Enter the Dragon (1973)

The British secret services convince Shaolin martial arts master Lee (Bruce Lee) to attend a martial arts tournament taking place on the fortress island of international drug lord and all around evildoer Han (Shih Kien). Since Han has disgraced the shaolin martial arts he once studied, and also murdered Lee’s sister (Angela Mao in a short but sweet flashback), there’s quite a bit of motivation provided for our hero to destroy Han’s operation.

Han for his part mostly uses the tournament as a way for recruitment, but at least two of the other martial artists, blaxploitation movie protagonist Williams (Jim Kelly) and roguish adventurer Roper (John Saxon) will turn out to be just as unhappy with their host’s lifestyle as Lee is, and thus make for natural allies.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to say that Bruce Lee never meant as much to my appreciation of martial arts cinema as he did to other people. Despite his obvious talent, the movie star image first approach he tended to take – and which fit Hollywood much better than it did Hong Kong – always did rub me the wrong way a little.

Which isn’t to say Enter the Dragon is not a fantastically successful attempt at mixing Hong Kong style martial arts, blaxploitation and spy adventure in the Ian Fleming style. This is one of those movies that seem to absolutely embody the sprit of 70s exploitation cinema (which has always been, and will always be, on of the loves of my life). There’s very little here that isn’t enjoyable – from the fights, to the gimmicks, the so wonderfully of its time production design, to the breathing noises so loud, Sonny Chiba heard them over in Japan and decided to make them even more absurd. The film is carried by a spirit of generosity towards its audience, really going all out to not just belong in half a dozen genres or so, but to provide a viewer with everything they could wish for from every single one of them.

And all that from a director like Robert Clouse who usually doesn’t understand pacing, or style, or how to direct action. Well, looked at objectively, for most of the film, it isn’t actually Clouse doing much of the heavy lifting, but the choreography, the production design and a gang of actors that appear to have a great amount of fun; the director for mostly tries not to get in the way of what he has. Which, given most of Clouse’s other films, I can’t help but wish he’d used as an approach more often.

Darker than Amber (1970)

Florida boat-dwelling beach buds Travis McGee (Rod Taylor) and Meyer (Theodore Bikel) are managing to save a mysterious woman (Suzy Kendall), tied to an anchor, who has been dropped down the bridge they were fishing under.

As readers of the novels this is based on know, Travis really doesn’t like that going to the police or the hospital stuff normal people do in reaction in this sort of situation, so he and Meyer take care of the woman - who will eventually disclose her name to be “Vangie” - and her wounds. She’s not going to tell them anything about why someone tried to murder her, and so it’s clear to Travis early on that she was involved in something illegal.

Of course, Travis’s sensitive macho ways and Vangie’s lost girl number fit each other perfectly, romantically seen, and the inevitable happens once they’ve gotten to know each other. Alas, Vangie decides to return to her old haunts to fetch some money (living off Travis’s seemingly endless supply of cash forever isn’t really her thing) and is killed by the charming personality responsible for the whole anchor business, Terry (William Smith with the fakest blond dye job imaginable, which is actually a plot point).

Again, Travis doesn’t do police, so he starts investigating his lover’s death and the nature of the trouble she was involved in on his own, eventually getting even with Terry and his partners with a needlessly complicated – and therefore perfectly awesome - plan.

This is one of only two movie adaptations of the much-loved Travis McGee series by John D. Macdonald. I’ve never been as fond of the books as many readers seem to be, mostly because I find the author’s inability to see that his hero, with his habit of murdering a book’s bad guy and ritually dumping his victim’s corpse in the ocean, is at least bordering on being a serial killer, and because McGee generally comes over as a self-righteous prick, 70s macho version, again without his author seeming to recognize this. Which rather puts a damper on the novels’ effective – if often overwrought – plotting and period mood for me.

On the movie side of this affair, I’ve also never had much time for Darker then Amber’s director Robert Clouse, whose movies I’d generally describe as bland at best, usually badly paced, dubiously edited and staged with disinterest. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that I have rather a lot of time for Darker than Amber. It’s not that Clouse reveals himself as a great director here, but he is certainly working competently enough inside of the idiom of early 70s crime cinema, never doing anything clever with clichés, but realizing them well enough, I’m perfectly okay with the lack of trying to reinvent the wheel.

Pacing still wasn’t Clouse’s strong point even here at his best, so a viewer has to expect some dragging of feet and some needless reiteration of things you already got the first two times. On the other hand, there are a couple of cracking, grim and brutal action scenes here. Particularly the final fistfight between Travis and Terry comes to mind there, which looks so brutal, Taylor and Smith have told in various interviews they were having an actual fight and weren’t laughed off by anyone. Actors, of course, have no tendency of using a good in for a bit of self-mythologizing whatsoever, so the story must be true.

Taylor is a curious choice for the sensitive thug role of McGee, mostly because he’s not exactly great at selling the first part of the description, but he also embodies a particular kind of machismo that’s part and parcel for the character type perfectly; never in a way that’ll question any of the assumptions of being a 70s macho man, obviously, but as a human time capsule of the type, he’s pretty perfect. Particularly when contrasted with Smith, who simply turns up Taylor’s ten and a half up to eleven, finding the place where “man of his time” turns into “outright violent psychopath” and really getting his teeth in.

