Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1988)

day 108, cane toads an unnatural history

CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY (1988) Four stars
January 14, 2019 will go down in history as one of the great movie-watching days of my life.

Let’s see, I consumed a 1984 kung fu comedy with a little bit of everything including drunken boxing and a monster known as “Banana Monster” or “Watermelon Monster” (TAOISM DRUNKARD, a.k.a. DRUNKEN WU TANG); a 1983 made-for-TV documentary called FROM STAR WARS TO JEDI: THE MAKING OF A SAGA that took a behind-the-scenes look at the making of RETURN OF THE JEDI; a 1987 anime that one headline called “classic demon Anime loaded with succubi, gore and tentacles” (WICKED CITY); a 1985 Japanese comedy mixing a love of movies and a love of food (TAMPOPO); one of the better Godzilla movies (GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE); an older Jackie Chan and an older Pierce Brosnan making it work in THE FOREIGNER; a 1988 Krzysztof Kieslowski film called A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE that lasts over 80 minutes (guess in the long run 80 minutes constitutes a short time); and I started on Peter Jackson’s debut BAD TASTE before calling it a day.

In between THE FOREIGNER and A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE, I watched CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY, a 47-minute documentary directed by Mark Lewis on a species taking over northern Australia.

I found a poster for the movie and it hits you with such blurbs as “An Absolute Delight!” (New York Times), “An assault of sex-mad giant toads munching their way across Australia!” (Roger Ebert), and “Riotously funny and hilariously twisted!” (Dallas Times Herald). It has CANE TOADS in huge letters across the top of the spread and a photo of a cane toad who’s as big as the girl who’s holding it.

Yes, it’s one of those “nature run amok” films.

We find out early on that in 1935, the cane toad was introduced to Australia as pest control on a beetle pestering their sugar cane.

Let’s just say that plan backfired, and it backfired miserably.

The toads are back in the headlines in Australia.

“Australian senator says government should pay welfare recipients to kill cane toads” reads one.

Senator Pauline Hanson wrote an open latter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and she’s a beaut.

“Dear Prime Minister

“As Queensland and neighboring states go through our Summer months, a further explosion of cane toads are hatching, adding to the estimated 200 million already here in Australia.

“Since their misguided introduction to deal with cane beetle in the North Queensland town of Gordonvale in 1935, cane toad numbers have exploded beyond the borders of Queensland and are having enormous effect on native Australian species.

“Unlike native frogs that lay between 1,000 and 2,000 eggs during their breeding cycle, toads will lay between 8,000 and 35,000.

“Their poisonous toxin is deadly to many native species including lizards, quolls, dingoes and crocodiles. Adult cane toads will eat almost anything it can fit in its mouth, including dead animals and pet food scraps. Their appetite and prolific breeding cycle knows no boundaries.”

Parents think teenagers are bad.

Hanson called for swift, bipartisan action.

“I would also encourage you to introduce a 3 month bounty over the Summer months to help reduce the breeding numbers throughout Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

“A 10 cent reward for the collection of each cane toad, I believe would encourage most Australians living with the pest to take an active roll (role) in reducing their numbers until a biological measure is developed.”

In the movie, Lewis reportedly wanted to create sympathy for the hated animal.

One resident said, “There are still quite a large number of the toads around, but not as big as they use to be. But I still let the animal and they give me a lot of enjoyment.”

We get a toad’s eye view of the world in a multitude of shots.

Our title creatures participate in a PSYCHO spoof.

They even get songs like “Cane Toad Blues” (Tim Finn) and “Warts ‘N All” (Don Spencer, Allan Caswell).

Around the five- or six-minute mark, Dr. Glen Ingram, then the Senior Curator Amphibia and Birds at Queensland Museum, explains the process of “Amplexus.”

These toads sure do love them a whole lotta “Amplexus.” They are responsible for the phrase “horny toad.”

For example, around 150 were introduced to Oahu in 1932 and in just 17 months, the toads numbered over 100,000.

One article described cane toads as “Fat, toxic and nocturnal.” For some reason, that description called to mind Dean Wormer telling Flounder, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Watching CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY also brought to mind the 1972 American International exploitation picture FROGS.

One of the legends involving that low-budget picture was that many of the film’s 500 Florida frogs and 100 giant South American toads escaped during production.

Maybe they ran into the cane toads or movie star Ray Milland, who left FROGS three days early because he was such an unhappy camper.

Guess you could say that it’s more a laughing matter for somebody who doesn’t have to deal with cane toads in any way shape or form, because “They pose a bigger menace than the German Army in World War II” (quote from another movie poster).

1941 (1979)

day 68, 1941

1941 (1979) Three-and-a-half stars
I have a general rule: Any movie featuring Slim Pickens, Christopher Lee, and Toshiro Mifune in the same scene will automatically be given a positive review, so Steven Spielberg’s 1941 has that going for it right off the bat.

I am sure you remember Pickens, Lee, and Mifune.

Pickens (1919-83) played many, many supporting roles in Westerns, but he also had a great role in Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE as Major T.J. “King” Kong that incorporated his cowboy flair.

Lee (1922-2015) played Count Dracula seven times, I do believe, in Hammer productions like TASTE THE BLOOD OF COUNT DRACULA and later appeared in one James Bond, five Tim Burton, two STAR WARS, and three LORD OF THE RINGS films. There’s a story that Lee was once pulled over by a Hollywood traffic cop, who asked Lee if he should be driving in daylight.

