Desi Spiderman (Review)
Desi Spiderman
2010
Written and directed by “Surendra Hinabar”???
 |
|
Only Desi Spiderman can get your whites white!
|
Desi Spiderman is ridiculous, but it knows it is ridiculous, and some of the things that are crazy are intentionally done so for comedic effect. Other things are just weird and who knows why they are that way. That’s what you get when you get a film that is a very localized production that blurs the line between fan film and local production. Desi Spiderman was made in Ghaziabad, India, and brings to mind the Superman film from Supermen of Malegaon. So in that spirit we are happy to watch Desi Spiderman and the ridiculousness there in. Because it is ridiculous.
Desi Spiderman: More Patriotic Than You!
Desi Spiderman’s costume makes him look like a luchador by way of Dr. Seuss. He wears a red turtleneck sweatshirt, white gloves, gold spider mask with eye holes cut out, black pants and brown belt, gold shoes, and white circle with text in the middle of the red sweatshirt. The text is “Kanha Milk”, which I think had a sponsorship deal to help fund the film. But I’m not 100% sure, because there isn’t a lot of information about Desi Spiderman in English.
Suck on this, Spiderman 3!
Surendra Hinabar is the name I found listed for writer/director/song lyrics, so hopefully that’s correct because I’m running with it. I don’t have any other names for the cast list, but whoever plays the Desi Mary Jane does a hilarious job of ridiculous faces during the fantasy musical and wistful daydreaming sequences. PAL Films is generic enough I can’t find anything about it. If it wasn’t for YouTube, this would pass one without being known by the outside world, which would have been a shame. What I think is the director’s YouTube Channel (labeled Navneet Singh) promises another film, but hasn’t been updated in two years. Maybe someday…. But until then, Desi Spiderman!
No one supports the Broncos in my town!
|
Hey, I just realized you’re not El Santo!
Read more…
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: India, super heroes, We don't need no stinking subtitles
Shanee (Review)
Shanee
aka Shaani aka Shani
1989
Written by Agha Nazir Kawish
Directed by Saeed Rizvi
Pakistan goes science fiction for this take on 1984’s Starman movie, Shanee! Of course, it has to get Pakistani cinemaed up first, which means it is full of lots and lots of violence! Shani, Shaani, Shanee, however you want to spell it, is billed as Pakistan’s first science fiction film (and actually is, as far as I can tell) The entire film was a result of Saeed Rizvi, who directed, photographed, and did many of the visual effects. Rizvi started doing effects when he was directing commercials, This was the first of three effects heavy films Saeed Rizvi completed, followed by Beheaded Man/Sarkata Insaan and Mysterious Island/Talismi Jazeera (a Russian coproduction).
Shanee is the first big budget science fiction effects film for Pakistan, and was designed to rival the bit 1980s US effects films like ET, Close Encounters, and Star Wars. It doesn’t quite live up to the hype. There are practical models, glowy aliens, video toaster effects, cartoon lasers and beams and glowy eyes, animated bats, animated crocodiles, a guy with a retractable knife arm, and fakey skeletons. Plus real owls and cobras, and lots and lots of explosions. Even the credits are designed to look like the ones from Superman
Whenever anything interesting is happening, the Shanee theme will blare, the refrain becoming annoying very quickly and unintentionally ridiculous soon after. Now the damn song is stuck in my head and has a good chance of being my last words when slipping from the mortal coil. Damn you, Shanee… There is a limited amount of songs in Shani, but not the no songs that the director claims in interviews. Shanee won a couple of Nigar awards (the Pakistani equivalent to the Oscars) including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Asif Khan.
Shanee is an Urdu language film Thus we’re forced to dive in without subtitles. But this is TarsTarkas.NET, and we don’t need no stinking subtitles! Luckily, the film is easy to follow without subtitles, and the few points that were confusing were easily cleared up by the review at the sadly now defunct TheHotSpotOnline.com, accessed through Archive.org. Also because it is Urdu, there isn’t a straight translation of the title, so for opening credits sake we’re calling the film Shanee, but the main character Shani, to avoid confusion by only being a little confusing. Got it? Good! Now let’s get Shaneed!
|
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Agha Talish, Asif Khan, Babra Sharif, Mohammad Ali, Nayyar Sultana, Pakistan, Sabiha Khanum, Sherry Malik, Urdu, We don't need no stinking subtitles
Süper Selami (Review)
Süper Selami
My mom made my suit!
1979
Written by Yılmaz Atadeniz and Hikmet Eldek
Directed by Yılmaz Atadeniz
I don’t know why this movie exists!
