I got your NINJA ASSASSIN right here.

Really, now, does this look like the kind of fellow who could turn your extremities into sashimi while carving a watermelon wedge out of your throat? I didn't think so. I mean, come on, he's making a little heart shape with his hands. Just for you. Awwwww.


Korean pop sensation—and sometime archenemy to Stephen Colbert—Rain is hawking some tasty little chocolate covered, orange-goo streaked goodies here called Fei Cakes, produced by the Fuma Group Food Company of China, which has in recent years invested heavily in the Industrial Bank, China Everbright Bank and Bank of Communications as part of their plan to become the "China Cake Kingdom." You will eat their cake some day. Oh yes, you will.

Fuma's marketing spiel for the cakes might sound a little . . . suggestive to western ears, and seems to be trying to encourage you to put something besides cake in your mouth:

Rain between your lips, rain in your mouth and in your heart
Fall in love with the Fei cake, with Rain and with the smelling of Rain!

Rain's Coming, indeed.

Now, if that doesn't make you want to run out and buy a box to munch on while Rain slices and dices his way through the ranks of his former ninja clan, I don't know what will.

Well, how about the image from the side of the box, then?



Nah, didn't work for me either. They had me at Sho Kosugi. But the Fei Cakes are mighty good.

As always, my eternal gratitude to Canada's most awesomest Asian mega-grocery chain, T&T, for stocking some of the coolest little nibblies this side of Hong Kong.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME (Canada; 1981)

D: J. Lee Thompson
W: John Saxton

There's a reason Anchor Bay's new release of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME has turned up for as little as five dollars in certain big box retailers in the U.S.: it's an awful movie.

The infamous tagline "Six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see!" is of course part and parcel of the old-school hucksterism used to peddle these "event-related" slasher movies back in the 70's and 80's, but here it's more of a blatant case of false advertising than was usually the case back in those days. Sure, in concept, some of the murders are a little off-the-wall (kebab-skewer through the mouth; weights across the nuts 'n neck, motorcycle spokes to the face, etc.), but they all happen so quickly there's little time to find them anything but frustrating (and upon rewinding, you discover how little you actually see). This movie more likely earned its R-rating for its now-quaint profanity than it's gore (of which there is little) or it's nudity (of which there is none).

By 1980, when this was shot, veteran director J Lee Thompson still had some craft left in him, if barely, but he was clearly painting by numbers on this outing, and sloppily so, as in two key scenes involving cars. Early on (and early enough to be an omen) one character's snazzy Trans Am jumps a rising river bridge, firmly planting (and utterly destroying) it's nose end on the other side, but a moment later, the car's in pristine condition. A little later, the car occupied by our possibly deranged heroine (Melissa Sue Anderson) and her crazy mother becomes lodged between the rising panels of the same bridge, eventually falling into the water below on it's roof, a plunge captured from three different camera angles, all of which are shown in sequence. Then, a fourth shot of the plunge completes the sequence, only this time, the car lands on it's wheels! How stupid did the filmmakers think audiences were in those days, anyways?

And poor Glenn Ford. He took a lot of flack at the time for appearing as Dr. Faraday in this, and his name value is really all he brings to it (as well as the opportunity for the filmmakers to insert another blatantly obvious red herring ("I'll never let anyone hurt you" he reassures Anderson in a disquietingly creepy fashion). One surmises that he took the role because it brought him back to Quebec, the land of his birth. He certainly wouldn't be the first actor to wrangle a free vacation out of a film role (Paging Michael Caine!).

The whole picture is sloppily made and poorly thought out. The red herring count is high, but it's also egregiously stupid, with virtually every character required to do bizarre things or exhibit strange behviour that no human being would ever do or exhibit (especially among a group of friends) in order to supposedly keep us guessing. It's insulting, as is the "rip off that rubber mask" finale straight out of the old Scooby Doo mysteries.

This would be a one star review were it not for the fact that Anchor Bay offers a very nice transfer on this edition, with the original music restored, thus the second star. The film itself barely merits one star. The only extra on the disc is the trailer.

From The Archives of Rex Saigon: RPM Weekly cover story - THE BLACK HOLE (1979)

Digging real deep today for a musty old copy of RPM Weekly Magazine (Vol. 32, No. 12, Dec. 15, 1979), a trade-only rag for the Canadian radio and recording industries that followed the trends, interviewed the movers and shakers, posted weekly charts in the top music categories, handed out the RPM Gold Leaf Awards (which evolved into Canada's prestigious Juno Awards) and, once in a while, pimped a movie they believed was destined to be the Next Big Thing, in this case Walt Disney Pictures' THE BLACK HOLE (a guilty pleasure of Rex's from way back), which opened worldwide just six days after the publication of the magazine, then promptly became one of those movies that contributed to the studio's lean years in the early 80's. Sure, it's basically a puff piece, written mostly from the press kit, just as such "features" are today, but it provides a sizeable preamble chronicling the history of the studio, and an interview with then VP and GM of Walt Disney Music of Canada Jim Rayburn, who was convinced the various record products would take off concurrently with the success of the film.

REX TAKES TIFF PIX

Took a few photographs at this year's Toronto International Film Fest, mostly of directors at the Q&As, but I'm no stargazer, so for the most part these were snapped from right where I sat, in one or two attempts, in darkened theaters. What you see is what you get. Or what I got. Or something.


Above, Soi Cheang discusses his brilliant new Hong Kong thriller ACCIDENT. He spoke in Cantonese but rarely needed the questions translated, and yakked with a few locals in the lobby for several minutes afterward. ACCIDENT is produced by Johnnie To, and it's actually superior to VENGEANCE, To's own entry in the festival. Cheang is flanked by an unidentified translator.


John Hillcoat (second from left) fields questions about his bleak end-of-the-world drama THE ROAD, possibly nervous that Bob Weinstein was sitting in the audience shooting uncomfortable stares at him. To the right of him are Kodi Smit-McPhee and Viggo Mortensen (turns out he's quite the long-winded one). Robert Duvall appeared at the outset, but couldn't stick around.


