I made a reference about oranges appearing out of nowhere in the description of the theme this month, and you might be wondering what the hell I was talking about. Well, I was talking about The Last American Virgin.
We've never seen this film, but in Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films someone mentions this movie. Apparently there's a character who pays for his girlfriend's abortion and then bringing her a bag of oranges and a Christmas tree as some sort of consolation gift. The person recounting that scene guessed the oranges' significance lied in some Palestinian tradition that didn't bear significance in our culture, but it could have just as easily been director Boaz Davidson's interpretation of American Christmas traditions. We might never know why (no one in Electric Boogaloo says definitively, and I can't find any answers on the interwebs) but that's part of the charm that comes from making art through these kinds of filters; sometimes stuff happens that captures the audiences' imagination, and you'll never know if it was intentionally provocative.
Oh Bloodsport, you are the gift that keeps on giving.
The plot unfolds something like this: Frank Dux was raised from brith to do one thing; win the Kumete (a super secret no holds barred fight to the death tournament that totally 100% exists). And that's just what he's gonna do...
The language barriers: Frank Dux's Overinflated Ego vs. The Truth.
The problems the language barrier presented: Frank Dux might have been born with his confidence dialed up to 100, but Frank Dux is also 100% full of shit. He's bullshitter that believes his own bullshit, no less. The film is "based on" Frank Dux's "real life experiences", a claim that came into question INSTANTLY. Reporters have called into question everything from Dux manufacturing his own Kumete trophies to his "secret missions for our military", and everything in between. But there was also tension between Van Damme and Dux. JCVD was skeptical of Dux's over the top "training" sessions, and things got heated enough that Dux claims that it almost came to blows at one point.
Further reading: If you want to read more about all this (and really why wouldn't you) this LA Times aritcal from the time period Bloodsport was released is pretty no holds barred, and the podcast How Did This Get Made has an excellent live episode covering much of the circus as well.
Sometimes language isn't so much spoken as it is expressed through dance.
The movie: A young jazz dancer teams up with two break-dancers and together they become a dance sensation.
The language barrier problems: The different dance backgrounds of stars Michael Chambers, Adolfo Quinones, and Lucinda Dickey gave way to some tensions on set. Dickey was raised by a classical dance instructor and had a heavy jazz background, while Chambers and Quinones started out self taught and developed a less ridged, but more physically intense, style. While trying to teach Dickey how to move like they did (which is the basic plot of the movie) they butted heads constantly. Dickey in interviews now even says that they had so little time to prep for the movie that she only got confidant in the technique while they were promoting the film, and even then she admitted, she wasn't all that great at it. Chambers and Quinones on the other hand were masters at their craft and were chosen for the rolls for that reason, so resentment was abound.
The sequel: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo had language problems all it's own. By the actors recollection, tensions between them had died off, but that could have been because they had a common enemy: the script. The story for the sequel was so slapped together it's laugh-ability is legendary. Where the first movie was gritty and featured many actual street dancers, the sequel was basically a Busby Berkely movie set in the 80s. The hokey and sterile Electric Boogaloo lacked everything heartfelt and human that made the first film a success.
Random thing I learned researching this: Adolfo Quinones was supposed to have the Lorenzo Lallams role in Body Rock, which would have likely made that movie more watchable.
This month we're going to be talking a lot about Cannon films, as Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films was largely the inspiration for this month's theme. If you're unfamiliar with Cannon, it's starts with Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They were the two top filmmakers in Israel in the 60s and one day they wondered together "If we can do this here, can we do this in Hollywood?" and they set out to find the answer. But two men who grew up loving films from Hollywood and ended up producing exceptionally popular films in their home country are bound to work through some strange filters when making films for US audiences. (Though, the strangeness of their films are also due to the haste in which they were made, as well as the egos that made Golan and Globus as successful as the were.) But frankly, that strangeness worked well for them for a surprising amount of time. Don't take our word for it though, watch the documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films and see for yourself. (And know that while the filmmakers were getting this movie ready for release, Golan and Globus shot their own documentary on the subject (The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films) and beat Electric Boogaloo to their release date, because of course they did.)
