Avenging Force - Some Dick (1986)

Yes, I watched this on purpose. Part of me is kicking myself because I put this movie on to be background and actually ended up watching it. There was a recent observation I heard on a message board, where people were bitching about remakes. One poster mentioned that good films shouldn't be remade but that remakes of bad films are fair game. Here is a movie that I, honest to god think could be remade. The film stars Michael Dudikoff who the trailer advertises as the star of the American ninja series....so you see the caliber of film we're dealing with. Anyway, Dudikoff(who I'm convinced turned to martial arts to fight off grade school bullies who plagued him with doo-doo jokes about his last name)  is a retired secret service agent who takes care of his sister and is on his way to visit his black friend who's also politician. Now his black friend (I'm not looking up his name I've already devoted too much attention to this movie) has spent his career combating a secret ultra right wing organization of white guys who want to bring America back to the good ole days by way ruthless violence. This is the key aspect that makes the film ripe for a remake, the crazy right wing conferences don't feel like that far a cry from the amount of people loosing their shit over gun control and birth certificates and what have you. Now a black man going against conservatism in the Regan era sounds pretty progressive for some low budget ninja movie.....pretty impressive right? Well not really cause the black guy and his whole family are killed and their house is burned down, his son's death is one of those unintentionally hilarious low budget moments . Though what almost makes up for it is the amount of homoerotic undertones the all-American villains are endowed with, which has me concluding that the villains in this film are just like any number of politicians who campaign against homosexuality only to be caught blowing the prom king.One top of that, whenever the white guys ride into battle they sport masks that just remind me of the Eyes Wide Shut masks and one in particular wears a costume that looks like an S&M getup. Anyway back to the movie, so the pissed off white guys play this 'Most Dangerous Game' type scenario and the climax of the film includes Dudikoff running that gauntlet. This piece of the movie is actually pretty well done, with some surprisingly raw fight scenes....oh and at some point they kidnap his sister and try to sell her off in a Cajun sex trafficking ring.....that also happens.

No for this remake, instead of having the white male lead take over, I'd go with a black protagonist. A black politician would be even more relevant these days especially one who can kick some ass. What would be even more progressive would be a black women fighting a bunch of pissed off white guys, if only our generation had a Pam Grier. But anyway for now we'll settle for a male lead like Jamie Foxx, done. Now regarding the subject matter, government conspiracy theories and what not, Michael Bay will probably want to jump on this, not going to happen. Bay's tendency to fetishize everything would fuck up all the dirty white guy's clearly repressed sexuality, not too mention take a lot of unnecessary moves to make them look especially badass (one cool thing about low budget action movies, this one in particular, all the guy's look like they've been in fights, they're not all cut an dried). Kathryn Bigelow  is my choice for the Avenging Force  remake, the film's confrontation of the hypocrisy of the societies that keep us safe would be a perfect companion to Zero Dark Thirty. And simply put, as great as Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker are who doesn't want to see her return to her more unapologetic genre films like Point Break and Near Dark? In fact even something as goofy as Point Break does an impressive job of showcasing the contradictions and ultimate failure of Bohdi (Swayze)'s supposedly zen like mantra. The mantra followed by the bad guys in this film is the complete opposite of the spectrum so it'd be the perfect auteur piece for her. So I'll go type up the script and mail a copy to Bigelow....oh shit. Looks like Dudikoff has already hinted at Avenging Force 2. Wikipedia has it slated for 2015. Guess this whole thing was a big waste of time.

* Favorite bit from Michael Dudikoff's Imdb trivia page:

- His passion is designing homes, particularly ranch style. His fifth home was called the "Dudarosa". He also delves into bronze sculpturing.

Peking Opera Blues - Tsui Hark (1986)

 

 The subject matter of Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues lends itself to all kinds of action adventure extravagance, being centered on a social uprising against the republic of China....confined to a theater. These two elements both pave way for exciting set pieces ( Hong Kong action seems to understand that musicals are precursors to action films). But the characterization is so effective the characters never get lost in action and the film deals with not one, not two, but three female protagonists. The ladies,  Tsao Wan (Brigitte Lin), a patriotic rebel who dresses as a man; Sheung Hung (Cherie Chung), a woman in search of a missing box of jewels; and Bai Niu (Sally Yeh), the daughter of a Peking Opera impresario are the emotional center of the film. The film avoids casting any of its leads into the cliches that happen with women in action movies, they all maintain their femininity and in some cases that puts them at a disadvantage and the same time they are strong but not some inhuman super women. The movie also has no qualms about questioning our hero's motives and even depict them as shallow. There's plenty of action films with badass women but idea of the unlikely hero as women is sometimes  difficult thanks to reverse sexism that doesn't allow female parts to have fleshed out flaws. No I don't intend to turn this into a feminist rant to pretend I care about women so that they'll sleep with me..... I was just taking back how female centric the film was. On that note everyone should take note of Bechdale Test which this film passes.

