Summer Fest 7 Recap (Day One): Terminator Genisys, Kung Fury, and Revenge of the Ninja

 After seven long years, it was time to have another Summer Fest Field Trip Movie, and while they can't all be The Happening, you have to give an "A" for effort to this year's outing. I have a pain in my brain, and its name is Genisys. I could maybe live with the fact that this mediocre (at best) fifth Terminator film undoes all of the other movies in order to create a dumber multi-verse if it made any sense. Or even just adhered to its own internal logic, such as it is. But no. It doesn't do that. I could tell early that Genisys was already losing the brave souls who joined me when Skynet had a voice announcing that the time machine was activated and to send the T-800 back to 1984. Let's stop right there. Since when does an automated system like Skynet need to tell itself what it's going to do? Oh, it's for the audience members too stupid to keep up with what is obviously going on? Because this is the first Terminator movie they've ever seen? Okay, fine. Believe me, if that bothers you - and it did for at least two people sitting with me - that's nothing compared with what's coming.

 Guess what? I'm guessing you're not going to see Genisys until it's on the Syfy Channel one Saturday afternoon and you're waiting for Sharknado 5 or something like that. I mean, it's pretty obvious nobody is going to see it on the big screen; there were maybe 11 people at a 7:35 showing on a Friday night, and the multiplex had already dumped Terminator Genisys into one of its "crappy" auditoriums. How do I know? Well, you don't usually go to a theater to see widescreen bars at the top and bottom of the screen. But there they were, because Crossroads 20 couldn't be bothered to put it on anything better than a screen matted for 1.85:1. That's how much they cared about Terminator Genisys.

 I could give you a laundry list of things that would make you simultaneously want to watch Genisys and also to run away in horror, but maybe you'll split the difference and pay two dollars for it in a couple weeks. Or watch it for whatever you spend on cable television next year. Honestly, I'd go for the two dollars, because you can be baffled along with the other four or five people who pay to see it. We can start with recreating scenes from The Terminator (specifically the Griffith Park Observatory and Kyle Reese arrivals), but making them way dumber by throwing in an extra Terminator (old Arnold digitally young-ified) who fights an all digital 1984 version (Bodybuilder Brett Azar replaced completely with pixels), or having a T-1000 chase digital actor Jai Courtney (I think he's playing Kyle Reese, but nobody bothered finishing the "acting" job in the computer) until Sarah Connor (also digital actor Emilia Clarke, similarly unfinished) bursts through the department store and shoots guns. So many guns.

 Anyway, The Terminator never happened. T2 never happened. Terminator 3 never happened, and mercifully, Terminator: Salvation probably won't happen. I'm not even clear how Genisys happens, because after old Arnold Terminator who came back in time to 1974 to protect younger Sarah Connor uses a homemade time machine to send Kyle and Sarah to 2017, there's no way they can still have John Connor and he'd be the right age to send Kyle back.... agh. My brain hurts. Hey, remember "Bad Boys," also known as the theme song from COPS? That's in this movie, for a "being arrested montage" which includes the second of three "Arnold tries to smile" jokes from the deleted scenes in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Also Matt Smith (Lost River) has replaced Helena Bonham Carter as the embodiment of Skynet and he turns John Connor (Jason Clarke) into a machine/man/something and then sends it back to 2014 to ensure Skynet will be created with the help of Miles and Danny Dyson, except now it's called Genisys and is an operating system that controls all of our devices. Kyle tells his younger self this because the timeline has been changed and now he has memories of both lives because Nexus point blah blah blah Quantum Magnetics.

 Quantum Magnetics.

 Terminator Genisys is such a stupid movie that I insist you all see it. There are multiple plot holes (like who sent back Pops, er, Guardian... er, forget it, Old Arnold?) that are designed to be addressed by sequels that probably won't be made because that's what happens when you come in 9th on your opening weekend. America has spoken, and it wants Minions. And, uh, they're probably right, but Terminator Genisys was the movie that Summer Fest 7 deserved. I gave it to 'em, and I don't regret it one bit. And look at it this way: if you're Phil Collins, from now on when someone talks about how much they hate Genisys, you can at least be uncertain for a few more seconds...

 Since I'm such a nice guy, when we got back to the Blogorium, I put on Kung Fury. In case you somehow avoided the internet a few weekends ago, it was all the rage on social media and everybody was reposting the link on Twitter and Facebook and, what the hell, let's pretend someone still uses MySpace. Fortunately for me, the masochists who followed me back from Terminator Genisys had somehow missed all of that, and had no idea what Kung Fury was. In truth, explaining what the short film is actually makes it sound worse than the finished product, but I'll do my best.

 Try as I might, there have been very few movies in the "neo-Grindhouse" movement that the Cap'n has actually enjoyed. Planet Terror had a fun John Carpenter vibe, but Hobo with a Shotgun was to relentlessly dour to really enjoy its grimy, 80's inspired aesthetics. Wolfcop pretty much went nowhere, and I've tried to avoid the glut of other, VHS-era inspired independent films because they promise a lot and rarely deliver. All of this is a means of explaining that Kung Fury is one of the rare "inspired by the 80's" concept films that actually does what it sets out to do. It's compact, wildly entertaining, and continually finds ways to surprise you and up the ante. Fest-er's laughed out loud repeatedly by its audacity, even though they'd groaned audibly when I told them about Triceracop before watching it.

 And that's the catch, because yes, there's a Triceratops wearing a police uniform, and of course he has a British accent. He's Kung Fuy (David Sandberg)'s partner, although Kung Fury doesn't want a partner. He works alone, after his original partner was brutally murdered by a kung fu master and then he was struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra at the same time. That's how he became Kung Fury, a cop in Miami, circa 1985. And by that, I mean a few actual sets mixed with liberal usage of green screens, playing in what looks like a grimy ambience of an oft-used VHS tape. Tracking errors are used to mask budget limitations early in the short, when Kung Fury is fighting an out of control arcade box, but everything is so over the top that it's really hard to find fault in the way that Sandberg (who also wrote and directed) presents it.

 Leave it to the Swedes to give us a short film where the hero hacks his way back in time to fight Hitler (The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone) - pardon me, Kung Fuhrer - but goes too far and ends up in "Viking Times," which means Laser Raptors, Direwolves, and Gatling Guns. I'm not even going to tell you what happens after that, because telling you too much about Kung Fury ruins the fun of discovering just how far down the rabbit hole Sandberg is willing to go. I will take a moment to note my appreciation for Triceracops preferred method of killing Nazis - it only makes sense, in that it doesn't make any more sense than anything else that happens. And, of course, the song that plays over the end credits is performed by David Hasselhoff. It's kind of great, and quite appropriate for Kung Fury. One of our Fest-ers described it as "the best thing to come out of Kickstarter," which is true. As I understand it, the short is Sandberg's "proof of concept" to secure funding for a feature length film, and if he can sustain this level of manic energy for 90 minutes, count me in.

