Revenge of 3-D: METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN (1983)

Director Charles Band was one of the first producer-directors to sense the impending 3-D craze in the early 1980s and unleashed the low budget but entertaining PARASITE in 1982. For his follow-up, he secured triple the budget to produce METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN, an adventure in a galaxy not so far away (California’s Bronson Canyon) that plays like a mix between THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981) and STAR WARS (1977), but sometimes looks a bit like MEGAFORCE (1982).

“It’s High Noon at the end of the Universe” promises the film’s tagline and that is about all the set up you will get as Band drops you right into the action with nary a hint of where this film is set. Dogen (Jeffrey Byron) is a bounty hunter called a Finder who is on the trail of evil Jared-Syn (Michael Preston, doing a complete 180 from his heroic leader in THE ROAD WARRIOR) and his half-cyborg son Baal (R. David Smith). Jared-Syn is collecting souls in crystals and recently killed the crystal mining father of Dhyana (Kelly Preston). Dogen teams up with Dhyana but she is promptly kidnapped by the evil warlord. So Dogan enlists the help of washed up former Finder Rhodes (Tim Thomerson) and the duo head to the Lost City of Set in order to secure a magic mask that somehow will stop Jared-Syn from achieving his goal of restoring this barren wasteland.

So, as you can tell from that synopsis, this is a great example of M.S.U. (Makin' Shit Up) cinema. METALSTORM doesn’t make a lick of sense outside of its comic book plot logic. Hell, I don’t know what METALSTORM means! Regardless, that doesn’t stop the film from being a damn enjoyable flick. The influences are obvious but Band spares no expense putting the action on screen. Band also displays some of the strongest directing in his career with a series of slow motion hallucination sequences that are really atmospheric. The action moves at a quick clip and features some good car stunts (watch for one stuntman getting clipped bad). The acting is good throughout, especially for a B-movie. Band again shows his casting prowess by featuring the future Mrs. John Travolta in her first starring role (Band also gave the world Demi Moore in PARASITE... damn it!). You also get Richard Moll showing up as a leader of a group of Cyclops.  And Tim Thomerson is great as Han Solo, er, Rhodes.

And, of course, there is the 3-D action. I wasn’t lucky enough to see this one in the theater, but reports from the field are that it was quite impressive. In fact, when genre film mag Cinefantastique did a round up on the 1981-83 3-D spell, they christened METALSTORM as the best of the bunch in terms of best utilizing the 3-D process. Band and director of photography Mac Ahlberg got a practice run on PARASITE so they knew exactly what to do this go-around. The film opens with the customary relief titles and then throws an impressive trick out every five minutes or so. Highlights include a glowing electrical beast that terrorizes Dogen; Baal’s extending arm that shoots green goo towards the audience; weapons (including the said arm) thrown toward the camera; and a climactic chase through a psychedelic dimension that probably left kids puking all kinds of day-glo colors in theater aisles. Seriously, how did this not cause Pokemon-esque seizures?

The film "ends" with the most laughable cliffhanger where Jared-Syn gets away (so the title lied!) and Dogen vows, "I'll find him in another dimension one day." Huh? Obviously Band was hoping this would be a series and Universal Studios also had high hopes for the film when they picked it up for distribution. In fact, METALSTORM holds a bit of cinema history in that it had the first 3-D trailer ever attached to a 3-D film as Universal attached the film's coming attraction to all copies of JAWS 3-D when it debuted the previous July. Alas, it is did not work as METALSTORM flopped when it hit screens about a month later, most likely due to audiences standing outside the theater going, “What the hell is a METALSTORM?” Hell, it came in one place below the also debuting YOR, HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE that weekend. On the bright side, it did eventually beat YOR in terms of total box office. So it’s got that going for it. METALSTORM is still a popular 3-D title in bootleg world, thanks mostly to a 3-D home video release in Japan. Universal has finally announced they will give this title a DVD release in August 2010. The down side? The release will be full frame, which is really a disservice to the widescreen photography. Makes me mad enough to go all metalstorm on their asses!

Alternate art:

Early promo art:

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Revenge of 3-D: COMIN' AT YA! (1981)

The Summer of 1981 saw the first 3-D hit of the ‘80s. A decade earlier Ferdinado Baldi and Tony Anthony had teamed up for the first time to create the “big” budgeted western BLINDMAN (1971) which was intended to be a comedy film following the success of THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970), but when finished, took on a more serious tone with tongue-in-cheek moments. This formula suited the duo well and became an international success, paving the way for two more westerns from the pair, GET MEAN (1976) and COMIN’ AT YA! (1981).

