The Gweilo Dojo: THE MANCHURIAN AVENGER (1982)

If there’s one thing I like it’s a good western. Preferably a revisionist western with a twisting plot, oodles of visual style and gritty retribution. Films like DJANGO KILL (1967) and THE PRICE OF DEATH (1971), two completely different styles of films, use the western setting as a launching pad for stories and characters that are so far removed from the pre-‘60s cowboys and Indians archetype that they are not so much westerns, per se, as period pieces.

If there’s another thing I like it’s a Western-made martial arts film. Preferably with real champion martial artists and a completely ludicrous plot about world domination. Films like KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE (1979) and FORCE: FIVE (1981) ape their Hong Kong counterparts but with totally anglo sensibilities, making them a breed unto themselves.

So what could be better than creating a Frankenfilm hybrid of the two genres? Sort of a Reese’s peanutbutter cup of exploitation films. You got a western in my kung fu! You got kung fu in my western! Two great tastes that taste great together, right? Sadly, aside from classics of the subgenre like THE FIGHTING FIST OF SHANGHAI JOE (1972), the kung fu western tends to be a good excuse to bungle both genres and THE MANCHURIAN AVENGER takes this unhappy trend to an all new low.

The basic premise of the film is that Joe (Bobby Kim, looking like he could start a career as Charles Bronson's stunt double) is returning to his home town in dirt-water Colorado after fleeing as a child. As we learn in flash-back, his father was murdered by an unseen man and his gang who were after gold. Upon returning, Joe finds that his brother and sister are now, some 25 years later, are being beaten and harassed by a local black-clad thug, Sam and his gang who are… yes, you guessed it, looking for gold.

On the coach-ride back home the stage is beset by Mexican banditos, or rather some community theater actors in Poncho Villa mustaches sporting what is unequivocally the worst freakin’ Mexican accents since master Mexicano thespian Speedy Gonzales graced the screen. Honestly, these guys are about as legit la raza as Jeff Dunham's Jose, the jalapeño on a stick. Naturally Joe kicks their asses while they stand there and stare at him. Right as they are ready to kidnap him anyway (because he must know where gold can be found), Joe whips out a throwing star and decapitates a rattlesnake that was within several feet of biting Diego, the leader of the bandits. Of course now Diego owes Joe his life and an uneasy bond is formed. “You, you are some kind of devil who look like a man. A man that fight like a lion!” exclaims Diego. Matter of fact his long-winded admiration of Joe’s fighting ability is repeated so often that there will come a point where you will be ready to hurl a throwing star at your TV screen the next time Diego shouts “he fight like a lion!” Seriously, how the hell would a Mexican bandit in the 1800s know anything about lions and their fighting abilities?

Upon arriving in town Joe discovers that his uncle has been killed by Sam’s men because (wait for it), they thought he had some gold stashed somewhere. Now Joe must avenge his family against Sam and his men by means of kicking them in the head while they practice the ancient white-guy martial art style of Standing-Still-and-Waiting-to-get-Hit. Turns out Sam and his men are merely lackeys for the local crimelord Master Cheng. Cheng, when not flaying the skin off of innocents with a straight razor, amuses children with magic tricks before bedtime. Since Joe is such a threat to a man who’s mystic martial arts can levitate objects and control the very elements (trust me, this sounds much more exciting than it really is), Cheng must send for reinforcements. His ace in the hole? A group of five badasses called The Four Winds, who dress in rags and live in a cave. Why are these five guys called The Four Winds? Beats the shit outta me. When Cheng’s lacky gazes upon the one with the neat neatly combed haircut, he stammers “Kamikaze, I am honored to meet you!” before comically fainting. You bet your ass son! That’s Bill Mothafucking “Superfoot” Wallace standing in front of you! ...pretending to have at least a shred of integrity.

This all leads to a showdown between Joe and Diego against Cheng’s men and The Four Winds. There are two climactic duels, the first being between Joe and Kamikaze which you’d think would be amazing. I mean, hell, this is what we have been waiting 80 minutes for right? Director Ed Warnick (of whom, inconceivably, this film is his only credit), takes what should be an easy score and fumbles it with extreme prejudice. Instead of tireless choreography allowing for exciting fight sequences, Warnick takes the easy way out and shoots all of the action from behind the attacker and the attackee, so that the performers can miss by a country mile and supposedly no one will be the wiser. In the end Kamikaze disappears in a cloud of smoke and Joe discovers that Cheng was the man who killed his father. But seriously, by this point you won’t give a flying crap, in the same way you won’t care that you never find out if anyone had any frickin' gold to begin with!

