I’m very confused by this movie. I thought it was directed by Umberto Lenzi (CANNIBAL FEROX), but IMDB says some guy named Doo-yong Lee. I don’t know what the deal with that is, and the movie itself is even more confusing.
I gotta admit though it was worth it for the opening 15-20 seconds. The picture starts out one day at the grave of Bruce Lee. (Actually it is clearly not the real grave of Bruce Lee here in Seattle, but hey man, movie magic.) Anyway all the sudden there is stock footage of lightning in the night sky. Then some guy who you gotta assume is Bruce Lee hops out of the dirt, and the title goes on the screen and the badass ’70s music starts playing. Then they even show the ridiculous painted cover to the video, which shows Bruce Lee coming out of his grave and a weird demon flying above him.
Next we see our man, who only looks slightly more like Bruce Lee than Jason Scott Lee did, on a plane. It freezes on him taking off his sunglasses as it says BRUCE K.L. LEA on the screen.
At this point I was ready to love this movie. I figured Bruce came out of his grave in Seattle, now he’s flying to LA or Hong Kong or somewhere and we’re gonna find out that some foolish motherfucker was responsible for Bruce’s death by misadventure and that motherfucker is gonna get entered by the dragon. Or whatever.
But no. Not this movie. Instead, the guy goes to a combination of LA and Hong Kong which is LA but inhabited by Asians. There he looks up an old friend that he trained with. Then he finds out some guy died and he tries to get to the bottom of it. And he meets a gal. And there are a couple fights. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | No Comments »
I’m really gonna get it for this one. I know the ladies and gentlemen of the internet fucking LOVE this movie. It’s one of those few things, like Chow Yun Fat or Bruce Campbell, that NOBODY says a negative word about on the internet. And that’s unusual because there is a LOT of Negativity on the internet in my opinion, I mean I bet Ghandi or Martin Luther King or somebody could have gone on there and get flamed to tears. But anyway…
When I reviewed the Evil Dead pictures, alot of individuals suggested that I would also like Dead Alive. And I guess I can see the connection, but excuse me while I kiss the sky – I’m afraid Dead Alive is no Evil Dead 2 in my opinion. This is a comedy about a guy in New Zealand whose mom gets bit by a half rat half monkey and turns into a zombie. And then the zombie disease starts to spread and what not and I think you can see where this is going, before you know it there is blood spraying everywhere.
What Evil Dead has that Dead Alive doesn’t is a delicate control of atmosphere and tone and a strong central character to hold it together. Ash is an unforgettable character, he is hilarious and he is an idiot and we love to see him in agony. Dead Alive doesn’t have that appeal. In fact I don’t even remember the dude’s name, sorry bud but it’s the truth. I believe he had glasses, average height, possibly light colored hair. That’s about all I remember.
Evil Dead also has such a strong atmosphere that it is creepy even when it is funny. Sam Raimi really means it with his horror, he doesn’t pull punches, so even when he’s making us laugh at flying eyeballs and what not we don’t forget the threat of those cackling demons and flying cameras and rapist trees in the woods. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | 9 Comments »
The box’ll get you expecting some weird french version of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, but I say it’s a 2000s Hammer movie. So you got a period piece with a mysterious beast eating people in a village, and the townspeople are trying to hunt it but they’re on the wrong track, and some colorful experts come to town to get the job done FOR REAL.
All that, but it’s the 2000s so they all do karate. Just like Charlie’s Angels, Mission: Impossible, X-Men, Superman, Charles In Charge, anybody that’s resurrected in the 2000s, they’re gonna do karate. Why? The Matrix. When? The 2000s. Where? A big screen near you. This includes not just americans, but also the French. The Musketeer did karate and Vidocq did detective style kung fu, and this movie introduces until-now-unknown traditions of French and Native American martial arts. Those scenes are kind of tossed in there, but it’s not quite as crazy as it sounds. If you like the movie like I did, it will probaly be due to the classic story of the monster eating the villagers, and the dudes trying to track the monster. Not the karate.
