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!

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.

THE BRAIN EATERS

1958/Director: Bruno VeSota/ Writer: Gordon Urquhart

Cast: Ed Nelson (also producer), Leonard Nimoy, Alan Frost, Joanna Lee, Jody Fair, David Hughes, Robert Ball, Greigh Phillips, Orville Sherman

This not a film to write home about in any sense of the word-however it is film to do a post on The Uranium Cafe about obviously- but at a mere sixty minutes and featuring an early performance by Leonard Nimoy (billed as Leonard Nemoy) it is not a total waste of time. It was produced by and starring B-movie and TV staple Ed Nelson and directed by character actor Bruno VeSota (the sexually frustrated fat guy in Attack of the Giant Leeches) and so based on The Puppet Master by Robert A. Heinlein that AIP was sued for outright plagiarism. Roger Corman arranged to have the matter settled out of court for $5000 and the promise that Heinlein receive no credit for “inspiring” Gordon Urqhart’s lifeless screenplay. But as I said, the film is not really that bad that it cannot be seen and enjoyed if there is nothing else on.

The story moves along at a tolerable pace and is aided by an often campy and unnecessary narration. For example in one scene we are told that the heroes are visiting the local telegraph station, but there is not need to inform us of this since we can see with own two eyes that they are doing this. But it adds for some laughs, though I assume the are unintended.

The basic story is that the residents of peaceful Riverdale Illinois have not only recently been plagued by violent murders and now must contend with the sudden appearance a huge alien craft that has either come from space or the bowels of the Earth. I am not clear on this. The mystery is compounded when a scientist believed long lost reappears from the craft after some fifty years. Some of the town’s folk have fallen prey to small parasitic organisms that look like little “tribbles” (as in the classic Star Trek episode) with pipe cleaners for antennae that attach to the base of their necks and control their thoughts and actions. Scientist Paul Kettering (Ed Nelsen) is hot on the mystery and even journeys into the alien craft seeking answers, which are not forthcoming. A lot of the action winds up being fist fights or gun battles between the infected and uninfected, or verbal sparring between everyone and the cantankerous Senator Powers (Cornelius Keefe, billed as Jack Hill and so it is not director Jack Hill in an early acting role as is often thought). On a return trip inside the ship Kettering finds another long lost scientist, Professor Cole under total control of the alien creatures and who is played by Leonard Nimoy, but you would not know if not for the voice. The story ends with high voltage wires frying the little brain eaters to death and the hero dying to save the girl.

The movie has potential with the material but does not do too much with it. What have been better is if the people under the control of the creatures were not so apparent. Some act like zombies practically. It would have had more tension had the cast and audience not known who was and was not infected, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing. I would also say a little more violence would have helped, as well as more frightening creatures. To the film’s credit it does not go over board with scientific explanations and long dialogs as is typical of a lot of films of the period. The movie takes itself too seriously and the laughs are unintentional, which can always make for a good time.

The movie poster is one of my favorite, but here is no scene in the entire film like it. There is no woman with vampire fangs and exposed brain, or hordes of people fleeing some terrible monster. In fact the monsters are little fuzz balls that a horde of fleeing people would squash. Can I recommend the film? Sure. It is required cult film viewing in fact, and as I said it is only about an hour in length, about the same time you would spend at the dentist’s getting a cleaning. Our next film seems to operate on a lower budget but in my opinion delivers more of the goods in the action and camp departments. So now that our brains have been eaten, let us see what it is like to have our flesh consumed in The Flesh Eaters.

THE FLESH EATERS

1964/Director: Jack Curtis/ Writer: Arnold Drake

Cast: Martin Kosleck, Byron Sanders, Barbara Wilkin, Rita Morley, Ray Tudor

All the action in The Flesh Eaters takes place on a small island off the Atlantic coast where five people must face a ravenous, microscopic organism that consumes human flesh in a matter of seconds. The budget for the film by director Jack Curtis is obviously very low and according to one story was subsidized by winnings his wife made on a TV game show. The characters are all comic bookishly two dimensional (and not surprisingly since the screen writer was comic book writer Arnold Drake): a mad Nazi Scientist, a drunken former screen queen, a down on his luck pilot, a zany beatnik and a good hearted gal with huge hooters she is not adverse to showing now and then.

