queen boxer [1972]

 

hong kong kung flu flix are a lot of fun.  the plots almost always lean toward revenge.  bad guys sometimes get their comeuppance by wronged good guys in the most spectacular fashion.  the fight choreography is a twin to dance choreography, if a bit more vicious & bloody.  this movie is no exception.  the queen in this movie is, for the era of its release, a rare thing.  a woman fighter.  & this movie is rarer, for that era, still for being directed by a woman, feng-chi yu.  

billed as bruce lee's real-life sister, ha ha, actress judy lee [chia ling], is out to avenge the murder of her brother.  an ax wielding group of thugs hired by the local mobster did the killing.  lee is an unstoppable force.  her kicks, punches & physical prowess bests any & every goon that steps in her way.  she is marvelous to witness as she tears thru the scenery leaving the ruined bodies of bad dudes behind.  we are introduced to her powers when she is accosted by aforementioned goofballs who try to assault her in the street.  she doesn't kill these dorks but she does make them spit out a few teeth.

soon lee gets the blessing of her father to wreak her revenge.  she partners with another man, ma yung, played by david wei tang, a social reformer who is hellbent on breaking the grip of the local gangsters in his town.  but there is no lovey-dovey between our two heroes.  these two run a parallel line toward the beasts that must be bested.  nor does this movie have any nudity or sexual assaults.  just straight up bone crushing, flesh gashing revenge taking purity.

& when we get to the final reel there is an army of lee kicking ass on the thugs & lead gangster.  she had taken a vow to revenge her murdered brother on the pain of her own death.  even more so, would be the music used in this film.  isaac hayes' 'theme from shaft' is the stolen theme for this pic!  & i love the film grain & burns on the print of this movie.  those added to the effect that i was at the grindhouse or drive-in watching a print made of a print of a print of this movie.  damn, that brought tears to my eyes!  

she freak [1967]

 

yeah, this movie might be an anticlassic, penned & produced by exploitation impresario david f. friedman, but it is frankly boring.  this is a total ripoff of tod browning's great movie freaks [1932].  friedman copped to the steal, in plain speak.  but what the hell.  for this movie we have a waitress in a greasy spoon, jade, who not only must deal with a dead-end job, but the advances of her boss, who is the owner/manager/cook of the diner.  what's an ambitious girl to do when the odds are stacked against her & her immediate prospects look grim.  

soon a suave salesman swoops into the diner.  he is running lead to a traveling carnival.  oh yeah?  jade inquires about a job with the carnival.  the salesman is charmed by jade.  she may not, in her own words, be able to dance & sing but surely she most have some kind of something to get a job with the carnival & get out of her small town & away from that diner.  

sure enough jade succeeds in getting a job.  she makes friends with some of the carnies & performers, including burlesk - yes that's how it's spelled on the sideshow marquee - dancer moon.  soon jade charms the pants off the resident grease monkey & troublemaker, blackie, & the well-off carnie steve.  where did steve get his money?  why ask.  so then anyway, jade loathes the sideshow workers who are steve's close friends.  guess what happens next.

if you've seen browning's movie you know what happens to jade.  but man, it takes a very long time to get to it.  even so, i found this movie fascinating because it is a document of late 1960s life.  the fairgoers all seemed surprised to find themselves on camera.  you see that when more than a few enter the frame they turn toward the camera with curiosity & surprise.  that's because i suspect the filmmakers shot at a real carnival with real customers.  & this movie was made for the drive-in crowd so there is a bit of cheesecake, a little bit of violence & blood, & a sleazy mien that kept me watching even when i found the movie slogging!   

the lone guitar of the apocalypse

 

today is halloween!

it's a few minutes past the witching hour but it is halloween!  the day when the membrane between the living & the dead is at its thinnest.  so welcome your dead.  it is a good day.  anna & i will need to make a candy run before those trick 'r treaters arrive.  forecast calls for rain.  but that never stopped trick 'r treaters!  so but then, however you observe, or not, this wonderful day i wish you a very haunted & happy halloween!

boo!

let us have a cup of earl grey, hot

when i found out the death today of sir patrick stewart my mind immediately replayed one scene of his from all the roles stewart has played.  stewart was a shakespearean-trained actor who brought wit & grace to even the smallest role.  he was better known as capt. jean-luc picard of the starship enterprise.  he was magnificent as picard but one must remember that the great speeches & lines of dialogue spoken by stewart as picard were penned by some of the finest writers of any TV series.  but you need a voice & presence to say them.  stewart had those in great abundance.  & as we remember sir patrick stewart as capt. jean-luc picard let's remember too his favorite drink, earl grey served hot.  i can list so many movies great & small, so many TV series as well that were lucky to have stewart play in them.  we all can, i believe, & we all have our favorites too.  stewart lived to a good age of 86.  not a bad run, indeed.  but it is his part as a maitre d' of the restaurant l'idiot in the steve martin vehicle, L.A. Story [1991] that i instantly thought of this afternoon when i read the news that sir patrick stewart passed away.  

stewart is simultaneously hilarious & menacing.  his exquisite voice gives this encounter just the right amount of absurd humor.  & he brilliantly balances menace with the other brilliant comedic actor in this scene, steve martin's wincing befuddlement.  these couple of minutes of this movie have tattooed itself onto my memory.  in short, stewart steals the show!

