Tiger Cage

Tiger Cage Directed By Yuen Wo-Ping, Starring Donny Yen (1988).

I’ve been sitting on this review for awhile, like Horton that dedicated pachyderm you may have read about in a Dr. Seuss book. At first I saw this action packed HK classic in the infancy of Netflix streaming and its sequel was there to boot. From the neon production logo to the starting gate, it doesn’t let up or take a breath. The film has constant blasting of hardware and pummeling. Chunks of heads are blown out by Asian dudes with comical mustaches. One of the main actors Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau starred in Demoness of 1000 years and John Woo's Bullet in the Head (which I need to get a copy of). Donnie Yen has gotten just too over exposed I mean he was in one of the lamest Star Wars, Rogue One, but that's definitely a step up in paycheck. Good for him I say!

Lucas was totally ripping off Hidden Fortress anyway.

 The stunts in this film look pretty painful, I'm sure a lot of stunt men were stuck in the hospital with broken bones. One dude jumps off a bridge and dives onto a moving car. What do you expect from Dickson Poon presentation, other than quality! One of my most favorite titles of the DP cannon is Porky's Meatballs (aka Devil Horse School Yard) Thank you HKDB for all the great info! 

actual image from Porky's Meatballs!

 Simon Yam aka Dr. Lamb hisself is one of the CID officers trying to bust up a heroin ring.

There’s an egg blowing prank that wouldn't look that weird on a Japanese game show.

After awhile it slows down to the pace of a ROM Com but not for too long. Then it settles into gun battle territory and another prank that causes fatalities this time.

yeah just like the incredible Mr. Limply

One cop gets covered in tear gas then shredded with a shotgun. His wife starts training for revenge. This dude with a fro and a mustache played by Johnny Wang Lung-Wei is super bad ass. Johnny Wang was in a lot of amazing Chinese flicks like Boxer's Omen, Dirty Ho and even Crippled Avengers. 

I remember watching the sequel to TG first with chop socky dubbing and enjoying it more. 

UGHHH I hate when my crepe explodes!

There’s this one gangster played by Micheal Woods who looks like Lionel Richie with gigantism, he wears a white blazer. It’s all very Miami Vice-ish. The fight scene between him and Donnie yen is highly entertaining and the fight choreography is excellent. Woods was only in a few HK films but he has an unhinged presence and even appeared in one other film featured in the Deep Red catalog, In the line of duty 4.

I just shit my pannntttsss!

Ng Man-Tat gets pelted with a bag of cocaine that erupts and clings to his face. He's one of the main cops and his character is pretty like able, I'm surprised he hasn't appeared in more films that I've seen.

I don’t want to spoil anything but Simon Yam brutally kills a major character and it’s pretty fucked up!

Dr. Lamb just got recruited as the Trump surgeon general.

During the second half, Yam gets more insidious and acts like a thug. Good cops get framed and it’s basically turns into a more gore soaked CSI.

One girl gets hurled out a window and dives onto a car like in the first half! There’s even a montage that gets you amped for the final showdown. I'd say watch part 2 first then revisit in the first one because most of the cast return even though a lot of them are killed. Go figure.

I'm not making copies of the Mad Ron's Prevues tape don't melt my eyeballs!

Ilsa Tigress of Siberia

Ilsa Tigress Of Siberia, directed by Jean LaFluer, Starring Dyanne Thorne (1977).

This very Canadian entry in a series of ghastly titillation and Nazisploitation smackers involves real authentic Bitch of Buchenwald Ilse Koch, played by the icy cold busty babe Dyanne Thorne for the third time. No one else could pull off this role but this isn't the first time Koch has been immortalized in cinema. The same year Dave Friedman who was inspired by Lee Frost's Love Camp 7 to use the set of Hogan's Heroes for the unsavory purposes of this production, a Lina Wertmuller arthouse classic came out called Seven Beauties. In that film, Shirley Stoler (who looks very much like the actual Koch) aims to murder main character Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini) if he doesn't satisfy her sexual needs. I highly recommend this film, which I saw in my Humanities class at City College of San Francisco.

Der Weinerschnitzel, yes I'd like to order that Descendents happy meal.

This entry is just as unpleasantly repulsive as the first two, but slightly less camp this time around. You don’t need to watch them all in succession to figure out what’s happening and thankfully they aren’t as frustrating and non linear as say, the Back to the Future series.