Leaving off on the subject of female stereotypes, its interesting to note that film seems aware of these cliches since what is expected of women is constantly pushed on them. Twice in the film the girls are forced to play the seductive women's role which coincidentally the two girls are terrible at and makes for a lot of laughs.  If there's a western film I'd compare Peking Opera Blues to it'd be Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be, with both film's dealing with the acting aspect of deception that comes into play during war. Bai Niu (these names are going to drive me up a fucking wall before this review is done) has always wanted to star in one of her father's productions but during the period it was not costume for women to actually play women's roles. Bai Niu gets her time to shine on stage before the film is over but its hardly in the way she expects. Tsao Wan     ( the patriotic rebel) is turning against her own father in her act of aiding the rebels; her spending most of the film dressed like a man is the film's greatest indicator of role playing especially from the female perspective. The least deceptive character Sheung Hung is oddly probably the heart of film and she has the least at steak, her motivations are actually pretty selfish but the fact that the film allows us to sympathize with her the most is what makes Peking Opera Blues one of the most progressive and accomplished action films I've seen. The greatest scene for me is where these three girls simply bond and have a sleep over, its a brief little scene where characters get to cast off their identities and just be themselves and it happens a little more than half way through the movie like a calm before the storm but mostly because they get to temporarily stop acting . Slant Magazine did a piece called 100 Essential Films (which everyone should read) and in their entry on To Be or Not to Be there's a quote I really wanted to steal and take credit for. 'Why are the actors in the film so good at understanding and predicting human behavior? Perhaps it's because these rebels, namely Benny's ham, are in touch with their insecurities in ways that elude the Nazi buffoons they target.' Same goes for this film where the women stay one step ahead by anticipating their enemies perceptions about them.

I guess should also talk about the action sequences. I mentioned in my review of Tiger on The Beat how well that film incorporates comedic sensibilities. Hong Kong genre films always seem more mailable than their American counterparts, never being afraid to switch tone. Likewise Peking Opera Blues action sequences are set up more like comedic set pieces with a very specific set up and punchline. Much of the big sequences happen within the theater, and Hark as great sense of mechanics, punctuating these action sequences with pitfalls. Hark seems to have an affection for theater and its apparent in his sequences which really aren't heavily edited he seems to want to showcase his craftsmanship up front, he trusts his actors physicality and his own control over the environment. Hong Kong for a while apparently had the reputation of making Hollywood action films look creatively bankrupt, why don't you people be the judge. Lastly, the entry for this film in 1,001 Movies you must see before you die is the unintentionally funniest one in the book. With the author morning the current state of Hong Kong cinema to becoming actively angry at the shape the industry is in.

 Full Film:

Gate of Flesh - Sijun Suzuki (1964)

 "'I think that what remains in our memory is not ‘construction’ but ‘destruction.’ Making things is not what counts. The power that destroys them is." - Seijun Suzuki 

'Greatest prostitute movie' isn’t a superlative I see often enough. There’s definitely enough contenders between Nights of Cabira ,  La Chienne, The Naked Kiss and Vivre sa vie and I have another to offer up today ,Gate of Flesh by Seijun Suzuki. Suzuki’s film follows around group of prostitutes in post war Tokyo where business has become so cut throat the women develop a code to keep each other in line. The girls hold sway over the territory, force any lone ladies out and punish their own if any of them ‘give it away for free’.  The ladies code makes them just as ruthless as the Yakuza characters Suzuki became so use to, but the code takes an emotional level here that elevates it above almost all his other work. The enemy of the ladies group becomes anything resembling real passion. This contradiction underscores much of the film particularly with women’s sense of belonging; the ladies all manipulate their usual territory with ease but at the same time have no real home. Suzuki nails down this alienation in his mis en scene where he avoids traditional coverage of the girls dwellings and upon protagonist, Maya’s arrival, and Suzuki favors low angles placing her in a pit she won’t be crawling out of. At this point the description probably sounds like one of those socially conscious movies that gets nominated for Oscars. But that’s only because I haven’t mentioned that this socially conscious film looks like a piece of pop art and is edited like a musical. One of the most surreal sequences is how excited the entire community gets over the visiting American G.I.s particularly the prostitutes who rush out to grab as many men as possible. What’s surreal is how playful certain lurid moments are, like the image of two teens laughing under a van that starts shaking it as the women service their clients. The market place has a great day too as the prostitutes’ wolf down their food to keep their stamina up.

