Bruce Lee and Chinese Gods (1976)

AKA: Pang shen feng; Story of Chinese Gods
Director: Chih Hui Chang

I don't even know where to begin with this one, as the size of this film's weirdness makes it nearly impossible to get a hold of. Should I start with ancient Chinese gods and their motorcycle clouds? Or the frequent dismemberment, charring, and other acts of insane violence? How about the fact that, when all else fails, the ancient gods of China have to call on the ultimate supernatural guardian of the East, Bruce Lee (sporting a cool third eye in the center of his forehead)?

There is an evil warlord who is oppressing the people of his province. His wife is a fox spirit, and although they are sexy, fox spirits are always deceitful and naughty. Disgusted by the ruler's evil deeds, the gods, one of whom can make his eyes extend way far out of his head, send a wise demigod type fellow down to Earth to talk sense to the despot. In accordance with the behavior you would expect from a ruler who murders his most loyal advisors and burns lots of people alive for the hell of it, he doesn't really see the error of his ways. Angered and frustrated, the demigod whips up a tornado that carries many of the peasants to a neighboring province, where the ruler is benevolent and honest.

The evil ruler decides to declare war on the good leader, but when his assassins fail to carry out their job, the fox spirit suggests that the evil ruler enlist the aid of the dark forces, who are pretty good at such things. In turn, the wise demigod enlists the aid of his pals up in the heavens and all out supernatural war ensues. Evil Taoist priests, monsters and demons of every possible shape and size, and god riding around on clouds that make motorcycle noises are all part of the fun. When the forces of evil send in the Three Kings of Hell as their coup de gras, the good gods summon up Bruce Lee. Yep. When God himself can't solve a problem, he calls on Bruce Lee. Wouldn't you? Bruce Lee, complete with his official silly fighting noises, materializes to kick some King of Hell ass. Bruce can do kungfu and shape shift into a stoned (not stone) dragon, among other powers he never used in his other movies but we always suspected he had in real life.

I'm not sure exactly how accurate the mythology on display is. As best I can tell, the reason Bruce Lee is no longer with us is because he had to travel back in time to like the Han Dynasty or something in order to assume his role as the ultimate god of China. He brought with him his knowledge of motorcycles and applied to it some clouds for his buddies. So, like, 90% culturally accurate.

I've really only scratched the surface of how insane this cartoon gets. This movie has more craziness packed into each of its artfully drawn but poorly animated cels than most any other film around. Was this for kids? Surely not. It shows people being chopped in half and burned at the stake, flailing and shrieking as the melt. It has demons ripping people apart and eating their limbs. I mean, sure it's the kind of movie I watched as a kid, but these kids these days are made of more tender meat. Kid friendly or not, Chinese Gods really is one of the most unbelievably fun and inexplicable things I've seen. It makes me feel a bit light-headed. The animation is not great, but you have to overlook the cheap animation and enjoy the delirium. And you can also admire the artwork, if not the outcome of trying to make it move.

Make or Break: The violence. Ostensibly made for children, this movie isn't afraid to revel in everything from people being burned alive to people being chopped to bits.

MVT: Bruce Lee's boobs. Seriously, man. It's like he hangs out with Kate Upton.

Episode #320: Only Lovers Left Alive

Welcome to the GGtMC!!!

This week Sammy and Will couldn't get together due to scheduling difficulties so we are blessed to have great friends of the show, Scott and Kat from Married with Clickers podcast, fill in for us!!! They are bringing you a review of the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive (2014).

Thanks again to Scott and Kat and make sure to check out Married with Clickers!!!

Direct download: ggtmc_320.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Adios!!!

Episode #319: The Long Thieves

Welcome to another episode of the GGtMC!!!

This week we are sponsored by diabolikdvd.com, so head over and buy some discs and tell them the GGtMC sent you over!!! It was Large William's turn to program and he chose two Robert Altman films, The Long Goodbye (1973) starring Elliot Gould and Thieves Like Us (1974) starring Keith Carradine!!!

Direct download: ggtmc_319.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Adios!!!

Heavenly Bodies (1984)

A lot of people are reticent to talk on the internet about the ideas they have for businesses, stories, products, and so on.  You can’t blame them.  If the public in general are opportunistic, self-serving backstabbers offline, just imagine what a bigger playground and a veil of anonymity grants them.  But since what I’m about to talk about involves characters I will never have the rights to use anyway, and I have absolutely zero interest in developing the concept with characters I made up myself, I’m just going to let the chips fall where they may.  That out of the way, this is my open letter/pitch to whomever at Marvel Studios or Twentieth Century Fox, or elsewhere who owns the rights to The New Mutants or just has a passing interest in reading this drivel.  

