In place of the usual random ramblings (mine) and edited highlights (yours), here’s something rather more coherent, referring back to the Mail Order Brides piece in TC10:
Dick Klemensen, Des Moines, USA – “I found it especially enlightening as I married an Asian lady over two years ago. I thought you might find my viewpoints interesting – you are welcome to publish them, or just read them as how one guy managed to luck out…
“If you’ve followed my rather personal editorials in ‘Little Shoppe of Horrors’, you will know I was married to a rather good-looking and well built redhead named Karla for some 15 years, when our marriage fell apart in 1987. I moved to a new town, and was living in a little apartment while I trying to sell my home in Waterloo, Iowa. This was one damned miserable period – one son trying to finish high school while living with his grandparents, the other getting over a divorce of his own (from a 3 month marriage). So it took some time before I got back into the dating area, and a damned strange feeling it was after 15 years to be going through the dating ritual shit again.
“But at 41, I found more available women than at any time in my life!! Maybe when women get older, they get different ideals of what they want in a man. But after joining a high class health club, I was going out 2-3 times a week (with different women) and was always totally broke. Dating is expensive. But I really wasn’t finding anyone I could connect with. I was even finding myself doing something I would never have imagined – turning down sex to avoid getting caught up with women with REAL family entanglements (as opposed to my teen years when just the THOUGHT of sex would split my pants out…). I was ready to have a relationship – so why weren’t the women I was seeing making me feel like I could settle down with them?
“I saw an ad in the back of Premiere, the movie magazine, for an oriental women dating service, or something like that. Well, I’d always found orientals unbelievably cute and sexy, and I sent away for the free packet. Some 16 pages of cute Filipinas and other Asian girls. Hmmm. But it would cost $125 for even the smallest ads and a 3 issue subscription. I let it slide for two more months, and then sent off a check, more out of curiosity than anything else.
“To be honest, I was more than a bit shy about the whole thing. Aren’t the only men who send away for these just too godawful ugly to get girls on their own? Well, I also found there was a second type – someone who had been burned so badly by a first marriage that they wanted someone to whom marriage really meant something.
“I had more women than I could handle right here in the old U.S.A. (for the first time in my life. What an ego boost…), but I had a need for something concrete. And boy, did I get a response from the ads. Hundreds of letters, most of them from the Phillipines or from Filipinas working in Hong Kong. I knew what Mick Jagger must have felt like with the women falling all over him… Many of the letters so sweet, the girls even sweeter. An occasional porno shot. Even some young film actress looking for a way to get to Hollywood (she said she would make it “worth my while”. Lucky I didn’t have a heart attack right then and there). But the ones I found the most interesting were the educated ones. There is no way I could fall for someone unless I knew something about them, and many people in the Phillipines pride themselves on the fact that they get their children educated in Universities, even if it means being a contract labourer for several years in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere. That described the life that Esperanza (Espie for short) had had.
“It was a real bitch narrowing down who I wanted to write to, but her letters stood out from the rest. She wrote sweetly but honestly: she had a little daughter, while she would like to have a relationship, if I wouldn’t also accept her daughter, I could just “Kiss off”. Well, I liked the honesty and openness.
“To make all this a bit shorter, we fell in love, wrote enough letters to publish as an encyclopedia, and married in Hong Kong in 1989. In May, she will have been in the USA for two years and becomes a U.S. citizen. Espie has a college degree in accounting, and is attending a University in the U.S. while working full time. Suzie Wong she ain’t, but I didn’t pay 1800 pounds for a stupid introduction! It worked for me, I can’t say it would for everyone. To be honest, there are a lot more women at home and it would have been cheaper to marry any one of the other women I met. But who can say where one’s heart will lead them. I’m pretty happy”.
