The Heroic Female: Michelle Yeoh

Hey ladies! Happy International Women's Day! As it is, cinema is still more or less a boy's club in many parts of the world and both women filmmakers and films about women are still at a minority. This, of course varies from culture to culture. One of the healthiest female images in films comes from Asia, in particular the liberal (compared to mainland China) Hongkong. The Hongkong film industry has raised plenty of strong female role models, both feminine in nature and powerful, independent individuals. The biggest female movie stars include Anita Mui, Zhang Ziyi and Maggie Chung. But the biggest, best of them is Michelle Yeoh, the action goddess. But are her films actually so feminine as they appear on first glance? I take a look at her three early-90s action films to make sure.

Wing Chun (1994)
Director: Yuen Woo-ping

Yim Wing Chun is a mythical figure from China's history, a developer of the wing chun school of kung fu. So who better to tell the story of how young Wing saved her village from bandits and got married than Michelle Yeoh at her kick-assiest and the legendary fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping.

This poster from Ghana doesn't quite do justice to Yeoh's looks

Wing Chun is a respected woman in a remote small village due to her fighting skills. Yet the male-centric society annoys her since she is supposed to get married and settle down when she would rather help her father work. Thus, she tends to dress as a man to work in the mill without being pestled. When bandits attempt to raid her village, Wing Chun single-handedly defeats them and drives them back to their master.

She also takes it upon herself to protect a woman she saved from the bandits, Charmy (Catherine Hung Yan). Charmy starts to work at Wing's mill and bakery. Due to her beauty, Charmy has plenty of suitors attempting to woo her. But after a fight for her honor, one beaten suitor also sets his eyes on Wing herself. Meanwhile, the leader of the bandits, Leung Pok To (Donnie Yen) plans to arrive to conquer the village himself and beat Wing in the process.

Like wu xia films tend to be,  Wing Chun is a blend of romantic melodrama, fast-paced fight scenes, crude farce humor and a few historical, political points thrown to the mix. While Wing is a strong, independent woman that defies the society's expectations, the film does have its share of crude sexual innuendo as well. Charmy is a typical damsel-in-distress, and the dumb men of the village like nothing more but to ogle at her. The film has some homosexual tension between the tomboy and the girly girl, particularly since Wing dressed as a man is mistaken as Charmy's lover. Their friendship seems to be a bit intimate for them to fondle each others head and shoulders so.

"I'll show those chauvinist men by pulling this phallic object!"

The fights are of course beautiful, detailed and kinetic, and they utilize plenty of phallic objects such as a spear penetrating a wall. A scene featuring a crop grinder has the most sexual imagery. The dumb Chinese farce humor isn't something I'm incredibly fond of, but the things are kept relatively low-key here, so one can concentrate on the fight scenes and how lovely Michelle Yeoh is.

★★★

Once A Cop (Chao ji ji hua, 1992)
Director: Stanley Tong

This spin-off film from Jackie Chan's Supercop series is a bit more serious business than we've used to seeing. But Michelle Yeoh, returning as Jessica Yang, takes the confident lead and proves to be more than a match for euro-trash gangsters and Chinese terrorist groups. The action is kick-ass and plentiful, but the film is perhaps a bit too long.

Jessica is sent to Hong Kong as an observer with a crack unit of the police attempting to take down an international terrorist cell. Hongkongese criminals are working together with a French terrorist (Alain Guernier) to pull off a major heist in the City Bank. Since her fellow officers are weak and unorganized, Yang soon forgets her role, taking a more active stance against the ruthless criminals. She also becomes involved with detective David Chang (Rongguang Yu), bent on capturing the terrorists. But it soon turns out he has a vendetta against the group since they killed his brother. What follows is a crash course between Yang Love and Chang Vengefulness.