The year is 1984. “Professor” Charles Xavier's (hopeful casting would be Lucinda Dickey) Rec Center has been a hangout and haven for the kids of the community for years (likely Los Angeles, but I’m flexible. Aside from the usual activities the center sponsors, there is also a video arcade lovingly dubbed “The Danger Room.” A group of teens (Codenames/street names: Karma, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Mirage, and Cannonball) who frequent the center also just happen to have a breakdancing team (guess what their name is). They take their skills to the streets to raise extra funds for the center as well as to find youths in trouble and rescue them. This is how they run across Illyana Rasputin and Doug Ramsey and bring these new recruits into the fold. Naturally, they're all superpowered mutants, as well (a nice, little analogy for teenaged awkwardness all by itself).  Often, the kids run afoul of the ultra-aggressive students of the Frost Academy, nicknamed the Hellions (also mutants, in case you needed to be told). Their mentor Ms. Emma Frost wants to expand her academy, and Professor X's Rec Center is the ideal location to do it.  The first film in the trilogy would focus on this conflict.  At the end, as all the kids are breaking and having a good time, Illyana is upstairs summoning up demons.  The second film would introduce Magma and be about both Illyana’s trip to Limbo/transformation into Magik as well as Mirage and the rest of the kids’ struggle with the Demon Bear.  The third film would bring alien techno-organism Warlock into the mix, develop his relationship with Doug/Cypher, and set the team against Warlock’s dad, The Magus.  That’s the basics.  Superpowered battles, teen angst, mesh half-shirts, and breakdancing, all in one franchise. Who could resist?  Pass the word along.

Samantha Blair (Cynthia Dale) is a wage slave in a steno pool (remember those?) for The Man, but she has a dream.  Along with friends KC (Patricia Idlette) and Patty (Pam Henry), she scrapes up enough bread to rent out a warehouse, renovate it, and start up her own aerobics studio (the titular one, no less).  As her client list expands due to her “unorthodox,” people-friendly approach, Sam sets her eyes on a second career as host of a morning exercise show.   But her success is ill-met by jerkweed Debbie (Laura Henry) and her boyfriend Jack (Walter George Alton, far better known as the eponymous Pumaman), who also owns Sam’s main competition.  Can a young dancer balance love with a football player (Steve, as essayed by Richard Rebiere), life with a child (Joel, as essayed by Stuart Stone), and aerobicizing all on her own?  The mind boggles.

Lawrence Dane’s Heavenly Bodies (incidentally co-produced by Playboy Enterprises) is much like any other of the various Chasing Your Dream films of the Eighties.  It centers on a young woman with a particular skill set.  She has had to (and still has to during the course of the film) struggle against forces both economic and sexist.  She has supportive, nonentity friends (seriously, why did KC want in on this business if she never does aerobics?), but she shines above even them because she has a special talent that just aches to be discovered.  What it does that’s interesting is twofold.  First, it makes Sam a single mother, and this shapes the core of her character.  While she does love her son (she even explains to him what orgies are), it’s clear that she had to put her life on hold for some time in order to earn the money to support the two of them, and her relationship with Joel’s father was formative in how Sam views new romantic prospects.  Second (and related to the first), is that her relationship with Steve is actually compelling and a little more realistic than we’re used to seeing in this sort of movie.  Their meet cute kicks off with the burly pigskinner (I’m just going to own that word) dressed in quasi-drag (replete with Daisy cup breasts and pig tails), mocking Sam and her job.  After earning his respect via the most erotic push-up contest in cinema history, she still rejects his advances.  Granted, it doesn’t take tons for her to relent, but the romance come from a place of mutual respect, and the fact that Steve quickly takes a shine to Joel strengthens the bond between Steve and Sam and the audience.  

The film also emphasizes watching and television (and television watching) as elements that shape Sam’s world.  She gets her own show, and though it feels mutually exclusive from her aerobics studio work in terms of popularity (we’re never really shown a direct correlation), it still makes her a media personality with a modicum of celebrity as well as providing an object of desire for some.  It also gives her the power to stand up for her cause that she wouldn’t have had otherwise.  Further, the finale of the film is a televised “workout marathon,” and whether or not Sam and her team win, that it is being broadcast to homes all over Canada (I’m assuming, since that’s where it was filmed) means that she will be judged by the public at large.  Not only does she stand to lose her business space, she stands to lose her entire livelihood, and if none of this was being filmed for an audience, there would likely never have even been a showdown.  Also of note is a scene where Sam acclimates herself to the set of her television program, and this scene harkens back to the “You Were Meant For Me” sequence in Singin’ In The Rain; from the prominent placement of a tall, white ladder, to the background color scheme, to the self-reflexive environment including lights, fans, and cameras, to the point that Sam names Gene Kelly as having a major impact on her life.  Of course, there’s also a sequence that directly apes this film’s biggest influence, Flashdance, but the first one feels just a hair more heartfelt, in my opinion.