It might not seem like it to the casual viewer, but He-man was a film with sequel ambitions. Cannon was under financial duress while producing both this and Superman 4 simultaneously, but their hope was the revenue from these two films would propel their finances in the right direction. Unfortunately that did not happen, and production on the He-man sequel was scrapped. But that turned out to be a windfall for Albert Pyun, as the production for Cyborg was able to cannibalize all the unused sets!
Masters of the Universe:
In an attempt to revitalize the fading popularity of He-Man, Mattel teamed up with Cannon and to make this amazingly weird train-wreck of a movie. The cast features a young new-to-English-speaking Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor, Meg Foster as Evil-Lyn and Billy Barty plays a character called Gwildor as a substitution for Orko. There are some fun effects, great set pieces, some interesting designs elements (likely lifted from Jodorowsky's mock up for Dune) and a RIDICULOUS plot that sends He-Man and his crew to modern-day L.A.. (This movie might be bad, but it's also relentlessly entertaining.) Despite their financial instability at the time, Cannon had high hopes for Masters, and not only did they give this production one of their biggest budgets to date, they started working on a sequel before it was released. Tough break for He-man, good news for Cyborg!
Cyborg:
What do you do when you have already sunk a tons of money building sets, props and costumes for a movie you can't afford to make? You call Albert Pyun of course! Pyun quickly wrote a script that incorporate these elements into a fun post apocalyptic cyborg movie and cast a young Jean Claude Van Damme in the lead. Pyun can make most any movie into something fun, but this is one of our favorites from his cannon.
Why this makes a good double feature: Not only are these movies tied together by production elements, they also each star a foreign actor on the cusp of stardom before they were able to speak English fluently.
Something in particular about the head's of Cannon films might explain thier movies' unique strangeness. Cannon was run by two Israeli cousins (Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus) trying to make what they considered "American" movies. But that's a hard task when you've not grown up in Amarican culture causing their definition of an "American" movie to be wonderflly skued. Over the Top and Cobra are glowing examples of this.
Over the Top:
Take a big name to star and make his character a cross country truck driver/deadbeat dad who arm wrestles in tournaments around the country to make his real living and what do you get? One of the most amazingly over the top Stallone movies of the 80s...
Cobra:
With crime gone completely out of control the city has lost all regard for the law. Lieutenant Marion 'Cobra' Cobretti (Stallone) is going to put an end to it using any means necessary. Stallone-er Cobra oozes tough guy badass by driving a sweet car, swilling cans of Coors, wielding big guns while blowing people away, and cutting the ends off his cold pizza.
Why this is a great double feature: These are two gems from the Stallone heydays!
Have you ever wanted to watch a movie that didn't come close to completing principal photography but was made into a movie anyway? I'm sure there are plenty of 50's b-movies that fall under this heading (and loads of Corman or Wood movies) but Journey to the Center of the Earth is a special case. Some of the “stars” listed on the VHS box aren't on screen more than 30 seconds and don't speak a word, the first 10 mins of the movie were shot for an entirely different script with a completely different director, the film takes place in the Lost City of Atlantis under Hawaii, and is the sequel to a movie that took place in that same Lost City when it was under northern Africa. If you're looking for some cinematic pain, some deep hurting as it were, look no further than this sequel to Alien from L.A....
The plot unfolds something like this: [Ok, I've not had synopsis this challenging since FEAR NO EVIL... here goes...] Crystina is being fired from her last nanny job. She doesn't want to quit being a nanny, she loves it! But even she must admit she's bad at it. When her employer asks what she'll do next, Crystina muses she'll probably teach karate. But lucky for her, she won't have to take any pesky karate lessons, fellow Brit and fading rock star Billy Foul needs a nanny to meet him in Hawaii ASAP! Crystina's got one last chance to be the nanny she hopes she can be. However, none of that will come back into play after the 20 min mark of this film... Meanwhile, a trio of siblings are venturing to their favorite cave on the Hawaiian islands. For reasons too taxing to mention here, Crystina joins up with this trio and together they chase the youngest sibling, and a dog, through caverns that eventually lead to the Lost City of Atlantis. And that's when the real confusion starts...
The top billed stars: Emo Philips (on screen for the count of ten, says nothing), and Kathy Ireland (still images of her are used many times throughout the film, but she is otherwise not in this movie).
