Dir: Emmett Alston
Star: Sho Kosugi, Brent Huff, Blackie Dammett, Vijay Amritraj

Vijay Amritraj. Good tennis player. Top Asian for 14 years, reached the Wimbledon doubles semis with his brother. But an actor? That he has a supporting role here tells you something. That he doesn’t stand out as particularly awful tells you more about this semi-Bond wannabe, that wavers between jaw-dropping incompetence and incoherence. We know we’re in trouble from the opening credits, featuring Kosugi (a low-rent Sonny Chiba at the best of times) doing kata surrounded by leotarded ladies, in a bizarre yet chaste 007 ripoff. It even has a strikingly crap song, strangely comparable to All Time High.

Set in the Phillipines (another reason for bad movie fans to sit up), it starts with a busload of tourists being kidnapped by terrorists, having missed subtle warning signs such as a man in dark glasses by the road-side muttering into a walkie-talkie with a three-foot antenna. Mind you, given the stultifyingly banal tour guide, I’d be grateful for the diversion: once the native dancers appear, capture by sadistic goons would seem a welcome alternative. This is especially so, when the leader of the gang is named – and we rewound the film to check this – Colonel Honey Hump. She is a lesbian, naturally, though one for whom English does not appear to be a familiar tongue, going by her performance.

She is, however, a model of restraint and understated acting, compared to her boss, Alby the Cruel. He is German (why he is in the Philippines is never made clear), in a wheelchair, and has a monkey with a diaper in lieu of the traditional white Persian. Played by the wonderfully-named Blackie Dammett – let’s just say that again: Blackie Dammett (in real life, the father of Red Hot Chilli Pepper Anthony Kiedis!) – he has kidnapped the group in order to force the release of Arab terrorist Rahji the Butcher, a character whose dialogue consists almost exclusively of “BWAH-HAH-HAH…”

To rescue the hostages, the government call in the DART team, a threesome led by Spike Shinobi (Kosugi), although not until he has a flashback on a sun-lounger (why does he take his samurai sword with him poolside?) during which we learn he was expelled from Ninja Academy for letting his emotions get the better of him. You may be excused for thinking this is an Important Plot Point. Don’t bother: it is never referred to again. Chief sidekick, Steve Gordon, is played by Brent Huff – with his roles here and in Gwendoline, he is the first man to have starred in multiple Incredibly Bad Films, alongside actresses Sybil Danning and Yukari Oshima. [Michelle Bauer has managed three, but two were minor roles]

Our heroic trio end up in a museum, where they are attacked by midgets. It’s sentences like that one, which keep me going through all the long, dark dull movies, y’know. Despite having all his dialogue dubbed, Kosugi looks suitably flummoxed by this. Well he might, as a fall of perhaps a yard, tops, kills the guy they’re after, even though he lands on his feet. They don’t make villains like they used to. “That was his last jump,” adds Shinobi cryptically.

Despite the presence of an international hostage crists, the good guys take time out for a few drinks, and seduction in Gordon’s case. But Alby and his henchmen have turned the Phillipine jungle into a Bavarian drinking hall too, so they’re not exactly losing ground. The government, however, is left with no option but to release Rahji. Who, in keeping with fundamentalist terrorist tradition, heads straight for the nearest whorehouse, pausing only to exchange his car for a horse and buggy.

Tracking the manic laughter, Shinobi follows Rahji, clings to the escape ‘copter, throws him from it, visits a floating brothel, leaps overboard, is chased by scuba divers (clearly always on standby) and finds the terrorists. Thus passes the middle 1/3. We know we are heading towards the final, climactic, all-out assault but get two classic lines first: “It would take a tougher man than you to pull apart industrial epoxy” and, “Do you understand? PIG HEADSSSS!” from Colonel Hump.

The end battle has an almost Zen-like approach. Witness the following sequence:

• Medium shot of waterfall
• Sound-effect of shuriken flying through air
• Close-up of guy holding shuriken unconvincingly to eye
• Medium shot of waterfall.

