The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

 

During the 2014-2015 NFL season, the Green Bay Packers defeated the New England Patriots by a score of 26-21 at Lambeau Field. Prior to the game, Large William and I agreed upon an interesting wrinkle: if my Patriots won, he’d be required to watch and review a movie of my choosing for the Midnite Ride (e.g. Jamaa Fanaka’s STREET WARS), whereas if the Packers won, I’d cover 1972’s THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS for the GGtMC blog. This particular gentlemen’s bet was a win-win proposition. It’s long overdue, but here’s my end of the deal.

The antiquated architecture standing in the Atlantic City occupied by this film’s characters was long gone when I walked off the boardwalk and onto the frigid sand nearly 40 years later to spread a departed family member’s ashes. Despite this difference in mise en scène, I can tell you with certainty that Atlantic City in the winter months is every bit as bleak and biting as it is in Bob Rafelson’s 1972 film, THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS. While the characters find that it’s a terrible time and place to hatch a real-estate scheme or get hired as an auctioneer, it proves more than adequate for bonfires and horsey rides.

During a broadcast into the wee hours, talk-radio personality David Staebler (Jack Nicholson) is urgently summoned to Atlantic City by his older brother, Jason (Bruce Dern). Without any further context, David leaves Philadelphia and arrives at the train station, only to be collected by his brother’s cheeky companion, Sally (Ellen Burstyn) and a clumsy welcoming band of drums and brass players. Trombone Shorty, they ain’t.

When the brothers first reunite, they do so with jail bars between them; jailed for reasons unknown, Jason is optimistic he’ll get out by sundown if David can track down a guy named Lewis. That doesn’t quite materialize, but Jason is cruising around the boardwalk on a motorized caddy in what seems like only hours later. He reveals a plan to secure real estate for a gambling enterprise on an obscure South Pacific island, and he wants David as a partner. Along for the venture as something of a support team are Sally and Jessica (Julia Anne Robinson), a pretty young thing as naive as she is fun-loving. Both women occupy points in an uneasy love triangle with Jason.

As the plan develops, it unravels at nearly the same rate. Certain events reveal Jason’s pattern (neurosis?) of overselling. (Case in point: Jason may not be able to afford the room in a historic hotel he’d convinced Sally he owned). David can barely contain his unease about the scheme and it seems that simply being near his brother puts him on edge. Sally is losing both confidence and trust in Jason, and shifts an envious eye towards Jessica. Failure doesn’t adequately describe the worst possible outcome for this motley crew.

Despite their shared genetics, the differences between the Staebler brothers couldn't be more stark. David is an introverted storyteller leading a dull life in a Philadelphia apartment he shares with their grandfather. Jason is a charismatic con artist and feverish dreamweaver with lofty aspirations. At a dinner following his release from jail, Jason sucks down brightly colored cocktails while rapping about stolen cars full of Swiss watches as David nurses a glass of milk. Rafelson leaves no stone unturned -- be it visual, narrative, or in characterization -- in illustrating this contrast, yet his efforts never feel try-hard, nor do moments feel unearned. 

Lensed by legendary cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, the film has a bounty of well-composed scenes with tight framing and offbeat arrangements. One of my favorites features Dern and Nicholson facing each other on horseback on the beach, with the animals barely stirring. Why? No idea. Many of the exterior shots on and around the boardwalk have an overcast, dreary look that reflect a decaying environment, but there are timely and purposeful tweaks to the palette -- a daytime bonfire scene which acts as a liberating cleanse for one character might be the brightest among them.

The film is book-ended by a pair of David’s on-air monologues which border on confessionals. I won’t spoil the content or moods of either, but the first one trails off with David describing he and his brother as “accomplices” before a phone call to his booth engineer abruptly interrupts the conclusion -- the same call that prompts his trip to Atlantic City. Towards the end of the film, David delivers an equally engrossing monologue that transitions into a scene where the brothers’ grandfather projects an 8mm home movie on the apartment’s wall showing the two young boys building a sand castle at the beach -- in other words, a temporary structure assumed to be knocked down or washed away. In lesser hands, this closing visual may have come off as clumsy or sickly sweet, but I found it dovetailed nicely with the film’s themes of lofty ambitions and a fleeting (but persistent) want for paradise.

