Three laughs: Ninja III The Domination

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 #30: Ninja III: The Domination
(USA, 1984)
Director: Sam Firstenberg

It's kind of odd that I've not yet featured any Cannon Group films in this column. Perhaps I've gone on even cheaper thrills than the relatively cheap but still Hollywood productions of the company started by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. The main idea of Cannon was to populistically grab onto any trend that might attract customers of the 1980's film landscape. Enter the Ninja.

As the world started to open up in the 80s, ninjas were some of the exotic thrills provided by foreign countries that managed to work wonders within the action movies. They made for good enemies for any action hero, but there was a sense of mysticism and magic in them that they could also carry entire movies as protagonists. Shô Kosugi was one of these crossover stars that first started as a villain yet grew into a surprisingly popular leading man.

As Cannon's Ninja trilogy goes, I've covered the Franco Nero -starring first part here before. While I might prefer the second one, Revenge of the Ninja, it is a close call and there's a lot more cult movie vibe in the third one, titled The Domination. For as Golan and Globus wanted to capture trends, it is not just a ninja picture, but rips off other popular films of the time, such as Poltergeist and Flashdance.

Yes, the story is of a female aerobics instructor that gets possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ninja, and must strike to kill at nights. She needs the help of Kosugi's wise old ninja master in order to defeat the evil. The film could have been a star-making turn for Lucinda Dickey, and the idea of a female lead in a ninja action movie is kind of progressive. It's too bad she can't be a fighter by her own right but has to be possessed in order to be able to take men on. The way to go about it is nothing short of crazy, so we might gawp and gather the highlights into a text such as this.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The movie has one of my favorite opening action scenes of any action movie ever. It's the best action scene of the movie, so it's a bit of a letdown that the rest of the movie can't hold up to that one. After a short intro of a man visiting an ominous ancient temple, a black ninja (David Chung) appears on a golf course to an entourage of polo-shirted white guys. He enrages them by squeezing golf balls into powder. He proceeds to hack and slash them to death which starts out a non-stop 10 minutes of pure action I won't go beat-by-beat here. Suffice to say the ninja lifts a running golf cart and stops such a hard hit from a golf club with his hand, the bar bends around it.

2. Soon after rich guys are offed, the action moves to cops pursuing the ninja. He lifts a ride from a helicopter and kills the cops within it, making the helicopter explode. Just as you think the scene is over as the ninja is hiding in a pond, breathing through a reed, he gets discovered and blows some poison darts to a cop through the reed and starts killing cops once again. Talk about making bacon on a beach.

3. I have to talk about the other side of the film, which sees Dickey's character be escorted by a cop (Jordan Bennett) since she is eyewitness of the Black Ninja's crimes. She ends up seducing him in an amazingly 80's apartement with arcade cabinets, neon lights and Duran Duran albums. Like a scene from The Naked Gun, she takes a can of tomato juice out of somewhere and pours some on her neck. Is this bizarre idea supposed to be sensual?

Three laughs: Miami Connection

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most "quality" films. 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.

Miami Connection (1987)
Director: Park Woo-sang

Lost for decades, the cheap 80's VHS movie Miami Connection was the first real gem discovered by the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and restored for an audience hungry for some prime cheese and turkey action. Miami Connection mashes together a story of a teen rock band and a crime thriller about about drug-dealing ninjas. It's exactly as bonkers as it sounds. But really, the film is funniest when attempting to be "just another movie". Everyone on screen is extremely awkward, their lines don't sound like anything anyone has actually said in real life, and the basically very clichéd plot becomes more and more bizarre the more elements are thrown into the pot.

The star and producer Y.K. Kim later became some sort of inspirational speaker, and it can perhaps be seen from his script, since such wisdoms are seen in the film such as "Only through the elimination of violence can we achieve world peace". As an actor, he's something to see. It's a bit cheap to make fun of his thick accent, but it is really hard to understand what he's saying, even when it's over-the-top action movie clichés such as "You don't scare me at all. Goodbye!"

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. A lot of the film's fun hangs on how cheesily 80's the entire thing is. So I hope you like mullets, synth-music and godawful clothing. The biggest laugh comes from the great reveal of all of this - after a fight scene where a gang of ninjas have killed some drug dealers and split the loot we see the band Dragon Sound in all their glory. Playing shirtlessly their hit song "Friends Forever" at a smoky, blue-tinted club to some really white-bread audience having trouble clapping along.

2. It's always hilarious when Kim is showing off his tae kwon do skills with ridiculous Bruce Lee -poses and grunts. My favorite is the practice scene where he takes his friends to school by showing a fist to Jack's mouth and humiliating John by grabbing his nose by his toes.

3. The real star of the film is Maurice Smith's keyboard player Jim, who has the most soap opera -like arc which sees him being teased of sending out some mysterious letters. It turns out he's just trying to find his father, probably by mailing to every candidate he can think of. When he finally finds him, he lets out an incredible high-pitched yelp. But alas, fate has a real ironic twist in mind for him, which motivates the surprisingly brutal final fight, which sees Kim brandishing a machete, among other things. Against the Ninja!

Them's fighting words!

 
Today is my birthday. I'm going to spend the night the best way I know how: at Night Visions Festival, enjoying a full night filled with horror, oddities and hilariously goofy old movies. But I'd also like to spread the cheer. After all, this blog recently topped 50,000 viewers so I figure I owe my loyal readers a treat (feel free to thank me in the comments). I'll take a page from Chris Sims and present several of the rootinest, tootinest, fightinest films known to man! If this doesn't grow hair to your bathing suit area, nothing will. Let's party for our right to fight!

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (Lik Wong, 1991)
Director: Ngai Kai Lam

I like my fight scenes like I like my stake: RAW and with an obscene amount of killings. That is also why probably my favorite splatter film is this gloriously over-the-top Japanese manga-based prison flick. The titular Ricky is certainly a kind of a superhero – of beating people until there's nothing more than a pile of bloody goo! The super-powered youngster is sent to the big house for killing a crime boss responsible for the death of his girlfriend. Ricky always stands up for the down-trodden, the persecuted and the weak, and thus sets out to clean out the corruption and the gangs from the joint. Thus, his chief rivals are the joint's sadistic warden and The Gang of Four, a fearsome crime boss ring, each of which controls one wing of the prison.

Unlike other films listed on this post, Riki-Oh is clearly meant to be funny. But it does it so violently and with such an over-the-top mentality that one can't help but to love it. The film clearly has a comic book sensibility, and it tops the ante with each subsequent action scene. It's even just the right length so that when you feel that you're finally getting tired of the gore, the film ends.

Plenty of Japanese flicks (many made by the company Sushi Typhoon) have tried to imitate its madcap charm, but none have succeeded. It helps a lot that all the gore scenes in this are practical effects as opposed to computer-generated blood. Thus, stomachs get blown open, jaws disengaged, organs fall into meat grinders and heads explode a plenty. There still didn't seem to be enough in the effects budget to make a convincing dummy girlfriend to throw off the roof. And there are also other ridiculous scenes such as Ricky practicing with his sensei by punching through gravestones he's throwing at him. Or the downright nasty scene where Ricky is buried alive. Or, or...



