Extraordinary Stories (2008)

 

Director: Mariano Llinás

Screenplay: Mariano Llinás

Cast: Mariano Llinás as X; Walter Jakob as Z; Agustín Mendilaharzu as H; Raúl Agüero as Vecino en ventana; Alberto Ajaka as Prisionero de las islas; Diego Alarcón as Padre de César; Rodolfo Andreani as Siri; Matías Arce as Vecino en ventana; Lola Arias as Alicia; Enrique Boess as Mazzuchelli; Héctor Bordoni as Carlos Armas; Fernando Brizuela as Sobrino del árabe; Federico Buso as Colombo; Soledad Cagnoni as Contadora; Elisa Carricajo as Hija de Palomeque

An Abstract List Candidate

 

3 Mona Lisas. Careful! No Napoleans.

For this unique Argentinean gem, you follow three completely separate narratives. In the first, a man named "X" (director-screenwriter Mariano Llinás himself) arrives at the boondocks. He stumbles, by accident, into being a witness of a meeting between a tractor driver and two men by hay bales which goes sour, when one shots the tractor driver (all in long take) dead with a shotgun. Well, he was not quite dead as X learns, inspecting the scene and taking a briefcase left behind as he leaves. For the second story, a man named "Z" (Walter Jakob) arrives in a town as the new manager of an agricultural office, only to learn his predecessor Cuevas, who lived in the storeroom, had a secret life buried in the possessions he left behind after his death. And the third story is of a man named "H" (Agustín Mendilaharzu), who has to cross a river searching for manmade monoliths. His is more complicated, as a debate at a society devoted to agricultural ideas ends up in an argument where one man argued that dredging a river could create a transport route; this is dashed by one veteran Bagnasco, who argued against it, leading to another Factorovich, stewing in his seat, to accidentally make a bet it was possible. With the advantage of knowing it was possible and had happened, with a company decades ago having tried this,  and the narrative cutting to an odd promotion film for emphasis, he hires H to look for the remnants.

These three stories by Llinás, over four plus hours long, will never cross but are allowed to breath and get odder, celebrating similar things and finding a wonder in adventure in the least likely of places. Z's one pleasure for his new job will be that he can drive around once a month to inspect their network, but with a system and secrets of a ghost named Cuevas that will draw him in the moment, trying to find his registration for the company car, Cuevas' red notebook is discovered in the care. X hides in the hotel room 301 in fear of pursuers, becoming almost a ghost in himself, and hunting old monoliths, actually markers of the old company construction, H's journey turns when the first he finds has been blown up and sabotaged.

There is too much to document sadly, but Extraordinary Stories, told like a novel with a male narrator a constant prescience to guide us, is idiosyncratic. With elaborate codes in a red notebook, with old pieces of paper between the pages that have aged brown with weird arrow symbols on them. Old letters stored at a grocery store for a "Kurgger", Cuevas under another passport. Or that X's briefcase contains the history of a massacre where, even in prison, a criminal was able to sneak out, to steal another briefcase full of gold from a grain mill business sealing a deal with a Saudi Arabian company, only for it to go south and everyone to die. This is Thomas Pynchon, the author of Gravity's Rainbow (1973), but very subdued, still weaving extravagant events but also embracing the joys of banal life, where H encountering the saboteur, an older grey haired man, is emphases by a sudden spaghetti western theme from composer Gabriel Chwojnik. If it has to be compared to a Pynchon novel, it is The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), which was not as drastic, world expanding or extreme, but a mystery surrounding a centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies. Here, a boss of an agricultural company, Cuevas, becomes a man within a labyrinth of his own design involving wild animals, which is just the kind of narrative Pynchon could have had, but is one of three such stories you get for the price of one.

Seeing Balnearios (2002), Llinás' debut which was an essay hybrid about Argentinean beach resorts, Llinás is also fascinated in the epistolary format, something witnessed here when the narrator of Z's story even takes a tangent into the life of an architect whose work, before his brief flourish of a career faded into obscurity, was considered evil and ominous in the small town he worked in, suddenly turning almost into a documentary. His stories consist of articles, maps, letters, documents etc. all within the narratives, but even the structure changes tone to feel appropriate for what tangent it now is on. That is not to say there is not a compelling trio of narratives here, and even on an emotional level, Llinás hits a tone with complete success, his style subdued to contrast the eclectic nature of the narratives with a diverse music score by Chwojnik that can incorporate a didgeridoo and match the diversions that happen onscreen too.    

Llinás can sustain an entire narrative plot thread being about X pinned in his hotel watching a woman from another room outside his window, or lead to X concocting a theory that the narrator afterwards says is entirely false after spending a long time letting it be drawn onscreen. The chapter devoted to "the Colonel", [Major Spoiler] revealed to be a sick lion and using a real animal with clear care for its well being [Spoiler Ends], turns into a legitimately heartbreaking sequence of pathos about the end of its life. Then there is the tale Lola Gallo, a mystery woman who X tries to connect to the case he is involved with when introduced in a newspaper article he finds. Instead, the film switches to her, with a female narrator and subchapters within a chapter about her, a tale of an old man fixated with her and a young tractor seller she marries that, when it leads to them coming together in a diner, is bittersweet and a standout. It is not even connected at all to X's plot or anyone else's, but is in itself a striking moment which justifies the film's length and structure completely.

The film's length, with two intervals, even manages to include a tangent set within World War II, with a real tank used on the film as it tells of "Big" Ben Ferguson and the Jolly Goodfellows, is a masterpiece which goes against the usual rules of film making and, like a Thomas Pynchon novel, breathes with so much content which never feels indulgent. One which, for a film sadly not as available as it should be, manages to feel like an incredible journey for four hours, telling the story of the pleasures of storytelling and intrigue, absolutely the case here as the journey proves to be more important than the destination for all three narratives¹. It is a film that, in its own distinct way, shows all the possibilities of filmmaking, and it is in the knowledge, possibly not satisfied even after even this gem, Mariano Llinás' next major production La Flor (2018) had to go thirteen hours long to follow from this.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Epistolary/Playful

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

 

===========

1) [Major Spoilers] H and the man sabotaging the landmarks, named Caesar with an unnatural knack to catch fish and rabbits with his bare hands, are arrested for accidentally trespassing onto a military base illegally, with explosives and weaponry, after deciding to work together. Z ends up on a farm where, after solace, he concludes the journey with Cuevas' secrets even to Africa with little learned. X just leaves the hotel with no resolution, even after killing a man, beyond getting the document in the briefcase to the right people, if by accident, to save a man from prison. [Spoilers End]

Taiwan Black Movies Part 3

 

Taiwan Black Movies (2005)

Director: Hou Chi-jan

Since I have quoted this documentary throughout these reviews about Taiwan genre movies, I should cover this even though, as previously mentioned, its structure for myself makes it difficult to critique. As it is a talking head production with clips of films, I find that it is hard to scrutanise a production where all the content is less in in-depth subtext but the information being carried forwards.

