I recently struck up a friendship with a young man who is fresh off the boat when it comes a lot of the movies I taken for granted that people have seen. It's not that he is disinterested in movies (he loves them) he just didn't have the opportunity or exposure to most of the stuff I've seen. Also, during the 90s I didn't have access to the internet and so was constantly finding out about new stuff from friends - in particular my buddy Mike who introduced me to wild and wooly world of HK cinema and a slew of 70s & 80s stuff I had missed(1).
So my new friend and I are watching a documentary about Troll 2 last night titled The Best Worst Movie. It's basically about the resurgent popularity of the movie among a demographic - mainly the Upright Citizen's Brigade/Alamo Drafthouse/Ain't it Coolers as shown through the eyes of the cast as they meet again after nearly twenty years to do openings and cons. It's a pretty depressing documentary filled with failure and sadness. He was asking me questions about what "cult" movies were (let me say that trying to explain what cult movies are by saying, "Uh, y'know - cult movies" isn't a good explanation). Then we watched a martial arts movie Bodyguards and Assassins which had Donnie Yen in it and wasn't bad but wasn't great. He had never seen a martial arts movie either (ay dios mio).
So I was thinking about it and I am putting this post together as a primer for the guy with a shout out for your input. I know more about some areas more than others (weird action movies vs Pink Flamingo-esque) and different decades than others (classic 80s Hong Kong Action vs HK from the 00s). So if we brain storm we can come up with a pretty good selection. After all it takes a virtual village to educate a promising film buff:
I'm gonna start with a couple of categories and titles but I'm hoping you guys will pitch in, if not here than on the FB group.
Carpenter and Russell: Lightning in a bottle
- Escape From New York (1981)
- The Thing (1982)
- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
- Scanners
- The Brood
- Videodrome
- The Fly
- The Killer
- Hard-Boiled
- Better Tomorrow I & II
- Bullet in the Head
- Red Cliff
- The original Zu Warriors from the Mystic Mountain
- Once Upon a Time in China I & II
- The Blade
- Destruction of the White Lotus Temple (aka Burning Paradise aka Burning Paradise in Hell)
- City on Fire
- Full Contact
- Repo Man
- Sid & Nancy
- Straight to Hell
- Walker (which is actually really fucking good)
Troma Pictures: Mark - this is your area of expertise.
Martial arts movies of the new Century: need some reminders, preferably sans wire work
- Yimou Zhang
- Hero
- House of Flying Daggers
- Curse of the Golden Flower (boring but real nice to look at)
- Tony Jaa will fuck your day up
- Even though I hated it, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
- Six-String Samurai
- Rubin & Ed
- Kalifornia
- Easy Rider (I'm not a fan but it is kind of an important movie in American cinematic history - overblown importance but still)
- Damn near any Takashi Miike movie (except the monumentally good 13 Assassins)
- Particularly Happiness of the Katakuris
- Tetsuo & Tetsuo II
- Biozombie
- Mermaid in a Manhole
- Hanzo, the Razor
- Tokyo Zombie
- Lone Wolf & Cub (though the manga are excellent)
Guess I might have to unbox my VCR in order to rewatch some of these movies. God only knows how some of these bootlegs of bootlegs are gonna look on a HD tv.
*This headline was inspired by Spacemen 3's Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs to (1990).
(1) Additionally, during the late 90s I "worked" at the Key Theater in DC for a couple of years (by worked I mean was a useless, shitty snot of teenager) an art theater that showed all kinds of films. When I moved into Austin I lived two blocks away from Vulcan Video and watched about a half dozen movies a week while ordering in books about Asian and Cult cinema at work. Man, I watched a lot of crap. During the late 00s I started being less hardcore about my movie watching and stopped reading most of the blogs and assorted sites. Since living alone again I've been watching more movies. Man, I'm watching a lot of crap.
I suppose I didn't much appreciate the B movies of the 70's because I never watched them...My dad watched mostly 80's movies. For example, the only time I recall hearing of "scanners" was when it was mentioned in Wayne's World. Yeah, I'm pitiful.
ReplyDeleteThat's not pitiful. I don't think "Scanners" gets a lot of recognition any more. Personally, it's not as good as "Videodrome" - which is one of my favorite movies (top 25 sci-fi) but it's something you have to be either in the mood for or completely unprepared.
Deleteappending my earlier post, I have seen "Big trouble in Little China" ...that's all.
ReplyDeleteOk, where to begin.
ReplyDeleteWaters: Of course, Pink Flamingos. That's a given. Also pretty much any of his early stuff that isn't readily available. Stuff like Female Trouble or Multiple Maniacs. Polyester and Hairspray have their place in cult cinema, but they're definitely more mainstream. After that, it's a bit slim, although A Dirty Shame really tried to take him back to his early days. It was good, but tried a bit too hard at times.
Troma: These flicks are REALLY a matter of taste. I love some of them, but they're all pretty terrible.
Toxic Avenger is THE Troma film that must be seen. Skip the sequels until Citizen Toxie, which puts a Troma eye on social problems. Strangely, it works and it's hilarious. (Of course, Lloyd Kaufman says they're ALL social commentary. Who knew?)
Class Of Nuke 'Em High is the OTHER Troma movie to see if only because it's one of the more famous ones. IF you get into those, then head into later stuff like Tromeo And Juliet or Sgt. Kabukiman. If you don't like the earlier ones, skip the rest. Be careful if you start becoming a Troma fan. They're not just a production company, but they also release a LOT of films. The only really good one that they released (that I know of) is Cannibal: The Musical. Definitely check that one out.
Other HK gems
The Bride With White Hair
Chinese Ghost Story
Fulltime Killer (Johnny To is awesome)
The Heroic Trio (like I said, Johnny To is awesome)
HK Cat III flicks
Erotic Ghost Story
Sex & Zen
Zombie movies (yes, some of them are worth it)
Sure, all of the Romero flicks are a great place to start. But let's dig deeper.
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (aka, The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue...one of the best non-Romero zombie flicks out there)
The Grapes Of Death (slow, but worth checking out)
Tombs Of The Blind Dead
As for Tony Jaa: MAN, Ong Bak is great. It really made me wish that the rest of his movies were watchable.
That's all I got for now.
I keep getting confused by "Ong Bak" the one that introduced us to Jaa with the stolen Buddha head and other "Ong Bak/OngBak 2" the epic fantasy duology (which is excellent and on netflix streaming)with Tony Jaa.
DeleteThe original "Night of the Living Dead" is still great. There's also a German zombie movie that came out in the last year or so that was pretty solid.
The only German ones I can think of off the top of my head are Night Of The Living Dorks and Dead Snow. (I think that one's German. It has Nazis in it.) Saw the first half of Night and thought it was alright. Haven't seen Dead Snow yet. Both are comedies, though, so I'm not sure that they would be ones that would please you too much.
DeleteIf you want a well past decent comedy zombie flick that came out pretty recently, Dance Of The Dead is pretty great. It's one of the few movies I've seen with slow AND fast zombies...and there's a reason for it. It's not really explained in the film, but the filmmakers said that the recently deceased are fast and the older ones are slow. Works for me.
"Dead Snow" was a Norwegian film. It does well in a triple feature with "Deathwatch" and "The Bunker" (undead huns). You are correct though, 99% of the time I really dislike horror/comedies.
Delete"Rammbock: Berlin Undead" was the German zombie/pandemic movie I was thinking of. Really not bad at all.