Fist of Fury (1972)

Posted on April 5, 2017 at 4:47 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

For his second major starring role following The Big Boss (1971), Bruce Lee reunited with director Lo Wei and Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest for Fist of Fury (1972). Shout! Factory recently released both films as part of their Shout Select series, transferred from new 4K scans with much improved color and sharpness, although the cover art uses the alternate and notoriously botched American titles of Fists of Fury for The Big Boss and The Chinese Connection for Fist of Fury. (Flip the cover art inside-out to correct this odd misstep.) In Fist of Fury, Lee plays Chen Zhen, student of the legendary (and historical) martial arts master Huo Yuanjia (or Ho Yuan-chia, as the opening titles spell it), who died in 1910 in mysterious circumstances. That means that this is a period picture, though there’s at least one scene where the extras are clearly wearing modern (1970’s) dress. Never mind. Already in the opening scene, Lo Wei creates a more visually appealing palette than his earlier film, as Huo Yuanjia is laid to rest in a cemetery in a torrential downpour, his students gathered around the plot under their Chinese parasols. It is not the first time that the film will resemble a handsomely mounted Japanese samurai movie. All of Yuanjia’s pupils are dressed in black except for Chen Zhen, newly arrived and clad in a white Mao suit, the traditional Chinese color of mourning. He falls upon the coffin, clawing at its lid until he’s whacked on the back of a head with a shovel to render him unconscious. Inside Yuanjia’s Jing Wu School in Shanghai, Chen Zhen fasts in his grief, obsessed with the idea that his master’s death wasn’t by stomach flu, as he’s told, but instead was an assassination. Trouble arrives when the local Japanese dojo, led by grandmaster Hiroshi Suzuki (Riki Hashimoto) and his translator, Mr. Hu (Pin Ou Wei, The Way of the Dragon), present a mocking gift in memory of the late Jing Wu Master, a framed sign calling him the “Sick Man of East Asia.” Enraged, Chen Zhen wants to accept their challenge of a fight to see which school is the superior, but his master taught that martial arts were for physical fitness, not for fighting. It’s not long before Chen Zhen is driven to break that ideal to avenge his master’s murder.

Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee) at his master’s funeral.

In fact, a similar arc dominated The Big Boss, in which Lee swears not to fight, wearing an amulet to remind himself of his vow, but after an extended slowburn, Lee breaks his promise and unleashes rage and exquisitely choreographed fighting moves. His character is like a recovering alcoholic, and when he faces down The Big Boss himself, we see why: he kills his opponents brutally, as though he can’t help himself. He seems to go into a fog, and when he emerges, everyone around him is crippled or dead. But Fist of Fury, a much more efficient martial arts film, doesn’t waste much time turning Lee loose. His moral quandary – how to avenge his master’s honor, when his master expressly forbade the use of violence – doesn’t consume Lee for very long before he decides to fall cleanly on the side of revenge without mercy. In many ways, Lee is playing the same man, one whose desire to live in a peaceful world is undone, tragically, by the corrupt men who intervene in the lives of those he loves; and he falls off the wagon again. Here, his wish to marry the beautiful Yuan Li’er (Nora Miao, also returning from The Big Boss) is deferred permanently by his campaign against the Japanese dojo. The back and forth escalates; when he wipes out most of Suzuki’s pupils, Suzuki returns the favor, leaving some of the Jing Wu students dead. It’s a classic set-up for this kind of genre movie, but what’s interesting is that the Jing Wu school wants nothing to do with it. They’re drawn into a gang war entirely by Chen Zhen, and as Chen Zhen becomes a fugitive, by night hiding out in the cemetery by his master’s grave, by day donning disguises to infiltrate the Japanese school, the students of Jing Wu just want to find their problem student and talk some sense into him before anyone else gets killed. Chen Zhen follows a doomed path, leading to a wonderful denouement that is both tragic and strangely triumphant.

Chen Zhen battles Yoshida (Fung Ngai).

