Full Contact / Hap do Ko Fei (Hong Kong, 1992)

They don't make them like this anymore, that's for sure. Whether or not Full Contact is a "good" film might be open to contention, but it is a "great" one. 

A sleazy, multi-violent, blood-drenched B-film, the slim plot is there merely as an excuse to string together a series of brutal and bloody fight and robbery scenes and notably efficient practical-effects scenes, interspaced by rather pointless club dance-performance scenes (featuring the obligatory love interest, Mona [Ann Bridgewater], who is a dancer at a club) and a few kitschy character-development moments. Above all, however, Full Contact is the kind of crime thriller that shows the bullet come out of the back of someone's head, if not hand, throat, or wherever else the projectile enters. 

Trailer to

Full Contact:

Not only that, the narrative throws in a psychopathic nymphomaniac (Bonnie Fu of The Mystery of Big Boobs a.k.a. Ju ru de yi huo [1993]) into the pot, a dim-witted and muscular and choleric wingman psychopath (Frankie Chi-Leung Chan of The Mad Monk a.k.a. Chai Gung [1993 / trailer] and Riki-Oh a.k.a. Lik wong [1991 / trailer]), and a psychopathic suave and smooth and oh-so-not-coded gay alpha man named Judge (former model and Hong Kong star Simon Yam of Naked Killer [1992 / trailer], Bloody Friday / Huet sing Friday (1996), Sparrow [2008 / trailer — a good film with a great soundtrack], The Suspect / Gik do chung faan [1998], and so much more) as the main trio of bad guys. Mr. Muscles, who would definitely be more attractive naked and with a bag over his head, is usually (over)played for vicious laughs, the nymphomaniac is apt to do things like masturbate in the car on the way to the next big job, and all three are as ready to kill as to yawn. Interestingly, despite the year the movie was made, while Judge is basically a stereotype in regard to his sense of fashion and semi-feyness, his sexuality, even when he has a handsome, younger toy-boy in tow, is never a topic of discussion — though our hero, Gou Fei (Hong Kong institution Chow Yun-Fat of The Killer [1989 / trailer], A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon [1989], Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [2000 / trailer], Curse of the Golden Flower [2006 / trailer], and so much more) does show a streak of homophobia by tossing out an occasional politically incorrect verbal barb in Judge's direction ("Wash your ass and wait for me").

Used in the movie —

The World Has Gone Insane, by Alan Tam:

None of the protagonists are particularly likable, as even those who are not untrustworthy psychopaths are violent, trigger-happy gangsters, but some are less violent than others — as in: some are above simply tossing a grenade into a strange car full of passengers, as does Mr. Muscles at one point. But then, the opening scene of Full Contact pretty much identifies Judge, Nympho, and Mr Muscles as kill-happy: in the course of the opening robbery, the trio basically kill everybody just for the heck of it — as they do more than once during the course of the movie. They are indeed without any redeeming values, other than Judge, who does at least possess a sense of style and showmanship.

The figure of identification of Full Contact, and thus movie's nominal hero, is of course Chow Yun-Fat's Gou Fei, who only gets involved with the terrible trio due to financial need: his duplicitous friend Sam (the always good Anthony Wong of Time and Tide [2000], Black Mask [1996 / trailer], The Heroic Trio [1993 / trailer] and more) owes a loan shark a lot of money. Gou Fei is perhaps less blood-thirsty than the rest, likes cute dogs, and also has a sense of honor and family, but he's also not above killing any and all who stand in his way. (Too bad he doesn't have a better sense of style; Judge definitely dresses better than he.)

Used in the movie —

Extreme's Get the Funk Out:

Director Ringo Lam (8 Dec 1955 – 29 Dec 2018), the man behind movies as good as City on Fire / Lung foo fung wan (1987 / trailer) — which wethinks was inspired by White Heat (1949 / trailer) and itself inspired Reservoir Dogs (1992 / trailer) — and flicks as uninteresting as The Suspect / Gik do chung faan (1998), dumps any and all attempt of any sort of statement in Full Contact. Instead, he offers a frenzied and gritty trash masterpiece, full of tasteless scenes and hardcore violence, that often causes one to drop their jaw or burst out laughing.