If films like Evil Dead 2 and Braindead are your thing, you owe it to yourself to check Riki-Oh. It should be just as big as a splatter cult classic. It does have friends in high places, though, as director Edgar Wright has admitted loving the film.

★★★★★

Avenging Force (1986)
Director: Sam Firstenberg

American Ninja mastermind Sam Firstenberg reunites with his star Michael Dudikoff for this dumb-as-a-rock action flick. Dudikoff plays the ex-secret service man Matt Hunter (a great character name, by the way), who arrives to New Orleans to help his friend Larry Richards (Steve James) run for governor. But since Richards is both black and a democrat, he's also the target for the secret Nazi Illuminati called The Pentangle. Hunter attempts his best to keep Richards and his family alive from the hit attempts and hides them in his grandfather's farm where he lives with his sister Sarah. But The Pentangle can receive information of their whereabouts with their connections and do a major strike. Hunter soon becomes the hunted, but he's also going to make sure The Pentangle never hurts anyone any more.

The plot mashes it's perfectly serviceable espionage plot to a mind-bogglingly stupid manhunt plot. The Pentangle like to dispose of their victims by hunting them like animals through a large swampland area. The end fights there are what really make the film memorable. Hunter takes care of each Pentangle member in a hand-to-hand combat. The shirtless Dudikoff wrestling with various burly men (one of which is dressed like a gimp) in the mud is astonishingly homoerotic. In particular, Hunter likes to lock his enemies to the ground with his thighs, and penetrate them with a knife or some other phallic object. Each villain also has a orgasmic last gasp that Vernon Wells would see as a bit overdoing it. The film's uneasy sexuality also doesn't end there. Hunter has a bit too much affection to his 10-year-old sister. When The Pentangle's top members kidnap her, they threaten to take her virginity (!). She's later found among transvestite hookers in the red light district. Firstenberg doesn't strain himself much, and gleefully burns likeable characters to death and executes children. The end result is very special 80's cheese, and another evidence that Firstenberg is the man to go to when you want some so-bad-they-are-excellent action films.

The entire film is currently on YouTube, if you want to watch it.

★ or ★★★★★

Undefeatable (Cui hua kuang mo, 1993)
Director: Godfrey Ho

I'm not actually sure where this film is supposed to take place. It's in English, but the film crew is from Hong Kong. The American-seeming setting, however is some warped version of our reality, where every person, man and woman, is a musclebound martial arts expert. From the look of things, as well as the slowness of their thinking, it seems that steroids and other illegal substances seem to be legal in this world, too. And everyone is on drugs, all the time. The mafia, however, organizes illegal street brawls that the police are unable to stop. Kristi (Cynthia Rothrock) turns tricks at these fights to earn money. Hey, it beats being a crack whore.

Unbeknownst to her, Anna, the wife of the notorious underground fighter Stingray (Don Niam) leaves her abusive husband. This drives Stingray mad and into a frenzy. He starts a killing spree of kidnapping any women that come into his path and gouging out their eyes. If any men try to stop him, he beats them to a pulp. When Kristi's sister dies at the hands of this brutal mass murderer, it becomes personal. Kristi joins with detective Nick DiMarco (John Miller) to take down the killer – by any means necessary!

Undefeatable is a parade of hilariously awful acting, worse hair, mind-boggling stupidity and, in a word, insanity. But one can't say that there aren't a couple of nifty fight scenes in this. Hong Kong action director Ho knows how to make his actors do the splits. But he can't tell a story worth shit. In a Hong Kong-set film the context of the film's martial arts fighting would be right at home, but in an American film they feel really odd. It doesn't help (or rather, it does) that the film contains heaps of gore and brutal violence. It's more or less unexplained what makes Stingray so crazy as to kill people with his bear hands, other than misogynism and abandonment issues. Lucky for the viewers, most of the effects are cruddy and thus obscenely violent the murder scenes become quite funny as well.

The end fight of the film isn't the best choreographed in the film, but it is probably the most stupid, and definitely the most brutal. It's precisely because of clips like this why the film has gained new following from YouTube. Just don't spoil yourself if you intend to watch the loony film in its entirety.




★ or ★★★★★

Road House (1989)
Director: Rowdy Herrington

Easily the best-known of this post's films, Road House is a genuine cult classic about bouncers in a very seedy tavern somewhere in the midwest. Their leader, the New Yorker Jack Dalton (who incidentally shares his name with MacGyver's best friend) is played by the late, magnificent Patrick Swayze. And he's the toughest of the tough, cleaning the entire town when he was only assigned to clean up the local tavern The Double Deuce.

Dalton is an expert cooler, advising the other bouncers, and breaks up a number of violent bar fights before the property damage goes over $ 50,000. A lot of the fights are caused by the minions of local kingpin Brad Wesley (also the dearly departed Ben Gazzara), who has financial control over the town. When Dalton also becomes involved by his ex-girlfriend, the town's sexy female doctor "Doc" (Kelly Lynch), Wesley takes a personal vendetta to get rid of the man. But Dalton isn't one to be easily bullied, and as a student of philosophy, his conclusion is pain.

Road House would be memorable even from the odd table-turning of a film about bouncers turning into a modern western, where a stranger cleans up a corrupt city of criminals. The dialogue is deliciously foul-mouthed and the film's humor sexist and rowdy. But what really makes it a classic is Swayze's character. Always the philosopher, he delivers deadpan such incredible one-liners as "Pain don't hurt" or "Nobody ever wins a fight" (Both of which are rules he comes to break during the course of the movie). No wonder, he's been studying philosophy and that sort of shit. nevertheless, for all his zen approach, Dalton is basically just as vengeful and brutal as a Steven Seagal character when pushed too far.

The film is on this list because of the fight between Dalton and Wesley's right-hand man Jimmy (Marshall R. Teague). This is the scene where the film goes completely off the rails (although it had been odd before). First the homoerotic mouth-off, and finally the surprisingly brutal final blow, which would fit a low-budget splatter film better than a Hollywood high-concept movie. It's probably needless to say that this is one of my favorite films of all time.



★★★★★

Gymkata (1985)
Director: Robert Clouse

Last, but definitely not least we have the most Reaganist film ever created, and also one of the most awesomely 80's films. Someone had the bright idea to turn the Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas into an action hero, and thus the film sends him out to fight for truth, justice and the American way.

In what has got to be one of the stupidest film plots ever written, the US secret service contacts Olympic medalist Jonathan Cabot (Thomas), because they need to set up a Star Wars -space programme weapons satellite in the eastern European nation of Parmistan. The way Cabot could handle this is to win the age old The Game, in which the Parmistans compete against a flock of ninjas. Whoever wins, gets one wish granted by the King of Parmistan. The only problem is that no-one has survived The Game alive in 400 years. So, Cabot goes through a frivolous training to win. During the course, he falls in love with his martial arts instructor, the princess of Parmistan, Rubali (Tetchie Agbayani).

Needless to say, the satellite plot is dropped pretty soon, and the film mostly concerns Cabot trying to survive in the hostile country. There just being an American is enough of a reason for everyone to try to kill him, whether part of The Game or not. Fortunately, his gymnast skills combined with the martial arts training prove to be so deadly, he can beat down huge crowds of people (some of which fall down without even being touched by him). The Parmistanian architecture favors elements on the streets that could as easily be used as gymnastic equipment. But he needs them, since The Game is even more deadly then the Hunger Games, and mostly involves ninjas shooting people running away with arrows.

