The Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange

BONUS REVIEW: Jewel of the Gods

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Noel

Unlike the last few films, where my problem with following them came from subtitle/dub issues, I have very little clue what was going on here because the sheer blandness of this movie was projecting a bubble of disinterest that kept pushing my gaze away. I looked at my phone, the clock, books on my shelves, paged through some manga, alphabetized a stack of DVDs. Not even a nude Abe Vigoda with a leaf blower aimed at my eyes could have succeeded in keeping me from looking at the screen more than Jewel of the Gods did.

So yes, our hero couple from the original The Gods Must Be Crazy film, Marius Weyers and Sandra Prinsloo, are back with an attempted ape of Indiana Jones, and I don't know why we're here. These aren't the same characters from the original film: one is now a square-jawed adventurer with a bladed boomerang strapped to his back, the other is a doctor whose father went missing while searching for fabled purple diamonds. It's set in Africa, but instead of using the lush deserts and plains, we instead have some public park trees alongside a generic river, and one of those rock quarries the Power Rangers would always beat up monsters in. It's not even set in the same period, instead dropping us in the early 40s with Nazis about, all Colonel Klink-ing it up as the goofy antagonists.

Along the way, we find out purple diamonds can zap at people like laser beams, our hero gets a Short Round sidekick in the form of a tall white man in brownface as a Calcutta Indiana raised in Dallas (any jokes you can imagine will be better) who wears a type of trucker cap that didn't exist at the time, there's a big fight where a witch doctor chases people around an abandoned factory, and in place of N!xau, we have a "pygmy" keep showing up, who ends the film by saying "Fuck you."

Fuck you, too, movie.

It's boring, badly written, badly shot. The acting isn't awful but didn't do much to hold my interest. The music, when we get any, is a few basic keyboard jabs. There's laughable model shots. People just wander around until they find the next setpiece. We see actual animals killed on screen.

Three times now, this franchise has had me feel I was watching one of the worst films I'd ever seen. It started with Crazy Hong Kong. Then Gods Must Be Funny In China was so awful that I actually warmed a bit to its predecessor. Now Jewel of the Gods has turned my scowls for both into mere dismissive shrugs as at least they were interesting in terms of their randomness and stupidity. This film was like staring at cardboard for 90 minutes.

Jak

And here we leave N!xau to see what Marius Weyers was up to when Gods 2 was being shot. In Jewel of the Gods (marketed in some markets as a sequel to The Gods Must Be Crazy for some reason), he plays a character who couldn't possibly be more different than the character he played in the first Gods Must Be Crazy film, and he plays it fantastically.

In this picture, he's a grizzled and jaded no-nonsense adventurer type with an odd name and an unconventional weapon of choice on the trail of some Biblical destructive treasure in Africa that's being sought after by Nazis and a well-bred villainous collector who wears a white suit and hat. It all sounds like it should be a shameless, low-budget ripoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but surprisingly, it really isn't. Though it definitely cribs the blueprint of the story wholesale, the execution of it is a great example of how many different ways even such a specific general story can be told, as it has its own pace and feel, one which is even very enjoyable, if only for a while.

The rapport between our protagonist team of Weyers's Snowy Grinder and Joseph Ribeiro's Yankee-accented Calcuttan Archie starts off shaky and stilted, but quickly becomes much more natural and charming as the story keeps throwing them into dangerous situations. Then halfway through, Archie is replaced by Sandra Prinsloo's Ally, and the chemistry between her and Snowy is far more staid and perfunctory, though it's still miles better than the actors' previous pairing in Gods 1.

Jewel of the Gods has numerous intentional callbacks to its Lucasfilm inspiration: Snowy hides in a basket that distinctly resembles the one Marion hid in, Ally tends to a shirtless Snowy's wounds, Archie screams wide-eyed while covered in tarantulas, among dozens of others. It's far from being the best movie I've ever seen, and isn't even the best movie in the post-2 Gods Must Be Crazy pantheon. There are plenty of moments that don't quite work, even in the first half, but the story and its progression kept my interest for a time, even aside from the additional entertainment of keeping a tally of Indiana Jones similarities.

If the second half starts with a dip in character quality, the last quarter goes completely off the rails with an extremely bizarre turn into a trap-filled factory that was supposedly built in pre-Biblical times by aliens, yet has suspiciously normal looking industrial catwalks and chains, and even signs that say "Danger" written in English. This sequence is followed by a very lazily paced mine cart ride that seems to exist for no reason except to prove that Raiders isn't the only Indiana Jones film that the writers saw.

My main problem with this film is that it starts with a lot of promise, follows through on that promise, and then proceeds to abruptly fail as though it was handed off to a different writer midway through. And the end segments just... keep... on... going. The movie's strength for me is in Snowy and Archie's back-and-forth in hostile circumstances, and that seemed to be discarded fairly quickly for the sake of other elements that don't work nearly as well. It's a better film than 4 and 5 to be sure, but so are some people's vacation videos. It's worth watching mostly to see how different a treatment a well-known story can be given, and also to see Marius Weyers playing a quite believable badass. Who'd have guessed?

BONUS REVIEW: The Gods Must Be Crazy 5 (aka The Gods Must Be Funny In China)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 20:53:00 +0000

Noel

First off, we're right back to the subtitling problem I had with Part 3, where it's white, borderless text which completely vanishes whenever a scene is brightly lit, or people are wearing white, or somebody sets a white sheet of paper on a table in the middle of a big exposition scene. Add to this an awkwardly written translation and the titles flying on and off at a rapid-fire pace, and there's a good third of this movie I'm just straight up not able to read. So there's parts of this story where I'm only guessing what happened based on visuals and performance alone, and aside from N!xau and a rotund man nick-named Fatty, I don't have a clue what any of the character's names are, and the string of blanks on IMDb shows that nobody else does, either. At least there's no narrators who go completely untranslated this time around.

I'm going to nickname one of the leads Mom. She's not actually a mother, and laments the fact that she's approaching middle age and never got married or had children, but she's very much the den mother of the group, and hooks up with Fatty at the end, so I'm going with Mom. Mom is trying to sell a line of non-stick cook wear, but is having trouble finding a spokesman. She's been making do with a trio of dudes - Chubby, Nerdy, and Ted Mosby - but their synchronized dance routine while dressed in drag hasn't been going over too well. That's when Mom spots N!xau, who's been living in Hong Kong for a while, to the point where he's starting to learn the language (aka, he's dubbed in Cantonese), and has been pulling odd jobs to try to earn a ticket back to the Kalahari. He's currently working for Fatty as a salesman for Coke, and when he's not running around with a giant bottle display slung to his back, N!xau is forced to smile his way through embarrassing performances involving African drums, pretty Asian women in blackface, and blowdart demonstrations.

I did still really enjoy N!xau's performance in the last two movies, and thought he had a lot of fun and some good bits to play off of, but it's sad and infuriating how they've turned him into an old-school stereotypical minstrel buffoon here. Except for some survival skills kicking in later on, he's portrayed as a barely functioning fool who doesn't understand what's going on around him, and is often the butt of peoples' jokes, as when Mom and Fatty team up to make N!xau their shared spokesman, but Chubby, Nerdy, and Ted Mosby all argue he's "too dark in tone" and "most Africans have AIDs!" Yes, that's a thing that's really said. And the 3 Douches carry on with such bullying, insulting N!xau at every turn as he paints pictures on the walls of the family he left behind, joins them in a race, and even saves their lives repeatedly. N!xau himself is giving a good performance, but he's been put in a very unfortunate and unkind position, and it's just not fun to see him here.

Anyways, that race I just mentioned. As part of their promotional deal, N!xau and the 3 Douches take part in a massive marathon event along the Great Wall of China and into and out of the Chinese wilderness. Also running are Shaolin monks and Middle Easterners, the monks so we can have random martial arts displays over who gets to eat the last bean cube, the Middle Easterners so their robes can be stolen as disguises. Our villain comes in the form of some ridiculously rich evil guy I'll call Cheney, who wants nothing more than to steal a panda, so he and his goons infiltrate the race in the hopes of poaching from the natural wilderness.

When separated from the others by a bizarre cliffside rope gag, N!xau comes across the rural farmhouse of a woman I'm calling Snow White, as she shares the house with six pandas who sit at the table for meals and are trained in all manner of tricks. Which amuse N!xau to the point where he delights in performing said tricks as though he's a trained animal (oh for the love of WHY). They're soon joined by Mom, Fatty, and the 3 Douches, and the boys of course all fall madly in love with Snow White, even Ted Mosby, despite his flirtations with Pretty Niece, Fatty's pretty neice.

Cheney and the bad guys show up, try to steal the pandas, there's fights, traps, traps upon traps, vomit, a synchronized sequence of everyone turning in their sleep until every man simultaneously takes a foot to their ballsacks, and tents and poison gas. And then N!xau meets and has a long conversation with a chimpanzee who remembers meeting him in Africa. They take a drive in Steve's shrubbery camouflaged jeep from the second film, which the chimp just has for no reason, then commune with the animals as wildlife teams up with N!xau to descend on Cheney's forces. Even a turtle who tells N!xau to throw it at people, in one of the few bits that actually made me chuckle.

Cheney still steals the pandas, but then he's outed to the race as all the other contestants team up to take his goons down. And then he's in a motorcycle with one panda in the sidecar. And then trying to get the panda back in the sidecar when it stops to drink a coke. And then he's stopped by our heroes as he finds himself facing the gunbarrels of a Chinese military that's very displeased with his poaching. And then our heroes all hook up in merriment for a big dance number over the closing credits.

Even if I had crisp, readable subtitles, I don't know that I'd consider this to be anything but a shit movie. There's no reason for N!xau to be here, as so little of the story is actually about him, and what's there is deeply insulting and deserves a kick to the shins of everyone involved. Snow White and the 6 Pandas are lovely, but also deserve a better film. The 3 Douches are completely uninteresting and unsympathetic. I did actually like Mom and Fatty just a hair, as the actors had some nice chemistry, but even they're stuck in bad physical gags or a bit where they pork out on poisoned melons and wake up in the boiling pots of shadowy rural folk (who are actually cleansing them of poison, not prepping them to eat, as is believed).

It's just a lousy comedy whose only chance of getting some marketing buzz was by saddling itself to a franchise it was unworthy of. Yes, I'm even saying that with the prior two films in mind. Part 3 is an odd, yet strangely magical film that works in spite of itself. Part 4 has some specifically shitty things, yet is otherwise blandly competent and inoffensive. This is just shit all the way through, and a sad finale to N!xau's career and the character he'll always be remembered for.

Jak

The Gods Must Be Crazy 5 is an even further departure for the series than 4 was, with N!xau living in China and having gained the ability to speak Chinese and communicate with those around him. At least, I think. If I'm right in that understanding, it doesn't change the character nearly as much as I thought it might, but it does drive the film firmly outside of any resemblance to the series.

A lot of the confusion comes because the subtitles in the only copy I could find are done in a way so they're unreadable when the lower part of the screen is bright, which happens constantly, making the story quite difficult to follow at times. There's a marathon of some sort, and there's a villain obsessed for some reason with getting pandas which are on the marathon's route. N!xau is drafted to replace a missing member on the Hong Kong team that's competing, and from there it's a loose collection of rapid fire gags and crude jokes that mostly fall flat, up until we get to N!xau dancing with a panda and then going to the domesticated panda house, and then a kung fu fight, and a talking turtle, and a monkey who drives and...

Actually, the first fight sequence in the forest is done really well, and a lot of the comedy infused in that part works, suggesting we're either seeing a genre director attempting to spread out into other areas outside of his strengths, or a good action director doing what he can with an extremely poorly written script that's been dropped on him. In any case, the most this picture has to offer is an illustration of how far from source material a property can drift. Beyond that, it's such an uneven slog of weird to me that I can't recommend it. Still better than the fourth film though.

BONUS REVIEW: The Gods Must Be Crazy 4 (aka Crazy Hong Kong)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 17:40:00 +0000

Jak

Yikes, is this ever a terrible movie.

Where Part 3 at least had a basic understanding of Uys's style and comedic sense, 4 appears to lack any understanding of comedy at all. The wretched dub doesn't help matters, but I doubt that even A-list voice actors could save this mess.

Segments end whenever the director gets bored with them (and he clearly has much more of a tolerance for boredom than I do), and many of the gags go far beyond the typical zany pitch into completely stupid when they're not just aimless and dull. This is a film whose story is firmly rooted in the mundane real world, yet still manages to feel exponentially more idiotic than the previous entry which had a hopping vampire and kung fu N!xau in it.

I spent a lot of the viewing time on this one wondering what Uys would have done with the setting. Watching Xi... oh excuse me, he's apparently called Nixau in the story now... watching Nixau and John's friendship develop could be charming in a moronic way sometimes, but I have a feeling that the parts that work for me have a lot more to do with N!xau's contagious smile and charm than any other element that the movie brings to the scene.

There's a warmth and potential for depth, and an interesting story that keeps threatening to seep up but is constantly cemented back by horrendous directorial choices, tired gags forced into the script, and limp, abandoned ends of scene fragments. Two people wrote it and an entire crew collaborated on it, why didn't any of them realize any of this? Why is the bird suddenly real at the end? Why do some of the musical instruments in the soundtrack sound like bodily functions? What the hell is going on with that ending? Why does this movie insist on being so relentlessly awful?

Noel

"N!xau running around a big city" is a hard plot to fuck up. You have to either try very hard or be incredibly inept to fuck that up. Neither Jungle 2 Jungle nor Just Visiting are particularly good movies, but they don't fuck it up and are enjoyable and entertaining enough to get by. That's your bar, to not fuck it up more than Jungle 2 Jungle or Just Visiting.

Crazy in Hong Kong fucks it up. It fucks it up HARD. Crossing over N!xau with hopping vampires somehow didn't fuck it up. N!xau running around a big city, so beyond fucked up that I'm left in a stupor.

To be fair, there's a lot that the film does do right. N!xau, while visibly aged (he was in his late 30s during the original Gods, 50 here) still has a lot of spring, vigor, and expression in his performance as he dives into scenes, like freaking out at a tiger on a TV, or walking into oncoming traffic for the first time, or trying to shoo off statues of birds from around a fountain, or breaking out his bow and arrow on multiple occasions. Whatever this film's weaknesses, he's still a fun performer to watch, and many scenes almost skate by purely on his charm. There's also a great recurring use of water, like him being shown a water and ice dispenser on a fridge, or celebrating in a rain storm while everyone else huddles under umbrellas, or dancing as he discovers the ocean, a pool of water large enough to quench all thirst... until he drinks some and spit at its saltiness. And he's not just about having water, but sharing it, as he's always going back to the dispenser to fill glasses for others, or trying to get everyone to share in the celebration, or even gathering drops in a leaf to cheer a sad friend. There's a touching story thread in this, and I even love the visual of the over-sized suit coat they wrap N!xau in, I just wish the film was capable of pulling most of this off.

The first major fuck up: the score. This score is such a foul air of flatulence wheezing out of an 8-bit synth that they stick a few actual fart sounds in there as if to acknowledge how much of a hind ripper it is. It's not only hideous to catch a whiff of whenever it appears, but it's improperly placed, often playing moods counter to what we're actually seeing, and drowning out sequences that would be stronger without any score whatsoever. The score is an ass, hogging the spotlight from the film and making everything about itself, whether appropriate or not, and even the good aspects I can see in there are insufferable as these notes just toot their way in, shooing my attention away from the screen.

The second major fuck up: the narrator. I don't know if this is how it was in the original cut or an alteration made by the dub, but instead of going with a satirical nature documentary-style observer, we're instead having the story related to us by one of N!xau's nephews in the village, a child when pointed out onscreen, but now an adult as he's telling the story back to us. It's a very awkward dub, like some half-stoned college kid trying to relate an old family vacation, giggling at things he thinks are funny before actually getting to why they are, and making anachronistic references that don't fit the perspective. I could see this working if it were going into N!xau's head, letting us take in the alien culture of a city from his point of view, but that's not how they play it, and I just wanted this kid to shut up every time he talked.

The third major fuck up: the villains. Through complete random happenstance, N!xau manages to snag a pouch full of smuggled diamonds during his trip to Hong Kong, and as these goons keep showing up and chasing after him, running into sheets of glass or flinging themselves about with teeter-totters, they're played with such a childish level of cartoonish buffoonery that even Bulk & Skull would be telling them to rein it in a little. There is one bit, a single quick bit involving sliding doors on a porch that's actually kind of fun, but everything else just gives in to the fart score whenever these two are around.

Those are the only major fuck ups. There's smaller ones, but those three are what makes this film a horrible waste of everyone's time as it's now almost impenetrable and I only managed to keep my focus on the film through sheer force of will (and pausing now and then to text Jak how awful it is). Which is a shame, because there are other potentially interesting elements that we're not being allowed to enjoy.

I don't dislike our main "city" character (Carina Lau) of Shirley (going with the dub names as that's all I have). The setup of how she unknowingly steals away an unconscious N!xau after meeting him on a commercial shoot in the Kalahari is a bit forced, but I like her story of being a rising burger company exec who finds out her own company is forcing a buyout on her mother's restaurant, and she's being locked out of the deal by her slimy boss (a completely random Conrad Janis, for some reason). She's trying to sort this all out, while dealing with her angry mom, bitter restaurant employees, and N!xau crashing at her place. On top of things, her husband, who managed the restaurant, just ran off with his mistress and all their savings. There's a good character here who has good reasons for why she's impatient about having N!xau stuck on her tail, and we do get some good payoff as everything crumbles and he's there to cheer her up and help in whatever way he can understand to.

Not so successful are her friends, though both are at least partially interesting. Winnie (Cecilia Yip) is a wild, motorcycle riding party girl who hopes to woo her millionaire boyfriend into financing the restaurant, only for him to leave her just as screwed as Shirley is. When we first meet Winnie, she has the hots for N!xau, but that thankfully goes nowhere as, after spending a day on the town, they bond over how much they both love babies, his who are waiting back home, and hers which she hopes to have one day. It's a clumsy as hell scene, but I like the sentiment behind it. Then there's John (Ching Wan Lau). John is the office idiot, often tasked with keeping an eye on N!xau. Somehow, in his lunkheaded assuredness, he's able to understand N!xau, and the two have entire conversations with one another despite speaking in different languages. I'm sure some of this is just John making guesses and running with it, but he seems to be on the right trail most the time, and I like the scene of them saying goodbye, John giving N!xau his business card, and N!xau giving him a napkin with a crude map scrawled in salt. I had a few good chuckles during their time together - him painting N!xau to look like he's wearing shoes and a tie to get into a restaurant, N!xau building a fire out of matches to cook sushi on, John trying to mess with N!xau over what a cigarette is only for N!xau to pull out a lighter and blow a puff in his face - and had a genuine laugh when N!xau returns to his village only to find John there, having followed the map, though peeved a taxi wasn't where N!xau said it was.

But the film bungles that with the bizarre tag of N!xau and John starting a Kalahari food cart service together. And bungles Winnie's plot with the uncomfortable description of the ways in which she was sexually taken advantage of. And bungles the farewell between Shirley and N!xau by her giving him a comically humongous glass Coke bottle for no reason. And there's even a plot thrust of him trying to get her to remove a false bird she stuffed in a bottle as a magic trick that they bungle by having the glass shatter, and the bird is suddenly alive and flying off. HOW THE HELL WHAT NO! And there's other bits where they play N!xau as more a buffoon than just an outsider, like when he tries hunting animals or gives his bow and arrow to a soldier who wants to shoot an apple off his head.

And yet, these are still just minor bungles. Aside from the goons, I don't have a huge problem with the actual content of the film or the idea of many sequences. But that fucking score. And that fucking narrator. They make the bad stuff unbearable, and the good stuff pretty darn near impossible to appreciate. Maybe they're just elements of the dub, I don't know. If it is, shame on whoever put them in there. If not, and they still accurately represent what was in there, then shame on whoever thought that was a good idea in the first place. This was never going to be a great movie, but it still could have worked on that same bar of modest enjoyability that Jungle 2 Jungle and Just Visiting hover on. There's other nice bits, like N!xau wandering into a market with caged birds, and caged cats, and looks up to a child sitting behind a stair rail and thinking it's caged, too. Or Shirley's mother having her breakdown interrupted as she sees this tribal man just wandering around her daughter's apartment before offering her a glass of water with a smile. Or John and N!xau brotherly duking it out through the consumption of an ice cream cake. Or N!xau delighting as he gets away from the city to the rural rice paddy fields, then comes across the heavily guarded border to China.

There is some good stuff in here. Nothing amazing, but certainly not bad, and if you tone down those two goons, redo that score, and either redo or just outright eliminate the narration, then you'd have a watchable, pleasant movie. But as it is, it's awful.

BONUS REVIEW: The Gods Must Be Crazy 3 (aka Crazy Safari)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 19:20:00 +0000

Noel

Despite being heavily into Hong Kong films of the 80s/early 90s during my teen years (there was a local theater that would double feature them every Friday at midnight), I don't recall ever before seeing anything from the Jiangashi subgenre, that of Chinese hopping vampires. Poking around a bit online, it really only seemed to become a thing when Sammo Hung made Encounters of the Spooky Kind in 1980 and Mr. Vampire in 1985, setting the trend of playing such vampires for comedic laughs amidst supernatural kung fu action. I really need to check both of these out. Anyways, it started a wave of sequels and spinoffs and ripoffs, and I see that Lam Ching-Ling, featured in the film I'm covering today, had became a well-established genre mainstay as the stern Taoist priest dealing with both the vampires and comical sidekicks who always get in his way.

As our film opens, Ching-Ying's priest, Master HiSing (I see what you did there!), has been hired by a young man named Sam or Leo depending on the version, I'll go with Sam as it's more amusing... anyway, Sam hires him to help recover the mummified body of his ancestor from an auction house in Europe, where HiSing resurrects the corpse as a hopping vampire right on the spot to settle an issue of ownership. The vampire is tamed into a controllable golem state through the usual means of an enchanted strip of paper stuck on its forehead, and led around by bells, creating some confusion as they leave the auction house into a costume party in the streets full of ringing and people dressed as ghouls. They manage to get the vampire on a plane bound for home, where Sam hopes to finally lay his ancestor to rest, but a broken compass sidetracks them over Africa where they're forced to bail when the plane runs out of fuel.

Guess which part of Africa.

I was very skeptical of how they'd blend this horror/action/comedy about hopping vampires with the adventures of N!xau in the Kalahari plains, but they do a pretty decent of job working those outside elements into the structure of the established Gods Must Be Crazy franchise. The vampire (Chan Lung, in a pantomime part that grew on me) is now himself the mysterious object who falls from the sky and, after discovering the paper is what keeps him from going on violent rampages and that he can be led around by a bell, N!xau (just referred to now by the actor's name instead of the character Xi) and his people put the vampire to use as a golem beast of burden, carrying heavy loads and having him smash head-first into trees so as to knock loose their fruit, and the children come to adore playing with him in the fields as they toss bells back and forth and watch him fly. As for HiSing and Sam, they're the couple wandering about the wilderness, initially dangling from their parachute over a tree full of thorns (which HiSing keeps pushing Sam into to keep himself from falling in), then losing all their food to a group of baboons, fully capable of opening cans with pull tabs, and running from that same two-person rubber rhino suit, which is filmed up close in slow motion for some reason, revealing all its folds and zippers.

They ultimately come across the native village where N!xau and his people save HiSing's leg from the massive python which has fully engulfed it, and then we get comical shenanigans of them trying to find the vampire without realizing it's in the same village they are. Another way to control the vampires is through an enchanted doll (yes, much like the traditional Voodoo doll), and there's an amusing scene where HiSing can't figure out why he's unable to get the doll to rise, and it's because he has it facing a different direction than the vampire, who's trying to rise down into the ground.

This all sounds really fun, but very little of it actually gets so much as a chuckle from me. There's neat ideas throughout the movie, but the actual execution is clumsy, and many of the sequences are poorly constructed. There's a play on the setup of the opening film where, forced to bail the plane, the passengers also dump a cargo of crates of Coke bottles and cans, and N!xau on the ground finds himself in the middle of a bottle shower as they all come down around him. But it doesn't go anywhere. There's a bit where he brings a can back to the village, unknowingly shaking the hell out of it while describing what happened until it pops open and sprays everywhere, but again, nothing more comes of it. There's also a potentially nice bit where HiSing is having his leg tended by to muds and native remedies, and asks for some water. N!xau proudly gives Sam a leaf with a single drop pooled in it. HiSing isn't pleased, but figures it's better than nothing, just as his foot is tickled and the drop pours into the crook of his eye. We never figure out if he retrieves it. And there's other bits that don't work, like HiSing and Sam thinking the native women want to sleep with them and arguing over who's going to "take that for the team", or a bit of HiSing looking for a place to take a shit, stealing food leaves and evading villagers, only to find himself in a cobra den. Or hooking Sam and their parachute up to a line as HiSing hops on a running ostrich and parasails Sam in an attempt to find the vampire. Or HiSing and N!xau having a ring-off to see who gets to keep the vampire. It's a very wacky, silly film, but very little of the humor hits in a significant way.

And then we get to the bad guys. Several times, we see this pair of blonde, sinister white people with heavy accents, probably supposed to be Dutch or German, who have allied themselves to another nearby tribe of the feathered-headdress, spear-throwing natives you typically see in 1930s adventure films, complete with a witch doctor chieftain. This group have constantly been harassing N!xau's tribe, first attempting to steal all their women, and ultimately return when they realize the stones being used for tools are full of diamonds. When they have to deal with the vampire, they break out their own massive black Voodoo zombie golem to take him on.

I will admit, this third act, as troubling and nonsensical as it is, is actually quite a lot of fun. The zombie is quite frightening, especially as he roars right into camera. The vampire has some nice moments as he acts independently of his control and chooses to protect the villagers who took him in. The effects of leaping and twirling are really well done, with some great action built around it. There's a nice bit where the milquetoast Sam finally gets to break into action as HiSing possesses him with the spirit of a slain baboon. And in the greatest bit of all, they summon the spirit of Bruce Lee himself to enter the body of N!xau, and we get to see our diminutive lead have a blast as he punches and kicks and chest stomps through the opposition, complete with Bruce's howls and nose flicks. It's the absolute highlight of the film.

I don't know, though, that it's enough to make the film worth watching. I enjoyed it both as a fan of the series and this style of Hong Kong action comedy (I may never have seen a Jiangashi film, but I love the Chinese Ghost Story series which has many similar elements), but even then, it's very rough and choppy, and lacks the level of skill and thoughtfulness of the official pair of The Gods Must Be Crazy films, especially the sequel. It's amusing, and the climax is crazy enough to entertain, but I don't recommend going out of your way to check it out.

It's also not the easiest film to watch, or at least not the only cut I was able to find in several places online. Many chunks of the film are in English, as Sam turns out bilingual, which helps them get through the international settings, but any time they're talking in Cantonese, the subtitles are a borderless white and disappear in some backgrounds. There's also a pair of narrators in the form of Stephen Chow and some other guy, but they haven't been translated at all. The scenes beneath them are visual enough that I can still tell what's going on, but any additional commentary or jokes they added have been completely lost.

I see also that Jamie Uys is indeed credited on the film as "consultant", but I wouldn't be surprised if that only extended as far as him telling them where that rhino suit could be found.

Jak

From everything I knew about the production of the movie, its unofficial status, and the insane decision to introduce, oh, HOPPING VAMPIRES into the generally reality-bound universe of the series, I was sure I would find it so bad that I would shut it off within the first fifteen minutes. After watching it, I feel like that may be the proper way to go into this movie, expecting a train wreck.

The series had always existed firmly in a zany universe, but was still grounded in the real world, and yet adding jiangshi, kung fu, and magic somehow doesn't completely alienate it from its previous entries like I was certain it would have to. It's unquestionably a different kind of movie by miles, but when we return to the Kalahari with our latest protagonist duo, the pedigree of the series is evident. Maybe it's our familiarity with N!xau and his consistency in his portrayal of Xi, even when possessed by the soul of Bruce Lee. Or maybe it's that the director, Billy Chan, seems to almost grasp the nuances of Jamie Uys's pacing and comedic setups from the first two pictures, but can't quite capture the timing and creativity necessary to move most of the moments from mediocre to great.

