All killer, no filler

To borrow from Final Girl, writing a Teleport City review of a movie that I really, really love is the next best thing to putting it down my pants. Not that I'm not also going to put Naked Killer down my pants, mind you. Read my full review, just posted over at TC.

The Sexy Killer (Hong Kong, 1976)

The Sexy Killer, I’m happy to report, is a film with a strong anti-drug message. Drugs, according to The Sexy Killer, will cause a person to slash another human being to ribbons with a cleverly disguised straight razor while wearing almost no clothing. And that’s just the people who don’t use them. I’m referring there, of course, to The Sexy Killer’s heroine Wanfei, as portrayed by resident Shaw Brothers sexploitation starlet Chen Ping. Wanfei, as she states unequivocally throughout The Sexy Killer, hates drugs, and were you to suggest otherwise, she would very likely whip her shirt off and start hacking away at your face with a special face-hacking implement that she had designed for specifically that purpose.

Interestingly, this is about all that we get to know about Wanfei’s character – or at least for the most part of The Sexy Killer’s running time it is. The film begins with a brisk prologue set in a nightclub filled with drug-taking naked people. If all of the nakedness and flagrant drug taking hadn’t already clued you in, both the preponderance of beaded curtains and the erotic wall murals populated by intertwined, big-bootied figures will surely hip you to the fact that this establishment’s habitués are all about “getting it on” while being completely “wasted”.

In that spirit, we are soon taken to a private room upstairs, where Wanfei’s younger sister is being coerced into an act of prostitution in exchange for the drugs that will feed her addiction. Later, Wanfei’s policeman friend, Weipin (Yueh Hua) – not only the last honest cop in Hong Kong, but also an anti-drug crusader of such zealotry that he’s earned the nickname “The Drug Smasher” – leads Wanfei to the aftermath of this scene, where she is inspired to make her first emphatic pronouncement about how much she hates drugs. From there, it’s only a matter of a convenient jump cut before we get to see Wanfei suddenly behaving as if she were a well-oiled machine built for the soul purpose of violently killing drug dealers – despite the fact that we’ve really been given no insight as to what it is in Wanfei’s background that makes her choose this particular approach over, say, community organizing or starting some kind of outreach program.

To be fair, The Sexy Killer does later tell us a bit more about Wanfei. She apparently works as a nurse, for one thing, and, more importantly, has a boyfriend who is a popular young up-and-coming politician. Unfortunately, this boyfriend also turns out to be elbow-deep in the whole drug business, which ends well for no one except Yueh Hua’s character Weipin, who gets to be all smug about the fact that he’s been telling this to Wanfei all along. Weinpin is, of course, smitten with Wanfei, and, after watching her making all kinds of crazy ecstatic faces while mercilessly slaughtering lowlifes for ninety minutes, it’s hard to imagine why he wouldn’t be.

Directed by Sun Chung, The Sexy Killer owes more than a small debt to Jack Hill’s Coffy, and is also a spiritual sibling to Japanese Pinky Violence films in the vein of Norifumi Suzuki’s Girl Boss films. Of course, Suzuki would never have bothered with the kind of prophylactic moralizing that Chung employs here, but the graphic lengths that Chung goes to explore the sexual depravity of the film’s villains – one of whom announces that his ambition is to make the “whole world” addicted to drugs – clearly demonstrates just how shallow his commitment to those morals runs. What we have here, above all, is an agreeable amalgam of sleaze and style, centered around that most perversely thrilling of seventies movie archetypes: the wild-eyed, hot pants-clad girl with an axe to grind, a shotgun to blast, and a platform boot to high-kick directly into the face of any creep who dares cross her.

While the film makes an effort to busy up its plot with some internecine battles between the drug dealers, I can’t say that I was inspired to bother keeping track of who was backstabbing whom. Instead I was happy just to let my attention skip from one gory set piece to the next, finding my ultimate reward in the movie’s fittingly combustive finale. This sees Wanfei send her car crashing through the walls of the big boss’s mansion and then methodically blowing away his army of foot soldiers with her trusty shotgun, after which she sends the boss himself to hell amidst an explosion of water from his ruptured waterbed.

Personally, I don’t subscribe to the whole notion of the “guilty pleasure”. But I’ll grant that The Sexy Killer’s pleasures are inextricably entwined with its trashiness. Those who are so inclined will doubtless find within it many opportunities to experience wave after wave of masochistic shame. And if I’ve just described you, have at it! (And furthermore: Oh snap!) Given my personal threshold, I’d simply describe it as a pleasant diversion – non-essential, but definitely satisfying if you’re in the mood for something along these lines. If you don’t just feel like watching Coffy again, that is.

