Tag: 1986

Kung Fu Wonder Child

  By

★★
“So. Many. Questions…”

You may have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of a spree with these Taiwanese fantasy-fu flicks of late. However, I think I’m feeling a bit sated with them at this point, and the law of diminishing returns seems to be setting in. There are only so many unconvincing male impersonators, bad effects (both optical and practical) and almost illegible and/or illiterate subtitles a man can take, and I think I’ve reached my capacity in almost of these categories. Fortunately, my queue of such things seems to be nearing an end, with just a couple more to go. Still, after this delirious experience, I feel in need of a week or two’s break from the madness.

The villain here is the usual long-haired sorcerer (Li), who is collecting souls for the usual, megalomaniac purposes, and keeping them in large, ceramic jars in his yard. As you do. Among his collection are the father and sibling of Chiu Hsu (a rather under-used Oshima, albeit very early in her career), and she eventually links up with helpful unconvincing male impersonator, Hsiu Chuen (Lin, of course) and not one, but two, annoying comic sidekicks, Mi Fu and Tudor. Hsiu is a servant at a martial arts school, where her grandfather (Long) is the cook. Except Hsiu wants to learn the skills taught at the school, and Gramps is not just the mild-mannered chef he initially appears to be. Hilarity ensues. Well, if your idea of hilarity is a dog peeing on someone’s face, at least.

This is the kind of thing where it feels like the makers threw every idea they came up with onto the screen, regardless of a) relevance and b) whether or not it could be executed with any degree of competence. For example, the first would include the extended opening prologue about a Chinese hopping vampire, and his two kids. It serves no purpose and seems to have strayed in from a completely different movie. As for the second… well, outside of the willingness of Taiwanese stunt-people to fling themselves around and into things for our enjoyment, this rarely gets to passable, even allowing for it approaching forty years in age. I did laugh that one of the monsters Hsiu ends up fighting, is obviously a flying facehugger from Alien.

That said, there is a surprisingly decent stab at mixing animation with live-action, when the villain transforms into an animated dragon for the final battle. If it’s not exactly Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it’s not notably worse than the Disney efforts in this area. In general though, the execution trails far behind the imagination, and as a result, does the latter something of a disservice. The slabs of childish humor are no more of a help. In the film’s defense, the target audience is likely also childish, or at least, child-ish. On that basis perhaps some slack needs to be cut? Yet I couldn’t help thinking, “It was acceptable in the 80s, it was acceptable at the time…”

Dir: Tso Nam Lee
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Yukari Oshima, Jack Long, Hai-Hsing Li

Magic of Spell

  By

★★½
“Spell-ing B-movie”

The best way to describe this, is perhaps to say that if I was nine years old, I would think it was the greatest movie I had ever seen. And I would likely be right, at the time. With the benefit of [redacted] more years, and several thousand additional movies under my belt… Not so much. Oh, it’s excessive, insanely imaginative and high energy, to be sure. However, it is also slapdash, incoherent and juvenile. Never mind appealing to nine-year-olds, it often feels like it was made by nine-year-olds. This explanation could be the most logical way to explain how the film manages to misspell its own name in the opening credits, calling itself Magic of Stell.

Let me attempt to summarize the more sane elements of the plot, as best I can. An evil wizard (Chen) seeks to reclaim his youth. This involves bathing in childrens’ blood, and eating the Ginseng King, who is played by a little kid dressed up to look like the herbal root in question. Out to stop him is Peach Boy (Lin, doing her usual unconvincing male character shtick), with the help of a bunch of friends, led by… some randomly wandering dude (Ku). Both sides are populated with bizarre characters, sporting even more bizarre abilities. For example, Peach Boy can summon a giant fruit which he can use like bowling-ball, and that occasionally shoots lasers out at her opponents.  Or one of his allies has an arm, which turns into an aggressive chicken on occasion and pecks peoples’ eyes out.

