The Fan (C, 1996)
Robert DeNiro is a baseball-worshiping knife salesman whose life is falling
apart. He loses his temper with clients (a really bad habit in a knife
salesman!) and doesn't make many sales, his ex-wife is getting a restraining
order against him, and his plan of being a hero to his son is not going well
due to his selfishness and crazy temper and his attempts to push baseball
on the boy. About the only thing that's going well for him is that his favorite
team, The Giants, have signed top hitter Wesley Snipes. But Snipes is having
his own run of bad luck, too. Unable to deal with the rest of the things that
are messed up in his life, DeNiro decides to try to help Snipes out of his
slump by killing the player (Benicio Del Toro) who has Snipes's lucky number
11 uniform. But Snipes, being a sane person, doesn't show the proper appreciation
for this, and DeNiro gets mad. A good return to Travis Bickle territory for
DeNiro, and the film hits on all levels - quality script, direction, and performances.
(This is immaterial, but here's a fun thing you can do: Snipes's character's
name is "Bobby," so whenever you see DeNiro cheering for him, you can pretend
he's congratulating himself on the great acting job he's doing. "Attaboy,
Bob-bay!" Well, it cracked me up, anyway... ) -zwolf
Fantasy Mission Force (C, 1984) AKA Dragon Attack,
Mini Special Force, Mai nei dak gung dui
One amazingly insane and stupid kung-fu thingie-whatsis starring Jimmy Wang
Yu and Jackie Chan. It's World War II and the Japanese are attacking the world
from a base that appears to be in uppermost Canada(?). Commanders from various
countries (with Abraham Lincoln representing the U.S.) try to find someone
to deal with the problem. After considering James Bond, Snake Plissken, "the
bald-headed detective" (Kojak, maybe?), a woman with an eyepatch, and Rocky
Balboa, they settle on Wang Yu. He starts recruiting an attack squad from
various criminals, Dirty Dozen style, starting with Jackie.
Jackie looks like a chimney sweep or something, wearing a top hat and doing
a musical number. Sometimes he also has a Mexican bandito mustache, and sometimes
he doesn't, although if he's supposed to be a disguise expert or something,
I missed it. Jackie fights a big hulking fat guy, and then a guy dressed like
Sherlock Holmes shows up, and a woman in leather blows up a shack with a rocket
launcher, and then a bunch of Japanese guys dressed as Scotsmen show up and
the woman takes one guy who may be trying to look like Elvis hostage.
Then some guys with hoods over their heads ride in on horses, and a guy dressed
as a knight causes some slapstick by jamming the point of his oversized WWI-like
German helmet into someone's ass. Some more hooded guys (wearing Tarzan get-up
aside from the hoods)jump out of a roof like ninja, and some Amazon women
show up and put our heroes (if these are supposed to be our heroes - there's
not enough of a plot to tell) lock them up with their heads through boards
that have dominatrix-bodies painted under the head-holes. Then some Japanese
Nazis show up in old cars from the 70's that have swastikas painted on them
(except for the one that has a Star of David) and raise havoc. Or, at least
I think they do - by that point I couldn't devote much more attention to this
dreck. If there's a plot, it's well-hidden, and if it makes any sense to you
then you're probably either on something or are well-versed in fever dreams.
Either hilarious or dull, depending on your mood. Mine tended toward dull
today, and the forecast calls for more dull tomorrow. People say Killer
Meteors is Jackie's worst, but they haven't seen this. I actually like
Killer Meteors. Most budget DVDs of this look and sound like they were
filmed off a screen in someone's basement. -zwolf
Farz (C, 2001)
Made-in-India combo of Cobra, Lethal Weapon, and... Cop Rock!
And layer heavily with the John Woo film of your choice. Some terrorists are
running rampant, blowing things up (with some of the craziest, most extreme
explosions you've ever seen - Bollywood has some ace pyro guys) and a police
commissioner nearing retirement is getting fed up with them. So he gets saddled
with loose cannon Sunny Deol, a guy who bears a vague resemblance to Sylvester
Stallone and who sports a comb-over hairstyle even though he's not going bald.
