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10TH OLD SCHOOL KUNG FU FEST: SWORD FIGHTING HEROES EDITION!

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Metrograph and Subway Cinema in association with Taipei Cultural Center in New York, Ministry of Culture, Republic of China (Taiwan) proudly present the 10th Old School Kung Fu Fest: Sword Fighting Heroes Edition from April 21-30, 2023!

Tickets are on sale on right here!

The Old School Kung Fu Fest is back and this time it’s all about flying through the air and chopping down fools with the biggest retrospective of Taiwanese wuxia (sword fighting hero) movies ever seen in New York City. Wuxia movies have a long history in Chinese cinema, but when King Hu’s Dragon Inn premiered in 1967, it kicked off a wuxia revival that reinvented action movies, so the fest has decided to celebrate the wuxia movies from King Hu’s homeland of Taiwan by going big or going home! With twelve movies on the big screen and three more online, they’re showcasing everything they could find, including:

The King of Wuxia (2022)

U.S. Premiere 

Directed by: Lin Jing-jie

Friday, April 21 at 7 PM in Theater 1

The most important thing to know about a three and a half hour documentary about King Hu is that it’s not long enough. King Hu appeared in 1966 with Come Drink with Me and absolutely revolutionized Chinese filmmaking, action choreography, editing, and storytelling. The seven movies he made between 1966 and 1979 are stone cold classics that influenced a generation and then…heartbreak and tragedy struck as Hu’s uncompromising artistic vision met hard economic realities. Hu worked with absolutely everyone over the course of his career and The King of Wuxia features interviews with friends and collaborators like John Woo, Sammo Hung, and his favorite actor, Shih Chun (A Touch of Zen, A City Called Dragon). They take us to the locations where he shot his films, Chinese opera performers demonstrate how Hu created his stunts, there’s rare footage of Hu from his acting days before he became a director, and dozens of emotional stories that have never been heard before. This is a testament to greatness, a documentary that’ll make you want to walk out of the theater when it’s over, pick up a sword (or a camera), and forge your own path in the world.

A Touch of Zen (1971)

Directed by: King Hu

Starring: Hsu Feng, Shih Chun, Pai Ying, Tien Peng, Tsao Chien, Roy Chiao, Sammo Hung

Sunday, April 30 at 1 PM in Theater 1

Astonishing is the only word for it. Running three ecstatic hours, A Touch of Zen is the kind of movie you surrender to, and you’ll walk out of the theater with your soul in better shape than when you came in. Butchered on release, it died at the box office and killed King Hu’s career until the three-hour cut played at the Cannes Film Festival three years later and received the Technical Grand Prize and almost took home the Palme d’Or. Ever since, it’s been considered one of the greatest Chinese movies ever made. Starting as a ghost story, it slowly spins a web as a scholar (Shih Chun) living next door to a haunted house, falls for the woman warrior he first mistakes for a ghost (Hsu Feng). By the time he finds out she’s on the run from the government, he’s caught in her grip, and so is the audience, as this movie delivers bamboo forest fights, martial arts transcendence and Zen Buddhism. Zen made Hsu Feng’s ferocious swordswoman a major star and established that King Hu had more on his mind than mere swordplay. Spending 25 days shooting scenes that take up 10 minutes of screentime, Zen made it clear that for King Hu, making movies was a way of life.

The Fate of Lee Khan (1973)

Directed by: King Hu

Starring: Tien Feng, Hsu Feng, Roy Chiao, Pai Ying, Han Ying-chieh, Angela Mao

Saturday, April 29 at 4:30 PM in Theater 1 and Sunday, April 30 at 4:30 PM in Theater 1

King Hu’s most ferocious statement of feminist principles, this flick features five actresses throwing flying fists (Hu Chin, Helen Ma, Angela Mao, Hsu Feng, and Li Li-hua). The first half of the movie is all set-up, as rebels, spies, and government officials in disguise descend on a remote inn looking for a pivotal McGuffin (a battle map). The second half of the movie sees all hell break loose as identities are revealed, loyalties are betrayed, and all the furniture gets bashed, crashed and thoroughly smashed. Think of it as The Hateful Eight but with women wielding swords. This is also the movie where King Hu, the great action innovator, met the next step in the evolution of the action movie, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan’s “Big Brother,” who does the action choreography in this movie (and in Hu’s next, The Valiant Ones). Sammo isn’t fooling around, and his approach challenges and elevates Hu’s vision, making the action feel rougher, rowdier, and harder-hitting than the elegant ballet of previous King Hu films.

The Valiant Ones (1975)

Directed by: King Hu

Starring: Roy Chiao, Hsu Feng, Sammo Hung, Han Ying-chieh

Sunday, April 23 at 5 PM in Theater 1

For a small story told like an epic, the tale couldn’t be tinier. Corrupt Ming officials have taken bribes and allowed a band of Japanese pirates to terrorize the South China coast. The government dispatches a small band of fighters, anchored by a husband-and-wife team, to take care of them. Outnumbered, they have to rely on guile, cunning, and clever strategy to take down their opponents. What follows is almost non-stop action courtesy of fight choreographer Sammo Hung and director King Hu, who deliver some of their greatest set pieces, including a chess battle that has to be seen to be believed. Sammo had a small role in A Touch of Zen, but he and Hu had just worked together for the first time on The Fate of Lee Khan, and now, in their second teaming up, they meld into a single brutal beast delivering intense onscreen beatdowns. Sammo’s action is aggressive, and features more kung fu than Hu’s other films, which relied mostly on swordplay. Hu edits to Sammo’s strengths, delivering a movie that feels like the future of Hong Kong moviemaking: hard-hitting, fast-moving, and out-of-this-world.

