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psycho shark
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Psycho Shark (Review)

January 17, 2011By

Psycho Shark

aka Jaws in Japan

2009
Directed by John Hijiri
Written by Yasutoshi Murakawa

Psycho Shark is the worst thing to come from Japan since shotacon. Don’t Google that at work. Or ever. And don’t watch Psycho Shark ever, because it frakking sucks. It sucks even at 2.5x speed, and the same amount of things happen, which is nothing. Since large portions of the film is one character watching other characters on video and fast forwarding, perhaps the film is telling us what needs to be done. I answered the call, but I still had to watch Psycho Shark, so the effort was for naught.

That shark sure is psycho! This is the movie where the shark stabs someone in the shower.

Okay, that’s the easy jokes, neither of which are true, so let’s get to the actual review of this plotless piece of shark dung. Originally called Jaws in Japan, the title was changed to Psycho Shark to cash in on the lucrative psycho demographics. Or something. Maybe the distributors thought people would avoid the film because it was Japanese, and took the foreign name out of the title Except the Japanese bikini babes are the main non-shark selling point, so that makes little sense. I’ll give this as much thought as to why they changed the name as the producers of Psycho Shark took in making Psycho Shark a good film: none!

What we have here is a found footage mess masquerading as a shark attack film with lots of attractive Japanese chicks in bikinis. How unique, as it is almost impossible to find Japanese chicks in bikinis anywhere in this day and age of the internet.

Miki (Nonami Takizawa) – The member of the friends duo who isn’t stupid, and enjoys spying on people who are taped. Eat your heart out, reality tv! Miki figures out something is wrong, but then a big bad shark shows up and ruins everything. Except the film, that was already ruined. Nonami Takizawa is a gravure idol and we threw up a gallery to get cheap web traffic. So click on it so I can act all smug and stuff.
Mai (Airi Nakajima) – The member of the duo who isn’t interested in spying on people and is totally interested in dating creepy guys. Also can be a jerk.
Kenji (???) – A creepy guy who works at the hotel and gives out free rooms to hot chicks. This somehow makes him a babe magnet, because women love guys who make minimum wage at a hotel. He’s so creepy he should be in Creepies. Or Creepies 2.
Creepy Girl (???) – She is possibly Miki, but it is dark and I don’t care so I’ll never know who she is. Nor do I care. A framing device that’s not needed. I should call her Appendix Girl.
Psycho Shark (CGI from your old Vic-20) – This giant shark shows up too late and too cheap for me to care about him. And just how is he psycho? Or is he just at a motel where people get killed like in Psycho? The world will never know, because I don’t care enough to ask Mr. Owl the answer to that question. So let’s just go with “Three”, that’s a good answer!

Adventure of the King
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Adventure of the King (Review)

January 9, 2011By

Adventure of the King


2010
Directed by Chung Shue Kai

Adventure of the King is way the hell better than Flirting Scholar 2. Why am I bringing that up? Because Flirting Scholar 2 was made along with Adventure of the King as part of the same group (Chinastar’s 5510 production plan – 5 years, 500 million yuan budget, 10 films), and is a sort of spinoff from Flirting Scholar 2 (which is a prequel to the Stephen Chow film Flirting Scholar) Adventure of the King is also an adaptation of the play The Matching of Dragon and Phoenix, which has been made into film several times, most recently as Chinese Odyssey 2002. So just imagine that Micheal Bay directed Romeo and Juliet and had Sam Witwicky wandering around going “No no no no no no no!” just because he wants to set classic plays in his universe.


Flirting Scholar 2 was absolutely awful. The worst films are bad comedies, because their entire reason for existing is to make us laugh. Failing at that becomes a big ball of sadness that can rarely be fixed by just going to town and mocking the film. Flirting Scholar 2 had no reason to exist except to make money off of dumb people who thought Stephen Chow would show up. He didn’t. It is basically a Hong Kong version of those Jim Carrey-less Jim Carrey movie sequels like Ace Ventura Jr., Dumb and Dumberer, and Son of the Mask. With that wonderful film as the opening movement of the 5510 plan, one would think that things would only go downhill from that low valley. How wrong I was!


