Just Came Dragon Inn

I finally found Dragon Inn (1967), recently released on Criterion. I'd seen the remakes/reimaginings already, Dragon Inn (1992) and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011), but hadn't seen the original, King Hu version.

As usual, the Imperial eunuchs are causing trouble. Cao Shiao-qin is trying to kill off the family of a rival general, who have fled to the west. His intelligence agencies set up an ambush at the Dragon Inn, a low-down spot near the border. They meet up with martial artist Shih Chun, who wants to meet innkeeper Tsao Chien for some unknown purpose. Another pair of fighters show up, one of whom is referred to a handsome young man, although she's clearly a woman... And it turns out that the innkeeper is quite a martial artist, too. These four will protect the general's family against the secret police, and eventually, the eunuch himself.

There are some nice little set pieces, like when someone tries to stab Shih Chun when he's drinking. He grabs the point of the sword between his thumb and finger, with the winecup balancing on the flat of the blade. The assassin can't move it in any direction, and is thrown back into the wall when he flicks the sword away.

But, and I may be jaded by more modern styles, the fighting is good but pretty old fashioned. There's no wirework (I think), but a lot stunt tricks. Also, the Tartars aren't as cool as in Flying Swords. 

Still, it was great to see one of the old school wuxia movies. Hu made this in Taiwan, after making Come Drink with Me for the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong. I think I liked Drink, better, but I'd watch more of these if I find them. 

Killer Content

This entry is about one of my favorite movies: Once More, My Darling (1949). Ms. Spenser and I taped it off of AMC, back in the eighties or nineties or whenever we recorded VHS tapes of cable channels, and AMC was a movie channel.

We watched it together many times over the years. I found myself daydreaming about the movie on lunch breaks or when out walking. I had things to say about Ann Blyth - so I started a blog as was the fashion of the time. But I don't think I've really said much about Ann Blyth on it.

Then let's talk about Robert Montgomery. who directed this, as well as starring. He plays Collier Laing, a very minor actor from a rich family of lawyers. He is perfect in every way and extremely handsome (Maybe he wrote this too), His mother, Jame Cowl, wants his to give up acting (and running around with women), take up law and settle down. But before he has to make up his mond, he gets a telegram from the government. He's been drafted - re-activated.

You're going to have to take this next part on faith. It's the plot of the movie. You see, a notorious jewel thief has disappeared, but left a necklace with his girl. To flush out the thief, they want to make him jealous, which means Montgomery has been drafted to seduce the girl.

And the girl is Ann Blyth.

When he first meets her, he doesn't recognize her as his assignment. She is dressed in tennis short, a tee shirt that says "KILLER", big sun glasses and a ball cap. She tells him right away that he is a very attractive man. He basically tells her, go away kid. But once he realizes it's her, he starts the seduction - except that she has already fallen for him, and wants him all to herself.

Before their first date, she wants to meet his mother, who's hosting a party for a few legal sorts. She shows up in her pajamas (she snuck out on her father), doused in perfume. The maid, Lillian Randolph, says she could wear those pajamas to the races, and inhales the perfume deeply (while everyone lese is gagging on it). See, it's always the black actors in the tiny roles who know what's what. 

Her scene at the party is brilliant. She is socially correct, doesn't want to intrude, remembers all the guests names, and speaks quite freely about love at first sight, "youth calling to youth", and her attraction to Cowl's son.

But by the next day, it seems like she wants to get married. Immediately, in Las Vegas.

Blyth is wonderful here. Of course, she's beautiful, a sort of elfin beauty, with a high forehead, almond eyes and a tiny nose and chin. But the way she plays Killer! As she tells Montgomery, she's nineteen years old, American, her friends tell her she isn't bad looking, and as for money, she's rolling in it. She's nearly perfect and she is going to get him if it's the last thing she does.

Montgomery is good too, but he's 45 and looks it, or worse. Blyth is 24 and having no trouble playing 19. The idea that teenagers would go nuts over him might have worked for Cary Grant, but for him ... well, just suspend disbelief. Anyway, he's directing so of course.

In conclusion, Blyth is playing a very particular type of teenaged girl, a very serious, intelligent girl who thinks she's sophisticated and adult, who's just as dixzy as any bobbysoxer in her own way. We don't see it that often. 

Bone Voyage

For the first horror movie of spook season, we picked The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023). It's based on the voyage that Dracula took to England. SPOILER - Everyone on the ship dies. 

It starts with a set of coffins boxes being loaded on the Demeter in some Eastern port. The quartermaster Wojcek (Daniel Dastmalchian) hires a band of laborers for the voyage. An educated black man, Corey Hawkins, tries to get a place, but they pick a stronger looking man. However, when he sees the dragon labels on the boxes, he bails, and Hawkins gets to go onboard.

One of the boxes broke open in moving, and after they are underweigh, Hawkins goes to investigate. He finds a comatose girl, Aisling Franciosi, in a pile of dirt. He starts giving her transfusions to see if he can save her. Most of the crew is against the idea of a woman on board, but the captain won't put her off, if Hawkins takes repsonsibility.

He soon has her awake, and she tells them that there is a horrible monster aboard, and they all need to get out!

