Intent to Kill (1993)

Vickie Stewart (Lords) is a beautiful female cop on the edge in this PM outing. When a drug deal goes wrong (you mean they can go wrong?), Colombian thug Salvador (Tiffe) must get millions of dollars worth of drugs to his ruthless boss, The Mooch (Curto), or Salvador will meet a gruesome end. So Salvador is going all over the seedy sides of L.A. trying to collect all he can. The only thing stopping him is Vickie, who is determined to bring down the Colombian drug empire. To do this, she must go pretty rogue, but not all the way rogue. Meanwhile, she must deal with her philandering boyfriend Al (Patterson), a fellow cop, as well as her boss Captain Jackson (Kotto)., who is always on her case.It was nice to see Traci Lords as a tough cop on the edge. She even teaches classes to other women in street self-defense. The sleaze factor comes in with some of the seamier sides of Hollywood with hookers and such (Vickie must go undercover as a hooker at one point). Vickie is a cool character and it would have been nice to see that developed more, maybe in a follow-up movie, or a movie that doesn't fluctuate so much...What we mean by that is, Intent to Kill goes back and forth between decent and very dumb, and there seems to be a lot of padding and plot elements that aren't related and/or make no sense. But luckily there are car chases with rockin' guitar solos behind them, blow-ups, shooting, funny moments and lots of clichés. And of course Traci Lords getting into all sorts of dangerous situations (keep in mind it must have been in her post-porn industry contract that she do no nudity or sex scenes to try to distance herself from her past...just a theory)...and Yaphet Kotto pops up as the BYC with, and we quote, "one month left 'til retirement" ! It is a shame that he's retiring, as every day, generic newspaper headlines appear such as "Drugs Rule Streets".And as far as her love interest is concerned, Officer Tom Martin, he's a kickboxing man that's some sort of cross between Gary Daniels and Richard Norton, but not anywhere near as likable or interesting as those two. This Gary Norton (or Richard Daniels) guy is Michael Foley, and he was actually in Karate Cop, so there you go.Intent to Kill was released on the budget-priced EP speed tape released by Video Treasures/MNTEX, and the quality is not good. We're guessing this was a posthumous release because it's not included in some reference guides. Why this didn't come out on PM's own label, we do not know. It even has a shot from another movie on the cover (we believe it was taken from a Gary Daniels film). The director of this movie, Charles Kanganis, should have complained. After all, the previous year he directed Traci in A Time To Die (1991), and the packaging was much better, it even had a red plastic VHS.Featuring the inspirational tune "Stand Tall" by Lost Art, Intent to Kill is reasonably entertaining, but not a premier PM.For more action insanity, please visit: www.comeuppancereviews.com

This is a 1993 straight-to-video stereotypical female-cop-has-to-show-her-stuff-to make-it-to-the-top movie. The action is written into the script AND it is executed...kind of. Traci Lords isn't my idea of an action star. Yes, she has done plenty of action parts, and even does a decent job as Anna in Len Wiseman's Underworld and also contributes a fair performance as Chameleon in Black Mask 2, but I never could wholly buy her as an action star. She doesn't fit the bill, and for me, her presence lessened what enjoyment there COULD be had in this endeavor. Not her performance; that is as good as she gets, but her presence.But this is typical of the 90's. It is overdone, the performances are over the top dramatically, the dialog is trite and contrived, and the action is choreographed so that no one actually touches ANYone in the hand-to-hand scenes.The mafia, gang, and cop stereotypical elements are too prolific to enumerate and really drag down the story, such as the story was.There IS some enjoyment to be had, if you're into late 80's, early 90's M4TV or Str82Video Movies. Directed by Chameleon, whose last "real" movie was...wait. Oops. I can't say he has made anything worth mention. But if you like this, he also directed A Time To Die (1991), also starring Traci Lords, and not any better than this one.This one rates a 5.6/10 on the TV/Video Scale from...the Fiend :.

For lack of better things to watch, we stumbled on this movie the other night on cable. Wow! If action is your thing, this film will be for you. There must be killings every five minutes. In fact, we are worried when there are no shootings in the background!Charles T. Kanganis wrote and directed this movie that has a woman detective at the center of the story. Vickie, is a tough cookie (no pun intended). She might look blonde and vulnerable, but just don't mess around with her. The fact that Vickie is basically standing up as the film ends is a testament to Tracy Lords' masochism.The bad guys come and go, yet, Vickie is able to avoid being shot, or have her hair messed during the worst of the action. The action is too intense at times as the Latin gangsters show to be ruthless in the way they settle disputes.Watch this film for the pure fun of watching the action. Otherwise, don't bother.

Story line - very poorActing - mediocre to poorCharacter Development - very littleViolence - heavySex & Nudity - NONETough cop Traci takes on a very bad drug dude, and in the end, she's the last cop still standing, mostly because it's her arrogance and stupidity that got the others killed. The best comedy moment (not intended to be funny) is when she seriously wonders what it was that she did wrong.I expected the overall quality of the flick to be poor, and so wasn't disappointed in that regard. However, I was expecting a certain amount of eye candy, and the best this movie provided was a girl on a bicycle wearing a thong bikini. Doesn't Traci realize that nudity is the only reason her fans put up with the other inadequacies?Traci is actually not a bad actress, but if she really wants to go mainstream and keep her clothes on, she needs to start hanging out with a better class of writers and directors. Continuing to be in forgettable flicks like this is what she's doing wrong.