What was the last movie you watched?

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Vengeance Is A Golden Blade ( 1969 )
The only film in the Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 5 set which I had bought previously on DVD. I did watch this film when I bought it about a decade ago. And I remembered nothing about it. As I watched it Saturday, not one thing in it seemed familiar. It was as if I watched it for the very first time. The plot has an unfaithful wife of a master swordsman drug her husband so that a rival could attack him and steal his weapon, the famed  Golden Sword which is so sharp it can cut through any weapon, making whoever wields it to be unbeatable. He is crippled by the rival, but manages to escape thanks to his faithful servant.  And for the next two decades, lives in hiding as he forges a sword capable of defeating the Golden Sword. There is also a twist involving his daughter which I will not mention here as it is a spoiler. It is a pretty unique plot, so I have no idea why it was so forgettable.

The Suicide Squad ( 2021 )
James Gunn's "F*&K YOU!" to the DCEU, as well as a f&*k you to the first Suicide Squad film. Meanwhile, while Gunn is busy erasing the DCEU, the DCEU continues as his Peacemaker spinoff series.

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A Taste of Cold Steel ( 1970 )
My mistake was watching the films in the Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 5 set in the order they were presented in the set ( which is basically chronological by release date. ) This movie was a sequel to Rape of the Sword ( 1967 ) which is also in the set. However, having watched it a month ago, I needed to refresh my memory on the plot by fast forwarding the first film again, because it was that forgettable.  Actually, I really didn't need to. This is not a continuation of the story, but rather, the two villains who got away in the first film attempt to steal a second famous sword in the second film. As far as I can tell, none of the other characters return, and we are left with a new set of heroes. The evil King Lu and his son Prince Lu Tianxia set their sights on a famous sword that gives off a purple glow, and enlist a gang of bandits to do it. The plan backfires as the gang ends up keeping the prince as a hostage and demanding the King pay a ransom, as well as keeping the sword for themselves. Meanwhile, one of the heroes swings by the King's palace to take revenge for the destruction of her home and kills the King. She and her sisters manage to beat the gang, with the aid of a mysterious martial arts master who turns out to be the master of Prince Lu, and is so insulted that a student would use his skills for evil, had saved his student from the bandits so he could kill the prince himself. So basically, the only reason this film exists is to kill off the two villains who got away in the first film.

Team America: World Police ( 2004 )
Was in the mood to see this again. Still funny.

Sons of the Desert ( 1933 )
I had wanted to also watch South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut but could not locate it. Found my Laurel & Hady Essentials set instead, and decided to watch this.

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The Iron Buddha ( 1970 )
This film's claim to fame is that it was the final film Sammo Hung fight choreographed for Shaw Brothers before defecting with Lo Lei, Jimmy Wang Yu and others to the new Golden Harvest studios. Otherwise, it was just one of many wuxia films Shaw Brothers cranked out after the success of The One Armed Swordsman. A really dark plot. A creep breaks into a hotel room and attempts to rape a mute girl, but is stopped by a master swordsman who happened to be a guest in a different room. Although everyone asks the swordsman to kill the rapist, he gives him mercy and sets him free because the creep promises to turn his life around. Cut to a few years later. Instead of reforming, the creep improved his swordsmanship, stole a powerful sword that can not only destroy any other sword it comes in contact with, but inflicts a deadly poison on anyone it cuts. Now unstoppable, he roams the country raping and killing women by the thousands,  and decides to track down and kill the master who showed him mercy, raping his wife and daughter in front of him before killing him, then tracking down the master's students and killing them. The senior student was out searching for his master when the other students were massacred, so becomes the only one left to take revenge. But first he must find a legendary sword that is the only weapon that can counter the poison sword. A dark movie where the sadistic villain succeeds in murdering everyone  except for the hero. But as before, even this pot boiler is good quality entertainment. Just not among the studio's absolute classics. Also, the print used for this Blu-ray release is an upscale of a DVD master, which has the motion artifacts that would not be visible on the old analog televisions, but show up on modern sets.

Phantasm ( 1979 )
Already reviewed.

Way Out West ( 1937 )
I had this set of restored Laurel & Hardy films sitting in the shelf next to the television for a couple of years because of it's massive trove of extras, which are mostly archived interviews with crew members from Hal Roach Studios filmed in the late 70s. So many that I never actually got through them all. A lot of shorts, including a near restoration of Battle of the Century, including the entire pie fight restored. It also included restorations of two feature films, including this western, best remembered by fans for the scene where Laurel & Hardy dance.

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The Jade Faced Assassin ( 1971  )
The wuxia revival of the mid 70s was the result of adaptions of Gu Long novels. Those films involved complicated stories, and a multitude of characters to keep track of as well as several subplots. There was some sword fighting, but most of the film was devoted to the confusing plot. Surprisingly, Shaw Brothers adapted a Gu Long novel towards the end of the 60's wuxia revival. The one that began with Come Drink With Me and then broke box office records with The One-Armed Swordsman.. The films then were mostly violent blood fests where the hero mowed through an army of the villain's henchmen. A Gu Long story seemed out of place in this era of wuxia. And as far as I know, this film wasn't among the studio's streak of blockbusters. Which is why it would be another five years before Shaw Brothers attempted to adapt another Gu Long novel with Killer Clans.  And the only reason why they adapted that novel was because critics were comparing it to The Godfather. Killer Clans became a huge hit in Hong Kong, and several other Gu Long novels were adapted by the studio. The problem with Gu Long movies is they are so complicated that you could end up being confused as to what is going on. In this adaption, I am pretty sure many plot points introduced were abandoned without resolution. I still haven't figured out who stole the Headmaster's creed. ( The film's McGuffin. )

Skiptrace ( 2016 )
I last saw this one four years ago, and had memories of enjoying it. Watched it this time, and it was just another formula film. It's good, but I didn't enjoy it the way I remembered enjoying it. Was it all just a false memory? Was I thinking of a different Jacky Chan film? Or is it just one of those films that get weaker each time you watch it?