The hilariously awful fight scenes are not even the stupidest thing of the film. The film is astonishingly racist, seeing as European countries still being in the Medieval times. Save for the country's princess, every single Parmistanian is a hideous old crone or old peasant without teeth, and frivolously hating America. Which is why it is hilarious that Cabot decides to wear his Stars 'n Stripes-coloured sweater when walking through the country's streets. Cabot also doesn't care much whether he accidentally beats some innocent people when taking care of his pursuers. Or some too touchy old women. Stupidly, the film also comes up with the idea of Cabot's father being missing while taking part of The Game in the middle of the film. He appears unharmed and almost unexplained and dies almost instantly by taking a few arrows in the back. This insanity is truly brain-meltingly strange. The film should be watched for the extended scene where Cabot wanders across a misty town, where every inhabitant seems to come out to laugh at him from the windows. Which is followed by this gem:



★ or ★★★★★

A Tale of Three Punishers

The Punisher and all related characters (c) 2012 Marvel

Frank Castle, also known as The Punisher, is seen as one of the grittiest and most realistic characters in the Marvel Universe. He has no superpowers, only complete ruthlessness and a thirst for killing a lot of criminals. Preferably with a lot of guns. His suit is just a T-shirt with a skull on it. So, naturally, his best adventures are often like throwbacks to the action movies of 1980's, when the death of a man's family was a good enough motivation for a man to run a rampage of brutally executing hoardes of criminals, and the audience was still rooting for him. Of course, that's also why Punisher is the cheapest one of Marvel's flagship characters to be made as a film. Conseqentally, it's been tried three times. And whatever the reputation for these movies are, none of them are really that bad. But of course none of them are as good as they should be, either.

The Punisher (1989)
Director: Mark Goldblatt

First stop was this Dolph Lundgren vehicle (remember those?). The Punisher's origin isn't exactly original in terms of action movies (his family is murdered by criminals, he vows vengeance and delivers it one bullet at a time). As it is, that's the only thing on display similar to the character in the comics. That's why this film feels like it was concieved as just a general, run-off-the-mill action film, and then someone pointed out the arbitual similarities to Marvel's property. Since at that time comic movies weren't a hot topic, securing rights was just the icing on the cake. The end result is kind of bonkers, but never less than entertaining.

Lundgren's Castle hides in the sewers of NYC, and does quick strikes here and there to destroy the mob. His me-time is hilariously spent nude, praying for God for forgiveness. His former partner Jake Berkowicz (Louis Gossett, jr.) has taken it upon himself to capture Castle, presumably due to all the paperwork he has caused the cops to write. But they both may be over their heads, as the Japanese Yakuza starts to take hold of the criminal operations. They are as ruthless as Punisher himself, as they have kidnapped the children of the most notorious mob bosses in the city. They also want to get rid of the meddling Punisher. AND – THEY HAVE – NINJAS!

The kind of 80's stupidity that's on display here has often been imitated in modern action movies, but very rarely bettered. A fight scene between the Punisher and ninjas takes place at a childen's playground, so we get to see uzi-wielding deadly assassins run down a slide to their deaths in the line of Punisher's gun. Also, those ninjas seem to master the secret of teleportation, as witnessed towards the end when they always appear behind Lundgren and Gossett. Lundgren kills a whole lot of people, always with the same stone-face that makes it seem he's channeling The Terminator for his role. And it's a good thing too, because anything even resembling character development in this film is nothing short of ludicrous. Somehow, the biggest gripe comics fans have against this masterpiece is that The Punisher never once in the film wears his iconic skull T-shirt. That's a pretty slim argument.

Haters gonna hate.

★★★★

The Punisher (2004)
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh

Certainly the most despised of the Punisher films is the reboot that came at the top of the first wave of Marvel's flagship movies (circa 2000-2005). As the film's beginning is pretty much unbearable, I can see why so many tuned off from the film completely. But this is a rare case that a film picks up towards the end. The lesson here is that we really don't need to see the extended origins of every single comics character, as somethimes they are just jarring of what makes the characters work in the first place. This film is heavily in debt for the storyline Welcome Back, Frank by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, which is widely seen as the best and definitive story of the character. A more straight-forward adaptation would've worked wonders.

G-Man Frank Castle is involved in the cover operation where the son of the ruthless mob boss Howard Saint (John Travolta) is killed. Castle decides to retire, and with his family goes on a witness protection programme located in Hawaii. But the vengeance-thirsty Saint finds the Castles and orders a brutal hit on Frank's retirement party, killing just about every family member and friend he had, and leaving Frank himself to die. But, miracously, Frank survives, and starts to plan on taking Saint and his crime family out his own way, as it's been proven that the arm of the law can't reach it. He relocates in an apartement building, that also houses the young and eager Spacker Dave (Ben Forster), the overweight Mr. Bumpo (John Pinnette) and the timid Joan (Rebecca Romjin).

The caricatures of the comic book are toned down quite a lot. For instance, Mr. Bumpo isn't so morbidly obese any more that Frank could use him to suffocate a 7-feet tall musclebound assassin to death. But crucially, this makes it seem as if the filmmakers had been serious making this, which makes all the carnage all the more enjoyable. Much of the violence is as over-the-top, and suitably nasty. The biggest problems in the film lie the casting. Way too much time is wasted lingering on Travolta's villain, seemingly just because he's the biggest star of the film. Travolta doesn't do that bad a job (even though there are traces of both phoning it in and hamming it up), it's just that his character and what he does isn't terribly interesting. We're all in this t see the Punisher kill a bunch of criminals. Speaking of Punisher,  Thomas Jane in the lead. Like so aptly put in Arrested Development, he's the sort of actor that just wants to see his kids, not a mass-murdering sosiopath. Castle becomes a total asshole by the end, which is played as a tragical character developement, when in fact makes him at long last finally worth cheering for.

He at least has a skull T-shirt, but uses it in only, like, one or two scenes.

★★★

Punisher: War Zone (2008)
Director: Lexi Alexander

The second wave of Marvel films began with the premiere of Iron Man in 2008, and a reboot of the Punisher francise soon followed in its wake. Like characterized by other movies in this wave, this one disregards much of personal melodrama in favour of a more humorous, tongue-in-cheek style. As a result this is the best Punisher movie at a certain point of view, and the worst from another. This one certainly has the best and funniest action scenes, but otherwise I would lean on the latter stance.

After a successful hit at an entire mob family, The Punisher (Ray Stevenson) chases the last survivor, enforcer Billy Russoti (Dominic West) into a bottle plant. Billy falls into a glass crusher, which Punisher turns on to kill him. But as it turns out, it just jumbles up Billy's face, making him (of course) swear vengeance and adopt the new name Jigsaw! Meanwhile, the Punisher is suffering from confidence issues, as he realizes he also killed an undercover cop in his raid. But he tries to redeem himself by protecting the fed's family from the sinister plans of the crazed Jigsaw.

