Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!

Wolves Don't Eat Meat, aka Kuwait Connection (Egypt/Lebanon/Kuwait, 1973)

2012-01-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

Given that most of my exposure to Arab popular cinema has been through viewings of the relatively genteel and apolitical films of Egyptian cinema's golden age, Wolves Don't Eat Meat comes as a bit of a shock. Believe me, if there were pearls around my neck, I’d be clutching them. In making the film, Samir Khouri, a Lebanese director filming in Kuwait with an Egyptian and Lebanese cast, reportedly aimed to take advantage of what turned out to be a very brief relaxation in Egypt's censorship standards, but his kid-in-a-candy-store approach to the endeavor only ended up getting the film banned upon release.

Which is not all that surprising, given that Wolves Don’t Eat Meat (which was originally known as Zi’ab La Ta’kol Al Lahm and released under the international title Kuwait Connection) contains about a thousand percent more full frontal nudity than you'd ever expect to see in a film from a predominately Muslim country. And that's not even considering the jaw dropping amount of grand guignol violence on display in the film -- or the fact that this was the early 70s, when filmmakers everywhere, regardless of creed or country, were allowing themselves to go just a little bit crazy in their attempts to see what they could get away with.

According to an interview with Mondo Macabro’s Pete Tombs and Andy Starke over at Cinema Strikes Back, previous to making Wolves, Khouri had worked in Italy under such directors as Sergio Bergonzelli, whose output of rough sexploitation fare included lurid entries like In the Folds of the Flesh. And, indeed, that influence here is clear, though what’s really interesting about Wolves Don’t Eat Meat is just how many different trends in 1970s international cinema it channels, making its exact lineage hard to nail down.

Following a credit sequence set to Patrick Samson’s Italo disco hit “Hey Yaba Hey”, Wolves kicks off its narrative proper with a wild car chase through the streets of Kuwait, at the conclusion of which hired assassin Anwar (Ezzat El Alaili) staggers away from his wrecked car and into the desert. Eventually he somehow comes upon the mansion of a shady underworld type named Saleh, at which some strange cross between a party, an orgy and an occult ritual is taking place. Anwar collapses and is carried by Saleh’s men to a spare bedroom, where he is cared for by Saleh’s wife, Maya (well known Egyptian actress Nahed Sherif, whose frequent nudity here guarantees this title a strong showing in next year’s 4DK Search Term Tweet-a-thon).

In a bizarre coincidence, it turns out that Maya is an old flame of Anwar’s, a former bar dancer whom he met while working as a war correspondent in Southeast Asia. Further signaling our and Anwar’s entrance into some kind of uncanny alternate reality is Saleh’s sister, a wizened crone in a wheelchair portrayed by an actor in an aggressively obvious rubber mask -- and with whom Maya appears to be having a lesbian affair. And then, of course, there is the fact that Saleh is seen receiving a visitation from the ghost of his previous wife.

Upon recovering, Anwar tells Maya that the atrocities he witnessed while working as a journalist resulted in him becoming “blood-thirsty”. Among these was the massacre at Deir Yellin, an attack upon a Palestinian village that left hundreds of men, women and children dead and would go on to become a pivotal event in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Anwar subsequently fell in with the beautiful and psychotic hit woman Linda (Lebanese actress Silvana Badrkhan, also frequently nude), with whom he has come to Kuwait to retrieve ten million dollars worth of jewels stolen from the Mafia. This caper, as such things are won’t to do in stories of this type, has gone completely pear-shaped, with the result that Anwar now is being hunted not only by both Linda and the Police, but American mobster “Barney” and his gang as well.

Meanwhile, Saleh, not blind to the obvious attraction between Anwar and his wife, turns threatening, which leads to the two lovers taking flight upon Maya’s luxury yacht -- where, in one of the film’s many uses of symbolism that even the most remedial student of film theory couldn’t miss, they make love on a bed blanketed with live doves. Saleh’s menace is then diminished somewhat when he is mysteriously murdered. This event gives birth to a whodunit subplot that you’d think might ensnare Anwar and Maya in its web, but which actually threatens to eclipse their story altogether as it takes on a life of its own as a parallel narrative. Finally this all leads circuitously to another insane car chase and a blood spattered finale in which all of Anwar’s various nemesis converge upon him at once -- and then, more surprisingly, to a hallucinatory final sequence that echoes Fellini’s 8½.

Throughout all of this, Khori makes sure to place his film’s simulated violence against a jarring backdrop of the real thing. The flashbacks to Deir Yellin are made up of real documentary footage that is both graphic and harrowing. A bloody fight with hatchets is staged in an actual slaughterhouse, the pretend carnage playing out amid shots of live sheep being butchered. Because of this, fans of movie-style blood and guts not inured to the sight of actual dead and dying children and animals may want to look for their thrills elsewhere.

Despite its many aforementioned nods to Italian genre films -- be they Polizzioteschi, Giallo, or Gothic Horror -- what Wolves Don't Eat Meat seems to be most in its heart of hearts is a violent political art film. Whether those pop cinema elements are then intended as a seductive candy coating or a further provocation I can't say. But I have noticed that a number of online writers who have approached the film as a genre piece have characterized it as more or less a bad, if interesting, one. I can't say that, either. To me, it's too fiercely unique, too personal, and too genuinely disturbing to be subjected to such easy judgment. For me to achieve a clearer state of mind on the subject will no doubt require repeat viewings, of which I suspect there will be many.

Friday's best pop song ever

2012-01-26T21:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight! The Drive-In Mob goes to a place "where nobody dared to go"

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight the Drive-In Mob will be camping it up 80s style with a gut-rumbling double bill of jaw-unhinging neon excess. First up, at 8pm EST, it's Olivia Newton John, Gene Kelly and who-the-hell-is-that-guy in Xanadu, one of the most gloriously upward failing musicals of all time. And then, at precisely 9:30-ish EST or thereabouts, it's Dino De Laurentis' delirious day-glo take on Flash Gordon, a film that has been scientifically proven to be better than Star Wars. Seriously, if these movies don't get you rocking, the wall-to-wall Queen and ELO will!

Both Drive-In Mob features can be streamed via Netflix Instant, and those who want to tweet or follow along can do so by using the hashtag #DriveInMob on Twitter. As for myself, I plan to eschew my usual tardiness and be present for the duration -- BECAUSE THIS IS FUCKING IMPORTANT, PEOPLE! Oh, and, as always, please check the official Drive-In Mob site for full details.

Indian Superhero Roll Call

2012-01-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

No film industry that lays claim to colorful escapism the way India’s does can do so without putting forward its fair share of ridiculously garbed costumed heroes. I’ve encountered quite a few of these magnificent creatures in my day (though I’m sure far from all of them), so I thought that -- given that I’m feeling a bit lazy in the lingering haze of the just completed Tweet-a-thon -- my doing an informal survey of the topic might be a good investment of the minimal effort I feel like devoting to it. Let’s proceed!

SUPERMAN: It’s no surprise that Superman is beloved in India, certainly not least because he is goddamn Superman. But also because his supernatural abilities so resemble those of the heroes of Hindu religious epics -- such as the awesome Hanuman -- who, through appearances in everything from movies to comic books, have also become fixtures of Indian popular culture. As far as I know, India’s first screen adaptations of the Man of Steel were a pair of low budget productions released in 1960, both of which starred the actor Jairaj in the title role despite being the products of completely different outfits. One of these was Mohammed Hussain’s pragmatically titled Superman, while the other, directed by Manmohan Sabir, bore the more puzzling moniker Return of Mr. Superman, a direct result of pressure put upon Sabir by the producer of Hussain’s competing version. As you can see from the pictures above, Return of Mr. Superman’s interpretation of its titular hero (that’s Mr. Superman to you) stays well shy of honing too closely to the original source material.

Far less liability-averse were a couple of adaptations that came along during the 80s. These included the 1980 Telegu language version that is often referred to as "Telegu Superman" (and which is helpfully reviewed here by my colleague Tars Tarkas), and 1987’s notorious “Hindi Superman”, which went so far as to swipe actual special effects footage from Richard Donner’s mega-budget Superman, The Movie.

GURU (1980): Though basically a remake of Dharmendra’s 1973 thriller Jugnu, this Tamil language film sought to set itself apart via the inclusion of the pictured pink garbed caped crusader, who shows up in one scene to dazzle a slack-mouthed gang of hoods with his acrobatic skills before disappearing from the picture altogether. Mission accomplished, Guru.

SHIVA KA INSAAF (1985): The mid 1980s saw something of a mini-boomlet in Indian superhero films, with Shiva Ka Insaaf standing out as something of an early adopter. Shiva Ka Insaaf was also India’s second 3D film, and its first in the Hindi language. Star Jackie Shroff appeals to the god Shiva for super powers and gets them, along with a somewhat ill fitting leather costume. Other than the religious overtones, this is another pretty straightforward retelling of the Superman story, complete with Jackie taking the guise of a socially challenged reporter and Poonam Dhillon taking on the role of a serially-imperiled Lois Lane figure. Given the 3D process involved, it will surprise no one that Jackie’s super powers mostly involve throwing things directly into the camera.

MR. INDIA (1987): The superhero boom of the 80s was no doubt due in part to the success of this charming crowd-pleaser, in which Hollywood’s current favorite Indian, Anil Kapoor, uses the power of invisibility to defend Mother India from a vaguely provenanced foreign boogeyman (is “Chino-stani” a word?) played by Amrish Puri. Hail Mogambo!

SHAHENSHAH (1988): The road back to superstardom after his ill-advised detour into politics was a hard one for Amitabh Bachchan. Perhaps hoping to piggy-back on the success of the aforementioned Mr. India, his rapid-fire spate of late 80s comeback vehicles included not one, but two costumed hero capers. The first of these was the moderately well received Shahenshah, in which Bacchan played a Batman-style costumed vigilante. Unfortunately, I have yet to see this film -- though I intend to remedy that in 2012 -- and thus have yet to review it… by which I mean make fun of it.

TOOFAN (1989): But I have made fun of this one! Here Amitabh prays to Hanuman to aid him in avenging his father’s murder, and, in return, the monkey god turns him into a caped crusader complete with a nifty crossbow that looks like it came fresh off the rack at Sports Chalet. This is one of those movies that sounds like it would be a hoot when described, but in reality is a dispiriting slog. Avoid yar!

AJOOBA (1991): And rounding out Amitabh’s trilogy of cinematic superheroism is this odd Russo-Indian co-production, in which the Big B plays a righteous masked rider. But what you’ll really want to see this movie for are all of the bizarre creatures and weird special effects, which are plentiful. The happy ending to all of this, of course, is that Bachchan did eventually regain his foothold on superstardom and has not looked back since. Since then, he has refrained from playing any superheroes, but he has played the Progeria-stricken child of his own actual son, so I’ll let you be the judge of whether that’s a change for the better or not. (Both MemsaabStory and Beth Loves Bollywood are big fans of Ajooba, and are happy to tell you all about it in their equally erudite and entertaining reviews if you just follow the links.)

KRRISH (2006): Either I’ve missed out on some Indian superhero movies from the 1990s, or audiences of that era were having a hard enough time dealing with Karisma Kapoor’s outfits without also having to confront the spectacle of grown men in day-glo tights. In any case, in the 00s the superhero returned to India’s theater screens in big budget style with this loose sequel to 2003’s Koi… Mil Gaya. Heartthrob Hrithik Roshan plays Krishna, the inheritor of super powers that were given to his father by an E.T. Graced with enough state-of-the-art CG effects and wire-assisted stunts to make it almost indistinguishable from a crap Hollywood film, Krrish met with enough favorable audience response to merit two sequels -- which makes me wonder why I only barely remember watching it.

RA.ONE (2011): Admittedly I have yet to see this one, in which Shah Rukh Khan apparently plays a hero with some kind of Tron-based powers. Though I never thought about it before, the advent of Ra.One made me wonder why SRK waited so long to take this route.

DARA SINGH: It’s impossible for me to compose a list like this without mentioning beloved wrestler-turned-stunt-film-king Dara Singh. Although I don’t know of Dara ever starring in what could be described as a traditional superhero film, the man is something of a superhero in his own right, and, in keeping with that, many of his films have a fittingly comic book-ish feel. Included in these are pictures in which he played everything from Tarzan, to Flash Gordon-style space jockeys, to Zoro-like masked riders, all of which guarantee that, mask or no, his are films that provide all the breezy, cheesy thrills that any superhero movie fan could ask for.

The Tweet-a-thon and the damage done

2012-01-23T19:56:00.000-08:00

I think it's safe to say that the 3rd Annual 4DK Search Term Tweet-a-thon was a spectacular success, given the modest height of the bar for success in this case. Essentially, there were search terms and they were tweeted, and this done in the rapid and extended sequence that might allow one to advisedly affix an "a-thon" to the end of things. To be honest, this was what I'd like my Twitter feed to look like all the time, but I just couldn't come up with gems like these on my own -- each one forged like a diamond inside a harrowingly unique mind which, in that fevered moment of creation, seemed to be finding its very reason for existing.

This year's selection of search terms was marked more by its variety than it was by any unifying trend. Yet there was at the same time no dearth of familiarity, most notably in the constellation of Bollywood stars on hand, the dragging of whose names through the mud has become something of a Tweet-a-thon ritual: Amrish Puri, Aruna Irani, and Bob Christo -- the latter via the entry "bob christosex", which memorializes his sexiness for the ages by making "sex" a part of his actual name!

And then there was the remarkable outpouring of guest contributions, among them those from the Cultural Gutter and Houseinrlyeh of The Horror!?, whose entries were so rarified and various that they made choosing a favorite difficult -- though I am partial, in CG's case, to "scary chinese people" and, in Houseinrlyeh's, to "muscle horror". Hell On Frisco Bay provided a local angle with "Making Frisco less pejorative", among others. Sadly, none of my searches for my own name or the name of this blog on any of these people's sites made the cut.

Probably those people who are most deserving of thanks, however, are all of my Twitter followers who failed to unfollow me despite the noisome and annoying ordeal I subjected them to for most of 24 hours. Sleep soundly, my friends, and thank you. You have a whole year to recover.

It's the 3rd Annual 4DK Search Term Tweet-a-thon!

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Every year at this time I'm forced to come to terms with the fact that all but a very few of you come to this site in the hope of seeing a picture of Aruna Irani's lactating boob. As a consolation, it's also the time at which I get to survey all of the other insane bullshit that some of you freaks have been one handedly pawing into Google in your journey toward the inevitable disappointment that is 4DK. This in turn all gets fed into what is surely America's Next Top Social Media Based Pseudo-event: The 4DK Search Term Tweet-a-thon!

That's right, girlies, it's that time again. Starting this Sunday, January 22nd at 5pm PST and ending at the same time on the following Monday, January 23rd, I will be devoting 24 drunken hours to the tweeting of some of the most disquieting queries culled from last year's selection of keyword searches reported via 4DK's Google Analytics account. As always, I encourage -- no demand! -- that any other interested bloggers and web masters dip into their own deep reservoirs of search-based shame and join in. I will retweet any and all contributions made in like spirit. Though keep in mind that, in order to insure that my Twitter feed during that time is but one impenetrable wall of Dada-esque word vomit, I will not be responding to any tweets, so don't get bent out of shape, all you precious sensitive souls.

4DK's Twitter account can be accessed here. Remember, only you and I will know. The rest will just think that I had some kind of seizure.

Friday's best pop song ever

2012-01-19T21:00:00.000-08:00

Drive-In Mob Tonight! Blue Sunshine and Squirm

2012-01-19T00:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight the Drive-In Mob really lives up to its name with a salute to drive-in auteur Jeff Leiberman. First, at 8pm EST, we tweet-along to Lieberman’s killer hippie classic Blue Sunshine, followed, at 9:30-ish, by his creepy crawly debut feature Squirm. Both films can be streamed via Netflix Instant, and like-minded souls can both follow and tweet along on Twitter by using the hashtag #DriveInMob. As always, be sure to check the official Drive-In Mob site for full details.

2012-01-18T00:04:00.000-08:00

Guru (India, 1980)

2012-01-16T11:40:00.000-08:00

By all rights, I should have looked away from Guru, but lord help me I could not. At the very least I should have stopped listening to it. The version of this Tamil language film that I watched had been subjected to the worst Hindi dubbing job imaginable -- not only on its dialog, but its songs as well. And rather than re-recording those songs from scratch, the dubbers simply pasted the caterwauling Hindi vocals (Asha Bhosle being obviously outside the price range) over the original musical tracks, substituting, for the duration of the sung portions only, a sort of drum machine and Casio-on-factory-settings karaoke approximation of their more lush, live orchestration. It was not good.

At the same time, Guru offers a lot of the searingly colorful grotesquerie and carnivalesque thrill-jockeying that I’ve come to hope for in action films from India’s regional cinema. And this despite the film actually being a pretty close remake of Jugnu, Dharmendra’s solidly middling Hindi thriller from 1973. It even borrows the same footage from the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, as well as some footage from Jugnu itself. More importantly, we get an appearance by what is probably Jugnu’s most thrilling feature, the Jugnu-Mobile, although here it is the Guru-Mobile, thanks to the fact that Guru is, in this version, the name of the altruistic bandit played by our leading man, Tamil superstar Kamal Hassan.

But alongside these familiar elements, Guru makes an effort to establish itself as its own odd breed of beast. In addition to Kamal Hassan’s courageous thief with a conscience, we’re also presented with a pink-clad superhero -- seemingly also named Guru, although obviously played by a different actor -- who strikes terror into the hearts of evildoers through flamboyant and impractical displays of gymnastics (which, as in Gymkata, are entirely dependent upon those evildoers’ surroundings being equipped with the appropriate equipment, such as parallel bars). This Super Guru announces himself via the hurling of a small metal statue of what appears to be a pigeon covered with flashing colored lights -- a practice that I imagine would quickly become prohibitively expensive, kind of like giving everyone you meet a Kindle.

Sadly, once introduced, this magnificent creature is never to be seen again. But Guru has plenty of other gaudy and baffling visual stimuli in store for us -- some of them courtesy of its Hindi inspiration and some all of its own fevered machinations. Mirroring Jugnu, the monolithically pompadoured “Boss” wears on his arm something that looks like an oversized cocktail shaker, and which extrudes all manner of deadly pointy things on command. On the romance front, Sridevi essays the role played by Hema Malini in the original, and when Kamal Hassan first lays eyes upon her, it is in a picnic setting where she is amusing a group of female friends by blasting the words “I love you” into a giant paper heart with a revolver. Do I want to know what this means? Probably not. Nor do I need any further explication of the scene in which Kamal Hassan and Sridevi antagonistically serenade one another while she flies a helicopter and he buzzes her in a light plane.

The cycle of reciprocal remaking between Bollywood and its regional counterparts was and remains a not uncommon practice, with Telegu and Tamil hits frequently being remade for the Hindi market and Hindi films also getting the regional treatment. Then, apparently, those Tamil and Telegu remakes have sometimes been dubbed so that Hindi audiences could enjoy cheaper, idiosyncratic regional interpretations of films they’d already seen in their own language, though this time with all of the music and dialog ruined. Truly, in the condition I watched it, Guru was just one pink superhero away from being completely unwatchable, but sometimes it’s the pink superheroes that make all the difference.

And also the tasteful set decor.

[NOTE: YouTube has some clips of the original musical sequences from Guru, which demonstrate that the songs, composed by Kamal Hassan favorite Ilayaraja, are actually quite nice in their unmolested form.]

Friday's best pop song ever

2012-01-12T21:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight! The Drive-In Mob with two heads!

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

One can never have too much head, so tonight’s Drive-in Mob gives you a little something extra. In the first half of our double-domed double-feature, The Incredible Two Headed Transplant, star Casey Kasem counts down the number of noggins on the titular abomination -- and in the second feature, The Thing With Two Heads (aka the movie that ended racism in America!), Free to be... You and Me star Rosy Greer finds himself sharing a body with a crabby old man played by Ray Milland. (You’d probably be crabby too if you had an inescapable second head singing “It’s Alright to Cry” at you 24/7.)

