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.

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.

INTERNET DISASTER (China; 2003)

INTERNET DISASTER (China; 2003)
D: Lee Tso-nam

Newly installed in a gleaming Shanghai suburb by her frequently absentee businessman husband (Yu Rong-guang), 18-year-old newlywed Vivian Chan (who’s far from 18 years old) continues her email relationship with an “online husband” who apparently understands her better than the real thing. She also strikes up a platonic, real-world entanglement with a ski bum (Alex To) she meets in her computer class. And then there’s her shamelessly nosy new friend from next door, who looks after that house with her shiftless boyfriend. When Viv’s internet paramour starts exhibiting stalker tendencies, the list of suspects is, obviously, a short one! Though it reflects an increasingly affluent and techno-savvy mainland Chinese audience, the film nonetheless toes the communist party line that maintains the internet can’t be trusted in the hands of mere citizens, a message ultimately delivered by a reformed Viv to her class of rosy-cheeked primary-school pun’kins (who are presumably rosy-cheeked because their classroom evidently has no heat!), one of whom counters that “surfing the web” would be OK because she knows how to swim! Awww. In revealing Yu’s character plays no role whatsoever in Viv’s predicament, the filmmakers flatly suggest that bored wives of wealthy Chinese businessmen would be a lot better off if they weren’t so darned uppity, and yet at the same time, scenes between Alex and Viv—as they frolic through sparkly shopping malls, restaurants and tourist attractions—look like something out of a Korean soap opera, a reminder to wealthy Chinese businessmen, one supposes, to keep an eye on their assets.

"Angel's, I want you to go undercover..."

"Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the police academy. And they were each assigned very hazardous duty. But I took them away from all that, and now they work for me."

"My name is Bond. Just Bond"



And these are Bond's Angels.


Chung Wing, Annabelle Lee Hiu-tung, Wong Kit-ying confront a bad man in CRIMINALS

While many fans of the glory days of Hong Kong cinema were, by 1999, bemoaning its dwindling post-handover output and all but writing it off in favour of the latest fads from Korea or Mainland China, someone was making sure the gap between the golden age and the modest resurgence we've been enjoying these past few years was being filled.

Mind you, he filled it with shit, but he still filled it.

His name was Jacky Wong (or as he was more popularly known in the credits of his movies, Jacky Wong), and it was no doubt due in large part to his money, as well as his company, Winners' Workshop, that the HKMDB lists over 40 productions (including plenty of Category III goodies) on which he served as presenter. ALL OF THEM IN 1999! And the HKMDB is still missing several titles from his resume. I know. I see scores of them whilst fumbling through the dump bins.

I suppose this is where I come in. An inveterate and unrepentant bottom feeder when it comes to Hong Kong cinema (or any cinema for that matter, as this blog has likely proven to the three people who read it), I'm all too content to rifle through boxes of two dollar VCDs in Toronto's many Chinese media shops while most normal online Hong Kong cinema buffs are heartily debating the aspect ratios and audio restorations done on the 32nd DVD release of Jackie Chan's POLICE STORY.

Well, I found a different kind of police story. Eight of them, in fact. Which brings us to Jacky Wong's BOND'S ANGELS series. A series most people probably never knew was an actual series, if they even knew about it at all.


Simon Loui, one of the most reliable character actors in Hong Kong cinema for many years, proves himself ever the trooper when flanked by his inexperienced co-stars in WHO'S THE ASSASSIN. It's thanks in large part to the then-ongoing efforts of Loui and his hard-working compatriots that the Hong Kong industry survived the lean years from 1999 to 2004, wherein bottom-of-the-barrel productions like these kept a lot of people gainfully employed. These movies are generally dreadful, it's true, but their importance should not be overlooked.

I've had the first entry, SWORD OF DAMOCLES since its VCD debut back in late '99 (from whence springs the first review below). It's not a very good film, and was hardly worth the eight bucks I paid for it. In the years 'twixt then and now, I'd seen the same cast on a handful of very similarly-designed VCD sleeves, but the thought of spending another $56 to complete this possible series was a handy deterrent. But thanks to the good folks at the Wa Yi Trading Co. stores (one downtown, two up north), and their continuing divestiture of old VCD's at rock bottom prices, I've managed to complete the set for the grand total of about $16.

