Tiger on the Beat ( 1988 )
About the time I got my first DVD player, a handful of companies began importing new wave Hong Kong action movies, all which had options for English subtitles. I bought a lot of them. About a decade later I decided I wanted to watch Mr. Vampire ( and yes, it had a hopping Chinese vampire, ) only to have the movie stop halfway through and go back to the menu. I eventually discovered that the companies that pressed the DVDs did such a bad job, that about half of the DVDs pressed between the mid 90s and early 00s have since deteriorated, thanks to the cheap type of glue used to make the DVD. I discovered a couple of other HK movies that wouldn't play beyond the first half. Dreading the possibility that half and possibly most of my library was unplayable, I rarely bothered watching any of the other import discs. As long as I didn't check, then I didn't know how much money was wasted. As far as I knew only a couple of the DVDs were broken. Whenever I would watch one of them it was like stepping into a minefield, not knowing if the film was still there, or it was another $25 down the toilet.
Last week I watched Curse of the Golden Flower, and right under it in it's storage box was Tiger on the Beat. I could have sworn the film was one of the low budget Sammo Hung comedies, but he wasn't in it. But the box said Chow Yun Fat was the star, and Lau Kar Leung directed it. Wow. I know I must have watched it after I bought it, but couldn't remember a damn thing about it. Even more intriguing, the costar was Conan Lee.
Conan was the last of the old school Bruce Lee clones. The first few deliberately changed their professional names to Bruce Lee, specifically to star in movies rip off producers claimed was the last film Bruce Lee made before his death, and distributed in countries where the population couldn't tell Chinese actors apart and couldn't tell the actor in the movie didn't look like Bruce Lee. ( Countries like The United States. ) Of course, calling the lead actor in your film Bruce Lee when he wasn't was illegal, so the spelling on their names was slightly altered. There was Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Bruce Ly, Bruce Lei, and so on. Just as long as the guy narrating the trailer pronounced the last name Lee. When all the alternative spellings of Lee were taken up, clones changed the first names. Such as Bronson Lee and Dragon Lee. By the time Conan made his screen debut, producers were no longer trying to pass their stars off as the original Bruce Lee, but instead as the next Bruce Lee. Jackie Chan became the new rage, and exploitive producers began cloning him instead. Conan lucked out as his first film Ninja in the Dragon's Den ( 1982 ) became a cult hit, elevating him out of the Bruce Lee clone pack. To this day most fans of old school martial arts films don't even consider him a clone, but the star of a classic martial arts film who nearly became a major martial arts star.
Except, that he decided not to stick around in Hong Kong, but head back to Hollywood to find work there. According to Wikipedia, his original name was Lloyd Hutchinson, and grew up in Queens, which if true was probably why he chose to seek a career in America rather than stay in Asia where he was a star. His first film for Hollywood was Gymkata ( 1985 ), followed by a recurring role on the series Falcon Crest, small roles in television series like MacGuyver, along with uncredited roles in movies like Big Trouble in Little China. Tiger on the Beat was his return to Hong Kong, where he once again was the star of most of his films, occasionally returning to Hollywood for bit parts.
I am amazed that I didn't remember anything about this film. Yes, it was the standard formula plot you get from every HK action comedy, so therefore indistinguishable from most of the Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung/Yuen Biao cop films. And like most HK comedies, the gags fell flat and performed over-the-top broad. But it had a few decent action sequences in the middle of the film, and what should have been a memorable action finale with Chow taking down villains with a shotgun attached to a bungee cord which he used to shoot around corners, and Conan and Gordon Liu fighting using chain saws. This was the movie Chow Yun Fat shot directly between A Better Tomorrow II and The Killer, so it is jarring to see him playing a comedic cop who is often lazy and cowardly and preoccupied with chasing women rather than his usual tough guy character from the same period. Most of the action is handled by Conan Lee who plays his partner. Ti Lung and David Chaing have surprise guest roles, although Chaing is wasted in a non fighting role as the police commissioner who shows up to take credit for big busts.
