Majestyk's Movies

Tuff Turf

2011-08-08T13:54:00.000-07:00

Tuff Turf is an overlooked and underrated teensploitation picture from 1985. As was common in the genre, James Spader plays a cocky rich prick. The difference is, this time he’s the hero.

Spader is this dude who used to live in Connecticut, where he spent his time getting kicked out of prep schools for being too awesome. Then his dad went broke so they moved out to the San Fernando Valley, where guido greasers in headbands and duck’s-ass haircuts earn their reps by sticking up doughy old dudes with switchblades. This is exactly what’s happening in the stylish opening montage, set to an eerie, pulsating Marianne Faithful song. The local toughs (tuffs?) are doing their thing when Spader rides by on his bicycle and breaks up the robbery without even dismounting. He gets away scot-free, except the one Latino in the gang slices the patch on the back of his jean jacket in half with a snapped-off car antenna. There’s no explanation given for why Spader decided to get involved, other than this is the kind of shit he likes to do for fun.

Naturally, this means war, so the rest of the movie is the ever escalating battle between Spader and the leader of the gang, played by Paul Mones, future co-writer of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s surrealist masterpiece, Double Team, the movie that poses the cinematic question: “What the fuck?”

I like this setup, because it’s more interesting than the usual Karate Kid format, where there’s some new wiener in town who gets picked on for no good reason until he finally grows a sac in the third act. Spader is already a badass at the beginning of the movie, and the bad guys have good reason to hate him. He fucked with them before they fucked with him. It’s almost like a Clint Eastwood movie, where a mysterious stranger rides into town and starts pissing off the locals. Spader has that naturally villainous quality about him so he makes a more interesting lead than the usual milquetoast pantywaist they stick in these kinds of movies. It’s really more of an Eric Stoltz part, but I’m glad they went a different way with it. I’d like to see Spader team up with Adam Baldwin’s character from 3:10: The Moment of Truth. They’d run that fucking school like a charity marathon.

I don’t want to give you the impression that this is a particularly original movie or anything. It’s not. All the old standbys are there: the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the wacky outcast buddy who shows him the ropes, the inevitable locker room scene. The difference is that the girl is actually a pretty good actress (Escape To Witch Mountain's Kim Richards, pulling a Kurt Russell with her jump to adult fare), the wacky friend is Robert Downey Jr., and the locker room scene has Spader getting beat the fuck down with padlocks wrapped in towels. It’s all pretty standard, but there are little touches that set it apart.

A lot of those touches are thanks to the imaginative direction of Fritz Kiersch, a reliable journeyman best known for his first film, Children of the Corn. He gives the film an enhanced sense of atmosphere similar to Paul Brickman’s work in Risky Business. In his review of Tuff Turf, Roger Ebert knocked the film for botching the timing of its set-pieces, but I think he just hadn’t caught the rhythm of the new MTV-inspired editing. Multiple close-ups and slow-mo inserts give a feeling of elongated reality to some scenes, almost like a spaghetti western. Kiersch’s somewhat exaggerated, vaguely surreal style gives the movie a greater impact than it would have with more pedestrian direction. He used this same technique in his next film, Winners Take All, a boilerplate inspirational sports drama that felt a little more weighty than most of its contemporaries.

Did I mention that Tuff Turf is kind of a musical? That’s another thing that sets it apart. The characters don’t all of a sudden start singing, but they’re always attending live shows. There are no less than three bands featured in this movie. In one scene, Spader crashes a snooty country club with Downey Jr. and two new wave chicks, and there’s a smarmy lounge act playing a slick cover of “Twist & Shout” for all the preppies to dance to. Then Spader commandeers the stage to serenade his ladyfriend with a lip-synched piano ballad with lyrics like “I want to feel your face / I want to hear your eyes.” Naturally this wins her over, and even though she’s the girlfriend of the villain (who considers her part of his “turf”), she brings Spader with her to Club Sixties, where there’s a cheesy blue-eyed soul outfit called Jack Mack and the Heart Attack, which has a horn section in matching suits who do synchronized dance moves. While they systematically scrape the black off of Wilson Pickett’s “She’s Looking Good,” she dances all over the tables, hypnotically swinging around her crimped, ass-length blond hair. But the best musical moment comes earlier, when Spader steals a Porsche to go to a punk club to see Downey Jr.’s band, which is fronted by Basketball Diaries author Jim Carroll. While Downey convincingly mimes the drums, Carroll speak-sings his way through a set of angular post-punk and Spader woos his ladyfriend by forcing her to dance with him while the rest of the crowd helps him out by boxing her in with some elaborate choreography.

Actually, the soundtrack is kind of great, if only for Carroll’s incongruously upbeat obituary song, “People Who Died,” which was also used to great effect during the end credits of the Dawn of the Dead remake. Like the movie itself, the music is a little better than it strictly needs to be.

Tuff Turf eventually stops dicking around with musical numbers and heart-to-heart talks with various parental units. Shit gets real when the bad guys attack Spader’s father (veteran character actor Matt Clark), but the cool thing is that Dad is no token victim. He’s actually winning the fight against the three thugs when the cowardly leader pulls out a piece and blasts him a couple of times in strategically off-center places. While Dad is hospitalized, the movie climaxes in a violent battle in the punk club involving guns, axes, and Dobermans. Then it’s happy ending time as our heroes go back to Club Sixties, where Jack Mack and the Heart Attack is ripping through another energetic retro number. Tuff Turf is kind of like that: It didn’t write this song, but it’s gonna play the hell out of it anyway.

The Dark Knight

2011-07-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Don’t freak out or anything, but I don’t really like this movie all that much. I know we all sat down and took a vote and the unanimous decision was that this was the greatest movie ever made, except for maybe—–maybe—–Empire Strikes Back, but then the whole Special Edition debacle kind of split the vote so Dark Knight came out on top by, like, a swillion miles. Then there was another vote about whether people who didn’t like it were either “fucktards” or “douchenozzles,” and that went back and forth a couple times before cooler heads prevailed and we went with “douchetards,” just to make sure all the bases were covered. Then we were gonna vote on which part was the best, so we popped in the DVD, but then we got distracted when it got to the part where Christian Bale says “I’m not wearing hockey pants!” (#21 on AFI’s list of the 100 Most Awesomest Fucking Movie Lines Of All Time, right after “You had me at hello”). Then the one handicapped guy who was there was suddenly able to walk again, so then all the lepers started pressing their open sores to the screen to absorb the movie’s healing light. I also hear it cures racism and brings the passion back to sexless marriages.

So I don’t know if I was born an asshole or if I worked at it my whole life, but either way it worked out fine because The Dark Knight is really just not all that great. I mean, it definitely puts out the vibe of greatness. And there are definitely lots of moments when it’s got the coordinates of greatness locked into its tracking system. But then somebody must have spilled some Mountain Dew into its guidance module or something because it suddenly veers off course, missing greatness altogether and instead landing right in the middle of pretty goodness.

I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what irks me about this movie, which by all rights I should probably love. I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it in the theater, but almost immediately my memory of it soured. I forgot all of the awesome parts and only remembered Christian Bale’s stupid Robert Loggia voice. Through multiple online arguments with various non-douchetards, I realized that the character of Batman is at the heart of my dissatisfaction. I’m a big fan of the Batman comics (or at least I was until the Scottish Dadaist Grant Morrison killed him off in the recent crossover event Final Crisis, possibly the worst-told story ever published in any medium), so I know Batman. And Mr. Bale, sir, you are no Batman. The suit looks dumb, the voice sounds like Corey Feldman in The Lost Boys trying to act grown-up, and the fights are so clumsy that it looks like they filmed the rehearsals. The guy just isn’t badass. He has a few moments, but then he opens his mouth and I just can’t take him seriously. He’s trying waaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard to sound tough, and it's frankly laughable. I can see what the Joker finds so funny about him. I keep expecting him to pull an inhaler out of his utility belt. It’s fucking distracting.

But I am, above all, a reasonable motherfucker, so I decided to give it another chance to see if maybe I was just being a joyless curmudgeon. I know that sometimes one’s recollection of a movie can take on a life of its own that is quite different from the actual viewing experience. Also, if I was to be the only douchetard on a planet of angry Dark Knight fans, I Am Legend-style, then I wanted to restock my ammunition for the lifelong battle that lay ahead of me.

Well, for the first two hours I wondered what the hell my problem was. I still didn’t like Batman, but I enjoyed every scene that he wasn’t in, and I’m counting the scenes where Bale is out of costume. The robbery at the beginning is hardcore, all of the secondary characters are likeable and well cast (particularly Gary Oldman, who so disappears into the role of Jim Gordon that I stopped thinking of him as an actor altogether), and it has fucking Eric Roberts in it, for christ’s sake. This is a dude who has credits like Raptor and Fast Sofa on his résumé. I mean, I like The Wrestler and all, but this is the comeback of the century.

And of course, the Joker is awesome. Heath Ledger totally nailed the character’s use of nihilist humor and unmotivated violence as a means of existential terrorism, and I will forever treasure the shot of him tottering away from the exploding hospital with his weird Crispin Glover/Frankenhooker gait. He also made a surprisingly sexy nurse. Just saying.

However, despite its many strong points, Batman himself is still a problem. For one, there's the fact that Christopher Nolan simply refuses to shoot him like a badass. Instead of using shadows or dramatic angles, he just points the camera at the poor guy in full light so you can see how chintzy the suit is. I used to think that the main reason I didn’t buy his tough guy credentials was because he didn’t do anything in the movie, but on rewatching it, I can see that I was wrong. He fights attack dogs, performs a daring raid on a Hong Kong highrise, jumps out of a perfectly good building, rides a motorcycle with monster truck tires, violates the Joker’s civil rights, and dangles a bunch of cops off a building like a human wind chime. So he does plenty of stuff. The problem is he doesn’t accomplish anything. He’s the most ineffectual hero of all time. He fails to save his childhood sweetheart from a fiery death, lets Harvey Dent get his face CGIed off, can’t protect the mob witness, gets his secret identity uncovered by a nerdy accountant (who really should have been played by a bigger actor, since the name “Mister Reese” is clearly code for the Riddler), and has to take the rap for the murders committed by Two-Face, which, consisting as they do entirely of mobsters and dirty cops, constitute the only progress for the side of law and order in the whole movie. Even those attack dogs kick his ass—twice. True, he saves those people on the ferries (Most obvious trap ever, by the way. When someone like the Joker warns you about the bridges and tunnels and there’s only one other way out of town, maybe you should be a little suspicious) and he catches the Scarecrow, but come on, that guy’s a has-been, a washed-up holdover from the last movie. It’d be like if the only person Jason killed in Friday the 13th Part 2 was that one survivor from the first movie. I recognize that maybe the filmmakers were attempting to make some kind of statement about the futility of vigilantism, but I don’t buy it. If you’re trying to subvert the superhero paradigm, you can’t show the protagonist fucking up for two and a half hours and then end the movie with a money shot of him riding off like a conquering hero while Gary Oldman delivers a soulful but uncharacteristically poetic monologue about how fucking awesome he is. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. When you try, it’s called vomit.

And that’s really my problem with the movie. It violates the #1 rule of storytelling: Show, don’t tell. It’s constantly telling me things that it fails to illustrate. It tells me that Harvey Dent was considered duplicitous by his colleagues in the police department, yet fails to show him being anything other than sincere and well-meaning. It tells me that Batman is a meaningful symbol of justice to the people of Gotham City, yet fails to show him doing anything for them besides blowing up their cars and trashing their streets. (In fact, we never see the citizens of Gotham at all, and we especially don’t see any of the poor neighborhoods where a self-appointed guardian angel might do the most good. All we see are glistening office towers and pillared government buildings, but what’s the state of the ghetto that the escaped Arkham Asylum inmates burned down in Batman Begins? How do its residents feel about Batman’s crime-busting efforts? Has he made an appreciable difference in their quality of life? Do they feel safer, or would they rather be left in peace with their cheap recreational drugs?) It tells me that Dent has some kind of obsession with the capriciousness of fate, yet he seems to have a Type-A take-charge personality that leaves little to chance. It tells me that the Joker is a seat-of-his-pants engine of chaos rather than a planner, yet he concocts absurdly intricate schemes incorporating intimate knowledge of the response times of various law enforcement divisions, hospital evacuation procedures, and the Gotham City municipal school bus schedule. It tells me that Maggie Gylenhaal is beautiful, yet Wally Pfister’s harsh lighting leaves her looking like Pumpkinhead in a dress. There always seems to be a disconnect between what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing.

Basically, I’m saying that the movie bites off more than it can chew, so it takes shortcuts. It brings up interesting notions like the ethics of privacy invasion, the expediency of dictatorships, and the occasional necessity of shielding inconvenient truths from the public, but immediately drops them after its ham-fisted, flagrantly schematic screenplay has paid them off with a line or two of dialogue, usually delivered by Michael Caine, who has made a career of sewing silk purses out of sows’ ears. However, this ideological confusion is not readily apparent until the unnecessarily protracted ending. Bottom line, if the movie had stopped after the Joker blew up Maggie Gyllenhaal (spoiler), I would not be a douchetard today. It would have left the movie at the perfect length, at the perfect pace, and with the perfect Empire-style downbeat set-up for the more triumphant Jedi-style trilogy capper, The Dark Knight 2: Knight Moves, in which they would replace Heath Ledger with Jake Gylenhaal because he’s the only actor the public would accept, what with him basically being the guy’s ex-girlfriend and all.

But instead it goes on for 40 more minutes, and that’s when all of the chinks in its Kevlar open up and let its true sloppiness spill out. Two-Face is too interesting of a character to fob off on the end of a movie, especially when his corruption seems to be the entire point of the Joker’s Jigsaw-like morality play. The climax, despite its gratuitous length, feels rushed, because it’s trying to cram an entire sequel’s worth of character arc into the third act of a movie that already had a perfect ending: Batman has lost the love of his life and is forced to see the limitations of his ideals, which sets up a movie-length confrontation between a pushed-to-the-edge hero and Two-Face, a fallen angel who represents the dark side of the vigilante coin. I rarely fault a movie for having too much ambition, but I feel that The Dark Knight’s overbusy and thematically muddled endgame squanders most of the goodwill that its first three quarters engendered. For its opening two hours, I wondered why I’d disliked the movie, but its final 40 minutes reminded me. They took a tightly paced and ruthlessly plotted battle of wits and turned it into a confusing mess of half-baked ideas. Sort of like this review, which started out debating the merits of the word “douchenozzle” and ended up bandying about phrases like “flagrantly schematic” and “thematically muddled.”

In the end, I don’t really dislike The Dark Knight anymore. I regard it as an ambitious failure, like communism or Crystal Pepsi. But that’s just one douchetard’s opinion. Take it for what it’s worth.

JCVD

2011-07-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

Remember that part at the end of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey where Wyld Stallyns are about to perform for a sold-out crowd and they suddenly realize that they still don't know how to play their instruments? So what they do is, they hop into their time machine, and when they pop back up onstage a second later, they've both got ZZ Top beards and they're like, "Whoa, that was a most excellent 18 months of intensive guitar training with Eddie Van Halen." I think the same thing happened to Jean-Claude Van Damme right before shooting started on JCVD, only with acting. I think he suddenly realized that he didn't have the chops to pull off a movie that involved more emoting than kicking, so he broke his old Timecop temporal displacement device out of mothballs and went back to the fifties to take some Method classes with Brando.

Actually, I don't think even that would be enough to explain the thespianic transformation Jean-Claude underwent for this film. I think he must have pulled an Excellent Adventure and traveled throughout the seventies, assembling all of its best actors. He kidnapped De Niro from the set of Taxi Driver, snatched Pacino from Godfather II, gave Hackman the Vulcan neck pinch on The Conversation, and had just enough room left over to stuff Dustin Hoffman into the time machine in his Ratso Rizzo costume. Then they had all kinds of crazy fish-out-of-water adventures in the present day (You should have seen the look on De Niro's face when he accidentally caught Meet the Fockers on cable) while Van Damme finally, after more than 20 years in Hollywood, learned that there's more to the art of screen acting than making your eyes get all buggy and cross-eyed while yelling "Nuuuh!" in your weird, flat Belgian accent. He learned that you can't just imitate the bells and whistles of human emotions; you have to feel them deep inside, because if you don't, the audience never will. And I'm also thinking that he taught all these great actors a thing or two in return and, in doing so, accidentally changed film history for the better. Just think, without Jean-Claude's influence, Pacino's legendary kickboxing sequence in Dog Day Afternoon would never have existed.

Granted, there are probably a few non-time-travel-related factors that may have contributed to the effectiveness of Van Damme's performance in JCVD. For one, he's playing himself. It's the role he was born to play. For two, most of the dialogue is in French, his native tongue. But that doesn't fully explain it, either. I've seen plenty of jackasses try to play themselves and fail miserably, and Jean-Claude's even pretty damn good in his few English-speaking scenes in JCVD. Yeah, the more I think about it, the more the time machine thing is the only explanation that makes any sense. The only other thing I can think of is that he's secretly been this good all along, and that, my friends, is too mind-blowing to contemplate.

Okay, here's the deal: JCVD is the new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jean-Claude Van Damme. The first scene is amazing. All the other reviews are gonna tell you about it, so I will, too. It's one long tracking shot, Touch of Evil-style, in which the camera follows Jean-Claude around a warehouse full of bad guys. In a single unbroken take, he engages in hand-to-hand combat, shoots a bunch of people, throws a grenade, and evades a flamethrower. It's well-choreographed and shot, with an awesome funky but melancholy soul song playing, but the funny part is that it's not very well executed. Punches miss by about a foot, and the timing is always a little bit off. It's all very subtle, until the scenery starts falling down, and you realize that you're on the set of Van Damme's latest straight-to-video opus, directed by some punk HK music video director with asymmetrical hair who doesn't have Jean-Claude's commitment to excellence. From the first scene, the Muscles From Brussels is characterized as a man who feels that he is capable of much more than world is offering him. He needs a mission, a calling, a raison d'être, and for his sins, JCVD gives him one.

After this straightforward opener, the structure of the movie gets all Tarantino-y, as the story is broken up into out-of-order chapters with pretentious titles like "The Answer Before The Question." It's kind of cool because you have to work a little harder than usual to piece together the story, but I'm not sure if the story itself requires it. It's pretty simple: Jean-Claude is in the middle of an expensive child custody case, but when he goes into a Belgian bank to transfer funds to his lawyer, he gets caught up in a hostage crisis of which the cops think he's the mastermind. Then he has to find out if he really does have a hero inside of him or if he's just a full-of-shit actor whose best years are behind him (and they really weren't all that great anyway).

I wish I could tell you more about the movie, but I kind of had a hard time following it. It's not really the movie's fault, though. It's just that I saw it at the Angelika, where Jean-Claude himself was supposed to appear for a Q&A, only he cancelled because, I shit you not, his puppy was in a coma in Thailand. How fucking sensitive is that? Can't you just imagine Jean-Claude sitting by the puppy's bedside, holding his paw and whispering, "Dun dew eet, ma fren. Dun go indo da lide." (Side note: "Thailand Puppy Coma" should be a Melvins song.)

Anyway, the Angelika is one of them there arthouses, which I'm all for, except that the Angelika sucks. The theaters are so long and skinny that it feels like you're watching a screen the size of a postcard through a paper towel tube. And the print of JCVD I saw had white subtitles, which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the cinematography is all blown-out and sun-blasted. It looks really cool, except that there are glints and sheens and splashes of white everywhere, making a lot of the dialogue illegible. You're trying to follow along, but you can only read half the words, so it's like "No, Jean…do it…gun here…police will…understand?"

This won't be a problem on DVD, though, so home viewers willl be able to fully enjoy the script, which is witty and self-referential without ever losing sight of the drama, particularly in this one scene where Jean-Claude suddenly levitates up above the set of the movie and, hanging amidst the lights in the rafters, proceeds to give an unedited five-minute monologue directly to camera. I didn't catch a big chunk of it, but he talks about his childhood and his marriages and his drug problem and his dreams. He promises to be the hero he always wanted to be, the one he pretended to be for so long that he forgot who he really was. He even starts breaking down and crying a little. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Not a single person in a theater full of hipster douchebags let out so much as a giggle while this man, this washed-up has-been who was a joke even in his prime, laid it all out on the line. I couldn't even understand half of what he was saying, but the emotion, man. The emotion came through loud and clear. Jean-Claude was never my favorite action hero, but he won me over with this speech. I don't think any other tough guy could have bared his soul so nakedly. Seagal might have tried, but I don't think he would have let his guard down like this. There really was no bullshit in Jean-Claude's speech at all. This was the beating, yearning heart of Van Damme, the one muscle he never got to exercise in any of his other films. I never thought I'd say this, but I wanted to give that sweaty, bulging bastard a big fucking hug right then and there.

Then I remembered that YouTube clip where he got a boner live on a Brazilian dance show and I thought better of it.

Anyway, you should all definitely see JCVD. If enough of us check it out, there is every reason to believe that Van Damme's action contemporaries will follow suit and step their game up. He's proved with this film that everyone, no matter how seemingly talentless and ridiculously accented, has hidden depths. Personally, I'm holding out for a remake of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries starring Chuck Norris as an elderly martial artist reliving the many, many asses he's kicked over the course of his life and the effect they've had on him. Or maybe even Seagal Satyricon. The point is, if Jean-Claude can do it, so can they. C'mon, guys. Let's see a little hustle out there.

P.S. How bullshit is it that the marketing department didn't use "Stock up on penicillin, because on November 7, America will catch JCVD" as the tagline on the poster? I really do have to think of everything, don't I?

Brain Smasher: A Love Story

2011-07-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

Brain Smasher: A Love Story is easily the second best bouncer movie ever made. If you have to ask what that first best is, I don’t know, man, I think you might be on the wrong page.

But that’s not its biggest achievement. Let’s be frank, there haven’t been all that many bouncer movies. It’s not that crowded a field. The same cannot be said for Albert Pyun movies, however. As of the writing of this sentence, he has directed 46 motion pictures. I can’t verify that number past that, though, because by the time I get to the end of this paragraph he might have knocked out a few more Nemesis sequels or something. I can’t keep going back to IMDB every two seconds. You’re just gonna have to take my word for it that this dude has made more or less a metric shit-ton of movies. And Brain Smasher is his best one.

Okay, fine. It’s the best one I’ve seen. Full disclosure: I have not seen even a quarter of the total Pyun filmography. I do have somewhat of a life. I have a job. Friends. Family. I go out on dates sometimes. Really. It’s a rich tapestry, the life of me. You’d be amazed.

So while I was out there trying to lay my hands on some ladyparts, it’s entirely possible that Pyun managed to squeak a masterpiece by me. Maybe Vicious Lips has a lot to say about the fragility of the human condition. Maybe Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor is that one movie that comes along every now and again that teaches you how to love again. I’m not discounting the possibility. Right now, right this second, there’s a mammal running around with a duck bill, laying eggs. Anything can happen.

So maybe being the best Albert Pyun movie out of the six or seven I’ve seen is not that big an accomplishment. But I liked it anyway. If you don’t dig loveable underachievers, you shouldn’t be watching Albert Pyun movies in the first place.

Right away, you can tell that Brain Smasher is a little different than the average Pyun movie because there don’t appear to be any cyborgs in it. Cyborgs are to Albert Pyun as big-breasted women are to Russ Meyer. I can neither verify nor deny that Pyun once lived in a house full of cyborgs in a polyamorous relationship, however. That’s where the analogy starts falling apart.

What Brain Smasher is about instead of cyborgs is this dude named Ed, a.k.a. the Brain Smasher. Ed’s a bouncer at a club in Portland, Oregon, and he’s proud of the fact that decent, hard-partying folk can have a good time in peace as long as his two fists are around. That’s what I like about Ed. He takes his work seriously and he honestly believes he makes a difference. He doesn’t get all philosophical about it like that other bouncer in that other movie. He’s more pragmatic.

He’s even got an honest-to-God origin story. Seems that when Ed was a young man, he was in a club that didn’t have a bouncer, and he took a beer bottle to the face that left him scarred. He vowed then and there that no one else would ever have their mellow harshed the way his mellow was harshed that night. It’s like if Batman’s parents got killed in the moshpit at CBGB’s. It’s not a job. It’s a calling. Someday, he’ll probably take on a young ward who also got hit with a bottle one time, and he will teach him everything he knows about smashing brains. Then someday he’ll retire and pass on the mantel of Brain Smasher to the next generation. Maybe there’ll even be a Brain Smashess or something. There’s no telling who might be inspired by this noble smasher of brains.

One more thing about Ed: He’s played by Andrew Dice Clay. Right away that’s gonna make a bunch of you not take him seriously, just because he’s a grown man who once upon a time asked other grown men to call him the Diceman. I always liked Dice, though. I was like 11 or 12 when he was a big stand-up, so his potty-mouth tough guy schtick was right up my alley. The only tape I had at the time was N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton, so I was and am a big fan of profanity. If you were talking about fucking somebody or something, I was listening. (Note to the kids: a "tape" or “cassette” or occasionally "cassingle" was what people used to listen to music on before it was beamed directly into your cerebral cortex by the sentient Lawnmower Man-style computer program known as will.i.am) Then Dice started making movies, and shit, I liked those, too. His starring debut, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, is an underrated gem in the Hudson Hawk vein, and it introduced the world to the action stylings of one Renny Harlin, the wacky Scandinavian who proved that Finland’s national flower is the explosion. The problem with Dice, though, is that he was too good at being a pig. People really believed that he spent every minute of his life making bitches make him sandwiches. They didn’t get that it was a character he was playing, like Pee Wee Herman or Sarah Palin. So when it was time to branch out into other characters, it was like Big Bird trying to play a CIA agent or a lawyer or, I don’t know, anything that’s not a giant transsexual bird or whatever the hell he is. I think this hurt the Diceman’s feelings, so it added a subtle layer of sensitivity to his performances. You can see a nice guy under all that bluster, wondering why no one ever noticed that his filthy nursery rhymes were a cry for help.

That’s why he fits the character of Ed perfectly, and not just because he has prior bouncing experience from Pretty In Pink. Ed is a real stand-up guy, a brave, selfless white knight, but everybody thinks he's just a crude bruiser, simply because he punches people in the forehead for a living and wears a jacket that says his retarded nickname on the back. Both Ed and Dice want to show people that there’s more to them than meets the eye.

Ed’s predicament is mirrored by that of his love interest, played by Teri Hatcher. Everybody thinks she’s a ditz because she’s a model. So when she has to protect this ancient red lotus that gives the person who eats its petals infinite power, nobody takes her seriously.

The people who want the lotus are these Chinese monks in Phantom of the Opera masks who get really pissed off when people call them ninjas, because ninjas are Japanese. See, everybody in the movie is wrestling with public perception issues. This is a very deep movie about punching, in my opinion.

So what happens is that Teri is running from these not-ninjas and takes refuge in Ed’s club. Naturally, Ed protects her, because that’s what Ed does. Then they’re on the run, and I don’t want to give too much away, but they may possibly start to kind of like each other a little bit. Sure, this is a contractually mandated romance, but there are some little touches along the way that make it work. There’s a part where Ed brings her to his apartment and she realizes that he has a calendar that she’s in. She tries to show him her page and he stops her. He doesn’t need to see her in a bikini to like her. Then there’s a point where he decides that he’s in over his head but then when she storms off, he ends up helping her behind her back. Then he catches up with her in a bar, and he’s like, “Maybe I should stick around. If anything happens, there’s no bouncer…”

I like the idea of the bouncer as a symbol of safety and order in a chaotic and dangerous world. It’s ridiculous but kind of true. A lot of times I like to go to the bar on Mondays. Most of the time, it’s really quiet so you can get a good conversation going, but it’s also when the crazies come out. I mean, if you’re the type of person who’s going to get fucked up on a Monday, you’re probably the type of person who’s going to get really fucked up on a Monday. And while I like to rubberneck at the ranting racists who try to explain to the Mexican barback why he’s the exception, and the off-duty truckers who’ve been drinking since 2:30 and are willing to fight you because you played “Beth” instead of “Strutter,” and the shoeless junkies who are trying to steal your bag from under the bar, I’d really rather somebody dealt with them before they hurt somebody and/or jack my iPod. That’s where the bouncer comes in. They’re out there every night protecting your good time, because sometimes a good time is the only good thing you have.

You know what I mean? That’s what this movie is about. Fuckin’ heroes.

Anyway, Brain Smasher moves along at a nice clip. There are a bunch of good brawls, some excellent backflips from the not-ninjas, some entertainingly arch dialogue(“Do you think I want to be a kung-fu thug forever?”), and two great cameos from B-movie vets Brion James and Tim Thomerson as the asshole detectives who don’t believe in ninjas. Then at the end there’s a nice twist where Teri has to rescue Ed instead of the other way around. She could just walk away with the lotus but she pretty much loves the big lug at this point so she risks it all for him. Then there’s some punching and some kissing, and then credits. Way to stick the landing this time, Pyun.

By the way, I like to imagine that “Pyun” is pronounced like the sound effect of a bullet ricocheting off a rock in an old western. And like those bullets, Pyun doesn’t always hit what he’s aiming for, but at least he makes an entertaining sound when he misses.

OBSCURE MOVIES I HAVE FOR SALE

2010-12-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

In addition to writing awesome reviews of movies, I also sell awesome DVD-Rs of movies. These flicks are not available on any legitimate DVD (at least in this country) which makes them fair game. If you see something you like, drop me a line at mleroux99@gmail.com. Some of these prints are in better shape than others, so if there are any weird quirks (no subtitles, minor strobe effect, random Greek subtitles that can't be turned off, somewhat out-of-sync audio, widescreen that won't play right on a square old TV, too dark to see a goddamn thing, made in Indonesia, starring Christopher Mitchum, etc.) I'll let you know ahead of time so you know what you're getting. I'm always acquiring more stock, so if there's something you want that's not here, ask me about it.

The movies cost five bucks each, plus three bucks shipping and handling, and they all come with a case and custom-made cover, or possibly a cover that someone else made that I custom-printed-out-at-work. If you order more than one, I can cut you a break on shipping. If you have any questions, leave me a comment or email me.

1. KILLDOZER
2. HORROR AT 37,000 FEET
3. PROJECT: METALBEAST
4. AEROBICIDE
5. BARBARIANS
6. NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE
7. THE MUTILATOR
8. TURKISH STAR WARS
9. 3 DEV ADAM
10. CHUD II: BUD THE CHUD
11. GRIM PRAIRIE TALES
12. KILL ZONE
13. DESERT KICKBOXER
14. SAVATE
15. BEYOND FORGIVENESS
16. OPERATION: GOLDEN PHOENIX
17. D’WILD WILD WENG
18. THE IMPOSSIBLE KID
19. HIT LIST
20. THE FINAL CONFLICT
21. THE DOUBLE O KID
22. COCAINE WARS
23. MOONRUNNERS
24. BOBBI JO & THE OUTLAW
25. RETURN TO MACON COUNTY
26. DEATH CAR ON THE FREEWAY
27. OUTRAGE
28. CITY KILLER
29. BROTHERLY LOVE
30. STEELE JUSTICE
31. STAND ALONE
32. MALONE
33. NINJA III: THE DOMINATION
34. WILD THING
35. 3:10: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
36. EXTERMINATOR 2
37. THE LAST SHARK (A.K.A. GREAT WHITE)
38. MS. 45
39. AVENGING FORCE
40. ENEMY TERRITORY
41. UNDER COVER
42. MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH
43. SHIVERS
44. THE ABOMINATION
45. THE GAMMA PEOPLE
46. THE LAST RUN
47. HICKEY & BOGGS
48. KISS AND THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK
49. FIGHTING MAD
50. WHITE LINE FEVER
51. MR. NO LEGS
52. GANG WARS
53. BRUTE FORCE
54. UNHOLY ROLLERS
55. DRIVE IN
56. THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE
57. SAVAGE HARVEST/ROAR (Double Feature)
58. THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL
59. ELVIRA MTV HALLOWEEN SPECIALS
60. A FISTFUL OF FINGERS
61. SHREDDER ORPHEUS
62. AMERICA 3000
63. DEATH CHEATERS
64. THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA
65. INNOCENT PREY
66. NEXT OF KIN (THE AUSTRALIAN ONE)
67. THE COMIC
68. SNAKE-EATER III: HIS LAW
69. SONNY BOY
70. WHEN NATURE CALLS
71. KARATE COP
72. KARATE COPS
73. BEYOND EVIL
74. BACK IN ACTION
75. MARTIAL LAW
76. SPACE RAIDERS
77. GET CRAZY
78. CHAINED HEAT
79. SCHLOCK
80. DEATH CHASE
81. MOONTRAP
82. THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
83. MEGAFORCE
84. RAD
85. THE SQUEEZE
86. THE PERFECT WEAPON
87. ROBBERY
88. WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
89. DOMINION
90. FEAR IS THE KEY
91. MISTER DIGITAL
92. HOMEBODIES
93. SHANKS
94. DAMNATION ALLEY
95. KILL OR BE KILLED
96. BLOOD BEACH
97. RAGE TO KILL
98. CODENAME: VENGEANCE
99. TIME RIDER
100. THE KEEP
101. COHEN & TATE
102. JACK'S BACK
103. THE ISLAND (THE ONE WITH MICHEAL CAINE AND THE PIRATES)
104. RAWHEAD REX
105. BLOOD RAGE
106. MUTANT HUNT
107. HARD GORE
108. DEATH WARMED UP
109. HUNTER'S BLOOD
110. HORRIBLE (A.K.A. ABSURD, ROSSO SANGUE, ANTHROPOPHAGUS 2)
111. CREATURE
112. ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES
113. NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980 BIGFOOT MOVIE)
114. LUNCHMEAT
115. BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER (A.K.A. NIGHT WARNING)
116. SHE
117. CITY LIMITS
118. MCBAIN
119. HANDS OF STEEL
120. LIGHT BLAST
121. ARENA
122. NEON CITY
123. NICE GIRLS DON'T EXPLODE
124. STEEL FRONTIER
125. CRASH AND BURN
126. CHINA O'BRIEN
127. CHINA O'BRIEN 2
128. DEMOLITION HIGH
129. CORPSE EATERS/TAKE AN EASY RIDE (DOUBLE FEATURE)
130. SAVAGE!
131. SAVAGE SISTERS
132. THE BERMUDA DEPTHS
133. DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (ORIGINAL TV MOVIE)
134. IMPULSE
135. GHOST TOWN
136. BEAKS: THE MOVIE
137. BARBARIAN QUEEN 2
138. BLADES
139. BLOOD FRENZY
140. BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW
141. BRAIN SMASHER: A LOVE STORY
142. RADIOACTIVE DREAMS
143. CAGE
144. CAGE 2
145. THE CALIFORNIA KID
146. CANNIBAL GIRLS
147. CELLAR DWELLER
148. CHERRY 2000
149. CRASH! (NOT THE CRONENBERG OR HAGGIS ONES)
150. CREATURE
151. DARK AGE
152. DEAD LINE
153. DEADLY PREY
154. DEADLY FORCE
155. NIGHT TRAP
156. DEATH VALLEY
157. DEF-CON 4
158. THE AFTERMATH
159. DEFIANCE
160. DIRTY DINGUS MAGEE
161. BAD RONALD
162. ENTHIRAN
163. FAREWELL, TERMINATOR
164. FATAL GAMES
165. FIGHTING BACK
166. FORCED ENTRY
167. WATER POWER
168. GATE II
169. GIALLO A VENEZIA
170. GLEAMING THE CUBE
171. GOBLIN
172. PHANTOM BROTHER
173. GODZILLA 1985 (JAPANESE VERSION)
174. GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE
175. HIGH ROAD TO CHINA
176. HUMONGOUS
177. I'LL NEVER DIE ALONE
178. INTREPIDOS PUNKS
179. LIQUID SKY
180. MAD MUTILATOR
181. DEVIL STORY
182. MULTIPLE MANIACS
183. MUTILATIONS
184. NEW YEAR'S EVIL
185. HOSPITAL MASSACRE
186. NIGHT VISITOR
187. OBLIVION
188. OBLIVION 2: BACKLASH
189. OUT OF CONTENTION
190. OUT OF THE DARK
191. TOBE HOOPER'S NIGHT TERRORS
192. PHANTOM RAIDERS
193. POOR WHITE TRASH II
194. PRISON
195. PSYCHO FROM TEXAS
196. LET'S GET HARRY
197. NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER 2
198. NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER 3
199. THE RANSOM
200. WAR PARTY
201. THE RIFT
202. THE SEA SERPENT
203. RITUALS
204. ROBOWAR
205. ROCKTOBER BLOOD
206. SAVAGE INTRUDER
207. SCANNERS 2 & 3 (DOUBLE FEATURE)
208. SCREAM FOR HELP
209. SCREAMTIME
210. SFX RETALIATOR
211. SHAKMA
212. SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 2
213. SLEDGEHAMMER (NOT THE TV SHOW)
214. THE STABILIZER
215. THE INTRUDER
216. STRIKE COMMANDO
217. STUNTS
218. SUPERSONIC MAN
219. T.A.G.: THE ASSASSINATION GAME
220. TENTACLES
221. THE BOOGENS
222. THE CARPENTER
223. THE CHALLENGE
224. THE POWER
225. THE PREY
226. BERSERKER
227. THE SLAYER
228. THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN
229. TRAPPED (TV MOVIE)
230. TRAPPED
231. DYING ROOM ONLY
232. TUFF TURF
233. SPLIT IMAGE
234. UNMASKED PART 25
235. WITHOUT WARNING
236. YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE
237. YOUNG WARRIORS
238. THE ZERO BOYS
239. NO HOLDS BARRED
240. TICKS
241. R.O.T.O.R.
242. KILLER ELEPHANTS ON A KUNG FU RAMPAGE
243. BRUCE LEE VS. GAY POWER
244. THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN
245. FIRSTBORN
246. OUT OF BOUNDS

Wrestlemaniac

2010-10-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or is there a whole new stratum of horror movies out there these days? They’re straight-to-video, but unlike the straight-to-video of old, they actually look like they might be halfway decent. They’ve got professional covers and decent photography and an overall level of competence that we’ve never seen in the straight-to-video market.