Now, it's a high mountain to climb to top the level of 80's cheese-tastic-ness that was Kung Fury, but I had no doubts that Golan-Globus could deliver the goods with Revenge of the Ninja. Remember, after all, that the 1983 not-exactly-a-sequel to Enter the Ninja is, in many ways, a template for the kind of "that can't happen" action movie Kung Fury is drawing from. We're talking about a film that begins with a ninja attack in progress, one that wipes out Cho (Shô Kosugi)'s entire family - save for his infant son - while he's hanging out with art dealer Braden (Arthur Roberts). They return to his home to find his entire family dead, and Cho - who I swear everyone pronounces his name as "Joe" - takes out the evil ninja clan single-handedly. Okay, I guess Braden shoots one of them. And then, without missing a beat, Braden offers Cho a job in America working at his art galleries.

 (SPOILERS ABOUND) Braden is, of course, evil, and is using Cho to traffic heroin in the dolls he delivers to the galleries. While Revenge of the Ninja never directly addresses this, I think we can all safely assume that Braden arranged for Cho's family to be killed. Again - if at any point any character says this out loud, I missed it. Instead, I just kind of guessed it when someone asked why Cho was a character in this movie at all. That's because, despite the fact that we spend inordinate amounts of time with Shô Kosugi, his son Kane Kosugi, and "Grandmother" (Grace Oshita), they're actually completely superfluous to the plot of the movie. Revenge of the Ninja is, for the most part, about Braden's drug dealing and dispute with the Mafia. Braden is actually also a ninja (with a ridiculous silver mask), and he decides to take out the mob without Cho having anything to do with the story. I mean, at all. For all intents and purposes, the title could refer to Braden taking "revenge" on the Mob for screwing him out of a drug deal.

  Cho eventually finds out about the drugs, which leads to Braden hypnotizing Cathy (Ashley Ferrare) into kidnapping Kane, and thugs try to kill Cho (and fail). Since "only a ninja can kill a ninja" or something ridiculous like that, Cho also has to dress up as a ninja and infiltrate the mob compound after Braden has so they can have the most drawn out fight possible.  Also, I guess he's going to save Kane, but since Kane saves himself (and Cathy, who is inexplicably placed in the worst "death trap" possible - it involves a Jacuzzi) and Cho never even looks for him, let's stick with the fight scene. I mean, you don't hit 80 minutes with the story they've got.

 I mentioned that Revenge of the Ninja isn't really a sequel of Enter the Ninja, and by that I mean it isn't in any way a sequel to Enter the Ninja. It's also not a prequel to Ninja III: The Domination - a previous Fest favorite - but since all three feature Shô Kosugi in some capacity, they form the loosest definition of a "trilogy" you're likely to see. This is the only one to outright star Kosugi (and his son), but Cho is so incidental to the actual story that you'd be forgiven for thinking he's just another supporting character. That said, Revenge of the Ninja has all of your favorite elements of 80s action cinema, including ethnic stereotypes: not even just the odd interpretation of "ninja," but also the Mafia goons and their one hired assassin who is dressed like a Native American and of course uses a Tomahawk. Revenge of the Ninja also features what may be the most uncomfortable fight scene in the history of Summer Fest, when Cathy is sent to kidnap Kane, and we're forced to watch a grown woman fight a six year old boy. It's much more of a back and forth battle than you'd think, but I'm not really sure that benefits anyone.

 After that, we realized we were old and tired and boring, so everybody went home without watching Traxx or Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Fortunately, there's always tomorrow...

Nevermore Film Festival Recap (Day Three)

 The final day of Nevermore for the Cap'n was a bit of a light one, by comparison to Saturday, but continued the trend of quality over quantity. While I only saw one feature (admittedly one I'd seen before) and one collection of shorts, the experience was consistently entertaining and served as a nice way to close out the fifteenth anniversary of the festival. As has been the case all weekend, the main draw, other than the films themselves, was the jubilant festival atmosphere. There really is something to be said for being at an event where people really want to be there, and not just showing up at the multiplex because it's something to do. Waiting in between screenings was an opportunity to soak in the decorations, take a look at posters new and old, and to trade notes with strangers about something you wanted to see but couldn't fit in.

 And there were more than a few - 2014 may have been the hardest to schedule in the three years I've been going to Nevermore. To give you some idea, here are the movies I wanted to see at the festival but didn't: Here Comes the Devil, Almost Human, Haunt, and Malignant. I'd already seen Last Days on Mars, Big Bad Wolves and The Human Race, so I was trying to catch movies I a) wanted to see with an audience (Grand Piano) or b) wouldn't be able to see on VOD or rental any time soon (The Shower). Since at least two of the movies I didn't see at Nevermore are on VOD (maybe more - I think The Visitant might be on there, too), I'll try to watch them in the next week or so and do a "supplementary Nevermore coverage" set of reviews, as were it not for the festival I wouldn't have known about them. As it was, I don't think I would have known about some of these movies at all had it not been for Nevermore, which is the other reason it's so much fun. But let's get to talking about the movies, and on the other side I'll share a few photos I remembered to snap over the weekend.

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 Grand Piano is a movie that I'm honestly surprised I hadn't heard about before Nevermore. It's a Hitchcockian thriller that wears its influences proudly on its sleeve, and is also being favorably likened to Brian DePalma, in part because it's easier (and maybe safer) to invoke DePalma than to draw comparisons to The Master of Suspense. That's fair (it sets a very high bar and is almost impossible to live up to when you put it up against Hitchcock), but director Eugenio Mira draws attention to his camera work and trick shots than DePalma ever has, and in many ways Grand Piano is a feature length version of the end of The Man Who Knew Too Much. It's a solid thriller with a very good cast that makes the most out of the three main characters being largely stationary for the duration of the film.

 Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) is a famed classical pianist, or, at least, he was - Selznick hasn't performed in public in five years. Following a botched performance of his mentor's composition, he withdrew from the public eye, just as his wife, Emma (Kerry Bishé)'s, star is on the rise. She's a famous actress, and uses some pull to get Tom back on stage to perform in Chicago for the first time. On top of that, Selznick will be performing on his mentor, the late Patrick Godureaux's custom Bösendorfer piano, flown in especially for the occasion. Most of the orchestra Tom's performing with is glad to see him, including conductor Reisinger (Don McManus), but someone in the audience is determined that Selznick have a perfect performance. If he doesn't, he's a dead man, and once the ground rules are in place, it's up to the pianist to figure out who is threatening his life, and why, without drawing attention while everybody is watching him.

