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Saturday, January 26, 2008Shark Hunter Release Year: 1979Country: Italy/Spain Starring: Franco Nero, Werner Pochath, Jorge Luke, Michael Forest, Patricia Rivera, Mirta Miller. Writer: Tito Carpi, Jaime Comas Gil, Jesus R. Folgar, and Alfredo Giannetti Director: Enzo Castellari Cinematographer: Raul Perez Cubero Music: Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis Original Title: Il Cacciatore di Squali Alternate Titles: Guardians of the Deep Availability: Buy it from Amazon  What is it, to be a man? This is the question, indeed, many of us ask ourselves. In this, our post-macho, post-feminist, post-metrosexual era, what then becomes the measure of a man? What is it that defines his life, gives him meaning, makes him a man? Indeed such a question is difficult to answer, at times perhaps even seemingly impossible. And so we enter an era of confusion, of aimlessness, until at last something emerges from the chaos to point the way, to illuminate us, to help us along on our journey and, at long last, make the answer as clear as the crystal blue waters of Cozumel. What is it, to be a man? Let Franco Nero tell you. No, no -- let Franco Nero show you. The first fifteen minutes of Enzo G. Castellari's Shark Hunter play as follows. We meet the titular shark hunter, Franco Nero, looking like he just stumbled out of the jungle and fell into a puddle of crazed hippie biker, while perched on a rock overlooking the ocean. Suddenly a shark catches his eye, causing him to leap up, run down the beach while accompanied by the sounds of Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis, and struggle to haul the thrashing beast to shore. He then retires to his open air beach bungalow to make love to his beautiful Mexican senorita, then goes to a bar where he beats the crap out of half a dozen thugs. Happy that Franco has whooped ass on the goon squad, a local takes him out for a bit of parasailing. I know, I know. You're thinking to yourself that while hauling in a fishing line hooked to a man-eating shark is tough, and making love on the beach to a sexy gal is tough, and beating up half a dozen hired bruisers is tough, there's not much tough about parasailing. That's what sunburned fat Americans do when they visit resorts, right? What's so tough about that? Well, nothing. But Franco, while he does admittedly get a kick out of the parasailing, what makes this tough parasailing is that, while in mid-air, he spies a shark in the water below, let's out a primal whoop of excitement, cuts himself loose from the parachute harness, plunges into the water, and immediately starts punching the shark in the face.
Although everything about the movie, from the title to Franco Nero's seemingly unquenchable thirst for punching sharks in the face, would lead you to believe that this is going to be another in the brief but highly enjoyable line of Italian Jaws rip-offs along the lines of director Castellari's own L'Ultimo Squalo, a film that so closely aped (or sharked) Jaws and Jaws 2 that an injunction was issued against it, spoiling big plans to unleash it in American movie theaters and, in fact, even going to far as to ensure that it would never see the light of day even on home video. However, after the insane opening and Franco Nero's lesson on how to be a real man, Shark Hunter settles down into being a rip-off not of Jaws, but of another American film, 1977's The Deep starring Nick Nolte and Jaqueline "Miss Goodthighs" Bisset as scuba divers who stumble across a fortune in sunken drugs. That film was remade in 2005 as Into the Blue, starring Paul Walker and Jessica Alba. That movie was completely idiotic, but I enjoyed it if for no other reason than it had cool scuba scenes and lots of shots of Paul Walker and Jessica Alba being scantily clad. Plus, it's not like doing a dumb remake of a movie that was pretty dumb to begin with was any great crime against cinematic art. Of course, I also like The Deep, and it used to scare the crap out of me as a kid. You see, I come from a long line of scuba divers, and by "long line" I mean my dad and, later, my sister. But I grew up around diving and diving equipment, and as a kid I used to get into my old man's trunk full of equipment and get gussies up in the way-too-large for me wetsuit and flippers, mask, and dive knife, which I referred to more dramatically as the shark knife. I'd then stomp around the basement, playing Thunderball and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and trying to throw the knife into the bare 2x4s of the unfinished walls. When I got to watch The Deep on our brand new Betamax video machine, it enthralled and terrified me. I loved all the scuba stuff, and even at a young age I know there was something special about Jaqueline Bisset in a bikini. But the one thing anyone remembers about that movie is the moray eels. My dad used to tell me outrageous tales about moray eels, and how the way their teeth curved in meant that once they bit you, it was impossible to remove them. You just had to pull out your knife and amputate your arm. The Deep certainly backed those stories up, and for years, the sight of sharks and barracuda did little to phase me, but I was always wary of eels. Even after I learned that moray eels are basically docile so long as you don't go shoving your arm into their hidey holes, I still get antsy when I turn around underwater and see one of them floating there, staring at me inquisitively with that horrible, evil grin they all have.
Shark Hunter, however, is better than either The Deep or Into the Blue, and Franco Nero looks less like Nick Nolte in The Deep and more like Nick Nolte in his more recent mug shot. But the gist of Shark Hunter is that Nero's character, Mike di Donato, gets pressured by a local gangster into helping salvage a downed plane full of loot. Franco and his parasailing buddy try to figure out a way to get the gangsters off their back and outsmart them. Despite the expectation generated from a title like Shark Hunter, there isn't much shark action in this film other than the beginning and the very end. Most of the action revolves around Franco Nero in his ratty shirt and bell-bottom dungarees getting into fights on the beach, only to have his beloved Juanita (Patricia Rivera) threatened by the gangsters. And there's a lot of scuba diving, sometimes with sharks present, which is a touchy subject for a lot of people. Scuba scenes usually get a bum rap in movies for being somewhat slow moving and boring. They do happen underwater, after all. I actually think a lot of scuba diving scenes are kind of keen, owing to my enjoyment of scuba diving, and depending on how they are filmed. Thunderball, for example, has pretty thrilling scuba scenes. All those Jacques Cousteau documentaries have cool scuba scenes. The Incredible Petrified World does not succeed as well with its many scuba scenes of guys sort of doing nothing for like ten minutes at a time. Anyway, point is that scuba scenes don't have to boring, even if they frequently are. Shark Hunter has pretty good scuba scenes, though one wonders why Nero spends so much time diving in his blue jeans when he later reveals he owns perfectly good shorts and a wetsuit. I don't know if you've ever tried to swim in blue jeans, but it's not pleasant. The scuba scenes are also aided by the fact that Castellari was fond of slow motion action scenes anyway, so you hardly even notice the diving is slow. At least he didn't film them in slow motion.
Castellari and Nero worked together several times before most notably on the superb 1971 poliziotteschi thriller High Crime. Among the many, many directors who made a living in the murky waters of Italian exploitation films, Castellari was one of the best when he was on his game. Like Umberto Lenzi and Antonio Margheriti, Castellari managed to direct some really great action films. He also managed to direct some really awful ones. Castellari, however, directed fewer truly awful films than did Lenzi and Margheriti, possibly because Castellari managed to avoid having to make crappy cannibal movies. Where as other directors skipped from one genre to the next based on whatever trend was at the forefront of exploitation cinema that week, Castellari stayed pretty well grounded in action films. He avoided horror almost entirely. Even when he ventured into the realm of other genres -- most notably a few post-apocalypse Road Warrior rip-offs in the 1980s -- he treated them more or less like action films. The one time he worked almost completely outside the realm of what he was familiar with was 1989's Sinbad of the Seven Seas, and we can see how that worked out for him. By the 1980s, there was no doubt Castellari knew his stuff, even if he wasn't exactly what you might call a visionary artist. He did have his style though, and he seems interested in Shark Hunter, which he keeps moving along nicely and crammed full of action both above and below the ocean surface. If there's anything to criticize in Castellari's direction, it's the choice to use footage of real sharks being caught and killed. This only happens once or twice, and I suppose scenes of shark fishing are more defensible than other scenes of real animal cruelty that pop up in Italian exploitation films, but it's something to warn people about. I understand why they used real footage, though I don't necessarily agree with the decision. But then, I used togo fishing, and lord knows we used to take pictures of ourselves with our fish, so I guess that's why I can't see to getting too worked up about the scenes of a hooked shark in this movie, as opposed to the far more frequent and far more abusive animal killing that goes on in those cannibal films.
Franco Nero is in good form here, looking completely deranged and badly in need of a shower. You'd think a dude who constantly went swimming and shark punching in the clear waters of Cozumel, Mexico, wouldn't have so much soot and crap smeared all over his face, but then you'd also expect that a guy with a girlfriend that pretty would have at least two pairs of clothes. But the only thing he has is his outfit, and then the same outfit with a hat and sunglasses. Nero throws himself headlong into the role though, lending it gravity and a great intensity, and the look is pretty spectacular. Nero made a career out of playing bad-asses, and while he's not as bad-ass here as he was in some of his old cop films, he still punches sharks in the face and jumps out of parachutes to wrestle them. Eventually, the movie gets around to explaining why sharks piss him off so much, but it's pretty uneventful and predictable. He goes on to have family members killed in a traffic accident, but he doesn't run around Mexico punching cars and trying to drag them back to his bungalow. And given how much the guy hates sharks, and how he seems to spend all day sitting around just waiting for a change to sock one in the jaw, you have to wonder they come to his aid all Aquaman-style during the underwater finale. I guess they respect his predatory, killer instinct and knotty tangle of blond locks.
