Trip to Moon

aka Chand Par Chadayee

1967
Written by Dr. P. Balakrishnan and T.R. Sundaram
Directed by T.P. Sundaram

How you boys like my new goldfish bowl?

Trip to Moon is another Dara Singh adventure, as the famous wrestler has become far too manly and powerful to be confined to foes just upon Earth, he has to search the stars for new enemies. Luckily the Moon and Mars both contain a sizeable amount of wrestlers and monsters for him to battle with, and then there is the little matter of the love of a Princess and adverting war between the Moon and Mars. As we get an experience that’s obviously heavily influenced by serials like Flash Gordon, the audience comes along for the ride in one of the few instances of Indian science fiction film. It’s also a bonus entry into the MOSS (Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit) Conspiracy Big Muscle Tussle, because I am awesome like that.

Rise of the Moon of the Apes!

Trip to Moon has several mysteries surrounding it. Though it was released in 1967, one of the actors – S. Nazir who plays a kidnapped scientist in the beginning – died earlier. He’s even listed as deceased in the credits. Theories abound as to when Trip to Moon was actually filmed, with guesses ranging from 1963-1967 – though it is possible additional scenes were added later. So why did it take so long for Trip to Moon to hit Indian theaters, if that was the case? Was it more distribution problems similar to what drove producers to start making stunt films in the first place, or was there something else going on? Or are these rumors all untrue and just made up by people with websites? Perhaps if you know Dara Singh, you can ask him. Tell him TarsTarkas.NET sent you! Then he won’t punch you as hard for bothering him.

Only in India do you get crowd scenes with Devo and a herd of Phantoms from Krankor…

Much like his other films King Kong and Samson, although he’s given a character and backstory, Dara Singh is just Dara Singh. Much like how Arnold Schwarzenegger is Arnold in every movie, even if he is a robot or a believer in Free Mars. By now Dara is headlining films himself, no need for pretty boys to share the spotlight. He still has a comic relief guy, because you can’t escape their goofy grasps. Dara’s wrestling opponents are less billed than before, and though some make appearances, many are under layers of makeup or costumes playing various space monsters. There is a feeling in the air that Trip to Moon is using whatever costumes the studio had lying around for use, along with possibly monster costumes.

It’s lonely out in space on such a timeless flight

The opening credits are filled with what look like stock scifi paintings as the credits role. Despite the trappings, there are relatively few Indian science fiction films. Others known or suspected to be (besides mythologicals or super hero films) include Dara Singh’s other film Rocket Tarzan (1963), Wahan Ke Log (1967), Rocket Girl (1962), Flying Circus (1965 – though that just has a robot), Flying Man (1965), Miss Chaalbaaz (1961), Atom Bomb (1949, dir. Homi Wadia), Kalai Arasi (1963), and Aditya 369 (1991). Thank MBarnum of Pedro the Ape Bomb for some of these titles. The either missing of unavailable status of many of those films prevents a good overview of older Indian science fiction. The more modern films are better known – Koi Mil Gaya, Krrish, Love Story 2050, Da.One, Aa Dekhen Zara, Endhiran (a Kollywood joint) and Krrish 2. But those are entries for new dawns and new days.

I’ll be He-Man, and you’ll be Bee-rah, Princess of Honeypots!

Yes, this unsubtitled, badly encoded vcd just doesn’t want us to know what is going on. But here at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!

Captain Anand (Dara Singh) – Space Captain Anand is the greatest fighter on three worlds, what with his kicking butts on Earth, the Moon, and Mars. John Carter needs to watch out! I thought from the context that Anand’s father was among the scientists kidnapped by the Moon, but he never shows up so who knows. For more Dara Singh, don’t forget to check out King Kong, Samson, and the Dara Singh Infernal Brains podcast Princess Shimoga (C. Ratna) – The stunning Princess of the Moon, who quickly takes a shine to Captain Anand and his seriousness. Her costume looks like a flight attendant’s costume, which is sort of weird in itself. I could find no information about actress Ratna aka C. Ratna. Bhagu (Master Bhagwan) – Comic relief buddy of Dara Singh, who is like Wayne Knight meets Abbott and Costello. is Anand’s paternal cousin. I originally guessed his name was Foruk, and kind of wish it still was. Bhagu has a double who is the assistant of the King of Mars, Isabel Balti (Rajrani) – The kidnapping Moon girl that takes a shine to Bhagu, because annoying dumpy guys are irresistible to fabulous moon babes. It’s a fact, Jack! Her name as Balti is a guess (a bad one), and the actress being Rajrani is also a guess (though more of process of elimination.) Simi (Padma Khanna) – The other space girl who accompanies Balti on her trips to kidnap people and other tasks. She doesn’t get to marry on of the two main castmembers, for reasons that will become apparent as you watch. Padma Khanna (here billed simply as Padma) is a Hindi and Bhojpuri actress who was mostly active in the 60s-80s. She has recently directed her own Bhojpuri film and runs a dance studio and produces stage shows in New York/New Jersey. Barahatu the King of Mars (Anwar Hussain) – The evil King of Mars Barahatu totally wants to marry the Princess of the Moon Shimoga, but he’s old and gross and evil, so she snubs him. So he just kidnaps her, risking a war to try to make her marry him. That just annoys her even more. Robot (man in suit) – This robot shows up suddenly and starts fighting captain Anand, until another robot randomly walks in and then the robots fight. Space Rhinoceros (men in suit) – Mars also features dangerous Space Rhinoceroses that will totally attack innocent wrestlers who are chasing after kidnapped princesses nearby.

Things went ugly quickly when a robot played 7 aces during Fizzbin

E=mcsexy

The actual film opening is with fake rocket models on a moon mockup, but it is just done by some scientists, similar to the Team America puppet show opening. They totally ripped that off from this obscure 1960′s Indian film!!! I bet Trey Parker and Matt Stone thought they’d never get caught, but they didn’t realize that TarsTarkas.NET is on the case! The scientists see bright light, a so one scientist goes to investigate. It is of course a singing alien woman outside. Like it always is with those dastardly aliens!

Once she’s done with her song, suddenly she’s back in space girl uniform! Space helmet, space suit, space miniskirt, all that jazzy space stuff. This film is getting space good! We all know that scientist is as kidnapped as Patty Hearst, and off they fly in their very realistic spaceship

Why are the feeding tubes and the bathroom tubes the same color?

Rocket pushing was an Olympic sport briefly in the 50s and 60s, before being replaced by by donut stacking.

The police discuss the case, and in walks Space Captain Dara Singh, in full space gear! He and his comic relief buddy Bhagu are all set to go to the Moon and hunt down those space women because that’s what they do! The Moon ladies made Dara’s mom cry, the monsters! Anand’s mom is played by legendary actress Kanchanamala (I think!)

They get the go-ahead to blast off to the moon, so Dara and Bhagu get in their jeep…are they gonna freak in the jeep? Is Dara a California Gurl? Thankfully not, because Dara and Bhagu arrive at the rocket site, just in time to see that a squad of alien dudes have beaten up everyone there and are trying to smash the rocket. Dara now has an excuse to fight some alien jerks. It’s punching time!

My favorite part of this fight is when Dara rips off one of his sleeves and throws it at the aliens.

We’ll make sure those Moon mooks swim with the luna tuna!

Look, firetrucks gotta be red, because that makes them go faster!

Despite the mighty Captain Anand’s power of punching, he and Bhagu are captured by the female aliens who kidnap them and blast off for the moon! They force Anand and Bhagu to wear space suits which in no way look like ridiculous fireman outfits. Bhagu is given dinner, which is just a pill.

The evil King of Mars sends a rocket to shoot down the spaceship the ladies and our heroes are in, giving the effects guy a new scene to show off his great work as the two ships fight. The hero ship manages to eventually slip the pursuers and lands, where the waiting Princess of the Moon watches as the two guys disembark. Captain Anand and Bhagu walk goofily due to the gravity difference, so the spacegirls slip on some Dr. Scholl’s gel inserts on the bottom of their feet, and soon the guys are gellin’ like a felon eating a melon while beating Magellan with their normal and casual walking.

1960s FoxNews isn’t pretty…

So the town model that guy made in Beetlejuice was of the Moon!

The heroes are brought before some moon judges in moon court who yell at them about breaking Moon Law or something. You know the Moon, over-regulating everything.

An escape attempt later results in a humorous encounter with guards that morphs into a prolonged fistfight as Trip to Moon betrays some of its serial inspirations. The heroes sneak back onto the moon rocket after stealing some guard uniforms, but the moon ladies were waiting for them on-board and force them to land again. These are some smart moon ladies!

Welcome to Moon Princess Airlines…

We know we look ridiculous, but since you’re our prisoner, you look even more ridiculous!

The Moon Princess forces the pair to fight in the gladiatorial arena, the first battle is against a guy in an orangutan suit. I mean a Moon Monster that is TOTALLY NOT a guy in an orangutan suit. Captain Anand beats that, next horses attempt to pull Anand into pieces (or at least a mannequin of Dara!) But Captain Anand is far too strong for those guys and stays in just one piece. He and Bhagu get accolades, laurels, and uniforms from the moon people, which is odd that Bhagu shares in the glory despite doing absolutely nothing.

Bigfoot of the Moon!

Never under tip your monkey masseuse!

Lady Zorro and Lady Zorro are Lady Zorro in Lady Zorro!

Shortly after, we get a crazy awesome musical number with alien parachuting singing women dancing on clouds. This is my favorite musical number in the film.

The evil King of Mars has his very own Bhagu as an assistant, this Evil Bhagu hels the King of Mars kidnap the Moon Princess because he wants to marry her before she marries that Captain Anand guy. But The Princess of the Moon isn’t very fond of King of Mars. Eventually we get a dance sequence with some guys in dark face. I don’t know if they are supposed to be aliens or racist caricatures of black guys or what. But suddenly Helen comes out and sings. Helen is like the most popular random singer to show up in Indian film ever, thus making Trip to Moon an essential item on their Helen completion lists.

OMG he saw me steal the Cheetos!

Don’t touch me with those Cheetos hands!

Thankfully, the King of Mars was thoughtful enough to leave a kidnapping note declaring he stole the Princess, letting Captain Anand and Bhagu know exactly where to go to find her! The King of Mars virtually guarantees Captain Anand showing up when he sends someone to kidnap Anand’s mom and sister.

Bhagu and Balti have a song and dance number dressed in goofy costues that remind you of what they would wear on the cover of some Conan book or Princess of Mars, and then begin to look for the Moon Princess. Captain Anand is also going to look for the Princess, but he’s working on a device to help him.

The story of my life…

Let me tell you more about NBC’s Whitney…

Bhagu and Balti manage to get into the King of Mars’s palace because Bhagu looks like Evil Bhagu, and they discover the captives. They send a video message to Captain Anand, who by now is dressed up in full Commando Cody gear. He rocket jet packs away to Mars!