 You can look at the poster and see that Elijah Wood isn't the only marquee name to draw in audiences: John Cusack is listed right afterwards, so it shouldn't be hard to figure out who the voice of the (mostly) unseen assailant is. At first I thought it might be a bad thing to know Cusack was in the film, since when you don't see him it's easy to work out his role in the film, but a friend of mine pointed out to me that it would be much more distracting not to know he was in the film and to suddenly hear his voice. Unlike Kiefer Sutherland in Phone Booth, it's impossible not to recognize Cusack's voice immediately, and it would pull you right out of the story at a critical point. As it is, using his name for marquee value when he's more of a audible presence than a physical one in the film is a necessary evil, but I do wonder why Grand Piano is still mostly an unknown film.

 The selling point of the film, beyond the always reliable Wood (people still content to think of him as Frodo tend to forget that he has quite a range beyond that) and a supporting cast you've seen in many other films, even if you don't recognize the names (Bishé was in Argo, for example) is Mira's direction. The camera is constantly moving, redirecting your focus and masking or revealing critical details at exactly the right moment. There's a split screen that doesn't initially look like one until one half of the screen zooms in on Selznick while the other side remains stationary, and seemingly impossible shots that swirl around the piano as Wood (or someone - Mira masks it very well) plays a series of very complicated pieces. Hitchock is famous for his use of "sound bridges," but Mira makes a great "visual bridge" by cutting to somepne playing a cello at the moment an act of violence occurs. I was impressed by the clever use of camerawork, but never distracted by it (as I sometimes am when watching DePalma).

 My fear is that the fact that Grand Piano is still something no one seems to know about will result in it being released on home video and being treated like a "DTV dump" to sit on shelves with any number of other movies with recognizable names that just aren't very good. Like, oh for example, The Frozen Ground, another movie with Cusack and Nicolas Cage you probably didn't know existed. It's not very good, and certainly nowhere near as interesting visually or structurally as Grand Piano. I don't feel like it would be fair for such a solid, consistently entertaining thriller to be thought of as "just another paycheck" for a few actors whose best days are behind them, which is often what the "DTV dump" implies. Wood was similarly great in the recent remake of Maniac, another movie that went largely unnoticed outside of hardcore horror fans when it drifted through a limited release last year. I'd hate to think that Grand Piano might not get a fair shot with audiences when I think many of them would enjoy it, and it's much better than a lot of so-called "thrillers" that do get wide release. But I'm glad I had the chance to see it again at Nevermore, and it benefits from multiple viewings, as the second time around you can see how much of the main narrative is set up in the first twenty minutes. Oh, and Alex Winter (Bill S. Preston, esquire) takes a break from his Excellent Adventures and Bogus Journeys to play a supporting role in the film, if that helps sway you.

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 After Grand Piano, we walked upstairs from Fletcher Hall to Cinema Two for They're Coming to Get You, Barbra!, the collection of U.S. shorts, which tends to be a highlight of every Nevermore. Generally speaking, it's difficult to see these short films outside of a festival atmosphere, even in a world where you can find nearly every short ever made online somewhere. Of the entries this year, I'd only seen one, and that was because it was an entry made for the forthcoming The ABCs of Death 2, where "M" is the letter up for voting this year.

 There was a bit of a wait outside of Cinema Two as a Q&A from the previous showing was running over, so after talking to a few other attendees and Jim, Nevermore's programmer, I caught up with some friends and had a brief chat with the cast and crew of The Shower who came all the way across the country with the film (seriously, if you can see it, do so. I'm looking forward to a release on DVD or Blu-Ray so I can show it to everybody I know, but in the meantime, keep an eye out to see if it's playing at a festival near you). Once Cinema Two finally opened up, it was time for my last screening of Nevermore, and it turned out to be one of the hardest ballots to choose a winner from.

 Like yesterday's shorts collection, I'll provide a brief synopsis and try to link to the trailer, site, or an IMDB page, because other than one entry, I couldn't find any of the full versions online.

 The Root of the Problem - starting things off on a high note is the story of a woman visiting the dentist in the 1950s(ish), only to discover her fears of dental work may not be unfounded. Are her dentist and his assistant really monsters, or is it just the gas causing her to see something horrible behind their pearly whites?

 Call Me Crazy - A mental institution may not seem like the best place to find love, but when a vampire who murdered her boyfriend meets a cannibal who ate his girlfriend, sparks fly. It starts a little awkwardly but quickly picks up steam and is both funny and rather gory in a way not dissimilar to yesterday's Mr. Bear.

 Out of One's Misery - A man mourns the loss of his family, only to be visited by a stranger that may or may not be real. The premise is a solid one, and it manages to be fitfully creepy, but there's a bit too much repetition of action in the story for me to really take to it.

Songs in the Key of Death - In the world where zombies roam the Earth, it's not always easy to make a living, but FJ Ackerman found a gold mine as a piano tuner with undead accompaniment. Presented as a news piece, ala 60 Minutes, Songs in the Key of Death is at times riotously funny and then flips to a truly gonzo finale that takes the insanity of the premise to a whole new level.

Rope-a-Dope - While not horror in the slightest sense of the word, Eric Jacobus' Rope-A-Dope is an amusing and action-packed variation on Groundhog Day where the Dope (Jacobus) runs afoul of a Martial Arts Mafia and wakes up on the same morning every time they knock him out. He has to learn to fight back, and the use of slapstick and action choreography and editing makes for a very impressive and funny short film.

Christmas Carvings - A locally made film starring one of the co-stars of Out of One's Misery, this short has a Tales from the Crypt-style twist but suffers a bit from pacing issues. A husband and wife celebrate the holidays in a unique fashion, but are they really alone?

Killer Kart - FSU Film School student James Feeney  makes what I ended up selecting as my favorite of a really strong set of contenders with this story of the closing crew at a grocery store trying to survive the shopping cart that "snapped." It combines the best elements of a slasher film with genuinely likable characters, some impressive gore, and one of the most improbable monsters you're likely to see this side of The Gingerdead Man. On top of that, it's really well made an a fun ride from beginning to end.

M is for Mime - I quite enjoyed this brief story of a disrespected mime who has his revenge on a snarky hipster, but realized quickly why The ABCs of Death keeps the credits for each short at the very end of the film - the credits are almost as long as the short itself, which left much of the audience feeling antsy. Don't take that as a slight against "M" is for Mime, because you'll enjoy the short itself, but it somewhat drained the momentum immediately following the end of the action.

Welcome to Dignity Pastures -  Speaking of really short shorts, I'm not sure what to make of this. Dignity Pastures is about a funeral home that caters to families of the undead, which is something we find out after the recently deceased comes back to life in the middle of a service. The funeral director is very quickly called to switch another service to a cremation, and before you know it, Welcome to Dignity Pastures is over. I suppose there's some merit to "get in, make your point, get out" but it felt like a better premise than the execution made it out to be.

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 Finally, here are some pictures I remembered to take (in my infinite wisdom) on Saturday night:

 

One of the many banners.

