Nuts in Mayhem

I picked Mayhem (2017) up on the strength of it's category, Comedy-Horror, and its stars, Stephen Yuen and Samara Weaving. Good choice.

It opens with Yuen explaining the setup: a new virus has become pandemic. It causes a loss of all inhibitions, making people act out their every urg, including lust and anger. It turns at least one eye red, hence its nickname, Red-eye. It doesn't kill you, but someone else might. 

Yuen is a young idelaistic partner at a prestigious law firm. When they are defending a man who killed someone in the grip of the virus, he finds the loophole that leads to a ruling of diminished capacity: Someone with red-eye can't be held responsible, even for murder. So he's become a big man in the firm.

He has a meeting with Samara Weaving, representing a group of home owners being foreclosed on. Yuen basically blows her off and has security escort her out. But it turns out he has bigger problems. 

It seems there was a mistake made on the Vanda Corp account, and he is being set up to take the fall. It was probably Caroline Chikezie, known as the Siren for whispering poisonous rumors to the higher-ups. They take it to the lead partner, and long story short, Yuen is fired. The HR goon known as the Reaper comes to deliver the news and has him escorted out.

But right about now, red-eye has been detected in the air system of the building. The building is put on complete quarantine. They are trapped - and also infected. That's one of the fun parts of this movie. I had guessed that it was one of those zombie movies, where our protagonists are the only ones who aren't infected. Nope - they've got it too. And they both want revenge. And until the quarantine is lifted, they have legal immunity to do it. 

And so begins their fight to ascend to the top level, protected by key card elevators and corporate goons. They arm themselves from a tool cage. Weaving looks particularly fetching weilding a nailgun. This all plays out with pandemonium in the background - people throwing folders in the air, copulating freely, fighting or just taking a nap. And of course, our protagonists are no more sane than the rest, just a bit more calculating. 

This was a fun gore-fest with quite a bit of social satire mixed in. I liked the fact that Yuen and Weaving were as affected as everyone else. Made for a little cute humor. We've seen one other movie by director Joe Lynch, Suitable Flesh. We liked the humor in this more.

Cat Fever

I probably saw Cat Ballou (1965) once or twice as a kid, but it was Ms. Spenser who clued me into how awesome it was - because of the Greek chorus of Stubby Kaye and Nat "King" Cole.

It starts with these two banjo players waiting for Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda) to be hanged, and telling her story in ballad style. Her story starts when she gets out of school, trained as a teacher. She got on a train to go see her dad in Wyoming, when she meets a convict (Michael Callan) being taken to prison and a drunk preacher. The preacher turns out to be the uncle of Callan, (Dwayne Hickman) and he helps him get free of his guard. Callan takes refuge in Fonda's sleeper bunk. She is too kind to scream, but he does take liberties - oh, well, he's soon out the window and gone from her life forever.

Fonda gets home and finds her father (John Marley) as cantankerous as ever. But his ranch is threatened by the developers of Wolf City. His only ally is an Indian, Tom Nardini, who he considers Jewish, as the Indians were the lost tribe of Israel. Soon the outlaws show up and are enlisted to resist the developers - until a gunslinger with a silver nose (Lee Marvin) shows up. Now, they're ready to face the law.

But Nardini suggests that they hire a gunslinger of their own. Based on the Western dime novels they read, they hire Kid Shaleen (also Lee Marvin). He shows up a drunken bum, barely able to hold his gun. But a big gulp of booze sets him right, and he's a dead shot. It lasts about 10 minutes before he's too drunk to function, as Callan says, "I've never seen a man get through a day so fast."

Sadly, he is sleeping it off when Fonda's dad is shot from afar. So Fonda does the only sensible. She takes her "gang" and starts robbing trains. 

This is a fun little comedy Western. Fonda is spunky and a little sexy - all the men are clearly in love with her, although only Callan courts her openly. In fact, Nardini quietly leaves, gently letting her know that as an Indian, he needs to stay away from her. It's also just a little darker than expected, with a few deaths taken seriously. I wonder if Fonda gets the drop in the last scene?

Kicking the Gong

Of course I've seen Stephen Chao's Shaolin Soccer (2001). But I guess I've never blogged it, so here goes. I got the urge to see it again, and got it from Hoopla.

It starts with Team Evil soccer star Ng Man-Tat throwing a game. The fans break his Golden Leg and his boss, Patrick Tse, refuses to pay him off. So he becomes a drunk. Many years later he comes across Stephen Chow, a Shaolin practitioner who wants to teach people to use kung fu for everyday living. But no one's interested and he's a ragged bum. Ng sees the power of his legs, and falls in with his plan. 