Oh, and the DVD appeared to be in perfect condition and showing no signs of deterioration. Unfortunately, it was released before anamorphic widescreen gad been invented, so I was watching the film in a small box in the middle of a modern television screen.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows ( 2016 )
Having decided some time ago to buy and watch every superhero movie ever made, I am amazed at how many of the films that got terrible reviews, got universally panned by fanboys, and are supposed to be terrible, turn out to be perfectly good entertainment. Case in point, this film, the one that was supposed to be a franchise killer and had Paramount demanding a reboot of the franchise. So it's back to the beginning of the story with a new cast and redesigned turtles, but the same studio, same producers, and same complaining fanboys to sink the next batch ( 2 ) of films before the next reboot.
While I get how disappointing it is when a studio or director doesn't get the source material right, films should be judged on what they are, not what they should have been. Any adult by now should know that film makers are notorious for shitting on the source material their films are based on because they feel they know how to make it better than the person who created it. For example, the Universal version of Frankenstein, which is the version of the monster we all know and love, was nothing like the book it was based on. Similarly, The Wizard of Oz ( 1939 ) would have been savaged by fanboys if the internet existed back in the 30s for everything it changed from the book. But both were given the opportunity to stand on their own, and became beloved classics, as had most old movies. We can't do that anymore? While the recent TMNT fall well below the bar set by the MCU films, they are still top notch entertainment. Meaning, it kept me occupied for the entire running time without getting bored, and on more than one occasion pumping my adrenaline during the action scenes. They don't deserve to be labeled as bad films.
Having said that, I have to admit that I haven't read any of the TMNT comic books or ever watched one of their animated series. My only experience with them are the movies and the video games. And if I was a fan, maybe there was something the movies got wrong I would have known about that would have ruined them for me. But these are more examples of films that I was warned of that didn't live up to the vile heaped upon them. If you want to know what a bad superhero film really is, watch any of the ones produced by TomCat. If you ever sit through Rise of the Black Bat, you would never complain about Batman v Superman again. You probably would never complain about Batman and Robin again.
Skidoo ( 1968 )
The 60s Counter Culture. An imaginary thing that mainstream media treated as real, but in fact was nothing more than a generation of teenagers on drugs, doing crazy things because they were on drugs. There was some DNA of an actual cultural there. The remnants beatnik culture mixed with the French New Wave, and the British Satire Boom of the early 60s which had evolved into what would become Monty Python and The Goodies at the tail end of the decade, and in between that The Beatles, and whatever influences they picked up on their world travels and used on their latest albums. But it was mostly warped imagination fueled by marijuana and LSD coming partially from teenaged hippies ( and The Beatles ) that the established media tried to distill into a formula and spit out. Occasionally stuff of entertainment value was produced. The Monkees, The Prisoner, and Laugh-In for example. Other times though the results were embarrassing. Like the space hippies on Star Trek, or most of the AIP films. And yes, even the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour.
Today 60s counter culture films come off as if the film makers deliberately being weird just for the sake of the film being weird, and not inventive in the way Monty Python was when it subverted British television. My take on them is middle aged or older writers attempting to write for what they thought the teenagers of the late 60s wanted to see on screen by imagining what sort of script they would have written if they were on drugs.
Otto Preminger's mess Skidoo was his version of a counter culture comedy. The A plot has retired mob hitman Jackie Gleason being asked by his old boss to put out a hit on one of the old gang members, played by Mickey Rooney, who is about to turn states evidence against their syndicate. And the big boss won't take no for an answer. So Gleason disguises himself as a convict and is sent to the same prison they are holding Rooney in. The B plot has unconvincing Hollywood movie hippies being invited by Gleason's wife to stay at their home because their daughter is in love with their leader. The two plots eventually merge with all the hippies and Gleason rescuing his daughter from the mob bosses yacht while his wife ( Carol Channing ) runs around singing the movie's theme song.
Like I said, a huge mess that isn't really funny. The reason for getting this film is because it was the final role for screen legend Groucho Marks, who plays the mob boss who goes by the nickname of "God". In an autobiography, Groucho denounced his final film saying both the movie and his performance were "God-awful". He was 77 when he made this film, and had slowed down considerably. Even if the script had given him good lines, his timing was way off. Although it is possible the lackluster delivery of his lines were due to him not liking the script.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1536495 times)
