Il Grande silenzio/The Big Silence (Italy, 1968)

(Opening credit sequence with great title music.) Although he made more than enough crappy films during his active years as a one-man, non-stop Italian film factory, at his best Sergio Corbucci ranks up there with Sergio Leone as one of the makers of some of the greatest Spaghetti westerns ever. Alongside his other masterpiece Django (1966), The Big Silence is probably Corbucci’s best film in the genre. Without a doubt, it is also one of the most disheartening westerns ever to be made anywhere, which might explain why it was never made it to the USA, which generally prefers its westerns sanitized.
Deep in the snowbound mountains of Utah, the amoral, psychopathic bounty hunter Loco (Klaus Kinksi) likes to kill before he captures, and often lugs around a variety of dead bodies which he plans to eventually turn over for the rewards. (Those he cannot take with him, he buries in snow mounds to come back for later.) Across his path rides Silenzio (Jean Louis Trintignant), a quick-draw killer of bounty hunters, forever silent since his childhood, after some nasty men, having killed his wanted Daddy and defenseless Mommy in front of him, slit his vocal cords. A truly great, depressing spaghetti western set in a snow-bound hell....
Had Albert Camus written westerns instead of novels, he would have written movies like this one. (The ending for the Japanese market, an extra on the current DVD, makes the film a philosophical joke.)

Killjoy (USA, 2000)

(Spoilers) What a killjoy. Some guy named Michael (Jamal Grimes) really likes his classmate babe named Jada (Vera Yell), but she’s got a gang-banging (and sorta sexy) boyfriend named Lorenzo (William L. Johnson) who doesn’t like old four-eyes invading his personal space. Lorenzo and his buds T-bone and Baby Boy eventually off Michael some night, but not before Michael does what every studious ghetto chil’ does when in need of protection: perform (a seemingly unsuccessful) attempt to raise a demon clown from hell named Killjoy (Ángel Vargas). A year later, Jada has broken up with Lorenzo and is now doing sex ed. homework with some cute dude named Jamal (Lee Marks). (At this point, we knows that Jada is the good girl of the film ‘cause she never gets neked for any of their under-the-cover sex scenes.) While Lorenzo is off getting laid, Killjoy the clown shows up in a decrepit ice cream truck. When a highly stoned T-bone (Corey Hampton) and Baby Boy (Rani Goulant) get into the truck, they are magically transferred to a large and filthy downtown artist’s space and promptly and unspectacularly killed. Before Lorenzo bites the dust in much the same way, the best scene of the whole movie occurs: the bitch he done porked takes a shower and, hey! She got the tits! She got the bod!
Once Lorenzo is done gone, Killjoy’s aim starts getting indiscriminate, but then some bum (Arthur Burghardt) pops up to tell Jada, Jamal and their friend Monique (Dee Dee Austin) all about Killjoy. Before they can say “we gonna die,” all three are transported off to Killjoy’s domain where they learn that Killjoy is actually (sorta) Michael possessed. Everyone runs around too much and the film starts getting real boring but then Michael and Killjoy get destroyed. The heroes would have lived happily ever after if the film didn’t have that predictable, never-lacking final scene needed to lead into a sequel should the film be a hit. This time around, the “twist second ending” scene is of Jada and Jamal in the sheets and partially dressed refining their sex ed. homework. Jamal goes under the covers to taste the taco, but a cackling Killjoy then pops up in his place to laugh and drool on Jada’s screaming face. (This direct to video celluloid turd obviously did well enough, for 2002 did indeed see Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil.)
Yo! It is easy to imagine what the producers told the scriptwriter of this film: “Give us some sort of inner-city Freddy rip-off that we can maybe turn into a franchise.” As for Carl Washington, the scriptwriter, he probably saw Stephan King’s IT on television the week before and was suddenly was hit with the truly creative inspiration of taking Pennywise out of Bangor, Maine and into gang-banging Compton with the new name of Killjoy. An aptly named film, to say the least.
Lacking tension, suspense or any real gore, Killjoy is a low-budget body count flick that for a change (but as can be expected of an inner-city exploitation flick) features (mostly) African Americans being bumped off instead of rich and socially advantaged white folks. The concept of an ethnic body count movie is in itself not new but is always a rather nice change of pace, but this turkey is definitely not a high point of the genre.
Killjoy is one of those types of films in which characters suddenly know life-saving information without being told, such as the magic “don’t break the circle.” Likewise, they are just as probable, within a five-minute span of time, to say both “we gotta stick together” and, after they get transported into Killjoy’s personal domain, “we gotta split up to find him.” In itself all this could be overlooked and forgiven if Killjoy were at least well-made, suspenseful or gory, but it isn’t, so jack-shit can be forgiven. About the only reason to rent this film is out of political correctness: we gotta keep them poor ghetto actor kids working and off the streets, so any money spent on the film’s rental or purchase can be seen as going for a good cause, right? So, if you ain’t gonna do any of your social duties like, say, eventually voting the Republicans out of the White House, then rent this movie and feel all warm and fuzzy inside cause you know you are helping our put-upon brothers advance economically! (Fat chance, actually, seeing that Charles Band has his fingers in the pie here.)

