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By  Will Silver, on February 21, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Corbin Allred, Jennifer Burns, Derek Webster, Barrie Ingham, Jonathan Charles Kaplan, Michael C. Mahon, Stacy Sullivan, Helen Siff, Charisma Carpenter, Johnny Green
Directed by Frank Arnold
Expectations: Low, but very much excited to be done with these!
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
At long last I find myself at the end of the lengthy Josh Kirby film sextet. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t always enjoyable, but damn if I didn’t get a few quality moments of WTF joy. I’m happy to report that one of the best of these comes in this film, the aptly titled entry: Last Battle for the Universe. While it is the last film, and there is a battle contained within, don’t get your hopes up for an epic confrontation between good and evil that will shake the pillars of the Earth. Nope, here it’s more along the lines of Josh Kirby wearing a thimble/bucket helmet and trading laborious blows with the evil villain contained in the time armor.
Once again, a Josh Kirby film is fairly unintelligible. I always get through the first few minutes following these pretty well, but as boredom and exhaustion sets in, I’m unable to keep up with all the lengthy jargon-driven dialogue exchanges. What I was able to decode was this: after finally retrieving the final Nullifier component, Josh’s time buddy Irwin 1138 reveals himself to be the true villain! As I suspected a couple of films ago (I think it was hinted at in Trapped on Toyworld), the evil Dr. Zoetrope is actually a nice guy. This is a change for the better, as I always thought his character was far more interesting and likable than Irwin’s. Anyway, Irwin steals Zoetrope’s time armor and whisks himself away. Where he goes is for later, as first Josh Kirby must probe the mind of Zoetrope to prove that he’s telling the truth (Read: Full Moon gets lazy once again and shows us a few minutes of footage from the previous films). It is after this blatant offering of stock footage that we finally find out where Irwin got off to, and it is here that the film hits an absolute high of insane, mind-boggling proportions.
Continue reading Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 6, Last Battle for the Universe (1996) →
By Will Silver, on February 20, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Richard Widmark, Bella Darvi, Victor Francen, Cameron Mitchell, Gene Evans, David Wayne, Stephen Bekassy, Richard Loo
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Expectations: Low. This is Fuller’s least favorite film according to his book.
Hell and High Water begins in classic Sam Fuller style, hitting hard with a stunning image designed to immediately excite the viewer and grab hold of their attention. The particular image that opens this Fuller film is a giant nuclear explosion on a remote island (which is actual footage of a test blast by the military), and we’re quickly told via narration that it’s this explosion that the film is about. Sort of. The explosion is more like the catalyst to the film and its climax, but I guess you could say that the explosion informs the entire film and gives tension to the events presented within. That’s kind of a stretch though. This conflicted feeling I have is representative of how I feel about the entire film.
Going into Hell and High Water I had virtually no idea what the film was about. All I knew was that it was a Sam Fuller film, that it was something of a military film, that it was a bigger budget studio picture made as a favor, and that it was Fuller’s least favorite of his pictures. Like the opening explosion, the knowledge that Fuller didn’t like this one informed my viewing of the film. To my surprise though (and realistically I shouldn’t be surprised), Hell and High Water is pretty damn fun, and exceedingly well produced. It is Fuller’s first film in color, as well as his first CinemaScope film and he wastes no time in utilizing both to great effect.
Continue reading Hell and High Water (1954) →
By Will Silver, on February 17, 2012, 5:20 am  The Singing Thief [大盜歌王] (1969)
Starring Jimmy Lin Chung, Lily Ho Li Li, Lo Lieh, Essie Lin Chia, Mui Yan, Chu Gam, Yee Kwan, Nam Wai-Lit, Man Lei, Au-Yeung Gwong, Yip Dung-Ching
Directed by Chang Cheh
Expectations: I really don’t know what to expect. Not much.
Well, this one certainly blew whatever expectations I had out of the water! Having taken wuxia to the highest heights he thought it could reach at the time with his previous film Golden Swallow, Chang Cheh sought to liberate himself from the standard Shaw Brothers cycle of constantly making wuxia pictures one after another. Instead he turned his attention to musicals of all things, and the resulting effort is The Singing Thief. Don’t be fooled by the title though, it’s not really a musical in the traditional sense.
