Bucktown (1975)

Big city hard ass Duke (Fred Williamson) comes to the conveniently named Bucktown to bury his estranged brother who owned a nightclub there. For dubious reasons of The Law, Duke must stay in town for at least sixty days to put his brother’s affairs in order.

Given that he’s hassled early on by the corrupt and racist police force, whose main reasons to exist seem to be racketeering and extortion (and who will of course also turn out to be responsible for the death of Duke’s brother, as if that ever was in any doubt), that’s not a great proposition. Because a man needs something to do, and the buck needs to flow, Duke lets himself be convinced by a hustling kid and by Harley (Bernie Hamilton), an alcoholic buddy of his brother, to reopen the nightclub for a bit. This also gets him far into the good books and the bed of his brother’s girlfriend Aretha (Pam Grier).

When Duke very violently disagrees with paying the protection money the police expects of him, things do start to look a bit bleak for his continued survival, so he calls in an old buddy of his from the city, the gangster Roy (Thalmus Rasulala). Once Roy arrives with three generally unpleasant mooks (one of them played by the late, great Carl Weathers) in tow, he and Duke begin to gleefully murder their way through the cops.

Once that’s over, Duke expects Roy and the goons to go back to the city. Instead, Roy decides to stay in town and take over the police business, legal and illegal. Duke’s not too happy with this, because he clearly didn’t plan on replacing one group of violent shits with another one, and apparently thought better of Roy. Which, giving their whole companionable killing spree, seems somewhat peculiar. Eventually, the former friends will come to blows.

Before going into Arthur Marks’s blaxploitation movie Bucktown, it is probably best to temper one’s expectations a little. Specifically, the promise of Fred Williamson and Pam Grier starring in the same movie isn’t fulfilled in quite the way I would have hoped for: Williamson’s as Williamson as he always is, but Grier’s role in the movie is strictly being The Girl, so don’t expect razors hidden in afros, much asskicking or just coolness from her. She is unfortunately in the movie mostly for the melodramatic outbursts of awkward dialogue, which doesn’t at all play to her strengths as an actress or as an on-screen personality.

Having put the film’s great disappointment out of the way, there is rather a lot to like about the rest of the movie: its portrayal of the police force of Bucktown as just another gang goes even further than the racist and corrupt police forces in most other blaxploitation movies that at least seem to involve law enforcement work from time to time do; but then going another step further and positing that gangsters and pimps aren’t a great replacement for that role either puts the whole thing dangerously close to being a blaxploitation film that actually critiques the kind of violent but awesome (in the movies) types of black men that are the bread and butter of these films as well.

Of course, this being an exploitation movie, it also takes great delight at showing us the badassery of Duke and Roy quipping while brutally murdering some – admittedly very nasty – people, and certainly is never going to make a – for it obviously hypocritical – final stand against answering brutal violence with even more brutal violence.

It does, however, use the somewhat less awkward opportunity to portray the kind of close, male friendship that would later become one of the core interests of Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed movie beyond the (heroic) bloodshed. These scenes of Duke and Roy first being buddies in violence and then growing increasingly disenchanted with one another – Roy’s disgust with Duke’s apparent growing of a tiny little bit of conscience is played particularly well by Rasulala – are the strongest of the film’s dramatic scenes. Rasulala and Williamson play off one another wonderfully whatever their relation, suggesting a lot of the men’s personal history without never needing to explain them.

That their final throw down is the climax of their relationship as well as the film’s best action scene – not that there’s anything wrong with the earlier action – seems rather fitting in this context.

Blind Rage (1976)

A mysterious mastermind (B.T. Anderson) gets wind of an opportunity to steal a huge load of secret US government money meant to be pumped into South East Asia to buy away the domino effect. He has a brilliant plan: convince five blind men (Tony Ferrer, Leo Fong, D’Urville Martin, Dick Adair and Darnell Garcia) of various nationalities and backgrounds to commit the robbery. This way, they won’t ever see their boss and so can’t identify him. The blind gang will be protected, as well, for they are going to pretend to be able to see during the robbery. Obviously.

Before the heist can happen, our robbers will go through an embarrassing training regimen with Sally (Leila Hermosa), a teacher specialized in helping the blind.

There’s really no way around it, so, like everybody else writing or talking about Efren C. Piñon’s Blind Rage, I have to lead in with the obvious: this is indeed a riff on The Doberman Gang in which the dogs have been replaced by blind people. That’s obviously all kinds of problematic from today’s point of view, but it is also very, very funny, once you start thinking about how the development of this particular piece of exploitation must have happened. One can’t help but imagine a certain amount of alcohol being involved.

Unlike the Doberman movie, Blind Rage is actually fun. Sure, it carries some of the hallmarks of Filipino export exploitation cinema of its time, so expect some flat acting, a peculiar dub, and some dark side streets and beige walls standing in for Hong Kong, Tokyo, Manila and parts of the USA. However, after a somewhat slow beginning, the whole affair develops a pleasant amount of energy, going by with a nice zip while hitting all of the heist movie tropes and nods to all kinds of exploitation sub-genres you’d expect, and doing this with conviction. Piñon may not be a terribly stylish director here – he’s really more on the functional side of things – but he does know how to stage cheap action, and how to shoot around ugly sets rather well, something that again helps keep spirits and pace of the film up.