On his wedding day H.H. Hart (Tony Anthony) has his ceremony interrupted by a pair of filthy bandit brothers who shoot up the wedding party, leaving Hart for dead and stealing his bride to be. After recovering from his bullet wounds in record time, Hart sets out on a path for revenge. Hooking up with a wandering old man who seems to know an awful lot about Hart’s quarry, Hart discovers that the brothers Pike (Gene Quintano) and Polk (Ricardo Palacios) are notorious white slavers who conduct raids on US/Mexican border towns to steal women to sell to brothels and Mexican army officials. Hart manages to capture the super-sleazy, obese Polk, tying him up and leaving him to be eaten by mangy rats, then successfully raids the villa, freeing the women, only to be captured by Pike in the process. All of this culminates in a showdown in a ghost town.

It’s worth noting that it has been reported that US distributor Filmways Pictures cut a sequence from the opening of the film that sets up Anthony’s character as a reformed outlaw. I haven't been able to find any evidence backing this up, but it's something to keep an eye out for. Lloyd Battista, the third part of the Baldi/Anthony team, writing all four of their collaborations, freely plunders the riches of his own themes used in BLINDMAN with the villains being a pair of sadistic brothers with woman issues (the younger brother, again, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and again involved in a rape relationship), a whole mess of captive women (all of whom are in their knickers), a drunken feast at which the women are displayed, and stuff blowing up for no reason.

Some have accused Baldi of creating a thinly-plotted excuse for a massive variety of 3-D set-pieces, and they would be partially right. COMIN’ AT YA! does feature a truly stunning array of 3-D effects, many of which are repeated in sequence to deliver more bang for what is essentially very little bucks. In addition to spears, knives and arrows (courtesy of a Native American member of the gang), guns and hands are Baldi’s favorite things to have bust through the screen. You can imagine the brainstorming sessions that must have been held while they sat around trying to figure out how many different 3-D gags they could come up with.  In a sequence where Pike and what’s left of his gang are waiting for Hart in a ghost town with his wife as bait, the gang members idly wile away the time by throwing things into the audience such as darts, playing cards and even an apple is peeled with the peel dangling out of the screen. In one sequence Baldi even falls back on his old school roots and delivers a menagerie of rubber bats on fishing-line to torment a room full of captive women (rubber creatures on strings is, or was, one of the Seven Deadly Sins of 3-D filmmaking. A cheap 3-D effect that helped kill 3-D twice). On the other hand, 3-D is used to great effect during a scene where Hart is peering out from under the wooden sidewalk to shoot one of the slavers in the crotch.

Even so, this could have easily been a straight-forward spaghetti western and a modestly entertaining one to fans of the genre, but it wouldn’t have been the surprise hit that it was raking in $12 million in the US alone. If that number seems low by today’s megabudgeted standards, just remember that the US distributor Filmways Pictures  no doubt paid something in the five figure range for the US rights. I imagine they would have been happy to pull in 10% of that figure. While COMIN’ AT YA was a modestly budgeted western to say the least with only a handful of locations and a tiny cast, Baldi is no piker in this arena and uses every nickel to his advantage, even splurging on extra filmstock to create quite a few atmospheric slow-motion sequences.

Granted some of the slo-mo is for extended 3-D effects (such as beans being spilled out of a burlap sack, gold coins cascading out of Pike’s hands onto Hart’s face, etc), even 3-D blood squib effects, but the scene in which Anthony’s character is skulking in the shadows while is bride is being simultaneously bid on by white slavers and being molested by two potential buyers is incredibly effective, building tension and adding “depth” to a scene that would not have the same punch if played flat and normal speed. In addition to that, Baldi sets the stage for his 3-D assault with an incredibly inventive opening credit sequence (which also serves to pad the running time); Hart walks through a set interacting with various props that have the credits printed on them and in one way or another pop out of the screen in 3-D. It is my opinion that all 3-D films should have credits like this. It’s interesting that instead of creating a trend, subsequent 3-D films (including TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS [1983]) went with a less enthusiastic approach with titles that were either in 3-D relief or simply floated above the action.

Though I can’t imagine why, somehow I missed seeing this in the theater, but I seemed to be the only one. All of my friends and acquaintances went to see it and we’re ridiculously enthusiastic about it. People who would never usually watch a western, much less a foreign one, raved about how awesome it was. Seemingly the only person who was unimpressed was Roger Ebert, who complained on television about the misogynistic violence and having an infant’s bare ass was shoved in his face. While it may not be the best western or the best 3-D movie ever made, it is solidly entertaining and paved the way for the second of a planned trio of 3-D adventures, THE TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS.

Last year a promo video was released for an announced re-issue of COMIN' AT YA! which would be awesome news, except that they've bewilderingly decided to give it a SIN CITY (2005) make over and added part of the BLINDMAN soundtrack. Here's the video, draw your own conclusions.

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Revenge of 3-D: TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS (1983)

THE TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS brought back the trio of Anthony, Baldi and Battista who are again accompanied by American executive producer/actor/screenwriter Gene Quintano. This time out Baldi and company decided that RAIDER’S OF THE LOST ARK (1981) was surprisingly uncapitalized on aside from a couple of notable exceptions such as Antonio Margheriti’s ARK OF THE SUN GOD (1983), and in fact most of the Indiana Jones knock-offs were made after the release of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984).