Set in Bangkok and Hong Kong, Lam's world is one of invisible or ineffectual cops and powerful gangsters, many without loyalty, the latter of whom kill indiscriminately and without remorse, and apparently with impunity. The plot is trite, if not inconsequential, and serves only a framework for the continuous series of bloody and violent action scenes, not to mention a pretty decent car chase, the aforementioned dance scenes, and an oddly out-of-place love triangle that goes nowhere.

Fans of vintage Hong Kong multi-violent trash can't go wrong with Full Contact — indeed, fans of violent trash in general can't go wrong with Full Contact. This film definitely earns, and deserves: Two (Shot-off) Thumbs Up!

 

10 Best in 2025

2025: another great year with an inordinately large number of fabulous films! Often, here at a wasted life we have had problems cobbling together a list of the "10 Best of the Year" — but not this year! We may have reviewed around 33 flicks this past year, but more than ten left an impression. For the first time, we also have two films that tie for the place on the list: two peas of a pod, it would do both injustice to choose only one of them... 
As the non-existent regular readers of a wasted life know, "best of" is always relative at this blog as the films we give good reviews don't always show up in our end of the year round-up while films we trash do. This is because our choice is based less on quality than staying power: how often we think back upon a film, or the general feeling it stirs when we think about it again. Thus, a pretty lousy flick might make the list. (Are we talking to you, Dead Zone? Maybe, but not just.) To read our full, always overly verbose review of any given film, click on the linked titles.
And so, here they are, in no particular order (but for the tied duo, which we look at last): the "Ten Best" films that we here at a wasted life watched in 2025 that we bothered to write about. A lot of anti-classics this time around... 

Hercules against the Moon Men

(Italy, 1964)

"Far from the best of the peplums, Hercules against the Moon Men, like most movies of the genre, has enough going for it that it remains fun and watchable even though you know you could do way, way, way better. Indeed, there is an obvious reason why this Alan Steel movie was so happily embraced for ridicule by Mystery Theatre 3000: it is hilariously bad."

Sherlock Holmes & the House of Fear

(USA, 1945)

"Taking Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tale The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips, scriptwriter Roy Chanslor (25 Aug 1899 – 16 Apr 1964), carved a tale that varies greatly from its source but does so effectively. [...] The House of Fear has an ever so slight body-counter vibe, as there is a steady stream of deaths throughout the film's running time, with all corpses disfigured to unrecognizability. And Holmes is once again, as in many entries of the series, oddly ineffectual at preventing the body count from growing. A grand total of seven, one could say [...]. The twist ending, in any event, truly surprises."* 
* Also reviewed this year, but both a tad less effective than The House of Fear: [Sherlock Holmes and] The Woman in Green (USA, 1945) and Terror by Night (USA, 1946)...

Messiah of Evil

(USA, 1974)

Art film horror! "Oh, baby! Baby you make me hot and bothered, the way you do the things you do... and Messiah of Evil, you do it good. We are on our knees, mouths agape, sweaty and quivering, in awe of what we see. Reputations are hard to live up to, but Messiah, you really do! You are an unstuffed D-Cup on a wonderfully lithe body or ten inches on a hairless and muscular one. Baby, your ten is a full ten of ten, and your cup runneth over! Whoever knew something so easy to get would be so good — Messiah is currently streetwalking on YouTube, and probably at your favorite streaming site as well."

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

(USA, 1988)

"To ask whether or not Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a good movie pretty much misses the point: it is a well-made, low-budget, and ultra-eighties campy, intentionally 'bad' movie about a walking, talking goth Valley Girl who is virtually incapable of speaking in anything but innuendos or malapropisms. The movie is the character and the character is the movie, and the character is built to feel up be a bizarrely sexy Mae West figure. Definitely and intentionally more a comedy than a horror movie, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a bit too episodic in nature and the jokes tend to be more juvenile than intelligent, but the movie maintains a good-natured innocence even when 'off color'."

