Starring Liu Ping, Chu Jing, Go Ming, Han Chiang, Liu Wai, Chiu Keung, Lee Goon-Cheung, Law Hon, Man Gau, Chuen Yuen, Gam Lee-Sang, Man Man, Tai Leung, Ling Siu, Cheung Ching-Fung

Directed by Pan Lei

Expectations: Low.

Going into The Fastest Sword I had little to no expectations. It . . . → Continue reading: The Fastest Sword (1968)]]> The Fastest Sword [天下第一劍] (1968)

Starring Liu Ping, Chu Jing, Go Ming, Han Chiang, Liu Wai, Chiu Keung, Lee Goon-Cheung, Law Hon, Man Gau, Chuen Yuen, Gam Lee-Sang, Man Man, Tai Leung, Ling Siu, Cheung Ching-Fung

Directed by Pan Lei

Expectations: Low.

Going into The Fastest Sword I had little to no expectations. It featured no one that I recognized from a quick look at the cast list and I had never heard of director Pan Lei either. The Fastest Sword took me by surprise though, as it’s actually a very good martial drama that revolves around the classic story trope of the cursed warrior who wants nothing more than to leave his past life behind him. It surprisingly brings together nearly all the necessary elements for a fun film: great directing, quality acting & martial performance, and a well-written screenplay.

The film opens with a badass swordsman from the South (Liu Ping) taking on three combatants who have come to avenge their brother’s murder. He quickly takes them out and an old man steps up and challenges the swordsman to a duel. If the old man wins, the famous Southern Sword must stay with him and train for three years. The cocky young man agrees and within the space of a few seconds he’s bested by the bearded elderly master. The film then moves into what is the first real extended master/pupil sequence I’ve seen while doing this review series, and I welcome the scene with open arms. It isn’t the training sequences martial arts fans are accustomed though (so don’t envision Challenge of the Masters), but it features some of the best moments of the film, specifically when the master tasks his student with carving a statue out of a giant rock. The master gives his student his task and then says, “I’ll be back in six months.” It’s a fantastic scene and one that eventually leads our hero to seek a new life as a mason in a small town.

Pan Lei (sometimes credited as Peter Pan Lei) cut his directorial teeth on a string of thrillers and traditional dramas, including Lover’s Rock, Cheng Pei-Pei’s first starring role. His first martial arts film, Downhill They Ride, is one of the few Shaw Brothers martial arts films that was not released to DVD after Celestial Pictures snapped up the rights to their entire library. Downhill They Ride is also one of the earliest color martial arts films to come out of the studio, with only Temple of the Red Lotus and its sequel The Twin Swords being released before it. Now after seeing The Fastest Sword, I’m even more intrigued to see the film, as Pan Lei proved here that he’s one hell of a director.

Pan Lei’s camera captures the action in a way different than his contemporaries at the Shaw Brothers. He focuses on primarily using close-ups in the action sequences, which is both good and bad. On one hand it limits the visibility of the actor’s movements when seeing those movements is generally an important aspect of a Hong Kong fight scene. On the other hand it limits the visibility of the somewhat average and boring late 60s choreography, replacing it with tense, exciting close-ups skillfully edited together. Eventually these two schools of fight filmmaking converged and gave us the stunning fight scenes we know and love, but for now it’s more of a “one or the other” proposition. For this film, the reliance on close-ups works really well, especially in the final duel. That scene also features one of the ballsiest uses of ultra slow-motion I’ve seen since I watched The Avenging Eagle in the theater last year and I have to wonder if The Fastest Sword influenced Sun Chung’s trademark slow-motion infused fight scenes.

The Fastest Sword is an unsung Shaw Brothers film due to its lack of any big Shaw actors, and the fact that director Pan Lei isn’t nearly as well-known or regarded as someone like Chang Cheh or Ho Meng-Hua. Even if the actors aren’t all that well-known to Shaw fans, our hero Ding Menghao is played by Liu Ping, supposedly one of the greatest Taiwanese actors of all time. Director Pan Lei regarded him as a Mifune-esque personality and I can see where he draws the connection. Lu Ping is great here, and really shows off his skill as both a dramatic and a martial actor.

Despite a clichéd overall story, the writing (also by Pan Lei) is especially good and raises the film behind whatever genre trappings the story provides. Pan Lei’s wonderful shooting style and cinematography also help the film remain interesting, exciting and beautiful throughout. The final duel is awesome and is perfect punctuation to a drama-heavy martial arts film. The scene is one of the most tense, edge of your seat duels I’ve seen in an early Shaw Brothers film, and I would definitely recommend this film to fans of the studio. It definitely does not reach the heights of other genre offerings, and it has something of a different feel to the standard Shaw picture, but it delivers quite a lot of good in a small, unassuming eighty-four minute package.

Next up in this chronological series of the Shaw Brother’s martial arts films, it’s Doe Ching’s Twin Blades of Doom! Sounds good!

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Expectations: High hopes, but moderate expectations.

I love film, if I didn’t I wouldn’t bother writing about it. I consider myself something of a film historian, not that I collect . . . → Continue reading: The Artist (2011)]]> Starring Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Missi Pyle, Beth Grant, Ed Lauter, Joel Murray

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Expectations: High hopes, but moderate expectations.

I love film, if I didn’t I wouldn’t bother writing about it. I consider myself something of a film historian, not that I collect and catalog old works, but that I’m concerned with maintaining an understanding of the industry in its many forms throughout the years. Silent films were a huge part of my life about ten years ago, so much so that I was pretty much watching nothing else. It is this foundation that instantly gets excited when talk of a new silent film emerges. Then I happened to see the trailer and I realized that not only was it a silent film, The Artist is a film set in the silent era and its plot revolves around the film industry. Great. As much as I love film, I kinda hate films about Hollywood, so my expectations were instantly cut in half, which is honestly the best thing that could’ve happened.

