BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Lone Wolf McQuade (Steve Carver, 1983)

McQuade is the best Texas Ranger in the state. 

Bad men led by Rawley Wilkes (David Carradine) are smuggling guns across the border. 

McQuade finds out.

Guess what happens next…

I do not have much familiarity with Chuck Norris’s work - before this I had watched Invasion USA and Silent Rage. I had heard good things about a couple of Norris’s other vehicles, and I wanted to see him at his best.

Lone Wolf McQuade is a pretty fun action movie. The plot is a little complicated, but the action is solid and the filmmakers pick interesting settings for each set piece. 

Notable as the first time he wore the beard, Lone Wolf McQuade stands out for how it tries to pay homage to spaghetti westerns. McQuade feels like an 80s riff on Eastwood’s iconic loner. The most overt reference is the film’s score, which evokes Ennio Morricone so much I am surprised he did not do it (Francesco De Masi did the honours).

The attempt to make Norris a loner badass is only partially successful - he looks great with the beard and the jeans. The filmmakers want to make him out as a beer-chugging, messy outsider who is disinterested in comfort or presentation, but Norris is so inherently square that it does not quite work - his onscreen awkwardness makes him believable as a loner, just not the kind the filmmakers want. 

This movie works in spite of Norris - he cannot react to anything unless it is an action scene, which is good for this movie. If Norris was playing Macbeth… 

The other reason Norris does not bump is that the cast is filled out with actors (Robert Beltran and LQ Jones) who can draw attention from the star. David Carradine preens as the villain - he has not got a lot to work with, but he knows what the role is and fills it out with understated swagger.

The only performer who is in a similar boat to Norris is Barbara Carrera. Most well known as the villain  from Never Say Never Again, she plays McQuade’s love interest. It is not a well-written part and she does not have a lot to do, but she is doing more than Norris, and perversely, this means her wooden moments stick out more than his do. 

The worst thing about the movie is that falls into the same hole of featuring a villain defined by some kind of impairment. Daniel Frishman plays Emilio Falcon, a Mexican gang boss who uses a wheelchair and crosses paths with McQuade throughout the film. Frishman has a great voice and plays his scenes with a smug glee - he feels a missing James Bond villain. But he ultimately adds nothing to the movie, other than serving as a contrast to McQuade. Their verbal sparring basically amounts to Norris throwing insults at his foe’s height and mobility. 

To be honest, the movie would be better without any dialogue. All the attempts to complicate the movie are pointless because it is obvious who the bad guy is and what they are doing. Norris is only dynamic when he is in action, and when the movie focuses on that, it is successful. But while it is not perfect, compared with the other Norris movies I have seen, this movie is a miracle.

I left the movie more a fan of Carradine and Frishman, but Lone Wolf McQuade is solid action cheese.

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Timecop (Peter Hyams, 1994)

Walker (Jean Claude Van Damme) is a Timecop, tasked with protecting the time stream from those who would like to affect history (or profit from it).

Now he is faced with the ultimate disrupter: a corrupt US senator who is robbing the past in order to fund his presidential campaign.

Three Peter Hyams reviews in one month?

Blame Outland.

This is widely considered one of JCVD’s best movies. I can see why.

He may be wooden, but there is something more compelling going on with him - compared with other performers of his generation, he is at least trying to sell the character’s despair.

This movie works as a simple action flick, and the key with this kind of picture is to keep the action moving fast enough so the plot holes do not trip you up.

The movie did not have a big budget and it shows in a few places. We get two set pieces in the past, a few future cars and some morphing CGI - it is not enough for the movie’s scope, but it is a feature, not a bug. I like watching low budget genre movies, and part of the fun is seeing what they spent money on. 

The key element in Timecop that keeps it compelling is the villain, played the late Ron Silver.

Silver is becoming one of my favourite character actors - he’s good in everything I’ve seen him in.

He is very good at soft-selling smarm, which is an asset here because the character does not have a lot to do here. He is less interesting as the younger version of himself - the character is more milquetoast and undefined.

Undefined is the word for the movie, at least in certain respects.

For example, rather than show us the invention of time travel, we get a monologue during a committee meeting - we also do not get to see the original time machine, which is essential to the villain’s plot.

