FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER (2007)

Nothing galls me more than when Hollywood filmmakers take source material that was kickass to begin with and apply the mentality of, "I can make this better because I'm in Hollywood." That said, I am deeply galled by FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER. I'll get to my litany of complaints shortly, but first a little background for those of you who have never read a Fantastic Four comic book, especially one from the fertile period that spawned this film's source material.

First published in 1961, FANTASTIC FOUR was the series that ushered in what would become known as "the Marvel Age" of American comics history, a refreshing change of pace away from the somewhat-stolid archetypes that the genre was founded upon. The Fantastic Four were a quartet of neurotic New Yorkers whose superpowers enabled them to save the world on an almost daily basis, that is when they weren't fighting amongst themselves. Their recognizable flaws made them easy to identify with, superhero avatars for the everyday person, and they very quickly assumed the role of an anti-team team of good guys who weren't even superheroes by definition; what the FF were was a family first, and a team of metahumanly-gifted scientific explorers second. Saving the world was usually just something that fell into their laps because, let's face it, other than relying on their own unique skill sets, these four were each a mess in different ways, the family unit equivalent of watching two monkeys trying to fuck a football, a state of confusion compounded by adding two more monkeys to the equation.

While Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Girl (later the Invisible Woman), the Human Torch and the Thing handled the ever-escalating threats and intrigues posed by the likes of the Red Ghost, the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk, the Frightful Four (including the regrettably-monikered Paste-Pot Pete), the Impossible Man, the Inhumans, and of course, Doctor Doom, we got to know them as individuals, both for better and for worse, and we learned to care about them.

Then came the day they met God.

FANTASTIC FOUR #49 (1966)

After pitting the FF against just about every kind of threat they could come up with (and then some), creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby figured their dysfunctional super-family could take on just about anything and win, so what was left? That stumbling point was solved by the introduction of Galactus, a nigh-omnipotent, gigantic cosmic being who survived by absorbing the life-energies of entire worlds, and his visually-spectacular herald, the Silver Surfer, another vastly-powerful extra-terrestrial whose role was to find planets for his master to consume.

The coming of Galactus: Not only does he announce himself, he also rocks a cool "G" on his breastplate in case we got confused.

But where Galactus was a cosmic force of nature personified, the Surfer was a tragic slave whose long-forgotten humanity resurfaced after plummeting through the skylight of the Thing’s blind girlfriend’s apartment. With Galactus’ arrival imminent, all manner of unnatural hell breaking loose in the environment and the Fantastic Four facing a disaster that they haven’t a hope of overcoming, the blind sculptress gets through to the chromed-up alien and awakens in him the realization that all life is precious, a notion that enables him to turn on his master and buy the FF the time necessary to receive help from the Watcher, another cosmic entity, but one who the Fantastic Four befriended years earlier. When all is said and done, Galactus agrees to leave the Earth alone forever, but he also strips the Silver Surfer of his trans-galactic travel abilities, vindictively stranding him on our violent, intolerant world.

For a mere comic book, a trifle aimed at kids and enjoyed by adults as well, that’s some pretty epic shit, and it kick-started the “cosmic” genre, a story form that would become Marvel’s stock-in-trade with such yarns as the Kree-Skrull War, the Thanos Saga, Adam Warlock Vs.The Universal Church of Truth, the Dark Phoenix Saga, and many others. But it was the Galactus Trilogy that was the first, and, in many ways, the best, a true watermark in the grand superhero myth.

Which brings me to the movie version.

I did not enjoy the FANTASTIC FOUR (2005), a considerably less-than-half-baked attempt to expand the Marvel Comics movie stable in the wake of the success of the first two SPIDER-MAN films, and went into the sequel expecting absolutely nothing, although it had to be a step up from the first film by virtue of its mere existence. But while the FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is an improvement over the first film, don’t forget that a gilded turd is still a turd and the few improvements are rendered utterly moot by a number of sour notes that sink the cosmic opera like it was the goddamned Bismark.

The new film finds Reed Richards and Sue Storm about to tie the knot, but that plan gets the kibosh when Reed is more or less press-ganged/guilted into working for the military in tracking an incredibly fast UFO that causes strange environmental phenomena wherever it goes. By this point you pretty much know the rest thanks to the earlier recap of the original comics, but the film removes nearly all of the elements that made the story a classic, leaving little more than the Silver Surfer standing when the smoke clears.

I could go on for days about why I hated this film, but I’ll spare you that rant and break it down to concise points, both pro and con.