Who wants to watch a Superman parody where he’s a filthy old man and there is lots of softcore sex? Probably more people than you can imagine, hence the reason Super Selami exists and isn’t just a figment of your imagination! Aydemir Akbaş starred in a slew of softcore Turkish films through the 70s, many of which are probably ridiculously awful, but several of which are genre parodies. Thus the exciting Superman film that is Super Selami. There is also Astronot Fehmi, which is your typical weird guy goes to space and has sex with space babes movie, except Turkish.
This being Turkish cinema, the soundtrack is ripe with stolen songs: the James Bond theme, a disco Star Trek theme, and even an instrumental version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Several more songs sound familiar even if I can’t place them without help.
Aydemir Akbaş plays both the heroic Super Selami, but also the villainous Çengel. That way, he has twice as much screen time, four times as many sex scenes, and eight times as many eye rolls from yours truly. The rest of the roles are minor, and the women exist to either be evil or rescue bait, and all of them get naked a lot. There is a scientist working on something secret. He has a daughter named Ayşe, who is hot and Selimi’s love interest. The Professor’s assistant Nuray is a turncoat. Çengel has another evil girl named Emel on his payroll, mostly so he can have sex with her. Selami gets his powers from a mystical guru who lives in a cave. Everyone else is either a goon or even less important.
Superman and Hamburglar’s lovechild!
Super Selami is typical low budget smut, gaining interest only because of the fantastical elements of the Superman parody. It offers little of interest outside of historical curiosity, nor is it titillating. Luckily it’s so short, so my time doesn’t feel that wasted. A good rundown of all the times Turkey invoked Superman in their films can be found in our review of Süpermen Dönüyor. As usual with obscure Turkish fare, we went in native, without subtitles. But at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!
|
 |
|
Death to all mimes!
|
The Stealth Sex Fiend
The Stealth Sex Fiend
aka 隱形淫魔之勇擒貴利雙柴 aka Invisible Erotomania
2003
Written and directed by ???
 |
|
Invisible dudes love reading porn!
|
People ask me all the time “Tars, why do you watch those terrible cheap foreign softcore films that have no redeeming value and are terrible and bad and terrible? Also, where can I get a copy?” And I like to remind myself and the world that even these terrible terrible films have value. These films say things, show things, and reveal much about relationships and gender roles in their country of origin (as well as what country’s porn is influencing them!) that regular budgeted cinema fails to do. While many of those films operate under a layer of characters and nuance and meaning, some of these softcore flicks are just a stripped-down raw look into their culture. Many are terrible because they have no money, but also because they show things that are terrible. I’m not saying that The Stealth Sex Fiend has some sort of double-secret true meaning of life, or that watching smut will change the world. But it might just make someone understand things somewhere a tiny bit more. And that’s not so bad, is it?
What do you do when you want to make a movie starring some ugly dude going invisible and getting his rape on when you got no money? You have him wear a goofy purple bodysuit and give it wavy effects! Sure, it doesn’t work at all, but you do have one of the creepiest softcore sex scenes ever.
Suddenly a Fringe Festival breaks out!
Okay, I’ll level with you, I watched this only because I heard the effects for the invisibility were ridiculous, and I was not disappointed. Imagine a guy in a purple bodysuit and some video toasters swirly effects that try to make it look all Predator-vision. Even though Predator-vision makes no sense for how someone is invisible. The only half-way decent thing that happened in this film was the ending, which will be spoiled, because if anyone cares what happens at the end of The Stealth Sex Fiend, then you deserve to be launched into the sun.
Our Hero (in that he heroically turns invisible to rape women while his girlfriend is kidnapped) is murdered by said kidnapped girlfriend in retaliation for him abandoning her. As Our Hero was a disgusting idiot, it is a joyous thing to watch him be killified dead. A happy ending that we deserved for sitting through this junk.
Who would have thought Predator vs.The Blue Man Group would be so boring?
The Stealth Sex Fiend is a film that it’s hard to find any real information on in English. Everything is the same two-three copy/pasted synopses that don’t even agree on the English name of the title, and even the HKMDB has not bothered giving an entry. It’s a film that people would rather be forgotten, a film that is just terrible and depicts terrible acts. A film that turned on its own main character. Back when nudie cutie films were first being shown, there was a subgenre known as roughies, which featured the nudity but also people being killed. The situation was that because they couldn’t show sexual release, the release of all the pent up feelings of the audience was depicted by characters being killed. The Stealth Sex Fiend inadvertently follows this point in a modified manner, the pent up terribleness becomes a force that has to be unleashed, killing the main character, otherwise people would just go bonkers. I’m talking end of the world scenario here. The Stealth Sex Fiend both inadvertently caused and then prevented the end of us all. It is one of those scary things that no one will ever know about except a few brave souls who watched a terrible movie about a invisible rapist who was really purple.
