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Wednesday, March 05, 2008Dharam-Veer Release Year: 1977Country: India Starring: Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Jeetendra, Neetu Singh, Pran, Sheroo the Wonder Bird, Jeevan, Indrani Mukherjee, Dev Kumar, Azad, Ranjeet Writers: J.M. Desai, Kader Khan, K.B. Pathak, Prayag Raj, Pushpa Sharma Director: Manmohan Desai Cinematographer: N.V. Srinivas Music: Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma (Laxmikant-Pyarelal) Producer: Chandan Desai, Subhash Desai, Chandrika G. Shah Once you're done with the knowledge-based cherry picking, there are a wide variety of factors that come into play in deciding which are the potential gems among the selection of five dollar Bollywood dvds at your local Indian grocer or favorite online vendor. Familiar names or faces in the cast or crew of a film are always helpful, but there are also certain thematic or conceptual lures that might serve to tip the scales. In the case of Dharam-Veer, for instance, it certainly didn't hurt that the cast included the stunning Zeenat Aman--and while its male lead, Dharmendra, isn't one of my favorite actors, I do harbor a lot of good will toward him thanks to his co-starring role--with Amitabh Bachchan--in the classic Sholay, as well as his appearance in other highly enjoyable films such as Ankhen and Alibaba aur 40 Chor. But what really closed the deal for me with Dharam-Veer was the fact that its action was described as taking place in a vaguely mediaeval "mythical kingdom". This aroused in me fevered hopes that Dharam-Veer would be some kind of mind-boggling ahistorical period piece--something, in other words, along the lines of Mard, the 1985 classic whose depiction of hero Amitabh Bachchan's battle against the British Raj managed to include MTV-inspired eighties fashions, gladiator battles, and women in frilly Victorian garb strapped to the front of Sherman tanks. These hopes of mine would have been even more fevered had I realized at the time that Dharam-Veer's director, Manmohan Desai, was also Mard's director. And, though my expectations would have no doubt bloated accordingly, I probably still would have come away from Dharam-Veer satisfied. The mythical land of the film's setting is indeed a gumbo of anachronisms--a greedy mash-up of mediaeval Europe, ancient Rome, and the 1001 Arabian nights that also manages to contain, along with its jousting matches and Roman chariots, gypsies, pirates and a climactic battle at sea involving canons--which I'm fairly sure had yet to be invented in the respective eras of King Arthur, Caesar and Scheherazade. This freedom from the constraints of history not only emboldens Dharam-Veer's art direction, but also allows its costumers to follow their muse wherever it may take them, a creative liberation that results in such singular sights as Zeenat Aman's Mediaeval gauchos and black nylons, black leather assemblages that put the "glad" in gladiator, and Jeetendra in some almost indescribably flamboyant flamenco dancer outfits (and, in those instances where the reach of the clothiers' imaginations exceeds that of their budget, baggy white long johns to fill the gaps).     I want to describe Dharam-Veer as a visual feast, but it's actually something less nutritionally balanced than a feast--more like a visual raid on the candy jar, given the candy jar is mostly full of Neco Wafers, Jolly Ranchers and Zots. The costumers render their otherworldly creations in a splashy comic book palette that, combined with the preponderance of brightly painted cardboard in the sets and backdrops, makes Dharam-Veer look like Prince Valiant by way of Flash Gordon by way of the Classics Illustrated version of Ben Hur. And, fittingly, all of this riotous display is in service of the type of over-heated, coincidence-dependent, improbably convoluted and cheerfully chaotic plot that seems to have been the exclusive territory of 1970s masala films. Whatever food metaphor you choose for the experience, you're bound to come away from it engorged - and, if you bring the right attitude to it, you'll be giddily satisfied as well. Dharam-Veer was one of four successful films directed by Manmohan Desai that were released during 1977, all of which dealt with the enduring Bollywood "lost and found"--or "separated at birth"--theme. The most successful of these was the blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony, which starred Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rishi Kapoor as brothers who grow up separately, unaware of one another's' existence--one raised as Hindu, another Muslim, and another Christian--ultimately to be united in vengeance against the man responsible for shattering their family. Following this model, Dharam-Veer opens with a complex shuffling of the familial deck. Interestingly, however, thanks to a chain of coincidences, all of these elements manage to fall back into their proper place over the course of the film, and the final dramatic revelation simply reveals that everything is pretty much as it should be, despite it not seeming that way.     As the film opens, a line of young noblemen are presenting the King with marriage offers--as in of jewels and other forms of valuable exchange--for his daughter, the Princess Meenakshi (Indrani Mukherjee) . The Princess, however, is unable to witness this touching spectacle, because she--headstrong, independent girl that she is--is off in the wilds hunting tigers. Unfortunately for Meenakshi, a gang of thugs hired by her brother, Satval Singh (Jeevan), is also on the hunt... for Meenakshi. Satval Singh has been told by a seer that he will die at the hands of his firstborn nephew, and so has decided to cut off the whole nephew-birthing business at its source by having the Princess killed. Fortunately, Jwala Singh (the mighty Pran), a proud hunter who, we later learn, is "well versed in the ways of the Samurai" and who has at his side a super intelligent falcon, Sheroo (played, according to the credits, by Sheroo The Wonder Bird), happens upon the scene and rescues Meenakshi from her attackers. The grateful Meenakshi promises Jwala Singh anything he wants as a reward for saving her life, and Jwala Singh asks that she become his wife. Immediately. Proving that she is truly a woman of her word, she agrees, and the two are married in a ceremony that Jwala Singh performs himself. Sadly, Jwala Singh and Meenakshi's first night of marital bliss is interrupted when one of the tigers Meenakshi had been hunting shows up at their door looking for some payback. Jwala Singh takes off in pursuit of the animal and on his way comes across a local whom the tiger has fatally mauled. Covering the corpse with his own cloak, he continues on and is soon locked in a death struggle with the enraged beastie. Meenakshi, meanwhile, wanders out after Jwala Singh and, seeing the dead body wrapped in his cloak, doesn't bother to go in for a closer look before jumping to conclusions and plunging into a deep state of shock. Meenakshi is eventually discovered and returned to the castle, where she remains in a wordless trance. Even so, the King still needs to get her married off. So when a nobleman with suitably diminished expectations comes courting, the deed is hastily done. This leads to the film's best line of dialogue, when Meenakshi finally awakens from her stupor in the presence of her new husband and he, in explaining the situation she finds herself in, says "You were not conscious when we got married".     