Because it’s not all about punching and kicking. There’s a whole shitpile of mystery in there. Because nobody knows what the monster is, how it got there, how it chooses its victims. Most of the town thinks it’s just a big wolf. But the protagonists think it’s something else. And I mean obviously they’re right. Because why would the movie be following the one guy that’s totally wrong? Although that would actually be a pretty fuckin good idea for a movie. Get to work boys.
Apparently the story is inspired by actual events in french history. They shoulda said “BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS!” to promote it, like on that Richard Gere movie, THE MOTHMAN DIARIES. Or like that one killer bee movie on tv where they go, “This will BEE a true story.” (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | No Comments »
As I have mentioned before I live in Seattle. We are famous for a couple of different people. First of all we got Bruce Lee. When he left China he came here, he went to the University of Washington, he opened up a Jeet Kune Do school. The movie about his life, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, largely took place here although they didn’t film here because the University of Washington wouldn’t give them permission because they wouldn’t remove the part about the football team calling him a gook. He and his son Brandon, star of Laserblast, are both buried here.
Then we got Jimi. Jimi grew up here and he’s buried here too, although he hated it here and probaly woulda wanted to be buried in London if he had lived long enough to think about that kind of shit.
Then we got Elvis. He didn’t live here or anything but he filmed It Happened At the World’s Fair here. I never seen it but I think he dances with Ann Margaret on the Space Needle.
Finally, there’s Kurt Cobain. He wrote some nice songs and then killed himself in 1994. He’s not buried here, because he was cremated. But after his suicide there was a public memorial service at the fountain in Seattle Center, the same grounds where Elvis walked and, if I’m right, danced with Ann Margaret. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | 1 Comment »
One of Richard Stark’s most ambitious Parker novels is The Score (aka Killtown) where Parker, Grofield and a bunch of other thieves team up to knock over an entire mining town. It would make a great movie, and it already made some french movie called Mise à sac that is not available to mere americans. Day of the Wolves isn’t based on The Score but it sounded similar enough that I thought I should check and be sure. Anything to help out my man Richard Stark.
I gotta warn you, unless somebody decides to put this one out on dvd, I don’t know if anybody else is gonna find it. It’s one of those mysterious dust-covered tapes you find, recorded in EP mode, real bad full frame transfer. Movie you never heard of, director you never heard of, big cast of actors you never seen before, real low production values. The only major connection between this movie and my world is that the cinematographer, when I looked him up, turned out he did three of my favorite Steven Seagal pictures (MARKED FOR DEATH, OUT FOR JUSTICE and ON DEADLY GROUND). But let’s face it, you don’t watch Steven Seagal movies for the cinematography, or at least I don’t. So this movie is a mystery find. And usually those finds don’t amount to much. But this is one of the better ones.
A mysterious criminal mastermind brings together a team of thieves that never met before and gives them numbers from 1-7 as their names. They don’t know what the job is, just the amount they’re gonna get, and that they gotta have a beard. He flies them on a private jet (because a helicopter is hard to steal) to an isolated farm, where they practice and prepare for the big day, but without really knowing the whole plan.
So far the plot is pretty similar to The Score, except the leader is alot more James Bond. The guy in the book is obviously an amateur (it turns out he has a grudge against the town – very unprofessional) and he doesn’t have access to these private jets and shit. Also, the beards is a new touch. The idea is that facial hair will help disguise them, but the reason it’s cool in the movie is because you got this gang of 7 dudes who all have suits, ties, shades, and big, bad ’70s beards. Even if they weren’t holding guns, you’d know the second they get out of that plane that something’s wrong here. Plus, alot of the beards are obviously fake, but they’re supposed to be real in the movie. Those are not good beards. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | No Comments »
Well here we are with another slightly above average horror picture from Stuart Gordon, the guy who did REANIMATOR and a couple other halfway decent movies, but who seems to live next door to Full Moon Video or something. By this I do not mean that he only makes movies about little bastards like ghoulies, demonic toys, subspecieses, dollmen, shrunken heads, puppet masters, and etceteras. All I mean is that he seems to share alot of stylistic choices, collaborators and straight to video horror blood with those guys. But this is one of his movies that seems a little better. A little.
