SNAP, CRACKLE, POP...SMASH!

ON THE RIGHT, THE BIRDS (NOT THE STONES):

I have a friend who loves Radio Birdman (and so do I) but hates, I mean HATES The Rolling Stones. I'm not sure why, and I think it might be a 'long story' reason. It's funny because even though Birdman don't sound like The Stones per se, you can't deny that they bear at least some inkling of their influence as most rock bands do. In a way the disparity of preference doesn't seem completely logical, but that's what makes personal taste...so personal. As we well know, it's hard to gauge who will like what and what will be popular based on simple facts alone. But then I have at least one friend who claims The Stones are the greatest rock and roll band ever, and anyone who thinks differently is wrong. And another friend claims they made some of the best rock and roll movies ever. So what's the best Stones song? Well, I might be too much of a novelty head here but I love their Rice Crispies spot. It's so punk! In and out, get the job done raw and fast. Call them a sell out shilling for cereal, but this still SOUNDS subversive, or at least disruptive:



I used to have this on an 8 hour video tape of garage and 60's bands, from The Kinks and The Who to Q65 and so forth. One of the best clips aside from the Rice Crispies spot was from this British B movie The Deadly Bees that featured The Birds - not to be confused with the U.S. folk group who spelled their name with a Y, but the incredible British beat / r&b band featuring future Faces member and Rolling Stoner Ron Wood. Damn, I wish they'd released this song as a single or something, because this is unfortunately incomplete. This seems to be the only known recording of the song:

LAUGHING POLICEMEN AND DANCING GIRLS!

On the plane to and from Tokyo back in November we were subjected to the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. I like Denzel and Travolta fine, but they can't seem to stay away from formulaic dribble that panders to the masses (who don't seem to care). They changed around the story a bit with this whole subplot of corruption in the MTA (really?), while Travolta's badman had a different, seemingly unnecessary back-story than Robert Shaw's bad-ass ringleader. The remake tried to be a more psychological thriller, but it ended up being a smarmy potboiler at best. Back in New York I re-watched the original to get the bad taste out of my mouth. It's so great, straight-forward and no-nonsense. It's like good pulp fiction - no bullshit or lots of explanations why this drastic heist is going on - it just is. And people will die. Robert Shaw's bad guy was a mercenary. He fought wars for a living. And now he wants more money so he's gonna take it from the city of New York. Simple economics. The mayor is a bumbling stooge whose staff convinces him pay the $1,000,000 ransom to save votes, not lives. Sort of an indictment of the capitalist system on par with Leone's For a Few Dollars More...maybe. Love Walter Matthau. He had this salty everyman quality that made him perfect in films like Pelham, Charley Varrick and The Laughing Policeman - the latter is what I ended up re-watching right after Pelham. It has a great raw look to it. Man, urban America in the 70's had a nice dirty, creepy, yet cool vibe - in these movies and also my memory of Manhattan as a kid. I remember White Castle on the corner, grimy gas stations, and greasy restaurants with rotisserie chickens in the window. And auto-mats. Anyway, The Laughing Policeman starts off in a San Francisco bus station and it has that sort of nasty city feel that you can really sink your teeth into right at the beginning. There's some random violence (not unlike that of the Michael Winner/Charles Bronson flick The Stone Killer) and a litany of low life cretins and oddball characters. One example is a funny, sort of dated scene with Lou Gossett Jr. as a cop reading the riot act to a mean hooker-beating pimp. Perennially creepy Bruce Dern is perfectly cast as Matthau's really annoying and arrogant new partner. There's a weird moment where they meet an informant in a cafe and then the camera cuts from Dern's gaze to a close up of a chic's ass, for no reason other than to see the ass maybe, and underline his character's creepazoid factor. Weird rhythm but it somehow works. The film quickly wraps up the conclusion and doesn't really make any sense. It was based on a popular Swedish detective novel of the same name, which I haven't read, but the Czar of Ivanlandia did read it and said the book didn't make much sense either. However, the title of the book comes from the old song, a record of which is given to the detective by his daughter as a gift. This is not in the movie though, so without knowing that you just assume the title refers to the protagonist, a somewhat sardonic detective. Wow, okay check out this plate of shrimp coincidence: I really liked Tsai Ming Liang's The Wayward Cloud, especially the ridiculous musical numbers to old Chinese pop songs. I was watching those on youtube right after I saw The Laughing Policeman and finally made the connection. Here's Hong Zhong's 'Strange Date' from The Wayward Cloud:



And then I discovered Hong Zhong's number was a cover of this old English dance hall song:



Then I found out that's where the book got it's title from. Whew. Now for something slightly different, perhaps you've already seen this bit with Chiang Kai Shek, also from The Wayward Cloud, (it says "Be Patient," but that's a mistake, it's really "Love Begins") but I dig it so here it is redundant or not:



This long trailer for The Laughing Policeman shows Matthau being salty, Dern being creepy, and Gossett acting tough. Gritty, funny, sleazy - all in all a nice bit of big studio exploitation:

EUROCRIME IS COMING BACK!