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Mission Impossible ( 1971 )
No, not the first film in a Tom Cruise franchise. In this wuxia film, the all powerful Dragon Sword is stolen from the Emperor's palace. Basically one of your all powerful swords that everyone now wants. It is said to be so sharp that it could cut opponents seven feet away. Although we never see this happen as the sword remains sheathed the entire film. So basically a famous burglar has stolen it. He is immediately killed by a swordsman looking to possess the sword for himself. He in turn is killed by a heroic swords master who intends to return the sword to the Emperor, because if it gets into the wrong hands it will cause chaos in the Martial Arts world. This is all explained in the first two minutes instead of actually seeing it happen. But we do go to the heroic master's house where he is attacked by another bandit wishing to possess the sword and fatally poisoned. The master's daughter and top student show up and kill the bandit, and before the master dies, he tasks them with journeying to the capital to return the sword. However, now the film's villain is after it, who is an immortal martial arts expert. Plenty of fights, and  a lot of the supernatural. Interesting film, but with a plot that by now was wearing thin.

King Kong ( 1933 )
So I grabbed a couple of films I had not seen for a long time, and decided to watch again.  I still think the original 1933 King Kong is one of the greatest movies ever made. But there are a lot of multiple things that haven't aged well.
#1] The Stop Motion Animation used to bring Kong and all the other giant monsters to life is jerky, and obviously fake looking. Even 50 years later when it was used on Clash of the Titans it looked jerky and fake.
#2] as faky as Kong and the other giant monsters look, the animated humans looked worse. This due to the posable dolls used for the humans being smaller with less joints than the monster dolls.
#3] They went with using real fur on Kong,  rabbit fur, which was constantly moving about even when Kong barely moved.
#4] Kong is not the sympathetic character he would be in every Kong movie made after this one. He murders every living creature he comes across, especially humans. He just grabs and kills humans for no reason. Most notably during his New York City rampage when he sees a sleeping woman in an apartment building he is climbing, yanks her out of her bed, and tosses her to her death.  He has the biggest body count of any monster of Hollywood's golden era, and all from the same movie. The only human he doesn't try to murder is Ann Darrow. But he does sexually molest her, removing her clothes, feeling her up with his fingers, then even sniffing his finger after he tickles her crotch.
#5] It should be no surprise as this was the 1930s, but anyone in this film that isn't white is a negative stereotype.
#6} Women in this film are not treated that well either.
#7] Not to mention the bad reputation given to gorillas, who are normally gentle.
#8] A good 15 minutes in the beginning of this film  is wasted on a sub plot about Carl Denham needing to find an actress for his new film and finding Ann. They could have just skipped that part.
#9] Jack just falls in love with Ann after not liking her for 20 minutes just because the plot called for him braving an island full of monsters to save her. No build up or nothing. Just several scenes of Jack being a woman hater who wanted Ann off his ship, then suddenly telling her he loved her.
#10] The dinosaurs are unusually hostile to humans for no apparent reason. Even a vegetarian Brontosaur chases down and kills about five sailors for no reason.
#11] Okay, what was the Broadway Kong Show going to be had Kong not broken free? Just an audience looking at a chained up ape for an hour? That's not something you bring a sitting audience in to see. It's something you would have groups walk past, as in a zoo exhibit. As amazing as seeing a giant monster chained up on a stage, it would have gotten boring after the first five minutes. Even Mighty Joe Young performed a bit in his act.
#12] The scene where Kong derails and attacks an elevated train... that train was headed towards a sharp turn at full speed. Had Kong not stopped it, it would have flown off the curve and wrecked anyway. Whoever chose to have the train headed towards a sharp turn without slowing down had no idea how subways work. Why did they even bother building a turn into the miniature set?
#13] Gotta feel sorry for the Chrystler building. For eleven months it was the tallest building in the world before the Empire State Building was completed with a couple more floors. Had King Kong been filmed a year earlier, then Kong would have climbed the Chrystler Building. Instead, it is seen off in a distance in the background as Kong battles the planes, missing out on motion picture history.
#14] It was that idiot's fault for flying his plane close enough for Kong to grab it. They could have just circled Kong from blocks away and fired the machine guns at him.
#15] This was more or less the last time in a Kaiju film that a monster was vulnerable to bullets. ( Well, not counting the remakes and the British film Konga. ) From this point on bullets bounce of Kaijus, and even tanks firing at them have no effect.
#16] Yes, this is the dumbest plot in motion picture history. A giant ape falls in love with a girl the size of his hand? It just shows you how good a filmmaker Merian C Cooper was to take such a dumb plot ant turn it into one of the greatest horror films ever.

Fast Times At Ridgemont High ( 1982 )
Was this ever a good movie? Not many of the jokes work, and most of those are with Sean Penn and Ray Walston. It does have that memorable Phoebe Cates swimming pool scene, which hasn't aged well due to how young both she and Jennifer Jason Leigh are supposed to be in this movie. I could just chalk this up to my taste in comedy maturing over the years, but I do not remember laughing at this movie back in the 80s either. Only reason why I have it is that it came packaged with Animal House and American Pie, and I wanted Animal House on DVD, and could not find a store that did not bundle all three films together. I'll give you this. It is watchable. It cast some of the best young actors in the business at the time who made the material work. It just isn't as fun as a similar film like American Graffiti. Also, this is a Christmas film!? Yep. A section of the film takes place during Christmas, including a mall Santa, and Christmas decorations on the houses. It was basically meant to depict a school year in the lives of the teenagers of Ridgemont High, and did a better job showing the passage of time than Grease, which seemed to have a high school were the semester lasted just a week.

