by ·Comments Off on A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Ching Siu-Tung)

Bad move to watch an awesome HK movie near the start of Shocktober, because now I’m off-mission listing HK movies I need to see, considering a TsuiHarkTober rebrand. Leslie Cheung, incompetent in his job as a tax collector, is told he can sleep for free in the spooky old temple infested by stop-motion skeletal zombies. Meanwhile White Snake herself, Joey Wong, is a hot ghost girl doomed by a giant tree called Old Evil to lure men into becoming new stop-motion skeletal zombies.

Joey with her evil stepmom:

“The bearded guy killed your sister. Let’s report him.” Wu Ma is in every kung fu movie but gets a rare big role here as the bearded guy. After Leslie meets the hot girl (Hsiao-tsing, aka Siu Sin, which sounds just like “Susan”) he gets the bearded guy invested in rescuing her soul and defeating the spirit so she can be reincarnated. They spend a long time fighting a gigantic tongue in the woods… cool movie.

by ·Comments Off on Demons (1985, Lamberto Bava)

I remember thinking this was quite bad when I saw it on VHS twenty-plus years ago, and it probably is, but all qualitative analysis goes out the window when you’re watching Demons in a sold-out theater with Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin performing the soundtrack live. In fact it’s a solid horror movie once you throw out the idea that characters or dialogue or motivation or logic matter. What matters is that people are trapped in a theater full of demons – most will be killed horribly and/or turned into zombie demons themselves, and a few might survive. And after the credits roll, you forget which ones survived and why, as Goblin performs a full set of hits synched to music videos of kills from Argento, Romero, and Deodato movies.

Internet says the two who escaped through the hole in the roof caused by a helicopter smashing through the roof (!) are Urbano Barberini (the killer cop of Opera, who’d previously motorcycled through the theater cutting down zombies with a sword) and Natasha Hovey (who turns demonic and dies over the end credits). The victims are gathered by invitation of Michele Soavi to watch a movie about a demonic plague caused by a cursed mask, as the same scenario plays out in the theater. Some hopped-up punks break into the place only to become extra victims. A bloody, oozy, gory good time with a big crowd, and even Claudio was laughing at some of the English line deliveries. I haven’t seen Bava/Argento’s part two, and an attempt to make part three resulted in Soavi’s great The Church.

Hovey inviting doom from Soavi:

Victim #1:

Getting to the chopper:

Brutality in front of 4 Flies and No Nukes posters:

by ·Comments Off on The Hitcher (1986, Robert Harmon)

Thought I’d watch a Classic and Current horror double feature with Talk To Me, then had to admit I’m very old now and the mid-’80s counts as classic. Feels like a Duel remake amped up to self-parody… kid discovers that the hitcher is murdering people, the hitcher knows he knows, and becomes an invincible revenge spirit to destroy the kid and everyone he meets. Of course Rutger Hauer is our hitcher and eventually his Flesh + Blood costar JJ Leigh appears as a waitress who believes the kid’s crazy story and joins the chase only to get horribly murdered (offscreen) in the end. I kept waiting for C. Thomas Howell to show up since that’s an old man’s name, but it’s the kid – he’d been one of the Outsiders and a Red Dawn-er in the past few years. I think his character is a cross-country car deliveryman, like in Vanishing Point. Harmon has also made a JCVD action film and a string of Tom Selleck TV movies. Adam Nayman’s review is good.

I love the wide shots:

by ·Comments Off on Peking Opera Blues (1986, Tsui Hark)

Intrigue in 1913 – Brigitte Lin is a general’s daughter working secretly for the rebellion along with opera daughter Sally Yeh (also of the unrelated Shanghai Blues, blind girl in The Killer). Cherie Chung (Winners & Sinners, Once a Thief) is just trying to steal some jewels and gets involved, not unlike Hayley Atwell in Mission: Impossible. Pretty cool movie with overcomplicated plot, and the audio commentary wasn’t doing much for me (it’s some podcasters with dodgy mics) so I’ll defer to letterboxers Matt and MDF.

by ·Comments Off on Warlock (1989, Steve Miner)

Some of my memorial screenings are more respectful than others… RIP Julian Sands, who was a better actor than allowed by this movie. The Salem witch hunters got this one right, hoping to hang Sands then burn him over a basket of cats, but he escapes to the present day with Richard E. Grant close behind. No doubt due to the Earth’s rotation, the time travel magic also lands them in Malibu. It’s all very Highlander.