Before storming the castle, Captain Anand takes out his anger on the helpless citizens of Mars City and tosses firecrackers that explode like giant bombs. The painted cardboard boxes pretending to be major cities burn.

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it’s cold as hell

What is Avant Guard Zorro doing in 1960s Cuba?

When Anand lands, a whole host of wrestler pals are sent to attack him. You’ll probably recognize a few of them if you’ve seen several Dara Singh films. And you’ll know that Dara can easily defeat all of them, and he does. Evil Bhagu also gets shot, allowing for Bhagu to take his place permanently as they pretend Captain Anand was captured and take him into the palace.

Instead of getting to the rescue, there are some hijinks happening for a while until everything hits the fan and eventually Captain Anand is punching more giant wrestlers and then faces a huge robot! W00t!

And a second huge robot! Double w00t!

Mars has worse fog than San Francisco!

I’m gonna go John Henry on this bitch!

The two robots fight each other instead of Captain Anand, so Triple w00t! When giant robots fight, we win, unless Michael Bay is directing.

The Moon Fleet arrives and there is a battle upon a rocket ship as the King of Mars tries to escape with the Princess. Anand defeats him but the ship crashes, which means Anand must fight another wrestler who was right outside where the ship crashed. Do they keep wrestlers every 50 feet or so on Mars? I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many wrestlers outside of wrestling matches! Anand defeats the wrestler by drowning him in a pool. It’s cold blooded murder in the ring!

The mighty X formation!

And all this science I don’t understand. It’s just my job five days a week

Trip to Moon kicks it back to awesome as Captain Anand must next fight a Space Rhinoceros! It is guys in a rhino suit pretending to be real like in Ace Ventura 2. Except fakier and no one is born out of this Space Rhinoceros suit. But it’s still awesome we have a Space Rhinoceros battle.

It’s Rhino time!

The day the rhinos would have revenge against poaching had begun. Millions would die beneath their horns and hooves.

I told you, that isn’t a handle!

Point out my two extra eyebrows again, I dare you!

Rated 6/10 (Approved, King of the Moon, Pull that Dara!, chalk outline that Dara!, bridge fight, eyeglasses communicator)

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Poster for Dara Singh’s Rocket Tarzan:

Poster for Homi Wadia’s Atom Bomb:

King Kong

1962
Written by Vishwanath Panday, Pandit Mathur, Mastji, and Majrooh Sultanpuri (lyrics)
Directed by Babubhai Mistry

Not that King Kong, there are no giant apes in this movie, though there are guys who sort of look like giant apes when you squint, or at least fat blogs. Nope, this is 1962s Indian epic King Kong, starring the great Dara Singh in his first starring role. You remember Dara Singh from Samson right? The Infernal Brains Podcast about Dara Singh? Well, if not, you now have a bunch of extra listening and reading to do! For the rest of us, this is an entry in the MOSS (Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit) Conspiracy Big Muscle Tussle, featuring dudes and chicks with muscles doing muscular things in muscular ways. Said muscular ways usually means punching many things. Click on the MOSS Page to see many more entries, as long as your roid rage is low enough you won’t Hulk Smash all our webpages. As for King Kong, let’s just say that there is a giant monster in the beginning of the film, but it’s all downhill from there!

Dara Singh was born in 1928 in the Punjab village of Dharmuchak. He wrestled in local tournaments while growing up, but went to Singapore to seek employment as a laborer. He ended up learning East Asian wrestling techniques – in addition to the Indian (and surrounding regions) technique called Pehlwani – and returned to India. With his brother Randhawa, the two became professional wrestlers and soared through the ranks. By the 1970s, Dara and his brother were the highest paid wrestlers in India, earning 30-40 times the going rate for bouts. Dara was also the “world champion” in the local circuits.

Prior to his lead role here, Dara Singh had been relegated to stunt work in films like Sangdil (1952), Pehli Jhalak (First Sight) (1955), and Jagga Daku (1959). In King Kong and many of his later films, Dara helped do the fight choreography, as he thought the usual Indian choreography didn’t look real enough. As Dara Singh comes from a lower caste, there was often trouble finding leading women who would appear with him. Besides Kum Kum from this film, his usual partner was Mumtaz (seen here in Samson) Dara’s lower caste status helped instill him as a hero of the common man, though his films usually had him suddenly discover his noble roots (as this one does.) After his movie career slowed down, Dara Singh gained a new generation of fans when he appeared in the 1980s tv series Ramayana playing Hanuman.

The movie’s title King Kong is even taken from wrestling. Though a reference to the giant ape, King Kong became a wrestling title, one which Dara Singh soon claimed, winning it off of stocky Hungarian wrestler Emile Czaja – who often went billed as King Kong (including his appearance in this film!) Dara winning the King Kong title gave him enough fame that director Babubhai Mistri decided he would be bankable as a leading man. The added fact that it was cheaper for people to buy movie tickets than to pay for wrestling tickets was just gravy. Due to distribution politics/drama, low-budget stunt films like King Kong were usually exhibited in rural areas, often with the director or star in attendance presenting the film.

Director Babubhai Mistri did effects work at Wadia Movietone, and directed many mythologicals in the 1950s (mythologicals being a genre of Indian cinema that does stories from the religious texts.) by by the 60s was unable to direct big picture films, thus he turned to the B movie circuit and making Dara Singh a star.

Like most surviving Dara Singh films, King Kong is available on badly encoded unsubtitled vcd with the craptastic video quality you expect. And the vcd has commercials on it..in the middle of the film! Luckily, a few Dara films have started to migrate to DVD, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll get some of his awesome stunt films on DVD soon…

As this is the inaugural Dara Singh starring flick, they didn’t trust him to headline the picture by his lonesome, so they threw in another character, the handsome swashbuckler type Badal (played by Chandrashekhar) There is also a comic relief sidekick for Badal. Comic relief sidekicks were so in vogue at this time, the evil warrior character Evil Guy also has his own comic relief sidekick. As you have probably noticed by some of the names, I haven’t figured them all out yet.

Jingu (Dara Singh) – A local warrior who lives with his mom, who has nicknamed him King Kong. His father is the disposed king, and he has a missing brother. Radhi (Kum Kum) – The Princess’s maid and Jengu’s love interest. She does almost all the singing. This is Kum Kum’s lone Dara Singh co-starrer that I know about, she starred in B films and used that to get starring roles in big budget pictures. Badal (Chandrashekhar as Chandra Shekhar) – Badal is the local handsome guy who hangs out with a Goofy Guy and crushes on the princess. He’s also the secret lost brother of Jingu. Princess Rajkumari (Parveen Choudhary) – The Princess who falls for Badal when he saves her from slavers. King Kong (Emile Czaja as King Kong) – The prior King Kong who is tossed out of the roll when Jingu proves himself the better man. Seeks revenge for his failure. King Hingoo (Kamal Mehra) – The evil king who disposed the prior king and now does evil stuff which is totally evil. Of course, we don’t actually see him doing much evil stuff, he just has some jerks working for him. But the dialogue probably mentions evil things that we don’t see… Smoke Monster (Men in suit!) – YES!! The Smoke Monster is awesome, we demand more Smoke Monster! Too bad he dies five minutes into the film and the rest is people running around not fighting monsters. BOOOO!!

Additional actors are Sheila Kashmiri as Princess Rajkumari’s other maid, Chhabili – the one that falls for Goofy Guy. Leela Mishra plays Jingu and Badal’s mom. I don’t know who plays Goofy Guy, the Evil Guy, or Evil Goofy Guy. King Kong is partially in color – the songs and the ending are shot in almost life-like color. Because that’s the A material. Oddly enough, the color film stock is tore up more than the black and white stock. There is also some cool Indian surf rock music! Not on the soundtrack I found, unfortunately.

A big ugly monster thing is about to eat this hot chick named Radhi who falls in a hole (why do they always fall in holes???) But Dara Singh as Jingu is like “Excuse me, I’m a well-oiled buff guy dressed as a caveman with a spear and I’m just wandering by, so it’s time to smoke your sorry butt!” The monster snorts smoke from its nose as an act of aggression. This attack via second-hand smoke causing increased lung cancer risk won’t pay off for decades, which is plenty of time for Jingu to jump inside the monster’s mouth and stab it dead!

Smoke on the warrior…

Radhi pretends to be more fainted than she actually is so Jingu will carry her around. They will continue to have a dysfunctional relationship as the movie progresses.


King Hingoo and the current King Kong arrive to slay the monster – Better late than never. Except not. They demand to know who has slain the beast, and Jingu admits he did it. When asked who he is, he says he is King Kong, as that is him mom’s nickname for him. King Hingoo declares that only he can bestow the King Kong title, and he’ll do just that by having Jingu and King Kong wrestle. This is like the wrestling in Santo films where at the time it was giving the audience what they want, but nowadays we just watch it and see it as padding. And as the glorious wrestling scene closes in on minute four, it comes to an end with Jingu winning and being declared the new King Kong.

Jingu goes to report to mom, who cautions him to be careful when dealing with this evil king, and also always wear clean underwear. You know how moms are…


But don’t worry, we got other characters to follow – Badal and Goofy Guy. They first appear fighting a fake tiger and rescuing two girls from slavers. Those two girls happen to be Princess Rajkumari – the daughter of King Hingoo – and Chhabili – one of her faithful maids. They escort the women back to the palace as flirtations fly, but back home Badal runs into trouble in the form of Evil Guy. Evil Guy is one of King Hingoo’s chief goons, and he even has his own Evil Goofy Guy, who fights Goofy Guy while Evil Guy fights Badal. Luckily, Jingu stopped by the palace that day as well and beats everyone up.

Badal and Goofy Guy will now proceed with a bunch of schemes to sneak back into the castle to see their women, the most ridiculous one being when they dress up as Chinese magicians, complete with Fu Manchu mustaches. Holy yellowface, Batman! No one recognizes them until Badal takes off his disguise, despite this being the most obvious disguise in the history of disguises.


The King and Evil Guy eventually scheme and send goons after Jingu. Despite Jingu’s weakness to rocks being thrown on his head, he defeats all of them and only a bloodied bad dude manages to crawl back to the king. Jingu is mad and heads to the palace, beating up guards left and right and then he kills King Hingoo! Except he didn’t, he just killed a double of the evil king. The real king comes out from behind a wall and is like “FOOLED YOU!!” and arrests Jingu’s mom.

The Princess hangs with Jingu, who saves her from some pursuers and the most realistic rubber crocodile you ever did see! Radhi starts to get jealous that the Princess spent time with Jingu.