Another likeable aspect about Blind Rage – and mostly what keeps the weird blindness fetish from becoming too offensive – is how seriously it treats its utterly goofy set-up. Keeping irony and self-consciousness to the minds of prospective viewers works wonders, and lets Blind Rage treat its blind criminals like this kind of movie would treat any seeing one. In other words, they are mostly violent shitheads, one of them’s rapey, and rolling over for the police as state’s witness happens in a manner of seconds for another one. All of which doesn’t exactly make for a likeable group of protagonists, but also staves off any potential mawkishness.

I’m not as happy with the decision to introduce the characters – about half with a short scene in which we learn of the violent way they lost their sight – as specialists in particular fields (one is a stage magician, and another a bull fighter!) only to then not make use of these talents in the heist itself, but I suspect these backgrounds are more the film’s attempts at characterisation than a doing Chekhov’s bull fighter kind of deal.

On the other hand, there are not many other films that feature a heist scene based on actors awkwardly playing blind people who are awkwardly pretending to see; nor many that would shoot a scene like that like your typical brutal crime movie heist, including quite the body count.

And if that’s not enough, Blind Rage decides to finish up on a short sequence of scenes in which good old Fred Williamson suddenly pops in for a cigar, some near shirtlessness and a good ass-kicking to reprise his role as Jesse Crowder and finish off the gang’s male, seeing, handler nobody cared about up until this point in a not terribly spectacular roof fight.

Structurally, that’s of course utter nonsense, but it does end things on an unexpected note while adding to the Williamson quota in a viewer’s life, which can only be a good thing.

In short: Mean Johnny Barrows (1975)

Dishonourably discharged from the army after he punched out a white guy who tried to murder him with a landmine (seriously), Vietnam war hero (and former nearly football star) Johnny Barrows (Fred Williams), soon finds himself homeless on the streets of his old home town. Early on, Johnny meets Mario Racconi (Stuart Whitman), a football acquaintance who offers him a job. But it’s clearly doing dirty work for the mafia, and Johnny has his principles. But as it goes, principles can be washed away by poverty and the general shittiness of one’s surroundings, so after further travails, Johnny will eventually take on the role of a hit man for Mario’s clan during an attempt of the aggressive Da Vinces (with Roddy McDowall of all people playing the youngest son) to muscle in on their territory. Don’t worry, the Racconis are the good Mafiosi, though, who only ever made money with numbers games and fought against drugs. Insert humungous eyeroll here.

This is the first of Fred Williamson’s twenty or so direction credits, and for its first twenty minutes or so, it actually feels like a minor highpoint of blaxploitation filmmaking. Williamson shoots as well as plays Johnny’s downward movement in the first act with great strength and conviction, bringing the shittiness of the black experience to life through fine direction and a performance that expresses much of the unfairness of the character’s life without any need for speechifying. It’s still not subtle, mind you, but it’s not about subtle things. As a bonus, there’s also a short cameo by Elliott Gould in which he dresses like a lost version of The Doctor – and calls himself the Professor to boot – teaching Williamson the ins and outs of being homeless by acting really, really weird.

After that, the film unfortunately spirals pretty quickly out of control and turns into a series of, sometimes weird and awkward, sometimes pretty fun, mafia meetings where the actors seems mostly to be farting around, horrible martial arts fights, long and badly written speeches told with soulful facial expressions quite in contrast to their badness by Williamson, a couple of decent action sequences and pointless plot twists, where nothing hangs together thematically or as a narrative anymore, the film losing all momentum as well as showing little of the impressive filmmaking chops of the first act.

VFW (2019)

Theoretically, VFW post commander Fred (Stephen Lang) was planning to spend the night of his birthday at the post, getting drunk with his vet buddies (William Sadler, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, David Patrick Kelly, George Wendt) – well, and the young guy (Tom Williamson) who just came in returning from one of the USA’s fresher wars. However, when the hour gets a little late, a young woman we will later learn goes by the charming moniker of Lizard (Sierra McCormick) runs in, hunted by the henchpeople and drug slaves of drug lord Boz (Travis Hammer). Lizard, you understand, has stolen Boz’s stash in revenge for his murder of her sister.

The elderly vets don’t cotton to a bunch of armed freaks storming into their post trying to murder an unarmed woman, and a couple of wounded vets and dead baddies later, they find they have stumbled into your classic siege scenario, not just attacked by Boz and his actual gang but also a horde of guys and gals in thrall to the particularly nasty version of speed Boz hawks. The police don’t come to this part of town on patrol, and phones don’t work, so the men and Lizard will have to fend for themselves, at least until morning.

