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ChristianLadewig
Reviews
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)
Bar-bar-bar-Barbarian !!!
The Eighties. VHS Hell. Somebody made the big buck with exploiting certain structures of genre cinema and within a year the b-industry was at hand providing two shelves of rip-offs for your local mom-and-pop rental limbo.
Not only the usual suspects of quickie celluloid theft - Italy and Asia - worked that way. Also the smelly smelly underbelly of Hollywood grinded full throttle when it came to feeding the Realm of Videotica.
1984. Conan The Barbarian by right wing muscle wiener John Milius had just swept the theaters twice with it's fascist only the strong and Austrian survive message. About 30 flicks - one trashier than the other - followed. Most from Italia, all great. Basta.
David Carradine (actually something like the 70s + 80s Messiah of filmic crap-a-rola) just like his dad acting where the money is, travelled to Argentina that year. Probably he made 8 films or something. The one I just watched is The Warrior And The Sorceress done under the tutelage of smut entrepreneurs Alex Sessa and Hector Olivera experienced in producing mainly barbarian movies and Women In Prison howlers line Amazons or Barbarian Queen.
Doctor Carradine, known to no idea movie-going cattle of todays day and age only as the Bill to be killed, stars as a lone sword master in a post-nuke and/or medieval world (the filmmakers somehow could not decide) out to play off two rivaling clan chiefs against each other to get money and their water reserves.
Well, what sounds like the umpteenth take on Kurosawa's Yojimbo/Leone's Fistful Of Dollars just in a different setting is actually the umpteenth take on Kurosawa's Yojimbo/Leone's Fistful Of Dollars just in a different setting.
It's fun though. Carradine looks his usual stoned and not interested in the film and has to endure many an unconvincingly choreographed sword fight. The sorceress - imprisoned by a lizard faced Luke Askew (maybe still known to some from Easy Rider) to forge a magic sword for goals not mentioned - shows her boobs most of the time. Other women get drowned and beaten while Dave-O and his hosts eat chicken and fruit. Them crazy South American lady lovers...
Among the monsters battled are a room full of plush tentacles and a fat Buddha looking heel with a talking (kinda) lizard that looks like something an intern of Jim Henson's would have been fired for even during the pre-Muppets days.
Having watched the film in my mother lingo of German as Der Krieger und die Hexe the dubbing once more had me jumping. Especially the fat guy who has a squealing voice I remember from my childhood calling Bud Spencer "Brother Snailshit" in the mighty movie and political allegory (possibly? Yes, yes !!!) Banana Joe.
When films bring back that kind of feel good memories they win in my book.
Barang Terlarang (1987)
Javanese sleaze outing..
Hee-Haw!!! My goal of building da woild's biggest collection of exotic Z-movies is slowly becoming reality. This is my fourth Indonesian movie starring Miss Eva Arnaz!
Artwork and liner notes of it's German video release called "Commando Wildcat" is made up like a Rambo/Mercenary type of thing, which was very popular back then.
In addition to the review the guy before me posted I'd like to say that "I want to Get Even" is the only film in my memory which depicts rape as a respected measurement of day to day dealings with your significant other.
Rudy, the cab driver can only have sex with his wife if she allows him to beat her up during the act. Which she - of course - abides lovingly. After she's raped by the mob the same man though wants her to have the now "impure" child aborted, before he in turn rapes the local mob sub-boss' sister as an act of vengeance.
The scene showing child-removal surgery uses a skinned rabbit for a fetus - just like Joe D'Amato's infamous Italian 80s splatter fave "Man-Eater", also known as "Antropophagus". Global trashmeisters seem to share a certain mental connection when it comes to realising filmic ideas.
The non-violent scenes are impossibly boring with dialogues scratching the surface of really lame soap operas the way they are made in South America (Salomé, Sinha Moca etc.).
I admit that I laughed out loud when she kills a hood using a bazooka from a distance of maybe 8 ft and decides to live with her abusive hubby happily ever after.
Dear fellow friends of good entertainment: Is this world really like that?
The Mercenaries (1968)
Fine early example of the mercenary-subgenre
The band of awkward soldiers and ex-soldiers willing to do everything for money is represented well here. A formula to be repeated over and over again mainly in Italian "Wild Geese" clones finds its embodiment in Rod Taylor, who brings his schooling of 120 % acting over as usual. His long time comerade is the overconscious Ruffo, a native of their Congolese country of action played by former football-jock and blaxploitation icon Jim Brown. I have the feeling the American version had an important side of the coin taken out: More interesting than the routine plot of escorting diamonds in a train through areas infested with wildman rebels is the inner struggle of Rod Taylor's character with the omnipresent racism towards his black pal, mainly shown by Sergeant Henlein, played by very German actor Peter Carsten. In the German dubbed version this is explained well: Taylor - who has got the German name Willy Krüger - and Henlein were comrades in the Nazi Wehrmacht. The bad guy still acts like a nazi while Taylor/Krüger even tries to forget his past by being a complete almost anti-patriotic mercenary. Technically the film does not fail to entertain. Solid characterizations, good acting throughout, colourful photography and a lively Africanized jazz score make "The Mercenaries" a great adventure movie.
Coconuts (1985)
Ultra chaotic Austrian road movie from hell
Got that trasher 'cos it has Hanno Pöschl, Viennese TV-regular and sleazeball extraordinaire of early 80s underground flicks "Obszön - Der Fall Peter Herzl" and "Frankfurt Kaiserstrasse". He's not playing his pimp routine here but a semi-criminal trucker indulging in hookers and alcohol. Actually it's nuthin' but three people tryin' to make the big buck. But the whole atmosphere of zero-motivated explosions, stupid Dialectic 80s humour and vulgar jokes pretty much did it for me. Soft porn icon Olivia Pascal is also there, not acting much but, yeah, there. Such is Singer Rainhard Fendrich and Mario Adorf. My head's still spinning from that film...