Furious (1984)

 

Director: Tim Everitt and Tom Sartori

Screenplay: Tim Everitt and Tom Sartori

Cast: Simon Rhee as Simon; Arlene Montano as Kim Lee; Phillip Rhee as Master Chan; Howard Jackson as Howard; Mika Elkan as Mika the Sorcerer

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Travelling in a spiritual void can be dangerous. 

[Spoilers throughout...but this film is not the same experience reading as watching]

Befitting this bizarre curiosity, card tricks between the opening credits are the first images you see, following by men in pelts and costumes chasing a woman in the open countryside. What you get is a sluggish martial arts fight, all revolving around a tusk which can move on its own like a dowsing pointer. Furious however will grow in oddness as, after she is killed after being able to defend herself at first, we met the brother grieving over her, running a martial arts school for children who will fight the villains for payback for her death.

I cannot help but think of all the films like this from the seventies into the nineties, from the United States, which came from the growing interest in martial arts cinema from the East, especially Hong Kong, which could even cast Asian actors and people who were accomplished martial artists, even have Asian filmmakers involved. The ones I am thinking of however, from the boom and fascination with martial arts in American genre cinema, are however not the Enter the Dragons of the world but oddities, like Godfrey Ho's Undefeatable (1993), curiosities which befuddle, to which Furious stands out amongst stiff competition in this context. One factor that helps shape its personality, as was attested to by one of its own co-directors Tim Everitt¹, was a project by two film school students just wanting to make a film. A few years earlier, they would have made a slasher film, but at a time when that genre was bloated in product, they choose martial arts, had two accomplished figures in Simon and Philip Rhee at hand, Simon making a career as a bit actor but especially contributing to stunt work on major Hollywood films, Philip Rhee among his many hats also co-creating the Best of the Best series. With their students, the director-writers planned out a project with only ninety minutes worth of negative to work with, only six days to film (the seventh taken, by Everitt's account, because the Rhee brothers went to Tijuana to drink), and having to figure out what to do with such drastic limitations. I feel for good reason, as a result, a greater sympathy for Everitt and Tom Sartori, this experiment of theirs which managed to have something far more compelling as a result of having to work around these restrictions.

Virtually no dialogue is heard over twelve minutes, in a film less than eighty, a film improvised at first around a lead Simon (Simon Rhee), in his fetching red shirt, being moved on to revenge for the death of his sister, brought to a mysterious dojo who will help him in his quest. From the tone, a quarter of the length in, this film feels like a surreal minimalist martial arts movie as a result. You only learn the protagonist's name and the plot, past the twelve minute mark, at the dojo, likely to be corrupt or at least up to shady business dealings even if they are willing, including its master Chan (Philip Rhee), to help Simon in his revenge quest. The strangeness of the film is already exemplified by the dojo leader having an assistant who can do magic tricks, and the first inexplicable chicken of the film appearing, wandering on a blue carpet in a corridor.

The film works on its own logic, even if there is actually a plot to eventually grasp, the kind of film which does have a real dream logic where, immediately after, friends come to help Simon who we have never been introduced to, introducing themselves by shortly trying to fight him, only to get involved which a group dealing with fast food chicken, a truck full of crates of the poultry. The logic feels like a dream, in mind to its origins, a trip just to a restaurant leading to a fight where everyone just introduced being killed off barring Simon. The chickens become the film's spirit animal; the first on the blue carpet is almost something David Lynch would do as a joke in one of his sillier moments².

The fight scenes are not the best of the genre, yet these are actual martial artists you are seeing in Furious, in mind most of the cast were the Rhee brothers' dojo students, to the point that, alongside them being capable and some willing to fall off roofs, the difference being that the film does not have the speed and pace to it of Hong Kong cinema. It is closer to martial arts demonstrations being played out in sequences, including the proper use of weapons, from Sais to many people capable of using nunchucks, even in the case of Simon deflecting plates. Very little dialogue contrasts this, large portions beyond the music visually told between fight scenes, which is surreal in itself before you even get to touches like Simon seeing his slain friends' heads being served to him in a restaurant, only for them to turn into roast chickens.

Any dialogue also has a tendency to repeat, the same words over and over, be it the whispering Buddha statue in the mountains, to a scene that would be infamous if Furious was more well known, where after his revenge is apparently completed, the dojo master tells him on a beach to go home, repeated as he himself moves off further into the distance. It does gain the quality of a journey with its own logic, also involving collecting the pieces of a talisman, all in mind of all the abrupt tangents interjecting. In mind to its hasty origins, the creators managed a dream logic where the least expected does happen, taking you off guard, yet never fall away from its focus. Henchmen in white suits jam as a Devo-like New Wave band when not summoned to fight Simon, and the main henchmen in one scene is turning people into chickens, which gains a darker meaning when co-director Tim Everitt had it in mind that they were running a restaurant chain and cooking these transformed chickens to cover costs. This is not even considering how he also fires chickens at Simon as projectiles (by way of editing) as his special technique.

Furious also has, due to its origins, the virtue that it was shot with a lot more care than you presume for a film only shot on six days, actually with care to how it was made if improvised. The result means that it has one foot existing in logic, an understandable plot template, and the other in the irrational, able to wander off in delightful weirdness. Beside, martial arts cinema, especially from Hong Kong, can be weird so this fits among good company. For this film to have someone turn into a pig back a magical backfire, which also talks, is just among as weird or even weirder content you could just find in the Shaw Brothers productions. You could have had something much stranger than what you witness it Furious' finale, the final fight apparently in the caves of Mongolia and involving explosion sounds, smoke and the fighters bouncing off each other in an alternative reality, even an abrupt insert of a homemade giant dragonhead at one point. In this case, though, the experience of Furious is still bizarre, which makes that comparison, and that weirder likely exists, a huge compliment.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Minimalist/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

 

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1) Scarecrow Video, a holy temple of cinema with one of the largest collections of films to rent from VHS to Blu-Ray in the United States at least, briefly had a podcast which included an insightful interview with Tim Everitt less than thirty minutes which explained so much. That interview can be found HERE.

2) If you have seen On the Air (1992), a cancelled television show of his that lasted only seven episodes, he would do this with ducks instead which was just as strange.