Super mourner powers activate!

Hey, I'm as sensitive as the next guy -- twice as sensitive, even -- but when it comes to movie violence, there's a particular type of gleeful, self-conscious gratuitousness that never fails to make me -- to put it politely -- laugh my fucking ass off. When a filmmaker lets me know that he has gone out of his way to show me a close-up of a blood-spraying stump, or holds on a shot of some lovingly fussed-over makeshift carnage for far longer than any considerations of narrative or drama would require, or just goes that one extra step to make some gore effect much more disgusting than it really needed to be, its like a warmly conspiratorial elbow in the ribs that lets me know I'm in the presence of a kindred spirit... and that, yes, it's okay to laugh. A lot.

You'd be right in assuming, as you probably are, that such antics appeal to me because, to some extent, they speak to the most juvenile part of me. After all, these filmmakers I'm talking about, who delight in both piling on and magnifying the gross details of bodily disintegration, do so in the same spirit as those ten year old boys who, when telling a dirty joke, gets so caught up in making the particulars as disgusting as possible that they lose sight of the punchline. At the same time, though, the adult in me recognizes something almost celebratory in the way these movies revel in the spectacle of flesh at its most permeable... as if each is a giddy paean to life at its most messy, and in all its absurd improbability. That we can actually maneuver ourselves through the world in these flimsy sacks of viscera that we inhabit is indeed a wonder, and when I see those vessels so cheerfully rent apart on screen like the offal-filled piñatas that they are, it seems like an acknowledgement -- both joyful and brattily defiant -- of the odds we beat every moment just by staying in one piece.

So far the films I've found most dependable in providing this distinctive brand of feel-good grand guignol include that jaw-to-the-floor kung fu splatter-fest to beat them all, The Story of Ricky, Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (duh), and, of course, more early products of the Troma mill than I care to fit in this space. But I think that The Machine Girl, the Japanese production just released to US DVD by Media Blaster's Tokyo Shock imprint, has earned its place in that pantheon right out of the gate. With a dedication to carnage that defies, not only commonly accepted standards of good taste, but also the laws of physics and human anatomy (more than once I found myself saying, "Wait... that can't come out of there"), this scrappy little upstart goes the distance to prove that it has everything its older, Romero-plundering siblings have and, perhaps, even more.

The story of Ami, a teenage schoolgirl who becomes a revenge-crazed killing machine after her younger brother is bullied to death by a gang lead by a powerful yakuza's son, Machine Girl is in such a rush to get to the red stuff that it doesn't even bother to go through the motions of having an even remotely original premise. Once she is captured, tortured, and literally dis-armed by her prey's father and his goons, Ami is fitted with a prosthetic arm that could double for an anti-aircraft gun and -- thank you, Planet Terror -- ready to get busy. And business, she is very, very good -- what with the many exotic sparring partners Ami's foes throw at her, including shiruken-throwing teenage ninjas, a master of the flying guillotine, and the sweet, not-so-old mother of her brother's killer modeling the dreaded -- but fabulous -- "Drill Bra".

Where Machine Girl does tread some new territory is in how it explores the question of if, as we've seen demonstrated in countless action films before, loss can turn the loved one of a murdered innocent into a vengeance-crazed killing machine, what would happen if the aggrieved loved ones of those in turn murdered by said killing machine were also turned into killing machines themselves? The answer to that question is Machine Girl's "Super Mourner Gang", made up of the parents of the aforementioned shiruken-throwing teenaged ninjas -- all since bloodily dispatched by Ami -- who each wear football uniforms with the photograph of their dead child emblazoned across the chest, and who cry those children's names in anguish as they wield chainsaws and other instruments of mayhem with deadly accuracy against Ami. It's admittedly pretty ballsy for a film like Machine Girl -- that could, with some justification, be described as "gore porn" -- to so savagely lampoon what is arguably at least an equally pornographic aspect of above-the-board culture. But, to my mind, it's on the side of the angels. I'll any day take Machine Girl's rowdy transgressions over that turgid, mainstream media-fueled, fetishization of grief that would so eagerly turn the private suffering of others into kitsch. Personally, I imagine that the Super Mourner Gang's headquarters is inside a giant, teddy bear-covered shrine built by strangers who thrilled to the details of its members' tragedies on the Today Show (or the Japanese equivalent of same).

