Friday's best pop song ever

Mat Bond (Singapore, 1967)

Last year I wrote a couple of posts dedicated to the contributions made by the Shaw Brothers’ Malaysian language division to the 1960s spy craze, specifically the series of films featuring secret agent Jefri Zain, aka Singapore’s answer to James Bond. Well, it turns out that Shaw’s number one competitor in the region, Cathay Keris Films, had their own answer to James Bond, and perhaps to Jefri Zain as well.

But while the Jefri Zain films were fairly straightforward attempts at sub-Bondian spyjinks (as straightforward as such things could be, that is) Cathay’s entry, Mat Bond, was an outright parody. The film’s star, Malaysian comedian Mat Sentul, had worked his way up through the ranks at Cathay Keris throughout the 50s and early 60s, starting out behind the scenes (he is also credited as Art Director on Mat Bond) before graduating to bit and then supporting roles on screen -- including comic relief turns in a number of Cathay Keris’ horror films, among them the successful Pontianak series. By the mid 60s he was acting and directing himself in a series of tailor-made comedy vehicles, all of which bore titles that consisted of his first name followed by whatever the intended target of satire was -- Mat Magic, Mat Pirate, etc. -- among which Mat Bond represents a rough mid-point in the cycle.

Without the benefit of English subtitles, it’s difficult for me to pinpoint the nature of Sentul’s comic persona. While long of face and a bit gangly, he’s not especially funny looking, nor does he partake too excessively in the mugging and pratfalling that so many of his screen comic brethren did. This last, of course, contributes a lot to Mat Bond going down as easily as it does, and I’m happy to have Sentul’s humorous essence remain a mystery in exchange for both him and the film in which he appears being as agreeable as they are.

Mat Bond reminds me a lot of Filipino spoofs like Dolphy’s James Batman, which was made around the same time. It gives a similar impression of reveling in its own low-rent nature, and as such seems to be making as much fun of itself as it does anything else. And indeed it is cheap. Interiors look to have been shot in a cramped basement, while a vacant lot seems to have provided the location for many of the exteriors. The clever booby traps that our hero evades during an opening scene mostly consist of precariously placed planks of wood. And, to flaunt that ghetto aesthetic, many of the sets incorporate handwritten signage complete with words crossed out and written over. What humor translates is also pretty lowbrow: Perhaps in answer to Jefri Zain’s entrance to his secret headquarters being concealed beneath his bathtub, Mat Bond enters his by way of a water-closet-cum-elevator, with the toilet chain serving as the control. At another point, a meeting of international criminals consists of an assortment of broad stereotypes, including a Chinese coolie and an American Indian in full headdress named Sitting Cow.

Also like James Batman, Mat Bond functions as both a comedy and a straightforward action film, so that interspersed with the gags are some fairly run-of-the-mill chases, fights and stunt sequences. But where it departs from its Filipino counterpart is the way in which it targets its satire. Whereas Dolphy took the Bond iconography head on, portraying the super agent as a preening egotist in a ridiculous checkered suit, Mat Bond instead takes the well traveled route of showing us a hapless everyman unwittingly thrust into a James Bond world. Sentul plays –- who else? –- Mat, a good natured bumpkin who still lives with his mom and fantasizes so hard about being a secret agent that he’s built his own makeshift “Oh Oh 7” lair in his home’s basement. While out fishing one day, Mat even sings a jaunty song about being a spy, which, thanks to its intermittent lapses into English, seems to be titled “Spy Spy Spy Bang Bang!” (Another English lyric goes: “Oh Batman, Oh Superman… Dangerman… They are all my friends!”)

It’s the old briefcase trick that eventually serves as Mat’s entryway into the highflying world of international espionage. And when Mat accidentally comes into possession of that case, it proves to contain a bottle of top secret pills designed to grant indestructibility. Not that Mat knows this, of course, but that doesn’t prevent him from popping one of the pills into his mouth. (I mean, what would you do?) This has the result of making him impervious to bullets and other kinds of violent harm. It also makes him the target of various criminal and foreign interests looking to get their hands on the pills. Among these are a gang lead by the requisite guy in an eye patch who spends most of the film barking orders from behind a control panel, as well as sexy lady spy “Lisa”, played by Sherley Koh. Lisa and Mat form something of an alliance of opportunity, at which point Mat gets to start putting some of his dreams of being a spy into bumbling practice. This being a 60s spy spoof, that means that many improbable –- and in this case, very inexpensively realized –- gadgets come into play, including a sort of all purpose umbrella that serves Mat as a combination gun, blowtorch, bullet shield, and parachute.

