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DAREDEVIL (2003).
Hot on the heels of the Spiderman movie comes the direct lineal rip-off
of Spiderman, Daredevil, a movie that fails on every concievable level.
If Spiderman was an enjoyably bad experience, campy and goofy, but breezy
and a bit fun, Daredevil is dour, awkward, poorly executed and uncomfortable.
Auteur Mark Steven Johnson (whoever that is, at least Spiderman was directed
by a familiar name, Sam Raimi) screws up the film in every department, in
fact, this is the most amateurish major Hollywood production in some time
(as bad as most Hollywood movies tend to be now, at least they are efficiently
and professionally made). The first, major problem is in the casting, Ben
Affleck who has never proven to be an actual human being, and his new status
as Mr. J-Lo doesn't help matters. His acting oeuvre, revolves around playing
smug, pudgy frat boys, constantly winking at the audience just to let them
know, “hey dudes, I'm not taking this acting crap seriously”, he's the most
wooden and uninspiring superhero since possibly Willie Ames as Bibleman.
Moreover, the rest of the cast can hardly stand up to much scrutiny, Jennifer
Garner is an emaciated Elektra, Daredevil's love interest, Colin Farrel,
the least interesting “bad boy” actor in some time plays a mumbling and
dull Bullseye (villain), and human rhinoceros Michael Clark Duncan plays
Kingpin, the crime boss who runs New York. Its obvious to anybody who's
seen one of the 50,000 previews for this trash that Daredevil is blind,
but that's not his weakness, his weakness is loud noises, yet for some strange
reason cranking up some faceless nu-metal song to “max” volume (yes, Daredevil
has a stereo that goes all the way up to 11) hardly bothers him at all.
We get a long and cliched look at Daredevil's upbringing, as a puny kid
in Hell's Kitchen, his dad (David Keith, who deserves better) is a washed-up
prize fighter secretly working for the mob. When little devil spies his
dad beating the crud out of some loan welcher, he runs off and is promptly
blinded by INDUSTRIAL WASTE. Presumably, since this is a comic adaptation,
the toxic properties of the waste give the boy superhuman hearing, reflexes,
touch, and olfactory senses. He trains his mind and body while his dad takes
to the ring again, and is promptly beaten to death when he refuses to throw
a fight. Guess which member of the cast pulled off this little coup. Thus
is born Daredevil, blind lawyer by day, blind crime fighter by night. Besides
the love interest there's the crisis of faith, the “you killed my father/no
I didn't bit” the reckoning between hero and villain, and the “it-looks-like-I'm-going-to-kill-you-but-I-won't”.
In other words the whole thing resembles a Monty Python skit without any
laughs. The dramatics are strictly grade-school variety, complete with a
bizarre finale of Duncan screaming like a banshee and going on and on for
10 bloody minutes about it “not being over” and his “being back” for and
inevitable sequel. Beyond the clunky dramatics, the film's violence is at
a constantly unpleasant level, Bullseye dispatches people with regularity,
bar owners, hired muscle, old ladies and so on. Daredevil has a goon neatly
bisected on a subway track, but not before clearing an entire bar of machine
gun toting gangsters (“what do you want” / “justice” ugh). For a PG-13 kiddie
matinee movie this is far too gruesome and violent, but beyond that the
whole thing is a murky, ugly, unfocused mess.
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DARK
WATERS (1993). Lucio Fulci apparently liked this movie quite a bit (maybe
all of the blind people reminded him of The Beyond) and this was written
up very positively in numerous genre magazines (when there was still such
a thing) and many were comparing director Mariano Baino, an Italian who
operates out of London, as another Michele Soavi (or even a new Argento!).
Unfortunately this is an awful, muddled mess of a film. Think of it as having
the usual Argento drawbacks, i.e., wretched acting and dubbing, and an incoherent
plot, but stripped of all visual flair, flamboyant killings, and filled
with leaden, dull, pointless scenes, and you'll have a pretty good idea
of what this is all about. Louise Salter comes to an isolated nunnery (on
the Black Sea, I guess) which is on an island, apparently to look into weather
or not she should continue making payments to the place as her late father
had, but it seems she's more interested in finding out about her mother,
a nun there who supposedly died in childbirth (?). A pretty young nun (Venera
Simmons) tries to help. Meanwhile the nuns very slowly walk around while
crying and clichéd deep moans are heard. Salter very vaguely looks into
things, and a nun tries to strangle her (hey, these things happen). The
nuns, of course, are all evil (you've seen enough exploitation movies to
know that by now) and use burning upside-down crosses to kill villagers;
one tries to stab Salter and she bashes the nun's head against the ground
until her brains ooze out. The most interesting character is a "fisherman"
(Valeriy Bassel, who seems more like a taxidermist/mortician) who looks
very Russian and speaks in a soft, calm voice. All together these things
take up about five minutes of screen time, the rest is like a bad imitation
of an Andrei Tarkovsky film, lots of slow ponderousness without the metaphysical
angst. The photography is terrible, and the music is even worse, the acting
manages to make Argento look like Kurosawa. The films of Fulci, or Ruggero
Deodato, or Umberto Lenzi are less pretentious (actually not pretentious
at all) and a lot more fun. Soavi is an imaginative exciting filmmaker,
things Baino doesn't appear to be, since Argento's style is pretty easy
to copy and he even botches that
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DAYDREAM [Hakujitsumu]
(1981). Tetsuji Takechi had been a major figure of controversy in the 60s,
but it seems most people saw him as little more than a pornographer. His
films in the 60s had aroused all sorts of moral outrage, so maybe he tried
to cause some more, only in the 80s it was hard to arouse much of anything.