I mean, usually these things are just tax write-offs, you know? The production company knows that they can get X amount of money by selling their movie to Blockbuster, who just wants to fill up their shelves with as much recent product as possible, since no one ever looks past the New Release section. So as long as the production company spends less than X amount on the movie, they’re guaranteed a profit even if no one ever sees it. With that kind of business model, there isn’t a lot of incentive to make these things watchable. They just need a concept that’ll look good on the box. Alien Vampires. Vampire Predators. Predator Zombies. Zombie Aliens. You know what I’m talking about. They’re just sitting there on the shelf, trying to pretend like they star Gary Busey when everybody knows they could only afford to shoot with him for one day. They don’t even look bad enough to be fun. They just look tired and desperate and world-weary, like old strippers who don’t even care if you look at them anymore.

But now we’ve got this new breed of straight-to-video. I think it all started with the After Dark series. You know, it was a film festival of eight horror movies that nobody would have seen separately, but together, they looked like a good package deal. It worked with the Spice Girls, so why not horror movies? Personally, I feel like a bad horror fan because I haven’t seen a single one of these things. They tried to make them out to be like Horrorpalooza or some shit, but I wasn’t fooled. I know straight-to-video horror movies when I see ’em. I wasn’t gonna let any goddamn marketing department trick me into paying to see them in a theater like they were real movies. I don’t care how many Suicide Girls with tattooed titties were in the audience.

So then these things came to DVD where they should have been in the first place, and I guess the studios saw that there was some money to be made feeding cheap (but not cheap-looking) horror movies to a limited but devoted audience, because now they’ve all got their own horror imprints that have words like "Extreme" or "Raw" in their names. They usually brag about their movies being unrated, which technically just means that they never bothered to send them to the MPAA, since straight-to-video movies don’t have to be rated. It’s like Sprite bragging about being decaffeinated.

I don’t know how I feel about this trend. Sure, I’m glad that there are a lot more horror movies out there and that they don’t have the kinds of restrictions that theatrical horror movies have. But I also think we’re losing something. To me, it takes some of the fun out of it when even straight-to-video horror movies look slick. I mean, with the digital tools available today, there’s no reason for a movie to look like crap. Everything can be color-corrected and tweaked and desaturated to death until your little B horror movie looks like Bad Boys II. It seems weird for me to argue for incompetence as a stylistic choice, but the fact of the matter is, half of what made low-budget seventies and early eighties horror scary was that it looked and sounded like shit. The photography was dirty, the meat-cleaver editing was jarring, and the score sounded like it was recorded in some porn addict’s basement. It made everything unpredictable. You never knew what the fuck was going to happen, because you didn’t know what kind of amateur lunatic was behind the camera. You felt like you just might be in the hands of a madman. Or at the very least, an Italian cokehead. But when everything looks nice and professional, you feel safe. You know that it’s just some well-adjusted 32-year-old film school grad who’s been first-ADing for a while, but he found some commercial producers with some foreign backing who wanted to break into features so they gave him the shot to direct because they thought his script was marketable. I’m serious. Listen to the commentary on any of these things and they make the whole process sound about as sordid as opening up a Lenscrafters franchise.

Anyway, this is a lot of baggage to dump on top of Wrestlemaniac, which is the story of a bunch of idiots who get murdered by a luchadore in a Mexican ghost town. I don’t have to explain the deal with Mexican wrestlers, who have kind of replaced midgets as the new cinematic code for absurdity. If you’ve never seen a real Mexican wrestling movie, you kind of owe it to yourself. My favorite parts are when the luchadore is just doing normal shit, like reading a book or enjoying a candlelit dinner with his ladyfriend, but he’s still got the mask on and nobody thinks that’s weird.

Anyway, it’s only gringos (such as the assholes who made Wrestlemaniac) who think luchadores are funny. In Mexico, they’re folk heroes who stand up for the common man. They fight corruption and injustice, as well as Martians. They give hope to the hopeless and provide generations of Mexican children with positive role models. So it’s kind of a dick move to take all that noble history and turn it into a cheesy slasher movie. It’s like making a killer Superman movie.

Aw, who am I kidding? This is a brilliant idea. The execution is only adequate, but it’s still a brilliant idea. What it’s about is this van full of total douchebags who are driving down to Mexico to make a porno. I don’t know why they couldn’t just shoot it in Pasadena or something, but I’m sure there were some real good reasons. Union problems, maybe. The jizzmoppers local wanted too much money.

Now, right away you know you’re in trouble, because these characters are annoying as balls. Everything they say is self-consciously vulgar and mean-spirited, and yeah, it’s supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but since when did "tongue-in-cheek" mean "cringe-inducing"? Shit, the very first line of dialogue is about the mythical sex move known as the Dirty Sanchez. Way to ruin that term, movie. That’s almost as bad as when American Pie blew up milf’s spot.

The only guy who’s even kind of likeable is the fat Mexican-American cameraman, who’s played by the dude they hired because Hugo from Lost was already booked. He’s the one who knows all about the Mexican ghost town of La Sangre de Dios, where legend has it that a luchadore named El Mascarado was imprisoned after he went crazy 40 years ago and started killing his opponents in the ring.

Part of the problem with this beginning part is that, like those Mexican restaurants all over New York that are run by Chinese people, there are no actual Mexicans in it. The porn douches go to a rundown gas station where the attendant claims to be Mexican, but he’s played by the white mongoloid-looking dude who was in House of 1000 Corpses. And they don’t even try to make him look, dress, or act Mexican. In fact, the only Mexican in the whole movie is El Mascarado himself, who’s played by the original Rey Mysterio (not the one in the WWE, who’s actually this guy’s nephew). He’s an older dude, so he’s got the classic Mexican wrestler build, all chest and gut. I have no complaints about Rey Mysterio whatsoever. He’s a mean motherfucker, and he looks great stomping on people and throwing them through breakaway furniture. But while he’s an awful lot of Mexican, he’s still not enough Mexican to allow this movie to fully exploit its premise. I mean, how many killer Mexican wrestler movies is the universe going to allow? Not many, I’m saying. Possibly just this one. That’s a big responsibility, movie, and I’m sorry to say, you fumbled it. You’re just not Mexican enough. You’re a Chexican chimichanga: tasty, but not authentic.

But all is not lost. Once the horror kicks in, I liked Wrestlemaniac quite a bit. It sort of reminded me of the obscure Spanish film Who Can Kill A Child? (Answer: A dude with a machine gun. He can kill the fuck out a child) in that a lot of it takes place in this deserted village in broad daylight. Personally, I like daytime horror movies because they remove the audience’s subconscious belief that dawn brings safety. When some maniac is stalking you in the middle of the afternoon, you’re pretty much fucked. I also like the Scooby Doo aspect of it, with this group of young people in an awesome custom van (my favorite character in the movie) going to a spooky place and investigating a local legend. Granted, Scooby Doo never had any lesbian scenes, but we all know the subtext was there.

And like I said, having a Mexican wrestler play Jason is a brilliant idea. El Mascarado’s specialty is beating people to a pulp and then ripping their faces off with his bare hands. It’s like removing a luchadore’s mask after he’s defeated, which is the ultimate humiliation. As the fat guy tells us, if a luchadore’s face is revealed to the public, he must retire in disgrace. So that’s how the fat guy figures out El Mascarado’s weakness: You gotta rip his mask off. Easier said than done, but at least there are some rules to this shit.

Speaking of the fat guy, he grew on me as the movie progressed. I think it was when he said that the reason he knew how to navigate around the ghost town, uncover secrets, and solve the mystery was that he was a veteran Dungeons & Dragons player. I mean, it kinda makes sense. If nothing else, D&D teaches you to pay attention to your surroundings and use the information you gain to solve the problems that you face, which is all important if you want to live through a horror movie. I have an ex-girlfriend who’s going to be very happy to learn that all those years tossing around 20-sided dice weren’t just providing her with a nonstop supply of crush-stricken troglodorks drooling over her (admittedly drool-worthy) rack; they were also teaching her valuable anti-luchadore survival skills.

Anyway, the beginning of the movie definitely leans too far into the winky-winky comedy realm, but by the end, they’ve got the balance right. It’s not completely straight-faced, but it’s serious enough that you can actually get into the story unironically. The face-rippings are nice and gross, and there’s a satisfying scene where the most annoying character in the movie gets tossed around like a sack of peat moss, then has his teeth knocked out on a stone ledge, Profondo Rosso-style. I do think there could have been more kills, more wrestling, and more wrestling-related gore, like heads getting clotheslined off and legs getting figure-four-leglocked into bloody splinters. But I have to give it to the director for his clean, efficient style. There’s no nu-horror twitchiness to the cinematography or editing. This guy has studied his Carpenter. He’s got the smooth, gliding Steadicam down, which lets him build suspense, establish geography, and, you know, let the audience see what the fuck is going on. And he throws in at least seven completely gratuitous ass-cam shots. That’s what Joe Bob Briggs would call "doing things the drive-in way."

I was especially impressed to learn that they were supposed to film the movie in an insane asylum, but then the day before the shoot, they lost the location, so they moved to a fake Mexican ghost town outside of L.A. two days later and rewrote the script on the fly. All things considered, they pulled it together pretty well. So maybe I was jumping the gun earlier when I complained about how these new straight-to-video horror movies are too professional. I guess there’s still a bunch of half-assery going on behind the scenes, even when the finished product ends up looking like a commercial for an allergy medication.

Kiltro

2010-10-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

One of my great failings as a human being is that I’ve never been much of a world traveler. But that’s okay, because who needs to actually go to far-off places when you can just watch kung fu movies?

Lately, I’ve been big into exploring what I call the Kung Fu of Many Nations. In addition to the standard Chinese and Japanese kung fu, I’ve seen French kung fu, German kung fu, Thai kung fu, Russian kung fu, Vietnamese kung fu, Australian kung fu, Indonesian kung fu, Italian kung fu, Filipino kung fu, and Korean kung fu. And if Mexican wrestling movies count as kung fu, then by God, I have seen Mexican kung fu. I honestly believe that there is only one thing that has the power to bring humanity together as a global family, and that is the universal language of motherfuckers getting kicked in the head.

The thing I love about kung fu movies from non-kung fu producing nations is the sheer chutzpah of it all. Making a kung fu movie is not a simple task. You need a lot of people with a lot of highly specific skills and enormous balls. And when you’re from somewhere that doesn’t really have much of a filmmaking infrastructure in place, it’s even harder. But that doesn’t stop some really dedicated, very insane people from putting their very lives on the line to get their feet in the door of international ass-kicking. And that’s what I love about today’s movie.

Kiltro is the very first Chilean kung fu movie I’ve ever seen, though I gather there are a few that came before and after it, all starring this same dude, Marko Zaror. He’s an award-winning stuntman (he got the Taurus for Best Overall Stunt for rolling down that cliff in The Rundown) who seems to have been building his own stunt school down in Chile for most of the decade. Based on Kiltro, I’m going to watch every single movie this guy makes until he pulls a Jackie Chan and starts making CGI comedies co-starring Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cleavage. I’m not saying that Chile is the new Thailand (the stunts are nowhere near as jaw-dropping, but give them time), but they’ve got a scrappy, don’t-give-a-fuck kind of energy that really appeals to me.

Since this is my first Chilean kung fu movie, I don’t know if they all start out with a robed dwarf hanging out in a cave, but this one sure does. We also get some mystical narration about how love is the source of hate and anger and all of mankind’s worst instincts. Then, to illustrate some of those instincts, it cuts right to one of those soul-killing neon-lit dance clubs full of people who were taught how to dress by Seth Green’s character in Can’t Hardly Wait. It’s truly terrifying. If this is the kind of shit that love causes, man, count me out.

There, we meet our hero, Zami. He’s a big goofy dude who likes to wear hoodies and raver pants that are so big on him that he looks like he’s melting. He also has the most unfortunate haircut I’ve ever seen on an action star who wasn’t Brian Bosworth. It’s this long, greasy WWF-looking mullet with the ends dyed bright red. But don’t worry, it’s all part of his character development. Although you are not expected to think he’s cool at this point in the movie, he does have sort of an Aztec nobility in his facial structure, with a big, proud, prominent nose. (I am tres français in that I believe that the nose is the soul of the face.) Combined with a beefy athleticism that makes you think that he probably smells like sweat every single second of his life, you right away believe that this character is capable of more than he’s currently displaying.

Which is good, because what he’s doing in that night club is staring angrily at this foxy Korean chick who’s dancing with a fratty-lookin’ douche named The Maniac. Zami challenges him to a fight the next day and knocks him the fuck out with one kick. It’s a sloppy little capoeira bout that takes place in some godforsaken post-urban wasteland. This fight is the movie’s great fake-out, because it’s so small and low-key that it gives no hint of the superpowered insanity to come.

See, what happened was, two years earlier, Zami rescued this girl Kim from some rapists, and he’s been in love with her ever since. But she won’t give him the time of day, probably because he keeps kicking the crap out of every guy who even looks at her. Even when he beats up every student in her father’s dojo with his own brand of clumsy but brutal street fighting, she isn’t interested. Her father tells him that he’s wasting his potential, especially since Zami’s father was a great martial artist (this comes as news to Zami).

So what we seem to have here is a teen wish-fulfillment movie where a loser has one special but seemingly useless skill (beating the living shit out of people) but nobody takes him seriously, especially the beautiful but quirky girl that he’s in love with. He’s like Ducky from Pretty In Pink if Ducky knew kung fu (Ducky totally should have known kung fu). So far, so corny. But the weird thing is, this shit actually works on its own terms. Maybe it’s because the movie takes place in the slums of Santiago, where there’s garbage in the streets and graffiti on every wall. It makes you give more of a shit about this dude’s problems than you would if he lived in some John Hughesian upper-middle-class wonderland. The excellent location work grounds the clichéd story in an exotic but down-to-earth reality.

So Zami’s friend is sick of seeing him moping around like a little bitch, so he brings him to see this Arab dude, who tells him a story of a guy whose love for a woman turned into possession, which then turned into fear. (This is what we used to call a "theme" in my college literature classes.) Zami says that he’s not afraid, so the Arab says, "Then you know what to do."

I didn’t think that was very helpful advice, but it turns out that Zami actually does know what to do. He goes right to the shop where Kim works and apologizes for beating up all of her boyfriends. Then he says the most romantic line that has ever been uttered in a kung fu movie (and possibly in any movie ever): "Every kick I’ve thrown has been for you." This chick’s heart must be made of adamantium or some shit for it not to melt right there. She should have been like, "You had me at ’kick.’" But no, instead, she tells him that she’s started dating The Maniac, and, in a stroke of total genius, the guitar-and-drums intro of David Bowie’s "Modern Love" kicks in and there’s one continuous tracking shot as Zami punch-dances out his despair by sprinting through the streets. I don’t know how this movie could afford the rights to this song, but I’d like to think that Bowie lowered his usual rate for this production because of his commitment to the advancement of the Kung Fu of Many Nations. If that’s the case, then B-Movie of the Day salutes you, David Bowie. If not, well, "Golden Years" is a pretty awesome song. You’ll always have that.

Then Count Dracula shows up with his posse of Flock of Seagulls vampires. Count Dracula is a tall bearded man with a cape and a rattail who likes to slice people up with his cane-sword. We’ve seen that before plenty of times, but as a bonus, he also likes to gouge out their gizzards with the claw handle of the cane, making great gouts of CGI squirt out. I didn’t realize that Chilean people bled zeroes and ones, but that just shows my ignorance.

Turns out that Count Dracula is this dude who is seeking revenge on all of the members of this mystical kung fu sect because one of them (Kim’s dad) stole his wife (Kim’s mom, deceased) from him many years ago. He’s the son-in-law of that advice-giving Arab dude (the cast is a real melting pot of South Americans, Asians, and Middle Easterners. Plus Count Dracula, who I believe is Romanian, if I’m not mistaken). So Count Dracula fucking destroys all of the students in Kim’s dad’s dojo (I don’t think Kim’s dad is a very good sensei. He seems like a cool guy, but I’m saying) and beats the shit out of Zami. Luckily, the dwarf from the beginning of the movie shows up and takes Zami and Kim back to his cave by the beach, but he can’t stop Count Dracula from kidnapping Kim’s dad and hanging him from the ceiling of his warehouse by hooks in his back, Ichi the Killer style. (No hot grease, though.)

Meanwhile, the dwarf, looking like a miniature little Charlton Heston, explains the whole deal to Zami and sends him to the north to get trained by this other sect member who may or may not really be Zami’s estranged father. Who knows? Always in motion is the future. When Zami asks why Yoda Moses can’t just kick Count Dracula’s ass himself, he says the best line in the movie: "Look at me. I’m old and I’m a dwarf." Which is a pretty good excuse for getting out of fighting Count Dracula, if you ask me. I’m gonna have to remember that one.

So Zami goes off on his quest. I don’t know how this movie managed to go from Golden State to Bulletproof Monk inside of five minutes, but it found a way, and I applaud it for that.

After Zami travels through some incredibly beautiful Chilean sunsets (it’s almost cheating to put a sunset in your movie), he finds his drunk maybe-dad, and there’s a lengthy training sequence out in a phony desert that looks like the set of Three Amigos. He takes some sort of hallucinogenic to temporarily wipe his memory clean, and there’s some pretty good cosmic hoodoo, mostly Buddhist-derived, with a little Native American mysticism throw in. It’s hard to do these kinds of scenes without making me think of On Deadly Ground, where Steven Seagal goes on a vision quest and fights his spirit bear, but I don’t blame Kiltro. That’s just what happens when you walk in the shadow of giants.

Anyway, Zami learns how to tap into his Z-state, which allows him to act without thought. That gives him super humongous ass-kicking powers, which come in handy because Count Dracula has finally gotten his shit together and kidnapped Kim.

So Zami paints himself up like the Ultimate Warrior and goes on the warpath. And that’s when the kung fu starts in earnest. He’s a big guy, six foot or so, but he can do crazy triple-kicks and full-air flips with no wires. I saw the training footage of this fight, and this dude is the real deal. He’s no Tony Jaa, but for his size, he’s pretty incredible. He takes out about a hundred guys in an alley, knocking some of them 20 feet through the air. He’s also got a blade on his heel that lets him cut like 50 throats in a row, filling the air with digital plasma. It’s kind of weird to think of the mopey bastard in the hoodie from the beginning of the movie chopping motherfuckers’ heads off without a second thought, but I guess that’s what the Z-state does for you. It’s like spiritual Red Bull.

Then there’s the final showdown with Count Dracula, accompanied by epic spaghetti western guitars that were clearly influenced by Robert Rodriguez’s Mariachi Trilogy. It’s a welcome change from the Zamfir music that was playing during the training montage, but really, even that wasn’t so bad. I like the music in this movie. It mostly sounds like real people playing real instruments, not some Casio shit like you usually get in low-budget action flicks.

Anyway, this is an excellent movie with a lot of heart, and it gets a big boost from some really incredible Chilean scenery. We get to see a lot of Chile, from the slums to the mountains, and it really is a gorgeous place. I don’t know why more movies don’t get shot in Chile. In fact, I don’t know anything about Chile. I’m just a spoiled American who spends all his time watching DVDs. Jesus Christ, I’m wasting my life. What a pathetic individual I am. In fact, fuck this blog. I’m gonna go do something with my time on this earth. See y’all in the Z-state.

The Sword and the Sorceror

2010-10-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

Does it make me a bad person that I love rip-offs? Show me the most blatantly mercenary cash-in on a popular trend and I’ll show you a fun night at the movies. The thing I love about them is that they take whatever formula was created by the progenitor of the trend and boil it down to its most superficial elements. For example, what made the original Matrix such a great movie was the whole concept of a virtual reality world where anything was possible, even gravity-defying kung fu. But all the people who ripped it off saw was the pretty people flipping around on wires, so for the next six or seven years, we got dozens of movies where people could do crazy Matrix shit for no real reason besides the fact that it looked cool. They copied the trappings, but not the point behind them.

In that sense, many rip-offs are more efficient entertainment delivery systems than the movies that inspired them. So even though Halloween is a far better movie than any of the Friday the 13th movies, I still watch the latter more often than the former. Sometimes you just don’t want to deal with piddly details like craft and suspense and storytelling competence. You just want to skip to the good stuff.

Granted, it usually takes a few years for me to get over the initial outrage I feel at the unoriginality of it all, but that’s cool. Fine cheese must be aged, anyway.

Which brings us to The Sword and the Sorcerer, as blatant a Conan rip-off as you’re likely to find. Conan the Barbarian was made by John Milius, the gun-toting right wing maniac (this is meant as an observation, not a criticism) who also directed the Cold War classic Red Dawn. He was so sick of the namby-pambiness of his hippie peers that he made a movie glorifying the concept of "Might makes right." It was an ode to a simpler, more primal, and, to Milius’ way of thinking, more noble world.

So there was all this other shit going on in Conan, but all the people who copied it saw was a muscley dude, some swordplay, and a bunch of wenches in furry underpants with their titties hanging out. So that’s what we get in The Sword and the Sorcerer and its ilk. On the Conan rip-off scale, I’d say it’s nowhere near as good as The Beastmaster, but its way better than The Dungeonmaster. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

The movie begins with some evil dudes in robes entering a paper mache cave. Then this Grace Jones-looking broad starts chanting and writhing, and the whole time, you’re wondering when the blue lasers are going to show up. The eighties were all about blue lasers.

But instead, they throw you a curveball by having rubber faces appear in the dirt. Then some kind of glop demon arises out of a pool of mud. He’s played by Richard Moll of Night Court fame, who was also in The Dungeonmaster. In that one, he was your standard evil sorcerer, but in this one, he’s a much more complex character. He’s an evil sorcerer with the face of a gargoyle.

So the deal is that this evil king Cromwell wants to use the Glop Demon’s black magic to take over a neighboring kingdom. To prove that he has the power to do so, El Gloppo uses his mind to rip the Grace Jones chick’s heart out and make it fly across the room into his outstretched hand. It’s a complete perversion of the Jedi mind trick. He might as well be using it to look under chicks’ skirts. (In the movie’s defense, his fingernails glow orange when he does this. This is a completely new twist on the classic blue laser optical effect, so maybe it’s not fair to call this movie a rip-off. Orange and blue are two completely different colors, after all.)

Anyway, the king is played by the low-rent Rutger Hauer knockoff who was also the head villain in the Chuck Norris classic Invasion USA. In that one, he shot a guy in the balls six or seven times to prove how evil he was. In this one, he does it by betraying the Glop Demon after he uses his magic to wipe out the king’s enemies with an ill-defined plague. Cromwell stabs him with a dagger, so Ol’ Gloppy jumps off a cliff. I don’t know, I think maybe this Cromwell guy is kind of a jerk. Maybe you just have to get to know him.

Anyway, the king of the country that Cromwell is invading doesn’t know about this shit because it’s olden times and text messaging hadn’t been invented yet. Sup king? Wear u @? Were all dead. Chk u later, k? That would have saved the king a lot of trouble, but what are you gonna do? So while his kingdom is being invaded, he’s just hanging out in a fake gray beard with his gray-wigged wife. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just hire legitimately old people to play these parts, but I wasn’t there on the set that day so I don’t know what kind of compromises had to be made in order to bring the singular vision of director Albert Pyun (Dollman, Kickboxer 2 and 4) to the screen.

But then the king’s melty-faced son shows up with the news, so the rest of the family flee. The younger prince, Talon, gets to carry the family sword, which is this ridiculous thing that has three full-sized parallel blades. It looks just like a much larger version of the knife hand that the villain screws onto his stump at the end of Enter the Dragon. All that steel must make it weigh about 80 pounds, but the extra weight is worth it because the two side blades can shoot out and impale people so hard that they fly backward about ten feet. It looks like there’s some sort of rudimentary rocket propulsion going on in there, which is an incredible feat of engineering, if you think about it. I wondered what they used for fuel? It’s a shame that this technology has been lost to the ages.

Anyway, even with his triple-bladed rocket sword, Talon can’t save his mom and dad from getting decapitated by Cromwell and his goons, so he flees and grows up to be your standard wandering sword-for-hire in a gigantic fur pimp coat. Then he returns home with his band of warriors, one of whom is played by the bald dude from Murphy Brown. Remember when the worst thing going on in this country was Dan Quayle’s beef with television’s depiction of unwed moms? Man, I miss the nineties sometimes.

So Talon goes to the tavern and learns that there’s an uprising against Cromwell, led by his father’s adviser’s son, whom the people regard as the rightful heir to the throne. This is where you realize that you don’t know what the fuck Talon thinks he’s doing. Since he’s actually the rightful heir, you’d think he’d want to get that shit cleared up. Or at least help out the rebellion somehow. Or some shit. I don’t know. But instead, he just gets drunk until the rebellion leader gets captured. Then Talon has to rescue this hot brunette from a bunch of rapists by beating them up with a turkey leg. She turns out to be the sister of the rebellion leader, so she tries to hire him to rescue her brother. But Talon doesn’t want money. Talon wants pussy. So the chick agrees to screw him in exchange for his services. But the catch is, he’s got to do the job first. Typical. Sure, he rescued her from those rapists, but what has he done for her lately?

Seriously, though, what the fuck is going on with this Talon dude? When he comes back home, he says he has "unfinished business" to take care of (movie code for "revenge") but then all he wants is to bone this wench. It’s like nobody showed him the beginning of the movie, so he doesn’t know that he’s a prince. He really just thinks he’s in town to get laid. Then he finally comes face to face with Cromwell, and a handy flashback reminds him of what the fuck he’s supposed to be doing. But even then, he doesn’t even reveal himself to be the real prince at the end of the movie. He just screws the chick and lets her brother be the king so he can ride off and continue to be an irresponsible lout. Way to piss away your father’s legacy, dude. Conan would never do that. Hell, even Ator the Flying Eagle wouldn’t pull that shit.

But that’s the kind of dude we’re dealing with here: a total chump. Talon keeps getting captured, forcing all of the other characters in the movie to rescue him. Luckily, everywhere he goes, people recognize him and talk about how they owe him for that time he saved their asses. I think they had to put these parts in because, otherwise, there’s very little evidence of his badass credentials in the movie. You never even get to see him chop someone into four parts with his three-bladed sword. I mean, it was pretty cool when he got crucified and then yanked out the spikes with his bare hands, but still. You need to earn this hero shit, Talon. You don’t just get it by default because you’ve got a wacky novelty sword.

There really isn’t much else to say about this movie. There’s a twist involving the Glop Demon that you’d have to be a total fucking douchebag not to see coming (no disrespect to any total fucking douchebags who might be reading this), a cameo by the dude who gets chopped up in the propeller in Raiders of the Lost Ark (this time, he gets his face sanded off by pedal-operated grindstone, but the funny part is, he keeps working the pedal even as he’s getting murderated. That’s dedication for you.), and your textbook topless harem scene (prior to this, the movie had been noticeably light on boobage).

Basically, you get what you’d expect out of a movie called The Sword and the Sorcerer. Namely, a) a sword; and b) a sorcerer. Its story checks out. Unlike that movie The Squid and the Whale, which, unless my interpretation is way off, wasn’t really about squids and whales at all. Maybe they’re saving that for the sequel, where the dickhead divorced dude gets eaten by a whale, so his son has to team up with a giant squid to rescue him. I’m not sure what that has to do with The Sword and the Sorcerer, but I’m just saying. The Squid and the Whale 2: This Time There’s Actually a Squid and a Whale would rule.

Anyway, if you like Conan rip-offs, you could do worse. Deathstalker, for instance. How the fuck do you stalk death? Does that mean you’re suicidal or that you’re so the opposite of suicidal that you’re actually trying to hunt and kill death itself? I don’t get it, man. The movie should have been called Dudechopper, because that’s all the hero does. I don’t mind a rip-off; it’s the dishonesty I can’t stand.

Sukiyaki Western: Django

2010-10-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

Dude, I could tell you all about this movie, but I think you’re still just gonna have to see it for yourself. What it is is your basic spaghetti western homage directed by Takashi Miike (pronounced "mee-kay," I’m told), the insanely prolific sicko behind such cinematic mind-fucks as Audition and Ichi the Killer. Right there, that oughtta tell you that you’re in for some seriously weird shit. This is the guy who made somebody’s claymation uvula sing in The Happiness of the Katakuris. And that’s the closest thing he’s ever made to a movie that normal people could watch. To quote Peter Weller in the criminally underrated Shakedown, he is "new to the planet."

But it gets weirder. Not only is Sukiyaki Western: Django a Japanese western (as if you couldn’t tell from the title), but it’s a Japanese western that’s performed in the most heavily accented English you’ve ever heard in your life. They sound like Japanese hair metal band Loudness singing Oh-whoah! Lock and loll clazy ni-i-ight! I could only catch every third or fourth word, but that’s okay. Miike helpfully color-coded the movie so you could understand it visually.

See, people are gonna call this your standard Fistful of Dollars plot, where a mysterious stranger strolls into a town that is completely controlled by two warring gangs and proceeds to play both sides against the middle. Other, snootier people are going to call it the Yojimbo plot, because it came first and it’s the same movie, only with a ronin instead of a gunfighter. But I’m gonna take it all the way back to the beginning and call it the Red Harvest plot, since that’s the Dashiell Hammett book that they’re all based on. So there.

Anyway, I only bring this up to show that even when you can’t understand a word the characters are saying, you still know what’s going on because it’s such a timeless story. And besides, one gang wears red and the other wears white, so you can always tell who’s on what side. They all dress like gay post-apocalyptic anime motocross Furious Five members, but the white side is run by this glam nancyboy swordsman who only longs for a worthy opponent, while the red side is controlled by a complete moron thug pistolero who likes to take naps in the middle of battles. (He’s got the best line in the movie. After he splatters this dude’s blood all over the dude’s wife’s face, he says, "My favorite color. It looks goooood on you.") They’re both good villains, but the white guy is far more impressive. He’s able to shoot people from miles away by aiming into the wind so that his bullets take about 10 seconds to curve around and hit their target. Very cool.

So into this town rides this shadowy dude who’s quick on the draw and that’s about it. Not only does he have no character development whatsoever, but he has the worst accent in the movie. Honestly, I think that’s why they hired him. Just to fuck with you.

Did I mention that Quentin Tarantino plays two parts in this movie (well, two and a half if you count the flashbacks)? And that he also speaks with a heavy Japanese accent? He plays a badass gunfighter at the very beginning that you think is going to be the narrator who bookends the movie, sort of a tall-tale thing, except that he never comes back at the end. That negates the entire purpose of having bookends. If you only had one bookend, all of your books would tip over and fall onto the floor. But Miike doesn’t give a shit about your books. Let ’em fall, he says. Fuck your books. That’s the kind of dude we’re dealing with here. A goddamn anarchist.

Quentin (I call him Quentin because we’re old friends from all those DVD special features I watched) does shoot at least six people, though, splattering one of them all over an obviously fake painted backdrop of a sunset. And he does it all while tossing around a bloody rattlesnake egg that he stole from a CGI hawk (Technical note: This movie uses the vintage "hawk scream" sound effect more often than any movie since Steven Seagal’s classic directorial debut, On Deadly Ground). He looks like he’s having a fucking ball. Then he comes back at the halfway point, wearing about thirty pounds of latex as this ancient arms dealer in a clanky clockwork wheelchair. Quentin’s pseudo-Shatnerian acting style is almost always distracting, but this is without a doubt his best performance since From Dusk Til Dawn. There’s one part where, with just a look, he conveys a real sense of loss under all that makeup, and it’s actually kind of affecting. You’re like, Shit, Quentin, I didn’t know you had it in you. It’s a good moment because, for once, he doesn’t just seem like Quentin Tarantino. He seems like a real dude having a real emotion. Good job, man. Now can you please stop fucking around with shit like this and give us that four-hour war movie with Adam Sandler and Arnold Schwarzeneggar that you’ve been threatening to unleash on us since the late nineties? Please put down the bong and pick up the laptop. Do it for the children.

(Ed. note: Obviously this reference is woefully outdated, but I kept it for historical-type purposes.)

Anyway, this movie is full of crazy shit. There’s a scene where a hot chick who looks exactly like What’s-Her-Face from Lost (No, not just because they’re both Asian. God, I can’t believe you would even say something like that. That’s fucked up, man. I’m not sure we can be friends anymore.) does a weird interpretive dance, then lays down on the floor and pulls a foot-long string of jingle bells out of her throat. There’s one character who gets beat up and bullied by his own split personality, and another who gets his balls shot off so he becomes a crazy leaping eunuch. There’s a completely out-of-left field shot of a red-and-white mottled fetus growing out of a rose. Not to mention it’s the only movie ever where the title appears on giant CGI tofu. (This is almost as protein-rich a title card as Ichi the Killer, where the movie’s name gets spelled out in the main character’s cumshot.)

Despite the randomness, Sukiyaki Western still functions as a proper action movie, with lots of well-choreographed fistfights and shootouts. A lot of dynamite gets tossed around, and obviously, there’s one of those Civil War gatling guns that you have to crank like an old-timey movie camera. It also goes without saying that this gatling gun is stored in a coffin. You knew that because the word "Django" is in the title. For the uninitiated, Django was an old spaghetti western about a dude who dragged around a gatling gun in a coffin. It was so popular that the ever-imitative Italians made about a thousand rip-offs with the word "Django" in the title, even though only one of them (Django Returns) had anything to do with the original. "Django" kind of became code for "bad-ass western." So you can see that Miike is consciously playing with cinematic myth here. He even has a Japanese cover of the classic Django theme song over the end credits.

The movie’s main joke is that people with speaking parts can get shot about a million times before they die, while non-speaking extras go down easily and by the dozen. Miike brings this so far that it becomes like a Family Guy joke. It goes on so long that it’s funny, but then it goes too far and stops being funny, but then it keeps going until it becomes funny again. Then it goes on so much longer that you’re not sure it’s even supposed to be funny anymore, but then it goes on so much longer than that that it becomes even funnier than it was in the first place. Like the puking scene in Team America times 9/11 times a thousand.

Anyway, you should totally check this one out. It has a lot in common with Miike’s yakuza movies, in that the pace vacillates between rapid-fire sensory overload and lugubrious banality. (If you don’t know what "lugubrious" means, it means "mournful." If you did know, you’re a lot smarter than I was until about 9:30 last night when I looked it up.) It’s a lot easier to take than most of those movies, though, since he isn’t really going for the throat with the shock tactics like he usually does. The female characters (including the absolute hottest grandma in film history) don’t exactly get off easy, but at least they get to keep their nipples this time. For a space mutant like Takashi Miike, this might as well be Pretty Woman.

Visting Hours

2010-10-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

Today we’ve got Visiting Hours, a semi-classy Canadian slasher flick from the early eighties. It’s about this murderous misogynist (played by Villain Hall of Famer Michael Ironside, whose evil eyebrows make him creepy even when he’s playing good guys) who gets so pissed off about this TV anchorwoman telling the world its okay for women to use lethal force to defend themselves against the psychos who try to rape and kill them that he decides to shut her up for good. So he breaks into her house and murders her maid (off camera), then strips to the buff and drapes himself with all of her jewelry until he looks like Xerxes from 300. When she comes home, he stabs her up pretty good, but she lives, so he spends the rest of the movie trying to get to her in the hospital, which must have the worst security ever, considering how many times this clearly psychotic motherfucker waltzes in and out. I’ve heard bad things about the Canadian healthcare system, but jesus.

The movie’s just okay, though I did like the unexpected girl power message they snuck in. While all the men in authority are saying that everything is under control, the anchorwoman teams up with a feisty single-mom nurse and a victimized New Wave chick with frizzy hair. These sisters are doing it for themselves. Most slasher movies have a hidden feminist theme, but this one seems to be a bit more earnest about it. It’s above-par for the slasher genre in terms of cinematography and acting (Did I mention that William Shatner is in it, wearing the most fabulous belted suede jacket I’ve ever seen?) but really light on the gore. It does point out a couple of interesting things, though.

First is the difference between the urban and rural slasher movie. In the rural slasher, the killer is usually a deformed, asexual mongoloid who kills people for some vague sort of revenge. My man Jay Voorhees is obviously the poster child for this type of slasher, but other examples are Madman Mars from Madman and Victor Crowley from Hatchet.

By contrast, the urban slasher is generally more realistic. He’s just your everyday sexual predator who kills women because he enjoys it. Examples of this are notorious video nasties like Maniac, The Toolbox Murders, and Eyes of a Stranger. In these movies, the killer isn’t a vengeful ghoul from beyond the grave. He’s just some dude. That’s what makes him scary. Instead of being an eight-foot-tall monster, he could be any greasy white guy on the street.

These are the movies that bore the brunt of the early eighties uproar over cinematic violence, but to me, they’re much less ideologically offensive than modern-day psycho-killer movies. Back then, there was no way that you could identify with the killers, who were portrayed as deranged outcasts. Granted, you wanted to see the gore that they left in their wakes, but more than that, you wanted to see these sick fuckers pay. No one ever watched one of these movies and said, "Man, I want to be just like that sweaty guy with the receding hairline and filthy apartment." Urban slashers were never "cool." They didn’t have iconic accessories like Jason, and they weren’t driven to insanity like Cropsy in The Burning. They were just sick fucks with bad hair and weight problems. They were pathetic and, sadly, true to life. In Visiting Hours, the killer spends all his time writing to his congressman and the media about his hatred of minorities and women. He’s a completely despicable character with no sense of style (he wears a leather vest, for God’s sake). In Maniac, the title character cries himself to sleep at night in the arms of a mannequin. How could Tipper Gore and her censorship gestapo possibly think that anyone would want to emulate these losers?

But nowadays, if you believe Saw and Seven and all of their various imitators, the smartest people on earth are serial killers. These movies glorify their murders as depraved works of art, lingering over the ingenuity and creativity involved and giving them rational-sounding motivations that normal people are meant to relate to. I find this much more offensive than the old school slasher flicks, which had the guts to lay bare the ugly and depressing banality of evil. In real life, psychopaths aren’t charismatic geniuses with a flair for dramatic art direction and a sadistic view of community service. They don’t kill you as part of a cat-and-mouse game with a brilliant profiler. They don’t kill you to teach the world a lesson. And they sure as shit don’t kill you for your own good. They’re just lonely weirdos who kill because it’s the only way to make their dicks get hard. Movies like Visiting Hours aren’t pretty, but at least they’re honest.