The intense racial rivalry and animosity between the Chinese and the Japanese fueling the plot was, again, historical. The film is set in the decades following the First Sino-Japanese War and following the Shanghai International Settlement which saw a rise in foreign settlers in the city, including the Japanese. The film also speaks to the invasion and occupation of Shanghai and China in the years to come, as Dwayne Wong (Omowale) writes in The Huffington Post: “Fist of Fury helped to exorcise some of the negative feelings that Chinese still had towards the ‘century of humiliation.'” This is evident throughout the film, including one notable scene where Chen Zhen is obstructed from entering a park by a sign that says “No dogs or Chinese allowed.” A dog is allowed to enter the park anyway, but he’s assured that’s because it doesn’t belong to a Chinese. (When Chen later camps out by his master’s grave, is that a dog he’s barbecuing?) The dojo features a Japanese garden straight out of the Toho back lot, a geisha gives a striptease to the saki-drinking villains in one scene, and both the instructor, Yoshida (Fung Ngai), and Suzuki wield samurai swords against Chen in the final battle. Lee answers Suzuki with his trademark nunchucks. He fights not just for the honor of his master, but as an act of nationalistic pride. This is populist filmmaking at its most sensationally effective, with a Chinese warrior confronting not just Japanese invaders but also a Russian colossus named Petrov (Robert Baker) to stick up for his fraught and battled-over country.

Chen in his final battle.

But the reason Fist of Fury plays so well to non-Chinese audiences is Lee’s charisma and martial arts talent. His down-and-dirty streetfighting moves, fast and savage, are coupled with a grace and athleticism that is always exciting to watch. When he enters a room of opponents, you can’t wait to see him let loose; while, per tradition, more challenging opponents, like the bosses at the end of each video game level, are set up with great effectiveness. (Petrov is introduced bending steel with his bare hands while Lee, disguised as a telephone repairman, watches from the corner.) The film also gives audiences more of what they want from Lee than The Big Boss did; that film moved Lee’s character only gradually into the center of the story as his multitude of friends fell to the villains, but Fist of Fury plays more like a star vehicle. Watch the moment when the messengers from the dojo depart the Jing Wu school, and all the Jing Wu students follow in a wave, leaving Lee standing alone, arrested in his outrage. He’s a loner from the start, so it’s no wonder that it isn’t very long before he’s wandering Shanghai on his own, setting into motion his multi-step plan of vengeance with cold-blooded calculation, like one of the Charles Bronson vehicles of later years. Chen Zhen became such a popular character that – despite the finality of its last freeze-frame – he was brought back to Chinese screens in subsequent years. Fist of Fury II (1977) and Fist of Fury III (1979) continued the plot with Brucesploitation actor Bruce Li in the Chen role. Though it didn’t feature Chen Zhen, another sequel, New Fist of Fury (1976), was an early attempt to launch Jackie Chan into stardom, under original director Lo Wei. (Chan has a very small role in the original Fist of Fury as one of the Jing Wu students.) Jet Li played Chen in the remake Fist of Legend (1994), which takes place in 1937. Chen also appears in the 2001 TV series Legend of Huo Yuan Jia, and the film Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (2010), with Donnie Yen. Not bad for a character who was invented for a quickie Bruce Lee movie. As for Lee himself, his next project was Way of the Dragon (1972), followed by his last fully completed film performance, in Enter the Dragon (1973).

Posted in Theater Hong Kong | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fist of Fury (1972)

World Without End (1956)

