Early Happy New Year, fellow ninjas.
It's been a few months but TheDenizen is back from the wilderness to serve up the goods on some more awesomely bad flicks.
Today I'm going to review a selection of wrestling movies. Pro wrestling is something that most of us like, even if it isn't really accepted by mainstream culture (I know it has had it's heydays, but it's definitely on a long downswing at the moment). Wrestling is generally seen as a niche interest of rednecks and trailer trash, and any references to it are usually mocking in tone. It's considered low brow, low budget entertainment.
It's not surprising then, that most wrestling films are cheap, low budget affairs made for the grindhouse market. They're also usually from Mexico or Japan (where the purists know the best pro wrestling is anyways)...there were dozens of movies starring Mexican luchador Santo in the 60s and 70s. Anyways, here's a handful of capsule reviews for some of my favorite wrestling flicks.
Calamari Wrestler - Cheesy wrasslin action from Japan, this one is a pretty formulaic underdog/sports movie kinda like Rocky, with the catch that the main character is a guy in a big, fake looking rubber squid costume. All the other actors treat him as though he were a real giant squid, and ignore the inherent strangeness of it. Very dry humor as the whole cast just plays every scene completely straight faced opposite a massive cephalopod. Hilarious.
Enter Zombie King - Gloriously campy lucha libre flick from Canada that features a group of technicos led by Ulysses fighting against evil rudo Zombie King and his undead hordes. Pretty much everyone in the movie wears a wrestling mask at all times, and Ulysses is constantly spouting ridiculous nonsense philosophies. It's got hot chicks, a great surf soundtrack, a Jim Neidhart cameo, and tons of dudes beating up zombies with snapmares and huracanranas. You could do a lot worse.
The Wrestler - Despite being a low budget indy film, this movie is the exception in that it's a serious drama about a washed up pro wrestler, and not just some schlocky junk. This is a really great flick and Mickey Rourke gives an amazing performance as the pathetic and broken down Randy the Ram. It won awards and deservedly revitalized his career. Some of the overwrought emotional stuff with the daughter came off as a little hokey, but it's just a crushing experience. Every pro wrestling fan should see it.
Oh! My Zombie Mermaid - Real life grappler Shinya Hashimoto stars as a pro wrestler whose wife is severely injured in an explosion and begins to transform into a mermaid. Unable to pay the medical bills, he is forced to accept a big money death match against a faction of rogue killer wrestlers called DDD. The first half hour or so is just set up but the last hour is solid insanely over the top wrestling action in a series of escalating battles. It's like a bad anime come to life, in a good way.
3 Dev Adam - Granted, this film is only tangentially related to wrestling, but it's such a great flick I relish any opportunity to talk about it. It's a Turkish superhero film in which knockoff versions of Captain America and the famous luchador Santo are brought in by Turkish police to help them stop evil knockoff Spiderman who is on a terrible crime spree. It's seriously insane watching a paunchy Spiderman climb up a drainpipe and stab a woman to death in the shower. Spidey terrorizes people with hungry gerbils. A woman gets killed with an outboard motor in the first minute. If you haven't seen this flick, find it. It's gold.
There's a bunch of other wrestling flicks to be had as well...I've got a few of the authentic Santo films on my "to-watch" pile. Plus there's a Japanese film called Rikidozan, a biopic about pioneering Korean wrestling star of the same name that is excellent by most accounts. And if you can stomach Jack Black's particular brand of "humor", I suppose Nacho Libre is a technically a lucha film too. Of course there's also Hulk Hogan's terrible movies, but other than No Holds Barred, his movies weren't really about wrestling anyways.
Happy viewing.
Showing posts with label denizen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label denizen. Show all posts
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
TheDenizen's TV Movie of the Century
Howdy, ninja gang...I'm back from my vision quest in the desert.
I've been caught in the swirling undertow of the time sink that is Read Dead Redemption for the last several weeks (too soon to declare GOTY?), but I've finally finished that up and gotten back into the swing of watching the crappiest movies I can find. I've got a backlog of shit to watch that would stagger a proctologist, so I soldier on.
One of the unexpected joys of mining the depths of lesser known world cinema is the occasional unearthing of an absolute gem. I recently watched the 1984 British made-for-TV nuclear holocaust film Threads, and not only was it the best film I've seen in ages, it gets my nod as the best TV movie I've ever encountered. I thought it would be a bit of a laugh, but I was dead wrong.
There are a couple of types of post-holocaust film: the predominant Mad Max action type, with outlaws and raiders racing around the wasteland and blowing each other up over resources, and the rarer scaremongering type which try to frighten people with dramatizations of how horrible the aftermath of nuclear war would truly be. Probably the best known American example of the latter is "The Day After", another TV movie from the same Cold War era as Threads. However, The Day After was full of melodrama and Hollywood heroics, and painted a cheesily unrealistic picture. The blunt realism of Threads is shocking in comparison.
Threads focuses on two working class families in Sheffield, England, which is the country's fourth largest city and one of the main centers of industry. The film slowly builds up the characters of Ruth and Jimmy, a young couple expecting a child, as well as their parents and siblings. In the beginning, there are news reports of tensions in the Middle East that everyone ignores. But as Jimmy and Ruth find an apartment and begin building their lives together, the tensions suddenly escalate into a very real threat of war between America and the USSR.
As panic gradually builds, people begin hoarding food and building bomb shelters according to government issued instructions. Contingency plans are put into motion, but suddenly 200 megatons falls on England and fucks up everything. Millions are killed in the initial blasts, and the survivors quickly discover that their shelters are woefully inadequate. Weakened by radiation sickness, hunger and disease, many millions more don't survive the first weeks. The film then continues on to tell the story of some of the few people remaining in England over the course of the next 13 years, struggling to cope with the reality of a world where everything left is irradiated.
The brilliance of Threads is twofold. One, it is disturbingly realistic looking. The filmmakers employed the expert knowledge of many scientists and nuclear theorists in writing the script, and filmed in a documentary style. The direction is flat, there is a monotone voiceover filling in necessary details, and almost no music to speak of. It feels real. Two, it doesn't flinch away from the horrific truth of the effects of nuclear explosions and fallout at all. Burning corpses, dead children, desperate and violent looters, radiation burns and projectile vomiting, completely ineffective government measures, mutations, it's all here. The only thing that Threads shies away from is cannibalism, which is never mentioned...although we do see survivors reduced to eating rats and raw animal carcasses.
Even without the cannibalism, Threads is relentlessly bleak and joyless, grisly horror piled upon horror, and the ending ruthlessly snatches away the one tiny shred of hope that exists. Threads aired on British TV in an era when most people only had 4 TV channels...millions of people saw this and it must've scared the bejesus out of Thatcher's England. It scared the bejesus out of me. And I loved it.
I do enjoy a good downer movie, and Threads is the granddaddy downer. It forces you to recognize the futility of trying to think or plan what you would do in the same situation. There's nothing you could do and there's nothing the survivors can do except keep going. Everyone should see this, especially horror buffs...it really is frightening. Powerful and affecting, seek Threads out and watch it.
Until next time...
I've been caught in the swirling undertow of the time sink that is Read Dead Redemption for the last several weeks (too soon to declare GOTY?), but I've finally finished that up and gotten back into the swing of watching the crappiest movies I can find. I've got a backlog of shit to watch that would stagger a proctologist, so I soldier on.
One of the unexpected joys of mining the depths of lesser known world cinema is the occasional unearthing of an absolute gem. I recently watched the 1984 British made-for-TV nuclear holocaust film Threads, and not only was it the best film I've seen in ages, it gets my nod as the best TV movie I've ever encountered. I thought it would be a bit of a laugh, but I was dead wrong.
There are a couple of types of post-holocaust film: the predominant Mad Max action type, with outlaws and raiders racing around the wasteland and blowing each other up over resources, and the rarer scaremongering type which try to frighten people with dramatizations of how horrible the aftermath of nuclear war would truly be. Probably the best known American example of the latter is "The Day After", another TV movie from the same Cold War era as Threads. However, The Day After was full of melodrama and Hollywood heroics, and painted a cheesily unrealistic picture. The blunt realism of Threads is shocking in comparison.
Threads focuses on two working class families in Sheffield, England, which is the country's fourth largest city and one of the main centers of industry. The film slowly builds up the characters of Ruth and Jimmy, a young couple expecting a child, as well as their parents and siblings. In the beginning, there are news reports of tensions in the Middle East that everyone ignores. But as Jimmy and Ruth find an apartment and begin building their lives together, the tensions suddenly escalate into a very real threat of war between America and the USSR.
