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: WHITE HOT (1988, Robby Benson)

White Hotness: Very.
Running Time: 95 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Tawny Kitaen (GWENDOLINE, CRYSTAL HEART, WITCHBOARD), Danny Aiello (DO THE RIGHT THING, THE STUFF), Robby Benson (ONE ON ONE, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST), Sally Kirkland (JFK, BEST OF THE BEST), Mark Margolis (DELTA FORCE 2, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, BREAKING BAD), Anna Thomson (TRUE ROMANCE, UNFORGIVEN, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN), Michael Ornstein (SONS OF ANARCHY, SEINFELD), Kevin Gray (MIAMI VICE, LAW AND ORDER), and Tony Sirico (THE SOPRANOS, GOODFELLAS).
Tagline: "There's only one place hotter than this."
Best one-liner: "The golden goose... crack! It's the smell of crack!"

WHITE HOT is a cocaine movie. Not in the sense that most 80s movies are, in fact, "cocaine movies," as in creatively and producorially fueled by cocaine––i.e., everything from TWINS to COBRA to A VIEW TO A KILL to TANGO & CASH––no, what I mean to say is that WHITE HOT is actually a movie about cocaine.

Before I delve too deeply into WHITE HOT: some of you know of my troubles reviewing this film; I made it five minutes into my previous viewing before my VHS player ate the tape. Of course, it was of the utmost importance that I complete the final installment of "Of Whitesnakes and Witchboards... a Tawny Kitaen Retrospective" which obviously I could not do without a working copy of WHITE HOT. 

We've made this journey together, from WITCHBOARD to THE LAND OF THE YIK-YAK, we attended a BACHELOR PARTY and relived our GLORY YEARS, and we learned how easy it is to break a CRYSTAL HEART. I couldn't let things go without exploring WHITE HOT, and, not wanting to miss a moment of the film through a bad self-VHS splicing, I obtained a second copy. When I wanted to take my first screen capture, I paused my new tape a few minutes in... and a similar issue occurred––the VHS player was eating this second tape, too! 

This time I was patient. I, paused it, took it apart, and managed to extract the tape and wind it tautly without breaking the ribbon, though it was mangled. From that point forward, I realized that my screen captures would have to be taken with my phone, in motion, as the tape played. This issue has never plagued me in my years of VHS viewing, so I'm inclined to blame the maker of the tape itself, who probably used some low-grade magnetic ribbon incapable of withstanding a "pause." The maker in question is Academy Entertainment, a fifth- or sixth-tier VHS distributor, whose flagship titles included David Bowie in THE LINGUINI INCIDENT, the WITCHCRAFT series, MANIAC COP 3, and KILLER WORKOUT. So, listen up, Academy Entertainment: that's intended as a shot across the bow––the likes of Media Home Entertainment and Vestron Video eat your lunch!

 Anyway, on to WHITE HOT. The cocaine movie to end all cocaine movies, I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should we call this "cocaine wearing a statement bow?" I suppose.

 

Is WHITE HOT good? WHITE HOT is not good. But we're not necessarily here to see a "good" movie. We're here to weigh in on whether WHITE HOT allows Tawny Kitaen to live up to her potential.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But before we get to that, some housekeeping. It's not at Tommy Wiseau-levels, and I definitely thought of THE FORCE WITHIN more than once, but this is a vanity project. It stars Robby Benson, and it is directed by Robby Benson. It is devoted to making Robby Benson look "edgy."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robby Benson is not edgy. He is a child actor who starred in movies about figure skating and private tutoring. Lacking an ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK/Kurt Russell-style opportunity for badass reinvention, he decided to pave his own way, directing himself in a movie where he traffics cocaine, has Tawny Kitaen for a girlfriend, and shows his ass with considerable elan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this scene, Robby Benson smokes crack. "I need the edge at my racquetball game." If he wanted to shed the child actor image, he probably shouldn't have directed himself in an afterschool special!