When a man shows up, the ladies find themselves torn over his affections and the violence that develops between them begins to echo the war itself. (One of Suzuki’s most ballsy choices is to intercut footage of bombings when one of the girls consummates her affections).  Many of Suzuki’s symbols are blunt but the movie was marketed to be softcore porn (‘pink films’ are what they called em in Japan at the time) so Suzuki takes a unsubtle approach that’s synonymous with porn and turns it into a powerful modernist gesture. Suzuki takes bold images like the American flag or a crucifix and puts them in a compromising context, it’s blunt elements like this that leave some opposed to Suzuki. But Gate of Flesh is special because these images that are foreboding at the start of the film become symbols of corruption that the characters actually end up embracing.  There’s another dramatic instance of Suzuki embracing a really blunt cliché for a jarring affect. In what I guess is the film’s most famous sequence Maya is punished for her indiscretions but her punishment scene is oddly the most erotic scene in the film. Suzuki could easily be lumped in with directors trying to shock but a scene like this elevates him to the level of an artist, Suzuki confronts his audience with the eroticism of violence. I understand this sounds like bullshit academia but when you see how the scene is film Suzuki does so in a way that you can’t look away, few filmmakers are this honest  their amorality and fetishizing violence. The best marriage of terms that can be used to describe Suzuki’s work is 'playful nihilism', there’s plenty of Suzuki films that are great but the playfulness overwhelms the nihilism (I’m looking at you, Tokyo Drifter) but here no number of Stanley Donen inspired set pieces can take away from the feelings of hopelessness. 

Gate of Flesh Part 1 of 6

The film is available in six parts on youtube.

Welcome to The Midnight Rambler!

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and welcome to 'The Midnight Rambler' I'm Greg, your host.It took me a while to come up with an intro then  I realized nobody gives a shit about intros. I'll mostly be specializing in obscure films that I think are fun and I'd like to share with others, not so I can horde titles and drop the line 'it's a really obscure film that you probably haven't heard of'. So yeah. Ummm...

Greg's current 20 favorite films: One per director. Will change frequently.

1. Meet Me in Saint Louis (Vicente Minnelli)
2. 8 1/2 (Frederico Fellini)
3. The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric  Pressburger)
4. Zazie Dans Le Metro (Louis Malle)
5. The Searchers (John Ford)
6. Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese)
7. Playtime (Jacques Tati)
8. Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)
9. Night of The Hunter (Charles Laughton)
10. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
11. The Devils (Ken Russell)
12. Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki)
13. The River (Jean Renoir)
14. Lola  (Jacques Demy )
15. Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen)
16.  L’Atalante (Jean Vigo)
17. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson)
18. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
19. Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
20. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel) 

Currently drinking:

 

Tiger on The Beat - Liu Chia-Liang (1988)

On the commentary to John Woo's Hard Boiled, Hong Kong Cinema expert (pffff that's not a real job) Bey Logan, spends a portion of his commentary talking about how HK action stars like Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan are, in real life are a far cry from their onscreen personas. What's so delightful about Tiger on The Beat is how much Fat plays against his image; this is a buddy cop movie but instead of Fat playing the no nonsense cop who has his shit together, he's cast as the loveable drunk. For the first half of the film, Fat has a comedic grace that combines low comedy of him pissing in his pants when held at gunpoint with all the precision of one of the great silent comics. With American action films, especially buddy cop films, its common to criticize a film for overdoing comedy but if anything Tiger on The Beat doesn't play to that strength enough. Which brings me to my next point; how few buddy cop movies fire on both cylinders equally? Where the comedy and the action are perfectly in synch. This one does, in fact these two contrasting elements come together thematically in a way that few films do. The first half of the film gives little indication this will be a full on action film but its surprisingly slow burn when it takes one of the films ongoing jokes, Fat's womanizing and actually turns it tragic in a surprisingly powerful moment. The final 15 minutes is as go for broke as any action sequence, with two characters battling each other with chainsaws (this is always the selling point of the film). Though even in the end sequence there are bits where Fat's skills as a physical comedian come into play with his badass persona that he morphs into in the second half. Fat fights off  the henchman with a shotgun with a tether rope attached to (you'll have to watch to find out how this works). When I was in high school I used to write film blurbs, that I look back on now as really embarrassing (like I will with these in 10 years) but one claim I made that I'm proud of is that Buster Keaton invented action comedy. Pair Tiger on The Beat with any Keaton feature (I'd suggest The Navigator on the basis one similar gag) and maybe you'll see where high school Greg was coming from......Or you can just watch the chainsaw fight and tell me to go fuck myself.