Director Lin Jing-Jie’s The King of Wuxia tells the story of one of the most talented — if unheralded in the Western world — filmmakers, King Hu. Bringing together actors, choreographers, critics, scholars, producers, fellow directors and others who knew and loved Hu to pay tribute to him, it’s a must-watch for fans of not just martial arts and wuxia cinema, but films as a whole.
From explorations of his best-known films Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen— look for directors John Woo, Tsui Hark and Ann Hui to lend their adoration and scholarship — to the story of Hu’s life and his final unmade movie, this is everything I hoped that it would be and more.
You’ll also hear from Sammo Hung, Pei-Pei Cheng, Peggy Chiao and more, this is a three and a half hour deep dive into the life and films of a creator I’m glad that I now know more about.
There are some amazing scenes in the first part with Peking Opera performers where they show off their sword fighting and jumping ability, as another set of talented performers create music and sound effects live. I’ve never seen anything like this and it added to the sheer joy of this film, even if the proposed movie that John Woo was going to produce never got made. I mean, Chow Yun Fat leading Chinese railroad workers in America during the Gold Rush to protect their adopted home? I’m all emotional even wondering what that would have been like.
Want to see it for yourself?
The U.S. Premiere of The King of Wuxia is next Friday, April 21 at 7 PM in Theater 1 at Metrograph and Subway Cinema in New York City. It’s part of the 10th Old School Kung Fu Fest: Sword Fighting Heroes Edition from April 21-30, 2023!
Deaf Crocodile Films, in association with distribution partner Seagull Films and with restoration from the original camera negative by Mosfilm Studio, has created a new restoration of famed Russian fantasy filmmaker Aleksandr Ptushko’s Skazka O Tsare Saltane.
Adapted from the Alexander Pushkin fairy tale, this movie is beyond gorgeous.
Driven from the Russian court by her evil sisters while Tsar Saltan (Vladimir Andreyev) is at war with cannibal trolls, Tsarina (Larisa Golubkina) and her infant son Prince Gvidon are tossed in a cask and launched into stormy seas. Somehow, her son (Oleg Vidov) has grown to adulthood and helps them to make it to an island where he falls in love with a human swan — a wereswan? — princess (Kseniya Ryabinkina) while dreaming of seeing his father again. So he asks the swan to transform him into an insect so he may spy on the evil sisters and learn how he and his mother can finally return to their home.
This is a movie filled with sheer magic, like a town trapped in time that must be rescued, monstrous sea giants, lion statues that come to life and a singing squirrel that is a puppet that will warm even the coldest of hearts. The fact that this movie is now coming out in the U.S. and can be streamed and purchased on blu ray is the kind of miracle that shows that we are truly in the golden age of physical media.
Deaf Crocodile has already released two other Ptushko films, Ilya Muromets (The Sword & the Dragon) and Sampo (The Day the Earth Froze). They’ve described his work as a combination of Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen and Mario Bava, which sounds too fantastic but I can assure you is completely true. If you’re wondering if you’ve heard of this creative force, he co-wrote Viy.
You can get The Tale of Tsar Saltan from Deaf Crocodile. It features a newhour-long video interview with legendary visual effects artist and film historian Robert Skotak on Aleksandr Ptushko and the history of Soviet fantastika filmmaking, moderated by Dennis Bartok of Deaf Crocodile Films, a new commentary track by comics artist (Swamp Thing), film historian and author Stephen R. Bissette, a new essay by film historian and professor Peter Rollberg (Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema) and box art by Tony Stella.
April 15: King Yourself! — Pick a movie released by Crown International Pictures. Here’s a list!
The song in this movie, “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns*, is a lie, because the protagonist of The Van, Bobby (Stuart Goetz), drives a 1976 Dodge B200 Tradesman customized by George Barris.
As for me, I grew up with two Ford Custom vans, one a basic panel van that I used to be a landscaper and the other a fully customized one with tables and chairs and shag carpeting. Yeah! 9 miles to the gallon!
Crown International Pictures took what worked for American-International Pictures and their beach party movies and added sex and drugs. This movie comes from the days before AIDS, before women truly being characters with agency in movies (well, not all the time) and even before Porky’s.