It is nonetheless a document of great interest, one I wished had been longer as it tackles its subject where, after Never Too Late to Repent (1979) became a success, suddenly there were so many films made in its wake that, as one editor explains, he could be working on fourteen films at the same time. Or that real world gangsters wished to work on these films, starring as extras and even bending producers' arms for money to film in downtown Taiwan. A lot of the film is about the distributors continually dodging the censors, including a montage of censored scenes, an issue that eventually lead to government intervention which stopped this movement.

This is sad. Alongside those I have seen, there are films shown in the documentary which shown various tangents in these genres films which entice - Queen Bee (1981) a martial arts film where the female lead has bees tattooed to her collar bone and chest; Girl with a Gun (1983), where the documentary has a gruesome but compelling sequence from the film where the female lead is cutting up and disposing of a body, which cuts to reverse negative in the midst of for haunting effect; the evocatively titled Gunshot at 6 o'Clock in the Morning (1979); and Girls' Concentration Camp (1983), which in the trailer shown looks the most lurid, as a Taiwanese women in prison film with all the clichés, but as a film from that country is immediately interesting to see for any cultural differences.

On the other hand, this censorship is talked of, alongside these genre films already burning out by 1981, having led to the New Taiwan Cinema of 1982 onwards existing. So this means, whilst we lost this original movement, we got instead the likes of Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, so one would not want to change time and lose films like A Brighter Summer's Day (1991). In hindsight, the only thing I would wish to have been different if that this original movement of genre films had gotten recognition much quicker, so many survived in better quality than what we got. None so more than the last film cover...

*****

On the Society File of Shanghai (1981)

Director: Chu-Chin Wang

Screenplay: Yung-Hsiang Chang and Ching Wang

Cast: Hsiao-Fen Lu, Shou-Ping Tsui, Fu-Mei Chang, Chi-Chun Chen, Yung-Hsiang Chin, Ji-Chi Chou, Chieh Huang                          

 

Contextually based on "scar literature", anti-Maoist literature which came in the late seventies soon after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, the first scenes of Society File is of men trying to flee mainland China only to be captured by the leaders and called unpatriotic, emphasising this point. This follows a trend of these films avoiding their Taiwanese culture, here setting itself in China where the main narrative follows the story of Li Li-Fang (Hsiao-Fen Lu), a female suspect in a stabbing of a military chief's son, a figure with a scar on her forehead, and scars on her chest and lower belly which alongside her demeanour leaves the investigating detective Mr. Shung and his younger male assistant curious to how she ended up this way. Against the will of their seniors who just want to throw the book at her, they wish to work backwards and learn why this young woman is even in this scenario.

Set in 1960, cutting to the summer of 1969 too, the film builds a narrative from flashbacks about Li-Fang's downfall, trying to learn why a woman who was a nurse suddenly contributed to the son of a major figure being stabbed by multiple men on her prompt, especially a person by the name of Wang she was close to. This films exists in how Taiwan, with its uneasy relationship with China over the years, wished to view its communist neighbours and their ideology next to their capitalist culture, though the result has much more nuisance than this even if by accident. It has absurdities, the female teacher of Li's old school, Principal Wong, is forced to wear a dunce's cap and work by young Maoists in blue uniform, broad caricature between them, whilst however contrasting this with a more profound image, of an old senile man at said abandoned school changing "Long live Chairman Mao" in his chair outside. Or Mr. Shung existentially wondering how the ideals he exited with has lost its way among broken windows and abandoned old buildings where he tells his assistant these concerns.

It is definitely a drama as much as a genre film, as alongside Li-Wang and the man she had stabbed Wang being half siblings to different mothers, the Principal his own dismissed and divorced as a bad element by his military father, there is the more sombre plot of how Li-Fang went as a nurse in 1969 to tend old figures of power in a building of rest, retired suddenly and is shown to be in a less emotionally healthy state moving back into her father's workplace. Gender politics plays into the narrative too, with her being told to marry a doctor twice her age on her father's encouragement. Her new husband is shown as being spineless and her father becoming paranoid and abusive when it is realised she is not a virgin before her wedding day. The plot reveal is not that difficult to realise - [Major Spoiler Warning] that she was raped by one of the old military members whilst caring for him as a nurse [Spoilers End] - but the build to the truth does take this seriously in between its pieces of genre storytelling, such as how most of the scars (including one she inflicts on herself) are in scenes of pure shock value. It is a compelling melodramatic film because it does take its subject seriously.

It's use of a very well worn archetype, an older and wider detective, helps immensely as a plot point as Mr. Shung becomes the compelling and sympathetic lynchpin alongside Li-Fang, always carrying a pipe with him, and showing both the wariness of his work but the skill he has acquired over the years, such as an unprofessional but blunt way to deal with a prisoner feigning madness by opening a window encouraging him to jump. Li-Fang herself, a figure as much of others' recollection as seen, is just as distinct, on one hand powerful but the other broken, actress Hsiao-Fen Lu committing to the performance. When the film does finally answer the question it has built up to, why she has ended up arrested and on trial for murder, it is a tragedy. Returning to its source, it does come off as an anti-communist China film, arguably propagandist, but more meaningful than this to a much symbolic idea of how power in general corrupts.

Also in a less then stellar print in the version I saw, looking like a VHS scan with burnt on English subtitles, On the Society File of Shanghai nonetheless closed the book on a fascinating festival of films on the right note, with the fact that that they were from a movement I had never heard of having a richer profoundness. All of them were rewarding, all sadly difficult to access and, with their restorers having to use what survives, cursed to their disadvantage in a world of smoothing over the past, a hurdle in the way of their greater access as these films, for the open minded to their scars, all have something interesting to see both as genre films and in what they were tapping into culturally as Taiwan Black Cinema chronicles. As time capsules, before the New Taiwanese Cinema came in 1982, they are enlightening.

Taiwan Black Movies Part 2

 

The Lady Avenger (1981)

Director: Chia-Yun Yang

Screenplay: Yun Chu and Kang-Nien Li

Cast: Hsiao-Fen Lu, Lun Hua, Nien-Kuo Kao, Hsiao-Ling Hsu, Shou-Ping Tsui, Hsuan Lung

 

Can't forget that strange image, won't let me...

Barely surviving oblivion, viewing The Lady Avenger was a reminder why film preservation is important, and in this case, you sadly see the handicaps of films having to be "perfect" when one like this had to be preserved from a very battered and scratched print, which will be a hindrance in giving The Lady Avenger a wider availability. This is sadder as this is a Taiwanese entry in the contentious "rape and revenge" genre however directed by a woman, Chia-Yun Yang, adding a different context alongside turning into one of the strongest films I saw from a collection of Taiwanese genre films.

