Dolph Lundgren is the Killing Machine Review at Row Three

I posted a review of the action-packed Dolph Lundgren is the Killing Machine over at Row Three:

http://www.rowthree.com/2010/08/17/review-dolph-lundgren-is-the-killing-machine/

Another Weekend of Trash

My friends and I recently got together for another one of our regular 'trashathons' – you may remember I covered the last extravaganza in an early post here. Basically consisting of watching as many cheap and cheesy genre titles we can handle in a weekend, our get-togethers have become a quarterly staple that I always look forward to. We've watched some really bad films, but we've also dug out some real gems in the past, many of which have disappeared completely with the DVD boom. Yes I'm talking VHS here. Throwing picture quality out the window we've been scouring the bins for some long forgotten titles. This time round we didn't manage to squeeze in quite as many films (we spent hours at a car boot sale purchasing more!) and a few aren't obscure by any means (only two titles were on VHS this time), but I still enjoyed myself and thought you guys might like to hear what we got up to. Again I've dug out some trailers and clips for your amusement.

P.S. Ratings are probably not worth it for most of these titles, but I'm going to give some scores for shear entertainment value, so don't take them too seriously.



FRIDAY:

Missing in Action

Year: 1984
Director: Joseph Zito
Writers: Arthur Silver, Larry Levinson, Steve Bing, James Bruner, John Crowther & Lance Hool
Starring: Chuck Norris, M. Emmet Walsh, David Tress, Lenore Kasdorf, James Hong

What trashy genre weekend would be complete without an entry from Chuck Norris. So we let the man who doesn't sleep, but waits (fact!) set us off. After a strong start featuring a 'nam flashback that ends in Norris leaping at a Vietnamese soldier with live grenades in either hand, the film unfortunately takes quite a nosedive and was pretty tedious for the most part. Things pick up towards the end once M. Emmet Walsh makes a surprising appearance and Norris lets rip on his bulletproof dingey (sorry, 'assault raft'), but generally this is pretty lame even by The Bearded One's standards. There are far too many scenes of gratuitous toplessness and 'tense' climbing sequences to sustain one's interest.

4/10

Friday the 13th

Year: 2009
Director: Marcus Nispel
Writers: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift & Mark Wheaton
Starring: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle, Aaron Yoo, Derek Mears

There's not a whole lot to say about the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th. It's not particularly bad, but it's not particularly good either. It's a totally by the numbers slasher film that is effective enough, but never offers anything new. That said, I kind of liked the fact that it didn't try and add too much of an unnecessary history to Jason Voorhees like some of these 'reimaginings' do, it just sticks to what the Friday the 13th films do best, killing vulnerable and sexually active teens. The killings are occasionally quite inventive and well staged, the pace is solid and it never gets dull, but you can't get away from the fact that it's been done countless times in the past in exactly the same way.

5/10


SATURDAY:

Fireback

Year: 1983
Director: Teddy Page
Writers: ? Not listed on IMDB
Starring: Richard Harrison, Bruce Baron, Gwendolyn Hung, Jim Gaines

The first really obscure VHS title we pulled out was Fireback, a truly dreadful action movie starring Richard Harrison, the go to guy for bad ninja movies in the 80's. This isn't a ninja movie though unfortunately (although one makes a baffling appearance), it's a shoddy revenge thriller following Harrison's search for the kidnappers of his wife. The box promised non-stop explosive action featuring a ludicrously over the top weapon, but this swiss-army gun (it even has an inbuilt radio!) only makes an appearance in the first 5 minutes, which incidentally are the best 5 minutes of the film. Elsewhere we just had to put up with atrocious dubbing, painfully wooden acting and poorly choreographed action sequences. Not the hidden trash gem we were searching for.

2/10

Push

Year: 2009
Director: Paul McGuigan
Writer: David Bourla
Starring: Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Djimon Hounsou, Camilla Belle, Neil Jackson

After the atrocity that was Fireback, we decided to watch something modern with an actual budget, so we pulled out Push, a film that just sort of came and went in theatres last year with little fanfare. The three of us had previously met one of the supporting actors, Neil Jackson, at a film festival my friend curates and he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy, so we thought we'd give this film a go after he mentioned how much fun he had making it.

I was pleasantly surprised actually. I wasn't expecting much, it just looked like a bog-standard straight to DVD sci-fi film, but it was an enjoyable and fairly original action romp. It was a little overlong perhaps and suffers from a few sci-fi contrivances, but I liked the use of its Hong Kong location and it had a quirky, colourful vibe to it that set it apart from most films of its kind. When the 'force' powers are used to their full effect in the latter third of the film it's great fun too.

