Last month during the SXSW Film Festival, The Playlist sat down with prolific Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald and got the scoop on his next project.
Titled, “Lucky Ho,” the B-movie, grindhouse-sounding film is expected to shoot this summer, in July or August, and McDonald told us, “[It’s] a women’s prison martial arts project. It’s awesome. It’s kind of filthy, hilarious and wrong. We gotta find some totally smoking hot Chinese babe who can kick ass and be naked in the shower a lot.” Sounds like something Quentin Tarantino would love (Tarantino’s brief Miramax DVD distribution arm Rolling Thunder Pictures released McDonald’s “Hard Core Logo” in the U.S. years ago).
The directed noted that the summer shoot would be contingent on finding his female lead and maybe he has? Over at Foundation Features (via Quiet Earth), a long thorough synopsis and three new posters have been revealed and they suggest that McDonald has indeed found his woman (or at least someone attractive to pose for pictures). But no one seems to know who she is and emails to McDonald’s PR people have gone unreturned so far. Here’s the synopsis and the posters are obvious here scattered throughout.
Tough, sexy, smart. A young Kung Fu prodigy. Meet LUCKY HO, the eighteen year-old schoolgirl who will break your heart with a smile and break your neck with a flick of her wrist.When her mother passes away suddenly, Lucky is left alone to fend for her younger sister, TRACEY, in a world of male predators and female competitors. As a defender of the underdog set, Lucky tries to stay cool, but her explosive temper keeps the stakes hot and attracts plenty of trouble. Lucky watches her dreams of getting into Harvard go up in smoke as she is expelled, and the day only gets worse when she comes home to find a drunken Tracey in the hands of their disgusting stepfather and his friends. The tension escalates into the night as threats and anger turn ugly and result in Lucky being unfairly charged for murder.
Life on death row is no day at the prom. Lucky finds herself being thrown into a bizarre underworld filled with transvestites, bull dykes and a corrupt warden with a “passion” for his female prisoners – especially newcomer Lucky. The evil warden proffers an after hours fight club where the female inmates are pitted against each other in a gruesome battle to the death. Lucky will have to fight like never before because among these crazy inhabitants, fighting is more than survival, it’s pure entertainment. As Lucky trains to combat some of the meanest inmates in prison history, only one thing keeps her going: escaping and saving Tracey from their corrupt step father. Lucky’s steel will and exceptional skill will help her to overcome the dark forces that conspire against her in a world that doesn’t seem to want to give her a chance.
Heads will roll. High kicks will fly. Cross-dressing fashionistas will serenade bloody victories and shower brawls. From knee socks and numchucks to shakedowns and chop-ups, every fight brings Lucky one step closer to freedom…
The prolific filmmaker has essentially finished, or half-way finished four other films so far this year. “This Movie Is Broken” — a quasi narrative/ concert documentary revolving around Toronto orchestral rockers Broken Social Scene written by well-known Canuck scribe Don McKellar — debuted earlier this year at SXSW (read our review); he’s finished his, “My Dinner With Andre”-like story of two estranged female friends who reconnect after years of resentment called, “Trigger”; he’s completed principal photography on a New Orleans-set documentary called, “Music From The Big House,” and he’s also finished shooting his sequel to “Hard Core Logo.”
McDonald has other projects on the burners as well and we’ll hopefully get to those soon. Hopefully we’ll hear casting details about “Lucky Ho” shortly, but we presume most of the actors will be Canadian thesps that might be relatively unknown to American audiences.