Cool, I just stumbled on the news that this cat Mike Malloy is making a documentary on Poliziotteschi - those gritty Italian crime movies from the 70's. Wild, violent and nasty stuff, like the truly vicious ALMOST HUMAN or the standout revenge flick that puts a positive spin on the term 'potboiler' - LA MALA ORDINA. And consider those ridiculous, yet evocative titles (that Italian genre cinema always offers) such as LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN. Here's the trailer:



Yes, that's John Saxon being interviewed. He deserves his own special corner, somewhere here in cyberspace. Anyway Eurocrime: The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled The ’70s is here too. Ever since IFC did those hour long docs on Shaw Brothers and Spaghetti Westerns, I figured that the crime films would follow. There are docs on Mario Bava, Dario Argento and even Lucio Fulci that cover Italian horror. Now I suppose all that's left are docs on sword and sandal and Italian sex comedies (!?!).

I think a large reason behind the Euro crime film's appeal is how unapologetic they are in their right wing ideology, yet so utterly transgressive in their depravity. That, and all the car chases, gun fights, macho posturing and brutal brawls; sick set pieces like machine gun assassinations and a spike through the throat, etc. A lot of rough stuff going on in Italy then - and I suppose still is - and it's palpable from these films

And I just found out there's yet another book coming out about spaghetti westerns! I'd like to see it, especially since it's from Fab press, who are all about outré cinema. But Alex Cox's 10,000 WAYS TO DIE is hard to beat. It's obsessive, but it's not one of those simple fanboy-type volumes of hype without substance. Cox looks at the films from a filmmaker's perspective and breaks down each film with constructive criticism. That means he tells you that Sergio Corbucci's pre-DJANGO film RED PASTURES "is a bad film" and why. It goes chronologically year to year and is an engaging, conversational sort of read. Don't know much about this new book, but part of the spaghetti western fascination is the fetishization of the mythology, reinforced by these sort of 'studies' (yeah, I use the word study loosely).

WHY DO POSTMODERNISTS RUN AMOK?

Last March I got hipped to these director / rock star t-shirts. And speaking of postmodernism, the place that's selling these - the IFC Center - is now doing a one week run of HOUSE - also know as HAUSU. Here is my two cents on that movie from when it played at last summer's NYAFF. This belated U.S. theatrical run (over 3 decades after its domestic release), along with the praise from Manohla Dargis among others, proves that director Obayashi was ahead of his time, not to mention out of his mind - in the best sense of the phrase.

Those shirts might be too smarmy, or should I say snarky, for one to wear in good conscience. But that's the conceit I suppose - the meeting, or I should say melding, of so-called high and low brow culture. I think it was at Cinema Classics where I saw some DVDs labeled with the slogan 'cult movies are the new rock and roll,' or something to that effect. Speaking of 'cult movies,' one night I came home from a funny night at a cozy bar, turned on the TV and saw a movie that was almost as obscure and legendary as the aforementioned HAUSU. I'm talking about this:



This was the best clip I could find, it's still so obscure, but TCM has a great page for it with a more tasty clip. Zines like SHOCK CINEMA and PSYCHOTRONIC heralded praise for both these films umpteen years ago. Used to be you'd go to Kim's for an un-subbed VHS of HAUSU and if you were lucky you'd stumble on a bootleg of DARKTOWN...The latter proves once again that if you revel in the offensive, you can also transcend it.

NO GO DIGGY DIE!

Back in the early 90's my weirdo friends had wacky bands like Sarcastic Orgasm and made crazy mix tapes of bizarre, often prickly music spiced with the best novelty songs. T. Valentines's Hello Lucille...Are You A Lesbian? is a standout example of the latter. I also remember around this time finding out about this odd, obscure band - purportedly from Texas (but the word on the web is they were actually disgruntled session guys from L.A.) - called Jon Wayne. Perhaps the song Mr. Egyptian was on one of those mix tapes. In any case, they sounded like a fall-apart punk band playing country music out of tune, with a drunk, demented singer who sounded like he had a plate in his head. The southern drawl and odd mannerisms might have been affected , but nevertheless something about the whole train-wreck affair smelled authentic. You can probably still find their Texas Funeral album in the dollar bin. That's where I found my copy back in the day. I swear I had hipped my friend Dean to this then too, but he has no recollection of it now. Oh well, you can't blame him. Nonetheless I feel it stands the test of time. Here's one of them user-made videos from youtube so you can hear the masterpiece Mr. Egyptian:



Now after all these years, again thanks to youtube, I've actually seen the band on stage - well this video has some live bits, and some music video, including one for Mr. Egytpian:



Obviously Jon Wayne was deeply influential:



And I can't resist offering an example of some rocking prickly music:

70's CINEMA: GRIT AND VENGEANCE

Bill Lustig (director of notable genre films, Maniac, Vigilante, Maniac Cop and owner of Blue Underground) is an exploitation film maven. Last year at Anthology Film Archives Lustig put together a series of vigilante films (which I missed unfortunately). This year he's back with "The Seventies - Buried Treasures," a series of gritty genre films, none of which are available on DVD. The series opened on Friday and I made a beeline to catch THE STONE KILLER, Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner's transitional teaming between THE MECHANIC and DEATH WISH, and THE OUTFIT, an adaptation of a Richard Stark/Donald Westlake novel, featuring Robert Duvall and Joe Don Baker. Before THE STONE KILLER, Jed of Anthology brought Bill Lustig out and they called up director Michael Winner in London on a cell phone. Bill put the phone in front of a mic and did a little q & a / intro with the director. Winner said he and Bronson were in a car on their way to JFK after wrapping STONE KILLER when he said to Bronson, "I have a script about a man who's wife and daughter are mugged so he goes out and starts shooting muggers," to which Bronson said, "I'd like to do that. I'd like to shoot muggers." Brand new print of THE STONE KILLER, which could be described as a good Dirty Harry knockoff. It's based on a novel called A Complete State of Death. According to Winner the producers didn't like that title, but they kept it as a line in the script. Not the greatest Bronson movie, but hard boiled and violent fun as expected. Stuart Margolin was great as the ex-army soldier hired by the mob to run an elaborate revenge scheme. I'm sure you all remember him as Angel in The Rockford Files. Towards the end of the film a big POP was heard when the projector bulb blew. They switched the reel to the other projector in five minutes, during which time Lustig said something like - 'this is part of the old 42nd St experience' and then started reminiscing with other folks in the audience about the grindhouses
back in the day ('guards with steel-toed boots' etc.). Since that bulb blew they had to move THE OUTFIT to the downstairs theatre. It was packed. Paul Giamatti sat behind me. THE OUTFIT was great. Same director as ROLLING THUNDER, John Flynn. Robert Duvall starred as the badass out of prison going after money he felt the mob owed him. It's from another Richard Stark novel, so similar plot to POINT BLANK. Joe Don Baker was Duvall's buddy / partner.
Cool cast also featured Karen Black, Timothy Carey, Robert Ryan, Sheree North and some other characters. Violent and mean spirited. Cinematically Flynn is very matter of fact, not stylized, tells stories well and gets good performances. One thing is that you'd think the mob would have more muscle at some of their undergournd casinos and so forth. It's kind of easy for Duvall and Baker to take what they want. Still, lots of fun, I recommend it.



ROLLING THUNDER is one of the top revenge movies. Dig the voice over in this great trailer.

LAMENT FOR STRAY CAT ROCK AND PUSHIN' TOO HARD.

PART 1

The dissonance accompanying the passing of the so-called King of Pop includes obituaries that have gone by all but unnoticed. On Monday June 22nd Yasuharu Hasebe died at age 77. Hasebe was a journeyman director of Japanese action and genre pictures, with a long career that included several inspired films, among them a few brutally transgressive and offensive pieces of exploitation. On his ascent through the ranks of the film industry, Hasebe worked as an assistant to Seijun Suzuki. Hasebe is well known internationally for his biker girl films, (a precursor to the pinky violence genre) the Stray Cat Rock series starring Meiko Kaji.



He will also be remembered for the ridiculous pop kitsch Black Tight Killers featuring a team of go-go booted ninja girls equipped with lethal bubble gum and deadly 45 rpm records! When Nikkatsu studios went exclusively 'roman-porno' in the 70's, Hasebe turned out some shocking roughies, like Assault! Jack the Ripper. Hasebe also helmed the fourth Scorpion movie (the last one featuring Kaji Meiko) Grudge Song. The great Nikkatsu action series at Japan Society featured Hasebe's 4th picture, the inspired Nikkatsu Action 'fun with dynamite' yakuza romp Roughneck (Arakure). Hasebe kept working up until his death (pneumonia).



PART 2



Sky Saxon, legendary vocalist, bassist and songwriter of The Seeds, passed away on June 25th. A fateful day indeed. The story goes that Saxon wrote the proto-punk masterpiece "Pushin' Too Hard" on a 15 minute break during a recording session. You might not know the band name, but you've most likely heard this indelible 2 minutes of pulsing vitriol. The Seeds first album also featured another classic, the haunting "Can't Seem to Make You Mine." Saxon and the Seeds personified the image and sound of snotty, gritty psychedelic garage punk. Their far spread influence proves the unruly power of two chord rock. Saxon sounded like a weird, acid casualty, unstable and unpredictable. Freaky stories surround the man, perhaps mostly myth, but whatever the case, his music often proves compelling and inspired.

I AIN'T AFRAID OF NO GHOST!