Joe Begos’s newest – made for nuFangoria - is very much a film in love with the magic of low budget and direct to DVD cinema of ye olden times (okay, mostly the 80s and John Carpenter’s 70s), but it’s also a film that mixes its influences inventively – sometimes even wildly - enough so that it doesn’t feel like a retro re-tread and more like a love letter. If you take your love letters with rather a lot of gorily mushed heads.

For gorily mushed heads really seem to be Begos’s thing here, with nary a noggin that isn’t smashed, mushed, caved in or otherwise made rather unattractive during the course of the movie. The action is very focused on highly messy melees with improvised weapons, the experienced troupe of actors and a consciously messy looking editing job selling everything as fun yet gruesome in exactly the kind of way old school horror and action fans will like it, often feeling more like a fever dream of near-post-apocalyptic action movies of years past than the way those films actually were.

Begos is rather good with fever dreams, as should be clear from his filmography by now, though the film at hand’s tendency to drench everything in reds and blacks isn’t as fantastically psychedelic as his work in Bliss. This one’s a looser, less deep film that’s focussed on fun violence and a bit of hero worship towards its cast.

But then, these guys are rather wonderful (obviously), and Begos knows it as well as the film’s probable audience (me included) does, so between the moments of carnage, there’s many a scene of the old dudes shooting the shit, revealing their traumata in ways that seem appropriately reticent and grumpy for men their ages, or just hanging around looking tense. And really, for a film that simply could get away with having Lang swinging an axe at punks and Fred Williams slitting throats and punching heads (always the heads!), there’s a pleasantly surprising amount of space for actual characterisation of these old soldiers as portrayed by old soldiering actors, Begos clearly preferring the looser Howard Hawks model of the siege movie to more modern sensibilities of how tight a movie is allowed to be.


VFW is a lovely effort, clearly made on the cheap, but carried by a mixture of filmmaking chops, wonderful aged character and action actors (and a couple of good young ones), and an abiding love for lethal head trauma.

In short: Black Eye (1974)

Ex-cop of course turned private eye - as well as beater of drug dealers and protector of prostitutes - Shep Stone (Fred Williamson) stumbles into quite the case. When looking in on prostitute Vera (Nancy FIsher), he only finds her corpse, as well as her murderer. The guy is armed with a knife but also swinging a cane with a special silver handle. We the audience already know that cane belonged to a silent movie star, and Vera stole it from the top of his coffin. After a pretty intense fight, the killer escapes with his cane and most of his bones intact. Shep’s not the kind of guy to let this sort of thing slip, so he convinces his ex-partner in the police to hire him to work the case, instead of the people actually responsible for investigating murders.

Because our hero’s a bit of a multitasker, he also agrees to a second case a couple of hours later. He is to find runaway daughter Amy (Susan Arnold) for a guy named Dole (Richard Anderson). Working the cases – if indeed these are separate cases – will lead Shep through all sorts of very 1974 situations, as seen through the eyes of nearly 60 years old director Jack Arnold.

The late 60s and the 70s didn’t exactly treat low budget movie pro Arnold too well, or perhaps he just never really managed to adapt his sensibilities to the new era of filmmaking. In any case, the non-TV work of late period Arnold always feels to me a bit like the work of a man who is trying his best to follow the contemporary exploitation angles but doesn’t quite have the vocabulary needed to do it convincingly. In Black Eye’s case, all attempts to depict the early 70s life and mores of younger people seem to come from a position of raised eyebrows, the director nearly audibly tutting at homosexuals, lesbians, late hippies, religious zealots, and letting his lead tut right with him. It’s often rather awkward, and could indeed be pretty unpleasant at times if not for the joy it is to watch Fred Williamson at work. Williamson spends much of his time using his nearly proverbial (at least if you’re moving in my circles) laidback swagger to stroll from slightly off kilter scene to slightly off scene as a character you might imagine to be played by James Garner in case of Wiliamson’s unavailability, flirting, pretending to be shocked by stuff my grandmother wouldn’t have been shocked by at the time – and how I love him for so clearly only pretending – and from time to time hitting deserving people in the face.


Every couple of scenes – when the film isn’t suddenly turning into a Sunday afterschool special or spends its time on a slow motion romance montage you gotta see to believe and which incorporates a nearly naked Williamson and later a tandem  – Arnold gets up to more timeless things. The handful of action scenes are mostly spirited and fun, and demonstrate that Arnold still had his old directing chops and just didn’t really warm to his material. Still, if you’re interested in the bodies of work of Arnold and/or Williamson, or want to see a 70s private eye film with a black lead that isn’t really a blaxploitation film, this one has enough good moments to be worth your while.

Crazy Joe (1974)

Brothers Joe (Peter Boyle) – Richard Widmark admirer and playing the crazy one more than actually being it - and Richie (Rip Torn) – the calm one - and their little gang of cronies (among those a Henry Winkler who will grow awesome facial hair during the course of the movie) are low-level mob operators who don’t feel they get the respect or the money they deserve for their services. When they’re basically patted on the back for a hit they commit, they think enough is enough, attack the villa of their capo, kidnap his number two (because the capo they planned to kill escapes) and some poor unluckies, and pretend that was their plan all along.

Cue a mafia group hearing under the lead of the scheming Don Vittorio (Eli Wallach) that concludes with the decision to let the two parties sort out their crap between themselves, two different betrayals, and a tiny mafia war, and Joe ends up in jail for a bit while Richie dies as a broken man. Joe’s reading up on his existentialist philosophy in jail - resulting in an inspired scene between him and his new buddy played by Fred Williamson discussing Camus among other things - so he’s not exactly out for revenge when he gets out, but he’s also not going to let bygones be bygones.

In this short synopsis, I make Crazy Joe’s plot sound much simpler than it actually is, for while it doesn’t aim for the sort of epic grandeur Coppola went for in a certain mafia movie and its sequel, its very own more shabby type grandeur does lead to a surprisingly complicated plot that takes place over the course of ten years or so, with the film spending its time not only on mob intrigue but also taking detours in directions you don’t exactly connect with the gangster film, and that surprised me rather pleasantly when the film wasn’t just effectively stimulating my genre glands.

For, despite being as genre conscious and imitative as a film mostly made by Italians behind the camera gets, Crazy Joe is not just interested in looking and feeling like other movies of its genre but also talks a bit of existential philosophy, changing times and the people who stand against them, US race relations, and trades in ambiguity. The last two bits pay off especially well for the movie, providing Fred Williamson the opportunity to put his typical swagger to use in ways that feel more than just his usual (and liked by me, don’t get me wrong) pose, giving that part of the plot particular resonance.

The film’s ambiguity does help its characterisations out too, portraying Joe as the kind of guy who has no compunctions killing for money (as long as it is enough money) but will also risk his life saving kids from a burning house (hey, I never said the film is subtle). As portrayed by Boyle, Joe starts as a character trying to style himself after Richard Widmark’s career-making crazy man spiel in Kiss of Death and somewhat learns to change and take control of parts of his life yet still fails. Joe fails in part because he can’t really let go of the past as much as he pretends to, and in part because the structures he is enmeshed in are the kind of conservative they are foes to all change that isn’t mandated from above. So the film certainly does the bit where you can read “mafia” as “society” too.

The whole she-bang is presented by Lizzani – your typical Italian all-genre movie hired hand for most of his career – in a not unexpected direct, semi-documentary style, with many a grubby looking shot of grubby New York streets and a nice eye for the interesting background detail. While the film isn’t particularly stylish, the comparative dryness of Lizzani’s direction works well with a film that really needs to have the feel of slightly enhanced authenticity. Consequently, what there is of violence does look messy and chaotic, not as if it were done by a bad choreographer, but in a way you’d imagine real violence of this kind does look in reality, people just stumbling about trying not to die and hurt the other guy as badly as possible at the same time. The director clearly knew when he had a good thing in his actors, so there are good performances by good actors all around, with nobody even close to phoning it in, Boyle being rather brilliant and Williamson in one of his career bests (probably because the film doesn’t need him to try so hard).

Not bad for a film whose main reason for existence probably was that Dino de Laurentiis wanted his own The Godfather (and didn’t get it).

In short: Three the Hard Way (1974)

When he becomes wind of the plans of particularly crazy white supremacist to wipe all black people from the face of the earth (or is it just the USA?) via EVIL SCIENCE!, and the bad guys kidnap his girlfriend Wendy (Sheila Frazier) to add insult to injury, record producer Jimmy Lait (Jim Brown), calls in two old friends of his. Together with martial artist Mister – that’s his first name – Keyes (Jim Kelly) and whatever the hell Jagger Daniels (Fred Williamson) is beyond awesome, Jimmy starts kicking Nazi ass. Cars explode at the slightest provocation, people shoot, Jim Kelly martial artists while directed by a guy who really has no clue how to film a martial arts fight. So much for genocide.

Need I say that Gordon Parks Jr.’s Three the Hard Way is not a very good film in the traditional sense, with the way it leaves narrative logic (or really, a plot) and characterization behind and replaces everything with blaxploitation versions of Men’s Adventure clichés? And need I also say that the film still is a whole lot of fun thanks to Parks’s pacy direction that from time to time shows excellent little explosions of 70s style, thanks to its core trio of ass-kicking heroes, as well as thanks to a sense of random abandon that replaces the filler that often mars the underwritten half of blaxploitation cinema?

If I need to or not, I’m still saying it. I’m also saying it’s pretty difficult to mess up a film this sillily eager to please and to follow its imagination wherever it leads. How could anyone resist a movie that sees Fred Williamson calling in a trio of multi-racial dominatrixes arriving on colour-coded motorcycles (and in fitting leather) when they need to torture information out of someone (poor guy dies of fright)? A film that has a scene where a truck explodes from driving through a billboard? And, you know, a film that contains the mystical trio of Brown, Williamson and Kelly - even though I have to admit that Kelly’s painfully sincere acting attempts are only saved by his afro when he’s in the same scene with Williamson’s swagger, and Brown’s laid-back charm and – here absolutely underused – actual acting abilities.

