A young, frequently nude karate expert searches for her brother's killer in Hong Kong.
Crucial information:
- chick-on-chick cemetery kung fu (even match; dome crack on headstone) - one chick in panties vs. four fully-dressed dudes kung fu (chick wins) - same chick PUNCHING ALL THE WAY THROUGH dude's stomach kung fu (chick wins...duh)
There is not much happening between all of the kung fu, but there doesn't really need to be. There is some cracking wise, but the sound is super-surprisingly inconsistent so you might miss a lot of it. Where there is one clearly audible "I will track a motherfucker down and bust a motherfucker up" there is bound to be more of the like, so you win whether you watch this movie in total silence or yap it up and wait for the fight scenes. It's just over an hour - taking the latter approach means you won't have to wait very long. Eat a few Skittles and the next chop will be thrown before you have time to get thirsty.
Which is why this blog has been so quiet. I've been catching up on my Scorcese and French New Wave and super-obscure high-falutin works you have never heard of because they are SUCH SUPERIOR CINEMA. Okay, truth - I've been having a big, long, embarrassing Nancy Meyers and Bravo reality tv fest. Netflix probably thinks I've been PMSing for the last fiscal quarter.
BUT! This is all about to change.
My dear friend Evan gifted me with a 50-movie, quadruple-DVD set that looks suspiciously like he bought it at a truck stop (making it even more awesome). "OVER 71 HOURS OF YOUR FAVORITE DRIVE IN CLASSICS," it says! Here is just a tiny sampling of the treats for which you and I are in store:
BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE BLACK HOOKER DAY OF THE PANTHER INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS SNOWBEAST WOMEN OF DEVIL'S ISLAND
These are a mere six of 50! FIFTY! Where to begin????
An aging high-class London prostitute takes up with the club sound technician; dramantics ensue.
You probably know this already, but if you coerce a hooker into dating you because you are disgusted by her line of work and want to save her from her own depravity - all the while dealing in arms trading yourself - and then yell at her and physically threaten her, you can make her do whatever you want, including love you! This is true! For real!
Also true for real, but in a REALLY true for real sort of way, if any of the following strikes your fancy, you will dig HUSSY:
Helen Mirren Helen Mirren being awesome (as usual) Helen Mirren stark naked Helen Mirren mock-chastising a john for being "a very bad boy" Cabaret Fin-des-'70s fashion shows (shoulder pads, beaded evening jackets, large perms, super-intense eyeshadow configurations) Movies that end in freeze frames
Scientists struggle to rein in two freshly-defrosted prehistoric creatures before they can destroy the world's oceans...and the world!!!!!!!!
You may remember Debbie Gibson as the singer/songwriter of such 1980s hits as "Shake Your Love" and "Out Of The Blue" and "Electric Youth" and "Foolish Beat" and also "Lost In Your Eyes" and "Only In My Dreams." You may remember Lorenzo Lamas from such television fare as "The Bold And The Beautiful" and "Falcon Crest." You may know Vic Chao from last season of "24," if you're still watching (some people's adrenal glands are still recovering from season one....sorry, Cochran and Surnow). Now all three are together at last, working to rid the seas of paleolithic-era threats accidentally freed by a rogue whale.
Scientist Debbie - now Deborah - yanks something bonelike from the gooey red beached whale carcass. She and cohort scientist Sean Lawlor (of the forthcoming 1066) extract red, yellow, and purple Kool-Aid from the something, mix the liquid over Bunsen burners, and run it through a highly specialized software program to discover that it is the tooth of a MEGA SHARK. Simultaneously, other scientist Chao is having problems all the way over on the far side of the world with a GIANT OCTOPUS.
The scientists meet up at San Francisco International Airport, which looks astoundingly similar to Long Beach, and discuss tactics. They mix some red, yellow, and purple Snapple over the Bunsen burners and run it through a highly specialized software program to no avail. Deborah and Vic make out in front of a random day player and then retire to a closet decorated like an Ikea drawer-pull showroom to do it to each other.
Meanwhile, the MEGA SHARK jumps out of the water 30,000 feet to nom an airplane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then later it jumps out of the water again to nom the Golden Gate Bridge in half!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The GIANT OCTOPUS just hangs out in the sea trying to look menacing and smacking the occasional boat off-course. It's hard to compete with plane and bridge biting so it's probably having performance anxiety.