Chia-Yun Yang, who is interviewed in the documentary Taiwan Black Movies (2005), was a script supervisor amongst many roles before she became a director of films like this, which was a production where the script was being worked on whilst being shot as she described in the documentary. It is however compelling from the get-go as a lurid pulp film still pointedly relevant in its subject, the soundtrack already strange and intense, befitting a bizarre opening where a sexist commercial is being shot where, even when shot in the back with a gun, a woman would still crawl and reach out for a cosmetics product.

Said actress named Chu storms off the set, only to be raped by the male driver she hitchhikes with, all within a sequence where you find, even in its lurid tone, the sympathy is on the female cast as, running from him in the muddy countryside, all the violence is ugly when happening to the female cast. Attempting to get a trial set up against him, the bias against this woman, including the actress likely to lose her reputation even if she was to win, is uncomfortably potent still decades later, especially as with the point made that the perpetrator also happens to be from a rich family, this film not feeling alien to a post-MeToo movement that transpired in the late 2010s at all. Even after that movement lead to woman speaking up of previous real molestation and sexual violence against them from powerful figures, this Taiwanese b-movie still possesses salient comments or moments which sadly are still relevant today.

Step in the real lead, a female reporter named Hsu, tackling the case only for Chu to not be held up as a highly moral and loose woman, even by Hsu's male fiancée, and the trial to go against her. Even when Chu tried to get revenge by knife, her body is found days later washed up and the shore and, as Hsu digs and openly taunts the male perpetrator, she is becoming more of a target. Even in this pulpy narrative that comes after though, this is taking the material seriously even in its heightened tone, uncomfortable and eventually nightmarish when Hsu unfortunately encounters four drunken men. It is a long sequence what transpires as, the film requiring a trigger warning for anyone interested in the film, she attempts to escape them through a grungy urban environment and fights back, long but to the point that, when it is not possible, the film tastefully cuts away and you get the impact of what has happened. That this was a set up by the rich man of before sets up the genre plot but does not demean how the film tells the story.

Even the song that plays afterwards is used fully to represent the lingering agony, the same words repeating in the shower for Hsu. It is an exaggerated film but the content is still strong, when she gets drunk and, despite the over-the-top drunken acting from lead Lu Hsiao-Fen, you get in the space of a few minutes someone being unable to tell her fiancée she has been raped without pain, and becoming traumatised to the point she would rather be drunk. That the fiancée himself is more concerned about saving face, twisting a metaphorical knife in, makes it worse; it is to the point that, destroyed and a woman devoured by revenge by the end, Hsu and he have long split up and a haunting image of them passing each other on an escalator in opposite directions takes place much later in the film, he already with another woman in a separate life again.

You can argue that, getting to the action tropes as she picks off the assailants, and the villain is trying to get rid of her, it undermines the point, but in context, you accept this as a heightened reality appropriate to tackle the subject. Those revenge scenes are fantastical - a poor stunt man is hung upside down by a leg off a crane on top of a building, whilst there is a repeating shot of a giant gory splash of fake gore, deep red, hitting on white which fits the film's mood. Even its music, between a sad solo saxophone, to electronic droning synth and guitar, is a bar higher than many genre films in turning uncomfortable and real subject matter into a primal scream, where every detail keeps you on your toes.

Even with the first images being a montage of all the revenge scenes out of context, gut stabbings to recreating the Most Dangerous Game in the woods, The Lady Avenger despite its sadly battered and mangled presentation befits the hyper-potent tone of a film whose luridness actually makes such uncomfortable subject matter more meaningful. This, even with some strong films I saw, was the one above them all I was blown away with from this batch of movies.

*****

Never Too Late to Repent (1979)

a.k.a. The First Error Step

Director: Yang-Ming Tsai

Screenplay: Yen-Ping Chu

Based on the memoirs of Sha Ma

Cast: Sha Ma, Hui-Shan Yang, Hsiu-Shen Liang, Hsiao-Fei Li, Min-Lang Li, Chi Wang, Mo-Chou Wang, Hsiu Chuan Yang

For a completely different tone, we get to the film argued in Taiwan Black Movies as the catalyst for this movement of Taiwanese genre cinema. Lead Sha Ma, introducing the film in narration, says he is not an actor as the scene presents him in a prison being lead along in chains by guards. In truth, whilst he would eventually become a prolific actor (including in Woman Revenger (1981)) Sha Ma was a reformed criminal turned author who in this fictionalised take on his life tells a cautionary tale of a man, within genre tropes, ending up incarcerated and the hard climb back up to salvation. In this film's case, whilst working at a brothel, when upon being stabbed multiple times by a surly gangster with their gang, even losing a finger to the blade in the process, he went beyond self defence to stabbing the man to death with a giant sharpened pole-like object. The film is fictionalised - Taiwan Black Movies, with one of its interviews, reveals that Sha Ma was charged for "obscenity" - but that does not stop the film as an interpretation of this real man's life from being compelling.  

Tragically as well, this is another film only surviving from very damaged materials, with the version I saw battered and with a lot of the sound track lost, only with the relief that it is not the whole film, just snatches, and that this proves that the visuals of a film can still tell a story even muted, like Sha Ma being bullied the moment he is put in a group cell. Early on, the film plays out as a prison escape film, including tools being hidden in food for the cellmates, including a comedic rotund figure named Chicken who bumbles through the escape plan. It even has a much more creative ways of drawing straws, writing numbers on torn up pieces of paper, to order who goes first to last to get through the window they spend days removing the bars from, with money for everyone to use if they manage to all flee.

However, despite escaping briefly and even meeting his real father, a man abandoned and left to be looked after by his grandmother in his back story, Sha Ma is eventually back in jail and even shipped off to Orchid Island, a literally island compound for re-education. It is a place closer to military training, but the film is not about anti-authority or crime pulp, whilst the later is occasionally seen, but a tale of a man now on the path to redemption, starting with the island being ran by a former classmate who wishes to help him. The film is instead a drama more than a genre film, but that is not a bad thing. Never Too Late to Repent was held in high regard, against quoting Taiwan Black Cinema, because it tackled subjects that were never seen before in Taiwanese films considered taboo, such as the narrative drifting into locations like brothels and especially tackling the Taiwanese prison system, particularly as the real narrative is that Ma Sha's fictionalised life eventually tackles the stigma of being a criminal even when you have reformed.

