Horror and Sci-Fi films old and new, weirdo trash, arthouse, forgotten gems, well loved classics, and I'm watching the original Dr Who from the beginning.
Wheels of Fire is a competent action packed Mad Max knock-off, marred only by some dated 80s sexism.
The film is set in a post-apocalyptic (the reasons for this aren't clear, but don't matter) world. A permanently stubbled hero, Trace, spends his days riding around in his turbo boosted, flame throwing Ford Mustang, fighting marauding gangs.
There's a plot involving a commune of people who want to fly to Mars in a homemade rocket, and an evil villain trying to wipe them out. Along the way Trace runs into a dwarf, a girl who has a hawk for a pet, a girl with telepathic powers, and a band of cave dwelling albino cannibals.
But, we're here for the car chases, gun battles and explosions, and Wheels of Fire does not disappoint. Nothing fancy or groundbreaking, but nothing unwatchably awful, just solid trashy entertainment. Plus, you have to admire any film with characters credited as Scum Woman 1 and Scum Woman 2.
A mix of mad villain sci-fi film and urban cop thriller, Light Blast is a gloriously cheesy slice of entertainment.
Dr Yuri Sobada, a crazed scientist, has created a laser weapon that can melt people on contact (especially sexy teens getting naked in a disused railway carriage) when fired at large digital clocks, and is now holding the city of San Francisco to ransom, for the sum of $10 million dollars. Inspector Ron Warren, played by no less than Erik Estrada, is the maverick cop sent to stop him, using his own renegade methods to get results, with firing guns and chasing take precedence over questioning suspects and filling in paperwork.
Like so many Italian genre and exploitation films of the 70s and 80s, Light Blast feels like a producer had a good idea, then maybe he (or another producer) had another, then another, until finally the poor scriptwriter is tasked with sewing the disparate elements into a screenplay. With a story revolving around a cop hunting a madman terrorising San Francisco, the main influence is obviously Dirty Harry. Like Inspector Callahan, Warren has a penchant for shooting first and asking questions later, if there’s anything left of the suspect to question, as well as his own unique technique of ending hostage situations. Callahan likes to drive a squad car through a shop window, while Warren employs a plate of chicken, a tight fitting pair of underpants and a surprisingly concealed firearm. The mad scientist is a movie staple but it’s interesting to see it matched with the cop thriller. The producer must have also had a soft spot for Raiders of the Lost Ark, or at least the melting face special effects of the climax (Temple of Doom had been released the previous year, so perhaps it was fresh in their minds), as a similar, albeit cheaper attempt crops up here.
Like so many of his contemporaries in the Italian film industry, Enzo G. Castellari helmed a dizzying number of films from all genres. Here he handles the different elements perfectly competently, especially the car chases, shot with a street level, in-your-face feel. It’s a low budget film, and it’s hard to imagine them having the cash to get permission to shut down the highways in a busy city, so I wonder if there was some guerrilla filmmaking going on.
Castellari also knows not to over stay his welcome, and wraps the whole thing up in a tight 90 minutes. There aren’t many lulls, and when they do crop up, they are the perfect opportunity to run to the fridge and get another beer, the perfect accompaniment to this goofy, highly entertaining piece of fun.
The author Shirley Jackson once wrote, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality”, and such thinking may go some way to explain the appeal of watching films with a fantasy or escapist element to them. Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo is a clever and charming exploration of this idea, as well as our relationship with movies, movie characters, and the people who bring them to life. Although the film is a move away from the more usual explorations of contemporary New York, it still has plenty of his familiar tropes, as well as a surprising twist in the tail.
Cecilia (Mia Farrow) lives in Depression era New Jersey, struggling to get by on her waitress wages. Her husband, Monk (Danny Aiello) is no help, spending his days playing pitch and toss with his unemployed friends, and his nights drinking, gambling and occasionally hitting Cecilia. Her only escape is the movie theatre, losing herself week after week in the fluff and glamour on the silver screen. During one viewing of her latest favourite, The Purple Rose of Cairo, the impossible happens – her favourite character, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) comes out of the screen into reality – and declares his love for her. This has serious implications for her marriage – but also for the rest of the characters trapped on screen, who can't move the story forward without their leading man.
The film within a film, The Purple Rose of Cairo is brilliant, a perfect pastiche of the bright and breezy RKO fluff musicals with their mix of beautiful people flitting between big apartments and New York nightclubs, with singers, big bands, and endless champagne. When Baxter steps down into the audience, this takes the film into the world of magical realism described by the writer Matthew Strecher as “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe”. While atypical of Allen's work overall, it is an area he does move into from time to time, in films such as Play It Again Sam and Midnight in Paris. In addition, as with those films, Allen never explains the cause of the fantastic events, leaving them open to interpretation – is it in people's imagination, some sort of mass hallucination – or has the sheer willpower of a devoted movie fan bought her idol to life?