Radhi dresses as a man and sneaks into the dungeons to check on Jingu’s mom, but she’s caught. Evil Guy also captures the Princess, Badal, and Goofy Guy in spite of their efforts to escape while performing a song and dance number. Evil Guy then schemes to pretend he’s good and the lost brother of Jingu in an attempt to capture him, convincing Radhi and Jingu’s mom to bring him back home. Jingu is then drugged and even though there is a brawl in the castle as Jingu shrugs off the drugs, he surrenders when they threaten his mom. Now everyone is captured, with Jingu and Badal chained to pillars and forced to watch as Radhi performs for the evil King before their execution in glorious color.

As we’re heading into the final round, King Kong stays in color as Jingu breaks free once again and starts beating people up. He sets Badal loose and they reunited brothers work their way through swarms of goons. With Evil Guy running around kidnapping ladies as hostages, King Kong returning for a grudge match, and the evil King to deal with, these brothers will have the fight of their lives to reclaim their family’s throne.

Rated 6/10 (Smokey, mom, maid, color, Smokey, Smokey)

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Mural

aka 畫壁

2011
Written by Gordon Chan Ka-Seung, Lau Ho-Leung, Frankie Tam Gong-Yuen, and Maria Wong Si-Man
Directed by Gordon Chan Ka-Seung and Danny Go Lam-Paau

Mural is another attempt from China to make bigger Hollywood-style pictures, which is both a good and a bad thing. It is good that money is being brought into make epic films. It is bad because the films being produced are all generic garbage. And as the money flows away from Hong Kong into the pack of upstart Mainland production companies, things are changing rapidly in both Hong Kong and Chinese cinema. But this review isn’t about that, it’s about Mural, a story about a guy who goes into a painting full of fairy women.

While Mural certainly looks nice, the story doesn’t hold up to the visuals and things become very bland. The visuals of creatures and monsters make good spectacles, even if the CGI isn’t up to par with Western films yet. Monsters and beauties are the two main attractions to Mural, there is enough of both you can let some things slide. Some good scenes and creativity in monster design help make certain points more memorable, but the underlying uninteresting characters and the obvious conclusion of the main love story cause things to not be so much a journey as just a trip through a museum.

Like Gordan Chan’s prior film Painted Skin, it is a tale from Pu Songling’s story collection Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. The tomb contains nearly 500 tales, and has been the basis for dozens of films and tv series, including the Chinese Ghost Story films.

There are far too many of the models/actresses/singers playing the fariy women to list them all in the Roll Call, but I should name drop a few, like model-actress Monica Mok Xiao-Qi, Xia Yi-Yao, and Bao Wen-Jing. And now we will never mention them again! Even Eric Tsang Chi-Wai shows up with ear extensions as a goofy monk.

Zhu Xiaolian (Deng Chao) – A scholar studying for government exams at the capital who runs into adventure while on his journey there. Zhu likes to speak big talk of responsibility and becoming a good person, his sense of justice propelling part of the plot. Deng Chao is also in Detective Dee. Meng Longtan (Ngai Sing) – A thief who is caught trying to rob Zhu and his servant. Ends up joining him on his trip into the painting and marrying a good chunk of the fairies. Hou Xia (Bao Bei-Er) – Zhu’s servant who spends most of the film following Zhu around like a puppy, though he does manage to grow a tad as a character. Queen (Yan Ni) – The nameless vain Queen of the fairy realm. Her rants against men hint at a greater insanity and bitterness, living in a world of her own creation for years. Her dress is reminiscent of evil queens from Disney films. Yan Ni is also in All’s Well Ends Well 2011. Shaoyao (Betty Sun Li) – The Queen’s main servant, who is disliked by the rest of the fairies due to her closeness with the Queen. Suffers from self-esteem issues. Betty Sun Li can also be seen in Kung Fu Cyborg. Mudan (Zheng Shuang) – Carefree childish fairy who travels to the human world briefly and encounters Zhu, and is then punished for what she did. Zheng Shuang is a Mainland newcomer to film who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 2011. Since 2009, she has starred in several tv series and has been releasing albums. Yunmei (Ada Liu Yan) – Fairy lady who both dates Rock Monsters and is married 2 times to Meng and then Hou Xia, both really without her consent. Ada Liu Yan (主播柳岩) is a tv hostess turned actress/singer who will look completely different if you find some of her old pageant photos, and is one of the few actresses honest about it. Cuizhu (Xie Nan) – Mudan’s best friend and a carefree spirit, Zhu pretends marriage to her in order to stay in the fairy world and find out what happened to Mudan. Xie Nan is a TV host and anchorwoman turn Mandopop singer who debuted in 2010. She’s briefly in All’s Well Ends Well 2011 Golden Warrior (Andy On Chi-Kit) – Golden Warrior is the only male-looking character allowed in the fairy world, he transforms from a bronze owl to defend the realm. Has a longing for Shaoyao that is not reciprocated. Totally isn’t He-Man.

Mural starts with a scholar Zhu Xiaolian and his servant Hou Xia chasing after a thief, Meng Longtan. Their race bringing them into a temple run by a Monk named Budong (played by Eric Tsang.) There, the scholar notices one of the paintings on the wall that is packed with young women. Soon, one of the women in the painting blinks and disappears, reappearing in real life inside the temple. Zhu Xiaolian follows her, and is soon led into her world. Her name is Mudan, and she lives in a giant temple building filled with female fairies who serve their Queen. But men are not allowed in this world, Mudan trying desperately to convince Zhu Xiaolian to hide in a nearby village. But it is too late, time for the daily roll call of fairy women, where Zhu Xiaolian is hidden among them, his covered aided by various fairies like Mudan’s friend Cuizhu and the second in command fairy, Shaoyao, who no one likes as they see her as a pet of the Queen.

The Queen herself comes out, demanding praise from her fairy subjects. But she smells the smell of men in the air, and just when Zhu thinks he is cause, we find out there is another man there, a male Rock Monster who forms together from a bunch of black pebbles. The Rock Monster engages the Queen and her troops in battle, and it is here where a bronze owl transforms into Golden Warrior – who totally doesn’t look like He-Man, why would you ever make that comparison? – and joins the battle. The Rock Monster is defeated, but not without revealing he was there because of love of one of the fairy women, which starts the Queen on a long rant about how all men are jerks and sleep with everything animal, vegetable, or mineral. We also notice that fairy Yunmei is obviously the Rock Monster’s lover, but she’s prevented from revealing herself by Shaoyao.


Zhu ends up being hidden in Shaoyao’s quarters where he hears some of her insecurities as she talks to herself. She delivers him to Mudan, who wants to see the human world. But Zhu’s hesitation to take her because she declares love for him causes him to return without her, and when he sees the painting again, Mudan is missing and has appeared in a painting of Hell!

Zhu is a responsible man and determined to not have her punished for his deeds, so he sets out to go back into the painting again, this time taking his servant Hou Xia and the thief Meng with him. They are immediately captured by the Queens troops, but brought in as guests, the Queen obviously having some sort of ulterior motive. Shaoyao and the other girls refuse to answer questions about where Mudan is.


The Queen lets Meng choose a girl to marry, and he ends up picking Yunmei. But even during the wedding celebration ceremony he’s already eying other women. By the next day he has rejected her and picked a new woman to marry. Zhu also demands a marriage, picking Mudan’s best friend Cuizhu – but secretly only so he has an excuse to stay at the compound until he finds Mudan. Servant Hou Xia also picks a wife, Yunmei, who by this point is so miserable she is just staring into space in despair with tears rolling down.

Zhu and Cuizhu continue pretending with their marriage, with Cuizhu becoming more used to pretending to be a wife. It is obvious that Shaolao has feelings for Zhu, though nothing is said. Meng adds three more wives two his total, while Zhu paints a huge landscape artpiece of the Chinese capital for Mudan in a drunken haze.


We learn the Queen is taunting Mudan in her cell in a fiery place, though Golden Warrior and Shaolao know where she is at. Shaolao gives Mudan Zhu’s fan for comfort.

Zhu sets out to rescue Mudan, and the fairy women help capture Shaolao so she’ll lead them to where she is kept. The party of fairy women and three men head off and things get more fantastical, with a giant turtle and an even gianter turtle that gives rides, and a flying many-eyed guardian creature with arms and swords who fights the fairies and humans. Probably the most exciting action sequence is the fight here, and wee see each fairy woman’s different nature-based powers. Shaoyao is the only one capable of defeating the monster (with the help of the other women) and she helps rescue Mudan thanks to her magical crown, which means she has to take Mudan’s place. The other fairies declare that Shaolao will soon be rescued by the Queen as she’s her pet, and everyone goes back to the city.


Mudan is awed that Zhu came back for her, but it is obvious that he does not love her and instead likes Shaolao. Mudan tries to lie to the Queen to explain things, but ends up getting in more trouble. Zhu’s attempts to smooth things over end in the Queen going 100% psycho, and soon all the fairies are rebelling, led by a rescued Shaolao (and Golden Warrior sacrifices his live to save her.) Things don’t end quite like you think they might with said rebellion, but the film still has a ways to go, so the implied bad ending isn’t quite the ending.

But even as reset buttons are hit and things seem to play out, the final messages of duty and love don’t quite ring as true as the declarations of the characters speaking them intend. This is further complicated by the onion skin layers of endings upons endings seemingly destroying any messages the film spend two hours laying out. By the time it is over, you won’t be sure what is real or what is fantasy. Though I prefer to believe that the entire thing was nothing but a delusion of the mad monk Budong, who slaughters all visitors and then envisions a crazed fairy-filled world explaining their absense to ease his soul into enlightenment.


Zhu Xiaolian’s scholarly uptightedness contrasts with Meng’s hedonistic attitude, though the pair end up becoming friends through their shared adventure. Meng learns responsibility, while Zhu finds the love he declared earlier that he only deserved after becoming successful in life, which his own rules prevents him from accepting it. The servent Hou Xia grows from a lapdog companion of Zhu’s into a more complex character, attempting to right wrongs with what little skills he has available to him. Ultimately, Meng and Hou Xia end up with love and families they thought they didn’t need or deserve, while Zhu is unavailable to to claim his love due to his own sense of duty and inability to sacrifice.

If you are looking for strong female characters, despite the fact Mural is packed to the gils with actreses, none are to be found. Every fairy woman talks non-stop about wanting to be a wife, be loved by the three male characters, or to have their babies. Even the woman who likes being free ends up wanting a husband. Only duty to the country is more important to the characters. The lone strong female character is the Queen, and even she is revealed to have created the entire world as an escape from a failed romance from Budong. The Queen abandons the world she created the second the man in her life, the monk Budong, returns – though at least she has the courtesy to repair back all the damage she did to it after killing all the characters in the movie. Sorry, women, it’s your duty to be baby factories unless you are the governor, in that case you can’t even date.


