Rogue One

The movie is full of drop-your-popcorn chase scenes and cheer-inducing fight sequences, but there’s also a distinct darkness to Rogue One: It makes The Empire Strikes Back look like Return of the Jedi.

Read the full rev    iew on Vegas Seven...

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.

Master of the Flying Guillotine

What's my favorite martial arts movie? Well, Enter the Dragon, of course -- it's in a class by itself. But my second fave is Master of the Flying Guillotine, which has more fight action than any other film of its genre -- hell, perhaps of any film ever!

The plot of the film is simple: The blind Master of the Flying Guillotine is out to kill the One-Armed Boxer. Yes, this is a fighting film in which the two protagonists are, ahem, differently-abled. This does not prevent them from kicking insane amounts of ass. Master of the Flying Guillotine is one ass-kicking after another. Hell, in the middle of the movie they stop dead for a martial arts tournament that absorbs about a third of the film's running time with nothing but one warrior after another duking out to the death in whatever bizarre fighting style they favor. It's basically Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter in film form (and both those games would rip off ideas and characters from this sequence).

So, we open with Fung, the eponymous Flying Guillotine Master getting some kind of braille message via domino via carrier pigeon that his two disciples have been killed by the One-Armed Boxer. Never mind that said disciples set out to kill said One-Armed Boxer, somehow they must be avenged. So Fung Master jumps through his roof, whips off a bunch of fencepost skulls with his flying guillotine, blows up his house and sets off to dish out the comeuppance!

Cue the opening credits, distinguished by some nice action stills but, more than that, an amazing garage-distorted, wah-wah-pedaled theme song that sounds like the Butthole Surfers trying to impersonate T. Rex. This is not the first or only piece of brilliant musical incongruity in Master of the Flying Guillotine -- Fung is constantly accompanied by a grinding Krautrock soundtrack (yes, that is actually Can and also some Neu!) that adds to his menace -- two other characters will be fighting or talking, but most likely fighting and suddenly this industrial grind n' groan rises on the soundtrack and WHACK! someone's headless.

The flying guillotine itself is a sort of birdcage-sawblade contraption -- you throw it at your enemy, it lands on their head, pull the chain and Voila! Instant decapitation. Such is the fate of Fung the Guillotine's first victim -- a three-limbed wino who cadges free drinks by telling everyone he's the famous One-Armed Boxer. You'd think in Martial Arts Battle Universe one would know better than to impersonate a legendary fighter, as legendary fighters always have someone out to rip their fucking head off with a doubled-bladed frisbee on a bike chain.

In the meantime, the real One-Armed Boxer -- played by director Jimmy Wang Yu -- is running his Kung Fu School and nobly refusing to participate in the upcoming big-money battle royale.

And so we come to said martial arts tournament. And, literally, it is one wacky fighter after another getting in the ring and battling until one's corpse is carried away. Behold...

Fake Bruce Lee vs. Fake Bruce Lee

Pointy-Hat High-Jump vs. The Man With Strategically Exposed Nipples

Mighty Choking Pigtail vs. Mustache Leatherdaddy

Little Guy Who Kicks People in the Nuts vs. Big Guy Who Punches People in the Face

Princess Eagle Claw vs. Monkeybutt-asshole.

Two Guys Who Fight on Poles Over a Pit of Knives

Yes, that's how good this movie is: Fighting on poles over a pit of knives is a throwaway battle.

Blades n' Jammies vs. Gadget Arms Yoga Guy

Uncouth Muy Thai Douchebag vs.Snakestyle Fancypants

Mantis-Style Moptop vs. The Wrong One-Armed Boxer 

Of course, Actual One-Armed Boxer gets dragged into this once he realizes Old Blind Nazi Monk Who I Bet Digs Throbbing Gristle Too is on a mission and will not be stopped.

Well, think about it: He's blind. It's not like he can carry around the photo -- sorry, the little domino with the bas-relief one-armed man -- and check it. Better to just kill 'em all.

One-Armed Boxer shoos his kung fu students off to safety, takes a challenge from Uncouth Muy Thai Douchebag (who is in cahoots with Flying Guillotine, somehow) and Gadget Arms Yoga Guy (Did you really think they were only gonna use that one once?). Master of the Flying Guillotine understands that good martial arts movies are like porn in one crucial aspect: The audience is here for the action. Plot is downtime. Get to what we came to see. Thus, Master of the Flying Guillotine has a crazed, balls-to-the-wall fight every five minutes and often more frequently than that.

Finally Flying Guillotine and One-Armed Boxer duke it out in a no-holds-barred battle, with a warm-up duel against Uncouth Mui Thai Douchebag.. All of this took a lot of location scouting -- we even see them renting the coffin shop (Yes!) for the closing fight. The One-Armed Boxer is as much about strategy as he is about force. I bet he can chessbox too...

Again, to reiterate, Master of the Flying Guillotine is a must-see in the world of martial arts flicks. It has inspired remakes, hip-hop albums, T-shirts, action figures, countless ripoffs and its own Urban Dictionary.  entry. Can you say the same about Citizen Kane or Last Year in Marienbad?

Cleopatra Jones

Back in the 60's and 70's, several attempts were made at a "female James Bond." Honey West and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. went heavy on gadgetry. There was the Ginger pictures (in which our heroine was most Bondlike in her skill at fucking her enemies into submission) and the Brits tried a lady spy series called Go Girl! (Bondlike for accents and ripoff credits).

