Calamity (1976)

I have always meant to try my hand at sculpting.  I still might.  The closest I ever came would likely have been either assembling monster models as a kid or painting tiny Dungeons and Dragons miniatures with a toothpick (a paintbrush just seemed too unwieldy for my chubby, little fingers), and, yes, I know that neither of these comes even close to the orbit of actual sculpture.  I think I would like to try doing mini-maquettes or mini-busts of different characters or maybe just full-size busts.  Stuff like the Creature from the Black Lagoon or the Hulk or something.  Stuff that’s in my wheelhouse.  None of that enigmatic modern art sculpture for me (maybe if I’m feeling lazy).  There will be growing pains, to be sure.  After all, I have zero experience sculpting anything, unless you count using Play Doh, but that was some time ago and nothing to write home about.  Time would also be a huge factor, since I don’t have enough of it to do the things I like to do now (like sleep, eat, and so forth, and you should see the hoops that have to be jumped through to get these reviews done on the regular), but I’m sure there are those who would also say that the time should be made for it (like time is a sheet cake or something).  I think I would likely stick to clay, as sculpting in mediums like stone or wood is (A) less forgiving/fixable, and (B) I would be less likely to inflict grievous bodily injury to myself with chisels, etcetera.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll sculpt the most perfect statue of General Guan Yu, like Uncle Chao (Yu-Hsin Chen) does in Hung Min Chen’s Calamity (aka Zhan Shen aka War God aka Kuan Yu Battles with the Aliens), and it will come to life and defend the Earth.  But in all likelihood, I’ll just wind up throwing out stuff I think turned out like crap.

Martians land in Hong Kong and give humanity an ultimatum: Die on your feet or live on your knees.  No human steps up, so Uncle Chao’s statue takes matters into his own hands.

Calamity is a film whose existence was ineluctable.  By that same token, that it exists at all is nothing short of miraculous.  Considering the levels of insanity to which the Japanese Tokusatsu genre climbed by this point (and, it can be argued, all of Japanese genre cinema), it was only a question of time before someone came up with this idea of giant gods battling Brobdingnagian Martians (and very well may have much earlier than this).  This is the sort of film where “space scientists” work in science fiction labs and call themselves “space scientists.”  Where Martians come in trios like the Three Stooges.  Where nothing is impossible, including Guan Yu inhabiting a wooden statue and becoming a real god, like Pinocchio (or Jet Jaguar, take your pick), because nothing in this world is improbable.  For example, Chao-Chun (Ming Lun Ku) creates a laser/heat gun that can melt steel, but no one ever thinks to use it on the aliens (or if they did, they either dismissed this idea straightaway or I just missed it).  Yes, this is a world of fantastic imagination, but it’s more like the cover version of a Tokusatsu film than one in its own right.  Is it in the realm of reason to criticize Calamity for this photocopy quality when so many of its Japanese counterparts do the exact same thing?  I would suggest yes, because those Japanese fantasy films of the Moiré Pattern Effect variety are just as bland and characterless.  What’s good for the goose…

The film also deals with science versus religion.  Uncle Chao believes with all his heart (bolstered by the imaginary, remembered voice he hears from the photo of his dead wife) that Guan Yu will possess his statue if the god deems it perfect.  Bear in mind, this is before the Martians land, so one has to wonder what Uncle Chao’s end game is prior to the invasion?  Maybe he feels that too many people have turned away from the gods, like his son Chao-Chun.  Maybe he’s just fulfilling the promise he made to his wife, and that’s all.  Either way, it’s science-minded Chao-Chun who is forced to accept a deity into his mode of thinking.  Chao-Chun even says, “There is no power of god in the world,” so you can see the lines of demarcation drawn clearly (sort of).  Likewise, the Martians belong to the realm of science or, to be more precise, science fiction.  They are technology and machinery incarnate.  They even have electronic BEM eyes that light up.  Guan Yu must teach them the lesson that gods are no laughing matter (take that how you will in this context).  

