What was the last movie you watched?

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Killer Constable ( 1980 )
One of the Shaw Brothers films I had been trying to add to my collection for years. This is the first legal North American release, having previously been released as bootleg DVDs, and on VHS from Master Video without Shaw Brothers consent retitled Lightning Kung Fu . My interest in it was purely due to its reputation as one of the last great martial arts films to come out of Shaw Brothers. However, after watching it, I am not that impressed. It is a remake of Chang Cheh's The Invincible Fist which I actually prefer. It does have a lot of very impressive cinematography, perhaps the best in the studio's history. Arrow Video must have thought this a masterpiece as it has three separate commentary tracks from film historians. But what is lacking here is the choreography.  By this point in time moat of the studios choreographers had either left for Golden Harvest or Seasonal Films, or like Lau Kar Leung had graduated to becoming directors of their own films, or were working for Chang Cheh. So, no memorable fight scenes.

Batman: Bad Blood ( 2016 )
I haven't read a Batman comic book since the 80s, back when I borrowed a friends copy of a trade paperback of the combined Death in the Family story arc where famously the Joker  ( SPOILER ) kills Robin.  Or actually, the readers who were given the option to vote on Robin's fate, gleefully killed Robin.  At the time I knew the original Robin, Dick Grayson, had long since left the book, and had gone on to become a superhero in his own right called Nightwing, and this was the first of many replacement Robins.  But other than that, most of my knowledge of the Batman mythos came from the Classic Batman comic books. What other myths I picked up came mostly from the various movie and Saturday Morning cartoon adaptions of Batman, most of which seemed to prefer classic Batman as well, and from all those television series that took place after Batman either died or disappeared, or the series Gotham where Bruce was still a kid. So basically I knew only bits and pieces of the post Crisis Batman mythos. The animated movies seem to be their own thing, based on story arcs from recent comic books, and assuming the viewer knows what the current mythos is when the movie was released. In this movie, we are introduced to Damien Wayne at a Buddhist monastery with no explanation as to who he is or why he is there. Worse, according to Wikipedia, there are two animated movies that explain who Damien Wayne are, and both are in this collection. So basically, the movies here are out of chronological order. Why? I eventually picked up who each character was to Batman in that timeline, but t would have helped a lot if the idiots who put this set out kept the films in chronological order. They did that with the past live action sets, why not  here as well? Anyway, another decent Batman animated film despite me having to scramble to figure out that Bruce must have f#$ked Talia Ghul at one point.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ( 2023 )
My only problem with the now defunct DCEU Aquaman is that it is Warner Bros. version of  the MCU Thor instead of being like the Aquaman from the comic books. I'm sorry the DCEU had to go. I may not have agreed with how they altered the characters from the source comics, and may have felt they tended to pick weak formula stories for their sequel films, and felt they rushed everything together in the Batman vs Superman film, but I was never bored by a DCEU film the way I was with a lot of past live action DC comics films.  They were entertaining no matter how much Warner executives ruined them by interfering. But this film did nothing to keep the DCEU alive. It is complete formula. Or rather, a formula ripped off of the earlier Thor films. Here are all the overused  superhero film tropes. Same arch villain returns. Secondary villain inexplicably redeems himself. Ancient evil threatens the world. Everything you knew would happen does happen. But it was still entertaining.

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Buddha's Palm ( 1982 )
Two things changed the Hong Kong film industry. Jackie Chan's successful Kung Fu comedies had all other studios changing from copying Bruce Lee to releasing their own martial arts comedies. Star Wars followed by ]Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, and several other successful effects driven fantasy films had studios  all over the world putting out their own fantasy films. Buddha's Palm was a little of both. One of the last of the studio's wuxia films, it was both comedic and full of fantasy effects. It is also one of the studios lesser films and the weakest one in Shawscope Volume III. It is still a fun film, but feels more like one f the independent films made during the beginning of the New Wave era than a Shaw Brothers movie.

Deadpool & Wolverine ( 2024 )
Honestly, I think I enjoyed the first two Deadpool movies more than this one. And I am getting a bit sick of Marvel trying to  tie the non MCU  cannon Marvel films into the MCU by claiming they are all time variants in a multiverse, even though they are basically killing off that idea because they cancelled Kang, and the incentive for doing it was to allow Sony to create a parallel Spiderman universe which they apparently are abandoning. And were the Deadpool films ever in the same universe as  The X-Men in either time line? Deadpool has a completely different origin in the Wolverine films.

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Bastard Swordsman ( 1983 )
I finish my Shaw Scope Volume 3 with this ridiculous film. Once again a late SB era wuxia film with a lot of plot twists and an assortment of characters o keep track of, including someone we though was going to be the film's villain, only he never gets around to starting his devious plot, and is forgotten by the third act. Instead we have the hero fighting the surprise villain using the silkworm technique where literally silk webs are emitted from the palms to turn your opponent into a cocoon. Entertaining, but ridiculous.  The entirety of Shaw Scope Volume 3 has bee either wuxia, or wuxia adjacent films. Next week I start Shout! Factory's Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 4 which has quite a few Venom kung fu films, so there will be a little bit of a rest from wuxia.