Be it being picked on by police when a crime is committed by someone else, or being fired when people see Ma Sha's tattoos, the real man's full body ones striking and likely to have stigmatised him in real life, the final quarter which deals with the hardness of ordinary life outside of prison is the most rewarding passage. With happiness marriage but even a simple job of selling magazines on the street needing a license, it offers a distinct change of pace to a drama about a criminal seeing one try his hardest to redeem himself but the society around him completely unfair in its structure. This is all melodramatic, but in melodrama, you still reach a meaningful conclusion which is a triumphant ending here. The genre tropes, as in Western melodrama, allows for intensity, here as he goes alongside his way to reforming and becoming an author, literally bleeding onto his art and actually bleeding his own manuscript as a result of a fight when defending a woman. As a non-actor, Sha Ma is charismatic, and in mind these genre films were meant to be "social realist", Never Too Late to Repent definitely shows the template for what this genre was originally meant to be, showing real Taiwan by way of genre plotting. I can see how, even if sadly underappreciated to the point it only survives in a damaged form, why people in its home land praise it in Taiwan Black Movies, and how it kicked off a movement of similar films.

To Be Continued...

Taiwan Black Movies Part 1

Introduction:

The following is based upon an online, free-to-watch streaming festival from the Anthology Film Archive, which screened between the 2nd to the 15th December 2020¹. This multi-part review as a result, covering five films and a documentary, is as much a time capsule, a diary, to remember this event as it is a review covering these films.

Attempting to review the documentary Taiwan Black Movies (2005), a production by Hou Chi-Jan about an hour or so long about a period of Taiwanese genre films made from 1979 to 1982/3, will be difficult to review fully for me personally. Talking head documentaries for me are difficult as they are very much analytical pieces, talking to figures from this era and film critics, but it is a great guide to these films, a cultural landmark that was entirely unknown to me. Sadly, it was not appreciated and rediscovered until a time later, having to be preserved from immensely damaged materials in many cases, a hindrance in a 4k fixated world for cultural growth. Taiwan Black Movies does point out that, from first film being Never Too Late to Repent (1979), they were made as pulp, enticing with lurid content particularly in terms of female nudity, but they had much more in hindsight in their meaning.

******

 

The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983)

Director: Tso Nam Lee

Screenplay: Hsin-Yi Chang and Hsin Wei

Cast: Hui-Shan Yang, Kuan Tai Chen, Yun-Peng Hsiang, Yi-Tao Chang, Ying-Chi Chang, Kai-Chun Chen, Sung Young Chen, Yi-Chun Chiang

 

What, a whore can't love her country?

Contextually the first of these films I saw may seem an outlier to that introduction, as it is closer to something I am very familiar with, as The Challenge of the Lady Ninja is not only a martial arts film, but belonging to a type I have bought old second hand DVDs of countless times in my past. Not just Godfrey Ho films but the many martial arts films which have always been a huge market, made in this era not only in Hong Kong but in countries like South Korea and Taiwan. This could have easily appeared on one of those DVDs, its premise a clear one - in a period setting, in the midst of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the opening scene has a figure named Li Tong betray his country for the Japanese imperial army, his uncle being killed. This slain man's daughter Xiaohui, learning the gifts of the Iga ninja clan in Japan whilst this is happening, returns to her home for revenge and patriotism.

This patriotic side, where she joins the Anti-Traitor Squad against Li Tong and his four unconventional bodyguards, does develop a new meaning when you learn, as documented in Taiwan Black Movies, the Taiwanese genre films started borrowing ideas from "patriotism" films to avoid controversy in their more explicit content. Despite a lead taught magic Japanese ninjutsu, from a ninja clan who do not discriminate against a Chinese woman good enough to pass their ultimate text, and oppose militarism contrary to their country's behaviour, as a result of this tone we end up with a film very anti-Japanese at least in them being moustache twirling villains. It definitely feels out of place among a movement which pushed for "social realist" genre films, but again one has to be reminded these were still genre films to sell. The evocation of Godfrey Ho, who is held as a notorious director, is not an insult as not only are the coloured smoke bombs used through something he (and the films by his frequent producer  Joseph Lai) was obsessed with especially in his infamous cut-and-paste ninja films, but one evokes the pure manic unpredictability of lower budget martial arts films particularly from their group, the sound effects of swords clashing enough in themselves to evoke the numerous I have binged in over the years.

Xiaohu's final test in her introduction does immediate shown this - spinning to change your red ninja costume to a pink bikini to seductively win over four male ninja, only for this to be an illusion that explodes; fake hand decoys to chop off; shadow clones; even a final part which involves an actual puzzle, of acquiring the prize out of a tube too long to reach by hand. Throughout the film you can suddenly have tangents involving unexpected techniques and fights transpiring: a moment requiring someone having to be poisoned involved letting the woman tasked to the job of seducing have multiple back up contingencies and even poisoned fake front teeth, and the final fight even includes the act of spinning deep into the ground and charge your opponent under the soil like a giant mole. The main conceit as well is that, with emphasis on the men being doubtful the women are able to get the job done, Xiaohui not only disproves them by training a small band of women, including Zhi Zhi the sex worker and an acrobat, but that they are better at the job, especially after training. Said training, involving painful limb stretching exercises with ropes pulling one's limbs, to seduction training, where using editing the women can create seductive illusions of themselves that can also explode, feels just on the sane side of a type of cinema which, to use a Godrey Ho example from one of his films, where he had a lead learn to be a better martial artist by kicking mirrors.

Li Tong's bodyguards are a trope in martial arts cinema themselves, of figures with distinct abilities from a female fighter, or a man armed with a razor sharp boomerang and net, to the most prominent, a man with a sky blue scorpion tattoo that goes down from his bald head to where his eyebrows should be like they are painted on. The four even get, long after their introductions shots, out of time against black, footage showing their techniques fighting people. The film does become conventional as it goes along, which is Lady Ninja's biggest flaw but not one which does any real damage to the film, merely that there is a bit of predictability among what is the more overtly genre structured film of those I saw.

Even if set in, say, the nineteen forties the hair and the headbands are of the eighties, and undeniably this was a film made to entertain, a film that can abruptly include a fight scene between two women in an oil filled ring, which does have a kinky edge in their leotards until it gets ugly and violent, and plenty of deeply silly material trying to side with a film meant to be taken seriously as there is drama in these characters fighting a force in the Japanese Imperial Army which is all powerful. You see the tug and pull between what this movement was here as, undeniably, this production was entirely for entertainment, some of which is just lurid, but also means we have the sense of unpredictability from these martial arts films that I grew to enjoy amongst these production issues.

*******

Woman Revenger (1981)

a.ka. The Nude Body Case in Tokyo

Director: Yang-Ming Tsai

Screenplay: Chen Kuo Tai and Chen-hsiang Tai

Cast: Hui-Shan Yang, Te-Kai Liu, Sha Ma, Emily Y. Chang, Yi-Fung Lu

Woman Revenger also feels part of the films closer to pulp then this movement's shift to "social realist" genre films, belaying an attempt of mirroring a world where, when made, Taiwan was experiencing political upheavals in the late seventies to the early eighties, from the United States officially ending their relationship with Taiwan, to much more severe concerns such as protests and even the murder of Lin Yi-hsiung, a leader of the democratic movement, and his family in February 1980. for their politics. This feels closer instead to a film like Girls' Concentration Camp (1983) which, with the trailer shown in Taiwan Black Movies, sounds in premise exactly as it sounds.

