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By  Will Silver, on February 6, 2012, 5:20 am  My Name is Shanghai Joe [Il mio nome è Shanghai Joe] (1973)
AKA The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe, The Dragon Strikes Back, Knochenbrecher im wilden Westen (literally translates to: Bone Crusher in the Wild West), Shanghai Joe, To Kill or to Die
Starring Chen Lee, Klaus Kinski, Gordon Mitchell, Claudio Undari, Katsutoshi Mikuriya, Carla Romanelli, Carla Mancini, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, George Wang, Federico Boido, Piero Lulli
Directed by Mario Caiano
Expectations: High, this one looks great and I’ve heard good things.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Usually in films where two distinct genres are mashed together, the end result is less than it could have been. In My Name is Shanghai Joe, I am happy to say that everything comes together in the best, most satisfying way possible. It is a western first, then a kung fu film, but it truly delivers on both levels. It is also nearly non-stop action, with Shanghai Joe moving briskly through the baddies in one great scene after another. I always go into mixed genre films with apprehension, especially ones that mix two of my favorite genres, but My Name is Shanghai Joe does it so well that I had an absolute blast watching it and will definitely be watching this one again.
There isn’t much of a plot to speak of. Shanghai Joe arrives off a presumably slow boat from China in San Francisco of 1882. He quickly buys a stagecoach ticket East to Texas. At every turn, Joe meets up with some of the most racist fuckers ever put onto celluloid, spouting shitty Chinaman jokes one after another. After working his way through tons of these bastards, Joe finally pisses off the wrong dude, who in turn hires four assassins to track down Joe and take him out. These assassins, with such names as Scalper Jack and Pedro the Cannibal, each go down in interesting and fun ways. My Name is Shanghai Joe is a revenge film, but not one to linger on the pain or the regret such killing might lead another hero to contemplate. Instead most of the scenes follow this general framework: Joe enters, the bad guys say some racist shit and attack, Joe fucking annihilates them. It’s truly gratifying to watch and literally never gets old.
Continue reading My Name is Shanghai Joe (1973) →
By Will Silver, on December 21, 2011, 5:20 am 
AKA “Silent Night, Evil Night”, “Stranger in the House”
Starring Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Marian Waldman, Andrea Martin, James Edmond Jr., Doug McGrath, Art Hindle, Lynne Griffin, Michael Rapport
Directed by Bob Clark
Expectations: Pretty high. This is a genre classic that I’ve heard nothing but good things about.
Like the ending of Black Christmas, my feelings about the film are ambiguous and require some thought. Usually I can assign a rating to a film within a few moments of finishing it, and some I can predict a rating while watching. With Black Christmas, I’m unsure whether I saw one of the best 70s horror films or one of the most boring and obvious. Watching Black Christmas, one of the earliest recognizable slasher films, for the first time in 2011 definitely isn’t doing the film any favors as its plot twists are pretty apparent to anyone who’s seen any major slasher film. Well fuck, let’s be real here, the plot twists would be obvious to anyone paying attention to the movie, even if they’ve never seen a slasher film.
The story is pretty basic: a sorority house receives strange, sexually aggressive phone calls while a weirdo murderer lurks about in their attic. That’s pretty much it. The film is built upon the premise that you identify with the girls of the sorority, most notably star Olivia Hussey, as she slowly confronts the evil that stalks her. For this to work, the audience must be able to place themselves in her shoes and in her mind; we must live within her fears. This is where Black Christmas fails because right from the first scene we’re also privy to the mind of the crazed killer. We follow him from outside the large sorority house as he climbs the trellis and slides his way into attic. As the film moves along we jump perspectives between the girls and the killer, further allowing the audience to know more than the characters they should be identifying with, and therefore many of the scenes that should be tense and full of scares are pointless and drawn-out because we know exactly where the guy is! Continue reading Black Christmas (1974) →
By Will Silver, on November 22, 2011, 5:20 am  Crash! (1977)
AKA Akaza, the God of Vengeance, Draculas Todesrennen [Dracula's Death Race], Death Ride
Starring José Ferrer, Sue Lyon, John Ericson, Leslie Parrish, John Carradine, Jerome Guardino
Directed by Charles Band
Expectations: High, I need some more giant 70s explosions courtesy of Charles Band.