MVT: This is a character-driven film and as such, how you evaluate it depends a lot on how convinced you are by the on-screen relationships. Both Dern and Nicholson put forth measured performances of two complex characters existing in a state of vascillating stress due to their  oppositional quirks. Burstyn is amazing as Jason’s aging, slighted lover. The charismatic performances are great and the chemistry is even better, but the underlying dynamic between the brothers is the most valuable thing in the film. I have a younger brother myself, and I found this element relatable. Fortunately, it's much more dysfuntional than how he and I relate to each other.

Make or Break: There are plenty of scenes featuring crackling dialogue. There are other moments that reveal nuanced and meaningful characterizations and the dynamics among the players (both individual relationships and as a group). There’s dazzling imagery throughout. The scene in the abandoned convention hall where our foursome puts on a mock Miss America paegent combines all of these elements and was a big make for me. David stiffly narrates as the paegent host, Jason screams encouragement from atop a stack of cargo boxes, Jessica plays the wide-eyed starlet, and Sally is off to the side playing the world’s largest pipe organ (allegedly).

Score: 7.75 / 10

Soul Brothers of Kung Fu (1977)

a.k.a. The Last Strike, Kung Fu Avengers

Director: Yi-Jung Hua (as I Hung Hwa)
Writer: Chan Wei Lin
Cast: Ho Chung Tao (Bruce Li), Feng Ku, Meng Lo, Carl Scott, Siu Yam-yam (Yum-yum Shaw), Au-Yeung Pooi San, Hoi San, Peter Chan, Alexander Grand, Yuen Biao

Following a recent viewing of the PBS documentary The Black Kung Fu Experience, I resolved to include more of the early cinematic contributions of African-American martial artists in my film viewing for 2014. (After all, why set goals for self-improvement in personal finance and health when I can set completely arbitrary media consumption benchmarks?) While Jim Kelly is probably the most famous and Ron Van Clief the most prolific of these pioneering actors, Carl Scott repeatedly emerged as the guy most overlooked and underappreciated. When I saw that RZA had name-dropped him in an interview with Film Comment as number one and the best, it all but cemented my urge to see his films -- all three of them! (I can’t, in good conscience, count Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth, where he appears as an extra).

Like any group of young urban professionals, the trio of Wong Wei Lung (Li), Shao-san (Meng), and Chai Yun (Au-Yeung Pooi San) work a variety of crummy jobs to pay for their Hong Kong apartment. However, as hard-working immigrants from the mainland, they’re willing to do just about anything in order to live out their dream to live beyond their means. Wong Wei Lung and Shao-sen are doing menial labor down at the docks one day when they come upon a fellow dock worker, Tom (Scott) getting beat up by several of his bosses and colleagues for spilling paint while also being a young, black male. In rushing to his defense, the roommates catch the ire of a cruel boss named Mr. Chien (Feng), a man involved in absolutely every business in Hong Kong, legit or not.

All three of the men lose their jobs, but eventually get new, shittier ones. They lose those too. While Shao-san ceases all productivity and falls into a gambling addiction, Wei Lung participates in organized fights to make ends meet. During a conversation with Chai Yun about the next day’s huge championship match, he announces his intention to marry her if he wins, and wait a minute, it’s her birthday tomorrow, so they’ll just get engaged during her party because apparently they’ve been banging on the side this whole time. We see glimpses that Shao-san harbors a secret jealousy about their relationship, but all that sexual tension never really goes anywhere and he gets sidetracked by his involvement with a mysterious bar-girl (Shaw). I held out hope that this arrangement would explore the complex spectrum of human sexuality in the same vein as the 1994 romantic comedy, Threesome, but the filmmakers played things safe.