7/10

Police Assassins (a.k.a. Yes, Madam)

Year: 1985
Director: Corey Yuen
Writer: Barry Wong
Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, John Sham, Mang Hoi, Tsui Hark, Sammo Hung

We stayed in Hong Kong for our next film with a martial arts favourite, Police Assassins (a.k.a. Yes, Madam). I'm a big fan of the genre (it's my biggest guilty pleasure) and I've been meaning to see this for a while as it's Michelle Yeoh's first leading role and I'd heard good things about it. In its action scenes it certainly doesn't disappoint. The final showdown is spectacular and shows the world that women can pull off action sequences of astonishing athleticism that are easily equal to those of their contemporaries, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Jet Li etc. Some of the moves and stunts are so fast, fluid and god-damned dangerous that I was blown away at times. Unfortunately these scenes are thin on the ground for the majority of the running time and as with most martial arts films of that period, slapstick comedy takes centre stage to fill the gaps. Admittedly I had a chuckle here and there and Tsui Hark of all people plays one of the comic relief characters and does a pretty good job, but ultimately I don't watch films like this for their comedy and there's only so much Benny Hill level goofing around I can stand in an hour and a half. So martial arts fans out there will get a big kick out of this, but be sure to have your remote on handy to fast forward certain sections.

6/10

The Roller Blade Seven

Year: 1991
Director: Donald G. Jackson
Writers: Donald G. Jackson & Scott Shaw
Starring: Scott Shaw, Frank Stallone, Karen Black, Don Stroud, William Smith, Joe Estevez

I can safely say without hesitation, that The Roller Blade Seven is the worst film I have ever seen. From the cover it looked like trashy fun (roller blading samurai!), but oh boy were we wrong. It actually plays out like a drug-induced student art film that has taken over the shell of a trashy B-movie. It's insufferably dull and to rub salt in the wounds consistently repeats shots again and again and again for no reason. The film makes no sense as it 'treats' us to early 90's music video visuals and improvised mumbling from its confused and clearly intoxicated cast (what the hell is Karen Black doing in there, she was in Nashville and Easy Rider for god's sake!). There are attempts at action sequences that are so slow and totally unpractised that they look like a bunch of kids whacking each other with plastic swords – in slow motion and on repeat. Doing research into this film I discovered that producer Scott Shaw described it as the first film adopting the 'Zen Filmmaking' style, where everything is shot on the fly and improvised in a short period of time. It sounds like an admirable thing, but from these results I wouldn't get excited. I've made improvised films with groups of 8 year olds in school workshops that are more effective than this. I also found out through my research that this is the first in a Roller Blade Seven trilogy and the producer has made dozens of 'Zen' films. God help us all....

I could go on, but I can't bare thinking about it anymore. If you ever have the chance to see this film, don't. Trust me, you may want to laugh at how bad it is, but it's not even worth it for that. Just check out the clips below and you'll see.

0/10

Embedding has been disabled on the trailer unfortunately, but here's a link to check it out in all its glory (the film is even worse, trust me).

And here's an actual sample of the film that I found elsewhere:

SUNDAY:

The Man From Hong Kong

Year: 1975
Directors: Brian Trenchard-Smith & Wang Yu
Writer: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Starring: Jimmy Wang Yu, George Lazenby, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Roger Ward, Ros Spiers

Maybe it was because we were coming off the back of The Roller Blade Seven, but I really enjoyed The Man From Hong Kong. It's 70's Grindhouse at its finest. A collaboration between an Australian production company and Hong Kong's Golden Harvest studio, the film is an unstoppable juggernaut of fight scenes, car chases and gratuitous nudity. Yes at its heart it is a low rate James Bond rip off with a forgettable story and plenty of hammy acting, but it's jam packed with everything we were searching for all weekend. Sammo Hung provides the action choreography (and a fairly large cameo) which as expected is top notch despite featuring less seasoned Western performers for the most part. Speaking of which, George Lazenby makes for an enjoyably cheesy villain and holds his own in the fight scenes against the One-Armed Swordsman himself Jimmy Wang Yu. A car chase towards the end is really impressive too. I wouldn't be surprised if Tarantino has this in his collection (in the Death Proof 'making of' he cites Ozploitation movies as his chief influence). So all in all it was the perfect end to our otherwise less-than-inspirational weekend line-up.

8/10

Gutter King

Director: Keith Alan Morris

Screenplay: Keith Alan Morris

Producers: Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Malte Grunert, Jennifer Kawaja, Julia Sereny & Sytze Van Der Laan

Starring: Zeb Crown, Casey Clark, Erica Ramirez, Blake Logan

Year: 2010

Country: USA

BBFC Certification: 15

Duration: 96 min

I was quite excited when I got Gutter King sent over to review from my good friends at Metrodome. As regular readers will know I love a good action movie and the thought of getting to give my first impressions on a fight-fest that no one else seems to have seen yet was enough to get my hopes up. It also had quite a cool looking cover that suggested a no-holds-barred action extravaganza. Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to that promise.

