Frankenstein Conquers The World

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.

White Fire

You can tell you're in for a treat right from the first frame of White Fire, a 1984 Robert Ginty vehicle made a few years after the surprise success of the blowtorchsploitation classic The Exterminator made the hangdog William Sanderson lookalike an unlikely action hero. White Fire opens in media res, with some blue-tinted footage of a family running in slow-mo from some Nazi cocksuckers. Dad grabs a gun and blasts one of them, but then another one hoses him down with a flamethrower, the orange fire blooming bold against the cyan cinematography. Mom goes down in a hail of gunfire on a beach. It seems like the kids, an 11-year-old boy and his little sister, are about to join their parents in death, when out of nowhere a burly lumberjack-looking dude comes up, snaps a Nazi neck, and takes them with him. This intro's mix of artiness and crappiness made me assume White Fire was Italian, as did the presence of Fred Williamson's name in the opening credits. (The Hammer, as I'm sure you know, made more movies in Italy than John Saxon, who made more movies in Italy than anyone else has ever made movies anywhere.) But no, actually it's a Franco-Turkish co-production. The Turkish part becomes clear in the next scene, which arrives with a smash cut to an establishing shot of a bunch of minarets and some onscreen words reading "ISTAMBUL [sic] - 15 YEARS LATER." The French part makes sense later, when all the incest starts happening.

To the accompaniment of the movie's theme song (a moderately awesome cock rock ballad that comes complete with lines like "White Fire! Like a thunderball! Crashing through the wall!"), we're reintroduced to the brother and sister from the first scene, now played by Robert Ginty and some little blond chick. They appear to be diamond thieves, which must be a hard life because it seems to have aged them at least 25 years in the 15 that have passed since we last saw them on that beach. Ginty looks about 40, 45, thanks to a semi-sleazy mustache that makes him look like a theatrical booking agent, the kind who mostly handles puppeteers and exotic dancers who specialize in bursting out of cakes. There is no explanation for why these two presumably European children grew up to become Americans, but I suppose that's movie magic for you.

 Soon, Ginty and Sis get captured by some assholes with unconvincing Italian accents. They escape using the ancient Turkish method of punching everyone a lot. But then Ginty gets cornered, so he picks up a chainsaw, which is what everyone should always do in every situation. "When in doubt, chainsaw that shit," that's my motto. Ginty agrees with me, proceeding to swing the saw around willy nilly and cut open some insert shots of sheep guts and denim. This is when you know it's okay to relax. It's not even 20 minutes into the thing and we already have multiple chainsaw disembowelings. This is the movie letting you know that you're in good hands. White Fire knows you've been hurt before by all those other shitty B-movies that promised the world and then delivered a bunch of scenes of dickheads in brown suits sitting on patio furniture. White Fire apologizes for moving so fast, but when something feels so right, you just have to go for it. Aw fuck it, White Fire's just gonna go ahead and say it: White Fire loves you, girl. White Fire loves you with chainsaws.

Anyway, Ginty and Sis head home, where the burly dude from the intro and his wife are waiting. Ginty and Sis don't bring up the chainsawing. That's just a little private memory between the two of them.

Next we cut to the only guy who possibly made more movies in Italy than Fred Williamson: Gordon Mitchell, a silver-haired character actor who looks like a mildly constipated Skeletor. He's some kind of supervillain/diamond miner or something. Apparently, Sis works for him, though in what capacity I do not know. I'm not 100% sure if she legitimately works for the guy and the whole diamond-stealing thing is just a sideline or if she's going undercover to rip him off. White Fire doesn't waste a lot of time explaining shit. White Fire has a lot on its mind right now. White Fire just needs you to trust it. Can you do that? Can you do that for White Fire? White Fire appreciates you being so understanding. White Fire doesn't deserve a girl like you.