THE CONS

There are many, especially if you’re already a fan, so I’ll just hit the major ones:

• IT’S A KIDDIE FILM. This film is aimed squarely at the little ones, and that artistic choice robs the story of all dramatic impact. The first two SPIDER-MAN films are a prime example of films that both kids and adults can enjoy, and the filmmakers would have been wise to take their lead, but such was not the case.
• DOCTOR DOOM RETURNS AND SUCKS EVEN WORSE THIS TIME AROUND. Doctor Doom was handled incredibly poorly last time around, and his treatment somehow managed to degenerate even further. The guy playing him is a total non-entity, a complete void of presence that sucks all life from the movie whenever he's onscreen. There's none of Doom's personality evident at any point of the film, and if this guy's supposed to be the monarch of the European country Latveria, why does he sound like he just stepped off the Metro North commuter express from Fairfield? Even more annoying is when Doom manages to remove his trademark mask and wanders about looking just like the Emperor from the STAR WARS flicks (although, let's face it, Darth Vader owes a lot to Doctor Doom, so I guess turnabout is fair play). Seriously, Doom is a big fucking zero in this film and isn't even worth notice after he robs the Surfer of his powers and starts hanging ten in the sky over Siberia (don't ask).
• ALL OF THE FF SUCK AND ARE MERELY CRIB NOTES VERSIONS OF THE CHARACTERS. Little of the rich characterization that made the FF classic characters is found here, the actors' performances coming off like the poor schlubs who are paid to don costumes and serve as whatever hero is needed for shopping mall appearances.
• THE WEDDING OF SUE AND REED ADDS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO THE STORY. There's much made of the tension between Sue and Reed as their wedding looms since he's totally absorbed in his research, and she wants a fairy tale wedding. I don't know about you, but considering that the entire planet is about to be rendered lifeless by an approaching whatchamawhoozits, their personal issues are totally insignificant, so not only do the viewers not give a flying fuck about that bullshit, Sue and Reed come off like a pair of utterly self-absorbed shitheads.
• DISCO REED RICHARDS. Following hot on the heels of SPIDER-MAN 3's execrable dance sequence, this film gives us a painful bit taking place during Reed's bachelor party — an event that the character would never have allowed to happen, as it would cut into his research time and he has no friends other than his teammates — in which we see Reed get his freak on and dance with a bunch of hot club bunnies, using his elastic body to dazzle onlookers and perform "cool" moves. I was appalled.
• STUPID BITS INVOLVING SPEED AND TIME. When the Surfer shows up in NYC, Johnny takes off in hot pursuit (sorry) and in no time the two of them are in Washington, D.C., a distance I can totally buy the Surfer traversing in seconds, but not Johnny. And when the FF need a ride out of Siberia, Reed summons the Fantasticar, which makes the journey from Manhattan in about five minutes. Five minutes? From New York to fucking Siberia?
• THE THING STILL LOOKS LIKE A HUGE HIGH-FIBER TURD IN SWEAT PANTS. Considering the incredible things that CGI has wrought in the past decade alone, to say nothing of what the top-level effects makeup artisans are capable of, there is absolutely no excuse for the Thing makeup. He looks like a "rear admiral," one of those super-solid doodies that stands up and salutes as it swirls down the bowl, and it's impossible for a turd to look heroic. Imposing in its sheer fecal horror, yes, but heroic? No fucking way. Ben should look like the bottom of a dried riverbed and while humanoid, his proportions are distinctly non-human with one eye is considerably larger than the other, a disconcerting image if ever there was one. The guy's a fucking monster, people, and he's supposed to be both hideous and frightening. The tragedy is that a beautiful soul exists trapped within that horrible body, and the version in the film is downright cuddly. Just what the world needs, a cuddly doo-doo man...
• ANNOYING AND OBVIOUS PRODUCT PLACEMENT. There are numerous sightings of the Dos Equiis beer logo, and we find out that the Fantasticar is a Dodge, complete with the "ram tough" logo embossed onto the seats.
• JOHNNY STEALS HIS SCHTICK FROM BOOSTER GOLD. Johnny is portrayed as an avaricious douche who thinks it would be a good idea for the FF to wear corporate logos on their uniforms and do endorsement deals for some extra scratch, exactly the kind of moves pulled by DC Comics hero Booster Gold. And while Johnny was always an attention-seeking dick, this was out of character.
• WHAT WAS DONE TO GALACTUS SHOULD BE PUNISHABLE BY FEDERAL LAW. Galactus is a cosmic giant and a sentient being, so although he's sort of a force of nature he's also totally aware of his actions. The problem is that he doesn't give a fuck about the "lesser" life forms he wipes out, much like a blue whale doesn't stop for a second to consider the tiny organisms that filter through its baleen. The filmmakers have transformed Galactus on an enormous cloud — yes, you read that right — with no sentience, so while a natural disaster like a tsunami or a volcanic eruption may be scary, robbing Galactus of a face and voice renders the threat void of cosmic awesomeness and personality. I've read that the effects people claimed that there was simply no way to make a giant man look believable but that's a load of motherfucking horseshit, so to those effects men I say the following two words: TIME BANDITS. Oh, and a very firm "FUCK YOU!!!" to whoever it was who made this "creative" decision.
  

