I felt it was time for a new installment to one of my personal favorite little perversions… er… I mean diversions, and that is my fasicnation with girls with guns, and in particualr Asian girls with guns. If you have not perused my sidebar yet you will see I have some static pages (nd there will you find my first two girl-gun collections. These pages along with my Julie Newmar , Bettie Page , and Fonda as Barbarella  posts are my big number makers on Google Analytics. I killed my self on my Robert Fripp and Yes essays and they get hardly a beep.  Go figure. The links to my other two pages are Guns with Guns One and Asian Girls with Guns. To be honest I am just wanted to update the blog and this was easy and fast.  I want to do more quick and easy posts. I did the K. Gordon Murray post and then was just too wiped out to do the Jimmy Page Lucifer Rising one. I could have slopped out something, but those are not the standards I am trying to promote here at the Cafe. There may be a young person on the cusp of life, a sophmore at Yale or Harvard now, who will know I skimped on the Jimmy Page article. That I did not give it my all. The all they expect. They know the real value of girls in tiny bikinis with big, hot guns in their little hands. I have a responsibility to those leaders of tomorrow to give them boobs and butts (and even some brains this time)  and smoking barrels while I mull over the Jimmy Page essay. I will not let them down!

Just a quick post to let the readers out there know why I am slacking lately here. I have been trying to get a new blog off the ground and am trying to get ten posts finished so I can submit it to a blog community that promotes expats, Americans or Europeans living abroad. As most of you know I am in China and the new blog is about my life and adventures (or misadventures) here. The site is called Commentarius Perpetuus (onrunning commentary) and is at seven posts now and I have have broken considerable ground with the sidebar and layout. I guess I can relax there and swing back this way and finsih these two posts that have been gathering dust for almost a week now.

Also happy to report that I am able to download BTs again and access IRC (which I have yet to learn all the ropes) and so am getting movies back in. I got in a bunch on Rapidshare as well but tonight it is acting pissy and does not want to download. So, let me go do some research ( as in lying my ass down on the sofa and zoning out on B-movies until I pass out) and I should be caught up with stuff tomorrow, and then can do this meme thing. Seems easy enough. I need to do a post on the last poll as well which did not get many votes, all of 5, but I still need to do a write up and commentary on it.

And lastly for a while I will be running the cafe with five posts per page for a reason that I am too tired to explain, but I need to do this way for a week or two maybe. It will look funny since the sidebar is so damned long now. I got addicted to to tweaking my sidebar obviously, and in the process my site loads so slow it is causing some trouble here and at some places that need to crawl my front page. Should be temporary or there may be changes so it can load faster, but not tonight.

See ya

Bill

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Special note for Pageophiles: If the above connection is a little too slow this might work a little better, though you cannot download the song from the flash file. In fact you might be better off just downloading the file from the  above  site if you can. The file is about 48 Mb and while it may buffer slow at time the song is there. I have tested it. Seems to load better for me in IE and Safari than Firefox or Flock browsers. Be patient. The file below is directly from my file sharing account at boxstr.com

JIMMY PAGE’S SOUNDTRACK TO KENNETH ANGER’S LUCIFER RISING

ESSAY COMING. NECESSARY TO GET IMAGES POSTED WHILE I CAN

DUE TO SOME SCREWY ISSUES HERE.

PLEASE BE PATIENT AND CHECK BACK SHORTLY.  BILL

Kenneth Gordon Murray was born in the American heartland of Bloomington Indiana in 1922. His father was a funeral home director and young Ken,or Kagey, spent much of his time in the company of local carnival and circus workers who camped in the Bloomington area during the cold winters. By the time he was a teenager he was running bingo parlors and getting the knack for smooth talking the authorities. By the end of the thirties Murray was getting his circus pals small roles in films through casting directors he knew. His first big show business break was  helping to cast several height impaired persons (midgets, dwarves or whatever they are called) in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. This would lead to him helping to cast circus folk for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. By this time Murray had moved to Hollywood with his wife Irene and learned some of the ropes of film production. While hardly worthy to tie the boot straps of someone like DeMille this did not stop Murray from heading to Miami Florida to set up his own production company humbly called K. Gordon Murray Productions.