The evil Nazi Peter Bartell, played by Martin Kosleck-who made a career of playing evil Nazis-is the man experimenting with refining the flesh eater experiment that was begun during the war. His experiments are interrupted when the plane being flown by studly looking Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders, most famous for his role as Talbot Huddleston in the soap opera The Days of our Lives) has to land off the coast because of a violent storm. With him are his passengers, jaded former movie idol Laura Winters (Rita Morely) and her assistant Jane Letterman (Barbara Wilken). A rule in low budget sci-fi flicks is “lots of dialog over expensive effects” and this movie follows the rule from beginning to end, but the chat is actually not too bad. The acting is campy and hammy often enough but I get the sense the actors and crew knew this and had a little fun with what they were working with, and so The Flesh Eaters becomes a more watchable and enjoyable ride than The Brain Eaters.

The group is joined later by the most obnoxious character in the film, a beatnik named Omar who rants and raves about “love as the weapon” so often that we feel relieved when he has his entrails eaten from the inside out later with a microbe laced martini made by Professor Bartell. In one memorable scene hero Grant Murdoch must rescue lush Laura Winters who has walked out onto a jetty looking for her booze. He gets some of the flesh eaters (usually holes poked in the film) on his leg and they are removed by Bartell’s pocket knife. They need something to stop the bleeding and in no time sexy Jane Letterman removes her blouse and spends the rest of the scene in her white bra. I think my buddy Ghidorah over at How to Maintain your Chainsaw would appreciate this fine scene.

There are some actually gory death scenes in this film which were ahead of their time for 1964. I have mentioned the demise of Omar the beatnik, and a couple characters have similar explicit death scenes later. One thing that threw me for a loop was that at the end the surviving castaways must deal with a huge rubber monster after an attempt to electrify the microbes only cause them to grow and unify. In a very odd twist the thing that kills the beast (remember in old sci-fi flicks there is usually one special thing that does the beast in, never bullets of course, and it must be found and developed in the last twenty minutes of the film) is human blood delivered directly into the creature’s eye. Strange that a thing that consumes human flesh is killed by human blood.

The photography (by Curtis under the pseudonym Carson Davidson) is actually pretty good, and while the effects are pretty low budget they very effective for the time. The two women are pretty sexy and plump and the tension between super jock stud Grant Murdoch and evil genius Peter Bartell is stereotypical and amusing. This is a good bad movie and of the two reviewed here I recommend this one more highly. Not to missed by enthusiasts of midnight cinema.

I am in the middle of rewatching the Vampire Lovers and felt the need to do a quick post on the queen of sexy lesbo vamps, Ingrid Pitt. There are some mythic elements to the life of Ingrid Pitt that is sometimes conflicting, depending on what source you are reading. There is the fantastic story of how she was born Ingoushka Petrov in 1937, of Polish parents, while her mother was being transported to a concentration camp in Germany during the war. Another source keeps the concentration camp story but gives the date of 1943 for her birth, while yet another source claims Pitt herself lists her birth date as November of 1945, when the war was well over for Germany as well as Japan and the camps were abolished.

She grew up separated until the age of ten from her parents and was reunited with them later in Berlin by the Red Cross. In 1962 she escaped East Germany by swimming across the Spree River and worked as a waitress supporting herself and her daughter while pursuing a career in acting. Whatever is true, false or exaggerated only adds to her dynamic charm and charisma.

She has had a few small roles in main stream films such as David Lean’s epic Doctor Zhivago and Where Eagles Dare with Clint Eastwood, but it was her work for James Carreras and Hammer films that has helped her achieve and maintain her status as a genuine cult film icon for decades now. Her ample cleavage, east European beauty and perfectly upturned nose made her a perfect Hammer scream queen.