Helping the movie be that much cooler is the music by Italian exploitation film staples Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis. Blending rock, prog, and film orchestration, G&M, who also worked under collective name Oliver Onions for some reason, turn in a great score that perfectly matches the action and fires up the blood. Pairing all that with nice location work in Cozumel -- my dad's favorite dive spot, incidentally -- makes for an all-around thrilling action film that is far different than the Jaws inspired title would otherwise lead you to believe. Labels: Action, Country: Italy, Director: Enzo Castellari, Stars: Franco Nero, Year: 1979 posted by Keith at 11:21 PM | 3 Comments Monday, January 21, 2008Sinbad of the Seven Seas Release Year: 1989Country: Italy Starring: Lou Ferrigno, John Steiner, Roland Wybenga, Ennio Girolami, Hal Yamanouchi, Yehuda Efroni, Alessandra Martines, Teagan Clive, Stefania Girolami, Melonee Rodgers, Cork Hubbert, Daria Nicolodi. Writer: Luigi Cozzi and Enzo Castellari Director: Enzo Castellari Cinematographer: Blasco Giurato Music: Dov Seltzer Availability: Buy it from Amazon  I can anticipate a lot of things that would potentially show up as the first shot in a Sinbad the Sailor movie (as opposed to Sinbad the Comedian movie, though I can also imagine the first shot in that movie as well, and it's Sinbad making an exaggerated screaming face and running away in fast motion from a poopy baby diaper), but one thing I never expected was a still shot of Edgar Allen Poe. It's that same one everyone uses when they need a photo of Edgar Allen Poe. Maybe that's the only one. I don't know. I also didn't know why Poe would be associated with the opening of a Sinbad the Sailor movie, though I could understand it in a Sinbad the Comedian movie, what with the macabre and all. Luckily, this film begins with a text crawl that explains to me that Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called " The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade," and it is upon that tale this movie is based. Within the first few minutes, I found the claim that this movie was based on a story by Edgar Allen Poe to be somewhat, for the sake of tact, let's say "dubious." Luckily, we live in the future, and while the future has let us down in so many ways -- no jet packs, no flying cars -- it has made one important concession to mankind, and that is the ability to go to the internet and instantly look up information on whether or not Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called " The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade," and if so, if that story featured Sinbad the Sailor in a heart-to-heart gab session with a misunderstood rubber cobra.
It turns out that Poe did, in fact, write a story called "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade." And thanks to the future, I was even able to read it without having to go down to the library and verify that it exists, then find the book, then deal with either all the crazy hobos at the public library or all the hobo-esque sleeping students at the local academic library. I am by no means a Poe scholar, and of his works, the only ones I have actually read are the ones that were eventually made into movies starring Vincent Price. So perhaps I am not one to judge the particular merits of "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade." I hear Poe himself was rather fond of the story. I thought it was pretty dreadful, and it seems many critics agreed. The basic idea of the story is that the narrator has found a book wherein he discovers the final few pages detailing the life of Scheherazade, the woman who spun the 1001 Arabian Tales to stave off execution at the hands of her sultan husband. Poe's story is set on the night after the sultan has canceled his decree that Scheherazade be put to death. She then explains that there is more to the story of Sinbad, and proceeds to relay a rather uninspired story that has Sinbad and his crew basically traveling from one crudely sketched fantastic location to the next, with no particular point to things. This story is punctuated from time to time by grunts of disbelief from the sultan, who eventually pronounces the whole story so preposterously awful that he reinstates the execution of Scheherazade. The end. I was hard pressed to disagree with him. I'm not sure what Poe was attempting to accomplish with this story. If we are supposed to be enthralled by this final adventure of Sinbad, then the story is an obvious failure. As adventure fare, it's terrible. Poe was a lot of things, but Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard he wasn't. If, however, Poe was attempting to somehow satirize the genre of fantastic adventure fiction, well then reading an awful story isn't made better if the last paragraph is a guy exclaiming, "That story was crap! Awff wif 'er 'ead!" Because I assume all sultans spoke with a thick Cockney accent, or at least that the sentence "off with her head!" must always be pronounced as such. Having Poe himself explain that the story was bad is cold comfort for the time I just spent reading it, and it forgets that the golden rule of satire is that you must first be an excellent example of that which you are satirizing. As potential satire, "The Thousand and Second Tale" is less Hot Fuzz, more Epic Movie.
This opinion thusly entered into the public register and scheduled for debate at the next meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Turn of the Century Works of Fantastic and Speculative Literature, where I regularly hold court whilst smoking my pipe and discussing my latest expedition to the steppes of Mongolia, let me then say that if, perhaps, Cannon films were to come along some hundred or so years later and wreak havoc with the contents of Poe's Sinbad story while, at the same time, claiming to be an adaptation of it -- well, let's just say that I don't feel any great crime against art has been committed in this instance. Sinbad of the Seven Seas will commit many crimes against many things, but playing fast and loose with "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade" is a misdemeanor, at worst, and given the quality of the source material, it's more like the sort of offense where a good natured 1930s cop just musses an impish kid's hair and says in his lilting Irish brogue, "Go on, lad, get a move on. Ahh, lovable scamp! I was that way when I was his age." And then, of course, he would belt out "Galway Bay," because that's what cops do, right? Anyway, if ever there was a perfect storm of awful, it's this movie. First of all, it comes to us courtesy of the illustrious Cannon Film Group, brainchild of Israeli producers Golan and Globus. This is the studio that brought us everything from Sho Kosugi ninja films to Chuck Norris drivin' airboats for freedom. Second, it was written by Lewis Coates -- also known to many as Luigi Cozzi, the Italian exploitation writer-director who gave us the classic Star Crash and the less classic Alien Contamination. Third, it was directed by Enzo G. Castellari, the man who brought us a number of classic gritty 1970s crime films and less classic 1980s post-apocalypse sci-fi films. And mixing these ingredients into a deadly stew is star Lou Ferrigno, former star of The Incredible Hulk and, more recent and related to this film, two mind boggling Hercules films -- also courtesy of Cannon -- in which Hercules did things like fight giant robots sent down by sexy female inventor Daedalus from the home of the Greek Gods up on the Moon. Turning this lot loose on the Arabian Nights seems like a can't win must-lose situation. Sinbad with a laser gun or a curved lightsaber scimitar? Bring it on! Unfortunately, Sinbad of the Seven Seas fails to live up to the high standards set by the two Hercules films, and if you've seen either of those, then you know what that means. This is likely due to the fact that, while the Hercules films were released in 1983, when The Cannon Group was at the apex of its Chuck Norris-fuelled power, Sinbad of the Seven Seas limped into production in 1989, at a time when personal conflict, lawsuits, and massive dollops of corruption had ripped apart the empire Golan and Globus built on the backs of ninjas, forbidden dances, and cut-rate Indiana Jones knock-offs. The halcyon days of crap cinema the likes of which Cannon excelled at were over, and while a few more Cannon productions found their way to the theaters (most notably, Albert Pyun's Cyborg starring Jean-Claude Van Damme -- more or less the last breath for Cannon), movies like Sinbad of the Seven Seas ended up going direct to video when previously they would have been shown on the big screen much to the delight and/or confusion of children standing hand-in-hand across America and demanding more Lou Ferrigno action. With no prospect for theatrical distribution, and with the studio itself in tatters, Sinbad of the Seven Seas ends up feeling like a cheap, hackneyed bit of half-assery. Oh wait, that describes pretty much all Cannon films, doesn't it? Well then imagine that instead of watching a movie that is a cheap, hackneyed bit of half-assery, you are watching a movie that is telling you about a movie that is a cheap, hackneyed bit of half-assery.
Because that's what Sinbad of the Seven Seas does. It tells you what is happening and how thrilling it all is, in order to not have to show you. The film, inspired no doubt by the success of The Princess Bride, is contained within a framing narrative in which a bored mother (Dario Argento's muse, Daria Nicolodi) reads a bedtime story to her equally bored daughter. Usually, when a film uses this framing device, the narration fades out and the movie of the story being told kicks in pretty quickly. But not here. Even though we expect it to end when it triumphantly announces, "And so our sotry begins," it doesn't. The narration -- which, mind you, is dubbed throughout by a voice actor even more bored than Daria Nicolodi -- continues for the entire movie, and it tends to be in the flavor of, "And then some things happened and Sinbad had wondrous adventures," without the movie actually showing most of those adventures. Even dialog scenes are voiced over by the narrator telling us what Sinbad and his pals are talking about, probably as both a money saver and as a way to cover for the fact that the cast probably spoke half a dozen different languages. Not that the movie is totally without action. In fact, if you get over the annoying and persistent narration, this movie, while certainly not attaining that rarefied air that is the domain of Cannon's Hercules films, is a clumsy but fair adventure and fond farewell to the days of Cannon. Sinbad's crew is one for the ages, consisting of Sinbad himself in glorious purple pantaloons or a loin cloth, depending on how the mood strikes him on any given day, and his trusted friends the Viking named Viking (Ennio Girolami, an old Enzo Castellari hand), Prince Ali, a bald guy named The Bald Cook, Poochy the Dwarf, and the Chinese Soldier of Fortune, who is played by a Japanese guy and dressed like a Thai ladyboy on his way home from a particularly colorful Siamese gay rights parade and martial arts demonstration. Sinbad and the boys have returned to lush, beautiful Basra after many adventures we did not get to see, so Sinbad's buddy Ali can settle down with his sexy bride to be, Alina (Alessandra Martines). Unfortunately, Basra and its wise and kindly king have fallen under the spell of the king's cruel adviser and wizard, Jaffar (John Steiner). You know, you'd think that if these kings were really so wise, they'd stop picking the black-clad, giggling fiend with a penchant for maliciously twisting the ends of his dastardly handlebar mustaches to be their advisers. No sooner does Sinbad arrive at the palace than Jaffar shows up to roll his eyes, point, and trap everyone.
If there is a highlight in this movie, besides the threadbare synth score and the inevitable island of sexy Amazons, it is John Steiner's performance as Jaffar. Think of the most ridiculously over the top, cartoonish, hammiest performance you have ever seen. Now times it by infinity. That's getting close to comprehending the deliriously over-the-top histrionics of Steiner. It's like the man mainlined pure essence of William Shatner, Jack Palance, Vincent Price, that black guy who was always scared in 1940s movies, Doctor Morpheus, and Bruce Vilanch. Every single sentence is shouted, and not a second goes by that Steiner isn't pointing, clutching at the sky, bugging out his eyes, and traipsing about in the most insanely delicious style imaginable. He is absolutely off the charts here, and as lackluster and bereft of energy as the rest of the film may be, Jaffar alone is worth the price of the movie. Anyway, while Jaffar is busy being diabolical, Sinbad rallies his men to fight back. This involves, among other things, a long scene in which Lou Ferrigno chats up a cobra in true "girl talk" fashion, only to tie all the cobras together so that he might use them as a rope to escape the dungeon and rescue his friends, who are being menaced by out-of-shape S&M dudes and sock puppet piranhas. Oh man, I've been to that club before. It's OK, but it's not as good as it was in the 70s. During this and most subsequent fight scenes, Lou Ferrigno will showcase Sinbad's sophisticated fighting style, which is to draw his scimitar, look at his opponents, look at his sword, then toss the sword away so he can charge the bad guys headlong and throw them across the set. Why does he even bother to carry a sword? The one time he uses it is when he's fighting a rock man -- the one opponent most likely not to be harmed by a sword. Incidentally, Sinbad defeats the rock man by throwing a rock at him.