Probably he was jealous at the success Nagisa Oshima had with his masterpiece
In the Realm of the Senses, and decided that he should grab a piece of the
sexually explicit art film pie while he could, but did anyone buy this as
"art"? It's a remake of Takechi's own notorious 1964 film Daydream. Its
taken from a story by the great Japanese satirist Junichiro Tanizaki but
don't let that fool you, it's a bunch of "is it a dream or is it reality"
stuff. A young man visits the dentist and is put under at the same time
as a young woman (Kyoko Aizome). They enter into some kind of shared fantasy
that involves Aizome being tortured by the dentist turned sadistic vampire
(Kei Sato). Aizome is both pleasured and pained by the enigmatic older man.
While decidedly surreal and baffling, its hard to take this film seriously
with extended gynecological penetration close ups and even a toilet shot.
But, for some reason, the movie is entertaining, in an oddball way, half
80s fashion commercial, half 60s experiment. It's surprising to see an accomplished
character actor like Sato in hard-core sex scenes, but he must have enjoyed
himself, since he appeared in Takechi's second, harder-core remake in 1987.
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THE
DEADLY MANTIS (SHAOLIN MANTIS, 1978). This is one of the best old-school
chop socky movies. It's a bit more dramatically inclined than usual, and
has a sizable female role, which is miles away from the bleak world of Chang
Cheh's slightly nihilistic plots. The sorely underrated David Chiang (probably
the best actor of all the kung-fu movie stars) plays a scholar/kung-fu master
who is sent by the tyrannical emperor to get the goods on a clan that is
planning a revolt. He ingratiates himself by being the teacher to Chi-Chi
(Lily Lee), the spirited and hot-tempered (and kung-fu fighting of course!)
youngest daughter of the clan. Soon enough the two fall in love, unfortunately
for them both the elder members of the clan figure Chiang out, and are about
to have him killed when Chi Chi comes to his aid and agrees to marry him
if they swear not to kill him. This is fine for Chiang, but not his family,
who are being disgraced and imprisoned by the emperor because of his lack
of results. Eventually he wants to leave to see them (and report on the
clan I would assume, even though for some reason he's never told Chi Chi
that he's a spy). The head of the clan agrees, but first Chiang and Lee
must fight their way through six stations manned by members of her family,
even her mother. By the end they must face off against Lee's fanatical grandfather
who kills both her and her mother. Chiang escapes, and barely misses getting
killed by the posse chasing him. While hiding out in the forest he observes
a praying mantis in action, and develops an unbeatable new martial arts
technique. Properly pissed off he returns to kick some booty and avenge
his wife. Like usual for a k-fu movie, the plot is pretty thick, but for
once the one here is easy to follow (mainly since we're given an explanation
that doesn't require a detailed knowledge of Chinese history to understand),
plus the little role reversals are nice. Chi Chi starts off as a typical
impetuous brat, but evolves into an understanding wife, whereas Chiang is
his usual cocky self, but must hide his martial arts skills until the end,
whereupon he becomes an intense killing machine. Most of the action is confined
to the last 40 minutes, but its worth the wait, and even better is the slightly
ironic ending, since after avenging his clan, Chiang returns to the tyrannical
emperor and is shown to be a hero in the service of an evil man who in the
end does more harm than good. A bit heavier than normal for a chop-socky
epic, but I loved it.