A couple of her greatest roles were as the lesbian vampire Carmilla in The Vampire Lovers (with Peter Cushing in yet another great vampire hunter role) and Countess Dracula, where she plays Elizabeth Bathory, the most prolific murderess in history and inspiration for countless b-movies and goth bands..

She has authored a couple books about her life in films and is a black belt in karate. I hope the images I found and edited do her the justice she deserves. She was one of the early pioneers of the whole Euro-Lesbian vampire movie craze that flourished in the 70’s. She was a real gem and she will no doubt reappear from time to time in the Café.

Check her website for more info at: http://www.pittofhorror.com

THE BLOB

1958/ Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr./ Writers: Kay Linaker (writer, as Kate Philips), Theodore Simonson, Irvine Millgate (story)

Cast: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland, Alden ‘Stephen’ Chase, John Benson, Lee Paton, Vincent Barbi

The Blob is a successful combining of the horror and teenage delinquent film genres. While the teens in the film are not really ‘delinquents” in my opinion they are still teenagers and therefore what they say and do is always suspect to the local adults. The film was a success for the time at the box office, which must have really irked new leading man “Steven” McQueen who opted for a one lump payment of $2,500 to $3,000 (depending where you read) rather than 10% of the profits, which went over $4 million. Also it seems the young McQueen appeared promising enough to be offered a three film contract from the film’s producers, but he was so difficult to work with he was released from the contract. He would of course go on to become a film legend in Hollywood. The movie was made outside Hollywood (shot around Valley Forge Pennsylvania) by an independent film company, Valley Forge Films (formally Good News Productions, a company that made Christian films with director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr ), and it is nicely shot film in deep colors and pretty well acted for a late 50’s horror film.

First I want to say that this film, along with the next feature, X-The Unknown, were two movies that terrorized me as a boy of about 12 or 13. Both movies are about an amorphous substance that is slimy and oozy and can slither, creep and crawl under things or get though ventilator grills easily. This posed a real problem for me at night trying to sleep and I remember covering the heating vents on my floor with encyclopedias to prevent entry, but knowing in my heart that if the Blob (or X) wanted in there was no way I was going to stop them.

The movie opens up with young Steven Andrews (McQueen) putting the moves on the classic “I’m not that kind of girl”  tease Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut, who was Andy Griffith’s gal on The Andy Griffith Show) up on the local lover’s lane. While Steven assures her his intentions are honorable and she in not just another girl a meteorite (The movie’s working title were, among others,  The Meteorite Monster and The Molten Meteorite) crashes to earth over the nearby hills. An old man played by veteran actor Olin Howland , in his last role, finds the smoldering space rocks and stars poking at it with a stick and soon has his arm covered with a flesh consuming “blob”. Steven and Jane rush him into to town, to Doc Hallen, who in turn, along with his nurse, are consumed and soon the havoc is on. Of course Steven and his teenage friends must contend with the local, skeptical adults and police who all think kids are up to no good and can’t be trusted to be honest (especially when the said high school student, like McQueen, is actually 28 years old!).

People begin disappearing though we really see about four people get eaten. This is my one real complaint about the film. At one point Lt. Dave (Earl Rowe) estimates maybe forty people have died during the night. The movie would have been more exhilarating if we had seen some of these deaths. Luckily the acting, dialog, nicely photographed scenes and cool looking monster help things move along without the visible death scenes.

After lots of futile attempts at convincing parents and cops the truth is revealed when the patrons of the local theater, who were there to see a horror movie of course, come screaming out onto the streets with the ever growing blob on their tails. Steven and Jane seek shelter in a diner after grabbing Jane’s doofy little brother who in one of the best scenes in the movies hurls his “empty” cap pistol at the creature. The blob surrounds the diner and seeks out the five people inside the diner while the rest of the town stands about fifty feet away and watches in horror. I never understood as a kid  why the blob did not just turn on the crowd and absorb all of them. Well, the weakness (all old movie monsters had one special weakness that the hero had to discover by the last ten or fifteen minutes of the movie) is soon discovered… C02 fire extinguishers. The blob is frozen and sent to the North Pole, never to be heard from again until Larry Hagman revived it in his more comical version Beware the Blob in 1972, with stoned hippies like Robert Walker, rather than hot rodding 28 year old teenagers, on the menu.

