Tag: fantasy

Dragon Chronicles – The Maidens of Heavenly Mountain

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★★★½
“Cool!” battles “Eh?”, and comes out ahead – albeit only after a lengthy struggle.

Going in, I knew this had a reputation for incoherent plotting, but after 10+ years watching HK movies, I figured I’d cope. Wrong: I sank within two minutes. An incomprehensible opening voiceover makes this feel like part 17 of an ongoing series; from there on, characters, sects, and magical kung-fu abilities (such as Shifting Stance, which lets you blink in and out of reality, or the self-explanatory Melting Stance) arrive with rush-hour frequency. Basic principle: various factions struggle for martial arts supremacy. Central to these battles are four women, who initally fight among themselves, before realising they must band together to face the ultimate enemy. If I said more, I’d be engaging in wild speculation.

The fact that you don’t really know who is good, evil or any point in between does hurt the film, and every scene with dialogue seems to make things worse. Just to confuse things even more, Brigitte Lin plays two of the women, though Cheung Man perhaps does best as the feisty, light-hearted Purple, whose ambitions exceed her actual skills. Lose any desire to understand what’s happening: the sets and costumes are spectacular, and the fights are imaginative, despite cheesy visuals, and sound effects that appear to have been lifted from Return of the Jedi. Instead of following the plot, try to copy the cool magical gestures of the characters. We did. :-) Maybe some day, we too will be able to regenerate a torso from the severed stumps of our legs…

Dir: Chin Wing Keung
Star: Gong Li, Brigitte Lin, Cheung Man
a.k.a. Semi-Gods and Semi-Devils

Amazons (1986)

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★★
“More Argentinian sword ‘n’ sorcery: mostly harmless.”

It’s amusing to see that even New Concorde – who released it – don’t seem to have watched the film, their website describing it as “about the legendary lost tribe of warrior women”. Er, no: the A word doesn’t actually get used in the movie, which is really about the quest for a legendary sword, the only thing which stands between an evil sorcerer and world domination.

There’s something irresistible about a film where it sometimes feels like characters were given names by pulling letters from a Scrabble bag – the sword of Zjiqkl – and for half the movie, we were prepared to swear one villain was called Al Gore. Sadly, it was Balgur. Ah, well, never mind. There’s certainly plenty going on, with plots, treachery, topless human sacrifice, bad blood and an alternate dimension largely realised with dry ice and strobe lights.

The action, unfortunately, sucks, though credit is due to Randolph for struggling with a lethargic snake, making it look like the most ferocious attack in cinematic history. Not sure the animals here were monitored by the American Humane Society either… Less bondage-heavy than the other Argentinian Corman productions, the nudity is still frequent. It’s kinda neat how no-one really makes a fuss about the warriors being female, but this is, at best, a passable waste of 80 minutes.

Dir: Alex Sessa
Star: Windsor Taylor Randolph, Penelope Reed, Joseph Whipp, Danitza Kingsley

Sakuya, Slayer of Demons

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★★★½
“Into every generation, a slayer is born…even in 18th-century Japan.”

Any similarities to Buffy are purely coincidental – despite the fact that our heroine Sakuya (Ando), like the blond one, has a soft spot for what she’s supposed to be slaying. Here, she saves the child of her first demon victim, and raises him as her kid brother Taro, despite unnervingly rapid growth and green lump on his head. She takes him on the ultimate mission, travelling to the recently-erupted Mount Fuji, which is the hellmou…er, source of the demons, to face the Spider Queen.

The special effects here are probably the highlight, both simple (the blue flames enveloping Sakuya’s kills) and complex, such as the impressive volcanic eruption and climactic battle with the Spider Queen. En route, she also meets a range of imaginatively-realised creatures – though one set look particularly cheesy, they are, apparently, a nostalgic collection from some classic 60’s films, so we’ll let Haraguchi off with a slap on the wrist for his self-indulgence. The problem is that when there aren’t any demons around, the movie seems lost and is, frankly, pretty dull. The basic premise is established early on, and not much more happens, storywise.