While Mural doesn’t quite hold up to its lofty goals of looking awesome, it isn’t an ugly film. The effects work and flying wuxia battle sequences sound better in text form than when witnessed on the screen. While Mural tries to be bigger than its britches, the on screen evidence fools no one, and the story’s banality keeps Mural from breaking its bonds and becoming more than itself. By espousing the view of not taking risks and doing your duty, the film fails to take risks with the story, and there is no happy ending for the audience.

Rated 5/10 (Cultural Ministry, painting head, Rock Monster back, Bronze Owl, That’s no woman that’s a man baby!)

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This Means War

2012
Written by Timothy Dowling, Simon Kinberg, and Marcus Gautesen
Directed by McG

Captain Kirk and Captain Picard’s evil clone battle for the heart of Legally Blonde! Yes, once again Tars has sold out and seen a movie in advance for free. This time, it’s the romantic comedy This Means War, where once again secret spies date hot chicks who know nothing about it, until getting involved in whatever spy stuff is happening in the third act. The twist is there are TWO spy guys who both want the hot chick and compete to be the best of the best of the best. Sure, it’s by the numbers, predictable at points, filled with wacky hijinks, and the action scenes aren’t given enough budge to be memorable in the slightest, but is it good? Meh. There are a few scenes that are hilarious, but the rest of the film is a mess of boring, stupid, or generic. This Means War is never going to top True Lies in the action department, so it shouldn’t even bother. I did not see Knight and Day, but from the reviews the action at least seems continual. This Means War features long sequences of our heroes riding their desks at the office after the brief beginning fight until the last act, so the weight of the film rests entirely on the romantic aspect of the story. That would probably be okay if we hadn’t felt like we’d already seen everything before.

FDR Foster and Tuck are CIA agents who in the opening sequence shoot up some bad guys and end up killing one brother of two, the second escaping and vowing revenge. We don’t know much about this guy except he’s bad, so forget about him. Tuck is a British CIA agent (whaaa?) who is divorced with a young son, while FDR is a playboy who has sex with anything that moves and anything that might move if it’s placed on a slope. As FDR’s wife is only hinted at dating again, but a boyfriend never presents himself as a threat, I can see the future clearer than the time I shoved crystal balls in my eyes and was banned from that Wiccan store downtown. Little do they know how many million$ I won from the lottery!


Reese Witherspoon plays some product tester guru named Lauren who keeps running into her idiot ex-boyfriend and his new fiancee, prompting her to complain to the typical romantic comedy perverted best friend character (Trish – played by Chelsea Handler, who is awesome and really shows how little energy Reese brings to This Means War) who signs Reese up for online dating. The same online dating Tuck turns to, getting them a date. As FDR is hanging in the neighborhood as backup in case things go sour, he inadvertently begins hitting on Reese right after the date ends, not knowing she’s who Tuck went to see. Soon we’re going all Betty and Veronica on this mo-fo, with the two guys laying down ground rules they begin to ignore as they compete for her affection.

The competition and bickering scenes are my favorite parts (besides Chelsea Handler), as they also are full of energy and have some good quips. As the two agents use CIA equipment to spy on Reese, they overhear her complaints about them and set off to make bigger and better dates. They pair engage in sabotage against each others dates as well, some of which is awesome. Eventually, Reese is forced to make a decision and the non-dead brother returns to cause trouble. Can our heroes repair their relationship with each other, save the girl, defeat the bad guy, and somehow fix their love triangle? Of course not, everyone dies.

Just kidding, why wouldn’t there be a happy ending? We are going by the numbers here!

The moral of the film is claimed to be that Reese shouldn’t choose the best guy, but the guy who makes her be the best person. That sounds cool and all, but no where in the film does she even talk about being made a better person and this advice is thrown out from nowhere in the third act. As she picks the character who lied to her more and whose only attribute for making her be a better person is to tell her to stop thinking about mistakes, it seems like she just picked whoever told her what she wanted to hear. The other guy is screwed over, and though things look like he’ll have a happy ending, there is a dig as the final joke that shows nice guys never win. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I don’t like her choice, and think the real choice should have just been neither of them. She should totally date the evil terrorist guy.

It wasn’t until the final credits rolled that I realized that this was directed by McG, which suddenly explained the random fast cars, the generic action, and the ridiculous computer displays. Writers involved worked on Knight and Day (Timothy Dowling) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Simon Kinberg), both films with similar plot elements. Not that that is suspicious in the slightest…

Rosemary Harris (Aunt May from Spiderman) make me realize how awesomely perfect her casting was in the Raimi Spiderman films. Likewise, Angela Bassett’s complete waste here reminded me how she was completely wasted in Green Lantern. It’s not hard to not waste Angela Bassett, just let her kick someone’s butt, problem solved.

In conclusion, the best parts are Chelsea Handler, and Tom Hardy and Chris Pine’s chemistry together and efforts to foil the other. Though this isn’t enough to carry the film, it is enough to prevent it from being a total waste of time. Though if you got better things to do like tasting different varieties of Cheerios or smelling blended teas, no sense in going out of your way, and just wait until it hits 10000 reruns on cable in two years.

FDR Foster (Chris Pine) – Franklin here is the kind of guy who slept with you already and has moved on to the next person. Sorry. During the course of the film, his character is hinted to reach some sort of growth, which consists entirely of not sleeping with some stewardess during their weekly sex session. Everything else can be seen as pure competition with Tuck to win the heart of Reese. Tuck (Tom Hardy) – The randomly British CIA agent with 1000 tattoos who is also a nice guy. We know what that means. Tom Hardy is also in Warrior Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) – Lauren is one of those career businesswomen who are hot but somehow no guy ever talks to them ever. You know, totally imaginary women. But here you go. And now she’s being chased after by two guys, will the fun ever stop? Trish (Chelsea Handler) – The drunken slut best friend of Lauren, who does what all best friends in romantic comedies do, say awfully inappropriate things and offer terrible, terrible advice. But as Chelsea Handler is awesome, it is funny.

Rated 4/10 (computer pics, civil rights violations are hilarious!, so is destruction of millions in government property!, will this gas tank explode?)

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The Evil Karate

aka 鬼門太極

1971HKMDB Link
Written by Joseph Kuo Nan-Hong, Tyrone Hsu Tien-Yung, Lin Yu-Yuan
Directed by Joseph Kuo Nan-Hong

The Evil Karate (鬼門太極) is a great Taiwanese kung fu fantasy with all the common revenge and secret kung fu instruction elements you need to ensure a simple but action-filled story. Taiwan’s martial arts spectacles focused on crazy action, and they weren’t afraid to have every character have a gimmick. This film is no exception, beyond every character having their own specific weapon, we have a lady who wears a snake (and uses it as a weapon), a guy who fights with a fishing pole, and everyone teleporting and zooming around in the trees like they’re flying squirrels. The not afraid to try new and fun things is part of the joys of Taiwanese kung fu films, and makes up for the often awful condition we have to view the treasures in. Even getting this in a subtitled print is a minor miracle, usually I’d be forced to deal with a substandard dub where everyone has a random British accent.

The Evil Karate is a mix of man-on-the-run/girl-fighter/revenge films, complete with a character whose talent seems to be getting everyone who helps him horribly murdered. Luckily, the villain is even more comically evil than you would think, and his pack of goons are pretty hilarious even as they die by the score. It is set in a kung fu fantasy world where people can fly, smash boulders, train at secret techniques from childhood, and evil gangs control vast territory for decades without anyone bothering to stop them except the now-grown children of people they murdered. But the real reason to bother with The Evil Karate doesn’t show up until almost halfway through the film, and that is actress Cheung Ching-Ching.

Cheung Ching-Ching was active for about a decade as a martial arts actress, kicking butt all over Taiwan in a variety of movies, most of which are either not available anywhere or only on beat up VHS tapes, bargain DVDs, and grey market specials. Which is sort of a shame, because she’s pretty good. The actress who plays the young Chen-chen (for around half the film) is also pretty good, and is really into all the physical work required for the job. I almost though this would turn into an Annoying Flying Kid movie, but thankfully we had a montage where she turned into Cheung Ching-Ching. Director Joseph Kuo helmed the two 18 Bronzemen films among his 63 films, most of which were in the 60s and 70s.

No one does karate, evil or otherwise.

Chou Chen-Chen (Kai Pao Yu) – Little girl whose parents are murdered and is raised by Lo Tien Hung and trained for revenge. She grows up into… Chou Chen-Chen (Cheung Ching-Ching) – The grown up Chen-Chen is now a master flyer, fighter, dart thrower, and kung fu girl. She kicks more ass by 6am than you do all day, unless you are also a kung fu girl who seeks revenge, of which we have several dozen that read TarsTarkas.NET. Lo Tien Hung (Shaw Luo-Hui) – Lo Tien Hung holds the secret of a jade manuscript that reveals the location of an awesome kung fu technique, and he gets many many MANY people killed over the course of the film because of this. If you see this guy coming, run away and take your entire family with you. He’s dangerous! Eventually trains Chen-chen to seek revenge, but not before getting the entire country murdered as the Seven Monsters seek him out. Shaw Luo-Hui is also in Ape Girl Fisher (Kang Ming) – A fisherman who uses Fishing Pole Fu. The first time I’ve seen in used in film. Probably the last time, because Fishing Pole Fu isn’t very effective. One of Lo Tien Hung’s many dead helpers, along with Farmer Kung, Master, and Chen-chen’s family. King Hades Yen (O Yau-Man) – Hades Yen is the Devil who gave Devil’s Gate the name. Often runs around with a gold face white hair. Leads the Seven Monsters Of Poison. Can survive multiple daggers shoved into his neck. O Yau-Man is also a big villain in The Dwarf Sorcerer. Snake Lady (Kong Ching-Ha) – I never caught her character’s name, because the Seven Monsters of Poison weren’t granted names, only vague personality stereotypes. But she’s evil, has a pet snake, and is totally into poisoning people. Kong Ching-Ha also appears in The Eighteen Jade Arhats Ghost’s Shadow (Gam Man Hei) – When the Seven Monsters of Devil’s Gate are incompetent, King Hades Yen outsources tracking duties to Ghost’s Shadow, who despite having a cool name also has cool tracking abilities. He’s like the Boba Fett of The Evil Karate. And like Boba Fett, he dies.

The Seven Monsters from Devil’s Gate go to talk to their boss, a leopard skin drapped on a chair with glowing eyes, who commands them to find a jade manuscript held by Lo Tien Hung. They have ten days. Also there are nine Monsters, not seven. Eight if you count the number that survive this meeting of the group, as the boss kills one. In fact, the exact number varies depending on the scene. The only one you need to pay attention to is the crazy snake lady, because she’s the most fun.