To Woman Revenger's defence, it is still prominent, with the same lead Hui-Shan Yang as in Lady Ninja, how it still emphasises strong female characters even with the nudity and violence. Also with its set up emphasises the notion of many of these genre films of "de-Taiwanisation", in which the lead Lingling comes to Japan after a friend from when they were orphans at the Sacred Heart Orphangae was killed by the underworld after acquiring money for the orphanage from them. This was where these films deliberately avoided cultural symbolism or landmarks which directly evoked the country, in being based in other countries in the plot (like The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983)) or here setting and shooting the film in Japan, with Lingling trying to rescue her late friend's younger sister Meifeng from criminals who are after the drugs her older sister is said to have ran off with. Quite a bit of tourism on film is seen as a result, be it a scene near Mt. Fuji or live footage of a real sumo wrestling show, which makes this a vast contrast to Lady Ninja's anti-Japanese tone.  The most elaborate use, the first, is actually one of the most creative scenes when Meifeng is first being tracked down, shot in the midst of a huge real crowd of people in the middle of urban Japan, vast and as far as one's eyes can see with a cacophony of music and sound.  It is a fascinating piece of verité in what you see, from retro rockabilly dancers, young Japanese men and women dressed as American fifties bikers and in dresses performing rock n roll dancing, eighties shell suits, and four guys as a cheap makeshift KISS, with the band's makeup on, heads through a giant black cloth all of them are holding up as they have tiny little puppet bodies with instruments attacked under their heads.

I see the film actually being influenced by the Japanese films of the decade before, even if with some nuisances are missed, such as a scene of attempted hara-kiri where a gangster (played by a non-Japanese actor speaking Mandarin) just plunges the blade into the stomach (only to be stopped) without any of the ritual found in Japanese pulp films. Especially when very late on, when the lead has her eye stabbed out, this feels like the result of a film like Lady Snowblood (1973) getting imported to Taiwan, including such scenes as one in the snow, after an attempt at a kidnap while women are bathing in a small room, or how the setup for the film is the lead's friend being murdered in a giant bathhouse.  One thing that Taiwan Black Movies also clarified is that, with a set piece of Lingling winning Meifeng's freedom briefly with a game of dice, using inner strength to crack a die, is that it was surfing a trend when "piles of gambling films" by 1982 were being made, to the point that it became a concern in terms of moral indecency.

These moral guardians would have likely blushed at the nudity, or a woman being held upside down on a wooden cross, with the legs outwards, with honey and ants on the legs with the poor actress involved having real ants on her. Such moments are a reminder that a couple of these films were clearly shot for less than high minded content, which will be a concern for many modern viewers. This does become a conventional crime film with some fight scenes eventually too, about an evil prostitution ring and Lingling trying to rescue Meifeng, but I have softened to this film too as an example of unpredictable, lurid pulp. Any film where a male gangster gets a comeuppance, in the docks in one of the containers stacked up high, by having a gold snake slid under his gold thong is distinct at least. It does get interesting by the climax when you have a band of women being created to finally defeat the villains, a striking image even with the titillation when you have them with blades, wearing white bikinis closer to gauze, getting revenge on a crime leader in his lounge. Especially when it comes to the tragic ending - [Major Spoiler] when the lead is arrested for finally getting revenge, the final shot with the "End" title over a close-up of handcuffs on her wrists [Spoilers End] - alongside how it has the melancholic song playing over the images, this does get a lot right in terms of this type of filmmaking even if it is also predictable.

To Be Continued...

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1) The online festival, whilst closed, thankfully still has its introduction text up HERE.

Saving Christmas (2014)

 

Director: Darren Doane

Screenplay: Darren Doane and Cheston Hervey

Cast: Kirk Cameron as Kirk; Darren Doane as Christian White; Bridgette Ridenour as Kirk's sister; David Shannon as Diondre; Raphi Henly as a conspiracy theorist; Ben Kientz as St. Nick

Ephemeral Waves

...and I love hot chocolate!

Covering this notorious Christian Christmas film, most reviews would immediately take this time to shoot fish in a barrel. Instead, during this Christmas period where this review would be best to read this review, let us make this a morality tale, a frank ones that sometimes are still told at this time of the year, as necessary alongside the hot chocolate that keeps us warm, the good cheer needed after all the stress of the year previous, to drop a form of reality check to improve for the New Year. The moral of this tale is the dangers of lack of speaking without thinking, and the tale immediately begins in 12th October 1970, the birthday of the executive producer/lead star Kirk Cameron.

Cameron, a child actor whose biggest claim to fame in his youth was the ABC sitcom Growing Pains (1985–1992), became an Evangelical Christian in his youth and began starring in films like Fireproof (2008). He begins Saving Christmas speaking directly to the viewer in a room from a Hallmark Christmas card about his love for Christmas, "even growing out the winter beard". He definitely adores the season, just hot chocolate alone, which whilst other reviews will possible mock him, this tale I am telling is ultimately a tragedy. Of someone who clearly had a good childhood with Christmas, and is well intentioned in this curious documentary/essay/fictional seasonal drama, but also unfortunately showed so much in his character by accident, flaws and traits from the worst of human beings which include an inability for constructive argumentative work, and not responding to criticisms with the virtue that a Christian should offer his other cheek to be smote and learn from the issues raised. He also looks reminiscent, in dress sense and unshaven look, to my older brother which adds weirdness to watching the film, baring the fact that despite once being a choir boy in his youth my older brother is definitely not an Evangelical Christian.

How does one practice Christmas as a Christian? That is the main concern of the film, or should be with mind to some issues that will be raised, but you can imagine that Cameron, likely with a wide eyed naive love for the season took it upon himself, with his own studio Camfam Studios and funded by the Liberty University¹, to work on this project with his co-star/director Darren Doane. The tale of Saving Christmas is Kirk Cameron showing concern that the Christmas he adores, of roasting chestnuts and turkey, is too materialistic in the eyes of others of the same faith, alongside other concerns of whether it has pagan aspects, such as whether his beloved chocolate was invented by druids.

This does hint at a good debate to have, as fellow Christians believe Christmas has completely misinterpreted the festival, something even non-Christians can show a concern of. The animated opening credits, set to a ska version of Silent Night, offers the promise in itself of a warm, well-minded work. Even if the title sadly has a more negative weight to it than one would hope, the fantasy would be that, if this was a smart introspective debate on the subject from a Christian perspective, the title would be a more humorously toned choice similar to the title to a family film about rescuing Santa Claus.

