CHINA SALESMAN (2018) ½ *

Mike Tyson is slowly carving out quite a movie career for himself.  After his funny cameo as himself in The Hangover, he went on to have memorable roles in action flicks like Ip Man 3 and Kickboxer:  Retaliation.  His appearances were the highlights of both of those films, and based on those performances alone, I was genuinely curious to see when and where he’d pop up next.  When I heard he was going to fight Steven Seagal in China Salesman, I knew I had to see it.  I just wasn’t prepared for… this.

Admittedly, China Salesman has a great set-up.  Say what you will about it, it doesn’t make you wait long to see the fight between Seagal and Tyson.  Five minutes in, Seagal offers him a drink at his bar.  When Tyson refuses, he sends some muscle-bound dudes to force Iron Mike to drink a mug of piss.  After mopping the floor with them, he then fights Seagal.

I have seen some shitty fight scenes in a Steven Seagal movie in my time, but this might be the worst.  Okay, maybe not the WORST.  It’s certainly the biggest disappointment in terms of squandered potential.  

It looks from the ham-fisted editing that Seagal and Tyson weren’t even on set at the same time during filming of the fight scene.  The use of odd and obvious CGI in simple camera set-ups (it looks like there’s a blur in between them at times) is painfully apparent, as is the flagrant use of stunt doubles for both men.  The funniest moment is when Seagal gets punched and it looks like a CGI flinch has been added in post-production.  We do get one great bit where Tyson punches a barrel that explodes on contact, but that is the only legitimately cool moment.  

Anyway, Seagal is an arms dealer who owns a bar in Uganda.  If you’re wondering what Seagal showed up to the party, it’s Yellow-Tinted Sunglasses, Goatee, and Scarf Seagal.  Tyson is a Ugandan militant.  When he tries to do a Ugandan accent, the results offer one of the few laughs of the entire movie.  (“We must avenge them BLLLUUUUDD for BLLLUUUUDD!”)

If this was a Casablanca type of movie with Seagal as Bogey owning a café in a war-torn stretch of land with Tyson acting as his ersatz Claude Rains, it would’ve been okay.  However, the title of this movie is China Salesman and if you haven’t already guessed, neither of them are salesmen, nor are they Chinese.  

No, the main thrust of the story revolves around a Chinese salesman (Dong-xue Li) trying to establish a tech contract for 3G cellphone towers in Uganda.  Of course, there are other nations who don’t want the Chinese to win the contract and will stop at nothing to prevent the salesman from doing his job (even causing civil war).  The first half involves a lot of industrial espionage (including Tyson hiding in the shadows taking pictures), board meetings, and construction site management.  The second half, in which the salesman becomes the hero of the Uganda revolution is even worse.  

The moment when the movie resorts to LITERAL flag waving, I pretty much gave up on it.  The problem was, at that point, there was still an hour left to go.

Whenever Tyson and Seagal are on screen together, the movie at least has an irresistibly cheesy vibe.  Too bad they’re barely in it.  In fact, if you turn it off right after their opening brawl, you’ll be a lot better off.

AKA:  Chinese Salesman.  AKA:  Deadly Contract.  AKA:  Tribal Warfare.

PRIME EVIL: LAST HOUSE ON MASSACRE STREET (1973) *** ½

Barbara (Robin Strasser) is madly in love with David (Arthur Roberts).  Her rich father (John Beal) doesn’t want her to marry David, but she does so against his wishes.  On their wedding day, Barbara catches David in the arms of his ex-girlfriend (Iva Jean Saraceni).  She stabs him with a pair of scissors, destroys the wedding cake, and takes off.  Barbara’s father insists David not divorce her (you know, that whole “for better or for worse” thing), but after her disappearance he grows restless.  He shacks up with his old girlfriend and soon, the two begin receiving threatening phone calls and having weird dreams where the cackling bride endlessly torments them. 

