Monthly Archives: March 2018

Film Review: Day of the Warrior (dir by Andy Sidaris)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

“Bring him in from the cold?  That’s real spy talk.  I love it when you do that.”

— J. Tyler Ward (Christian Letelier) in The Day Of The Warrior (1996)

Here’s two good things about the 1996 Andy Sidaris film, The Day of the Warrior:

First, a good deal of the film takes place in Dallas.  As I’ve said before, I’m always happy to see my hometown in a movie, regardless of whether the movie is good or terrible.  The Day of the Warrior not only reveals that a division of the Legion To Ensure Total Harmony And Law (a.k.a. L.E.T.H.A.L.) operates out of Dallas but also that it’s apparently headquartered on the top floor of the Bank America Plaza.  Willow Black (Julie Strain, who had previously played a villain in three separate Sidaris films) is the new head of the Dallas branch.  Apparently, her job largely consists of working out on the treadmill in her office.

The other good thing about The Day of the Warrior is that one L.E.T.H.A.L’s top agents is named Doc Austin (Kevin Light).  Unlike the Abilene cousins that appeared in Sidaris’s previous films, Doc appears to actually be good at his job.  For one thing, he can actually shoot a gun and his dialogue isn’t exclusively made up of painful double entendres.  But my reason for liking Doc Austin is because he shares his first name with my cat and his last name with one of my favorite cities.

Anyway, the film itself is pretty stupid but you probably already guessed that as soon as I mentioned that it’s an Andy Sidaris film.  The latest international super villain is a guy named the Warrior (Marcus Bagwell).  The Warrior used to be an agent with the CIA but, when the Cold War ended, he discovered that he was out of a job.  Because The Warrior’s mother was half-Native American, he decided to start wearing war paint and launched a career as a professional wrestler.  However, The Warrior’s wrestling career was really just a cover so that he could safely travel the world and set up his own black market operation.  He deals drugs.  He sells weapons.  He dabbles in human trafficking.  “The SOB is even into pirating porno flicks,” Willow says.  The Warrior takes the whole professional wrestling thing pretty seriously.  At one point, he gives orders to his henchmen while standing in the middle of a wrestling ring.

(It’s also established that The Warrior lives in “north Dallas.”  You probably actually have to be from Dallas to get the joke but, as far as Sidaris humor goes, it’s a good one.)

LETHAL has several agents working undercover in The Warrior’s organization.  Apparently, they’re so deep undercover that not even Willow Black knows how to get in contact with them.  (To be honest, that would seem to be kind of counterproductive but I’m not an international super spy so what do I know?)  However, The Warrior has employed a computer hacker known as Hard Drive.  (The Warrior calls him “Mr. Drive.”)  When The Warrior manages to compromise LETHAL’s computer systems, Willow and her agents not only have to track down the people undercover but they also have to stop whatever it is that The Warrior is planning to do.

(The Warrior’s ultimate scheme was never easy to figure out.  He seemed to spend most of his time flexing his muscles.)

As for the undercover agents, Doc Austin is investigating drug dealers in South Texas.  Scorpion (Tammy Parks) and Shark (Darren Wise) are trying to infiltrate The Warrior’s Vegas-based porn operation.  Fu (Gerald Okamura) is working as an Elvis impersonator.  Cobra (Julie K. Smith) is working as an exotic dancer in Beverly Hills because of … reasons, I guess?  Another agent, Tiger (Shae Marks) teams up with a pilot named J. Tyler Ward (Christian Letelier) because it’s not a Sidaris film without someone flying a plane over the bayous.  To be honest, it seems like most of these people are just hanging out.  I wouldn’t necessarily trust any of them with any national security secrets.

Anyway, this is pretty much a typical Sidaris film: stuff blows up, everyone gets naked, and there’s a lot of bad jokes.  Even by the standards of a Sidaris film, the acting is incredibly bad.  Remember those scenes in Boogie Nights where Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly played Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell?  That’s about the level of talent that we’re talking about here.  To illustrate, here’s a typical scene from Day of the Warrior:

In short, it’s no Hard Ticket to Hawaii but at least Dallas looks good.

Book Review: You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

You Only Live Twice, the 11th James Bond novel, opens 8 months after the tragic ending of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Tracy Bond is dead.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld has vanished.