We can’t find a reliable cast list, and you better believe there wasn’t any subtitles. But at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!
I will give the women in this movie credit: They do keep clean!
|
Somehow I don’t think this is the guy’s apartment…
Read more…
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Hong Kong, invisible dudes, softcore, We don't need no stinking subtitles
Hwarang-V Trio (Review)
Hwarang-V Trio
aka 화랑브이삼총사 aka Hwarangbeu-i samchongsa
1987
Written and directed by Kim Yeong-han
With Hwarang-V Trio, we return again to the world of Korean children’s film, a hive of scum and villainy that makes Mos Eisly look like a church choir. Previously, we got stuck on this detail with Super Batman & Mazinger V and Alien Lightning Dragon, and you can expect many more soonter than later. Because if I have to suffer, YOU have to suffer, dear readers! I’m also going to reveal my ignorance in anime robots, so forgive me if I don’t immediately identify popular robots I don’t know anything about if they’ve been ripped off for the cartoon robots in Hwarang-V Trio. Which is highly likely. The main robot is off his animation model so much they might not have even been using the same model.
Hwarang-V Trio features a whole host of enemies each with a ridiculous costume culled from the finest props left over from the dozens of other Korean kiddie films. Or maybe some of these costumes are even new, it’s not like we’d be able to tell the difference, and they’re surely used again in later films.
With that in mind, I’ve dubbed the villainous crew the Evil Circus, because their colorful costumes and presence of an evil Clown lend that thought to mind. I’ve tried to list all of the villains I could, but many just are standing around doing nothing in the background before their untimely death by cartoon robot, so don’t expect much!
Both the Evil Circus and the heroic band of random children suffer from the same affliction – their numbers randomly increase and shrink, often during the same scene. Characters never seen before join up for an important search of fight sequence and then are never spied again. It’s almost as if the filming was as haphazard as the watching. Despite all the confusion, there is a sort of basic plot of a space princess, annoying children, an evil space queen, and giant robots murdering people. This is why you never get involved in space royalty, the body count racks up so high in the sky that you can’t go twice as high as a butterfly. Because you’re dead!
Director and writer Kim Yeong-han was involves in several Korean kiddie films, including directing/writing duties on Robotstar Zanga and it’s sequel, Star Zanga Z Mazinga V Super Betaman – which we know as Super Batman & Mazinger V! Besides him, the cast list is impossible to connect names to faces without some outside help, so unless that help shows up in the comments, everything will remain a mystery…
As usual, there are no subtitles (and at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!) so everything that happens ranges from conjecture to confusion. But it’s not like things here will make much sense even with pop-up annotation.
|
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Kim Yeong-han, Korea, Korean Kids Movies, We don't need no stinking subtitles
Buddha’s Palm (Part 4)
Buddha’s Palm (Part 4)
aka 如來神掌(四集) aka The Young Swordsman Lung Kim Fei Part 4 aka 如來神掌(四集大結局)
1964HKMDB Link
Written by Sze-To On
Story by Shangguan Hong
Directed by Ling Yun
Hey, it’s Buddha’s Palm Part 4! As you recall from the introductions to Buddha’s Palm Part 1, Buddha’s Palm Part 2, and Buddha’s Palm Part 3, we’re sort of getting burnt out introducing the same thing over again. So let’s pretend this introduction has more exciting information than it actually does. But, seriously, if I did suddenly find new information, I would probably be editing it into the relevant Buddha’s Palm movie.
The adventured we got “To be continued!” on in the last time comes to a close. And it’s really the close of the whole story, except for that whole several more sequels produced years later by different production companies thing. Let’s just forget about that for now, and focus on the current installment. Do we got cool new monsters? YES! Two brand new cool monsters show up for battle. Do they die a horrible death, murdered by our bloodlusting protagonists who can’t let innocent monsters who are minding their own business live? Yes! So “BOOOOOO!!!” to monster murder! Is there magic drawn on effects that show the super wuxia forces at battle? Yes! Is there no stinking subtitles, of which TarsTarkas.NET does not need? Yes! Yes as in no subtitles.
Though this is the end of the Buddha’s Palm Quadrology, don’t worry. There is one more article coming up, and it will be something special. A celebration. But until then, let’s get on with the show!
|
Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: awful monster costumes, Chan Wai-Yue, Cheung Seng-Fai, Hoh Siu-Hung, Hong Kong, Ko Lo-Chuen, Kwan Hoi-San, Lee Sau-Kei, Ling Mung, Ling Yun, martial arts, Patricia Lam Fung, Shangguan Hong, Simon Yuen Siu-Tin, Siu Chung-Kwan, Sze-To On, Walter Tso Tat-Wah, We don't need no stinking subtitles, wuxia, Yu So-chau, Yung Yuk-Yi