Anyone who's seen even one of these pictures would probably tell me that I paid about $15 too much. I don't know; the series kinda grew on me after awhile, I actually started to care about these girls—especially when spunky Kaka got her leg caught in a bear trap, poor thing—and while I'd rate none of 'em higher than a 3 out of 10 (see below) there's a certain wistful feeling that were it not for the heroic efforts of people like Jacky Wong and his brethren who pumped out shot-on-video product like there was no tomorrow for a good three or four years while Hong Kong cinema was on the verge of extinction, we might not have Hong Kong cinema at all today.

Alright, perhaps that's a bit too wistful—and deluded—but since no website I can find (including the venerable HKMDB or the Hong Kong Film Archive!) has bothered to attach a chronology to all the pieces of the Jacky Wong filmography, I decided to do at least some of the dirty work myself.

And while this series may not have generated a best-selling Farrah Fawcett style nipple poster, or changed the way girls feather their hair, it's not without some merit. Some, I said.

Let's start with...

A SWORD OF DAMOCLES (1999) First of far too many Bond’s Angels video features, a largely interminable collection of straight detective stories from Winners’ Workshop, a prolific outfit better known for an seemingly endless stream of shamelessly padded Category III sex flicks that appear to exist for few reasons beyond providing employment to washed-up 80’s directors and uninhibited starlets of dubious talent, and steady product for a recently-re-opened chain of former porn houses in Hong Kong. In shifting gears for an audience that doesn’t wear trenchcoats, however, the company has divested itself of the only thing worth watching in most of its movies to date: gratuitous female skin, thus making their trademark padding all the more unbearable, even as the production methods have taken a turn for the (slightly) better. When the prized Holy Spirit Sword is nicked from a Hong Kong auction house by thieves working for power-hungry businessman Wong Tin-dok, the security chief assigns its retrieval to Simon Loui’s newly opened private detection agency, consisting of himself and three “Angels,” sporty and sassy Kei-kei (Chung Wing), brainy and sensible Ley-kwan (Annabelle Lee) and bouncy and ditzy Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying), who soon uncover a plot—through a laughable amount of intuition and following people around—by the businessman’s aide (Ng Shui-ting) to copy the sword for fun and profit. But the sword has a habit of empowering the worst in those who possess it, causing the audience to view them through green and red filters as they thrust their arms skyward, mad with power. The real saving grace here, (as in the myriad sequels) is the sense of immediacy (not to mention history unaffected by artifice) afforded by shooting virtually without a budget on the real-time streets of Hong Kong in plain view of hundreds of passers-by! Written by the director. Followed by BLOODY LIE. 2.

BLOODY LIE (1999) When his cousin is charged with the murder of a PR girl, Bond (Simon Loui) entrusts his detective Angels (Chung Wing, Annabelle Lee and Wong Kit-ying) to hound a pair of likely suspects—a wealthy playboy (Raymond Cho) and a dirty cop—using their uncanny powers of conjecture, post-hoc reasoning and following suspects around in a conspicuous manner for very long stretches of time. To justify the title, there’s a lie detector scene in this film that runs over twenty-two minutes and extablishes virtually nothing, broken only by a brief sequence of the girls eating lunch and frolicking. By the time the girls are allowed to administer yet another lie detector test to a suspect, and Kiki (Chung Wing) whips out a gun to extract the truth—in a police station!—you’ll be hoping this might be the last Bond’s Angel’s film. But you’d be wrong. Followed by BEWARE OF THE STRIPTEASE. 1.