Posted on March 31, 2017 at 11:26 am by Jeff Kuykendall

While on a mission to Mars – which, ambitiously, also happens to be the first manned flight into space – Rocketship XRM (not to be confused with Rocketship X-M) travels so fast that it is flung into an “exponential time displacement” and leaps from 1957 to 2508. Crash landing back on Earth, only gradually do the four passengers realize this world is the same one they left, and that several centuries have passed. High levels of radiation are detected everywhere. Inside a cave they do battle with two spiders the size of dogs. In the mountains and valleys they encounter disfigured men dressed in prehistoric garb and flinging spears, many of them having only one eye; the explorers decide to call them Mutates. Eventually they uncover a tunnel which leads to an underground civilization. Here, the last vestiges of humanity have become docile pacifists in the wake of nuclear Armageddon, so weak that each successive generation is smaller in number and more sickly; the crew of XRM reckons they are witnessing the death of the human race. The Allied Artists release World Without End (1956) is something of a camp classic, and it’s just been released on Blu-Ray by Warner Archive, which has been hitting it out of the park this year with cult releases; this follows excellent high definition transfers of the stop-motion dinosaur romps When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) and The Valley of Gwangi (1969). Though World Without End isn’t as lovingly regarded and is certainly not a special effects showcase, the film has in its favor a Technicolor Cinemascope presentation that makes it easy on the eyes, lending a similar visual luster as the Technicolor The War of the Worlds (1953) and This Island Earth (1955), and the Cinemascope Forbidden Planet (1956), even if the sights are not nearly as spectacular as any of those films. No, World Without End is largely set in underground rooms, with not a single alien or apocalyptic vista to fill the wide frame. You see, the real subject of World Without End is girls, girls, girls.

Servant girl Deena (Lisa Montell)

As it happens, the men of the future have evolved into wimpy intellectuals, but the women (as it’s mentioned on multiple occasions) are unusually vivacious. Naturally, the women have become dissatisfied with their mating choices, and they admire the muscles on the newcomers: a shirtless Rod Taylor (The Birds) evokes an awed stare. (And hey! He does look good!) Bravery and “guts” are valued too, though the society’s all-male council, led by the elderly Timmek (Everett Glass, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), detest the spacemen’s use of weapons, having developed a postwar aversion to all arms. It’s perfectly clear: only the Greatest Generation can save them. Appropriately enough, the production artist is pin-up artist extraordinaire Alberto Vargas, whose “Varga Girls” in Esquire and elsewhere inspired the young fighting men of WWII – and the nose art of their fighter planes. World Without End tells us that guns and virility are all that can save mankind, and in discovering the abundance of leggy females eager for real loving, the crew of XRM find fast comfort in the apocalypse. As Dr. Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral) confesses, “I’m a widower and a grandfather, and I’ll never see 50 again. But this afternoon I had the unique experience of being flattered, sought after, and catered to by several beautiful women who competed for my attention. Gentlemen, I can only describe the experience as being, well, exhilarating.” Rocketship captain John Borden (Hugh Marlowe, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) falls for Timmek’s beautiful daughter, Garnet (Nancy Gates, Comanche Station). Taylor’s Herbert Ellis even finds himself at the center of a love triangle between the vivacious redhead Elaine (Shirley Patterson, It! The Terror from Beyond Space) and the shy servant girl Deena (Lisa Montell, Pearl of the South Pacific), a survivor of the upper world who has escaped the mutating effects of radiation.

The Mutates, or Beasts, attack.

Eventually Ellis chooses Deena, after she risks her life to expose a plot hatched by the jealous Mories (Booth Colman) to frame them for murder and theft of guns. Deena then joins the men on an expedition to the surface world where they use a bazooka to clear the neighborhood of Mutates, and where Borden has a climactic duel with the Mutate chief. The fact that Deena has to translate the Mutate ooga-booga language for the men makes it clear that we’re in just another iteration of some well-worn pulp SF, and Deena is the beautiful native girl guiding our white explorers against hostile tribes. These are the tropes that close out a story which otherwise balances sex fantasy with social commentary borrowed (and mutated) from H.G. Wells, with its stratification of Eloi and Morlock types. In fact, the Wells estate sued for plagiarism, which is amusing, because The Time Machine had nothing to fear from silly schlock like World Without End. (Taylor would go on to star in George Pal’s straight adaptation of the original work.) Writer-director Edward Bernds (The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters) is happy to mash together as many familiar genre elements as he can get his hands on, and it’s pretty clear from the start that this is just a slicker, prettier incarnation of B-movies like Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) and Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956); Bernds’ only directive was to appropriate some rocketship footage from Flight to Mars (1951), a film from Allied Artists’ former incarnation, Monogram Pictures. The most compelling scenes come early on, when the astronauts land in snow-covered mountains, trying to determine if they’re on one of Mars’ polar caps or some other alien world; but imagination runs dry by the time Taylor has freed himself from the giant spider’s cobwebs. No, the film is most enjoyable today because of its limited imagination, where everyone conforms to our heroes’ expectations, and the world can only be saved by sheer manliness: it’s like a movie written by Futurama‘s Zapp Brannigan. Appropriately, in the 90’s it was riffed live by Mystery Science Theater 3000 at one of its early conventions.