Tony Anthony is J.T. Striker, a presumable getter-of-things-not-easily-gotten (he has no backstory aside from a few allusions), who is hired to retrieve a mythical key that fits the locks of four mythical crowns that were created by the Visigoths in the 6^th century after the conquest of Spain. They are believed to contain secrets of unimaginable power. So unimaginable that the five credited writers couldn’t come up with anything (other than what is amusingly revealed at the end). Once in possession of the key, he is required to assemble a team and infiltrate the high-tech security rigged castle fortress of a demented ex-con who is using the crowns to pass himself off as a mystical guru. His team consists of an alcoholic electronics expert Rick (Jerry Lazarus), an over the hill circus strongman Socrates (Francisco Rabal), and his nimble and nubile daughter Liz (Ana Obregon). Also, Edmond (Gene Quintano), the operation’s liaison insists on tagging along to keep an eye on things and generally be a pain in the ass.

Early promotional art

The film opens with a twenty minute, dialogue-free sequence in which Striker infiltrates a European castle that has been outfitted with a huge variety of traps and a few ghosts as well. Of course we never see the ghosts, but we see things being puppeted around on fishing-line (another of the Seven Deadly Sins of 3-D Film Making). Imagine Indiana Jones’ opening scene in which he braves the trap-laden temple to snag the golden idol. Got it? Now imagine that it is done on a fraction of the budget with Tony Anthony in the lead set in a castle… in 3-D! This entire sequence has Anthony getting a year’s worth of cardio, leaping, falling, climbing, ducking, and dodging everything from flaming arrows, steel spikes, swords, halberds, muskets, crossbows, spinning spiked timbers, flaming spheres, dogs, bats, and snakes (why did it have to be… ah, forget it). Much like COMIN’ AT YA!, Anthony dodges projectiles that come within inches of doing him harm and many shots are repeated a few times in slow-motion just to make sure you are getting every nickel out of that $5 ticket price. For some reason, even though there is a vast amount of reliquary objects heaped about and clutched by random skeletons, Striker is single minded in his purpose and only grabs the key to the crowns, leaving everything else to go up in flames with the castle. Yes, the castle burns. Don't ask me, I don't know, it's like haunted fire or something! The really odd thing here is that while Ennio Morricone is justifiably famous for his incredible scores that often defy genre conventions, for this upbeat, big action scene he provides a slow orchestral score that feels like it needs a Red Bull. While the action flies fast and furious, Morricone’s score delicately meanders along with sweeping strings feeling like it should be used for an appearance by the Queen of England rather than an action-packed Indiana Jones rip-off. Love ya Ennio, but what the hell were you thinking here?

While COMIN’ AT YA! was a pretty decent, straight-faced western, TREASURE is patently ridiculous fun. The key to the crowns has some sort of paranormal power and is prone to going completely batshit at random moments causing earthquakes, explosions and random objects to fly out of the screen at the audience (cue comedic drinking via the alcoholic). The introduction of the villain, Brother Jonas (Emiliano Redondo) is a slide-show briefing cribbed straight out of ENTER THE DRAGON (1973) and his elite followers all wear animal masks. The entire ending (which I won’t spoil) is so far out in left field that it's not even in the stadium parking lot. The final scene is a “gotcha” bit in the final seconds that sets up the scrapped science-fiction follow-up, ESCAPE FROM BEYOND (aka THE MYSTICAL KNIGHT), but makes absolutely no sense on it's own.

In addition, some of the dramatic stuff is a little bizarre:
After Striker convinces Socrates to join him, Socrates has a sensitive exchange with the clown “Popo” (Lewis Gordon) that he shares his dressing room-slash-apartment with, in which Popo is emotionally overwrought by Socrates' impending adventure:
Popo: “You can’t do this kind of work anymore!”
Socrates: “I’m as strong as ever!”
Popo: “Except for your heart!”
Popo then exclaims that Socrates’ daughter “has a right to know” and makes him promise to tell her “everything” when he returns. Say what!? Does the Ringmaster know about you two? This is quite possibly the one of the few times in my life that clowns have made me laugh out loud... I just can't quit you Bamboozle.

One of the most interesting things about this film is that while it was a blatant rip-off of RAIDER’S OF THE LOST ARK, it seems to have actually inspired many films that followed. The robe-clad, evil “supernatural” cult leader is an awfully similar to the Mola Ram character in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984) and the whole “castle raider” theme seems to be echoed in INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989). Interestingly TREASURE was released in Asia in '84 under the title TREASURE OF THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, while TEMPLE OF DOOM followed a year later. Even though those influences could be easily brushed aside, Tony Anthony’s laconic, gum-chewing, safari jacket and cargo pants attired fortune-hunter, color scheme aside, bears an uncanny resemblance to Jackie Chan’s laconic, gum-chewing, safari jacket and cargo pants attired castle-raider Hawk in THE ARMOUR OF GOD (1987). Go check, I'll wait.