The Marine

2010-10-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between eighties action movies ("classic action") and nineties action movies ("neu-action"). I mean, there are obvious stylistic differences in cinematography, scoring, and squib-squishiness, but I'm talking about the heart of the matter here. Deep in their souls, what sets Commando apart from The Rock? It's a question that has haunted men since the dawn of time (the dawn of time being roughly 1995 or so).

Well, I'll tell you. It all comes down to what people who make documentaries about Kurt Cobain call "the cult of personality." See, classic action is structured around the persona of the central badass. The plot is only significant in that it allows the main ass-kicker to kick ass in his own way. The best classic action heroes stuck to plots that let them do what they did best with a minimum of fuss. You'd never see Seagal making Bloodsport, even though he was much more of a legitimate martial artist than Van Damme. It just wasn't his style. And that's the appeal of classic action. If you plugged a different badass into the movie but kept the exact same plot, you would get a completely different movie. Stallone could have easily played Arnold's role in Commando, but if he had, it wouldn't have been as goofy and over-the-top. Sly was taking himself pretty seriously back then, and his movies reflected that. On that same note, imagine Arnold in Cobra. He would have noticed what a ridiculous movie he was making, and he would have let us laugh with him. Sly forces us to laugh at him by buying into his own bullshit. Even though Cobra and Commando are both firmly in the "unstoppable muscleman mowing down hundreds of stuntmen" genre, the differing badass je ne sais quoi of their respective stars is what gives them their own unique personalities.

Neu-action, however, is centered not around the hero, but around the central concept. What if somebody put a bomb on a bus? What if there was a bank heist during a flood? What if a bunch of convicts took over a plane? It's this kind of wrongheaded thinking that made Nic Cage a de facto action star. The central badass in these films is secondary, which is why legitimate badassery all but disappeared in the nineties. You didn't need a believable badass to carry your movie for you, because that's what all those newfangled CGI effects were supposed to do. All you needed was a big-name actor. Any big-name actor. For example, if you substituted Christian Slater for Keanu Reeves in Speed, the movie would not change significantly. I like Speed, and I like Keanu, but I never really buy him as a world-class ass-kicker; he's just the guy that the plot happens to. It could have happened to anybody, but it just happened to happen to him. Yyou couldn't substitute anyone else for Arnold, though, or it wouldn't be an Arnold movie anymore. He is the movie.

That's why, as much as I love Die Hard, I have to say that it's the granddaddy of neu-action. Bruce Willis more than proved his badass credentials in that film, and over the course of the series, he made the character of John McClane more important than any particular plot element. The movies would not be the same if anyone else were in them, but they didn't know that before they made them. They were just looking for a familiar face to plug into this awesome idea they had about terrorists in a skyscraper. That's what makes it proto-neu-action: the concept was more important than the star. From that point on, "Die Hard on a ____" became a genre unto itself, and you could insert anyone into the same basic plot and they all felt pretty much the same. Both Van Damme and Seagal made Die Hard ripoffs, and they're among the most generic and interchangeable entries in their respective oeuvres. Under Siege is a good movie, but it wouldn't really have mattered if somebody besides Seagal played Casey Reibeck, because the ship was the star, not him. You can't say that for Out For Justice (mostly because there's no ship).

Believe it or not, this brings us to The Marine, which is an attempt to return to the tenets of classic action. The only reason for this utterly generic movie to exist is to give overmuscled WWE wrestler John Cena (who looks like Matt Damon if he got juiced with the radioactive ooze from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2) a chance to carry an action movie. There is no central concept other than that. The movie was built around him, not the other way around.

This has been tried plenty of times before. The Marine falls into the category of "novelty action," where the selling point is the chance to see some weird non-actor in a cookie-cutter action flick. Usually, these things are geek shows, like when they tried to make an Olympic gymnast into an action star in Gymkata. Sometimes it works, though. The best example is Stone Cold, which uses the flamboyant persona of Brian Bosworth as a blueprint for the tone of the movie. Compare that to One Man's Justice, where the movie expected us to take the Bos seriously and ended up being far less entertaining as a result.

The Marine is more One Man's Justice than Stone Cold, in that it doesn't really do anything unique with John Cena. He's just a big, dumb roid monkey who hits people. I hear that in the ring, he's a preposterous wigger cliché who made his championship belt spin like some gangster rapper's 22-inch rims. If they'd have built a movie around that ridiculousness and managed to keep a completely straight face, we might have had a camp classic of Road House proportions on our hands.

That said, I enjoyed the hell out of The Marine, and it has nothing to do with John Cena. It's just a completely retarded movie that seems to be utterly impressed with its own awesomeness. There are all kinds of moments where they awesome up parts that don't need awesoming up, like showing slo-mo CGI shell casings or putting whooshy sound effects on camera moves. Things like this reek of desperation. You can practically smell the flop sweat as the movie gives itself a hernia trying to impress you. It's like when you see Jim Carrey on Letterman and it looks like he's gonna fucking shoot himself if he doesn't get a laugh.

The best part is that Robert Patrick is the main villain. He sort of Kurt Loders his way through the performance, saying his lines more or less straight, but by the bemused look in his eyes, you know what he really thinks of this nonsense. He knows exactly what movie he's in, and it's hilarious to watch him ham it up shamelessly. He effortlessly steals every last second of screentime from his underqualified co-stars. From the second he shows up onscreen, the movie is his for the taking, so he puts it in his pocket and walks off with it. Hope you weren't using this movie, guys. It's mine now.

The most hilarious thing about The Marine is how hilarious it isn't. There are all these goofy Michael Bay-style scenes with the villains where there's "funny" music playing to let you know that you're supposed to laugh, because you sure as hell wouldn't have figured that out on your own. Seriously, this is probably the worst score I've ever heard. There's this running gag about how the black henchman (who apparently just converted to blackness last week or something, because being black is all he can talk about) is afraid of rock candy because he got ass-raped at summer camp as a kid. And the whole time he's confessing this, the Deliverance banjos weave in and out of the score, and Robert Patrick is sitting there chuckling. Ah, child molestation. Always a surefire laff riot.

But even though the filmmakers felt the need to bring back this rock candy bit two or three times, they don't feel the same responsibility to the themes or characters they introduced at the beginning of the movie. See, the movie starts out with this dude John Triton getting kicked out of the marines for being too badass. Then he gets home and hangs out in the kitchen in his underwear with his orange-skinned, yellow-haired wife, complaining about how marining is all he knows how to do so he doesn't have a purpose anymore. He gets a job as a security guard, but he can't keep his ass-kicking instincts in check, so he throws some grotesque yuppie stereotype through a plate glass window and gets fired. Then he has a heart-to-heart with his fat co-worker who tells him that he needs to learn how to adapt to his new life and find a new use for his ass-kicking skills. Then this loveable character disappears from the movie forever, because none of these themes have anything to do with the actual plot.

See, Robert Patrick and his crew of idiotic goons kidnap his wife for no good reason, so he spends the rest of the movie tracking her down. That makes it seem like her getting kidnapped was a good thing because it gives him an outlet for his skills. Dude, get a hobby. Your wife can't get kidnapped every day just to give you something to do.

If the filmmakers had stopped and thought for a second before they started filming, they would have realized that having his wife get kidnapped negates the entire beginning of the movie. He's not rescuing her because being a marine is in his blood, he's rescuing her because she's his fucking wife. That's the kind of plot you use when you want to show how the badass wants to retire from ass-kicking, but then the bad guys push him too far. It's a clear case of "You fuck with mine, I fuck with yours." If they wanted to show how much of a gung-ho hero-type he is, they should have had some random woman get kidnapped so he could go rescue her simply because it's the right thing to do. Everyone would ask him why he insists on involving himself in shit that has nothing to do with him, and he'd say, "It's what I do. I'm The Definite Article Marine." Then he would find his purpose: helping the helpless. Shit, now you've got a franchise on your hands. But what, is his wife gonna get kidnapped again in part two? It doesn't make any sense.

But fuck the plot. How's the action? Totally absurd but bloodless, even in the unrated version. It's mostly explosion-related, even though fire never kills anybody in this whole movie. Cena himself is completely fireproof. Incredibly massive fireballs go off right in his face and nothing happens to him, yet the villains insist on trying to blow him up anyway. Robert Patrick is also slightly flame-retardant. Even though he does get Freddy Kruegered up lovely in a blaze, he still comes back for one more fight.

The best scene is the car chase where Cena drives a Camaro cop car that gets whittled down by gunfire until it's just a chassis on wheels. Then he drives it off a cliff and the bad guys keep shooting it as it spirals through the air, and as it explodes, Cena jumps to safety. But you probably saw that in the trailer, along with the slo-mo shot where Robert Patrick walks by the biggest car explosion of all time and pretends that he doesn't notice it. Bear in mind that this scene uses Filter's "Hey Man Nice Shot" for roughly the millionth time. Can we call a moratorium on that song, as well as "More Human Than Human?" Even for ironic purposes, since that was already done in The Cable Guy over a fucking decade ago?

Anyway, if you like your action movies big, dumb, and sweaty, The Marine is very eager to meet you. It might get a little overexcited and start humping your leg, but that's part of its charm.

Jaws 3

2010-10-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

I wrote this review the week after Roy Scheider died. That hit me kind of hard, since we're talking about Chief Brody here. On the battlefield of my mind, Jaws has long been engaged in eternal conflict with Die Hard for the title of "Best Fucking Movie of All Fucking Time." It goes back and forth, but Jaws is the sentimental favorite because it represents a watershed moment in my growth as a human being. As a kid, I used to be scared shitless of sharks. It wasn't that I was afraid of getting eaten by one (I went in the ocean without complaint). I just couldn't look at the toothy fuckers, even in photographs. In elementary school, my fellow students would chase me around the library with open copies of National Geographic. But when I turned 12, I decided that it was time to grow up, so I stayed up late and watched Jaws all by myself in the dark. From that point on, it's been in my top two. Even if it didn't symbolize my ability to overcome my (many) childhood fears, it's just a flawless movie in its own right, perfectly mixing scares, adventure, gore, atmosphere, and characters. It's pure cinema. The scene where our three intrepid shark hunters compare scars and sing sea shanties is probably the greatest scene ever filmed.

So when I heard about Roy Scheider going to that great chumbucket in the sky, I watched Jaws in tribute. I drank to his leg. I drank to swimmin' with bow-legged women. I did not make any "We're gonna need a bigger coffin" jokes. Let's have a little fucking class, people.

But that wasn't enough, so to illustrate Mr. Scheider's importance to the series, I watched Jaws 3, which he wasn't in. And if you've seen this movie, you know how well that worked out. The makers of Jaws 3 must have been thrilled when Jaws: The Revenge came out and quickly usurped its spot at the top of the list of crappiest shark movies ever. While Jaws 3 is merely incompetent, Jaws: The Revenge is insultingly preposterous. (Naturally, I own them both.)

Anyway, Jaws 3 is probably better known as The One At Sea World, or alternately, The One That Used To Be In 3-D. The 3-D aspect is what brings in most of the incompetence. Since it's not in 3-D on home video, you're left with all these shots of badly matted objects floating toward you for no good reason. My favorite part is at the very end when the shark is slooooowly approaching the underwater control room, and it's very clearly not moving at all. It just appears to getting bigger because they were dollying the camera toward a tiny model of a shark. Intercut with this are some hilarious reaction shots of the cast screaming in terror as if the shark were rushing at them at high speed. Then it hits the window and the glass shatters, but no water rushes in. They just optically superimposed some very cheap sugar glass over the footage of the model shark, which never seems to actually interact with the glass in any way. It's a very special effect, in the way that retards are special.

But the funny thing is, Jaws 3 as a whole isn't really as bad as I remembered it being. The premise is awesome, for one. The idea of Bruce the Shark attacking Sea World allows for different kinds of scenes than if they'd just gone back to Amity again. And the cast is pretty solid. Dennis Quaid does his usual Harrison Ford Lite thing, Lea Thompson (in her first screen role) shows off her ribcage in a purple bikini, and Louis Gossett, Jr. is on hand to pronounce the word "here" like Cartman does. (But of course LGJ was in it, because he was in every movie made in the eighties that didn't have Michael Caine in it. But don't worry, they saved him for The Revenge.) And the dialogue is actually kind of okay. The script was co-written by Richard Matheson, of all people, so when the one-dimensional characters are talking about non-shark-related stuff, it sounds sort of natural. I particularly liked the repartee between the two grown-up Brody brothers. In that sense, it follows the tradition of the original Jaws, in that the best scenes don't have the shark in them.

But let's talk about that shark. It is by far the worst of the series. First off, you never really buy that it's supposed to be 35 feet long, ten feet longer than the previous sharks. This is because it never comes out of the water so you can see some scale. I think this was probably a cost-cutting measure. Rigging a giant pneumatic crane to lift a huge animatronic shark out of the actual ocean is far more logistically complicated than just filming all of the shark scenes in a tank on the Universal back lot, which is what it looks like they did. They even resort to stop motion for one shot, something no other film in the series did.

Also, this shark's behavior is absurd. For one, they've got it searching for its lost son. I don't care what Finding Nemo is telling you, fish are not great parents. They pretty much leave their offspring to fend for themselves. It is literally sink or swim. (It's hard out there for a fish.) For two, they've got it swimming backwards and hiding motionless in tunnels. Sharks can't do either. Their fins are made of cartilage, so they don't bend like other fish's do. Think of them as wings that let them glide through the water. Also, if they stop moving, they suffocate. They actually point this out in the movie, but they don't stick to it. They also have the shark growling and roaring, when sharks have no vocal cords whatsoever. None of this is as ludicrous as The Revenge, when a shark tracks the Brody family from Amity to the Bahamas to get revenge for its fellow great whites, but still.

A lot of people swear by Jaws 3, though, and I can see why. Of all the films in the series, it most resembles your basic cheesy monster movie. Whereas the first film transcended its B-movie roots, Jaws 3 wallows in them. Setting it at a theme park lets the filmmakers use the standard eighties titty comedy template, so you've got young people in tight shorts playing pranks on each other while trying to get laid. It's like a Friday the 13th movie with a shark.

Speaking of which, when am I going to get the land-shark movie I've always wanted? How scary would that be? You'd copy the first scene from Jaws, but as a twist, you'd have the chick actually make it to shore, but then the shark just keeps coming. Why have they made 12 Children of the Corn movies but no Jaws 5: This Time, It's Bipedal?

Then for Jaws 6, I want them to follow the leads of the Leprechaun and Hellraiser franchises and set it in outer space. Think about it. You could have a space shark swimming around, ramming spaceships and eating astronauts so their globulous blood droplets float around in zero gravity. Then the hero (Chief Brody's great-great-great grandson, head of security for the starship Amity) could ride the shark back to Earth so it burns up in the atmosphere. Somebody get me Spielberg's number. I think we got a winner here.

Born To Fight

2010-10-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Ever since Ong Bak came out and kicked all of our asses like our backpacks had mechanical boots attached to them, Thai action movies have been drifting to our shores on DVD. Most of them come with the Ong Bak logo prominently displayed on the cover, with the legend "From the hairstylist of Ong Bak" not-so-prominently displayed underneath. A lot of them even show Tony Jaa front and center, even if he's only in the movie for five minutes as "T-Shirted Goon No. 2." This used to piss me off, but now I forgive the DVD-makers their marketing chutzpah. With or without Jaa, these movies are usually worth the money.

True, you gotta know what you're getting into with a lot of the older ones, which weren't ever intended to be seen by anyone except Thai peasants with understandably low standards. Ong Bak represented a revolution in Thai production values, so even though it looked kind of ghetto by American standards, it was still Pirates of the Goddamn Caribbean compared to most Thai flicks. A good example is Spirited Killer ("These killings are quite spirited, wouldn't you say? They possess a certain joi de vivre that I find delightful."), which does feature Jaa in a single fight scene (the best in the movie). The characters keep talking about how the movie they're in is about some kind of invincible spirit of vengeance, but as far as I can tell from watching it, it's just about a bunch of dudes in sweatpants running around on dirt roads, kicking each other. That's what happens when you can't afford sets or costumes. But it's got some good kicking, so you forgive it. Who watches action movies for costumes, anyway?

But mostly what Thai action movies are known for are stunts, and of all those I've seen, Born To Fight delivers the most spectacular ones. In fact, it's got some of the best stunts ever attempted in a motion picture, period. I don't normally make bold statements like that, but Born To Motherfuckin' Fight kind of demands it.

When I say stunts, I don't mean fight choreography, car crashes or explosions (although there are plenty of those). I'm talking about crazy motherfuckers with no regard for life and limb who throw themselves off, into, and through all kinds of shit for your amusement. Thai people are nuts. Their main innovation over Hollywood or Hong Kong is the lack of wires or pads. You see a stuntman launch himself off of something, bounce off of something else, spin five times, and then land in the dirt, all in one shot. I don't care how much training you have, that shit is gonna fucking hurt. It looks like somebody gets seriously injured in every single shot. You'll see things in Born To Fight that you can't believe a motherfucker actually survived.

Here's the basic breakdown of the movie:

The Bondian Pre-Credits Action Sequence: This shit is so good, it would have been the big climax of any other movie. We got two 18-wheelers driving side by side, with dudes throwing other dudes off the top of them. There's one shot where a guy gets kicked off of one, bounces off the side of the other, and lands in the dirt between them, his head rolling within a fucking inch of the rear tires. Somebody almost died for art that day, and I, for one, appreciate that shit more than words can express. Majestyk's Movies salutes the fuck out of you, Random Thai Guy Who Almost Got Run Over In That Shot. But as impressive as that stunt was, the sequence is full of similar shit. Another dude gets launched off the truck and lands on top of a minivan. But he doesn't land cleanly. That would have been too easy. No, this dude has to just glance off the rear corner so you can feel the fucking metal crease your spine. It looks so awkward and unplanned that you gotta wonder if he could ever walk again afterward. And then, after all this, we got one 18-wheeler careening off a cliff, Duel-style, and another crashing through a shantytown, Bad Boys II-style, followed by a truly massive series of explosions. This shit is beautiful, man. I'm getting misty-eyed just thinking about it.

The Introductory Gayness: Clearly, the movie couldn't have continued at this pace or somebody really would have died, and in any case, human eyes are not meant to withstand such a nonstop barrage of total and complete awesomeness for 90 straight minutes. Maybe in the future when people have bionically augmented optics, this could be accomplished, but for now, even Thai action movies have to slow down and introduce some stupid characters in between the ass-kickings. It turns out the movie is about all these socially conscious student-athletes who are logging their community service hours by bringing food and supplies and shit to this impoverished village out in the middle of nowhere. So you're gonna have to endure about 20 minutes of sappy-sweet sentimentality before the murderation begins anew. Sorry, bud. Them's the breaks.

The Villainy-Establishing Massacre: But when that gayness stops, man, look out. See, in the first scene, this big drug lord was captured by a cop who just happens to be at the village with his gymnast sister when the drug lord's beret-wearing paramilitary goons attack. What I love about Thai movies is that they aren't afraid to make the villains as evil as fuck. There's none of that "villains are people, too" moral relativism bullshit you get a lot these days. These dudes are fucking monsters, and they know it. They're like Chuck Norris villains. They slaughter women, children, old people, monks, cripples, whatever. They don't give a fuck. This shit is fucking brutal. I actually cringed in this one shot where a dude's arm gets machine-gunned and it splatters into unrecognizable shape without ever actually falling off. It's rough stuff, especially when you see a father get executed right in front of his little girl, but it's absolutely crucial to set up the incredible catharsis you feel later in the movie when the good guys fight back.

The Turning Point: Eventually, you learn that the bad guys are holding the village hostage to secure the release of their boss. Not only that, they have a nuclear goddamn missile pointed at Bangkok. Shit just got real, so after the hostages hear the Thai national anthem on the radio, they rise up and starting singing along, and the movie gets all Braveheart on you with the swelling music and St. Crispin's Day pre-battle speeches. This shit is actually quite moving if you're the type of person who gets choked up by the prospect of underdogs righteously kicking ass. These hostages are fighting armed mercenaries with no weapons and little to no chance of success, but they have one thing going for them: They're Thai. Thai movies make it seem like being Thai is the greatest thing on earth. They love their country and they love each other, with neither irony nor jingoism tainting that love, the way it does here in America. They just have a well-developed sense of national self-esteem, and it makes them in-fucking-vincible. Man, I wish I was Thai.

The Payback: While this movie does have a main star (Dan Chupong, the dude who was also in Dynamite Warrior, that movie where Thai cowboys fight each other with kung-fu and/or rockets), it's really an ensemble piece, and the extended climax reflects that. Basically, what we got here is about a half-hour of almost completely wordless action vignettes as each former hostage uses whatever gifts Buddha blessed them with to take out the villains. Apparently, the cast is full of real soccer players, gymnasts, rugby players, and muay thai fighters (including the little girl who saw her daddy get executed), so these are some pretty slick motherfuckers. They got moves for days. I'm not gonna lie, shit gets pretty goofy when the soccer player starts knocking out snipers with a soccer ball from a hundred yards, but it's pretty easy to get swept up in the moment and give in to the ridiculousness. Also, it gets kind of like Gymkata, in that there are always random pieces of makeshift gymnastics equipment around for the cop's sister to swing around on and kick people. You can't front on her skills, though. But as talented as the heroes are, the real stars are the stuntmen playing the villains, because they're the ones who have to take most of the punishment. You know how in most movies when people get kicked in the face, they just kick real close to the face but place the camera in such a way that no one can tell that there was no actual contact? They don't do that in Thailand. They just kick motherfuckers in the face. Or in the head. Or they launch them over the top of a moving pick-up truck through a burning wall and into a pile of dirt. There are so many awesome bits of action in this sequence (which ends with another massive series of explosions), I can't even begin to describe them all.

And why should I? It's not about what happens, it's about watching how it happens. That's what separates the true action fans from the casual ones. To the true action fan, action is like the ballet. Someone with less knowledge of the art form may just see a bunch of interchangeable jumping and kicking, but an expert can discern the truly incredible from the merely mediocre. Born To Fight is an action movie for connoisseurs who know that every roundhouse kick is not created equal. It's not about story or acting or cinematography, although these things certainly help. It's about the art of war, the grammar of violence, the poetry of motion, and Born To Fight was made by warrior-poets of the highest order. If you don't like it, you might just be a pussy.

Red Wolf

2010-10-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Before The Matrix and Kill Bill made Yeun Woo-Ping the go-to guy for American directors looking to spice up their fight scenes, he was an in-demand director in his own right. My favorite of his filmography (and one of my favorite Hong Kong movies, period) is Red Wolf. There's no wirework here, no mystical warriors, no gravity defiance: just brutal ground-based hand-to-hand combat and a shitload of automatic weaponry.

What we got here is your basic Die Hard rip-off about a sizeable gang of terrorists who invade a cruise ship that, for reasons I have been unable to ascertain even after a fourth viewing of the film, is carrying a shipment of uranium in its safe. The ship's first officer has gone rogue and staffed the entire boat with sociopathic henchmen who have zero problem with mowing down every innocent bystander in their field of vision. The only ones standing in their way are an Ex-Cop With A Tragic Past and a Beautiful Thief With A Heart Of Gold.

So yeah, the set-up is as standard as you get, but the execution of it is not. This is a great action film, but you wouldn't know it from the first half-hour. We meet the tortured Ex-Cop and see some slow-mo flashbacks of his wife dying in a bungled hostage crisis, establishing his need for redemption through violent adventure. Then we meet his Doomed Friend who has his Doomed Wife and Convenient Hostage Daughter on board. Meanwhile, Beautiful Thief is milling around, getting into slapstick situations that allow her to pick people's pockets. Then we end up in the ballroom, where a very hot but very talentless lounge singer is belting out a cornball ballad in heavily accented English. This catches the attention of the Captain, a lecherous old white dude, so the First Officer brings her by his cabin after the performance for some sleazy sex. Naturally, she's evil, so she kicks his ass a whole bunch before some goons reduce his chest to raspberry jelly with their silenced pistols. This is seen by the Ex-Cop, and from here on out, it's all action.

This first fight sets the tone and style for the rest of the movie. It's shot with a wide-angle lens in tight spaces, so you can really see the combatants and their spatial relationships. It makes the action easy to follow from move to move, letting you understand the language and pacing of the fight. Compare this to many modern American movies, in which the camera is so close to the action that all you're looking at is a blur of motion. Too many directors think that movie magic lives in the camera, so they shake it, pan it, zoom it, whip it, and basically do everything except light it on fire to bring more energy to the scene. They think they're amping up the action, but all they're really doing is obscuring it. The audience wants to see what's happening, not be bombarded with some technique the director learned in film school. The magic of an action scene comes not from complicated camera calisthenics, but from the athleticism of the actors/stuntmen, the rhythm of the editing, and the logic of the choreography.

All of this comes into play in the first fight in Red Wolf, in which Ex-Cop must enter a small room containing two gunmen. He's unarmed and they know he's coming, so he doesn't even have the element of surprise, but because the scene is so immaculately planned, shot, performed, and edited, it seems completely feasible that he is able to incapacitate one goon, momentarily stun the other, and make his escape without getting shot. A lesser movie would cop out and let the hero prevail only due to the villains' poor aim, but Red Wolf is no lesser movie.

This scene reminds you that a beautifully executed action scene is the purest form of cinema in existence, telling a story through a series of images and movements, not words. It also establishes the style of action we'll be seeing for the rest of the movie: lots of bullet-dodging, ample use of makeshift weapons (most notably a couch, which the Ex-Cop throws at one goon), a variety of disarming moves, and lightning-quick but unshowy Chinese boxing. And it's not even the best action scene in the film.

From there, Ex Cop gets framed for the captain's murder, but Beautiful Thief discovers the truth when she overhears First Officer and Evil Lounge Singer discussing their plans while making out in the dressing room. This scene is hilarious, because it starts with Beautiful Thief all alone, delivering a monologue pondering the capriciousness of fate ("One minute ago, I was fighting for my life, and now, I'm sipping chilled wine.") Then she starts talking to a boiled lobster before putting on a blond wig and launching into a nearly indecipherable a cappella version of "Rike A Virgin." That's what I love about Hong Kong movies. They go from maudlin sentimentality to goofy humor to unrelenting carnage without batting an eye. It's your one-stop shop for everything you could ever want in a movie, kind of like a cinematic poo poo platter.

So Thief discovers the truth and breaks Ex-Cop out of the brig. See, Thief is the Jar Jar of this movie. She's always freaking out at inopportune times and screwing things up, but her Idiot Fu is strong, so she always accidentally comes through in the clutch. You may remember the actress who plays her as the annoying chick from Jet Li's The Bodyguard From Beijing. The thing about her is, she's not a good actress, but she's an entertainingly bad one. And let's be frank: she's not ungorgeous. In fact, she's kind of stunning. So a combo of good looks and weird comic timing save her character from being the movie-killer it seemed designed to be.

Anyway, Ex-Cop jumps through a window into the ballroom where all the passengers are watching Evil Singer perform. He holds a chunk of broken plate up to her face and tells all the goons to back off, but she does a backward head butt, not caring that she gets a huge gash across her cheek. Then her backup band breaks out their Uzi 9mms and indiscriminately sprays down the crowd with hot lead. I have never seen so many innocent bystanders die in a movie before. I swear to God, by the end, not one single passenger is still alive. It's incredible. These people would have been better off being rescued by Special Agents Johnson & Johnson and their acceptable 35% hostage-loss margin.

So while Ex-Cop is running around the ship, dodging machine gun fire and getting locked in a freezer (from which he ingeniously escapes by shoving a frozen pig into the overhead fan), Evil Singer holds Thief and the rest of the passengers hostage in the ballroom. The marring of her beauty caused by the cut on her cheek seems to have driven her completely insane, and she spends the rest of the movie being the most ridiculously evil bitch you have ever seen. There's one part where she casually strolls down a hallway, smiling maliciously as she takes her time shooting some fleeing passengers in the back. Another scene is almost too brutal for the movie, where she tries to force Thief to slice open Ex-Cop's friend's wife's face with a chunk of glass while her four-year-old daughter watches.

Luckily, that doesn't happen, but then Thief has to look after the little girl because her mom gets shot about a hundred times. Her dad died earlier, so you can already see the end of the movie coming, where Ex-Cop and Thief will walk off into the sunset with Little Girl in their arms, a makeshift family. It's weird how many movies end like that, with the family unit destroyed and then reassembled, as if symbolizing in microcosm the re-stabilization of society following the intrusion of anarchy in the form of terrorists, zombies, ninjas, what have you.

But first, Ex-Cop's gotta beat a guy's brains in with a dumbbell and fight a Brutish Black Guy (the only kind you'll find in Chinese movies) on a soapy floor wearing rubber suction-cupped bathmats on his feet for traction. I could have sworn this dude was played by Michael Jai White with a unicorn mohawk but imdb tells me I'm mistaken.

Then there's a great chick fight between Evil Singer and Beautiful Thief. Thief can't fight for shit, so her strategy is to bounce around like Bugs Bunny imitating an old-timey pugilist, and when she accidentally lands a punch, she stops and does the not-even-trendy-at-the-time Arsenio Hall fist-pump in triumph. I know this shit sounds retarded, but somehow, it's endearing when she does it. Then she dumps a whole bunch of latex paint on the Evil Singer and lights her on fire. She burns for like two minutes and doesn't die, so when her boyfriend the First Officer finds her, she's all crispy and whimpering, and he's forced to stoically put her out of her misery. It's a hardcore death for a hardcore character.

The climax is back in the ballroom, where First Officer has hung Little Girl from the ceiling with a bomb strapped to her chest and the detonator on her foot, so if she touches the floor, she'll explode. This scene starts off with a nice quirk when Ex-Cop and Thief enter the ballroom and find First Officer playing a drum solo. And it looks like the actor can really play the drums, too. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust a fucking drummer.

So then there's a good 15 minutes of vicious kung-fu before Ex-Cop pulls off one of the most complicated finishing moves ever. First Officer is holding Little Girl hostage, about to set off the bomb. In the exact instant that a drop of blood drips into his eye, making him blink, Ex-Cop pulls a steak knife out of his own leg and throws it underhand through the rope holding up Little Girl and into First Officer's throat, then catches her foot before the detonator hits the floor. Then the movie's over, with no other survivors in sight and no explanation for that goddamn uranium.

Red Wolf is a great fucking movie. If you like your bloodthirsty action tempered with moments of transcendental weirdness, you should check it. Also, if you like that kind of thing, you sound pretty cool. We should hang out some time and watch some movies.

P.S. I have no idea why it's called Red Wolf. Maybe it's the name of the ship or something.

My Father Is A Hero

2010-10-27T11:48:00.001-07:00

A lot of kung-fu heads will probably call blasphemy on me for this shit, but I have to say it: I don't really like the old-school set-in-the-past type chopsocky all that much. I'm not saying it doesn't have its place, but I grew up on American action movies. If you're gonna have punching and kicking, why not throw in some machine guns and car chases, too? I can relate to it more, and it provides more opportunities for interesting props and locations. You can only see so many bamboo dumpling houses get busted up before you want to see some shattering glass.

That's why I prefer Jet Li's contemporary movies to his period epics. I mean, yeah, everybody knows Once Upon a Time in China is a classic, but when they're not fighting, it's boring as hell. Maybe it's more interesting to Chinese people, but I just don't care about all the annoying villagers who keep getting into trouble and making Wong Fei Hung save their stupid asses. It's tedious. And then there's that Swordsman crap that everybody's always going on about. With all the colored lights and people flying through the air on cables, that shit feels like Cirque Du Soleil. It's just not my thing, man. I like kung-fu that's more or less ground-based, so that when people do make incredible leaps, it's a big deal, rather than the status quo.

Which brings us to My Father Is A Hero (or, as it says onscreen, My Father Is Hero. Which he is, since the father in question is Jet Li, who played the title role in Hero many years later). Jet Li plays this shady dude in mainland China who smokes cigarettes and neglects his son, Johnny, who's an awesome little ass-kicking kung-fu expert, just like Jet Li used to be in real life. Jet's always getting into kickfights when he should be attending his son's kung-fu exhibitions, but his son loves him anyway. Then you find out that Jet is really a cop so deep undercover than he can't even tell his family about it, so they think he's really a criminal. Then the wife randomly coughs one day, so you know she's a goner. The only movie I've ever seen where someone coughing didn't mean that they were mortally ill was Inside Man, where Denzel coughs twice in the middle of his dialogue, then just excuses himself and continues talking. You know, like how sometimes people cough in real life and it doesn't mean they have TB. It's kind of the best part of the movie.

So anyway, even though his wife is dying at home, Jet takes this mission where he has to infiltrate this gang by helping this kindly criminal named G-Dog escape from jail and go on the run with him to Hong Kong. Personally, I think Jet should have let someone else take this assignment. It's not like he doesn't have a good excuse. His fucking wife is dying, for Christ's sake. Besides, it's not like he's saving the world with this shit. He's just trying to bust some gunrunners. Dude, Jet, you're a nice guy and all, but you have to get your priorities straight.

Let's talk about these gunrunners. The main one is always wearing sunglasses and white kid gloves. At first, I thought maybe later in the movie he was going to rip his face off and reveal that he was a Toon underneath, like maybe Bugs Bunny had gone bad. But that didn't happen. I guess he's just a germophobe who also happens to be sensitive to the light, like those kids from The Others. What a loser. All he needs now is an inhaler.

Then there's a whole shitload of plot and melodrama and whatnot, which is all pretty much ruined by the hilarious dubbing on my DVD (when a character gets some life-changing news, her response is, "That was great."). And there are a bunch of moments where I can't tell if the shit's that's happening is supposed to be weird or if it's just Chinese. Like when Johnny and his fat friend spell out Chinese words with ants. Weird? Or just Chinese? Or when the friend shows up at Johnny's house, hands him a paper bag, and says, "I brought you some bacon. Gotta go!" Is that a custom in China or is the fat friend supposed to be kind of wacky? If anybody can shed some light on this for me, I'd be appreciative.

So then there are two awesome action scenes. The first is at this restaurant that has a glass waterfall right in the middle of it that Jet can slide down while henchmen shoot out the glass with machine guns. Then somebody drives a car right into the restaurant and somebody explodes. Good stuff.

This is where Jet meets his dying wife's future replacement, Mommy II. She's a cop who's hot on his trail because she thinks he's a criminal, so she goes undercover with his family and bonds with his wife and son. Then the wife dies and gives her an envelope. This movie is all about people dying and giving each other envelopes. It happens like three or four times.

So now Mommy II and the kid are trying to find Jet, because now they both believe that he's a cop. And you can already see the shattered family unit being restored. I let it go in Red Wolf, but this time, I have to call bullshit. Jet Li, you were a terrible husband and you do not deserve to just jump right into a new relationship with this kung-fu lady cop. You need to spend some time alone to reconnect with your son and deal with your own issues of selfishness and secrecy before you are ready to fully commit yourself to another person.

Oh, but I forgot to mention that other awesome action scene. So the other kids at school have discovered that Johnny's dad is a criminal, so Johnny's got to kick all their asses. This is hands-down the best kid-fu ever. I know a lot of you are gonna be pulling for 3 Ninjas, but fuck 3 Ninjas. This kid is awesome. It's just like grown-up kung-fu, only smaller. He even kicks three dudes while in midair. I don't know about you, but I love watching kids get beat up in movies, so this was a real highlight for me.

So anyway, Johnny and Mommy II try to meet up with Jet, but then Johnny gets taken captive by the gang, who know that he's a cop's son but don't know that he's Jet's son. So Jet's gotta just sit there and pretend that he doesn't know the kid while the villain slams his face through a glass fucking table. Seriously, if nothing else, this is the only movie where an adorable little boy's face gets smashed through a sheet of glass. Call Guinness.

So Jet's solution is to choke the kid in front of everybody, knowing that Johnny knows "kung-fu breathing" and will survive. Imagine if this was an American movie. Can you picture, like, Matt Damn choking out a little kid in a movie, even if he was only pretending to kill him? How fucking awesome would that be? I want more kid-choking in movies. Dear Hollywood…

But the plan falls apart when Jet goes back to the garbage heap where they'd chucked his son's supposedly dead body and finds the gang waiting for him. The awesome part is that they've disguised themselves in garbage bags, so for a while, he's fighting the Attack of the Trashbag People. Then we've got various kinds of fu (sword-fu, fire extinguisher-fu, corpse-fu, etc.) on top of garbage trucks and inside your Standard-Issue Action Climax Warehouse Location. But the difference is, this time Jet and Johnny are working together as a team. This incredible adventure has brought them closer than ever before. It's too bad Mommy I couldn't be there.

(Another word about Mommy I. Before she died, she wrote a letter to Jet explaining that despite the fact that he's a terrible person who abandoned her on her deathbed because things got really hectic at work, she knew that he must have had a good reason for being such an asshole, even if she couldn't possibly imagine what it might be, being a girl and all. This is basically any patriarchal society's view of the perfect wife: Just shit out a kid and die, woman. I got things to do.)

Still, this last fight scene has the movie's most transcendentally ridiculous moment when Jet ties a rope to Johnny and swings him around on the end of it like a human yo-yo so he can kick motherfuckers. And he's really whipping him around, too, doing cool under-the-arm-and-around-the-back moves. A dude I was watching the movie with called this maneuver "kidchucks." Everybody's gonna want their own this Christmas.

In all honesty, though, Jet is still being a bad dad. I mean, it's great that he and his son have found an activity that they can share (ass-kicking), but is it really good parenting to let your kid fight a bunch of grown men with axes? I know the kid can handle himself, but shit could have very easily gone wrong, and then Jet would have to explain to his police captain why he let his 10-year-old son get killed in a kung-fu fight with international gunrunners. Not gonna look good on the report, in my opinion.

Anyway, this movie is probably a lot better than it might seem from this snarky-ass review. I really recommend it, in fact. It's got some excellent action, and the story brings up some interesting ideas, even if they're retarded. I'd imagine it would even be kind of tragic if it wasn't dubbed to sound like an episode of Voltron. But really, what you're going to remember is little Johnny learning to be a man by beating up other kids, going face-first through plate glass, and letting his father use him as a weapon. I don’t care what the title says: This little dude is the real hero.