What it does have is Danny DeVito as Bobby’s friend Andy. And such well-known vans that two of the automobiles from this movie, Straight Arrow and Van Killer, were released as toy cars.
Bobby wants Sally (Connie Hoffman) but she’s already dating tough guy Dugan (Steve Oliver). So he tries to get with Tina (Deborah White), who is way too good for him, before racing Dugan and rolling his van. He survives and moves on vanless.
Director Sam Grossman only directed this film. Writer Robert J. Rosenthal also wrote The Pom Pom Girls, Malibu Beach and Zapped! while Celia Susan Cotelo was also a writer on Malibu Beach.
*Nine other songs by the artist are in this: “Early Morning Love,” “Jenny,” “Rag Doll,” “Hang My Head and Moan, “Country Lady,” “You’re So Sweet,” “Peas in a Pod,” “Bless My Soul” and “Hey, Mr. Dreamer.”
April 15: King Yourself! — Pick a movie released by Crown International Pictures. Here’s a list!
CIA killing machine Cross (Burt Lancaster) is retiring, but not before he trains his replacement, Jean Laurier (Alain Delon), alias Scorpio, to replace him. The CIA wants Scorpio to kill Cross for suspected treason and working with the enemy, but Cross pays him off and takes him back to America.
Cross’ Soviet counterpart Sergei Zharkov (Paul Scofield) helps him to get away from a trap and into Vienna, but Cross wants to rescue his wife Sarah *Joanne Linville) too. Unfortunately, the CIA gets to her first, which means that he decides to get revenge on the man who ordered the hit, McLeod (John Colicos). That makes the CIA throw even more money at Cross to pull off the job on his teacher.
It turns out that Cross has really been making money by playing every side against one another and even has Scorpio’s girlfriend on the payroll. The young agent kills her with no remorse and tracks down Cross, who tells him that he needs to always watch his back, because after he’s killed, they’ll be looking to clear up any loose ends. Spoiler warning. He’s right.
Scorpio was written by David W. Rintels and produced by Walter Mirisch, at least until director Michael Winner wanted to change the script and United Artists picked him over Rintels and Mirisch. What ended up on screen is a lot like another Winter movie, The Mechanic.
Even though the CIA are the bad guys in this movie, Winner was permitted to shoot in their headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It was the first movie ever shot there, even after Winter showed them the script. Even odder, Cross’ home is really CIA Director Richard Helms’s house. Perhaps they were allowed to do so because Lancaster asked Senator John V. Tunney if he could get them into the building.
April 15: King Yourself! — Pick a movie released by Crown International Pictures. Here’s a list!
Their orders: LOVE your enemy…then KILL HIM!
Major Stony Stonewall (John Ericson) has been given a mission: kill off a group of Japanese officers while they’re in a brothel in the Philippines. That means it’s time for a dirty one-third dozen: a sex worker on the run from organized crime by the name of Cindy Lee Dawson (Crystin Sinclaire, Crazy Alice from Caged Heat and Libby from Eaten Alive), the sexually overcharged killing machine known as Rose Carson (Nory Wright, Cover Girl Models), a Scandinavian nurse named Anna Oleson (Johanna Raunio) with a death sentence thanks to a terminal illness and Sonya (Liza Lorena), who was assaulted by Japanese troops after they murdered her entire extended family.
They’re aided by Lieutenant West (Karen Ericson, wife of the hero in actual life) and a rebel leader named Paco (Ramon Ravilla). Seeing as how this as made in the Philippines, this has Vic Diaz in it, of course, but my favorite character is the Japanese admiral who is nothing like the animals that the propaganda has led the girls to believe that he may be.
Set in the 40s but feeling like it’s the 70s — outside of the big band music that plays during the training — this movie promises sleaze and only has women talking about how much they want sex and not getting it. Director Cesar Gallardo also made Bamboo Gods and Iron Men and somehow in this film, he figured out a way to make attractive women turned into killers boring.
I am of the age — let’s just call it old — where I had no idea who Vanessa Hudgens is. So to those of you reading this wondering the same thing, she debuted in the movie Thirteen before becoming famous as Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical series and recorded two albums in the 00s, V and Identified. She was also in Sucker Punch, Spring Breakers and a Netflix movie series called The Princess Switch. She also dated Zac Effron and Austin Butler. Now, I wish I hadn’t gone too deep into her private life, as I learned she attends the controversial Hillsong Church and at the start of the pandemic, she posted on Instagram that it was inevitable that people would die from the COVID-19 pandemic in a very oh well kind of way. You could say, well, she’s young, but she was 32 when she did that.