Alexander has a particular action style. The dark athmosphere is lighted with colourful lights, which makes the contrasts between the two dominant colours high and looks like a comic book panel. And the 80's-style action violence in the film is also great. The film opens up with such a great action scene, with the Punisher killing a whole room full of gangsters while swinging on a chandelier, that it's impossible for the rest of the film to match its inspired lunacy. Even the inspired scene here and there can't hold a candle to that opening scene. Alexander should've saved that for the last, instead of the underwhelming finale she had. Also, there is again way too much air in between scenes of carnage, and this time lingering on the villains is even more terrible. Jigsaw and his brother Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchingson) have such atrocious Noo Yawk Eetalyan accents, that's listening to the yabber with each other makes the viewer's own urge to kill them rising and rising, and reaching unacceptable levels of hatred towards them.

I've got the scowl. It's what the fans want, right?

Ray Stevenson's Frank Castle is at least the closest portrayal of the character so far. He doesn't have a skull T-shirt, but at least has a bullet proof vest on that has the skull. And he wears it througout the film. Stevenson just lacks some charisma to pull off being the lead, as a bit part player he works a lot better. The film also finally has Punisher's tech expert Microchip, played by Seinfeld's Newman, Jurassic Park's Dennis Nedry himself, Wayne Knight! As a voice of reason he is something essential that was lacking from the previous installments. Too bad Punisher still pouts too much of the time. Stevenson's not determined enough, as his Punisher is always flashing the possibility to quit his crusade against crime. Never! We demand more blood! We demand more Punisher films! With warts and all, they are still a lot more entertaining than a lot of the other bargain-bin superhero films.

★★★

The Worst of the Worst

Well, I've reached 100 blog posts with this text. Much as I hate to be self-congratulatory or celebrate meaningless milestones, I still figure it's as good time as any to do something cool I've wanted to do for a while. The clip here (by Schulte Fiajo) has been watched in YouTube for over 2 million times – and that's just for this crappy-quality version. The scenes in it are certainly amazing, but how are the actual films? Luckily I've seen every one of them, so here's the rundown. Hope you haven't stuffed up on Thanksgiving, because there's a big plate of Turkeys coming your way right here!

Enter the Ninja (USA, 1981)
Director: Menahem Golan

This film was actually one of the first reviewed for this blog (back when I had little to no idea where to go with it). So it stands to reason to take a fresh new look at it. Actually, compared to most of the other films on the video, Enter the Ninja is quite coherent. In fact, even compared to Golan's two other ninja films starring Sho Kosugi, Enter the Ninja is practically art.

Franco Nero stars as army vet Cole, who has decided to join a ninja academy. Because he's white, he dresses up in a white costume. Disposable evil ninjas dress in red, and Cole's chief rival Hasegawa (Kosugi) dresses in the classic ninja black. The film begins as Cole runs through a forest, killing off red ninjas and outsmarting Hasegawa. Cole's goal is to fake-assassinate the school's sensei. He succeeds, earning him to graduate with flying mark. This earns him the envy of Hasegawa.

And with these ten opening minutes, we have nearly all the ninja content that is actually contained in the film. The rest plays more like a western, with Cole helping out his land-owning war buddy Frank Landers (Alex Courtney) in a ranch in the Philippines. As it happens, the evil plantation owner Charles Venarious (Christopher George) wants the land and sends groups of thugs to persuade Landers to change his mind or die. When Cole always beats 'em up, Venarious comes up with more and more nefarious plans, finally just hiring Hasegawa.

There isn't much note-worthy about the film. It's an OK friday-night film if one doesn't expect anything much. Characters float in and out of the picture with little to no explanation. Cole gets away with a lot of assaults and murders, but then again, the police force in the Philippines is either non-existent or owned by Venarious. Franco Nero has laughably horrible dialogue, but manages to pull the character off. Nero proves himself to be multiple times cooler than many other Golan-Globus main actors such as Chuck Norris, for example.

★★ 1/2

Scene and context: Worst Death scene

This is a big spoiler as it is what happens just before Cole's final showdown with Hasegawa. Venarious has his usual main-bad-guy threat-speech while Cole is lurking behind a corner. But Cole proves that a ninja star is faster than a revolver. My DVD version had this scene cut shorter. I suspect it is a cut version, which would explain why the film never showed what happened to the fat, one-armed thug boss.

Alluda Mazaaka...! (a.k.a. Alluda Majaka, India, 1995)
Director: Satyanarayana E.V.V.

As mad as Bollywood films might be, they hold no cake to the cheery insanity that goes on in the films made in the Southern Telegu territories. Chiranjeevi is the biggest star of the area. During the mid-90's he was so popular that his fans threatened to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire in front of movie theatres if his new film would not be released. The problem with Alluda Mazaaka was not it's magnificent action scenes, but rather the sexually suggestive banter. The film's plot itself was pretty hard to understand (for me, at least), so I have to rely on second-hand sources to make sense of it.

Sitaramudu (Chiranjeevi) is the son of a village leader and the owner of a kick-ass moustache. One day in the countryside, he encounters the two daughters of a wealthy businessman. The city girls are spoiled, snotty and picky, so he decides to teach them a humiliating lesson. While he's playing around with them, both the girls fall in love with Sitara. At the same time, Sitara's sister Malliswari (Ooha) has gotten pregnant with a sleazy lawyer Shivaramakrishna (Giribabu). This makes Sitaramudu's father kill himself, and the boy to vow revenge and to get the two legally married. But Shivaramakrishna is only after the lands owned by the family, and plots to get rid of both brother and sister. Malliswari is framed as a prostitute and Sitara as a cop killer. Sitara thus decides to disguise himself as the wealthy Mr. Toyota to find out Shivaramakrishna's plans and which of the girls truly loves him.

The three-hour film has so many plot twists, scheming and romantic relationship tangles that it's hard to keep up. It also moves along at a lighning speed, and only stops to have some pretty funny coreographed song-and-dance numbers. They also pretty liberally borrow from western music, and it's worth to hear at least the Indian version of Queen's We Will Rock You. But all of the film's action stunts are absolutely fantastic, with some very cool stunts, explosions, car flips and horseback chases you wouldn't see in any Hollywood film (one of the reasons why is probably because the horses have to do pretty painful-looking falls). It is constantly inventive, crazy and badass. Another very popular scene is the tractor stunt. The film climaxes in a boat chase so massive and so cool, thet Face/Off and Miami Vice pale in comparison. The film is nothing short of amazing during these scenes, but after the mid-film break, there is a little too much talking and following of the too-hard-to-follow plot. The comedy in the film doesn't really work for me, altough I do know people who laughed their asses off even to those.

★★★★

Scene and context: The worst stunt

The stunning chase scene which features this stunt, starts off the film. The chase itself also features a number of other fancy things you can do with a horse. There's also incredible car flips and explosions so big, even Michael Bay would think they'd be overkill if he wasn't so busy masturbating. At the beginning, Sitaramudu (Chranjeevi) in police custody. When he hears the girl he loves is about to marry, he does a daring escape to stop the wedding. We then step back in time to see how we got to that point.

