David Carradine Roundtable

If you're a fan of the late actor David Carradine, please hop on over to Chris Poggiali's Temple of Schlock blog for a roundtable discussion of Carradine's two features as a director: 1972's YOU AND ME and 1983's AMERICANA.

I had a terrific time rapping about these two terrific films with Chris and Video Watchdog assistant editor John Charles (whose essential McFarland reference book THE HONG KONG FILMOGRAPHY: 1977-1997 is now available as a trade paperback). Particularly because I had never seen either film, but had been curious about them.

YOU AND ME is very difficult to find, as it has never been on VHS or DVD in the U.S., while AMERICANA is available only in a severely compromised pan-and-scan version. Carradine, who died in June at age 72, is an actor I have watched and admired for some time, and it was a great privilege to discuss his work with two fellow fans and friends. Please enjoy our Temple of Schlock salute to the fine David Carradine.

Now, I have to finally pull ENDLESS HIGHWAY off the shelf and give it more than just a cursory skim.

Carradine Around The Web

EDITED to add more links:


You can't be a fan of Crappy Movies and not love David Carradine, who was often the brightest spot in junk like FUTURE ZONE and KARATE COP, even if he just appeared for five minutes.

Here are just a few good Carradine tributes online tonight:
Chris Poggiali's Temple of Schlock
Screengrab in Exile (taking the place of the recently late and lamented Screengrab)
Jeremy Richey's Moon in the Gutter
Rent some Carradine from Netflix, which has only a handful of his hundreds of screen roles
New York Times obit
Screenwriter T.L. Lankford shares a memory from ARMED RESPONSE (although his photo isn't working)
Tribute from the always hilarious (and mysterious) Vern
Wrong Side of the Art gives us a look at the incredible Frazetta-esque DEATHSPORT one-sheet.

Carradine's death is still being unofficially called a suicide. He had seven kids and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

R.I.P. David Carradine

The star of KUNG FU, KILL BILL, BOUND FOR GLORY, DEATH RACE 2000, the SHANE TV series, and a million other films and television shows, most of which were beneath his talents, is dead at age 72.

Here are a couple of old posts I wrote about more obscure Carradine features that probably few other bloggers will today:
HIGH NOON, PART II: THE RETURN OF WILL KANE
SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT

Like his father, the distinguished character actor John Carradine, David was a highly eccentric, very talented, charismatic performer who often dwelled in lowly quickies and cheapies that hired him for a few days to add marquee value to them. And he usually did. Also, like his dad, David rarely (but sometimes) walked through a part.

Often volatile, always interesting.

Once A Bloodsucker, Always A Bloodsucker

It isn’t until now that you’ve been able to really see SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT, which director Anthony Hickox (WAXWORK) made in Moab, Utah in 1988. Vestron unfortunately went down the tubes around that time, and SUNDOWN never received a proper theatrical release. Its VHS release and television showings made mincemeat of cinematographer Levie Isaacks’ work and Hickox’s staging, but getting to see it on Lionsgate’s Special Edition DVD reveals an amusing horror/comedy that has been very badly served by its rights owners to date.

SUNDOWN’s biggest problem is its large cast of characters and disparate storylines. It’s difficult to ascertain who the movie is about, and many plot threads are ultimately not connected as strongly as they should have been. The great Bruce Campbell, just off EVIL DEAD II, is Robert Van Helsing, who arrives in the desert town of Purgatory to find Count Mardulak (David Carradine), the vampire his great-grandfather stalked over a century before. What Van Helsing isn’t prepared for is facing an entire town of vampires, which gathered in Purgatory to keep them away from the tempting taste of human blood.

Also arriving in Purgatory is David Harrison (Jim Metzler), his wife Sarah (DALLAS’ Morgan Brittany) and their two daughters. David has come to rescue the town’s lone industry, which is a factory that manufactures artificial blood for medical use. Of course, it’s also Purgatory’s food supply, and between the plant being on the fritz and an unusually large assembly of people passing through, many townspeople are jonesing for the real red stuff.

Hickox also introduces a third plot thread, which pits Mardulak and his followers against enemy vampires ruled by Jefferson (John Ireland!), who wants to get out of Purgatory and take over the world using the human race as food. All three stories mix together uncomfortably, but the decent cast, occasional wit, lush scenery and Richard Stone’s majestic score make the end justify the means. Campbell is particularly funny in an Ash-like performance, and Carradine seems to be enjoying himself more than in some of the other B-movies he’s starred in.

Also appearing are the delectable Deborah Foreman (VALLEY GIRL), M. Emmet Walsh (BLOOD SIMPLE), Maxwell Caulfield (GREASE 2), Dana Ashbrook (TWIN PEAKS), Elizabeth Gracen, Bert Remsen, Sunshine Parker, Buck Flower, Dabbs Greer and John Hancock, so you can imagine the delightful acting moments that occur. Ignore the pretentious title, as well as any preconceptions you may have gotten through its pervertedly pan-and-scanned tape and TV prints, and you may find that SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT is an appealing little movie ($2.5 million) with laughs and fun.