It also doesn’t play by its own rules. It is carefully explained that Sakuya’s Vortex Sword feeds off her life-force, and only human blood is an acceptable substitute. This just doesn’t seem to happen – I was, admittedly, watching a Chinese dub (featuring Anita Mui as the Spider Queen), so maybe something got lost in translation. But between such shaky plotting and the song(!), can’t help feeling it was perhaps aimed at a more juvenile, less critical audience. And that’s something of a shame.

Dir: Tomoo Haraguchi
Star: Nozomi Ando, Kyusaku Shimoda, Keiichiro Sakagi, Yuki Kuroda

Dragon Inn

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★★★½
“Flying remake kicks up a sand-storm, Brigitte Lin in drag again.”

Eunuchs are always trouble. Here, in the Ming Dynasty, they’ve reduced the Emperor to a puppet, and are close to wiping out all opposition. The last rebel leader Chow (Leung) is on his way to a meeting with his subordinate Yau (Lin) at Dragon Inn, a venue in the middle of nowhere owned by Jade (Cheung), a woman whose interests include sex, bounty hunting, and spicy meat buns of dubious content. However, also waiting for him are government forces. And when the rain comes down – which it does with surprising venom for a location supposedly in the middle of a desert – no-one gets to leave…

There’s a lot to enjoy here, particularly Maggie Cheung’s performance, which is excellent. Her character pivots the film, with the other forces too well-balanced to prevail on their own – the sparring and negotiation means there’s more tension and less fighting than might be expected. The action is good (perhaps most memorably, the Yau-Jade duel where they manage to swap clothes), but it seems as if the camera is often half a step behind; even the wide-screen DVD doesn’t seem big enough. There always seems to be a sandstorm, or something else, stopping the martial arts from fulfilling their potential. Donnie Yen as the Chief Eunuch is also wasted, in a way more common in his Western movies – he vanishes for the middle 70 minutes; Yau, too, takes a back seat once Chow arrives on the scene.

Still, the finale is excellent, with the deciding player not perhaps being who you’d expect, and as a whole, the film is a more than entertaining entry into the flying swordplay genre.

Dir: Raymond Lee
Star: Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Brigitte Lin, Donnie Yen

Barbarian Queen

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★★★
“Not exactly family viewing, yet energetic in a dumbly fun way. Lana Clarkson, RIP…”

With the untimely death of Lana Clarkson (legal advisers suggested we not use “murder by a crazed record producer”), this takes on a certain poignant quality, especially when she uses lines like, “I’ll be no man’s slave and no man’s whore.” Clarkson pioneered sword-swinging feminism well before Xena, and while no-one is going to mistake this for high art, it gallops along at a fine pace – lasting barely 70 minutes, it could hardly do otherwise.

Clarkson plays Amathea, whose wedding day is rudely interrupted when her village is burned and groom (Zagarino) captured into gladiatorial slavery. She sets out to rescue him, along with sidekick Estrild (Shea, who’d go on to direct Poison Ivy), and traumatised sister Taramis (Dunlap). Sneaking into the villain’s city, she teams up with the local rebels and convinces the gladiators they have a chance at freedom. They also get get caught and tortured. A lot. Chuck in numerous rape scenes and you wonder what audience it’s aimed at. But the heroines are better than you might expect; despite some 80’s hair, there are some convincing bits of action, in particular a fight by a river. Amathea’s method of convincing the torturer to free her is also unique in cinematic history, as far as I’m aware (if I’m wrong, please, let me wallow in my ignorance).

Producer Corman continues his ability to find cheap talent, though the “destined for greater glory” name is heard and not seen – the music comes from Christopher Young, who’d go on to score films such as The Shipping News. James Horner’s Battle Beyond the Stars work also crops up, but when you write for Corman, you expect this kind of thing.

Dir: Hector Olivera
Star: Lana Clarkson, Katt Shea, Dawn Dunlap, Frank Zagarino

She

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★★★
“She may be the face you can’t forget…the film, too, has its moments.”

Proof positive that a lack of narrative coherence is no barrier to a good time, She makes about as much sense as you’d expect from a film where the soundtrack veers wildly from Rick Wakeman to Motorhead. It’s post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery, with Bergman as She, the immortal goddess ruling a tribe of Amazon warriors. For reasons which are never explained, She ends up tagging along with hero Tom as he searches for his kidnapped sister. Hey, even Immortal Goddesses need some time off, I guess.