There is also something small about the settings - the Parker factory looks like any warehouse, but filled with crates and piping.

The budget might be the cause of some of these choices, but it does not explain others - the main example is the subplot with Walker’s new partner (Gloria Rueben), which feels like it is on fast forward: she is introduced, they do not get on, they start to connect, and it turns out she’s a villain.

Hyams seems to be a fan of this twist because it happens in Outland and Sudden Death as well - a character is introduced, they are barely involved in the movie and then they are the bad guy.

In two out of three cases, it does not work - including this one.

Now, I am not enough of a sci-fi head to care about the logic of time travel BUT the ending of the movie is such a leap I had to laugh: our hero comes home to find Melissa alive and meets his ten-year-old son for the first time. This son has known Walker his entire life but this Walker has no memory of this kid’s entire life. The implications of this psychologically on the family is so bleak, the ‘happy reunion’ comes across like a dark joke.

Hyams is back to being his own DoP and the movie features his signature of extreme darkness - the third act action sequence was frustrating because I could not tell who was who, particularly during the close combat in the house.

All that being said, I had a good time with Timecop. The concept is still fun, it is decently paced and Ron Silver is having a great time as the villain.

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Outland (Peter Hyams, 1981)

On the moon of Io, workers are dying under mysterious circumstances.

Recently appointed Marshall William T. O’Neil (Sean Connery) begins investigating the deaths. 

When the trail leads to the top brass, O’Neil finds his investigation compromised by obstacles and intimidation.

When the lawman refuses to look the other way, other plans are made.

A hit squad are on the next transport to the station, with orders to kill him.

Isolated from the station crew, O’Neil has to face these killers alone…

Peter Hyams, I cannot quit you.

A sci-fi riff on High Noon, Outland takes the 'used future' of seventies sci fi pics like Star Wars and Alien, and strips it down to a scrappy thriller about one individual making a last stand against other people who have greater numbers and bigger guns.

What is so intriguing about the movie is that while it is set in the future on a distant moon, it does not go the extra step of adding aliens or other familiar elements. Instead this is a movie about corporate greed and exploitation of labour. To push this home, one of the film's tag-lines riffs on Alien’s: 'Even in space, the ultimate evil is man'. 

Everything wrong in this movie is not the product of extraterrestrials, but old-fashioned humans. 

This is not the set up for arguing that Outland is a masterpiece. BUT it is easily the best Peter Hyams movie I have seen.

Part of it is that Hyams works with good collaborators. Instead of Hyams himself, you have Stephen Goldblatt as DOP; as editor, you have Stuart Baird, Hollywood’s Mister Fix-It. 

There are some great visuals - I particularly liked the steadicam used during the foot chase through the station; and the use of backlight as the figures arrive on the station.

If you are a fan of the used aesthetic of seventies and eighties sci-fi, Outland is a great addition. There is nothing particularly original about the picture, but this grunt-level look at the future stands on its own. 

The homage to High Noon also helps Hyams dramatically - his other films suffer from a lack of real stakes, but there is a solid-ness to the High Noon scenario that gives the movie an in-built sense of escalation. The movie gets a lot of mileage from the countdown to the next ship’s arrival.

There is also something more filled out about the world - Hyams’ other work never feels fully realised or lived in. Characters also have believable relationships that grow - I liked the uneasy friendship between Connery and the station medic, Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen). Nothing in the movie is that original, but it works.

As the protagonist, Connery is good, but there is a metatextual layer to his performance that kept me at a distance. As with Running Scared, Hyams (who wrote the film) is not good at humour - Connery has a couple of casual domestic violence ‘jokes’ which come early and completely coloured his performance. The character has been abandoned by his family, and those jokes made it hard not to read into their motivations for leaving. Connery’s minimalist performance makes it too easy to overlay his offscreen history into the text.

If that  puts you off, that is understandable. These lines come early, but they do not pervade the picture. Once the villains come into view, and O'Niel finds himself under siege, the movie is on a surer footing with regards to connecting with the protagonist.

The action is pretty sparse, but effective. The foot chase I already mentioned is good, and the third act involves O’Neil struggling to fend off his killers outside the station. The killers themselves are not that interesting, but the film makes up for it in terms of the set pieces. 