It all adds up to a thing of slightly unhinged awesomeness I enjoyed mightily.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,gordon parks jr.,blaxploitation,action,wtf,jim brown,fred williamson,jim kelly,sheila frazier

In short: Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)

After taking a time-out in the last movie, our old friend He Who Walks Behind the Rows is back again. Unfortunately, the mysterious Godhood's return to kids' favourite corn-based horror series isn't all one would have hoped for.

For one, He (as his friends call him) is now some sort of living flame thing, which must be awkward when you're a mysterious power living in a cornfield. Consequently, He now lives exclusively in a corn silo, stinking up the neighbourhood while waiting for his followers to throw themselves down into the silo once they reach that horrible age of eighteen. This time around, there's one exception to the age rule though, because the production was able to hire David Carradine for ten minutes of sitting in a comfy chair, which he does while doing a cult leader shtick, until his head splits open and a fire-breathing something burns a hole into useless sheriff Fred Williamson's head, which might be the one scene that makes this rather tepid and boring outing worth watching.

I really don't know what it is with the film's whole obsession with fire anyhow, seeing as He will also be beaten (until the inevitable, lame kicker ending, of course) by fire ("fight fire with fire", the film helpfully explains), which makes even less sense than the whole cult this time around. The lameness of this film's cult also has a lot to do with the lameness of the supposedly creepy kids, or rather, the bored looking teenagers led by Adam Wylie playing a boring prophet named (I kid you not) Ezeekial as if he were a kid staring someone down playing with marbles.

All in all, it's so dispirited and dispiriting stuff, I'll even spare us all a plot synopsis, and only mention that you'll also get to see final girl Stacy Galina, Alexis Arquette, Eva Mendes, Ahmet Zappa, and Kane Hodder, if that sort of thing is important to you, but honestly, excitement lives elsewhere than in Ethan Wiley's movie.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,ethan wylie,stacy galina,david carradine,fred williamson,adam wylie

Three Films Make A Post: That's not the victim screaming - it's you!

The Fountain (2006): Take one part pretty good melodrama, one part utter, brain-curdling weirdness and one part horrible 70s airbrush poster art, and you pretty much have The Fountain. It's a film where earnest artistic ambition dances with kitsch so closely that nobody involved - surely not director/writer Darren Aronofsky and certainly not this writer - seems to be able to tell where one begins and the other ends anymore. It's certainly a film worth experiencing, but it's also a film to which the often misused description of "pretentious" fits perfectly, in that it just isn't as clever and profound as it pretends to be.

Can you really watch naked, bald, lotus-seated Hugh Jackman float through golden-ish space in a bubble and not giggle?

 

Death Journey (1976): I'd be glad if there were much of anything to giggle about in this Fred Williamson-directed part of the Jesse Crowder series of films (it might be the first one or the second - the Internet is divided, and I'm not going to watch the additional material about the production, because this thing has already stolen enough of my life), starring Williamson, and nobody else of consequence. A private eye carting a mafia bookkeeper willing to sing from LA to Chicago while the man's former bosses are doing their best to kill them may sound like the perfect set-up for a low budget action movie, especially with a guy like Williamson who always seems to have fun when doing anything physical in the lead role. Williamson the director, however, has no idea how to stage an action sequence interestingly or even just effectively, leading to a film so bland it would probably still be boring if half of it didn't consist of filler and scenes that go on much longer than they should. Even the soundtrack gives the impression of being a collection of outtakes from a a handful of other blaxploitation soundtracks.

On the positive side, there's only a sex scene realized so hilariously wrong-headed that Williamson and his partner seem to possess two or three heads each.

 

Ricco The Mean Machine (1973): Christopher Mitchum takes his dear time to take vengeance on the mafia boss who murdered his mafia boss father while Barbara Bouchet undresses or under-dresses to distract the parts of the audience receptive to her charms from the utter vacuum that is Chris. The sleaze for a good Italian crime movie is certainly there, sometimes in hilarious and embarrassing ways (turns out the best way to steal mafia money in a film that isn't supposed to be a comedy is to let Barbara Bouchet dance naked in front and on top of a car). From time to time, Tulio Demicheli's film breaks into fits of pretty nasty violence, but even then, Mitchum's complete lack of personality in his role as Hamlet's more boring brother undermines much of the emotional punch of those scenes. Not to speak of the scenes where the script wants him to act.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,italian movies,sf,melodrama,action,blaxploitation,eurocrime,darren aronofsky,hugh jackman,rachel weisz,fred williamson,christopher mitchum,barbara bouchet,in short

In short: Black Cobra (1987)

Original title: Cobra nero

Fashion photographer Elys Trumbo (Eva Grimaldi) witnesses one of the dozen murders a nameless gang of evildoers with an equally nameless leader (Bruno Bilotta) commits per week. The gang isn't amused and at once attempts to kill the accidental witness too, but Elys manages to flee into the protective arms of the police.

Alas, the police is nothing these particular evildoers are afraid of. The very same night, members of the gang attack the hospital where Elys is being taken care of. Fortunately, the chief of police has put maverick cop and professional asshole Robert Malone (Fred Williamson!) on the photographer's case. Malone arrives just in time to do what he does best: slaughtering the bad guys and acting like a douche towards the traumatised woman.

