THE WILD WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN (1966) ** ½

Batwoman (Katherine Victor) is a crimefighter who looks like one of the Golden Girls is all dressed up to go to an Eyes Wide Shut party.  Her arch-nemesis is a guy named Rat Fink who wears a fedora over top of his lucha libre mask.  When Rat Fink steals a top secret atomic hearing aid (it allows the user to listen in on any phone conversation) Batwoman and her all-girl army of bikini babes set out to recover it.

This is one of director Jerry Warren’s more coherent movies, if you can believe it.  Even then, there’s still inexplicable footage of The Mole People edited in for no good reason whatsoever.  I can’t say it’s as “good” as Teenage Zombies, but it’s about on par with Face of the Screaming Werewolf.

The shoestring budget, awful costumes, and bad performances lend the movie a certain amount of charm.  That’s not quite enough to sustain the entire running time, but it’s enough to make for an intermittently amusing flick.  Whenever things threaten to get dull, the scenes of scantily clad women go-go dancing help to maintain your interest.

There is at least one hilariously offensive sequence that is memorable.  That’s when Batwoman and some friends conduct a séance in order to find the whereabouts of Rat Fink.  During the séance, the voice of the spirit keeps getting interrupted by a spirit speaking Chinese.  It’s so wrongheaded and goofy that you just have to laugh.

AKA:  She Was a Hippy Vampire.  AKA:  The Wild World of Batwoman.  

MARVELOUS STUNTS OF KUNG FU (1979) **

Marvelous Stunts of Kung Fu, you say?  Well, I wouldn’t call them “Marvelous” or anything, but I guess they were okay.  Although the fight choreography is just so-so, the Kung Fu battles occur at regular intervals, so at least it never gets too boring.   

A deadly gang controls a small town and murder Kung Fu masters in rigged fights.  A traveler wanders into town and squares off against a crooked fortune teller who’s in cahoots with a sexy pickpocket.  Eventually, the trio decides to put their differences aside to take on the nefarious den of ruffians. 

Even though we don’t get any marvelous stunts or anything, the fight between the fortune teller and our hero is well done.  Too bad the rest of the fights are just ho-hum.  The finale, while jam packed with opponents, just doesn’t have the same sense of style.   

The most memorable fight happens right away in the opening scene.  That’s when the bad guys show off their “Golden Chicken” style.  In between shots of them punching and kicking, we see close-ups of a clucking chicken.  This scene is the comedic highlight of the film.  Unfortunately, the rest of the intentional humor fails to generate any laughs.  Maybe “Marvelous Chicken Kung Fu” would’ve been a more accurate title.  It certainly would’ve been a funnier one.

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE (2016) ****

Writer/director Taika Waititi’s latest is a touching, sad, and hilarious little movie that is a wonderful showcase for Sam Neill.  He plays a cantankerous old bushman whose wife adopts a troubled overweight teenager (Julian Dennison).  When his wife dies, social services threaten to take the boy away.  Panicked, Dennison runs off into the bush and Neill has to track him down.  Through a series of misunderstandings, the authorities come to believe that Neill has kidnapped the boy and the pair decide to evade capture by living together in the woods. 

One of the joys of the movie is seeing Neill’s gruff exterior being slowly eroded by the charms of his newfound “nephew”.  Some of the best parts are the smaller scenes where the two of them are just sitting around talking.  He really makes you care about his character and his arc is genuinely moving.  If this isn’t his best performance, it’s awfully close.   

Waititi possesses a light, childlike touch that makes the film feel like a whimsical children’s movie.  His script is sharp and funny and it slides effortlessly from wacky sequences to more heartfelt moments without missing a beat.  It’s also packed with some great dialogue and plenty of laugh-out-loud zingers.  My favorite moment is when Dennison reads a wanted poster and says, “Caucasian?  Well, they got that wrong because you’re obviously white!”  

DIRECT ACTION (2005) **

Dolph Lundgren stars as a cop who is breaking in a new partner, played by Polly Shannon.  Some of his colleagues learn that he is about to blow the whistle on their dirty dealings and they try to silence him.  Knowing he’s in constant danger, Dolph advises his new recruit to steer clear of him.  She of course sticks around long enough to save his bacon.  From then on, the duo tries to stay alive long enough to bring down the dirty cops. 

Directed and co-written by Sidney J. (Iron Eagle) Furie (who also directed Dolph in Detention), Direct Action is a by-the-numbers and uninspired vehicle.  The plot is standard-issue and the action is lackluster.  The biggest problem is the crummy camerawork that hampers many of the action scenes.  There’s a lot of jittery movements, unnecessary zooms, and awkward camera placements that undermine what could’ve been solid sequences.  The editing leaves something to be desired too. 

Direct Action (which shouldn’t be confused with the similarly-titled Dolph flick, Direct Contact) benefits from a strong performance by Dolph.  He has a reasonable amount of chemistry with Shannon, who does a fine job as his feisty, naïve partner.  While it’s far from Dolph’s worst, it never really distinguishes itself from the glut of actioners found in his filmography.   