Anyways…
Let me go into Dead Hot with an open mind.
You may read the description “After a ghost hunt gone wrong, students of witchcraft Vanessa Hudgens and GG Magree travel to Salem, Massachusetts to seek out proper mentorship from experts in witchcraft” and think you’re about to see perhaps a horror movie. After all, it has the horror category listed on Tubi.
Nope. This is, instead according to the PR for it, “The Craft meets The Simple Life.”
They also say that it’s an “intimate journey into the supernatural realm” and a “coming-of-age story that explores identity, feminine power and sisterhood.”
Um, sure. I guess.
Hudgens is joined by Australian electronic music producer, DJ and singer GG Magree (who I learned from Twitter did get COVID-19 while touring and luckily for her best friend was not one of the people who inevitably died). Her website says that she delivers “a heavy dose of what can only be characterized as relentless club anthems” and the “best way to experience GG Magree is live.” She also said on Twitter, “Words don’t do it justice to how personal the whole filming experience was, capturing some of the deepest darkest elements in my own personal life. I was lucky enough to pop my executive producer cherry &score the movie.”
Um, sure. I guess.
According to Variety, “Hudgens and Magree are both self-taught students of witchcraft who have been experimenting and connecting with the spirit world for most of their lives. During the pandemic, they spent their quarantine together watching shows about the afterlife, and exploring how ghost hunters, mediums and witches engaged with the spiritual world.”
What follows is what seems like episodic TV that didn’t get bought by anyone else and jammed into a Tubi show that people like me will watch because, as you know from this site, I will watch anything the channel plays.
I don’t want to be a gatekeeper that laughs at these girls playing with spirit boards — I mean, far be it from me to make fun of Ouija, seeing as how I’ve watched hundreds of movies with spirit boards for this list I keep adding to — and the other things tourists do when they spend a few days in Salem, as well as say words that mean nothing like “hot,” “magical” and “spiritual.”
As we continue to live in the never-ending Satanic panic — trust me, it never ended, it just switched targets and is now called Q-Anon — it makes me a little happy that people will make shows about stuff like this. I was laughing like an absolute maniac when Vanessa repeatedly asked Siri what electromagnetic frequencies are. and Siri couldn’t come up with an answer and she lost her mind and called her phone a slut. There’s also night vision wine drinking and a long cookie-making scene where you can tell that neither of these girls has ever made cookies without the supervision of much older adult. And oh yeah — GG’s grandmother was choked to death and this has a very gravitas scene where she explains it, as well as a massive freakout later where she feels a spirit touch he and then remembers that Tawny Kitaen nearly died in Witchboard.
They made three of those movies — yes, I have seen Witchboard 2: The Devils Doorway and Witchboard III: The Possession more than twice — and if they made more Dead Hot I would watch every single episode. I really thought that Vanessa and GG were going to realize that their sisterhood meant that they were meant to be together, but Vanessa was just wine drunk and in the morning GG was like, “Oh me too, sister, that’s hot,” but the camera catches one tear slide ever so slowly down her face because she was this close to nirvana, but as well all know from Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, there was a way to hell, even from the gate of heaven.
Also: I only know that quote because it’s in a Danzig video.
The 10th Old School Kung Fu Fest: Sword Fighting Heroes Edition! is coming soon, with in-person screenings at Metrograph in New York and remotely on SVOD via Metrograph At Home from April 21-30, 2023. The festival includes US premieres of The King of Wuxia, The Swordsman of All Swordsmenand Night Orchid.
Check out the trailer!
Schedule
Screening on Metrograph at Home (Svod)- (April 21 – May 4)
Following a tragic accident in 1977, the three Winters siblings — Vera (Elena Ontiveros), Wes (Brandon McLemore) and Ethan (Jackson Lee Turner) — move into the strange home that they’ve just inherited. At this point, you understand what’s going to happen: dark secrets, odd happenings and total doom.
