All posts by Rod Lott

Action

The Gauntlet (1977)

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I miss the Clint Eastwood who directs and stars in The Gauntlet: the one who shoots a gun and has fistfights. The one who wasn’t interested in chasing Oscar gold with mediocre melodramas of butch boxers, county bridges and apartheid rugby. The one who’s second or third line of dialogue is simply, gruffly, “Fuck ’em.”

As cop Ben Shockley, Eastwood is given the plum assignment of escorting an escort from a Las Vegas jail to a Phoenix courthouse so she can testify in a case against a rather feared mobster. Shockley would rather be drinking, and the manly named hooker, Gus (Sondra Locke), considers her chaperone to be a “big, .45-caliber fruit.”

Before they even depart her cell, Vegas bookies are betting against Shockley even completing the assignment, eventually placing the odds at 100-to-1. As the story progresses, one can see why, as Shockley has to protect Gus the huss from a horny constable (Deliverance‘s Bill McKinney, forever may he make us squeal), a hippie biker gang, snipers in a helicopter and the titular gauntlet of Phoenix’s finest, blowing bullet holes into the bus Shockley steals on their final stretch, after crudely welding a driver’s seat capsule of armor.

While its comedic bits could be tempered, The Gauntlet is a merry, if minor movie of mayhem Eastwood sandwiched in between Dirty Harry outings. Its slightness in story is mitigated by an almost tireless pace — slowed only by a motel stop for Locke to bathe — and plenty of the ol’ boom-and-pow. By that, I mean explosions and the trading of gunfire, not some sexual euphemism. Speaking of, for a then-real-life couple, Eastwood and Locke share zero chemistry, and what’s with him putting her in all those rape scenes? That’s not a recipe for lasting relationships. —Rod Lott

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Kitchen Sink

Tokyo! (2008)

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With multiple directors tackling different stories set within one iconic world city, Tokyo! is just like New York, I Love You or Paris, je t’aime but watchable and winning. Well, for a hair more than half the time, at least, which beats the other passport-anthology films handily.

Up first is the best, Michel Gondry’s “Interior Design,” in which an aspiring filmmaker (Ryo Case) and his supportive but ignored girlfriend (Ayako Fujitani of the ’90s Gamera revival films) crash in the tiny Tokyo apartment of her pal (Ayumi Ito, Gantz II: Perfect Answer) while in town for his screening. When their transitionary lives prove too much for her to handle, the would-be director’s neglected partner undergoes an out-of-left-field change to feel useful, but I won’t spoil what. I will, however, hereby forgive Monsieur Gondry for The Green Hornet, based upon the infectious charm and creativity of this captivating short.

Why is it that most triptych flicks seem to place the weakest segment in the middle? Such is the case with “Merde.” From Leos Carax (Pola X), it concerns the titular creature (Denis Lavant) who has all of Tokyo in a tizzy. He’s a milky-eyed, manhole-dwelling mutant who steals crutches from the handicapped and throws cigarette butts at babies. The initial scenes, clearly taking a page or two from Godzilla, are funny. Then, with a court scene that feels like actual jury duty, it grows interminable. I wanted to commit seppuku.

Finally, there’s the partly successful “Shaking Tokyo” by Joon-ho Bong (The Host). The tale centers on a hermit (Teruyuki Kagawa, Sukiyaki Western Django) who hasn’t left his home in 10 years. His life is all about ordering pizza, reading magazines and falling asleep while defecating. He hates contact with people and sunlight. The idea is intriguing, both in the movie and real life; on many a frenzied day, I could go for a solitary agenda of pizza and pooping. Who’s with me? —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Gantz II: Perfect Answer (2011)

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After a two-minute “previously on Gantz” type of intro, something one may construe as action goes down in Gantz II: Perfect Answer. It’s too little, too late, however, and followed by even more slog, until an ungodly walking running time of two hours and 21 minutes is reached. The whole of Japan should know better.

It’s a damned shame, given how frenetic the first film was a mere one year before. I suspect both Gantz chapters — birthed from a presumably never-ending manga, it bears mentioning — were shot back-to-back, as the original film ended in a cliffhanger. In hindsight, I’d rather have my questions of what would happen go unanswered, if the imperfect Perfect Answer is the lame response.

Although I give returning director Shinsuke Sato immense credit for not doing the same thing twice, I found myself pining for at least the mission-after-mission, go-get-this-goon structure to stick its head into the proceedings. In its place is a plot twist that the big, black ball called Gantz has up and changed the rules of his own game, thus pitting the black leather-costumed “contestants” against one another. Never underestimate the love of a human heart to fracture a team.

A couple of zippy sequences exist, primarily a mowdown-cum-showdown amid a crowded, speeding subway train. But the finale is sappy; the rogue’s gallery of aliens, missing; the electric charge sent down your cinematic spine, startlingly weak. So underwhelming and disappointing is this immediate follow-up, the experience is like licking the top of an old 9-volt battery to see if it has any sign of life left. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Perversion Story (1969)

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Dr. George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel, Belle du Jour) puts his San Francisco clinic and publicity tricks over everything, from his credibility to his homely, heavily asthmatic wife, Susan (Marisa Mell, Danger: Diabolik). While Dr. G is off administering, ahem, gynecological treatment to nude photographer Jane (Elsa Martinelli, Hatari!), he receives news of Susan’s death. Although she hated her hubbie, Susan leaves him with a surprise $2 million insurance policy, which would fix the clinic’s financial problems, except it sure looks fishy to the authorities.

At a topless club with a built-in ceiling swing, one performer/prostitute Monica Weston (also Mell) proves a dead ringer for Susan, but with blonde hair, green eyes and healthier lungs. Mell stuns as unbelievably, lip-biting sexy in this role; during their first lovemaking session, she has to unclamp George’s hand from her breast and force his digits southward.

But just what is going on? Can George figure it out before the cops find enough evidence to put him behind bars and possibly on death row? And since this thing is titled Perversion Story — and comes from ’69, haw-haw — how much nudity can we expect? Enough, my horny readers, as the flesh of the movie’s ladies are as curvy and on display as San Francisco’s famously steep and winding roads, but this is no porno.

The aforementioned coupling between George and Jane is shot ingeniously from the mattress’ POV, with flesh pressed right up against the screen. But Perversion Story has much more on its mind than mere pumping and pulchritude — writer/director Lucio Fulci has cooked up a corker of a plot at the film’s chewy center, even more complex than the thriller genre generally demands. It proves the man could do much more than gross us out, and that it’s a shame he didn’t do it more often. —Rod Lott

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