Zemeckis tried to warn us of the Trump presidency, why didn't we listen?

The racist aspect mostly fizzled out with each sequel, so you could sort of enjoy the busty Russ Meyer babes with a clear conscience. This is the Nazisploitation genre where it’s guaranteed to cause emotional trauma unless you are a Trump-kin or a racist piece of shit 4Chan homophobe and if that’s the case go fuck yourself.

The Eurotrash look of the film is appealing to me and reminds me of those weird Swedish Pippi Longstocking dubbed movies I used to rent during the same time period as when I used to go over to my friend John’s house and secretly watch Hotdog the Movie and Zombie.

The snowy locations give it a air of a Christmassy feel and Ilsa looks just as foxy as ever in that star hat and Wampa skin fur coat. Just in the first 5 minutes we get a smushed in cherry red skull cavity, cracked open by a giant cartoony hammer. I can't imagine anyone hasn't seen all of these in order, but for those who haven't--tuck in, it gets pretty gruesome.

This reminds me of that song by Warrant.

The whole gulag is set up like a Looney Tunes cartoon with man eating tigers and chainsaw arm battles. Ilsa parties with her cossack dudes who all lust after her of course. She does a clumsy dance to Russian bear music that’s part Fonzie part Elaine from Seinfeld complete with thumbs and kicks. Then she has a yucky threesome with two beardos who look like Hugo Stiglitz stunt doubles, they play a library track from Dawn of the Dead during the porkin'. I can just see the Hari Krishna zombie peer out from over the corner.

I'M SOOO OVER THIS!

Hitler is yesterday’s news and the new fascist pin up is Stalin. They torture enough Russians to compete with the Japanese medical camp team from Men Behind the Sun. Every other dude looks like Yakov Smirnov and talks like Balki from Perfect Strangers, but they all worship Ilsa. Man, all of a sudden the ego stroking of a fascist maniacal bitch is reminding me of a needy Orange diaper KKKlown—thanks a lot movie!

Trump's peen looks more like a baby carrot than a gerkin--noted.

One dude with an Axe body spray type name has too much will against state oppression and is tempted sexually with Ilsa’s meat balloons, he becomes an important figure in the second act of the story. I like how a minute after the war is over, they torch everything, murder anyone in sight and move on. No one sticks around to see if the news was reported as hearsay or in jest.

Movie over, I think not!

We’ve got at least an hour to go.

1977 Montreal flashes across the screen I can just hear the Stompin' Tom music and taste the La Batt’s blue! The sleaziness barometer starts to increase as the lone gulag survivor, who’s been hiding out in Canada takes his two pals to a brothel. Looks like they went into the wrong whorehouse because guess who runs it?

in Canada a pearl necklace is not what you'd think.

They capture Andre and he doesn’t even say “excuse me, you can’t arrest me, talk to my lawyer”. Apparently he’s better at withstanding abuse than picking up the phone and dialing a cheap attorney.

This grimy Italian dude that Thorne’s character swindled out of his hooker biz mentions Pompano Beach, which is where I grew up!

check out the fun bags on this hose hound.

There’s more of a Russian mafia aspect to get rid of enemies than shock troopers coming in and butchering people. The methods are just as gruesome however. When I first got wind of this series I was totally appalled, that it until I watched all of them and there's more humor, albeit super dark in tone but they're more entertaining on a campy level than you'd think.

In Tigress they use the loud heart thumps from LHODES and even that same library track from Galaxina as the lone survivor from the start of the movie envisions his worst nightmare. His torture fantasy shows Ilsa as a demented version of a cast member of CATS gnawing his dick off.

The Willy Wonka on dabs plus LSD nightmare machine is pretty creative, it takes your worst fears and attacks your brain with them. Why does this computer exist, who knows but it’s pretty cool.

Oh Shit! it's a horny Phillis Diller in CATS makeup! 

The Russian embassy has a score to settle with “The Bitch” and they send over ninja assassins. One gunman who looks almost exactly like Don Steele (aka Rockin’ Ricky or Screaming Steve from Joe Dante’s cinematic cannon), gets impaled and it's pretty delightful.

This pacing on this one is pretty riveting and I highly recommend seeking it out. You can skip Wanda The Wicked Warden, unless you have a hard on for Jess Franco. 

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