ACTION WORLD - 29/04/25.

So, I’m unsure whether or not I have any remaining readers who are London-based, but just on the off-chance…

I am contributing the above event, taking place on Tues 29th April, at my local community café, as part of the New Cross & Deptford Free Film Festival.

The concept is, we will be travelling the globe, exploring world cultures through the warped prism of action movies.

As such, the current expectation is that I will be screening and introducing brief clips and trailers from Indonesia, Taiwan, Turkey, Australia, The Philippines and… possibly even some more places, whilst my accomplices cover assorted other locales.

Also, there will be beer - which is frankly a relief.

I can't make any great claims about the event being worth travelling / going out of your way for or anything, but like I say - just on the off-chance.

Deathblog: Shinichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba (1939-2021)

It goes without saying that I was incredibly sad to learn on Thursday that the great Sonny Chiba (‘Chiba-chan’ to many of his fans in Japan) has passed away at the age of 82, following a ten-day battle with covid-19.

Normally when a noteworthy figure passes away at a reasonably advanced age, we’re inclined to fall back on clichés of the “he had a good run” variety, but in Chiba’s case, it instead just seems heart-breaking that a man who remained so vital and energetic throughout his life, hitting his ninth decade still fighting fit and looking far younger, should meet such a miserable end. A terrible reminder (lest we needed one) of what a curse this damned virus continues to be.

Trying to summarise the entirety of Chiba’s career in film and TV is a daunting task. From his early days as a fresh-faced juvenile supporting player at Toei, he swiftly worked his way up to heroic leading roles through the ‘60s, appearing in that capacity in such delightful sci-fi/monster romps as ‘Golden Bat’ [‘Ogon Batto’] and the U.S. co-production ‘Terror Beneath the Sea’ (both 1966).

Ahoy mateys: Chiba in the early ‘60s.

Even in these early films, the energy and charisma he brought to the screen was formidable, but it was towards the end of the decade that, alongside an inevitable parallel career as a supporting player in the studio’s ninkyo yazuka dramas, before he began to reinvent himself as a martial arts / action star, soon cementing himself as Japan’s foremost exponent of screen-fighting and stunt work in a long series of increasingly outrageous karate, crime and exploitation movies.

Outside of the generally ultra-violent / adult-orientated movies he made for Toei, millions across Japan also soon knew him as the star of the somewhat more family friendly ‘Key Hunter’ and ‘The Bodyguard’ TV series, and as the founder of the self-explanatory Japan Action Club, through which he attempted to develop the nation’s stunt performers and choreographers to a level which would allow them to compete with Hong Kong’s supremacy in the field, mentoring such stars as Hiroyuki Sanada and the ever-incredible Etsuko Shihomi in the process.

On the other side of the Pacific meanwhile, Chiba gained an entirely entirely audience, becoming an unlikely American grindhouse icon after the fledging New Line Cinema, ever on the look-out for a “new Bruce Lee”, recut and redubbed Shigehiro Ozawa’s staggeringly excessive karate/gore exploiter ‘Gekitotsu! Satsujin Ken’ [‘Sudden Attack! Killer Fist’] in 1974, transforming it into ‘The Street Fighter’.

Arguably featuring a more extreme approach to on-screen violence than had been seen on U.S. screens up that point (excluding perhaps the unrated gore movies of HG Lewis and his imitators), ‘The Street Fighter’ predictably proved a box office smash in inner-city theatres, prompting New Line to repeat the procedure with just about every one of Chiba’s equally crazed early ‘70s pictures they could get their hands on, as well as Shihomi’s signature ‘Onna Hissatsu Ken’ [‘Sister Street Fighter’] series and sundry other Toei product besides.

Back home meanwhile, Chiba had repeatedly proved his thespian chops in a somewhat more serious context by this point, continuing to take supporting / second lead roles in the hard-edged jitsuroku yakuza films which dominated Toei’s A-picture output through the early ‘70s, generally playing to type as wild / out-of-control ‘human dynamo’ type characters - most memorably perhjaps in ‘Hiroshima Death Match’, the excellent second instalment of Kinji Fukasaku’s epochal ‘Battles Without Honour and Humanity’ [‘Jingi Naki Tatakai’] series (1973).

 Chiba with Meiko Kaji in ‘Wandering Ginza Butterfly: She-Cat Gambler’ (1972)

The respect gained from these more quasi-realistic yakuza roles led (or so I’ve always tended to assume) to Chiba subsequently establishing himself as a stalwart presence in the succession of more ambitious, ‘blockbuster’-style projects which came to dominate the Japanese box office once the increasingly unsustainable ‘production line’ ethos of the major studios more-or-less ground to a halt as the industry contracted in the latter half of the ‘70s.

Considerably lightening up his hard-boiled image, Chiba switched back to his ‘60s ‘heroic lead’ persona to play the driver of the titular shinkansen in Junya Satô’s ‘Speed’-inspiring epic ‘Bullet Train’ [‘Shinkansen Daibakuha’] in 1975, before moving on to such big budget productions as Fukasaku’s ‘Star Wars’-inspired ‘Message From Space’ (1978), Kôsei Saitô’s jaw-droppingly macho time travel battlefest ‘Sengoku Jieitai’ [‘G.I. Samurai’] (1979), and, most significantly, playing a long succession of brooding patriarchs and aging master swordsmen in the series of historical / fantasy epics which more or less defined commercial Japanese cinema through the early ‘80s, beginning with Fukasaku’s ‘Yagyu Clan Conspiracy’ [aka ‘Shogun’s Samurai’] in 1978.

