PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Revenge Of The Shogun Women 1977

Revenge Of The Shogun Women 1977 Written by Terry Chambers, Hua Chan and Huang-kun Lin, directed by Mei-Chun Chang. I watched the 3-D Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. I don't have a 3-D BD3D Polarized player or TV so I watched the Anaglyphic red/cyan version with the glasses supplied. I thought it was some of the most eye popping 3-D I'd seen.

The story is typical of the 70s with bandits robbing and raping their way through small villages. Thirteen of the local women who were attacked take the pledge to become nuns and learn martial arts. They defy the head nun and get some revenge on the bandits. There's plenty of action and swords poking out of the screen. The fights are fair to good and the revenge is swift and deadly.

There are three 3-D shorts with slightly racy content that was rather uninteresting, I fast forwarded through them.

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Ghost Nursing 1982 Written by Team Kam Shing Screenwriter's and directed by Wilson Tong. A Chinese horror movie that's recently been released on a Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray. It looks very good.

Jackie has a spate of bad luck, mostly caused by her gambling problem. She visits her friend who gets her a new job at a bar as a B girl and prostitute. Jackie's luck gets worse and her friend says Jackie should see a seer to get some protection. She does and he preforms a nurse of ghost ritual.

Jackie is given a ghost baby which will help her if she follows the rules. That's the little guy above. She's got to worship the figure and part of the ritual is to give it 3 drops of blood every 3 days. Ghost baby does a good job protecting her, punishing wrong doers, some rather violently. At that point I was wanting my own ghost baby.

Things go sour when Jackie falls for a guy and forgets to worship the ghost baby. Jackie's boyfriend brings in an exorcist and they try to destroy the ghost baby. That doesn't go well, the ghost baby get really mad, it gets very exciting, horrible things start happening, people die. Now I'm not so keen on a ghost baby of my own. I could easily forget to bleed on the little guy, I'm poor at sticking to schedule.

The acting isn't the best, the script is weak and it's got a pretty small budget but the movie is still pretty entertaining. There's plenty of running about, yelling and there's plenty of gore and violence. Nicely, the baddies are all punished quite dramatically. The movie has a good sense of humor and I laughed a fair bit. I'd watch it again.

Beaks 1987 Written and directed by Rene Cardona Jr. A Mexican horror film that's also known as Beaks: The Birds 2, Birds of Prey, Falco Terror and Evil Birds. We watched the 100 min version, with all the gore put back in.

A reporter and her cameraman are off around the world on a story about birds attacking humans. Michelle Johnson plays Vanessa and Christopher Atkins plays Peter. We meet a small flock of people who have violent encounters with the birds, Vanessa and Peter interview some of them. The birds are pretty vicious and many people are maimed or killed. Near the end of the movie the birds stop attacking and there's no answer as to why this all happening.

I thought it was a bit below average, it's pretty slow getting going and a bit dull. The acting is poor on average and the script isn't much better. The bird attacks are hit or miss, I'm guessing it was depending on who was throwing the pigeons. It's a fairly well shot film, kudos to cinematographer Leopoldo Villaseñor. I wouldn't need a copy as I doubt I'd have time left to get around to it again.

Bullet In The Head 1990

Bullet In The Head 1990 Written by John Woo, Patrick Leung and Janet Chun, directed by John Woo. Someone gave me a copy of the longest version of the movie. I hadn't seen it in a while so I watched it.

Ben, Paul and Frank live in Hong Kong are long time friends who run in a gang. They fight with other gangs, one fight over some money winds up in murder, they run away to Saigon, smuggling some drugs to finance the trip. It's 1967 and there's a war on. It makes it easy to smuggle but hard to survive. On arrival a suicide bomber winds up blowing up their contraband.

The trio narrowly escape being executed for the bombing. They meet up with an assassin called Luke. They join up to rescue a singer from the hands of Luke's boss. A fire fight breaks out and Paul steals a chest full of gold when they escape. That gold is the cause of all their problems, besides the big one of going to Vietnam while there's a war on.

The group is waiting by the river for a boat to pick them up. The gangsters and the Vietnam army attack and they barely get away. Sally is killed and left in the river. Paul manages to save the gold but they're caught by the Vietcong. They are tortured and Frank is made to shoot other prisoners. Ben shoots a couple of prisoners and turns the weapons on the Vietcong.

Luke arrives about then with some American helicopter gun ships. They blast the Vietcong. Paul and Frank had escaped into a field, Paul shoots Frank in the head to keep him quiet, and escapes with the gold. Ben follows Paul and watched while he guns down some locals for a boat. He shoots Ben too. Some monks find Ben and patch him up so he can return to Saigon.

Ben finds Luke who tells him Frank is still alive. Frank lives on the streets, he's taking heroin to dull the pain from the bullet that's still in his head. Ben kills him and takes his skull to visit Paul. He's a successful businessman and he doesn't care. He tells Ben to leave. Later Ben and Paul battle to the death in cars.