Yeah, MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE this is not, but it has the potential to be entertaining. While some kung fu westerns tend to faceplant by making the proceedings slapstick comedy, for the most part MANCHURIAN AVENGER plays it straight... I think. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. The acting is so amateurish, in a surprisingly unamusing way, that at times it seems like Warnick is trying to elicit laughs from the intentionally broken English of the Mexican and Chinese characters. At other times he is clearly trying to get laughs from Cheng's yellow-bellied (oh stop groaning!) lackey whose whiny cowardice is supposed to provide comic relief, but does nothing more than add to this film's extensive list of sins.

The movie is super low-budget with a bare minimum of sets and non-existant production values, and in spite of the R-rating has nothing except the shot of a removed hand to warrant this. Don't expect this Manchurian Joe to be gouging out eyes and ripping out hearts like Shanghai Joe. No sir. Just some reasonably impressive kicks that obviously don't come anywhere near connecting. Also, the day for night shots are so badly done that at times it is impossible to see anything at all. There's also no real visual style with scenes being a collection of close-ups that appear to be edited with a shotgun. All this would be forgivable if the film wasn’t so deadly slow paced. Warnick lingers on long shots of people slowly walking, sitting and lying still,  punctuated by dialogue flatter than Paris Hilton’s brainscan. In addition, for no other conceivable reason than to pad out the films running time, Warnick has a bit where Joe wanders out into the brush and has a five minute long flashback to scenes that we just saw! This excruciatingly monotonous concoction could still be elevated by some great action, but Warnick clearly doesn’t have the money or the patience for heavily choreographed action sequences delivering fight scenes that look as if they were improvised on the spot. It’s one thing to waste a perfectly good premise; it’s another thing to waste the awesomeness of Bill Wallace. That’s just criminal, amigo.

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Quick Fix: Recent Viewings and Video Ramblings

Yeah, I'm too lazy to do full blown reviews for these flicks so this is what you get.  Enjoy my non-readers!

DIRTY LAUNDRY (1987) - Nope, this doesn't feature the Don Henley song.  That would have at least given it some merit. Concert sound man Jay (Leigh McCloskey, fresh off the classic HAMBURGER: THE MOTION PICTURE) finds himself in a pickle after he accidentally picks up a sack of cash during a coke deal (involving two grandmas) at a laundromat. This puts him in the cross-hairs of mobster "Macho" Marty (Frankie Valli), his goon Vito (Nicholas Worth), and music manager Maurice (Sonny Bono). Teaming with music reporter Trish (Jeanne O'Brien) and neighbor kid inventor Oscar (Robbie Rist), Jay runs all over L.A. trying to escape the villains. 

The only thing worse than this flick is knowing that some loser in his thirties - yours truly - was compelled to watch it based off that cover art. Because we all know this POLICE ACADEMY style drawing means hilarity. Director William Webb has no idea what comedy is with the film falling flat at every turn. To give you an example, Webb's idea of humor is to have two male cops with the last names Betty and Veronica. Or Crockett & Tubbs look-a-likes slipping on a wet floor with a cheap-o MIAMI VICE riff on the soundtrack. Or the top F.B.I. guy being named Zimbalist and everyone making cracks about it. It is so odd a cast of "legit" folks like Valli and Bono got signed onto this. To be fair, Bono's character completely disappears halfway through and never shows up again. Maybe he was embarrassed and didn't show up for work? Even odder are the brief appearances by two Olympians, Carl Lewis and Greg Louganis. Lewis is one of the MIAMI VICE cops and Louganis is cast as Jay's womanizing surfer roommate (yeah right!).  Couple all of that with a complete absence of T&A (a requirement for these kind of flicks) and you get a film that is a total wash.