Fortunately, Meenakshi's new husband, despite being willing to marry an unconscious woman, is a true gentleman. So when she informs him that not only is she married to the hunter Jwala Singh (whom she now believes to be dead), but also now with child as a result, he stops short of making the demands of marriage upon her. Rather, he agrees that the two of them should live separately under his roof, raising the child as man and wife, while not taking part in any of the carnal activities that such a union might imply. Though in return he asks that she promise to never reveal the true nature of the child's parentage (and we've seen how Meenakshi is about keeping promises). After the required interval, Princess Meenakshi gives birth to twin boys, a circumstance which is of no small concern to the craven Satval Singh, who is still determined to avoid the destiny the seer has laid out for him. Luckily for Satval Singh, his wife has also given birth--at exactly the same time as Meenakshi. Seeing an opportunity to serve two ends at once, Satval Singh switches the second born of the Princess's twins, Veer, with his own child, then takes the first born twin, Dharam, and drops him off a parapet. As the gods would have it, Sheroo The Wonder Bird is flying by at precisely that moment and, unwilling to tolerate infanticide on his watch, scoops Dharam up in his beak and flies off into the sunset. (It must be said here that most of Sheroo's wonders are performed by either a puppet or by Sheroo with a clearly visible tether tied around his midsection.) Meanwhile, Satval Singh's wife has had a crisis of conscience and has, unknown to him, switched her child back with Veer.     Sheroo The Wonder Bird deposits baby Dharam with the kindly blacksmith Lohar and his wife Dhano. As fate according to Dharam-Veer would have it, Lohar and Dhano just happen to be nursing back to health the wounded Hunter Jwala Singh, who has been in a coma for the entire nine months since getting on the wrong end of that tiger, and who awakens from that coma at the precise moment that Sheroo makes his baby delivery. Of course, Jwala Singh has no way of knowing that the baby is his--or even that he has fathered a baby--so all he can say is, basically, "Nice baby you've got there". Twenty or so years go by, during which both the King and Meenakshi's husband somehow manage to die, leaving her Queen of the realm. Because Satval Singh has believed all along that his son, Ranjeet (Ranjeet), is actually the child of Meenakshi, he has beaten and verbally abused him constantly, and so the boy has grown up to become a resentful lout much like his father. Veer (Jeetendra), on the other hand, has grown up to become a somewhat exuberant young man with a taste for big puffy sleeves with frills--and Dharam has grown up to become forty-two year old Dharmendra. Lohar has raised Dharam to be strong like the bull, and in an earlier scene we see him showing a younger version of Dharam how to split wood with one swing--that younger version of Dharam played by Dharmendra's actual son, billed here as "Bobby Junior Dharmendra", but better know today as the Bollywood star Bobby Deol. (For those who don't know, Dharmendra is also the father of the actor Sunny Deol.)     The class boundaries in Queen Meenakshi's kingdom are obviously considerably more porous than those of mediaeval England or ancient Rome (or even modern India, for that matter), because Prince Veer and Dharam, the poor blacksmith's son, have somehow, over these twenty-some years, become inseparable friends. As such, they spend their (by all appearances considerable) leisure time dancing across the kingdom's lush hillsides, proclaiming and demonstrating their love for one another with a homoerotic intensity that almost threatens to eclipse that of even Feroz Khan and Vinod Khanna in Qurbani. Somewhere in the course of their frolicking, they encounter Pallavi, a mean princess played by Zeenat Aman--an occasion which the two men commemorate by singing a charming song about how one must keep one's woman on a short leash in order to prevent her from developing a haughty attitude like Pallavi's. Dharam declares that Pallavi, despite all appearances to the contrary, will ultimately be his, and so begins a strange courtship in which Pallavi shows her affection for Dharam by forcing him to perform in life and death struggles in her personal coliseum, locking him in cages where he is poked with spears by midgets, and having him bound and whipped. Finally Dharam convinces Pallavi to come away with him, and what follows is a jaw dropping musical number in which a singing Dharmendra leads a bound Zeenat Aman around on a rope while forcing her to do menial tasks. It appears that Pallavi is beginning to enjoy this treatment, but then she takes the first opportunity to stab Dharam in the gut, leaving him to bleed to death as she hightails it back to her castle. AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, who should come upon Dharam's wasting body but the hunter Jwala Singh himself. Jwala Singh nurses Dharam back to health, and Dharam, impressed by the remarkably out-of-shape looking Jwala Singh's mastery of the Ways of the Samurai, asks to become his pupil. Pallavi, meanwhile, has had an attack of conscience over her gutting Dharam like a stuck pig and returns contritely to his side. Ultimately, she realizes her love for Dharam and, in so doing, becomes virtuous and kind. This is an unhappy development for Sujan, the man to whom Pallavi has been promised in marriage, as well as for Pallavi's brother, Dev Singh (Dev Kumar), and the two quickly become part of the growing list of Dharam and Veer's mortal enemies, which also includes Satval Singh, Ranjeet and, for reasons I won't even go into, Azad, the leader of a band of gypsies. Ultimately this axis of evil will conspire to turn the two BFF's against one another, a plot which will lead to Lohar, Dharam's adoptive father, being framed and punished in the Queen's court for a crime that he didn't commit, and ultimately to the murder of Dharam's adoptive mother in circumstances that place suspicion upon the royal family. Despite the Queen's assurance that the family is innocent of these crimes, Dharam asks that in recompense she leave her castle and come to his hovel to take the place of his mom. As demonstrated before, Meenakshi is honorable to a fault, and so acquiesces to this demand, spending her days from that point on cleaning up around Dharam's hut, feeding him food with her hands and giving him foot rubs.     And so, as mentioned earlier, those familial bonds that fate conspired to break at Dharam-Veer's outset manage to, despite all obstacles, reassert themselves by its final act. It is the purpose of the "lost and found" films to serve as a testament to the strength of these bonds, and dramatize how, as an expression of God's will, they exert a magnetic pull that no barrier of class, character or simple geography can resist. In the case of Dharam-Veer, this means that everyone ends up having the relationship with one another that they're more or less supposed to be having (though admittedly with some markedly creepy overtones), even though they don't know it--until, of course, events lead to a round of startling revelations... and battles at sea involving pirates and lots of swinging back and forth from the masts of long ships. Now, I have spent a lot more time than I normally would summarizing the story of Dharam-Veer (even though, believe it or not, I haven't come close to giving everything away). The reason for this is that the insane convolutions of Dharam-Veer's plot are such a large part of its appeal. As with many of the best masala films, in between marveling at its many visual delights, one can't help sticking with it just to see what preposterous turn of events it will throw at you next. And just when you think you've got a handle on what type of cards the film has up its sleeve, it comes at you from a whole different angle, blindsiding you anew by way of some extremely bizarre primitive special effects or absurd action choreography.     