Black Cat (Steven Shin) – Hollywood aren’t the only one remaking ‘Nikita’, as this enjoyable but almost pointless Hong Kong film shows. It’s pointless, because Besson’s original was the nearest any Western director has come to reproducing the style and pace of the best Eastern action. Shin’s version tweaks the story in several ways – the heroine is now an innocent waitress, sent down after shooting a man in self-defence (and, admittedly, blowing away a cop as a nervous after-reaction), and her final hit is on the man she loves, but these have little impact on the feel of the film. One interesting idea is using an implanted chip to control the heroine but, save for one beautiful scene on an aircraft, it’s also sadly wasted. However, the set-pieces are easily up to the level of the original and had it not all been done already, it would have been heartily recommended. C+
Body Parts (Eric Red) – I’d have expected better from the writer of ‘The Hitcher’ and ‘Near Dark’ than a rehash of those old “psycho limb” movies, but in essence, that’s what this film is. Jeff Fahey loses his arm in a road accident and gets the limb of an executed murderer. Fill in the blanks yourself for most of the next 70 minutes, as the film skirts the more interesting questions such as, “If he were to jerk off, would it feel like someone else was doing it?”, in favour of predictable menacing-the-family sequences, as the people who got other bits from the criminal meet neo-grisly deaths. Only in the last quarter does the film show much imagination, a pity, as the ideas on view there aren’t bad – if you can stay awake that long. D-
Burden of Dreams (Les Blank) – This documentary chronicles the making of Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo”, and ends up being more fascinating than the movie it portrays, though with the same central theme: grand folly. Like a Shakespearean tragedy, heavenly ambition becomes hellish nightmare, as Herzog is forced from his first location at gunpoint by local Indians, lead actors Jason Robards and Mick Jagger drop out and the vital rainy season is missed. Then things really start to go wrong. See Klaus Kinski, smiling on arrival, metamorphose into a scowling wreck, muttering about the “fuckin’ stinking jungle”. See Herzog spend four years trying to make a film. See a bulldozer taken on the Amazonian jungle, and lose – the jungle didn’t need spare parts flown in from Miami – all depicted with unflinching detail. A nightmare. B+
Death Leaves No Footprints in the Snow & other films (Justino Gaveleto) Amateur films are usually at their best when they attempt things no Hollywood director would, and this batch of shorts mostly appeal in direct relation to their incoherence. Wisely using film stock rather than video, Justino produces some striking, surreal, and weird images, especially when (as in ‘Death…’) he’s unencumbered by plot. Then there’s ‘Gratuitous Violence & Garlic’, which tries to tell a vampire story, but is let down by seriously bad acting, and actively annoying technical shoddiness. These represent the two extremes – most are in the middle, dumping raw imagination onto the screen without much intervention. While the ideas are definitely there, a willingness to edit out failures would be welcome. Justino would make a fine director of photography, but definitely needs to keep an eye on any storyline. I’ll still be interested to see his next project – a ‘heroic bloodshed’ shoot-out. Contact Just, 77 Crystal Palace Park Road, London, SE26 6HT. B- to E-
The Golden Years (four directors!) – An American TV series repackaged here as one massive four-hour tape. Which is the main problem. It’s unwatchable in one chunk, and barely palatable in a couple – I took three sessions over nine days. Based on a Stephen King story, it’s about a janitor at a research establishment who gets blasted by radiation and starts to grow younger, provoking interest, unsurprisingly, from “agencies”. He’s forced to go on the run with his wife, helped by a renegade agent. The first two hours are nearly redundant (Steve missed them but still sussed the plot) and it could, and should, have been cut down to feature length. Apart from that, it actually has decent performances from Felicity Huffman, R.D.Call and Frances Sternhagen plus some humour, weirdness and things-mankind-was-not-meant-to-know, though the ending is bizarre. C-
J’Embrasse Pas (André Téchiné) – Not many French actresses get two films to open in London in one week, but Emmanuelle Beart had “La Belle Noiseuse” (four hours long, bearable only to serious film theorists – or those who like Ms. Beart with her kit off) and this one which, like ‘Noce Blanche’, had a totally misleading advertising campaign. The title does not apply to her but the rent boy she befriends – in the first 80 minutes of the film, EB is on screen for about two of them. More truthfully, it’s about a bloke who comes to the city; gets a job; sleeps with his landlady; loses both and is forced into prostitution to survive; then finds the life not that awful. His attempt at a relationship with EB doesn’t go too well – her pimp beats him up and rapes him. There’s a moral in there somewhere (“Emmanuelle really screws you up”?), but I’m not sure I like it. Not badly-made, and utterly cheerless, I’m docking it marks for being a con! D-