The characters themselves are a little two dimensional, but in the context of the era, the films Cecilia likes to watch, and the fantastic events depicted, the slightly unnatural sounding dialogue, such as the onscreen characters having a philosophical discussion, does not seem as jarring as it would in a contemporary setting. Farrow helps, bringing a likeable charm to her character, and her sometimes neurotic mannerisms make her the nearest we have to the “Woody Allen” character that usually crops up if the man himself does not in one of his films.
The period detail feels convincing, and the film clearly had some money spent on it, but more importantly, Allen clearly also spent time on the script, and as feels engaged in the subject, so we feel engaged too. The Purple Rose of Cairo is a film about films, one which looks into not just the creative process that lies behind them, but also the relationship between the filmmakers, the fictional characters they create, and the audience who fall in love with them. Here Allen ask questions as to what it really is that we fall in love with – the actor, the character they are playing, or the image we have of them.
The crux of the drama and comedy is the clash between the world of the movies (perfection, order, repetition, happy endings) and that of real life (imperfect, real, chaotic, unhappy endings). Ultimately Allen celebrates both of these for being what they are, and while he does not appear to be favouring one over the other, he seems to suggest that "real" will eventually win out whether we like it or not. This is most evident in the heartbreaking climax, where Allen refuses to pander to the sort of happy endings of classic movie fantasy, even though he celebrates these as good things in their own world.
Martial arts films are tough to do well, and the best ones usually have a charismatic star with a unique style, who can overcome any deficiencies in the script, direction or cast. Gymkata, an 80s oddity starring Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas, does not have this, but fortunately it manages to compensate by being as deliciously silly and unhinged as it is incompetent.
Thomas plays Jonathan Cabot, a champion gymnast recruited by the US government to infiltrate the tiny but brutally primitive country of Parmistan. They need the permission of the King of Parmistan to build a missile defence site, and, for some reason, the only way they can get this is by having Cabot compete in a brutal “Most Dangerous Game” style contest, called where losers are hunted to their deaths - but if anyone were to win, they would be granted one wish.
Gymkata is directed by Robert Clouse, who, more than a decade earlier, had made the bona fide genre classic Enter the Dragon, and with a similar plot (athlete hired by government for secret mission), it feels like he is trying to recreate the same magic with Gymkata. However there are several elements that make the earlier film a classic, namely the star Bruce Lee and his unique fighting style, the excellent supporting cast (Jim Kelly, John Saxon, and the villainous Kien Shih and Bolo Yeung), as well as the superb brassy, funky soundtrack from Lalo Schifrin. Gymkata, unfortunately, has nothing to compete with any of these.
It is common for martial arts films to have a unique selling point about the star or their fighting style. In the case of Gymkata, it is the supposed mix of Cabot's gymnastics skills with more traditional eastern fighting styles. This is a mix that certainly has potential, and Thomas isn't a bad fighter, athletic and nimble on his feet, and let's not forget that Bruce Lee was an excellent dancer in his youth, something clearly evident in the graceful sometimes almost balletic look of his on-screen fighting.
But Lee also had bags of on-screen charisma and as well as a deep understanding of how to make fighting look good on screen, projected a real sense of danger, something completely lacking in Thomas. Thankfully, the dull lead actor is more than compensated for by the gloriously silly, albeit also slightly baffling, screenplay.
Right from the start, we get a training montage, a staple of films such as this, and this really sets the tone for the film : equal parts unpredictable and inexplicable. In keeping with the blend of East and West used in the fighting style, one of his trainers is a huge muscular man who yells at our hero while seemingly trying to kill him. The other is an Asian guy with a hawk, who spouts sound-bites of wisdom and makes Cabot walk up the stairs on his hands, over and over again. This is not accompanied by any “Eye of the Tiger” type music, but simply lots of slightly incongruous cartoon sound effects
Quite why anyone would volunteer to play "The Game" is hard to tell, as nobody has come out of it alive in hundreds of years. However, the King of Parmistan is to be admired for his optimistic boast that he can grant any wish, given that he rules a country that seemingly lacks both electricity and indoor plumbing.
Still, the approach to mental health is something I haven't seen anywhere else. The mentally ill are all sealed up in their own walled city, complete with livestock and a huge array of sharp knives. Oh, and a courtyard containing nothing but a Pommel Horse, which our hero conveniently takes full advantage of to take on an army of attackers, who, conveniently, attack him one at a time.
Any film this relentlessly silly and botched is eventually going to amass a cult following, so it came as no surprise to read that in 2006 Gymkata won an online poll conducted by Amazon and consequently won a DVD release. While Gymkata may lack slickness and competence in front of and behind the camera, it has a cheerful silliness and energy that means things rarely get boring, and while it never reaches the truly unhinged heights of the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space or Troll 2, this is highly recommended for fans of entertainingly bad films.