Directed and written by Brendan McLemore, the Winters family tries to pass off all the strangeness as the result of their collective trauma. But you know that there’s no way that that’s true. But man, I saw the Amazing Kreskin do that fingers touching table moving thing all the while that he told us that there’s no such thing as ghosts.
You know what I’ve learned about being in a haunted house? One: get out. Two: Don’t bother with a seance. Three: If you find a ring and someone tells you that it’s haunted, don’t wear it.
I do love that the family finds an antique dealer named Alfred (Philip Neil Parker) who conveniently has a wife named Jackie (Angela Moore) who just so happens to be a parapsychologist. That’s super convenient and I think an incredible business model. Or a scam where the husband tells you everything is haunted and you have to hire his wife to take away the ghosts or sell them the valuables for a loss.
April 14: Tiger Style — Grab a Shaw Brothers film and write about how great it is.
At once a Shaw Brothers film, a Eurospy action movie and kind of like the Hong Kong Danger Diabolik, Temptress of a Thousand Faces is why I watch movies.
Officer Chi-ying (Tina Chin-Fei) is trying to hunt down the Temptress, who she publically dares to come after her. The Temptress agrees to this by stealing her identity, flirting with an entire club full of men and cleaning out a jewelry store while wearing Chi-ying’s face. Our heroine’s name gets cleared by her photographer boyfriend Inspector Yu (Liang Chen), who ends up being the one in peril when dealing with the titular villainess and her army of henchwomen.
Yes, the Temptress really does have a thousand masks, maybe even more, as well as an unlimited supplies of knockout gas and scantily clad women ready to answer her every command. This is a movie that at once has a strong female heroine and antagonist, but also one that has fan service aplenty, like the Temptress appearing being bathed by her handmaidens and Chi-ying fighting barefoot in a near see-through gown, but the men around them are such morons that they can’t help but shine, no matter how much of the male gaze gets thrown their way.
There’s a bomb that gets deactivated with seven seconds left — just like Goldfinger — as well as a volcano base — just like You Only Live Twice — and even the Bond theme playing just because, well, this movie is a riot and unafraid where it’s taking stuff from. That’s how good it is.
It all ends with Chi-ying battling the Temptress after she wears the face of our heroine and makes love to her man while she’s forced to watch. A twin adversary kung fu spectacle, topped only with our heroine and her reclaimed man shooting near thousands of bullets and wiping out an entire base full of dedicated domina female supertroopers.
I may not have any power over Arrow, but I know another Shawscope box set has to be coming. I dream that this and Infra-Man end up on it, movies that show that the Shaw Brothers made more than just their typically amazing kung fu movies.
April 14: Tiger Style — Grab a Shaw Brothers film and write about how great it is.
Cheng Jung (Derek Yee) and Wong Lai Fen (Leanne Liu) work at the same police station and start dating. One evening, as they camp on an island, she hears a strange noise and investigates, only to discover a strange green light. Somehow, she knows the island despite never being there and the light eventually knocks her out. When she wakes up, she attacks the kids near their camp with a fork and tries to drown one of them.
Yes, things aren’t normal.
May goes back to being a cop and is placed on a serial killer case by Inspector Wong (Hua Yueh). Somehow, May is able to not only catch the criminal, but shoot him with a bullet that reverse course after being fired, which leads reporter Koo (Ken Tong) to think she’s a superhero. Her new reckless attitude gets her taken off the case, but the two cops that replace her end up falling down an empty elevator shaft.
Everyone that ever was in May’s way must now pay. Like the horney superior who she takes disco dancing and then castrates with a crab. Yes, a crab. Or the holy man whose bird is destroyed and whose face is covered with boils before he’s launched down the strairs. Even an attempt at exorcizing May ends up with her drinking vomit from a toilet and sending a knife into the throat of her aunt.
The spirit that is inside her? Well, she died as a child after being sold to another serial killer, who smothered her with a pillow and then tore her insides out, at which point another completely different guy sold her dead body as goat meat.
Director Yang Chuan also made Hou wang da zhan tian bing tian jiang. If you haven’t seen that, well, get ready. This movie — like that one — is packed with bloody murder, insects, worms, slugs, neon lights and fog, death by toilet paper, nurses killed in showers, ghosts riding people in photographs…it packs in so much that by the end, you’ll be exhausted in the best of ways.
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