The Amazing Transparent Man

I own a few of those Mill Creek Public Domain sets and have spent the last two months watching a film each Sunday night from one disc at a time. I have avoided those I might have seen in the past, but was in the mood to watch Edgar Ulmer's own take on invisibility and the dangers that could come from having such a power. I grinned as I watched it because, par for the course in an Ulmer film, the cast has some really nasty, crooked characters, although the screenplay dares to later show that even a few of them have some humanity about them. You have a Nazi scientist whose experiments in a concentration camp killed his own wife (he seems like a decent man, not the kind of inhuman, diabolical evil scientist one might normally visualize in such a part; he looks withered and browbeaten), a colonel who suffered an injury in the war that has left him deranged and cruel (using their pasts and current criminal status against them, he can blackmail to get what he wants) wanting an invisible army to do his bidding, a self-absorbed dame who wants a bigger piece of the pie than the colonel has been giving her, and an escaped bank robber Joey Faust, a dark soul who finds a little bit of humanity when it matters most. Faust is really shanghaied into agreeing to participate in the invisibility experiments, and the radiation used to turn him invisible have life-threatening effects that cannot be reversed. I never felt Ulmer was that interested in the invisible man parts of the story as much as following these crooked characters constantly backstabbing each other. All have agendas and their destruction is caused by the desire to benefit themselves. The very experiments that offered financial gain leads them down that path to their own doom. I think anyone that watches this will know right away that most of the principle cast are doomed, if just because they knowingly embrace the criminal lifestyle, certain to reap what they sow. You do get some invisible effects, but they are mainly used in two robberies. Instead, Ulmer keeps his film primarily in one location, at the colonel's secret hideaway, inside a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Always working with a shoestring, Ulmer opts to keep his films character-oriented and driven. It is interesting that so many of his films follow heels and derelicts of society, those with a nasty streak, who are looking for how they can get ahead at the expense of others.

No Retreat, No Surrender (1986)

Okay, you can approach “No Retreat, No Surrender” in two ways. You can prepare for the kind of acting and storyline that will leave you with a sick feeling in your stomach (or, in my case, a huge grin and plenty of giggles), or go in with the mindset that there’s some cool action/fight choreography worth tolerating for such HORRIBLE performances, brainless dialogue, and putrid plot. I am making no excuses, people like me eat these jokers up, stuff like “Gymkata”, the crème de la crème of goofy, bad action movies, and “No Retreat, No Surrender” is right there beside it. I don’t know, you watch “American Ninja III” and maybe something like “No Retreat, No Surrender” is a masterpiece.

These movies always look like they were made for twenty bucks with cameras that sat in hot warehouses baking for a period of time, the film stock worn and cheap. I like it just fine that way, as well as, the exhausting method of the editing and rapid fighting choreography, the way a fight has a different camera placement and cut for each body blow. I appreciate the meticulous care by those involved who gave a damn about how awesome a martial arts fight could be between numerous individuals, even if they sacrificed everything else about a movie that might have needed the same kind of attention.

I imagine the character of RJ, with a Jeri-curl and boom box, will probably make quite a few African-Americans cringe as he functions as the “jive bro” stereotype you often see in these kinds of films when the filmmakers sought to branch out to certain kinds of demographics. He even raps and breakdances (oh, boy, wait to you see the dance contest where RJ arrives dressed like Michael Jackson!). What 80s movie with teenagers would be complete without the food-gorging obese kid (“Stick with me, kids, and you’ll never go hungry.”), rude and crude as expected?

Jason Stillwell is a disciple of Bruce Lee and his created Jeet Kune Do, and his father was recently “retired” by a criminal enterprise “taking* dojos from martial arts instructors to use their establishments as fronts for organized crime. Stillwell hasn’t forgotten this nasty incident (his father’s leg broken by the mute, powerful thug Ivan, the Russian (played by the menacing, very young, fresh-faced Jean-Claude Van Damme) and will obviously be certain to confront his adversary in the near future.

But the movie takes this strange detour as pops moves his son to Seattle and Jason tries to start at a new dojo against his “no fighting” father’s wishes. The villain winds up being the bullying overweight kid who is part of a famed karate champion’s dojo (!) and instigates an unfair contest (the champion’s protégé is head of the dojo while he’s away fighting tournament’s across the country and is told by the overweight kid that Jason was talking crap about Seattle’s karate compared to Los Angeles) where Jason looks foolish and stubborn when one of the more talented students continues to beat him. It ends with RJ forcing (at first) Jason to retreat! It is all quite bizarre, but so are all the scenes with the obese character who snarls and lies because he doesn’t like RJ.