Sunny is ultra-tough and doesn't play around with criminals; he just wades
in with a .45 in each hand and guns them all down... stopping every once in
a while for the prerequisite Bollywood song-and-dance numbers, or to munch
carrots. Sunny is so tough and cool that it's hilarious already, always blowing
things up and not even flinching when they go off - smirking, in fact. He
steals lines from Cobra ("Crime is the disease for which I am the cure!")
and stunts from Lethal Weapon (jumping off a building and taking a
criminal with him... 'cept with Sunny there's no air bag waiting!) and he
drives his partner insane... especially when he starts a whirlwind romance
with the guy's daughter, and even ends up marrying her - which makes her a
target for the killers. Then he kills the brother of a master terrorist and
things intensify even more, with the terrorist enacting a relentless (and
brilliant) campaign to discredit and disgrace Sunny and drive him insane before
killing him. But making Sunny crazy and enraged might not really be such a
brilliant idea, seeing as how he kills dozens of people even when he's calm
and happy. In between the songs and stylish slam-bang mayhem, there's a parody
of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire with kids winning Pepsis, and our
hero bench-presses a bus! Oddly, people start spontaneously speaking English
for a few sentences now and then, my favorite outburst of which is an impassioned
"I... hate... your... FACE!" Unbelievable action epic with lots of violence
and plot twists that don't stop. Granted, it's all so over-the-top that it's
not anywhere near realistic, but so what - it's entertaining as hell! Check
it out... all nearly 3 hours of it. -zwolf
Fascination (C, 1979)
From one of the opening images - a woman in a lacy white dress standing spotless
in the middle of a blood-splattered slaughterhouse - you know you're in for
something weird and artsy. But, what else would you expect from Jean Rollin?
A runaway thief finds an ominous old castle to use as a hide out, and there
he finds a pair of pretty lesbians who have fun teasing him. It soon becomes
clear that something strange is going on and he's in over his head, but he
can't leave because some other criminals whom he ripped off are outside gunning
for him. The girls warn him to leave before dark, because some "guests"
are coming. One of the girls goes out to deal with the criminals - she stabs
one while having sex with him, then picks up a scythe and dispatches the others,
like a combo reaper/angel of death. Then darkness falls and the guests - described
as "death" - start arriving. They're a club of seductive women who
worship Satan, drink blood, and tell the thief that at midnight they're going
to ritually murder him and use him as a main course. He doesn't take them
seriously and he's having a ball dancing and playing games with them, but
then midnight comes.... Beautiful-looking film has more plot substance than
most Rollin films, mainly because the sex (while still there in abundance)
isn't the primary motivation for the film. Lots of nudity but pretty mild
gore. Classy horror sleaze. -zwolf
Fast and the
Furious (B&W, 1954)
John Ireland is a hood on the run after killing a trucker, and he kidnaps
Dorothy Malone to go along for the ride because she has a fast car. She proves
to be quite a handful, though, and gives him a lot of trouble. The cops are
looking everywhere for him, so he figures out the only way to stay incognito
is to join in a car race to Mexico. Meanwhile, he and Dorothy start to like
each other. Fast-paced '50's drive-in fodder that was one of Roger Corman's
first production jobs. Has absolutely nothing to do with the Vin Diesel movie
of the same name. -zwolf
Fatal Needles Vs. Fatal Fists (C, 1980)
A couple of top law officers - the guy with the hat and the guy without one
- catch a lot of bandits until they meet up with some guys called The Four
Devils and the guy with no hat accidentally kills the guy with the hat (who
was the more charismatic of the two... I think it was because of the hat).
The remaining guy (Don Wong, who you'll also like in The Hot, The Cool,
And The Vicious) becomes a drunk out of guilt, swears off fighting, and
starts working as a laborer. But then his friendly employers get targeted
by a colorful gang of thugs (including a little guy with Elvis sideburns,
a huge fat guy with a toupee in the middle of his chest, and a guy with long
white hair who kills by throwing acupuncture needles. This provides our hatless
hero with a chance at revenge, and redemption. Better than usual plot, and
the acupuncture needles make interesting weapons. The DVD contains an interesting
and very informative commentary track by Ric Meyers (a kung fu film buff)
and Bobby Samuels (a martial artist) that's worth the (modest) price of the
disc all by itself. -zwolf
Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid (C, 1986)
AKA Zeisters
Two drug-taking lowlifes are stuck with a huge, drooling, farting, crying,
puking fat guy who's severely retarded and has a pinhead haircut. They take
him to town and the viewer gets to laugh uproariously at his handicaps and
see jokes about retards being shot, called names, and depicted as monsters.
