The Lost Empire

You know how The Producers is all about a musical that was specifically created to be so bad that it would fail epically and be a massive tax loss? Well, The Lost Empire was apparently also supposed to be so bad it would fail epically and be a massive tax loss, except director Jim Wynorski did his very, very best to create a good movie... that could not be worse if he had tried. 

Black belt? Brown belt?
I don't know--what level is the belt made of sequins with a big glittery buckle on it?

Wynorski would go on to direct over a hundred more movies, most of them under pseudonyms--he was Jay Andrews for Stealth Fighter, Jamie Wagner for Cry of the Winged Serpent, Rob Robertson for Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Tom Popatopulous for The Escort III, Sam Pepperman for Sexy Wives Sinsation and H.R. Blueberry for The Witches of Breastwick. As you can see, he specialized in monster movies and sex movies or, in the case of  The Hills Have Thighs, a combination of the two; 1986's Chopping Mall would be the peak of his career. So, honestly, bad as The Lost Empire is, it's not like things got a whole hell of a lot better over the next thirty years of filmmaking.

The first thing we see in The Lost Empire is two enormous tits. Consider this preparation for the hundreds of enormous tits to come. The camera pulls back to reveal some bimbo trying on a rhinestone necklace in a shop in Chinatown. A red light briefly flashes out of the eye socket of a particularly ugly-ass statue as bimbo and shop owner negotiate an, ahem, deal.

But, suddenly, three ninjas appear! The owner has a three-piece suit and a .45 like true 70s hero... but he is no match for the Party City ninjas and their hypnotic yo-yos of death! Incredibly, the cops arrive within about 15 seconds but they are also no match for the hypnotic yo-yos of death... although one of them does manage to stop the ninjas from stealing the glowing red orb thingy before collapsing to the ground in a heap of pale blue polyester and fake blood. Cue the credits!

After said credits, we get a rather bewildering expository scroll.

Anyway, cut to a bunch of police and cop cars outside a school. Apparently there is a "bunch of terrorists" who are "armed to the teeth" with a bunch of kids hostage and, just like in Uvalde, Texas, the police are afraid to go inside. While school shooting scenarios can be hard to watch, what makes this one easier on the viewer is  that the kids do not seem frightened at all. The little girl having a knife waved in her face seems more sleepy than scared. One of the boys slumps over his desk with the demeanor of a child waiting for a math test to be handed out. All of the actors in The Lost Empire are bad-to-mediocre, but I would particularly like to praise the woodenness of these young thespians for saving  viewers emotional trauma.

See, I told you: Uvalde. Luckily, mysterious, black-clad biker with a badge rolls up and, after a brief briefing, drives straight into the school and starts taking down bad guys. We will notice that, in this movie, bullets not only create bloody holes, but cause the person who is shot to fly through the air.

Oh look, cowboy cop trope does takes off motorcycle helmet to reveal foxy lady trope.
There may be corpses strewn about and a criminal bleeding out a few feet away,
but the helmet removal still merits the sexy saxophone and a harp!

We also meet foxy maverick lady cop's boyfriend, Mustache Meatball, who is CIA, when she punches him in the nose and then they jump-cut to a sex scene. Just when we begin wondering what the fuck all of this has to do with the opening with the ninjas and the ugly statue and THE EYE OF AVATAR, the phone rings and we find out that police lady's brother was one of the officers hurt and is in the hospital. Thus maverick cop--actually, her name is Angel Wolfe--storms into the hospital wearing a skintight silver lame jumpsuit. One does not expect the sort of professional pantsuits-and-blazers attire seen in Charlie's Angels, but The Lost Empire's commitment to inappropriate outfits is truly remarkable and only just beginning.

Anyway, as he's being whisked into surgery, her brother whispers something about "The devil, he exists!" Like we need to be told that in the age of social media.

Mustache Meatball explains that this is all about some guy named Lee Chuck, known as "Satan's Hatchet Man" (Bruce Norris is an insurance salesman in a Connecticut suburb.)  who is part of pretty much all fo the evil in the world or something.

