Light Blast (1985)

When CHiPs originally aired (from 1977 to 1983), it was clear early on that co-star Erik Estrada was the lynchpin around which this televisual universe spun.  His Frank “Ponch” Poncherello was a swaggering ladies’ man who was adept at his job but also wasn’t above being taken down a peg when he acted like an ass (which was at least once per episode).  Contrasted against his straitlaced (nay, torpid) partner, Jon Baker (Larry Wilcox), it’s little wonder why Estrada garnered the majority of the popularity from the show.  He had charisma and looks (including a smile usually reserved only for grade school class photos), and sometimes that’s enough.  Of course, part of CHiPs’ fame also rested on the fact that it showcased some truly beautiful ladies being beautiful in tight uniforms, like Randi Oakes and Brianne Leary, and sometimes that’s enough, too.  Add to this the comedic relief stylings of Grossman (Paul Linke) and Harlan Arliss (Lou Wagner), and you get a recipe for success.  But television series don’t last forever, and Estrada rode his popularity as far as he could, appearing in a slew of direct-to-video films that varied in quality from middling to piss-poor.  He also gave a great turn as Marco Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar Diego Garcia Marquez on the animated Sealab 2021, prominently displaying his funny bone (though honestly, the show was only good up until the fantastic Harry Goz passed away, in my opinion).  So, where does Enzo G. Castellari’s Light Blast (aka Colpi Di Luce aka Neonkiller), a film which I believe actually had a theatrical release (but I’m not one hundred percent on that) fit on the Estrada spectrum?  I’d say it sits at the higher end of the curve, but it’s still not very good, and I believe that Estrada himself has very little to do with its quality, regardless.

A randy couple are melted (in imitation of the Nazis being melted at the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark) during Yuri Svoboda’s (Ennio Girolami) testing of his new light-based superweapon.  Cut to: Detective Ron Warren (Estrada) taking out a couple of bank robbers wearing nothing but his gotchies and a turkey (with fries on the side).  Ron and his partner, Curtis Swann (Michael Pritchard, in the Jon Baker/Grossman role), are assigned to track down Yuri and his goons after the physicist (NOT a physician as stated on IMDb) threatens to destroy San Francisco if he’s not paid five million dollars (and then ten million, and then twenty million).

Light Blast is very much a conservative film in how it views the world, particularly with regards to the criminal element.  This is underscored in the sequence of Ron’s introduction.  The bank robbers are filthy scumbags, cackling with glee at their vicious misdeeds.  They even shoot a hostage in the back a few times just for kicks (and to make the audience detest them all the more).  An older woman watching this goes positively bloodthirsty, demanding that the cops murder the bad guys outright.  Naturally, Ron is happy to oblige, taking out the robbers and stating, “It’s maggots like you that make me like my job.”  Crime is not to be tolerated, and its perpetrators cannot be allowed to live (one has to wonder how Ron would deal with, say, a jaywalker?).  This is a black and white world, populated with black and white characters.  The film this most resembles in this respect (or at least the one I kept referencing in my mind) is Cobra which opens in a similar fashion (and to be fair, a great many films of this ilk contain prologue/hero intro scenes in this vein), but was released the following year.  Could it be that for once the Italian film industry were leaders rather than copycats?  Well, no, not really, since Light Blast’s attitude towards criminals is an extension of films like the Death Wish and Dirty Harry franchises, and certainly there were other films in between with a similar outlook (typically with a vigilante hero rather than a cop, but the two quickly intermingled and became a third thing), but the Light Blast/Cobra comparison really sticks out to me.  

Further to this is the idea that Ron is a man for whom his job is his life (killing’s his business, and business is fine).  Sure, we’re given a few token scenes of “domestic” life with his girlfriend Jack (Peggy Rowe), but they are totally joyless.  There is absolutely no chemistry between these two characters, and Jack is essentially an expositional tool and a motive for vengeance only.  In the middle of a miserable dinner, Jack races to the phone when it rings and then jets out when work comes a-calling.  He gets more excited investigating a crime scene than he does spending time with his lady friend.  Ron is so myopically intent on taking out bad guys, he neither blinks nor shows any sense of loss when his colleagues are killed or hurt (actually, he is further encouraged to go on the warpath by a wounded co-worker [“get those son of a bitches”]; Ron’s sensibility is the only correct one).  He doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on an adversary.  He has no compunction about using innocent bystanders to aid him in tailing one of Yuri’s henchmen rather than using the skills we assume he should possess as a police officer.  He is a sociopath, a characteristic remarked upon explicitly by Yuri, who claims that he admires Ron’s “cold efficiency.”  And that’s coming from a guy who liquefies human beings for a living.

