"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Taking Tiger Mountain

TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN – not to be confused with Tsui Hark’s THE TAKING OF TIGER MOUNTAIN – is a surreal post-apocalyptic experimental black and white art film, shot in 1975, screened in 1983, and never released on video until Vinegar Syndrome’s recent blu-ray. It’s most notable as the first performance by the late great Bill Paxton, who is the lead as well as the production designer.

Like many people, I’m sure, I most associate Paxton with his funny whiny guy roles, especially Hudson in ALIENS. Game over, etc. And he stayed strongly associated with James Cameron as not only the lead in the present day section of TITANIC, but the real life friend who told Cameron, emerging from an actual expedition to the Titanic wreckage, about the 9-11 attacks (as seen in the Imax documentary GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS). They both came out of the Roger Corman school – Paxton worked as a set decorator on EAT MY DUST, BIG BAD MAMA and GALAXY OF TERROR, where the two first met. Though we all know Paxton ended up making it as both a leading man in blockbusters and a reliable character actor, remember that he directed the 1980 novelty music video “Fish Heads,” the 2001 supernatural religious thriller FRAILTY, and the 2005 golfing drama THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED. He was a filmmaker. But as a 19 year old working as a set dresser for the educational films of Encyclopedia Brittanica Features he befriended director Kent Smith (writer: MASSAGE: THE TOUCH OF LOVE; composer: VENEREAL DISEASE: THE HIDDEN EPIDEMIC), who thought he’d make a good star for an independent movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 10th, 2019 | 7 Comments »

Ready or Not

READY OR NOT is a funny horror movie about one of the less romantic wedding nights. Grace (Samara Weaving, Ash vs. Evil Dead, MONSTER TRUCKS, THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI) is nervous about marrying into the Le Domas family, who are super rich from their great grandfather or whoever’s board game company. So when the groom, Alex (Mark O’Brien, ARRIVAL), explains the family tradition that at midnight they have to go downstairs and play a game with the family, she doesn’t complain. She’ll do any silly thing to win them over.

They challenge her to a game of hide and seek. If she can stay away from them until dawn, she wins. She laughs and doesn’t take it seriously until she realizes they’re taking it very seriously. Like, trying to kill her seriously. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 9th, 2019 | 22 Comments »

Cobra Kai (Season 1)

I don’t have the attachment many people I know have to the KARATE KID movies. But I’m kinda into their mythology, especially after my recent dip into the more over-the-top b-movie villainy of part III. So I excitedly took advantage of a free window (until September 11th) to watch the ten half-hour-ish episodes in the first season of the premium Youtube series Cobra Kai.

Even in today’s gold rush for nostalgic i.p. this seems like a too-good-to-be-true sequel scenario, especially for my interests. Ralph Macchio – now actually older than Pat Morita was in the first movie! – returns as Daniel LaRusso, but so does William Zabka as part 1 nemesis Johnny Lawrence, and even though Macchio gets top billing, Zabka is treated as the underdog hero, like Iceman Chambers in UNDISPUTED II, or like I wanted them to do with Martin Kove’s villainous sensei John Kreese after seeing him down and out in the opening scenes of KARATE KID III. Broke, washed up, divorced, drinking Coors all day, still listening to Ratt and wearing Van Halen t-shirts, Johnny attempts to re-open the Cobra Kai dojo in a strip mall next to a vape store. But he’s so bad at salesmanship he ends up having only one student, a nice kid named Miguel (Xolo Mariduena, Parenthood) who tempers some of his worst tendencies while being empowered by his macho tough love and “strike first, strike hard, no mercy” philosophy. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 5th, 2019 | 81 Comments »

Return of the Street Fighter

RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER (which, it’s important to note, is “filmed in Actionscope”) has the same director as THE STREET FIGHTER (Shigehiro Ozawa) and came out in the same year (1974). And I’m sure that was possible partly because it’s only 80 minutes long and padded with black and white flashbacks to two of the first movie’s fights, as well as the same childhood flashback, and it has a pretty long section that’s just the people from different karate schools demonstrating different weapons and techniques that will be used against evil-code-of-conduct-following anti-hero Takuma Tsurugi (Sonny Chiba) – punching through stacks of rock plates, or swinging “NUNCHAKU CLUB” or “SAI DAGGERS” or whatever the on screen text calls them in the American release. Somehow it’s still a great fuckin movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 4th, 2019 | 9 Comments »

Darlin’

So there’s this character called “The Woman.” Growling, feral berserker covered in grime, part of basically a modern day lost tribe, wild cannibals living like savages in forests, hills and caves, occasionally invading civilization to hunt meat or steal children. She was created by Jack Ketchum, I think for the book Offspring, though that’s a sequel to Off Season, which I haven’t read, so maybe she’s in that too. In the 2009 film OFFSPRING she was played by Pollyanna McIntosh, who later played Jadis on The Walking Dead and Angel on Hap and Leonard. I didn’t think OFFSPRING worked, but I’m glad McIntosh was so good in it that they made her survive and let Lucky McKee direct a sequel in 2011. He wrote both the movie THE WOMAN and a book version in collaboration with Ketchum.

In that story, a middle class dad spots The Woman while hunting, captures her, chains her up in his shed, tries to so-called civilize her. It’s an outrageous allegory about misogyny and generational abuse, and when I rewatched it last year I thought it was even better and more relevant than it seemed when it came out. It holds up as one of the best horror movies of the 2000s.