The Big Cringe: This whole movie is one long cringe, but if you watched it with enough people it might actually be entertaining (unlike FEAR NO EVIL), but it takes a toll for sure.
Things to watch for: This is a movie to poke fun at all the way through, there are scenes that are clearly b-roll from the Alien from L.A., every asinine situation lead to even more asinine situation, characters are written out of the story with voiceover instructing them to “get help”, or sometimes departing characters shout that they'll “come back with help”, but they never do come back...
But is it good?: It's bad, it's really really really bad. But it's so bad, it folds over on it's self and gets good.
What we learned: Sometimes deep hurting is exactly what you need in a movie.
The uncredited director: Albert Pyun is notorious for having movie after movie taken from him in the editing process (or worse) leaving each of his finished films no more his own work than an Alan Smithee work. And it's a shame, not unlike Jackie Kong he appeared on our radar as not only a force of bad movie making to be reckoned with, but also as a director of color. There are too few non-white male film directors even now but to find one who is responsible for some epic fun from they heyday of video is usually exciting followed by a sad story of some kind. Albert Pyun still makes movies today, and is working on finishing a few more but his health is declining. Our hope is that he gets to make a few movies his way before he has to stop all together.
Tobe Hooper went from working with Spielberg to working with Cannon in three years. That's a progression that usually moves in the other direction... But, in 1982 Polterguiest came out under Hooper's direction (and Spielberg's supervision) and in '85 and '86 he cranked out Lifeforce, Texas Chainsaw 2, and Invaders from Mars for Cannon. If you haven't checked out Lifeforce, please do, but in the meantime here's a suggestion for the most polarizing horror double feature from a single director we can think of.
Texas Chainsaw 2:
12 years after making Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper gives us a look into what Leatherface and crew are up to. This stallment in the TCM series could be considered the most playful of the series partially due to Dennis Hoppers crazed as the Texas Marshall and Bill Moseleys as the iconic Chop-Top. Aditionally, the Massacre family competes in chili cook offs, kidnaps radio hosts, and live in an abandoned amusement park. If you ever wondered where Rob Zombie got most of his influence from, this is it!
Invaders from Mars:
An 80's remake of a 50's B-movie, Invaders from Mars successfully retains the fun of campy horror while delivering really great special effects. Basically it's equal part's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and creature movie, with a script co-written by Dan O'Bannon and starring the ever wonderful Karen Black!
Why this makes a good double feature: These two movies cover two very different tones of horror, and are directed by the same guy. It's a pretty great illustration of how wide the genre and fandom can range.
One of these movies is better than the other, and you may be wrong about which is which.
Exterminator 2: Oh the splendid pain that is Exterminator 2. How it's a sequel is puzzling as it has little to do with the first installment aside from featuring the same flame-throwing vigilante. But, it does feature some excellent deep hurting delivered by Mario Van Peebles and Robert Ginty, allowing Frankie Faison to effortlessly steal every scene he's in. There's also some seriously insane stuff involving the Exterminator's love interest... But, you'll won't learn any of that from watching the trailer!
Captain America (1990): That's right, there was Captain America movie in the 90s. We watched it on the 4th of July this year and it caught us off guard. We thought we were in for a doozie, but it never got truly bad. There are some fun action sequences, an enjoyable villain, surprising make-up effects, and the bad guy from Robocop is the good-guy president! But it's far from flawless, the story gets really muddy and Captain is far too old for the part for starters. Over all though, it's a pretty valiant effort from Albert Pyun considering the constraints he was likely faced with.
Why this makes a good double feature: After Exterminator 2 this Captain America will seem as good as Winter Solder.
We don't always watch movies that are amazingly bad. Sometimes we watch movies that are mostly bad. This movie fell into the later category sadly, though it has some redeeming qualities (and it could play well as a MST3K with large chunks edited out ) the painful-to-watch parts overrode any fun qualities this film had to offer.
The plot unfolds something like this: A tight knit group of high school boys are preparing to throw themselves into collage life, Animal House style. But nothing could prepare them for the tragic reality that crashes in on them when one of their sisters is violently murdered by a roaming biker gang. Faced with their first taste of the frustrating reality of the slow processes of the legal system, they decide to take matters into their own hands. Together they'll take on crime in every corner of their crime ridden city, making enemies on the force as well as in the criminal underworld. Can they tough it out long enough avenge the death of their friend, or will they fall apart at the seams?