Troll 2 (Italy, 1990)
Director: Claudio Fragasso (as Drake Floyd)

So legendary is this film in badness, that documentaries have been made from it. While director Claudio Fragasso (of Zombi 3 and Scalps fame) claims that his film is strongly ironic, what is clear that the cast and crew of the film had no idea of it at the time of the shoot. Blame the language barrier between Italians and Americans, but we got some of the worst acting, weirdest logic and oddest looking creatures and set-pieces in entertainment history.

The young Joshua Waits (Michael Stephenson) is listening to a  bedtime story told by his Grandpa Seth (Robert Ormsby). He hears about the bloodthirsty goblins (there are no actual trolls in the film) that use trickery to lure people into their forest. There the foul creatures can magically turn their captives into half-man half-vegetable hybrids and eat them. The next day, Josh's family is going on a vacation to a country village called Nilbog. While Josh tries to warn that goblins may be after the strange countryhouse deal they've got, no one listens to him. Why? Well, Grandpa Seth has been dead all along and Josh has been talking to a g-g-g-ghost!

At the same time Josh's sister Connie (Holly Waits) is struggling with her boyfriend Elliot (Jason Wright). While she would want to just have sex with him, Elliot prefers to wear micro-shorts and hang out in a trailer-van with his buddies. Nevertheless, the teenaged boys follow the family to Nilbog, but soon most of them are preyed by the evil shape-shifting goblins and their queen Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed).

If the film has a message, it wants to say that vegetarism is bad and inhuman, and the only way to save the world is to believe in fairy tales and go straight for a baloney sandwich. Every time someone eats a vegetable in the film, something bad happens. Some campiness can be deducted from some character names (Sherrif Gene Freak?), but it's all so badly done, it's hardly relevant whether the makers had their tongue in cheek or not. The acting varies from incompetent (all of the Waits) to manic overacting in a Helena Bonham-Carter drag (Reed). The troll masks look like they were made by kindergarteners, and in every shot they're in it's fun to spot the single troll mask that has goofy eyeballs in it. The film is pretty funny to be watched with a couple of beers and a group of snarky friends. But as I've seen the bloody thing for three times, I can promise that it reduces in charm with every viewing.

★ (or ★★★★★)

Scene and context: Worst reaction

Arnold (Darren Ewing) is the horniest of the film's teenaged boys. When he sees a young girl running for her life in the forest, he attempts to tackle her. Only when he realized she's being chased by blood- (or sap-)thirsty trolls does he realize that they should run. They seek refuge in Gielgud's house and get a glass of fruit juice to drink, courtesy of their hostess. The truth is soon revealed as the girl melts into a pile of goo upstairs, and Arnold grows roots which render him immobile. Then the trolls come out...

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (USA, 1987)
Director: Lee Harry

While a little less known than Troll 2, SNDN2 has also the dubious honors of being named one of the worst horror films ever made. While I wouldn't actually go that far, it is better to not have seen the first film in the series in a while while watching this. For the first 40 minutes or so, Silent 2 is little more than the clip show equivalent of a horror film, reminiscing everything that happened in the first.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (which I will also be reviewing soon) ends as the killer santa is shot at the feet of his kid brother, Ricky Caldwell. This of course hinted at a sequel already. We open as the all-grown-up Ricky (Eric Freeman) is already captured and interviewed by the criminal psychologist Henry Bloom (James L. Newman). He reminiscens his brother's kill spree and his traumatic childhood, being terrified of the color red, sex and Santas. When he grew up, he also had a girlfriend, Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan). When jealousy takes the better of him, Ricky starts to kill everyone around him, until he is arrested by police forces. But while he has told the story, Ricky has also managed to escape from the interrigation room by figuring out how to kill Bloom. As it's Christmas, the recently released Ricky  decides to attempt to kill the one person in his background that he or his big brother never managed to kill yet: the sadistic Mother Superior (Jean Miller).

The Embodiment of Evil.

The film has two major problems which attribute to it's bad reputation. First is of course the pacing. At first the film seems to be the cheapest ever made, as it only contains two people sitting in a room and clips from another film. There are long, unnecessarily lingering shots that seem to only exist to waste time. It takes 40 minutes before there are any major new scenes. Fortunatelly, the film picks off from there. There's a sweet car flip and explosion which show that there was some money in making this, but perhaps they ran out of it in the middle of the shoot. The film also manages to have a good share of inventive and funny murders. A yuppy gets toasted with a car battery so his eyeballs pop. A guy is impaled with an umbrella, which is then opened. Not much of it has anything to do with Christmas.

The biggest problem is that Eric Freeman is a horrendous actor. He has two different methods in the film: one when he's supposed to be normal and thus tries to not react to anything too much. The second is when he's a manic killer, going as over-the-top as he can, spurring one-liners in a Duke Nukem voice or having a mocking tone. The end half of the film is still funny enough and close, oh so close to being so bad it's funny. At times this is still almost unwatchably terrible.

★★

Scene and context: Worst line-reading ever

Ricky has just killed off her girlfriend and her yuppie ex-boyfriend brutally. When a cop tries to arrest him, he turns his gun back to his face and shoots him. As he now has a gun, he goes off in a kill spree around the neighbourhood, cackling to himself.

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (Israel/South Africa/USA, 2002)
Director: David Worth

I know this post has so far had a lot of "it isn't really that bad". Well, try this on for size. This is a film so hilariously bad that it deserved two entries to the video list, and even one of them features three actual deaths. There have been a lot of shark-themed exploitation films, but this has got to be the most inept, the most brain-numbingly stupid and the most hilarious of them.

It's hard to be the white girl when all the ethnics get eaten around you.

Beach patrolman Ben Carpenter (John Barrowman) discovers a giant tooth in an underground cavern on the Mexican coast. The shark researcher Cataline Stone (Jenny McStone) becomes interested in the case and arrives to study. When her research ship and it's surfer boy crew is attacked by a gigantic shark, Carpenter must come to the rescue. It becomes clear that the shark in question is a prehistoric Megalodon, a huge shark with a never-ending appetite. But the greedy holiday resort owner wants to keep this quiet for fear of loss of money (as is always the case). He also has a local cable company in his back pocket, which has already lost a number of employees to the shark. Yet they are still adamant to keep a luxury cruise fundraiser for the rich and powerful. A lot of silly hijinks ensue.

I feel like having Mexican for dinner tonight.

Really, Megalodon doesn't seem at all different from a regular great white shark, except it is a lot bigger and meaner. It's size also hilariously varies during the course of the film. The shark scenes are just clips from nature documentaries and the film has a whopping three different ones at its disposal. When the shark is just peeking from the water, this is silly, but when thesame scenes are used with CGI to show the shark eating someone or something, it looks truly ridiculous. The only fully CGI scenes at the very end of the film look too horrible to be from Playstation 1 game demos.

The film's real gift to the world is the totally incredibly bad dialogue, which is delivered even worse than in Troll 2. Here, I don't think the filmmakers can back off from their creation by claiming they're doing a satire. This straight-to-video film is as much exploitation as they come, not content of feeding off just from the popularity of Jaws, but also from the really minor success of its rip-off Shark Attack. Needless to say, this sequel has nothing in common with the first two films of the series. Barrowman in the lead role seems to have quite a lot of fun. Getting a vacation in Mexico while pretending to be a dude that looks at bikini girls? No wonder.