Seen from today, a lot of this very un-questioned macho posturing will look uncomfortable to some (and understandably so), but as a pulp fantasy of this particular kind of violent machismo, I find Darker than Amber rather hard to beat.

In short: Deadly Eyes (1982)

This City, Canada. After authorities, as represented by department of health agent Kelly Leonard (Sara Botsford) and Scatman Crothers, burn a steroid-infested ship-load of corn, the rats that have been living on said corn move into the city. This will turn out to be a dachshund-sized problem, for their special diet has turned them into rats as big as dachshunds and rather aggressive ones to boot. So soon, they begin eating children and the elderly.

Kelly rather quickly cops to what’s going on but the mayor (perhaps the place is called Amity?) and her boss just won’t believe her. But hey, at least she’ll acquire a new boyfriend, hunky teacher Paul Harris (Sam Groom) during the proceedings. Unless a) they are eaten by dachshundsrats or b) Paul just can’t resist the advances of his student Trudy (Lisa Langlois). Trudy thinks Paul’s so sophisticated because he has travelled and stuff and is apparently convinced that Paul being divorced means he understands women. Well, Trudy’s a cheerleader, not a budding intellectual, so what do you expect?

I’m not sure why you’d acquire the rights to James Herbert’s (at least in Europe) best-selling novel The Rats to then move its action from a grubby pulpy London to a nameless (unless it’s really called This City, which is the name its mayor likes to use) Canadian city? But then, I, unlike the makers of this very special movie, am also less than convinced that portraying one’s mildly giant rats by putting dachshunds in costumes (well, and by using pretty crappy puppets for close-ups) is a swell idea, so what do I know.

The dachshund thing is of course what Robert Clouse’s Deadly Eyes is most famous for, and it’s really fair too. There certainly is more than just a little charm to watching a horde of what is most obviously small dogs setting out to murder people. Oh, let’s be honest, it’s absolutely frigging hilarious, as are the script’s attempts at writing teenagers. Hearing Trudy speak and breaking into a fit of laughter are pretty much the same thing, while her attempts at seducing her teacher merrily skip over making one uncomfortable into even more hilarity. I’m also very fond of Sam Groom apparently being to This City, Canada what Tom Atkins is to the world of John Carpenter – the (inexplicably) sexiest man alive.

At the same time, there’s the heart of a really ruthless little horror film (and an actual adaptation of the Herbert novel) hidden away under the never-ending barrage of funny dialogue, the sort of film that has no trouble murdering children and the elderly. Of course, the comedic quality of the rat attacks and the even more comedic dialogue demolish any hopes of taking the film seriously.

However, the film’s just too funny complain about that.

Three Films Make A Post: EVERY SECOND YOUR PULSE POUNDS THEY GROW FOOT BY INCREDIBLE FOOT!

The Pack (1977): By now, I’m quite sure that Robert Clouse’s films and my approval shall never meet beyond Gymkata. This is even the case with what should be a shoe-in as a movie to at least slightly disturb a guy like me who gets pretty nervous around larger dogs (I blame a certain Doberman of my past). Unfortunately, The Pack’s dogs never do end up making me nervous, or feel as threatening as they should, mostly because Clouse isn’t one for mood building in his direction at all. He’s pointing, he’s shooting, he’s keeping things in focus, but beyond that, I always get the impression from his films he just wasn’t that interested in them himself. That’s not much of a problem in a film as insane as Gymkata that isn’t hindered by a lack of directorial vision, but in a tepid little nature strikes back film like this, you really want someone behind the camera who works for his audience’s excitement.

But at least Joe Don Baker is in it playing, of all things, a marine biologist (don’t ask), so there’s that.

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959): This, on the other hand, is quite the thing, as macabre a 50s film as you’ll probably get to see, full of outrageous pulp ideas, and one of Edward L. Cahn’s most energetic directorial efforts.

Sure, the performances are somewhat mediocre, but who needs great thespian efforts in a film that features a most excellent shrunken head based curse and has no problems at all with throwing stuff like post-mortem decapitation, a living dead guy with stitched up lips whose bodily fluids contain more curare than blood, and another gentleman whose body belongs to a dead Amazonian tribesman and whose head is that of a mad anthropologist? This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call art.

A Dirty Carnival (2006): Yoo Ha’s gangster film mixes the traditions of classical US gangster movies made after the fall of the US studio system and of jitsuroku style yakuza films, aiming for its own kind of stylized hyperrealism. It’s a film that knows how many gangster movies its audience has probably already seen, yet somehow still manages to aim for and hit an audience’s emotions instead of the irony glands. Which I think is a particular achievement in a film that counts a director making a gangster movie among its cast, and therefore threatens to become much too meta and self-conscious for comfort. A part of the film does indeed concern itself with truth and fiction echoing one another, but it’s done quite intelligently and with so much care, this approach enriches the film as a tale instead of resulting in the empty poses of ironic distance.

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