Dess Vish Drei

I hope you "Run Run" into a very Happy Birfday!

Our favorite movie mogul turns the big one double-Oh-OH! today. And like all men who live past the age of ninety-five, he's become the spittin' image of George Burns.



So celebrate accordingly: watch some Shaw flicks, and check out this three-part, vintage Shaw's docu on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UE24UnCmHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxW3u5ORPx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBCMZd6gUew

Random nonsense

Michael Bay made you care more about a yellow robot, who could speak only through the power of XM radio, than Rob Zombie could any of his (not so) human characters in Halloween.

And to those who don't "get" the original Halloween; with complaints like that whole thing with Michael's motives being, oh, a little vague: that's the point. You see, that helped create mood, something the new one doesn't have. Along with decent dialouge, acting, a hint that the storytellers know how to tell a story, and a basic sense of geography in the blocking and shooting of scenes. Oh, and it's also not good when the majority of the audience wants to walk out because it's all so shoddy and dull. You know, the little things.

One more thing. I just finished up Nip/Tuck season 4, and I think it's time for us all to just be honest: we like this show because it's shitty, right? It's Dynasty for the late-night crowd. Organ harvesting; Scientology sub-plots; Larry Hagman's penis pump; Peter Dinklage's diarrhea. This is like if Kazuo Koike, in Brothers mode, wrote about plastic surgeons in Miami. Only Koike probably would have classed it up a bit. I know everybody likes to say how it's all a big morality play, or a modern noir, but come on. Lets just admit we love it because it's pure, 100% sleaze, and a million emotional revelations set to Rocket Man can't hide it.

Hold on to your dicks, 'cause this one's a doozy.


Mikadroid (1991)

Despite a box cover claiming “Available for the first time in North America”, we all know that this Mikadroid has been around the block, only under a different name: Robokill Beneath Disco Club Layla. One that Discotek has decided to tag on, you know, for ghetto nostalgia. A feeling I’m starting to get.

“The cyborg slashes away her clothes while viciously slicing her body”. Yep, that’s what got thirteen year-old me to scrawl that glorious title onto the lime green order form. Weeks later it arrived, via Miami, a fresh batch of yellow labeled tapes which may or may not have contained traces of Florida snow. I was ready for the Robokill.

What I wasn’t ready for was the unimaginably graphic contortionist porn I got instead. Phone calls were made to my friends, viewings were held. All that was missing was a circle jerk… and Robokill. More weeks pass, this time the real thing arrives.


While it didn’t make me as popular as The Twister, it still brings back memories, and not just ones of a blond with her ankles pulled behind her head. It represents early Japanese movie watching that didn’t involve Street Fighters or Baby Carts, but Evil Dead Traps and Sweet Homes. Late night video romps in the basement, where any thing with a cool box cover, or a lurid description, shot through my VCR faster than a thin-crust through my colon. Nowadays, while I lay off the Domino’s, a lurid synopsis can still do the trick. Kinda like this:

Showa year 20, the Japanese army is undergoing construction on a new breed of indestructible super soldier, the project’s codename: Jin’ra. Men turned into humanoids, one turned into 100% killing machine, the Mikadroid. The plans are halted, and the project buried deep underground, until…. 1991, the disco club Layla, where the preferred dress code for boogieing down is a large medallion, sports coat, and no shirt. Its dance magic gets the sparks flying down below, to the resting place of the ultimate killing machine; bringing it to life in the neon land of Mister Donut. When the club lets out, all paths lead to the underground garage. At midnight, the gates are locked, leaving those inside trapped with the Mikadroid.


It’s nice to be wrong. At thirteen, while I liked the Robokills of the faux-title, it just wasn’t all that impressive after seeing Ron Jeremy lick his own penis while exclaiming “Look what I can do!” No, it was worse than that: it was boring. I didn’t pay to see boring. Then again, I did paid to see Van Damme and Dennis Rodman in Double Team. Eight times.

This time I had fun, not viewing number three of Double Team fun, but fun all the same. Director Tomoo Haraguchi and his crew know their horror; as they visually quote everything from Deep Red to Maniac. Even blaxploitation-actioner Hell Up In Harlem gets a shout out. Though initially wanting to make a zombie epic titled Mikado Zombie, Haraguchi still delivers the goods with this Red Sun Tin-Man slasher, which boasts killer work from modern SFX ace Shinji Higuchi, and, like any hack n‘ slash worth it‘s weight in karyo syrup, loads of inventive kills. While the pacing issues are still present, it doesn’t diminish its position as a true relic of the rough and ready V-cinema days.