The movie is very well made and while it is a B-movie it is not what I would call a bad movie, either in a good sense or bad. The catchy title song (coming in downloadable format along with The Green Slime theme in a post or two) was co-written by Burt Bacharach and was a hit song on the radio at the time. A link to a Blob site is given below and this is a true cult classic. A remake was made in with Kevin Dillon in 1988 where the Blob is the product of yet another secret government/military agency with nothing but security and profit on its always evil agenda. Well, I like the space Blob myself and all the mystery it brought with it. The film just looks rich and nice and one can see that McQueen is a real talent in his first film role. Not to be missed. The next film on our Uranium Café Double Feature presentation is about another amorphous, oozing creature who comes not from outer space, but from the center of the Earth in an early Hammer sci-fi film called X-The Unknown.

http://theblobsite.filmbuffonline.com/

X-THE UNKNOWN

1957/Director: Leslie Norman/ Writers: Jimmy Sangster (story), Jimmy Sangster (screenplay)

Cast: Dean Jagger, Edward Chapman, Leo McKern, Anthony Newley,     Jameson Clark, William Lucas

I was really excited to finally find a copy of this film online. Along with the Blob it is a movie that left me afraid to step out of my bed at night for fear something may be lurking and oozing under it, waiting for me to get up and go to the bathroom. Originally slated to be a sequel to Hammer’s Quatermass Experiment (released as The Creeping Unknown in the States) film but when Quatermass creator/writer Nigel Kneale refused permission for use of his Bernard Quatermass character another film was put together that very much resembles the earlier Quatermass film and TV productions. American actor and Oscar winner (twelve O’clock High) Dean Jagger heads the cast with his unique voice and was apparently an attempt to draw in an American audience. The film was the first writing product for production manager Jimmy Sangster, who would later go on to write some of Hammer’s more memorable films as well as direct a handful. Direction on X was begun by American director Jospesh Losey (see my post on The Servant) who was essentially in exile in England after having been blacklisted as a communist sympathizer. Some of his scenes are supposed to be in the film even, but after a few days he was removed from the position for what was reported to be health reasons. Actually Dean Jagger refused to work for an alleged commie lover and so Leslie Norman took over the job.

The film opens in the bleak bogs of Scotland where a group of soldiers are conducting tests looking for hidden radioactive isotopes. The testing is soon interrupted when a fissure opens up and two soldiers suffer sever radiation burns. The matter is brought to Dr. Royston who has been working in his little hideaway on experiments involving radioactivity. When he inspects the fissure he concludes it very well could be bottomless and the area is sealed off. Later two boys are out on a dare and while creeping into the decrepit lodgings of a local hermit one of them encounters something and suffers lethal radiation burns. A canister of Royston’s radioactive experiment is found there, much to his consternation. There is a lot of talking and scientific explanations between the films genuinely creepy moments. Later a medical Lothario sneaks a very willing young nurse into what appears to be the x-ray room and one of the film’s best moments occurs when the flesh melts off his face after he encounters the thing. The nurse goes into one of the best horror film screams on record, so good the scene earned a place on my site’s banner. There is a lot more talking and explaining of theories but the films moves along well enough. The creature is not revealed until the last part of the film and it is not bad really. This is a couple years before the blob and the movie was obviously pinched in the budget department. But when your monster is a pile of radioactive mud you are not worried too much. The thing oozes around and over things in believable fashion and I suppose I wish we had seen more of the mass. The beast is done in of course by a quick scientific method that makes little sense but in all these old movies science is both the monster and savior.

One of the film’s more eerie moments come when a team member is lowered slowly down into the crevasse to look for signs of the creature. There he finds the remains of one of two soldiers who the creature killed earlier. The scene is dark and atmospheric and as a kid it freaked me out even though the soldier made it out alive.

