The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

Tagline: Widely considered to be the greatest kung fu flick of all time.

Curiosity: Just look at the tagline. Also it heavily influenced Wu-Tang Clan. So, there’s that.

Plot: Spurred by his teacher, San Te (Gordon Liu) joins a group of insurgents looking to overthrow Qing rule. He’s quickly found out, though, and his father sacrifices himself to allow San Te to escape. Eventually, he ends up studying martial arts at a Shaolin temple. Over the course of a year-plus, he studies the 35 chambers of Shaolin in the hopes of liberating his town.

Thoughts: 36th Chamber has a reputation for being a gory, but artistically impressive, kung fu flick. It almost earns that reputation in 2011. It is indeed surprisingly bloody for a ’70s flick. While it’s certainly not on the torture porn side of things, the use of blood gives the film a certain amount of grit lacking in a genre that emphasizes showmanship over realism.

Not that it doesn’t have its flash. 36th Chamber packs plenty of fight scenes. While it goes through a considerable dry spell in its second hour, the action is solid throughout. The battles get brutal, but tastefully so. They’re not the best I’ve ever seen, but they certainly held my attention. But these things are to be expected. What sets 36th Chamber apart is its training section.

Generally speaking, training scenes in kung fu movies are filler. That’s why you don’t see them in Bruce Lee movies. They murder the pacing, both in terms of plot and visuals. But they do pad out the running time. If you want to know why kung fu movies run two hours when Western B-movie actioners run 90 minutes, there’s your answer right there. 36th Chamber, however, is actually at its strongest during this section. We see San Te achieve a peace who couldn’t find as a rebellious youth, and the exercises he practices actually kind of make sense. Other kung fu flicks pull shit out of their asses when their protagonists learn some devastating new move; 36th Chamber actually emphasizes practical tests.

After this portion, though, the film kind of stalls. San Te returns to his hometown and gets his revenge, but the movie keeps going towards a fourth act that feels superfluous. Still, I get why this film is so lauded.

Reflection: The subtitles on my DVD call the main character “San Ta.” Just one of many mistranslations.

Drunken Master (1978)

Tagline: Gettin’ shitty ta-night? [NOTE: This is not the real tagline.]

Curiosity: It’s the movie that launched Jackie Chan’s career.

Plot: Wong Fei-hung (Chan) is a dedicated student to kung fu, but his wayward ways get him into too much trouble for his father (Lam Kau) to handle. When Fei-hung brings shame on his family (by, uh, hitting on his cousin…), his c-c-c-c-c-crazy uncle Beggar Su Hua Chi (Yuen Siu-tien) is brought in to teach some discipline. But when the assassin Thunderleg (Hwang Jang Lee) seeks a hit on Wong’s father, things get serious and/or drunken!

Thoughts: While I respect Drunken Master for the influence it had on future action stars like Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer) and Tony Jaa (Ong-Bak, The Protector), I kind of found myself drifting off halfway through the film. The first 30 minutes are some pretty strong comedy/action, as Chan goes through a series of fight ‘n’ physical comedy set pieces. In fact, as great as Chan is at martial arts, I’d argue he’s an even better comedian. Drunken Master’s humor is pretty broad, but Chan throws himself completely into the part.

But the funniest passages also slow down the flick, which then descends into an endless series of training scenes. Them shits is not funny at all. Worse, the whole concept of a “drunken master” barely enters the script until the final 20 minutes. That’s when Wong learns the art of using a staggering fighting pose to deceive opponents. While it allows Chan to segue back into physical comedy again, the idea of having Wong pretend to be drunk is incredibly forced. I get that his character is trying to set a trap for his opponent, but it comes so far out of left field, and is then so obvious, that I don’t understand why anyone would fall for it. Considering the drunken master technique is supposed to be the crux of the movie, that’s a big problem. Drunken Master would be a great movie if it came in at 90 minutes, but at two hours it’s just too bloated.

Reflection: CASE RACE!

Red Heat (1988)

Tagline: Moscow’s toughest detective. Chicago’s craziest cop. There’s only one thing more dangerous than making them mad: making them partners.

Curiosity: I’m a big Schwarzenegger fan despite his sex scandal, but I somehow never saw Red Heat before now.

Plot: Moscow narcotics officer Ivan Danko (Schwarzenegger) is in (red) hot pursuit of the gangster Viktor Rostavili (Ed O’Ross), literally. He tracks the guy to a sweat lodge in the middle of nowhere. It’s like super hot in there, which is why all these muscley guys look super sweaty in the opening scene. It’s also why they’re only wearing, um… loincloths.

ANYWAY. Viktor escapes to America after killing Danko’s partner. Danko follows him to Chicago, where he gets partnered up with Jim Belushi (Played with great commitment by the actual Jim Belushi). Belushi is all like “I’m Eastern European-American! What could I possibly talk to this Eastern European about?! Also I like boobs and hamburgers!”

Danko and Belushi are so ethnically different! How are they gonna catch the bad guy?!

[SPOILER ALTERT]: Guns. They do it with guns.

Thoughts: I don’t know if I’m just getting older, but I did not care for Red Heat. Maybe I’ve just seen too many buddy cop movies, but Red Heat’s attempts at presenting Danko and Belushi as polar opposites is too much. It’s also horribly dated by its stereotyping. Rush Hour pokes fun at the Chinese, and there will surely be Chinese stereotypes to play on in the future, but Russian Communism fell apart two years after Red Heat came out. All those lazy jokes don’t work anymore.

