Suicide Blonde (1999) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Suicide Blonde premiered at the 1999 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, and did well enough to land a DVD distribution deal. While clearly a very low budget effort, it was a quick watch. It could best be described as a Tarantinoesque humorous thriller. A lowly valet for a strip joint, who has an "unhealthy fixation" on a stripper who treats him like dirt, and no real life, is parking a classic stretch Cadillac convertible for 4 big time Hispanic crooks, and bumps into a blonde (Angel Boris). She asks him for a ride home, saying that her crazy boyfriend, who has a big gun, is chasing her. They get to her supposed apartment, and the boyfriend shows up wearing a leather jacket with a big scorpion on it and carrying a big gun. The boyfriend's plot was to steal the car and shoot the valet. By chance, he only wounds him, and the valet somehow manages to kill Scorpion.

Meanwhile, the hoods have committed a murder in the strip joint, and are rather upset to be missing their getaway car. After they take a cab from the crime scene, they are looking for the valet, with the idea of horrible torture and death. Boris makes nice with the valet, who ends up killing a second person, and going to bed with her. In the course of the evening, the crooks start talking about the legendary Scorpion guy with the crazy blonde, and are then told that the valet who has their car is actually the legendary Scorpion and the crazy blonde.

As I write this, 10 IMDB readers have this at 8.6 of 10. It isn't really better than Casablanca, but if enough people see it to give it an accurate rating, I would expect it to settle into the low 6s, because the film has some offbeat characters, good looking women, plenty of over-the-top violence, and more than a little humor. It is also a far better looking film than I would expect from a mini-budget production.

Scoop's comments in yellow:

Suicide Blonde is actually a remarkably entertaining film for something made with a budget of approximately zero. It's a gangster comedy-drama in which the gangsters are both threatening and silly, like Miami Cubano updates some of the Runyonesque underworld characters in the films of the 1940's. (Think about the roles Mike Mazurki used to play, if you're a film buff). Shot in the Art Deco District on South Beach, it was filmed with extreme levels of contrast and saturation in order to give a more distinctive flavor to the otherwise unexceptional visuals.  For a no-budget film, it does have a certain flair.

Summary:

A feckless valet parking attendant is hijacked by psychotic criminals while parking the car of a big-time gangster. During the course of the night, in several desperate self-defense maneuvers, the poor schmuck lucks out of several tricky situations with the hijackers and the car's owner, and ends up assuming the identity of a legendary underworld figure named Scorpion - sort of a Miami version of Keyser Sose. By the time the Cuban Mafia guys finally meet him, it is they who are terrified, not he.

Pretty silly stuff, but an easy watch. Not a big winner, but a film worth watching if you really enjoy the whole lurid, tongue-in-cheek, Tarantino approach to violence.