Only now does it occur to me... EXCESSIVE FORCE (1993)

Only now does it occur to me... that Thomas Ian Griffith––performer of THE KARATE KID III's notorious, coke-addled villain Terry Silver––is... an auteur!

Yes, as they say in the action biz, he "pulled a Stallone"––he wrote, produced, and starred in this fine film, called EXCESSIVE FORCE. 

 

Though it wasn't the starmaker that New Line had hoped, I think he deserved this as much as Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris, whose respective films HARD TO KILL (1990) and THE HITMAN (1991) are tonally similar to EXCESSIVE FORCE, feature a similar amount of mullets, and are really no better or worse.

TIG is certainly a better actor, blow by blow, than Seagal or Norris

Also, this movie really capitalizes on Thomas Ian Griffith's piano playing––as COBRA KAI would also, decades later––and while he's playing a tough cop whose real passion is being a jazz musician, it's hard not to think about John Woo's HARD BOILED and its resident, clarinet-blasting Inspector Tequila.

TIG wielding Woo-style double-pistol action, as well

And with its Chicago-set, "mobsters and corrupt cops vs. one last virtuous hero-cop" plotline, it's hard not to see this as a pure mashup of HARD BOILED and THE UNTOUCHABLES. I wonder if TIG was up for the Billy Drago role in that?

 
The "Capone" here is ROCKY's Burt Young

Speaking of which, there are a shocking amount of top-shelf character actors rounding out this film.

James Earl Jones (R.I.P.) continues his '80s run of non-prestige action flicks, continuing in the vein of ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD and BEST OF THE BEST. Here, he plays a pathos-exuding friend of Thomas Ian Griffith, who also plays a mean jazz saxophone.

SQEEEEEEAD-ELLY-DEE

As always, so much pathos

We have the incomparable Lance Henriksen as TIG's creepy, cigar-chomping boss, 

Tony Todd as a (possibly) nefarious fellow cop,

and TIG's leg extension is basically a supporting character, in and of itself.

KARATE KID references abound. TIG's character name is "Terry," just as it is in THE KARATE KID PART III. He also sings "Danny Boy" in one of his first scenes; it's no coincidence that "Danny Boy" was one of the insults he flung at Daniel LaRusso in KK3.

Along the way, there are a lot of high-kicks, explosive squibs, jazz riffs, moody lighting choices, asymmetrical earrings, B-roll shots of the Chicago River, and the whole thing ends with a kitten exchange in a hospital.

TIG and JEJ both love kittens, what can I say

In the end, I am left with a strong desire to see NIGHT OF THE WARRIOR (1991), a film also written by Thomas Ian Griffith and starring... Lorenzo Lamas.

R.I.P., James Earl Jones

Farewell to James Earl Jones, whose booming, iconic voice and endless acting chops made STAR WARS a staple of my childhood, brought gravitas to films like CLAUDINE, THE MAN, BY DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and BEST OF THE BEST, and elevated essentially irredeemable fare like EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC or ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD. (Pictured here in BEST OF THE BEST, giving Eric Roberts a well-deserved dressing down.) R.I.P.

Only now does it occur to me... BEST OF THE BEST (1989)

Only now does it occur to me... that BEST OF THE BEST (not to be confused with the Milli Vanilli album) is practically a lost Cannon film––a South Korea vs. U.S.A. martial arts tournament movie packed with Golan-Globus alumni: Eric Roberts (RUNAWAY TRAIN), James Earl Jones (ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD), John P. Ryan (AVENGING FORCE, DEATH WISH 4, DELTA FORCE 2), Eddie Bunker (RUNAWAY TRAIN, SHY PEOPLE), Louise Fletcher (INVADERS FROM MARS), Tom Everett (DEATH WISH 4, MESSENGER OF DEATH), and Kane Hodder (AVENGING FORCE). Damn!

There are at least a dozen good reasons to see BEST OF THE BEST, so, without further ado:

#1. Eric Roberts. A.K.A. a Steel Town Boy on a Saturday Night.

It's sort of the FLASHDANCE of Taekwondo tournament movies, with Eric Roberts playing a widowed father who spends his days welding at a car factory. Though he lives with a shoulder injury, his one passion is martial arts. Eddie Bunker (ex-con, novelist, and bit player who might be best known to audiences as "Mr. Blue" from RESERVOIR DOGS) is his co-worker who just wants to hang out and grab some beers.
 