Michael Moore sits with Fest programmer Thom Powers (I think!) for a very engaging Q&A session for his new documentary CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY at the prestigious Elgin Theatre. Also in attendance were Moore's father, several striking miner's from Northern Ontario, and a coterie of hired "protesters" who marched down Yonge Street decrying the evils of Wall Street. Moore's new doc digs up the deep-seated and tangled roots of the current economic crisis in America (and by extension the world), with his typically leftist sense of humour. The film also showcases recently-unearthed footage of Roosevelt giving a speech that, had he lived to implement the plans he puts forth in it, might have altered the course of American history away from the current disaster.


Johnnie To joins fest programmer Colin Geddes and a translator on stage at the Ryerson to perform a little autopsy on VENGEANCE, his slick thriller starring French pop king Johnny Halliday, who also appeared at the beginning of the film, but couldn't stick around. An expectedly sumptuous visual experience even if it isn't top-tier To, with lots of little touches (beyond the casting of Hallyday) that will remind you of French cinema of the 60s and 70s, as well as an epic gun battle on a field full of cubes of discarded newspaper and cardboard that serves as To's homage to Akira Kurosawa.


Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza take the stage with Colin Geddes after scaring the shit out of the Midnight Madness with their pumped-up sequel [REC]2. They don't build up to the good stuff in this. They don't have to because the first film was the backstory. This starts with the good stuff and never slows down.

MIA on DVD: TWICE DEAD (1988)

D: Bert L. Dragin
W: Bert L. Dragin, Robert McConnell



Found this advertisement for the video release of the direct-to-video horror flick TWICE DEAD while skimming a small stash of bound-for-the-recycling bin home entertainment magazines for the various technology articles I've been posting in the past few days. I haven't seen this little B horror, actually, nor am I likely to, but I thought the packaging looked appropriately garish enough to share.

From The Archives of Rex Saigon: Gump goes video CD (1994)

Few among today's digital cognoscenti may remember that the Video CD format—still popular today in Hong Kong and parts of Asia, where few households circa 1993 had VCRs when this low-priced, climate-friendly format made its debut—almost became the successor to VHS. Almost. This ad from Philips appeared in the November 1994 issue of Premiere Magazine, touting the "CD-quality audio" and "digital picture quality" of the then-nascent format. Notice they don't say "VHS-quality" or "laserdisc-quality", since the VCD generally landed somewhere in between those formats—or, just as often, beneath both of them—on the home theatre presentation scale. It may have died a quick and quiet death in North America, but the format's resilience in Hong Kong, in particular, means any fan of the city's cinema who truly wants to wear the badge must indulge the format on a regular basis or risk leaving a considerable segment of Hong Kong's diverse film offerings undiscovered due to its lack of availability on DVD or any other format.

JAILBIRD ROCK (USA-Argentina-Panama; 1988)

D: Phillip Schuman
W: Edward Kovach and Carole Stanley (story by Eduard Sarlui)

In the frightening decade of the 1980’s there was an American television series called SOLID GOLD. This was a music program in which the top ten hit singles of the week were counted down between lipsync performances by actual best-selling artists.

As America had yet to want their MTV, the countdown segments on SOLID GOLD were boosted by sex-drenched interpretive dance routines performed by the Solid Gold Dancers, a collection of mascara-blasted, feather-haired showgirls in minimalist costumes, high heels and, when appropriate, leg warmers (say, while “performing” their interpretation of Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” for example). There were also a couple of guys in the troupe, but enough about them.

In fact, the Solid Gold ladies were the only reason for any red-blooded, just-pubescent boy to even bother tuning in to SOLID GOLD, and probably the only reason the show lasted as long as it did. When I think back to the revolving door of hosts that included Dionne Warwick, Marilyn McCoo, Rex Smith (who?), Rick “Disco Duck” Dees and Wayland Flowers & Madam, for heaven’s sake, I’m absolutely convinced the dancers were the reason the show lasted so long. God knows they were the only reason I watched. You only needed to watch about ten minutes of SOLID GOLD to say you actually watched SOLID GOLD, and none of those ten minutes required a host. If you catch my drift…

Anyway, if the Solid Gold Dancers had made a movie, that movie would be from 1988. At least, if I had my way, it would have been. Because then it might have attracted some actual talent behind the camera, and the “all-tease” format of the released product would have at least been justified.

JAILBIRD ROCK is a piece of shit set to a grating synth-pop score. A Women-In-Prison movie with all the Women-In-Prison movie cliches—an incompetent warden, a lesbian head guard, pretty girls using dirty words, knife fights in the yard, catfights in the showers, fights with hot irons in the laundry room, homemade ’shine, toilet duty, solitary confinement and all-out interpretive dance competitions—yet not so much as a single exposed bottom or bared breast to place it in the pantheon of babes-behind-bars masterpieces. It comes so close though. Actually, on reflection, I did see a couple of bums, but that’s about it. And they’re the bums of extras, which is hardly the reason anyone watches Women-In-Prison movies.

But wait a minute, did I just say “all-out interpretive dance competitions”?

Yessir, I did.

You see, JAILBIRD ROCK, as the title might have already implied, is a musical. Well more of a dance-ical and quite frankly, when push comes to shove, the girls in this prison could give the Solid Gold Dancers a run in their nylons, once they sort out their differences, stop assaulting each other with hot irons, and learn to distinguish a chasse from a ciseaux. This last bit of education seems to occur mostly off-camera; despite countless "rehearsal" sequences, we're given nothing that anticipates the film's tightly-choreographed dance show climax.

But first things first.

After killing her raging alcoholic stepfather to spare her mother another beating, dance prodigy Jesse (Robin Antin) is sent to the Mierda Hoyo Prison For Wayward Girls in a part of America where the automobiles all look strangely South American and the cell doors are drapes, not bars. Once there, she immediately bunches up the panties of block leader Max (Rhonda Aldrich) and her second-in-command squeeze toy Echo (Robin Cleaver). Playing on Jesse’s team are mousy crybaby Peggy (Valerie Jean Richards) who’s also an easy target for Max, and brash Samantha (Jacqueline Houston), a black girl from the ‘hood who don’t take no crap from nobody, as illustrated by the scene in which she tells Max to “get your dick outta my face before you gotta pull it outta your ass, bitch!” Max, a lesbian, is holding a knife, so Samantha is speaking metaphorically, of course.

