Sunday, January 28, 2018

245. Shaolin Deadly Kicks

245. Shaolin Deadly Kicks aka Tai ji ba jiao (1977)
Director: Wu Ma
Writer: Hsiang Kan Chu
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org removed

A gang steals a treasure map and divides it into 8 parts, pledging to reunite in 3 years to claim the reward. 3 years later, a dogged cop is hunting down each and every member.

Not much to tell about this movie. A gang called “The Dragons” breaks into a house, steals a map, and kills the man who lives there. The gang leader didn’t want anyone to be murdered, but it happened anyway. Since the murder is going to put increased attention on the gang, the leader decides to wait three years before following the map to the treasure. Some members disagree so the leader breaks the map into eight pieces, giving one to each member.

Just shy of three years later, one of the gang is caught robbing a place and put in jail. He breaks out, but learns that his escape was a scam engineered by a cop hunting down all eight members of the gang. They fight, cop wins, crooks dies.

And that formula generally plays out through the rest of the film. Eventually the cop is down to only two pieces, but is gravely injured. He’s taken in by a woman he’d joined with earlier to beat up some thugs and it turns out her father is the gang leader. The other surviving member arrives as well. The father wants to be done with his criminal past and gives both his piece and all the pieces the cop has found to the final member, but the final member decides to kill the father anyway. The cop and daughter track the killer down, face off against him, and eventually kill him. THE END.

The cop is after too many people. If this were a tv series or several movies, you could get away with eight distinct villains, but this is a ninety minute movie. Assuming you have ten minutes for set-up and credits, that gives ten minutes per villain. Granted, you can do incredible things in short films, but it’s hard to make each villain unique and threatening when they have so little time.

Not that the movie doesn’t try. The cop finds one crook caring for the crook’s blind mother and ailing son. The cop offers to leave the guy alone and provide money for a doctor for the boy if the crook just hands over the map piece. The crook declines the offer, they fight, he dies, but it’s a character moment and an attempt to differentiate him from the other characters. The reason it fails is that it’s so short. We don’t see the crook weighing the decision, the consequences of the cop killing him, or much of the reaction from the crook’s wife. It’s a good impulse, well-executed, but just hamstrung by the available time.

On top of that, the fight choreography didn’t pull me in. The cop had a specific move he’d make with his foot just before he was about to fight, but that was the only distinction. I may not understand martial arts movies enough to tell what is good and bad choreography. Tiger Love is obviously bad with hits that don’t land and stuntmen clearly waiting for the swing to come in, and Shaolin Deadly Kicks at least doesn’t fall into that trap. However, it’s mostly people hitting each other. Very few of the encounters showed any invention or novelty.

In the end, it’s so-so—not that good, but not terrible. I’m sure you could find ways to riff it if you were so inclined and the movie seems to be public domain so there’s fun to be had with that. I’ve added a copy to archive.org here for ease of use, but it’s not something I’d suggest going out of your way to watch. (edit 3/3/20: the film has been removed from the Internet Archive for reasons unknown)

Saturday, January 27, 2018

244. Jocks

244. Jocks (1986)
Director: Steven Carver
Writers: Michael Lanahan and David Oas
From: Cult Cinema

A ragtag college tennis team has to win the conference championships in Vegas or lose their scholarships. But will they be able to withstand the temptation of Sin City?

To switch things up, here’s what the plot should have been:

LA College hasn’t won a championship since Coach Bettlebom took over the athletic department nearly a decade ago. The college president, played by Christopher Lee, demands Bettlebom produce a trophy to keep the alumni donations coming in. The school’s best chance is the tennis team, but Bettlebom hates them: partly because he thinks tennis is a “pansy” sport, and partly because he thinks the team is a bunch of degenerates, none more degenerate than team star, the hotshot “Kid.”

The team is a rag-tag bunch of freaks who are serious about tennis, and nothing else. Their antics on and off the court give the tennis coach, Richard Roundtee, panic attacks since his job is on the line, but when the game is on the line, the Kid’s talent always gets them the win. Among the freaks is Jeff, a clean-cut milquetoast who could be great if he believed in himself, but is generally treated like a twerpy little brother by the Kid.

As the competition approaches, the Kid’s cavalier behavior puts the team’s success in jeopardy and particularly harms Jeff. Even though Jeff’s always working hard, he’s the perpetual loser. He’s engaged to the girl of his dreams, but she dumps him. He makes it into a frat, but it’s the one that doesn’t party. He’s got a 4.0, but he’s dependent upon this tennis scholarship. Just before the trip, he receives his scholarship check to pay for tuition and the Kid convinces Jeff to let Kid bet it on blackjack. It goes how you’d expect.

With everyone at their lowest—the coach’s job being threatened by Bettlebom, Jeff disconsolate about the Kid losing the money, the team facing defeat—the Kid is offered the chance to transfer to an elite school with a winning tennis team: full ride and brilliant future if he throws the match. He considers it because it’s the best option for him, but recognizes there are values higher than selfishness and supports his team. In the final doubles match, the Kid is doing great, but it’s Jeff who delivers the winning shot. And, because it’s the 80’s and some plot contrivance like this was set up earlier, someone gives Jeff a bunch of money that covers his losses. I don’t know, some sad sack to whom Jeff gave his last dollar after the Kid screwed him ended up turning that buck into ten grand on the slots and wants to repay his kindness.