Mifune (1920-97) appeared in over 150 movies during his career and none are more famous than his 16 collaborations with director Akira Kurosawa (ordered from last to first): RED BEARD, HIGH AND LOW, SANJURO, YOJIMBO, THE BAD SLEEP WELL, THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, THE LOWER DEPTHS, THRONE OF BLOOD, I LIVE IN FEAR, SEVEN SAMURAI, THE IDIOT, RASHOMON, SCANDAL, STRAY DOG, THE QUIET DUEL, and DRUNKEN ANGEL.

All three actors are each speaking different languages.

Awesome.

Pickens, Lee, and Mifune appear together early on in 1941 and we get the first shark victim in JAWS (actress and stuntwoman Susan Backlinie) as bonus opening scene treat.

1941 is the bastard child on Spielberg’s filmography, seemingly the film that even he doesn’t like all that much.

Just how much of a bastard child?

John Wayne and Charlton Heston were both offered the role of General Stilwell and turned it down because they believed 1941 to be unpatriotic.

I believe Wayne even told Spielberg that he should be ashamed … and called the script the most anti-American piece of drivel he ever read.

Robert Stack took on Stilwell and looking at photos of the real Joseph Stilwell, the actor looks just like the real person.

1941 came between CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in Spielberg’s filmography, so of course the $94 million worldwide gross of 1941 would be considered a huge bust compared to $300 million for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and $390 million for RAIDERS.

It’s an oversized, loud comedy that mostly fails on that intended level, but succeeds in other ways. That’s very strange and yes, 1941 is very strange indeed.

Spielberg himself said, “Some people think (1941) was an out-of-control production, but it wasn’t. What happened on the screen was pretty out of control, but the production was pretty much in control. I don’t dislike the movie at all. I’m not embarrassed by it. I just think that it wasn’t funny enough.”

Spielberg has said that Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the picture with Bob Gale, should have directed the picture.

Though I don’t laugh at the vast majority of 1941, I am never bored and I end up smiling through a lot of the picture.

I’ve already mentioned Pickens, Lee, Mifune, and Stack, and that just scratches the surface of the star power on board.

We also have Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Tim Matheson, Warren Oates, and Nancy Allen, and several more familiar faces in Treat Williams, Bobby DiCicco, Eddie Deezen, Wendie Jo Sperber, Perry Lang, Penny Marshall, Michael McKean, Joe Flaherty, Mickey Rourke, and John Candy.

In addition to Pickens, we have a couple more of the great old-time character actors in Dub Taylor and Elisha Cook Jr.

Williams, DiCicco, Dianne Kay, and especially Sperber are particularly delightful and basically steal the movie away from the bigger names. They are fun, fun, fun, that’s for sure, and their work peaks at the USO club sequence, by far the best part of the movie that incorporates a dance contest and a brawl. This sequence found inspiration from both a film and real life: Universal Pictures’ HELLZAPOPPIN’ (1941) and the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. I rate this sequence with any Spielberg’s ever done throughout his nearly five-decade career; Spielberg thought about making 1941 an old-fashioned musical, but he said he didn’t have the guts to go through with it at the time.

There’s just a lot of enjoyable moments during 1941, plain and simple.

For example, Stilwell watched DUMBO twice in real life during the month of December 1941 when he was a commander in the Los Angeles area. Stilwell, I believe, even cries watching DUMBO in 1941. Sure difficult being a cinephile.

Game of Death (1978)

GAME OF DEATH (1978) One-and-a-half stars
After Bruce Lee’s death in 1973, a new genre of exploitation films came into existence, “Bruceploitation.”

Actors in this genre included Bruce Li, Bronson Lee (combining two action stars), Bruce Lai, Bruce Le, Bruce Lei, Bruce Lie, Bruce Liang, Saro Lee, Bruce Ly, Bruce Thai, Bruce K.L. Lea, Brute Lee, Myron Bruce Lee, Lee Bruce, and Dragon Lee, while Jackie Chan was touted as the next Bruce Lee until he found his own groove with SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW and DRUNKEN MASTER (both 1978).

“Bruceploitation” films often included some variant of “Enter,” “Fist,” “Fury,” “Dragon,” and “New” in their titles. BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE, that’s my favorite title and VHS cover art.

The films were nearly all garbage.

That leads us to GAME OF DEATH.

Lee started filming GAME OF DEATH after WAY OF THE DRAGON and he finished a few dazzling fight sequences, including the most famous one against NBA superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a matchup pitting the 5-foot-7 Lee and 7-2 Abdul-Jabbar. GAME OF DEATH had all the makings of Lee’s masterwork.

Alas, it never came to be.

Lee stopped filming GAME OF DEATH to go make ENTER THE DRAGON, the film that helped break martial arts films in the international market.

Unfortunately, Lee died on July 20, shortly before the release of ENTER THE DRAGON, and he never completed GAME OF DEATH.

A few years later, director Robert Clouse built a theatrical version of GAME OF DEATH around Lee’s three fight scenes (totaling 11 minutes), with all sorts of subterfuge used to “cover” for the fact Lee died and left a major hole in the production. Clouse, under the pseudonym Jan Spears with Raymond Chow, concocted an entirely different plot leading up to the fights and changed Lee’s character from “Hai Tien” to “Billy Lo.” Amazingly enough, two former Academy Award winners found their way into the cast, Dean Jagger (in his penultimate theatrical film) and Gig Young (in his final film).

This insulting subterfuge includes multiple Lee stand-ins who hide behind shades for the majority of the movie, stock footage beginning with Lee’s fight scene from WAY OF THE DRAGON against Chuck Norris, a superimposed towel over stock footage, a cardboard cutout, cuts to “fake” Bruce from “real” Bruce, and finally footage from Lee’s actual funeral.

