Silver Emulsion Film Reviews

Coming Soon: Sam Fuller’s Brainquake!

In 1993, director Sam Fuller published his final novel, Brainquake. But while the book was released in French and a few other languages, it was never released in English. Until now! Err — September! English speakers will finally be able to enjoy this “lost” novel from a true storytelling master, as this September Hard Case Crime and Titan Books will be publishing Brainquake in English for the first time ever! If that’s not enough to sell you, here’s the synopsis!

The bagmen who transport money for organized crime live by a set of rules: no personal relationships, no ties, no women…and never, ever look inside the bag you’re carrying. Paul Page was the perfect bagman, despite suffering from a rare brain disorder. But that ended the day he saw a beautiful Mob wife become a Mob widow. Now Paul is going to break every rule he’s lived by–even if it means he might be left holding the bag.

Still not enough? How ’bout the intro to the book, featured in A Third Face, Fuller’s memoir?

Sixty seconds before the baby shot its father, leaves fell lazily in Central Park. Sparrow-weight with bulging jugular, the balloon peddler’s face appeared coated in white ashes of cow dung used against flies, but the pallor was really from his anemia.

Sounds like a must-read book to me! Brainquake releases on September 9, 2014, and you can pre-order it now from Amazon (and presumably other major book retailers)! Below you’ll find the cover and a link to the Amazon pre-order page! Enjoy!

The Delightful Forest (1972)

The Delightful Forest [快活林] (1972)

Starring Ti Lung, Chu Mu, Chiang Nan, Lan Wei-Lieh, Tin Ching, Wong Ching-Ho, Lee Man-Tai, Wang Kuang-Yu, Yue Fung, Kwok Chuk-Hing, Lau Kar-Wing, Wang Han-Chen, Hoh Gong, Li Min-Lang, Kong Ling

Directed by Chang Cheh & Pao Hsueh-Li

Expectations: High.

The Delightful Forest is another Shaw Brothers film based on the classic Chinese novel Outlaws of the Marsh (AKA The Water Margin). This time they’re focusing on Ti Lung’s Water Margin character Wu Song. The Delightful Forest adapts Chapters 27–31, the story of Wu Song’s imprisonment after killing his devious sister-in-law and her lover after they had fatally poisoned Wu Song’s brother. I also just found out that the tale of Wu Song’s brother was told by the Shaw Brothers many years earlier in the 1963 Huangmei opera film, The Amorous Lotus Pan (and again a few years later in 1982’s Tiger Killer). In any case… The Delightful Forest!

The film opens with Wu Song (Ti Lung) confronting his sister-in-law’s lover in a restaurant… you can’t argue with a film that opens with a restaurant fight. Wu Song exacts his revenge and is quickly captured without incident for this murder. Now wearing a cangue, he is escorted by two guards to the nearby prison. The prison chief’s son, Shi En, recognizes Wu Song as the martial hero he is, so he begins giving Wu Song preferential treatment. When confronted about it, Shi reveals that he wishes for Wu Song to help him in a sticky matter.

The Big Brawl (1980)

The Big Brawl (1980)
AKA Battle Creek Brawl

Starring Jackie Chan, José Ferrer, Kristine DeBell, Mako, Ron Max, David Sheiner, Rosalind Chao, Lenny Montana, Pat E. Johnson, Mary Ellen O’Neill, H.B. Haggerty, Chao Li Chi, Joycelyne Lew

Directed by Robert Clouse

Expectations: Moderate.

It’s ironic that Golden Harvest would send Jackie Chan to America in an attempt to recreate Bruce Lee’s success with Enter the Dragon, just as Jackie was finally gaining major notoriety on his own terms with films like The Fearless Hyena and The Young Master. After fighting to break free from Lo Wei’s control and desire to make him the next Bruce Lee, he landed in a more well-funded version of the same dream. Unfortunately, this was never Jackie’s dream. The Big Brawl is the resulting film and it’s definitely not the best way to introduce Jackie Chan to the American audience.

The story casts Jackie as Jerry Kwan, the son of a restaurant owner who is being bullied by some mobsters. Jerry knows kung fu and wants to show ’em what for, but his father forbids him from fighting. The mobsters catch wind of Jerry’s martial prowess, though, and they hatch a plan to force him into fighting for them in the Battle Creek Brawl in Texas. Why? I don’t honestly know, but that’s the plot. It’s not much of one, but that’s all you get. Oh, and just because there weren’t enough clichés, the mobsters also use kidnapping Jerry’s loved ones to force him into doing these things he otherwise wouldn’t be doing.