But as far as embodying the deadly glamour and "I own this room" charisma of Bond, the closest you'll come is Cleopatra Jones. As portrayed by the 6'2" Tamara Dobson, Cleo is a couture-wearing, karate-kicking high-level CIA agent whose movies combined fashion and feminism, blaxploitation and martial arts, spy movie thrills and social consciousness.

 Cleopatra Jones opens with one of the best badass hero introductions in the movies: Landing by helicopter in the middle  of the desert, with dignitaries of all nations lined up to meet you. Then you give the signal for the RAF to wipe out "$30 million on the street" worth of poppies -- not a hand wave, but a Avedon/Verushka for Vogue-style flourish of your fox-trimmed cloak.

Dobson's wardrobe throughout is by Giorgio di Sant'Angelo. The designer went nuts on furs, hat, turbans, boots, capes and statement jewelry. If this sounds slightly impractical, dig her maxidresses with breakaway skirts for fight scenes. Probably 99% of humanity would look ridiculous in at least one, if not all of these outfits, but Tamara Dobson carries every one them off like the supermodel she was.

 

 

Immediately after the explosions, we meet Mommy aka Shelley Winters. She's a drug lord (drug lady?) and that was her poppy field Cleo wiped out. She's hanging around one of those big paneled & draped offices every top villain in the 70's had. We will only see Shelley Winters on this set -- until the very last scene, and i imagine that they needed a pair of muscleboys in hot pants carrying a plate of spaghetti and a couple of pints to lead her there.

Although here Shelley is a big ol' lesbian with a wardrobe of ghastly wigs that have model names like "The Buffalo Chicken" and "Pubic Hair." She's also got a taste for young stuff: As she says to whatever stretch-panted blonde, brunette or redhead is wandering around her office, "You're the only one around here who gives a shit about Mommy." I just hope she's hooking Miss Teen Poughkeepsie up with smack for services rendered. Or, better yet, before they are rendered: I can't imagine it is a muff that one is eager to dive into...

Mommy decides the thing to do is send the cops she's bought off to bust Cleo's pet charity, a narco/alco recovery house run by her dashingly turtlenecked and Afro-ed boyfriend. So there's a bust, with plenty of stereotypical nasty cracker pig cops wrecking the house and roughing people up and planting drugs on a sobbing ex-junkie.

So Ms. Cleopatra Jones packs up what i can only imagine is six Louis Vuitton trunks of her finest outfits and goes back to Cali with more chutzpah than LL Cool J and Biggie put together. A pair of thugs meet her at the airport, but lose her -- only for her to reappear sliding down the baggage chute. She uses her mad kung fu skills, but the bad guys eventually draw guns...

As the police run toward Cleo, guns drawn, she smirks and flips out her CIA I.D. One cannot help but enjoy the turning-of-the-tables as the cops now show her deference, in comparison to their behavior in the previous scene.

Works even better than a "Stand Your Ground" law, officers.
Now, I need you to do two things. One, step out of my way. Two, suck it. I'll let you pick the order.

Cleo meets with the police chief, played by that guy who was also Kojak's Chief of Police, who is nothing if not apologetic (he did not approve the bust, apparently). She's pissed about the raid on her boyfriend's halfway house and she's pissed about all the dope in her old neighborhood and she's pissed about the cops being assholes. CoP says he'll handle it, but nothing doing. As Cleo says, "My jurisdiction extends from Ankara, Turkey to Watts Tower, baby!" Why would one think it's a good idea to have this woman on your doorstep and mad as hell?

She brokers a 72-hour truce between the cops and the brothers to get to the bottom of who ordered the raid and who sent those assholes to the airport. When the bad guys put a bullet in Cleo's man, she throws down, revealing an in-car arsenal that would put Puff Daddy's to shame.

Boyfriend is now out of commission. This shoot-the-boyfriend move gets pulled a number of times in these female-centric blaxploitation movies (i.e, Sugar Hill, Foxy Brown). It leaves our heroine to TCB alone, while making sure we get her man's not a coward and rubbing off a bit of her potentially virago edges -- if he was able to save the day, he would and/or she might let him. But he's not, so....

 Hey! It's Huggy Bear! Yes, Antonio Fargas himself shows up as a flashy drug dealer who questions the intelligence of Shelley Winters' plan to poke a stick into the giant hornet's nest of fierceness and fury that is Cleopatra Jones. Legit question! In the meantime, Cleo has enlisted the Johnson Brothers, who are part cavalry, part comic relief. (And if Melvin ain't high on weed, i don't know who is.)

 Another recurring motif in Cleopatra Jones is men appreciating the awesomeness of Cleopatra Jones, either as she arrives, as she leaves or both -- seriously, it probably adds about 10 minutes to the flick. Cleo has no interest in going incognito: Her flamboyant presence is the dead opposite of the usual agent cover, but it seems to work just as well. She's not going to blend in anyway, so why not rock a turban and a T-top Corvette and let the males of the world marvel at the majesty?

The Corvette comes in handy during a ten-minute Bullit-esque car chase. This movie certainly believes in giving the people what they want: Fast cars, kung fu, one-liners, crazy fresh outfits. Did i mention the part where she wins the dirtbike race?

I'm going to assume that you can guess the outcome of the final showdown between the twentysomething 6'2" kung fu Amazon and the pudgy, sixtyish lady who drinks and screams a lot....

Cleopatra Jones has been an inspiration and an icon ever since this flick came out. It was followed up by Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, another bust-the-narcos mission with the Johnson brothers and another lady-loving Ms. Big. It also had the added thrill of being a Shaw Bros. co-production, with New! Improved! martial arts action. I wouldn't say that Cleopatra Jones could replace James Bond, but i do wish she'd had more than two movies...