Ong-bak (Thailand, 2003)

(Trailer) When it comes to plots, Thai director Prachya Pinkaew's movie Ong-bak has one so old and so slim that it is a miracle that the film is as entertaining as it is. Basically: good boy from the country goes to the big bad city on a mission where he defeats and is defeated but remains true to his mission and finally saves the day and leaves the big bad city behind him to go back home. In Ong-bak, Tony Jaa is Ting, the good boy that is on the mission. He also happens to be a young master of Muay Thai, a tradition-rich form of kick boxing also known as "The Art of the Eight Limbs" that is the national sport of Thailand (the "eight limbs" are the hands, shins, elbows and knees).
One day a low-level thug named Don (Wannakit Siriput) comes to Ting's village and steals the head of the local Buddha statue called Ong-bak. The true soul that he is, Ting volunteers to retrieve the head and journeys to Bangkok, where he ends up an unwelcome guest of ex-fellow villager Humlae (Petchtai Wongkamlao), a young man who has long since left his country-bumpkin past behind him and now crawls through life as an incompetent low-rent con man (named "George"). Although Ting is a Buddhist who has promised his master never to use his fighting skills without reason or for personal gain, all cards always land in a way that requires him to use his prodigious talents. Numerous fight and chase scenes later—including a truly fabulous chase incorporating an untold number of with three-wheeled scooter-taxis and a mega-cool scene during which Ting kicks butt while on fire—not only does Humlae regain his sense of honor, but the mismatched pair regain Ong-bak’s head and also bring the downfall of mobster Khom Tuan (Sukhaaw Phongwilal). (Although, in truth, one could argue that Humlae actually loses more than he gains, but this could be a matter of cultural attitude.) The movie ends with the parade honoring Ong-bak's return to the rural village.
One-time stunt man Tony Jaa does a star-making in Ong-bak, and it is not without reason that he is being hailed by some as the next heir to (take your pick) Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan or Jet Li. Fit and good looking, Tony Jaa's emotionless straight face permits one to read what one wants while his stunt work and fighting skills leaves one either breathless or winching in amazement and/or imagined pain. Director Prachya Pinkaew often shows the more astoundingly nimble stunts from three of four angles, and from every angle they are eye-openers. No hidden wires here: when the villagers being tossed from the tree in the movie's opening scene land on the ground with a thump after falling untold yards, there are no edits, nor are there any when Jaa glides under cars or across tables or defends abused women or runs over the heads of a line of bad guys. (Of course, as happens only in films of this ilk, even when ten bad guys are out to get him at the same time, they always attack one after the other, but hell, that happens to Batman too and no one ever complains about it, so why should we here?)
Clocking in at around 104 minutes, Ong-bak is truly a fun ride that easily feels as if it were in fact a lot shorter—something that many other films of lesser length cannot claim. An adrenaline rush of fight and chase scenes that defy believability and gravity, the film's liberal dose of humor and excellent production values helps make Ong-bak one of the most enjoyable and watchable sock-'em, knock-'em films to come out of the Far East in a long time. Definitely the right choice for anyone who in any way has any slight affinity for vintage Jackie Chan or Eastern fight films in general.

Aufklärungsrolle –Als die Liebe laufen lernte ([West] Germany, 1988)

(This review appeared in a print copy of the excellent film magazine Shock Cinema some half-dozen years ago. If you don’t know the magazine, you should. For more info on Shock Cinema, check out their homepage).

Roughly translated, the name of this movie in English would be "When Love Was Learning How to Walk." It is definitely one of those films that makes a person glad that they can understand German, for Als die Liebe laufen lernte would never work dubbed or subtitled, not that it ever would be. A hit in Germany when it first came out, it was quickly followed in 1989 with Als die Liebe laufen lernte, Teil 2, directed by Anthony Waller. How much the individual directors of each film actually had to do with the movie is questionable, for the only name that carries through in both films is that of the producer, Richard Claus. (Michael Strauven, who directed the first film, has never been heard of again; Waller went on to make the excellent Hitchcock influenced thriller Mute Witness (1994) and the barely bearable An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), both of which had Claus as a producer or co-producer.)
Als die Liebe laufen lernte is a hilarious combination of outtakes edited from the German “aufklärung” (or “clarification”) films of the 1960s and early 1970s. With titles such as Helga, Die Schulmädchen Report or Die Hausfrau Report (Parts 1 to ad nausea), these films were the German film industry’s response to the changing mores of society at the time: soft-core sex films disguised as studies or clarification. They purported to explain the changing mores of the youthful society as well as the how, what, when, where and why of sex. Depending on the slant of the film, they were either relatively informative, unbearably boring or completely negative – not something you would want to sit through from start to finish in any event.
For Als die Liebe laufen lernte, the filmmakers selected some of the most laughable or outrageous outtakes, either due to the content or the way the content is presented. Love that explanation of different positions shown through the use of wooden drawing puppets, the commentary of which finally informs the viewer that “this position” (69) should not be done because it results with the man’s nose being subjected to the unpleasant smells of the posterior. Or how about how some women become lesbians because they get flashed as a child? And did you know that “petting”, like Rock ‘n’ Roll, came to Germany from the United States? Some sequences are positively surreal, such as that of the naked girl running down a beach being pursued by a bulldozer with its shovel full of about 8 men dressed like English businessmen with bowlers.
Als die Liebe laufen lernte is easy to see several times and almost makes you want to see the original sources, though any person who had the honor of seeing those films when they first came out is quick to warn you against doing so. (Actually, some of those films are now to be found on late night television in Germany, especially on the local, low budget city television stations. In general, if you suffer from insomnia they work better than a sleeping pill. Even uncut they reveal the innocence of their time.) This selection of outtakes is well worth seeing, even if you don’t understand German. And club owners take note: Als die Liebe laufen lernte is an excellent film to project in the background as moving décor.
The German CD firm Crippled Dick Hot Wax has released an excellent compellation CD of music from the Schulmädchen series composed by Gert Wilden, one of Germany's great B-film composers. A definite must for fans of Sleazy Listening.