Yeoh is at career-best form here. In the beginning she's seen in masculine military uniforms, seeming quite butch. But once she falls for Chang she starts to mellow out and become more feminine. That doesn't stop her high-kicking terrorists, even if the boys mostly do the shooting. One interesting scene shows her grab Chang's Playboy magazine and start to read with interest. The blurry lines of Yeoh's sexuality are here again, but she'll get turned. It's sad to have such paper-thin innuendo over a character that could be used so much better.

Once again, the Achilles' heel of the film is the comedy. I like the slapstick and all, but can't stand the funny faces, farce, and in the gravest crime of all, men dressed up as women. Jackie Chan also does an embarrassing cameo in drag.

★★★

The Heroic Trio (Tong fong sam hop, 1992)
Directors: Johnny To, Ching Siu-Tung

The most unique of the three films on display here is a blend of Chinese folklore, science fiction, crime thriller and even a comic-book superhero movie. For it's a tale of three strong women who happen to have superpowers. They have the same powers as the three most famous female superheroes. Tung (Anita Mui) is The Wonder Woman, a strong, righteous and noble warrior, but with a secret identity. Chat (Maggie Chung) is Catwoman, the super-slick burglar and thief who also has incredible fight skills and can get out of tight spots. And Ching (Michelle Yeoh) is The Invisible Woman, who initially serves the evil warlock (Yen Shi-Kwan).

Bad girls get to have all the fun. Try converting her now!

The three super-heroines use their skills and powers in a very different ways. Wonder Woman attempts to stop the other two and their schemes at first, which makes the three fight each other for most of the running time. But in the end they realize that the Warlock's rising power threatends them all, and the three unite for a super team-up. The men, represented mostly by the police (Damian Lau and Paul Chun) are left to the sidelines. Their incompetence in solving baby-snatching crimes is what springs Wonder Woman into action in the first place. Their place later on is mostly to root for the good guys and to clean up after the bigger scrapes.

Presumably also to patch up her suit later on as well.

The film is thoroughly postmodern which is reflected in how the rise of the new age and the female superstars in the end defeats traditional magic in the story. The tight body-suits, blue lightning and innovative camera movements reflect comic books and anime series in a way that was copied numerous times to films ranging from Irma Vep to The Matrix to Underworld. The effects here are quite good, utilizing wires and practical effects rather than dull computer tricks its carbon copies later would do.

Maggie has nothing but contempt for Underworld, as anyone should.

The main problem with the film is that the goody-goody Mui is a bit bland while the badder girls are hotter and clearly have more fun. In the time where Hongkong was starting to drift back to mainland China, the story of building unity through a common history also rang true. It's not at all a deep film in any way, but it's quirky and fun and inventive and the three leads are as charismatic as ever. And they beat up an androgynous bastard. How's that for female empowerment!

★★★★

Cruising Revisited

The Crime movie genre has some bona-fide classics that are easy to be recognized by anyone. These include your Film Noirs, Heats and Godfathers. But some of the more interesting films of the genre are treasured by some, and leave others completely cold. None more so, than French Connection director William Friedkin's 1980 joint Cruising. I'm even not that sure myself what to make of the film that seems more content in describing the New York gay leather clubs and subculture than it is of having a familiar plot or character arc. The film is certainly one of the most experimental in Friedkin's career, and thus warrants a closer look, however one wants to do it.

So... Revisited or Chew? Even this soon after creating the categories I'm at a bit of a loss on how to treat this movie. Chewisited! There may be spoilers.


The Face Value

Gerald Walker's novel Cruising was a hot property at Hollywood in the late 70's. The novel was based on a true story of a serial killer lurking homosexuals in the underground gay leather-culture circles. Oliver Stone was very eager to direct the book. The French Connection producer Philip D'Antoni was adamant that Friedkin should direct it. After the financial flop of Friedkin's film Sorcerer he agreed to look into it, and when there were a number of brutal unsolved murders in New York, he decided to do it. In a bit of a rare move for the director, he also took over the scripting duties. Thus he made sure Walker's story would not be twisted into a cutesy Hollywood story of good vs. evil and a happy ending to tie the bow.