Posted in Theater Fantastique | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on World Without End (1956)

The Point (1971)

Posted on March 27, 2017 at 3:37 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

Everything has a point if you look closely enough. This was the revelation singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson discovered while tripping on acid and wandering into the woods near his home in early 1970. The trees had points, and their branches had points, and every shrub and bush and all the houses in the distance, too. Therefore, everything must have a point. The psychedelic breakthrough led straight to an album called The Point, and subsequently to an animated made-for-TV special – the first of its kind – also called The Point (1971). The album is usually filed away in the children’s section, and rock fans would consider his subsequent album, the classic Nilsson Schmilsson, more worthy of discussion. But the funny thing about making something for children: the children grow up and look back on it with nostalgia, and they expose their children to it, and on and on. In many ways, Beatles fan (and drinking pal) Nilsson had made his own Yellow Submarine, something which could please young and old and earworm its way into the consciousness of future generations. Granted, The Point is a bit more obscure, but if you talk to the right people, they love it. (Digression: on a music board I used to frequent many years ago, one of the contributors happened to mention she was one of Nilsson’s children. What followed was a flood of comments with love for Nilsson’s music, and The Point in particular.) I have recently had a son, and I plan on exposing him to The Point. In fact, I tried to with this viewing – but the three-month-old snoozed through the whole thing. Maybe when he can see a few feet past his head I’ll give him a second chance.

Part of the Gary Lund-illustrated comic inserted into copies of Nilsson’s “The Point” LP. The drawings were inspired by the then-still-in-production animated film by Fred Wolf.

The album, even if it is a storybook interrupted by songs, ranks among Nilsson’s best, and it was produced during what is considered his creative peak. His songwriting had matured while his voice retained the sweetness that contributed to the Grammy win for “Everybody’s Talkin’,” the Midnight Cowboy hit. The record’s cover features needlepoint artwork (get it?) and an LP-sized comic book that skips quickly through the plot. The songs are uniformly excellent, though only the first three seem to actually be about the story and characters. It doesn’t appear that all of them were originally intended for The Point: for example, the stream-of-consciousness standout “Think About Your Troubles,” which explains how your salty tears fit into the grand scheme of nature, had been kicking around Nilsson’s head since at least late 1969. But it’s much the case as it was with Sgt. Pepper: John Lennon once pointed out that the Beatles hadn’t really written a concept album, since so few of the tracks are about Sgt. Pepper, but “it works, because we said it works.” Similarly, The Point, as a record, works; the songs seem to fit into the story, even though a glance at the lyrics reveals more to do with Nilsson’s preoccupations with love, heartaches, and break-ups. The spacing of the storytelling and the songs is such that whenever Nilsson begins to sing and the piano kicks in, it’s a kind of sonic relief, like cool water rushing in; and further unity comes with the instrumental versions of the songs, arranged by George Tipton, that play during the narration. Nilsson reads his fable to the listener while doing all the voices. You can even hear him turn the pages of his script. He was always something of a one-man band; in many of his records, those backup singers you hear are just him. Likewise, the album has an intimate and personal touch. Such would remain the case with the animated film, even though in this case it would be a different one-man-band: Fred Wolf.