So, needless to say, The Machine Girl is for everyone. Wait, I mean NOT. NOT for everyone. In fact, if you are in the least bit squeamish, I would recommend running from this one like a sprinter with a bladder problem who's just realized the only available restroom is on the opposite side of town. But if, in reading my above effusions, you've experienced any twinge of self-recognition, I would buy the hell out of this shit. You won't be sorry.

MLF?!

You may not have heard of her, but if you're a bad guy, Suet Nei is probably going to kill you. In my latest contribution to Teleport City , I take a fond look at the Dark Heroine Muk Lan-fa films, a series of wild and violent "Jane Bond" entries from the swinging Cantonese cinema of the 1960s.

Muk Lan-fa Memories

In response to my review of the Dark Heroine Muk Lan-fa movies, Cindy over at the Movie-Fan Princess Forums generously provided me with these cool scans of an original movie booklet for The Dark Heroine Shattered the Black Dragon Gang, the second film in the series. This booklet was available at Hong Kong theaters playing the film when it originally opened back in 1966.

Black Dragon Booklet 1

Black Dragon Booklet 2

Black Dragon Booklet 3

Black Dragon Booklet 4

Guest reviews at Teleport City and Jet Set Cinema

I've been invited to cross-post some of my reviews at Teleport City and its sister blog Jet Set Cinema. That's a real honor for me, because to my mind Teleport City is simply the best site dealing with international cult cinema on the web; it's consistently literate, funny and informative, with a refreshingly unapologetic attitude about skewing toward the darker regions of the cinematic spectrum. More importantly, Teleport shows a deep appreciation, as I do, for the work of Mogambo himself, Mr. Amrish Puri, which is why I've chosen to inaugurate the relationship by posting my review of Mr. India, one of that fine Bollywood actor's crowning achievements. Once you've checked that out, please head over to Jet Set Cinema for my take on the Shaw Brothers' 1968 proto girls-with-guns swank-fest Temptress of a Thousand Faces. I'm also planning on writing some exclusive content for both sites within the coming weeks, so keep your eyes open (as seen below).

The Dark Heroine Muk Lan-fa (Hong Kong, 1966)

In the mid sixties, Hong Kong's Cantonese language film industry, faced with the emerging dominance of the considerably more well-funded and increasingly action-oriented Mandarin language Shaw Brothers Studio - as well as changing audience tastes in a rapidly modernizing society - found itself in need of retooling its output. Melodramas, romances and period martial arts films featuring heroic female swordsmen had been staples of the industry, but it now appeared that films reflecting the cosmopolitan tastes and hyperbolic pace of a more technologically driven age were in order. Of course, nothing celebrated speed, style and technology like the James Bond films, so it only made sense for Cantonese filmmakers to adapt the conventions of those films to their audience and capabilities. Furthermore, since Cantonese cinema was at the time largely driven by female stars - and appealed to a largely female audience - it also made sense that these culturally specific reimaginings of the Bond film should feature young women as their protagonists. The resulting flood of films, made mostly between 1965 and 1968, has been retroactively dubbed the "Jane Bond" films by critic Sam Ho...

Read the full review at The Lucha Diaries

Temptress of a Thousand Faces (Hong Kong, 1968)

Thanks to the release over the past few years of a large portion of the Shaw Brothers catalog on DVD, it should no longer be a secret to anyone who cares that the venerable Hong Kong studio was responsible for far more than the martial arts movies that got imported to the U.S. or horror movies in which people vomit up snakes. Among the more delightful discoveries to come out of this digital mother lode is the handful of James Bond inspired flicks churned out by the studio during the late sixties. Of course, since most of these movies don't actually feature any spies or espionage (the exception being the Angel With the Iron Fists series, which features Lilly Ho as a lady super spy ranked Agent 009) that influence is expressed mainly in terms of attitude and design. Films like The Golden Buddha and Summons to Death, for instance, share more in terms of narrative with romantic Hitchcock thrillers like North by Northwest or To Catch a Thief, yet still manage to include space age hidden compounds, knife's edge haberdashery, consumer objects with lethal hidden functions and, most importantly, a world well stocked with beautiful young women to serve as a sexual supermarket for the films' well-heeled and limitlessly mobile male protagonists.

Out of all these films, the 1968 actioner Temptress of a Thousand Faces comes the closest to being an exercise in pure style. Loaded with kink and anarchy - and set to a furious pace that both obliterates and makes redundant the need for coherence - it's a perfect example of the type of cinema experience that leaves you no choice but to simply let it wash over you...

Read full review at The Lucha Diaries