Reprising his role as real life figure Jûbei Yagyû (‘Lone Wolf & Cub’ fans take note) through several further movies and TV spin-offs, Chiba also portrayed legendary swordsman Hattori Hanzô in several further TV series - by which point I think it’s probably safe to say his place in the popular culture of a new generation was pretty well defined.

In subsequent decades, he made a speciality of the scene-stealing cameo, regularly turning up to bring some gravitas to grizzled, former hard man yakuza / samurai roles in everything from humble V-cinema action flicks in the ‘90s to ill-starred Hong Kong co-productions, epic historical/fantasy reboots in the early ‘00s and - inevitably - Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ movies, all whilst also keeping to plates spinning vis-à-vis his presence as a much-loved media personality, martial arts/fitness guru and general elder statesman of Japanese commercial cinema.

And, all this of course barely scratches the surface. I wish I had the capacity to try to do it all justice. For a wider appreciation of Chiba’s contribution to cinema, I’d recommend spending some quality time with the estimable Sketches of Chiba blog, and, right here on BITR, why not have a look at my creaky old 2013 review of one of his earliest action vehicles, 1970’s Yakuza Deka: The Assassin, or the trailer gallery for one of his craziest and most essential movies (a film so extraordinary in fact that I found it impossible to review in a more conventional manner), 1974’s inimitable Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope.

More Chiba tribute content may or may not follow soon, time allowing, but for now, to quote the retitling of New Line’s U.S. version of 1973’s ‘Bodigaado Kiba’: Viva Chiba!

Golden Queen’s Commando (Chu Yen-Ping, 1982)

Although I can’t find a way to shoehorn it into any of my existing blog categories, today I’m going to go off-piste to tell you all about ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, a lackadaisical action spectacular from the depths of Taiwan’s b-movie netherworld which charmed and mystified me in equal measure as it unfolded before my sleepy, post-midnight eyes last weekend.

[Quick note: Where possible, I’ve tried to present both the Chinese and English names of cast members when crediting them, but given the extent of misinformation and general obscurity which surrounds the Taiwanese popular film industry, confusion is bound to ensue, so apologies in advance for any mistakes.]

On first glance, ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ seems like a pretty fool-proof proposition: an all-female riff on ‘The Dirty Dozen’, set in war-torn Manchuria circa 1944. Pretty straightforward stuff, you may think, but just try telling that to director Chu Yen-Ping, a man best known in the West for bringing the world the unforgettable, allegedly Triad-financed all-star headfuck Fantasy Mission Force a year later.

Suffice to say, anyone familiar with that film will anticipate trouble brewin’ with this one, and indeed, the same delirious mixture of full-spectrum sloppiness, misplaced ambition, relentless forward momentum and sheer, unadulterated craziness is already in full effect in ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, as Yen-Ping leaves any semblance of real world logic way back in the rear view mirror right from the outset.

As seems fairly sensible, the film begins with a series of short vignettes introducing us to each of our ‘commandos’, illustrating the circumstances which led to them being incarcerated together in what we’re forced to assume must be some kind of hellish, pan-Asian prison camp.

And, boy howdy, what a fantastic line-up of ladies we have to root for here! Much in the spirit of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s ‘House’ (1977), each of our heroines has a simple, one-personality-trait identity, a distinctive costume, and an easy name to help us remember them.

There’s a tattooed lady wrestler from Inner Mongolia (‘Amazon’, played by Chun-Chun Hsu/Theresa Tsui), a master safecracker and cat burglar (‘Quicksilver’, Hsueh-Fen (Silvia) Peng), and ‘Sugar Plum’ (Joyce H. Cheng), who appears to be some kind of man-eating femme fatale / call girl with a cupid’s bow tattooed on her cheek.

 Even more memorable though is ‘Brandy’ (Hao-Yi (Hilda) Liu), an alcoholic swordswoman who we we initially see debasing herself terribly as she tries to scrounge a drink in a filthy, crowded bar. Once she’s managed to glug down a flask of wine however, it’s ‘Drunken Master’ time, as she is transformed into a fearsome fighter, slicing up her goon-ish tormenters in classic chanbara fashion! Wow!

A somewhat more aesthetically complex creation, ‘Black Cat’ (Hui-Shan Yang / Elsa Yeung) meanwhile boasts a spectacular, period-defying teased hair-do, new wave make-up and ray-bans, as well as wearing an oversized black cross around her neck.

Apparently some kind of Old West-styled outlaw / gambler / preacher(?), Black Cat makes up for the fact she was born forty years too early to audition to play bass in The Gun Club by bringing her own brand of rough, frontier justice to the saloons of old… Asia?

In one of several tributes to ‘For a Few Dollars More’ scattering through ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, we initially see her calling out some no good varmint who’s unsuccessfully tried to stack a card game against her, blowing him away with a hidden pistol concealed inside a bible.

Eventually emerging as the movie’s Charles Bronson / second-in-command figure, Black Cat is undoubtedly pretty awesome, but when it comes to picking my favourite Golden Queen Commando, she narrowly loses out to ‘Dynamite’, played by Sally Yeh (who went on to star in Tsui Hark’s ‘Peking Opera Blues’ and John Woo’s ‘The Killer’ (both 1986)).

Swaggering across the Tibetan Plateau in hot-pants and a red bandana, Dynamite keeps a lit cigarette permanently dangling from her lips and specialises in – you guessed it – blowing stuff up, sometimes even using an oversized, cartoon-style detonator. (At one point later in the film, Dynamite further cements her infinite coolness by literally bringing a knife to a gunfight, and winning. Too much, man.)