You can differentiate stock footage from the body of the movie, because of its grainy quality.

Abdul-Jabbar even refused to participate in the reshoot and so they filled the “Hakim” part with somebody who does not even closely resemble the basketball star.

In other words, none of it’s well done.

Not that it should have been done at all.

Heart of the Matter: The 11 minutes of the real Lee are the only reason GAME OF DEATH gets more than one star for a rating and these scenes are the only reasons for watching. Lee deserved better, a lot better, than a cynical slapdash exploitation film like the first 80 minutes directed by Clouse.

In those 11 minutes, however, we remember what a dynamo Lee truly was, a marvel of modern man. Just dazzling.

Thankfully, after technological advances, viewers can skip all the bullshit and cue up the good parts, as Phil Hartman’s Telly Savalas said (about different movies, lol, but yeah, we don’t have time to fast-forward).

Still, it’s tempting to speculate what could have been.

They could have taken all of Lee’s completed footage and built around it with interviews from Lee himself, Norris, Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Wall, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, et cetera. Or just used only the completed footage.

Nearly anything would have been superior to what they did for the first 80 minutes in GAME OF DEATH.

Cat People (1942)

day 19, cat people

CAT PEOPLE (1942) Four stars
Russian-American producer Val Lewton (1904-51) made his mark on horror movies and cinematic history in general with a series of low-budget thrillers for RKO beginning with CAT PEOPLE and continuing through I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, THE LEOPARD MAN, THE SEVENTH VICTIM, THE GHOST SHIP, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, THE BODY SNATCHER, ISLE OF THE DEAD, and BEDLAM.

That’s a fertile period of films (1942 through 1946) that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Universal Studios’ horror movies of the 1930s.

Lewton’s influence can be seen on the vast majority of horror movies of the last almost 80 years, unfortunately though in just one way.

Horror movies often rely on jump scares, and “Lewton Bus” is film industry shorthand for a scene that slowly builds tension and then jolts the viewer at the most tense moment with a sudden scare from something that turns out to be completely harmless, like a cat or a dog or that damn stupid friend who loves to play tricks on their friends at the most inopportune times. The audience supposedly “jumps” en masse on cue. This technique gets the name from a scene in CAT PEOPLE, where we think a character will be attacked and killed by a panther and the hissing sounds turn out instead to be an incoming bus pulling up.

Slasher films especially utilize scenes like that, beyond the point of banality after being used in thousands of movies. Occasionally, a film like HALLOWEEN or PHANTASM will succeed using “Lewton Bus” scenes, just to make it clear that I don’t hate jump scares per se, but a stockpile of these scenes in a film often point to lazy filmmakers who just want to generate cheap thrills. Seasoned movie viewers can sniff out a cheap jump scare from a mile away.

Fortunately, Lewton’s productions are far more than jump scares and cheap thrills, right from the start with CAT PEOPLE, directed by Jacques Tourneur.

Necessity becomes the mother of invention, and it’s true for CAT PEOPLE and the other Lewton productions with their low budgets and subsequent high creativity.

The plot centers around Irena (Simone Simon), a fashion designer originally from Serbia, and her romance and marriage with Oliver (Kent Smith). Their marriage remains unconsummated because of Irena’s paralyzing fear that she will turn into a large cat upon consummation. Irene doesn’t even kiss Oliver. Oliver, a most understanding husband all things considered, begins to confide in his assistant at work, Alice (Jane Randolph), and Irena’s anger and jealousy trigger her Serbian curse. Oliver also gets Irena to visit Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway) upon Alice’s recommendation; Judd, of course, develops his own designs for Irena.

Unlike the Universal monster movies, CAT PEOPLE does not show the monster and instead relies upon shadows and sound effects. This suggestive approach allows viewers to use our imaginations and we can invent some disturbing scenes on the widescreen of our minds, like what exactly happens to Dr. Judd in his death scene.

“We tossed away the horror formula right from the beginning,” Lewton said in the Los Angeles Times. “No grisly stuff for us. No mask-like faces hardly human, with gnashing teeth and hair standing on end. No creaky physical manifestations. No horror piled on horror.”

CAT PEOPLE (made for $134,000) became a big hit for the last few days of 1942 and then into 1943 after its 1942 Christmas release date and RKO, of course, sold it through a series of sensationalistic taglines:

“She knew strange, fierce pleasures that no other woman could ever feel!”

“LOVELY WOMAN … GIANT KILLER-CAT … THE SAME “PERSON”! … IT’S SUPER-SENSATIONAL!” (1954 re-release)

“The exciting story of a woman who kills the thing she loves!”

“The strangest story you ever tried to get out of your dreams!”

“A Kiss Could Change Her Into a Monstrous Fang-and-Claw Killer!’

“She Was Marked With The Curse Of Those Who Slink And Court And Kill By Night!”

“To Kiss Her Meant Death By Her Own Fangs and Claws!”

“Kiss me and I’ll claw you to death!”

“The most terrifying menace of them all!”

Oliver, Alice, and Irena return in THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944), one of the first sequels to throw off a general public (and publicists) expecting more of the same. TCM.com starts its entry, “The RKO publicists must have been using mind-altering drugs when they masterminded the ad campaign behind THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944), a poetic fantasy about a lonely young girl who invents an imaginary playmate.”

Poetic is one word to describe the Lewton CAT PEOPLE films, and how many horror movies have ever been deserving of that compliment?