The first twenty minutes of Last House on Massacre Street (which, let’s face it, is one of the coolest titles ever) would make a great contained short film.  It stands on its own as a nifty piece of exploitation filmmaking with a potent set-up and an even better punchline.  What’s surprising is that director Jean-Marie Pelisse (who unfortunately never made another movie) deftly maintains the same level of atmosphere throughout.  Most directors would run out of gas after the spectacular first act.  Pelisse is somehow able to keep the suspense brewing while the film spins off into wilder, weirder directions.

The third act contains a twist that veers into the realm of the supernatural.  Now, a lot of films wouldn’t have been able to survive this sort of sudden turn.  Incredibly enough, this one defies the odds and manages to get even better as it goes along.  Last House on Massacre Street is the rare flick that actually lives up to its junky exploitation title.  It’s an eerie and effective little chiller I won’t soon forget, and one that deserves to be better known. 

AKA:  The Bride.  AKA:  The House That Cried Murder.  AKA:  No Way Out.  AKA:  Scream.  

You can find Last House on Massacre Street streaming on Prime for free here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C353T8K?ref_=imdbref_tt_wbr_piv&tag=imdbtag_tt_wbr_piv-20 

ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS (1973) ** ½

Tony Kendall returns as Kommissar X in this sixth entry in the long-running series.  A rich woman vacationing in Bangkok with her family is terrified when her daughter is kidnapped by white slavers. She calls on Captain Rowland (Brad Harris) to find her and he in turn gets in touch with Jo Walker (AKA:  Kommissar X) to join the hunt.  Together, they track the slavers down to a remote island where a wealthy madam (who keeps a pet crocodile) runs the show.

This was my first exposure to the Kommissar X series, and if it’s any indication of the franchise, I wouldn’t mind checking out the other entries.  It’s a lightweight, pseudo-spy movie with some decent action and a handful of genuinely funny bits.  My favorite moment came when Harris’ clothes are stolen by a beautiful would-be assassin.  When she fails to kill him, he’s forced to put on a short bellhop’s uniform and give chase in extremely ill-fitting clothes.  Kommissar X also has a few Bond-inspired gadgets like a pistol-sized rocket launcher and a pair of sunglasses that double as a radio transmitter.  Not to be one-upped, the villains have a pretty cool ice cream truck equipped with a flamethrower at their disposal.  

Island of Lost Girls is far from perfect.  After a strong start, it falls into a repetitive rut after a while.  (Try to keep a running tally of how many people get killed by poisoned blow darts.)  Still, any movie that manages to combine prostitutes with poison rings, motorboat chases, and killer snakes makes for a perfectly acceptable lazy afternoon entertainment if you ask me. 

AKA:  Three Golden Serpents.

HARD BREED TO KILL (1967) **

A gang of bank robbers led by Slim Pickens attack a rancher, kidnap his wife, steal his horses, and leave him for dead.  As Slim and his men head into Indian territory, the rancher nurses his wounds and takes off in hot pursuit.  While the robbers endlessly bicker, the rancher picks them off one by one to reclaim his wife and exact his revenge.  

Well, when Rafael Portillo, the director of the Aztec Mummy movies makes a Mexican western with Slim Pickens, you can be damn sure I’m going to watch it.  Portillo offers up a handful of nicely shot scenic vistas, which lends the otherwise cheap-o film a much-needed shot of production value.  It’s also a bit grislier than some of its contemporaries.  We get a few slashed throats and a scene where our hero impales a bad guy on his walking stick. 

However, that’s not quite enough to make Hard Breed to Kill a quality south of the border oater.  The film suffers from a repetitive nature that prevents it from gathering much momentum.  After a solid set-up, it eventually devolves into an endless series of scenes of bad guys looking for water, making camp, nodding off, and shoving off in the morning.  The flashbacks (in which the wife remembers her husband teaching her how to survive in the wild) serves to flesh out their relationship, but it ultimately slow things down even more. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: HOWLING 6: THE FREAKS (1991) * ½

Ian (Brendan Hughes) is a British werewolf drifter stuck in a small American town.  He gets a job helping a local pastor restore his church and begins to develop a crush on the pastor’s daughter.  A traveling freakshow ran by the evil Harker (Bruce Payne) rolls into town, and he almost immediately decides he wants Ian to be his star attraction.  