Those above mentioned special effects largely consist of shots--shots that are none too seamlessly integrated into the sequences in which they feature, I must add--in which horses are made to perform leaps that said horses either wouldn't or couldn't do by means of what appears to be animation using cut out photographs against a still background. The result is actually quite arresting visually, in a surreal sort of way, if you disregard that you were actually intended to accept it as reality. As for the fight staging, the defining philosophy appears to have been "You can never have too many back flips". People perform this move in response to even the slightest bit of physical force--and in defiance of all known laws of physics--and also incorporate it into their attacks, forcing their opponents to wait until they have spiked their landing before running them through. Given its vintage, the one thing that really would have put Dharam-Veer over the top for me is a seriously funky score. However, the score by the team of Lamikant-Pyarelal is actually quite conservative, depending a lot on relatively traditional Indian rhythms and instrumentation. This is still not a bad thing, and the songs are pleasant overall, if not exceptionally memorable, and always manage, at their most lively, to get the head doing that little sideways bob that any good Bollywood soundtrack should. Of course, it's often hard with these movies to separate the songs from the production numbers--or "picturizations"--that contain them, and many of those here are top notch. The sequence for "Hum Banjaron Ki Baat Mat", in which a literal army of floridly garbed singing and dancing gypsies overwhelms Princess Pallavi's amphitheater of pain, is without question the moment when the picture is at its most excruciatingly colorful. But it is another gypsy themed number, the climactic campfire rave-up "Band Ho Mutthi To Laakh Ki Khul Gayi To Phir Khaak Ki", that was the clear standout for me--though it was less characteristic of Dharam-Veer in that it is merely dazzling, rather than overwhelming, in its use of color.     On the acting front, Dharam-Veer's cast does a good job within the constraints of the comic book world that the film creates. Dharmendra is a performer who's very good at standing on top of things, puffing out his chest and booming out defiant proclamations - often while pointing - to the corrupt powers that be, and he gets to do a lot of that here. Zeenat Aman, who has shown elsewhere that she is an actress of considerable range, spends the first half of the film pouting and scowling, and the second half winsome and starry eyed. Jeetendra, by far the most abused of the celebrity clothes-horses on display, does perhaps the most admirable job by managing not to be completely eclipsed by his wardrobe. Lastly, Jeevan, thanks to a spirited commitment to shaking his fists and hissing the heroes' names through clenched teeth, makes for a fine two dimensional villain, though he's no Amrish Puri. Dharam-Veer is a movie designed to thrill, and it succeeds on all of the intended levels, as well as on many levels that probably weren't so intentional. In addition to the thrill of watching its spectacular musical numbers and beautiful stars, there is the singular thrill that comes from seeing combinations of color and fabric that will likely never be repeated in human history. Adding to Dharam-Veer's singularity is the fact that it's pretty much guaranteed to be the only place where you can see a special effects shot of a horse jumping over a castle wall that is at once so patently phony and so hauntingly compelling. Even if you could find any of these elements in another film, the chances of that film also starring Sheroo The Wonder Bird are slim to none. Perhaps, then, Dharam-Veer can be said to be a film that exists against the odds--and perhaps even in defiance of reality itself. And given that it comes to you, in spite of all probability, with all these many gifts in store, how can you refuse it? Especially when it's only five bucks. Labels: Bollywood, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Stars: Dharmendra, Stars: Zeenat Aman, Year: 1977 posted by Todd at 9:38 AM | 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 Monday, November 26, 2007Throne of Fire Release Year: 1983Country: Italy Starring: Sabrina Siani, Pietro Torrisi, Harrison Muller Jr., Beni Cardoso, Peter Caine, Dan Collins, Stefano Abbati, Roberto Lattanzio, Isarco Ravaioli, Amedeo Leonardi, Gianlorenzo Bernini. Writer: Giuseppe Buricchi and Nino Marino Director: Franco Prosperi Cinematographer: Guglielmo Mancori Producer: Ettore Spagnuolo Original Title: Il Trono di fuoco Availability: Buy it from Luminous Film and Video Wurks At my age, and with my experience, I shouldn't fall for it. And yet, on occasion, I'm still taken in by cool posters and cover art. At these times, I actually leave my body and hover above myself, screaming warnings but powerless to prevent my corporeal self from plunking down a wad of cash on a movie that has a cool looking cover. "You fool! You know the movie isn't going to be anything like the cover!" my spirit cries, but alas his words are unable to prevent the transaction. And so it is I end up owning movies like Throne of Fire, a dreary, slow-moving, largely uninteresting Italian sword and sorcery film with a cover that featured an illustration of a big-breasted nude chick swinging around a sword and wearing a little metal thong. "This looks pretty good," I said to myself, even as my other disembodied self was shouting, "Dude, seriously! That chick probably never even shows up in the movie! Didn't you learn anything from the cover of Hot Potato???" Well, I didn't, and true enough, Throne of Fire never features a sexy, naked Valkyrie type chick swinging around a sword. In fact, it's the rare sword and sorcery film that doesn't feature any toplessness at all. The whole thing plays out more like a really bad throwback to 1960s peplum than it does a 1980s sword and sorcery film. Once again, the jazzy, saucy poster art lured me in and let me down. And once again, I learned nothing from the transaction. I'd do it again, I tell ya! I'd do it again! Ha ha ha!
What Throne of Fire lacks in sexy, naked Valkyrie type chicks swinging around a sword it makes up for with plentiful scenes of people sitting around in poorly lit throne rooms discussing events that would be more interesting if they were actually happening on screen instead of just being described to us by bored Italians. Keep in mind that my capacity for liking even the absolute worst of 1980s sword and sorcery films is legendary. I like Barbarians. I like Conquest. For crying out loud, I like Hawk the Slayer and Archer: Fugitive from the Empire! Right now, I'm sitting here and thinking about how I want to watch one of the Ator movies -- and possibly all of them!!! And that seems like a good idea to me, and it's not something I haven't done before. This past weekend, Krull was on TV, and not only did I watch it, but I also watched it when they did the late-night replay -- and I already own that shit on DVD, man! So for a sword and sorcery movie not to get my easy-going seal of approval really has to mean something, I think. Throne of Fire is a bad movie. Not Yor, the Hunter from the Future bad, which is awesome, but regular old boring "is this asshole still explaining the plot to us?" bad. Taken at face value, the description of Throne of Fire's plot is as deceptively enticing as the lurid artwork. Satan wants a son so he can plunge the world into darkness, but instead of siring the kid on his own, he sends his messenger. When he becomes a man, the son of...well, the son of Satan's messenger will sit upon the throne of fire, thereby giving him power to -- honestly, I'm not sure, but it probably has something to do with more plunging the world into darkness type of business. Only a hero pure of heart and clad in naught but a loincloth and leather bicep tassels can stop the evil one's dastardly plan. Also, only the rightful heir can sit in the throne of fire without being set ablaze (something you'd think wouldn't bother the son of Satan, but since this is the son of Satan's errand boy, I guess it's important), so Satan's ward must also kill the proper king and marry that king's daughter. In time, you will learn that setting people on fire when they sit on it without permission is the sole power of the throne.