And James Bond is no longer the man who readers thought they knew.

Over the course of the previous ten novels, one thing that remained consistent about Bond was his ruthless and unsentimental approach to his job.  For the first 9 books, Bond was the man who reacted to Vesper Lynd’s suicide by coldly announcing, “The bitch is dead.”  Then, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond finally fell in love and married, just to have Tracy murdered an hour later.  The first few chapters of  You Only Live Twice introduces us to a Bond who has become a shell of his previous self.  The man who used to always be in control of every situation is now drinking so heavily that it’s causing him to screw up at his job.  The once committed professional is now rarely in his office and, when he’s summoned to a meeting with M, he actually shows up late.

M has decided that he only has one option.  It’s time to demand Bond’s resignation.  The scene where M says that he has no choice but to fire his best agent is a shocking one.  For 10 books, Bond has been M’s best agent.  M is almost a paternal figure to Bond.  To read M casually talking about dismissing Bond not only shows us how far Bond has fallen but also reminds us that there’s no room for sentiment in intelligence work.

Fortunately, before going through with his plan to fire Bond, M speaks to a psychologist who explains that Bond is suffering from shock and that, in order to become the man that he once was, he needs to be given a task that will restore his confidence, an “impossible” mission.  If Bond succeeds, it’ll be the first step to dealing with his grief.  If Bond fails, his career will be over.

That’s how Bond eventually ends up in Japan, trying to convince the head of Japan’s secret service, Tiger Tanaka, to share intelligence with the British.  Tanaka says that he’s willing to do so if Bond does him a favor.  The mysterious Dr. Guntram Shatterhand has moved into an ancient castle and has set up his own “suicide garden.”  Tanaka wants Bond to kill Shatterhand.  Once Bond realizes that Shatterhand is actually Blofeld, he’s more than happy to do the favor.

Of course, it won’t be easy to penetrate Shatterhand’s castle.  However, with the help of actress Kissy Suzuki, Bond disguises himself as a mute Japanese miner named Taro Todoroki and heads out to get his revenge.

You Only Live Twice is one of the stranger Bond novels.  Far more than any of the other Fleming books, You Only Live Twice deals with Bond’s psychology.  In fact, the story is often so twisted that it’s tempting to wonder if perhaps the entire thing is some sort of fever dream.  Much like a German silent film, it sometimes seems as if the book’s bizarre and outlandish plot is actually a reflection of Bond’s twisted mind.  We’ve never seen Bond as self-destructive as he is at the start of this book and it’s probably not a coincidence that his mission leads him to a literal suicide garden.  When Bond transforms himself into Taro Todoroki, it allows him to leave behind the baggage of being Bond and only by denying his identity can he finally defeat Blofeld.  As for Blofeld, he’s such a bigger-than-life villain in this book that it sometimes tempting to think that he may have leapt fully formed out of Bond’s damaged psyche. Blofeld is the opponent that both Bond and Fleming needed.

And just as Bond found freedom in his new identity, it seems that it did the same thing for Ian Fleming as a writer.  There’s a liveliness to Fleming’s prose that suggests that he actually enjoyed writing this odd chapter of Bond’s life.

And then there’s that ending!  Despite the fact that I already gave a spoiler warning, I’m not going to reveal the ending because it’s one of the most shocking and unexpected endings in the history of the Bond novels.

Tomorrow, we finish up our look at Ian Fleming’s Bond novels with The Man With The Golden Gun.

Music Video of the Day: Everything Zen by Bush (1994, directed by Matt Mahurin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Is Everything Zen by Bush the worst music video of all time?  Let’s break it down:

0:06 — For some reason, this shot of the birds taking off from the rooftop was one of the most overused shots of the 90s.  It means nothing.  Birds perch on building and then they fly away.  That’s what they do.  In this case, I think the birds are saying, “Let’s get out of here before Gavin starts singing.”

0:20 — The only shot that was a bigger cliché than birds flying off a rooftop?  The one of the woman standing at the end of a tunnel.

0:27 — Bush makes their first appearance and already they’re trying too hard.  Bush was not the first band to rip off Nirvana and Pearl Jam, they were just the most obvious.