Throughout it all, Wei Lung and Shao-san train Tom in kung fu so he can better defend himself against angry shipping supervisors and asshole Triads. Meanwhile, Mr. Chien assembles his own trio of bad, nameless motherfuckers, respectively portrayed by Alexander Grand (Sideburns), Lee Hoi-Sang (Jug-Smasher), and Peter Chan Lung (Tiger Style). Allegiances shift, people change, and everyone is freaking out about money. A showdown is inevitable.

Despite my skittish disposition towards most Bruceploitation fare, this was a pleasant surprise. The film doesn’t do much to hide its iconographic nods. Even though his hair is more Bieber than bowl cut, Bruce Li’s character makes frequent references to his idol, has a Lee poster hanging in his room, reads his books, and is even regarded by Mr. Chien as a dangerous fighter because he “fights like Bruce Lee.” Sure he does, movie dialogue. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

I don’t know that 1977’s Soul Brothers of Kung Fu was the best place to begin in Carl Scott’s filmography, but it was definitely the earliest. He earns a strong supporting role here, with plenty of screen time and a performance nearly undone by one of the most horrific voice actor dubs I’ve ever heard. Fortunately, we’re not watching a Carl Scott movie to see him channel Sidney Poitier, and he conveys plenty of screen presence in his engagements with an eager and energetic Hong Kong stunt team in some good fight scenes. At times, he looks like an absolute world-beater. The Gents have discussed in past episodes how rare it was for gweilos to be able to hang with action players in golden-age Hong Kong, but Scott looks very much at home here and his fighting talent is undeniable.

Wading through the glut of 1970s kung fu cinema, let alone the output of second- and third-tier Hong Kong production companies, can be a cinematic minefield. Does this film rival stuff with the Shaw Brothers stamp? Is it Magnificent Butcher? Of course not, but when you’ve seen something as actively bad as Swordsman with an Umbrella and been burned by bargain bin multi-packs, a film like this is a happy accident. The exploitation elements were surprisingly strong too, as debuting director Yi-Jung Hua navigates from x-ray punches, organ gouging, and attempted rape to casual bloodletting and groin attacks. It should be said that not all of these elements revealed themselves on my first watch; after observing some confusing edits during the back-end “boss battles,” I discovered that the film had an uncut version floating around under the title Kung Fu Avengers (detailed here, be wary of spoilers). A simple rewatch of a few select climax scenes probably elevated this film a full point or more.

Make or Break: No matter which cut of the film you watch, the aforementioned sequence of boss battles is the stretch upon which your enjoyment of the film will likely hinge. If you see the Xenon
version, the herky jerky editing and jump cuts to nowhere will probably break the film into a hundred bite-sized pieces. The grisly conclusions in the uncut version, however, make for a satisfying film overall and provide logical extensions to the techniques we observe during training scenes earlier in the film.

Does the Film Have a Random Yuen Biao Appearance?: Yes, it has one.

MVT: I wish I could report that this was *the* Carl Scott film to see, but he’s underutilized here and the awful dubbing doesn’t help matters. Everything about this film is, at minimum, solid. Which is to say, not horrible. This makes it hard to single out any aspect as the most critical, but the fighting is probably the element closest to exceptional. All of the fighters, from Deadly Venom Meng Lo and Alexander Grand to Carl Scott and Feng Ku move well and throw convincing strikes, and the gore at the back end of the film helps to sell the stakes of each fight. The inventive training sequences added a nice visual touch as well. Dig it.
Score: 6.75 / 10

Episode #233: Loren Avedon The King of the Kickboxers

Welcome to a very, very special episode of our little podcast called the GGtMC!!!

This week, with the graceful presence and help of the great Karl Brezdin of Fist of B-List blog fame, we are honored to bring you a review of The King of the Kickboxers (1990) starring Loren Avedon and Billy Blanks. We are also blessed with the presence of Loren for a near 2 hour interview that was just amazing!!!