Vengeance of the Phoenix Sisters (1968)

New York Premiere of the Digital Restoration

Directed by: Chen Hung-min

Starring: Yang Li-hua, Liu Ching, Chin Mei

Saturday, April 22 at 1 PM in Theater 1

Where has this movie been all our lives? A black-and-white tornado that sometimes feels like the French New Wave doing wuxia, its opening half-hour will leave you breathless as it beats your eyeballs into submission with its muscular handheld camerawork, savage swish pans, and kinetic editing. Its score, on the other hand, feels like Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrman weaving a tapestry of Chinese opera music. It’s all the work of first-time director Chen Hung-min, who had already edited a host of movies including King Hu’s Dragon Inn. Stars of Chinese opera and the silver screen, Yang Li-hua, Liu Ching, and Chin Mei, play the titular Phoenix Sisters, separated as children in a brutal massacre. 15 years later, they cross paths again: oldest sister Xiufeng (Yang) an accomplished swordswoman who lives disguised as a man; middle sister, Qingfeng (Liu) doling out justice wearing a mask; and spunky youngest sister, Zhifeng (Chin) who loses her adoptive family in another attack. These three separated siblings ultimately reunite to remind audiences that the greatest wuxia family value is revenge.

The Swordsman of All Swordsmen (1968)

U.S. Premiere of the Digital Restoration

Directed by: Joseph Kuo

Starring: Tien Peng, Polly Shang-kuan, Chiang Nan

Saturday, April 22 at 3:30 PM in Theater 2 and Sunday, April 23 at 1 PM in Theater 2

Taiwan’s Joseph Kuo owned the ‘70s kung fu movie to such an extent that we devoted 2021’s Old School Kung Fu Fest to his films (like 18 Bronzemen and Mystery of Chess Boxing). But before he dominated kung fu, Kuo made sword-slinging wuxia and they’re some of the best films in the genre. Released 55 years ago, Swordsman of All Swordsmen is newly digitally restored and it’s been the centerpiece of this retrospective as it plays around the world because it’s just that good. Running a breakneck 85 minutes, the film begins with Tsai Ying-jie (Tien Peng) setting out to kill the 5 martial arts masters who murdered his parents. He’s spent 20 years preparing for this moment, so he’s understandably bummed when things go awry almost immediately and he winds up owing his life to Flying Swallow (Polly Shang-kuan) whose father orchestrated the murder of his parents and Black Dragon (Chiang Nan) who tells Tsai that he owes him a duel to the death once vengeance is served. Bloody, brutal, and full of thorny moral conundrums that can only be solved by killer chopsticks and razor-blade-lined hats, this flick was such a huge hit it spawned two sequels featuring the Tsai Ying-jie character and we’re showing both (The Bravest Revenge is screening online only but the crazy climax to the trilogy, The Ghost Hill, screens live).

The Ghost Hill (1971)

Directed by: Ting Shan-hsi

Starring: Tien Peng, Polly Shang-kuan, David Tang Wei

Sunday, April 23 at 3 PM in Theater 2

The final installment in the Swordsman of All Swordsmen trilogy, no familiarity with the other two movies is required to have a blast. Polly Shang-kuan reprises her Flying Swallow character, alongside Tien Peng’s Tsai Ying-jie, and this time they decide to storm Hell itself in revenge for the death of Flying Swallow’s dad. After all, when life is this cruel, you want to speak to a supervisor. Lord Chin, the Ruler of Hell, likes to bathe in boiling oil and he’s guarded by the Left & Right Judges, the Ox Head Demon, the Black & White Wuchangs, the Murdering Wonder Child, and Soul Hunter Yaksha, so this won’t be easy. Fortunately, Flying Swallow and Tsai have a just cause and an entire hobo army to help them crash through the styrofoam caves of doom and chop necks under multicolored disco lights. Shot by a cinematographer who films fight scenes like he’s storming the beach at Normandy, the visuals come flying at your eyes fast and furious in this delirious, blood-soaked fantasia. Will you be able to describe the plot or map the character arcs? Probably not. Will you see a flying head biting people? Guaranteed.

A City Called Dragon (1970)

Directed by: Larry Tu Chong-hsun

Starring: Hsu Feng, Shih Chun

Sunday, April 23 at 7:15 PM in Theater 1

Hsu Feng debuted in a small part in King Hu’s Dragon Inn and almost immediately Hu tapped her to star in A Touch of Zen alongside Shih Chun. But Zen was a massive production that seemed to drag on forever, so during the downtime Hsu Feng, Shih Chun, and most of the Zen cast and crew teamed up with Hu’s assistant director, Larry Tu Chong-hsun, to make A City Called Dragon. Hsu’s performance in this flick is so hardcore that it won her “Most Promising Newcomer” at the Golden Horse Awards before A Touch of Zen even came out! Hsu plays a rebel infiltrating Dragon City to get battle plans which will help overthrow the Northern Manchus. Her contact gets beheaded by the Governor (played by Shih Chun, being the bad guy this time) who then locks down the city, leaving Hsu with three missions: find those plans, take righteous revenge, and don’t get murdered. That last one’s harder than it sounds because Dragon City is crawling with spies and assassins and they’re all looking for her. Sporting as much intrigue as action, Hsu Feng is a righteous sword of holy vengeance in this shadowy flick that’s like what would happen if John LeCarre’ decided to put down his pen and pick up a sword.