There are moments here which are “I can’t believe I just saw this.” If you saw the Indian film RRR, you’ll know the kind of thing I mean. Except, there is good reason why this has remained an underground item, rather than generating Oscar buzz. For there are also moments in this which appear to have strayed in from your local community theatre pantomime. I mean this in a number of ways: the quality of the performances, the juvenile humour, and the way you have both men playing women and women playing men. Not all of it works, to put it very, very mildly, and I’ve no idea who the target audience might have been.

Matters are likely not helped by the VCD release, which has the Cantonese audio track coming out of one speaker, and the Mandarin out of the other (how they used to do multiple-language media). So you’re listening to two different languages, simultaneously, and they are not in sync either, adding to the overall insanity. I think “exhausted” is the best single word for how the whole endeavour made me feel. It’s the cinematic version of a run-on sentence which lasts for 80 minutes, making copious use of the words “and then…” While I can appreciate the invention on view here, it doesn’t excuse an approach that seems to involve spraying the audience with a fire-hose, and hoping it slakes their thirst.

Dir: Chung-Hsing Chao
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Chen Shan, Pao-Ming Ku, Mei Fang Yu

A Heroic Fight

  By

★★★
“Fight for your right to… fight.”

Well, this is certainly… a film. Indeed, of all the movies I’ve seen, it is unquestionably… one of them. Is it good? Bad? I’m still not sure. There are so many shifts in tone here, you’ll get whiplash. It’s clearly intended to be a parody of eighties Hong Kong cinema (even though it was made in Taiwan), yet is equally guilty of committing many of the same sins. I can’t deny the imagination here. A gangster, the unfortunately named Mr. Duh (Chao) is embroiled in a struggle for control of his empire with a lieutenant (Wei) who wants to start dealing drugs. To this end, the boss’s grand-daughter is kidnapped, only to be rescued by conveniently passing martial arts actor Hsiao-Long (Lin). He – and I’ll get back to that – is part of a film studio under his father (Yuen), who specializes in action and special effects. They end up hired by Duh, putting their skills to use to protect the grand-daughter and, at one point, fake the boss’s death.

It’s all a thin excuse for a variety of skits and action sequences, which run the gamut from cringey to very impressive. The former would include the prepubescent daughter doing slutty Madonna cosplay, in what’s basically an extended commercial for McDonalds, while Material Girl plays. Note: not a cover, the actual song. Jennifer Rush and the Yellow Magic Orchestra also have their catalogue plundered by the soundtrack here, which may explain why this has never seen an official Western release. The good stuff includes most of the action, which have so much imagination crammed into them, it almost hurts, from Hsiao-Long’s tricked-out BMX bike, to the final fight, in and around the film studio. Even the grandchild’s kidnapping involves a Mickey Mouse costume and use of helium balloons which I suspect would not pass close inspection, either by a scientist, or by Child Protective Services.

Lin’s skills, while wire-assisted, are notable. Though confusingly, it appears she is playing a male actor, who specializes in playing female roles. [Yes, but what are her preferred pronouns…] Given her career contained no shortage of male roles, this is quite meta, and her first scene appears to parody the kind of films in which she achieved fame. I would say that a lot of this has not dated well, with many references lost in the mists of time, even to those of us who have seen more eighties HK films than we’d like to admit. These are therefore left dangling to no particular point or reaction for a contemporary viewer. Fortunately, the action is probably as good as I’ve seen in a Taiwanese production. These often tend to come across as the poor relation of the work being put out by Hong Kong studios at the time: you’d be hard pushed to argue that’s the case here. Albeit only in spurts, this is every bit on par, and Lin’s tiny talents are enough to keep the pot bubbling.