Even for a non-Malay speaker, Mat Bond is a pleasantly brisk watch. The charm of its bargain bin Bond approximations goes a long way, and its antic pacing, while never really inspiring the level of merriment that I imagine it was intended to, at least serves to keep it from wearing out its welcome. Also serving to keep things peppy and engaging is a wonderfully twangy, electric guitar driven soundtrack by the Malay pop group The Pretenders, which also provides the impetus for lots of scenes of Singaporean teens frugging it up at local (basement situated) nightclubs. Unless you are the type of person for whom the sight of common kitchen appliances standing in for high tech scientific gear does not coax a smile, this is a film that is, at the very least, very hard to hate.

Malay speaking audiences at the time seem to have also found Mat Bond hard to hate, with the result that it is still fondly remembered by some today. Such was the film’s popularity that an aging Mat Sentul later decided to revisit the same territory during the 80s with something called Mat Spy. I thought it would be cute to do a combined review of Mat Bond and Mat Spy, but Mat Spy prevented me from doing so by virtue of being heartstoppingly dreadful. Shot on video, it appears to be either a television or straight-to-video production, and, aside from a clever Bond-style credit sequence, doesn’t really have anything to do with the whole secret agent concept anyway. It instead busies itself with a plot about some hapless jewel robbers, and is capable of generating interesting only among those curious to see just how long it will go on before Mat Sentul is actually introduced into the proceedings. (Answer: quite a fucking long time.) In it’s favor though, it does contain a scene in which Mat Sentul farts in a cobra’s face and it dies. So there’s that.

Mat Spy also serves the purpose of making Mat Bond’s modest virtues, a distinct lack of cynicism and a humble desire to entertain among them, shine all the more brightly. Still, I don’t think you need to suffer through the latter in order to appreciate the former. I did, apparently, but you don’t.

Neraka Lembah Tengkorak (Indonesia, 1988)

What is it about a hot woman in a skull mask? Is it that her nubile body makes one pine for his lost youth while her death’s head visage mockingly reminds him of his encroaching mortality? Probably.

Neraka Lembah Tengkorak is based on a series of popular Indonesian novels credited to author Bastian Tito, all of which focus on the exploits of Wiro Sablang, a sort of wuxia-style wandering hero gifted with a wide variety of supernatural powers. Seven films in all were based on the series, all starring actor Tonny Hidayat as Wiro, and the popularity of the books would later also translate into a successful TV series, albeit one with a different actor in the lead.

The world presented in Neraka Lembah Tengkorak (English translation: Hell Skull Valley) is similar to the Martial World of Chinese fiction, complete with various feuding clans and schools, as well as every chance meeting between strangers resulting in a brief fight before anyone bothers to figure out whether they have a beef or not. This is, at least, what seems to be happening during the first half of the movie. We spend a good deal of time watching as the members of one particular school fend off challenges from whatever random lone fighters shows up at their doorstep. Thanks to their advanced martial arts skills, they don’t appear to have much trouble doing this -- until, of course, the real villains of the piece make their entrance.

These would be the aforementioned hot chicks in skull masks, who number five in all and come dressed in color coded outfits for easy identification. (The green one, for instance, is the leader, while the yellow one, we will later learn, has a romantic past with our hero.) These women each have the magical ability to dematerialize in a puff of smoke and then unexpectedly reappear in another place, which makes them considerably harder to beat than the more mortally-abled itinerant swordsmen that the clan is used to dealing with. In fact, they are impossible to beat, it turns out, as the women have soon managed to kill the entire lot of them.