The evil Count (Lennie Weinrib) and the King (Paul Frees).

Nilsson conceived The Point as both an album and an animated film. He convinced ABC to buy the project only after cornering the network’s commissioning editor, Marty Starger, on a plane flight from LA to New York. The feature was slated in as an ABC Movie of the Week, to debut Christmas 1970. This date would later be pushed, as the realities of completing a full-length hand-drawn animation film began to settle in. Still, the right man was hired for the job. Nilsson had wanted Wolf to animate The Point from the start, having seen his Oscar-winning short film “The Box.” Wolf’s style is instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in the 70’s or 80’s; for one, he created the famous “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop” commercial. Wolf, inspired by how Nilsson was going to record the whole album on his own, decided that he would draw the entire film on his own. Such a remarkable feat is seldom attempted, though Bill Plympton would later make a career of it. What makes Wolf’s accomplishment extra special was the extraordinary time constraint. In Alyn Shipton’s Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter, Wolf said, “It’s certainly not the best animation in the world, but this was my challenge. I better come through with a style that is going to be consistent for 74 minutes of animation, in other words, a total of 28,000 drawings which I did in 34 weeks. The hand can get numb just thinking of it. The fact that I was doing it all myself dictated a style, which I think is effective.” Indeed, there are only a few moments in the film where you can sense the animator’s exhaustion, namely a strange brief dance number between two creatures that look like the love children of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. But such bizarre moments only add to the trippy feeling of the film as a whole.

The Pointless Man (Paul Frees), who demonstrates that having too many points is as good as having no point at all.

The completed film finally appeared on February 2, 1971. For this initial airing, Midnight Cowboy co-star Dustin Hoffman played the narrator, who in the film is a father telling the story to his young son. Because his contract only extended to the single broadcast, in subsequent airings he would be replaced by Alan Barzman (a veteran of Wolf animation), Alan Thicke, and finally Ringo Starr. (When I saw this as a child, it was the one with Thicke.) Ubiquitous voiceover artist Paul Frees plays a host of characters. Mike Lookinland – Bobby from The Brady Bunch – is the protagonist, Oblio. And what a great name that is. Oblio has the rounded (“pointless”) letters o and b, but of course b does have a point, as does the l. In other words, even too-round Oblio has a point (or two), which is the point of the story. Oblio, in Nilsson’s tale, is born in a town where everybody has a point on top of their head; all the buildings have points too, and even the pets, like Oblio’s dog Arrow. To disguise Oblio’s freakishly round head, his mother gives him a pointed hat. But his roundness bothers the son of the evil Count – especially when Oblio beats him at a game of ring toss – so the Count urges the King to enforce the only rule which the kingdom has, the rule which states that everything must have a point. Oblio is exiled into the Pointless Forest with only Arrow as his companion, and there he encounters a number of strange characters and creatures before having his own revelation, like Nilsson’s, that everything does have a point, including Oblio.

Animation accompanying Nilsson’s “Are You Sleeping?”

Part of what makes the film so endearing is that it has the same gentle and witty qualities as the album, captured in the script and the characterizations, particularly those of Paul Frees. When Oblio is born, his father says, “Hi there, Oblio,” as though he’s greeting a friend at work. Similarly, Oblio’s banishment from the town is treated as something disappointing and sad but not catastrophic; the villagers are simply perplexed that a time has finally come to enforce a law they never thought would be enforced. Nonetheless, they’re encouraging to Oblio – giving him and his dog candy, and waving goodbye, as he heads off toward possible starvation and death. Well, it’s a children’s fairy tale; being exiled to the woods is pretty common. Most of the strange beings that Oblio and Arrow encounter in the forest feel random and thinly conceived, though the watercolor-speckled animation and Nilsson’s irresistible tunes compensate. By the end – that is, the “Destination Point” – any child will be able to tell you the point of the tale. And if they come away with an appreciation for the genius that was Harry Nilsson in his prime, all the better.

 

Posted in Late Night TV | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Point (1971)