Our blog generally has a soft spot for Barbarian fantasy and we usually try to have a month every year where we concentrate just on Sword and Sorcery films be it an American productions like Sword and the Sorcerer or more esoteric ones like TheConquest.
But this time we’re not here to discuss any single movie (even though you can read our review of The Barbarians)- this time we’re here to talk about people who weren’t just an actors ,people who were barbarians 24/ 7! The Barbarian Brothers, Peter and David Paul.
via Nick’s Strength and Power
Even though they never formally competed in bodybuilding they were crazy- obsessed gym rats often displaying almost absurd feats of strength like those you can see in this Japanese TV Show.
I especially like the backing vocals from the giant!
It seemed inevitable that they would transcendent the fitness worldand go into films and that happened with when notorious Cannon Films decided to back them up. They already had some experience co- producing Sword and Sorcery flicks in Italy so it’s seemed like a perfect fit. Interestingly the original director was going to be our (Serbian) famed director Slobodan Šijan ( Who’s Singing Over There, The Marathon Family) and he even went as far as to scout locations but Šijan was eventually replaced with a B-movie maestro Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust).
They followed it up with films like Think Big (as idiotic truckers hired to transport toxic waste), Double Trouble (with brothers paired against each other as a Criminal and a Cop) and Twin Sitters (actually the first Barbarian Bros. movie I ever watched). Their career got another great wrinkle when the legendary Oliver Stone cast them as Hun Brothers in young Tarantino penned Natural Born Killers. Unfortunately their scene was cut in the theatrical release, but you can see it in all it’s awesomeness in the Director’s Cut version!
..and yes that’s a young Tony Stark with a mullet interviewing the Barbarian Brothers!
As the 90’s ended their draw as the leads faded too. David Paul branched out into Poetry and Photography (mostly for muscle magazines ) and you can even buy his collection Art of Bodybuilding (with foreword by non other than Arnold Schwarzenegger) right here. He is also trying to establish himself as a director with a faith based, experimental film on the way but all in all he actually seems like a chill dude.
On the other hand his brother Paul is roaming the college campus of University of Rhode Island calling himself a “Knight of Light” possibly claiming to be a second coming of Jesus Christ.
…we’re not too sure, but you can judge for yourself
Raymond Chow‘s film company Golden Harvest hit it big in the early 70’s when they discovered a certain up and coming star called Lei Siu Long aka Bruce Lee . Their mega-fruitful collaboration hit it’s stride with Lee and Chow even forming their own partnership/ production house Concord Prouction Inc. (each owning 50%) Way of the Dragon was a product of that collaboration, as was Warner Bros. cooperation- Enter The Dragon. Unfortunately Lee died before the world premiere of Enter The Dragon and Golden Harvest lost it’s biggest star way too soon.
Bruce, Raymond & Wang Yu
Of course Golden Harvest would find continued success in decades to come, skyrocketing the career of Jackie Chan in the 80’s and making popular TMNT films (together with New Line Cinema). But in that strange place between Lee and Chan they continued to produce films to different varies of success.
One of those was Lo Wei‘s Slaughter In San Francisco, there to fulfill Chuck Norris‘s contract, he signed on two films when he made Way of the Dragon. Now, another famous name that had a (three) picture deal was non other than one- off Bond from Australia, George Lazenby!
Now, on Bruce’s insistence Lazenby was signed on a three picture deal. First of the films was to be Shrine of Eternal Bliss aka Stoner, the movie he was ready to make with Lee and Japanese Karatemovie sensation Sonny Chiba but Lee died and Chiba dropped out soon afterword. Warner Bros. co- production money was also gone and with it’s budget severely cut Lazenby was promoted to a star.
Lazenby as the Detective Stoner, investigating a new and deadly drug! I’m still not sure if that’s the best or a worst name for a character.
With all the controversy surrounding it movie was still a minor success in both Hong Kong and Europe and the Golden Harvest collaboration continued. Next up was a unique co-production too, joint effort between Chow’s Golden Harvest and The Movie Company from Lazenby‘s native country of Australia (even thou he was being demoted to a villain) and the film was called: Man from Hong Kong aka Dragon Flies! That was right in the middle of both Hong Kong movie boom and Australian New Wave of films so as expected the result was seriously bizarre mix of Hong Kong action and Aussiecraziness and has to be seen to be believed. Still we will try to help you out and pinpoint some of the most entertaining bits (and there’s a lot of those).