Sound ugly? That's because it is. This indefensible low-budget piece of shit
from Troma productions is vulgar, unfunny, mean, and juvenile. Bad taste is
fine, but this is just degrading, even by Troma standards. It was directed
by John Golden. Fuck you, John, I hope you and your momma get cancer. That'd
be funny, wouldn't it, John? Ha ha, fascist bastard. I'm glad you never got
to make another movie. -zwolf
Fathom (C, 1967)
Silly espionage fluff with Raquel Welch as a skydiving expert named Fathom
Harvill, who gets recruited by a British spy agency to recover something called
"The Fire Dragon." At first it's supposed to be a device that can trigger
an H-bomb, so Fathom agrees to the plan, but she later discovers that it's
really just a jewel-covered golden dragon that's been stolen from the Chinese
government. Everybody wants the artifact, including a horny, cold-blooded
megalomaniac, nearly-insufferable and oddly-prissy Tony Franciosa (who delivers
his lines like he's in love with himself and calls Raquel "poppet" waaaay
too much... I usually like the guy, but this role makes you want to slap him,
but that's part of the character, I guess), and the British team... any and
all of whom may actually be double-crossing bad guys! A very-much '60's caper
flick with happy music, pat dialogue, and goofy plot devices. But, Raquel
makes for extremely good eye candy, and this utilizes her nearly as well as
any film she's ever done (except maybe Hannie Caulder, which desperately
needs a DVD release if anyone with the power to do so is reading this) and
it's all pretty entertaining, anyway. Heck, I know I watched it enough times
back when our local TV station used to play it in their late-night movie lineup,
back when we only got three channels and there were no VCRS or DVDs (*Editor's
Note: For you young people out there, this era was known as the 1970's). So,
maybe it's a sentimental favorite... -zwolf
Fear in the
Night (B&W, 1947)
Star Trek's Dr. McCoy, DeForrest Kelley, stars in this moody film noir flick
with a brooding atmosphere courtesy of the Cornell Woolrich story ("Nightmare")
upon which it was based. Kelley dreams that he kills a man in a mirrored room
and then locks the corpse in a closet... and he wakes up with a key in his
hand and blood on his wrist. He becomes obsessed with finding out what happened
while he was asleep, and starts trying to track down that mirrored room, using
deja vu as leads. During a rainstorm he finds the house with the mirrored
room and tries to get help from his detective brother-in-law, who helps him
discover what caused the killing and who's really responsible. Fast-paced,
stylish noir with a very dark feel to it. -zwolf
Fear Is The Key (C, 1972)
Barry Newman is a scuba expert who is forced by gangsters to help them recover
sunken jewels. He doesn't want to help them, because they killed his wife
and child years ago. In the claustrophobic climax, he and tow of the hoods
are in a small submarine and Barry turns off the oxygen. Barry also leads
some cops on a great car-chase, too - after Vanishing Point,
wouldn't you be disappointed if he didn't? Rugged, tough actioner from a novel
by Alistair Maclaine. -zwolf
Fearless Fighters (C, 1973)
Some gold-seeking bandits kill a man's family, and he breaks out of jail to
seek revenge. He allies himself with a whip expert and his sister, and a traveling
swordswoman. The bandits form a gang to combat them, and recruit two martial
arts experts called The Soul Pickers to help. One uses golden disks that emit
a solar ray, and the other uses a big metal crescent in each hand. A guy called
One Man Army also aids the evil doers. The bad guys are also helped by a group
of Vampire Phantoms who disguise themselves as statues. One of the good guys
falls off a cliff and destroys an arm and leg, but an old master replaces
them with bionic weapons. Great kung fu movie with swordfighting instead of
hand-to-hand, better-than-usual photography, and loads of colorful weapons
and neat camera tricks (which seem to make up for a lack of true fighting
skill in some of the actors). Total fun superhero-fu! -zwolf
Feast of Flesh
(B&W, 1967) AKA The Deadly Organ
A crazy pervert in monster get-up goes out drugging women to make them into
sex slaves whom he can control by playing an electronic organ. He also kills
them by shooting them up with heroin, then dumps the bodies on the beach.
Meanwhile swingers at the South American nightclubs are partying away, providing
him with loads of potential victims. The dialogue-less scenes of him injecting
women and then kissing them (with his monster mask still on) in his shadowy
beachhouse are pretty weird, but the partying and police-investigation all
get pretty tedious. The movie seems built mainly around people making out
and brief titty-exposure scenes, none of which are as explicit as director
Emilio Vieyra's softcore horror flick, The Curious Dr. Humpp.