It's got a good script and a great cast with Tony Leung, Jacky Cheung, Waise Lee and Simon Yam in the lead roles. The scenes in Saigon and the jungle are pretty realistic. It's a great reminder to stay out of a war zone. I've seen this several times already and was glad to get a longer version of the film.

Avengers From Hell 1981

Avengers From Hell 1981 Screenplay by Kin Lo, directed by Pei-Chuan Li. A guy I know passed along a few 1980s Chinese horror films from the Shaw Brothers that haven't had a DVD release.

It's an anthology movie, 3 stories with ghosts and murder. In the first, a cop runs into a ghost in an abandoned house, in the second Philip Chan is cheating on his pregnant wife when he kills his pregnant lover, in the last a ghost helps a man win at gambling. They'll all have a bad time with the ghosts, some of them won't survive.

Nothing special about it, just a good average film that delivers some noisy action, murder, and a bit of comedy. My only complaint, too much Mahjong.

Son Of The Incredibly Strange Film Show 1989

Son Of The Incredibly Strange Film Show takes Jonathan to Hong Kong to meet Jackie Chan and Tsui Hark, to Hollywood to see Fred Olen Ray, Stuart Gordon and Doris Wishman, to Mexico to see Mexican Wrestlers, and to Pittsburgh to see George Romero and Tom Savini. He also devotes an entire show to the life and work of Ed Wood Jr. Well worth a look for certain film fans.

Jonathan Ross's Asian Invasion

Jonathan Ross hosts Jonathan Ross's Asian Invasion, a three part look at Asian cinema, circa 2006.

Episode 1 Japan Jonathan spends some time with Ryuhei Kitamura who's first film Versus was a big international cult hit. I liked it, I even have two DVDs of it. Jonathan takes Ryuhei shopping for DVDs, he then shows clips from Casshern, Ping Pong, Wild Zero, The Calamari Wrestler. He talks about other directors and their films: Shunji Iwai, "Beat" Takishi Kitano, Takashi Miike, Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Oshii and others.

Episode 2 Hong Kong Jonathan talks to one of my favorite Chinese actors and directors Stephen Chow and looks at the comedy of HK cinema. Then he spends some time looking at crime cinema and Michelle Yeoh.

Episode 3 Korea Jonathan visits Korea to look at their movies.

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Tai Chi Hero is a 2012 Chinese action comedy directed by Stephen Fung. It's a jazzed up fantasy about the creation of Tai Chi. It's a mix of melodrama and martial arts. The action sequences were choreographed by Sammo Hung. It's the sequel to Tai Chi Zero, which I haven't seen. They do give us a bit of a recap at the start of the movie. Now the action takes place in a village that's going to be destroyed for a railway line. The zero from the first movie is now getting married to a member of the Chen family, it's the only way he can learn the family style without bringing disaster to the village. Disaster comes anyway as the village is attacked by the scumbag in charge of the rail expansion. He's got it in for the Chen family himself. Peter Stormare plays Lord Flemming or "Flamming" as he's listed in the credits. He's as atrocious character, much like his atrocious British accent. I sure wasn't sold on the movie, the melodrama parts were dull but I did like some of the action scenes. By the time it was done I was pretty much thinking I wouldn't need to see it again.

I've seen Dinosaurus! more than once but I do like movies with big monsters. The movie has two decent stop motion dinosaurs and the fight between the T-Rex and the steam shovel is OK. It's from 1960 and when I saw it back in 2017 the DVD was $54 on Amazon. Now there's a DVD for $14 and a Blu-ray for $20, the later is what we watched. The movie looks pretty good but it's still about an average production.

I do like the two posters above. Sometimes the foreign posters are more entertaining than the US versions. The movie is fairly entertaining, buoyed up by the stop motion dinosaurs, dragged down a bit by the average script. I'm debating the purchase of the Blu-ray. There are some extras that sound interesting.

Ghost Ninja 1988

Ghost Ninja is a 1988 Hong Kong movie that's also called Diamond Ninja Force. It's directed by Godfrey Ho and stars Richard Harrison. The Black Ninja Clan has it in for Richard, they want his Golden Ninja statue, they will kill for it. It's only so-so. It's kind of dull at times. It's part of a two movie DVD along with Primitives.

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Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings is the third of the Detective Dee films. The movie was released in 2018 and the Blu-ray came out in November, I just noticed it was out a week or so ago an immediately ordered it. I real liked the two previous movies. It's directed by Tsui Hark and the screenplay is by Chang Chia-lu.

The first movie Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame came out in 2010, the second film Young Detective Dee: Rise OF The Sea Dragon came out in 2013 and it's a prequel to the first. Time wise, the 3rd film falls between the 2nd and the 1st. I'd recommend the whole trilogy.

Mark Chao played Dee in YDD:ROTSD and he plays him again in this film. Dee has been promoted to head of the Department of Justice. He's been given a super weapon, the Dragon Taming Mace.