As panic gradually builds, people begin hoarding food and building bomb shelters according to government issued instructions. Contingency plans are put into motion, but suddenly 200 megatons falls on England and fucks up everything. Millions are killed in the initial blasts, and the survivors quickly discover that their shelters are woefully inadequate. Weakened by radiation sickness, hunger and disease, many millions more don't survive the first weeks. The film then continues on to tell the story of some of the few people remaining in England over the course of the next 13 years, struggling to cope with the reality of a world where everything left is irradiated.
The brilliance of Threads is twofold. One, it is disturbingly realistic looking. The filmmakers employed the expert knowledge of many scientists and nuclear theorists in writing the script, and filmed in a documentary style. The direction is flat, there is a monotone voiceover filling in necessary details, and almost no music to speak of. It feels real. Two, it doesn't flinch away from the horrific truth of the effects of nuclear explosions and fallout at all. Burning corpses, dead children, desperate and violent looters, radiation burns and projectile vomiting, completely ineffective government measures, mutations, it's all here. The only thing that Threads shies away from is cannibalism, which is never mentioned...although we do see survivors reduced to eating rats and raw animal carcasses.
Even without the cannibalism, Threads is relentlessly bleak and joyless, grisly horror piled upon horror, and the ending ruthlessly snatches away the one tiny shred of hope that exists. Threads aired on British TV in an era when most people only had 4 TV channels...millions of people saw this and it must've scared the bejesus out of Thatcher's England. It scared the bejesus out of me. And I loved it.
I do enjoy a good downer movie, and Threads is the granddaddy downer. It forces you to recognize the futility of trying to think or plan what you would do in the same situation. There's nothing you could do and there's nothing the survivors can do except keep going. Everyone should see this, especially horror buffs...it really is frightening. Powerful and affecting, seek Threads out and watch it.
Until next time...
Friday, May 7, 2010
TheDenizen talks boobs and bars
Alright kids, time for some more trash cinema.
TheDenizen is back and I've got celluoid cells on the agenda. Jail cells, that is.
A prison makes a great setting for a movie. Two opposing uniformed gangs (prisoners and guards) have to coexist in a tightly controlled, institutionalized environment. Dramatic tension is always high and the potential for violence is ever present. Not to mention the fact that filming in concrete rooms and plain grey hallways can be done pretty fucking cheap. Make it a women's prison and cast a bunch of babes and you've got yourself box office gold. Today I'm going to discuss a selection of Women In Prison films.
WIP movies go back to the 40's and 50's, but the films from that era were generally chaste morailty plays designed to scare young women away from a life of crime. It wasn't until Spanish sleaze merchant Jess Franco came along in 1969 with his shocker 99 Women that WIP films became about exploitation, reveling in lurid displays of flesh and sexual sadism. 99 Women was a hit, and established the formula that the vast majority of subsequent WIP movies adhered to.
A wide eyed, naive young woman is brought to a prison to begin serving her sentence (she's sometimes guilty of a crime of passion but usually completely innocent). She's introduced to the sadistic warden, is forced into a shower and given a revealing prison uniform, and then mixed in with the general population. She encounters tough lesbians, gains the respect of other prisoners by winning some catfights, endures torture or rape at the hands of the warden and ultimately leads a jailbreak attempt. The escape often fails with the prisoners being killed or returned to their cells.
It seems like kind of a downer, but dozens of profitable films have been made using pretty much that exact outline. Of course, the appeal lies not in the riveting storytelling, but in the pervasive nudity and the BDSM fantasy of the (usually fairly tame) torture sequences. It's not everyone's cup of tea to be sure, but if you can enjoy this type of thing, there are some great flicks out there to be seen. Anyways, enough rambling, here's some quick reviews.
99 Women - the first, but not really the best. I already mostly described this one, so let me mention this: As with many European WIP movies, 99 Women exists in both R and X rated versions. The X rated stuff is most often (as in this case) cheap looking hardcore insert shots filmed by someone else, making no effort to match the sets or the actors to the people in the real movie. Be preapred for that if you plan to delve into the X rated or Unrated cuts of WIP flicks.
Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion - Meiko Kaji plays Sasori, a woman falsely imprisoned after being betrayed and framed by a former lover and his gang. Sasori is not just tough, she's incredibly bright and determined, and after enduring the standard WIP trials (including a very sexy lesbian scene with an undercover cop posing as a fellow prisoner), Sasori actually escapes the prison and exacts bloody revenge on all the men who put her there. A classic that spawned three sequels.
The Big Dollhouse - Mmmm, Pam Grier. A bunch of other hot chicks, too, but mmmm...Pammy. Also Sid Haig. This one was directed by Jack Hill, who made a handful of blaxploitation films with Grier. An all female prison in the Phillipines somehow has mostly hot American girls as prisoners, who get into the usual trouble and catfights. One of the best produced WIP films.
Virgins from Hell - super campy stuff from Thailand, about an all girl motorcycle gang who commit violent robberies to fund an assault on a criminal compound. The plot is ridiculous and convoluted, but basically these chicks fail utterly and get captured by the criminals, who keep them locked up in an underground cave to test their aphrodesiac drugs on (seriously). Thai film laws forbid nudity, so part of the appeal of this one is how retarded it is seeing two chicks in evening gowns having a catfight in a tub, or lesbian sex scenes that consist of fully clothed soft kissing and sultry looks. Hilarious crap, and full of crazy action and stunts.
Lost Souls - this variation on the WIP theme involves a large group of illegal immigrants from mainland China who are captured for ransom by a sadistic gang outside of Hong Kong. The prisoners, men and women alike, are stripped naked and kept in a filthy barn and are subjected to all manner of abuse. Some are tortured, some are raped and they all end up dead or deported. This was actually quite grim and unpleasant; genuinely sadistic instead of camp-sadistic and none of the nudity was titillating at all. This flick is hard to recommend, and it's probably one of the strangest things ever produced by Shaw Brothers, much better known for their kung fu epics.
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS - The prison this time is actually a WWII concentration camp, run by a female S&M Nazi with huge boobs. All the prisoners are Jewish, but thankfully the film veers away from any overt racism, merely fetishizing the Nazi trappings. Lots of sex in this one, even the torture scenes have a slant of kink to them, like one with an electrified dildo. This flick is notorious for good reason and well worth a look.
There are many other examples of the type, like the three Ilsa squels (Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Wicked Warden, and Tigress of Siberia), Barbed Wire Dolls, Escape from Hell, Women in Cages, Bare Behind Bars, Caged Heat, The Big Bird Cage, etc. etc. Sadly, as the exploitation grindhouses of the 70's gave way to the VCR boom of the 80's, the demand for this type of fare nosedived as a glut of hardcore porn became available to watch in the comfort of your own home. WIP movies have pretty much remained the exclusive domain of porno (and direct to video crap) ever since.
Perhaps with Rodriguez and Tarantino's recent renewal of the exploitation cycles, we may see a proper WIP movie in the theaters again in the near future. The closest thing we've had in years has been Black Snake Moan, with half naked Christina Ricci in chains for most of the running time.
More of that shit, please.
TheDenizen is back and I've got celluoid cells on the agenda. Jail cells, that is.
A prison makes a great setting for a movie. Two opposing uniformed gangs (prisoners and guards) have to coexist in a tightly controlled, institutionalized environment. Dramatic tension is always high and the potential for violence is ever present. Not to mention the fact that filming in concrete rooms and plain grey hallways can be done pretty fucking cheap. Make it a women's prison and cast a bunch of babes and you've got yourself box office gold. Today I'm going to discuss a selection of Women In Prison films.
WIP movies go back to the 40's and 50's, but the films from that era were generally chaste morailty plays designed to scare young women away from a life of crime. It wasn't until Spanish sleaze merchant Jess Franco came along in 1969 with his shocker 99 Women that WIP films became about exploitation, reveling in lurid displays of flesh and sexual sadism. 99 Women was a hit, and established the formula that the vast majority of subsequent WIP movies adhered to.
A wide eyed, naive young woman is brought to a prison to begin serving her sentence (she's sometimes guilty of a crime of passion but usually completely innocent). She's introduced to the sadistic warden, is forced into a shower and given a revealing prison uniform, and then mixed in with the general population. She encounters tough lesbians, gains the respect of other prisoners by winning some catfights, endures torture or rape at the hands of the warden and ultimately leads a jailbreak attempt. The escape often fails with the prisoners being killed or returned to their cells.