Political gamesmanship ensues, shivs are pulled, and everyone ends up in solitary, but Jesse’s lifelong desire to kick it on Broadway is a flame that won’t be extinguished just because Max makes her clean a clogged up toilet with a toothbrush, and so she organizes an all-singing, all-dancing Prison Girl Variety Show. The inept administration sees a wonderful PR opportunity, Max sees a chance to mount an escape (a plan that remains unsuspected by everyone in spite of the fact that she shows up for but never participates in the rehearsals!), and Jesse spends the next six weeks whipping society’s rejects into the best damned tushy-shakers this side of, well, SOLID GOLD. On the big night, the girls tie up their prison shirts, hike up their cut-off short-shorts and leg warmers and dance, baby, dance!

In fact, the final number, illustrated here and set to a screechy tune called “Gotta Move,” is the high point of the movie. All of these girls are phenomenal dancers, but director Phillip Schuman has no idea how to film and cut a musical number, let alone a movie, so we’re left to sort of extract the energy from his unimaginative camera angles and awkward cutting. Mind you, Schulman’s biggest credit before this was the X-rated (and somewhat famous, thanks to a screenplay by DR. STRANGELOVE scribe Terry Southern) RANDY, THE ELECTRIC LADY (1980), which actually makes the general sterility of JAILBIRD ROCK doubly frustrating: this guy worked in PORN and the one thing he leaves out of his Women-In-Prison movie is gratuitous nudity?

If anyone learned anything from this movie (and it certainly wasn’t Schulman, who never made another), it was leading lady Robin Antin, who would go on to found the popular Pussycat Dolls burlesque group, as well as find some success choreographing music videos, television shows and movies (which is exactly what her character Jesse ends up doing when she gets out of prison in JAILBIRD ROCK). Unfortunately her choice of projects (CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE) sometimes seems as dire as her choice of boyfriends (McG, the director of CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE)

So, if you crave a prison picture with all of the workup and little of the release, JAILBIRD ROCK might be worth a peek for schlock aficionados. I found mine rummaging through a box of two dollar VCDs in a Chinatown shop, so I consider it money well spent.

MIA on DVD: HOT STUFF (USA; 1979)

Great little movie with a fun cast and a script co-authored by the venerable Donald Westlake. Sadly, it's not on DVD, but I managed to dig up these credits of the inimitable Reed's theme song and post them on YouTube. Enjoy!

And, for your further viewing pleasure, Dom Deluise blasts off!

GYPSY ANGELS (1980/1994)

GYPSY ANGELS (1980/1994; United States)
D: Alan Smithee

Diggin' into the vault for this one. Ahhh, the memories. Brother, you just ain't seen bad acting until you've seen a pre-Wheel of Fortune Vanna White, playing the leather jumpsuit-clad squeeze toy of a macho barnstorming pilot (executive producer Gene Bicknell, who looks a lot like John Sayles but acts like Merle Haggard) defiantly proclaim: 'Well let me tell you one thing mister, I am one fine stripper. Real kinky, you know what I mean? Yeah, you betcha!' If the bellbottoms, aforementioned jumpsuits and Lyle Waggoner on display here are any indication, this is a movie the top-billed Vanna (at least Gene correctly surmised nobody would pay to see him) would likely have preferred to keep buried in the past, since most of it was shot in 1980 before she realized she was better suited to decorating game show sets. Not only can she not act, but she appears to be on the verge of puking during her big love scene with Gene (in which she innocently begs 'Love me. Please...love me.') To her credit, Vanna does reveal one of her vowels during that same romp in the hay. Otherwise, toss this one a Golden Turkey Award.

THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH (1976; United States)

Hal Lindsay, false prophet

THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH (1976)
D: Robert Amram, Rolf Forsberg

"It's almost as if we had an unconscious desire to see the biblical prophesies fulfilled," frets narrator Orson Welles, ominously, in this classic piece of Christian fearmongering. Quietly insane evangelical minister Hal Lindsay attempts to marry revelation to then-current affairs in an effort to prepare us for the Armageddon that lies just around the corner. Obviously, with 30 years of hindsight, we now know he was wrong, and continues to be wrong, but had really swingin' fashion sense circa 1976.

Many actual scientists and deep thinkers appear on screen in LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, and you'd be forgiven if you felt that some of them (who are clearly talking along evolutionary lines) were being taken out of context to support Lindsay's crackpot theories. Lindsay's apocalypse is scotch-taped together out of all the Bad News® that was available at the time of production. Thus, Lindsay's world was set to end as a result of any number of nasty afflictions. Recombinant DNA! Brazilian killer bees! Viruses from Hell! Atheists and witches run amok! And, as Orson says with deathly gravitas, "Nucular" Holocaust. It's Hal's nauseating belief that if you don't have hardcore Christian faith, then your ONLY possible options are witchcraft, astrology, transcendental meditation, Hare Krishnas or the Rev. Sun Myung-moon's wacky Reunification Church! In any case, Hal sez you haven't got a prayer.


The late, great Orson Welles

As always, Hal saves the best for last, enlightening us as to the coming of the antichrist, a figure he believes is alive today (at least as of 1976), and who would achieve omnipotence through seemingly good deeds and the establishment of world peace before enslaving everyone with microchip implants supplied by the then-fledgling computer industry. Or something. Apparently, only those who heed Hal's book and movie can avoid falling under the spell of this evil megalomaniac. He then proceeds to illustrate his argument with imagery designed to stoke the usual cold-war paranoia: before or around 1982, sez Hal, Russia and China will invade the middle east (didn't happen, at least not the way it's predicted here), the European market will grow to a prophesied ten member nations (25 and counting and still no Armageddon), and the "nucular" bombs will rain from the skies like the falling stars seen by the biblical John on his island retreat (well, we're still waiting!). Nonetheless, this allows the filmmakers to go mad with stock footage, a delirious and depressing exercise in escalating doom that runs a full six minutes, unnarrated. Oh, the humanity!