Technically, the biggest problem I had with the movie were the visual effects: Most of the exterior model shots look like models - they suffer from a static camera and overlighting. They look like composites that have not been completely integrated. The movie was one of the first to use the Introvision process which means you can view a finished composite of live action actors against film of models or matte paintings through the camera while shooting, rather than having to wait for post-production.

The composites here look a bit sloppy - you can see the light around the actors, and the lighting of the models never quite blends together. It is not terrible, but it takes time to get used to.

Overall, Outland is a solid thriller and a strong effort from Peter Hyams. 

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BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Ninja III - The Domination (Sam Firstenberg, 1984)

After he is fatally wounded, the Black Ninja (David Chung) possesses a passing lineman/aerobics instructor Christie Ryder (Lucinda Dickey).

Christie is in the fight of her life to free herself from the evil ninja, who is determined to exact revenge on his killers.

Only Christie and rival ninja Goro (Sho Kosugi) stand in his way.

This movie is great. It is so good I would recommend watching the movie knowing as little as possible.

The only thing you need to know is that the movie’s title is a complete mis-sell. This movie is the third in a trilogy of unrelated ninja tales released in the early eighties by the Cannon Group (responsible for the Death Wish sequels, Superman IV, Lifeforce, Runaway Train, Masters of the Universe and the Breakin’ movies).

While its title is generic and it steals from a bunch of other, better movies, Ninja III assembles its constituent parts in such a way that it ends up resembling nothing else. Such is the beauty of Cannon Group - their movies are like looking at American pop culture through a funhouse mirror. 

Every element in the movie is both identifiable and also off. There are combinations of ingredients which do not usually go together - the opening action sequence features a ninja attacking golfers (including chasing after a golf cart); our heroine goes into full flashdance mode to ward off a possession while her apartment comes to life around her. 

The acting is wooden but that emotional disconnect adds to the movie’s atmosphere. Same with the production values - the simplicity of the settings and lack of extras make the film feel more alien and fantastical.

And in terms of narrative progression, Ninja III manages to be both simple and baffling - this movie is a combination of extended set pieces bracketed by narrative ellipses that remove any sense of character development or discovery. The characters do learn things, but they do not react to them like they are consequential.

Somehow this is one of those glorious circumstances where every creative decision - made in total sincerity - is pushing the movie away from genre and toward its own surreal world. I would not call it outsider art, but it is definitely outside the kind of movie promised by the title.

I have not seen enough ninja movies to declare this the best ninja movie ever made, but I doubt that the genre contains any entry as singular as Ninja III - The Domination.

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Black Mama White Mama (Eddie Romero, 1973)

A riff on The Defiant Ones, Black Mama White Mama pairs Pam Grier with Margaret Markov as two squabbling prisoners who escape the prison bus and escape through the jungle.

Off the bat, the music for this movie is AWESOME. Harry Betts’ main title music makes this movie feel like the best seventies action movie ever. 

This movie had a more efficient set-up than the previous women in prison movies but mostly the effect of watching four of these things in a row - in the space of half an hour we get the conflict between the prisoners, a food fight, lesbian wardens, and a hot box torture scene. 

The chase antics are a little all over the place - I felt a dip in the film’s pacing as the film juggles our heroines with the rebels, the police and the mercenaries who have been hired to ambush them.

Familiar faces Vic Diaz and Sid Haig walk away with the acting honours although most of the cast are decent, in an earnest b-movie kind of way. 

I like Sid Haig, but he gets so much screen time that the movie loses focus - and most of that subplot is based around him trying to have sex with everybody he meets. 

The climatic action sequences are pretty effective in their staging - I like the setting of the docks for the finale. For once the action is not an endless intercutting of people shooting at screen left and right, and there is a bit of tension as the rebels are forced back toward the ship.

We get another semi-downbeat ending although this time the villains die in a massive explosion and the surviving rebels manage to escape. As though to sum up the whole endeavour, the film gives the final word to the antagonist. As he views the bodies of the rebels, the police captain delivers a final declaration, ‘12 years a captain. I’ll be a major before dinner’.

Between this movie and Women In Cages, you can feel the hand of filmmakers who understand the place they are working in - it feels like the casting, the performances and the scripting of the Filipino cast members are more fleshed out.