I got wind of the news that GHOSTBUSTERS III is in production. The Ghostbusters franchise is great. I'm afraid I can't say the same for this poster though. Now that really is kind of scary. I just saw Ernie Hudson in a Broadway production of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. And he co-starred with Chad L. Coleman, who played one of my favorite characters on The Wire, Cutty (the ex-con turned boxing coach). Back to Ghostbusters, you can't really go wrong with Bill Murray. I just saw him in Limits of Control. I actually like Jim Jarmusch, but his last bunch of films have been lost in pretension and this script is no exception. I will say that he made excellent choices in production: cinematographer Christoper Doyle captures the beauty of Seville Spain and renders a fascinatingly modern universe - the envornments are more interesting than the script itself, like the industrial landscape they pass by on the train ride or all those ultra-modern airports. Plus he gets to shoot a great cast: Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal, John Hurt, Kudo Yuki, an incredibly interesting face in Isaach De Bankolé, and an incredible ass (whole package actually) in Paz de la Huerta. Jarmusch is very much about homage and his use of de la Huerta reminded me a little bit of Bardot in Contempt. Anyway, it's been 20 years since the last Ghostbusters film. A lot of the audience for the new film were barely alive when the first two films were released. The nature of media is different now. I'm just imagining what it would have been like if they had released an Easy Rider part 2 in 1988. And the "I ain't afraid of no ghost" refrain reminds me of that comic genius Mantan Moreland. He was almost one of the Three Stooges! amazing for a black comedian in the 50's. He was in those Charlie Chan movies and East Side Kid pictures and he ended his career in the incredible Spider Baby:

One of my favorite Moreland performances is how I menatlly connected him to Ghostbuster - his show stealing turn in King of the Zombies:

MORE MONKEY ROCK

Speaking of monkeys and rock and roll (the previous post), I remembered that great sub-genre Japanese GS (group Sounds): Japanese 60's garage and psych music. The Spiders largely spearheaded the sound of Japanese GS. Check out this opening of one of their many rock and roll movies: The Song is "Akai Dress no onna no ko wa" - The Girl in the Red Dress. A great prototype of psych/garage/powerpop with distinctly Japanese nasal vocals. The crazy thing about this clip is that the title "Road to Bali" comes up. Hey wait a minute! That was a Hope and Crosby vehicle! How uncanny that The Spiders had a single (pictured above) of a song called "Monkey Dance" b/w the dance floor mover "Furi Furi" (Shake Shake). There's actually a more frenetic version of Furi Furi than the one on the single. Notice the two lead singers on the cover aping the movements (couldn't resist) of primates to perform the monkey dance. In the 70's the more clownish of the two singers (the one slightly more upright on the record cover) Masaaki Sakai, would star in the super popular Monkey TV show, based on the Chinese classic Journey to the West about the mischievous monkey king Sun Wu Kong. Monkey was broadcast in Australia and the U.K. where it enjoyed almost as much popularity as it did in Japan. Meanwhile the states got Ultraman and Tesujim 28 (Gigantor).

MONKEY ROCKS

When I started up this little cyberspot I just gave it the first name that came to mind: Rockin' Monkey. I've always liked monkeys and rock and roll - the two go together so well. And we're talking real rock and roll - that means from Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner and Bo Diddley to The MC5, The Sonics and The Mummies, NOT Huey Lewis and the News (although I love that story about how their sound truck picked up the hardcore band Impulse Manslaughter, who were hitching with guitars in tow after their van broke down). WFMU dj Dave the Spazz is a great testament to how real rock and roll and primates of all sorts (especially chimps) are a perfect combination. I remember being at Dave's house for a party attended by the late great soul singer supreme Nathaniel Mayer and he dug all the various monkey icons and decorations Dave had in his place. And I met Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown who saw the monkey cover art for a Dave the Spazz compilation tape (Monkey Fever volume 1 - volume 3 is pictured here and was his latest dj premium) and he started laughing hysterically and uttered something about a cartoon with monkeys in it. But the name "Rockin' Monkey" is a bit lame. Maybe it's the apostrophe, or just the crudity, or both. So I figured I'd switch it around, at least for the time being, to Monkey Rocks. I like that this configuration of the words is more ambiguous. And I also recall the early Australian punk band Rocks that I first heard on the "Feel Lucky Punk?" compilation. I showed it to my friend Mick from The Space Juniors and he laughed because he used to play shows with Rocks and made funny impressions of them, telling me how they had handlebar mustaches and were awkwardly macho. But while Rocks might be a great choice of words, the blog name is still kind of lame. Feel free to comment with suggestions, or hate mail, or whatever...

STICK IT TO THE MAN

The first folks I saw when i got to the Born Loose show the other night were the blogmasters of Ivanlandia and The Otto Mannix Report. They told me about their spanking brand new blog collaboration on biker movies: BIKER MOVIE BLOWOUT. The ensuing conversation was a litany of title-dropping. "Did you mention Werewolves on Wheels"; "What about the one with Joe Namath?" (CC & Company - featuring a performance by Wayne Cochran); "The Wild Angels is the cream of the crop"; "That one with Harry Dean, The Rebel Rousers, was such a bore; "Is this one a biker movie?" (e.g. Mad Max - answer: no, it's a post-apocalyptic cop revenge movie. The outlaw bikers are only villains, and not the main characters); "Some of the best are actually hybrids" (Hells Angels 69 is a biker-cum-heist movie). I didn't even realize that the master of Ivanlandia had actually curated a biker series at Anthology in 1990. I'm sorry I missed it. I feel like such a dolt.