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Before I get to this weeks films, I realize I left a couple of things out of last week's review for Mission Impossible. One, it is directed by Joseph Kuo, who ever so briefly worked for Shaw Brothers before deciding they were not giving him enough artistic freedom and left the studio and returned to Taiwan to make his own  independent films. Some which included 18 Bronzemen, Mystery of Chess Boxing, ,  7 Grandmasters, and a few other cult classics. Mission Impossible would not be considered among his classics, but does show what he was capable of when given a big budget. I also failed to mention that Kuo shot the film at silent movie speed. Or basically, the fast speed silent movies move at when shown in sound movie projectors. Not only are fight scenes sped up, but so is everything else. Which is very noticeable and some times distracting. For a film deliberately shot at such a fast pace, it was surprising it concludes with a fifteen minute segment which is basically the villain being chased by a ghost that seems to needlessly drag on and on. I was going to mention that last week, but somehow forgot to put it in my review. Anyway, on to this week's reviews. 

The Six Assassins ( 1971 )
The final film in Shaw Brothers Classics Vol Five. The plot is basically a hero is asked to assassinate the evil leader of a neighboring fief. Not sure where the title came from, as there are at least eight assassins. While considered wuxia and taking place in China, the plot seems more like chambara. There are also a few musical numbers performed by the main characters, which seems odd and out of place whenever it happens.

Juggernaut ( 1974 )
Summer is when I usually stop to watch the other films in my library. After all, why buy them if I never actually watch them again? It also gives me time to replenish my entertainment budget. Considering the money I have been spending on all these Shaw Brothers box sets from both Shout! Factory and Arrow Films, I am currently at a $170 deficit. So, wait until next January to catch up on all the home video releases from 2025 I want in my library. The plan all week was to watch Batman and Robin, to evaluate if it is unwatchable crap, or a thrilling superhero film made for immature kids that works once you accept that it is a Nickelodeon/Disney Channel quality film. well, went to the store room and the set with the  Burton/Schumacher batman films was buried under a bunch of other box sets.  I could see the box, but really did not feel like moving stuff around just to rewatch that film. And then right next to me was the pile of all the 70s disaster movies I collected last year, which are all still together. And there were a bunch of them I thought were really good. So I grabbed a few that I felt like I wanted to see again. And the new plan was to watch a double feature of Black Sunday and 2 Minute Warning, both films about terrorist attacks on the Super Bowl. But... unexpected guests showed up at 8pm who we needed to entertain, and by the time we got them to leave, it was 1230 in the morning. Not enough time for a double feature, and not enough time for The Towering Inferno which has a nearly three hours long runtime. Juggernaut was the fourth film I grabbed. Reviewed here before, a terrorist who calls himself Juggernaut has placed seven bombs on a ship and will detonate them at dawn unless he gets the ransom he has asked for. Most of the drama comes from Richard Harriss  trying to defuse the bombs, each which has a complex series of booby traps. To tell you the truth, this is not as exciting when you know which bombs explode. But is still a really good film without the tension.

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Swordswoman Three ( 1970 )
This weekend I began watching Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 6 this week. This volume has no movies previously released on home video in North America. Mostly because these were films no other video company was interested in releasing in North America. Some of these picked up reputations years after their initial release. But basically, none were hits in Hong Kong, none innovated the martial arts genre, none were either milestones or classics. They were all basically potboilers released to capitalize on the popularity of the wuxia genre. However, a few of them have been mentioned a lot on audio commentaries on previous Shaw Brothers Classics disks. The Black Tavern in particular, which is supposed to be the most violent film Shaw Brothers ever made.   The films in this set are:
Swordswoman Three ( 1970 )
Twelve Gold Medallions ( 1970 )
The Black Enforcer ( 1972 )
Dual For Gold ( 1971 )
Finger Of Doom ( 1972 )
Na Cha And The Seven Devils ( 1973 )
Shadow Girl ( 1970 )
Swordsman At Large ( 1971 )
The Black Tavern ( 1972 )
The Young Avenger ( 1972 )
Crazy Nuts Of Kung Fu ( 1974 )

Also this week, Arrow announced their release in December of Shaw Scope Volume 4. It will have nothing but science fiction, fantasy and horror. So will predictably have Super Infra Man and the Black Magic series. But also a few films I have been hoping to collect including Oily Maniac. About the same time Shout! Factory confirmed the release of Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 8 which will include Treasure Hunters and Cat vs Rat.

Okay, so on to this set. The lead off film, Swordswoman Three, is... well, a potboiler. Lo Lei wants to be the best swordsman in the world, so wants to duel the current master swordsman, but cant even beat his son. So decides to steal the most powerful sword in the world, the all powerful Steel Sword which has the magnetic power pull any weapon out of the hands of his opponents. So right off the bat we have a villain who wants tom be the greatest swordsman in the world, and a magic sword capable of making anyone who wields it unbeatable. The three swordswoman are three sisters who are tasked with protecting the Steel Sword. But one of the sisters in engaged to the villain ( somehow not realizing he is a villain ) and permits him to hold the sword so he can look art it, which he does for two seconds before running off with it. The rest of the film is the attempts by the tree sisters to retrieve the sword from an unbeatable villain. Entertaining, but basically a rehash of a lot of plot points from previous wuxia films.

