PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

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.

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A couple of Hong Kong films today, first up the sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, CTHD: Sword Of Destiny. It was a Netflix original that I'd already seen but not since it came out last year. John Fusco wrote the screenplay from Du Lu Wang's book and Woo-Ping Yeun is the director. It's got Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Jason Scott Lee and a bunch of other people I mostly didn't know.

Jason wants the Green Dragon Sword and he sends Harry Shum Jr to steal it. Harry gets caught. Donnie gathers some fighters and brings them to the house where the Green Dragon Sword is held. Michelle shows up there and so do the bandits. There's plenty of martial arts and flying about. There's some family drama among the members of the martial arts world. Nearly everyone dies. I liked it better the second time and it's more re-watchable than the first film.

The Fate Of Lee Kahn is a 1973 King Hu film that I hadn't seen before. Sadly, it's on a VCD and the quality is pretty poor, the subtitles are pretty hard to read. This copy on YouTube is much better than that VCD we watched. It was directed by King Hu, who co-wrote the script with Chung Wang. Hu is most famous for directing A Touch Of Zen, Come Drink With Me and Dragon Gate Inn. All interesting films worth seeing.

The story in The Fate Of Lee Kahn is about a group of rebels fighting against Mongol rule. They're being hunted by Mongol Official Lee Kahn and his soldiers. Most of the action takes place at an Inn where the rebels operate. When Lee Kahn shows up things get dicey and people start dying. It's not one of Hu's best films but it's a pretty good action film with some nice court intrigue. You can check it out on YouTube for yourself. Check for a link in the first paragraph.

House Of Traps 1982

Someone lent me a copy of the new 88 Films DVD of House Of Traps. I would have borrowed the Blu-ray but I still don't have an all-region Blu-ray player yet. Not in a big hurry, I only have one Blu-ray to watch.

House Of Traps is a 1982 Shaw Brothers action film. It's directed by Chang Chen, who wrote the screenplay with I Kuang. The movie stars the Venom Mob. These were guys who got schooled at the Taiwan Peking Opera School. They got their best fame from being in Five Deadly Venoms. They did all their own fight choreography. They weren't the best actors but they were good at the leaping about with swords.

House Of Traps is about a secret revolt against the Emperor by a Prince of Royal Blood. The local Inspector and some pals beat the villainous Royal Member. There's plenty of sneaking about, double crossing and fighting along the way. Some good portion of the movie is spent showing off the huge trap set. It's a pretty fun set, complex but with a nice level of goofiness. Lots of fighters fall to the traps, gotta be quick.

It was a fun film, good on the action but weak on the humor. Bey Logan's commentary says that the studio pushed Chang Chen into having more comedy but he wasn't a comedy director. Since the complete movie has been hard to get, this release is going to make a lot of people happy. I was glad to see it. Now onto something else.