Now, I may be tardy for the first feature, but, believe me, I would give my left brain to make sure that I’m there for the tail end of this, um, double header. DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE? This is the level of wit you can expect tonight, people. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to tweet-or-at-least-follow along!

And as usual, you can do so by streaming both features on Netflix Instant, starting with The Incredible Two Headed Transplant at 8pm sharp EST, and joining in on Twitter using the #DriveInMob hashtag. Be sure to check the official Drive-In Mob site for full details.

Cinderella and Her Little Angels (Hong Kong, 1959)

2012-01-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

Confronted with a film like Cinderella and Her Little Angels, one has cause to wonder just how many of life’s cruelest unpleasantries could be smoothed over by the warmly familiar conventions of the romantic musical comedy. Parodies like The Producers and Cannibal! The Musical, after all, not only mine the absurdity of setting real life atrocities to a jaunty musical score, but also highlight that form’s ability to defang and co-opt such horrors. Thus it’s not unthinkable that such a production could get our toes tapping to the sadly commonplace yet no less grim spectacle of child labor and sweatshop peonage.

A slick product of Hong Kong’s Cathay studio, Cinderella and Her Little Angels tells the story of Xiaolin (Umetsugu Inoue favorite Peter Chen Ho), a shy tailor employed by a swanky Hong Kong clothing shop. Xiaolin is smitten with Danning, a girl from the local orphanage, but has yet to work up the nerve to make his move. Fortunately, the shop has a mannequin that bears an uncanny resemblance to Danning on which he can practice, which isn’t creepy at all.

And why would Xiaolin be familiar with a girl from the local orphanage, you may ask? Well, that, apparently, is where all of the shops garments are made, with Danning basically serving as a cheerfully trilling galley master, urging her fellow orphans –- hunched to the task of sewing away with fingers both tiny and teenaged -- ever forward in their arduous labors through the power of uplifting song. A sample lyric:

You are sewing and I am packing
If you aren’t quick, you can’t get things done
Don’t look around, hurry up, hurry up
Even with no sleep we must try our very best

Danning is played by Linda Lin Dai, a versatile actress whose fame at the time enabled her to work as a free agent for both of Hong Kong’s titans of Mandarin language cinema, Cathay and Shaw Brothers. In 1961 she would sign a contract with Shaw, entering a period in which she would break the record for most awards for Best Actress received at the Asian Pacific Film Festival. Sadly, her suicide in 1964, at the young age of 29, would cement her legendary status, initiating a period of public mourning that saw her funeral inundated by thousands of fans.

And, indeed, Lin Dai’s beauty and charm are hard to miss in Cinderella and Her Little Angels, making it no surprise when Xiaolin’s boss, upon setting eyes on Danning during one of her rare visits to the shop, beseeches Xiaolin to recruit her as a model for his upcoming fashion show. This is a decadent proposition for the modest Danning, but wary of the underfunded orphanage’s desperate need for renovation, she relents, hoping to cover the costs with her modeling swag. Less easy to convince is the orphanage’s conservative headmistress, Madame Kong (Wang Lai), who ultimately must be kept in the dark about Danning’s moonlighting by means of a variety of comedic ruses, most of which somewhat preposterously involve Danning’s aforementioned mannequin lookalike.

Danning, needless to say, proves to be a natural as a model. And the fashion show, accompanied by sung narration from and off-screen chorus, is the clear centerpiece and highlight of Cinderella and Her Little Angels. The salt of Hong Kong, as presented in the film, are not too receptive to the distinctly Western peculiarities of modern fashion, as exemplified by Madame Kong, who calls the “Brigitte Bardot” style sample gown that Xiaolin brings to her “weird”, refusing to have her charges participate in its manufacture. Thus the fashion show sequence seems manifestly intended as a primer for the film’s audience, and as such bears all the hallmarks of a society in the throes of transition, with all of the deep ambivalence that that entails.

This last, I assume, explains why the otherwise chirpy ditties delivered by those unseen singers contain some couplets that seem both perversely and hilariously judgmental. Of a kimono it is said, “Westerners are naughty. They treat it as nightgown.” And, as for another stylish -- and relatively conservative -- evening ensemble:

Look at this new coat
It’s exciting with chest and arms exposed
Modern people like to be sexy
They love to expose their body

Composed by Yao Min, Cinderella and Her Little Angels’ songs, though delivering some harsh medicine, are relentlessly upbeat in tone. And dammit if, along with the winsome performances by the film’s leads, they don’t contribute to it being one of the most charming musicals about cheerful orphans conscripted into forced labor that I’ve ever seen. Toward the end, the singing becomes virtually wall to wall, with the songs providing an ongoing narration describing things that we’re already clearly seeing take place on screen. And if you had any doubt about how things ultimately turn out:

Friday's best pop song ever

2012-01-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

The Infernal Brains Podcast, Episode 9

2012-01-05T06:53:00.000-08:00

A thorough knowledge of lucha libre cinema is what separates the Mexi-cans from the Mexi-can'ts. Of course, Tars Tarkas and I are neither of those, but we still try to do our best in this discussion of The Mummies of Guanajuato, a classic of the genre that features all three of its biggest stars: Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras. As usual, you can download the podcast here, or stream it below while looking at pretty pitchers.

Mysterious Island, aka Tainstvenny Ostrov (USSR, 1941)

2012-01-04T06:33:00.000-08:00

Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island has been adapted for the screen many times, but seldom, it seems, with much faithfulness. This may in part be due to the makers of those adaptations wanting to insert into them the science fiction elements that are largely missing from Verne’s original. Verne is, after all, inseparable from his reputation as a science fiction author, yet those who tackle this particular example of his work might be surprised by the extent to which it plays as a straightforward adventure. In response to that, the 1961 film version of Mysterious Island famously sought to spice things up with the addition of some Ray Harryhausen begotten giant animals, while the semi-silent 1929 version included a mysterious underwater race and the 1951 Columbia serial added invaders from Mercury.

Thus it could just be that the 1941 Russian film version, Tainstvenny Ostrov, might be the most faithful adaptation of Mysterious Island out there. Though to just what extent it is I personally can’t say for sure, because, as is so often the case, my copy lacks the subtitles that would enable me to determine whether the characters in the film are spouting dialogue in keeping with Verne’s own or simply parroting Stalinist bromides about collective farming. Still, the evidence of the eye is that Tainstvenny Ostrov follows the events of its source material with a surprising level of scrupulousness.

In keeping with that, the film begins as does the book: In Virginia circa 1865. As the Battle of Richmond rages around them, a group of men lead by the northern officer Smith (Alexei Krasnopolsky) make their escape from a military prison in a hot air balloon. Carried away by a storm, they crash land on the titular land mass, which they later dub Lincoln Island. As time goes on, they master the island’s environment, constructing a palatial shelter inside a cliff face, forging tools, creating an irrigation system, and building a compound complete with windmills, farmland and a working elevator.

Throughout this, the group -- which also includes the freed slave Neb (R. Ross), the sailor Pencroft (though it sounds like they’ve changed his name here to “Petrov”), the young boy Herbert (Yuri Grammatikati) and a dog, to name a few -- face a catalog of what could be considered pretty boilerplate island perils: Their camp is invaded by wild apes; another castaway (I. Koslov), who has been reduced to a caveman-like state of savagery, makes the scene; and they are forced to fend off an attack by marauding pirates. All the while they find themselves repeatedly aided by the efforts of a mysterious, unseen benefactor.

As we saw with the recently reviewed Kosmicheskiy Reys, the Soviet film industry had, as recently as the mid 1930s, yet to completely kick off the trappings to the silent era. And, despite its spoken dialog, Tainstvenny Ostrov still shows some signs of the same -- largely due to the frequent use of under-cranked camera work and the heavy reliance on written title cards to move the narrative forward. Aside from this, though, the film is well executed and obviously generously funded. The opening battle scene is far more spectacular than the narrative demands and, once we’re on the island, good use is made of the dramatic natural locations, as well as some impressive matte and miniature work. Co-directors B.M. Chelintsev and Eduard Pentslin also keep the pacing such that, despite the many scenes of the castaways discussing plans by the campfire –- and, in my case, the total inability to understand what they were saying -- the feeling of a driving forward momentum is never lost.

As most of you know, Verne’s Mysterious Island is a sequel whose identification as such renders moot the very mystery around which it’s centered. Because of that, any of us familiar with the tale will be watching Tainstvenny Ostrov in eager anticipation of the moment when the castaways will finally discover the hidden port of the submarine Nautilus and, within it, the ailing Captain Nemo, here played by Nikolai Komissarov. In the event, the effects and sets used to realize the steampunk-before-there-was-steampunk super vessel are given spare screen time, but are beguiling enough for me to hope that the same crew might have also brought their own version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to the screen. The imposing Komissarov is also with us all too briefly, but must understandably be rushed from the stage in order to make way for the film’s catastrophic, volcano-blasting finale.

Given the limitations I had to deal with while watching it, I'd be loathe to describe Tainstvenny Ostrov as in any way a work of propaganda, though it's not hard to see what aspects of its story might have warmed the hearts of Soviet censors. Its castaways leave behind a United States torn apart by war and racial prejudice (in the course of their escape, Smith must free Neb from a bloodthirsty lynch mob) and end up building a society of their own from scratch, in the course exhibiting much of the same industriousness and utopian idealism celebrated in so many works of Soviet propaganda proper. And indeed there are some rousing, patriotic-sounding songs that blare on the soundtrack during these particular scenes. But, in truth, my guess is that the reason those involved here chose to adapt Verne’s novel is the same one that has driven so many others to bring it to the screen over the years; it’s simply a ripping good adventure yarn. And that fact is something to which Tainstvenny Ostrov provides clear testament, with or without translation.

Mystery Thai Theater Part 1

2011-12-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

The good news is that a pal of mine returned from his trip to Thailand with an armload of VCDs for me. The bad news is that, thanks to the fact that all of the writing on these VCDs is in Thai –- and that the discs themselves are not subtitled -- I have only been able to identify a very few of them. As for the remainder, I’ve decided to go ahead and review them as best I can, under made-up titles that I nonetheless feel reflect 100% journalistic accuracy as far as the actual contents of the films. If anyone, upon reading these descriptions, feels that they can provide any more information on the titles in question, please get in touch.

Punched by a Girl (Thailand, 198?)

This one was a bait-and-switch of the lowest order. The illustration on both the sleeve and the disc itself depicts two women in colorful masks and black cat-suits brandishing pistols, which lead me to believe that it would be a cheesy but potentially fun costumed hero caper. In reality what it is is an utterly generic action film starring Jarunee Suksawat, who made a good many such films back in the day. And because it’s a Thai film made in the 80s, whatever god Sorapong Chatree offended decrees that he also must be in it, and that he must do so swathed from head to toe in acid washed denim.

As far as the plot, I can’t tell you much other than that it begins with Jarunee and her (I think) sister’s (I think) mom being killed by a bunch of thugs, which leads to the (I think) sisters seeking vengeance upon the thugs with the help of the (I think) policeman played by Chatree. To the film’s credit, it jumps right into the action from the get go. Unfortunately, that action consists entirely of tepidly staged fights, shootouts and foot chases set in nondescript clearings. By the end of the film we’ve never seen the masks depicted on the sleeve -- nor have we seen the also depicted giant diamond, or the pick-up truck leaping through a massive explosion while itself also exploding. It’s almost like the makers of this VCD wanted my friend to buy it despite its subpar contents. I suspect some kind of profit motive was involved.

Love Me, Love My Guitar (Thailand, 199?)

A boy and a girl are in love. They talk on the phone, walk through parks very slowly, and rendezvous at gazebos. A guitar is present for much of this, though it is never played. Meanwhile, a goofy kid with an awesome MC Hammer wardrobe returns home to his parents after an apparent long absence. His mom is played by an obvious tranny. (Oh Thailand!) All of this is accompanied by instrumental versions of a scrotum-shriveling assortment of 70s and 80s light rock hits: “Nights in White Satin”, “A Woman in Love”, “All By Myself”, “I Know I’ll Never Love This Way Again”, Supertramp’s “The Logical Song” and -- oh, what the hell, why not throw in “The Theme from Shaft” while we’re at it.

(Sigh.) High-waisted jeans are worn. A bottle of Black Label is consumed. Sad things, happy things, and even putatively hilarious things happen; life’s rich pageant. Example: a girl is crippled in a car accident -- and the boy is responsible! She becomes bitter and spends the rest of the movie crying. That is (spoiler!), until she suddenly finds herself able to walk again for some reason. I think it has something to do with the power of love.

Despite the fact that the lack of subtitles made it utterly impossible for me to understand what was going on, there is nothing you could say to convince me that this is not a horrible movie. I don’t blame my friend, though, because the VCD sleeve has a picture of a guy rocking out on a guitar while a stock car flies over his head. Fuck you, Thailand.

King Mustache (Thailand, 197?)

The sleeve for this disc sports an illustration of a guy with a truly magnificent mustache. However, once we pop the disc into our player what we see is Sorapong Chatree crawling through a field, trying not to awaken a pair of sleeping gunmen and ultimately doing a face plant in a big pile of animal dung. Dammit, this is that fucking Sompote Sands movie about the water buffalo. There is no way I’m watching that again.

Violence Man (Thailand, 197?)

In this one Sorapong Chatree comes home to the humble shack inhabited by his parents only to find that they have been murdered by a gang of vicious thugs who were apparently seeking information about some kind of hidden treasure or something. And, OMG, you’ll never guess what happens: Sorapong and his fringed jacket set out to bring the thugs to justice with the power of violence. Ears are lopped off, faces enthusiastically spin-kicked, eyes gouged and… well, let’s just say that, this being a Thai action film, no hut is safe from the ravages of fire and various combustibles.

Sorapong finds an ally in his violencing in the form of fellow Thai superstar Sombat Methanee, who has had problems of his own with the thugs. Sadly, those thugs eventually catch up to Sombat, killing his wife and forcing him and his small son to go on the run. At this point the movie develops something resembling an actual plot and thus becomes hopelessly incomprehensible. Somehow Sorapong and Sombat end up involved with different factions that are both competing to find whatever buried thing it is that everyone is trying to find. This gives us the opportunity to witness a Sorapong vs. Sombat throw-down before Thailand’s heavily militarized police force shows up to blow the fuck out of all the huts that have been left undamaged during the previous two hours. (I was weighing the option of giving this movie the alternate title Shack Attack!)

To its credit, this movie has more than its fair share of gore, violence, exploding huts, kung fu, nudity, soft-core sex, and exploding huts. Still, the best thing I can say about it is that it’s the most enjoyable out of this particular batch of films, which is known as either “damning with faint praise” or “conducting a taste test where the only thing you’re tasting is various kind of poo”. If not the actual title, I hope that someone can at least provide me with the name of the Godfrey Ho ninja movie that this film undoubtedly later found itself cobbled into.

That’s all the muddled incomprehension there is for now, folks. But be sure to watch for the next exciting installment of Mystery Thai Theater!

UPDATE 1/1/2012: Well, once again, being loudly ignorant on the internet has reaped rich rewards -- this time as a result of the efforts of the marvelous Ninja Dixon and Regis of ThaiWordView. Regis informs me that, in the case of the films I dubbed Punched by a Girl and Violence Man, the VCDS are the product of an outfit called Lepso, who are notorious for their misleading packaging, often using text and artwork for either a completely different film or using artwork that is a mash-up of images from several different sources. ThaiWorldView has an extremely helpful page detailing a number of Lepso's releases, identifying both the actual titles of those releases and, where applicable, the titles of the films represented by their packaging.

Though it pains me to let go of that title, Regis tells me that Punched by a Girl is actually a film whose Thai title Google Translate helpfully renders as Crystal Rose, while it's packaging -- featuring the two masked heroines -- pertains to another Jarunee Suksawat/Sorapong Chatree film from 1983 whose title Google Translate was much less helpful with. A review of that latter film appears on this page of ThaiWorldView. As far as Violence Man, Regis informs me that that is actually a 1981 film whose Thai title Google Translate puckishly asserts would be Tire Scheme, perhaps if coined by an autistic English speaker with an advanced sense of whimsy. Again, ThaiWorldView has provided a review of that film, which can be found on this page.

I will return with another update once I've been gifted with additional information from other parties who, like Regis and Ninja, are not only less lazy, but also considerably more generous and more well informed than myself.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-12-29T20:56:00.000-08:00

...

2011-12-26T15:15:00.000-08:00

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-12-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

Alupihang Dagat (Philippines, 1975)

2011-12-19T20:36:00.000-08:00

In the Philippines you need only call him “FPJ”, but, to outsiders, Fernando Poe Jr. might need a bit more of an introduction. One of the most iconic stars of Tagalog cinema, Poe was also among the first Filipino actors to seize the reigns of production for himself, producing upward of a hundred self-starring pictures under his FPJ Productions banner and others. Poe was also a frequent director of these films, the 1975 hit Alupihang Dagat being just one of many he helmed under the pseudonym Ronwaldo Reyes.

In Alupihang Dagat, FPJ plays Gomer, the son of a humble fishing village where the men sail out to sea and the women stay behind to dive for sponge. At the story’s outset, we learn that the village has been troubled by a spate of disappearances on the part of its seafaring youngsters. Gomer learns of this upon returning from an extended voyage, and soon sets out in his tiny skiff to get to the bottom of things. Eventually he stumbles upon the island hideout of a band of modern day pirates who, under the leadership of a female captain named Odessa (Elizabeth Oropesa, who would later appear in a considerably more buttoned-down role as the wife of Ramon Revilla in The Killing of Satan), are responsible for kidnapping and enslaving many of Gomer’s friends and neighbors.

As observed by Gomer, the pirates reveal themselves to be a savage and imbecilic lot, fighting amongst themselves for sport and, at one point, staging a fight between two randy male horses that, while foreshadowing a climactic moment in the film, makes Alupihang Dagat guaranteed unpleasant viewing for animal lovers. Eventually Gomer is captured by the brutes and put at the mercy of Odessa, who wastes no time in subjecting him to a series of sexually charged humiliations. However, seeing as FPJ is blessed with the chiseled features and powerful physique that say “matinee idol” in any language (not to mention that he has some truly awe inspiring sideburns), it is not long before Odessa has fallen for Gomer and freed him from his bonds. This act ends up having unfortunate consequences for her, and the film’s last act sees Gomer fighting to rescue Odessa from a vengeful band of her former compatriots lead by the ever-cretinous Vic Diaz.

Poe scores high marks as a director with Alupihang Dagat. He captures the day-to-day life of Gomer’s village with an affectionate attention to detail while making great use of the film’s rugged seaside locales. At the same time, there is a palpable air of melancholy hanging over these opening scenes that, even without the aid of English subtitles, communicates that the villagers have seen happier times. While I don’t have a broad enough experience of Filipino cinema to say for sure, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Poe’s downcast and gritty depiction of the lives of the working poor here was influenced by the recent work of Lino Brocka. The film then neatly switches gears in its final third to become a definitive example of Filipino “Goon” cinema, with seeming armies of mustachioed stuntmen being hurled this way and that as Poe and Oropesa let loose on some especially imposing looking machine guns.

Poe the actor also makes a definite impression here, though I have to admit that, for me, he was somewhat overshadowed by Elizabeth Oropesa in the role of Odessa. I must further admit that this is in no small part due to the wide assortment of short-shorts and fetish boots that the fetching Oropesa wears throughout the film, not to mention the fox stole that she at one point, for some reason, rocks as a hat. (Shades of Wolf Devil Woman.) I am not alone in being moved by Oropesa, it seems, as, soon after Alupihang Dagat’s successful run, she was picked to reprise her role as Odessa –- this time front and center -- in Mariposang Dagat. For those eager to keep apace, recent years have seen the actress reveal a lifelong ability to see spooks and predict the future, embarking on a new career as a spiritual healer and medium, so there’s also that.

As some readers have been quick to remind me, I am long overdue in introducing FPJ to the pages of 4DK. Now that I have -- and have in fact found the process quite enjoyable, with or without Elizabeth Oropesa’s booty shorts -- I hope that it will be the beginning of a long and happy relationship. Alupihang Dagat is a truly engaging piece of Pinoy pop cinema, combining a populist heart with a cineaste’s eye for style while at the same time never forgetting to deliver those oh-so-important cheap thrills.