Michael Felsher moderates director Hickox and director of photography Isaacks in an entertaining audio commentary that doesn’t answer all the questions a fan of this movie may have (so is Vestron’s Dan Ireland related to actor John Ireland or not?), but most. Neither man had seen SUNDOWN since it was made, and they have a good time revisiting it and telling tales. Also included are individual on-screen interviews with Carradine (charming), Campbell (candid as usual, including some juicy Carradine gossip) and Walsh (avuncular). About six minutes of not terribly thrilling stills are included, as well as a handful of Lionsgate trailers. There’s no SUNDOWN trailer, but one may never have existed, since it didn’t get the theatrical release it deserved.

I Got No Reason To Doubt It

HIGH NOON, PART II: THE RETURN OF WILL KANE. I can't imagine a more ludicrous title or concept than this. Admit it—at first glance, you'd assume this was an SCTV parody with Joe Flaherty as Gary Cooper, wouldn't ya? ("Yup.") Then you notice that it was written by Elmore Leonard, which piques your interest a little bit. And once you start to get into it, you realize that it really isn't too bad. In fact, HIGH NOON, PART II, which aired on CBS in the fall of 1980, would likely play much better under any other title, because as good as it is, it of course doesn't measure up to the 1952 classic.

More than a year after killing Frank Miller and leaving Hadleyville with his wife Amy (Katherine Cannon stepping into Grace Kelly's dainty shoes), former marshal Kane (Lee Majors) returns to buy some horses and settle down. His dreams of a simple future are shattered, however, when his horses are unnecessarily killed during a gun battle between a posse led by arrogant new marshal Ward (Pernell Roberts) and the roguish but basically decent Ben Irons (David Carradine), who has a $5000 bounty on his head. Kane knows Irons is innocent of the murder charge against him, but Ward, who delights in cruelly mistreating everyone, including his deputies Darold (Michael Pataki) and Alonzo (J.A. Preston), insists on hunting Irons anyway, ordering his men to shoot to kill on sight. As we know from the Cooper film, Kane can't bear to let an injustice pass, and his decision to bring Irons in himself to stand trial makes him an enemy of the gun-happy Ward.

Let's get it out of the way—no, Majors (in between THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE FALL GUY) is no Cooper, but he isn't bad either. In fact, his casting as a durable, righteous western hero is spot-on, and he's an excellent foil for both the wry Carradine (THE LONG RIDERS had already come out) and the bigoted sadist Roberts. Nicely photographed in Old Tucson by Harry May (FRIENDLY FIRE), HIGH NOON, PART II benefits from its rousing score, which is reminiscent of Ennio Morricone (who composed the theme to Majors' earlier western series THE MEN FROM SHILOH). Since no music credit is given, and some of the score sounds familiar, I've concluded that CBS or producer Edward J. Montagne (MCHALE'S NAVY) oddly decided to use library tracks. An unusual decision for a TV-movie of that era, but an effective one. Carradine later appeared three times with Majors on THE FALL GUY (once memorably with his father John and brothers Keith and Robert), while Roberts guest-starred on Lee's series THE BIG VALLEY and THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN.

To Stop The Rat, One Kills It

Everybody is kung fu fighting in THE YEAR OF THE RAT, #3 in Manor Books' Kung Fu series, written by "Lee Chang" and published in 1974. Although the lead character is named Mace--and the name is prominently displayed on the cover--the series is named Kung Fu, certainly to capitalize on the KUNG FU TV series starring David Carradine. I believe there were also some KUNG FU novelizations published at the same time, meaning there were two different series under that umbrella on the shelves then. Fans of the TV series who accidentally read this book were probably surprised at the intense violence the "Kung Fu Monk-Master" perpetrates upon his opponents.

Victor Mace, a kung fu badass, is on assignment for the CIA in Ottawa, Canada, where he is to discover how the Red Chinese are sneaking their agents into North America. That's not what the book is about, however, as the Chinese commies are planning to release a deadly virus along the east coast of the United States that will kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. The trail leads Mace from Ottawa, where he eliminates a couple of dozen enemies inside the Chinese embassy there, to a commercial ice plant just outside Buffalo, New York, where Mace massacres a few dozen more rednecks. And that's not even mentioning the many gunmen, assassins and Red Chinese agents he beats the asses of elsewhere.

Like Ninja Master Wade Barker, Mace sometimes dresses in ninja garb and uses weaponry such as shurikens to slice up his opponents, but I get more of a Shang-Chi vibe than Sho Kosugi from him. He mostly just fights hand-to-hand without any gimmicks, and certainly doesn't rely on swordplay to cut his opponents in half like the Ninja Master did. THE YEAR OF THE RAT is an action-packed little novel, and like many of these trashy paperbacks I've been reading, would make a great exploitation movie. I'm really surprised that no producer during the 1970s optioned the Mace books or the Penetrator or the Executioner or the Ninja Master and made a movie based on one of their stories (there was a Destroyer movie in the '80s starring Fred Ward as Remo Williams, but it was not a hit).