BEWARE OF THE STRIPTEASE (1999) Evidentally sensing that we needed them after trudging through BLOODY LIE, the Bond’s Angels are back! Resigning from the agency after boss Bond (Simon Loui) notes her gullability in a performance appraisal, private dickette Kiki (Chung Wing) takes a freelance gig searching for the runaway daughter of a successful clothier who bears an uncanny resemblance to the ex-boyfriend who ate a slug from then-rookie-cop Kiki’s pistol after he kicked her around and caused her to miscarry their baby when the then she wouldn’t hush-hush his daddy’s weapons dealing. Surprisingly, it turns out he’s not the same guy—not by a long shot—but it takes the diligent efforts of old pals Ley-kwan (Annabelle Liu) and Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) to convince her that this case goes far beyond a missing teenager. OK entry in the series is typically high on needless exposition and scenes of people walking around, and low on action until the kung-fu finale, but maintains just enough momentum to sustain interest for fans of this kind of video junk. Climactic character twist involving one of the villains is a silly surprise. Incidentally, the “striptease” of the title is largely justified by an unconvincing mash-up of footage with which the director tries to convince us that Kiki is getting loaded in a striptease joing while a caucasian peeler works it onstage. Followed by CRIMINALS. 2.

CRIMINALS (1999) Tasked with finding a politician’s stolen car, Bond’s Angels face a dramatic conflict of interest when boychaser Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) unknowingly falls in love with a key player in the auto theft ring, a suave hood (Teddy Lin) with Ekin Cheng hair on a desperate, murderous climb to the top. Perhaps sensing a dwindling interest in this generally plodding series, production company Winners’ Workshop have paid more attention to the details in this passably suspenseful installment (though they still skimp on the action). The screenplay, for once, holds up reasonably well to scrutiny and thankfully doesn’t require two thirds of the movie to be needless padding, while Wong’s flaky Yuk-yee gets the most shading of any character in the series to date. The cliffhanger ending is also an inspired touch. Followed by WHO’S THE ASSASSIN. 3.


In this scene from WHO'S THE ASSASSIN, the new Bond's Angels extract information from really-super-nice-guy Mr. Ting, played by one of Hong Kong's most venerable players of hissable villainy Karel Wong, whose very presence playing a nice guy in any film should qualify as a spoiler. Notice the deft handling of Wong's lengthy, complicated expository dialogue in this scene.

WHO’S THE ASSASSIN (1999) With one of Bond’s Angels shockingly blown to pieces at the end of CRIMINALS, and Lei-kwan (Annabelle Lee) packed off to the U.S. for cervical cancer treatment in the first few minutes of this followup, ace detective Bond (Simon Loui) pairs insolent, hot-headed Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) with Lei-kwan’s newly-arrived sister Tse-kwan (Miu Yin-wai) to solve the murder that climaxed the previous episode, while new hire Kaka (Cheng Chi-hung), Bond’s niece, gets tangled up with adulterous college flame Marco (Karel Wong), who may very well be the playboy psycho behind the recent murders of two women. Think these two plots will cross? Replacing two main characters in any series is no easy feat, even in no-budget dreck like the Bond’s Angels franchise, but if nothing else, the producers took pains to equalize the range of acting talent across the lead roles—they all suck about the same now, but each deserves at least a few points for trying their best under such catchpenny circumstances. Modest creative gains made in the previous film, and the potential for clever twists, are squandered: in the end, the killer is exactly who you figure it will be despite hoping that the filmmakers have been toying with red herrings along the way. Followed by CRUEL ZONE. 1.

CRUEL ZONE (1999) After countless entries, the Bond’s Angels series finally puts its heroines through the wringer in this followup to WHO’S THE ASSASSIN, the next entry after NUCLEAR WEAPON. Mind you, it’s still a dull slog, but it’s a marginal improvement over many previous installments. Ace detective Bond (Simon Loui), who’s done virtually no detecting of any kind in the series so far, sends the new Angels (Wong Kit-ying, Miu Yin-wai, Cheng Chi-hung) to look after a buddy’s flat on Lantau Island by convincing them it’s a resort vacation (!). Right around the time that Kaka (Cheng) gets her leg caught in a bear trap, it becomes apparent that not only are the locals a wee bit strange, but a psychopath has targeted the Angels because a) Tse-kwan’s sister Lei-kwan put his sister behind bars in BLOODY LIE and b) his wife ran off with a private detective, so he’s just got this thing against private detectives, and he’s selected Tse-kwan as the subject of several days’ torture around the island! Like all of its predecessors, CRUEL ZONE is half-baked with four parts padding to one part plot, and the villain’s plan relies almost entirely on dumb luck, though considering the sleuthing abilities of these gals, that arguably makes it a very clever plan. Followed by CYBER WAR. 2.


