Manborg

Stop motion magic.

Manborg is a 2011 spoof/homage to cheesy action/horror/sci-fi from the late 80s/early 90s. So, it takes the most ridiculous aspects of films like Cyborg, Robocop, Hellraiser, Terminator II, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Hardware, Mortal Kombat, etc. and turns them into a brilliantly entertaining film that should satisfy fans of Full Metal Yakuza, Hobo with a Shot Gun, Tokyo Gore Police, Isle of the Damned and most of Troma's output. It's unbelievably good, a result of mixing conventional latex effects, stop motion, and comically bad laptop effects.

Manborg was originally a soldier in the last great war against Hell's armies, led not by Satan, but by the dreaded Count Draculon, a bio-mechanical demon created on a shoe-string budget. But of course, that soldier was killed in combat and made into a super-warrior, only to wake up in a futuristic time full of future cassettes and future locks and total world domination by Hell.

A blonde Peter Sellers plays a future Dr. Strangelove.

Manborg is quickly captured and locked up with several archetypal prisoners --Liberty, the Australian punker whose power seems to be to shoot two revolvers at once while dancing, Mina, the kick-ass knife ninja chick who has the power of going into anime attack mode, and #1 Man, the superstrong and disciplined martial-arts master. They are held captive by the evil Baron and his henchmen Dr. Scorpius and Shadow Mega, a hot cyborg woman, and forced to fight in an arena against Hell's minions and giant robot monsters.

Liberty, his sister Mina, and #1 Man. The good guys.

All of the usual action cliches follow: Manborg suffers from amnesia and can't explain himself, so he is not trusted by the other prisoners. But then he quickly masters his robo-human powers and becomes their hero. They break out of prison and go into hiding. Heads get blown off. Lots of scary skeletal and zombie-esque bad guys in Nazi-style uniforms. Liberty and #1 Man try to make a box of instant macaroni, blah, blah, blah. 

A jailer-bot and Shadow Mega. Bad guys.

The movie works great as a parody, but also contains a lot of really witty and bizarre additional humor, and some really great horror effects. Totally recommended if you like anything cool. It kept me entirely entertained the whole way through and I laughed out loud at least a dozen times. It's great. Made me happy.

RATING:

American Samurai

In the mid 80s, a film called American Ninja emerged, exposing Americans for the first time to Japanese martial arts culture. Seven years later someone said, "American Ninja... American SAMURAI!" And that's the movie they decided to make. 

The year was 1992. Cool stuff hadn't been invented yet, but fortunately CGI had also not been invented yet, so everything in this movie is REAL. When the main character pulls a bullet out of his gut, it's REAL. Or it might as well be. Though, sometimes when the scene cuts away, that wound isn't even there. It's the paradox of conventional FX.

I am deep in thought. I am a samurai.

This is the story of white man named Andrew, who was raised by a Japanese samurai master after after his mother and father were killed when their plane crashed in Japan, leaving the infant the only survivor. Despite this, Andrew has no Japanese accent and doesn't appear to speak Japanese. He was raised in English by a Japanese father, and his adoptive brother, Kenjiro (Mark Dacascos), also lacks the ability to speak his native tongue.  You may know Dacascos as the Chairman from Iron Chef America (SPOILER: He's not really a Chairman).

Mark Dacascos knows good eating.

Andrew was taught all of the essential samurai skills, and manages to master the elusive Samurai Sixth Sense, which Kenjiro can't even do, so the father declares that Andrew is his true heir and gives him a magical sword. Kenjiro is fucking pissed, calls Andrew a round-eye, and flashes his big-ass yakuza tattoo and he's all like, "Fuck you, dad!"

I'm all like, FUCK YOU DAD!!!!

Suddenly, it's five years later and Andrew wakes up to his apartment being burglarized by four or five heavily armed men who are trying to steal his sword, which he keeps in a glass case above his fireplace or something. After a brief but intense battle, Andrew winds up shot in the gut, which causes him to lose consciousness but gives him a psychedelic vision that his evil brother is trying to steal his sword.