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut ( 1999 )
About two decades ago I lived in a house that I was just  a few more payments of owning. And then the financial crisis, combined with the neighborhood suddenly being gentrified, which meant the property taxes on any property in the neighborhood skyrocketing. And me temporarily without a job, and a lot of investments lost, and the bank holding the mortgage wanting to foreclose because a developer wanted to buy the property. Basically, I had a choice of trying to find the money to pay off the bank and pay off the taxes and going into debt just to hold onto the house, or take the bank's offer and sell out to the developer and move into a different house that would only be a rental. It was about the same size as the previous house, and in a neighborhood not yet gentrified, so little chance of the rent going up. But there was a huge stipulation. The owner of the property refused to allow any remodeling or altering of the property. Which included not allowing shelves to be built. The previous house, an old brownstone from the 1800, s that had a friggin library! That's right. There was a room with nothing but wooden book shelves on every wall which was meant to be a library. Most of the other brownstones on the block had stripped the shelves out of their libraries decades ago. I happened to have a brownstone that retained all of it's 19th century architecture.  So, that's where my movie library went. VHS tapes, Laserdiscs, DVDs, and eventually the first Blu-rays I owned. Also, video games, collectables, and some actual books. My movie library was arranged in sections, much like the shelves at Blockbuster. So for example, all of my Laurel & Hardy films were together in the same section, arranged by release date if possible, or volume number when released that way. Superhero films, alphabetized by hero, although the MCU had it's own section and was arranged in release order. James bond movies in release order. etc. It was possible to find any movie you were looking for without having to resort to a catalog that told you which shelf the film was on. ( And I had a catalog too. ) But then we had to move. And I found out the owner of the new house didn't have shelves, nor wanted any built. Now, I could have just bought free standing shelves. Which was not as easy as it sounds, because the ones tall enough to be reasonable needed to be bolted into the nearest wall to keep them from falling over, which the landlord forbade. I could get these dinky three foot shelves, but the ones they sold were basically three or four shelves, and if I filled up an entire room with them, could only fit about half of my library. More if I was allowed to block windows, closets and vents, which once again the landlord did not want me to do because of some imagined fire hazard. I was looking into free standing shelves like the ones you see in the middle of stores ( like Blockbuster had ) which take up a lot more space than you would think. Basically about three feet by eight feet for the base. Plus, these were basically bare wire shelves that looked unappealing in the middle of homes. So, I ended up never getting around to having any shelves in my current residence to put my movie library. And, every year I assume that next year we will be moving out to a permanent home, as soon as the housing market stops being insane, or we decide to move completely out of the state.

So what happened to my movie library?  Stuffed in the same moving boxes they arrived in this residence in. They are in a storage space/unused section of garage where they were dumped temporarily after moving here, joined by about five more boxes. When I put those movies in those boxes, they were put in by category. The boxes were even marked with what category was in each. So here is the problem. Certain members of the family think the library is just taking up space with something I will probably never watch again, and so to justify their existence, I must share the library with friends and family. So basically whenever someone wants to watch a movie, they are allowed to go into the boxes and look for something to watch. The problem is, the way they always seem to do it is to  pull every single DVD out of a box and put it on the floor, then instead of putting them back, pull every DVD out of another box, then every DVD out of a third box before finding something they want to see, then just randomly put everything back in the wrong boxes. And another thing that happens, someone digs out a film, watches it, then forgets where he or she got it and puts it back in the wrong box. So basically, everything is as mixed up as a deck of cards that has been shuffled, cut, and shuffled again. And every time I go to find something, it isn't there. And trying to find it takes hours and hours. And yes, I try to put the boxes back into order, when I have the time, which seems to last only a few days as everyone has to dig through them while I am at work. So, Saturday I was in the mood to see the entire Lego Batman trilogy, which is the Lego Movie, it's sequel and the Lego Batman movie. And all three films were supposed to be in the box with my other Batman films ( not counting the DCEU films which are supposed to be together in a second box. ) So I looked in that box. It had the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher set, the Dark Knight set, the animated film set, the 1966 movie, the Columbia serials, and pretty much every other batman film I owned, including two of the Lego movies. Someone removed The Lego Movie and didn't put it back. And I spent hours looking for it, and could not find it. Did find the South Park movie I had been looking for a couple of weeks ago. But damn it, could not locate the first Lego film, which for all I know was left somewhere else in the house, or possibly lent to someone's friend who never returned it.

Sorry, but I needed to vent about that.

Well, anyway. this film.... is not that good. I mean, you watch something like Imagination Land which is really three episodes strung together, and that one you laugh all the way through. Sometime so hard you nearly fall on the floor ( like when the Cavity Creeps show up. ) This one relied too much on the humor being able to hear the characters curse without being bleeped, as Comedy Central did back then before they decided to air their cartoons uncensored after midnight, and release the South Park episodes uncensored on DVD. Too much of the movie is devoted to musical numbers. Sure, a few songs are gems. But most seem to be just padding. And one of the best songs, Kyle's Mom's A Bitch, was taken from an episode of the series. So, less laughs than the other direct to video movies, and less laughs than an average episode of South Park. ( Far less funny than Team America: World Police. )But I could have sworn I thought this was hilarious  three decades ago when I last saw it. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood Saturday.

