All posts by Rod Lott

Martial Arts

Dororo (2007)

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Should you happen to find a basket floating in the river containing a baby with no eyes, arms or legs, don’t freak out — it’s probably just Hyakkimaru! As created by manga master Osamu Tezuka (Black Jack, Astro Boy) in the late 1960s, Hyakkimaru is a samurai whose real flesh was stolen by 48 demons. With each one he kills via the blade that subs for a left arm, he gets back some of that skin and those limbs, one piece at a time, be it an ear or the liver. Don’t ask — just go with it.

Fully grown, Hyakkimaru (Satoshi Tsumabuki, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) roams the countryside with wisecracking sisterly sidekick Dororo (Kô Shibaski, One Missed Call), looking for demons to slay. Among those they find include a spider-crab creature, girls who morph into oversized caterpillars, a woman who turns into some sort of witch butterfly, a living lotus tree with stretchy neck, something akin to those damned flying monkeys, a pair of talking monster dogs and one hopping devil on horseback. Our heroes gain an ally in a giant ghost baby.

Most of these beasts are all-CGI, but some come in the preferred form of dudes in rubber suits. Given the source material and the country that created kaiju cinema, I much prefer the latter. Regardless, the monster-slaying portions make Dororo quite a kick, but the more Hyakkimaru questions his origins, the more Akihiko Shiota’s epic slows considerably, eventually staying stuck in a 20- or 30-minute lag.

Even today, Tezuka’s Dororo enjoys a page-turning pace; this often-too-serious adaptation could have done that by ditching the dramatic introspection that wasn’t so heavy in the books and stick to the ghost-busting. It’s overlong at two hours and 19 minutes, and ends with no true ending, as Hyakkimaru has two dozen hellions left to stab. If a sequel gets made, I’d certainly like to see him do his thing, but I hope Shiota drops the music score that sounds like you’re being serenaded by a mariachi band in a Mexican restaurant while you’re trying to apply just the right amount of honey to that sopapilla. —Rod Lott

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Kitchen Sink

42nd Street Forever: Volume 1 (2005)

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Here’s what you get in 42nd Street Forever, Synapse Films’ first in a series of trailer compilations: flesh, blood, women, terror, an undertaker, his pals, nude nuns, killer ‘shrooms, crippled masters, centerfold girls, chicks with dicks, werewolves on wheels, pink angels, creampuffs, a post-apocalyptic decapitation and much, much more. As the clip for Starcrash warns, “You are about to be HURLED …”

In the mondo movie Secret Africa, a narrator intones almost gleefully, “A baby girl is scarred … for beauty!” Uniquely, a double feature of The Blood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama is presented as a faux news report, complete with mention of the “Up Chuck Cup” gimmick. Confessions of a Summer Camp Counselor is one of those colorful sex comedies from the UK that the book Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema rendered with such infectious nostalgia. Wicked, Wicked pits Tiffany Bolling against a slasher in a hotel employee uniform, in a little somethin’ called “anamorphic Duovision”: “Twice the action! Twice the excitement!”

This debut volume is heavy on the lost art of ’70s porn trailers, which make adult films like The 3Dimensions of Greta look (almost) downright respectable. Another 3-D one is Hard Candy, starring The Lollipop Girls and John Holmes, who tells (warns?) viewers that they “can now sit under the shadow of my long schlong.” Panorama Blue touts being “shot in 70mm super widescreen/Panoramascope” while a couple makes out on a moving roller coaster, stripping until they’re fully nude. Don’t forget The Italian Stallion, starring a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone as Stud; all they can show here is Sly romping in the snow and playing on a jungle gym. (That’s not a euphemism.)

More names can be found in Corruption, with Peter Cushing as a ladykiller (the illegal kind); Ginger, starring Cheri Caffaro as the titular “goddamn dick-teasing bitch”; Super Fuzz with Terence Hill as the super cop who sees red; and Destroy All Monsters with Godzilla and the whole damn gang. Destroy all your plans for the next two hours and eight minutes when you slide this disc into your player. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966)

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This overly rushed and poorly dubbed sequel to AIP’s hit Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is inferior to that film, but still a load of fun, if you can stomach all the sub-Laugh-In moments and constant winks at the camera.