International man of knowing stuff about things

2011-12-19T07:22:00.000-08:00

Recently I was interviewed by Helena Gustavsson for the Swedish weekly ETC on the topic of spy films from many lands -- a topic about which you, and now Helena, know that I can go on at epoch-spanning length. The mercifully condensed results can now be seen here. Interested readers of the non-Swedish-speaking variety will have to rely on Google Translate, but I think the gist of it is still gettable. Njut!

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-12-15T21:00:00.000-08:00

Santa mob tonight!

2011-12-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight the Drive-In Mob is going to get all seasonally-appropriate with a Santa Claus theme. Fortunately for us, all movies concerning Santa Claus are of an unassailably high quality. Exhibit 1: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Science fiction or science fact? Fire it up on Netflix Instant at 8pm EST and judge for yourself. Second up at 9:30 EST, and also on Netflix Instant, is Santa Claus -- or, if you want to get racial about it, "Mexican Santa Claus". If you didn't see this movie as a kid, congratulations! That's just that many more nightmares that you didn't have.

As always, those who want to tweet or follow along need only use the #DriveInMob hashtag on Twitter. Be sure to check out the official Drive-In Mob site for all the details. Sleigh you there!

Kosmicheskiy Reys, aka Cosmic Journey (USSR, 1935)

2011-12-12T06:13:00.000-08:00

Whether or not you’re a retro-future fetishist like myself, you’ve got to admit that the farther away cinema was from the actual nuts and bolts of space travel, the better it made it look. Despite some obvious nods to the scientific realism of Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond, the 1935 Soviet silent Kosmicheskiy Reys: Fantasticheskaya Novella (The Space Voyage: A Fantastic Story) seems to model its idea of space exploration on the comparatively more prosaic earthly pursuit of travel by ocean liner, with astronauts packing heavy suitcases for their trip and boarding massive, streamlined “space planes” via gangplanks while wearing their Sunday best. This is a future I want.

Kosmicheskiy Reys was originally conceived by director Vasili Zhuraviyov in 1924, but only saw production in the early 1930s due to the urging of the Communist Union of Youth, who wanted a film to inspire interest in space travel on the part of Soviet youngsters. Despite this chronology, I have to wonder if some filming had not been completed on Kosmicheskiy Reys previous to that time, as, while a few silent films were still being released in the U.S.S.R. in 1935, the lack of soundtrack combined with the under-cranked look of much of the film makes it seem pretty anachronistic, sophisticated effects notwithstanding.

The film centers around the efforts of Sedych (Sergie Komarov), a grandfatherly scientist at the U.S.S.R.’s Institute of Interplanetary Communication who has decided that it would be a good idea to use one of the giant spaceships they have lying around to go to the moon, thus opening “the way to space”. For this journey he recruits the handsome young post grad Victor (Nikolai Feoktistov), not knowing that Victor has been recruited in turn by the Institute’s director, Professor Karin (Vasili Kovrigin), to put a stop to Sedych’s plan -- the stated reason being that Sedych is too old to withstand the as of yet untested rigors of space travel. Karin would instead prefer to continue launching experimental probes manned by hapless bunnies and kitty cats until he can be assured that such a mission would be safe for humans. Sedych, with all the impatient candor of a man whose mortal horizon is clearly in view, says that he thinks this is “bullshit” and that Karin is a “pussy” (admittedly I was lip reading Russian there, so those may not have been his exact words, but that’s the gist).

Fortunately, Victor’s teenage brother Andriusha (Vassili Gaponenko) is made from all the good, progressive Soviet stock that was so obviously in short supply when his turncoat brother was forged, and outs Victor to Sedych. Come the day of the launch, the kid then arrives at the site with a troop of his fellow scouts (I’m guessing these are Young Pioneers, rather than Communist Union of Youth scouts, due to their young ages) who physically prevent both Karin and Victor from interfering. With a cry of “long live youth”, Sedych then boards the ship to the delighted cheers of the children, though not before Andriusha can sneak aboard with him. Sedych’s assistant Marina (K. Moskalenko) is also along for the mission, meaning that, in this film, the first humans on the moon will be an old man, a woman, and a little kid. Whine as much as you want about this being propaganda, but that’s still cool as shit.

As indicated above, Kosmicheskiy Reys’ special effects sequences are ambitious and, for their time, impressively executed. Quite understandably, Zhuravlyov spends a lot of time lingering on them, and, for the most part, they stand up to the scrutiny. It’s not so much that they fool the eye, but that they so effectively contribute to the film’s overall sense of grandeur. The miniature work powerfully communicates the mammoth scale of the space ship, and the scenes of the astronauts giddily flying from one end of the craft’s interior to the other, despite a visible wire here and there, depict the experience of weightlessness with an infectious sense of euphoria. Finally, those scenes of the crew traversing the moon’s surface –- which involve a lot of buoyant leaping across crevasses and up and down peaks -- are realized by way of some really delightful stop motion animation work. Not that theose scenes look in any way “real”, mind you, but they nonetheless add a welcome playfulness to a film that might otherwise be weighted down by its solemn sense of import. (Though, according to Wikipedia, those animated sequences, and their failure to conform to the tenets of “socialist realism”, were cited by Soviet censors as the reason they removed Kosmicheskiy Reys from circulation soon after its release. Oh, well.)

Even with all of its pomp and bold stroke revolutionary allegory, it’s hard not to get caught up in Komicheskiy Reys’ enthusiasm for the human project of space exploration -- especially, I think, for someone like me who has childhood memories of the excitement that surrounded the original moon landing and the missions leading up to it. In the end, after a brief episode of peril on the moon’s surface, the triumphant cosmonauts return to a spontaneous parade and the adulation of an adoring public. Even the haters who initially stood in their way are now all smiles. Wesley… er, I mean Andriusha in particular ends up being the hero of the day, cementing this as a movie that I would have absolutely loved to death when I was a little kid.

By the way, Komicheskiy Reys places its action in the far off year of 1946. As we all know, a lot happened between 1935 and 1946 to distract us from the project of manned space travel (except for those Nazis, of course, who apparently sent flying saucers to the moon). But, who knows? Perhaps, had fate not intervened, we might have been shooting off to the cosmos in flying ocean liners during the Truman administration. Probably not, though. And, in any case, it likely wouldn’t have looked nearly as cool as it does in this movie.

Friday's best pop song ever: FHx2

2011-12-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

Because choosing just two was hard enough.

Drive-In Mob tonight!: a note from the VP

2011-12-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

The VP, of course, being Vincent Price, who will be the subject of tonight’s Drive-In Mob, starting up promptly at 8pm EST. First up will be The Conqueror Worm, which I’m pretty sure is the movie that the Ohio Players song “Funky Worm” came from, though don’t quote me on that. Second up is The Last Man on Earth, which will provide a nice point of comparison to last week’s Drive-In Mob feature, The Omega Man, which was, like it, also based on Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend”. Both films are available from Netflix Instant. To follow and/or tweet along, simply use the Twitter hashtag #driveinmob. (Though, in this case, you might just want to watch along, as these are both pretty good movies.) Please check out the official Drive-In Mob site for full details.

Los Demonias del Desierto (Mexico, 1990)

2011-12-06T20:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, show of hands: Who else felt a little empty inside after reading my review of La Venganza de los Punks, knowing that that would likely be the last they heard of the cartoonish anti-protagonists of that film and its predecessor, Intrepidos Punks? Well, it turns out that the threat posed to Mexico by roving bands of punk rock bikers who worship Satan and The Road Warrior in equal measure was greater than we thought. Because, while not employing the same personnel, 1990’s Los Demonias del Desierto (Demons of the Desert) follows the template set by the Punks films so closely that we can safely consider it a sequel in spirit, if not in fact.

Yes, it’s true; gone is the gang’s luchadore-masked leader, Tarzan. But in his place we now have the wild-eyed cultist played by Sergio Bustamante, Father Damien, in a performance that seems like a desperate warning to the future concerning Brando’s Dr. Moreau. And to be honest, Father Damien seems like just the guiding hand that the formerly somewhat scattershot punks needed, channeling their putatively youthful energies toward a clearly defined goal. That goal, in this case, is the overthrow of our corrupt, consumerist society, the method, apparently, being the occupation of people’s hearts and minds. By bullets.

Just how bad is this band of satanipunks, you ask? Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of one of its members SHOOTING HIS OWN MOTHER at Damien’s urging -- an opening scene that, if unsubtle, at least does an economical job of orienting us within the film’s moral universe. Later the gang will ambush a nice nuclear family on their road trip, then shoot dad and grandpa before dragging mother and son back to their camp. Oh, but first our lead punkette -- whose blue fright wig makes her look like she has a tribble on her head -- has to get sexy with the dad’s corpse, because Los Demonias del Desierto is just classy like that.

Fortunately for the punks -- or so it would seem -- the police officers assigned to their case are surely the two most elderly on the force. These are brothers Carlos and Tony, played by brothers Fernando and Mario Almada. Both Amadas are perennial stars of Mexican action cinema, with Mario especially appearing in a whole mess of narcotraficante movies. Clearly their reputations are meant to precede them here, because when we look at Carlos and Tony, we are meant to see, not two men who have clearly chosen on-the-job coronaries over retirement, but 100% stud material. To this end, we see these codgers effortlessly putting the beat down on hoodlums young enough to be their grandchildren and romancing a pair of beauties easily 40 years their junior. In what I’m guessing is a further attempt to bolster their manliness, we are also this time given a designated gay punk biker for Carlos and Tony to call “faggot” and “queer” all over the place; meaning that, like the Punks movies before it, Los Demonias achieves the staggering feat of making its heroes even more repellent than its villains.

Carlos and Tony’s ladies are named Linda and Julia, and given the time-saving requirements of Los Demonias’ skeletal narrative, we can be assured that, once we have met them, it is not long before their peace and safety will be compromised. And, sure enough, it is only in the next scene that they are accosted by the punks at a lonely roadside spot. Julia is killed, and Linda is taken back to the camp for later sacrifice. Once there, we see that it may be Father Damien’s in-house medium, Samantha, who is really calling the shots, seeing as she determines each of his moves via the draw of the tarot -- and is also responsible for dishing out the brainwashing potion that turns their young captives into mother-killing degenerates. No woman, however, is any match for the double fisted, geriatric power slam that is the team of officers Carlos and Tony, especially now that the gang has messed with their love supply.

Los Demonias del Desierto will not disappoint fans of the Intrepidos Punks films who come to it expecting a sleazy, ridiculous piece of crap. It’s just that good. My only complaint is that the musical score doesn’t reach for the same level of authenticity as that of Intrepidos Punks, which featured an at-least-trying-to-be-punk theme by the Mexican group Three Souls In My Mind. Instead what we get is a hideous marriage of synth and sax that could have graced any of Kenny Loggins’ shitty movie songs from the 80s -- all the more reason to hate these Demons, seeing as having horrible taste in music is the worst sin that a punk could commit. Other than that, the outfits didn’t reach the level of outlandishness of the previous films, but I’m not going to split hairs. I mean, why be a punk about it, right?

Money Money Money (Thailand, 1965)

2011-12-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

So far my coverage of Thai megastar Mitr Chaibancha has -- as you might expect from a blog bearing this title -- focused exclusively on his work in action films. And while the actor’s background as a boxer made him ideal for such roles, his ubiquity during his brief reign necessitated that he be something of a jack-of-all-trades. 1965’s Money Money Money illustrates this nicely, showing that Chaibancha could carry his own in a romantic musical comedy as well as in one of his two-fisted adventures as the Red Eagle. (By the way, the Romanized spelling of this film’s Thai title is Ngern Ngern Ngern -- but before you take on the treacherous task of pronouncing it out loud, please be advised that, within the movie, it’s pronounced “Nun Nun Nun”.)

Money Money Money was helmed by Prince Anusorn Mongkolkarn, a popular director of the era who continued a long tradition of film industry involvement on the part of the Thai royal family, one that goes all the way back to the earliest days of Thai cinema, when King Chulalongkorn’s younger brother, Prince Sanbhassatra, returned from Europe with his first movie camera and took up filmmaking. (Mongkolkarn was the brother of Thai director Prince Bhanu Yukol, and the father of Prince Chatreechalerm Yukol, a well regarded director of the 1970s.) Money Money Money is a musical comedy that’s very heavy on the music, showcasing a wide cross-section of Thai music that ranges from the classical and traditional to the Western pop influenced. And from his handling of it, it’s easy to assume that Mongkolkarn had a sincere fondness for the subject. His involvement might also explain why one of those songs is an almost hymn-like paean to the glory of the king.

Giving us no relief from the tongue-tripping names, Chaibancha here plays Akkaraphol, a Western-educated young aesthete who is called back to Bangkok by his millionaire Uncle, Lord Hiran, to begin his apprenticeship in said uncle’s loan-sharking business. Sent to the village of Bang Ruen Suk to collect debts from the impoverished residents upon whose backs Hiran has made his fortune, Akkaraphol happens to see a local talent show, and is impressed by one of the bands that perform there. He is also impressed by feisty local girl Kingkaew, which is no wonder, as Kingkaew is portrayed by Petchara Chaowarat, the actress whom Americans might call the Hepburn to Chaibancha’s Tracy, and Pakistanis might call the Anjuman to Chaibancha’s Sultan Rahi.

These impressions combined inspire the kind-hearted Akkaraphol to impulsively forgive all of the villagers’ debt, and declare that he will instead open a nightclub in Bangkok where he will exploit the villagers’ musical talents to sensational effect. Soon he has allies in this project in the form of his sister Paradee (popular Thai singer Sumalee Thonglong) and her lover Rangsun (Charin Nantanakorn, another singing star), an underemployed music teacher who moonlights as a pop songwriter. The money-obsessed Lord Hiran, as might be expected, is none too pleased with this plan, and sets out to derail it at any cost. Thus Mitr and crew -- while mitigating the myriad culture clashes encountered by the bumpkin-like village musicians in the big city -- must struggle to ensure that the show goes on in the face of meager resources, crippling debt and the many obstacles thrown at them by the not-correspondingly-hamstrung Hiran.

Money Money Money is a pop film with the emphasis on the populist, although its politics, while manifestly heartfelt, aren’t all that strident. Still, it’s no less heartening to watch its climactic scene, in which Mitr and a crowd of placard-carrying villagers essentially “occupy” Lord Hiran’s lavish birthday party, ultimately expressing their economic grievances in the form of a catchy song. As for Chaibancha, his performance as the gentle and soft-spoken Akkaraphol is an ego-free one conscious of its place within a vibrant ensemble cast, always fading into the background as necessary when it’s a talented co-star’s turn to shine. Underscoring this self-effacement, the film pokes good-natured fun at the more screen-hogging exploits of Chaibancha’s action hero persona, in a scene where three idiotic thugs hired by Lord Hiran sport ridiculous looking parodies of the mask worn by him in the Red Eagle films. All of this really showed Chaibancha in a new light for me, making this film one that I think is essential for anyone who wants to understand the legendary star in all of his dimensions.

It being a musical comedy that clocks in at a full three hours and fifteen minutes, it can truly be said that Money Money Money is absurdly long, with even its epilogs having epilogs and subplots being introduced in the eleventh hour seemingly just to keep the narrative wheels turning that much longer. But, in its favor, you really do end up spending a lot of time with its characters. And at the end, when an MC steps onstage at Mitr’s club to present those of them who have married one another during its course, you really feel like you’re at the closing end of some lengthy family obligation, like a wedding reception at which no tradition -- be it the garter toss, the money tree, the throwing of the bouquet, the conga line -- was overlooked. Fortunately (and hopefully as with those relatives for whom we’ve endured that conga line) both those characters and their stories have proved endearing enough that we are willing to indulge them.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-12-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

Drive-In Mob Tonight: It's a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!

2011-12-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Charlton Heston is not only America's premiere gun nut, but also a helpful barometer of our growing insanity throughout the late 20th century. (In the 50s we cast him as a Mexican! In the 60s we thought people wanted to see his naked butt!) What better person, then, to be the subject of a tribute by the Drive-In Mob, that shambolic tribe of Twitter twits and wits whose weekly movie tweet-alongs have become the talk of all the finest salons.

Tonight's event starts at 8pm EST with Earthquake, in which God deals California the drubbing it so richly deserves as Heston chases Ava Gardner through the rubble. Second up, at 9:30pm EST, is The Omega Man, which demonstrates, to everyone's surprise, that Charlton is the missing link between Vincent Price and Will Smith. As usual, because I simply live on the wrong coast, I will be sitting out most of the first feature, but you can bet your damn dirty ape behind that I will be there for the second. And also, Soylent Green? That shit is totally made out of people, yo.

Both of tonight's features are available from Netflix Instant, and all and sundry can both follow and tweet along by using the Twitter hashtag #DriveInMob. Be sure to check out the official Drive-In Mob site for full details. Tweet you there!

Khufia Mahal (India, 1964)

2011-11-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

The use of special effects in Indian films was one of the many things pioneered by producer/director D.G. Pahlke, who employed primitive optical effects to depict fantastical scenes from the Hindu religious epics during the early silent era. These techniques were further explored in the coming years by adventurous technicians like Babubhai Mistry, who used them not only in the production of mythologicals, but also in “Arabian Nights” style fantasy films and Italian Peplum inspired stunt films like Dara Singh’s King Kong.

Still, despite all of this practice, one could be forgiven for observing that these effects didn’t appear to grow all that much more sophisticated come the 1960s, or even the 1970s. This is in part due to the fact that, in India as in America, fantasy films were usually confined to the realm of B cinema, where budgets and schedules were tight and –- perhaps more importantly -- audience expectations were correspondingly low. As evidence of the latter, take for example 1964’s Khufia Mahal, whose opening credits boast a cavalcade of “Wonders” that include a “Flying Horse”, an “Apeman”, and a “Gorilla”.

Mind you, the credentials of Khufia Mahal director Aakkoo are not to be questioned where primates are concerned, as he was also the director of the sole starring vehicle for 4DK’s primary totem animal, Pedro, as well as a film simply titled Gorilla. But beyond the trotting out of various members of the animal kingdom, most of the movie magic in Khufia Mahal -- whose “Trick Photography” is credited to R.R. Ramarao -- involves crude double exposures that combine actors, boats, carpets, men in genie costumes and model palaces with aerial or undersea backdrops to make them appear, to those most charitable in their willingness to suspend disbelief, as if they are either flying or sinking. There is also an appearance by an awesome killer fish that, as its victim fights for his life, appears to be swinging from the soundstage rafters like a piñata.

Viewed alongside similar low budget Indian fantasies of its day like Hawa Mahal or Magic Carpet, Khufia Mahal appears to tick off a list of what were essentially generic plot elements. There is a wicked, all-powerful sorcerer (Sheikh) who, smitten with a beautiful princess (Zimbo’s Chitra), abducts her in his flying palace, much to the displeasure of her manly suitor (P. Jairaj), who, along with his comic sidekick (?), endeavors to defeat the sorcerer’s powerful magic with muscle alone. Along the way we have the aforementioned genie, who gets shrunken by the sorcerer and imprisoned in a bird cage, the aforementioned flying horse, and lots of magic auras projecting from people’s hands by way of someone drawing them directly onto the film.

Among Khufia Mahal’s more or less natural wonders is Hungarian wrestler and regular Dara Singh nemesis King Kong, who shows up during the final act to throw down against the advertised Apeman and Gorilla. The former is a fellow in an ape mask and a shiny black bodysuit, while the latter is a guy with no ape mask but a full-on gorilla suit. Way to maximize on that costume rental, people.

The fact that I have very little to say about Khufia Mahal itself shouldn’t reflect poorly upon it. It has all the naïve charms of most of the other crudely-realized old Indian B movie fantasies I’ve seen -- which comprise quite a lot by now -- those charms being considerable, provided one has a high tolerance for flying everything realized via dodgy process shots (which I do). Sure, there’s little that distinguishes it, and all of that flying about begins to blur together after a while. But, as with all of these films, there’s the added benefit that, if you nod out and wake up during it, you might actually think that you’re having some kind of monochrome, print-damaged hallucination. Then again, if you don’t buy my usual “Indian stunt films as cheap high” argument, I’m afraid I’ve got nothing for you.