The Grand Passion (1970)

Directed by: Yang Shih-ching

Starring: Polly Shang-kuan, Pai Ying, Tsao Chien, Shih Chun

Friday, April 28 at 7:15 PM in Theater 1

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. King Hu’s A Touch of Zen was such a massive production that seemed to drag on forever, that during the downtime his cast and crew went off to make another movie. This time, it was his production manager, Yang Shih-ching, who picked up a camera, and he tapped Hu’s other major female discovery to headline the cast, Polly Shang-kuan. Dragon Inn may have put Hsu Feng on the road to stardom, but the intense Polly Shang-kuan was the actual lead swordslinger in that movie, and this hardcore flick is a showcase for what she can do. Like A City Called Dragon, it’s also about rebels trying to deliver a McGuffin (a list of names) but this time Polly Shang-kuan and Pai Ying are siblings as well as part of a secret spy network and they need to take the list to a middleman at the local teahouse. Standing in their way, of course, is the government’s torture-loving General, and numerous creeps who start coming out of the woodwork who may be friends or may be foes. Eschewing the occasional silliness of the genre, this one is an intense drama with gorgeous production design and a sense of realism that grounds the action and makes the twists feel real. Polly Shang-kuan would go on to be one of Taiwan’s biggest action stars and director Yang Shih-chung would make two more movies with her after this one.

Night Orchid (1983)

U.S. Premiere of the 2K Remaster

Directed by: Chang Peng-I

Starring: Brigitte Lin, Adam Cheng, Don Wong Tao, Eddy Ko, Fung Hak-on

Sunday, April 30 at 7:15 PM in Theater 2

Movies don’t come more star-studded than this hothouse flower. Based on a zeitgeist-changing megahit TV series and written by Gu Long himself (considered one of the greatest wuxia novelists of all time), this posh flick stars Brigitte Lin, one of Taiwan’s biggest actresses who was soon to find fame in Hong Kong movies and Adam Cheng, a major Hong Kong pop star and actor. Cheng plays Chu Liu-xiang, one of Gu Long’s most popular characters and the star of a series of novels. He’s a fun-loving, hard-drinking Robin Hood who refuses to kill his enemies and has a knack for the ladies. Cheng first played Chu (whose name literally translates as “lingering scent”) in an 65-episode TV series that was broadcast in Taiwan in 1982, and it proved to be so popular that producers invited him over to co-star with Brigitte Lin in this movie written by Long. It moves a mile-a-minute, characters come and go with alarming frequency, and the whole thing culminates in a booby-trapped temple of wildly outlandish doom. Come for Brigitte Lin, stay for the kung-fu fighting tiger and leopard-men, the murderous, caped little girl who pops in and out from beneath the sand and an enemy in white nylon who can flatten himself into a two-dimensional sheet and vaporize.

The Legend of the Sacred Stone (2000)

Directed by: Chris Huang

Starring: a bunch of hand puppets

Friday, April 28 at 9:15 PM in Theater 2

In 1984, the wuxia series, Pili, debuted in Taiwan and became one of the most popular television shows of the ‘80s. In 2000, the series spun off into this feature film which has almost never before been available in an unmutilated version overseas. Here at last is the full, uncut, puppet wuxia of your dreams, presented with all its wildness and beauty intact. The story is straightforward: an evil martial arts master is out to destroy the world and an army of heroes assembles to stop him. So what? Here’s what. It’s all done with hand puppets, based on the centuries old po-te-hi style of puppet-based storytelling famous in China and brought to Taiwan by the Huang family. Director Chris Huang (called “Ten Carts of Books” by fans for his vast knowledge) is a fourth generation puppeteer and his relative, Vincent Huang (known as the “Eight Tone Genius”), does all the voices. Shot on a 36,000 square foot soundstage, with energetic, lo-fi CGI deployed at breakneck speed on vast puppet sets, Legend of the Sacred Stone feels like an amped-up version of Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain, only it’s all done with puppets. Delivered with total sincerity and dramatic depth, after you see it, you’ll never look at puppets in quite the same way again.