And the few good points:

• THEY NAILED THE SURFER. I never cared for the Silver Surfer past his initial appearance — a story in which he actually served a purpose instead of being a whiny pussy-boy — but at least he was done the justice that his master was denied. Visually interesting, sleek and voiced by Laurence Fishburn, he's pretty damned cool.
• JOHNNY DOES A “SUPER-SKRULL.” An idiotic plot twist that allows Johnny to switch powers with any other member of the FF if he touches them is put to good use when he absorbs all of their powers to take on the now cosmically-empowered Doctor Doom (even though it was clearly established that he would switch powers with someone else, rather than absorb said powers and still keep his flame abilities, but since no one appears to have edited the script why nit-pick?). Armed with all the powers of the Fantastic Four, Johnny becomes a stand-in for the Super-Skrull, a shape-shifting alien warrior who has gone toe-to-toe with not only the FF but Thor as well; Super-Skrull is a badassed motherfucker if ever there was one and the ass-kicking that Johnny hands to Doom is worthy of the big, green mofo.
• BEST STAN LEE CAMEO EVER. Stan Lee, co-creator of the FF, shows up in a tux for the wedding of Sue and Reed, and when asked by the usher who he is he replies, "Oh, I'm Stan Lee. I'm on the list." The usher looks at him with disdain, says, "Nice try, buddy" and kicks him out on his ass. Priceless.
• JESSICA ALBA IN HER FF JUMPSUIT. I know that Sue Storm is supposed to be the textbook example of a white chick, but Jessica Alba is very easy on the eyes, even in that terrible blonde wig. At last you can put that fake popcorn butter to good use, if ya know what I mean...
  

So the bottom line on FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is that if it were any more of a flat-out cocksucker, there would be a great big, hairy pair of balls bouncing off the film's theoretical chin. And if you don't believe me, check out James Belardinelli's scathing review for some vitriol that makes my opinion look like a puff piece.

Oh, and special mention should also be made of the trailer for UNDERDOG, the latest TV-to-film adaptation, the trailer for which makes it look like it could be the worst movie ever made. Track it down online and be prepared to know the true meaning of despair.

SHREK THE THIRD (2007)

One of the sure signs that a series has "jumped the shark" is when the writers have pretty much run out of ideas and they think they can inject new life into moribund characters and situations by bringing babies into the mix. That said, the SHREK series has officially jumped the shark.

The original SHREK (2001) was an entertaining change of pace for animated features, leaving out the dreaded musical numbers (for the most part; that "I'm A Believer" finale was embarrassing and still gives me agita), giving us a grouch as the reluctant anti-hero, painting the world of fairy tales and legends as an anachronistic haven for lunatics, having the decency to be just-subversive enough within family-friendly story, and raising a stiff middle finger to the entire catalog of similar-but-saccharine fare from Das Uber-Disney. As such it was a near-brilliant effort, and after raking in a gazillion bucks at the box office a sequel was inevitable.

SHREK 2 (2004) was beloved by many, however I found it unbearable but for the exception of Antonio Banderas' scene-stealing delivery as Puss In Boots; come to think of it, it was blatantly obvious that the creators had comedy gold in Puss, so why didn't they just do a retelling of his story, only from the skewed perspective found in the first SHREK? I guess that would have made too much sense...

Now we get to SHREK THE THIRD, in which Shrek and his wife, Princess Fiona, find themselves up for the throne of Far Far Away when Fiona's dad dies, a role Shrek wants nothing to do with, instead longing to return to his fetid swamp. Discovering that Fiona's teenage cousin Artie is next in line for succession, Shrek sets off to shanghai the kid into occupying the monarchy, accompanied by Puss In Boots and Donkey, hands-down the single most irritating "comedy relief" ever — well, next to Jar-Jar Binks anyway — to say nothing of the fact that he's exactly the same character essayed by Eddie Murphy in Disney's MULAN (1998), and who needs comedy relief in a film that's already a comedy anyway? Then there's the subplot of Fiona's pregnancy and Shrek's fears about impending fatherhood, sub-sitcom-level pap that doesn't add much to the story. And don't get me started on the wholly inappropriate use of Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" during the dead king's funeral, especially when given the karaoke treatment by a chorus of frogs (I shit you not).

The film is a strictly by the numbers sequel with little to recommend it, and even Puss In Boots couldn't save this listless trifle. An imaginative use of Led Zepplin's "Immigrant Song" and the best CGI animation in the trilogy notwithstanding, SHREK THE THIRD is feeble, definitely not worth paying full price and barely worth a look on cable, but not quite up — or is that down? — to the level of deserving the title "cocksucker." Take the kids to Blockbuster and rent them SHOGUN ASSASSIN instead.