It is at this point, forty minutes into Neraka Lembah Tengorak, that our hero finally makes his appearance. Thankfully, it is an entrance well worth the buildup, as it involves Wiro Sablang flying in on the back of a giant puppet eagle. I have seen the character’s name translated as “Wiro, The Crazy Warrior”, and Tonny Hidayat indeed plays him as something of an unhinged prankster. He giggles constantly, and spends a lot of time toying with his opponents before making his opening move, perhaps capitalizing on their impression of him as being a harmless nutjob. Such drawing out of the action proves necessary, for, once we see Wiro’s formidable powers demonstrated, it becomes clear that, if he were just to get right down to the fighting, the movie would be over in a matter of minutes. Seeing someone make an opponent explode simply by angling his palm at them might be exciting in the moment, but it doesn’t provide much opportunity for building suspense in regards to a fight’s outcome.

Neraka Lembah Tengorak was directed by Lilik Sudjio, a prolific director of Indonesian genre films who also helmed the previously reviewed Darna Ajaib, as well as The Queen of Black Magic starring Suzzanna. Sudjio was obviously working with very limited resources here, with the result that Neraka Lembah Tengorak comes across like a Chor Yuen wuxia film that’s been leeched of all of its elegance, intricate detail and lushness of atmosphere. Thankfully, Sudjio compensates for these missing elements in the best Indonesian tradition, delivering wave after wave of cheesy gore. Knives and swords being driven into and/or through people’s heads becomes something of a leitmotif, and Wiro’s aforementioned exploding palm technique is truly something to behold.

At the same time, the film’s very minimalism manages to provide it with something of a unique atmosphere all its own. Music is used very sparsely, with most of the fight scenes being accompanied by little more than the low, constant sound of howling wind in the background. This lends a brooding, funereal aspect to the action that stands in weird contrast to its frenetic pace and garish presentation. In this respect, the film reminded me a bit of Polly Shang Kwan’s moody gore-fest Ghostly Face, which, given my fondness for that film, is a very happy association indeed.

For Neraka Lembah Tengorak’s bloody finale, a couple of Wiro Sablang’s erstwhile sidekicks -- a crazy old kung fu master and an acrobatic, blue veiled swordswoman -- belatedly make the scene, effecting an exponential increase in the number of heads being paired and perforated by blades before it all comes to an abrupt conclusion worthy of a 1970s Shaw Brothers film. All in all, the film has that dirty, rough edged charm that I’ve come to expect from this branch of world cinema, and, while it was certainly no watershed experience, I didn’t regret losing the scant seventy-five minutes it demanded of my time. Then again, if you put a scantily clad woman in a skull mask at the center of your movie’s action, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have me for the duration, no matter how lame everything else in it may be.

Also? Dwarfs.

Friday's best pop song ever

Special Silencers (Indonesia, 1979)

My pal Durian Dave just got back from Malaysia and delivered unto me a sack-load of VCDs of crazy looking Malaysian and Indonesian movies, so, not surprisingly, those are going to comprise a lot of what you’ll be reading about here at 4DK over the coming weeks. Of course, none of these VCDs are subtitled, but I imagine that won’t be too much of a problem. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’m sure you’ve long ago given up on me ever reviewing a film that I actually understand anyway.

First up is Special Silencers (Indonesian title Batas Impian Serbuan Halilintar), a vehicle for Indonesian action star Barry Prima that I’ve been wanting to see for quite some time. Barry’s The Warrior co-star -- and one time wife -- Eva Arnaz, is also on hand, and shows herself to be no slouch in the fighting department herself, although the filmmakers seem to use her high-kicking exploits more as an excuse for lots of up-skirt shots. I guess, given Indonesia’s strict codes of film censorship, opportunities for titillating content had to be taken where they could. (Unless you were Lady Terminator and just didn’t give a f**k.)

So, anyway, now I have seen Special Silencers, and it is indeed special. But, although parts of it left me speechless, I refuse to be silenced. Actually, I don’t really know why the movie is called Special Silencers. My guess would be that it was an attempt by those cagey Indonesians to fool distributors into thinking it was some kind of straightforward, Western style action movie. It’s not, though. Instead it’s another example of Indonesian mysticism-inflected freakiness, in this case mixed in with lots of scenes of Barry Prima and Eva Arnaz dispatching goons with airborne kicks.