Movie starts with an Aussie journalist visiting Hong Kong– by a glider of all things! I’m just going to assume she came from Australia to Hong Kong by a glider ’cause that’s just perfect. She almost gets arrested by Jimmy Wang Yu ( One-Armed Swordsman, The Chinese Boxer) but he decides to show her what’s so special about special units anyway- in bed!
In the meantime very suspicious (and suspiciously scarred) Sammo Hung (Enter The Dragon, My Lucky Stars, Ip Man2 ) carrying a briefcase in the bus. Hardened Aussie Detectives Gross goes after him and after a bit of a chase at the Ayers Rock (and a bit of a brawl too) manages to arrest him.
Shortly after Wang Yuarrives in Australia to continue with the (you guessed it) Sammo Hung case. That means he will interrogate good ol’ Sammo– and by interrogating I mean beating him into submission. I guess Chinese people don’t believe in human rights. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for Sammo a mysterious assassins shots him (to prevent his from testifying I guess).
Wang Yu starts chasing him and after a crazy pursuit they end up in the middle of a Chinese restaurant of all places!!!
We finally see the evil boss of crime and it’s (of course) non other that George Lazenbywith a porno mustache to boot! He went from a Bond to a Bond villain, and it suits him well in fact. Yu contacts the journalist from the beginning of the movie– turns out the glider was borrowed from her boyfriends, she’s a bit of a slut that way. Anyway, she takes him to the high class party where he meets Lazenby face to face.
Did he just accuse Wong Yu that he’s yellow? That’s maybe taking it to far…
And surprisingly he finds information that the main center of the villains is the local Martial Arts Center. So he breaks into in, climbing the but it turns out the center was not so empty as he thought. Massive showdown ensues in Martial Arts Center and continues climbing on another level against a seemingly endless number of attackers.
Of course- despite all his mastery he gets severely beaten and cut , and half dead barely manages to jump onto the first car shows up in front of the center. The Chinese lady co- driver hilariously proclaims “He is a good man, we must help him” even though she never saw him before.
They do the only logical thing and that’s drag him to somebody who can patch him up– it turns out to be the girl’s father- veterinarian! Man, I’m starting to understand why Yu hated everyone and everything on the set.
She really thinks this is cute
While naively returning from the picnic( and the obligatory picnic sex) Lazenby‘s gang attacks their car and his lady dies in a horrible explosion and he vows to get his revenge. Man, that’s a bit excessive, he didn’t even know her two days go!
So he does the only logical thing, borrows the glider from the journalist and uses it to break into his office by climbing down the pipes. He finds the office almost straight away and even though Lazenby is ready he is not ready for the rage of the dragon. He manages to light him on fire and still keeps beating him , man- Wang Yu has no mercy at all! And then he slips a bomb into his mouth!
Just look at that!
The detectives wait for him outside and although grumpy at first laugh with him at the explosion of the whole building floor and all the death that entails! Man, you get this sort of stuff only in the 70’s!
Trivia: The Man from Hong Kong was one of the subjects of highly entertaining documentary on Aussie cinematography: Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! It’s especially interesting seeing some behind the scenes like the power-strugle between the director Brian Trenchard-Smith and main actor Wang Yu who mostly wanted to direct everything himself, and his open disdain for white actresses he filmed love scenes with was definitely a bit unexpected.
Add to that and extremely hyped Quentin Tarantino who obviously enjoyed the movie immensely when he was about 10 years old.
Another fun bit of trivia, the other cop (one with an unruly set of hair) is actually Hugh Keays-Byrne later famous for his performance in Mad Max franchise (as a Toecutter in Mad Max and later as a Immortan Joe in Fury Road).
Also, it’s important to note Umbrella Entertainment did a fine job of re- releasing the movie on BluRay in 2016, remastering it to 1080P HD, so if you ever want to check out the movie in best possible quality, you can order it here.
Despite his ongoing health issues over the last couple of years Albert Pyun managed to finish his 54th film, a crazy mix of Star Wars, Dune, Cyborg, Mad Max and his trademark Kickboxing action with a help of excellent cinematographer Michael Su and a score by his long time collaborator Tony Rippareti. I’ll always have a soft spot for Pyun trademark Cyborg/ Kickboxing action and I hope this could be a bit of return to form of our old favorite.