The Killing of Satan (1983)

day 106, the killing of satan

THE KILLING OF SATAN (1983) Three stars
Not exactly sure what to make of this 1983 Filipino production named LUMABAN KA, SATANAS or THE KILLING OF SATAN elsewhere in this great big world.

I mean, you can’t go too far wrong with a movie that features the line, “Satan! Where are you? Come out and fight!”

THE KILLING OF SATAN has a preposterous but literal plot (our hero does kill Satan), ridiculous dubbing (mouths are moving without dialogue coming out, I do believe, on multiple occasions), eye-popping special effects, nudity galore (not too much galore, though), and a hero who’s equipped with the powers of a jean jacket, jeans, a rockin’ ‘stache, and Chuck Taylors. Yeah, he’s an ex-con too and you’re right, he sounds like the most believable action hero to ever grace a movie screen.

Not sure how many action heroes graced a jean jacket. I do remember Martin Sheen wore one in BADLANDS, a Levi’s 507XX jacket, but does that count? Oh, I better not forget Chuck Norris and his demolition in denim from INVASION U.S.A.

Jean jackets apparently date back to the late 19th Century.

Levi Strauss designed the first-ever jeans in 1870, designed to be “a durable, breathable utility garment for cowboys, railroad engineers, and miners to wear during the gold rush out West.”

In all my research, I do not see Ramon Revilla, the actor who plays our hero Lando, listed among the great celebrities who rocked jean jackets. I mean, for crying out loud, I think he’s every bit as important as Kanye West, especially after research.

Revilla was around his mid-50s in age when he made THE KILLING OF SATAN. Are you kidding? That makes his feats in THE KILLING OF SATAN even more impressive. You must have God on your side, though, to overcome middle age, a jean jacket, being an ex-con, and that mustache.

Over a lengthy career that started in the 1950s, Revilla has been nominated for five and won two awards from the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), although he was not nominated for THE KILLING OF SATAN.

Revilla won Best Actor for his work in the 1973 film HULIHIN SI TIAGONG AKYAT and won the Presidential Award in 2005. His other nominations include Best Actor for NARDONG PUTIK (1972), SANUGIN ANG SAMAR (1974), and CORDILLERA (1986).

Revilla, now 91 years old, served 12 years (1992-2004) as Senator in the Philippines and he also developed a legendary reputation for being a ladies man, before he ever went near politics.

Did he use killing Satan for his campaign?

Revilla’s son Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., who succeeded his old man in politics, took umbrage at Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin for his 2009 “mail-order bride” joke on David Letterman.

“Let him try to come here in the Philippines and he’ll see mayhem,” Revilla said.

“Bong” said this while being an active Filipino senator. Baldwin, of course, later apologized and said he understood why folks like the Senator were so upset.

“Bong” is Revilla’s 60th child of 72 children with 16 different women.

We’ll have more on the rest of THE KILLING OF SATAN in another episode.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

day 67, first blood part ii

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985) Three stars
Sylvester Stallone has proven responsible for two movie franchises, ROCKY and RAMBO, that have produced a combined 12 films over the last four decades.

Outside those franchises, though, it’s been a struggle for the actor, writer, and director, barring a $255 million worldwide hit like CLIFFHANGER. (We’ll see how many EXPENDABLES installments they make.)

Honestly, it’s been a struggle for this viewer to stay interested through sheer crap like STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT!, for example, or to enjoy something like OVER THE TOP as more than an exercise in overblown ridiculousness (arm wrestling, child custody, and truck driving).

Given a choice between Stallone franchises, I’ll take ROCKY.

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II works best on a comic book level, just like a couple of the ROCKY pictures from that era.

Just the other day, we took a look back at COMMANDO, a similar cinematic action comic strip with a muscular actor whose surname begins with the same letter.

FIRST BLOOD PART II came out May 22, 1985, while COMMANDO blew up screens beginning October 4, 1985. Only during the Cold War, baby!

Just like I prefer ROCKY over RAMBO, I prefer COMMANDO over FIRST BLOOD PART II for a similar reason.

FIRST BLOOD PART II makes a dread mistake with the female character Co-Bao, played by Julia Nickson. Why did they create her character in the first place?

Let’s be honest, Rambo and FIRST BLOOD PART II don’t know what to do with her. We don’t have time for love in this universe. It just bogs everything down.

Outside the first couple ROCKY movies, it’s often been a struggle for women characters in Stallone movies.

Rambo and Co-Bao are no Rocky and Adrian, for sure.

Rae Dawn Chong’s Cindy provided an unexpected bright spot in COMMANDO and helped elevate it above FIRST BLOOD PART II.

I don’t know, I just cringe when I hear Co-Bao ask Rambo to take her with him.

Then, she’s killed because, let’s face it, FIRST BLOOD PART II handles violence better than any other human attribute.

Her death means that a distraction’s out of the way and we can get back to the true love at the heart of FIRST BLOOD PART II.

I found the number of kills in the RAMBO movies: one in FIRST BLOOD, 74 in the first sequel, 115 in the third edition, and 254 in the fourth installment.

According to moviebodycounts.com, COMMANDO featured 88 kills, including 74 in the grand finale.

HOT SHOTS! PART DEUX satirized this rather well.

Frank Stallone’s big musical number over the FIRST BLOOD PART II end credits, why, you guessed it, it’s called “Peace In Our Life.” Yeah right, there’s barely even a moment of peace in the entire movie.