The Last Boy Scout (Tony Scott) – While ‘Die Hard 2’ plunged virtually straight into mayhem, this film starts off by trying to set up characters and a complicated scenario involving corruption, gambling and politics. The point of this is not clear. It’s a Bruce Willis film f’heavens sake, we know precisely what’s going to happen – Bruce will end up in his vest, bloody but unbowed, smiling his famous “shit-eating” grin. Nothing should get in the way – not family problems, or brushes with the law. Catch some z’s, as until the Bad Guys (redneck boss, effeminate hitman) turn up this could almost be “Kramer vs. Kramer” (except that didn’t have gratuitous exotic dancing). The sound of nose entering brain will alert you to phase B: which piles mayhem upon mayhem and wins the award for Best Offensive Use of a Stuffed Toy before fading to the obligatory moral, which seems to be “The family that slays together, stays together”, judging from the chortles accompanying the final death. Probably reprehensible, but did you expect anything else? C+
The People Under the Stairs (Wes Craven) – In most Craven movies, the bad guys are more colourful than the good ones. Here, the hero is a kid burglar, who gets a lot more than he expected when he breaks into a house, best described as an unofficial orphanage, run by a man and woman who seem to be inspired equally by ‘Parents’ and the Brothers Grimm. Our hero, who only went into crime to stop his poor, sick mother from being evicted (ha! tell that to the people of LA…), has to rescue the poor, abused daughter. Ignore the clumsy social comment and it holds together, generating a fine head of steam despite the good-guys-by-numbers approach, though the titular creatures are frankly a disappointment. B
Showdown in Little Tokyo (Mark Lester) – “The proportion of Americans who do not consider Japan a dependable partner rose to 42 pct over the past year, a survey commissioned by Japan’s foreign ministry shows. Major reasons given were fierce economic competition, Japan’s attack in 1941 on Pearl Harbour, and the selfishness of Japanese people”. This news item goes some way to explaining why the villains in ‘Showdown’ are Japanese, but xenophobia aside, it’s not a bad film, adding a few twists to the ‘mismatched cop’ cliche – Dolph Lundgren is the pure American hero, obsessed with Japanese culture; Brandon Lee is his half-Eastern partner who couldn’t give a damn about it. They take on the “slopeheads”, rescue a damsel in distress (mostly as an excuse for a very bad pun), learn to respect each other, and make comment’s about Dolph’s penis. At the risk of repeating myself, “Probably reprehensible, but did you expect anything else?” C+
Anime
3×3 Eyes OAV 1 & 2 – Only in Japan – for the moment… Yuzo Takada’s manga series, translated and released in English by Studio Proteus, has also made it to the video screen, with the production in Japan of a series of OAVs (Original Animation Videos). Pai, the last member of the Triclops. a race of immortals, has journeyed from Tibet to Tokyo to find Yakumo, whose father had promised he’d help her become human. Unfortunately, Yakumo is killed, only to be resurrected by Pai, who “inhales” his soul, turning him immortal, albeit with a mark on his forehead that spells “zombie”. This links his fate to Pai’s – she dies, he dies; she becomes human, so does he – and this vested interest provokes him into aiding her search for the Statue of Humanity, which will fulfill her wish.
In the first OAV, they travel to Hong Kong and meet Ling Ling, a sceptical psychic investigator, who soon learns to be slightly less dogmatic! At 25 minutes long, it works well, putting the supernatural elements in an effective modern setting, which increases the plausibility, while the animation is very sharp. But I had to wonder whether the story held any long term interest, as it seemed easy to predict the plot for the rest of the series.
Fortunately, part 2 confounded the predictions, though it returns to a favourite anime cliche, the Demon High School – Japanese monsters must be the most learned in the world, judging by the time they spend plaguing educational establishments! So with a nod to ‘Urutsoji Doji’, and perhaps one to ‘Mr Vampire’ too, the OAV splatters it’s way towards an impressive climax. There’s now two more in the series, and hopefully the imagination shown in them will be on the same level. B-
Fist of the North Star – Island World, 12.99. Island World deserve credit for spotting anime’s potential. Spurred on by the success of ‘Akira’, they’re promoting the genre in a big way, and have planned a whole series of releases, of which. ‘Fist’ is the first – unfortunately, it’s not brilliant, with animation no better than competent Saturday morning TV, and a plot reminiscent of bad kung fu fodder. I can see why they chose it to follow up ‘Akira’: “Fist”, with it’s post-holocaust, urban decay setting and gleeful violence, might have sounded like Katsuhiro Otomo’s masterwork. But anyone expecting ‘Akira 2’ will be disappointed.
Ken, the hero, has his girlfriend kidnapped, and sets off to rescue her. Luckily, he’s the Fist of the North Star – ten seconds or so after he hits someone, they explode – so before you can say “..and you must pay!”, he’s spraying around the internal fluids of anyone who gets in his way. Which is the major appeal; ‘Fist’ is undoubtedly the bloodiest animation ever to get a UK release, even with the (imposed?) digital blurring. If only they’d put more effort into the animation or story, and less into finding a striking range of ways to kill Ken’s foes!