Joker: Folie à Deux  ( 2024 )
I swear there was no plan to watch this film on this particular Saturday. I received a bunch of Superhero films in the mail a few weeks ago, mostly catching my collection up with what was released in 2024, and a few I missed from earlier years. My queue was set up by how the films were stacked in the box, a decision by whoever packs the boxes at  the Amazon fulfilment center. And  aside from moving the Sony Spiderverse movies in release order, I am watching these films in the order they were removed from the box. And somehow this film was scheduled to be watched the same night Lady Gaga was to host SNL. With the bad reviews this one got, I was expecting to hate it. I didn't. Not as good as the first one, but I liked it. Perhaps because I was familiar with the television musicals of Dennis Potter which this resembles. My only complaint was how it turns out that  Arthur Fleck  isn't the Joker after all. Reminds me of all those false Joker origins in the series Gotham that frustrated viewers. In that case it was because DC/Warner never gave the producers of that show permission to use The Joker or his earlier persona The Red Hood. I wonder if tat is what happened with these movies. DC/Warner decided to allow a sequel, as long as they establish Artur was not the real Joker.

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Rebel Intruders ( 1980 )
Started Shout! Factory's Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 4.   Eight more martial arts films from Shaw Brothers studios, this time from the 80s and the final five years the studio was open. Seven of the movies were previously released, so less that half of the set are movies I don't yet have.

Rebel Intruders ( 1980 ))

Two Champions Of Shaolin ( 1980 ) ( Previously released by Well Go )

Legend of the Fox ( 1980 )

Black Lizard ( 1981 )

House of Traps ( 1982 ) ( Previously released by Image Entertainment )

Masked Avengers ( 1981 )

The Sword Stained With Royal Blood ( 1981 )

Five Element Ninjas ( 1982 ) ( Peviously released by Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters )

Shaolin Prince ( 1982 ) ( Previously released by Funimation )

Shaolin Intruders ( 1983 ) ( Previously released by Image Entrertainment )

Holy Flame of the Martial World ( 1983 ) ( Previously released by Well Go )

Opium and the Kung Fu Master ( 1984 ) ( Previously released by Funimation )

Rebel Intruders is one of the Venom Mob films with a formula Venom Mob plot. During China's Republican period, a city in the North is overrun with refuges from the wars. Three who have martial arts skills are able to find work, and soon become blood brothers. The corrupt town leader  decides to switch allegiance to a different warlord  and assassinates the general in charge of his town, framing the murder on the refugees who have to fight their way out of town.  While the plot is formula and forgettable, it is made up for with more fantastic fights choreographed by the Venoms.

Venom: The Last Dance ( 2024 )
And now on to a different Venom. I liked Sony's Venom franchise, although was not too thrilled with the way they divorced it from any connection to Spiderman. Venom started as a villain in Spiderman, originally as a symbiote costume  Peter Parker acquired during the Secret Wars which began to possess him. In the Sam Raimi Spiderman films, the Venom origin was retold eliminating the backdrop of Secret Wars. The Venom films that followed were no sequels to the Raimi films, and gave Venom a different origin. This was after the MCU took off, and Sony thought they could take all the Spiderman characters they had the rights to  and build a Spiderman cinematic universe. Which is why, despite this film having a plot that supposedly kills off Venom, we all know Sony still had plans for Venom to join the long delayed Sinister Six movie, having already imported Vulture from the MCU, and introduced Morbius. Also, it wasn't likely that Sony would give up on their only successful SSU franchise, so it is very likely Venom will return in a 4th film even if  no Sinister Six film is ever made.


The Thundermans Return ( 2024 )
My Superhero Movie collection is every live action superhero film to be released on physical media in the United States, which means even the films I particularly don't want to own, but need for a complete collection. This counts as a television movie, and was released on physical media in 2024, so despite it being adreaded Nickelodeon film, needed to be added and watched at least once. And as SNL is on another unexpected hiatus, decided to get it over with. Thank God it is only one hour and ten minutes long, which just barely qualifies it as feature length, but short enough not to be too torturous. Based on a Nickelodeon series that concluded six years ago because the lead actress decided to quit acting to peruse a singing career. It didn't go so well, so agreed to return for a reunion series. I never actually saw the original Thundermans series, as I haven't watched anything on that channel since Ren & Stimpy was cancelled, so had no idea it even existed, doing a little research on Wikipedia showed that it had a way better premise than this film. A family has super powers. The eldest daughter wants to use her powers to be a superhero, while her twin brother wants to use his powers to be a super villain. There is constant conflict between them throughout the series, but eventually their sibling bond wins over and both become superheroes, recruiting the rest of the family to join their team in the series finale. This movie? They are fired from being a superhero team after injuring a member of a rival superhero team during a bank robbery, and are forced to return to their home town.  While most of the family looks forward to getting back to a normal life, the twins want to be superheroes again. They soon realize they were framed for injuring the otter team in order to get them out of the way so  a team of villains can commence with their own sinister plot. Which is as much as I can say without spoiling the story, although I doubt anyone here will ever be interested in watching this. If you do, be warned. It is supposed to be a comedy, but the gags are terrible. To make matters worse, there is a laugh track. A canned laugh track which includes cheers whenever a character from the original series shows up for the first time. Every character in this film was either mildly stupid, or very stupid. Like I said. I was glad this thing was only 70 minutes long, although it felt like twice that long, and I wanted to stop watching less than a minute into it. I cant believe 12 year olds like this so much that Nickelodeon felt they needed a full cast reunion series. Perhaps the original series was better than this? I doubt it. Both Nickelodeon and Disney Channel produce the worst sitcoms I have ever seen, and I dread whenever children are visiting and one of those channels goes on to quiet them down.

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Two Champions of Shaolin ( 1980 )
The Wu Tang Clan has decided to side with the Manchu's and hunt down all rebels against the Emperor. This includes the Shaolin monks, who they have a grudge against, and plot to kill any monk found outside the temple. This includes two of the monks ( Chiang Sheng and Lo Meng ) who had bee warned by the Abbot not to start any trouble, but killed a bunch of Wu Tang chiefs anyway. Once again Chang Cheh dips into the Shaolin Temple legend. The plot has not much of a point,  as pretty much every character is dead as the end credits appear. I guess the Shaolin monks were the winners because the Wu Tang members dropped dead from their wounds thirty seconds before they did? Basically, the plot was just an excuse for some more fantastic choreographed fights from the Venom Mob.