HUMAN HUNT (1987) - I've been digging some 80s Mexican exploitation cinema lately.  The only problem is few of their titles have an English option.  Thankfully, this one was dubbed into English.  A young couple elopes and they decide to spend their honeymoon in a small Mexican beach town. Bad move as there is some crazy psycho in a big black truck who is pushing people in their cars off a cliff. Rod (Valentin Trujillo), the brother of the deceased boy, arrives in town to claim his body and begins investigating. The law thinks it is just bad drivers that keep flying off this cliff, but Rod soon finds out otherwise and he suspects the Sheriff might be the killer. Naturally, this stay in the small coastal town also gives him a chance to romance a local waitress, whose sister was the first victim. This is my second Trujillo flick (the first was the highly entertaining OCCUPATIONAL KILLER) and it is pretty good. The mystery isn't much as they try to make everyone a suspect, but one reaction by a character during a pivotal scene will tip you off easily. The car chases are pretty good and the menacing big black truck reminds me of the Lance Henriksen segment in NIGHTMARES (1983). Trujillo also co-wrote and directed.

THE KILLINGS AT OUTPOST ZETA (1980) - Another one of those "SOS because monsters are attacking us" low budget sci-fi flicks. Starfleet sends a rescue team to the barren planet Zeta after two exploratory teams go missing. This mission is of the utmost importance as they were hoping to begin colonization on this Earth-like rock within two months. Once the team of six (four men and two women) get there, they discover everyone dead due to some weird rock monsters (to be said in Fred Schneider voice). In the post-STAR WARS age, it is weird to see something this cheap on screen. Co-directors Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler certainly seemed ambitious, but only had enough money to create some cheap space suits (motorcycle helmets) and maybe three sets. The monsters are most likely paper mache and are never given a good glimpse. The surface world stuff (shot in some desert) is actually pretty well done. Emenegger and Sandler had an extremely prolific two years after this film, producing close to a dozen cheap-o sci-fi flicks (with titles like LABORATORY, LIFEPOD, TIME WARP) before disappearing in 1981.

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Carpocalypse Now: RUN LIKE HELL (1995)

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The "Never Got Made" Files #43 - #47: Night of the Living Dead Romero projects

Horror legend George Romero has made a lot of great films.  What is surprising is he has probably been attached to more unmade films than any other horror director I can think of (Guillermo Del Toro will surely take the crown before his career is over).  I could go on and on about the various projects he toiled on to no avail, but that would probably kill the internet.  Instead, I will only focus on the projects that actually got so far as to have visual representation in the form of pre-production advertising.

#43 – SHOO-BE DOO-BE MOON

This project was announced as a potential film property by Laurel Entertainment in the early 1980s.  However, the genesis actually stems from a pre-NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD period when Romero was at Carnegie Mellon University. According the to the essential Romero biography (well, up to 1985 at least) The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh, Romero did a radio program with friends Rudy Ricci and Diane Lang called “Attack of the Zilches.”  Ricci described it as “a take off on those 1950s science-fiction movies, where teenagers are attacked in cars.”  According to Zomibe’s author Paul Gagne:

Ricci later wrote an as-yet-unproduced script for Romero and Richard Rubenstein based on the same essential idea, INVASION OF THE SPAGHETTI MONSTERS (originally SHOOBEE DOOBEE MOON).

Laurel took out a huge, two-page ad for the flick which looked like GREASE crossed with MAD magazine.  Surprisingly, the idea of bloodsucking aliens looking to impregnate earth chicks didn’t catch on (I blame the next year's E.T.).

Two more ads for the film that appeared in Variety circa 1980:

#44 – MONGREL: THE LEGEND OF COPPERHEAD

A few years later, Laurel teased film fans with a mystery film that promised “the creation of the hero of the century” and that it was “coming soon to theaters and wherever magazines are sold.”  Hmmmm, what could this possible be. Well, it turns out Laurel partners Romero and Rubenstein had tried to look into the film rights of various comic book characters, but found the licensing rights too expensive.  Their solution?  Why we will create our own comic book character and make a movie about him while we’re at it.  Laurel teamed with Marvel Comics to create this new superhero and here is what Romero said to the New York Times about it:

“The superhero character is the sheriff of Philadelphia in the not-too-distant future.  According to Romero, the script “will be a typical introduction of a superhero – how he came into his powers – and will take him through his first series of adventures.  It will have some solid social values and a little social satire and there will be a lot of weaponry and vehicles.”

Well, unfortunately for fans of weaponry and vehicles, the project never got off the ground.