So last week I was pretty sorely disappointed with Full Moon’s latest offering, Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt, leading me to plumb the depths of Charles Band’s filmography in search of something sure to wet my whistle. I found it right at the beginning of the list in Crash!, a movie promising more car action than I would know what to do with. Perfect timing after my disappointment with the lack of said action in this summer’s Drive. While Crash! isn’t quite as exciting as the poster makes it out to be, it is a barrel four-barreled good time, with more crashes and explosions than you’d ever expect a low-budget film from 1977 to sport.
The plot isn’t the strong suit here, but as Crash! is Charles Band’s second directorial effort and earliest surviving film (his first film Last Foxtrot in Burbank is a sex comedy forever lost to the sands of time, perhaps for the better), it is interesting as foreshadowing for his later career path. I expected this to be nothing more than a rollicking car crash movie, but it’s actually a horror film about a driverless, killer car and a woman doing her best to avoid being killed by her invalid husband. The woman picks up a small, primitive idol at the swap meet and somehow it inhabits her car and starts driving around, blowing up other cars. I’m not sure exactly what happened, nor do I care, the explosions are great and the car stunts are spectacular, hitting notes that The Blues Brothers would echo a few years later.
Continue reading Crash! (1977) →
By Will Silver, on August 16, 2011, 5:20 am  Straw Dogs (1971)
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna, Del Henney, Jim Norton, Donald Webster, Ken Hutchison, Len Jones, Sally Thomsett, Robert Keegan, Peter Arne, Cherina Schaer, Colin Welland, David Warner
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Expectations: High. I’m very excited to see this.
Having just read The Siege at Trencher’s Farm, I was thoroughly excited to watch Straw Dogs for the first time. It’s a very well-regarded film of Sam Peckinpah’s and one that is always mentioned when talking about his best work. I knew going in that the film diverged quite a bit from the book, but I had no idea just how off the rails it got. Instead of the taut, thrilling tale that the book tells, Straw Dogs is mostly a very boring and meandering film, and one that simply does not do the book justice.
David Sumner and his wife Amy have temporarily moved to the English countryside of Amy’s youth so that David can finish his mathematics book. He’s working on some deep shit and needs the peace and quiet to sort out his thoughts. A few of the able-bodied townsmen, including one of Amy’s old flames, are building the couple a garage and clearing out the rat infestation in the old farmhouse. Tensions run high between David and Amy because David is focusing all his time on his work when she would rather have that focus pointed squarely on her.
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By Will Silver, on July 29, 2011, 5:20 am  Four Flies on Grey Velvet [4 Mosche di Velluto Grigio] (1971)
Starring Michael Brandon, Mimsy Farmer, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Bud Spencer, Francine Racette, Calisto Calisti, Marisa Fabbri, Fabrizio Moroni, Oreste Lionello, Aldo Bufo Landi
Directed by Dario Argento
Expectations: Low, I’ve heard this one is bad, but there’s also a lot of “it’s not so bad” reviews out there.
I’ve been putting this one off for a while, and after watching it, now I know why. Sometimes you just get a feeling about something. Simply put, Four Flies on Grey Velvet is fucking boring. It is a suspense film with virtually no suspense, which as we all know, is a complete waste of time. I simply can’t imagine anyone finding this film very interesting, but a quick glance at the IMDB user reviews shows me otherwise. Whatever floats your boat.
Roberto is a musician in a rockin’ band, but he’s being stalked by the classic Giallo baddie, a strange dude in a trench coat and dark glasses. Roberto turns the tables and stalks the stalker into an opera house, where the dude pulls a knife and a scuffle ensues. The musician leaves a murderer, but not before someone wearing a baby mask in the balcony takes a few scandalous photographs and runs off. Now the hunted-turned-hunter Roberto becomes the prey once again as he finds himself in a thrilling game of cat-and-mouse with this mysterious photographer. The game is afoot.
Continue reading Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) →
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