 Also known as "three I didn't see."

Forgive the glare: I tried hard to avoid it but it just wasn't happening.

 Well, gang, that about wraps it up for the 2014 Nevermore Film Festival coverage. I had a great time, made some excellent new discoveries, and am looking forward to seeing what's in store for 2015!

"U" is for Undefeatable

 Undefeatable falls into a category I like to call "good ass acting": you might be familiar with this, the most admired of acting styles from its many appearances in the non-sex scenes in porno. It's the kind of acting that originates from someone whose primary training came in another field - let's say, the martial arts - but who is called upon to deliver lines and carry the dramatic weight of a film, whether they can or not. Or maybe it's whether they should or not. Either way, the end result is often entertaining.

 (just for clarification, when I say "good ass acting," I do not mean "good ASS acting," like you'd see in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective)

 I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that most of the "good ass acting" in Undefeatable is a direct result of the fact that most (if not all) of the cast are or were primarily known for their fighting skills in 1993, with the notable exception of Cynthia Rothrock (China O'Brien), who was already a star in Hong Kong action cinema and had a string of B-movie hits in the U.S. I don't mean to insult her by saying she's probably the most naturalistic actor in the film, but it's really between her and Donna Jason (Abducted II: The Reunion).

  Everybody else falls somewhere between the "wooden line delivery" and "wait, is he acting?" spectrum. It's not on the same level as, say, a Miami Connection, but I'm not exaggerating when I say the most believable scenes are when characters are fighting or practicing. Everybody in this movie, be they underground fighters, college students, or psychologists, seem to have at least rudimentary martial arts skills.

 Rothrock plays Kristie Jones, a waitress who also gets in street fights for money. But it's not just because she likes beating people up - Kristie is putting her sister Karen (Sunny David) through college! When Kristie is busted by Sgt. Nick DiMarco (John Miller), Karen has to bail her out, but the sergeant takes a shining to her "hard luck story."

 At first, it was hard to tell what the hell Undefeatable was going to be about, because before we get to Kristie and Karen's story, it seemed to be a domestic drama about a woman named Anna (Emille Davazac) and her abusive husband "Ray" (Don Niam), who moonlights (?) as a brutal "death match" fighter. At the advice of Dr. Jennifer Simmons (Jason), Anna considers leaving Ray, and ultimately decides to after he rapes her while dinner is cooking.

 I hate to give a movie credit for something like this, but Undefeatable really does a great job of making a rape scene feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible, both for the victim and the audience. Yes, it SHOULD do that, because it's, well, rape, but not since Irreversible have I felt such a strong desire to fast forward to get this scene over with. Not only is it unbearably drawn out, but Ray keeps flashing back to beating a guy to death while calling Anna "Mommy." Perhaps it's a sign of how often it misses other narrative or cinematic benchmarks, but Undefeatable certainly makes you glad that only one of the many rapes that occur in the film is on-screen.

 Well, with that out of the way, luckily, Anna decides to leave Ray, never to appear in the film again. Ray doesn't take to Anna leaving him so well, even though she made him dinner (salad, steak, and wine!) so he spraypaints his hair red, but that only lasts for a few scenes. Fortunately, there's also childhood trauma flashbacks, unimpressive dining room trashing, and menacing shots of checking his mail to look forward to.

Oh, and Ray begins kidnapping any woman wearing a floral print dress, whether or not they look anything like Anna, because that's how he copes. In what is arguably the silliest example this, Ray (SPOILER) kidnaps Karen while a woman who looks more like Anna than she does is hitting on him outside of a grocery store. But, he politely turns down her offer to "come to my place for a drink" so he can (DOUBLE SPOILER) kill Kristie's sister. How else would our divergent plot lines come together?

 In another, mostly silly twist, Dr. Jennifer Simmons is not only Anna's psychologist but also Karen's professor, which is how Kristie gets tied up into the whole shebang. Wait, no, Ray killed her sister completely at random. THAT'S how she got tied up into it. Well, dramatic irony, I guess.

 Just so we're not hanging out with uncomfortable rape man the entire time (did I mention that his name is actually "Stingray"?), Kristie takes the law into her own hands and starts beating up any underground fighter who has a style similar to the way Karen was killed. This leads to a fight on top of barrels an one using improvised construction equipment. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the fighting, but director Godfrey Ho (Bionic Ninja) - under the pseudonym "Godfrey Hall" - has a bad habit of using slow motion for parts that aren't that impressive and cutting away from the cool moves.

 As fight choreography goes, there seems to be some impressive action on display, and because these are martial artists first (acting a distant second), everybody is doing their own stunts. But the shot composition and editing make many of the fight scenes look amateurish and laughable. I think I was supposed to be impressed, not chuckling.

 Oh well, Undefeatable is entertaining, even if not often for its intended purpose. While line deliveries are often so wooden that I couldn't believe that was the best available take, there's a certain "can do" attitude to the film that fights hard to keep you engaged. Most of the time, it's at the very least a compliment to the awkward construction of almost every dialogue scene, which makes it kind of like the kung fu equivalent of porn. If the porn was also shot poorly with the wrong parts accentuated. Anyway, it's not often you see a cop's partner shot in the neck and his only advice to his dying friend is "breathe, dammit!"

 If you've never heard of Cynthia Rothrock, and I guess I could understand how that's possible, Undefeatable probably isn't your best entry point into her filmography, but it's one you can work your way towards over a drunken weekend. Might I suggest pairing it with Tiger Claws II, featuring Expect No Mercy's Jalal Merhi?


 Up next: the beginning of the end for John Carpenter...

"K" is for King Boxer

 As I am led to understand, King Boxer set off the "kung fu" craze in the U.S. when the dubbed version (Five Fingers of Death) made a splash on this side of the Pacific. I hadn't seen Five Fingers of Death, but it seemed like the dubbing didn't help the experience of Django, so it made more sense to watch this landmark chop sockey film in its native language.

 Other than 1978's The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer seems to be held in the highest esteem for Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies, and I can understand why. I suspect that the dubbed version would make it even more enjoyable for Western audiences, but the film is no slouch in Mandarin. For such a simple story (a tournament of fighters that will determine which discipline controls the provinces), King Boxer packs in a number of subplots, introduces new characters nearly every ten minutes, and has crisply shot, kinetic fight scenes. And then there's the gore - it doesn't start until nearly an hour in, but when Chang-hwa Jeong (Six Assassins) commits to eye gouging and decapitation, he goes all out.


Chao Chi-Hao (Lieh Lo) is a student under the tutelage of Master Sung (Wen Chung Ku) and is in love with Sung's daughter Ying Ying (Ping Wang). When bandits attack Sung, he decides it would be better for Chi-Hao to study under Master Sun*(Mien Fang), where Chao's brother Ta-Ming (Bong-Jin Jin) has been training. He sends Chi-Hao out, not knowing that the bandits are servants of Meng Tung-Shun (Feng Tien), who wants to eliminate the other disciplines in order to win the tournament and control the provinces.

