Cork'08 - THE GOOD THE BAD THE WEIRD

After offering up one of the best horror films in recent years with A TALE OF TWO SISTERS and an equally marvellous gangster revenge film in the shape of A BITTERSWEET LIFE, director Ji-woon Kim turns his attention to... a Korean tribute to spaghetti westerns?

It sounds insane and that's as good a way to describe it. Insane it most certainly is, and brilliantly so.

In what amounts to a Korean remake of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, a mysterious treasure map is the subject of the chase across the desert (the wild east replacing the wild west) and the three men in pursuit are a vicious bandit, a mysterious gunslinger and an idiot with money on his mind.

There is just enough of a plot to propel the action scenes along but the action is what it's all about. Bullets fly, blood runs and things explode - the action kicks off early on and rarely lets up for the rest of the film. Subtle introspection is nowhere to be seen; vast amounts of fun are all that is offered up here and it delivers in spades.

Undoubtedly one of the maddest films of the year and one of the most enjoyable experiences you're likely to have in the cinema (which is definitely where you should see it).

Gobsmacking Cinema: THE FIGHTING FISTS OF SHANGHAI JOE (1972)

It's been a while since I dipped into the world of gobsmacking cinema so it's about time I returned there (click on the link to see the previous entries). If nothing else, it'll be a bit of a change from gobsmackingly ill-informed Oscar predictions (although I see the SAG nominations were announced today so that'll probably be back soon).

Since it has been a while, here's a quick refresher. The films I choose to cover here are something special, though not always for the right reasons. They're films that are either so bad, so offensive or so crazy that they can't help but merit the title of gobsmacking cinema. They're the films that just leave you wide-eyed in amazement, unable to believe what you've just witnessed - perhaps they're so bad you can't believe they were ever released on the unsuspecting public; maybe they conform to outmoded stereotypes that our modern politically correct age wouldn't allow; or perhaps they're just so mind-blowingly insane that you can't help but love them, even while you struggle to comprehend what you're watching.

Today I'm returning not just to gobsmacking cinema but also to my beloved spaghetti westerns as I open the vault door and unleash the whacked-out majesty of THE FIGHTING FISTS OF SHANGAI JOE. In many ways, it's a standard spaghetti western - a lone hero wanders into town, falls foul of the bad guys, cleans the place up, the end. However, the hero of this film is a Chinese immigrant played by Chen Lee, an immigrant who happens to be a dab hand at martial arts.

Spaghetti western. Martial arts. This combination alone is enough to afford it a place high in the upper echelons of celluloid brilliance. Two of the coolest genres in the history of cult cinema, in one film. You'd already think it couldn't get any better.

You'd be wrong though, because as much as the combination of spaghetti western and martial arts is a work of genius, it doesn't take into account the superb pseudo-Morricone score by Bruno Nicolai; it doesn't take into account the hilarious stunts involving reversed film and a man jumping through the air screaming a lot; it doesn't take into account the wonder of a typical spaghetti western showdown in a dusty street where the quick-draw gunslingers are replaced with two martial artists.

Nor does it take into account the killer moves, the bloody deaths, the hideous mutilations - or all three, in the case of the mesmerising scene in which Joe performs a flying eyeball-gouging punch.

Or how about the moment where Joe insults a villains sister, only for it to sound unintentionally hilarious as he's dubbed in a well-spoken American accent that makes the phrase "your slut of a sister" sound inappropriate and almost charming.

You know what else would be good? A string of villains played by cult movie favourites like peplum hero Gordon Mitchell or the maddest actor ever, Klaus Kinski, and possibly featuring a cannibal called Pedro. We could maybe throw a killer yo-yo in there too.

Of course we can't forget the dialogue either. It's hard to keep a straight face when you're listening to lines like "You've got seven lives, like a cat" or an exchange such as

"He's one of your race."
"You mean Chinese?"
"I don't know."

This little snippet only hints at the casual racism demonstrated by numerous characters in the film, a racism which is the garnish on a film that was already heading well into the gobsmacking cinema category.

The story has something to do with Mexicans or something, but to be honest it's almost irrelevant.

How about finishing with one last word from our hero before he walks off into the sunset?

"I'd give anything to stay here. If only I could... but my life belongs to the victims of injustice."

What a hero. Joe, I salute you.

Gobsmacking Cinema: KILLPOINT (1984)

FONGSPLOITATION LIVES!

