Monday 31 August 2020

Three laughs: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

 It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★


 

Three laughs case file #34:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (USA, 1986)
Director: Tobe Hooper

It's strange how some horror sequels can get away with a more silly tone, such as Evil Dead 2 or, to lesser extent, Phantasm II (maybe one could also argue Dawn of the Dead). Some that try out similar things are reviled, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. To be fair, Evil Dead 2 sets a gold standard in horror-comedy filmmaking and others that go that route aren't nearly as good or funny. But that's not to say they are bad movies, far from it!

Director Tobe Hooper has insisted that even the first one is a sort of black comedy. There are perhaps some chuckles to be had from the mad exploits of the Hitch-hiker or the dinner scene late in the movie. Nevertheless, the sequel goes a lot further in this aspect.  The film was made as a part of the director's deal with Cannon Group, which has brought up suspicions that it was made in order to secure funding to the more ambitious Lifeforce (1985), or perhaps earn back a little of what it lost.

The sequel sets out to skewer much more of the Americana than the previous did, with digs about the state of consumerism, media, sexual repression, dual moralism and 80's eat-or-get-eaten capitalism in general. It also dives deeper into distorted ideas of family values. Cannibalism and murder is a way of life, but the film's insane characters also revel in and enjoy it.

Basically the film's plot (such as there is one) is very similar to the one in the previous film. The lady DJ Vanita Brock, or "Stretch" (Caroline Williams) gets kidnapped by Leatherface and his family and must fight to survive in their secret lair, now close to Dallas in order to easier capture victims. Meanwhile Sheriff Lt. Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) is out to avenge the disappearance of his son in the previous film. This time, though having a "Chainsaw" massacre is not just empty talk, and power-tools buzz for a lengthy part of the movie. It's also made pretty clear on which body part these long blades are meant to be an extension of.


 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The very first scene makes clear the intentions and approach of the sequel as opposed to the first. A bunch of obnoxious yuppie teens hoot and holler, and blow people's mailboxes as they're driving to a party on their minivan. But when the night falls, they get a taste of their own medicine as a zombie geek jumps on the youngsters' car. In fact it's leatherface doing a bit of a puppet show with a corpse and soon gives them a show in the use of a massive chainsaw as well. Oingo Boingo is playing on the background for this scene.

2. The film's biggest new character, Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) is a truly slimy and obnoxious dude, out to make Stretch as uncomfortable as possible. It's almost a relief when suddenly Leatherface burtsts through the door. But the clumsy oaf can't catch Stretch as she makes good use of a fire distinguisher runs through a safety door.  Instead, he manages to injure Chop-Top's head, revealing the metal plate he got in 'Nam. But he woes more of the destruction of his terrible Sonny Bono wig.

3. Towards the end there's a touching but blackly comedic scene of Lt. Enright finding the remains of his son, which happen to be a gruesome skeleton on a wheelchair. He proceeds to destroy the entire lair with his own chainsaw. He comes to Stretch's rescue later on and declares himself "The Lord of the Harvest". But Leatherface isn't going to let the guy threaten his family, culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime duel with chainsaws. This was this franchise's high point. It was all downhill from there on.

Wednesday 26 August 2020

The Best of Laurel & Hardy (shorts)


 

This is the 250th post on this blog. It looked pretty unlikely for years that we would ever get this far. But now we have the familiar swing back for a while, and if you have followed my back catalogue, some old story formats will make a comeback in the near future. We'll see how long this will last, but let's just make the most of what we have now.

One of the first films "reviewed" here was a short film of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy called Laughing Gravy. It's certainly among their best, and features a truly nasty ending gag. Recently, I realized that this was just in the two-reel version of the short. There's also a three-reeled version that replaces the end gag with minutes of Laurel & Hardy arguing about their friendship. It's really limp compared to the tight gag-fest of the shorter version, and of course not nearly as funny gallows humour.

Since I've been watching a few Laurel & Hardy compilation dvd's while in quarantine, I thought it would be of good public interest to make a list out of my favorite shorts. After all, while they were prolific and usually maintained a good quality throughout their team-up with producer Hal Roach, there are some gems that warrant a more closer look.