Ultrachrist! ( 2002 )
Each January I go over Wikipedia's list of superhero films to find ones I don't own yet. Most would be films released the previous year that I had not bought yet. Some ones on my list that took a long time to make their  physical media debut ( damn you streaming and your exclusives ), and a few are some really obscure  films that had been so obscurer that it took a while for them to even get a Wikipedia page, let alone be added to the list. Ultrachrist! was one of those low budget independent films probably only shown at a couple of film festivals before being released on a small video label.  I dread having to watch films like this, especially when they are supposed to be comedies. And this was a comedy about Jesus. A red flag as basically every comedy about Jesus has sucked. Well, except for Life of Brian, but Jesus was hardly in that one.  I went into this one with low expectations, so if it turned out to be halfway decent, and I am talking about padded 70s television movie decent, then I would be impressed. Nope. Worse than I thought. According to the box, it got four stars from Film Threat, and won best comedy at the Philidelphia Video Festival. I am guessing it was judged on a curve for being one of those shoestring budget home made films  that is better than the average supe 8 film.  But this is no Clerks.  I didn't find one gag the least bit funny. People are probably going to Hell for making this, so at the least it should have been a little funny, right? To make all of that eternal suffering and damnation worth it? But all the jokes were either lifted from other sources or made no sense. It was shot on video. And not the HD video that at the least the Bret Kelly films were shot on, but what appears to be camcorder video cropped to widescreen. And it is badly compressed, so terrible picture quality on the DVD. The plot, Jesus returns to Earth as part of a prophecy to usher in a new age of peace and harmony, but is unable to get anyone to listen to him.  After seeing a comic book, decides to become a superhero called  Ultrachrist and use his powers to teach Christianity, which for some reason works. The Devil wants to stop him, and raises Hitler, Dracula, Nixon and Jim Morrison from the dead to go after him. Which is the only promising premise in this film, but goes nowhere. Basically. this is a 90 minute film that felt like ten hours. And if these is a Hell, then I am sure this is one of the films playing on the televisions in a continuous loop.


Madame Web ( 2024 )
This was supposed to be the worst film of last year, and one of the all time worst superhero films eve. The second to final nail in the Sony Spider-Man Cinematic Universe. And yet, I liked it. Perhaps that may have been due to suffering through Ultrachrist first, but despite a one hour plot in a two hour film, I wasn't bored. I was entertained.  Not MCU entertained. But enough that I never felt like time checking to see how much longer the movie had. It is not as if it has a major problem. It is basically an origin film that never completes. You never get the full origin story of Madame Web. That character is an elderly woman in the comic books, who has been aged down to her 50s in the Spiderverse, had they eventually shown Madame Web in the same time line as Morbious and Venom. Which I am sure they were eventually going to get to in their plans for a Sinister Six film. This film explains how Madame Web gets her powers, but ends 20 years before her powers have fully manifested, before she begins calling herself Madame Web, and before she has any costume. Even more frustrating, she becomes he protector and mentor of three teenaged girls who will, by 2024, become the three Spiderwomen. We only see them as those spiderwomen briefly as a dream the villain has, and as a vision Madame Web has of her own future. In this movie,  Julia Cornwall,  Anya Corazón and Mattie Franklin have no powers and are years away from each gaining any spider like powers. Once you get past tat disappointment and the plot seemingly ripped off from The Terminator, you have a decent film about a woman realizing she has the power to see the future, and is trying to protect three girls from being killed by a super powered villain who wants them dead before they eve become spiderwomen.

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Legend of the Fox ( 1980 )
This film was most notable for being the one Venom Mob film not released on home video or available as a bootleg. That ended a decade ago when Celestial restored and released most of the Shaw Brothers martial arts films on DVD in the early 00s. Not exactly a lost classic, this was another one of those dense wuxia novels condensed into a single feature film where you spend the entire film trying to keep track of all the characters. If not for the lost film bit, this would have been considered one of the lesser Venom Mob films. But it does have one of the top villain death scenes, as the hero cuts him right in half, sending his upper body flying in one direction and his lower body in the other.

Kraven the Hunter ( 2024 )
How not to do a superhero cinematic universe.
STEP 1: Get the rights to a single superhero
STEP 2: Notice the success of Marvel Studio's MCU and decide you want your own.
STEP 3: come up with the cockamamie plan of turning your one comic book into an entire cinematic universe  by putting the villains into their own solo films and eventually having them team up in a later film.
STEP 4: Inexplicably reboot the superhero's film series despite a successful trilogy giving the reason as the poor critical response to the third film, but really because those first three films killed off a few of the villains you wanted in your cinematic universe.
STEP 5: Allow the producers of the reboot series to add an ongoing mystery to the superhero's backstory and then never resolve it, because...
STEP 6: Marvel is allowing you to reboot your superhero again, this time in the MCU.
STEP 7: finally get around to those solo villain films, but set them in an alternate universe where the superhero does not exist.
STEP 8: Oh, and those villains are now heroes.
STEP 9: Pick the  least popular characters for the solo films.
STEP 10: wonder why no one went to see those films, and more or less cancel the cinematic universe just as the characters were starting to meet each other in the post credit scenes.

