Fatal Contact (2006 )
After a couple of memorable martial arts films playing a villain, Wu Jing was given top billing as a hero. Fatal Contact is basically a potboiler. A familiar story that has been done many times before about a poor martial artists who ends up fighting in illegal underground matches. As usual with these stories, the hero does well, making a lot of money he never had before and living in wealth for the first time in his life. But as usual, something goes wrong in the third actthat has him looking for revenge against the gangsters he was working for. I won't say what his grievance with them is, because it is a spoiler, but needless to say we get the predictable ending where Wu Jing storms the gangsters clubhouse with he intent of killing his bosses. When this happened in a Shaw Brothers film, or any number of classic old school martial arts films, the hero's assult would have lasted for 20 or more minutes while he fought his way through an army of gangsters before reaching the big boss, usually getting mortally wounded on the way so he is just barely still alive when he confronts the boss. ( I just want to point out that in almost all of the Shaw Brothers films, the boss had no fighting skills himself and relied on his army of killers to protect him. Hence the barely alive hero living just long enough to get the job done. Bruce Lee influenced a change in this formula with the movie The Big Boss ( 1971 ) where the gangster boss was a martial arts master. Although with The Way of the Dragon ( 1972 ) he reverted back to a crime boss without any martial arts skills. But by the mid 70s on up the head bad guy was the toughest fighter in the film. ) In Fatal Contact the takedown of the gangsters takes about two minutes, and lasts that long only because one of his bosses runs away ans has to be chased. The handful of gangsters guarding the bosses are killed of with very little effort. A very anticlimatic ending.
In fact, the film's biggest problem is how little fighting there actually is. The fighting matches are far apart and brief as most of the film follows the characters down time between the fights. You would think there would be a lot more to showcase Wu Jing's skills. But director Dennis Law as more interested in making a drama. The film is decent as a drama, but that's not what Wu Jing's fans were looking for. It was because of Wu Jing that Dragon Dynasty acquired the North American rights to this film, perhaps even before they even watched a print of the film.
X-Men Apocalypse ( 2016 )
There is an annoying trend that has recently taken over film franchises. The alternate timeline reboot. This happens when a character in the franchise travels back in time and does something to cause the time line to change, erasing story lines and even negating the death of characters. While timeline reboots are more common on television, on shows as varied as The Flash and Fringe, there have been major offenders on movie franchises. Star Trek, for example, with a franchise that spans both movies and television, was dramatically altered by J J Abrams when angry Romulans time travel into the past, killing Kirk's father and destroying Spock's home planet Vulcan. The end result was an altered time line where such events as the Enterprises first encounter with Khan never happened, allowing alternative versions of those stories to happen.
Timeline reboots are a way for studios to have their cake and eat it too. To reboot a franchises they are not happy with and start fresh, while at the same time being able to claim it is the original franchise. As far as I am concerned, a timeline reboot is no different than any reboot. The canon has been voided. The early films no longer count. In the case of the X-Men franchise, a reboot was necessary because the first three films were written as a trilogy with a beginning, middle and end, where major characters were killed off. he plan was that if there were to be any future X-Men films then they would all be prequels, but as solo films under the banner of X-Men Origins. The only X-Men Origins film to be made was for Wolverine. What followed were two other solo Wolverine films, but no other X-Men solo films. ( Deadpool does not count because he was a villain in the franchis before becoming an antihero in a film series that is neither canon with the original films nor the timeline reboot. ) X-Men: First Class was greenlit as a reboot of the franchise. But then came X-Men: Days of Future Past which established that the X-Men Trilogy was indeed part of the First Class timeline. In it Wolverine travels back in time to prevent the events that lead to the creation of the Sentinels, eventually teaming up with the X-Men of the past. He succeeds, but then returns to an altered timeline where characters killed off in the previous X-Men trilogy are still alive. So basically X-Men Apocalypse is the first film to take place in the altered timeline, with one of the alterations being some characters who were villains in the past X-Men films now being established as heroes. So basically, the first three X-Men films never happened.
I guess this is all a moot point. We all know that the current X-Men franchise is as good as dead once the X-Men move into the MCU. The second adaption of the Dark Phoenix Saga ( which completely contradicts the ending of X-Men: Days of Future Pat ) had already been filmed before Disney bought 20th Century Fox, so should still be released. But with exception to the Deadpool movies which are too popular to end and can still continue within their own alternate universe, it is very likely that none of the planned X-Men sequels and spin-offs will ever see the light of day, and from this point on all plans will be for a new X-Men canon that takes place in the MCU.
Having said that, the latest X-Men film is still entertaining.
The Ape ( 1940 )
Saturday Night Live is on a break again this week, although for a good reason this time, Easter. Which means once again I have time for a third movie and can take another crack at the Son's of Kong set. Normally I set my expectations for crap, considering these are mostly old public domain B pictures from poverty row studios. But this week's film has some promise. First off, it was made by Monogram, which along with Republic Pictures were the poverty row studios that came the closest to transitioning into a major studio. ( The only poverty row studio to pull that one off was Columbia. ) Monogram was capable of producing quality films, such as the Bowery Boys/East Side Kids series that ran for 48 films, still the record for the longest running American feature film franchise. ( The only other franchise to beat that record was Mexico's Santo series which ran for 52 films, one which ended up being an experiment on MST3K. )
The script was based on the play of the same name, written by Adam Shirk, who is infamous for writing the script for Ingagi ( 1930 ), the fake documentary that claimed to show footage of an African cult that sacrificed women to gorillas. The success of that film lead to RKO giving the green light to King Kong, simply because it also featured a tribe that sacrificed women to gorillas, ( or at least one big gorilla. ) Critics once accused the play The Gorilla of ripping off the play The Ape. ( The adaption of The Gorilla starring The Ritz Brothers is in the same Sons of Kong collection, and was reviewed a month ago. ) Monogram bought the film rights in 1934, making an adaption called House of Mystery.