This is cinematic genius on a par with Welles or Lean – the midgets earlier suggest Alston may be a pseudonym for Fellini. I note that “Alston” has not apparently worked on anything since Fellini died…By now, we are deep into “Eh?” territory, with Shinobi fighting evil ninjas for no readily apparent reason – between Germans, Japanese, Arabs and the locals, it is truly a terrorist United Nations. Rahji is dispatched with a detonator in the mouth, while Alby is trampled to death by a herd of stampeding polo ponies. At the risk of repeating myself, sentences like that sum up the reasons we lurk in the “under $10” section of less-discerning movie outlets: an unfettered imagination is a good thing, and when it goes utterly berserk, it’s even better. One can only wonder at the script meeting where they came up with this ending for the villain.

In keeping with traditional badmovie ethics, the title is meaningless, as far as I can tell, since at no point in the film do nine ninjas die. The German title translates as Nine Lives of the Ninja, which might make more sense. But what else would you expect from a film where Shane and Kane Kosugi play characters called Shane and Kane, while Vijay Amritraj plays one called…yep, you guessed it, Vijay. There’s one extraordinary appropriate line from the film that sums up the whole surreal experience: “Too many drugs this time, boys, too many drugs.” For the makers, perhaps – for Chris and I, not even a 151-proof rum-soaked pineapple proved sufficient to mask all of this film’s delicious flaws.

It’s spring, and a young man’s thoughts inevitably turn to…spending all day in the dark. Yep, it’s film fest time again, with Arizona’s own Phoenix Film Festival, back for its second year. For some reason, they invited us back too. Guess we’re not trying hard enough. 🙂

Things were slightly different from last year; fewer films, I think, but more chances to see them, which works fine for us harried acolytes who are making (inevitably futile) attempts to see everything. The staggered start times were a bit of a mixed blessing – while it does reduce the crush to get in when you don’t have three films beginning simultaneously, it occasionally led to perilous rushing between screens. Still, some things were the same as last year. The venue for one, though the Arizona Center seemed a good deal more…well, vacant than last year, exemplified by a food court where two-thirds of the units are unoccupied.

Not much better luck in the cinema, where the concession stands seemed wildly unprepared for people actually wanting snacks at 11am in the morning. We felt particularly bad about forcing the director of Jane White is Sick and Twisted to chase after us, waving a press-pack, as we sprinted off in search of something edible. Hopefully, he’ll understand that man cannot live by popcorn alone.

Was delighted to see the punctuality of the festival remained as eccentric as ever – this is not an event for the fastidious clock-watcher, shall we say. Some of this was self-inflicted by the organisers: if you schedule a 100 minute film for noon, it’s a bit optimistic to have the next begin at 1:30pm! As a result, events started anywhere up to 45 minutes late, but the great thing is…no-one minded – all the more time to chat. And, as last year, without exception, people were more than happy to hang round and talk, a delightful change from bigger events where guests get bussed in, and escorted out. Mind you, could have done without the house lights coming up four separate times in the middle of one poor movie – it’s not like we were having sex or anything.

We crammed in seven films in a day and a half. It would have been eight, but an accident on Highway 51 delayed our arrival – just one of several oddities that weekend, including my receipt of a summons for jury service (dammit, you have to be a U.S. citizen, so no Twelve Angry Men role for me). Also caught the high-school short film program, which was a wide mix between the unexpected – Taken Away featured martial arts choreography worthy of a Hong Kong movie – and the…well, let’s just say a couple of the makers probably took time out from writing bad poetry in their bedrooms.

The regular features were, almost without exception, impressive. It’s immensely sad to realise the hard part is no longer making a movie, it’s giving anyone else the chance to see it. I have no doubt at all that if films like Drop Dead Roses or Dead Dogs Lie got to open in 3,000 screens across the continent, they would royally kick the arse of Van Wilder. That they get no such opportunity is unutterably sad – check out last year’s report, and see how few of 2001’s movies got any distribution. The organisers did get one foreign language film into this year’s festival, something I’d like to see more of – if chances to see low-budget English-language movies are thin on the ground, for overseas ones they’re effectively zero.