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DEAD
OR ALIVE (1999). I really can't put my finger on Takashi Miike. I want to
say he's overrated, and I think that he is, in part. He strikes me as every
bit the smart-ass who pushes his films so far over the top in order to make
fun of both the genre and his audience in one fell swoop. Of the three films
of his I've seen Fudoh was junk, Audition was on the same
level of I Spit on Your Grave, “good” in some sense
or another, but not something I really want to watch again or put too much
thought into. This one brings about the same ambivalent reaction I had to
Audition, it really isn't a “good” movie at all, but
it is, none-the-less one of the damnedest things I've seen lately. It may
seem a ridiculous connection, the the opening burst reminded me of Kurosawa's
The Bad Sleep Well, in so far as a bit of bravura cinema that outshines
everything that comes afterwords. Basically chronicling a wild night in
the Shinjiku district of Tokyo, Miike tosses everything imaginable at the
viewer, from a fat gangster's gut exploding ramen after being shotgunned,
to a punk having his throat slashed while sodomizing an anonymous man in
a toilet. In fact, this sequence is so breathlessly constructed and memorable
that it really does bog down the rest of the movie, which is a conventional
action thriller featuring Sho Aikawa as a cop who becomes the arch nemesis
of street thug turned would-be kingpin Riki Takeuchi (giving his usual monotonous,
snarling performance). As usual with Miike, he focuses on Chinese living
in Japan, or with Takeuchi's character of Ryuichi, a Japanese raised in
China who returns to Japan with a largely Chinese gang in tow. The usual
contrast between hero and villain is shown: Takeuchi's kid brother was sent
to America to study (and makes some pointed comments about the fate of minorities
in Japan as opposed to America), but when he finds out that the profits
of murder and drugs sent him there he disowns his brother; Aikawa, on the
other hand, is the typical workaholic cop who's daughter is dying of a heart
defect, and who resents her absentee father—eventually Aikawa turns
to a yakuza boss for a loan to pay for the operation (Takeuchi says “unlike
you, this country hasn't done anything for me”, a comment, I imagine
is supposed to be ironic in this context). The two damaged family units
come into contact with the violent lives of their benefactors with disastrous
consequences for all concerned leading to, the ending. Ah yes,
the ending. How to explain it. Well, I won't, because that would
ruin everything, save to say that it made me laugh out-loud (the intended
reaction?) and it seemed to be a cross-breeding between the endings of Violent
Cop and Dr. Strangelove (!). Yet, after it was over
I got a sneaking feeling about this ending, essentially that Miike, stuck
with an above-average, but hardly ground-shaking cop vs. yakuza movie scratched
his head and decided to go all out for the most bizarre ending imaginable.
Its memorable all right, but its still cheating.
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DEATH MASK OF THE NINJA
(1983?). This one is a typically logic bending Shaw Brothers movie, but
like a lot of them it's a lot of fun. Ti Lung (billed as "Tiger Lung" on
the video box) and Erh Tung-Sheng star as brothers separated at birth. Erh
becomes a renegade prince while Ti is taken under the wing of three goofy
monks who are, of course, kung-fu masters. Ti and Erh team up to take down
the local warlord and reclaim their kingdom. All of it leads up to a lot
of unreal Shaw action, people fly through the air, hover, etc. There's a
fire ninja, a carriage of death, a wall of kung-fu fighting monks, and lots
of bad dubbing. No death masks, though.
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DEATH POWDER (1985).
Probably one of the first Japanese "cyberpunk" movies that led up to Shinya
Tsukumoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man is strange as hell, but pretty entertaining.
The story, of course, doesn't make a damn bit of sense, but director Shigeru
Izumiya doesn't let that stop him, since it has something to do with a drug
that causes nightmarish hallucinations in the user he gets away with all
sorts of foolishness. It starts off with a couple of secret agents on the
case before going off all over the place, sperm computer graphics, strange
monsters, and even some weird-assed bit dealing with a rock star. Izumiya
was known as the "God of Protest Music" before dropping some really bad
acid.
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DELLAMORTE, DELLAMORE
(aka CEMETARY MAN, 1993). What the hell ever happened to Michele Soavi?
After three or four promising movies he seems to have dropped off the face
of the planet. Of his few films this is the best, leaving behind the Argento-inspired
incoherence of The Church and The Sect, he adapted a comic
book and turned it into an inspired and dark absurdist festival. Rupert
Everett (before he became Madonna's weekly best friend) plays Fransisco
Dellamorte, the caretaker at an out-of-the-way cemetery. He has no life
to speak of, only a moronic gravedigger (Francois Hadji Lazaro) to keep
him company. The only thing that seems to happen is the occasional zombie
that Dellamorte must dispatch with a workmanlike glee. The plot itself is
rather thin, but Soavi strings together some outrageous scenes, Lazaro falling
in love with the severed head of the mayor's daughter (hilarious!), Dellamorte's
cringe inducing troubles with impotence, his urge to kill the living and
so on. Throughout Soavi peppers the film with beautiful imagery and a plot
that (mostly) makes sense, as well as, surprisingly, some excellent performances.