The Assassin (2015)

Directed by: Hou Hsiao-hsien

Starring: Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Zhou Yun

Saturday, April 29 at 7 PM in Theater 1 and Sunday, April 30 at 9:15 PM

No one saw this coming. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan’s great arthouse director and master of the long take, decided that he wanted to make his very own wuxia movie to pay tribute to the ones he saw growing up in Taiwan (just like the ones featured in this retrospective). The movie he delivers fits comfortably in this line-up, but the way he tells it makes it feel unlike anything else we’re screening. It won “Best Director” at Cannes, “Best Film” and “Best Director” at the Golden Horse Awards, and it stands as a labor of love that’s deeply respectful of the genre’s conventions even as it deconstructs them. Shu Qi, a longtime veteran of the Hong Kong film industry, plays a veteran assassin towards the end of the Tang Dynasty, less than a single human lifetime away from when the grandeur of that dynasty will disappear, taking all its elegant refinements with it. She’s been trained from birth to kill for her masters, but now a sense of justice and mercy is beginning to compromise her kill count, making her wonder if the people who polish mirrors and repair robes might be more deserving of justice and mercy than the rich people who order her around. Made with meticulous attention to realism in its combat, clothes, and furniture, this is a gem of a movie, crafted, refined, and polished until it gleams.

SCREENING AT METROGRAPH AT HOME (SVOD) VIRTUAL SCREENINGS ONLY (April 21 – May 4)

The Daring Gang of Nineteen from Verdun City (1959)

Directed by: Tu Kuang-chi

Starring: Josephine Siao Fong-fong

Fans of martial arts movies most likely know Josephine Siao Fong-fong best as Jet Li’s kickass mom in Fong Sai Yuk (1993) but she was famous for decades before that movie rebooted her career at 47 years old. Starting in movies when she was seven, and appearing opposite a 14 year-old Bruce Lee a year later in An Orphan’s Tragedy (1955), she got her first role as an action heroine in this flick when she was only 12. Essential viewing for her fans, in Daring Gang, Siao Fong-fong plays a child raised from birth to take revenge on the Evil-Doer (that’s literally how he’s credited) but she’s never told why. It’s not until they meet that she learns the reasons why she’s had to devote her entire young life to killing this man she doesn’t know. Complications ensue.

Iron Mistress (1969)

Directed by: Sung Tsun-shou

Starring: Han Hsiang-chin, Pai Ying, Tsao Chien

A wuxia programmer about a group of rebels taking on the Jin invaders during the Southern Song Dynasty, Han Hsiang-chin plays the Iron Mistress herself, leading a band of feisty fighters in guerilla warfare. Fighting by her side is Pai Ying (A Touch of Zen, The Fate of Lee Khan, The Grand Passion), who loves her. When another rebel leader (played by Tsao Chien) tries to team up, he immediately arouses Pai Ying’s suspicions that he could be a Jin spy or — even worse — a rival for the Iron Mistress’s hard-assed heart. Filled with characters based on real-life historical figures, this flick really comes alive in its action scenes that are full of flashing blades.

The Bravest Revenge (1971)

Directed by: Chien Lung

Starring: Polly Shang-kuan, Tien Peng

The second movie in the Swordsman of All Swordsmen trilogy, this time the focus is on Polly Shang-kuan as a daughter who must avenge the murder of her father with the main character in Swordsman of All Swordsmen Part 1, Tsia Ying-chieh (played again by Tien Peng). After their dad is chopped up, Polly and her three brothers train for five years under five different masters to develop the martial skills they need to kill the bastard who killed their daddy. However, even after all that work they’re STILL not good enough. Fortunately, Tsia Ying-chieh comes along and decides to help. Might the three brothers, one sister, and one heroic stranger be ready to take on the evil slayer of fathers? Not quite. First they must battle 100 conscripts, as they fight their way through the Hall of Poison and Hall of Fire, before they can even face almost certain death at the hands of the Big Baddie. It’s a movie stuffed with non-stop action, climaxing in a final half hour that’s a bruising throwdown, making this the ultimate matinee flick.

Tickets are on sale right here!

Boston Underground Film Festival: Mister Organ (2023)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

A battle of wills, a cat-and-mouse game, a potentially dangerous deep dive into the inner workings of a revenge-minded miscreant — New Zealand journalist/filmmaker David Farrier’s latest documentary Mister Organ is all of this and much more.

Farrier catches wind of a highly suspicious parking boot operation at an antiques store, where the film’s titular centerpiece, Michael Organ, is demanding exorbitant amounts of cash for people to get their cars back. Matters escalate from there as Farrier initially exposes Organ’s racket and then makes the mistake many people — several of them interviewed for this film — have made: getting involved with Organ, who seemingly leaves a great deal of emotionally and psychologically damaged acquaintances in his wake. Former roommates, judges, and even his own family members want nothing to do with him, and Farrier learns why — the hard way. 

Mister Organ is a fascinating look at a person who takes anyone who crosses him to task, be it in a courtroom, with veiled threats, and sometimes worse. Farrier has crafted a gripping cautionary piece about the perils of trying to play one upmanship with someone highly skilled at the activity.

Mister Organ screened as part of Boston Underground Film Festival, which took place from March 22–26, 2023.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Galaxy of Terror (1981)

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April 5: Roger Corman’s birthday — Whether he produced or directed the movie, share a movie for Corman’s birthday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: When Frederick Burdsall isn’t at work or watching movies while covered in cats, you can find Fred in the front seat of Knoebels’ Phoenix. 

If I were to make a list of my favorite directors it would look like this: 1. Alfred Hitchcock 2. Dario Argento 3. Ridley Scott 4. Lucio Fulci and 5. Roger Corman. Why Roger Corman? If you hand him half a mil and say “I need this pic by the end of the week,” he’ll deliver. Let’s see the almighty Spielberg do that. Corman is the king of making something for nothing and we are the better for it because his movies are what movies should be…FUN. I would love to see what he could do with a budget and a solid script, but that won’t happen, so let’s accept him as the low budget God he is.