And now that I’ve seen it, I can honestly say that I don’t really understand why it’s getting so much praise. I mean, I get it… if Drive was the movie that lights millennials bulbs in 2011, and The Tree of Life was the one that rang the bell for arthouse fiends, then The Artist is the film that floats the boat of the nostalgic lover of old Hollywood, but shouldn’t a film actually be good beyond the hype, pretense and nostalgia? All three of these critically acclaimed movies fell far short of the mark for me, and as much as I didn’t care for it, I’m tempted to say that The Tree of Life is the best of the bunch, regardless of my star ratings (which I stand by). Didn’t expect to ever say that.

But back to The Artist. It’s OK. Once you get past the novelty that it’s black & white and it was filmed in old school, 1.33:1 Academy ratio, it’s really a rather simple, boring story. If you’ve seen any “rise and fall” film, you can stay home and enjoy those two hours however you’d like because you know exactly how the film will play out. George Valentin is a silent film sensation, until the plucky new girl in town Peppy Miller gives him a run for his money. The Artist is definitely enjoyable overall, featuring a few genuine moments of brilliance, but Best Film of the Year talk is just ludicrous. OK, it looks like an old movie, big fucking deal. How ’bout an original story? For me the film also falls short on the nostalgia factor, a commodity The Artist spreads around like it’s sand at the beach. Instead of simply targeting the twenties and the styles of the silent era, director Michel Hazanavicius ropes in elements of film noir, pre-code 30s comedies (the breakfast table scene feels strongly of Lubitsch, at least visually, as well as Big Daddy Citizen Kane in subject matter) and 1950s melodrama. In a strange turn of events, the era the least represented is the 1920s! The film opens with one of Valentin’s silent films, but instead of evoking the feeling of a silent film, it feels like a 30s serial. It’s fun, I don’t want to take that away from the scene, but it never looked right to me.

To add to this feeling, later in the film Valentin watches some old film reels. We’re led to believe that he’s been binging on them all day?/week?/month?, but the one we see him watch is actually the Douglas Fairbanks film The Mark of Zorro from 1920. Valentin gives off something of a Fairbanks vibe throughout the film, so I was puzzled by showing the actual Fairbanks here. Not only does the footage look remarkably different from anything previously shown, I wonder if we as an audience are supposed to think that this is one of Valentin’s films, or if we’re supposed to get the reference and reminisce about Fairbanks. It’s a small moment and arguably one that doesn’t matter, but I can’t imagine I’m the only one to instantly identify the classic film and wonder what was going on.

On a more positive note, the dog is cute as hell and totally steals whatever scene he’s in. The dog itself seems to be a reference to The Thin Man films and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a whole host of cute dogs in films again because of this. You just can’t deny a cute dog. Not to be completely outdone, both Jean Dujardin & Bérénice Bejo also pull out top-notch performances. They’re a joy to watch and both look absolutely stunning as old Hollywood figures. They truly nail the look of the 30s and Hazanavicius creates some very memorable, amazing shots throughout the film.

As is probably apparent by now, The Artist is filled with references to old Hollywood films, and this is one of my biggest problems with this film. By focusing on nostalgia and direct references to other films and old Hollywood, the film at the heart of The Artist is disingenuous. It’s not much of a movie beyond strapping together a bunch of tired Hollywood tropes in a giant nostalgia masturbation package. It’s incredibly similar to what Tarantino does with his films, but at least Tarantino makes the compilation film you’re watching interesting in its own right (usually).

The most egregious offense is the climactic scene of the film that features key music from Bernard Hermann’s classic Vertigo score. Does the music work in the scene? Yes. Does it help the movie overall? No. In fact, the use of Vertigo‘s score instantly took me out of the film and had me questioning why it was being used. I started re-examining the plot and wondering why music from Vertigo would be used in this instance. I didn’t take it simply as music, but as commentary on the scene itself. While watching I came to terms with it and saw how little elements of Vertigo‘s plot had been taken and re-purposed for The Artist. But while the music works over the scene, it ultimately makes me think less of the film as it blatantly exposes how the film is nothing more than carefully composed nostalgia. Am I supposed to be impressed with this? Or am I supposed to just think about how much I love Vertigo while The Artist ends and then walk out of the film riding that nostalgic love of classic Hitch? Really? And film critics are accepting this shit?

I was excited to see a new silent movie, but instead I got a jumble of old Hollywood references and a story as old as sin. I’m truly sick of these bullshit nostalgia films that seek to make a film of the past, but instead do so only with a wink and a nod. Then when people call the filmmakers on it they reply that it’s a love letter to whatever they’re trying to capture. If you want to make a silent movie, just make one and leave the references at the door. It doesn’t have to be about classic Hollywood either (or perhaps it does to attract the attention of the industry), it can be anything you want. Look at the silent movie within a movie in Almodovar’s Talk to Her for a perfect example of a good way to pay homage to silent films without relying solely on stealing specific story elements from them. That’s where The Artist really dies for me; instead of creating a new, genuine piece of art, they went and wrote a love letter that seemingly doesn’t understand what made silent films great. Just by making a silent movie you are honoring old Hollywood. We don’t need our heroine spouting fuckin’ Greta Garbo lines in the inter-titles.

Directed by Frank Arnold

Expectations: Low.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

Oh man, are you ready to talk about an awful film? Then get ready for Josh Kirby… . . . → Continue reading: Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 3, Trapped on Toyworld (1996)]]> Starring Corbin Allred, Jennifer Burns, Derek Webster, Barrie Ingham, Sharon Lee Jones, Buck Kartalian, J.P. Hubbell, Lucian Cojocaru, Florin Chiriac, Bogdan Voda

Directed by Frank Arnold

Expectations: Low.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

Oh man, are you ready to talk about an awful film? Then get ready for Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 3, Trapped on Toyworld! Just based on the short trailer at the end of Part 2, I knew I was in for one hell of a bumpy ride. Josh Kirby Part 3 is a seemingly never-ending barrage of bad scenes on top of bad scenes, with ever so subtle bits of goodness along the way. Thankfully, the way the series is structured you could easily skip over this worthless film and not really miss a thing. OK, you’d miss the revelatory moment when Josh realizes he’s a bona fide Time Warrior and can bend the powers of time to his will, but now that you know that, feel free to skip directly to Part 4. Or continue reading for the toy-induced nightmare of a lifetime!