As you can imagine, the various episodes required to introduce us to this mob of ass-kicking oddballs eat up so much screen-time that I was wondering whether there would actually be any time left for them to be assembled into a crack team of commandos and sent on a dangerous mission. Not that I’m complaining you understand - I could happily have watched a few dozen more of these action-packed vengeance vignettes, hit the end credits and headed off to slumberland feeling pretty satisfied.

But, ‘Dirty Dozen’ movie’s gotta do what a ‘Dirty Dozen’ movie’s got to do, and so eventually the aforementioned bad-ass dames find themselves incarcerated together in the aforementioned prison camp, being bossed around by soldiers who, in view of the historical setting, must presumably be Japanese, even though their uniforms and equipment appear to be German. Seriously though, let’s not even go there. They’re just baddies, ok?

Incredibly for a film of this vintage and general type however, the rote ‘Women In Prison’ segment which follows is entirely lacking in the kind of exploitative sadistic / sexual content one would usually expect of such material. In fact, the evil Asian Nazis don’t even so much as leer at any of the attractive women under their command, insofar as I recall. (There is a food fight instead though, if that’s any consolation.)

It’s almost as if Yen-Ping was setting out to make a family friendly movie or something. Albeit, one of those family friendly movies which involve hundreds of people being slaughtered, dismembered body parts flying across the screen and so forth - but still.

Anyway, it is whilst hanging around in this strangely non-threatening prison hell-camp that our heroines first encounter the formidable Brigitte Lin, heading up the cast list as our eye patch-sporting Lee Marvin surrogate, ‘Black Fox’.

“The Black Fox was really hot before the war – her two guns were enough to panic any mobster from Hong Kong to Chicago,” Black Cat helpfully explains. (Yes, there’s both a Black Cat and a Black Fox in this film, get used to it.)

[Hopefully Brigitte Lin will require no introduction for many of this blog’s readers, but given that I rarely cover Chinese-language cinema to any great extent, let’s just say – deep breath – ‘Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain’ (1983), ‘Police Story’ (1985), ‘Peking Opera Blues’ (1986), ‘Dragon Inn’ (1992), ‘The Bride With White Hair’ (1993), ‘Chungking Express’ (1994). You get the idea.]

Masquerading as a fellow inmate, Black Fox undertakes assorted chicanery in order to get our six heroines committed to the prison’s ‘black hole’ punishment room (basically it’s just an empty room with no lights where they hang around together, smoking cigarettes), from whence she orchestrates their escape.

Unfortunately however, the lengthy ‘prison break’ sequence that follows takes place at night, rendering the action largely incomprehensible on the badly degraded print of the film included on Golden Ninja Video’s recent Ninja Vortex compendium of IFD/Joseph Lai related films.

Presumably sourced from a Japanese VHS release if the burned in subs are anything to go by, this sadly seems to represent the only version of this film currently available in any format. Looking on the bright side though, at least it’s widescreen. Given that about 90% of the soundtrack consists of stolen Ennio Morricone music, I’m not really expecting a legit, remastered blu-ray edition to pop up any time soon either, so let’s just be thankful for what we’ve got.

A typically moody nocturnal action shot from the extant print of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’.

So, as you’ll appreciate, I don’t really know how the ladies get out of prison. There seem to be a lot of soldiers being massacred, some jeeps zooming around and some buildings catching fire, but the whys and wherefores are all lost in the tape-sourced murk. Eventually though, they regroup in some kind of hideout which Black Fox has set out for them, where they are – finally! - briefed on the details of the mission they are supposed to carry out.

A spectacularly half-hearted attempt at exposition, this briefing lasts around thirty seconds, accompanied by a single chalkboard map, and basically consists of: “so there’s this underground enemy chemical lab, and some revolutionaries are threatening to unleash a chemical attack, so we get there first and blow it all up before them, any questions?”

Well, ok, how about - whose enemies? What revolutionaries? What the hell is going on here? I seem to recall there was also some reference made to a ‘queen’ at this point, which I suppose goes some way toward addressing this film’s grammatically awkward English title, but… which queen would that be then? I confess, the complex politics of war-time Taiwan and mainland China aren’t exactly my area of expertise, but… on reflection I should stop tormenting myself with these questions and just roll with it really, shouldn’t I?

I mean, I suspect I’ve already put more effort into trying to set the scene for this thing than Yen-Ping ever did, and even if he did deign to address his story’s historical background to some extent, you can be damn sure none of his efforts would have survived IFD’s typically horrendous English dubbing process (and make no mistake, this one is an absolute shocker in that regard).

Anyway, next thing we know, we’re in some dusty rural locale, and our heroines are all riding horses! They all seem to have reclaimed their preferred costumes and weapons from the pre-prison section of the movie, and Brigitte Lin has acquired a big, furry hat which she proceeds to wear through the remainder of the picture, even though the weather looks quite warm.

Meanwhile, someone in the editing room is absolutely caning their old copy of the ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ soundtrack LP, and ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ seems determined to transform itself into a western. There are many bad men on the Commandos’ tail, which we know because we see atmospheric, low angle shots of the black-hatted riders thundering over the camera, wielding flaming torches. Cripes! 

From hereon in, the narrative more or less degenerates into a series of unrelated set pieces with zero connective tissue linking them together. So, at one point, the Commandos enter a forested area, where they all ensnared by a variety of elaborate booby traps, one of which involves Black Fox getting clobbered by a bunch of human skeletons which swing down from the sky (or something).