★ or ★★★★★

Scenes and context:
Most random line ever:

Carpenter has been shown from the beginning to be both really horny, and a real asshole. Stone has pushed off anyone trying to get close to her so far in the film, but it appears that she has finally fallen for Carpenter's charms(?). Sorry, I really got nothing. This comes from out of nowhere. If you want to watch the film, I suggest that you don't watch YouTube clips and save it.

Worst CGI


The two sleazy businessmen are having their fundraiser interrupted by Megalodon attacking. Stone and Carpenter haven't made it to attack the beast yet, so it starts eating rich people like popcorn. The shark also has an uncanny ability to teleport from place to place. How else can you explain that it's already waiting for its escaping prey like a hungry Droopy Dog?

Movies I-wanna-see Rises

First things first. You may notice a small difference in the title of this blog. Yeah, I figured that since I usually spend weeks to perfectly tune each blog post to be absolutely perfect, it's not so Fast any more, is it. So with just changing one letter I made a reference to a british sketch comedy a reference of a rarely-seen arthouse film. And what does "Last" mean? Is this the last, final word on movies and you don't need to turn to any other blogs for advice afterwards? Or is it just that each post takes so long that this will be the last one to report? You be the judge. As I'm fairly sure that my Best-of-the-2000s series will continue to 2012, while other blogs finished their lists about a year ago, I'll try to do it as a little bit of both. I'll also keep developing the blog. The URL will stay the same for now, but if some morning you won't find it in the old address, try to change the letter as well. And now, to business.

You know what we haven't had in a while? Pointless lists of awesomely shitty movies I haven't seen yet. Having a little more ambition with this blog certainly didn't mean you would get rid of those. So, like a zombie or the Dark Knight, here's another installment in our exciting series.

ALLUDA MAZAAKA! (1995)



Some of my friends have seen this batshit insane Indian actioner and say it's the greatest thing since the domestication of the horse. Unfortunately the link of the awesome tractor fight from the film has been removed from YouTube, but at least this scene is some compensation for it.

AMERICAN COMMANDOS (1982)



It's the Philippenean Death Wish meets Delta Force - and so much more including a ninja picture.

BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966)
http://www.youtube.com/v/AjgJ3gMF2sk?fs=1&hl=fi_FI

This is a match I'd like to see! Although I do hope Billy has some Blade-like garlic weapons or something or this'll be a one-sided match.

CEMETARY MAN (Dellamote, dellamorte, 1994)



I'm not entirely sure if all of this comedy is intentional or not. This could be the italian Evil Dead II.
"Why?! You were always so understanding!"

THE CRIPPLED MASTERS (1979)
http://bit.ly/bcl85N

If people missing limbs can play music, they can do kung-fu too!

DARK ANGEL (a.k.a. I come in Peace, 1990)



Dolph Lundgren vs. a Mortal Kombat-powered alien! YES!

E'GAD, ZOMBIES! (2010)
http://bit.ly/65gXrh

Ian McKellen in a period zombie film?! Yes, please!

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)
http://bit.ly/bez3

If you don't want to see Bruce Lee meet (and fight) Popeye and James Bond, you're dead to me.

HALF A LOAF OF KUNG FU (1980)
http://bit.ly/d5snxg

But Jackie Chan doesn't meet Popeye...
...Jackie Chan BECOMES Popeye. Mind = blown.

JACK FROST (1964)



This is crazy film based on a a Russian folk tale, not the Michael Keaton snowman movie, although that sounds awful too.

L'EXECUTEUR
http://bit.ly/bVTzer

This is the sort of thing most french movies would need. Take notes, Godard.

MATANGO - ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (1963)
http://bit.ly/MjYCn

I wonder what shrooms the makers were on?

MYSTICS IN BALI (1981)



I see Re-Animator got some ideas here - but toned them down. This is one of the most fucked-up-looking films I've ever seen!

NORWEGIAN NINJA (2010)
http://bit.ly/cCvvA3

I have a thing for Scandinavian ninja movies.

THE ONE-ARMED EXECUTIONER (1983)
http://bit.ly/9a9XVl

The first Bobby Suarez film I-wanna-see, inspired by the documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed.

OUTLAND (1981)
http://bit.ly/Wvbad

According to Empire magazine it has Sean Connery making Space his bitch. Ace.

RAZORBACK (1984)



It's got only two states of being - dangerous or dead. It being a murderous giant wild hog.

RIGHTING WRONGS (1986)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN_xxs_8Kqg

“Over studying makes you a moron.” - tag line from Righting Wrongs.

R.O.T.O.R. (1988)
http://bit.ly/abOlBj

Or Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research. With a name like that, you'll just know it has some robots going on a rampage!

THE SUPER INFRAMAN (1975)



This chinese Ultraman-clone seems to be even more insane.

TIGER ON THE BEAT (1988)
http://bit.ly/181Rn9

I heard from trustworthy sources that this is mad as hell. Chainsaw fights and the lot. And seems to be cheerfully misogynistic to boot. Nice.

THE TOUGHEST MAN IN THE WORLD (1984)
http://bit.ly/9HsTOg

I miss Mr T. The T used to mean Tough.

WHEELS ON MEALS (1984)
http://bit.ly/aP5KGD

Nothing silly about this one, just seems kickass enough for my tastes.

WHO KILLED CAPTAIN ALEX? (2010)



Seriously THIS is how to do low budget films. Uganda rules!

ZOMBIE LAKE (1981)
http://bit.ly/4ymFRC

Dead Snow didn't invent nazi zombies, although they weren't as lovelorn in that one.

Night Visions Maximum Halloween 3010 report

After missing out on the most exciting biannual film festival in Finland last spring, I wanted to take part of this Halloween's Night Visions festival a little wider than usual. Unfortunately I had a job and a big party to keep me occupied, yet I managed to see quite a large number of festival films. As Night Visions has grown larger, also it's variety of different films has grown. It depends whether this is a good or a bad thing, as many festival goers didn't care too much to have mainstream films like Due Date in the festival lineup. Yet much of the stuff I saw was weird as ever so I won't complain that the festival has lost its cool just yet. In fact, I'm eagerly waiting for April when Back To Basics will blow my mind!

I'll leave a couple of films I saw to be discussed later on in different blogposts. There's too much to write about anyways.

Frank Henenlotter: Bad Biology

The festival had chosen interesting guests this time around. Frank Henenlotter is remembered for the cult classic Basket Case. All of his films I've seen deal with characters that have problems with some mutated part of their own body. His newest film, his first in 19 years doesn't break the trusted formula. Bad Biology is more twisted sex-comedy than body horror, but it's still pretty icky. It deals with two characters: First with a girl with seven clitorises and an hungry man-eating appetite. The second a young man who has trouble from his monstrous-sized penis which seems to have a mind of its own.

This bad-taste parade is shot pretty cheap and it shows. Yet it has a nice aura of just trying crazy ideas together and seeing what fits. The sexual subtext is left pretty thin but it's a fun ride nevertheless. Particularly with an eager festival audience with the author also present with amusing anecdotes.