At the end of Part 2, Josh Kirby inexplicably teleports out of the time pod and finds himself careening through the tubes of time. In a surprising move from Full Moon, they actually address this WTF moment and explain it away with some bullshit techno-jargon! I couldn’t believe it. You gotta sit through about an hour of this film to get there, and by that point you’ve probably purged your mind of the events of Part 2 in an attempt to waylay neural overload, but it is nice to get closure on one thing in this series. Before any explanations come to pass though, Josh Kirby materializes out of the time tubes and into another wooded area. He soon runs into a robot Raggedy Ann rip-off named Annie who, after greeting him and exchanging some pleasantries, promptly asks him to unzip her dress. Seriously.

The toy world is just as creepy as it looked to be from the trailer, and is pretty much without any redeeming factors that might make me defend this film’s existence. The best part of this movie is probably the rehashed opening scene from Part 1 that replays in its entirety when Josh relates the fate of the universe to Annie and a giant toy bear I failed to get the name of. If that’s the best scene, then clearly the worst of the film would be the big dance sequence that follows shortly thereafter.

Josh Kirby finds Geppetto the toy maker and mistakenly mentions something about a show, sending Geppetto into a frenzy. He commands the toys to perform and perform they do. A rousing joyous painful song I’m assuming is called “We are the Toys of Toyworld” begins and it’s truly awful. The vocalists and the performers in the toy suits both exhibit the same lackluster, bored delivery and I really felt their pain. No matter how long the scene is for the audience, these fuckers had to hang out through what was most likely a few days of filming the sequence, hearing and performing the song over and over. For this, I salute them. It would take some iron-stomached individuals to hear this shit for that long. Just when you think the scene is finally over the music transitions into a slow dance and we are treated(?) to the toys doing their best ballroom moves across the dirt-floored courtyard of Toyworld. (For the record, “Toyworld” is not an entire world of toys, it’s Geppetto’s stronghold which bears the esoteric sign on its gate reading, “TOY WORLD”.) You’re probably thinking the slow dance gradually ends and our participants clap and congratulate themselves afterwards and we move on with the film. Nope! The music again seamlessly transitions into a more hip-hop influenced section, and then later still it moves into a final tango sequence which quite skillfully integrates the classic “Jack in the Box” song into its melodies. The scene is fuckin’ tough to sit through, but at least it ends on a high note with Josh Kirby jumping into a wind-up powered VW Bug and riding off into the sunset with Geppetto in the back seat. I’m probably biased towards this scene because of my love of VW Bugs, but fuck it, I’ll take what I can get after that dance-a-thon train wreck.

The guy that plays Geppetto reminds me a lot of Lloyd Kaufman, causing me to go into a Tromatic mental sidetrack every time he came on-screen. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, I’ve come to think of these mental wanderings to be my brain’s coping mechanism with bad films, allowing me to think of things far more interesting than whatever is playing out on-screen and sometimes adding a much more interesting observation to the film than my conscious brain could come up with. No great abstract observations with this one though, yet another testament to how boring the film is. It bored both my conscious and subconscious brain. Anyway, I don’t mean to take anything away from Buck Kartalian (the actor that plays Geppetto) by making him into some sort of cut-rate Lloyd Kaufman. Kartalian is easily the best new actor in the film, and is a short respite to the cavalcade of awfulness his Toyworld has to offer. After all, he was in the original Planet of the Apes, so that should count for something. I suppose Sharon Lee Jones as Annie the robot is also good, but her character is so annoying that every time she came on-screen I tried my best to actively avert my attention to something else in the film.

Of course, the film couldn’t end without one more round of the abysmal dance number. I should have seen it coming in a film this annoying. Oh, and speaking of annoying, every time the film cuts back to Irwin and Azabeth in the time pod, Azabeth is chanting an inane, mind-explodingly annoying, bullshit chant that should definitely rank as one of the oddest choices made by a filmmaking team in the history of cinematic time and space. This whole series is needlessly stretched out into six films because of “Why make one or two good movies when you can make six half-assed ones?”, the Full Moon mantra. I suppose that isn’t entirely fair though, as the films do commit fully to the unique locations and really give it everything they can with the small budget they’re working with. This commitment leads to high disappointment if you’re not feeling the setting though. Regardless of any benefits of doubt, I can’t imagine anyone truly enjoying this one, even little kids who may have enjoyed the first two.

There was only one scene that genuinely grabbed my attention and made me laugh out loud in Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 3, Trapped on Toyworld. Josh Kirby runs through a spindly forest (that reminded me of the swamp in Krull) as a troll gives chase. Josh jumps up and does a gymnastic move off of the fortuitously placed parallel bar in the haunted forest to thwart his enemy. The troll drops to the ground, shakes off the blow and starts to rise. He finds his sword embedded deep in his belly and instead of bleeding or caring, he simply breaks the blade off in his stomach and continues the chase. It’s a small bit of solace in a sea of annoying, boring toy shenanigans. Thankfully Part 4 looks about a million times better than this one, but I won’t hold my breath.

Here’s the piece of the movie with the “awesome” dance sequence.

Next week I need to take a Josh Kirby break so I’ll be watching a film that’s hopefully not as awful as Trapped in Toyworld was, 1987′s Creepozoids!

AKA Mi amigo Mac, Mac – O Extraterrestre, Mac, a földönkívüli barát, Mick… mein Freund vom anderen Stern

Starring Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward, Tina Caspary, Lauren Stanley, Jade Calegory, Vinnie Torrente, Martin West, Ivan J. Rado, Danny Cooksey, Laura Waterbury, Ronald McDonald

Directed by Stewart Raffill

Expectations: I have high hopes that this will . . . → Continue reading: Mac and Me (1988)]]>

AKA Mi amigo Mac, Mac – O Extraterrestre, Mac, a földönkívüli barát, Mick… mein Freund vom anderen Stern

Starring Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward, Tina Caspary, Lauren Stanley, Jade Calegory, Vinnie Torrente, Martin West, Ivan J. Rado, Danny Cooksey, Laura Waterbury, Ronald McDonald

Directed by Stewart Raffill

Expectations: I have high hopes that this will deliver some B-Movie fun.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

OK, hear me out! If you’re a child of the 80s like myself, you most likely saw this movie when you were a kid and have some vague memories of how it did a horrible job of ripping off Steven Spielberg’s slightly more famous stranded alien film, E.T. The Extraterrestrial. Like fine wine, time has been very kind to our friend Mac and his zany adventures through the Los Angeles basin, resulting in one of the most unexpectedly fun re-watches in a long time.