Don't Look in the Basement

(Planet Texas, 1973)

"It is safe to say, for all the flaws that Don't Look in the Basement might have, it displays more filmic talent than is found in all of [Larry] Buchanan's films together, and unlike that Texan's movies, is not a movie to watch just for laughs. [Don't Look in the Basement] actually has (misshapen) balls."

 

 

Frogs

(USA, 1972)

"An amazing movie, if you get down to it: this nature-gone-mad eco-horror movie not only evidences a notable lack of directorial talent, thespian ability and narrative skill, but is also oddly boring and padded and without any truly convincing action — BUT: it is also amazingly riveting and fun and watchable. It is truly a tangible example of dichotomy at work [...]."

 

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks

(USA, 1976)

"A wonderfully cheap and nicely sleazy sexploitation anti-classic, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is a low-rent variant of the traditional WIP film, but instead of a prison we have a sheikh's harem — the harem of nasty, paranoid and sex-obsessed El Sarif [...], who expands his harem by kidnapping beautiful women from the West. As the film opens, we see the delivery of his three latest additions (played by Uschi, [Colleen] Brennan, and [Derna] Wylde), flown in to the Arabian deserts (of Palm Springs, actually) by helicopter; the three Babes of Yesteryear subsequently spend most of the film naked but for the smallest of gold chastity belts." 

Dead Zone

(USA, 2022)

One for the guys! (And for those who dream of guys.) "Not to be mistaken David Cronenberg's Dead Zone (1983 / trailer), from so long ago that no one really remembers it. This Dead Zone [...] is, in all truth, pretty stupid in almost every way, but, oddly enough, also far more enjoyable than it has the right to be. Regional genre filmmaker Hank Braxtan [...] won't win any prizes for his overly direct and unadorned style, but he does a good job with his actors and manages to wrought the little he has into an oddly satisfying if overly familiar (and ultimately inane and forgettable) slab of virile action."

The Advent Calendar / Le calendrier

(France/Belgium, 2021)

"The Advent Calendar does deliver the goods as an attention-grabbing and captivating horror movie liberally dosed with moments of discombobulating terror. While not overly gory, the dark and bleak movie has its moments of blood and violence, both onscreen and off."

And the tie:

Mesa of Lost Women (USA, 1952/53)

&

The Beast of Yucca Flats (USA, 1961)

Two films that are so utterly terrible, and so surreally memorable — more so than "enjoyable", in any event — in such the same ways that they truly deserve to be viewed as total equals. Watch them with someone you hate... or with a group of drunken and stoned Bad Movie fans... 

 

Mesa of Lost Women

(USA, 1952/53)

"A mind-blowing bad-film anti-classic on par if not 'worse' than anything Ed Wood Jr ever made, the overall anti-style of this pasted-together and unbelievably inept project often has the feel and aura of that anti-auteur's fingerprint, and not just because Wood Jr purloined this movie's outrageously annoying and surreal soundtrack for his own lesser disasterpiece, Jail Bait (1954), which also shares some faces and voices. [...] [A]n oddly disorienting and nonsensical non-narrative that defies every concept of narrative logic and continuity but offers prime examples of thespian and directorial and scriptwriting inability."

The Beast of Yucca Flats

(USA, 1961)

"[...] The movie is a senseless train wreck that defies description and truly earns its reputation as one of the worst films ever made. [...] At a mere 53 minutes in length, The Beast of Yucca Flats is an unbearably long movie when watched alone. Not only is any scene that could have been conveyed in five seconds extended to what feels like five minutes, but the time in between every such scene is also padded with any padding possible, not to mention an inordinate amount of driving scenes of cars going and coming and parking and pulling away and driving and driving and driving."

The Doorman (USA, 2020)

Uh, déjà vu? Here at a wasted life, we hypothesize that whoever is truly responsible for the story behind this movie — the credits claim two names for the story and three for the script — was the roommate of Cory Miller, the credited scriptwriter of Force of Nature, a "less-than-involving, disjointed, by-the-numbers, occasionally laughable and definitely pointless, bullet-heavy action thriller" that was released about three months earlier than The Doorman. So many aspects of the two films are exactly the same but tweaked that one could easily imagine that someone was reading someone else's screenplay while writing their own — then again, it could simply be that, when it came to the two screenplays, no one was interested in creativity or being different and, instead, used the same bullet list of banalities and clichés. 