The team is saved, the school gets their trophy, and the tennis coach is promoted to Bettlebom’s position. The girl who’d been wanting the Kid to live up to his moral potential shows up and the two leave together. THE END of a cut-and-paste 80’s teen sports movie, but entertaining enough for what it is. These formulas developed for a reason—they have a fundamental narrative satisfaction. All the parts kind of fit together.

Now, here’s what really happened:

The start with Lee and Bettlebom is largely the same, but Bettlebom never comes around or recognizes his fate is tied to the tennis team. He’s always looking for ways to undermine the team and get them out of the tournament. Roundtree, who’s given nothing to do in this movie, never gets that stressed over his players’ irresponsibility. They’re a rag-tag group of non-traditional players: the Kid, Jeff, Chito—a Hispanic player, Andy—an African-American player, Ripper—large and angry (and familiar), and Tex—who isn’t distinct from the Kid.

When they play, they’re supposed to be great, but we don’t see that. The Kid doesn’t excel so much as trick his opponent into getting distracted by a girl in the stands. Andy, when he starts to lose, pretends to be gay to discomfit his opponent and flounces around the court. Tex suggests his opponent make the game “interesting” by putting an absurd amount of money on it, because he’s apparently rich or something, and that intimidates his opponent into losing. Finally Chito, prays theatrically in Spanish before the match and then wins in conjunction with that… somehow? Ripper just brutalizes his opponent and Jeff gets pushed around by his. Ultimately, nothing compelling happens on the tennis court.

They’re in Vegas, though, so surely things will happen there! Jeff did get his $3,000 tuition check at the beginning and the Kid says he can use it while playing Blackjack. Then Jeff gives him the money because, inexplicably, he’s feeling lucky and trusts the Kid. Then the Kid kills it at Blackjack, is solicited by a woman who, whoops!, turns out to be a man in drag because it’s 1986 and the transphobic trope of “the trap” is still funny. The movie must think it’s hilarious because the Kid isn’t fooled, Bettlebom is, and the final scene is the transvestite sitting down with Christopher Lee for drinks.

After much non-incident, they go to the final championship, lose the first round because all their tricks are matched by people doing the same thing (Andy is set against an actually gay person (?) leading him to use a homophobic slur, Chito faces off against a devout Jewish player and loses, Tex suggests a $100 wager and his opponent counters with $1,000 deflating Tex, and the Kid plays poorly, potentially throwing the match). As they go in to play doubles, the team finds out that the Kid has placed a bet against them (even though it was placed by the opposing team as a blackmail trick), and they have to win every set. They do, Bettlebom fires Richard Roundtree anyway, is approached by Christopher Lee to discuss something, and then the inevitable scene of Bettlebom getting chewed out and Roundtree being elevated is missing.

No, I literally think it’s missing. Lee says he wants to talk to Bettlebom, they go to Bettlebom’s hotel room, Bettlebom sees incriminating pictures of himself taped all over the walls, and suggests he and Lee have their conversation in the bar instead. Lee doesn’t see the pictures and we don’t see the conversation. All that happens is they sit at different tables, Lee is approached by the transvestite and Bettlebom spills his drink. THE END.

How do you fuck this up so badly? It’s a simple plot simply done: have goofy characters being goofy in Vegas and on the tennis court. Have the seeming villain of the piece, Bettlebom, initially bad-mouthing the team and then becoming sycophantic when he realizes his fate is tied to theirs. Have the team they’re facing be real dicks so there’s a slobs vs. snobs conflict. I mean, you’ve already got Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds so you have someone on your cast who can tell you how it’s done. Plus you’ve got Richard “Motherfucking Shaft” Roundtree, and all you can think to do with him is have him chuckle and shake his head in jovial disapproval?

This isn’t a movie that gets it so wrong that it’s a compelling train wreck, it’s a movie that fails to rise up to the low, low bar it sets for itself. The movie isn’t just incompetent, isn’t just lazy, it’s seemingly resentful of the expectation that it work up the energy to shuffle through the perfunctory scenes it needs to have to reach ninety minutes. They can’t even get the tennis shots right.

The co-writer, Michael Lanahan was one (of several!) tennis coordinators on the film and not only does all the tennis footage look like garbage (these actors can’t play), they never give out any of the scores. You don’t know when anybody’s winning or losing, you just see montages of serves, volleys, and misses. How’s the game going? Does this shot matter? Is this match point? If you can ever tell, you’ve a better eye than me.

Look how long this is and I haven’t even gotten to the casual racism, sexism, and homophobia although maybe that’s a given considering it’s a lazy, lazy 80’s comedy. It’s garbage. Avoid it.