The film opens on a distant planet in our solar system. Which planet is never revealed, but the foreboding presence of Saturn overhead suggests that it might be one of the ringed planet’s sixty-two moons. I guess now is a good time to state that it’s important that any sort of analytical or critical thinking must be turned off for the remainder of the film or used simply as comedy, as anything else will only result in sheer disappointment with this cinematic gem. OK, where was I? The planet is inhabited by weird creatures with eternally surprised looks on their faces, doing their best to survive. The dad (or Big Mac) busts into the soil and inserts a makeshift straw, sucking out the life-giving water inside. Due to their surprised facial structure, their mouths are always ready to go for straw-drinking, and with mouths like that I’d imagine the straw would’ve been one of the first tools this species invented… or maybe their world is populated with straw trees and in order to survive the creatures evolved and adapted to use the tools given them by the area they inhabited. It’s questions like this that we’ll never have a definitive answer for, as the promised sequel unfortunately never materialized.

To make a long story short, an American space probe lands on the surface of Mac’s planet and the desert-dwelling creatures approach it like the monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The probe is one of those rock collector units equipped with claws and a vacuum to take samples and return them to the NASA scientists waiting patiently on Earth. One thing leads to another and Mac & his family get sucked inside for the ride of their lives!

Mac and Me is hands down one of the most flagrantly bad movies I’ve seen in a while. Its script is awful, eschewing a traditional plot for the most of the second half. It actually reminded me of Troll 2 in certain ways (mostly the general feeling of exhaustion watching the film in one sitting brought on), but I hesitate to even mention that film for fear of being misunderstood that I think they are on similar levels. Mac and Me is considerably better in terms of visual fidelity of the special effects, the acting and the cinematography. The opening half of Mac and Me (let’s say up until the kid in the wheelchair goes off the cliff) is fairly respectable for a moderate-budget family film, but the second half delves deep into the reckless style of storytelling that characterizes every moment of Troll 2. What’s important to remember though is that Mac and Me, like Troll 2, is so much fuckin’ fun that virtually every shortcoming pays huge dividends to those who watch bad movies in hopes that they turn the corner and become good. Mac and Me is firmly in that camp, and although there is a lot of 80s nostalgia working its magic on me in the film, I think most B-movie aficionados would have an equally enjoyable time with this one.

Director Stewart Raffill actually does a good job here. Whachoo talking about, Willis? Yeah, I said his directing was good. Perhaps the poor acting of the kids is a result of his inability to tell actors what he wants, but his ability to create an interesting visual composition is much better than I would’ve expected. It’s easy to watch something purty like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and call Spielberg a good director, but I think it takes a much more careful eye to see that a movie like Mac and Me is perfectly directed for the type of film it is. Never before has an alien baby driving a Power Wheels down a residential street with a pack of dogs chasing him looked as gorgeous as this. I would never go so far as to say that Raffill is a good director, but he is definitely one that understands the camera and what he’s trying to achieve, something I can’t say for most truly bad films.

Raffill also adds some incredibly touching and heart-wrenching moments to the film that counterpoint the hijinks perfectly. These come whenever Mac communicates with his family members who are hoofing it through the Mojave desert trying to find him. The aliens all put their hands up and whistle while Alan Silvestri’s music swells and the cinematography expertly captures the tortured moment using shallow depth of field to heighten the feeling of isolation. Later in the film the scene repeats, but this time Mac stares plaintively at the freeway while his mother and sister lay dying on the desert floor and Big Mac futilely digs into the ground for water. The pain in their saddened, surprised eyes cuts right through any species barrier we might have.

The special FX of the film are also surprisingly good compared to my expectations. Most of the shots are achieved through full-body suits or puppets and for the most part they work well. The alien’s faces are especially emotive, perfectly communicating the surprise they feel in every new experience the film offers them. OK, so maybe the alien’s facial design isn’t that great (and I have a feeling the shape of their mouths came from the think tank at Coca Cola), but the actual FX work is pretty good regardless. The parts when Mac is sucked into a vacuum (yes, this happens more than once) were really incredible, and that’s no bullshit. It honestly looks great and I have no idea how they achieved it.

And let’s not forget our sponsors! Mac and Me is pretty much only a movie because of something called The Mac and Me Joint Venture. If it wasn’t already apparent that there was a hidden capitalist agenda throughout the film, the copyright statement betrays any social commentary or artistic merit you might have thought you detected while Big Mac robbed the supermarket for the Coke HE NEEDS TO SURVIVE. And don’t forget when Coke literally saves Mac’s family as they lay dying in an abandoned mineshaft. (Reminder to self: buy Coke for emergency kit.) I recently read a satiric novel by Max Barry called Syrup. In the book, the characters are tasked with creating a film that exists purely as a ninety-minute commercial for Coca Cola. I couldn’t help but think that perhaps Barry is a huge Mac and Me fan, and that maybe this is where Mac and Me went wrong. By broadening their scope to so many investors that must be represented, it diluted the film’s power and its message to unfulfilling levels for most viewers. If only Mac and Me had stuck to one or two products it could have started a whole new sub-genre of film, and we could’ve had an entire series with these intergalactic fuckers.

Ah who am I kidding, Hollywood films are so laden with product placement these days that they’re all a little bit of Mac and Me, but at least Mac had the cojones to be proud of his corporate affiliations and shamelessly suck down Coke after Coke as he danced on a McDonald’s counter in a bear suit on his way to a Wickes Furniture store that he read about in The Daily News. It might be blatant, but that’s better than insidious and subliminal in my book. Despite being a simple rip-off of E.T., Mac and Me is a singular experience that truly must be seen to be believed. It’s far from the worst movie ever made, although it may very well be the most shameless. It’s pure gold though and one can only hope that Criterion will pick up the film and give it the Blu-ray retrospective edition that it truly deserves.