And to be fair, this is a movie whose parts average out to lackluster rather than existing there for its whole running time. There's a string of moments near the end that go completely over the top, including a brilliantly cut scene of the priest riding an ostrich, Xi riding on the hopping vampire's back, and Sam running after them, trying to keep up. That and what follows soon after, with the possessions of Sam by a baboon and Xi by Bruce Lee, and the jiangshi versus voodoo zombie battle, it all sounds precisely as stupid as it really is. The fact that it still worked for me elevates my opinion of the movie.

When it doesn't work, though, it's either awkward, confusing, or just merely boring. Admittedly, a moderate to large part of this may be because the version I watched, while subtitling the characters' relevant dialogue, did not subtitle the narrators' lines from Chinese and there were more than a few segments of extended narration. It was mostly clear what the characters were doing, but many times, the actions were either repetitive or understated, leading me to believe that much of the comedy of the situation was in the narrators' description, as we saw so many times in the first two films.

Overall, it comes off as a hackish tribute to both the jiangshi genre and the spirit of Jamie Uys's style (even if not the flair), and marries the two probably as well as they ever could be. It's not a pairing I imagine anybody outside of the production asked for, and not really one worth expecting anything particularly good out of, but it has enough moments to make it worth 92 minutes - provided you've absolutely nothing better to do with them.

Episode 9: The Gods Must Be Crazy 2 (1989)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 02:58:00 +0000

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Jak's pick for the month is The Gods Must Be Crazy 2 (1989). IMDb. Wikipedia.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 8: Disorderlies (1987)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 01:22:00 +0000

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Noel's pick for the month is Disorderlies (1987). IMDb. Wikipedia.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 7 - Lupin the 3rd: Strange Psychokinetic Strategy (1974)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 23:41:00 +0000

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Angie's pick for the month is Lupin the 3rd: Strange Psychokinetic Strategy (1974). IMDb.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 6: The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 22:56:00 +0000

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Jak's pick for the month is The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980). IMDb. Wikipedia.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 5: Phase IV (1974)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 18:32:00 +0000

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Noel's pick for the month is Phase IV (1974). IMDb. Wikipedia.

The original ending:

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

C2E2 2014 Bonus Episode

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 03 May 2014 18:24:00 +0000

(Kevin, Tessa, JD is somewhere back there, Jak, Angie, Noel, Adam)
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The Movie Exchange hosts all met up last month at Chicago's C2E2 convention, and are joined by JD DeMotte, of Comics Are Awesome and A Return to the Dreaming, for this live group recording in the middle of a hotel room with a droning AC. Seriously, sorry about the tinny audio quality, but it was either that or leaving the constant drone unfiltered.

Alongside those in the picture above, we were also joined this weekend by Igor and Julie. For an alternate look at the weekend, check out these posts by Igor: DAY 1, DAY 2, DAY 3, DAY 4. As well as Angie's writeup.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 4: Southland Tales (2006)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 23:53:00 +0000

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Angie's pick for the month is Southland Tales (2006). IMDb. Wikipedia.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 3: The Hollywood Knights (1980)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 17:21:00 +0000

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Jak's pick for the month is The Hollywood Knights (1980). IMDb. Wikipedia.

Raccoon Cat.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 2: The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 16:00:00 +0000

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Noel's pick for the month is The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990). IMDb. Wikipedia.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 1: Hudson Hawk (1991)

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 00:13:00 +0000

Welcome to the debut of our new format.

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Angelle's pick for the month is Hudson Hawk (1991). IMDb. Wikipedia.

Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

The Last Dragon (1985)... Jak's Pick for December

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 03:51:00 +0000

Jak

Here's where I confess that I've only sort of seen the movie I picked for this month. And here's where you ask how one "only sort of sees" a film. And here's where I answer that by saying I was young, I was drunk, it was after a wild party, and I was trying to crash on some stranger's couch - trying, because the couch was in front of a television playing a late night movie. This in itself wasn't special, as I found myself in that situation at least a couple dozen times through my teens and early 20's. This one particular time, though, it was The Last Dragon playing and I kept seeing and hearing things from this movie that made me struggle through the semi-conscious haze and say, "Hold up, I shouldn't miss this." I don't remember whose house it was anymore, I don't remember anybody who was at the party or what it was even for, and I don't remember nearly as much about any of the other movies from the other times I'd found myself in that spot, so I had a feeling this was probably a movie worth revisiting.

Leroy Green is training as his teacher shoots arrows at him, which he breaks as though they're mere distractions from his routine. When Leroy catches a blue one instead of breaking it, his teacher informs him that his training is complete and he is prepared for the Final Level, where he may attain The Glow. He then tells Leroy to find the wisest sage in the universe, Sum Dum Goy, who will serve as his new teacher, and sends him off with a medallion that he says once belonged to Bruce Lee.

As Leroy makes his way through New York, he stops off in a theater to watch a Bruce Lee movie, which is soon interrupted by Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem, and his cronies. A child calls out to the Shogun, "I know who can beat you!" Sho'nuff, angry, asks who, and the child tells him "Bruce Leroy, that's who!" and then points at Leroy. Apparently, Leroy is the only thing that stands between Sho'nuff and total supremacy. Leroy's calm responses anger Sho'nuff more and more, until he challenges the entire theater to a fight, which they're more than happy to oblige. Leroy leaves and Sho'nuff calls out that he's going to get him.

The movie then reminds us it's from the 80s by way of a music video dance show at a club called 7th Heaven for a few minutes. While this is going on, the sleazy Eddie Arkadian sends his man JJ to talk to the host Laura in an attempt to get his girlfriend Angela's video on the show. Laura turns down the meeting, then performs a song with a breakdown that has to be seen to be believed. When Eddie learns that his attempt has failed, he decides to kidnap Laura. As she is signing autographs, Leroy passes and catches her eye, and she catches his. As she gets in her limousine, an electric piano plays to let us know that love is happening.

The limousine is being driven by a kidnapper, though. When it stops to pick up two more criminals, Laura tries to fight them off and Leroy shows up to help. He beats them all up and they drive away without Laura. He helps her gather her things, flags a cab, and then disappears into the night. She picks up the medallion he accidentally leaves behind. He's distraught when he comes back to find it again.

Eddie's goons show up at Eddie's and tell him tall tales about the twenty or thirty bodyguards with clubs and chains that roughed them up. He sends his ex-prize fighter, Rock, to bring her back.

Leroy is teaching his class when Sho'nuff shows up with his entourage. They try to goad him into a fight, and when that doesn't work, they threaten to kill Johnny, one of his students, if he doesn't follow the Shogun's order to "kiss my Converse". When he obeys, Sho'nuff kicks him in the face and leaves.

The next day, Leroy has breakfast with his mother, father, younger sister, and brother Richie. Richie is keen on winning a dance competition to get a date with Laura. Leroy sees Laura on television and recognizes her. He follows his brother to find out where he can find her and the two end up at the competition.

Posing as a sound technician, Rock kidnaps Laura in a video truck as Leroy waits for his brother to return. Seeing this, Leroy attempts to act and is too late. He does find a clipboard that Rock dropped that says "Eddie Arkadian Productions" on it.

We finally see Angela's video for her song "Dirty Boy", and it's pretty wretched. Laura watches it with disinterest. After it's over, she tells Eddie that she isn't going to play the video on her show. Just as Eddie's about to get rough, Leroy bursts in, takes out all of the henchmen, and tells Eddie to back off before dunking him in the fishtank. Leroy gets away with Laura.

At Laura's apartment, she gives him back his medallion, now tied to a ribbon. She flirts with him and he awkwardly leaves. Leroy walks through New York and finds Sum Dum Goy's fortune cookie shop. Three Asian teens refuse to let him in, though, and even take his hat.

Meanwhile, at Leroy's father's pizza restaurant, Sho'nuff shows up looking for Leroy. He and his goons wreck the shop and Sho'nuff leaves, telling Leroy's father to pass on the message that Leroy has to fight. Leroy shows up shortly after and his brother rebuffs him for not standing up to Sho'nuff when he had the chance.

Leroy angrily trains until he falls to his knees, exhausted. In the middle of meditating, Laura shows up and asks if he is interested in being her bodyguard. He flatly declines and she leaves, annoyed at his distance.

Eddie and Rock hire new goons and we're treated to Angela and her dancers rehearsing another song. After they leave, she tells him she doesn't want him to kill anybody and then calls him out on his selfishness. After an argument, she tells him off and leaves. Later on, Eddie hires Sho'nuff to take out Leroy.

Leroy runs into Laura and apologizes for his attitude earlier. In her car, he describes The Glow to her, then nervously and very awkwardly admits that he doesn't know how to be with a woman. They get to 7th Heaven and she plays clips from Bruce Lee movies on the screen as more electro Motown music plays. He takes cues from the romantic clips and kisses her as his brother witnesses it from the rafters. One of the clips then gives Leroy an idea on how to enter Sum Dum Goy's place in disguise, and so he leaves. Leroy's brother shows up to yell at Laura, then witnesses her being kidnapped once again by Rock and Eddie.

Leroy's ploy seems to fail pretty quickly as the three teens unmask him in seconds. After he convinces them that they're mistaken about his identity, they invite him to play a game of craps with them - a game he obviously isn't familiar with.

Angela comes by Leroy's training school looking for Leroy and talks to Johnny, telling him that Leroy should stay away from 7th Heaven because Eddie's out to get him. Meanwhile, at 7th Heaven, Eddie has tied up Laura and Richie.

Leroy teaches the teens how to play craps "the way we play in Harlem", which involves a hopscotch outline. When he shows his medallion to try and see Sum Dum Goy, they keep it and lead him out of the building. He kicks the door in and starts getting rough. The teens show him that Sum Dum Goy is really just an automated computer, mass-producing fortunes for their cookies. Leroy confronts his teacher, who tells him that he needs no master, and that the medallion was just a belt buckle. Then the teacher leaves to visit his mother in Miami. Leroy goes to confront Eddie at 7th Heaven after locking Johnny in a closet to keep him from getting in the way. Johnny is freed by a child and they run to follow Leroy.

At 7th Heaven, Leroy is confronted by Eddie's newly hired goons and beats them all easily, until a giant wrestler named Goliath starts gaining ground against him. Leroy's students rush into the club at that point and overtake the rest of the goons. Eddie and Rock make off to the back with Laura, and Richie dances his way out of his ropes. Really.

Leroy follows them into the storage area in the back of the club, followed by Richie, who knocks out Rock and then gets caught by one of Sho'nuff's henchmen. Leroy knocks him out and, soon after, Sho'nuff appears, ready for battle. They fight and, after the obligatory kung fu back-and-forth, Leroy harnesses The Glow and wins. Eddie pulls out his gun and fires. Leroy catches the bullet in his mouth and takes down Eddie, hanging him up on a chain as the police arrive to take him away. Leroy gets the girl, the end.

In a movie filled with over-the-top acting, Julius J. Carry III, portraying Sho'nuff, sets himself in his own league. Carry sprays ham on the little scenery he doesn't chew up completely, in all the best ways. On the other hand, Leroy's actor, the martial artist Taimak, was taught how to act on the set of this film. Where this would normally hurt a movie, I felt that Taimak's understated and slightly wooden delivery lent itself well to the character of Leroy, emphasizing how removed from typical youth society he is and also making a great counterpoint to the fever pitch of jive and bluster that most of the other characters maintain. Leroy telling the Asians, "Oh no, I had too much already," when they're trying to get him to smoke and drink killed me, and I believe it wouldn't have worked if it had been given to a more trained actor.

The filmmakers seemed to aim to cover multiple genres with The Last Dragon, specifically kung fu, action, blaxploitation, comedy, and musical. Unlike many that attempt this sort of gumbo approach and come off as uneven, I think this one succeeds - well, for the most part, as the music numbers largely feel out of place and too long. This was certainly the result of having Motown Records founder Berry Gordy as producer, and director Michael Schultz who directed Krush Groove earlier that year, which the music scenes at 7th Heaven had me flashing back to more than once.

This movie references race a lot, and often in dated ways. This comes as no surprise in a blaxploitation pic whose entire premise hook is ascribing an Asian role to a black character. I did notice that often the most racist jokes were delivered by characters of the target race - the Asian teens at Sum Dum Goy mocking stereotypical Asian speech and mannerisms, Johnny calling himself "Oriental", and Leroy saying of blacks that "we all just look alike". On the other hand, there's a lot of "coolie" being thrown around haphazardly, so make no mistake, it's not the most sensitive film out there. Beyond the racial aspect, everything in the plot's all been done before and that's clearly the way it likes things. Shorten or cut out some of the music performances and the execution of the story would have a near perfect pacing and flow in my opinion.

And now, like so many aspects of the movie, I've covered something of a spectrum myself in watching it. It's a very different movie from what I remembered it to be when I was young and plastered, and, unlike most movies I remember liking while wasted and/or young, I ended up enjoying this one on a straighter viewing.

Okay, it's your turn, Angie and Noel. Did you find The Glow, or just a couple of filthy Converse?

Angie

I had never heard of The Last Dragon before Jak picked it for the exchange, and when I heard the phrase "martial arts musical", I knew I was in for something strange. I just didn't realize how strange. It starts off well enough, showing our hero performing moves just as we saw Sho Kosugi do at the beginning of the Ninja films. The music is clearly from Motown records, and while it may not be the normal music you'd expect to hear behind someone performing martial arts, it works well as Taimak performs them in a way reminiscent of dance. It gave me the impression that this combination just might work. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie didn't follow through.

The film can't seem to decide if it wants to be a tribute to martial arts films with the twist of an African American protagonist, an outrageous parody of the same with Blaxploitation elements, or just a vehicle to push Motown Records music. We have scenes where Leroy is trying to learn his martial arts, follow the ways of his master, and grow as a person. Then we have moments where Sho'nuff and his thugs trash things while spewing racial slurs. Then we have to sit through music videos, some of them parodies, some just there to say, "Hey, isn't DeBarge great? Buy his new hit single!" These rapid changes left me unable to really settle into the film and enjoy the ride, and definitely left me unable to really care about our main characters at all.

As such I'm left with the ability to enjoy certain moments or characters and not really care about the plot. I find most of the scenes with Angela really amusing, with her "Madonna meets Cyndi Lauper" parody music performances and her over-the-top outfits. I also was pleasantly surprised to see her stand up for herself and walk away from Eddie. Something about the fact that Richie is always wearing leather pants adds an extra bit of amusement to his "mature for his age" personality. And there are funny moments to be found when the movie just completely lets go and is completely silly. It's just that those over-the-top moments cheapen the more serious ones.

Any moment with the character of Laura Charles had me flashing back to my viewing of Krush Groove, a film we may or may not ever cover here. I didn't realize this was made by the same director, but I'm not surprised. That film is a loose biopic of Def Jam creator Russell Simmons, but quickly becomes a vehicle to try to make you fall in love with Sheila E, and instead just makes you incredibly tired of her. Vanity is better used here, and a better actress than Sheila, but still not a particularly strong supporting character. Taimak himself is an incredibly weak lead, much better at his martial arts than his acting, so between the two of them, the film becomes tedious at parts.

This film is perhaps the most fun as a way to spot cameos, between a tiny Keshia Knight playing Leroy's sister, Ernie Reyes Jr suddenly showing up near the end to join the big fight, or, for a Parker Lewis fan like me, seeing B. J. Barie appear as one of Richie's friends. It seems like a film best experienced in moments rather than as a full dose. I could see myself replaying some of these clips, but not really wanting to watch the whole film over again.

Noel

Before I sit down to watch the The Last Dragon, I wanted to take a moment to say that I've seen it before. Or at least the last hour or maybe the last half. All I know is that I didn't catch the beginning of the film and didn't even know what the title of it was for several years. This was about two decades ago, on an upper tier movie channel around '92-'93. My dad and I were big into Hong Kong cinema, including the works of a Mr. Bruce Lee, and random channel flipping brought me to this young black man who was even more deeply drawn to and driven by the inspiring image of Lee; shaping his body, his philosophy, the entire core of his life around the skills of his lost idol. It was a touching theme, one that inspired me to go out and start exercising. Which lasted about 20 minutes before I was plopped back in front of my Sega Genesis. I don't remember much else, aside from a goofy big bad guy at the end, and both sides developing these chi abilities with glowing lines drawn around their swinging limbs.

As I said, it wouldn't be until around '97-98, when I first gained regular access to the internet and sites like IMDB were already taking off, that I was able to find out what this film was. Even then, I lacked that extra kick to finally grab a copy and revisit it. That kick has now come. Will this film be the ultimate testament to the power of pure fandom dedication? Will it be dripping 80s cheese? Likely, it'll be both.

So let's slide that disc in and press play...

.........

.........It would seem I have some gaps in my memory. I didn't remember that Leroy's fandom of Bruce Lee is just some background flavor to his already dedicated years of martial arts training, and instead of just being a lonely fanboy, he actually has his own school (which he teaches while clad in Lee's trademark yellow track suit). I didn't remember that the actual bad guy is a tiny bald white dude trying to put his girlfriend's music video on tv just so he can feel like he's accomplishing something. I didn't remember that Vanity is the host of said music video show and guides us through gloriously impractical dance numbers and video montages. I didn't remember that Mike Starr and William H. Macy are among the bad guy's thugs. I didn't remember that Ernie Reyes Jr., future star of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze and Surf Ninjas, shows up in the last half hour at all of 12-years-old and proceeds to mow his way through goons with his already blossoming skills and charm. Sure enough, Ernie Reyes Sr. was fight choreographer.

As Jak said about his experience, this is a very different film than what I remembered it being, and I was totally unprepared for where it would go. I knew Sho'nuff was wild, but Julius J. Carry III fumes with so much rage every frame he's in that heat ripples practically radiated from my television (though that might have just been the actual heat of my tv, as it's about 3 degrees in Minnesota please send help in the form of kindling and combustible papers). When his fingers kick into the Glow, with searing red energy and high voltage sparks, the performance from Carry III alone makes it one of the most convincing visual effects I've ever seen.

Sho'nuff is a wild character played in a wild way, but it helps that he's surrounded by a wild world in which to sell it. This is a world where Laura Charles can edit a music video on the fly from the booth of a dance club, while somehow also producing a song about a topic (The Glow) of which she's only just learned. This is a world where a video game magnate is named Eddie Arkadian, and he has a flesh eating fish in the middle of his living room. This is a world where Asian people acting like black people will make fun of a black person acting Asian. This is a world where "the baddest of the bad" evil henchmen auditions are a thing that happen.

This is a film where logic doesn't exist because that's not the point of any of it. This is a parable, this is a fantasy. It's not supposed to make sense or fit the confines of reality, as long as it stays true to the characters. And here it does. What Taimak lacks in star charisma and acting talent, he more than makes up for not just with his impressive physique and martial arts skills, but with his natural boyish charisma, which totally sells this kind young man eager to truly find his place beyond cultural boundaries he doesn't identify with. When he's knocked down, I felt it. When he comes awkward and giddily in love, I felt it. When he surges with the glow and finds the master within, I felt it. Leroy is a wonderful little character played in just the right way.

Just the right way is how I'd describe the film as a whole. This is one of those movies, like Hackers or Flash Gordon, that isn't easy to pin down as either good or bad, because it doesn't care. It just set out to be exactly the type of film it wanted to be, and pulls it off in just the right ways. When Sho'nuff crashes the movie theater, it's a garish madhouse, an exaggerated comic book filled with larger-than-life personalities projected against the restrained face of Bruce Lee on the screen. When we kick into music, we don't just get a tune on the soundtrack, we get fully produced dance number spectacles, and a Motown by way of Queen hero theme as asses are being handed out in the third act. We don't just get a villain, we get a crazed megalomaniac with a temper flaring his rage to a higher degree than his height, surrounded by people he failed to turn into superstars who would make him even richer, and a brutal warrior looking to fight the only person who refuses to fight him because he's a fighter dammit and fighting all he as to fight with. With a film like this, it's not hard to slip off the tracks. One way to go is Freaked, where you heap so much zaniness on top of zaniness that you're making it seem funnier and cleverer than it actually is by burying the majority of the stuff that isn't working. The other is That Which Came After Part 5 And Shall Not Be Named, where it had all the wild ideas and punchlines, but delivered with so little passion and so tonally off that they sink faster than a nickle in a roll of belly chub.

Here, they have interesting material. It's crazy material, completely out there, but it goes far enough to grab a viewer's attention without going so far as to become garish. And it's necessary as the plot is otherwise typical martial arts movie tropes, and it's through the bizarre that they become refreshed. And then it's given to people who care. A director with a good eye who knows how to have fun and keep the energy flowing without going so far over-the-top that it loses focus. A cast who bring all their characters to life, makes them interesting, and, most importantly never winks at how silly it all is. A catchy, danceable score that gives a rhythm to the fights and keeps the pace at a constant note.

I can't say this is a good film, but nor can I say it's bad. It is exactly the film it set out to be, and is so to an exceptional degree. If this type of thing isn't your bag, then this will probably be the equivalent of shoving your head into musty luggage that's been sitting in the attic so long that you don't know what's been living in it. But if this is your type of thing, then I think you'll have a damn good time watching it. I certainly did.

That light you see around my enthusiastically displayed thumbs up, Jak? That's from a flashlight, but let's just pretend like I've had years of training and am producing The Glow.

Jak

The last few months, I've tried to guess what you two's reactions to this month's film would be. I'm usually wrong. With this one, though, I nailed both impressions dead on. Maybe I've been doing this with both of you long enough now to have picked up on the more subtle nuances of the generalized criteria each of you employ. Maybe there's enough similarity between the approaches of the other mid-80s fare we've been viewing recently that it was sort of telegraphed by your earlier reactions to similarly genre-bending movies. Or maybe I just got lucky this time and will be dead wrong again next time. So as I really have nothing else to add here that hasn't already been said, let's sing a verse or five as Angie rolls her eyes at us.

"Take life one day at a time, that's what a wise man said to me..."

We'll be back next month with... something a little different.

BMX Bandits (1983)... Noel's Pick for November

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 02:13:00 +0000

Noel

P.J. and Goose are a pair of teens who want nothing more than to spend every day popping wheelies on their BMX bikes. They're quickly joined by Judy, to whom they offer to make up for accidentally costing her a job by promising to help get some wheels of her own... just as soon as they can afford repairs for their bikes, which were also damaged in the accident. They ponder their options, and during a failed attempt to gather clams, they come across a mysterious package hidden beneath the water.

The Boss has led his gang through a series of successful and sensational bank heists, and now plots to rob an armored truck. Key to the mission are a set of walkie talkies keyed to police frequencies, so he sends two of his goons, Whitey and Moustache, to retrieve the package, which has been hidden beneath the water.

Sure enough, the packages are one and the same as the kids decide to cash in on the fancy walkie talkies by selling them to other kids in the area, thus getting their bikes all tricked out and Judy popping wheelies on one of her own. Whitey and Moustache don't take long to catch up, and the chase begins as they pursue our teen trio through a graveyard, in and out of a mall, and down a waterslide, all to the accompaniment of slickly shot BMX bike stunts overlaid with synth whoosh and zap noises.

The plot of this story is about as basic as you can get, roughly there just to string along a set of circumstances where our kids' team of professional stunt riders (including a man in a wig as Judy) show off their pops and spins and jumps off of conveniently placed ramp-like objects, as well as some great stunt driving as the goons skid after the kids in their increasingly trashed muscle car. There's a lot of fun energy to these sequences, as the crew literally just looked around town for places it would be neat to run a bike through, and built little bits and stunts around what they found. The editing is smooth and quick, the camera always crisply framed, with some great shots where it's mounted right on the bikes and cars in question. It's all silly and predictable and basic, but I'll be damned if I don't always have a smile on my face as bright as the pastel color codings of our heroes.

What really pulls me into the film are the lead kids. There's just as little on paper for them to work with as there is the plot, but there's a improvisational flourish which again elevates it a bit as P.J. and Goose have a comfortable banter they've grown up with, and Judy instantly settles into their exchanges as she becomes the kindred spirit they never knew they were missing. The original plan of the story was to have a romance develop between her and P.J., but this was axed as we see both boys show an interest in her, only for her to gently turn them down and insist on keeping relations with both platonic. It settles into a surprisingly refreshing dynamic, especially for the 80s, where the boys accept that the girl doesn't need to be into one of them to be a part of the group who's seen as an equal.

Well, I say equal, but Judy does still spend most of the climax as a damsel in distress. She does do her part to annoy and sabotage the baddies after she's been snatched, but the boys get to do all the action as they race after in pursuit. Part of this is because Judy was originally written as a much more token "girl" role, but the charisma of the actress caught the director's eye, so he again improvised and bumped her presence up. I wish he could have retooled the climax a bit, but it is what it is.

And that actress playing Judy is Nicole Kidman, all of 15 at the time and already a head taller than most of her male co-stars. Her height actually lends her a good physicality in the role, even though that's not her doing most of the bike riding. Her elvish grin and mop of red hair are also endlessly charming as she trades barbs with the boys, both of whom are also wonderfully natural in their parts. Jame Lugton gives Goose that gangly wit as he snaps out one-liners and recounts horror movie plots at inappropriate moments. He fell out of acting for a while, but it's nice to see he's come back to the game in the last decade. Angelo D'Angelo is the reverse, having had a pretty strong career in both supporting and lead roles up to the late 90s before disappearing. It's not hard to see why he kept on as, even here, he has an impressively toned physique, good looks, a leading-man spring in his step, and crisp delivery that holds its own in the banter.

The bad guys are an interesting lot, with Moustache and Whitey looking like low-rent costume party impersonations of Freddy Mercury and Billy Idol. John Ley and David Argue have a wirey physicality as they dive head first into likely painful gags and prat falls in their pursuit of the kids. It does get too cartoony at times, and there are moments where their constant arguing over who gets to drive does grate, but there are some really fun and memorable moments, like the horror movie pursuit through the graveyard as they don hideous goblin masks, or Whitey's little dance on the speedboat, or the genuinely creepy moment where they corner Judy... until it gets all goofy again. And Bryan Marshall is fine as The Boss, there just isn't much to the character as he's the typical White Guy In Suit Tony and I kept encountering in Automan and Street Hawk.

The film leads up to a major climax where our leads gather together an army of dozens of other kids on BMX bikes - all of whom hope to use the reward money on the crooks to pay for a BMX track they can all share - chase after the villains and take down armed goons with a barrage of pelted bags of flour. It's a chaotic mess of a sequence, but in all the right ways. The climax does unfortunately go beyond that, with a weak chase capped by a pointless gag as everyone becomes covered in soap bubbles, but then the theme song, "Ready to Fly" by the Papers, kicks in as we see all the kids celebrating their new BMX track with a series of races. Which all three of our heroes win, of course.

This is not a great film. It's a good kids film, but I can see how the pace can be wonky, the constant "bah ba-dah, bah bah dah" score can grate, the endless silliness of the bad guys can pedal the roll of an eye, and all the general goofery and BMX worship can be a bit much for an adult to enjoy, and so I don't expect Angie and Jak to like this film all that much, if at all. For me, though, every viewing burrows deep into my nostalgia. Which is weird, not only because I was never so into bike riding that I ever really knew what BMX meant, but because I never saw this film as a kid. I caught it on a movie channel about four years ago for the first time, loved the hell out of it, even kept an eye out for a future airing so I could let it be the first thing I'd taped with my VCR in about a decade (the only available DVDs at the time were crummy pan&scan releases and what aired on the movie channel was the gorgeous widescreen print which now graces a Blu-Ray). It's become one of those films I throw on a couple times a year just to cheer myself up, and it's nestled right into my nostalgia sweet spots alongside the likes of The Wizard and Goonies and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie. I really adore this movie, and I'm glad its cult popularity is again starting to catch on.

Jak? Angie? Are you ready to fly?

Jak

With Rad just three months behind us, I was prepared for more of the same from BMX Bandits. I nodded when it started off with the same kind of stylized angles and closeups of masked bicycle action featuring the two adolescent leads. "Yes, this is about right." Then the pig-masked bank job happened, I straightened up in my seat a bit, and wondered just where the movie was going to take us with this.

The two leads' lines were completely unnatural, full of one-liners and obvious setups, like the dialogue ethic of Kevin Smith filtered through late night talk show monologue authors. Once I got accustomed to their cadence and meter, I found them likeable and charming. The goons tended toward overacting, particularly Moustache, though it didn't stand out nearly as much as it would in a picture that's played straighter. I felt Judy provided a nice complement to the duo's dynamic, as opposed to being an overly obnoxious foil or over-wrought wedge, which is how I find the "potential love interest" is usually written to be in these kinds of movies.