What Saving Christmas actually is - essay, Christmas drama, religious discussion, none of the above - is a misguided attempt at tackling a much more complicated subject, wide-eyed but without greater wisdom. It surrounds Cameron trying to help his brother-in-law Christian (Darren Doane) who hates Christmas, clearly suffering through a severe depression, requiring a therapist, which has latched onto an existential crisis about being a Christian but seeing Christmas as full of "perverted symbols with hidden meaning", "needless spending" and (with more humour) "elf worship", which requires a priest. It does not need Kirk Cameron to bend his arm in the front seat of a car which they spend most of the film within, all with a calm smile on his face of confidence, unless Cameron was to turn this into It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and properly help Christian find new meaning as his Clarence. The Christmas party his wife has set up would have been expensive to decorate, which if this was ever realistic would have not helped violent depression further especially as a religious man, "a slap in the face of the true meaning of Christmas" the thing he has latched onto in what is clearly an existential "dark night of the soul" in a well thought out film.

I can see the ideal and sympathise with Kirk Cameron - wanting to be a reassurance that Christmas cheer and charity has not been lot even today - but I agree more with Christian which immediately causes problems, that "this is not what God wants" when, for the Judeo-Christian faith, Christmas usually means now spending too much and advertisements for productions which puts off even the non-religious. Christian even brings up a sad symbolism, from the sad image of a Nativity snow globe buried in the corner hidden by a giant tree, a sad image just from merely having to picture it, which does have too much power to be easily dismissed. The moment however Cameron says he is wrong, that he was "drank the Kool-Aid", is when the film becomes a tragedy of him drinking his own, a solipsist form where, in a long conversation, Cameron has some good thoughtful ideas and constructive metaphors you can work with in wisdom, such as the swaddling clothes at Jesus' birth and death symbolically connecting, but there is not enough provided to lead to the needed conclusion.

There is also the tangent which feels out of place, that the film gets into references of the apparent war of Christmas, as a couple of the people at the party are planning to protest the cancellation of crazy shirt Friday at their work place. This concern for me has always been a contentious thing in whether it actually existed, as we have in the British Isles occasionally talks of this, but at times, it has felt from my insignificant vantage point whether this is just an odd thing that happens in the big metropolises. Where did this apparent belief in the cancelling of Christmas come from? A bigger concern for myself, whether this will have note or be a completely straw man argument in its nature, is that never is it asked whether someone who is not Christian (or of a different faith or celebrating Haneka) is ever offended if someone says "Merry Christmas" to them in the street or at work, but that it apparently exists as a concern to cancel Christmas, never asking where the evidence from either those who are threatened, or those blamed responsible, comes from in terms of how regular people on the street with their own faiths or lack thereof react to the Christian holiday. As much of this belief for me, even if bias, stems from living in a working class English town which is predominantly Caucasian environment of Protestant background, whilst multi-ethic and diverse, where Christmas cards which say "Merry Christmas" are a dime a dozen everywhere at the winter season, and no one really bats an eye on the subject regardless of whether they even have spiritual faith or not. In itself, like the entire issue of whether Christmas is too materialistic, we have these debates, or whether Fairytale in New York by the Pogues has to be censored due to certain un-PC language in the lyrics for a specific example, but never does it get brought up enough whether there are really any debates to figure out the solution, instead always coming off as solipsism in that neither side ever consider the wider question.

It neither helps that Saving Christmas with this pointless digression, requiring this huge tangent in the review, seems to make this all a joke but still be fixated upon it. It is a joke, much later on, with the character of Diondre (David Shannon), a friend of Cameron's who is the most charismatic person of the film, alongside a co-worker at the party, start commenting on things like there being an Area 52, where all the Christmas decorations are hidden away? It is actually a funny joke, but what about when they start trading off between them, behind their mugs to stay secret, ideas like Chem-trails or even the conspiracy that all the burger meat in fast food is merely "pink slime" rather than the real thing? On the surface this scene, which is presented comically, would be a parody of this mentality, but tonally there is a question of what the intention is, especially with the question why the scenes and references were even made.

If this had been a subtle documentary about breaking down how to worship, including where Christmas symbolism originates from, and issues like why we celebrate Christ's birth in December, the film would have been welcomed even if it was entirely from a Christian perspective. Cameron pulls some long bows, like The Garden of Eden's stand-in being a Christmas tree lot, but sometimes his personal interpretation have something of note which is sweet, such as it better we have trees than more crosses, as Christ hung himself off one to forgive Adam taking an apple off the Tree of Knowledge. It may cause people to roll their eyes, like the one I have just included, but this is not the problem. The problem is when he presumes this is enough or makes assumptions, batting off difficult issues which need to be tackled.

Interpretation has been a huge part of Christian text, but as someone who has had an interest in religion in general since I went to a primary school where the local vicar came frequently for assembly sermons, the most profound ideas tend to not try to win an argument but offer introspection. Cameron comes off as a big kid who really had good Christmas memories, but he skips huge and dangerous amounts of detail which, even if some would still cause him grief, would have given him greater wisdom and strengthen the interesting moments of introspection if he forced himself as the executive producer to tackle them.

Even with some of the obvious ideas - like reminding people of St. Nicholas being a true Santa, not the construct in red garb by the Coca Cola Company - is not dealt with enough. Director Darren Doane goes for a grubby realism, of a man in pelts and a beard brooding, but it leads to an unintentionally funny moment which, if the film was not gun-ho at being right, would have been an amusing fictionalised and human take on the figure. One where St. Nicholas will beat up a heretical priest, for saying Christ is not immortal, then suddenly go off to give gifts to the poor with a cheese eating grin on his face. Even if Cameron had gone for the obvious, i.e. ideas which Charles Dickens did perfectly well in A Christmas Carol of charity and that virtue can be found even in the spectacle of Christmas, he would have done better, but this is all left on the table.

The added, uncomfortable detail is found in the type of language used. "Drinking the Kool-Aid" or throwing about the word "heretic". You can have your unexpected, silly hip hop Christmas dance at the end scored to Family Force 5, but it cannot be hidden how this attitude of headstrong righteousness is when this all sounds sinister. This is where the American Evangelicals in pop culture become an entity which is looked to in suspicion, and even without this, unfortunately a film like Saving Christmas has not aged well further after the presidential nomination of Donald Trump, a figure bolstered by the Evangelical right in spite of nothing in his background recommending him as a very virtuous figurehead. It is an accidental coincidence Kirk Cameron was behind Trump in the 2016 elections²; some of the aw-shucks charisma, blunt with disregard attitude to conflicting opinions the film has is the kind which has become more acceptable by the end of the 2010s and has run amok in politics in a more toxic form.

This film's issues can be boiled down into Cameron's infamous banana argument against evolution, although let us correct one detail - Cameron was merely co-hosting the television show Way of The Master with Ray Comfort, a New Zealand Creationist/host/Evangelical who was offering the argument the banana was an "ironclad argument" of God's intelligent design³. I am not here to debate the subject of evolution, when the bigger issue is how, even for someone arguing for evolution, you need to accept that a debate will not be won by bringing literal piece of fruit into the debate, or that (for the Creationist or Scientific side equally) winning the argument will reward everyone in the end when the introspection and ideas considered should be the point. Yes, the banana, even if we have generically bred them into what they are, are curiously perfect in their form just from how to open one, but even wishing to win the argument is not a goal worth striving for as it gains nothing. It would have been more profound, even if it pissed scientists off still, to just raise a banana up and ask them how on Earth it came to be, even if said angry scientists would have scientific theories to retort back. Back-and-forth debate with mind to grow on both sides should have been the point.