Given a perfunctory release in the US years after its release, and not surprisingly
it received mostly bad reviews by people ecstatic over junk like Pulp
Fiction and Shallow Grave.
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DEMONIAC (1979). God
help us. Unbelievably horrid even by Jess Franco's standards, this takes
exploitation filmmaking to new lows. Franco stars (and has as much acting
ability as directorial) as a religious nutcase who has the compulsion to
kill "sinful" women. To pad out the 78 minute running time we have countless
scenes of Franco walking down the street and close-ups of his eyes bulging
out. A lot of different versions exist, even a porno one, but would that
really make a difference? You'd think that after 200 or so films Franco
would decide to learn basic filmmaking skills.
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DEMONS
2 (1986). After the world-wide runaway success of the first part of the
Demons duology Demons, high level talks where held in the
Italian government, headed by Minister of Incoherent Shit Dario Argento.
Since this meeting was held at the highest eschelons of the Italian cabinet
(in other words, behind a pizzaria) the minutes of the meeting are secret,
so I will "reconstruct" the conversation (as in make it up) for you, my
loyal reader:
Argento: We need to make a sequel to Demons, now before Bolshevik-Zionism
takes over the world!
Prime Minister: Hey-a, that's a nice-a meatball!
Argento: We must put together the gigantic talents that made Demons
the cultural force it was, namely Dario Argento, Lamberto "Dario Argento"
Bava, Sergio "Dario A and the Mixmasters" Stivaleti, Rick "Double D Argento
and the Weztzidazzzz" Springfield….
Dubbing Guy with the New York Accent: Rick Springfield is dead!!!
Argento: In that case The "Argento B-Side Playahs" Cult.
Prime Minister: That's-a nice doughnut.
Argento: We also need a scene in which I molest my nubile daughter Asia!!
Audience: Dario!!! (wah wah wah)
Thus was Demons 2 born onto the world. First of all, this movie is
in no way stupid or retarded. Not at all. Things in this movie happen for
a very good reason, and not just because the producer's second cousin's
barber's mailman thought it was a good idea. No. This is a Dario
Argento production after all, and is coherent throughout. Basically
this is an exact remake of Solaris, I mean Demons, and since
this is Demons 2 I guess that makes sense. The first film
took place inside a movie theater, and this takes place inside an apartment
complex, and instead of watching a movie that unleashes the demons, people
watch a movie that unleashes demons! But the movie is on TV rather than
in the theater! See, see where the difference is? Some hep teens are having
a party, but they're getting high on life and don't need drugs (that, right
this moment, are being used to fund terrorism against Jamie Farr!) to have
a good time. They just play music by The Smiths and Dead Can Dance
and The Cult. Yes, this movie takes place in the 80s, don't hold
that against it. Actually hold that against it. One character seems to be
mentally disturbed, but we in the audience aren't quite important enough
to inform about all of this. Anyway she runs off to her room and watches
a mindless slasher film on TV about demons. Suddenly a demon comes out of
her TV and attacks her. Demons come out of my butt and tell me to kill babies,
but no one is making a movie about me. She starts slashing people and turning
everyone into demons, and so on and so forth, sort of a flesh eating living
dead pyramid scheme. Can those unaffected by dandruff and demonic possession
survive? Wisely, the Black Guy from the first Demons movie was brought
back long enough to get his dick torn off by the demons! This guy needs
to call Al Sharpton or something. But really, the central set-piece of this
film is when the Pregnant Heroine is attacked first by a demon child, then
by a cute little demon baby that comes out of the demon child's chest! Demons
are apparently best defeated by 1) towels, 2) fold-away beds, C) umbrellas.
The best thing to do when you're being attacked by demons is to stand around
and look worried until your husband shows up. If, alternately, you're a
man, the best thing to do is be killed immediately and let the demons devour
your wife/daughter/dog, etc. Speaking of dogs, Asia Argento is in this movie
too! Oh, snap!!! Er, I mean a dog turns into a demon. Wait a minute, that
person's back is to the camera, they're not going to turn into a demon are
they? Watch Demons 2 until the shocking conclusion to find out the
answer to that and who assassinated John Garfield! Its not who you think!!!
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DERANGED (1987). One
of an endless stream of straight-to-video cheapies by porno vet Chuck Vincent,
and like most of them, this stars ex-porn star Jane Hamilton. This is a
bad Repulsion copy with Hamilton as a crazy broad who's pregnant
and recovering from a nervous breakdown. She's attacked by a burglar, kills
him and miscarriages, and starts having hallucinations etc. Most of the
film is in a bad set and has a few descent moments, but 83 minutes of an
increasingly hysterical Hamilton and general pretentiousness is just too
much for all but the most desperate cinephile. Jamie Gillis shows up as
Hamilton's suicide father and doesn't beat up any women for once (or beat
himself off for that manner).