Other than once again having a one hour plot in a two hour film, there was nothing wrong with Kraven the hunter. I mean, there were dozens of marvel characters SONY has the rights to which would have made great solo films, but lets use this character which is considered one of Marvel's joke villains along with M.O.D.O.K.  or Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime. But for a Kraven the Hunter film, this was pretty good. Hopefully SONY has gotten their quest for a Spider-man cinematic universe out of their system. What they should have done is have a series of film where Spider man defeats one villain after another, sending each to prison, then have a final film where all the villains get out and team up against Spider-man in one last battle.

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Black Lizard ( 1981 )
Wow. So Shaw Brothers recycled the same plot within a month? A month after Corpse Mania,  they released another horror film where the monsters turn out to be an elaborate plot to disguise a revenge murder plot as supernatural activity. In this case, what appears to be a monster and the ghost of a missing wife. The difference is that this movie form Chor Yuen who  was in the  midst of a successful run of wuxia films, so this has a fair share of sword fights. There is some really dumb stuff here, like how crazy the plot is when the villain could have just killed the persons he wanted to and hid their bodies, and the way the villain is killed at the end of the film. The biggest let down here is the giant lizard shown at the beginning of the film turns out to be a statue. What a letdown.

Priest ( 2011 )
I bought two of the films that have been on and off and on again on the Wikipedia Superhero Movie list. The first is based on a Japanese graphic novel. It is a combo steampunk, modern alternate universe, and Western. In a slightly different world, humans and vampires have been at war for thousands of years. The vampires in this world are alien looking animal like monsters that rip humans apart and eat them for their blood. The Catholic church finally defeats the Vampires by creating warriors known as the Priests who specialize in fighting skills that counter vampire moves, and carry weapons specialized in killing vampires. When the vampires are supposedly wiped out, the church disbands the priests. And this is just the minute long pre credit animated opening montage. A western like town is attacked by a hoard of vampires and a girl is kidnapped. Her uncle is a priest, and comes out of retirement to rescue her. The plot is composed of almost nothing but tropes from westerns, horror and dystopian science fiction films. Every moment of this film feels like something you have seen many times before. But it is  entertaining enough to be a good waste of 90 minutes if you want a dumb film to kill time with.  No, I don't think this really counts as a superhero film, but I can see why someone keeps adding it to the Wikipedia superhero movie list.

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House of Trapps ( 1981 )
One of the  films on the Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 4 set that I already have.  And already reviewed here: 

https://forum.rifftrax.com/index.php/topic,5210.msg997331/topicseen.html#msg997331

The Wraith ( 1986 )
This film is constantly added too the Wikipedia list of live action superhero films:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_superhero_films
As a collector of superhero movies, I frequently return to that list to see if anything new was added, specifically if any small independent films were added that may have been previously overlooked. That's how I find films like [Ultrachrist. Not that I want films like that, but a collection is a collection, which sometimes means having to add pieces that are sub par for  a complete collection.  (  like any superhero film directed by Bret Kelly. Ugh. ) If you frequent that Wikipediae page, you will notice that some films come and go. Films are added to the list, stay a while, and are removed by the moderators. some you can understand. I get why Tarzan films keep getting added and why the moderators keep removing them. Tarzan sort of  resembles a superhero, but really isn't.  Some of  them fall into the mutant with powers category which is what everything attached to Marvel's X-Men comic books is about. But then if any film where a character has mutant or telekinetic powers is considered a superhero film, does that make Carrie ( 1976 ) a superhero film?  Someone did, and ultimately, the moderators at Wikipedia didn't. The Wraith is constantly added to that list, and constantly removed. I decided "What the hell? If so many keep calling this a superhero film, may as well add it to my collection." So is it?

Well, that depends. Do you think The Crow is a superhero film? Well, The Crow is based on a comic book, which gives it a pass as a superhero film even though it is actually a horror film. The Wraith is a similar story about a spirit that returns from the dead to go after the criminal gang who killed him. But it is not based on a comic book, and if the dead returning to avenge their deaths qualifies as a superhero film, then Zombie Nightmare is a superhero film. The Wraith has none of the emotional impact of The Crow, although in the final reel, it does try for that. I would not be surprised if this movie was the inspiration for The Crow. It is a bad  film. But not in a way that has you wanting to turn it off. More like, it just isn't that good. It's like a not as exciting rip-off of the original Mad Max, only with a ghost. This ghost is the reincarnated spirit of a guy killed by a gang of thieves because he was making out with a girl the gang leader wanted to be his girlfriend. The gang in question steals cars by forcing the owner to have a drag race  for  ownership of the cars, a race the thieves cheat in. So of course the ghost returns to earth in a  black sports car and takes them out one by one by racing them, each gang member dying in a fiery crash. This movie achieved cult status on home video, I just cant figure out why. There is nothing here that wasn't in a lot of other movies, and done a lot better.

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Masked Avengers ( 1981 )
No. This is not the Avengers with Captain America, nor the one with Steed. The Avengers in this movie are a clan of assassins who all wear masks and use tridents as their weapons. Much like Five Deadly Venoms, this is another Chang Cheh film where  the heroes spend much of the film trying to figure out the identity of the masked killers. This film came out at the tail end of the Venom Mob cycle when half of the Mob members had already left Cheh and the formula for the films was wearing thin. Even so, the final battle is among the best in the Cheh filmography.