Of course, the hospital shoot-out won't be the last attempt on Elys's life. The poor woman will not even be safe in that most secure of all places the police could put her - Malone's apartment. On the positive side, the photographer has a thing for complete assholes, so there'll be a glorious romance in her and Malone's future if they survive the whole nameless bandit affair first.

There really was no movie made during the 80s too bad for the always hungry Italian rip-off machine to ignore. Case in point is Black Cobra, a film actually ripping off Sylvester Stallone's painful Cobra, of course on a mere fraction of the Hollywood film's budget. But I have to say, if I had to decide between the Stallone vehicle and this film, I'd certainly go with the Italian version, seeing as it features in Fred Williamson the charismatic lead actor the American movie lacks, tortures its audience with fewer crypto-fascist soliloquies and even is in the possession of a sense of humour.

That sense of humour mainly shows in the loving care the film puts into making Williamson's character the most unsympathetic asshole possible (while still making the man look his trademark cool), until he has all the negative character traits of any action hero ever combined, making it completely impossible to take anything he says or does seriously. Williamson seems to have fun with that and applies his considerable powers of self-irony to his role.

As it goes with Williamson vehicles, he is the most entertaining part of his movie. The script goes through the mandatory variations of scenes and elements from Cobra and adds bits and pieces of other cop vigilante movies, without too much care for logic (What exactly are the bad guys trying to do here? Or, for that matter, the police?); there's a female lead without any agency whatsoever; and the bad guys aren't just nameless but also weirdly vague characterised and without anything much memorable about them.

Although there a too few of them for an action film, director Stelvio Massi knows how to shoot mildly exciting action sequences. They're nothing to write home about, especially compared with what a Hong Kong director or someone like Enzo G. Castellari would have done on a comparable budget, but they're clean, have loud noises and people dying, so I'm kinda alright with them, as I am with the whole of the film.

And, truth be told, for a film ripping off Cobra, being "kinda alright" is quite an achievement.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,action,stelvio massi,fred williamson,eva grimaldi

In short: Vigilante (1983)

Industrial electrician Eddie Marino (Robert Forster) is your typical mild-mannered family man, until a gang more or less randomly hurts his wife and kills his little son. Although his colleague Nick (Fred Williamson) tries to recruit Eddie for his own little vigilante crusade, the man decides to let the justice system run its course.

Of course, this being a movie called Vigilante and all, "the system" is totally corrupt, and the only gang member that is indicted at all comes away with a suspended sentence of two years. The only one actually landing in jail is Eddie himself for his violently displeased conduct in the court room. With the help of a randomly helpful Woody Strode, Eddie survives his thirty days in jail.

All the while, the film has kept the audience up to date on the dubious achievement of Nick and his merry band of thugs. They seem quite adept at torturing and killing people. It's the American Way, I know.

When Eddie is released, he at once goes to Nick and asks the chief vigilante for some help in a little murder spree of his own.

William Lustig's Vigilante is a technically well done version of your typical vigilante film, with all the usual problems of the genre, especially an annoying tendency to bore the viewer with long self-righteous speeches that are supposed to convince the viewer of the rightness of going on private killing sprees, but mostly succeed in dragging down the movie's pace and insulting me through their stupidity.

Vigilante isn't all stupid all the time though. The film has a lot of small moments and gestures that strongly hint at a discomfort with the actions of its supposed heroes, suggesting that Nick and Eddie are as violently unhinged as the people they are going after. Which they are. These moments make a strange contrast with Nick's speeches and the emotionally manipulative way Lustig sets up the court session. It feels as if one half of the film is cheerleading for vigilantism and the other, less loud half, is convinced of its utter uselessness.

What the film features in any case are very strong appearances of its lead actors. Forster and Williamson and their all-cult-movie-star supporting cast are giving the sort of shaded performances that hint at disquieting depths and breaking-points in the characters they are playing. This aspect puts Vigilante more in the tradition of Italian cop and vigilante movies of the 70s, and I wouldn't be surprised if Lustig had planned his film as an homage to those films.

Unfortunately, Lustig is no Enzo G. Castellari, and although the film's action is appropriately dry and mean, the American just isn't as good at handling the dramatic parts of the movie, even though the actors are doing everything possible to hand them to him on a silver platter. At times, the film seems to be too interested in bloviating about the evils of "the system", instead of basing its violence on the inner lives of characters who would provide ample opportunity for it.

The pacing of the non-violent scenes is just a little bit off, too, throwing the film out of its rhythm repeatedly by going on just a little too long to keep the film's momentum going.

Lustig's movie is not bad, it's just not as good as the movies it seems to base itself on.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,action,in short,robert forster,fred williamson,william lustig

Warrior of the Lost World (1983)

The post-nuclear wasteland (comes, as any good wasteland, complete with luscious woodland areas and competently maintained roads) is dominated by the worse-than-fascist-so-they-must-stand-in-for-communists uniformed goons of Prossor (Donald Pleasance, looking for all the world like frigging Doctor Evil and acting accordingly).