I fucking hate the summer blockbuster season...

SHIN KYUSEISHU DENSETSU HOKUTO NO KEN - YURIA DEN (2007)

Anyone who's ever seen FIST OF THE NORTH STAR in any of its incarnations will tell you that the female characters were pretty much there solely to be rescued or serve as sacrificial lambs at the hands of rapists and garden variety murderers, so this made-for-DVD place holder (until the next theatrical feature) beefs up the role of Yuria — rechristened "Julia" in the English version, presumably to distance her name from sounding like a urinary reference — the unintentional catalyst to the odyssey of killing that passes as a story, and adds further details to her covert role as the last general of the Southern Cross Fist (if you aren't well-versed in this series, don't ask; it's a looooong story). However, while admirably fleshing out Yuria's role the writers have rendered much of the mystery and surprise of the tale's events moot by having her serve as a behind the scenes manipulator whose actions create a whole new level of pointless retroactive continuity.

This is FIST OF THE NORTH STAR as chick flick, two terms that should never be in the same sentence for any reason, and as a result much of the insane fighting, violence and showering gore is absent, attempting to make the viewer feel guilty for enjoying the carnage that they wanted to see in the first place, and while not boring this is not what a fan of the series would want. And for those who know this stuff, this DVD recounts hero Kenshiro's origin, bits of the Rei storyline, and sets the stage for the next film, Toki's heartbreaking battle with the ruthless Raoh. Now, that's a film I want to see!

SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007)

Well, I finally got around to seeing SPIDER-MAN 3, and having had no real expectations for it I got exactly what I expected.

The film is a bloated, near-two-and-a-half hour desperate attempt at prolonging a franchise, and for what is purportedly the most expensive movie ever made I’d really like to know where all the money went. The script has more holes than an 8th Avenue porno shop, drags along without doing a good job of holding the average viewer’s interest, has some really, REALLY stupid shit happen, and while all that holds true I have to say I have seen many films that are far worse. The real problem here is that SPIDER-MAN 3 is nothing more than product, trying to force the emotional heart found in the first two installments and falling flat.

Here’s the part where I start citing some of the problems, so if you hate spoilers I’d advise you to stop reading and instead watch the recent ultra-loaded Criterion edition of Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI, one of the greatest films ever made in any country and a textbook example of a film that perfectly blends action, involving characters, tense situations, and raw human emotion. Anyway, HERE COME THE SPOILERS!!!

THE PLOT: it’s two years since Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) became Spider-Man, and New York City is finally embracing him as its own hometown hero, rather than vilifying him as J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle would have it. Life’s so good for Peter that he’s ready to propose to Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), but when her Broadway career nosedives down the bowl Peter makes a dorky ass out of himself and the lovers have a potentially relationship-ending row. Harry Osborn (James Franco) still wants revenge against Peter for allegedly killing his supervillain father, so he undergoes the same genetic resequencing that turned his pop into the Green Goblin, gets some badass threads and weapons, hops on a flying snowboard and goes in search of Spidey’s head. Harry then suffers a concussion that erases his knowledge of Peter’s secret, but that doesn’t last long and he comes back more pissed off and homicidal than ever. And as if all that wasn’t enough, the Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church), rival photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), and Venom (a black load of parasitic, extraterrestrial CGI cum) are thrown in to cause more mayhem; the Sandman can turn into — SURPRISE! — sand and kick much ass, but he’s actually just robbing, causing billions of dollars in property damage and injuring countless innocent bystanders in an effort to garner enough cash to pay for his seriously ill daughter’s medical treatments (her illness is never explained). And, in a bit of from-out-of-nowhere plot chicanery we learn that the Sandman is the guy who really murdered Peter’s Uncle Ben. Peter and Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) are alerted to this, and once Peter bonds with the black space-spooge, he becomes more aggressive, sports an ebony version of his fightin’ P.J.’s and goes hunting for the Sandman. That space-jizz also brings out Peter’s inner assholism to a sickening degree, so as the story spirals to its conclusion Peter must deal with his romantic mishegas, Brock’s hatred of him — made lethal when Brock and space-spunk merge — a final showdown with the Sandman and Harry, and his own inner demons.

THE PROBLEMS: there are many, but I’ll concentrate on the stuff that seriously irked my beige ass.

IT’S NEEDLESSLY OVERLONG. Self-explanatory.