It stars Brad Thornton, Ellie Church, Kelsey Carlisle, Paul Gunn, Clare Hoak, Tommie Vegas, Jennie Carroll, Ashley Campbell, Nathan Ferrier, Nick Rush, Fulvia Santoni and Cat Cakmis as Leah C6 and you can enjoy the new extended trailer right here!
We spoke about the “Expendables of Horror“aka Death House almost a year ago when principal photography was finished but now we finally have the first trailer (and the early release date too).
Death House staring genre luminaries like Kane Hodder, Gunnar Hensen, Barbara Crampton, Michael Berryman, Bill Moseley, Tony Todd, Wernon Wells, Sid Heig, and the talented Billy Oberst Jr. will be screened for the first time June 3rd at Scare-A-Con New England. So if you’re into that sort of thing (and you probably are if you’re a WM reader) you know the place to go.
Now enjoy!
Update: According to the latest information, movie will be released in cinemas by Regal Movies on 19. January 2018 to around 200 screens (double the originally planed number)!
Everyone’s favorite burlesque dancer/ martial artist/ actress Tura Satana is finally getting a documentary of her own!
Tura laid a blueprint for every female action star that we have today with her role as villainous gang leader Varla in Russ Meyer‘s classic “Faster, Pussycat!Kill!Kill!” ( it’s truly rare to see such an ass- kicking performance even now) but that’s just a tip of the iceberg. In her youth she was a prisoner of Japanese- American internment camp, later she was a victim of racially motivated gang rape and yet she rose up to become a martial artist/ avenging badass, super- popular dancer an then legendary B- movie actress with her turns in Meyer’s Faster,Pussycat!(1965) and Ted V. Michael’s The Astro- Zombies (1968) and The Doll Squad (1973).
Even thou she survived further hardships like a horrible car crash in the 80’s and had numerous operations to repair her back she never lost her will to live life to the fullest. Later in her life she worked as a nurse and a police dispatcher but in 2000’s she did return to acting appearing in the TheAstro-Zombies sequel Mark of the Astro Zombies (2004) , women- in- prison film Suger Boxx and she also reprized the role of Varla in Rob Zombie‘s underrated animated movie The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009).
Cody Garret started working on the project before Tura’s death in 2011 and you can easily see that it was a passion project for her and the rest of the crew. The list of the people interviewed for the documentary is seriously impressive with everyone from Dita Von Tease , John Watters (Pink Flamingos) and Ted V. Michaels (Astro Zombies) to Kitten Natividad (Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens) and Shannon Lee ( Bruce Lee Enterprises) gladly taking part. Movie is also narrated by the Asian- American comedian Margaret Cho.
We already talked to some length of our love of Kazahstani cinema. From the long lost action of Blizhniy Boy with Kickboxer/ MMA fighter Cung Le and the veterans like David Caradine, Carry- Hiroyuki Tagawa and Garry Busey to Beyond the Game with everyone from Olivier Grunner and Mark Dacascos to Eric Roberts and Michael Madsen.
Well, now we finally have a new trailer (and the release date) for the long gestating Diamond Cartel (formerly know as The Whole World at Our Feet). Featuring (as always) all- star cast of Armand Assante , Michael Madsen, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Tommy “Tiny” Lister, Don “Dragon” Willson, Olivier Gruner, final performance of acting legend Peter O’Toole and my personal favorite old school Kung Fu ass-kicker Bolo Yeung!
Enjoy the trailer and we’ll talk about the movie after it comes out March 31.
After the surprising success of the original The Crow movie, directed by Proyas and staring the late Brandon Lee the studio decided that The Crow concept is good enough to warrant a series ala Nightmare at Elm Street. Unfortunately The Crow mythology was never really built for a franshize. The author of the original comicbook James O’Barr did his best to keep the control of the projects with different pitches for sequels like the one with a Native American of the Crow tribe coming back from the dead to avenge his family (later comic-ized as The Crow: Dead Time) and the female Crow who died on her wedding day (now a basis for O’Barr’s still unpublished The Crow: Engines of Despair) but both were rejected.
Still unpublished The Crow: Engines of Despair
The second part ended up being a The Crow: City of Angels with Vincent Perez, actually a fairly decent film that still failed to live up to the expectation after the original. Dimension Films decided not to stop there so another sequel was put into production, this time with even less of a budget.
