Barbaric Yawp

Here's how I came to watch Red Sonja (2025). It started with Conan comics, issue 5 or so. I fell in love with Barry Windsor-Smith's art, and soon found his Red Sonja. And what comics-loving little boy doesn't love a warrior woman in an steel bikini? Later, I got into the Conan movies, and loved Red Sonja with Brigitte Nielsen (while understanding that it wasn't very good). So was pretty psyched for a new, maybe better version.

It stars Matilda Lutz as Sonja. She lives with her Hyrkanian tribe in the forest, at one with nature. But a horde of barbarians come and destroy her village, and the people have to scatter. She grows up alone, always searching for her people, worshipping their nature goddess. 

She comes upon a hunting party capturing and torturing a horned monster for the gladiatorial arena. But when she tries to free it, she is captured as well. She is sent into the arena with the worst weapons and a chainmail bikini. She's told that it won't protect anything, but the crowds will love it. 

Well, she escapes, chased by Emperor and mad assassin (Wallis Day), finds her people, blah, blah, blah. It's all pretty generic, especially Sonja being in tune with nature and all. But I don't really mind that. My major beef is that Lutz just doesn't impress me as a warrior. Nielsen wasn't much of an actress, but at least she looked fierce. I want some of that for Sonja. In fact, there nobody struck me as impressive - maybe Wallis Day. The monsters were kind of cute - there was a Harryhausen cyclops - but not great. There were some mandrill men, but they didn't come to much, just added a little color. Oh well. We kind of liked director M.J. Bassett's under-the-rsdar Solomon Kane. 

We watched Deathstalker (2025) mainly because Patton Oswalt was the second lead. We were only aware of the Deathstalker franchise from the MST3k riff on the third one, so we figured a remake was going to be fun. And we were right. This movie did not take itself seriously at all. It is full of info dumps about how the Dreadites of Abraxeon were working for the evil Nekromemon - We could never see the name Nekromemnon without laughing. 

It stars stuntman and model Daniel Bernhardt as Deathstalker. He starts out stealing the magic thingie from a corpse (well, he was coughing up blood) on the battlefield. As he walks in a nearby tavern, everyone fears him - but they can't say his name without being interrupted by a giant two-faced monster who wants the MacGuffin. He kills the monster, but throws away the MacGuffin. 

But the MacGuffin won't be thrown away. It keeps re-appearing in his pockert He needs a wizard to remove the curse. Enter Draedalad - a tiny wizard with a rubber mask, played by Laurie Field but voiced by Oswalt. He's not much of a wizard, but he's all we've got. 

There are two things that I loved about this movie, aside from the obvious joy they got from stupid sword and sorcery names. One was Bernhardt - he has a long lined face, looking something like Danny Trejo, or even Dave Grohl. He has a nice deadpan delivery, and serious martial arts chops. The other was all the practical creature and gore effects. Director Steve Kostanski is known for that kind of thing, like sawing people's heads in half. Unfortunately, this was mostly too gross and slimy for Ms. Spenser, who decided to listen only He even put some fighting skeletons in (I think CGI, but still a nice tribute).

 So my advice is: Deliver on action and special effects. Don't take yourself too seriously. Should be enough for us. 

The Chosen

We've been watching old TV concert serties shows as our dinner viewing, like Midnight Special (Wolfman Jack Aooo!) One of the things we noticed is how great Teddy Pendergrass is. That made Ms. Spenser think of Choose Me (1984), where he sings the theme song, and quite a bit more.

After a nice title sequence set outside a sleazy nightclub named Eve's, we meet Keith Carradine. He is being released for a mental institution, primarily because they need the room. He heads for Eve's, looking for the Eve. That would owner Leslie Ann Warren - but she's not his Eve. His Eve is dead, and Warren bought the bar because it had her name. Carradine also meets Rae Dawn Chong, who reads him bad, horny poetry and generally acts weird.

Intercut with this is Genevieve Bujold as a radio relationship counselor, Dr. Love. She has a deep, sexy voice, but a detached, rational approach. It turns out that Warren has been calling into the show and talking about how messed up her love life is. 

Bujold is moving in with Warren as a new roommate. Since she works days and Bujold nights, it should work out. But Bujold's call to her psychiatrist (she'll only talk to him on the phone) hint that she may have some kinks that don't show up on her show. 

