Long before PUNISHER: WAR ZONE there was THE STORY OF RICKY, another hilariously violent, ridiculous movie based on a comic book. This is a lower budget Hong Kong movie, though. Raw and scrappy, not stylized. So it’s even more ambiguous how serious or goofy it’s actually supposed to be. I like that.
The movie starts with John Carpenter-ish keyboards and a bus pulling up to a prison. Ricky is a new fish who sets off the metal detectors, not with a random titanium knee like Seagal in HALF PAST DEAD, but with 5 slugs he keeps in his chest as a souvenir. (What’s wrong with one of those smashed pennies?) You know the rule: 5 bullets in the chest = tough. Hell, 50 cent only had 3 and I think one of those was in the ass.
So the screws already hate Ricky. The villain in most of the movie is the assistant warden, in charge because the boss is on vacation in Hawaii. The assistant’s a fat slob with a fake eye that he keeps mints in. Or maybe they’re pills and he just calls them “mints” to be cute, but I prefer to think they are actual mints. That would be weirder. Also, they never say anything about this but I couldn’t help but notice the guy’s got a shelf full of VHS porn on the wall beside his desk. That shows you the kind of office they’re running here, because most places you’d have to stash that shit. Just ask Clarence Thomas. This guy keeps the collection proudly on display like it’s his Assistant Warden of the Year trophies. (more…)
Two years after ENTER THE DRAGON, Brian Trenchard-Smith brought Australia their own Hong Kong co-production of a martial arts extravaganza. Jimmy Wang Yu (the One-Armed Swordsman himself) plays Inspector Fang, the man of the title, and he is a hell of a man. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him actually, he looks like kind of a dweeb, but throughout the course of the movie he will prove it. He is The Man from Hong Kong.
As you all know, I’ve been on Geocities since 1999. Over those almost ten years I’ve been ridiculed, interventioned and etc. by people who didn’t understand why I didn’t move to a grownup type websight with my own domain, like they would have in the 21st century. I always resisted because it made me laugh to see how shocked people were that Geocities still existed and that somebody would purposely still use it, and not be ashamed to put that URL in their highly acclaimed film book. It became kind of a test to see if people could see the substance of what I was writing about or if they would just ignore it because of the unprofessional surface. You all passed the test, good job everybody.
You take the “the”s out, the title becomes more aerodynamic. This unlikely THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS part 4 combines elements of the previous 3: the characters and tone of part 1, the video game plotting and drug kingpin bad guys of part 2, the director and improved visual style of part 3. Combining all the technologies they’ve developed into a new model.
Some terrible, fucked up news. Lou Perryman, who played Stretch’s faithful hick sidekick L.G. in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 died Thursday, murdered by some random scumbag. I feel a little weird because he died under such horrible circumstances and I only know who he is because of the spectacular way he was killed in the movie. But he wasn’t a horror guy – he just ended up in that one and POLTERGEIST because he worked with Tobe Hooper (he was assistant cameraman on the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE).
Most Americans, when they think of Australia they think of kangaroos and koalas and shit. Me, I think of high speed car chases and vicious (but wise) giant crocodiles. And I guess maybe occasionally I think of 6′5″ Seattle Storm center Lauren Jackson. But usually it’s the cars and crocodiles, because as you maybe noticed I’ve been watching the Australian films this last year or so – ROGUE, DARK AGE, ROAD GAMES, RAZORBACK, etc. I’ve never been there, but something about that place really appeals to me, and so do their movies, I’m not sure why. They seem to have an untapped (by me) reservoir of really good filmatists there who work in a style that appeals to me. Energetic but not frantic, stylish but still raw, serious but not pretentious, lots of car flips.