Zhao Wei is a young woman who uses her kung fu to make steamed buns. When Chow sees her, he is impressed (and steals some buns). He calls her beautiful, although she has terrible acne. She takes his worn-out ratty shoes as payment for the buns.

Now, Chow needs a team. He manages to convince his brothers, also kung fu experts in a variety of specialities, to join as well - there is an open entry tournament with a cash prize that seals the deadl. So they begin playing a demo game, and get clobbered, until they remember that they are Shaolin. Then they destroy the opposing team.

Also, Wei gets herself fancied up for Chow, but he liked her better before. She gets fired around her. But that may help her get her skin cleared up.

In fact, they go all the way to the finals - vs. Ng's old nemesis, Team Evil. It's a dirty game, and their goalie is taken out. They are about to forfeit, when Wei appears, with clear skin and a shaved head, ready to play.

This synopsis is sort of beside the point. The point is amazing stunts of kung fu integrated into soccer and other daily pursuits. The movie is often surreal - costumes might change arbitrarily, characters might comment on the movie they're in, and so on. That's not even to mention the impossible wire-fu/CGI-fu involved. 

It's also funny as heck. Maybe his best, edging out Kung Fu Hustle. 

Chan the Man

I went to another library book sale to pick out some cheap DVDs, including The Black Camel (1931), a Warner Oland Charlie Chan movie.

The movie is set in Honolulu, and at least partly filmed there. Movie star Dorothy Revier is making a movie, but seems distraught. She gets her psychic adviser, Bela Lugosi, to come and help her out. Her friend Sally Eilers is worried that Lugosi isn't a good influence. 

Oland as Chan enters undercover as a Chinese merchant, asking to see Lugosi. But Lugosi sees through the act, and Oland tells him that he is investigating the death of an actor a few years earlier. And then Revier is found murdered, and Eilers is acting pretty suspicious, especially since her boyfriend found the body.

I've seen a few Charlie Chans, and most have been stinkers. This one was much better. The location shooting is plain to see, not just because Diamond Head is in the background. It looked like there would even be a hula scene, but sadly, we only see some schoolgirls watching something that isn't shown. The comic relief wasn't Number One Son, but a police assistant (Otto Yamaoka?). His bit is to run in with a piece of irrelevant evidence, usually when Chan is in the middle of figuring something out. Oland tells him to go find something else, and he rushes off. It's a pretty good gag.

Lugosi is good here, as a suave psychic, and -- SPOILER -- and not the villain! All in all, very worth watching. 

Luc Besson's Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula

Did you know that Luc Besson made a Dracula (2025) movie last year? Us neither. But I was willing to give it a shot. based on that alone.

Dracula is played by Caleb Landry Jones. The movie starts with Jones going to war against the Ottomans, ordering his priest to tell God to protect his beloved Zoe Bleu. When he returns and finds Bleu dead, he kills the priest, renouces God, and so becomes a vampire. That's all it took.

He will use his immortality to search for the reincarnation of Bleu. Wasn't that the Mummy's deal, not Dracula? He develops a special cologne that women can't resist, so that will help with the search.

Much later, Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) visits Castle Dracula about a land deal. Jones is now in extreme old age makeup, with a wig very similar to the one Oldman wore in Coppola' Dracula. He sees a locket with a portrait of Harker's intended, Mina, and realizes that she is the one he has been seeking, Zoe Bleu come back to life. 

So he has his CGI gargoyles hold him prisoner and sets off the Paris for find her. A little blood, and he's looking like a young dandy again, and is soon courting Bleu and trying to get her to rmember her past life.

But Abid has gotten free of the gargoyles and found Father Christoph Waltz, vampire hunter. Not van Helsing, though. He was Jewish, Walz is Catholic. But will they be able to save Bleu?

This is a good looking but odd movie. The gargoyles, the perfume, the non-van-Helsing, and so many other details that don't quite belong. But other details seem to come from other movies, to the extent that I wondered if there were elements of parody in Besson's plan. 

But I think the main impetus for this movie was to allow Caleb Landry Jones to go wild, with multiple make-up and acting styles. We haven't seen him in much (X-Men: First Class), but he seems to be fun to watch. The rest of the movie is luxurious and lovely, but that might be more of the Coppola homage. 

Not a great Dracula, but not bad. I can see how Nosferatu overshadowed it. 

Downfall of the Goofer Dust Man

I've known about Scott Joplin as a brilliant composer of ragtine since at least The Sting. I may even have known that he composed an opera in 1910. But I just found out that Treemonisha (1982) was staged and recorded, and is available on Archive.org. So I queued it up.