And even as I say "these kinds of movies", what kind of movie IS this? For starters, it's one that's not afraid to dip into a number of genres and wildly varied setpieces. I can't think of another film off the top of my head that has a graveyard chase sequence and bicycles going through water slides. That's not to say that all of the sequences worked. The chase that made up the third quarter of the movie really began to drag to the point that I needed to think a bit to remember what the plot was again. As a whole, it's a cartoonish adventure picture that I found enjoyable enough. Really, expecting much more than "enjoyable enough" from a children's movie as an adult would be as ridiculous as that ending song. My goodness.

Angie

The first time I heard of the film BMX Bandits, it was because it was mentioned by another blogger friend as one of his favorite childhood films. Beyond the fact that it starred Nicole Kidman, I knew nothing about it. Rad had already taught me I wasn’t interested in BMX bikes at all, but I left those feelings at the door and approached the film unbiased.

The end result is that I don’t necessarily like this movie, but I don’t dislike it either. I like that the plot is set up early and keeps moving throughout, and there’s a strong 80s flavor to the action and comedy, not to mention the outfits. Being Australian rather than American, I also noticed a trait somewhat close to what I think of as British humor, particularly in the line delivery of our three young stars.

Beyond that, there’s not a whole lot to say. The incredibly noticeable male stunt double for Nicole Kidman in her "show off" scene makes you wonder why they decided to keep that moment in at all. I suppose because without it, she’s not much more than the damsel in distress Noel mentions. I was glad to see her hold her own once she was captured, but it still is a little disappointing that they always chose her for such situations.

The chase scene is also overly long to me. While they do their best to keep changing the setting and having different things happen, and I enjoy some of the camera angles they use, there’s only so many ways I can watch kids weave through obstacles on bikes and a car barrel through things, and I just got bored with it. It feels too much like they were padding the film for time. A lot of the jokes are aimed just a little too young, as well, so that watching it as an adult, I’m more likely to roll my eyes than to laugh (they run into a thing of women’s underwear! Now they’re all covered in soap bubbles!) On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder if the writers of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure saw this film and loved it. If not, it’s a fun coincidence that both films feature extended water slide scenes and people causing havoc in a mall.

While I can’t say I would ever watch this film again, it wasn't a painful experience either. If I had seen it as a kid, I might have felt differently.

Noel

I totally get why BMX Bandits didn't do much to click with either of you. As you say, Angie, it does aim quite young, and yes, Jak, it's really damn ridiculous. For me, that's the magic of it, that it takes my mind back to being a kid as I race alongside the chase scenes with the same zeal with which I once staged entire epics with my G.I. Joes. It's the type of movie where kid me would absolutely love to hang out with these teens I'd never meet in real life, while running and toying with the safety-scissor dangers of gangsters who don't exist. There is a dark edge to the film, with real weapons, and masked thugs lurking in the dark shadows of graves, but all threats are traversible as a popped wheelie causes danger to turn on itself in a goofy, stumbling scuffle, so any sense of menace comes with the promise of a Metos grin at the amusing way in which it's overcome.

Very few films are able to take me back to this headspace. I mentioned a few, all of which are tied not only to the feelings of childhood, but the actual experience of having seen them as a child. What surprises me about BMX Bandits is that I have yet to encounter another recent discovery that enmeshes itself so thoroughly in this part of my nostalgia that it conveys that exact same mindset, where I actually experience that child-like squee instead of merely appreciating it as some form of critical contextualization. It's a weird thing, and I still don't entirely know how to explain it beyond this.

But that's a personal reaction, one that's very much singular to me, and so I can't be surprised (and I wasn't) that the two of you didn't have the same reaction. And yet, I'm glad you didn't hate it. It didn't entirely click, but it also sounds like it didn't entirely annoy the crap out of you either, and that you both did have some measure of fun. Which is all I was really hoping for. :)

We'll be back on the 1st of December with a pick from Jak: The Last Dragon (1985)

Freaked (1993)... Angie's Pick for October

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 00:34:00 +0000

Angie

There are a number of movies I have memorized by heart, but none more so than the Bill & Ted films. (Well, maybe The Little Mermaid. It's close.) I don't just know all the lines, I know the facial expressions, the musical cues, everything. While the films sparked my love for Keanu Reeves in my youth, and makes me more forgiving than most of his poor acting skills even today, I also hold a special place in my heart for his co-star, Alex Winter. Alex is a little more difficult to find than his counterpart, spending a lot of his time post-Bill behind the camera rather than in front of it. But he did have one starring role after those films, in a film he co-wrote and co-directed called Freaked.

The film starts off with a fantastic animated credits sequence that is sure to get your attention. The punk score and bright colors may scream early 90s at you, but the animation style is so interesting that it masks the dated nature of it all.

From there, we're brought to the set of talk show, where former childhood star Ricky Coogan, who has been horribly disfigured, comes to tell his story. He was approached by the large corporation EES (Everything Except Shoes) to promote Zygro 24, a chemical that has been banned in the US and Europe. The company (whose CEO is played by William Sadler, aka Death in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) insists the product is safe, even though the guy who works at the plant shrinks down in size as he's explaining all this to Ricky. They offer Ricky 5 million dollars, and as pompous and greedy as he is, he can't refuse.

Ricky takes his best friend Ernie with him. Ernie is played by Michael Stoyanov, best known for being the less "whoa-ful" of Blossom's brothers. Ricky's biggest fan, Stewie, has also stowed away on the plane, and the boys get a great laugh at seeing him hurt. At the airport, groups are protesting the chemical and Ricky's involvement with it. Ricky finds one of the girls attractive and covers himself in bandages just to get close to her. He's unable to keep up the act when she insults his acting ability.

On the way to the factory, he sees advertisements for a freak show and they decide to stop. They meet Elijah Skuggs, who manages the show. He offers to show them a private exhibit, since the show isn't going on that night. It's all just a ruse, though, and he actually ties the three of them up in order to turn them into freaks, which he does with the help of his machine and Zygrot 24. The transformations are done with stop motion animation and a lot of fun. He merges Ernie with Julie, the protester, and turns Ricky into an even more gruesome form of Two-Face. He really wanted to transform Ricky completely, but ran out of Zygrot 24, so he locks Ricky in his outhouse until he can get more to finish the job. The outhouse is apparently a TARDIS, as it's huge on the inside.

Ernie and Julie can't help but vomit when they look at him, and while their reaction is obviously exaggerated for laughs, his get up is quite disgusting, particularly when he spurts puss from warts on his face and hand. Ricky meets the other freaks, including an uncredited Keanu Reeves covered in hair as Ortiz the dog boy. There is also a human worm, a nose man , a cow boy (as in, he's a cow), a bearded lady (played by Mr. T), sock head (voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait), The Eternal Flame (who continually farts flame), a female pinhead, and a frog man (who's just a French guy in a diving suit).

Ricky is not yet ready to accept his fate. The freaks share their stories with him (including a hammer lying on the ground that used to be a wrench), but Ricky is still in denial. He's convinced that EES will come and save him and put him back to normal. He also discovers that he has a psychic connection with Stewie now, and Stewie goes around telling people about Ricky's plight, which gets him captured. I think we're not technically supposed to know that it's EES capturing him, but who else do you think it would be?

The freaks perform a show, and for the main event, Ricky does Shakespeare. The audience loves him. A man from EES arrives and tells Ricky how ugly he is, and the crowd turns on him. Ricky flies into a rage and the audience leaves in a panic, but Skruggs is happy.

Ricky takes advantage of a milk man to escape the outhouse, but two giant Rastafarian eyeballs stop him. Ricky finds out that Skruggs' plan is to have him transform into a full monster and kill all the other freaks at the end of the next show. On his way back to the outhouse, he runs into the other freaks, who are also trying to escape as milkmen. He gets into a fight with Ortiz when they don't believe him. Ortiz is distracted by a squirrel, and when the eyeballs run him off, the freaks accept Ricky as their leader. They hatch a plan to defeat Skruggs and escape. They sneak into his lab and manage to make a formula that would turn Ricky into a good superfreak, but they leave it there when Skruggs shows up.

EES arrives with Stewie in tow. They want to use Skruggs mutation machine to mutate workers so they have extra arms and other extremities to increase production. Stewie sneaks around them to steal the good superfreak formula and bring it to Ricky during the freak show, but an audience member pours it over Stewie instead, transforming him. In response, Skruggs pours his goo on Ricky, completing his transformation, and Ricky and Stewie fight. The costumes for the two superfreaks are really impressive.

In the midst of the chaos, EES tries to steal Skuggs machine, so he pours goo on them as well, merging them all into nothing but a shoe. Because of course. Ricky almost kills Stewie, until he realizes he truly cares about the boy. Skuggs attacks Ricky, but Ricky is far too strong for him. Skuggs ends up in a vat of the chemical and comes out as Brooke Shields, the host of the talk show we saw at the beginning of the movie. Most of the freaks are cured because they had eaten some macaroons they didn't realize had antidote in them. There's a fun reveal where Ricky had been in shadow during the talk show scenes during the film, and his profile looks like him in freak form, but when they turn the light, on you realize there's just a cactus behind him. Brooke Shields is revealed to still be Skuggs, but Julie (now separated from Ernie) shoots and kills him. But of course there is a fake out death so Ernie can then arrive and shoot him again, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Writing out the plot for this film, and watching it right on the heels of Leonard Part 6, you can see that these movies are both overly silly in their own way, and logic is thrown out the window for the sake of laughs. But unlike Leonard Part 6, it seems pretty clear to me that everyone on the set of this film was having a ridiculously good time. They know the absurdity they are dealing with, and they embrace it fully. Some of the jokes are in poor taste and don't age well by today's standards, but I'm more willing to forgive it because the movie as a whole is irreverent and gross.

The initial creature designs are done by Screaming Mad George, and for the most part, they look fantastic. While their movements aren't always perfect, they are well done. The biggest problem is for Winter, as the design leaves him limited in conveying emotion and speaking in a muffled voice behind the half prosthetic in his mouth. But even so, I think he does a great job with it, and the fact that this is a comedy and not a drama means it's not much of an issue.

The movie manages to be both a chance to see Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves, and William Sadler acting together again, and also a silly comedy that hits my funny bone in just the right way. But I can also see it not appealing to everyone. While I'm hoping both Jak and Noel will appreciate it, I figure it's also entirely possible they may not care for it at all.

Noel

Like Angie, I couldn't help but compare this film to Leonard Part 6 while watching it. On paper, they're absolutely the same type of chaotic, silly nonsense. The plot is crazy, the characters completely over-the-top, random asides and gags are pelted at us several times a minute just to keep us on our toes. The problem with Leonard was that it had actors who didn't get how to deliver the material and filmmakers who didn't get how to capture it. Here, we don't have that problem. Everyone has just the right mad gleam in their eyes as they sink their grotesquely mutated teeth into every crazy line, and properly mug with the pantomime zeal of a silent film actor in every perfectly framed, canted, or whirling shot. Every action, every choice, every music cue, every background drone of ignited farts just because the Eternal Flame is standing there, is pitched to perfection so as to sell each moment for all it's worth.

The problem is that I don't find a lot of it to be worth all that much.

No, Angie, I don't enjoy this film. I don't dislike it, and certainly don't loathe it to the degree I do Leonard, because they do admirably pull off everything they set out to achieve. That's good for them, and I appreciate them for it. I just don't know that I wanted to see them achieve everything they set out to. A decade ago, I probably would have thought this was one of the funniest films around. I may be steadily growing a stick up my butt, because these days I'm a lot more sensitive to things like the gay bashing when those of a "sensitive disposition" are focused on and told to get out, frequent abuse is heaped on a child for a chuckle just because he's aggravating in his sincere admiration, and Rosie the Pinhead is just downright wrong, especially to someone like myself who has a mentally handicapped individual in my life. Surprisingly, I don't find Mr. T's bearded lady as transphobic as I expected. It's a transformation she took on willingly, and wears it with confidence and grace, and is surprisingly never made fun of for it.

I wish she had represented the majority of the film, that these are genuine people beneath their outward unusual appearances. There are moments where the film seems to want to explore this angle, of people not only longing to be accepted by the public, but by themselves, yet they're far too fleeting for the film to ever find that anchor of emotional weight. We hear about what Ernie and Julie learn by having their gender politics thrown out of whack, but we never really get to see them take that journey because they're too busy actually whacking one another. Ortiz, a proud, confident man, is on the verge of being the one to challenge Ricky to accept the state he's found himself in and wear it with pride, but then Ortiz is off chasing a squirrel and we don't see him again until the end. Even Worm's lectures come in the voice of a snob, and end with him desiring someone to wipe his ass for him. The film gets so caught up in all these crazy things they can get away with that they forget to take a few extra minutes to try to be something just a little bit more, just a little bit deeper, to ultimately give it all meaning. And isn't the theme of accepting who you are left somewhat moot by the majority of them being cured in the end?

The look of the film absolutely is superb, with excellent makeup effects of both a subtle and completely over-the-top nature, but there's a point where they go maybe just a bit beyond over-that-top than they needed to. I love Worm, and Cowboy, and especially the Rastafarian eyeballs with machine guns (not as racist as you'd expect it to be), but I don't know that I need the random moments of bloody gore as people actually violently die, the constant references to turds, and have I mentioned I hate few things as much as vomit jokes? Yeah, you can imagine how much I loved the scene where Julie and Ernie are firehosing the contents of their shared stomach. Additionally, a lot of the actual gags and one-liners fall flat for me, so all I'm left with are shrill sights of absolute grotesquery, screaming and flinging puss at me from my TV. Again, I can't say it's entirely bad as that's exactly the film they wanted to make, but it sure doesn't make for a night of entertainment I enjoy partaking in.

Which isn't to say I dislike it all. I did get a few solid laughs in there, like with the Ramada Inn towels, the backstory of the hammer, and the notion that thirteen people disguised as milkmen is just one milkman too many, and there are some great performances, particularly by Randy Quaid, Michael Stoyanov, and *gasp* Keanu Reeves. The problem isn't them, it's just that a lot of the humor feels forced, like we're supposed to laugh at it just because of how absurd and random and grotesque it is, instead of actually crafting something witty which has something to say.

Again, I don't hate this movie. It's amusing enough and has some neat ideas and visual effects, but it ultimately doesn't work for me. All of the energy and garish inventiveness on display makes for a lovingly crafted rubber mask of an entertaining film experience, but once you get past the surface, it's still just a rubber mask, with nothing beneath it to give depth to what we see on the outer layer. One could argue that Alex Winter is what lies beneath this mask, but while I think he's definitely a capable filmmaker, and I've enjoyed some of the other work I've seen (especially the live-action Ben 10 movies), he's not a particularly gifted storyteller nor comedic writer. And I'm sorry Angie, he's not that good of an actor, either. And it's not just the makeup, as he's really lousy in the scenes where he's not covered in prosthetics, too. Too much overly forced mugging, dancing around with word emphasis which kills a lot of his one-liners, and he's just not that appealing of a lead.

So I'm sorry, Angie. It didn't work for me.

Jak

Unlike Leonard Part 6, I'd never heard of this movie before, not so much as the dimmest memory of a sun-bleached box in the video store, so I didn't have any idea of what to expect. The intense and very uniquely well done opening credits suggested I was in for a sort of gross-out acid trip of a movie.

As usual, my initial impression was wrong. Well, sort of. It's a lot closer to an edgy cartoon brought to life, successfully (the makeup is worth the price of admission alone), complete with some truly awful jokes.

Locked in an outhouse that operates under the physical laws of a Dungeons & Dragons Bag of Holding, mutated beyond any hope of returning to his former life, our hero Ricky struggles with a small door labeled "Fyre Exit" which refuses to open. "That's against the law!" he cries - out of his entire dire situation, this is what he chooses to focus his frustration on. This is one of the bits that works - or maybe I should amend that to say that this is one of the bits that works for me. This movie is so full of wildly different stabs at comedy that it's less a consistently funny movie and more a way to determine exactly what your sense of humor is. You, any of you, even you, WILL find at least two parts that will make you laugh out loud, though the rest of the movie may be a slog of groans getting to those parts.

The story is paper-thin lunacy, and I'd be grasping for cynicism if I thought that was anything other than intentional. If Rad was mid-80s concentrate, Freaked is early 90s extract. And like a lot of things from the early-to-mid 90's, it's not about the story as much as it's about the attitude and the presentation. When I looked up information on it after watching, I wasn't surprised at all to find out that the writing and directing team were also behind MTV's The Idiot Box, because the humor and pacing is much more like a sketch comedy show than most comedy films I've seen.

As Angie pointed out, the cast and crew obviously had a riot making this, and that's what makes me enjoy it far more than the similarly paced and similarly bizarre Leonard Part 6, which felt more like a paint-by-numbers, "insert joke here" affair of crass marketing than anything entertaining. If something's not going to end up being very good, it should at least have some element of "look how much fun we had" behind it. This has that all over it.

So while I didn't ultimately find it to be what I'd call "a good movie", I don't hate it for its unevenness, either. When it misses, it misses awkwardly and noticeably. However, when it hits, it hits hard and well. "The hideous frogman!" is my new favorite movie moment.

Angie

Noel, I can understand that some of the jokes here are just too offensive to be taken lightly these days. The pinhead is no doubt there as a reference to Tod Browning's Freaks, but that doesn't make her portrayal any less cringe-worthy. The gay bashing was something that was so commonplace for the time period (this is just a couple years after Alex and Keanu were calling each other the f word after hugging, for instance), but we've come so far that it comes off badly now and the attempt at making some kind of lesson about how we view gender roles with Julie and Ernie comes off completely disingenuous. The movie clearly puts attempts at comedy over being respectful or, as you point out, having any kind of meaning, and as both you and Jak said, some of those attempts just don't work. So I can certainly understand if some of the more offensive ones are too difficult to overlook.

As Jak said, this movie is very early 90s. The soundtrack, the offensiveness, and the style are all firmly from that time period. And I think it's obvious that my love of Bill & Ted goes a long way in making me fond of the film despite some of its bad spots. I'm not even going to pretend like Alex Winter is a good actor. Much like Keanu, he seems born to portray Bill S. Preston, Esquire and comes off awkward in most other roles. If this film wasn't so cartoonish in style, his acting wouldn't work. But the fact that he hasn't really done any acting since means he's aware of it as well.

And Noel is right, this film has no real message to speak of. I went through and watched the film again with commentary from Alex Winter and Tom Stern, and near the end, when Ricky stops just short of killing Stewie, Alex attempts to say that the theme of the film is that love conquers all. But he does so with a chuckle, and this is after the two of them spent most of the commentary laughing at their own jokes and occasionally reminiscing. They also pointed out repeatedly that they made this when they were 25 years old and knew nothing, and that pretty clearly shows.

When I was in college, I took a film as literature class. We had a group project, and my group picked Reservoir Dogs. At the end, after we had all talked about various scenes and how their presentation conveys various ideas and portrays the characters, the professor asked us what the message of the film was. We suggested that the film asks if there is honor among thieves, and answers it with a no. But it's a fairly shallow message. That film, like many of Tarantino's works, is more about the snappy nature of the dialogue, the excellent selection of the soundtrack, and the style he brings to his shots. And I love every bit of it. My point being that sometimes I enjoy style over substance, as long as the style is executed well.

As I said before, this movie isn't for everyone. Your tolerance for the low brow has to be pretty high. But for those not easily offended, who love a high dose of insanity and cartoonishness, this is a film worth checking out.

We'll be back on the 1st of November with a pick from Noel: BMX Bandits (1983)

Leonard Part 6 (1987)... Jak's Pick for September

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 02:40:00 +0000

Jak

I've got a vague memory of my parents renting a Bill Cosby movie called Leonard Part 6 when I was eight, and wondering why I'd never heard of the first five parts. Of course, they don't exist, and from all that I've heard in the years since, that meta-joke is the only trace of comedy that supposedly exists in the whole movie. Bill Cosby himself discouraged people from seeing it leading up to its release. "Wow," I thought, "how bad could it be?"

I've tried to write this review a few times now, and each one reads like overly snarky exaggeration or hyperbolic bile - and the internet's got way more than enough of that already. So instead, I'm going to detail the plot below as objectively as possible, with no interjections of my opinions or thoughts until the end, because it really does need to speak for itself first. This may be difficult.

It starts with a CIA agent being killed in his swimming pool by a trained rainbow trout. The CIA chief, played by Joe Don Baker, lures back Leonard Parker, a retired agent who now runs a fancy L.A. restaurant, by sending one of their agents to try to kill Leonard by way of a shootout in the restaurant's kitchen. After taking out the agent, Leonard arrives at the CIA meeting and learns of a series of murders at the hands of several different trained animals (housecats, squirrels, and gophers). Apparently, Medusa, a vegetarian woman in charge of an evil organization, has gained a formula which can take control over all the animals of the world, and Leonard is tasked with stopping her. He refuses to and leaves, saying he is retired.

Leonard's daughter has arrived at his house with her new boyfriend, a play director who is 65 years old. Leonard isn't happy about this.

A CIA agent arrives at Medusa's compound and is killed by frogs who throw his car into the water, drowning him. Meanwhile, Leonard pines for his wife, who left him seven years ago. He calls her in the middle of the night to talk about their daughter's relationship, a conversation which ends with them setting up a dinner date the next day. A four minute montage of tailors sewing clothes, and Leonard working out and getting shaved and manicured follows. Leonard's workout tape is interrupted temporarily by Joe Don Baker, giving mission details to recover the animal control sphere from the compound's "B Room". Leonard ignores this and goes to his dinner date with his wife at her house down the block from him.

They appear to be reconciling at the beginning, until she starts spilling wine and sauce all over him, ending with her smashing a plate of rice into his face. She's still angry about catching him in the middle of what appeared to be an affair. Leonard leaves, instructing his butler to drive him to a fortune teller he would always see before he'd go on his missions.

The fortune teller speaks in gibberish and slaps his face as her children throw stuffed dolls at him and laugh. She hands him a pair of ballet slippers and a red jewelry box. He is ready to accept the mission the CIA has for him and is outfitted with numerous weapons and a set of hair clippers. His butler leads him to his tank gun-equipped, rocket-powered sports car and he goes speeding to the compound, attempting to blow up the gates. Medusa laughs, watching him on security cameras as he exhausts all his firepower. She finally lets him in by opening the gates.

She sends thirteen dancing vegetarian warriors dressed as birds out against him. They dance around Leonard, scratching him up and stripping him of his remaining weapons. All appears to be lost, until Leonard puts on the ballet shoes and starts ballet dancing, which lets him win the fight against the warriors. He uses the hair clippers to shave one of them bare. Medusa, now angry, sends her armed guards after Leonard as he proceeds further into the compound, hidden amidst a group of ostriches. He reaches the room with the sphere in it, which is filled with bees (because it's the "B Room"), and opens the red jewelry box which contains a magic queen bee who leads all the bees out of the room. Leonard makes off with the sphere as the guards are covered in bees.

Leonard arrives back at his house, where he performs drunken surgery on himself to extract a bullet from his arm. Later that night, he and his wife watch their daughter's play, where she ends up nude in her scene. After the play is over, one of Medusa's agents ties up the cast and kidnaps Leonard's wife, leaving a note telling him to return the sphere if he wants his wife back.

Leonard goes to the CIA to retrieve the sphere where they are attempting to use it to control animals and failing. Leonard instructs the rabbits to attack the CIA agents, and runs off with the sphere in the chaos.

Leonard and his butler replace the fluids inside the sphere with dishwasher liquid and head to the compound, though not before the fortune teller drives next to them and switches places with the butler in the passenger seat. She gives Leonard butter, meat patties, and a hot dog weenie before leaving.

Leonard returns the sphere to Medusa at the compound and, of course, they do not return his wife. Medusa knows they replaced the fluids and says that it doesn't matter because the liquids have nothing to do with the sphere's operation. In 15 minutes she will activate the machines that will allow her to control all the animals.

Leonard is thrown into a cell with his wife where lobsters approach them menacingly. One of the lobsters cuts the wires that attach him to the wall, and he threatens another with the butter to get it to cut his wife's wires. The lobsters retreat as both of them wield butter.

Leonard and his wife storm the rest of the compound on a horse, interrupting the activation with one second remaining, and grab the sphere. He fends off the vegetarian guards with the meat patties (which burns them on contact) as his wife frees all of the animals from the compound. Medusa's sidekick takes a bite of the hot dog and his head explodes.

Leonard throws meat at the machinery, which causes everything to burst into flames. He drops Alka-Seltzer into the vats of fluid, drowning the villains in a tide of goo. Leonard escapes on the back of an ostrich as the compound self destructs. Joe Don Baker and the CIA arrive and are incensed at the destruction of the sphere, and Leonard, not caring, heads back home with his wife as the goo gushes out of the compound.

Leonard and his wife celebrate at his restaurant by her pouring and smearing food all over him. The end.

And now here's the part where I'm supposed to present my own opinions and I'm still finding it hard to construct a sentence that can adequately represent them. This movie is proof that there are things money can't improve. The sets and special effects were fantastic for a 1987 film, yet it still managed to be the most tedious movie I've watched in a long time. It's obvious which segments somebody thought were supposed to be funny, making it that much more apparent when the jokes and gags fail to land. It reminds me of the stories my friends and I would write when we were very young, before we figured out that directionless randomness doesn't necessarily equal entertainment - which leads me to now wonder if I'd have enjoyed this movie when I was eight, or if I'd have also concluded back then that this is stupid.

Actually, yeah, there it is. That's what I'm going to go with. This is stupid.

Angie

My expectations for this film were exceedingly low. If you're going to watch a film that both the director and star admit is terrible, you can't really go into viewing it any other way. Given my recent track record with the films we've been picking for the Exchange, I was steeling myself for another film that I probably wouldn't enjoy. So imagine my surprise when I found out Leonard Part 6 really isn't that bad.

Now, saying it's not bad doesn't mean it's good, and this film isn't. I'm just saying that there are moments of amusement to be gained here, if you're in the right frame of mind for them. This is an incredibly silly film, a film that is quite intentionally stupid on purpose. It's clear that Cosby was going for a kind of absurd humor throughout, but the main problem is, 9 out of 10 times, that humor falls flat. I laughed hysterically when the gang of frogs surround the agent's vehicle and then literally hop as one into the water, carrying the car and drowning him. Shortly after he had been writing down "Gribbit" to record their words. It's stupid - so, so stupid - but for that moment, at least, it hit me perfectly.

However, plenty of other moments of humor don't do the same for me. Watching Leonard's estranged wife cover him with food, for instance, is probably the most painful of the attempts at humor, primarily because it's used twice. I feel like the ballet moment could have been funny, but the fact that we're told about it as the film opens, and then see the fortune teller give him the shoes, makes the scene largely expected and therefore less absurd and more tedious. Though I do find Medusa's explanation of the dancers' origins pretty funny.

Speaking of Medusa, Gloria Foster is fantastic. I recognized her voice as the Oracle from The Matrix the moment she spoke, and I love watching her play over the top here. She really deserved a larger career than she got, and she's definitely too good for this film. It's also worth mentioning that Cosby is still Cosby here. While a little more subdued than the character most of us are used to seeing him play on his show, he's still charming and makes wonderfully expressive faces. It's just that the story and the jokes are so weak that just having him here isn't enough.

The story with his wife and daughter are pretty well done, and you can certainly see similarities in there with both his sitcoms and his comedy routines, but they take up far too much time in what is supposed to be a zany parody of James Bond. I suppose you could see it as an attempt to make the audience feel something more when the hero's ex-wife is captured, since you've witnessed so much of their broken relationship up until now, but it's truly not necessary at all and, frankly, the extra time still doesn't make their reunion any more believable. Helping him save the world doesn't mean she will automatically forgive him for cheating on her, after all.

I don't regret watching it, but I'll probably never watch it again. For a movie so badly regarded, I think that's giving it a fairly decent compliment.

