Shaolin Handlock ( 1978 )
Grabbed this Shaw Brothers potboiler off the shelf, from Ho Meng Hua, the director of Flying Guillotine ( 1975 ), the Black Magic series, and Mighty Peking Man. While David Chiang and his sister are out shopping, someone murderers his father and his two students he mistook for his children. Finding out the killer came from Thailand, Chiang goes there for vengeance. I can't really give any more of this plot without revealing any spoilers, so I will talk about the title technique, the Shaolin Handlock. It is basically a twisting back flip that puts you directly behind your opponent, followed by a sleeper hold that cracks their neck. And yes, it looks as ridiculous as it sounds. Even more ridiculous are the plot twists which takes plot convenience theater to a whole new level. But it is because of the film's odd plot that this movie is even remembered.
Lazer Team ( 2015 )
I began by buying the Batman movies, then the Spiderman films, then Superman, then decided to go for it and collect every American Superhero movie ever released on DVD or Blu-ray, going for the completest collection possible without resorting to bootlegs or unauthorized releases. I relied on the Wikipedia list of American Superhero films. A list that keeps changing from month to month. Sometimes to add films the editors of Wikipedia forgot existed, or were just recently released. Other times to remove movies they suddenly decided didn't fit the definition of Superhero film. A movie Wikipedia suddenly decided a couple of weeks ago fit the description of Superhero film was Lazer Team along with it's sequel. And as the first film was already OOP and nearly sold out on Amazon, I decided to buy now rather than pay an arm and a leg later on eBay.
I've talked about this before. The film's that just barely qualify as Superhero films. And Laser Team just barely qualifies. It is a crowd sourced co-production between YouTube and a studio called Rooster Teeth that previously only made videos for YouTube that were mostly clips from the game Halo with comic voice overs added, so my expectations were very low. And perhaps low expectations is the best way to watch this film.
Back in the 60s the Earth receives a message from an alien race warning that they will soon be invaded by another Waring race that has previously destroyed other civilizations. The Invaders will demand that Earth's mightiest hero face their mightiest warrior in a fight. If the earthling wins the fight then Earth will be spared. If he looses then mankind will be destroyed. However, the benevolent aliens warning Earth will send them a ship containing powerful space armor to be used in the battle which should give the earthling the advantage. Because space is so vast, it will take decades for the armor to arrive. But it should arrive a week before the invaders. So the army picks a child to be raised and trained to be Earth's champion, and to wear the armor when it arrives.
Unfortunately, a couple of delinquents manage to shoot down the arriving spacecraft with their illegal fireworks. An incompetent cop and the dumb jock he had just arrested for fighting arrive to investigate. The four men find the armor in the wreckage and each try on a part, not realizing the armor permanently fuses itself to whoever puts it on. So when the Army shows up to the crash site, the armor they wanted to retrieve is permanently attached to the misfits. One is wearing the helmet which turns him into a genius. One is wearing a glove which produces an energy shield. One is wearing an arm cannon which shoots laser blasts. And one is wearing the boots which gives him super speed. The army can't remove the armor, so their only option is to train the misfits in the next few days to team up and combine their powers to fight the invader. Unfortunately, they are goofballs seemingly incapable of being trained.
You can see where this film is going. The misfits are all incompetent until the last act where they suddenly learn to work as a team and save the planet. One can imagine this film with Adam Sandler and his usual co-stars playing the misfits. In fact, I have seen Adam Sandler do something similar in the movie Pixels ( 2015 ). But this movie doesn't have the same budget, and the most noteworthy name in the cast is Neil deGrasse Tyson who has a cameo. ( The leads in this movie are all the voice actors from Rooster Teeth's Red vs. Blue ) Despite all of this, the low expectations were unwarranted. It is actually a decent film. Although as a comedy, I didn't find it funny. It's not the fault of the cast, who despite being in their first film, all give strong performances. But instead the writers who come up just short of good material. And here is what is frustrating. I'd say this film was 90% close to being a successful comedy. Perhaps just one more rewrite of the script could have injected this film with the humor it needed. The plot had a lot of potential. As a sci-fi/adventure film, it works. Even the action is decent. But the Rooster Teeth's goal was to write a comedy, which they didn't do.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1787014 times)