 Meng Tung-Shun is, to outward appearances, an honorable man, and in public he stops his son (Shen Chan) from making him look bad. But behind closed doors, he's scheming to destroy Sun and Sung, along with their best pupils. He also collects master-less warriors, including Chen Lang (Chi Chu Chin), a fighter who uses his mighty forehead in combat. Later he attains the assistance of Okuda (Hsiung Chao) a brutal Karate expert from Japan who travels with two swordsmen. They do his dirty work, until Chi-Hao intervenes.

 When Chi-Hao proves himself to be worthy of training, Master Sun teaches him the "Iron Palm," a deadly skill that requires harsh training, all the more so after Meng Tung-Shun's henchmen destroy Chi-Hao's hands (in a very similar way to Django). Not to spoil too much, but let's just say he makes an unexpected full recovery in time for the tournament.

 In order not to bog down the review with names, I'm leaving out several important characters, including a love triangle involving a singer and one of Sun's other pupils - who betrays Chi-Hao out of jealousy - but there's a lot going on in King Boxer between all of the great fight scenes. The lulls between action never feel boring because there's so much going on, so many characters with differing agendas, and allegiances being swapped regularly. It's not the most streamlined movie, but King Boxer is never difficult to follow aside from keeping track of who's who (by name anyway, physically they're pretty distinctive characters).

 I had heard King Boxer was pretty violent, but early on it seemed like that was exaggerating things a bit. Not so later in the film, when blood starts pouring and savage wounds are opened as a result of fights getting serious. Once Okuda shows up, the film takes a decidedly darker turn and as the tournament approaches, King Boxer becomes more of a revenge film than you'd believe early on. Not that I'm complaining, because it elevates the film from "pretty damn good" to "holy crap" in short order.

 Finally, it's worth noting that King Boxer uses the theme from Ironside, and whether you know the show or not, you'll recognize the theme - Quentin Tarantino also used it for Kill Bill, and he appears on the commentary track for this film, which was a nice surprise. I think it's the second commentary from Tarantino I've heard for a movie he wasn't involved with (the other is Hot Fuzz). I will admit it's hard to remove the baggage of Kill Bill when I heard it in the film (and it plays quite a bit in a similar fashion) but that didn't detract from the experience. Call it King Boxer, call it Five Fingers of Death, whatever works for you, but settle down and enjoy some Shaw Brothers at their finest.



 * IMDB says "Sun" but the DVD I watched had subtitles that said Suen.

Blogorium Review: The Man with the Iron Fists

 Expectations are a funny thing sometimes, especially if you live in some kind of film geek "bubble." I didn't realize I lived inside of said "bubble," but the generally blase reaction to RZA's long talked about, long-in-the-making kung fu epic The Man with the Iron Fists, it seems clear to me that very few people were excited about the movie. Or at least, as excited as I thought they would be. This may come as a surprise to Blogorium readers, but the Cap'n is fairly well versed in the Wu Tang Clan, and while not as well versed in chop sockey cinema, I do have an appreciation for how seriously the RZA takes the genre. When you surprise a film scholar with your knowledge about the Shaw Brothers, the Shaolin Temple, and Eastern philosophy (as RZA does on the commentary for The 36th Chamber of Shaolin), then your long gestating entry into kung fu movies isn't just a lark.

 And The Man with the Iron Fists is more than just a series of winking references to Enter the Dragon, King Boxer, and 5 Deadly Venoms although you are going to see all of those and a lot more even before Gordon Liu shows up*. RZA integrates Buddhist philosophy into a serious back story of how Blacksmith (RZA) escapes a misunderstanding that ruins his "freed slave" status in the U.S. and washes him up in 19th century China, where he learns to embrace his Buddha nature and then the art of Chi and pressure points in fighting. This comes in handy when he was to fight Brass Body (Dave "The Wrong Side of Town" Bautista), but I'd better not explain how because that would be a SPOILER, just like how Blacksmith becomes the title character.

*WARNING: NON-MOVIE RELATED TANGENT AHEAD*

 Maybe it's the Eli Roth factor that caused people to tune out of logically being excited. Look, I get that many people hate Eli Roth and Eli Roth movies even though when I talk to them it seems like they've never seen his movies. Okay, so Cabin Fever is a tonal mess and kind of fails to be funny or scary when it needs to be, but hating the Hostel movies sight unseen is a little silly. Technically, because they center around and organization that captures people and auctions them off to be killed (by torture), Hostel and Hostel Part II get wrapped up in the "torture porn" category with the shitty Saw films. My problem with that snap judgment by people who have only heard the term "torture porn" is that the Hostel films, unlike the Saw movies, don't give you torture sequences you want to cheer during. In fact, they make you squirm and feel a little gross, even the second or third time. I laughed the first time I saw the prosthetic eye dangling in the first Hostel, but the second time I saw it I felt bad for that girl and was kinda queasy.

 Anyway the point I'm getting at is that people don't seem to like Eli Roth not because of what they've seen him do, but what they decided about what they didn't see. And maybe you thought he was loud and obnoxious in Inglourious Basterds (which he's supposed to be) and in Death Proof (okay, no argument here) or you just don't like the other movies he produced or his public persona or something. When I get to my Argo review later on we'll be covering similar territory vis a vis Ben Affleck, but I guess the "Screenplay By The RZA and Eli Roth" is turning a lot of people away for some reason. It's silly, because you're missing out.

 *END OF NON-MOVIE RELATED ELI ROTH TANGENT*

 In addition to Blacksmith and Brass Body, there are a bunch of other crazy characters inhabiting Jungle Village, both in and outside of the Pink Blosson brothel. To start with, there are the clans: the Lion Clan, Wolf Clan, Hyena Clan, Jackal Clan, and maybe I just misunderstood Wolf clan but it seemed like there was a Rat clan too. Most of the movie is about the Lion Clan, who are given the task of protecting a shipment of gold. Gold Lion (Chen Kuan-tai), their leader is murdered by Silver Lion (Byron Mann), who takes over with his lieutenant Bronze Lion (Cung Le) and plan to steal the money for themselves.

 Silver Lion, like pretty much every other clan member in Jungle Village, hires the Blacksmith (real name Thaddeus Smith - see what they did there?) to make weapons for them, so when they find out that he might be assisting Gold Lion's son Zen-Yi, the X Blade (Rick Yune) in claiming vengeance with a suit of retractable knives, they don't take it too well. All the Blacksmith wants is to leave Jungle Village with Lady Silk (Jamie Chung), who works at the Pink Blossom, but that's probably not going to work out so well for them. Or anybody else when Silver Lion hires Brass Body to kill Zen-Yi.

