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Cult cinema from East Asia and oddities from around the world

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Lethal Irritation: Rage against the meaningless two-word movie title August 10, 2008

There’s a blight in the world of action movies and for once it’s got nothing to do with the stars, the directors, the product placements, the stunts, the scripts, the choreography, etc.

I’m talking about the proliferation of the meaningless two-word film titles.  It’s hardly a new phenomenon, but because the practice has been going on so long and there are only a finite number of appropriate “tough words” to choose from, it’s getting ever more difficult to sort them out in my brain.  And for a genre often accused of being generic, the last thing we need is generic film titles too.  Not learning from spoof titles like Naked Gun, Loaded Weapon and more recently Hot Fuzz, film executives are still trundling out the two-word monstrosities and there seems to be no end in sight.

What’s more, the practice has now become more commonplace in Hong Kong when they decide upon on English title for their film.  I know for a fact I’m going to be on some internet forum at some point in the future and there’ll be a discussion on Fatal Contact and I’m going to say, “yeah, good film, one of Ringo Lam’s best” and someone will gently point out that that film was Full Contact while making a vulgar hand gesture into their monitor.  And I can hardly wait for the Fatal Contact discussion: “hopeless film,” I’ll probably say, “CGI blood and Sammo was completely wasted,” while someone corrects me that the film I’m talking about is Fatal Move.  See what I mean?  All I need is someone to come up with a film called Full Move and I’ll be completely screwed.  I had enough trouble in a recent post getting Island of Fire (about a prison) mixed up with Prison on Fire (also about a prison, I’ll admit) and that’s got three words.

As we’ve seen with SPL: Sha Po Lang (good title when you hear the explanation at the start of the film) being turned into Kill Zone for its US release, someone somewhere obviously thinks the two-word title sells, especially if it’s got absolutely bugger all to do with the film in question.  I think it might be something to do with the trailers we’ve been force fed for so long.  Imagine the Voice of God coming up with this for my upcoming masterpiece Fatal Termination:

“Bruce Chow is Jim Wu [action shot of actor with gun], a cop who plays by his own rules.  He’ll do whatever it takes to bring to justice the government agency that left his nephew severely colour-blind [shot of sickly young kid in a wheelchair].  By any means he can [explosion].  A deadly secret [shot of actor in stealth mode].  A beautiful girl [starlet tosses her hair in front of another explosion].  A rookie partner from Greenland [Wu shouting at the Superintendent: “I don’t have time to train no wet-behind-the-ears Eskimo!”].  The roughest justice imaginable [more action shots and a few more explosions just to establish we’re not into Merchant Ivory territory].  From the deadly shores of Hong Kong [night shot of city: traditional oriental music plays over the top] to the frozen wastes of the north…to the sprawl of New York [Inuit sidekick: “man, it’s colder here than back home!”]. [Music swells and then silence] Fatal Termination [credits flash impossibly fast on screen.  Then blackness].”

It can’t just be me that’s getting irritated and confused by these two-word shenanigans, but just to make sure, I’ve collected a bunch of the best (i.e. worst) together with some old favourites.  The twist is, I’ve added a few creations of my own – mainly by just mixing the other titles up a bit.  Some are obscure Hong Kong movies, some are well known, while some are your typical straight-to-video Seagal/Van Damme efforts.  Can you tell which are the real titles and which are the bogus ones?

Flash Point

As far as I know, there are twenty-eight genuine titles in amongst that lot.  Happy hunting.

The films rights to Fatal Termination are still available.

“You stinky!” - Hong Kong’s funniest subtitles July 13, 2008

One peculiarity of Hong Kong films has always been the territory’s tradition of subtitling their films in Chinese and English.  Chinese subs are necessary as dialects vary from place to place but the written form can be understood universally (theoretically, at least) and English subtitles seemed to have been law at one point but the practice still continues even though the colony is no longer under British rule.  As the people who do the subtitles are Chinese, it’s not surprising that the translations can go awry at times – sometimes with hilarious consequences.