So I can’t really recommend ‘Fist’. It (just) succeeds on a one-off viewing but anyone interested in Japanese animation should hold fire, as there’s better anime coming. AnimEigo are planning to release the excellent ‘Bubblegum Crisis’, and Island World have lined up ‘Dominion’ for July and ‘Project A-ko’ next, with ‘3×3 Eyes’ and ‘Legend of the Overfiend’ (BBFC permitting!) planned for later in ’92. ‘Fist’ seems to have sold quite well, but how much was follow through sales from ‘Akira’? However, hopefully interest in anime has been established – either that, or it’s back to scouring the children’s section for mutilated anime, a frightening prospect for films like ‘Nausicaa’, which lost 26 minutes in becoming ‘Warriors of the Wind’. That’s more than the BBFC cut from ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’… D-
Project A-ko (US Manga Corp, $39.95). America, spurred on by a fandom numbering in the tens of thousands, is now a sufficiently large market to allow the release of a wide range of anime. And for sheer entertainment, ‘Project A-ko’ is among the best. The title is a homage to Jackie Chan, and they have a similar spirit humour, mayhem and sailor suits, though ‘Project A-ko’ has these on schoolgirls, rather than coastguards! The story is centred around two girls, A-ko and B-ko. They were at kindergarten together, where B-ko challenged A-ko to a battle, but it never took place as A-ko had to move away. Now, the pair have met up at high school and are squaring off for the long-postponed duel, once again over the friendship of a third girl, C-ko.
Now this may sound terribly twee, like a story in ‘Bunty’, but things aren’t quite what they seem. C‑ko’s a princess, abandoned when she was a baby; her family is now on the way to reclaim her and they’re more than willing to total Tokyo or anyone who interferes, including A-ko & B-ko. Fortunately A-ko & B-ko are no average citizens either – A-ko is capable of leaping through tall buildings with a single bound (right at the end, we glimpse her parents, and heredity may be blamed!) while B-ko can design and build a robot from scratch in an evening, and wields an interesting range of weaponry. When these two clash, the results would keep several construction companies in work for months, so when they realise C-ko’s family want to take her away, it’s major urban renewal time!
The animation is smooth and fluid, the humour comes across well, it’s got a neat soundtrack and the story develops beautifully from near-normality towards wild SF. The pace occasionally slackens too far in the first half and some scenes might provoke sniggers from a Western viewpoint, but leave your brain at the door, and you should have a thoroughly enjoyable 80 minutes. US Manga Corp have done an excellent job of presenting the tape. It’s letterboxed, and subtitled, using the black space below the picture, which makes the text highly legible. $40 may seem expensive (it should be less when Island World release it here in August, albeit dubbed), but as it’s just about an all-round winner, it’s hard to complain. A-.
The ultimate conspiracy theories take individual, seemingly disparate, topics and link them together to form a web of intrigue so dense that nothing can be considered as beyond it’s grasp. Step up, Milton William Cooper, a chief proponent of a line of thought that takes in individual plots as diverse as Kennedy’s assassination, aliens from another world, the CIA’s drug running and the fall of the Soviet Union, and combines them all into an interesting schema.The following is a transcript of a talk given by Cooper in Los Angeles on November 17th 1989. I’ve edited it to achieve a more coherent form – partly because what works in speech doesn’t always work on paper, partly because Cooper exhibits a tendency to deviate into other areas. Fascinating though his tales from Vietnam, descriptions of Hawaiian scenery and details of how the FBI award security classifications are, they don’t bear much relevance to the matter in hand.
“As a child, I’d heard stories from my father (my father was a pilot) about Foo Fighters, UFO’s, strange craft that were not made on this Earth. And as a kid, you hear that in passing, and it’s neat, and you giggle about it, and you go out and play “Spaceman”, and you forget it. When I was in the Air Force, I met men who had participated in alien recoveries. Now this intrigued me, it interested me, but it was usually after quite a few bottles of beer that these stories would come out, and sometimes the next morning I couldn’t remember what the heck the guy said.
“When I left the Air Force, I went into the Navy…I was assigned to the Intelligence Briefing Team of the Commander in Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, who had to know everything concerning his area of operations, which was one half of the Earth’s surface – the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and all the land masses in between.
“Eventually, I found myself…holding two documents; one called ‘Project Grudge’, another one called ‘Operation Majority’. Project Grudge contained the history of alien involvement since around 1936, and it began [by] talking about Germany’s involvement with a crashed disk that they had recovered in 1936 and were attempting to duplicate….If they had been successful, we would not have won the war, because you can not beat these weapons. You can not outfly these craft, you can’t even think about it with conventional aircraft.
“They did make some headway. When we went into Peenemunde, we captured documents, we got some scientists, we got some hardware. The Russians also got some documents, some scientists and some hardware. It wasn’t until 1947 that we were able to capture a craft, a whole craft, not all together but it was everything. And that occurred near the city of Roswell, New Mexico. There were dead aliens recovered from the craft. In Project Grudge I saw photographs of these dead aliens, of the craft. I saw photographs of live aliens, I saw photographs of autopsies, internal organs, I saw photographs of the alien designated E.B.E 0 which was held in captivity from 1949 until June the 2nd, 1952 when he died. I saw the history of what they had been able, at that time, to put together, from incidents in the 1800’s which involved aliens and their craft.