★★★

Juha Rosma: HARMAGEDON (Suomi 1986)

Jussi Parviainen, Juha Rosma: Harmagedon

Perhaps the biggest highlight of this year's festival was the unforgettable Finlandia Gala of the nigh-forgotten finnish art-action film Harmagedon. Jussi Parviainen is a big name in the finnish theatre circles and he produced, wrote, directed and starred a series of plays in the 80's which starred his own alter ego, Juska Paarma. Harmagedon the film is the conclusion for this series, and it sure goes out with a bang.

Juska Paarma (who had been killed in the previous play) is resurrected to kill everyone he knows with a white shotgun. Thus after his own destruction he will destroy everything he held dear in the world as well. The world is seen in Paarma's point of view - women pine for having sex with him, men either fear him or love him as a hilarious drinking buddy. Even though the film is repetitive, the arty photography, often hilarious script and a cavalcade of 80's finnish actors holds the whole thing together. I particularly love Aake Kalliala.

Maybe even more incredible than the film were screenwriter-star-producer-uncredited director Parviainen's anecdotes before and after the film. After stories about killing a child as a five-year-old, an explosion at the prop factory, surviving the war in Afghanistan and hoping to meet Osama bin Laden, it's a night to remember.

★★★★

J Blakeson: The Disappearance of Alice Creed

This one managed to surprise me! The best crime-film in a while, it tells the story of two men excecuting a kidnapping. And like the best heist films, it makes you almost hope that the criminals get away with it, so well-planned is the crime, however despicable. The film is told with considerable patience, in that it doesn't give away all its cards in the beginning. The starting montage of the criminals silently preparing an apartment for their hostage is intriguing enough.

With a couple of suitable twists that don't feel forced, we get to find out that it actually deals with a power-play. Every one of the characters has some strengthness and weaknesses over the other two. Thus, the film never loses its drive and the viewer keeps on the edge of his seat until the end credits.

HERE BE SOME MINOR SPOILERS, although I try to articulate them as vaguely as possible.

One jackass complained about the ending being too uplifting after the film. I don't think so. A crime always leaves traces and thus no one walks away from the tangled triangual drama intact.

★★★★

Mark Hartley: Machete Maidens Unleashed!

Documentary-maker Hartley continues on the same path than his previous Not Quite Hollywood, this time focusing on B-movies made in the Philippines. I got dozens of MIWS from this, which was probably the intent. So in that, the film fulfills its function. It is always fun to see old clips, even brief ones, but the real meat is the wide array of interviews with fun anecdotes. Unfortunatelly, the focus of the film tends to stray from time to time. If I wanted to hear from the making of Apocalypse Now, I would've watched Hearts of Darkness instead. Also too much time is spent on describing Roger Corman's producing tactics. I would've wanted (nay, NEEDED) to hear more about Weng Weng, one of the greatest actors that ever lived.

★★★

Yannick Dahan, Benjamin Rocher: The Horde

The first dud of the festival. This french crime-film swiftly turns into a zombie film. Kudos for keeping it mostly serious but the problem here is that it's all been done better by oh, so many times. I couldn't care less about any of the characters even if they have been written tension among themselves. There are gleeful moments here and there (cocky cops on a bust get taken down at the first door, the gun-toting old fat neighbour), so that one watches this through without too much pain, but mostly it's just droll.

★★

Seiji Chiba: Alien vs. Ninja

I had a very troubling text message just before the screening of this film. So it tells about the quality of the movie that I was able to forget the threat of my loaned car being towed away, and just sit, watch this and have a good time. The start doesn't promise much. A shitty-looking film is shot with a digital camera at some forest with either wimpy-looking ninjas or annoying comic sidekicks (that ALSO are wimpy-looking) having boring battles.

But once tha Aliens arrive the fun begins. It's obvious that the creatures are copied from the Aliens of Ridley Scott and James Cameron. But with their slimy green rubber-suits and dolphin-like beaks they look kind of cute. Not to mention their tiny offspring. And at the same time the creatures are very blood-thirsty (not to mention thirsty for some boob-grabbing). So we soon get rid of the most annoying chracters and have a good amount of silly WTF-moments. It's a very stupid film, but unashamedly so. With the goofy humour, gratitious violence and interest in female anatomy it is a clear movie for a boy's night out. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that. The audience loved it judging by the applause.

★★★ 1/2

RED (c) 2010 Summit Entertainment, Di Bonaventura Pictures

Robert Schwentke: RED

RED is a big ensemble action movie, and thus must be compared to the recent The Expendables. RED is better. But it is by no means a perfect movie either.

Like The Expendables, your enjoyment of RED depends largely of how much you get a kick out of the actors on screen. And I for one love more old, crazy character actors than wrestlers and other muscle stars, even though I love 80's action films with all my heart. In addition to leading Bruce Willis, you'll get John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Morgan Freeman, and a couple of smaller parts I don't care to reveal yet, even though they are found on the cast list. And all these actors seem to have a genuinely good time - for once they get to shoot guns instead of doing boring drama. Except for Bruce who has a boring romantic subplot - that at least happens among all the action and not bizarrelly stopping it a'la The E-movie. Without the cast, or even with just Bruce, the film would be sort of a lacklustre spy thriller, even if it has a few truly kickass sequences (most of them are found in the trailer). But Malkovich and Cox in particular always bring a smile to my face, even with some lesser material.

One thing that really bugged me about this film was the use of music. It was way too generic and comedic and always too loud. I get that RED is supposed to be an action comedy, but the makers should take a page from the ZAZ filmmaking: Everything is much funnier when done with a straight face. Without the wink wink -attitude this could've been an even greater action film. But I still enjoyed it a lot.

★★★

Pasquale Festa Campanile: Hitch-Hike (Autostop rosso sangue)

Here is a just about perfect sleazy italian thriller to play at an all-nighter. About as sleazy as you can get Franco Nero plays a wife-beating sleazebag, who gets kidnapped by even bigger scum. There is no good, or even shades of grey. Everyone in the film is either bad or ugly or even badder and uglier (on the inside that is). The film quality is suitably dirty-looking for a film like this as well.

Like The Disappearence of Alice Creed, the story doesn't flow from start to finish like you would expect it. A couple of suitable twists take the story into all new layers. The film is about as nihilistic as can get, yet it isn't hard to watch as action and outrageous sequences follow each other. Even the notorious rape scene feels like a parody of the one in Straw Dogs. Yet you won't be walking from the film with a happy-go-lucky attitude, that's for sure.

★★★★

Frank Henenlotter: Brain Damage

And here we are back with Henenlotter. Brain Damage rivals Basket Case as his magnum opus. He told that he poured a lot of his own experiences with cocaine into this film. It sees a young man getting connected with euphoria-causing brain parasite, which seeks to kill a lot of other people. This is not a subtle film by any mens, but Henenlotter keeps adding up the shots nicely and keeps the pace comical enough but not turning into a huge farce at any point. Both the scenes with carnage and scenes of drug-euphoria are done extremely well. But it still feels a little padded and the acting is very bad indeed. Elmer the parasite is a likeable villain with a sweet voice and one wonders why he hasn't become a bigger pop-culture icon.

★★★ 1/2

Todd Phillips: Due Date

Who doesn't love a good road trip movie? Todd Phillips, the director of Road Trip, returns to the genre with a dream pairing of Robert Downey, Jr. and Zach Galifianakis. Both are considered some of the funniest actors in Hollywood today.

