Ninja 3: The Domination (1984)

This chunk of 80's cheese has recently been given a Blu-Ray release, so I thought it was time to catch up on this Golan Globus masterpiece.

Ninja 3: The Domination doesn't disappoint. Starting with its famous Ninja versus golf-course scene, we learn that for a ninja (Sho Kosugi), stealth isn't that important when you can kill indiscriminately with throwing stars, and are impervious to bullets. After outrunning a police car, taking out a helicopter, two motorbikes, and countless cops, he is eventually cornered, and shot more times that Peter Weller in Robocop. Although this does slow him down a bit, he still manages to escapes.

Lucinda Dickey (Breakin', and everyone's favourite sequel title, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) stars as Christie, a telecoms repairer by day, Gym instructor by night. When she spots our injured ninja rolling about in the wilderness, she naturally goes to help, only to be attacked by him. She escapes, but instead of calling the police, or getting on with her Glen Campbell day-job, she goes back one more time. After mumbling Japanese and brandishes his sword at her, she start seeing the Ninja's memories.  Its about this time our ninja friend finally croaks, and now Christie seems to occasionally become possessed, and is able to command his ninja skills.
Every night when she is alone in her ultra eighties pad, the room fills with smoke and the lights short out. Arcade machines come to life, and the samurai sword which she kept as a souvenir floats about. In these weird Exorcist/Poltergeist moments, Christie feels the need to go on a cop killing spree for vengeance.

There are plenty of WTF moments in this, and its impossible to write about this movie without mentioning the sleazy gender politics. Jordan Bennett plays Officer Billy, a man who doesn't take no for an answer and even more creepily, uses his police powers to harass Christie into dating him. In fact, I have a alternative reading of this movie that Christie is a feminist vigilante, who uses the ninja skills to take out the sleaze-bags who make up the police department. There's a jaw-dropping scene where one of the girls in Christie's gym class is attacked and harassed by a bunch of scum-bags. Christie is the only one who steps in to help her, even though there are plenty of people around, including Officer Billy. When the gang pick on her instead, Christie's newly found ninja skills kick in and she wipes the floor with them. But at no point does Officer Billy help out. In fact its at this point he arrests her! No wonder Christie's alter-ego is pissed.

Ninja Facts:

Don't worry if you haven't watched the first two movies, they apparently have nothing in common with this film, apart from them starring Sho Kosugi who also choreographed the fight scenes.

V8 juice is not sexy, even on Lucinda Dickey.

"Only a ninja, can destroy a ninja"

The Uninvited (1988): The Terrible films of Greydon Clark Part 1

A mutant cat. A gangster's yacht. George Kennedy. Sit back and enjoy The Uninvited!

The Visitor (1979) AKA Stridulum

As soon as I saw the bat-shit trailer, I had to see this film. It looked like Dune mixed with Exorcist II The Heretic. That would certainly qualify it mad enough to check out.

With such a great cast & terrible reviews, I was expecting an incoherent mess, but its actually pretty cool. Its much better than other Italian horror knock-offs which were being made at the time.

It basically boils down to two-parts The Omen, one-part The Exorcist, a healthy dose of Rosemary's Baby, and a splash of Hitchcock's The Birds for good measure. The real difference is that instead of demonic possession, its an evil space-traveler who has impregnated a group of humans and blessed their children with supernatural powers. If this all seems a little too much like L Ron Hubbard for your taste, don't worry. All this is explained at the start to some bald-headed children in a greenhouse, by a Jesus-like Franco Nero!

After this disjointed opening, the film settles down to tell the story of Katy, a young girl who has powers of telekinesis. Paige Conner plays Katy as playful rather than sinister, which makes the film more fun when she starts going off the rails.

Katy wants her mother to settle down with Raymond Armstead (Lance Henriksen) a rich businessman who has just brought the Atlanta Basketball team! He wants to get married and have children too, but Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail) doesn't feel comfortable settling down, probably due to all the pestering!

It seem that Henriksen is being funded by a shadowy organization who are pushing him to create a heir. To top this off, a mysterious visitor played by John Huston keeps popping up, who seems just as keen to stop this happening.

The film continues very much in the vein of The Omen (1976), with an elaborate death for anyone who gets too nosy in their affairs. Damien's devil dogs are substituted in this by a hawk, and Billie Whitelaw's nanny character is replaced by house-maid Shelly Winters.

John Huston is not the only director acting in this. Sam Peckingpah plays Dr Sam, who is apparently Barbara's Ex-husband. You wouldn't know that from watching the film however, as due to his drug problem, he kept flubbing his lines. His brief appearance is mainly shots of the back of his head, with his voice dubbed by an actor.

There is no getting away from the fact that this movie is preposterous, but apart from Peckingpah, the cast are pretty game. Especially Glenn Ford, who plays a police detective who gets an expletive-filled ear bashing from the young Katy.

There is some good work behind the camera too. The Cinematography is classy, with angular lines which accentuate the late seventies décor and architecture. The director Giulio Paradisi was assistant director on Fellini's 8 1/2.

Questions I asked myself whilst watching:

Is that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Yes it is!