Big Business
(1929)
Directors: James W. Horne, Leo McCarey

This silent-era flick has basically everything you would want from a L&H short. It has an interesting premise, snowballing situations and lots of property damage. Moreover, the film pits the duo against the hot-tempered moustache-man James Finlayson, who had a supporting role in many of the Roach-era films. He had a very silly bug-eyed rage face, which made him an excellent foil to Laurel & Hardy's tomfoolery.

In this story, sales tactics for a christmas tree fail to impress Finlayson, but L&H keep pushing it, making the angered customer destroy one of the trees. This causess L&H to retort and begin to do damage on the occupant's house, which in turn makes Finlayson attack Laurel & Hardy's car. At the point where the car is exploded and half the neighborhood is out to see the epic battle, a policeman arrives. 

A lot of laughs are mined out of the characters trying to appear innocent as they have just busted a window wide open and destroyed just about everything inside. The cop is portrayed here as a mere observer, not even attempting to stop the wonton destruction but just biding their time to get to punish the people responsible.


Liberty (1929)
Dir. Leo McCarey

Probably taking a page from the book of Harold Lloyd, this silent one sees the pair escape the police in a skyscraper construction site. But what really drives the plot is the fact that the pair has dressed each other's pants on and they try to switch them back.

The gag-work is beautifully laid-out, with Ollie getting a live lobster in his pants near the beginning, that snips his bottom at key turns, making him almost drop again and again. The film works as a time-piece of a time where cities were building up almost overnight, and the unexpected adventures they could provide for the hapless wanderer. The cop chasing them with quite lethal means also gets his comeuppance in the end with a supermarioesque squashing.


Brats (1930)
Dir. James Parrott

There are several films like Twice Two (1933) that see the actors do a dual role as their usual characters, and in that case both of their wives. But I find it funnier when grown men play children than women. It also requires a bit of trick photography as Stan & Ollie's kids in this one are a lot smaller than their grown-up counterparts.

Juniors won't go peacefully to bed, running amuck and pulling pranks well after their bedtime. Meanwhile, their dads attempt to play billiards and of course wreck their own story as well. Upstairs, Ollie Jr. gets shot in the butt and Stan Jr. makes the batroom overflow. The end gag could have been an even bigger one, with some consequences shown, but it is splendidly set up with Ollie's usual dismissiveness of Stan and cocky demeneour.


The Music Box
(1932)
Director: James Parrott

One of their best-known films, this one sees Stan & Ollie as movers, set to deliver a piano into a fancy hilltop mansion. Of course even the staircase to the house proves to be a big obstacle, never mind getting the box containing the instrument inside the house. It is a good example of the farcical nature of snowballing destruction, as well as utilizing all manners of sight gags as well as the knowledge of the myth of Sisyphos.  

The film's lofty reputation would let one to expect an even more outrageous finale as the owner of the house arrives to find a piano he didn't want as well as most of his property demolished. While this is one of the smoother-running shorts with good gags throughout, I also have a soft spot of shorts that have an even more outrageous ending. For instance, the silent short Wrong Again (1929) has a landowner fed up with shenanigans take out his shotgun and say to his mother to read about the murder (of Stan & Ollie) in tomorrow's newspaper. 


Busy Bodies (1933)
Director: Lloyd French

This one sees Stan & Ollie in a new job at a woodshop. They soon annoy their co-workers and bumble about cluelessly as to make the whole plant turn against them.

It is a great piece of prop comedy that uses all sorts of power tools and building materials to make Ollie's day worse and worse. It even has a more painful version of Chaplin's Modern Times gag where Ollie is sucked into the gears of a major machine and spat out. And as I love the destruction of cars in particular, the final gag sees their car being sawed in half by a giant buzz-saw. It has been said that the filming of this stunt was dangerous as all hell and could have easily killed our beloved duo.


Dirty Work (1933)
Dir. Lloyd French

Now, having Laurel and Hardy act as chimney-sweeps that manage to soot up the house and demolish the chimney is by itself funny, but not that remarkable. What makes this short so notable is that the house they're called to is also the house where a mad professor is acting out some strange experiments on a formula that rejuvenates ducks back into eggs.