My introduction to Chinese subtitles probably came later in life than most fans.  My first exposure to Hong Kong films was on TV, where they were subtitled perfectly; after that, I had to make do with horribly dubbed VHS tapes, and it wasn’t until I saw a freshly pirated copy of City Hunter that I became aware that Hong Kong subtitled its own films into English.  It was a bit of shock after watching Channel 4’s meticulously worded subs to be faced with a line like: “oh, are they chewing gums or my hearing’s wrong?”

But it wasn’t until I saw Police Story 2 that the potential for comic interpretations became apparent.  One bad guy shouts a command to his colleagues when Jackie gets the best of them: “Beat him out of recognisable shape!”  From then on, I’ve been looking at Hong Kong subtitles in a different way…

The best ones aren’t necessarily the ones that are completely wrong or weird.  In some ways, you can see that the subtitle makes perfect sense in itself; it’s just that no native speaker of this language would phrase it in such a way.  And why the Chinese seem to think we have a bodily function we call “stooling” is beyond me.  It’s odd because such things as typos are relatively rare, and when was the last time you read a Chinglish subtitle that mixes up “you’re” and “your” or “there” and “their”?  I believe I’ve only seen one such mix up, and as native English speakers get them muddled up every day, that’s quite an achievement.

It’s not just the dialogue that can come to grief - sometimes the blurb on the back of the DVD box can raise a belly laugh or two.  The following is taken verbatim from the back of the Hong Kong Universe DVD of The Protector (with apologies to all who have read my comments about this nugget before on the HKMDB):

“Super action star Jackie Chan being the Director and actor this time* in “The Protector”, co-starring Sally Yip and other action actress**. 

New York policeman Billy Wong (Jackie Chan) chase after the gangsters who killed his partner on the ground, on the ramparts and in the air***.  He investigates a kidnapped case to Hong Kong and discovers Mr. Big is the leader of the gangsters****.  Finally, a big fireball lights up the beautiful harbour of Hong Kong”

*Erm, actually, James Glickenhaus is the Director, as it says elsewhere on the box.

**I guess the blurb writer wasn’t a fan of Moon Lee, who co-stars alongside Jackie…

***Jesus, what a day: first killed on the ground, then killed on the ramparts and then again in the air.  No wonder Jackie’s after revenge.

****This completely ruins the tension in the movie: all along I was thinking Mr Henchman was the leader.

Some of the best Chinglish subtitles can be found in the book Sex and Zen & A Bullet In The Head by Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins, and I’ve tied to avoid duplication where possible.  As this book is now twelve years old, I think it’s high time for some new ones to be copied and pasted throughout the Internet!  I plan to write new articles with new subs when I’ve got enough together, and if any readers have got a howler they’d like to see on here, please email me on drunkenmaster42@hotmail.com.   In the meantime, I present the following for your amusement.

Unreasonable requests and outlandish orders:

“Bump him to death” – From Beijing with Love

“Sock him, Fatty” – Pantyhose Hero

“Let me see how rude are you!” – Forbidden City Cop

“Carry a gun!  Armed Rubbery!” – People’s Hero

“You’re under our encirclement” – Fatal Move (whatever happened to “we have you surrounded”?)

“Bastard, bump against me” – Pantyhose Hero

“Doctor, are you rude?” – Forbidden City Cop

“Follow that fatty!  Run him down” – Pedicab Driver

“Let me rape you once and for all” – Pantyhose Hero

“Jin Si, your belly is open.  Run” – The Heroic Ones

“Let’s gay” – Pantyhose Hero

Insults, abuse and fighting talk:

“Can I slap her heavily?” – Forbidden City Cop

“You stinky!” – Fatal Move

“Auntie, you talk like a whore” – Pedicab Driver

“Frankly, are you a girl or a pervert?” – Pantyhose Hero

“You want to beat me, I do want to hit you hardly with rod too” – Forbidden City Cop

“Fatty, how can you piss on the street?” – Enter the Fat Dragon

Just plain wrong:

“Keeps delaying rascally” – Fatal Move

“Damaged, it’s sharp” – Pantyhose Hero

“I really recognise his scent of smell” – Ebola Syndrome

“You have a gun, return him with a bullet!” – People’s Hero

 “No, I have just stooled” – Lawyer, Lawyer 

“Slash the boys like greens, you serious” – Fatal Move

“Cut off the crabs, I will kill you if you don’t pay” – Fantasy Mission Force

“Sorry, my orgasm” – Pantyhose Hero

“I am stooling” – Bio Zombie

“Was beaten up when I just walked in.  Someone expelled me out” – Fatal Move

“It Banged, and a lot of people stooped down on the street” – People’s Hero

 “What for? I don’t chew gums” – Interpol 009 

“Those bastards drank the urine which I’ve added with cathartics” – Lawyer, Lawyer

I’m off to do some stooling now.  Until next time, enjoy those subtitles!

Bruce Lee Vs Elvis: more “Game of Death” footage found April 1, 2008

A recently discovered film can containing a mere 10 minutes’ worth of material has already been hailed as the Holy Grail for both action film fans and music fans.  The contents show the King of Kung Fu fighting the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in a life and death struggle set inside a Pagoda. 

The footage is believed to be yet more material from Lee’s unfinished film Game of Death, shot in 1972.  The project was only in its infancy when Lee was called upon to film Enter The Dragon for Warner Brothers, and Lee died before he could go back and complete the film.  However, it has always been claimed that more material was shot than was ever seen, even taking into consideration the newly restored material that surfaced in recent documentaries on the subject.

The idea of Bruce Lee starring alongside Elvis Presley is not as far fetched as it sounds.  Presley was a huge fan of Lee, and was himself a Karate practitioner under the tutelage of Lee’s friend Ed Parker.  Presley expressed a wish to work with the Kung Fu star on a film project, but it had always been assumed that the two legends never met.  However, the footage comes as no surprise to the Presley estate.  “We know Elvis went to Hong Kong in 1972 to meet Bruce,” says a spokeman for the singing star, who died in 1977.  “He wanted the visit to be very low-key as he was mindful of the hysteria that would follow if the Hong Kong people knew the two were meeting.”

Travelling under the name of Vince Everett, Presley spent a total of two weeks in Hong Kong filming with Lee.  Full details of the found footage are being kept secret, but it is believed that the scene starts with Presley singing a musical number while Lee and co-star Nora Miao dance the Cha Cha – Lee was a spledind dancer in his youth and was even crowned the Hong Kong Cha Cha Champion of 1958.  Unfortunately, the film was shot without sound, so the song Elvis is singing remains a mystery – for now.  “There is dialogue, and it’s in English,” says another spokesman.  “We’re working with lip-readers to discover what is being said and sung.”

After the song ends, it appears Lee and Presley have an argument, and the two start fighting, with Presley using Karate against Lee’s Jeet Kune Do.  In all, the footage lasts just under ten minutes and contains fight choreography that one privileged viewer has said “will stun fans.  It’s simply outstanding stuff, and Elvis is on fine form.  When he breaks his guitar over Bruce’s head, it all goes nuclear.  I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

So why has the world not seen this amazing footage, and why did neither Lee or Elvis mention it?  No one knows for sure, but one theory is that Lee was unhappy with the dancing element of the scene and wanted to reshoot it before presenting it to the world.  As for why the footage was lost, there appears to be a simple explantion.  “We have a large vault in which we store all our films,” explains an employee at the archive vault of Golden Harvest studios, where Lee made all his Hong Kong movies.  “This particular reel was in a can where the writing on the label was completely obscured by a substance that looks like hamburger mustard.  It was simply left in the vault until we were doing a cleanout and we decided to have a look at what was on it.  Imagine our surprise when we found what it contained.” 

And what will happen to the film now?  Columbia Pictures distributed the Golden Harvest film Game of Death in 1978, five years after Lee’s death using stand-ins and archive footage to seemlessly build a new movie around the footage Lee had shot before leaving for the States to make Enter The Dragon.  The result was so astonishingly successful that hardly anyone noticed that Lee was being played by a series of other actors and stuntmen.  Columbia Pictures now wants to buy the film outright and insert the found footage – and shoot new scenes to explain the Presley character.