This brings us to the character of Yuri himself, an equally forbidding character and the one interesting concept in the film.  Yuri is a pure comic book supervillain.  He employs a super-science weapon to hold power over the masses (the fact that it only affects people in proximity to liquid crystal display time pieces is a flaw, to be sure).  He has numerous henchmen, a notion I’ve always simultaneously loved and questioned, because for how marvelous it would be to have them, the practicalities of recruitment and retention make them extremely implausible (so let’s just take them on face value).  He has an underground lair in an unusual location.  But most of all, he believes that he’s doing all of this horrible stuff with the noblest of intentions driven by a personal tragedy.  Yuri understands that “money buys power,” and that his invention will make him “more powerful than God” (assuming God wears a digital watch; most likely a Casio Databank).  Nevertheless, he declares that his ultimate goal is world peace, might making right and all that.  He is a monster with a cause, just like Ron.  The only difference is that Yuri is indiscriminate in his choice of victims, while Ron is only slightly more discerning.

MVT:  The film’s action sequences stand out for being both multitudinous and well-executed.  They are the glue binding the film together, but I think they ultimately struggle to do so because the non-action scenes are so incredibly hollow, it makes sitting in one spot in anticipation of the next car chase/shootout/et cetera something of a chore.  Unless you enjoy reaction shots without reactions.

Make or Break:  The first body melt piqued my interest, and Castellari doesn’t shy away from the gore.  If only there had been just a few more of them.

Score:  5.75/10       

Hammerhead (1987)

Even if you’re into Speedos, those tiny, skin tight swimming briefs that have become synonymous with Eurotrash and body-type-to-Speedo-size inverse proportionality, there is simply no way in Hell you can defend the invention and implementation of the banana hammock.  Like the Speedo, men who really shouldn’t wear banana hammocks seem to wear them more than other people do.  The other side of the coin is that they’re a favorite undergarment of men in the porn industry (not that I would know anything about that), who are usually fit enough to pull them off (pardon the pun).  These types of under clothing simultaneously scream “vanity” and “I couldn’t give a fuck.”  I’ve personally never met a single person who could take a banana hammock seriously, which is why they are typically employed in films to tickle the funny bone (pardon the pun, again).  There’s nothing more hilarious for some people than seeing a thin swath of cotton (or lamé) barely covering a man’s giblets while either their flyspeck-follicled gut and thighs strain to envelope the briefs and/or snap the waistband or the whole pathetic affair sags limply off a some scrawny stronzo’s nethers like soft bread dough stretching from your hand to the kitchen table, threatening a sneak peek between the gaps at any moment.  The latter is sadly the case with “comedy relief” sidekick Jose (Jorge Gil) while improbably romancing the delicious Julia (Donna Rosea, who actually can pull off the French cut bikini look) in Enzo G. Castellari’s Hammerhead (aka Cobra Revenger aka Special Agent Hammer aka Hammer).  At least a viewer’s confoundment at this scenario is paid off later in the film (you really should be able to guess how from the get-go, but that’s neither here nor there), so there’s that.

Hammer (Daniel Greene) is a Miami cop who loves to sleep in late with his dog, and doesn’t play by the rules.  Greg (Jeff Moldovan), an old buddy from Hammer’s days in Jamaica, is killed after coming to the flinty cop for help with some ruffians who are after him.  Hammer heads back to the island to find out who killed his pal and bring them to justice.  And did I mention he doesn’t play by the rules?  Because he doesn’t.

Two things running through this film are ideas of friendship and loyalty.  Hammer, Greg, Jose, and Carlos (Antoni Corone) used to form a team (of cops, criminals, or simply mercenaries, we never know completely) called the Storm Riders.  They are men bonded through violence and machismo, and their influence for the better on Jamaica was widespread, as we learn from some interspersed dialogue.  Together as a team, they were able to enact a positive force.  We never learn why the team broke up (or if we did, I must have missed it), but we know that when the team fell apart, it allowed for flagitious forces to rise up and corrupt the island.  The Storm Riders’ bond, their loyalty to each other, is implied as the core of what they were able to accomplish.  As their leader, Hammer was the obvious lynchpin.  The others took their cues in “proper” behavior from him.  Jose maintains this loyalty into the present to the point that he is almost a lapdog for Hammer.  It’s difficult to take Jose seriously as a man of action for the majority of the film, as he’s played largely as a horny trickster character, though he does prove himself in the back stretch to, in fact, have the qualities that earn respect and prove that Hammer’s ideology is the correct one.  Sans Hammer, the other three Storm Riders don’t measure up.  Without getting into any plot twists, Greg gets in above his head; he can’t deal with his adversity, and he has to come to Hammer for aid.  Carlos is nowhere to be found when Hammer first returns to Jamaica.  Whether dead or crawled into a hole or worse, we don’t find out until further into the runtime (did you guess which yet?).  Jose has become a taxi driver, has eschewed his violent life, and become a “lesser” man for it, a lifeless soul trudging through his days.  Reuniting with Hammer reignites Jose’s zest for a life of conflict, a life of meaning.  Hammer needs to redeem himself for his irresponsibility in leaving the island by returning and once again demonstrating his loyalty to this place and his friends (including, significantly, his ex-girlfriend Marta [the gorgeous Melonee Rodgers] and the daughter he didn’t know he had).