I did like the scene where Dolph beats up a guy wearing a Punisher T-shirt.  He of course played The Punisher in the 1989 movie.  That’s about the only memorable part though.  Too bad there wasn’t a scene where he beats up a guy carrying a He-Man lunch box. 

AKA:  Black Scorpion.  

STRAY DOG (1949) ****

Toshiro Mifune stars as a rookie cop whose gun is stolen on a crowded trolley by a desperate thief during a heatwave.  He scours the underworld to find his piece and is disheartened to learn someone has been wounded with it.   Mifune then teams up with a more seasoned detective (Takashi Shimura) to find the thief before more people can be wounded and/or potentially killed by the gun.

Stray Dog feels like Akira Kurosawa’s version of an American film noir of the ‘40s.  The cinematography is moody and drenched in shadows, and the close-ups of the desperate, sweaty faces of the characters are effective.  Instead of relying on plot twists and hardboiled characterizations, Kurosawa is more interested in his characters’ feelings of guilt and obsession.  Mifune in particular is excellent as he frantically tries to get his gun back all the while feeling he’s the one to blame because of his carelessness. 

The opening that chronicles the loss of the gun is some of Kurosawa’s best work.  You’re immediately sucked in from the first frame.  Once Mifune and Shimura team up, the film starts to become something akin to a Buddy Cop movie, but even then, it’s more thoughtful and introspective than you’d expect.  The scene where Shimura lays out the differences between him and his inexperienced partner is one of the best in the entire picture. 

I also liked Kurosawa’s use of symbolism.  The heatwave that occurs during the investigation causes everyone to literally sweat it out while the search is on for the gun.  Once there is a break in the case, the heatwave gives way to a torrential downpour. 

The final act is electrifying.  There’s a tense encounter in a hotel that contains some of the most suspenseful work Kurosawa ever did.  The scene where Mifune must use his detective skills to pick out the thief in a crowded depot is equally intense.  Overall, this is one of Kurosawa’s best, which is really saying something.

LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN (2006) **

Lucky Number Slevin is yet another one of those Tarantino knockoffs that somehow were still being made long after their expiration date.  This one at least has Pulp Fiction’s Bruce Willis on board playing a soft-spoken hitman named “Mr. Goodkat”.  While it’s good seeing Bruce alongside such name actors like Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley, their talents largely go untapped. 

This is one of those crime comedies that feature hitmen, gangsters, and hoods that have names like “The Boss” and “The Rabbi” and characters that make pop culture references during casual conversation (Columbo, James Bond, and Hitchcock among them).  Tarantino had a knack for making this kind of stuff seem effortlessly hip.  In director Paul (Push) McGuigan’s hands, it seems forced and unfunny. 

The film feels more like a string of vignettes in search of a plot than anything.  Some of them work better than others, but the longwinded flashbacks that feature unnecessary slow motion are pretty annoying.  The final plot twist is predictable, although it might not have been so bad if it wasn’t for the constant back-and-forth with all the flashbacks. 

Star Josh Hartnett doesn’t do a bad job when he’s just hanging around in a bath towel and trying to convince everyone he isn’t a hitman.  When he’s actually called upon to do some assassinating, he’s rather unconvincing.  He does have a nice rapport with Lucy Liu and their scenes together are easily the best thing about the film.  Their chemistry helps keep you interested, even when the movie is contently spinning its wheels. 

AKA:  The Wrong Man.  AKA:  Slevin.

RED ZONE CUBA (1966) ½ *

Red Zone Cuba features all of writer/director/star Coleman Francis’s hallmarks:  Long scenes of people sitting around drinking coffee, people flying airplanes, a hero being gunned down in cold blood in the finale, and confusing editing.  I’m all for auteurs indulging their creative instincts, but this is Coleman Francis we’re talking about here.  If you thought The Skydivers or The Beast of Yucca Flats was bad, wait ‘til you get a load of this. 

Francis really outdid himself on this one.  He takes the incoherence he pioneered in Beast and doubles down.  You know the editing is bad when we don’t even know what country our heroes are in.  There’s a scene where Francis’s escaped convict character and his buddies flee from their Cuban prison and return to the States within the span of a jump cut.  Maybe it would be easier to figure out if Arizona didn’t look exactly like Cuba. 

The plot is an exercise in delirium.  Francis joins up with a band of freedom fighters to evade capture by the police.  He and his team storm the beaches of Cuba (they look like kids filming a war movie in their mom’s backyard), are captured, and get imprisoned.  While they await execution, Coleman and his cohorts escape and return home seeking to fleece the widow of one of their cellmates.  

The only thing saving Red Zone Cuba from being a No Stars movie is the presence of John Carradine.  His brief cameo doesn’t add much to the film, but the fact that he sings the theme song (“Night Train to Mundo Fine”) definitely makes it memorable.  Too bad the 90 minutes that follows the song it is thoroughly dreadful. 

AKA:  Night Train to Mundo Fine.