Ram Bharose (India, 1977)

2011-11-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

Cameos are fun, but they can also be cruel. Case in point: Ram Bharose, wherein the scant time afforded Dara Singh onscreen only tempts us to imagine what the film -- by Bollywood standards a fairly well financed spy thriller in glorious Eastmancolor, certainly more well appointed than related genre efforts fronted by the third billed Dara Singh in his heyday -- might have been like if the wrestling star turned stunt film king had been given it all. Instead what we get is lesser Kapoor family scion Randhir hogging the screen in his central role as a complete staggering idiot.

Ram Bharose exploits that most well trod of 1970s masala movie plots; that of the brothers set by fate upon opposing moral paths. In this case those brothers are Ram (Kapoor) and Bhanu, the latter played by Sholay’s Gabbar Singh himself, the great Amjad Khan. Growing up in dire straits has left each of the two with very different approaches to life. Ram, openhearted and devout, has embraced the cause of justice, and intends to follow in his late father’s footsteps by joining the police force, despite being by all appearances retarded and having no aptitude for the task. Bhanu, by contrast, is cynical and ruthlessly materialistic, worshipping money at the expense of god and Mother India. This has lead Bhanu to, without his family’s knowledge, take employment with one of those many high-living Indian movie baddies who is known only as “Boss”, in this case played by Madan Puri and serving the interests of some unnamed and nefarious “foreign country” represented by token Caucasian weasel Tom Alter.

When C.I.B. Agent 1107 (Dara Singh) steals out of said foreign country with an incriminating microfilm, Boss and his goons are hot on his tail, finally forcing a wounded 1107 to pass the film off to the hapless Ram during a chance encounter. Thus is set in motion the string of events that will lead the brothers to face each other from opposite sides of the law, and ultimately offer Bhanu a final chance at redemption. And, yes, this is yet another one of those “reluctant secret agent” movies, and being that it’s also a 1970s Bollywood movie, we can rest assured that, no matter what else happens, it will all end with a big fight in an exploding lair.

While Ram Bharose, at least superficially, stacks its moral debate in Ram’s favor, it ultimately doesn’t make a very good case for virtue. I think we’re meant to be charmed by what director Anand Sagar and Randhir Kapoor himself consider to be Ram’s childlike innocence. But what he really comes across as is a freakish, creepily desexualized man-child; basically Baby Huey without the diaper. Thus, whenever he does one of his wide-eyed takes at the oh so mysterious workings of the adult world, or uncomprehendingly lets one of the femme fatale’s obvious come-ons fall clatteringly to the floor in the space between, all we want to do is smack him across his stupid face. By contrast, it is Amjad Khan’s Bhanu, as the more complex of the two characters, who provides most of the film’s real heat and excitement. And it’s nice to see the often underused Khan playing a somewhat more dimensional version of his usual heavy -- one who, despite being bad, is at least given reasons for being so, as well as a chance at redemption, even if that ultimately involves his heart’s icicles being unconvincingly melted by Ram’s insipid goodness.

Also on hand here is Rekha as Kiran, the daughter of one of Boss’s enemies who was kidnapped by the villain in her infancy and raised to be a kung fu fighting “Mafia Queen”. It’s a fun bad girl role that sees her tasked with vamping the coveted microfilm away from the naïve Ram, at one point by disguising herself in a sexy nurse’s outfit. Of course, Kiran’s background makes her also ripe for redemption and, sadly, ultimately not immune to the mysterious thawing power of Ram’s Keane-eyed guilelessness. Another performer worth noting for his receiving a little more of the limelight than usual here is Keshto Mukherjee, 1970s Bollywood’s favorite comedy drunkard, who gets a fairly meaty sidekick role opposite Kapoor, albeit one that requires him to act drunk for a good portion of the time.

As for Dara Singh, Ram Bharose’s action keeps him confined to the Boss’s underground dungeon for a good portion of the film, though not without affording him a nice iconic moment during the climax. A good few years past his Hercules days, the star proves still adept at pretending to bust heavy chains with his heaving pectorals, just as he did during the final moments of countless Bollywood proxy peplums during the previous decade. In this sense, Dara is here in Ram Bharose to play what is essentially a quote from a Dara Singh movie, and that fact in turn testifies to his beloved status within Indian popular culture. It’s a wise choice by the filmmakers in this case, because, to my mind, his appearance is one of the few things that make this otherwise unremarkable masala worth mentioning.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-11-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

Our fathers will cry in hell...

2011-11-23T07:33:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a movie is so poorly made yet so entertaining that it threatens to upset the balance between good and terrible in the world. That's when I step in. Yes, that's right; I am The Stabilizer. And this movie is about me. Please read my full review, which has just been posted over at Teleport City.

Mechte Navstrechu, aka A Dream Come True (USSR, 1963)

2011-11-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

Among the wave of Soviet Bloc sci-fi films made during the early days of the space race, Mikhail Karzhukov and Otar Koberidze's Mechte Navstrechu stands alongside East Germany's The Silent Star as one of the most visually imaginative. Both films are examples of the impressive level of technical achievement that could be accomplished when the humble space opera, during that era consigned by most filmmaking cultures to the B movie genre ghetto, was treated as an A list property. Of course, it should be said that, when it isn't dazzling our eyes, Mechte Navstrechu is often propagandizing to the point of self parody. On several occasions, patriotic-sounding songs well up on the soundtrack to urge its cosmonaut heroes onward, so stiffly sung that they make the "Trololo" guy sound like Iggy.

Mechte Navstrechu -- along with director/effects man Karshukov's first film, Nebo Zovyot -- was part of a package of Soviet sci-fi films purchased by Roger Corman during the early 60s. Under Corman's aegis, director Curtis Harrington would later use virtually all of its special effects footage, many of its establishing shots, and much of its non-dialogue scenes that didn't feature astronauts with prominent "CCCP" markings on their spacesuits for his 1966 feature Queen of Blood, filling out the remainder with dialogue scenes shot on a Los Angeles sound stage with an American cast that included John Saxon, Basil Rathbone and Dennis Hopper.

Like a significant number of other Communist space epics (DEFA’s The Silent Star, In the Dust of the Stars and the aptly named Signals among them), the original version of Mechte Navstrechu starts with the receipt of a mysterious signal from outer space. As the personnel of a well appointed scientific center puzzle over its meaning, a similar signal, generated by our planet, is received by the residents of the distant planet Centurion. In an impressive model sequence, Centurion then launches a mammoth space probe, manned by a crew of two men and one woman, to investigate. Unfortunately, the craft runs into trouble, making a forced landing on Mars, and an SOS beacon of sorts is sent to Earth containing a filmed document of the crash. In response, a crew of heroic young cosmonauts is dispatched from a base on the Moon to rescue the survivors.

Mechte Navstrechu takes place in a post-Cold-War world of international cooperation, but it is clear that some rivalries still remain. Krylov, head astronomer at the scientific center, has a good natured ongoing argument with “Mr. Laungton”, another scientist there, about whether alien life will prove friendly or hostile once encountered. Laungton insists upon the latter, and, within the utopian framework of the film, it is clear that his are meant to represent the warlike, anti-progressive ideas of the old order, and that his Western sounding name was likely no arbitrary choice on the part of the screenwriters. Nonetheless, this very question lingers tensely in the air as the space travelers grow ever closer to their first close encounter with the mysterious Centurions. This only to make more triumphant the rebuff of Laungton that occurs in the film’s final moments, once the crew, after great sacrifice, has successfully rescued the benevolent female Centurion and returned with her to Earth. “You were wrong, Mr. Laungton!” gleefully barks one of the cosmonauts, addressing what appears to be the entire world over some kind of global public address system.

Despite its optimistic tone, Mechte Navstrechu boasts a look that is, to a great extent, markedly somber and eerie. For all the scientific advancement on display, no one seems to have quite mastered the technology of indoor lighting. Thus the interiors of space ships and pretty much the whole of the Centurions’ planet are forests of murky shadows. This contrasts interestingly with the stereotypical Soviet utopianism of the early Earthbound scenes, in which human crowds are rendered tiny by the massive triumphalist architecture enclosing them. Centurion, for its part, seems to be cloaked in an abysmally deep, perpetual night, making all the more tantalizingly alien all of the mysterious structures and gadgetry we see on display there. Compounding this is the fact that the Centurions are always depicted as mute, moving slowly and silently through their surroundings as if in a somnambulant trance.

In making Queen of Blood, Curtis Harrington stuck surprisingly close to Mechte Navstrechu’s story in scripting his first and second acts. Mechte Navstrechu, however, was a film that made its point very quickly, and as such came in at barely over an hour. Thus, with no more of Mechte Navstrechu left to work with, Harrington took the opportunity to take off from its ending and go in a completely different direction. In his version, the astronauts, in the course of transporting back to Earth the rescued alien woman (Florence Marly, dressed and made up to resemble the character played by T. Pochepa in the original), find that she is not the friendly E.T. advertized, but instead an animalistic monster who hypnotizes the crew members one by one before gorging on their blood. Because of this, Queen of Blood almost feels like a rebuttal to Mechte Navstrechu, as if playing the untrusting and cynical Mr. Laungton to the original’s Dr. Krylov. Could it be that optimism in the face of the unknown was a value that was considered just too commie for American audiences at the time?

Of course, if there is a triumph of capitalism to be found in Queen of Blood, it is in the fact that, thanks to the high caliber of its borrowed design and effects work, it manages to look like a million bucks despite having cost executive producer Corman considerably less. The man knew quality when he saw it, and one doesn’t have to look too hard at Mechte Navstrechu to see that it’s a visual feast of a kind rare within its genre.

The zenith of world culture has been achieved

2011-11-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

I know that most of you have probably already seen both of these videos, but I feel that I would be remiss in not posting them here, because they are literally two of the best things I've seen all year.

The first is the trailer for the Ghanaian sci-fi epic 2016:

The second is the trailer for the latest effort from Dinosaur Worldwide, the folks who brought us Italian Spiderman, and it contains literally everything that a piece of filmed entertainment should:

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-11-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

The Muffs - Lucky Guy (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: The Muffs

Oh Islam! (Egypt/Italy, 1961)

2011-11-13T16:24:00.000-08:00

One of the most lavish Egyptian productions of its day, Oh Islam! is a swoony mix of history, folklore and plain old Hollywood style hogwash. The Egyptians have proven themselves adept at this kind of thing, but in this case they turned to the real experts, hiring American director Andrew Marton, a television mainstay who also served as either an AD or 2nd unit director on such A-list epics as Ben-Hur, Cleopatra and The Fall of the Roman Empire.

The Italians were also involved in Oh Islam!, though to what extent is a little more difficult to say. The IMDB entry for the film is one of that site’s more Frankensteinian, and whether that’s more indicative of the basic nature of the IMDB or of Oh Islam! I will momentarily withhold judgment. What I can say is that the version of Oh Islam! that was eventually released in Italy, under the title La Spada dell’Islam (The Sword of Islam), was altered to the extent that some of its original Egyptian stars were replaced by Italian ones, most notably Italian screen siren Silvana Pampanini, who was substituted for famed belly dancer and actress Taheya Cariocca in the prominent role of Shagrat al-Durr.

Why look, here’s a photo of Cariocca in the role, followed by one of Pampanini, standing beside Egyptian actor Imad Hamdi, essaying the same role in a still from the Italian cut:

The primary credited director for La Spada dell’Islam was Enrico Bomba, who also has a production credit. The IMDB credits Marton and Bomba as co-directors of Oh Islam!, even though Marton alone is given onscreen credit as director in the original Arab language version. This is likewise the case for Italian cinematographer Marcello Masciocchi, whom the IMDB credits alongside Egyptian cinematographer Wahid Farid, despite the latter having sole screen credit in the original.

This above information is repeated on a number of other sites which obviously used the IMDB as their source. And while it’s certainly plausible that all of the named parties worked alongside one another on the original Arab language version of Oh Islam!, I nonetheless want to be cautious of becoming part of an ongoing misinformation loop where the film is concerned. Further undermining my confidence in the internet’s ability to supply me with solid, incontrovertible facts is Wikipedia’s assertion that the film was submitted as Egypt’s bid for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1961 under the title Love and Faith. This is contradicted by the IMDB’s listing of Egypt’s Oscar submissions, which claims that the country’s 1961 entry was something called Teenagers, while also erroneously including on the list a 1973 film called Love and Faith which was actually Japanese. FFFUUU…

Thankfully, a much clearer picture is yielded by watching Oh Islam! itself. And what becomes most immediately apparent is that it boasts a dazzling constellation of Egyptian star power well worthy of its monumental subject. On hand are such familiar faces as Lobna Adel Aziz and Roushdy Abaza -- both stars of the previously reviewed Bride of the Nile -- as well as “The Beast” himself, Farid Chawki, who here gets to truly unleash his trademark ferocity in the role of an irredeemable villain. Shoring up the frontline, along with Cariocca, is Egyptian screen heartthrob Ahmed Mazhar, who plays the male romantic lead opposite the radiant Aziz.

At the center of Oh Islam! is the Battle of Ain Jaloot, a decisive confrontation in 1260 AD that saw the Egyptian military successfully drive back the invading Mongol forces, thus beginning the reversal of a tide of Mongol conquest that had swept the majority of the Islamic Middle East. At the same time, the film dramatizes the rise and fall of Egypt’s first female ruler, the Sultana Shagrat al-Durr, a role that offers the diva-ish Taheya Cariocca ample opportunity for lusty scenery chewing. And if this wasn’t already enough to fill your narrative plate to overflowing, we’re also offered a romance that takes a pinch of historic detail and mixes it with a generous helping of Bollywood-style “lost and found” drama -- as well as a fistful of jackhammer-subtle patriotic symbolism.

The film begins with the fall of Afghanistan to Mongol forces, in this case lead by Farid Chawki as the wild-eyed Boltai. Because Boltai cannot claim the country’s throne until every other heir to it has been killed (because invading barbarians always respect the order of ascension of the countries they conquer, I guess), the Sultan has his counselor Salama steal away with his young daughter Jihad and her cousin Mahmoud. Before she escapes, he tells Jihad that hers is not a name, but a “duty… a destiny”, and that one day she will unite the Muslim peoples against their common enemy. From this point on, Boltai continues popping up in the path of the fleeing children like an armor clad, medieval version of Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter, necessitating that they disguise themselves and blend in with a procession of slaves being lead to market by their Mongol captors. Jihad is ultimately sold off to serve in the harem of Shagrat al-Durr, while the feisty Mahmoud is bought by Prince Ezz El Din Aibak (Imad Hamdi) to serve in his military forces.

Mahmoud, who in his adult form is played by Ahmed Mazhar, turns out to be a fictionalized version of Saif Ad-Din Qutuz, the man who, as Sultan, would lead Egypt to victory at Ain Jaloot. In Oh Islam!’s climactic portrayal of that battle, it is Jihad, played in her adult form by Lobna Adel Aziz, who urges the forces onward by seizing a trampled flag and repeatedly shouting “Oh Islam” while perched atop a rock -- a feat which actual history argues was performed by Qutuz himself. In this sense, Jihad is as much of a phantom as the character played by Aziz in the fanciful Bride of the Nile, albeit of a different sort. It wouldn’t be much less subtle if this completely invented character were simply perched upon Mahmoud’s soldier with a tiny sword and a set of wings.

Meanwhile, Shagrat al-Durr -- who’s governing philosophy could be succinctly summed up by Michelle Pfeiffer’s Batman Returns bon mot “life’s a bitch now so am I” -- is fighting to maintain power against those many powerful men who’d rather not see Egypt ruled over by a woman. Once Mahmoud and Jihad are tracked down by the now blind Salama and reunited as kissing cousins, the Sultana uses her ownership of Jihad as leverage to force Mahmoud to do her political dirty work, which mostly involves killing folks. Somehow this all leads to the final battle at Ain Jaloot, which sees further complications arise when an army of Spanish Crusaders arrives on the scene (something that apparently actually happened).

Whoever the hell directed and shot Oh Islam!, they did a fine job, seeing as the mandate was obviously to create a Hollywood caliber period spectacle as seductive to the eye and spirit as it is historically dubious. The climactic battle sequence is indeed as spectacular and rousing as one could hope for, employing an awe inspiring legion of extras and an abundance of credible looking costumes and weaponry. Panoramic widescreen compositions are employed to full breath-capturing capacity, as is the intensely vibrant color palette typical of Egyptian epics of the period. Truthfully, this work is as credibly that of Marton and Wahid Farid as it is of any Italian genre veterans of the day granted the appropriate generous budget; Bomba, after all, was no stranger to Peplums, as he also had a hand in producing Romulus and the Sabines, and Maciocchi lensed everything from sword-and-sandal flicks to Antonio Margheriti space operas to Yor, Hunter from the God Damned Future. Hopefully some day I will have the answers to just who did what on Oh Islam! and when, but now I am tired.

Honestly, being a human of middling age, if you had told me twenty years ago that there would one day be a resource as wondrous as the Internet Movie Database, I might not have believed you. And if you had further told me that a large portion of that technological gift-from-god’s most habitual users would end up doing nothing but complaining about it, I would have dismissed you altogether. Yet I have to admit that it’s difficult not to resent the perilous rabbit holes one often gets sent down thanks to a healthy skepticism regarding the IMDB’s version of the facts. Indeed, a couple of the sites I landed upon as a result of Googling the title of Oh Islam! in the original Arabic likely got me added to some kind of FBI watch list. Come to think of it, given the current sad climate, merely reproducing that title in English might be enough to raise some hackles.

And on that note, I must say that it might serve the average Islamophobe well to watch Oh Islam!, as it would allow him or her to thrill along to what is an understandably proud moment in the history of Islam while offering the comfort of being as corny and overblown in its celebration of same as anything John Wayne ever put his name on. By the end, it’s stirring enough to have even the most dedicated yahoo jumping up and down on his chair and shouting “Allahu Akbar!”

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-11-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias (Mexico, 1965)

2011-11-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

Judging from the costume worn by the titular hero of Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias, I'd have to guess that Rocambole is Spanish for "check out my junk". You can make your own call based on the picture that accompanies this review, but to me that emblem on his chest looks like an arrow showing us the direct route downtown.

For this and many, many other reasons, las Mujeres Arpias is a truly silly movie, one that I'm sure will provide lots of amusement for those who can put aside -- or revel in -- its backward gender politics. How could you expect any less from a film whose super hero sports a uniform incorporating a truckstop novelty tee-shirt? I only wish that Rocambole's sidekick wore a costume as well, so that he could have one of those sex position zodiac symbols on it.

Anyway, you've got to wonder what's up with this war between the sexes we see playing out in lucha films. We've so far seen masked wrestlers set upon by female vampires (both women and girls), witches, mini-skirted femaliens, just plain diabolical women, and now... harpies? In keeping with this spirit, Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias taps into female villainy at its very root, giving us bad guys who make a group of chorus girls literal slaves to their vanity by injecting them with a fugly-making drug and then bribing them to commit crimes with the promise of a temporary antidote.

Of course, not a one among these women -- even Rocambole's trusty girl friday -- is willing to sacrifice her beauty for the moral high ground, and so the harpies are born. To be fair, we're not just talking about run of the mill, every day fuglitude here, but rather the kind of full bore, mirror cracking, oatmeal-faced fugilaciousness that makes adults and babies alike cry in terror and confuses dogs into thinking they should bury the one afflicted. (Not to put too fine a point on it.)

Entrenched in the Wrestlers vs. Women film cycle as it is, contra las Mujeres Arpias sets itself apart from the pack by not providing male henchman for the physical tussles with the hero and instead has Rocambole actually slugging it out with the women themselves (or, in most cases, obvious male doubles in bad drag). These fights are actually quite brutal, and Rocambole -- not the nicest of masked Mexican movie heroes -- actually seems to be getting off on it a little bit. He just really likes to hit people, it seems, and it's a testament to just how thick the cheese is sliced here that this never manages to come off as repellent as it probably should.

Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias is one of those movies that skirts the margins of what can really be considered lucha cinema, and, to be honest, I'm mainly including it to mix things up. Rocambole, like Neutron, is a fictional character (loosely based on a 19th century French pulp hero, it seems), and, while his look and fighting style are similar to those of a luchadore, he's not presented as a professional wrestler. Instead, he's essentially a traditional super hero who, when he's not in his ridiculous costume, wows nightclub crowds as a stage magician who's sort of a one man Ed Sullivan show, punctuating the pulling of bouquets from his sleeve by exhibiting his skills as a ventriloquist, knife thrower and escape artist. It may just be a function of his troubling resemblance to Bob Saget that makes actor Julio Aleman's suave take on this alter ego come off as more smarmy than was probably intended. But it just makes it all the more enjoyable when he has to put on that stupid looking costume. It's like his punishment for being creepy.

Do I recommend Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias? Well, yes; just as I implicitly recommend any film that I don't specifically say should be avoided. Like a lot of these movies, it clearly has issues, but if there's a cry for help in there somewhere, I wasn't able to hear it over the sound of my own laughter.

******

Check out more of my reviews of classic lucha movies at The Lucha Diaries!

Puss 'N Boots (Japan, 1969)

2011-11-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

Life is funny. One moment you’re gently ribbing a friend for his review of DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots, and the next he’s viciously throwing down against you with a review of a sci-fi tinged Brazilian take on the same tale with a guest appearance by Coffin Joe. To not respond in kind is simply not an option. And suddenly a life that was rich and varied, filled with possibility and hope, is narrowed down to just Puss in Boots.

For me, the most startling thing about this whole turn of events is just how ubiquitous representations of Puss in Boots turn out to be throughout world cinema. And this is especially so given my impression that Puss in Boots is one of the less beloved among the beloved fairy tales. Despite the fact that he was brought to us by Charles Perrault -- the man who also gave the world the literary versions of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood -- I always thought that he was something of a B-lister. Am I not right?

Whatever the case, there’s no ignoring that the Puss’s film incarnations are legion, rendered both in live action and every kind of mation (suit, clay and ani-) imaginable. Consider for example 1969’s Puss ‘N Boots, an animated interpretation of the tale from Japan’s Toei Animation studio. Toei was and remains a powerhouse in the world of Japanese animation, with its TV creations including such influential series as Sailor Moon and Go Nagai’s Mazinger Z, and among its feature work, Puss ‘N Boots proved significant enough to merit its titular character becoming the company’s official mascot, a trademark that it uses to this very day.

Sadly, that pedigree does little to help me out where Puss ‘N Boots is concerned, as, with a few notable exceptions, I’m not much of a fan of drawn animation. Still, having become something of a reluctant expert on Perrault’s feline antihero in the past few days, I was able to entertain myself while watching it by noting the various ways in which it tweaked the original in order to make it more suitable for feature treatment. As I touched upon in my recent review of the scarifying El Gato Con Botas, the original, as initially committed to text by Perrault, is strikingly -- almost refreshingly -- lacking in the broadly drawn conflicts and heavy-handed moralistic underpinnings we’ve since come to expect from old school children’s stories. (As opposed to new school ones, which just tell kids how special they are… or how to poop.)

For instance, the Ogre in the original is really just another innocent victim of the cat’s con game (Perrault’s version of Puss, you see, is kind of a dick), and the human beneficiary of those games’ ill gotten rewards is a no-account layabout who -- at least, by the punishing standards of the genre -- is not manifestly deserving of them. Puss ‘N Boots makes short work of these inconvenient particulars, first of all by establishing its titular protagonist from the outset as a noble outlaw hero. And in keeping with that -- and, in the process, jettisoning a significant aspect of Perrault’s version -- he is already clad in his dashing little swashbuckler’s outfit when we meet him, boots, cape, feathered cap, sword, and all.

Such meeting takes place as the kind-hearted Puss, here called Pero, is being run out of his kingdom for the capital crime of allowing a mouse to live rather than eating it. In hot pursuit of him are a trio of bumbling cat ninjas, dispatched by the king with orders to kill, who will continue to pop up throughout the film and provide much of its slapstick humor. It’s not long before Pero comes upon our human hero, Pierre, a virtuous young innocent who lives in servitude to his ghastly brothers who, unknown to him, have cheated him out of his share of the inheritance left by his father. In stark contrast to his literary model, Pero decides to help Pierre, not out of any desire for self preservation, but simply out of the spirit of altruism and chivalry. Thus the two are set off along the road leading to the Princess with whom Pierre will become smitten and, ultimately, the villain he will have to vanquish in order to win her.

And it is in the casting of that villain that Puss ‘N Boots really doesn’t pussy foot around (sorry) in presenting its conflict in the starkest moral terms possible. Not content with a mere ogre, its makers instead give us “Lucifer, The Prince of Darkness”, who elsewhere is simply referred to as either “The Devil” or “Satan”, while at the same time being suitably ogre-like to nod in the direction of the traditional version. Yet, despite the potential for leaden allegory that this conflict presents, the tone that the film maintains while presenting it is consistently lighthearted. Immediately prior to working on Puss ‘N Boots, director Kimio Yabuki and animation director Yosuji Mori -- along with much of the film’s creative team -- had worked on the much more serious-minded animated feature The Little Norse Prince, and were determined with this follow-up to pursue a tone that was much more fun and loose. As a result, those potentially dark aspects of the story are here overbalanced by a heavy apportionment of visual comedy, as well as a focus on the type of swashbuckling action that seems to have become an increasing part of the Puss In Boots mythos as the years have gone by.

As with any Japanese treatment of Western source material, it’s tempting to look at Puss ‘N Boots primarily through a cultural lens. But I think that such a view would be warped by the fact that, with the film, Toei was clearly aiming for an international, rather than a strictly Japanese, audience. Previous of the company’s animated features -- Alakazam the Great, Panda and the Magic Serpent, and Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon -- had seen varied success as theatrical releases in the U.S. and abroad, and there is much to indicate that the same game plan was in place here. As such, the Disney influence -- freely acknowledged by Yabuki and Mori -- is strong on many levels, even carrying over into composer Seiichiro Uno’s original songs. These are schmaltzy but innocuous, with lyrics generic enough to convey all of the expected narrative beats in a suitably culture-spanning manner; there’s the rousing “friends to the end” number sung by Pero and Pierre at the outset of their partnership, and, for the young princess, a pretty trifle that, while sounding much like a traditional Enka ballad, gets across most of the same ideas as “Someday My Prince Will Come”.

The technical quality of Puss ‘N Boots, in keeping with the standard of Toei’s feature work at the time, is also top notch, thanks largely to a top-shelf animation team that included a young Hayao Miyazaki. Given that, it pains me all the more to say that there was little within it visually that was either weird of beautiful enough to really draw me in. Then again, it was competing with the unhappy fact that it was the second adaptation in as many weeks that I’d watched of a children’s story that I previously had basically no interest in at all.

The only question that remains, then, is this: Who will ultimately win this Puss-slathered standoff between Tars Tarkas and myself? (SPOILER: It will be Tars Tarkas. Because, while I’m pretty sure he still has another Puss up his sleeve, there is no way I’m going to tackle that Christopher Walken live action version from the 80s.) I’m sure you’ll all be waiting with bated (cat) breath for the outcome.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-11-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

But still, you can't beat that price

2011-10-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

I love Mill Creek’s 50 Movie Packs. It’s a problem. Not that they have nothing to offer, mind you (hell, the Martial Arts set is worth it for The Impossible Kid alone). It’s just that the sheer number and variety of them couples inauspiciously with the fact that -- as I’ve just recently realized -- I am prone to purchasing them indiscriminately regardless of content.

This often occurs when I need to add a few dollars to an Amazon order to get free shipping. In the moment, the idea that I can get both free shipping and fifty more movies for just a few extra bucks seems like a deal too good to pass up, even though thirty to forty of those films will ultimately go unwatched. Not that I don’t try to justify the purchase with an initial, heroic effort to watch as many of them as I can -- a forced march that ultimately sees me consuming otherwise prohibitive anti-films in defiance of any notion I might previously have held of dignity or aesthetic standards (for instance, no other circumstance, short of brute coercion, would have lead to me sitting through The Dungeon of Harrow). For someone with any kind of obsessive-compulsive tendencies at all, one of these sets is like the ribbon you tie around the tail of a caged animal in the hope that it will exhaust itself chasing it.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was only recently that I realized that, under the circumstances just described, I would be prone to buying even the notional 50 Movie Pack pictured above. “Hmm, ‘Pure Crap’”, I would think. “Sounds dire, sure, but when you think about it, it breaks down to only pennies per film!” In honor of this sad admission of helplessness, my good friend #lowdudgeon whipped up the cover graphic above . God help me, I’m already wishing it was real!

But most importantly, readers, now that we have this hypothetical beauty, which mottled denizens of the public domain ghetto do you think should compose its hypothetical contents? I think a nice caveat would be if the inclusion of a title in the Pure Crap 50 Movie Pack would constitute a form of banishment, excluding it from appearing on any other set henceforth. (For instance, I’d love to put God’s Gun on there to prevent it from sullying any future bargain bin Western collections I purchase). But I’m not going to impose limitations on things, because limitations are not in the spirit of… well, of crap, I guess. Your suggestions welcome below.

Puss in Boots (Mexico, 1961)

2011-10-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, there inevitably comes a time for every movie blogger when the big money comes calling and he or she must make the choice whether to sell out to Hollywood or continue along on his or her chosen path. Such a Faustian proposition was recently presented to my friend and colleague Tars Tarkas, and, well, you can see on which side of the debate he ultimately came down on. Not that I’m judging, mind you. You see, I too would love to get my hands on some of that sweet DreamWorks swag, which is why I sat down to write my own review of their current hit Puss in Boots.

The first thing that struck me about Puss In Boots was that the CG was of a much more hit-or-miss quality than what we’ve typically come to expect from the DreamWorks Animation team. While the rendering of the human characters was fairly convincing, the animal characters -- and especially our feline hero -- were another story entirely:

And while I assumed that the fact that everyone was speaking in Spanish was just a nod to inclusiveness and cultural sensitivity -- and that voice star Antonio Banderas would eventually revert to his charmingly accented English –- this did not turn out to be the case. It was at this point that I realized that what I was watching was not, in fact, DreamWorks’ current take on this children’s favorite, but instead the 1961 Mexican adaptation of Puss In Boots from Director/Producer Roberto Rodriguez, the guy who made all of those horrifying suitmation Little Red Riding Hood movies during the early 60s. And upon realizing that, my first reaction was to rush to the bathroom and wash the taste of corporate dong out of my mouth.

Not surprisingly, El Gato con Botas doesn’t bother itself with hewing too closely to the original Charles Perrault tale on which it’s based. At the same time, it’s almost admirable how economically it transforms what is basically the story of a cat swindling a bunch of hoity toity rich folk to enrich his master and get him laid into a Wizard of Oz style quest narrative suitable for feature treatment. Here our hero is Juanito (Humberto Dupeyron), a young shepherd boy who lives in a kingdom taken over by the tyrannical, puzzlingly orientalized ogre Federico (Armando Gutierrez). Also -- because this film, like Rodriguez’s Red Riding Hood entries, seeks to make itself as traumatizing as possible for its young audience -- Juanito lives near a horrifying forest filled with monsters.

Federico’s grueling program of taxation has driven the entirety of the kingdom’s inhabitants to the point of starvation, with the King and his family being no exception. Having leached away all of the royal family’s wealth, Federico next demands by way of tribute that the King turn over to him the young Princess Dora (Rocio Rozales), so that she may be married off to the ogre’s cloddish, Mini-Me-like son Babuchon. Juanito -- who, after a chance encounter with the Princess, has become quite smitten -- wants to prevent this from happening, and when he comes upon a magical old lady who lives in a TARDIS-like tree stump, his chance presents itself.

The old lady, who introduces herself as “The Lady of Time”, presents the nonplused Juanito with a tiny swashbuckler's outfit (look, much is made of the boots, but it should be remembered that there are also a jaunty feathered cap, a cape, and a sword involved) and tells him that, when he finds the one who can squeeze into them, he will have found the hero capable of vanquishing the ogre. Juanito then heads home to find that his father, who has suffered an accident while out in the woods searching for him, is on his death bed, and is promptly cast out of the house by his two nasty brothers, who don’t care to compete with him for the meager inheritance. As an afterthought, they toss the family cat out after him.

In keeping with the original story, the cat, fearing that he will be abandoned -- and at this point played by an actual cat -- then suddenly finds his voice and tells Juanito that he could be of great help if he only had some badass, cat-sized swashbuckling gear. We next get a shot of what looks like the unhappiest cat in the world, uncomfortably kitted out in that very gear, before a magical transformation takes place and the cat is no longer played by a real cat, but by a somewhat scarifying cat costume.

That costume is inhabited by the little person actor Santanon, who also starred in the Red Riding Hood films as the Wolf’s disturbingly masochistic skunk sidekick. Santanon -- who also went by the title “El Enano Santanon”, or “The Dwarf Santanon” -- made his name in these costumed animal capers. But if you want to see his face, that’s him in Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters, playing Waldo, the cackling dwarf assistant to the mad scientist Doctor Halder.

Yeah, that's the guy.

As in the Red Riding Hood films, Santanon does not provide the voice for his character, which in this case is instead provided by radio and voiceover actor Julio Lucena, who was also the Mexican voice of Barney Rubble, Dick Dastardly and Top Cat. (Maria Eugenia Avendano provided the skunk’s voice in the Red Riding Hood films.) Of course, if you are an American reading this, none of that information is relevant, because any familiarity you might have with El Gato con Botas would stem from the efforts of K. Gordon Murray, who distributed English dubbed versions of all of Rodriguez’s fairy tale movies to American television and kiddie matinees, ensuring that U.S. children of the post-Eisenhower era would grow up just as haunted by them as their Mexican counterparts.

Like La Caperucita Roja, El Gato con Botas combines competent commercial filmmaking with an occasional telltale shoddiness. While its bright colors and some of its fanciful sets are suitably beguiling, its animal costumes, which very well could have been made for the production, nonetheless look like they’ve been sitting in mothballs a bit past their expiration date. Those previously exposed to the Red Riding Hood films are also likely to recognize a sort of “house look” thanks to the many reused sets and props. Furthermore, Sergio Guerrero’s songs, though inoffensive in themselves, become weaponized once sung by grown men squawking in cartoonish children’s voices.

And yet the spectacle of watching a non-costumed supporting cast that includes serial lucha movie tough guy Nathanael “Frankenstein” Leon interact, and sometimes even fight with, these scruffy football mascots (which eventually come to include a human-sized rooster) never, ever gets old. This, combined with a number of other surreal trappings, makes El Gato con Botas one of those movies that doubles its value by serving as both the viewing experience itself and the drug that you need to take in order to enjoy it. Meow!

In closing, I’d like to make clear that I’m far from seeing myself as being above the occasional enjoyment of a slick, CG animated 3D blockbuster -- nor, all ribbing aside, do I fault my friend Tars for occasionally writing about them. But, as dazzling and entertaining as some of those films may be, they can never be as singularly weird as a movie like El Gato con Botas, and become less capable of being so the more our screens are deluged with similar product. Sure, Rodriguez’s movie doesn’t strive for inclusivity by transparently including elements aimed at pleasing both kids and adults, as these contemporary movies are so often praised for. Instead, there is much within El Gato the intended appeal of which -- to young or old, man, woman or child -- is tantalizingly mysterious.

And that’s an opacity I can roll with; I don’t need to be flattered by you, while engaging in it, trying to show me the gears turning behind the process of entertaining me. I’d much rather be wondering what the fuck is wrong with you.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-10-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Sisterhood of the traveling skull mask

2011-10-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

As Skeletons in the Closet month rattles to a close over at M.O.S.S. headquarters, I feel I'd be remiss in letting the round robin of reviews pass by without re-posting my 4DK take on the Indonesian sword and sorcery adventure Neraka Lembah Tengkorak to Teleport City. In few other cinematic ventures will you find more sexy women wearing crude skull masks. If you missed the review the first time around -- or if you'd just like to refresh your memory -- you can check it out here.

Vampire Doll (Japan, 1970)

2011-10-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Vampire Doll -- for enemies of brevity also knows as Fear of the Ghost House: Bloodsucking Doll -- is the first of a trio of vampire films produced by Japan’s venerable Toho Company during the early 1970s, each of which was directed by Michio Yamamoto and co-written by Ei Ogawa. These films have come to be known as the “Bloodthirsty Trilogy”, although the links between them are more thematic and stylistic than arising from any connective story elements.

The story in this case begins with Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) arriving at the spooky, remotely located mansion of the Nonomura family with the intention of paying a visit upon his fiancé Yuko (Ukiko Kobayashi). Unfortunately, Yuko’s equally spooky and remote mom (Yoko Minakaze) informs him that, during his absence on business, Yuko has died in a car accident. However, during his night spent at the mansion, the grief stricken Sagawa has an unexpected encounter with Yuko, though she does seem to not quite be herself.

Skip forward a week, and Sagawa’s sister Keiko (Gate of Flesh’s Kayo Matsuo) arrives at the Nonomura home with her boyfriend Hiroshi (Akira Nakao), having not heard from her brother since his departure. Mrs. Nonomura tells Keiko and Hiroshi that Sagawa left after that first evening, but after finding evidence to the contrary, the two decide to fake car trouble and stick around to Scooby-Doo the situation out. In the process, they stumble upon all kinds of ghostly goings on, as well as the requisite dark family secrets, before finally coming face to face with the spectral, bloodthirsty Yuko herself.

Though Japanese folklore is not without its fair share of blood drinking critters (the Kappa, for example, is said to suck the blood of an animal out through its anus!), the idea of the vampire as an undead human with a taste for the red stuff appears to be one wholly imported from the West. Because of this, Vampire Doll to some extent comes across as a catalog of transplanted tropes from European and American gothic horror films, with those tropes given novelty by their placement within a Japanese milieu. These include everything from the Nonomura’s sinister deaf mute servant, to the ceaseless “dark and stormy night” ambience, to the Nonomura house itself with all of its cobweb covered tchotchkes (among which, in the most blood-curdling touch of all, appear to be a couple of Hummel figurines). This last strains credulity enough that the filmmakers felt duty bound to have it remarked upon in the film, with Hiroshi at one point mentioning that the mansion is “an authentic foreign-style residence”.

That said, Vampire Doll quite obviously does not hold itself to all of the rules of Western vampire films. For instance, going by those rules, it’s difficult to say exactly what Yuko is. She slashes the necks of her victims with a knife before drinking their blood, rather than biting them, and, if I understood the third act reveal correctly, she is meant to be under some type of state of hypnosis. Whatever the case, though, there’s no denying that Yuko -- with her blank, iridescent eyes and unearthly smile -- is creepy as fuck. Yamamoto most excels in creating a horrific atmosphere when she’s on screen, and never fails to highlight her presence in the most disturbing manner possible.

Undermining these legitimately unsettling elements within Vampire Doll are those others that fall decidedly within the realm of high camp, chief among them being the comically overwrought performance of Kayo Matsuo as Keiko. Cushing excepted, it’s generally true that the protagonists of horror films tend to be their least interesting characters, usually serving as exemplars of the fact that, while virtue perhaps makes one ideally equipped to battle the forces of evil, it also tends to render one something of a dullard. Unfortunately, so outmatched is Keiko that she can’t even face up to her evil battling duties, and instead leaves all the heavy lifting to Hiroshi while she engages in all manner of bug-eyed, “feets don’t fail me now” histrionics. On top of that, Riichiro Manabe’s harpsichord heavy score tends to oversell things by half, and as a result fairs poorly in the inevitable comparisons to James Bernard’s work in Hammer’s Dracula films, which are an obvious influence here.

