Written, directed, produced, and starring Margot Hope, FEMME FONTAINE: KILLER BABE FOR THE CIA is a virtual one-woman, Whitman's sampler, send-up of action-adventure genre conventions. Distributed by Troma productions (e.g., THE TOXIC AVENGER, CLASS OF NUKE EM HIGH), this film is as
crude as it is campy, and as tasteless as it is humorous.
Drew Fontaine (Margot Hope) is a famous modern artist by day and an undercover CIA agent by night. Fontaine quits the agency to focus full-time on finding her father--a CIA agent who has disappeared in the line of duty. But her CIA superior, Max Hogan (Heinz Mueller), keeps enticing her back to
undercover service with unfulfilled promises of finding her father.
With this as the premise, a complicated series of events takes place involving overlapping criminal agendas. Masterminding these plans are a diverse cast of characters: Master Sun (James Hong), the leader of a Buddhist monastery and Fontaine's personal spiritual guide; Madam Lee (Catherine Dao),
Master Sun's cousin and the Dragon Lady leader of quasi-criminal "business" operations; an evil Femi-Nazi with lesbian lover henchwomen, who leads a nasty group of skinheads; Columbian drugs lords; CIA double agents; and even a couple of garden-variety American street thugs. Alliances shift and
transform, good guys turn out to be bad guys (and vice versa), and through it all Femme Fontaine keeps her wits about her and her long tresses of auburn hair shiny and brushed.
With inventive torture scenes, lesbian kisses, kickboxing fights, and double-crosses galore--not to mention murder by crossbow, electrocution, silencer, ice pick, and neck snapping--all taking place in Los Angeles, London, Munich, and South America, FEMME FONTAINE is truly an action-packed action
parody with something for everyone.
Is this film tacky? Absolutely. But is it fun? You bet. Caught somewhere between replicating B-movie riffs and parodying them, KILLER BABE has a good time with cliches from both James Bond thrillers and the hit woman subgenre exemplified by LA FEMME NIKITA. However, this film has an advantage over
the films it mocks: it doesn't take itself seriously--at least most of the time. Since the film is dedicated to the director's dead father, and since the plot revolves around a daughter searching for the truth surrounding her father's disappearance, there is occasionally an irritating undertone
which signals that something "important" is going on here. But, in the end, the generous viewer ought to be willing to forgive this film its lapses into narcissism--after all, how many films are there where you get to see a really hot babe torture a despicable skinhead thug in a tub of water
through nipple electrocution? Not nearly enough--but FEMME FONTAINE: KILLER BABE FOR THE CIA does its small part to balance the score.(Violence, sexual situations, adult situations, profanity.) leave a comment