Prometheus ( Parts 1 and 2) ( 1980 )
This is technically a movie. Made as the season 4 opener for The Incredible Hulk, CBS decided to split it into a two parter, which is how it is presented on the complete series set. Typically, the Hulk television movies were turned into two part episodes for the summer reruns and syndication, although this set keeps the television movies in their original two hour edits. I had completely forgotten this one was coming up until the episode I was watching this Saturday ended with a "Too Be Continued"  and I realized I had to continue and watch the second part, which cut into the time I had reserved for one of the Batman animated movies ( since this is an off week for SNL ). Damn it. There is not enough of a story here for an hour long episode, let alone a two hour TV film. In part 1 a meteor crashes into a mountain near where David Banner is staying in a cabin with a blind girl he is helping. Banner goes to investigate the Meteor, and is subjected to the Gamma radiation emitted from it. He stumbles into a bees nest, which turns him into The Hulk again, but thanks to the extra Gamma Radiation, instead of turning back into Banner after his rampage, he turns into a dumb version of Banner who has the Hulk's body. In part two, the army coming to investigate the meteor crash mistakes The Hulk  as a space alien and captures him for study. Trapped in an underground base, the Hulk is eventually able to escape from it's cell and make it's way back outside. Once far away from the Meteor, he is once again able to transform into Banner.  The most expensive of the Hulk episodes, and the one that comes the closest to being like the comic book with The Hulk fighting with an actual army, it is mostly padded. This could have easily fit in a one hour episode. Also, the Hulk/Army confrontations are very underwhelming.

The Crow ( 2024 )
The last two superhero films I have in queue are both reboots which are so under the radar that you probably never knew they existed.  Yep, they rebooted The Crow. And I have no idea why. After the first Crow movie, the sequels simply had different protagonists becoming The Crow. Not just because Brandon Lee was unavailable to do the sequels due to being killed during the filming of the first film, but because the Crow comic book was a limited series where the story was completed once Eric got his revenge, and was reunited in the afterlife with his girlfriend Shelly. Which was what happened in the movie. Which meant there was no reason for Eric to return as The Crow in a sequel. There was a television series reboot, which basically dragged the same story out for 22 episodes.  While both the series and the first Crow movie were based on the source comic book, this movie puts Eric and Shelly into a completely different story. Instead of being murdered by a street gang, they are both killed by a immortal  millionaire who sacrifices innocent girls to Satan and has demon like powers. If you are going to change the Eric and Shelly story, why even bother having them in it?  The first half is mostly an art film about two delinquent goth teenagers falling in love. It takes nearly an hour of a 1 hour 50 minute film for Eric to turn into The Crow.  Once he does, it finally turns into a revenge film.   This is where the film sort of redeems itself with an incredibly bloody battle between a samurai sword wielding Eric and an army of armed bodyguards protecting one of the people responsible for his and Shelly's death.

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Sword Stained with Royal Blood ( 1981 )
One of the later Venom Mob films when only three out of the six Venoms were still in the Mob. And another one of those adaptions of a wuxia novel. In this case, only using part of the novel where the hero takes out an evil clan who has stolen gold from the government. And never actually gets to the second half of the novel where the hero uses his sword to kill a member of the royal family, making the title of the film inaccurate, Then again, this was from the same director ( Chang Cheh ) who decided to call his adaption of Legend of the Condor Heroes by the title The Brave Archer when he had already decided to remove all references to archery in the film. So... complicated plot leading up to Philip Kwok killing a whole bunch of evil martial arts experts. Not the best of the Venom Mob films, but one of the rarest as it was not available on home video until about ten years ago.


Son of Batman ( 2014  )
As mentioned a month ago, for no good reason the Batman  80th Anniversary Collection which has several of the animated Batman films, has a disc with three of the films in the wrong order. The first film on the menu is Batman: Bad Blood, followed by Batman vs Robin below it, followed by Son of Batman when you click the "NEXT" icon and go to the second page. However, after watching Batman: Bad Blood and looking it up on Wikipedia to write a review, I discovered that it was the second sequel to Son of Batman ( 2014 ), which was followed a year later by  Batman vs Robin ( 2015 ) and then Batman: Bad Blood ( 2016 ), each film having plot elements that continued into the next, and concluded with the animated movie Batman: Hush  (2019 ) which is not in the collection. So I begin with the third film on the disc, and next time will watch the second. The plot to this film: Talia al Ghul shows up in Gorham to let Batman know that  he has a son named Damian from their affair ten years earlier, and now Deathstroke wants to kill the kid. Long story short, Damian becomes the new Robin. I will say this. Son of Batman is a far more violent and bloody film than Sword Stained with Royal Blood, which has ten times the body count in the first ten minutes than the Chang Cheh film had in total.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man ( 2024 )
Here is another reboot of a superhero franchise you probably didn't realize existed.  Mostly due to it not being  given a theatrical release in North America. Basically a low budget film with mostly practical effects, but a script actually co-written by the creator of the character Mike Mignola, based on a story arc from his comic book. I liked it, despite it's Asylum sized budget. It was legitimately creepy, and for no real reason had a third wall breaking intermission where the film cuts away to an old witch who teaches the audience how to make something called a witch ball. Worth watching, but don't expect the effects extravaganzas found in previous Hellboy films.

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Five Elements Ninjas ( 1982 )
Reviewed this a few times here. The last great film made by Chang Cheh. Two rival clans have a tournament among their best fighters to determine who will be the rulers of the martial arts world. The evil clan brings in a ringer, a samurai from Japan. When he loses his fight, and commits seppuku as a result, he announces that his  good friend, who happens to be the king of the Ninjas, will avenge him by decimating the righteous clan.  When the slaughter does happen, only one member of the righteous clan  escapes. He finds a martial arts master who teaches Ninjitsu, and learns the counter techniques to defeat the ninjas and get his revenge.  Perhaps the most violent film of Chang Cheh's career.