THE DEVIL'S WORK

The moment I met Michael Lucas I felt a brotherly kinship to him. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met, which puts him alongside Miss Vaginal Creme Davis. Their style of humor is somewhat different, but they share an innate ability to amuse off the cuff, never affected, but seldom out of character. Of course in Miss Davis' case, the characters are multiple. I haven't seen Mike for a few years, but you can imagine my excitement when I discovered he had published a novel via the display at St. Mark's Bookshop. I've known he was a writer since I met him, and used to read him in Maximum Rock and Roll, but this was the first I'd heard of him authoring a full tome. Topping it off was the wonderfully crude retro cover art that references luche libre wrestling. Mike's sardonic sense of humor and incredibly astute social insights are intact in this thoroughly enjoyable read. The tale is set in the 90's and concerns a film school grad who gets a job delivering modern furniture to a mostly insufferable shi shi clientele. His boss is a clueless queen and his partner in schlepping is a daft Englishman. I know that Mike was (might still be) a furniture mover, and wonder how much of the autobiographical bits extend to the extraneous characters. One choice moment is when our protagonist encounters a young coed from school, now a committed junkie. She pretentiously name-drops Burroughs, to which the main character asks "Edgar Rice?" It's a 'can't put it down' sort of read, with a dark overtone and depressing ending. Overall, it's a hilarious and biting commentary on how inane life can be. I know Mike is rather obsessed with South American garage music and pop culture in general, so the allusions to Mexican wrestling made perfect sense. The wry descriptions of San Fransisco in the 90's, especially the 'hipster' scene, brought on euphoric laughter. Mike published this on his own press, Rudos and Rubes. Rudos are the bad guys in Mexican wrestling. I believe Black Shadow and Blue Demon were both rudos, although Blue Demon might have switched sides at some point. A rube is defined as an "Awkward and unsophisticated' person. That of course maintains Mike's scathing sense of irony, since obviously us Rudos and Rubes readers are highly sophisticated.

BORN LOOSE?

The Candy Snatchers are one of my all-time favorite bands. Desperate, insane, balls out punk rock; they put on some of the greatest live shows I've ever seen. Just under a year ago we lost Snatcher's legendary guitarist Matthew Odietus. Now the Snatcher's just as legendary front man Larry May is back where he was born to be - on stage leading a raging band. They are Born Loose, though I wonder if they ever considered being The Born Loose. I wonder if there is a band called The Born Losers, named after the Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin biker movie. Digressions aside, the band was part of Dean Rispler's latest great rock show at The Trash Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Unfortunately I missed The Mess Around, who friends said were tight and rocked the power chords. I went in as Larry was taking the stage with band beers in hand. The band includes Suke, a great guitarist who played second guitar with the Snatchers at some point, not sure how many gigs. He is a confident player and must have listened to lots of hard rock and metal judging by his screaming solos. The rhythm section were in a band called Nova Express that I'm not familiar with, but based on their heavy hammer style of playing they're obviously right for the part. They both looked pretty jovial. The drummer sported a Two Thousand Manics t-shirt and the bass player's hair sort of reminded me of Pedro Ramone's - in a good way. As the band finished tuning up and making the appropriate pre-set instrument noises Larry started to tell this story about his old friend Chris Kuchar (sp? I don't think the guy's name is really the same as that of the incredible Kuchar Brothers). Seems ol' pessimistic Chris once retorted to Larry's casual 'What a nice day' comment by saying 'Larry, if it's so nice, why don't you fuck the day.' Larry told the story in the way that only Larry can. He had a few drinks but was rather lucid at this point, yet still managed to elongate the simple tale in an amusing manner. At one point Dean yelled from the sound booth 'Hey Larry, that's really interesting. Tell us more.' A frustrated Larry responded to Dean by inserting the words god damn and fucking into a phrase of gratitude, then they launched into a great, straight-ahead uptempo number. The first song was a good indication that Born Loose retains the Candy Snatchers penchant for high octane music, but also showed a little more influence of 70's rock. I suppose The Faces are the source of some inspiration. They don't sound like Stewart and co. per se but did have plenty of breakdown parts that allowed songs to coast for a while with some guitar licks and calmer vocals and then explode once again in a rave-up ending. Not nearly as wild as a vintage Snatchers show of course, but they did keep the energy high and did too well picked Snatchers songs: I'm a Bastard, and Doin' Time (With you). As the show went on Larry's between song banter became more and more like that of James Brown. Apparently down in Larry's home town of Virginia Beach, when you're fucked-up and rambling on uninteligibly they call it 'speaking mayonnaise.' In any case, Larry Mayo rules. After the show I found out they'd only practiced five times before this impressive first gig. I look forward to more Born Loose.

The Brooklyn Rail on Asian film and more...