 

Bullet list:

• A slumming names star to play an "important" character — we say "important" with quotation marks because Jean Reno's Victor Dubois in The Doorman is truly a present character, whereas Mel "You can call me Ambassador" Gibson's character Ray in Force of Nature is not even really needed for the story and exits fairly quickly. 
• The background stories of the protagonists of both movies: tragic, with a death that the hero(es) cannot come to terms with. (In all truth, however, the guy in Force of Nature has it worse than Ruby Rose's character Alexandra "Ali" Gorski: she couldn't stop the death, but he actually [if accidentally] caused it.)
• A virtually empty apartment building with a few remaining inhabitants.
• Hidden artwork worth millions — in Force of Nature, purloined by Nazis during WWII; in The Doorman, purloined by dealers of illegal art (including one German) when the Iron Curtain fell.
• Bad men with big guns that takeover the building to get the hidden art, killing the inhabitants as they see fit.
• Bang! Pow! Someone fights back until the bad guys lose — in Force of Nature, it was definitely a team effort; in The Doorman, it's the highly decorated U.S. Marine Gunnery Sergeant Alexandra "Ali" Gorski that decimates those that should be decimated.
• Vibes of attraction between the two lead adult good people that indicate that heterosexual snogging might be a future option.

Give us a few minutes and we surely could find more points in common, but we would guess that the fact that The Doorman is a pretty generic slab of celluloid is already apparent. That said, as unoriginal and ludicrous as The Doorman is, it remains far more interesting than Force of Nature, if only because it comes across as a bit meaner and has a bit more blood; indeed, when one nice guy gets a hammer to the head, blood actually splatters. And not much later, there is a small, winch-inducing torture scene (regrettably quickly undone by a subsequent humorous scene involving the music of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries).

Trailer to

The Doorman:

A further plus is that The Doorman has Ruby Rose as the lead ass-kicker, and not only does she look good (if possibly a bit on the anorexic side) when kicking ass, she usually also looks convincing. She's a little bit less convincing when required to convey emotion or even friendliness, but face it: you are not going to watch The Doorman for anything other than the ass-kicking and shooting. (In that sense, the overall banality of the narrative is perhaps aside the point.) Sometimes the fights are a bit over-edited, but they generally remain watchable and violent enough to keep you awake (rather unlike much of Force of Nature). Ruby Rose, in any event, and as she already proved in flicks like John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017 / trailer), is convincing when it comes to action and as such is a name to watch if you like the genre. 

Jean Reno (of The Last Battle [1983 / trailer]) looks a bit bloated and bored, but he does at times look like he is trying to act. Norwegian actor Aksel Hennie (of Terkel in Trouble [2004 / trailer]), as second-tier baddy Borz, does perhaps the best job in the movie, sliding believably between friendliness and cold-heartedness, smile and dead-face. He gets the only thing that comes close to skin scene, and though he does keep his towel wrapped tight to hide the family jewels, his general physical appearance could cause a drop or two of saliva in some viewers. (We, for one, promptly took matters into our own hands.) He often steals the given scene he's in, even when fully clothed, and by the final resolution he also proves himself to be an even bigger asshole than you think he is.

As for the direction, well, the genre-flexible director Ryûhei Kitamura may not be in top form in The Doorman — see: The Midnight Meat Train (2008 / trailer) — and he does rely a bit too much on quick edits, but he still does a decent job and keeps the movie rolling at a relatively quick pace (excluding the interminable family-bonding scenes, that is).

To be blunt, The Doorman is hardly special in any way, despite a nice fight scene here and there and a few decent deaths. If you have nothing else to do and the movie is at hand, it makes for painless and passable viewing. To paraphrase what we said about Force of Nature: decades ago, in the fun days of grindhouse, a movie like this would have had the redeeming features of fun stuff like spurting fake-looking blood and flying fake-looking body parts and a lot of gratuitous real-looking naked love pillows (see, for example, Ilse, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks [1976]). The Doorman, however, made, as it was, totally in line with today's prudery and overwhelming desire not to offend, has none of those cheaply gratifying aspects... to its detriment. 