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The Twelve Gold Medallions ( 1970 )
It isn't surprising why this never became a classic. After the box office record breaking success of The One Armed Swordsman,  Shaw Brothers flooded the market with many more Wuxia films. So much that there was Wuxia fatigue. Later that year Jimmy Wang Yu would release The Chinese Boxer, kicking off the new fad in martial arts films, Kung Fu. And thanks to Bruce Lee, Kung Fu would become the dominant martial arts genre. So basically, many of the Wuxia films made in the early 70s are ignored, with exception to the major releases like 14 Amazons or The Water Margin. That is a shame, as this film deserves to be considered one of the best Wuxia films ever made. Based on an actual historic event during an invasion of China, where a traitor minister hoping the Emperor will be toppled,  decided to deliver a gold medallion to a heroic general ordering him to retreat and allow the invasion to happen. A group of heroic swordsmen decide to keep the general from receiving the medallion by intercepting and killing the messenger delivering it. A martial arts clan leader decides to accept the task of delivering a medallion to the general, and sends out several messengers, all who are stopped by his own former student, who to make matters more complicated, is his daughter's fiancé. This does not stop the swordsman from doing his patriotic duty and intercepting the couriers attempting to deliver the medallions, and eventually sets the film up for a confrontation between master and student.  A thin story that is nicely shot, and has plenty of  imaginative fight scenes. Also, pointlessly dark, as so many of the heroes end up dying by the final reel, and even after the hero inevitably defeats his master, it is revealed in screen text that the clan attempting to deliver medallions was just a diversion from the actual courier, who did get through, causing the downfall of the dynasty. Oh well. But I guess you just cant change history for a happy ending in a movie.


National Lampoon's Animal House ( 1978 )
I first got to see National Lampoon's Animal House on it's network television premier back in the early 80s. I had seen and liked the short lived Delta House television series , but at my age at the time, was simply unable to get in to see an R rated film. Of course, the network television broadcast was highly censored, removing most of the movie's best jokes. Yet, I remember laughing through the whole movie. A few years later it came out on home video, and friend rented it from a video store. This was my first time watching it uncensored, and I once again laughed all the way through. It was that same year that I saw National Lampoon's Vacation in the theaters, and thought "Wow, this is nowhere as funny as Animal House." For me, National Lampoon's Animal House would remain a gold standard in comedy, along  Airplane! and the Monty Python movies. In the early 00's I got this film in a budget pack along with Fast Times At Ridgemont High and American Pie, the three DVDs shrink wrapped together for $15. And while Animal House was the funniest of the three films, I wasn't laughing at it as much as I had in the past. Watched it again a few years ago, and I barely laughed. Something I sadly realized about comedy. It dates poorly. The problem is, things are usually funny when they are fresh and new. R rated films had been around less than ten years when Animal House was released, and up until then, no one had used the R rating for a comedy about delinquents yet. Or at least, to that degree. Since it's release, there would be hundreds of movies, and later television shows, that covered the same material. And, I had seen the jokes already. And jokes get less funny each time they are told. So, I had not seen Animal House in over a decade, maybe more, and still had these discs hanging around, and wanted to see if somehow not watching the film in such a long time made the gags fresh again. It didn't. I watched the entire film, and did not laugh once. I did feel nostalgic, revisiting all those classic scenes again. But after watching so many R rated comedies over the years, frat boys cursing just isn't as funny as it used to be. Popped in a random episode of Community to see if my funny bone was still working, and laughed several times. Sigh. How long until I no longer find Community funny?

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The Black Enforcer ( 1972 )
With all the hype Chang Cheh and Lau Kar Leung get, you may think Shaw Brothers had only two great directors working for them. Three if you count King Hu, who left the studio immediately after filming Come Drink With Me and therefore just barely worked at Shaw Brothers. But they had a lot of great directors who were mostly ignored in the United States because their best work was in the Wuxia genre, which was barely imported here as most distributors preferred Bruce Lee style Kung Fu. Wuxia was seen as a genre that only appealed to the Chinese, even after the success of the Wuxia tribute film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. More recently More recently there has been a reevaluation of Wuxia by American film critics, especially after Celestial began restoring and rereleasing the Shaw Brothers films in the early 00s making most of them available on home video for the first time. Also getting reevaluated was the Shaw Brothers Hong Kong Horror films. And one Shaw Brothers director responsible for both was Ho Meng Hua. Probably best known for The Flying Guillotine and Mighty Peking Man,  he made a bunch of classic horror films for Shaw, many of which will be available in the upcoming Shaw Scope Volume 4.  The Black Enforcer is among his Wuxia films, and praised more for it being completed than for it's quality. Several Shaw Brothers films had to be abandoned in 1970 when several actors and actresses defected to the new Golden Harvest studio, leaving dozens of movies half filmed. Ho Meng Hua had to contend with rewriting the film to accommodate the actors who left without finishing their scenes, in some cases having to reshoot entire scenes with new actors recast in the roles. Or in the case of this film, having two actors play the same character and hoping the audience would not notice. He had begun shooting this movie in late 1969 and would not complete it until 1972. The film itself is a depressing revenge thriller where a police constable  seeks vengeance against the criminal who murdered his family then framed him for it, sending him to prison for 15 years. A decent film drama wise, but not very memorable on the fight scenes.


