In the annals of late-night cable mediocrity, few films face-plant harder in stiletto heels than Black Scorpion, a movie that plays like someone watched Batman, got drunk on peach schnapps, and shouted “What if Catwoman had less personality and more cleavage?”
Enter Joan Severance, a woman genetically engineered in a secret lab to wear leather and smirk under dim lighting. She plays Darcy Walker, a tough, brooding cop who’s so disillusioned with justice she decides to put on fetish gear and hand out vigilante beatdowns like a dominatrix with a badge and no safe word. The transformation into Black Scorpioninvolves black vinyl, a glowing scorpion ring, and apparently a total disregard for physics, laws, or logic. Somewhere between the high-kicks and backflips, you’re supposed to believe this is empowering. Spoiler: it’s not.
The plot, if you can call it that, revolves around a villain named Breathtaker, an asthmatic mad scientist whose master plan is to poison the city’s air supply—which, considering this is L.A., sounds less like terrorism and more like business as usual. He wheezes through his lines like he’s inhaling sawdust and monologuing through a CPAP machine. He’s not menacing—he’s just tired and full of phlegm.
Darcy’s sidekick is Argyle, a car thief turned gadget guy who talks like a rejected In Living Color sketch. He modifies her car, the Scorpionmobile, which looks like someone welded fins onto a vacuum cleaner and fed it Red Bull. It has gadgets, a warp drive, and the personality of a rejected Knight Rider clone. The car is arguably the most grounded and charismatic character in the film.
The fight scenes are laughable—choreographed like a Zumba class for extras with inner ear problems. Most punches land like wet socks hitting a drywall. The editing tries to create a sense of speed and danger, but it ends up looking like a local cable access show tried to shoot The Matrix using mall security footage and a fog machine they got on clearance.
The dialogue is pure gold if you’re into drinking games based on bad lines. Example:
“Sometimes justice has to wear black lace.”
That’s not empowerment. That’s a cry for help wrapped in a Frederick’s of Hollywood clearance rack.
Joan Severance tries. She really does. She’s got the look, the poise, the kind of voice that could make a parking ticket sound like foreplay. But she’s stuck in a script written by someone who clearly thought comic books were for people who couldn’t handle the depth of Baywatch Nights. She spends the movie either glowering behind a domino mask or delivering wooden lines while straddling motorcycles like a bored lingerie model with a concussion.
The cinematography is drenched in neon like it’s trying to blind you into thinking something interesting is happening. Spoiler: nothing is. It’s all sleaze and no substance—like if Showgirls and RoboCop had a one-night stand and the condom broke.
What really sinks Black Scorpion is that it doesn’t commit. It wants to be camp, but it plays too straight. It wants to be sexy, but it’s laughably juvenile. It wants to be a gritty vigilante tale, but every villain looks like they wandered in from a live-action Tick episode. You’re never sure if you’re supposed to be turned on, thrilled, or embarrassed for everyone involved. Most viewers land on the third.
By the time Darcy is ziplining through the city or slow-mo karate chopping her way through stuntmen who look like retired HVAC technicians, you’ll find yourself rooting for the credits. Not because you hate fun, but because this isn’t fun—it’s the cinematic equivalent of someone trying to be cool by wearing sunglasses at night and falling into an open sewer.
Final Verdict:
Black Scorpion is not a superhero movie. It’s a late-night skin-flick disguised as crime-fighting fantasy, stitched together with bad lighting and worse instincts. Joan Severance looks amazing and deserves a medal for not breaking character during this soft-core cosplay fever dream, but she’s stuck in a plot with the emotional depth of a Mountain Dew commercial.
1 out of 5 stars.
That one star is for Joan. Not for her acting—just for enduring this disaster in four-inch heels without quitting halfway through filming. The rest is just crime… against taste, logic, and spandex.