Sunday, January 21, 2018

243. Robo Vampire

243. Robo Vampire (1988)
Director: Godfrey Ho
Writer: William Palmer
From: Sci-Fi Invasion

An anti-drug team turns one of its fallen members into a cyborg to combat drug dealers smuggling drugs in vampires. Meanwhile, one of the agents is kidnapped by the cartel and a team of mercenaries is dispatched to save her.

I know that capsule synopsis makes no sense and I’ll be straight with you: the movie doesn’t clarify it. I have a job to do, though, and that’s to describe this movie!

Sooooooooo… yeah.

Cold open on a man being led somewhere at gun point by two white men in US Army uniforms. They disturb a coffin and a Chinese hopping vampire jumps out. The unarmed man runs away as the two uniform-wearing men shoot at the vampire and eventually get killed by it. Title card!

Cut to Ko, the drug lord who looks like Matthew McConaughey’s greasy cousin (no images provided, you have to find and confirm for yourself), who tells his underlings that he’s ordered the Daoist to train vampires to fight the drug agents.

I rewound that part several times to see if I was hearing right.

Cut to the cellar of the vampires where a couple of lackeys are placing drugs in the coffins. Vampires awaken, Daoist monk comes in and puts them back in their place. Later, when he’s going to demonstrate the vampires’ powers, the ghost of a woman attacks him because she was betrothed to one of the vampires before he died and, since the monk has brought him back as a vampire, they’ve been denied the opportunity to spend eternity together. She fights the monk, the monk raises her vampire ex who refuses to attack her, and the monk agrees to marry the two to each other.

Between those two vampire scenes with the monk, the monk is transporting some drugs and gets caught in an ambush by the drug agents. He summons some vampires who kill the agents and one of the bodies is used in an experiment to create a mechanized human.

I was watching this alone and still shouted, “What the fuck?” as though someone would answer my question.

The scientist glues together discarded mannequin parts and the cut-rate RoboCop rises looking like samurai cosplay made from disposable baking tins and duct tape.

Meanwhile, or later, or elsewhere, I don’t even know at this point, the drug dealers break into a church and demand the priest tell them where he’s hiding the drugs. He says there aren’t any and, in the process of wrecking the place, they find the drugs stashed in the cross hanging over the altar. They kill him, but a woman jumps out from the back and shoots nearly all the thugs. She’s captured though and it turns out she’s a drug agent (but then why was she in the church that was hiding drugs?). The cartel subjects her to water torture to make her reveal the names of the other agents.

How am I still describing this movie? I’m not even at the halfway point!

All right. A mercenary is hired to bring the agent back. He meets up with people he knows who have their own grudges against the drug dealers and, through the standard action movie events, ends up saving the agents and killing all the gang members at the hideout. THE END for that part and, no, vampires and robots never play a part in it.

The vampires and the robot face off several times to no great effect. Bullets don’t hurt the vampires and the robot can’t get killed so those sequences just happen then peter out. Ultimately the monk is betrayed by the woman’s ghost and the robot sets the monk's body on fire. No real resolution for the robot, ghost, or vampires, but the movie’s hit the ninety-minute mark, so THE END.

Ah, Godfrey Ho, where even the English-language footage is dubbed by voices that don’t match. I’d always heard Ho constructed his movies from bits and pieces of other films, but the other movies I’d watched of his were at once more subtle and more overt than this. Ninja Champion and Ninja Empire were largely their own movies with an extraneous ninja plot filmed and spliced in. You could take those moments out and have essentially the same film.

This movie, though, is almost a masterpiece of editing. You don’t just have the separate RoboCop vs. vampires and rescue mission action movies, you have scenes that are clearly composed of shots from at least two different movies. Intellectually, it was compelling because I kept looking for the seams and trying to figure out what shot was from which movie. Narratively, it’s incomprehensible.

With all the cutting, a lot of content gets lost. I don’t know if my attention wandered (I was getting into some knitting while watching this flick, yo), but at some point in the rescue plot the drug dealer’s thug that kidnapped the agent went rogue and started helping the drug agents. Also, characters got separated from the group, they arrived in inexplicable locations, and I never knew what was going on. Then we’d cut back to hopping vampires and JiffyPop RoboCop. What was any of this?

The movie is absurd and I found it laugh-out-loud funny so it’s a recommend on that level. The movie is not, in any way, good, but it’s serviceable for a bad movie fix or as something to make fun of. Apart from that it’s a little too disjointed for watching on its own.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

242. Tiger Love

242. Tiger Love aka Ren hu lian (1977)
Directors: Kuang Hui and Yi-Hsiu Lin
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

A man raised by his mother and a tiger returns to his village to live with people only to end up in the midst of a generations-long battle between two families.

An inherently confusing film that may be rendered more incomprehensible by the dubbing. I’m going to do my best. This movie has basically three plots that don’t exactly relate to one another, but don’t weave together either.

The movie opens with a couple being chased by a small gang. She’s betrothed to her cousin but loves the man she’s with. They all end up at the edge of a cliff, the beloved is attacked, presumed dead, and the woman jumps over the edge. Instead of dying, though, she lands in a tree where a tiger finds her. She’s so scared that she wets herself, the urine spilling onto the tiger’s face. When she wakes up again, she’s in the tiger’s den and remembers a legend that if a girl kisses a tiger, the tiger will be her servant for life.