Interestingly, comic artist Bob Layton put up artwork from the proposed comic on his site and details his involvement during 1984-85 on this unrealized project.  You can check it out here:

http://www.boblayton.com/Archive/October%2005/oct05.artfind.htm

The sci-fi bible STARLOG also ran this tiny blurb about the then unnamed project in 1983:

#45 – THE STAND

Do I really need to say anything about this one?  Long rumored to be Romero’s dream project, the adaptation of Stephen King’s epic 800-page virus novel is what initially brought the two horror-meisters together.  When funding couldn’t be realized (they wanted at least $20 million), the duo opted to do CREEPSHOW instead.  After that film’s success, Laurel continued to push the title with Romero attached (even going so far as to propose it as a two film series).  In the end, George and Laurel parted ways in the late 80s and THE STAND was eventually made as a sanitized and bland TV mini-series by Mick Garris.  *shakes head*

#46 – APARTMENT LIVING

This project popped up post-MONKEY SHINES as one of three films Romero was attached to (the other two being Laurel’s long-gestating PET SEMATARY and a remake of THE TURN OF THE SCREW; neither got made by Romero).  While discussing his monkey mayhem thriller in Fangoria #76, Romero said the following about the project:

Fang: What picture’s next on the agenda after MONKEY SHINES?

Romero: Theoretically, I’m supposed to start working on something called APARTMENT LIVING.

Fang: Is it a feature-length DARKSIDE remake, as rumors suggest?

Romero: No, it’s not a remake.  It’s about an apartment that eats people.  The building is alive, and it eats people.

Fang: What do you mean by “theoretically” you’re supposed to start working on it?

Romero: I don’t know for sure about it.  There’s no picture right now that’s ready to start shooting.  I don’t mean to sound evasive, I just literally don’t know what’s going on with APARTMENT LIVING, though it tentatively has probably the best shot – as far as financing – to be the next picture ready to go.

Cinevest ran several ads in Variety for the film during 1988-89, but the film never got before the cameras and Romero went on to make THE DARK HALF.

#47 – THE BLACK MARIAH

Not much is know about this project but I include it just for the interesting pic.  Following the nightmare post-production period on THE DARK HALF, Romero came under contract to New Line Cinema to develop new horror films. One title was THE BLACK MARIAH, an adaptation of the debut novel of author Jay R. Bonansinga.  Sounding like horror combination of DUEL and SPEED, the novel tell the story of a black truck driver who comes to the assistance of a guy on his CB radio who says he can’t stop his car because it is cursed and if he does he will die.  The publisher was so sure that this film deal would go through that they sent out the original paperbacks with a line on the cover reading “soon to be a major motion picture directed by George Romero.”  D’oh!  It never got made.

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Prison Prescription: CHAINED HEAT (1983)

Want me to blow your mind?  Back in May 1983, RETURN OF THE JEDI burst onto a thousand screens just in time for Memorial Day weekend and grossed $41 million in 5 days (a record back then).  No one in Hollywood would dare to go up against the LucasFilm Monster Money Machine (© George Lucas).  Well, except for Jensen Farley Pictures, a small distributor that specialized in horror and T&A films.  What did they unleash that fateful weekend in 404 theaters to combat the power of The Force? Why a W.I.P. (Women in Prison) flick rife with nudity, sleaze and b-stars in CHAINED HEAT. You won’t get that in today’s market at all.

HEAT centers on innocent Carol Henderson (Linda Blair) who is sentenced to 18 months in a women’s penitentiary for accidentally killing a man.  Carol realizes what a tough time it will be when some chicks in the holding cell get into a fist fight over their favorite soap operas.  She quickly learns the prison's segregated caste system where the blacks are led by Duchess (Tamara Dobson) and the whites by Erika (Sybil Danning).  Well, we assume there are black prisoners there as their wing is never really show and only two black girls are in the picture.  Carol soon finds herself in the middle of this when she witnesses the killing of a black inmate…on her first day in the joint…on her way to her cell.

Racial tensions are the least of Carol’s worries in her new home though as she also has to contend with a thoroughly corrupt staff. You have lascivious Warden Bachman (John Vernon) who seduces female inmates with drugs in his 70s porn style office (complete with a jacuzzi!) so he can make X-rated videotapes of them (“Don’t call me warden, call me Fellini,” he utters at one point).  Under his nose, head guard Captain Taylor (Stella Stevens) is in cahoots with sleazeball pimp Lester (Henry Silva) to traffic drugs and execute the ever popular prisoners-to-high-priced-escorts exchange program.  After one of Carol’s only friends is killed alongside the warden, the prisoners forget their differences and unite to find the secret video tape of the foul play.