The interesting parts of this flick: This is the first movie we've seen that's attempted to blend the tone of Animal House with the tones of Deliverance and Deathwish. And although they don't pull it off, it still made the movie far more interesting than it could have been. There's also very strong undertones of vigilantism being the polar extreme of crime rather than the only solution to crime. Most “men take the law into their own hands” movies are weighted to the “this is the only way to get justice” end of the scale, where this film weighs in with more of a “you might be as bad as the bad guys if you dole out 'justice' without due process” ideal.
Reasons not to watch: There as so many scenes that don't makes sense in this movie, but the one that lost us was excessively violent to the only women in the cast. We fast-forwarded through a sexual-assault scene that the filmmakers chose to cut back to at least 4 times. It was excessively long to say the least, but it was also totally unnecessary. Sexual violence scenes are almost always unnecessary, but especially if they're added to pad out nudity rather than to make cometary. And unfortunately, justifying boobies shots seemed to be what this movie was after. (That, or they were trying to drive home how bad guys were really, really bad and the good guys were really, really motivated, which is equally distasteful and will turn us off from a movie just as quick.)
Things that almost won us back: The main frat boy manages to find time to animate multiple short films. That's in addition to taking on the bad guys at night and attending normal classes during the day. And though we absolutely don't buy that this character was creative in any way, the animations are pretty great and are worth watching on their own. There's also the ridiculousness that every time the vigilante frat goes out to fight crime, they find it. Like instantly. There seems to be people committing crime every five feet in this town, but there's hardly a cop to be seen.
That's right that's: Ernest Borgnine and Richard Roundtree teamed up as the detectives on the case. Actually they might be the only detectives in the whole town...
What we learned: If your friend takes a shotgun blast to the chest, don't take him back the frat house to discuss the happenings of the last few weeks. Just take him to the hospital, otherwise he'll probably die on your bed right before you blow your frat up with a box of grenades...
Not without it's charm, this movie didn't have any of the overly crazy elements many other Cannon movies embrace. Actually, this one's ending caught me off guard because it was sort of reasonable...
The plot unfolds something like this: A group of rich boys have taken it upon themselves to rid their beloved school of a recent rash of petty crimes. Acting on the unfounded idea that the poorer students are responsible for said crime, the gang tracks down some of these less fortunate classmates and literally terrorize them. (Of course, the irony that they're "fighting" crime with terrorism is totally lost on them.) Meanwhile, students have been going missing and the whole school believes the vigilantes to be responsible. But are they really responsible, or are they just the victims of vicious-rich boy stereotyping?
Things to watch for: A twist ending you can likely see coming but plays pretty well anyway, with a twist reveal that you couldn't possibly see coming. Loads of dudes too old to play high schoolers playing high schoolers anyway. The main antagonist/co-writer obviously writing some choice scenes for himself. Some nice commentary on the fine line between vigilantes and criminals.
Things to look away for: Some step-sibling incest/sexual-assault scenes (that thankfully stop short of nudity).
“That Guy!” moment with:Miguel A. Nunez Jr. (The Return of the Living Dead, Action Jackson, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)
What we learned: Filming your acts of terrorism against your fellow classmates might not be the best idea if you want to keep those acts of terrorism secret...
There are some pretty excellent reasons to watch Invasion USA, though not many of them have to do with Chuck Norris. He stalks the halls of an empty office building, he skulks around a plucky reporter, he makes wry comments at the bad guys. Generally speaking there are fantastic action sequences peppered with epic explosions, but all those scenes are intercut with stone-wall molasses Chuck walkin' around.
The plot unfolds something like this: An invasion is being planned on the shores of Florida by communist terrorists on a quest to do something... and they will stop at nothing to blow up a few houses in the suburbs, drive through a mall, and blow up a house on the bayou to prove... I can't even remember. What does the plot matter when they are laying waste to much of what makes the childhood of suburbanite kids dull and uninspired?