I know this one got a small amount of theatrical play here in seattle and that alone is an amazing accomplishment for Stuart these days. In case you are wondering it is not about dragons. If you look closely there is no R. In fact it is about a village of fish people, which could only mean that it is based on stories by Howard P. Lovecraft.
Now don’t ask me why, but Howard P. Lovecraft was afraid of fish. I know it seems like a pretty wacko thing for some fruit to be scared of but at least the guy made something productive out of his whole problem. He was horrified and disgusted by this idea of people who worship a fish god and slowly turn into fish and squid and screw people and make fishpeople babies. And the filmatists here do a good job of making that idea seem like a resonable premise for a horror movie.
The best thing about the movie is the creatures. You don’t see them too many times but when you do they have some nice designs, creepy in a phoney cgi kind of way. Most of the time there are no effects though, just menacing villagers who act strange enough that you know hey, these are fishpeople man. The movie was shot in spain with a mostly spanish cast and crew. The leads are american though so it’s got this whole touristy, dare I say fish out of water kind of deal going on where the stupid american web-yuppies crash their yacht and end up poking their noses where they don’t belong. In fishland. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | 1 Comment »
HERO is no surprise. I knew I was gonna like this movie. I heard enough to know this was gonna be a good one. I mean it’s got that acclaimed director who did all those movies I haven’t seen like THE ROAD HOME. But then instead of doing another movie like that, what he does, he gets Jet Li and Maggie Cheung and Donnie Yen and Zhang Yiyi and he says, let’s do an awesome fucking epic with kung fu and swords and about ten million arrows.
This movie has been making the rounds for years. It got nominated for the foreign film oscar, and it played the seattle international film festival, and it’s been on DVD in Asia forever which is no problem for a worldly dude like me, I’ve been free of the region code shackles for years. Region 2, region 3, bring it on motherfuckers, I go all the way up to region 4, region 5 on a good day. I could do region 10 if they threw it at me, region 11, I don’t give a fuck. Anything. But here in region 1 Miramax was supposed to release HERO in theaters. What they wanted to do was leave it on the shelf for years and finally put it out when there’s less interest. That worked so well with SHAOLIN SOCCER. Unfortunately HERO was sitting on the shelf but then it fell off the shelf and got stuck behind the desk and nobody knew it was there. Then I think Tarantino dropped a pencil back there or something, so he reached back there and he felt HERO. So he pulled it out and dusted it off and he was like, “You guys still have this? You should, like, release it in theaters, where people go to watch movies projected on a screen.”
That was a few weeks ago and it turned out Tarantino was right, people wanted to see this movie and it’s been doing very well. No thanks to me. I kept not seeing it and not seeing it.
In a way it kind of shows how cool I am, here is this great movie that everybody loves and I’m like, yeah, I know, masterpiece. I’ll see it later. I gotta watch FRANKENFISH. I knew it was there but I left it unseen, I wanted to save it for later. Who knows when you’re gonna need to see HERO for the first time. Well yesterday I finally figured the time was right, we had come to the point in our relationship where we should take it to that next level, sit down together in a theater and make visual contact. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | No Comments »
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Can you believe that? Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Has there ever been a better title for a film of Badass Cinema, because I don’t think there has. Leave it to Sam Peckinpah, that lovable old drunk who spent his whole career fighting with studios and filming innocent kids standing by the side of the road watching as horrible atrocities took place in slow motion to come up with a title like that. I don’t think that one will ever be topped.
