Vomit fetish, anyone?

Since I don't think I could get a full blog post out of telling you that my cat likes asparagus (although that is true and I kid ye not), I guess I'll just give ya some more random movie reviews, without theme.

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Boxer's Omen, The (C, 1983) aka Mo. Mind-boggling Shaw Brothers craziness full of bizarre special effects. When his brother's neck is broken by bad-sport Thai kickboxer Bolo Yeung, Chen Hung swears revenge and starts seeing mystical symbols and priests. A guy rots away and coughs up a bat puppet, which a black magician and Buddhist priest battle over. The black magician casts over spells using a rotting human head covered with entrails, which leads to spider attacks that kill a monk. The monk's mummified body later tells Chen Hung that their fates are intertwined, and when he decays, Chen Hung will die. Chen vomits a live eel and becomes a monk. He battles the black magician, who eats entrails, sends alligator skulls to attack Chen, and even sends his own decapitated head to try to strangle Chen with his neck veins. Chen wins and resumes his boxing career, but other black magicians gather, resurrect a girl by sewing her inside an alligator and then eating regurgitated banana peels and chicken anuses (no special effects in some of that -- just actors with strong stomachs), and they blind him. He has to face them (even though he cheated and had sex since the last duel), and to do so he has to travel to Nepal to get a sacred Buddhist relic. Then things get so crazy that I'm giving up on trying to describe them; you just have to see it, it's like a fever dream on psilocibin. Not much of a plot, but since it's mostly a vehicle for weird, no-limits-of-imagination special effects, it doesn't need one. Essential, gory cinematic psychosis that nothing can prepare you for. I fell asleep during this once and had the freakiest dream...



Manhunt (C, 1972) aka The Italian Connection, Black Kingpin, Hired to Kill, Hitmen, Manhunt in Milan, Manhunt in the City. The mob in Milan hires a couple of American hitmen (Henry Silva and Woody Strode) to kill a small-time pimp named Luca Cannale. The reasons why aren't completely clear, but it appears to be something about making him the scapegoat for a bunch of dope-money skimming between the Italian mob and its American faction; how that's supposed to work is a mystery, but these mob guys look more brutal than smart. Anyway, the whole city's soon after Luca and his wife and daughter are murdered, and Luca goes from being a silly, oily sugar-pimp to a fear-driven killing machine, beating and shooting dozens of men out of sheer desperation. His main offensive move seems to be the head-butt; not only does he head-butt his would-be assassins, but also crushes a wall phone and shatters the windshield of a speeding car. He also uses the crane at an auto wrecking yard as a murder weapon. Lots of great action scenes and some memorable characters help distinguish this Italian crime/bad-haircut shoot 'em up. It's on the Action Classics 50 movie DVD set, even though the packaging misidentifies it as an old Western.




Whole movie:


Protect Your Daughters (B&W, 1933) aka Reckless Decision, Suspicious Mothers. Pre-code morals expose of overprotective parents and their drunken hard-partying kids. One mom fears for her daughter because she stays out all night and wears raggedy panties. Her best friend Beth seems like a much nicer girl because she's promised her preacher father to not get married until she's twenty-two. Preacher dad rails against "modern young rowdies headed for Perdition" (girls on bicycles with big ol' shorts on) and does fiery sermons against kids who were caught during a raid on a speakeasy, unaware that his good little Beth was one of them. Furthermore, Beth has secretly gotten married to her boyfriend when she was too drunk to remember it. Despite all the debauchery, the parents decide they were wrong and the kids are alright after all! Go figure.


Singapore Sling (B&W, 1990) Unique, bizarre, and (unfortunately for me since I'm determined to attempt it) hard to describe sickie directed by Nikos Nikolaidis. It's either a sleaze film trying to pass itself off as art, or an art film trying to be sleaze, but whatever it is it's at least partially a tribute to the film noir classic Laura, and maybe Pasolini's Salo. A detective who's been shot in the shoulder while trying to track down a girl named Laura ends up in the clutches of the people who may have killed her: a crazy-as-tequila-worms incestuous mother-daughter duo who are into all sorts of extreme sexual perversions. They like to vomit in his face during sex, or tie him to the bed and shock him so he'll convulse while being screwed, pee in his face, and more. It's likely to get worse, because when he showed up they were burying the badly-disemboweled-but-still-alive body of another guy. While they keep him captive they enact weird scenarios, either for his benefit or as part of the games they play with each other. Sometimes they talk to the camera. There are lots of messy eating scenes and some fairly graphic masturbating with handfuls of fruit. The plot is too art-crazy to be very compelling, so the film tries to stay interesting via the visuals (the black and white cinematography is excellent, and each frame is artfully composed). Overall it's pretty pointless, but it's worth watching for the weirdness. All of the twisted goings-on would probably be unbearable under most circumstances, but the tone of the whole film is completely surrealist comedy and can't be taken seriously enough to really offend... well, offend me, anyway -- your mileage may vary. Even all the vomiting came across as more silly than gross. So, even with the subject matter, I wouldn't rate this as one of the ultra-disturbing movies (like Irreversible or the All Night Long or Guinea Pig flicks or whatever) -- it's closer to the Happiness camp. Still, though, despite the high level of craftsmanship, I doubt the makers of Laura would be too flattered by this homage.



Single White Female (C, 1992) Bridget Fonda dumps her boyfriend because he cheated on her (if I'd been him I'd've dumped her for having the most asshole-looking haircut ever) and she moves out and gets a new roomate, Jennifer Jason Leigh. At first JJL seems mousy and shy, and they bond. Then Bridget gets back together with her Significant Dipshit, and JJL reveals herself to be possessive, obsessive, and maybe worse. She starts trying to take over Bridget's life, buying clothes like hers and even copying that awful bedwetter haircut; that's a definite commitment to one's psychosis, especially since it makes her look like a redheaded Matthew Laborteaux (Albert from Little House on the Prairie). After trying to manipulate Bridget's life to keep herself part of it, JJL resorts to swinging sharp objects, including spike heels, knives, bailing hooks, etc. Enthralling and intense even if it runs toward cliche by the end.



Want to read more things I say that are perhaps stupid and about farts and nipple tissue and the things that can be done with baby ducklings? Maybe you can find them at my twitter feed.