The movie starts with an overly dramatic execution scene of conveniently named Alex Corvis via the electric chair in the local prison. Our hero is accused of stabbing his girlfriend 20- something odd times and people are cheering his demise. He is of course innocent and as it usually goes returns from the dead with a roasted face that somehow evolves intro something alike a classic The Crow jester make- up. As he runs away we are treated to a not so good suicide dive followed by a really bad shapeshift moment! So the Crow flies with him but he also turns into a crow too, isn’t that a bit too much?
The mystical crow leads him to the police department’s evidence room, where he discovers proof that his girlfriend Lauren was killed by a group of corrupt cops. He also has a vision of the leader of the killers who has a scars on his arm. He goes to her grave and there, he runs into Lauren’s younger sister Erin, played coincidentally by young Christine Dunst (who would find much bigger success in another comicbook series some years later). She doesn’t seem to recognize him at first but when she does she gets really angry still believing he is the killer but he promises to prove otherwise and then disappears.
Unfortunately Morbus is just too gangly and funny to be a convincing angel of revenge
He tracks down his friends Leonard who testified falsly and got him in all this jam. Turns out he testified in return for a job at a CONSTRUCTION! This just might be the single worst deal in the history of film. He gets names of the corrupt cops out of him and goes on a wild killing spree.
After killing a cop via car crash (you can do fun stuff like that when you’re invulnerable) he uses the evidence he found on him to convince Erin of his innocence. It turns out her father Nathan had dealings with the cops and that started this whole mess.He owns a business company cops used for smugling drugs.After trying to prove to her that her death was a mistake he ends up killing himself. In a really cheep twit it turns out the main leader of the evil cops is- the police chef! Also a dabbler in the occult (I mean, who isn’t) and the man with the scars. Already knowing the way to cheat the crow (not so smart animal after all) he organizes and ambush for Alex in a “modern” night club (they have computers and really bad cameras and stuff). Alex of course thrives in the chaos and kills more than couple of cops. We even have a default impalement on a pipe, a staple of American cinema.
Impalement pipe- don’t leave your home without it!
Now one of the detectives manages to ignite a gas leak (remember that pipe from minutes ago) and the whole place goes up in flames and then in all the dead bodies Alex finds a severed arm with the scars. His mission is finally done. Or is it? Of course not. It turns out the Cheif of police faked it, and managed to trick the fate itself.You see having finished his task Alex is now without his powers and can finally be stopped. This moment really drags movie (even further) down. I mean if the mystical crow is this stupid I don’t thing a single death would be successfully avenged.
He confronts the Cheif but knowing he has an uper hand he stabs him to death all the while convincing him he really is guilty of his girlfirends death. What a deranged prick! He with a help of detective Madden and his slut secretary drag him to the taxidermy room (that exist in a police station- for some reason) and we find the sister Erin there too- with her mouth stitched shut. Now when all seems lost the crow shows up, take’s Erins bracelet, drops it on Alex and he finally comes back to life all reachached and ready to go. Man, this movie loves it’s clishes so much!
Alex being back in revenge mode manages to defeat everyone and he chooses to place the Cheif on the same electric chair that he was on. Poetic justice all the way. After that he returns to being dead, the necklaces now resting on the cross on his grave. Trivia: This movie does continue the cool tradition of having cool alternative rock/ industrial/ metal bands contribute to the soundtrack.Just listen to this Danzig track.
Unfortunately by the time the forth movie rolled over (more on that one soon) the budget for the soundtrack became non- existent and they stopped that particular tradition. Trivia, continued: It’s interesting how almost every move post- the original Brandon Lee hit turned out to be such a miss. Like I said, Dimension Films ignored some really descent story ideas from James O’Barr, just the damn author of the whole thing. Then there was a whole crazy script treatment for TheCrow V that involved resurrection of a good and evil rappers starring (then young) Eminem and Doctor Dre. That leads us all the way to today with Relativity Media remake that was supposed to be directed by Javier Gutierrez (who even went as far as to ask for O’Barr’s blessing) with Luke Evans as Eric, after that fell trough Jack Huston has signed to direct with Andrea Riseborough as (female) Top Dollar, Corin Hardy after that and then Relativity bankruptcy happened. Strangely they kept pushing the project even after the bankruptcy now with Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, Justice League) attached as a lead by trust me- don’t hold your breath.
Bradley Cooper, once attached as Eric -thankfully that never happened.