It seems like kind of a downer, but dozens of profitable films have been made using pretty much that exact outline. Of course, the appeal lies not in the riveting storytelling, but in the pervasive nudity and the BDSM fantasy of the (usually fairly tame) torture sequences. It's not everyone's cup of tea to be sure, but if you can enjoy this type of thing, there are some great flicks out there to be seen. Anyways, enough rambling, here's some quick reviews.
99 Women - the first, but not really the best. I already mostly described this one, so let me mention this: As with many European WIP movies, 99 Women exists in both R and X rated versions. The X rated stuff is most often (as in this case) cheap looking hardcore insert shots filmed by someone else, making no effort to match the sets or the actors to the people in the real movie. Be preapred for that if you plan to delve into the X rated or Unrated cuts of WIP flicks.
Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion - Meiko Kaji plays Sasori, a woman falsely imprisoned after being betrayed and framed by a former lover and his gang. Sasori is not just tough, she's incredibly bright and determined, and after enduring the standard WIP trials (including a very sexy lesbian scene with an undercover cop posing as a fellow prisoner), Sasori actually escapes the prison and exacts bloody revenge on all the men who put her there. A classic that spawned three sequels.
The Big Dollhouse - Mmmm, Pam Grier. A bunch of other hot chicks, too, but mmmm...Pammy. Also Sid Haig. This one was directed by Jack Hill, who made a handful of blaxploitation films with Grier. An all female prison in the Phillipines somehow has mostly hot American girls as prisoners, who get into the usual trouble and catfights. One of the best produced WIP films.
Virgins from Hell - super campy stuff from Thailand, about an all girl motorcycle gang who commit violent robberies to fund an assault on a criminal compound. The plot is ridiculous and convoluted, but basically these chicks fail utterly and get captured by the criminals, who keep them locked up in an underground cave to test their aphrodesiac drugs on (seriously). Thai film laws forbid nudity, so part of the appeal of this one is how retarded it is seeing two chicks in evening gowns having a catfight in a tub, or lesbian sex scenes that consist of fully clothed soft kissing and sultry looks. Hilarious crap, and full of crazy action and stunts.
Lost Souls - this variation on the WIP theme involves a large group of illegal immigrants from mainland China who are captured for ransom by a sadistic gang outside of Hong Kong. The prisoners, men and women alike, are stripped naked and kept in a filthy barn and are subjected to all manner of abuse. Some are tortured, some are raped and they all end up dead or deported. This was actually quite grim and unpleasant; genuinely sadistic instead of camp-sadistic and none of the nudity was titillating at all. This flick is hard to recommend, and it's probably one of the strangest things ever produced by Shaw Brothers, much better known for their kung fu epics.
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS - The prison this time is actually a WWII concentration camp, run by a female S&M Nazi with huge boobs. All the prisoners are Jewish, but thankfully the film veers away from any overt racism, merely fetishizing the Nazi trappings. Lots of sex in this one, even the torture scenes have a slant of kink to them, like one with an electrified dildo. This flick is notorious for good reason and well worth a look.
There are many other examples of the type, like the three Ilsa squels (Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Wicked Warden, and Tigress of Siberia), Barbed Wire Dolls, Escape from Hell, Women in Cages, Bare Behind Bars, Caged Heat, The Big Bird Cage, etc. etc. Sadly, as the exploitation grindhouses of the 70's gave way to the VCR boom of the 80's, the demand for this type of fare nosedived as a glut of hardcore porn became available to watch in the comfort of your own home. WIP movies have pretty much remained the exclusive domain of porno (and direct to video crap) ever since.
Perhaps with Rodriguez and Tarantino's recent renewal of the exploitation cycles, we may see a proper WIP movie in the theaters again in the near future. The closest thing we've had in years has been Black Snake Moan, with half naked Christina Ricci in chains for most of the running time.
More of that shit, please.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
TheDenizen reviews Nightmare on Elm Street
Hey what the hell, jzbadblood mentions the movie I just saw tonight. So here's my take on the Freddy remake:
Jackie Earle Haley is pretty good as the creepy-as-fuck pedo Freddy, and there's a couple of cool visual concepts and novel kills...but it's not scary at all, and it's not funny at all....it's just kinda there, and it's boring watching the two protagonists slowly and painfully piecing together Freddy's backstory since pretty much everyone in the theater already knew what the story was. Too many weak jump-scares, not enough Freddy cracking jokes.
It was a decent enough movie I guess, just kinda unnecessary.
And jz also posed the question 'why do we like horror movies'? Well, I can only speak for myself, but it's totally about the blood-lust.
Jackie Earle Haley is pretty good as the creepy-as-fuck pedo Freddy, and there's a couple of cool visual concepts and novel kills...but it's not scary at all, and it's not funny at all....it's just kinda there, and it's boring watching the two protagonists slowly and painfully piecing together Freddy's backstory since pretty much everyone in the theater already knew what the story was. Too many weak jump-scares, not enough Freddy cracking jokes.
It was a decent enough movie I guess, just kinda unnecessary.
And jz also posed the question 'why do we like horror movies'? Well, I can only speak for myself, but it's totally about the blood-lust.
Friday, March 26, 2010
TheDenizen talks violence of the Pink persuasion...
Hello again, ninja minions.
TheDenizen is back and about to tackle a subject that's near and dear to my heart: half-naked Japanese girls kicking ass.
The Japanese film industry was pretty austere and serious during the 50's and 60's with only a few exceptions (Seijun Suzuki's 1967 mindfuck Tokyo Drifter springs to mind)...the most popular films of the era were stately dramas and rousing action adventure films. But by the time the 70's rolled around, pretty much everyone in the country had a TV set at home and movie theater revenues were plummeting. In order to coax patrons back into the movie houses, filmmakers often took the tasty bits that couldn't be shown on TV and cranked them up to 11. Mainly, the sex and violence quota skyrocketed.
Masterfully written and acted samurai films gave way to gory and over the top swordplay flicks. As the market for exploitation fare soared, one subgenre of chambara and yakuza films carved out a niche for itself by telling the lurid stories of female gangsters: Pinky Violence. Packed with wall to wall swordfights, brawls, nudity and sex, these flicks certainly weren't innocent, but they usually lacked the meanness of a lot of contemporary American exploitation fare. They were just more fun.
Here's a quick look at a few of the series from the 1970's I enjoy the most.
Rica - Rica is a half Japanese, half American teenager who runs an all girl gang in modern day Yokohama. After a huge battle with a rival gang, Rica is carted off to juvenile hall and her gang is captured and sold to slavers who intend to ship them to Vietnam as rape fodder for American GIs. Rica busts out of detention and goes on the warpath, facing off against one tough male gang boss after another, trying to get back her girls. There is more plot in the first 20 minutes of this movie than most complete films, and it just moves at a breakneck pace the whole way. There's an extended scene where Rica sings in a strip club, and her dance moves are some of the worst stuff you've ever seen, but her outfits are amazing. In practically every scene, Rica is wearing a new cape or midriff-baring pantsuit with incredibly detailed and colorful patterns. Very kitschy. Tons of knife scraps, kung fu catfighting and bouncing boobs.
Rica was followed by two sequels. Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer is about Rica trying to unravel the story of one of the reform school girls from the first film, who has somehow ended up in a mental institution in Misawa. The plot was much more coherent and conventionally paced, but there was almost no nudity and too much use of guns. Rica 3: Junvenile Lullaby features Rica using a fucking spear gun to bust up a pornography ring that was exploiting girls from the Juvenile Prison. Much better.
Sex & Fury - Reiko Ike plays a fearless swordswoman, pickpocket and gambler named Ocho who is on the trail of her father's killers. She plays some poker and gets whipped naked by Swedish nymphette Christiana Lindberg along the way, and ends up slashing her way to the top of the yakuza syndicate responsible for her father's death. The first major set piece of the movie is a swordfight in a bath house, in which Reiko takes on a dozen or so men completely nude. She also fights the final battle topless, but by the end she is so soaked in gore that you can't even tell. Nice.
Sex & Fury had only one sequel, the ludicrously titled Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture, in which Ocho solves the equally ludicrously named "Crotch Gouge Murders" while doing battle with a bunch of opium smugglers. The story is kinda confusing and some of the sex scenes are just creepy, but there's lots of cool visuals and and swordplay.