“We have found that we could not simply add the Elvis scene to the Pagoda section of the movie Game of Death,” said one high-ranking Columbia official.  “His character needs explaining.  We are therefore going to shoot new footage to help the flow of the revised film.”  One problem is that many of the cast, and director Robert Clouse, have passed away since making the film, and the aging process makes it impossible to use the services of the surviving cast.  “We have already aquired the services of an Asian-American actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tai Chung Kim [Lee’s stand in for the 1978 shoot] to play Billy Lo, and we will use archive footage and outtakes to fill in the gaps with the other actors.”

Columbia have gone even further by hiring an unknown actor to direct the new material.  Matt Conroy was given the job as he looked eerily similar to Robert Clouse in the late 70’s.  Conroy has not directed a single frame of film, and after studying Clouse’s back catalogue, which includes such genre classics as Gymkata and China O’Brien 2, was initially worried he may have been over-qualified.  However, he has now embraced the challenge: “There’s no getting around the fact that I look like the guy,” says Conroy, “and the producers are insisting that they want someone as close, physically, to Bob Clouse.  I will do my best and try not to let anyone down.”

It is not known at this point who will play Elvis in the re-shoot, but with an estimated 85,000 professional impersonators in the world there shouldn’t be too much trouble finding someone for the role.  As for the outcome of the duel, executives are keeping their lips firmy sealed.  “You’ll have to wait and see,” says an excited official.  “But this is going to be huge!”

The revised version of Game of Death is scheduled to hit cinemas worldwide exactly one year from today – on April 1, 2009.

Chan to direct Armour of God 3? August 5, 2007

I read two interesting articles this week about Jackie Chan, and I can’t help thinking that maybe the two separate stories are related somehow.

The first, brought to my attention by dleedlee at the Hong Kong Movie Database, concerns Jackie’s relationship with the Rush Hour movies.  Apparently, he’s not a fan, and his comments could not really come at a worse time as Rush Hour 3 is about to speed its way to our screens anytime now.

As well as venting his frustration at not having free reign with the action scenes, he also bypasses any kind of semblance of tact and slates the crowd-pleasing “War” singalong from the first instalment, saying: “I hate that, the whole thing, I hate it, even the [head bobbing] movement”, although it appears he’s chalking all that down to cultural differences as he wasn’t familiar with the song.  He also publicly says he “hates” the American system and states point blank of the original Rush Hour: “I hate the movie”.

So why did he come back for a third instalment?  “My manager begged me to do it”, Chan says, which is just the kind of quote you want on a movie poster outside theatres showing the new movie. 

Don’t hold your breath for Rush Hour 4, then.  

Hot on the heels of this revelation comes the staggering news that Chan is planning to return to directing and scriptwriting for a second sequel to one of his most successful films ever, Armour of God. 

If this comes to pass, it’s exciting news indeed.  The last whole film directed by Jackie was 1991’s Operation Condor, which was the first sequel to Armour of God (although in the States, they switched the films around so that in their universe Armour of God is a sequel to Operation Condor).  Operation Condor was so expensive and took so long to complete that Golden Harvest “requested” that he used other directors in future, and the work suffered.  It needs to be remembered that just prior to Operation Condor, Jackie had handed in his magnum opus Mr Canton and Lady Rose, which turned out to be an expensive and time consuming flop.  The best scenes Chan did in the 90’s were when he directed himself like in the good ol’ days of the 80’s, including the now-infamous finalé of Drunken Master II. 

Now he’s free of Golden Harvest I suppose he can do what he likes, and the decision to resurrect Armour of God kind of makes sense.  The name of his most popular series, Police Story, beame sullied with the lamentable First Strike, and New Police Story moved the series in a direction few fans wanted to go.  A new Project A movie would proabably not be considered simply because it would raise the Hung/Yuen question again, although if the new Armour of God movie is a hit, who knows what will happen?  There are certainly still plenty of fans foaming at the mouth for a reunion. 

Sadly, we’re going to have to wait a while to see if he’s still got his directorial chops.  Armour of God 3: Chinese Zodiac doesn’t begin shooting until April 1st (I hope this is not some kind of wildly elaborate April Fool’s joke!) and we all know Jackie’s plans can change like the weather.  In the meantime, he’s working on a kind of remake of Journey to the West with Jet Li, and it doesn’t look anything to write home about. 