Oh, and if this movie sounds familiar, you might have seen it under its American title, The Enforcer. Thank you, Dimension Home Video, for watering down the quirky flavor of Hong Kong cinema into something that sounds like a straight-to-video Dean Cain movie.

Frankenstein Conquers The World

2010-10-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

What we got here is your basic Japanese giant monster movie. Nothing too special. It begins like so many others have, with some Nazis retrieving Frankenstein's still-beating heart from a mad scientist's castle in Frankfurt and transporting it via submarine to a lab in Hiroshima, where the A-bomb causes it to regenerate into a full-grown monster that spends the next 15 years eating bunny rabbits in the radioactive ruins. Like I said, pretty standard stuff.

I don't want to belabor this review, because if you've seen one giant Frankenstein movie, you've seen 'em all. Some scientists working at a hospital for victims of the Bomb find Frank wandering around, so they bring him back to the lab for study. They helpfully explain that he's a Caucasian, even though he's very clearly played by a lanky Japanese dude. Then they discover that Frank will regenerate any damaged tissue as long as he gets a steady dose of protein. Then, for reasons not fully explained, he starts growing and growing and growing until he's about 50 feet tall. He breaks out of the lab and lives in the mountains, occasionally getting into some mischief, like when he throws a whole tree at a bird and it accidentally crushes some poor dude's log cabin. Oh, Frankie. You lovable scamp.

The problem is, there's this other monster, a real prick named Baragon who looks like a reptilian Labrador puppy with a glowing horn on his snout. He's tunneling all over the countryside, blowing up oil refineries and making Frank take the blame for it. So now the army's trying to kill poor Frank while the Hiroshima scientists are trying to save him. Then him and Baragon finally meet up and have a knock-down, drag-out fight across the Japanese wilderness. It's kind of funny, because Frank is just some dude with a big forehead, so it's extra ridiculous when he jumps on the rubber puppy-lizard's back and starts whaling away. At first, you don't think he has a chance because this Baragon asshole is so much bigger, and he can shoot red lasers out of his mouth, while Frank's just a skinny Japanese guy with no special powers. But that's actually Frank's secret weapon. Since he's not covered in 200 pounds of rubber, he has the mobility and speed to turn the tables on Baragon. Then Frank holds his corpse over his head victoriously and throws him over a cliff into the sea.

Any other movie would end right here, but not Frankenstein Conquers The World. It's got its own agenda. With only four minutes left in the movie, a random giant octopus (you can tell it's a giant octopus because one of the scientists yells, "Look! That's a giant octopus!") climbs out of the ocean to fight Frank. Maybe he was pissed off about Frank chucking that douchebag Baragon into his ocean, or maybe the octopus was really the mastermind behind the whole thing and Baragon was only his henchman. I don't know. The movie wasn't too specific about the octopus' motivations. Anyway, whatever his fuckin' problem is, this octopus is an even bigger prick than the last monster. Frank is already worn out from his battle with Baragon, so he doesn't put up much of a fight when Cocktopus drags him over the cliff to a watery grave. What a fuckin' bummer. Frank goes to all this trouble to clear his good name, and for what? Dammit, I hate that octopus.

Anyway, if you've ever wanted to see a movie where a random giant octopus is introduced in the last four minutes, this (and maybe the deleted scenes from Goonies) is probably your best bet. Glad I could help.

Murder Party

2010-10-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Murder Party is the product of some kind of bizarre new offshoot of the straight-to-video indie scene that the internet tastemakers are calling "hipster horror." For those of you not living in a major metropolitan area, a "hipster" is a shockingly skinny, desperately interesting person in impractical pants who has moved from a small town to either New York or Los Angeles, where his or her laboriously louche behavioral affectations and wardrobe eccentricities will pass largely unnoticed except by others of his or her ilk. The modern hipster loves irony, asymmetrical haircuts, and music that sounds like eighties music but is made by people who are too young to remember the eighties. It is important to note that anyone claiming to be a hipster is, in fact, a poseur: "hipster" is a pejorative term that only a clueless non-hipster would willingly embrace. In fact, the average hipster's primary hobby is mocking the pretentiousness of hipsters. This is why I'm not exactly sure if I'm a hipster or not. While my pants fit me properly and my haircut is not constructed of angles impossible to achieve under the laws of Euclidian geometry, I do display some admittedly hipster tendencies in that I: a) live in Brooklyn, b) wear oversized aviator glasses, and c) rock the fuck out every time Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" comes on. Personally, I would classify myself as a geek who knows how to dress himself, but to others, I may be just another pseudo-artsy suburbanite who migrated to the city so I could feel superior to those I left behind. I'll let you be the judge.

Murder Party tells the story of a nebbishy nerd who finds an invitation to a Halloween party on the sidewalk. On a lark, he makes himself an endearingly chintzy knight costume out of cardboard and attends the party, which is held at a warehouse in the formerly working-class neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the most virulent hotbed of hipster activity in North America—although the hipsters currently living there will tell you that Billyburg (as it is no longer cool to call it) has been over for at least five years now. With Williamsburg having gone mainstream, the hipster wave pushes ever east, into post-industrial wasteland Bushwick (or "East Williamsburg," as the realtors are calling it now), converting crumbling commercial property into overpriced loft spaces.

Anyway, the nerd shows up at the party and is promptly knocked out and tied to a chair by a collection of hipster archetypes: the furry freak-folk fan, complete with hoodie and drinking problem; the upper-class Jewish boy slumming it for art; the laconic bipster ("blue-collar hipster," The Hipster Handbook, 2002) whose skilled artwork is derided by his peers as being too representational; the lanky, small-breasted slut, all elbows and ribs, who creates installation art as an outlet for her monstrous narcissism; and so on. Through their self-involved gibberings, you eventually ascertain that they are members of an art collective who have kidnapped the nerd on the orders of Alexander, a pompous bisexual who rules the Williamsburg art scene by claiming to control $300,000 in grant money. It's Alexander's idea to murder the nerd for art. ("At the witching hour, we'll stab him. We'll stab until he dies," he says, a tiny smirk on his placidly self-bemused face.)

By this point, the movie could easily descend into the kind of distractingly arch dimestore nihilism trafficked in by smug torture trash like Chaos or Funny Games. Instead, it retains a satirical bent not dissimilar to Roger Corman's pitch-black beatnik parody Bucket of Blood. As the movie goes on, every actor manages to find the human core of the broad stereotype he or she is playing. In fact, the film turns into a Breakfast Club/Hostel hybrid when the hipsters all take sodium pentathol and sit in a circle, revealing uncomfortable truths about themselves. It's a weird and welcome choice to spend the movie's second act letting the audience get to know and like the villains more than the victim, but it pays off when they turn on each other in an orgy of bloodletting that culminates in a rooftop chase and an axe-vs.-chainsaw fight.

I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I would. Its tone is playful without being goofy, and it looks and sounds great considering the low budget. It was made by a group of childhood friends called Lab of Madness who have been making movies together since the days of VHS class projects. As such, the cast has a unique rapport that is remarkably polished, especially in light of the fact that most of them have never had a legitimate film job. On the strength of this funny, gory surprise, I would keep my eyes peeled for whatever these guys do in the future.

I normally grade these DIY shot-on-video flicks on a curve, but this one can stand on its own terms against any mainstream horror movie that came out this year. In a horror scene that has become so damn serious in recent years, Murder Party manages to be lots of fun without insulting your intelligence or relying on moth-eaten nostagia. Attention, Hollywood: If you can't give us the hot shit, Brooklyn's just gonna have to do it for you. The sun rises in the east, bitches.

Luther The Geek

2010-10-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Today I wanted to review a legitimate horror classic, but I wanted to do one that hasn't already been discussed to death. I mean, is there really anything left to say about The Howling 2: Your Sister Is A Werewolf that hasn't already been said a million times before?

Really, there was only one choice. We're talking Horror Hall of Fame here. We're talking the absolute best horror movie made in rural Illinois in 1990. We're talking Luther the Geek.

Luther the Geek opens with some stills of old-timey circus sideshow signage while some disembodied voice that sounds suspiciously like the narrator from the beginning of The Transformers: The Movie explains the history of geeks. Not geeks like you and me who own autographed copies of Bruce Campbell's autobiography, but geeks who bite the heads off chickens for the amusement of rednecks. The first scene is set in 1939, and it shows one such geek—a drunken travesty who lives in a cage—being egged on (that is not a chicken joke) by a posse of yokels who chant "Geek! Geek! Geek!" over and over again. (The movie's director is cursed with the nerdtacular name of Carlton J. Albright, so I'm betting this part was inspired by his junior high gym class.) One of these yokels is Luther, who at this point is a little boy of nine or so. Somebody accidentally knocks him over and he cracks his front teeth out on a wagon wheel, then sits there holding them while watching the geek bite the head off of a chicken and spit it out at the audience. This fascinates young Luther so much that he tastes the chicken blood before his mama hauls him away, calling him a little turd while he stares crazily at the geek.

So that's pretty much it for an origin story. Luther saw a geek bite the head off a chicken when he was a little kid, so that made him sculpt himself some metal dentures so he could bite people's necks out. Yeah, I don't get it either, but I'm guessing that Luther probably had some undiagnosed emotional issues long before the whole chicken-biting incident. The way I figure it, the geek thing just gave him a way to focus his rage.

Anyway, the story picks up 50 years later as Luther sharpens his steel choppers with a file while a committee of terrible actors tries to decide whether or not to release him from the insane asylum where he's been locked up for the past 25 years for tearing the throats out of three people. If you decide to watch this movie (which you should), I'm gonna have to apologize for this scene. It's boring and unbelievable and not at all like the rest of the movie. I guess they just needed a way to get Luther out of the mental hospital and out on the street, but that still doesn't explain why he still has his metal choppers after all these years. You'd think 1) They'd have rusted, and 2) They'd be in an evidence locker somewhere in a baggie marked Exhibit A. But then again, this is a real progressive mental health institution we're talking about. They believe in giving people second chances, even when the people in question are non-verbal maniacs who have turned their mouths into murder weapons.

So Luther gets out and heads right to the butcher shop, where some swarthy dude is thematically cleavering some poultry. For a second, you think it's going to be like in Psycho II where Norman tries to rejoin society by getting a job at the local diner, but nope, Luther goes right back to his criminal ways by stealing the butcher's jacket from a hook just inside the screen door. The butcher chases him, but Luther just runs off to a safe distance and struts back and forth like the cock of the walk. (That is a chicken joke, but it's also an accurate description of what Luther is doing. He preens like a rooster.)

This is your first real good look at Luther, and at first, he's not very impressive. His dossier in the mental institution lists his height as 5' 10", but I ain't buying it. He's 5' 8', tops, a wiry little middle-aged balding guy who looks and acts an awful lot like this retarded fella who used to try to beat me up when I worked in group homes for the mentally disabled.

So if this was your first day of freedom after all these years, I think you'd do exactly what Luther does: go to the supermarket and start sucking some eggs. This gets him kicked out of the store, so he sits down on a bench in the parking lot next to an old lady (who's actually a young lady in bad old-age makeup). Then, for the first and last time in the movie, he tries to reach out to another human being by offering her one of the eggs he stole. Naturally, the dumb bitch drops this gesture of good will, leaving Luther no choice but to rip her gizzard out with his teeth. This is a great moment, because he goes from kinda threatening but still goofy to a feral flesh fiend in about half a second. He just lunges for the old broad's throat in broad daylight. It's some good Fulci-style gore, too, with lots of ragged, stretchy flesh. Then the camera lingers on it afterward and lets you hear the blood trickling out like a leaky faucet. As far as first kills go, it's one for the books.

Now Luther's got a little legal problem on his hands, so he runs around the parking lot until he finds a car with an open backdoor. (A lot of the problems in this movie would be solved if people just locked their doors, including the butcher who lost his jacket.) The car belongs to this nice blond mom who unknowingly drives Luther out to her farm, where he sneaks into her barn, turns right to the camera, and bites the head off one of her chickens. This is the best chicken decapitation of the movie, bar none. The throat stretches about a foot before it tears, and then Luther guzzles blood from the stump like he's drinking from a wineskin.

Then we see the movie's most dynamic bit of filmmaking. The mom is in the kitchen, cutting up potatoes, when she glances out the screen door and sees Luther running toward the house. It's weird, because she's not alarmed at first, because it's the middle of the day, there's no scary music playing, and the shot is from far enough away that she can't really tell what's happening at first. It's just some dude approaching the house. I wonder what he wants? But then he gets close enough and she notices that he's covered in blood and obviously insane, so she runs up and slams the door, but he smashes the glass and breaks in anyway. This all happens within a few seconds, with minimal cutting. One second she's peeling potatoes, the next she's fighting for her life. What I think this symbolizes is the random incursion of chaos into order, the Dionysian element intruding on everyday Apollonian existence. Clearly, Luther is a figure shrouded in myth and mystery. He also bites the heads off chickens. (See above paragraph.)

Up until this point, this has been a pretty ridiculous movie, but right here is where it surprises you. All jokes aside, Luther is a scary motherfucker. His eyes have no reason or humanity in them. His movements are animalistic yet cunning. He's not like Dr. Giggles or some shit, some wannabe Freddy with a tired gimmick. He's just this crazy dude who wants to bite your neck out for no good reason, and you know just from looking at him that there's no talking him out of it. The scary part is that, unlike most of the mindless automatons you see in slasher movies, you can always tell that Luther is thinking about something, although you can't possibly imagine what that is. I can't stress enough what a completely believable but utterly batshit performance this is. I don't know who you are, Guy Who Played Luther, but Majestyks' Movies salutes you, sir. You sick fuck.

Anyway, after Luther busts in through the door, Mom runs for her shotgun, but Luther disarms her, shoves the barrel up her dress and pulls the trigger. Luckily for Mom's reproductive future, the chamber is empty, so she kicks Luther in the balls and runs away. Then he slowly gives chase as she runs upstairs instead of out the front door. Luther's stalking style is distinctive, because he clucks like a chicken while he does it. Believe it or not, it's very eerie and menacing as he taunts her with his clucks ("Buck, buck, buck, buck, buck… buck…buck… buck-aaw!"), letting her know that there is no escape from a bloodthirsty geek with murder on his mind.

So he captures her and ties her to the bed with strips of cloth from a sheet that he tore up. It's creepy to watch how carefully yet casually he does this, starting by making a little rip with his teeth, then tearing down the length of the sheet in a straight line. It's as if he's done it a million times before. Clearly, Luther's no newbie. He knows the drill.

So while Mom is tied to the bed upstairs, her big-tittied daughter shows up riding on the back of her boyfriend's Harley. The waist of her jeans goes up to about two inches underneath the lower swells of her globular DDs, while he's the sort of dude who wears red cowboy boots with black jeans. Despite the broken glass and the shotgun on the floor, Tits McGillicutty assumes Mom is just out shopping, so her boyfriend moves the plot along by spraying her with a random can of whipped cream, forcing her to take a shower.

And it's a hell of a shower, too. First, you think they're just gonna tease you because they only show her stripping down to her bra and panties before she shuts the bathroom door behind her. But then her douchebag boyfriend joins her, and we get a solid minute and a half of humongous all-natural knockage while they fool around in the shower. Apparently, this chick was on SeaQuest or some shit, so it's kind of like the first time you saw Alyssa Milano naked in Embrace of the Vampire, only with much, much bigger breasts and no eurotrash vampires (a great tradeoff, in my opinion).

Then she gets out of the shower and walks around in her bathrobe for a few seconds, making you think some scary shit is about to happen. This signals that the nudity portion of the movie is probably over, but then her boyfriend tackles her to the bed and the boobs come out again! What a great plot twist. I love it when filmmakers toy with audience expectations like that.

Normally, I don't go on and on about tits like this. For me, tits are just the sprinkles on a violence sundae. Nice, but not strictly necessary. But these tits are so spectacular that I'd recommend the movie even if the rest of it sucked. (Which it doesn't. But seriously, those are some nice tits.)

One kinky thing about this sex scene is that Busty Hooterman and her pet man-boy are banging on Mom's bed while Mom is tied up right on the other side of the wall, listening to them go at it. Talk about uncomfortable, right?

By this point, we've completely forgotten that Luther is even in the movie, but then he reminds you by stealing the boyfriend's bike and making him chase after him. Then they get into a fight, and the boyfriend accidentally get shot by this random shotgun-toting farmer, who tries to apologize to Luther, but Luther doesn't care. Luther just wants to bite a chunk out of this dude's neck and spit it out like the tip of a cigar.

The boyfriend's still alive, though, so they tussle some more, then Luther clonks him on the noggin with his motorcycle helmet, then throws his head back and lets out a triumphant rooster crow. Shit, man, I know how ridiculous this sounds, but I swear to god, it's creepy. You just have to see it.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Jugs has discovered Mom, so she tries to untie her. Unfortunately, Mom doesn't really help matters by yelling at her to hurry up, which just makes her nervous. I mean, I know you've had a rough day, Mom, what with getting captured by an insane chickenman and then finding out that your daughter is sexually active under rather awkward circumstances, but c'mon, give the girl a break. She's doing the best she can. Being overly critical isn't very productive.

So thanks to Mom's backseat knot-untying, Bigguns can't get her free, so she has to hide under the bed while Luther walks in. She sees that he has her boyfriend's stupid red boots on, so she basically becomes catatonic for the next reel or so. Then Luther catches her after some stalking around, and a deputy comes by to warn everybody about Luther, but Luther holds the shotty on the boyfriend (who's busy making brilliant observations like "He thinks he's a chicken! This is crazy!") while Boobsy pretends that everything is okay.

After the deputy goes on his way, Luther finally has a chance to have some fun. This is a weird part of the movie, because you aren't really sure what his agenda is. He's not in it for the sex, since he had plenty of opportunities, so all he does is kick Funbags in the ribs a few times and dance around with her like the Joker did with Vikki Vale. Then he kills the boyfriend offscreen, somehow tearing his whole chest off so you can see his heart beating on the outside. He didn't even have a knife or anything, so I don't know how he accomplishes this. With his teeth, maybe?

Then the daughter manages to free Mom right before she dies for some reason. Internal bleeding from getting kicked, I guess. I didn't really expect the movie to go there, and Mom's believable grief makes the rest of the movie a lot more intense than it would be otherwise.

She runs out of the house, where she meets up with the deputy, who doesn't call for backup or secure all exits or do anything useful. He just runs blindly into the house while Luther escapes, incapacitates the deputy's vehicle and radio, then runs into the barn. Then there's a whole lot of cat-and-mouse with the deputy and Luther in the dark barn (which must be roughly the size of the Mall of America), until the deputy gets fed up and starts taunting Luther by saying, "C'mon out, chickenshit!" Then he starts imitating Luther's chicken-speak, but he keeps his human accent so all he's doing is saying "Bock! Bock bock bock!" He's not even trying to pronounce it right, so he sounds like an ugly American tourist trying to parlay voo fronsay. If I was a chicken or of Chicken-American descent, I would find this really offensive, especially coming from a peace officer.

Luther gets understandably pissed off by the deputy's dismissive attitude toward his adopted culture, so they have a pretty solid mano a mano fight. Luther might not look very tough, but if you let him get up close you'll find that he's a grappler. You can't get a good grip on him, and when you think you've got him, he twists around and bites your fingers off and gnaws your trachea out. At least that's what he did to the deputy. He might make an exception for you, I don't know.

Meanwhile, Mom accidentally knocks herself out and spends the rest of the night in the chicken coop. She wakes up when Luther walks in to bite his morning gizzard, dressed in the daughter's boyfriend's stupid clothes. (I like how Luther keeps upgrading his wardrobe over the course of the movie.) Luther's thrilled to see her, and as he approaches, preparing to do god knows what, she also starts trying to imitate his chicken-speak. Only she does it right, putting the proper enunciation on the bawks and the ba-kaws, and this tickles Luther so much that he starts clucking away and dancing his happy little rooster dance. See, Luther's like the French. As long as you make an attempt to speak his native language, he'll respect you.

Unfortunately, Mom is not trying to make friends with Luther. She's just trying to distract him so she can grab her rifle and shoot him in the heart. Which she does. At first, I thought this was a lame way for him to go out. It wasn't very spectacular or bloody at all. But then I realized that it wasn't really about that. It was about how Mom goes fucking nuts and starts clucking and crowing over his dead body in a triumphant rage, sort of like a poultrified version of the end of the first Texas Chainsaw when Sally was laughing hysterically after getting away from Leatherface. Then that sort of morphs into a wail of sadness as Mom realizes that killing the metal-toothed maniac who murdered your big-breasted daughter is not going to bring her back to you. And that's where the movie leaves you, with a mother's wordless grief.

I know this movie sounds pretty retarded, like one of those so-bad-it's-good movies those ironic assholes over at the Razzies are always yapping about, but just try and laugh at that ending, motherfucker. It's serious as a heart attack. You never quite know where you stand with Luther the Geek, and that's what I love about it.

That and the tits.

Hard Rock Zombies

2010-10-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

What we got here is one of those cheapo horror comedies they used to make back in the eighties, the kind that weren't even trying to be scary anymore. I generally find that movies that try to be stupid and succeed are inherently less entertaining than movies that try not to be stupid and fail, but Hard Rock Zombies is kind of a hoot. It's the story of an unnamed and unsigned hair metal band that goes to the hick town of Grand Guignol, CA to do a show. They get invited to stay at this big mansion populated by a randy old dude, his werewolf wife, a big-haired blond groupie, a rubber-faced gnome, and a midget in an eye patch.

Now, midgets have somehow become the international symbol for absurdity. For some reason, you're supposed to think it's just so damn hilarious every time there's a midget on the screen. Man, how irreverent. Look, he's just like a person, only smaller. In my younger days, I was guilty of falling prey to this particular fallacy, but I think that doing so in this case does a disservice to this specific midget actor, since he is far and away the most accomplished member of the Hard Rock Zombies cast. His name is Phil Fondacaro, and he has over sixty credits on his résumé. He's been an Ewok, a Garbage Pail Kid, and one of them hooded Phantasm dwarves. He's played Cousin Itt, Dracula, the Yattering (Clive Barker fans know what I'm talking about), and someone named "Stinksucker" in a movie called Monster High. He portrayed the title character in Troll, a role he is currently reprising in a remake under the direction of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood's John Carl Buechler (who also did special effects work on Hard Rock Zombies). Basically what I'm saying is, this dude Phil Fondacaro is a goddamn B-movie superstar, and I'm not gonna treat him like a punchline just because he's a little shorter than average. I've been saluting a lot of motherfuckers lately, from Frankie and Annette to whoever the fuck played Luther the Geek, and now I'm adding Mr. Fondacaro to that list. You rock, sir. What you lack in stature, you make up in awesome.

Anyway, the folks in Grand Guignol think rock and roll leads to Satanism and masturbation (which, if you're lucky, it does) so they hold a town meeting to decide what to do about it. ("My National Enquirer says that musicians can't play a single note unless they eat drugs first," says one frightened housewife.) They vote to cancel the band's concert, but due to sloppy wording, they end up banning rock in all its forms.

Shit just got real.

So then the entire band gets murdered, and after they're dead, their square manager discovers that the old duder who owns the mansion is really Hitler. I guess this was right around the time when Hitler became funny again. Nowadays, that's old hat, but I guess back then, it was pushing the envelope. This part's trying a little too hard to be offbeat, if you ask me, but I might have liked it more if they didn't give it away on the DVD box. I have to say, though, they must have hired an actual Hitler impersonator, because he does a damn fine job, even giving long speeches in German.

So then this virginal groupie chick who's in love with the band's lead singer plays this tape that he recorded before he died. It contains a song he'd read in a book ("A what?" asks the drummer) that brings the dead back to life, so the band rises from their graves and kills all of the motherfuckers who murdered them, including Hitler. The movie's over, right? Wrong. Then the dead Nazi villains rise again and go on a zombie rampage, turning everyone they meet into flesh-eating goons. Then it's up to the band to find a way to stop them, even though all they really want to do is play their farewell concert. It's funny, because they don't talk or show any personality, but then they get on stage and they rock the fuck out. I like that they come back to life with two things on their mind: rock and revenge. These are zombies I can relate to.

This is a pretty straightforward description of the plot, but the movie isn't straightforward at all. It's artsy in that early MTV way, so every now and again, a music video breaks out full of random images that don't have anything to do with each other. This is fine when it's for a frolicking montage, but when important parts of the plot (like both major murder scenes) get turned into Duran Duran videos, we got a problem here. It's alright, though. I could still figure out what was going on, more or less. It certainly made me pay attention.

There's some good wackiness in here, like when this nerd decides that zombies hate heads because they symbolize the intellect, the antithesis of zombiedom, so everybody tries to escape by shielding themselves with giant cutouts of famous heads. And then there's the running gag about the undead gnome who eats himself, ending by sucking his face into his severed skull like a piece of chicken skin.

So I had a good time. But I do have one problem with this movie. These are not really hard rock zombies. With the possible exception of their semi-metal set closer, they have way too many keyboards in their music to qualify. I'd say they're heavier than Night Ranger but softer than Dokken, if that helps you locate them on the eighties cock rock continuum.

I'd say your enjoyment of this movie is going to depend on your tolerance for cheesy eighties rock. Personally, I love this shit. It makes me wish the nineties never happened. When did being a whiny little bitch become rock and roll? Rock and roll is music you make with your dick. It should be fun, goddammit. The way I figure it, if a song makes me laugh, it's just as good as a song that makes me cry. I don't believe in guilty pleasures. Either it makes you feel good or it doesn't. Be a man and own up to what you like. Or be a woman and own up to what you like. Your choice.

Anyway, if you like cornball humor and songs whose lyrics consist of the words "shake," "it," "up," and "baby" repeated over and over again in no particular order, this is your movie. I suppose the zombies could stand to rock a little harder, but couldn't we all?

Dr. Giggles

2010-08-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

Dr. Giggles came out in 1992, sort of a no man's land for horror movies. The slasher cycle of the eighties had gone down in the flames of censorship and camp, and the mid-nineties post-modern neo-slasher revival was still a ways off. Yet Dr. Giggles seems to be both the last hurrah of the former and the precursor of the latter. It's got all of the hallmarks of a post-Elm Street slasher movie: gimmicky killer (psycho who thinks he's a surgeon), novelty deaths (thermometer through the mouth, roto-rooter stomach pump, giant suffocating band-aid, etc.), themed one-liners ("Are you experiencing any discomfort?"), and oversexed 28-year-old teenagers (designated comic relief Doug E. Doug, that Irish dude from the first season of Angel, the other chick from Charmed). But it also displays a lot of the trappings that would become common in the Scream-a-likes to come: classy high-contrast photography, more expensive sets (as opposed to cheap location work), realistic but subdued gore, a cast of WB actors and actresses (Granted, their shows hadn't actually been created yet, but they still have that WB cute-but-broody look), and, most importantly, an ironic take on the conventions of the genre.

Of course, Dr. Giggles came out a couple years before Pulp Fiction popped the mainstream's post-modern cherry, so rather than going the Scream route and having all of the characters blatantly explain the tenets of the slasher movie so that their later subversion would be clear to the audience, it just parodies them mercilessly and expects the audience to get the joke on its own. Which it most assuredly did not, which is why Dr. Giggles has largely been lost to the ages.

When I first saw it back in '92, I thought it was really, really stupid. Fourteen-year-olds take the things they love pretty seriously, and the way Dr. Giggles kept ruining the illusion of reality with its goofy puns offended me. Since then, I've come to recognize and appreciate the absurdity of most of the things I once took at face value, and after rewatching Dr. Giggles, I have to say that it's an underrated horror comedy masquerading as a cookie-cutter slasher flick. It's a mildly subversive little in-joke that had the misfortune of coming out six or seven years before that kind of thing became popular. Sometimes it's not smart to be ahead of the curve.

Here's the deal: Dr. Giggles is this crazy motherfucker whose father was a general practitioner in a small town named Moorehigh (which is exactly what I got over the course of the movie). When his mom died of heart problems, Pop went crazy and starting cutting out his patients' hearts while little Dr. Giggles just sat there laughing. When the people of Moorehigh found out, they lynched the old man, but Junior escaped by hiding inside his mother's hollowed-out corpse. (If you've never seen a bloody, giggling eight-year-old scalpel his way out from between a pair of rubber tits, you haven't lived.) Then he spent the next forty years in an insane asylum before escaping and coming back to Moorehigh to get revenge on the next generation, giggling like early Daffy Duck the whole time.

Just from this setup, we can see that Dr. Giggles pre-dates the modern "mixtape movie" like Kill Bill and Doomsday by being a grab-bag of the preceding era's dominant horror heroes: He's got Freddy's motivation (lynching leads to murder of teenagers who had nothing to do with it), Michael Myers' backstory (crazy kid spends whole life in institution before returning to his hometown), and Jason's issues (son continues murderous work of insane parent). Dr. Giggles isn't so much a character as he is a collection of clichés, but the actor who plays him makes it work. He's played by Larry Drake, once best known as the retard janitor on L.A. Law but now mostly remembered as Durant from the Darkman series.

(I mean, who gives a fuck about L.A. Law anymore? That's the thing about stuff that normal people like: It has no legs, because normal people have no heart. They don't really love the things they like; they just passively experience them because they've got nothing better to do. In 40 years, do you really think people will still support American Idol the way geeks still support Star Trek? Hell no. When something new comes along, normal people just go with the flow and forgot about the old shit. But geeks remember. That's why we're finally running things. The norms might boost the opening-weekend grosses, but it's the geeks who'll still be buying the DVD [or the 3-D cerebral cortex implant or whatever medium is prominent at the time] in 30 years. There's a lesson to be learned there: Make a product for the masses and you'll eat for two days. Make it for the geeks and you'll eat forever.)

Anyway, Drake is great as Dr. Giggles. Every single word of dialogue he speaks is a medical-themed one-liner ("I'm not really seeing patients yet, but for you, I'll make an exception," "Visiting hours are over," "Open up and say ah," etc.) but somehow, they all seem to come from within the character. They don't make him seem like a slumming character actor; they make him seem like a total fucking nutcase who has his own separate reality running in his head at all times. His façade never breaks down. He never gets angry or threatens to rip somebody's lungs out. He maintains his bedside manner and soft-spoken bemusement at all times, even when he's chasing somebody around with a hypodermic needle or fencing with one of those rubber hammers they use to test reflexes. But at the same time, there's an undercurrent of gleeful sadism bubbling just below the surface, as if, deep down, he knows this doctor persona he's concocted is all for show. It's a hilariously deadpan performance that, in a different era, would have spawned a dozen straight-to-video sequels. Plus, there's one really creepy part where he keeps giggling hysterically while simultaneously whimpering in pain from a gunshot wound. You get the idea that the giggling is a coping mechanism for the good doctor, so even though the pain is very real (he's far from an invincible superslasher), he just laughs it away. He did the same thing as a child when his mother died. With no dialogue designed to develop his character, Drake gives you a little insight into the way Dr. Giggles' mind works. And really, in a movie like this, a little is all you need.

I think Dr. Giggles is ripe for a revival, but there's one part of the movie that just doesn't make sense. One of the teenage couples has doomed itself by playing a prank on the token black couple (the first to buy it, naturally) and retiring to the bedroom to fuck. So while the chick puts on the dude's mom's lingerie (which is creepy in its own right), the dude goes into the bathroom to put on the condom. Did people ever really do that? Were people in 1992 so scared of AIDS that they put on the rubber before the foreplay even started? Getting a handjob with a condom on would totally suck. But then the guy ends up losing the condom in the toilet while his girlfriend is getting murdered, so he says, "Maybe she won't notice." What? How the fuck is she not gonna notice that his pecker isn't encased in slimy latex? Was he just gonna walk out of the bathroom and jam it right in her without preamble? No diddling, no oral, no nothing? What a pig. And even if he had managed to put the condom on, was he planning on stepping out with his dong ensheathed and declaring, "Present vagina! It is safe for me to enter you now!" Man, sex in the early nineties must have been boring. I was only having sex with myself at the time, but I gotta say, I was much more romantic. Of course, it helps if you're completely head over heels in love with your partner.

In closing, watch Dr. Giggles. And practice safe sex, but don't be a fucking Nazi about it. A naked cock is not a lit stick of dynamite.

Redbelt

2010-08-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

It's a well-known fact that, sooner or later, every disreputable genre will get artsyfartsified. Jaws did it for monster movies. Crouching Tiger did it for chopsocky. Silence of the Lambs did it for serial killer flicks. And now Redbelt is here to do it for one of the most disreputable genres of all: the Chuck Norris movie.

See, back when he was still blond and beardless, Chuck was always playing these retired martial artists who just wanted to hang back and not have to kick motherfuckers in the neck anymore. He used to be in the army, but now he runs a little dojo or something, nothing extravagant, but enough for him and the occasional ladyfriend. Somewhere along the way, he gets into a random bar fight to let you know that he could still kick ass if he wanted to. He just prefers not to. Then somebody asks for his help, and he tries not to get involved, but sooner or later, some dumb fuck pushes him too far and he has to break his feet of fury out of mothballs. This movie's been made roughly 700 million times, both with and without Chuck, and while it's awesome, it's not the kind of story that you ever really believe in; it's just a workable formula for mindless action. But Redbelt takes that exact formula—even down to the bar fight—and breaks your goddamn heart with it.

This is a great movie, and you know what? Even though respected playwright David Mamet wrote and directed this thing, I'm going to go ahead and take full credit for its existence. Long-time Majestykles will no doubt remember my review of the not-so-hot kung-fu flick Chinese Hercules in which I lamented that the so-called "hero" spent the whole movie bellyaching about how he didn't want to kick ass anymore. "Nobody wants to watch some dude wrestle with his demons and become a more spiritual person," I sagely declared. "We want to watch him get righteously pissed off and slaughter a whole mess of deserving scum." I then went on to say, "I kind of hope that someday somebody proves me wrong and makes a movie where, when the hero finally stops blubbering and learns to kill again, we think, 'Aw, that's too bad.'" Well, I guess David Mamet has been reading my blog on the sly, because Redbelt is that movie. I assume the check is in the mail.

Here's the deal: Chiwetel Ejiofor plays this badass jujitsu expert named Mike Terry who runs a little storefront dojo in L.A. He has a code of honor that makes sense to him and seems like the correct way to live his life, but the rest of the world doesn't agree. He's always broke, so everybody's always trying to get him to fight competitively, but he knows that's not the right way to use his skills. He just wants to teach his students, hang out with his hot Brazilian wife, and basically be the most decent and noble human being who has ever walked the earth.

That's pretty much what this movie is about: maintaining your personal code of ethics when the entire world wants you to sell out. The plot is too goddamned complicated to explain, but it involves all of these seemingly minor incidents adding up to a vast conspiracy to get Mike to fight in this UFC-style tournament. And I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but when that tournament comes up, I found myself wishing that Mike didn't have to fight in it. Crazy, right? The tournament is where the kung-fu happens, and I still wished that Mike could just go back to his dojo and teach a few whitebelts some basic self-defense maneuvers. The tournament is such a crass bastardization of everything that Mike believes in that it actually broke my heart to see him lower himself to that level. Redbelt did the impossible: It made me anti-asskicking.

A lot of that is on Ejiofor himself. I don't know how well known he is, but he's one of my favorite actors working today. He can play villains (Serenity), heroes (this movie), and sidekicks (Inside Man) with equal conviction, and he has a decency and grace that is second to none. I honestly believe that if the world wasn't so fucking racist this guy could play Superman—he's that fucking deep-down noble. Now, a lot of people don't like a 100% good character. They need shades of gray to be able to relate. It's the classic Superman vs. Batman debate. I can appreciate that (nine times out of ten I'll go with Bats over Supes), but I also love a character who doesn't have a dark side. Someone who either by nature or by conscious choice will always do the right thing, no matter how much it hurts. He refuses to act out of pettiness, to compromise his principles, to deny whatever help he can give to whomever needs it. Because, believe it or not, that's the person I want to be. I want to be the goddamn hero. But I am weak and I am selfish, and though I have my moments of courage and honor (like we all do), in the end, I am just as flawed as anyone else. I'm no hero. I'm just a guy trying to get along. That's why I'm a sucker for someone who represents the best of what I wish I could be. I wish I could be that humble, that loyal, that brave, that selfless. I don't know what it says about me, but I envy a martyr.

(Did I mention that I was raised Catholic?)

Anyway, Redbelt is definitely a portrait of a hero, but it's also an exploration of how much being a hero would suck. While everyone can agree with Mike's code of honor in theory, in reality, it would be a major pain in the ass. In the movie, he's always helping out everyone except himself. Some neurotic lawyer lady wanders into his dojo off the street and accidentally busts his window, and he lets her go without asking her to pay for it. After all, she was clearly not in control of her actions. Besides, she was a guest in his dojo. It would be wrong to ask her for money. Of course, his wife just wants to know how the hell they're going to replace the window when they can't even pay the goddamn rent. Redbelt asks the question: When does being honorable amount to selfishness? Is it not more honorable to compromise and be able to feed your family than to stay pure and have them starve? Mike's noble intentions and strict moral code may lead to enlightenment on the mountaintop, but down here on the ground with the rest of us mortals, it leads everyone around him to pain and suffering.

In the end, the movie does glorify Mike's code, but it's careful to show the cost, both to himself and those around him. But there are pluses and minuses in everything, and his example leads others to find strength within themselves they never knew they had. I guess the moral of the story is: Everyone loves a hero. Just don't marry one.

Anyway, let's talk about the fights, because none of this would matter if they didn't deliver. There are only two major fight sequences in the movie, but they're pretty awesome. The first is that bar fight I was talking about. Tim Allen plays this asshole movie star who goes out on the town without his bodyguards because he wants to get into a fight for research. Problem is, he's a pussy, so Mike has to save him. What follows is two minutes of seemingly effortless jujitsu, in which Mike disables four or five men without ever throwing a punch. In Japanese, "jujitsu" translates as "the gentle way," and while I wouldn't go that far (I don't see how you can gently snap someone's wrist), it's more about using your opponent's aggression against him than it is about being aggressive yourself. You can't meet force with force; you can only embrace it or deflect it. The catchphrase of the movie is "There is nothing you can't escape," and that's what Mike's fighting style and his life are all about. It's about maintaining your dignity and your honor even when you're facedown on the mat, because if you remember what you stand for, you will eventually find a way to get up again. It's as clichéd a message as there is, one parroted by every cheesy power ballad ever recorded, and yet there are moments in this movie that damn near made me cry. It just goes to show that there are no outdated themes, just outdated modes of expressing them.