“I saw a project that was to fly recovered alien craft that had been recovered intact and undamaged…how that happened, I have no idea. It was called ‘Project Red Light’ and first was conducted from the Tonopah test range in the Nevada test site and then was moved to a specially built area, ordered built by President Eisenhower, called Area 51, code named ‘Dreamland’ in the Groom dry lake area…by secret executive order. It doesn’t exist officially: if you ask anyone, or if you write letters to the government, they will tell you it doesn’t exist.
“The project to…test fly these craft was ongoing until sometime in 1962, when a craft blew up not far from the test site, in the air, and the explosion was seen over a three state area, the pilots were killed. They had no idea what had happened or why the craft blew up, but they put Project Red Light on hold until a later date when the aliens supplied us with three craft and personnel to help us fly these craft. That project is ongoing and we now have not only alien craft that we are flying, we have craft that we have built using the captured technology, and some of the UFOs that people report seeing in the United States, and maybe even elsewhere, are flown by United States personnel.
“Professor [James] Oberth was probably one of the greatest rocket scientists…that ever lived. When he retired, the government gave him a special award, there was a press conference, all kinds of ceremony, and when he got up to speak he said…and I quote Professor Oberth, “Gentlemen, we cannot take credit for all the technological developments that we have had in the past decade. We have had help”…One of the reporters raised his hand and said “Professor Oberth, can you tell us what other country helped us?”. He said, “It was those little guys from out in space”, and then he got down and would not comment any further.
“The first moon landing was May the 22nd, 1962 – oh, excuse me, that was the first landing on Mars…The first time we landed on the moon was sometime during the…middle 50’s because at the time when President Kennedy stated that he wanted a man to set foot on the moon by the end of the decade, we already had a base there.0
“I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there are all kind of things going on all the time, we are making rapid progress in exposing this. Since I have begun talking, people have begun coming out of the woodwork at a rapid rate…and are helping us to put it together, because I don’t have all the answers. I saw an awful lot of material, I have remembered an awful lot of it,, I have probably, in my remembering, made some mistakes, but I guarantee you they’re minor ones, if I have.
“You know, there’s really nothing wrong with what’s been happening, except for three things. Number one, when thhey decided to keep it secret, they needed to finance it. They couldn’t tell the public, so they couldn’t tell Congress – they decided to finance it with the…importation and sale of drugs. Now, in the documents that I read, in Operation Majority, it specifically stated that when George Bush was the president and CEO of Zapata Oil, he, in conjunction with the CIA, organised the first large scale drug importation into this country from South and Central America by fishing boat, to the offshore oil platforms of Zapata Oil, and then from there onto the beach, thus bypassing all Customs inspection and law enforcement inspections of any kind. They are still bringing in drugs, to a limited extent, in this manner.
“Another manner is by CIA contract aircraft…one of their bases of landing is Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. We have affidavits from air controllers who have vectored the planes in, who have made sure they’re not interfered with in any way. We have affidavits from personnel at Homestead Air Force Base who say the planes have been met by Zeb Bush, who is George Bush’s son. We have affidavits from people who work in the Gulf of Mexico, in the offshore oil business, that yes, indeed, the drugs are coming in, at least some of them, from the offshore oil-platforms.”The next thing that’s wrong is, to keep the secret they killed a lot of people who tried to leak it out. And if I hadn’t done it the way that I did it, you wouldn’t be seeing me anywhere standing or walking on this Earth now.
“They killed President Kennedy…Between ’70 and ’73, in Operation Majority it stated verbatim that President Kennedy ordered MJ-12 to cease the importation and sale of drugs to the American people, that he ordered them to implement a plan to reveal the presence of aliens to the American people within the following year. His assassination was ordered by the policy committee of the Bilderbergers0. MJ-12 implemented the plan and carried it out in Dallas, it involved agents of the CIA, Division 5 of the FBI, the Secret Service and the Office of Naval Intelligence.
“President Kennedy was killed by the driver of his car, whose name was William Greer. He used a recoil-less, electrically operated, gas-powered assassination pistol specially built by the CIA to assassinate people at close range. It fired an explosive pellet that injected a large amount of shellfish poison into the brain and that is why in the documents it stated that President Kennedy’s brain was removed0…The reason for that is so… they would not find the particles of the exploding pellet or the shellfish poison in his brain, which would have proved conclusively that Lee Harvey Oswald was NOT the assassin.
“The Soviet Union and the United States have been close allies since the end of World War II and have been closely participating in the secret space program all this time…What you see happening in the Soviet block right now is not the result of people standing up and saying, “We want to be free”, it’s the result of the international bankers saying, “You tear down these barriers and you meet the West half way, give your people some freedom, the West is gonna take some freedom away from their people so that we can put together a one-world economic system and have all the power. That’s what’s happening! If you don’t believe it, sit around and watch it!”