But at least we’ve now got something to look forward to. You can read the articles here and here.

A beginner’s guide to Kung Fu films - Part I June 24, 2007

Part One: Definitions and a very brief history lesson.

New to Kung Fu movies?  Don’t know a Wong Fei-Hung from a Fong Sai-Yuk?  Wouldn’t know one end of a three-sectioned staff from another?  Fear not, for after watching far too many of these films, I now offer some background information to hopefully help with the viewing experience.  If it’s not in here, it isn’t worth mentioning.  Or it’s something I’ve forgotten.  Or something I never knew in the first place and was blissfully ignorant of.  In seriousness, this is all done tongue-in-cheek and should not be taken in the least bit seriously, apart from the bits that actually give out useful (and accurate) information, but I’ll try to keep this to a minimum.  Firstly, some general points…

Kung Fu movies have probably been around since the dawn of film technology, but the modern day Kung Fu movie was born in 1970 with the release of The Chinese Boxer and died of natural causes around 1984.  Its death came about as a result of several factors including the demise of the Shaw Brothers film studio and the popularity of modern day action movies like the ground breaking Police Story.  Kung fu movies originate in Hong Kong, or at a push, China.  Any movie not originating from these territories claiming to be a Kung Fu film should be treated with suspicion.  Kung Fu films do not feature kickboxing, karate or ninja.  If you see a DVD cover depicting flying stars or a man with a black mask over the lower part of his face, this is not likely to be a Kung Fu film.  If you see a DVD cover with Steven Segal on the cover, run like hell.  If in doubt, look for words like “Shaolin”, “Drunken”, “Monkey”, “Dragon”, “Fist”, “Snake”, “Chamber”, “Duel”, “Master” and “Warriors”.  Films containing these words are almost certainly Kung Fu movies and therefore can be approached with confidence.  What’s more, it has been scientifically proven that all films with those words in are classics of the genre. 

Another distinction that must be made is the difference between Kung Fu and Wuxia (or Wuxia Pian) films.  Wuxia films are also have ancient origins and were all the rage immediately before Kung Fu came in vogue in 1970.  The difference is Kung Fu films generally feature unarmed combat (or combat with traditional Chinese weaponry) and the fighting is more or less grounded in reality.  Wuxia Pian, on the other hand, is more fantasy-based, with combatants able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, run across bamboo forests and glide gently to the ground from atop a mountain.  They are also armed with swords and are usually bound to a strict code of chivalry. 

Kung Fu movies are generally set in an unspecified point in the 19th Century.  There are many exceptions to this rule; for example, many films are set in the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907AD), which was another exciting (read: bloody) time in China’s history, but most of the time you’ll be stuck in the 19th Century.  A lot of films deal with a specific point regarding Dynasties, and here is probably the most important point of all:

Overthrow the Qing!  Restore the Ming!

This should be your mantra.  It’s surprising how many fans (and I’m talking hardcore fans, here) forget which way round this goes.  The Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911) was the last Dynasty of China, and as Dynasties go, it was considered a bit of a stinker.  There are many reasons for this, but the main one was that the Manchu people, who were the conquerors of the Han people, were not actually Chinese.  In other words, the Qing Dynasty was headed by foreigners called the Manchu who overthrew the Ming Dynasty ruled by the indigenous Han people.  The Qing were also supposedly responsible for burning the Shaolin Temple and thus spreading Shaolin martial arts across China when the monks fled.  This theme is the basis of many, many Kung Fu films.

In many films you will see the Manchu depicted as evil, corrupt, stupid or incompetent (or all of the above).  The Manchu are easily identifiable by their distinctive uniforms and their little round hats.  When killed, they invariably become hopping vampires and torment the Han afresh from beyond the grave.

By comparison, the Han people are depicted as righteous, hardworking, honest and immune to corruption.  They wear the universally identifiable peasant garb and have long hair in pigtails.  Cutting this hair is a deeply humiliating experience and is always done at some point by the order of an evil Manchu lord.  However, paradoxically, this always seals the corrupt lord’s fate: you can guarantee several cans of whup-ass will eventually be opened upon said Manchu.  The Manchus are too stupid to ever realise this is going to happen.