Lady Snowblood - Meiko Kaji plays Yuki, a woman who was born in a prison to a widow who died in childbirth. She was then raised and trained as an instrument of vengeance, possessing deadly skills and a concealed sword. This is probably best known as the flick that Quentin Tarantino used as the basis for Kill Bill, even reusing Lady Snowblood's theme song. Meiko Kaji is beautiful, and has a fierce glare that could bore a hole through titanium. She uses that glare to stunning effect as she smoothly dispatches her enemies. Plenty of splashy blood, but this flick also asks some serious questions as Yuki continually ponders the point of avenging the family she never met.
Lady Snowblood was followed by Love Song of Vengeance a year later, a less interesting film in which Yuki gets mixed up a political scheme. It still has no shortage of swordplay, and fans of Meiko Kaji will want to check it out. Meiko Kaji was also famous for playing Sasori (aka Scorpion) in the Female Prisoner 701 series, a woman who breaks out of prison to exact revenge on the men who wrongfully put here there. Maybe for my next blog I'll review those, or some other Women In Prison flicks.
Other notable Pinky Violence films from the era include Stray Cat Rock, Girl Boss Guerilla, Girl Boss Revenge, and Terrifying Girls' High School.
The Pinky Violence genre still exists today in a slightly altered form, way down on the low budget end of the filmmaking spectrum in Japan. Recent efforts use less sex but WAY more bloody gore, often for comedic effect. Movies like Machine Girl, Zombie Hunter Rika, Oneechanbara, Samurai Princess and Tokyo Gore Police all show off sexy female leads unleashing copious amounts of ultraviolence.
I love that shit, it never goes out of style...
TheDenizen is back and about to tackle a subject that's near and dear to my heart: half-naked Japanese girls kicking ass.
The Japanese film industry was pretty austere and serious during the 50's and 60's with only a few exceptions (Seijun Suzuki's 1967 mindfuck Tokyo Drifter springs to mind)...the most popular films of the era were stately dramas and rousing action adventure films. But by the time the 70's rolled around, pretty much everyone in the country had a TV set at home and movie theater revenues were plummeting. In order to coax patrons back into the movie houses, filmmakers often took the tasty bits that couldn't be shown on TV and cranked them up to 11. Mainly, the sex and violence quota skyrocketed.
Masterfully written and acted samurai films gave way to gory and over the top swordplay flicks. As the market for exploitation fare soared, one subgenre of chambara and yakuza films carved out a niche for itself by telling the lurid stories of female gangsters: Pinky Violence. Packed with wall to wall swordfights, brawls, nudity and sex, these flicks certainly weren't innocent, but they usually lacked the meanness of a lot of contemporary American exploitation fare. They were just more fun.
Here's a quick look at a few of the series from the 1970's I enjoy the most.
Rica - Rica is a half Japanese, half American teenager who runs an all girl gang in modern day Yokohama. After a huge battle with a rival gang, Rica is carted off to juvenile hall and her gang is captured and sold to slavers who intend to ship them to Vietnam as rape fodder for American GIs. Rica busts out of detention and goes on the warpath, facing off against one tough male gang boss after another, trying to get back her girls. There is more plot in the first 20 minutes of this movie than most complete films, and it just moves at a breakneck pace the whole way. There's an extended scene where Rica sings in a strip club, and her dance moves are some of the worst stuff you've ever seen, but her outfits are amazing. In practically every scene, Rica is wearing a new cape or midriff-baring pantsuit with incredibly detailed and colorful patterns. Very kitschy. Tons of knife scraps, kung fu catfighting and bouncing boobs.
Rica was followed by two sequels. Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer is about Rica trying to unravel the story of one of the reform school girls from the first film, who has somehow ended up in a mental institution in Misawa. The plot was much more coherent and conventionally paced, but there was almost no nudity and too much use of guns. Rica 3: Junvenile Lullaby features Rica using a fucking spear gun to bust up a pornography ring that was exploiting girls from the Juvenile Prison. Much better.
Sex & Fury - Reiko Ike plays a fearless swordswoman, pickpocket and gambler named Ocho who is on the trail of her father's killers. She plays some poker and gets whipped naked by Swedish nymphette Christiana Lindberg along the way, and ends up slashing her way to the top of the yakuza syndicate responsible for her father's death. The first major set piece of the movie is a swordfight in a bath house, in which Reiko takes on a dozen or so men completely nude. She also fights the final battle topless, but by the end she is so soaked in gore that you can't even tell. Nice.
Sex & Fury had only one sequel, the ludicrously titled Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture, in which Ocho solves the equally ludicrously named "Crotch Gouge Murders" while doing battle with a bunch of opium smugglers. The story is kinda confusing and some of the sex scenes are just creepy, but there's lots of cool visuals and and swordplay.
Lady Snowblood - Meiko Kaji plays Yuki, a woman who was born in a prison to a widow who died in childbirth. She was then raised and trained as an instrument of vengeance, possessing deadly skills and a concealed sword. This is probably best known as the flick that Quentin Tarantino used as the basis for Kill Bill, even reusing Lady Snowblood's theme song. Meiko Kaji is beautiful, and has a fierce glare that could bore a hole through titanium. She uses that glare to stunning effect as she smoothly dispatches her enemies. Plenty of splashy blood, but this flick also asks some serious questions as Yuki continually ponders the point of avenging the family she never met.
Lady Snowblood was followed by Love Song of Vengeance a year later, a less interesting film in which Yuki gets mixed up a political scheme. It still has no shortage of swordplay, and fans of Meiko Kaji will want to check it out. Meiko Kaji was also famous for playing Sasori (aka Scorpion) in the Female Prisoner 701 series, a woman who breaks out of prison to exact revenge on the men who wrongfully put here there. Maybe for my next blog I'll review those, or some other Women In Prison flicks.
Other notable Pinky Violence films from the era include Stray Cat Rock, Girl Boss Guerilla, Girl Boss Revenge, and Terrifying Girls' High School.
The Pinky Violence genre still exists today in a slightly altered form, way down on the low budget end of the filmmaking spectrum in Japan. Recent efforts use less sex but WAY more bloody gore, often for comedic effect. Movies like Machine Girl, Zombie Hunter Rika, Oneechanbara, Samurai Princess and Tokyo Gore Police all show off sexy female leads unleashing copious amounts of ultraviolence.
I love that shit, it never goes out of style...
Monday, January 18, 2010
He's a Cop, AND a Samurai?
It's TheDenizen again.
OK, enough of the lists. The Year's Best Milkshakes, Top 10 Diseases of the Decade, Greatest Celebrity Haircuts, etc. etc. I've seen a zillion of them in the past month, and I'm sick to death of them. They're usually stupid (in that they list shit I don't care about) and wrong (in that they don't agree with my opinions). I don't need to know the Top 5 Ways to Shave a yak, just tell me the best one. I'm probably only gonna need that kind of information once. So today in the interest of brevity, I'm just going to talk about one movie, but it is unquestionably the best of it's kind.
I like shitty movies, and I've seen a lot of really bad ones. Knowing my unusual cinematic tastes, people often ask me "What is the best 'bad movie' out there"? It's important to state that when I talk about shitty movies, I don't mean overwritten big budget Hollywood star driven ego-projects that tanked, like Ishtar or Gigli...I mean Z-grade schlock filmed for next to nothing that tries really hard to rise above it's limitations and fails spectacularly.
There are lots of great bad movies. 80's slashers produced for short drive-in runs, amateurish Italian and Turkish knockoffs of popular American films, exploitation sleaze churned out for the 70's grindhouses, etc, but one film rises above the creme de la crap. That film is Samurai Cop.
Samurai Cop is about a white cop named Joe who comes to LA to fight the evil Japanese gangs taking over the streets. Despite the fact that we're told several times that Joe has "trained with the Japanese masters", he talks about the code of "Bushida" and cannot pronounce the name of the main bad guy Fujiyama (played by a Latino). The Katana gang (which appears to only have one actual Japanese member) doesn't take kindly to Joe's intrusion into their racket peddling smack to grade school kids, so they send wave after wave of goons to die by Joe's hand.
Samurai Cop is truly wretched in every way. Filmed in the mid 80's and starring Sly Stallone's bodyguard, it never actually played anywhere, only getting a direct to DVD release in the 90's after being discovered in a vault somewhere. Everything is completely amateur hour, from the clunky writing, to the awkward direction, to the wince-inducing acting (Samurai Cop is the only acting credit on imdb for several of the principal actors). This movie wants to be a knockoff of Lethal Weapon so badly, it even has Joe exchanging painful chummy racial banter with a black partner.