It is from Miami that Gordon’s company would import and redub over two dozen foreign films, mostly from Mexico. He redubbed Santo the Wrestler films for American matinee audiences as the character Samson. I honestly thought it was a whole other character for the first half of Samson in the Wax Museum. Then my Sherlock Holmes type reasoning kicked in and I thought, “just how many silver masked wrestler detectives from Mexico were there?” In no time I deducted that Murray had simply changed Santo to Samson. I was proud of myself for that one. I finally got in a copy of Little Red Riding Hood Meets the Monsters and will watch it eventually and do a post on it. His films are rather obscure and hard to find. He reissued them under various titles and most slipped off into public domain oblivion since he failed to manage them or even copy write many of them. Later the IRS would seize what films of his they could get their claws on and that only added to the difficulty in finding suitable prints of many of his imported and original films.

His films fall roughly into three categories. His imported and redubbed films, usually Mexican wrestling and horror movies.  Then there are his fairy tale films which earned him the title of King of Kiddie Matinees. A couple of his more noted kiddie titles were Santa Claus, which enjoyed a long and lucrative run, and Puss and Boots, which I would love to see because I have read it is simply an abominable production. The last category consists of about a dozen original exploitation type films like Shanty Tramp which had an X rating. All told Murray released some 60 productions that many people feel are almost all true cult classics. it is almost impossible to find many of them any more, though Something Weird Video is releasing little by little many that were once thought long lost.  Almost all are  lacking in any real quality or even enthusiasm. truly bad but mesmerizing productions. One’s tongue falls out of their mouth in disbelief a couple times a reel. Ed wood Jr. suddenly seems like David Lean in comparison. The dubbing of the films (such as the Santo ones I have seen) are often quite hilarious. In fact I recently started watching Santo and the Diabolical Brain (considered one of the better ones) and it was subtitled and in the original Spanish and it just did not seem as cool as the cheaply dubbed Wax Museum one I had watched the night before. As silly as they sound Murray basically “invented” the looping style of dubbing that evolved into the system still used in modern pictures.

Somehow his names winds up in occult circles as well. Reportedly there are Satanic like cults built up around his films. Whacked out devil worshippers and  black magic types see secret messages in hs movies I guess. I read this on the site dedicated him called Welcome to the Wonder World of K. Gordon Murray, which was supposed to be the title of a children’s themed TV show he did not get off the ground. He seems to be a real genuine independent film maker and gimmick maker. Not too much about him on the net though. I can only find the one portrait posted above which I edited because it was so washed out looking. There is a documentary on his life and films that is to be available soon and there is some info on that online, but again, not too much. He was just one of those crazy, workaholic film makers that the stuff of legend is made of. True film making legend. Expect a post on Little Red Riding Hood Meets the Monsters shortly as well as a couple more Santo reviews and a study on the immortal, the timeless, the trend setting Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy.

UZUMAKI

2000/Director: Higuchinsky/Writers: Junji Ito (manga), Kengo Kaji (supervising screenwriter)

Cast: Eriko Hatsune, Fhi Fan, Hinako Saeki, Eun-Kyung Shin, Keiko Takahashi, Ren Osugi

I think I have mentioned in a few previous posts about my ambivalence towards more modern Japanese  horror films(and Asian in general, though I consider Japan to be yardstick by which the rest of Asian cultures is measured, for better or worse), or cinema in general. With rare exceptions I find most of it  all wanting and repetitive and I much prefer the Japanese cinema prior to about 1970. Uzumaki is for me one  of the exceptions. I had long put off watching this movie for one reason or another, but it was on my list of films to see before I died so I finally popped it in the DVD player and was morbidly pleased with the results, though it is a far from a perfect horror film. I got the BT from demonnoid.com and was surprised to the find the entire manga comic series by Junji Ito included. I included, free of charge, a few pages for readers to check out. To honest I had no ideas this was based on a comic book unit I opened the folder. But like the film I was pleased with the story and art which I glanced over. I tend to not like the goofy looking fairy like characters that adorn the majority of manga comics and I felt the pen and ink drawing sin Junji Ito’s story to look more like the b/w independent stuff coming out of the US from places like Fantagraphic books, which to me are better drawings.