Below are links to most (if not all) the film pieces I've published in the Brooklyn rail. Enjoy...

1. Apoorva Lakhia with David Wilentz
   
2. Gauze, Manga and Delinquency, Tadanobu Asano with David Wilentz
3. Alex Cox with David Wilentz
   
4. WATERMELON TIME! The Plastic Fantastic Universe of Tsai Ming Liang
5. Brute Force
6. More Freedom and More Shocking
7. How Pink Got So Violent: A guide to Japanese female exploitation films of the 70’s on DVD
   
8. DVD Culture: JIGOKU
   
9. Dream So Real - An Interview with Miwa Nishikawa
10. New York Asian Film Festival 2008
11. Japan Cuts
12. Johnnie To In Charge
13. Pretty Poison
14. Imamura Retrospective at BAM
15. Elephants & Ass-Kicking: Tony Jaa & Jet Li
16. Languid Winds and Daring Kimonos
17. Dawn of Japanese Animation
18. The Unseen and the Unspoken: The Films of Lee Chang Dong
19. Silent Ozu & Late Ozu box sets
20. Roman-Porno to Desu Noto - The Odyssey of Shusuke Kaneko
21. KAWAII Unchained: Sailor Suit & Machine Gun
22. French Noir and Flying Swordsmen
23. Two Lane Blacktop
24. Tatsuya Nakadai Retrospective
25. Mavericks from the East and Last of the Independents
26. Noir At the Film Forum
27. Princes and Assassins
28. The Absolute Cool of Death and Horses
29. SAMURAI FLASHBACK
30. DVD CULTURE SAMURAIs
31. The Turntable Is The Cosmos: Asian Summer in New York
32. Old Fashioned Gore and Familiar Tropes: The 2006 NYC Horror Film Festival
33. Monsters and Madmen box
34. Yojimbo/Sanjuro: Two Films by Akira Kurosawa
    
35. Yakuza Films at the Asia Society
36. Burst City
37. Takashi Miike Takes New York
38. Hausu Party (HOUSE from Japan is THE CRAZIEST MOVIE EVER)
39. In League with Satan (House of the Devil)
    
40. 10% True, 90% Lies interview with Sion Sono
41. The Naked Heroes with David Wilentz
42. Japan Cuts 2010
43. WILD BOARS RUN AMOK: THE 2010 NY ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL
    
    

TATTOOED HITMEN ONLINE

In the wake of Bruce Lee's worldwide success came the x-rated violence of Sonny Chiba and more stateside exploitation of Asian action (e.g. Shogun Assassin). It seems there was only one low-brow attempt to cash-in on yakuza films (Schrader's The Yakuza don't count) : TATTOOED HIT MAN! That's Bunta Sugawara brandishing the smoking gun. The original film is the 1974 modern yakuza yarn Yamaguchi-gumi gaiden: Kyushu shinko-sakusen - a mouthfull of a title which as far as I can suss out is along the lines of 'Yamaguchi Gang tale: Invasion of Kyushu.' New Line dubbed it in English and re-named Bunta 'Bud.' It's available on VHS only but you can watch it widescreen on Netflix.The skinny from Patrick Macias is that New Line was actually trying to start a boom off of the Schrader penned film. Sydney Pollack is a respected director but his films were often wincingly trite and stylistically constipated. You'd hope a team of writers like Paul and Leonard Scrader (both deeply invested in yakuza-eiga) and Robert Towne would ensure a compelling film but my memory of it was ho-hum at best. Anyhow, New Line figured they'd go the easy route - what they sort of did with Sonny Chiba's Street Fighter - dub an existing movie in English. This time they got Jack Sholder (who would go on to direct The Hidden and Nightmare on Elm Street 2) to re-write and edit. Apparently they just ditched the whole last reel in which Kyushu is invade. What you do get is a transgressive caricature of a gangster potboiler. Those dubbed voices sound familiar. It's got to be same team that did Street Fighter. Does the guy doing Bunta actually talk like that or is he trying to sound Japanese? Or does he think this is a spaghetti western and he's playing a Mexican revolutionary? The original film itself was a cash-in on Fukasaku's 'true-document' masterpiece Battles Without Honor And Humanity, which is notorious for it's crude foul mouth characters. The dubbing is perfectly primed for the deuce with all the 'motherfuckers' and other insults worthy of a Dolemite game of the dozens. And the way this film looks now (slightly worn, replete with a few jumpy edits, etc.) is exactly what those guys tried to do with that grind house double movie. In essence it's an (unintentional) action comedy that features anarchic thugs, loose women, a VD gag (again, unintentional), misogyny, gunfights, moral bankruptcy, and barely a thread of plot. Nevertheless, most of the Netflix customers who commented gave it bad reviews...And following the previous video nostalgia post, this was released on VHS by Wizard Video.