Lego Movie ( 2014 )
I collect superhero films. And one of the sub, collections is all the Batman films, including the Columbia serials, as well as a few television shows. All which I kept together in this one opened box where you can see the Burton/Schumacher film collection box set near the top, and a lot of the others either directly below or above it. Among those films are the Lego movies, because there is a Lego version of Batman in it as one of the lead characters.  A couple of years ago I felt like rewatching the Lego films, and wouldn't you know, they had been moved. I don't want to rehash again how f*&ked up my home video collection is having to be kept in a bunch of boxes, and family members who keep shuffling them around so that they are not where they should be. But it took me months to find Lego Batman and the first Lego movie and return them to the batman section/boxes. I told everyone not to move the batman films again, or mix up any other movies kept together by category, which was completely ignored because a couple of weeks ago I was once again in the mood to watch the Lego films, and the first one was missing again! Whenever a DVD that is supposed tom be in a specific box goes missing, I get into a bit of a panic. Did someone stick it back in a box it doesn't belong in, or did something else happen to it? Did a family friend borrow it who never returned it? Did someone decide I was never going to watch it again, and give it to Good Will? Was someone either visiting or a workman fixing something decide to snatch it? I mean, I could always get a new one. But my bigger worry is if this is no longer in my possession, then are any other movies gone?  Is my collection incomplete? Because I have a lot of DVDs that are long out of print and are no longer available, even as used on eBay. So I usually go nuts and check through every box, which is a long process of carefully removing every DVD in every box. Often I find a lot of movies in the wrong place and they go back to the box they belong in. But as usual, the missing movie is found in the very last place I look. That one box I saved for last, because it is the dumbest place it could have possibly been put. In this case, the Lego Movie was mixed in with the VHS tapes?! along with a couple of other DVDs that went back to where they belong. Why? Well, anyway, all three Lego movies are back together, and as far as I can tell, nothing else is missing. So.. all that trouble for a film I just sort of like. All three Lego movies were fun, but clearly the first was the best. And it has it's problems. They have a lot of incredible animation and backgrounds, which you barely get to see because the animation moves way too fast. This also effects the action scenes as things move way too fast for you to tell what is happening most of the time. Also, the ending, although meant to be some sort of twist, sort of kills the movie. Having it switch to a live action story that is supposed to be heartwarming, sort of robs the Lego characters of a satisfying conclusion to their story. 

[LucasM]

A suggestion: buy one (or more, depending on the size of your collection) of those 7' tall metal cabinets that you can lock and put your collection in there.

A sign on the cabinet could finish this off, saying, "Since those borrowing these have repeatedly not put them back where they came from as I have requested, see me and I will come with you to this cabinet to get you a film if you want one.  When you are done watching it, I will put it back where it belongs so that it is there when it is needed next.  Thank you."

[stethacantus]

A suggestion: buy one (or more, depending on the size of your collection) of those 7' tall metal cabinets that you can lock and put your collection in there.

A sign on the cabinet could finish this off, saying, "Since those borrowing these have repeatedly not put them back where they came from as I have requested, see me and I will come with you to this cabinet to get you a film if you want one.  When you are done watching it, I will put it back where it belongs so that it is there when it is needed next.  Thank you."

I would need a lot of those cabinets and they would need to be able to stack without breaking. Also, there are family members who insist that a physical movie library is a waste of money and space with everything on streaming. ( For the record, at least eight of the movies and one television episode I have on physical media are not available through streaming , either because of legal conflict, regional unavailability, political correctness,  or someone in it being cancelled. ) Anyway, in order to keep my library which takes up too much space, I have to allow everyone access to said library. And I have lectured them on putting things back where they found them. Which is apparently too hard for them to do. 

Duel for Gold ( 1971 )
Wuxia translates to Martial Arts Hero, and was always stories of heroic swordsmen and swordswomen fighting against evil. Basically like American western heroes, or later superheroes. Which is why it is questionable that this film is considered in the wuxia genre. There are no heroes in this movie. Just several villainous swordsmen and women who end up killing each other over a stash of stolen gold which they decide not to split up among themselves. ( Not really a spoiler as the movie opens with the villains dead on the ground, then shows the story in flashback. )  Interesting enough concept, but not as thrilling when there is no one to root for.


The Lego Batman Movie( 2017 )
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part( 2019 )
Saturday Night Live was a rerun this week, so was able to complete the Lego Batman trilogy. And I have to say, you really should not try to watch two Lego movies back to back.

[stethacantus]

Finger Of Doom ( 1972 )
What's Halloween without a few spooky coincidents that seem ordained by the supernatural? Then again, these were the movies I watched on November 1st, All Holy Day, what was once the holiest day in the Christian calendar before the Catholics invented Christmas to coincide with the popular pagen winter feasts. But basically, All Holy Day is the day that   evil is vanquished from the Earth. Or at least subdues for a few days until it gradually leaks back. Since November 1st was the day the world was cleansed of evil, then October 31st, All Holy Day Eve ( later shortened to Halloween, ) was the day that the evil spirits reached their yearly peek. So, nothing spooky should be happening on November 1st, right?