The film is bleak overall and done in a pretty serious tone. Even the obligatory comic relief provided by two soldiers (one played by Cockneyesque singer/comedian-and husband of sexy shrew Joan Collins- Anthony Newley) is eliminated  when they are consumed by the pile of slithering radioactive mud. It is a movie typical of the times in most ways and the evil was something in part man made and in part unknowable. The thing is basically unstoppable, but like the Blob there was a way to destroy it if you only thought hard enough and could hang on until the last fifteen minutes of the film.

Hammer of course will always be remembered primarily for their lushly staged and designed horror films, but they did some other things as well and I think X the Unknown is one of their truly hidden gems. Hidden in a pile of radioactive sludge. A really good movie in my humble opinion and I think most regular readers of the Café will not be disappointed.

AN IMMORTAL SCREAM BY A SUPER CUTE LITTLE BRITISH NURSE

TRAILER FOR X-THE UNKNOWN

TRAILER FOR THE BLOB

ONECHANBARA

2008/Director: Yôhei Fukuda/ Writers: Yôhei Fukuda, Yasutoshi Murakawa

Cast: Satoshi Hakuzen, Manami Hashimoto, Ai Hazuki, Hiroaki Kawatsure

Unlike Rottweiler which is a fairly lame flick but one I can recommend I cannot say the same of this mess of a film called Onechabara (or Oneechabara sometimes) and means something like “sword fighting older sister”. It is based on some role playing video game and the heros are a cowboy hat wearing girl in a bikini, a sawed off shotgun toting gal in black and a school girl samurai. They spend their time killing off hordes of zombies that were the creation of a mad scientist. This seems like it could translate into a reasonable movie really, but real fast this thing turns into a load of total horse hocky and only gets more fetid as the minutes grind away excruciatingly.

One thing people online say is that at least the action scenes are decent and well done, but I do not think they are decent at all. They are long and boring and the site of a hundred zombies hopping around and flaying their arms while the samurai girl is attacked by one or two at a times is too shlocky here. Of course this is a gimmick we all know from any Kung Fu movie and accept it, because if the entire band of bad guys actually jumped the hero at one time they would pulverize him, so they sort of hop around and attack one at a time. I live in China and there is no tradition I know of here like that. The opposite is true, huge mobs maul you here at one time. All the gun shot blasts and blood splatter are computer generated and I think that sometimes we just need “real” fake blood from a bottle or tube, and not a computer program. Seems this type of thing is becoming more and more common in Japanese action and horror films. I read the film was shot on video and it looks like it too. Washed out and the night shots are grainy.

The story is simply too unbearable. I display my masochism in just doing this post, but I am trying to save someone out there. I cannot walk away from my responsibility. Why Asian films dip into this maudlin soap opera hell with family ties and tragic love issues and long, sappy death scenes with goofy, over scored soundtracks and crying girls is beyond me. It is so prevalent. Look, the heroine goes on a quest to kill her little sister and does just that, so why this long, drawn out scene at the end with gobs of tears and melodramatic grief. And then during the final duel are all these flashbacks that make the damned thing even longer. She sits weakened and almost beaten, but then… flash back! and she comes back stronger.  And then… flashback and reattack again. If I were the bad guy with a sword at her throat I would recognize that she is having another flash flashback by the3rd or 4th time and is about come back ten times stronger and I would chop her damned head off while she is still looking at the ground and lost in heart wrenching memories.  And at the end of the film I wondered, where are the zombies? It stops becoming a zombie movie for about the last 20 or 30 minutes and becomes this attempt at a cry baby family story. Why? The director and writer can not do a zombie splatter film much less a human interest story. They try to show why the little girl became evil, and how she really  looked up to her big sister and on and on and on… and who cares. I wanna see zombie guts and Japanese boobs in a bikini!!!!