Check out Loren Avedon in other films as well...No Retreat, No Surrender 2 & 3, Manhattan Chase and Tiger Claws 3....just to name a few!!!

Direct download: ggtmc_233.mp3

 Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!!

2012 in Three Sets of 10: Karl Brezdin Can't Do Math

For me, 2012 was about films which moved me in some meaningful way. Some films made my neurons fire on all cylinders. Others delivered visceral thrills through amazing sequences of movement and light. Many of my favorites, however, squatted brazenly and took a dump on my heart. Among so many others both seen and missed, the films in the list below stamped 2012 as a tremendous year for cinema.

1) Oslo, August 31st
The best film I had on this list for 2011 was Take Shelter. That remained the case up until I saw Steve McQueen’s Shame, starring Carey Mulligan and Michael Fassbender’s penis. Apparently, I’ve got a thing for character-driven thought pieces about addiction, because my favorite film of 2012 is about a recovering heroin addict. Anders Danielsen Lie keeps it in his pants for a terrific lead performance and I was more emotionally invested in this character’s story than any other this year.

2) Holy Motors
If one was looking for a film this year that featured humor, horror, a prosthetic stiffy, hair-eating, and Kylie Minogue, one need look no further than Leos Carax’s Holy Motors. It combines visually fantastical sequences with quasi-episodic storytelling and is highlighted by the wildest performance this year from Denis Lavant (sorry, Joaquin). It’s a dense slab of meta-cinema and its arthouse touches will leave a lot of people cold, but I found it to be one of the richest and most rewarding theater experiences in recent years.

3) This Must Be the Place
Just when I’d forgotten just how terrific Sean Penn can be as a leading man, he goes and gets transformative on us in Paolo Sorrentino’s English-language feature debut. Beyond some awesome David Byrne concert footage and a great performance from Frances McDormand, this is a beautifully shot film that you’ll wish you could hang on the living room wall. There are images from the last 20 minutes that are still etched in my memory.

4) Amour
Michael Haneke does raw and real like few other directors, and this one packs a wallop. Beyond Emmanuelle Riva’s stellar performance, the movie is well-paced and the direction is terrific. The camera barely leaves the apartment in which the couple resides and there’s an almost complete absence of recorded music. This is the end-of-life movie to rule them all. You might want to go out for something cheery like ice cream or whiskey afterwards.

5) Hara-Kiri
If, for some wild reason, Takashi Miike decided to do nothing but samurai period pieces for the rest of his career, we’d be all the richer for it. This remake of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 masterpiece is in good hands. Miike doesn’t shy away from silent moments, he composes his shots beautifully, and handles the emotional qualities of his characters with purpose and care. The first and final acts are incredible filmmaking.

6) The Raid: Redemption
Respectfully, anyone who says this film was by-the-numbers or anything other than a huge step forward for action film might need to give it a rewatch or ten. This features some of the most inventive and sadistic fight choreography in years, with heaps of tension laced between. I look forward to Iko Uwais and Gareth Evans making films together for the next decade and trying to top what was accomplished with this landmark work.

7) Zero Dark Thirty
Due in part to the universal praise this film received, I’ll have to admit that I was chilly on Kathryn Bigelow’s newest joint. The real-life events on which the film is based were so fresh that this reeked of too-soon sensationalism, and I couldn’t help but feel that this was going to be another two-hour commercial for U.S. military might. I couldn’t have been more wrong, though. The film cooks like the finest of police procedurals at a rolling boil for a good 110 minutes before a tense and shadowy climax. Chastain is terrific and you can forgive a few of the WTF cameos because the movie is that good. Captain Jack Harkness AND Scott Adkins?