But really, I mean that doesn't sound so bad, right? Aside from the fact that Satan is too lazy to sire his own son. But then, I guess technically God didn't do the deed with Mary, so he didn't sire his own son, either. Seriously, you Christian gods and demons need to take a page out of Zeus' pick-up artist manual. Now there was a god who knew how to sow his seed. That cat could hardly find time to hurl his mighty thunderbolts, so busy was he getting busy and seducing fair maidens by appearing to them as a shimmering mist of impregnation or a horny silver-furred pygmy marmoset waving its hands wildly and yelling, "I'm king of the gods, baby!" I guess Satan was too busy tempting the souls of good men and pressing Slayer CDs to find time to bang some homely chick in a crappy Italian sword and sorcery film. Anyway, with a plot like the one possessed by Throne of Fire, you figure you're going to get some random scenes of villages being pillaged, and an old man or woman will probably talk rapturously about how the hero has come to fulfill the prophecy, and then since this is the devil's adopted son we're talking about, there will probably be scenes of sweating people being tortured, and there will be an orgy. Hell, that could be the entire plot, with the finale consisting of a plodding sword fight and probably some crudely animated magical ray beam effects. And you know what? I'd be pretty satisfied. But even in the admittedly modest realm of being "at least as good as Iron Warrior," Throne of Fire fails miserably. And while it does have the prophecy, the torture chamber, and random scenes of pillaging, there is no orgy (Seriously? The son of Satan isn't going to have an orgy? He isn't even going to litter his throne room with scantily clad maidens? Lame, son of Satan, lame!), and even the stuff that is present is so unimaginatively staged and so lacking in energy that it hardly even registered. I mean, dudes are pillaging a village and setting huts on fire, and I didn't even notice.
So where were we? OK, yeah. Satan sends his messenger to impregnate a woman, so that this child may sit on the titular throne of fire, a feat which seems to have absolutely no effect, positive or negative, on the powers of the people who sit upon it. Morak, the son of the messenger of Satan, grows up to be Harrison Muller, who spends his day sending gangs of killers out to perform the most boring acts of pillaging you're ever going to see. On the plus side, some of them have pretty cool eagle wing helmets. It seems like, given the free reign Morak has with sending around death squads, that he has already succeeded in conquering pretty much the entire crappy kingdom, but people are still talking about the good king on his throne of fire. It apparently never occurs to Good King Fire Ass to send out an army to stop Morak's band of brigands. Seriously, Morak's army has like ten guys in it. How can they possibly not be defeated? Maybe if the king spent more time attend to the affairs of his kingdom and less time worrying about his fire throne, he wouldn't be in this situation. The last time we had a fire king around these parts, he had armies of scantily clad barbarian dudes and was able to fend off attacks from a guy who could hurl icebergs at him. By comparison, Morak doesn't seem to have any powers at all beyond the powers of prolonged exposition, and still this fire king gets his ass handed to him.
The king eventually falls to Morak, but the princess Valkari escapes. Hey! She does look like the sword swinging chick from the cover, though she keeps what little top she has on through the entire film. Sabrina Siani plays Valkari, and she at least is a welcome sight for eyes that are fast becoming difficult to keep open. She was a staple of the Italian sword and sorcery industry during the 1980s, having appeared shortly before this film as the largely naked evil Ocran in Lucio Fulci's completely bizarre barbarian fantasy film Conquest, which would be a much more entertaining film to watch than this one. She also appeared in The Invincible Barbarian, Sword of the Barbarians, White Cannibal Queen, and Ator the Fighting Eagle -- all of which would be more enjoyable to watch. Yes, even Ator. I never thought I'd find a movie that would make me think, "Man, I sure wish I was watching Ator right now -- no, I really wish I was watching Ator III!" but I guess that's the thrilling part of this job: you always learn new things. Only one man stands in the way of Morak, the little gang he has, and his mad scheme to do whatever it is he'll be able to do by sitting on the throne of fire. That man is Siegfried, played by Invincible Barbarian star Pietro Torrisi. Pietro is a huge guy who gives off a sort of "Brad Harris with a perm" vibe, and his career in Italian exploitation was extremely long if unremarkable. He mostly filled uncredited roles, starting out as far back as 1963 with an appearance in The Ten Gladiators. In 1965, after a few more gladiator movies, he made the jump to Eurospy films, appearing in a couple pretty movies starring George Ardisson. Still, his roles were restricted to things like "Bodyguard." He continued this steady but minor work throughout the spaghetti western trend, the violent cop film trend, and the sexploitation trend. In 1982, after nearly twenty years in the business, someone finally decided that the post-Conan sword and sorcery boom was the right time and place for Pietro to step up to the plate and take on a starring role. And so he became Zukhan, king of the barbarians, in Franco Prosperi's Invincible Barbarian. He had another starring role shortly thereafter in Sword of the Barbarians, then was back to an uncredited role in The Iron Master, one of the few Italian sword and sorcery films that has eluded my prying eyes up to this date. And then it was on to the role of heroic Siegfried. At age forty-something, he still looks good, and if nothing else, he handles the action scenes with gusto. It's just too bad there are so few of them. He spends most of the movie getting captured, escaping, getting captured again, being taunted by Morak, escaping, then getting captured. And to make matters worse, Morak isn't even a very good taunter.