Just because radical fundamentalists love to fulfill prophesies, or see fulfillment where none rationally exists, doesn't mean the prophets were right. It just means that we'll always have to live with people like Hal, desperate to prove their "faith" has substance rather than just keeping it to themselves, and actually learning from it.

TIFF 2007: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, T.V. Carpio

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007; USA)
D: Julie Taymor

Ever have a particularly strong memory play out in your head while you were listening to a cherished song on your mp3 player? You know the routine: the song isn't necessarily about you or your particular fragment of history, but nonetheless there's the movie unspooling in your mind with it's own soundtrack, if only for a few minutes.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, the latest film from renowned stage director turned film director Julie Taymor seems to be built almost entirely on the effortless ability of virtually any song in the back catalogue of The Beatles to evoke a certain time, a certain place, a certain frame of mind in virtually any listener. Taymor chooses these moments wisely, if rather obviously: they're pretty much the cultural touchstones that have all but replaced actual history in the minds of recent generations, in no small part becauce they've formed the backbone of nearly every Big American Movie about "the sixties" to come down the pike. As such, they're cliches, but set to the music of The Beatles, they're magic, and besides, cliches are what works best in any good musical. Like most of the recent crop of stage musicals based on pop repertoires (Abba, Rod Stewart, Queen, Billy Joel), the story here would be a dreadfully thin, left-of-center oversimplification without them.

The film's much-touted musical/fantasy sequences are fuel for daydreams, as one would expect from director of TITUS and director/designer of Broadway's LION KING refit, but many of the songs that frame them were never intended to forward a narrative, and they'd more than likely stop the plot cold if it weren't for Taymor's dazzling visuals completing the character arcs within these sequences more effectively than her unquestionably talented cast of singers, who look more 60s-as-we-remember-it than 60s-as-it-really-was, and often need only be present in a scene surrounded by the director's dreamy phantasmagoria and singing a typically evocative (but non-narrative) tune for us the audience to grasp their evolution.



Of course, without the music, there's about as much plot here as you'd find in any stage musical based on any pop act's back catalogue (paging Abba!), and the plot is this: idealistic early 60's goody-goodies become late-60's cynics, burnouts, protestors and veterans, full stop. That old chestnut has pretty much turned up in countless major movies about "the sixties" made in the last 20 years, but the timeless quality of the music keeps us from ever caring that Taymor and 69-year old writing duo Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (THE COMMITMENTS, STILL CRAZY, umm...NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN) are just running down a checklist of important signifiers of the decade, and coating each with a gorgeous new lacquer.

Taymor's cast of actor/singers (Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Martin Luther and Dana Fuchs, the latter two both debuting here as Joplin and Hendrix refurbs respectively) is impressive across the board—as are the numerous guest stars, including Bono, Joe Cocker and Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite, but as an avowed fan of Hong Kong cinema and Cantonese pop music, I'll give special props to T.V. Carpio as the bisexual Prudence (bad with men, yearns for the ladies). Carpio's mom is famous Hong Kong diva Teresa Carpio, and it's obvious T.V. has inherited her mother's pipes, particularly during her opening rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" a yearning ode to lesbian love.


T.V. Carpio

This is a director's picture all the way, and one very much worthy of the big screen experience. The ground it covers may feel well worn, perhaps a bit pat, but Taymor and her team of designers and effects engineers dress it up in a such a beautiful new wardrobe, it'd be a pity to not see it writ large, while appreciating its artistic intensity rather than its philosphical/political underpinnings, because the latter are, naturally, better suited to the history books.

TIFF 2007: GEORGE A. ROMERO'S DIARY OF THE DEAD

GEORGE A. ROMERO'S DIARY OF THE DEAD (2007; USA/Canada)
D: George A. Romero

In an age where everyone's dying to tell a story, to make themselves known, and increasingly fitted eight ways to Sunday with the means to do it, it should come as no surprise that a reimagining of George Romero's DEAD franchise would be a timely affair, particularly now that it's been liberated from studio interference.

This time out—his 146th if I recall correctly, and I think I do—Romero's trademark unexplained zombie apocalypse rises up while the protagonists, a bunch of pretentious film school students and their besotted professor, are shooting a low budget monster movie deep in the woods outside Pittsburgh. The one in Ontario, Canada, that is. Armed with the videographic weapons of the digital age—cell phone cameras, DV cameras, Webcams, security cameras, Myspace and YouTube videos— and the knowledge that the end is nigh, the group sets out in their grimy Winnebago (with the "W" logo rather lazily taped over by Romero's set designers) to document the mayhem with an eye to uploading the results so that people can see the truth this bunch believes the world is being denied by the mainstream media, which has almost immediately attempted to put a positive spin on the plague.

Folks who like to piss all over Romero's last zombie flick, the narrative-driven LAND OF THE DEAD (which really wasn't that bad), will find much to savour here now that he's working to his own specs on a comparitively modest budget and freed of a standard narrative. There's a sense of urgency and nausea (and, of course, calculation) in the hand-held camerawork— much of it performed by cast members—that has been largely absent since Romero's original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.



That to achieve any of this Romero's characters had to be pretentious film-school students (and their besotted professor) was a bit of a bother, but in this age of untrusted media conglomerates and ubiquitous, listen-to-ME "personal reporting," I suppose it is the most topical route to catch up to the zeitgeist. But the concept wears a bit thin over the course of 90+ minutes, though by then you've invested enough in these characters to at least see how, or if, they die. The whole cynical "are you gettin' all this on your stupid camera?" ethical-moral routine is present and accounted for as pretty much everyone takes a shot at their student "director" (Joshua Close) for his seemingly callous drive to capture every gruesome moment on video. A brief snippet of Close's character talking to the camera is about all we're given to suggest he's NOT motivated by a filmschoolian lust for fame, and it's barely enough to convince. Indeed, the entire film is set up as a patchwork documentary pieced together from various sources by the director's girlfriend after he's no longer capable of finishing the project. Indeed, the film's opening title isn't DIARY OF THE DEAD, it's THE DEATH OF DEATH. Clever, if not particularly inventive. Her switch from loathing his decisions to finishing the project in his honour—replete with a horror-film score because she feels she needs to "scare you"—is just a bit too tidy (and quite how she does it is never explained, even though we're supposed to be watching the final results)

As stated, a lower budget apparently couldn't deny Romero the services of the folks at KNB Effects Group, and their gore doesn't disappoint in the least! A few little bits of CG are evident in the head shots, but that's acceptable in this day and age. Overall, though, the zombies meet some very inventive demises this time out, via defibrillator paddles, acid, scythes, gunshots, you name it. An attempt to be all meaningful in the final scene rings a bit hollow, but the effect used to put it across is exceptionally well done.