Compare Vic Diaz, who delivers a florid performance as the gay warden in The Big Bird Cage. Here, he is more subdued and frankly more intimidating. His lack of reaction when torturing a witness is genuinely chilling.

There is an underlying weight to Romero and De Leon’s version of the Women in Prison format that is missing from Hill’s work - Hill treats the conventions with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and the shooting environment is reduced to a cartoon paradise. Black Mama White Mama is not as relentlessly bleak as Women in Cages, but the setting does feel like a living place, while the government forces and the mercenaries do not feel like comic book villains. 

It’s not the best movie I’ve seen in the genre, but Black Mama threads the needle between the depressing realism of Women in Cages and the more ridiculous world of Jack Hill.

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The Big Bird Cage (Jack Hill, 1972)

In an unknown dictatorship, a small group of rebels led by Django (Sid Haig) and Blossom (Pam Grier) are stuck robbing locals for money.

Seeing an opportunity to expand their numbers, the rebels decide to liberate a nearby women's prison. In advance of their assault, Blossom becomes an inmate and Django seduces one of the prison's sadistic guard (Vic Diaz).

Will their plan succeed? Or will they end up in The Big Bird Cage? 

The first thing The Big Bird Cage gets right comes right at the start: Pam Grier is top-billed. Good move.

Written and directed by Jack Hill, The Big Bird Cage is a major step up from his first go at the genre: The movie has better pacing and feels more fleshed out. While The Big Doll House felt small and home-made, The Big Bird Cage feels more epic in scope, but also looser in tone.

The Big Doll House felt slow and overly earnest in how it laid out the story. It felt like a rehearsal for this movie, which is all swagger and confidence. The movie has an offbeat sense of humour and a feel for reversing/undermining expectations that makes it far more exciting.

The biggest shift is the revolutionary leader Django played by Sid Haig. Unlike the earnest rebels of Hill’s previous movie, Haig is an opportunist who is out for himself. He spends the movie having to be nudged into action. Overconfident, mercenary and corrupt, Haig dominates every scene he is in. He is also in on the joke, pushing the character toward outright villainy. 

In an evolution from their transactional relationship in The Big Doll House, Pam Grier plays his girlfriend, Blossom. Unlike her beau, she has more belief in the cause and is constantly in conflict with him about their goals. Grier is far more comfortable than she was in Doll House - she also gets far more to do than in her previous roles, particularly in terms of action. The script has the good sense to delay bringing her into the prison, with a series of action sequences that set up how much of a grenade she will be once she is in the titular cage. Whipsmart and unstoppable, Grier’s performance as Blossom feels like a speed ramp toward her breakout in Coffy. 

As with their previous appearance together, Grier and Haig have great chemistry - they are the oddest of odd couples, but you buy them as a bickering but long-term pair. 

The acting overall is better than Doll House - Vic Diaz manages to be detestable while somehow giving his sadistic prison guard pathos when he thinks he has found a new boyfriend (Haig in a ridiculously fey disguise). While the prisoners are a little cookie cutter, Carol Speed stands out as the prison’s resident pot stirrer - she gets a funny extended bit where she tries to convince Blossom that she is the big shot of the inmates. 

While it moves well, has scope and has a better sense of tone, The Big Bird Cage is still an exploitation movie. While there is a certain charming bluntness to it, there are elements of the picture which I had to silo off - the movie has a cartoonish vein of homophobia that I am still trying to wrap my head around. It feels like the filmmakers are taking the familiar stereotype of the evil queer guard/inmate and push it into parody -  there is a lesbian character who is a sexual predator, but she is treated as a buffoon. There is another inmate who is so fixated on having sex that she assaults a gay prison guard. These moments are played to be ridiculous, but they do not play as well against the film’s broadly sympathetic view of the inmates.  

While those scenes clang, other attempts at humour are great - I particularly enjoyed one beat during Django’s escape from the initial robbery. He is so obsessed with escaping he does not realise that the vehicle he has stolen is a cab with an elderly couple in the back. 

 

The movie is a buffet for every possible reaction - you are guaranteed not to be bored. It is easily the most entertaining movie of the sample I viewed and probably the most representative - if I was going to point to a WIP film as one to watch, The Big Bird Cage would be it. 

That being said, take the points raised about the movie’s homophobia as a disclaimer.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.