The movie threatens to pick up when Morak has Siegfried cast down into the Well of Madness, where he will be assaulted by all manner of ghoulish monsters and hallucinations. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't really deliver on the Well of Madness, and Siegfried is menaced by one guy with blobs of make-up on his face and some spooky underlighting before he is allowed to go about his business. While down there, he happens to find his own father, who has been imprisoned lo these many years by Morak. It turns out that Morak can't kill the old man because the guy knows the secret of the prophecy that prescribes by when and in exactly what manner Morak must sit upon the throne of fire. He imparts this knowledge to Siegfried, and then just for the hell of it also gives him a spell of invisibility and the gift of invulnerability to anything but fire -- which is kind of a lame gift when you are fighting a guy who is about to take over the fire throne. Anyway, there's a long bit where Siegfried and Valkari keep rescuing each other and then getting captured again, and the whole things finally boils down to the inevitable showdown between Siegfried and Morak. By the time this admittedly competent -- especially within the realm of Italian barbarian movies, where the sword fight choreography was often legendarily awful -- sword fight occurs, you will have stopped caring, fallen asleep, or coughed up your own skeleton in an attempt to relieve the mind-numbing tedium. So let me put this in perspective: there is a movie directed by Jess Franco called Diamonds of Kilimandjaro. Even among fans of Jess Franco, it is considered to be terrible and tedious. I am going to give that movie a tepidly positive review and claim that it's not as boring as, well, as Throne of Fire. Other than the fact that some of the sword fights are OK and the leads look good, I have almost nothing positive to say about Throne of Fire except to mention that Siegfried is a master of gymkata. I go into movies like this expecting to be entertained no matter how awful they are. And I almost always am. And when you put this movie in, and it's got that topless barbarian woman cover and the first thing you are greeted with is the Cannon films logo and a remarkably crappy synth score, well things seem to be headed in the right direction, at least to me. But it doesn't take long for you to realize that you'd be much better off watching one of Cannon's other cheap-ass barbarian films, possibly Adventures of Hercules. Anything would be better than Throne of Fire.
Although you can't fault Torrisi and Siani for their one-note but largely competent performances (relative to the performances one usually sees in these types of movies), there is plenty of blame to be spread around among the writers and director. By this point in his lengthy career, Franco Prosperi should have known better. Way back when, he helped write the script for Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World, one of the very best peplum adventures and arguably one of the best fantasy films of all time. He was originally slated to be the director before Bava took over. He must have died inside the day Bava took on directorial duties for Hercules in the Haunted World, because shortly thereafter Prosperi settled into a career of churning out scripts and doing directorial duties on a slew of sleazy mondo exploitation films. By the time he was tapped to direct a couple sword and sorcery films in the 1980s, he must not have given a damn about anything. His direction in Throne of Blood is as listless and boring as the script, and while me manages to keep everyone in frame and in focus, he doesn't put much effort beyond that into things. Frankly, though, I guess it's hard to blame him. After Throne of Fire, he decided to direct and a write a couple Cannibal Holocaust rip-offs. Cannibal Holocaust rip-offs...think that one over for a few minutes. Complicit in the crime of boring me to tears are writers Giuseppe Buricchi and Nino Marino. Between the two of them, they had almost zero experience writing scripts, and their lack of ability shines through in every scene. There is no sense of pacing, not a single moment that generates even a spark of excitement. The dialog is dull and pointless and abundant. The entire thing is lazy. Why is the son of Satan's messenger doing all this instead of the actual son of Satan? Why does the son of Satan's messenger need a Christian friar to perform his wedding ceremony? Shouldn't he have his own devil-y friar? Why is the good king so easy to beat? Why do all the peasants killed in one scene show up again, alive and well, a few minutes later in another scene? OK, OK -- that one we have to blame on Prosperi. The only bright spot in the entire dismal affair is a single gag where Morak agrees to let Valkari's people free. He then proceeds to shoot them in the back with arrows as they try to leave. But hey, at least they were free. Still, a ten second gag in ninety minutes of undiluted dullness hardly makes for a film worth recommending. You know the worst thing about Throne of Fire? It's that I just finished watching the movie and writing a review about how boring it is and how much I hated it. And then I look over at the table and see the bad-ass cover and think to myself, "Hey, Throne of Fire. That movie looks kind of cool. Maybe I'll watch it..."  Labels: Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Year: 1983 posted by Keith at 5:09 PM | 5 Comments Monday, March 20, 2006Fire and Ice
1983, United States. Starring Randy Norton, Cynthia Leake, Steve Sandor, Sean Hannon, Leo Gordon, William Ostrander, Eileen O'Reill, Elizabeth Lloyd Shaw, Micky Morton, Tamarah Park. Directed by Ralph Bakshi. Written by Gerry Thomas and Roy Conway. Purchase from Amazon.com
 .OK, let's talk some Dungeons & Dragons before we dig into the film review proper. It'll help you understand the background which makes it possible for me to so love a film like Fire and Ice as much as I do. It's also one of those inevitable subjects, and it's best we get it out of the way now. Geeks and nerds will always bring it up. For us, D&D is sort of like heroin is to skinny rock stars. You go through a period of brief flirtation, end up heavily addicted to the point where it destroys your social life, and you sit around, all high on your drug, saying things that seem deep and philosophical to you but are really just idiotic, like, "Man, what if you put a Portable Hole inside a Bag of Holding?" or, "Man, wouldn't it be cool if Gary Gygax was here right now?" Then you go through a period of recovery, followed by a relapse, then finally get clean and spend the next thirty years talking about how you "used to do heroin" or "used to play D&D" to whoever has the misfortune of being in a position to have to listen to you. Possibly the only thing worse than people telling you stories about when they were stoned and stared at a wall for seven hours, or people reading you their erotic vampire fanfic, is crusty old farts telling you about how they used to roll the twenty-sided die -- and yeah, try sidling up to someone in a bar one night and asking them if they'd "like to roll the twenty-sided die." You'll be lucky if your potential mate-date doesn't yell, "Blee yark!" in your face and take you back to their keep on the borderlands to show you their collection of smoky crystalline dice that they store in a leather pouch they bought at last year's medieval festival. Speaking of which, when did it become acceptable to show up to medieval fairs dressed as an elf? Since when did that become an acceptable historic recreation of the times? I mean, a sprite or a kobold I could understand, but an elf? For that matter, when did camouflage pants and combat boots become acceptable attire? For God's sake, man, where're your jerkins??? I think if you're going to dress up for a medieval fair, you should have to meet some minimum standard of historical accuracy. At the very least, you shouldn't be able to wear a long Fruit of the Loom t-shirt with a belt cinched around it. It should be like dining at a fancy restaurant. You don't have proper attire? Well, sir, please don this complimentary King Henry VIII robe. OK, hoi polloi I can excuse, but the people who actively take part in the festival events? It just doesn't seem fair to me that some guy went out and forged his own full suit of plate mail armor, and then the guy next to him bought two rolls of Reynolds Wrap and a sheet of poster board.