In their seventh film, CYBER WAR, Bond's Angels are finally given the opportunity to kick around a few bad guys. With choreography even!

CYBER WAR (1999) Still dazed from her experience in CRUEL ZONE, Angel detective Tse-kwan (Miu Yin-wai) decides its time to head back to the states for some rest. With little work and one less friend in her dayplanner, man-bait Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying), suddenly cognizant of how coddled she was by her former colleagues, decides to get involved with computers, ultimately joining a handsome techie (Edward Mok) on a visit to a Beijing computer expo, where the momentary loss of her passport puts her on the FBI’s most-wanted list back in Hong Kong! Now Kaka (Cheng Chi-hung), and Tse-kwan, who just couldn’t stay away for long, must help clear Yuk-yee’s name, which, since the Bond’s Angels series is as cheap in its seventh installment as it was in its first, means plenty of soundless scenes of the girls asking actual strangers for directions (or the time!) in the hopes we’ll be convinced this is anything like an actual investigation! Ranks with CRIMINALS and CRUEL ZONE as one of the better entries in this generally ridiculous series, but that’s not saying much. 2.

NUCLEAR WEAPON (1999) Somebody’s blowin’ up stuff all over the city, and that puts Bond’s Angels on the trail—to love! In this followup to CYBER WAR, Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) swoons for the bumpkin-ish pal of her mainland cousin, while Ka-ka (Cheng Chi-hung) romances an athletic stranger who bumps into her on the street, and Tse-kwan (Miu Yin-wai), ever the sensitive one since her misadventure in CRUEL ZONE, becomes infatuated with . . . the bomber! But it’s cool; he’s a repentent type who’s really being menaced by the man who taught him bomb-making to take revenge on the police for jailing his father years earlier on a trumped-up explosives charge. The Bond’s Angels series goes out on a comparitive high note in this modestly suspenseful (if typically contrived) installment, and finds an ideal Special Guest Star in Chan Kwok-bong as the bomber with a conscious (and a few surprises for the girls). He’s easily the most fully-realized character the series has ever produced, and his presence has a noticeable effect on all three leading ladies. Still, this is probably best enjoyed if you’ve somehow managed to survive the first seven features. 3.

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.

SUKEBAN BOY (Japan; 2006)

D:Noboru Iguchi
W: Noboru Iguchi, from the Manga by Go Nagai

WARNING: contains brief nudiness


Took a brief break from the wonderful world of Hong Kong Cinema today to watch the Hong Kong DVD of a shameless little gem from Japan called SUKEBAN BOY (2006).

Wow.

Gleefully twisted and but with tongue so firmly planted in cheek it's pushing through teeth and tendons and grue, Noboru Iguchi's adaptation of Go Nagai's Oira Sukeban manga, is a delightfully speedy, gloriously naked parody of schoolgirl fetish films so often found in Japanese erotic entertainment and, of course, a fetish film in its own right, I suppose.

The story is simple. Frequently beaten at a string of boys' schools because of his girlish features, gruff punk Sukeban (who's actually played by a girl, hardcore starlet Asami) is dressed in the traditional schoolgirl outfit and sent to a all-girls' school by his incestuous father.

There "she" encounters all sorts of villainy afoot, as well as Mochiko (fellow A/V porn starlet Emiru Momose) a new found friend with sapphic leanings who first takes her to the school's female embarrassent dojo, "The Club of Humiliation," which is actually a cover for the "Pan-Suto League" the in-house girl-gang that fights its battles in candy-coloured nylons over black thongs! From there, Sukeban must battle the "No-Bra League," whose leader Annie The Good spits bullets from a guerilla belt she wears across her enormous breasts; the "Hoichi League," three bald girls in fundoshi with kanji painted on their heads (in a nod to "Hoichi The Earless" from KWAIDAN); and the mysterious masked avenger of the naked Zen-su league, who doesn't take kindly to those who get too close to Sukeban. Peek-a-boo martial arts battles fought in varying stages of undress and increasing levels of TETSUO-style body-mutation gore ensue.