In Dr. Goldfoot & the Girl Bombs, the great Vincent Price reprises his role as Dr. Goldfoot, who manufacturers a mess of hot bitches in gold lamé swimwear in his secret lab. This time, he’s programmed these barely clothed vixens to kiss — and thereby detonate — the world’s NATO generals. The plot pretty much ends there and gives way to a series of loosely connected, probably scripted-on-the-spot wacky shenanigans involving teen idol Fabian and his efforts to foil Goldfoot’s plans for world domination.

Price actually gets two roles in this one, but he’s no Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, that’s for sure. Laura Antonelli provides a highlight by performing a seductive go-go dance in her negligee. Providing some “comic relief” in a film full of it is the Italian team of Franco and Ciccio, who may remind you of Martin and Lewis … but only after being kicked in the head by a team of horses.

Mario Bava had the unfortunate assignment of directing these two numbskulls — who make Roberto Benigni look perfectly restrained — in what had to be the most terrifying time in his long horror career. Faults and all, its 79 minutes will fly by, but you’ll still be left with the aching feeling that it’s missing a certain something the original had … ah, yes: Susan Hart. Meow! —Rod Lott

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Pre-Show Countdown

5 Fired-Up Flicks Featuring Bruceploitation Star Dragon Lee

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Dragon on Fire (1980) — The Dragon on Fire in question is Dragon Lee. Wacky kung fu. Shaolin strike rock fist. A fat guy sticks dishes to his boobies. Tree kicking. Whole frog soup. Attack on a parakeet. Rabid cannibal in a wheelchair. Man pisses himself. Villain tracks fights with a sand timer. Mad dog technique. Reverse-motion crawling in the grass. Slow-motion milk spurting. The hairiest toes you’ve ever seen. Who’s who? Who knows, who cares.

Golden Dragon Silver Snake (1979) — Dragon Lee headlines Godfrey Ho’s colorful Golden Dragon Silver Snake, in which everyone is at the mercy of a motorcycle gang whose members wear skinny ties and answer to a cat-throwing crime lord. There’s a semi-ingenious fight involving a guitar and a trick net hat, but that’s topped by a 15-minute fight sequence that begins at a hotel pool, moves to a playground, then atop moving boats! Plus, there’s egg fu, wheel fu, sandbag fu, electric drill fu and raft fu thrown in here and there. But the best part is when some elderly guy walks into a trap of spikes. Old people crack me up.

Rage of the Dragon (1979) — Judging from what’s onscreen, the Rage of the Dragon is rather tame. Dragon Lee sets out to avenge his father’s death, with a trusty assistant by his side who sports an enormous brown growth on his nose that is never explained. Dragon fights several baddies, including a team of masked swordsmen and a freaky-faced dude that looks like something out of Dick Tracy. There are too many characters and if you can figure out who’s who and what’s what, you win a prize: watching a better kung-fu movie.

Champ Against Champ (1983) — After a lengthy absence, young Dragon Lee returns to his hometown in Champ Against Champ, but guess who doesn’t cotton to this idea? Damn near everyone! Thus, much punching and kicking ensues. Early on, Lee loses his leg in a scuffle (see it tucked behind him?), so he fashions a new one out of steel. What does this mean for you, the viewer? One additional stock sound effect than usual. Lee then takes on a host of baddies, including a man who breathes fire, a cave-dwelling evil guy who tosses magic flowers like darts and a quartet of circus clowns wielding whirling ribbons of doom. Crazy! Like a fox!

Dragon Lee vs. the Five Brothers (1982) — Five things you need to know about Dragon Lee vs. the Five Brothers:
1. Dragon Lee is the star. He fights five brothers.
2. Look not so closely during some of the fight scenes and you’ll see the shadows of the cameraman and his crane.
3. One poor sap gets a karate chop right to the testes.
4. There’s a guy with a cool metal hand.
5. Also, a horsey. —Rod Lott

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