Quint

A star-studded Eurotrash with big budget combining a Frankenstein theme with the biblical story of Adam and Eve. A psychopathic Earth scientist creates a psychopathic robot that disrupts the idyll of two lovers in a research station on Saturn's third moon. Summing up the biggest highlights, we have a weirdly overacting Harvey Keitel with a ponytail as a cold-blooded madman, who at one point fights a completely naked 63-year-old Kirk Douglas. Then there's a horny robot with glowing flashlights for a head, who inherits his creator's sexual fixation with the main character (Charlie's Angels’ Farrah Fawcett), whom he chases around the sprawling, extravagant set. Surprisingly, it's all directed by Stanley Donen, whose credits include the classic musical Singin' in the Rain and the sophisticated comedy Charade. The music was composed by the Oscar-winning Elmer Bernstein. Donen joined the film as director only at the last minute, and the result feels awkward, rushed and in many ways unfinished (some of the more outrageous scenes were cut from the film). One can only imagine how the film would have turned out if its original director, John Barry (not the composer, but the production designer of, for example, Star Wars), for whom Saturn 3 was a dream project, hadn't left after creative disagreements with Douglas. As an curiosity from the 1980s to stave off boredom, though, it's entertaining.

An action B-movie that wants to be a modern variation on the samurai classic Yojimbo. The plot is quite similar and there's also Toshiro Mifune as a samurai mentor. While Sergio Leone swapped the original samurai for cowboys in A Fistful of Dollars, his western version of Yojimbo, and Walter Hill swapped the original samurai for gangsters in his western version, Last Man Standing, here some samurai have "survived" to this day and still maintain their traditions. The transformation of the initially ignorant boxer (Scott Glenn) into an old-school samurai who follows the moral code of Bushido is absolutely incredible. Nevertheless, the film offers solid action sequences that dazzle not only thanks to Frankenheimer's distinctive visual style, but also thanks to the solid melee fight choreography by a then-unknown Steven Seagal. The final scene is reminiscent of the over-the-top final “one-man-army” carnage in Commando (except that here Mifune makes do with a mere samurai sword against machine guns). Unlike Commando, however, The Challenge lacks the slightest humour and serves up unrealistic action with dry earnestness. But it still has something to it.

In today's flood of CGI-packed, youth-oriented action films, it's hard to find an honest, old-school flick with an emphasis on gritty physical action and contact choreography. And so we have no choice but to reach into the direct-to-video waters, where there are still films whose actors don't need doubles or other crutches in the form of tightropes, quick cuts or digital effects. Their raw fights, during which real pain is felt with every punch and fall, act as an antidote to all the sterile battles of digital superhero figurines that dominate today's action movies. The Undisputed series is one of the best in this area, and even its fourth entry, after the dreaded change of director, isn't bad after all. The latter-day “Van Damme” Scott Adkins returns for the first time in years to his best role as Russian prison wrestler Boyka, who first appeared as the main villain in Undisputed II. He then became the lead in Undisputed III and even earned his name in the (original) title of the film in Undisputed 4. This time around, he's an outright badass who no longer cares only about himself (and being the best fighter under the sun), but thinks of others as well. But that doesn't mean he's gone soft at all. His motivations to win this time around may not be very compelling, but he's still just as badass in the ring. It's just a shame that the fighting styles of the various actors are pretty similar this time around, their moves are quite repetitive and the action doesn't have the right build-up. It’s not on par with Undisputed III, but it's still watchable.

A rather novel shark horror film that impresses by the fact that it doesn't take place on the surface, but deep underwater in complete darkness, where you can't do without a flashlight and oxygen. While director Johannes Roberts doesn't work with open underwater space with the same visual imaginativeness as, say, Alfonso Cuaron did with outers space in Gravity, he still manages to successfully evoke a chilling sense of helplessness and uncertainty in the unfathomable depths, which are immensely vast, full of chasms and predators, and yet you can't see beyond your nose in them. Could there be a better place for horror?

In the early 1980s, the Shaw Brothers studio was trying to deal with the fact that their kung fu films were slowly falling into stereotype, so they took some liberties and made some entertainingly wacky and obscure films. Five Element Ninjas is bollocks, but in the best sense of the word. The plot is typical of a kung fu film, full of heroism, self-sacrifice, intrigue and betrayal; the heroes avenge the murder of their master. Well, you know. The biggest draw here are the breathtakingly absurd fighting techniques of the sneaky Japanese ninjas, which can surprise any Chinese kung-fu warrior who believes in a fair fight, as well as viewers who have seen a lot of similar films. Every time something absolutely insane comes up in Five Element Ninjas, you think nothing else will top it, but every other scene will disabuse you of that notion. Sun ninjas dazzle their opponents with glittering umbrellas, forest ninjas ambush unsuspecting warriors disguised as trees, water ninjas with snorkels unexpectedly leap out of the water, fire ninjas revel in pyrotechnics, and underground ninjas can burrow into the ground and stab your genitals with a spear. Equally amusing, then, is the insane ingenuity with which the already wise heroes eventually start to give them a run for their money. They'll use a fishing net on the water ninjas, stomp the underground ninjas with stilts, etc. The action scenes are packed with unbridled acrobatics and comic-book-style over-the-top brutality. Fighters are literally stomping their guts out and being ripped in half with bare hands. The action may take place in visibly cheap sets with painted skies and the same cheesy sounds, but it is incredibly choreographed with perfect timing. This is even in fights where one fighter faces five opponents at once. Synchronising the rapid movements of so many fighters simultaneously must have been a real chore, and it works brilliantly here. The direction could have been a bit more imaginative and the cinematography less static, but it's still one of the best kung-fu flicks I've ever seen.

In the late 1980s, Arnie (like Sly in Tango & Cash) tried to break into comedy with a buddy cop film that not many people remember today, because it was eventually overshadowed by his other comedy, Twins, from the same year. Red Heat was directed by Walter Hill, so it's not surprising that the humour combines with brutal violence and raw atmosphere. Sentimentality is kept to a minimum, so there’s not much of a bromance, a typical element of the subgenre. A few years earlier, Hill had basically kick-started a wave of buddy cop comedies with 48 Hours. Red Heat, however, is the first and perhaps only buddy cop film to bring together an American and a Soviet. It's a sort of cross between Lethal Weapon and Rocky IV, reflecting the then-loosening relations between the US and the Soviet Union. The Soviets are no longer seen as enemies, but as someone with whom Americans can join forces against a common enemy (international drug smugglers). The American viewer could sympathize with the protagonist, who is something of a Soviet Dirty Harry, despite the fact that he ultimately did not defect and remained a proud Soviet patriot (unlike in Red Scorpion of the same year). Another virtue of Red Heat is that it is the first American film to be shot in the Red Square (albeit without the approval of the Soviet government). But it still portrays the Soviet Union in a caricatured way – the way Americans imagined it in the 1980s. So there is an enormous amount of hilariously silly stereotypes, which are served up to the audience with stony seriousness. And I can't help but think that's what makes the film so much fun. Something so grotesquely absurd would not be made today. Right from the start, we're deafened by Horner's hard-edged variation on Prokofiev's Cantata for the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution, which is underscored by shots of Soviet soldiers marching proudly through the Red Square and majestic cuts to statues of Lenin and Marx. The opening credits are appropriately stylized in Cyrillic (with the letter "R" reversed), although the Soviets in the film principally use the Latin alphabet when writing in Russian (WTF?). Arnold, who speaks a lot of Russian here, spouts memorable expressions such as "kapitalizm", "kchuligany" or "kokainum" (which have been the target of many musical remixes on YouTube). Fights between half-naked men in the snow, the ripping off of artificial legs full of cocaine and bus chases are then treated as the usual routine of ordinary Soviet cops. It's all crowned by the final shot of Arnold in a Soviet uniform, saluting for no reason in the middle of the Red Square. No wonder Russian audiences are said to regard Red Heat as a brilliant parody that leaves them dying in laughter. However, the harsher Soviet police practices ultimately win out in the film and prove more effective in fighting criminals than American bureaucratic practices. The humour here, of course, comes from the banter between the representatives of the two different superpowers. Ivan Danko (Schwarzenegger) is a disciplined, taciturn Soviet cop who doesn't understand English metaphors and reacts to everything with cold apathy, in short, a role where Arnold could apply his Terminator acting experience and his strong accent. Art Ridzik (Jim Belushi), on the other hand, is a sloppy, foul-mouthed American cop, fond of hamburgers and doughnuts – perhaps Jim Belushi's best role. And Ed O'Ross, is absolutely flawless as the slick bad guy. Of course, there's plenty of proper 80s action.

Ninja Terminator is considered the best ninja film by the extremely prolific production company IFD Films. Though it's hard to say whether it deserves that designation, given that IFD produced over 100 ninja films during the 1980s alone (the height of ninja mania), and I doubt there's anyone who's seen them all, let alone someone who can get a good handle on them. They all have plots and titles (a mandatory combination of the word “ninja” with another, randomly chosen word) so similar that it's virtually impossible to tell them apart. Most of them are the work of the “Ed Wood of Hong Kong cinema” Godfrey Ho, an extremely hyper-productive director who managed to spawn up to 30 ninja films a year. How did he do that? Quite easily. Just buy a few Hong Kong, Thai and Filipino films that nobody knows. Then put them together, mix them up a little differently each time, and re-edit them so that the characters in each film say something a little different. Then shamelessly steal music from various well-known films. And to make it sell well in the west, spin in a few shots with western B-movie actors that nobody cares about. The most famous of these was Richard Harrison, who made world cinema history by reportedly turning down the lead role in the spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, making Clint Eastwood a star. Harrison reportedly only made one ninja film for IFD, and only later learned that his filmography had grown to include dozens of ninja films recycling the same footage of him over and over again, which did little for his career. Harrison has the ability to play out all of his scenes with a single, stony-faced expression, and his ninjutsu skills consist of being able to change from civilian clothes to a camouflage ninja suit (which he wears without being outdoors) in a split second using a stop trick. He is then taken over by the doubles, who in turn can use the stop trick to teleport from place to place during fights. Considering that all of IFD's ninja films were made using the aforementioned cut-and-paste method, it's not surprising that they didn't have the most coherent plots. What makes Ninja Terminator stand out is that, for a small moment, you even understand what's going on in it. The film starts out very lucidly. The good black ninjas steal a golden ninja statue from the evil red ninjas who want it back. This is followed by an incomprehensible time jump “two years later” and from that point on it stops making any sense – trying to decipher who is who and what is going on will make your brain spin. They serve us two films in one. In the second one, instead of Harrison, we watch an Asian hero who does nothing but fight or have sex. Ironically, this character has the most space. Probably because the actor who portrays him really masters martial arts (he literally beats all his opponents with his hands in his pockets), unlike the Western actors who can only manage funny poses. Another challenge for the audience is the fact that a lot of the important action takes place off-screen, thanks to the fact that on the DVD the actors are often cropped in front of the camera (due to sloppy transcription or incompetent camerawork, who knows). Sometimes only partially, resulting in very unusual compositions. Sometimes completely, so that there are moments when two speaking characters sit opposite each other and all we see in the frame is the table between them. In this case, it is sometimes hard to tell who is actually talking to whom, as many of the characters are dubbed with the same voice. But that's the fun of it. If you see the film with more than one person, you can then spend the next hour and a half after it's over passionately discussing with them what actually happened and why it happened (e.g. why do all the ninjas have eye shadow, and why does one of the villains wear a lady's wig on his head that he only takes off before fights?) This is a universal commentary applicable to any IFD film.