Stephen reviews: Riding Bean (1989)

ridingbean_1 Riding Bean [ライディング・ビーン] (1989)

Starring Hideyuki Tanaka, Naoko Matsui, Mami Koyama, Kei Tomiyama, Megumi Hayashibara, Chieko Honda

Directed by Yasuo Hasegawa

Another relic from my high school days, Riding Bean is about as action packed as you can make a movie without becoming a simple montage of action scenes. It’s short, but full of shootouts and car chases and shootouts during car chases leavened with plenty of lighthearted humor. It’s all about Bean Bandit, the Roadbuster, the best and craziest getaway driver in Chicago with a scar on his face and a jawline to make Jay Leno jealous. He’s a lot like a ’90s anti-hero, and his badassery oozes off the screen. His partner is a sexy gun expert named Rally Vincent, who knowledgeable anime fans might recognize as the main character of Gunsmith Cats, though here she is blonde instead of brunette.

Bean will take on any job as long as he gets paid, and while Rally is more of a good guy, she is still pretty much in it for the money and has no qualms about the illegal nature of their jobs. As with any rebel car chase story, there are plenty of car crashes and incompetent police for Bean to make fools out of. And trust me, these are some flat-out ridiculous car chases that could only have been brought to life in an anime. His car may not be as tricked out as James Bond’s, but has Bond ever had a car that can drive sideways? And of course it has the requisite “driving off an unfinished overpass” scene as well; you can’t have a car chase film without one of those.

Confirm or Deny (1941)

Starring Don Ameche, Joan Bennett, Roddy McDowall, John Loder, Raymond Walburn, Arthur Shields, Eric Blore, Helene Reynolds, Roseanne Murray, Stuart Robertson, Queenie Leonard, Jean Prescott, Billy Bevan

Directed by Archie Mayo

Expectations: Moderate.

Confirm or Deny is an interesting film because it’s so unique. It’s hard to classify as it’s kind of a thriller, it’s kind of romantic, and it also has an almost fly-on-the-wall, documentary-like feel in its depiction of the war correspondents working in London during The Blitz, a series of Nazi air raids on British cities during World War II. These air raids happened from September 1940 to May 1941, so with a release date in December 1941, Confirm or Deny was also quite the topical film.

The original draft of the story was written by Sam Fuller and star journalist Hank Wales (who, according to Fuller, was the basis for the Hitchcock film Foreign Correspondent). The two newsmen caught wind of the Associated Press offices getting bombed during the Battle of Britain, so they decided to write a film about newsmen doing everything in their power to get the news out despite these incredible, extraordinary circumstances. The finished film reflects a lot of this general feeling, although like all of Fuller’s early scripts, the studio heavily re-wrote Confirm or Deny to fit their desires more closely. I’m guessing they added the romantic angle, as it really doesn’t fit at all, nor is it very believable or romantic.

The Conjuring (2013)

Starring Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston, Shanley Caswell, Hayley McFarland, Joey King, Mackenzie Foy, Kyla Deaver, Shannon Kook, John Brotherton, Sterling Jerins

Directed by James Wan

Expectations: High. I’ve heard a lot of hot fire about this one.

Watching The Conjuring made me think about the horror genre, but that isn’t really a good thing. The film highlights aspects of the modern horror film that I feel are exactly what drove the genre into the ground, so instead of being involved and drawn into the film at hand, I was sitting there trying to figure out why I wasn’t doing just that. I enjoyed the film — it’s a fun piece of dumb fluff — but in terms of horror it’s a paltry example of the genre and it makes me sad that this (along with the remake of Evil Dead) are being championed as the 2013 high points of the genre.

The Conjuring is supposedly based on a true story from the case files of a very famous pair of paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Amityville Horror was also inspired by their work, but the difference here is that The Conjuring makes the Warrens characters in the film. They bring with them a small team of ghost hunters with audio equipment and fancy cameras to capture the apparitions haunting the house. I assume that a basic haunted house story would have been seen as too easy and derivative, so the filmmakers added this layer on top to distinguish the film from the pack.

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972)

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan [愛奴] (1972)
AKA Ainu

Starring Lily Ho Li-Li, Betty Pei Ti, Yueh Hua, Tung Lam, Man Chung-San, Fan Mei-Sheng, Goo Man-Chung, Chan Shen, Fang Mian, Chan Ho, Sze-Ma Wah-Lung, Lee Ho, Hoh Gong

Directed by Chor Yuen

Expectations: Very high.

If you boil it down to its bare elements, Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is a simple revenge story. At the same time, it’s something of a revisionist version of the simple revenge story, as the film’s plot plays out far different than any previous Shaw Brothers revenge film (and believe me, there were a lot of those!). The film is also gorgeously well-directed by the one and only Chor Yuen, who is able to construct an artful, rousing melodrama from the base elements of a trashy genre film. It’s something to behold.

The film begins with a green-tinted sequence where an investigator (Yueh Hua) questions a man who found a dead body. The end of the scene connects us to a time years prior, where, now in full color, we are shown the film’s title and a sequence full of slow motion and sheer fabric. The woman at the center of this scene is Lady Chun (Betty Pei Ti), a madam who rules her profitable brothel with a figurative iron fist (gotta make that clear in a Shaw Bros film!). This particular day is a fateful one, as Lady Chun receives a newly kidnapped shipment of young girls, one of which is the divinely beautiful Ainu (Lily Ho Li-Li).