 Meanwhile, Jack Knife (Russell Crowe, clearly having a great time) shows up at the Pink Blossom and surrounds himself with women for some good old fashioned debauchery, mostly not involving his gun that also seems to be a rotating blade (or is it the other way around). Also, the gold is being protected by the Gemini Killers (Andrew Lin and Grace Huang), who the Lion Clan decides to take down despite their impressive ability to work together in interlocking fighting styles.

 I feel like I'm not even scratching the surface of the film (which is actually pretty easy to follow) because Lady Blossom (Lucy Liu) is also a major part of the story, for reasons both apparent and also slightly surprising (unless you saw the trailer), and the Lion Clan has another secret ally who fires poisoned darts of mercury (also designed by the Blacksmith) and I'm basically not mentioning Wolf and Hyena Clan who are pretty important until Brass Body shows up.

 Overall I have to say I was pretty entertained by The Man with the Iron Fists, although I have to admit I was underwhelmed by some of the fight scenes. Not all, but some. Whether as a result of budget or because of time, some of them are shot in a haphazard way that undermines the action and choreography, or just don't have the impact they ought to (the end of the Blacksmith / Brass Body fight in particular lacks energy). It's a shame, too, because some of the fight scenes are really entertaining: the Gemini Killers vs the Lion Clan, Brass Body vs Zen-Yi, Zen-Yi vs the Wolf Clan, Jack Knife vs... well, I can't tell you that one, Silver Lion vs Zen-Yi, Lady Blossom and Bronze Lion. It's just that the camera is too close sometimes.

 While I would like to give special props to Russell Crowe for making a guy as sleazy as Jack Knife seem appealing and for clearly embracing the spirit of Ol' Dirty Bastard in order to play this role, since I don't get to talk about Dave Bautista much (read: ever), it is fair to point out that he steals the show as the heavy. I never really feared Silver Lion or Bronze Lion or even Abbott (SPOILER) but Brass Body just enters the film and starts tearing things up. He's unstoppable and he knows he's unstoppable so Brass Body just does whatever he wants to do. When you meet him the first him, he playfully picks up all of the children in the street and carries them around, and you think "hey, maybe this guy isn't so bad" until he tosses them aside with no effort (it's actually funnier looking than I'm making it sound) to talk to Silver Lion. Bautista needs to be in more movies of a non-DTV nature, because he has the same kind of charisma as a Dwayne Johnson, but he seems less genial and more menacing.

 So The Man with the Iron Fists is pretty good, not perfect, but not some hack-y attempt to cash in on fans of kung fu movies. RZA clearly takes this seriously and he did the best he could with a limited budget and relatively novice directing skills and I think he succeeded in a lot of ways. I think that he can and should make more movies and that they're going to get even better as he goes along, but this is far from the "disappointment" that I kept hearing after it came out. So yeah, it isn't perfect, and it's not going to supplant many Shaw Brothers movies in your "what chop sockey flick should we watch tonight" conversation, but I think many geeky types (especially of the Wu Tang Clan variety) will find there's a lot to like about The Man with the Iron Fists. Find a theater that serves beer, or I guess get it on Blu-Ray in a few months, kick back with some cold ones, and enjoy seeing a guy get his head punched off.


 * To be fair, the Enter the Dragon reference is very well done and you don't necessarily see it coming until it happens.

Retro Review: The Matrix

 I can still remember the arguments about The Matrix from the spring of 1999; it all started with the trailers, which promised Keanu Reeves doing wire-fu and firing machine guns while Laurence Fishburne behaved mysteriously. The film looked ridiculous, and considering that the equally over-the-top The Devil's Advocate was the last movie many of us had seen Reeves in (and boy, if you haven't seen The Devil's Advocate, grab a twelve pack of your favorite cheap beer and get ready to howl with laughter*), not many people I knew were planning on seeing it. To make things worse for The Matrix, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News decided to post his positive review of the film on April 1st, which many readers of the site assumed was a joke (it was not, but many people didn't believe it).

 Slowly but surely, the film went from half forgotten joke to something people were going to see, that people wanted to see. I don't recall why I was back in Raleigh, but I know I saw The Matrix at Mission Valley. Maybe it was the expectations of failure, but I can't lie: I laughed a lot.

 While there are positives to The Matrix, that's going to have to wait a little bit because there were two things I took away from the first (and probably second) time I saw the film in 1999. The first was that anything "cool" about the world of leather-clad, gun-toting, "Agent" fighting in-computer freedom fighters was totally undermined by ridiculous lines like "I need weapons" and my personal favorite "Whoa! I know Kung Fu!" delivered as foolishly as humanly possible by a wooden Keanu Reeves. Sure, "Bullet Time" looked pretty cool and the fights were well choreographed and the Wachowski brothers made an entertaining cyber chop-socky mashup, but damn was it stupid when it wanted you to think it was so smart. So smart that Jean Baudrillard - who the Wachowski's name-drop by including Simulacra and Simulation in a key part of Neo's hacker apartment - felt the need to point out that they misunderstood what he meant by "virtual world" and that Disney Land was closer to what he meant than the Matrix. But I digress.

 The second point I walked away with, the one that became contentious over the next few months as rabid fans of The Matrix continued to tell me how "original" and "revolutionary" the film was, had to do with the similarity of its plot to Dark City. To this day, Dark City isn't as well known as it should be. The film is arguably the best thing Alex Proyas and David Goyer created (although Proyas' The Crow and I, Robot are more recognizable), but it's always been a sort of "cult" film. The problem is that Dark City was released in February of 1998 and The Matrix in March of 1999, and both films are about men who discover they are a part of a manufactured world, one controlled by all powerful interlopers that dictate their very identities and even the architecture of their world. With the help of a mentor who has some view of the "real" world, they discover powers which allow them to thwart their oppressors, save "the girl" and both films end with an ambiguous suggestion that their journey has only begun.

 Yes, it's true that this is in broad strokes the "hero's journey" that permeates most stories, but the similarities between Dark City and The Matrix were just too much for me at the time. Dark City had been on VHS for what I'm guessing was a few months and it was fresh in my mind, and if you substitute "aliens" for "machines" then The Matrix was just too much of "been there, done that" and recently, at that, for me.

 Not that my point registered with anyone other than people who had seen Dark City. Instead, there would be talking out of both sides of the mouth about how "all movies rip off other stories" but also how "The Matrix is amazing! Nobody's done it like THAT!" and I just didn't get what they were so gaga for. Maybe if I hadn't seen Dark City so recently or if my perception of Keanu Reeves wasn't tainted by Johnny Mnemonic, Speed, and The Devil's Advocate (in short: Bad Actor), it's possible that I too would have looooooooved The Matrix. But in 1999, that was not the case.

 The tepid (to be kind) reaction to The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions was a kind of vindication four years later, although I still watched both of them and really wished I hadn't.