So maybe I’m a big nostalgic push over, or maybe I just like crap, but I say dance your heart out in that disco club called Layla; dance all night, then make your way underground to that dark, dank garage, and see what you find. Who knows, maybe ten years down the road it’ll give you some memories.

Wes Black
Discotek

Grodyween

Someone recently called it an "abortion", but I think Zombie could bring a rough and gritty sensibility to this.

Well, I was wrong.

I love Halloween. I think The Devil's Rejects is one of the best American films of the past 15 years. But this one, just doesn't work.

Now the version I just watched is the workprint, which looks about as finished as it gets, and not the theatrical cut, which has a new escape sequence, a beefed up body count, a different ending, Sid Haig, and is missing a really raunchy rape scene.

But none of that is going to make much of a difference. Actually, according to many, it makes it worse. Because before we at least had an honest failure, now we have a studio-tinkered failure.

Zombie pulls off some nice shots, a few good moments, and some decent music cues here and there. The key problem is in the writing, and the performances that it reaped. In short, they are just embarrassing. Shit gives you douche chills. A few guys (well, maybe just Foree and Forsythe) manage to go so far out there that they escape with their "dignity", but the rest just made my balls shrink up into my gut. Zombie's dialouge is a perfect example of a writer that only knows how people talk from watching movies...which were written by assholes who only know how people talk from, yep, watching other movies. Those who complained about the girl talk in Death Proof should go kiss Tarantino's foot loving ass after listening to the chicks in Halloween squeal on about bullshit. And that kid who plays Meyers, shit. I won't even get into it.

And to make matters worse the whole thing is boring and poorly paced. Which keeps it from working even on a cluster-fuck level, that you could just laugh at. As a whole it just sorta lays there dead. The legacy of Halloween aside, even as a psycho-killer movie it's dullsville. In fact, it's so poorly strung together that I would recommend future writers to watch it, and mark down all the points where it drops the ball, doesn't pay off, and just underwrites or seems to forget about some almost interesting material.

Al that said, I'll probably be checking it out in theaters this weekend just to see the differences (I'm a savage like that); if the extra kills actually add anything (I'll guess it's a no), or what the new ending is. Which has to be better than it just...ending.

Modern Love

Song of the Day: 1984 - David Bowie

I love my Sirius satellite radio. Besides being able to get my Howard Stern fix 24 hours a day, I'm able to scroll to a station like The Vault; which plays lots of rare tracks, live shit, covers, and cool stuff that just doesn't make the play list on most other stations. Like David Bowie's 1984. Now, I'm a big Bowie fan, I have a handful of his albums, plus the best of stuff, but I'd never heard this one before. The best way I can describe it is blaxploitation meets space opera. Supposedly he plays it in this video, but since the sound on my computer is busted, I can't make any promises. He sure does look pretty though.


Quote of the Day: "Guilty pleasures aren't even overrated; the idea is meaningless, an elitist concept invented by smarmy intellectuals with nothing better to do."
- Stephen King

That's from Uncle Stevie's latest Entertainment Weekly column; a killer essay on the pure joy of pop culture. Give it a read here:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20050107,00.html#

And in closing, a message to the Mexican gardeners of Los Angeles:
I'm all for you folk achieving the American Dream, but could you do it without pissing out back of my place? Thanks.

"Do you know what this is for?! It's for jacking off!"

Anyone with access to a Netflix account should rent 10 to Midnight as soon as they can. I really want to say more, tell you all about the crazy shit that happens, but I won't. You just need to rent it, sit back, and ask yourself "Do you know what this is for?!"

Bye, bye

Ready, set, blast off....


Sayonara Jupiter

“You, you’re destroying the cosmos, and the solar system!” says the black beanpole with the feathery weave. But see, he’s got it all wrong. They’re gonna save the cosmos, and the solar system. They’re gonna save it all, but to do that they’ve got to say “sayonara,” sayonara to Jupiter.

In the year 2140, man has colonized in space, and the universe is in need of a second sun. Thus begins the battle over the fate of Jupiter, and why they must say “bye-bye“ to space’s King of the Gods. Leading this Jupiter Solarization Project is Dr. Eji Honda, and with child prodigy Carlos, he’ll take his favorite planet, and use it to bring a new life to mankind.


