Movie Reviews

The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

Starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Charles Grodin, Diana Rigg, John Cleese, Robert Morley, Peter Ustinov, Jack Warden, Steve Whitmire

Directed by Jim Henson

Expectations: High. This was always my favorite Muppet movie as a kid.

While The Muppet Movie brought your favorite puppets to the big screen, it was lacking in one major area: plot. I don’t mean this as a knock, the road adventure works well for that film, but The Great Muppet Caper does a great job being its own thing and providing a completely different experience than that original film. So where The Muppet Movie was a string of random events with a shoestring plot, The Great Muppet Caper is almost entirely plot.

Kermit and Fozzie play investigative journalists recently employed by the Daily Chronicle. They’re sent on assignment to London to interview Lady Holiday about her stolen diamonds, but due to a mix-up Kermit thinks Miss Piggy is Lady Holiday. It’s a mystery, it’s a love story, it’s a rollicking good comedy; The Great Muppet Caper is full of life. It’s been almost 20 years since I last watched this, but I saw it so many times in my youth that I was still able to sing along to many of the songs and I remembered large sections of the film shot by shot, and joke by joke. While that might work against some films, it only enriched the experience of re-watching The Great Muppet Caper for me; I was in Muppet heaven.

Stephen reviews: Blade of the Phantom Master: Shin Angyo Onshi (2004)

Blade of the Phantom Master: Shin Angyo Onshi [新暗行御史, Shin Angyō Onshi, 신암행어사, Shin amhaengosa] (2004)
AKA New Royal Secret Commissioner, Phantom Master: Dark Hero from the Ruined Empire

Starring Keiji Fujiwara, Sanae Kobayashi, Ryusei Nakao, Romi Park, Jun Fukushima

Directed by Joji Shimura & Ahn Tae-gun

I have a bit of an oddity here. Unlike most anime, Blade of the Phantom Master is based upon a Korean comic book series rather than a Japanese one. Its setting and visual style therefore reflect a slightly different feel than other anime. The most noticeable way this shows is with the obviously Korean sounding names. I can only wonder what kind of meaning was lost in an English translation of a Japanese adaptation of a Korean story, but I can’t do much more than call it a curiosity and wish I was more familiar with the Korean folktales that inspired it. The voice acting was originally recorded in both Japanese and Korean, and considering its Korean roots I would have preferred to watch that version, but for some dumb reason the American DVD release only retained the Japanese language track.

More unfortunate about its creation is that it was made after CG began insinuating itself into anime. From the very beginning, the film makes it clear that CG is going to play a heavy part of the production. This immediately made me regret choosing this for my next review, and there are several scenes that are just flat out ruined by it. Nothing sucks the fun out of an action sequence like making it with CG. The movie surprised me, however, by not relying on CG as much as I thought it would. It still has plenty of bad moments, but it also has plenty of decent scenes that don’t use any CG or only a slight bit that I could ignore. The CG is mostly used outside of the actual combat, which goes a long way toward making it more bearable. There’s also some good stuff in this film, and I wound up having a mostly pleasant experience watching this.

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)

Starring Elizabeth Kaitan, Cindy Beal, Don Scribner, Brinke Stevens, Carl Horner, Kirk Graves, Randolph Roehbling

Directed by Ken Dixon

Expectations: Moderate. I love The Most Dangerous Game, and I love cheap sci-fi, so where can this go wrong?

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity is a film with limited appeal. Basically, if you’ve ever watched a sci-fi film, but wished the protagonists were played by buxom beauties in loincloths, then your search is over. There’s also the niche group of audience members that may have secretly wished for the same buxom beauties in something of a Most Dangerous Game scenario. Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity fulfills both fantasies, but beyond that it doesn’t do much. And if that wasn’t your thing going into the movie, I doubt the movie has the power enough to sway your sexual fantasies into the weird and wild. But who knows, give it a shot!

So as I alluded to: Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity is a science fiction re-telling of Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game. The slave girls of the title are Daria and Tisa, who escape from a prison ship in the opening minutes. They hijack the ship and set out for stars unknown, but instead they end up crash landing on a nearby planet inhabited by an eccentric hunter named Zed and his robot servants. He invites the girls to dinner, where they meet a couple of other shipwrecked people under the care of Zed. This would normally be a seminal scene of the story, where the hunter reveals some sadistic fascination with hunting, but instead it’s just kinda boring.

Predator 2 (1990)

Starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Rubén Blades, Maria Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton, Robert Davi, Adam Baldwin, Kent McCord, Morton Downey Jr., Calvin Lockhart, Kevin Peter Hall

Directed by Stephen Hopkins

Expectations: Low. I re-watched this a few years ago (right before starting SE and hated it).

