BA_Harrison

Wheels on Meals is a knockabout action comedy starring martial arts legends Jackie Chan, Yuen Baio and Sammo Hung. Chan and Baio play best friends Thomas and David, who run a fast food van in Barcelona; while working, the pair rescue a beautiful young woman, Sylvia (Lola Forner), from thugs who try to kidnap her. Meanwhile, private detective Moby (Hung) is searching for a woman and her daughter, who turn out to be Sylvia and her mother. It eventually transpires that Sylvia is heir to a fortune, and that her half brother Mondale (José Sancho) is trying his best to stop her from claiming her rightful inheritance.

If you've read some of my other reviews of HK action comedies of the '80s, you'll know that I am not a big fan of Asian comedy. That said, Wheels on Meals is actually fairly amusing - not laugh out loud funny, but far less puerile than a lot of similar films. Unfortunately, this one does prove somewhat lacking in the action stakes. There are a few reasonably fun fights throughout, but nothing spectacular, which is disappointing given the talent, and while the best is definitely saved for last, the final act isn't as jaw dropping as it might have been. Yuen Baio leaps around while being chased by Keith Vitali, Hung has a forgettable swordfight with Sancho, and Chan has a hard-hitting one-on-one with Benny 'The Jet' Urquidez. I'm a big fan of Urquidez - he makes for a great villain - but his big fight in Wheels on Meals is nowhere near as creative or impressive as his showdown with Chan in Dragons Forever three years later.

Worth watching if you're a fan of the three leads, but it's far from their best work. 6/10.

A gelatinous alien organism crashes to Earth inside a meteorite and proceeds to dissolve human victims, the creature gradually growing in size as it 'eats'. Teenager Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen, who doesn't look a day over 27) and his girlfriend Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut, just a few years younger than McQueen) witness the blob at work, but no-one will believe them...

Director Chuck Russell's 1988 version of The Blob is one of my favourite horror films of the '80s; I've been meaning to check out the 1950s original for a long time, to see how it compares. Having just watched the film, it's clear to me how much Chuck Russell admires it, his version being an affectionate update: besides a few minor tweaks (making the organism the result of a top secret US science experiment) and a lot more gore, the remake is basically the same film, with the old man getting the blob on his hand, hero Steve discovering that cold can repel the 'monster', and that classic moment when the blob attacks the patrons of a movie theatre. The fact that not many changes were needed to bring Russell's film up-to-date shows how strong the original story was.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how effective the special effects are in the original film - the blob is actually really good, with one scene actually being better than the same moment in the remake (I always thought that the blob retreating from under the cold room door was a bit rubbery in Russell's film). There is, perhaps, a little too much teen nonsense in the film, which was clearly marketed at the drive-in crowd, but because it was aimed at a younger audience, it does mean that we get a pretty amazing theme song during the opening credits: all together now... 'It creeps and leaps, And glides and slides, Across the floor, Right through the door, And all around the wall, A splotch, a blotch, Be careful of the Blob'.

This is the film where Chow Yun Fat shoots people round corners with a shotgun on a rope and where Conan Lee has a chainsaw duel with Gordon Liu. And if that wasn't enough, we get the drop-dead gorgeous Nina Li Chi (Jet Li's real-life wife), lots and lots of really bloody squibs, and Conan Lee doing some crazy stunts on top of a moving car. Admittedly, there's some bad comedy to endure in order to get to the good stuff, but let me just say it one more time... chainsaw duel... while doing kung fu!!! Believe me, it's well worth the wait.

Chow Yun Fat plays lazy womanising cop Francis Li, eleven years with the force and still only a sergeant; he is teamed with young 'perfect' cop Officer Michael Tso (Lee). Together they try to bust a cocaine smuggling operation run by kingpin Lau Fai (Liu). Being an 'odd couple', Li and Tso get into plenty of comedic situations typical of the buddy cop genre before the kidnapping of Li's sister by the drug gang forces them to get serious. Nina Li Chi plays Marydonna, sexy sister of drug dealer Poison Snake Ping (Phillip Ko), the woman helping the cops in their investigations.

As much as I generally dislike HK action films that feature too much comedy, this film has such incredible fighting and stunts that I can happily turn a blind eye to most of the dreadful humour.