On a big, dumb action movie level, though, I enjoy both FIRST BLOOD PART II and RAMBO III. That’s about the only level I can enjoy them. I love that we have a protagonist who speaks less and less over time. When he does speak, though, we go back to enjoying the silence. “To survive war, you gotta become war,” I believe Gizmo adapted that mighty well in GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH.

If you think about FIRST BLOOD PART II, it falls apart or it disgusts you.

For example, let’s start with the premise that Rambo’s assigned to go to Vietnam to only take reconnaissance photographs of possible POWs. No engagement of the enemy whatsoever.

Yeah, sure, he’s a regular Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004).

Murdock (Charles Napier) should have known better.

I mean, he only reads the following aloud, “Rambo, John J. Born 7-6-47 in Bowie, Arizona. Of Indian-German descent, that’s a hell of a combination. Joined the army 8-6-64. Accepted special forces, specialization: light weapon, medic, helicopter, and language qualified. 59 confirmed kills. Two Silver Stars, four Bronze, four Purple Hearts. Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor. You got around, didn’t you? Incredible.”

Yeah, sure, no engagement of the enemy. Only photos. I mean, where does it say that in Rambo’s dossier?

We know, of course, that Murdock set Rambo up to fail and that Rambo will not fail … again, Murdock should have known better. You should have picked somebody else. Kurtwood Smith, coming off his performance as one of the sleaziest villains ever in ROBOCOP, inherited the sleaze mantle from Napier in RAMBO III.

In the RAMBO series, the early scenes in FIRST BLOOD (1982) are the ones that stick with me the most over time.

These scenes tell us everything that we need to know about John Rambo and his sad plight in his own country after coming home from Vietnam, and say more than Rambo’s actual concluding monologue.

FIRST BLOOD PART II works better on that level of articulation with Rambo’s “I want what they want and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had wants! For our country to love us as much as we love it! That’s what I want!” That’s about as good as any of the speechmaking in RAMBO gets.

Hey, do you remember when I said I liked FIRST BLOOD PART II more than COMMANDO? I lied.

Bloodsport (1988)

day 43, bloodsport

BLOODSPORT (1988) Three stars
RZA said that he’s probably watched THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN 300 times.

I have probably watched Jean-Claude Van Damme’s feature debut BLOODSPORT a good 100 times.

I can just remember being a young lad watching it every single damn time it played on cable television.

Yeah, every single time.

Idly clicking on that remote control day after day, depressed by all them channels and nothing to watch, then here came BLOODSPORT like an oasis in the sub-Sahara of Midwestern small town cable TV.

BLOODSPORT, you saved me from watching SHE’S OUT OF CONTROL again because there’s “nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

Van Damme played an important part in my adolescence. For a while, I was a raving JCVD fan, watching as many of his cheesy action flicks as possible. To be sure, JCVD had many, many fans during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, where his performing the splits at least once every flick became nearly as ubiquitous as Keanu Reeves saying “Whoa!” in all his films. All we needed was Van Damme splits followed by a Reeves “Whoa!” Life would have been perfect.

Eventually, though, I had to face the facts that Van Damme’s movies were not all that good.

Yeah, you’re right, I’m still mad about being ripped off by his 1997 pairing with Dennis Rodman, DOUBLE TEAM, and Rodman’s acting made a basketball fan pine away for the acting of his Chicago Bulls teammate Michael Jordan, who struggled considerably playing himself in SPACE JAM. That’s bad.

I felt ripped off by DOUBLE TEAM and somebody else rented it.

Oh dear Lord, I even forgot Mickey Rourke was in DOUBLE TEAM.

Roger Ebert started his review, “DOUBLE TEAM is one of the most preposterous action films ever made.”

That comes with the territory for Van Damme movies and it’s just amazing what cocaine will do.

Anyway, here we are back at BLOODSPORT, Van Damme’s magnum opus.

Under normal circumstances, it’s not a good movie, but like TEEN WOLF and OVER THE TOP, for example, I enjoy it particularly because it’s not good and it stockpiles cliches like rogue nations do atomic weapons. I like BLOODSPORT more than both TEEN WOLF and OVER THE TOP, though.

Let’s go through a brief cliche checklist for BLOODSPORT:

— Illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong.

— Our hero (Van Damme) who wants to go to honor his sensei, who trained our hero as if he was his own son.

— Our hero who must go absent without leave because his Army superiors balk at his participation in the martial arts tournament.

— The Army send a couple buffoons to chase our hero around Hong Kong. Bet they skip this film during a Forest Whitaker career retrospective.

— Our hero’s arch enemy (Bolo Yeung) in the illegal martial arts tournament who effectively creates a mood of menace until he finally opens his mouth to speak.

— Our hero’s new best friend (Donald Gibb), a loud-mouthed, cartoonish American who must take a fall to give the hero the revenge angle in the final match.

— Our hero’s obligatory love interest (Leah Ayres), who’s a reporter that wants access to the illegal martial arts tournament. She’s just appalled, terrified by the violence and, of course, wants the hero to not participate.

— How could I forget the loud, loud, loud rock music that’s used because the movie’s producers couldn’t afford Survivor.

Here it’s “Fight to Survive” by Stan Bush, a jaunty little rock number I remembered simply as “Kumite!,” the name of the illegal martial arts tournament the song chants until it’s hopelessly attached to your cerebrum.

Yes, that Stan Bush, who gave the world “The Touch” from TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE, later covered by Dirk Diggler in BOOGIE NIGHTS during his cocaine wannabe rock star days.

In 1986, Bush’s “The Touch” and “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Dare to Be Stupid” (Al’s Devo style parody) split a single. Epic. Surely, it was released on Epic Records. (How ironic that YouTube cued up “Dare to Be Stupid” right after rocking out to “The Touch.”)