Roberts has got a statement mullet and wears statement sweaters with deep V's.


As the film's heart, Roberts bleeds with his usual acting intensity, often reserved for conversations with his mother, who is played by––

#2. Louise Fletcher.

"Nurse Ratched" is quite the score for a tournament fighter movie. It'd be like if they got Meryl Streep to play Johnny Cage's mom in MORTAL KOMBAT. Fletcher gets to flex her acting chops in about three scenes, which is pretty good for something like this, I guess.

#3. Philip Rhee as "Tommy Lee." (Not to be confused with the drummer from Mötley Crüe.)

Perhaps best known for BEST OF THE BEST, BEST OF THE BEST II, BEST OF THE BEST III: NO TURNING BACK, and BEST OF THE BEST IV: WITHOUT WARNING, Rhee is a talented performer tasked with the movie's soul and most exhaustive backstory. It's a representational relief that the lead character in an '80s movie about a Korean/American martial arts tournament is Korean-American. He may only have fourth billing, but this is truly Rhee's movie (he was also a producer and co-writer).

#4. Chris Penn as a Martial Artist. It feels right to come off of the entry about an actual martial artist to arrive right here. The movie doesn't comment on Penn (right, in the blue pants)

being unable to jump rope, or basically unable to lift his legs

or do a proper push up.

I also want to be clear that I am definitely in favor of this choice. He also gets to shout the line, "Grab him like a toilet seat!" in the climactic fight. He's kind of the "Vernon Wells in COMMANDO" of this movie, whereupon an out-of-shape guy was slapped in a chain-mail sweater and pitted against Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bless.

#5. The montages. The above images come from a training montage set to an "Eye of the Tiger" rip-off called, fittingly, "Best of the Best," by Stubblefield & Hall. No "Hall & Oates" are they, but they acquit themselves with "whooooahhh/be the best that you can be/the best of the best" lyrical élan.

This is all crosscut with their South Korean opponents doing exercises that are a lot more strenuous. Even though one of the Koreans killed Tommy Lee's brother in a match, they're not exactly set up as Ivan Drago-ish villains. (Every member of the South Korean team can do a push-up.)

#6. I haven't even mentioned the people who run the American team. The first would be the head coach, James Earl Jones.

He has pretty much one rule: "DON'T EVER BE LATE!" (That should be printed on an inspirational poster and attributed to Darth Vader.) He cares a lot about his team members showing up to practice, and a melodramatic plot development where Eric Roberts wants to miss a practice because his son was hit by a car (!) leads to the following exchange:

"MY KID MIGHT LOSE HIS LEG!"


"WE ALL HAVE OUR PRIORITIES!"

Damn, James Earl Jones, you're as cold as ice!

#7. John P. Ryan. He shows up briefly as the owner (?) of the American Taekwondo team. It's kind of unclear what the bureaucracy is, but he gets to act as if he is very excited about a martial arts tournament.


#8. Finally, Sally Kirkland (JFK, ANNA) rounds out the team management as a specialist on the mental aspects of martial arts. She takes everybody back to karate school or whatever

and I thought there was going to be a big plot-line about "we're not gonna let some woman tell us how to kick dudes in the face" but she's pretty much treated with respect from the outset, so... nice job, movie!

#9. Kane Hodder. You know him best for playing Jason Voorhees from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII through JASON X, but prepare to get to know him all over again as "Redneck in Barfight" shouting "I want him, I want his balls!"

To which Chris Penn retorts, "Yeah I thought you were missing a pair, ASSHOLE!"

#10. Ahmad Rashad as himself.

He commentates over the tournament finale, lending it a "documentary" sports feel.

#11. Simon Rhee (Philip Rhee's brother) playing the South Korean badass who accidentally killed Philip Rhee's (fictitious) brother.

The eyepatch lends him a kind of "South Korean Snake Plissken" vibe, and he has the acting and martial arts chops to pull it off.

#12. The sincerity.

Without giving too much away, by the time THE BEST OF THE BEST is over you will regard it as a shockingly sincere 80s sports movie, one which that recognizes opponents as "not bad guys at whom you should scream 'U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A!,'" but multi-dimensional human beings who are also in pursuit of excellence and worthy of respect. That's all.

Film Review: ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD (1986, Gary Nelson)

Stars: Hoo Boy of 5.