It is mostly thanks to its leading men that the viewer keeps up with the story. The crazy hijinks of the film are usually not particularly funny and sometimes outright annoying. Not to mention obvious at certain points. For instance, who among the audience doesn't get what is going to happen to a coffee jar full of a dead man's ashes the minute the topic is discussed? A couple of rewrites should've worked wonders. Particularly Galifianakis's character is close to being so utterly, life-threateningly moronic that it's nearly impossible to like him. The actor saves what he can, but is still not my favorite comic sidekick. Downey Jr.'s character's rage towards him is meant to show the character to have some anger issues, even though he's acting mostly pretty reasonable given the circumstances. Towards the end the hijinks get so crazy, this overplayed comedy works better.

Actually Due Date is one of those comedies like Knocked Up that's about the main character growing up and adapting to boring mediocre family life. At the beginning RDJ is shown to not get along with children and even though his methods of handling a problem child are hilarious, they are hardly good parental advices. But during the road-trip with a huge man-child he learns to suppress his anger towards simpler people and thus is allowed to enter the family life.

How sweet, but there are dozens of better road trip / buddy comedies. Here's waiting for The Hangover 2.

★★

Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Tak Sakaguchi: The Mutant Girl Squad

I loved Tokyo Gore Police back in the day, but Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl bored me. The modern japanese gorefests have plenty of sick ideas, but they work in such a fast pace, it can get tiring. The idea behind Mutant Girl Squad is that three different directors have taken each a part of the same story to direct. It brings some new joy to the project, even if it is a bit hit-and-miss.

A teenaged girl finds out on her birthday that she's a half-mutant. Her mutant parents get killed so she joins a secret society of mutants to take revenge on humans. This much I understood about the plot. It may be getting tired, but I was lost after the first part. The second part is the most boring and confusing one, but at least the best ideas are saved to the end. So we get to see an adrogyn Astro Boy-copying mutant, a girl who has a chain saw coming out of her ass and a girl who has katanas coming out of her tits. It's extremely bad taste, but it's the sort of film where you can't help but love the never-ending madness that's put to the screen uncompromisingly. I had fun with this one in the end.

★★★

Yun Je-gyun: Haeundae: The Deadly Tsunami

Yet it didn't get any better from there. One of my happiest Night Visions -memories was the screening of the bonkers chinese catastrophy film Super Typhoon a year ago. The ultimate film for preaching trust in the authorities was a suitable send-off. The Korean catastrophy film is a lot more boring one. Bad South-Korean films are usually packed with both horrible comedic bits and overdone melodrama. One should've guessed this would be too. Laughs were few and the film follows the basic Roland Emmerich plot too closely without doing this so over-the-top that one would have fun. Okay, one dog gets kicked and some people electrocuted. But I digress, I slept through most of this shit.

★

Ken Wiederhorn: King Frat

I had to question my sanity of paying money to see the final film, which is more than usual in Night Visions. A bad, bad, BAD Animal House rip-off is so tasteless, I wondered why more people weren't vomiting on the floors. King Frat barely has any plot at all, more than the hijinks of the most awful fraternity on campus. Seriously, these people make the Animal House boys look like Christian role models. Most of the humour is based on farts, boogers, burping and various other body fluids. One particularly idiotic scene sees a beautiful blonde accidentally starting to have sex with a guy in a gorilla suit in an ambulance (dont ask, I didn't understand it either) and then getting miraculously stuck. The scenes end suddenly and flowing in an order which makes me question the sanity of even the editor of this thing.

The theme is an odd ear-worm with a sweet lady-voice singing too fast about all the Fratboy hijinks for me to catch the lyrics. The theme has been playing in my head ever since, partly because not 5 minutes pass in the film without the fucking song. So all in all, it wasn't even so bad it was funny. It was so bad it made me and everyone else in the theatre feel very uneasy. That may be why it was certainly worth a view.

★

Ever more movies I-wanna-see

No one has told me to stop, so here's a new collection of those wacky films I wanna see:

First Bulletproof, which I saw between Tweeting about it and this blog post. But I'll reccommend it to everybody! Gary Busey at his craziest! Your worst nightmare, butthorn.
http://bit.ly/jUGln

Beast in Space
Star Wars-themed sexploitation starring the finnish bombshell Sirpa Laine!

The Challenge of the Lady Ninja
http://bit.ly/afojj0
This is the first occasion on this list about my love for the kunoichi. I want to see this soo bad!

Captive planet (Sette uomini d'oro nello spazio)
http://bit.ly/8TtEjP
Features suicidal robots without genitalia

THE GREEN SLIME



Usually, 50's and 60's B-movies aren't worth it. But this looks like an exception. It has the funkiest theme song!

Day of the Dolphin
http://bit.ly/b5uOXv
Dolphin Assassins Yield the Greatest Movie Poster and Tagline Ever?
-Unreality

DEADBEAT AT DAWN
Hobo violence!


Deadly Prey
http://bit.ly/aYrs2r
Hailed as one of the most action-packed movies of all time.

Fallen
http://bit.ly/9lKRe6
I mean the one where Denzel Washington chases a body-swapping demon.

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES



This trash comes from Cannon - Of Course!

High-Kick Girl
http://bit.ly/4wjPkp
Not exactly kunoichi, but kick-ass girls nevertheless!

The Iceman Cometh
http://bit.ly/9SwRTz
Arnie would say: Let's Kick some Ice!

INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS



The best documentary about the finnish Centre Party ever made!

Karate Bear Fighter
http://bit.ly/c0CoZF
This might be the best name of a movie ever created.

Kommissar X - Jagd auf Unbekannt
http://bit.ly/Sb9km
The germans know their stuff as well as the italians.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
http://bit.ly/2azi2o
OK, it's a near internet meme, but you can't say this shit isn't horrible and awesome at the same time!

NINJA TERMINATOR



Explosions! Teleportation! No Sense!

Parting Shots
I can't find a YouTube clip, but Edgar Wright recommends this Michael Winner picture for Death Wish 3 -fans. It's gotta have vigilantism!

Prophecy
http://bit.ly/8RfjE
Jumping, exploding human-bananas?

Red Phoenix
http://bit.ly/7FzCaQ
As promised, more kunoichi. The sexy kind!

THE RUNAWAY



"This is a bad guy." No shit, that's Gene Simmons! In a movie with robot spiders

SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS
http://bit.ly/ajvnxY
Sorry, ladies. Not to be sexist, but this is far too entertaining.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 2
http://bit.ly/2whuw2
Garbage Day!

SURVIVING THE GAME



I'm a sucker for rich dudes hunting the homeless -flicks.

Werewolves on Wheels
http://bit.ly/dah9PI
I certainly don't want anybody saying I am running a highbrow-blog

ZARDOZ



Yes, that was a huge floating head saying, "The gun is good" and puking rifles to a crowd of diapered men on horseback. Once you bought your ticket, you got to hear the head finish the sentence ("... The penis is evil.")
- Cracked.com

10 to Midnight
http://bit.ly/594KLA
The obligatory Bronson-picture. But they are all so great!