The Greatest Showman it is not.  

This is the only Howling sequel I haven’t seen, which is why I wanted to review it to close out the Halloween Hangover column.  I’ve long heard it was one of the best Howling sequels.  Now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m not sure agree with that assessment.  Sure, 2 is bad, but it’s also spectacularly entertaining.  Although the freakshow plotline makes it stand out from the other sequels, there’s not much here that makes it “better” than them either.

Speaking of the freaks, they include a three-armed card player, a half man/half woman (who shows off one boob), and an alligator boy.  The best one though is played by none other than Huggy Bear himself, Antonio Fargas.  He’s the geek who bites the heads off chickens.  So, no matter how bad Howling 6 is, at least it has that going for it.

At 100 minutes, it’s about 20 minutes longer than any Howling sequel should be.  The subplot about a local election is totally unnecessary and should’ve been scrapped entirely.  There’s also a terrible montage where Hughes fixes up the church that’s accompanied by some awful country gospel music that deserved to be left on the cutting room floor.

Howling 6 moves at a slow pace and it takes a good 45 minutes before anyone turns into a werewolf.  As far as the effects are concerned, they are decent, compared to what we’ve seen in the other sequels, but the final creature (which isn’t all that hairy) is kind of lame.  The melting sequence in the end is pretty cheap looking too, although the final skeleton looks cool enough.  Much of the film is too dark, which might’ve been on purpose to hide the weak werewolf effects.  In fact, the blue-skinned vampire make-up (yes, there’s a vampire in this movie… don’t ask) is a lot more inventive than the shitty werewolf, who looks like he’s in dire need of Rogaine.

Hughes makes for a bland lead.  The good news is that Payne is quite good as the conniving ringleader.  His performance is easily the best thing about the movie, but it’s not nearly enough to qualify it as anything other than another shitty Howling sequel.

BLUE RUIN (2014) ***

After being impressed by Jeremy Saulnier’s Murder Party, I figured I’d give his follow-up, Blue Ruin a try.  It was a critical hit on the indie circuit and got him good enough notices to parlay it into his biggest success, Green Room a few years later.  While it’s not quite as strong as either of those films, it’s still an absorbing and stylish thriller.

What we have is basically a homeless version of Death Wish.  Dwight (Macon Blair) lives in his car along the Rehoboth boardwalk.  When he finds out the guy who murdered his parents is getting out of jail, he heads down to Virginia and kills him in a barroom bathroom.  His family comes after Dwight packing heat and he must defend himself at any cost.

Saulnier moves things along at a slow and methodical pace.  Even though there are times where it seems like not a lot is happening, it all works out well in the end because you get to see the toll that violence and revenge takes on its characters.  There are a lot of quiet stretches along the way that are punctuated with bursts of gruesome violence, which is what makes them so effective and shocking.  

Blair (who’s appeared in every one of Saulnier’s films) is great in the lead role.  The whole movie rests squarely on his shoulders.  If we didn’t grow to care about him and his quest for revenge, everything would’ve come crashing down.  He does a fine job showing what an average joe has to go through to get revenge.  He’s not Charles Bronson.  He’s just a dude, which is the main thing that separates Blue Ruin from your typical revenge picture.