(In what I think must be a nod to the early work of Robert Rodriguez and his legendary EL MARIACHI "guacamole gun," clumps of bloody business are actually thrown at the actresses, some of whom are actually giggling. Mere seconds earlier, Sukeban's three male protectors hysterically slather handfuls of grue on each other when they're shot by organic weapons that have grown out of a woman's breasts!).

While Asami seems to be the only "actress" in the bunch with any even approaching reasonable thesping ability, the pouty, dead-eyed line-readings and awkward gestures of the rest of the female cast actually enhance to the dry wit present throughout. I haven't seen the two lead actresses at work in their rather sticky day jobs (no, really, I mean it!), and while there are no sex scenes in this piece, I suppose if you're going to film a comic book adaptation nonetheless brimming with gratuitous nudity, you won't be getting picking A-list stars.

Apprarently, this drew a good response when it screened at the 2006 Fantasia film festival in Montreal, but at 61 minutes and shot on video (and beautifully so, with faux letterboxing), this wasn't exactly bound for widespread distribution, so it's nice to see the HK DVD includes English subtitles, plus the original Japanese audio in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS. As a guaranteed cult item along the lines of the live-action WEATHER GIRL, though much less pretentious and made by people who are very much in on the joke and willing to splash as much nudity across the screen as is humanly possible, SUKEBAN BOY is cheeky fun.

Buy it At DDDHouse, if you dare!

THE BARREN VIRGIN (1985)

Lam Yue-kit, Heung Chuen-chung and Kim Gee-mei.



THE BARREN VIRGIN (1985) D: Lee Tso-nam

. . . or, The Subject Was Hymenoplasty! A "social disease" film in the fine tradition of U.S. roadshow exploitationers like DAMAGED LIVES (1933) and SEX MADNESS (1938) and MOM AND DAD (1945). In other words, a conservative moral issue fueled by ripe dialogue and fronting an endless parade of "square-up reels" on the part of both the characters and the filmmakers. In other words, sex, son, and lots of it!

The title's misleading though: there are actually two barren virgins put through the wringer here, both of them misunderstood and driven to sins of desperation by the harsh expectations of an unjust society. One, Kwai-len (Kim Gee-mei) is a Hong Kong divorcee with an impenetrable hymen who flees an abusive husband in Hong Kong to live in Japan with the other barren virgin (Lam Yue-kit), a close friend not coincidentally named Mary whose leaking vagina has her terrified that her fiancee's archconservative (and apparently clueless) Singaporean parents—and maybe even her fiancee—will think she's used goods on her wedding night. Quelle horreur!

Repping offense in this gynecological soap opera is Mary's friend Ruby (Heung Chuen-cheung), a likewise appropriately-named scarlet woman who models naked or nearly-naked with snakes, motorcycles, spearguns, banana-yellow surfboards and other phallic metaphors, and snacks on a buffet of promiscuous boyfriends, including one (Chan Kai-jun) who discovers a surprise package on a Caucasian tourist but doesn't let it spoil the fun!


Heung Chuen-chung with accessories.

The barren-esses, meanwhile, turn to the nightclub scene to raise the exorbitant cost of Mary's outpatient hymenoplasty, with Kwai-len substituting her "iron bar" hymen for Mary's less protective barrier right at the brink of nookie with a sleazy old fart.

Despite a Category II rating and distinctive lensing against often dramatic Japanese locales, the abundant toplessness and full frontal nudity here tend to mitigate against any pretense of social responsibility, which was probably the point to begin with. Marbled with the kind of stale, hokey comic relief that one expects from a film of this genre, regardless of country of origin, and the characters ultimately reap their just rewards, as they always have in films like these: some enjoy postnuptial frottage with their abstinent manly men, while others face the direst of consequences (thanks in part to a gweilo "transvertile") in a throwaway bit that reeks of prevailing ignorance about the subject.

But hey, tits galore! as David Friedman might say. And the opening credits—all three minutes, fifteen seconds of 'em—unspool over footage of the Main Street Electrical Parade at Tokyo Disneyland, almost as if to prophecy the innocence that will be lost soon after, but more likely because somebody wanted to get their home movies up on the big screen. The last 90 seconds of this film truly must be seen to be believed.