It turns out that Chong is married to a Euro-trash gangster, and he is sleeping with warren, who also has a fling with her bartender, John Laroquette. Carradine winds up sleeping with Chong, Bujold and Warren. And he always asks a woman to marry him if he kisses her - or as he says, he only kisses women he wants to marry. But he also tells people he was an air force ace, combat photographer, spy, Yale professor of English, etc. So you don't have to believe him. 

And this all takes place in 80s LA. It has a sort of La Ronde feel, with everyone making love in many combinations. Dr. Love is everywhere on the airwaves, and all the women love to listen to her, and imagine what she is like. And all women fall for Carradine, because he seems to be a terrible liar and the only honest man. 

He is a lot of fun in this. He goes through the movie with a lopsided Jack Nicholson grin (or maybe a cuter Steve Buscemi). He wanted to find his last great love, but has a plan to go back to Las Vegas, gamble up a stake and move on from there. Will he be able to find a woman to share this plan with?

We saw this back in the 80s, on VHS, not in theater. The delirious, love-and-neon drenched atmosphere was intoxicating then. Now, 40 years later. it still delivers.

The movie was directed by Alan Rudolph (Love at Large). Super-agent Shep Gordon (Supermensch) wanted him to direct a music video for Pendergrass, who had just been paralyzed in a car crash and needed money. Rudolph told him that for a few more dollars, he'd make it a feature. Rudolph even took a directing job no one else wanted so he could pay for a few more Pendergrass songs that Gordon didn't control. I hope it worked out well for them. 

Do Mi Do Day

M. Spenser heard a bizarre song on the radio, said it kind of sounded like Noel Coward, but sillier. It turned out to be Dress Me (Do Mi Do Day), sung by Hans Conried. And that turned out to be a song from the Dr. Seuss-penned The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953). 

Little Tommy Rettig explains his life while practicing the piano. His mother Mary Healey is raising him alone. His father died in the war. His piano teacher is Mr. Terwilleker (Hans Conried), but their plumber, Mr. Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes) says it's a racket. Tommy's mother tells him to stick to plumbing, and tells Tommy to keep practicing for the big recital. As he plays, he falls asleep.

He wakes up in Dr. Terwillilker's Institute, a surreal palace of piano. Dr. T. has built a piano so large that it will take 500 boys to play it at the big concert. And then... world domination?

While trying to escape, Tommy finds his mother, who has been hypnotized by Dr. T,. and will be marrying after the concert. Mr. Zabladowski is also there, preparing sinks for the 500 boys - the sanitation department requires it. Hayes is friendly to Tommy, but just wants to install the sinks and get paid. 

But Tommy works his cuteness powers on Hayes, who he starts to think about as a father. When Hayes gets a good look at Healey, he starts to consider it.

Meanwhile, Dr. T. is dressing for the concert, while singing a Dressing Song... 

The look of the dream world is rather Seussical, although there's only so much you can do in live action. There are complicated castles, a pair of elderly Siamese twins joined at the beard, musicians whose horns are immense, and whose violins are worn around the head. There are also a number of silly songs, but none so good as Dress Me. The list of clothing he wants is very Seussical (a peek-a-boo blouse with an inner lining of Chesapeake mouse, undulating undies with maribou frills, a bolero jacket with porcupine quills, etc). And when he is dressed, in wild colors, medals and sashes, a half cape and marching band hat, it's like he stepped out of a Dr. Seuss book.

Conried is a lot of fun in this, although he could have gotten more to do. Hayes played the plumber fairly hard boiled, which kept the sentiment to the right level. I guess the original was  lot longer (11 songs cut!) and darker, with more world domination. But Seuss got caught up in a studio struggle between Harry Cohn and producer Stanley Kramer. Cohn wouldn't let Kramer direct, so they used Roy Rowland. The premier was a disaster, leading to more cuts, which I don't think helped. And so much for Dr. Seuss' movie career, and almost Hans Conried. 

I've heard of this movie, and always wanted to watch, but it isn't on streaming or at the library. But guess what? It's on YouTube and Archive.org. So you can watch it too! But if you don't, please watch the Dressing Song - search "do mi do duds" on YouTube or where ever. And enjoy.

Martial Arthouse

I put on The Invincible Dragon (2019) because I was in the mood for some mindless Asian action. What I got was either much less, or much more mindless than I thought.