Surprisingly, Gutter King places more of an emphasis on the drama than the action, which of course isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when the dramatic elements aren't particularly well handled or interesting I kind of wished they'd have stuck to the fighting. The film tells the story of Will (Zeb Crown), a young offender pulled out of juvenile hall by Bob (Casey Clark) to start a new life with him and another foster-child Paul (Blake Logan). Will soon finds out however that Bob's motives aren't entirely charitable as he is secretly utilizing these aggressive young men to fight in underground bare-knuckle fighting tournaments. Will still ends up getting caught up in the world though, mainly to help raise money to run away with the girl next door, BeBe (Erica Ramirez) who is struggling herself with an abusive father among other problems. Meanwhile, Bob's previous fighting prodigy Paul gets increasingly jealous of Will's success and makes his life as hard as possible whilst they live under the same roof.

The bare bones of the narrative are pretty standard action movie fare, but it's presented very solemnly with an indie/arthouse sort of feel which theoretically should raise it above and beyond the usual trashy genre entries, but the filmmakers don't have the talent to pull it off. This results in a film stuck in a ditch between classy character-driven indie film and cheesy fight-filled action movie, a balance that didn't work for me. I think a major problem was that the narrative is quite poorly constructed. The film just doesn't flow very smoothly and a lot of the character's actions lack the appropriate level of motivation to make them acceptable. The performances don't help either, everyone comes across as bland and the leads spend most of the film moping around and throwing little hissy-fits now and again, it's like watching some sort of 'emo' action movie. The two street-fighting foster-brothers are strangely cast too, with neither of them that convincing as hardened offenders. Logan in particular who plays Paul just seems quite camp most of the time, mainly due to his constant over the top sulking.

There are some positive aspects to Gutter King though. When the action does take place it is fairly solid and well handled, it just takes a while for any full on fight scenes to appear. It lacks the grace and acrobatic prowess of Asian martial arts films, but makes up for it with a visceral yet not overly edited style. The film looks nice in general actually, with some fetching shallow focus photography on display. This is unfortunately let down by some horrendous sound work though. The music featured is strong, if a little overused, but the location sound recording is terrible and mixed way too low against the music which meant I was straining to hear what was being said half the time.

Gutter King is a film that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be and ends up failing to satisfy in both the action and dramatic departments. It takes itself way too seriously to be a fun fight film and is too poorly produced to pull off the indie drama that it seems to be reaching for at times. Some may appreciate the fact that it's trying to add more substance and weight to a much-maligned genre, but for me it just didn't work.

4/10 

Gutter King is released on 26^th April by Metrodome.

Apocalypse of the Dead

Director: Milan Konjevic & Milan Todorovic

Screenplay: Vukota Brajovic, Milan Konjevic & Milan Todorovic

Producers: Milan Todorovic, Vukota Brajovic, Loris Curci, Zeljko Mitrovic

Starring: Ken Foree, Kristina Klebe, Emilio Roso, Miodrag Krstovic, Vukota Brajovic

Year: 2009

Country: Serbia/Italy/Spain

BBFC Certification: 18

Duration: 96 min

Apocalypse of the Dead (AKA Zone of the Dead) is a low budget Serbian zombie B-movie due a UK DVD release in March. Featuring a lead performance by Ken Foree, star of Dawn of the Dead and featuring a plot combining Night of the Living Dead with Assault on Precinct 13, Apocalypse of the Dead is clearly made by fans of the horror and exploitation genres. So the question is can these first time directors channel their fan-love into something close to it's influences?

Well the short answer is no. Apocalypse of the Dead shuffles (and runs) down a well-trodden path of zombie-movie clichés. The premise is that an experimental gas which can bring dead cells back to life is being transported across Serbia. Things go wrong of course and the gas container is accidentally blown open unleashing a zombie plague across the city of Pancevo. Our protagonists are chiefly a group of Interpol agents transporting a dangerous prisoner to Belgrade who end up having to work together to fight off the hordes of the undead surrounding them. Along the way they meet some teenagers coming home from a wild party, an old English professor and a psychotic bible-quoting skinhead with a never-ending arsenal of weaponry at his disposal.