Hammerhead also deals with the past, its mistakes being revisited on the present, and the idea of fate as it affects the protagonist.  Greg comes out of Hammer’s past to remind him of his former life.  His current life is normalized (a dog, a steady job, a boss he butts heads with on a regular basis [we can assume, since, you know, he’s a cop who doesn’t play by the rules and all]).  Realizing that he is obligated by his ties to Jamaica, he returns to a place he once called home, and it’s there that he discovers that he cannot get away from this former life and his responsibilities as a man simply by moving away from them.  Hammer was meant for Jamaica, and Jamaica needs Hammer.  Without him there, the island and his friends fell apart (more or less, or at least were less fulfilled than when he was there).  Hammer’s past is not done with him, and we have the understanding that if it hadn’t been Greg who came to Hammer, someone else would have at some point to reveal his place in this world (after all, without this siren song/call to duty, we wouldn’t have a film at all), and Hammer is man enough to comprehend his destiny and own up to it.

This film is largely unpolished, however it is entertaining up to a point (one thing that can be said about Castellari is that his films [from my experience] never forget that they exist to bring enjoyment).  The filmmakers use a lot of dolly shots and even more slow motion photography, and both bring with them a certain amount of style, to be sure.  The action scenes work, for the most part, because they maintain both a high quality/theatrical flair in the stuntwork and a kinetic dynamism (read: everything is amped up to eleven) in the interpersonal sequences.  This is, unfortunately, undercut by a seeming lack of proper coverage or possibly poor editing choices which give the film a scattershot ambience throughout.  The script is, of course, insanely predictable and loaded with scenes and dialogue untethered from actuality (discounting the heightened reality of the action pieces).  If I had to guess, I would have to say that Castellari wanted to go to Jamaica for a vacation, so he set a film there, shot whatever he felt he needed to shoot there, and then spent the rest of the time kicking back with some fruity drinks on a beach somewhere.  Bear in mind, I’m not against this, but it makes for a slight product that knows all the numbers it needs to hit, knows that we know all the numbers it needs to hit, barely hits them, and then just walks away from it.  Kind of like how Hammer walked away from Jamaica in the first place.

MVT:  The action scenes are good.  I can’t say much more about them than that, honestly.

Make or Break:  The first action set piece includes a motorcycle jumping not one but two cars as well as a car going up on two wheels for a bit.  It’s zany enough to be fun, but not far enough above middling to be all that memorable aside from a couple of individual images.

Score:  6.25/10           

Episode #316: A New Barbarian For Each Corpse

Welcome back for another episode of the GGtMC!!!

This week the gents are joined by fellow Gent, Andy from the North, for coverage of A Dragonfly For Each Corpse (1974) directed by leon Klimovsky and The New Barbarians (1983) directed by Enzo Castellari!!!

Direct download: ggtmc_316.mp3 

 

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Adios!!!

Episode #303: Lord Love a Striker

Welcome back for some more of that GGtMC goodness!!!

This week Sammy and Will are joined by Tom Deja from the Better in the Dark podcast for coverage of Lord Love A Duck (1966) directed by George Axelrod and Striker (1988) directed by Enzo G. Casteralli!!!

Direct download: ggtmc_303.mp3 

 

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Adios!!!

Escape From The Bronx (1983)

Film actors can come from literally anywhere. Many spend years studying (and understudying) their craft, hoping for that big break. Others seem to just fall into it. For example, Marilyn Monroe started on her fateful path to stardom after being photographed at the munitions plant in which she worked. Johnny Depp accompanied a friend to an audition when director Wes Craven asked him to read for the part of Glen in A Nightmare On Elm Street. Harrison Ford worked as a carpenter building cabinets for George Lucas when he was cast in American Graffiti. All went on to successful careers showcasing their particular talents. Yet for every diamond-in-the-rough happenstance deems worthy of bestowing on the world, there are dozens, if not hundreds (and sometimes it feels like thousands), of onscreen personalities pulled from obscurity simply because they looked good and happened to be in the right place at the right time. If IMDB is to be believed (though it seems very plausible to me), Mark Gregory (aka Marco Di Grigorio) was discovered in a gym in Rome.