These last sentences do ring some rather disquieting bells these days, judging by the presence of McDonald’s in Red Square, for example. If even 10% of the above is true, it certainly puts a new, very sinister slant on Bush’s much vaunted “new world order”…
Elegaic music murmurs as three—female and barefoot PAIRS OF LEGS in skirts break from tableau to gently engage in croquet. A blue mallet hits a blue ball through a wicket, a green mallet knocks a green ball, and a yellow mallet pushes forward a yellow ball, all in enticing syncopation.
Suddenly a red ball rockets through the dew covered grass and hits the green ball. The LEGS all stop moving as a FOURTH PAIR OF LEGS, this one in stylish shoes and stockings, marches to the red ball and steps on it. A red mallet it brought down hard on the red ball causing the adjacent green ball to thunder out of view. The Pair of Legs manoeuvring the green ball departs. This process of elimination is grimly repeated with the yellow ball and yet again with the blue ball.
However, when the BLUE MALLETTED PLAYER makes her sad exit, the viewer’s viewpoint glides along with this particular Pair of Legs. A red ball whizzes by. The Legs stop. Another red ball malevolently sails past the legs. Then yet another red ball. A fourth red ball makes brutal contact with the Legs causing the Player to fall to her knees and into the frame. The player is VERONICA SAWYER.
As should be clear from the above paragraphs, the shooting script for ‘Heathers’ (dated January 26th, 1988) is a different animal from the finished film in many ways, ranging from the subtle to the obvious. The challenge is to play the detective and try to work out why the changes were made, piecing together evidence from the script, and other sources as well. For example, if you’ve seen the trailer for the film, it included the line “It’s God versus my boyfriend, and God’s losing”, which never appeared in the finished film. The script reveals this was part of Veronica’s voice-over after killing Kurt & Ram – the original speech was as follows:
Veronica (V.O.): The most popular people in school are dead. Everybody’s sad, but it’s a good kind of sad. Suicide gave Heather depth, Kurt a soul, Ram a brain. I gave J.D. shit about the Ich Luge thing but what really frightens me is that I’m not frightened by what J.D.’ll do next. It’s God versus my boyfriend, and God’s losing.
Why this was axed, I can’t say, and there are other, even smaller (but obviously deliberate) tweaks to the dialogue where no obvious explanation can be found. “You stupid cunt” becomes “You stupid fuck” (scarcely going to get the film a PG rating) and, even more bizarrely, “Love your blouse” was modified to “Love your cardigan”. Odd.
Fortunately, some changes make more obvious sense. Product placement has become a thorn in moviegoers’ sides recently, with seemingly gratuitous plugs for products littering certain movies. ‘Heathers’ bucks the trend, and a couple of brand names mentioned in the script never made it onto celluloid. The scene between Veronica and JD in the ‘Snappy Snack Shack’ originally took place in a 7-11, but presumably New World’s lawyers nixed the idea, on the grounds that 7-11 would not want to be identified as the favourite convenience store of a teenage psychopath. Similarly, the “mineral” water planted near Kurt and Ram’s bodies to prove their homosexuality was originally Perrier!
It’s also interesting to note the way some of the characters changed, especially J.D. When preparing the “hangover cure” for Heather Chandler in the script, he doesn’t notice that Veronica picks up the wrong cup. In the film he realises the error, but conceals it, which clearly makes him more culpable, as does his suggestion that Veronica forges the suicide note in the earlier version, the idea comes from Veronica herself. On the other hand, the planned version of the final battle in the boiler-room has JD attempting to shoot Veronica in cold blood.
This heightened viciousness is apparent in other places. Though the script contains no trace of the widely-known “everyone gets blown up” ending, it’s true to say that the entire movie was originally blacker in tone. No-one is innocent: Peter, organiser of Westerburg’s Foodless Fund, is seen dipping into the kitty for a Big Mac and some fries: “Hey, even Bob Geldof’s got to eat”.
Speaking of things food-related brings me to the cheerful scene in the school toilets where Veronica is called into a cubicle to assist Heather Duke to vomit (a regular task – Lehmann carefully draws attention to Veronica’s index finger, specifically that the nail is cut short). Presumably on grounds of taste, we lost the following little exchanges:
Heather McNamara (O.S.): Did she have the pie or the ice cream for dessert? (like a game-show host) And the answer IS…. Heather Duke holds up her copy of The Catcher in the Rye and makes a bizarrely defiant smile. Heather Duke: Yeah, you know Holden Caulfield in the Catcher in the Rye wouldn’t put up with their bogus nonsense. Veronica: Well, you better move Holden out of the way or he’s going to get spewed. Heather Duke puts down her book and opens her mouth. Veronica sticks her finger in…
Bleah. Interestingly, the book Heather Duke carries everywhere is “The Catcher in the Rye”. Between the shooting script and the film, this became ‘Moby Dick’ – ‘Catcher’ may have been thought too cliched. Anyway, another tasteful passage happens when Veronica and JD are talking after their game of strip-croquet:
J.D.: See the condoms in the grass over there. We killed tonight, Veronica, we murdered our baby. Veronica: Hey, it was good for me too, Sparky. J.D.: Just saying it’s not hard to end a life. Veronica: There’s a big difference between the most popular girl in the school and dead sperm.