-zwolf
Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse
41 (C, 1972) AKA Joshu sasori dai 41 zakkyobou
Second in a Japanese women-in-prison series, this stars Meiko Kaji from the
Lady Snowblood films as Sasori ("Scorpion"), a woman who's been
wrongly imprisoned and is on a vengeance hunt. She's so dangerous that they
keep her locked in a dark, cold, wet cell. When an inspector comes and they
let her out, she tries to jab a sharpened spoon through a guard's other eye
(apparently she got the other one in the first movie). So they chain her to
a log and let the guards gang-rape her as a lesson to the others. Soon she
stages a breakout from a prison truck and does some hideous things to the
guards before leading some of her fellow inmates through the mountains. And
that's where things get weird and mystical. They meet a crazy old woman with
a knife, whose house falls down around her. She dies and a big wind springs
up, covers her with leaves, and when they blow away again, she disappears.
Then the cops start catching up to them. When some tourists rape and kill
one of the girls, waterfalls turn to blood and Scorpion hijacks their bus
and lets the girls torture them. When the abuse spreads to the innocent tourists
the movie becomes a surreal production number about infanticide. At a roadblock
the girls push Scorpion off the bus as a decoy, and the cops capture her and
use her to try to free the busload of hostages... and she plays a trick, getting
revenge. Very strange and effective hybrid of exploitation and art, poetic
scenes mixed in with gore and sleaze. And it works! Kaji is stunningly beautiful
and her acting is haunting, even though she says less than a half-dozen words
the whole film; she has a feral, thousand-yard stare from hell... she's convincingly
dangerous. Damned cool, completely punks out Xena. -zwolf
Female Vampire (C, 1973) AKA Erotikill,
La Comtesse Noire, The Bare-Breasted Countess, The Loves of
Irina
If you have to see one Jess Franco film (and believe me, you don't), this
is supposed to be the one - his best work. Lina Romay wanders foggy forests
wearing a cape, boots, and a belt... and that's it. She's mute and looks like
somebody killed her puppy right before she went catatonic. Still, men don't
ask any questions when she wanders out of the woods and bites them on the
penis. She laments her fate in voice-over narration and drives a car with
a flapping-bat hood ornament, for she is Countess Irina Karlstein, a descendant
of a long line of vampires. Director Franco himself plays Dr. Roberts, a VanHelsing
type who wants to put an end to the countess's suckfests. Meanwhile she's
solemnly going about her business, gnawing the crotches of every man or woman
she meets. Killing arouses her, so she frenziedly masturbates over the corpses
of her victims. She can also turn into a seagull (maybe it's supposed to be
a bat - everything in the world of Jess Franco is "close enough"
- hey, it flies, what's the diff?) by flapping her arms. When she can't get
a person, she sucks her thumb or a bedpost. She also visits a lesbian torture
dungeon, just for variety. Then she meets a guy she really likes and is torn
between love and bloodlust... and that's about as close as we get to any kind
of plot. Franco's old fave, Dr. Orloff, shows up. He's blind but still does
gynecological autopsies! Pretty light on story and no gore (the scenes from
the Erotikill version at least smear some blood around her mouth),
but loads of softcore porn and cheapshit camerawork, with occasional moments
of art and atmosphere. Franco's best is still pretty sloppy, but this has
some redeeming values... or lots of 'em if you're a horndog who can't bring
yourself to watch hardcore. Lina Romay is pretty haunting in her uninhibited,
deadpan performance. -zwolf
Fiend of Dope
Island (B&W, 1961) AKA Whiplash
Charlie (played by former Tarzan Bruce Bennett) is a whip-wielding boss who
owns everything and everybody on his small island in the Carribean, growing
marijuana, dealing guns, and overacting with great enthusiasm. He abuses everybody
around him, but they don't dare stand up to him until his right-hand man is
surred on by "Yugoslavian bombshell" Tania Velia, a woman Charlie had shipped
in for himself. She thinks Charlie's a scumbag and his cantina a dump, but
she tries to manipulate him and does a lot of dancing, but that does no good,
so she and Charlie's pal lead a native uprising against him, and if you thought
he was overacting before... Dude must drink waaaaaay too much coffee, and
use it to chase down meth-amps, because there's nothing left of the scenery
but sawdust when he's done with it. Decent pseudo-sleazy island-adventure
flick made a must-see by Bennett's jaw-droppingly hyperactive performance.