We meet Kowloon (Max Zhang) in hot water. Gangsters have in tied up and in a pot being boiled in a Hong Kongbanquet hall kitchen. The gang suspects him of being a police informer. He tells them the story of the dragon tattooed on his chest. When he was a kid, he spent one summer day playing in a pond with a nine-headed dragon - the best day of his life. He felt the dragon would always protect him. The gangsters laugh at him and pull him out of the pot to kill him. Of course, once he's out, he fights his way free, kills the henchmen and chases the boss into the banquet. He gets him down and shoots him through the wrist, causing the boss' hand to wind up on someone's plate.

It seems Zhang was a policeman, after all. He is swiftly demoted for this exhibition, and sent to the boondocks. He has cleaned up, shaved the gangster soul patch and got a haircut. Even though things are usually quiet, policewomen start getting killed around him. He has a serial killer on his hands, and seems to be related to the case.

His method of of investigation is largely putting himself into the killer's shoes and imagining the crime. Or is he remembering it? He seems a little unstable.

When his policewoman fiancee is killed, he snaps. He is kicked out of the police, starts drinking, grows his hair and beard, earns a living getting beat up in fixed underground fight clubs. One of his old coworkers says he was a bad policeman, but a great fake boxer. 

As the movie goes on, he gets twitchier and twitchier. One character, a good looking doctor who wants to help, notes that he's counting people again - PTSD, OCD, who knows what else. But he does try to solve the case.

SPOILER - He figures out who the culprit is by seeing him in a vision. Maybe dragon related?

It turns out that director Fruit Chan is more of an arthouse director, not an action movie director. He did try to make this a commercial action film. Did not entirely succeed. Zhang is an action star, so the fight scenes were fine. It's also interesting to see him undercover, then cleaned up, then going crazy. 

The final fighter with - SPOILER - UFC monster Anderson Silva, is pretty funny. They started trading movie cliches like "We're not so different, you and me," and accusing each other of stealing their lines. 

Monkey Time

I was in the mood for some good Chinese fantasy, and saw Stephen Chow's name, so I picked up the two-disc set A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box (1995) and A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995). 

I'm not sure I will be able to summarize these crazy movies. It starts with Monkey King (Stephen Chow) mouthing off to Kwan Yin, refusing to help Longevity Monk (Law Kar-ying). Kwan Yin subdues him, and decides to kill him ("He's really annoying!"), but the monk intervenes for him. So she only makes in incarnate as a human, 500 years later. 

As a human, Chow remembers nothing of Monkey or his quest. Instead he is the leader of a bandit band. The band runs into a pair of demon women, Spider Lady (Yammy Lam) and Bai Jing Jing (Karen Mok). They plan to find the reincarnated Longevity Monk and eat him, to gain his powers. Both of them also more or less fall for Chow, but Chow particularly goes for Mok. There are some more demons, some hurly-burly, and Mok thinks that Chow got Lam pregnant, and kills herself. 

When Chow finds out, he is frantic. He finds "Pandora's box" which allows him to travel back in time. Each time he does, he arrives too late. On his last try, he goes back 500 years. He meets a minor deity, Athena Chu, who tells him everything in the area belongs to her, including Chow himself and the Pandora's box.

In Part Two, we learn a bit more about Chu's character. She is a swordswoman wandering the dunes, in a very Ashes of Time manner. In a fight with some disguised demons, she reveals her true self, and her sword. The sword is magic - it can only be drawn by her true love. When she meets Chow, what do you think he does? So now he is entwined with three beautiful supernatural beings. He has also realized that he is really the Monkey King, but still doesn't want to go to the West with Longevity Monk. He's really annoying.

As far as I can tell, Chu has an evil twin, with whom she shares a body - the evil twin only comes out under the moon. Is this magic or mental illness? Chow romances the twin to get the Pandora's box back - or is he really falling for her? This is another Ashes of Time theme - the mutability of identity.

Then a lot of stuff happens, and he gets killed. He realizes that Chu is who he truly loves, but Kwan Yin reminds him of his duty, and he accepts it. His ghost wraps up a few loose ends, and it's off to get the Sutras in the West. 

So, a lot of stuff happens, which is normal for these Monkey stories. There is also a lot of low humor, also typical. My favorite is in the second part, when Longevity Monk gets on everyone's nerves by being so pious. As he explains to the demons who are guarding him, "Demons are the same as humans. They should be treated with kindness." The demons listening throw up, and/or attempt to kill themselves. Even Kwan Yin, Buddha of Compassion, thinks he's annoying. 