While Sinbad is doing that, we pay another visit to Jaffar, who is...OH MY GOD IT'S JON MIKL-THOR! It's Jon Mikl-Thor hanging out in Jaffar's rooftop laboratory! Oh wait, no it isn't. It's a teased-blond bodybuilder chick who looks and dresses exactly Jon Mikl-Thor in Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare. I have no idea who she is supposed to be or where she came from. She shows up out of nowhere, and then hangs out in the lab for the rest of movie making doubting comments about Jaffar's plan, which Jaffar responds to with lots of eye bugging, pointing at the air, and rolling of his R's. Jaffar's nefarious scheme, we discover via ample shouting and hissing and pointing, is to scatter a sacred gem to the far corners of the world, then hook the princess up to his H.G. Wells machine to...honestly, I have no idea. All it means is that Sinbad and his crew have to travel the world to collect all the pieces of the gem so that Sinbad can then...actually, I have no idea why Sinbad needs to reassemble the gem. It'll bring happiness to Basra or something. We've all seen how well that worked out. But what I do know is that this means Sinbad and his crew will set sail, fight some zombies, some rock men, undead medieval knights, and other monsters as they strive to free Arabia from Jaffar's wicked spell. I assumed at the end Sinbad will fight Jaffar and his bodybuilder girlfriend, but it turns out she just sort of wanders off in search of a protein shake or something, leaving Sinbad to face off against -- huh, what do you know? His doppleganger. Any film that features Lou Ferrigno fighting Lou Ferrigno has got to be pretty good, right? As cool as all that stuff above may sound, the sad fact is that much of it is pretty clumsy. Enzo Castellari was a pretty good action director, great from time to time, but with this material, he just seems to meander and have no idea what to do other than show it in slow motion from time to time (his signature). Maybe if Sinbad had been a tough as nails police inspector from Napoli, this would have worked out better for everyone. Instead, the movie lacks any real energy, and the constant bored narration saps the moments of action of the spirit they need to succeed. The final result is a movie that has the cheap look of a community theater read-through of a Sinbad movie written by one of the members. I blame...well, everyone but Lou Ferrigno and John Steiner. And that woman who plays the Amazon queen. Holy cow! Arabia is lucky I wasn't Sinbad, because given the choice between saving crappy old Basra from Jaffar and his bodybuilder girlfriend or spending a lifetime with a hot, scantily clad jungle woman prone to doing wiggly dances -- well, take a wild guess.
Castellari was at the end of a long career full of cool movies like Shark Hunter, Heroin Busters, and High Crime. After Sinbad of the Seven Seas, he was relegated to the backwaters of Italian television movies, though some of them must have been popular because he made like nine hundred TV movies in the "Extralarge" series. Similarly, Luigi Cozzi's days of writing and directing awesome films like Star Crash and less than awesome films like Alien Contamination were behind him as well. He cranked out a couple more films, but by 1990, he was pretty much done. In a way, it makes Sinbad of the Seven Seas a bittersweet picture for fans of exploitation in general and Italian exploitation in particular. I mean, here in a single film you have the sort of weak, exhausted last hurrah of Golan and Globus' Cannon Group. You have the same for writers and directors Luigi Cozzi and Enzo Castellari. They may not mean much but bad news to most people, but man alive -- I love these guys. The total number of entertaining hours given to me by these three sources is too scary to tally. And this is it. This is the swan song. Like battered survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this is where they limp off into the sunset to be forgotten. It's a shame that there wasn't a way to make Sinbad of the Seven Seas into the completely bonkers, inept swashbuckling masterpiece these guys deserved. Everything is almost there, but the end product is less a celebration and more a world-weary sigh. This is the end of an era, boys. Sinbad of the Seven Seas is the group of battle-weary veterans realizing that their day has passed. Heck, it gets me a little misty-eyed, and that's probably why I like the thing and think it's worth checking out. I mean, there is still plenty of weird stuff. It may not be as good as the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films, but it has rubber snakes, zombie attacks, Jaffar's eye-bulging madness, that sexy Amazon chick, a fight with a slime man, and that random bodybuilder chick. Judging most of the acting at all is pointless, as everyone was redubbed for the final product. Ferrigno, former bodybuilder and permanent fixture at any convention that waxes poetic over The Incredible Hulk, is no master thespian, but he plays Sinbad with a laid-back affability that makes him impossible to dislike and impervious to meaningful criticism. John Steiner, of course, acts at a level that can't be contained by mere speaking, so you can judge his performance despite the dubbing (and the judgment is that he's awesome). The rest of Sinbad's crew is playing to character, so the Chinese guy who is Japanese and dresses Thai is stoic; the Viking is hearty; Ali is noble in a boring way; and the cook and Poochy the Dwarf are frequently terrified and confused. Princess Alina doesn't have much to do but lay back, let her bosoms heave, and look gorgeous, but she does that with admirable skill. A couple other people show up, including a pointless comic relief guy and his daughter (played by Castellari's real life daughter), but there's not much reason to discuss them. This show belongs to Ferrigno and Steiner. Sometimes the fights are OK, like the one with the zombies and the one where Sinbad storm the gay bondage club where his buddies are chained up and being dangled over sock puppets. The zombie one even has Sinbad punching through a zombie's chest and pulling out his heart -- which is a tiny Madball version of the zombie's face! This causes Sinbad to crush the head/heart, point directly into the camera (a taste of your own medicine there, Jaffar!) and exclaim, "Jaffar!!! You're next." When Jaffar views this event on his magic voodoo television, Sinbad is looking directly at him. This is the second or third time this happens in the movie. One expects that Sinbad would know Jaffar is watching him on a magic TV pond. That's what evil wizards do. But Sinbad's ability to know exactly where Jaffar has positioned his magical cameras is pretty impressive. unless, I suppose, Sinbad goes through the entire movie with a giant movie camera floating above him, in which case I guess it'd be pretty easy to figure which way to look when wishing to address Jaffar personally.
As for other aspects of the film...well, there aren't as many special effects as I'd like, but the ones that are there are about as horrible as I would want them to be. The rubber snakes and piranha sock puppets are a real highlight. And seriously -- those piranhas! Did the guy who made those never see a piranha before in his life? I find that hard to believe, given that this is the world of Italian exploitation filmmaking we're talking about, meaning that at least one special effects guy must have worked on at least one Italian cannibal film, and you know they love piranhas. Sinbad also fights a rock man and a slime guy, but neither of those are especially epic effects. Then there's the rockin' synth soundtrack! Nothing says epic old world adventure quite like a keytar! The soundtrack may be anachronistic, but given that this is a movie where the prince of Basra looks like that guy from Wham (you know, the other one), it seems strangely appropriate. Most of it sounds like something written for Lucio Fulci's Conquest but ultimately rejected for being too goofy. And of course, there's all the fun to be had with the homoerotic subtext... err, well... when a big, sweaty, muscular dude in leather chaps wraps a chain around a big muscular dude in purple tights, and then they proceed to rub against each other and grunt, and it's all filmed in slow motion -- that's, ummm... that's not subtext is it? Seriously though, as a guy who doesn't mind a little homoeroticism in his films, this is how I want all my gay films to be: manly men striking heroic poses, then wrestling with each other. When I heard Brokeback Mountain was going to be a gay cowboy film, I was overjoyed. I hoped it would be like The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, only with dudes kissing each other. Instead, it was two hours of shepherds talking about their feelings and alienation. Forget that! When I watch a gay movie, I want to be tough guys blowing shit up, wrestling, leading revolts against Rome, throwing each other at sock puppets -- I want gay action movies. I think the time is right. Gay cinema will have made a tremendous leap forward when it starts producing films that aren't about being gay, but instead are about guys punching each other in the face, jumping muscle cars through the open boxcar doors of moving freight trains and throwing swords across the room, then they plant big wet ones on each other. Is it wrong for me to dream of this utopia?
Folks, when they say they don't make 'em like they used to, they mean movies like High Sierra, and movies like Sinbad of the Seven Seas. Just as it marks the end of one era -- for exploitation film, for Cannon, for Castellari, for sword and sorcery movies -- it marks the dawn of a new one, for this is the point at which the "direct to video" production really came into its own and would be dominated by another studio not entirely unlike Cannon: Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment and it's many subsidiaries. Golan and Globus themselves would try to make the transition to the 1990s with separate and sundry production companies, but continued incompetence, personal conflicts, and uncontrollable corruption sunk pretty much all of their respective projects before anything substantial was ever achieved. Sinbad of the Seven Seas marks the point at which cheap, shoddy rip-offs could no longer be hustled onto actual movie screens, complete with a marketing campaign, television commercials, and actual interest. It marks the point at which those films were aimed instead at the home video market, which really came into its own during the 1980s. It marks the point where the only crap films being released to theaters costs hundreds of millions of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands (or maybe just thousands) of dollars. Fare thee well, Sinbad. Fare thee well, Stryker. And so long Arabian Adventure, which I recall liking as a child but remember almost nothing about as a grown man. Was Mickey Rooney driving a giant clockwork robot around in the desert or something? Wasn't Christopher Lee named Alakazam? How is that movie not out on DVD? I have a feeling it would make an excellent double feature with Sinbad of the Seven Seas, and by excellent, I mean it would be one of those things I would make people watch, and they would vaguely resent me for it for years. Given my druthers, I would watch Hercules and The Adventures of Hercules. That's Cannon fantasy from a time when the studio was flush with cash and drunk amid the Golden Age. Sinbad of the Seven Seas is the final gasp of a once mighty people, now decadent and wasted shells of their former selves. But you should still see it, because Jaffar is incredible and Lou Ferrigno fights Lou Ferrigno. The movie actually gets a little battier and more enjoyable every time I watch it. Perhaps some day, I will feel that it deserves to take it's rightful place alongside the Hercules films and Seven Magnificent Gladiators, thus forming a nigh invulnerable wall of Cannon-produced Lou Ferrigno sword and sorcery wonder. Plus, this movie would make an amazing stage musical. So all you people who thought Legally Blonde was worth a stage production -- your destiny is Enzo G. Castellari Presents Edgar Allen Poe's Sinbad of the Seven Seas: The Musical. Get crackin'! Labels: Director: Enzo Castellari, Fantasy, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Studio: Cannon, Year: 1989 posted by Keith at 10:56 PM | 8 Comments Tuesday, February 07, 2006High Crime
1973, Italy. Starring Franco Nero, James Whitmore, Fernando Rey, Duilio Del Prete, Silvano Tranquilli. Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Maurizio Amati, Tito Carpi, Enzo G. Castellari.
