Really Awful Movies

In the mood for a film where the hero gets his ass beaten down more times than Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid and bawls more often than Tammy Faye Baker? How about a film where the titular character appears for less than 20 minutes total and hardly utters a word? If so than Chinese Hercules is the film for you!

Wai-Man Chan plays Shen Wei (according to IMDb) although in my badly dubbed version it sounds more like Chung Sun. I’ve also seen him referred to as Lee Hsi. Evidently the man has more names than Puff Daddy. Chan’s character is not the titular Chinese Hercules. Not even close. The man who will be henceforth referred to as “our hero” probably weighs less then 110 pounds soaking wet. But his lack of mass and musculature is well-compensated for by his overwhelming cowardice and torment, resulting from the time he killed his fiancée’s brother using his “hands made of blood.” Upon realizing how deadly a weapon his fists were, our hero disappeared faster than Donald Trump’s hairpiece in a wind tunnel, vowing never to raise his fists of fury in battle ever again.

He escapes his village and attempts to start a new, more peaceful life as a dock worker in a coastal town. He certainly doesn’t want any more trouble, but to paraphrase Frank Zappa, there’s just no way to delay trouble’s comin’ everyday. And in this case trouble arrives in the form of the controller of the pier, the chain-smoking, ever-smirking Boss Chan. Chan makes a deal with the syndicate. They want exclusive rights to the pier and demand the workers gone pronto – no severance and no two-week’s notice.

For want of a Norma Rae, the dock workers are helpless and have nowhere to go. Hence, they are forced to submit to repeated beatings by the nefarious boss and his henchman. Our hero wants to help his friends and even half-heartedly steps in a time or two, but his guilt and sheer wussiness are stronger than his desire for self-preservation. As a result, he gets his ass whupped repeatedly, taking more beatings over the course of the film’s 90 minutes than famed-jobber Iron Mike Sharpe took throughout the entirety of his wrestling career.

Usually in films such as this, the protagonist gets pushed and pushed until he just can’t take it any more. Usually. But not our hero. The little guy is such a pacifist (wuss), he makes Mahatma Gandhi look like John Rambo. I lost count of how many times he appears ready to finally throw down but instead woefully stares at his fists and weeps like a baby before literally running away like a little bitch.

So just who is this Chinese Hercules? “The First and Only Muscle-Mad Monster of the Martial Arts” is played by the great Bolo Yeung. The former Mr. Hong Kong and star of Enter the Dragon and Bloodsport is Boss Chan’s chief henchman: a bone-cracking, head-crushing, body-breaking, one-man wrecking crew. Bolo and his sweaty pecs finally appear in the last act of the film to lay some serious smack on the poor, beleaguered dock-workers.

They attempt to take down Bolo (who for some reason has always reminded me of Garry Shandling) using the ancient Chinese fighting technique of let’s-attack-him-one-person-at-a-time, but it’s hopeless. Bolo crushes their puny little heads like so many ripe nectarines. Our hero, ready to run away once more, is goaded by his ex-fiancée who reprimands him for being such a big baby. “You may die,” she says, “but at least you’ll die a man!” Finally, our hero steps in and the big boss battle is on!

It’s an ok fight as far as big boss battles go (let’s face it – Wai Man Chan is no Bruce Lee) but it is notable for the Cigarette Flick of Doom. As Bolo and our hero throw down, Boss Chan sits on the sidelines, smirking and smoking as is his wont. Our hero has Bolo on the ropes and is about to drop a barrel on him when Boss flicks his cigarette at our hero, ever-so barely grazing his forehead. This heinous act, rendered in super slow-motion, is so devastating it causes our hero to drop the barrel and gives Bolo time to recover and get a few more licks in.

In the end, our little hero, probably while continuously chanting to himself “I think I can” manages to defeat the big bad Bolo and Boss Chan to boot. The remaining dock workers are able return to their lives of common toil and drudgery in peace.

Chinese Hercules, unfortunately, does not live up to the gleeful promise of its title. The Hercules is barely in it, the head-crushings are bloodless, and the hero does more bawling than brawling. Not terrible, but could have been so much better.

** (out of five)

Holy Trombone! The Town that Dreaded Sundown sequel cum remake is actually pretty good. Said with such surprise as multiplexes are presently lousy with unnecessary remakes and reboots of horror classics that just don’t cut the mustard nor have any inkling or understanding of what may have made the originals so successful. For every successful re imagining such as the 2012 Elijah Wood starring Maniac, there are countless lame, pointless films whose only raison d’etre for being made is that the filmmakers could. Thankfully, The Town That Dreaded Sundown 2014, while not perfect, is not one of them.

TTTDS ’14 is a strange hybrid in that it both loosely retells the events of the original film of the same name and furthers the story. Hence, it’s both a little bit country and a little bit rock n’ roll. Of course, the story stems from the real-life 1946 “Texarkana Moonlight Murders” that claimed the lives of five people, terrorized a small town, and to this day remains unsolved. And as we noted in our review of the original, the accuracy of the retelling of the actual events in the 1976 film have been criticized for being dubious at best.

The film begins on Halloween night 2013. Sixty-five years later, and the small town of Texarkana is still coping with the original “Phantom” killer murder spree. This is a world where the original TTTDS film exists, and indeed the film is shown repeatedly in Texarkana, much like a latter day Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is at one such Halloween drive-in showing that we meet our plucky heroine Jami, played by the uber-likable Addison Timlin. Jami and her date leave the showing early to park in a secluded grove for a little pre-marital fornication. Quicker than a 17 –year old schoolboy on a first date, a familiar burlap-sacked figure enters the frame. He demands Jami and her boyfriend exit the vehicle and the killing spree begins anew. Jami is left alive with the orders to “Make them remember.” Is it a copycat or has the original Phantom killer returned to finish what he started over half a century ago?

What’s most interesting about this version is how it incorporates and intersperses footage from the original film to mirror the latter-day Texarkana terror. There are also some familiar elements that return such as a Texas Ranger charging in to spearhead the investigation (although Anthony Anderson is certainly no Ben Johnson.) The famous trombone kill is also recreated, albeit much less successfully than in the first. The kills in general are gorier and more brutal than in the predecessor, including one juicy bit where the Phantom uses the severed head of one of his victims, a returning soldier, to break the window of the motel room where the unfortunate Leatherneck’s girlfriend is waiting. We are also treated to shinbones breaking through flesh, bullets through eyes, throat slits and stabbings aplenty, and a nice bit of train-track mutilation.

As the spree continues, Jami’s investigation leads her to the son of original Town director Charles B. Pierce, Charles B. Pierce Jr., played by Denis O’ Hare of American Horror Story fame. Jr. is an eccentric individual who lives off the grid in a boat docked in a field in the middle of nowhere. His domicile is filled with original TTDS memorabilia including posters, commemorative mugs and the actual sack worn by the original actor in the original film, who remember, is not the original killer. Like everybody else, Jr. has his own theories as to who the current Phantom may be and why the murders have begun again.

Unlike the 1976 film, this one requires a dénouement, and the revelation of who’s hiding under the sack as well as the motive is all a bit Scooby-Doo. The film eschews the somewhat portentous voiceover and quasi-documentary, Cinéma vérité feel of the original for a more traditional structure. In doing so, it also jettisons much of the original’s creepy, deserted Hicksville atmosphere. Nonetheless, TTTDS ’14 is also much less campy and more brutal than the original. Still, it’s the film’s meta-like fiction blurring with reality blurring with fiction as well as the filmmaker’s obvious reverence for the original which make this remake/update a winner.

*** (out of five)