Noel

Jak, I'm left in much the same position as you. I watched the first half of this movie at my dad's place, where he and I quickly fell into expressions of stupor as we stared at the screen, occasionally turning those stuporous looks at one another to confirm that, yes, we were both indeed left just as lost by this film. He gave up after half an hour, so I packed it up and finished it at home. I was left in the same state by myself, occasionally pausing the film so I could turn off my television and stare into the eyes of my reflection as I pondered how this film manages to exist in the state it does. And when the film was over, and the credits had played out in full, I realized I'd been staring at the main menu for five minutes as perceptions of the regular world slowly dawned on me. It's a mesmerizing experience, in a way, but instead of leaving me in a state of peaceful complacency, it left me empty and hollow, and chilled at the abyss I now found in myself. I'm left with unanswerable questions of "how" and "why", and an experience that can only enlighten through repetition, but when a second viewing is likely to be the same numbing hell as the first, it leaves me finally excepting the truth that some questions aren't meant to be answered.

But a lack of definite answers does not require a dismissal of the art of theories, so in order to try to purge this from my system, let me see if I can speculate about how a cinematic foreskin boil like Leonard Part 6 came into existence.

It's long forgotten now, but there was a time when Bill Cosby was both a sex symbol and a dashing male lead. Shortly before the first of his three domestic sitcoms, he starred in I, Spy with Robert Culp, where the two played a pair of dashing international sleuths who frequently saved the world, and looked sharp while doing it. In the 80s, with the rise of the summer action movie, I could imagine Cos looking at Beverly Hills Cop and saying, "Y'know, I used to be able to do that stuff. That used to be me." Thus, an idea came into his head, that of a now retired spy - with Leonard Parker resembling, but not officially his old role of Alexander Scott - who is forced back into the game while also dealing with family issues which get mixed up in events. If you look at Beverly Hills Cop, it's not impossible to have a gritty crime drama play out within comical shenanigans, and you could imagine Cosby's resolve, "We'll dooooooo that! But cleaner, so the kiddies can come see!"

So this was passed to a writer, but something was lost in the translation and, forgetting to do his researched, he mistook his old memories of I, Spy with those of Get Smart, and penned a gag-laden script filled with under-arm missiles, Jane Fonda training montages, and people being killed in silly ways by cute animals. And since the studios heard the word "Kiddies!" echoing from the direction of Bill Cosby's mouth, they mistook that to mean the little tots were the intended audience, and signed off on the script lickety split. By this point, the script had found its way back into the pudding sticky hands of Bill, who was storming about the house, reading it out loud, interspersed with cries of "How could they! How dare they! This doesn't represent my art!" but then he stopped when he heard the laughter of those metaphorical kiddies and realized it might be worth it to play along. Maybe even sell some more Jell-O. But he still had his fond memories of Alexander Scott and tried to take it a little seriously, mostly approaching the role with a buttoned-up charm... until he got to the setpiece with the vegetarian bird dancers, ostriches, and vats of dishwasher fluid brought to roiling life by Alka Seltzer, and by then his dignity was pretty much thrown out the window.

For a director, they went to a British newcomer named Paul Weilland, who apparently has actual comedy chops, as he built a decent career after Leonard when television direction brought him in touch with Rowan Atkinson, with whom he collaborated on a number of Mr. Bean episodes and a Blackadder film. He also did City Slickers 2, a sequel I don't hate. Granted, with all of these, he was working with actors at the tops of their comedic games, who not only got the jokes in the script, but helped to hone them. Here, he had a Bill Cosby who was trying to play his secret agent as either a straight, dashing lead, or as his exasperated sitcom dad, and instead of really digging into and selling the jokes of the script, Cos seemed to be embarrassed, a feeling which became infectious as nobody but the two villains even really tried to give the material on the page a chance and instead either deadpanned it or went off in directions that had nothing to do with anything. I'm thinking the butler and the psychic here.

Oh, and have I mentioned Jan de Bont yet? Jan is most famous as the director of Speed and Twister, a great pair of 90s action movies. Before taking his own seat in the directorial chair, he honed his skills as one of the top Hollywood cinematographers of the late 80s/early 90s. He did Cujo, Die Hard, Black Rain, The Hunt for Red October, and Basic Instinct. If you look at his work on Leonard, it's admirable as every shot is lovingly framed and lit. Just look at the sequence where the frogs gather under a car and hop it into a river. There's a genuine layer of tension to the buildup as you first have one, then more, then dozens of frogs and the spy in the car doesn't realize their sounds are what he's jotting down in his wiretap notes as they all suddenly leap as one and... the scene is awful. It's not awful because it's poorly done, no. It's masterfully done, it's just entirely wrong for the movie. Too much of this film is shot with the slick seriousness of a Ridley Scott movie, and this not only kills the joke, but creates a massive clash where intent and execution grind against one another, creating the mesmerizing tone which bore into my skull like an eggbeater in a metal pail full of delicious jelly beans.

And I don't understand how this happened. These are people who should know better. The director went onto better things, yet so little of the comedic filmmaker he came to be is on display here. The writer, Jonathan Reynolds, penned a pair of comedies - Switching Channels and My Stepmother Is An Alien - which, while not great, are competent works I mostly enjoy. Bill Cosby is an excellent comedian, a great sitcom lead, and even used to cut quite a slick figure in his I, Spy days, so why has it always been so hard for him to make the transition to film? Even Jan de Bont can't be accused of not getting the humor, as before this, he'd shot Ruthless People, one of the greatest screwball comedies of all time.

On paper, this is a film that should work. These are talented people, and even the stupid, nonsensical storyline, and the jokes it's filled with, aren't all that bad. Yes, they're stupid, but a stupid laugh is still a laugh, and there's nothing any stupider here than you'd find in the classic Pink Panther movies, or Austin Powers, or even Zoolander. Yes, I'm going there. Zoolander is a masterpiece, but look at that and this side-by-side and tell me, on paper, how they're any different? What isn't working here is not the conception, but the execution, as everything in the film, from the performances, to the direction and editing, to even the lack of any score in most scenes, ends up leaving it all a collection of interesting pieces that should fit, but are instead repelling one another like the same polarized ends of a magnet.

This is exactly the type of film I should enjoy, exactly the type of humor that should have me rolling in my seat with giddiness as I defend a forgotten little gem that nobody understands. Instead, I'm left with a hollow ringing in my soul, an echo of this... this... thing, I don't know, I can't come up with anything else to call it. It's a failure, yes, but one of the most bizarre and incomprehensible failures around. The basic story at its core isn't awful. The script written from it is stupid, but still serviceable and occasionally a hair clever. It could work if delivered right, but it isn't. And yet, despite not clicking with the material, nobody changed it. Instead of just playing his performance mostly straight, why didn't Cosby insist on a rewrite? Why didn't the director? Why didn't somebody sit down and say, "Fellas, this isn't working. What can we do about that?" After the movie was put together, Cos instantly came out against it, publicly tearing it a new one as a horrible film. But why was it a horrible film, Bill? Aren't you the leading star with the pull to reshape it? Aren't you the sole producer, without a gaggle of other cooks in the kitchen to blame for everything going wrong? Aren't you the guy credited with the original story, who could have taken a look at the script that was handed to you and said "No no no, this isn't what I was going for."?

Bill, who's fault is it for this film being what it is? Who's fault is it, really?

J-E-Y-O-U.

Jak

Angie, I really wish I could have found some kind of positive experience in this film like you did, as I'd have less of this bad taste in my mouth. And once again, Noel and I agree on a picture. This is beginning to become an unexpected trend. Next thing you know, I'll be watching Gunhed again and finding new layers of depth. (Don't get too excited, Noel, that was a joke.)

I went into this knowing it would be bad and was genuinely surprised that the bad movie I had in mind was so much better than the pile of awful choices that I ended up watching. I only thought I knew what failed execution looked like. We've reached a new shade of low and I think my contributions to this blog over the next few months are going to be more glowing (relatively speaking) than they would have been otherwise, just because of how much lower the bar for "bad" has been set now.

I'm not fishing for overstatement laughs here, I mean it. Ed Wood's films and Manos rank higher than this because those are at least honestly bad - there was a drive and a vision, however flawed it may have been, which was pursued, and missed its mark for one or more reasons, usually more. Leonard Part 6, though - it's some kind of cinematic poo golem, a bad movie without a soul. Whereas most soulless Hollywood fluff has at least a few laughs and thrills here and there, Leonard has this subtly shallow, cynical core that shines through its high production values, which I can't quite pinpoint beyond the lingering shots of Coke products and the overly random gags and story elements that seem to scream "the rubes oughta laugh at this."

We didn't.

We'll be back on the 1st of October with a pick from Angie: Freaked (1993)

Rad (1986)... Noel's? Pick for August

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Noel

Rad is a very specific movie which plays to a very specific type of audience. If you're the type of guy who debates how Automan and The Powers of Matthew Star rank up alongside the likes of Airwolf, you'll probably be a fan of Rad. If you custom built a BMX bike while a mix tape of Stan Bush power anthems and Tangerine Dream's Street Hawk theme played on your Walkman, you'll probably be a fan of Rad. If you ever...

Wh-wha...

what are you doing here?!

Nobody was supposed to find you sealed away with your mint and carded action figure collection for at least another 17 months!

No! Stay away! Noooooooooooo-*Zap*

Tony

Hello, Exchangers, Tony here. You might remember me as the guy who kept forcing all of those lousy Ninja movies on Noel and Angie. As the blog's recent lack of Ninjosity suggests, I'm no longer a contributor to the Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange (having been replaced, and improved upon, by Jak), but since Rad was one of my original picks, I thought it only fair that I should come back and bat lead off for this month's review. Oh, and don't worry about Noel. I merely shot him with a homemade sleep ray, which ionizes Celestial Seasonings tea and combines it with force-focused photons which are then fired from an old Nintendo Zapper gun. He currently believes he's watching an episode of Power Rangers. He'll wake up in a few hours with a slight headache and a desire to kick a giant rubber monster in the balls. So basically how he usually feels when he wakes up.

Okay, dudes, let's walk this sucker

Rad tells the story of Cru Jones (Bill Allen, but not the Microsoft Bill Allen), a high school senior, paper boy, and BMX fanatic who finds his purpose when a large race track is built in his small California town. Dubbed “Helltrack”, it will be the site of the largest and most lucrative BMX race in the country. Unfortunately for Cru, several things are working against him and his dreams of BMX glory.

For one, there's his mom (Talia Shire of Rocky fame), who wants Cru to focus on his upcoming SAT's - which, it just so happens, are taking place on the exact same day as the qualifying races for Helltrack. And then there's Duke Best (Jack Weston), the owner of Mongoose bicycles and president of the Federation of American Bicyclists, who sees a threat in the young upstart. Finally, there's Bart Taylor (played by Olympic Gold Medalist Bart Conner in his first acting role), poster boy for team Mongoose and the top-rated BMX rider in the nation, not to mention a first-class prick. But Cru is unbowed. Wearing his street clothes and a battered hockey helmet, he makes his way through the brutal qualifying rounds to earn a spot in the actual race. This doesn't sit well with Best, who stands to lose a lot of money if his golden boy doesn't win Helltrack. After failing to recruit Cru to team Mongoose, Best begins to throw up a series of bureaucratic obstacles to insure that Cru is unable to compete in the race.

But not everything is going badly for our hero. All of the top BMX riders in the nation have descended on Cochrane, and one of them happens to be the beautiful female rider Christian (Lori Loughlin). After seducing one another with what is surely the only BMX freestyle dance scene in film history, the two bond over some ass-sliding (not what you think, sinners) and before you can say "convenient plot tumbler falls into place", they're in love. With encouragement from Christian, and a lot of help from his friends, the townsfolk, and plucky little sister Wes (Laura Jacoby), Cru manages to beat Best at his own game and claim his spot in Helltrack. Under the banner of “Rad Racing”, Cru squares off against the 19 best riders from North America. Best instructs two of his racers (twins Chad and Carey Hayes) to take Cru out, thus clearing the way for Bart to win. But Bart has other ideas. When the twins cause Cru to crash, Bart stops and waits for him to catch up. From there, it's a sprint to finish, with Cru edging Bart at the line with a nifty - and totally unnecessary - 360 spin. After being dismissed from Mongoose by a livid Best, Bart goes over to congratulate Cru on his victory. Wes suggests that there's room on the Rad team, which is met with an enthusiastic response by all as they hoist Bart's bike into the air as credits roll.

I've never seen such raw talent and determination in one kid before!

Rad is a fascinating story. I'm not talking about the plot, I mean the film itself. To the uninitiated, this may look like just another forgotten 80s movie that tried marrying the latest thing (BMX) with the underdog kid formula that was so popular and successful at the time. And while the latter is true, Rad is not forgotten. Not by a long shot.

Directed by Hal Needham (Smokey and the Bandit, MegaForce), Rad was a huge dud at the box office in 1986, pulling in just over $2 million dollars. But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity. First, it became a massive hit on the burgeoning home video market, where it stayed on the top-ten video rental list for two years. Pretty impressive, right? Unfortunately over the next couple of decades, the rights to the film became muddled. With the original studio, Embassy, out of business, no one seemed to know who owned Rad. Limited to just that one initial VHS release, you'd think Rad would've simply faded away. Instead, it flourished, and Rad is more popular today than ever. Not only does it have the requisite fan sites where the like-minded gather to quote the film and discuss the awesomeness of John Farnham (singer of "Thunder In Your Heart" and "Break the Ice"), its 25th anniversary inspired a weekend long celebration that drew cast and crew as well as over two thousand fans to the original filming locations (Cochrane and Calgary, Canada, which stood in for the fictitious Cochrane, California). Star Bill Allen remains extremely active within the Rad fan community and is currently spearheading an effort to get the film an official DVD release. There's even a documentary in the works entitled A Rad Documentary.

But why has Rad inspired such a rabid following? Not unlike "Why is Justin Bieber famous?", that's a hard question to answer. For most of us, what it boils down to is that Rad is one of the few movies to focus on the sport of BMX racing and freestyle. While enjoying a resurgence today, BMX peaked in the mid-80s after, of all things, the movie E.T. prominently featured BMX bikes in its classic chase scene finale. It just so happened that my next door neighbor at the time was one of the best BMX racers in the state of Ohio, and that only served to fan the flames for me. Pretty soon, I traded in my cheap, off-the-rack "Led Sled" and got a high end bike of my own. It was a 1985 Mongoose Californian, which cost $214 and had to be special ordered (and just so happens to be the same model that Cru rides in the movie). Having temporarily outgrown Star Wars, and with my penis still a good six years away from fully coming on-line, BMX and freestyle were my obsessions for the rest of the decade.

Look, I'm not so blinded by nostalgia and my love for BMX that I can't see that the acting in this movie is about on par with the Stumblebum, Idaho repertory theater company. And I know it's corny and hopelessly dated. I also know that I don't care about any of that. Rad is the definitive pop culture work dedicated to the sport of BMX and freestyle, and that is, well, pretty rad.

Whoa, it looks like Noel is coming to, and it just so happens that I'm wearing a rubber monster costume... Don't ask. I'm gonna scram before one of Noel's size elevens finds its way to my balls, but I'm genuinely curious to find out what the rest of you thought.

Jak

I heard we were doing Rad this month and saw the poster for it. "Oh gross, a BMX bike movie," I thought. I have zero interest in bikes and less than zero interest in BMX, so I found every reason to put off watching this. Visions of plotless BMX culture sequences filled my head. Eventually the day came where the deadline was near and I had to make myself put the fanmade DVD in. The menu popped up and an electronic drum fill introduced an opening synth riff that was so mid-80's, I wouldn't be surprised if its soundform output was a portrait of Reagan playing an Atari and drinking New Coke. Then the lyrics come in and it's screaming to be the score of a training montage: fire, glory, risking it all, the thrill of the moment, moves like lightning and hearts of thunder. All right, I'm in the right mindset for this now: this is going to be the Rocky of bike movies. It even has Talia Shire in it.

It opens with a series of genuinely impressive bike tricks, impressive enough that I didn't realize it went on for four whole minutes. Like many movies before it, I hoped this wasn't an indicator of the pacing to come. It was, though this turned out to be one of the things I liked about it.

I was surprised because I usually don't like when a movie meanders. In this case, I found the tangential scenes much more charming and entertaining (obligatory cheesy romance scene notwithstanding). Once we got back to scenes where the focus was on the main plot's development, the writing seemed to turn hamfisted and forced, the characters stopped being nearly so likeable, and even the acting became less believable, as though the actors didn't know what to do with their lines. It reminded me of my experience watching Krull in that way, like there were two very different writing and directorial teams at work on different parts of the same movie.

For the big racing sequences, my brain sort of shut off because it was a formulaic story (underdog beats the odds!) from a formulaic genre (competition!) from a formulaic period (1986!), so I knew how it was going to end from the moment the plot was set into motion. At least the bike tricks never stopped being impressive, which is more than I can say for the incessant electro pop soundtrack (or that dance sequence. Yow.)

In the end, I found myself wishing it had been exactly the kind of movie I was initially dreading it might be. I have to admit that's an experience I've never had before.

Angie

Does the fact that I've never seen any of those titles Noel mentioned serve as a warning sign here? It may. I had also never heard of this film before now, though being not quite yet five at the time of its release may be to blame. But then, The Karate Kid came out two years before that, and I know that movie very well, so maybe not.

I see a lot of similarities in structure between this film and that one, with the main difference, beside the karate/BMX racing swap, being that Mr. Miyagi's role is fulfilled by the love interest. I'm sure there's no coincidence there, as Hollywood probably made tons of these films to try to cash in on that movie's success. I loved The Karate Kid as a child, and when I watched it earlier this year, I was pleased to see just how much that film held up. So while I have zero interest in BMX bikes or racing, I thought it was possible I may still be able to get some enjoyment out of this film.

I'm sorry, Tony, but that didn't happen.

When I heard the first couple songs on the soundtrack, I appreciated the 80s cheesiness of them, but after a while, they all started to sound the same, and I was a bit surprised to find out there were multiple artists involved, as I couldn't really tell them apart. Though I think the biggest hurdle for me is the dialogue. I spent a lot of time thinking, "No one would talk like that. Ever." The scene early on with the adults having a meeting about adding Helltrack to their town is so obviously dumbed down to make sure children can understand it that the adults involved seem really stupid. Not to mention the leap in logic that a town thoroughly annoyed by the antics of its three newspaper delivery boys (and girl) would welcome such a competition to their town just for the sake of profit. Of course, that does make it convenient when the old man who thinks life would be better if there were no children suddenly changes his mind and decides to help the local boy after all.

Speaking of, I adore Ray Watson, and I did at least enjoy watching him in this film. It was also interesting to see Lori Loughlin in something other than Full House. I adored Talia Shire in the Rocky films, so seeing her essentially playing Adrian as a mom is fun, though I don't entirely like the way she's pushed to the side so much. I also rekindled a part of my memory I hadn't visited in ages when I realized Jack Weston looks familiar because I saw him in Short Circuit 2.

I had a lot of time to think about these other films and television shows because the movie spends a lot of time showing us people on bikes. Cru escaping the cop who's apparently not really trying to arrest him but just playing a game of cat and mouse. The ultra-ridiculous dancing the other bikers put on before Cru and Christian take over on the bikes. Cru training with Christian. And then, of course, the race itself. I'm sure these moments are excellent for people interested, and I can see how it would be enough to latch a kid into wanting to ride as it did for Tony, but as an adult, it just doesn't interest me one bit.

There's one other thing that bugs me, and after that, I swear I'll stop nitpicking and play nice. When we're first introduced to Bart, he's a jerk. He stops a parade just so he can hit on two girls right in front of Christian, who it's at least suggested is his girlfriend before he dumps her soon afterward. He's also not too nice during the dance scene. But once it comes down to the approaching race, he's a pretty good sport, confident he can win this one, and not in agreement with Duke's antics to try to ruin Cru's chances. Him slowing down in the race really shows it, because he wants to race Cru fair and square. It therefore makes perfect sense when the good guys offer him a spot on their team at the end of the movie, but it's a really bad writing choice to make his character so inconsistent without showing us any motivation for his face turn.

In the hands of a better writer, I feel like this movie could have stood up and been a lesser known film for fans of Rocky and The Karate Kid to discover and enjoy. As it is, I'm afraid it just lives as a poor imitation. To try to include some kind of positive here, I will say I agree that the story about what happened to the film is an interesting one, and I would gladly watch The Rad Documentary if it's ever released.

Noel

Dammit, Tony! I don't know what's worse: that I smell like Celestial Seasonings, or that I'm making "fwip" noises as I strike dynamic poses with the full expectation that they'll be backed by flashy graphics and a shredding guitar. If you'd give me half a second, you'd find out I'm actually riding at your side on the final lap of the Helltrack.

Rad is not a great movie. The plot is formulaic. The dialogue is formulaic. The cast is formulaic. The villain is formulaic. The small town drama is formulaic. The romance is formulaic. The lead is formulaic. Also a bit of an asshole, but a formulaic one. The struggles with his mom over education vs. "This is the one thing in life I know I can do!" is formulaic. The power ballads and 80s synth track are formulaic.

This movie is formulaic. But you know what? Formulaic does not equate bad. I do enjoy a film that goes outside the box, tries new things, and completely blows my mind as it opens my perceptions up to new possibilities. I also enjoy the palate cleansing comfort food of a film where I pretty much know every twist going in, and just ask that they be given to me in an interesting way. And Rad gives me that. Hal Needham is a former stunt man/coordinator, and the majority of his films are catered to showing off physical prowess in the form of circus-like spectacle, and he absolutely delivers here as the art of BMX stunt riding is shown in every conceivable way, through both the pounding speed of the races and the lingering slow motion of every flip, spin, and tire pogo during moments like Cru's morning paper route, daily game of chase with the bulldog motorcycle cop, practicing in a home-made obstacle course with his friends, and, in the greatest segment of hyper-reality ever committed to celluloid, Cru and Christian mutually alluring one other with a phantasmagoria of pops and locks and obviously fixed on a rig closeups at the local dance, all set to the emo romance pop ballad "Send Me an Angel".

Even outside the stunts, there's a color and energy to the goings on as this small town is invaded by emblazoned athletes and corporations infatuated with their own product. Though, as mentioned, Cru is a bit of an asshole at first, trolling people on his daily route and being the type of smartass who can get away with it because of that smile. Bill Allen gives him an everyman appeal. He's not perfect, but he believes in what he can do and so we join his friends in cheering him on as he sets out to do it. And it helps that Allen is skilled enough with a bike to sell the shots where it's obviously him, unlike Lori Loughlin who's often replaced by a man in a wig. Which isn't to say Christian is a bad character, she's not, but she ultimately doesn't do much beyond show up and fall in love, as the town itself is far more instrumental in helping Cru fight through increasingly petty rule changes, and she doesn't even take part in the final race. Talia Shire is also quite good as the mom, even though her conflict with Cru is minimal, and Ray Walston is always a treat, especially when he's flipping the bird.

As for the rest of the cast, Tony's not off in that they're made up of largely untrained talents, or whatever character actors they could find. Bart isn't bad as Bart, and has a realistic cockiness and athleticism, but he's pretty flat in the charisma department and never actually feels like a threat to Cru. The twins are pretty hard to take seriously when they walk around in the spacemen uniforms from Forbidden Planet, and never pull off the threat when they're sent to take Cru down. And even Duke Best is a pretty limp villain, as Jack Weston sloshes through the role in a way that would never cut it as a CEO in the real world. Other roles, like Cru's friends and various types around town, feel like local amateurs, but have an authentic charm, and there's even an adorable moment where we pause the movie for two minutes just so an announcer can run down a list of the actual BMX racers who showed up.

It's not a top-quality production, there's pretty much zero depth or complexity to the whole thing, every scene ticks off the list of expected scenes, and there's no real threat to overcome beyond some assholes being assholes to the asshole. But it still stirs the thunder in my heart, and I'm with this movie for every kick of the pedal, the winning of every achievement we knew would be won, and every gratuitous 80s use of a child saying "shit".

Tony, thanks for first introducing me to this film a few years back, and returning to share it with me now.

But if you EVER pull another stunt like the one you did to open this piece, I'll amass every force in my power to-*Zap*

Tony

Angie, Jak, I was never optimistic you were going to fall head over wheels for Rad. For one thing, we're working with a slim generation gap here. It may only be a few years, but in pop culture terms, that's a lifetime. There's just nothing here for either of you to gain any nostalgic purchase. The music, the fashion - hell, the entire BMX culture - are nothing more than antiquated oddities to the both of you. My best hope was that the underdog formula and uber sincerity of it all might win you over. Alas, it didn't. Perhaps those are antiquated notions as well.

Noel, I obviously had a pretty good idea of what your reaction was going to be. Like Angie and Jak, this isn't exactly your section of pop cultural turf, and I know you have about as much interest in bikes and the sport of BMX as you do in rubbing your balls on a rusty cheese grater, but you had a certain appreciation for Rad the first time around, so I was confident it would hold up on a repeat viewing. I'm glad I was right.

We can't force others to love something. It doesn't matter how hard we try, or how strong of a case we make, love isn't compelled. It just doesn't work that way. Not even when the other guy is total a dick who will only break her heart, while you're clearly better looking and have more to offer. Oh, and this whole “friends” business? Well, you can take that and stuff it in a sack, sister! I've got your “friends” right--

But, I digress. My point is, there is no right or wrong here. I don't take offense to Angie's reactions to Revenge of the Ninja or Rad for the same reason she wasn't upset that I didn't fully embrace anime after watching Memories.

Angie, Jak, I sincerely appreciate the both of you indulging Noel and I in our little switch-a-roo, and for allowing me to come back and share not only the movie Rad, but also a little bit about the sport of BMX and freestyle with you and your readers.

We'll be back on the 1st of September with a pick from Jak: Leonard Part 6 (1987)

Matango, aka Attack of the Mushroom People (1963)... Angie's Pick for July

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 02:20:00 +0000

Angie

After our group of friends finished watching The Calamari Wrestler together, we started discussing other crazy movies we had seen. One guy talked about a Japanese movie he had watched at a young age that contained giant mushroom people and had given him nightmares. It was decided immediately that a follow up party was necessary to track down this film and give it a watch. The party was even themed, with mushroom pizza, mushroom soup, and even cupcakes that were decorated to look like mushrooms from Super Mario Bros. The film we watched was Matango, also known as Attack of the Mushroom People for its U.S. release.

We start with a man telling us that all his companions are dead - but no, not really, only one of them is dead. He then says that if he told us what he meant, we'd think he was crazy.

From there, we flashback to a group of people out on a boat together while the credits roll. Our cast of characters has striking similarities to the Gilligan's Island crew, with one glamorous woman and one shy girl, a rich man, a professor, a skipper, and not one but two characters who are reminiscent of Gilligan himself, at least in dress if not personality. While their excursion seems to be a little longer than a three hour tour, they do still hit a bad storm along the way.

A thick fog surrounds them and their radio dies out until finally they drift toward an island. With it appearing to be uninhabited and their boat in no shape to sail, they set about trying to find food and water. Some of the shots of them wandering the island remind me of Lost, particularly the brief glimpses we got of The Others early on in that show, and while I know this is most likely a coincidence, I can't help but wonder if any of the creators saw this film, as the island does have its own mysteries to be discovered.

They find water as well as traces that suggest humans have been on the island recently. After climbing one of the higher mountain peaks, they notice a wrecked ship on another shore. On closer inspection, they realize the ship has been abandoned for a long time, and there are traces of fungus and moss growing on all its interior surfaces. They also find a sample of a giant mushroom, matango, that is native to the island, along with a week's worth of canned goods and the captain's log.

The log tells them that the mushrooms have nerve altering effects, and so they decide that they must gather food and try to repair their ship, but definitely not eat the mushrooms. While two of the men are out hunting, they find the remains of a broken mirror, and are shocked when a bird seems to refuse to fly close to the island. As they travel further, they see a strange creature moving between the trees. So naturally they shoot first and ask questions later, but the creature gets away.

As they go to sleep, a strange creature is once again seen peering into the windows of the ship. It creeps inside and appears before all of them, a humanoid monster covered in fungus growth, before disappearing before their eyes. Gilligan 1/Koyama insists that these rich spoiled people are all going crazy because there are women stranded with them and they are driving the men mad. There's then some drama about who Ginger/Mami is spending her time with, but it's not really relevant. The important part is that they are running out of food and tensions are high.