He's so enthusiastic about his role that he's acting as fast as he can...
it's like one big long spasm! He looks like he could fly to pieces at any
second, and that makes the otherwise-standard story more compelling. -zwolf
Fifth Day of Peace (C,
1969) AKA God With Us, Crime of Defeat, Last Five Days of
Peace, Dio e' Con Noi, Die im Dreck krepieren
Franco Nero and his friend are deserting German soldiers on the run as WW2
is ending. Hundreds of other German soldiers are being put in prison camps
when Franco and his friend show up and turn themselves in, little knowing
that a German Colonel von Bleicher is still commanding the loyalty of the
German prisoners in the camp, and he's still exercising strict discipline.
When some prisoners try to escape without checking with him first, he has
them whipped to death. When he finds out that Nero and his pal are deserters,
he wants them executed for it. A Canadian captain in charge of the camp has
a power struggle going with von Bleicher, who has the audacity to ask for
guns so he can execute the deserters, claiming it's not about the war, but
about military principle. When the request is refused, the Germans protest
by banging on their mess kits, en mass, nonstop, taking shifts so the monotonous
noise never ends. Will the Canadian captain decide that the struggle to save
a couple of deserters is worth it... or will he knuckle under? It'll only
cost you a couple of bucks to find out, but be aware that the DVD's not great
quality. Not bad military drama, with an Ennio Morricone soundtrack. -zwolf
Fight For Your Life (C, 1977) AKA
I Hate Your Guts
Riveting low-budget suspense flick about a black family held hostage by three
brutal thugs. The hoods - one Latino, one Chinese, and a redneck leader (William
Sanderson, who's amazingly different from his funny Newhart/root beer
commercial characters - he's completely despicable here!) - call the family
every racist name in the book and generally abuse them. The father (named
Ted Turner!) Is a preacher and doesn't believe in fighting back, but the incredibly
nasty hoods push him far past his limits, and the family must take some much-needed
vengeance. With a little nudity and mild gore, plenty of tension, and particularly
scurvy criminals. Rather crudely made but very effective, should have you
on the edge of your seat, and if it shows anybody how ugly racism can be,
so much the better. -zwolf
Fight, Zatoichi,
Fight (C, 1964) AKA Zatôichi kesshô-tabi, Blind
Swordsman: Fight, Zatoichi, Fight, Zatoichi 8
The eighth Zatoichi film begins with a close-up of our blind swordsman
hero almost stepping in horse shit, and, of course, it gets better from there.
Some officials are on the hunt for him, and a lot of other blind masseurs
pull a "I am Spartacus" trick to help him give them the slip. Then
he gives his palanquin ride to a woman and her baby, not knowing that enemies
were lying in wait for him, and they kill the woman, thinking he was still
in the palanquin. Zatoichi takes the baby under his protection and sets out
to return it to its father and avenge the murdered mother. So, Ichi doesn't
only have to contend with fending off killers, but has to change diapers as
well... sometimes simultaneously! He still finds time to do a little gambling
and, as usual, proves impossible to cheat. A money-grubbing woman helps him
look after the baby so she'll have a chance to pick his pocket. Things get
a little bizarre when Ichi tries to nurse the baby, but overall the combination
of Ichi's gentleness with the innocent child and his brutal slaughter of some
truly unscrupulous enemies gives star Shintaro Katsu plenty of chances to
show off not only his fighting skill but his acting range as well, including
a flair for comedy (which, not surprisingly, often stems from incidents where
the baby pees on somebody). The twist ending also delivers some strong pathos,
and the fiery climactic fight is inspired. -zwolf
The Final Comedown (C,
1972)
Well-thought-out, more political than usual Blaxploitation (it's almost not
exploitative... but then it includes plenty of sex and violence to keep its
hand in that pool, too). A young black militant's story is told through interconnecting
flashbacks as he's dying of a bullet wound received in a war with the police.