As even that short synopsis will show, CHAINED HEAT has something for everyone.  There are sleazy movies and then there is this one.  German helmer Paul Nicholas crafts a film that is like a wayward child acting out in a dozen horrible ways in order to gain the love their parents.  Well, you had me at the scene ten minutes in where John Vernon admonishes one of his hot tub conquests about her needle drug habit by saying, “Why can’t you just snort it like the rest of us?”  Nary five minutes of screen time will go by without something seedy happening.  You have knifings, catfights, transvestite beatings, shower scenes, drug runs and everything else under the sun.  Hell, the film even leaves the confines of the prison about a hour in as Carol is one of several prisoners taken out of the jail by Lester so they can serve as pieces of meat at a party for elites (where one coked up guy goes nuts on Blair, attempts to rape her and holds a gun to her head).

Of course, the film also holds a special place in our heart here at Video Junkie because it features one of moviedom’s most iconic image montages ever.  Yeah, film scholars will talk about the editing of the stair sequence in Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925) or Hitchcock’s shower scene in PSYCHO (1960).  But film history would be a total bust if it did not mention the topless shower encounter between Linda Blair and Sybil Danning.  King Kong vs. Godzilla?  You ain’t got nothing on this showdown of epic proportions.  Rather than drool, er, talk about it, I’ll let the images doing the speaking:

No doubt the allure of seeing young Regan from THE EXORCIST (1973) nekkid drew a lot of people to the film, but director Nicholas is a man who knew his exploitation and paired her up with Austrian ultravixen Danning.  This is truly one of cinema’s greatest back-to-back (front-to-front?) shots of all-time and probably sent Russ Meyer into convulsions.

It is truly mind blowing that this actually got released into theaters. Now the happy ending to this story would be that HEAT fought tooth-and-nail against the big budget blockbuster that weekend and won. Sadly, we can’t say that.  But it survive past the first round. CHAINED HEAT finished in 7th place in the top twenty and, after JEDI, sported the highest per screen average out of any film.  Just knowing that somewhere in America kids were lined up to see JEDI and got to glance at the HEAT poster brings a tear to my eye.  Think about that the next time you line up for a $200 million dollar blockbuster.  Try to imagine a poster in the lobby promising blood, babes and bars.  Hard, ain’t it? Amazingly, this still has not see a DVD release in the US.  It has shown up on Showtime within the last few years, but is sadly an edited version that omits a lot of the violence (including Blair being raped by Vernon). Lionsgate apparently now has the U.S. rights and chances are if they ever release it that it will be this cut down version.

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Soppy Cinema: LORDS OF THE DEEP (1989)

As mentioned in the ENDLESS DESCENT review, the hot genre commodity in the late 80s was “close encounters of the underwater kind.”  And you know if anyone was going to jump all over that it would be Roger Corman and his Concorde Pictures.  To a 14-year-old like me, this was the greatest news ever. If anyone could bring bloody ballast to this sub-genre, it would be Corman. Concorde had delivered some gooey monster-pieces at the time like THE NEST (1988) and THE TERROR WITHIN (1989).  Plus, the title LORDS OF THE DEEP conjured up images of another Corman production, the classic HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (1980).  And what’s that?  The lead is Bradford Dillman, the same guy from PIRANHA (1978)?  This is going to be awwwwesome, right?

LORDS opens with a scrawl about how the year is 2020 and the human race – having depleted all natural resources above ground – is looking to colonize underwater.  Makes sense, right?  We enter a submerged station run by the Martel Corporation just as the entire crew (whose outfits look like they were made out of old blankets) finds out they are being replaced.  Scientist Claire (Priscilla Barnes of THREE’S COMPANY “You’re not Suzanne Somers” fame) has discovered some jelly type substance (we don’t even see her find it) and, being the genius she is, decides the best course of action is to stick her hand into it.  The result is some kind of trippy visuals that make you think her head got invaded by Ken Russell circa 1982.