The plot involves typical yuppie Robby Benson falling in with a bad element. His coke dealer Butchie (Kevin Gray), who is kind of a "poor man's Lou Diamond Phillips meets poor man's Val Kilmer,"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

is under fire from an opposing mafia gang, led by Danny Aiello (who, let's face it, is the second-biggest box office draw here, after Tawny)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and because Butchie bears a certain resemblance to Robby B, he asks Robby, in bad faith, to take over his coke business for a couple weeks while Butchie is "out of town." The idea is that the mob will assassinate Robby B and think they've taken out Butchie. Robby B is soon way in over his head, slinging coke like an amateur and unknowingly acting as a decoy for mob assassins. As my wife remarked, "It's kinda like TRUE ROMANCE meets KAGEMUSHA." Yeah, exactly.

Along the way, this brings us such sights as a recumbent Danny Aiello, lounging in a lustrous robe while an aspirant Broadway singer belts "Big Spender," 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bowtie-wearing henchman and character actor Mark Margolis, two decades before he would make his name in the fictionalized drug trade as Hector "Tio" Salamanca in BREAKING BAD,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Sirico ("Paulie Walnuts" on THE SOPRANOS) as an Aiello thug (maybe we should start thinking of WHITE HOT as a farm system for beloved/infamous criminals in the prestige television era),

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the underrated Sally Kirkland (not pictured––damn, the scene went by too fast!––why was she even in this?) as a random drug addict.

This movie might be best defined by two things: freebasing and slap bass. Speaking of which, the low-rent NEVERENDING STORY-inspired soundtrack by Nile Rodgers gives the proceedings the feel of a half-remembered dream. The pop soundtrack, too, is actually pretty great. There are about three tracks played over and over, recycled at least six times throughout the movie. One of them is a complete rip-off of Janet Jackson's "Nasty" (a track called "Do It Up" by Mike Rogers), which I obviously endorse.

Anyway, enough ancillary material: let's get to Tawny Kitaen. Her character is basically "Melanie Griffith in WORKING GIRL" meets "Jennifer Connolly in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Essentially, her character, as written, exists to let Robby Benson's character off the hook. "His girlfriend's the one with the real coke problem, not Robby," says the screenplay. "It's her desire for cocaine which drives him to do erratic and terrible things." Oookay. I'm calling bullshit on that one. It's a two-way street, Benson, and I'm not letting you thrown Tawny under the bus!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Kinda "urban pirate" meets "Milan fashion week."

 

However, I'm definitely here for the scenes where Tawny wears the latest in adventurous, silken yuppie fashions 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and tries to get her friends to try crack as if she's a Mary Kay saleswoman pushing the latest cream blush. I have, on many occasions, voiced my approval of Tawny's statement bows, and I gotta say that the combo of coke and crack addiction has apparently sabotaged her statement bow game––now it's just a l'il regular bow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wonder if that's an artistic choice the director made. (Probably not!) She's also got some rad berets––sort of a proto-BLOSSOM, "Blossom & Six" vibe––

 

 

until her addiction gets so bad she has to cheat on Robby Benson... for crack!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It leads to a solid photo shoot, though

Then Robby, too, spirals into addiction and nothingness, and this is where it starts to turn into "Act III of GOODFELLAS done as an ABC afterschool special," with everything doused in Ray Liotta-esque coke laughter and paranoia. (No helicopters, though.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tawny gets a nice "Stella! Stella!" moment, calling for Robby from the balcony 

 

 

 

after he's had enough of her cheating ways, apparently. Then she betrays him, tries to steal his cash, runs him down in a car (things are starting to improve!), but then dies ignominiously in a car bombing, which really took the wind out of my sails. (Sorry 'bout the spoilers, but it'd be a miracle if you found a working copy of this film anyway.)

Before you can say "Take 'im to Staten Island and get rid of 'im!" the chickens come home to roost; Danny Aiello is rubbed out by Butchie, and Robby Benson and his new sidekick (Aiello's character's nephew) come to take revenge on Butchie by force-feeding him cocaine until he dies. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be fair, this is the most "cocaine" way to end this motion picture and I therefore must applaud it.
 