Click here for Man with a Moustache Month Roll-Call Back when Teleport City first made the big jump from print zine and BBS to the then-fledgling World Wide Web, Calvin Coolidge was still President of the United States and my writing style, fresh out of college, was somewhere considerably south of the highbrow level of refinement you regularly see on display these days. Anyone who chances across one of the old reviews in the archives will be assaulted by a fairly odious "Man, this movie rocks!" sort of idiotic enthusiasm. Cute in a teenager, perhaps, but unbecoming for a man of the world such as I have become. There are certain quintessential movies, however, that were reviewed in those heady days of youthful exuberance and limited writing skill, and slowly but surely, I've been going back and revisiting some of those films and giving them a more proper write-up using the sort of wit and verbal sophistication that regularly gets us declared as one of the ten least essential sites on the Internet, right below a website dedicated to Japanese nose bondage and mucous fetishes. Generally, the more I liked a film, the worse the eventual review was likely to be. I tended to get carried away, like a victorious sailor just home from the Pacific and in need of a little female attention. Except that overbearing joy in regards to being a hero of the Pacific usually did get the lads amorous attention from beautiful ladies, where as that same level of glee directed toward celebrating, say, Zombie 3, has exactly the opposite effect on most women. But then, I didn't sit through Zombie 3 just so I could get laid. No, I sat through The Piano just so I could get laid. And you know what? In the end, it wasn't worth it. But enough about my youthful indiscretions. Let us return to greener fields and frolic in them like jolly red-capped gnomes high on purple mushrooms. One of the films, indeed one of the entire genres that got lost in excitement upon discovering it was the gritty, violent Italian cop films from the seventies -- poliziotteschi, as they became known -- and in particular, the Umberto Lenzi-helmed thriller Violent Naples starring poliziotteschi poster boy Maurizio Merli and his imposing, bushy blond 1970s moustache. Violent Naples, which is also known as Violent Protection and Napoli Violenta, was the first of these films I'd ever seen, and to say it blew me away is a fair bit of understatement. I was ready to run down the street hooting and hollering (or hollerin', as we say down South) and singing the praises of the movie to anyone who would listen. As it turns out, most people on the street, when approached by me in that manner (I believe I was wearing a garbage bag dress and two small potato sacks for shoes), were willing to listen to me rant unintelligibly for as long as it took them to pull out their cans of pepper spray. A few years removed from my initial reaction, I can sit back and examine the movie once again. My feeling for the movie is no less enthusiastic, but being who I am today, rather than go running into the streets like some unhinged lunatic who has meaningful conversations with bits of gravel, I can sit back in the warm glow of Violent Naples, light my pipe, and engage in reserved but no less enthusiastic reflection on the many merits of the film. To begin, however, we should first look at another Maurizio Merli poliziotteschi film, 1975's Violent Rome, which introduces us to the character of bitter but compassionate police inspector Betti and serves as the film that would turn Merli, up until then little more than a bit player on the Italian film scene who specialized in appearing in films where producers hoped people would mistakenly identify him as bona fide Italian superstar Franco Nero, into an international star and the iconic face of an entire genre of film. But of course, before we can talk about Merli and Violent Rome, we have to talk about Franco Nero. In 1971, audiences were delivered the message that the freewheelin' sixties were over, and so were the innocent fifties for that matter, when long-legged Clint Eastwood stepped onto the screen as "cop on the edge" Harry Callahan in the groundbreaking crime thriller, Dirty Harry. Other tough-as-nails cops and private eyes followed in Harry's cynical footsteps, including Shaft, Serpico, and a guy named Popeye Doyle. This new generation of cop film was a marked departure from past crime films, where guys like G-Man Jimmy Stewart would walk proudly through spotless backlots dispatching ne'r-do-wells with precision shots. Callahan and his compatriots were angry, disillusioned, and cynical. Rather than existing on stylized sets and sound stages, they strode through films shot on location on the decaying and beat-up urban centers of America. Everything they encountered was grubby, seedy, and mean. Rather than going home to quaint suburban homes and beautiful, devoted wives, they went home to shabby apartments, empty rooms, or into the company of hookers, strippers, and hardened femme fatales. They were world-weary, tired, and as a result of filmmakers' general distaste for authority as was honed during the late sixties, often as disgusted and at odds with their chief, the mayor, and city hall as they were with the criminal elements who were allowed to ride roughshod over a terrified and pathetically meek public. Faced with a nightmare on both ends of the spectrum, these cops often chose to operate outside the system, since they saw no way to uphold the law or deliver justice by working within a broken system. There's an air of vigilantism in their actions -- the proverbial taking of the law into one's own hands. And the films often drew sharp criticism for what some saw as a glorification of abuse of power, the violation of civil rights, the pandering to paranoia, and the embracing of Wild West vigilante justice. But these films, often with shaggy-haired, morally ambiguous anti-heroes in bell bottoms and leather jackets, informed by Eastwood's previous work in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, were anything but right-wing. In the end, bureaucrats and upstanding men of wealth and power are almost always revealed to be as vile and guilty as the common thugs on the street. And the heroes themselves are friendly with all sorts of shady underbelly characters that would drive a true blue right winger nuts. They pal around with hustlers and pimps, hookers and heroin addicts, recognizing that these people are often decent people who simply made bad decisions. The Dirty Harry cops aren't interested in busting some chump pot smoker at a club, or running some single mom in for prostitution. Their quest lies solely in bringing down the most vile criminals. The serial killers, or in many cases, the wretched scum who are protected by layers of money and power and social insulation. These were the villains the common man couldn't fight back against, and who couldn't be prosecuted within the system, because they were the system. At best, these cops are morally gray, a reflection of the exhaustion and confusion America and the world felt after emerging form years of political and social turmoil to find the world torn asunder with no clear plan on how to put it back together. Crime went out of control in many cities, and the world became intimately familiar with phrases like terrorism and hijacking as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict played itself out on the global theater during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. The average citizen felt trapped in their own homes while thugs and criminals, terrorists and corrupt politicians looted the world and left it all ablaze. In such a setting, it's no big mystery that people, even fairly liberal-minded people, could look at characters like these cops and identify with them. In other words, when you watch Harry Callahan grind his foot mercilessly on the serial sniper's wounded leg, you know what he's doing is wrong, but you still like that it's being done. Obviously, morally and politically, these films walk a line that is less liberal or conservative, less Republican or Democrat, and more a simple question of embracing a sort of libertarian self-reliance and eschewing of a bloated and ineffectual nanny-state that has raised a generation of people too timid to take care of themselves, and so turn to the state for everything from food to protection rather than relying on themselves. In Italy, the social and political conditions were no better than in America, and in some ways, were a good deal worse. Crime was rampant. Red Brigade terrorist attacks had the population panicked. The 1970s were a decade out of control in many ways, and perhaps even more so than New York City, Italy and Naples embodied the confusion, angst, and frustration of the world. Rome's Fiumicino Airport was seen by most of the violent criminal and terrorist element of the world as a revolving door in and out of Europe. Traffic was so heavy and security so lax that you could all but waltz through customs while holding a rocket launcher. It wasn't like Italy wasn't already known for its homegrown brand of crime; now they were the nexus point for any crackpot brigade looking to kidnap a diplomat, assassinate a judge, or blow up a building. It was in the midst of this chaos that Italian screenwriter Vincenzo Mannino wrote the movie High Crime -- aka La Polizia incrimina la legge assolve -- starring tough-as-nails Franco Nero as Vice-Commissioner Belli and directed by Italian genre film staple Enzo G. Castellari (who's directed everything from this film to 1990 Bronx Warriors). Obviously inspired by Dirty Harry, the film was a huge hit, and with the muzzle flash of a blazing Magnum, the poliziotteschi genre roared onto screens, boasting untold levels of brutal violence, flared slacks, and drooping seventies moustaches. I'm going to refer to the movie here as High Crime for the scientific reason that it's shorter to type than the original Italian title. High Crime centers around noble-but-frustrated vice cop Belli, who is on the verge of busting up one of the biggest drug smuggling rings in Genoa. Unfortunately, the ring includes several extremely powerful and prominent citizens, and Belli's boss is unwilling to pull the trigger on the operation for fear that their evidence isn't good enough. He'll be satisfied with nothing less than absolute and ironclad proof that will dismantle the cartel permanently, but Belli knows that airtight and total proof is simply not realistic in any case.  