In the end TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS continues the ultra-gratuitous use of 3-D effects that Baldi went nuts with in COMIN’ AT YA!, but has a somewhat less successful film underneath, probably due to the fact that Baldi was a little out of his comfort zone and working for Cannon Films meant that you didn’t have the same freedoms that you would if you were shooting an independent film back in Italy. Regardless of that, it’s an entertaining film, though probably not exactly for the reasons intended and it is the final big screen performance of Tony Anthony to date. It must have been having the plug pulled on the third 3-D outing, the aforementioned ESCAPE FROM BEYOND. I know because it kills me too.

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Revenge of 3-D: AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983)

The early ‘80s was a boon period for the 3-D format. Amusingly, it was the small independent production COMIN’ AT YA! that kicked off this 3-D renaissance. Released in June 1981, this Tony Anthony western vehicle drew in the crowds with its 3-D novelty. Hollywood naturally saw gold in them thar hills and over the next few years a slew of 3-D studio pictures hit screens. But as quick as the craze hit, it ended and the final nail in the coffin was AMITYVILLE 3-D, the last studio flick attempting to bowl audiences over.

This picks up with the Amityville property abandoned and for sale. Tabloid journalist John Baxter (Tony Roberts) and his photographer partner Melanie (Candy Clark) quickly uncover a séance scam at the famous Amityville house. But when Baxter finds out the house is on the market ("It's a steal. Nobody wants it."), he can't pass up a good deal and moves in to work on his great American novel. Surprisingly, his bitchy ex-wife (Tess Harper) doesn't approve of him moving out because she knows the stories and fears for the safety of their daughter Susan (Lori Loughlin). Baxter experiences a number of strange phenomenons but, hey, this place is a steal so he can put up with it. Of course, once his daughter is killed by the evil in the house, he suddenly gets serious and, before you can say POLTERGEIST, Baxter hauls in a paranormal investigative team (led by Robert Joy).

Directed by Richard Fleisher, this sequel is just as slick as the previous two entries but lacks, well, everything. Seriously, nothing major happens until an hour and ten minutes into the flick. Well, unless you consider a séance Susan’s friends (including a young Meg Ryan) have chilling. Some crazy stuff goes on in the last ten minutes, ending with the house exploding in a big ball of flames. Screenwriter David Ambrose definitely dropped the darker edge of the first two films and seems more inspired by the episodes of THE OMEN. He took the pseudonym William Wales on the final product, probably for fear of rioting filmgoers pissed off that he considers things like a fast out-of-control elevator, overdeveloped film or a sliding bathroom wall scary. Oh, and he has the film's major plot point happen off screen and doesn't have the brains to include a priest character (blasphemy!). Of course, what can you expect when the tagline in the US was “WARNING: In this movie YOU are the victim”?

All was probably forgiven by audiences thanks to some eye-popping 3-D gags and AMITYVILLE 3-D shows it ain’t playing around. From the opening credits to the finale, there are 3-D special effects every ten minutes or so. Some are lousy (a Frisbee flying towards the camera) and some are absolutely spectacular (a pole going through a car window; strikingly similar to Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET). The funniest bit is Roberts walking in on the dying realtor, who reaches out his hand toward the camera for an extended period of time. It is amusing because you realize if this were happening in “real life” that Roberts is just standing there doing nothing while this guy dies in front of him. No wonder he is divorced! The end has a number of gags from a door exploding to a swordfish flying at the camera. There is also a demon that comes up from a basement well and breathes fire right towards the audience.

I guess it is a credit to producer Dino De Laurentiis’ enthusiasm (or bank account) that he was able to corral some decent leads into this. Tony Roberts had just done a bunch of films with Woody Allen. Tess Harper sure had an interesting 1983, having starred in TV's CHIEFS (3 Emmy nominations), TENDER MERCIES (5 Oscar nominations), SILKWOOD (also 5 Oscar nominations) and this (1 Fantasporto nomination). LOL! I hope she is enjoying that pool this paid for. Director Fleisher certainly seemed to be slumming (the man made 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA for heaven’s sake), but he turns in a very polished looking picture. He was lucky enough to top this in terms of his worst feature by making MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY (1987) a few years later.

Sadly, this wasn’t enough to lure in audiences who had already grown tired of the 3-D experience. AMITYVILLE 3-D actually opened in first place the weekend it came out, but you have to remember that the movie-going public and industry was a completely different monster back in 1983. A film could reach the top spot by hauling in a measly $2.3 million. It dropped each successive week and was gone from theaters in less than a month, symbolically signaling the end of the 3-D craze. This was supposed to be the final film in the AMITYVILLE series (the house freakin' blew up), but clever producers found a way to keep it going with sequels (one TV movie and 4 direct-to-video) focusing on "haunted" items from the house. Oh, Hollywood! Interestingly, if you want a real Amityville 3-D experience, the house is currently on the market. Be sure to tell them Dino sent ya.