SLEAZY SEGUE EXTRA: VIDEO NOSTALGIA

The stream of consciousness continues to flow. The previous post's reminiscence of film flotsam such as Firecracker brought back a flood of video rental memories. For instance, speaking of Firecracker, mention must be made of Raw Force, the zombie martial arts movie made in tandem with the former, also featuring the alluring Kesner in the cast alongside B-movie vet Cameron Mitchell (who might deserve his own post) and a bunch of kung fu no names. This one actually had TV commercials! This brings to mind a film that came out around the same time that never made it on video here and remains shrouded in obscurity, despite its incredible title: Karate Killers on Wheels. This was in New York area theaters circa 1980 or 82 and Joe Bob Briggs raved about it. Still, no one else seems to remember it and it doesn't seem easy to find. From what I've sussed out it's a violent biker~martial arts movie made in 1976 by none other than Shaw Brothers, also released as simply Killers on Wheels. The only sign of any video ever being available seems to be in German (sans subs). The Chinese title is "Wu Fa Wu Tian" which means something along the lines of "Totally Unlawful." Celestial Pictures, who now own the Shaw library, have it listed on their website. Wouldn't it be nice if some DVD distributor picks it up? Apparently it features actress Liu Hui Ru, who played 'Princess Dragon Mom' in the incredible Inframan. Back when Sneak Previews was still on channel 13 (public television) and Siskel and Ebert made snarky comments at each other, they did a great 'guilty pleasures' episode on which they featured Van Peebles seminal blaxploitation outcry Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and the Shaw Brothers cash-in on Ultraman, featuring Bruce Lee imitator Bruce Li (Ho Chung Dao) as the titular Inframan. Anyway, the advent of home video in the 80's was the first death knell for grindhouse exploitation pictures. A ripe catalog of juicy taboo-defying genre films made there way into homes. I remember looking at an early video catalog that featured provocative titles such as The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula and The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism. The avatars of distribution included major and indie labels, both mirroring the sleazy marketing tactics of exploitation days of yore. Paragon Video remains endearingly carved in the memory for their copious and diverse low-budget fare, big boxes and close to 15 minutes of lurid trailers on every tape. Titles included the gloriously shameless One Armed Executioner, about an Interpol agent on a Death Wish styled mission of vengeance; Lucio Fulci's gratuitously gory The Gates of Hell; Weird run-of-the-mill b-movie fare like Hotwire, a southern fried potboiler about car thieves. Check out this incredible online gallery of vintage VHS box art.

SLEAZY SEGUE

Following the stream of consciousness from the previous post about Kiss of Death, the mention of Swedish sexpot Christina Lindberg brings us to Sex and Fury, a pinky violence co-opt of the popular Red Peony female gambler series. Sex and Fury (the original title is something like 'Story of delinquent elder sister Ocho') features voluptuous (and shameless) Reiko Ike as the sexy Ocho who is an expert card sharp, pickpocket and kicks ass at nude swordfighting. Speaking of fighting in the nude, does anyone remember Cirio H. Santiago's Firecracker (aka Naked Fist) starring Jillian Kesner? It features a memorable scene in which Kesner's character, a martial arts expert searching for her sister, is assaulted and ends up defending herself while each item of clothing is cut off her body, one by one. Apparently Santiago (a journeyman director of Filipino exploitation cinema who just passed away September 26th) knew this was a good idea when he tried it the first time in TNT Jackson, featuring Jeannie Bell, one of the first African American playmates of the month. Actually, I think Firecracker is a remake of Jackson. ANYWAY, Lindberg appears in SEX & FURY as a foreign gambler put in more than one compromising position during the course of the film's lurid action/comedy/sex combo. S & F is a low-brow good time helmed by legendary Japanese exploitation auteur Norifumi Suzuki. I thought it was a funny coincidence that there's a character with the same name in Japan's domestic blockbuster of a few years back, (the insufferably saccharine) Always: Sunset on Third. To its merit Always does feature a nice recreation of postwar Tokyo, an interesting inversion: artificial design of a setting associated with neo-realism. Nostalgic indeed. Anyway, enough with the digressions. In the 'Japanese Cult, Pulp and Exploitation Cinema' class I've been co-teaching we just screened School of the Holy Beast, a rousing nunsploitation film by Mr. Suzuki. Here's some of the info I provided the students:

School of the Holy Beast (Seiju Gakuen) (1974) director Norifumi Suzuki was a screenwriter first who worked on yakuza, chanbara, karate, exploitation, sexploitation and such genre films. Suzuki wrote some of the Red Peony scripts and directed the second installment, Gambler's Obligation. His niece is none other than Oryu herself Junko Fuji. Suzuki directed his fare share of pinky violence ( a lot of sukeban) films and Sonny Chiba movies. He also directed the popular Truck Yaro (Truck Rascals) series about renegade truck drivers, featuring yakuza eiga stalwart Bunta Sugawara. Suzuki's serial killer film Star of David: Beauty Hunting is even more infamous (and shocking) than his foray into nunsploitation. Suzuki also claims credit for introducing the term 'porno' to Japan (an alternative to the common expression 'pinku').