This review has been brought to you by (in order of appearance): United Van Lines, Coca Cola, Skittles, Dos Equis, The Chicago Cubs, Energizer Batteries, Otter Pops, The Chicago Bears, McDonald’s, Sears, Rawlings, a vacuum company who didn’t pay enough money so their product’s name was obscured by billowing dust, The Los Angeles Dodgers, The Daily News, Wickes Furniture, Golden State Food Corp., Sumitomo Bank, Carnation Ice Cream, Coors, Camel, Marlboro, Brawny Paper Towels, Laura Scudder’s, Planters Peanuts, McKids and last but not least, Cadillac.

Starring Cheng Pei Pei, Tang Ching, Yeung Chi Hing, Fan Mei-Sheng, Ku Feng, Wong Ching-Wan, Lui Hung, Man Sau, Nam Wai-Lit, Siu Lam-Wun, Kong Lung

Directed by Ho Meng-Hua

Expectations: High, Ho Meng-Hua usually delivers.

The Jade Raksha is just another Cheng Pei-Pei revenge movie on the surface, but . . . → Continue reading: The Jade Raksha (1968)]]> The Jade Raksha [玉罗刹] (1968)

Starring Cheng Pei Pei, Tang Ching, Yeung Chi Hing, Fan Mei-Sheng, Ku Feng, Wong Ching-Wan, Lui Hung, Man Sau, Nam Wai-Lit, Siu Lam-Wun, Kong Lung

Directed by Ho Meng-Hua

Expectations: High, Ho Meng-Hua usually delivers.

The Jade Raksha is just another Cheng Pei-Pei revenge movie on the surface, but there is something a little more interesting than that underneath its clichéd exterior. While the fights are nothing particularly special and the choreography is even less notable, the twists and the turns of the script and the character’s journey really do work their way into your heart and by the end you’re reveling in wonderful secrets finally exposed and smiling right along with the characters. This one’s definitely only for the fans, but those that seek it out will find a competent, fun movie, even if it is somewhat average and forgettable overall.

Cheng Pei-Pei plays the Jade Raksha, a swordswoman out for revenge posing as a legendary ghost to get to her victims. She goes around the countryside murdering anyone with the surname Yan, because when she was a small child, a man bearing that name killed her entire family and left her for dead. Early in the film she meets up with the savvy Xu Ying Hao (Tang Ching), who quickly identifies her and strikes up a friendship. Xu has a quest of his own, to find the man who murdered his father many years prior. The two vengeance seekers quickly find that their task won’t be as straightforward as they thought, when friendships and allegiances get in the way.

Prior to starting this series, I never knew Ho Meng-Hua as a martial arts director. What I always associated him with were his forays into horror and the supernatural such as the Black Magic films and The Mighty Peking Man. He’s a respectable martial arts filmmaker as well, but it’s clear by watching his films that he has a completely different take on the genre than other well-known directors like Chang Cheh or Lo Wei. Ho Meng-Hua always injects some element of the supernatural into the proceedings and the misty, moonlit opening of The Jade Raksha foreshadows his varied future career in the horror genre. Also as expected there’s a couple of really great supernatural moments that other directors would balk at and refuse to do. Ho Meng instead goes right for it, and while over-the-top moments such as Cheng Pei-Pei chopping down a bamboo tree and then pole vaulting over a gorge’s burned-out bridge may put off some viewers, it’s times like these for me when Ho Meng-Hua’s films, and the Shaw Brothers, truly shine. There’s also one fight scene that heavily features the combatants jumping onto and fighting on bamboo branches, foreshadowing its use in more well-known films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Ho Meng-Hua’s camerawork is confident and beautiful, perfectly capturing the varied moods the scenes require, from haunting horror to luscious romantic moments more akin to a Hollywood Western than a Hong Kong martial arts film. I also continue to be highly impressed with his ability to cut on action and make it look seamless. The technique is used to simulate thrown weapons in virtually every Shaw Brothers film from this era, but no one sells it like Ho Meng-Hua. When I can pause the movie and advance it frame-by-frame and only barely detect the cut, my only response is to laugh in honor of the amazing work on display. It’s such a simple technique, one of the oldest in the book, but I don’t think there’s anyone who made it as seamless as Ho Meng-Hua.

I found the acting to be especially good from the cast, with Cheng Pei-Pei, Tang Ching and Ku Feng turning in the best performances of the film. Neither Cheng and Tang overshadows the other, instead they both carry the film equally. Both of their tales are interesting and engaging, so the film’s back-and-forth nature between the protagonists helps to keep it flowing well. Ku Feng is also particularly good as a blind beggar; I guess there’s a reason why he’s been in 347 movies!

As I mentioned above, the fights are nothing to write home about (or write a review about). There are some great shots sprinkled throughout them though, so this keeps them from getting too stale. Ho Meng-Hua uses long takes to shoot many of the fight scenes, allowing the viewer to take in the entirety of the conflict in one big helping. It’s not as exciting as a well-edited piece would be, but the horizontal camera movement through falling henchmen and a sword-swinging Cheng Pei-Pei makes it all the more interesting. There’s also quite a few wonderful overhead shots of the fights, including one of the famous Shaw Brother’s outdoor corridors at night. The combatants run down the walkways with torches lighting their way; the camera high overhead capturing their movement like blood cells traveling through concrete veins.

The finale is like something ripped straight out of a James Bond film, with the hero in peril on traps that would make Hsu Cheng Hung proud and the villain spilling all the beans. These are good, revenge-laden beans though, so I will forgive the obvious cliches. The Jade Raksha even ups the ante another notch by actually utilizing some James Bond stingers to great effect, and by James Bond stingers I mean actual musical cues from the James Bond soundtrack, not music in the style of. Good ole Hong Kong. The Jade Raksha is exciting and quite enjoyable, but there just isn’t enough to elevate it to truly great (or perhaps even memorable) levels. It remains a fun, well-made revenge film, nothing more, nothing less. And really, is there anything wrong with that?