These two sides of the movie have very little to do with one another, mainly a disgusted butler going in an out of the two ordeals going on at the time. Intercut together they create quite a lot of intrigue and even suspense. It's obvious Stan & Ollie will mess up the place and get turned into test subjects, and the waiting is a part of the fun, as well as all shotgun-related shenanigans. It does pay off in the end. It was rare for the Laurel & Hardy films to turn to straight-out science fiction, but in this case it makes for a memorable experience. Beyond that, "I have nothing to say!"


Thicker Than Water (1935)
Dir. James W. Horne

As moviegoing changed, there was no more need for short films and Laurel & Hardy moved on to feature-length films. But they gave their one last shot in this one, that is probably the best one that deals with martital troubles and the friendship between the two characters. I often find the nagging wife -films to be a bit too much like boomer humor for my tastes, even if (or especially when) they get cartoonishly violent. But they also tend to give the impression that Ollie prefers Stan over his wife, which causes jealousy. Read what you will out of that.

Nevertheless, this film is conceptually quite inventive. Characters break the 4th wall literally, since the only way they can move from one location to another is to physically drag out the next scene over the screen. The film also has a quite unpredictable plot; from marital woes and money troubles we move on to an auction of a grandfather clock, and there to some hospital humor as Ollie needs a blood transfusion.

This is a bit of a SPOILER, but the last scene is something special as the transfusion switches the pairs personalities, and we see the respective actors try each others maneurs on for size. Truly this was well ahead of its time, long before anyone had the idea of Face/Off in mind.

Do you have a favorite Laurel & Hardy joint? I would like to hear from them, so I might maybe make a sequel to this post some day.

Thursday 20 August 2020

Joe D'Amato triple feature

 

 

As a preview of next month's ABC's of Italian genre cinema post, I thought I'd take an opportunity to take a couple of monster movies that didn't make the cut for that one. Moreover, this post is to write a bit about Joe D'Amato (1936-99), born Artistide Massaccesi.

He's often seen as one of the more banal Italian genre film director, making shlock from popular cannibal and zombie genres. Yet I don't particularly find his movies "so-bad-they're-good". While he is not a brilliant horror director in disguise, I do find his films to often be more original and suspense-driven than their reputation suggests.

Probably what ruined his reputation was the moralistic fact that he also worked on Adult films, producing first the Erotic films like the Black Emmanuelle series, and then moving on to hardcore pornography (like making the notorious Porno Holocaust). But I have selected here three horror films that perhaps shed a light a bit on why D'Amato was an unique director after all, if not entirely successful.

Antropophagus: The Beast (Antropophagous, 1980)


Italian film fans know the character actor George Eastman, often playing nasty brutes, from films like 2019: After the Fall of New York and Warriors of the Wasteland. He had a fruitful work relationship with D'Amato, working with multiple genres and even co-directing 1983's 2020 Texas Gladiators. But with Antrophagus, he had a role of a lifetime. He also worked as one of the film's screenwriters.

Most of the film concerns a group of young vacationers exploring a mysteriously empty Greek island. It's as if all the occupants therein had died or fled. To spoil a little, it turns out a cannibalistic and mute killer with a scarred face (played by Eastman) lurks there.


The film builds up very slowly, which is partly impressive for a film deemed a Video Nasty, but also partly a bit boring as the puzzle pieces don't seem to reveal themselves. Nevertheless, as D'Amato started out as a cinematographer, he manages to create an unsettling vastness of the island, and claustrophobic interior scenes with ease.

The film's most memorable part comes when we get a flashback on the tragic events that made Eastman's character lose his mind and all sort of reasoning. D'Amato seems to have a point that we are only one bad day away from reverting back into cavemen and killing everyone within our territory.

★★★

Absurd (Rosso Sangue, 1981)

 


A sort-of sequel to Antropophagus, except it actually has an entirely different backstory. But Eastman looks and acts the same way. The actor worked as a screenwriter in this one as well. This time, Eastman's mute killer surfaces on the mainland, killing people that happen on his way, and seeming impervious to bullets.