For Friedkin's demand of reality, many of the film's gay club scenes were shot in actual leather bars, with the patrons being brought out as extras. As a weird coincidence, an actor in a minor role of The Exorcist was also imprisoned for actually murdering the gay film critic Addison Verrill. Naturally, Friedkin went to him for research of the mind of a gay serial killer. Later on, the actor also confessed to the murders Walker was describing in his novel, although the truth in these confessions is questionable. Never let it be said, however, that William Friedkin doesn't work for the authenticity of the milieu of his films.

The Plot

We follow everynight ordeals at gay bars for a while. After a steamy night out, man takes a new friend to his apartment. During sex, the stranger brutally kills him. Elsewhere, in a gay porn theatre, the stranger also stabs a random movie-goer. Body parts show up in the Hudson river and the police are clueless on the identity of the killer. Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino) figures the best way to get information to capture the killer is to send a man undercover. The young, eager officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino) accepts to complete this mission, and settles to live in Greenwich Village under a new identity. At nights he goes to leather bars to observe the situation and ask about customers.

At first Burns thinks the job will be easy like a walk in the park. While he can't share work details with his girlfriend Nancy (Karen Allen), he remains close. But as he starts to go deeper and deeper undercover, the job also starts to strain the relationship. Burns becomes obsessed, but even his superiors are uncertain whether its for the capture of the serial killer, or if Burns has just been sucked in the gay subculture.

The Contents

As mentioned the film mostly deals with describing the New York gay leather clubs and subculture in the sleazy, pre-Giuliani times. Characters and events are less important and the film hasn't got a satisfying conclusion that would explain the mystery. The movie goes deliberately in circles, and the viewer is either caught up with it or not.

Pacino's Burns is an odd character, since we get so little information about him, and even those nuggets often seem to be contradictory. He doesn't seem to have problems being used as a bait. Many of the serial killer's victims look very similar to him, they are dark-haired young men with large eyes. Burns doesn't seem to mind this or have even the slightest hint of fear or care for himself. The film does hint he's willing to go deeper undercover than would ever be required for his job. And make no mistake, this is no euphemism. I mean gay sex here. Many times he's only shown to be interrupted by a chance.

For the most part of the film Burns seems to be playing a role or hiding under a facade. When he first enters the film, he's laughing (perhaps a bit nervously) at Captain Edelson's enquiries of his sexuality and seems to be most at ease here. After a few nights at gay night clubs Burns channels his frustrations to his sexual performance with Nancy. Later on, their sexual relationship seems to go dry. The end hints that he doesn't see her as sexually desirable any more, yet they both choose to play along with the parts they're supposed to.

That final scene arises more questions than it answers. Are those pieces of clothing Nancy is inspecting the same ones the killer used? Was Burns the serail killer all along? Or did he kill his friend and neighbor Ted's (Don Scardiano) violent lover Gregory (James Remar)? Perhaps Ted too?

I wouldn't try to fit the film's motif into such a tight little package. Those items Nancy examines are to be seen more symbolic. Throughout the film, we have seen that Burns has a bit of a violent streak. In the beginning he expresses it through sex. In the middle, he's disgusted on how violently his fellow officers treat captured rent boys. But towards the end, he shoots one suspect dead when he's attacking him with a knife. He has also made a lot of other moral compromises throughout the film, such as breaking into the suspect's house. This shooting is the final deed that pushes him entirely into the dark side. In the beginning he was comparable to the serial killer's victims. Naive, looking for a thrill, trying to keep his urges at bay until he needs them. But giving in to the violence, S&M sex and a grey moral code, he has made himself more like the killer himself. Nancy has a couple of nasty surprises in store for her.