Fortunately, the smarmy and disgusting charismatic Professor McWayne (Harrison Muller) leads a resistance group against Prossor's evil. Too bad the Professor is held captive in Prossor's capital. His two or three co-resistance fighters, Fred Williamson in a cameo that doesn't afford him to do anything and the Professor's daughter (Persis Khambatta) aren't enough to rescue him, they desperately need a Chosen One.

As Destiny will have it, The Rider (Robert Ginty, with the kind of performance that lets me think wistfully of more charismatic leads in post-apocalyptic films. Like Mark "I can't talk or act but I sure can pout" Gregory. Ginty really is that disinterested.), some permanently bored looking and comatose sounding guy driving a "super sonic speed cycle" - featuring the most annoying computer voice ever (and again, letting me think wistfully of the witty banter in Knight Rider. It really is that painful) - crashes into the mountain where the rebels' allies are living.

Those guys are known as the Elders, are middle aged, ugly and run around in Ghandi's worn-out clothes. Oh, they also have magic powers and can heal wounds with the flashlights they have hidden in their sleeves. Anyway, the Rider is of course very excited to be the Chosen One to save the Professor, so it takes only the daughter's promise not to shoot him in the crotch if he goes to the rescue to convince him to be fulfill his destiny.

After some boring adventures (look, loud spiders! a snake! zombies/mutants!, Daughter and Rider rescue the Professor, but the insane incompetence of everyone involved (which presumably mirrors the things that happen behind the camera) gets Daughter kidnapped while her father goes free.

So Rider and Professor go to the meeting place of the local post-apocalyptic tribes (the Shirtless Kung Fu Dudes, the Guys in Nazi Uniforms, the Hitting Hookers, the New Wave Persons and the Redneck Truckers) to get themselves an army.

A little fistfighting and an annoying, stupid rousing speech of the Professor later, they have one. It's only consisting of about fifteen people, but hey, at least Rider is the Chosen One.

Off to the rescue they go. Will they save Daughter before Donald Pleasance has photocopied her whole body? Do I sound like I care?

I know, I know, all this sounds like the sort of film that should be right up my alley, what with its post-apocalyptic nonsense and Fred Williamson and Donald Pleasance cameos. The sad and tragic truth is that this might be the least fun post-apocalypse film our friends in the USA and Italy have ever made.

Director David Worth (who'd later go on to make the incredible Shark Attack 3: Megalodon) does everything in his power to make even the most awesome elements of his film terribly boring. I'm not sure how he does it, but he succeeds admirably. Is it Worth's inability to get anything even out of people like Pleasance and Williamson whose presence usually is enough to lift everything they appear in to the level of "at least watchable"? Is it the excellent way in which he keeps the action scenes completely unexciting through framing and editing exemplary in their boring ineptness (which you shouldn't confuse with fun ineptness)? Is it the fight scenes in which nobody ever seems to touch his foes? The toy weapons with the toy soundeffects? The fact that I wanted to punch the film's hero in the face whenever he opened his mouth and mumbled something?

Who knows?

So, let this be a warning not to delude yourself into a "with all this crap going on, this has to be awesome, right!?" state of mind concerning Warrior of the Lost World. Also keep in mind that the person who is warning you away here has been known to call Donald G. Jackson's post-apocalyptic roller skate epics "mandatory watching".

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,fred williamson,donald pleasance,post-apocalypse,italian movies,reviews

The New Gladiators (1984)

The future looks dire. In the year of 2072, Earth is in a dubious state. The bloodthirsty masses are entertained and kept in their place by the beauty of violent TV shows. No other show can beat the ratings of market leader "Killbike".

This doesn't make the boss of the permanently second placed network WBS (hm, do they have a connection to Warner Brothers?) "your friend Sam" (Giovanni Di Benedetto), who only communicates with his subordinates via video screens, very happy at all.

Friendly Sam orders his second in command Cortez (Claudio Cassinelli) to develop a revolutionary new show that will take the future of television back into the glorious past of entertainment: Gladiatorial combat to the death between convicted killers.

This wonderful idea proceeds well, but the helpful artificial intelligence Junior (who has more to do with the running of the world than the humans have) discovers a fatal flaw in their concept - they need a real hero among their killers to effectively channel audience sympathies. There is no better candidate for this than the "Killbike" champion Drake (Jared Martin).

The trouble is, Drake isn't on death row. But Junior has a plan.

Some time later, Drake's beloved wife is brutally murdered, her killers are shot. Drake, who, as we will find out later, is innocent of the crime, but is sentenced to death anyway. He could of course become a gladiator instead.

When our hero arrives at the training facility for the show, he finds himself the favorite target of their SS-garbed warden Raven (Howard Ross), as well as of some of his own "colleagues" like Kirk (Al Cliver). Only Abdul (Fred Williamson!) is just too damn cool to waste his breathe with stuff like this.