It turns out the killer has escaped from a medical facility. He battles a motorcycle gang and some cops, but ends up in the houselhold of a seemingly regular family, The Bennetts, who have to fight for their life against the unremorseful killer. The film is a bit darker, utilizing night scenes and the fear of the unknown within a city setting to its advantage. It includes all the basics of a slasher movie, with its unfeeling and unstoppable force coming out of nowhere to intrude on a normal family life.

Compared to the previous one, this is more eventful, but also a bit confusing, as pieces don't seem to add up the same way to a big reveal as before. The violence is particularly brutal here, with plenty of gore and a particularly nasty scene where Katya Berger's head is being burned in an oven. This film turned out on the list of the notorious Video Nasties as well.

Massacessi used the pseudonym Peter Newton this time around. It might be that since he had directed ten Erotic movies in the year between these two movies, the name D'Amato started to wear out.

★★★

Beyond the Darkness (Buio Omega, 1979)

 

As much as those two monster pictures had some nasty and disgusting shades, they pale in comparison with D'Amato's best horror work. It is a thoroughly disturbing serial killer movie that cares not of the boundaries of taste and reason. It has some shades of black comedy as well, that were later more realized in purely comedic films such as DellaMorte DellAmore. It also takes ideas presented by films such as Psycho to their logical extremes.

Frank Wyler (Kieran Canter) loses his girlfriend to an illness. But instead of letting go, he decides to dig up the corpse and embalm her. The family villa houses this secret, but multiple people stumble upon the scene by accident and meet their grisly fate as punishment for this. Iris (Franca Stoppi), the strange housekeeper is culprit on all of this, finding also suitable victims for his young master and helping dispose of the corpses.

 

The film is a gruesome remake of The Third Eye, but also revels in the historical knowledge on stuff such as how mummies were used to be embalmed (we can see this in all gory detail). While the film centers around necrophilia, it also includes cannibalism and gory dismemberments. It seems the effects budget for this was considerably bigger than in most of D'Amato's other works.

While the film may seem to have so many tasteless elements in order to irate cencors and decency activists, it also has a very perculiar and odd sense of wonder in all this. The human mind in its most crazed can be oddly creative and logical in its illogicalities. It's not an easy movie to predict the next scene and it keeps surprising the viewer. The images are sterile and unmoving, which makes for an odd experience to follow such depravity.

 

On the worse side, the ending seems rushed and a bit clichéd compared to the rest of the movie. It had some ingredients that could have made it a serial killer classic, but now it stays more or less just a curiosity for those that can stomach its contents. It has a very cool Goblin soundtrack, though.

★★★ 1/2

Sunday 16 August 2020

Three laughs: A Talking Cat?!

 

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.   

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #33:  
A Talking Cat?! (USA 2013)
Director: David DeCoteau 

A very cheap family movie about a magic cat helping out a family with their problems might sound innocent enough. But when you have a director like David DeCoteau make it, known from his trashy films, you might be onto something odd. Adding to the comedy is main star Eric Roberts, a veteran on hundreds of movies, most of them bad, cashing in a check with a vocal performance that sounds like it was recorded in his car while driving to get some coffee and donuts. Or maybe the trunk of the car. 

The film has some penny-squeezing qualities (many of which we come to in a minute), some of which is that the main house used in the movie looks suspiciously like a set from a porn movie. And in fact the film's set WAS used in a little film called Ass Worship 13

As you might know, cats aren't exactly known for being easy actors in movies, and the tabby Duffy with the physical side of the main part does look like he would have none of the bullshit the film keeps feeding us. He is replaced in the film's poster by a younger, cuter kitten. Other stars are made to be some wood-faced models, except the film's dad, played by Johnny Whitaker, who has some very unusual features for a leading man, which makes him of course all the more interesting to watch. One could only wish one of the cinematic Garfield movies was made with a similar who-the-fuck-cares attitude.

Three laughs (SPOILERS): 

1. The movie has two main houses where the action is set in, but it leaves even The Room behind in its obsessive use of establishing shots. Hilariously, also many of these don't seem to fit together. Is the film supposed to be set on a beach, or a forest, or maybe the desert? Is it some tropical country or California? Well, at least the movie crept just above the required 85 minute length.