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

What a difference a couple of years makes. Many times I’ve mentioned how my love of B-Movies has allowed me to sit back and enjoy many films that I would’ve never been able to before. Predator 2 is a great example as I loved it when it was new, but re-watching it just a few years ago proved trying on my patience. I bitched about how it wasn’t doing what I thought a Predator movie should do, and that they probably should have never made a sequel. But in the interest of reviewing the Predator series leading up to my eventual reviews of the two AVP films (Oh God, am I actually watching those movies?), I reluctantly put the disc in and threw all expectations out the window. C’mon, Predator 2! I’m here! Do it! Kill me now! Give me your best.

Predator 2 responded with such force and vigilance that I was shaken to my core. How could I have possibly disliked this film just a few, short years ago? It’s all thanks to starting Silver Emulsion and really exploring my love of film in its many forms that I’m now able to recapture that childhood glee of watching Danny Glover take on the baddest motherfucker this side of Jupiter. I take back every bad thing I ever said about Predator 2 in the last couple of years, because Predator 2 is pure fun.

Fatal Deviation (1998)

Starring James P. Bennett, Mikey Graham, Johnny Murray, Michael Regan, Conor O’Shea, Greg Weir, Barry Smith, Paudie Greene, Edward Healy, Peter Crinion, Colin Hamilton

Directed by Shay Casserley & Simon Linscheid

Expectations: High. This one better be as great as I hope.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Fatal Deviation is a special movie. It’s Ireland’s first full-length martial arts picture, and it’s an incredible piece of low-budget entertainment. You wanna read a review of said B-Movie gem? Oh yeah? Well… OK.

But you’ll have to go to Rodney’s website Fernby Films to check it out, because I reviewed the film as my entry in his annual event, Worst Film Week! So go check it out!

This is a fan-made, joke trailer, but it’s all I could find.

Young Guns (1988)

Starring Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney, Casey Siemaszko, Terence Stamp, Jack Palance, Terry O’Quinn, Sharon Thomas Cain

Directed by Christopher Cain

Expectations: Low. I’ve seen this one before and did not enjoy it.

I thought maybe this would be one of those movies that would get better with an appreciation for shitty movies. Unfortunately this is not the case, as Young Guns is not quite trashy enough to ignite the B-Movie torch and light my way through this tortured mess. It starts out well enough with an interesting and enigmatic opening of purple-tinged film grain and the silhouettes of our main characters, but just a couple of cuts later we’re treated(?) to close-ups of the stars as their names come on-screen in the most obvious, dumb way possible. Like Batman and Robin, at least Young Guns has the decency to let everyone know what they’re getting into. I should’ve stopped it right then and there, but I have an obligation to finish the filth and deliver something resembling quality content here at Silver Emulsion, regardless of the quality of the film.

I watch a lot of slow-moving B-Movies where their budgets don’t allow much to actually happen beyond a few people talking about something that you really should be seeing. Young Guns is like the opposite, where it’s almost all things happening but very little explanation, and what is there is so mind-numbingly boring and unengaging that I literally zoned out immediately whenever someone started talking. This happened the last time I watched it too, and I went in aware of this and actively tried to avoid it. I was simply unable to; it’s not my fault, it’s just a shitty, poorly constructed movie.

The Twelve Gold Medallions (1970)

The Twelve Gold Medallions [十二金牌] (1970)
AKA Twelve Golden Medallions

Starring Yueh Hua, Chin Ping, Cheng Miu, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Wang Hsieh, Wong Chung-Shun, Yeung Chi Hing, Ku Feng, Liu Wai, Goo Man-Chung, Jeng Man-Jing, Fan Mei-Sheng, Tong Tin-Hei, Ma Ying, Go Ming

Directed by Cheng Kang

Expectations: High. Cheng Kang returns!

The Twelve Gold Medallions was Cheng Kang’s first feature since the wonderful Killers Five, so I went in hoping that it would live up to the pure, unfiltered awesome laid out there. While The Twelve Gold Medallions definitely doesn’t live up to that kind of hype, it’s a really incredible wuxia film that is sure to delight and excite fans of the genre. It starts out with a bang too, immediately dropping us into the action as Yueh Hua is doing his best to stop the messengers carrying the twelve gold medallions of the title.

The film opens with some text, hoping to frame the events of the film within some sort of historical context. The twelve gold medallions are the ploy of an evil traitor, hoping to thwart the plans of a patriotic general doing his best to preserve the current Emperor’s reign. Yueh Hua, a noble swordsman, takes up the task of stopping these messengers and their false messages. Beyond that, there’s also a romantic sub-plot between Yueh Hua and Chin Ping, the daughter of his master, as well as some drama between Yueh and his master (Cheng Miu) over the fact that Cheng has become the leader of the villainous group trying to deliver the medallions.