Golden Needles

Exciting adventure through a unique theme of story of a most desirable but deadly statue. To gawk at it's enticing golden beauty, transfixing. It's needles, ones which can take pain away, than return it, in it's ultimate torturous form, followed by death. Finding she's been swindled, as the corrupt sellers want another 250 thousand, hot Ashley enlists help, which comes in the shape of big burly leading man, Don Baker, and he's great to watch here. Only one who can break in and steal the statue. Of course a love affair blooms between the two, and sometimes we wonder if Ashley has corrupt intentions. She's a mystery. Chao as Don Baker's childhood friend is solid as always. Some strong impactful violence doesn't hurt either, and Ann Southern, is an unforgettable hoot as a club owner, acting much the same way she did in the standalone, serial killer pic The Killing Kind. The film is just so all exciting, due to it's different kind of story, and a film I recommend you see.

Director Robert Clouse's career has been overshadowed by 1973's "Enter the Dragon" which was in part, an attempt to incorporate elements of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema into the American formula. Some two decades before John Woo et.al made the leap to Hollywood, producer Raymond Chow (head of Golden Harvest) teamed with Clouse many times in the 1970s, repeatedly spiking cross-cultural martial arts and detective actioners. "Golden Needles" was another such attempt to fuse American and Hong Kong action film conventions: this film being a comedic, actionful, fantasy version of the classic "Maltese Falcon". Joe Don Baker starred as an American in Hong Kong, who for a favour and a price, attempts to track down a priceless idol. This idol is one of the strangest McGuffins in the movies: it is pierced by needles in a specific pattern, and if the acupuncture is performed on a man, in the same pattern as marked on the idol, renewed sexual vigour results. Thus, it is sought after by all manner of older men (including Burgess Meredith in one of his funniest roles). Whilst meant as entertainment, the film succeeds also as one of the strangest treatments of the theme of drug addiction so prevalent in 70s American film, and even Clouse's other work (especially "The Amsterdam Kill"). Boistered by an excellent, comical, music score by Lalo Schifrin, featuring piercing sounds to mimic the acupuncture motif, the film is an immensely enjoyable generic hybrid, free from pretension, and a shining example of B-movie pleasures. Self-consciously, and never heavy-handedly, Clouse uses the genre conventions to frame a study of the US cultural appropriation of foreign practices (the Asian connection being the supplier of heroin ironically enough). Progressively weirder and with a protagonist whose easy-going sense of adventure becomes ever more sobering as he proceeds, this film is a true oddity, and all the better for it. Clouse's handling serves as a neat reminder of the time when he was still an innovator in B-movies, instead of the mere imitator he had become by the beginning of the 1980s.

Despite bringing together a newly-born film star – Joe Don Baker, fresh from the box-office smash, WALKING TALL (1973) – and action director – Robert Clouse, of ENTER THE DRAGON (1973) fame – this a lamentably lackluster martial arts flick about the search for (or rather the chase after) a bronze statue which contains seven golden all-curing acupuncture needles which is craved by various parties.

Baker is a retired detective slumming it out in Hong Kong who is hired by an enterprising ‘cowgirl’ (Elizabeth Ashley) to look for the titular commodities on behalf of her mysterious employer. Baker comes in possession of the statue early on in the game but it is subsequently stolen from the house of an old Asian teacher of his who is murdered; consequently, he teams up with his colored partner Jim Kelly (saddled with an Afro hair-do typical of the era) in L.A. to go after the bad guys – with a little help from a butt-kicking Asian policewoman and her colleagues. Hollywood veterans Burgess Meredith (as the villainous old businessman who seeks immortality) and Ann Sothern (as a Hong Kong madam who takes punishment like a man to protect Baker) bring some much needed spice to the largely indifferent proceedings.

This movie is like straight of Hong Kong. Going for the gold is good, but it is not a medal. It's a statue made from gold, containing needles to bring vibrancy. Used right, you're king of the world. Used wrong, you're dead. So many characters coming across the idol. Some good, some bad, some in-between. The one idol found turned out to be a copy. And a lot of money is out in stake. Now I have seen a lot of fight actions in the genre. Jim Kelly is the only non- Asian who is a martial artist. Cause he is trained by the Dragon: Bruce Lee. Joe Don Baker is just a brawler. He held his own in the film. Entertaining throughout the film is key.

2 out of 5 stars.

Golden Needles is a low-budget martial arts action film. It's not boring - there's no shortage of chases and physical violence - but there's not much of a story to it, either. It also may have set a world record for the most number of people being smashed through glass panes in a single movie. The set-up is that certain interested parties are in hot pursuit of a golden statuette that comes complete with a set of needles, which, when inserted, will revitalize the recipient to their younger days of physicality and sexual prowess. Liz Ashley (the buyer) and Joe Don Baker (the fixer) are the good guys, but their characters are so underwritten, it's hard to care about them, and they just function inside the plot. The only character that seems to be fully written is Burgess Meredith, playing an aging millionaire who's the real money man behind the mischief. His scenes both lighten and liven up the movie. The scenes between Baker and Ashley are the least interesting, including a hard-to-believe sexual tryst, because the dialogue is so poor. At a certain point, you don't really know or care who's got the needles; the twists and turns don't matter much, you figure the good guys will prevail, and you're just waiting for the next fight. As kung fu pictures go, it's acceptable, but not stellar.