Joe dodges bullets during a car chase by ducking and bobbing his head in the driver's seat. The main girl has a giant crocheted lion head on her office wall for no apparent reason. A villain uses a katana to slowly SAW the head off an unconscious guy. One of the female gang memebers only has one line: "The boss is coming", but she gets to use it in about five different scenes. The climactic katana duel was obviously filmed in slow motion and sped WAY up. It's got glaring continuity errors, poorly choreographed fight scenes, ridiculous plot devices, laughable editing, cheesy 80's synth music throughout, and three of the most painfully uncomfortable-to-watch love scenes I've ever witnessed.
It's a fucking classic.
OK, enough of the lists. The Year's Best Milkshakes, Top 10 Diseases of the Decade, Greatest Celebrity Haircuts, etc. etc. I've seen a zillion of them in the past month, and I'm sick to death of them. They're usually stupid (in that they list shit I don't care about) and wrong (in that they don't agree with my opinions). I don't need to know the Top 5 Ways to Shave a yak, just tell me the best one. I'm probably only gonna need that kind of information once. So today in the interest of brevity, I'm just going to talk about one movie, but it is unquestionably the best of it's kind.
I like shitty movies, and I've seen a lot of really bad ones. Knowing my unusual cinematic tastes, people often ask me "What is the best 'bad movie' out there"? It's important to state that when I talk about shitty movies, I don't mean overwritten big budget Hollywood star driven ego-projects that tanked, like Ishtar or Gigli...I mean Z-grade schlock filmed for next to nothing that tries really hard to rise above it's limitations and fails spectacularly.
There are lots of great bad movies. 80's slashers produced for short drive-in runs, amateurish Italian and Turkish knockoffs of popular American films, exploitation sleaze churned out for the 70's grindhouses, etc, but one film rises above the creme de la crap. That film is Samurai Cop.
Samurai Cop is about a white cop named Joe who comes to LA to fight the evil Japanese gangs taking over the streets. Despite the fact that we're told several times that Joe has "trained with the Japanese masters", he talks about the code of "Bushida" and cannot pronounce the name of the main bad guy Fujiyama (played by a Latino). The Katana gang (which appears to only have one actual Japanese member) doesn't take kindly to Joe's intrusion into their racket peddling smack to grade school kids, so they send wave after wave of goons to die by Joe's hand.
Samurai Cop is truly wretched in every way. Filmed in the mid 80's and starring Sly Stallone's bodyguard, it never actually played anywhere, only getting a direct to DVD release in the 90's after being discovered in a vault somewhere. Everything is completely amateur hour, from the clunky writing, to the awkward direction, to the wince-inducing acting (Samurai Cop is the only acting credit on imdb for several of the principal actors). This movie wants to be a knockoff of Lethal Weapon so badly, it even has Joe exchanging painful chummy racial banter with a black partner.
Joe dodges bullets during a car chase by ducking and bobbing his head in the driver's seat. The main girl has a giant crocheted lion head on her office wall for no apparent reason. A villain uses a katana to slowly SAW the head off an unconscious guy. One of the female gang memebers only has one line: "The boss is coming", but she gets to use it in about five different scenes. The climactic katana duel was obviously filmed in slow motion and sped WAY up. It's got glaring continuity errors, poorly choreographed fight scenes, ridiculous plot devices, laughable editing, cheesy 80's synth music throughout, and three of the most painfully uncomfortable-to-watch love scenes I've ever witnessed.
It's a fucking classic.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
TheDenizen talks End of the World
Hello again, ninja dudes.
Gonna change gears this entry and talk about something other than ninjas for once. Today it's all about the Apocalypse, or more specifically, Post-Apocalypse. We all know that Mad Max was fucking awesome, and Road Warrior was even better (let's just pretend that Thunderdome never happened, ok?), and they were both very influential. Since Mad Max movies were relatively cheap to produce and made a shit-ton of money, it was only natural that million crappy knockoffs with tough dudes kicking ass in the wasteland would flood the market shortly thereafter.
And flood the market they did. Italy, Spain and the Philippines started cranking out these shitburgers like there was no tomorrow. Universally cheap and rushed, these flicks are a gold mine for the connoisseur of celluloid abortions like myself. Let's examine a small handful of examples from the Post Apocalypse genre.
2020: Texas Gladiators (1982) - This flick is about a group of 5 Rangers who travel around a post-nuclear war Texas meting out justice in a lawless land. It starts out with an incredible assault on a wasteland church by a horde of slavering mutants (well, guys with green paint on their faces). They crucify the priest, and gangrape one of the nuns while another nun desperately slashes her own throat with a shard of glass to avoid the same fate. The Rangers show up, fill the church with smoke bombs and then use shotguns and machetes to slaughter every single mutant as they run out. Sweet. Sadly the rest of the film doesn't quite live up to the opening, as one of the Rangers goes rogue right away and another quits to join up with a group of civilians trying to defend and repair a factory/refinery. A group of evil bikers led by the rogue Ranger eventually show up and massacre/enslave the civilians, and the remaining 3 Rangers are left to exact bloody revenge. Not bad, but it does drag through the middle a bit. Tons of squibs.
The New Barbarians (1982) - This Z-grade Italian flick is brutal. As in brutally bad. I'm going to spoil the shit out of it here, so if you don't wanna know, skip ahead. After a nuclear holocaust, an evil gang of homosexual bikers dressed as Stormtroopers and calling themselves "The Templars" are on a mission to exterminate the few remaining humans. Into the mix comes Scorpion, an Italian Mad Max wannabe with a badass car and a score to settle with the Templars. He gets captured and RAPED by the Templars, but then gets saved by Fred Fucking Williamson, who chews up the low budget scenery as an invincible archer. They team up and wipe out the Templars in a protracted and ridiculous scene full of guns that go "pew pew". The End. There, I just saved you an hour and a half of corny dialog and awful slow-mo action scenes (and male rape).
Stryker (1983) - They obviously had a bit of a budget for this one, since they had real tanks and an actual Interceptor just like Mad Max's but they must've spent all their money there. The "story" is some ridiculous twaddle about finding a new fresh water source in the aftermath of a nuclear war, but really it's just 90 minutes of bad actors staggering about a gravel pit shooting at each other. They're killing each other over a few drops of water, but no one ever mentions where all the gas for their dozens of vehicles comes from. I had to go back and rewatch several parts because I could barely stay awake during this snooze-fest.
The Warrior and the Princess (1984) - This chunk of schlock is essentially a remake of Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars in a nuclear wasteland setting with David Carradine in the lead role. Carradine is a warrior monk (shocker) who wanders into a dirty little town controlled by two rival factions, both vying for control of the only well in the area. Unbelievably cheap and cheesy, but it does have a mutant chick with four tits.
Recently Post Apocalypse films are back in vogue, with Hollywood throwing some real money at the productions. Current examples of the type include the excellent Children of Men, The Road, and the upcoming Book of Eli with Denzel Washington fucking people up with a machete. Lookin forward to that one.
Also, at some point in the new year, the HeadNinja and myself are planning to post a special review of "Escape from the Bronx", another Italian Post Apocalypse monstrosity. Don't miss it.
Gonna change gears this entry and talk about something other than ninjas for once. Today it's all about the Apocalypse, or more specifically, Post-Apocalypse. We all know that Mad Max was fucking awesome, and Road Warrior was even better (let's just pretend that Thunderdome never happened, ok?), and they were both very influential. Since Mad Max movies were relatively cheap to produce and made a shit-ton of money, it was only natural that million crappy knockoffs with tough dudes kicking ass in the wasteland would flood the market shortly thereafter.
And flood the market they did. Italy, Spain and the Philippines started cranking out these shitburgers like there was no tomorrow. Universally cheap and rushed, these flicks are a gold mine for the connoisseur of celluloid abortions like myself. Let's examine a small handful of examples from the Post Apocalypse genre.