Emperor Zhu Zhengde/Lee Siu-Lung (Richie Ren Xian-Qi) – He’s the emperor, and he had an adventure. And he’s also a king. King Emperor. Not one of them evil Emperors like in Star Wars. At least not in the film, maybe in real life he was a jerk, I don’t know, I wasn’t in China back in the day when he was in charge. While with amnesia, takes the name Lee Siu-Lung (aka Bruce Lee)
Phoenix (Barbie Hsu Hsi-Yuan) – Phoenix’s character a delight, constantly beating everyone with a whip and yelling. This is the first Barbie Hsu character that I didn’t find annoying or boring. Even her over the top crazy lady turn in Reign of Assassins pushed my patience.
Lord Sima The Royal Historian (Law Kar-Ying) – The Royal Historian’s job is to chronicle the life of Emperor Zhu Zhengde, and spends most of the film making proclamations and writing them down in his Royal Log. This is both annoying to everyone in the movie and hilarious to everyone watching the movie. Law Kar-Ying is in both Metallic Attraction: Kungfu Cyborg and Future X-Cops.
Commander Chen The Royal Bodyguard (Bruce Leung Siu-Lung) – When you bodyguard is Bruce Leung, you’re in pretty good hands.
Mr. McFortune (Wu Ma) – Kentacky Fried Chicken’s answer to Colonel Sanders is Mr. McFortune. Have you ever been to Kentacky? They really need a new decorator… Wu Ma’s been in film forever, and was recently seen here in Haunted House Elf.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

The Vanquisher (Review)

December 25, 2010By

The Vanquisher

aka Suay…Samurai aka Final Target

2009
Directed and written by Manop Udomdej

The Vanquisher starts out confusing and just gets more and more incoherent until you give up and go back to that one thing…what’s it called…reading! So just read this instead of watching The Vanquisher. Director (and writer) Manop Udomdej has graced TarsTarkas.NET before with his film Lizard Woman, and a few of the stars from that one make their way into this film. Sadly, the gecko women are not going to pop up and bit random characters. The Thai title Suay … Samurai translates to “Beautiful Samurai”. Because when you think “Samurai”, you think of hot Thai women.

HELP! The slow-motion rain burns!

The Vanquisher‘s troubles began before the film was even edited, when an actress in the film named “Amy” Chotiros Suriwong wore a dress at the 2007 Thailand National Film Awards that was so revealing that the entire nation of Thailand went insane. People couldn’t stop talking about how they were shocked, shocked that women had breasts. The government was overthrown 17 times, riots filled the streets, and Tony Jaa became a monk. So executive producer Somsak Techaratanaprasert chopped her out of the film, despite the fact this film is based on the premise that you will be staring at the breasts of the actresses in it.

It was obvious that this film was made with foreign distribution in mind. The film is mixed with English, Japanese, and a smattering of Thai. Why they bothered, I am not certain, as the English is so awful I can’t believe it was actually written and spoken by anyone who has heard English before. The sentence structure was beyond awkward, and even what I could pick up on seemed to be random statements. I needed the subtitles just to understand what was being said, unfortunately that was no help as the subtitles were autotranslated from either Thai or Chinese and were nothing more than broken sentence fragments. At least until halfway through the flick, when they just gave up entirely on having subtitles. As I have said before at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles. So I made up a story about how all those chicks were lesbians and it suddenly got far more interesting. You would think the white actors who are obvious native English speakers would at least be understandable, but you would be wrong. They must have had no input on the script as to writing sentences that people would actually say, or they don’t care and were just looking for a payday. Payday may be an awesome candy bar, but it made an awful time understanding the film.