The movie piles on more plot, if you can believe it (you might ask, what about Van Damme and the crooks he thuggishly fights for? Because this thread seems cut when the movie treads in Seattle waters away from the opening sequence almost completely), where the karate champ, Ian’s sister, Kelly, is the love interest for Jason, with dojo protégé, Dean (with designs on Kelly) also very wantonly aggressive in his desire for her. Of course, Dean embarrasses Jason by whooping his ass at Kelly’s birthday party, he drives off in a rage, and eventually Ian is confronted by those crooks we saw in Los Angeles wanting to take dojos in Seattle now.

The acting in this movie believes every emotion should be expressed loudly, with plenty of shouting and melodramatics, the overweight kid always a source for Jason’s misery. He plots and schemes, the chunky bastard, always with a devilish grin, loves causing problems, thrives on it.

The movie is devoted to Bruce Lee; a love letter to him. Jason goes to his grave to beg for help, to seek guidance, to vent about his frustration at trying to follow this dead icon’s fighting methodology. Director Cory Yuen was obviously a fan.

In a weird, but wonderfully fit for this genre, turn of events, Jason is “visited” by the spirit of Bruce Lee (in the form of Tai Chung Kim) who will teach him the art of defense, not the misuse of superior fighting skills but how to integrate them into a way to defend himself against those physically stronger through a higher degree of mental strength. That’s a first for me: a training regiment conducted by the spirit of Bruce Lee! Concentration, focus, quick reflexes, Jason learns a great deal from a ghost! And director Yuen gives the Ghost Sensei a ton of story time. It is just mind-boggling to me, but what could bad martial arts movies do without such absurd ideas?

While Ian’s team (two of Jason’s well-established antagonists’ Dean and the overweight kid) never suffer for the miseries they caused Jason (this ongoing feud is never settled despite all the plot dedicated to it), two members suffer painful losses to Ivan during a match determining the Seattle dojo. Ivan will have his fight with Ian (a well balanced match that ends in the nasty Russian being disqualified), but the end result allows Jason to utilize his training under Ghost Sensei Lee and get even with the man who broke his father’s leg and pride. It was interesting seeing Van Damme in the heavy menace role normally occupied by Bolo Yeung, grunting and hard-charging like a rhino. Also funny is seeing Jason have such success against him in the ring (albeit the Russian had just demolished two of Ian’s best fighters and went 2 physical rounds with the karate champ himself). Today’s audience will only care about seeing Van Damme’s seven or so minutes on screen while the rest isn’t anything to write home about. Most of the film is about father (portrayed by an actor who believes every line of dialogue should be overemphasized)and son bickering over when to and not to fight, and the jerk obese kid's mean-spirited shenanigans. Watch at your own risk.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

I was writing this for the user comments of imdb, but it went overlong because I couldn't stop writing. I think I need to add photos but at this moment I have other horror films to watch on this particular Sunday. I just enjoy spending an afternoon with Dawn of the Dead. I think many consider the heavier alternate versions overlong, but I just consider them another worthwhile zombie experience.

The review itself...

The plot: America has fallen under an apocalyptic doom thanks to the dead eating on the living with two SWAT members, a helicopter pilot, and a news broadcasting station director “running”, hopping in a chopper, flying off for a place to get away from the threat of destruction, landing on a huge shopping mall, hermetically sealing themselves off from the world around them, until their new “home” is invaded by a traveling group of raiders who move from place to place to pillage and steal to survive.

I finished watching the “extended version” and actually much prefer it to other versions because it just felt more like a “complete” film, further advancing the characters, how they deal with the zombie apocalypse and enjoy the mall for all the creature comforts and material wants that such an environment provides.
Just throwing off some thoughts, I have to admit that Roger’s departure was kind of a bummer this time around to me, because I wondered to myself how he would have reacted (and responded) to the raiders intruding upon “their digs”.

Flyboy and Francine’s (David Emge and Gaylen Ross) relationship never quite seems to contain any real present passion, which I found interesting; if anything, they seemed to annoy each other. I often wonder why Roger (Scott Reiniger) seemed to lose his bearings during the sequence where he and Peter (Ken Foree) were hot wiring diesels and driving them in front of the mall doors to protect their home from outside forces (the zombies, possible authorities, or others wanting to enter in). I mean he had already seen a lot of murder and zombie activity—I guess, after seeing enough of it, he could no longer hold together his sanity, but still, I ponder what sent him over the deep end to the point of irrationality which eventually led to several mistakes that would cost him his life.