2. Eric Roberts' lazy-ass dialogue is heard throughout the movie but in fact the titular cat can only talk to people once each. During the first 15 minutes it might be hard to recognize when people are hearing the cat, but once he really talks, you can't help but notice. The reason being that the cat's mouth has been animated by the cheapest possible MS Paint images put into a GIF animation possible.

3.Getting back to the gay porn qualities of the movie, although the film has the most white bread and milquetoast romantic comedy plot possible, we do have an extensive scene where Justin Cone and Daniel Dannas have a conversation by the pool. The film lingers very long on the wet, shirtless and fit young dudes' bodies. The question remains if there's a problem the cat didn't help the boys with or if this is just an obsession of director DeCoteau he couldn't shake even when making a kids' movie.

Thursday 13 August 2020

Three laughs: Ebola Syndrome

 

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #32:  
Ebola Syndrome (Yi boh lai beng duk, Hongkong, 1996)
Director: Herman Yau

Has there been a pandemic going on long enough that we might have a bit of a black-hearted laugh about it? I recently had my Covid tested, and even that experience was enough for me to want to have a laugh at this shitty disease's expense. Or perhaps at the assholes who spread it because of no regard for public safety.

Today's film tells the story of one such individual. It is also a notoriously nasty and outrageous film, that could only have been made in liberal Hongkong in the 1990's. They used to have this CAT III rating that allowed directors to truly push boundaries, which resulted for a lot of erotica, but also some very out-there movies.

Herman Yau's Ebola Syndrome is nasty in every sense of the word. It has a kind of racist approach to the disease spreading in Africa at the time, showing natives therein being just primitive tribespeople. The film's main character Kai (Anthony Wong) is one of the nastiest bastards in all of cinema history. A brutal sociopath, misogynist, rapist and murderer, he is a Triad henchman on the run from his bosses to Africa, where he catches a disease. He returns home to become a cannibal chef at a burger joint (in a move parodying the more straight-faced The Untold Story).

The film itself pushes the viewer's buttons and provokes at every turn. The approach is something akin to Troma movies, but made with a better budget and sense of cinematic shots. Yau is not a bad director, but he approaches the sort of nihilistic edgyness that was hip in the 90's, but a bit tiresome now. Ebola Syndrome doesn't apologize for anything, it is a throughly slimy and mean-spirited movie, and proud of it. And, for certain sorts of viewer, also very funny. Viewer discretion is adviced.


Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The film's opening scene sees Kai having sex with his bosses' wife and getting caught in the act. The boss orders the sniveling underling under a golden shower, which shows quickly on what kind the film's sense of humour is. Nevertheless, the shlubby-looking Kai soon reveals that he is more cunning and ruthless than appears, and brutally murders everyone else in the room.

2. The film's racism could almost be seen a parody of some old-school shockers, such as Italian cannibal movies. The shocking conditions in Africa, for instance, show pig corpses intended for food being stored in broad daylight next to human corpses. Needless to say, they get churn into hamburgers anyway. Both pigs and corpses.

3. But dead people in a bun are not the most disgusting thing the film serves. Later on, we see Kai listening in on some next-door love-making while relieving himself on a piece of meat. Of course the same piece gets then thrown into a pan and served to customers. If this movie teaches something, it's taking distance and remembering at least some resemblance of hygiene.

Friday 7 August 2020

H is for Hill and Spencer



Some people love 'em, some loathe 'em. But there's no denying the films of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer aren't some of the most essential if one wants to understand Italian Genre Cinema. For one, their punching-and-burping brand of humour brought down the spaghetti western. In some ways the overly cynical subgenre was a parody in itself, but after these guys were done with it, it was impossible to take seriously any more.

So let's take a look at the work done by them in the spaghetti western play field. Hill in particular was used quite a lot as a cowboy, as you might remember. As this post takes its H from his name, it shall focus more on his work, though Spencer was also alnong for the ride in most cases.

The Colizzi Trilogy 
(Director: Giuseppe Colizzi)

God Forgives, I don't
(Dio perdona... Io no!, Italy/Spain 1967)



The first starring role of the Hill/Spencer duo. At this point their mishaps were still a bit more violent and cynical than later on, reminiscent of the rivalry of Blondie and Tuco in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Colizzi's tongue in cheek approach was to create a sort of animal fable in the west, with Hill and Spencer taking attributes of a cat and a dog, respectively, and the main villain played by Frank Wolff being, of course, a wolf. Or maybe a cunning fox.

