As far as the creativity goes, I see I was wrong, Cheh Cheng is one creative dude.
One of the things I really like about Five Deadly Venoms is that opening scene where the various venoms are introduced. It's so stylized and cool, as if the old master is telling the tale and what we see is the young pupils imagination of what he is being told. It's a real moodsetter, even though it takes up so little of the running time, it's effects saturates the rest of the narrative. Just imagine the movie without those moments, it just wouldn't be the same, the ambiance would be completely diffrent. It's one of those examples of a little bit of craftsmanship and creativity impacting the overall film a lot.
And the whole narrative overall is just cool as well.
Five Element Ninjas (1982)
Five Element Ninjas is a cursed film for me. Every copy of it that has fallen into my hands has been deficit in some way. Sound and picture out-of-synch and such things. Happy that at least you've managed to see it.
Ah man,
Crippled Avengers. What the fuck was that movie? It was one of those films where you asked yourself, "Seriously, this
actually exists"!?
I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. The film starts with a villain de-arming a little kid. It's supposed to be this really horrible moment but it's just so goofily done that it becomes hilarious.
And the rest of the violence is so hilarious over-the-top too. That metal-arms guy obliterates bones like Shane Carwin obliterates brains.
Ip Man did this really great scene where Donnie Yen breaks the bones of his opponents -- yet's Crippled Avengers does the same but it's fucking hysterical because of how bad it is.
But overall... it was just such an undignified film. The whole crippled martial artists angle came off as so crass that it irked me (especially that mentally retarded guy). Unlike something like say,
One Armed Boxer (1972) where I just laughed the whole way through.
That was one of those lines that always stuck with me. So juvenile but just the context and delivery of it was so fun.
but Sammo Hung plays a prominent role in the film as well.
I'm going to say something that will force me to hand in my HK film-fan card. I wasn't cognizant of the fact that that was Sammo Hung until now.
I guess I just assumed it was some random pudgy Chinese guy. In hindsight... shit he is pretty hard to miss!
When I first saw it, I guess I was most familiar with Majestic Eyebrows (of
Big Trouble in Little China fame, where he also played Majestic Eyebrows). But yeah Angela Mao really is the star of that show -- and I remember thinking that her fights were quite thrilling indeed.
but what really made the experience interesting was the plot... it's almost identical to Bruce Lee's "The Chinese Connection, aka Fists of Fury", yet Hapkido only came out almost 9 months earlier.
I didn't really think about that either when I first saw it.
But HK kung fu productions can be so formulaic that one gets a bit dull at noticing things like that. Costumes and archetypes are so ubiquitous that you get blind to the similarities between pieces as anything other than genre-trappings. Wasn't the hapkido master-costume also in both films, as it's a common costume in many other films.?
Still haven't been able to see that one despite searching
and unlike Cheng Pei-pei, who I like and I'm not trying to bash,
If I'm allowed to do some haphazard theorization in here. I listened to the audio commentery that Pei-Pei did for
Come Drink With Me (alongside our main-man Bey Logan). In it she spoke a few words on the Celebrity Culture of Hong Kong cinema. Back then, it was the women who were the stars, the celebrities, the ones who were top-billed and recieved special threatment (until that scoundrel Bruce Lee came along and mucked it all up!)
Looking at some of her roles, like say,
That Fiery Girl, I'd almost wager that Pei-Pei was threated more like an celebrity off-and-on screen, while Angela Mao was handled more like an martial artist. The roles that Cheng were chosen for does seem to contain a bit more of glamour than you'd expect from someone in the martial world.
there's a whole Kickboxer-esque plot about Muay Thai, which, of all the martial arts featured in the movies that came out back then
Chang Cheh did a Muay Thai centric movie.
Death Ring from 1983. If memory serves it was really awful though, and really misinformed on how Muay Thai is supposed to work.
There was a Muay Thai fighter in Master of the Flying Guillotine right?
As long as we're name-dropping Kung Fu movies with Muay Thai in them,
One Armed Boxer feutured a duo. Whom hilariously enough did a spastic version of the
wai khru ram muay before every fight, accompanied by traditional music, of course.
I've been wanting to catch this
If you watch it and end up enjoying it, feel free to add me to your enemy list.
Finally got round to seeing Paths of Glory last night, what a film...
Man I straight-out missed the very existence of this post by like a week. I feel kinda bad about it.
Yeah,
Paths of Glory is just superb in that way only Kubrick's films can be superb. It sorts of feels like the product of a younger, more raw Kubrick, from the time when he was still angry with the world. The emotions, statements and messages are presented more openly unlike his later career when he would mask them with decorum and subtilty. Lots of his movies contain some sort of negative portrayal of the powerful and wealthy -- those in power -- but in Glory his loathing is laid out right in the open.
I was really put-off that movie for some reason. I agree that certain scenes where, in plain wording, great. The scenes feutering Eddie and Fats sportsmanlike rivalry was really good. But it was so... haplessly predictable. It felt as if we were just going through the motions. There is no catharsis, or peaks-and-valleys or anything, you just stocally go through everything until the ending. I've sort of had this problem with many Paul Newman films, like
Hud for example which I watched recently. There is just something in the tone that is off-putting to me.
eventually realized some were on Netflix (in Canada
You get Hong Kong classics on Canadian Netflix? Swedish Netflix is mostly the standard fare from the 90's and 00's Hollywood productions...