Next up in this chronological series of the Shaw Brother’s martial arts films, it’s Pan Lei’s The Fastest Sword, the final Shaw Brothers martial arts film from 1968!

Starring Sam Lee Chan-Sam, Wenders Li Tung-Chuen, Neiky Yim Hui-Chi, Amy Tam Ka-Chuen, Carolina Lam Kit-Fong, Chan Tai-Yee, Siu Chung, Doris Chow Yin-Wa, Woo Wai-Chung, Chan Sang, Eric Lau, Kelvin Chung, Ah Ting

Directed by Fruit Chan

Expectations: High. I used to love this movie.

I’ve started this . . . → Continue reading: Made in Hong Kong (1997)]]> Made in Hong Kong [香港製造] (1997)

Starring Sam Lee Chan-Sam, Wenders Li Tung-Chuen, Neiky Yim Hui-Chi, Amy Tam Ka-Chuen, Carolina Lam Kit-Fong, Chan Tai-Yee, Siu Chung, Doris Chow Yin-Wa, Woo Wai-Chung, Chan Sang, Eric Lau, Kelvin Chung, Ah Ting

Directed by Fruit Chan

Expectations: High. I used to love this movie.

I’ve started this review three times now, and still can’t find a way to properly begin talking about this film. There’s so much going on within it, while at the same time it’s fairly devoid of a traditional plot and moves about somewhat slowly through its story. No matter how flummoxed I am at putting my thoughts to words with this film, I’m sure of one thing. I love this movie. I saw it for the first time fairly close to its Hong Kong release while I was still a teenager. It’s themes of youth and dead-end situations rang true for me, and I instantly made a connection with the film. It contained an energy and power I’d rarely seen in the movies. Hong Kong films are famous for their amazing ability to harness teams of gifted stuntmen and martial artists, but Made in Hong Kong‘s energy is of a completely different variety. It’s pure, raw, unfocused youth on film and it’s a truly impressive and one-of-a-kind experience.

After my initial viewing many years ago, I became instantly enamored with it and based on its power, expected it to eventually break the culture barrier and receive the praise it was due in the West. The years passed and this never happened, and so I find myself finally re-watching the film nearly fifteen years later with the film just as obscure and unseen as it ever was. It’s a shame, as even up against the unrealistic, mythic status I built up for the film in my head, Made in Hong Kong inspires, excites and emotionally moves me.

I was always under the impression that this was Fruit Chan’s début film, but some research informed me it was actually his sophomore effort. It is the film that burst him onto the scene though, making the entire Hong Kong industry sit up and take notice. He had previously made a bigger budget studio picture called Finale in Blood, which was supposedly enjoyed critically, but the public failed to embrace it. I’ll have to judge for myself at some point. This brings us to Made in Hong Kong. Fruit Chan had seemingly become frustrated with the traditional Hong kong studio system and sought to completely undermine it with his second feature as a director.

Filmed entirely with leftover and unspent film at the end of other film’s shooting reels, Made in Hong Kong feels immensely different from any Hong Kong film at the time. The actors are unknown; the shooting style is visceral and predominantly handheld. It somewhat reminds me of a Lars Von Trier Dogme ’95 film for these reasons, although this one has a lot more going for it than most of those restrictive film exercises. Made in Hong Kong is definitely artsy, but it’s not pointlessly obtuse for the sake of seeming deep. The film remains accessible through the easily relatable characters and the situations writer/director Fruit Chan places them in. Through his lens, these characters run the gamut of emotions, from dark depression to joyous friendship. Every shot looks fuckin’ gorgeous too, with some of the best costuming I’ve probably ever seen in a film. Their clothes just look so effortlessly cool.

Made in Hong Kong‘s other major strength is in its editing, and to a lesser degree its script. Fruit Chan elevates the movie to near-transcendental levels when the climax comes to a head and our lead character Autumn Moon must make the decision of his life. We see two possible outcomes simultaneously, but through the magic of editing it plays out in not only the coolest way possible, but also representative of what would have run through the character’s mind at the time. These characters live and breathe; they are multi-layered and hard to understand. This makes the final act of the film resonate on such a deep and human level that I doubt many viewers could come away without a long-lasting effect.

I know I’ve been dancing around the plot and any concrete details about what the film is about or what it contains. This is deliberate. I’d love for this review to introduce new people to this wonderful film, but it’d be a crime to spoil anything. I could sum up the entire film in a paragraph, but in a film like this a simple synopsis can’t convey the true power of the work. If you get a chance to see Made in Hong Kong, just do it. Don’t ask questions, don’t read the back of the box. Just do it. This is a truly special piece of work.

Trailer nowhere in sight, here’s a good clip.

Directed by Frank Arnold

Expectations: Low. I expect the series to get less fun as they move on.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie . . . → Continue reading: Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 2, Human Pets (1995)]]> Starring Corbin Allred, Jennifer Burns, Derek Webster, Barrie Ingham, John DeMita, Richard Lineback, Spencer Rochfort, Sandra Guibord, Jonathan Charles Kaplan, Heinrich James, Dimitrii Bogomaz, Time Winters, Robert Louis Kempf

Directed by Frank Arnold

Expectations: Low. I expect the series to get less fun as they move on.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

The first Josh Kirby film was something special. It wasn’t especially great or anything, but it’s notable for packing in a veritable smorgasbord of special effects and general good times. I wish I could say that the sequel contains the same amount of fun as the original, but it just ain’t so. It doesn’t even pick up at the same moment as the cliffhanger ending of Part 1! Instead it opens with the requisite “Previously on Josh Kirby…” section, followed by the last couple of scenes of the first film. Except they never show the final scene again, the one with Josh Kirby riding the triceratops into town like some sort of warped version of Palm Sunday.