Any film whose main point of interest involves sweaty female bodies can’t really be blamed for having the camera emphasize same, and this one certainly does its damnedest to raise shots of women’s crotches clad in tight, bright lycra to an artform.  However, I believe that this prioritization does the film a disservice in the long run, not because of what it wants to deliver to its audience but because of its overkill in doing so (I won’t get into the multitudinous plot holes in this thing because we’d be here all day).  This film is montage crazy (and these are obviously heavily influenced by the style of music videos, themselves montages in their disconnectedness from linear time and space), and it’s quite clear from only a few minutes in that this is the way things are going to be.  The opening title sequence encompasses the girls and their quest to kickstart Heavenly Bodies.  This is almost immediately followed by another montage as Sam’s client base expands.  Montages are often intended to cover a long period of time and move a story into its next phase, but this film is so smitten with them that the narrative is given no room to develop of its own accord (whether because its producers had no faith in it by itself or simply couldn’t care less about it, I’ll leave to you to decide).  I would wager that Heavenly Bodies is eighty-five percent aerobics montages and fifteen percent actual story.  And again, that’s all well and fine, if all you’re interested in is watching women exercise.  But if that’s the sum total of your desire in watching this movie, why not just watch any one of the profusion of aerobics shows that you can watch for free (and in less time) on television?       

MVT:  Cynthia Dale may not light the world on fire with her acting chops, but the woman has a plethora of heart, and it’s all on display here.

Make or Break:  The marathon at the end is what it’s all about (like the big tournament in almost every movie like this, including The Karate Kid, released the same year), and it works.  Nevertheless, the filmmakers emphasized so many similar scenes before it, that it robs the climax of a good deal of its power.  So, I guess that’s kind of damning with faint praise.

Score:  6.5/10

The Cheerleaders (1973)

Director: Paul Glickler
Starring: Stephanie Fondue, Denise Dillaway, Jovita Bush

Young Jeannie has a problem: at fifteen years of age, she is still, tragically, a virgin. She figures the best way to lick this problem is by taking the advice of a couple friends and trying out for the cheerleading squad. She makes it, but her efforts to deflower herself at the hands of some virile young lad continue to be stymied when the squad captain Claudia has made a bet that she can foil Jeannie's noble plans for the entire season. Wacky hijinks ensue and require the cheerleaders to take off all their clothes as often as possible, all in the name of sexual liberation and freedom and America!

Oh yeah, the sleazy janitor is also planning to fix the next game, because someone always has to be fixing the game in these cheerleader movies. Unfortunately for him, the cheerleaders have their own plan to help the team by sapping the opponents of all their strength. Can you guess how? Remember, this was back in the days when football players were dedicated gridiron gladiators who never fooled around before the game and could have their strength instantly sapped by them by having sex the night before. Too bad the cheerleaders also had a big orgy with their own players, making everyone on the field so very sleepy! But wait! Is that a fourth string running back the other team has? The cheerleaders missed him! Can anyone but Jeannie come to the rescue and save Amorosa from the shame of losing a high school football game?

The Cheerleaders is unrelenting and indefensible sleaze. And predictably enough, to that we say, "Rah rah rah!" The biggest complaint that you can lodge against this film isn't that it features gratuitous nudity or horrible acting,. No, the biggest flaw in this film is that the cheerleading is really quite bad. Nothing rhymes. None of the cheers are catchy. Opening narration explains how the Amorosa High football team is on a winning streak and school spirit is at an all-time high. What could be causing this is a mystery. And though the film implies it's all thanks to the cheerleaders, when you actually see them cheer, you'll realize that the upturn in school spirit is still a mystery. The cheerleaders aren't even performing in unison. How can the team go on to win the big game when the cheerleading is so shoddy?

So you know, what with the cheering being so bad and all, it just sort of shattered the illusion of reality for me that this film could have otherwise created. Everything else is pretty true to life, after all, like how the cheerleaders drive around in their convertible sports car all the time in their cheerleader outfits and still doing cheers, even when they're just going to eat hotdogs, or how the cheerleaders are always having naked slumber parties, or how they always save the day -- usually by employing sex. These parts of the film take on an almost cinema verite reflection of real life which is undermined whenever we're asked to believe that these are the greatest cheerleaders in all the land.