And remember. It could happen to you. And you. And you!

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.

“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

“Get that finger outta your ear. You don’t know where that finger’s been."

If you forced me to pick one thing that drives me nuts about Hong Kong cinema, it would be actors playing cops on public surveillance missions constantly pressing their fingers to their conspicuous earphones and mumbling to themselves as they scan the surrounding area.

Whether they’re pretending to read a newspaper, hawk fish balls or sweep the sidewalk, there’s always that moment where the actors simply must fidget with their earphones. This is hardly specific to Hong Kong pictures, but since the actors in many Hong Kong movies—especially no-budget duds like KUNG FU POLICE—often play these scenes on open streets in plain sight of hundreds of oblivious real people scurrying around them while the camera crew shoots from a van parked nearby, the urge to do something with their hands must be overwhelming, if only to mask the embarrassment of having to stand in the middle of a crowded sidewalk in their own street clothes with a two-dollar earphone stuck in their head!

KUNG FU POLICE has many such scenes, but unlike other, better cheapo Hong Kong police procedurals, the filmmakers can’t even be bothered giving the actors something to actually do as they mill around a Wanchai intersection looking all surveillance-y and stuff, so they press those earpieces like crazy!

No newspapers. No fish balls. Just fingers in ears.

It starts off with this guy…

…then cuts to the star of the show, Jackie Lui, lookin’ smooth.

Then we go to David To, who actually IS doing something else to blend into the crowd. He’s standing beside a guy that looks a lot like Wong Yat-fei (not pictured) handing out leaflets. These appear to be real leaflets for an actual place, so it’s kinda cool that they threw a t-shirt on the guy and stuck him out there for verisimilitude. But then, up goes that finger…

Then it’s over to this guy, who nods while holding his fingers to the earpiece, presumably acknowledging a command to look the other way, then looks the other way and, without touching the earpiece, appears to talk to himself. I’m going with the shot of him touching the earpiece for the sake of consistency:

Then we’re back to David, who’s now moved to the edge of the road, so he can finger his ear and lean on the railing. Gettin’ tired, I suppose:

Then we cut back to Jackie, who’s become rather engrossed in fingering his ear, to the point that he is no longer surveilling the landscape, which could have been just the break villainous jewel thief Karen Tong was waiting for. Alas, no. We’ll later learn she’s not even in the neighborhood.

We return to this guy once more to find he’s resumed his fake job of handing out leaflets, but again, important news over his earpiece has necessitated a rather obvious swing of his arm up to his head. If Karen were anywhere in the vicinity when all this is taking place, she would have been long gone to another part of town by this point:

Jackie again. He’s back to scoping out the busy Wanchai intersection, but must once again press his earpiece in tight lest he miss any vital information about the robbery his unit has been informed will take place somewhere in the vicinity. This time, he responds to something he pretends to hear in his disconnected Walkman earphone:

Then we’re treated to a shot, which occurs rather quickly, of the lone female member of Jackie’s team performing aural on herself. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a simple cutaway to a couple of actual Hong Kong folks having a chat. But then up pops that finger:

And finally, the money shot. We’re shown the robbery taking place nearby, but NONE of the cops sees it. They are notified that it’s going down when Red T-shirt guy gets the call…

…on his cell phone:

This represents about half the ear-touching shots that occur in this single movie, but you get the idea.

Not that this production isn’t burdened with other problems, what with all the ambient noise, poor night lighting, dreary shot composition and creepy Candy Lo impersonations by two wholly non-descript supporting “actresses” who are so non-descript I can’t remember their names.

In case you’re still interested, Jackie Lui is a cop and Karen Tong is a jewel thief newly escaped from prison with Big Plans to stick up jewel dealers who are walking home from work because that’s cheaper to shoot than scenes in actual rented spaces like jewellery stores that can’t be faked in the producer’s apartment or the production offices. Anyways, Jackie’s tai chi classmate owes Karen a few robberies, and his sifu’s daughter has some kind of relationship with him that only exists in her vacant little head. And that’s about it, really.

Most definitely a movie to approach with lowered expectations, but since my purchase of the VCD allowed the production company to make back their entire expenditure, the dirty work’s been done.