By that same token, this conflict reflects the struggle between traditionalism and modernity.  Uncle Chao carves wooden statues using nothing but his chisels, his hands, and some elbow grease (by the way, he is functionally blind with Glaucoma, making his efforts even more preternatural).  He knows that there is value in taking the time to do things by hand and do them right.  Apparently, his whole life has been a progression toward the perfection of his craft, a quasi-Nirvana.  Chao-Chun uses scientific tools, largely automated, and he even adds in the science fiction go-to of radiation (in another experiment [this one involving bees] which goes nowhere).  He laments the hard path scientists have to trod (“If everyone was like you, we’d still be primitive”), because it has to be worth it.  According to this film, however, not so much.  Guan Yu is, naturally, the most traditional of traditional symbols, and the Martians the ultimate symbol of contemporary man (even though they’re not human).  They, like Chao-Chun, have a hard time grasping how tradition can be so powerful when it’s so archaic.  And this is why they fail or are useless to the film’s narrative, such as it is.

It’s not unfair to ask how the special effects in a special effects film fare.  So, how do they fare in Calamity?  Sadly, not so well.  Aside from a handful of decent matte shots, they’re pretty threadbare across the board.  The miniatures are as simplistic and undetailed as it’s possible to be.  The Martians look bad (in an Irwin Allen television show sort of way, but cheaper), especially when compared to the rather ornate Guan Yu costume.  But these things could be forgiven if the action worked or if the story had some interesting ideas or tension or characters.  But it doesn’t.  The Guan Yu versus aliens scenes are essentially the same moves repeated ad nauseum.  Further, the human characters contribute nothing (the exception, of course, being Uncle Chao).  There is even a hellion biker girl character who has nothing to do other than ride through tunnels and dance to Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting” (I’m almost positive the song rights were procured for its use here), and that’s just wasteful.  The most calamitous thing about Calamity is that it’s entirely constructed of window dressings without the windows.  The filmmakers knew the notes but not the tune.

MVT:  the giant monster battles, though they are repetitive to the point of lethargy.  

Make or Break:  By the middle of the final battle of the giants, you’ll just want it to be over.

Score:  6/10    

Horrible High Heels (1996)

Hey, let’s talk about my feet!  For as long as I can remember, my feet have been grotesquely wide (around a triple E width, if that helps any).  The last pair of normal sneakers I had were Welcome Back Kotter ones when I was a kid (it said, “Up Your Nose with a Rubber Hose” and other snazzy bon mots around the sides).  I could never wear Chuck Taylors, because my feet poured out over the tops of the soles (but fuck if I didn’t try).  My first pair of Doc Martens were regular width (because that’s all that anyone sold, and this was before they were available on every street corner in the world, and they were expensive as all hell compared to the shoes I would normally buy), and the breaking-in period was pure hell.  Since then, I’ve discovered companies that that specialize in wide width shoes, but it’s still a crapshoot buying them, because you have to buy them over the internet (the sneakers I have been buying this way have started giving me corns, so now it’s back to the drawing board). 

  

And then there’s the flatness of my feet.  I’m fairly convinced that I have no arches to speak of, so, of course, I have to wear special arch supports.  The beauty of these babies is that they’re made of plastic, so they tend to give you shin splints until you get used to them.  They also make it sound like you’re walking on ducks, they squeak so much.  To put it simply, footwear and I don’t get along.  I don’t even think the human leather shoes of Wai On Chan, Cheng Chow, and Chiang-Bang Mao’s Horrible High Heels (aka Ren Pi Guo Zheng Xie aka Bloody Shoe) would fit me any better than any others do.  It doesn’t help that I can’t walk for shit in high heels.

Lee Kang (Hung Fung) is the proprietor of a small shoe cobbling business.  He’s also a degenerate gambler of the lowest order, and, after getting knocked out during a row over his habit with young Sherry, he’s skinned alive by a masked lunatic (whose identity is obvious, even before you meet him without the mask).  Lee’s son Tien (Lam Chak-Ming) comes home from university with hoochie mama Wendy (Suen Tong), and he almost seems to give a rat’s ass about finding his missing father.  Wang, one of Sherry’s co-workers, finds a cheap source for fantastically soft leather (have you guessed yet who the murderer is?) and has some dealings with his nephew Ah-Nan (Siu Yuk-Lung), who works for triad boss Kuen (Shing Fui-On), a man very interested in the wholesale of women’s shoes.  Is that enough for you?