But this is just one of those things, like how Paganism makes me mad because it's all fruity sweetness and light hippies flitting about and saying "Blessed be!" and "Goddess bless you," instead of doing what it was Pagans were busy doing before the sixties ruined it all, which was hitting people in the chest with giant battle axes then drinking blood from the cleaved skulls of their enemies. We didn't "drum circle" the Romans out of Scotland, people. I'm just saying that if you are dressing up for the Renaissance Festival, at the very least you should have to invest in a pair of those tan rawhide Robin Hood boots that were popular with the pickup-driving guys when I was a kid. Still, I suppose it could be worse. Anime fandom seems to have been overrun by fat guys dressed as cats, where all they do is draw whiskers on their face and throw on some cardboard ears and a pipe cleaner tail. You know what that outfit is, buddy? That's what the loser kid throws together for Halloween. Some people spend hours and hours crafted outrageously complex and detailed costumes to showcase their nerdiness. I think those people should be allowed to kick the ass of anyone who shows up dressed as a cat person, wearing normal clothes but with a cheap tail and ears taped to themselves. Likewise, the guy who makes his own authentic armor should be able to use his Morning Star of Clobberin' +3 on anyone who show sup to a medieval fair wearing their normal clothes, but with a cape thrown on. I mean, this is why Civil War reinacters don't give you guys no respect, man. So where was I? Sorry, I can get pretty worked up when a topic is this important. So yeah, like many other nerds, I dabbled in the black art of D&D. Funny, in retrospect, how hysterical people were over the evil of the game. If you remember, D&D was going to either turn us all into devil worshippers (also fond of just throwing cheap cloaks over their street clothes instead of going all the way and putting on red Danksin unitards) or it was going to cause the youth of America to become so lost in this amazing world of make-believe and fantasy that all concept of the real world would disintegrate, leaving us with a society full of people wearing fake elf ears and cheap cloaks. Hmm. I guess they were right, after all. My flirtation with this world full of dungeons and dragons began at an early age thanks to the fact that an old boyfriend of my mother's happened to be one of the early employees at TSR, so he funneled me a steady stream of the old basic and advanced box sets that came in the red and aquamarine boxes respectively. I guess I was in fourth grade when we put together our geeky little campaign, though back then D&D was considered less dorky and more dangerous, sort of like how video games were dangerous, then became dorky, and now are back to the point where thug kids host video-game related public access cable shows about them. For the most part, we'd gather at a friend's house, cheat on our character sheets for a while, consult various charts, then play the game for half an hour (usually Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, because we liked to equip our characters with lasers and such) or so before retiring to play outside or watch a movie. Four times out of five, the movie would be a barbarian movie not entirely dissimilar to the game of D&D we'd just abandoned in mid-campaign. Actually, there was a 97% chance that the movie would be Beastmaster. But we've covered that territory before, so if you need to hear jokes about Beastmaster and watching barbarian movies, go back and read one of our previous sword and sorcery movie reviews. Somehow, the animated Ralph Bakshi feature Fire and Ice managed to slip through the cracks, though I can't imagine it didn't make the early 1980s cable TV rounds. It's perfect late-night HBO fare. If I'd seen it back then, I would have embraced it whole-heartedly and probably proclaimed it the best thing I'd ever seen. Or something to that effect. Alas, it was never to be, and although Heavy Metal was inescapable at the time, Fire and Ice remained unseen by me until the recent DVD release allowed me to go back and see how Bakshi's sword and sorcery cartoon had aged over the years. In brief, Fire and Ice is the animated feature film equivalent of trying to buy saucy fantasy comic magazine Heavy Metal at age thirteen, praying that the B. Dalton check-out clerk doesn't realize that the magazine is a veritable horn o' plenty of naked chicks riding dragons around acid-trip landscapes that look like something the guy down the street would have airbrushed onto the side of his custom van. And then, if you do manage to score, you have to forever hide the torrid tome amongst your copies of Dragon magazine for fear that the big-breasted zebra-striped woman on the cover might otherwise arouse parental suspicion, resulting in them just happening to randomly open the magazine to one of the naughtier Guido Crepax stories. Ralph Bakshi is a director and artist who was at the forefront of a lot of innovative new ideas, but he was always at the forefront in a way that would only facilitate his ambitions crashing and burning, only to have someone else basically hatch the same idea a few years later with great success. Bakshi first made headlines by directing a raunchy cartoon for adults named Fritz the Cat, forever destined to be picked up by accident by aging vaudeville fans who mistake it for Felix the Cat. At the time of the film's release, the concept of cartoon movies for adults, packed full of cursing, drug use, and sex, was pretty alien, and it's likely that more than a few ill-informed parents took their screaming, crying broods out for a fun day at the cartoon movie only to discover after the lights went down that they were in a grindhouse theater full of guys in raincoats jerking off to anthropomorphic cat women (if you've been to an anime convention lately, you've seen that some things never change). Soon thereafter, Bakshi decided that what he wanted to do with his time was make an animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. To realize his vision, Bakshi would rely on a technique called rotoscoping -- that is, filming live actors, then tracing the artwork over them. Bakshi's ambition was admirable, but it was a fair leap across the chasm from ambition to realization, and The Lord of the Rings failed to make the jump. The film is an uncomfortable mish-mash of questionable character design (ugly gap-toothed hobbits, Boromir the Viking, Aragorn the Navajo), impressive animation, and shocking lapses in the quality of rotoscoping that results in frequent shifts from animation to live-action actors who look nothing like their animated counterparts horsing around against heavily tinted backgrounds. It also didn't help that funding was a major stumbling block, and Bakshi ran out of time and money two books into the three-book adventure. Undeterred, Bakshi forged boldly forward, sticking to the fantasy formula for Fire and Ice, which was released in the immediate wake of Conan the Barbarian's success and the launching of the sword and sorcery trend that delighted us for so many hours when we'd grown tired of using our imaginations to slay trolls and other beasts lurking in the pages of the Monster Manual and beloved Fiend Folio. Where Lord of the Rings held the promise of Bakshi merging his adult-oriented artwork with the world of Tolkien, the hook for Fire and Ice was that it was an artistic collaboration between Bakshi and one of the most famous pulp artists of all time, Frank Frazetta. Frazetta rose to prominence as one of the most in-demand artists of the heyday of pulp fiction, gaining particular notoriety for his illustration of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and while you can't exactly claim that he invented fantasy artwork, he certainly defined it for quite some time, up until the point when Haji Sorayama started drawing hot, naked robot chicks and Boris Vallejo picked up the fantasy art gauntlet. But Frazetta was The Man for decades, creating a style that showcased beefy, axe-wielding barbarians in furry loincloths and big-breasted, big-booty women in tiny, tiny magical bikinis. It would seem, at least in the early 1980s, that his artwork would be a good match for Ralph Bakshi's animation style. Something more adult-oriented, full of gibbering goblins, bare-chested barbarians, and buxom babes. Working from Frazetta character designs and the basic template of a fantasy tale as