While that rhymes with kiss… Never mind.

She raises her son with the tiger and the boy learns kung fu by mimicking the big cat. For simplicity, let’s start calling the kid Tiger Boy. When he turns twenty, she sends him to the village to live with people. He stumbles across his father, the man from the cliff, who takes him in as his son. End part one.

A young woman splits off from her hunting party and is captured by Tiger Boy. They fall in love but apparently are each members of feuding families. Now we’re in a martial arts Romeo & Juliet. Tiger Boy kills her cousin which causes her family to wipe out his entire family and then Tiger Boy confronts her father. A fight ensues, Tiger Boy is hurt, but escapes.

His mother finds out, though, and goes to the girl’s father demanding to see her son. It turns out the mother is the girl's cousin. They tell the mother Tiger Boy’s not there and attack her. She leaves, finds Tiger Boy back at the hut they grew up in, and tells him to pledge not to seek revenge since he’s part of both families. Then she dies. End part two.

The tiger who lived with the woman for twenty years kills a member of the family that killed the woman. Since the tiger had killed 99 people before meeting the woman, this makes 100 which turns the tiger into a demon who pledges to avenge the woman’s death. He’ll do this by turning into an old woman and murdering each member of the family.

The tiger works his way through everyone until only the daughter that Tiger Boy is in love with is left. Tiger Boy tries to stop the tiger, but revenge must be completed, and the girl ends up killing the demon by pouring hot oil down its throat. She and Tiger Boy are reunited. THE END.

So… yeah. It’s a weird one—doubly so because it’s so boring. This description makes it seem like the movie is just bonkers when it’s just poorly composed. It feels like there were three ideas for movies but the producers didn’t follow through on any single one of them. Instead we get this mishmash of content that never manages to compel. I had to watch the first thirty minutes over and over because I kept falling asleep.

On top of that, the cinematography and choreography are bad. Granted, the movie is cropped so you’re losing a lot of the frame, but even with that in mind, the shots are flat, the fighting is uninspired, and none of it looks good. You can see the kicks and punches failing to land as the stuntmen stand waiting for their cue to act like they got hit.

This movie should be more fun than it is, especially considering how silly it gets at the end. Even that turn, though, isn’t done with enough gusto to carry the movie along. That turn merely becomes another moment where I check how long is left in the movie. It’s not a recommend, even for riffing. The whole thing is just too dull to sink your teeth into. However, it does seem to be in the public domain so I’ve added a copy to archive.org here. Maybe you could re-cut and re-dub it into something more entertaining.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

241. Night Club

241. Night Club (1989)
Director: Michael Keusch
Writers: Michael Keusch and Deborah Tilton from an idea by Nicholas Hoppe and Bevin Chu
From: Cult Cinema

A couple hopes to open a night club, but six months later find both their business and marriage in dire straits.

I’m curious if I can make this the shortest summary of any movie on the Misery Mill.

Nick and Beth want to open a night club. Six months later, the club still isn’t open because of asbestos and old chemical waste on the lot. Nick whines about needing to repay Eddie the mobster’s $200,000, but spends most of his time imagining having sex with Liza, a fantasy version of his wife. In the end, Beth leaves to do a photo shoot in Europe and sends Nick a video congratulating him on finally opening a club but says that she’s not coming back. Cut to Nick opening the club and it filling with people. THE END.

80 minutes of whining and sexophone-backed nudity. I have nothing to say about this movie because literally nothing happens. I even have the impulse to go through each little bit of scene just to have something to talk about, but that would give the impression that something is happening. Eddie appears at the beginning and end to threaten Nick over the $200,000 Eddie invested in the club and Nick periodically hooks up with Liza, his mistress who’s actually his wife but actually a fantasy and maybe some other problem… I don’t know. All I know is when Eddie shows up at the end to rough up Nick, Liza shows up and screws Eddie in front of Nick which then suggests that even Eddie was imagined. So the one element of plot the movie had didn’t exist either. Great.

The movie is constantly going into fantasy and dream sequences and never communicating a concrete timeline. Nick promises Eddie word on the money in 24 hours. Then Eddie arrives at the end of the movie so the entire thing has been 24 hours. Only it turns out Eddie was imagined, I think, so who knows how long any of it has been?

Two things are going on. First, narratively, Night Club is the movie version of this guy’s story. Nick is an aspiring novelist who, so far as the movie tells us, has no experience running a club. The entirety of the movie is him whining: whining about people not loaning him money to get him out of this bad situation, whining about the people who leased him the place screwing him over, whining about his wife not having sex with him at precisely the moment he wants. 80 goddamn minutes. Imagine Tommy Wiseau’s most self-pitying moments from The Room, but lose the accent and affect and you’ll have Nick’s voice. How could we possibly care about his fate, let alone his club or novel?