Dir: Chung-Hsing Chao
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Yuen Cheung-Yan, Dick Wei, Chung-Hsing Chao

The Naked Cage

  By

★★★★
“Pinky violence in the USA”

Yes, in some way, this is probably among the closest the West has come to reproducing the DGAF attitude of Japanese entries like the Female Prisoner Scorpion series. Here, it’s most notable in the character of Rita (Whitaker), an unrepentant bad girl who has no hesitation in knocking out a cop and blowing away a diner owner, inside the first five minutes. Inevitably, she ends up sent to the slammer, along with innocent Michelle (Shattock), after a bank job goes wrong. Rita blames Michelle for her capture, and is intent on making her pay. Though first, she’ll have to deal with the existing “queen bee” of the prison. Meanwhile, Michelle has problems of her own, not least sleazy prison guard Smiley (Benedict), a part-time pimp who has set his sights on her.

There’s no shortage of things going on here, and it’s all enhanced by helpings of gratuitous nudity and senseless violence. These are delivered with energy by director Nicholas, who’d also done the not dissimilar Chained Heat three years previously. That did have a considerably higher-profile cast, including Linda Blair, Sybil Danning, John Vernon and Henry Silver; here, there’s hardly anyone you’ll know. Michelle’s ex-husband is played by John Terlesky, who was Deathstalker in that sword ‘n’ sorcery franchise, and that’s about it. Still, don’t let that put you off, as everyone here goes about their roles with a degree of commitment, and lack of inhibition, which can only be admired. And frequently is, from a variety of angles.

Make no mistake, this is an eighties film, particularly clear in the costumes and Very Big hair. It’s also a segregated prison. with the black prisoners having their own wing – was that actually the case? They have their own issues, and play a key role in the riot which is the film’s climax. Though they are in sharp need of a Pam Grier or a Tamara Dobson to anchor the characters there. As is, there’s not really anyone who is capable of standing up to the white-hot intensity of Rita when, for example, she forces an inmate who betrayed her to chew down on broken glass. I have to say, the guards in this correctional facility do adopt a very hands-off approach.

The film looks surprisingly good. It was recently released on Blu-Ray, and the colours really pop off the screen, the print looking lovely considering its age. Especially considering it’s not exactly a film that would have been considered worth preserving at the time of its release. With a story that is persistently entertaining, characters that certainly count as larger-than-life, and more than the contractually required amounts of flesh and catfights, this is very much an upper-tier entry in the women-in-prison genre. It might not quite be enough to supplant my all-time favourite, Reform School Girls. But in Rita, it’s definitely got a bad girl capable of standing alongside the characters played by the likes of Meiko Kaji, Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto.

Dir: Paul Nicholas
Star: Shari Shattuck, Christina Whitaker, Stacey Shaffer, Nick Benedict

Revengence Superlady

  By

★★★
“Sympathy for Lady Revengence.”

Despite a mangled title, what you have here is a straightforward tale of vengeance – and its attempts to diverge from that narrative are when the film is at its least interesting. Evil general Ji Xian Tang kills the parents of Ho Yu Fung (Ding): well, I suppose technically he only kills her father, her mother committing suicide by the corpse. In some remarkably unsubtle foreshadowing, Yu Fung is told, “This broadsword is our family heirloom. Our hope for vengeance is in your hands.” Given this, it’s no surprise she escapes with the help of a brave sacrifice from a servant, and becomes the pupil of a kung-fu master.

After what feels possibly as much as weeks of training, she heads out to get her revenge, though her first attempt succeeds only in killing one of Ji’s body-doubles. The film then drifts off-course, as she overhears the servants of traveling scholar Master An plotting to rob him, and helps him avoid that fate. He’s a supremely uninteresting character: they have absolutely no chemistry together and their relationship serves no purpose.  Meanwhile, the General has realized Yu Fung is after him – perhaps a result of her showing up at his residence, and going on about having been sent by “the souls of your victims.” So he unleashes the Iron Monk, a.k.a. Iron Sand a.k.a. Iron Buddha a.k.a. Lord Wang. The subtitles are kinda vague.

Mind you, if I was called Lord Wang, I’d probably have an a.k.a. too.