Explosions!: There's not much to say about this movie because most of the amazing parts are when stuff is blowing up. But they actually got to blow up real structures making this film's action especially wonderful. The filmmakers had access to a housing development that was being demolished, a mall that was re-modeling, a shack in the bayou and many other structures they inevitably level. It adds something to the action that's hard (or expensive) to get in a movie using models or CGI, and it's worth all the Wooden Chuck in the world to see them!
Reasons to watch: The aforementioned blowing up of lots of stuff. A car chase scene through a mall! The opportunity to make fun of Boring Chuck over and over. A cute scene with an armadillo. Billy Drago! Chuck Norris might be a “one man army” but there's an actual army in the final scene that also has an enjoyable hand in the blowing up of stuff. Did I mention that EVERYTHING is unequivocally destroyed?!?
Cringe moments: When a boat full of unarmed people get's mowed down, it starts to feel like excessive “these guys are really really bad guys” fodder. Also, Chuck gives Jack Bower and Dirty Harry a run for their money on the “one man army” and “laws smaws” fronts.
Siblings of the stars: Aaron Norris, brother of Chuck, is not only co-credited with writing the screen play for Invasion USA, he is also the stunt coordinator.
What we learned: If any other action star from this time period stared in Invasion USA, this would be a must watch classic. However, if someone other than Chuck had starred, someone different would have likely been the stunt coordinator and the action wouldn't have been as good. This might be our official selection for Catch-22 Action Flick of the 20th century.
Weird stuff I know after researching Invasion USA: This movie has a novelization. I found a lovely review of said novel at Glorious Trash.
Ninja III is a movie that may have no peer. It combines the horribleness of ninja appropriation with the insanity of the 80s aerobics fad and topping it all off with a spirit possession.
The story unfolds something like this: Ninja III jumps into the action head first as most of the L.A.P.D. is slashed, dropped, drown, and ninja-stared to death while responding to a ninja having murdered a golfer and his golfing party. The cop-massacre ends when our ninja is filled with more bullets than Bonnie and Clyde combined, and still somehow manages to make his was to the bordering desert to die. Luckily, he runs into Christie, a plucky utility worker/aerobics instructor who's body he immediately decides to possess. Christie reports most of that to the police where she meets officer Billy Secord. He's a tenacious cop who stalks Christie until she suddenly relents to his demands that they date. Meanwhile, Christie is hunting down the cops who were successful in defending themselves during the cop-massacre. She's also slowly becoming aware she's “possessed”. Will the ghost of the ninja's blood lust ever be fulfilled?
And there's aerobics?: For reasons that never make any sense at all, Christie teaches an aerobics class in her off hours as a utility worker. As a result of this we're treated to an abundance of scenes with unnecessary aerobicising, both in a gym setting and in the fog filled home of our possessed Christie.
Things to watch for: Epic fog-machine use at the flimsiest excuse. A cop that witnesses an attack against Christie but doesn't help her as she fends off her attackers, but then “arrests” her for assault as a way to "win her heart". The aforementioned harassment plot totally scoring the harasser a date. The grossest use of V-8 Juice in a sex seen we hope to ever see. An arcade game scanning someone with laser-grids. Attempts to jazzercise a ninja spirit away. A man who wears a sweater underneath all his tank tops... hold on, maybe that wasn't a sweater...
What we learned: Sometimes you don't have to see the two previous movies to fully enjoy the third in the series.
But did we like it: Honestly, this movie gets better and better at every turn... if your version of “better” involves fog machines and laser light shows... which ours does...
This was a movie we'd had in our pile of
possibilities for months and last night, our regular movie screening
buddies decided, was the night to watch it. Here's what we
thought:
It's
certianly epic. In some of the final scenes there are literally piles
of extras in considerable amounts of makeup lying dead in the streets of London. The sets and locations are
fantastically grandiose. The “weightlessness” of space and some of the acting are Over the Top, only adding to the fun. The pice de resistance? Patrick Stewart...
with a full head of hair... kissing a dude.
The first ten mins of the movie take place in space (where the "weightlessness" seams heavier than normal) where a crew of space dudes finds an abandon space ship with three completely naked humanoid survivors. After some of the other astronauts mysteriously die, our main protagonist astronaut returns to earth with the crystalized, sill naked, humanoid survivors who instantly run amok. Things only get weirder from there...
Thank you for deciding for the group Hannah, it truly was high time we watched Lifeforce.