defined by decades of pulp fiction, and plagued as always by budget short-comings and a general lack of interest from audiences, Bakshi gave us Fire and Ice. Fire and Ice involves a clash of two cultures. First, there is the evil, skinny blue guy Nekron, who would be played by David Bowie if this was a big-budget, live-action film. Nekron lives in a land of ice and glaciers and dreams of making the rest of the world as dismal and bleak as his North Dakota-esque ice kingdom. Standing in his way is the king of Fire Keep, who has harnessed the power of the volcanoes that surround his kingdom. Nekron's scheming mother devises a plan to kidnap Teegra, the hot big-booty daughter of the king of Fire Keep, and thus force him to negotiate a surrender. But being evil, Nekron's minions are mostly sub-human goblins who don't seem to be very good at much of anything other than riding atop advancing glaciers while hooting and waving clubs. Teegra escapes (using the ever-effective "look at my nipples while I writhe about in the water" method of escape), gets captured, escapes, get captured, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, a hunky barbarian named Larn survives Nekron's attack on his village and takes to wandering the land, killing goblins whenever he happens to come across them. He and Teegra eventually hook up, and then a dude named Darkwolf, in a big wolfhead hood, shows up to do some damage as well. The whole thing ends with a wild assault-by-dragon on Nekron's icy fortress. It is by no accounts a perfect film. Bakshi relies once again on the technique of rotoscoping, realized here in infinitely better fashion than in the awkward Lord of the Rings. Although this is once again a film made by first filming live-action actors on a soundstage, then animating over the top of them, there are no points at which we just get tinted footage of the live-action actors. The actual animated look is consistent, and the rotoscoping provides for very fluid and realistic movement of the characters. Unfortunately, Frazetta relies heavily on moody shading and lighting, and in that sense, Bakshi's animation falls flat -- literally. There's no real attempt, save for one or two scenes, at creating a sense of depth or lighting. Bakshi just doesn't have the time and resources to achieve such detail, and thus Frazetta's characters look less like Frazetta creations and more like Bakshi's character designs from Lord of the Rings, but better looking. There's also a funny part in one of the DVD extras where Frazetta explains that he always assumed that somewhere out there were women who looked like the women he drew, at least up until the process of rotoscoping, and thus needing to find a real woman to serve as the actress base of his design for Teegra, the booty-shaking daughter of the good king of Fire Keep. Although it fails to capture the nuance of Frazetta's original artwork, Fire and Ice still boasts pretty good if standard artwork. It reminds me of how much I miss the look of hand-drawn animation. Computer-assisted artwork results in really smooth, really slick lines and shading. By comparison, something like Fire and Ice -- which was really a stylistic throwback even upon its initial release -- looks likes a series of animated sketches, with bolder outlines, rougher around the edges. But I really like that raw look, though I have nothing against the more refined lines of modern animation. The backgrounds are also highly stylized, almost impressionist, which means they look cool and were easier to draw. With more time and better technology, Bakshi might have been able to realize a more fully developed style of animation for this film, with more inventive lighting and shading, resulting in something that looks less like a bigger budget version of The Herculoids. But he didn't have those things, and the end results are still enough fun for me to forgive him. In fact, the entire film was completed by just a tiny handful of artists working from Frazetta's character designs and Bakshi's live-action stars, which makes the TV cartoon quality moments excusable and the more richly realized moments truly impressive. One of the artists was none other than Peter Chung, who animated the dragonhawk finale and would go on to create his own scantily-clad, impossibly-proportioned heroine some years later when he wrote and animated a little show called Aeon Flux.
The acting is, at best, workmanlike, but it suits the style of the film. None of the live-action actors were anyone especially accomplished, unless you count an appearance on Glen Larson's Buck Rogers to be an accomplishment. Steve Sandor, who provides the voice of Darkwolf, is probably the most experienced actor of the bunch, having logged countless hours working on pretty much every television show that was made from Star Trek on. Luckily, the dialogue doesn't demand much of anyone, so they all glide by pretty easily and without anything really sticking as a particularly bad acting job, though a few huffs and puffs during running scenes are looped in a little too loudly. The script by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas (the duo also worked on the script for Conan the Destroyer, and both together and separately, worked on a number of famous cartoon TV shows, including The Transformers and GI Joe) is pretty paint by numbers pulp fantasy. It doesn't do anything you don't expect it to do, and each of the characters depends on you recognizing a familiar pulp archetype. There is no back story for anyone. We have no idea who any of these people really are, or why they're doing what they do. We don't know who Nekron really is. We have no idea why Darkwolf shows up and joins forces with Larn. The extras tell us that an original draft of the movie explained that he was Nekron's father, but that never shows up -- nor is it even hinted at -- in the finished product. The thing is, none of the characters really need a complicated (or even simple) back story, because the dependence on the target audience's familiarity with stock pulp characters gets the job done. Nekron does the things he does because he's bad. Larn is good. Darkwolf is cool and mysterious. Teegra is scantily clad (even for a fantasy film princess) in a thong and flimsy bikini top and has jiggling boobs and booty cheeks. If you need any more information than that, then you've missed the point of this type of throwback story, which is to show guys in loincloths beating up goblins, intercut with leering shots of Teegra's ass as she crawls through the swamp. I would imagine a movie like Fire and Ice appeals to a very select population of people. It was a failure upon its initial release, though like most Bakshi films it built up a cult following after the fact. Measured against modern fantasy films that take advantage of cutting edge computer animation (Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy being the benchmark), something as modest as Fire and Ice can't really measure up, but you're sort of making a mistake if you pit a small-budget pulp fantasy movie from 1983 against something of that stature. Older fantasy fans, however, will probably find a lot in Fire and Ice that appeals to them, especially if they favor old-style pulp storytelling and artwork. I thoroughly enjoy Fire and Ice, beginning to end, and find it consistently entertaining and fascinating, not to mention beautifully realized despite the typical Bakshi-project budget constraints. It's a lot more enjoyable and successful as a piece of animated filmmaking than Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, and the influence of Frazetta, while not completely realized, adds even further to the old-fashioned pulp novel feel of the movie. Labels: Anime and Animation, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Netflix Diary, Year: 1983 posted by Keith at 4:37 PM | 4 Comments Wednesday, January 11, 2006Yor, the Hunter from the Future