So here’s what I can tell you about Special Silencers aside from the huge swaths of the story that I had absolutely no comprehension of at all. There’s a guy, see, and he steals an amulet containing a bunch of little red pills from an old holy man. He than goes around and surreptitiously slips these pills to a series of people without their knowing, and then hangs around in the shadows to watch what happens. And what happens is that these pills, once ingested, apparently make a full-sized tree instantly grow inside the digestive tract of the victim, with the result that the gore-soaked branches come poking up out of their stomachs and kill them. This, of course, is portrayed with an almost documentary-like realism.

One of the victims is the traveling companion of Eva Arnaz, who just happens to have recently made the acquaintance of motorcycle-riding free spirit Barry Prima. This man may have been Eva’s husband or boyfriend, but, once he’s out of the way, Barry makes his move pret-ty fast, is all I’m saying. Barry and Eva then take it upon themselves to get to the bottom of this whole abdominal tree sprouting business, with the result that the pill guy starts sending wave after wave of his minions to kill them, which in turn results in lots of entertaining ass-kicking. Finally pill guy captures Eva and submits her to all kinds of unspeakable tortures, which include her having to smell some guy’s smelly gym shoes (true). Needless to say, Barry eventually saves the day, and pill guy, as Fletcher Hanks would say, is made to die “by his own evil creation”.

 (Spoiler)

Special Silencers has pretty much everything you’d want from an Indonesian exploitation movie. It has an outlandish central concept that’s inexpertly realized yet earnestly presented, hella gore, motorcycle stunts, farty synthesizer music, and nonstop action almost exclusively involving Barry Prima and Eva Arnaz yelling and spin-kicking people in the face. In fact, if it’s not a standout of the genre, it’s only because there is so much competition within the genre in terms of sheer apeshit insanity. In other words, they can’t all be Mystics in Bali or Lady Terminator, but that still leaves quite a lot of room for goodness.

All killer, no filler

To borrow from Final Girl, writing a Teleport City review of a movie that I really, really love is the next best thing to putting it down my pants. Not that I'm not also going to put Naked Killer down my pants, mind you. Read my full review, just posted over at TC.

Friday's best pop song ever

The original and the best.

Silver Maid (Taiwan, 1970)

(Apologies for the lack of visual flair this time around, but, thanks to an uncooperative disc, I was unable to provide screen caps from this film. The accompanying images were pulled from the ever helpful Hong Kong Movie Database.)

For Hollywood, the idea of a martial arts adept preteen may just be a moneymaking novelty to pull out of the hat every couple decades or so, but to the Taiwanese it's obviously never been much of a big deal. Witness, for example, the young star of Silver Maid, Ng Siu Wai, who appears to be in the neighborhood of about twelve. Somewhat unusual, sure, but, then again, we've seen much younger in these type of films. And aside from that, Silver Maid, rather than being some kind of exercise in kung fu kidsploitation, is nothing more than a humbly enjoyable example of your standard martial arts fantasy of its day, complete with all of the plot elements that entails: warring clans, magical super weapons of awesome power, and over-intricate power struggles between its many and varied characters.

Our story begins with young Silver Maid (Ng Siu Wai) applying to become a pupil of the ruthless Red Devil sect. The Red Devils are an internally fractured group who appear to be held together solely by the fearsome demonic authority and appropriately fiery facial hair of their leader Red Devil Chief (Wu Pin Nan). At the same time, Silver Maid is also on a quest to find a cure for a mysterious ailment that is afflicting her dear old grandpa. Said cure turns out to be the elusive Fairy Fungus, which is said to be guarded over by "five poisonous creatures". When Silver Maid later encounters those creatures in an eerily surreal sculpture garden, they're revealed to include a frog, a centipede and a scorpion that can transform themselves into deadly human fighters, and a snake that can transform itself into a really, really big (puppet) snake.

Thanks to some really formidable magical kung fu skills, Silver Maid makes short work of these critters, and is able to retrieve the fairy fungus. This whole violent spectacle, with all of its preposterous airborne kicking, is witnessed by a couple of the Red Devils, who quickly realize that Silver Maid really isn't in need of their sect's tutelage at all. Could it be that she is a spy for their hated rivals, the Black Devil Sect? Meanwhile, Silver Maid's grandpa is revealed to be a legendary hero called the Silver Knight, and then everybody sets off in search of a magical superweapon called the Sacred Tooth. Ultimately, the Red Devil Sect will be revealed to be harboring a secret so secret that its members chopped off the ends of the English subtitles on the disc I watched so that not even I could be privy to it.