Lo Tien Hung is a man on the run, lying bloody in a field and found by the young girl Chen-chen. Her rich family takes Lo Tien Hung in, despite his protesting, and hide him away when the Seven Monsters from Devil’s Gate slaughter the entire family except for Chen-chen for no telling where Lo Tien Hung is.


Because the Seven Monsters are such failures at finding Lo Tien Hung, their boss outsources the job to a guy named Ghost’s Shadow, who is a ninja who tracks people down for a living. There is a battle between Lo and several of the Seven Monsters, and Chen-chen is hanging on Lo’s back the entire time. Finally, things look grim, but suddenly an old fisherman intervenes using his fishing pole as a kung fu weapon. I’ve never seen a kung fu battle where a guy is using a fishing line to hook baddies and toss them away. King Hades Yen makes his first appearance in the film to kill Fisher.

After all this, Lo locates the manuscript he’s supposed to already have, and there is disaster! Lo can’t learn the special technique, because he’s too old. But, Chen-chen is not too old! They stay at a guy name Farmer Kung’s place, who also teaches Chen-chen darting. After a short montage of training, the Seven Monsters come again, Lo and Chen-chen run away, and Farmer Kung is brutally murdered by the Seven Monsters. King Hades Yen kills another of the Seven Monsters in his anger of their escape. Let’s just let Yen kill all his troops, making victory that much easier! It’s called lazy fu. Hades has killed two of the monsters while Lo and friends have killed zero


Another old guy with a beard helps the Lo and Chen-chen – Teacher – and thanks to the magic of another training montage, Chen-chen is now all grown up! She’s flying around in the air, and has super-strong hands. And also a midget named Meteor lives there. But as we all know the story by now, the Seven Monsters show up again and yet another guy who helped Lo dies. RIP Teacher.

Lo and Chen-chen run, but are tracked down and trapped. Lo manages to kill Ghost’s Shadow before he succumbs to snake poisoning, while Chen-chen spontaneously learns bare-hand technique while defending herself from pursuers, and kills three of the Monsters. Lo’s body is missing, and we don’t know if he lived or died.


Chen-chen now much find the hidden location of the Devil’s Gate base. But no one is talking. She does get into a spat with a jerk in town who turns out to be part of a group of three siblings also looking for the Devil’s Gate base. They call themselves the 3 Knights of Kiang Nan and are avenging their father. With so many people looking for the Seven Monsters (now there are like five Monsters left even though four have been killed…) they attract attention from the Seven Monsters gang and soon there is a fight at the inn. One of the Knights are injured, but Chen-chen and the other two follow the retreating villains into the lair of the Devil’s Gate.

Even though it is obviously a trap, filled to the bone with tricks and traps, they decide to follow. We got spears, gas, flying doors, flames…it’s like a video game exploded in here! The heroes then face off against the remaining Monsters, and it is time to BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! The Evil Karate, because the Snake Lady tosses her snake, and it gets chopped in half. As in they cut a real snake in half for a 1/2 second shot. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!



Besides the wanton animal cruelty, the rest of the film is pretty stellar, and the final battle as the villains retreat further and further into the depths of their hideout is great fun. One neat scene is when a bunch of guards fire arrows at Chen-chen, and she grabs all the arrows in one fistgrab and throws them back in one toss, arrowing every one of the archers. Soon Chen-chen and the lone remaining Knight face off against Hades Yen. Yen is invincible except for a small weak point, but no one knows where it is. Will they discover it in time? Will the remaining Knight realize he’s the son of Lo Tien Hung, who is among Hades Yen’s captives? Will you realize that the answers to those questions are “Duh!”? Find out by watching The Evil Karate.

Arrow time!

Rated 8/10 (Coal Black, Funny Hat, Huck Finn, Female Knight, nose flames, Male Knight, What the heck are the Baseball Furies doing in this film?, HH in the HHiz-zouse!)

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East Meets West 2011

aka 東成西就2011 aka Eagle Shooting Heroes 2011

2011
Directed by Jeff Lau Chun-Wai

East Meets West 2011 is an update in tone of Jeff Lau’s 1993 film Eagle Shooting Heroes, a classic comedy film that boasted a huge cast (many of whom were borrowed from Wong Kar-Wai’s Ashes of Time, which was running over budget and needed another film to be made with the core cast to balance the books!) and has become one of the mainstay comedy films due to the crazy and energetic feel to the picture. East Meets West 2011 takes inspiration from that, transports the reincarnated gods to modern day, and adds super hero trappings and some philosophical discussion into the mix. And though it isn’t non-stop zaniness, it is still a good time and is one of my favorite recent Hong Kong films.

While Eagle Shooting Heroes/Ashes of Time are largely based on Jin Yong’s Condor Heroes trilogy, East Meets West 2011 instead takes from another of Jin Yong’s wuxia works, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils. The eight major characters known as the Eight Heavenly Dragons are based on the eight races of non-human entities described in Buddhist cosmology, called Tianlong Babu (天龍八部) the “8 kinds of beings that protect the Dharma” The Eight Races are the Deva, Nāga, Yaksha, Asura, Garuda, Kinnara, Gandharva and Mahoraga. Tianlong 天龍 means Heaven Dragon, but can also translate to deva-nāga “Devas and Nāgas”, the 2 highest categories of tianlong. The lower 6 categories are: yecha 夜叉 “Yaksha; cannibalistic devils; nature spirits”, gantapo 乾闥婆 “Gandharva; half-ghost music masters”, axiuluo 阿修羅 “Asura; evil and violent demigods”, jialouluo 迦樓羅 “Garuda; golden bird-like demons that eat dragons”, jinnaluo 緊那羅 “Kinnara; half-human half-bird celestial music masters”, maholuluojia 摩睺羅迦 “Mahoraga; earthly snake spirits”. And, yes, I ganked all that from Wikipedia.

Jeff Lau’s films are almost always crazy awesome, and he’s very good at bringing Western elements into his work. Lau’s films often look more advanced than their counterparts from the same year, and hold up much longer than normal. His vision can take the simplest tale and give it a grand scope. Even the title of East Meets West 2011 shows the clash of Western and Eastern styles, with the Eastern gods taking up Western super hero visuals in a modern Hong Kong, while still being connected to the ancient past and Jade Emperors and all that jazz. Even the music comes from both the West and East, with a remake of Happy Together used several times, as well as a redo of the James Bond theme (this might be one of the first times I’ve heard the score legitimately used in an overseas film, as I’ve been spending too much time watching old genre films that have been ripping it off wholesale), but also Karen Mok songs.

It is almost impossible to discuss parts of this without spoilers, so I am declaring this review SPOILER FILLED. Don’t come crying to me if you keep reading and everything is ruined.

Sammi (Karen Mok Man-Wai) – Sammi is the burnt out non-love-believer who spends her day doing effects makeup at a haunted house where her father works. But things change when she meets Charles and this whole being an immortal thing happens. Sammi transforms into Ashura. Karen Mok has never looked more glamorous than when she’s flying around in Heavenly Dragon mode. Karen Mok pulls off the awesomely beautiful super hero outfit, as well as the schoolgirl outfit, and the goth outfit, and the normal attire. See Karen Mok in Task Force and Haunted Office. Kenny Bee (Kenny Bee) – Kenny Bee plays Kenny Bee as Kenny Bee. And his involvement in his former band the Wynners is a plot point. He’s Sammi’s dad and is married to Scarlet. Kenny transforms into Naga. Wen (William So Wing-Hong) – Wen is a super cabbie who wants to be actor, and spends the film trying to convince people of his acting skills and critiquing other actors. Wen transforms into Garuda. Jade (Tan Wei-Wei) – A wannabe singer from an affluent family, Jade has an antagonistic relationship with her abusive and philandering father, and is often seen covered with soot. Jade transforms into Deva. Tan Wei-Wei is a singer who gained fame winning a televised singing competition. Bing (Jaycee Chan Cho-Ming) – Bing transforms into Mahiraga, whose randomly determined form appears as deformed heroes from Hong Kong cinema: a one armed swordsman, someone from the Buddha’s Fist movies with a giant leg, and a hopping vampire. Jaycee Chan is also in Tracing Shadow. Scarlet (Crystal Huang Yi) – Scarlet is a half crazy, fashioned obsessed spoiled young bride of Kenny, who was a classmate of his daughter Sammi. The two women have an antagonistic relationship because of this. Scarlet often is wearing different expensive and elaborate fashions. Scarlet transforms into Gandharva. Huang Yi is also in Treasure Inn. Da Xiong (Ekin Cheng Yee-Kin) – A mute bun maker perpetually covered in flour. His wife has left him and his son, Xiaofang. Da Xiong transforms into Kinnara. Ekin Cheng is also in Future Cops. Charles (Eason Chan Yik-Shun) – Charles is a ruthless hairdresser turned businessman. Can anyone melt his heart of stone? Charles transforms into Yaksha. His ever-present secretary is played by Stephy Tang Lai-Yan (All’s Well Ends Well 2011 and Nobody’s Perfect)

Sammi is a goth-makeuped makeup lady for a haunted house, the same haunted house her father Kenny Bee works at. She declares she doesn’t believe in love or marriage, despite her monologues on romance on the subject. Her father married one of her classmates from high school – Scarlet – who is now in big debt from a businessman named Charles. Charles was trying to get a reunion tour put together of Kenny Bee’s real life old band, the Wynners, and is now sending goons to go after his money. While avoiding goons, Kenny hears birds talk that tells him and Sammie to jump off a high cliff – they do and land on their feet unharmed.

Sammi and Kenny head to a meeting with Charles (and also Sammi’s intent to “chop up that bitch!” – referring to Scarlet) in city filled with musicians waiting to be discovered – people think they’re managers. Cabbie Wen is intent on becoming an actor, and spends his time trying to impress the duo with his skills. The cab gets mobbed by wannabe pop star Jade and her friend Bing (who turns out to just be the servant of Jade’s rich father sent to convince her to return.) The chaos causes the cab to crash into a mute man covered in flour (Da Xiong) and explode – Da Xiong’s son Xiaofang then is witness to the Jade Emperor telling him the tale of the Eight Heavenly Dragons in full color flash animation!


You see, they’re all reincarnations of the Eight Heavenly Dragons, the seven of which were betrayed by the evil eighth one, who continues to kill them again and again every reincarnation. Also there is an evil Lady Gaga wandering around. And I’m not talking about the real Lady Gaga. No one believes the kid and everyone continues on their way.

While meeting Charles, he cuts Sammi and Kenny’s hair so they have a total makeover. This sparks Sammi’s interest, as she is a believer in love at first sight. Charles declares he must have the Wynners concert, or people will think he is a failure and he’ll lose all his money. Scarlet avoids getting chopped by Sammi for now because they have to hurry and put on a scam fake Wynners concert.