Shatter ( 1974 )
Tonight was supposed to be the final superhero film in queue, Knights of the Zodiac. That is until I opened up what was supposed to be a factory sealed new Blu Ray and found the DVD of the movie Zodiac inside. Amazon blamed the third party seller who sent the Blu-Ray ( Amazon said they had it in stock, so why did they use a third party seller? ) and a replacement copy is on the way. My next films are not to arrive until Tuesday. I could have watched Zodiac  as I was told I didn't need to return it, but the disc was completely full of scratches, and when I tried it, it caused the Blu Ray player to make  a noise I never heard it make before, then ejected the disc while a yellow triangle warning appeared on the screen saying that the disc was corrupted. I didn't really want to watch Zodiac anyway. So, rewatch one of my other movies from my library? But then I realized I had  Shatter. I actually had this movie for a long time. I was planning to watch it a month from now  when I had completed watching Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 4, and before I began my next martial arts movie set. Shatter is a co-production between Hammer Films and Shaw Brothers, starring Stuart Whitman as the title character, and Ti Lung and Lily Li as two Hong Kong residents who befriend and help him. Shatter is an international hit man based in Hong Kong who accepts a job to assassinate the leader of an African country.  But when he returns, the client who hired him refuses to pay him, and instead sends thugs to kill him. After a beating, he ends up taking refuge in a massage parlor and bar where he meets the head madam Mai Mee ( Lilly Li ) and her bartender Tai Pah ( Ti Lung ) who is also the master at his own martial arts school. Shatter has some documents that the bad guys who hired him want back, and with the help of Tai Pah and Mai Mee, plans to sell the documents back to  the bad guys for  a million dollars. Ti Lung is in the film to provide the few scenes of martial arts. He acts as Shatter's bodyguard and beats up any gang of thugs who attack. A purely formula 70s hitman film with martial arts thrown in, made out of desperation by Hammer who needed a hit at the box office to keep from bankruptcy. It didn't work. It was the final film the studio made before closing. At worst it is passably entertaining.  It is no classic, and only remembered for being the other co-production between Shaw Brothers and Hammer ( the other one being Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires )

[stethacantus]

Shaolin Prince ( 1982 )
Back in the 90s, I bought a movie from the home video label Master Arts called Death Mask of the Ninja.

The reason for the purchase was that Death Mask of the Ninja was actually a Shaw Brothers film starring Ti Lung called Shaolin Prince. And at the time I was collecting Shaw Brothers films. So why did Master Arts have an unauthorized release of a Shaw Brothers film? Well, upon watching my copy, I  was very disappointed. For the first five seconds you get the opening title Death Mask of the Ninja, and then it suddenly cuts to a lesser quality print of a different film, which appears to be a fifth generation VHS bootleg. That film was Shaolin Prince, but I was hoping that a movie released on a semi-major home video label would be a quality first generation print, and not something that looked worse than the bootleg Shaw Brothers films I had been buying off the street. Master Arts originally began when it purchased the home video rights to the syndicated Fist of Fury Theater films. They gradually built their library by buying the library of other home video labels that had gone bankrupt. This inevitably included a few less than reputable companies who would disguise their films from the legal copyright holders they stole them from by changing the title. Master Arts thought they had bought the rights to a film called Death Mask of the Ninja,  but apparently no such film exists. Movie posters for Death Mask of the Ninja have turned up ( which are exactly the same as the box art Master Arts used. ) and some have located through newspaper microfilm advertisements for Death Mask of the Ninja in theaters. Many are convinced that a theatrical distributor slapped the title Death Mask of the Ninja on one or more films he didn.t have the rights to.

Shaolin Prince is a forgotten but entertaining Shaw Brothers film. One of those films that awkwardly mixes drama with comedy. The comedy part, the emperor is being usurped. As his palace is surrounded by the enemy, he arranges for his best warriors to escape with his two sons who are heirs to the throne. One of the warriors takes refuge at the home of a public official still loyal to the late emperor where the prince is raised. The other warrior is mortally wounded, and before dying, gives the second prince to three goofy Shaolin monks. Unaware that the baby is a prince, they decide to raise him and teach him their wacky brand of Kung Fu. Neither brother is aware of the other's existence until the final act where they both show up at the palace to avenge their father. The comedy from the wacky monks is tiresome, but the action and fight choreography makes up for it.

Knights of the Zodiac ( 2023 )
This has been on the Wikipedia Superhero Film list for the past two years. It does involve someone with super powers, so I decided to add it to my superhero movie collection. Despite being based on an anime, this isn't really a superhero film. It is your basic paint by numbers pot boiler. A homeless teen who earns money by fighting in underground cage matches unleashes a burst of energy during a fight. This immediately attracts a group of armed androids who attempt to capture the kid, and when he runs into an alley,  he meets a guy who basically tells him "Come with me if you want to live." The teen goes with the guy to his hidden mansion and is told that the energy he released during the fight meant that he was a Knight of the Zodiac, who's destiny was to protect a teenage girl who is the reincarnation of the goddess Athena. So basically, a formula plot that has been in a lot of other films. It is pretty much a set up for what is supposed to be a series of Knights of the Zodiac films, but is so predicable that I cant tell who the mysterious masked character who trains the teen to be a Knight of the Zodiac actually is. ( And I am sure they were going to save that reveal for the final film in the series. )The effects and action are good enough that you are entertained. But it is another one of those films hat you will forget about a few days after seeing it.

[Pastor of Muppets]

I saw Final Destination Bloodlines today.  I love this franchise just because it is so stupid and so formulaic.  Every single installment is exactly the same, right up to the fake out happy ending.