Pressure comes from all sides to either wrap up or drop the case, and Belli finds himself in the middle of an ultra-violent street war declared on him by the criminal men with the most to loose. He's also struggling to take care of a young daughter and girlfriend who are supportive and proud of what he does, but at the same time are frustrated by the amount of time Belli devotes to his crusade. At the same time, Belli discovers that even though he can take care of himself in a firefight, the men against whom he's up against are more than willing to strike where he's vulnerable -- specifically, family and loved ones. High Crime is one of those rare action movie that does pretty much everything ight. Franco Nero is absolutely mesmerizing as Belli. He's pretty much at the height of both his popularity and attractiveness here, and uses his looks to convey smoldering intensity mixed with world-weariness. Although Nero commands the movie with undeniable charisma, it's not left up to him to carry the weight of the film on his shoulders. The supporting cast is equally superb, a far cry from the assembly of cardboard throw-aways that often populate the background of an action film. As Commissioner Scavino, James Whitmore could have lapsed into what quickly became the all-too-common stock character of the overbearing commissioner, sitting behind a giant desk and gnawing on a giant cigar while screaming about how the hero had crossed the line. Instead of taking this route, Scavino emerges as a particularly sympathetic character. His heart is with Belli, and he wants to take these bastards down just as bad as his number one officer. But he also knows the bureaucratic game that has to be played and knows how easy it will be for the majority of big-time players to escape scot-free unless the evidence against them is so overwhelming that no amount of political connection or wealth will be able to buy their way out. Instead of being little more than a blustering foil for Nero's more active protagonist, Scavino is a glimpse at Belli's future, a man who once burned with passion but finds himself discouraged by red tape and political maneuvering at every turn. As good as the cast may be, though, and as tight as the script is, the real star here is Enzo Castellari's direction. If you only know Castellari as the slow-motion abusing director of goofball sci-fi actioners like New Barbarians and Escape from the Bronx, then you're going to have to reassess your opinion of him when he works in the medium of the gritty cop film. Even his silliest outings during the eighties boasted a higher level of energy and insanity than the bulk of what surrounded them -- just compare the crazy action of New Barbarians to a drearier post-apocalypse movie like Exterminators from the Year 3000. High Crime is a burning example of just how good Castellari could be when his heart was in the production. The film bristles with action and, even during the dramatic scenes and exposition, there is enough tension to ensure that violence remains a lurking character even when its not making its presence directly known. But when it is making itself known? That's when the movie kicks into severe overdrive. High Crime basically operates under the presumption that Dirty Harry and Death Wish were good, but they just weren't grim enough. People in them were just too happy. High Crime overloads on brutal street violence -- not just overripe and juicy squibs, though they certainly represent themselves here, but Castellari's big pre-occupation here seems to be human-to-vehicle mayhem. The film's opening scene is an extended chase sequence which culminates in a fiery car bomb sending the mutilated remains of a potential witness hurtling from a charred and twisted vehicle with surprisingly effective special effects. From there, Castellari bounces skulls off of windshields and is more than willing to dwell in graphic detail on every shattered skull and crushed limb -- even if it belongs to a child. He doesn't delve into flat-out gore, but there is a bared-teeth, unflinching brutality to the violence that makes it far more effective than moist gore effects. Castellari keeps the pace frantic, but he understands that the key to making a movie like this exceptional is to be sure you squeeze emotion and character development into the mayhem. Exploration of character isn't exactly deep, but Castellari and crew do take the time to make sure you care about the characters, which makes the action all the more exciting (something I wish modern action films understood -- action for the sake of action, featuring players you care nothing about -- is more tedious than it is thrilling). High Crime invests actual time and energy in the characters, and that's what makes it an enduring film -- and that's why it was able to spark an entire genre. Although High Crime was inspired by Dirty Harry, High Crime itself is the movie that became the template for the glut of tough Italian cop films that followed. Franco Nero defined both the attitude and appearance that would become commonplace among subsequent protagonists, and Castellari defined the take-no-prisoners approach to portraying gruesome acts of violence. The score by Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis would also become a benchmark for later films, and G&M themselves became one of the most prolific composers of scores for Italian cop movies. High Crime put all the pieces together remarkably, and where as some "first films" that kick off a whole trend are, themselves, not very good (Sweet Sweetback, I'm looking in your direction), High Crime manages to be one of the top three or four films of the poliziotteschi genre, and one of the top films in a decade that produced pretty much the best action films ever made. As good as High Crime is, though, the genre had it's signature star and even better films waiting in the wings. Continued... Labels: Director: Enzo Castellari, Poliziotteschi, Stars: Franco Nero posted by Keith at 12:38 AM | 2 Comments Friday, May 03, 2002New Barbarians
1982, Italy. Starring Giancarlo Prete, Fred Williamson, George Eastman, Venantino Venantini, Massimo Vanni, Anna Kanakis, Giovanni Frezza, Enzo G. Castellari, Iris Peynado, Andrea Coppola, Vito Fornari, Ennio Girolami, Stefania Girolami, Zora Kerova, Fulvio Mingozzi. Directed by Enzo G. Castellari.
1982 was a busy year for the world of exploitation cinema. Conan the Barbarian was released and initiated a deluge of imitators, birthing the sword and sorcery genre that gave me and so many others much joy throughout the 1980s. Italy, in particular, was quick to cash in on the trend, socking us in the gut with gory barbarian epics like The Barbarians, Conquest, and far more Ator films than should ever have been made. At the same time, or rather slightly before, in 1981, a wild bunch of Australians released a little film called Road Warrior, a sequel to a rather good, intense "society on the edge" film called Mad Max. Both the original and its sequel (let's all pretend there was never a third movie made, and the world will be a happier place) starred a handsome up-and-comer named Mel Gibson, and I feel safe in saying I expect big things from him at some point in his career. In much the same was as Conan, Road Warrior become a phenomenon and sparked an entire genre of post-apocalyptic movies features guys in shoulderpads driving around in the desert and shooting each other with crossbows. Of course, most of these films lacked a few key elements that made Road Warrior such a hit. For one, Road Warrior was exciting and action-packed. Most of the imitators were not. For another thing, Road Warrior had good writing, good acting, good music, and a wild cast of characters. Max, our hero, was the classic spaghetti western antihero. And then you have the hooting feral kid with the razor blade boomerang, the goofy guy in the gyrocopter, the stunning female warrior with the Kim Novak eyebrow action going on, the little weasely guy who gets his fingers cut off, Vernon Wells with a pink mohawk and assless leather pants, that guy who went on to be in Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn, and of course, a bodybuilder in an iron Quiet Riot mask who carries his own set of loudspeakers around and calls himself The Humongous. And need I even mention that this is the movie that gave us the phrase, "Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!" Even if the movie hadn't been good, that alone justifies its existence. The legion of imitators, on the other hand, tended to lack these key components and were, instead, ninety or so minutes of sullen guys trying to pass bad acting off as end-of-the-world angst. You got cheap sets, lame stunts -- especially compared to the spectacular stunts in both Mad Max and Road Warrior -- and bland as dry white toast characters. And worst of all, in order to mimic Road Warrior as best they could, almost all of them are set in the desert, barring the offshoot genre where some muscular guy is in the Bronx (which shifted the rip-off material from Road Warrior to Escape from New York). It made sense for Road Warrior to be in the desert. After all, Australia has a lot of desert, and in the context of the film, we can assume that only a few people even bothered to brave the outback. It wasn't like the entire country moved into the desert. But if the film is set in America, why would everyone live in the desert? We have nice countryside, and last I checked, one of the many affects of a nuclear war was not changing everything into the Sahara Desert. More than likely, they were just aping Road Warrior and also discovered it's a lot easier and cheaper to have your post-apocalypse in a desert than in a city. Sort of like one of those sci-fi films set a hundred years in the future but all the action takes place in "an amusement park designed to look exactly like a small American town in 1985." Still, as stupid and cheap as many of these knock-offs were, which again seemed to come primarily from Italy, a lot of them were also tremendous amounts of fun. Their shoestring budgets and slapdash structure often resulted in some entertaining stuff, though not always entertaining in the way the makers might have intended. New Barbarians, despite everything that is wrong with it, is one of these entertaining films. I've noticed that you can trace b-movie trends through the years simply by looking at an Italian director's filmography. Enzo Castellari started his career in spaghetti westerns, then in the 1970s moved on to low-budget black action films (with a couple really blatant Jaws rip-offs thrown in for good measure), and then into the exploding post-apocalypse film, where he actually made many of the genres more amusing and entertaining entries, including 1990: Bronx Warriors, Desert Warrior, Escape from the Bronx, and the movie we're here to discuss, New Barbarians. Giancarlo Prete stars as Scorpio, since all post-apocalypse type guys have to have cool names like that. You don't ever hear about a guy named Mike saving a tribe from marauders. Prete worked with director Castellari on several films, and even managed to score a part in cult fave Ladyhawke. Scorpio is your typical wasteland wanderer. He has a suped-up car, though to be honest, most of the suping-up seems to consist of randomly attaching fins and little sticky-out bits of chrome to your car. However, we can tell Scorpio is a cut above some mullet working on his Camero in the front yard, because Scorpio had the good sense to install a keen green-tinted plastic observation bubble in his car. This, of course, serves no purpose whatsoever. In one of those boss custom vans with the Yaz artwork airbrushed on the side, you can use an observation bubble because the back of the van can get dark, and sometimes when your laying back there, sparking one up with your baby as you listen to Toto, you want to be able to stare up at the stars and talk about your dreams. Sure, we've all been there, right? But this is a car. There are windows all round you. Why do you need an observation bubble? Well, I guess because it looks cool and he can turn the light on and get the slick green glowing effect. Who am I to question Scorpio? It's not like I've survived the end of the world or anything, though I did survive seeing Cats. At this point, I need to get a little something off my chest. Like many of you, I was a child of the 1970s, and I cling to that notion and that decade as my heritage, primarily because I really hate that 1980s synth rock crap. Gary Numan my ass. Having been squeezed out in 1972, I feel I have enough conscious years during the 1970s under my belt to claim it as my fatherland. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying disco was good, because we all know disco was a fart straight from the sour bowels of Satan himself, and I'm not a big fan of feathered hair. But the 1970s gave us many wonderful things as I've discussed multiple times in other reviews and need not retread here. With that established, I have to confess that as much as I may make fun of them, I sometimes really wish I had been one of those 1970s van guys. You know, I could drive my Chevy custom with a wizard brushed on the side out into the desert to just think and look at the stars. I could cruise around town listening to Skynard and James Taylor and Golden Earring, who I once saw play live at the Louisville Riverfront Festival along with Foghat. I could put the moves on my baby in the back, which would of course be done up with some boss, red shag carpet. I could wear tight jeans and smoke pot with friends while saying, "Dude, they are so right. We really are just dust in the wind." I could take my baby by the hand in the back of my Chevy van after making clumsy but sweet love to her, and give her the whole "Freebird" speech about how I'm a wandering spirit who can't be held down to any one place. She would understand, because she's cool that way, and one day she would stand on the edge of town, a lonely tear rolling down her cheek, as I kissed her good-bye, climbed into my van, and rambled on to the next town. "See ya around, Keith Allison," she'd say to herself as I disappeared into the setting sun. Yes, the van guy -- philosopher morons. A dying breed in today's world of high tech computers, electronic music, and these Limp Bizkit fans with their piercing and their loud rudeness. In this modern age, there seems scarce little room for a lazy, introspective dreamer downing a Coors in the back of his van and really empathizing with the melancholy lyrics of "Beth." And I sit here, surrounded by mountains of steel and concrete, awash in a sea of technology that accomplishes nothing, drowning in a deluge of boundless information and no wisdom. I sit here, and I pine for the simpler days that passed me by. I sit here and I shed a solitary tear for the last of a dying breed, the van guy. To you I raise my glass and say, "carry on, my wayward son." Scorpio is a van guy, or he would have been a van guy if the world hadn't ended. You can see it in his eyes. As things stand, however, he spends most of his time driving around aimlessly in the desert, making one wonder where he gets his gas (I get mine at the taco stand -- thank you and good night! You're a wonderful crowd! I'm here all week). There's this bunch of goofball survivors who have a caravan of crappy "future" cars going through the desert. Then there are these guys called the Templars who, just like the actual Templars did when they started getting insane and corrupt, go around hassling people. The movie opens with the caravan under siege, and mere minutes into the film we get brutal yet incredibly fake looking decapitations and mass slaughter. That's a good way to open any film, and I wish more films opened with gory mayhem, especially films that deal with Meg Ryan and her struggle to find a meaningful relationship in this crazy modern world of ours (hint for Meg: look for a van guy). Now if You've Got Mail or Hanging Up started off with a scene of nomads being slaughtered, then maybe I'd be interested. The Templars kill people in a variety of ways. Sure, there's the simple killing and stabbing and shooting, but why do just that when you can mount a razor blade fan on your running board and drive around chopping people in half with it? Sure, being able to use some of your weapons requires an amazingly coincidental set-up, but you know how people are. If you are trying to run them over with your razor blade fan dune buggy, they will oblige you by running slowly directly to the left of your car and will even stumble when you need them to so you get that good cleaver to the head effect. So we can deduce that the Templars are not the nicest of fellows, but to be honest, how would you feel if you had to wear all white padded outfits with oversized shoulderpads? Scorpio has a couple run-ins with these guys, more by accident than as a result of him trying to help anyone out. We get the less-than-shocking realization that, at one time, Scorpio was a Templar himself, but turned his back on their cruel ways so he could drive around in the desert causing them grief. Along the way he picks up a sexy lady and Fred Williamson. Of course, if you have Fred Williamson, a sexy lady can't be far behind. Fred, who had also worked with the director before on GI Bro (oh brother), plays Nadir, and obviously he's a total bad-ass in a casual way. When I think of all the action stars who I would not want to cross, Fred Williamson tops the list. The man is simply the paramount of outdated cool and tough. How can you not love a guy who, in the late 1990s answers the question "Have you ever thought of marketing and selling your trademark cigars?" with the reply (paraphrased from memory) "Hell no! What would I do if I saw some punk walking down the street smoking one of my cigars and looking like some sort of faggot?" Williamson represents one of the film's key cool aspects. Usually, when a white hero has a black sidekick, the black guy is comic relief or, despite being better than the white guy, ends up captured and having to be rescued. Look at The Matrix. Does anyone honestly believe Lawrence Fishbourne needs Keaneu Reeves' help in a fight? I didn't think so. In New Barbarians however, Williamson kicks ass from start to finish and never once makes a mistake. He's the one who has to bail the white guy out, not the other way around. He's the one who doesn't need help, even though he's smart enough to take it when it's offered. And he shoots dynamite bow and arrows like Bo and Luke Duke! All hail Fred Williamson! I can't remember a damn thing about the woman except Scorpio beds her at some point and she probably does get captured. She's not a very interesting part of the story. Scorpio is also friends with a wily little juvenile mechanic played by Giovanni Frezza, known to cult film fans the world over as "Little Bob" from Lucio Fulci's House by the Cemetery. At least this time around he hasn't been dubbed with the most annoying voice ever in the whole universe, so you can actually get to like him. He is the ace repairman who customizes Scorpio's car. Like Nadir, he's far more competent than Scorpio at pretty much everything you can think of. I started wondering why Scorpio was even the hero of the movie, since he's easily the least memorable of all the guys. Eventually, Scorpio bungles his way into getting captured by the Templars, and the main Templar gets to give the whole, "Join us, and together we could rule the land!" speech, though you have to wonder why they are so intent on ruling a patch of very dead and worthless desert. When Scorpio refuses they tie him up and shock the whole audience by raping him. Yep, you heard right. Most sleazy action films, especially ones set after the fall of civilization, feature at least one woman getting raped, but how many have the bravado to leave the women alone and simply rape the male lead? Not too many, as I can recall, and while it's not "good," it was certainly unexpected and daring. Back in college, I took a course on literature and war. In it, we read a short story in which the narrator was a member of a tribe of gorillas who descend into madness and warfare. Quite a good story, really, and an interesting study of how animals behave when faced with impossible odds. One of the many things the dominant male gorillas did as the violence progressed was to begin mounting lesser males. The same thing happens in prisons, of course. More times than not, it is not a sexual act, let alone a homosexual act. It's simply a desperate display of power. It's a way to showcase your dominance over weaker members of the tribe. I'm not saying that New Barbarians is by any stretch of the imagination dipping its toes into the pool of analyzing the human psyche and what happens to it when its plunged into an environment of progressively more violent decay. More than likely, they just thought it would be shocking and unusual to victimize the male hero for a change. But if I was backed into a corner and was unable to escape the question by flashing my eye spots, at least I have ammunition for the argument, though quite frankly, I can't imagine any instance where I'd be backed into a corner and forced to debate the social and psychological implications of Scorpio getting sodomized by a Templar. Anyway, this gets Scorpio fired up for taking out the Templars once and for all. After escaping their evil clutches when they all take off to do a little massacring, Scorpio commissions Little Bob (okay, so that's not his name in this movie, but still...) to make him a see-thru bulbous plastic suit of armor. This is easily the most disturbing thing ever. Imagine, if you can, if you dare, a vaguely out of shape David Hasslehoff (more out shape than Hasslehoff himself) squeezing his hairy, oiled-up beefiness into a clear plastic container, then running around wearing nothing but a pair of bikini briefs underneath as he blows things up. That's pretty damn frightening, and I'm sorry for even planting the image in your head. Scorpio gets help from Nadir and Little Bob, who actually do just about all the work and killing. Nadir has the explosive-tipped arrows, but rather than firing them, he just takes off the arrowheads and throws them at people. It seems a bit of overkill to use an entire stick of dynamite's worth of explosives for individual guys, but the end result is lots of exploding people, or rather, lot's of exploding mannequins. We're not talking high tech here. While Little Bob and Nadir single-handedly take out the entire Templar army and save the caravan people, Scorpio lumbers about awkwardly in his little plastic outfit until the head Templar finally stumbles across him for the final showdown. Does Scorpio end the reign of terror, kill the Templar leader, then wander back off into the wasteland? Well, what do you think? There are a lot of adjectives one could apply to this film, but the most appropriate seems to be "absurd." Scorpio is obviously a loser. Everyone in the whole world is more competent than he is. But hey, all he wants to do is drive his car, baby! For a post-apocalyptic world, things sure are easy to obtain. Williamson has an expensive patent leather outfit that looks shiny and new. No one seems to have any trouble finding endless amounts of ammunition for their exploding arrows and bullets, and no one is hurting for gasoline. And these are cool explosives people have. Sometimes they will blow up entire compounds, while other times they will just blow up a barrel. The head Templar's gun seems particularly versatile with the level of explosive action it can generate. And I have to pull Road Warrior into the fray one more time. Max: dusty, torn-up leather outfit. Scorpio: trousers, a fuzzy Sonny Bono sheepskin vest, and then that frightful naked bubbleman outfit. And you wonder why not as many people remember Scorpio. Of course it's the absolute absurdity of this film that keeps it entertaining, though the awkward but frequent violence and action certainly help out. I mean, the film makers really tried to have a lot of cool brutality and car stunts; it's just that they failed miserably every single chance they got, and that in itself is worth enjoying to no end. The acting is on par with what you'll see on display at your local community theater, and the Templars in particular are positively Renaissance Faire-esque in their talent. Fred Williamson is, as you would suspect, Fred Williamson. Who would tell him to do anything differently? And why would they want to in the first place? You cast Fred Williamson because you want Fred Williamson. When you want a bad-ass who never shows weakness and never makes a mistake, you cast Fred. When you want a spastic nerd, you cast Eddie Deezen. If you put them in the same movie, that's money in the bank. Unfortunately, Eddie Deezen is not in this film. New Barbarians is bad. It's really bad. It's also amazingly entertaining and full of energy. Despite the cheapness on display and the ludicrous scenario, there's no denying that the film delivers plenty of action and violence, and the whole thing is tremendously fun. If you are looking to explore the polluted waters of post-apocalypse films, then the work of Enzo G. Castellari are the perfect place to start, and this is one of his wildest, most enjoyable films. Labels: Director: Enzo Castellari, Science Fiction: Post Apocalypse, Year: 1982 posted by Keith at 6:10 PM | 0 Comments Saturday, January 20, 2001Escape from the Bronx
1984, Italy. Starring Mark Gregory, Henry Silva, Valeria D'Obici, Giancarlo Prete, Paolo Malco, Ennio Girolami, Antonio Sabato, Andrea Coppola, Massimo Vanni, Moana Pozzi, Romano Puppo, Alessandro Prete, Eva Czemerys. Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Buy it now from Amazon.