THERE’S TOO MUCH SHIT GOING ON. You have three villains, two of whom are sort of uninteresting, vying for screen time alongside the continuing soap opera that is Peter’s life, plus retroactive continuity adjustments (more on that shortly) and it’s like trying to fit ten pounds of shit into a three pound sack. The film would have been okay with one solid bad guy and the counterpoint of the mushy stuff. Speaking of which…

IT’S A FUCKING CHICK FLICK. Seriously, with its overwhelming focus on the romance stuff and everybody’s conflicted feelings and betrayals and crying and shit, the movie really is a chick flick that happens to have Spider-Man in it. They even haul out Gwen Stacy — a major character in the first decade of Spidey’s comics run; look her up because it’s too much to go into here — so Evil Peter can fuck with Mary Jane’s head, and Gwen’s inclusion goes absolutely nowhere. If you bring a date, have tissues at the ready and be prepared to feel the testosterone leech out of your body. Although, I gotta give the casting agent props for finding an actress who looks exactly like Gwen as drawn by John Romita, Sr.

THE FX ARE WILDLY UNEVEN. Considering the film’s price tag, the CGI on Spidey and Goblin Junior look like half-finished or rushed video game characters, and there’s really no adequate excuse for that, a point brought home when weighed against some of the spectacular work done on the Sandman, especially when he’s giant-monster-sized during the final throwdown.

THE INCLUSION OF SPACE-CUM, er, VENOM. This one’s strictly a personal thing. I fucking hate venom, and have hated him from the second he showed up in the comics, so his inclusion was like having a rusty crochet needle slowly stuffed up my urethra. Oh, and Topher “That ‘70’s Show” Grace sucked out loud.

THE SANDMAN DID IT. By retroactively telling us that the Sandman killed Uncle Ben, accidentally or otherwise, the tragedy of that death is rendered moot by placing a face and background on the culprit rather than having Peter’s uncle fall victim to a random, pointless killing at the hands of a Joe Nobody. The fact that he’s sorry about it and receives Peter’s forgiveness comes off as trite, a real “who the fuck cares?” moment made worse when the Sandman, now absolved, allows himself to poignantly blow away into the sky over Midtown Manhattan, presumably to start a new career as yet another airborne pollutant.

TERPSICHOREAN OVERKILL. Translation: too much dancing. Yes, DANCING. When Peter starts becoming aggressive thanks to the space-spackle, he starts feeling like a funky dude and begins strutting down the street in a failed attempt to be cool and sexy, looking like SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER’s Tony Manero as a retard (in other words, looking like Tony Manero). That shit was funny, but when Peter drags Gwen Stacy to the jazz club where MJ works as a singing waitress, the film morphs into FUCK YOU! THE MUSICAL as Peter transforms into a piano virtuoso and channels his inner Fred Astaire, publicly executing gravity-defying moves that would cause anyone with half a brain to observe, “Yeah, that guy’s Spider-Man.” This annoying display reaches the nadir of unpleasantness when bouncers attempt to physically eject Peter, and in the decidedly one-sided ass-kicking that ensues Peter accidentally punches Mary Jane square in the kisser, and, unintentional or not, that’s something I do not want to see.

MY SPIDER-SENSE ISN’T TINGLING. Since several developments in the plot could not have happened if Peter’s “spider-sense,” an extra-sensory perception that unfailingly warns him of imminent danger, had been working, the writers conveniently (read “lazily”) ignore it, despite it having been used to indelible effect before (most notably in SPIDER-MAN 2 when he anticipates a car hurled through a coffee shop window by Doctor Octopus). This gaffe is equivalent to a Superman flick where Supes has no cool ocular powers; that would suck, and the analog in this film totally sucks.

ALFRED, BUT NOT. A from-out-of-nowhere plot device that verges on a non-sequitor is the Osborn family’s butler, Houseman (John Paxton), previously seen for a nano-second in SPIDER-MAN 2. He’s apparently the only person in the Osborn mansion other than Harry, and when he sees Harry fuming after he’s had his ass soundly and disfiguringly kicked by Evil Peter, Houseman volunteers the fact when he dressed the dying Norman (the Green Goblin) Osborn’s wounds it was clear that he was killed by his own glider and Peter was not responsible. If I had written that scene, Harry would have looked at Houseman and said, in Richard Pryor’s voice, “Muthafukka, you couldn’t have told me that shit TWO YEARS AGO?!!?”

So yeah, SPIDER-MAN 3 is a washout, and according to the Internet Movie Database its ticket sales are already slowing, so it looks like word of mouth is more dangerous to Ol’ Webhead than the three villains in this movie combined.

But the one bright spot in the whole thing was more screen time for Mageina Tovah, the charming actress who plays Ursula, the dorky-beautiful beanpole daughter of Peter’s landlord.

If they make another one of these, even with a different main cast, Ursula must return.
THE BOTTOM LINE: simply put, SPIDER-MAN 3 could have done with a lot more thought being put into it, and I pray Columbia learns from this slapdash mistake. It’s too bad that Maguire and Dunst may not return for future chapters, because SPIDER-MAN 3 is not a worthy coda to what could have been an exemplary comic book-based trilogy. Not quite worthy of the epithet "cocksucker," but not all that hot either.