On the sunny beaches of earth The Church of Jupiter, led by singer/songwriter Peter, and his pet dolphin, wait for it, Jupiter, look to stop the re-birth of the planet they worship. They take pills that give them “no fear, without any of the consequences”, and argue that mankind doesn’t need to go into the space, it’s too big, so lonely. They don’t understand the truth; that earth is too small to contain man.

But, no matter what Peter sings, or what pills they take, Jupiter is bidding farewell.


Years before 2010, you know, the year we made contact, and sometime after the Prophecies of Nostradamus were fulfilled, there was a time of war, Star Wars. Sci-fi became the craze of now and tomorrow, and everything from before and beyond melded in the galaxies, then into the brain of man. One man: Sakyo Komatsu, the big, spaced-out, space dog of Japanese sci-fi fiction. He’s the one that caused the Sinking of Japan, unleashed a Virus on the world, then set loose the agents of ESPY to save us all. But it wasn’t enough, at least not for Godzilla governor and Toho tyrant Tomoyuki Tanaka. He wanted the epic of all epics, the one that truly would destroy the cosmos, and the solar system, man, and he got it.


So leave behind your worries. Leave them all behind, and believe in lovers floating nude through the universe, believe that Mickey D’s can make a “humburger” soar, or that on the beaches, under the sun, you can take a pill that will make you feel no fear, without any of the consequences. That hippie chick may have never given a name to the little green pill, but I like to think it’s the thing that can save us all, the thing that makes us just say it: Sayonara, Jupiter.

Wes Black

Discotek

You and your pussycat lips!

Continuing on with the liquidation of my review archives, here's a snappy little number about Teruo Ishii's Blind Woman's Curse. I thought this one turned out pretty good.


Blind Woman’s Curse (1970)

"When people refer to filmmaking as my job I'm always a bit embarrassed, because I don't consider what I do as anything more than having a great time."
- Teruo Ishii

With an unmatched consistency, the late Teruo Ishii delivered film after film that was, to quote the tagline for Pieces, “Exactly what you think it is.” I’ve seen the looks on your faces when the greatest Japanese cult film you’ve never seen turns out to be Noboru Ando smoking in a dingy bar for eighty-minutes. Hell, I’ve had that look, delivered right to my mug by the greats, but never, ever, by Ishii. With him, the real thing is always better. Which should excuse me from writing a synopsis for this movie, but since I get paid by the word, here we go:


Ishii opens the show with a synchronized, matching-tattoo sword-slashing rain-dance where our gal Meiko Kaji kills somebody’s big boss, and blinds his sister. Then after spending three years in a Technicolor prison cell (years before becoming #701), Kaji returns home to the ol‘ gang. She now must maintain her honor and control while caught in the middle of a twisting, back-stabbing, turn-coating gang war. Oh yeah, there’s also possessions, evil cats, opium den whippings, a dancing, drooling hunchback, an nudie avant-garde haunted house, kitty-cat wire-work (when they’re not yanking it by the tail), and a cane-carrying Ryuichi Uchida in a bowler and red loin-cloth. Anything to avert your eyes from the hairy ninkyo nether regions; something which Ishii admittedly had no taste for.


Likely looking to cash-in on Toei’s popular femme-ninkyo series Red Peony Gambler. the folks at Nikkatsu concocted their own twist to contend with the lady dice-rattler: Rising Dragon, Iron Flesh. The first two films follow the ho-hum ninkyo pattern, but when number three was ready to roll, those Nikkatsu cats asked for a little horror to be thrown in the mix. What they got was starlet Kaji taking a backseat to a mop-topped dandy driving yakuza spook-house ride at three hundred MPH. A mix-tape of madness that makes Seijun Suzuki’s transgressions in youth action seem not so transgressive. I like Suzuki, I swear I do, but people shitting their short-shorts because he floods the set with yellow lights won’t know how to handle Blind Woman’s Curse.


Here’s the real kicker: Ishii made better, and wilder, movies in his career, hell, Ishii made better movies than this that year, and they’re all out there for you to find. So tuck away your Yugi-Oh cards, and gasp at the horrors of a malformed man, scour the depths of hell, and discover the joys of torture. It may all sound too wild, and inconceivable, but don’t you worry, that mop-headed man in the sky will be by your side, holding your hand at every atrocity, and sharing a laugh at every off-color gag. After all, the only one enjoying it more than you or I is Ishii himself.

Wes Black
Discotek