Jade is beaten by her father and then stabbed by Bing, which causes her to transform into her immortal form. She transforms Bing, saves her father from thugs, and then sets out to try to awaken the other heavenly dragons, most of who are now at the concert pretending to be members of the Wynners.

Evil Lady Gaga causes power problems and the stadium begins to collapse, but the Heavenly Dragons transform into heroes and save the people from the falling scaffolding. Charles is saved by Sammi as she transforms into Ashura, causing him to be as interested in her as she is in him.


The Heavenly Dragons set out to do good deeds to inspire people to be good. Charles being saved and then talking to Sammi as Ashura inspires him to be a good businessman, not a corrupt businessman like he was. There is a saving the day montage, and an goofy extended scene where they try to inspire some robbers to be good, though the robbers keep immediately getting shot.

Ashura/Sammi accepts a date with Charles on the roof, but when she leaves for the restroom he is kidnapped, along with family members of other Heavenly Dragons. The whole thing is a trap, and Charles is Yaksha, the evil Eighth Heavenly Dragon and they’re all doomed again. Sammi is hurt enough that she surrenders, and the Heavenly Dragons commit suicide. They then turn into butterflies and enter Charles’s body, unbeknownst to him. There, they begin a cleansing of his soul, starting to turn him good again. This is where the film’s visual elements kick it up a notch into excellent. At one point they are literally tugging on his heartstrings, and his heart grows three times in size.


Charles realizes the pain he has caused the other Heavenly Dragons and especially Ashura/Sammi, whose heart he breaks in every reincarnation. He instead asks for forgiveness from the Jade Emperor and everything is reset back to their current lives, but without Charles remembering anything of his previous lives. It’s now time for the Wynners concert, except this is a real reunion concert, and Sammi organized it. She meets Charles for what he thinks is the first time, but he does not remember her even though he is obviously smitten again. Sammi cannot bare to be around him while he cannot remember her, and her face as she’s walking away is heartbreaking. It is the duty of the other Heavenly Dragons to help Charles learn to be a good immortal again, but they cannot tell him of his previous life or his previous love for Ashura/Sammi

The final line about how she’d “rather forget a love I shared, then remember on that was forbidden” is a haunting testament to what you sometimes must do for love.


East Meets West 2011 takes silliness and emotional issues and blends them together in a nice mix. There is enough crazy things happening that you won’t get too bored for too long, but there is enough other stuff going on under the surface that you’ll start thinking twice. While I have seen some people upset that the film isn’t 100% dumb gags, I for one appreciate when films make effort to stretch beyond their boundaries. Jeff Lau isn’t afraid to try to give a grand vision on even the most dumbest films, and he stretches here and hits it out of the park. Highly recommended.

Rated 8/10 (temperature, bird friend, a real tattoo, every film has Flash animated flashbacks, strict dad, golden tower, the degree of love, young son

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The 33D Invader

aka The Fruit Is Ripe 33D aka 蜜桃成熟時33D aka Mi Tao Cheng Shu Shi 33D

2011
Directed by Cash Chin Man-Kei

33D Invader is like a 1990s Hong Kong Cat III comedy time traveled to 2011 and unleashed itself on the public. And because time travel plays a part in the plot of 33D Invader, perhaps that was the subtle message they were going for. The male characters are direct out of an 80s American sex film. We have the Nice Guy (Lawrence), the Nerd (Danson), the Fat Guy (Stephen), and the Other Guy who has no real personality but is there to fill out the group (Felix). The female characters range from blank slate to blank slate to blank slate with slightly bigger boobs. And though we’re given a quick introduction to them, it is hard to remember which one is a slut in which one is a virgin when they’re all running around naked. Only Future and Jeana get any sort of personality, even Xucker No. 2 is nothing but a generic villain.

Granted, the audience isn’t people who care about the plot, it is people who care about seeing naked girls be naked.

It is hard to determine exactly what is going on, because 33D Invader is all over the map. Every sex scene is completely different in tone, from the sensual and erotic, to the rough and filthy, to the rape rape rape, to the gross, to the woman on woman, to the man drugged for sex by a woman, to the guy is so gross you want to hit fast-forward.

33D Invader was originally called The Fruit Is Ripe 33D, betraying its namesake origins as the next The Fruit is Ripe film. Like almost all of the prior films, it has nothing to do with any of the others and was given a namechange makeover. The first film was 1993′s Crazy Love, which featured Loletta Lee being naked. 1997 gave us the second film in the series, which was given the English title The Fruit Is Swelling. It featured Jane Chung Chun as a character named Peach who was given the Big treatment and grew up overnight in a universe where everyone seems to have sex at the drop of the hat. By 1999, they just literally translated the Chinese title of the next sequel, and thus we had The Fruit is Ripe 3, which was confusing for people like me who saw that at the video store (while renting everything in the Hong Kong section) and wondered where the other two parts were, not knowing that I’d already seen them (as there was little information available on Hong Kong film at this point.) The third film features actress Jay Fong Ching as an angel named Peach who has come to Earth to help some loser with his love life, and many people are naked.

The 33D part of The 33D Invader is the lost promise of it being in 3D like 3D Sex and Zen, which at the time of announcement was pouring in the dough. But when The 33D Invader showed up in theaters, it was as flat as a pancake. Coincidentally, some of the actresses…

But let’s hit the cast, and then dive into the plot!

Future (Macy Wu Qing-Qing) – Future comes from the year 2046 and is here to save the human race by getting knocked up by the guy with the best genes. She just has to avoid alien rapists and horrible gened humans who might get her preggers first. Future has magic powers, which are just computer implants of the 2046 equivalent of the iPods. I did like that they pointed that out instead of trying to make her magical. This is model Macy Wu Qing-Qing’s first film Lawrence (Chen Jyun-Yan) – Lawrence is our good guy with excellent genes who will soon become a deadbeat dad when he deposits sperm into Future’s vagina. Chen Jyun-Yan is a Taiwanese actor Jeana (Akiho Yoshizawa) – Jeanna likes Lawrence, he sort of likes her, but he doesn’t love her. She becomes jealous of Future. Akiho Yoshizawa is a Japanese pornographic actress and is nicknamed AV Stephy, because she sort of looks like Stephy Tang. If you squint. A lot. Xucker 1 (Kato Taka) – The lead alien sterilizing bastard Xucker No. 1 has followed Future to the past in order to rape the baby-making-ability out of her. Kato Taka is a Japanese porn star known as Goldfinger, and he is said to have appeared in over 5000 productions. You can buy replications of his hand to use for sexual activity if you want to. Xucker 2 (Hsueh Ya-Wen) – The other evil time-traveling alien. I can find sadly absolutely no information about Hsueh Ya-Wen online. Hawk (Law Kar-Ying) – Law Kar-Ying shows up for some reason playing Hawk the Bald Detective, which looks like some sort of throwback to old school Hong Kong cinema or something. I’m not sure what is going on here, but having a bald singing noir detective being forced into service of alien time travelers fits right in with everything else going on. Law Kar-Ying is also in Kung Fu Cyborg, Future X-Cops, and Adventure of The King.

Felix (Justin Cheung Kin-Seng), Stephen (Tsui Ho-Cheong), Danson (Andrew Kwok) – These three dudes spend the entire film trying to get it on with the three ladies below. They sort of succeed in the end. Mia (Lee Ko-Chu), Ceci (Chen Chih-Ying), Jane (Monna Lam) – Jeanna’s roommates. Mia is the virgin, Ceci sleeps with anything that moves and gets naked all the time, Jane “has fierce mouth”, but no real personality. Lee Ko-Chu and Chen Chih-Ying are Taiwanese actresses, while Monna Lam is a Hong Kong model

33D Invader is a college sex comedy, as the guys rent out a house for when they take their school exams. They rent a place right next to a quartet of hot babes, who are also at school taking their exams. The male characters spend a large amount of time trying to see their female neighbors naked, which the girls find only slightly annoying. Much of these adventures involve dressing up in wacky costumes (like Avatars, ghosts, etc) and then being humiliated by the women. Of course, good guy Lawrence doesn’t participate, being too focused on studying. He is sort of in love with Jeanna, but not in love, if you know what I mean. Things change when naked girl Future materializes in his bed, and she wants his genes to save the human race. Lawrence is too good to even take advantage of the situation in a pervo fashion. By the next day he and his friends are trying to help Future score a man whose genes are healthy enough to save the species. But as women will tell you, it is hard to find a good man, and no one else measures close to Lawrence.


Future is not alone in her time traveling shenanigans. She’s been followed by two aliens, Xucker No. 1 and Xucker No. 2, who want nothing more than to rape her sterile in order to kill the human race. You see, the Xuckers have been irradiating the planet to make humanity extinct, and if they have sex with you, you become a brainless sex zombie. Which is a bad thing. So Lawrence and his buddies must protect Future as well as help her, and Lawrence realizes he may not have feelings for Jeanna, but might have feelings for Future. Will things be straightened out? Is the human race doomed? Will they every explain why Xucker No. 2 was drooling gallons of clear slime out of her mouth during her lesbian/hermaphrodite sex scene? What do you, the viewers at home, think?

When Avatars attack!

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As usual, we got more listening choices than you can shake an unsubtitled vcd at: downloadable mp3, embedded flash with slideshow, embedded audio player, and iTunes feed link. So many choices, you’ll have to call in your secret evil gang to select them all!

Download the mp3 (right click, save as)

Watch in slideshow form:

Click the graphic for Podcast Feed:

Click here for iTunes Feed

Films Discussed:
Black Rose – Tars Review, Todd Review, Dave Review
Spy With My Face
The Blonde Hair Monster – Dave Review
Lady Black Cat – Tars Review, Dave Review
Lady Black Cat Strikes Again
The Black Killer
The Professionals
Golden Skeleton
Dark Heroine Muk Lan-Fa – Tars Review, Todd’s series overview
Dark Heroins Muk Lan-Fa Shatters the Black Dragon Gang
Lady in Black Cracks the Gates of Hell
Gold Button
Temptress of 1000 Faces
Angel with Iron Fists
Angel Strikes Again
Wong Ang vs the flying tigers part 1 part 2

Jane Bond overview
More Cantonese Cinema information

Site Links:
Soft Tofu Tumblr
SoftFilm Blog
Connie Chan Movie Fan Princess
The Lucha Diaries
Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!