Unfeasibly, the instigators of these traps turns up to just be a bunch of slobbish militia type dudes. Could they those ‘revolutionaries’ we were just hearing about? I’m not sure, but whoever they are, they’re a fairly good natured bunch, which leads us to our next set piece, wherein they promise our heroines their freedom, provided they can prove their mastery of various disciplines by defeating their captors in a series of challenges involving noodle-eating, beer-drinking, archery etc.

Sadly, whilst all of these hi-jinks are going on, there’s very little time for us to spend getting to know the individual Commandos, which is a shame, because they’re all such outstanding characters I could easily have watched a spin-off solo movie featuring any of them.

There is some rather minimal back-biting / in-fighting along the way, but the chief takeaway from this is simply the realisation that Quicksilver is by far the most annoying member of the group, prefiguring Winona Ryder’s angsty android character from ‘Alien Resurrection’ by several decades as she brings the action grinding to a halt on several occasions in order to start whining about the fact that she’s an orphan and had to make her own way in the world, and so on and so forth.

I mean, I’m sure each of these women has just as much of a hard luck story to tell, but do you see them tearing up and complaining about it every five minutes? Just look at poor Amazon – she’s been snatched away from her prize-fighting career in darkest Mongolia with nothing but an animal skin bikini to her name, and she barely even gets any screen-time. She’s just quietly takin’ care of business, trying to get this action movie / western / whatever thing done, as should you Quicksilver, you ungrateful cow. Just because you’re slightly less cool than the other characters, you think you’ve got a right to monopolise our attention. Go and crack a safe or something, why don’t you!

Sorry, where were we? Oh yes, the next big set piece finds the Commandos holing up in some sand dunes for a showdown with the army of baddies who have been following them – apparently led by the heretofore unmentioned “Flash Harry, the best tracker around”. (“But it can’t be him, he’s in Brazil,” Quicksilver exclaims, inexplicably.)

This sequence soon develops into a seemingly endless series of stylish, low angle shots of silhouetted stuntmen being thrown from their horses in slow mo, as multiple explosive charges set in advance by Dynamite explode around them.

Grabbing these extremely effective pyro / horse stunt shots was presumably a big deal for director Chu, and he seems determined to milk them for as much production value as he possibly can, throwing together what I imagine must have been every single piece of footage shot for these sequences and looping ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ endlessly behind them, creating a slo-mo, cowboy blasting montage which goes on for so long it eventually blurs into complete abstraction, resembling some avant garde / psychedelic re-appropriation of violent western imagery – an impression only intensified by cutaways to close-ups of the warrior women, rocking their assorted early ‘80s fashion statements as they blast away at their attackers with rifles.

After all this, we’re left feeling thoroughly discombobulated as the surviving Commandos (yes, some of them have sadly copped it, but no spoilers here) finally reach their destination, which appears to be a system of caves. Here, after more close-quarters soldier slaughter and more weepy shit from Quicksilver as she finally serves her purpose by cracking the lock on the big, metal door, they infiltrate the “chemical plant”, where…. well… good grief. I think this is where I finally lost it.

Imagine if you will, a cornucopia of bubbling, mad scientist beakers and chemistry equipment, full of wildly coloured liquid, all lorded over by cackling, Nazi-uniformed Asian soldiers. Meanwhile, the room’s big, raised central panel spins around (a common motif in crazy, early’80s Taiwanese films, in my experience), revealing - for some goddamned reason - the guy who was in charge of the prison way back at the start of the movie!

He is enthroned, Blofeld-style, upon a red upholstered armchair, stroking a cat, and is attended by a hefty, Eunuch-like servant wearing a one-piece yellow bodysuit. (Those still determined to wring some real world context out of this nonsense may wish to note that there is kind of white-on-red crescent/bull horns motif going on here, whatever that might imply.)

“I beg of you please, you mustn’t destroy any of this, this is not evil, it is art and science, all those wonderful theories,” the Eunuch guy pleads with the Commandos. “With this, we can take man to a higher level of civilisation, where there is peace, no pain, a paradise beyond dreams,” adds the prison boss/warlord.

“That’s a load of horseshit if ever I heard any,” Black Cat immediately responds, before opening fire and machine-gunning everything to smithereens – which I for one couldn’t help thinking seemed at least a bit premature.

I mean, admittedly, the cackling Nazis and cat-stroking Bond villain are assuredly not good signs, but this man in the yellow seems fairly sincere, at least. And after all, we haven’t actually seen any proof that this outfit are up to no good, have we? Wouldn’t it make sense to wait around and ascertain whether or not they have actually made any discoveries vital to humanity’s future, before going for full-on obliteration?

Well, apparently not. Still determined to turn itself into a western by any means necessary, ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ takes one last deep breath and goes for a kind of Bond movie-ish variation on the ‘Wild Bunch’ ending. Chaos! Blood! Screaming! Slaughter! Will anyone get out alive…?

To find out, you will simply have to commit ninety minutes to watching whatever ragged copy of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ the internet and/or grey market can provide you with. I’m confident you won’t regret it.

Resorting to a tired cooking metaphor (last refuge of the speechless movie reviewer), this film feels as if someone cleared out everything sweet or salty from the kitchen cupboard, mixed it all up in a bowl, and served it up raw for dinner. Crazy, indigestible and quite possibly dangerous to one’s continued well-being it may be… but it’s kind of irresistible too.

Filleting through errant genre tropes like an ADHD-afflicted kid trapped in a comic book archive, it finds Chu Yen-Ping dishing out happy, context free pulp adventure mayhem like the unhinged b-movie savant which for the moment I’m going to assume he is.