In other aspects, though, Vampire Doll measures up to its Western inspirations quite nicely, thanks in no small part to the scrupulous production design of Yoshifumi Honda and the ornate Tohoscope compositions of cinematographer Kazutami Hara. Also working in its favor is a hysterical pace that sees all its spook show trappings crammed into a terse 70 minutes. Once you’re dumped out the other end of this frantic spook ride, the impression your left with is that of a balance of genuine scares and tongue-in-cheek “boo” moments of the type ideal for low-investment Halloween viewing, best savored between mouthfuls of candy and answering the call of the demons at the front door. All in all, a nice, mildly exotic alternative for those not up to the umpteenth viewing of House on Haunted Hill.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-10-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Night of the Skull (Spain, 1976)

2011-10-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

[This review is part of the M.O.S.S. inaugural Round Table, Skeletons in the Closet.]

There are two unfortunate givens for those like myself who work the unforgiving cult cinema beat on the internet. One is that you will eventually have to review Zombie Lake. The other is that you will eventually have to review a film by Jess Franco. While the first of those trials I have happily put long behind me, the other still looms ominously on the horizon. You see, because Franco only wrote the screenplay for Zombie Lake -- and because acceptance of that fact requires that you also sign off on the idea that Zombie Lake had a screenplay at all -- you can’t count fulfillment of the first given as a twofer.

Of course, this also means that, as it is with Zombie Lake, an awful lot of people have written about Jess Franco films on the internet. And because the internet is known to conduct snark at a rate and volume twice that of praise, a loud plurality of that writing is pretty negative. This makes the prospect of addressing one of his films all the more a subject of dread for those of us yet to cross the threshold. Yet, for me, I sensed the time had come when my contribution to the inaugural M.O.S.S. Roundtable -- an examination of the lofty cinematic tradition of grown adults running around in skull masks and skeleton suits -- came due. With my usual investigatory rigor, I ran searches of the terms “skull” and “skeleton” on Netflix and voila!: Franco’s 1976 thriller Night of the Skull (aka La Noche de los Asesinos) leapt out at me like… well, like a scary Halloween skeleton, of the type, perhaps, that you might buy at Walgreens.

Of course, it has to be said that Franco has his share of fans along with his detractors. And for them I think part of his appeal is the same juvenile impulsiveness that makes his films so hit or miss. As a director, Franco follows his muse wherever it takes him, no matter how well that serves the goal of making a film that is coherent or even watchable. And when the inspiration isn’t there, he has no problem with handling things in the most perfunctory and slapdash manner possible. (Also, as Keith has pointed out, Franco is a notorious lone wolf, which removes from the equation any equal collaborators who might rein in his more imprudent tendencies.) These indications of a personal artistic vision make it difficult to dismiss Franco as a hack, even if the term “auteur” rolls no more easily off the tongue where he’s concerned. And it can’t be denied that his approach often bears some interesting results, albeit ones that frequently have to be sifted from a surrounding preponderance of narrative flotsam.

As for Night of the Skull, it’s a mystery, which on first consideration would not seem like the best fit for Franco’s elliptical style. But when one considers the flaky internal logic and dreamlike atmosphere of the typical Italian giallo, there’s room for optimism that things might work out okay for those of us obligated to watch it. However, Night of the Skull, while boasting some gialli-like elements, is in fact more of a gothic mystery in the “old dark house” vein, which renders thing a little dicier. For starters, the Victorian setting largely prohibits those jazzy flourishes that are so often the saving grace of a Franco film, such as his signature psychedelic nightclub sequences.

What Night of the Skull does have, though -- and which makes it ideal for my purposes –- is a guy running around in a skull mask who is both heavily featured and central to the film’s plot. This gentleman is our killer, who is offing his victims in accordance with a passage, detailing the punitive nature of the four elements, which is found in a made up tome called “The Book of the Apocalypse”. These thematic murders require quite a stretch in some cases, one that Franco doesn’t really seem bothered to make. For instance, one victim, tied up on a rock by the seaside, writhes around for a bit before expiring unconvincingly. Later she is said to have been “killed by the force of the wind”, even though it didn’t appear to be all that windy at the time and, barring being strapped to a jet engine or the wind bearing large chunks of architecture as in a tornado, that can’t actually happen.

All of the aforementioned murders are filmed in dim lighting and are virtually bloodless, which is one of Night of the Skull's primary disappointments. On top of that, the sex and nudity is near non-existent, even though the ever-willing Lina Romay, Franco’s partner and muse, is on hand in a central role. Instead, the director languorously rolls out a “greedy heirs get theirs” drama that is, despite some unexpected turns, pretty pedestrian. We start out with the murder of Marian family patriarch Lord Archibald (Angel Menendez), which is followed by the inevitable gathering of the deceased’s assorted scheming and ungrateful siblings, spouses and offspring for the reading of the will.

Among this group we have most of the usual suspects, including a couple of twitchy servants (Luis Barboo and Yelena Samarina), a dissolute black sheep cousin (William Berger) and the alcoholic second wife (Maribel Hidalgo) who is hated by all and sundry. In a more unusual turn, there are also among the bereaved a his-and-hers set of adult illegitimate children (Lina Romay and Antonio Mayans), who, previously unknown to each other, begin an affair that is only by a later plot twist (spoiler!) revealed to be not incestuous, even though that comes too late to prevent the “ick” factor from setting in. Once the blood begins to tastefully and moderately spill, we also have the arrival on the scene of Major Oliver Brooks (Alberto Dalbes), a renowned Scotland Yard inspector whose jurisdictional authority is a bit suspect given that the film is putatively set in Louisiana -- and more obviously shot in Spain.

Night of the Skull’s credits claim as its inspiration John Willard’s The Cat and the Canary, while in turn mistakenly crediting that famous stage play to Edgar Allan Poe (other sources suggest that Franco was inspired by a book by Edgar Wallace, which sounds a little closer to the mark). Whatever its patrimony, the story manages to be both complex and internally consistent -- with a resolution that, if not too surprising, at least makes sense – and if that’s all you ask from your mysteries, you’ll be happy. As for its direction, looking on the plus side, Franco does a professional job of laying out all of the various plot mechanics in a coherent and linear fashion. On the negative side, a coherent and linear Jess Franco, in my experience, is a Jess Franco who’s not all that invested, and hence the film lacks the unpredictable digressions and directorial quirks that might have otherwise made it less sleepy viewing.

I’ll admit that it’s a little disappointing that, having resigned myself to riding the wave of Franco’s insanity, I came upon him in such a restrained mood with this film. Yet it’s just such unpredictable dips and lapses, set alongside the manic peaks and detours, that have earned him his reputation as the frustrating and maddening director that he is. Consistency is one thing, but it perhaps speaks more highly of Franco that, whenever one dips blindly into his massive 180 film filmography, one truly doesn’t know what they’re going to come up with. In the case of Night of the Skull, what one comes up with is a fairly boring and conventional film, but the fact that that in itself is somehow shocking speaks volumes.

Who ya got?

2011-10-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

I admit that I've been putting off writing my entry in the current M.O.S.S. Round Table, and the reasons for that will likely be more than apparent once I've finally gotten around to it. In the interim, I thought I'd contribute to the Halloween-y vibe over at Teleport City by contributing a review of another one of Lam Ching-Ying's delightful vampire action comedies from the 80s. (My earlier review of Lam's Mr. Vampire can be seen here.) Vampire vs. Vampire is especially fun because it pits Lam's venerable Taoist priest character, who usually finds himself up against hopping vampires of the Chinese variety, against a Euro vamp in the tradition of Hammer's Dracula, albeit one who looks a little like a young Nick Cave. Read the full review here.

Sher Khan (Pakistan, 1981)

2011-10-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

It may be true that time is cruel to lady film stars, but it’s never as cruel as the industries that employ them. Take, for example, the case of Punjabi superstar Sultan Rahi, who, throughout his career, blew through a series of favored leading ladies, all of whom putatively outgrew their charms as Rahi continued to go strong. And keep in mind that Sultan Rahi looked like this:

Further keep in mind that this picture of Rahi is from 1981, when he was entering the fourth decade of his astonishing 600+ film career. And, had he not been killed in 1996, he would no doubt still be going strong today as a scowly, pointy bag of bones.

Prior to 1981, one of Rahi’s frequent female co-stars was the actress Aasia, who appeared opposite him in his breakthrough blockbuster Maula Jat. Aasia’s retirement in 1980, after only a ten year run in the industry, left a vacancy that was ultimately filled by one of Rahi’s most enduring and influential leading ladies. That leading lady was Anjuman, who had begun her career in Urdu language films, but transitioned to the Punjabi film industry for her debut opposite Rahi in Sher Khan.

Sher Khan turned out to be one of Rahi’s biggest hits, enjoying a record-breaking theatrical run that, in the process, catapulted Anjuman to stardom. As a result, the actress became, along with Rahi and his screen nemesis Mustafa Qureshi, an essential part of what was considered at the time to be a surefire formula for success within the Punjabi film industry -- a formula that guaranteed that, over the next ten years or so, very few Punjabi films would be made that didn’t feature all three stars, and in virtually identical roles each time. For Anjuman, this amounted to 117 films opposite Rahi, many of which were so similar in content that they could each be considered installments in a seemingly never-ending meta-narrative.

But Anjuman achieved more during her time in the spotlight than simply filling the female-sized absence at Rahi’s side. With films like Hunterwali, she also established herself as an action hero in her own right, displaying a rough-and-tumble physicality that was previously unheard of in Pakistani cinema, where the heroines of action films were typically consigned to the role of adoring cheerleaders for their macho leading men.

Having now seen Sher Khan, I can definitely say that Anjuman stands out in it, and that that’s a pretty impressive feat, given that she has a lot to compete with. No intimate, small scale narrative is this, and so packed is the cast that none of our three top billed stars are able to muscle their way on screen until after the first twenty minutes or so. In the interim, we’re introduced to the title character, Sher Khan (Iqbal Hassan), a bandit who, after an abrupt reassessment of his wicked ways, decides to leave everything behind, with “everything” including both his former gang and his wife and two small kids. Rahi, I believe, is meant to be playing the adult version of Sher Khan’s son, and the prologue features a young actor who does a fantastic job of channeling the star, making for an uncanny portrait of Rahi made mini:

As you have probably already guessed, I watched Sher Khan without the aid of English subtitles, and so it presented itself to me as little more than an impenetrable procession of different pairs of men yelling at each other. Of course, given the type of film that it is, one need only be patient until the narrative fat boils down to a rivalry between Sultan Rahi and Mustafa Qureshi with Anjuman in the middle. The three actors are clearly in the full bloom of mega-stardom here, and are each, delightfully, given screen introductions that are thunderously iconic. In fact, Rahi -- who here basically reprises his Maula Jat role, gandasa and all, albeit under the name “Sultan” -- gets what is by far the most over-the-top intro I’ve yet seen him receive, with every hysterically pitched signifier in the Punjabi cinema arsenal put to the task of communicating that his arrival on the scene is indeed a very big deal (yes, there are lots of thunderclaps):

As for Qureshi, who plays an imposing police captain, we see all of the activity in a bustling town square go into freeze frame as his feet trod purposefully by, and get a weird POV shot that incorporates his sunglasses before finally seeing his face:

Anjuman, fittingly, is introduced in song, standing atop a horse-drawn carriage as she vivaciously mouths to playback singer Noor Jehan’s vocal, followed by a romp through the fields accompanied by a chorus of colorfully dressed mutiyars. Anjuman’s character is a classic screen siren, both charmingly assertive and sassy, which unfortunately results in her being frequently slapped by her male co-stars. There’s also a bit where Mustafa Qureshi insists that she constantly keep one eye covered for some reason. I accept that this last is likely one of many mysterious behaviors on display –- like people dragging their beds into the middle of the road, for instance -- that are only made mysterious by my ignorance of Punjabi culture.

That said, for many of us, the cultural hurdles will come early in Sher Khan, specifically in an opening scene where a leering bandit breaks into a family’s home and tries to make off with their teenage daughter. We see the father pick up a pair of scissors, and fully expect him to attack the bandit, but instead he hurls the blade into his daughter, who breaks free from her captor and runs tearfully into her father’s arms, only to die soon after from her injury.

Against such a backdrop, one appreciates that much more the few glimmers of female empowerment provided by Anjuman’s moments on screen. Beyond providing the eye candy in a generous supply of song and dance numbers, she also takes a very active part in a couple of the physical brawls, and even has a major role in saving the day in a scene where Rahi is held captive by the bandits. Furthermore, there’s a shockingly palpable amount of chemistry between her and the usually severe Rahi, who displays what looks like genuine desire upon first meeting her and even cracks a smile on a couple of occasions. Despite the obvious misogyny on display elsewhere, one can almost see how a woman with the power to breach such an intractable edifice might seem formidable indeed to the men around her, and worthy of the overzealous efforts expended toward containing her energies.

Another thing that struck me while watching Sher Khan -- particularly in an opening scene of the bandits terrorizing a village that is intercut with stock footage of various jungle animals stampeding -- is how, while perhaps not artfully made, these Punjabi action films are certainly very adept at creating a persistent sense of nerve-jangling anticipation. I also noted to what a great degree the movies were composed in the editing room, utilizing quick cutting techniques that would not become common practice in the West until a couple of years later (and which would be widely bemoaned by highbrows for evidencing the pernicious influence of MTV). A later scene similarly cuts between shots of Rahi and Mustafa Qureshi fighting and stock footage of two fighting lions. Though, somewhat puzzlingly, they are female lions (perhaps the only footage available?), I definitely got the point, and was further driven to wonder whether such a cinematic blunt instrument as this really required subtitles after all, or indeed any appreciation for the formal niceties of plot.

As for Anjuman, she would make the last of her many screen appearance opposite Sultan Rahi in 1995, having been gradually replaced by the younger actress Saima, whom Rahi was rumored to have secretly married. She nevertheless soldiered on in her career, braving both public razzing over her weight gain in the late 80s and industry resistance to her refusal to recede into character roles, but would ultimately retire in 2000. In the interim, Rahi was murdered -- in what is often referred to as an “assassination” -- on a road outside Gujranwala, bringing to an abrupt close an era of Pakistani cinema which it could be said he almost single handedly defined. Still, however imposing the man’s legacy, stars like Anjuman are notable not for having shared in his light, but for shining despite his long shadow.

Mustafa Qureshi: He likes kittens, just like you do!

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-10-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-10-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

Saint Etienne - You're In A Bad Way by WBRNewMedia

Sugar Is Not Sweet, aka Nam Tan Mai Wan (Thailand, 1965)

2011-10-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

My viewing of Sugar is Not Sweet provided quite a contrast to my typical experiences of watching Thai films from the 60s. The Thai Film Foundation’s subtitled DVD of Sugar features a print that measures up as nearly pristine when compared to the savaged condition of most everything else that’s available from the era. On top of that, director Rattana “R.D.” Pestonji, while essentially working on the fringes of the Thai film industry at the time, paradoxically worked to a technical standard that put the country’s mainstream product to shame.

Pestonji -- whose reputation has in recent years been rescued from obscurity thanks to his influence upon contemporary filmmakers like Wisit Sasanatieng -- was a technical pioneer in Thai cinema. While the standard practice was to shoot films on 16mm color reversal film stock and either dub sound later or have it added live-in-theater, Pestonji insisted on shooting on 35mm in synch sound, despite the prohibitive cost of processing (which, until the late 60s, required that the unprocessed stock be shipped to the UK).

Also a staunch supporter of Thai national cinema in the face of Hollywood’s encroaching dominance in the local market, Pestonji was nonetheless clearly influenced by America’s cinematic output –- though how much reverence he held that output in is arguable. As such, Sugar Is Not Sweet, his final film, comes across as sort of an anti-version of the typical Hollywood romantic comedy, though sadly one whose cynicism ultimately outweighs its abundant charms.

Sugar centers around the family of Jaroenkesa (Saneh Komlarachun), a wealthy Thai Chinese who has made his fortune with a hair growth tonic called “Boon Treatment”. The formula for Jaroenkesa’s cash cow was the work of his late business partner, a resident Indian whom Jaroenkesa chooses to honor by marrying off his own layabout son, Manas (a young Sombat Methanee), to said partner’s orphaned daughter, Sugar (Metta Rungrattana). By this means, Jaroenkesa hopes to both provide financially for Sugar while, at the same time, putting a permanent wedge between the dissolute Manas and his gold-digging girlfriend Watchari (played by Preeya Rungrevang, who carries on her shoulders the task of providing all of the film’s cheesecake and teasing near-nudity).

Manas, for his part, is none too happy about having to marry a “Roti” (the movie presents an interesting cross-section of inter-Asian prejudice without seeming to comment upon it much), but is more than pleased by the two million baht that his father offers in return -- as is Watchari, whom Manas has promised to share the loot with once the marriage has been officiated. Once the innocent Sugar arrives from Bombay, Manas makes no secret to her of his relationship with Watchari, and tells her in no uncertain terms that theirs is to be a marriage in name only, after which he banishes the girl to the separate living quarters that have been provided her. Little does Manas know, however, that Watchari is herself having an affair with Thawin (Ruj Ronaphop), the singing spokesman for Boong Treatment’s ubiquitous television commercials, and has made a pact to leave Manas for him once she receives her share of the wedding graft.

Despite being played by the handsome and charismatic star Sombat Methanee, Manas is about as repellent a center for a romantic comedy as one could imagine. Yet it is indeed Manas who functions as our protagonist, with the infinitely more sympathetic Sugar afforded nowhere near the same amount of screen time. (Which, to be fair, could also be the result of Metta Rungrattana’s noticeably less sure-footed acting chops.) Given this, it goes without saying that the plot’s greatest pleasures comes during that portion of the film in which Sugar manages to turn the tables on Manas, and we see his life incrementally unraveling around him.

To my mind, Manas’ karmic downfall would have made a wholly satisfying ending point for Sugar Is Not Sweet. Yet, in defiance of my wishes, Pestonji and it soldier on, seemingly motivated by the grim determination to honor the romantic comedy mandate that the male and female leads must be somehow united in the end, no matter how improbable or insanely ill advised that may be. This is motivated, on Manas’ part, by his desire to fulfill his -- at this point late -- father’s wishes for grandchildren, and, on Sugar’s part, by absolutely nothing anything that has yet been established about her character could support. Ultimately, Manas gets his way by way of trickery and implied marital rape, the film closing with him contentedly basking in the undeserved fruits of his bastardry. It’s an oppressively dispiriting resolution. Though, if one were looking for a silver lining, you could look upon it as a prescient commentary on the Hollywood romantic comedies of today, whose plots seem driven far more by inertia than actual logic or character dynamics.

Throughout Sugar, Pestonji displays enough endearing directorial quirks to keep us purring contentedly throughout most of the film’s running time, even if no amount of charm could ease us over that final hurdle. The film’s straightforward narrative is apparently not enough to keep its director from becoming distracted, and so is interrupted by a second act consisting entirely of a party at which numerous musical numbers are performed, several of them American-style rock-and-roll tunes performed by a combo fronted by a Caucasian-looking woman singer. This sequence ends with a protracted drunken brawl, which, like everything else in the scene before it, does little or nothing to move the ostensible story forward.

Pestonji also lets us know right off -- via a prologue in which an off-screen narrator introduces both the characters and the actors playing them -- that this is going to be a production heavy on artifice, and then follows through with a presentation that is resolutely theatrical in its staging. Most of Sugar’s interior scenes are filmed statically from a removed angle that takes in the entirety of the set, with very few close-ups or reaction shots. This conservative approach is offset by a wild use of color that makes many of those sets look like an explosion in a paint factory, albeit a paint factory that only produces varying shades of red and pink. Added to that are moments of giddy irreverence, such as the repetition ad absurdum of the dippy Boon Treatment jingle, which, as elements of manic consumerist satire, suggest the influence -- like that seen in Japanese director Yasuzo Masumura’s Giants and Toys -- of Frank Tashlin.

Sugar Is Not Sweet is unquestionably an important film in the history of Thai cinema, as is R.D Pestonji an important director. And it is for that reason that I feel pressed to applaud Pestonji for not delivering the resolution that ages of genre film immersion have conditioned me to both expect and hope for, even though sitting through the forced march that that entailed was an inarguably unpleasant experience. I can’t, however, overcome my ambivalence to the point of advocating that aspect of the movie as being something anyone else should trouble themselves with. I will instead say that it’s a film worth enjoying for the many enchantments on display in its first and second acts, and that, after that, you’re pretty much on your own.

