The Adventurers (2017) – A Chinese jewel thief (Andy Lau) gets out of a French prison intent on pulling the requisite One Last JobTM, despite the cop who put him there (Jean Reno) keeping close tabs on him. Also, Shu Qi is one of the team the thief puts together, and everyone just stops and stares at her whenever she’s on screen because damn.
For some reason, this never quite gelled for me, even with almost Mission: Impossible-levels of gadgetry. Part of the problem is the bizarre decision to have all of the actors either speak Chinese (when, naturally, the Chinese characters converse) or English (whenever the French characters speak either to the Chinese characters or among themselves). Again, not a one of these actors or their characters is a native English speaker. Even Reno, who’s performed in English in several English-language films, couldn’t act when everyone else around him is simply repeating their English lines by rote.
Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010) – Why did I take so long to see this? It’s a complete skewering of the “murderous redneck” school of slasher horror; a handful of typically clueless college kids go off camping in the wild, where they cross the paths of the titular Tucker and Dale — friendly, peaceful, good ol’ boys with a cabin they’re fixing up in the woods. But circumstances keep throwing the hillbillies in situations where they unknowingly seem to fit the “backwoods killers” assumptions of the college kids, and every time Tucker and Dale try to help out or even just be friendly, someone accidentally dies at their apparent hand.
Oh, and there’s plenty of gore, too.
This is Shaun of the Dead-grade horror comedy here, at the top of my list for the subgenre. If our traditional Halloween Movie Marathon weren’t going to be a Roger Corman tribute this year, I’d definitely schedule this in.
Quest For the Mighty Sword (1990) – So then Joe D’Amato says, “Shucks, I guess if someone else can make the third Ator movie with very little connection to the previous two, I can make the fourth with NO connection!”
How disconnected? Well, not only is Miles O’Keeffe not playing Ator (it’s now the completely physically-dissimilar Eric Allan Kramer), but “Ator,” pronounced AH-tor in the previous movies, is now AY-tor. Innovation!
In this confusing setup, Prince Ator is a wise ruler (so why’s he not KING, huh? Who IS king?), but he’s cut down by archvillain Thorn, who wants his magic sword. In fact, in killing Ator, Thorn breaks the sword in two… but doesn’t take it. So Ator’s wife takes the sword halves and his baby son — also named Ator — and goes to hide with Grindel, a magic troll-dwarf-thing living in a cave. (Grindel wears a semi-articulated mask left over from the infamous Troll 2. That’s right, D’Amato is using castoffs from Troll 2.) Then Mom goes crazy because Grindel uses a love potion on her, and runs away.
And baby Ator also grows up unto Eric Allan Kramer, still in Grindel’s keeping. Some actors can fake being a teenager when they’re a decade older; Kramer most certainly cannot. A witch whose presence is never explained shows him visions of DeJanira, a demi-goddess who tried to rescue his father from Thorn and was consigned to some kind of suspended animation until young Ator can free her. All Ator needs is his sword…
Here’s the thing. The movie is called Quest For the Mighty Sword, but… there isn’t a quest. Ator knows Grindel has it. In fact, Grindel fixes is back into one piece, and gives it to Ator — whereupon Ator chops at Grindel. The blade breaks; Grindel wanted to know what Ator would do, so he gave him a fake. This happens TWO MORE TIMES, until finally Ator finds the broken bits himself, forges them back together himself, and chops Grindel in half. That’s all in the first half-hour. Ta-dah, he has the sword! What’ll we call the rest of the movie?
Then Ator goes and rescues DeJanira (whose resting place is guarded by a TWO-HEADED ROBOT), and they have some adventures, and then the movie gets sidetracked into a sidequest about a diseased king who wants DeJanira for himself, and when Ator rescues her (her goddess powers have been taken away, so all she can do is scream a lot)… well, we’ve run out of movie and it’s over.
Seriously. Ator never gets close to tracking down Thorn and avenging his father, which was supposed to be his big goal in life. It’s like D’Amato said, “Hey, how much footage have we shot? About ninety minutes? All right, roll credits — it’s not like anyone’s gonna watch it to the end anyway.” (He couldn’t have been delusional enough to think that there was going to be a sequel to wrap up the storyline, could he? D’Amato may have been a quality-agnostic crapmeister, but he supposedly had a good head for business.)
I’ve like Eric Allan Kramer in what I’ve seen him in — Robin Hood: Men in Tights (as Little John) and The Incredible Hulk Returns (as Thor), mostly, although I know he’s also had a couple of pretty successful sitcoms (which I never saw). I’m happy that anyone can have a Joe D’Amato credit so early in his career and still make a go of it.
[No actual trailer available — here’s a scene.]
Abandoned movies:
NetherBeast Incorporated (2007) – Whatever reason people have for watching vampire movies, it’s probably not because they want long, drawn-out explications of this movie’s version of vampire lore stopping the story cold. Even the presence of Steve from Blue’s Clues couldn’t keep it going.
Wizards of the Demon Sword (1991) – A spoof needs to be better than the material it’s spoofing. This isn’t.
I noticed today my DVD of “Tucker & Dale vs. EVIL” was in the same stack as “Wrong Turn” and remembered reading this review.