The above picture is a typical scene from a film based on the struggles of the Chinese patriots against the evil Manchu lords.  This particular Chinese patriot is about to be executed by the Manchu.  In a typical twist, the commander on horseback has been given buckteeth in order to make him more foreign and ridiculous.

It’s worth mentioning that the Ming was never restored.  You wouldn’t know this from all the victories the hardworking Han patriots win over the Manchu in literally countless Kung Fu films during the seventies and early eighties.  It’s a little like watching a series of American Civil War movies in which the South always win.  The Qing Dynasty was eventually overthrown in the early 20th Century by Sun Yat-Sen’s revolutionaries (another good source for dozens of films) and China decided to do away with Dynasties altogether and become a republic.

The corpse of the Kung Fu movie came kicking back to life, much to everyone’s surprise, in 1991 with Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China and suddenly it was fashionable to make period films again, and they are still popular to this day.  But while the “New-Wave” Kung Fu films certainly have their merit, they do seem a breed apart from their 70’s ancestors, and should be considered almost like a separate genre.

Coming soon: Part II – Legends of Kung Fu.  Until then, remember: Overthrow the Ming!  Restore the Qing!  Oh, hang on…

Curse of the Movie Collector May 7, 2007

No, this isn’t a review of a horror movie, although horror does play its part.  Even if you’ve never seen a Hong Kong movie, you’ll probably find something familiar in the insanity that follows…

I was trawling through Play.com the other day when I noticed that a film called Fearless Hyena has recently been released by those nice folk at Hong Kong Legends.  Hong Kong Legends (hereafter referred to as HKL) generally release the definitive versions of classic Hong Kong films (as the name implies, funnily enough) here in the UK.  I tutted my annoyance as I’d only bought the HK version of this film only a few months ago.  Then I thought, “hang on, I bought that on DVD before.  And wasn’t this the film that…” and after a few minutes had this array on the floor by my PC:

Yes, I’ve got four different versions of this film.  The first (on the left) was a VHS tape bought at an ex-rental shop for the princely sum of £5.00 back in 1993 (it was the only way you could get a copy then).  The tape was quite worn and the transfer was pretty ropey, so after a year or two I took the unprecedented step of ordering a copy of the film from a mail-order firm in a magazine (this being long before the days of internet shopping and the global market).  I sent off my cheque and waited the required 28 days for delivery.  The result (see second from left) was a brand spanking new copy of Fearless Hyena.  I was chuffed.  However, upon watching said opus, I was rather disgruntled to discover that the film broke down about fifteen minutes from the end.  There was then about five minutes of a blank screen and then the film came back, sort of showing a fast rewind until it got to the part where it left off.  Not exactly conducive to a good viewing experience, this.  Anyway, fast forward to the digital age (hurrah!) where I learn that Eastern Heroes have released the film.  It’s still dubbed into English (booo!) but the box proclaims that it’s “Colour Enhanced & Digitally Re-Mastered for Higher Picture Resolution” (it isn’t) and a “16.9 Anamorphic version enhanced for widescreen television” (it isn’t that either – the top and bottom bits of the picture have simply been masked to give the impression of widescreen).  Now I could probably go on for days about the frankly criminal shortcomings of Eastern Heroes, but as they have now gone the way of the dodo, there seems little point.  Anyway, the box also proclaims “Interactive moving menus”, and this it has got, so we can all feel a little better about the situation.  Needless to say, this particular version (see third from left) I never even bothered to watch.  The fourth (right) is the Fortune Star version I bought last year.  It’s in the original language (hurrah!), subtitled (double hurrah!) and genuinely remastered (gasp!).  However, I noticed that the remastering process rendered some of the colours a little “artificial”, and of course the subtitles can’t match that of a western release.  That HKL disc sure looks promising. 