Another problem with the film comes from the casting: Belushi feels so thoroughly useless throughout the movie. He doesn’t show up until about 20 minutes in, and never really does anything important. Schwarzenegger was/is the bigger star then/now, but hot-dang; Belushi literally contributes nothing to the movie besides shitty one-liners.

Still, this is classic Brownschwagger here. Arnie gets to kick ass and look cool throughout, and that opening scene in the sweat lodge really does look awesome/homoerotic.

Reflection: Shoulda cast Danny DeVito. That guy knows how to play off of Arnold.

The Serpent and The Rainbow (1988)

Tagline: Don’t bury me… I’m not dead!

Curiosity: Bill Pullman (Independence Day!!!) gets a nail driven through his wiener.

Plot: After totally meeting his spirit animal, anthropologist Dennis Alan (Pullman) is sent to Haiti by a pharmaceutical company to research a drug that turns people into zombies. Not so much Romero zombies as voodoo zombies. This drug, called tetrodotoxin, creates the appearance of death – recipients show an extremely low pulse and no reaction to stimuli. It also robs them of their free will, turning them into slaves. When Alan attracts attention from the local zombie drug kingpin (Zakes Mokae), he’ll have to use his wits AND his spirit animal to get out alive.

ALSO HE GETS NAILED IN THE PENIS.

Thoughts: PENIS.

Sorry, sorry. The Serpent and The Rainbow features one of the most uncomfortable scenes I’ve ever witnessed, but it’s surprisingly low on gore. If anything, it’s more of a drama than it is a horror movie, which perhaps makes it more effective. There are some fantasy elements thrown in, as Mokae summons up black magic and what-not, but it’s mostly about one man’s war against a drug dealer. There just happens to be some voodoo involved along the way.

In that sense, Serpent is one of Craven’s more modest films. It’s not aggressively frightening. But it has these flashes of disturbing images that really pack a punch. The most intense of which is, of course, Pullman’s wang getting crucified. We don’t actually see anything (As of opposed to Hostel 2, where we see everything), but man does Pullman scream like it’s real. The following scene, in which he gets dumped on the street in his bloody underwear, sells the rest of it. Scary movies prey on our deepest fears; one of mine involves getting nailed in the junk.

As for the rest of the flick, it’s solid. It’s a little slow and not quite as compelling as some of Craven’s other films, but it’s got a strong script and a decent cast. Not my favorite zombie movie, but I dug it.

Reflection: PENIS.

Shocker (1989)

Tagline: On October 2nd, at 6:45 a.m., mass murderer Horace Pinker was put to death.

Now he’s really mad.

Curiosity: It was bundled with The People Under the Stairs.

Plot: High school football hero Jonathan (Peter Berg, who went on to create Friday Night Lights) almost has the perfect life. He’s a star player and he’s got an awesome girlfriend named Alison (Cami Cooper) who is super cute despite always talking in a raspy whisper. There’s just one problem: Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi, fuckin’ Skinner from X-Files) murdered most of Jonathan’s family. Bummertown, U.S.A. On top of that, Jonathan psychically witnessed the whole thing.

Using his psychic powers, Jonathan is able to track Pinker’s next move and capture. But receiving the death sentence only makes Pinker stronger, as he makes a pact with a demon to become a being of pure electricity who can take over others’ bodies and travel through televisions or some shit. I don’t know, man.

Thoughts: Shocker is not a good movie. While I consider myself a Wes Craven fan, this is not his finest film. The movie has essentially four things working against it. They are…

1). Sandwiched between The Serpent and The Rainbow and The People Under the Stairs, Shocker just feel like such a light work. Serpent is an excellent zombie/voodoo flick. People is just so damn weird. Shocker, meanwhile, feels like an old school B-movie sci-fi flick. It would be great, pulpy fun if not for the fact that…

2). The running time is too damn long. Shocker is nearly two hours long, but its premise is so preposterous and its characters so goofy that it really needed to come in at a tight 90 minutes. Craven couldn’t do much cutting, though, since…

3). Shocker keeps changing its rules. The creators of Star Trek held a simple tenet: You can only introduce so many rules for your fictional world before viewers stop caring. Once you set those rules, you need to either follow them to the letter or explain why you’re circumventing them. You can’t break the laws of physics, and you should treat your fictional world the same. But Shocker keeps adding stuff. For the first 45 minutes, it’s about a psychic kid. Then it’s about a guy with electrical powers. Then it’s about a guy who lives in the TV. I personally thought the film was strongest when dealing with Pinker as a depowered serial killer. Instead, Shocker has a jack of all trades, master or none thing going on. This is further exacerbated by the fact that…

4). Horace Pinker is clearly Craven’s attempt to create another Freddy Krueger. Dude has the same annoying penchant for one-liners, and the whole psychic kids angle isn’t exactly original for Craven either. I get what makes Krueger so iconic: He tortured kids, he got them while they were at their most vulnerable, and he just straight up looked cool. Pinker’s m.o. is less specific, he just kinda showed up whenever, and he wore a lame orange jumpsuit. He’s a blander villain in every way.

Reflection: Megadeth did the soundtrack, though. So that’s cool.