2020: Texas Gladiators (1982) - This flick is about a group of 5 Rangers who travel around a post-nuclear war Texas meting out justice in a lawless land. It starts out with an incredible assault on a wasteland church by a horde of slavering mutants (well, guys with green paint on their faces). They crucify the priest, and gangrape one of the nuns while another nun desperately slashes her own throat with a shard of glass to avoid the same fate. The Rangers show up, fill the church with smoke bombs and then use shotguns and machetes to slaughter every single mutant as they run out. Sweet. Sadly the rest of the film doesn't quite live up to the opening, as one of the Rangers goes rogue right away and another quits to join up with a group of civilians trying to defend and repair a factory/refinery. A group of evil bikers led by the rogue Ranger eventually show up and massacre/enslave the civilians, and the remaining 3 Rangers are left to exact bloody revenge. Not bad, but it does drag through the middle a bit. Tons of squibs.
The New Barbarians (1982) - This Z-grade Italian flick is brutal. As in brutally bad. I'm going to spoil the shit out of it here, so if you don't wanna know, skip ahead. After a nuclear holocaust, an evil gang of homosexual bikers dressed as Stormtroopers and calling themselves "The Templars" are on a mission to exterminate the few remaining humans. Into the mix comes Scorpion, an Italian Mad Max wannabe with a badass car and a score to settle with the Templars. He gets captured and RAPED by the Templars, but then gets saved by Fred Fucking Williamson, who chews up the low budget scenery as an invincible archer. They team up and wipe out the Templars in a protracted and ridiculous scene full of guns that go "pew pew". The End. There, I just saved you an hour and a half of corny dialog and awful slow-mo action scenes (and male rape).
Stryker (1983) - They obviously had a bit of a budget for this one, since they had real tanks and an actual Interceptor just like Mad Max's but they must've spent all their money there. The "story" is some ridiculous twaddle about finding a new fresh water source in the aftermath of a nuclear war, but really it's just 90 minutes of bad actors staggering about a gravel pit shooting at each other. They're killing each other over a few drops of water, but no one ever mentions where all the gas for their dozens of vehicles comes from. I had to go back and rewatch several parts because I could barely stay awake during this snooze-fest.
The Warrior and the Princess (1984) - This chunk of schlock is essentially a remake of Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars in a nuclear wasteland setting with David Carradine in the lead role. Carradine is a warrior monk (shocker) who wanders into a dirty little town controlled by two rival factions, both vying for control of the only well in the area. Unbelievably cheap and cheesy, but it does have a mutant chick with four tits.
Recently Post Apocalypse films are back in vogue, with Hollywood throwing some real money at the productions. Current examples of the type include the excellent Children of Men, The Road, and the upcoming Book of Eli with Denzel Washington fucking people up with a machete. Lookin forward to that one.
Also, at some point in the new year, the HeadNinja and myself are planning to post a special review of "Escape from the Bronx", another Italian Post Apocalypse monstrosity. Don't miss it.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
TheDenizen reviews Ninja Assassin
Well, holy crap.
I just got home from Ninja Assassin, and as I sit down to write this review I am consciously trying to keep the hyperbole in check...but fuck that noise, son, Ninja Assassin ROCKED and is quite possibly the best ninja movie ever. I've watched a lot of ninja flicks over the past couple of weeks in anticpiation of this one, so let's run down the standard checklist:
Ninja that melt effortlessly into the shadows? Check.
Insane ninja vs ninja battles? Check.
A modern day police force bleating on about "Ninjas in this day and age? Preposterous!" Check.
Multiple shuriken flurries? Check.
Brutal training sequences? Check.
Cheesy, over the top killings? CHECK.
If you don't like graphic beheadings and flying limbs and splashy buckets of bright red blood, stay far away from Ninja Assassin. Yes, the story is kinda trite, some of the dialog stinks and the acting is nothing special...but it's a goddamn ninja movie, not Shakespeare. A ninja movie only needs enough story to hang its fight scenes on, and Ninja Assassin succeeds at this in spades.
The fight scenes themselves are wonderful. Vicious, frantic, and gory as hell. I've read several reviews complaining of choppy choreography, rapid-fire editing and poor lighting during the action scenes. Those reviewers are retards. Listen: the days of classically trained martial arts actors performing long, uninterrupted takes of fighting are pretty much gone. Tony Jaa, Donnie Yen and a handful of indy film guys are all that's left of that tradition. The rapid cutting is here to stay, but Ninja Assassin does it very well. The movements are well choreographed and the action is relatively easy to follow. If you want to see examples of poorly edited fights where you can't tell what the fuck is going on, rent Batman Begins or the latest Bourne atrocity.
The fights in Ninja Assassin are very busy visually, with lots (and lots) of CGI blood and weapons and fire filling every frame, but you can always tell who is who and where they are in relation to each other. The actions performed before and after each edit actually match up to form a coherent looking move (Batman Begins utterly failed at this). Korean pop idol Rain trained like a mofo for the action scenes in this flick and it shows...he is ripped and totally believable as an action star. And yes, some of the fight scenes are shot in darkened rooms, but it's just to show off how badass the ninja look slipping in and out of shadows. It's pretty badass.
In short, peoples critiques of this movie are stupid. It's an incredibly over the top dopey ninja film with extreme violence and gore. It rules. Go see it.
I just got home from Ninja Assassin, and as I sit down to write this review I am consciously trying to keep the hyperbole in check...but fuck that noise, son, Ninja Assassin ROCKED and is quite possibly the best ninja movie ever. I've watched a lot of ninja flicks over the past couple of weeks in anticpiation of this one, so let's run down the standard checklist:
Ninja that melt effortlessly into the shadows? Check.
Insane ninja vs ninja battles? Check.
A modern day police force bleating on about "Ninjas in this day and age? Preposterous!" Check.
Multiple shuriken flurries? Check.
Brutal training sequences? Check.
Cheesy, over the top killings? CHECK.
If you don't like graphic beheadings and flying limbs and splashy buckets of bright red blood, stay far away from Ninja Assassin. Yes, the story is kinda trite, some of the dialog stinks and the acting is nothing special...but it's a goddamn ninja movie, not Shakespeare. A ninja movie only needs enough story to hang its fight scenes on, and Ninja Assassin succeeds at this in spades.
The fight scenes themselves are wonderful. Vicious, frantic, and gory as hell. I've read several reviews complaining of choppy choreography, rapid-fire editing and poor lighting during the action scenes. Those reviewers are retards. Listen: the days of classically trained martial arts actors performing long, uninterrupted takes of fighting are pretty much gone. Tony Jaa, Donnie Yen and a handful of indy film guys are all that's left of that tradition. The rapid cutting is here to stay, but Ninja Assassin does it very well. The movements are well choreographed and the action is relatively easy to follow. If you want to see examples of poorly edited fights where you can't tell what the fuck is going on, rent Batman Begins or the latest Bourne atrocity.
The fights in Ninja Assassin are very busy visually, with lots (and lots) of CGI blood and weapons and fire filling every frame, but you can always tell who is who and where they are in relation to each other. The actions performed before and after each edit actually match up to form a coherent looking move (Batman Begins utterly failed at this). Korean pop idol Rain trained like a mofo for the action scenes in this flick and it shows...he is ripped and totally believable as an action star. And yes, some of the fight scenes are shot in darkened rooms, but it's just to show off how badass the ninja look slipping in and out of shadows. It's pretty badass.
In short, peoples critiques of this movie are stupid. It's an incredibly over the top dopey ninja film with extreme violence and gore. It rules. Go see it.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
TheDenizen talks Ninja Part II
Alright punks, TheDenizen is back with more movie reviews.
I mentioned in my first blog that I like violence, and I really, really do. To me, violence is one of the few bright beacons of joy in an existence completely saturated with stupid people doing stupid things. I hate people in general, and that tends to go hand in hand with enjoying seeing extreme violence inflicted upon them.
It's for this reason that I still haven't seen Ninja Assassin: there's nothing worse than sitting in a movie theater crowded with idiots, so I have a cardinal rule about NOT seeing movies in the theater until they've been out for at least a week. The crowds thin out significantly by then and I can choke down my murderous rage for longer. I made an exception to this rule ONCE in the last 10 years for LOTR: The Two Towers and it was 3.5 hours of torture, as I spent the entire film's running time stifling the urge to savagely donkey punch the retarded chatty fucks filling the row in front of me.
Anyways, I'm finally seeing Ninja Assassin tomorrow most likely (and will post my thoughts to compare/contrast with the HeadNinja), but I've spent a bit of time over the last few days revisting more old school ninja *ahem* "classics" to put me in the mood. Let's get to it.