Empress Wu Zetain is the wife of Emperor and she's got a power grabbing personality. She sets an Indian cult against the detective but,w sadly, she's no match for Detective Dee.

Unlike the first two movies this is more a Wuxia fantasy film with flying martial arts and magic. The magic is often illusion but the martial artists are bouncing around like they're made out of rubber.

There's plenty of action but that's often weighed down by the melodrama. The sets, props and costumes are all top notch. The CGI works well for the most part and there's usually something of interest to look at. I enjoyed it and I know I'll want to watch it and the rest of the films again.

I really enjoyed The Predator. It came out in 2018 and it's not a reboot, characters mention the previous Predator visits. The screenplay is by Fred Dekker and director Shane Wood. Shane had appeared int he first Predator movie back in 1987. He's written and directed a few movies I like. He wrote the first two Lethal Weapon films, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. All those are worth watching and even having. He wrote and directed Iron Man 3, The Nice Guys and Edge. I've only seen Iron Man 3 and didn't care enough about it to blog about it. Shane's writing and directing the new Doc Savage movie. I'm kind of interested in that.

The Predator starts with a Predator ship crashing on Earth. Boyd Holbrook and some US soldiers are on a mission when they encounter a Predator. Boyd manages to knock the Predator down. He steals a bit of the Predator's suit and sends it to his son. A secret US gov department gathers up the wounded Predator and takes him to a secret base. Boyd gets arrested, the gov wants the bits that Boyd took but he ain't talking. Another Predator turns up, a bigger and meaner beast, and he's got two space dogs with him. The new Predator wants to keep the downed ship and Predator gear out of the hands of the humans.

It's got a great cast, I particularly liked Olivia Munn, Thomas Jane and Keegan-Michael Key. There's plenty of action and plenty of dark humor and craziness. I liked many of the characters and the baddies all got slaughtered. The CGI Predators didn't look bad to me and there was a guy in a suit for movement and the like. The other CGI was fine. There were good locations and sets. I'll want to watch it again so I just ordered the 4 pack of Predator films on Blu-ray. I already had the first two on DVD but I didn't have a copy of the third film or fourth film. Not surprisingly it was cheaper to buy a four film Blu-ray set over buying the 3rd and 4th films separately. I'll look forward to that.

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Our first film is the 1977 Hong Kong film Foxbat with Henry Silva and Vonette McGee. It's written by Philip Chan and Po-Chih Leong with some additional material by Les Roberts. Po-Chih Leong shares the director credit with Terence Young. The cast has some guys I know, Roy Chiao, Rick Van Nutter and Wah Yuen, but there are several other Hong Kong actors I recognize but can't name.

The story is based on the 1976 incident when Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected to the West in a MIG 25. Most of it's set in Hong Kong. Henry is a spy who films the plans for the MIG 25 with a camera in his false eye. Stupidly, there's no end of that here, the plans get eaten by a stupid chef and he spends the rest of the movie running about trying not to get killed. There's a fair bit of action but not all fights are top notch. The car chases are much the same. Roy plays a good villian, Doctor Zod, with his ready to die henchmen.

It's not a great film, it struggles to break average, but there is a level of entertainment value attached in it's loopyness. The script is all over the place, some dialog stinks, some is plain dull. It's a spy story filled with incompetant spies and villains that fail their way to the grave. It's not a comedy but a couple of times I got a laugh. I don't know that I would ever need to see it again, there are much better Hong Kong films to watch, and time is tick, tick, ticking away. The Blu-ray came from Code Red, they're expensive and hard to buy, so I doubt I'll find one used for cheap enough to bother with.

I feel the same way about our second film, Rawhead Rex. It's Clive Barker's story come to life but cock blocked by director George Pavlou. The monster isn't as rapey in the movie as he is in the book. He does kill kids in both. The original story appeared in volume 3 of Barker's Books Of Blood back in 1985 and the movie was made in 1987. I never read more than the 1st story in the 1st volume and moved on. I was never a horror reader for the most part.

It's one of those malevolent evils in the ground sorts of stories. It's set in a small village in Ireland. Near the village is a group of caravaners. They're doomed! A writer and his family is staying at the pub. He's researching Pagan legends. That will help later.

Rawhead Rex gets released when a stone obelisk is uprooted in a field by a farmer. He's the first to die. RR is 9 foot tall and ugly. Sadly his makeup is the most disappointing thing in the movie. His head is laughable. Still, the show must go on and RR tramps about, killing people, chomping their tasty bits for tea. Plenty of people get slaughtered. Some others fight back.

Some parts of the movie are better than others. The basic story is fair, the dialog good sometimes, acting mostly good. I don't think it struggles as much to get to average but it sure could have been a lot better. If only they has done something about Rawhead's head. Clive complained about the film, his unhappiness would drive him to direct Hellraiser himself. You can check it out on YouTube.