The other side

The film takes itself and its subject quite seriously. The actual murder scenes are brutal, slow, painful shots of violence, not for the weak of stomach. The dangerousness of sex is emphasized. Friedkin does walk a fine line between damning the S&M culture entirely, although to me he doesn't cross it. Plenty of homosexual critics have analyzed otherwise so I'm not sure. Maybe the film IS offensive. The film has two clear comedic parts that have emphasis on how the film views the underground world.

The first is when Burns makes an attempt to learn the code used by rent boys in gay bars. He asks the salesman (a cameo by Powers Boothe) about them, and learns just the multitude of sex acts people are looking to do in those kinds of bars. If he had paid any attention to the salesman's speech, he would've gotten that yellow scarf in a back pocket means you're into water sports. But he goes to a bar wearing such a napkin, and understandably gets into a fight with a golden shower enthusiast.

This is Pacino as Burns still attempting to make the underground scene work for him, more than other ways. He figures any scarf will get him close enough to speak with bar prowlers and doesn't realize that the hanky itself is more or less a promise in these parts. There's no courting period. Or maybe he would secretly like to pee on gay people, or to just watch such an act happening and just can't manage to come to terms with this sudden urge. I wouldn't rule out that possibility, either.

The method actor Pacino always plays the best loose cops, since in interrogation scenes he often relies in surprising and confusing his opponent. Rather oddly, here his tactic seems to have a bulky black police come by dressed only in a thong and a cowboy hat to slap both him and the suspects around. This part takes the suspect, as well as the viewer of the movie, completely off-guard. Friedkin does have Burns's trait of not being afraid at any point of anything, not even making himself completely ridiculous. Yet at the same time, although it shouldn't this over-the-top comedy scene totally works.
"WHO THE HELL IS THAT GUY!?"

The Legacy

During the time of its release, gay rights activists publicly panned the film and protested its release. This forced the studio to put a disclaimer in front of the film that announces that the leather bars are only a small portion of the gay culture and not all homosexuals are into S&M and rent boys. Still, the film's reputation to this day is of a homophobic relic, even if it's not entirely the case.

Critics panned the film widely and it was even nominated in the first annual Razzie awards for worst pictures. Friedkin was also nominated as the Worst Director, but so were Brian De Palma for Dressed to Kill and even Stanley Kubrick for The Shining. More than 30 years of hindsight really reveal what a sham those awards also are, even if luckily none of the prestigious nominees won.

Thanks in part for the controversy leg-up, the film was a modest success at the box office. However, it was by no means as big a hit as the studio expected from director of The Exorcist and The French Connection. One should also remember Friedkin came from the expensive flop of Sorcerer and was quickly fading into obscurity. For most of the 80's and 90's he would struggle for work. But when he did manage to fim a movie, it was always at least interesting. After all, also his biggest masterpiece, To Live And Die In L.A. was yet to come.

The New Batch Revisited

Fed up with Hollywood right now? I know I am. And I know another who most certainly was in 1990: Joe Dante. So, what better time to join us all together for the first installment of a new recurring series in this blog. The Revisited takes a look at a cult movie I've already seen multiple times and picks out the elements that make it work so good. The series also takes a look on how the movie holds up today. The best way to begin this series is to take a look at one of the most unusual, and best, movie sequels ever made. So here you go: Gremlins 2: The New Batch!

The Face Value

Joe Dante is a director straight outta Roger Corman's stable. He's an exploitation filmmaker that found fame and fortune waiting in Hollywood, mostly thanks to his peers like Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis who had risen in power and were able to produce any kind of films they wanted. With Dante, it was his unique mix of slapstick humor straight from Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons, monsters and set ups from 50's science fiction, and biting satire of the good old', red-bloded mom's apple pie Americana. While such subjects undoubtedly sold in the golden age of Amblin entertainment and VHS horror films, studios tended to not quite get Dante's unique visions. One of his better-fared, however, was the anarchic Christmas tale of 1984: Gremlins.