Anyway, Mr. Wang tries to force Yu Fung’s teacher to give her up, and Master An spends the night at a Buddhist temple run by cannibalistic monks(!). Yu Fung shows up to rescue him, and to do so, has to go through a spectacular series of traps. These made me strongly suspect this might originally have been shot in 3-D, since they tend to come straight for the camera. It’s certainly the film’s most memorable sequence, even in 2-D. Then she suddenly remembers about the whole familial slaughter vengeance mission thing, and it’s eventually off to battle past Wang, then face Ji around and up a large pagoda. You just know someone is going off the top…

Definitely getting an extra half-star for the Buddhist temple apparently run by people who’d seen Indiana Jones and Cannibal Holocaust, it helps that Ding kinda has a resemblance to a young Michelle Yeoh (at the time this came out in 1986, she was just getting started across the frontier in Hong Kong). She has a nice, acrobatic style; there were a couple of scenes where I thought she was being doubled, only for the camera then to show, no, it was actually her doing the moves. However, the pacing has a lot of room for improvement, grinding to a halt more or less whenever Master An is on screen. Between that and the entry-level nature of the storyline, this doesn’t manage to live up to the “Super” element of its title.

Dir: Tôru Murakawa and Qitian Yang
Star: Ding Lam, Yau Kin Kwok, Wong Jun, Lee Jun Fung
a.k.a. 13th Sister or Lucky 13

Johnnie Mae Gibson: FBI

  By

★★
“Not-so fair cop”

This 1986 TV movie was the first film made about an FBI agent while they were still active. Gibson was the fifth black female agent in the bureau’s history: she broke new ground by being the first such assigned to the Fugitive Matters department in the Miami branch, and was also the first to reach a supervisory level within the FBI. That would, however, be well after the story told in this film. It covers how she came to join the FBI, and her first major undercover operation, taking down a gun-running ring operated by ex-NFL star, Adam Prentice (Lawson). However, Gibson starts to find the lines between real-life and undercover work blurring, and begins feeling genuine affection for her target. This doesn’t sit well with her partner, TC (Rollins). If it sounds all very by the numbers… It is.

No less stereotypical are the other black men in Gibson’s life. Most notable are her sternly disciplinarian father, who thrashes Johnnie after she accepts a Thanksgiving gift on a surplus turkey from some white folks, and Marvin (Young), the husband she meets at college. The latter is thoroughly unimpressed when she announces – in a staggeringly clunky fashion, showing up in full uniform – that’s she going to join the police force. You can imagine his reaction to her becoming an FBI agent, and his perpetual whining is perhaps the film’s most annoying aspect. Though it has to be said, when it comes to caring for their daughter, Gibson is very much the absent mother.

All the background stuff is bounced over so quickly as to be little more than a parade of cliches. Yeah, we get it: she had to overcome some obstacles. Though based on the evidence here, racism wasn’t really one of them, and the way sexism is depicted has some flaws, for example when a fellow trainee at Quantico kicks her ass repeatedly in hand-to-hand training. For this begs an obvious question: would a criminal in the field go easy on an FBI agent trying to arrest them, because they were a woman? Of course not. From that viewpoint, this incident was actually less sexism than a reality check. It could have been welcomed as such, showing Johnnie she needs to use her brain rather than brawn, rather than a simplistic message of The Man Keeping A Woman Down (literally).

The undercover case is not much better in this department, trotting out the usual tropes before suddenly exploding into a gun-battle at the end, which even Gibson, in interviews at the time it was shown, noted was entirely fictional. The TV movie seems particularly guilty of trying to cram too much in, and would have been better served by focusing either on its subject’s journey to becoming an agent, or on her work thereafter. By attempting to cover both, it succeeds in covering neither adequately. While the subject is undeniably worthy, I can’t say that this treatment feels as if it does her justice.