The story takes place in the small Japanese city of Kurouzu which has come under the curse of evil spirals (or vortexs as they are called in the translation). It is not clear why the town is cursed but soon schoolgirl Kirie and her childhood boyfriend Shuichi are at the center of the escalating nightmare. Kirie finds Shuichi’s father absorbed in filming the spiral patterns on a snail’s back one day on the way home from school. Soon there is a suicide at the school when a boy leaps from the top of a very high spiral staircase, landing at the bottom with blood and brains splattered everywhere. Things get more and more out of control as Shuichi’s father loses his mind under the influence of the vortex curse, one night almost losing control when there are no more spiral patterned naturo fish rolls in his miso soup. That makes me pissed off too. He convinces Kirie’s father, a pottery maker, that the vortex is the highest form of art and asks him to design a vortex patterned plate. Soon Kirie’s father is pulled into the curse and distintigrates menatlly and physically. The home situations not the only concerns since at school students are turning into snails and having their hair grow out into elaborate spiral like designs the size of trees. The spiral (vortexes… it really bothers me how these films are translated at times. The term spiral is never once used though sometimes it is the better word to use. We do not say a “votex staircase”) motif appears all over the film, though not as frequently as in the comic book story. Eventually even the dark clouds in the sky assume a menacing spiral pattern.

Shuichi’s father eventually decides he wants to become a vortex himself. What better way to achieve this than to crawl into the washing machine and click it on. His mother winds up in the hospital in despair and she soon clips off all her hair as to eliminate any spiral designs. Soon she realizes her finger prints are spirals and…well… you can guess the rest right? She kills herself after a centipede tries to slither down her ear and soon her dead husband is calling to her from the other side, where there are perfect vortexes. Shuichi himself gets all tied in knots, literally, and in the last scenes we see the towns people all under the effects of the vortex curse, except for Kirie and we do not know what becoems of her. One memorable scene has her stalker admirer throwing himself under a moving car so she will always remember him and he gets all twisted around the wheel and rim. The film ends with unanswered questions but most movies like this do. The comic book seemed to go off into other directions, such as many of the town’s folk turning into dangerous zombie like creatures. While some people in the film appear “zombiefied” they never collect together and terrorize Kirie as they do in the manga story. The film is shot using a greenish hue and it looks eerie. The music score is good and the acting above average. There are no gratuitous school girl panty shots and no sex, which is actually a relief and gives this Japanese shocker a boost in the credibility department. So many newer Japanese horror films are of the Pinku Eiga style, which is simply softcore porn with a few mutilations thrown in to balance things out. Nothing like seeing a young naked Japanese school girl in one scene and then a disemboweled, blood drenched one in the next to push all the borderline personalities watching right over the edge. I thought the film was creepy and well made and the effects and photography are pretty good for this style of movie. Get the comic book if you can, if that is your bag, as I think it is actually a better story.

SAMPLES FROM JUNJI ITO’S MASTERFUL MANGA COMIC UZUMAKI

VIDEO TRAILER FOR UZUMAKI

If you do not know who El Santo (The Saint) is he was a real professional wrestler in Mexico who also became a matinee idol and comic book hero. He made some 50 or more films in his career and a few were imported into the US by K. Gordon Murray, most noted for importing and dubbing loads of children’s fairy tale films. Santo in the Wax Museum was one of the more successful Santo films because it was one of them that was dubbed into English. I also have a about six or seven other Santo films here and the other one I watched, Santo and the Diabolical Brain is in Spanish with English subtitles. I don’t know why, but I like some movies more dubbed. Not because I am lazy and cannot read subs, but it really adds to the campiness of the already corny translated dialog, as in the case of many of the Toho kaiju (strange monster) films. And most certainly the dubbing adds to the zaniness of this Santo (called Samson for some reason in the Murray releases, as if gringos can’t accept a Spanish sounding name) film from 1963, made when Santo himself was already 45 years old.