Think I like “Fight to Survive” more than “The Touch.”

— There’s a child actor playing the young Frank Dux (later played by Van Damme) in BLOODSPORT and he’s an astonishingly bad actor. He’s named Pierre Rafini and his only credit listed on IMDb is “Young Frank.” Awesome.

Honestly, that’s not a huge liability, since he’s only in a small portion of the film, not like for example David Mendenhall in OVER THE TOP and Norman D. Golden II in COP AND A HALF, who mugged so heavily during their performances that I look for my wallet after every viewing of their respective films.

— Slow motion. Lots and lots of slow motion. Maybe the whole movie should have been made in slow motion and we’d have a GONE WITH THE WIND-length martial arts epic.

— “Based on a true story,” about as true as “The Amityville Horror.”

Credit: “This motion picture is based upon true events in the life of Frank W. Bux. From 1975 to 1980 Frank W. Dux fought 329 matches. He retired undefeated as the World Heavy Weight Full Contact Kumite Champion. … (yada yada yada not in credits yada yada yada).”

BLOODSPORT screenwriter Sheldon Lettich touched on Dux in an interview found on Asian Movie Pulse, “Frank told me a lot of a tall tales, most of which turned out to be bullshit. … There was one guy who he introduced me to, named Richard Bender, who claimed to have actually been at the Kumite event and who swore everything Frank told me was true. A few years later this guy had a falling out with Frank, and confessed to me that everything he told me about the Kumite was a lie; Frank had coached him in what to say. … Nearly everyone knew he (Dux) was just a delusional day-dreamer and a big bullshitter.”

Dux served as the fight choreographer for BLOODSPORT.

— Van Damme made such waves in the motion picture industry that he received a Razzie nomination for “Worst New Star” and his competition included Don the Talking Horse from HOT TO TROT, Tami Erin from THE NEW ADVENTURES OF PIPPI LONGSTOCKING, Robby Rosa from SALSA, and the winner Ronald McDonald from MAC AND ME.

Lettich received a Worst Screenplay nomination for his work with Sylvester Stallone for RAMBO III. Both lost to COCKTAIL and its screenplay by Heywood Gould.

— Cannon released BLOODSPORT and all I can say about that is “Electric Boogaloo.”

The Devil-Doll (1936)

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THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936) Four stars
Two men escape from Devil’s Island at the beginning of THE DEVIL-DOLL, director Tod Browning’s penultimate theatrical feature.

Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore), wrongly convicted and imprisoned for 17 years for looting his own bank and murdering a night watchman, wants nothing more than cold-blooded revenge against his three former business partners who set him up for the fall. They’ve been living high on the hog while he’s been rotting away in prison. That can produce a lot of hatred.

Marcel (Henry B. Walthall, 1878-1936), meanwhile, wants to return to his scientific work. He’s single-minded in purpose, just as Lavond. Marcel, an idealist through and through until his final breath, has developed a way to reduce people to one-sixth their original size and this all ties in with speculation on how mankind will find the necessary resources to feed a growing population. Marcel believes that he’s found the solution for the human race moving forward.

(With the world’s population projected at 10 billion by 2050, there’s articles already written on how we will feed our growing population.)

At the moment of his greatest scientific triumph, the first successful shrunken human, Marcel dies and then Lavond joins Marcel’s widow and assistant Malita (Rafaela Ottiano) in continuing Marcel’s work. Of course, Lavond intends to exploit this scientific breakthrough for his personal revenge with the ultimate goal of clearing his name and Lavond and Malita go to Paris to carry out Lavond’s master plan. Lavond, a wanted man, disguises himself as Madame Mandelip (call her Mrs. Dreadfire) and Lavond/Mandelip and Malita set up a shop selling lifelike dolls.

Lavond can mind control the miniaturized humans (first Marcel and Malita’s slow servant and then one of his former associates Rodan) and they carry out his revenge. Brilliant plan. I mean, what authorities would ever believe that you were attacked by a “devil-doll?” Not only that, but you wouldn’t even know what hit you until it’s too late.

Barrymore (1878-1954) finds the right notes to play the wide range presented to him throughout THE DEVIL-DOLL. On one hand, Barrymore played Mr. Potter in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE 10 years after THE DEVIL-DOLL and Mr. Potter earned the No. 6 slot on the American Film Institute’s list of the 50 Greatest Villains. Barrymore uses some of the same notes playing Lavond, although he’s the main protagonist rather than main antagonist. On the other hand, it’s especially sad watching Lavond being unable to reveal himself to his estranged daughter (Maureen O’Sullivan) who’s adamant that she hates him; Lavond mostly contacts his daughter in the Mandelip guise. Mandelip earns a few laughs and like the later performances, for example, by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in SOME LIKE IT HOT and Dustin Hoffman in TOOTSIE, they create legitimate characters that go beyond, way beyond the dudes-in-drag gimmick.

Walthall’s Marcel and Ottiano’s Malita belong alongside many of the great mad scientists throughout cinematic history. Malita is deliriously, delightfully loopy and, of course, relentless in the pursuit of continuing her dead husband’s legacy. Ottiano (1888-1942) became the subject of an article titled “Rafaela Ottiano: The Venetian Who Played the Villainess.” She’s a lot of fun.

Marcel and Malita fit one definition of mad (“carried away by enthusiasm or desire”) while Lavond fits another (“intensely angry or displeased”), and that gives THE DEVIL-DOLL a very interesting dynamic.