In the end, as far as Tawny goes, she gets to be a fashion bomb throughout, flaunting hints of star power between mediocre scenes of mediocre dudes talking 'bout drugs in unfurnished rooms. Her character is definitely scapegoated by a narrative more interested in fluffing The Benson Factor, but as usual, she does what she can, with an undeniable joie de vivre. Which, maybe that's a bummer of a note to end the Tawny Kitaen retrospective on, but wait––there's more.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I received a communique from Tawny Kitaen during the course of this retrospective. She wanted everyone to know that "I hope you get everything that I used to be embarrassed about... David Geffen's right-hand man called me Yoko Ono, I was so embarrassed back then... and then as I got older and realized that the success of [Whitesnake] had a little bit to do with the videos and what I brought to it, and it made me feel really, really good. So I guess if I had any words of wisdom, there's this old Jewish adage, and it goes: 'When you grow up, I wish employees on you.' So John Kalodner, an employee of David Geffen gave a perspective on me that was true, but he was trying to hurt me at the same time... he didn't know that years later his words would come back to haunt him in everything that I do, when I have to talk about my experience, and that was being the Yoko Ono of Whitesnake, so I hope you can throw that into your blog."

Perhaps this is the best note to end the retrospective on: we've seen six films here, some of them good, some decent, and some bad, but Tawny's charisma has been a consistent baseline throughout. Whether or not history chooses to remember her as "The Yoko Ono of Whitesnake" or, much less likely, "The Scapegoat of WHITE HOT," the ridiculousness of the insult––if it is indeed even such––can be worn as a badge of pride, because in each of these films, many of which are baldly sexist and/or underwritten, she brings much more to the part than is expected of her. Whether as a style icon, a screen presence, or as a skillful actor, she rises above the material. So here's your benediction: "Tawny rises above."

Film Review: TWO EVIL EYES (1990, George A. Romero & Dario Argento)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 120 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Adrienne Barbeau (THE FOG, CREEPSHOW), Ramy Zada (DALLAS, DARK JUSTICE), E.G. Marshall (CREEPSHOW, 12 ANGRY MEN), Tom Atkins (HALLOWEEN III, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, CREEPSHOW), Bingo O'Malley (CREEPSHOW, KNIGHTRIDERS), Harvey Keitel (BAD LIEUTENANT, MEAN STREETS), Martin Balsam (DEATH WISH 3, PSYCHO), Tom Savini (PLANET TERROR, MARTIN), John Amos (GOOD TIMES, DIE HARD 2), Julie Benz (DEXTER, RAMBO IV), Madeleine Potter (THE BOSTONIANS, THE GOLDEN BOWL), Christine Forrest (MARTIN, MONKEY SHINES). Special Makeup Effects by Tom Savini. Based on works by Edgar Allan Poe.
Tag-line: "When I Wake You...You'll Be Dead."
Best one-liner: "Christ! Rich people... Sick stuff always turns out to be rich people."

Originally conceived as a George Romero-produced, Poe-based cable television series (with Michele Soavi directing "The Masque of the Red Death," Richard Stanley directing "The Casque of Amontillado," and with John Carpenter & Wes Craven involved as well), it failed to receive the final green-light and instead we ended up with a full-length horror-omnibus twofer entitled TWO EVIL EYES. I've heard a fair amount of bellyaching about this film, ranging from Poe purists who're upset that the settings are contemporary to disdainful viewers who inexplicably cite the complete incompetence of Romero and Argento (!). I must say that these criticisms are unfounded– I see TWO EVIL EYES as one of the stronger horror omnibii, fusing outrageous Savini gore, virtuoso camera-work, audacious performances (including an entire host of CREEPSHOW alumni), and original expansions to the Poe stories together into a result that's occasionally hilarious and occasionally terrifying.

So without further ado– since Poe was a poet, after all– I'll express my love for TWO EVIL EYES in the form of verse:

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR (in the mode of "The Raven")

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered zombie theory,
I felt a hankering for some Romero,
seized the disc and gave it a go,

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven though he sorta looked a crow.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he,
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched by the one-sheet of CREEPSHOW--
Perched upon a bust of Carpy above the one-sheet of CREEPSHOW--
Perched, and sat... like in the Poe!

Then the ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of neon electric glow,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no Wes Craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from your nightly sorrow--
Tell me what thy lordly name is upon this night's horror-show!"
And quoth the raven... "Adrienne Barbeau."