Often discussed by zombie aficionados and DAWN fans is the comic treatment of the zombies: I think this movie just uses zombies in every way imaginable, including the pie-in-the-face ridicule, useless against weapons, dangerous when allowed to enlarge, a menace in that their bite contributes to the increase in numbers (strength in numbers matters), such a reminder of what we once were that some living humans have a hard time shooting them in the brain (a constant reminder of how difficult it is to just kill zombies is news broadcasts featuring talking heads on opposing sides debating the immoral act of shooting a former loved one in the brain or separating the head from the body, or especially the uneasy debate on how to respond to the epic crises facing the country, with non-stop bickering and arguing expressing the collapse of civilization, showing us that when push comes to shove, we cannot handle an epidemic of such magnitude), and even ignored for a small period of time (once our heroes are able to quarantine them from the mall, they seem to go about their lives inside the mall, enjoying their place for its many pleasures).

As a teenager, I remember renting the VHS, utterly shocked by the graphic violence on display, the way bodies are torn apart (the scene where a victim has his bowels removed certainly had me in total amazement), flesh is ripped from throats, shoulders, necks, legs, and arms, and the feeding frenzy that results from stupid decisions of several victims. David Emge’s zombie is a stunning depiction of a man in his exact state the moment of death: the limp, the gun hanging on the finger, the lumbering walk ( just impressive).

As an adult, the most powerful sequence to me is the Harlem apartment complex raid where the police enter to find a Puerto Rican gang of hostiles, encountering the undead as well, with one particular SWAT member completely unhinged ( a racist, blinded by rage and hostile intent, exploding a head with a shotgun blast). That incredible moment where a boarded room with those arms emerging, full of zombies, and the kid killing himself (I seem to remember the scene actually showing him blowing his brains out when I watched it on VHS, but dvd prints don’t seem to have it) show us Hell on Earth, a taste of how the zombie crisis is turning a once civilized country upside down.

Of course, the middle-of-nowhere farmland plane landing pad where our heroes stop to get fuel contains many powerful, memorable moments (such as the head severed at the top by the helicopter propeller, Foree having to shoot two zombie kids, and the iconic poster zombie’s momentary presence on screen).

Many do not like the greenish blue skin color of the zombies, but I think it gives the picture an appropriate comic book quality, including the bright red, thick, gushing blood that bubbles when the skin is pried away by zombie teeth. To this zombie fan, nothing is more awesome than rotting flesh make-up effects and flesh-wound gore, and “Dawn of the Dead” pleased this gorehound in every way.

To me, the *money shot*, a phrase used to describe all sorts of things, for a horror film isn’t the exposing of tits but a quick, bursting impact of brains/blood splattering on a wall after a zombie’s (or human’s) head is hit with a shot-gun blast. I applaud this movie for its audacity, the challenge to anyone to sit through its violence and dig on the thematic material that accompanies the gore.

I was fortunate, I think, to rent a grotty, beat-up VHS copy from an appliance center more concerned with selling refrigerators instead of hiring out video tapes, as a teenager, having never experienced such “sucker punch” (as Romero puts it) horror at such an impressionable age. I’m a “dead-head” thanks to that particular Midnight experience (and a lot of Saturdays, re-renting the movie over and over from the same place!) and continue to watch the film with such fondness and joy.

Barbara Crampton

Word of warning: I have added some nude photos so if you do not like seeing a beautiful woman naked leave this blog post now.


Barbara Crampton (along with Rebecca DeMornay in Risky Business and Linnea Quigley in The Return of the Living Dead) was one of the first women I desired sexually as a teenager introduced to nudity.



A fantasy dream girl of mine, Crampton represented everything I have ever been attracted to. She could lose herself into the ‘girl next door’ or some ‘scientist’ in glasses (like From Beyond) part, roles which might hide the sex kitten underneath the disguise. I, however, have admired her willingness to “go all the way” in roles which demand a certain degree of courage.



Let’s face it, naked, strapped to a gurney, with a severed head between your legs, I imagine it wasn’t easy performing in front of the camera in such a situation without a degree of reservation and reluctance. The character was violated in an absurd way unlike anything we had every seen at that time. Maybe not sexually, but having to endure that devious professor's severed head ogling her body, without her ability to thwart off his leering, Crampton properly showed the horror such a ordeal would elicit. How could she not encourage arousal, especially in a dominatrix outfit in From Beyond? Crampton, to her credit, seemed unencumbered with the fear of surrendering her naked flesh to roles she portrayed> Such moments as her clothes being torn off by her lobotomized father in Re-Animator at the request of Dr. Hill, while unconcious due to a shock, soon awakening to find herself tied to that gurney for the film's most notorious scene, had to acquire a bit of bravery because many would not allow themselves to be put in such a precarious position for the sake of an absurd scene such as that.