The reason for the second adaption only six years later was that they had Boris Karloff signed to a nine picture deal. This was to be the final film in the contract, and the studio decided they wanted his last film to be a top tier production. ( Their slang for movies given a bigger budget than usual. ) The Ape was their hottest property, and apparently a great fit for one of the best known actors from the horror genre. Monogram hired Curt Siodmak to write a new script. As said last week, Siodmak would go on to write the Wolfman movies for Universal, and at the time was writing scripts for the Invisible Man franchise. He also wrote and directed last week's movie Bride of the Gorilla, a film that was only hurt by cheap production, including the decision to change the half human/half cat monster Siodmak created for the film into a guy in a rented gorilla costume. Helping Siodmak as a co-writer was Richard Carroll, who was simultaneously pinching up the script for the W.C. Fields classic The Bank Dick. Directing was William Nigh, who also directed House of Mystery. For me the movie that stands out in his filmography is The Fire Brigade ( 1926 ), a silent disaster movie I have been trying to see for the past 30 years after seeing a clip from it on Kevin Brownlow's documentary Hollywood. The rest of the cast is your standard skid row B movie actors, the only notable one being costar Maris Wrixton who would be the star of White Pongo five years later. Otherwise, it looked as if Monogram made every effort to produce a film of the same quality as the Universal horror films.
So basically Monogram had everything they needed for a classic horror film. But what we get instead is mediocre. Boris Karloff plays a doctor who has devoted his life to finding a cure for paralysis. His motivation, that both his wife and daughter were hit with a disease that paralyzed them, eventually killing them both, and he had been unable to save them. He has so far perfected a treatment that works on both Guinea pigs and dogs. Moving to a town with a large number of paralysis victims, he opens up a practice, but is soon labled by the townsfolk as a mad scientist. However, he has managed to find one patient, a young woman who he is attempting to cure of her paralyses. It turns out his cure involves removing the spinal fluid of the freshly dead. He gets his first opportunity when a visiting circus brings in a mauled trainer. The trainer had been torturing the circus gorilla when the ape had enough, broke out of his cage and attacked him. In the process the trainer's lit cigarette falls into a pile of hay and sets the circus ablaze. In all the confusion the gorilla runs off. The trainer was rushed to the doctor, but with no hope of saving him, the doctor removed his spinal fluid and injected it into his paralyses patient, resulting in her ability to slightly move one of her legs. Meanwhile the gorilla has been roaming around town, and has even killed one of the townsfolk. One night it crashes through the window of the doctors house and attacks him. But the doctor has a syringe of something that causes the gorilla to fall to the floor. The next night the gorilla is on the loose again and kills another victim, who the doctor examins, removing his spinal fluid during the autopsy. Once again his patient is injected, and this time can just barely move both her feet. The doctor frets that his cure is not working fully yet, and desperately needs more spinal fluid. Meanwhile the sheriff and his men have been searching for the killer gorilla. The bloodhounds keep tracking it's trail back to the doctor's house, but buy the doctors explanation that it keeps returning there because it is looking for the trainer it had mauled. When the sheriff and his men finally do corner the gorilla.... well, that is all I will say as to not spoil the suprise ending. However, it was an ending I easily guessed.
It's not a bad film. But not very interesting. The bar had been set higher by the Universal films. Both Karloff's doctor and the gorilla make bad monsters/villains as you feel sympathy for both. The gorilla acts the way he had been after being abused and tortured by humans it's entire life. And the doctor was only trying to find a cure to a terrible medical condition, and in the process help a paralyzed girl walk again. The way he s treated by the townsfolk (even the towns kids who vandalize his house every day ) makes you feel less sympathy towards them when they begin to become victims of the gorilla. This is not your normal Karloff film where he plays a decent villain you want to root against. Amazingly the one responsible here is the most talented name attached to the film. Curt Siodmak later explained in interviews that he basically gutted the original play and wrote an original story. The character of the doctor and the entire plot involving the need for the spinal fluid was his idea. The original play was a classic old dark house story. A group of people who invested in an expedition years earlier gather in a mansion owned by the explorer in that expedition. There he had discovered a fortune in treasure in a temple. The investors are entitled to a share. However, the explorer explains to them that by stealing the treasure, he has brought back a curse where a killer ape will murder those who claim the treasure one by one. He then makes a demand that any investor who wants his share of the treasure must stay in his mansion for a week. Predictably, one by one an investor is killed off very night by an ape that seems to appear from nowhere. House of Mystery followed this plot. Siodmak got rid of it, substituting it with his own original story. Amazingly House of Mystery is not included in the Sons of Kong set, even though it is public domain and they could have easily obtained a print online, as they appeared to have done with their other films. To think they padded out this set to ten films with Law of the Jungle that only has an ape in it for a couple of minutes when the set could have had House of Mystery instead.