Deep in Gordon Mitchell's mine, an ambiguous ethnic finds the title character: a radioactive diamond the size of a dehumidifier. When touched, it emits a sizzling sound and makes your skin look like the white part on the inside of an orange. So Gordo burns the guy’s face off on the diamond so no one else will know about it. Then he goes and tells some people about it. Unfortunately, these are the same badly accented assholes Ginty had to chainsaw earlier. I don’t understand this dude’s decision-making process.

We're showing signs of some plot here, but don't worry, things are about to get weird. Back at the Ginty household, Sis is swimming around naked for like 20 minutes. Ginty comes to tell her dinner is ready. It gets really uncomfortable when he steals her towel, telling her that if she wasn't his sister dot dot dot. The camera lingers on his face as he gawks at his nude baby sis like this is a normal thing that people do.

Then, even though she just got out of the pool and showered and dried herself off, Sis goes skinny dipping again. This double-dip proves to be her undoing, because the assholes from the Chainsaw Gang show up and shoot a blow dart at her head for some reason, and she dies. Ginty is all broken up about this. He's not only lost his sister, the only family he had left in the world, but he never got to find out if she would let him nail her or not. He's inconsolable. Unlike the Burly Guy, whose wife also died in the raid but you don't see him whining about it, or even mentioning it ever again. Sometimes assholes show up and stab your wife to death. It happens.

So Ginty goes out and gets drunk. A random blond chick helps him home, and that's when a light bulb goes off over Burly Guy 's head: They could get the blonde some plastic surgery so she looks like Sis and then steal the White Fire diamond! It's such an obvious plan that I'm surprised no one thought of it sooner.

For some reason, the blond goes along with this, so then we find ourselves in the unique position of watching a movie that features both plot elements stolen from Vertigo and chainsaw fights. There's a montage of Ginty and the blonde frolicking on the beach as he teaches her how to be his sister. She can't seem to get it right, though. She can't look at him like a sister because every time she looks at his sagging face, she doesn't see a brother, she sees the love of her life. Understandable. After all, what woman wouldn’t fall for a guy who wants to cut her face off and glue his sister’s on there instead? That and riding a unicorn, that’s what every little girl grows up fantasizing about.

Things are getting pretty kinky here, but they get even more so after the blonde goes to some kind of Amazonian New Age plastic surgery cult to get her face fixed. When she returns, she's magically transformed into the same actress who played the sister. Luckily, both characters’ voices seemed to be dubbed by the same person, so the transformation is uncanny.

Sis 2 promptly tries to seduce Ginty with the same boobs he so enjoyed ogling earlier (the Amazons must have copied those, too) but he manages to resist. They just make out a little, which the movie seems to think isn’t creepy beyond belief. I’m betting the screenwriter’s next family gathering was a little awkward.

While all this is going on, our man Fred Williamson enters the picture. He's Sis 2's former pimp and he's looking for his lost merchandise. Every now and then, there's a scene of him torturing somebody for information by pressing their face into a grill or shoving their crotch into a bandsaw. He's a real amiable guy, though. When he plays Russian Roulette with a dude, he applauds the man's bravery for making it through two rounds without cracking. If you absolutely had to get your nutsac sawed in half by a murderous pimp, this is the one you'd want to do it.

So eventually Ginty and Sis 2 recruit a bunch of dudes to rob the mine and steal the White Fire. The funny thing is, the fact that Sis 2 looks exactly like Sis 1 is never a factor in their plan. All they do is show up with some guns and start shooting everyone. It's actually pretty easy, since all the henchmen are helpfully dressed for maximum visibility in bright red jumpsuits borrowed from the wardrobe trailer of V.

Anyway, for some reason Ginty and Co. can't steal the diamond, so they blow it up instead. They give Fred Williamson a handful of smaller diamonds so he'll leave Sis 2 alone, and then our heroes ride off into the sunset. Ginty may not have the White Fire, but he's got his sister back, and this time it's not a crime against nature if he puts his wiener in her. It's like a fairy tale!

Tuff Turf

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

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

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

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

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