In her performance as the film's high flying heroine, Ng Siu Wai combines an impish glee with the kind of intermittent spooky menace that only little kids can pull off. Especially effective are those scenes in which she announces her arrival by trilling out a haunting melody on a flute, causing her opponents to freak out all over themselves. As far as her actual martial arts prowess, I'm afraid that's where Silver Maid relegates itself to the "not for purists" pile, as that's pretty much entirely accomplished via wire work and special effects. That's more than okay with me, of course, and I especially liked the optical effect that was used to show Silver Maid splitting into multiple versions of herself. Not that I hadn't seen it done numerous times before, mind you, but -- what can I say? -- a classic is a classic. I also have to say that it was very gratifying to see a Taiwanese martial arts film in which the character played by the female lead was actually identified as female, without her even having to masquerade as a boy at any point.

Beyond that, Silver Maid doesn't have much that distinguishes it thematically from the rest of the fantasy kung fu pack. Yet it does, thanks largely to the mystery elements of its plot, boast a strong narrative drive, as well as some tight direction and an engagingly brisk pace. (I would name-check the director here, but none of the sites I depend on for information on these movies seem to know who he or she was.) This surehandedness was particularly welcome, due to the fact that the film's fantasy elements lacked the over-the-top quality that would have made them stand up as the main attraction, being instead subordinate to the story itself. Though in saying that I don't want to short change the giant puppet snake, which was indeed the awesome.

Scorpions and Miniskirts (Spain/Italy/W. Germany, 1967)

First off, I'd like to welcome all of you folks who typed the words "scorpions" and "miniskirts" into Google -- while at the same time assuring you that we have a strict "no questions asked" policy here at 4DK regarding what strange predilections bring our visitors to our door. We're just happy to have you.

Seriously, though, you don't have to be a clammy-handed pervo (not that I'm judging) to be drawn to a film with the title Scorpions and Miniskirts. In fact, all you really need is the cognitive ability to register the title Scorpions and Miniskirts and utter the phrase "fuck yes". That said, I have to tell you that Scorpions and Miniskirts was not the title to which this particular film was born, but is instead a more grindhouse-friendly rechristening of a Eurospy film that originally bore the English title Death on a Rainy Day. However, if that still seems too good to be true, proof that the film was marketed under the Scorpions and Miniskirts moniker comes from a no-less reliable source than YouTube:



And it has to be said that the title Scorpions and Miniskirts, at once so generous in spirit and self-effacingly reductive, is much more in keeping with the general good nature of the final product than the more melancholy sounding alternative. Simply listen to Piero Umiliani’s characteristically boisterous score for the film (shaba-daba-doo-wahhhhh!) and you’re sure to get the idea.

Then again, whether you share in that good natured spirit depends a lot on how high your tolerance is for outrageous levels of sexism and xenophobia. In effect, the short version of Scorpions and Miniskirts would consist of a smarmy European in a crisp suit doing the Twist to snazzy lounge jazz while intermittently stopping to alternately shoot an Asian person or slap a woman on the ass. If the movie had come out in the present day, it would no doubt come across as a merciless parody of the empire-minded chauvinism of the original Eurospies -- much like Michel Hazanavicius’s recent OSS 117 films -- but, as is, I’m afraid it’s the genuine article, copious evidence of tongues planted firmly in cheek aside.

On a more carefree note, while freighted with some of the more unseemly prejudices of its age, Scorpions also testifies to the jet-setting, internationalist aspirations of its time, doing so in a manner that only an Italian/Spanish/German co-production about a pair of French secret agents partially filmed in Hong Kong and New York can. The first of those agents is horny, happy-go-lucky spy guy Paul Riviere (Adrian Hoven), who we initially meet when he bursts out of a coffin in the middle of a funeral and, for reasons that are never established, guns down all of the mourners. A helicopter then arrives to airlift Paul, still in his coffin, and deliver him to the office of his long suffering superior (Gerard Landry). From there he is dispatched to help out his pal, also horny and happy-go-lucky fellow agent Bruno Nussak (Barth Warren), who at the moment is being pinned down by a gang of heavily-armed Asian hoods –- again for reasons that are never established.