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THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE
[La plus longue nuit du Diable] (1971). A silly slice of 70s cheese that's
at least well photographed and not insomnia curing. Seven travelers come
to an isolated castle that is under a curse. A mysterious woman (Erika Blanc)
shows up and turns out to be a succubus (call the theater for the meaning
of this shocking word) who kills off the self-indulgent people who symbolize
the Seven Deadly Sins. Blanc gets to wear some great 60s/70s outfits, there's
some lesbianism ("let me help you bathe"), dreary surrealism and a WWII
prologue. Its all way too clichéd with too much 70s Euro pretentiousness,
but at least it isn't a Jess Franco movie!
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THE DEVILS (1971).
Ken Russell is pretty passé now, but this film is still as powerful as ever.
Oliver Reed plays the vain and brilliant Father Grandier, the de facto governor
of the walled city of Loudon who butts heads with the cynical and power-mad
Cardinal Richelieu, who sends a baron to dig up some dirt on the sensual
priest and manages to stir up mass hysteria among the local nunnery, led
by hunchbacked Vanessa Redgrave. Soon the entire city descends into a virtual
hell of unrepressed sexuality and horrendous violence leading to a horrific
ending. Its interesting that the film got a predictable drubbing in the
PC Overlook Film Encyclopedia, which wastes no time in comparing it to Mark
of the Devil and calling it "misogynist". It is, in the way that most
films, books and everything else is, it could also be called "misanthropic",
but it's more trendy to hate just women rather than the whole of mankind.
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THE DIRTY MIND OF YOUNG
SALLY (aka INNOCENT SALLY, 1973). Pointless in-between porno, when things
where getting more explicit, but not too explicit, though this film is gross,
just not in a porno way. Red-haired Sharon Kelly ("Colleen Brennen" in hardcore)
runs a pirate radio station with hick engineer George "Buck" Flower (C.D.
LaFleure in the credits). She describes sexual positions and people screw
around while listening. There's sex on the beach, in a dune buggy (the actress
looks decidedly uncomfortable, and the big bruises on the outside of her
thigh are a little ominous), and in a house. The last part of the film is
devoted to scenes I'd rather not have seen: between Kelly and Flower (ewww!)
between Kelly and a cretin who makes Ron Jeremy look like Robert Redford
(eeeewwww!) and a thin, ugly, balding detective (eeeeeeeeeewwwww!!!!). I
can't believe any porno patron wanted to see fat middle-aged asses pumping
away, or Kelly talking about how "good" they are (what sort of standard
is she going by?). Judging by these guys, I could've been in movies like
this! I almost ran from the room screaming in terror when the skinny bald
guy said "you're the best piece of ass I ever had!" EEEEWWWW!!!!! The music
is really awful, and a film with no plot shouldn't run a damn 95 minutes.
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DISCIPLE
OF DEATH (1972). This is one of those movies that skirts a fine line between
being effectively Gothic and just plain goofy, and, of course, it ends up
being just plain goofy. It starts off promisingly though, as a pair of young
lovers cut their thumbs and swap blood to proclaim their love. Typically,
considering all the places they could do it, they do it over the tomb of
some joker who had committed suicide, and, as we are later informed, the
tomb of a suicide is a gateway to hell. So, the dead man is released from
hell and comes back to life as a very cool looking Mike Raven, complete
with little Devil goatee. As it turns out, Raven, or "The Stranger" needs
to sacrifice a willing virgin to the Devil so he can escape the torments
of eternity, so he sets about slaughtering the local virgins. The town priest
is suspicious of the guy (duh, he looks like the Devil from a Warner Brothers
cartoon) but the killings continue, and the hero's love starts to come under
Mr. Goatee's spell. Even worse, his sister is kidnapped and sacrificed.
So the pair set off to a cabbalist who makes bad ethnic jokes and mixes
some magic weapons for them. Unfortunately the Bad Guy has a few tricks
up his sleeve, he summons the powers of hell and creates a demon midget!
Yes, this is where the movie starts to become goofy. Well, it starts to
become goofy even before this, as Raven suddenly becomes really pale and
has to spout off cliché devil worshipper dialog about "dark master this"
and "eternal hellfire that" and it becomes very clear that Raven
has a rather unfortunate lisp that makes all of his speechifying a little
less than terrifying (not to mention his awful yellow horse teeth). This
is the sort of movie where the heroic priest tries to fend off the demon
dwarf for the hero's sake and instantly falls down and has his neck eaten
by the little fellow, and of course mini Satan is never heard from again.