Rita of the West (Italy, 1967)

2011-10-01T16:35:00.000-07:00

I miss old school pop music movies.

That thought occurred to me while, of all things, attending a press screening of the Taylor Lautner movie Abduction that a friend of mine invited me to. Lautner's performance in that movie was so much of the classic non-actor variety that, for me, it would only have been forgivable if he had been some freshly minted pop sensation making his svengali-mandated screen debut. It would even have made the movie more enjoyable if this alternate universe Lautner of mine had periodically whipped out his guitar and serenaded his female co-star with one of his current hits, even if those hits were terrible (as I imagine they would be). Maybe then the action could have also been interrupted intermittently by scenes in which Taylor's overzealous fans tried to gain access to him by a variety of comically improbable means. Yes, there would be fake mustaches involved.

I'm not a graphic artist.

If Abduction had been a quickie pop star vehicle in the mode of, say, Fabian's Hound Dog Man -- or, hell, even Cool As Ice -- it would at least have been even less able, and hence less ill-advisably inclined, to try to disguise its true nature as a cynical cash-grab aimed at separating teenage girls from their allowances. It also would have benefited from some of such movies' innate, frothy charms, all of them being so ephemeral and chained to their specific cultural moment that, even viewed fresh, each successive frame might seem to recede into nostalgia in its passing.

Sadly, such films -- cheerfully slapdash genre pastiches existing for the sole purpose of allowing fans to gawp at their non-actor musician stars on the big screen -- seem to have ceased being the preferred mode of cinematic exploitation for today's music industry. Instead, a misguided, wholly boring, and completely ersatz notion of "realness" seems to be guiding things, with the result that what pop star film vehicles do get made are either concert films or lionizing documentaries. And I am not including here the pop music-heavy product turned out by Disney, since that is less about good old idol worship and more about the type of aspirational nonsense that encourages its young audience to identify with their rock star protagonists because they are every bit as special as they are!

In fact, the final gasps of the classic pop movie seem to have occurred during the 90s, back when Prince made the last of his awful but completely hysterical movies, and during which we saw the release of Spice World, a late-to-the-game classic of the genre. But, of course, to truly experience the genre at its peak, you'd have to go back to the 60s. It was then that the success of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night and Help! inspired slapdash cinematic imitations on the part of practically every also-ran British Invasion group, from The Dave Clark 5 to Herman's Hermits -- a phenomenon which crossed hemispheres in the form of similar capers featuring Japanese "Group Sounds" bands like the Spiders and the Jaguars. Italy, a country robust in both its cinematic and pop music traditions, was also not immune to the trend, as demonstrated by Ferdinando Baldi's pop-heavy Spaghetti Western send-up Rita of the West.

Rita of the West features pint-sized belter Rita Pavone in the role of itinerant gunslinger Little Rita. Pavone at the time was not just a huge sensation in Italy, but throughout Europe as well. The combination of her diminutive size and brash, aggressive singing style -- coupled, no doubt, with her alarmingly hyperkinetic dancing -- gave her enough novelty appeal among American record consumers to drive her song "Remember Me" (sung in an endearing, heavily accented English) into the nether reaches of the U.S. Top Forty, and resulted in her becoming, if briefly, a recurring presence on American television, with numerous appearances on both The Ed Sullivan Show and Shindig, among others.

Much is made of Pavone's slight stature in Rita of the West. And to be honest, with her short-cropped hair, freckles, and child-sized cowboy attire, she looks very much like a twelve year old boy. At one point a bartender calls her "kiddy" and refuses to serve her. But, playing on this, Rita of the West also makes her invincible, a shootist so supernaturally skilled that she is capable of felling even the most iconic gunfighters in the Spaghetti Western universe. Here, working with the Indian tribe of Chief Silly Bull (Gordon Mitchell), her plan is to rid the world of all of its gold, and hence the source of all of its evil. This naturally involves her stealing the gold of literally everyone in her environs, after which the idea is to seal the entirety of it in a cave on the reservation, where it will be blown up with dynamite. Say what you will about this scheme, but in the world of Spaghetti Western plots -- which have the tendency to frequently crib from one another -- it at least has the virtue of being unique.

Yet, while Little Rita preaches peace and sings of the power of smiles, her methods lean more toward mayhem. Not realistic mayhem, mind you, though it is tempting to wonder what Fulci would have done with this material. During a gunfight with "Ringo" (played by Peplum star Kirk Morris, looking much more like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name), the antagonists' expertly aimed bullets continually stop each other mid-flight, until an even more expertly aimed bullet of Rita's blocks the barrel of Ringo's gun, after which the two engage in a parodic karate fight. Finally, frustrated with Ringo's implacability, Rita cheerfully blows him up with a giant golden hand grenade. Later, she uses a similar weapon to explode a band of fiesta-ing Mexican bandits, whose smoking limbs can be seen flying every which way. Rita's ultimate act of Spaghetti West domination, however, comes during the film's latter half, when she cooly guns down Django himself (played by Franco Nero ringer Lucio Rosato, who both drags a coffin and sports bandaged, bloodied hands).

In most cases, the aftermath of this carnage provides the opportunity for a song, usually an upbeat number that inspires the assembled townsfolk to engage in wild, choreographed dancing like some kind of frontier flash mob. All of these are sung by Pavone with various of her co-stars, who include a number of other figures from the Italian pop music scene. Lucio Dalla, then at the beginning of what would become a long and venerated career as a singer-songwriter (among his compositions are a couple that have become Italian pop standards), portrays Rita's German sidekick Fritz, while the town's ineffectual sheriff is played by 50s crooner Teddy Reno. Reno, who discovered Pavone, was the singer's manager at the time and, a year later, would become her husband -- an arrangement that provoked scandal due to the twenty year age difference between the two.

I should also mention that almost every song sung my Rita and her partners in the film is about how wonderful Rita is, with lines like "Little Rita, Sweet and clever" being fairly representative.

There are a lot of factors that make Rita of the West a compelling watch, not the least of them being the film's manic combination of goofy "up with people" exuberance and pitch black gallows humor. Genre workhorse Baldi accentuates this further by providing a credible Spaghetti Western framework -- complete with beautifully shot, scope-enhanced vistas and lots of claustrophobic, sweaty close-ups -- for all the irreverent pop art antics to play out within. Furthermore, Pavone, while perhaps no great thespian, is a charming presence with a truly infectious enthusiasm, as is Dalla. And there is no end of pleasure in seeing a cast of genre stalwarts -- which, in addition to the previously mentioned Mitchell and Morris, also includes Trinity himself, Terence Hill, as Little Rita's love interest Black Stand -- who themselves seem to be taking great pleasure in sending themselves up. Nor is their little delight in seeing so many of the classic Spaghetti Western sets and locations used here play host to such atypical goings on.

To return to my opening tirade, they don't make films like Rita of the West anymore. And, to a certain way of thinking, that is as it should be -- as Rita of the West could easily serve as a textbook example of disposable filmmaking. But, for a person like me, that disposability makes the act of plucking it from the trash that much more thrilling. It's the kind of movie whose true enjoyment, to my mind, requires an act of mental time travel back to that moment, both incredibly specific and flittingly brief, during which it was culturally relevant -- and even then, perhaps only marginally so. And when you're really able to tune in to that, it's like feeling the buzz of the fly trapped in amber. If the songs are rocking, the stars appealing, that makes it just that much better.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-09-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-09-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Infernal Brains Podcast, Episode 8: THE WORST!

2011-09-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

This latest is a very special episode of The Infernal Brains, for in it Tars Tarkas and myself draw upon our vast respective trawlings through the world of obscure global cinema to share with you, our fans, those particular films that have most horrified and sickened us -- films that, as this podcast will make painfully clear, still haunt us to this very day. Yes, people, it's The Worst of The Infernal Brains! As per usual, you can download the episode here, or stream it below while weeping uncontrollably at the shocking visual evidence provided by the accompanying slideshow.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-09-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Fury of Hercules (Italy/France, 1962)

2011-09-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love about the bustling Italian film industry of the 1960s is how its constant demand for onscreen talent made it a stopping point for such a wide array of characters from across the pop cultural landscape. Body builders, beauty queens, and stars both down-trending and slumming from around the globe all made their way to Rome at one time or another to get a piece of the action, as well as did performers and artists from other disciplines who just needed the extra cash. It is for this reason that today we can look upon such surreal spectacles as that of Southern California born muscle/stuntman Brad Harris locked in mortal battle with iconic French pop provocateur Serge Gainsbourg.

The Fury of Hercules was the second of two peplums that Gainsbourg appeared in for director Gianfranco Parolini during 1961, both of which were filmed in Zagreb and starred Harris (an apparent favorite of Parolini’s who would later star in the director’s Kommisar X eurospy series.) These followed close on the heels of Gainsbourg’s Italian screen debut in another sword and sandal adventure, Nunzio Malasomma’s Revolt of the Slaves, in which he also played a heavy. The singer was well into his career as a songwriter-for-hire and cabaret performer by this time, but was a few years off from the pop success that would lead to the legendary status he holds today, so it can be assumed that these were acting gigs taken to keep food on the table. It was an arguable boon, then, for Gainsbourg that his distinctive look –- which the recent biopic Gainsbourg, A Heroic Life explicitly paralleled to the caricatures of “the evil Jew” found in Nazi propaganda from the 40s -- made him an apparent strong candidate for playing villain roles in the Italian genre films of the day.

Fury finds Harris’s Hercules arriving in the city of Arkad, hoping to pay a visit on its king, a friend of his from previous adventures. Instead, Hercules finds that the King has died, and that his daughter, Queen Canidia (Mara Berni), who has risen to the throne in his stead, has fallen under the sway of her power hungry advisor Menistus (Gainsbourg). Under Menistus’ guidance she has turned Arkad into something of a national security state, following his directive to build an enormous wall around the city at the expense of many slaves’ lives. In response, a rebel movement has sprung up within the kingdom, one on which Menistus hopes to pin the blame for his planned murder of Canidia, after which he intends to seize power. After a number of failed attempts on the part of Menistus and his cronies to get Hercules out of the way, the hero joins up with the rebel forces and leads an attack that will end his malevolent reign once and for all.

Given the flat, American-accented dubbing of his character in the English version of the film that I saw, it’s difficult to gauge Gainsbourg’s performance in The Fury of Hercules. I will say, though, that it stands out against the typical scenery chewing of Italian genre movie villains of its day for its very low key nature. Rather than furiously projecting menace, Gainsbourg instead relies upon what seems to be his natural ability to exude an air of casually sinister, feline decadence. Menistus seldom shouts or declaims, but instead quietly insinuates his menace, like the hushed narrator of one of Gainsbourg-the-singer’s more debauched lounge numbers.

As for The Fury of Hercules as a whole, it’s a fairly run-of-the-mill peplum, one that would likely rate little more than a dismissive footnote for any chronicler of Gainsbourg’s career. Even so, its classic B movie trappings -- styrofoam boulders, inopportunely blinking corpses, mangy gorilla suits -- might make it an irresistible anecdote to include in the tale of a figure ultimately destined for greater things. As for the man himself, I sincerely doubt that the film would rank very highly in the hierarchy of memory for one who counted bedding Brigitte Bardot among his many accomplishments, but I would nonetheless be curious to know what Gainsbourg made of the whole adventure. He was, after all, a man with both an artistic soul and a keen knack for pop exploitation (this is, don’t forget, the guy who once promoted himself by tricking a teen starlet into singing a song about a blowjob) and here he was, not just commenting on, but actually collaborating in the very trash cultural “Pop! Bang! Whizzz!” that he would later ironically celebrate in the song “Comic Strip”.

At the end of The Fury of Hercules, Menistus dies an ignominious death at the hands of his oppressed subjects, which I have to admit was an outcome I found a little disappointing. Perhaps made greedy by the many possibilities suggested by the film’s odd confluence of talent, I was really hoping to see Hercules toss Serge Gainsbourg into a volcano or something -- not the least so that I could have the pleasure of typing that sentence. Of course, the producers very well may have thought that having the hulking Harris square off physically against the slight crooner would have undermined their hero’s sportsmanlike image, and I don’t blame them. Still I am grateful that, for a brief moment, such a possibility even existed. And for that, Italian cinema, I thank you.

Casus Kiran: Yedi Canli Adam (Turkey, 1970)

2011-09-12T21:16:00.000-07:00

In my review of Casus Kiran, Turkish director Yilmaz Atadeniz’s remake of the 1942 Republic serial Spy Smasher, I described that film as being “in constant, rapid motion from beginning to end, presenting more of a continuous event than an actual story”. I further went on to opine –- quite pithily, if I do say so myself -- that “trying to impose the strictures of plot upon it is sort of like trying to identify the conflicts and character arcs within a hurricane or brush fire”. With that in mind, you’d have to think that any sequel to such a film would have no choice but to pick up where the former left off -- to just keep rolling out that one continuous event to the point when all allotted time and resources were exhausted.

Add to this the fact that all Turkish pulp superhero films of Casus Kiran’s ilk, when taken as a whole, are themselves something of a blur and a picture like Casus Kiran: Yedi Canli Adam (“Spy Smasher: The Man With Seven Lives”) comes across as being more intended to further obscure such distinctions than it does to expand upon any particular previously existing property.

Of course, simply picking up where Casus Kiran left off is not an option for Yedi Canli Adam, because seemingly much has changed in the intervening years. Producer-and-distributor-turned-star Irfan Atasoy indeed returns in the lead role, but is mostly surrounded by new faces. And even the costume he wears as Spy Smasher has been changed, now more closely resembling the getup worn by the hero of Atadeniz protégé Cetin Inanc’s earlier Iron Claw the Pirate, a film that was already tough enough to distinguish from Casus Kiran as is.

Also subject to the old switcheroo is Spy Smasher’s sexy lady sidekick, played in the original by Sevda Ferdag and here by Feri Cansel -- playing a character who, in accordance with Turkish pulp movie naming conventions, appears to also be named Feri. Happily, what has not changed is the fact that Spy Smasher and his sexy lady sidekick have just about the best marriage in all of superhero-dom. They just really enjoy beating up and killing their enemies together, and often trade admiring glances and laugh lustily while doing so. You get the sense that they have really amazing sex afterward. Furthermore, while she is twice more likely to end up picturesquely tied to a post, Feri is the Smash-meister’s equal in both dishing out and taking punishment, and is also no slouch when it comes to talking some vicious smack (something that, even in an unsubtitled Turkish film, needs no translation).

One lamentable way in which Yedi Canli Adam does maintain the status quo, I’m sorry to say, is in its inclusion of an in-name-only comic relief sidekick for our heroes. That character, Bitik, is this time, however, kitted out in a Sherlock Holmes outfit. Atadeniz apparently really liked this idea of a gibbering comic foil named Bitik annoying his superheroic betters by bumbling around in a deerstalker and cape, because he also included that character in his subsequent film The Deathless Devil. There, however, the character was portrayed by Erol Gunaydin, a different actor from the one who plays him here, although Erol Gunaydin is, in fact, in Yedi Canli Adam, only playing an entirely different role. Yilmaz Atadeniz, you have officially blown my mind.

And then there are our villains. While Casus Kiran made one of its rare concessions to the actual plot of the film it was ostensibly remaking by featuring a mysterious hooded villain in the grand 1940s movie serial tradition, Yedi Canli Adam’s choice of heavy is more indicative of its time. Here the bad guy is a foppish, floppy haired libertine in ascot and shades, with a crew who are a bit scruffier than the generic black hats seen in the first film, some of them even having the beardy look of student radicals. In keeping with that, the gang conducts much of their business surrounded by blissed out hippies in a psychedelic nightclub, a setting that provides for such indelible musical moments as a group frug to the Standell’s “Riot on Sunset Strip”, as well as other timely favorites.

Together this motley collective goes about the general business of being enemies of Turkey, which here mainly involves carrying out assassinations and the kidnapping of a prominent scientist and his young daughter. This, naturally, means that it won’t be long before Spy Smasher and Feri are roaring down the highway after them, burning rubber on their twin motorcycles as a surf cover of the In Like Flint theme plays on the soundtrack. (A healthy chunk or John Barry’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service score and Peter Thomas’ jaunty Jerry Cotton theme also get quite a workout.) This sets in motion the usual cycle of our heroes repeatedly chasing and then engaging in frenetic tussles with the baddies, leading to each having multiple opportunities to both be captured and to rescue the other from capture. Throughout this, it must be said that Irfan Atasoy pulls off some deeply impressive acrobatics and stunts, although they do require one to willfully ignore the very many times the villains could potentially have shot him while he was executing all of those show-offy serial back-flips and handstands.

While the enjoyment I took in Yedi Canli Adam derived in great part from happy associations with every other pulp Turkish superhero film I’ve seen, I regret that watching it has placed even further from recall any of those other films’ specifics. I mean, how many nominally unrelated Turkish superhero films featuring comic relief characters named Bitik who dress like Sherlock Holmes is one man expected to keep track of? Or how many featuring pairs of motorcycle riding his-and-hers heroes, especially given that their costumes are virtually indistinguishable from one another? The answer may be that the whole of Turkish pulp cinema is really meant to be experienced as one big intoxicating morass, rather than as a collection of discrete works. I’m beginning to suspect that Yilmaz Atadeniz saw it that way, at least.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-09-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

Drive-In Mob Tonight!: Dracula A.D. 1972 and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

2011-09-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I get hammered for every Drive-In Mob, and tonight that will be doubly the case. This time we'll be tweeting along to the Hammer classic Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, as well as the somewhat anti-classic Dracula A.D. 1972 (both of which are available on Netflix Instant). The fun starts at 8pm EST with Dracula, and continues with Frankenstein at 10pm EST. You can play along at home by using the Twitter hashtag #DriveInMob. I myself will, as usual, be sitting out the first feature, but you can count on me to weigh in on Frankenstein. Be sure to check out the official Drive-In Mob site for full details.

Sumpah Orang Minyak (Singapore, 1958)

2011-09-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

To the degree that any Western cult film enthusiast is aware of the legendary Malaysian bogey known as the Oily Man, it is most likely by way of the Shaw Brothers' 1976 Hong Kong production The Oily Maniac. In that film, Mighty Peking Man director Meng Hua Ho wrestled that eerie bit of folklore into something resembling a more sleazy take on Swamp Thing, complete with about 500% more nudity and sexual violence. As a result, those familiar with that film might be taken aback by the comparatively delicate take on the subject found in Sumpah Orang Minyak (in English: Curse of the Oily Man), an earlier take on the legend from Shaw's Malaysian division.

Of course, much of the difference between Sumpah Orang Minyak and The Oily Maniac arises from the span of nearly twenty years that separates them. But I also can't help thinking that the former's relatively stately and reverent tone is in part the result of it being a star vehicle for the phenomenally beloved Malaysian performer P. Ramlee, who also scripted and directed the film, in addition to contributing to its music. As mentioned in my review of his Tiga Abdul, Ramlee's stature as a musician, actor and all around creative dynamo has lead to him becoming an institution in his homeland, and, as such, it's inevitable that any monster picture in which he took the titular role would be handled with more gravitas than your average tossed-off creature feature.

Here Ramlee plays Si Bongkok, a disfigured hunchback who, as the movie begins, finds shelter with a kindly old batik maker (Idris Home) after being pursued through the night by a gang of village ruffians. It is not long before the batik maker sees that within Si Bongkok's pitifully twisted form rests a gentle and artistic soul, and not much longer before his business is booming thanks to the hunchback's beguiling designs. None of this, sadly, changes the fact that Si Bongkok is routinely brutalized and tormented by the people of the village, especially by the aforementioned gang of ruffians, who are lead by a surly character named Buyong (Salleh Kamil).

Things come to a tragic head when Afida (Sri Dewi), the comely young daughter of the village elder, stands up to Buyong in Si Bongkok's defense. A town festival at which Si Bongkok attempts to show his gratitude to Afida by presenting her with a portrait he's painted only proves to be another occasion for Buyong and his cronies to further humiliate him. Fleeing the scene, a tearful Si Bongkok loudly curses his fate, ushering in a long sequence that's a captivating triumph of naive surrealism and grade school theatrics.