The list of people who have worked for him is ridiculous. Nicholson, Scorsese, Cameron, Coppola and a boatload of  actors who’ve all made a mark on the industry and they all learned how to do it from Roger. His adaptations of some Poe stories starring Vincent Price for AIP in the ’60s are genre classics, with The Fall of the House of Usher being a favorite of mine, as well as The Tomb of Ligeia.

Quick, true story….Vincent Price was a  frequent visitor to the Poe house here in Philadelphia. On one occasion a woman asked him how could he, as a Poe aficionado, make movies that were not very true to the original story, and he told her with a smile, “Because they pay me very well.”

These films introduced me to Roger but the two that really cemented my love for his films were the two I saw one Saturday afternoon back in 1984, Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World. Shot almost back to back in typical Corman style (Move that corridor over here, rearrange those two rooms and voila!, a brand new ship), I raved about these two no-budget gems for years and I welcome them happily into my DVD collection.

Let’s look  back at Galaxy of Terror from 1981, starring Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston, Sid Haig and Robert Englund. The members of the Quest are heading to Morganthus to find the missing crewman from the starship Remus. Anyone else think this is going to end badly?

The Planet Master has just been told the fate of the Remus. He orders a military official to take over the Quest and go find out what happened. He is told by an old woman, “Death will surround you.” He should have listened. The Quest crew consists of Cabren (Albert), Baelon (Zalman King), Alluma (Moran), Kore the cook (Walston), Quuhod (Haig), Ranger (Englund) and Dameia (Taaffe O’Connell) along with Commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens) and Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie). A quick, risky hyper-jump lands them right by Morganthus and after a more risky landing on the planet they find the remains of the Remus and its crew….with one lone survivor. They return to the Quest where the Remus survivor locks himself in a room and is killed.

Wanting to avoid a similar fate they send out a group to look around and find a huge pyramid which they believe will help them in understanding what happened to the Remus. Finally gaining access, Baelon, Cabren, Alluma and Dameia go exploring, leaving Quuhod to stand guard. Back at the ship Ranger and Kore go looking for the Captain who’s gone missing.

As crew members die in the pyramid, chaos reigns in the ship as the Captain fries trying to fight an imaginary enemy. The survivors regroup back at the Quest and decide to give the pyramid another try. NOT what I would have done. They venture deeper into it eventually being separated and done in by their own fears except for Ranger and Cabren, who go on to play the final game of the pyramid and become the new Planet Master.

Several notable names worked behind the scenes on production and sets: James Cameron, Bill Paxton and Don Opper. Unfortunately, it was vilified by the critics and let’s be honest…not surprisingly. This is not Shakespeare. It is what it is, a low budget, sometimes over the top sci-film with a semi-talented cast who gave it their all. It is mostly remembered for the scene of O’ Connell getting raped by a giant maggot, but sometimes….that’s just enough. So give it a watch and enjoy it as I always have and ready yourself for Forbidden World.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Computer haekjeonham pokpa daejakjeon (1983)

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April 4: Remake, remix, ripoff — A shameless remake, remix or ripoff of a much better known movie. Allow your writing to travel the world (we recommend Italy or Turkey).

Also known as Savior of the Earth or its Western remix Space Thunder Kids — which also has parts of The Cosmos Conqueror (which takes from Giant Robo), Raiders of Galaxy, Protectors of Universe,  Savior of the Earth, Solar Adventure, Space Transformer, Cheolin samchongsa and Defenders of Space  — this movie may claim that it’s about Dr. Kim, Sheila and Keith saving the world from Dr. Butler, but a casual watch will tell you that this is Tron.

The English dub of this is incredible, because it feels like it was made by two guys in a tunnel, as it’s somehow too loud and too quiet all at the same time.

Keith is kind of the hero, despite being very annoying, and spends much of the movie playing a version of Galaxian before being blasted into the video game grid and being beat on by Joe, who is probably the most characterized black man that’s been in a cartoon since the 1930s. Joe whips everyone around him and forces them to play Go, Asteroids, Pac-Man and other video games but just like the world of Bridges and Boxleitner, these games are real.

Keith — or Ki, I mean, who knows with this dub — escapes into the desert as he battles Joe in a racing game, which ends up with them drinking in an oasis together, captured by the tiny and annoying Bbik Soo-ni or Princess Sandy who falls for our protagonist and wants to keep him all for himself, but then he explains that he has to save the world, so she introduces him to her eyepatch-wearing pirate sister Odin who for some reason has a submarine that would not look out of place on Space Battleship Yamato and at the very same time, it looks like Nintendo’s Radar Scope, a game that failed in the U.S. and was replaced with the reason we probably still know Nintendo thanks to its success, Donkey Kong.

Maybe they’ve also ripped off Captain Harlock‘s Arcadia. Who knows. Because Odin, beyond being the sister of the miniature princess, could also be the twin sister of Space Adventure Cobra‘s Sandra. The movie does get the Japanese influence right, because characters either look realistic or absolutely cartoony beyond belief and the two animation styles, when mixed, are very jarring. Oh yeah — the Saviors costumes also look like they come from Lensman.