She goes back to the crime scene to look for clues and THE EYE OF AVATAR jumps into her purse (no, really). Then Charlie Chan (no, really) appears and they all go to dinner. He tells them about THE EYE OF AVATAR... well, actually two eyes. Lee Chuck and this guy named Dr. Sin Do have one....

You do, nitwit! Look in your purse next to the Tampax and Love's Baby Soft!

So, it seems the only way to get on Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom to look for Lee Chuck and THE EYE OF AVATAR is to answer a want ad. Ah, remember the days of newspaper want ads, when you could flip to the back of the Poughkeepsie Journal and be like, "I need a job. I see opportunities for secretary, sous chef and lady gladiator in some kind of death-battle three-way..."

"They're never told it's a one-way trip."

But... you know it's a one-way trip. How do you know and they don't? 

So, they've got to go to Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom for the Lee Chuck Memorial Battle to the Death for Ladies Only. Yes, kids, it's Russ Meyer's Enter the Dragon. However, you need to have three women on your Lee Chuck Memorial Battle to the Death team, so Angel Wolfe needs to find two ringers that are interested in a one-way trip to a doom battle on death island--sorry, death battle on doom island.

So, Angel Wolfe, maverick cop, drives her pink Barbie jeep out to the desert, where an old Native American guy is sitting in the middle of Tiger Lily's Neverland camp. He vanishes in a blur of bad FX glitter as Angel throws a feather in the fire in some type of summoning ritual.

And so appears Whitestar, fresh from the 1 a.m. show at the O'Farrell Theater. She is played by Russ Meyer starlet Raven De La Croix, less as mystical Native American then the bemused broad from Queens she actually was. There will be no further reference to her being some kind of spiritual being that is summoned from the ethers.

As seems to be the way in this movie, they head to a nearby restaurant for some exposition as well as more painful puns from Whitestar. 

However, this scene does end with our heroines beating up some creepy rednecks in the parking lot, so that's a plus....

Next they head for an unused warehouse--I mean, women's prison. A prison where all of the women are twenty-three, barefoot and in hot pants... except for the one that gets to wear full dominatrix drag. That would be "Whiplash," played by Angelique Pettyjohn, a Vegas showgirl best known as a green-haired space babe on Star Trek and one of Elvis' girls in Clambake. Nice to see you, ma'am.

So after some whipping and slapping and mud-wrestling and some other girl running up solely to get her top ripped off, the blonde beats Whiplash and is recruited for the mission to the Lee Chuck Memorial Battle to the Death for Ladies Only on Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom. Surprisingly, they do not talk this over at a picturesque local restaurant, but in a shower. Guess they needed the bare-boob shot more then they needed the discounted craft services....

When the incorrect subtitle reveals an inadvertent truth...

So, our heroines, Angel, Whitestar and, uh, Heather are headed for the Lee Chuck Memorial Battle to the Death for Ladies Only on Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom. If they win they get $25,000 to split between the three of them, which comes to about $6,500 each after taxes. I guess Angel feels that revenge is priceless and I suppose Heather feels the same way about being let out of prison, but I'm not sure what Whitestar is getting out of this. Kicks? Sticking it to The Man? Free (one-way) airfare and semi-deluxe accommodations? An associate producer credit? Anyway....

Table for three, please. Is the lunch buffet still going on?

So, all the babes dress up in their finest Maybelline and spandex and head out for the Lee Chuck Memorial Battle to the Death for Ladies Only on Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom. But Angel forgets her purse and THE EYE OF AVATAR in Mustache Meatball's car. Blondes, I tell ya!

Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom!

(You know, if I ever had a bunch of money to waste, I'd get someone to do a big mural in my house

that looked like a cheap movie matte painting of an alien planet or supervillain lair. 

Get a Godzilla costume for me, maybe some shark fins for the cats....)