Maybe next year they’ll even expand it out beyond a weekend – with 300 submissions this year, there’s clearly a demand for a festival like this, and personally, I’m perhaps better equipped for stamina than a sprint (I always seem to end up wanting to lie down in a well-lit room for a while, having had quite enough of darkened ones). This is probably just me being greedy though; why have a weekend of fun when you can get a whole week?

[Thanks once again to Golan and everyone else at the PFF for their help and assistance, the film-makers for unfailing friendliness, even in the face of…er, us, and co-editor Chris Fata for dealing with ACT tests, suffering through another bout of shaky-cam nausea, and being everything one could want. And she’s all mine, hahaha!]

Phoenix 2003? Hell, yeah! Can’t wait!
Visit the Phoenix Film Festival website.

Festival Reviews

• Andel Exit
• Dead Dogs Lie
• Drop Dead Roses
• Five Years
• Jane White is Sick and Twisted
• Ocean Park
• To Protect and Serve

TC Awards

• Best Film: Dead Dogs Lie and Jane White is Sick and Twisted – tie
• Best Actor: Eddie McGee, Drop Dead Roses
• Best Actress: Kris Carr, Five Years
• Best Ensemble: Tommy Flanagan, Gary Stretch, Sarah Graham Hayes, Dead Dogs Lie
• Best Director: David Michael Latt, Jane White is Sick and Twisted
• Best Supporting Actor: Chris Hardwick, Jane White is Sick and Twisted
• Best Supporting Actress: Barbi Castelvi, Drop Dead Roses
• Best Script: David Warfield, Ocean Park

Another year draws to a close, and so while there may be no obelisks on the Moon, that does mean it’s time to inflict another top 10 list on you. I make no claim to have seen every film released during the year, so this is obviously not going to be comprehensive…but I strongly suspect that few of those I didn’t see, would have a snowball’s chance of making it onto here. This is the major benefit of being a non-professional critic – I don’t need to sit through the dreck.

Mind you, even allowing for an informed selection, there were still a number of films which were endured rather than enjoyed. This was particularly true of the multiplex where, especially in the first half of the year, it seemed that the wider the release, the suckier the movie. Comparing it to last year, where even the Oscars showed more taste than usual, it was pretty depressing, and I make no apologies for the fact that you probably haven’t heard of half the films in the list, never mind seeing them.

The sad fact is, the odds are that I probably won’t get to see a number of them again either. Five of the ten were seen at film festivals, and only one has actually managed to acquire any kind of distribution since. The advent of digital video has only added weight to the argument which says that anyone can make a movie – but getting it seen by the rest of the population remains a nightmare. It’s possible that with the Internet, distribution will become possible, but the slow growth of broadband, and the problems of getting paid, remain tricky curves on that road. However, for one film on the list, the Internet is the main source of income and sales, pending a general distribution agreement, and this might point the way forward.

The Internet also allowed us to see films I didn’t want to actually pay to see, and it was refreshing to discover that my critical faculties were as sharp as ever. The worst movie of the year goes to Rush Hour 2, for being not just dull, but actively aggravating, with Chris Tucker a fabulous poster child for the KKK. The most over-rated film of the year also reached us down the cable modem: Shrek, a painfully obvious and startlingly unoriginal (oh, look – a Matrix parody) mish-mash of fairy tales and political correctness. Can anyone explain its appeal?

Disappointments came in the form of the two computer game films, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy. Spots for both were being polished up in the top 10, but neither of them remembered that no matter how good you look, you still need a storyline to hang your imagery off. I still like both films, but neither came up to my expectations and hopes.

Onto the brighter side. It was a delight to see both Iron Monkey and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust on the big screen – if the former was really a 2001 movie, it would have been in the top 10, and we can only hope for more of the same in 2002. The re-release of Holy Grail was just what was needed after the events of Sept.11, while Ben Kingsley (or Sir Ben as we must now call him) provided perhaps the most memorable performance of the year in Sexy Beast.

Things also perked up considerably towards the end of the year, with a couple of reasons to make you want to go back to the cinema and eat popcorn. Say what you like, Harry Potter proved you don’t need big American stars to make an engaging film, when you’ve got a good source…and the author hovering over you a hawk! And so, without further ado, here are the top 10 in reverse order, based on the ratings given at the time (more or less!):

#10 – Ginger Snaps. This one just scraped in, displacing Snatch after a watch-off determined it to be the best lycanthrope film since American Werewolf, combining black humour and a good old-fashioned monster movie to great effect.