Can the hero escape the villain's terrible torture dungeon and save his
beloved? Will the pale villain start to crack lame jokes and even say "I'm
sure we'll see each other later…in hell!"? The answers to this and more
can be found at the end of Disciple of Death! In Color!
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DOLLS
(2002). Since Takeshi Kitano likes baseball so much, we can say that Kikujiro
was a ground out Brother was a pop-out, and Dolls is a
feeble little grounder back to the pitcher. Its hard to imagine a worse
film from a director who once seemed to be capable of so much. Either Kitano
has lost his way completely as a film director, or he is surrounded by a
group of gutless yes-men the likes of which cinema has never seen. The seeds
of Kitano's decline as a director have been evident ever since Hana-Bi,
the recycling of old material, the kitschy melodrama, the predictability;
yet, none-the-less he was still able to work out quality films with his
thin material simply because of his stylistic boldness. Whatever else, Kitano
has never been afraid to keep things slow and steady, especially in an age
of flashy hacks like Takashi Miike, who's absence of storytelling ability
is punched up by a willingness to insult and disgust the viewer. If his
previous film, Brother, was a failure, it was at least an interesting
one, something that cannot be said about Dolls, a film completely
bereft of life, a film so staid and unrelentingly boring that the title
card should read: “Directed by the evil Takeshi Kitano”. The
kitsch of Hana-Bi, Kids Return, and Kikujiro
has been writ large into a movie that is nothing but kitsch and
tackiness for nearly two hours. It certainly is pretty to look at though.
Starting out with a traditional Japanese puppet play as its backdrop (a
device used with greater skill and daring by Masahiro Shindo in Double
Suicide more than twenty years ago) Dolls proports to be about
tragic love cut short. Kitano's pontifications about the film have titled
it his “cruelest” film. The cruelty is mostly meted out to the
audience, especially those who once had faith in this director. The over-arching
story deals with a young couple engaged to be married, the man coolly breaks
it off with the woman in order to marry up and into his company, pushed
along by his parents (Kitano's bizarre technique here is to have these conversations
carry on in voice-over, while the act of conversing is shown in slow-motion
flashbacks, interesting once, but the fifth time shows Kitano's editorial
laziness). The woman attempts suicide, and the man rushes to her aid, vowing
never to leave her, the two divorce themselves from society and aimlessly
wander about tied to one another with a rope between them. They serve to
introduce (by way of walking by the characters) the embarrassing stories
that flesh out this lame omnibus. An aging gangster pines after his lost
love, whom he left years ago to make something of himself. She still comes
to the same park they met at, each Saturday, carrying a lunch for him, and
having acquired a corpse-like pallor, as well as a portentously red shade
of lipstick (more frightening than portentous, really). Eventually he meets
up with her again, but doesn't tell her who he is, being a stupid woman
apparently, she can't figure it out. The second, even worse story finds
a pathetic grown man obsessing over a vapid teen idol singer played, appropriately
by a real-life vapid teen idol singer. At one point Kitano shows her performing
some ridiculous (if you can somehow manage the definition of "perform"
to include lip-syncing and bobbing up and down like a hooked fish) song
not once but twice. Eventually the zombie-like idol is disfigured (hilariously,
her “disfigurement” consists of a bandage placed over her eye)
in a car crash (cue the only welcome face in this whole damn movie, Ren
Osugi, as her manager, in a cameo that consists of one or two lines), and
her creepy fan proves his devotion to her in a predictable and dull manner.
I kept asking myself the same question about this movie, “why did
Kitano make this? What did he hope to prove?” I wondered if he was
attempting to do the same thing he did ten years previous, follow up the
devious and violent Boiling Point with the serene and poetic A
Scene at the Sea, only this time following up one bad movie with an
even more pretentious and ill-conceived one. The real issue here, I think,
is that Kitano's movies have become like his TV work, safe, predictable,
middle-of-the-road, the savagery and drive of his early films came, I think,
from the fact that audiences refused to accept him as a tough guy and as
an artist. Once he began to get their approval, he quickly stopped being
rebellious and gave the people what they wanted, be it the pap of Kikujiro,
or this suitable for framing wallpaper that features something for everybody:
the retirees in the audience can marvel over the old-timers falling in love,
the air-head teen girls can gush over their favorite idol acting in a real
movie, and the driven twenty/thirty somethings can identify with the conflicted
young man and woman who amble about for the last twenty minutes of the movie.