This film could have some interesting things to say, and it almost does.  For example, there’s the aspect of mad love going on.  Sherry pines for Tien (why is anyone’s guess, as the man is blanker than a sheet of copy paper and has fewer sides), and the entrance of Wendy makes her go a little crazy (there’s even a nice cat fight just to prove this).  Sherry goes to extreme lengths to get Tien, naturally, because he’s the man she deserves, and she was there first.  Wang pines for Sherry, and he also will go to extreme lengths to have her.  He even has a photo of her at home with her mouth cut out (you don’t have to wonder why; they make it excruciatingly clear in the movie).  I can’t imagine that being in any way satisfying, and I can only cringe at the abrasions one could incur with such a prop.  However, Sherry ultimately rejects Wang, which makes him go even crazier.  But just being in Wang’s presence is enough to infect Sherry with Wang’s insanity.  That she winds up as she does in the end stems not only from her commiseration with this guy but also (and more importantly) from her abuse at the hands of men in general.  Sherry is the embodiment of puppy love turned inside out and gone dark.  

Then, there’s the idea of “skin trades” (and not just in terms of animals, unless you count people as animals, which is fair play) and how fashion feeds into it.  Consumers and vendors love the human leather shoes.  Sherry and her fellow employees love working with the leather, and the money they make off their sales thrills them.  During the first human skinning, the killer exclaims, “I started my fortune with this leather.”  As in films such as Eating Raoul, this guy discovers discover that not only are people as easy to kill and use as animals are but they’re also cheaper and of a higher quality.  It’s just that this movie hasn’t a humorous bone in its body.    

Being a Category III film, Horrible High Heels does its level best to fulfill the promise of that rating.  It opens, for no narrative reason whatsoever, in a slaughterhouse, and we get to see cows being killed and cut up in graphic detail.  That’s about as subtle as this film gets.  There is plenty of rape for everyone, and this is combined with humiliation (as if rape, in and of itself, isn’t humiliating enough).  One victim is micturated on.  Another is stripped, beaten, made to walk on all fours like a dog, and forced to touch herself with amputated body parts.  This isn’t to say that the consensual sex scenes are any more pleasant.  They are as softcore as can be, leaving nothing to the imagination (well, a little), and they are just as skanky as any of the rape scenes.  They have a grimy aura to them, and the participants look dazed and sweaty.  Even when the characters want to be having sex, they still look like they couldn’t be further away.

The greatest fault of Horrible High Heels is that it’s incredibly scattershot to the point that you can completely believe that this thing was made by three directors, because it doesn’t follow any of its storylines coherently.  It also doesn’t really give a shit about what’s going on in any of them.  The human tanning angle is dropped halfway through the film.  The Ah-Nan/triad aspect doesn’t relate to the rest of the film except by the thinnest of threads.  The search for Lee that started this whole thing comes up only sporadically and with as much gusto as a nonagenarian’s exercise routine.  The characters change into completely different personalities at the drop of a hat.  The cops are completely subplot material until the end, when they suddenly become action heroes, just because (as does Tien in one of the more amusing sequences of the film).  With how salacious this movie is, it’s astounding how stultifying it manages to be.  If nothing else, its title at least delivers on two things: There are high heels in the film, and it’s horrible.

MVT:  The gutter-level sleaze.  Come on, you were watching this for some other reason?

Make or Break:  The opening scene in the abattoir may put some off their feed and spoil their libidos.  Then again, it may kickstart others’ engines.

Score:  3/10 

The Butterfly Murders (1979)

Fong (Siu-Ming Lau) narrates the backstory of where the martial world stands (all we need to know is that there was some ruckus, we’re currently in the “Quiet Period,” and there are now seventy-two forces who control the martial world, the only one with which we need to concern ourselves being the Ten Flags Clan led by Tien [Shu Tong Wong]).  After the murder of a paper mill owner prompted by a counterfeit copy of Fong’s memoirs, The Ten Flags are summoned to Shum Castle, where Lord Shum (Kuo-Chu Chang) is hiding in fear for his life.  It seems some flagitious ne’er-do-well is using poison butterflies to off people, and it all ties in to a secret deep beneath the castle’s surface.