And thus The Doorman remains watchable in an unmemorable way: it's simply by-the-number, action-flick fluff that is fun enough with beers and/or a bong, but neither original enough or extreme enough to prevent it from being quickly forgotten after the final credits role. Nothing to avoid, per say, but nothing to really bother searching for — unless, of course, you're a fan of Ruby Rose. Then, obviously enough, one can truly say she's done far worse movies than this slab of commonplace action-genre product.

The World Gone Mad (USA, 1933)

 

"Someone wanted Henderson out of the way because he was in the way!"

Lionel Houston (Neil Hamilton)

Another poorly cropped and bleached and scratchy pre-code public domain movie that you can find floating all over the web and on innumerable compilation DVDs, The World Gone Mad supposedly also saw re-releases under the titles The Public Be Damned and The Public Be Hanged — but we were unable to find any visual documentation online of the last two supposed titles. Oddly enough, the movie often finds its way onto public domain horror movie compilations, where it truly does not belong. It is a crime movie, not a horror flick.

Made by Majestic Pictures, a pretty much forgotten Poverty Row production company that did a few films of note — The Vampire Bat (1933), for example — before being swallowed by Republic Pictures, The World Gone Mad does reveal, despite some of the name actors participating, its low-budget roots in the occasionally somewhat threadbare production and flimsy sets. Luckily, other sets manage to convey enough money (due to size or opulence or even the number of extras) that the film looks less barely budgeted than tightly budgeted.

The movie is a mid-career directorial project of the hardworking William Christy Cabanne (16 Apr 1888 – 15 Oct 1950), a man known, alongside with Sam Newfield ([6 Dec 1899 — 10 Nov 1964], see: The Monster Maker [1944]) and William Beaudine (15 Jan 1892 – 18 Mar 1970), as one of the most prolific directors in American films. Among the over 100 movies Cabanne directed, you find no undisputed (or even disputed) classic, but you do find some fun movies, like the generic Old Dark House "horror" One Frightened Night (1935 / full movie); Universal's second mummy film, The Mummy's Hand (1940 / trailer), a fun flick that actually cannibalizes some footage from the first, The Mummy (1932); and Bela Lugosi's only color movie, Scared to Death (1946). The World Gone Mad, the content and narrative of which bears little resemblance to its title, may not be a "classic" (real or lesser) per se, but despite its age and concomitant creakiness, it is a watchable and interesting little obscurity that easily counts as one of Cabanne's better movies.

Still, as always, Cabanne's direction is rather stodgy and workmanlike, though there is one true visually creative flourish that is so out of place with the rest of the movie that it draws attention to itself: a dolly shot up to and into a calendar, at which point the displayed image becomes the opening of the next scene. It is a shame that Cabanne didn't do more fun stuff like that in this and his other movies, as most of his work — as is much of this movie — is staid (as in: point and shoot and edit) to the point of visual somnolence.

One other interesting sequences in the movie that definitely isn't somnolent — both in regard to editing and its reflection of the capitalist system — is the perfectly timed montage going from one person to the next as the $30,000 contract to kill the local district attorney works its way down from subcontractor to cheaper and shabbier contractor, much in the way many "jobs" normally go in our capitalist system, until it reaches the hand of the obvious immigrant, the swarthy-skinned and slightly oily-looking, Casanova's-Memoirs-reading hitman Ramon Salvadore (J. Carrol Naish [21 Jan. 1896 – 24 Jan 1973] of The Monster Maker [1944], House of Frankenstein [1944], The Beast with Five Fingers [1946] and Dracula vs Frankenstein [1971]). Yep, then like now, immigrants do our dirty work.

The narrative weaved by scriptwriter Edward T. Lowe Jr. (29 June 1880 – 19 April 1973), whose numerous projects include The Vampire Bat (1933), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945 / trailer), keeps the tale relatively tight if a bit too leisurely, with only a few overt meanderings into the unnecessary — indeed, one character who initially comes across as totally unnecessary, the dizzy telephone operator Susan (Inez Courtney [12 Mar 1908 – 5 Apr 1975] of The Raven [1935 / trailer]), unexpectedly proves rather essential to the movie's resolution.

