All collagen and silicone, Carmen Electra got her first lead role thanks to The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven. A superhero film before such a thing was in vogue, it merges The Crow, Deliverance and anything ever shot in that sketchy wooded area by every neighborhood. She plays McKenna, a vengeful hussy selected to carry on the longstanding tradition of a Native American tribe. Or something like that.
It begins with her sister, Emma (Shauna Sand, former Playboy Playmate and former human), pursued by the local womanizing redneck (Michael Stadvec, The Dentist) in a town full of womanizing rednecks. He kills her to get his grubby hands on her necklace, which grants the wearer mystical tribal powers, but before expiring, she hides it under a couple of leaves. Why she didn’t use the jewelry’s functionality to escape harm, we’re not supposed to ask.
Upon hearing the news of Emma’s death, McKenna moves back home. Her old flame, Henry (Tim Bagley, The Mask), is now sheriff. He’s shacking up in a mobile home with Nora (Debra Xavier, American Vampire), who may as well be named Whora. Henry ditches her for McKenna faster than a budget divorce, naturally driving Nora to take up meth.
Meanwhile, McKenna sees visions of Natives in her bedroom, beckoning her to become “the chosen one.” (Are Carmen and the devil walkin’ side by side?) Putting in repeat visits is the spirit of Emma, whose vocal delivery leads viewers to believe director Lawrence Lanoff (Playboy: Babes of Baywatch) instructed Sand, “Hey, do your Kathy Ireland.”
So that Legend of the Raven can last longer than 30 minutes, McKenna gives in to the ghosts and wears the necklace, thus imbuing her with aforementioned mystical tribal powers. Suddenly, she’s excitedly licking her dinner plate and dry-humping the air around her. Soon, she and Henry have music-video montage lovin’. When they go at it again, it’s with a half-gallon of milk, which made me want to swear off the moo juice.
An hour into this opus, McKenna finally dons a costume as Indigenous superhero The Raven — which is to say she wears a skin-tight silver spandex onesie, complemented with spiked and steel accessories. Inversely, Nora resurfaces as an out-and-out comic-book villainess in black leather and a yard-sale Lone Ranger mask. They have a poorly choreographed fight to the overacted finish.
Continuity is absent from The Chosen One, as is a logical script. I didn’t even get to mention the subplot about the Route 33 serial killer (Lanoff himself). And check out the cutaway of birds in flight … as one poops. This is the rare movie that dares to play the line “How ’bout a knuckle sandwich?” entirely straight.
At the end, McKenna and Henry agree to eat a cow. The whole experience is best summed up by exclaiming, “Crazy. Froot Loopin’ crazy!” — a line cribbed from the Decampitated trailer preceding this Raven. Nevermore. —Rod Lott