We could’ve just rewatched A Room With a View:

Warlock Sands has to collect leaves from Satan’s book, killing and cursing people along the way. He kills a guy who also got killed in Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part 3, and curses his wife Lori “Footloose” Singer to age rapidly via ever-whiter wigs, then drinks the boiled fat of an unbaptized boy to gain flying powers. Grant teams up with Singer and a Mennonite to perform an ancient ritual… just kidding, they chuck a weathervane through his body then smash his hand with a hammer. But Sands escapes to the godless city of Boston and assembles the book using crappy fx, then Lori makes him melt and humanity is saved until the sequel, which I’m in no hurry to watch. David Twohy wrote this and made Timescape before hitting the big time with The Fugitive. Sands returned in part 2, from the director of Hellraiser 3, then Ashley Laurence stars in Warlock 3, along with a new Warlock who was (coincidence, I’m sure) also in a Highlander.

by ·Comments Off on Kung-Fu Master! / Jane B. by Agnes V. (1987-88 Agnes Varda)

Kung-Fu Master! is narrated in past tense by Jane Birkin’s character, who becomes interested in a teenage classmate of her daughter. They invite him on vacation to London, where Jane’s older daughter catches on to their affair, causing huge scandal. The movie is also about video games, and increasingly about the AIDS crisis. The silly title combined with unappealing premise kept me away for years, but this is a proper movie, beautifully made, and a warm family affair (Birkin’s daughters are her real daughters, and the boy is Mathieu Demy).

When Jane shows off the piano in her kitchen in the documentary, I realized the Kung-Fu interiors were shot at her house. But Jane B. is not a documentary, at least not exactly. They put different wigs on her and she acts out alternate lives, both from her own fantasies and stories contributed by Agnes – including an extended “Maurel & Lardy” routine with Laura Betti (the servant in Teorema).

by ·Comments Off on The Falls (1980, Peter Greenaway)

Making more movie lists over here, re-categorizing things, so my first screening from the new project is The Falls by fellow categorizer Greenaway. 92 sections of varying length (some are major characters who will be referenced later, some are just represented with a title card – half the subjects of discussion don’t even appear). All people affected by the Violent Unknown Event (which took place at least three decades before the present interviews) are affected in different ways, but all have interest in birds and flight. They suffer different ailments and dreams, speak in one or more of “the mutant languages,” and are classified as one of “the four newly formulated genders.”

Absurd concepts mixed in with bland facts and read/performed very straight. At one point the narrator is shown onscreen then muted as a later narrator updates his report. Murders and accidents and conspiracies… callbacks and self-references (to PG’s earlier shorts). Not sure if someone being struck by lightning is a reference to the same year’s Act of God. A sinister force called FOX, a society for ornithological extermination, comes up a few times. Tulse Luper is in this, as an influential author whose stories sometimes seep into the film.

Influenced by TV sketch comedy? “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” I searched for “Greenaway” with “Monty Python” and found this interview/manifesto.

by ·Comments Off on On the Silver Globe (1988, Andrzej Zulawski)

Kind of a fully mad Solaris meets The New World, written by someone in love with death monologues. Astounding costume design, though after a while you realize all the locations are the same couple beaches and caves, and that the director’s opening statement about this movie being canceled during production wasn’t bullshit.

First-person camera from astronauts’ shoulder-mounted webcams, and people being really intense about philosophy. A long, delirious dying rant isn’t intense enough for Zulawski, who jumpcuts the speech, cutting out pauses and gaps between words. The astronauts find a new planet, their kids beget more kids and invent religion, then Astronaut Jesus Marek arrives from their home planet and shakes things up. In the meantime, humanity has become enslaved by the psychic sherm creatures. Marek tries talking with the sherms, whines about the earth woman who left him, then he finally falls for a girl on this planet and stops whining as much.

Not looking up all these characters and actors (or even recounting the rest of the plot), but I assume some of these people are returning from The Devil, just from their ranting endurance. Feels at times like a massive Dune-scale epic, then you realize you’ve spent the last half hour watching people in cool costumes rant on the seashore.

Never model yourself after Jesus, or you know what might happen:

by ·Comments Off on Yes, Madam! (1985, Corey Yuen)

Petty thieves named Aspirin (Mang Hoi of Zu Warriors), Strepsil and Panadol accidentally end up with that secret microfilm that everyone in the 80’s was after. Wild-haired John Shum Kin-Fun and Tsui Hark must be buddies – they also costarred in RoboCop ripoff I Love Maria. Unfortunately for them, crime boss James Tien is after the microfilm, and supercop Michelle Yeoh and her British counterpart Cynthia Rothrock are on the case. This is in Criterion’s “Michelle Yeoh Kicks Ass” collection but the white lady kicks 70% more ass.

Cameos by three legends covered in sheetrock dust:

Tien in back with his two main henchmen: