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Until the mid eighties, the costumed superhero as we know him in the West was a figure largely absent from Indian cinema. The primary exceptions were those intermittent attempts to appropriate the Superman character that seem to dot the history of modern South Asian film. Yet in the neon decade the industry seemed to see something of a mini renaissance in the appearance of such characters. Superstar Amitabh Bachchan's attempts to revive his career after his less-than-stellar turn in Indian politics included two portrayals of caped crusaders. And, most famously, there was that same year's mega-hit, Mr. India used his powers to defeat the enemies of his country. But before all of these there came another film based around the exploits of a costumed hero of superhuman abilities, 1985's Shiva Ka Insaaf.
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I guess we're supposed to be on the edge of our seats as Dharmendra attempts to outfox Hantomas by pretending to be on the side of evil, but it's hard to get into the spirit of things when it's so obvious Dharmendra is a secret Interpol guy. Eventually everyone winds up on board a cruise ship that also happens to be full of smuggler's gold, reminding you that you've gone for most of the movie without even knowing what the hell Hantomas and his gang are even trying to do. I guess they were trying to smuggle gold, or possibly steal it, but their entire scheme seems to have absolutely no point at all. Nothing they do seems to have any connection to anything else they do. It's completely baffling to the point that I started to think this was less a criminal gang and more a dada-ist performance art troupe. Every time you ask them a question, they respond with a dance or by miming a tennis match. What are you trying to tell me, Hantomas! I don't understand!!!
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Shrimp Chips are short reviews and off the cuff commentary about whatever movie we happen to be thinking about here at Teleport City, but not thinking about so hard that it warrants a full review. This can be vaguely remembered stuff from the past or something I watched last night. For example, the last Shrimp Chips I thought about were:
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Jet Set Cinema is Teleport City's short form salute to the sexiest, swinginest, and swankiest in the world of film of television. From sleuthing with Mr. Moto and Bulldog Drummond to fashion tips from Jason King, all things cinematically suave will find their home here. The latest grooves include:
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The Hell of 50 Movie Pack is an ongoing journey through the many Mill Creek 50 Movie Pack box sets I have acquired. Everything from Hercules movies to bad 50s science fiction to cheap horror films from the 70s, with plenty of other stuff to fill in the cracks. Our latest viewings include:
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When I recently set about the task of converting all my old VHS tapes to DVD-R, I started rediscovering a lot of films I hadn't watched in years, not since first I plucked them out of the dollar bin at whatever video store was trying to get rid of them. It was a big chore, because I had a lot of VHS tapes, and some of them were copyguarded for reasons I will never fathom. Who in the hell copyguards Archer: Fugitive from the Empire? Half those tapes are so old and worn at this point that they could snap at any moment, and what then? What happens when Archer: Fugitive from the Empire finally gets eaten by my aging VCR? What happens when The Barbarians can't be played anymore? So I decided to take my holy assignment one step forward and make sure I reviewed as many of these films as possible, because the internet is going to last forever, and one day we will create sentient computers by downloading the whole of human knowledge as represented by the contents of the world wide web into it's databases. At that time, the computer will become a living, thinking creature. It will also be an idiot, thanks to the fact that most of what's on the internet is blogs written from the viewpoint of someone's cat or reviews of movies like Solar Force starring Michael Pare.
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One need only glance over the many titles in the lucha movie genre to see that there is a long history of enmity between Mexican wrestlers and mummies. This goes all the way back to 1964, when Elizabeth Campbell and Lorena Velazquez threw down against a pop-eyed, reconstituted Aztec warrior in their sophomore effort as The Wrestling Women and continued throughout the rest of the sixties, during which Santo would come up against shambling bandage jockeys in films like La Venganza de la Momia. But the conflict didn't really kick into high gear until 1972, when the success of The Mummies of Guanajuato guaranteed that, for the next several years, Mexican movie screens would seldom see respite from the spectacle of colorfully-garbed, masked Mexican grapplers working their moves on a seemingly endless series of inexplicably muscular mummified adversaries.
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Far away from the three piece Harris tweed and pocket watch look of most vampire hunters, Kronos is a mixture of pirate and soldier in appearance, with bushy blond hair and a rapier. Grost, by contrast, is a bespectacled, goateed hunchback, though he's far from grotesque. They are two halves of a whole -- the muscle and charm in Kronos, the brains and wit in Grost. For the lead role, they cast German actor Horst Jansen, and he certainly looks the part. Tall, confident, sexy, and swaggering. Even though they're in the same profession, there's very little of Van Helsing about the man. Kronos looks less likely to have been spending his days steeped in researching of arcane folklore and more likely to be lying on the beach, a tan young woman on one side and his surfboard on the other. What he learns, he learns through experience or via the wise counsel of Grost.
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Hooray! Time for another B-Masters Cabal Review Roundtable. This time around, we're playing off Cold Fusion Video's "Month of the Living Dead," in which the "living dead" is narrowly defined as meaning "zombies." So this is our attempt to be more inclusive and see that the various other members of the living dead community get their just dues. So it's a month of vampires, ghosts, ghouls, Frankenstein monsters, mummies, and anything else that spent some time dead but just won't stay down. So we present The Month of the Alternative Living Dead. Teleport City will be checking in with swashbuckling vampire hunters, luchadore-battling Mexican mummies, and wise-cracking demon hellspawns. So stick with us through the month, and be sure to follow the link to check out the other B-Master contributions to this most valuable attempt to bring a little more equity to the world of the living dead.
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