The movie the director himself calls "The Muppet Show on Acid" showed another side to the kind of cute and cuddly plush toy critters the public of the 80's was lapping up. It's also a parody of Christmas movies, what with magic being brought to a small town consequently wrecks everybody's lives rather than brings them together. Dante clearly had a lot of fun with cartoon violence and havoc wrecking little monsters but he felt that the entire story was there. But studio execs had another idea. Ironically, the movie set to destroy the idyllic image and the cutesy feel-good everyone was selling, turned out to be a profitable machine in its own right.

Since Dante didn't want to do a sequel, the producers searched around. No one was eager to follow Dante's footsteps, and Spielberg stuck to his friend's side. So, finally the negotiations got Dante back, but also gave him more free hands to play around with the concept. As it happened, Dante had already planned to do a satire of movie sequels and how useless they are at core. The director's idea was to wreck the entire franchise to the ground before the studio could find someone to direct Gremlins 3. And he was about to have the time of his life doing it.

The Plot

The old Chinatown block where Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) keeps shop is set to be demolished in way of a hyper modern office block built by businessman Daniel Clamp (John Glover). While Wing opposes, his health is in a bad condition, and the property passes on as he dies. After that, his pet mogwai Gizmo runs away from home. He gets captured by the scientists Martin & Martin who bring him to their lab. But Gizmo manages to escape again before they find out that mogwais breed by getting them wet.

Meanwhile, Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) has moved into New York with his girlfriend Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates) to build a career as an illustrator in Clamp's company. He founds the wandering Gizmo in the building and promises to keep him safe. But of course a freak accident gets the mogwai to breed and soon there's a whole new batch of Gremlins growing. They make a mess of Clamp's building first, and then plan to take over the whole of New York.

The Contents

The characters of the film are quite wise to how the whole ordeal is going down, going from rememberance of the first film to a whole new meta-level of consciousness. The scene where John Astin's clumsy janitor fixes a water fountain with Gizmo attempting to dodge the spraying water is played out purely for laughs. Likewise Dante makes fun of the two other rules. The characters get into an argument of the vagueness of the eating rule: how soon after midnight can mogwais start eating again without turning into gremlins? Also, gremlins can't be beaten by luring them into the sunshine since it happens to be a rather cloudy day. Plenty of scenes show them in quite bright environments anyway.

No "bright light?"

Most of the film works as a bitter letter to plastic capitalism, with gremlins standing in as ravenous consumers, always wanting more and more. But the thing is, the creatures won't succumb to society's norms and act all meek in front of rich people. They do what they want and have no need for hierarchies. Yuppie bistros, late night cable shows, even Leonard Maltin and his damning movie reviews - all get parodied in a machine gun pace.

The building itself has a lot of places set up for various types of comedy. There's a tv station for media satire, a sci-fi lab for some B-movie shenanigans and a food court for some old-school slapstick. A movie theatre set hosts the most meta joke of the movie, with Hulk Hogan appearing to break the fourth wall in order to stop gremlins from wrecking the movie they're starring in and the audience is watching! Did I mention this movie is really, really awesome?

An interesting character is that of Daniel Clamp, a clear stand in for the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Turner. In the beginning of the film he's played off as a villain, a ruthless magnate who won't allow tradition get in his way of progress. He's always seen through a monitor, video-conferencing from his office rather than to appear in place. Later on, small-time bosses in his building have ridiculously tight standards of appearance that they rule to minute detail.

But when Clamp makes his full appearance, he really isn't such a bad guy. He's a clueless buffoon that doesn't fully realize the consequences of his business decisions, yes. The real villains are his underlings, trying to suck up to the billionaire by trying to please him in the most absurd fashions possible. During the gremlin ordeal, Clamp gets a whiff of the old-timey Americana he had so forgotten, and plenty of his yes-men get their punishments in the forms of various gremlin skits.

The crudest and one of the funniest being saved for last.