The Butterfly Murders (aka Dip Bin) is Tsui Hark’s first feature length film following his graduation from The University of Texas and his return to Hong Kong (I always remember his anecdote [I believe from an issue of Fangoria] where he was filming a dance or ballet class as a student, and his teacher pointed out to him that the shadows the dancers cast were more visually interesting than the dancers themselves; that is, a different way of looking at cinema).  The film itself is chock full of jump cuts and a storyline that assumes we’ll catch up to whatever is happening onscreen (and, yet again, we have to look at this as being, one, partially a cultural thing with how the Chinese construct and engage with film, and two, possibly something caused, at least in part, by the editing that happened oh-so-often after a foreign [but especially Chinese] film left its director’s hands and traveled abroad).  

And yet, this disjunctive quality aids in bolstering the mystery element of the film.  The Butterfly Murders, in many ways, is very much an “old dark house” movie.  Disparate guests with nothing in common are invited to an unexpected place.  Said place is hauntingly barren and forbidding.  Said guests are embroiled in a mystery which could cost them their lives.  There are secrets and twists that appear to come out of nowhere but do, in fact, have explanations.  There are hidden chambers which house aspects of the truth.  There’s an odd butler-y character in the form of Chee (Hsiao-Ling Hsu), who is deaf and muter but also far better looking than most cranky, old cinematic butlers I’ve seen.  The only thing really missing is the raging tempest outside (though the sky in the film always looks overcast, and you could look at the swarms of butterflies as being the storm which keeps everyone cooped up).  The three main characters, Fong, Tien, and Green Shadow (Michelle Yim) play detective, piecing the puzzle together.  

Since Fong is our audience perspective character, he plays the primary investigative role.  He questions people but generally keeps out of things, observing and processing the goings-on as a scholar/scrutineer does.  It’s he who will actually learn a lesson from the story, and, as he would pass it on to his eventual readers, Hark passes it on to the viewer.  Fong chronicles tales of the martial world from what he has experienced in it and is highly regarded for this.  This story is yet one more of these yarns, and it unfolds partly as a folk tale and partly as an accounting of what actually happened.  Fong’s memoirs are valued because he is known as one of the great storytellers of his time, and the falseness of the writings being foisted off at the film’s opening is important because it’s telling us that the reality crafted in the writing of guys like Fong is valuable as historical documentation and as fashioning of the world in which everyone who isn’t a scholar/author lives.  Flashbacks take us from the main story to spice up the proceedings, give us backstory, and show us that there are common legends in this world.  Therefore, we get the two clowns robbing a grave who are attacked by the butterflies as well as several shots of the aftermath of Magic Fire’s (Eddy Ko) wrath.  

This world is supported by myths and legends as surely as ours is by science and nature.  This is why the heroes of this world have supposedly magic powers.  And yet, the filmmakers very clearly show us that these abilities are a combination of skill and gadgetry.  For example, Magic Fire can’t actually control and create fire.  He is a master of pyrotechnics and explosives.  Similarly, Thousand Hands has all manner of sharp, pointy objects he can hurl en masse with pinpoint accuracy.  His moniker has nothing to do with him having a thousand hands (though that would have been kind of neat to have seen).  It’s a simultaneous aggrandizement and de-mythologizing of these special people.  Fong’s writing creates larger than life characters, while Hark shows us that there are real world explanations for their gifts.  But in the end, the martial world of the film will continue to be colored by and filled with Fong’s point of view, not Hark’s. 

Oddly enough, for a film set in the martial arts world, there isn’t a ton of fighting in it.  Actually, I should append that.  There is a decent amount, but it takes a while to get to any of it, and, to be perfectly honest, you can tell that Hark was still very much an enthusiastic novice (as an analogy, you almost need to ask yourself whether you’re interested in seeing Salvador Dali’s artwork from when he was four years old; personally, I would leap at the chance).  For as many interesting shots/visuals we get there are just as many, if not more, that are so undisciplined in angle and movement, you almost can’t tell what’s going on, and the editing is as choppy as a prep cook.  Nevertheless, it’s this sense of experimentation that turned Hark into the filmmaker he would become in a very short span of time.  Additionally, the director seems to rein it in a sizable amount as the film rounds third base while ramping up the more fantastical components, and this is when the movie became most satisfying for me.  Yes, you have to work with the film (arguably against it) to make heads or tails of it at the outset, but both the journey and its destination are worth it.

MVT:  The mystery facet keeps the film together and even gels with the rest as it moves along.

Make or Break:  If you can’t make it through the film’s first ten minutes, it won’t be for you.  I loved the challenge of it (as a Western viewer) and where it led.

Score:  7/10