Running Time: 99 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew: Richard Chamberlain (THE MUSIC LOVERS, THE LAST WAVE), Sharon Stone (CASINO, BASIC INSTINCT), James Earl Jones (STAR WARS, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, SNEAKERS), Henry Silva (SHARKY'S MACHINE, BULLETPROOF, GHOST DOG), Cassandra Peterson (ELVIRA MISTRESS OF THE DARK, PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE), Robert Donner (COOL HAND LUKE, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER). Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard (KING SOLOMON'S MINES, SHE). Screenplay by Gene Quintano (SUDDEN DEATH, OPERATION DUMBO DROP) and Lee Reynolds (WHO AM I, DELTA FORCE 2). Directed by Gary Nelson (FREAKY FRIDAY, THE BLACK HOLE). Music by Michael Linn (AMERICAN NINJA, BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO) and Jerry Goldsmith (TOTAL RECALL, ALIEN, GREMLINS). Second unit directed by Newt Arnold (BLOODSPORT, BLOOD THIRST).

Tag-line: "24 Karat Entertainment!"

Best one-liner: "We're starting to piss off somebody's god!"

I've written before at length about the "Cannon Quatermain Canon"––the two films, KING SOLOMON'S MINES and ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD, were made simultaneously in 1985, were based on outworn adventure novels by H. Rider Haggard, and were shamelessly attempting to cash in on the success of the INDIANA JONES series.

These films, even moreso than the average American globetrotting adventure film, are xenophobic, racially insensitive (they actually use brownface on Robert Donner to transform him into the excruciatingly offensive Indian character "Swarma"), and generally spit-take inducing. I honestly can't tell if these films are an elaborate joke on the audience, a spoof of the genre's racist tropes, or a genuine attempt at action-adventure entertainment by woefully out of touch individuals.  [It's also worth noting: Cannon's FIREWALKER (with Chuck Norris) was made in the same period and is definitely cut from the same cloth.]

The plot concerns Allan Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain, who deserves better)

Note how his fedora differs from Indiana Jones' in that it is handsomely garnished with a swatch of leopard print from Jo-Anne Fabrics.

and Willie Scott––er, I mean Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone, who also deserves better)

She doesn't even get to sing.

are searching for... not the Ark of the Covenant nor the Sankara Stones nor the Holy Grail, but, I shit you not... a legendary white African tribe who lives in a lost city of gold. At one point, Sharon Stone is made to exclaim, "The white race does exist!" I cannot overstate how unsettling this is.

James Earl Jones (who also obviously deserves better) shows up in a tailcoat, a plastic bone tooth necklace, a Native American feather headpiece, and no pants.

He is playing the warrior sidekick "Umslopogaas," and he wields a giant axe that is conspicuously lightweight and shiny, almost as if it is a piece of plastic covered in reflective paint (which it is). At one point he is captured by the guards of the white tribe's lost city, who are black men wearing white hoods. Again, these decisions appear to be so plainly tone deaf and misguided that it is better to believe they are not deliberate.

According to James Earl Jones, he only signed up for this picture because it allowed him to piggyback his shoot dates with an African vacation. I hope it was a nice vacation.

Master of crazy-eye Henry Silva rules the Lost City like Jim Jones, wearing community theater biblical robes and a Gene Simmons wig. He is clearly based on "Mola Ram" from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (complete with a floor-opening sacrificial chamber and a mine full of slave labor), and the major difference is that he does not rip out his victims' hearts, but rather dips them in gold. He screams things like "Which one of you is going to die for slaying our sacred beast?" and appears to be having something approaching a good time.

And wait a minute, who is that on the left, in the Valkyrie breastplate?

Why, it's none other than Elvira (!) herself (Cassandra Peterson), who mostly lounges around and gives the evil eye, which makes her role in this mess the most enviable, from an actor's standpoint.

ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD is treasure trove of cheap costumes, depressed actors, incompetent matte work, and mind-bogglingly terrible ideas. There are giant maggot attacks, a wild raft ride (that attempts to mirror TEMPLE OF DOOM's mine-car chase),

and a zany bazaar salesman whose wares include bulletproof spandex.

Furthermore, Quatermain solves literally 95% of the problems he faces with trick-shooting (at tomatoes, natives' faces, trap doors, stalactites, etc.) which is a great message for the youth, too, sure.

In the end, the film is troubling, bizarre, baffling, and frankly the whole thing has aged about as well as the Gold Dust Twins. Now you must atone for your sins by watching the entire catalogues of Ousmane Sembéne, Sarah Maldoror, and Gadalla Gubara. Whew.