0:31 — Gavin Rossdale sang something about getting something to eat so here’s someone in a pig mask, holding a fork.  Literal representations of Bush’s lyrics only serve to remind us of how stupid they are.

0:40 — In the video, Gavin sings “psycho brother.”  In the actual song, he says “asshole brother.”  I guess his asshole brother lives in Los Angeles and wears a pig snout.  In real life, Gavin Rossdale doesn’t have a brother so already he’s lying to us.

0:46 — This is where I really get pissed off.  There’s only one good lyric in this damn song and they stole it from David Bowie.  And no, saying “Dave’s on sale again,” doesn’t make it okay.

0:53 — The woman’s being carried away by someone.  We’re getting edgy now, folks.

1:00 — I can’t understand a word that Gavin’s singing and while I could look up the lyrics, I won’t.  Compare this part of the song to literally any Nirvana song.  Kurt Cobain’s lyrics were cryptic but still meant something.  Bush’s lyrics sound like they were cribbed from a 9th grader’s notebook.

1:11 — One of Bush’s trademarks was that, whenever they couldn’t come up with any new lyrics, they would just repeat the song’s title.  What does “Everything zen” even mean?

1:25 — Along with birds flying off of roofs and women standing at the end of tunnels, intense backlighting was another 90s music video cliché.  This video makes sure to touch all the bases.

1:31 — A mask and an exposed rib cage?  Is that zen?

1:35 — Gavin sings “demigod” as if he got the lyrics a half hour before recording the song.

1:45 — “There’s no sex in your violence.”  We’re getting even more edgy here, folks.

2:05 — Gavin’s back to repeating “everything zen.”

2:10 — The birds are back, still trying to escape the band.  That guitarist isn’t going to let them go that easy, though.

2:13 — Why were bands in the 90s always playing in abandoned warehouses?

2:24 — Leave Elvis out of this, you wanker!

2:34 — He really wants us to know that he doesn’t believe Elvis is dead.

3:06 — Back to “There’s no sex in your violence.”  If he doesn’t believe that Elvis is dead, why should we listen to him about anything?  Maybe there is sex in your violence.

3:28 — I always hear this lyric as “Trust you once, wagah.”

3:36 — Some dude wearing an animal skin.  Does he think Elvis is dead?

3:48 — The woman is back but, in another 90s music video cliché, she disappears while running away.

3:53 — Chill out, Gavin.

4:06 — It’s that final, anguised “zen!” that makes me want to punch the wall.

One final note: Bush was British but they were never big in the UK.  This is all on you, America!

Spring Break Scenes That I Love: The “Which Vinny?” Scene From Jersey Shore Shark Attack

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The reason that I’ve picked the scene below for today’s scene of the day is that I want to encourage everyone to exercise caution this Spring Break.

Things can get crazy out there, especially on the Jersey Shore.

From 2012’s Jersey Shore Shark Attack:

Embracing the Melodrama Part III #4: The Grasshopper (dir by Jerry Paris)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“It’s very simple what I want to be: totally happy; totally different; and totally in love.”

— Christine Adams (Jacqueline Bisset) in The Grasshopper (1970)

Seriously, is Christine asking for too much?

Total happiness?  That may sound like a lot but trust me, it can be done.

Totally different?  That’s a little bit more challenging because, to be honest, you’re either different or you’re not.  If you have to make the effort to be different, then you definitely are not.

Totally in love?  Well, it depends on how you define love…

At the start of The Grasshopper, Christine thinks that she’s heading to America to find love.  While an oh-so late 60s/early 70s theme song plays in the background, Christine leaves her small hometown in Canada and she heads down to California.  She’s planning on meeting up with her boyfriend Eddie (Tim O’Kelly) and taking a job as a bank teller.

Of course, it soon turns out that working in a bank isn’t as exciting as Christine originally assumed.  Eddie expects Christine to just be a conventional girlfriend and that’s not what Christine is looking for. As well, it’s possible that Christine may have seen Targets, in which O’Kelly played an all-American boy who picks up a rifle and goes on a killing spree.