I decided that since Halloween fell on a Friday then this year I would watch horror films on the following Saturday, the next day and the closest to Halloween. I had ordered  Golden Harves Classics Volume 1 a month ago a month or two ago. It showed up in a bashed up box resealed in shrink wrap, obviously used, which I returned. The price wen up by $10 on the Golden Harvest set, and went down by $10 on Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 6, so that was ordered instead. I intended to repurchase the Golden Harvest set once the price dropped back into the 50s, but that hasn't happened yet. The Golden Harvest set is mostly supernatural films. Had I not returned it, this week would have been Doctor Vampire. Next week on the Shaw Brother's set is a monster movie called Na Cha and the Seven Devils ( 1973 ). And for a while I thought I had missed watching a horror themed martial arts film on Halloween weekend by a week. That is until I began watching this week's film, which I assumed was just going to be another Wuxia movie. Nope. It is a wuxia horror film! The finger of doom from the title is a technique that turns victims into zombies. Well, more like those voodoo style zombies than flesh eating zombies. But the women turning them into zombies are doing this so they can act as pallbearers for the coffins they lay in most of the day. Doesn't really make much sense. But these women come from the sect that invented the finger of doom technique, and one of them is using the technique to help an evil swordsman take over the martial arts world. The head of the sect does not approve of the finger of doom being used for evil purposes ( so why did you even invent it? ) and orders another of her students to track down the other student abusing the technique and put a stop to her, permanently. And if you didn't think this movie was horror themed enough, the evil sword master  has a hunchback as a servant! Yep, this was meant to be a horror film. And without planning it, was the martial arts movie that I ended up watching this weekend.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame ( 1923 )
And here is where things get even more strange. I had intended to watch Phantom of the Opera this Saturday to celebrate it's 100th anniversary. I ordered the disk a week ago, and it arrived Friday USED! I mean, really used. A box with no factory seal, one of the two disks missing, and the one remaining with scratches all over it. So, it went back. So, what horror film did I have in my library to watch instead? At first I considered watching Jaws again this year, because it is the 50th anniversary. Last year I participated in the one horror film a day challenge, but could only do so if I started as soon as I got home and didn't pause the film, even if I needed to leave the room to make dinner, answer the doorbell or phone, or take a bathroom break. I had seen all of these films before, so didn't really need to see every scene. But it did mean I  spent most of King Kong listening to Fay Wray screaming from my kitchen. ( I vowed to rewatch it on a day when I didn't need to leave the room frequently and ended up watching it again few weeks ago. ) The Hunchback of Notre Dame was one of the films I could not find last year for the challenge, but found it a few weeks ago while looking for the missing Lego movie. BTW, could not participate in this years horror movie challenge because MSNBC has taken over the television after Trump was reelected. So at the last minute, I decided to rewatch The Hunchback of Notre Dame. So, this weekend had two horror themed movies featuring hunchbacks. Completely unintended. But almost as if fate made it happen. Or at least, Amazon continuing to put used merchandise in their new stock. Cut it out Amazon. I am beginning to think it is deliberate rather than some overworked employees making mistakes.

[stethacantus]

Na Cha and the Seven Devils ( 1973 )
An odd pick for Shout! Factory to add to their Shaw Brothers Classics collection.  Not truly wuxia, but more of a fantasy film with some swordplay. Written and directed by Japanese director Tetsuya Yamauchi who Shaw Brothers hired just to make this movie. And was made specifically for the Taiwanese film market where Na Cha is a popular character. Na Cha is basically a folk legend about a child deity who similar to the Monkey King in character and abilities. There have been many films based on the character, including one made a year later by Chang Cheh starring Fu Sheng. But in this film, Na Cha accidentally allows seven heavenly peaches fall from a tree and down onto Earth where  seven different animals eat them and become demons. The lead deity orders Na Cha to go down to Earth and kill the demons before they can cause havoc on mankind. Which they pretty much do. This is most definitely suppose to be a kids film. And yet, it has a scene where a demon seduces a woman, then while making out with  he, fondles her naked breast, and then shoves his hands up her dress and begins massaging her privates. IN A F&*KING KIDS FILM!

The Eagle Has Landed ( 1976 )
Well, this was a surprise. So, Wikipedia has a list of American made live action superhero movies. And I am collecting superhero movies, so rely on the Wikipedia list for those small independent or small releases I would not know about otherwise. And for some reason, new superhero movies are added to the list a few years after their release, which means they are no longer in print for their physical media release. Which means a lot of the time I have to search for them on eBay. About a year ago I was looking for one of those OOP movies and found a few sellers. Fortunately no one was pricing their copies like Super Bowl tickets yet. One of the sellers, who ran a brick and mortar used media shop, was only selling items in bunches. In this case, Ultrachrist ( see review ) was being sold with The Eagle Has Landed. So for the same $10 I would have paid to the other sellers, I could get two movies. And in this case, a movie from my childhood which I would not mind watching again for nostalgic reasons. So I ordered it. And then a week later received an email apologizing that they no longed had a copy of The Eagle has Landed and would just be sending me Ultrachrist. But would be sending The Eagle Has Landed as soon as they got it back in stock. Well, it was probably a scam. But I did receive Ultrachrist in mint condition, so basically forgot about the other film. It was a shame I would not be getting it, but would have been spending  the same $10 if I had bought Ultrachrist from other sellers, so didn't actually loose anything. Last Wends day, a copy of The Eagle Has Landed showed up in the mail. 

Back in the 70s, while most of America had become anti-war due to Vietnam, the kids my age loved watching war movies. Especially World War II movies where the soldiers ran around machine gunning each other. Of course, our tastes would change with Star Wars, and our preferred wars would  soon take place in space.  But that decade we would watch every WWII movie broadcast on television.

This war movie was directed by John Sturges, who also directed Ice Station Zebra, The Great Escape, and the MST3K experiment Space Travelers. It was his final film before retirement. As a kid, any movie where Nazi's and Americans shot machine guns at each other or blew each other up with Bazookas was outstanding entertainment. This would be the first time I saw this as an adult, and would notice all of it's flaws. The story is very simple. A group of Nazi soldiers disguised as Polish soldiers sneak into England and take over a town on a mission to kidnap Winston Churchill.  They are discovered and end up in a battle with American soldiers stationed at a nearby villa. The flaws? The film is two hours and fifteen minutes long. While it does not seem to be slow paced, it does take nearly an hour for the nazi's to parachute into England. Basically the first hour is Himmler putting together the team which is to carry out the mission. And Donald Sutherland, who plays an IRA spy working for the Nazis, taking up residence in the English village as a marsh warden in order to do something that will help the invaders. I'm not sure what. It appears this film may have been a lot longer, as a lot of stuff seems to have been cut. For example, Donald meets English girl Jenny Agutter, and in the very next scene they are both madly in love. I am sure there was far more scenes cut showing how their romance built. And most likely scenes that explained what exactly his character was supposed to be doing. The film really comes to life with the introduction of Larry Hagman's character, an American general who wants to be in the war, but has not seen battle and is about to be transferred back stateside. When he finds out about the nazi's, he decides to order his company to attack them instead of alerting allied command. The general turns out to be an idiot, and ends up getting half his men killed. I have no idea if the scenes deleted would have improved the narrative of the film, or made it pace slower. But despite all the plot holes, it is entertaining. Considering the last time I watched this, it was on network television where they unusually added any deleted scenes to increase the running time, then I probably didn't even see the version I saw as a kid. Oh well. Still, a surprise to get something in the mail I had already given up for dead.