The worst part is that there is evidence that a good film could have been
made from this, there are some good parts here and there, these are undermined
by the pointless omnibus style and the gutlessness in which they are portrayed
(its inconceivable to me anyway, but Kitano basically lets the idol worshiping
fan pass without any comment at all, and as such never becomes anything
other than a cipher, his act of “devotion” makes no impact because
we aren't allowed to mock his pathetic life of sympathize with the same;
Kitano would rather we look at the pretty photography, and be amazed by
his editing techniques, as insipid as they are); the Kitano of old would
have approached this fearlessly, and probably delivered something at least
a bit memorable. Old-man Kitano approaches this like a hack and as such
delivers a movie that isn't just bad but is genuinely hateful.
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DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE!
(1980). The only reason to watch this garbage is for the incredible performance
of Nicholas Worth, who should have gotten an Academy Award, or something
(last I saw he was in a Dr. Pepper commercial with that Johnnie Cochran
guy from Seinfeld). He's a Vietnam vet who takes porno pictures ("very classy"
in the words of a porn proprietor) and is also a strangler/rapist in his
spare time. Worth lifts weights while growling and screaming, laughs and
cries hysterically, says "I'm all man" and "I'm the best there is" and calls
into a radio talk show using a phony Spanish accent. You haven't lived until
you've heard Worth do his imitation of a black street pimp. Unfortunately
the rest of the film involves a pair of inept tough-guy cops led by the
dull James Westmoreland. Like most of these sort of films its best to root
for the psycho.
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DON'T GO IN THE WOODS
(1981). Easily the most asinine slasher pic ever as four complete morons
head into the wilds of Utah and are beset by a maniac who looks like a reject
from The Hills Have Eyes. The gore is applied liberally and with
all the skill of a monkey wielding his own crap. Arms are whacked off, throats
are slashed, bodies speared etc., all in hilariously shoddy detail. The
acting and direction are horrific, but that's not too much of a surprise.
You'll be glad to know that H. Kingsley Thurber provides the score, and
he sings the end title song that must be heard to be believed.
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DR.
GORE (DR. GORE'S BODY SHOP, 1972). Wow, this was almost a lost film, so
it has to be good since only good films are lost. It's a tragedy that JG
"Pat" Patterson died in 1974 at the young age of 97, since we are deprived
of his awesome cinematic talents. I'm reminded of the death of Jean Vigo.
If this film is anything to go on he would have given the world oh so much
more. I love vanity productions, especially when they're pieces of shit
like this. Oh, the pleasure of watching some midget, chain smoking, toothless,
balding pathetic failure in life make a movie in which he gets to make out
with hot chicks. "Har har har, that girlee with the big bungas gives me
a stiffer! Har Har Har." Oh what a pleasure it is to watch a movie in which
EVERY SINGLE FUCKING INCH OF FILM WAS USED IN THE FINAL CUT. Pat was obviously
so enamored of his movie that he decided that viewers shouldn't miss ANYTHING.
NO, NOTHING IS MISSING. Watch as Pat wears the same fucking suit in every
scene. Watch as he stands around and smokes. Watch as he stands around doing
nothing. Watch as he just stares past the camera wondering if his father
died thinking his only son was a failure. In this Original Production utilizing
the revolutionary process of PLOTGO in which the plot has never been used
before, Patterson plays a legendary country doctor who lives in a castle.
His wife dies of lung cancer caused by Patterson's chain smoking so he decides
to build the perfect woman who has rubber lungs not affected by decades
of passive smoking. He uses his HUNCHBACK servant (see, its funny because
the servant is a hunchback, but he's not named Igor, he's named GREG!! ha
ha ha!!! I'm laughing and contemplating suicide at the same time) to saw
off body parts from various women to use to build the Perfect Woman. A Blonde
with big ol' breastasits and a ghetto booty. Pat likes the booty, he a booty
fiend. See, its funny because he mutilates and kills women!! Ha ha ha!!
Hey, look at me, I'm a toothless bald loser who couldn't get laid to save
his life, I know, I'll make a movie that shows just what a pathological
loser I am!! I'll get to make out with hot chicks and show everyone how
much I hate them!!! Way to go Pat, I'm so sad you died. He makes his byatch
a mindless sex slave (ACTING was involved here) but she becomes a sex maniac
and jumps the bones of every man she sees. Hilarious!! Oh, oh, goodness,
my spleen ruptured from hilarity! Just think, if this was directed by Andrei
Tarkovski it would've been 15 hours long and even less would have happened!!
Dr. Gore goes insane and smokes! He then has flashbacks that consist of
previously seen scenes from the movie. Talk about production values!!