Needless to say, this is very much a "what you see is what you get" type of film, and believe me you see a lot. This film is a prime example of what you could get away with in the carefree and easy 70s that would get you locked up today. Consider, first of all, that the crisis presented to us is that a fifteen-year-old girl hasn't gotten laid yet. No one leaps up and says, "Well, you should wait until you get older anyway." Nah, the general reaction is more along the lines of, "Weird! Let's get you some sex!" In addition, you have older teachers, male and female, both getting it on with underage (according to the script, remember) girls, and that's cool, too. And then you have Jeannie's own dad who leers at his naked daughter from time to time before also having sex with one of the cheerleaders. And then you have the scene in which Jeannie's initiation to the squad involves her having to shower in the boys' locker room, just when the team comes running in with their minds on a gangbang. Har har har! And then Claudia teaches Jeannie that the best way to seduce thugs is to pretend you want to be treated rough. These are all valuable lessons for young girls to learn, of course.

Tasteless doesn't even begin to describe The Cheerleaders. But like most oddball skin flicks from the 1970s, there's such an exuberant..."innocence" certainly isn't the word I'm looking for...such a joyously perverse celebration of all things tawdry. If you are going to be offended, then you're better off being offended by the lack of a plot or the amazing absence of acting skill from every performer. But at the same time, you should just be ashamed of yourself if you sit down to watch The Cheerleaders and expect taut plotting, engrossing characters, and stand-out performances. If that's the case, then frankly you deserve to have sat through a scene of a fat guy in a jock strap crawling around on the floor while a cheerleader licks a baseball bat.

Since this is technically supposed to be a sex comedy, the movie does have to take time out from all the nudity for crude humor the likes of which would make even Benny Hill shake his head in embarrassment. Ho ho ho! The janitor is a peeping tom! Oh, the hilarity! Jeannie's dad is willing to let the cheerleading team stay over for a slumber party, and he offers them grilled wieners! And, um...well, really that's about it. Most of the gags involved cheerleaders eating phallic shaped food items or bending over.

Curiously, almost no one form this cast went on to bigger and better things. In fact, most of them never went on to anything, period, and this remains the sole entry in their filmography. Cheerleader Kimbery Hyde went on to star in a couple of those naughty nurse movies, but the only familiar face, if you can call it that, is Pat Wright as the football team's coach. He starred in a stack of films including Revenge of the Cheerleaders, the hillbilly sexploitation comedy Sassy Sue, Caged Heat, I Spit on Your Corpse (yes, the sleazy follow-up to I Spit on Your Grave), Candy Tangerine Man, and Russ Meyer's Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. In 1992, he got back to his roots with a part in The Bikini Car Wash Company. Curiously, almost all his roles cast him as a coach, a cop, or a creepy in-law.

As a skin flick, though, you'd really have a hard time beating The Cheerleaders. Or maybe, you wouldn't have a hard time beating it. The cheerleading outfits are tiny, but that's not of much concern since they come off in almost every scene. Everyone gets naked all the time, and sex is had in cheesy bachelor pads, fast food restaurants (nothing turns you on like have sex on a dirty deep fryer), car washes, locker rooms, trophy rooms, gardens, and well eventually you just lose track.

Make or Break: The willingness to commit to irredeemable sleaze without ironic armor or "we're all a satire" attempts to justify how tasteless it all is. This is about as "pure" as X-rated exploitation comes.

MVT: Stephanie Fondue as Jeannie. Not just because she's cute and willing to indulge this nonsense, but because she has a 70s glam rock mullet that would make Suzi Quatro proud.

Nomads (1986)

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

For a long, long time there were (and still are today) certain cultures that believed that the act of having one’s picture taken either caused harm to or robbed one of one’s soul.  Possibly this is linked to the thought that mirrors are both essential in communication with saints and spirits as well as in their role as portals to other dimensions (which can function as either good or evil, my favorite cinematic example of which is found in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness).  A portion of how cameras work (at least the early varieties) is  via mirrors inverting images, and even though some societies may not generally know about the design of the apparatus itself, their ability to duplicate one’s image (like looking in a mirror) takes on the sorcerous role of spiritual jailer.  But we know better, don’t we?  Like Arthur C. Clarke stated, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and so long as we hold ourselves up as more enlightened, it’s easy to use this platitude to explain (or explain away) just about anything.  Still, there is some part of me that wonders, with the preponderance of people describing every last inch of their lives in graphic detail on the internet, with the facility with which people will place so much of their most sensitive information online, with the desire many people have to want to be someone else in some imagined reality on the web, if we have perhaps robbed ourselves (or forfeited, if you happen to place any sort of credence in the existence and importance of actual souls) of our own anima?  Maybe that’s overreaching in a film review for John McTiernan’s Nomads, but I think it has some relevance, considering the emphasis on photographs in the film and main character Jean Charles Pommier’s (Pierce Brosnan, post-Remington Steele [sort of] and pre-Goldeneye) use of them in his role as an anthropologist.    