Dir: Bill Duke
Star: Lynn Whitfield, William Allen Young, Howard Rollins, Richard Lawson

Fair Game (1986)

  By

★★★
“Time to back out of the outback…”

First off, this is not to be confused with the other Australian film of the eighties by the same name, made four years previously. This is considerably more sparse, and likely the better for it. Jessica (Delaney, who went on to marry John Denver, and have a highly acrimonious divorce from him) runs an animal sanctuary in the outback, but discovers someone has been hunting the local fauna on it. Suspicion falls on three local yahoos: Sunny (Ford, reminiscent of a young Sam Neill), Ringo (Sandford, doing some impressive stunts) and Sparks (Who – no, really, that’s his name), a trio of hunters targeting kangaroos – regarded as vermin by the farmers – for their meat. They don’t take kindly to being confronted, and begin an escalating campaign of terror against Jessica. But even a peaceful animal-lover can only be pushed so far before she breaks. Turns out that line is likely being strapped to the hood of their Jeep and driven topless across the countryside. Or thereabouts.

While I doubt the maker of Revenge saw this fairly obscure film, it does seem somewhat similar, with three men pursuing a lone woman through a desert wilderness, before the tables are turned on them. Quentin Tarantino has also spoken glowingly aout this piece of Ozploitation, and you have to wonder if the scene described above was perhaps one of the inspirations for Death Proof, in which the similarly Antipodean Zoë Bell spends a good bit of time on the bonnet of a speeding car – albeit more clothed and of her own volition [Though amusingly, one of the video covers for the film opts to depict a rather more chaste version of the scene] If so, I can see why he opted to lift only that sequence, as the film as a whole is rather… jerky, for want of a better word. By which I mean, the narrative feels like it consists of a series of unconnected sequences, rather than ones which flow into each other.

There is still a certain sense of escalation, and for once, there isn’t actually a sexual assault. The thugs’ actions begin with petty bullying, and escalates through stalkerish activities, like taking a Polaroid of Jessica while she sleeps, but bypass the obvious rape, which is refreshing. However, it still takes a bit too long to get to the meat of proceedings, with Jessica turning her farmstead into a series of home-made, yet increasingly lethal, traps with which she can defend herself. I’d like to have seen this stretched out, rather than compressed into a frantic final 15 minutes. She’s the hunted rather than the hunter for the majority of the time, and as usual, the former is the less interesting part of the equation. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie went on to become Peter Jackson’s favorite cameraman until his death in 2015, and does a nice job of capturing the wild beauty of the Australian wilderness.

Dir: Mario Andreacchio
Star: Cassandra Delaney, Peter Ford, David Sandford, Garry Who

Vendetta

  By

★★★
“Ripe for a remake starring Zoë Bell.”

vendettaMovie stunt-woman Laurie Collins (Chase) is out for the night with her sister, Bonnie, until the latter accepts the company of a young man. When things get more than a bit rape-y, and Bonnie ends up shooting her attacker dead. She is convicted of second-degree manslaughter, much to the chagrin of her sister. Worse is to follow after Bonnie is sent to prison, as there, she then falls foul of the jail’s top dog, Kay Butler (Martin). Bonnie soon turns up a corpse, with the incident written off as suicide, due to the heroine found in her veins. But Laurie doesn’t believe a word of it, and deliberately commits grand theft auto, among other crimes, in order to be sent to the same prison, where she can find those responsible, and make them pay for what they did to Bonnie.

Starting with a film-within-a-film scene which had me wondering if I was watching the wrong, post-apocalyptic movie, it’s a nice idea to have the heroine be a stunt-woman, and gives a credible explanation for her physical talents. This 1986 film is also ahead of the curve in making, in explicitly making the facility a “for-profit” prison, something which would eventually become an issue almost three decades later. That said, this does appear to be a rather cushy penal establishment, where inmates are well compensated for their work, and there is both a swimming-pool(!) and a video-arcade(!!). It doesn’t skimp on the exploitational aspects, with the shower scenes typical for the genre, and the rape of Bonnie is genuinely nasty.