PSYCHEDELIA TO THE MAX

He comes to consciousness and realizes it was all a dream. His brother isn't trying to steal the sword... he's already stolen the sword. 

Hi-yah! This is not my real sword, but it is my real package.

Hey, don't you think this movie could use an attractive female character? Well, one shows up and goes with Andrew to Turkey for some reason. She has red hair and she fights with Andrew all the time, like a meager rendition of Han and Leia. They fall in love.

"I'm sorry I couldn't find a screen cap of your face, but it's obvious you are hot."

Yata yata, the girl gets captured and Andrew has to agree to fight in a gladiator-style tournament against weapons masters, martial artists, a Texan with a big knife, a viking with a horned helm and battle axe, and, you guessed it, Kenjiro who is using the sacred family sword!

Tex-ass! Kans-ass!

I'm not going to tell you who wins, but there may be a reason this film is not called Kenjiro.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I ded

All in all, a pretty interesting and absurd watch, though parts are boring and it feels kind of rushed. Especially recommended if you have a high tolerance for bullshit and a love for stupid action. 

RATING

Zachariah

 

All I should need to say about Zachariah is that it is A) set in the Old West and B) it features Rock bands with electrified instruments.

Seriously. The James Gang. Country Joe and the Fish. The New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. And Jazz great Elvin Jones as a drummer who is the baddest gunslinger in the West.

Other interesting facts: It's loosely based on Hesse's Siddhartha. Apparently the Firesign Theatre adapted it for the screen. It features a young Don Johnson.

Zachariah, Job Cain and Matthew, the best gunshooters to ever shoot.

Some ladies wash and oil up Zachariah for the sex.

Zachariah is a nice guy. He has a friend named Matthew who is also a nice guy. Of course, they get hold of a gun and join up with some bank robbers, who are also Rock musicians. The robbers are better at rocking than they are at robbing, so Zachariah comes up with the idea to use a music concert to distract the townspeople, while he and Matthew rob the actual bank. It works! They get pretty rich together. But they both want more. And so they meet up with a super bad-ass gunslinger who kills any and all who challenge him.

Religious symbolism abounds.

Zachariah and Matthew swear they will always be together. It's almost homoerotic for a minute. In the very next scene they part ways. Zachariah has to go out on his own, fuck a really high class whore, farm with a blind man in the desert and "find himself." Derrrr.

Matt becomes a super badass gunfighter and eventually comes for Zach, who has since laid down his gun. Then something happens and there's a huge confrontation, denouement and end to the film. 

It's one of the few true examples of the Acid Western genre, alongside Greaser's Palace, El Topo, Four of the Apocalypse and Dirty Little Billy. It's got totally surreal moments alongside bizarrely stylized musical elements. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

RATING:

Master of the Flying Guillotine

Okay, let me start by saying there are so many reasons to like this movie, both seriously as a good example of a Hong Kong Kung Fu film and as a campy, old action movie with some absurd moments. Additionally, for fans of post-punk and early industrial music, you get an amazing soundtrack. The background music sounds like it could be Clock DVA messing around in the studio before laying down their real tracks, and the main title theme could easily be a Chrome outtake from Half Machine Lip Moves. Oh, and this was released in early 1976, so it was ahead of its time punk-wise.

The guy pictured above is the Master of the Flying Guillotine, "the most gruesome weapon ever conceived!" He's so bad ass that he can punch the air! His fists make loud sounds on impact with even our gassy atmosphere! Don't fuck with this guy. He can jump straight up through a thatched roof!  He's got a weird hat on a chain that decapitates any person, statue or chicken he throws it at.  And did I mention he's blind?

This guy is the One-Armed Boxer. He's also a total badass, and can even walk on the goddamn ceiling, but he works for the Ming dynasty, so the Master of the Flying Guillotine wants to kill him. The Master is actually the antagonist in this film. And it raises the question: which handicap makes you a better Kung Fu master? It's an age old question, finally put to the test.

Despite his moustache, this Mongol Kung Fu master isn't a major character.