I just realized that not only is Redbelt a classy version of a Chuck Norris movie, it's also a classy version of an inspirational sports movie. It's got all of the elements: Pure-hearted hero denies worldly temptations offered by corrupt society and emerges victorious from climactic tournament. This is pretty much the plot of Rad, only with a different sport and better haircuts. And just like Rad, the climax is a little rushed and a lot far-fetched (it's one of those endings where somebody gets rewarded for doing something that would get you or me imprisoned), but it packs a punch. And it does it without ever throwing one.

Street Kings

2010-08-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

After he grew out of his Bill & Ted phase, Keanu Reeves pretty much made a career out of being miscast. He's gotten a reputation as the guy the studios saddle filmmakers with so they can have a bankable name on the poster. I think it started with his role as Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula. In Keanu's defense, that part has a long tradition of sucking. It's been played boringly by dozens of actors over the course of nearly a century, but never with a British accent that sounded like the San Dimas High School drama club's production of A Christmas Carol.

Then Keanu started utilizing his bland but strangely charismatic demeanor in action roles, where he basically functions as a blank canvas on which filmmakers and audiences alike can project pretty much whatever they want. Whether he's playing an idealistic adrenaline junkie (Point Break, Speed) or a superpowered messiah (The Matrix), he maintains the same facial expression and lets the context surrounding him do all the heavy lifting. He's sort of like C-3PO, who can look sad, scared, or happy depending on what's going on around him, even though his face is just an unmovable mask.

Nowadays, Keanu keeps trying to go against his dopey but sweet persona by trying to play cynical tough guys without ever really pulling it off. (I do think he was surprisingly intimidating as a redneck wifebeater in The Gift, though.) But somehow, even though you're never excited to see Keanu cast in anything (The Day the Earth Stood Still? Really?), and he's never really all that good, he still almost never ruins the final product. Eventually, you kind of have to respect the guy. He seems like a decent dude, and he always gives every role his best shot. That's probably why he's stuck around a lot longer than all the other prettyboy actors of his generation. I mean, have you seen much of Judd Nelson lately?

Which brings us to Street Kings, a halfway decent crime thriller that pretty much nobody saw. This is a different role for Keanu because he's trying to do the whole "burned-out detective on the ragged edge" thing, so it looks like he put on a little weight and tried to make his perpetual babyface sag a little. Even though this is really more of a Kiefer part than a Keanu part, he puts his back into it and manages to come off slightly more badass than usual. You still spend most of the movie wishing that they'd cast Tom Jane or somebody like that, but by the end, Keanu's inherent naiveté actually works for the character, who turns out to be not as cynical as he thinks he is. Unlike, say, Constantine, I can see why they went the Keanu route on this one.

Street Kings is based on a James Ellroy story, so it's obviously about dirty L.A. cops. And even if you didn't know that, you'd figure it out in the first 30 seconds, because the first thing Keanu does after he wakes up in the morning is grab his pistol and puke. Then puts on an ugly shirt and goes to the liquor store for three travel-sized bottles of vodka. Then he tries to sell a .50-cal Army surplus machine gun to a couple of Korean gangbangers who like to use the N-word in wildly inapt ways. Then he follows them back to their crib and kills them and their entire gang. He doesn't have a warrant or identify himself as a cop or anything. He just kicks the door in and starts shooting. The first two guys, one of them's just sitting at the dinner table and the other one's taking a shit. The next two try shooting back, but it doesn't work. Like all of the movie's gunfights, it's shot economically with an eye toward geography, and the squibs are nice and squishy.

So then, right when you've pretty much decided that this dude is just a monster with a badge, he opens a secret passageway and rescues two little girls in a cage. So now we don't know what to think. Sure, he violated those gangbangers' civil rights by murdering them without a warrant, but they were also evil kidnapping scum. The movie isn't really interested in exploring the theme of ends justifying the means in any kind of meaningful way, but it provides enough character development to keep the story moving in between badass beats.

You find out in the next scene that Keanu is basically a hitman for the cops. His boss, Forest Whitaker, tells him who to kill, then cleans up the mess afterward. But then Keanu's ex-partner tries to rat him out to Internal Affairs, represented by Hugh Laurie, the guy from House, which is the TV version of that old horror movie from the eighties, only set in a hospital. Which is not a house, in my opinion. Fucking TV people screw everything up. Anyway, then the partner gets shot more times than Robocop, and everyone in the whole world except for Keanu knows that Forest Whitaker ordered it. So he's got to deal with his guilty conscience and get to the bottom of the whole thing by shooting a whole bunch of people. Which he does, very satisfyingly.

Shit, man, I wish I had more to say about Street Kings, but it kind of is what is. It's the kind of down-and-dirty little shoot-'em-up that the marketing people like to call "gritty" even though that word has been ground down to a nub by overuse and thus has no meaning anymore. If you like that kind of movie, then this is the kind of movie you'll like. The plot is never the slightest bit believable, but the action is violent and exciting and the cast is interesting (Jay Mohr, Chris Evans, John Corbett, Cedric the Entertainer, The Game, and Common, who, despite being a crunchy granola pussyfag manages to be twice as badass as The Game, a real-life Blood with a face covered with prison tattoos). And there are some good poetically hard-boiled lines, like when Forest Whitaker describes Keanu's role in the police force by saying, "You're the tip of the fuckin' spear." And you get to see Neo fight Ghost Dog, so if that sounds up your alley, you should probably rent it or something. Too bad the DVD's already out or they could have used that last line on the cover.

Queen of Black Magic

2010-08-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

Today we got another Indonesian oddity from Mondo Macabro, the video company that brought you such experimental arthouse fare as For Y'ur Height Only and Lady Terminator. This one's called Queen of Black Magic. It's not as shit-in-your-hand-and-rub-it-in-your-hair insane as the legendary Mystics in Bali, but it's pretty good.

It's about this broad who gets lynched because everybody in the village thinks she's a witch, so she decides to prove them wrong by, um, becoming a witch. It starts out at this wedding that looks more like a Day of the Dead parade, with lots of dudes in weird masks dancing around. Then the rice casserole turns into maggots and the bride starts seeing snakes everywhere (possibly a Freudian foreshadowing of her upcoming marital duties) and hallucinating that her husband-to-be is a plastic skeleton. Obviously, black magic (I'm sorry, "urban magic") is afoot, so they call in a witch doctor to clean that shit up. The evil's too strong, though, so he gets telekinesised to death.

Then the groom is like, "Hey, I know who did it. It's this chick I dumped after promising to marry her so I could take her virginity in a filthy shack out in the rice paddies." His unsubstantiated allegation is good enough for the angry mob he's got hanging out on his lawn, so they go grab the chick and burn down her house with her mom in it. Then they throw a dummy wearing her dress off a cliff, but luckily, she gets caught by this other witch doctor who convinces her that she needs to get herself some of that revenge everybody's talking about.

So she learns the dark arts and goes back to the village to magic the hell out of everybody who lynched her. She makes big rubber blood bubbles appear all over this one dude, then has another guy get his right eyeball stung out by bees. Then another guy gets his right eyeball eaten by worms.

Come to think of it, the blood bubble guy's right eyeball popped as well. She's got a problem with right eyeballs, I guess. Maybe One-Eyed Willie touched her in her area when she was little.

So then she keeps trying to quit this whole revenge thing (it's so time-consuming) but the witch doctor keeps bullying her into it. I don't know if I trust that guy. So she makes red Kool Aid come out of her ex-boyfriend's neck, and he stumbles back home and rips off his own head with his bare hands. Then it starts flying around and biting people, until this pious Muslim dude with a porn star mustache comes to town and tells everybody that praying makes the devil shit his pants.

Then the movie becomes kind of a commercial for Islam for a while. Then there's almost some incest. Then the witch doctor starts throwing around big papier mache boulders, so the main chick makes him explode with her mind, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what Muhammad would have done.

Jumper

2010-08-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

Jumper is a superhero movie for assholes. Anakin Skywalker plays Max Jumper, a dude who discovers that he can teleport anywhere in the world. So he what he does is he starts robbing banks so he can become a callow, self-absorbed yuppie prick who uses his powers to scooch over two feet on the couch so he can pick up the remote and change the channel so he doesn't have to watch flood victims drown on TV. (Kinda makes me wonder why he's not a big fatass, now that you mention it.) So you kind of figure that the whole movie is gonna be about him learning that helping people is more important than being a rich dickface, but then all he does is learn how to save his own ass.

Seems there are these dudes called "paladins" who want to kill jumpers for Jesus. Jesus hates jumpers, you see, because only God should have the power to rob banks and stand on top of Big Ben whenever He feels like it. Sam Jackson's the head paladin, and, like always, he seems like he's having a great time. In fact, even though he's playing a self-righteous cocksucker, I was kind of on his side. If all jumpers are selfish douches like Anakin, then they should be trapped with electric grappling hooks and stabbed with ceremonial daggers.

The movie, however, seems to think that Anakin turns into some kind of hero, even though the only person he saves is his own girlfriend (played by that chick from The O.C. who looks like a slightly oversized Bratz doll), who wouldn't even be in danger in the first place if Anakin hadn't lied to her about his superpowers. So then the movie ends and we're supposed to think that Anakin is some kind of hero now, even though there is no evidence to support that claim. I appreciate that they were trying to do something a little subversive and show a hero who's not very heroic, but they didn't follow through on that strategy. The whole tone of the movie acts like Anakin really is a hero, providing him with a triumphant theme song and slo-mo money shots. I got the sense that the assholes who made the movie actually expected us to root for this guy, even though he has no redeeming qualities and lacks the charisma to make that look cool.

The fight scenes are pretty sweet, though, even if X2 did teleportation better. The problem is, they never really work out the rules, so you're always kind of wondering why Anakin even bothers to fight anybody when he could just bamf himself to Sri Lanka. Then you're supposed to believe that Sam Jackson, armed only with a cattle prod, poses a serious threat to two dudes who can teleport, one of whom has a flamethrower. (Bonus: There's a dude with a flamethrower.) Still, I sort of liked it on an "Oooh, shiny!" level. It's hard to complain about flying buses.

But then the DVD has some animatics of scenes that didn't get shot, and they're way cooler than anything in the movie. There's one part where Anakin is fighting this other jumper on a helicopter and then he teleports them both to the fucking moon and handcuffs the dude to Neil Armstrong's flagpole. Not since The Chronicles of Riddick have I so wanted a sequel to a movie I didn't like that much.

Postal

2010-08-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

Postal is a film by German auteur/tax loophole exploiter Uwe Boll, who takes a lot of shit because he's an arrogant, deluded, loud-mouthed asshole who makes really terrible movies out of video games that nobody's ever heard of. This one's different, though, because it's supposed to be funny.

It's about this dude (Zack Ward, a.k.a. Scott Fargis from A Christmas Story) who lives in a trailer park and has a 400-pound wife who fucks everybody but him. He can't find a job, so him and his Uncle Dave (former Kid in the Hall Dave Foley and his naked penis) steal a truckload of Krotchy dolls (anthropomorphic cartoon cock-and-ballses) so they can sell them on eBay. Problem is, Osama was gonna do the same thing, only he was gonna load the dolls up with Bird Flu. The whole point of Postal is to try and be as offensive as possible to as many people as possible, but it's just so childish that it fails and ends up being kind of…I don't know if cute is the right word for a movie in which the hero headbutts a retarded kid for no reason, but there it is.

Case in point: The first scene shows the 9/11 terrorists haggling with Osama over the phone about how many virgins they're going to get in heaven. That's about the level of satire we're dealing with here. Boll (whose first name is pronounced "uva," not "yoowie," as I had hoped) even appears as a child-molesting, video game-hating Nazi version of himself who owns a theme park called Little Germany and pays for everything with gold teeth while bikini babes in Hitler mustaches dance around him.

The only point he seems to be making with any of these adolescent shock tactics is that politics and religion and stuff are, like, stupid. Still, the movie is a lot of fun because it's so colorful and eager to please. It's got the feel of one of those USA Up All Night flicks from the late eighties, the ones you catch halfway through and never find out the name of. I'd compare it to Sonny Boy or Parents or Nice Girls Don't Explode, real classics like that.

Also, it's got some great cameos, like Seymour Cassel and the dude who played the Big Lebowski as dirty old men (Best line: "When I get through with her, she'll look like she got hit by the mayonnaise truck!"), J.K. Simmons as a street preacher who says fuck the 9/11 victims, Verne Troyer as a version of himself who gets raped by a roomful of monkeys, and that yuppie alpha-male asshole from Hostel, here playing the yuppie alpha-male asshole from Postal.

This will very likely be Boll's best movie ever, and I suspect it will develop a small cult following. Certainly Boll himself believes that he's made a timeless masterpiece. As he says on the outrageously paranoid and self-important commentary track, "I have the courage. This movie is full of courage. This movie is not pussying out for nobody. This movie is insulting the people that have now the power, who can now destroy my career. They can now sue me. They can now kill me, like the fundamentalists. I give a shit about the fucking Mufti shit, and about the Muslims or whatever, or Muhammad, because I give a shit about the whole religious stuff." Seriously, fuck firemen. Uwe Boll is the real hero.

Freddy vs. Jason

2010-08-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

Dude, seriously, how excited were you when this movie came out? I couldn't even believe the universe loved me enough to let this movie exist. After a dozen years and thousands of rumors, the cinematic showdown between my man JV and that punk pederast Fredrick K. was finally a reality. Like many awesome individuals who grew up in the eighties, these two stabby motherfucks provided my gateway into the horror genre, laying the foundation for an obsession that would follow me into my thirties, stealing all of my expendable income and robbing me of an entire wall of my apartment. They're at least partially responsible for turning me into the unboyfriendable man-child I am today. I should probably want revenge, but if there's anything that these two have taught us, it's that vengeance is a closed circuit from which there is no escape. The world could learn a lot from Freddy and Jason.

Anyway, that's a lot of baggage for a movie about two ugly guys who put metal objects through each other. And while I can't say that Freddy vs. Jason is the definitive Freddy and Jason movie, it does enough things right that I can't help but love it. Bride of Chucky director Ronny Yu makes everything bright and shiny without going into full-on McG sugar rush mode, and the script stays on just the right side of the line dividing a stupid movie that knows just how stupid it is from a stupid movie that's pretending not to know how stupid it is. We'll call it "The Renny Harlin Line."

The actors certainly help set the tone. You can't fake bad acting of this caliber. Every single word that comes out of Kelly Rowland (hardly recognizable when not standing immediately to the left of and slightly behind Beyoncé Knowles) is an amazing display of computerized speech simulation. You can practically hear the gears turning in her head as she struggles to remember and enunciate the inhuman dialogue that the screenwriters (clearly deaf-mute shut-ins who have never had a conversation with another human being before) have concocted. Hers is the very special brand of terrible acting that makes you visualize the words on the page, where they're even funnier in stark black and white. It takes an actor of grandiose awkwardness to make these words, perhaps pecked out at random by a warehouse full of woodpeckers, truly sing. Luckily, Freddy vs. Jason is populated almost exclusively by such guileless anti-thespians.

The story, I have to admit, could be better, but I like the set-up, that Freddy brings Jason back to life to make people remember the legend of Freddy, which gives him the power to invade kids' dreams again. One thing I like about the script is that it's very old-school comic book, in that characters explain their motivations to no one in particular while looking straight at the audience. But then they have about 60 scenes where the plot gets re-explained over and over again. The first two-thirds of the movie is much more Elm Street than Friday, which means a whole bunch of backstory and strategizing that you don't find in Jason's minimalist solo adventures. There are way too many scenes focusing on the victims and not on the monsters, who are clearly the stars of the show. It reminds me of King Kong vs. Godzilla, where you had to sit through an hour and a half of baffled scientists before the climactic dust-up. The people scenes in FvJ are much more involving, though, thanks to the inventive cinematography of Fred Murphy and the bulging cleavage of Monica Keena. I really feel for that poor girl's back. Of course, I'd much rather feel on her front, but that's neither here nor there.

The one thing that I was highly skeptical about before I saw this movie for the first time was the recasting of Jason. Stuntman Kane Hodder had played the venerable Mr. Voorhees a record four times, starting with Friday VII, and I felt that he was the definitive Jason. Whereas previous Jasons had played the character as a mindlessly murderous mongoloid who commits mass slaughter because that's just the way he's wired, Kane brought a certain malevolence to his performance. Just the way he cocked his head or rolled his shoulders told you that this was not just a character driven by violent impulses he doesn't understand, but a snarling engine of death that exists only to eradicate all human life in its path. With very subtle body language, Kane gave Jason a will and a soul. Without him, those last few Friday movies would have been nearly unwatchable, and it broke my heart a little when I heard that his services would not be required for Freddy vs. Jason.

But after I saw the movie, I could see why they recast him. To make the plot work, Jason had to be somewhat sympathetic to contrast with Freddy's mean-spirited nastiness, so they picked a stuntman with sluggish, dopy body language to make him more of a Frankensteinian misunderstood monster. That's why I've always preferred Jason, honestly. Both of them will kill you for no reason, but only Freddy's gotta be a prick about it. He's a racist, misogynist pedophile who likes to toy with his victims first, digging into their subconscious to bring their deepest fears to the surface. He's gonna make it hurt. Jason's much more Zen about the whole thing. He sees. He kills. It's nothing personal. I'm not saying he's the nicest guy on earth, but he'll do his best to make it as quick and painless as possible. He's not gonna call you a whore or make you endure some elongated torture sequence ironically referencing your favorite hobby. He'll just walk up and impale you on something. Done.

I think this has to do with their differing M.O.'s. Jason's killing sprees generally take place over the course of one or two nights, so he's got a lot of work to get done. He doesn't have time to dick around with elaborate production numbers involving claymation snakes and doppelgangers of his victims' loved ones. He's just gotta stab and move on. Freddy, on the other hand, usually only kills one victim per night, so he has to make a meal of it. Also, he's kind of a dick, so he enjoys his victims' torment. That's why Kane's Jason really wouldn't have worked. He's almost as malicious as Freddy, so the audience wouldn't have had anybody to root for. The FvJ Jason is too dumb to understand what's going on, so you kind of forgive him because he really doesn't know any better. He's sort of like Cujo in that respect. It ain't his fault he got the rabies and tried to eat E.T.'s mom. Metaphorically speaking.

What I always found strange about the movie is that even though Jason's body count is way higher than Freddy's, he still comes off as the lesser of two evils. If you really pay attention, you'll notice that Freddy only kills one person in the whole movie, while Jason hacks up like 35 teenagers just in that one scene at the kegger in the cornfield. I guess this says a lot about us as a culture. It doesn't matter how many innocent people you kill, just as long as you don't use any foul language.

Anyway, Freddy vs. Jason may not be everything it could have been, but it's a hell of a fun flick that I revisit a couple times a year. I love how deliciously squirty all the wounds are, as if all the victims are so hypertensive that their veins were about to burst. I like Freddy's stupid kung fu moves in the final battle, which is I guess what you get when you hire a Hong Kong action director to make your horror movie. I love all the Looney Tunes-style banging and bouncing as these two indestructible icons hack away at each other. I love that Camp Crystal Lake has enough propane onsite to create a small nuclear explosion. And I love that my man Jason walks away with that peckerhead Freddy's head as a trophy. Some say there's no definitive winner, but answer me this: Who's gonna get up tomorrow and continue his good work of enforcing teenage abstinence with whatever edged weapon God has placed in his path, and who's gonna spend the day on a mantelpiece, chatting with Mrs. Voorhees' severed head?

Robocop 2

2010-08-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

Robocop 2 got a bad rap when it came out, and it's easy to see why. It could never live up to the original, the very existence of which is kind of a miracle. Robocop is both a kickass action movie that raised the bar on cinematic violence and a no-holds-barred satire that was ahead of its time in its depiction of corporate omnipresence, the militarization of the police force, and the general crassification of society at large. Like all of Paul Verhoeven's movies, you were never sure if you were supposed to laugh or cringe. Or both. Or neither. Who knows with that kinky Dutchman?

Robocop 2, on the other hand, takes all of the masterfully integrated components of Robocop 1 and cranks them up to 11 so that they don't fit together so well anymore. Like its upgraded biotech antagonist, it's a bigger, clunkier, less elegant beast than its predecessor. The funny parts are obviously trying to be funny, the violent parts are too over-the-top to be shocking, and the satire has degenerated into comic-book exaggeration. While the first one was an honest-to-God Film with a capital F wrapped in the shiny silver skin of a goofy B-movie about cyborgs, possibly the goofiest of B-movie tropes, the second one is just a goofy B-movie about cyborgs. But if you've ever read one of my reviews before, you know damn well I'm not gonna knock it for that.

At the start of Robocop 2, Detroit is in even worse shape than it was in the last one. Or in Action Jackson, for that matter. The cops are on strike, half the populace is addicted to a new superdrug called Nuke that looks like Taco Bell hot sauce, and evil multinational conglomerate OCP is about to pull a hostile takeover of city government. So what OCP does is, they take the brain of Kane, the leader of the Nuke gang, and put it into a huge stop-motion robot octopus monster that's dripping with gatling guns and chainsaws and arc welders, and there's only one dude who can stop him. You might have heard of him. First name Robo, last name Cop?

But before we get to that shit, we got some human drama to deal with. The first movie was as much a metaphysical melodrama as anything else, making you feel for the ghost of Officer Alex Murphy trapped in the machine of Robocop. At the end, he reclaims his humanity, but I guess he didn't tell the suits back at OCP, because they'd prefer if he just did what he was told like a good home appliance. They wish he'd stop cruising by his old house and freaking out his wife, so they make him tell her that her husband is dead and only Robocop remains. I've read reviews that say that this theme is then dropped so the movie can focus on the carnage, but I think it's subtly working in the background over the course of the film. Robo wasn't lying when he said that Alex Murphy was dead, but that doesn't mean that Robo isn't still human. At one point in the movie, his programming is overwhelmed with a list of bullshit politically correct directives that render him incapable of taking decisive action, much like a computer than can only do what it's been programmed to do. After he fries his circuits to burn this programming out of him, he's left with no directives at all, not even the three he started out with in the first one: "Serve the public trust," "Protect the innocent," and "Uphold the law." At first, you'd think this means that Robocop is going to go crazy and start murdering motherfuckers, but that's not his style. He doesn't need any programming to tell him to be a good cop. He wants to protect the innocent, serve the public trust, and uphold the law, because that's the type of dude he is. As he learned at the beginning of the movie, he can't be Alex Murphy anymore, but that doesn't mean he's just a robot. A robot can't make choices, but Robocop chooses to be a hero of his own free will. And isn't our free will what makes us human?

Anyway, that's some heavy-duty shit for a movie where Tom Noonan's skull gets sawed open and his brain and spinal column get put in a jar with the eyeballs still attached so he can watch the doctor show off his hollowed-out head like it was a conch shell he found at the beach. This is a pretty hardcore movie. Everybody who gets shot gets shot about a hundred times, and they're not afraid to kill kids and little old ladies or press gun barrels to the soft-shelled temples of infants. There's a heavy emphasis on surgery, with both the hero and the villain undergoing non-consensual vivisection, as well as some impromptu scalpel torture of a dirty cop. It seems fascinated with the effect of metal on flesh, whether it's in the form of bullets, bonesaws, Robocop 2's face-mauling claw hand, or Robocop himself, who puts Kane in the hospital by launching himself off of a motorcycle through the windshield of the oncoming big rig Kane is driving. Think about how badass that is: Robocop uses his own body as a projectile weapon. I think the movie missed an opportunity to have Robo stand up from the wreckage of the truck, his blue-steel chassis painted red with the blood of his enemy.

Even so, this is an extraordinarily vicious movie, which makes the comedic scenes of reprogrammed Robo spouting mish-mashed platitudes to a team of evil little leaguers even more jarring. That's what I love about it, though. Why bother with a consistent tone when you can run the gamut from Cronenbergian body horror to Airplane!-style spoofery? This is a movie that doesn't just have its cake and eat it, too; it has its cake, eats it, pukes it up, pisses on it, then makes some little elephant sculptures out of it, which it then blows up. Or something. I don't know, man, this is a movie that does a lot of shit with its cake.

I also like the villains. For one, there's an 11-year-old named Hobb with a foldaway submachine gun who is somehow the second-in-command of the drug empire. He's a mean little bastard, but you still kind of feel for him when he bites it because, after all, he's just a kid. He hangs out with fucking psychopathic drug dealers all day, how's he supposed to know right from wrong? He even gives an argument for the legalization of drugs that is so entirely reasonable that you stop thinking of him as a villain. He's much preferable to The Old Man, the oily OCP CEO whose bottom-line brand of banal evil makes Hobb's drug-dealing and murdering look quaint.

But the star of the movie, in my opinion, is Tom Noonan as Kane. He plays the character as a Charlie Manson cult leader who really, honestly believes that the drug he's peddling is the key to paradise on earth. "Jesus had days like this," he says when Robocop invades his lair, and he's not trying to be funny. He means it. His performance is so convincing that it's a shame that he disappears halfway through the movie and turns into a Max Headroom digital avatar that appears on a plasma screen in Robocop 2's face. Even so, he gives Robocop 2, who exists only as a mixture of animatronics and stop-motion puppetry, a personality. You picture the soul of Kane living in the machine, and it humanizes the special effects.

Noonan is one of my favorite creepy character actors. A tall, lanky fellow with an expressionless monotone, he's best known as the killer in Manhunter, but he also played Frankenstein in The Monster Squad. I've actually had the good fortune to run into him twice, once in Brooklyn when he was getting off of a train I was getting on (He had to duck to go through the door), and again when I was smoking a cigarette outside of a bar in Manhattan. He was on crutches for some reason, and after he'd hobbled about halfway down the block, I finally worked up the courage to shout, "Robocop 2 rules!" He skeptically looked back at me over his shoulder, probably wondering if I was making fun of him. I feel bad about that, because I definitely wasn't. Robocop 2 does, in fact, rule. It might not be a timeless classic like the first one, but it's a big, sloppy, socially irresponsible B-movie with guts. And it's not afraid to show them to you, either.

The Shepherd: Border Patrol

2010-08-28T15:00:00.000-07:00

Watching JCVD made me want to do some research into the recent work of Jean-Claude Van Damme to see if his newfound acting chops had any historical precedent. So I checked out The Shepherd: Border Patrol, which I'd heard was the best of his straight-to-video output. And I gotta say, it was an entertaining meat-and-potatoes flick with some well-staged action and a few inspired touches. It won't change your life, but it's got a good chance of positively influencing your Sunday afternoon.

Let's talk about the title first. The second half of it makes sense, but the first half is like some random Polaroid that Pearl Jam stuck in the middle of their liner notes that has nothing to do with anything and you're like "What is that, a seashell? Somebody's pierced nostril? A phrenology chart in extreme closeup?" It's a complete non-sequitur, almost Dadaist in its aggressive incongruity. Some have postulated that the titular shepherd is actually the villain of the piece, an ex-Special Ops commander who has taken to smuggling heroin across the U.S.-Mexico border by strapping it to illegal immigrants. I call bullshit on that. Not only does no one say anything about anyone shepherding anything in the entire movie, I consider the connotations of the word "shepherd" to be far too positive to be connected to a guy who likes to blow his runners up with explosive vests when they get caught. What I think actually happened was, the sheisty charlatans who financed this flick sold it to distributors under the proposed title The Shepherd, little realizing that that aspect of the story was already being written out of the script by the army of straight-to-video screenwriting monkeys they had locked up in a warehouse in Burbank. But since the wheels of commerce were already in motion, they were stuck with it, so they slapped that Border Patrol part on there to make it look like they'd actually seen the movie they'd made. Basically, it would be like if The Goonies was called Tentacle Cove because of that scene with the octopus that got cut out.

Wait a minute, I just figured this whole thing out. So Jean-Claude is on the New Mexico border patrol, right? He's just transferred there from New Orleans, which is not the first time he's pretended to be Cajun to explain his accent. He's all tortured and shit, but you don't know why. It has something to do with a vague flashback he has where some chick falls back on a bed and closes her eyes and Van Damme knocks over a bookcase. Heavy duty shit. His name is Jack, and he has a bunny who's also named Jack that he carries around in a cage all the time. I think this might be symbolism, I don't know. Hard to tell.

So Van Damme's first assignment is to fight these evil drug-running, immigrant-smuggling mercs, who are known as "coyotes." So think about it: What's the job of a shepherd? To protect his flock from coyotes and other predators. So I guess Jean-Claude really is The Shepherd, even though he does no shepherding whatsoever and no one ever refers to him as such, and in any case he never manages to save any illegal immigrants and that whole angle is a very small part of the movie anyway. The word "shepherd" also has some religious associations than I don't think the movie warrants (unlike in Cyborg, Van Damme does not get crucified for our sins this time), but I'm still glad I could finally get to the bottom of this completely pointless mystery.

Anyway, this movie has a lot of things going for it. It's got a body count in the mid double digits, and the fights are inventive and well-shot, with lots of modified jujitsu moves where dudes climb up their opponents like spider monkeys and flip them over. Despite being in his late forties, Van Damme does a lot of his own stunts, too, as evidenced by this one shot where you can see his face the whole time he does a full body flip around some guy's neck. And the explosive vests are a nice touch, because watching people blow up is one of the things that ignited my love of cinema in the first place.

There's one incredible part in the middle where the coyotes are disguised as priests on a heroin-filled bus full of real nuns and priests. When they get stopped by the cops, all these secret compartments open up and mounted machine guns pop out. Then there's a big firefight where Jean-Claude gets to shoot indiscriminately in the direction of innocent bystanders while the bus knocks police cars through the air. Then they escape to Mexico, but Jean-Claude doesn't give a dog's dick about that jurisdiction crap, so he follows and shoots it out with the villains some more, leaving many nuns and priests dead.

Then Jean-Claude manages to sneak onto the bus for some slick close-quarters combat, complete with human shield, but then his partner, Officer Turncoat McDeadguy, sells him out to the drug lords, who live in a big mansion with heavily squibbed statues all over the place and a swimming pool full of big-tittied bikini bitches. There's an early scene where one of the bad guys keeps lighting small sticks of dynamite on his cigar and throwing them into pool where the chicks are swimming. Nobody seems to mind this overmuch. It's a good thing that guy gets gassed to death in a barn a few scenes later because eventually that joke was going to stop being funny when somebody's breast implant got popped by flying shrapnel.

So Jean-Claude gets thrown in a Mexican prison, where the chief of police gives us a Van Damme staple by making him fight a cage match against the Mexican penal system's number one mixed martial arts champion. The police chief also employs one of my very favorite lazy writing clichés: He speaks perfect English for most of the sentence, until he gets to the words that the screenwriter learned in high school Spanish. Take this line, for instance. "I'll never understand you Americans. Why can't you keep your problems in su país?" So let me get this straight. This guy has a firm grasp on contractions and rhetorical questions, but he can't handle the word "country," which they probably teach on the very first day of Inglés 101? Nice try, warehouse full of typing monkeys.

Luckily, people don't talk very often in this movie, particularly Van Damme. I think he has like six lines of dialogue in the first 15 minutes, and three of them are "Yes, ma'am" and two of them are "I would like a cheeseburger and a coke, please." Luckily, he gets into a barfight in less than 12 minutes, so I ain't complaining. The dude's still got moves, but I don't really like him as the brooding, tortured hero type. I want to see him smiling and hitting on the ladies, like in real life. I think maybe this is why his acting was so much better in JCVD, because they let him talk. Left to his own devices, the man is a total babbler who's beloved by the French for routinely dropping the most ridiculous bon mots of all time. (Example: "Air is beautiful, yet you cannot see it. It's soft, yet you cannot touch it. Air is a little like my brain.") JCVD played more to his strengths than a movie where all he does is glower for whole reels at a time, so then when he finally does talk you haven't had a chance to get used to his accent so everything he says sounds stupid. It's sort of like how sometimes you like a song because it's so bad that it makes you laugh, but then it grows on you and all the irony leaks out so that you don't even remember why you thought it was funny anymore. That's what the sound of Jean-Claude Van Damme talking is like.

Also, has anyone else noticed that he has a huge lump on the right side of his forehead? It looks like a softball is trying to birth itself through his skull.

Anyway, if you like back-to-basics action where the clergy is collateral damage and a floppy-eared bunny rabbit gives the best performance, you could do a lot worse than The Shepherd. It's still got that direct-to-DVD look, but at least it's well framed and edited, which is more than you can say for most theatrical action movies these days. And thanks to over-the-top touches like the awesome bus chase and the exploding vests, it's got a more big-budget feel than anything I've seen from Seagal in at least ten years. Maybe this Van Damme guy's got legs after all.

Beer For My Horses

2010-08-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

We're living in an age where any damn thing at all can be made into a motion picture. We've got movies based on TV shows, comic books, video games, theme park rides, other movies, board games, and big-headed tween slut dolls. This one right here, Beer For My Horses, is an action-comedy based on a Toby Keith song guest-starring Willie Nelson. It's about vigilante justice, which is odd, because the movie's about cops. Also, not only are there no beer-drinking horses, I actually don't remember seeing any horses at all. Then again, it might be wishful thinking to expect that kind of thematic consistency from a movie in which impending doom is announced by a farting bulldog.

Before we get to the movie, I'm gonna make an announcement that will probably blow your mind. You should go get a drink of water or some smelling salts or something just in case. I will not be held liable for any bodily harm that may befall you due to fainting and/or seizure caused by reading the following statement.

I like country music.

I ain't talking about Johnny Cash, neither. Everybody likes Johnny Cash. If you don't like Johnny Cash, congratulations, you're an asshole. Come on up to the front and get your certificate, which is in the form of a big, brown "A" tattooed right on your fucking forehead. The "A" stands for asshole, asshole.

So, obviously, I like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and David Allan Coe and all that old school outlaw country it's cool to have at least a passing appreciation of. But that's not the country I'm talking about. I'm talking about country country. The kind of music cool people hate more than any other. The kind of music made by ignorant rednecks, for ignorant rednecks. I ain't embarrassed about it, though, and let me tell you why.

Well, first, let me make it clear that I ain't talking about no pussified country. If it sounds like Celine Dion with steel guitars, I hate it just as much as you do. Unfortunately, that's about 95% of the country that's out there. That's why you can't buy country by the album. You have to cherry-pick the good songs and make a mix. A good country song possesses the same gumbo of irreverence, showmanship, absurdity, braggadocio, and unexpected emotion that I look for in a good B-movie. And just like a B-movie, you can usually tell whether it's gonna be a good one based on the title. You see a song called "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)" or "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," you know you're in good hands. You learn to look for certain keywords, like "beer," "redneck," "drinking," "truck," "bottle," "Texas," "six-pack," or any combination of the words "kick" and "ass." But whatever you do, stay the fuck away from any country song with the word "love" in the title. Those songs are for overweight housewives from Utah whose husbands spend too much time at Home Depot.

Now that that's out of the way, I must stress that I don't just listen to country. I listen to all kinds of music. Everybody says that, but what they really mean is they listen to everything from U2 to Pearl Jam. I really mean it, though. On any given day, I could be found rocking out to German pirate metal, early nineties New York hip-hop, vintage British punk, cheesy eighties synth pop, trendy bands with three full-time French horn players, and/or any of Mike Patton's estimated 975 side projects. I am a well-rounded motherfucker. If a song makes me feel something, whether it's making me want to laugh, cry, dance, or punch somebody in the neck, I consider that a good song, no questions asked. I don't give a fuck if it's cool or original or well-played or anything. All I care about is the effect it has on me. In the words of the great prophet Andrew W.K., "I love music / I love to feel / I love to get through."

I think a lot of modern music forgets about that last part. It makes no attempt to connect with the listener. It's so desperately poetic and willfully obscure that you can't relate to it. It makes a nice sound, but what's it saying? Think about it. What is the average contemporary rock song even about? Half the time, you can't even understand the words the singer's slurring, and even when you can, they don't mean a damn thing. All the average contemporary rock song seems to be about is a vague sense of dissatisfaction. I actually listen to a lot of that shit, but it's not exactly the kind of thing you want to raise a beer and sing along to.

Country's not like that, though. It always wants to connect, and that's important to me. Its subject matter is the stuff of good times: drinking, driving fast, picking up chicks, and not giving a fuck. These are rock staples, but rock has largely abandoned them in favor of navel-gazing and angst. It's the same thing that happens to every art form on its journey to redundancy: It loses touch with the basic gristle of human life, turning ever inward, until only its practitioners and the most devoted of aesthetes can appreciate it. It happened to once-popular mediums like poetry, theater, and jazz, and if things don't turn around, it'll happen to rock, too. Some day, if the Radioheads of the world have their way, the only place you'll be able to hear rock is in a cocktail lounge. Snobs will be sipping white wine and thinking real hard about every note, while outside, the rest of humanity is having a great time drinking and singing along to whatever new form of music has deigned to come down from its pedestal and talk about shit that matters to them.

Take Toby Keith, for instance. Now, I'll be the first to admit that his politics are somewhat less than progressive. "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" is a horribly jingoistic and short-sighted song that I happen to find hilarious. I don't agree with its mission statement that "put[ting] a boot in your ass" is "the American way," but I have to admit that it's a fun fantasy along the lines of a mid-eighties Chuck Norris movie. I kind of wish that we were that righteous and that all we had to do was find the right asses to kick to set the world straight, but I know that ain't so. Luckily, it's just a song. It's not a foreign policy doctrine. But he's also got a song called "Get Drunk And Be Somebody" that I can totally get behind. Its message has gotten me through some rough times. It's about working all week for people who don't give a fuck about you, then going out on Friday night and being with your friends and feeling like maybe it's all worth it. Who can't relate to that? You hear it once and you already know the chorus by heart. You know what it's about just from the title. It ain't trying to prove how smart it is. It's just trying to make you feel better about your shitty life. Because guess what, hipster bands? Most people have to go to work every day. We don't live in a loft with 18 other art school kids, so we can't really relate to your danceable but aloof songs about Kierkegaard and ennui. We have real problems, so we don't need to manufacture depression through music just to feel something. We'd rather listen to a song that makes us transcend all that bullshit and feel good about ourselves for a change.