This is the story of an educated black girl in a small Southern town in the late 19th century. It starts with a conjure man named Zodzetrick is trying to sell a bag of luck to Treemonisha's mother Monisha, who is a bit susceptible. But her husband Ned shoos him off, telling him that they don't believe in superstiition. Treemonisha arrives to give Zodzetrick a lecture on dnagers of superstition. 

The Pastor Alltalk comes and preaches to the people - and while he has them distracted, Zodzetrick kidnaps Treemonisha. They plan to throw her into a giant wasp nest, for the crime of opposing their conjure scam. 

But her boyfriend Cletus uses a scarecrow to dress as a demon, and rescues her. The third act is a big celebration, with Treemonisha pleading for the conjure conmen to be treated with mercy and released. Zodzetrick promises never to reform - but he does get out fast. 

Now, this isn't a "ragtime opera". It is mostly an opera in the classic European tradition, with some touches of ragtime, spirituals, cakewalks, etc (a little too early for blues). I loved the music in general - more than most operas, I would say.  But I should also note that the version I watched did not have subtitles. I can't understand "operese" very well, so I didn't get all the plot. But I did hear Zotzetrick refer to himself as "The goofer dust man, king of goofer dust land!"

But I did get the dancing. This production, by the Houston Grand Opera, was great, with some very impressive dancing, including a second act "ballet". 

So, a fun musical evening. Sadly, Joplin never saw a staged production, and his self-staged read-through with piano accompaniment lost him money. So glad we have this record. 

Master Class

I have never watched a He-Man or She-Ra cartoon, nor have I seen the Dolph Lundgren movie, But I do like big dumb action movies, so I figured I'd give Masters of the Universe (2026) a shot. 

It starts on the planet Eternia, a perfect land of beauty and heroes presided over by Castle Greyskull. Prince Adam is being trained by Duncan (Idris Elba) and his daughter Teela. He is young, small, unserious and not a good fencer. His father, King Rando, is ashamed. Then Skeletor and his army attack. 

Duncan, the king's Man-at-Arms, promises to hold the castle, but fails. At the last moment, the little prince is given the magic sword and tossed into a portal to Earth. On his way down, he loses the sword.

When we next meet him, he is a young adult played by Nicholas Galitzine. He is on a first date, telling the girl about his past, the story above. She leaves in a hurry. He works in HR, but spends too much time searching for the lost sword. He finally finds it the hands of a heroic statue in a comic book store. When he grabs it and says the magic words - nothing. The store wants it back, so he absconds with it.

But it looks like a signal gets sent to Eternia, because Galitzine is attacked by a beast man, and is in big trouble until grown up Teela (Camila Mendes) shows up to help, and takes him back to Eternia. But Eternia, under Skeletor's rule, is a burnt out dystopia. And Galitzine and Mendes are thrown in a dungeon.

In the same cell are a drunken wreck who turns out to be Idris Elba, and a robot janitor, voiced by Kristen Wiig. Galitzine recognizes her as a decommisioned war robot, and gets her to break them free. They meet up with the remaining loyal heroes. Galitzine remembers them from his childhood, but only by the silly nicknames he's given them: Fisto, Ram-Man, etc. It takes them a while to accept these, but I think it's cultural. After all, the enemy os named Skeletor and has a skull for a face, and his lieutenant is named Evil-Lynn (Alison Brie).

When they go up against Skeletor, Galitzine finds that he can call on the sword to become incredibly strong and buff. But he also wants to use the Earth skills he learned in HR: teamwork, communication, inclusivity. This is mostly just played for laughs. 

In fact, the general tone of the movie is silly. It's not all for laughs, but they definitely aren't taking any of this seriously. Sometimes it's characters striking a heroic pose and nothing happens - don't you hate that? A lot of it is making fun of the source material, like Galitzine telling people on Earth that he's a prince of Eternia, and having them think he's crazy. Or everyone hating their very basic nicknames. 

And I should mention the elephant in the room - Skeletor is played by box-office poison Jared Leto. And he isn't bad. His face is covered, which is a plus, and he reads his lines in a sort of greasy mid-Atlantic accent, sort of Vincent Price style. He's a good one for making villainous monologues and getting deflated. He met the assignment. 

In fact, most of the movie does. It doesn't do as much with Eternia as it might, but there are some backgrounds. I thought the humor and action were good, but not excellent. I'll compare this the recent D&D movie. Same idea, not as good.