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018) ** ½

The Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is their first Netflix movie.  It might also be the first western anthology ever made.  It’s the first one I’ve seen at any rate.  Like most anthologies, it’s almost doomed from the start because of the uneven structure of the genre.  However, there’s some real gold to be found here.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (****) Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) looks like an aimable, unassuming goofball, but he’s also a crack shot quickdraw gunfighter.  In addition to shooting people, he loves singing and narrating the events of his life.  In fact, nothing, even death can stop him from his longwinded narration.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (the story, not the whole movie) is probably the best thing the Coens have ever done.  It is a hilarious and surprising ode to Roy Rogers and Sam Peckinpah in which the sadistic outbursts of violence are almost as funny as Nelson’s performance.  This segment allows the Coens to take their penchant for creating colorful characters with peculiar dialogue patterns and their knack for sudden violence to the nth degree and they in turn create what has got to be the ultimate Coen Brothers creation.  

Near Algodones (***) James Franco stars as a bandit who tries to rob a bank.  He doesn’t count on the armor-plated teller (Stephen Root) and his devotion to the bank’s security.  As he is about to be hung for his crime, the bandit, through a set of unlikely circumstances, goes out of the frying pan and into the fire.

This tale has a great set-up and a strong middle section, but it ends much too abruptly (albeit fittingly).  Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen this sequence expanded upon.  It would’ve been nice to have had Franco’s character fleshed out a bit more.  It would’ve given the final scene a bit more impact, instead of just a taste of (literal) gallows humor.

Meal Ticket (** ½) A man (Liam Neeson) runs a small traveling sideshow.  The star of the show is a quadruple amputee (Harry Melling) who performs everything from the works of William Shakespeare to the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.  Eventually, he realizes the show can’t go on forever.

Wow.  This one is just bleak and depressing.  It’s well-realized and the art direction is excellent, but like the previous tale, it’s all too brief.  This is another one that would’ve benefited from a longer running time.  It earns points for being relentlessly grim, but the payoff (although inevitable) isn’t quite as effective as it could’ve been.  

All Gold Canyon (*** ½) An old prospector (Tom Waits) makes his way through the countryside looking for gold.  Through many ups and downs, he finally strikes it rich.  Almost immediately, he’s forced to defend his claim at any cost.

This tale perfectly shows us the loneliness and isolation of the Old West.  The grizzled Waits fits right into the Coens universe, so much so that you have to wonder why it took them so long to cast him in one of their movies.  Waits endears himself to the audience and when it comes time for him to protect his gold, we wholeheartedly root for him.  This also has the distinction of being one of the most uplifting stories in the lot, which is nice, because the last two tales are utterly depressing and/or dull.  

The Gal Who Got Rattled (**) Zoe Kazan goes out on the Oregon Trail with her brother to meet her future fiancée.  Along the way, she has to deal with the death of her brother, the possibility of putting down her dog, and the prospect of being cheated out of her money by a scoundrel wagon master.  A handsome cowpoke (Bill Heck) offers to help her by proposing marriage, but that might not be enough to save her doomed voyage.  

This one moves at an ambling pace.  It also lacks the sharp humor of the other stories.  The ironic ending doesn’t quite work as well as in the other tales either, mostly because of its drawn-out nature.  The performances by Heck and Kazan are solid, but they are unable to elevate this solemn, slow-moving sequence.

The Mortal Remains (**) A stagecoach carrying a handful of passengers pushes on toward the frontier.  The passengers pass the time by having rambling conversations and generally getting on each other’s nerves.  It soon becomes apparent that two of the passengers aren’t who they seem.  

The talky nature and claustrophobic setting help to drag this story down and end things on a down note.  That’s not to say there aren’t some good moments here.  I particularly liked Chelcie Ross as the talkative trapper who goes on and on about people being like “ferrets”.  The twist ending is a bit obvious (especially if you’ve seen Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors), but like most of the stories here, it ultimately comes off a bit slight.

Like most anthologies, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is uneven and fitfully amusing.  It serves to sketch for the audience the harshness of frontier life as well as the sudden outbursts of violence that hallmarked the Wild West.  Most of the stories end with a big death scene, which shows the arbitrary nature of life and death.  I can’t say it’s entirely successful, but the first segment alone just about makes it worthwhile.