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Revenge of 3-D: WILDCAT WOMEN (1975)

Brother man, I really don’t dig comin’ down all heavy on this flick. Like, check it, it’s got pimps an’ ho’s, heavy dudes with nice threads and cool cats with lotsa bread. It’s all about classy rides and a crazy scene that’s bustin’ off of the screen. They threaten hot chicks with mice, but that ain’t nice. I could go on forever, but I ain’t that clever… Alright, alright, put away the tomatoes.

A piano-bar singer, Lolita (Yolanda Love), finds herself in a world of pissed-off (which disturbs the yoga exercises of her next door neighbor) the likes she has never known before when her uncle is gunned down in front of his liquor store by the goofiest collection of mob thugs you’ve ever seen. As if that wasn’t enough, one of her friends is stabbed to death by her pimp. The two events can’t possibly be a coincidence! So she gets her shit together, calls up some friends and sets out to take down the mob… who are in fact merely a handful of guys headed up by a short Japanese dude, called The Buddha (Joey Ginza), whose broken Engrish and pseudo-Asian accent often slips into a Southern California surfer drawl. The plan? Start stealin’ the dope and the bread from their drops and then… do it some more! Yeah! Lolita falls for chubby, out of shape Cleon (who is smoother than hot grease on a glass floor when he sees Lolita talking to her neighbor and says “I don’t know whether to be jealous or suggest a threesome!”). Could this be a set-up? The plot thins…

Released in three different versions including a hard-core X-rated cut titled BLACK LOLITA, WILDCAT WOMEN desperately wants to be a raw(er) sister of the tough-as-nails black female action flicks popularized by the cool and curvaceous Pam Grier. Except here we have Yolanda Love, who is credited as “Miss Exotic Galaxy” which I suspect is a contest that never existed, or if it did, was a one-shot deal for porno starlets. Oddly, she’s surprisingly prudish, refusing to show any skin except in a bikini and a brief and somewhat obscured love scene that could have been damn near anyone because of Love's penchant for wigs.
To paraphrase a famous film star manager, you can punch like Pam Grier, you can kick like Pam Grier, but you can never be Pam Grier. Nobody proves that more than Yolanda Love. Don’t get me wrong, she’s one of the best things about this movie, aside from her dime-store wigs, she is definitely a fine lookin' foxy mama and she don't take no shit from no man (a cop actually tries to help her only to get screams of “beat it pig!”). Unfortunately writer-director Stephen Gibson doesn't really give her a whole lot to do out side of a single action scene in the beginning of the film in which she throws down some badass kung fu moves after telling a trio of horny, racist bikers (is that redundant?) “in case you haven't heard, rape ain't a woman's idea of a good time!” Yeah, that should convince them. In spite of being the main character, a sizable portion of the film takes place without her doing really all that much in the way of ass kicking.

Director Stephen Gibson was the man responsible for a string of risible 3-D porn titles in the mid-‘70s, including the infamous John Holmes outing HARD CANDY (1976). Here he tries to make a mainstream black action movie and seemingly as an afterthought, added some hard-core inserts, most of which do not involve characters or settings from the main film. The hard-core inserts were then cut down to very soft-core to be released with an R-rating in "mainstream" theaters (I'm willing to bet this sucker was cranked so many times at some pit in the Duce that the print disintegrated on the projector). The third version is the version found on DVD that has slightly extended soft-core scenes. The inserts vary in quality, but as much as I enjoy gratuitous nudity in trashy movies, the scenes here range from “Hmmm… what time is it?” to “Oh my fucking christ, my eyes!” In every aspect of the movie, it appears the film was made in bits and pieces over a couple of years, as was the case with his first film THE PLAYMATES (released in 1975, but actually began production in 1973). Here random scenes and anachronistic porn inserts give the impressing that an editing room exploded and Gibson had to cram all the pieces together into a vaguely contiguous feature at the last minute.

Pornography is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “the depiction of erotic behavior intended to cause sexual excitement”. There is nothing of that nature to be found here.

Inserts aside this is a bad, bad movie. And I don’t mean “bad” like I’m talkin’ about Shaft. Nuh-uh and hell no! We’re talkin’ petite-cute women who wear men’s clothing and are mistaken for guys, kinda bad; I’m talkin’ girls being “tortured” into divulging information by being threatened with a white mouse, kinda bad; I’m talkin’ mobsters so dumb that when they catch you planting a bug in their suburban tract house, they let you run right past them through the door to escape, kind bad! Bad like the dialogue, that falls to the ground like Dick Cheney's hunting buddies. For example, Lolita, travelling with two friends on bicycles for no reason whatsoever, is asked by one friend “why didn’t you plan this meeting on top of Mount Everest?” to which Lolita replies “I would have, but it’s still segregated!” Phew! I'm pretty sure that was supposed to get a laugh. Instead of making up their own catchy jive sayings, when “master of disguise” Tinker Jones (Larry Ellis) agrees to help Lolita take on the mob, she says “yeah! We’ll float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!” What?! You can’t just rip off Muhammad Ali’s world-famous line at the height of his popularity and walk away! No girl, uh-uh, I call bullshit on that! Bad like, the “Deep Vision 3-D” process that doesn’t freakin’ work, kinda bad! The polar opposite of the excitement of great 3-D effects occurs when the 3-D effects don't work because of sloppy production. No matter how much you mess with your TV or flat-panel monitor, you will not see the few cheap 3-D effects that this film (or from what I gather, any of Gibson’s efforts) have to offer, even when projected theatrically. You dig what I’m layin’ down sucka? Bad 3-D is what makes people not want to see 3-D movies at all.