While they find some root vegetables and turtle eggs, Gilligan 2/Yoshida ends up eating mushrooms anyway, and tries to kill them all. The other men manage to overpower him and lock him up. The skipper works on repairing the yacht, and when Kasai/the-billionaire-sans-wife offers for the two of them to take the food and split, he tells him to leave. But in fact he's planning to take it all for himself and just go. Meanwhile, Mami has let Yoshida free. He seems to be developing a rash, and he kills Koyama without hesitation. They boot Yoshida and Mami off the ship to go live in the forest.

After many days of rain, mushrooms have sprouted everywhere, and Mami comes back to tempt Kasai into eating them. His hunger prevents him from resisting, and he sees visions of dancing girls. Only after he's finished indulging does she tell him that it will turn him into a mushroom. He runs away and hears laughter all through the forest. One by one, the giant mushroom people appear all around him.

The professor sees the yacht return to the shore. Inside, the skipper transcribed a suicide note before jumping into the water once he ran out of food. Only the professor and Mary Anne/Akiko are left whole. Akiko wonders if it would be better to just eat the mushrooms and transform because they would at least survive, and he then slaps her before telling her he can't live without her. There's a knock at the door, and a fungus covered arm pushes its way inside. He shoots it away, but more appear at the portholes. The creatures are coming for them. The professor heads out to try to attack them, but all he really does is leave Akiko defenseless so she can be captured. He follows the sounds of frenzied high pitched laughter to a grove full of the mushroom people. He tries to shoot them, but there are too many. Akiko calls for him, and he finds her eating the mushrooms. She tells him how delicious they are with a huge smile on her face. He manages to fight his way out amongst the creatures and make it out to the yacht to escape.

We come back to the beginning scene, and we see that he is trapped in a cell and being observed by doctors. If you didn't think anything of the fact that we only saw his back at the beginning, you're no doubt noticing it now. He asks if he should have also eaten the mushrooms, says that if he truly loved Akiko, he would have joined her there. Surely it would be better than his current life. He turns to face the camera, and we see that he too now has the mushroom growth all over his face. The doctors tell him they are glad he returned and he says that the people in Tokyo are just as inhuman as the creatures on the island.

The movie runs at a pretty slow pace, though at 90 minutes, it is brief. The trouble is that, the moment the mushrooms are introduced, we pretty much know exactly where this film is going. At least we know it's inevitable that they will eat the mushrooms, even if we don't realize it will transform them. They try to inject it with more plot by making Mami a temptress and introducing some class based conflict of the poor vs. the rich, but I don't think it's resolved very well.

However, where the movie does excel are its horror moments. While the costumes are cheap and even downright silly looking at times, the music and sound combined with the way the scenes are shot go a long way to increase the creepiness of these the mushroom people. While I was shocked on our first viewing when our friend told us this gave him nightmares, with this second viewing, I can actually see very easily how that could happen. We see the humanoid creature through shadows first, and then only bits and pieces at a time before we see the whole thing. And through a child's eyes, I can see how these otherwise very unrealistic creatures could be seen as frightening. While as an adult, the effects border a little too much on cheesy to scare me, I do appreciate what the director was trying to do and I think he pulled it off as best as he could with what he had. If you look at this as a decent attempt to emulate films like It Came From Another World, you may be able to enjoy it despite its thin plot.

While Jak was at that original party with me, I'm interested to see if he gained something new from the film this time around, or if he still finds it as silly as we did the first time we watched it. I'm also curious to see if this one is going to appeal to Noel's sensibilities or not.

Noel

Oh, this absolutely appeals to my sensibilities, and don't agree that the characters and themes are poorly resolved. In fact, I find them very deep and complex.

Our young "hero", Kenji, is a university teacher off on an affair with a young female student, and while they seem to be the plucky "one true love" of this story, they not only fall apart at the end but go through a rough patch on their way there (the slapping her then saying he loves her scene being the peak moment). The skipper, Naoyuki, is the most dependable member of the crew, always keeping calm and taking charge... until the day he bundles up all their food for himself as he sails off alone, then commits suicide off screen. Singer and tv star Mami, instead of being a vapid ditz, is probably the sharpest member of the crew, using her whiles to win her favors, but also never backing away from doing hard work and holding her own alongside the men. Her one mistake is putting her stock in Yoshida when he makes his play for power at the end, which is ultimately her downfall.

As for Yoshida, it amuses me that you pointed him out as a Gilligan, because his beach hat look was specifically modeled after Akira Kurosawa, a close friend of director Ishiro Honda. Yoshida, a best-selling novelist who's always putting pen to paper, even while delighting in the pleasures of his privileged lifestyle, goes through a fascinating shift from bumbling tag-along to the closest this story gets to a villain as he uses the philosophy of their separation from humanity to justify ignoring social norms, making repeated advances on Mami, then getting a hold of the rifle and drawing first blood. And speaking of that first blood, Senzo is almost a false villain, openly talking about doing things to the others that Yoshida ends up doing for real, and even as he hordes away his own supply of food, he's still giving the majority of what he finds to the main group. Aside from the bits he sells to Masafumi, which I'll get to. The moment where he's suddenly blown away by Yoshida caught me completely by surprise and is a great "this shit just go real!" twist.

If anyone does fit the Gilligan's Island comparison, I'd say it's millionaire celebrity Masafumi, in that he's always lording himself above the group and trying to use his class and his cash to win favors and preferential treatment, even as he's stealing cans of food from behind everyones' back. And just like Thurston Howell III, it often bites him in the ass and leaves him the most unliked of the group, and I love the moment where he has to buy his share of food off of Senzo instead of getting to partake in what the mate gives to the rest of the group.

This is a very deep cast of characters, and I like that they don't fall into easy archetypes, and that they do unexpected, yet very human things. And all the performances are surprisingly grounded and naturalistic, given the often over-the-top nature of Japanese acting. Even the 60s-era English dub track I listened to is remarkably well produced, giving everyone distinction and nuance, as well as keeping the dialogue realistic and naturally delivered. This isn't a film about Mushroom People, it's a film about people. Horrible, ugly, everyday people who speak to the worst of what we could all become if forced outside of social norms. This film is not only remarkably ahead of its time in that its cast is almost completely composed of yuppie assholes who hate one another, but in how it uses them to make a nihilistic statement that some forces can't be overcome, some battles can't be won. Especially if they're really yourself.

And that's what the Mushroom People are: they're our characters, they're ourselves. Everyday survival is a difficult thing, represented by the lack of animal life on the island and the sporadic roots and turtle eggs our heroes have to seek out for each meal. The mushrooms represent the complacency and delusion of wealth. They're abundant, they'll keep you full, they'll keep you alive, but they'll erase your identity as you're forced to conform, to put on a false face and hide the real human underneath. Note how only the wealthy characters are those to succumb to the mushroom, even our idealistic young professor. The two poor men, skipper Naoyuki and shipmate Senzo, are both killed for their efforts to stay alive. They crossed the wealthy and were discarded, whereas the wealthy have become complacent and lethargic, and will continue to do so until they're just another mushroom in a grove exclusive to fellow mushrooms.

And I think the mushroom grove is a marvelous piece of set and costume work, especially with the hallucinatory barrage of sounds and images of our rich cast delighting in their consumption of that which is destroying them. I do, though, have problems with how some of it is shot, as there are too many full-figured shots of foam suits with mushroom heads wobbling around. They should have obscured them more, and not lingered so much that the well-sculpted suits can be so closely scrutinized.

I think your inability to connect with this movie, Angie, has less to do with its pace (which is a marvelous slow boil) and its character drama, than it does the expectations with which you approached the film. You wanted something silly with mushroom people you could laugh at. Instead, the film is a character piece where the mushrooms themselves are as much of a background element as the Cenobites in Hellraiser. They may have been the selling point of the film, but they aren't what it's about. It's about the people, about the desolate island, about the Lovecraftian foreboding of an ultimate doom from which only one person will partially escape. A doom that seemingly comes from without, only to be revealed as coming from within.

I think this film is magnificent, and thank you for picking it as it's one I've heard about for years and have been waiting for an excuse to finally hunt down and watch.

Jak

"We're watching Matango this month."

It's a rare film that leaves me with a blank slate impression years later, and Matango was one of them. I had seen it at a party five years ago, and all I could recall was that the characters reminded me very loosely of the Gilligan's Island cast early on, enough that I remember wondering which had come first (Matango did, though I keep reading that the similarities are purely coincidental, which seems extremely odd). Beyond that, I couldn't remember a thing else about it. At first, I liked that I couldn't, because I wouldn't have any bothersome preconceptions clouding my experience. Then, I got worried - if it was really that forgettable, what kind of a bland 99 minutes was I in for?

I noticed the Gilligan's Island analogues again almost immediately from the beginning, though as the first act goes on, the characterizations don't follow that show's cast too closely beyond the general occupations and wardrobe direction. Still, it's hard not to hum "the weather started getting rough" when the storm begins. The first six minutes do a great job of setting up a false air of levity, even in spite of the psych ward introduction's ominous setup. It's an aspect of movies like this that I think would be so much more effective if the genre was unknown prior to viewing. While I understand why that's impossible - everyone wants to at least know what kind of film they're going to watch - it's always been an interesting thought to me how much more gripping some movies might be with no advertisements or even titles beyond "Here is a movie".

The hopeless situation post-storm is very well done. Once they reach the island and begin exploring the shipwreck, the early parts of Alien keep coming to mind. Any movie that can evoke Gilligan's Island and Alien in the first half hour is a pretty neat accomplishment. The set design is especially effective in the derelict, really making the walls look like places you wouldn't want to set your bare hands on for too long.

In lesser hands, this could have been an extremely boring setup. The characters are written with believable developments and they're never taken to the point of parody, even those jerks Koyama and Yoshida, as they easily could be with the kinds of archetypal personalities we're dealing with here. Yoshida playfully blowing smoke rings while the skipper details the dire food situation is an example of this kind of subtlety that takes this beyond the average monster movie's cannon fodder. This is good because, for its type, this one is extremely slow paced to the point that it almost subverts the genre - here is a monster flick that is all about the characters, for a change, to the detriment of the monsters themselves, as we'll soon see. Kasai's fall from authority to desperation, the skipper's calm assurance leading to the shock of his surprise betrayal, Koyama's shift from obvious villain to initial victim - with the exception of Yoshida's babbling expositional monologue when he's threatening the group with the gun, this movie has consistently strong dialogue. I highly recommend keeping the Japanese audio, though. I had English subtitles with three audio tracks available on my copy (Spanish, English and Japanese), and switched between the English and Japanese audio a few times. I found the readings on the English dub to be extremely poor in nuance in comparison. Delivery is everything, especially for this kind of survival drama.

Unfortunately, the last quarter of the movie is marred by the ridiculous premise, which is an admittedly odd thing to say considering the whole story has been leading up to the payoff of mushroom people. While I admit I can't come up with a better idea off the top of my head, I can say that I believe the movie would have worked well, maybe even better, without a monster angle at all. As a story, the conflicts between the characters have everything to do with survival and personality clashes, and the mushroom people element seems to be in there largely to sell tickets for its "wait, what? oh, weird!" factor.

Why this movie wasn't more memorable for me the first time I watched it is a mystery. It's definitely in its own class out of the films I've watched for the Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange, and is one of the better older movies I've seen, in spite of its unfortunate, ultimately silly end, complete with an obligatory "who are the real monsters here". It's a slow burn through the 99 minutes, with a fizzle at the end instead of a bang, though it's one I don't regret sitting through and one I'll likely not forget twice.

Angie

So it seems I stand alone in my opinion on this one. I should state that I made the Gilligan's Island comparisons because I don't see how an American watching this film these days couldn't see them, purely by coincidence or not. But that doesn't mean I think these characters are cookie cutter, and they obviously cannot be rip-offs.

The problem I have with them is the sexist tone that runs throughout the movie. I had a hard time enjoying the original King Kong thanks to the idea that the characters strongly suggested it was Fay Wray's character's presence that damned them, and I don't enjoy it anymore here. I know it's an old superstition about women at sea, but that doesn't stop it from rubbing me the wrong way. Add to it that Mami really is just a temptress always out to help herself and no one else, and Akiko is a demure woman who only follows around the man she loves and easily falls into the temptation of eating the mushrooms, and I'm done.

That said, I can see Jak's comparisons to Alien, as well as a film like Night of the Living Dead or a story like Stephen King's The Mist. This is definitely a film about the characters reactions to what is happening around them, and that is why not much happens beyond the character conflict. Perhaps these characters are meant to be unlikeable, making their punishment fitting for them. I'm just not a fan of watching a movie full of nothing but unlikeable characters, regardless of their eventual comeuppance.

I also think Noel hit the nail directly on the head as far as what the mushrooms stand for in the film. All good monsters should represent something, and I find, more often than not, it is Japanese cinema that often uses them most effectively. This film definitely ranks high on the list of using them properly. I may have missed it on my initial viewing, but reading his analysis makes it plain.

I also don't think this is a bad film, despite my problems with it. While it may not be something I would return to, I do think it is worth a viewing, and it's entirely possible that it will appeal far more to you than it did to me.

We'll be back on the 1st of September with a pick from Noel: Rad (1986)

Krull (1983)... Jak's Pick for June

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 04:03:00 +0000

Jak

As I type this paragraph, I've never seen the movie Krull, and yet it's my own pick for this month. I know a few people who have seen it, and all of them either loved it because it was so bad or hated it because it was so bad. So apparently I'm in for a bad movie if my friends and Rotten Tomatoes' 33% rating are to be trusted. This is not why I chose this film.

When I was very young, we had an Atari 2600 game console. Thanks to the plummeting prices from the video game market crash at the time, we ended up getting a good collection that I spent a lot of my early youth playing through. My uncle had one as well, and since we would only very rarely go to his house (Thanksgiving and a couple of birthdays were at his place, and the rest were at my grandmother's), the games he had that we didn't have were like exotic treasures to me. Among these was a cartridge labeled "Krull", with ominous cover art and levels that had so many wildly different things going on that I couldn't keep up. I figured if it confused me that much, it had to be a really good and deep game. When I found out it was based on a movie, I imagined how awesome the scenes that inspired the levels must be.

Early impressions carry an awful lot of weight, and I have a feeling that's going to make this an interesting experience for me. Even knowing now that the game's levels are really nothing more than tenuously linked-together, dressed-up rehashes of Kaboom, Pitfall, and Breakout, I still tend to think of it as a game with far more depth than a cartridge of that era could possibly hold, even as I'm playing it and cataloging every influence.

Similarly, even knowing that every person I know and every source I can find agrees that Krull is a pretty bad movie, I'm finding myself expecting that the film will have the same awe-inspiring depth that I can't seem to shake of my impression of the game that's loosely based on it. Young Jak really wants this movie to be good. It's about time to see if it is.

It starts off with the bladed star weapon, that I already know from the game manual to be called the Glaive, boomeranging around through space to bring us the title in what must have been fairly impressive special effects at the time it came out in 1983. A huge structure which looks like equal parts geode and petrified wood enters the scene and flies toward a planet with two suns where it eventually lands in the middle of a desolate landscape, breaking and shifting the land around it. It's the Black Fortress, the narrator informs us, the stronghold of The Beast and his army of Slayers which travels from world to world enslaving each one's inhabitants. Its latest visit is to the world known as Krull, where there's a prophecy that a girl will become a queen who will choose a king and have a son who will rule the galaxy.

We next see this girl, Princess Lyssa, in the middle of a conversation with her father, King Eirig. He's opposed to her idea of marrying Colwyn, the son of another king whose country theirs is apparently at odds with. She argues that they must have a guaranteed alliance with their enemies to stand against these new invaders from the Black Fortress.

We get right to the wedding which is soon interrupted by a contingent of Slayers. Of course, Lyssa is captured by the Slayers after a melee in the castle with Colwyn and the soldiers after the two kings are killed. Colwyn is hit with a Slayer's beam and falls unconscious as everyone else is slaughtered.

The next morning, an old man who we learn is called Ynyr the Old One treats Colwyn's wounds amidst the dead. He tells Colwyn that Lyssa is being held in the Black Fortress by The Beast, who can only be taken down by a mythical weapon called the Glaive which must be retrieved from a mountain peak. Colwyn scales the mountain and, after navigating some harrowing conditions, he comes back with the weapon in hand, ready to tackle the Black Fortress, only to be told by Ynyr that the fortress changes its location with every sunrise. The blind Emerald Seer can help locate it, so they head off to find him. On their way, they meet a clumsy magician named Ergo who accompanies them. Meanwhile, inside the fortress, The Beast tells Lyssa he intends to have her as his queen, in an effort to be the king of the prophecy whose son will rule the galaxy.

On their way through a mountain pass, they are ambushed by a small group of criminals who are convinced to join Colwyn's quest to take down the invaders. The group is trailed by a cyclops, Rell, who kills a Slayer that had spotted Ergo. Soon, they reach the Emerald Seer who attempts to locate the fortress before his visions are interrupted by The Beast. They bring the Seer to the Emerald Temple in the middle of a swamp where he can work beyond The Beast's influence. After a battle with Slayers and the loss of one of the criminals to quicksand, the Seer is killed by a doppelganger who nearly kills Colwyn before being dispatched by Rell. Colwyn's only option now is visiting the Widow of the Web, a dangerous sorceress who Ynyr once loved long ago.

Ynyr reaches the Widow alone and she reveals where the Fortress will rise the next day, though the price of acquiring the knowledge ends up being his life. He tells Colwyn where it is, the Iron Desert, before he dies. The Iron Desert is unreachable in time except by using Fire Mares, which the group rounds up and rides to the Fortress. Once there, they are soon attacked by Slayers. They eventually make their way into the Fortress, at the cost of Rell and a few of the criminals.

Colwyn uses the Glaive to enter the princess's chamber where she tells him he must fight The Beast. He does and eventually wins. The world of Krull is saved.

From the opening shots of the Black Fortress dawdling through space, I had a feeling this was going to be another optical effects reel masquerading as a movie. I feel like I was both right and wrong at the same time, because there are two very different movies mashed together here.

If we divide the film into thirds, I really enjoyed the middle third of the movie. It showed off the impressive sets and locations without lingering, the story moved smoothly from one adventure to another, making me genuinely want to see what happened next, and I found myself liking and caring about a lot of the characters as they were fleshed out - something which surprised me because I find that most quest genre movies with a larger cast tend to just give their characters paper doll archetypal personalities and choose to leave the depth to other genres.

The first and the last thirds are almost exactly the opposite of that. When we're not getting reams of backstory dumped on us in one minute, we're hanging on shots that seem to be designed solely to show off the locations and special effects. During the Slayers' siege of the kingdom, we have so many long stares at a single cart on fire which just plod on as if the movie's saying "Look. It's on FIRE. We set something on fire and we filmed it. Look at that thing on FIRE." Lyssa doesn't so much as react when she sees her father get killed. There are literally three full minutes of Colwyn climbing the mountain to reach the Glaive.

Somewhere soon after this part, the film finds its legs for a good while, with promising character development and exciting pacing. Then from around the point where Ynyr dies, it's a downhill slide right back into Bad Movie Land as the characters are reduced to one-note parodies of their earlier potential, and the pace goes all over the place again.

It's an extremely uneven experience, which is much more frustrating than a plain bad flick, because the cast and crew proved they could have made this a very good movie if just a little more effort and thought had been put into the opening and closing acts. The special effects were mostly impressive, though I felt the fight scenes came off kind of forced, sluggish, and awkward in their execution. The wardrobe was a neat mix of medieval and sci-fi, and the sets were beautiful and expansive. It was good that at least a few of them were part of a good movie, even if that movie was buried in the middle of a bad one. Even if it wasn't the movie that young me thought it would be.

Maybe that movie's out there somewhere. Sorry kid, this one isn't it. I wonder what Angie and Noel thought of it?

Angie

For the longest time, I thought Krull was a Conan the Barbarian rip off. "Isn't that the one they remade with Kevin Sorbo?" I would say when someone mentioned it. "No, that's Kull the Conqueror." Kull, Krull, they're practically the same thing. Then I'd see a poster with the Beast's rather ugly head on it and assume it was a straight sci-fi story, one of the many attempted rip offs of Star Wars that appeared in the early 80s, so I never bothered with it. But in recent years, I've been more curious about it.

While there's certainly some Star Wars influence present, there's also a bit of The Lord of the Rings. I'm not entirely sure if the sci-fi laser beams really mesh well with the otherwise fantasy setting. They feel tacked on, desperately trying to remind you of light sabers without actually including any. Beyond that, it's mostly a fantasy tale, and as a huge fan of most of the 80s films in the genre, I found things here and there that I could enjoy from this movie.

Ergo's entrance into the film makes you think he's going to be absolutely terrible, but apparently first impressions aren't everything, because he ends up being one of the better characters of the whole film. His presence is sorely needed at that point, since Colwyn is a vanilla bland lead and Ynyr a poor Obi Wan Kenobi substitute. From then on, the film just follows the same pattern. Our heroes walk until they run into more people, convince the people to join them, and then keep walking. This movie is paced like The Lord of the Rings is written. We don't need to watch Colwyn's entire climb up the mountain when nothing happens but a minor avalanche, and we don't need to see their entire journey on the fire mares to reach the Black Fortress. The pacing also hurts during the quicksand scene, where it doesn't look like the guy actually legitimately is sucked under because it moves so slowly and he isn't really struggling all that much.

Besides Ergo, I really like Rell the Cyclops, even if his makeup is fairly poor. Pretty much all the effects in this movie are very poor. Obviously noticeable green screen, bad creature effects, bad transformations from Ergo, just all of it. The only thing I think looks great is the crystal spider. It takes you out of the movie a bit when you're noticing just how bad these things look.

I'm also disappointed in just how minor a role Lyssa plays in the story. The legend says she will become queen and choose her king, so you would think we're getting a strong-willed, brave woman, but instead all we get is a damsel in distress. I can't measure the disappointment I felt when I saw her grab that sword as the castle is under attack, and then quickly just toss it to a guard only to watch him get killed. And instead of picking up another and fighting, she just gets captured. I can't help but compare her to Lily in Legend, who ends up in a similar predicament, but takes care of herself so much better (particularly if you watch the director's cut of that film). But I do like the idea that this prophecy is a repeating one, where there can be multiple Lyssas and the circumstances just have to be right. It reminds me of The Legend of Zelda, where the young Link appears over and over again throughout history to save the world.

Overall, I'd say this film is ripe for a remake. Use some much better effects and tighten up the pacing, pick a more charismatic male lead, and update Lyssa's role so that she puts up more of a fight. I'd say Liam Neeson could come back and play Ynyr this time, but he's already been Qui-Gon and there's no need for him to repeat that kind of role again.

Noel

Krull is an odd film, and one I keep revisiting despite saying I don't like it all that much. The early 80s was a great period for fantasy movies, but while the likes of Dragonslayer, Willow, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Legend, The Never Ending Story, and a good handful of others dazzled audiences with innovative visuals and eye-popping design work, Krull suffered alongside Clash of the Titans in that it felt old. Both were the products of studios and technicians who were passing their prime and tried in vain to keep up with talented newcomers who were pushing the industry in bold new directions, and thus those films feel exactly like what they are: the product of a bunch of old guys trying to stay cool for a new generation of kids, without really having a clue how to do so, so they just fell back on lazy imitation or old tricks which date the films and leave them feeling more like something made a decade or more earlier.

Which is a shame, because there is a lot about Krull which actually holds up. As Jak points out, the middle section is where the film is at its strongest, with some solid setpieces and an interesting batch of characters steadily (if a bit randomly) introduced into the party. You've got Ergo, the boisterous magician who can't keep his scribbled notes for spells separate from his recipes for pies, and who complains and boasts and whines and sidetracks for sweets, yet still dives in to help when the chips fall. You've got the band of outlaws and ruffians led by the great Alun Armstrong as Torquil (and also including Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane in very early roles), as men scraping by to stay alive outside the law, who are given a chance by the new king to make their sons proud and earn freedom from the chains they still wear. You've got the blind seer, tragically unable to see how the Beast will outwit him on both occasions he tries to help, and the boy apprentice who finds a new family once his mentor is slain. You've got Rell, the Cyclops, whose entire race is a tragedy in that they sold one of their eyes to the Beast for the gift of foresight, but the only future they see is the moment they'll die.

I've used the word tragedy in the last two of those bits, and that's where the strength of this section of the film lies, in that it has powerfully tragic stories that it hits the characters with, then challenges them to rise above it and move on. Even as the climax turns into silliness, Rell still goes out with a great hero moment as he defies his fated death and saves the day, even though that destines him to go out in a way of even greater pain. Even more tragic is Ynyr, who goes from being the token Ben Kenobi figure to almost stealing the show as things sidetrack into a sweeping classical fable that tells his entire life story in the span of 10 minutes through his history with the Widow of the Web, whom he saves from her fate even as he excepts the fate which finally brings him to an end. There's some shoddy stop-motion and they linger way too long on the aged Freddie Jones genuinely struggling to climb along the web, but this section is still the most moving piece for me.

And yet, despite these great moments, the film still ultimately doesn't work. Again, Jak hit the nail on the head in that the opening and closing acts are a mess, randomly throwing in cliches they're swiping from other stuff and general random nonsense. And our two leads don't help. Ken Marshall and Lysette Anthony are fine actors (Lysette especially doesn't deserve the voice they idiotically dubbed over her just because a producer thought she sounded "too British"), but Lyssa spends half the film ineffectively running through poorly designed corridors, and Ken Marshall, our hero, lacks an actual hero's journey. Seriously, they throw a few challenges at him now and then, but he ends the film exactly the proud, noble leader he opens the picture as, going through no change, no growth, nothing to make us form an attachment to him as our lead. He's already rising to the challenge in the first act, so it means very little when he rises to the challenge in the third.

I don't usually bring drafts of the script into pieces for this site, but I'm really quite fond of the early draft of Krull, and I think mentioning it can add a little context for how the film ended up as it did. Originally, it was purely a medieval fantasy piece, where the Beast was a giant black dragon, recently awoken by dark magic after having been banished to a demon realm centuries ago, and the Fortress, his mountain, never flew into space. The Slayers, instead of the oddly designed zombie storm troopers we get here, were entirely human people who pledged to fight for the Beast just so he wouldn't destroy their lands and families.

Dragonslayer beat them to the punch in 1981, so the dragon was out. Okay. They made it a demon beast thingie. Fine. H.R. Giger was hot, so they decided to cop his style for the villains. Unfortunately, everything he draws is clearly penises and vaginas, so by stripping and sanitizing those elements, they're left with flat, bland designs that don't look like much of anything. The sets are instead just smooth curves of... nothing, and look exactly like the poorly lit pieces of plaster and fiberglass they are. And they obviously had no confidence in the Beast suit they built, so they both hide it in shadows, and shoot it with a blurry kaleidoscope effect which, instead of building mystery, has the feel of Mom shoving her hand over your eyes when something she doesn't want you to see comes on TV. Even for the human characters, while their costuming is very nice, the prop work just looks cheap and shoddy, with axes and pikes and Rell's trident designed with flimsy handles and impractical blades. And the Glaive. I've never been a fan of the Glaive. It looks kinda cool for a second, but Ken Marshall has to keep holding it in odd ways to keep from slicing his own wrist, and when it's in use, the whibble-whibble-whibble sound it makes is more adorable than daunting.

And by turning the Slayers from actual people into stormtroopers, they undercut the scale of this world, the conflicting politics of the Colwyn/Lyssa relationship (she originally had a mother, and the rival kings were Colwyn's father and a Slayer character who carried on throughout the story), and leave the place feeling surprisingly deserted. We hear about a village, but don't see any of them beyond some women with food. When we're at the castle, it's just the four main figures of royalty and a bunch of soldiers, with absolutely zero presence of a commoner populace. I understand cutting out unnecessary masses for budgetary reasons, but this also makes every encounter in the story feel more random. Rell has a reason for being there, but Ergo and Torquil's band are just random people they come across who just randomly decide to tag along. By stripping out other encounters with people, which tied into those who sold out and became Slayers, we don't get any breaks between the meaningful encounters to keep them from feeling like the plot points they are.

Also, someone at some point said the story wasn't Star Wars enough, so they decided to shoe-horn some bullshit scifi elements into it. And you can tell they were added late, because every mention of other worlds or the galaxy come through voiceover or ADR lines just as a character's mouth is off screen. Also added were all the laser effects. The Slayer weapons, instead of firing beams, actually have a metal bolt at one end which they fire like a harpoon gun. Once that single shot is gone, they flip the weapon around to a piked end for melee combat. It's a musket/bayonet type of thing, and a genuinely thoughtful idea, but sticking laser animation over the metal bolts they fire has led to many a person complaining about why the aliens that shoot lasers don't keep shooting their lasers.