And so, Christine abandons Eddie and heads to Las Vegas.  Since this movie was made in 1970 and Uber didn’t exist back then, Christine’s preferred method of traveling is hitchhiking.  This gives her a chance to meet the usual collection of late 60s weirdos who always populate movies like this.  One driver crosses herself when Christine says that she plans to have a baby before getting married.  Another is a hacky Las Vegas comic.

In Vegas, Christine applies for a job as a showgirl.  As she explains to sleazy casino owner Jack Benton (Ed Flanders), she “once did Little Women in school.”

“Did you do it nude?” Jack replies.

Yep, that’s Vegas for you!  It’s the city of Showgirls, Casino, and Saved By The Bell: Wedding in Vegas, after all!

Anyway, thing do get better once Christine meets and falls in love with Tommy Marcott (Jim Brown), a former football player who is now working as a door greeter in Jack’s casino.  Everyone tells Christine not to get involved with Tommy.  One of Jack’s men, a menacing hitman who looks just like Johnny from Night of the Living Death (he even wears glasses), warns Christine to watch herself.

Through a long series of events, Christine ends up on her own again.  The usual collection of 70s events occur: murder, drugs, prostitution, and ultimately a stint as the mistress of a rich man played by Joseph Cotten.  The important thing is that it all eventually leads to Christine and a skywriter getting stoned, stealing a plane, and deciding to write a message in the sky.

That’s when this happens:

Yes, it’s all very 1970!

Anyway, The Grasshopper is one of those films that tries to have it both ways.  Establishment audiences could watch it and think, “Wow, those kids are really messed up.”  Counterculture audiences could watch it and say, “Old people are such hypocrites.”  Oddly enough, The Grasshopper was written by future director Garry Marshall and it’s an incredibly overwrought film.  There’s not a subtle moment to be found in the entire film and the film’s direction is flashy but empty.  However, for those of us who love history, it’s as close to 1970 as we’re going to get without hopping into a time machine.

Film Review: The Dallas Connection (dir by Christian Drew Sidaris)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

My first thought when I came across 1994’s The Dallas Connection:

Oh my God, it’s a movie about my hometown!

And, just judging from the film’s poster, it appears that Dallas is blowing up!  Look at all of those flames behind Reunion Tower!

(Whenever a film is set in Dallas, you know you’re going to see Reunion Tower in the background.  Depending on when the film was made, you’ll probably also see Bank of America Plaza.  That’s the green building.)

Of course, film posters are often inaccurate and it’s not really a spoiler for me to tell you that, at no point, does Reunion Tower blow up in this movie.  Don’t get me wrong.  A lot of stuff does blow up in The Dallas Connection.  It’s a Sidaris film, produced by Andy Sidaris and directed by his son, Christian Drew Sidaris.  The Sidaris name is pretty much synonymous with stuff blowing up.

That said, a good deal of The Dallas Connection does take place in Dallas and, unlike a lot of other films, it was actually filmed in Dallas.  This wasn’t a case of something like Dallas Buyers Club or Killer Joe, where New Orleans was used as a Dallas stand-in.  Nor was it like that terrible “Babylon” episode of The X-Files, where a bunch of Canadians in denim were awkwardly cast as Texans.  It’s always fun to see building that you recognize when you watch a movie.

That said, The Dallas Connection opens in Paris.  We know it’s supposed to be Paris because of all the French stock footage.  Inside a Parisian mansion (which looks suspiciously like a house one would expect to find in the suburbs of Dallas), an assassin named Black Widow (Julie Strain) is murdering a scientist.  Black Widow’s trademark is that she has rough sex with her targets before murdering them.

Meanwhile, Black Widow’s associates — Cobra (Julie K. Smith) and Scorpion (Wendy Hamilton) — are killing scientists in South Africa and Hong Kong.  The South African scenes feature a lot of grainy stock footage that was probably lifted from a nature documentary.  Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, death comes via an exploding golf ball.

Why are all the scientists being killed?  Well, it turns out that they’re all due to attend a scientific conference in Dallas.  (Woo hoo!  Way to go, Dallas!)  Apparently, they’ve developed some sort of missile defense system or something.  The last remaining scientist, Morales (Rodrigo Obregon), needs to be protected from Black Widow and her assassins so it’s time to call in Chris Cannon (Bruce Penhall) and his team of incompetent government agents.