As sequels often have more marketability, they usually need a host of new, marketable characters. Dante takes this idea to ridiculous lengths by having a cast of gremlins with various powers and personalities. On the monster side, there are an electric, spider- and bat-gremlin as well as an acid-scarred Phantom Gremlin and the grotesque female gremlin. In accordance there's also a googly-eyed daffy gremlin, a buck-toothed dum-dum gremlin, a Jimmy Cagney-looking gangster gremlin and, most memorably of all, the Brain Gremlin, voiced with an obnoxious Australian upper-class accent by Tony Randall.

In the midst of such a colorful cast, the human actors can't help but to feel like staticians. And that is, even though the actors are awesome. Veterans like Christopher Lee and Robert Prinsky do their outrageous roles with both grace and glee. Dick Miller, a xenophobic and a little racist all-American fruitcake in the first, has transformed into an unlikely action hero for this one. My favorite is still kathleen Freeman's Microwave Marge, a hysterical woman bringing the same kind of layers of camp to this as Una O'Connor did for James Whale's monster movies back in the day. In the nastiest, most vicious blow to the original movie, Dante even undermines its blackest, darkest scene, with Phoebe Cates having a pervertedly tragic reason for hating President's Day as much as she does Christmas.

It's American pop culture and consumerism thrown into a blender and dyed colorful and splashed to screen. Dante evokes the cartoons of old with the same kind of fast-moving never-stopping energy. Which is why it's so apt that the film begins with a short Bugs & Daffy segment animated by none other than Chuck Jones himself. Here's a clear changing of the guards if I ever saw one. It's a shame the studio interfered with Dante's actual Looney Tunes movie so much. That film has several segments good enough to make the viewer wonder if corporate culture cost us another as big a masterpiece in mischief as Gremlins 2 is.

The Legacy

Or: Why the world doesn't need Gremlins 3

Gremlins was a big hit of its time, and there were plenty of films that replicated its formula, such as Critters, Ghoulies, Troll, Hobgoblins and so on. While most of these were aimed at children or pre-teens, Gremlins had an unique nastiness that worked well on adults too, that proved hard to replicate. Seeing it as a child was actually as exciting as watching a grown-ups horror film. And there are so many pop-culture riffs and spoofs, it's impossible for children to catch them all. I only got the Public Enemy -referencing grapefruit squeeze the last time I watched it, and I've probably seen the movie 10 times.

While Gremlins 2 doesn't have as many horror elements as its predecessor (save perhaps the scene with Spider-Gremlin), it did everything else bigger and bolder. And inexplicably, fell short on the earnings. Perhaps it was due to audience's tastes having modified. Joe Dante himself believes he waited too long after the first movie. Nevertheless, that fact served Dante's ultimate goal of preventing further sequels. Nevertheless, the auteur has now and then toyed with the idea of doing another, simply because, well, the director hasn't had the kind of freedom in his work since.

But having celebrity cameos and broadening the scope just wouldn't work any more. The reason is because there eventually was a bigger film, Tim Burton's underrated 1996 film Mars Attacks! The movie plays out much like Gremlins would if they had access to ray-guns and flying saucers. Mars also takes a step further into mean-spiritedness. While the body count in Gremlins 2 is relatively low, Burton gleefully executes celebrities by the hoardes. His offs include A-listers such as Michael J. Fox, Danny DeVito, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Martin Short, and Jack Nicholson twice! Burton also plays out with an all-you-can-eat buffet of disposable plastic pop culture relics, and has silly cameos from such unlikely sources as Pam Grier, Paul Winfield, Christina Applegate and Tom Jones.

Since Mars Attacks! still isn't quite as good as either Gremlins movie, I'm thinking the most important thing is that Gremlins are hand-crafted works of love. Mars Attacks! is "just" a silly little catastrophy movie parody and a cartoon movie with plenty of now-shoddy mid-90s computer effects. At best, that's what any new version would be, since Hollywood execs think computer effects are the only way to go now. While that could bring an impressive Gremlin army to the screen, it wouldn't have the same soul.

They should rather remake Critters.