Oh, did I not mention he’s an aspiring novelist? Oh yeah, he’s an aspiring novelist which adds an additional layer to the movie since he’s periodically working on his book. Is it unclear if we’re seeing dramatizations of his novel or the actual events of his life? Does he look at a manuscript sitting on a table with only a cover page that is later revealed to be blank pages? Does he fling said manuscript out a window in a moment of rage-y release? You better believe it! Which leads to the second thing:

The movie’s trying to be arty. God save us from aspiring creatives (like me) who think they can make something. The movie is constantly toying with levels of fantasy and delusion and dream and I suppose our confusion as members of the audience is supposed to reflect the mental breakdown Nick’s going through, but it doesn’t work. Something I left out of my write-up of Killpoint was that parts of the movie reminded me of David Lynch and the same is true of this movie.

I know. Let me justify that statement.

Killpoint has a lot of disjointed scenes of Leo Fong walking around with only strange white noise in the background. Night Club has characters playing with videocameras and tapes, watching footage of themselves that don’t make complete sense even to them. Lynch used these elements in Lost Highway as well as other films, but he’s doing it intentionally to unnerve the audience and create a setting where conventional narrative and physical rules don’t apply. The white noise is present in Killpoint because they forgot to put actual bed music in and Night Club is playing with levels of reality but to no larger purpose. Lynch uses those elements as the bedrock of his films. You’re supposed to feel discomfited by them. Here, they’re an afterthought if not an accident.

I wanted to start drinking halfway through this movie and the only thing that stopped me was that I’d donated platelets earlier in the day. Don’t watch this movie. While it’s not hallucinogenically dull like The Creeping Terror, that’s not to the movie’s credit. To put it another way, it fails even at failure. A dull, dull film that imagines you’ll endure its endless white boy whining for the thoroughly un-tittilating repetition of nudity. It’s not offensive, merely interminable. Stay away.

Saturday, January 13, 2018

240. Hot Target

240. Hot Target (1985)
Director: Dennis C. Lewiston
Writers: Dennis C. Lewiston from a story by Gerry O’Hara
From: Cult Cinema

A rich man’s wife starts having an affair only to learn her partner is a criminal who may have specific plans for her.

An erotic thriller that’s neither erotic nor thrilling. Shock of shocks, the Cult Cinema set offers up another mediocre flick. In brief:

Christine meets Greg in the park when their dogs get into a minor fight. He reveals that he knows she’s the wife of a major business guy who does business stuff (80’s!). Rather than start flirting with her, he immediately goes into creepy stalker mode by getting her number from her vet, calling her, and then demanding she meet him at his apartment. For some reason, she does. He gets an impression of her keys while she’s cleaning up after sex and tells her that he’s a crook. Even the apartment that they’re in belongs to someone else.

They continue to hook up until he breaks into her house one night to steal all her jewelry. He wakes her up and tries having sex with her in the billiard room, but her husband catches them. A scuffle ensues and the husband gets killed. Greg tells Christine to stay quiet and that he’ll sort it out, but the police inspector is being really aggressive and getting close to the truth. Greg goes back to the apartment where he stashed the jewels, but the original owner is there. Another scuffle, Greg gets stabbed in the belly and kills the owner with a candlestick (“billiard room,” “candlestick.” Was this movie was plotted on a Clue board?).

Greg calls Christine, she rushes out and drives him to a criminal doctor on the docks. Her car is surrounded echoing a dream she had at the start of the movie, but it’s only the doctor and his associates. They take Greg from the car and tell her to leave. Three weeks later, she arrives at Greg’s funeral. We know it’s three weeks because the cops shadowing her say so. The chief inspector gives the rest of the story: Greg was found dead in the ocean, there’s no positive ID of Christine or Greg at the scene of the second murder, and Christine is not going to be pursued for the death of her husband. They leave and the camera pans back to reveal Greg, still alive!, watching Christine put flowers on his grave. Rather than approach her, he walks away. THE END.

You can get a sense of what the movie’s going for: a woman seduced by a roguish stranger and then caught up in a criminal conspiracy. Only the movie imagines Greg has sincere feelings for Christine. In fact, the movie wants you to like, maybe even sympathize with Greg, when he’s a real creeper. I mean, this isn’t Going Steady-levels of creepiness, but he’s immediately stalking her and ignoring her demands that he stop. I think the movie wants us to believe that the erotic tension between the two of them is so intense that she’s not sincerely telling him to back off, but there’s no sense of tension here. It just feels like she wants him to stop following her.

Then the rest of the plot just doesn’t work. Maybe it’s because I don’t buy them as a couple, but a lot of the drama, post-murder, depends on him trying to be with Christine when it seems more likely that he’d be cutting loose to let her take the blame. It’d be a more interesting movie if, rather than being overcome by desire for her and having to see her one last time while robbing her house, his entire plan had been a sadistic mind game to have her take the fall for her husband’s murder. Alternately, because an early scene in the movie features the husband screwing over a business rival, I halfway expected Greg to be working for that guy as part of some larger corporate espionage scheme. Two words: better movie.