8) Killer Joe
I haven’t seen The Paperboy yet, so for the time being, this remains my favorite Matthew McConaughey film of the year. His performance as the titular Joe is nuanced and layered, and recalled the menacing and gentlemanly balance on display in Robert Mitchum’s role in The Night of the Hunter. William Friedkin shifts between sleazy and silly tones effortlessly, nudging the audience to alternate between winces and laughter throughout.

9) How to Survive a Plague
The story and struggle of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power and its activist efforts during the early days of the AIDS crisis is powerful, sad, and uplifting all at once. I was especially surprised by the film’s heavy reliance on primary-source archival footage of the group’s meetings and demonstrations. It’s a testament to how well ACT-UP documented itself that the narrative cohesion would have suffered in the absence of it. As a burgeoning professional in the field of archives, it was a personal affirmation that yes, preserving history for future audiences is really fucking important.

10) The Kid with a Bike
There were few debut performances from child actors better than Quvenzhané Wallis this year, but Thomas Doret as the restless, abandoned character of Cyril was one of them. All the layers of this boy’s hurt -- rage, sadness, and distrust -- are peeled back and made palpable by skillful direction from the Dardenne brothers and Doret’s steely demeanor. This one hit all the right emotional beats for me and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a little dust in the room during the last 15 minutes of this film.

The Best of the Rest

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
End of Watch
The Master
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
5 Broken Cameras
Kill List
Polisse
Sleepwalk with Me
John Dies at the End

Searching for Sugar Man
The Deep Blue Sea
Entrance
Argo
Cannibal Warlords of Liberia
Safety Not Guaranteed
Django Unchained
The Imposter
The Loneliest Planet
Beasts of the Southern Wild

Death Force (1978): Review

Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Starring James Iglehart, Carmen Argenziano, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Jayne Kennedy, Joe Mari Avellana. Rated PG.

**Review may contain light spoilers.**

At various points in life, we’ve all had friends screw us over in some way. People who never returned borrowed copies of Excitebike (Wayne), others who pinched liberally from your stash (Steve), and varsity athletes who hooked up with your date the night of senior prom (fuck you, Tim). Despite transgressions like these, I’ve been fortunate that none of my friends tried to stab me to death and leave me in the middle of the ocean. Doug Russell, worthy protagonist in Cirio H. Santiago’s 1978 blaxploitation film Death Force (a.k.a. Fighting Mad) is not so lucky, however.

Three Vietnam War buddies are on their way back to the States after their combat service and have a large shipment of stolen gold to show for it. After selling off the loot to a shady buyer played by Santiago regular Vic Diaz, the three veterans are reveling in their new wealth aboard a boat to Manila. One partner, Morelli (Argenziano) has immediate designs on using the money to take over the Los Angeles underworld. He suggests to McGee (Penitentiary’s Leon Isaac Kennedy) that their partner, Russell, can’t be included in such plans since he’s a family man heading home to a wife and baby. But instead of giving Russell (Iglehart) his slice of the pie and letting him make a new life, they scheme to cut him out of the money right then and there. McGee distracts Russell as Morelli sneaks behind him and slices his throat and the two dump their former friend into the open sea.

Russell soon washes up on an island occupied by two Japanese soldiers marooned there since just after World War II. While the Japanese soldier has light comic streaks and is largely utilitarian -- catching and cooking fish, fetching drinking water -- the general is a samurai master prone to waxing nostalgic about Joe DiMaggio. They treat the burly American soldier’s wounds and are able to nurse him back to health. How he didn’t attract sharks or completely bleed out while drifting for hours in the ocean with multiple stab wounds is never touched upon, but Santiago could give a shit about our scientific logic. In time, the general trains Russell in the art of the samurai and transforms his clumsy sword swiping into slightly less-clumsy lethal force. His skill becomes so deadly, in fact, that he can slice coconuts clean in half as they are slowly lobbed to him.