One of the most boneheaded sequences has Jones adopting a cunning disguise as a homeless guy to plant a bug on one of the mobsters. He then throws off his disguise revealing his bright red and white aloha shirt and jumps in his woody to inconspicuously tail his quarry by driving 20 inches off his bumper. At one point he breaks down in the middle of an intersection, but it’s L.A. so nobody cares and everyone just drives around him. Speaking of scenes with motor vehicles, I defy anyone to find a lamer car chase in any ‘70s action movie. After Lolita snags a drop from a guy who lies wounded on the floor after she literally pushes him down, she hops in her car and races to the roof-top parking lot of a bowling alley with the mob clown-car right on her ass. There she drives in circles around the lot while the mobsters follow her until after several revolutions, she leaps from the car and a miniature version falls over the edge and explodes. Even the hilarious car "stunts" in the Terence Hill / Marvin Haggler epic VIRTUAL WEAPON (1997) weren't this lame!

While I can spend far too much time taking this movie apart for silly things like the would-be rapist bikers who travel on the quietest motorcycles ever, it’s still somewhat enjoyable. I’d rather sit through WILDCAT WOMEN any day of the week instead of Rudy Ray Moore's much-ballyhooed DOLEMITE (1975) films. Yeah, DOLEMITE is considered a camp classic, but it's always left me non-plussed and it always seems to be the film embraced by people who don't like the good stuff, such as SLAUGHTER (1972) or ACROSS 110th STREET (1972). At least WILDCAT WOMEN has a great '70s soul/jazz score, bloody shootings, amusingly inept acting, old Los Angeles locations and odd characters, some of whom appear and disappear in the film without any rhyme or reason – Tinker Jones is set up as the main male lead and is actually pretty entertaining, but half-way through the film Lolita falls in with marble-mouthed doughboy Cleon and we never see Tinker again! Hell, the climactic show-down is set in an abandoned amusement park, where it appears The Buddha is not tall enough for any of the rides, and that has to count for something. If only we could ditch the awful porn inserts and the worthless “Deep Vision 3-D” process, that by all accounts never worked in the first place, then we might actually be getting somewhere.

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The "Never Got Made" File #17: GODZILLA 3-D

When it comes to massive movie monsters that would make an impact in 3-D, Godzilla seems to be a perfect fit. However, despite putting the cinematic chomp on towns for over 55 years, the Big Lizard has never had a chance to blow his atomic breath in three dimensions. But he came awfully close in the early 1980s.

Fresh off the success of FRIDAY THE 13^TH PART III, director Steve Miner contacted Toho Studios, home of Godzilla, in 1982 and secured the rights to monster franchise. And he had big plans for the beast as the enthusiastic Miner told Cinefantastique in 1983:

“For a long time I felt the classic monster movie – one giant beast against a city – has not been properly treated with the post-STAR WARS technology. Having explored only the very surface of what 3-D could possibly offer, it became clear that there could be a perfect marriage between monsters and 3-D. I was a big Godzilla fan as a kid, and Godzilla is the most monster of all-time.”

“The approach is to make the best monster movie ever made. The movie will be very much in the spirit of the original Godzilla film, but it is a totally new film played absolutely straight. It is going to be scary, full of suspense. It is diametrically opposed to the more recent Godzilla films, and we’re getting away from the ‘man in the suit’ concept for the monster. We’ll be using stop-motion animation to bring the creature to life.”

Miner hired neophyte screenwriter Fred Dekker to pen the script. Openly admitting that he cribbed a story device from GORGO (1961), Miner had the idea of Godzilla crushing an American city while he searched for its child. Major characters in the script include:

*Peter Daxton – a US Navy Colonel who wears an eye patch thanks to a previous scuffle with a Russian rival

*Boris Kruschov – a KGB agent who is missing a hand thanks to his scuffle with Daxton; in its place is a long blade

*Dana Martin – a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who is investigating the events surrounding the mysterious attacks who teams with Daxton

*Balinger – a UC Berkley paleontologist who joins Martin and Daxton

*Kevin Daxton – Peter’s ten-year-old son who just happens to love lizards and knows how to escape being tied up a la Houdini (oh boy!)