So the movie’s dull, imagines its characters as sexier than they are, and is front-loaded with a lot of nudity that just feels sleazy. On top of that, no big moments of camp or crazy so it’s not even like I can tell you to find a copy on YouTube and jump to this or that point. Skip it—it’s just “blah.”

Sunday, January 07, 2018

239. Low Blow

239. Low Blow (1986)
Director: Frank Harris
Writer: Leo Fong
From: Cult Cinema

The daughter of a wealthy industrialist is inducted into a cult and a scrappy PI is tasked with finding her.

The second part of my birthday gift to myself and I wish I’d just bought socks instead. As with last post’s Killpoint, this is a Frank Harris film starring Leo Fong and Cameron Mitchell (our lord and savior), and I was made aware of it by a Best of the Worst episode. I have to say, they liked the movie far more than I did.

We open with the credits—bold move—which indicate that not only are Leo Fong and Cameron Mitchell in this, so is Stack Pierce, Nighthawk from Killpoint. Pierce was my favorite part of that movie and I was excited at the prospect of seeing him in this one as well. In fact, a lot of the actors from Killpoint are here as well. Nothing comes of it, but it was neat to notice.

In terms of content, the movie opens with armed gunmen holding up a sandwich shop. Fong, playing ex-cop and now private investigator Wong, (not to be confused with Lt. Long, his character from Killpoint) somehow hears the commotion from across the street, walks in, and shoots all the gunmen.

Meanwhile Karen Templeton, daughter of the head of Templeton Industries, is being inducted into a cult headed by Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell is the charismatic focus, but it’s actually being run by Karma, a young woman recently released from prison and running the cult as a scam. This becomes the first, but not last, instance in this movie of “the movie I’d rather be watching.” The cult being explicitly run as a scam that the leader themselves isn’t aware of is great. I’ve never seen that movie. Plus Cameron Mitchell is wearing a cloak and blackout glasses the entire time. His whole routine is just odd, much like his role in Killpoint. Best of the Worst made fun of his performance because he was always sitting down, but he doesn’t come across as drunk or lazy here, he honestly seems to be camping up a gonzo role.

The Templetons find out their daughter has been absent from college for two weeks and John Templeton sees Fong retrieve a woman’s stolen purse. That’s enough for Templeton to go to Fong’s office, which is a sty, and hire Fong to find his daughter. Sidenote: the thieves Fong stops pop up a couple more times in the movie to get beat up as one of the running gags that doesn’t work. The others are that Fong’s car doesn’t work and that he can’t park. They’re not funny and they don’t fit with the movie.

Anyway, Fong finds out the girl is at the cult, he sneaks in as a reporter but is outed and beaten, and then he escapes. He gathers a team of various toughs, sneaks in at night, and saves the girl as every guard gets killed and Karma shoots Mitchell in the head. Templeton is reunited with his daughter and Fong decides to take his girlfriend to Vegas, but his car won’t start. THE END.

I skipped a lot of the middle because it doesn’t matter and is boring. Nothing in the movie seems to connect to anything else, not just narratively, but visually. I was constantly confused as to where characters were or how shots related to each other spatially. Honestly, it felt like they forgot to shoot coverage so it started to feel like characters just appeared and then suddenly were somewhere else.

Also, as I noted above, there were several moments where I would rather have been watching the movie suggested by Low Blow as opposed to the actual movie. A big one was when Stack Pierce shows up as an underground boxer trying to make money in unlicensed fights. He gets in trouble with the local mob for not taking a fall. Fong finds him while Pierce is contemplating his next move and gives him his card. This happens several times, by the way. Fong sees someone being an impressive fighter and gives them his card. As Best of the Worst points out, he’s constructing a team before he realizes he needs a team.

Only, when Fong realizes he needs a team to raid the cult, he doesn’t call all the people he’s been contacting, he holds a “Tough Guy” competition with a $25,000 prize… which then features all the people he gave his card. The competition is held in a dirt pit in the middle of nowhere and when Fong has gathered all his fighters, he says they won’t get their money until they do the raid.

As I’m thinking about it, there’s a lot that happens in the movie that would warrant discussion: the Tough Guy competition, the fight at Fong’s home that’s apparently a dilapidated farm, Fong cutting the top of some goons’ car off using an angle grinder. There are moments that are laugh-out-loud funny just for their incongruity, but they’re placed amidst all of this disjointed nothing.

In fact, the movie’s really boring despite these oddball moments. To give just one example, I had to rewatch the raid on the cult three times because I kept falling asleep—and that features a shot of Fong crushing a guy’s head by stomping on it (dude’s head turns to cake. It’s hilarious). The movie weirdly required constant attention to follow but in no way rewarded that attention.

So, surprise surprise, this isn’t a recommend. As with Killpoint, Best of the Worst basically hits all the good moments obviating the need to actually watch it. If you’re really inclined to check out either of these flicks, I found full copies of both on YouTube. Knock yourself out.