The problem with Saving Christmas is the same, where through less arguments but empty bravado, Kirk Cameron convinces Christian he is right rather than come to a new meaning between them, to storm into the house and belly surf the floor nearly into the Christmas tree. Kirk Cameron did not want to actually debate this subject, just go for material that is not even obvious, but ill thought out. Glossier than I expected, nothing about the film in its low budget style, like a low budget Christmas drama, or the music and casting etc. is an issue, but that as a production desiring to argue, it does not provide an argument to begin with. The sense of intellectually head butting others rather than trying to deal with the conflict is what corrupts Saving Christmas in itself entirely right down to only being eighty minutes with little friction, with a quick and frankly illogical resolve that changes Christian.

Cameron would sadly be doing this still even after the film was criticised and I have not even gotten around to the fact the film effectively celebrates the materialistic and indulgent nature of the season, and merely placates the notions of charity and goodwill. A close thing to a warning is Cameron informing the viewer to not run their credit cards to their limits, but this aspect is the most egregious. It also is where the sense of Kirk Cameron's wide eyed, child like nature coming into this, from how he perceives the subject, is ultimately his undoing, to the point that whilst Saving Christmas was savaged, he did not come back with an argument against his critics and have a debate, but say it was part of an "atheist conspiracy"⁴.

Sadly he did not use this to grow and mature, and whilst we can argue that a lot of the worse aspects of Western culture in the late 2010s onwards comes a variety of things (corruption, anti-intellectualism) also add to that list an unwillingness to accept failure, a juvenile attitude that one does not continually change and learn in the face of subjects, one that does not learn a subject cannot merely be conquered, with the knowledge it may have never been meant to be completed. Kirk Cameron sadly did not learn as, in December 2020, as an anti-mask and lockdown supporter he went to stage mask-less carol singing protests during the season, twice with mass crowds, during the COVID-19 pandemic⁵. Most reviews, if they time stamp themselves, may never consider the opinions of those on the opposite side of the argument, but this morality tale of mine, for a film which is misguided as its reputation suggests and for only the morbidly curious, is not meant to be another burial of an American right wing Evangelical either.

In fact, truthfully, I will argue the left wing are as capable of this type of ignorance and misguidedness, in a worse capacity behind moral righteousness and common sense to shout down their opponents in the same way Kirk Cameron does to Christian in the front seat of a car, their own vocabulary replacing the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" with a similar unwillingness to debate a subject. In mind to the likes of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens forced his protagonist and the reader to experience the cruelty of real life before there could be a happy ending. This particular morality tale does not ignore the real difficult nature of the world, particularly as this review to stamp it to December 2020 comes from a miserable era in human society. The moral however is one I feel is important, whilst also being a very simple one - that we really need, even on an amateur level, better critical thinking and debating skills. I am sure, one day, I could easily write a very long polemic about a film from a left wing perspective this ill advised and ill-thought-out, which makes this a moral I want to learn as much as any of my dear readers should.

 

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1) "Training champions for Christ since 1971"

2) An example from the 2020 re-election of this can be found HERE.

3) An article on this, though from the scientific side of the debate, can be found HERE.

4) As talked of HERE.

5) HERE.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990)

 

Director: Milton Gray, Marsh Lamore, Robert Shellhorn, Mike Svayko and Karen Peterson

Screenplay: Duane Poole and Tom Swale

Voice Cast: George C. Scott as Smoke; Jason Marsden as Michael; Don Messick as Papa Smurf; Lorenzo Music as Garfield; Laurie O'Brien as Baby Piggy / Mom; Lindsay Parker as Corey; Janice Karman as Theodore (voice); Jim Cummings as Tigger / Winnie the Pooh; Ross Bagdasarian Jr. As Alvin / Simon (voice); Jeff Bergman as Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck; Townsend Coleman as Michelangelo / Dad; Russi Taylor as Huey / Dewey / Louie / Baby Gonzo; Frank Welker as Slimer / Baby Kermit / Hefty Smurf; Barbara Bush as Self; George Bush as Self; Paul Fusco as Gordon 'ALF' Shumway

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Now I'm seeing ducks!

Beginning with the Ronald McDonald Children's Charity, with Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue recovered from a VHS rip, we start with an advertising where children of various disabilities and social standings smile to the camera in idyllic commercial depictions of childhood, happy and with a children's chorus evoking the ideals of charity and contributing to those in need. We forget that whatever one's opinion of McDonalds and any corporation in general¹, with this the fast food franchise's charity part of their public face, any business has to account for the world around them. This includes various attempts at charity and "community service" for a lack of a better term depending on whether they sincerely desire to help the public or if for dubious means. This is also important to think of as that charity also helped produce this curious combination of public scares and pop culture, a very odd one where, not since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and all the hurdles to get Warner Brothers and Disney to agree to let their characters co-exist on the same screen, this is done for the sake of a fear of children getting into narcotics and done as a public health service.

Likewise, the prelude to this infamous cartoon special about saying no to drugs also includes an address by the then-president George Bush Sr. with his wife Barbara Bush, hoping this work would be advancement on the war on drugs the USA was involved in this period. It is surreal to envision or even see this piece, from a Buena Vista International distributed production; the imagine of Donald Trump, when he was president, sat on a couch with Ivanka Trump, addressing an audience like this feels a foreign and peculiar world on long ago. Baraka and Michelle Obama maybe, but what Cartoon All-Stars... is, if also a vague and misguided attempt at social consciousness, is also a fascinating time capsule that, were it not for all the rights negotiations that may be involved to re-release it, does show a period where children from the USA especially grew up with "say no to drugs" campaigning, this just one of the various ways to promote the message over various pop culture. There is even a reference to Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in dialogue which, alongside how peculiar it was a horror villain known as a child murderer managed to be referenced even in this production, goes to show the era it was made in was a time ago. The reason why this one is known and infamous is that, for this tale of a teenage boy named Michael, an added surrealism of having this writer's name, we have the likes of Garfield interacting with the Muppet Babies to help him kick drugs. Where the evil smoke figure on the opposite should, tempting poor Michael to crack, is voiced by the legendary actor George C. Scott, and where it effectively turns into an animated version of Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), only with the addict protagonist seeing Donald Duck's nephews rather than bats...who then start to sing.