AN INSPIRATIONAL FILM MOMENT

From TENACIOUS D in THE PICK OF DESTINY:

You guys, having some Satanic guitar pick isn't going to make your rock any better. Because Satan's not in a guitar pick... he's inside all of us. He's in here, in your hearts. He's what makes you not want to go to work, exercise, or tell the truth. He's what makes us want to party and have sex with each other all night long. He's that little voice in your mind that says, "Fuck you" to the people you hate.

Readers, I dunno about you, but I can totally relate.

THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER SERIES (1974-1976)

If you ever need to cite a film series that absolutely adheres to the theory of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” look no further than the first three of Toei Studios’ four ONNA HISSATSU-KEN (“Killing Fist Woman”) flicks, the first of which saw release in the West as SISTER STREET FIGHTER.

Having nothing whatsoever to do with my man Sonny Chiba’s superlative THE STREET FIGHTER (1974), the importers sought to fool the chopsocky-hungry into thinking ONNA HISSATSU-KEN (also 1974) was part of an ancillary series by slapping the STREET FIGHTER name on it and playing up Chiba’s presence in the film despite the fact that he’s in it for maybe ten minutes. Such chicanery notwithstanding, SISTER STREET FIGHTER is a total blast from start to finish and sports one of the classic examples of hilariously ludicrous dubbed dialogue.

The story features the adventures of Koryu Lee (Etsuko “Sue” Shihomi), a half-Chinese practitioner of Shorinji-kenpo, and her quest to find her missing undercover cop brother who has been captured by a bunch of Yakuza assholes. Koryu heads to Japan and not five minutes after the opening credits, we are treated to the first of many hardcore ass-kickings handed out by our heroine, in this case against a restaurant full of creeps.

In two seconds. these guys will have the living shit soundly kicked out of them.

From then on it’s non-stop — and I do mean NON-STOP — violence and carnage as Koryu screams, kicks and bashes her way across the Land of the Rising Sun, with the action slowing down only for the brief moments necessary to provide a character’s name or display topless junkie strippers writhing about and screeching, “Heroin! Heroin! I must have my heroin!” No joke, there are even fights during the expository scenes, for fuck’s sake!

During the course of all this madness it quickly becomes apparent that the film takes place in one of those movie worlds where the police exist in name only and everybody and their grandma knows karate. The main bad guy actually collects martial artists, who spend most of their time hanging around his swimming pool and showing off their signature moves (each helpfully identified by subtitles) when not squabbling amongst themselves. A gang of guys run around with wicker baskets over their heads for no apparent reason,

Thai kickboxer chicks in Fred Flintstone outfits (???) with paper bags over their heads turn up with no explanation,

there's a shirtless assassin decked out with a Mohawk, cape and wrasslin’ hose to accent his blowgun and shield, and there’s even a jaw-dropping bit when the basket-heads invade a ballet studio and have their asses handed to them by the head ballerina — in tights, no less — who just happens to be a master of Ryukyu Kojoryu Karate (a bit of info provided by subtitles during a freeze-framed shot of the petite dancer throwing some guy like he was an empty bag of potato chips).

By the time the “story” reaches its climax, Koryu’s brother is killed, thereby upping the ante into tried-and-true revenge cliché territory, and she must take on the main baddie, giving both of them the opportunity to display their hitherto unseen ability to fly through the air and float there during combat. Throw in aid from another cute karate chick, bolstered by the utterly gratuitous appearances by Sonny Chiba and Masashi “Milton” Ishibashi, forever infamous as Junjo from (you guessed it) THE STREET FIGHTER, topped off with a guy getting a sai shoved through his skull (horrible crunch noise included),

and you have a fast paced, logic-and-sanity-bending spectacle that will delight young and old alike with it’s “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. And while the violence is nowhere near as over-the-top as that on display in the rated-X-for-violence THE STREET FIGHTER, SISTER STREET FIGHTER acquits itself quite admirably, including five shorn minutes of gore and violence restored to the recently released uncut DVD, such as a great bit where Koryu twists a guy’s head one-hundred and eighty degrees and his broken-necked corpse staggers backwards down a flight of stairs, oozing blood from the mouth and staring at the other Yakuza scumbags in the room before falling over.

Giving new meaning to the phrase “quickie sequel,” SISTER STREET FIGHTER: HANGING BY A THREAD hit the screen a mere four months after the original and it’s pretty much a remake of the first one, right down to having virtually the same cast as more or less the same characters, only with a lot more kinky sex and sadistic violence added to the mix. This time out, Koryu leaves Hong Kong for Japan in search of some guy’s daughter who’s been kidnapped and discovers the girl has been sold into prostitution, addicted to heroin and used as a mule for diamond smuggling by having the jewels surgically implanted in her ass cheeks.