The film's plotting is divided into several viewpoints, but the core is that two buddies with a dangerous bandit on their tails, are traveling across the west to find loot that has gone from person to person after a train robbery. As it's a study of power dynamics, cheating to win, gambling and poker are also very important aspects of the film.  

 
This was the point still when spaghetti westerns were racing to have ever more epic scopes and bigger action scenes. As a spectacle, the movie also delivers, even though the wandering across deserts takes a bit too much of the running time. The film is explodable and at times even brutal, which makes for an odd cocktail with all the animal-based slapstick, but it holds together surprisingly well.

★★★ 1/2

Ace High
(I quattro dell'Ave Maria, Italy 1968)



This film starts off straight from where the last one left off. The two buddies are wandering across the desert, with their loot packed in. But things get complicated when they meet up with a bandit (Eli Wallach) who has survived from a hanging, and starts to swindle them out of their earnings and perhaps enlist them to help him get revenge.

It's the longest and limpest part of the trilogy, that allows Wallch's Leone-tested maneurs and charisma to drive the film rather than more intricate plotting, humour or character dynamics. But . this time around the film's balancing of epic action, cynical brutality and comedy doesn't fit together as well, leaving a taste a bit too dry.

Once again there's a long heist sequence, here saved toward the end of the film, that shines as the best part of the movie.

★★ 1/2

Boot Hill
(La collina degli stivali, Italy 1969)



As the trilogy closes, the film explores more themses such as aging and settling down. Hill's scoundrel has a new get-rich plane, but he has to try to convince Spencer who has settled as a gold-digger with a new partner, to join him and a grizzled gun-fighter (Woody Strode) to battle a bandit (George Eastman) who has taken over an entire town.

At this point the comedy aspects are starting to take hold, and there are more jokes here than in the previous two films. The film's major plot concerns a traveling circus that is used as a Trojan Horse in order to gain access to the closed city. But the film works mostly as a cavalcade of nice stunts and gun-fights, it doesn't have the well-thought out plotting and character work of the first film in trilogy.

The circus acts foreshadow the reliance of slapstic and acrobatics in lieu of gunfire later on, but in here the bodies still pile up and people get a proper lead poisoning.

★★★

They Call Me Trinity
(Lo chiamavano Trinita..., Italy 1971)
Director: Enzo Barboni (E.B. Clucher)



This was a turning point for the spaghetti western genre and a major box-office hit. I would think audiences were getting tired of the over-the-top cynicism on offer in so many spaghetti westerns (that were done in just an 8-year stretch of time. The intended audience for this one were born around the same time as the whole sub-genre.

The plot concerns the lazy bounty hunter Trinity meet up with his brother Bambino who has escaped the law in plain sight and become a sherriff for a small town. A rich dandy hires a group of Mexican thugs to create trouble, which threatens to hit also the small religious community out on the prerie, trying to build their own town. Trinity and Bambino, who walk on a morally grey line, must decide who they want to help build the west.



As a film, Trinity is overlong and uneven. The best secenes see Trinity and Bambino bickering, but neither is much fun by themselves. Barboni's greatest invention was to replace the final gundown with a beat-em-up free-for-all. This has since been topped in many ways and many times.

★★ 1/2

A Man From the East 
(E poi lo chiamarono il magnifico, Italy/France 1972)
Director: Enzo Barboni



Hill is playing solo here, as a New York dandy who gets an inheritance. It turns out to be not that much in money, but more in cameraderieship with a gang of rootin'-tootin' frontier men. They are in turn tasked to grow the young greenhorn into a real man. On the way, Hill also falls in love with a beautiful young lady (Yanti Somer).

So it's more or less a romantic comedy that's only set in the old west. Even though the films with Spencer weren't exactly that raunchy, this one has even less edges than them. The most memorable things regarding this film are a quite good barroom brawl scene, and a nice scenery-chewing turn of the film's villain, gunslinger Morton Clayton (Ricardo Pizzutti). Most of the actors playing Hill's gang members do their best to even out the buddy-comedy partnership, but none of them can really hold a candle to Spencer's irritability and Obelix-level imperviousness to any physical harm. 