Soon, all hell breaks loose. The animals are all killed, then the ship's dog, then the captain's cute little son. Good riddance. Through all of this, Hawkins tries to find a scientific explanation. And if you think Franciosi can give them some advice in killing the monster, she says if they knew how to kill the monster, they would have killed it centuries ago. 

This is the part people call "Alien on a boat". We know there were no survivors - no live survivors, ecept the rats. So we watch people getting picked off one by one. Sadly, this is hard to watch, because they all die so dumb. For instance, they figure out that he needs to be in his coffin by day. Then they ignore that, even after seeing several of the bitten go up in flames in the sun. 

So, in spite of a good idea and best intentions, this wasn't thatgood. Partly the lack of tension - everyone dies - except the undead. Then, the stupidness. Maybe the monster could have been more effective, but it wasn't bad, and you got to see a lot of. We liked Hawkins, Franciosi, and Dastmalchian. I guess it's worth watching, in Spooktober, anyway.

Girl Fighters

For the last action double-bill of my solo viewing weekend, I went with the trieds and true female-lead type: Sri Asih (2022) and Becky (2020).

Shri Asih is a bit of an oddball - a comic superhero movie, but based on an Indonesian comic. It starts with a tourist couple visiting an Indonesian volcano (Mt. Toba?). The volcano explodes, and more than that, we see an evil face in the ash cloud. The couple flee, but are killed in a car crash. She is pregnant, and manages to give birth before she dies.

In the orphanage, the daughter is a strong willed girl. She has a friend who is a mild and bullied boy - and she always fights for him. But she is adopted by a nice woman, who starts training her in fighting arts. Now grown, she is played by Pevita Pierce. She is a strong fighter, but has trouble controlling her anger. 

When she meets up with her friend from the orphanage, she finds him as part of a semi-underground group trying to protect his apartment complex from gangs and corporate goons, who want to tear it down and [some corporate plot I don't really remember]. So she becomes there defender.

But then she learns that she is part of an ancient race of heroes with super-powers (good!) but that the evil volcano demon is trying to possess her, for evil (bad). To avoid this, she'll have to learn to control her temper. 

The action here is very much sub-Iko Uwais. But it's still a lot of fun. 

I wanted to watch Becky because I had seen some good reviews of its sequel, Wrath of Becky. It's about a defiant teen girl, Lulu Wilson, who has recently lost her mother. Her father, Joel McHale, is taking her to their lake house to grieve (good), but has also invited his new girlfriend, Amanda Brugel and her young son (bad - especially because they announce that they are getting married).

While she is out in her playhouse/treehouse brooding, a small gang of White Supremicists invade the house. Although McHale and Brugel try to hide the fact that there is one other member of their group, the Nazis figure it out and send one of the crew out to get her. She is ready for him, and kills him with a broken ruler and a bundle of sharp colored pencils. 

That's sort of what this movie is about - a teen girl Home-Aloning a bunch of Nazis. It's pretty brutal - a dog gets killed, McHale gets killed, etc. The lead Nazi is played by, of all people, Kevin James, and not in a funny way at all. His enforcer, Robert Maillet (pro wrestler Kurgan), is pretty scary, but in the end, a little more sympathetic.

But it's all based on Wilson feeling that she has nothing to lose, especially after her father is killed. The gang offers to let her go in the custody of her new stepmom, and she essentially goes fuck that, never liked the bitch (Brugel is not a bitch, she is very understanding, but you know how girls are).

However, I felt the movie spent too much time on the teen angst, not enough on the Nazi-killing. The kill are all right (lawn mower to the head, for ex), but they just take too long to get to. I think I would have preferred something campier and more off-the-wall. I think I'll skip the sequel.

So this long weekend was a bit more successful than the last. I took fewer chances, went with more crowd-pleasers (me, I'm the crowd). Ms. Spenser even caught part of Equalizer 2, and thought she might enjoy it. Well done, me. 

One-Man Armies

The next pair of movies I watched on my batchelor weekend were assassin movies, both sequels for no special reasons.

I've been aware of Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) for a while, as well as being aware of the widespread opinion that it isn't very good. It stars Rupert Friend as the eponymous hitman. He's an Agent - a gene modified superkiller with heightened strength and reflexes, and diminished conscience and introspection. He s supposed to track down Hannah Ware, daughter of the scientist who developed the agents. He has gone underground, and this is a plot to get him back. 

It turns out that Zachary Quinto is a more advanced agent, with subcutaneous armor, making him bulletproof. Friend goes over to Ware's side against Quinto. Fortunately, it turns out that Ware is the most advanced Agent of all.

I actually quite liked this - mostly for image of Friend in a sharp suit, skinhead haircut, jug ears and no expression. The action is sort of John Wick adjacent (not as good, but what is?), and fun. I never played the video game this is based on, and I guess that's good. I also had no idea that there was an earlier Hitman (2007) movie, which is also supposed to be bad. But I'll watch it if I come across it. 