The ladies get their clothes taken away and are forced to walk in single file while guns are waved at them. They also undergo dental work, pap smears, vaginal steaming and a variety of other questionable med-spa treatments. Yeah, if I signed up for a battle to the death and wound up on a Goop retreat I'd be pissed too.

Then we get the standard "attempted attack by a tarantula while sleeping" trope. Of course, as always, the spider does not succeed but, in a twist, the spider is... well...

Next the girls run and do aerobics in bikinis while a knockoff of the Chariots of Fire theme plays. This goes on for some time... and why shouldn't it? Let us not pretend that there is any reason for the existence of The Lost Empire besides jiggle jiggle jiggle. And tax shelters, of course.

It's pretty much the same scene as backstage at the gentlemen's club,

except without the body glitter.

Anyway, Whitestar gets a special invitation from Dr. Sin Do, who apparently likes to host big-tittied ladies for dinner as well as for tournaments to the death. She puts on her best bra and her worst attitude, rather like me going on a date back in the aughts....

Instead of texting Whitestar that her dog has gotten out and her mom is sick and thus releasing her from her terrible Tinder date, Angel and Heather go off to explore Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom. They find all the previous contestants in the Lee Chuck Memorial Battle to the Death for Ladies Only drugged and locked in an underground dungeon... pretty much like Enter the Dragon... or Darktown Strutters... or The Forbidden Zone or any of many other movies. What The Lost Empire has that they don't is a gorilla. Well, I mean a P.A. in a gorilla suit...

That's the spirit! The asshole with the gorilla is named "Prager," like the founder of the eponymous bullshit-peddling winger "university," but he is played by an actor with the awesome moniker of "Blackie Dammett," which you are welcome to use the next time you need to anonymously check into a hotel. Apparently in a wild coincidence or just an unwillingness to pay another actor, it's also the  Uvalde cop from the opening. Feel free to wonder if The Lost Empire is actually a The Wizard of Oz-like fantasy where Angel got knocked on the head while trying to rescue the kids and the whole Lee Chuck Memorial Battle to the Death for Ladies Only on Dr. Sin Do's Island of Doom thing is all a dream. Are Whitestar and Heather really just the EMT's treating her concussion...?

In the meantime, Whitestar's date is going really badly.

Mustache Meatball shows up, THE EYE OF AVATAR shows up, the gorilla suit shows up, Hijinks, shenanigans and inept ersatz kung fu battles ensue....

You cheap Phantom of the Opera!
You knockoff Dr. Phibes!
You bullshit Mr. Han!

You say indestructible dematerializing laser canon,
I say cock and balls with the condom half-pulled off.

The Lost Empire is a terrible movie but it does have a lot of things that people enjoy in it. Martial arts battles? Yes! Rogue cops! Yes! Laser canons? Yes! Boobs? Yes! Ancient curses? Yes! Bad puns? Yes! Man in a gorilla suit? Yes! Boobs? Yes! Women in prison? Yes! Native American rituals... sorta? Yes! Boobs? Yes! Undead villains? Yes! Boobs? Yes! Boobs? Yes! BOOBS? YES! YES! YES!

Three the Hard Way

Can I get a "Hell, yeah!" or, at the very least, a "What! What!"

Three the Hard Way is a blaxploitation flick directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. of Super Fly fame and starring legendary football player Jim Brown, football player of some repute and grindhouse hero Fred Williamson and martial arts star Jim Kelly, whom you probably know from Enter the Dragon. They're fighting  Nazis.

It seems a group of business-suited white supremacists have somehow created a poison (unlike today's business-suited white supremacists, they actually believe in science) that will kill only the black residents of Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington, D.C. Jim Brown's buddy finds out about this, they kill buddy and kidnap Jim's girl. So it's time to go out and get some payback. And save a few million people, of course. Give back to the community...

It was seeing shit like this that made the NRA and Ronald Regan
support gun control back in the 60s.