OK, I hear you, I’m being too harsh to expect Charles Band and company to make a direct sequel that actually picks up right where the story left off. This is true, and for the most part it does continue on rather nicely if I throw away my preconceived notions that it should open (or at least reference) the dino-riding scene with Josh Kirby. In any case, the first film ends on the eve of the climactic battle and about half of this film is said battle. There’s a bit of a run up, but most of it is the battle. It ranges from slingshots on the castle’s ramparts to dino-knights jousting for the fate of the land and the supremacy of the throne. Your mileage may vary, but I greatly enjoyed seeing two stop-motion dinosaurs (complete with stop-motion knights atop them) fighting it out to the death.

After a bit of running, our heroes find themselves back at their time capsule, hoping to continue their hunt through the universe for the Nullifier pieces. Before they can lift off though, the evil Dr. Zoetrope busts in with his time armor set to “Kick Ass” and a quick laser battle ensues. And then right when all seems lost, the screen quickly fades to black and fades back in on a desert landscape with the pod and our heroes laying on the ground. They are quickly scooped up by a giant hand! WTF just happened? I rewound the film to see if I had zoned out and missed some important plot point or time jump or anything that might explain the sudden shift in location, but no, it really just fades from one moment to the next. Full Moon has always been fairly ballsy with their plot structures, but I’ve never seen them use such a jarring change of scenes before.

Sick jump, dude!

The Josh Kirby character is nothing special, but perhaps if I was a small child I would think otherwise. He’s definitely presented as the more-than-capable hero, but it’s funny and pretty unbelievable as he’s a previously bullied and interminably shy fourteen-year-old kid in his own time. Yet we are supposed to believe that after one sword-fighting lesson with a broadsword, he is not only capable of wielding one in battle, but that he can handily defeat castle guards who have more than likely spent hours upon hours training their sword hands. I know these types of disposable extras always stay up too late at night and come to work with hangovers (thus explaining their inevitably shitty fighting), but even such a guard on his worst day should be able to beat a plucky kid who just started wielding a sword that afternoon.

There is a scene later on in the film that follows a similar trajectory, albeit a much more believable one within the film’s logic. Josh Kirby finds himself in a situation where the only weapon at his disposal is a bicycle. Not just any bicycle, but a mountain bike! Since this is the mid-90s, mountain bikes were the shit and therefore I will accept people doing things far beyond their capabilities or the laws of physics because of the collected goodwill of the people in the general direction of mountain bikes. Josh mounts the bike (remember from the first film that he’s all about bike racing) and uses it to the best of his ability to thwart the evildoer. He does so with such confidence and ease that either the villain is a pushover or Josh Kirby is one bad motherfucker on a bike. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

In the final moments of the film, it again pulls the WTF lever. In one moment Josh Kirby is saved and all is well, but in the next shot he’s outside the time pod careening through the tubes of time! Huh? How did that happen? I guess I’ll have to watch the third film to find out! Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 2, Human Pets overstays its welcome and takes too long to actually get to the human pets part of the film, but it still remains fairly enjoyable throughout. It’s not nearly as fun as Part 1, but it’s still bound to entertain anyone that enjoyed the first film.

Next week, it’s the third installment: Josh Kirby… Time Warrior: Chapter 3, Trapped on Toyworld! This one looks disturbing as FUCK. The things I do for this website.

Starring Stephen Forsyth, Conrado San Martín, Anna Maria Polani, Helga Liné, Eugenio Galadini (as Graham Sooty), Franco Ressel (as Frank Ressell), Aldo Sambrell, José Calvo (as Pepe Calvo), Javier de Rivera, Andrea Scotti (as Andrew Scott), Rafael Albaicín

Directed by Giovanni Grimaldi

Starring Yueh Hua, Angela Yu Chien, Chen Hung Lieh, Lo Wei, Wong Wai, Chiu Hung, Lee Kwan, Han Ying Chieh, Ng Wai, Cheung Hei, Wong Ching Ho, Lee Sau Kei

Directed by Lo Wei

Expectations: Moderate, I enjoyed the previous Lo Wei film I watched The Black Butterfly.

This one . . . → Continue reading: Death Valley (1968)]]> Death Valley [斷魂谷] (1968)

Starring Yueh Hua, Angela Yu Chien, Chen Hung Lieh, Lo Wei, Wong Wai, Chiu Hung, Lee Kwan, Han Ying Chieh, Ng Wai, Cheung Hei, Wong Ching Ho, Lee Sau Kei

Directed by Lo Wei

Expectations: Moderate, I enjoyed the previous Lo Wei film I watched The Black Butterfly.

This one kind of snuck up on me. My thoughts about it kept evolving as I watched, starting at “This is OK,” then moving on to “This is pretty good,” until finally settling on “Hey, this is coming around nicely. Well done, Lo Wei!” And it’s mostly due to the well-developed, enjoyable characters that populate the film. I don’t say that very often with these Shaw Brothers movies and in the grand scheme of things the two main swordsmen characters aren’t very deep, but they are both intriguing and fun to follow around as they move through the adventure. That’s about all you can ask from a genre film character and these two guys (and a whole host of fun supporting characters) really brighten up what is otherwise a rather average movie.

At the plot level, Death Valley is another in a long string of mistaken identity films, with one righteous hero being mistook for one stone-faced bandit and vice versa. The catch here is that prior to the mistaken identity hijinks, the two characters meet and strike up a brotherly friendship. Suddenly as the two men are thrown into situations where they are thought to be the other, they learn about who the other man is and weigh this information against what they experienced firsthand. It makes the proceedings much more interesting than they have a right to be and how well it all works is a credit to the strength of Lo Wei’s storytelling abilities, both behind the camera and with the pen.

The fights are mostly enjoyable, but are generally uninspired “one vs. many” battles that need a hell of a lot more choreography than what’s there to make them sparkle. The action of Death Valley was choreographed and directed by Han Ying-Chieh, who later continued working with Lo Wei in his more famous works with someone named Bruce Lee. In any case his work here doesn’t seem to be anything special, but there are some excellent moments sprinkled throughout, with the majority coming during the finale.