Film Review: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977, John Boorman)

Stars: 2.8 of 5.
Running Time: 118 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Linda Blair (ROLLER BOOGIE, THE EXORCIST), Richard Burton (THE KLANSMAN, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD), Louise Fletcher (BRAINSTORM, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST), Max von Sydow (THE ICE PIRATES, THE SEVENTH SEAL), Ned Beatty (STROKER ACE, DELIVERANCE), James Earl Jones (SOUL MAN, STAR WARS), Paul Henreid (OPERATION CROSSBOW, CASABLANCA), Kitty Winn (KOJAK, THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK). Music by Ennio Morricone (RED SONJA; THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY). Tap Dance Routine choreographed by Daniel Joseph Giaghi (PENNIES FROM HEAVEN).
Tag-line: "It's four years later...what does she remember?"
Best one-liner: "If he can teach me how he has survived Pazuzu... I'll come back and let you know."

Where to begin? The acting talent is astonishing- of the seven principal players, six have been nominated for (or have won) Oscars. The seventh, Kitty Winn, had won Best Actress at Cannes. The director, John Boorman, had a history of accomplished, edgy work from POINT BLANK to HELL IN THE PACIFIC to DELIVERANCE. So where did we go wrong? Well, two things in particular:

#1. EXORCIST II is playing a high-stakes poker game with the audience. And it's betting the farm on a little lady named Linda Blair, which you'll soon realize was something of a mistake. What everyone thought was a genius, new acting talent from the first EXORCIST was mostly just the voice of Mercedes McCambridge and the astonishing special effects. In the meantime, Blair had unfortunately become something of a King Midas in reverse… but, hey, she still does a mean tap-dance. More on that in a minute.

#2. Looks like John Boorman kept Richard Burton sober. Another big mistake. He plays nearly every scene with an infantile, bewildered grimace- the subtext is "Goddamn you for taking away my gin stash!" He's pronouncing "evil" with three syllables- "Eee-vee-ill." This man is tortured.

"When the wings have brushed you...is there no hope once the WINGS HAVE BRUSHED YOU!!!" Hand this man a flask, for the love of God!

"Where'd you put my stash, John? I won't be cross with you if you give it back, straightaway. I don't even want it all- just a fifth of the best gin. How's about a Gin Rickey, John? Just one Rickey. Then we'll get back to the film. Just a quick snifter, John. John?"


"Oh, I'll buy it back, John! I'll give you all the gold 'n silver in all the world, John! I'll do the picture gratis, John! Whaddya say? Just a quick Pimm's cup! It's all I need, John- just a little Pimm's to keep me going."


"You want some shite acting for your shite film, John?! By all the saints, I'll give it to, you bloody bastard! All's I wanted was some Pimm's, you divvy git! Why, now I'll take this Pazuzu fellow and cock up your picture!"

Anyway, there's some shit with amnesia and synchronized hypnosis,


and, wait- if Linda Blair can see into the future, then why doesn't she use that knowledge to prevent ROLLER BOOGIE from happening?

Then there's this tantalizing bit from the credits: "Tap Dance Routine choreographed by Daniel Joseph Giaghi." If you're anything like me, such an absurd statement will excite and intrigue. 'What can we put in Part 2 that we didn't have in Part 1?' Clearly the answer is a tap-dance routine. And not just a tap-dance routine– a psychedelic tap-dance collective seizure attack:

Dit-dat duh duh

Clickety-clackety-clickety-clack

EEEEEYEEOOOOOWWWW

YUHH-UHHHH-UHHH

Truly, it's the little things that keep ya going.

So, EXORCIST 1 had the head-spin, the vomit, and the inappropriate use of a crucifix. EXORCIST 2 has the tap-dance seizure, the locust POV shot,

and the rock crevice plummet. But there's some good stuff going on, too. Ennio Morricone's score is in turns funny, primal, epic, thumpin', and, on at least one occasion lends unexpected weight to a scene involving a locust attack. Boorman makes some bold stylistic and editing decisions, a few of which (trippy hallucinations

and a jarring self-immolation sequence) work quite well. On the whole, it kinda feels like a weird, arty horror retread of those terrible old Republic serials. It never quite bores and never quite entertains. Almost three stars- why not?.

-Sean Gill