In the end, I like parts of this movie, and parts of what this movie was originally meant to be, but it's so shoddy at times, and so horribly compromised by the studio at others, that it just plain doesn't hold together. It's certainly watchable, and a must-see for RPG fans to want to see something resembling a table-top adventure brought to life, but it's not good. It had potential and tries so damn hard, but it just didn't fall into the hands of the right people, so it ended up broken and a shadow of what it should have been.

But the score. Holy hell the sweeping, swashbuckler score by James Horner is one of his best, and while it doesn't quite manage to be the glue that holds things together, it certainly does its job of backing the powerful moments and elevating some of the weaker ones. The ride of the fire mares, especially, is a rollicking adventure with his theme, even as it plays over a painfully drawn out deus ex machina which moves into lousy matte effects.

Jak

I've never paid too much attention to the Star Wars phenomenon beyond seeing the films and noticing "yep, there sure is a diehard fanbase for this series," so the now-obvious comparisons to it went completely unnoticed to me when I was watching Krull. That we all seemed to have a similar experience with the film anyway kind of shows me that even when you take out the derivative factor, it's still the same poor movie. If you liked the soundtrack, you can pretty much hear it again in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

I agree with Noel that the wrong people executed this, and I agree with Angie that it should be remade. As much as I believe that remakes perpetuate the culture of unnecessary repetition masking as creativity, I think I would pay to see a second take on this in the theater. I can count on one hand how many movies I've seen at the theater in the past ten years, so that's a heavy statement from me.

In the meantime, I can still play the game, and somehow the movie it's based on hasn't tainted that for me. Jumping the strands of web in the Crystal Spider's lair, fending off Slayers in the chapel, riding to the shimmering Black Fortress - I can still see them as scenes from an amazing adventure movie, except now I know it's a movie that nobody's made yet. Maybe that makes it better. Better than that, maybe someone will make that movie one day. Until then, Krull is best enjoyed with the expectation of failed execution.

Next month is Angie's pick, Floopy-Doo And The Penis Mightier Than The Borg, a porno Star Trek fan fic by the internets converted to a screenplay and directed by John Waters. See you then.

We'll be back on the 1st of August with Angie's actual pick: Matango, aka Attack of the Mushroom People (1963)

Gunhed (1989)... Noel's Pick for May

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Thu, 02 May 2013 01:35:00 +0000

Noel

A few months ago, I was biting at the bit to revisit Gunhed, which was one of my favorite films during the 90s. But over the course of those months, I've been burned hard in my revisiting of both Guyver installments, which were stacked right alongside Gunhed in the deep echoes of my nostalgia from that time. Thankfully, this trip down memory lane paid off better than either of those.

Gunhed was initially born Godzilla 2. Toho's 1984 reboot of the franchise, The Return of Godzilla, had been a roaring success (not so much over here, as the heavily re-edited Godzilla 1985), but they found themselves drawing a bit of a blank when it came to cranking out a sequel. So they did something that would be a hell of a lot of fun to see more studios do: they held a contest, accepting open submissions from fandom, with the wining entry being promised a production deal. Jim Bannon was an American in Japan at the time - I can't find any backstory for him, but he's credited as a writer on Macron-1 around then, which is a US dubbed/re-edited version of the anime GoShogun - and submitted a story in which the Big G took on a Skynet style supercomputer who decided to wage war on humanity. I don't know the specifics of this version, if it was set in the present as the computer was rising up, or rather a post-apocalyptic nightmare of Godzilla representing nature fighting back after technology has already won. Either way, it was one of the most popular entries. It lost out to Godzilla vs. Biollante, which set in motion the fantastic Heisei era of complex, epic Godzilla films, but Bannon's story struck such a chord that Toho gave it to writer/director Masato Harada to rework into a standalone property.

In the near future, the discovery of an element named Texmexium (suck on that, Unobtanium!) allows for the dawn of the massive, artificially intelligent computer, Kyron-5. Upon his activation on the day now known as Hour Zero, he launched a cybernetic uprising against humanity. And lost. Yeah, before you start thinking Terminator knock-off, this is set in a world where that fight has already been had and mankind barely managed to come out on top. Earth is largely a lawless shambles, though, with society only just starting to rebuild as the island mountain complex housing Kyron-5 lies abandoned and gathering dust, the computer itself currently lacking the power to function, but its automated security systems keeping everyone away.

But in a day and age where manufacturing infrastructures are still trying to get back on their feet, existing electronics and computer technology (particularly plastics, as I'd imagine the oil industry would take some time to get back up on its feet) are prized trade on the black market, leading to bands of illegal raiders looking to score whatever booting up booty they can find. After a prologue filled with backstory and explosions, we meet one such group, and I'm instantly in love with the level of detail taken to give everyone a personality in outfits of scraps from a world overrun with junk. The captain is Bansho (Mickey Curtis a pop Japanese/Canadian musician going back to the 1950s), a bearded old man in a bomber cap who keeps his kids straight with words of wisdom and the occasional smack upside their head. Second in command is Babe (Aya Enjoji, her character name being pronounced Bah-beh), a badass battle vet with one eye and streaks blazed through her hair. As extra guns, you have the big black guy, Barabbas James (Brewster Thompson, known as the "world's strongest jump roper" - I'm not kidding), and the "Game over, man!" wiseguy who won't shut up, Bombbay (Jay Kabira). On tech, you have the beautiful young Boomerang (Doll Nguyen) and wise old Boxer (Yosuke Saito). And in their midst is Brooklyn (Masahiro Takashima), a long, lean, young stud with a David Hayter level of cool to the glint in his eye, all of which, added to his constant gun fiddling and cigar case full of carrots, is a mask for performance anxieties and bouts of motion sickness.

This is the family we meet up front, the well-oiled pool of scoundrels all bound by names beginning with the letter "B".

Less than 20 minutes in, all but two of them are dead.

As you can guess, the place they were stupid enough to attempt to loot is Kyron-5's massive island complex. They figure enough time has passed that whatever systems were running have bled dry, but nope, automated security is still alive and well, with pinpoint laser beams, blades that suddenly spear out of floors and walls, and hovering mines drawn to sound quickly picking off this team in swift, brutal fashion. My favorite is a bit where everyone is cramped in an elevator and Brooklyn and Bansho have a moment where the old guy pulls out a cigar and the younger a carrot, from matching cases, and just as they share a smile, something smashes in and out of the car so fast it can't be seen, and where Bansho stood, all that's left is a hole, a smear of blood, and his old bomber cap, which Brooklyn will eventually make his own in tribute to his mentor.

The only two left after all this are Brooklyn and Babe (Bombbay also made it this far, only to die minutes later by the plot point I'm just getting to), and they've increased their number by picking up a Texas Ranger, Sergeant Nim (Brenda Bakke). What is a Texas Ranger doing here? Well, it seems the southern state has become the new North American superpower, and a bioroid (androids who survived the war only to be enslaved into menial labor by the humans) working at a nuclear power plant in Dallas went on a rampage, killing dozens of people and stealing a vial of Texmexium, which it's brought back to this island in the hopes of reawakening Kyron-5, the hope for all its kind. The Rangers pursued, but the island defenses took out their choppers and soldiers, and Nim is all that's left. So Brooklyn and Babe tag along, because they have nothing else to do for the moment but survive and hope to find a way back to their ship on the top floor.

We're only about 20 minutes in, and there's still so much more to tell. :)

The bioroid gets the vial to Kyron-5's central control terminal and starts the systems back up again, but the humans are close behind. Babe and the bioroid fall into a vat of chemicals, seemingly to their deaths, and Brooklyn and Nim fight over ownership of the vial, only to set their differences aside when Kyron-5's primary defense measure kicks to life: Aerobot, a massive, multi-limbed tank, unrelentingly gnashing through anything between it any intruders to the system. Our heroes dive down a shaft into the lowest levels of the complex, and black out.

They come to, having been rescued by a pair of semi-feral children, offspring of Kryon-5's human caretakers from before its turn and the massive war (which shows you how short a stretch of time that actually took place in). They're Seven (Yujin Harada), a cynical wisecracker with a heavy limp and cybernetic ticks, and Eleven (Kaori Mizushima), a hyperactive mute who's developed her own sign language of charades. With these two, the adults are able to learn the ins-and-outs of the facility and have access to food and water, but they eventually split up in a disagreement over the best way back to the ship up on the top level. Nim and Eleven decide to slowly start scaling the outter rim of the complex, while Brooklyn and Seven decide to challenge Aerobot directly. To do this, Brooklyn will need to assemble a Gunhed - a massive, robotic tank used in the war - from the dozens of wrecks left behind from the battle of the opening prologue sequence. Both missions take a couple days, but gradually progress. Unfortunately, a new bioroid is formed, a fusion of both the original and Babe, and goes after Nim. It successfully retrieves the Texmexium and begins the countdown to Kyron-5's full awakening (as well as the center of the complex once again igniting into a nuclear reactor, which would be very very bad for our heroes), but every time the bioroid tries to kill, the Babe half of it fights off the urge, and even makes herself known to Brooklyn.

So with Nim's plan foiled by the bioroid and Kyron-5 coming back to life, all bets now hinge on Brooklyn and his Gunhed (voiced by Alexander Adrock sound-alike Randy Reyes), which he's already butting heads with over its deadpan sarcastic attitude which resembles that of Bansho. The unit is assembled, the missiles and massive gatling gun are armed, and fuel tanks (later replaced with kegs of whiskey they find) are filled and strapped to the side as the tank begins its rapid ascent through a complex filled with traps. There's a great bit where Seven buys them some time as he distracts security systems by setting off one bomb after another in a munitions level, but things eventually come to a head with the battle against Aerobot, and a fight with the bioroid as the clock counts down to the next Hour Zero.

I really love this movie, and the main reason is the density and attention to detail. I love how the entire Texas Ranger's backstory with the bioroid is largely buried in suggestions and throwaway lines, largely because it isn't important. We don't need to know the current state of the US, nor where the bioroid trying to wake up this supercomputer came from, but by slipping the little bits in they did, they suggest oodles of world-building that spark my imagination wild. Much like they do with the history of our team of raiders, who all got their "B" nicknames from Bansho. Brooklyn is named Brooklyn simply because the scraps of clothing he was able to find in this new world included a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey, despite him knowing next to nothing about baseball. And then I love that the Gunhed is a baseball fan, having some fun when it sees the jersey by replacing the "B"s and the "D"s in its readouts with the Dodgers font. And there's also great moments where you hear the baseball "Charge!" theme as it appears on screen, at one point quietly echoed by Brooklyn as he's amping himself up for battle and confronting his anxiety at being behind the controls. Why would a tank be a baseball fan? Well, think about it. In a world with artificially intelligent tanks, what would those tanks do to keep their minds occupied in their off time? What would they do for fun? Pouring through computational analyses of sports statistics seems to me like a real possibility.

In terms of performers, Brenda Bakke is the only weak point of the cast. She looks fine, and I love the design of her uniform, but she's a horrible actress lost in whether she's supposed to be Linda Hamilton or a femme fatale, and succeeds at neither. Otherwise, the cast is great. All of the raiders instantly make their presence felt in the opening, which makes their presence feel lost when they're gone. Enjoji's Babe takes an interesting turn as we see her in abstract sequences within the mind of the bioroid, fighting for control of the body and eventually sacrificing herself to take the other half out with her. Seven and Eleven are a fantastic pair of kids, smoothing out the typical rambunctiousness with a world-weary edge as Seven cynically jokes about the world, and Eleven's spastic attempts at communication come with the harriedness of desperation. Even when they have the revelation at the end that Eleven's inability to speak comes from the final key control to Kyron-5 being in her throat - something even she seems to be partially unaware of - she manages to sell it well as her desperation to escape turns into a desperation to fulfill this new longing that's been programmed in her. And again bringing up the suggestive backstory, the cybernetic implants of both her and Seven bring up some very interesting questions about what was actually going on at this Kyron-5 complex, which we know was some form of research facility. Where they truly children of the employees? Or yet more experiments?

Gah, it gets my brain juices flowing even more at the possibilities! :D

Anchoring it all is Masahiro Takashima as Brooklyn. While he's still a dependable character actor in film and tv, there was a stretch there in the early half of the 90s where Takashima was an A-list leading man in Japanese blockbusters, similar to Sam Worthington's boom a few years back, or what Channing Tattum's going through right now. But before he starred in the last two Godzilla films of the Heisei era, or as the titular lead in the fantasy epic Yamato Takeru (a wonderful film poorly released over here as Orochi, the Eight-Headed Dragon), he made his first big splash in the cockpit of a Gunhed. I'm not going to argue Takashima is a magnificent actor, as some bits, especially him nervously playing with his gun, feel a little forced, but he certainly has blockbuster leading man appeal with good looks and a good build, a can-do attitude when the cards come down, and a bit of endearing, self-aware dopiness. It's great seeing him try to be the baddest ass in the room in the opening, but failing because we can all see his anxieties as he's struggling at the controls of the ship and Babe bursts into the cockpit and wants to know who was stupid enough to let him be there. He's kind of a loser who has nowhere else to be and is trying (partially in vain) to make the best of the group he's found himself in. With the Gunhed, he finds a purpose. He finds something he can actually do, with dedication, that will allow him to face his fears, channel his anxiety into getting back at the thing that killed his friends, and a new group of people to protect who know the real him instead of the false bluster he used to wear. And he's a great image in the later half, all sweaty and streaked with oil as he bounces around the cockpit in Basho's old bomber cap.

And as his companion, we get the Gunhed tank itself, which is an interesting design. The model and full-size puppet work is a little unwieldy in action given the limits of the time (especially the "walking" scene), but it's still a neat design that owns its lack of distinction - it's a weird, almost random collection of parts and shapes piled on top of one another, and speaks with a deep, monotone voice - then counters it with little bits of personality, like the aforementioned baseball stuff, the occasional snarky remark, and great moments like how it goes from being an open doubter of Brooklyn's intended mission, to being the one rallying the human when it points out the whiskey tanks after its fuel has been depleted. Gunhed was just a thing in the background, a necessary vehicle to carry our characters from point A to point B, but in the course of doing so, establishes itself as a fully realized character on its own terms. By the time we reach the end, and Gunhed is a mangled wreck torn to pieces by Aerobot (who goes down in a convenient but rousing hero moment when Brooklyn hefts the massive gatling gun onto his own shoulder - which should have shattered his arm and collar bone, but still) when Gunhed further sacrifices himself by driving straight into the central core of Kryon-5 to give the humans a chance to escape, it's made its mark on the story, and showed why it's the one giving title to the film.

The film is not without its problems. The pace is off, especially in the second half where it's just scene after scene of Gunhed smashing through things. There's some impressive stuff in there, but they just didn't have the budget or technology to fully pull those moments off, and so they feel like what they are: stiff models stiffly running into one another. This is at its worst with Aerobot (who's name comes because he was originally supposed to fly), who's just a lump of swinging tails and arms, when they could have gone all out with gnashing claws or buzz saws or something. He's supposed to be this unstoppable wall of death, and he's instead a dump truck with a tail, and his fight with Gunhed is a sloppily staged and edited series of things smashing into other things. So I'll admit the film does get dull for a few stretches, and that people can and have tuned out in the second half as a result. And this, tied to the density of ideas and info being piled up, can make the 90 minute film feel like it's dragging over 2 hours.

And maybe some of their suggested stuff is almost too implied, to the point where it's very easy to miss if you aren't paying attention. Honestly, this was my first time picking up on the whole Texas Rangers/bioroid story. Every time I watched in the 90s, I just thought the bioroid was something that was there and already a part of Kryon-5's systems, and that the Texas Rangers were pursuing the raiders. And Seven and Eleven used to confuse me more than anything, with no explanation for Seven's cybernetics, and the sudden glow from Eleven's mouth boggling me until this time when I saw the screen saying "final key input" just as she approaches the Texmexium port. It all suddenly made sense to me now, but I can see how this is a film that could leave people lost or uninterested their first time through.

I also want to point out that the version I watched here was the Japanese version, which is actually a 50/50 mix of Japanese and English. Pulling a card that wouldn't come back into play until Firefly's use of Chinese, the suggestion here is that America and Japan have formed a merger of some sort, and so people are fluent in both languages. Brooklyn and the kids primarily speak Japanese for the whole film, while Nim and Gunhed speak English, with the suggestion that everyone is still able to understand one another. And in the opening, the raiders are all speaking in lines that slide constantly between English and Japanese - again, just imagine Firefly - showing a fusion between the languages. Writer/director Harada was a fluent speaker of both languages (like Jim Bannon, he got his start writing translations in the film industry), and not only was the international cast an attempt to make a film which could be equally marketed and successful in US theaters, but the fusion of the languages was a bit of stylistic experimentation that he put a lot of thought and effort into. Unfortunately, the distributor who bought the film turned out to be ADV Films, a then fledgling anime distributor who had no ability to get the film in theaters, and all of the dialogue was redubbed in English (both Japanese and English lines). That's why an incensed Harada has his name replaced with Alan Smithee on the fully-dubbed release, and the film has never managed to rise above a niche fandom, despite the likes of James Cameron and William Gibson being open fans who have tried to bolster its audience over the years.

I love this film. I really do. As with the Guyvers, it's probably been 15 years or so since I last saw it, but I'm glad I still enjoyed it far more than I did them. And that enjoyment has even deepened, as not only do I still appreciate the look, and the cast, and the world, and the wonderful music I haven't mentioned until now, but I've found new things to love like the little details I'm only now picking up on which suggest far bigger things in the lands beyond this island and the histories of those involved. And this was my first time seeing the Japanese/English hybrid version, which I found to be a fascinating experiment that in no way distracted from anything. I'm not sure which version you two have, Jak and Angie, but either way, its time for me to step back and hear whether or not you enjoyed this movie, or if I'm once again standing alone in defense of something odd.

Jak

Like a lot of people's mothers, mine used to tell me "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

The dubbing was very well done.

......

Welp, sorry mom, I've got a quota to meet here.

Noel, I can understand why the movie gets your imagination running wild, because it certainly leaves plenty of time for the mind to wander. The pacing is slow to the point of near inertia at times. The worst offender is the repair of the Gunhed which takes forever and does nothing to attempt to be remotely interesting or contribute to keeping the story moving. I'm reminded of reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame, wanting to know what happens next and having to pore through endless pages of Hugo's descriptions of architecture.

Between the detail of the sets, the gratuitously extended wireframe animations of unnecessary things like landing simulations, and the weird boxy crossfades between scenes, I got the impression early on that the movie is more an excuse to demo special effects than an effort to tell a lucid story. This is only galvanized by the extremely odd interactions between the people at times, annoying sounds that Seven makes for seemingly no reason at all, and the lackadaisical approach to exposition the movie takes thanks to the bizarre cuts, obfuscating closeups, arcane dialogue, and illogical attempts to visually explain what's happened ("Babe = monster" sequences, I'm looking squarely at you).

Maybe I'm just too stupid to follow this kind of film - if so, I think I can live with that. I have a feeling the story would be so much better if I were to read the script, where these opaque concepts and motivations are spelled out that the director and/or actors completely failed to translate to the audience on screen. It's funny, because at the beginning of the movie, I was faced with these two sheer walls of text detailing the story thus far, and the first note I wrote down was "Show, don't tell. This doesn't mean show words." By the middle of the movie, I wrote "On second thought, don't show. You're terrible at showing."

A great microcosm of my experience of the film as a whole is the battle at its opening. I could tell a lot of money and effort was put into the sets and machines, and there were certainly plenty of sparks and pretty lights to go around. Regardless, I felt like I was watching a car being manufactured through the entire fight. Maybe some music would have helped?

I realize that I spent most of the first half of the movie not knowing what was going on and trying to figure it out. I spent the last half of the movie not knowing what was going on and not caring if I found out or not. By the time Gunhed's low-rent Morgan Freeman voice started showing some interesting personality, the movie had long since lost me through its appallingly awful execution. I know this is only my second contribution here, so I feel I should state that I don't believe that there are many things that are objectively bad. If Gunhed isn't an objectively bad film, it's the closest thing I've seen to one in a very long time.

Angie

Generally, with this project, I make it a point to not read the first review until mine is completed because I want to have a fresh opinion on things. But seeing as how I watched this film and barely had any idea what was going on from start to finish, I figured it wouldn't hurt to read Noel's recap before setting out to document my impressions. I had even gone to Wikipedia to read their recap when I finished watching the film, and I was still lost. Jak and I did watch the dubbed version of this film, but from what I could tell, it was a dub that was going for accuracy over matching mouth movements, so I'm assuming this is not a case where the dub left things out. It's just that the movie itself leaves a lot of things out.

It starts off giving us an info dump, both in text and narration, to tell us all about what happened before the film. Then it cuts to two large clunky looking robots fighting each other in the worst version of Robot Wars I've ever seen. The movie doesn't bother explaining to you why this fight is important, but instead just moves on to the group of raiders. I honestly expected most of them to die, simply because Brooklyn is the only one who gets any kind of attention beyond a few wisecracks here and there. I feel like there's potential here - think of the group of marines in Aliens, and how we take some time to get to know them before they're killed off - but this is such a brief moment of the movie that you simply can't care about them. Then there's suddenly this bug eyed thing in the green water, and I honestly didn't know if it was an alien or a robot or what. The characters know what it is, and apparently they don't feel the need to talk about it either. Which is all fine and good in real life, where that probably would happen, but in movies with such complex worlds, it generally helps to have someone around to explain this stuff, too, so the audience will also know. It was also not clear to me that the creature fused with Babe, so much as I just kept thinking "Why are we seeing Babe's reflection in one of its eyes? That makes no sense."

I understood about the Texmexium (this is why writer/directors need a trusted editor to tell them when they have stupid ideas) and how it's an important thing both the good and bad guys want, and the countdown we see clearly means something bad is going to happen when it's over, but in terms of plot, that's about all I knew. Well, that and the fact that Seven is annoying. I suppose that sudden random screeching where he repeats certain words is supposed to be his cybernetic implants malfunctioning, but all I saw was an annoying kid who wouldn't shut up. Ditto to Eleven's glowing mouth. I missed the tiny text Noel mentioned, so I had no earthly idea what was going on there. I thought maybe Seven had shot her with something, and I didn't really understand why she's able to talk once her mouth stops glowing, though I figured it was somehow related.

There's a decent attempt here to build a rapport between Brooklyn and the Gunhed, and at times it works well. Gunhed is given a strong personality through Randy Reyes' voice, and I can see the change that Takashima is showing in Brooklyn. I think if there's anything you can blame on the dub, it's the fact that their relationship doesn't feel quite as strong as it could. Though, of course, I'm not sure if having them speak two different languages would give me that impression, either. It seems like that would be difficult to pull off, anyway, and I'm not sure I could sit through this slow moving confusing mess again just to find out.

The first half is a confusing, not well explained info dump, and the latter half is more of those boring giant sized Robot Wars fights, or even worse, some kind of poor Transformers clone as we slowly watch Gunhed go from mech to tank and back again. There just isn't a single point where the movie grabs me or holds my attention for anything more than a few minutes. It makes sense after Noel explains it, but I shouldn't have to go to outside sources in order to understand the story being presented to me. While the storytelling rule may be "show, don't tell," there are cases where you need to tell at least a little bit, and this is definitely one of them.

Noel

As I fully admitted in my review, this film has some significant problems, mostly in terms of pacing and the robot battles being nowhere near as captivating as the filmmakers seem to hope they are. And, yes, the opening prologue sequence handles its infodump in a ridiculously clumsy way. That said, while I'm not entirely surprised the two of you didn't like the movie, I am surprised you disliked it to the degree you did.

You both accuse the film of not making sense or never explaining anything. I'd counter that by arguing neither of you paid attention.

What the initial bioroid is (a worker in a nuclear power plant who fled from Dallas following a rampage) and what its goal is (to awaken Kyron with the stolen Texmexium) are both related to us by Nim in the scene where we first meet her.
As to the Babe!Bioroid, I don't get how it's so obtuse. The boiroid dives into the vat. Babe falls into the vat. Later, a new bioroid emerges that has Babe within, wrestling for control of their shared body. This is a clear example of them showing things through cinematic cause and effect.
The same is true of Eleven's larynx, which lights up the moment the bioroid keys in the final sequence. As she approaches the central terminal, I'll admit "keyword input" was not printed in the largest of text, but it does hold on that shot much longer than the blink of an eye, and just as the countdown clock reaches 0, she leans to the terminal and opens her mouth to speak. Again, this is not the most obtuse of cinematic storytelling.
As for the other threat of the ticking clock, the fact that the complex the heroes are ascending through is a nuclear reactor that will ignite when Kyron is activated is again information that is clearly related to us by Gunhed, and even has a big "Wha-huh!" reaction from Brooklyn.

This isn't just stuff I was pulling out of my ass. Everything I mentioned in my review builds upon thing that are there in the film, if you pay attention to it.

That said, I agree it's hard to pay attention to something that you're unable to connect to. Without that spark of interest, these details are easy to lose in the drone of noise that the experience has become. While I like that it plays these elements subtly instead of explaining them repeatedly in great detail with big flashing lights, as is typical of exposition in the typical blockbusters we get Stateside, the sluggish pace of the movie and numbing giant robot sequences mean the film isn't the easiest to hook people with, and if you aren't hooked, the rich depths of the narrative are never reached as it all just floats by.

Still, I had to sit down and give the English dub a watch just to see if that affected the experience at all. The script of the dub isn't bad, and no real information is lost in the translation, but the voice acting itself is really dull, with the stiff British actors failing to imitate American accents (Brooklyn is the worst of them, which is a problem as he's the one we're stuck with the longest). This element on top of the pace definitely can tip the scales even further into making this a dull experience. And Jak, as for the opening sequence lacking music, the English dub completely removes the score from several sequences, including that prologue. The Baseball "Charge!" song is a recurring motif throughout the Japanese track, and something Gunhed would pipe through his own speakers on occasion. I'm guessing they removed it over licensing concerns, but this does further deaden a few scenes, saps Gunhed of just a bit more personality, and removes context from the moment where Brooklyn himself hums the tune.

So, yes, I do insist that the dubbed version is a weaker version of the film... though I will admit it's not by much. This is a film that's already teetering on a ledge, and the dub only tips it a few inches closer to the pits. But while I agree it's a messy, flawed film, I don't think it's a bad one. Objectively or otherwise. It's a complicated film. Not always in a good way, but I still like how there's more there below the surface than most big dumb action movies would even pretend to have. I also like the performances and production design, and still argue that the filmmaking outside of the tiresome robot sequences is actually quite sound. And I think it's a film that does grow in quality with multiple viewings and invite the two of you to give it another try some time down the road.

Though, sadly, I understand why you're unlikely to do so.

We'll be back on the 1st of June with a pick from Jak: Krull (1983)

Guyver 2: Dark Hero (1994)... Angie's Pick for April

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 02:30:00 +0000

Angie

I have a weakness for renaissance men. You know, the type who can do just about anything? David Hayter is a screenwriter who worked on both X-Men and X2. He's also a voice actor, known for both the charming Lupin III in Castle of Cagliostro, and the gruff and hardened Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series. Being a fan of all three of those, I became a fan of the man himself. So when I heard he had also done live action films, I found a movie called Guyver 2: Dark Hero. A quick internet search told me that a viewing of the first film was unnecessary, and after Noel picked it and I was forced to watch it, I think we can all agree that the internet was trying to do me a favor back then. But will the sequel be an improvement over the original?

Before we begin, we should probably note that Jack Armstrong being replaced by David Hayter isn't the only casting change going on at the moment. While Jack no doubt got the boot due to his poor acting skills, it's only the demands of real life that caused our own Monthly Midnight Casting Change. It's with a heavy heart that I must tell you Tony will no longer be continuing on this journey with us. We enjoyed his sharing of the Ninja trilogy, and we got to expose him to some interesting films he had never seen before, but for the present, we must go on without him. He will be missed! But I hope you will join me in welcoming another renaissance man to our crew - Jak. Like David Hayter, Jak is also a writer and an actor, as well as a musician. His busy schedule doesn't often leave him time to watch films, but this project may change that.

All right, time to get on with it.