At the end, as Keith leaves, he’s given a computer disk or frisbee — or come on, it’s an identity disk — by Bbik Soo-ni and that’s what destroys Sark — or you know, Dr. Butler — and that’s how we get through this 70 minutes of Korean animation.

Director Su-yong Jeong also worked on Transformers The Movie and the TV series. He also directed a Bible-based TV series, Jesus: A Kingdom Without Frontiers and the movie Yesu, which one imagines comes from that show. IMDB lists Roy Thomas as the other director and that’s linked to the comic book writer and I call IMDB kayfabe on that.

This is definitely something, I’ll tell you that much.

You can download this movie from the Internet Archive.

I learned about this movie from Ed Glaser, author of How the World Remade Hollywood, which you can buy from McFarland Books. Here’s a fun video he made about it.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Girl With Gun (1982)

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April 4: Remake, remix, ripoff — A shameless remake, remix or ripoff of a much better known movie. Allow your writing to travel the world (we recommend Italy or Turkey).

If you’re going to make a female revenge movie, you can’t get a better inspiration than Ms. 45. Except that this movie, directed by Yao-Chi Chen and written by Chia Lau isn’t just inspired, it’s literally the same movie — it’s by Taiwanese talent but set in Hong Kong — with some minor changes.

Hsia Yin is Liang Pi-Ho, a mute worker in the garment industry who is the Thana or this movie, but she has so much to live up to, as Zoë Tamerlis is perhaps one of the most untouchable actresses ever for connecting with a role and making you believe in it. Liang Pi-Ho has to deal with the same indignities, like street gangs accosting her and a photographer who keeps touching her and the man who comes into her apartment to defile her. She deals with things the same way, blasting them with dispassion. Yet Hong Kong doesn’t seem like the end of the world that Abel Ferrara showed off in his film. And when it gets really grisly, the movie deals with censorship by going to inversed white on black.

It also begins with news stories about attacks on the homeless and gives a backstory to Liang Pi-Ho, showing how she’s mute because of the death of her parents. The film also closes with her receiving treatment instead of her decimating a party while dressed as a nun, then being cut down and yelling, “Sister!” See — I somehow spoiled two movies at once.

According to Girls With Guns, Godfrey Ho — yes, you knew somehow he would get involved — released a Westernized version called American Commando 5: Fury in Red and Crackdown Mission that has some white faces and a Satanic cult randomly thrown in.

Also known as Fury In Red, this also has the landlady’s dog replaced with a cat who our heroine feeds parts of her first victim to as well as a nightclub scene with the Human League’s “Love Action” playing on the soundtrack. The Ocean Shores VCD version of the film also has the theme from Ghostbusters and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and I can promise you none of those songs were legally obtained.

In case you’re wondering, at no time does the lead dress as a nun, but the cop on the case does.

I learned about this movie from Ed Glaser, author of How the World Remade Hollywood, which you can buy from McFarland Books. Here’s a fun video he made about it.

Hunt Club (2023)

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A new version of The Most Dangerous Game, this finds Cassandra (Mena Suvari, a long way from American Pie) trying to find her lost girlfriend and daughter. It leads her to Carter (Casper Van Dien), who offers her $100,000 to be part of the hunt on his island. 

I’m sure you can see where this is going. He wants her to be part of the hunter, along with other women like Tessa (Maya Stojan) and Lexi (Jessica Belkin) while he and his rich friends like Jackson (Will Peltz) and Virgil (Mickey Rourke) try to kill them.

But those rich guys have no idea just how dangerous women can be.

I have to tell you, this movie has one of the bloodier and most upsetting castrations I’ve seen in a movie and if that’s not a selling point, I don’t know what is.

Directed by Elizabeth Blake-Thomas (Unseen, Just Swipe) and written by David Lipper and John Saunders, Hunt Club might not break any new ground, but it moves quick, looks good and has plenty of star power for a streaming movie. I love that Van Dien has found a second life playing heavies in movies like this, because he’s really great in this film.

Hunt Club is available on digital, on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

TWO DOGS THIS WEEK ON THE DIA DOUBLE FEATURE!

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This week, Jennifer Upton joins Bill and me for two canine-centric movies on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channel at 8 PM EST or 1 AM in London where Jennifer lives.

Up first, we meet Dracula’s Dog, which you can watch on Vimeo.

Every week, we watch two movies, discuss them, share the ads for each movie and then have themed cocktails. Here’s the first drink for this week.

The Zoltan

  • 1 oz. Kahlua
  • 1.5  oz. vodka
  • 4 oz. milk
  • 1 splash cola
  1. Pour the Kahlua and vodka over ice.
  2. Add the milk then top with cola before stirring.

Our second movie is Devil Dog: Hound of Hell, which is on YouTube and Tubi.

Here’s the second drink.

Red Devil Dog

  • 1.5 oz. vodka
  • 1.5 oz. peach schnapps
  • 1.5 oz. Southern Comfort
  • 1.5 oz. gin
  • 1.5 oz. triple sec
  • 3 oz. orange juice
  • Splash of grenadine
  1. Shake all the ingredients with ice in a shaker.
  2. Pour over ice and bark at a car.