Justin Decloux, who compiled and annotated the aforementioned ‘Ninja Vortex’ set from which I sourced my copy of this film, informs us that ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ is “…shockingly coherent for a Yen-Ping production”. Goddamn.

‘Pink Force Commandos’, with most of the same cast and crew, followed in ’83. Wish me luck, I’m going in.

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At the time of writing, a version of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ comparable to the one I watched (actually, I think it might be a bit more cropped around the edges, if yr feeling picky) can be enjoyed on Youtube here.

October Horrors # 7: Train To Busan (Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)

So, seems like this one pretty much knocked it outta the park as far as South Korean zombie movies go, right?

I actually first became aware of ‘Train to Busan’ a few years ago, when a freelance work assignment required me to do a bit of research on international box office figures. Scanning through the resulting info, I was surprised to see that a home-grown horror film had recently become the highest grossing film of all time in South Korean cinemas. I mean, not just the highest grossing South Korean film in South Korea – the highest grossing film from any country. Avatar, Avengers, Star Wars, whatever – ‘Train To Busan’ smoked them all in the domestic market.

Not bad for a movie that, on the face of it, sticks pretty faithfully to the post-Romero template of grim, zombie-initiated societal collapse, and an achievement that would surely have been unthinkable for this kind of film twenty years ago.

I’m sure I am far from the first person to reflect on how peculiar it is that the idea of malevolent, reanimated corpses eating the raw flesh of the living has become an acceptable subject for mainstream entertainment in the 21st century, but in many ways, ‘Train to Busan’ feels like a new crowning achievement for this trend.

For ‘Train to Busan’ is, make no mistake, a mainstream film. The use of a post-‘28 Days Later’ infection paradigm allows the story’s unimaginably hellish scenario to be portrayed with a bare minimum of gore and bodily corruption, whilst viewers are encouraged to sympathise and/or identify with the central characters through such positive, universal sentiments as concern for family, friendship, co-operation and self-sacrifice.

The complicated networks of sadism, cynicism and voyeuristic prurience that usually define the relationship between viewers, filmmakers and on-screen characters in horror films are never really put into operation here, whilst the ‘monsters-from-the-id’ psychological transgressions that are traditionally key to the appeal of the genre are likewise scrubbed off the film’s squeaky clean surface until only a trace memory of their presence remains.

But, if there are to be mainstream zombie films, I’d nevertheless argue that ‘Train to Busan’ provides a pretty good model for how they can be done well.

I’d not sure how to best put this, but… that aforementioned lack of cynicism actually feels very refreshing. After a few decades in which even the most innocuous Hollywood action-adventure films (and, by extension, their Asian and European equivalents) seem to have been populated by wise-cracking, self-interested loud-mouths, there is something very appealing about following a group of people who are for the most part quite reasonable, soft-spoken and quote-unquote “normal” as they team up to deal with catastrophic, life-threatening circumstances.

In this respect, I can easily see why the film proved so appealing to a general audience – particularly in South Korea, where viewers could presumably relate even more directly to the surroundings and pre-zombie day-to-day concerns of their on-screen surrogates.

It helps too that the film is extremely well-made. Performances are generally convincing and character stuff is well-handled, despite touches of the hand-wringing familial melodrama that seems to be a ubiquitous part of Korean popular culture, and though not as traumatic as it may have been in a “proper”, full strength genre film, the sense of sudden, near-total apocalypse, and the eerie dislocation felt by passengers trapped in the orderly, hermetic environment of a high-speed, inter-city train whilst it unfolds, is very well conveyed.

Even in the era of smart phones and roaming wi-fi hotspots, the confused, second-hand fragments we receive of different locales being ‘quarantined’, of defences of cities having ‘failed’, and of more and more phonecalls to relatives and business contacts ringing out, dead, is extremely effective, building a very modern sense of slow-building, gut-tightening panic that I’d imagine must feel recognisable to anyone who has been unfortunate enough to find themselves adjacent to a terrorist atrocity, or a sudden outbreak of civil disobedience or warfare, in recent years.

Setting the film on a train, it must be said, is also a bit of a masterstroke. I say this for no other reason than that action-adventure scenarios set in or around trains have always had great cinematic potential, as has been proven whenever the necessary factors of budgetary resource and filmmaking talent have aligned – and, whilst I’ll refrain from running through my extremely long list of “GREAT FILMS (OR PARTS OF FILMS) SET ON TRAINS”, I can happily confirm that ‘..Busan’ earns a deserved spot on said list, with its litany of life-and-death struggles with door locks, detached carriages, switching yard derailments and runaway engines feeling both satisfyingly exhilarating and… weirdly old fashioned, in a sense.

(I’m apt to wonder for instance whether the drivers on South Korea’s latest generation of high speed trains really communicate with their central control room solely via a crackly old radio set, as is portrayed here, but no matter – as far as the movies go, this is great stuff.)

Zombie-wise meanwhile, the blank-eyed, hissing, running/infection-spreading creatures of ‘Train to Busan’ may not add much to the sub-genre’s rich legacy, but where the film really distinguishes itself horror-wise is in portraying such a sheer mass of them. Obviously reflective of fears arising from life in the densely populated cities of South-East Asia, these swarming zombies are repeatedly seen smashing through plexi-glass windows in their hundreds - an undifferentiated tide of biting flesh - whilst the complex, multi-level geometry of the station buildings in which much of the action takes place even leads to several moments in which the confined creatures crash through a wall of glass and literally pour down from the skies - a veritable tidal wave of mindlessly animated, chomping death machines.