And while we’re on the topic of sex… David, Heather Chandler’s boyfriend, was eventually only seen in the party at Remington University, getting a blow-job from his girl (in a room described as decorated with “a series of obnoxious Ferrari posters”, though you couldn’t tell in the movie!). As the following phone-conversation shows, the script has him reappearing later, as Heather Duke’s boyfriend, after she moves up to replace Heather Chandler as queen bitch:
Veronica: I’m delirious for the both of you. Can you put Heather on? David proudly looks down off-screen at his lap. David: She can’t really talk right now…
A pity this scene was lost, as it reinforced the idea that nothing had changed. despite the multiple deaths. This would have fitted in with other excised sections emphasising how Heather Duke has become Heather Chandler II. The fact that it would have added another dimension to dubious fantasies about Shannon Doherty, is, of course, irrelevant…
And finally, you may remember TC9’s shower scene extravaganza, which included the wonderful scene from ‘Heathers’ where Winona takes a shower with her clothes on. Well, there was more to it than that…
Heather Chandler: Veronica needs something to write on. Heather, bend over. Both Heather McNamara and Heather Duke bend over. Heather Chandler violently laughs: Heather Chandler: How nice. Two assholes; no waiting.
[In answer to the question, “What would you do with $5 million, and two days to live.] Rodney: I’d change my life. New clothes. New haircut. New house. New home. Heather Chandler: How sad! Blowing all your cash on two days of trying to be hip.
Heather Chandler: Look at me. I look great. I’m the girl in the commercials and the videos. I’m the blonde in the bikini on the horse holding a Pepsi can. I’m the princess being spanked on the throne by Billy Idol’s guitarist’s guitar. What do I get out of being friends with losers. I give them a piece of a winner and they stain me with loserness.
Veronica: Seventeen is the last year Mom buys the Twinkies. When you make the jump from working weekends at Pizza Hut to thirty years at IBM, you lose something. Not innocence – power.
Ram: Listen up, dude. In those woods is some of the finest pussy in the school and we don’t even have to buy it a hamburger and a Diet Coke.
MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH
A loner arrives at a school, run thro h terror by a,powerful clique of stud He falls in love with a girl fringe of the leaders, but fall foul of the clique itself. Then its members start to die in suspicious ways… However, this doesn’t solve the problem as other pupils move right up to continue the status quo. So the loner decides to solve the problem by blowing up the entire school, but the plot is discovered by the girl he loves, so he commits suicide by blowing himself up in front of the school.
Sound familiar? No, it’s not ‘Heathers’, but ‘Massacre at Central High’, a film dating back to 1976. No-one paid much attention to it at the time – probably because it’s not really all that good – but the similarities to the much later ‘Heathers’ are striking, even if the synopsis above is slightly selective (the ruling clique in ‘Massacre’ is male rather than female, and they drop a car on the loner’s legs, which understandably leaves him a bit upset). Watching it is a bit like seeing Bava’s ‘Bay of Blood’ after ‘Friday the 13th’; there’s an eerie sense of deja-vu, made surreal by the obviously dated fashions. And, hell, even the loner looks very much like Christian Slater…
Few things on Earth, short of a direct hit from a thermonuclear warhead, are capable of getting me out of bed at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Yet despite this, I’ve recently been leaping downstairs (well, stumbling, anyway), with an enthusiasm not seen since the early days of ‘Multi‑Coloured Swap Shop’, to watch a cartoon show.
‘Samurai Pizza Cats’ is a freeform translation of a Japanese animated series. 13 episodes have been shown in the UK, with another 13 to go, but there are at least fifty original programs. Being Japanese, it’s had to undergo surgery before getting here. However, while most such programmes died on the operating table – see ‘G‑Force’, aka ‘Battle of the Planets’, for perhaps the worst case of malpractice – SPC survived the treatment remarkably well, mostly because it was done with a sense of humour and the content was not toned down to anaemic levels (personally, I blame this for the rise of the American serial killer ‑ here, where we grew up with real cartoons like Tom & Jerry, there’s no such problem). The overall impression with SPC is that a bunch of guys with a VCR got together on a wet weekend and made up their own story. At least, I assume that the characters in the original didn’t discuss their lack of eyebrows with each otherI suspect the conversion may have been done in Canada, but this is based purely on the odd reference to Quebec, and the fact that no Americans seem to have heard of it!