Now The Woman is back in DARLIN’, released today on blu-ray and dvd. It’s another interesting standalone story and it’s written and directed by McIntosh herself. There are some funny behind the scenes shots in the extras with her directing in full costume or in civilian clothes but caked in dirt makeup. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 3rd, 2019 | 4 Comments »

Yor, the Hunter from the Future

No – you’re the hunter from the future.

It’s fair to say that YOR, THE HUNTER (spoiler) FROM THE FUTURE is a cheesy movie. And though its 89 minutes are whittled down from an Italian mini-series of four 50-minute episodes, I don’t need to see the other 111 minutes. But 89 of it is just right. I dug it.

Like CONQUEST for Lucio Fulci, YOR is director Antonio Margheriti (SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT’S EYE, CODE NAME: WILD GEESE, CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE) trying to ride the wave of savage shirtless musclemen left in the wake of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. But this story combines the ax-wielding stone age warriors with futuristic sci-fi elements. In that aspect – and in Reb Brown’s blond wig and furry shorts and boots – YOR reminds me of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which started the year before. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 2nd, 2019 | 11 Comments »

The Nightingale

THE NIGHTINGALE, now in limited theatrical release, is Australian director Jennifer Kent’s followup to THE BABADOOK. That 2014 debut of hers was a critical sensation and cult hit that made less than 1/34 the box office of ANNABELLE the same year, but it reached a ton of people, including many who don’t usually bother with the genre. Certainly some of the hype was about it being directed by a woman, and I think that’s relevant in that its scares are based in motherhood. I can point you to plenty of pro-woman horror movies, but few that are about such specifically female fears.

That made Kent one of those directors whose names get reported as being on the short list to direct every WONDER WOMAN or CAPTAIN MARVEL that comes along. She told Indiewire “I did entertain one blockbuster seriously and I thought, yeah, I could give this something really special. But then ultimately I heard about the way the films are made, and I thought it would kill me.” So five years later she still hasn’t been sucked into the ol’ i.p. game, unless you count developing an adaptation of the 19th century lesbian thriller book Alice + Freda Forever. Instead she made this. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 29th, 2019 | 20 Comments »

The Street Fighter

“I may in fact be worse than the villains. But I know the way they think and act.”

Sonny Chiba is… THE STREET FIGHTER, a.k.a. Takuma Tsurugi (or Terry in the English dub). He’s an A+ anti-hero because he’s just straight up a bad person, but he’s so cool he keeps luring us into rooting for him.

And he’s definitely in the Bad Motherfucker Hall of Fame. We’re introduced to him disguised as a Buddhist monk to visit Tateki Shikenbaru (Masashi Ishibashi, SHOGUN’S NINJA) on death row. Shikenbaru is apparently a murderer, but he seems like an honorable guy who’s excited when he realizes he gets to have a karate duel in his cell with someone as good as Tsurugi. But Tsurugi hits him with a special delayed-asphyxiation blow that causes him to collapse just before execution. The prison officials decide they legally and/or ethically have to transport him to a hospital, at which point Tsurugi and his sycophantic partner Rakuda (Goichi Yamada, DOUBLE SUICIDE AT NISHIJIN) ambush the ambulance, abduct the prisoner and send him to Hong Kong. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 28th, 2019 | 9 Comments »

Tai Chi Master

By now you’ve probly noticed that I like searching for wisdom in martial arts movies the way some people do religious texts. Sorry, they’re just more fun to me than holy scripture. But man, when I find one that speaks to me I feel spiritually invigorated. TAI CHI MASTER (a.k.a. TWIN WARRIORS) (1993) is just such a sermon. It’s one of those stories full of symbolism that

1) seems easily applicable to life

and

2) makes for strong, mythical drama

And since it’s directed and choreographed by the great Yuen Woo-ping (in between IRON MONKEY and WING CHUN) it would already be worth watching just for the beautiful fights full of wild flourishes and ingenious gimmicks. This is a world where people frequently kick logs and barrels at each other and back, where most people have the ability to leap into the air and spin or flip several full rotations, where you fly up and swing on a chandelier and the lamp oil spills and makes the floor slippery so you land on top of the people who have fallen down and slide around on them like they’re snowboards. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 27th, 2019 | 4 Comments »

Point Blank (2019)

POINT BLANK (2019) is a recent Netflix release directed by Joe Lynch (WRONG TURN 2, EVERLY). It’s not a remake of the classic Lee Marvin POINT BLANK from 1967, or the non-classic Mickey Rourke/Danny Trejo POINT BLANK from 1998, or even the Brazilian police corruption documentary POINT BLANK from 2015, but in fact the French one from 2010 that was recommended to me many times but that I haven’t seen yet. Of the three of those I’ve seen, this one’s in second place!

It’s got a great, “oh shit, we’re already doing this” opening. There’s an exterior shot of a mansion at night, but before the camera can move inside we hear gunshots and see flashes inside, and then a guy comes flying through one of the windows and makes a run for it. He’s Abe (Frank Grillo, MY SOUL TO TAKE) and he’s frantically trying to get ahold of his getaway driver brother Mateo (Christian Cooke) in between ducking gunshots and receiving threatening texts from some guy named Big D.

And then… I’ll just say he ends up an unconscious John Doe at a hospital, which is where he intersects with our protagonist, Paul (Anthony Mackie, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER), a nurse doing extra shifts because his wife Taryn (Teyonah Parris, CHI-RAQ, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK) is about to give birth to their first child. And the next thing you know Mateo has taken Taryn hostage to force Paul to sneak Abe out of the hospital. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 26th, 2019 | 8 Comments »

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