As alarming and impressive as all this is however, this complete de-humanisation of the zombie threat nonetheless feeds into what most horror fans will have realised fairly soon into the film’s run-time – namely, that ‘Train to Busan’ is far more of an action-adventure movie (disaster survival sub-category) than it is a horror picture.

By the time we reach the scene in which a small group of mis-matched (all male) characters use improvised weaponry and armour to fight their way through several zombie-infested train carriages in order to rescue their (female) dependants from a toilet cubicle elsewhere on the train, it had occurred to me that the threat our heroes were facing could basically be anything – aliens, Nazis, piranhas, lions, dinosaurs, whatever – and the drama would still play out in pretty much the same way. (1)

That’s not necessarily a criticism – it’s a great sequence, perhaps the highlight of the movie overall, superbly edited and full of rousing heroism, hair-raising suspense and Hawksian male bonding, and I was thoroughly on-board with it whilst watching.

In retrospect though, I miss the spikes. I miss the blunt nastiness, the pessimism, the misanthropy and raging despair. The splintered doorframe and raised gardening trowel of our shared zombie history is nowhere to be found here, my friends.

Far more so than the gore and nastiness though, ‘Train to Busan’s greatest loss in retooling the zombie movie to fit mainstream expectations comes from its jettisoning of the questioning of authority that was such a key element of the formula as defined by George Romero.

That’s not to say that ‘Train..’ is mere mindless entertainment, or that it lacks a social conscience, but it is notable I think that the film’s social commentary in confined solely to the level of individual (rather than societal) morality.

A running dialogue continues throughout the film concerning the respective merits of self-preservation vs collective responsibility, whilst, more specific perhaps to the film’s South Korean identity, Dong-seok Ma’s two-fisted working class hero gives Yoo Gong’s salaryman protagonist a hard time about the “parasitic” nature of his employment as a hedge fund manager, and Gong’s inability to maintain a functional family life alongside the demands of his job is also a central (if not exactly original) concern. (2)

All of which is well and good, but in the meantime, there is no real feeling here that the authorities (or indeed the evident inequalities of the nation’s ultra-capitalist society) are in any way to blame for the chaos and mass death resulting from the zombie outbreak. Though cities may be overwhelmed, misleading advice given to survivors, and soldiers and police may be transformed en masse into zombie predators, at no point do we get the impression that the powers-that-be are doing anything other than their very best to cope with this sudden and unprecedented cataclysm.

This is a far cry indeed from the bleak – and far more convincing - vision of confusion, cruelty and incompetence that Romero brought to the screen in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘The Crazies’. To my mind, ‘Train to Busan’ suffers greatly from the absence of this perspective, even whilst I appreciate that such a pessimistic approach may have been just too much for viewers in a nation as geo-politically precarious as South Korea -- at least assuming that the filmmakers’ (very UN-horror movie-like) intentions were indeed to avoid giving their viewers sleepless nights, and to instead encourage them to bring their friends and neighbours along to the next screening.

As a movie then, ‘Train to Busan’ is well made, thoroughly engaging and great entertainment – it’s well worth a watch, and you’ll probably want to invite your own friends and neighbours around to watch it a second time too. As a film however (and most particularly as a horror film)…. it leaves something to be desired.

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(1) I couldn’t really find a way to crow-bar this into the main text, but another specifically Korean element of ‘Train to Busan’ arises from the fact that it’s action is all *just a wee bit patriarchal*, in a manner that might seem slightly jarring to contemporary Western viewers. As well as the aforementioned scene in which the heroic dudes battle to rescue their women from the toilet, this reaches its nadir at the film’s conclusion, when – hilariously – a close-to-death male hero uses his last breaths to try to instruct a woman on how to drive a train (something he has no experience of himself); “now, I think this must be the brake..”, etc.

(2) Dong-seok Ma, incidentally, kicks ass in this movie. Hugely likeable, he reminded me somewhat of Shintaro Katsu, and I will happily watch any further films in which he stomps around looking sad and punching people.

Exploito All’Italiana: Syndicate Sadists (Umberto Lenzi, 1975)

Despite its lurid English release title – and despite the fact that director Lenzi was responsible for several of the more savage entries in the poliziotteschi canon – ‘Il Giustiziere Sfida la Città’ [literal translation: ‘The Executioner Challenges The City’], which hit Italian screens in August 1975, actually stands as one of the mildest, most easy-going contributions to the genre.

In fact, you’d also need to snip away a few brief moments of violence here and there and you could probably present this one as a family friendly action-adventure movie - about as far removed from the excesses of films like Mad Dog Killer as it’s possible to get whilst still remaining under the wider umbrella of ‘euro-crime’.

For better or for worse – and really, it’s a mixture of both - It appears that the responsibility for this surprising shift in tone sits primarily with the star of ‘Syndicate Sadists’, the late, great Tomas Milian.

After spending the better part of a decade portraying a variety of boggle-eyed peasant tricksters and fevered psychopaths in Italian genre films, the sheer gusto Milian brought to the screen had by this point made him somewhat of a bankable - if unconventional – star in Italy, and it seems he thought he deserved a chance to prove himself as a straight action hero. Apparently the producers/backers of ‘Syndicate Sadists’ agreed, and Umberto Lenzi (now equally late and great, sadly) was engaged to direct what basically amounts to an unashamed star vehicle for the Cuban dynamo.