I picked The Equalizer 2 (2018) because I've given up looking for part one. Is it really bad? I guess it's on Paramount+, so next time we want to stream Star Trek, I'll check it out. Anyway, Denzel Washington is the Equalizer, a Boston Lyft driver who sometimes helps the people he drives for. When some douchebags load an obviously drugged woman into his car, he takes her to the hospital, then comes back and beats the douchebags up. He also gives a black teen a job cleaning and repainting the wall outside his apartment.

But the real plot is about Pedro Pascal, who was in DIA with Washington, but is now running a kill-for-hire company. Thwarting them involves a little globe-trotting and braving a hurricane on the North Shore. 

I liked the action, and of course Denzel is always a treat. The Boston locations were fun too, for an old Masshole. I wasn't that thrilled by the various subplots, although some of them did pay off. 

I guess this was originally a TV show, which I didn't see, and later another TV show (starring Queen Latifah!), which same. The latest entry is The Equalizer 3, which features Washngton coming out of retirement for one last job. I'm looking forward to that. 

Exotic Adventure

Ms. Spenser was off for the weekend, so I tried another experiment in watching lots of maybe-not-so-great movies. I'll be blogging them in pairs, matched thematically. First, old-fashioned exotic adventure.

Secret of the Incas (1954) is known mostly as the movie where Charlton Heston acts as the prototype for Indiana Jones. Harry Steele (Heston) wears a beat-up leather jacket and fedora, acting as a tour guide and amateur gigolo in Cuzco. He picks out middle-aged Glenda Farrell (or she picks him out) as his latest conquest. 

But is real passion is treasure hunting. He's looking for clues to the hiding place of the great Inca gold sunburst, working with local scuzzball Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life). Uncle Billy tells him of a new woman coming to town on a truck - that means she doesn't have any papers.

She turns out to be Nicole Maury, a Romanian refugee who is desperate to get to America. Since she doesn't have any money, you know how she's been paying her way. When Farrell comments that Heston is "changing horses in mid-stream", he grins at her and says, "Wouldn't you?" He is a cad.

The last act takes place in Machu Picchu, where we meet archeologist Robert Young, who is also taken with Maury. So Heston will have to steal the sunburst from under their noses. He knows where it is based on the old "light from a window reflected of the shiny thing placed in the secret spot" that Dr. Jones popularized. 

The movie also features vocal acrobat Yma Sumac both as a native servant and as singer on the soundtrack. That, plus the Cuzco and Machu Picchu locations would make this a great watch. But Heston is maybe too much of a heel to make it completely enjoyable.

The Indian Tomb (1959) is a Fritz Lang film, based on a book by his wife, Thea von Harbou. It is the sequel to Tigers of Enchnapur, which I couldn't find easily, so I skipped it. Prince Ramigani (Rene Deltgen) is in love with temple dancer Seetha (Debra Paget), who has run away with German engineer Paul Hubschmid. Deltgen wants him dead and her returned. 

While they are on the run, Deltgen's sister and her brother, another German engineer are brought in to build a tomb for the prince's lost love. When he finds out that she's not dead, just lost, and that she hates him, he wants out. But they are held captive.

The movie is filmed in India, including the water palace Jal Mahal. It's full of exotic locales and characters, but also (like Incas) a lot of brown face makeup. There are some tigers, but no tiger attacks (maybe in part 1?). Really, the biggest draw is Paget's extended dance sequence, where her costume is a strapless, backless bra and open-sided bikini. And it's not because she's a fabulous dancer. 

Both of these were more fun that I would have guessed, which is good enough for a bachelor's weekend.

Prog-Rock Destroyer

Jonah Ray Rodrigues is back in another horror flick: Destroy All Neighbors (2024).

He plays a prog-rock musician who is toiling over a planned record in the bedroom studio of his crappy apartment. but his loud new neighbor is destroying his concentration, playing EDM, banging on the walls and screaming. Rodrigues doesn't want a confrontation, but he finally pounds (taps) on the wall. His neighbor shuts up, but appears at the door - we see him through the peephole. He's a hideous troll-like old man, who hawks a loogie on the door. Under all the makeup, he's played by Alex Winter.

Jonah calls the police, but when they show up they find the neighbor having tea with Jonah's girlfriend. He has come over to apologize, and is charming to everyone. He promises to keep the music down, but behind everyone's back, gives Jonah the throat cutting gesture.

Jonah's day job is as studio engineer. He gets harassed in the parking lot by a drunk, and harassed in the studio by the musician he's working with, who gets him fired. When he comes home to Winter blasting the EDM, he finally works up the nerve to go over and confront him. Winter mocks him, tries to get him to dance, tries to get him to fight, and in the confusion, beheads himself. Cue Jonah going to YouTube - "How to get rid of a body." He winds up with a dismembered corpse, who unfortunately comes to life.

And this isn't the last body he will wind up with - all of them mysteriously re-animated. 

Rodrigues is kind of playing his usual nerdy character, but a little more spineless, a little less self-aware. He is obsessed with a prog-rock Youtube bass player, who advises that if people like and understand your music, you're doing it wrong. He has nothing but contempt and pity for anything non-prog. It's a little frustrating at first, because he's so unlikable, but then the killing starts. 

Not the scariest or funniest horror-comedy we've seen, but a fun low-budget B-movie.