That last sentence probably perked the interest of action and horror fans, but unfortunately the skinhead is criminally underused, only really pulling out all the stops at the end of the film. Plus, although he provides the film's most fun moments, he's also one of the weakest actors, struggling to deliver his pretentious dialogue with any conviction. The performances in general are a real sore point in this film. Now I usually don't care too much about the acting in zombie movies, but here it's really quite painful. The main cast members aren't the worst I've seen, they fit in with the B-movie vibe (Foree has some nice moments), but most of the supporting cast are Serbian actors forced to speak English all the time (even to each other), probably in an effort to make the film more appealing to an international audience. It means that anyone not in a starring role is either badly dubbed or stumbles through a language that is clearly not their mother tongue. Why they didn't just subtitle all of the Serbians and keep the main cast members speaking English I'll never know - their characters are supposed to be from the US anyway.

As I said though I can usually forgive cheesy performances in a film of this type, but unfortunately it didn't deliver in the departments that matter either. For me a genre movie succeeds if it either does something original with it's concept, goes way over the top in the exploitation stakes, or simply does what that genre does best (i.e. scares or excites). Apocalypse of the Dead never really does any of these. The filmmakers do nothing original at all, apart from maybe set it in Serbia. Every zombie cliché you can think of is included, from the group member being bitten early on who will need to be killed at some point (I'll let you guess when) to the old character asking to be left behind to die. As for going over the top and doing what a horror film does best, this is where the film disappointed me most. The film starts very poorly, largely because it relies heavily on the terrible supporting cast, but also because it takes a while for any serious zombie carnage to kick in. The only really impressive and exciting scene comes at the film's finale when the survivors have to fight through a vast wave of the living dead armed with a variety of guns and a samurai sword. This scene is great fun, but was too little too late for me. There are one or two moments in the middle which are entertaining enough too, such as a decapitation by harpoon, but generally it's just a queue of cheaply reproduced scenes that we've seen many times before.

I generally like to give all types of films a chance, especially horror and action movies because I'm a fan of the genres. Apocalypse of the Dead however just felt a bit lazy. The potential was there for a fun 'beer and buddies' movie, but it's overuse of actors working away from their native tongue and far too many clichés just left me wanting to revisit better films. Those who are big zombie fans and don't want anything extra added will get a few kicks from this, but I'd prefer to whack Evil Dead on again.

3/10

The Big Boss

Year: 1971
Director: Lo Wei
Writers: Lo Wei
Starring: Bruce Lee, Maria Yi & James Tien

The Big Boss (otherwise known as Fists of Fury in the US - which is the UK title for his follow up confusingly!) was Bruce Lee's breakthrough film, turning him from TV sidekick and ex-Hong Kong child star to global megastar. It also helped kickstart the huge Kung-Fu craze in America (alongside The Chinese Boxer and King Boxer which were released a little earlier in the west). For these reasons The Big Boss has achieved a classic status among martial art movie fans. Being one myself, I can fully appreciate the impact it had and moments of the film fully justify this, but it's certainly not without it's flaws and is not Lee's best film by a long shot.

The plot is hardly worth mentioning - it involves a family working in an ice factory, that unbeknown to them is actually operating as a drug smuggling racket. Whenever anyone gets close to sniffing this out they get brutally murdered. Lee plays a friend who initially stands on the sidelines as people are bullied, bribed and murdered, due to a promise he made to his mother not to get into trouble. This promise of course is shattered into a thousand pieces as Lee vows revenge on the drug dealers and proceeds to kick seven shades of sh*t out of everyone.

Unfortunately, from an action perspective this 'promise' means that we barely see Lee lift a finger until half way through the film, and even then it's not until the last half an hour or so that he really lets rip. When it comes, you really do get to see why Bruce Lee became such a household name though. Although the choreography isn't as impressive as in some of his later efforts, this contains some of his most brutal and animalistic fight sequences, especially in the intense and bloody showdown with Ying-Chieh Han, who was actually the action choreographer on the film.

Performance wise, Lee was never going to win any Oscars for The Big Boss, but his star power and charisma is clear on screen. The moment when he first snaps and breaks his 'no violence policy' in particular is filled with an awesome ferocity and intensity. Away from the action scenes he's not given much to work with, but he still stands clearly above the rest of the cast.

Lee's charisma and a couple of strong action scenes aren't enough to make this a great film though. Fist of Fury is a much more successful effort and although martial art purists will scoff at the idea, I think Enter the Dragon, although in some aspects watered down by Hollywood, improves on films like The Big Boss with tighter pacing and more polished production.

The Big Boss has some strong moments that showed the world Bruce Lee's potential as an action superstar and still impresses in the fight scenes, but ultimately it's a cliched and cheesy film which takes too long to really get going.

5/10

* As a side note - I watched the Hong Kong Legends Platinum Edition DVD of the film and it looked amazing, especially considering it's age. It's a shame the company no longer exists, as it was a driving force in my martial arts movie addiction.