[stethacantus]

Shaolin Intruders ( 1983 )
I forgot to mention this last weel, but Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 4 has every film directed by Tong Kai. Which is only three. Tong was the partner of Lau Kar Leung when both choreographed the fight scenes in the early Chang Cheh films. The team was broken up when Lau Kar Leung became a director. And while Tong would have preferred continuing as a fight choreographer, Shaw Brothers kept pressuring him to become a director, after the success of Leung's films. He finally agreed to direct Shaolin Prince, which he intended to be his only film  as a director. Well, he was then talked into doing this, as well as his masterpiece Opium and the Kung Fu Master. The plot: Three misfits investigate the mysterious assassinations of top martial arts chiefs after one of them is framed for the murders. Their investigation takes them to the Shaolin Temple where they discover rogue monks are responsible. Well, mystery solved.  Or is it......? The lesser of the Tong Kai films, but still very entertaining.

Silent Night ( 2023 )
A couple of years ago I heard the unbelievable. John Woo was going to  direct a Christmas movie. The plot leaked was that it takes place on Christmas Eve, and involved a hero  fighting home invaders. Actually, that was the plot for Violent Night, which came out exactly one year earlier. In that film it was Santa Claus who took on the home invaders. Silent Night, the first American Film John Woo made since Paycheck in 2003,  sadly tanked in the theaters. I was prepared to buy it ever since, but each time I would attempt to purchase it from Amazon, I would try to also get his other recent films But The Crossing Parts 1 and 2 and Manhunt were never released in the United States,  and are only available as expensive imported discs that some reviewers were saying were actually region locked. And the remake of The Killer is still a streaming exclusive. Finally decided to get this by itself.

The actual plot: On Christmas Day a stray bullet from a shootout between drug gangs kills a boy playing in his yard. In rage, the father chases down the car with the gunmen who killed his son, but they shoot him through the throat and leave him for dead. He recovers, and vows to kill every member of the gang on the next Christmas, spending the year training at fighting, shooting and stunt driving. This leads to him taking out the gang at their compound.  Silent Night is meant to be a gimmick film. Not only cant the father speak due to his throat injury, but at no time in the film do any of the other characters speak. All dialogue is  craftily avoided , although one of the characters does talk  while being gaged. But otherwise this is basically a silent film, but with loud gunfire. It took a little longer than I liked to get to the action as the first hour of the film is the father training for his vigilante mission.  But once the action does finally begin, it is pure John Woo.

[stethacantus]

Holy Flame of the Martial World ( 1983 )
By 1983 you get a lot of films from Shaw Brothers Studios that had you not seen the studio or producer Mona Fong in the credits, you would think came from one of the New Wave films from one of the other studios. Holy Flame of the Martial World is one of them, having barely any fight choreography and tons of fantasy and visual effects. A young couple is on the run from just about every martial arts master in the world because they are both holding parchments containing poems which hold clues to the whereabouts of the two Holy Flames, both weapons  with unbelievable powers. Two of the masters catch up to an kill the couple, and  are about to kill  their infant son so he can never later seek revenge against them, when he is rescued by the Elder Yama who overpowers the two evil masters with his ghostly laugh technique ( where his literal laughs causes pain and death to anyone in front of him. ) The elder makes off with the infant and one of the parchments, vowing to the two evil masters that he will personally teach the infant his Kung Fu so he can seek vengeance in 18 years. Not only does he teach the son a version of martial arts where  he can cause a sword to fly around and kill his opponent, but has deciphered the parchment and sends the son to the magic cave where the Ying Holy Flame weapon is hidden. Meanwhile the evil masters don't just have the parchment that gave them the location of the Yang Holy Flame, but had found another infant who was the sister, and have raised her to kill the Elder Yama, telling her it was Yama who killed her parents. Naturally this leads to a brief battle between the two siblings, before they both discover the truth  and combine their mastery of the Ying and Yang Holy Flames to battle the evil masters.  There is very little actual martial  arts in this film, and only from a couple of supporting characters. Most of the characters in this film use techniques that employ magic, so that they cause projectiles to fly at their opponents or shoot energy beams at them, and in some cases  cause their opponents  flesh to explode so that all that is left of them is a skeleton. This was one o the forgotten Shaw Brothers films,  having no major director attached to it,  and the only two stars in it having minor roles. It was made when Shaw Brothers was desperate to keep up with the other studios who were beating them at the box office with their own fantasy films. It bombed at the Hong Kong box office, and that should have been that. However, in the 90s it was rediscovered on video by American HK film enthusiasts who were looking through the Chinatown video rental stores for effects driven fantasy films, and soon after had a following on the bootleg video market. Its fun, if you don't care about a coherent plot or character development. But if you like tons of nonsense fantasy scenes happening one after another, then you will like this.

Batman vs Robin ( 2015 )
This is actually the second in the three Batman/Damian animated films which for some reason are in reverse sequence on the Batman 80th Anniversary Collection. The first film, Son of Batman.  has Batman discovering he has a son, and trains him to be Robin. This film, his disobedient son nearly leaves him to be the sidekick of the Talon, a warrior working for The Court of Owls, and the third film, Batman: Bad Blood has Batman and his son going after a new killer vigilante who has history with Batman and The Joker. These animated films have pretty much a constant quality, which is not enough to be good enough for a theatrical release, but better than the average Batan: The Animated Series episode.