Ninja Terminator - Godfrey Ho is like the king of the shitty 80's ninja film, and this is one of his finest hours. He takes a bunch of footage from an old 70's triad movie, shoots a bit of new ninja footage, and then splices it all together in the hopes it somehow makes sense using voice overs. It doesn't (he also blatantly rips off music from Star Wars and Clockwork Orange). This flick concerns a band of three ninja who betray their clan and steal the three part Golden Ninja statue, which gives the possessor physical immunity. The rest of the movie is just various ninja/triad groups fighting and trying to steal the pieces back.
Richard Harrison looks ridiculously out of place as a middle aged white ninja named Harry, who delivers orders to his underlings via his Garfield phone and sports more eyeliner than BigKaboom at a Smiths concert. The evil Ninja Empire issues death threats by sending little tiny robots to deliver menacing VHS tapes to their victims - seriously, they look like Transformers toys. There's a totally pointless G-rated sex scene between two minor characters, scored with "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.
Lots of cool ninja stuff with smoke bombs, shuriken, caltraps, etc at the beginning and end, but most of the middle is taken up by the kung fu fighting of the older triad picture. Thankfully those fights are plentiful and actually quite well choreographed and filmed. Jaguar Wong is a badass dude who smirks constantly while beating the shit out of everyone, and the main villain is played by Korean superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. Lee played Silver Fox in the Secret Rivals films, but for some reason he wears a preposterous blonde ladies wig and a white dress suit for 90% of this movie. I'm sure it made sense to Godfrey.
Life of Ninja - I had great hopes for this movie: a kung fu/ninja flick starring Chen Kwan Tai and Yasuaki Kurata? Can you say "massive fucking potential"? It starts off with a bunch of ninja in a cave going through rigorous training exercises - nice. Then about 30 seconds later any notion of this being a serious movie are tossed gleefully out the window as the focus changes to female ninja and their training methods. This includes a mud wrestling match to the death that plays over most of the opening credits, and repeated half naked dipping into an icy pool. Thankfully after that, the weak exploitation stuff falls to the wayside and unadulterated asskicking takes over.
The plot concerns a total prick of a Hong Kong businessman who is being targeted by Ninja for assassination, and the Chinese kendo instructor (Chen Kwan Tai) he hires to protect him. Lots of cheese on display here, like when a female ninja hypnotizes another girl with bright blue orbs that shoot from her eyes, or when a guy gets attacked with a machete in the shower and responds by spraying his attacker with the shower head. There's also plenty of brutal fighting in the flick, including an insane beatdown when Tai takes on about 15 ninja single-handed, using only a pair of tonfa. HELL YEAH. Of course the final battle between Tai and Kurata is incredible, although for some reason, they filmed about 1/3 of it in the pitch black, and you can't see a thing. When the lights are on though, the two veteran screen fighters put on a clinic, with Kurata even busting out some lightning fast monkey style at the end. Me likey.
Ninja 3: The Domination - This flick starts out really promising with a ninja slaughtering about 30 people at a golf course, including a bunch of cops, before being cornered and gunned down. The ninja sees a girl before he dies and magically transmits his spirit into her, and the next 45 minutes of the movie is the girl and her cop boyfriend trying to figure out why she's suddenly got an interest in Japanese swords and keeps blacking out. There's all kinds of stupid Poltergiest/Exorcist crap in there to pad the running time, plus Sho Kosugi standing around looking tough in an eye-patch. Finally around the hour mark, we get another police massacre at a graveyard before Sho goes into action...first fighting the girl to force the ninja spirit back into it's own body in a blur of cheap effects, and then kicking his ass.
All around, a pretty shit movie with way too much melodrama and not nearly enough ninja antics. It wasn't even goofy enough to laugh at, except for the clothes people are wearing in the gym club scene. Lucinda Dickey plays the main chick, and she's kinda cute, like a mix of a young Geena Davis and Linda Hamilton, but she never gets her cans out, and she falls for this dweeby little guy with a furry back and shoulders. Weak. At least lots of people get killed.
And there you have it. My bloodlust is whetted. My shuriken sharpened. I've got my ninja headband. Ninja Assassin here I come.
I mentioned in my first blog that I like violence, and I really, really do. To me, violence is one of the few bright beacons of joy in an existence completely saturated with stupid people doing stupid things. I hate people in general, and that tends to go hand in hand with enjoying seeing extreme violence inflicted upon them.
It's for this reason that I still haven't seen Ninja Assassin: there's nothing worse than sitting in a movie theater crowded with idiots, so I have a cardinal rule about NOT seeing movies in the theater until they've been out for at least a week. The crowds thin out significantly by then and I can choke down my murderous rage for longer. I made an exception to this rule ONCE in the last 10 years for LOTR: The Two Towers and it was 3.5 hours of torture, as I spent the entire film's running time stifling the urge to savagely donkey punch the retarded chatty fucks filling the row in front of me.
Anyways, I'm finally seeing Ninja Assassin tomorrow most likely (and will post my thoughts to compare/contrast with the HeadNinja), but I've spent a bit of time over the last few days revisting more old school ninja *ahem* "classics" to put me in the mood. Let's get to it.
Ninja Terminator - Godfrey Ho is like the king of the shitty 80's ninja film, and this is one of his finest hours. He takes a bunch of footage from an old 70's triad movie, shoots a bit of new ninja footage, and then splices it all together in the hopes it somehow makes sense using voice overs. It doesn't (he also blatantly rips off music from Star Wars and Clockwork Orange). This flick concerns a band of three ninja who betray their clan and steal the three part Golden Ninja statue, which gives the possessor physical immunity. The rest of the movie is just various ninja/triad groups fighting and trying to steal the pieces back.
Richard Harrison looks ridiculously out of place as a middle aged white ninja named Harry, who delivers orders to his underlings via his Garfield phone and sports more eyeliner than BigKaboom at a Smiths concert. The evil Ninja Empire issues death threats by sending little tiny robots to deliver menacing VHS tapes to their victims - seriously, they look like Transformers toys. There's a totally pointless G-rated sex scene between two minor characters, scored with "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.
Lots of cool ninja stuff with smoke bombs, shuriken, caltraps, etc at the beginning and end, but most of the middle is taken up by the kung fu fighting of the older triad picture. Thankfully those fights are plentiful and actually quite well choreographed and filmed. Jaguar Wong is a badass dude who smirks constantly while beating the shit out of everyone, and the main villain is played by Korean superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. Lee played Silver Fox in the Secret Rivals films, but for some reason he wears a preposterous blonde ladies wig and a white dress suit for 90% of this movie. I'm sure it made sense to Godfrey.
Life of Ninja - I had great hopes for this movie: a kung fu/ninja flick starring Chen Kwan Tai and Yasuaki Kurata? Can you say "massive fucking potential"? It starts off with a bunch of ninja in a cave going through rigorous training exercises - nice. Then about 30 seconds later any notion of this being a serious movie are tossed gleefully out the window as the focus changes to female ninja and their training methods. This includes a mud wrestling match to the death that plays over most of the opening credits, and repeated half naked dipping into an icy pool. Thankfully after that, the weak exploitation stuff falls to the wayside and unadulterated asskicking takes over.
The plot concerns a total prick of a Hong Kong businessman who is being targeted by Ninja for assassination, and the Chinese kendo instructor (Chen Kwan Tai) he hires to protect him. Lots of cheese on display here, like when a female ninja hypnotizes another girl with bright blue orbs that shoot from her eyes, or when a guy gets attacked with a machete in the shower and responds by spraying his attacker with the shower head. There's also plenty of brutal fighting in the flick, including an insane beatdown when Tai takes on about 15 ninja single-handed, using only a pair of tonfa. HELL YEAH. Of course the final battle between Tai and Kurata is incredible, although for some reason, they filmed about 1/3 of it in the pitch black, and you can't see a thing. When the lights are on though, the two veteran screen fighters put on a clinic, with Kurata even busting out some lightning fast monkey style at the end. Me likey.
Ninja 3: The Domination - This flick starts out really promising with a ninja slaughtering about 30 people at a golf course, including a bunch of cops, before being cornered and gunned down. The ninja sees a girl before he dies and magically transmits his spirit into her, and the next 45 minutes of the movie is the girl and her cop boyfriend trying to figure out why she's suddenly got an interest in Japanese swords and keeps blacking out. There's all kinds of stupid Poltergiest/Exorcist crap in there to pad the running time, plus Sho Kosugi standing around looking tough in an eye-patch. Finally around the hour mark, we get another police massacre at a graveyard before Sho goes into action...first fighting the girl to force the ninja spirit back into it's own body in a blur of cheap effects, and then kicking his ass.