In typical Sidaris fashion, the plot is pretty much impossible to follow.  That’s not because the story is especially complex or clever.  This isn’t one of those films where you need to rewatch it to pick up on all the details or the clues or anything like that.  Instead, The Dallas Connection’s incoherence feels as if it’s a result of everyone just making it all up as they went along.  It’s a Sidaris film so you know that, inevitably, everyone’s going to end up in the bayous, blowing stuff up.

And yes, yet another remote control boat shows up and explodes.  Of all of the Sidaris trademarks, the exploding remote controlled boats is perhaps the strangest.  At the same time, it’s also the most amusing.  Seriously, whenever anyone is standing near any body of water, you just know a tiny speedboat’s going to come along and blow him up.

In the end, The Dallas Connection is a typically incoherent Sidaris film but at least it features a lot of scenes shot in my hometown.

Book Review: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

“The World Is Not Enough”

— The Bond Family Motto, as revealed in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming

First published in 1963, Ian Fleming’s 10th James Bond novel opens with Bond in a familiar situation.  He is back at the Casino Royale, both to gamble and to visit Vesper Lynd’s grave.  Much as he did after being tortured by Le Chiffre, Bond is considering resigning from Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  However, in this case, Bond’s desire to quit is not motivated by petulance or wounded pride.

Instead, it’s due to frustration.  Bond has spent the past year searching for any evidence that SPECTRE and Blofeld survived the events of Thunderball.  Bond is convinced that SPECTRE no longer exists but M disagrees.  Feeling that he’s wasting his time, Bond has even written out an official resignation letter.  From the minute that we read Bond’s self-satisfactory resignation letter (along with Bond’s thoughts as to how M would react to each passage), we realize that, after two novels in which Ian Fleming seemed to be bored with his most famous creation, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is going to be a return to form for both Bond and Fleming.

As opposed to continuing to search for Blofeld, Bond is much more interested in getting to know Contessa Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo.  When Bond first sees Tracy, she’s boldly racing past him in her car.  The second time, he rescues her from the social embarrassment of revealing that she doesn’t have the money to cover her gambling debts.  The third time, he prevents her from committing suicide in the ocean.  It’s only after all of this that Bond learns that Tracy is the daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, Europe’s biggest crime lord.  Draco and Bond discover they have a lot in common.  They both operate in the shadows and they both want to protect Tracy.

That’s right, James Bond is in love!  Over the course of Fleming’s novels, James Bond falls in love three times.  The first time was with Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale and it ended with Vesper’s suicide.  The second time was with Tiffany Case in Diamonds are Forever and it ended when Tiffany left him for an American.  The third, and final time, is with Tracy.  Just as he did with Vesper, Bond eventually asks Tracy to marry him.  This time, Bond and Tracy actually do get married but the marriage only lasts an hour before ending in tragedy.  On Her Majesty’s Secret Service features Fleming’s darkest ending since From Russia With Love concluded with Bond seemingly dropping dead in a hotel room.

What makes the ending so shocking is that, up until those final few passages, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is such an enjoyable and almost carefree adventure story, a throwback to Dr. No and Goldfinger.  With the help of Draco, Bond discovers that Blofeld is currently hiding out in Switzerland.  However, ultimately, it’s Blofeld’s own vanity that exposes him.  Blofeld writes to the College of Arms, asking for confirmation that he is actually descended from royalty.  Assuming the identity of genealogist Sir Hilary Bray, Bond travels to Switzerland and uncovers Blofeld’s latest plot.  It’s actually a pretty silly scheme, one that involves brainwashing British girls to return home and destroy Britain’s agricultural economy.

But it doesn’t matter how silly Blofeld’s plot may be.  Indeed, the plot is so over the top that it’s impossible not to enjoy it.  In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Fleming seems to have rediscovered his passion for not the character of Bond but also for M.  (One of the book’s best scenes occurs when Bond visits M on Christmas morning.)  This is a fun read, without any of the slow spots that were present in Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me.  Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that, while Fleming was writing his book in Jamaica, Dr. No was being filmed nearby.  Not only does Fleming work a winking reference to Ursula Andress into On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but he also revealed that, like Sean Connery, Bond was Scottish.

All in all, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the best of Fleming’s original novels.