[stethacantus]

Shadow Girl ( 1970 )
It's a wuxia film, about a swordswoman who turns invisible. Lots of effects in this one. Lots of green screen used.  The plot.... Not sure what it is about. So basically, a woman who can turn invisible and uses her power to prank everyone into thinking she is a ghost, ruins a wedding procession, where the bride's palanquin is knocked over, her ceremonial headpiece stolen, and the guards protecting her are all knocked over. This prank causes the bride's father to demand the invisible brat who attacked the wedding procession and delayed the marriage to be hunted down and delt with. He is the villain of the film, although I am confused as to exactly what he did to make him a villain. There are some hero  swordsmen out to get him, and their leader has been injured by a poisoned sword by one of the villain's henchmen when he fought them, but exactly what scheme he was up to or what evil deed he had done in the past is not explained. A confusing film with an invisible prankster girl who likes pranking the villain. We eventually get her origin story in flashbacks, but I have no idea what is happening in the rest of the film.

Scooby-Doo ( 2002 )
I had some other films I wanted to see this weekend, and as usual, could not find any of them. Then while looking through one box, found this film and remembered that it was an early James Gunn movie. So, grabbed this one. Not as good as Suicide Squad or Guardians of the Galaxy. Possibly because someone else directed it. But you can tell from Gunn's script that he had an affection for the cartoon series. There is very little mocking of the source material. And the surprise villain is one that would please any long time fan of the cartoon series. The monsters turn out to be real, which is a switch from the series. Although in this movie, it is presented as the very first time the Mystery Inc. gang has ever run into real monsters, the rest having been hoaxes.  The CGI Scooby-Doo is terrible. Like most popular cartoon characters brought into live action films via CGI around that time, is all floppy and out of model. And unintentionally frightening enough that Fred should have tried to demask him. Certainly not the CGI that brought Rocket Racoon alive years later. A nice enough film, and despite all the negative reviews, a lot better than the source material.  But I can see why I could not remember the plot even though I had seen it a decade ago.

[stethacantus]

Swordsman at Large ( 1971 )
A wuxia version of Robin Hood finds his reputation smeared when several bandits are impersonating him when they commit their crimes. He is hunted by two cousins who vow to bring him to justice, one who is the most beautiful swordswoman in the world. When she is injured by a gang of criminals sent to capture her for the bandit leader Happy King, the wuxia Robin Hood rescues her and nurses her back to life. Realizing he is not the villain his reputation makes him out to be, she returns to her cousin to plead with him that the wuxia Robin Hood is really a hero, but he betrays her and attempts to capture him while he is drunk, leading to him being injured, and the wuxia version of Friar Tuck being killed. So basically there is a love triangle between the Robin Hood and the two cousins.... and there is also a sup plot thrown in about everyone seeking a legendary sword called the Deer Saber, which like all legendary swords, can be used by whoever possesses it to rule the martial arts world. Most likely one of the wuxia films begun in the mid 60s and not completed and/or released until the early 70s. Which would explain why Sammo Hung is in it despite having already defected to Golden Harvest, and there being a musical number in it, which Shaw Brothers had stopped putting in their martial arts films by the 70s.

Two-Minute Warning ( 1976 )
Black Sunday ( 1977 )
With SNL on Thanksgiving hiatus, I was able to watch this  as a double feature. Back between the release of Jaws and the release of Star Wars, when the two biggest trends in movies was still martial arts films and disaster movies, Universal and Paramount rushed to be the first to release a disaster movie taking place at the Super Bowl. Both involved terrorism as the disaster. One being a crazed sniper mowing down the crowd, the other a terrorist organization setting off a bomb in the Goodyear Blimp which would send shrapnel into the crowd. In fact, both films had plots that involved the Good Year blimp ( a good year for product placement for that company. ) Both had the president of the United States in attendance at the game. Both were shot during actual football games. Both have crowds rushing the exits in a panic. Universal rushed Two Minute Warning out first, beating Black Sunday by nine months, but then having the release pushed back from July until November. Also, Two Minute Warning was unable to get permission from the NFL to use the Super Bowl, so the game is referred to as the Championship Game. Black Sunday got permission to use the Super Bowl. Both good movies, but Black Sunday is far superior. That is until you finally get to the terrorist attack. Reportedly Paramount cut the budget as filming neared completion, so none of the effects shots were made, resulting in some clever editing to simulate a blimp crash rather than using model work and perhaps an actual blimp crashing into a stadium. Even the blimp exploding is just stock footage of an explosion rather than blowing up a model. So basically, a solid film with a disappointing conclusion. However, Two Minute Warning is boring in it's first hour, where all it does is introduce all the characters who are to be shot dead by the sniper, giving each a short story arc which will turn out to be meaningless, and each which is not very compelling. But once cameramen aboard  the Good Year blimp spot the sniper hiding above the score board, Two Minute Warning becomes a first class thriller, with the SWAT team trying to figure out how to stop the gunman from shooting the crowd without causing mass panic, then finally the mayhem as the sniper takes out each character one by one. Pretty huge body count at the end of the film which includes a few of the SWAT  team, as we see the camera pan past about thirty body bags in the parking lot. Although I am not sure how many of those deaths were the result of being trampled in the panic, or falling off the balconies of the stadium.