Holy Beast featured the debut of lovely lead Yumi Takigawa. Takigawa was scouted off the streets of the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. She went on to appear in other genre films such as Graveyard of Honor (yakuza film by Kinji Fukasaku), Bullet Train (Sonny Chiba has to rescue a hijacked bullet train from bomber Ken Takakura), and Karate Bear Fighter. Takigawa also had the honor of reviving the role of scorpion in 1976's New Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701 after Meiko Kaji departed the series. She went on to a successful TV career and forged an image antithetical to that of a pinky violence starlet, enhancing the cult value of Holy Beast (because of her rare risqué performance).

SLEAZE REPORT: POISON WOMAN FROM HONG KONG

At the beginning of the millennium Celestial Pictures acquired the Shaw Brothers film library, or at least a good chunk of it, including lots of classic kung fu, wu xia, and other cool genre stuff. There has since been revival series and foreign region DVD releases as well as Shaw Brothers documentaries on cable TV. In the past few years various titles have been licensed to Dragon Dynasty, Image Entertainment and Media Blasters, allowing a slew of Shaw Brothers titles to pepper the DVD shelves. Image recently released Kiss of Death, a tawdry exploitation film, offering a curious counter to all the standard martial arts fare. Granted this one has martial arts too, but that's not really the focal point of this gruesome venture.

SPOILERS AHEAD - though in this kind of film you pretty much know what's going to happen before it starts...

Kiss of Death is a rape-revenge movie. Ling is a young, attractive and pure factory worker. On her way home from work she is brutally violated by 5 slothering low-life criminals. She makes her way home to the silhouettes of her guardians (not sure if they're her actual parents or aunt and uncle). We only see their shadow through a paper screen as they admonish her for coming home late and say she should work as a bar girl to make more money. Poor traumatized and stigmatized Ling has no one to turn to. The original Chinese title is Du Nu, or "Poison Woman" and it's a double entendre. Soon Ling discovers she's contracted Vietnam Rose, a notorious strain of syphilis (apparently it's also the name of a Phillipino soap opera). For the rest of the movie she suffers occasional attacks of the disease, feeling pain down there and treating it by popping some mysterious pills. It's very random and nonsensical, only adding to the gleefully sleazy exploitative thrills. Without giving the whole thing away (wait, what's there to give away?) Ling ends up working as a bar hostess (just as her uncaring caregivers suggested) in order to seek out her attackers and extract revenge. The gimp but badass bar owner, played by Kung Fu movie stalwart Lo Lieh, becomes her martial arts mentor. The training scenes are pretty entertaining because at first he shows little of that "I don't hit women" attitude, simply knocking her down until she's fierce enough to counter his attacks. Kiss of Death glides along by the numbers at a typically fervent but deliberate Shaw pace. The melodramatic tones are amped-up : lurid colors shrouded in shadows, super-groovy canned music, and last but not least overwrought emotions Chinese style. The villains, plucked from central casting (meaning Hong Kong alleyways), are hopelessly sleazy and evil, chewing up the scenery. There's a great psychedelic club scene where the baddies drug a couple of young co-eds and frame them into being sex workers, while our heroine infiltrates the party on her mission of vengeance. Completely ridiculous and devoid of any metaphorical value, Kiss of Death simultaneously delivers on its promise of (unintentional) high camp and disturbing gritty action. Kiss is not as imaginative as some of those pinky violence films, but in some ways it's actually better than the legendary They Call Her One Eye because that Swedish exploiter is a little too far fetched. It doesn't make sense that the titular One-Eye, played by lovely Lolita Christina Lindberg, is supposed to be an enslaved prostitute, yet is allowed free time (and salary) to go out and hire men to train her in guns and martial arts to wreak vengeance. It dilutes the tension big time. The fascinating thing about They Call Her One Eye though, is that the director, like H.G. Lewis and Dave Friedman did with the gore film, deliberately set out to cash in on a low-budget, taboo-breaking twisted twist on a fairy-tale. And it worked. Seen in its original 42nd street grindhouse context, the impact must've been ten fold more shocking and entertaining. As for Kiss of Death, its tawdriness is di riguer for Hong Kong cinema, particularly at that time. Now I have to get my hands on a DVD of Sexy Killer, the sleazy Hong Kong remake of the Jack Hill helmed Pam Grier vehicle, Coffy. Chen Ping, star of both Kiss of Death and Sexy Killer, boasts a filmography chock full of genre and exploitation titles, from the kung fu spaghetti western The Stranger and the Gunfighter (starring Lee Van Cleef and Lo Lieh) to The Mighty Peking Man.

TURKISH DEATH WISH!?!

After all those posts on revenge movies look what I find...

TRAILER FLASH

Here is the trailer for the new Japanese low budget indie Bakabakance. The title roughly means stupid dance. Baka (stupid) is a great overused Japanese word. Apparently the movie's about a road trip a guy takes with his co-worker and the ex-girlfriend who left him for another guy. Read about it at Nippon Cinema.



And here's one with English subtitles for The Good The Bad and the Weird. I mentioned it earlier here.



More trailers here.