There's also a lot of Duct Tape in this movie. Its an "in" joke with Pat
and his buddies, they use to call Pat Mr. Duct Tape. Ha ha ha. That was
before he got lung and rectal cancer and died screaming. At the end the
Perfect Woman/Sex Slave gets into a van that has DUCT TAPE all over it.
Everyone in North Carolina looks like a fucking serial killer. What fun!
HG Lewis introduces the tape and its so touching the way he can barely remember
Patterson's name. Here's part of what he had to say: "In conclusion, you
might not like the acting in this motion picture, or the set design, or
the direction, or the camerawork, or the lighting, or the editing, or the
gore, in fact you probably will not like anything about this film, it is
a hateful film, hateful and deceitful, it is full of evil and smelliness,
it has a lot of duct tape and playa hating, you could say in the end that
out of all the lost films in history, this one deserves to be lost, you
could even say that everyone involved with the film should somehow retroactively
not be born, or given the love of their mothers. But without a doubt you
can in fact say that this film was directed by my good good friend…uh…John…Pat,
Pat….Patterson, I think. Yes, Pat Patson…er Patterson. My very good friend."
The tape includes not ONE but TWO fucking previews for The Ripper
with Tom Savini. That movie makes this one look like Birth of a Nation.
Ten thumbs up!!!!!!!!!!!11
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DR. JEKYLL'S DUNDGEON
OF DEATH (1978). The descendent of the original Dr. J. (James Mathers, also
the screenwriter) is up to his hapless ancestor's old tricks, developing
a "rage serum" that releases subconscious anger and turns people into muscular
karate experts. Seemingly shot in somebody's basement with a flashlight,
with plenty of idiotic Walker Texas Ranger-esq. karate fights, watching
this you're in crap film heaven. Mathers' performance comes from the eye-budging,
sneering, eyebrow arching school: he's hilarious! He whips both his big
black manservant (named Boris!) and his lobotomized sister ("love is painful!")
attacks and ice bowl ("Ice! Ice! Ice!") and ends up being injected with
his own serum and screaming: "I won! I won! Oh God, I won!" while San Francisco's
only cop, Sgt. Maloney (!) investigates. Director James Wood was also the
cinematographer, editor, and wrote the story, so its good to see his two
days of hard work paid off…well, not really.
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THE DOOM GENERATION
(1995). Coming hot on the negligible heels of Oliver Stone’s Natural
Born Killers and caused the predictable “controversy” about media violence,
though it lacked the multi-million dollar ad campaign to stir up trouble.
Somewhat dim-witted teen couple James Duval and Rose McGowan meet up with
psychopath Jonathan Schaech and go on a crime/killing spree. The violence
is cartoon-like, as are the characters, save the swastika-chested Neanderthals
who brutalize our “heroes” in the end. A rather nonsensical film from Gregg
Araki, it none-the-less avoids descending into the sort of hyper banality
of Stone’s movie. “Industrial” band Skinny Puppy appear as a gang
of thugs who assault Schaech at a drive-in.
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DRIVE-IN MASSACRE (1977).
A killer is on the loose at a California drive-in, cops Jake Barnes and
Adam Lawrence (who look almost exactly the same) investigate. For some reason
this movie seems to work, even though outward appearances would say it shouldn't,
it has stagy, overlong scenes, and lots of wooden direction, but it has
a kind of strange charm that makes it irresistible for the discerning cheap-ass
movie fan. The film's highlights have to be a great decapitation and one
of the burly cops dressing up as a woman.
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DRUNKEN MASTER II (1994).
Jackie Chan made his career in old school chop socky epics, so it was great
to see him return to the genre and predictably make probably the best out-and-out
kung-fu film ever. The plot is thin and meaningless: Chan plays folk hero
Wong Fei-Hung who's caught up in a plot to smuggle Chinese antiques out
of China by nasty Brits and westernized Chinese. Ti Lung plays his father
and Anita Mui is his stepmother. Shaw Brothers vet Lau Kar-Leung directed
most of the film before being fired by Chan, but it really doesn't matter
since in the best chop socky tradition the film is nothing but a collection
of amazing, jaw-dropping fight scenes that will impress everybody but the
dead. Lau himself figures prominently in two of the fight highlights (and
looks spry for a man in his 50s).
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DUEL OF THE IRON FIST
(1971). A-typical for a Shaw Brothers production in that it isn't a fantasy/period
piece but a more modern (though not really "realistic") film. A very young
Ti Lung plays the son of a Triad boss who high-tails it out of town when
his father is killed. When he returns he finds the new boss is out to get
him. Basically a lot of one-on-fifty chop-socky fights done in director
Chang Cheh's usual workmanlike verve, but this is one of the few chop-socky
films where both heroes (David Chiang, too) bite it.
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