Should you have left Katy with that strange elderly babysitter you've just met?

Why are they trying to kill her now? never-mind.

Is that supposed to be a Swiss-Army Bird? whaah?

Where is my old Pong game console?

Who is the funky score by? Franco Micalizzi

So where did that gun come from anyway?

Of Cooks and Kung Fu (1979) Tao Tie Gong

A mysterious stranger with a Raiden style hat, is killing off the chefs in the area, and it's not because of the cooking.

Master Glutton (Chai Kai) was once the Emperor's cook, The King of Chefs. But after a bizarre scallop incident, he was chucked out in disgrace. Over 20 years, he's developed a series of kung fu styles based on Chinese dishes. That's the odd premise, and also what he's teaching his wayward grandson Tan Tan (Chan Siu Lung AKA Jackie Chen). Yes, its basically Drunken Master, with an even more obscure fighting style. The two plot lines of chefs and killers carry on till they inevitable meet.

As part of my remit to review obscure films, I could make the whole blog on Hong Kong movies from the 70's. Having said that, if you've seen a few kung-fu movies, you can pretty much guess how this one will pan out.

So why am i writing about it? Well 3 reasons.

1. Its not actually that bad. There is plenty of action, the training sections tie into the plot as you see our young hero learn from his previous mistakes. Jackie Chen has great acrobatic ability.

2. This film has spadefuls of  gratuitous camera zooms. It may be a cliché of Hong Kong movies, but for me, this is a real plus.

3. The version I've seen has a weird effect which I'm going to call Wobble-Cam. Sometimes the action seems to bob up and down like a boat. Sometimes it feels like the camera is trying to avoid being punched. At first I thought it was some in-camera effect, but it looks like someone has blown up the print and has manually moved the film around, in a similar way they used to do pan-and-scan, only more violently. Its a really weird effect, that's hard to explain, but I quite liked.  On YouTube there is a clip of the film from a German release which doesn't have it, so I think this effect was added when it was released in America in the mid 80's. If any one can shed some light on this, please drop us a comment!

To be honest the film could of done with a few more locations. 90% of the fights seem to occur on the same dirt path.

Things to look out for:

Like Magnificent Bodyguards, There's another blast of a John Williams score on the soundtrack. This time Jaws!

If your daughter's life is being threatened by a hoodlum to make you reveal a secret, this film has a ingenious way out of it.

"As it's well known, Chinese cooking is the best in the world!"

This movie also goes under the name Duel of the Dragon, and is presently on YouTube and DVD rental at LoveFilm UK.

Magnificent Bodyguards - Fei du juan yun shan (1978)

Dipping into the world of Martial Arts can be a confusing adventure. Films tend to go under more names than a career criminal (not including original Cantonese or Mandarin titles). Prints can have laughable dubbing, or hard to read subtitles. The print-quality tends to vary between passable and atrocious, and the stories often assume a passing knowledge of Chinese myths and history which makes them hard to follow.

However, if the movie is as mad as a box of frogs, and the action puts Hollywood to shame, none of this really matters in my opinion. Jackie Chan movies make a pretty good gate-way into martial arts. Even if you don't like it, you've always got the insane outtakes at the end as consolation.

Magnificent Bodyguards is an early film in his career which he not only stars, but co-choreographs. Its got plenty of action, and a relatively straightforward plot (until the end). Jackie plays Lord Ting Chung, whose hired by Lady Nan (Ping Wang) to protect her and her sick brother as they cross the Stormy Mountains, a wild bandit-filled zone. With four bad-ass deputies running the territory, and evil Lord Chu controlling them, Jackie needs the help of his two brothers for the journey. Chang (Leung Siu-Lung) is a deaf Leather maker, and Tsung (James Tin Jun) is a fighter with a protection racket known as the Skinning Swordsman. (one skins humans, the other doesn't!)

Did I say the plot was simple?  The film is littered with hard-nuts and deadly assassins, that make the crossing more complex. After a while, the odds begin to look bad.

This was the first Hong Kong movie to be shot in 3D, and consequently there are plenty of shots of poles, knives and sharp sticks coming straight at the camera. In most films thats pretty annoying, but it makes sense in this. However, similar to Amityville 3D and others of the era, the picture can get a little blurry.

This flick doesn't have as good a reputation as Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagles Shadow, which he also made in 1978, but I think its a gem. Its got great footwork and plenty of different weapons. There's no stupid sub-plots, or characters only there for light relief. It doesn't have Jackie's trademark use of environment in the fight scenes, but all in all, it would make a great 3D Bluray release (fingers crossed!)

Stray notes:

There's something fishy about that Sedan...

If you've ever wondered what would of happened in Raiders of the Lost Ark if Indiana Jones wasn't afraid of snakes, I think this film covers it.

In the version I watched, one scene builds up the tension with a good blast of the Star Wars music!

There is an inverse law in Hong Kong movies that the more disabled or elderly you seem, the better the fighter.

Did they run out of film at the end?

The Appointment (1981)

 Edward Woodward stars in this slow-burning British horror movie, which feels closer in spirit to the 70′s anthology movies than the 80′s VHS era it was released to.