Still, I liked her performances in Stuart Gordon’s pictures featuring Crampton, such as her most famous Re-Animator and (my favorite) From Beyond, as characters who just didn’t appear in as bubble-headed idiots that drop their clothes on screen. I cared about both characters, and didn’t want harm to come to them although danger was almost a guarantee considering the threats that existed in those films.




She appeared sparingly in other films like Castle Freak and Robot Wars (and Puppet Master), but I will never understand why she never achieved B-movie goddess status she so richly deserved. I watched Chopping Mall a week ago and couldn’t understand why director Wynorski didn’t feature Crampton in a more substantial role because she could easily play a better part than some ditzy moron who makes these stupid decisions that get her burned alive.

I didn’t think she was the same as those many other dumb ass blonds who bounce their boobs and stumble over their lines while on all fours receiving a shagging doggy style. Maybe this is why she didn’t make a lot more movies after Chopping Mall, appearing in a semi-lead role in Castle Freak as the estranged wife of Jeffrey Combs, or featured as more or less a “special guest star” in something obscure like Robot Wars. I noticed she got a part in Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem, so I smiled knowing that the director reached out to her to allow us to see Barbara once again.

As a 34 year old, I look back fondly at my teenage years when women like Barbara were so very vividly present in my mind, some might say I looked at her from purely lustful reasons, but I enjoyed not just her beautiful body, but those particular characters she portrayed before the interesting roles which could punctuate her sensual abilities on screen evaporated. Too bad, I wish there was as big a resume for Crampton as there is for Quigley who seems to have never stopped working. Perhaps Crampton simply wanted more quality parts while Quigley just wanted to keep working, but I hate that I can’t find a list of films with Barbara in them…you know goodies to discover.

I certainly get a geek thrill looking back at photos like the ones I have included here where she seems perfectly aware of her alluring qualities as a sexpot, uninhibited enough to establish her then-connection with sci-fi and horror.

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2

***/****


I just had some random thoughts about Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2, and I haven’t added anything to my blog in a while. So what the fuck, might as well include them here, with some pictures. I included a nude photo of Wendy Lyon (I don’t imagine very many people stop by this blog anyway, so why not?).



Well, if you are gonna rip off “Carrie”, “The Exorcist”, and “Nightmare on Elm Street” then do it right and “Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2” does just that. Wendy Lyon sure impressed me in showing that she could portray two specific characters and mimic Lisa Schrage to a tee. Speaking of Schrage, I relished her so much that I longed for her to be on screen so much longer than she actually was (so seductively sexy in a slutty way yet conveying a sense of menace if her ire is enflamed, you don’t want to cross this woman or scorn her in anyway, her wrath gets your ass killed). The film really is an effects movie, but Lyon’s locker room scene is easily the best sequence of the film going away. What I liked most about it was her comfort buck naked on screen: you could actually see Mary Lou, completely uninhibited and embracing her new body, knowing that the victim (trying to hide in a locker) was mincemeat, and it is because Lyon has that ability to show the new host possessing her character Vicki.



This film also includes a fetish of mine, when Vicki appears in a guy’s jersey during the “demonic horse”/ “water mirror”/ “sheet violation” sequence—I am overwhelmed with arousal when a pretty young thing gets into a guy’s jersey. Anyway a rocking horse has rarely looked more scary and this has to be the first time I’ve seen bed sheets “trap” a girl to her bed, the impressions of these hands groping Lyon’s body appearing (it is a GREAT scene). The bizarre chalk board scene, where these hands protrude, grabbing Lyon, pulling her into it, with Mary Lou emerging from the basement chest in Vicki’s body, is quite surreal.



This movie thrives on these unusual nightmarish special effects scenes, like Mary Lou’s burnt corpse bursting from Vicki’s body, over a period of minutes metamorphosing into her beautiful body before the fire set her ablaze in the 50s. We get the Carrie prom night homage where students scurry in horror as Mary Lou extends her fury by turning the hall into a sparks-flying, lights falling, tables-turning, mayhem-filled craze, where a certain self-absorbed bitch (an adversary to Vicki), Kelly Hennelotter (Terri Hawkes) gets a “lightning bolt” impalement. The Exorcist homage has a Catholic Priest warning Ironside (as a teenager he was Mary Lou’s boyfriend, getting revenge for her dismissal of him) to embrace Christianity or else not have protection against her evil (although she doesn’t fear him and the crucifix does not harm to her).