Anyway, a big earthquake causes the replacement crew’s sub to crash and the power in the station to go down.  A diver is sent out to fix it, but returns as a gelatinous filled wetsuit. Capt. Dobler (Dillman) orders the body quarantined and no one to speak of this.  But Claire wants to study it and goes against his orders.  Dobler can’t handle the insurrection and, with secret orders from above ground, attempts to kill the crew and this now shape-shifting blob.  This thing turns out to be a benign alien that wants to warn humankind about mistreating the Earth.  Awwwwww.  And Claire just happens to be a clairvoyant who they want to tell their message.  Or, as she so aptly puts it, “I only know that something is trying to tell me something.”

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, damn it!

LORDS not only holds the distinction of getting everything wrong, it might also be one of the worst Concorde Productions of that era. Yes, worse that PURPLE PEOPLE EATER (1988). My adolescent expectations aside, the film is just terrible.  It is like Corman had a spy on the set of THE ABYSS (1989) who would get pieces of the plot over lunch breaks.  Underwater station? Check.  Corporate giants? Gotcha.  Aliens looking to protect man from himself? Yup!  But these aliens say stuff like “stop now so the Earth can heal.”  Damn, did Al Gore check this out when it hit 32 theaters back in the day?

To back up the weak environmentally friendly screenplay, we have some truly bad acting.  It says something when Roger Corman gives the best performance in a cameo as a corporate exec.  Barnes is the worst of the lot, constantly having this look on her face that can only be described as a cross between a smile and slack-jawed “duh” face.  It ends up making her look like Jack Nicholson’s Joker most of the time. Dillman looks to only be picking up a check. Even worse is the level of cheapness on display in this movie.  I think there are a total of three sets and they all look shoddy.  I slapped down ENDLESS DESCENT for having only one true underwater scene, but at least they had some seaweed and a floating corpse.  Here, director Mary Ann Fisher has one real underwater shot (miniatures excluded) and it is a close up of the diver working on an electrical box that was surely shot in a pool.  See that awesome poster at the top of this review?  Don't get your hopes up.  Fisher even includes a bit where characters get scared by a rat…in a unit 20,000ft. deep in the ocean!  What makes it hurt so bad is Corman and co. damn well knew how to properly exploit this “bottom of the sea” fad and still opted to go the softie route.  It should have been a low-budget THE THING (1982) underwater. Instead we got E.T. (1982) minus the Reese’s Pieces but plus some ecological mumbo jumbo. To quote Bill Duke from MENACE II SOCIETY, “you know you done fucked up, don’t you? You know it, don’t you? You know you done fucked up.”

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The "Never Got Made" Files #41 & #42: Craving some Wes

Hard to believe now, but Wes Craven used to be persona non grata in the film world thanks to his shocker LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972).  Well, it isn't like people didn't want him around but he did have a helluva time trying to get projects funded (before he became the Weinsteins' whipping boy).  Following THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977), Craven spent time in TV land with the Linda Blair starring STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE (aka SUMMER OF FEAR; 1978) before doing Hollywood's project limbo dance.

#41: One project Craven found himself attached to (and I don't even know if he knew) was something advertised in a 1982 issue of Variety called THE FALLEN.  Who wouldn't love a film "in the genre of THE OMEN, THE EXORCIST, THE RAIDERS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS" to see?  THE RAIDERS, yes!  The only mention I've ever been able to find from Craven on this project is in the book Screams & Nightmares: The Films of Wes Craven where he said (when talking of the failed MARIMBA movie [see below]):

"I've since turned down two more jungle things - one was a RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK type movie; the other about a sniper in the jungles of Vietnam."  

#42: MARIMBA is quite a different project than the unidentified THE FALLEN.  This was a film that Craven actually researched heavily, cast and was fully prepared to direct.  As relayed in Screams & Nightmares, the film's genesis stems from some Italian producers approaching Craven to write two scripts.  Craven on the project:

"I had written a script called MARIMBA about drug smuggling.  Dirk Benedict and Tim McIntyre were cast, but the money I was promised never came through."

"I spent years in the jungles of Colombia on this thing that never got made about cocaine smuggling, called MARIMBA."

Sure, Wes, we totally believe your story about spending years in the Columbian jungles in the late 70s doing "research" on a film about cocaine.  Was Dennis Hopper with you by any chance?  Anyway, the Italians heavily advertised MARIMBA in the late 70s/early 80s issues of Variety.  One ad confirms Craven's casting story and adds an additional cast member of Chris Mitchum.  Damn you Movie Gods!  According to Craven the producers refused to give him back his script and they eventually morphed it into the entertaining CUT AND RUN (1985), which featured Craven alum Michael Berryman. This appears to be true as MARIMBA's credited producer Alessandro Fracassi did in fact produce CUT AND RUN.  Ain't the movie world weird?