A series of murders and disappearances  are tied to people who have recently visited Dr. Karols’s (Claudio Brook) wax museum. The museum is a strange collection of figures on one floor, ranging from Gandhi to Gary Cooper, but housed in the lower level is Dr. Karol’s collection of infamous murderers and monsters, the pride of his little museum. When photographer Susana Mendoza vanishes Santo is called in by a friend to investigate. The first part of the movie seems to plod along and I almost forgot it was a Santo film, until he arrives on the scene in his trademark silver mask, tights and cape. He rides around in a sports car and has a “Batcave” type laboratory that seems to be located in his apartment. Later when thugs set out to kill him they just come in through his back door. He is renowned for his crime solving abilities but once in a while he has to put the case on the back burner and rush off to the arena to do some wrestling. In fact there are three bouts in the film.

The movie culminates of course with Santo fighting the bad guys and monsters (humans changed into wax figure zombies by Dr. Karol, who plans to somehow destroy the world with them) with lots of wrestling moves. The girl is saved from being turned into a “panther girl” and put in the museums lower floor and in one scene Santo cooks four or five monsters with a vat of boiling wax. Claudio Brook is great as Dr. Karol and in one scene does a classic mad scientist laugh that goes on and on. Santo is really strange as he stands around people’s apartments discussing the case in his mask and with his exposed chest and belly seemingly drawing no special attention from anyone. Like I said the dubbing adds to the fun, especially Dr. Karol’s radio announcer monotone. I liked it a lot and look forward to getting my others Santos films burned so I can lie back on my sofa and be thrilled at the marvel that is El Santo. For cheese lovers only.

KING KONG ESCAPES

1967/Director: Ishirô Honda/ Writer: Takeshi Kimura

Cast: Rhodes Reason, Mie Hama, Linda Miller, Akira Takarada, Eisei Amamoto

I was lucky that before all my BT download problems began a month or so back I downloaded a batch of classic Toho kaiju films. Kaiju is the term for Japanese monster films, and in particular those wonderful ones with guys in rubber suits judo flipping one another all over Tokyo. I was pleasantly surprised with King Kong Escapes, the 2nd King Kong film from Toho after King vs Godzilla. It has all the trademarks of a great Toho kaiju film, such as finely detailed miniatures,  and was directed by Ishiro Honda, who turned out some of the best monster films for Toho. One thing that makes this Toho monster film a little more enjoyable than some is the drama between the human being is better than usual.

First there is the crew of the US Explorer. Led by all American he man Commander Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason) and his 2nd in command Jiro Nomure (played by Toho standard Akira Takarada) the submarine must make an emergency landing near Mondo Island, home of none other than King Kong. They arrive ashore with the head of the medical department Lt. Susan Watson (Linda Miller) who earlier got the crew to shape up by warning them she had plenty of Castor oil to administer. In no time they encounter Kong who gets himself into a kung fu style brawl with Gorosaurus. Of course Kong falls for the blond Lt. and gets all dreamy eyed looking at her. He picks her up to adore her and then she begins to speak English very loudly and slowly and orders him over and over, “Put me down Kong. Down! Put me down!”, and he does since all you have to do is speak English loudly and slowly and anything in the Universe will understand.

There is of course an evil element to the film, as there always is in a good Toho film. Usually some sinister, secret organization (usually led by aliens) is up to no good and they either need to employ or eliminate one or more of the kaijin. In this case the bad guys are led by Dr. Who  played by Eisei Amamoto, who has developed a gigantic Mecha-Kong to excavate all the Element X he desires so he can then sell it to the highest bidder and they can construct enough nuclear weapons to bully the combined powers of the US and the USSR. He is in serious negotiations with the mysterious Madame X, or Madame Piranha,  (Mie Hama) who is from “some unknown Asian country”. The country is never named and it is comical at times how the script avoids identifying the rogue nation, though we can assume it is either commie China or North Korea (remember this is 1967 and you are still better dead than red). Mecha-Kong can not endure the effects of Element X and shuts down and so Dr. Who falls back on Plan B, kidnapping the real King Kong to excavate the mineral. Exactly why humans and human designed machines cannot be used is never explained.

Kong is kidnapped and soon Dr. Who has Commander Nelson on his tail, along with the UN. In these old Toho films the UN seemed to have unlimited power. In some scenes just by saying “I’m with the UN” a person is given charge of entire military units. Nelson and his friends wind up at the North Pole, where Who’s headquarters are, and soon wins over the “Oriental Mata Hari” with little effort, simply by laying back on the sofa and acting rude and arrogant seems to make her weak. She suddenly abandons all her plans for herself and “her country” and sets the good guys free, and of course is offed by Dr Who.