See you Saturday!

El Houb (2022)

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Karim (Fahd Larhzaoui) tells his parents Fatima and Abbas (Lubna Azabal and Slimane Dazi) that he is attracted to men. This is based on the real experiences that Larhzaoui has had in his own life. And this movie is about the lead up to that moment and what comes after and how Karim must come out to himself, basically.

Directed by Sharrif Nasir, who wrote this with Phillip Delmaar and Larhzaoui, all of these moments are set in motion when Karim’s father catches him in bed with Kofi (Emmanuel Boafo), which finally sets in motion the long avoided coming out. The real avoidance comes in when his family decides to not listen to him and avoid hearing his explanation, so he barricades himself within a storage room under the stairs of his family home until they finally break down and hear him out through the door.

This movie has humor and warmth to tell its truth. Karim’s family doesn’t seem against his life choices, but instead it seems if they just pretend it doesn’t exist, they never will have to deal with it or change. That’s perhaps much worse than even arguing. They create their own walls.

El Houb is available on digital and on DVD and Digital from Dark Star Pictures and Uncork’d Entertainment.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Alien from the Abyss (1989)

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April 4: Remake, remix, ripoff — A shameless remake, remix or ripoff of a much better known movie. Allow your writing to travel the world (we recommend Italy or Turkey).

The true joy of Italian exploitation cinema is that sometimes, you expect a complete ripoff and are instead rewarded with something if not better than the original, then at least different. Shocking Dark AKA Terminator 2 seems like it’s going to be one James Cameron movie and ends up being another. Night Killer was sold in Italy as a sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre— it was released using that film’s Italian title, Non Aprite Quella Porta 3 (Don’t Open the Door 3) — and has elements of A Nightmare On Elm Street yet at heart it’s a very deranged portrait of a marriage gone wrong and a woman on the verge. One only has to look at perhaps the most successful ripoff ever, Zombi 2, to see how Lucio Fulci took the basic idea of ripping off Zombi AKA Dawn of the Dead yet somehow going further and stranger than George Romero.

Alien from the Abyss AKA Alien from the Deep has a poster that might make you believe that you’re about to see one of the many remix remake and ripoff versions of Ridley Scott’s Alien (there are a whole bunch in this article).

Yet this movie does what the Italian genre directors do best and get inspiration and then go their own way.

It’s directed by Antonio Margheriti AKA Anthony M. Dawson. He made plenty of movies that cashed in on other films’ successes, including Codename: Wild Geese (The Wild Geese), The Last Hunter (The Deer Hunter), Hunters of the Golden Cobra, Jungle Raiders and The Ark of the Sun God (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Lightning Bolt (a James Bond-style movie) and Tornado: The Last Blood (Rambo: First Blood  Part II). He also made Castle of Blood and its remake Web of the Spider, And God Said to Cain (which inversely was pretty much remade in America as High Plains Drifter and inspired Eastwood’s Unforgiven), the giallo Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye, Yul Brynner’s last movie Death Rage, the John Saxon shocker Cannibal Apocalypse. And, of course, he made Yor, Hunter from the Future.

Margheriti was the master of lighting, which he needed as he would set up multiple cameras to get shots from every angle, as well as different levels of close-up, giving him coverage faster so he could shoot fast. He was also great with miniatures and, as you can tell from this movie, he seemed to just love exploding things.

Instead of space, this movie is quite earthbound. Jane (Marina Giulia Cavalli, billed here as Julia McCay; she was born in Portland, Oregon but found fame in Italian movies like Fashion Crimes and Complicazioni nella notte) and Lee (Robert Marius, Cop Game, Warriors of the Apocalypse) are ecological activists trying to discover why E-Chem is dumping toxic waste into a volcano. Colonel Kovacks (Charles Napier!), the man running the show, tries to take them out with his henchmen and helicopters. Lee gets captured, but Lee runs into the jungle where she meets Bob (Daniel Bosch), a snake farmer who falls for her and gets rebuffed quickly. He literally milks snakes of their venom for a living, a fact that really makes her upset.

While all this is going on, Dr. Geoffrey (Luciano Pigozzi, using his Alan Collins name; if you’ve seen any number of Italian exploitation you’ve seen Luciano) tries to warn everyone that the toxic waste and magma are combining to send a message into space that’s soon answered by a ball of fire that falls from the sky. Inside that burning bit of cosmic comet is an alien that looks like HR Giger but made from elements you can discover at your local Rome — or the Philippines, this was made there — Home Depot. Don’t take that as an insult. I absolutely love the monster in this movie and am obsessed with his gigantic lobster claw.

Just when the movie is getting a little too Romancing the Stone between Jane and Bob — they flirt like no two human beings ever have before, saying dialogue that feels alien and insane like “Don’t you touch me, you snake squeezer!” and man, they’re either going to kill one another or have the best sex anyone ever has had in a jungle movie that forgets that it’s supposed to be Alien — the M-16 carrying bad guys bust in and his trained snakes attack, leaping out all over the place and wasting bad guys left and right. Did I cheer? You know I did.