On the whole, the characterizations are perhaps a bit to stock, if not stereotypical — the lawmen, honest; the reporter, a womanizing wisecracker; the bad guys, oily or suave; the woman, little more than appendages to the men's arms; etc. — but to expect something other in films of that time is perhaps disingenuous.

Although the movie does uphold the precepts and concept of law and justice, The World Gone Mad's narrative has a unique, overall capitalism-critical attitude: in the end, all but one of the big businessmen in the movie are just as criminally and morally corrupt as those of the underworld, concerned only in profits and themselves, and willing to have someone killed to ensure their status quo remains as it is.*

* Times have changed little since then. Down with capitalism. Eat the rich. Ban the Republican party. Put Trump in Epstein's cell. Spitball the religious right.

In the end, however, scriptwriter Edward T. Lowe Jr.'s resolution offers an iota of (idealistic and ultimately unconvincing) hope by revealing one of the businessmen to care so much for the little people that he would prefer death to ensure their well-being. (Either Lowe had a flawed sense of reality or those higher up put on some pressure to add that fairytale concept.) An interesting but seldom seen aside that almost goes unnoticed in the events is the fact that one female character is obviously the shared mistress of two of the bad guys.

The narrative concerns the murder of upright Dist. Atty. Avery Henderson (the usually uncredited character actor Wallis Clark [2 March 1882 – 14 February 1961] of Mystery of the Wax Museum [1933 / trailer] and The Lady and the Monster [1944 / full film]), which is staged to look like love-nest argument gone deathly wrong and becomes a reputation-ruining scandal, to the disbelieving indignity of his wife, Evelyn (Geneva Mitchell [3 Feb 1908 – 10 Mar 1949), and both of his two best friends, the [stock character] wisecracking reporter Andy Terrell (Pat O'Brien [11 Nov 1899 – 15 Oct 1983) of Some Like it Hot [1959 / trailer] and so much more]) and Henderson's equally upstanding subsequent DA replacement Lionel Houston (Neil "Commissioner Gordon" Hamilton [9 Sept 1899 – 24 Sept 1984] of the unsung minor classic waiting to be rediscovered Terror Aboard (1933 / full film), The Devil's Hand (1961 / full film) and, of course, Batman: The Movie [1966 / trailer]). And thus the two begin, in their own way, to pursue the truth, to the displeasure of all those involved in the original murder and cover-up... 

So, in the end: The World Gone Mad is a tight, oddly mesmerizing if notably slow crime flick with a nice cast of familiar faces* and adequate acting, although much of the dialogue is pontificated and a bit too loudly recorded. The anti-capitalist mood of the narrative peters out towards the end, with one of the film's two climaxes showing that the toppest guy ain't a bad man after all, and the two investigations come to a head thanks to a surprisingly unseen twist. Fans of the old movies of yesteryear can't go wrong with The World Gone Mad; those of the age who multitask no matter what they do, on the other hand, will find the movie creaky and uninteresting. You know which hat fits best...

* Including, aside those already mentioned, Evelyn Brent ([20 Oct 1895 – 4 June 1975], above, of The Seventh Victim [1943 / trailer] and Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command [1928 / a trailer] and Underworld [1927/ full film]) as the duplicitous bad gal Carlotta Lamont; Louis Calhern ([19 Feb 1895 – 12 May 1956] of The Asphalt Jungle [1950 / trailer] and Blackboard Jungle [1955 / trailer]) as Christopher Bruno, the suave but thoroughly corrupt gangster; Richard Tucker ([4 Jun 1884 – 5 Dec 1942] of The Bat Whispers [1930] and The Unholy Three [1929 / full film]) as Graham Gaines, the narcissistic and greedy big businessman with Trump-like morals; and the forgotten John St. Polis ([24 Nov 1873 – 8 Oct 1946] of The Phantom of the Opera [1925 / full film] and The Unknown [1927]) as Grover Cromwell, the blindsided businessman who, unlike big businessmen in real life, gives a damn.

The full film –

The World Gone Mad: