Dak Rambo is...THE ULTRA WARRIOR

Here at CF, we're aficionados of many things cheesy and cult, but few genres hold sway over us in the way that cheesy post-apocalyptic movies of the '80s and early '90s can. There's just some lure to punks running around in gravel pits with laughable "futuristic" attire and cars or dune buggies modified with ridiculous fins and pieces of metal welded all over them.

I thought I had a pretty good grasp of this genre and its dubious cinematic offerings, having collected and watched almost every Italian, Filipino and American Mad Max clone. There I was, perusing records at a local music store when I happened upon Ultra Warrior, a previously unknown and later entry in the canon. The box cover pulled me in, and I assembled $1 from the change in my pocket and purchased the tape.

With cult cinema, you tend to get drastically downgraded returns with each film that plunges you further into the regrettable depths of a sub genre. In the post-apocalyptic cycle, you have your creme de la creme, Road Warrior and Escape From New York, followed by flicks like 2019: After the Fall of New York and Raiders of Atlantis that you revel in for their delirious excesses, hackneyed though they may be. Then you descend into the still enjoyable but wholly indefensible, your Warrior of the Lost Worlds or Endgames, until you finally hit the absolute dregs, questioning the value of your life while you're watching Bronx Executioner. Ultra Warrior inhabits that middle ground - it's bad, to be certain, but it still has certain endearing elements and a high enough entertainment value to warrant a recommendation to die hard aficionados. It also has the benefit / detriment of being a Roger Corman production and release, and boy does it ever show!

We kick off with the standard ominous title crawl over stock footage of an atomic bomb exploding, and we're introduced to our hero, Kenner (Dack Rambo - NOT his real name!), who is your cookie-cutter post-apocalyptic badass. He is triumphant in a competition which is mysteriously reminiscent of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. After his victory, his "reward" is being charged with heading out into the desolate wasteland to try to secure more of the civilization's fuel source, which, naturally, is dwindling. The wasteland is in the eastern half of the former United States, but it doesn't matter, because it looks just like Arizona in the end. Dack Rambo spends much of the movie mumbling his lines and taking part in post-apocalyptic activities like watching bizarre punk bands and battling biker gangs with Mohawks and the obligatory dune buggies that everyone in the eighties assumed we would be using after the fall of civilization.

What follows are some totally out of left field space battle scenes meant elevate the movie over what is at heart just another 9th-rate Mad Max clone. These sequences would be more impressive had they not been stolen from about two or three other earlier Roger Corman productions; Battle Beyond the Stars is easily identifiable for those who have seen the movie. This footage is of a much higher quality than the original stuff they filmed for Ultra Warrior. It should be no surprise that co-director Kevin Tent went on to become a A-list editor; I suspect it was his job to raid Corman’s library for footage they could steal and edit into the movie. The obvious giveaway comes when you see George Peppard (Hannibal from the A-Team) for a split second, but it's actually his character from Battle Beyond the Stars. Peppard himself was probably nowhere near the actual set of this one! There's also a whole lot of random stock footage liberally distributed throughout to pad out running time and reduce budget costs, but you've got to laud Roger for his thriftiness. Few directors / producers were able to get so many nutty projects onto the screen. If the rehashed footage isn't enough tediousness for you, there are also several badly-lit, Skinemax-esque sex scenes between Dack Rambo and his love interest that go on way too long.

In researching this bizarre cinematic experience, I discovered that Rambo is indeed the star's true family name, although he "upgraded" to "Dack" from "Norman," a far wimpier birth name. He was known mostly for replacing Jack Dempsey as Bobby Ewing in the last seasons of Dallas that no one watched. His presence is one of the top selling points of the film on the box, so you know you're in for a treat.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

Well, that depends on just how serious are you about watching bad movies. If you are a fan of post-apocalyptic cinema who absolutely must see it all, then yes, it does get worse than this, and Ultra Warrior will hold your attention. Casual fans can stick to the tried-and-true favorites.

The Happening / The Crappening

Writing a CF review of this Hollywood cash and burn is kinda like picking on the retarded kid at school. Aside from John Boorman (Zardoz, The Exorcist II), I can think of no other Hollywood director that has gone from being considered a brilliant new voice to out-of-his-mind in such a short span of time. Sure, lots of brilliant directors have made bad films, but Shyamalan has made two in a row. In fact, The Happening takes things a step down to the lows dredged by Lady in the Water.

The plot is ludicrous, but on paper, it actually sounds as though it would make a pretty cool low-grade science fiction movie, like the ones they cranked out back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. People mysteriously go into trances and begin killing themselves in major East Coast cities. Is it biological terrorism? Urban nihilism? A covert government test? Unfortunately, the cause isn’t nearly as interesting as any of those scenarios – it’s (ludicrously) the trees and plants, which have suddenly decided that they hate humans and have evolved ways to get rid of us.

Mark Wahlberg, who is not necessarily a bad actor, is our everyman, and even he doesn’t really seem to know what to do with the material he’s offered. The opening scene with him playing a high school science teacher is painful, and I wondered if they hadn’t slipped in some rehearsal footage by mistake. His brother will come off looking cooler in front of a half-empty stadium during the New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

It’s not all Marky Mark’s fault. The dialogue is such that Knight basically sent his actors down the road in a car with square wheels. What we have is a clear violation of screenwriting rule #1 – “show, don’t tell.” One scene, for instance, has a group of people being shot, and we see Wahlberg close his eyes and tell himself, “Think you’re a scientist, look at the variables…”

You expect straight-to-video movies to be bad, but it’s rare when a major Hollywood director ends up making something as Mystery Science Theater-worthy as The Happening turns out to be. This movie is so poorly-directed and acted that if you took all of the scenes that actually worked and combined them, you may get a minute and a half of running time. Shyamalan’s first mistake was believing in his heart when the whole world told him he was brilliant. Yes, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are well-made films, but Knight’s hubris clearly got the better of him, and one wonders whether he even passes his scripts off to editors any more. When the public began to get skeptical of his films, Knight got a bit snarky. Disney turned this one down after reading the script, and it has been reported that his own assistant was not confident in the script.
Towards the end of the film, the plot veers into gothic horror territory. Wahlberg, Deschanel and the kid with them stumble across a decrepit farmhouse that time forgot, complete with the standard crazy doll-collecting caretaker who may or may not have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Shyamalan’s stilted dialogue and inept scene structuring ruin what could have been a few effective scares. The set piece really doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the movie; I actually wonder if Shyamalan was having difficulty stretching the killer trees and weeds plot into a feature film, then added this sequence as an afterthought.

Is this movie worth your $2?: The Happening is one of those that really should be viewed for its monumental flameout value, if nothing else. You almost wish Shyamalan would have checked himself before he wrecked himself, because only the most mean-spirited among us would really want to see him fail. It is certainly not good, nor is it entertaining or interesting enough to be bad-good. Masochists need apply.

Avenging Force: Dudikoff vs. Nazis

Among ‘80s action films, Avenging Force is a rare creature, indeed – It’s a movie teaming up Michael Dudikoff and Steve James that isn’t an American Ninja movie, AND, even more oddly, it eschews the rightwing jingoistic “soldier for American” storyline that so many Reagan-era action movies embraced. Of course, it still endorses vigilantism and macho posturing with dollops of homoerotic subtext, but in a welcome change of pace, the heroes are battling an underground conservative conspiracy. Perhaps the strangest thing is that this one came out of Cannon Films, the studio responsible for the bulk of conservative ‘80s action, including Invasion USA and the Missing in Action movies. In an even odder twist on rightwing action themes, it is implied that the CIA are the bad guys!

Helming this one is Sam Firstenberg, the ‘80s action director responsible for the two best Sho Kosugi ninja outings and the first two American Ninja movies. Michael Dudikoff, putting his patented “wooden to wooden” acting range on display, is ex-CIA agent Matt Hunter, who retired to a quiet ranching life after his parents were murdered. Cannon vet Steve James is Larry Richards, an altruistic politician from New Orleans running for the Senate. On a routine “catching-up” visit, Hunter ends up in the middle of a botched attempt on his friend’s life at a Mardi Gras Parade, during which Richards’ young son is killed. It turns out that the underground extreme rightwing racist “Pentangle,” led by Glastenbury (John P. Ryan - It’s Alive, Class of 1999, in another great over-the-top performance) has set their sites on ensuring that Richards doesn’t make it to Washington.

Avenging Force kicks off with a great action set piece, where members of the Pentangle wear weird masks (there’s even a leather gimp outfit for good measure) and hunt a couple of guys Most Dangerous Game-style through one of Louisiana’s back bayous. Like most Cannon films, the plot merely exists to hang action scenes on, and this one stands out from much of their other fare in being more colorful and interesting. There’s a gory Mardi Gras shootout, an above-average car chase, an escape from a burning house, another bayou hunt in the pouring rain, a fight involving medieval weaponry, and more. It still has that trashy, slapped-together feel that every Cannon production has, but Avenging Force doesn’t quite suffer from the pacing problems that drag down some of their more famous films.

Steve James and John P. Ryan are always lots of fun to watch, and this time around is no exception. I’ve always wondered why James never got top-billing in any of the movies he was in. He’s certainly far ahead of Dudikoff in the charisma, entertainment and sheer energy department – watch American Ninja 2 for another prime example of this. Ryan gives a grimacing, overacting performance as the slimy racist demagogue. Whether he’s ranting and raving about how “Hitler was right,” or chortling as he shoots an associate in the gut and leaves him to bleed to death, he manages to dominate every time he’s on-screen.

This being a low-budget Cannon production, there are still many problems with the movie. The dialogue is just atrocious, and there are sloppy filmmaking gaffes and plot holes. The ending is also unresolved and anti-climactic. Perhaps they planned an Avenging Force 2, but the world was deprived when it got overshadowed by the latest Chuck Norris feature.

Is this movie worth your $2?
Avenging Force is an overlooked but highly entertaining low-budget action take on Most Dangerous Game plot elements, which have long since become cliché. Any bad action and Cannon buffs owe it to themselves to see this one.

Heroes of the east: Kungfu war of the roses

AKA: Challenge of the Ninja

One of the greatest teams in martial arts films has been the director and star of the classic martial arts film 36^th chamber of shoalin. Director Lau Kar Leung and Gordan Liu (two roles in Kill Bill) have teamed up for several of the most classic kung fu films of the shaw brothers era. Eight diagram pole fighter, executioners from shoalin, legendary weapons of china and one of their best team ups is Heroes of the east.

While this team had mistakenly taken on too much comedy in legendary weapons and the the 36^th chamber sequels here the comedy all in the first half actually works. Gordon Liu plays a wigged(one of the few movies where he askews the Skinhead look) martial artist whose father arranges a marriage to a beautiful Japanese woman. At first he’s against it but he concedes and soon discovers his wife is a well rounded Japanese martial artist.

The first problem this marriage has is that Liu’s new wife is a nationalist all about the superiority of Japan’s martial skills. One time after another her very sensitive husband stomps on her puny Japanese skills until she runs home to the waiting arms of a hunky ninja expert played by Yasuaki Kurata. Kurata by the way is best known to modern audiences for his small but important role going toe to toe with a much younger Jet Li in Fist of Legend.

So in strange attempt to save the marriage Liu sends his estranged wife a challenge for a duel claiming that if she can best him once in 10 challenges he will concede that Japanese martial arts are superior. Nothing says love like a 10 level challenge.

This letter is intercepted by our ninja expert and a whole group Japan’s finest experts are so offended that they travel to China to challenge Liu. Ok So as you would expect the Chinese guy takes them on one at a time and you can imagine this would not play in Japan any better than Rambo II would in Vietnam. There is a whole sub-genre of ‘Chinese martial arts are better than Japanese martial arts’ films. My favorite Kung Fu movie of all time is Duel to the Death a 1982 spin on the theme by Chinese ghost story director Ching siu Tung.

The fights are great but you really have to dig movie martial arts challenges because after the plot is established in the first hour the second is just non stop fights. They are good fights and the Ninja expert played Kurata almost steals the show with his dirty Ninja tricks. His crab style fighting is also really cool to watch. You dig it. What separates Heores from the east from other ‘Chinese martial arts are better than Japanese martial arts’ films is the PC ending. Liu gives this speech that is supposed restore the honor of the defeated Japanese in what looks like a lame attempt at soothing the egos of Japan’s movie goers. I’m sure that makes them feel better after one Chinese dude ina wig beats all their countries experts.

Is it worth your two dollars:

Fans of old school martial arts movies should consider this crucial viewing. Certainly fans of the Kill Bill movies would benefit from seeing Gordon Liu and finding out why QT gave him not one but two roles. YES!

Shadow Whip: Whips n' swords, and it's NOT a fetish movie!

Devotees to classic Shaw Brothers films are already aware of Pei-Pei Cheng and her work in Kung Fu epics such as Come Drink With Me and Golden Swallow, where she played the titular character. It was released in the seventies in the U.S., dubbed and tagged with the weird title The Girl With the Thunderbolt Kick. Golden Swallow served as one of Director Chang Cheh's bloodiest films, but balances a love story along with the trail of bodies. However, it was her performance as Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that Americans are probably most familiar with.

Pei-Pei also starred in an unusual Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movie called The Shadow Whip. Directed by Lo Wei, who went on to direct the Bruce Lee classic Chinese Connection (or Fist of Fury, depending on who you ask). The film starts off at a snail's pace, and I admit I was about to shut it off after fifteen minutes, which consisted mostly of some strange guy signing as the characters travel on a wagon train across a snow-blanketed Chinese frontier.

Slow start aside, I'm glad I stuck it out. The plot isn't all that important - basically, Pei-Pei and her uncle fight huge groups of sword-wielding bandits with whips, and unconventional weapon in these sorts of movies for sure. There is early wire-fu, which is pretty well done and goes beyond the hidden trampoline backwards filming so common during the era.

According to a brief glance at the IMDB page, Summo Hung was in this, but it must have been a brief cameo, as I didn't notice him.

Is it worth your $2?
Yes - if you've got a hankering for a movie that combines whips and swords (the best of both worlds!), then this may be one of the few that satisfies you. I found it good enough, but if that doesn't cut it, watch Pei-Pei in Golden Swallow, which is really much better.

Super Infra-Man - He has see-through eyes!

We at CF were treated to a rare a wonderful thing a chance to see a bad movie classic on the big screen. This one was barely able to sneak onto American screens, even when it was originally released in 1976. In a well-made and respectable foreign film, we often consider dubbing to be nothing short of annoying on a level that could only be matched by Britney Spears' acting or Jar Jar Binks. Nails on a chalkboard, etc. That being said, the English dubbing in Super Infra-man is not only acceptable, but preferred - only a few movies I can think of benefit from English dubbing. See also: Story of Riki.

Ripping off Ultraman and pre-dating the Power Rangers, Infra-Man is a schlock classic, ranking with the best of the bygone rubber monster craze. Starring a baby-faced Danny Lee years before The Killer made him famous when he went down in a blaze of glory with Chow Yun Fat. He was off to an embarrassing start in the seventies, wearing the tight red rubber Infra-Man suit that also sports antennae.

When a volcano explodes and spits out the secret headquarters of Princess Dragon Mom, a blonde-haired Chinese woman who cracks a giant whip and wants to control the earth, the world's greatest scientific minds leap into action, creating a superhero with see-through eyes (according to the trailer). We know they're scientists because they all wear white coats and hang out in a futuristic-looking room full of randomly-blinking lights, as every B sci-fi scientist seemed to.

Princess Dragon Mom commands a legion of guys wearing bike helmets with skulls painted on them, as well as half a dozen rubber-suited monsters. They also have speedboats and go around tearing down power lines and brainwashing people - EEEEEEVVVVVILLLLL! The story is incredibly simplistic, and really just shuttles Infra-Man from one confrontation to the next. There's a strange scene with the professor and his daughter that's good for some unintentional laughs, and lots of great stuff with PDM hamming it up in her sekrit base.

This movie is a lot of mindless monster fun, but it's got some pacing problems, especially if you try to watch it with subtitles. It's best enjoyed auf English, as the Germans would say, with a big group of acquaintances with senses of humor.

Is this movie worth your $2?

No doubt! The English-dubbed version has enough laughs to leave any fan of bad movies happy. The more people to share the laughter will only amplify your enjoyment of this film!

Burial Ground: This cloth smells like death

At this juncture in time, even non-horror fans can be remotely familiar with parts of the Italian zombie canon, thanks to the wide availability of this stuff on DVD. At the very least, you shouldn't be surprised to talk to the "normal" people who can remember seeing that distinct giant box for Fulci's Zombi 2 (AKA Zombie) turning white on a video store shelf of a bygone rental store.

If you really want to test an Italo-schlock fan's mettle in a contest of "yes, but have you seen this," you'd do well to bring up Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground, a considerably lesser-known Italian horror clunker from that glorious year of 1981. The '80s truly was the decade that proved to be the swansong for anti-PC tax write-offs that were dumped straight to the shelves of video stores, but, thanks to DVD, we can enjoy films like Burial Ground until the apocalypse.

The story begins with some guy (we later learn he's a "professor") wearing a glued-on beard chipping away at a bunch of dirt. He's been hard at work studying some mysterious runes, which look more like Internet emoticons (seriously – look carefully - there's a smiley face carved onto the tablet!). Lo and behold, zombies emerge from the wall. Before they start munching on him, he tries to reason with them, screaming, "No! I'm you're friend." This would be stupid enough, but the bad dubbing that plagues the rest of the movie just makes it that much better.

Next up, you get your typical cast of ugly Italian zombie fodder driving up to the mansion where the professor was conducting his studies. The credit sequence is accompanied by some of the worst nu-jazz this side of Kenny G / pornography. The acting is awful, and the dialogue is so unbelievably bad that you can rest assured not a soul on the set spoke a lick of English. Actually, this pushes the movie even higher, as the characters deliver one howler after another. It truly is magical.

The vacation party is there to frolic, and they do just that for a good chunk of running time. I've seen reviews level the charge of "boring" on these sections of the movie, but I really have to question what they're doing watching bad Italian zombie films if they're there solely for the mayhem. Slow down, smell the roses, appreciate the finer points of bad filmmaking – we get hilarious dialogue between characters, sleazy, uncomfortable sex scenes, and totally laughable editing. The centerpiece of the movie turns out to be this weird "child" named Michael. You see, for the purposes of the script, he's supposed to be around the age of ten, but due to the unavailability of a real kid (pesky laws), the director opted to cast what appears to be a thirty-year-old man with some kind of dwarf condition, and then had him dubbed by a guy attempting a falsetto. He has to be one of the scariest, most bizarre things I've ever seen in a horror movie – and it's completely unintentional!

Michael's overall creepiness is compounded by the fact that he has a strange Oedipal fixation on his mother. At one point, she rebukes an advance from him, and he responds, "What's wrong?! I'm your son!" You can see where this is going. I'm not sure who urged this subplot be added to the "script," but you will not soon forget it.

The zombies in the movie look cheap, but simultaneously effective. I can certainly appreciate a director who works with the effects he's got. Bianchi's living dead, clad in moldy cloaks and covered with green pus and maggots, are the "smarter" breed of zombie that are able to use tools; this is the only zombie film I can think of where we see the undead teaming up to knock down a door with a battering ram. Thankfully, they're not modern athletic zombies like those found in 28 Days Later or the Dawn of the Dead remake. This doesn't matter, though, because the characters in the movie are so incredibly stupid when faced with their impending doom that they sit in one place and wait to get eaten. There are some memorable yet cheap gore scenes, including one obviously inspired by the eye impalement scene in Zombi 2, and another involving the creepy "kid" that will remain with you for the rest of your life.

Burial Ground is a terrible movie. Entry-level film school students would have a field day picking apart the inconsistencies and moviemaking rules that are violated, but that's precisely why it's so easy to love. The pace moves along at a fast clip, and the stupidity hits monumental levels.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

Yes – if you're a zombie movie or Italian trash cinema fan, Burial Ground is absolutely worth a rental. I recommend ownership – it ranks with classics like Riki-Oh, Robocop, Commando and Bad Taste as one of my favorite "party movies." Throw it on, and then watch your friends clear out of the room or question your sanity!