 But that was then, and this is now. With thirteen years and some perspective, what do I think of The Matrix now? Well, I hadn't seen it for several years when a copy of the Ultimate Matrix boxed set came through the used book store I worked for, so I thought I'd give it a shot. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were still bad (although the third not as terrible as the second) but the first film isn't all that bad. The way the Wachowskis set up the beginning of the film, where Tom Anderson (Reeves) isn't aware of his true nature, is handled in an interesting way, one where it isn't clear what Morpheus (Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) want with "Neo", his hacker alter ego, or if the alarming encounter with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) actually happened or not. Things start off with a cracking action sequence that gives audiences a hint of what's to come, but it's a good while before we get bullet time or super acrobatics after that.

 In the years between seeing The Matrix for the first time and seeing it again, I've seen more of Hugo Weaving, Carrie-Anne Moss, and even Keanu Reeves. I must say that in the latter instance, I was perhaps unkind in the characterization of "Bad Actor" (or the suggestion that he wasn't "acting" dumb in the Bill and Ted movies), even if Street Kings and Constantine aren't really going to help make my case (I did enjoy them. Sorry.). He was good in Thumbsucker and A Scanner Darkly, even if the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still stunk to high heaven. Ugh.

 At any rate, with its proximity to Dark City not as much of an issue, I'm willing to enjoy the film as a silly kung fu movie that wants to pass itself off as high minded (and, considering the books and journal essays I've read or seen about the film, clearly it inspires some level of critical analysis) and be happy at that. One of these days I might even listen to the philosophers commentary track (with Ken Wilbur and Dr. Cornell West) and the critics commentary track (Todd McCarthy, John Powers, David Thompson) to hear what they think. As I understand it, things are not always flattering, which is refreshing considering how many "back patting" commentary tracks are out there.

 I have not, and don't know that I would consider it, watched all three films back-to-back. To be honest, I just can't bring myself to listen to the Architect again. But there's always a What the Hell Week out there...


 * While many people like to point at Scent of a Woman as the point when Al Pacino became a caricature of the actor he'd once been, it's hard to argue that the scene chewing, half-screamed "performance" he delivers in The Devil's Advocate is where he jumped the shark. Or nuked the fridge. Whatever that one is. Anyway, his final scene in that movie is Mega-Acting that rivals Nic Cage at his nuttiest.
** I didn't have anywhere else to put this, but looking back it it now, how crazy is it that Joe Pantoliano is the fourth person on the poster? I guess in 1999 most people hadn't seen The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, so maybe Hugo Weaving wasn't that well known, but I'd forgotten that Joey Pants was on the poster. Quick, other than Memento, name a movie with Joey Pants released since The Matrix. I could only name two.

Retro Review: A List of "Sword and Sorcery" films I've Seen (or Think I've Seen)

 So while I was working on the Your Highness review, I made a concerted effort to think of every movie that falls into the "sword and sorcery" category that David Gordon Green's movie is paying homage / gentling mocking. If you saw the review, I narrowed it down to Conan the Barbarian (have seen) and Krull (have not seen). I also mentioned The Barbarian and the Princess because, if I remember correctly, the VHS has a four-breasted woman on the cover. It turns out that such a movie does not exist, because it's actually called The Warrior and the Sorceress. Again, I'm not really an expert on this subgenre.

 While thinking carefully about it, I realized I could name a few other movies that I've seen part of, all of, or think I might have seen when I was younger. Here is a list with any thoughts that possibly come to mind with them.

  Masters of the Universe - A He-Man movie has to count in some capacity. I've never seen Masters of the Universe, but it was playing in the background during a birthday party / sleepover I went to. That and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I think.

 Circle of Iron - Hey! I actually reviewed this movie - it's a kung-fu, sword and sorcery, parable sort of thing, but there's lot of loincloths and warriors and stupid crap with David Carradine as a leopard dude.

 Deathsport - So I watched the first thirty minutes of this Roger Corman produced ripoff of Roger Corman's Death Race 2000. Instead of cars, there are motorcycles, but first peasants ride around on horses and avoid mutants, and David Carradine is rocking a loincloth / cape combination but also shoots some kind of weird laser gun. Technically it's more "post-apocalyptic" but it reminded me of some of the dumber "sword and sorcery" shit.

 Willow - I saw Willow when I was young, and even then it seemed like a pretty weak knock-off of Star Wars, but with witches and Warwick Davis and Val Kilmer. I seem to remember the whole two headed dragon growing out of some sort of sac grossed me out and I haven't watched it since.

 Cave Dwellers - I saw it on MST3k.

 The Scorpion King - from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors and the pro-wrestler-turned-crappy-cgi-effect formerly known as The Rock. This isn't even a guilty pleasure - I openly enjoy this silly movie that's part Conan the Barbarian, part Conan the Destroyer.

 The Beastmaster - I'm not positive I ever saw all of Don Coscarelli's The Beastmaster. I'm not even really sure I've seen some of this movie, or at all. Maybe I just know what it is.

  Dragonslayer - Like Willow, I saw Dragonslayer and it creeped me out in parts. Specifically the parts with Peter MacNicol.

 Ladyhawke (?) - Forgive me, because I don't remember many swords. I guess there probably were, but mostly I remember Matthew Broderick from War Games and I remember not knowing who Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer were.

 The Lord of the Rings - These movies don't count, do they? I kept finding it on lists, along with Highlander and Excalibur, which I guess kinda technically count. Your Highness does borrow a few helicopter shots of our heroes on their journey, one of which reminded me of a similar shot used in the trailer for The Hobbit.

 Jason and the Argonauts / The 7th Voyage of Sinbad / Clash of the Titans - The Ray Harryhausen triptych of movies I guess are unmistakably "sword and sorcery" or at least "sword and Greek mythology" films. I saw all of these as a kid (funny how I didn't see many of these films after age nine...) and the robot bird Simon in Your Highness is most definitely a nod to that stupid robotic owl in Clash of the Titans. I forgot its name and don't know that I need to know it. I'll pretend its name is Archimedes, which I'm pretty sure is the name of the owl in The Sword and the Stone.

 The Black Cauldron - Speaking of Walt Disney, I never even considered this movie to qualify, but more than one list mentioned both The Sword and the Stone and The Black Cauldron. I saved The Black Cauldron for last because at least I have a story about this movie.

 I saw The Black Cauldron when it opened in theatres and was apparently the one kid in the world that didn't think it was the nadir of Disney animation (see: Waking Sleeping Beauty). In fact, I couldn't wait to rent the VHS tape when it came out... which was funny, because it DIDN'T come out on videocassette. Not until I was in high school, as a matter of fact. Like Song of the South, The Black Cauldron simply vanished from the lips of anyone involved with The Walt Disney Corporation for the rest of the 1980s. It took the better part of a decade before anyone could watch it again. I still don't really get the "sword and sorcery" categorization, mostly because I always connect that subgenre with the desert, but I guess it does fit in.