Samurai Pizza Cats Opening Lyrics
Samurai Pizza Cats – who do you call when you want some pepperoni? Samurai Pizza Cats – they’re fighting crime, and you know that ain’t baloney! There’s Speedy Cevichi, the leader of the bunch. A heck of a fighter, makes a heck of a lunch! And little Polly Ester, who’s never afraid, Of going into battle when the bad guys invade. Plus Guido Anchovy, a wild romantic rover, This cat gets down, down with a love hangover… Here come the Pizza Cats – they’re so bad . They’ve got more fur than any turtle ever had! They’re stronger than old cheese (stronger than old cheese!), They’re stronger than dirt (stronger than dirt!). If you step on their tails (don’t hurt me now!), Then you’re gonna get hurt! Samurai Pizza Cats…
It’s about, you will not be surprised to hear, some restaurant running felines with sword skills. The hero is Speedy Cevichi, a distinctly un‑neutered tom who regularly falls in lust with any female, of any species, who crosses his path, just as long as she possesses those ‘anime eyes’, the size of footballs (and in SPC, these are taken to ridiculous extremes). He possesses a wonderful Ginzu sword, capable of slicing in two almost anything (including a deep‑pan pepperoni pizza) with a display of background pyrotechnics unrivalled since the last Jean‑Michel Jarre concert. Together with his colleagues Polly Ester and Guido Anchovy, they strive to defend Little Tokyo, their home, from the machinations of the Big Cheese, an evil rat with a penchant for cross‑dressing (more on this later), and a band of his own henchmen.
The plots have a comforting similarity, being variations on the theme of “Big Cheese plots to destroy Little Tokyo, but is foiled”. However, that’s like describing Tom & Jerry as “cat fails to catch mouse”. The use of the same animation in different shows (the Pizza Cat launching sequence appears with a relentless regularity) becomes like the chorus to a song, and careful observation reveals the accompanying dialogue subtly varies.
Japanese kid’s shows are known for including plot devices that’d make the BBC blanch. In the original version of the aforementioned G‑Force, chief villain Zoltar was actually a hermaphrodite. Needless to say, there’s no trace of this left in the “sanitised for our protection” version broadcast in Britain. One episode of SPC was similar: it revolved around the head villain being seen wearing women’s clothes, and sending out his henchmen to kill the witness before she could reveal his secret. Instead of not bothering to translate that show, the explanation given was that he was rehearsing the role of Maria in ‘The Sound of Music’. While not X‑rated, perhaps, this is still several degrees more perverse than you’d find in ‘The Real Ghostbusters’. The Big Cheese’s crows are even referred to as “ninjas”, ITV not sharing the BBC’s mealy‑mouthed approach (‘Hero Turtles’?) to such things.
The series is refreshingly free of the moralising that strait‑jackets other shows, most notably the obscenely preachy ‘Captain Planet’: “Gee, if we’re nice to each other then we can solve this Middle East crisis AND be kind to the environment as well”. Don’t you hate socially‑conscious broadcasting? None of that in SPC: Little Tokyo gets trashed on a regular basis, junk food is promoted with the ultimate decadence of home delivery and moral concerns are simply not present. One story was about ‘Princess Vi’ and her attempts to go out on the town incognito. Anyone who remembers Princess Di’s exploits with Pamela Stephenson will know where this episode is coming from, and it has to be said the portrait of royalty isn’t a very flattering one. On reflection, this republican outlook might tie in with the Quebec references!
However, the main appeal of the show doesn’t lie in it’s origin or it’s plots. On the surface, it might seem like a cheap ripoff of the Ninja Turtles (TM, C, all‑rights‑reserved). However, SPC harks back to the days when cartoons were entertainment rather than adverts for toys – it’s only as a result of the series’ success that the SPC toys will be arriving here (apparently, mainly due to pressure from the grandson of a senior executive at Bandai UK!).But above all, Samurai Pizza Cats possesses one major advantages: it’s actually FUN to watch, and in the current era there aren’t many television shows which you can say that about.
Samurai Pizza Cats Episode List.
Stop Dragon my Cat Around
Underground, Underwater, Undercooked
If you knew Sushi like I know Sushi
The Great Golden Cluck
Let the Cellar Beware
Singing Samurai Sensei-tion
The Nuclear Potato
Kind of a Drag
Double Trouble for Princess Vi
Hot & Cold Kitties
Candid Kitty
Pizza Cats are Only Human, Pt.1
Pizza Cats are Only Human, Pt.2 Episodes 1, 2, 8 & 9 are available on a videotape, exclusive to Woolies!