Kong escapes slave labor and swims back to Tokyo and of course Mecha-Kong arrives later and they have it out on Tokyo Tower. There are lots of fun bits in this film and all the actors ham it up and have a great time. The real center piece is Kong’s horrible costume. The mask appears to be made of nothing but papier-mâché and in a couple scenes when Kong runs it is just hilarious. His fingers never seem to move and his eye lids look like window blinds opening and closing. Mecha-Kong looks pretty darn good and the monster battles in the film are above average. Mie Hama is so very cute and she and Dr Who add a James Bond element to the film. Mie would star in 1967’s Bond flick You Only Live Twice, along side  Toho actress Akiko Wakabayashi,  as the coquettish secret agent Kissy Suzuki. If you are not a fan of Toho monsters move along, but if you are and have not seen this one yet then please do. I doubt you will be disappointed. I have about a dozen more Toho monster films to throw at you so stay tuned. Sadly I was not able to get a copy of Ishiro Honda’s Rodan and am going to see if that is available from a Rapidshare site. I watched Ghidrah last night and the Rodan in it looked different, more chickenish than I recall the original version being. This calls for some serious research.

Here is a first for the Cafe really. Normally I would prefer to do my own essays and commentaries but in this case I am just going to copy and paste a short mini bio about Mie Hama from IMDB. When I do do something like this I will always credit the site I got the information from. I am sure I could do a fitting little essay but I a little pressed for time and energy. My personal feelings is that she is totally adorable in that virginal sense. In fact I was almost repulsed that she fell for hairy, crass 007 (Sean Connery) in You Only Live Twice. Her story is rags to riches in a sense. I do not mean untold riches, but going from a ticket collector to one of Japan’s leading ladies virtually over night is a Cinderella story in my book. Now that I’ve shared my personal feelings and I fell a little less guilty here is the info I swiped from IMDB:

Biography for Mie Hama
Date of Birth
20 November 1943, Tokyo, Japan
Height
5′ 4½” (1.64 m)

Mini Biography

Mie Hama was born in Tokyo, Japan on November 20, 1943. She first started out working as a bus fare collector. While working, she was spotted by producer Tomoyuki Tanaka , and was soon employed at Toho Studios. She appeared in a bevy of drama and sci-fi films, including Kingu Kongu tai Gojira (1962), where she became the Giant Ape’s “Damsel in Distress.” She is probably best known in Western Cinema as Bond girl Kissy Suzuki, starring alongside actor Sean Connery in the 007 film You Only Live Twice (1967). That same year, Kingu Kongu no gyakushû (1967) was released, thus, she portrayed the spellbinding “Bond-girlish” villainess Madamn Piranha. Her extended wardrobe and enchanted bed chambers contributed to the film’s “James Bond-ish” atmosphere. In addition, Hama would sometimes be referred to as “Funny Face,” due to her appearances in Japan’s “Crazy Cats” movies.

She became of the most popular actresses in Japan’s “Golden Age” of Cinema, but has done little acting when Japan’s cinema world experienced severe financial problems. However, she did return to appear in a few films in the 1970s and 1980s, and she is seen, most recently, working as an active environmentalist.
IMDb Mini Biography By: Oliver Chu

Trivia

Because of illness during filming, Mie Hama (Kissy Suzuki) was doubled in a diving scene (in “You Only Live Twice”) by no less than Diane Cilento - Sean Connery’s wife at the time.

Had actually appeared in almost 70 movies before she got married to 007 in You Only Live Twice.

The first Asian woman to appear in Playboy.

Was the first Asian Bond girl.

Has been called the Japanese Brigitte Bardot.

Her first name is pronounced “Mee-yay.”

When producers for “You Only Live Twice” warned Mie that because she wasn’t learning English quickly enough, she was going to be fired from the film, she solemnly told them that, because of her shame, she would then commit ritual suicide. Whether she was bluffing or not, the producers decided not to risk it, and she was kept on the film.