Prior Infernal Brains:
Taiwanese Giant Monster Films Part 1
Taiwanese Giant Monster Films Part 2
Polly Shang Kuan
Turkish Pop Cinema Part 1
Turkish Pop Cinema Part 2
Dara Singh
Infernal Brains Podcast – 07 – Insee Daeng
Infernal Brains Podcast – 08 – Worst Podcast Ever
The Mummies of Guanajuato – Infernal Brains Podcast Episode 09

Gold Button

aka 金鈕扣

1966
Directed by Cheung Wai-Gwong

As the female-focused action films that later became collectively called Jane Bond films evolved, other studios quickly jumped into the action to capitalize on the Black Rose/Connie Chan mania. Besides the already reviews Dark Heroine Trilogy, another entry is Gold Button. Gold Button features mysterious star So Ching and shows off some of the James Bond spy influences that helped shape a good number of the Jane Bond films. We have such wonderful things as doomsday weapons, an all-powerful secret gang, female agents, gunfights, punching, gangs of girls in swimsuits, dozens of nameless henchmen, a masked boss of the evil gang, spy gadgets, a film named after a flower/characters named after a flower, and stolen theme music (including the James Bond theme!)

Things get a bit more sleazy than the female-audience targeted Connie and Josephine flicks. Fanny Fan is naked in the back, while female characters are forced to disrobe and threatened with rape, and we see undies tossed on the floor. But even the sleaze is held back, the women wear one-piece swimsuits instead of bikinis! I am not sure if Mingxing Film Company is imitating 1966′s Golden Buddha with the extra sexiness, or if these films began production before Golden Buddha and it is ramping up things for another reason. Gwan Jing-Leung did the stunt work, and Wong To produced.

So Ching displays not nearly as much charm as Connie Chan and Josephine Siao in her appearances in front of the camera, probably due to her not growing up while making movies like those two. But she does have that beauty contest winner appeal and serious tone (contrasted by Fanny Fan playing the sexpot here!) After making several Jane Bond type films and a few other pictures, So Ching seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth. So Ching, if you have ever returned to Earth, please let us know!

Fanny Fan Lai started acting in 1957 after winning that often entry point into Hong Kong cinema, a beauty contest. Acting under the name Wan Li-Hong in Shaw’s Cantonese division, she failed to achieve much success until she joined Shaw Brothers’s Mandarin division as Fanny Fan, and became a star with 1959′s The Pink Murder. She became known as a sexpot and bad girl, probably best for her role in The Golden Buddha. Her nickname was the Oriental Brigitte Bardot. She retired from film in 1969.

As you can probably guess from the craptacular images included in this review, Gold Button is not available on in any sort of format you can find acceptable. I scored this from a Hong Kong tv broadcast someone uploaded to a Chinese YouTube site, complete with the station’s squashed picture due to the widescreen not being anamorphic. The uploader took it upon himself to blur out the station logo, so the top right of the screencaps look like someone smeared vasoline all over them. There is also a small segment of the film missing, and the very small compression on YouKu means if I blew the images up any larger than I have, they’ll just look like a bunch of blurry squares. As there is little information on Gold Button out there, it is currently unknown of the three other films So Ching made that feature many of the same cast are also part of this series or their own thing. TarsTarkas.NET will let you know the second someone uploads squashed tv recordings of the film for us to gawk at and write lame jokes.

Miss Peony Pai No. 1 (So Ching) – Her full name mentioned in the subtitles is Miss Peony Pai No. 1. As there are other Pai No.s and other Miss Pais, I guess her real name is Peony? The character is as mysterious as anything else. Her character is engaged to Chief Lin and calls Miss Pai No. 2 her sister, though probably in a sisterhood sense and not blood sisters. Miss Pai No. 2 (Fanny Fan Lai) – The sexpot member of the Pai crew who is kidnapped and replaced by a prototype from Mistress of 1000 Faces. Because her sexy double was sexy and sinful, Miss Pai No. 2′s character doesn’t live to the end of the film. Chief Lin Wen-Tsu (Wu Fung) – The Interpol Chief ho just can’t seem to catch those rascally Devils Gang members. Luckily, he’s engaged to one of the hot spy babes his unit outsources, which is totally not a conflict of interest that should be investigated by higherups at Interpol. Actor Bowie Wu Fung was a leading man for decades in Cantonese film, and has popped up in Lady Black Cat and The Red Wolf Yim Lam (Seung-Goon Yuk) – Interpol doesn’t outsource all their female talent, and officer Yim Lam is competent and confident enough to save the day and catch Interpol traitors. Assistant Chief (Roy Chiao Hung) – I’m sure this guy is an honest cop and is in no way evil… Roy Chaio Hung also shows up in The Dark Heroine Muk Lan-Fa Devils Gang Boss (It is a mystery…) – The villainous boss of the Devils Gang, who doesn’t get a cool name. He does get a cool costume, which looks like they stole it from a local high school band, gave him a cape and eyeless ski mask. No. 2 (Fung Ngai) – Fung Ngai shows up again in a film as a villain’s henchman, like he did in Spy With My Face. He does get to lead for once in Lady in Black Cracks the Gates of Hell

Gold Button starts out with an animated opening credits of a gold disk radiating circles set to the tune of Bonanza. But there is no dude ranch or cattle rustling going on. Instead, we have a mad scientist (yet another Professor Lee – that name being the default mad scientist name for Cantonese cinema!) who is hard at work testing his new deadly doomsday weapons on some poor helpless rabbits. I sure hope the rabbit skeletons we see are either fake or were killed for reasons unrelated to the making of this film.

The first thing you do when you are a mad scientist making a doomsday weapon is to call a female agent you are friends with for reasons never explained, so Professor Lee calls up Miss Pai No. 1 and explains how he invented the P-bomb, which could destroy the world in a few hours. He’s also made the Green Tear Bomb, because just one doomsday weapon isn’t enough. Professor Lee…or Professor Farnsworth?? Someone sneaks in the room and cuts the phone line, and also cuts Professor Lee’s life short.


Miss Pai No. 1 tells Pai No. 2 to call Interpol Chief Lin Wen-Tsu while she prepares to investigate. This involves dressing in an all-black action outfit, with no sleeves and two-gun holster. She suspects the Devils Gang, which we’re soon to find out are the bad guys responsible for everything ever that happens. The Pais and the cops arrive at the lab, where it takes them way too long to notice Professor Lee’s dead body in the middle of the lab. Even worse, Devils Gang members arrive, beat up and replace the outside policemen, and pose as coroners and take away the Professor’s body.

Eventually Pai No. 1 and Chief Lin figure out that something is wrong, and then the Devils Gang attacks! There is a big gunfight, where Devils Gang members get shot and have long death agony sequences. They even kill their own wounded members so no one is captured alive.

Devils Gang members attempt to catch Pai No. 2, who is wandering alone in the tall grasslands near the Professor’s place for some reason that ht film doesn’t bother to tell us. She hides in the lake as the Devils Gang men search and calls for help from Pai No. 1 via radio. Peony Pai No. 1 has returned to the Interpol HQ along with Chief Lin, and they say they’re going to send a speedboat.

The boat comes…she’s rescued! And by rescued, I mean immediately captured because the boat is filled with the Devils Gang! Oops! If you like shots of people riding a boat along a river, boy will this movie make you happy! There was lots of shots of the boat coming for Pai No. 2, and a long sequence of the real boat looking for Pai No. 2.

The Devils Gang take Pai No. 2 to the secret underground base – after a long walk along some cliffs. Inside, one gangmember blows himself up because he’s new and too dumb to know that there is a minefield just past the secret door. And now the audience and Pai No. 2 now knows! But it never comes into play, even when the cops storm the secret base in the final act. So, yeah, this whole sequence of moving magnets to open the door and stepping in pre-made footprints is pointless.

They enter the throne room, where a row of babes in red swimsuits stand in a row. There are also goons in all-black uniforms with devil head insignias covering the heart area lining part of the walls, and some shirtless goons with green faces, who look like B movie zombie monsters or something. The throne is empty, but a giant Devil Head (!!) beeps it’s eyelights and broadcasts orders to take Pai No. 2 to the secret jail!


The Devils Gang boss declares the leader of the group that captured Pai No. 2 a failure because he didn’t get Pai No. 1 or Chief Lin from Interpol, so he sentences him to death! Death by electric Chair! What a strict boss! Just imagine what he’d do if you hung up a Dilbert cartoon… The man is electricuted by the Devils Gang second in command, No. 2. The giant devil head laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. And then it laughs.

At the police base, Pai No. 1 and Chief Lin discuss strategies when Pai No. 2 walks in, obviously hypnotized or brainwashed or something. She refuses to go to the hospital, and Miss Pai No. 1 takes her home. Pai No. 1 uses clock radio to call into the Pai Headquarters, and requests Pais No. 5, 7, and 13 to help. The plan is to search Professor Lee’s dead body, because no one thought to do that before. The best and brightest!


Pai No. 2 shoots darts at Pai No. 1, misses, and pretends to be asleep when Pai No. 1 investigates what just happened. Uh-huh. I don’t get this fake sleeping, because who else could be shooting darts in the same room when there is only two of you???

Pai 13 is some guy with a long beatnik goatee, though later he’ll have no goatee. He and Pai No. 1 leave for the morgue, while Pai No. 2 tattles on her sis to the Devils Gang. By the time they get to the morgue, Pais No. 5 and 7 have been replaced by evil guys that Pai No. 1 beats up. They find the real 5 and 7 unconscious.


Professor Lee and many of the other bodies at the morgue have been replaced by Devil’s Gang members who gas everyone to kidnap them. Pai No. 1 is not knocked out, but pretends she is and gets kidnapped anyway. So all this pretending to be asleep does nothing despite being a constant feature of Gold Button.

Interpol finally gets around to searching the morgue and realize Pai No. 1 is missing and something is wrong. Peony Pai No. 1 left a note disguised as a gold button that you put on a record player, saying she knows Pai No. 2 is a fake and went to the morgue, and is probably dead.


Pai No. 2 is now dressing in halter top and tight pants, and we find out she’s not hypnotized, but is a fake! Chief Lin is coming to see her. She’s ordered to capture him so she has knockout gas loaded in a fake tooth to give him via kiss. Won’t that knock her out too? I guess not, because women are tricky like that. He shows up and she’s in the shower, back naked! Also buck naked, but we only see the back. She has him bring her clothes, because she forgot to bring them with her to the bath… Chief Lin knows what she’s doing, but decides to pretend to go along with it, because it lets him go along with it. Also some other logic I don’t follow. Pai No. 2 says she is to replace Peony Pai No. 1 as fiance as she’s dead. But some guys in black masks are hiding in the curtains, and Chief Lin attacks!

While Chief Lin is beating them all up, Pai No. 2 must have changed clothes because she has a completely different outfit on right afterwards when she tries to kill him. Chief Lin rips off her fake face to reveal her real face (Holy Mission Impossible, Batman!) But the fake mask was glued on by knockout gas or something and he’s KOed and captured.