#9 – 90 Miles. A genuinely touching documentary depicting the life of one man, and his return to his native land. We liked it so much, Chris subsequently worked tirelessly to bring the film and its director to Phoenix – and its impact on me was not much less.

#8 – Revolution #9. An excellent recreation of one man’s descent into paranoia and madness, highlighted by an amazing performance from Michael Risley. He manages to make you feel both sympathetic for, and scared of him, at the same time.

#7 – Cradle of Fear. You’ll be hearing more about this one shortly, but in a year when the peak of horror was Anthony Hopkins eating brains, this was a fabulous breath of foul, blood-spattered and morally upstanding air which made me proud to be British. Pass the six-pack!

#6 – Memento. Undoubted winner of any best script award, this demanded more attention when watching it than any other movie. Beautifully precise, this demands immediate repeat viewing, and will hopefully be just as solid next time.

#5 – Boys From Madrid. A road-movie that gradually slides into a quest for redemption, before an ultimate revelation that makes for the most disturbing viewing of the year. I need a shower just remembering it.

#4 – Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (left). Who’d have thought that the man would go from splatter movies to the most beloved book of the century? And do so almost faultlessly, too, recreating Middle Earth and all its inhabitants to perfection. $300m well spent.

#3 – Versus. Possessing more raw energy and invention than any other movie, this one kept a smile on our faces for two solid hours. We laughed, we cheered, we said, “Fuck me! Rewind that!” A tiny budget, yet full of vim and vigour; this is what cinema is about.

#2 – Monsters Inc.. Call me a softie. Call me a sap. But you know what – I don’t care. This was the only film we paid to see twice at the cinema, and we loved every minute of it on both occasions. Fabulous story, fabulous characters, flawless execution, and perfect timing, both comedic and dramatic.

#1 – Ever Since the World Ended. You know a film is obscure when a Google search for the title has the TC review as the first entry. Regardless, it’s a great twist on the pseudo-documentary entry, and is both spooky and eerily plausible. If ever a movie deserved broader circulation, this is it – ‘cos if nothing else, I want to see it for a second time…

There’s a website, Jump the Shark, which is devoted to trying to pinpoint the moment when once-great TV shows “lost it” e.g. the musical episode in Buffy, the arrival of Joxer in Xena. It’s not, however, a concept limited to television. We’re all familiar with film-makers, on both side of the camera, who appear on the scene in a blaze of glory early in their careers, a shooting-star soaring across the firmament, only to crash and burn in an equally meteoric way, reduced to churning out a steadily-decreasing standard of dreck.

But why is the horror genre so particularly blessed with these? It seems to suck the very life out of directors, to the extent that I can think of only one who has maintained genuine quality in his work for more than a few years: David Cronenberg. Let’s take a look at a few particularly fallen angels, and see if we can find when they jumped their sharks. For assistance, we call on the surveys in the Internet Movie Database, whose users are able to rate movies on a scale from one to ten…

Exhibit A in any such discussion must be John Carpenter. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, he showed near-genius level talent, first with Halloween and then The Thing, which both remain classics even now – rarely has the slasher movie or alien invasion pic respectively been done to such good effect.

My hypothesis is this: at some point on the set of Christine, Carpenter was kidnapped by aliens and replaced by an almost-identical double. The only way to tell them apart, is that the clone lacks any artistic talent – the theme of extra-terrestrials which look just like us is a familiar one in his work, perhaps a subtle clue to those viewers able to pick up on it. The real Carpenter is probably making TV commercials on Alpha Centauri.

Next up is Tobe Hooper – you know your career is a bust, when you’ve made ten films, and Lifeforce gets a place on the podium (hey, I like it, but it’s not one of those I could defend to anyone else). If Hooper ever possessed any ability, it appears to have evaporated completely in the past decade – the last movie Hooper directed whose score reached the dizzy heights of, say, 4.0, was way back in 1989.