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

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EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977) Three-and-a-half stars
There’s movies that are hated and then there’s EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, a movie that received hate on an epic, violent level since it’s considered the worst sequel ever made and one of the worst films ever.

Sequels are often penalized for being too much like the original and then ironically enough, EXORCIST II has been lambasted for being nothing like the original mass phenomenon known as THE EXORCIST.

EXORCIST II director John Boorman admitted to not even liking the original film and his sequel is a direct challenge to the film that came before it.

I just want to know, did Boorman and fellow director William Friedkin ever get into a shouting match that degenerated into fisticuffs?

In a 2017 interview with IndieWire, Friedkin said, “I saw a few minutes of EXORCIST II, but that was only because I was in the Technicolor lab timing a film that I had directed — I forget which one — and one of the color timers at Technicolor said, ‘Hey, we just made a a print of EXORCIST II, would you like to have a look at it?’ I said OK. I went in, and after five minutes, it just blasted me. I couldn’t take it. I thought it was just ridiculous and stupid. But that was only five minutes, so I can’t make an ultimate judgement about it. It just seemed to me to have nothing to do with THE EXORCIST.”

Friedkin was also famously quoted, “And I looked at half an hour of it and I thought it was as bad as seeing a traffic accident in the street. It was horrible. It’s just a stupid mess made by a dumb guy — John Boorman by name, somebody who should be nameless, but in this case should be named. Scurrilous. A horrible picture.”

Boorman articulated on EXORCIST II in a 2005 interview with Film Freak Central, “The film that I made, I saw as a kind of riposte to the ugliness and darkness of THE EXORCIST — I wanted a film about journeys that was positive, about good, essentially. And I think that audiences, in hindsight, were right. I denied them what they wanted and they were pissed off about it — quite rightly, I knew I wasn’t giving them what they wanted and it was a really foolish choice. The film itself, I think, is an interesting one — there’s some good work in it — but when they came to me with it I told John Calley, who was running Warners then, that I didn’t want it. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I have daughters, I don’t want to make a film about torturing a child,’ which is how I saw the original film. But then I read a three-page treatment for a sequel written by a man named William Goodhart and I was really intrigued by it because it was about goodness. I saw it then as a chance to film a riposte to the first picture. But it had one of the most disastrous openings ever — there were riots! And we recut the actual prints in the theatres, about six a day, but it didn’t help of course and I couldn’t bear to talk about it, or look at it, for years.”

Boorman lived out the Jean-Luc Godard quote “In order to criticize a movie, you have to make another movie.”

The critical (and audience) reaction to EXORCIST II seems based on whether or not you liked or hated THE EXORCIST. If you liked it, you hated EXORCIST II; if you hated it, you liked EXORCIST II.

For example, BBC critic Mark Kermode called EXORCIST II the worst film ever made because it trashed the greatest film ever made (THE EXORCIST). Leonard Maltin called it a “preposterous sequel” and Gene Siskel, who rated it no stars, chimed in with “the worst major motion picture I’ve seen in almost eight years on the job.” Siskel ranked THE EXORCIST No. 3 on his Top 10 list for 1973, behind only THE EMIGRANTS / THE NEW LAND and LAST TANGO IN PARIS.

Pauline Kael, a fan of Boorman and a Friedkin detractor, wrote of the original, “The demonic possession of a child, treated with shallow seriousness. The picture is designed to scare people, and it does so by mechanical means: levitations, swivelling heads, vomit being spewed in people’s faces. A viewer can become glumly anesthetized by the brackish color and the senseless ugliness of the conception. Neither the producer-writer, William Peter Blatty, nor the director, William Friedkin, show any feeling for the little girl’s helplessness and suffering, or for her mother’s. It would be sheer insanity to take children.”

Kael on the sequel, “This picture has a visionary crazy grandeur (like that of Fritz Lang’s loony METROPOLIS). Some of its telepathic sequences are golden-toned and lyrical, and the film has a swirling, hallucinogenic, apocalyptic quality; it might have been a horror classic if it had had a simpler, less ritzy script. But, along with flying demons and theology inspired by Teilhard de Chardin, the movie has Richard Burton, with his precise diction, helplessly and inevitably turning his lines into camp, just as the cultivated, stage-trained actors in early-30s horror films did. … But it’s winged camp — a horror fairy tale gone wild, another in the long history of moviemakers’ king-size follies. There’s enough visual magic in it for a dozen good movies; what it lacks is judgment — the first casualty of the moviemaking obsession.”

When I finally caught up with EXORCIST II in the late ’00s, I liked it and liked it enough that it held a spot on my top 10 list for 1977 for a few years. Yeah, I seem to be one of those crazy, wacky people who likes both THE EXORCIST and EXORCIST II. I’ll go ahead and be a heretic, and I’ll step up in defense of THE HERETIC.

— First and foremost, I have never seen a dull or non-visually captivating and compelling John Boorman film. His credits include POINT BLANK, DELIVERANCE, ZARDOZ, EXORCIST II, EXCALIBUR, and THE EMERALD FOREST. As Kael said in her review, EXORCIST II has enough visual magic in it for a dozen good movies. I mostly enjoy EXORCIST II on the level of a first-rate sound and light show. I see the film’s looniness as a virtue, but I can see where that would be a problem with viewers who love the Friedkin picture. Never even on a dare (let alone a review) do I hope to have to explain the plot of EXORCIST II.