The film's most memorable character is bound to be Samuel, the deaf-mute Amish man who proves rather handy with his little chalk-board, with which he communicates with the protagonists when they stop at his farm, and sticks of dynamite, with which he dispatches three undead ghouls before turning around his chalkboard, where's he written an introductory "Hello, I'm Samuel" that he punctuates with confident little nod of the head! Priceless.

My name is Grace Lee...

Well, it's about damned time. THE GRACE LEE PROJECT finally hits DVD. Women Make Movies has finally put a price tag on this that puts it within reach of the home viewer. Definitely worth the 20 bucks.

You can order it here

In THE GRACE LEE PROJECT, filmmaker Grace Lee manages to cram a textbook worth of insight into a scant 70 minute running time, and, with a sense of humor akin to that shown by Morgan Spurlock in SUPER SIZE ME, presents a litany of telling observations about growing up female in a diasporic Asian (largely Korean) culture that, to hear the myriad Grace Lees on display tell it, almost unwittingly turns its young women into closed-minded do-gooders who, even when they do muster up the gumption to rebel, only do so out of fear of losing face for their parents and the greater community. In other words, girls who never seem to have any true sense of independence or freedom, and basically the polar opposite of the filmmaker herself - a self-professed (in the film) non-believer from a Christian Korean family who dated and married a Caucasian (also in the film) and decided on a career that all but guaranteed a hard-scrabble existence (although this film should change all that). Nonetheless, her own parents, a soft-spoken, humble couple, are featured in the films opening moments and if they harbor any feelings of embarrassment about their daughter's life choices, it's not evident on screen.

The film will probably resonate best with Korean women ages 25-35, as Lee genuinely seems unable to find a Korean Grace Lee that deviates far from familial and societal expectations ("quiet, soft spoken, Christian, petite, intelligent, really nice and with 3.5 years of piano lessons"), and those she does highlight are hard-pressed to define what makes them "different" from what their generic names imply. Nonetheless, all the subjects, while sharing essentially the same existential quandary, which itself is more a symptom of their upbringing than their parents' choice of name, still manage to betray little eccentricities and repressed desires to subvert the system, so to speak. Women of Chinese extraction, most notably Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs ("Grace X"), are also featured prominently and tend to come off as the most atypical of the bunch in one way or another, perhaps because of the culture's longer presence in the west, perhaps not. Another Chinese Grace Lee who came from an abusive adopted home and in turn took in an abused woman and her three daughters later in life, provides much of the emotion of the doc's final 20 minutes.

No film about young Korean women made by a young Korean woman could possibly sidestep the issue of religion, what with Christianity an ever-present force in the diasporic Korean community. Lee makes no bones about her thoughts on the subject in sequences involving a P.K. ("Pastor's Kid") who has her entire life planned out while still just a teenager, most likely unaware of the hidden machinations that conspire to keep her on the path she's "chosen." In voice-over, Lee says she envies the girl's unsullied and eager acceptance of her future ("marriage at 25, three kids each spaced five years apart), but the images presented on screen subtly suggest the director knows that life may throw up unexpected obstacles to challenge her glassy-eyed optimism. The girl's father is shown operating a modest but dedicated church out of his backyard and she dutifully quotes the requisite scripture to explain why this is acceptable, while the sharp-eyed viewer will no doubt see plain evidence of a split within this particular Korean community's church that has probably given this Grace Lee an even narrower world-view.

Continuing the theme, Lee meets a Pastor's wife and, in one of the film's more obviously calculated moments, shows her explaining how young girls can always get a "do-over," should they lose their virginity, during a discussion of the dreaded S-word at a Christian youth group meeting. Nice.

In the end, the audience is left with many excellent avenues for discussion. For as alike as these women are in both name and social conditioning, life will throw many of them in fascinating new directions - if only they'd have the encouragement of a community, and the courage of Grace X, to see where they lead.

THE GRACE LEE PROJECT, though it lacks the marketing power behind docs like THE CORPORATION, SUPER SIZE ME or the collected works of Michael Moore, easily joins their ranks as one of the most entertaining pop-docs of the year.

After a screening in Toronto in 2006, Grace Lee answered questions from the audience (four of whom were Grace Lees, including two from the film), including the inevitable query about a sequel. She claimed she was done with the subject, but I couldn't help but think of Michael Apted's 7-UP series. Obviously, a GRACE LEE PROJECT every seven years might be overkill, but at least one follow-up, say in ten years time, would be an ideal way to see how these women, many of whom are still at crucially undefined moments in their lives, have turned out in comparison to the expectations both they (and others) have for themselves in the film.

Rex says you gotta see this one, and here's the sneak peak to prove it:

Tuh-ran-su-fo-mah!

Just came into possession of a small pile of Korean theatre flyers via the globetrotting Ms. Saigon, and thought this one from Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS was kinda cool. I'm no fan of Michael Bay, but I do love movie posters in languages not my own. In moviehouses in my neck of the woods, they give you these shitty little magazines filled with studio press-kit rewrites, "interviews" that are really just...blowjobs-in-disguise, upcoming DVD review-lets that largely parrot sleeve copy, and for whatever reason, horoscopes and celebrity birthdays. Basically, crap that can be read in thoses few moments you've got before the movie begins. Well, in Korea, you get these cool little 9' x 12' one-sheets with just the information you need. Sure, it's still studio fluff, but compared to some of the reading material I've seen in theaters, this is marketing minimalism. I'm sure Korean theatres have plenty of other tie-ins going on, but since I've only seen these little flyers, I can live in my bubble a little bit longer.