We start off being told that one year has passed since the original film. Sean still has the Guyver suit, and he's struggling with it. The suit is not content to sit around and live out a peaceful life with Mizky. It wants to kill evil doers, so Sean is being drawn out at night to do just that. He finds some thugs who are smuggling cocaine inside dolls, and proceeds to tear them apart. Their boss begs to simply be arrested, but the Guyver suit wants blood.

Back at home, Sean is plagued by nightmares where the suit makes him completely lose control. He also keeps seeing strange alien shapes that he sketches out in his notebook. While watching a television show where a man swears his brother was killed by a werewolf, the man shows a cave drawing he found near the site, and the drawing contains the same images Sean is seeing in his dreams. It turns out this all happened at the site of an archaeological dig, and Sean heads off to find it.

While asking for directions to the site, he runs into Cori, the daughter half of the father-daughter team directing the dig. She begrudgingly agrees to bring him along because she understands his quest for answers. She and her father are searching for answers themselves. They specialize in trying to find evidence of aliens, bigfoot, and the like. Their project is being funded by a corporation, and sure enough, it's Kronos, and all their men are really zoanoids. There's also a government agent named Atkins who is undercover on the dig. He knows something is up with Sean and wants his help to uncover this whole mess.

Eventually, they dig up an alien spaceship and find more Guyver suits inside. Kronos wants them, the government wants them, Cori and her father want to study them and prove to the scientific community that they're not crackpots, but only Sean knows it's best to get rid of them altogether. The ship keeps calling to him, and when he finally enters it dressed as the Guyver, it gives him some back story on the whole process. It reveals that the Guyver was a mistake made by the aliens - they wanted to use humans as their soldiers, but humans proved too unpredictable.

Amidst all this plot, there are of course fights between the Guyver and the zoanoids, and honestly, that's about all you really want to see. The fights are greatly improved from the last film. While the first fight with the thugs still mostly consists of him throwing the guys around, the later zoanoid fights are much stronger. The suits have been improved since the first film, giving them greater range of movement. The stuntman inside the Guyver suit uses martial arts and the fights are just all around dynamic with lots of blood gushing out. The transformation scenes are much briefer and just all around look better.

Unfortunately, the dialogue, script, and acting are only better because they were so horrible the last time around. Hayter is giving it his all, but his attempts at looking conflicted primarily come off as blank stares. He shines much better when he's voicing Sean from inside the suit, because he's clearly a stronger voice actor than screen actor. Kathy Christopherson deploys a whiny voice for most of her delivery, making her annoying when her character is otherwise a decent female lead. It also lacks any true emotional weight when it's revealed that Cori's father is also a zoanoid. And seeing as how he's killed off, the story doesn't really try to deal with it either. The most interesting thing they probably did with the movie was making the end fight be between Sean and a zoanoid/guyver hybrid. The design, at least, looks pretty great, and they seem more appropriately matched as opponents.

But the direction is where this movie really suffers. It is a little over two hours long, and should really only be an hour and a half. The extra length is due to poor direction choices, like lingering on the pulsing guyver nodules on Sean's neck for far too long, or watching him fake drive a truck on the way to rescue Cori. If you went through and did a cleaner edit of this film, you'd end up with something much more dynamic and sleeker.

But perhaps I am being a bit harsh. Noel? Jak? What say you?

Noel

Damn. After the first film failed to live up to my nostalgic embrace of its memory, I had hopes that Guyver 2 would more than make up for it. But, damn. To be fair, it is a significantly stronger film than the first, but not being as bad as the one before doesn't mean this one isn't bad, too.

In terms of the direction, on a purely technical level, Steve Wang deserves massive props for how far he came in just three years. He only made one other film between the Guyver flicks, Kung Fu Rascals, which is the silly thing playing on Sean's tv just after the opening sequence. It was an entirely independent work where he and his friends went out to a park with camera equipment and home-made special effects and just experimented and had fun, and the lessons he learned through that experience are apparent. His camera work is much crisper and more dynamic, creating a nice flow to every scene, and the action sequences are especially fantastic as the camera and editing are fast, but never frenetic, often moving with each blow of the battle so as to keep everything nice and clear. It's definitely an emulation of the choreography of Hong Kong cinema, which was building a strong cult following on our shores at the time, but it's a solid emulation that shows genuine understanding of the technique.

Where I think the film largely fails is the script, which Steve Wang deserves just as much blame for as he does props for the direction. Sure, the screenplay is credited to Nathan Long, but Long was working off a story from Wang (note how I'm avoiding any Long Wang puns - you're welcome), and Wang not only supervised the development of the script, but has gone on to collaborate with Long again on subsequent works (while I really like Wang's Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight, Long was head writer of the show and the scripting is just as stiff there). Obviously, Wang didn't have a problem with how the script turned out, and that's a glaring oversight on his part.

The central story, while kinda weak as far as sequels go, isn't my main problem so much as it is the construction. Sean is our hero, but as with the first film, he's very inactive, often just standing around until the story throws something at him. He suspects someone at the dig is working for Kronos, but instead of coming up with a way to root them out, he just glares at people a lot until he's eventually attacked. He chooses to seek out the cave, yes, but all he adds to the dig are a few names, as it's the ship that finally reveals itself with the crack in the wall, and nothing that's found on board is really changed by him being there. Seriously, other than having to fight off the enemy at the end, there is nothing about this film that would have played out differently had Sean not been there. The dig would have gone on and eventually uncovered the ship. Kronos would have bided their time before revealing themselves. Government spy Atkins would have just kept watching everything. If you then change it so that two Guyver units are found and Cori dons one of them for the 3rd act fight, things still play out largely the same, even with the twist and final fate of her father. Who's death, yeah, is surprisingly muted given how much time they spend building up to it after his reveal.

But no, we have to keep Sean in there, and staple on a weak theme of self discovery as he sets out to uncover his place in the world, only to come to the conclusion that it's up to himself to define what he wants to be. Which is fine, but there's no reason he couldn't already be there. There's the struggle with killing, but he never hesitates to viciously slaughter his foes. Then there's a BS backstory about the Guyvers being a failure just so he has something to overcome. And I hate the opening sequence, which tries to paint Sean as an American superhero in a glaringly obvious imitation of Batman and Punisher. Sean leaving behind the laser-etched calling card of "Guyver" on the wall is awful and makes no sense, and if they really wanted to go the dark vigilante route, they should have stuck to the city and actually played it out instead of sending Sean into the woods and never mentioning it again. I mean, seriously, when he finally utters the word "Guyver", why does nobody mention the vigilante killings that have been in the news? Why doesn't Atkins confront him on it while he's in the middle of confronting Sean over everything else? What point did that opening sequence ultimately serve?

Atkins, though, is my favorite part of the film. He's just as clumsily written as everyone, but Christopher Michael plays him with the great energy of a dedicated agent who gets the job done despite being fully aware that he's surrounded by monsters that could rip him limb from limb at a moment's notice. Sure, his fight scene with the female zoanoid is a painful throwback to the comical warehouse chase/battle from the first film (and the "Bitch." tag is unnecessary), but he still sells the weak one-liners of the script better than anyone else, and I love when Sean says "Protect the girl!" and Atkins looks at the approaching, bullet-proof monster and says "Who's gonna protect me?" But he still does, and still fights the good fight against overwhelming odds, and I'm glad that he survives at the end. I also like his devout belief that everything will be better in government hands running up against Sean's knowledge that weapons like the Guyver would be misused, no matter who ends up with them.

Aside from Atkins, the acting is pretty flat. All of the secondary parts are forgettable. Once the big bad reveals himself, I just wanted him to jump into his creature form quicker because his human actor has the charisma of a lima bean. Kathy Christopherson isn't bad as Cori, but Angie's right about her squeaky voice being an annoyance, and Cori is kind of a jerk in the way she keeps cutting Sean down over what's in the cave. And as for David Hayter... I have to admit that, due to this film coming out around the same time V.R. Troopers was on the air, I went for several years thinking he and Brad Hawkins were one and the same. In retrospect, Hawkins is significantly beefier than the long and lean Hayter, but they have a similar striking look with the strong cheekbones and piercing eyes. Sadly, they also have the same lacking level of charisma, as Hayter's primary display of emotion is going from a flat look to a comical sneer face that made me laugh a few times. He does nail the voice, and I have much love for the man as a writer (his draft of Watchmen continues to be my favorite version of that story), but the world was not robbed by his on-screen performances being few and far between.

To get back to positives, I'm impressed by the production values Wang pulled off despite this entry being made for significantly less than the first film (the budget of this was, seriously, only $900,000). There are some cost-saving aspects of the creature designs in that we not only have the Lisker suit from the first back in full, but other costumes have been reused with different heads (Cori's dad has the same body as the elephant nosed Russian, the bug with ridiculously long pinkies was one of the lab creatures), and all of the monster suits - including the "Max's transformation" head - are recycled during the flashbacks as ancient zoanoids. But just by replacing the heads with ones that are now fully expressive with animatronics that let their eyes move and their mouths open and close with the dialogue instantly sells the creatures better than what we got the first time around. The redesign of the Guyver suit is spectacular - broader at the shoulders, heavier "boots", light blue coloring, all more true to the manga look - and the main villain monster is amazing in both creature form and Guyvered creature form, and even had to do some nice little bits of acting in both, which were pulled off well. In addition to the creatures, there's also the great cave set with the moving wall of the spaceship, the organic spaceship interiors, and the lovely model work during the flashback chronicling the history of the creation of both zoanoids and the Guyver unit. And there's also some choice uses of CGI in the film. A few morphing effects don't work, but the ship rising out of the ground at the end looks nice, and I absolutely love the two moments of Sean summoning his armor while in motion, one while running through the woods, the other after having just leapt off a cliff.

But the high-points of the film just aren't enough to make up for a largely flat cast and a very weak script that the direction, no matter how striking the camerawork, was able to overcome. The Guyver has always been a blip of undeserved success for what's ultimately been a cheep bit of tween boy silliness on both sides of the pond, and it says a lot that when the audience who embraced both this and the works of Rob Liefeld ultimately turned on Rob, they left The Guyver floundering as well. It only worked because it came out at the right time to run into the right group of people, but that time passed and those people moved on. Both films are a perfect adaptation of the manga and anime, not in that they made it into something good, but that they perfectly captured everything that made the series both momentarily interesting, but ultimately disposable and forgettable. They didn't elevate the material, so ultimately sank after cresting that passing wave.

A few extra thoughts:

The music is essentially the same score as the first film, and just as uneven a mix of Terminator ripoff and random keyboard pounding. It has a few nice swells during action scenes, though.
Favorite exchange: "You go get help, I'll handle the bear!" "Right...... Wait, he'll handle the bear!?"

Jak

"What's a Guyver?"

That was the question I've had no answer to since I was told what movie we were doing this month, though it had really been around for me much longer than that. I vaguely remembered hearing about these movies a long time ago when I was a teenager as one of those weird things the Sci-Fi Channel would advertise that I tuned out while waiting for MST3K or Star Trek or whatever to return. Back then, it was probably closer to "What's a Guyver? Eh, who cares, when's my show coming back on?" Now, it seemed, I cared, and I'd be finding out soon. I made a point not to look anything up about Guyvers and Guyver-related things, not even February's Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange on the first Guyver movie, because I was curious how well this movie would stand on its own. What better way to find out than to go into it genuinely ignorant?

As it turns out, the previous movie's plot was summed up very neatly in a couple of lines right before the introductory sequence, a sequence bathed in Kool-Aid blood, some very cliche villains, and a truly unbelievable amount of slow motion. The uneven acting showcased throughout the rest of the film is established in this sequence as well. The head villain starts it off with some fine hamming followed soon by his gang shooting at the Guyver, all looking perfectly bored. I imagined the director saying, "Ok, everyone, here's where we point our guns in this direction. Ok, good, now you pull the triggers. Ok, cut, great, next scene." There's some serious cheese in how the title appears, too. "Oh, okay, so this is that kind of movie," I thought.

The story grabbed my interest early on, which surprised me because most monster fight movies I've watched use the plot as a simple vehicle to get on to the next fight. It's unfortunate that I found it really difficult to stay focused through the entire two hours because, like the acting, the pacing was all over the place. Scenes just end abruptly in the middle of conversations, fooling me more than once into thinking we were going into a flashback. On the other side of the spectrum are the travel montages and dream sequences that all went on at least three times longer than they needed to. I found myself shouting "Okay, jeez, I get it!" at the screen after sitting through more than a minute of David Hayter's pulsing neck nips juxtaposed with the collapsing walls of the dig. The endless shots of the sets and reactions when the ship was uncovered reminded me of watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which is never a good thing. Then there's the Gratuitous Jeep, a twenty-three second long shot of a Jeep falling off a cliff and exploding. Nobody's even inside of it, and it served no further purpose to the narrative. "This movie needs an exploding car!" This is why this movie is two hours.

The fight scenes were a mixed bag. Every impressive martial arts move seemed to be followed by an impossible segment of floaty nonsense that didn't even attempt to convey an illusion of impact. At times, the creatures were just standing there staring at each other. I couldn't stop laughing at the grey monster who kept beating his chest for no reason. I liked it so much that I went back and counted how many times he did it: nineteen times in two fights. At some point in the movie, I thought "You know, this doesn't look bad for an 80's flick." Later, I found out it was made in 1994. Oh.

As the scenes piled up, I realized that I've thought "Oh, okay, so this is that kind of movie" on no less than five occasions. By the time the main villain was chewing up the scenery with stock maniacal laughter and delivering the line "I love my job" straight to the camera, I was completely confused because I couldn't figure out how self-aware this film was. It felt like three or four different people with very different visions wrote scripts and cobbled them together. This is a movie that tries to analyze a man's struggle to determine his destiny. This is also a movie where "Bitch." is apparently acceptable as a one liner. So in learning the answer to "What's a Guyver?", I'm left with a new question that I may never know the answer to: "What's a Guyver 2?"

Angie

When we reviewed the first film, I promised the sequel would be better. I wasn't wrong, but I think all three of us have highlighted here that I may have also oversold it. Memories can be pretty good at lying to you sometimes, and it's possible I may have been crushing on Hayter a little too much the first time I watched this film. At least, that's the best excuse I've got in terms of why I remembered enjoying this movie before.

Noel does point out two of the funniest lines in the film, which did in fact make me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, they were more a case of the broken clock being right twice a day as much of the rest of the humor didn't come off as well. Christopher Michael did certainly make Atkins a more interesting character than the rest, but once again, I think that had more to do with one competent actor being surrounded by only passable ones.

Oh, and those chest beating moments Jak mentions? He left off the part where they used something akin to a cat wailing as the monster's cry every time he beats his chest. I kept looking around to make sure my cats weren't fighting with each other every time I heard it, because it just sounded so strange and out of place with what I was seeing on screen. I appreciate their efforts to give the monsters some kind of personality and life, but most of them came off just as silly as that.

Overall, I just can't recommend this series. Noel is right that these are a relic of their specific time period, and have not aged well at all. There are some moments that may be enjoyable in a "so bad it's good" kind of way, but you may get too bored with the films before you reach those scenes.

We'll be back on the 1st of May with a pick from Noel: Gunhed (1989)

Ninja III: The Domination (1984)... Tony's Pick for March

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Tony

The Power of Kosugi compels you!

I think most of us would agree that what keeps William Friedkin's 1973 film The Exorcist from being a classic is its baffling lack of Ninjas. Thankfully for us, director Sam Firstenberg would rectify that a decade later with our March entry in the Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange: Ninja III: The Domination.

Ninja... III?

Yep. III. Not III as in the third film of an interconnected trilogy, but III as in the third Ninja film released by Cannon that featured Sho Kosugi, but are otherwise unrelated.

Like its predecessors, Ninja III was in heavy rotation on HBO when I was growing up. I naturally loved its senseless violence, but for me, Ninja III was really all about the lovely Lucinda Dickey. Best know for her role in the breakdancing duology Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (the latter helmed by Revenge of the Ninja and Domination director Sam Firstenberg), Dickey experienced a short-lived brush with almost-fame before retiring from acting in 1990 to raise her two daughters.

With that enlightening bit of history out of the way, it's time to put on our leotards and crack open the V8 juice (this will make sense later, I promise) as we Ninja for the third and final(?) time!

Ninja III: The Description

A Ninja assassin (David Chung), for reasons never specified, shows up at a country club and murders a scientist, his wife, several body guards, and a couple of golf course security officers. This turns out to be a mere warm up for our naughty Ninja, because when the police arrive, the real killing begins. After taking out police motorcycles, cars, and even a helicopter, the assassin is cornered and riddled with bullets. This only seems to piss him off, though, and he kills even more policemen before once again being filled with lead. Finally, he uses his ninja skills to disappear, leaving the surviving cops too stunned to initiate an effective search of the surrounding area.

Mortally wounded, the Ninja manages to find a young telephone line technician named Christie (Lucinda Dickey) working on a nearby pole, and gives her his sword before dying. Soon, Christie - who also works part-time as an aerobics instructor (because it was the 80s, and all women were required by law to be part-time aerobics instructors) - begins to experience strange visions of the fateful events at the golf course. Christie is ultimately compelled to go to the secret cave where the Ninja assassin kept his weapons, don his uniform, and begin taking out the cops who were responsible for his death, one by one. This includes the young and extremely hairy Billy Secord (Jordan Bennett), a ~~stalker~~ officer who takes a special interest in Christie. The two eventually fall in love and share the only bit of V8 juice-infused foreplay in the recorded history of sex.

When science fails to answer Christie's questions about what's happening to her, she and Billy seek the help of a Japanese mystic (James Hong). There they learn that Christie is possessed by the spirit of the evil Ninja. Frightened and unable to exorcise the spirit from Christie's body, the old man tells them that “Only a Ninja can kill a Ninja.” This ups the ante from Revenge of the Ninja where “Only a Ninja can stop a Ninja.” Luckily, there just so happens to be one heading their way who has a score to settle with this particular evil Ninja.

When Yamada (Sho Kosugi) reaches these shores, he follows the trail of dead bodies, eventually confronting Christie, who he believes to be the evil Ninja. The two battle, but her true identity is revealed when Yamada removes her mask. When he learns Christie's story, Yamada vows to help her and proceeds to steal the evil Ninja's remarkably well preserved and mysteriously not yet cremated body from the morgue. He then takes it to a mountain temple... in Los Angles, California. There, Yamada manages to coax the evil Ninja's spirit out of Christie and back into its own body. Whole again, the evil Ninja and Yamada square off while Christie and Billy look on. Finally, while the evil Ninja is distracted, Christie retrieves his discarded sword and stabs him with it. Totally ignoring the fact that the old man said that “Only a Ninja can kill a Ninja,” the evil Ninja dies.

Ninja III: The Dissertation

The films that make up the “Ninja trilogy” are really nothing more than violent, R-rated comic book movies where the titular characters are mythologized and held up as something akin to modern demigods. Viewed in that context, it makes it easier to swallow the total absurdity of something like the evil Ninja getting shot fifty times at point blank range and shaking it off like they're mosquito bites. In particular, since Domination outright introduces a supernatural element from the start, anything goes as far as I'm concerned. That doesn't keep it from all being a bit silly, but it never insults our intelligence, because it flat out tells us early on that this isn't supposed to be realistic.

The supernatural aspect isn't the only thing that sets Domination apart from its predecessors. While the action in Enter the Ninja mostly took place in a remote village in the Philippines, and the tone of Revenge of the Ninja was often as stoic as its hero, Domination is really a Ninja movie for the MTV generation, with a pop culture sensibility largely absent from the first two films. This, if you'll pardon the pun, is a double-edged sword, because while the production values take a noticeable uptick here, this movie is very, very 80s. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just that every few minutes, some pop culture artifact pulls you out of the moment and reminds you that you're watching a movie. It's funny how easy it is for me to suspend disbelief and accept something as outlandish as Ninja possession, only to have the illusion shattered by the sight of an arcade game.

The other big difference is focus. In Enter, our hero is an American Ninja traveling the world in search of a purpose. In Revenge, he's a Japanese man who leaves his home to escape the violence of his past only to find that violence is a universal problem. Here, the hero is actually a heroine. Christie is a normal L.A. Girl - tough and capable, no bimbo or damsel in distress - pulled into a deadly and frightening situation beyond her experience and out of her control. She sort of reminds me of Sarah Conner in the first Terminator film. Dickey is no Meryl Streep, but she manages to come across as tough and vulnerable, a difficult trick for even the best actresses to pull off convincingly. English is also her first language, a first for the protagonists in this series.

Like the previous two films, Domination opens with a bloody and exciting action set piece. The 1 Ninja vs. 50 cops opener is about as good a whiz-bang bit of exploitation entertainment as I've ever seen. The middle portion of the film takes on a horror movie vibe as the possessed Christie carries out a series of gruesome assassinations against the various cops who killed the evil Ninja. It's not until about the half way mark, when the criminally under-used Sho Kosugi shows up, that we get our first true Ninja on Ninja action. The finale throws in everything but the kitchen sink as the evil Ninja somehow turns the temple's monks into an army of Kung-Fu zombies. It's fun, but it still can't touch the sheer awesomeness of Revenge's more straightforward showdown.

The bottom line

Look, I realize this film isn't art. It's not particularly well made, nor especially well acted, and it's certainly not well written. This is unapologetic, grindhouse-style entertainment for the home video/pay cable generation. I loved every blood-soaked minute of it.

A few Ninja notes

Ninja III: The Domination recycles parts of the score for Revenge of the Ninja, particularly during the final fight scenes and the end credits.

The arcade game Christie has in her loft is called Bouncer. I did a little research and it turns out that, due to high costs, Bouncer was never mass produced and thus never released to the public. For all the Bouncer information you'll ever need, please visit this page.

Angie

It's pretty common for movie series to go downhill as they progress, and even more common for the last in a series to be a stinker. That's usually how it ends up being last - no one wants to spend money continuing a franchise that has ruined itself. But this "franchise" is barely one at all. I'm actually surprised they put the "III" in the title, because, once again, we have absolutely no connection here to the previous entries. Though I suppose, stylistically, this one does have some things in common with the previous entry.

Besides the appearance of Kosugi (who is really just a supporting character in this one), the movie also contains some of those laughably bad moments that happened frequently in the previous entry. I once again found myself laughing at the unintentional goofiness that occurs during the opening fight sequence. I laughed even harder once the cheesy 80s soundtrack kicked in, which seemed to contain songs written specifically for the film. A Pat Benatar wannabe sings as we are introduced to Christie for the first time. For whatever reason, when she turned off her ultra-large boombox that the song was supposedly playing from, I guffawed. Yes, this is certainly a silly, silly movie.

Unfortunately, the further the film went on, I found myself less amused and a little more bored. Like hearing a series of puns relentlessly, the cheesiness of the film goes from funny to just tedious. It doesn't help that Officer Fuzzball is rewarded for his stalking by Christie suddenly deciding that he isn't creepy, she really does like him. The V8 seduction is a real head scratcher. This is, of course, another prime 80s stamp, a woman who is such a health nut that she won't drink coffee or soda, she only drinks V8. But to use the drink, wouldn't they have to gain permission? And if so, who approved the use of it as a seduction tool? I tend to be grossed out by the combination of food and sex in general, but this is particularly messed up as it almost looks like blood that he's licking off her body. Yuck.

The underlying story of the film is one that could have been interesting and entertaining if it had been handled well. A supernatural evil spirit taking over the body of someone else to get revenge is a good concept. Since the ninja first saw Christie as she was scaling a telephone pole for work, using almost the same exact move he had just used to scale a tree earlier, she was an obvious choice. But the execution just doesn't work. Christie sees one of the cops who attacked the ninja, she gets possessed, she kills the cop in some gruesome way, she comes home and doesn't remember what happened. Rinse and repeat. And her attempts to deal with what is happening to her mostly seem to be to come home and dance it out of her system.

The exorcist inspired scene comes off particularly bad, with her pale white makeup and the way she spins around and around inside the restraints they're holding her in. Once again, in the right framework, this could be creepy, but here it just comes off silly. The same can be said for the moment in her apartment when the spirits start whispering at her - they sound more like the goblins from Labyrinth than anything truly spooky.

Even when Kosugi finally gets to be part of the action, it's not that thrilling. It seemed to me like the choreography of the fights in this film are pretty lacking, not really giving him much of a chance to show off his strengths. Whether he was fighting the possessed Christie, the zombie monks, or finally the evil ninja at the end, it all just feels uninspired to me. I can see why they chose to have Christie deliver the final blow to the evil ninja, as it is a proper way to finish her story arc, but it does make Kosugi's character seem mostly useless. And apparently, Christie and Billy certainly think of him that way, because they don't bother to help him out of the sinkhole he's fallen into or tell him thanks in anyway. They just leave off into the sunset together.

So while I found something of value in the other two entries in this series, despite their faults, I simply can't recommend this one. The bad outnumbers the good too much for me. If you're a lover of 80s cheese, you may be able to get more out of it, but for anyone else, I think you're better off just passing this one by. Check out the earlier films for something a little more fun.

Noel

And here's where I surprise ~~no one~~ everyone by saying I quite enjoy this film.

Linda Firstenberg, who I'd never seen before, make for a very compelling lead, and a fresh face for the Ninja "franchise". In fights, her moves have more the measured grace of a dancer than they do the force of a martial artist, but her physical athleticism can't be denied, especially every time you get a look at her magnificently developed arms and shoulders. There's an everyday vulnerability to go with the strength, a very Heather Langenkamp quality, but I like how the film makes sure to show us how well she can handle herself in everyday situations, so the threat is significantly stronger when she has to go up against forces quite far from the everyday. It's never clearly expressed if the poltergeist sequences in her apartment are actually happening or just in her head, but I love the moment when she decides not to give in, and starts fighting back the doors that are flying open and grounding objects sailing into the air. And in the best bit of the movie, she actually tries to combat the demonic forces with the power of 80s pop music and dancing. It's good stuff, and the awkward V8 sex scene (which mostly doesn't work because of the horrid actor in Billy's role) is more than made up for by sequences like the wild exorcism or the steely glint in her suddenly eye-linered eyes as she dons the ninja gear. My only major issue with her is that she's largely denied a climax. Instead of it being all about Christie struggling to hold onto herself while clashing swords with another ninja, she only gets a few swipes at Sho before the evil ninja is back in its own body and she's just watching on the sidelines while Sho steals the... wait for it... show. Sure, she gets a poke in with the sword, but that's not what killed the ninja. It kept fighting for another five minutes, only losing the day when Sho buried a knife in its skull.

Speaking of Sho, I was surprised he didn't show up until almost half way through the film, but I like the mystery of his role, that we don't know if he's a friend or foe until quite late into things as he's always lingering on the periphery, slowly putting the pieces together of how the ninja ended up possessing Christie. Sure, he completely hogs the spotlight in the climax, but at least he does so in grand fashion, as the battle between he and the ghost ninja is great. I especially love the moment when the monks in the temple are possessed and go after Sho, and he does everything he can to not hurt his friends before being forced to disarm them. It's a silly moment on paper, but very well played. And I like little moments of humor from Sho, like the bonking together of the nurses' heads, or the bit with the darts in the police car. Sho has really grown into a fine cinematic presence over the course of these three films, so I'm not surprised he left an impression on fans back in the day. My only issue is, if you want to give Sho an eyepatch, just give Sho an eyepatch. Don't over-think it by strapping that jar lid to his face.

I'd disagree that the narrative isn't straightforward, Tony. It's crazy as hell, and doesn't follow the more typical "hero's journey" structures of the first two, but it's still pretty easy to follow. A ninja assassin is gunned down by cops, passes into the body of a young woman, then hijacks her body at night to get revenge on those cops, even as the woman he's possessing starts falling in love with one. That's actually a great hook, and I quite enjoy it. My only problems with the story are two fold. First, they needed to play up the cops more as innocent victims being punished for just doing their jobs. For the first two kills, we get a shlub in a wife beater cussing at the ninja from across a pool table, and a dude sleazing into a hot tub with a pair of call girls. It's almost as though the producers wanted us to enjoy the sight of these guys being killed, but I think that robs the story of the horror it needs at what Christie is being forced to do. It's not until we get to the attack at the police funeral that they try to play her victims up as honorable folk, and by then, it's a bit too little, too late. The second problem, which I've already mentioned, is Jordan Bennett as Billy Secord. His "romantic" lead does cross the line into stalker territory as he keeps refusing to take no for an answer, and if that's the route you want to go, you need to play it very carefully, giving him a bumbling, hapless charm along the lines someone like Brian Benben can deliver. Jordan Bennett is no Brian Benben, and his attempts at charm comes off aggravating and unappealing, and that more than the pouring of V8 made the sudden sex scene so completely unbelievable. Also, dude, wow. That is some serious back hair.