Lenzi had previously worked with Milian on the preceding year’s ‘Almost Human’ [‘Milano Odia: La Polizia Non Può Sparare’], a stone-cold classic of misanthropic ‘70s crime/exploitation cinema that arguably marks a high watermark for both men’s careers. Such was the intensity with which Milian’s character committed bloodcurdling atrocities in ‘Almost Human’, the film was marketed as a horror movie when it reached the USA, and, again, the extent to which ‘Syndicate Sadists’ pulls a total 180 on any expectations this may have been in place for the director and star’s subsequent crime picture is remarkable.

Having pushed himself about as far into the realms of nihilistic psychopathy as it’s possible to go whilst still returning safely in ‘Almost Human’, it is perhaps understandable that Milian thought his screen persona was in need of a little TLC, lest he spend the rest of his life watching people cower in fear when he passed on the street, and it is plainly obvious that reinventing himself as a card-carrying Good Guy was his main objective in ‘Syndicate Sadists’.

To give you an idea of the level of control Milian exerted over this production, legend has it that whilst en route to Rome to begin shooting, he picked up a copy of David Morrell’s novel ‘First Blood’ (which would of course become the basis for the 1982 film of the same name, introducing the world to Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo for the first time) at the airport. Apparently impressed by the book, Milian is said to have demanded that his character in ‘Syndicate Sadists’ be named “Rambo” – in spite of the fact that the name was perceived to be both meaningless and faintly comical to Italian audiences.

Nonetheless though, the star got his way, and ‘Syndicate Sadists’ is all about RAMBO. Everybody in the somewhat anonymous version of Milan in which the film takes place knows about Rambo. Men respect him, women adore him, and evil-doers freeze in fear at the very mention of his name.

Swathed in gigantic driving goggles and sporting a fetching variety of winter jackets, woollen hats and scarves (most of them red) alongside his shaggy hair and full beard, Rambo certainly cuts a striking figure during the movie’s opening credits, as – accompanied by Franco Micalizzi’s rousing crime-funk score - he roars into town on his bright red motorcycle, returning home after an unspecified period out on the road (presumably “finding himself”, or defending sundry innocents from the depredations of criminals, or somesuch).

Part hobo, part hippy, but all two-fisted defender of justice and freedom, Rambo is an action hero wrought from the uniquely eccentric sensibility of Tomas Milian, and, assuming you’re in the right frame of mind to tolerate such a colossal display of egotism on the actor’s part, he’s a pretty awesome guy to have around.

Early in the film, Rambo is reunited with his brother (a mild-mannered cop who has been suspended and victimised for failing to toe the line re: the city’s endemic corruption problem), and our hero accompanies him on a visit to his new place of work - the HQ of a kind of organised vigilante organisation that has been set up to tackle the rampant criminality that has resulted from aforementioned corruption (in the absence of Rambo’s saviour-like presence, presumably).

Here, Rambo wastes no time in stripping down to his vest to out-karate this private police force’s karate experts (Milian’s kung fu is a sight to behold), before he casually out-shoots their gun people on the pistol range, and finally earns himself a warm handshake from the boss of the outfit, who tells Rambo he’s exactly the kind of guy they’d like on their side, if only he’d settle down and accept the offer of a steady job. No dice though of course – Rambo’s a lone wolf, following nothing but the winds of fate.

As you might well have expected, these winds soon lead Rambo directly toward the sharp end of sorting out the city’s law and order problems, after his brother is killed whilst investigating the kidnap of a cute little kid, snatched as part of a feud between organised crime families. Needless to say, our hero’s lone wolfin’ philosophy is temporarily put to one side, and he’s hot on the heels of justice (with a tasty dose of vengeance thrown in for good measure).

What follows is a fairly half-hearted rehash of the old ‘Red Harvest’/’Yojimbo’/’Fistful of Dollars’ formula, as Rambo alternately tangles with both Gang Boss # 1, Senor Conti - played in super-cool, menacing fashion by Luciano Catenacci, whom you may recall as the bald-headed burgomeister in Mario Bava’s ‘Kill Baby Kill!’ – and Gang Boss #2, the tellingly named Paternò, played by no less a personage than Joseph Cotten.

As per usual in his late career appearances in Italian films, Cotten proves an awkward and belligerent presence here, alternately muttering and yelling his lines as he putters ineffectively around the reception room of his hideously decorated out-of-town mansion. It seems that Rambo was at one point a protégé of Paternò, before he went his own way, and upon returning, he is saddened to discover that his former boss has now gone blind (which certainly helps explain the décor), and not a little crazy to boot. Effectively incapacitated by his blindness, Paternò is reliant upon his new right hand man – his son Ciccio, played by Alfredo Lastretti, last seen as the Dario Argento lookalike killer in Lenzi’s Spasmo.

The film retains a certain amount of sympathy for Paternò (the old “he’s out of touch and doesn’t really know what his underlings are up to” excuse), and as such it is Ciccio who becomes the true villain of the piece. Played by Lastretti as a prissily effeminate ‘glowering pervert’ stereotype, it is he who is presumably supposed to be the “sadist” of the film’s English title, as is aptly demonstrated by the film’s most gratuitous incidence of nastiness, wherein he and his goons assault and murder Rambo’s on/off girlfriend Flora (a thankless role for the wonderful Femi Benussi).

Though this scene isn’t remotely as grim or explicit as one might reasonably have expected of a mid-‘70s poliziotteschi, it is shocking simply in terms of its complete irrelevance to the storyline - especially given that Rambo reacts to the news of Flora’s death with little more than a shrug and a grunt (because, hey, what’s a girlfriend or two in comparison to the death of his BROTHER, who was a GOOD COP, and MUST BE AVENGED, etc).