The Bronx has become a war zone. "Deinfestation Annihilation Squads" patrol the neighborhoods, evicting residents and blowing buildings up. Meanwhile, Trash (Gregory) rides the wastelands on his motorcycle, running weapons to the underground (literally) resistance, led by Dablone (Antonio Sabato). The president of General Construction Corporation, Mr. Clark (Ennio Girolami, aka Thomas Moore), has plans to level the Bronx and build a nice, clean city of the future on top of its ashes, and he has clandestinely ordered DAS leader, Floyd Wrangler (Henry Silva), to deport and/or exterminate the low class residents. As the Bronx residents become more and more embattled, the resistance hatches a risky scheme in a bid to force the corporation to negotiate.

Enzo G. Castellari's Escape From The Bronx (aka Fuga Dal Bronx) is really nothing more than a sequel to his own pasta-pocalypse film, 1990: Bronx Warriors (aka 1990: I Guerrieri Del Bronx). Its title is strictly a ploy to cash in on John Carpenter's vastly superior Escape From New York (and if you've ever seen the amount of non-Django movies with the word "Django" in the title, you'll be very familiar with this practice). From its first shots, the film embodies a distrust of government and big business. As the silver-suited armies tramp through the streets, shooting and burning everyone they see, there is a loudspeaker reassuring residents that they only want to relocate them to housing in New Mexico, and "there is nothing to fear." The instant those words are uttered, we know they're untrustworthy and up to no good. With this setup, the film alludes (consciously or unconsciously) to the Warsaw ghetto under the Nazi regime, and on that level, the film works, though the reference is a tad heavy-handed, I think.

Along those lines, the film is also a play on the battle against homogeneity. The Annihilation Squads dress exactly alike (or as alike as a shoestring budget will allow). We cannot see their faces clearly behind the visors of their helmets. They are the same, interchangeable. The only one who dresses any different is Wrangler, but that's only to distinguish him as the leader (though Silva's cheekbones alone could do that). The Bronx denizens are more individualistic. Though they generally dress in tatters, we can see their faces. The various gangs have distinctive styles of dress (zoot suiters, cabaret tap dancers, pirates, and so on), but each character has a slight variation of their own. The city Clark and company want to erect is full of clean structural lines with no individualism allowed, and it is planned to be built right on top of the Bronx, in effect stamping out any distinctiveness with the sheer weight of sameness. The future will be bright, shiny, and dull.

Trash fits into the antihero archetype snugly. He has no gang anymore, and his only interest in the resistance is in how he will profit from it. When Dablone says he should move underground with them, Trash basically says they're all idiots, and they're not any safer underground than above. He doesn't want responsibility, and the only time he accepts it is when it is thrust upon him. When the film starts, we get a Robin Hood feel about Trash. The government/corporation knows him by name and even seems to be looking for him specifically. His parents have a full-sized poster of him in their home. He brings necessities to the resistance. Problem is, rather than robbing from the rich to give to the poor, Trash robs from the rich to sell to the poor. It isn't until the struggle is made personal, that he takes a proactive hand. As Edmund Burke said, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Trash cannot stand apart from his fellow men. The only way they can triumph (in fact, survive) is united.

Castellari has been around the block a few times, and he knows what he's doing with a camera, and he certainly realizes this is an action film above all else (the science fiction aspects are fairly tangential). There are scenes of immolations, shootings, explosions, blunt force traumas, and mayhem of all types. The problem is (and it always pains me to complain about things like this) there is too much of a good thing here. The carnage is wall-to-wall, but it's so pervasive (and scattershot), it loses its impact. Add to that, the main plot/plan of the characters takes so long to get to, it feels arbitrary. It literally feels like there was a two-sentence synopsis of the movie, and Castellari just made everything else up. 

It's been argued (and I think the best James Bond films are sterling examples of this) that the better the villain's plan is, the better the action movie is. Unfortunately, the villain's plan in Escape From The Bronx never goes past level one. The whole movie proceeds not in peaks and valleys but in a straight line. Consequently, there's no cathartic payoff at the climax. Finally, the pell-mell narrative structure leaves an unfocused, shrug-inducing feel in the viewer. It's worth a view and could even be useful as something to keep on in the background of a party, but on its own, this one just left me kind of cold.

MVT: Henry Silva owns every scene he is in (no shock there). With no meat on the bones of this check-cashing gig, he still winds up with plenty of gristle between his teeth.

Make Or Break: Trash owns a revolver that is even more powerful than Harry Callahan's .44 Magnum, apparently. You'll know the scene when you see it. 

Score: 5.75/10