— Boorman’s beef with THE EXORCIST centered on its treatment of Regan. Blair earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work in THE EXORCIST, although credit should be given to stunt double Eileen Dietz and actress Mercedes McCambridge, who performed the most controversial scenes (Dietz) and provided the voice of the demon (McCambridge). EXORCIST II gives us a Blair in a transitional period between her child star past and her exploitation film future. She’s absolutely radiant, glowing even in EXORCIST II.

“Finally, one day, the script appears,” Blair said of EXORCIST II. “And I felt like, ‘Wow, this project is amazing, it’s perfect, it’s fabulous.’ They presented a really good next step, for the film, for the project, for Regan. You give me these amazing actors. Richard Burton, for me, that was what got me. To work with Richard Burton, that’s still, to this day, is one of the highlights of my life.”

— Ah yes, Burton (1925-84), an actor reputed to be one of the best actors on his best days and one of the worst actors on his worst days. You can virtually smell the alcohol on Burton during EXORCIST II, so you can guess which end of the Burton performance spectrum covers EXORCIST II. However, I’ll take a Burton train wreck performance over Sir Laurence Olivier’s later “take the money and run” career work in, for example, MARATHON MAN, THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, and DRACULA, where Olivier (1907-89) stands out for his mannered (tortured) accent.

— I am fascinated by sequels that go in the opposite direction or even comment and criticize the previous entry, like BACK TO THE FUTURE 2 and GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH. They’re far more interesting than sequels that are more or less just inferior copies of the original film, like, for example, JAWS 2 and OMEN II and many, many, many others.

I would even say that EXORCIST II has a more original, more daring vision than THE EXORCIST.

Stripes (1981)

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STRIPES (1981) Three-and-a-half stars
Bill Murray was the Groucho Marx of the 1980s, especially during films like STRIPES and GHOSTBUSTERS.

STRIPES is Murray’s DUCK SOUP.

It’s not only all the one-liners and the institutional putdowns throughout both films, but a couple later scenes.

In DUCK SOUP, Groucho’s Rufus T. Firefly starts opening up machine gun fire and it only brings him immense pleasure.

Firefly boasts “Remind me to give myself the Firefly medal for this!”

Then his loyal assistant informs Firefly that he’s firing upon his own men.

Of course, Firefly offers his assistant $5 to keep it under his hat, but then Firefly withdraws the offer and keeps the five spot under his own hat.

Firefly’s joy during that sequence and the whole film, for that matter, come back when Murray’s John Winger takes on them darn Commies in STRIPES.

Murray, like Groucho, treated all this like one great big put-on.

That’s the comic attitude that informs STRIPES and like Groucho, Murray never played the fool. He’s the intelligent one, the hustler who knows the score, and sure Murray’s foil Sgt. Hulka (Warren Oates) socks it to Winger during basic training, but eventually the pair reluctantly find common ground and reach an understanding.

Winger first wanted to join the U.S. Army based on a lark, not some great conviction to serve his country.

For example, Winger thought he could pick up more women in the military.

Winger: “Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual. But now I know why I have always lost women to guys like you. I mean, it’s not just the uniform. It’s the stories that you tell. So much fun and imagination.”

Winger and his best friend Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) see the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle as an opportunity to go pick up their Military Police girlfriends (P.J. Soles, Sean Young) in West Germany and enjoy a holiday in Switzerland. Of course, this leads to their comrades seeking them out and being captured by the Soviet Army. Winger and the gang rescue their friends with that heavily-armed recreational vehicle on their side.

Winger keeps that lark attitude throughout STRIPES, even after his friends fall into Soviet hands.

Winger: “C’mon, it’s Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick ’em up, we zip right out again. We’re not going to Moscow. It’s Czechoslovakia. It’s like going into Wisconsin.”

Everything’s a lark to Winger (and Murray).

Murray and Ramis make a very good comedic duo. You might be surprised to find out STRIPES (directed by Ivan Reitman) had been originally intended to be a Cheech and Chong vehicle, but that pair wanted the dreaded “complete creative control.” Both Ramis himself (who scripted ANIMAL HOUSE and directed CADDYSHACK) and Columbia Pictures were reluctant to have Ramis onscreen, but Murray insisted that he would only be paired with Ramis.

Ramis is vital to the success of STRIPES. He’s the ordinary guy counterbalance to Winger, but also the loyal best friend who ends up along for the ride despite knowing that his best friend’s crazy. Ramis brings an interesting tension to the movie that might not have been there, for example, had Dennis Quaid played Russell, such as the scene when Russell starts choking Winger. Quaid seems far more the stereotypical All-American hero type. Also, Ramis and Murray shared dynamite chemistry.

Veteran character actor Warren Oates is also vital to STRIPES. Like Russell, Sgt. Hulka makes a great counterbalance to Winger. There’s just one dramatic scene in STRIPES, when Hulka confronts Winger in the latrine. Hulka dares Winger to take a swing at him. Winger obliges, and Hulka wipes the floor with Winger. Even more so than Winger, Hulka knows the score. Hulka had originally been scheduled for death in the mortar accident and to be replaced by his twin brother also played by Oates, but the creative powers-that-be thankfully scrapped that concept.

On vacation in 2017, riding over the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge headed into Louisville, I thought it seemed very familiar and sure enough, it’s the bridge where Winger melodramatically quits taxi driving by flinging his keys into the Ohio River. Fortunately, we did not reenact the scene that day; it definitely would have been fun making it back home.

Would it be safe to say STRIPES is the greatest movie ever shot in Louisville?

Not so fast, my friend, as former Louisville head coach Lee Corso would say.

GOLDFINGER, RAIN MAN, A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, and THE INSIDER, for example, might have something to say about that.