Played by Billy Dee Williams, he's very intelligent but his impatience and
rashness lead him astray, and open to manipulation... but such anger is hard
to avoid, since he gets turned down for jobs when they find out he's black,
he gets hassled by cops who think he stole a car he bought, and he has to
watch is friends trying to escape into drugs. And finally, some well-meaning
but flaky and incompetent white hippie types don't back him up like they promised
and leave him hanging in a bad situation. The structure of the film is pretty
smart; whenever the rhetoric of the flashbacks starts to get a bit heavy,
they go back to more action scenes, which aren't badly done and include occasional
blood-spraying. Doesn't hang together to be as powerful as it could have been,
but definitely not just another black-action film. Worth seeking out. Also
stars genre stalwart D'Urville Martin. -zwolf
The Final Countdown (C, 1980)
Kirk Douglas stars as the captain of the modern nuclear aircraft carrier The
U.S.S. Nimitz, which, with full crew and modern jets, gets whisked back in
time to the day of the raid on Pearl Harbor. Kirk must decide whether or not
he should attack the Japanese forces and perhaps change history. Watching
modern jets dogfighting old Japanese Zeroes is kind of strange, but there's
not much action overall. Interesting concept, though. Also stars Charles Durning,
Martin Sheen, Katherine Ross, and James Farentino. -zwolf
Find a Place
to Die (C, 1968) AKA Joe... cercati un posto per morire!
After a rockslide caused by fending off bandits who are after their gold,
a man is trapped under debris and has to send his pretty wife to a disreputable
town for help. She finds this help in the form of a sweaty young man who's
apparently driven to desperation by listening to a senorita sing the bad theme
song. He was court-martialed from the cavalry and is hunted by the law and
so he doesn't want to go there, because there's a torture-loving gang of Mexicans
roaming that area. Money convinces him, though, and they gather a group of
hard-luck guys who can use guns and head out to free the trapped husband.
Soon they find dead bodies left by a bandit leader named Chato. Chato's found
the husband first and tortured him to death, so the rescue party decides to
take the gold instead, but Chato's gotten that, too. And he still wants the
woman, so he sets up a standoff against them. Plenty of action and a fast-moving
story, but this lacks much of the usual spaghetti-western style, coming across
as more of a traditional American product. But not a bad one. -zwolf
Fist Of Iron, Feet Of Steel (C,
?)
...and brains of stone! Sorry, couldn't resist. Actually, this is a pretty
good kung fu flick. A martial artist beats up some hoods on a bridge (only
using one hand!) and makes them mad, so they come to his house, slap his mom
around, and beat up his friends. He gets righteously pissed and, although
he promised not to fight, he comes back to bust their heads. One of the main
hoods is Yang Sze/Bolo Yeung, that incredibly muscular Chinese guy who's in
so many of these movies. All the head gangsters wear hats that usually stay
on even during fights. Stylish! Some crooked gambling with beans is also featured,
as is some whorehouse humor. Good, bloody fights, including an amazing end
battle with tonfa clubs and a staff. Better-than-average chop-socky. -zwolf
Fists, The Kicks, and The Evils
(C, ??)
This is a retitling of god-knows-what. Some evil creeps (including Bolo Yeung,
who's amazingly keeping his shirt on in this one - you can hardly recognize
him!) start taking over kung fu schools and charging merchants protection
money. Bruce Liang has to go up against them when they murder his father for
knowing Crane Fist. Another teacher who's already dying from a previous fight
with Bolo trains Bruce in Crane Fist before Bolo catches up to him and murders
him. Bruce continues his training under an old master (kind of a Simon Yuen
figure - this seems to be a variation on Jackie Chan movies). He starts ramming
his hands into a bucket of rocks and smashing walnuts with a crane-form hand.
Then he goes for revenge. It's about as standard as kung fu movies get, plot-wise,
but it's very well handled and features good fight scenes (and lots of 'em
- the climactic fight goes on for 10 minutes straight), so even if you've
heard this one before, you'll like it again. Some plots are just classic,
y'know? -zwolf
The Five Deadly Venoms (C, 1970's)
Kung fu classic about a rather goofy student who has to seek out five superwarriors
from The Poison Clan, each of whose identity is a secret, and each of whom
has been trained in a fighting style based on a different poisonous animal
- snake, centipede, lizard, toad, and scorpion. Better-than-usual Chinese
martial arts film plays like a video comic book, with super powers (amazing
speed, iron-hard skin, the ability to walk on walls, etc.) and phenomenal
fight scenes, and even a decent plot and some visual flair. One of the best.
-zwolf
Flareup (C, 1969)
Luke Askew, who looks a little like Chuck Connors with an even more embarrassing
haircut, kills his go-go dancing ex-wife because she wouldn't take him back.