That brings me to the topic of joy. Isn't joy awesome? It's just about the best thing on earth, yet there are a whole bunch of joyless fucks out there. Let me tell you a little secret: The world don't wanna give you shit, so you better steal your joy where you can. If some country-western singer gets his from putting monster truck tires on his Ford F-150 and spitting his Copenhagen juice into a Big Gulp cup, who the fuck am I to argue? And if he can convey that sense of joy to me—a sarcastic New York liberal—then doesn't that make the world a better place for everybody? Even though I've never gone hunting or been in a honkytonk or worn my straight-leg jeans up to my sternum, I know what he's getting at. He's just trying to express himself through the iconography of his time and place. It's just like when a rapper talks about his gold chain or when a metal band sings about swords. These items are just totems of their identities, like Batman's cape or Indiana Jones' hat. When a rapper talks about his 24-inch rims, he's really saying, "This is who I am, and I don't give a fuck if you don't like it." When a metal singer talks about the glory of battle, he's really saying "I am awesome. Deal with it." And when a country singer writes a song about sitting on his tractor, drinking sweet tea, he's saying "I am not embarrassed to be who I am," which is a sentiment that I think we can all stand to learn. When you're listening to a song, it doesn't really matter what the particulars are, as long as the theme is relatable. I can't relate to owning a pickup truck, but I can sure as shit to relate to being totally in love with a whole bunch of stuff that the rest of the world looks down on (See: every movie review I've ever written). Whatever you care about, whatever makes you get up in the morning and love being you, even if nobody else understands, that's your pickup truck. That's what the man's singing about. He's not singing about his gun rack and his Skoal Ring; he's singing about joy. And joy, my friends, is universal.

Anyway, that's a lot of shit to dump on a movie co-starring the guy who wrote a song called "Letter To My Penis." His name his Rodney Carrington, he's some kind of redneck comedian/novelty songwriter, and he's Toby Keith's sidekick.

In Beer For My Horses, Toby and Rodney play bumbling deputies who have to take the law into their own hands when Toby's high school girlfriend Claire Forlani (still the prissiest broad in movies, despite the halfway decent Oklahoma accent) gets kidnapped by Mexican meth dealers who dress like Scarface. Luckily, they've got Ted Nugent on their side. He plays the Snake Eyes of the Bible Belt, a mute bowman who was raised by Indians, carries two Tech Nines at all times, and has his badge tattooed on his chest. Needless to say, the Nuge rules, but he's just one small facet of a great cast. Tom Skerritt plays the leather trenchcoat-wearing sheriff; Willie Nelson pops up as the leader of a trailer park circus troupe; David Allan Coe says one unintelligible line but still scores with a 21-year-old blonde hooker with a gold cross dangling between her hooters; Gina Gershon has one scene as Toby's soon-to-be ex; the guy who played Booger plays yet another sleazy lawyer; and Barry Corbin (Northern Exposure, plus every movie ever made) is the jerky rich villain who makes fun of Toby because his dad died poor. It's a game of Spot The That Guy: Good Ol' Boy Edition. Also, Toby's character is named Rack, which makes me hope his first name is Gunther. (Think about it.)

Movie-wise, this is all very eighties. There's lot of wisecracking, some truck chases, an explosion, and a shootout in a bar where Toby gets to jump through the air shooting two pistols. And just when you least expect it, there are monkeys and midgets running around everywhere, though they're not half as surreal as the scene where Rodney sings an a capella version of "Shout!" with a bunch of multiethnic thugs who for some reason are hanging around a rest stop bathroom in the middle of nowhere, which seems to reinforce the theory that minorities are only acceptable to the masses if they can sing. None of this is gonna blow your skirt up or anything, but I don't know, I like this kind of movie. It's just a stupid buddy flick that they don't make anymore unless Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are in it.

Anyway, having a fondness for country music will probably help you appreciate Beer For My Horses more. (By the way, the title refers to a toast: "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.") I ain't exactly recommending it, but I am recommending busting out a bottle of whiskey, a bucket of icy longnecks, a pack of Marlboro Reds, and a playlist of shit-kicking music. If you need some suggestions, give me a holler. And if your voice ain't hoarse the next day from singing along, I'm sorry, bud, but you ain't doing it right.

Foul Play

2010-08-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

What the hell happened to Chevy Chase? And by that question, I don’t mean “Why isn’t he making movies anymore?” I mean “What the fuck is physically and/or psychologically wrong with him?” This is a man who had it all. He was tall, good-looking, charming, and equally adept at verbal and physical humor. He was the only Saturday Night Live cast member who could be considered a full-fledged romantic leading man, sans irony. If he’d played his cards right, he could have segued into latter-day Alec Baldwin roles: condescending, smarmy, but just sexy and sensitive enough to make you love him.

So what happened? He went from being one of the funniest people alive to being not only not funny, but the opposite of funny. Plenty of older comedians lose their mojo (Dan Aykroyd, I’m looking at you), but Chevy is actually anti-funny. Funny implodes upon contact with him. When funny spots Chevy Chase at the bar, it pretends to be looking real intently at the jukebox until he passes by.

Here’s my theory, and like most of my theories, it involves either the devil, time travel, or a warehouse full of monkeys. I think Satan approached Chevy when he was just a rich kid who occasionally played drums with an early incarnation of Steely Dan. At the time, Chevy had everything a young layabout could want: money, looks, perfect pitch. The only thing he didn’t have was a sense of humor. So the devil made him an offer: His soul for 20 years of hilarity. So Chevy took the deal, not realizing that those 20 years would pass so fast and that, at the end of it, he would be forced to do on-camera interviews for the DVDs of his old movies where people would expect him to still be funny. So he figures, how hard could it be? And so he tries to be funny, even though Beelzebub long ago repossessed his sense of humor. And we, the DVD-viewing public, soon learn what happens when unfunny people attempt comedy without a license. Don’t let this happen to you. If you’re not funny, folks, just stick to the facts. Leave the wisecracks to the pros.

It’s a shame, because Chevy used to be my kind of comic actor: the kind who was funny because he was smarter than everybody else. I can’t help it, man. I’m a cocky little fucker, so I relate to comedians who use humor as a way to feel superior. That’s why I’m not a huge fan of contemporary comedies. They’re all about idiots, losers, and oafs, people I would never want to hang out with, let alone emulate. Back when I was a kid, performers like Chevy, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, and even John Candy made funny look cool. For a little dude like me who couldn’t fight, I admired the hell out of these guys who could take control of any situation with just their quick wit and unflappable confidence. I dare say that these men had more influence over me than any of the people who are actually in my life. I patterned my personality after their teachings, but who the hell would want to be like Will Farrell? Sure, he might make you laugh, but his entire schtick is “Look at me! I’m wearing a stupid outfit! I’m making a stupid face! Laugh at my shame!” I can’t stand desperate comedians like Jim Carrey or Mike Myers who look like they’re gonna shoot themselves in the fucking face if you don’t laugh at their tired antics. I prefer old school Chevy Chase, who was so busy amusing himself that he didn’t even give a shit if you thought he was funny or not. And that’s why he was funny. It’s like how the guy who looks like he doesn’t even need it gets all the chicks.

Anyway, that’s a long way to go to get back to Foul Play, a comedy-thriller in which Chevy plays second fiddle to Goldie Hawn. It was his first major film role, but he was already a star. He held a closeup well, he looked good in a suit, and you believed him when he spoke. It didn’t hurt that late-70s Goldie Hawn was so fucking adorable that you could have put Jim Belushi up against her and she’d make him seem like Cary Grant.

The movie is a corny but agreeable good time. It’s from a period when comedies looked like actual movies, not slickly edited blooper reels. The camerawork is as sly and sinister as lightweight Hitchcock, with lots of silent shots that let you see the location and all of the players in it. Every director wants to make a Hitchcockian thriller at some point in their career, because it's the purest form of cinema and a showcase for directorial talent. The story must be told visually to build suspense and lead (and mislead) the audience and the characters (though often not at the same time) through the plot. A good thriller’s major set-piece can be something as simple as two people walking down the sidewalk. A good director will make that an exciting cat-and-mouse game, while a bad director will make it just what it is: two people walking down the sidewalk.

Anyway, I think the Foul Play guy does a good job. As for the script, the plot is twisty but not particularly crucial, in the best Hitchcock tradition. Goldie plays a mousy but hot as fuck librarian who picks up a hitchhiker one day after driving through an interminable credits sequence in which a Barry Manilow song plays in its entirety. There isn’t enough irony in the world to make me like Barry Manilow, so this sequence is best watched on mute so you can enjoy the beautiful Bay Area scenery without any flugelhorn solos intruding. The hitchhiker slips Goldie a pack of Marlboro Reds with a roll of film in it ("Beware of the dwarf," he whispers ominously in her ear as he bleeds out), and then the rest of the movie is about all these wacky goons (an albino, a guy with a scar down his face, the archbishop of California's mustachioed chauffeur, etc.) trying to get the cigarettes away from her. They might as well have been called MacGuffin Lights.

Along the way, she gets hooked up with Chevy, who plays a detective with a partner played by Brian Dennehy. This flick has a great cast. At one point, Chevy, Goldie, Dennehy, and Burgess Meredith are all in the same scene together. That’s a roomful of awesome people right there. Also showing up is world-class midget actor Billy Barty, who gets hung out a window, beat with a broom, and rolled down the street in a barrel but survives with his dignity intact.

Personally, I don’t find midgets as funny as I used to. I’d rather see them treated with respect and given full-fledged characters to play. I much prefer mocking just regular old short guys, which is why I was so glad to see Dudley Moore show up as a wee pervert with a closet full of blowup dolls and a hideaway bed that makes a trumpet fanfare when it folds out. The man’s a natural born hobbit who comes up to about doorknob height, and for some reason, it makes me laugh to see him walk around in his little suits.

But the highlight of the movie is the part where Burgess Meredith (Goldie’s snake-owning anthropologist landlord) suddenly reveals that he’s a blackbelt and starts karate-chopping motherfuckers. Goldie and Chevy have been captured, so Burgess sneaks into the villain’s lair like a ninja and gets into a five-minute no-holds-barred fight with this big dominatrix-looking bitch. Before I saw that, I never realized how spiritually impoverished my life was.

Then Chevy and Goldie race downtown to the opera house where the Pope is about to be assassinated while watching Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, which has got to be the single gayest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Man, the Pope must have to sit through shit like that all the time. “Welcome to our country, here is our national children’s choir singing three hours of tribal folk songs.” Heaven better be pretty fucking sweet for His Popeness to put up with that shit.

Anyway, here’s where the movie becomes a game of Grand Theft Auto for a while. Chevy steals a car and drives like a maniac until he crashes into a pizzeria, at which point he steals another car. Then he does it again. Granted, he doesn’t beat an old lady to death with a dildo, but I bet they'll totally do that if they ever remake it.

In conclusion, Foul Play is a fun movie from a time when comedians were the coolest guys in the room and comedies were treated with a little respect, even when they featured pratfalling, dwarf-rolling, and karate-chopping. It’s also a sad reminder of what happens to funny people when they fuck around with the devil. Satan is no laughing matter, kids. Remember that.

Zombie Strippers

2010-08-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

When a movie comes out called Zombie Strippers, it's a given that I'm gonna see it. And I sort of resent that.

It's not that I don't think there should be a movie called Zombie Strippers. (Frankly, I'm stunned it took this long.) It's just that I dislike feeling pandered to. To me, the title seems a little forced, a little too on the nose. The people who made this movie think they can just slap the word "zombie" together with the word "strippers" and I'll come running. And they're 100% right, but fuck them for being so presumptuous. We both knew it was a done deal as soon as Zombie Strippers and I laid eyes on each other, but it doesn't need to act so cocky about it. Sure, I'm easy, but does that mean I don't deserve to be romanced a little bit? C'mon, Zombie Strippers. At least buy a girl a drink first.

Anyway, when a movie has an awesome title like Zombie Strippers, you can be reasonably certain that the title is going to be the most awesome thing about it. So I knew going into this thing that it was going to be a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am type situation. I knew that Zombie Strippers was going to seduce me with the promise of sexy, splattery hijinks, then leave me vaguely unfulfilled and somewhat embarrassed afterward. It was always going to be a one-night stand, just a rough and sloppy 90 minutes of forgettable fun. No promises, no strings, no future. But dammit, I guess I'm just a romantic at heart, because I dared to hope for more. I see no reason why a movie called Zombie Strippers has to be a one-off timewaster, a movie you see just so you can say you saw it. I mean, if I thought that way back in 1990, would Frankenhooker and I still be together after all these years? You gotta dream, man, or what's the point?

Well, it turns out my first instinct was the correct one. Zombie Strippers is a better title than a movie, but it does have its moments.

We start out with a phony baloney news report that fills us in on the backstory of the Zombiestripperverse. In the near future, George W. Bush has just been elected to his fourth term (And the award for Most Instantly Dated Plot Device goes to…), and as his first order of business, has banned all forms of public nudity. We also learn that the U.S. is low on troops because of all the wars we're fighting in France, Venezuela, Alaska, etc., so the government is experimenting with zombie soldiers.
Then we cut to the hallways of that same old abandoned mental institution where 90% of every direct-to-DVD horror movie gets shot. The zombies are already on the rampage, and a dude in a lab coat watches them through shatter-proof glass and says, "Behold a pale horse." Which would be a pretty solid line if I thought the screenwriter was actually referencing the Bible verse it came from (Revelation 6:8) and not the Johnny Cash song that they use in the opening credits of the Dawn of the Dead remake. So already this flick is ripping off a ripoff, which lets you know that it's one of those self-conscious winky-winky flicks that want you to know that it's all just a big joke so there's no need to hold the movie up to any kind of standard of quality.

I'm sorry, fellas, but that dog won't hunt. Go ahead and make your movie funny if you want, but admitting right off the bat that it's all just a big laugh and that we shouldn't take it seriously is a huge cop-out. It means you don't have the balls to treat your absurd but workable premise with the respect it deserves, so you attempt to circumvent criticism by letting us know that you're "in on the joke." If you really wanted your movie to be funny, you'd have the courage to play it with a straight face and trust us to get the joke on our own. The way it is now, Zombie Strippers is like some awkward fat dude who makes self-effacing jokes at parties, not realizing that if he didn't point out his flaws, people might just overlook them.

Anyway, so the government calls in cinema's eight gazillionth knockoff of the space marines from Aliens. They spout a bunch of self-consciously satirical dialogue that wouldn't sound out of place on South Park but sounds pretty stupid coming out of the mouths of crappy straight-to-video actors. Then there's some reasonably spooky Ridley Scott-inspired backlit photography and some CGI-enhanced head explosions before one of the soldiers gets bitten and hides out in a nearby underground strip club run by Robert Englund. His star attraction is Jenna Jameson, whose boobs are so fake they look like special effects. Even before she turned into a zombie, I kept expecting them to burst open and have a bunch of tentacles come out.

So then the soldier bites Jenna, but the twist is, being a zombie makes her a better stripper. So then all the other girls have to follow suit if they want to keep up. I think this might be some kind of metaphor about all the plastic surgery that models and sex workers have to get to stay competitive. Speaking of metaphors, you can tell that the filmmakers thought they had a real rich stew of allegory going here, what with all the political jokes (the zombie serum is created by a company called W Industries) and the references to sociosexual peer pressure, but none of it really comes together into anything semi-coherent. I think it's all about choosing not to become a zombie, even when everyone else is doing it, which is a clear reference to America's apathy in the face of our ongoing War on Terror. All the strippers are also big into quoting from philosophy books, but that seems more like the screenwriter showing off the stuff he learned in college than any kind of legitimate thematic concern. All this stuff is pretty ham-handed, proving that movies are never dumber than when they're trying to be smart.

Anyway, Zombie Strippers is one of the new breed of exploitation movies that try to be naughty and transgressive but never succeed in being legitimately sleazy. They throw in all this industrial metal/Suicide Girl shtick, and it just ends up seeming like reheated Rob Zombie. This is what happens when nerds try to get kinky. Back in the day, you had real perverts like Jess Franco making this shit. Nowadays, it's just geeks with laptops who think nudity is funny. That's why none of the sex and gore is actually sexy or shocking. It lacks the courage of its convictions.

Like I said, there are some good moments, like when a stripper rips a dude's jaw off and bites his tongue out, or when Jenna (who looks surprisingly creepy as a zombie) battles her archnemesis by shooting billiard balls at her from her coochie. And there are lots and lots of ugly prosthetic boobs on display, if you like that sort of thing. Personally, I like boobs that flop around a little bit when you shake 'em, but maybe I'm just old fashioned.

I didn't have a bad time watching Zombie Strippers, but its problem is that it's simultaneously trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Clearly, the world needed a movie called Zombie Strippers. I'm just not sure it needed this one.

Executive Koala

2010-08-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

Tamura's just your average Japanese dude. He's an executive for a successful vegetable pickling concern, and despite his crippling shyness and lack of self-confidence, he's managed to spearhead a partnership between his firm and a South Korean kimchi manufacturer that promises to help his company boost its market share. His love life is looking up, too. His ex-wife disappeared three years ago, but he's moved on, even though he still loves her. He's dating this cute secretary in his office, who likes him even though her co-workers make fun of her for it. So it's kind of a bummer when she ends up murdered and everyone assumes he did it. Kind of makes for an awkward work environment.

There's one other thing about Tamura, but I don't know if I should even mention it. Honestly, I feel like some sort of racist for even bringing it up, because it's not like it really matters. So what if he's a six-foot koala bear? It's not important to who he is inside, you know? This is the age of Obama. We shouldn't judge people by the color of their skin or how much fur they have growing out of it.

So, yeah, that's what this movie's deal is. It's a deadpan comedy/thriller type thing where every now and again somebody is an anthropomorphic man-beast with a big plushy head like your high school football team's mascot. And nobody thinks that's weird. It's not like they don't notice it. Everyone is fully aware that Tamura is a koala and his boss is a bunny rabbit and the guy who runs the convenience store is a frog. They just don't bring it up, which makes sense. I mean, you wouldn't just walk up to a midget and be like, "Hey, so you're wicked short. How's that working out for you?" That would be rude, which the Japanese are more frightened of than just about anything besides giant nuclear lizards and tall white women. There's a pretty great shot where Tamura is walking down a crowded street, and it's pretty clear that the people around him aren't extras. Some of them do double takes when they see him, but most just keep their heads down and go about their business, secure in the knowledge that, if they had reason to be concerned about the dude with the huge, bulbous koala head in their midst, their superiors would surely let them know about it.

Executive Koala begins with an animated credits sequence like an old Pink Panther movie. Temura is shown in cartoon form, flying around in a business suit while his teeth-rottingly chipper theme song plays, explaining that little things like divorce and downsizing can't keep him down. It's sort of like the beginning of the Toonses the Driving Cat sketches on Saturday Night Live. Then we see him at work, trying to convince some skeptical human executives of the validity of his plan to merge with the kimchi company. The fact that he gesticulates a little too wildly to compensate for his mostly inexpressive animatronic stuffed animal head probably doesn't help his case, but they go for it anyway.

At this point, it's still funny to see a guy with a koala head wearing a business suit or making pillowtalk with his attractive ladyfriend, but that wears off pretty quickly and you start wondering what the fuck they were going for with this one. There is really no good reason why Temura should be a koala. It has nothing to do with the plot, and it's never explained why this world has humanoid animals walking around and assuming high-level corporate positions. The story would have remained exactly the same if he'd just been a regular human, only I probably wouldn't have watched it, because who the hell wants to see a movie where some boring peckerhead who's not a koala occasionally blacks out and goes into a blind rage and maybe killed his girlfriend and possibly his ex-wife? Without the koala, you got nothing.

From now on, this should be a viable option for all directors stuck with a not-all-that-interesting script. I'm pretty sure I would have gone to see Righteous Kill if Pacino and De Niro had been played by a mongoose and a sea lion, respectively.

Anyway, Executive Koala is admirably deadpan at the outset, letting you get used to this world where you can walk into a room and there's a big white bunny rabbit just sitting there, being real friendly and supportive despite his evil pink eyes. It does get weirder as it goes on, however. At one point, this Korean businessman opens his briefcase and a fluffy hand puppet jumps out, and Temura is like, "A giant flying squirrel!" And you're like, "Giant? Buddy, you're a six-foot koala." It brings up some bizarre questions about the zoological hierarchy of the world this movie takes place in. It's sort of like how Goofy is a person, even though he's a dog, but Pluto is just an animal.

The visual style also gets more surreal as the movie progresses. At the beginning, it's very flat and drab, with fluorescent lights washing out most of the color, but by the time it gets to the concluding kung-fu battle in front of a flashing neon ferris wheel, it turns into a full-on psychedelic light show. That's also when the movie gives up on trying to make sense and gives in to the ironic detachment it had valiantly fought off up until that point. In my Zombie Strippers review, I complained that the movie never took itself seriously enough to justify its existence, but Executive Koala treats its retarded premise with a commendably straight face right up until the final reel, when it reveals itself to be a big joke that doesn't amount to anything. Still, it's hard to complain when a movie's climax hinges around the idea that learning Korean martial arts allows you to self-resurrect at will. Makes me wish I hadn't wasted my time on those breakdancing lessons when I was a kid.

The Patriot

2010-08-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

The Patriot is a total load of horseshit, but I liked it. Actually, I think that’s why I liked it. Normally, I’m not one for Ye Olde Hiftorical Adventuref. To me, history is way too complicated and unwieldy to be effectively packaged into movie length. Life just doesn’t behave like a movie. Significant events don’t all happen within five minutes of each other, plot strands get left dangling, and satisfying endings are hard to come by. Pretty much every movie that purports to be historical is just as full of shit as The Patriot, but at least The Patriot isn’t ashamed of it. It just trots out every single cliché in the Screenwriting 101 textbook and acts like it invented them. This is what I’ve been talking about in my last few reviews: There’s nothing ironic about The Patriot,which makes it a million times funnier than a movie that tries to be in on the joke. I don’t want you in the on the joke, movie. If you are, how am I supposed to mock you?

The Patriot opens with a shot of its star: Mel Gibson’s badass tomahawk. This flick has more concentrated tomahawking than any other movie in history, so it’s got that going for it. Then we meet the tomahawk’s co-star, Mel himself. He’s playing this ex-soldier who won the French-and-Indian War single-handedly by chopping motherfuckers’ heads off and cutting their eyes out and mailing them home to their mamas. Now he just wants to pull a Mr. Majestyk (the Charles Bronson character, not the devastatingly handsome B-movie bloggist) and leave the killing behind so he can live a quiet life on his farm, raising his seven kids and pretending that he doesn’t want to get biblical with the surprisingly age-appropriate sister of his saintly dead wife.

Speaking of which, you ever notice how many movies Mel is in where he’s a widower? Just off the top of my head, I can think of six. And that’s not even counting sequels. And the funny thing is, Mel has been married for like a million years. So either he can’t think of anything scarier and more dramatic than losing the love of his life, or he desperately wants to kill the bitch. Could go either way. You really can’t tell with Mel.

Shit, we’re gonna have to talk about Mel, aren’t we? Look, man, I have a certain amount of respect for his complete lack of giving any kind of fuck about what anybody else thinks, but I’m not going to apologize for his views. I’m not sure I even know what his views are. Sure, the evidence seems to point to him really having some issues with the Jews, but am I the only one who saw him get married by a rabbi in Lethal Weapon 4? That’s gotta count for something. Either way, I grew up on Mel’s movies. I probably know the script to Lethal Weapon by heart. So I kind of think of him like a racist uncle: I hate the illness, not the man. All I can do is hope that he pulls his shit together so he can focus on making badass movies where various Christ surrogates (and occasionally the man Himself) bleed all over the screen before going on a rip-roaring rampage of righteous revenge. (That happened at the end of Passion of the Christ, right? I only saw it once and I was pretty high.)

(Ed. note: This was obviously written before Mel's meltdown.)

Anyway, so Mel’s eldest son the Joker wants to join the Revolutionary Army so he can fight for freedom, duty-free tea, etc. Mel just wants to stay home and make crappy chairs that break when he sits on them. This is a Mel staple: He begins all of his historical adventures with some slapstick comedy before getting into the atrocities. I know Mel didn’t write or direct this thing, but it’s got his hairy knuckleprints all over it. I can’t fault the strategy, though. Most historical movies make their characters so austere and noble that we can’t relate to them, but Mel knows that people falling down and/or farting was just as funny in the past as it is now. That’s universal. It’s what makes us all human, so that when his characters start getting slaughtered in their dozens, we actually feel bad about it. Like in Apocalypto, we’re like, “Oh man,one minute that guy was being tricked into eating wild boar balls, and now he’s getting his decapitated head bounced down a Mayan pyramid. That could happen to me.”

Also, what’s up with Mel’s main characters always building furniture? I can’t be the only one who feels that the infamous “Jesus invents the table” scene was the heart and soul of The Passion.

And speaking of atrocities, The Patriot really ladles them on thick. Most movies just have one inciting event that makes the audience lust for the villain’s blood, but The Patriot has like twelve. Every 20 minutes, the British slaughter some more innocents, and you’re like, “Okay, movie, I get it. The Brits are assholes. You don’t have to keep convincing me. I am perfectly cool with you murdering the bastards. You had me at ‘They shot my 15-year-old son in cold blood.’”

So yeah, that happens, so Mel calls up his old buddy Thomas Aaron Hawk and gets his two younger sons to snipe some redcoats while he gets all up-close-and-personal on their limey asses. This is hands-down the best scene in the movie. When he goes blood simple with rage and grief and hacks up some random English infantryman into McNugget-sized pieces with the blood splattering all over his face like a P.A. on the set of Dead Alive, I once again lamented that Mel never got the chance to play Wolverine. Not only is he squat and hairy, but the man does berserker rage like no one else. That might have something to do with the fact that he’s completely insane. Or Australian. Whichever.

Then the movie plays out almost exactly as you’d expect. The black soldier earns the respect of his racist compatriot by saving his life, a sentimental gift spells certain doom for the character who receives it, and everyone has a dead loved one to avenge. Some have several. That’s sort of the movie’s genius: It turns the American colonies’ battle for independence and democracy into a Death Wish movie. It makes the whole affair much more personal, especially since all the atrocities get carried out by this one prick, a brutal British officer with cold blue eyes and a WWF haircut.

That’s why I question the title. Sure, at the end, he starts leading the charge against the redcoats and waving Old Glory (Just called “Glory” at the time) and making the guy who wrote the score have a fucking embolism with the swirling violins and triumphant trumpets. But really, he doesn’t seem to give much of a shit about patriotism. He just doesn’t want you killing his kids. The movie really should have been called The Tomahawker. Or, if you want to be subtle, The Chairist. If it had been called either of those, I probably wouldn’t have waited nine years to see it.

The Calamari Wrestler

2010-08-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what it is with this dude Minoru Kawasaki, but he apparently can’t stop making movies about big rubber-headed talking animals with human jobs. Prior to making Executive Koala—a sort of black comic Eric Roberts movie with no tits but with a lot more anthropomorphic bunny rabbits—he made The Calamari Wrestler, the heartwarming story of a dude who transforms himself into a giant squid so he can be a better wrestler.

Both of these movies are admirably straight-faced in their approach to this surreal subject matter. They play their storylines more or less without irony, so you actually sort of care who killed Exec Koala’s wife and why Calamari Wrestler thought morphing into a cephalopod was the way to go. The joke in the former movie is that homeboy being a koala has nothing to do with anything. It would have been the exact same movie if he was just some dude with anger management issues, only it would be way less awesome. Calamari Wrestler is different in that the squid angle is crucial to the plot. A squid, you see, is impervious to most standard wrestling moves, since he has no joints to bend in the wrong direction. Plus, you can see how having six extra limbs would come in handy when it comes to ass-kicking. That’s why other wrestlers start turning themselves into sea creatures, so Calamari has to defend himself against an octopus and some kind of boxing crawfish. The whole time this is going on, Calamari also has to win back his ex-girlfriend (the sex scene is surprisingly chaste and romantic for the culture that invented tentacle porn) and deal with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Japanese Vince McMahon.

What I find interesting about this movie, though, is not the plot (which is really just a retread of every other inspirational sports movie from Rocky to Rad) or even the absurdity of watching a giant squid slam a giant octopus into the turnbuckle. You get used to that stuff pretty quickly, so you stop seeing Calamari as a visual joke and just see him as another character. What I find interesting is that the movie seems to be equating Japan’s love/hate relationship with monsters with their subconscious desire to break free from their culture’s pathological need for conformity. In the movie, the president of the Japanese pro wrestling federation claims that, after World War II, the flagging morale of the Japanese people was boosted by the exploits of a famous wrestling champion, whose victories became symbolic of Japan’s ability to overcome any obstacle. That’s why he wants to make Calamari throw the match against the human champion. (The fact that wrestling is always fixed is blissfully ignored.) He figures that the people will be incapable of seeing a squid wrestler as anything but a monster, a symbol of the troubles plaguing their nation, so their spirits will be lifted by seeing a normal man defeat it.

In reality, Japan’s morale was boosted after WWII not by professional wrestling, but by Godzilla. In the first Godzilla movie, he was the villain, a nuclear monstrosity that personified the destructive power of the atomic bomb and, by extension, America and the rest of the decadent West. However, a curious thing happened as the series progressed. Godzilla stopped being the villain and became the hero. He would still destroy Tokyo on a biweekly basis, but he would also defend it against other, even more destructive beasts, the thinking being that G-Zed might be a monster, but at least he’s our monster.

But what would make a hive-mentality culture like Japan champion a creature that not only never has any hope of fitting in but is quite literally out to destroy society itself? If that’s not clear evidence of a people secretly yearning to break free from normality and let their freak flag fly, I don’t know what is.

The same thing happens in The Calamari Wrestler. Rather than seeing the squid-man as a monster, they embrace him as their hero. That’s what boosts the people’s morale: not seeing a representative of the status quo defeat the monstrous anomaly, but celebrating that anomaly for the very things that make it different. In its quiet, absurd, only slightly pretentious way, The Calamari Wrestler makes the case for individuality in a society that has always openly feared and secretly respected it. I would say that getting a bunch of monks to transform you into a leotard-clad leviathan is probably pushing it, but the metaphor holds true nonetheless.

Fatal Contact

2010-08-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

Fatal Contact feels like a kung fu movie that somebody just broke up with. It just wants to stay home and wallow in self-pity, but due to prior engagements that it can’t get out of it’s forced to venture out into the world and attempt to thrill audiences with its martial arts action.And the frustrating part is, you can see all this potential if it would just get its head out of its ass and stop moping all the goddamn time. It’s like if you just got dumped a week ago, but you still have to go to your friend’s birthday party. You just want to hang back and listen to the songs you played on the jukebox, but somebody’s like, “Hey, you wanna play some Bug Buck Hunter?”And you’re like, “Nah, I’m not really feeling Big Buck Hunter right now. Besides,‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ is next.” But they persist, so you begrudgingly play Big Buck Hunter,and what do you know? You have a great time, despite yourself. You’re actually pretty good at it, landing several Double and Triple Buck Bonuses. Exercising your skills takes your mind off your troubles, but then the game ends and you remember that you’re a heartbroken sad-sack sonofabitch, so you go stand in the corner, sipping a beer that tastes like ashes and wondering how you can be surrounded by friends and still be so alone.

That’s what Fatal Contact is like.

(Big Buck Hunter = kung fu in this analogy. Not sure if that was clear.)

What we’re dealing with here is a star vehicle for Yeun Woo-ping protégé Jacky Wu, whom everyone is saying will be the next Jet Li. (There’s even a line in FC where his character explicitly states that as his goal.) Hong Kong—still reeling from the game-changing rise to global dominance of Thai action cinema—desperately needs some new blood, but Wu’s actually been around for a while. I didn’t realize until I checked IMDB that he was the star of the 1996 wirework epic Thai Chi II, one of Master Woo-ping’s last films as a director. The fact that he spent the whole movie rocking the frontal-chrome-dome-with-two-foot-ponytail look might have something to do with that.

Anyway, since Ong Bak made that wire-fu shit look like fucking Cirque du Soleil, Fatal Contact is much more hard-hitting and reality-based than the fanciful Thai Chi II. I really have to give it up for Wu’s skills here. He’s fast as hell(possibly faster than in-his-prime Jet Li, if you can believe it) and he has a knack for sneaking in kicks and punches where you least expect them. This is kung fu that you have to pay close attention to, lest you miss the intricate ballet of blocks, holds, and counter moves. Tony Jaa is still the champ, but this Wu guy is one to watch.

Unfortunately, Fatal Contact is kind of a bummer. Wu plays your typical Jet-esque country bumpkin from the mainland who goes to Hong Kong for a wushu exhibition. He meets this skinny little waif of a girl who hangs out with a lot ofh ookers and gives them advice like “Find an old one and pretend that you’re pitiful.” All she cares about is moneymoneymoney, so she puts the Lady Macbeth mind whammy on Wu and talks him into joining an underground fighting ring. Then some innocence is lost, betrayals are made, etc. Then things get really depressing.

Right from the first frame, this is a dour-ass movie. The score sounds like Grandma’s old tomcat took six or seven steps on a piano keyboard, then keeled over and died. The movie livens up whenever there’s kicking to be done (particularly in a three-on-one fight in which Wu gets torn up by an opponent with rusty nails sticking out of his gloves), but then it goes right back to sulking. This is a movie where people are always gazing mournfully into the middle distance or walking alongside litter-strewn bodies of water for no good reason. You keep having to be like, “Movie! Snap out of it! C’mon, man, it’s not that bad. Look, kicking! You like kicking, right?"

Even outside of the classically shot fight sequences, there are definite moments of awesome to be found. For instance, the villains are all fashion victims who rock bi-colored haircuts that look like furry calico jellyfish or wear stuff like safari hats and shiny gold lamé blazers. And there’s one totally awesome supporting character named “the Captain.” He’s a fast-talking street hustler who does random magic tricks and just happens to be a secret thai chi master. I don’t know how much of this has to do with the poor subtitling, but he speaks a lot of amazing gibberish, like when he starts quoting “We Are The World” and says “We are the ass children.” The movie lights up whenever he’s onscreen, but sadly, he bails right before it reaches its crescendo of self-pity, like a fair-weather friend who’ll drink with you when you’re riding high but conveniently lose your number when you really need him.

I can’t say I really blame him, though. This movie self-destructs in epic fashion in the last 15 minutes, degenerating into such a wallow of overbaked melodrama that you can’t help but laugh. If you really want to know, here’s the deal: Wu’s girlfriend has sold him out to the gangsters who run the underground fighting ring, but he doesn’t know that because he’s a retard. So she pretends to be kidnapped so he’ll throw a fight,which he does, getting his leg broken in like 16 places in the process. Then, while he’s in the hospital, telling her how much he loves her and stuff, she starts feeling all guilty, so she has to walk around a dingy fluorescent-lit hallway six or seven times before she finally just says fuck it and throws herself out the window. That drives Wu insane, so he limps over to the gangsters’ apartment and kills everyone with a butter knife. (Awesome scene, by the way, but what the fuck?) Then, right after the head gangster tells him the truth about his lying girlfriend, he gets shot to death by the cops.

Then we cut to the morgue, where his girlfriend’s corpse suddenly starts crying, prompting the undertaker to say “It’s as if all of the tears of her life came out all at once.” Then there’s a little coda where Wu and his girl are sitting in the grass under the stars, supposedly during happier times, but the bitch still won’t stop talking about money and Wu still doesn’t notice what a shallow cunt she is. Then the movie actually has the nuts to steal the last shot of Citizen fucking Kane by showing the girl’s designer shoes, a symbol of the materialism that spelled her doom, being thrown into a furnace.

Still, even though Fatal Contact is the kung-fu equivalent of Goth yearbook poetry, the fights are pretty amazing, and I have high hopes for Jacky Wu’s next movie. Let’s just hope he picks one that remembers how to have a good time.

Eye of the Tiger

2010-08-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

Eye of the Tiger is a quiet blue-collar drama about a man trying to put his life back together after serving a prison term for killing a man in self-defense. It stars a pre-crazy Gary Busey (in that brief period in the mid-eighties when he wasn’t automatically cast as the villain) as a working-class dude who just wants to reunite with his wife and daughter and get on with his life. You can tell he’s a tough guy, though, because as he walks home from prison, one of his fellow parolees, a fast-talking Cuban gangster, offers him a ride home as partial repayment for saving him from getting shivved in the neck. Gary doesn’t require repayment, though, since he was just doing what any decent man would’ve done in his place. So the gangster gives him a note with his phone number written on it underneath the words “Anytime, Anywhere.” So it’s nice to know that Gary has backup in case anything goes wrong. Not that anything will. Certainly nothing concerning the bands of bikers ominously roaming the streets on their Kawasakis, wearing paramilitary garb and black stormtrooper helmets. They’re just there for local color, probably more of a motorcycle club than a quote unquote “biker gang.”

When he gets back to his hometown, though, his welcome is less than warm. The sheriff is a real prick who promises to send him back to the slammer first chance he gets, and Gary’s wife is upset because he used to be the foreman at his construction job, but now he’s got to start back at the bottom because he’s an ex-con. Gary doesn’t mind, though. He doesn’t speak much, but you can tell that he’s perfectly willing to put in the time to regain the trust of his fellow townspeople through hard work and humility. He’s got plans, you see, and there’s nothing that can stop him from achieving them. It’s the American goddamn Dream.

Then the raping and the murdering and the exploding start.

Turns out Eye of the Tiger isn’t really a working-class drama. It’s a badass revenge picture where bikers get decapitated by a cable stretched across the road and a man’s wife isn’t even safe when she’s dead. But that beginning part is all important. For a movie like this to really work, you can’t just be sitting around waiting for the violence to start. You have to get so sucked into the drama that you almost forget that it’s all gonna end in bloodshed and tears. That way, when you realize that the shit’s about to hit the fan, you actually feel bad about it, which in turn makes the revenge all the sweeter.