Keep in mind that the alien doesn’t show up until an hour into the movie, which would have upset me when I was young but old me finds that absolutely perfect. And by alien, we mostly just see his oozing black claw bathed in Italian horror lighting and so much fog. Instead of having a cool suit to fight the alien in, like the Power Loader Ripley wore in Aliens, our heroes just have construction equipment. Oh yeah, and a flamethrower, which Dr. Geoffrey delivers just in time to get stepped on by the xeroxomorph.

The word balls gets thrown around like, well, balls and the monster is more like a puppet, plus there’s a obvious mannequin death scene as all good Italian movies must possess. Napier is a real life special effect, starting the movie at eleven and going into numbers beyond the charts, eating scenery as if he’s Donald Pleasence in an Italian Wendy’s.

All hail Italy and let’s not forget Tito Carpi, who wrote this, and also was the writer of more than a few other movies that I like, including the Sartana movies, the perfection of Marta, Escape from the Bronx, Sinbad of the Seven Seas, Warriors of the Wasteland and Tentacles. Oh man! And Joe D’Amato’s Il porno shop della settima strada, Thor the Conqueror, Rush and Giovannona Long-Thigh.

Franco Gaudenzi, who produced this with Gianfranco Couyoumdjian, was the man who made so many Bruno Mattei movies happen like Desire, Zombi 4, Born to Fight, Night Killer, Robowar, Strike Commando 2, Zombi 3, Double Target and more. As for Couyoumdjian, well, he produced Zombi and Dr. Butcher, M.D.

What I’m trying to figure out right now is the career path of this film’s composer Robert O. Raglan, who went from being a Chicago ad exec to the music for a wild collection of movies, from Weekend With the Baby Sitter, The Thing With Two Heads and Abby to The Glove, Grizzly, Mansion of the Doomed, 10 to Midnight, Evils of the Night, The Supernaturals, Assassination, Messenger of Death and more. What an incredible resume! He was paired with Andrea Ridolfi on this.

Man, how can you not be entertained by this? There’s a scene where Jane literally does a laundry list, saying “I’m singlw. Catholic. Angelo Saxon. And I don’t trust men who milk snakes” which made me laugh out loud. Cavalli is really spunky and cute in this and Margheriti is the least scummy of Italian genre directors as she just teases nudity whereas Mattei would have had her running through the jungle nude and reenacting that worm scene from Galaxy of Terror.

I’m so excited that Severin has re-released this on blu ray. Their new version has a 4K scan from the original negative, interviews with Margheriti’s son Edoardo and the North American debut of the documentary he made about his father, The Outsider – The Cinema of Antonio Margheriti. Order it now from Severin.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Zapatlela (1993)

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April 4: Remake, remix, ripoff — A shameless remake, remix or ripoff of a much better known movie. Allow your writing to travel the world (we recommend Italy or Turkey).

In Mumbai, Tatya Vinchu (Dilip Prabhavalkar) and his henchman Kubdya Khavis (Bipin Varti) enter the cave of Baba Chamatkar (Raghavendra Kadkol), a wizard who knows the Mrutyunjay Mantra, a mantra that can place someone’s soul into another body or object. They’re being tailed by Inspector Mahesh Jadhav (Mahesh Kothare), who has been obsessed with catching Tatya Vinchu. He tracks him down to his warehouse headquarters and they get into a shootout, at which point Mahesh fatally wounds Tatya Vinchu. Before he passes on, the criminal uses the Mrutyunjay Mantra to transfer his soul into the closest thing nearby: a doll.

Yes, that’s right. This Indian Marathi-language film, directed by Kothare, is Child’s Play.

Mahesh’s boss Superintendent Jairam Ghatge (Jairam Kulkarni) has a daughter who has just Gauri (Kishori Ambiye) who just came back from the U.S. And she has another relative —  seriously, this gets a little confusing keeping track of who is family with who — called Lakshya (Laxmikant Berde) who is a ventriloquist. He’s in love with Aavadi (Pooja Pawar), whose father Constable Tukaram (Ravindra Berde) has already arranged her marriage to another cop, Constable Sakharam (Vijay Chavan). As you can imagine, the doll with the spirit of Tatya Vinchu ends up being owned by Lakshya.

He starts his reign of terror by killing Lakshya’s evil landlord Dhanajirao Dhanavate, a crime that lands our protagonist in jail. He’s cleared of all charges, but Tatya Vinchu leaves for Mumbai, where he discovers that the only way out of the body of the doll is to possess the first person he revealed himself to, who would by Lakshya, who has now been sent to a mental institution as he can’t stop screaming about the possessed doll. Mahesh and Gauri also learn from the wizard that the only way to stop the killer is to shoot the doll directly between the eyes.

Mahesh Kothare wrote the movie in a few days — I mean, he pretty much just remade Child’s Play, so while this is impressive, is it? And he named Tatya Vinchu as an amalgamation of his make-up man’s name Tatya and the translated name for a movie he loved, Red Scorpion. Seeing as how the Dolph Lundgren Red Scorpion was only five years old when this was made, I assume that it was not the movie he was referring to.

In 2013, there was a 3D sequel made called Zapatlela 2. It was also remade as Ammo Bomma, which is kind of funny because it’s a remake of a ripoff. I mean, Dolly Dearest and M3GAN did the same thing and no one really was all that upset, right?

You can watch this on YouTube.