Loosen up, realise this bears effectively no relation to the H.Rider Haggard novel (previously filmed by Hammer, with Ursula Andress in the Immortal Goddess role), and you may find this fun, albeit the dumb kind. I should warn you that the first 20 minutes suck, make little sense and are remarkably tedious. Once we get moving, things perk up, because on their travels, Tom and She encounter a wild range of wacky adversaries: chainsaw-wielding lepers, mad zookeepers, vampires and someone doing a convincing impression of Robin Williams at his most irritating. None of these could hold an entire movie, and Nesher realises this, wisely whizzing them past at high speed, despite the resulting random air, like a D&D adventure written by a rank novice.

The action is competent, if obviously cheap, though surprisingly, Bergman is outdone by her sidekick (Kessler). Tom rescues She, She rescues Tom, repeat with minor variations until it all ends in a pitched battle against the bad guy and his army of, oh, say 30 soldiers. Whatever its shortcomings (and space is too short for a listing), lack of imagination is not one of them. Many less inventive movies are out there – thus, this one can only be applauded.

Dir: Avi Nesher
Star: Sandahl Bergman, David Goss, Quin Kessler, Harrison Mueller

Red Sonja (1985)

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★½
“Nice hats – shame about the movie.”

No, really. The milliner on this production deserves an Oscar, simply for providing the most amazing range of headgear I’ve ever seen. Everyone seems to have a different selection of pointy things to choose from; this civilization may have limited technology, but it’s clearly not short of hat-shops.

Unfortunately, this is largely the best thing about the movie. Nielsen, before getting buffed-up and implanted, doesn’t have the physical presence to carry off the role. On its own, this wouldn’t be fatal to the film, but she is woefully short on the emotional intensity which could have compensated (c.f. Hudson Leick) – she makes Arnie look like a talented thespian. The purpose for her revenge against Queen Gedren (Bergman – who turned down the title role, showing remarkable foresight perhaps) is glossed over so rapidly that it has no impact either, and the pointless and extremely annoying kid made me wish that the talisman stolen by Gedren would suck the entire universe out of existence. Way too many riding-riding-riding shots too, accompanied by one of Ennio Morricone’s less memorable scores.

Good stuff? Er…the fight between Sonja and Gedren at the end is actually pretty good, and you wish Sonja hadn’t spent the first 90% of the movie having to be rescued all the time. The only other saving grace is that it isn’t quite as bad a comic-book adaptation as Tank Girl. But how could it be?

Dir: Richard Fleischer
Star: Brigitte Nielsen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sandahl Bergman, Paul L. Smith

Barbarian Queen II

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★★½
“In which our heroine learns the ropes…and the chains…and the rack…”

Much like the first, bondage fans would probably mark this a grade, possibly one and a half, higher given the amazing length of time the heroine spends tied to racks and other torture devices – or just tied in general. Not that this, per se, makes it a bad movie. No, the severely limited budget (the population of the land where this takes place appears to be about 1/10th that of San Marino) and clunky acting take care of that…

However, the writing helps, since tongue is in cheek, right from the movie’s subtitle: The Empress Strikes Back. It would be churlish to point out the total lack of any empress in the film. There’s also the mud-wrestling bout, carefully set up early on when a barrel of water is knocked over, instantly turning about two acres into the Everglades. As for the story, Clarkson plays Princess Amathea – her character has the same name as the first part, but how she became the king’s daughter is never explained – whose father’s throne has been usurped by the evil Ankaris (Bracho). She escapes and builds a band of curiously large-haired heroines to lead a revolt.

One interesting subplot is Ankaris’s daughter (Tijerina), a genuinely creepy teen with a disturbing interest in methods of torture. She has a crush on Amathea’s love interest and evokes the spirit of her dead mother to help her out. This angle adds a welcome depth, to a story that otherwise is largely what you would expect. The fighting is largely woeful: one participant holds their sword up while the other bangs their weapon off it. Yet, it’s never dull and Clarkson makes a good heroine, independent and feisty from the opening scene.

Dir: Joe Finley [probably a pseudonym for Hector Oliviera]
Star: Lana Clarkson, Greg Wrangler, Cecilia Tijerina, Alejandro Bracho