Lo Wei isn’t an overly artistic director, but he is one that knows exactly what he wants. Death Valley is filled with wonderful shots and great cinematography, as well as some of the better uses of snap zooms I’ve seen in a while. During one of the big fights in the middle of the film, there is one particular shot which starts out as a medium shot of Yueh Hua fighting in front of a giant calligraphy character on the wall and then the camera snap-zooms out to reveal an entire courtyard with bamboo training poles and yet another set of oncoming bandits. It’s a hard one to describe, and it’s a very small moment within a larger action sequence, but it’s skillfully pulled off and adds a lot of visual flair to an otherwise average fight.

The engaging story of martial friendship between the two swordsmen leads us to a grand confrontation on a mountaintop in the titular Death Valley. I don’t want to reveal too much, but let’s just say that if the region wasn’t already called Death Valley, whoever found the aftermath of the final battle atop the hill would’ve definitely started calling it that. These exterior hills are used in a stunning amount of Shaw Brothers films, and to me they are to Shaw Brothers what Vasquez Rocks are to American Science Fiction films: endlessly used, always awesome. Lo Wei’s distinct eye for a great landscape shot helps them look new, fresh and better than ever in the finale of Death Valley. I often wonder what these hills look like nowadays. Probably filled with high-rises or some such desecration. From Chang Cheh’s memoir it seems like these exteriors might be in Taiwan or Japan, as he distinctly mentions Shaw Brothers filming tons of exteriors in both locations.

Chen Hung-Lieh and Yueh Hua are great in their respective roles as the two main swordsmen on opposite sides of the situation. Like The Black Butterfly, director Lo Wei has a brief role and he again performs admirably. He was an actor before he was ever a director, and he definitely has equal chops both in front of and behind the camera. Wong Wai plays the ruthless villain of the film and does a great job in his first screen performance. He’s a little hammy here and there, but the scene when he searches for the injured Yueh Hua in the dwelling of an elderly lady and her grandson is intense and heartbreaking as he ruthlessly interrogates and tortures them both. He was only in nine films in his entire career, but just off of the strength of this one scene it seems like he could have made a living playing heavies like this one.

Overall Death Valley is pretty good and it comes together nicely. Lo Wei is a competent, visually interesting filmmaker and I look forward to reviewing more of his work. And if you saw this movie many years ago and you’re trying to settle a bet: Yes, this is movie where Yueh Hua kills a guy by throwing a chopstick into this throat.

Couldn’t find the trailer, but here’s the whole movie.

Next up in this chronological series of the Shaw Brother’s martial arts films,  it’s Ho Meng-Hua’s The Jade Raksha with Cheng Pei-Pei!

Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman

Expectations: Pretty high. I’ve never seen the whole movie and I expect it to be fun.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

OK, . . . → Continue reading: Hercules in New York (1969)]]> Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Stang, Deborah Loomis, James Karen, Ernest Graves, Tanny McDonald, Harold Burstein, Merwin Goldsmith, George Bartenieff, Taina Elg, Michael Lipton

Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman

Expectations: Pretty high. I’ve never seen the whole movie and I expect it to be fun.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

OK, I’m not going to try to pull anybody’s chain here, Hercules in New York is pretty fuckin’ awful. Thanks to the presence of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and the DVD release from 2000 that restores his original audio (Arnold’s voice was dubbed out in the theatrical edition, the horror!), Hercules in New York is actually watchable, but every moment it continues makes the task harder and harder.

The first half moves fairly quickly as there isn’t a lot of plot to speak of other than Zeus and Hercules have an argument and Hercules is sent to Earth. What follows is more of an episodic structure than a traditional film, and this is easily my favorite part of the film. Here we are treated to a cavalcade of random occurrences that beset our muscled hero and I took to naming them in the style of the Hercules films of old. So in no particular order we have: Hercules vs. the Athletes, Hercules vs. the Intellectual Socialites, Hercules vs. the Hercules Poster, Hercules Sightseeing in New York, Hercules in Love, and last but certainly not least Hercules vs. the Escaped Bear. If we’re being specific it should read: Hercules vs. the Guy in the Bear Suit. That should be enough of a recommendation right there and if that didn’t get you pumped for Hercules in New York then nothing will. OK, he body slams the bear! C’mon!

Oh, but goddamn is this movie shit! It’s painfully slow, with the scenes set in Mt. Olympus being the worst of all. Perhaps this was due to the general lack of Arnold in these scenes, but it’s probably more due to the horrid acting and the meaningless, lengthy dialogue. At least Zeus was waving around a rebar lightning bolt more often than not, and that gave me a modicum of fun.

I’ve never seen this one all the way through before and over the years I’ve heard many things about how this was one of the worst movies ever and all kinds of bullshit hyperbole. No matter how bad it is, it’s a far cry from the worst ever. Just the mere presence of Arnold raises it up, but I must remember that I speak from the future with the miracle of actually hearing Arnold’s thick, sometimes undecipherable accent at my disposal. I honestly can’t imagine watching the film without it, and perhaps if I had I would agree with the worst ever statements.

I don’t think the film’s sense of humor is purely unintentional either; it’s clear in many scenes that they’re going directly at the humor. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t, but it’s still an absolute must watch for the die-hard Arnold fan, if for nothing else than to see him body slam a dude in a bear suit. And stick around for the closing moments as Arnold’s buddy reminisces about his time with Herc and you get to see some great alternate footage of the bear fight.

The film also features a couple of great lines not spoken by Arnold. The first is from the opening moments as the camera flies through the clouds on its way to the home of the Gods. The narrator tells us that we will be hearing a story from a time “when myth and history merged into mystery.” Whatever the fuck that means, but I love the wordplay. The second comes later in the film, during some scene where Arnold was elsewhere (and therefore I kinda zoned out). A man who Arnold previously picked up and twirled around (during Hercules vs. the Intellectual Socialites) speaks to the girl Hercules has been courting and has this to say about our favorite demigod, “I like him even if he did crack two of my ribs.” Despite the inherent humor in the line, it is an accurate description of the film. Despite Hercules in New York‘s insistence on being a fucking awful film, I still kinda like it.

Original Trailer with Dubbed Dialogue

DVD Re-Release Trailer with Arnold Dialogue