With this first group of pesky Asians out of the way, and with scant preface, Paul and Bruno then merrily set off to rescue Bruno’s latest fling, Leila Wong (Lilia Neyung), who, as we will soon see, has fallen into the clutches of the evil Dr. Kung (George Wang), the leader of an ancient, world domination-seeking Chinese sect known as the Red Scorpion. Said rescue is effected by Paul and Bruno popping up in the sect’s secret lair at an opportune moment, disguised as members, and engaging Kung’s monk-like minions in a drawn out punch-up, without us being any more the wiser as to how they managed to breach the presumably heavily guarded hideout in the first place. (Paul later tosses off a reference to having followed Leila’s captors inside.)

As you may have guessed by this point, Scorpions and Miniskirts does not exactly place a premium on plot. What there is of one is so vaporous that to even call it thin would be over-generous. As indicated above, major story developments happen off-screen, while our heroes are busy engaging in protracted fist fights and episodes of serial sexual harassment, only to be dealt with later on with a line or two of throwaway dialog. Thus is the film liberated from the tiresome demands of narrative and instead simply allowed to be a parade of leering sexual shenanigans and cartoonish violence (the latter of which our heroes take to with a characteristic movie spy unflappability, rendering them a preposterous combination of adolescent distractibility and ruthless, superhuman efficiency).

The great whats-it in this case is a flask of perfume containing a sample of human RNA, which the Scorpions hope to use to somehow brainwash the American Secretary of Defense into provoking a third world war. (Look, that’s what they said.) Said flask had previously fallen into the hands of a since-murdered colleague of the two French agents, who, in an attempt at subterfuge, had sent identical looking flasks to an assortment of beautiful women located in various parts of the world. This necessitates that Paul and Bruno travel to each of these women’s locations in order to determine who among them is in possession of the real deal, in the process assembling a harem that they cart along with them like chattel as they traverse the globe. Needless to say, many stewardesses, cocktail waitresses and micro-dress wearing nurses are groped along the way -- though, to be fair, a running gag is made of Paul’s inability to actually bag any of these babes, as his thuggishly blunt seduction methods see him constantly losing out to the comparatively suave, less hands-y Bruno

.

Director Ramon Comas is clearly attuned to the utter ridiculousness of all that’s described above, and imbues it with an appropriately giddy pace and hyper-real color palette –- while at the same time delivering some inspired flashes of trippy, psychedelic style that, in combination with the film’s frequent instances of light S&M, make the end product seem kind of like a Jess Franco movie with all of the boring bits taken out. For me, this makes the film very hard not to like, despite all of its shortcomings. Helping further is the fact that Scorpions and Miniskirts is so obviously twisting itself into pretzel shapes in order to be as aggressively absurd and flat out stoopid as possible. Witness, for example, the early fight scene in which a grenade blast leaves nothing left of a trio of the Red Scorpion Sect’s minions but three perfectly minion-shaped holes in the wall.

The strangest moment in Scorpions and Miniskirts comes during its finale, as Paul and Bruno are racing to prevent Kung and his goons from completing their attack upon the visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense. Interspersed with this mad scramble are news broadcasts comprising archival footage of Robert McNamara –- the actual Secretary of Defense at the time, as well as the widely reviled architect of the Vietnam War -- mixed with footage of a vaguely similar looking actor delivering scripted lines. Of course, the super agents ultimately succeed in foiling the scheme, and, rather than spouting the hate-filled call to arms that the dastardly foreigners had planned for him, McNamara, one of the late 20th century’s most notorious warmongers, instead delivers a message of peace. Personally, I think they should also have put a miniskirt on him, as that’s the only way the situation could have been any more implausible.

Friday's best pop song ever

Nothing to see here

So recently I registered the url kittensinwifebeaters.com and began work on building a site that would feature lots of photos of kittens wearing tiny little sleeveless tee-shirts. This, I figured, would not only be a surefire route to massive internet fame, but also an ideal way of putting to use all of these adorable kittens that I found in my basement. Then the man from the health department came around and said, "Hey, those aren't kittens!" Embarrassing.

Anyway, it is for this reason that I haven't had the time to post any reviews this week. But I'll be back on the bike in the next few days, I promise. Please stay tuned.