Saturday, January 06, 2018

238. Killpoint

238. Killpoint (1984)
Director: Frank Harris
Writer: Frank Harris
From: Cult Cinema

A National Guard armory is robbed and the weapons start showing up on the black market. Police Lt. Long must marshal all his investigative powers to stop the violence from spiraling out of control.

This is my birthday weekend so instead of randomly selecting movies, I’m doing a goofy 80’s-action double-feature. Specifically, it’s a Frank Harris-directed, Leo Fong & Cameron Mitchell double-feature. The companion piece will be Low Blow!

Don’t you hate when your birthday gifts turn out to be crap?

I thought I knew what to expect from this movie due to seeing it reviewed on Best of the Worst, but that didn’t give me a proper sense of how dull the movie would be. In fact, their take it made it seem a lot more entertaining than it was.

To get to the movie itself, we open with Nighthawk, the enforcer/second-in-command to Cameron Mitchell (our lord and savior), shooting a guard at a National Guard armory and stealing all the weapons. Mitchell gives the order to make sure no one besides him is selling guns in town so Nighthawk takes a few goons to a Chinese restaurant and shoots up the place. You’d think this would lead to a plot about a gang war jumping off among the local gun-runners, but it doesn’t. Nothing comes of the shooting.

Likewise, Nighthawk then sells some guns to a few criminals who proceed to shoot up a grocery store. Nighthawk gave them instructions to leave no witnesses so they kill everyone in the store even though it’s just a simple robbery. While these criminals come up again later in the movie, this event also has no lasting impact.

We’re still in the introductory part of the movie, by the way. We haven’t even met our heroes and we’ve already seen two gun-heavy action setpieces. The movie does not maintain this pace.

Eventually our heroes arrive: Lt. Long (Leo Fong), and Agent Bryant (Richard Roundtree). That’s right, the movie got Shaft. They don’t make good use of him. Long and Bryant are supposed to be working together, but rarely even share a scene. The investigation keeps getting stymied since anyone who may be a lead gets immediately killed by Nighthawk or someone hired by Nighthawk (who Nighthawk then promptly kills). The movie never has a sense of movement. Not only does it never feel like the cops are closing in on the villains, it never feels like the villains are moving towards some goal of their own.

Bryant gets killed just as Long is posing as an arms-buyers and arranging a meeting with Mitchell and Nighthawk. On the day of the deal, Nighthawk cuts Mitchell’s throat and handles the deal himself. Once the guns are presented, the police spring their ambush, killing all of Nighthawk’s men. Long and Nighthawk trade shots with each other with Long finally shooting Nighthawk… as does Mitchell. Turns out he’s not dead and ends up contributing the killing shots. When Long starts reading Mitchell his rights, Mitchell dies. THE END.

The movie feels like a giant shrug. The energy’s highest when Roundtree, Mitchell, or Nighthawk (Stack Pierce) is on screen. Not only are they the best actors, they’re doing the most interesting things. Roundtree just has presence. He only needs to be in the shot to make it more interesting. Meanwhile, Mitchell is playing his crime boss as a weirdo sociopath. He has a black poodle that he dotes over early in the movie that simply disappears later. We learn in a rambling monologue Mitchell has that the dog is dead (we never learn how). Even that monologue is so strange—no other character has one and Mitchell’s isn’t until his penultimate scene—that we’re in delightfully WTF territory as it’s playing out. Finally, Nighthawk is just cool. He’s the character that’s actually out in the world setting events in motion and he can’t be stopped. He even gets shot early in the movie and doesn’t flinch! When you place him alongside Mitchell, you have the kind of glorious unpredictability that makes exploitation cinema so compelling.

Unfortunately they’re absent from the majority of the middle. Instead we have Leo Fong and the limp direction of Frank Harris. I thought Fong was mumbling all his lines until I heard all the actual non-actors from the police station they filmed at reading their parts. The characters are so flat and affectless in this middle portion that I kept pausing to see how much time was left. While this part of the movie has fight scenes, they’re shot so poorly—generally long shots with no dynamic edits—and performed so slowly that I couldn’t get excited. I honestly spent the majority of the movie waiting for it to end.

It may be redundant to say at this point, but I don’t recommend this movie. Listening to Best of the Worst go over it was more entertaining, but also gave the impression that there’s more bite to the movie than there is. Their video pretty much hits all the key moments from the movie, the most watchable ones at least, which saves you the work of watching the whole thing. If you choose to watch it anyway, I’d suggest riding the fast-forward button just to see Roundtree, Mitchell, and Pierce’s scenes. The rest just doesn’t offer much.

Monday, January 01, 2018

Year in Review: 2017

Misery Mill Year in Review: 2017

2017, Jesus. Even without politics it's been a year. I'm having difficulty remembering what movies I saw this year, specifically remembering that they were from this year. Spider-Man: Homecoming was only just this summer, as was Get Out, which seems impossible. As I'm writing this, I still haven't managed to see the new Star Wars and I probably won't for a while yet--not because of any of the vitriol, though. Frankly, all the complaints make it sound like something I'd like. I'm putting it off because there will be time to see Star Wars and I'm more concerned with seeing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri before that leaves theaters. I did manage to catch a few screenings at this year's Philadelphia Film Festival, which was nice since it'll be my last one. Of course, most of the movies I saw came from the Graveyard Shift, aka the festival's genre offerings. Three stood out:

Takashi Miike's Blade of the Immortal was nice, but felt like it was trying to make too many nods to what are larger plots in the manga and anime. One very nice aspect of the movie was its repetition of every character having their own story, but having to recognize that this story isn't their story.