"God Forgives. The Brotherhood doesn't."

Well, it took nearly a decade, but the powers that be, somewhere in the offices of MGM, have finally realized the Craig Baxley's 1991 magnum opus STONE COLD is worthy of release on DVD.

Bar none, this film, which launched the DTV career of ex-Seattle Seahawk Brian "Boz" Bosworth, is the most underrated action movie of the 1990's. Maybe even of all time. Seriously. American movies designed around sports or martial arts stars all too often make the fatal mistake of getting mired in "messages" or, worse, pandering to the pre-teen set. In a sense, both are what effectively killed Jeff Speakman's big-screen career around the same time STONE COLD was in wide release. Speakman, a real-life ken-po boogie master ("I got the pow-uhh"), had roughly the same acting ability as The Boz, but his debut film, THE PERFECT WEAPON (1991), was a dull slog through Buddhist-y believe-in-yourself-as-you-kick-ass righteousness, and his followup, STREET KNIGHT (1993), which Cannon ultimately sent straight to video despite high production values and a solid supporting cast, was really just another after-school special about the perils of street gangs. By the time Speakman tried to go "dark," with veteran stunt-coordinator Rick Avery's directorial debut, 1993's THE EXPERT, the damage was done, though Speakman has remained a quality also-ran of the DTV market ever since.

And so has The Boz.

But it wasn't the quality of Boz's debut film that sent him to the ranks of the Blockbuster shelf-fillers. Box-office performance probably had something to do with it, but that in no way implies a bad movie. Like Speakman, The Boz simply wasn't a household name, nor was he as well known as the producers probably thought he was, but if nothing else, his comparatively affordable salary simply meant more money for some of the goddamned coolest practical stunts ever to burn across the screen. Reportedly, the producers had only ever planned on making something that would be an easy sell to the big cable networks (thus the film's 1.33:1 aspect ration, matted on the new DVD), but when Baxley turned 74-year-old Walter Doniger's tight screenplay into a lean, mean motherfucker movie in which everyone and everything gets shot and blown up, they knew there's be at least some money to be found in a theatrical release. And so it went...

A few of the tightasses I worked with at a daily newspaper at the time were fish-eyed that I could give this silly-sounding movie such raves in an extended review, but when I passed around the screening cassette a few months later, most of them suddenly realized the greatness they'd missed on the big screen. Those who didn't lived sheltered lives...

I mean, not only do you get a pro-football novelty-athlete-du-jour in the lead role of a supercop who infiltrates a scuzzy gang of bikers with access to heavy artillery (including military choppers!) and plans to blast up the state senate, but you get not one but two of the greatest screen villains of the past 20 years, Lance Henriksen as gang leader Chains and William Forsythe as his vicious second-in-command Ice. And with veteran hollywood stunt coordinator Baxley at the helm after two above-average mid-budget actioners—ACTION JACKSON (1988) and I COME IN PEACE (1990)—it's a safe bet the action scenes won't just amaze, they'll friggin' cut your arms and legs off and weld you into a steel tank and drop you into the bah-yoo, son.



And now that we live in an age where heavily and obviously computer-augmented "practical" stunts in a film like LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD are considered welcome throwbacks to old-school 80's action pictures by critics who really oughtta have better memories, it's nice to put in an true old-school action movie and see what it was like when stunts were done entirely for real.

There'll be blood...on the floor...when Super Snooper opens the door...

One of the best bits of news I received last year was news that an old favourite—Sergio Corbucci's SUPERFUZZ (1981) aka POLIZIOTTO SUPERPIU—was finally getting a legitimate Region 1 DVD release this February. A special edition no less, although what ultimately hit store shelves was not what many fans were expecting. The R1 DVD of Superfuzz turned out to be the U.K. cut of the film, which lists among its offenses: PAL speedup, additional and extended scenes which screw up the pacing a bit, music replacement, alternate voices from the U.S. version, missing narration, and more.

Also, the distributor didn't port over the interviews with Corbucci's wife and actor Sal Borgese from the Italian disc, opting instead for a bio of Terence Hill and clips from other films (but NOT Superfuzz, oddly enough).

Saigon says skip this baby and get the Italian DVD instead (see below).

While some folks may have fond memories of SUPERFUZZ from it's endless airings on HBO in the network's early years, I was one of the few, the proud, to have seen it first run in a theatre, geek that I was. And what would possess a small-city 12-year-old to place a fluffy, often puerile Italian comedy made by people he'd never heard of above all other fare—even RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK—playing the local multiplexes that summer?

Well, the theme song definitely had something to do with it, which is why I posted it over at Youtube, taken from the awesome Italian DVD of the film that came out a couple of years ago: :D





I'm sure there was more to it than just a groovy title track, though. But for my money, rarely has a theme song so infectiously encapsulated the personality of a film. After all, this is a film about a Miami cop (Terrence Hill) who gains superpowers when he accidentally shoots a Nasa rocket out of the sky after firing a warning shot to scare a freeloading alligator out of his police canoe on a routine call to collect on parking tickets at a swamp shack in the everglades! THE LEOPARD this ain't. By the end of the movie, Hill and Ernest Borgnine are floating on a giant chewing gum bubble over sunny Miami. In between is all manner of humour that perhaps only a 12-year-old could love.

When I discovered the uncut, anamorphic widescreen, 5.1 Italian DVD about two years ago, after years of fruitless wading through listings for bootlegs on eBay and shoddy "official" fullscreen releases from the U.K. and elsewhere, I was in a deep nostalgic haze for several hours, thanks in no small part to an ever-present all-region DVD player. Not having seen the film since that theatrical showing 24 years prior, I was pleasantly suprised to discover how little of this film I'd actually forgotten over the years. That said, I'd highly recommend sourcing out the Italian DVD while it's still in print. It contains the original U.S. English language track, a beautiful transfer, and the aforementioned interviews.

