As Hollywood continues to burn bridges with its audiences through rebooted drivel and politically correct lathered story-lines, and actors/actresses can't keep their mouths shut about issues that don't affect them and that audiences really don't care their opinion on, I find my appreciation for cult films grows stronger.  Low budget cult cinema has never seemed to care about being politically correct, there were never any issues about salaries, because the entire budget for the film was likely 1/10th of what stuck up Hollywood actresses complain about getting paid, and creators were forced to be creative on a shoestring budget, not rely on millions of dollars of CGI to have a hit.  And diversity and strong women roles... ironically that has never seemed to be an issue in cult films either.

Alley Cat is one such film, which stars the relatively unknown Karin Mani in her only starring film role as Billie.  Billie awakes one night to find two hooligans attempting to steal the tires off her car.  She quickly runs down stairs, beats the crap out of them with some karate moves and is followed by her grandfather who chases them off with his gun.  They run back to their hideout and tell their boss, Scarface (who ironically looks like a greasier version of Maroon 5 front-man Adam Levine), and complain how they were handed a beat down by an old-man and a butt kicking girl.  

The next night Scarface decides to show his goons how it's done.  They find Billie's grandfather in a convenient store with his wife, tail him and proceed to mug them on a street corner, killing his wife in the process.  The aftermath of this encounter sets Billie off as she realizes how flawed the legal system is as she attempts to see some justice upheld for her grandparents, and gets caught up in it herself.  This leads her on a personal vendetta to find Scarface and deliver the punishment that the police seem to be inept at doing.

To my surprise Alley Cat was extremely entertaining, it's as if someone took Death Wish, Karate Kid and a little bit of a "women in prison" exploitation film, stuck them in a blender and this is what came out.  The dialog is awful, and the acting even worse but that all seems to compliment the "Frankenstein" mixture of films it's clearly ripping off, only adding to the entertainment value.  Even more surprising is there actually is a little substance behind this 80's B-movie script, and the film does a pretty good job highlighting the incompetence in our justice system that doesn't appear to have improved much in the last thirty plus years.

Overall, there's not much Alley Cat doesn't seem to have and considering the 1980's is my favorite decade for American films I'm happy to have found another film to add to my list.  It's a shame Karin Mani made so few films, she had all the makings for a successful 80's American cult film actress and the body of a Playmate!

7/10