He also decides to gun down Raquel Welch, another go-go dancer whom he blames
for "corrupting" his wife. He snuffs another dancer, so Raquel gets
wise and changes locations, but an idiot from her old club (the "Pussycat
A-Go-Go") tells the psycho where she is, and the chase is on again. Raquel
gets a new boyfriend who helps her deal with the assassin. Good suspenser
with Las Vegas and L.A. scenery, go-go dancing, a goofy music score that everybody
seems to love for some reason, and, o' course, Raquel, Raquel, Raquel! Good
pacing, total 1969 atmosphere. Don't miss if you're into that kind of thing.
-zwolf
Friday the
13th (C, 1980)
Critics hated it and would later call it a harbinger of all-things-bad since
it helped start the slasher movie craze, but nobody can say it wasn't influential.
Plus its gore effects are still a hell of a lot better than you get nowadays,
because Tom Savini studied medical texts while FX artists nowadays just seem
to study other slasher films. An infamous camping ground, Camp Crystal Lake,
a.k.a. "Camp Blood," is re-opening years after it was closed down because
a couple of counselors were murdered. Soon after it opens, the murders start
again, lots of 'em, via great gore effects - slashed throat, arrow emerging
from throat, axe in the face, a beheading, etc. - and that's basically all
the plot you need. Which is good, 'cuz it's all the plot you have.
Led to sequels with no end in sight, but the best are Part 2 and Final
Chapter. -zwolf
Friday The
13th, Part 2 (C, 1981)
A lot of people in short pants getting killed. It's very difficult to elicit
sympathy for people in short pants. Anyway, the first sequel was also the
first "Jason" film, and he's scarier here than in the others - he wears an
Elephant Man-style pillowcase mask and has long hair and beard stubble and
wears overalls so he seems more like a crazy mountain man instead of a crazy...
electrician, or whatever the bald coveralled hockey-masked version resembled.
The camp counselors are an especially unappealling, not-very-characterized
lot, such at the guy with the hat, the girl with the farty Volkswagen, the
girl whose only redeeming feature is a nice butt and that's not nearly enough,
the guy in the wheelchair, obnoxious nerd "Ted," etc. - absolutely nobody
you won't be happy to see impaled, slashed, or bludgeoned. And thusly do they
go, via ice pick, garrote, machete, the infamous spear-through-two-bodies-at-once,
a hammer, a pitchfork... damn near everything done in Mario Bava's Bay
of Blood. Jason's creepier and not as cartoonish here, and the gore effects
aren't quite as flashy as those Savini did for the first one, but Carl Fullerton's
work is quite serviceable. One of the better entries in the series, although
time - and a thousand imitations that have since made cliches out of any innovations
- haven't been particularly kind to it. -zwolf
Frogs (C, 1972)
"Today the pond... tomorrow the world!" Before this film was released,
frogs were nowhere near the top of the "most frightening animal"
list... and the release of this American International Pictures masterpiece
did absolutely nothing to change that. But it's still a damn cool eco-horror
flick, despite the low-fear-factor of its title heavies. A freelance photographer
(Sam Elliott at his most clean-cut) is taking pictures of swamp pollution,
and then falls in with a family of spoiled rich folk. The patriarch of the
family, Ray Milland (none of whose movies ever air on television before midnight,
I think) is especially abrasive and responds to an overabundance of frogs
by trying to poison them. This just drives the swamp life to converge on his
property, seeking revenge. Snakes, spiders, lizards, Spanish moss, leeches,
alligators, quicksand, snapping turtles, and, yes, frogs, all bring their
moist-and-slimy vengeance down upon the foolish humans. Unless you have some
kind of phobia, this ain't all that scary, but it's not boring. Weird music
score, lots of croaking (no pun intended), a funny little cartoon clip if
you stick through the credits, and one of the classic movie posters of all
time - a frog with a hand sticking out of its mouth. (Nothing like that is
in the movie, but that's okay...) -zwolf
From Hell (C, 2001)
A Hughes Bros. film, you'll either love it or hate it... such is their polarizing
power. Same goes for Johnny Depp, who's solid enough in his role as an opium-addicted
police inspector who uses his psychic visions to solve crimes. Heather Graham
is also good, though a beautiful hooker with perfect teeth in Victorian London
is as tough to buy here as it is in My Fair Lady. Basically, this is
a shallower retelling of the graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore
& Eddie Campbell, which may be the definitive graphic novel of