godspeed sir patrick stewart

everyday is halloween: the brain that wouldn't die [1962]

 

those fucking mad scientists.  getting all weird & obsessive.  a crazy idea, or technique leads them to commit atrocious acts of violence.  & this movie is proof of it.  dr. bill cortner, played by jason evers, is a master surgeon who synthesized a solution that can reanimate dead tissue.  he also has surgical skills par excellence.  but his methods, to quote another movie about another madman, apocalypse now [1979], dr. cortner's methods are unsound.  

you see, this flick starts out with a surgery.  cortner & his surgeon father, played by bruce brighton, is doing some kind of brain surgery.  the father takes the lead on the operation but loses his patient.  but wait, bill says he he can bring the patient back from the dead.  he does with his magic solution & messaging the dead guy's brain.  sure, this brings the patient back to life but bill's father is freaked out by his son's methods.  & of the doggedness of the younger doctor's unorthodox ways.

still, what the hell.  bill gets a telephone call from his assistant.  come to their hidden compound in the mountains, where bill & assistant had been working in secret, right away.  something terrible has happened.  so bill & his lovely fiancé, jan compton, played by virginia leith, race thru the mountain roads with bill behind the will.  bam!  a car wreck & jan loses her head.  no worries, bill takes her head & tootles off to his compound.  

what now.  bill fixes jan's head in a tray with his magical potion pumped into it.  yep, a disembodied head.  while bill's assistant, kurt, played by anthony la penna, shows our young mad doctor that the thing they've been working on, a kind of frankenstein's monster, has mutated into a homicidal maniac.  kurt keeps the monster locked up in a room adjacent to the lab where jan is just gaining consciousness.  but bill has other plans.  he needs to get a body so he can graft jan's head on it.  he leaves jan, kurt & monster to go hunting for a suitably sultry young woman.  where does he go?  to a burlesque show!  why not.  

turns out kurt is a victim of bill's earlier work.  the monster is a collection of sewn together body parts animated by bill's magic liquid.  & jan, now simply a head, can communicate telepathically with the monster locked in the room.  you can see where this story is going.  the movie is short on action & long on dialogue.  while watching the exchanges between kurt & jan i wondered how samuel beckett would craft these scenes.  cuz this movie is bleak.  but it is also, despite its salacious nature, kinda boring.

bill is a putz.  kurt is a dimwit.  the monster is a mere thought by the writers.  & jan, the most interesting character in this movie, is given very little meat to chew.  beckett would've created speech, i think, of such profound existential despair that would shake the core beliefs of even the most hardened viewer.  the movie is dumbly directed by joseph green.  the production must've cost only a couple of bucks while the sound design is atrocious.  but hey!  who is complaining!  this movie was shot in 1959 but released in 1962 when it almost immediately went into the public domain.  this flick is flawed for sure but i sitll can't stop myself from thinking about it.  i even think there might be poems in it from both the monster & jan's point of view.  this is must-see movie for those of us that demand a fair chunk of cinematic cheese.  it's not fine cheese.  it is more like velveeta, in all its anti-glory, rich, gooey & so delicious!

boo!

everyday is halloween: heatwave! [1974]

 

how about a made for TV disaster movie.  i was gaga-crazy for disaster flix when i was a lad & i tried to watch all of them.  producer irwin allen had a lock on this sub-genre of horror-melodrama with movies like the towering inferno [1974] & the poseidon adventure [1972] in the '70s but there was a rout of these pics such as this one under review.  it is a curious document of life in 1970s america.  for in this movie it is the women we see at the supermarket doing the shopping, or at the laundry mat.  while the men are doing the he-man shit by going into the office.  & when the shit hits the fan it is the men who are expected to take on leadership roles.  

still, this is an interesting slice of life of a twentysomething couple, frank & laura, in the midst of a 17 day & counting heatwave in los angeles.  how hot?  the cut shots of a digital clock & thermometer, the type you'd see on a bank display from the street, tells you not only the time of day but how miserable you are going to be with temperatures hovering between 116-117 F [47 C].  that's surface of the sun hot.  top it all off is a wonky grid that makes for brownouts & blackouts, along with disruptions of the municipal water supply.  in short, frank & laura, who is seven months pregnant, are having a tough time.  

did i mention frank is played by ben murphy & laura is essayed by bonnie bedelia?  they do a serviceable job as an ordinary american young couple.  frank works as a junior stockbroker.  laura is a stay-at-home wife, natch.  but when laura's mother offers the couple their mountain cabin shortly before the city suffers a blackout, bam!, our young couple is soon driving the mountain roads in their VW bug worried about running out of gas.  man, that was the '70s!

still, this is not an apocalyptic movie.  the world continues to function.  people are not cutthroat, blood-thirsty goofballs.  the couple's bug is stolen but not by some faction of a killer road gang.  & when they finally get to their cabin in the woods, they are met by some good people, not crazed zombies, much to my disappointment.  still, the director, jerry jameson, keeps the narrative flowing.  we care for frank & laura, & their baby.  this is essentially a chamber piece focused on our young couple.  & it is interesting to note that these two young persons are utterly & uniquely ordinary.  just like you & me.  

boo!