Some guy holds an open tournament for masters of Kung Fu from all over. This Mongol guy with a great moustache shows up, as well as a Thai boxer, an Okinawan kobojutsu user, and an India yoga master. The One-Armed Boxer brings his disciples to watch the event, but he doesn't want to attract the attention of the authorities, so they have to keep a low profile. It's not so easy to evade prying eyes when you only have one arm. I mean, how many one-armed guys can possibly show up to a Kung Fu tournament? At least three. The blind master kills the other two, because apparently he can hear the sound of having just one arm. He's going to kill every one-armed man he meets, just to be sure he gets the One-Armed Boxer. So, he starts fucking shit up at the tournament, and recruits a few of the foreign masters to help him track down the Boxer.

If you practice yoga and you can't do this, you are doing it wrong.

After this, there's just a lot of Kung Fu, just like the part of the film before this. You get decapitations, burnt feet, poetic justice, random pink-filter flash backs. All a lot of fun.

"He wasn't the One-Armed Boxer. He was a one-armed bum!"

RATING:

War in Space

If this poster makes the movie look cool... it's a trick.

War in Space was filmed in 1977 and is set in the distant future of 1988. It starts out pretty much what it must have been like to live in Japan in the late 70s. Butterfly collars and leisure suits abound. It's ostensibly a Japanese alternative to Star Wars, but this is just a trick (see: Message from Space for a real Japanese Star Wars).

My friend David Cawley informed me about this film. He's the sort of guy who really thinks a lot of old cheesy films are actually good, not ironically. He informed that this film is legitimately bad.

He's right.

It's a fairly typical alien invasion movie. Aliens want to invade. The people of Earth don't want them to invade. For some reason, there is a conflict. A bunch of Japanese guys and their pal Jimmy at NASA built a super space ship weapon to fight off the alien invasion when they thought it was going to happen a few years ago. But now it really is happening, and for some reason the super weapon space ship is still not ready. (Thanks OBAMA!)

The aliens, we discover, disguise themselves as humans. But if you peel off their masks, you see that they are not human at all. They have GREEN SKIN, and apparently never invented makeup. So masks was the only thing they could come up with to try to blend in and invade. Meanwhile, the aliens are also zapping the shit out of the Earth with their laser cannons.

There is quite a bit of spaceship-on-spaceship violence. Some bad subtitles add a bit of humor: "Shoot the ion rockets!"

Remember, this is the same year Star Wars was made.

Just wait till you see the caesarian Emperor of the Galaxy and his guard, horned Chewbacca.

 

But like I said, this movie sucks. It has some interesting elements, but if you are smart, you'll stop watching about 2/3 of the way through.

RATING:

Moving Target

Moving Target has just about everything you could want in a movie: Chynna Phillips, Jason Bateman, Tom Skerritt, John Glover, Jack Wagner, Robert Downey Sr., a teenage band that sounds like seven session musicians improvising a song for a cheesy movie soundtrack with no singer. A hit man that dresses like a character in a Miami Vice/Saved by the Bell crossover and who decides to gun down a family from a suburban rooftop with an uzi.

This is the perfect example of Made-for-TV 80s. Nothing about it bears any resemblence to reality, and yet you know all these characters as soon as you see them. Cliches cultivated by pop culture, that never actually existed. But you know them and you love them. Admit it.

 

You get great dialog like: "Hey, open up, you little pencil head!" and "I wanna be here with these zoids only marginally more than I want to die of malaria." In other words, it's just like kids really talked in 1988.

On top of Tom Skerritt, all covered with talent.

Jason Bateman is a heroic teenage musician who, after finding a hot young Chynna Phillips to temporarily replace him in his "next big thing" teen band, gets sent to summer music camp while he family is swept up in mob related intrigue. Bateman runs away from camp, only to find his family has suddenly moved in his absence. Suddenly people are trying to capture and/or kill. But he sticks it to the man AND he plays fruity Baroque piano.

His best friend at music camp is a black nerd, of course, who says cool stuff like, "Man, you got trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for big problems"

All in all, this film isn't going to blow you away, but is full of goofy 80s music, goofy 80s hair, goofy 80s clothes. Watch it while drunk with a bunch of friends who really love the 80s.

RATING: