Legendary Weapons of China (1982)

Thanks to El Rey Network on Sling TV, I've been watching a ton of Kung-Fu movies lately. And in doing so, realized I haven't really reviewed one here.

This classic Shaw Brothers film includes some of the most important elements of any great kung-fu movie. Sure, you expect great fight choreography. Maybe you also expect a bit of comedy (like the many great Jackie Chan films, you know...before they weren't so great anymore). Well, this one has all the right elements of entertainment, without going full-on comedy throughout. Though, you WILL laugh...

To hit all the appropriate notes of a great kung-fu film, this one features:

Super-shiny metal weapons!

The elaborately choreographed intro is a given.

...the use of Chi!

...and students sacrificing themselves needlessly!

Yes, that guy suicided by ripping out his own crotch.

Sadly, though, the movie does not include a White-Haired Evil Dude.

What I'm getting at is this kung-fu flick is all kinds of the awesome type of weird. It's got Gordon Liu making his students invincible to everything (except bullets).

He puts paper on their wounds to...heal them, I guess?

Anyway. The premise finds members of a secret society competing to kill a traitor to keep him from exposing their big bad secret: the society's magic and supernatural kung-fu arts can't, in fact, stop bullets. The inclusion of this magic stuff adds some of the best, weirdest elements of the film.

Voodoo Kung Fu, anyone?

But there's also little nuggets of strange translation, like how they say "pugilism" instead of "kung-fu" quite a lot throughout the film.

My Shoulder-Blade Pugilism Style is STRONG!

Or where two people spit on Gordon Liu's hat to simulate rain.

What I'm getting at is: this movie has it all. Great fight choreography. Absurdity galore. Gordon Liu. And all the "legendary weapons."

Seriously, the last thirty minutes are insane kung-fu awesomeness. So many weapons, with such a mixture of choreography. Everything prior is just a build-up to the last two fights, and because of that, this is a Shaw Brothers gem.

Legendary Weapons of China can be seen regularly on El Rey Network's rotation of Thursday's "Flying Five Finger One Armed Exploding Death Touch" line-up. Or purchased cheaply on Amazon.

Blood of Heroes AKA Salute of the Jugger (1989)

Have you ever wondered whether there'll be sports after the apocalypse? Do you worry atomic wars that mostly eradicate mankind might disrupt the football season?

Well, take heart, post-apocalyptic sports fans, because Rutger Hauer has come to answer your question with a resounding..."SPORTS WILL STILL SPORT AFTER SOCIETY CRUMBLES!"

Yes, Rutger Hauer (most notably of Blade Runner and Hobo with a Shotgun) plays in a competitive sport where five people work together to place a dog's skull on a spike to score. The timekeeper chucks stones at a metal plate until someone wins, or until 100 stones are tossed. There are two blockers. One guy swinging a chain. And the "quick" whose job is to grab the skull and place it on the spike.

"Touchdown"

It's not unlike football. For example, violence is encouraged, but the players generally have enough respect for one another to avoid gratuitous injury where possible. But, honestly, it's not exactly like football either, since most of them are wielding weapons of some sort.

Swinging a chain...swinging a chain.

So, first let's talk about the pieces, then we'll talk about the whole pie.

Rutger Hauer is the grizzled veteran of the sport. He's seen some shit, man. And he's got a vendetta to boot. Regardless of his motivation in this particular film, the man can do no wrong in my book. He is on the level of a Peter Cushing. No matter how bad the film, the script, or the directing, these are actors that elevate every single frame of the film they are in. They have a presence that is unparalleled.

Just like Peter Cushing can hold a screen presence doing this...

So too can Rutger Hauer wear a tire wrapped around his face and still look like a badass...

Number of people who can look cool wearing tires as a helmet? One.

And he can go one-eyed in the same movie and look twice as awesome.

The other big name here is Vincent D'Onofrio. This guy has been awesome as far back as Full Metal Jacket (1987). But more recently, he made Wilson Fisk (The Kingpin) something more than a one-note villain in the Netflix series, Daredevil (2015).