Si Bongkok's lamentations reach the ears of the Orang Bunyan, who, in Malaysian folklore, are a race of forest dwelling supernatural beings akin to elves or goblins. As the sky opens above him, the Orang Bunyan Princess arrives in a kind of land-faring boat to usher him back to her world. There, the King of the Orang Bunyan presents him with a great book from which he can choose one wish. Si Bongkok chooses to be beautiful, and the King asks in exchange that he vow never to succumb to wrath or boastfulness in his dealings with his fellow humans, otherwise the deal will be off. From there, it's only a matter of Si Bongkok bathing in a magic fountain, after which he emerges as beloved Malaysian musician and performer P. Ramlee, who, to be honest, is a pretty good looking dude.

Of course, once back in the human world, it quickly proves too difficult for the now easy-on-the-eyes Si Bongkok to resist telling the assembled villagers to go fuck themselves. In the ensuing melee, Afida is killed by a blade intended by Buyong for Si Bongkok, and after a dramatic, storm-swept brawl, Si Bongkok kills Buyong in retaliation. Not surprisingly, this is seen as a violation by the Orang Bunyan King, who quickly appears to render Si Bongkok invisible for eternity. Fortunately, good old Satan, always eager to set things back on an even keel, is also on hand, and appears before Si Bongkok, offering him a magic ring that will make him once again manifest to the eye. And once that ring is donned, Old Scratch proves good on his word -- though what Si Bongkok becomes visible as is the cursed Oily Man.

The Oily Man, in both tale and popular representation, is pretty much everything that his name advertises: a guy covered from head to toe in greasy black oil. Though -- in Sumpah Orang Minyak, at least -- he is also shown to have the ability to dematerialize, walk through walls, and leap great distances. As far as his visual presentation in the film, it's simply a matter of dressing P. Ramlee in a black body stocking and painting his entire head with some kind of shiny black makeup. Thankfully, the Orang Minyak, much like the Krasue, is another one of those Southeast Asian cryptids so bizarre and unsettling in its very conception that not even the most threadbare representation can completely rob it of its capacity to disturb.

Needless to say, Satan's gift of turning Si Bongkok into an objectionable mass of grease does not come without a price attached, and that price is that Si Bongkok must now rape 21 virgins within the course of the next week -- a task which Si Bongkok sets too with surprising alacrity (perhaps in part due to the fact that the film has exhausted about eighty percent of its running time before introducing its titular menace). This sets up an interesting contrast to the markedly more lurid Oily Maniac, in which the Oily Man is depicted as an avenger -- rather than a perpetrator -- of wrongs, including rape. However, it is Ramlee's version that hews more faithfully to the fabled original, a figure so identified with rape that it appears that even real world rapists have on occasion adopted his guise.

Certainly, Si Bongkok's final rampage does much to undo the goodwill that Ramlee has, over the course of Sumpah Orang Minyak's preceding 90 minutes or so, worked to generate toward him as a Quasimodo-like tragic figure. But I also suspect that Ramlee did so in fealty to his source material. While The Oily Maniac, like any exploitation film worthy of the name, strove to, wherever possible, turn that source into grist for evermore gratuitous displays of tits and blood, Ramlee uses it as a means by which to express his respect for the culture that both created it and, to some extent, him.

And, in this, Ramlee does a fine job, creating a film that is at once dense with mournful atmosphere and elevated by moments of dreamlike lyricism. (His musical contributions -- which, as in Tiga Abdul, are engaging and beautifully sung -- add a lot in this last regard.) In the end, Sumpah Orang Minyak may not provide the course thrills of The Oily Maniac, or the visceral jolt of other Southeast Asian horrors, but, in its own hypnotic way, it offers rich rewards nonetheless.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-09-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Drive-in Mob Tonight!: Wheels on Meals and Fantasy Mission Force

2011-09-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight's just might be the best Drive-in Mob ever, as this time around we've chosen to Tweet-along to two Jackie Chan class- Well, I was going to say "classics", but the fact is that one of the movies is a classic and the other one is Fantasy Mission Force. That's alright, though. Because Fantasy Mission Force may very well be the perfect Drive-in Mob movie; it's both indescribably weird and objectively awful, while at the same time being incredibly entertaining.

The fun starts at 8 pm EST with Jackie's Sammo Hung directed action comedy Wheels on Meals, and continues with FMF at 10 pm EST. As usual, my obligations on the West Coast will prevent me from wheeling and mealing, but YOU CAN BET YOUR SWEET ASS that I will be there for Fantasy Mission Force! As always, you can participate by following along with the movies on YouTube and using the Twitter hash tag #DriveInMob to weigh in with your pithy comments. Be sure to check out the Drive-in Mob site for full details.

Genghis Bond: Agent 1-2-3 (Philippines, 1965)

2011-08-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

Genghis Bond: Agent 1-2-3 contains a number of elements that, empirically speaking, appear to be fairly standard to the many spy spoofs fronted by beloved Filipino comic Dolphy during the 1960s. As in the later James Batman and Napoleon Doble and the Sexy Six, Dolphy plays a double role, and there is the same combination of slapstick and straightforward action that’s likely to make any of these films a bumpy ride for the uninitiated.

Also, the level of satire on display is once again solidly of the Mad magazine caliber; the high comic concept here seemingly arising from some (perhaps stoned?) person thinking that, if a Chinese guy named Genghis were to replace James Bond, he could then be called Genghis Bond, and that that would be hilarious. And I’m not saying that it’s not -- because, as is so often the case, the film’s lack of English subtitles prevents me from confirming my overwhelming suspicion that it probably isn’t.

In the first scoop of his thespian double dip, Dolphy portrays Agent Bond, a top operative for the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation -- or NBI -- who sports a uniform of checkered suit and matching trilby very similar to the one Dolphy wore in James Batman. Agent Bond doesn’t do much during the movie’s first act other than be endlessly hectored by his girlfriend’s shrewish mom. Then he falls afoul of a diamond smuggling ring run by a Mr. Big figure by the name of Gaspar and is captured in short order.

This turn of events opens the door to Dolphy’s second character, Genghis, an unassuming East Asian funeral home proprietor. Genghis wears a full Fu Manchu mustache and goatee. But in case that’s not enough of a blunt signifier for you, his every entrance is accompanied by the stereotypical Asian piano riff. Inseparable from Genghis is a clownish assistant by the name of Babalu, who is in fact played by a comic performer by the name of Babalu, here making his screen debut in a starring role. Babalu -- aka Pablito Sarmiento –- would go on to appear as a sidekick to Dolphy in a series of films before making the jump to his own starring vehicles in the 1970s. From what I can gather, his shtick involves having a huge chin and a lot of exaggerated crying and carrying on, though, again, the lack of translation prevents me from truly divining the root cause of his putative appeal. Nor does it allow me to ascertain why the same low piano note thrums on the soundtrack every time Dolphy slaps him -- which is often.

Need I explain at this point that Genghis, as the result of an improbable series of circumstances, is ultimately called upon by Agent Bond’s superiors to impersonate Agent Bond? Or that hilarity ensues? Or that, as a result, a little man finds within himself reserves of courage and poise that he had previously not thought possible? Of course not. But what I will tell you is that none of these things are presented in all that interesting of a manner, thanks to Genghis Bond being woefully cheap, even by the already threadbare standards of 1960s Tagalog cinema. Seriously, by comparison to the settings here -- which generally appear to be the result of filming in disused corners of someone’s house or apartment -- James Batman’s goofy papier mache sets look positively lavish. And, even worse, the film evidences none of Napoleon Doble’s quirky stylistic flourishes by way of compensation, with director Luis San Juan instead opting to use a nailed down, point-and-shoot approach to filming what little action there is.

Of course, it’s not as if the mechanics of plot, of their presentation, are the top order of business here in the first place. To the contrary, Genghis Bond mainly serves as a loose framework by which to string together a series of miscellaneous bits of crowd-pleasing business, much like a variety show. There are quite a few musical interludes, including one in which a bunch of teens in bathing suits go-go dance to a Filipino surf band called The Sociables, who play an English language cover of Jan and Dean’s “Little Old Lady From Pasadena”. Elsewhere, there is a lengthy training sequence that mainly serves as a showcase for the cameo-making Roberto Gonzales, who was at the time known as Filipino cinema’s “Karate King”. And then there is a cat fight between two of Gaspar’s shapely female minions that erupts, as it ends, completely out of nowhere, leaving not even the slightest plot ripple in its wake. (Genghis Bond boasts in its credits the appearance of “44 Bikini Girls”, which should give you a pretty clear idea of the type of entertainment we’re engaging with here.)

It’s obvious that no one behind Tagalog pop movies like Genghis Bond felt they were creating something for the ages, and their disposable nature is underscored by just how many of them have been disposed of in the intervening years. Even Genghis Bond seems to have barely survived; it’s original opening credits are missing, and what remains is marred by numerous scratches, pops, and missing frames. As such, it seems a little unfair to subject it to any kind of formal critical scrutiny, much as it would be for Mr. Blackwell to come into your home and critique the outfit you’ve chosen to wear while watching TV.

Yes, as that statement indicates, I see this as something akin to a private matter: something to be shared between the filmmakers and their particular audience at a particular place and time. That watching Genghis Bond at such a great remove from that original context would prove unsatisfying shouldn’t be too surprising. And, as such, I’m certainly not going to complain about it. At least not much.

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-08-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

Drive-In Mob tonight: Switchblade Sisters and Big Bad Mama

2011-08-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

For you trend watchers out there, the Drive-In Mob is like a flash mob -- only less flashy, thanks to it being text-based and there being, as of yet, no Twitter equivalent of line dancing. Tonight, starting at 8 pm EST., we tweet along to a double bill of 1970s exploitation classics, the first being Jack Hill's ingenious girl gang reimagining of Othello, Switchblade Sisters; the second being the Roger Corman produced gangsters-in-garters epic Big Bad Mama. Other obligations sadly prevent me from joining in for the first feature, but I fully plan to be on board for Big Bad Mama. You, too, can both join in and follow along by using the #DriveInMob hash tag on Twitter. Be sure to check out the Drive-In Mob site for full details.

El Chupacabras (Mexico, 1996)

2011-08-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

As with Weng Weng, I assume that, if you don’t know by now what El Chupacabras is, it’s because you don’t care. That mythical creature’s currency as a pop cultural punch line is so long ago expired that to remind anyone of his/her/its heyday seems like an “I love the 90s” act of premature nostalgia. Back in those days, the creature was the impetus for any number of low budget straight-to-video/cable quickies from both sides of the border, including the film under consideration here, El Chupacabras. As an extra blast-from-the-past bonus, El Chupacabras also reminds us that, in 1996, The X-Files was very popular.

Given its obvious cheapie origins, El Chupacabras should be commended for the ambitious geographical scope of its narrative, which spans the Americas. The film opens in Mexico, where a rancher and his family are killed by a mysterious, unseen creature. From there, we head to Canada, where we meet Jorge Carrasco (bull-necked action star Jorge Reynoso), a scientific investigator with the U.S. government, who, when we join him, appears to be on the trail of bigfoot (who, I’m happy to say, makes a much welcome cameo). Also on Bigfoot’s trail is Duncan MacGregor (played by the film’s director, Gilberto De Anda), a world famous hunter whose catchphrase appears to be “fuck you”.

Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, reporter Amanda (Lina Santos) narrowly escapes death when she and her guide are attacked by another unseen creature while exploring a cave containing the skeleton of a strange, unearthly animal. And bringing it all home back in Mexico, police commandant Roman Hurtado (muscle-bound Miguel Angel Rodriguez in a very tight shirt) is, along with his on-the-job-and-off partner, a red headed lady forensic investigator (maybe Isabel Andrade?), trying to get to the bottom of the killings along with the attendant rash of livestock mutilations, all the while trying to keep a lid on rampant speculation that the legendary Chupacabras is to blame. Complicating things further is a crazy priest who shows up from time to time to shout something about “prophecy” at anyone who will listen.

If you, kind reader, have prophesied that all of the above far-flung characters will eventually converge upon Officer Hurtado’s small Mexican town in search of the Chupacabras, you are to be commended. But don’t be too hasty in investing in your own psychic hotline. El Chupacabras moves along at an energetic pace, driven forward by the momentum of its own predictability. There are many well worn tropes to be trotted out, after all, and dammit, we are going to race breathlessly from one to the next in order to get them all in. At the same time, the film does strive for extra credit with a couple of mildly interesting twists, including a red herring in the form of a human serial killer and some events that point to the possibility of the Chupacabras being extraterrestrial in origin.

And then there are the welcome moments of unintentional hilarity, such as the scene where Reynoso’s investigator character grimly peruses an imposing looking tome from his library…

…only for an over-the-shoulder shot to reveal that what he’s staring at is a ~~Frank Frazetta~~ (Sorry! It's Boris Vallejo; I stand corrected) print featuring one of that artist’s trademark bubble-butted barbarian babes.

Once in Mexico, Reynoso teams up with Hurtado’s ginger partner, and the two proceed to Mulder and Scully their way to the bottom of things. All leads to the entire cast ending up in a misty -- break out those halogen flashlights! -- sheep carcass filled ruin where El Chupacabras, which has been stingy with its monsters up to this point, finally seals the deal, though in a manner every bit as chintzy as its Sci-Fi channel level budget would lead you to expect.

While the X-Files references in the film are plentiful and obvious, I have to say that the one notable thing El Chupacabras adds to the formula is its insane level of machismo. The combined testosterone of the three man mountains in its lead roles is enough to be detected from space, making it surprising that any extraterrestrial would have even come within striking distance. This conspicuous chemical imbalance also guarantees that, in addition to the two women in the film who actually get to do stuff, there is also a generous number of Rubenesque ladies in impossibly tight skirts for these gentlemen to ogle and indiscriminately manhandle. Hulk want!

This also means that, despite the effort put into establishing an atmosphere of mystery and unearthly dread, things can’t be settled without having two guys run away from a tremendous explosion. The truth is out there. BOOM!

4DK and Masala Zindabad take on THE BEASTS OF BOLLYWOOD!

2011-08-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Once again I've had the honor of being a guest on Beth and Amrita's wonderful Masala Zindabad podcast. This time around the topic of discussion is Indian cinema's veritable arkload of animal stars, a topic that longtime readers of 4DK will know I'm well familar with. The episode can be streamed for a limited time directly from the Masala Zindabad homepage, and can also be downloaded via iTunes. Hurry; if you pass this episode up, you risk making Moti the dog cry, and Pedro the Ape Bomb drunker and angrier than he already is!

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-08-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'll buy that for a dollar: Cassandra Cat (Czechoslovakia, 1963)

2011-08-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

It’s come time again for the least recurring of 4DK’s recurring features, I’ll Buy That For a Dollar -- the reason for the delay being that I haven’t found myself doing much dollar DVD diving of late. That state of affairs, given the current state of our economy, is, of course, susceptible to sudden and drastic change, as dollar DVDs containing fuzzy transfers of forsaken public domain films might soon be all that we’re able to afford.

Thankfully, my long experience of dollar bin foraging has taught me that the above scenario is not as dire as it may sound. A life of being limited to dollar discs does not necessarily consign you to a cinematic diet of Taiwanese kung fu films starring Carter Wong and the dregs of Fred Williamson’s oeuvre exclusively. For example, look what I found just recently: a disc featuring a dubbed print of a film from the Czechoslovakian New Wave by director Vojtech Jasny! Granted, I had to rifle through a lot of Carter Wong and Fred Williamson titles to find it, but I prefer not to dwell on that.

Vojtech was at one time a booster of Checkoslovakia’s communist regime, but had begun to sour upon it by the time of making Cassandra Cat in 1963. By the time of the Soviet invasion in 1968, he had become outspoken in his dissent, as expressed through one of his most acclaimed films, All My Good Countrymen, which was banned soon after the takeover. Vojtech would leave the country not long afterward, and would eventually, with help from fellow Czech New Waver Milos Forman, land a teaching position in Columbia University’s film department.

With Cassandra Cat, Vojtech uses a deceptively simple, fairytale like narrative in which to couch his antiauthoritarian allegory, and the result, as is often the case when such a strategy is employed, is an uneasy mix of cynicism and whimsy, sort of like a bedtime story read by a bitter, alcoholic dad. The story, set in a small town, is narrated by Oliva, the town’s old custodian, who begins the film by looking down upon his fellow townsfolk from his perch atop the clock tower, bemusedly enumerating their various foibles and peculiarities for us as he casually breaks the fourth wall. Whether Oliva strikes you as a wry observer in the mold of Our Town’s Stage Manager or simply a judgmental windbag depends, I suppose, on what you bring to the table.

Oliva is just one facet of a dual role performed in the film by Jan Werich, who was not only a well respected Czech actor, but also a politically engaged author and playwright. Despite all of those accomplishments, Werich may be best known among English speaking film fans for a performance that never even made it to the screen: that of Blofeld in the Bond film You Only Live Twice, whom Werich portrayed briefly, only to be unseated by Donald Pleasance once the producers deemed him too grandfatherly for the part. (A picture of Werich on YOLT’s volcano lair set, holding a cat much more iconic than the one in the film currently under discussion, can be seen here.)

During the film’s opening moments, Werich’s Oliva regales a room full of school children with a tale of his allegedly true encounter with a magical, bespectacled cat. Once this cat’s cheaters were removed, he tells them, all humans within its gaze were rendered in colors that revealed their true natures: the cowards yellow, the lovers red, the liars gray, etc. And in telling this story, it seems that Oliva has brought it to life, as no sooner has he finished than a traveling magician (also played by Werich) and his troupe arrive in town, among their number a four-eyed tabby just like the one in the story. The magician and his crew then treat the townsfolk to a performance that mostly consists of thinly veiled satirical jibes at them and their various hypocrisies.

For a rousing show closer, the Magician’s ever leotard-clad assistant Diana (Emilia Vasaryova) takes off the kitty’s tiny specs and gives him a good long gander at the berg’s assembled citizenry. As promised, the assembled are instantly cast in a wide variety of unflattering hues, exposing them for the assortment of craven crumbums that they are. That is, except for the lovers, who, in a surreal and balletic sequence, waltz joyously with one another as the rest freak out in pantomime around them. In the ensuing fracas, the cat escapes into the countryside, setting off a race between some of the town’s more unsavory adult elements, who wish to hunt it down and kill it, and the more virtuous inhabitants -- the children especially -- who wish to hold it and pet it and call it George. Or something.

Leading those aforementioned unsavory adults is the Schoolmaster, played by Jiri Slovak, who we last saw as the sympathetic male lead in Vaclav Vorlicek’s Who Wants to Kill Jessie? With this character, Vojtech demonstrates the efficiency of his fairytale approach as a means of ruthlessly cutting to the satirical bone, painting, with minimal strokes, a chilling portrait of malignant banality. A hunting and taxidermy enthusiast, the Schoolmaster is seen near the beginning of the film shooting down a stork which we’ve just seen flying over the town, much to the horror of some of the more principled onlookers. In his defense, he guilelessly protests about what a fine specimen the bird will make once stuffed. Later, once that process has been accomplished, he has his assistant run around his office with the stuffed and mounted animal in a mimicry of flight, clapping with childish delight all the while.

In telling his tale, Vojtech utilizes a visual vocabulary that blurs the line between high surrealism and the playfully indulgent theatricality of children’s fantasy films. Because of that, the one aspect of its dollar DVD presentation that least serves Cassandra Cat is easily its washed out color scheme, which leaves just enough of a glimmer of the original’s hues to let us know just what a very colorful affair it once was. This is frustrating for a number of reasons. While its charms are more than few, it’s unlikely that many of today’s viewers need an allegory like Cassandra Cat to illuminate the queasy relationship between tyranny and the truth. As such, I think it’s primary appeal lies in its status as a visual feast.

That said, it shouldn’t be forgotten the power that Cassandra Cat likely held in its original place and time, especially in light of the Soviets’ violent suppression of the Prague Spring a few years later. After all, I suppose the measure of any cat, once it’s out of the bag, is the amount of force brought to bear upon putting it back in again. Verdict: Well worth the dollar!

Friday's best pop song ever

2011-08-11T21:00:00.000-07:00