The plot synopsis: Godzilla and its baby are awoken after an errant meteor hits a US satellite, causing a nuclear missile to be fired into the Pacific Ocean. Things go wrong right away as a Japanese fishing boat is attacked and a Russian nuclear submarine goes missing. Dana Martin sneaks onto the quarantined Japanese boat and finds a prehistoric fossil, which she takes to Balinger. Meanwhile, Daxton locates the missing Russian sub off the coast of Mexico and commandeers all relevant material from the destroyed sub including two nuclear missiles. Naturally this doesn’t sit well with Daxton’s old rival, KGB agent Kruschov. Back in San Francisco, Daxton, his son and Balinger are called to Mexico when a large, dead creature washes ashore. This is Godzilla’s baby (which took out both vessels) and they take it back to the San Francisco where they keep it in a warehouse to study. Naturally, you can guess what happens next. The Big G surfaces by the Golden Gate Bridge and takes it out before unleashing a massive beat down on The City by the Bay. Daxton and his team then try to lure Godzilla to the island prison of Alcatraz with sounds of its baby record by the sub before shooting it down with some handy Russian nukes.

From my feeble summary, it sounds like Dekker wrote a pretty enjoyable if clichéd monster flick. The more detailed synopsis in the book Japan’s Favorite Mon-ster shows it is really just an amalgamation of every great monster movie before it from KING KONG (both versions) to JAWS (1975). Hell, it even sounds like there is some ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) and SUPERMAN (1978) thrown in there and some early 80s Cold War hysteria that would make ROCKY IV (1985) blush. Interestingly, Dekker mentions in the book that casting ideas included Powers Boothe as the heroic military man Daxton, then unknown Demi Moore as reporter Martin and Jeff Goldblum as aloof scientist Balinger (foreshadowing his work in JURASSIC PARK and INDEPENDENCE DAY). Dekker also seems to have committed the unforgivable sin of most folks doing a remake – thinking they can improve upon (and therefore needlessly complicate) the origin story. So instead of Godzilla being a dinosaur awakened and mutated by nuclear testing, the big green one is, according to the script review, “a pseudo-scientific mishmash in which Godzilla is said to be a pre-dinosaurian life form, hailing from an era when such creatures had nuclear fission occurring in their bodies (this accounts for Godzilla's atomic breath, which is his fatal weakness, enabling the heroes to kill him by firing missiles down his throat, causing a nuclear implosion).”

Script in hand, director Miner set off to pitch the project to every studio in town. He even hired renowned illustrator William Stout (pictured left, with a model of his design), fresh off CONAN THE BARBARIAN, to help re-design the creature. Stout had an interesting take on the creature, as he mentions in the Japan’s Favorite Mon-ster book:

“I wanted to get away from something you could obviously tell was a man in a suit, and deliver a creature that people could either completely believe, or if they doubted it at all, they'd go, "How in the hell did they do that?" I gave him a more dinosaur-lilke configuration in the legs, to begin with, so it didn't look like there was just a guy in there with human legs. Then I began to develop a muscualar structure that was believable. It was based on Allosaurus, which has arms that actually function, as opposed to those of a T-rex, which are basically useless.”

Stout provided models, sketches and storyboards as well for Godzilla’s big city attack that would take place all over San Francisco.

Unfortunately, no studio seemed willing enough to take the risk. Miner pitched the project around to everyone but they all balked at the $30 million dollar budget projection. He should have hit up Dino De Laurentiis, who had no problem dropping $24 million on the KING KONG remake. In the end, Miner continued to toil on the project for 2 years, even pitching it for half the budget figure in 1984 before his option ran out. Ironically, after years of gestation – which also saw director Jan DeBont’s version snuffed for being too costly – the US remake came into being in 1998 “thanks” to Roland Emmerich and a budget of $130 million. You gotta love Hollywood sometimes.

Interestingly, another GODZILLA 3-D project emerged from Japan in 2005 when director Yoshimitsu Banno – who previously helmed GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (1971; aka GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER) – announced he would be creating a 40-minute 3-D Godzilla feature to be screened in IMAX. The proposed project was to feature Godzilla battling all over the world from Tokyo to Las Vegas to save humanity. For more details on the development, check out the 7/13/05 update in the archive at the excellent Henshin! Online site. Despite a wealth of details on the project, it also never came to fruition, although Toho is rumored to still be toying with the GODZILLA IMAX idea. Audiences, however, will probably get to see the G-man in 3-D as it has been announced that Legendary Pictures is prepping another US remake which will most like take advantage of the current 3-D craze.

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Revenge of 3-D: DYNASTY aka WARLORD (1977)

Waxing prosaic on the joys of classic Hong Kong cinema is like dating Pamela Anderson, it's been done to the point where nobody cares any more and it's been done by far better than you. Sci-Fi and horror tend to be the genres of choice for 3-D movies, but Hong Kong had their own little 3-D revival in the ‘70s with a handful (or more) martial arts films. I don't know why we American's didn't do it in the ‘80s too. We love our cheesy, wannabe white-boy chop-socky flicks. Can you imagine the total insanity if REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983) had been released in 3-D? World powers would be crushed under the weight of our collective pop-culture ninja feeding frenzy! Hmmm... Perhaps that is why it wasn't made in 3-D. To keep the world safe!

Like a fair amount of Hong Kong period movies that are made without Western audiences in mind, the screenwriters assume you have some knowledge of the class system and government hierarchy in historical China as well as some of the general history and customs. I've done a little reading on the subject, but can't even pretend to be any sort of scholar, so I tend to find these films a little on the confusing side at least until I figure out who’s is kicking whose ass and which one is wearing the white hat (so to speak). Anyone who has had their head spun by the convoluted political machinations of THE SWORDSMAN III: THE EAST IS RED (1993) will understand where I'm coming from.

The stripped-down premise of DYNASTY is this; the Prince of the Emperor, in retaliation for trying to exclude eunuchs from Imperial court politics, has been falsely accused of treason by silver-haired schemer Eunuch Chow (Pai Ying). The corrupt Chow is on the warpath trying to find the Prince and kill him, squashing the “rebellion” once and for all. A master swordsman convinces Chow to let him take over as head general in his army in order to keep him safe, though he gets a little more than he bargains for when Chow puts the moves on him in the bedroom! In reality he is using his position, waiting for the right time to assassinate Chow. As they fend off waves of rebel attackers, they decide to attack a monastery where they think the prince may be hiding. This only serves to piss of Tan Sao Chin (Tan "Flashlegs" Tao-Liang), a tricked-out umbrella wielding badass who has just had it up to *here* with Chow’s villainy and proceeds to stalk him while shaking a bamboo cup filled with coins. From there it’s non-stop action as Tan tries to kill Chow and alternately fend off the assassins Chow sends after him.

Now if there is one thing this movie does right it is making use of the 3-D gimmick. Whether it’s simply shots of armies riding on horseback, thundering toward the camera, shots of conversations through beaded curtains, bell ringing, pot-throwing, kicking, punching or a wide variety of weapons, no opportunity is missed to thrust things in the audience’s faces with gleeful abandon. Cheap? Sure. Fun? Damn right! Chow and his generals fend off assassins firing arrows, assassins throwing bricks, assassins throwing shurikens, assassins throwing spears, assassins with swords and then there's Chow using his silver pinky claw to slice off the scalp an assassin and throw it at the audience! And that’s just in the first 15 minutes!

The film is decidedly low-budget and anyone expecting the technical precision of THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS (1978) or the over-the-top spectacle of MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE (1975) is likely to be disappointed. However light in the wallet this movie is, it makes up for it with the sheer volume of action scenes, creative violence, and plenty of locations. Chow’s weapon of choice is a collection of Freddy Krueger-like silver claws that he has on each finger, perfect for slicing, dicing and thrusting straight through the torso of the monk of your choice! Speaking of the monks, after deciding that simple fisticuff isn’t going to cut it, one whips off his top robes and spins them into a fighting staff. At one point Tan is attacked by a group of sword-wielding wanderers by a river. After successfully fending all of them off, they quickly ditch the swords and swap them out for flying guillotines! The budget may look sparse, but without the aid of CGI, they managed to make the 3-D guillotine attacks seriously eye-popping, particularly when the monks arrive to help out Tan, providing plenty of fodder with heads flying off left and right. Not enough for you? There’s plenty more where that came from including a guy who so determined to kick Tan's ass that even after Tan slices off both of his hands, he keeps on fighting! Plus there is a spectacular two-on-one climactic duel on a mountain top with one of the most unique weapons I’ve ever seen in a martial arts film.

The film has it's share of memorable quotes as well, one of my favorites being the one where Chow's younger general is puffing himself up in front of the new guy, after being compared to the older general: “For kung fu, I’m a lot better and as for brains I have twice as many!” I wonder where he kept all of them?

Until recent years the HK film industry has had a total lack of respect for film history and many films have been lost through neglect or in some cases disasters such as fire. Most of the 3-D films are incredibly rare, if they are out there at all, but DYNASTY (aka WARLORD [1977]) can be found transferred from the ultra-rare, short-lived Japanese VHD format and it occasionally runs at festival screenings. While I can't assume that DYNASTY was the first HK martial arts film in 3-D, it was in fact the first HK martial arts film in 3-D and Sensurround, the 8-track analogue precursor to our modern multi-channel surround sound formats such as Dolby Digital and DTS. I imagine this was a pretty mind-blowing experience back in the day and helped overcome the production's budgetary shortcomings.

Although I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy, director Mei Chung Chang released another rare-as-hell 3-D martial arts film also in 1977 with some of the same cast, titled REVENGE OF THE SHOGUN WOMEN. Apparently the plot concerns a monastery of women who've been raped by bandits and are trained to be lethal fighters, so they can take their revenge against the evil bastards. If DYNASTY is any indication, SHOGUN WOMEN should be quite the find.

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