A Corman-like hybrid of Alien and The Thing with a softporn twist. Scientists have created a synthetic life form to give starving people something to eat in the future. But their experiment mutates into a cross between an alien and a critter with very large teeth, and instead of becoming food for humans, it makes food out of them. A seemingly traditional low-budget spaceploitation flick that borrows a few unused space battle shots from Battle Beyond the Stars, though they are in no way related to the plot. But why not have a nice kickass beginning? They also recycle sets and props from the weird sci-fi B-movie Galaxy of Terror (some of which by a then-unknown James Cameron). So even here the corridors of the spaceship are made of cardboard coasters and hamburger boxes, which is more evident on the Blu-ray. Not surprisingly, there's also plenty of gratuitous female nudity. The characters in the spaceship shower all the time (maybe because there's so much dirt, slime and pus everywhere) and have lots of sex (probably to keep themselves and the audience entertained). Classic. But Forbidden World is notable for its very strange, sped-up editing, characterised by crazy stroboscopic flashback and flashforward shots that the viewer perceives rather subliminally. The strangest moment is during the monster attack scene, which for some reason is intercut with hundredths of a second sections from the previous sex scene. WTF? It's like Tyler Durden edited the film after seeing the shower scene from Psycho. Maybe there's some hidden meaning in all this that escapes me, either way, the aggressive rapid-fire montages made me more sick than the ubiquitous gore effects. The soundtrack, which mixes disco synthesiser music with unpleasant electronic sounds, will also give you a headache for hours afterwards. Finally, it's worth mentioning the completely unprecedented way in which the heroes take out the main monster. I won't give it away, but you wouldn't dream of something like that.

In Tango & Cash, Sylvester Stallone attempted to redefine his image as a mumbling muscleman, which was going out of fashion in the late 80s and early 90s. So he put on glasses and a fancy suit, started to talk more and faster, and oozed self-ironic humour (“Rambo is a pussy”). Kurt Russell, on the other hand, is seen here in his typical role of a brash, uncouth deadbeat in a ragged T-shirt. A tailor-made role, you might say, although it was originally intended for Patrick Swayze, who eventually preferred another memorable 80s gem (Road House). The two stars play the best cops in town, between whom there is a constant rivalry, and the whole film is based purely on their childish bickering, posturing, sizing up and outbidding. There's not a moment when one of the characters doesn't utter a wisecrack – the banter is so constant and absurd that it's borderline unbearable. But it all works thanks to the great chemistry of the two stars, who sparkle all the time. They even share a shower scene (in prison) that has gone down in the annals of the most famous unintentionally homoerotic moments of 80s action movies. Buddy cop movies have never avoided a certain amount of “bromance” (the bonding of the male leads), but Tango and Cash have an outwardly terrible phobia of it in order to maintain their superhero masks, but they live it to the fullest anyway.

Part sequel, part “retirement” remake of the insane B-movie banger Deadly Prey, which became a trash cult-classic thanks to its wonderfully clunky action scenes and clunky wannabe badass attitude. Fans will be delighted to know that the original cast members are also returning to their original roles to have another crack at being young again with director David Prior after almost 30 years. They're no longer the fittest in terms of movement (they don't even try to dodge flying bullets anymore), but they still got it. Ted Prior is no longer running around the woods in denim shorts, but the typical 80s homoerotic undertones are definitely not missing. In fact, the sexual tension between the protagonists and the main villain is directly mentioned by the villain's sexy assistant. Over the years, David Prior has retained a youthful exuberance and an unfamiliarity with basic directorial techniques such as the rule of the axis (so that characters talking or shooting at each other sometimes look the other way), and as a result he still gives diehard fans what they expect from him. The charm of the original (plankish acting, stupid dialogue and absurd twists) is still there, and in addition to that, Prior also tries to impress today's audiences, which is customary with reboots. Thus, the internet, hackers and nerds speaking today's teenage slang play a big role in the film. But who knows how many new, viewers uninitiated in the 1980s it will win over (and if today's bad-movie lovers would prefer something extremely cool like Sharknado). The film was shot on digital and there are a lot of bad CGI effects, which makes it feel somewhat sterile compared to the first one. But it's still pure old-school action that doesn't hold anything back, doesn't mess with anything, and entertains with its over-the-top, muscular language and dry one-liners. I had a hundred times more fun with it than with the new Kickboxer.