the 20th century. I can only recommend the film to those of you who've already
read the book, as it takes care to explain in detail much of what the film
glosses over or cuts out all together. I enjoyed this film. -igor
Full Contact (C, 1992)
AKA Xia dao Gao Fei
Crazy damn hard-ass Hong Kong action flick directed by the god of such things,
Ringo Lam, and starring an at-his-most-badass Chow Yun Fat. When Chow's buddy
ends up owing money to a gang of psychotic criminals - a prissy-but-deadly
magician, a mohawked steroid case, and a laughing sadistic slut who's named
"Virgin" for the same reason that huge guys are often called "Tiny" - Chow
tries to help out, but even though he's in full-on one-man-army mode he gets
betrayed and messed up pretty bad. Some monks take a few bullets out of him,
replace some missing fingers with prosthetics, and as soon as he's healed
- sooner, even! - he starts gearing up for some cold-blooded, single-minded
revenge. Meanwhile his betraying "friend" has been rising in the criminal
ranks, and has regrets for betraying him. Chow may give the guy a chance to
make it up... at a price. Things slow down a little in the middle (or, more
likely, anything's going to seem slow after the slam-bang opening) and the
plot gets a little complicated (clumsy subtitles don't help much) but overall
this is one of the most badass strings of celluloid that John Woo didn't have
anything to do with. Memorable dialogue: "Masturbate in Hell!" -zwolf
Funny Games (C, 1998)
Bizarre German art-horror in which a well-to-do family on vacation are terrorized
by a couple of clean-cut, well-mannered young men in tennis outfits. They
come over to borrow some eggs and start playing homicidal games with the family,
humiliating, torturing, and terrifying the crap out of them. Things don't
go the way you expect, and a few really odd things happen that turn the viewer
into a conspirator, testing reality and playing on your sense of guilt, so
while the smirking little psychos are playing games with the family, the director
is playing games with the viewer... even sometimes intentionally letting you
get bored with the violence by having people sit unmoving and silent for minutes
at a stretch (negating the "movie" part of the movie), and referring
to the viewer directly and re-winding footage when things don't go the psycho's
way. This could have been brilliant, but it's a little too smug and smart
for its own good and so the black humor isn't quite as disturbing as it should
have been. Still, it's intense, out of the ordinary, and worth checking out.
-zwolf
The Furious (C, 1981?)
If you're a Bruce Le fan (yep, that's Le, not Lee - I actually like some of
Bruce Lee's imitators... sue me!), you'll be the one who's furious, because
the video box makes outrageous lies claiming Bruce is in this, and he's not.
A vicious drug dealer called The Rattlesnake beats up his rivals and even
burns some of them alive. The police do everything they can to stop him, but
since the back of the box says, "Only Bruce Le can put an end to 'The
Rattlesnake'," I guess the sumbitch is gonna escape after all. Better
script than usual, but a little less action (there's still plenty, though).
The movie's not bad, but Best Film & Video, who put it out on tape, are
some lyin' bastards. Stars Lo Lieh and Ku Fung (?!?). Has a little nudity.
-zwolf
Fury in Shaolin Temple (C,
1979)
Gordon Liu kung fu! Two fathers exchange infant sons to raise them in alternate
kung fu styles in order to defeat some bad guys plaguing the land, who want
to invade China but have the Shaolin Temple in their way. To learn their secrets,
the bad guys steal Shaolin's secret techniques manual. Gordon (one of the
sons) is introduced by footage of him working in the kitchen that I swear
I've seen in another movie. Then there's waterfall footage (maybe from Shaolin
Drunken Monk). Anyway, his kitchen duties have trained him in Shaolin
Kung Fu, and given him background for his mission, learning Ghost Fist so
he can combine it with the other son's Dragon Fist and vanquish the bad guys.
It's not bad but it's kind of disjointed and looks like a patchwork of several
films. Things unrelated to the plot happen and kind of get in the way of coherency,
so it seems padded. But it's not boring... -zwolf
Futureworld (C, 1976)
Sequel to Westworld in which Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner visit Delos,
the ultimate resort, where people can visit a medieval city, ski on Mars,
and play around with all kinds of robots. Fonda gets to watch one of Blythe's
dreams where she makes out with Yul Brynner, and he also fights samurai robots,
faces a robot double of himself, and discovers an evil plan to replace world
leaders with robot duplicates. Sort of like "Stepford World." A
robot with no face made the cover of Famous Monsters Of Filmland. -zwolf
