SIX-STRING SAMURAI is an artifact from another time – the early internet days, when movie nerds like us were a fringe group beginning to ascend to power, and before people would make fake trailers and put them on Youtube. Specifically it was the fall of 1998, after a strange summer of blockbusters everybody hated (GODZILLA, LOST IN SPACE, THE AVENGERS) but also some classics (BLADE, THE MASK OF ZORRO, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, WILD THINGS, OUT OF SIGHT) — see my overview of the season here. In the middle of all that Palm Pictures released this low budget post-apocalyptic movie about a Buddy Holly lookalike battling his way through the desert to get to “Lost Vegas.” It only played 16 screens, but it lasted 15 weeks. People must’ve been watching it.
I didn’t get a chance until it came to DVD, but I’d been hearing about it for months on The Ain’t It Cool News. In researching it I found an interview with director Lance Mungia where Harry Knowles acknowledged that his “over-the-top” review had raised expectations too high and led many people to be disappointed. And that’s my memory of what the reaction was at the time. I think I liked it more than some, I thought it was pretty cool, but it didn’t change the world.
Then over time the world changed for other reasons, and now I’ve come back to SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Viewing it a quarter century later it feels much more special – a last gasp of the pre-digital video era, when you couldn’t make a weird genre mashup unless you really meant it. The movie itself is not so serious, but the filmmakers had to have been in order to obtain and properly use film and cameras, drag them out into the scorching heat of Death Valley and create an alternate reality in the sand dunes, abandoned houses and gas stations.
On the blu-ray Vinegar Syndrome released a couple years ago (they also did a 4K) it looks great. Like a real movie. Not only does it have beautiful, natural film grain – it has crane shots! It has a fire stunt and an explosion! And only a couple of visual effects. These days a student at Loyala Marymount could still make a MAD MAX meets LONE WOLF AND CUB but they’d be shooting it half-assed and digitally, adding some kind of “grindhouse” filter in post, it would likely feel like a joke made by someone who’d never seen the movies they were parodying. Mungia’s only retro affectation is shooting the opening with a non-anamorphic lens because he liked how the old kung fu movies looked when their credits were squeezed for TV.
The other rare ingredient is the star, Jeffrey Falcon, a part of that unique tradition of white martial artists who moved to Hong Kong in the ‘80s and ‘90s to play the gweilo bad guys in action movies. His first role was as “Leader of the Robbers” in TOP SQUAD, and he seemed to mostly get into the female-oriented movies: OPERATION PINK SQUAD I and II, THE INSPECTOR WEARS SKIRTS II, the Cynthia Rothrock movies LADY REPORTER and PRINCE OF THE SUN. He played “Kidnapper” in SHE SHOOTS STRAIGHT, and he’s credited as assistant choreographer on another Joyce Godenzi movie called LICENCE TO STEAL.
In the world of Hong Kong action he was a minor player, but I’m sure when Mungia met him at the American Film Market it must’ve been holy shit this guy’s from the world of Hong Kong action! They hit it off, and talked about making a movie together, and later had a eureka moment when Falcon put on Mungia’s scratched up, taped together glasses to find out how he could see through them, and Mungia thought he looked like a post-apocalyptic Buddy Holly. The rest of it apparently came to them pretty quick.
So we’ve got this absurd premise that Russia dropped the bomb in 1957 and took over America, but Elvis was crowned king of Lost Vegas, “the last bastion of freedom.” And now that it’s 40 years later and Elvis has died, a new king is needed, so here’s this guy who looks like Buddy Holly, trekking through the desert doing flying kicks, fighting off a bowling-themed team of bounty hunters (they carry chain maces in their bags and knives in their bowling pins) being stalked by Death and his faceless heavy metal Horsemen. He carries a rickety umbrella and a guitar with a sword sheath taped to the back.
In the opening he rescues a little kid in a coonskin cap (Justin McGuire) who starts following him around. He’s a surprisingly non-cloying kid – it helps that he speaks so little I assumed he was mute for a while. Buddy tries to get rid of him by drawing a line in the ground with his sword and saying, “Cross that line, kid, I’ll cut your little teddy bear in half.” The kid uses the bear to wipe away the line, as if he’s figured out a loophole, but then he thinks about it and decides to leave the bear behind. I don’t think it’s an intentional reference, but it reminds me of EL TOPO when he has his kid bury his teddy bear and photo of his mother in the desert to become a man.