Dance With Me Henry ( 1956 )
It is about time I complete my Abbott and Costello collection. Universal had released the Complete Abbott & Costello Universal Collection which had all their films in a single box set. Sort of. First, the history of Universal and their A&C releases. A decade earlier they began releasing the A&C films on DVD, each in a box set containing four films. When the final box set was released, fans of A&C were disappointed to realize that at least one of the Universal films, It Ain't Hay,  had not been included in any of the sets. It was a remake of am earlier Universal comedy called Princess O'Hara, which was based on a Damon Runyon short story of the same name. The family of Runyon claimed Universal didn't have the right to release the story on home video, and held up the rights to release both It Ain't Hay and Princess O'Hara on home video for years.  The rights issue was finally settled in 2008, at which time it was included on the Complete Universal set, which did not go well with A&C fans who now needed to re-buy the same 28 movies ( including the compilation film ) just to get the one film they were missing. Fortunately, I hadn't gotten around to buying the four film box sets when Universal announced It Ain't Hay would be in the Complete set. Okay, one other problem. Universal decided to use some of the Realart  re-releases of the A&C films for source prints, which turned out to have parts of the title sequences altered so that the Universal logo was replaced with the Realart logo. The problem was that with Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein, the logo was part of the opening animated titled, which meant some of the animation was removed, and the final gag where A&C jump off a rowboat and swim away from the invisible man was removed. So for that film I needed to buy a separate earlier DVD single movie release that had the original Universal opening and closing.

And now the other problem. Universal was only interested in releasing the films they owned, and not to license the rest of the A&C films for an actual complete collection. Guess we should be lucky they bothered to secure the rights to It Ain't Hay, but that was more so they could sell the complete box set to those who already bought the four film box sets. Here is what happened. Back in the 1940s Universal was on the verge of bankruptcy when the A&C movies became their studio's only hit films.  Since A&C were under a long term contract with Universal, they decided to lend them out to M.G.M. in trade of some of the M.G.M. contract stars. So M.G.M. stars appeared in a couple of Universal films, and A&C did three films for M.G.M. When their contract was up, A&C only agreed to sign a second contract Universal if there would be no more lend outs, and that they would be allowed to do one film independent from Universal a year. The first was made for Eagle-Lion Films, a small studio that would later be bought by United Artists. The second was made for United Artists. The third and fourth made for Warner Bros. because they agreed to make them in color. And the fifth, Dance With Me Henry was made for United Artists. M.G.M. later merged with United Artists, so that M.G.M. Home Video had the home video release rights to the United Artists and Eagle-Lion releases. Warner Bros. then bought the M.G.M. movie catalog, so ended up with the home video rights to every movie A&C had made outside of Universal. So did they use this to release their own box set of A&C films? No. In fact, because Warner had bought M.G.M., Dance With Me Henry, which was previously released on M.G.M. Home Video, went out of print. The only one of the independents I could find on DVD was The Noose Hangs High, which was OOP but still in stock at Amazon. The rest, I had to settle for downloading from bit torrents and burning to home made DVDs. ( Okay, Africa Screams and Jack & the Beanstalk were both public domain, so available on multiple DVD releases, but sourced from horrible prints that I didn't want to bother to buy. ) Since then many of the M.G.M and independent films have seen re-releases, so it was about time I began to replace my bootleg discs.

Olive Films re-released Dance With Me Henry, and on wide screen. Wait a second. Wasn't this film in a 1:33:1 ratio? I checked with the bootleg, and yes, Olive has cropped the film to a widescreen aspect ratio. It is possible that it was shot in 1:33:1 and then cropped in theaters. By 1956  most theaters had adopted widescreen, and films not shot in Cinemascope or other widescreen formats were shot in 1:33:1 and cropped by the theater. In these cases, the cinematographer was instructed to shoot nothing of importance at the top and bottom of the frame. Still, I would have preferred the full frame instead of cropped. ( BTW, Olive Films released a lot of Paramount films shot in the 80s that were originally shot 1:33:1 and cropped in theaters without showing the full frame from the earlier VHS home video releases. ) Also, the film print is very grainy. I am not sure if tat is due to Olive being given an inferior print, or if A&C shot the movie on inferior film stock.

Dance With Me Henry was made one year after  A&C made their final film for Universal. They had planned to do a number of films outside of Universal for United Artists, but ended up disbanding the comedy team a year later. So this ended up being their final film. ( Not counting the compilation film Universal released in 1965 ). In 1954 R&B singer Hank Ballard released a single called Work With Me, Annie. It was infamous for having overtly sexual lyrics ( for the 1950s ), and the FCC tried to ban it from radio airplay. Which made it popular with white teenagers, putting it on the Billboard charts from record sales before the FCC had a chance to ban it. In 1955 Etta James recorded a sequel song with the same tune called Wallflower, which had the lyrics "Roll With Me, Henry" sung repeatedly. It too became an R&B hit, and was better known as Roll With Me, Henry.  Later that year Gorgia Gibbs, a  singer who recorded covers of songs by black artists for mainstream radio, recorded her remake of the Etta James song called Dance With Me, Henry along with a lot of less offensive lyrics. It would hit #5 on Billboard. A&C acquired the rights to the song. Their first movie independent of Universal was to be a Rock N Roll movie. However, Lou Costello asserted full  creative control over the film. He wanted the story to revolve around his character, a child like adult who ran a kiddie park and adopted two orphans. The Rock N Roll was almost entirely non existent by the time the script was completed, replaced with a story where Costello's character is framed for murder, then is rescued by the children of the town when the actual mobsters who did the murder kidnap A&C. It is a mess of a plot, with plenty of pathos jammed in,  and a few cringeworthy scenes, such as the ending where Costello leads all the children of the town down the street with a flute like the Pied Piper. Worse, none of the A&C routines are in this film. So basically, it is the weakest of their movies. About the only positive thing to say about it is that unlike most of the Universal films, it is neither continuously interrupted with musical numbers, nor is A&C reduced to supporting characters in a rom com. There is one slightly funny scene where the mobsters want to know where Abbott has hid the stash of missing money, and to get him to talk continuously beat Costello.