To celebrate the release of the new Black and Chrome edition of the fantastic Mad Max: Fury Road we take a look at the seemingly endless number of films it inspired: the good, the bad and the ugly!
Directed by “Italian George Miller” Enzo Castellari this movie takes a peek into distant future (8 years later) where war is raging between street gangs in post-apocalyptic New York. Amidst all of that is the gayest anti-hero Mark Gregory (who mysteriously disappeared from the face of the Earth) who manages to reunite street gangs and win against evil government agent Hammer (played by Vic Morrow). Fred Williamson also takes roll in this battle.
Another feature from mastermind of The Bronx Warriors Enzo Castellari only one year later. This time two mercenaries Scorpion (played by Giancarlo Prete) and Nadir (played by Fred Williamson) help wandering caravans fight off an evil band of white-clad bikers after the nuclear holocaust. In order to achieve this they had to go through a living hell, including Scorpion’s ass being penetrated by gang of gay Templars in this hilarious scene:
03. Made by a Pinoy c- movie maestro Cirio H. Santiago and staring our favorite Aussie bad-ass Richard Norton and eponymous. Equalizer 2000 (1987) the movie doesn’t offer much in the way of story but makes it all up with a whole lotta bullets and bombs (one babe too). Also Norton swears that the damned thing could actually work and I’m not going to question him for sure.
Swayze is most popular when dancing (), or fighting people in bars but in the late 80’s Swayze decided to take a post-apocalyptic vacation of sorts. In this career left turn Road Warrior meets Martial Arts as Swayze plays. Also it’s worth noting that new regions like China are just discovering the Mad Max franchise as evident recent rip- off , the Chinese Mad Shiella. So, I guess post- apocalyptic wasteland won’t stop being a popular destination any time soon.
01. Steel Frontier (1995) places Joe Lara (Legends of Tarzan) in a post- apocalyptic Western wasteland and surprisingly- it works! Actually it’s a good candidate for my favorite Lara film. The plot is your basic Yojimbo/ Fistfull of Dollars thing but if it works why fix it. General is played by always super entertaining Brion James (General Quantrell) and Lara even goes mano- a- mano with Kane Hodder aka Jason Vorhees himself!
We enthusiastically talked about the first post- Expendables 2 movie for Chuck Norris- The Finisher. Unfortunately that project never came into fruition (even though they were talks of it shooting in Australia with out favorite Aussie badass Richard Norton directing) but now we finally have some good news for all you Norris fans out there!
Just a cool photo of Chuck stretching Norton from our friends at Action Elite
Chuck has signed to appear in African (Botswanan to be precise) movie with some B- movie heavy hitters like Michael Jai White (Spawn, Black Dynamite) and previously mentioned Richard Norton, now a famed choreographer having worked on Mad Max: Fury Road, Suicide Squad and Ghost in a Shell). The writer is Motswana- born Edward Sebati and on the directing duties we have none other than the action maestro Isaac Florentine of Undisputed and Ninja fame! I see him as a sort of heir to the Menahem Golan of the legendary Cannon Films(just better).
McDaniels brothers, only their mother can tell them apart!
Movie centers around the two brothers Sasha McDaniels and Dumisani McDaniels who end up caught up in a net of poaching, robbery, murder and even a serious political conspiracy.Chuck is of course playing their cool uncle Sean Kane. Pre- production is well on the way and filming should beginning early 2017 and I’m sure I speak for all of us- it was about damn time!
Deadly villain Sahili played by Aurelien Henry Obama,much deadlier than the regular Obama!
As far as we can see it seems the cast is a good mix or original actors: irreplaceable Tom Neyman as The Master, Diane Mahree as Maggie (I had no idea she was still around) and Jackie Raye Newman as Debbie (of course) joined by Bryan Jennings (aka the son of the original’s Sheriff Williams Bryan Jennings) and also the new addition: Nuria Aguilar , Danielle Daggerty, Christopher Barnes and Christina Pezzo as Nicki.
Now, make it or break it moment of the casting is the replacement for Torgo (as original actor John Reynolds tragically died before the movie come out in 1966). For this crucial role they picked Nebraska born- LA based actor Steven Shields (from the award winning short film “The God Chair”) who as far as I’m concerned really looks the part. “I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to bring Torgo to the screen” he stated. I for one can’t wait to see Torgo back in action.
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