1983, Italy. Starring Reb Brown, Corinne Clery, John Steiner, Carole Andre, Luciano Pigozzi, Ayshe Gul, Aytekin Akkaya, Marina Rocchi, Sergio Nicolai. Directed by Antonio Margheriti. Written by Robert Bailey and Antonio Magheriti. Not too terribly long ago, I wrote a piece on movies dealing with time-traveling barbarians. I went back and read it yesterday, because I like to reel about in my own filth from time to time, and I was shocked by how shoddy the craftsmanship of the article was. Not just the number of typos and sentences where I seem to lose my train of thought half-way through, allowing whatever I was writing to simply trail off into an incomplete and incoherent mess; those things are a given whenever I sit down to bash out a piece on my keyboard. Honestly, you'd be surprised by the accuracy scores I got in typing class back in high school, and you'd be even more shocked by my ability to catch and correct poor grammar and typos in a first draft when I bother to do such things. But like I said, it wasn't just that. The article just wasn't very good. And while there is plenty of stuff that isn't very good on this site, most of what really disappoints me is now seven or eight years old, and I can dismiss its weakness as mere youthful inexperience and put whatever title was subjected to such embarrassing writing onto my lengthy list of things to rewatch and rewrite. Because, with some six-hundred or so titles in my queue waiting to be reviewed, what I really need to be doing right now is taking movies about which I've already written and adding them back into the mob. But this time traveling barbarian movie article was only written a year or two ago, at a time when I thought my game had been somewhat elevated. It was disappointing to me, and I can't help but assume that at the time I wrote it, I must have been sober and possessed of ample free time that would afford me the chance to do a good job. When I find myself under those desirable circumstances, I generally tend to half-ass it. OK, not as if Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time or Time Barbarians really deserves anyone's whole ass be put into the effort -- especially considering the fact that it's obvious the people who made the film put, at best, a quarter of their own asses into it. But still, it's my site here, and I should invest a little care in what becomes a part of it, seeing as how the Internet is a record of the sum total of human knowledge that will be preserved for hundreds of thousands of years. What really bothered me though, and this is where things start to get sad and you should all hang your head in disappointment for me, is that the substandard writing I did for that article means that the movie Yor, The Hunter from the Future didn't get its just dues. Most people in the world will consider the just dues for Yor, The Hunter from the Future to be a swift kick to the groin of anyone involved in the making of the film. Doing a quick survey of Yahoo, Google, and the external reviews linked to from the Internet Movie Database will turn up a body of reviews almost unanimous in their disdain for the movie. Yor, The Hunter from the Future certainly isn't an unknown movie, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a single person out there, even among aficionados of bad movies, who doesn't feel that it probably should be an unknown movie. Sometimes it seems like the lone voice in post-apocalyptic wilderness is the guy who writes for www.antoniomargheriti.com, though even the film's own director has publicly stated that the film is awful. And this is precisely why my moderately positive review of the film is such a tragedy. Given that I am apparently one of the two members of the Yor fanclub, it behooves me to write a better defense and review of this maligned slice of early eighties Italian exploitation. So it is with the soaring heart of an eagle -- but not the soaring heart of Ator, the Fighting Eagle -- that I return to the prehistoric world of Yor to rework, rewrite, and revise my review in the hopes that, if better constructed, it will convince some impressionable and pathetic young person out there to gaze upon the visage of Yor with a glimmer of sympathy and pity for those of us who get all worked up and tingly every time we here that triumphant explosion of synth-rock that is the theme song for Yor, The Hunter from the Future. The words "favorite" and "Yor" have, to my knowledge, never been uttered together before, not even on the internet where all things perverse and profane flourish. In a medium where you can probably find a website with pictures of people masturbating with donkey hoofs while a Nazi shoves live eels up their butt, you can't find many people who will say anything positive about Yor, The Hunter from the Future. But unlike almost every other critic and film fan in the world, I come not to bury Yor, but to praise him -- at least mildly. My initiation into the strange and exclusive cult of Yor came in the eighties, when a film like this would actually get released to theaters with a considerable degree of fanfare. Conan the Barbarian had just stormed on to screens, and the Italians apparently possess a magical ability to forecast which movies will ignite remarkable trends, then rush out scores of imitations mere days after the original inspiration is released. I suppose it has a little something to do with business acumen, and a lot to do with the fact that most of these movies had production schedules that closely resembled the gestation period of a fruit fly. These were heady days for young men with very little sense of decency in their cinematic taste. In a drunken run that began more or less with the release of The Black Hole and TRON, youngsters of the era were subjected to a seemingly endless parade of generally delightful bad films that was only made all the more intoxicating the day a friend got cable television. Whenever people bemoan the sad state of modern movies and complain about how much junk is getting dumped on the market, I feel I should recommend they take a step back and re-examine previous years. The problem with movie hindsight is that it is terribly myopic. Decades removed from any given year, we tend to only remember the exceptionally good (and in a few rare instances, exceptionally atrocious) films, thus giving that year an inflated position. Living in a year, however, we're exposed to every piece of crap that rolls out of the factory, and so the poor quality of our current time is much fresher and more evident than that of years past. It's the same phenomenon that makes it look like foreign countries make better movies than we do. Since we're only exposed to a select, hand-chosen few foreign films every year, we tend to get the cream of the crop. But as anyone who lives in one of these countries can tell you, they manage to make just as many wretched offerings as we do. We just get filtered content. The big difference between now and then is the budget. It used to be that rotten films were confined to the ghetto of low-budget quickie productions, while films with a larger budget invested in them had shown some degree of merit. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and just because a studio and critics thought a big-budget film might be good doesn't mean it actually was. Things reversed sometime in the nineties though, and most of the good films had smaller budgets while the big-budget movies reeked of bloat, excess, and slapdash craftsmanship. Now we live in an era where people dump millions into films that previously would have been made on a shoestring. To tie this all together into a poorly wrapped package, the grandfather of providing A-list financing for B-list concepts was Dino De Laurentiis. It started for him in the sixties, working as a producer for cheap "sword and sandal" peplum films. Although Dino's films probably weren't budgeted any higher than their contemporaries, most of the ones that bear his name look and play much better than the rest of the pack. In 1968, he lavished French director Roger Vadim with a sizeable budget for the piece of psychedelic cheesecake sci-fi pop art known as Barbarella, and thus began the producer's long love affair with throwing tons of money at silly concepts. Now, what ties this in with Yor, The Hunter from the Future is the fact that De Laurentiis produced Conan the Barbarian. So yes, Italian moviemakers have a knack for latching onto a big trend and draining it mercilessly of its precious lifeblood. At the same time, most of the trends upon which they hop -- Westerns, peplum, zombies -- also have significant ties to Italy in the first place. A Fistful of Dollars may have starred Clint Eastwood, but it was an Italian film. Ditto Steve Reeves and Hercules. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead sparked the glut of Italian zombie films that shambled through the eighties, but it was made possible by the financial graces of Italian director/producer Dario Argento. And Conan was the fevered brainchild of Oliver Stone, John Milius, and a whole bun |