 "In the near future." More times than not, it's a euphimistic way for a science fiction film to say, "We were too broke to afford interesting sets." Setting a film in "the near future" is a great way to get around a variety of stumbling blocks, not the least of which is a low budget. The near future allows you, as I said, to pretty much make up all sorts of new technology, situations, and laws while not having to fork over any money to build futuristic sets. It allows you to mold modern society to your whims without having to recreate it as something new. The alternate to this solution is to have a guy from the future travel back in time to the 20th century to save us or kill some other time traveling villain or some such nonsense. Once again, unless you are James Cameron, this allows you to throw some scifi stuff the way of the audience while not having to think too much about the look of the film. My favorite solution to making a sci-fi film with a low budget came in one of those Full Moon productions about guy sin giant robots hitting each other. I can't remember which one, and I'm not currently committed to my craft enough to expend the thirty seconds it would take me to go to the Internet Movie Database and look it up. Anyway, the vast majority of the movie is set in "a futuristic theme park made to look exactly like a 20th century town," which means they can have their scifi cake while filming the entire thing at an abandoned strip mall. Setting your film in "the near future" allows you to do something else as well. It allows you to "predict the future" with surprising accuracy, something that always seems to impress people. Frankly, if your movie made in 1980 predicts with any degree of accuracy events that will occur in the far-flung year of 1986, I'm not entirely prepared to call at your feet and call you the Amazing Creskin. What's far more interesting is when a film maker sets their film a few years in the future and yet is so wildly off-base in their interpretation of current events that their film just makes them look like a bunch of buffoons. Strange Days and pretty much any movie that based it self on the virtual reality revolution that was going to sweep the 1990s into an era of digital masturbation fall into this category. Sure, we all started masturbating while using computers, but it was only because we were looking at porn pictures, not because we had donned a full-body tactile stimulator suit and downloaded a Catherine Zeta-Jones avatar into our VR machine. The vast bulk of 1980s post-apocalyptic scifi actioners that flooded the market during the waning yet intense final days of the Cold War also fall into this category. The precedent for these films was set by the spectacular Mad Max, a near-future film that was smart enough to stay just grounded enough in current reality to remain completely believable. While this movie may have set the stage, it was the sequel, Road Warrior that everyone clambered to rip off. Mad Max was cool and all, but it's story of society teetering on the edge of collapse wasn't as financially compelling as Road Warrior's vision of a future gone insane and full of wild bikers and people in big chicken wire shoulder pads. Of course, the big difference between Road Warrior and the endless parade of imitators is that Road Warrior was a great movie, while most of the others sucked. When Italian exploitation director Enzo G. Castellari decided to try his hand at post-apocalyptic films, he tried a couple different recipes. He churned out the requisite "wandering around the wasteland" Road Warrior rip-off in the form of New Barbarians, a fairly average but ultimately enjoyable film. It pales however, to the bizarre blend of Escape from New York and Warriors that was 1990 Bronx Warriors, a wild tale of near-future gangs in the no-man's-land of The Bronx. Alternately accurate and ridiculous, the movie featured gangs of pimps, Broadway tap dancers, roller skaters, and of course, bikers lead by the young and charismatic Trash. When a movie is as big, as powerful, as awe-inspiring as 1990 Bronx Warriors, the people want, nay, demand a sequel. Or maybe the don't. It doesn't really matter, because want it or not, they made a follow-up to that "in the not too distant future" reworking of Walter Hill's classic street gang epic The Warriors. Since I actually quite enjoyed 1990 Bronx Warriors, I really have no complaints about a second film in the ongoing saga of heavy metal biker hero Trash and his never-ending struggle against the forces of greedy Manhattan fat cats. Set a few years after 1990 Bronx Warriors, this movie continues the tradition of being dead on in some of it's not-too-difficult predictions, while being laughably off-base in others. As in the first film, the most accurate prediction is that, unlike what we saw in Escape from New York, Manhattan does not become a criminal wasteland but instead becomes so fabulously expensive that only the very rich can afford to live there while the poor and freakish are pushed further and further into the margins of the city map. By Escape from the Bronx, the trendy and the rich have outgrown the confines of Manhattan and are looking to take over the other burroughs as well. Anyone currently living in New York can attest to the accuracy of this as what were once affordable neighborhoods in Brooklyn other burroughs are suddenly tripling their rents and pushing the poor, and even just the middle class (who might as well be poor relative to New York's outrageous cost of living), find themselves getting forced further and further away from the city. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at things, that's about where this film's accuracy in predicting the events of distant 1996 come to an abrupt halt. You should be thankful, because an action film about the rise and fall of spoiled Ivy League millionaire twenty-somethings building Silicon Alley with mom and dad's money, then proving they didn't know what the hell they were doing, thus taking the whole greed-crazed American economy down with them, might be good drama but hardly makes for scintillating action cinema. And let's face it, the world needs another expose of the vapidness and superficiality of cokehead yuppies like it needs another Hitler. Do you want to watcha movie about some rich kid drinking too much and screwing the marketing girl, or do you want to watch a movie where bikers and tap dancers throw grenades at Henry Silva and his army of cops in silver jumpsuits? Speaking of which, given that they are marching very slowly down the middle of the street, these cops might have been better off in body armor, flak vests, things like that. But I guess that doesn't look as cool as foil jumpsuits. After the gangs who kept the order were destroyed in the first film, The Bronx has become even worse than it was before, and a Manhattan company has big plans to demolish every single building and turn it into a rich man's paradise. The movie opens with legions of the aforementioned cops parading through the crumbling wasteland of The Bronx, droning on and on about how everyone is ordered to leave The Bronx and report for relocation to clean, modern housing somewhere in New Mexico. Why they want to ship a bunch of New Yorkers, and a bunch of New Yorkers from The Bronx, to New Mexico is beyond me. I guess there's room for everyone there, but its not like there is a striking resemblance between New Mexico and The Bronx. Needless to say, a lot of people aren't all that excited about being forcibly located to New Mexico. They might be persuaded to leave a crime-ridden hellhole like The Bronx if they got to go somewhere besides a desolate hellholle out in the middle of nowhere. Not to insult New Mexico, or The Bronx for that matter. In order to deal with the people who refuse to leave of their own free will, the corporation has employed "disinfestation" squads, paramilitary units in silver jumpsuits and motorcycle helmets who walk around The Bronx frying everyone with flame throwers. As I mentioned in the review of the previous film, I can think of about a hundred weapons that would be more effective in close-quarter urban combat than a flame thrower, but I guess none of them make for as dramatic a visual. Oh well, at least some of the cops carry machine guns too. It seems a bit odd, even if the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, that some real estate company would be allowed to stomp about The Bronx incinerating and shooting people left and right, including many unarmed and innocent people. Even within the context of the film it is established that while The Bronx may be a modern day Casbah without that infamous region's decorating sense, the rest of the country is still more or less law-abiding. Sending in legions of shock troops who kill mass number of people at random seems to be the sort of thing people tend to notice. Even if we discount that and agree that, for the purposes of this film, the government is willing to turn a blind eye to the mass extermination of countless men, women, and children, we still have to deal with the fact that, contrary to promises made by the corporation, the people aren't being relocated at all. They are being exterminated. Now this is the sort of thing that people really notice. A street war with armed thugs and homeless guys is one thing, but murdering what has to be tens of thousands of people with no repercussions is hard to swallow, even within the relatively goofball world of post-apocalyptic urban horror stories. Even the creators of this film must have realized this, because they at least pay some lip service to "dealing with the U.N. Human Rights Committee." But come on! How can this company keep the mass slaughter of thousands upon thousands of people a secret? All any reporter had to do was go down to New Mexico and see that there weren't any idyllic relocation homesteads there, and presto! The story is broken. Unfortunately, the journalists in the movie are too damn lazy to make a single phone call to check this claim, and instead get all their news directly from the corporate spokesman. This is sort of like how the government can investigate corruption within the government and conclude that it's not too bad. Are we suppose to believe them? Actually, when you look at what a bunch of lazy asses the modern crop of journalists are, these suck-ups who report press releases and marketing copy as if it is cold, hard fact rather than doing any actual work or research, I have to conclude that, albeit unintentional no doubt, Escape From the Bronx pretty much nailed modern journalism right on the head of the nail. Of course, instead of worrying about all this, you could say to me, "Hey, you dipshit, this is an Italian scifi film about bikers and show tune gangs fighting Henry Silva. Don't spend so much time analyzing the logic gaps of a movie aimed at subliterate 15-year-old Manowar fans," and I would have to hang my head in shame at your wisdom. Not that there is anything wrong with Manowar. Also among those refusing to vacate The Bronx are Trash's parents. It's sort of a weird twist to imagine Trash having parents, even weirder to imagine him still living with them, though not entirely unrealistic. I just have to get used to thinking about Trash leading a street gang revolution with Fred Williamson, then going home at the end of the day to tack posters up to his wall and have his mom cook him up a Hot Pocket. Since Trash has become something of a street legend after leading the spectacular but brutally unsuccessful street gang revolt against the cops in the first film, the disinfestation squad, lead of course by my main man Henry Silva, figure they can murder his parents, and that oughta smoke the little fella out. While Trash's dad busts some skulls with a baseball bat, Trash himself is busy collecting ammo to sell to the underground resistance, so named because they all live underground and don't put up much resistance. However, they are lead by a positively Ricardo Montalbon-esque Antonia Sabata, Sr., complete with bandana, cool accent, and keen pirate earring. A shame, then, that he would go through all that trouble to create a cool swashbuckling rebel persona for himself then get saddled with the name Toblerone. That may mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, but to me it just means expensive but delicious chocolate bars. Toblerone's merry band of freedom fighters is comprised primarily of the remnants from the defeated gangs, now united by a single cause. Viewers of the previous film will recognize members of the Zombies, Fred Williamson's silky pimp gang, and weirdly enough the leader of the tap dancing show tune gang. All in all, it's a fairly cool thread of continuity in a type of film that usually garners several sequels that have nothing at all to do with one another. Toblerone urges Trash to join their cause, which seems to be the cause of hanging out underground and drinking coffee, but Trash says he's more interested in fighting in the streets and continuing the struggle than hiding out like a rat. When Trash returns home, he finds his parents have been the victims of a grisly flame thrower attack, which annoys him to no end. I should mention that when Trash leaves and comes home, he rides his motorcycle up and down the stairs. Given the narrow and winding nature of the staircase, it might make more sense to just park the motorcycle and walk up, but whatever. Who am I to tell a heavy metal biker and freedom fighter Trash