Peony Pai No. 1 is put in a room where there are doors and windows, but if she gets near them, they slam shut Star Trek style! And then reopen when she steps back, sort of a Tantalus torture or potential escape. A speaker voice mocks her (it seems every evil villain in these films uses a voice via speaker!) His gang of swimsuited girls come in, and are to force Miss Pai No. 1 to change into a swimsuit like them! She refuses and is insulted, so has a karate fight where she fights the girls and beats up all 7 of them. Then the Devils Boss brings in four of the big shirtless guys with green faces, and says if she doesn’t change, he’ll have them change her, and they might have hands that wander around a bit… He also says that if she kills herself via cyanide in her tooth, they’ll change her clothes regardless! So she agrees to change with the girls, and is given a white and black patterned swimsuit.

There is also a secret doorway on the bed, her and two girl guards get on the bed and lay belly down, and the bed slides forward into the next room. The Devils Gang boss is there, and boy does he look like he escaped from a Luchador film! His identity is a secret, hidden behind a black skimask on with no holes, over glasses. He’s wearing what looks like a gold and red band uniform with a gold devil head broach, and green pants with a gold cape.

The version I’m watching seems to have a few minutes missing…

We return when Chief Lin has Devils Gang guy No. 2 captive and is stopping other bad guys from repairing a switch. It turns into a fight and he beats them up. Chief Lin then tries to arrest the Devils Gang boss, which turns into a fight. The fight becomes a long struggle which results in Chief Lin ripping off the mask of Devils Gang boss – it’s the Assistant Chief at Interpol! Because he’s the only male character left!

The other cops coming led by Yim Lam, having captured Fake Pai No. 2. The real Pai No. 2 is free, and is hanging with Miss Pai No. 1 in the Devils Gang lair. Pai No. 2 has a huge machine gun, and when Assistant Chief escapes from Chief Lin, he convinces Pai No. 2 to give him the gun. Which he then shoots at Chief Lin. The two girls freak out, and Chief Lin yells that Assistant Chief is the Devils Gang leader. Devils Gang boss guns down Pai No. 2, but is then beaten and gunned down himself by Chief Lin.

We’re also told that Pais 5 and 7 were also killed by the gang by Pai No. 13, who is also there. Devils Gang members swarm, Chief Lin machine gun them down until he runs out of bullets. The Devils Gang prepares to attack, will the cops come in time? Yep, cops come in and slaughter everyone evil! And if you are wondering if Peony Pai No. 1 is sad that her sister and roommate is dead? She doesn’t even look at her dead body.

And everyone lives happily ever after. Except all the people who died. The end!

Pretty entertaining, though sadly overshadowed by bigger and better entries in the genre. Still, Gold Button isn’t a film to miss, it is just sadly not in a form to be appreciated by anyone until the magic remastered DVD fairy gets off her lazy butt and produces the dozens of flicks I’ve been calling for.

Rated 7/10 (hunting rabbits, round buttons, fridge magnets, give him the chair!, needle-shooting pin, the title button/recorder, Pai No. 13 is here to be useless!)

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Cicak Man 2 – Planet Hitam

2008
Directed by Yusry Kru (Yusry Abdul Halim)
Written by Yusry Kru and Meor Shariman

Cicak Man 2: Planet Hitam is an improvement on the original Cicak Man in almost every aspect. And while the original film had a few moments, it was mired in annoyances that just turned me off. The sequel manages to drop almost everything bad about the original film while ramping up almost everything good. It’s good to see something that might get noticed come out of Malaysian cinema.

Much of the original cast returns, even some characters who are dead show up to continue the fun. Danny does not return, even though Yusry Kru wrote and directed this installment as well. I think a dream cameo was filmed, but didn’t make it into the cut, because production synopsis mention Danny helping. The two Gingers (Adlin Aman Ramlie and AC Mizal) return in ghost form to harass Cicakman. Also Malaysian model Linda Onn has a brief role as Tania’s man-hungry camerawoman.

The overall setting is far less grand. Metrofulus looks less like the city of fantasy and Libertarian excess it was in the original film and looks more like Kuala Lumpur. This probably helped budget-wise, without the added pressure to dress up the city, they were freer to spend the money on other things like action set pieces. Though I thought some of the culture of Metrofulus was some of the more interesting parts of the original, I am glad they set themselves free to do more things. Saiful Apek is far less annoying as Hairi/Cicak Man this time around. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be acting more mature now that his friend had died, or that Apek realized that if he toned it down a few notches the film would be much more palatable for overseas audiences. In any event, it is a welcome change, and helps push Cicakman 2 far beyond its predecessor in enjoyability, the one factor that really matters. The fact we aren’t stuck with filling much of the running time with an origin story helps put the plot on a more traditional arc. No new ground is broken in the super hero genre, but that genre is so saturated at the moment that you have to work very hard indeed to go somewhere that hasn’t been gone before. Cicakman instead is trying to take familiar elements and make them Malaysian. Hairi’s life seems much more relatable now than when he was a wacky scientist in the original, with the struggling to find a job and family responsibilities.

Remember, cicak=gecko, and hitam=black, so the flick is Geckoman 2 – Planet Black. Now you are an expert in Malaysian.

Hairi (Saiful Apek) – Hairi has matured as Cicakman, but still deals with the struggle of being a super hero and trying to hold down a regular job, with the fact he has to run off and beat up bad guys all of the time. When Professor Klon returns with a new scheme, Hairi has more on his plate than ever before! Cicak-Man (Saiful Apek) – Cicakman has the power of geckos, the strength of geckos, the red costume of geckos. Geckos!! Tania (Fasha Sandha) – Hairi’s crush who used to like Dannial. Was Professor Klon’s secretary, but is now working at Fulus News. Is determined to find out who Cicakman is. We put up a Fasha Sandha gallery when we reviewed the original Cicakman Professor Klon (Aznil Nawawi) – Professor Klon is back, and comes in both crazy homeless guy and crazy Jim Carrey modes! This time, his scheme is to con the entire planet into buying water purifiers to clean water he pollutes. Oh, that dastardly Professor Klon! Will Cicakman be able to stop him? Rrama (Tamara Bleszynski) – A psychopathic killer who sees her murder sprees as artwork. she wants to make the ultimate masterpiece and kill Cicakman! And she teams up with Professor Klon to do it. Rrama is costumed after a butterfly, though she looks like many other masked female comic book characters. Yeah, yeah, get your Rendezvous with Rrama jokes out of the way. Tamara Bleszynski is an actress model based out of Indonesia, of mixed Polish/Sundanese heritage. Iman (Sharifah Amani) – Imam is Danny’s blind sister, who Cicakman now takes care of as a moral obligation to his late friend. She doesn’t know he is Cicakman, despite the fact he’ll change into Cicakman right in front of her. This is why all superheroes have blind friends. Look it up! Sharifah Amani is the second daughter of famous Malaysian actress Fatimah Abu Bakar. She is probably most famous for playing Orked in Yasmin Ahmad’s Orked trilogy (Sepet, Gubra, and Mukhsin) Miss Chee (Louisa Chong) – A Feng Shui guru who helps Cicakman deal with all the weirdo stuff happening. A former auditor and newsreader, Louisa Chong (born Louisa Alissa Chong Abdullah) gained fame from the tv series 2 Campur 1 (2 Plus 1)

Cicak Man 2 takes up a few months after the original leaves off. Hairi is still Cicak Man, and thanks to the antidote developed by his late friend Danny, he no longer has to worry about devolving into a gecko as long as he keeps up the medicine. Hairi has quit his job as a research scientist for Professor Klon’s disgraced company, wanting to work for a job that wasn’t against his morals. But every job he ends up getting he loses due to absences at work because of Cicak Man duties. Hairi is also looking after Danny’s blind sister Iman, who serves the function of giving him someone to talk to.

Tania is back as well, and her sworn hatred of Cicak Man at the end of the original film has turned to curiosity over who he truly is. She now works for Fulus News as a reporter. Not a very good reporter, much is shown of her fumbling around on air. We have a new female in the mix, a villainess named Rrama that looks like Catwoman – except she’s a butterfly, see! She has wings that show up once or twice. Rrama is a killer, but not a stone cold killer, she’s red hot as she enjoys it so much. Killing is an art to her, she performs her slaughters as though painting a masterpiece on canvas. She views killing Cicak Man as the ultimate art piece that she’s determined to finish.


A consortium of evil bad guys consisting of every villain stereotype in history – cowboy, American businessman, African witch doctor, scarred yakuza, Arab terrorist, etc. – are set to do some evil terrorist stuff. And they’re led by their secret leader – the disgraced Professor Klon! He and Rrama have a new plan, to poison the world’s water supply so they can profit from producing the cure to the poison, thus controlling the world! The best parts of these meetings is one guy randomly says “What in the wide wide world of sports?” during one of Klon’s speeches.

Professor Klon proceeds with his black water plan, turning the water of the city black. Then he goes on TV and declares the President of Metrofulus poisoned the water so they could jack up the price, and he’s going to counter with the water purifier to stop them. But he first needs the people to overthrow the government. The people are like “Sure!” How low are the President of Metrofulus’s approval ratings that people will join up with a supervillain? I’d complain about this more, but here in America we have many supervillains in elected positions, so it’s not that far fetched.


During attempts to stop muggers, Cicak Man is harassed either by Rrama or by the ghosts of the Gingers. He can’t seem to get any peace. The only way he can figure out to fight off the ghosts is to see a feng shui expert, Miss Chee, who is so dragon lady it hurts. She warns him to beware the butterfly – meaning Rrama.

The president resigns amid the protests and chaos, and Professor Klon shows up in a huge tank dressed like a low-rent Iron Man. He announces water purifiers have been given to leading businessmen to be sold to the public, then drives off in his tank. Cicak Man hitches a ride and finds the hidden base. But Cicak Man himself is tracked by Rrama, who’s secret identity is Amarr the cameralady for Tania. As Amarr is played by a different hot actress (Linda Onn), we see her rip off her face Mission Impossible style to reveal Rrama underneath.


After fighting Rrama once again, Cicak Man goes to the water reservoir to fight Professor Klon. There he has another battle with Rrama on a dirty railed walkway in the reservoir cave that looks like something out of Goldeneye.

Thanks to the power of his tongue, he goes from losing to winning. He demands she take him to Klon, but she says that was the idea and everything is a trap. Iron Man Klon is happy to see Cicak Man, because they have Iman held hostage over latex – which is also the weakness of Cicak Man (Wait a minute…) This leads to a battle with Klon and Rrama as Iman is slowly lowered into the latex and as the timer to release the black poison into the world’s water supply ticks down.

Time to be tongue-tied!

Rated 7/10 (butterfly dart, supermodel teacher, the President, camerawoman fakeout, tracker, don’t walk stand still, the longest don’t walk countdown in history!)

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