A bunch of reviews that refused to get written combined with the emergence of an obsessional new project to render my usual B-Fest roundup both irrelevant and impracticable. Still, a couple of the projected B-Fest reviews were sufficiently well advanced to be worth resurrecting once I got back into the swing of things:
Attack of the Puppet People (1958), in which a startlingly good Bert I. Gordon movie is undercut somewhat by insisting upon sci-fi when it ought to be straight-up fantasy instead…
Drunken Tai Chi (1984), which is a charming light comedy about assassination and post-traumatic stress disorder…
Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962), in which the makers of Reptilicus return to Denmark to rework The Angry Red Planet…
The Lair of the White Worm (1988), in which Ken Russell decides that an obscure Bram Stoker novel could use a little extra sex and blasphemy…
The Lost Missile (1958), in which an unconscionable orgy of stock footage gives way to an unexpectedly bleak and sober meditation on the end of the world…
RoboCop (2014), which didn’t suck anywhere near as much as I thought it was going to…
and…
Thomasine and Bushrod (1973), which wasn’t supposed to be the blaxploitation Bonnie and Clyde, but inevitably gets passed off as that anyway.
#1 by RogerBW on April 22, 2014 - 8:26 am
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Puppet People sounds vastly more fun than I’d have expected from BIG, too. Might give it a try.
Heh, all the best people are aero geeks. The best bit about War of the Worlds for me was the YB-49 stock footage.
Did John Agar ever play a character who wasn’t defined by his randiness?
Even considering how young they were in 1988, getting Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi shows good taste on the part of Russell’s casting director.
His right hand? I thought we agreed on total body prosthesis. Lose the hand.
#2 by blake on April 22, 2014 - 5:16 pm
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Of the films I’ve seen:
ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE – I watched this as a young kid (4th grade perhaps). The slightly inconclusive finale and the murder-suicide plot that spurred the climax forward stayed in my mind for weeks. It’s really one of the most compelling things I saw in an old sci-fi movie, to be perfectly honest.
DRUNKEN TAI CHI – Donnie Yen’s physical performance is one of this best and NOBODY choreographs tai chi in a fight better than Yuen Woo-Ping and his brothers. Memorable lines include “Your ass is grass” and something about the dad telling his son that he can’t go out and play anymore after his son buries a saber in his neck.
JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET – This movie, more than Reptilicus, deserved a softcore novelization courtesy of Dean Owen back in the early 60s.
#3 by blake on April 22, 2014 - 5:26 pm
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“But to write Norton coherently would require owning up to the fact that corruption has a momentum of its own, plenty strong enough to drag good people along in its wake.”
You would think that Padilha, who both hails from Brazil and directed the critically-acclaimed TROPA DE ELITE 2, which is all about police and government corruption, wouldn’t shy away from that sort of theme.
#4 by Richard on April 23, 2014 - 10:35 am
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“The Lost Missile” sounds like someone heard about Project Pluto:
“The missile was designed to deliver as many as 26 nuclear bombs over the Soviet Union in a single mission. It would do this while flying at Mach 3 and less than 1,000 feet above ground level. SLAM’s shock wave overpressure alone (162 dB) would devastate structures and people along its flight path. And, as if that were not enough, the type’s nuclear-fueled ramjet would continuously spew radiation-contaminated exhaust all over the countryside.” – http://blog.seattlepi.com/americanaerospace/2010/07/12/the-missile-from-hell/
#5 by blake on April 23, 2014 - 11:22 am
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One more thing about DRUNKEN TAI CHI that I don’t recall mentioning: the film is more or less a synthesis of almost everything that Yuen Woo-Ping had made since the late 70s, mainly the kung fu comedy epitomized by THE DRUNKEN MASTER and the kung fu/sorcery/comedy that the Yuen Clan had been dabbling in since 1982. The puppeteer that Yuen Cheung-Yan plays is more or less an extension of the drunken Taoist priest that he had played in earlier films like SHAOLIN DRUNKARD and TAOISM DRUNKARD. Also, as I mentioned in our chats, El Santo, Yuen Shun-Yee’s Iron Steel character is in many respects reprise of the psycho killer he played in the kung fu comedy/slasher film DREADNAUGHT, produced a year earlier.
#6 by The Rev. on April 28, 2014 - 2:50 pm
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Thanks to Netflix, last year I had a weekend where I watched Journey to the Seventh Planet and Angry Red Planet, in that order. Although the latter was more satisfying to my giant-monster-loving self, I was surprised by the thoughtful touches in the former, and found it to be the smarter film, as you did.
I almost wish I still didn’t know what happened to that astronaut at the end of JttSP. I kind of assumed, from what I saw, that he’d been absorbed by the brain, as had happened to the guy in ARP, and I had assumed that horrid screeching was coming from the brain as it did whatever it was doing. Thinking I’d perhaps missed something, I rewound it, and realized that screeching was coming from the astronaut. This not only gave me a bit of a chill, but made me wonder what exactly the brain was doing that would make someone cry out in such a way. (Like they say, the audience will usually come up with something much more terrifying if you don’t show it.)
Also, I am completely sold on Drunken Tai Chi and resolve to watch that ASAP.
#7 by Supersonic Man on April 29, 2014 - 11:51 pm
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I can’t believe you reviewed Drunken Tai Chi without mentioning breakdancing.
It was my first Donnie Yen film, and remains my only one.
#8 by The Rev. on July 12, 2014 - 2:52 pm
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Saw Drunken Tai Chi today. I am here to strongly suggest that everyone who hasn’t already seen it do so immediately. Excellent fight scenes, a fat woman who is insanely agile and talented, kung pu puppetry, dick and fart jokes, a complete disregard for safety especially regarding fire, breakdancing, murder, slapstick, a cute kid, a dwarf…this movie has damn near everything. If the dwarf had done kung fu I’d be proclaiming this the greatest movie of all time that didn’t have a giant monster. As it is, I really don’t see how anyone could be disappointed in a movie that is nonstop awesome.
#9 by The Rev. on July 12, 2014 - 3:10 pm
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Naturally, that should’ve been “kung FU puppetry” up there.
Also, I am going to spread the gospel of Lydia Shum far and wide. The fact that she’s not world-famous and known and loved by all is a travesty of justice that needs to be rectified, because holy shit she is amazing. If there’s a movie with her and Sammo Hung onscreen together I need to own it. (Invincible Eight is already on my radar, since she’s in it and he did some of the choreography.)
#10 by maggiesmith on January 28, 2024 - 11:12 am
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I have read the book Lair of the White Worm, and in its own way, it is as weird as the movie. Bram Stoker wrote it when he was in the later stages of the syphilis that killed him, and it reads as if he was high on SOMETHING. The fear of sexually attractive women which is a subplot in Dracula, is full-blown in Lair. Under the circumstances, I guess that’s understandable.
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