In terms of filmmaking, I found this totally on par with Firstenberg's direction of the second film, mixing solid choreography and editing with the handheld television camera on a zoom lens cinematography. It's not my favorite type of filmmaking, but it's capably handled, and he does just as well with the wild poltergeist sequences (love the goofy voices snarling in Japanese on the soundtrack, and the laser and smoke effects from the arcade machine) as he does the ninja action. The highlight definitely is that opening sequence, where an assassination on a golf course turns into a bloody chase as this one ninja takes out half the police department before they empty hundreds of rounds into him... and then he keeps fighting! It does have its implausible moments, like when he lifts up the golf cart or wraps an iron around his wrist, but given the story that follows, I'm willing to let it slide. And when the ninja gets his body back in the climax, I love the execution of how it moves with a corpse-like stiffness and unnaturally spins around when it's hit. There's a lot of little details like that which impress me, and unlike Revenge of the Ninja, this film embraces its sillier moments and even goes for a few legitimate laughs.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this final chapter in the Ninja sequence. It's silly as hell, but played it just right and kept me engrossed and entertained from the bright blue polo shirt of scene one to the heroic shot of Kosugi atop a cliff as we enter the credits. A fun time was definitely had, and thanks again, Tony, for finally getting me to check out these three essential installments of 80s cinema.

A few extra thoughts:

It's always a delight when James Hong shows up in a film, and despite not being Japanese (which I blame the producers for, not him), he's a welcome presence as the "exorcist", and slips some good chuckles beneath the serious veneer of his performance.
Didn't realize until now that James R. Silke, who wrote both this and Revenge of the Ninja, is the pinup and comic book artist Jim Silke who was briefly big in the 90s. I read his scifi swashbuckler series Rascals in Paradise back in the day and remember it being a fun, if light and old-school cheesecake, book.

Tony

If 80s cartoons taught me anything - besides consumerism - it's that there's a lesson to be learned in everything we do. Well, kids, in today's episode, Tony learned that Ninjas aren't for everyone.

As popular as Ninjas became in the 80s, they never did graduate to the Hollywood A-list, and the likes of Sho Kosugi never got to walk the red carpet, unless that carpet was covered in fake blood. Like their “Chopsocky” Kung-Fu predecessors in the 70s, the cinematic Ninjas of the 80s were B-movie heroes. The principle differences between the two were format and venue. While Kung-Fu films thrived in the halcyon days of the grindhouse, the outbreak of Ninjamania coincided with the mainstreaming of home video and pay cable. This meant that you could enjoy your exploitation from the comfort of your living room, and didn't have to wonder if the guy three seats over was masturbating under his raincoat. Unless you lived in my house, where we referred that man as “Dad”. By the way, if you should ever find your self watching a movie at my Dad's house, here's a little tip: if he asks if you want butter on your popcorn, say “No”.

Angie, I really appreciate how open minded you've been throughout this so-called “Ninja Trilogy”. I know these types of films aren't exactly your thing, but you made an honest effort to find some pros hidden amongst the many cons. I can certainly understand why Domination was your least favorite of the three. I think its inclusion of pop culture was a bit like ordering extra cheese on a deluxe cheese pizza. Unless you have a great affinity for both Ninja exploitation and 80s pop culture, it would be a bit overwhelming. One area where we did find some common ground was with the fight choreography. I also felt it was a bit sloppy and uninspired here, lacking the skill and elan of Revenge of the Ninja. Another thing we agree on was that the horror element didn't quite work. Even though Ninja and horror make for an odd genre mash-up, I actually love the possession concept. The problem is that the execution was a bit lacking. What does it say when the scariest moment in the movie was the V8-infused sex scene between Christie and Officer Chia Pet?

Noel, I sort of had a feeling you would like this one. From the inclusion of a female protagonist to the horror elements, it seemed right in your wheelhouse. The comparison of Lucinda Dickey to Heather Langenkamp in A Nightmare on Elm Street was spot on. Like Langenkamp, Dickey isn't a great actress, but she did balance strength with vulnerability in a way that was crucial for any successful “final girl” in a horror film. Great job picking up on the evil Ninja moving with a rigor mortis-stiffened gait in the finale, too. All these many viewings and I've never noticed that before. That's what makes you Noel.

And with that, we bring the curtain down on the “Ninja Trilogy”. In spite of our mixed reactions, I do hope our readers seek these films out. They may not be high art, but I believe that Ninjamania is a genuine bit of pop cultural history worth exploring.

We'll be back on the 1st of April with a pick from Angie: The Guyver 2: Dark Hero (1994)

The Guyver (1991)... Noel's Pick for February

noreply@blogger.com (Noel Thingvall) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 02:59:00 +0000

Noel

"You can't kill me. I've been rejected by death."

The manga series Bio-Booster Armor Guyver first saw print in 1985, and still retains enough popularity that it continues running to this day. In the states, it became this mini cult boom success story in the early 90s as the comics and OVAs finally reached our shores, along with a pair of live-action, American produced films. Surprisingly, these films were produced a year before the first OVA hit video over here, and two years before the first issue of the comic, meaning it had to launch the property to an American audience instead of building on a pre-existing fandom. And it worked, as a following was formed around the kid in an iconically designed suit of alien armor, and I was totally swept up in it, with notebooks filled with doodles of what various other heroes and creatures might look like with the same suit of form-fitting armor.

The boom ended up fading within a few years, with American editions of the comics breaking off after a dozen volumes, leaving much of the run from the late 90s to today unavailable in official translations. The videos also failed to catch on in the era of dvd, and a more recent anime tv series came and went without creating much of a blip. I went back and re-read the first arc of the manga in prep for this piece, and I think I know why it didn't stick...

It's not that good.

It's not. The Guyver itself is impressively drawn and designed, but the rest of the artwork is mediocre and none of the monsters he fights are memorable. The plot is a very basic Kamen Rider knockoff, with him fighting one monster after another while struggling with his own humanity. It looks neat and there's a lot of violence, so I can see why tween boys quickly latched onto it in the peak Rob Liefeld years, but it doesn't have anything beyond that to pull in older readers or keep its followers interested as they grow out of it.

As for the film... well, it's not that good, either.

The central plot is a loose adaptation of the opening manga arc, with the villain side of things being the most faithful. The Cronos Corporation has discovered that humans were bio-engineered by aliens in ancient times, but instead of just being menial slaves, we're actually organic weapons, and small tweaks to our DNA can trigger us into monstrous, super-powered transformations. Zoanoids, as such lycanthropic beings are now know, have largely lurked in the shadows, but Cronos, under the leadership of Fulton Balcus, has started triggering and building a private army. They've also discovered a Guyver unit, a suit of bio-organic armor that the aliens used to keep their creations in line. Before the suit can be activated, a scientist makes off with it.

In the comic, the Guyver falls into the hands of a teenager who has to juggle his involvement in this underground war with his friends and life at school. Here, we get some dude named Sean Barker, who lacks any form of backstory or character arc (there's some weak setup of him needing to control his temper, but it's never explored any further), and who's about as bland and forgettable as a white-painted fence post. Thankfully, he spends half his screen time replaced by a stunt-man in the Guyver suit, but you can tell the producers knew they had a dud of a lead on their hands as he not only doesn't get first billing, but is pushed down to third, beneath supporting player Mark Hamill and love interest/distressed damsel Vivian Wu, both of whom were more recognizable names at the time. Not only that, but Hamill is also featured on the poster as wearing the Guyver armor, despite him never once doing so throughout the story.

The plot is a randomly constructed mess of cliches and coincidence. It hits the manga beats: the unit is stolen, Zoanoids are revealed, the hero gets the suit, someone close to him is kidnapped, he loses a fight where his control sphere is ripped out and he seemingly dies, then he's reborn as we learn the backstory and he fights the final boss. It's all fine, if basic stuff, but they try to pad out the material in weak ways. Mizky (Wu) is suddenly the daughter of the scientist who stole the Guyver. Sean has a run in with the bully (with comical street gang) from his karate class. Instead of the unit falling into Sean's possession during the opening battle (as it does in the comic), they convolute an entire series of coincidences just to get him to the armor, then yet another string just to have him put it on.

And the worst part, I hate to say, is Mark Hamill. I love you Mark, but you're entirely tacked on. This was his "poor man's Michael Biehn" phase, where Hamill donned a moustache and tried to be all gruff and growly, this time as Max Reed, a cop on the edge who's completely dismissed by his own department over his investigation into Cronos and its monsters. Hamill does fine, but there's nothing for his character to really do except be there, hold together the other unnecessary threads the story adds, and then die tragically at the hand of Cronos' experiments in the end. I'll admit, his monster transformation is painful to watch, and props to the puppet department for keeping his anguished eyes on the dying sculpt.

Visually, there is some nice stuff to look at in this film. The directors are Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George, a pair of makeup legends from the 80s. Wang is a slick sculptor, and the Guyver suit is largely his work, with every aspect of its design from the manga brought meticulously to life. The eyes and breathing mask. The elbow blades. The head spike. The extra eyes that give it a rear view. The chest that opens and unleashes a devastating final beam. It looked great then, and still holds up well, especially the amazing transformation bits where they pull off some things with full actor stop motion and in-camera effects that most would deem impossible in the days before CG. Despite being a brick, Sean has the great rousing moment as he says, "I... am... the Guyver!" while his breath is heavy and he glistens with sweat, and the camera whips back as the pieces of the suit explode out of him and start slapping into place. It's an amazing shot.

Sadly, it's one of the few shots that earns that word. Most of the film is very lazily framed, leaving it looking bland and cheap. Wang made a name for himself in subsequent years for his flashy camera and action choreography (Kamen Rider Dragon Knight was a fantastic show that everyone should track down), but very little of it is on display here as even the battles between the Guyver and monsters come off clumsy. As for the monsters, most of them do look pretty nice, but the camera work doesn't hide their shortcomings (visible seams in the back, inarticulate mouths), so they don't really sell. When Balcus turns into a giant monster at the end, the impressive bits are undercut by the fact he's visibly being pushed around on wheels. They created great stuff, but they didn't shoot it right, so it ends up looking cheaper than it is. The only monsters that really work are Max, which I mentioned above, and Lisker, evil second in command, and I see from the credits that he's the only one created in full by Screaming Mad George. Wang and he must have been too busy with their directorial duties as some of the creature work was outsourced, and it shows.

The tone of the movie is also wildly off. The manga is a dark and violent action series, and some of that makes it here, but New Line allegedly wanted to bring it more in line with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film series that had been a big hit for them, so humor was added. Not for the heroes, no, but for the villains, as the goons are suddenly a comical bunch with a biker chick who wants to go shopping in Brazil, a fat Russian wearing a collar who snorts with his nose to indicate his enhanced sense of smell, and Jimmy Walker rapping and wisecracking before turning into a jive talking gremlin with bling and massive lips. So yeah, they try to be funny, but they go all Michael Bay with ethnic humor and nastiness. There is a legitimately funny scene where Walker's monster wanders onto a horror film where he's mistaken for the star creature and is pulled aside for a meeting with the director, but it's completely out of place, and all these antics do is lessen the threat against our hero. Michael Berryman is perfect as Lisker, and the black coat they put him in accentuates his striking and gaunt features, but it's hard to take him serious when even he's shaking his head at his goons and calling them idiots. David Gale does far better as Balcus, but most of that is him just hamming things up in the way he was known for, lacing his dictatorial zeal with a perverse glee.

This film is a mess. The story is barely stitched together from underthought cliches. The tone doesn't know if it wants to be straight or funny, and ultimately succeeds at neither. The creatures are neat but filmed in a way that hurts instead of accentuates them. The hero looks awesome, but has zero personality or character. The direction is clumsy and leaves the film looking like a straight-to-video production instead of something intended for theaters. Oh, and I haven't mentioned the music. The main theme, with synth percussion and guitar, is actually quite catchy despite being a knockoff of the Terminator theme, but the rest of the incidental music is intrusive and feels like someone randomly poking at a keyboard.

It's been about 15 years since I last watched this film or even thought about the world of The Guyver, but I saw this movie so many times during that stretch of a few years that this was like hopping on a bike, as I was quoting along to the wave of memories the film brought forth. I enjoyed watching it, and this did fire up all the cylinders of nostalgia, but it's important for people to know that something being nostalgic doesn't mean it's good. This only works for me on a personal level that not many out there would share, as The Guyver only had a brief, cult boom on our shores. It's not something where I could sit down someone today and win them over. Why? Because it's ultimately not good. I can see why I totally dug it at the age I was when it came out, but I'm no longer that age and the people who are aren't in the same environment I was at the time. This isn't the "totally awesome" era of the early 90s where Rob Liefeld reigned supreme and anime was this slick and dirty new word that mostly promised blood and boobies.

This film is a part of me and a part of my memories, and I'll definitely revisit it again and again over the years, but it's not something I can recommend. It really is crap made by people who had a lackluster property and no clue what to do with it. But maybe this is just me holding too harsh a mirror against my past delights. Tony, Angie, let me know what you think and if I'm being too hard on this childhood favorite of mine.

Note: The DVD is not the cut that appeared on video. A few incidental character bits have been added and the extreme violence which initially caught my eye as a kid has been heavily toned down.

Tony

Okay, Exchangers, get out your flannel shirts and Doc Martens and join me in the WABAC machine. We’re heading back to the early-90s!

Cracked Rear View

It’s late at night and I’m surfing through the 30-some odd channels of cable TV at my disposal, when I stumble across an oddity that stops me dead in my tracks. Coming in somewhere near the end of the first act, I watch as a kind of deranged Power Ranger, with help from a puffy looking and unkempt Luke Skywalker, battles a large Gremlin with the voice of J.J. from the 70s sitcom Good Times. Until a few days ago, I chalked that memory up to a nightmare brought on by a bad Chalupa, but Noel insists that what I saw was actually this month’s featured movie, The Guyver.

Hold my hand because I only wanna be with you... back in the present

Here we are back in good old 2013 (BTW, you should’ve seen the look on mid-90s Darius Rucker’s face when I told him that present-day Darius Rucker was a country singer. And yes, I told him not to do that Burger King commercial). Though the slacker-induced taco fog has long since lifted, my memories of that nightmare are vague, at best. Convinced Noel is pulling my tail, I load an oh-so-90s VHS copy of The Guyver into my VCR and push play...

92 minutes later

Man, Noel, you weren’t lying, were you? The Guyver is indeed a film about a deranged Power Ranger who, with the help of a not so puffy looking - yet quite unkempt - Luke Skywalker, battles a giant Gremlin with the voice of J.J. from the 70s sitcom Good Times. That’s the kind of thing you win a bar bet with.

Believe it or not, I actually went into The Guyver with moderately high hopes. After all, how do you screw up a movie about a kid who finds a symbiotic alien super suit that turns him into a kung-fu fighting hero? You don’t need a polished script, high production values or good actors to pull that off - which is good, because The Guyver doesn’t have any of those things. All you need is some catchy music and exciting fight choreography. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have those things, either. This movie should’ve worked on the same level of guilty pleasure as a Power Rangers episode, but it’s undermined by a complete lack of energy. It's a product of the most uninspired direction this side of 1 Night in Paris. Here’s a rule of thumb I like to follow: you hire guys named Screaming Mad George to DJ the noon-to-four block at a classic rock station, but you don’t hire him to co-direct a movie.

There’s some amusement to be had in the camp of it all, though. The actors playing the bad guys clearly relish their chance to ham it up, and whenever they’re on screen, it all kind of works in a B-movie sort of way. I also found their costumes and make-up somewhat impressive by low budget fright flick standards, though seriously, Walker’s Gremlin persona is one of the most overtly racist things I’ve ever seen in a movie. When the focus shifts to our charm-challenged hero, his meek would-be love interest, or the clearly bored and embarrassed Mark “Slumwalker” Hamill, things grind to a halt. Even when Sean dons the suit, as impressive as it is with its moving parts and shooting steam, it doesn’t move the energy needle much. It’s just a signal that we’re in for another boring and clumsily choreographed fight scene.

As Noel mentioned, I have the VHS version thanks to a lucky score at a local thrift store. I honestly can’t imagine why they felt it necessary to tone down the violence for the DVD cut, which is the work of co-director and should-be DJ Screaming Mad George, if my research is correct. The back of the box for my VHS copy lists the rating as PG-13, and that feels about right to me. The fighting is exaggerated and cartoonish, and while some of the creature stuff is gruesome and unpleasant, particularly during the scenes at Cronos corporation near the end, it’s all rather tame by today’s standards.

Ultimately The Guyver is a rather shoddy B-movie that breaks the first commandment of low budget action films: “Thou shalt be fun”. I’m convinced there’s a decent, if unoriginal, “superhero” flick in there somewhere, but along the way, it was lost in the folds of incompetence... along with Jimmy Walker’s dignity, Mark Hamill’s pride, and Screaming Mad George’s career.

Angie

This may be a give away for a future post, but I feel partly responsible for us viewing this film. What I mean is that I have the sequel picked for my next film, and Noel volunteered to pick the first movie before it. I'd never actually seen it before, though I had seen one video review that assured me there wasn't much value to it. I was more than willing to try to give it a fair shot, but I have to admit it was painful for me in places. I made the mistake of reclining on the sofa and had to pause the movie at one point because I could feel myself falling asleep. And that was in the middle of an action scene.

There's a moment early on when one of the cops tells Mark Hamill's character that he's wasting his time chasing Ninja Turtles, and it's clear they wanted us to make that comparison. But it doesn't hold up, not by a long shot. Well, I suppose in that they both feature creatures that are really people in suits, but honestly, I was thinking Power Rangers more often than Ninja Turtles, thanks to the cheap look most of them have. But more than anything, the Ninja Turtle films had a plot that was targeted toward children, whereas this film doesn't know who it's targeted toward.

All three leads are dreadfully uninteresting and downright painful to watch. Mark Hamill is just going through the motions, and both Vivian Wu and Jack Armstrong are terrible. The weak dialogue given to them makes it even worse, and the plot doesn't help. For example, Vivian Wu's character shows up at Sean's karate class, dressed like a prim schoolgirl, seemingly just so he can offer to take her home. Mark Hamill shows up to tell her that her father is dead, and he ends up taking her home instead. When Sean comes to her house a little while later, there are visible tears in her eyes, but instead of asking what's wrong, he gets jealous because he sees Hamill there. Sean, wouldn't you at least be concerned that the other man was hurting her? That she might not want him there? But instead, he just turns around and walks away.

When he comes back to her apartment the next day, she's dressed like a Madonna backup dancer from the 80s. I guess the death of her father has made her rebel. As the two of them do finally discuss her father's death, both actors lack any ability to convey emotion to us, so the scene just doesn't work. And Sean Barker is such a jerk that he uses this moment to put the moves on her and is then pissed when his karate instructor shows up and therefore prevents Mizky from kissing him. But we're supposed to like this guy and root for him, and want the two of them to get together in the end.

I would also like to suggest that this script was perhaps written by a six year old. Never mind what the credits say, I have proof. Some of you may know that I'm currently working with my friends on a very small independent film project. We're actually filming two scripts at once, one of which was originally written by the director at the age of six. Nearly every scene in this draft ends with one of the characters saying something to force the scene to end. "Well, let's go get you a room." "Well, we might as well go now, so let's go." This same method happens repeatedly in The Guyver. "I'll just go get us some dinner" "No, it's fine, I'll leave." "Well, we might as well go now."

As Noel mentioned, you can tell they were also trying to make this a comedy, but pretty much every single joke falls flat. The only ones even trying for it are Jimmy Walker and Spice Williams, and as such, they come off as bizarre and completely out of place. Bebop and Rocksteady these henchmen are not. David Gale and Michael Berryman are more competent as the lead villains, but once again, this weakly structured movie doesn't give them much to work with.

The action is also pretty abysmal. Apparently, wearing the Guyver suit makes you throw people a lot. Because most of the time, that's all Sean does. Gang in the alley running towards him? He throws them away, one by one. Zoanoid goons attacking him and his girl? Yup, throws them away! We get a little more of a fight later on in the climactic scene, but the choreography is still pretty uninteresting. I'm sure it's largely related to a lack of movement available when wearing those heavy suits, but it's the kind of thing that a film of this style should consider before designing them, or at least before framing the shots.

There are elements here that I think could have made a better film if handled a lot better. The creature designs have potential, but I agree with Noel in that they aren't animated enough to be taken seriously. Also? We see a few of them mid-transformation, and the middle mess never looks anything like what the final form does. Even Hamill's transformation, while fittingly unsettling, just comes off wrong as we're forced to look at it far too long.

At one point, I started imagining what this would look like as an anime, and began to realize where they went wrong. As we saw with last month's pick, Anime is such a stylized genre that trying to directly translate all the elements just doesn't work quite right here. My memory tells me all of this was treated much better in the sequel, though I guess we'll find out in a couple months if I'm correct. Oh, and don't let that ending scene fool you. Striker is nowhere to be found in that one. Fortunately.

Noel

Sorry I threw you both a stinker this month. There's no responsibility for it on your part, Angie, as this was a nostalgia trip I was planning to bring up anyways a little further down the road. So if anything, thank you for forcing us over that hump sooner.

I don't regret featuring this film on the blog, though, as this is a perfect venue for us to revisit things from our past while simultaneously sharing them with someone new. Sometimes they'll hold up (you're two for three on the Ninja films so far, Tony), and sometimes they won't. But they can still be worth sharing in the end. The Guyver is a film worth sharing. For several reasons.

1) To give appreciation for Steve Wang's growth as a filmmaker. Angie has us lined up for The Guyver 2: Dark Hero in a couple months, where he takes the reins solo, and while my memory of the story is fuzzy, the action most certainly stands out in my mind as being leaps and bounds above what we see in this initial outing. At some point down the road, I also promise to bring up Kung Fu Rascals, a transitional film between the Guyver flicks, where he took his paycheck from the first and made an indie action flick in his back yard starring himself and some friends, to both have some fun, and experiment and cut his teeth on stylish choreography and camera work. I don't know if he just hadn't worked out that style in time for The Guyver, or if there were too many production limitations for his ideas to shine, but I promise you all that he does make up for the constant throwing we get here in place of actual martial arts.

2) As a warts and all study of male tween tastes of the early 90s. Remember, Rob Liefeld wasn't just some niche fad. His comics sold huge and he was a pop culture icon who briefly overshadowed even Stan "The Man" Lee. His stuff was ugly and crude, but conveyed everything 90s kids found awesomadical. Bio-Booster Armor Guyver pushed all the same buttons, as a teenage boy they could all identify with was given super armor that allowed him to crush, break, and slice to death massive monstrosities of increasingly grotesque design. It didn't matter if it was stupid or poorly drawn, it tied straight into their id of power fantasties with a dash of nastiness the kids felt they were getting away with just by reading such things.

The movie, at least the version Tony saw, still retained a lot of this, as we see the Guyver literally rip creatures limb from limb, slash their throats under raining geysers of blood, and rip open his own chest for the ultimate final move of a power beam that vaporizes anything in its path. It didn't matter that what we saw was stupid or poorly made, but it was a normal guy suddenly given huge power, and instead of just saving the day, he was slaughtering the opposition! Literally! This sounds gruesome and juvenile, but this was an era where kids getting easy access to violent entertainment was still fresh and new. Cable TV was settling in, with uncensored movie channels kids could explore behind their parents' backs. Video games were heading down the increasingly gory road that was just about to culminate in Doom and Mortal Kombat. Comic books were in the post-Alan Moore and Frank Miller era where everyone was dark and broken and increasingly uncaring if the villains lived to face justice, and the artists at Marvel were just about to break away and form Image.

I'm not saying it was an admirable time in hindsight, but it was a turning point, a cultural loss of childhood innocence, that's still somewhat adorable in how juvenile it's being while pouting in a demand to be seen as mature.

And at the middle of it all was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The original TMNT comic was never meant to be a big thing. It was a brief parody of the stylistic stuff Frank Miller had been doing in his Daredevil run. But it sparked something. It came at just the right time and was one of those parodies that leaves such a strong impression that it elevates into becoming its own glorious thing of beauty (see also, Airplane). So it kept going, yet it never took off until someone looked at this gritty study of teen angst and brutal ninjitsu and said, "Hey, lets clean it up for the children!" And that's what most of us knew as kids, the clean-cut Turtles of the cartoon, where the only villains who were smited were nameless drone robots, and everything was largely played for laughs. The comic book version most of us read was the Archie tie-in to the cartoon, which was every bit as family friendly. Yet accidents would happen, and when parents would buy an issue for their kids, they'd occasionally pick up the actual, original TMNT comic by mistake, and we'd suddenly see these silly characters we loved brooding in despair before using the blades of their bladed weapons to slash foot soldiers to death. And instead of electronics pouring out of the wounds, it was blood and gore because these were actual people instead of robots and, oh, how our young minds would suddenly be blown.

And then came the movie. We all went in expecting the fun and games of the cartoon, but no, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went right back to the comics, where Raphael is a violent manic depressive, Casey Jones is a half-crazed vigilante who beats peoples' heads in with a baseball bat, and Shredder lorded over the broken minds of his cult of teenage followers. It was amazing. To this day, I hold it up as one of the best films based on a comic book.

And directly in its wake, both released in 1991, were The Guyver and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. And you can see the same problem fucking up both.

Looking at the first TMNT movie, you can see what The Guyver was initially going for, and what it should have been. Sure, the filmmaking is still shit, but if they'd at least gotten the tone right, that would be one less thing bringing it down. Instead, the studio wanted it to be funny. The first TMNT, while fondly remembered, suffered a bit because audiences found it too serious, too dark, so the edict was made that TMNT 2 would be more in line with the cartoon. It would be sillier, the villains less threatening, with all brooding tucked away and never explored again. Somewhere in all of this, the same edict was made of The Guyver. "It's based on a cartoon, so make it more cartoony!" "It's based on a comic, so make it more comical!" You know, the attitude of people who don't have a clue what they're talking about.

The Guyver was already a broken film, but this is what ultimately killed it, that the filmmakers didn't have the freedom to make the movie they wanted. And who knows, maybe that's why the direction is so flat and the makeup men outsourced most of the makeup instead of doing it themselves. Maybe they just stopped caring. The film certainly feels like a passion project for which the passion was lost.

Anyways, this was supposed to be a point about youth culture of the early 90s, but it veered off a bit. Where was I...

3) This is, officially, the very first live-action American film based on an anime or manga property. It wouldn't be the last, as it was followed by The Guyver 2, Fist of the North Star, Dragon Ball: Evolution, and Speed Racer. That's not exactly the best company to find oneself in (excepting Speed Racer, which is actually pretty amazing and has strengthened its following over the years), and it goes back to Angie's point about how hard it can be to translate imagery that has the freedom of illustrations into the limitations of live-action. Speed Racer showed it can be done, but only if you have tons and tons of money and state-of-the-art, innovative effects work to throw at it. On a low-budget, you're pretty much shit out of luck (unless you still bring an energetic camera to things - see, The Guyver 2 in two months). Fist and Dragon Ball suffer the same problem as The Guyver: it's in the hands of people who don't really get it, and have nowhere near the resources needed to pull off what they do get.

It's not to say anime can't be successfully adapted - I hold out hope for the Robotech and Cowboy Bebop films - but it requires such effort and resources that nobody wants to even try given how badly past attempts have failed. Ignoring that past attempts have failed because of a lack of said resources, but still. It's hard. And it was especially hard in the days of the early 90s, where Stephen Spielberg was still two years away from showing what CG animation could be capable of.

Ultimately, The Guyver is a horrible film that never really had a chance to be anything but horrible. It was a lousy property that had no money to pull off the few things the comic got right, a studio who couldn't figure out who they wanted to target it for, a script proven by Angie to have been written by a child, and a pair of rookie filmmakers who just weren't ready for the situation they were thrown into.

It's made of fail.

But not in the good way.

[Sorry, but the only trailer we can find is a foreign dub where the film was retitled Mutronics. But it still gets the gist of the film across.]

We'll be back on the 1st of March with a pick from Tony: Ninja III: The Domination (1984)