Little Sisters / Powder Burns Review

Distributor: Vinegar Syndrome Edition Details: Standard DVD Release Specs: Video Format: NTSC Format: DVD Regional Code (for DVD/Blu-ray): 0 (All) Number of discs: 1

This release features what appear to be the two earliest feature films that Alex de Renzy made. It is great that Vinegar Syndrome has given a nice release to Little Sisters and Powder Burns but sadly neither of these films will likely appeal to most viewers.

Vinegar Syndrome hasn't included any extras on this release.

You can jump to the review of Little Sisters or Powder Burns or just keep reading to read them all.

Little Sisters is an extremely odd film to come from Alex de Renzy and likely one that most viewers will dislike. Little Sisters is best described as Alex de Renzy's acid trip of an adult fairy tale, although that may not even properly describe this film. Two sisters Emily (Clair Dia) and Candy (Kandi Johnson) live with their mom in a wooden gypsy caravan sheltered from the world deep in the woods. They are told never to venture into the woods. One day, while their mom is out, the two are kidnapped by some sort of hippie pirates who leave a note blaming the kidnapping on a local group of lesbians. When the mom gets home she goes in search of her daughters, finding the gang of lesbians, who also go — on their own — in search of the two sisters as well. During her search for her daughters, the mother runs into drag queens, gay monks, and a rather tall forest elf named Derek, and ends with a full cast song. Honestly, this sounds like far more fun than it really is.

I'm not even sure that the film was telling a real story. The night before the kidnapping, the mother reads to the sisters Lewis Carroll's “Jabberwocky.” Everything else that follows in the film feels like utter nonsense, which leads me to wonder if the reading was put there on purpose. The finished film has a feeling like it was ever really truly created. It more feels like de Renzy came up with an idea, started shooting without any real plan, and then threw together the footage that he got. The entire film also feels like it was shot on the unkempt backyard of some estate.

Alex de Renzy appears to have been trying to create a comedy. The gang rape that occurs doesn't fit in well with a comedy but then again, de Renzy was never one to be trendy. The mix of heterosexual and homosexual scenes will put off some viewers as well. Sadly, none of the sex scenes are particularly erotic. There is no real acting per se, there seems to be no real direction either, nor any script that anyone had to follow. While de Renzy would go on to create such classics as Pretty Peaches, Femmes de Sade, and Babyface, Little Sisters is no where in the league of any of these films and is likely not to thrill even hardcore fans of the director.

Vinegar Syndrome has done a great job with the presentation of Little Sisters. Little Sisters is presented in the full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The transfer contains print damage, grain, artifacts, and some jumps however the picture does look great for a film this old and rare. The colors look beautiful.

Little Sisters is presented with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural track, which is in decent shape. It is obvious there was dirt on the masters for the audio and there was some damage to the audio. However the dialog is clear and easy to understand.

Powder Burns appears to have been the first adult feature film that Alex de Renzy made. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that he knew what he was doing yet leaving this film a wreck. Even de Renzy seems to recognize this and applies some band-aide's to the film but they can't do much to salvage what was never there to begin with.

Powder Burns was an attempt at an adult western, which seemingly takes place in the old wild west until Lolita shows up driving a Porsche. The film never really seems to know exactly when it is taking place, one could justify in the 1800s due to some of the dialog in the film and 1971 due to the Porsche. Sadly I'm not sure that de Renzy even knew when exactly this film took place when making it. The identity crisis the film has with time is just the beginning of its issues.

The film never finds a sense of itself. It almost seems as if de Renzy was trying to do something else and due to some sort of catastrophic issue had to rethink all ideas in editing and tried to salvage what remained. The plot is that Ernest Sham, the sheriff, saloon keeper, and pillar of fire and strength chases the McNasty Brothers (Black Bart McNasty, Buffalo McNasty, and the third McNasty I was never sure of the name of) out of Sewerpipe Creek. This causes financial issues for the town, since apparently the McNasty brothers were its only source of income. Enter Lolita “the golden dream,” a go-go Dancer who sets up a brothel with Ernest to save the financial future of the town. But then the McNasty brothers return. One of the battles is apparently Sham's Battle, according to the narration, but I'm not sure if it is the one at the beginning or end to be honest.

Powder Burns just ambles along with no real idea of what it is doing sadly. Most of the story is given by an obviously later thought of narration by Ernest Sham. The narration is stuck in the film rather willy-nilly sometimes even over dialog. The narrator definitely seems to have been an afterthought to attempt to bring some coherency to the film.

Outside of the narration the cast just seems to be doing whatever, without any real direction, to be later edited into something. The ending itself even just seems to mostly be the remaining cast wandering around doing something so that there would be something on the screen. Even with the lack of direction of the film it could be salvaged by some great sex. However, I even forgot for a while that I was watching an adult film due to the lack of sex in the film. The sex comes in at the very end of the film and then it becomes almost wall to wall.

Alex de Renzy picked some nice locations for shooting the film. It is too bad he just hadn't figured out what he was doing yet. There is no one I can really recommend this film to at all. It just ends up being tedious to sit through.

Powder Burns is presented in the full screen ratio of 1.33:1. The film sports nice colors and contains grain, artifacts, and print damage. The print damage is significant in the beginning of the film. The film is watchable throughout but this is one of the worst transfers I have seen come from Vinegar Syndrome.

Powder Burns is presented with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural track. There are some jumps in the audio and some scratches. The audio is in better shape than the video with the audio usually able to be understood.

Past Reviews Interviews