The story of The Singing Thief revolves around Diamond Poon, a reformed diamond thief who’s now known for his wonderful singing voice. He works in a nightclub run by his good buddy Fu and he’s content to keep his life simple. Someone else has a different life path in mind for Poon though, as a new thief in town is accurately impersonating his trademarks and making everyone think that Poon’s up to his old tricks. He could be, and the mystery of just who is stealing everyone’s jewelry is one of the best parts of the film. In some ways it reminded me of The Big Lebowski, where an innocent dude gets mixed up in a sea of people all out to get him and play him for their own interests, but realistically that foundational story has its roots in places far older than The Big Lebowski, such as Dashiell Hammett’s groundbreaking 1929 novel Red Harvest (itself a huge influence on film, particularly on the work of Akira Kurosawa & Sergio Leone).
Continue reading The Singing Thief (1969) →
By Will Silver, on February 16, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Sho Kosugi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Doran Clark, Bruce French, Vladimir Skomarovsky, William Bassett, Kane Kosugi, Shane Kosugi, Dorota Puzio, Jan Tríska, Gene Davis, Alfred Mallia
Directed by Eric Karson
Expectations: Sho Kosugi. JCVD. I heard it’s bad, but I gotta see it!
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Hot off the heels of the amazing Bloodsport, Jean-Claude Van Damme landed the main villain role in this Sho Kosugi vehicle, and regardless of whatever flaws the film has, it definitely delivers on the schoolyard playground promise of “Sho vs. JCVD!” They face off a few times throughout the film, with two major battles occurring during the closing half hour. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but Black Eagle is the type of movie that doesn’t lend itself much to beating around the bush.
Basically a low-budget version of the James Bond film Thunderball (but with better underwater sequences… fuck Thunderball‘s torturous underwater filmmaking), Black Eagle sees Sho Kosugi as the title character: a covert CIA operative capable of fucking up any evildoers holiday plans. An experimental plane went down off the coast of Malta and even though it’s Sho’s scheduled family vacation time, they force him to do the job. How does the U.S. government do that exactly? By picking up his kids and flying them directly into harm’s way in Malta, and then using their presence there to force him into a position where he has no choice but to agree, that’s how! Stand up guys those CIA suits. Of course, he’s not the only one looking for the plane, and this is where JCVD and all the requisite Russian baddies come from. It’s the Cold War as told through a mediocre James Bond rip-off starring two of the screen’s favorite Western martial arts stars.
Continue reading Black Eagle (1988) →
By Will Silver, on February 14, 2012, 5:20 am S tarring Corbin Allred, Jennifer Burns, Derek Webster, Barrie Ingham, Matt Winston, Nick De Gruccio, Cindy Sorenson, Michael Hagiwara, Lomax Study, Mihai Niculescu
Directed by Ernest D. Farino
Expectations: Low. I kinda just want to be done with these, so anything more than absolute shit will be a win in my book.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Once again I find myself before my computer wondering just what I can write about a Josh Kirby film. I can say that at least this film is a definite improvement from the poor results of Part 3 and Part 4, but it’s still incredibly slow-paced and boring. That’s pretty much the Full Moon modus operandi though, stretching out every dialogue sequence and adding in about twice as many expository exchanges than there needs to be. Whatever, by this point in my trek through every one of the Empire International/Full Moon films I’m no longer surprised by this, but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to sit through.
So at the end of Part 4 (and replayed here for our “enjoyment”), Josh Kirby and his buddies mysteriously transport to an unknown location because one of them puts the Nullifier back together in the wrong order. This leads them to another piece of the Nullifier, but soon after they fall through a crevice in the Earth. Once they get up and dust themselves off, they see a bunch of human size mushrooms all around them and Asabeth, claiming these are delicacies on in her homeland, quickly bites off a piece of one and enjoys. These aren’t your average six-foot mushrooms though, they’re alive! And poisonous! So Asabeth is pretty much out of commission for the movie and our heroes must venture to into the lair of The Muncher with the help of the mushroom people in order to rescue Puffball, the mushroom with the spores which act as antidote for the poison. Get all that?
Continue reading Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 5, Journey to the Magic Cavern (1996) →
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