So there I am, my finger hovering over the “Add to Cart” button for the HKL DVD.  And do you know what I’m thinking?  I’m thinking, “you know what?  I’m not even sure I like the film anymore”…

So did I buy the film for the fifth time?  No, not yet.  But when the sale comes…

It’s one thing to deliberately double-up on certain titles when better versions come along (besides, I find a pile of old/unwanted DVDs makes a nice place to hide all your Hsu Qi “modelling” discs and suchlike) but over the past year or so I’ve been increasingly troubled by the possibility of buying the same film again by accident.

Now this will probably only resonate with other fans of Hong Kong films as all of their English language titles seem to come from a vocabulary of only about 150 words.  When browsing through lists I look at something like Shaolin Drunken Vole Vs The Evil Dead and I have to think to myself “have I got that?”  It might be me getting older or something, but I’m not retaining the information as well as I used to.  Next item on the list, Naked Cop 3 or whatever, and I’m sure I’ve got that.  I even remember bits of it in my mind.  But lo and behold, it’s nowhere to be seen and I realise I’ve been thinking about something else entirely.  Likewise My Flying Auntie and We Love Deadly Dancing Millionaires.  So I opt for the DVD version of Legendary Weapons of China as I haven’t upgraded from VHS yet…and then look up to see it on the shelf next to me.  So I decide to quit while I’m ahead and have a lie down for a bit.

I’ve so far only bought the same film by accident once: Sammo Hung’s Spooky Encounters.  For some reason, I thought it was going to be the sequel (which I soon discovered was called, rather confusingly I feel, Spooky Encounters 2).  But as time goes on and the old grey cells disappear, it’s inevitable that this kind of thing is going to happen again sometime. 

When it does, I hope I can be philosophical about it and think of it as just another ringer to help hide my pile of eastern nudeyness.

Rage against the Remake! (King WHO??) May 1, 2007

Unless you are particularly unobservant, you will have noticed that over the last few years, the movie industry has thrown seemingly dozens of remakes our way.  So much so that nearly every film you hear about these days is a remake of something or other.  Even respectable filmmakers get in on the act, too: Peter Jackson, director of classics Bad Taste and Braindead (I think he also scored a minor hit with some kind of fantasy-based project) did King Kong and is now remaking The Dambusters.  Even though no one seems particularly interested (the only publicity I’ve heard about the Dambusters film is people speculating what the dog will be called now), remakes are still being churned out at a massive rate.

However, nothing about the current trend has really, truly, wholly pissed me off until now.  I hated the idea of a Dawn of the Dead remake (it ended up quite watchable, actually), I scoffed at the idea of a Wicker Man remake (I will never, ever sink so low as to watch that one), but I took it all with a pinch of salt.

That was until I heard that last week it was announced that Quentin Tarantino is to helm a remake of Come Drink With Me.  Now don’t get me wrong, I like Tarantino up to a point.  Both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were bloody brilliant.  Some of his scripts are good to great.  But Jackie Brown left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth (but then again, I’m not a big fan of Elmore Leonard) and I’m still not sure about Kill Bill – it seemed to me as if he was deliberately trying to get bad performances out of the actors most of the time.

Tarantino’s credentials as a Hong Kong film nut are without question – he used City on Fire as a template for Reservoir Dogs and much of Kill Bill is in the Shaw style (including the logo at the start and a tell-tale shaky face zoom).  But King Hu’s Come Drink With Me?  I’m sorry, but it’s too polite to be given the Tarantino treatment.  I’m surprised he even likes the film – I would have thought Chang Cheh would have been closer to Tarantino’s style, and The Five Venoms more his speed.  Plus, aren’t the public starting to get tired of Tarantino wearing his grindhouse influences on his sleeve?  Kill Bill was not well received, and I’d imagine this will fare even worse. 

What I want to know is how is he going to handle the scene at the Inn where the Golden Swallow and the bandits are pretending not to fight each other?  I certainly hope she’s not going to just burst in and shout, “Any of you f*ckin’ pr*cks move and I’ll execute every one of you motherf*ckers!”  And are we going to be treated to a Twisting competition between the Golden Swallow and the Drunken Beggar Fan Dapei?  What about Smiling Tiger’s lifeless body in the boot of a car (or the back of a horse-drawn carriage in this case) after being accidentally stabbed in the face by Jade Faced Tiger?

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