Two of the greats, just hanging out post-apocalypse

Those are the pieces. The big pie is a Mad Max version of Major League (which, coincidentally, came out the same year as the latter), with Rutger Hauer as the Tom Berenger veteran and Joan Chen playing the Charlie Sheen rookie part. It's any underdog sports story (Rocky, Bad News Bears, Karate Kid, Hoosiers), but it takes place after the apocalypse.

You can't just throw these things together and hope they work...

With that concept at its heart, this movie does a few magical things. First, it completely sells this sports and its structure so well that, by the end, you understand how the game works (there's even a training montage!) and what the stakes are. That's no small task for a throwaway late-80s movie. Secondly, it actually makes you care for these characters enough to root for them by the end.

It's a bit tough to find on DVD, but easy enough in the usual digital places. So, if you get the chance and the inkling, find this little-known gem. It's a strange mixture of a lot of cool things that work well together in this case.

Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

When your post-apocalyptic movie opens with credits set to a pop song, it's not really post-apocalyptic anymore. It's a James Bond film. And when you put a pop star into that post-apocalyptic movie, you're stunt-casting (and getting a hit soundtrack to boot).

The film opens with a few key call-backs to Mad Max 2, but almost no reference to the original.

This dude is quite SAXY, but not as saxy as Max's former wife.

Because, let's face it, the sequel had overshadowed the original by this point, and still does. Max is robbed by his gyro-copter buddy from The Road Warrior. Only, it's not his gyro-copter buddy. It's the same actor, but not the same character. Keeping up?

He's surprised you noticed him at all...let alone in two movies...

Max also does a call-back to the more successful, previous film by finding a little musical-thingy that comes in handy, similar to the one he found at the beginning of The Road Warrior that helped him win over the feral kid.

When a movie tries this hard to remind you of other movies, you should be worried.

Apparently, as the 80s really set in, everything became a parody of itself. Like a comic-book version of reality where the audience needed less subtlety and more...well, just zero subtlety at all.

Nope, not comically over-the-top...

With each of the films in this series, one gets a sense that George Miller is re-writing and re-shooting his previous effort. Recursively moving forward while still re-hashing a bit of the previous effort. This is most clear in the third effort. Max is, again, established as a badass who can handle himself. A man who can fight, but who also adheres to an interior code. A guy who is good with a gun, but who's smart enough to be formidable without one.

Good with a gun...

...and, um, better with a gun.

And then things get weird. And not in a good way. Because Max is rescued by a tribe of children. Yep, children living the Ewok-lifestyle save the most badass of badass men to exist after the apocalypse. And the children have a prophecy that predicted Mad Max would come to them. But really, it's not a prophecy...it's movies! The movie is getting all meta. Even with the movie-screen-staff, called "the tell"...ugh...

That aspect ratio sure does look familiar...

So, does that make us, the film-watchers, the children in this meta-metaphor? Hey filmmakers, probably not the best idea to relate your audience to children. Just saying.

It's like someone else took over directing and scripting duties after the first part of the film in order to infuse "heart." Things start off with a bunch of badass Mad Maxing going on for the first hour, and then George Miller said, "Yah, so-and-so's got it from here. I'm off for a nap. I'll pick up at the end for the chase scene."

And we end up with "Mad Max and the Lost Boys" for the sagging middle of the movie as a result.

Just what I want in my post-apocalypse...a sea of children.

After the plot gets its wheels rolling again, Mad Max and the kids end up back at Tina Turner-Town where they proceed to liberate a key component of Tina Turner's methane production from her Ike-like grip. After a road-pursuit that is remarkably reminiscent of The Road Warrior, the kids escape in an airplane and Mad Max is left to roam the post-apocalyptic country-side he now calls home.

Max sleeps best on the radioactive sand of a deserted wasteland.

Clearly, this movie is a mixed-bag. A sprinkle of good, with the after-taste of bad. It doesn't come close to living up to The Road Warrior, but it's more post-apocalyptic than the original Mad Max. Ultimately, there's about twenty-five minutes of the film that really sink it. On top of that, the effort to make it an "up" ending while keeping Max out in the apocalypse strides an awkward line. It's worth watching. But not more than once.

We'll see what Fury Road brings on May 15th...