how to conduct himself in his own apartment building? While Trash vents his anger by leading a bunch of homeless guys in various guerilla attacks against Henry Silva's men, a nosy reporter with a shrill voice and atrocious make-up sneaks into The Bronx with her photographer to get first-hand proof of the atrocities being committed there. Needless to say, she gets caught in the crossfire and ends up tagging along with Trash to see Toblerone. While Trash urges the underground resistance to quit collecting weapons and start using them, the reporter has a different approach: kidnap the president of the corporation responsible for the slaughter and use that as leverage for focusing attention on the horrors being perpetrated upon the rag-clad inhabitants of The Bronx. In order to pull off their little scheme, they enlist the aid of former bank robber extraordinare Strike and his bomb-making little kid. The quartet make their way through the sewers and abandoned subway tunnels into Manhattan, emerging just in time for a big shoot-out in a riverside park. In the ensuing violence, they manage to nab the president but lose the reporter. Trust me, you won't miss her. She delivered her lines with the grating style of Fran Drescher minus the incredible beauty or intentional satire. Upon hearing about the kidnapping, Silva is delighted. Now he finally has ammunition he can use to turn public opinion in his favor, allowing him to murder even more people. I'm not exactly sure I follow his line of thinking, as kidnapping the man who has slaughtered countless thousands hardly seems like a heinous act. Luckily for Silva, the vice president of the company is also overjoyed, and he manufactures a story about the kidnappers expressing a total lack of interest in politics. They only want money, and lots of it. While better thought out, this still seems like a flimsy excuse to invade The Bronx and kill everyone in sight, but then since that's what they were doing to begin with, I'm not sure what the problem ever was. The vice president also has another job he wants Silva to carry out: making sure the president is murdered by the rebels in The Bronx, even if that means Silva has to kill the guy himself. After being promised freedom to kill even more people, Silva enthusiastically agrees. Before too long, war breaks out between his men and Trash's and Toblerone's band of flamboyantly dressed warriors over ownership of a bunch of crumbling buildings and trash heaps. As you may very well have guessed, this is a pretty goofy movie. It's also quite entertaining. There is a ton of action, most of it well-choreographed. Like Peckinpah and Walter Hill, Enzo Castellari loves to use slow-motion, so you get lots of slow-mo shots of guys getting shot, bashed in the head, fried with flamethrowers, or just punching people. I think this movie is more violent than the first one as well as being more action-packed. As far as the acting goes, it's better than you might think. While the reporter woman is awful, the rest of the cast is actually pretty solid. Antonio Sabato brings a dashing sense of cool to what would have been a fruitcake of a character handled by a less manly gent, and of course Henry Silva is a dependable workhorse who brings his usual malicious charm to his character. You can always count on Henry to deliver a slightly over-the-top, always entertaining performance. Strike is played by Giancarlo Prete, who also played the fairly unheroic hero, Scorpio, from another Castellari-helmed post-apocalypse movie, New Barbarians. He's much better here as the grisled thief turned freedom fighter. His son in the movie is played by his real-life son, and since the kid's primary function is to hang around in the background and blow things up, he's neither intrusive nor annoying, which is all you can ask of any child in a movie, or life in general for that matter. Mark Gregory returning as Trash is also charismatic, though he's not given much more to do than kick ass and look like a member of Saxon. That's fine. As I said when I reviewed the previous film, I much prefer the tough-ass heavy metal hero to the namby pamby goth rocker heroes we seem saddled with now. You know, putting on a long black PVC trenchcoat doesn't make you look like an ass-kicking hero of the future. It makes you look like a member of The Damned, and while I have my share of Damned songs I enjoyed, I'd much rather have Manowar on my side during a fight. When it comes to predicting the future, of course, we can all look back from our vantage point here in glorious 2001, aka the future, and have a good laugh at the expense of the vision of those who came before us and tried to guess what things would be like, or at least what would make a fast buck at the time. Given the state of New York City in the early 1980s, coming out of one the most violent and terrible phases in its history, conceiving of parts of it as a vast wasteland run by criminals was easy, and that's what John carpenter served to us in Escape from New York. However, Castellari's concept of the city as a giant playground for the rich, where big corporations call all the shots and local politicians are little more than figureheads, was slightly ahead of its time and a lot more accurate. Still, we wouldn't love these movies as much if they'd gotten everything right, as I said earlier, and this one is pretty ludicrous even without the requisite bikers in assless leather pants riding aimlessly around in a desert. The problem is that Escape from the Bronx envisions a near future where kicking ass is par for the course when out for a night on the town. Trash is a bad-ass, through and through, as are most of his friends. Who would have thought that instead of that, the future would see us all become the biggest bunch of pansies and mindless consumers in the history of the world. Okay, maybe we're less pansy than the French aristocracy just before the French revolution, but that's not saying much. You can't ride into battle listening to Willa Ford, and you can't have your scene where you stare out at the water and think about all the pain and suffering set to Jennifer Lopez shaking her ass and letting her producer and back-up singers do all the work. Say what you will about macho metal and the heroes it inspired, at least they were believable in their roles as ass-kickers. The plot also has more work put into it than your standard "urban hell of the future" movie. Sure, there are holes large enough to drive entire biker gangs through, or even gangs dressed like the cast of Cabaret, but all in all, it works well enough. It was fun to see the corporation turn the kidnapping around to use to their benefit. I also think the movie has a great ending. The first movie ended, of course, with all our favorites getting their asses kicked by the cops. This time around, the gangs manage to get the better of the cops, at least for a while, and Trash of course gets the better of Silva's brutal character. The final shot is of Strike emerging victoriously from the rubble to meet with Trash, who is surveying the flaming wreckage from his latest handiwork. Strike smiles and nods to Trash, who returns the gesture with a world-weary shake of his head as if he knows the fighting has all been for nothing. They've gained nothing but a hellhole, and it's more than likely even more cops will show up soon to put an end to the uprising. It's the sort of gloriously downbeat ending you don't see too much of in these happy times. So this look at the future is an interesting look at the past and how we all thought society was going to fall apart and we would become an endless stream of victims for big business. It's too bad that during the dotcom craze, when America idiotically bet its retirement fund on the ego trips of a bunch of spoiled brats with no concept at all of how to run a business, much less a whole economy, that we didn't have men like Toblerone to laugh in our faces and blow shit up. Labels: B-Masters Roundtable, Director: Enzo Castellari, Science Fiction: Post Apocalypse, Year: 1984 posted by Keith at 12:11 PM | 0 Comments Sunday, January 14, 20011990 Bronx Warriors Release Year: 1982Country: Italy Starring: Mark Gregory, Stefania Girolami, Fred Williamson, Vic Morrow, John Sinclair, Christopher Connelly, George Eastman, Ennio Girolami, Massimo Vanni, Betty Dessy. Writer: Elisa Briganti and Enzo Castellari Director: Enzo Castellari Cinematographer: Sergio Salvati Music: Walter Rizzati Producer: Fabrizio De Angelis Original Title: 1990: I guerrieri del Bronx Availability: Buy it from Amazon  It's been a long time since the world ended. Oh sure, the latter portion of the 1990s were filled with movies where the world almost ended, but as they say in the Pentagon, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and atom bombs. Yeah, we might have used a giant asteroid to destroy Paris just for kicks, but when it comes down to ending the world, we pretty much became wimps. The end of the Cold War seems to have dashed our post-apocalyptic fantasies, and an upturn in the economy and a brainwashing of people into thinking that increased credit lines and frivolous spending to support an economy built entirely upon the ego trips and wet dreams of moronic dotcom CEOs who aren't fit to be managing a Burger King, let alone a money-losing company inexplicably valued at a kajillion dollars is somehow synonymous with stability, prosperity, and intelligence, resulted in an era of unbridled optimism. Gone were the days of trickle-down economics. Gone were the days of an Evil Empire and a Red Scare. Gone were the days when middle school youths would organize themselves out in the woods to build a bomb shelter that would eventually evolve to resemble a foot deep hole covered by a sheet of warped plywood. It wasn't that we solved all our problems so much as we just got really good at ignoring them. Kids getting dumber and dumber each year? No problem! Everyone getting meaner and more prone to fatal acts of mindless violence? Hey, that's cool. Everyone refusing to take responsibility for absolutely anything that happens to them or those around them? Okay by me, because I work for a pre-IPO company that granted me eight trillion billion dollars in potential options once the deal goes through. The country is perfect, so there's no need to end the world on our movie screens. Why, if we all pull together behind the President and stare up in awe at the sky as moving string music plays in the background, we can overcome anything! In the words of Jim Kelly laying down the law in Enter the Dragon, "Bullshit, Mr. Han Man!" Call me a pessimist, but our house of cards so irresponsibly built on a fault line underneath an active volcano in the path of stampeding elephants is going to collapse, and when it does, you can bet your sweet fannie that all of a sudden, people will be making end-of-the-world movies again. If this means finally putting an end to the "heist movies for film students" genre that was spawned by the success of Quentin Tarantino, than perhaps economic collapse is not such a high price to pay. Say what you will, but we've all been a bunch of morons these past few years with our dotcom start-ups, brain-dead venture capitalists, day trading, and the general idea that being stupid as a log is okay so long as you have a high credit limit and one of those hands-free cell phone units. When it hits, all we'll need back are some Commies, and we'll be right back where we were for the first two great ages of apocalypse films that came at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1980s. Having spent most of my teen years in the 1980s, I am fairly familiar with what went on then. The Reagan years. Ahh, the Reagan years. We were so young, so naive, so willing to be lead by a total and complete nutcase. The post-apocalyptic movie kicked off in a big way with the release of the Australian film Mad Max, but really exploded like a neutron bomb upon the release of the film's sequel, The Road Warrior. Dozens upon dozens of fly-by-night trend-hoppers clamored over one another to get out to the desert and film a movie about guys in big shoulderpads driving around aimlessly. For the most part, there was never any real reason to put them out in the desert other than the facts that The Road Warrior did it, and it was generally pretty cheap to film in a desert. Stack some styrofoam packing crates up, string up a little bubble wrap, and you have an instant "desert town of the future." A few films decided to stick to the cities however, most notably John Carpenter's wonderful Escape From New York, which depicted a New York City so overrun with crime that the whole of Manhattan was simply shut down and turned into a giant prison. Who would have thought that the opposite would be true, that it would become so expensive to live in the city that most of the bad elements would be forced out, leaving room only for yuppies and dotcom CEOs? Well, weirdly enough, Italian director Enzo G. Castellari thought that, and the result is one of the more outlandish yet eerily accurate predictions of the near future, 1990 Bronx Warriors. It's easy to dismiss his film as a rip-off of Escape From New York mixed with The Warriors, but doing so would be short-sighted. Although it's obvious even from the title of the film that Enzo, who also directed Road Warrior inspired post-apocalyptic films like New Barbarians, is taking elements from The Warriors and Escape From New York, it should also be noted that these films owe a |