And yes, the girl is sexy and wears a tight, red bikini and cowboy hat… sometimes.  Usually she’s in some gunslinger poncho looking thing. And it is really not that sexy. The one thing the film had going for it and it never exploits it fully. We never learn why she has to wear this outfit as she trudges through the barren wastelands of a ruined, zombie infested Earth. I would think combat fatigues would be better. I do not think any explanation would make it reasonable, but we are deprived of any good shots anyway, so what the hell’s the point. And the zombies are not scary and appear out of nowhere in unreasonably large numbers. One moment their slow and lumbering the next they’re doing Kung Fu flips through the air. The battle scenes, as I said, are brainless. Low end. There is some useless fat guy who cannot do anything but hide when the fighting starts but he is “the brains” of the team, but I never saw him accomplish much of anything other than whimper all the time. Our heroine’s evil sister dresses like a school girl and is always in a clean and pressed looking pedophile uniform, despite the fact the world is in an apocalyptic condition. And why do these women in action movies have to look so intent and serious. Jesus. They frown and grimace more than Clint Eastwood. If you want to frown and grimace do not wear a bikini with fluffy little things on your boobs. It does not work. Squint and suck on a cigarello. And about the sawed off shotgun girl. A double barrel shotgun can only fire two shots then you have to reload. The gun cannot hold 500 shells. I know, suspension of disbelief, but enough is enough.

I admit it. I am weak. I am a sucker for a pretty face and round butt. Take a look at that DVD cover. So promising. Sure, the girl cannot act and I did not expect her to. I did not even want her to. But I hoped to see her do something rather than try to actually act. And she does try, and that means what? Crying and feeling sad over the body of her sister that she kills. For some reason unknown to mortal man these lame soapy Asian films equate great acting with uncontrolled crying. And more crying. And more crying. The tsunami of hysterical crying must be accompanied by corny Asian soundtrack music that builds up and up like a melancholy, anguished bosom about to burst. Oh the sadness of it all. What is more tragic is that this stuff is played on the buses and on the outside PA systems here in China all the time, usually at woofer shattering volumes. Creating a dramatic soundtrack for our insubstantial little lives I suppose.

Asian movie posters are often very well done design wise. I was sucked into this one by the cover art. The covers are great, it is the actual movies here in Asia that seem to be getting worse and worse. God, this thing sucked. I have Machine Girl here too, but I am afraid to even try. The cover looks too damn good for the film to deliver on. Avoid this piece of crap please. But I did include a piece of 3D art of the heroine (I forget her name and refuse to watch the film again to find out or look it up on the net) that looks pretty nifty.

One of the more enduring Hammer Queen legends Veronica Carlson was a talented art student who gained some popularity as a model after a few small film roles. She appeared here and there in the British tabloids with a few lines of gossip under a pin up style picture that usually focused on her legs. Hammer head James Carreras saw one such picture of Veronica and decided to cast in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave with Christopher Lee, to be directed by Freddie Frances, more renowned for his cinematography, especially his b/w work. This has become one of my all time favorite Hammer Films, if not my favorite. She also did Frankenstein Must be Destroyed with a thoroughly menacing Peter Cushing as a Dr Frankenstein who will let nothing or no one stand in the way of his goals, including hapless little Veronica. She and director Terrence Fisher were upset over a rape scene included in the film at the behest of the American distributor. I must say that the scene of Peter Cushing assaulting her is one of my lest favorite and unnecessary scenes in the Hammer catalog. It is totally incongruous with the way Frankenstein is portrayed in other Hammer films and not consistent with Pushing usual on screen personas.

She came into the Hammer scene towards the end of its glory days and when the American distributors were seizing more control over the British studio resulting in the more exploitive period of the studio before its demise. This is the period where Hammer’s output tended to resemble the Euro-Sleaze work going on across the channel. She made one last substantial last film with her by now good friend Freddie Francis called the Ghoul before going into film retirement and moving to Florida to paint fulltime. While she seems to remembered as a long legged pin up model, I simply adore her innocent face and thick blonde hair. A short film career but she is still remembered fondly.

THUMBNAIL GALLERY COLLECTION OF VERONICA CARLSON

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