Along with plenty of righteous 70s threads, Brown shows off the tremendous physical grace--vaulting over barricades, leaping down stairwells, hanging on to the hoods of cars--that helped him lead the NFL in rushing for eight seasons (Although note that the suit is worn with a nice pair of kicks--which i am guessing are Pumas or Keds--because no one could do this in a pair of alligator Ferragamos.) Three the Hard Way does not stint on prolonged action scenes and isn't that why we're all here anyway?

 Although the fact that two of those action sequences involve wrecking a herd of sweet Detroit-made sedans and pumping hundreds of bullets into a collection of vintage pinball games does make a me a little sad. The latter takes places once Jim  Brown travels to New York City to get the first member of his posse: Fred Williamson. Fred Williamson is, as always, one smooth badass who always seems to be having a good time in his flicks, even crap like 1990: The Bronx Warriors and he seems to be enjoying Three the Hard Way even more than usual.

 

Then we come across Jim Kelly, or at least his bitchin' Lincoln  Continental having drugs planted in it by a herd of crooked cops. But with a mighty yell of  "Gonna set me up?!" he kicks the crap out of them.

It's a bit like a drawn-out version of a similar skirmish in Enter the Dragon; the next sequence will also reference the climactic car wash battle in Black Belt Jones. Our heroes manage to capture one of the Nazis and figure he ought to be good for some information...

We then get a glorious montage of a red-white-blue clad trio of biker babes coming into Manhattan from Brooklyn. The ladies are Countess, Princess and Empress (the last of whom is played by Irene Tsu of Ebony, Ivory and Jade, so she's rolled like this before). And, well, the ladies handle interrogations in a way that gives pause to even this rather rugged set of gentlemen. (If you want true brutality, call upon the women.)

More fistfights, more car chases, more running around shooting. It occurs to me that we never learn how these guys know each other or how they all became such profound ass-kickers. Usually they at least throw in a line about being Green Berets in 'Nam or, in this case, ex-football players. (Even Kelly, though he didn't go pro--he was also apparently a hell of a tennis player, though i somehow sense he must've had some hoop game as well.) We see Jim Brown as a producer (of the Impressions), but no idea what the other two guys do.

This band of nutjob cartoon white supremacists lacks the over-the-top misanthropic lunacy of a Donald Trump or Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee, any of whom would be a far more ridiculous villain than Three the Hard Way's unctuous businessman. The Nazis of Three the Hard Way aren't really your classic movie Nazis: Their hair touches their collars and they are listening to music with acoustic guitars and synthesizers which, as we all know, is mixing the races. Their Nazi banquet is totally dorky--no The Damned or The Night Porter decadence here.

 

 

It's pretty obvious that our trio of heroes certainly possess physical, intellectual and sartorial superiority  over these schlubs in berets. (A beret only works if you're a chick doing some kind of Bonnie Parker/Patty Hearst or a guy with good hair and cheekbones that could cut diamonds who is somehow affiliated with MI6.)

The climactic attack on the Nazi mansion has that peculiar day-for-night mix where you keep wondering if the battle took three days or we're on an alternate Earth where the days and nights are 15 minutes long. Still, busting up Nazis in a flawlessly spherical 'fro and black leather pants, Jim Kelly comes off like a cross between Dr. J., Bruce Lee and Iggy Pop. Can you imagine anything cooler? Jim Brown shows off his superior skill at kicking down doors and leaping across furniture while firing a shotgun. Fred Williamson lays waste to many bad guys without taking the grin off of his face or the cigar out of his mouth.

One can fantasize that Eric Garner had been endowed with the cop-clobbering powers of Jim Kelly. Or that right at the moment Dylan Roof raises that gun in the Emanuel Church, Jim Brown busts through a stained-glass window, slides down the aisle and shotguns the little cracker with the Moe Howard haircut. A superhero ass-kicking wasted on a redshirt weasel, but still... 

... anyway, Three the Hard Way could do with a little more plot, but it's still pretty damn gratifying.