Meanwhile, McGee and Morelli have begun their violent takeover of the L.A. drug trade, including a particularly humorous scene where they show up to a poker room in pinstripe suits and brandish tommy guns like some 1920s rum-runners. McGee eventually begins putting the moves on Russell’s wife after telling her that he died in combat. Played by model and actress Jayne Kennedy, Maria is a sultry night lounge singer struggling to find new work. Despite her need for financial stability, she continually resists McGee’s sleazy attempts to exert his influence over her and replace Russell as her caretaker. What’s interesting about his increasingly menacing behavior towards her is that the two performers were a married couple of eight years at the time of the film’s release. We can’t be certain which real-life experiences Leon chose to mine from when working up rage for his scenes with her, but I’m sure they came from a “honey do” list.

 

Shortly after the Japanese general declares Russell’s samurai training over and tells him to use his skills “for peace [and] not for the cause of vengeance,” Doug books it out of that shitty island and goes back to the States for bloody, head-choppy revenge. Most of the second and third acts consist of Russell tearing through his former friends’ crime organization, and while the choreography during these scenes isn’t extraordinary, the action has a raw and loose charm. The musclebound James Iglehart cuts a very imposing figure and moves pretty well for a guy of his size, but at times looks like a drunk hippo on ice skates. In a few instances that recall Peter O’Brian in The Stabilizer, our hero literally slips and trips over himself while trying to fight off the baddies. Thankfully, Santiago gives Iglehart and the stunt crew a number of sets to wreck, and they often spend as much time destroying props as they do fighting each other.

There are some awesomely cheesy death scenes in the run-up to the inevitable showdown between our hero and the dickheads who did him wrong. Morelli gets increasingly paranoid and unhinged as Russell works his way up the ranks, getting so flustered at one point that he can’t correctly put a phone back on the hook. While Kennedy portrays a pretty sleazy villain in McGee, I thought Argenziano was clearly the best performer in the film. Their gang may be a two-headed monster on paper, but he plays his character with a heavy anger that signals alpha dog status. Some actors make good creeps, others make good heroes, and judging by a sampling of his film roles, Argenziano’s character type is authority figures. It also doesn’t hurt that he sports a quality moustache and a pretty dense tuft of chest hair through most of the film. That stuff lets you know who’s in charge.

While the shot composition is fairly solid throughout, the biggest critique I can make of the film is that a number of night-time and interior shots are very poorly lit. This is only compounded by the rather poor quality of the edition I watched, as the film lacks a proper/official DVD release. Despite the obvious low budget nature of the film, Santiago still manages to create an engrossing blaxploitation revenge tale with good performances, good action, and reasonably compelling characters. A definite early gem from his catalog and one I would recommend without hesitation for exploitation fans.

Make or Break: Training scenes have the potential to really sink films, so the first beach scene between a recovered Russell and the Japanese general definitely made it for me. After the general describes the samurai code and his allegiance to his Emperor, Russell treats it all very lightly and makes wisecracks in response. Feeling disrespected, the general tosses the bigger and stronger Russell to the ground like a sack of potatoes to assert his authority. It sets the tone for the rest of the training scenes between master and pupil.

MVT: Carmen Argenziano as Morelli. As mentioned, Kennedy gives a really solid villain performance but I just thought Argenziano was operating at a different level. Morelli plants the seeds that set the story in motion and he projects authority in his interactions with cops, underlings, other criminals, and especially with McGee, his allegedly equal partner. While McGee does a lot of the sleazy asshole things that the audience requires to validate Russell’s revenge, you get the sense that Morelli is masterminding all of it.

Score: 7.25/10

Death Force is a solid 70s actioner that would please most fans of Filipino exploitation film and is a definite watch for anyone who digs the films of Cirio H. Santiago. While his filmography is short, James Iglehart also starred in Bamboo Gods and Iron Men and teamed up with Santiago previously for 1973’s Savage! It’s a bit of a shame he didn’t turn into a bigger star, but he’s in fine form here and definitely rates as one of the underrated heroes of 1970s action cinema.