Back to the showroom, where post-coital Deborah and Vic exchange compliments on each other's fetching body odor and then realize that the answer to the MEGA SHARK/GIANT OCTOPUS problem is: Pheromones! Vic will return to Tokyo and Deborah will stay in San Francisco; they will release sexy sea creature smells underwater to lure and then corral each creature in their cities' respective bays. This is about when Lorenzo Lamas shows up and he...yells a bunch and does...stuff? He sports some rather intense sideburns - this much is clear. They all wear jumpsuits and the plan is set in motion, but soon fails as Deborah's submarine pod loses its pheromone-dispensing arm and they realize they never actually figured out the corralling part.
The only solution is to force a MEGA SHARK/GIANT OCTOPUS SHOWDOWN, aka per Deborah, "a thrilla in Manila.*" So they do some more luring and then the MEGA SHARK bites off the GIANT OCTOPUS's tentacles while the GIANT OCTOPUS squeezes the MEGA SHARK and they simultaneously die and it's a little sad. The main message of the story (told exclusively through exposition): Stop global warming, Obama = Hope, save the animals, no nukes. Since Michael Vick got his job back you might feel uncomfortable watching something like this but don't worry, MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS is a very progressive movie at heart, and no mechanical models were harmed during the making thereof.
*"We can get the buy-in, but the shark is going to want 50% of the Pay-Per-View." --Viewing companion Mat
Special thanks to Julie and the Mini-W for screening.
Undercover asskicker Treat Williams must pose as a teacher to infiltrate and destroy a white supremacist group at a military academy.
A SPECIAL NOTE:
First viewing of TS4: FINAO led me to believe that it was just not sufficiently horrible enough to merit a write-up here on Mayonnaise Bathtub, where we believe in the QUALITY crap. But after some reflection (and some prodding from Seth, who lent it to me), I have decided that it is worth fast-forwarding to the following points of interest.
* On the DVD menu, the title is in the same font as PLAY, SPECIAL FEATURES, etc., but as my viewing companion pointed out, FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION is, hilariously...not an option.
* Decrying of "Atheists and multiculturalists!" (Side note: If you're going to watch the whole thing, you should definitely consider downing a shot every time someone in the movie utters this phrase.)
* Neo-Nazi bonfire festivities shot to make it look like the joint is popping off...but then the camera pulls back and there are just four sad but very, very determined haters.
* Very long is-it-a-fight-or-isn't-it??? dude-on-dude wrestling sequence. No homo!
An ex-con wakes from the bender of his life to discover that he may have murdered someone...or several someones.
Freshly sprung from jail Ryan O'Neal is back in Provincetown, barely vertical after a really bad night, piecing together the events of the past few drunked-out weeks with the help of his father (Lawrence Tierney) and a little hair of the dog - a square bottle that is probably whiskey but looks a lot like Manischewitz. There is a seance and a bunch of double-crossing (?) blonde ex-girlfriends, one of whom is now married to church preacher Penn Gillette. Two million dollars and a coke deal gone, of course, awry. A dance party featuring people doing lines off a glass table that is otherwise bare except for a tiny bowl of caviar. COKE AND CAVIAR, now that is how you know it is a wild scene. That and the rather spastic '80s dancing. Small New Wave butch doing the side-to-side elbows boogie in a pink tank top and suspenders, Private Vasquez and I salute you for your brief, lonesome representation of cinematic female masculinity.
When tough guys aren't tearing up the floor (and their nasal membranes), they are boozing in dive bars, getting bad tattoos, and hiding blonde ex-girlfriends' decapitated heads in their marijuana stashes in the woods. They are also possibly getting framed for said murders via car phone, parking illegally around the Cape, getting forced down the breakwater at gunpoint, anthropomorphizing their machetes ("my best friend in Viet Nam"), and hooking up with an Isabella Rossellini consigned, impossibly, to dowdiness by a parade of hideous Forenza sweaters that would make Cosby proud.
Best moment of the movie, and perhaps of all time: With the backing of an Angelo Badalamenti score that would not have been out of place in LOVE STORY, Ryan retreats to the shore to read a letter from Isabella...a letter in which she informs him that her husband is having an affair with his wife, that they should not discuss it, and what hello MURDER??
His response below:
Free writing lesson from Norman Mailer, who adapted the script from his own novel: There is "less plot" involved in writing a screenplay than a novel. Also from Mailer's making-of featurette: Drug deals are more exciting than real estate deals, and this is a thriller movie.
It really should be classified more as a mystery, though, since it a) is wonderfully hard to follow and b) ends with five bodies overboard...but SIX splashes. SEE? MYSTERY.
I learned to read at age three, I was forbidden access to pop culture, I graduated from a Seven Sisters nerd college. I was supposed to be an intellectual. It didn't take. I owe it all to one midnight viewing of BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and a dogged refusal to ignore the still, small voice within...the one that thrives on ludicrous dialogue and ludicrouser explosions.