This movie certainly isn't as tight as Journey to the West, which Chow directed as well as starred in. This one is written and directed by Jeffrey Lau, and it's a little bit of a grab-bag. Some stupid jokes, some thrilling fights, some hot demon-girls - really what more could I ask for?

Michael Jai White Zone

I was stuck for movie to watch due to a streaming bait and switch.  So I grabbed Dead Zone (2022), the nearest action film with a recognizable name. It was Michael Jai White, and it was all downhill from there. 

Time: The Future. Dystopia: Zombified. Living humanity has kept the zombie hordes at bay by dropping A-bombs on infected areas. Large swaths of the country (? world?) are now radioactive and also zombified. 

Our intrepid team must go into one such dead zone to retrieve the MacGuffin serum, etc. Leading the team is Jai White. They will be going in with armor and opaque helmets, which makes the stunt doubles' job easier. Instead we get close-ups with HUD interface. 

Once in zone, after a few zombie fights, one or two guys bit, they run into a civilian, a woman who for reasons I didn't get, has been living in the zombie zone for months, with makeshift protection. With her help, they will find the serum and "get to the choppa." Oh, and find love?

This was pretty bad. Having close-ups of (and some fighting by) Jai White made it better, but he was a part of the ensemble. The rest of the ensemble is fine, but nothing special. Without White, it would be worse, but still a fun bad movie. Well, I was desperate, and Michael Jai White was in it. 

Kaboom?

I had heard that The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024) was pretty good, so I figured I'd try it out. I wonder if I was thinking of a different movie.

It starts with a scientist seeing an asteroid heading towards Earth, but also a UFO. The UFO crashes near by, after leaving a goo-rimmed hole in someone's roof. The scientists goes to investigate, and disappears. The scientist scenes are animated in a sort 1940s Max Fleischer Superman style. 

The movie then inroduces us to stars Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. As orphan shoat and duckling, they are found and raised by kindly Farmer Jim. Their idyllic upbringing is depicted in a vaguely Hart Benson style with Farmer Jim drawn as if Benson had to design a round cheeked smiling farmer for a corporate mascot. 

But all good things come to an end. When the pair has grown, Farmer Jim walks off over the horizon, leaving them the house and enjoining them to always stay together and help each other. 

In the present day, they still live in the house, now modified in wacky ways, presumably by Daffy. Porky is too much of a straight arrow, cautious, rule following pig. He knows that the building inspector (Laraine Newman!) will be visiting that day, and gets Daffy up to try to get up to code. They do not succeed. That's not even counting the big, goo-rimmed hole in the roof. Now they need jobs. It won't be easy, because they've never worked before and one of them is Daffy.

At a local diner, they meet Petunia Pig, and Porky falls hard. She is a flavor scientist at the local bubble gum factory - although she is very dismissive of their latest flavor. She gets them a job at the factory, and Porky even gets Daffy to do the job without mayhem. Things are looking up for the pair. But we know that people chewing the new gum (starting with the scientist) become zombies, who live only to chew ... gum.

So, what are my complaints? One is the way they pounded the "stay together" theme. Although Porky is driven to distraction by Daffy, he repeatedly comes to the realization that they belong together. Repeatedly. Look, I think he could stand to be a bit more dependent. But they have to beat that lesson into our heads. I wasn't really thrilled by Petunia Pig as a near-autistic flavor scientist, but I guess that's just because she's not a big member of the 1940s "classic" cast. 

I also didn't like Daffy's characterization. He's still a chaotic nutcase, but here he's capable of self-reflection and acting sensible. I suppose that's a good lesson for the kids, but not as much fun.

Then there's the character design. They were going for the look of the original Bob Clampett designs, and they did pretty good with Daffy. But I wasn't happy with Porky's face. Sometimes it looked very old-style - 1930s say. Other times it showed a lot of 21st century influence. Not just the 201x Loony Tunes, but some traces of Ren and Stimpy. 

Maybe if I had watched a lot of the twenty-teens Loony Tunes, I'd be more accepting. A lot of the animation looked fine - just not what I was looking for.

Finally, guess who was not in the UFO? Marvin the Martian, that's who. It's called the Day the Earth Blew up! There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!