rightly become legendary among those who go for this sort of thing. Lucinda Dooling, her startlingly cut (for 1981) muscles rippling, subdues the high school pusher, forcing him to take an overdose of his "own medicine," all the while speaking to him in the calmest, sweetest tones imaginable, absolutely in control.

The rest of the film is good cheesy fun -- best watched with some buddies and a six pack -- but the one scene is dangerous erotica. We have never really had a genuinely tough movie heroine who caught on with the general public (although Kathy Long, Jillian Kesner and Lucinda Dickey certainly had the stuff) and "Lovely But Deadly" stands as the one claim Dooling might have had for this title.

Lucinda Dooling looks great and fights great

[TD-11 · 10/10 · 9 October 1999]

An absolute classic for fans of mixed fighting. Actually, this is my favorite film of all time. A Young lady goes after a gang of drug dealers to get revenge for the drug related death of her brother. There are many nice mixed fight scenes in the movie. The greatest scene of all is after Lucinda has beat up a pusher, she pins his arms under her knees behind his back and rubs his throat forcing him to drink his own drugs. Simply awesome.

Enjoyable adventure movie as cute teen beats up drug dealers

[Baldy-13 · 25 March 1999]

Lovely uses sexual attraction to trap drug dealers. Once she exposes them she beats them up and leaves them for police.

Very cheesy action flick with some funny scenes.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 7/10 · 15 December 2014]

Mary Ann Lovett((Lucinda Dooling)is called by her friends Lovely.Her younger brother drowns in a drug related accident.Mary becomes angry and decides to stop drugs in her high school via martial arts."Lovely But Deadly" was directed by David Sheldon,who also directed quite effective horror flick "Devil Times Five" in 1974.The acting is amateurish but full of enthusiasm and the fight scenes are unintentionally funny.I loved girl fight scene between Mary Ann Lovett and some blond cheerleader during the party.The film is quite violent but not bloody at all.The body count in this supremely cheesy vigilante flick is surprisingly low.If you enjoyed "Coffy" with Pam Grier you can give "Lovely But Deadly" a look.7 karate cheerleaders out of 10.

Awesome

[uroshnor54 · 10/10 · 9 April 2015]

I saw a few clips of Lovely But Deadly online and I just had to see it all so I got the VHS on eBay. It isn't a good movie but it's pretty entertaining. Lucinda Dooling is absolutely, um, lovely as Lovely. It really is too bad she wasn't in many other movies. The rest of the cast is okay. The writing isn't too bad, although there are definitely quite a few scenes that are unintentionally funny and the real jokes are only funny because they aren't funny: "I think you guys are too pushy." "Pushy? I'll show you pushy" *Gives first guy a light shove*. But I think the scene with the cat fight at the costume party and the scene where this one guy is steamed to death in a cardboard box (among some others) place Lovely But Deadly firmly in so-bad-it's-good territory. And as one of those kinds of movies it succeeds and that's why I'm giving it a 10/10.

Some other reviewers here have noted that the score is kind of James Bond-like, and I must admit it does sound kind of discount-John Barryish. There's even a catchy song that plays during the opening credits. This movie kind of reminded me of the James Bond series in a few other ways. The ending in which the cheerleaders beat up a bunch of guards working for the bad guy kind of reminded me of the end of Octopussy, in which circus performer ladies beat up Kamal Khan's guards. Actually, Lovely But Deadly came out two years before Octopussy. Of course, I'm guessing the writers of the thirteenth James Bond movie probably never saw (let alone heard) of Lovely But Deadly. Also, Gomorrah (Seriously?) kind of reminded me of Jaws. Kind of.

It's too bad Lovely But Deadly hasn't had a Blu-Ray release like some other cheesy low-budget movies from the '80s.

Not your average chick flick!

[GOWBTW · 9/10 · 10 April 2018]

There are several fighting films that is all action. And there are some that have a lot of sex appeal to it. This movie is also a war on drugs. It deals with the sister waging a war on drug dealers moving in on the high school. The victim, her brother who was strung out and drowns at the beach. Mary Ann "Lovely" Lovitt(Lucinda Dooling) is a high school graduate whose brother falls victim to drugs, tries to the ones responsible for his death. Lovely puts her fighting skills to the test against anyone who would get in her way. This movie is rather humorous. There's a lot of puns and slapsticks. Other than that, it was very entertaining of some sorts. The fight scenes are amazing. Where the ladies take care of the workmen on the docks. A very good chick flick with surprises to it. A classic gem of its own way. Subtle. 2 out of 5 stars

Unusual low-budget actioner is worth a peek

[lor_ · 27 January 2023]

My review was written in July 1983 after a screening at Thunderbird Drive-In of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In an era when the B-grade action film market is dominated by lookalike martial arts pictures and vengeance mellers, "Lovely but Deadly" is an entertaining novelty, combining elements of both genres into a teenage wish-fulfillment format. It represents a tough sell commercially, but pic will provide pleasant diversion for both action fans and students of current trends.

Filmmaker David Sheldon has adapted the current vigilante trend in films to teen pics, with pert young brunette Lucinda Dooling toplining as a California high school student, Mary Ann Lovett (nicknamed "Lovely"), mounting a one girl campaign to wipe out the drug dealers and higherups in her community, in order to avenge her kid brother's drug-induced death.

Sheldon styles Dooling as an underage female version of James Bond (with topgrade martial arts skills to boot), a gimmick which proves to be fun since she is a normal-looking young gir rather han such macho femmes as Pam Grier, Cheri Caffaro, Monica Vitti, Cornelia Sharpe and Marilyn Chambers who have previously essayed similar roles. Also to the film's advantage is the staging of Bond-like action scenes in prosaic settings such as the school locker room. If you can't compete with $30,000,000 budgets, you can at least have fun with the format.

Cast mixes old pros (Marie Windsor as heroine's aunt, Richard Herd and John Randolph as behind the scenes heavies) with young talent with generally effective results. Dooling, in particular, overcomes the occasionally preachy anti-drugs script with her forceful, physically convincing performance. Teen genre conventions such as cheerleaders' action and several rock songs belted on camera by the anti-hero slow up the narrative, but the final action payoff on the docks which karate teacher Susan Mechsner and her class of diminutive high school girls come to Dooling's rescue from assorted thugs is priceless.

Lensing is cheap, using available light for many scenes. The musical score by Robert Ragland is in the same rousing bag as his recent "10 to Midnight" offering and features a scene-setting title song which has the tone of a Shirley Bassey-Bond theme.