Now the layman will be aware that the issue of drugs in modern culture has yet to be resolved. Marijuana being legalised in states in America is a huge change - where Simon of the Chipmunks is able to inform everyone what one is but it is still considered the gateway drug to worse narcotics - but instead of mocking Cartoon All-Stars... however, the bigger tragedy is that this was the work of earnestness by conservative/corporate USA, whether the people animating and voicing the film were actually earnest in the goal or not, which was inevitably going to be doomed to squareness about the subject. It actually feels like a perversity in itself, in truth, when you have these characters materialise from the toys and possessions Michael's younger sister has (the likes of the Smurfs to Winnie the Pooh), looking and sounding as we may have grown up with them, only for the harsh reality of them to have to encounter drug addiction. Even if the box hidden under Michael's bed is full of weird alien forms of narcotic tools, it feels wrong for this to have transpired, despite the many parodies which may have existed. Winnie the Pooh's obsession with honey and demeanour should raise suspicions, Garfield was always cynical, and out of all the Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtles to be included, the only one being Michelangelo the party dude feels strange unless he is a teetotaller surfer dude, but with the other characters it feels like a moral transgression if you think of how these characters have been brought into the subject where, for all the dancing around actually talking about real drugs and their effects, "crack" is actually referenced at one point.

For myself, missing this anti-drug campaigning by being too young and British, I did nonetheless grow up with some of these characters. I remember Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Smurfs, the Ninja Turtles and Garfield cartoons. Then there are figures only know in the UK in hushed voices and Simpsons references like Alf: a cat eating alien (who threatens to eat Garfield in the one darkly humorous line) who started as a live action character, got an animated work to qualify here and eventually had a cancelled talk show in 2004.  And in some cases, there are characters being used for this moralising which is actually a transgression against them rather than feeling too innocent to be involved. The rumour, which has never been substantiated and was eventually debunked², was that Jim Davidson, the creator of Garfield, did not get his permission to include Garfield which compromised future screenings. I am, however, thinking of someone like Bugs Bunny, who here with Daffy Duck was the first time someone else ever took on the role after Mel Blanc. God knows anyone who has actually seen at least one of the old Bugs Bunny shorts where Tex Avery/Friz Freleng/Bob Clampett school made him the ultimate libertine of cartoons, who dressed as women constantly and was an utter spiteful misanthrope to suckers, the kind of figure whose morally concerned version here vastly contrasts a character more likely to be on jazz cigarettes himself.

The fact all these characters, including their voice actors, were pulled together is spectacular, and the animation is not bad. Even for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which I have already referred to, it took Steven Spielberg at the height of his powers (just as a production) to be in the same room so rivals Disney and Warner Brothers would allow Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny onscreen together, and even then there had to be rules set in stone. Here, under the auspices of protecting children from drugs, more influence was found if dooming this special due to the obvious copyright issues now to deal with. In terms of voice acting, whilst there are some legendary if underappreciated voice actors here (like Frank Welker, the living zoological database for animal real or imagined), the one big gleeful discovery for a cineaste is one of the only animated roles for George C. Scott as the evil Smoke, a tempting vapour who promoted those evil nasty drugs on young adolescents. It was probably a pay day, but George C. Scott was one of those character actors who could make any production better just because he was there and he was the best thing in Cartoon All Stars... as to be expected. In fact, the Smoke character, a purple cloud of smoke in a suit, is the one intelligent aspect of the short, Smoke's temptations and threats having a weight to them with the legendary Dr. Strangelove actor voice and that the dialogue does not shy away from him still being a threat even when Michael kicks the drugs.

The message itself is vague and confused, and that is the ultimate reason anyone understandably mocks the short. It does not dare try to explain why drugs are harmful, throwing weed under the bus in the same light as crack, when they are in different categories, and depicting the damage caused by them through nightmare scenarios that feel like they are drug hallucinations themselves rather than the real grim toll they cause. From the deranged theme park of roller coasters through the brain matter and the hall of distorting mirrors, to a musical number where the song is about saying no to drugs in various ways, it never dares scare children with the truth of the harm drugs can cause. Neither does it even admit why anyone would be hooked barring some platitudes of curiosity and stress. What it does instead is just a fantasy scenario - where Bugs Bunny borrows a time machine "from some coyote" to take Michael to the past where he first took weed, all in black and white in one clever touch, before going on to a series of scenes of him suffering hallucinogenic nightmares, including a sewer full of multicoloured sludge or a carnival where a giant Miss Piggy sucks him up in a drink's straw. The many shots of what Michael will look like ravaged by drugs instead looks like a zombie, not factual accuracy to the real toll of narcotics, where animation in its exaggeration betrays the message.

If the finale of the short did not scare you off drugs, there are moments where it does completely contradict itself, not at least a father whose beer drinking is not thrown under the bus too in the one line it is brought up in. The entire scenario is the product of squares pulling their punches and being uncomfortable even trying to talk about drugs, only referencing a few and leaving the others vague which is a dangerous thing in itself, the sense that instead we will put a really ominous synth drone when crack is mentioned and that will be enough, all in a video gaming arcade when this happens to emphasis the clichés of that being a den of debauchery. The only sense of adult thoughtfulness is that aforementioned line of dialogue that Smoke, Scott's villain, promises to return at the end like the nagging potential for relapse, a detail which is an actual struggle for some addicts and the one only honest consideration. The rest is deeply silly and not surprisingly was the sort of thing dope heads could smoke pot and laugh at as was the case for Reefer Madness (1936). In terms of a cultural artefact, I do find it compelling and recommend people find this; in fact, as with any project, I wish it was legally available as, even as an animated project, contextually it is a really unique piece and, in its own perverse existence, is watchable.  The weirdness of the project in itself is enough to recommend anyone look into.

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1) I have softened to McDonalds, both because in Britain fast food stores like it, as American exports, exist in a very different way to the image I have had of them in the United States; in America, you have tomes like Fast Food Nation, where the 2006 Richard Linklater adaptation will always stick in mind for the moment about faecal matter in the burgers, or the 2004 documentary Super Size Me demonising them but in England, especially as a result of a pandemic, their banality as regular people work hard jobs in their kitchens to provide food for regular people working hard jobs has become more significant. Particularly as someone who is working class myself, seeing them as an inherently evil corporate monolith is overly simplistic as, blending in the background next to a supermarket where my closest is, it just seems a gaudy building where people on both sides of the till exist, with their individual existences. Also, whilst I prefer other burgers, I have to admit at some point, after the toil of 2020,  just binging on their menu and giving in to stuffing one's face just once would seem far less like you are selling your soul nowadays as I type this, that and their McFlurries were always good.

2) Mark Evanier, head writer of Garfield and Friends (1988-94), debunked the rumour on the Cartoon Research Facebook page HERE with the following text in October 2013:

"How about if I confirm it? Jim knew all about the special, he okayed Garfield's participation and approved whatever had to be approved.

I believe the original plan, which got all the various copyright holders to agree to let their characters participate called for limited airing."