So, yeah, there’s nothing original about Eye of the Tiger. Not even its recycled-from-Rocky III theme song, which gets played three times. It’s basically just Walking Tall, but with an armored pickup truck kitted out with grenade launchers and machine guns instead of a two-by-four. Kind of an upgrade, if you ask me.

That’s what’s so awesome about Eye of the Tiger. It starts out very down-to-earth and believable, then gradually yet inexorably ascends to the heights of ludicrousness. By the end, we’re dealing with the kind of movie where it makes perfect sense that Yaphet Koto, complete with goggles and a white scarf, can fly around in a bright red biplane, chucking grenades out of the cockpit while listening to late-period James Brown.

The trouble starts for Busey when he rescues a nurse who’s about to get a train run on her by the biker gang, which is led by this guy who has a Freddy Mercury mustache and a head that’s shaved everywhere except for a four-inch-wide strip of mullet in the back. Busey busts up their party by knocking them all over with his pickup truck, so the local media makes him a hero. Then his buddy Yaphet Koto, the only cop in town who hasn’t been turned against him by the corrupt chief (Seymour Cassel, who’s surprisingly good at being a Grade A cocksucker) tells him that the bikers run a huge post-apocalyptic cocaine-processing compound out in the desert and that they’re definitely gonna want payback.

So Busey starts cleaning his shotgun, telling his wife he’s got that feeling he used to get right before the VC attacked back in Nam. (Back in the eighties, being a Vietnam vet was shorthand for “can handle himself in a fight.”) So she’s like, “Gary, I love you despite your frightening overbite, but can we please just get the fuck out of this shitty town like I wanted to do at the beginning of the movie?” He thinks it over for a second before saying sure, but then the bikers drive their bikes right through his picture windows and start throwing bowls of salsa on the walls. That really pisses Gary off. (They also kill his wife and put his kid on a catatonic state, which also probably upsets him a little bit.)

After Gary gets out of the hospital, he wants some closure on the salsa incident, so he dials in his IOU to the Cuban gangster, who sends him that armored pickup I was talking about. (In a touch typical of Busey’s surprisingly low-key take on the character, he chuckles nervously after saying, “I’m in bad shape, partner. I could use a little help.”) Then he goes to his wife’s funeral, and the bikers show up and start kicking up dust everywhere while the sheriff just stands there smirking. These guys are fucking dicks.

Gary’s vengeance gets off to a great start when he pulls that Wile E. Coyote-style stunt with the cable stretched across the road, but then the gang retaliates by digging up his wife’s corpse and dragging her coffin around behind their bikes. Once that happens, you’re pretty much okay with anything Gary does to these pukes. He could invent a time machine, go back in time, kill their fathers, and marry their mothers so that he can become their stepfather and sexually abuse them throughout their childhood, and you’d be like, “Nah, that’s fair. Fuckers had it coming.”

So then he gets into a few more scrapes involving lassos and exploding mannequins, until the bikers finally get around to kidnapping his daughter. So he puts one of them in the hospital, then visits him in the emergency room and shoves a stick of dynamite up his ass and tells him to write down the coordinates of their home base. (Don’t worry, he lubes it up first. He’s not a monster.) So then he drives his murderwagon out there and uses a F-14 joystick to activate the mortar launcher in the truckbed and the machine guns in the grill. Meanwhile, Yaphet provides air support from his Sopwith Camel. This scene goes into full-on Rambonian overkill, with dozens of stuntmen (well, probably the same six or seven, since their faces are covered by their helmets) getting catapulted out of fireballs all over the place. I would have preferred if Yaphet had been listening to some vintage James Brown (“For Goodness Sake, Look At Those Cakes,” perhaps) rather than his compromised eighties material, but other than that, it’s damn-near perfect.

Then Gary rescues his daughter and gets into a fistfight with the head biker while the surviving goons watch. This part could have been more creative, but it’s pretty cool when Gary slams the fucker’s face into a mountain of coke and knocks him the fuck out. I also like that these bikers seem to have some sort of warrior code, because when Gary defeats their leader, they all wordlessly get on their bikes and drive away, probably hoping to find work in a neighboring Chuck Norris movie.

Eye of the Tiger is my kind of flick. Every single time I go to a video store or restock my Netflix queue, this is exactly what I’m looking for: a forgotten gem from the eighties, the golden age of the action film. Every now and then I think I’ve seen them all. I lament that there are no more surprises for me, that it’s all reruns from here on out. Then a movie like Eye of the Tiger comes around and proves that those who think they’re seen it all simply haven’t been looking hard enough. The sun never shines on a closed eye, after all.

Harley Davidson & The Marlboro Man

2010-08-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

As far as I can tell, Harley Davidson & The Marlboro Man is a cult classic with a cult of one: me. I don't know anybody else who's even seen this movie, let alone loves it like I do, and all the reviews I've read of it are dismissive bordering on abusive. Hell, even co-star Mickey Rourke disowned the movie, claiming that it made him feel like such a sellout that he retired from acting and spent the next few years in the boxing ring, getting his face pummeled until he looked like a Garbage Pail Kid. Me, I've watched this flick about 20 times since I first caught it on VHS in '91, and it remains an entertainingly baffling viewing experience to this day.

For no discernible reason, HD&TMM takes place in the near future: 1996. It stars two of the greatest examples of squandered potential the eighties had to offer: Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson. Mickey plays Harley Davidson, a kind of holy fool who likes to roll into town on the bike that bears his name, start a whole bunch of trouble, then roll back out again so he can spend the next two, three years philosophizing about God and the universe and shit. He wears an ugly leather motocross suit and a big diamond earring, and he can't shoot for shit. His buddy Marlboro is an ex-rodeo star who can shoot pool and pistols better than anyone alive, so he spends his time getting into barfights with gigantic Native Americans, balling this lady bike cop by the name of Virginia Slim, and duct-taping his ratty old cowboy boots back together.

Together, the two of them cruise back to their old stomping grounds in Burbank, CA, former home of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Harley's got some business to settle with a man-mountain named Jack Daniels, played by ex-WWF star Big John Studd. See, Harley banged Jack's wife (disgraced former Miss America Vanessa Williams) a few years back, so he's gotta let Jack pick him up by the balls and throw him through a few windows to earn Jack's forgiveness. But then there's a new problem: The bar where Harley, Marlboro, and Jack hang out with their pals Old Granddad, a deaf dude named Jose Cuervo, and this other cat (Giancarlo Esposito) who stole Jimi Hendrix's wardrobe and first name is about to get foreclosed unless they can come up with $2.5 million to renew the lease. Seems that ever since they went and put an international airport in Burbank there just ain't no room for decent, hard-working outlaws anymore, so Harley comes up with the idea to rob one of the armored cars belonging to the evil multinational bank that owns the deed.

They do the job alright, but then these blue-eyed yuppy douchebags (led by everyone's third favorite Baldwin, Daniel) show up wearing neck-to-ankle Kevlar-lined leather priest frocks and start blasting away with those fancypants Eurotrash machine guns that have the clips in the back instead of in the front. Our boys get away, but then they discover that the moneybags they stole actually contain a bunch of packages of a new designer narcotic called Crystal Dream, which looks like blue Sterno that's been vacuum-sealed like beef jerky. Turns out the bank pres (Tom Sizemore, playing a character who really ought to have been named Chase Manhattan) has been dealing drugs on the side, so he sends his hit squad out to murder everybody. Then there's a lot of male bonding, some shootouts where people need to get plugged in the head three or four times before they go down, and a pretty awesome helicopter vs. skyscraper climax that I'm pretty sure got jacked by the Wachowskis for The Matrix. Not to mention they totally ganked those priest coats for Reloaded. Maybe I'm not the only one in the cult after all.

What I like about this movie is that I really can't tell what they were going for with it. I suspect that at some point in its development history it was some kind of post-modern Warholian pop-art meta-movie satire using the flotsam and jetsam of our consumerist culture to create a Wild Bunch-style elegy to the 20th Century outlaw as he gets swept under the rug of history by the homogenizing influence of Corporate America. While there's still some irony in the idea that the only rugged individualists left in the world are named after mass-marketed products, I think that's about as far as the satire goes. This is just your standard urban Western/buddy movie, but with a whole shitload of weird touches, like the gunfight that takes place in the airplane graveyard or the fact that the bar has an airplane sticking out of its roof because, as it says in a newspaper headline glimpsed briefly on the wall, "PLANE CRASHES INTO PUB: Pilot Makes Happy Hour." I would actually like to read the original screenplay, because I have a feeling that the pseudo-futuristic world of this movie might have been fleshed out a lot more there than it was in the finished product. Or maybe it was always half-assed and that's just wishful thinking on my part. Either way, this feels like a movie that was based on a comic book or a fantasy novel or something, in that you feel like it's only scratching the surface of a much grander mythology.

If they'd really pushed this fucker into Buckaroo Bonzai levels of self-conscious cult nerdery, it would probably be better known, but as it stands, it's just a quirky action movie that starts with a bike-riding montage set to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive" and ends with Sonny Crocket riding a bucking bronco while dressed up like Roy Rogers. Along the way, there are many incidental pleasures to be had, most notably the breezy buddy banter between the two stars. Rourke and Johnson are two easy-going, naturalistic actors who pretty much bullshit their way through the whole movie on the strength of personal charm and iconic wardrobe choices. Marlboro's always dispensing down-home wisdom such as "Like my old man told me before he left this shitty world, 'Never chase buses or women—you'll always get left behind,'" while Harley is more prone to Zen fripperies like "It's better to be dead and cool than alive and uncool." I particularly enjoy the mid-shootout conversation the boys have about how the bullets for Harley's modified .454 Ruger cost $2.00 apiece, so that when he empties it at the bad guys and doesn't hit shit, he just wasted 12 bucks. "I nailed one and it cost about four and a quarter," Marlboro says as he rolls out of the way of machine gun fire. "Now here they come and they're spending a fortune." That's the kind of stuff I miss in modern action movies, where all anybody ever seems to say anymore is "C'mon!" and "Get down!"

Anyway, if you're looking for a blatant Butch & Sundance ripoff that uses corporate mascots to contrast the dusty highways of America's recent past with the gleaming office complexes of its immediate future, this is probably the only game in town. Also, you get to watch Don Johnson perform the single greatest trick pool shot ever captured on film. And there's this one part where Tom Sizemore speaks Japanese. Shit, what else do you need, man? Go watch this bitch and let's you and me and maybe the Wachowskis start the cult together.

Uncommon Valor

2010-08-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

Before John J. Rambo and Colonel James Braddock picked up their M-60s and helicoptered over to Vietnam to bring our boys back home, Uncommon Valor was the first POW movie. The difference between it and First Blood Part II and Missing In Action, though, is that instead of one kinda mumbly muscleman taking out throngs of Cong all by his lonesome, we’ve got a whole team of hardasses ready to head back into the shit to rescue their brothers in arms.

UV stars Gene Hackman as Gene Hackman, as per usual. This time, Gene Hackman happens to be a Marine colonel whose son went MIA in ’73, but it takes him ten years to find the prison camp where he’s being held. This is already a different setup than usual, because most of the time action movies take place over the course of a couple of days. Once Arnold decides an ass needs kicking, he just goes out and kicks it, but this movie shows all the effort that goes into locating the ass and the training that goes into being able to kick it properly.

So what Gene does is he locates all of the members of his son’s old unit (I said unit). It’s a hell of a bunch, too. We got Tim Thomerson as a chopper pilot who didn’t take off his sunglasses for six years after the war ended. In protest, I guess. We don’t really know because these aren’t the type of people who like to talk about their feelings. These are the type of individuals we like to refer to as “men.”

Then there’s Randall “Tex” Cobb of Raising Arizona fame, playing a good guy for the first and last time in his life. He’s a crazy biker convict who wears a grenade around his neck just in case he ever feels like saying “Fuck it” and blowing himself up. My favorite is Fred Ward, the tunnel rat with PTSD who’s good at sneaking around the bush with his face painted green and slitting motherfuckers’ throats. Actually, come to think of it, that kind of character will always be my favorite. I was always more of a Snake Eyes kid than a Duke kid. Weren’t you?

Anyway, there are some other dudes in the unit, but those are my favorites. So Hackman tough-loves these dudes into helping him bust his son out, but they’ve all been civilians for the better part of a decade now, so he’s gotta retrain them. To do that, he recruits a Marine drill sergeant played by a pre-Red Dawn Patrick Swayze. He’s kind of an uptight prick, but you kind of like him anyway because he’s a good shot and he don’t take shit. He gets into a fight with Tex and busts out some kung-fu on him, but then Tex busts out some kung-fu of his own, and just like that, awesomeness ensues. I never knew until right that moment just how badly I wanted to see Randall “Tex” Cobb roundhouse kick Patrick Swayze in the face. Nothing against the Swayz, of whom I’m a big fan, but I just really needed to see that happen for some reason. Thank you, Uncommon Valor, for fulfilling desires I didn’t even know I had.

Another hidden desire of mine was to hear Robert Stack say “Fuck you” in his awesome Ultra Magnus voice. Stack is playing this millionaire who’s financing the operation because his son’s a POW, too. The main thing his money buys, besides weapons, is a full-scale mock-up of the prison camp so the boys can practice the rescue mission. There’s one awesome part where one of the guys chainsaws a wooden target that’s supposed to be a guard, but unfortunately, the chainsaw does not figure into the actual mission because the CIA comes along and bollockses up the whole thing, so they have to improvise. Everything works out okay, though. The whole ending is pretty sweet, with all kinds of shit blowing up and motherfuckers dying in a blaze of glory, but what makes it all work is the set-up. You actually like all these dudes, and you believe that they all like each other, so when one of them sacrifices himself for the greater good, you feel it. You don’t get that in a lot of these team movies, where you can really only tell the characters apart if they happen to use a novelty weapon like a crossbow or something.

Anyway, Uncommon Valor isn’t as ridiculously over-the-top and jingoistic as the POW movies that came later in the Reagan era, when the thinking seemed to be that now that all the hippies had cut their hair and bought Saabs we could go back to Nam and win this fucking thing for the Gipper and whatnot. UV is still pretty fucking patriotic (Hackman gives a big speech before the final battle that’ll make you wanna jerk off with the American flag) but it’s a little more down-to-earth and realistic. I recommend it if you like movies where bamboo shacks blow up like they were made out of C-4 and men with bullet wounds in their shoulders scream out each others’ names. Which I'm pretty sure you do, since you’re not a total pussy.

Battle Warrior

2010-08-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

I’m a sucker for these old Thai action movies, even though they burn me again and again. I’m not talking about the new stuff like Ong-Bak or The Protector even The Bodyguard. I’m talking about the backyard action movies they made in the eighties and nineties. Produced strictly for the domestic market, these flicks were only meant to be seen by Thai people who didn’t mind lousy production values as long as they got to see movies in their own language for a change. They were never intended to be watched by American audiences who are accustomed to having luxuries like “lighting” and “sets” in their movies. Most of these flicks are real dogs, with way too many cornball comic-relief scenes and way too little action, but some of them are a lot of fun if you can get your threshold for basic filmmaking competence down to Ted V. Mikels levels.

Battle Warrior tells the story of this guy who gets kidnapped by this other guy and these other guys who want to rescue him. These old Thai movies don’t spend a lot of time cluing you in on who the characters are and why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s more like, “There’s this plot that needs to happen if we’re ever gonna get to the kicking, and since we’re the only ones here, let’s get to it.” In this case, it’s all about this anthropologist guy who finds the Golden Stone, which is an ancient tablet detailing the origins of all these Southeast Asian tribes. It’s supposedly worth a billion baht (the subtitles say “dollars,” but I’m not buying it) so he stashes it at the bottom of a river before he gets captured by this backwoods warlord and his posse. Then the dude’s daughter gets all these random guys together to venture into the jungle to save him. Are they soldiers? Mercenaries? Friends of the family? I don’t know. They’re just the dudes the story happens to happen to.

Movies like Battle Warrior point out the importance of costuming, in that they don't have any. Everybody is just wearing regular-ass clothes, so you don’t get any of the visual clues that a good (or even serviceable) costume will give you. A dude wearing an army uniform is probably a soldier, but a dude wearing a T-shirt and sneakers could be just about anything. It really affects a movie’s believability when its band of badasses are all dressed like unemployed tomato pickers. This gives a lot of older Thai movies the feel of a school project where your classmate is supposed to be Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird but he’s just wearing his older brother’s dress shirt tucked into his jeans. The best example of this phenomenon is Spirited Killer, in which a vengeful kung-fu demon comes back from the grave wearing a windbreaker and Reeboks.

Anyway, the scene where the team gets assembled lets you know that the incomprehensible tedium of these expository scenes will be worth it in the long run, because it explains the many perils with which our heroes’ journey into the warlord’s territory will be fraught. First, they’ll have to get past the Black Goblins, a savage tribe of scary blowdarting motherfuckers who wear black facepaint and speak fluent Ewok. Then they’ll have to defeat the warlord’s first line of defense: a zombie. (“A zombie?” says the guy in the ugly T-shirt. “Yes. A bloodsucking zombie,” replies the other guy in the ugly T-shirt.) No explanation is ever given as to how this warlord got his own zombie. Some dudes are just lucky, I guess.

Tony Jaa gets above-the-title credit on the DVD cover, but pay that no mind. Ong-Bak was, is, and always will be Jaa’s first starring role, so any movie from before 2003 that tries to tell you otherwise is lying to you. He does have a decent-sized role as the warlord’s right-hand man, and he also did some of the fight choreography with his mentor, Panna Rittikrai, the Harvey Weinstein of Thai action cinema. But aside from a few flips and spinkicks, he doesn’t get to do much. It’s not that his fights are bad, but they’re just not jaw-dropping like his later work.

The cinematography can also be a problem, particularly in the Black Goblin ambush. It seems that the crew didn’t bring any lights into the jungle with them, so scenes are shot with whatever sunlight manages to filter down through the dense canopy overhead. A lot of times you're just looking at a bunch of black blobs sort of oozing around each other. Then there’s the fact that I suspect the movie was shot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio and then stretched out to 1.85:1 for the DVD, which makes everybody look squashed. All this makes it a little hard to tell what’s going on sometimes, but that's okay because the music informs you that it's all very exciting. They use the old Kung Fu Theatre method of stealing music from other movies. In this case, they heavily sample the Die Hard score, specifically the cue that builds to the iconic moment when McClane jumps off the roof tied to the firehose. It's really tense, suspenseful music, but they'll use it for a boring scene of some dudes tromping through the jungle, which is really surreal. It's really distracting when you're trying to pay attention but all you're thinking is "Blow the roof!" "But Karl's up there!"

But then the zombie shows up (he’s another dude in sneakers and sweatpants, but he has some gooey shit smeared on his face so I guess his story checks out) and everything is awesome. He starts gutting people with his bare hands and getting shot a million times and hacked in the neck with a machete, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. Then they discover his only weakness: grenades. Before they splatter him all over the jungle, I think he manages to kill a bunch of the good guys, but it’s hard to say since the only ones I could tell apart were the leader (they gave him a bandanna to make him look more official) and the big white guy named Smith who came along for reasons unknown. On the DVD, they show him holding this gigantic quadruple-barreled machine gun. It looks sort of like a giant black licorice whip. I love oversized novelty weapons, so I was really looking forward to it, but I don’t think it ever shows up in the movie. Buyer beware.

Then the climax is full of kung fu and shootouts and a surprising amount of explosions. It’s nothing to get worked up over, but there’s a certain amount of tension involved because you don’t trust that these guys really know what they’re doing. They got explosives going off just a few feet from all these dudes in sweatpants, and it looks seriously unsafe. Somebody could get hurt real easy.

I guess that’s kind of the appeal of these movies. They look like something you and your buddies could do, only they’ve got a bunch of shit blowing up and people flipping through the air 16 times and landing on their heads. You really shouldn’t try this shit at home, but try telling Thailand that.

The Impossible Kid

2010-08-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I had what could only be described as a spiritual experience. I am speaking, of course, of the first time I saw For Y’r Height Only, arguably one of the three or four finest Filipino James Bond rip-offs ever made starring a midget. That midget was named Weng Weng, and I was instantly charmed by his plucky spirit, his easy way with the ladies, and his formidable testicle-attacking abilities. This was a man on a mission: a mission to punish the nutsac wherever he found it. The nutsac, as you know, has no conscience, no morals, no shame—but by God, Weng Weng would teach it fear.

For Y’r Height Only is probably the best bad movie ever made. It’s stuffed so full of ridiculousness that I nearly gave myself an embolism trying to write a review of it a few years ago. It is as absurd and transcendental a B-movie experience as can be had on this tired Earth of ours.

I had long heard tales of Weng Weng’s other adventures as the indomitable Agent 00, but I never dreamed of actually seeing them myself. Then I discovered a duped copy of it online for $2.50, and lo, there was joy across the land. It just goes to show that B-movies never die. Orson Welles’ original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons is lost forever, but if you want to see a 30-year-old Filipino midget movie, all you gotta do is ask the right people.

It’s called The Impossible Kid, and on the poster underneath the title, it says: Agent 00 is back! No gimmicks… All is true… Don’t laugh and turn him down. He is a tiny dangerous man! How fucking amazing is that? What can I even add to that? My meticulously modulated snark could only tarnish its glory.

Anyway, this time out Weng is an Interpol agent working in Manila, but he still wears the same safari-style white leisure suit. He’s trying to stop this terrorist organization that’s attempting to extort a billion Filipino pesos out the country’s leading industrialists. The leader of the group calls himself Cobra, and he hides his face with a KKK hood made out of an old tubesock. He says he’ll kill a rich man every day until he gets his money, and only Weng Weng can stop him. This is a much more streamlined and down-to-earth case for Agent 00. If FYHO was a Roger Moore adventure, full of gimmicky gadgets, corny one-liners, and a string of mannequin-like female co-stars, The Impossible Kid is lean-and-mean Sean Connery. Aside from an awesome miniature motorcycle and a few smoke bombs, Weng has to get by with his fists and his wits alone. Even though he gets the chance to pole vault, paraglide, and walk a tightrope, this movie is really a showcase for Weng’s kung-fu skills. He’s got a pretty great fight in a dojo where he has to fend off a bunch of karate killers before taking down a lady assassin. He’s also a force to be reckoned with in a gunfight, since he never misses and his opponents are always aiming over his head. He even gets to use a full-size machine gun this time, so he’s even deadlier. His action scenes are both hilarious and well choreographed. Sure, it’s funny to watch the little bastard decimate a bunch of regular-sized dudes, but you have to admit that he’s got some decent moves. I bet he could kick my ass.

I appreciate this meat-and-potatoes approach, but I still think For Y’r Height Only is better. That one was so packed full of amazing shit—from Weng’s tiny jetpack to the Filipino hoodlums who were dubbed to sound like Prohibition-era gangsters—that it would have been incredible even if it had starred a full-size superspy. The Impossible Kid plays it so straight that it would be kind of boring without Weng. There are a lot of scenes where guys in ugly blazers and ascots sit around arguing with the chief of police and shit like that. The upside of that is that this a much more competent movie than FYHO, in that the plot more or less makes sense and characters don’t just disappear for no reason, but since when did anybody want competence in a Filipino midget movie?

Still, saying that a movie doesn’t measure up to For Y’r Height Only is like saying that getting laid isn’t as good as winning the lottery. Just seeing Weng Weng back in action made me feel like I had a million microscopic teddy bears having a picnic in my soul—especially when I heard the theme song. It’s an honest-to-god blaxploitation power ballad with a soul diva just singing her fucking guts out about how badass Weng is and how much she wants to fuck him. The song builds to an epic crescendo as her mad dwarf lust causes her to totally lose her shit and wail, "I love you Weng WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENG!!!!!!" (I can’t verify this, since I haven’t seen any footage of the recording session, but I assume that she was so overwhelmed by emotion that she dropped to her knees Patti LaBelle-style and started ripping her clothes off, tears streaming down her face in apocalyptic ecstasy.) If anyone has any leads as to how I can get this amazing work of songwriting on my iPod, please let me know because I’ll never be complete without it.

According to IMDB, Weng Weng also starred in a western called D’Wild Wild Weng. As God is my witness, I will not rest until I have seen that movie and written an overlong, rambling review of it. That is my promise to you. I don't care how long it takes. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my man Weng, it’s that nothing’s impossible, kid.

Ong-Bak 2

2010-08-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

Mankind is one giant family united by blood and history, but it has long been a family at war with itself. That is, until one man brought us all together: Tony Jaa. White or black, Asian or Caucasian, Muslim or Undecided, we could all agree on one thing: That motherfucker kicks ass. In Ong-Bak, he taught us that it doesn’t matter if your feet are on fire as long as you can still crack skulls open with your elbows. In The Protector, he proved that there is no force on earth more powerful than a Thai man separated from his elephants. And in his eagerly awaited (and, as of this writing, not officially available in the U.S. yet) directorial debut, Ong-Bak 2, he illustrates that, while it’s possible to kick every ass you meet, ultimate enlightenment can only be achieved when you kick the ass inside yourself.

I’ve been waiting for this movie to come out for years, pretty much ever since the credits for The Protector rolled in 2007. It got announced pretty quick, but its release kept getting delayed because Jaa had already spent all of the money in Thailand, so he had to wait for them to print more before he could continue filming. Then the pressures of directing and starring in the most expensive movie in Thai history while choreographing some of the most intricate fight sequences ever attempted and performing all of his own stunts caused him to have a nervous breakdown, so he had to wander off into the jungle by himself and live with the elephants for a few months before he could get his shit back together and complete the shoot. When a man pushes himself to the brink like that in the name of ass-kicking, I feel that it is my sworn duty as a proponent of the badass arts to see that man’s movie as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the Weinsteins have the U.S distribution rights, so we all know what that means: It’ll sit on the shelf for a year or so while they cut out all the weird parts and splice in a new score by some white guy with a ponytail who listened to Dr. Dre once, then they’ll release it in three or four American cities for a week and a half and then complain to Variety that American audiences just don’t “get” Asian cinema. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again, and I, for one, am not gonna stand for it anymore. That’s why I went to extraordinary lengths to procure this film in the here and now. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. If you want to see Ong-Bak 2, you have to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who has the Internet. Then you have to ask that last guy if you can use his computer for a sec, and then you have to order the Asian import DVD from eBay because they didn’t have it at the porn store where you normally buy your Asian import DVDs.

Ong-Bak 2 has nothing to do with Ong-Bak 1 except that they’re both too awesome for this sick, sad world of ours. The first one was the story of a modern-day Thai dude who has to go to Bangkok and put his knee through about 250 faces so he can bring this stolen Buddha statue back to his village. The second one is much more epic. It takes place 700 years ago, when all these warlords were running around Southeast Asia, ripping shit up. Jaa plays this dude who gets trained by these multi-culti pirates to be the most hardcore motherfucker ever so he can go get revenge on the cocksuckers that murdered his mom and dad. That’s about all the plot a movie like this really needs, but Jaa is clearly trying to imbue this thing with some kind of spiritual message, so this simple story gets pumped up to Ben Hur levels through sheer filmmaking gusto. The visuals are sumptuous and colorful, with lots of slow-mo shots of Jaa standing on a cliff in front of the sunrise or looking all crazy-eyed into the camera with his hair hanging in his face while the cold, cold rain pours down like the golden shower of the Buddha. This is a beautifully crafted movie. Every facet of this film, from the camerawork to the art design to the acting, is comparable and in some ways superior to Hollywood product. Thai cinema has come a long way since Battle Warrior, where they couldn’t even afford lights or costumes. It’s even come a long way from the original Ong-Bak, which was amazing as an action showcase but pretty retarded as a movie. With Ong-Bak 2, however, Jaa clearly isn’t happy with making just another cheesy action flick about transvestite gangsters who steal elephants to impress their Australian investors. He’s trying to make some art here, and I think he might succeed a little bit. He lets the visuals do most of the talking, giving every frame a trippy kind of mysticism, while the score’s triumphantly old-fashioned trumpets put you in a Braveheart state of mind. I really don’t know what message he’s trying to convey with all this, but it certainly makes the movie feel more elegant and dramatic than any other Thai movie I’ve ever seen.

But shit, watching a Thai action movie for the cinematography is like watching a porno for the costumes. We’re here for action, and action we get. Ong-Bak 2 is less of a stunt movie than the first one. This is a straight-up fight movie. There are fewer jaw-dropping moments where you can’t believe that a human being just did that and survived, but the furiously paced fights, while smaller scaled, are much more intricate and varied. Jaa shows off by using just about every style of kung fu known to man, from Drunken Fist to Tiger Crane to his trademark Muay Thai, which he saves until the climactic 30-minute no-holds-barred battle royale with dozens of masked henchmen. He also gets to use a lot of weapons. Some are pretty standard, like swords and spears, but he also busts out some more exotic ones, like the Coiling Dragon Staff and this other one that looks like a nightstick tied to several yards of yarn. This movie is basically Jaa proving that he’s a well-rounded martial artist and doesn’t have to remain stuck in the Muay Thai ghetto. The glorious Thai people have always had a chip on their shoulder about their homegrown martial arts, so this movie is all about Jaa showing the purists of China and Japan that Thailand is ready to run with the big dogs.

Did I mention that this movie is absolutely insane? The plot keeps getting derailed by all these flashbacks and training montages, so you just never know what the fuck else is gonna happen in this thing. There’s this one scarfaced dude who lives at the pirate village where Jaa grows up who likes to throw explosives around for fun, so shit is always blowing up for no reason. There’s also some really excellent crocodile wrestling featuring what has to be the best CGI croc I’ve ever seen, since there’s just no other way they could get a 12-year-old that close to the jaws of death. Jaa also runs across the backs of a herd of stampeding elephants so he can put the leader to sleep with a punch to the top of the head, at which point all of the other elephants kneel before him like he was fucking Babar. Then there’s a flashback where Dirty Balls from Ong-Bak shows up and scratches his nuts. Then there’s this part where Jaa has to fight this gigantic motherfucker who’s got tattoos on his face that make him look like Fred Williamson after he got turned into a vampire in From Dusk Till Dawn. Speaking of vampires, Jaa fights one. He gets sent into this cave to test the power of his mind, so you think he’s gonna have to chop his own head off like Luke did in that evil tree in Empire Strikes Back. Instead, it’s more like the torture pit in Army of Darkness, because this pointy-toothed she-bitch starts hissing and spitting and jumping off the walls and trying to bite his throat out. Oh yeah, and he also does an interpretive dance while wearing a gorilla mask and fights a flying witch who’s dressed up like a crow. On the back of an elephant. Whose face he just did a bicycle kick off of. Which was after this Arabian dude with a wicker basket on his head threw him off a building. Twice.

And then it just…ends. There’s a heartbreaking twist that you probably saw coming, and then things look hopeless for our young hero, and then this narrator informs us that all this shit is Jaa’s own fault but that maybe if we all pray for him he will be relieved of his torment and find inner peace, which I take to mean that there will probably be a third movie, but only if we all go see this one. It’s like in the stage production of Peter Pan where the audience has to prove that they believe in fairies or Tinkerbell dies. It’s totally jarring and probably really, really Buddhist.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where Ong-Bak 3 isn’t being rushed into production, so I’ll believe in fairies, vampires, bird bitches, Loch Ness monsters, Bigfeet, whatever you got. Just give me more Tony Jaa. Considering how long it took for this movie to finally get released, haven’t we all suffered enough?

High Voltage

2010-08-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

Remember when I used to review horror movies? I’ve always vacillated between action and horror, but lately, I want all action, all the time. I still watch horror movies, but I rarely feel the need to write about them. Maybe it’s because I tend to feel that horror is gonna be just fine without me to sing its praises on the internet. Trends come and go, but horror always survives, thanks to a devoted fanbase with a never-ending influx of people who have just turned 17 and want to prove how hardcore they are. Action, however, is kind of on the endangered list. Every now and again there’s a random hit like Taken, but kids these days prefer their action movies to be about robots with superpowers, not unshaven men with shoulder holsters. The classic action movie is going the way of the western or the film noir. Rather than being a viable commercial genre, it’s quickly becoming a purely retro phenomenon, an exercise in aesthetics to be consumed solely by nostalgists.

Luckily, I’m not the only one keeping the flame burning. I was recently exposed to the works of Isaac Florentine by fellow action fetishist Outlaw Vern. Florentine is a direct-to-DVD director who is almost single-handedly keeping the meat-and-potatoes American action movie alive. The fact that he is an Israeli who works in a heavily Hong Kong-influenced style and usually shoots his movies in Bulgaria only proves how dire the situation is.

Florentine is a former martial arts instructor who got his start choreographing stunts and directing episodes of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, so this is a dude who knows the best angles at which to film a guy kicking another guy so that he flips end over end and crashes headfirst through a coffee table. This is a very useful skill for an action director to have, but you’d be amazed at how many don’t have it. He shoots clean frames that emphasize movement and causality, so that his action sequences flow logically from one exciting event to the next. This is a decidedly classical approach when compared to contemporary action filmmakers, who prefer to hire highly skilled stuntmen to design and perform an intricate and immaculately timed dance of destruction, and then kick the camera around in front of it like an empty shoebox they found in the street. Florentine also has an excellent grasp of the proper tone for old school action. It’s not too light, not too heavy, and never ironic. He treats his one-dimensional characters with respect and takes their stories seriously, but he also has no delusions of grandeur. He knows he’s making cheesy movies where character development is defined by putting a chair leg through the chest of the guy who killed your partner.

This isn’t the first time I’ve reviewed one of Florentine’s movies (The Shepherd: Border Patrol) but for some reason I didn’t mention him in the last one. That’s why it’s kind of a shame that I have to introduce you to him with High Voltage, which, in addition to having a title that looks really eye-catching on a VHS box but doesn’t have anything at all to do with the film contained therein, is nothing special. It’s an early film of his, so he hadn’t quite perfected his chops yet. His later work like U.S. Seals 2 and Special Forces shows a much more confident directorial hand, as well as much more impressive stuntwork. But High Voltage does have its moments.

What we got here is a movie in which TV heartthrob Antonio Sabato, Jr. leads the least badass gang of armed robbers in movie history. We’ve got a pre-Road Trip Amy Smart, who's way too cute to look tough pumping a shotgun, plus the puffed-up frat monkey who played the deputy in Freddy vs. Jason and a couple of nondescript white guys in blue button-ups and khakis. What they do is they attempt to rob a bank, but then they discover that it’s being used as a front for some Vietnamese gangsters, so they team up with the bank manager (who also happens to be the head gangster’s moll) to rip off the loot and make a break for Mexico. The manager is played by Shannon Lee, daughter of Bruce, who I’d only ever seen in a Hong Kong flick with the amazing title of And Now You’re Dead. Mostly she’s just the love interest, but she does get one fight scene in what is probably not the least convincing bar set I’ve ever seen. Her kung fu is serviceable at best, but at least she’s kind of cute.

The first half of the movie is kind of boring, but it really picks up after that barfight. Amy Smart’s lame boyfriend gets killed in the crossfire with a gang of bikers (one of whom is played by Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds), so they force a priest (Hit List’s Ken Lerner in a rare non-lawyer role) to marry her and the corpse at gunpoint. Once that happens, things get much more absurd and enjoyable.

This was 1997, so naturally every movie had to have a bunch of colorful Tarantinoesque underworld factions becoming entangled with each other in a series of double-crosses and coincidences, so the climax is all about the Vietnamese gangsters and a vengeful biker (played by Johnny from The Karate Kid) converging at an Arizona motel run by Antonio’s freakishly beefy Sicilian uncle. Then Florentine really gets to let ’er rip with the roundhouse kicks and the machine guns and the people falling over railings. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but at least it doesn’t skimp on the good stuff. And in these days of incompetent action and sissified CGI, sometimes that’s the best you can ask for.

Crank: High Voltage

2010-08-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

There are basically two types of people in this world: Those who think the Crank series is preposterous, offensive, and retarded, and those who are like “Duh.” Personally, I find that first type of person hilarious. Obviously, a series of films as over-the-top and willfully unrealistic as Crank and Crank: High Voltage had to have been designed that way from the start, but these assholes seem to think that it requires a world-class intellect like their own to notice it. They’re like, “At the end of the first one, Statham fell like 10,000 feet out of a helicopter. There’s no way he could survive that. What a crock of shit.” And I’m like, “I know, right? You know what else sucks? I saw this cartoon once where this dude shot a duck point-blank in the face and all that happened was its bill turned around backwards. And then—can you believe it?—the duck just turned the bill back around like nothing happened! That’s totally not what would happen if you really shot a duck in the face. Also, the duck could talk.” Basically what I’m saying is that pointing out that Crank is ridiculous and unbelievable is not a valid criticism. All you’re telling me is that you don’t like that type of shit in the first place, so why should I care about your opinion? It’s like somebody saying that Motörhead sucks because they’re too loud.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying you’re an asshole if you don’t like Crank and its sequel. I mean, you got a couple strikes against you, but if you could get down with the movies in theory but just don’t care for the hypercaffeinated visual style, I can appreciate that. I don’t normally go in for that kind of shit myself, but I think it works within the confines of the Crankiverse. So it’s cool, you and me can still be BFF’s. Just don’t try and tell me that the absurdity and crudity that has been carefully layered into the films from the script stage on was some kind of mistake that only you were sophisticated enough to point out. That dog won’t hunt.

Anyway, we should probably get around to talking about Crank Fucking 2 at some point. Most of you won’t agree with me, but I think the first one was a little better. The second one has way more crazy shit in it, but I think the storyline of the first one (Hitman has to keep his adrenaline up to stop the poison in his veins from stopping his heart before he gets his revenge) was more interesting. It’s a great action movie plot, because it creates a compelling reason for the hero to cause needless destruction, do lots of drugs, and pork Amy Smart in public. In Crank 2, Statham has had his heart (which is so badass that it somehow survived the poison from the first one all by itself) removed and replaced with an artificial one, so he’s got to keep juicing it with electricity so it won’t conk out before he gets his real one back. This leads to some hilarious shit, like when he electrocutes himself at a power station and somehow turns into a giant rubber-masked Godzilla version of himself. But it’s not as socially irresponsible as a movie that says sniffing cocaine off a filthy restroom floor to get your heart rate up is the right thing to do.