But Drake's natural charisma and his love for nearly suicidal acts in favor of the other gladiators soon win them over.

Which is a good thing when you see that their "training" is a combination of mild brain-washing and physical torture.

Drake is even charming enough to bring technician Sarah (Eleonor Gold) over to his side. With a little research she finds proof for Drake's innocence. Even worse, she finds proof that Junior must have something to do with the frame-up, which should be impossible, since its programming doesn't contain a potential for EVIL.

Disturbed, she visits Junior's inventor Professor Towman (Cosimo Cinieri). Towman has retired from scientific work and now lives, playing the organ, in a ruined church full of computer equipment. He agrees to give her a (beautifully quaint looking) keycard for Junior's inner sanctum. Before he can also give her the codes to reprogram his wayward creation, he is murdered.

At least, Sarah is able to get a little more information from Junior now, none of it very pleasant, though.

Drake and his friends won't be too happy about the fact that the winner of their game is going to be disintegrated.

Fortunately, they all have seen Spartacus, well, make that The Arena and know just what to do.

Many critics will tell you that Lucio Fulci's Eighties work in other genres than horror was completely and absolutely terrible hackwork made by a man totally disinterested in the movies he made.

After watching The New Gladiators, I am not one of them. It's surprising what a neat little piece of Italian SF-action cheese this is. It has everything this kind of film needs: A minimalist score by Riz Ortolani, production design that mixes old Rome, neo-neo-fascism, Blade Runner and Eighties ideas of high tech into a memorable thing of shoddy beauty, unnecessary gore (including a little eye mutilation, of course - it is a Fulci film), Fred Williamson, Al Cliver and Jared Martin as a surprisingly solid, even somewhat sympathetic hero.

Fulci develops at least two quite rousing scenes of male bonding and (of course, again) just ignores the stupidity of parts of the film's backstory and worldbuilding with the correct amount of verve.

It's also amazingly fast-paced for a Fulci film, the action is not brilliantly staged, but competent enough. And I dare you not to laugh or cry out in happiness during the final gladiatorial fight on motorbikes (not that vehicles were in use during training - oh well) including the silliest helmets and ornaments imaginable. Also, two decapitations for the price of one.

What puts The New Gladiators close to my heart is something different, though: It's the honest, if misguided, interest Fulci shows in a thing he normally didn't care about at all: His characters as something like people. Mind you, I am not saying the film works as a character study. But it develops enough motivation for most actions in the film to keep the characters somewhat believable, the most un-Fulci-like thing I have ever seen.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,action,sf,al cliver,lucio fulci,fred williamson,howard ross,jared martin,reviews

1990: Bronx Warriors (1982)

In 1990, the New York government has given up on the Bronx. What order there is, is kept by the gangs now controlling the area. The prime force among them are the "Tigers", led by The Ogre (Fred Williamson), properly identifiable through their fashionable way of wearing classic pimp style clothing while driving around in hot rods. Below them on the ladder of success are the "Riders", clad in classic post-apocalyptic biker style, which would be much more convincing if their leader wasn't Trash (Mark Gregory) he of the Hairy Metal mop, the model looks and the negative acting chops. Of course, Trash is our designated hero.

Other pillars of the Bronx community are the "Zombies", name-defyingly sporting a combined roller-skater/hockey theme and the "Scavengers", a bunch of mad people best described as sociopathic and hebephrenic mimes.

The not always harmonious co-existence of these slightly improbable groups ends when Trash saves Ann (Stefania Girolami; daughter of the director and only slightly more talented than Gregory) from the dubious attentions of the Zombies' leader Golan (George Eastman in a very minor role). Little does he know that "his girl" is the heiress of the biggest weapon producing company in the world, whose owners will pay the sadistic cop Hammer (Vic Morrow) a lot of money if he brings them back their living property.

The man goes about it in a unique way - he has a dream you know. A dream of letting the Bronx burn so that he will never be forgotten.

Another post-apocalyptic nonsense-action piece by the great Enzo G. Castellari, The Bronx Warriors (which steals in equal measures from Escape from New York and The Warriors) lacks some of the charms of Warriors of the Wasteland aka The New Barbarians. Dardano Sachetti's script delivers his usual mixture of boredom, weird ideas and disinterest in the basics of time and space, while director of photography Salvati has not as many interesting sights to show as in his work with Lucio Fulci.

This doesn't mean there is nothing of interest to see here: Some of the action scenes are suitably outrageous (although nothing comes even close to Warriors), the gangs of New York are strange enough to be entertaining and the friend of ruined buildings will find many an interesting sight.

It's just a little disappointing that the plot never gets enough traction to make one forget the silliness of the proceedings. The remarkably bad performances our male and female leads deliver do not help the movie at all - whenever Trash opens his mouth one cannot help but wish for his slow and painful death. Or at least for the hitting and bleeding to start again.

But seeing a pimp-tastic Fred Williamson fighting with a cane sword is something I'm glad I didn't miss.

 

Technorati-Tags: post-apocalypse,action,italian movies,fred williamson,reviews,enzo g. castellari