If you like Corbucci's sillier stuff, or just about anything with Terrence Hill in it, then POLIZIOTTO SUPERPIU will be money well spent.

“We’re not JUST Vegas dancers. We’re trained commandoes.”

In a previous entry, I stated that if TV’s SOLID GOLD dancers had made a movie, that movie might have been JAILBIRD ROCK.

But whilst perusing the “DVD Blowout” standees at a local department store, I came across Kenneth Hartford’s HELL SQUAD (1987), a movie I’ve been desperately wanting to upgrade to DVD since the inception of the format, and one of the last remnants of my musty old VHS collection. As the DVD looks to be mastered from the VHS tape, this was more of a lateral move than an improvement in quality, but for a rare gem like HELL SQUAD, beggers needn’t be choosy. The world is fortunate to have this on disc at all. Only it probably doesn’t know it yet. Silly world.

HELL SQUAD is the really the movie the SOLID GOLD dancers would have made if they’d made a movie. And unlike JAILBIRD ROCK, I doubt they could have made this one any better than it already is.

Film history is littered with projects made by people who fancied themselves auteurs-in-waiting. People who thought they had ideas that could only find true release on celluloid, ideas that could change the way the world appreciates cinema, change the way the world thinks.

Those people did not make HELL SQUAD.

HELL SQUAD, on the surface, appears to be the kind of film someone wagered someone else they couldn’t make. And so they made it. And they won the bet. This isn’t a movie that was pitched to anyone other than a bunch of guys sitting around a poker table who probably though the guy behind the idea would forget the whole notion by the next morning.

Well, Kenneth Hartford didn’t forget his little notion, and HELL SQUAD shall forever remain his crowning achievement, a film so good, he’s not seen fit to make another film since. Although, in all honesty, anyone who’s seen Carlos Gallardo’s 1976 Phillipines exploitationer HUSTLER SQUAD will certainly know where Hartford got the idea.

Our story begins with the test detonation of an “Ultra Neutron Bomb,” a weapon capable of vapourizing out all living organisms without harming man-made structures like buildings and cars (ostensibly so future generations, or aliens, will have less digging to do to piece together a cultural history of the planet earth, but really because it saves a shitload of money in special effects make-up)

Moments later, at the Middle East Consulate, ambassador Mark Stewart (Jace Damon) argues the merits of the U.N. bomb with his anti-war son Jack (Glen Hartford), who plans to go back to the U.S. to warn the world, but no sooner is he out the door than he’s kidnapped by terrorists driving a pea-green ‘71 Plymouth Fury. Jack is promptly chained up, and a rather fey Arab in a big wicker Peacock chair (not unlike Charlie Lum!) demands the “Second Phase Fuel Formula” for the Ultra Neutron bomb. In 30 days. Or he’ll kill Jack.

Faced with the prospect of losing his peacenik son, and unable—for reasons not clearly defined—to call down the wrath of the American military complex or the Central Intelligence Agency, Stewart turns for help to his assistant Jim Rather (Walter Cox), who quickly puts into action an ironclad plan to cut through all the red tape, bring the ambassador’s son back alive, and wipe out the terrorist threat to the civilized world.

Showgirls, baby! Vegas showgirls!

Guns!

In short time, Jim tracks down the lead dancer at the Imperial Hotel, Jan, played by the lovely Bainbridge Scott, a bottle blonde who looks and sounds like a hot young Cathy Moriarty, but with half the talent. Jan rounds up her girls, and Jim makes the pitch: $500 a week plus $25,000 each upon their return.

Accepting the challenge but kept ignorant of the true mission, they begin their training, which consists of an obstacle course with four obstacles (including tires and a wall), lessons in chopping wood, and firing F-16 rifles with little instruction on how to actually hold the weapons! Soon after, as the girls lounge in the pool in their bikinis, they’re numbers are whittled down to the eight who will complete the mission. Their cover? Dancers, of course, at a club in “Karajan,” an Arab country entirely represented by stock footage.

In no time at all, they’ve arrived at their hotel in “Karajan” which bears a striking resemblance to the Imperial Hotel in Las Vegas, but which one dancer takes great pains to remind us is (cough, cough) not the Imperial Hotel in Las Vegas.

“Well, I read on the plane over here that there’s a water shortage,” sez dancer/commando Gail. “Plenty of oil in this country, but little water, so I suggest we fill the tub and all get in at once.”

So do I, Gail, so do I.

Bubbles!

Anyways, the bathtub giggles are soon interrupted by mysterious telephone orders to head out to “Kajmal” to pick up some jeeps at a storehouse crawling with nasty Arabs. Donning their standard military issue uniforms of red berets, tight shirts tied at the belly and khaki short-shorts, the girls engage their swarthy enemies (”Terriss!” as Bainbridge calls them) in a pitched gunfight that leaves not a single Arab standing.

It’s at this point that the girls retreat to the giant hotel bathtub to wash off the stink of battle. But their scrubbing is short-lived, as another mysterious phone call sends them back out on another mission, this time to a military encampment in which two of the ladies commandeer a tank so as to better blow the shit out of everything and kill even more Arabs than they did the first time. It’s only after they’ve decimated the place that they realize the ambassador’s son isn’t there.

Tanks!

It’s at this point that the girls retreat to the giant hotel bathtub to wash off the stink of battle. Again. The phone rings with another mission, but Jan, now savvy, refuses the mission.

Since this is an undercover op, the Hell Squad takes their kick-kick-thrust-turn-kick routine to the Arabic bar that serves as their cover and which coincidentally resembles the Fez Club in L.A., where they promptly one-up the local bellydancers with a tight display of their Vegas glitz.

Showbiz!

It’s at this point that the girls retreat to the giant hotel bathtub to wash off the stink of dancing in a bar full of drunks who’ve never seen Vegas showgirls before, but before they even get in the tub, they’re sent out on another mission, only this time, there’s no target to destroy.

So what do they do? They head back to the bathtub, where they sing their battle hymn:

Hell Squad, Hell Squad, we’re the best
Don’t ever put us to the test,
We’re a hell of a fightin’ machine,
We are tough and goddamn mean!”