A movie I enjoyed a bit more even though narratively it's a bigger mess than anything I've seen recently was Jeong Byeong-Gil's The Villainess. The opening sequence had a higher body count than most films I've seen, and I've seen some monstrous movies. The plot is profoundly absurd and all the better for it. Plus the action sequences aren't just brutal and inventive, they necessitate a making-of documentary. If there isn't a visual effects special on the Blu-ray, it's not worth buying.

The final movie I'll mention actually comes out next year: Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead's The Endless. The only thing I'll say is don't watch any trailers, don't read any descriptions, just go in cold. The movie has a turn that I'm sure will make a lot of people check out, but it's best to go in and have the elements unveiled for you the way they are for the characters. What I can safely say of the plot is the starting point: two brothers escaped a UFO cult ten years before. After receiving a video from the cult, the two decide to go back to answer lingering questions. I really loved it.

In my personal life, for a variety of reasons, I decided to quit working in higher ed and pursue teaching English overseas. I'll be getting my teaching certification in the next few months and, hopefully by August I'll be in Korea starting a new job. I'm excited, nervous, and reconsidering a lot of my life. On a less introspective note, I've also started hosting a bad movie night at a local bottle shop, specifically The Bottle Shop. Trash Tuesdays every Tuesday at 8. I only started this December, but I'm hopeful it'll be a thing by the time I leave in August. I can guarantee several peak pieces from the Misery Mill will be screened.

Anyway, what all this means for the Misery Mill itself is very little. I'll have all the movies with me and will continue to watch and review them at the rate of two a week, hopefully getting everything done in a reasonable time. All that said, let's get to the purpose of this post, the Misery Mill Year in Review:

So far I've watched 237 of the 400 movies, but, because some of the movies are on multiple sets, I've actually knocked 292 movies off the list (because my list includes the movies from the Sci-Fi and Horror packs that I watched before, the number is actually 392 out of 501). I said when I started this project that it would take me until August 2019. Last year, I said the final date will be March 15, 2019. The current end point is January 18, 2019. The thought that I'll be finishing off most of these box sets in the next year is staggering.

Fun movies of note from this year:

A Bucket of Blood
City Ninja
Click: The Calendar Girl Killer
(kind of)
Fighting Mad
The House That Screamed
The Kidnapping of the President
Memorial Valley Massacre
Ninja Champion
The Patriot
(WTF WTF WTF)
Top Cop

Here, as of 31 December, 2017, are the movies currently available through the Internet Archive. Links lead to the Misery Mill posts which have links to streaming copies:
All the Kind Strangers
The Amazing Transparent Man
Anatomy of a Psycho
Atomic Rulers of the World

The Bat
Battle Beyond the Sun
Beast From Haunted Cave
The Big Fight
Black Cobra
Black Fist
Blood Mania
Bloodlust!
The Bloody Brood
Bloody Pit of Horror
A Bucket of Blood

Carnival of Crime
City Ninja
Counterblast
Curse of Bigfoot

The Day the Sky Exploded
Death Machines
Death Rage
Deep Red
The Demon
Devil Times Five
The Devil’s Hand
The Disappearance of Flight 412
Don't Look in the Basement
Doomsday Machine
The Driller Killer
The Dungeon of Harrow

Embryo
End of the World
Eternal Evil
Evil Brain From Outer Space

Fighting Mad

The Giant of Metropolis
Good Against Evil
Grave of the Vampire
Green Eyes
Guru, the Mad Monk
The Guy From Harlem

Hands of a Stranger
Hands of Death
Horror Express
Horrors of Spider Island

I Bury the Living
I Eat Your Skin
The Image of Bruce Lee
The Impossible Kid
Infernal Street
Invaders From Space
Invasion of the Bee Girls
Iron Angel
It's Alive

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

Keep My Grave Open
Kung Fu Arts

The Legend of Bigfoot

Mama Dracula
Man in the Attic
Manos: The Hands of Fate
The Manster
Mesa of Lost Women
The Mistress of Atlantis
Monstroid
Moon of the Wolf

Night Fright
Night of the Blood Beast
Ninja Death
Ninja Heat

Prisoners of the Lost Universe

Radio Ranch
Rattlers
The Real Bruce Lee
The Return of the Kung-Fu Dragon
The Revenges of Doctor X

The Sadist
Scared to Death
Shadow Ninja
Shadow of Chinatown
Shaolin Temple
Shock
Silent Night, Bloody Night
Sisters of Death
Slashed Dreams
Snowbeast
Star Odyssey

Throw Out the Anchor!
TNT Jackson
Track of the Moon Beast

War of the Robots
The Werewolf of Washington