Our heroine’s investigation brings her into contact with her long-unseen sister, an expert jeweler who doubles as a cutter for the Yakuza and horribly degraded mistress to the sleazy-as-all-fuck villain, another Mr. Big type who collects martial artists as a hobby. The sumbitch even has a training facility that would have been right at home on S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Island in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (my vote for the best James Bond movie ever made), complete with a small army of karate assholes, the worst among whom are the heinous Honiden brothers, a trio of martially-skilled sociopaths lead by Masashi Ishibashi in a role that is impossible to distinguish from his deceased character in the previous movie. There’s even a cocky thug-for-hire played by the awesome Yasuaki “Shoji” Kurata, veteran of more samurai and HK Shaw Brothers kung fu epics than I can count, and though he whores himself out to the bad guys he’s actually the brother of a cop who gets murdered at the beginning of the film, and he eventually teams up with our heroine.

The villains repeatedly attempt — and fail — to kill Koryu, and things just escalate to an insane degree, so much so that I, a man who’s endured at least three hundred martial arts films, got a headache. Don’t get me wrong; I had a great time watching the flick’s exquisitely-choreographed, ultra-violent carnage, but once Koryu’s sister betrays the boss and gets her eyes graphically gouged out for her efforts and both she and the kidnapped girl get sadistically murdered, the film ceased to be good, sleazy fun and I found myself waiting for it all to end. That malaise wasn’t helped by the fact that the film apes its predecessor so mercilessly that I felt like I was stuck in an endless loop of SISTER STREET FIGHTER with some extra violence shoehorned into it and most of the crazed exuberance taken out. If not for its cloned nature, SISTER STREET FIGHTER: HANGING BY A THREAD could have stood on its own as a competent thriller, but as is it’s just okay.

The third entry, RETURN OF THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER, was unleashed barely eight months after the last outing and once again the filmmakers more or less remade the first one, this time with the added twist of ripping off many tropes from ENTER THE DRAGON, most notably the villain with an artificial hand/weapon. Koryu sets out from Hong Kong to once more kick ass in Japan, her righteous fury directed against another Yakuza and his collection of badasses who have kidnapped her cousin and forced the woman to use her scientific knowledge in aid of their scheme to control the world’s gold economy (don’t ask, it makes no fucking sense). Yasuaki Kurata is also on hand again as pretty much the same guy he played previously, but Masashi Ishibashi shakes things up by ditching his persona from the previous two installments — to say nothing of THE STREET FIGHTER — and going for some skin dye and a pimp suit with a collapsible steel whip.

I don’t know if he’s supposed to be Black or Hispanic or what, but he sure as shit looks like a complete idiot.

And bad though that may be, there’s even a Japanese actor in head-to-toe blackface as an African warrior, complete with oogah-boogah over-the-shoulder leopard skin, animal hide shield, and a big, honkin’ spear. I’ll spare you any further details because it’s just another trip down a well-traveled road, but I’ll let it suffice to say that the third installment suffers from the same “been there, done that” cloneness of number two and just like the previous film it would have been just fine if the first movie didn’t exist.

I guess the filmmakers figured they’d milked the cookie cutter adventures of Koryu Lee for about all they were worth, so when 1976’s SISTER STREET FIGHTER: FIFTH LEVEL FIST came out, it was a sequel in name only, having squat to do with the previous three. Etsuko Shihomi is back but this time she’s Kiku, an unmarried girly girl whose kimono salesman dad is desperate to see her married off, but since she’s a badassed karate instructor she’s not interested in matrimony. (Hey, unlike Koryu, at least this chick has a job, rather than just inexplicably wandering from ass-kicking to ass-kicking!) The plot, such as it is, once more involves drug smuggling and by this point I could not have cared less, and the virtually action-free plot not only moves slowly but also “treats” us to several unwanted musical numbers and attempts at comedy. Kiku has a cute friend named Michi (the half-Yank, half-Japanese Michi Love) who lives with her Black half-brother Jim (Hen Wallace), both orphans from Okinawa who share a Japanese mother and weathered the intolerance of cruel locals, so their sibling bond is built on mutual suffering. Unbeknownst to Michi, Jim works as muscle for drug smugglers and when he is killed she has an excuse to seek revenge but of course gets captured, prompting Kiku to finally get off her kimonoed ass and fight, by which point the flick has been running for a full hour and the wait just isn’t worth it. The rest of the running time drags on interminably, even when the fists and feet are bashing the shit out of everyone and everything in sight, so the final film in the series is a hugely disappointing washout. I guess someone tried to broaden the series’ appeal by softening Shihomi’s persona and introducing tear-jerking melodrama, but you can’t have it both ways in martial arts movies, so they should either have gone for a straight up festival of violence or given Michi and Jim their own separate weepy (which would definitely have been more interesting than this film).