The festivities are interrupted by yet another phone call that sends them out after another non-existent target.

Thus, after a long day of pointless missions and bathing, the Hell Squad hits the sheets, but their slumber is short lived, as armed terriss break in to their room and march them off to an audience with a nasty shiek called The Shiek, played by Marvin Miller.

Marvin Miller!

Now, you may not be familiar with his name, or even his face, but you might know Miller’s voice, which graced not only the narration of the second GODZILLA movie, GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER (1955, aka GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN), and the first Gamera movie GAMMERA THE INVINCIBLE (1966) but also the Japanese import cartoon PANDA AND THE MAGIC SERPENT (1958), the Japanese disaster epic SUBMERSION OF JAPAN (1973; aka TIDAL WAVE), as well as voices for UPA’s GERALD McBOING BOING and MR. MAGOO shorts, not to mention Frank Capra’s famous Bell Laboratories shorts OUR MR. SUN (1956), HEMO THE MAGNIFICENT (1957) and, most famously, the voice of Robby The Robot in the sci-fi classic FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956), a gig he repeated decades later in Joe Dante’s GREMLINS.

HELL SQUAD was Marvin Miller’s final film.

In it, Miller adopts a sort-of Northern Afghanorussian hybrid accent which he uses to intimidate the Hell Squad—who are all chained in their underwear and lingerie to the wall of his torture room which is probably not unlike the ones used by Uday Hussein back in the day. He also uses a tiger on a leash, but in punctuating his angry words by stomping his feet, he stomps on the tiger’s tail and the tiger eats him, allowing the Squad the opportunity to break free of their chains and fight their way out. Lingerie kung-fu ensues. Seriously.

Lingerie Fu!

Hitching a ride in the middle of the desert with a the only helpful Arab in the entire film, the girls arrive back at their hotel, but before they even set foot in the tub, the final call comes in. This time, it’s the real deal. The mission to save the Ambassador’s son.

“Wear swimsuits and snorkels,” commands Jan.

Exotic Locales!

Turns out, the Ambassador’s son is being held in a castle from an old Roger Corman movie, and the girls have to swim across a lake—well, crawl, really, since it’s barely deep enough to cover their knees—to gain access to the castle. After that it’s smooth sailing: crawl through some tunnels, harpoon some Arabs, grab the Ambassador’s son, crawl back across the lake, light a convenient trail of gasoline that blows the castle to smithereens, then jiggle down an airport runway in their bikinis to catch up to the rescue plane as the terriss shoot at them from a pursuing jeep.

Espionage!

Stunts! (take that, Jackie Chan!)

Whew!

Make no mistake. HELL SQUAD is drive-in trash. But it’s clear the filmmakers never intended it to be anything better, nor were they trying to mock any genre conventions. Clearly they had a little bit of money, access to Vegas locations and a a few willing strippers (these girls ain’t real Vegas showgirls) plus a legendary voiceover artist and character actor with one foot in the grave.

Evidence that HELL SQUAD’s tongue is firmly planted in cheek—as if the whole concept wasn’t enough—can be found in this high-lahr-ious sketch routine that occurs when Jan literally unmasks a cross-dressing traitor in their midst.

Jim: How did you know it was Ann…or Andy?
Jan: It had to be someone in our immediate group. Quite frankly, Ann…or…or Andy was the only one beyond suspicion, besides yourself Mr. Ambassador
Various Hell Squad Members: Well, thanks a lot Jan. That’s really great. Really, Jan.
Jan: I’m sorry gang, but thanks to those weird midnight phone calls, I wasn’t even sure of myself!
Jim: Well, how did you finally zero in on Ann or…Andy?
Jan: When I went to the ladies room right after Ann…or ANDRE had left.
Hell Squad Member: The ladies room?
Jan: Yeah, the toilet seat was up
(music sting)
Jan: Well? Everybody KNOWS that a man has to lift the toilet seat to go to the bathroom! Listen you girls, take Ann…or ANTHONY…downtown to police headquarters…
Ambassador Mark: Wait a minute! What IS your name?
Ann or Andy: FRED!

Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaahhhhhh!

Never gets stale.

The largest boom mic encroachment EVER!

Somewhat surprisingly, HELL SQUAD didn’t exactly ignite the careers of its principal cast or crew. Not only was it Marvin Miller’s last film, it was also Kenneth Hartford’s, although by all accounts, he’s still alive, and probably still happy that he won that bet. Bainbridge Scott went on to appear in 1990’s DEATH CHASE, directed by David Prior, a middling hack better known for employing has-beens than breaking out up-and-comers, though he would have better luck with some Canadian chick named Pamela Anderson four years later in RAW JUSTICE. She then turned up a couple of times on TV’s MURDER SHE WROTE in the early 90’s, and hasn’t been heard from since. Of all the girls playing the Hell Squad, only one, Maureen Kelly, went on to an appearance on the TV show ROSEANNE. Walter Cox stayed in B-movies for several years.

There was one other bit player in HELL SQUAD who went on to some measure of fame:

He’s the Korean guy on the right. His name’s Phillip Rhee and after this, he would go on to co-star with Korean Bruce Lee clone Jun Chong (aka Bruce Le from Umberto Lenzi and/or Lee Doo-yong’s BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE) in Lee Doo-yong’s SILENT ASSASSINS (1988), which also starred Linda Blair and Playboy Playmate Rebecca Ferratti, who was allegedly paid quite well as one of the infamous female “guests” to Prince Jeffri of Brunei (along with Hong Kong starlet Yolinda Yan and others). Rhee would soon after make his name with a series of four BEST OF THE BEST films throughout the early 90’s before dropping off the radar.

Come to think of it, though, probably the most interesting person in the cast is the woman who plays Ann before she’s unmasked as Andy, Jennifer West. While she’s a moderately better actress then nearly anyone in the Hell Squad, she’s probably better known for her lengthy career in hardcore porn, often under the name Sally Ballgargle.

I got this last bit of info from the Internet Movie Database.

Really.

No, really.

Now Playing at a Bargain Bin Near You!

Related Link:
HELL SQUAD at Amazon