The B-Masters Cabal

Nikka/Nikkatsu Month continues with

VELVET HUSTLER
Velvet Hustler is the story of a cocky, carefree Tokyo hitman named Goro (Nikkatsu action star Tetsuya Watari). When we first meet him, he casually steals a smart red convertible sportscar from an airport, pulls up next to a limo, and blows away the occupants before casually returning the car to the exact same parking spot at the airport and leaving town to lie low in Kobe. Goro expects to be back in Tokyo in six months, but a year later, he’s still stuck cooling his heels in Kobe, waiting for the heat to die down. He spends most of the day sitting in a rocking chair on the docks, waiting for the foreign ships to dock so his crew of touts can pick up the gaijin men and spirit them away to associated nightclubs. Goro himself seems neither disappointed or enthused by his small-time pursuits. His only regret is that he can’t yet go back to his beloved Tokyo. It’s a sentiment he shares with Pepe Le Moko, stuck in The Casbah and forever dreaming of returning to Paris, the title character from the movie that originally served as the inspiration for this film’s inspiration, Red Quay.

I remember when I first saw Black Sabbath at the video store as a child, and I turned my nose at it because it was an “old” movie. But I’ve now matured, at least in this regard, and I was now eager to watch it, and give me something to warm up with in my preparations for my site’s 500th review in a few weeks. That is, if I can get online – my computer is falling apart, and I could barely put up this latest review and this announcement. Time to get a new computer, so please cross your fingers and hope there’s no delays.

The Werewolf Reborn! (1998)

Like Frankenstein Reborn! before it, The Werewolf Reborn! banks hard on the fact that the default shooting location for practically all Band-related flicks in that time period was Romania, which lends itself well to the Old World origins of the “classic” monsters. There’s also the fact that, since the silent short The Werewolf in 1913, there have been a crapload of werewolf movies. It’s well-trodden territory, and the Benjamin Carr 2.0 Script-O-Matic simply had to churn out the most shop-worn — excuse me, “timeless” — elements of werewolf mythology, slap on a teenage protagonist, and call it good, or at least done.

Plus: Reader Revenge Month is coming! Vote in the poll in the sidebar to determine what I’ll review!

Ah, Exorcist rip-offs! – God love ’em.

L’ANTICRISTO (1974)

Built around a remarkable performance from Carla Gravina, this is a surprisingly compelling hodge-podge of devil-worship, reincarnation, incest, possession, and some other stuff I don’t dare mention on the front page of the blog…right up to about the two-thirds mark, at which point everyone threw up their hands and said, “Oh, bugger it! – let’s just rip-off Friedkin!” The fact that they proceeding to do precisely that, and on an effects budget that wouldn’t have covered The Exorcist‘s use of pea-soup, makes the final third compelling for all the wrong reasons.

[Caution: some images NSFW!]

.

Kicking off the new year by reveling in two of our favorite things: movies from Japan’s Nikkatsu Studio and whiskey from Japan’s Nikka distillery. Yeah, no relation, but I need only the flimsiest of excuses to kick back and watch chipmunk-cheeked hitman Joe Shisido knock off wise guys while I down a dram or two of Nikka whiskey. And first up:

CRUEL GUN STORY
Cruel Gun Story is –- like Nikkatsu’s Youth of the Beast, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! and 3 Seconds Before Explosion before it –- based on a book by hardboiled crime novelist Haruhiko Oyabu. It tells the story of Togawa, a con who is sprung from prison early via the machinations of a mysterious underworld kingpin who communicates with him through an emissary, a former mob lawyer named Ito. Ito and his boss want Togawa to carry out a robbery that they’ve planned, involving an armored car shipment of racetrack receipts worth 120 million yen, and have hand selected a crew of four men to assist him in the task. They also seem to know an awful lot about Togawa, including the fact that he has a younger sister who was disabled in an accident that Togawa feels at least partially responsible for –- a fact which makes the cash-strapped felon that much more likely to take them up on their offer.

Have also added new screencaps to Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter and Bloody Territories.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Is everybody still suitably hung over? Good! Then let’s celebrate the end of the Naughties, and the beginning of the Teens, with a movie from the 1960’s that tried to make a 50’s-style horror film out of two flicks from the 40’s. Yes, it’s time for a Jerry Warren film… and not just any Jerry Warren film, but one of his least known, least sought-after and least interesting movies!

But just in case you thought that wasn’t mind-numbing enough… I’ve also unearthed the two Spanish-language films that Warren cannibalized for his, uhh, unique vision. In fact, this review really has much more to do with La casa está vacía (1945) and La Dama de la muerte (1946) than Warren’s film, Curse of the Stone Hand (1965). If you’ve ever seen Curse of the Stone Hand, I think you’ll understand why.

It’s all Santo’s fault: his return to the Witchcraft series made me feel guilty about my own dangling franchises.

AMITYVILLE: A NEW GENERATION (1993)

In yet another sequel that obviously wasn’t meant to be one, a mirror from the notorious Amityville house brings mayhem to an artists’ commune and forces a young photographer to confront the truth about his father, and about himself. The film wastes a decent premise in its struggle to become “an Amityville film”, but is bolstered by a nice supporting performance by Terry O’Quinn as the cop on the case.

I have also re-formatted and added screenshots to The Amityville Horror (1979), and fixed the screenshots in Amityville 1992: It’s About Time. I had hoped to have spruced up The Amityville Curse, too, but a slack postal system means that won’t be happening until next week. Stay tuned.

.

Rose and Norah are sisters dealing with different life crises who decide (well, Rose decides) to start a crime scene cleanup business. Naturally, they deal with their own pasts, discover something about themselves, and commit felonies with biohazardous materials.  It’s a comedy!

Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

CHINESE GHOST STORY: THE ANIMATION
Chinese animation, or at least what small amount is available for sampling, has proven to be high on imagination and somewhat rudimentary in execution. Actually, OK. I’m no Chinese animation expert. Before seeing A Chinese Ghost Story: The Animation, my only exposure to an animated Hong Kong movie was the same as pretty much every other American Hong Kong movie fan’s exposure: Bruce Lee and the Chinese Gods. But heck, what that movie lacked in terms of accomplished animation it more than made up for with sheer weirdness. I mean, there you were with Chinese deities ripping around ancient China on motorcycles made of clouds. People were getting burned alive, and then Bruce Lee shows up with a third eye, makes weird noises, and battles all sorts of multi-headed demons and dragons. Indeed the quality of animation was on par with those “Stories from The Bible” shows, but maybe if those had been less about Jesus helping people and more about Jesus battling a saucy fox spirit, we would have overlooked the shoddy animation in those as easily as we overlook it in Chinese Gods. Hell, it’s not as if The Bible doesn’t have enough weird stuff in it. I’d pay good money for animated feature film of the Book of Revelations.