I'd like to take this opportunity to offer a little heads-up for any of you in the UK with access to the digital TV channels Movies4men and Movies4men2. They show a lot of forgotten movies (some criminally so, but most justifiably so) and more often than not the late night schedules are filled with the kind of tosh that Channel 5 used to fill up their weekend late night schedules with before they suddenly tried to become respectable. The upshot however is that there are some real gems of cult cinema lurking in the schedules during the wee hours. From spaghetti westerns such as DJANGO, CALIFORNIA and VENGEANCE to classic Jess Franco Eurosleaze (VENUS IN FURS, 99 WOMEN) there's some real treasure there.

Obviously, being me, I want to talk about one of the trashiest of the trash though - a film so bad that the sole reason for it featuring in my semi-regular Gobsmacking Cinema series is its sheer lovable crapness. It's an 80s action flick which could loosely be described as a martial arts cop thriller. However, it could more accurately be described as a jaw-droppingly bad cauldron of insanity and violence. And poodles.

The film in question is the classic - okay, I lied, it's not classic at all, at least not in the sense of the word that normal people use - KILLPOINT.

Where does one begin to describe a vision of brilliance such as KILLPOINT? How about the cast...

KILLPOINT features Cameron Mitchell, star of many a dreadful-but-lovable exploitation movie, not least of which was the original version of THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (the old video nasty, not the awful Tobe Hooper remake), who portrays a crimeboss who is violently insane, mistreats women constantly and... has a pet poodle.

He's joined by heroic cop Richard Roundtree, who of course is famous for being a guest star in the TV series THE FRESH PRINCE OF... nah, just kidding, he was of course SHAFT. I mean the original SHAFT, not the pointless remake one. That one was some Jedi guy who talks about what French people call burgers, or something.

The star of the film however, and God alone knows why, is Leo Fong, a cop who never seems to crack a smile. This could be a result of the rape and murder of his wife (an ultimately irrelevant plot point that is delivered in a hilariously bad piece of dialogue between two non-actors also playing cops), or it might just be because he's such a terrible actor.

Fong can't act; he's got a really bad hairstyle; he just seems to mumble all the time; he's clearly too old to be the martial arts star that the movie needs, and in fact his only qualification for indulging in martial arts is the fact that he appears to be from the right ethnic background. Seriously, when he starts kicking ass, it's with all the balletic grace of your grandad dancing to Carl Douglas records after one two many glasses of port.

Fong and Roundtree are paired up to solve the problem of a group of criminals (working for Mitchell, of course) who are committing robberies but with a new twist. They don't want any witnesses but rather than wear masks, they choose the more interesting approach of shooting everyone in the building, leading to some wacky action sequences in which they shoot up the entire clientele of a Chinese restaurant and then repeat the stunt in a supermarket.

Actually, Fong and Roundtree may very well be partners in theory, but in truth they appear on screen together very rarely. Once, if I remember correctly. Still, that doesn't matter so much because you have other wonderful partnerships anyway, such as Mitchell's teaming up with Stack Pierce as the psychotic criminal Nighthawk, who seems hellbent on shooting pretty much anyone he meets. You've also got the two cops I mentioned earlier who spend most of the film talking to each other on the phone. Clearly not professional actors, one of them looks like he's never seen a movie camera before ("rabbit in headlights" springs to mind) while the other talks in a strangley muffled way that suggests he's had his jaw wired shut.

But there's so much more to enjoy than just bad acting. There's badly executed martial arts; mindnumbingly unconvincing stunts; the finest array of moustaches outside of the pantheons of 70s soft rock; there's the wonderful habit people have of flying up in the air in spectacular fashion when they get shot; there's the dancing of the least erotic strippers ever; there's the synthesiser score that sounds cheap even for the 80s; there's even, when Fong readies himself to make his final stand against the bad guys, a cop-in-training montage! Yep, that's right, TEAM AMERICA fans, a proper, honest-to-goodness, 80s-action-movie-cliche training montage!

It's difficult to emphasise how simultaneously terrible and magnificent this film is. It should be required viewing for anyone who ever wants to study film, if for no other reason than to provide a checklist of everything you shouldn't do, and yet it's just so much damn fun!

The best news of all? Fong and Mitchell also starred together in another 80s film (which I'm sure is just as much of a turkey as this one) entitled LOW BLOW. Joy of joys, it's also been aired on TV thanks to those good M4M folks so expect an appraisal of that one at some time in the near future too.

In the meantime, I believe this film turned up on a budget DVD somewhere so either pick it up or else keep checking the M4M listing for the next showing (it seems to be on every week). You will/won't regret it.

P.S. I should point out that I didn't come up with the name "fongsploitation". It was the work of Marty McKee, who writes the rather good Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot blog, which I urge you to check out, particularly as he's currently working his way through the wonderful FRIDAY THE 13TH series of films. I've always wanted to do a FRIDAY 13TH marathon here, but I'm too lazy.