Exhausted during a marathon hospital shift, Dr. Flax (Lesley-Anne Down) is called in to consult on Pommier’s case.  The Frenchman (did I mention he’s French?) is hysterical, shouting seemingly nonsensical sentences (it doesn’t help any that no one in the hospital at the time speaks French), but before he collapses, he manages to break free of his restraints and whisper something cryptic to Flax.  Next thing you know, Flax is reliving the events that lead Pommier to this end as well as embroiling herself in things she probably shouldn’t, all of which centers on a gang of punks and their death-black van.

Like I teased with my opening salvo, this film deals to some extent with the thin line between savage and civilized worlds.  Pommier moves to Los Angeles to take up a teaching position, to live like a “normal” person.  However, there is an undertone that Pommier is fleeing something from his time among “savages.”  One of the first images in the film is of an Inuit, hood raised, face hidden in blackness.  As the credits end, the camera moves into that dark abyss, and the shot dissolves to the city at night.  There is a (arguably) throwaway line that Los Angeles is a city built on top of a desert.  Pommier tells his wife that he’s amazed to see these eponymous Nomads “in a modern city.”  The Nomads literally wander around town, doing whatever they wish, including defacing property and even killing people.  They are portrayed as punks (and interestingly played by not-quite-so-youthful actors like Adam Ant and Mary Woronov), and really they are a perfect fit for the analogy.  They stand apart from society while traveling among society.  They do not obey the rules of society, employing the seemingly pointless brutality of a people with no ties to or use for civilization.

In this same way, the film plays with ideas of perception and performance, notably through Pommier and his camera.  He comes alive when taking photos of people interesting to him from an anthropological viewpoint.  Nevertheless, the Nomads do not show up in any of the pictures he takes, their souls already being both free of corporeality and trapped by the land on which they dwell.  As he follows the punks around, they tease Pommier along.  They look directly at him and/or pretend to be acting off guard, allowing him to photograph them, knowing his efforts are futile.  At one point, Dancing Mary (Woronov) even leaps up on an automobile and does a little gyrating directly for Pommier and his camera.  Likewise, the film alters perspectives constantly throughout its story.  Sometimes we are watching events in the present as Flax experiences them.  Other times we are watching events Flax is watching in the past as she observes Pommier.  Still other times we are watching events from Pommier’s point of view, and the transitions between past and present, Flax and Pommier, are fluid, often occurring within the same shot.  The characters in the film are as much observers as they are observed, and this, in turn, shapes the film’s reality (quite literally).

On the flip side of this is the concept that the film is possibly describing Flax’s mind as it disintegrates.  Yes, she is exhausted from work, but there’s more to it than that.  She is also newly divorced, and she has moved (by all indications across the country from Boston) to a new place where she knows few people (the major [and somewhat dumbfounding] exception being the high-energy fellow doctor Cassie [Jeannie Elias]) and into a new apartment where she is still in the process of unpacking (her bed is literally a mattress on the floor).  Flax is inexplicably fascinated by Pommier, and after he bites her ear, her slide into surreality commences.  It’s almost as if his perceptual madness is passed on like a virus, all of which stems from something ethereal in the desert landscape resting under the veneer of the city of Los Angeles.  It adds an intriguing layer over the film’s narrative.  However, the filmmakers also don’t really bother to flesh out Flax enough aside from these cursory tidbits to make her journey all that compelling.  It’s as if the film is meant to be solely Pommier’s (and the heart of his narrative is his investigation, not his character), with book end sequences featuring Flax.  Developing her as a more substantial participant in the movie could have gone a long way in enriching some of the themes and adding a bit of complexity.  Instead, her throughline plays more like an extended lead up to the “shock” kicker at the film’s end.  It makes the film experience more frustrating and banausic than it should have been and consequently makes the film itself a very minor footnote in the history of genre cinema.

MVT:  The Nomads are great, not only for the uneasiness they bring but in the casting of them.  It’s not as if any of these thespians shine especially, but that they cast people as old as they did subverts the typical notion of punks as “youth in revolt” and augments the supernatural aspects they represent.

Make or Break:  I love the scene where Woronov dances for the camera.  This is not only since I love the actress in everything she does but also because the scene is both menacing and entertaining simultaneously.

Score:  6.25/10