In this, it shares something of the same look and feel as Reform School Girls, made that year, right down to the presence of an blonde, obvious Ilsa-lookalike in charge, though Collins’s Miss Dice is far more sympathetic  than Sybil Danning’s Warden Sutter. [Coincidentally or not, both films also feature the Screamin’ Sirens’ song, “Love Slave”, during a scene of sexual abuse.] The main weakness here is likely Chase, who seems rather unconvincing in terms of physical presence, though does acquit herself half-decently in the action scenes. Her Laurie just doesn’t quite feel like the kind of character who would go to such elaborate lengths to extract brutal vengeance – and it’s a damn good thing she wasn’t sent to another facility. You can contrast her character with that of Martin, who definitely feel like the kind of scum that would rise to the top inside.

There is a certain bleakness to the ending [spoilers follow]. After Laurie has completed her revenge, with the help of Miss Dice, the warden turns to her and says, “Did it bring Bonnie back?”, then adding, “You have the rest of your life to think about that.” It’s somewhat disconcerting for the viewer who has been brought along on Laurie’s quest, suddenly to have the moral carpet yanked out from under them like this, instead of any closure. If the hairstyles haven’t aged well, this philosophical ambiguity has.

Dir: Bruce Logan
Star: Karen Chase, Sandy Martin, Kin Shriner, Roberta Collins

Death Shadow

  By

★★★
“Stylized beyond belief.”

deathshadowsWhile made in 1986, you’ll frequently find yourself thinking this could be from a decade or two earlier, though to be honest, the style in this samurai-revenge-crime-whatever film is as all over the place as the plot. Some of that works well. Having the heroine’s sword turn into a ribbon, which she then twirls artistically, is more successful than it sounds. However, the multiple breaks for little disco-dance sequences, involving dry ice and flashing lights… Not so much. The set-up is great. Three condemned men are recruited, Nikita-style, to become shadow agents, working for the government. One of them manages to have a wife and a daughter, but has to leave them for their own safety.

Ten years later, he’s working a case when he meets his daughter, Ocho (Ishihara) employed by the man he’s investigating, Denzo. The end results is, the case blowing up, the death of both he and Denzo, and Ocho’s recruitment by his boss as a replacement. She can avenge her father by getting the evidence that will bring down the whole syndicate, in particular, a fake license hidden in the sash of a kimono. Unfortunately, this sash is now evidence in a murder investigation, and is in the hands of the police. And Denzo’s mistress, Oren (Natsuki), is out for her own revenge, on the woman she blames for his death.

Plenty of scope here, certainly. Unfortunately, the potential is frittered away after that blistering first twenty minutes, becoming bogged down in a welter of male characters who tend to look the same, act the same and sound the same. It’s a constant stream of corruption, lies and deceit that becomes quite wearing: the yakuza are corrupt, the cops are corrupt, even the local priests are corrupt, their grave-robbing antics being what kicks the quest for the kimono sash off. But it’s all too meandering, and Gosha [who also directed The Yakuza Wives] seems to be much more in love with these subsidiary characters than they deserve. Ocho and Oren are fine – the latter, in particular, is a memorably slimy creature, who is not as weak as she appears. There just isn’t enough of them.

Occasional moments here do work: mostly, when the two female leads have not been shunted off to one side, making way for macho grunting by top-knotted sword-wielders. I don’t have a problem with films like this, that take a different approach to familiar material. However, style alone isn’t enough, and what’s left here is infuriatingly flawed. There’s the basis of a great storyline, and a pair of superb central characters; that’s a foundation many movies would kill for, and on which Gosha could have built. Rarely have I seen such solid ground wasted as badly as occurs in this film.

Dir: Hideo Gosha
Star: Mariko Ishihara, Mari Natsuki, Masanori Sera, Takuzô Kawatani
a.k.a. Jitterna. There’s also some question over whether it’s Shadow or Shadows. The IMDb goes for the former, the DVD sleeve the latter.