I really like Peckinpah, especially one that I guess is not generally considered one of his best, The Getaway. I like that this is a guy who makes violent westerns and crime movies but instead of trying to dazzle the audience with explosions and car chases, he seems to pour his filthy old grizzled alcoholic soul into it. All of his frustrations, problems and paranoid delusions seem to end up in there somewhere. He knows that a good personal film is not necessarily about some dude reading poetry and being misunderstood by the ladies.
I never knew what this one was about, but I always wanted to see it because of that title. And people recommend it to me all the time as one of the greats of Badass Cinema. It placed #77 on the original Badass 100, but with its reputation and inevitable some day release on American DVD, I bet it will slip up a little higher if we ever revise that list.
But I gotta be honest, just to help out anybody that might be in that same situation. As great as this movie is, it is not as COMPLETELY FUCKING BAD as the title may imply. And I’ll explain why but let me tell you what it’s about first.
The movie starts out like a beautiful postcard in some Mexican villa somewhere. Ducks swim in a little lake while a young girl, obviously pregnant, sits at the shore. The girl gets brought inside to face her rich and powerful dad, who has his men rough her up until she will say who the father is: Alfredo Garcia. The old man is sad. “He was like a son to me.” And then of course he tells his men there will be a million dollars for whoever brings in this Alfredo’s head. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | 1 Comment »
(Written for The Ain’t It Cool News, but they never put it up.)
Dear Harry and Moriarty,
I saw a new movie you guys might be interested in, called HELLBOY. It’s about this guy with a giant hand. He is red but he works for the government. Then he fights monsters because he’s in love with the girl from STORYTELLING, but she catches on fire. etc.
Actually come to think of it it’s based on a comic strip so I would not be surprised at all if you boys heard of it already. This is NOT the Punishing guy, this is a different guy, named Hellboy.
What I liked about this movie was the character of Hellboy, who is played by Ron Perlman (BLADE II). He is a guy from Hell who decides he’s not into being evil. So he does other stuff. I always thought Perlman was funny when he was on that Beauty and the Beast show with the gal from TERMINATOR. Because he is this scary lion man and the women loved him because he was sensitive and wore a blouse and because it was only a TV show so they didn’t have to face the reality of what a guy smells like if he lives in the sewer. Believe me man, you ever spend more than two days in a sewer, hiding out or whatever, it’s curtains for your love life for at least a year. Not to brag or nothin. I guess that is not a brag though. Just my 2 cents.
Anyway the point I was getting at was that when he took the makeup off, he still looked like a fuckin beast. This is a grizzled looking dude. He plays in makeup all the time so I guess it’s no big deal for him to be painted red and have a tail and horns and a giant hand and whatever other shit they pasted onto the dude. He doesn’t even notice, to him it’s just like wearing pants. So he is able to give a real acting performance and make this a great character. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | 3 Comments »
I don’t know why it took me this long, but I’ve finally seen the most recent Chucky picture. This one came out on the tenth anniversary of Die Hard as well as the original Chucky picture so it is very special to me.
As some of you know, over there in Japan they are making cartoons for adults, and what they’re doing with Bride of Chucky is doing the same thing for puppets. I think many adults have always wanted to watch a puppet movie but they were too embarrassed unless it had alot of blood and a respectable brand name like Bride of Chucky.
This is actually not as much a horror movie though as it is a campy comedy with occasional sadistic murder scenes. It is all very tongue in cheek. I don’t know if the filmatists here realize that Chucky isn’t scary anymore, but they definitely do know that there are some things that are just funny to see puppets do. Like shooting two guns at a time, or getting in a shovel fight, or making out in front of a fireplace. The best scene of the movie is when the girl doll Tiffany spectacularly mutilates and electrocutes a newlywed couple with the simple toss of a champagne bottle, and it impresses Chucky so much that he marries her and then there is a romantic love scene in silhouette. That is why the trailer (which is on the DVD) says “This October, Chucky gets lucky.” I guess it came out in October. (read the rest of this shit…)
January 1st, 2005 | 2 Comments »