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Soppy Cinema: ENDLESS DESCENT (aka THE RIFT; 1990)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.  For reasons only known to coke-addled Hollywood execs, underwater monster movies became a craze in the late 80s.  “It’s like JAWS but totally underwater,” I can hear them saying.  Studios flooded (ah, boo yourself) the market and within the first six months of 1989 audiences got big-budget titles like THE ABYSS, DEEPSTAR SIX and LEVIATHAN.  That’s enough to give you a bad case of the bends.  The indies tried to stay afloat and gave us titles such as THE EVIL BELOW and LORDS OF THE DEEP (both 1989 as well).  Naturally, an enterprising exploiter like Juan Piquer Simon was more than happy to sail in their wake and gave us ENDLESS DESCENT (aka THE RIFT) the following year.

E.D. (hey, that don’t sound right) opens with sub designer Wick Hayes (Jack Scalia, in Kip Winger hair) being told by Steensland (Edmund Purdom, in a one-scene role) that Siren-1, his pet project the Government took out of his hands, has gone missing 35,000ft under the sea.  They ask him to help a NATO rescue team, but Wick wants none of it until he is told that “Mark Massey was on board.”  Damn, we all know how important Mark Massey is, right?  So he reluctantly agrees to join the team.

"This sub's only seventeeeeeen!"

Leading this rescue operation on Siren-2 is Capt. Phillips (R. Lee Ermey, radically cast against type as a gruff military guy).  Other crew members includes some Swedish divers with French accents, a Trapper John look-a-like M.D., a cook (yes, they have a mess hall), token black guy “Skeets” (who says “Aw, man” or “Damn” every other line), computer geek Robbins (Ray Wise) and – wouldn’t you know it – Wick’s soon to be ex-wife Nina (Deborah Adair).  Heading to Siren-1’s last known location, the crew gets a SOS signal and dives to the region.  Once there they discover unheard of plant growth in the area (“I could open a sushi bar and retire a millionaire,” chimes the cook).  Sven goes diving (in the film’s only underwater scene; more on that later) and is killed by something.  The sub is then attacked by some big ass octopus (I think that is what it was), which Wick is smart enough to shock off the damaged vessel before he lands it on shelf.

Such terror would send me for the surface, but these are dedicated movie characters so they continue to the SOS signal.  In one of underwater moviedom’s biggest cheats ever, they discover a “naturally pressurized subterraneous cavern” and the expendable crew members get off the sub here to explore the cheap sets, er, caves.  To their surprise, they find some labs set up and the SOS sender long dead.  Wick grabs some data discs just before everyone is attacked by some slimy mutant creatures that stand no match for the crew’s highly pressurized special guns.  Back on Siren-2, they watch the discs and find out the Government was conducting genetic experiments down here.  Yeah, you read that right.  The U.S. Government decided the best place to set up their huge DNA mutating machine was in a cave 35,000ft deep in the ocean.  So what was the real reason the crew was sent here and who set them up?

Running a scant 79 minutes, you can’t ever fault ENDLESS DESCENT with being boring.  In fact, this plays like THE ABYSS mixed with ALIENS on fast forward; the sub drama comes from the former with the monster chase and slimy double crosser guy from the latter.  Of course, Simon knows he can’t possibly compete with these Cameron big budgets so he does the next best thing – he makes it goofy and gory.  Any monster that get blow’d up with be done in gooey fashion and there is plenty of that in that last half hour.  The same goes for humans.  When one guy gets infected, he asks a crew member to kill him and she complies by blowing his entire head off.  Uh, thanks?  The film is definitely cheap (ever see a sub interior with ceiling tiles?), but that lends a certain charm.  The leads (Scalia, Ermey, Wise) are all good in their roles, even if Simon completely refuses to get imaginative in the camera department (point and shoot territory here).  While not the worst waterlogged feature from that era (that would be LORDS OF THE DEEP), it is definitely worth a view if you are in the right mood.  You know, the kind of mood where you accept a person will see mutated seaweed and automatically touch it or where Jack Scalia – feathered hair and all – designing submarines for a living isn’t that farfetched.  Just make sure you don’t get the bends on your way back to the surface.

Ray Wise reacts to the script.

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