The glue holding all of these films together was star Etsuko Shihomi, a protégé of Sonny Chiba’s and inarguably one of the most hardcore of the female asskickers to grace the Japanese cinema, and maybe even the most hardcore. Her every move was both visually captivating and shattering, plus she was very easy on the eyes, reminding me of a Japanese Mariska Hargitay. I mean, look at those eyes:

Jesus H. Christ! The only Asian ass-kicking gal from the Good Old Days who comes close is the gorgeous Hui Ying-Hung, but that’s fodder for another article…

Sadly, like some other martial arts movie goddesses — most notably, her contemporary Angela Mao Ying — Shihomi got married in 1987 and has become more or less a recluse, retiring from show biz altogether and shunning the spotlight, including even granting interviews. Too fucking bad for us fans, because her like will never be seen again.

So, the bottom line: if you see any of these flicks, stick with the vastly entertaining first installment. If you mess with the rest of them, especially the last one, it’s on your own head. Hey, man, I suffer so you don’t have to.

TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

GRINDHOUSE (2007)

I'll cut straight to the point: if you love 1970's exploitation flicks the way I do, stop reading this right now and get your ass on line for GRINDHOUSE. The film aims to recreate the experience of sitting through a sex-and-violence-drenched double feature in a grungy environment, complete with simulated shit-quality prints and dubious trailers, and succeeds in spades. And it really is a double feature, with the two films and other goodies adding up to three hours and eleven minutes of balls-out mayhem.

The first feature is Robert Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR, an ultra-gory throwback to the days when zombie flicks ruled the screen (with a strong dose of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK thrown in for goood measure) and logic came in a distant second. An experimental gas escapes into the air of a small Texas town, rendering most of the populace into flesh-scarfing, pustule-festooned undead, and those lucky few who find themselves immune must take up arms and kick motherfucking ass to stay alive and attempt to stop the gas from spreading and bringing about the end of the world. Rose McGowan headlines as go-go dancer Cherry Darling, whose unfortunate encounter with some flesh-munchers leaves her minus one leg, and her mysterious ex-boyfriend, El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez, the director's little bro), proves to be quite the badass as he dispatches zombies with extreme prejudice and equips Cherry with a machine gun/grenade launcher prosthetic limb. In between offal-showering set pieces, there's a healthy streak of ludicrous humor, and I laughed my ass throughout at the over-the-top gleeful bedlam of the whole thing.

After some fake trailers (I won't spoil the surprises, because they're laugh-out-loud hilarious, especially the one with Nicolas Cage in the most outrageous role of his entire career) we get Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF, a delightfully schizophrenic hybrid of VANISHING POINT's gearhead histrionics, the psycho-behind-the-wheel found in flicks like DUEL and THE CAR, and the tough girl genre best exemplified by the immortal FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! The story gets off to a slow start as we meet four young women who are unwittingly stalked by the scarfaced Stuntman Mike, played by one of my all-time favorite actors, Kurt Russell, who looks like he's having too much fun for his own good.

Kurt Russell as the twisted Stuntman Mike.

Stuntman Mike is a particularly sadistic yet charming vehicular serial killer, and after the story pulls a PSYCHO by letting us get to know and care about the women only to have them horribly killed (I rather liked the bouncing severed leg), another group of women is introduced. This quartet consists of two professional Hollywood stuntwomen, an up-and-coming actress, and a makeup artist, and when Stuntman Mike sets his jaundiced sights on them he doesn't realize he's chosen absolutely the WRONG bunch of girls to fuck with. All of this leads to one of the most harrowing and spectacular chase scenes since maybe as far back as THE ROAD WARRIOR, with real-life Kiwi stunt maniac Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman's stunt double on KILL BILL, here playing herself) giving her all on a car hood as she holds on for dear life at nearly two-hundred miles per hour while Stuntman Mike attempts to run her and her companions off the road.

Zoe Bell: pretty — and badassed like a motherfucker — in pink.

No bullshit, campers, I have not had this much fun at the movies in years, and I left the theater with a smile on my face so big that my head nearly split in half. Do NOT miss GRINDHOUSE in the theater; it'll still be excellent fun on DVD, but a major part of the experience is seeing it with an audience of jazzed-up louts who are in on the vibe and whoop and holler at all the right places. You've heard of other films being touted as "thrill rides," but GRINDHOUSE actually delivers a cracking good, sleazy romp just as exhilirating as a go-round on the Wild Mouse with a gut full of tequila and a brain pan full of really good LSD. I know it's early yet, but GRINDHOUSE not only gets my highest recommendation, but also steps up as my choice for the most entertaining movie of 2007. And considering how pussified R rated movies have become in the violence and gore department over the past twenty-five years or so, I have no idea whatsoever how they got away with even a third of the gruesome carnage on display here. TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!