There is one bump on the steady road towards TVMs and video-premierdom: Poltergeist, the highest-rated film of Hooper’s career. Or it would be, if the authorship of Poltergeist wasn’t severely in doubt. Much evidence points towards Steven Spielberg, who conceived, co-wrote and produced it, as well as allegedly taking over all post-production. Producer Frank Marshall has said Spielberg was on set constantly and would step in when Hooper was indecisive, and it seems likely Hooper was hired to act as an ‘Alan Smithee’, allowing Spielberg to sidestep around a clause in his E.T. contract.

With a big warning * beside Poltergeist, it really leaves only Texas Chainsaw Massacre worthy of note. The presence of much actual directorial talent here is also questionable: looking at the subsequent filmographies of pretty much everyone involved, it seems like one of those happy coincidences, where the resulting product exceeded the talents of most of those involved. [See also Miracle Mile, Enter the Dragon and Heathers] Hooper was simply in the right place at the right time, and has been living off those pickings for more than 25 years.

Finally, a trickier example: Dario Argento. Looking at his graph, we first see an increase, through his early 80’s work, and only then a drop off. As you’d expect from a man who illustrates well the thin line between genius and lunacy (often managing both in the same movie), it’s harder to pinpoint one specific production when he lost it. At first glance, after Deep Red would appear to be the obvious choice, but you’d be hard pushed to justify calling his ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy, whose average sits above 7.0, as the work of someone past his prime.

Personally, I would pin-point the moment, not just to a film, but to the end of Opera, which is so utterly laughable and ludicrous (yes, policemen routinely mistake tailor’s dummies for corpses), it was clear that Argento had blown his talent. Once we get past that film, however, it’s clear that something happened – too much drugs, according to some reports. Being fair, we can’t blame him entirely for The Dark Half, since there’s no way for IMDB voters to separate his portion from Romero’s. But Trauma, his subsequent solo project, was hardly any better, and after a brief upshot for Stendhal, he was back down, almost to Tobe Hooper levels, for Phantom of the Opera.

However, a miracle would appear to have occurred this year, with Sleepless bucking the trend to rate a full two points higher than his previous movie – a turnaround not seen for Carpenter or Hooper. However, caution would be urged, not least because the film hasn’t had an American release, so as far as IMDB voters go, I suspect it has been seen largely by (the few remaining) sad Argento fanboys. The jury will therefore remain out on that one, and a final staking of a former great talent is on hold pending the TC review…

Does this “prove” anything? Not really. But it seems that the point at which directors jump the shark is likely to be around the time that their movies are worse than their debuts. This makes sense, in that you would expect someone to get better with experience – and also, budgets will probably also be bigger, improving the technical aspects. If later movies are no improvement over your first, than clearly something pretty questionable is going on with your career.

Dir: Roger Christian
Star: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates

It doesn’t actually begin too badly, though I don’t know about man being an endangered species, as the opening text claims – it’s John Travolta’s career that’s about to be put in extreme peril. In the year 3000, humanity has been reduced to a primeval state, harbouring vague memories of civilization, gods and demons. We can tell it’s primeval, because all the men look like Swampy. Hell, all the women look like Swampy. Our hero, Jonnie (Pepper, in his last starring role – trust me on this one) leaves the sanctuary of the mountains to find these mythical gods in a ruined city. I have to say, the effects and sets are excellent, and I was wondering if this was perhaps more a misunderstood gem.

How wrong I was. For then the invading alien race, the Psychlos, turn up and start firing. For some reason, the movie suddenly acquires a virulent green tint, the first of many totally gratuitous filters director Christian puts in front of the camera. Green, blue, orange – even more than one in the same shot. And when he hasn’t got out his Crayolas, he’s tilting the camera: initially, it didn’t make much difference since, hey, mountains are kind of tilty anyway, but this gets old fast on any level playing-field. The drinking game for this movie should involve taking a swig each time the camera moves off the horizontal: should ensure oblivion is reached by about 30 minutes, a best-case scenario for any viewer.