Also, I think the acting in the first one is a little underrated. There are so many little supporting parts that are so much more memorable than they could have been, from the dude who gets thrown off the roof who yells "What you mean ding? Whayoumeanding?" as he falls to his death to the surprisingly affable black gangster in the bathroom who says the immortal line: "There's a white nigga in here with a gun!" I also really appreciated the scenery-chewing yet oddly sympathetic performance of the main villain, who has a few moments where his facial expressions mix grief and hysteria and rage and humor in equal proportions. The performances in Crank: High Voltage are more of the Troma-style overacting-for-overacting’s-sake school. They’re entertaining and they fit the tone of the movie, but they’re not as distinctive as the ones in Crank 1.

The main area in which the original surpasses its sequel is in its ending. Having your hero jump to his (seeming) death from a helicopter and, while falling through the clouds, leave a goodbye message on his girlfriend’s answering machine was both incredibly badass and sort of sweet. It was a bold move to conclude 90 minutes of foul language, fornication, and bloodshed with a man coming to terms with his own mortality by giving closure to the woman he loved.

But even if Crank 2 isn’t as awesome as Crank 1, it’s still more awesome than a gorilla with a chainsaw. This movie is giddy, mean-spirited fun from beginning to end. It’s basically just scenes of crazy sex and violence and profanity slapped together one after the other, so you’ve barely had time to reconfigure your mind-grapes to deal with the insanity you just witnessed before they slap you in the face with some more. To support my thesis, I give you this quote from noted Onion AV Club commentator and caps-lock enthusiast Zodiac Motherfucker:

I AM HERE TO SERVE NOTICE ABOUT THE REAL THATS RIGHT CRANK 2 BITCH FUCK YEAH IT IS ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY FUCKING FUCKING LIFE. WALL TO WALL OWNAGE YOU GOT STRIPPERS SHOOTING MOTHERFUCKERS YOU GOT CHINESE GANGSTERS TEARING SHIT UP YOU GOT GREAT BIG JACKED UP CHOLOS OWNING PEOPLE YOU GOT GAY DUDES WITH NUNCHUCKS YOU GOT STATHAM RUNNING AROUND LIKE A FUCKING HURRICANE OF OWNAGE YOU GOT AMY SMART BEING AWESOME AND HOT AND GETTING FUCKED IN PUBLIC YOU GOT HOOKERS CRUSHING SOME FAT MOTHERFUCKERS NUTS YOU GOT OLD ANCIENT ASS CHINESE DUDES GETTING PUSSY YOU GOT MOTHERFUCKERS GETTING THROWN OUT OF WINDOWS YOU GOT LITTLE KIDS BEATING THE FUCK OUT OF OTHER LITTLE KIDS LIKE FOR REAL A STONE FUCKING BEATDOWN HOLY SHIT IT IS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE THE OWNINGS PER MINUTE ARE PROBABLY THE HIGHEST THEYVE EVER BEEN

CRANK BITCH FUCK THE FUCK YEAH CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY THIS YEAR MOTHERFUCKERS GET YOUR ASS TO THE THEATER AND FEEL THE FUCKING VOLTAGE IF YOU LIKE TITTIES YOUR GONNA FUCKING LOVE CRANK 2

ZMF is rarely this effusive, but he's just barely scratching the surface of Crank 2’s madness. He didn’t mention how the pussy-getting old Chinese dude is played by David Carradine. Or the part where a stripper gets shot through both titties and they start leaking saline. Or when Statham interrogates a fat dude by cramming eight inches of greasy shotgun up his ass. Or Bai Ling’s outrageously offensive pidgin English, which is full of lines like “I bitchfuck you!” that are even funnier when subtitled—it’s like a Chinese takeout menu published by Larry Flynt. Or then there’s the part where a character from the first movie has a cameo as a rubber head in a fish tank. Or the part where a dude has the tip of his elbow hacked off with a machete for no reason. Or the part where Statham gives the audience the finger with his fucking face on fire. Shit, he didn’t even mention the part where Amy Smart puts Corey Haim through a windshield.

Still, despite his deplorable oversights, ZMF’s enthusiasm is dead-on. (Also: "Fuck the fuck yeah” is now something I say.) This is a superior entertainment that never stops coming up with inventive new ways to blow your fucking mind. I strongly recommend seeing this movie with an audience. I have gone on record as stating that the American public as a whole is allergic to awesome, but my Crank: High Voltage viewing experience has renewed my faith in my fellow countrymen.

Before I close, I would like to give a post-dated “Fuck you” to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for failing to recognize the groundbreaking work of music legend Mike Patton. His score for Crank 2 is the weirdest and most rockingest soundtrack I’ve heard since Dario Argento lost Goblin’s phone number. It sounds like if Sergio Leone got signed to Anticon to record a tango/thrash/electro jazz album that got remixed by DJ Spooky to be the soundtrack to Todd McFarlane’s porno revamp of Tom & Jerry. So yeah, it’s a Mike Patton album, only it comes with a feature-length music video full of boobs and blood and occasional interludes by REO Speedwagon.

Seriously, what do I have to do, jerk you off on my chest? Go watch the fucking movie already.

Superman Returns

2010-08-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

I seem to be the only person alive who really loves Superman Returns. Most found it too long, too slow, and too sappy. I agree that it is all of those things. But of all the superhero movies out there, it’s the only one that affects me emotionally because it features one of the only heroes in the genre who's really worthy of the title.

To cynical contemporary audiences raised on ironic distance and gritty antiheroes, Superman seems outlandishly corny, a boring goody-two-shoes with no rough edges or shades of gray. And that’s what I love about him. Unlike other superheroes, the world would actually be a better place with him in it. A world so insane, so chaotic and brutal that it requires a violent, emotionally scarred vigilante like Batman to mete out the justice its government cannot is kind of depressing, but what if Superman existed? Imagine the ecclesiastical joy you would feel knowing that there’s someone out there looking after you, who will catch you when you fall. It must be what it’s like to really, truly believe in a just and loving God, only you can actually see Him in the flesh, zooming across the sky in glorious Technicolor.

This religious yearning is crucial to the character’s creation myth, both in the comics and in the real world. Subverting the Nietzschean Übermensch ideology that so inspired the Nazis, Superman was created by two sons of Jewish immigrants at a time when their relatives in Europe desperately needed their people’s long-delayed savior to finally arrive. A survivor from a decimated culture arriving in the heartland of America to defend the innocent and preserve justice, Superman was both of manifestation of the Jewish people’s longing for a protector and a celebration of American idealism. A powerless infant in his native land, he was given strength by his arrival in America, a land where, theoretically, a person of no means could leave behind his suffering and start a new life of hope and promise. Created during the Great Depression, Superman was a symbol of compassion and generosity in a world given to corruption and rot.

I strongly disagree with the idea that being purely noble somehow makes Superman less interesting than more conflicted characters like the X-Men. Just for a moment, pretend that you’re Superman. Earth’s yellow sun gives you immeasurable power, more than enough to rule the world if you wanted to. But you don’t want to. Instead, you only want to help people. You choose to be polite and generous and forgiving and self-sacrificing. Do you understand how remarkable that is? Do you think you or anyone you know would possess enough self-control and basic human decency to not give in to the temptation to use your unlimited strength for your own ends? They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but Superman refutes that. In a world where abuses of power are more often the rule than the exception, I find that immeasurably inspiring. Batman did the best with the hand he was dealt, but he’s a flawed character for a flawed world. Superman flies trailing the promise of utopia behind him like a cape.

And don’t think that Superman doesn’t suffer by choosing not to lord over every human on earth like his own personal ant colony. His body might be Kryptonian, but his soul is pure human. He has the same desire for recognition and adoration as any of us, but he chooses to hide his light under a bushel by trying to make his way in the world as a lowly reporter named Clark Kent. I believe that Quentin Tarantino was wrong when he wrote in Kill Bill that Kent’s bumbling personality is Superman’s criticism of mankind. I don’t believe that Clark is an act. Clark is what being human does to Superman. Because he can’t use his powers without blowing his secret identity, he becomes just like the rest of us: unsure of himself, socially awkward, prone to mistakes. It’s easy to make everyone love you when you can save them from a falling airliner, but wouldn’t you want them to love you for you, not what you can do for them? When he’s Superman, he’s invincible, which gives him confidence and a certain swagger, but when he’s Clark, he’s vulnerable to the same pitfalls of human interaction as the rest of us. Being able to stop a bullet with your eyeball doesn’t help when the people at work think you’re a dork (which you kind of are—you’re a farmboy from Kansas, for God’s sake). That’s why it’s so important to him that Lois Lane fall in love with him as Clark, not Superman. It’s like a rock star wanting to make sure that his favorite groupie loves him for his personality, not for the fame and fortune. It shows that we’re all the same inside, no matter how powerful we seem on the outside.

Superman Returns illustrates this facet of Superman’s personality better than any of the other films in the series. Christopher Reeve gave a deft dual performance as both Superman (a man with so much natural grace that he could sit at a dinner table in a blue leotard and seem perfectly comfortable) and Clark, whose slapstick antics displayed Reeve’s underrated comic timing. For my money, he was Superman incarnate, but Brandon Routh synthesizes the two sides of Superman better. When he has the cape and tights on, he seems like a modest guy who’s been thrust into the spotlight, like a shy best man making a wedding toast. Rather than basking in the glow of his loving public, he seems embarrassed by the hero worship. He knows that he did nothing to deserve these powers he has, so he feels unworthy of such adoration in a world where so many have to work so much harder than he does to achieve far less. To me, Superman’s humility is much more impressive than his superpowers. The latter he was born with, but he earned the former through strength of character alone.

The movie is far from perfect. The plot is non-existent (Superman lifts heavy things!), the ending anticlimactic, and Kate Bosworth's bland, humorless Lois Lane makes me yearn for the feisty oddness of Margot Kidder. It also makes mincemeat of the denouement of Superman II, which, let's be frank, was never hot shit to begin with. Worst of all, they continue the franchise's misstep of using Lex Luthor as comic relief, undermining his effectiveness as a nemesis. In the comics, Luthor isn’t just a criminal mastermind yearning for wealth and power. He’s a captain of industry who already has both. What makes Luthor a villain is his pathological resentment of Superman. In a world without a man who’s more powerful than a locomotive, Luthor would be its most remarkable specimen. He’s a brilliant scientist, a genius businessman, and a stunning lateral strategist. He is the epitome of human achievement, but he pales in comparison to Superman, who attained his magnificence not through hard work and intelligence, but by a simple fluke of biology. This cosmic injustice drives Luthor mad with envy. In his mind, he’s trying to destroy Superman not because the Man of Steel is constantly thwarting his plans for world domination, but because he feels that Superman’s very existence belittles mankind itself, turning all of its achievements into the scribblings of children who need a father figure to protect them. (They do cursorily address this in the film, but this theme gets abandoned for the goofy "Let's make an ugly new continent that no one would ever want to live on" scheme.) To Luthor, humanity will never achieve its potential as long as it has Superman to coddle it. If Superman is God, then Lex is Lucifer, attempting to shove Man out of the Garden of Eden so that he might fulfill his destiny under his own steam. Of course, Luthor also believes that the only way for that to happen is for him to rule the world and show his fellow man the way (while taking his cut, of course—you can’t expect him to work out of pocket), but what do you expect from an egomaniac who feels that his only rival is a man who can lift continents?

Superman Returns is too ponderous and weakly plotted to be a masterpiece, but it does the right things right, at least for me. It shows me a hero who cares more about saving people than he does about the collateral damage-intensive psychodramas that other superheroes engage in with their fellow cosplay fetishists. His past is every bit as tragic as Batman’s, but he rises above it with class and grace. Even when he’s not flying over our heads like a bird or a plane, he still gives us someone to look up to.

Thunder and Lightning

2010-08-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

Today we got my tribute to the late, great David Carradine. Now, I don’t want to brag, especially considering the morbid and tragic nature of his death, but I cracked the Carradine case several hours before both the press and the authorities. When I first heard of his supposed suicide, something just didn't add up for me. I knew there was no way Carradine would off himself. That dude loved living. He still had broads to ball and martial arts to master. My gut said “sex game gone awry,” and I shared that hunch with the world. People said I was just being a clueless fanboy. In their stunted view, David Carradine was ashamed of his 45-year B-movie legacy and decided to take the coward’s way out. But I knew he was proud of the work he’d done, and I stuck to my guns. Now everybody’s talking about “autoerotic asphyxiation” this and “murderous ladyboys” that. This is one case where I take no joy in being right, but you have to admit that dying in the middle of a sleazy sex game in a Bangkok hotel room is way less of a bummer than hanging yourself in the closet of a Bangkok hotel room. It's not exactly a blaze of glory, but I guess it'll have to do.

Anyway, I said goodbye to the star of possibly the two greatest B-movies of all time, Death Race 2000 and Q: The Winged Serpent, by watching a Roger Corman-produced moonshinin’ picture from 1977 called Thunder and Lightning. Carradine plays a swamprat who wears an earring in a time and place where that’s probably a lynch-worthy offense, but he runs the county’s best rotgut so it’s okay. Then his girlfriend’s fatcat daddy, who runs his own bootlegging operation out of a soda factory, starts blowing up Carradine’s stills and smacking around his whiskery hillbilly compatriots. So you know what that means: car chases and kung fu.

Since this is a Roger Corman picture, Thunder and Lightning gives it to you with the science. At the three minute mark, we got an explosion. At seven minutes, we got a hydrofoil chase. At ten, we got a car crash. Then we need to handle some business like introducing the villain and the love interest, Kate Jackson (a.k.a. Charlie’s Other Angel), but that’s okay because these scenes get sugarcoated with some tits and gator-rasslin’. That makes the eight minutes we have to wait until the next explosion fly by. Then we got some minor karate at the 25-minute point, followed by a car flipping over two minutes later. At 28 minutes, we got a speedboat race, and at 33, we got a fistfight. Then we got 15 minutes of plot, so you can go take a piss or smoke a cigarette or something, because then the rest of the movie is pretty much just shootouts, crack-ups, and moonshine Molotov cocktails.

Thunder and Lightning is a pretty damned entertaining good ol’ boy flick full of great character actors like George Murdock (playing pretty much the same role he did in Chuck Norris’ starring debut, the CB-craze cash-in Breaker! Breaker!) and Majestyk's Movies salutee Charles Napier (Hit List). It’s also got lots of quotable cornpone dialogue like “Shit fire and save matches!” and “Sweet kidneys o’ Christ!” David Carradine’s filmography is full of little gems like this, and when he died (hopefully in the middle of a toe-curling orgasm), the B-movie world lost one of its most gracious and elegant ambassadors.

Fair Game (1986)

2010-08-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

Fair Game proves my theory that every Australian movie will turn into The Road Warrior sooner or later. I never made it all the way through Picnic at Hanging Rock, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a dune buggy tricked out with spikes and monster truck tires figured into the finale somehow.

Fair Game came late in the Ozploitation cycle, but it’s a good’un. It’s about this foxy animal conservationist chick who doesn’t own pants. She gets into a rivalry with these kangaroo-poaching yahoos who drive a pick-up that has red headlights and big pipes welded to the hood so it kind of looks like they made a Hot Wheels car out of the devil from Spawn. The set-up seems like it’s gonna be a real sleazy I Spit On Your Grave type deal, where a chick gets raped around the Outback for an hour before getting her revenge. But this is an Australian chick we’re talking about, so she refuses to be a victim. There are plenty of opportunities for her to back down and let it go before things get out of hand, but she keeps giving as good as she gets. They sneak into her house and take a Polaroid of her taking a nap bare-assed; she sneaks into their camp and welds their guns together into an abstract barbed wire sculpture. They drive their truck through her house; she drives their van off a cliff. They strap her naked to the front of their truck like a deer carcass; she sets up a bunch of booby traps and kills the living fuck out of them with electricity, fire, and iron. This is some badass shit. I mean, John McClane gets a lot of credit for kicking ass barefoot, but let’s see him do it pantsless.

I recommend this one. There’s some pretty great stuntwork with this dude jumping from car to car in the middle of a high-speed chase, and it manages to have a bunch of nudity and a feminist message at the same time, so you get to have your tits and eat ’em, too.

I Know Who Killed Me

2010-08-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

A couple things about this movie we have to get out of the way right off the bat:

1) Yes, the title is a line of dialogue from the movie, and no, it doesn't make any goddamn sense at all. The character who says it was never killed, so it's one of those bait-and-switch deals, like I Spit On Your Grave. But unlike that movie, where the main character surely would have spit on somebody's grave were there any actual graves in the movie for her to spit on, this movie's titular line of dialogue actually contradicts everything that the character who speaks it has been saying about herself for the whole running time. It's like they came up with a title first, but then forgot to tell it to the guy they hired to write the movie, but they'd already printed up the posters so they were stuck with it.

2) Lindsay Lohan does not get naked in this movie. But you already knew that, since she plays a stripper and strippers don't get naked in movies anymore, a dangerous precedent set by Jessica Alba in Sin City and continued by Rose McGowan in Planet Terror. (You know, I'm starting to think this is all Robert Rodriguez's fault.) Personally, if I were a stripper, I would be insulted by these Hollywood starlets who think they're too good to do what real strippers do every night for far less money. Spoiled brats like Alba and Lohan want all the cool accoutrements that come with playing a stripper (the "bad girl" attitude, the sexy dance routines, the slutty costumes, etc.) but they don't want to do any of the heavy lifting. It's like if an actor got cast to play a cop but refused to carry a gun. I understand your ethical dilemma, but that should have stopped you from taking the role in the first place. It's not a matter of me wanting to see some tits; it's a matter of an actress' lack of commitment to the role she has been paid to bring to life. And in the case of I Know Who Killed Me Even Though I'm Not Dead And It's Not Really Me I'm Talking About Anyway, it's even more insulting because all of the other strippers surrounding Lindsay Lohan get naked. It's like they needed some tits to create a realistic atmosphere for a strip club, but Lindsay's were too expensive so they had to hire some stunt knockers. It just ain't fair. These other actresses have dreams, too. They want to be famous and star in their own movies, but they don't have the full might of the Walt Disney Corporation backing their careers, so they have to pay their dues and show off some skin like many accomplished actresses did before they got famous. And for what? So Lindsay Lohan can have her stripper cake and eat it too. Fucking bullshit.

Okay, we should probably talk about the plot now. Lindsay plays a high school piano prodigy who gets kidnapped by a psycho. When she shows up later, she's missing a hand and a leg and claiming that she's really a stripper named Dakota. So since the movie tries real hard to make you think that she's just crazy, you know she's really telling the truth. That's the shocking twist, that everything turns out pretty much how you thought it would.

This movie has already become a little notorious, not only because it so closely mirrors Lindsay Lohan's real-life transformation from America's Sweetheart into America's Drunken Whore. It's also a completely ridiculous movie from beginning to end. This thing is positively Italian in its aggressive commitment to utter implausibility. It's like a Brian De Palma thriller, only half-assed. De Palma would go so far over the top that you'd have to appreciate the audaciousness of it all, but the best this movie can do is get you on a "so bad, it's good" level. But on that level, this shit works. It is pretty goddamn goodly bad/badly good in on nearly every category.

Let's break it down:

Cinematography: This is one of those movies with symbolic colors, so everything is either blue or red. Blue represents Good Lindsay, red represents Bad Lindsay. At one point, a character shows up wearing yellow and automatically becomes the most interesting thing in the movie. You can't take your eyes off of him. It's like that little girl in the red dress in Schindler's List. But what I don't get is why everything except Bad Lindsay (who always dresses in red) is blue. And I do mean everything. There is more blue in this movie than in a Jacque Cousteau documentary. Seriously, it's like the director has some grudge against the color blue. Maybe the Smurfs murdered his mom or something. The killer even wears bright blue gloves and a blue stocking over his face. An awesome twist would have been if he turned out to be in Blue Man Group and was chopping off limbs to create some kind of syncopated musical routine. That would have ruled.

Script: I love these movies where not only is the basic premise impossible to swallow, but they also throw in some other minor outlandishness for no good reason. Okay, I'm gonna have to spoil the big twist: Good Lindsay and Bad Lindsay are separated-at-birth twins, so when something bad happens to one of them, it happens to the other, too. So when GL gets her hand and leg amputated, BL's hand and leg just fall off. That's some pretty crazy shit to base a whole movie on, and any other movie would have tried to make everything else as realistic as possible to compensate. Not this one. This one also throws in a super-strong robotic hand that responds flawlessly to nerve impulses and a prosthetic leg that needs to be plugged in at night. It's shit like this that marks this movie as something special. Another thing that makes this movie particularly Italianesque is that the cops are fucking retards. In real life (as well as in better movies), what investigators do when hunting for serial killers is to cross reference the victims' histories to find points of comparison in hopes of discerning a pattern that will lead them to the perpetrator. They don't do that here. They just yell at Lindsay because she's not cooperating. If they'd done what I suggested, they would have easily found several clues linking the victims to the killer. (And in any case, they would have known it was him because he's the only guy in town who has dozens of prosthetic limbs hanging from the ceiling in his basement. Shit hanging from the ceiling = psycho.) As a film viewer, you'll actually figure it out in the first five minutes, since there's this one scene right at the beginning featuring a character who's only around long enough to get all intense about something that he doesn't have any business getting intense about. Then he never appears again, and the movie doesn't give you any other suspects. The only way the villain could have been any easier to identify is if he'd been played by Christopher Plummer.

Acting: Dude, it's awful, particularly from Ms. Lohan herself, who is utterly unbelievable as both a goodie two-shoes and a chain-smoking tramp. I, for one, am grateful. Competent acting could have easily raised this movie to the level of mediocrity, which is the last place you want it to be.

So yeah, if you like terrible movies, this is a terrible one you'll like. It's not as balls-crazy as The Wicker Man remake, though, because it doesn't have Nic Cage dressing up in a bear costume and beating up women. That's the kind of thing that only comes along once in a lifetime, though, so don't hold that against I Know Who Didn't Actually Kill The Person Who Isn't Technically Me.

Rambo

2010-08-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

Unspeakable awesome. That's the only way to describe the new Rambo.

Over the weekend, I walked around telling anybody who would listen that Rambo is the greatest movie ever made. I said it without hesitation, without qualification, and for damn sure without shame.

But now that some of the initial elation has worn off, I have to amend that statement. It's probably not the greatest movie ever made. It's only the absolute no-contest best action movie since Terminator 2.

The lukewarm and/or condescending reviews this landmark in no-nonsense action cinema has received from mainstream critics mystifies me. I don't know what's up with these people. It doesn't seem like they saw the same movie I did. Maybe it's just that they grew up in some parallel universe where justice always reigns and hatred doesn't congeal in the bone marrow, so they're missing that hard chunk of black diamond that the rest of us carry around in our hearts that makes us scream for violent retribution against an unfair world. But for people like me, Rambo is 100% emotion. It angries up the blood in the most beautiful, life-affirming way.

Rambo is not a complicated film, but it is a powerful one, if you can allow yourself to experience it on a purely emotional level. George Lucas once said that engaging an audience emotionally was easy: Just strangle a kitten on camera. (Too bad he didn't follow his own advice. A few kitten-stranglings might have injected some life into the prequels.) Sylvester Stallone agrees, so the whole first half of Rambo is just one metaphorical kitten being strangled after another. Then the second half is Rambo killing the fucking shit out of those dirty kitten-stranglers. Simple. Basic. Primordial.

The plot: Rambo now lives in self-imposed exile in Thailand, running a riverboat service and catching deadly cobras for snake shows. He fucking hates everybody and has lost all faith in both himself and the world. Then some Christian do-gooders come to town, asking him for a ride into Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar). I don't know if you know this, since Britney's custody battles seem to take up a lot of space in the papers, but there's been a bloody civil war going on over there for over 60 years, the longest in history. It's basically a genocide, with the Burmese government using profits earned from crystal meth trafficking to systematically eradicate a tribe of independence-seeking rebels, the Karen. So these Christians want to bring food and medical supplies to the Karen. Rambo knows that passive resistance won't do shit against a methed-up army of killers trained to see their enemies as subhumans worthy of extinction, but he lets himself get talked into it by the foxy blonde of the group. I don't see a lot of sexual tension going on here. I think he's just reacting to the earnest idealism he sees in her, as opposed to the self-aggrandizing "My morals are better than yours" dick-swinging of the other missionaries. Community service as masturbation.

A lot of people in the theater were laughing at this part. I think that's part of Stallone's plan. He lets you chuckle at the over-baked dialogue that blatantly poses the philosophical question: Is it enough to merely do good, or must you also destroy evil? This question is posed in as blunt a manner as possible, as befits a Rambo movie. It's not ironic. It's not post-modern. And it's definitely not cynical. As he proved in Rocky Balboa, Stallone doesn't have time for cynics who keep themselves insulated from both the darkest and brightest aspects of human nature by a buffer zone of cosmopolitan irony. Stallone isn't talking to them, because they're not listening anyway.

So he lets them laugh at the beginning of the movie. Ha ha, isn't this corny, the way this weird-looking old man discusses age-old ethical quandaries in the rain. Thank God I'm young, middle-class, and white so I don't have to actually give a fuck about anything.

But nobody's laughing once the killing starts. At about the 20 minute mark, there's a massacre that shuts everybody the fuck up. It is absolutely punishing. Body parts blown off. Women raped and executed. Babies bayoneted and thrown into burning huts. It is the hardest action scene I have ever witnessed, and it hurts. This isn't fun action, with exploding arrowheads and pithy one-liners. This is man's inhumanity to man. This is war, and Stallone shoves it right in your face. It's like he's saying to the skeptics, "Why aren't you laughing now? Isn't it funny? C'mon, you fucking hipster, laugh this shit off. I dare you. Laugh."

Lots of people have a problem with the fact that Stallone is showing this shit the way it really happens. They think it's wrong for him to portray real-life atrocities in his cheesy action movie. They'd rather have him fight the Russian mafia or Eurotrash mercenaries or even not-explicitly-Muslim-but-probably-Arab terrorists. Because that's safe. It's just a campy good time at the movies. They don't have to suffer the indignity of being forced to think about stuff while sharing space with the unwashed masses.

It's like when South Park introduced Timmy, the retarded kid. He was the singer in a band, and his spastic verbal ejaculations were both hilarious and catchy. The audience loved it and he himself had a blast. But nonetheless, the townspeople protested, saying that Timmy was being exploited. But it had nothing to do with protecting Timmy. It was just that the liberal townspeople would rather have retarded people locked away where polite folks wouldn't have to feel guilty about the fact that they make them uncomfortable.

That's like Rambo with this Burma situation. Critics may bitch that Stallone is co-opting a real and ongoing tragedy, but the fact of the matter is that this movie will raise more awareness of what's going on over there than a dozen newspaper articles and documentaries. So how do you think the actual Karens feel about it? Do you think they feel exploited by Stallone, or do you think they're just glad (like Timmy) that someone is finally listening? Rambo clearly isn't a message film (it's too unpretentious for that), but Stallone knows that Rambo is a mighty worldwide icon, and he has chosen to train this symbolic power on a situation that desperately needs it.

This no-holds-barred approach also performs a vital storytelling role. The more evil Stallone makes the bad guys, the more righteous his eventual payback. It's simple physics. The farther you pull back the bowstring, the farther the arrow goes. Well, since he's Rambo, Stallone pulls that motherfucker back until it damn near snaps, and when he lets it go, that arrow flies several miles and stabs right through some inhuman cocksucker's face. And the people in the audience who aren't dead inside cheer and cheer.

I cannot describe the emotional catharsis of the last act of this movie, when Rambo leads a group of mercenaries into the woods to rescue the Christians. I could try, but I'd fail. I'm not that good a writer. Rambo is like the Roman Coliseum, only nobody really gets hurt and justice prevails in the end. And it prevails in the messiest, most jaw-dropping way imaginable.

I don't know any other way to say it, but while watching this movie, I felt more loved than I'd felt in months. When it comes to loving me, there's this movie and then there's my mother. And quite frankly, this movie knows me better. It's never been a secret what action movie fans want, but for some reason, Hollywood likes to pretend that it's a big mystery. They think we want smirky prettyboys swinging around on cables, bicycle-kicking generic henchmen. They think we want techno music and villains who bleed dust. They think we want our violence to have all the viscera and gravitas of a pinball machine.

But Stallone knows better. He listened to our pleas and gave us the action movie we've always wanted. When people get shot with a .50 caliber jeep-mounted machine gun, they don't just fall down, clutching their torsos. They break apart. Pieces fly off in clouds of blood. Just like in real life. It's not pretty, but my God, is it awesome. It is an unholy wail of rage, and if you've got the bloodlust in you, the uncivilized caveman fury, then it is absolutely exhilarating. There was a moment at the end, when Rambo is about to waste the main bad guy, and he stands up into frame in slow motion like a fucking mountain rising through the earth's crust, and I found myself releasing a roar of triumph. It was a goddamn battle cry, and I didn't plan it. It just bubbled up out of my warrior place, my don't-fuck-with-me place. After 236 individual onscreen deaths (half good guys, half bad), I felt punch drunk, blood simple, shell shocked, and kill crazy. I felt alive, invincible, and unashamed. And if that ain't loving me, then God didn't make the little green apples.

I've never seen a movie like Rambo. I've never seen a movie that combines the entertainingly cheesy with the legitimately hardcore in such separate-but-equal measures. It's a feel-good movie for people who don't usually feel so goddamn good.

Maybe some of you can't relate. Maybe you have nothing but goodness in your hearts and can't understand how watching an hour and a half of heads exploding can be an expression of joy. If that's the case—honestly and without sarcasm—I'm happy for you. You're lucky. Most of the time, this rage that people like me carry around is a curse. Unchecked, it locks us in a shell of resentment and prevents us from evolving. But properly vented, it can be a powerful motivating force—and a fucking rush. People like me spend our whole lives looking for an opportunity to use the power of our rage for something positive (as Rambo would say, "Live for nothing or die for something."), but most of us never find it, and our anger eats us up inside like stomach acid with no food to dissolve. Because we know that evil isn't just a concept. It's made flesh every day by the actions of misguided men and women, and there isn't much we can do about it. But Rambo can.

And that's the secret. That's why Rambo has remained a hero in the Third World to this day, while we Americans grew soft and weak, reimagining our heroes as video game avatars who fight simply because it looks cool. Rambo is going to be a fucking phenomenon in the Third World, especially amongst the kind of persecuted peoples that those liberal critics are so eager to protect from big, bad Sly's exploitation. Oppressed people from all over the globe are going to love it, because the poor and disenfranchised know about that hate inside, the one that needs to be vented. They know better than you or I that there is no justice in this world. But there is Rambo. And sometimes, for an hour and a half at a time, that's enough.

Get Crazy

2010-08-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

In my neighborhood—Fort Greene, Brooklyn, home of brownstones, bodegas, and baby strollers—they have a flea market every weekend in the summer. I like to stroll through on Saturday afternoons, still stinky from sleep, to buy a fancy hot dog covered with apple chutney from the food tents or maybe a bootleg funk compilation from the guy selling incense. But my favorite booth sells used CDs (I found a promo copy of bodybuilder/heavy metal god John Mikl Thor's Thor Against the World for five bucks), DVD-R's of out-of-print movies, and random duped CD compilations (I got one called Ultra Chicks Vol. 5 that's full of French bubblegum pop from the sixties. I'm weird like that.) It's run by one of those hyperactive older gentlemen who never really grew up. On weekends, he projects real 35mm film prints of strange old movies at a playground in my old neighborhood (Greenpoint, which is like Sesame Street, only with Polish people instead of Muppets). He still rocks a vintage rock T-shirt, usually Television or New York Dolls or something of that vintage, and despite his upbeat demeanor, he carries an air of melancholy. He seems like a man who's watched the world leave him behind as it forgot about all of the music and movies he loved when he was young and vital. But he's a fighter, so he shows up every weekend with a small assortment of lovingly hand-selected bootlegs to spread the word. I bought Chained Heat from him, as well as the cheapest copy of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in existence. He's one of those older guys who's just so psyched that a young dude is at all interested or knowledgeable in anything made before 1998. You should have seen his eyes light up when he realized that I knew who Henry Silva was. For just a moment, he believed that maybe the glories of his youth wouldn't be buried under the sands of time, that there are a few whippersnappers out there who can tell the difference between classic and old. And I looked at him and I wondered: Is this my future? Someday, when my roguish good looks have abandoned me, will I be out there in the park, preaching the gospel of Kickboxer and Luther the Geek to a crowd of skinny hipsters who can't even remember a time when movies weren't all 3-D choose-your-own-adventures that get beamed directly into your cerebral cortex? Maybe. If that's what it takes to keep the B-movie alive in the 21st century and beyond, then so be it. I will be a prophet of the absurd, unappreciated and malnourished, but crackling with wisdom for those brave enough to absorb it.

Anyway, this dude really recommended today's movie to me, and it's a great one. He called it "the best rock movie of all time," and I think he may be right. It's directed by Allan Arkush, a graduate of the Roger Corman Academy of the Drive-In Arts, and it's a pseudo-sequel of sorts to Arkush's earlier cult classic Rock & Roll High School, the movie that airlifted the Ramones from the dank cellars of Queens to the sun-kissed streets of California, where they looked like leather-clad bog monsters compared to all the tanned teenyboppers.

Get Crazy might be even better. It's a screwy madcap comedy set at a Filmore-esque theater on New Year's Eve, 1982. It begins, as every movie did back then, with a Star Wars parody. A model spaceship with a hair dryer hot-glued to its underbelly flies overhead with a tinfoil-wrapped astronaut astride it, Dr. Strangelove-style. It crashes into a giant blinking 1983 sign, and the lights come up, introducing us to the wacky crew of the Saturn Theater. Daniel Stern is the harried stage manager who has to wrangle the night's concert into shape, but he's kind of distracted because he just met the girl of his dreams and every time he looks at her he imagines that he's Tarzan and she's Jane, so they have these getting-to-know you conversations while he walks around with a live chimp in his arms. It's that kind of movie.

Meanwhile, the villain (Ed Begley, Jr.—remember him?) and his two sycophantic sidekicks Mark and Marv (former teen heartthrobs Bobby Sherman and Fabian) are trying to buy the theater so they can turn it into a soulless stadium where the kids can't afford tickets and no one can see the stage. "Fuck you and fuck rock & roll!" he declares, fucking fighting words if I've ever fucking heard them.

Luckily, the rockolytes of the Saturn have an ace in the hole in the form of their drug dealer, Electric Larry, a glowy-eyed cryptkeeper heavy metal high plains drifter from outer space who appears in a puff of smoke every time anybody needs any pharmaceutical enhancement, whether they know it or not. I don't want to lapse into hyperbole here, so I will merely say that Electric Larry is only the coolest goddamn thing I have ever seen in my entire fucking life and leave it at that.

So then the bands start arriving, and they rule, too. The opening act, a Muddy Waters parody called King Blues, is underwhelming, but he does provide a much-needed history lesson by singing a boogie-woogie song called "The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll." From that point on, every succeeding act does their own cover of "Hoochie Coochie Man," bringing it back to where it all began and proving that no matter what style you play, it's all American music, baby, straight from the gut.

The next band is called Nada, and they're a sort of New Wave Oingo Boingo-y chick band with a million members and a lead singer in a cheerleader/marching band uniform who likes to do cartwheels around the stage while the audience pogos up and down like lottery balls. Then they bring out punk icon Lee Ving on vocals. He's playing a dude named Piggy who's pretty much the Tazmanian Devil of rock who has to be chained up before the performance so he doesn't headbutt everybody to death. With him encouraging the people in the balcony to perform 20-foot triple-lindy stagedives, they blast through a supersonic punk version of "Hoochie Coochie Man" that flat-out rocks. "Who says a whiteboy can't sing the blues?" says King Blues.

The next act is the best. It's a Mick Jagger spoof called Reggie Wanker played by none other than Malcolm Mac-Fucking-Dowell, who is so awesome I can't even describe it. Most actors simply don't have the raw animal charisma to play a believable rock star, but he does. He doesn't have a great voice, but who gives fuck? This is rock and roll. You want perfect pitch, go listen to folk, hippie. He belts out a Kiss-like "God of Thunder"-y anthem called "Hot Shot" with lyrics along the lines of "I'm a mystical sage of a nuclear age in seduction / I can take any heart, I've mastered the art of corruption!" It's phenomenal, a truly transcendental rock saga. Then, while his Keith Moon-like drummer (played by Doors skinsman John Densmore) pounds out a 20-minute solo on a kit the size of a cargo van, Wanker goes backstage to have an orgy with a literal roomful of naked girls packed from floor to ceiling in a cube-shaped mass of sweaty limbs. Unfortunately, when he extricates himself, he discovers that his wife is banging the house nerd (Dan Frishman of Head of the Class fame), so he goes back onstage and turns "Hot Shot" into a heartbreaking lighters-in-the-air dirge. Then he sips some Electric Larry-spiked water and goes into the bathroom to get a pep talk from his penis, who becomes his new manager.

Fuck, this movie rules.

Anyway, there's all kinds of other shit going on backstage, like a glowing disco bomb and an uptight fire inspector, played by Robert Picardo, one of fellow Corman alumni Joe Dante's stock company. (He was the first werewolf in The Howling.) Other great cameos include Clint Howard in a one-line role, Eating Raul's Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel doing their usual thing, and, most interestingly, Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph, who played Mr. and Mrs. Futterman in Dante's Gremlins—which didn't come out until the following year. I have no idea how this strange cinematic intermingling came about, but it's probably my favorite dual cameo of all time. I doubt anyone else gives a shit, but seeing this early version of the Futtermans made my fucking day.

In the end, the theater is saved, a giant talking joint walks around, and Lou Reed (supposedly playing a Dylan parody, though I honestly couldn't tell the difference) shows up for a solo closing number that actually kind of breaks your heart. This movie is just pure joy from front to end, a big, stupid, sublime rock & roll blowjob. Movies just aren't this fun anymore. It's a shame I had to find this one on bootleg DVD on a racketball court in Brooklyn when it should be out there in every Best Buy in the land. I guess that's why we need people like the guy who sold me Get Crazy. He's the real Electric Larry. Shine on, you crazy diamond.