I also love these off-the-wall scenes that seem to exist just to make us fall back in our seats like when Mary Lou has Vicki give her pops a nice sensual kiss, sends Vicki’s fanatically drab religious mom through their door, and enters principal Ironside’s office, hopping on his desk, eventually sitting on his lap. I think it just further establishes that Lyon is fully capable of playing a foxy minx lost in her role as Mary Lou, who could do such things, behave such a way, without flinching. I particularly grinned when Mary Lou, at the beginning, confesses to her priest that she committed a multitude of sins and doesn’t feel guilt for doing so.

Sigh

I've just hit a rut. I have lost my passion for movies it seems. I have still been churning out imdb user reviews, but mostly for television. Stuff like Tales from the Darkside, The Twilight Zone (both the 60 and 80s version), even Charlie's Angels. Doing these can be laborious, yet I have such a passion for writing, especially for entertainment, that I press on. Life has a tendency to drag us down, those who have this thriving creative energy inside that wants to express itself, and movies with television can be a sort of device to unleash such energies. I hope October produces that lost love that has been absent for a while. A return to the horror genre is what I desire, even if life has sucked away that joy I used to have.

Nemesis (1992)

* * *

In the future, cybernetic beings are replacing humans with perfectly duplicated cyborgs which mimic human behavior and look the part. Oliver Grunner is an LA cop, Alex Raine, who is a human with cybernetic parts, who hunts terrorists for his department, under Commissioner Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson). What Alex doesn’t realize is that Farnsworth has been “replaced” with a state-of-the-art cybernetic recreation who is to lead a revolution with a plan to wipe out humankind.

There are characters like Angie-liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), Max Impact (Merle Kennedy, who moves like a monkey), Jared (Marjorie Monaghan, a “good cyborg” and once Alex’s lover before he discovered she was in fact an “it”), and Julian (Deborah Shelton, Jared’s cybernetic ally whose naked body actually looks synthetic) who are trying to stop the evil cyborg’s from the planned human holocaust.



The plot, with a lot of technical mumbo jumbo as dialogue to explain facets of the story play second fiddle to the non-stop action and you can most definitely see the John Woo influence in the grand ways director Albert Pyun and cinematographer George Mooradian stage action sequences. Gruner, in exceptional shape, even moves like Chow Yun Fat , at times, with how he shoots his various guns, particularly hand weapons.

Lots of buildings take abuse, sparks emitting when metal is blasted into, the ground exploding from missiles and bullets, trees in Java toppling, old factories no longer in use taking an ass whooping thanks to the stunt coordinators and action choreographers allowed to work their cinematic magic.

Lots of recognizable faces inhabit the cast, the aforementioned Tagawa, who appearance always brings a smile to my face, Thomerson who had to check his dependable personality at the door because he portrays a cyborg, Merle Kennedy who many might remember from Night of the Demons 2, Yuji Okumoto (a dimestore Java hotel owner who plays a more important role in the plot than first realized) some might recall as Ralph Macchio’s nemesis in Karate Kid 2, the late, great Brion James as Farnsworth’s right-hand man with a peculiar accent that turns him into a clown, a very young Thomas James, naked as a jaybird, holding up in a Java hotel room with Julian as they assess Alex’s motives from a distance, and Deborah Shelton who many will remember as the “woman of interest” for oft-tormented hero Craig Wasson in Brian DePalma’s classic Body Double.



Still, it is all about the action in Nemesis as Pyun just lets it all hang out, exploiting Hawaiian locations which substitute for Java, getting a ton of mileage out of areas like the Kaiser Steel Mill in California, among other places where he can allow lots of shoot outs where those discharging their weapons hit everything else than their desired targets it seems. Coolest scene could be where Gruner must escape from certain death by blowing out several floors under him in order to escape. Plenty of “cyborg effects” which should appeal to fans of “cyberpunk”.



I particularly love one scene where an old lady, picked on by one of Farnsworth's cybernetic henchmen, pulls a gun and blows him away! Haha, good one, Pyun! There's even one scene where Farnsworth petitions Alex to help him find a "rogue cyborg", Jared, who fled with certain data important in helping a renegade human terrorist group, where Gruner has long hair a bit too reminiscent to Rambo. Essentially, though, Gruner is a half-human robotic version of Rambo, able to take unrealistic abuse and keep forwarding ahead.



It's all about fun. I love action movies if they give me what I crave: carnage and destruction. Nemesis does just that. It was much to my surprise, although I don't know why, that Pyun has made something like four of these movies! Geez, Louise. If you want more of the Thomerson we fans of his know and love, I suggest Pyun's irresistible, Charles Band-produced, sci-fi action junk movie, Dollman. As you might expect, Nemesis does recycle storylines from other popular cinematic fare, but this is of no consequence to those of us who eat this shit up.