 Do you like how I mentioned two different Nightmare on Elm Street movies even though they are in no way topically related to these films?

 So I guess there were more movies than I led you to believe yesterday, although I've seen maybe three of them in the last ten years in their entirety. Several of them I only saw once, when I was pretty young, and they didn't make much of an impression. That might explain why Your Highness was slightly perplexing to the Cap'n.

Blogorium Review: Black Dynamite

The Cap'n has to openly admit something: I'm not as versed in Blaxploitation Films as I ought to be. Oh, I've seen the major "canon" films: Shaft, Dolemite, The Mack, Foxy Brown, Blacula, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Boss *ahem*, and Detroit 9000, but I'm far from versed in the genre the way I am with, say, slasher films. I really wish I'd seen Black Belt Jones, for example, before watching Black Dynamite.

That being said, even if you aren't steeped in Blaxploitation history or just happen to really enjoy I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, you're going to really enjoy Black Dynamite. It's a different kind of parody than the Wayans / Zucker model of the mid-to-late 80s, mostly because of how hard it works to feel like a product of the era.

While this is going to sound strange, I’m going to draw a comparison to The House of the Devil, because both films manage to feel evocative of their respective time frames (Black Dynamite of the early-to-mid-seventies and The House of the Devil to the very early eighties) with a combination of camerawork, film stock, and set design. As with The House of the Devil, Black Dynamite could fool people into thinking they aren’t watching a parody… well, I won’t go that far. Stylistically, maybe, but if you’re paying attention to the story (and you’ve ever seen I’m Gonna Git You Sucka), then it’d be hard to mistake this for the genuine article.

As stories go, Black Dynamite has… a bit going on. Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White)’s brother Jimmy is gunned down by, um… drug dealers? Mobsters? The man?, causing the Cool Brother Who’s Out of Sight to put aside his Kung Fu practicing and Love Making in order to clean up the streets and get revenge. He’s helped out by “The Man” (in this instance, the CIA, with whom he served after being left behind in Vietnam), his main man Bullhorn (Byron Minns) and informant Cream Corn (Tommy Davidson).

Here’s where it gets a little more complicated, because Black Dynamite does manage to fit almost every cliché into one film: Black Dynamite teams up with the local Black Panther party to help overthrow the corrupt Congressman Monroe James, as well as local hood Chicago Wind (Mykelti Williamson). Then things get even more complicated as a vast conspiracy involving Anaconda Malt Liquor, The Fiendish Dr. Wu, and the President of the United States raises the stakes for Black Dynamite.

The level to which Black Dynamite is a parody (or just satire) of the genre is up to you. See, from what I do know of most Blaxploitation films, they are pretty ridiculous. Many of them were made on the cheap, so camera work can be a little shoddy, plots can go all over the place, and characters are painted in the broadest strokes possible. For example, Shaft is such a badass that most of the plot doesn’t need to tie together; he can pretty much wander around starting shit and seducing ladies at a moment’s notice. Alternately, it’s pretty hard not to say that Bullhorn is directly modeled after Rudy Ray Moore.

So when Black Dynamite abruptly shifts from being a “getting the drugs out of the community” to a showdown on “Kung Fu Island”, the level of parody is up for debate. Of course, when you’re watching a movie with a character named “The Fiendish Dr. Wu”, a “master of Kung Fu Treachery,” don’t take things too seriously. By the time that Black Dynamite switches directions for the fourth of fifth time (somewhere around the introduction of the orphanage), it’s easier to just enjoy the ride.

Helping to ease your enjoyment is Michael Jai White as Black Dynamite. I knew he was a charismatic guy from Exit Wounds, and that he was a martial arts master (okay, from the same movie, but also Universal Soldier). I guess that he might have been funny in Jerry Springer: Ringmaster, but honestly I don’t remember because of how bad that movie was. Here, however, he’s the ultimate package.

Jai White understands how inherently silly the genre is, and finds the balance between underplayed Richard Roundtree and over the top Fred Williamson. Even his kung fu, which is solid, is punctuated with ridiculous Bruce Lee-esque squeals and mannerisms. If you’ve seen the “Damoe” deleted scene from Kill Bill part 2, where Jai White has an outlandishly bad Australian accent, then you’ll have some idea of how funny he can be while kicking ass. But he’s also unmistakably a Bad Ass Mo-Fo in Black Dynamite. You don’t doubt that he could, say, defeat a nun chuck wielding Richard Nixon (spoiler).

While the targets are wide ranging and the acting is, at times, deliberately over the top, my favorite moments are the little ones. For example, early in the movie Black Dynamite is visiting Honey Bee (Kym Whitely) and sits down at his desk. The camera, at a low angle, swings up awkwardly as Jai White stands up, revealing the boom microphone at the top of the frame. This, as Adam was quick to remind me, is directly lifted from Dolemite, but what makes it even funnier is that Jai White quickly looks up at the boom mic not once but twice.

Other little things, like the fact that stock footage never seems to match the action sequences (particularly at the end of the Chicago Wind chase), awkward cuts to mask stunt accidents, or delaying a split-screen because Black Dynamite is having trouble hanging up the phone really sold me on the movie. In fact, I'm a little fuzzy on why people don't like Black Dynamite. A handful of reviews I saw indicated the film was all style and no substance, which I don't totally agree with.

Admittedly, the story is all over the map, but there is an actual through line from beginning to end. The unnecessarily over-complicated explanation of the Anaconda Malt Liquor conspiracy should make that clear. To be fair, the sequence with the pimps (which includes cameos by Bokeem Woodbine, Cedric Yarbrough, Miguel Nunez, Brian McKnight, and Arsenio Hall) doesn’t really go anywhere, but you do get to hear the following exchange:

Black Dynamite – “I’m declaring war on anyone who sells drugs to the community!”

Chocolate Giddy-Up – “But Black Dynamite, I sell drugs to the community!”

I highly recommend Black Dynamite to anybody sick of seeing crap like Epic Movie or Recent Movie 3 or whatever they pass themselves off as these days. While you don’t need to be a scholar on Blaxploitation films, it wouldn’t hurt your appreciation of what director / writer Scott Sanders and co-writers Michael Jai White and Byron Minns have accomplished. In fact, it may send you in the direction of the films Black Dynamite is satirizing. I, for one, am going to try to locate Black Belt Jones and see how much I missed in the first viewing of Black Dynamite.

---

Just for good measure, a sampling of other great lines from the movie:

“Your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery!”

“Take your filthy black hands off the presidential dinnerware, you moon-cricket!”

“First Lady, I'm sorry I pimp slapped you into that china cabinet.”

“You diabolical dick shrinkin' mother fuckers!”

“Now Aunt Billy, how many times have I told you not to call here and interrupt my Kung Fu!”