Whilst ‘Syndicate Sadists’ boasts a few action sequences that are a lot of fun, executed with Lenzi’s characteristic flair – see for instance a pool hall ass-kicking extravaganza modelled after the one in Don Siegel’s ‘Coogan’s Bluff’, or the numerous scenes in which Milian screeches around back roads on his motorbike playing cat-and-mouse with the baddies – the sad truth is that, for the most part, the director seems all at sea with Vincenzo Mannino’s comparatively light-hearted script, and the film flounders as a result.

With a tone that veers uneasily between crime movie nastiness and blockbuster heroics, never fully committing to either, the sense of relentless forward momentum that characterises Lenzi’s best films is lost amid an expanse of repetitious, unfocused character scenes that stretch out between the picture’s relatively modest action highlights.

Where the rushed productions schedules and narrative deficiencies of many second tier poliziotteschi tended to be counter-balanced by the gritty violence, madcap energy and evocative location shooting that makes the genre so appealing, Lenzi & Milian’s decision to jettison these saving graces in favour of pursuing a more mainstream action-adventure direction eventually leaves ‘Syndicate Sadists’ looking like a rather muddled, sub-par example of the form; but, it is nonetheless one that I think can prove a great deal of goofy, undemanding fun, if approached with yr expectations in check.

Basically - your enjoyment of ‘Syndicate Sadists’ will depend entirely upon your tolerance for Tomas Milian and his antics. The entire movie essentially exists as a salve to his ego, and in a sense that in itself is hilarious. Personally, I love the guy whenever he is able to keep the comedic side of his persona in check, and thankfully he does so here, playing it straight as an arrow with his charisma in full effect, irrespective of the project’s inherent ridiculousness.

The kind of oddball hero Milian presents here is a character that could ONLY have worked in his hands, and, if you’ve ever watched him in one of his more sweaty/psychotic roles and found yourself wondering what it would be like to see this guy dispensing life lessons to small children, “living by a code” and riding nobly into the sunset on a big, red motorbike of justice – well, this is the movie for you.

Given that Milian returned directly to his more conventional “twitchy psycho” parts in Lenzi’s ‘Rome Armed To The Teeth’ (1976) and ‘The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist’ (1977), I’m assuming that this re-branding exercise didn’t prove an immediate success, but, like most of his characters, he was nothing if not persistent.

In between those assignments, he got another shot at a scruffy / unconventional action hero role, playing hirsute cop Nico Giraldi in the Bruno Corbucci-directed ‘Squadra Antiscippo’, aka ‘The Cop in Blue Jeans’, (1976). This time around, the movie proved such a success that Milian got to reprise the character in no less than eight(!) increasingly comedic sequels, leading right up to his eventual departure from what was left of the Italian film industry in the mid-1980s.

Having never acquired much of a taste for Italian comedy, I’ve not yet dared delve into the Nico Giraldi movies (the posters alone are enough to put me off), but, in retrospect, we can perhaps see ‘Syndicate Sadists’ as an entertaining, if misfiring, first step in this transition between the “bad ass” and “lame ass” phases of Tomas Milian’s career in Italian crime films. And, thank god, it is one in which the laughs he and Lenzi bring to the table are entirely unintentional, as is only right and proper.

Toei Trailer Theatre # 1: I AM THE WOLF MAN – PROUD AND GENTLE-HEARTED.

We jump here from Nikkatsu’s trailer department to that of their ‘60s rivals/’70s successors for the title of “Japan’s coolest movie studio”, Toei – basically just in order to give me an excuse to write a few words about ‘Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope’ (Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1975).

I was contemplating a full length review of this remarkable motion picture, but, having revisited it this weekend, I honestly don’t think there is much I can say about the film that will not be made immediately apparent by the act of watching it. (If ever a work of art spoke for itself, etc.)

Essentially I think, ‘Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope’ represents a kind of platonic ideal of everything a “cult movie” can and should be – all the more-so given that, as with most of Toei’s admirably unpretentious output, it was more than likely knocked out in a couple of weeks for a hypothetical audience of adolescent manga fans and boozed up salarymen, without the slightest notion that it would still be attracting attention over four decades later.

When I first encountered ‘Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope’ last year, via a slightly iffy fan-subbed download of a Japanese TV broadcast, it blew me away to such an extent that I could barely even take it all in. Returning to it for a second time, I decided to take a slightly more methodical approach and test my initial hypothesis that this is a film in which every single moment of screen time has something awesome happening in it.

Did it pass the test? Well, let's put it like this - there’s a brief scene early in the film, shortly after Sonny Chiba’s character Inugami-san witnesses a member of defunct rock band The Mobs being torn to pieces by an invisible tiger on the streets of Tokyo, when he is taken in for questioning by the police. This scene, which lasts about two minutes, is not especially awesome, although it does attain the level of ‘mildly awesome’ in the fan-subbed version, whose translation has one of the police officers declaring, “A spectral slasher? Seems to be the only explanation!”.

Aside from that, everything else that happens in ‘Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope’ is categorically, unreservedly awesome. It puts the pedal to the floor right from the outset, and barely lets up for a second.

By the grace of the international film copyright gods, it is also now available in the US and UK as a blu-ray/DVD combo pack from Arrow, so you have NO EXCUSE for failing to verify these findings for yourself.

‘Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope’ – watch it, live it, love it.

(Ok, perhaps don’t “live it”.)