Get Crazy

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.

Bloodfist II

As you may recall, Bloodfist was a cookie-cutter tournament/revenge flick in the Bloodsport/Kickboxer mold. Bloodfist II: Blood Fistier is more of an Enter the Dragon thing. It mostly takes place on this island fortress in the South Pacific, run by a dude named Dr. Su who has his own army of goons in orange pajamas. Su's deal is he had this wussy scientist with a phony German accent (not quite as bad as the gay Nazi in 9 Deaths of the Ninja, but worse than the white slaver from Raw Force, if that helps) create an undetectable steroid that makes motherfuckers super strong and impervious to pain. To test out the formula, Su kidnaps all of these champion fighters in a variety of disciplines, from boxing to karate to Greco-Roman wrestling, and makes them fight his souped-up henchman.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Bloodfist II gets the Truth In Advertising Award for 1990 because the very first shot is a close-up of a boxing glove dripping with blood. Take that, The Squid and the Whale. Then the camera pulls back, showing a very sweaty Don "The Dragon" Wilson, looking more like a Eurasian Dean Cain than ever. He looks slightly more badass than he did in BF1 but still not all that impressive. He's not very big or muscular or anything. It's amazing that this regular-looking guy was light heavyweight kickboxing champion of the world for 12 straight years. His arms aren't even very well defined. Then again, I guess he's a kickboxer, not a punchboxer, so fuck arms. Arms are for gaylords.

This is a movie that gets right to the good stuff. The very first scene is a kickboxing match. Don (apparently playing the same character as the first one, although the events of that film are never mentioned) is fighting this mustached chump who won't go down, no matter how many times Don kicks him. I've been trying to figure out if he got dosed with Dr. Su's steroid, but I don't see how that's possible, since it won't be invented for another three years, according to the timeline I gleaned from the opening credits montage of newspaper clippings. Either way, this dickrag won't stay down, until Don jumpkicks him in the neck and kills him. Everybody else acts like this shit happens all the time, but Don feels so terrible about it that he vows never to fight again.

And so he devotes his life to non-violence, growing a long ponytail and teaching at-risk kids to deal with their anger issues through positive activities like gardening and basket-weaving. After winning the love of a blind kindergarten teacher, he is eventually rewarded for his charity work and pacifist agenda by Readers Digest, who publish a cover story about him entitled "A Warrior's Peace: How A Champion Fighter Kicked The Kicking Habit." The final scene shows him quietly nursing an injured fawn back to health and releasing it into the wild, where it is reunited with its mother.

Nah, I'm just fucking with you. He doesn't do any of that shit. He just starts whoring and doesn't stop for three years until his old cornerman calls him up from Manila and says he's gotten himself into debt with Dr. Su, so he needs Don to come help him out. So Don hops on the next plane to the Philippines. He isn't in town for five minutes before badly dressed henchmen are coming out of the woodwork. Wherever he goes, there's another dude in a flannel shirt and jeans, just dying to let Don kick him in the head. The movie's about 15 minutes long at this point, and only three or four of them didn't have fighting in them. And of those three or four, one of them had tits. So already you gotta appreciate where this movie's head is at.
Then one of the bad guys gets the bright idea to not engage the world-champion kickboxer in foot-to-face combat, so he pulls a gun instead. Don gets captured and thrown on a boat with a bunch of other badasses, most of whom are played by real-life fighting experts, except for this one dude who looks like Freddy Mercury who's played by the original Deathstalker. Real all-star cast on this one.
Most of these dudes aren't actors, and that's why I like them. Their line readings are pretty flat, but they seem like real people, because they are. It makes you kind of give a shit when they start getting killed off.

So they go out to Dr. Su's island, and Don escapes and runs around for a while, kicking every henchman he meets. Then he finds out that his old cornerman has betrayed him and set him up, and he gets recaptured. Then the movie does this amazing thing where it skips the dreaded Part Where It Drags In The Middle. I don't know why more movies don't do this. There's almost always that section around the 45, 50 minute mark where the characters are sitting around, talking about what just happened and trying to predict what's gonna happen. Maybe one of them tells a story from their childhood that elucidates their motivation in the third act. Maybe the male and female leads finally get over their initial antagonism and share some smoochies in a storage closet. Or maybe, if you're really lucky, there'll be a montage in which the hero's long, dark night of the soul is illustrated through shots of him walking down the street with his hands in his pockets or standing on a small bridge, watching the ripples in the water below, thus mentally preparing himself for the battle ahead. Mostly, though, the Part Where It Drags In The Middle is just the movie trying to stretch itself out to 90 minutes by any means necessary.

That's why Bloodfist II is such a model of narrative economy. It just cuts that part out completely, then fills in the missing time with more fights. It goes from the fight where Don gets captured straight to the big showdown, which means that the concluding 35 minutes of the movie (approximately 40% of the total running time) is all fighting. Thank you, Roger Corman's Concorde Pictures, for respecting my intelligence.

The fights are pretty damned good, too, because of all the different styles involved. The first one has a heavyweight boxer hammering the ribcage of a beefy goon in red pants, but come on, dude, boxing is for pussies. Kicking is where it's at. He gets his ass handed to him, then Dr. Su gives him the thumbs-down and has him speared to death in front of the others.

Next up is Deathstalker, who's playing an Army hand-to-hand combat instructor. I like this character. I'm not sure he actually talks at all, but he says all there is to say with his cocky body language and well-timed Skoal spitting. His moves are precise and elegant, which pleases the crowd, so Dr. Su lets him off with just a broken arm. The great part about that is, after he escapes at the end of the movie (Spoiler), he takes on all these goons literally one-handed.

Then the next guy is a balding Greco-Roman wrestler who just sits in the middle of the ring and blocks every move his opponent tries. I've never seen this style of fighting on film before, and it reminded me of the fact that the dudes who always win in the Ultimate Fighting and whatnot are the grapplers. You can have fists of steel, but they're not gonna help you if somebody puts his knee on your neck and doesn't let up until you pass out. This guy actually wins his fight with a devastating series of nut punches, but Dr. Su is a jerk and has him speared anyway. Sore fuckin' loser, you ask me.

Then some karate dude gets easily dispatched, and then this lanky, saggy-faced white tae kwon do master wins his fight. I love seeing tall white guys do kung fu, because their feet are so huge. It looks like they could take somebody's head off with their big, bony ankles.

This displeases Dr. Su, so he sends in Don's old friend, who's all hopped up on go-juice. Then Don himself jumps in, and the remaining good guys escape and run around knocking over furniture and kicking ass. Don himself takes out Dr. Su by kicking him off of a balcony right in front of his daughter. Boy, I'll tell you, life ain't easy for a dude named Su.

Then all the surviving good guys cluster around Dr. Su's corpse. They look down at it pensively for a moment, like it's a shoe somebody left on the sidewalk and they're trying to figure out how the fuck somebody leaves behind a shoe, I mean, wouldn't you notice you only had one shoe on? The fuck? Then they just walk away. And that's end of the movie. Thanks for coming everybody, you've been a great crowd, we're Bloodfist II, check out the merch table, goodnight!

And that's how you make a shitty low-budget action movie: You get the fuck in and you get the fuck out. That's the Tao of Roger Corman.