★★

My Name is Nobody
(Il mio nome è Nessuno, Italy/France/West Germany 1973)
Director: Tonino Valerii



Sergio Leone himself executive produced another spaghetti vehicle to his favorite star, Henry Fonda, and also secretly co-directed several scenes in the film. It turns out he preferred to do the more comedic parts of the film. Most of the film's more stylized scenes were done by the dependably talented director Tonino Valerii.


Hill plays a wild west weirdo who happens upon an old gunslinger Jack Beauregard (Fonda) who thinks of peaceful retirement. Much as the Italians had done in real life, he decides to stage a final showdown so that legends might be written in his name. In doing so, he messes up with some powerful enemies, and soon Beauregard and Nobody are facing the men of the Wild Bunch alone.

Fonda being more of a straight man requires Hill to play his basic character shtick even more unhinged (and annoying) than usual. The film has its share of cool setpieces, including a comicbooky Funhouse shootout. But the movie also had the bad luck to come out the same year than Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, which had plenty of more insightful ideas on comedically deconstructing the westerns. But it's still one of the better films Hill ever did, and Ennio Morricone's theme song is an ear-worm for the ages.

★★★ 1/2

Monday 3 August 2020

Three laughs: American Kickboxer 2



It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 
Three laughs case file #31:  
American Kickboxer 2 (USA, Philippines, 1993)
Director: Jenö Hodi

Let's kick two flies with one stone. Since we've been very interested both in bargain-bin VHS action movies and foreign movies from around the world, here we have a cheapo actioner that's been done in the lovely Philippines. American Kickboxer 2 has nothing to do with the first film in the franchise, as the case with sequels always should be.

It's a dumb-as-rocks -kind of film that also has its tongue firmly in cheek. Nevertheless, it has a borderline soap opera kind of plot. The film concerns a rich family's small daughter getting kidnapped by a SWAT team in a helicopter. As the parents can't go to the cops, Lillian (Kathy Shower) makes a shocking revealation to her husband Howard (Police Academy's Tackleberry, David Graf): he's not the father of the girl, it could either be his violent ex-husband David (Evan Lurie) or the girl be a result of a casual fling with a local playboy Mike Clark (Dale Cook). Luckily, both of them are cops, martial artists and men of action. Not so luckily, they despise each other and the situation they are put in.

The film's actors are hilarious to watch as Cook can barely act and just stumbles around stupidly, and Lurie is so off-puttingly aggressive it's impossible to feel any sympathy for either of them. But then, they get into bar fights, shootouts, prison riots and even an underground fighting ring around every corner. As a travel commercial for the Philippines, it really doesn't work. But as far as B-grade action movies go, this one is a keeper.



Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. As we're somewhat copying the buddy cop -format from movies like Lethal Weapon, one thing the film needs is a Joe Pesci -like comic relief. Or rather, not. When the main characters first meet they immediately hate each other, and start to fight at a McDonald's parking lot. Maxin Ross, a local club owner, plays a weaselly guy that has an objection since the beat-down is happening on the hood of his car. He runs his mouth a bit, but is mercifully kicked in the head soon enough.

2. The main characters bickering to the point of fisticuffs is a running gag throughout the film. My favorite scene comes when, just as another of their fights is about to start, they suddenly duck out from a drive-by shooting. As Lurie thanks Cook for saving of his life, Cook smugly retorts there's no debt since they saved each other. But Lurie just takes this as a realization nothing is stopping him from sucker-punching his partner to the face. As Cook falls, he also hits his head to a steel door behing him. But then we immediately cut to the next scene where he's walking around as if nothing happened. This is basically a Tom & Jerry cartoon with real actors.

3. It turns out that our dynamic duo has a secret ally infitrated in the criminal leagues, a guy who's a dead ringer to the director Peter Jackson in a beret. He makes his infiltration in a memorable way. As everyone is distracted by watching the captured heroes fight each other to the death, he goes to put two cockroaches from a jar to a guard's leg. As the roaches run up his trouser leg, the guerd is distracted for a moment and then klonked in the head. Smooth.

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