It wasn't Father's Day, but Bingo O'Malley still wandered around, dead (ish)

You see, he died while hypnotized, so he can't sleep with the fish

This causes unease to his trophy wife
Who realllllly doesn't want his eternal life
Adrienne's performance is pretty sympathetic
Which after CREEPSHOW's "Billie" is no small trick
Gold-diggers got souls sometimes, too
(and you'll never hear me say that in another review)
The conspiring lovers wear yuppie pinstripes

and E.G. Marshall delivers some nice "old man gripes"

There's twists and turns and how the plot does grow!
Quoth the raven, "Adrienne Barbeau."

Hey lookit, it's Tom Atkins as a hard-boiled detective!
One of these days, I'll do a full-blown retrospective

And we hear about The Others, from the opposing side of the mortal gate
And while I won't reveal what they look like, I'll say that they're well worth the wait!

And Carpy's ex-gal shares a scene with (Christine Forrest) she of Romero,
Ya don't see that every day, I'll have you know
I'll bet they had some tales to tell in the midst of that tableau
It's not the kind of thing ya see in a film by Truffaut

So quoth the Raven, "Adrienne Barbeau."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Carpy above the one-sheet of CREEPSHOW;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow from his toe;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the row
Shall be lifted-- God bless George Romer-o!

~~~


THE BLACK CAT (in the mode of "The Bells")

See the suavitude of the Keitels
Bow-tied Keitels!

What a world of merriment
his beret fortells

He's a sort of Pittsburgh Weegee

What's this, who... me?

Oh that Keitels, tells, tells

Oh how we long to see
a shot of POV
on our old tube TV

So thank God for Signore Argento
The man puts on a goddamn show

There's things that he's got
and things that he ain't
of the latter, there's not
a great deal of restraint

Pendulum P-O-V
looks pretty good to me
(the gore's all Savini)

Cat P-O-V rears its feline head
and instills in Keitel a true sense of dread

He's a beret-wearin' artist livin' life in the city
He just wants to photograph the nice little kitty


He's shacked up with a sensitive l'il lady
her hair's as red as the beard of O'Grady

She's a music teacher to a young Julie Benz
And Argento captures all this with his wide-angle lens

Her violin music so beautifully wells
For the Keitels tells tells
The Keitels tells tells

Harvey hits up a ren-fair
But who knows if it's really there

It's probably only in his dream
But is there more to it than it would seem?

John Amos shows up, helpin' solve some crimes
But the plot's pretty fucken far from GOOD TIMES

Watch for Savini, blink and you'll miss 'im, gettin' arrested by the police
and if you're paying attention, his character's taken from Poe's Berenice

I don't mean to dwell
But this segment's all about Keitel
Oh the rapture it impels
of the Keitels tells tells

The cat begins driving dear Keitel mad
And so he resolves to do something bad

He begins choking the cat beyond hope of resurrection
(Yikes- I really hope Keitel didn't have an erection)

But what the hells who can really tells
After all, we're dealing with Keitels
(The Keitels tells tells)



At least it's set to smooth sax jazzytown
Nothin' set to that can ever make me frown

Amongst animal lovers, nausea it may induce
BUT DON'T WORRY MY FRIENDS THERE WAS NO ABUSE!!!


And check out this bar
I really hope it's not far

Sure, it ain't the Oak Room or the Ritz
But I'll bet you can pick up a cold sixer of Schlitz

Then Martin Balsam (from PSYCHO!) walks toward the stair
which'll give any true horror lover a nice fuzzy scare


Oh, how the danger sinks and swells
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of Keitels

Of the Keitels
Of the Keitels tells tells tells
Tells tells tells
In the clamor and the clangor of the Keitels!

Tequila for breakfast– er make mine a Mezcal
It's merely a warm-up for Keitel's zany Grand Mal

For the Keitels tells tells
Oh how he tells tells tells


"IT'S... A... FUCKING CAT!!!! MEOW!!!! MEOWWWW!!"

MEOWWWW!!!

Keitel must have his say
We only do things his way

That Keitels tells tells
The Keitels tells tells

Oh the little lady's not too impressed, but how about now:


MEOW!!!!

MEOWWWW!!!

MEOWWWWW!!!!



-Sean Gill