The kid knows how to drive (using the Short Round method). All the vehicles are beatifully rusted, and theirs doesn’t make it far before breaking down. In a gorgeous, surreal touch, Buddy opens the door and a bunch of gumballs pour out in slow motion. To quote what one of Ricky Bobby’s sons said about anarchy, “I don’t know what it means, but I love it!”
Buddy still wants to ditch the kid, and in a touch that feels very ‘80s, drops him off with a parody of a middle class suburban family. They live in a wrecked house and wear torn up clothes. I don’t think you can trust anyone who wears a tie in a post-apocalyptic scenario, and that’s exactly what this dad does. He also plays golf. The mom wears pearls, the son dresses as a cowboy. “Strange, but it’s better than what’s outside,” Buddy reasons. He relents and takes the kid with him when they turn out to be cannibals planning to eat him.
It’s an episodic movie, but the kind of episodes I Iike: a bar fight, a motorcycle ride (and crash), a tai chi montage (with a little added rock ‘n roll swagger) in front of a perfect sunset… how can I not at least kind of love a movie that has that? Look at the guitar and the sword in the corner! That’s a movie!
And there’s a sword fight against an entire platoon of Russian soldiers. Death finds the bodies and says, like some Saturday morning cartoon villain, “Only one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me.” When Death and Buddy come face to face they first duel with guitar riffs, then swords. (Falcon brought in a wushu swordsman friend, Liu Boa, just for the latter.)
There’s a lively soundtrack worthy of the subject matter, with songs by the Red Elvises, a surf and rockabilly band made up of Americans who emigrated from Russia, and use that as a gimmick. Like Yakov Smirnov, except cool. They’re also seen in the movie, and their songs mesh well with the score by Brian Tyler. It’s only the composer’s third feature, after one indie and one TV movie. A few of his credits since then include SIMON SEZ, BUBBA HO-TEP, VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS, PAPARAZZI, and BANGKOK DANGEROUS.
Oh, and William Friedkin was impressed by his work on FRAILTY so he recruited him for THE HUNTED and BUG and also Justin Lin brought him onto TOKYO DRIFT so he’s done almost all of the FAST & FURIOUSes since then, as well as RAMBO and RAMBO: LAST BLOOD and THE EXPENDABLES 1–3. And also he did IRON MAN THREE which led to THOR: THE DARK WORLD and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON and like 100 other big movies. The guy has done well for himself.
I don’t want to repeat history’s mistakes and overhype this. It’s a simple movie. I just appreciate these young hungry citizens of the ‘90s getting sandy and sweaty to bring this goofy concept to life, and doing such a quality job of it. To me the real Buddy Holly is only kind of cool. But teach him to use a sword, send him and his two-tone shoes into the wasteland to leap away from explosions, battle mythical villains, then push up his glasses and snap his fingers – now we’ve got a party. And I admire a movie with so many perfectly trashed locations and props made out of junk but also beautiful samurai movie imagery. These are impressive first timer accomplishments. My only complaint, really, is that a movie with so much LONE WOLF AND CUB spirit oughta have a few blood geysers. Maybe that’s why it didn’t quite stick in the cultural memory. But maybe it’s ready to resurface there, because looking back at it now I can really appreciate it. Look at this stuff:
The AICN interview I mentioned was right when the movie had come out, so they had everybody in Hollywood telling them they were hot shit, and getting their hopes up that they could build off of this. Mungia mentions Falcon being up for a super hero movie, which I’ve heard elsewhere was Cyclops in X-MEN. He also said they were about to do “a really wacky Christmas action movie this winter that Jeff and I wrote, about a plot to assassinate Santa.” Decades later, on a commentary track, he says that Falcon only wanted to do lead roles, and that it led to a falling out. Sadly, Falcon never did another movie, and maybe never will, since no one has been able to locate him for years. Maybe he really did become the King.
Mungia didn’t manage to leverage the SIX-STRING buzz into anything bigger either, with one exception: seven years later he did a straight-to-video THE CROW sequel, which we will be discussing soon. On the extensive extras of the Vinegar Syndrome release Mungia seems to have a good attitude about it all, enjoying his life running a small media production company, fondly remembering SIX-STRING as a fun time he and his friends had when they were young, speaking highly of the enigmatic Mr. Falcon. I would be excited if those two somehow reconnected and decided to continue the adventure, but if it’s not meant to be it’s not meant to be. They’ll always have Vegas.
April 9th, 2024 at 8:58 am
I’m someone who definitely ordered this DVD based on all of the Ain’t It Cool News hype. I even kind of convinced myself into thinking I really liked it because it seemed like I should, but looking back I’m not sure it was true. I haven’t thought about it in years, but now you have me wanting to check it out again.