Anyway, Jonnie gets captured, pausing only to crash through a succession of plate-glass windows, all remarkably intact, despite the passage of enough time for cities to crumble. His attempts to escape bring him into contact – literally – with Terl (Travolta), the Psychlo security officer who is mean and grumpy even when he isn’t stuck on Earth “with endless options for renewal”, after being caught shagging a senator’s daughter. Bizarrely, there’s much in the film that revolves around office politics of the most banal sort, which is wildly out of place in a supposed SF-action pic.

“In order to feel safer on his private jet, John Travolta has purchased a bomb-sniffing dog. Unfortunately for the actor, the dog came six movies too late”
Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live

Hard to say which is worse, Travolta’s appearance or his acting. Things the movies teach us, #391: it is hard to exude menace, when you have tubes stuck up both your nostrils. And that’s excluding Terl’s funky dreads and the platform soles, clearly intended to increase his stature, but which actually make him resemble a former member of Slade as he clomps around. Travolta’s performance is no more comfortable, and would be barely acceptable as a pantomime villain at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon.

Our hero, meanwhile, is stuck with the other “man-animals” and fed something green and lumpy; it must be good, as a fight breaks out over its distribution, albeit only so Jonnie can give the “we humans have to stick together” speech. Terl, meanwhile, has his own plans. The Psychlos came to Earth in search of gold (coincidentally, also a rare element on their planet), and he wants to use humans to operate the mining machinery, which would be a breach of the rules. He also lets Jonnie and two colleagues out, purely in order to find out what humans like most to eat – I guess asking them would have been too much trouble – and comes to the conclusion that it’s rat.

He plugs Jonnie into a learning machine, force-feeding him, not just the knowledge necessary to work the machinery, but the entire Encyclopedia Galactica, including the bits on military technology. Oops. If Terl is supposed to be one of the elite, you wonder how such a dumb species ever discovered the wheel, never mind interstellar teleportation. He then brings Jonnie to the destroyed Denver public library, just to emphasise that knowledge is useless. Jonnie picks up from the rubble…well, for one glorious moment, I thought it was going to be a copy of L.Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, but it’s even more cliched – the Declaration of Independence.

Terl can’t survive outdoors because radiation makes the atmosphere the Psychlos breath explode [This an Important Plot Point, once you can get past wondering about the dubious physics involved]. So he leaves Jonnie and his crew to mine for two weeks and wanders off. Jonnie uses his new-found knowledge instead to sprint around the United States, dropping off local cavemen at flight simulators so they can learn to fly fighter jets [miraculously still in working order after a thousand years or so], picking up nuclear bombs, oh, and looting gold from Fort Knox. Terl, of course, barely questions why his gold mine is miraculously producing bullion bars, probably stamped, “Property of US Government”.

Jonnie kicks off the revolt, and then…to be honest, I’m not sure what happens, exactly, as the story is edited in such a way as to border on the incoherent. Must have been damn fine flight simulators though, as the cavemen are now flying like Tom Cruise on amphetamines. The nuclear bomb is snuck through the teleportation gateway to the Psychlos home planet, where it blows up, causing the entire atmosphere to go with it. Kinda lucky such an unstable planet had survived the four billion years necessary to evolve intelligent life.

Terl meanwhile, gets his arm blown off – reacting with much the same depth of emotion you’d get if someone told him there was a thread on his suit jacket – and is kept hostage by Jonnie for reasons which remain unclear to this day. Estimated cost: $73m. American box-office: $21m. Watching John Travolta’s smug Scientologist face as his career goes down the plughole: priceless.

It’s impossible to list all the ways in which this film is jaw-droppingly awful. The plot makes no sense, the acting is awful, the direction woeful. I’ve read the original novel (hey, so shoot me) and it’s actually not bad, or at least not disastrous, in a pulp SF kinda way. Its miserable box-office doesn’t tell the whole tale, since it’s widely known that Scientologists were asked to go and see the movie multiple times on the first weekend. About the only thing in its favour is that, while I’ve no doubt Hubbard’s name is largely what got Travolta interested, it surely is too bad to contain any kind of cult-indoctrination message.

Rottentomatoes.com lists the final critical score at 69-4 against, an unprecedented tidal wave of hate. The Battlefield Earth FAQ goes even further, cherrypicking the bad ones. Believe the hype on this one: it’s every bit as poor as you imagined, and then some.