All around, a pretty shit movie with way too much melodrama and not nearly enough ninja antics. It wasn't even goofy enough to laugh at, except for the clothes people are wearing in the gym club scene. Lucinda Dickey plays the main chick, and she's kinda cute, like a mix of a young Geena Davis and Linda Hamilton, but she never gets her cans out, and she falls for this dweeby little guy with a furry back and shoulders. Weak. At least lots of people get killed.
And there you have it. My bloodlust is whetted. My shuriken sharpened. I've got my ninja headband. Ninja Assassin here I come.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
TheDenizen talks Ninja
Beatings and Salutations to the readership of KBN! My name is TheDenizen and I like violence.
I'm also a junkie for movies, so violent movies are naturally up my alley. I like 'em in all shapes and sizes: Big Hollywood productions, low budget indys, foreign films, you name it. As long as there are several protracted scenes of someone doing grievous bodily harm to someone else, I'm all over it. That includes westerns, gore and horror flicks, kung fu, exploitation, crime/heist movies, or basically anything with samurai, ninja or Japanese schoolgirls.
Thus my tenuous link to Kidnapped By Ninjas. I'll be posting semi regular film reviews of whatever I happen to be watching. Sometimes they'll be detailed, and sometimes I'll post a group of themed capsule reviews. I'm telling you now though, I'm not going to bother reviewing huge blockbusters unless they are of extreme interest: go look up e-pinions or some shit if you wanna read about Twilight or the new Harry Potter flick.
My interests generally lie in the seedier underbelly of world cinema. Schlocky, micro budgeted amateur productions and trashy sleaze are much more likely to be highlighted than any Michael Bay movie. Giddy up. Hopefully I can turn some of you lovely folks on to a few of the lesser known films that so enrich my life.
With that out of the way, let's get this ball rolling...
Since this is Kidnapped by Ninjas! let's talk ninja flicks. The Ninja is enjoying a resurgence in popularity recently the likes of which hasn't been seen since the mid 1980s, largely due to the recent film Ninja Assassin (of course, there's also the whole lame internet war between ninjas and pirates, but screw that). Ninja Assassin might be grabbing the headlines these days, but let's have a look at a handful of ninja films from days gone by:
Samurai Spy (1965) - Awesome ninja action from director Masahiro Shinoda. This flick introduces all the cool ninja conventions that were staples by the time the 80s came along and ninja flicks were being cranked out by the dozen. Reverse jumping, shuriken flurries, rope darts, it's all here and filmed with incredible style. The plot is a little convoluted and deals with samurai politics in the wake of the Battle of Sekigahara, but it doesn't really matter. This flick is more concerned with making ninjas look cool as hell.
Chinese Super Ninjas aka Five Element Ninjas (1982) - pretty sweet Shaw brothers movie from the 80s about a gang of color-coded ninjas using unique elemental attacks to wipe out a clan of Chinese dudes. Tons of special weapons and cool moves as the ninjas kill just about everyone in the first 30 minutes. Then the last couple of guys figure out ways around all their individual ninja tricks and kill all the ninjas. Simple, but brilliantly executed with plenty of spraying blood and guts.
Duel to the Death (1983) - Two words: NINJA MAYHEM. This flick has so much incredible ninja crap, it hurts. There's a giant ninja, exploding ninjas, ninjas who fly on paper kites, Bugs Bunny-style burrowing ninjas, a naked female ninja with a huge net, you name it. It's Japan vs China in a sword swinging, limb hewing, finger ripping extravaganza. A bit talky in the middle, but the ninjas more than make up for that.
Red Shadow (2001) - This movie was awesome for about 20 minutes, then it turned into a painful endurance test. After a bit of cool stylized ninja action, we are forced to hear endless moaning and moralizing from ninjas who don't want to kill! WTF? Just kill stuff and shut up, you're fucking ninjas! The attempts at comedy fall completely flat. A big disappointment, I can't believe I finished the whole thing.
Ninja Checkmate (1979) - I get burned blind buying shit all the time. I see a cheap DVD with "ninja" in the title and my will melts. This flick actually doesn't have a single ninja in it, but was just a random English title slapped on an imported kung fu DVD from China. I mention it only to highlight this annoying and devious practice of DVD distributors. That being said, this film (aka Mystery of Chess Boxing) is actually an excellent old school kung fu movie starring Mark and Jack Long. Worth checking out, despite the dearth of ninja related content.
I know I've skipped the well known North American series of Ninja movies starring Sho Kosugi, but I figure if you don't know about THOSE already you have no hope.
See you all next time, I gotta go watch someone get their face ripped off.
I'm also a junkie for movies, so violent movies are naturally up my alley. I like 'em in all shapes and sizes: Big Hollywood productions, low budget indys, foreign films, you name it. As long as there are several protracted scenes of someone doing grievous bodily harm to someone else, I'm all over it. That includes westerns, gore and horror flicks, kung fu, exploitation, crime/heist movies, or basically anything with samurai, ninja or Japanese schoolgirls.
Thus my tenuous link to Kidnapped By Ninjas. I'll be posting semi regular film reviews of whatever I happen to be watching. Sometimes they'll be detailed, and sometimes I'll post a group of themed capsule reviews. I'm telling you now though, I'm not going to bother reviewing huge blockbusters unless they are of extreme interest: go look up e-pinions or some shit if you wanna read about Twilight or the new Harry Potter flick.
My interests generally lie in the seedier underbelly of world cinema. Schlocky, micro budgeted amateur productions and trashy sleaze are much more likely to be highlighted than any Michael Bay movie. Giddy up. Hopefully I can turn some of you lovely folks on to a few of the lesser known films that so enrich my life.
With that out of the way, let's get this ball rolling...
Since this is Kidnapped by Ninjas! let's talk ninja flicks. The Ninja is enjoying a resurgence in popularity recently the likes of which hasn't been seen since the mid 1980s, largely due to the recent film Ninja Assassin (of course, there's also the whole lame internet war between ninjas and pirates, but screw that). Ninja Assassin might be grabbing the headlines these days, but let's have a look at a handful of ninja films from days gone by:
Samurai Spy (1965) - Awesome ninja action from director Masahiro Shinoda. This flick introduces all the cool ninja conventions that were staples by the time the 80s came along and ninja flicks were being cranked out by the dozen. Reverse jumping, shuriken flurries, rope darts, it's all here and filmed with incredible style. The plot is a little convoluted and deals with samurai politics in the wake of the Battle of Sekigahara, but it doesn't really matter. This flick is more concerned with making ninjas look cool as hell.
Chinese Super Ninjas aka Five Element Ninjas (1982) - pretty sweet Shaw brothers movie from the 80s about a gang of color-coded ninjas using unique elemental attacks to wipe out a clan of Chinese dudes. Tons of special weapons and cool moves as the ninjas kill just about everyone in the first 30 minutes. Then the last couple of guys figure out ways around all their individual ninja tricks and kill all the ninjas. Simple, but brilliantly executed with plenty of spraying blood and guts.
Duel to the Death (1983) - Two words: NINJA MAYHEM. This flick has so much incredible ninja crap, it hurts. There's a giant ninja, exploding ninjas, ninjas who fly on paper kites, Bugs Bunny-style burrowing ninjas, a naked female ninja with a huge net, you name it. It's Japan vs China in a sword swinging, limb hewing, finger ripping extravaganza. A bit talky in the middle, but the ninjas more than make up for that.
Red Shadow (2001) - This movie was awesome for about 20 minutes, then it turned into a painful endurance test. After a bit of cool stylized ninja action, we are forced to hear endless moaning and moralizing from ninjas who don't want to kill! WTF? Just kill stuff and shut up, you're fucking ninjas! The attempts at comedy fall completely flat. A big disappointment, I can't believe I finished the whole thing.
Ninja Checkmate (1979) - I get burned blind buying shit all the time. I see a cheap DVD with "ninja" in the title and my will melts. This flick actually doesn't have a single ninja in it, but was just a random English title slapped on an imported kung fu DVD from China. I mention it only to highlight this annoying and devious practice of DVD distributors. That being said, this film (aka Mystery of Chess Boxing) is actually an excellent old school kung fu movie starring Mark and Jack Long. Worth checking out, despite the dearth of ninja related content.
I know I've skipped the well known North American series of Ninja movies starring Sho Kosugi, but I figure if you don't know about THOSE already you have no hope.
See you all next time, I gotta go watch someone get their face ripped off.
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