It might not be to some people taste, as the slight story is stretched butter-thin over 90 minutes. Indeed, contemporary reviewers dismissed it as boring, and the film had only a limited cinema release. This is a shame as it does contain some memorable moments, and sustains an unsettling vibe for most of the film.

After a powerful opening scare involving a girl in the woods, we flash forward to meet Woodward, a family man who breaks the news to his precocious daughter that he will be missing her school violin recital due to a work appointment. From this point on, bad omens, nightmares, and premonitions suggest he’d be better pulling a sickie, than driving to his ill fated appointment…

This is director Lindsay C. Vickers only full feature, which is unfortunate, as he shows a lot of panache in the set-scenes. The movie's feverish dream atmosphere builds to an enjoyable over-the-top ending.

The film is currently on YouTube split into 7 parts.

Death Wish 3 (1985)

Charles Bronson's acting reaches new heights of somnambulism in this demented flick by the late, great Michael Winner.

In the first two revenge flicks, Winner had killed off everyone remotely close to our anti-hero Paul Kersey. So in Death Wish 3, he takes the franchise to its next logical step. Bronson is now a guardian-angel drifter, who returns to New York to meet an old friend whose being terrorized by a local street gang. 

With the same bad luck as all his other acquaintances, Bronson's pal is beaten to death before he can say 'no dice', and is immediately framed for the murder. The chief of police, played by seasoned-pro Ed Lauter (Longest Yard), recognizes him as the vigilante from the first film, and lets him return on condition he takes out the street scum which is turning the neighbourhood to hell. 

the streets of this unnamed suburb looks more like a post-apocalyptic war zone than 80's NYC. This might be because it was actually shot in London!

The main slime-ball spends a lot of the movie eyeballing Bronson and vice-versa. So its a bit odd that Bronson doesn't target him first. Instead he seem to arbitrary take out car thieves and bag-snatchers, rather than the main perps who are murdering the neighbours one by one. They're quite easy to spot due to the ludicrous gang paint/hairstyle combo.

Some of the funniest bits occur in the tacked on romance with his young beautiful court appointed lawyer who,  for some reason, has a thing for mysterious monosyllabic elderly  murder suspects. She literally begs him for a date, which Bronson begrudgingly  accepts. The date has some hilarious bad dialogue and their relationship ends as badly as you'd expect.

As Bronson's rep grow within the community, the big bad leader calls up dial-a-gang, and a biker group ride into town to spice things up. The movie conclude with a neighbourhood free for all, as everyone grabs a gun and all hell breaks loose.

Bronson barely raises a sweat or his pulse in this movie, which is probably only sensible as he was 64 at the time. The only emotion he portrays is a sad stoicism, and it's not too surprising that this is his last collaboration with Winner. Even though the stupidness makes this film a lot easier to take than the first two, it still contain some ugly scenes.

Things to look out for:

Alex Winters (of Bill and Ted fame) plays a street punk

Marina Sirtis (Dana Troy from Star Trek Next Generation) plays a small role

Street Thug: " They killed the Giggler!"

Kathryn: " I hope you like chicken, it's the only thing I know how to make."

Kersey: " Chickens good. I like chicken"

 Fraker: "Truth is, I hate creeps too. But there's nothing I can do about them. I'm a cop."

This Movie is presently available on YouTube

The Red Salute (1935)

Barbara Stanwyck stars in this weird mix of 30's screwball comedy and anti-communist propaganda. It's caused a mini-riot when it was first shown in New York, when protests by left-wing students ended in arrests. It's interesting to compare with the red-scare movies of the 50's that Hollywood later churned out. In fact it was retitled and re-released in 1953 as Runaway Daughter.

Stanwyck plays Drue Van Allen, the military General's daughter whose causing all kinds of embarrassment due to her scandalous behavior. She's involved with the campus left-wing radicals, and plan on marrying Leonard Arner, the lead communist agitator. Her father is having none of it, and tricks (well, basically kidnaps) her into a trip south of the border to Mexico.

From here, the story becomes classic comedy Hi-jinx. Stanwyck tries to get to Washington with everyone chasing her, accompanied by an AWOL soldier (Robert Young) who wants to go the opposite direction. The script is full of one-liners, and the plot is light and pacy through this middle section.

There's a hint of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, when Stanwyck and Robert Young pass themselves off as a couple at a hotel (It was made the same year). With her quick wit and pithy put-downs, Stanwyck character is strong, opinionated and intelligent. Of course in the film, this is considered a major problem. The movie can't allow her to have her own way, and everyone ultimately agrees with her father that she needs a good dose of "common sense" and to settle down with the right man (The soldier who Stanwyck nicknames Uncle Sam).

As all films are documents of their time, it's curious to see such support for American militarism before World War 2. It concludes with an impassioned speech by Young at the Student Rally. He wins half the crowd round with an appeal to their patriotism and causes a large free-for-all brawl amonst the audience. In the confusion Stankwyck and Young get together and Arner gets strong armed out of the country!

The film is presently on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR5WJhkEOVo