I’ll take Psycho Women for $800, Alex

Genja (Sophita Sribanchean aka Sophita Sriban) – Genja is a cop who helps the CIA and gets almost killed for it. Then it is time for revenge! This is Sophita Sribanchean’s first film.
Sirin (“Nui” Kessarin Ektawatkul) – The Thai spy agency/CIA’s lead fighter, as well as non-insane female Nui Kessarin is a former national champion in tae kwon do and was in Born to Fight and Dangerous Flowers
Clare (Jacqueline Apithananont aka Jacqui A. Thananon) – Clare is the crazy as heck CIA lady who is in charge of the Vanquisher project, and is charged will killing all them ladies. She missed one, thus the film has sort of a plot. Jacqueline Apithananont was also in Queens of Langkasuka and The Bodyguard 2.
Mazaru (Pete Thongchua) – Mazaru is some sort of bad guy who is in charge of some ninjas, and is permanently having a scowl on his face. Pete Thongchua was in Lizard Woman.
Hana (Saito Kano) – A Yakuza chick who somehow is wandering around and has a sword. Saito Kana was also in Lizard Woman, as one of the women who take a shower and are then geckoed the frak up.
That’s sexual harassment. And I don’t have to take it!
Chanbara Striptease
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Chanbara Striptease (Review)

December 10, 2010By

Chanbara Striptease

aka Oppai Chanbara

2008
Directed by Akira Hirose

Chanbara Striptease came out to capitalize on the Chanbara Beauty films, it even has the same font on the poster to further cement the relationship it is exploiting, even if the actual film has nothing to do with the Chanbara Beauty films. But that applies to Japan, while here in America few people have even heard of Chanbara Beauty films, though probably more know about the games than the films. As Chanbara Striptease was originally released in Japan as Oppai Chanbara (Oppai is Japanese for “Breast), that meant this film was originally called Breast Chanbara. Oddly enough, they thought that direct translation title wouldn’t do well here. Americans must be too dumb, they need to know that the Breasts will be naked! Keep in mind it wasn’t the Japanese production company coming up with this brilliant marketing, this was Americans. Thus, Chanbara Striptease. The American DVD release has the tagline “Blades, Babes, & Boobs…” which is accurate, except we don’t get enough of any of them. But I’m just a man who always demands more.

Despite the cheap origins, the films does make a few feeble attempts to be more than what it is. Lili’s character has to cope with the fact she’s taken life and will have to take more to make things right. She has trouble adjusting despite her years of training to prepare her for using the Sayama Hashinryu, the deadly killing martial art passed down only by women. We also get smatterings of honor, noble sacrifice, and morality tales. But eventually it must all take a backseat to half-naked chicks swinging swords around with awkward abandon. Come on, Japan, can’t you give your AV stars years of training in swordplay choreography? I thought you were cool

Lili (Ryo Akanishi) – Lili is just your average modern ninja girl sent back in time while being initiated into the martial art of Sayama Hashinryu. Her martial arts skills allow her glowing breasts to give her vast powers to defeat the evil Yamishika gang and save the Iida village. and also to get it on with dudes from 300 years ago. Ryo Akanishi is an AV star who has made more porn by 9am than you will ever watch.
Hikoichi (Yoichi Matsuda) – Villager of Iida village back in the past and brother of Yae. Lili likes him, but as Hikoichi has never been with a woman he is constantly spazzing out.
Lady Okinu (Lulu Anoa-aka Ruru Anoa) – Evil female head of the Yamishika gang, spends most of the film standing around taunting people while holding a pipe. Do you wanna get pipe-taunted? You might think you do but you really don’t. Lulu Anoa is an AV star who you can easily find disturbing images of on Google.
Yae (Sasa Handa) – Pregnant resident of Iida village and Hikoichi’s sister. Her husband Tosuke is constantly yelling and over-exaggerating everything he says and does. So when you have several AV stars in your movie, why would you make one pregnant the entire time and thus unable to run around in the buff? It doesn’t make much sense. When Sasa Handa isn’t starring in an amazing number of adult films, she shows up in genre fare like Kekko Kamen Royale and The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers.
Grandma (???) – Grandma teaches Lili all about the martial art Sayama Hashinryu.

InBad, Movie Reviews

Revenge of Lady Fighter (Review)

December 5, 2010By

Revenge of Lady Fighter

aka Buhawi

1973
Directed by Junar – aka Jun Aristorenas
Written by Greg B. Macabenta

“Only a hurricane can freeze the fury of her fist!”

Revenge of Lady Fighter is really well done once the fight sequences get going. In fact, the fight scenes and quality are so good the film actually made me angry. Not at the film, but because the team behind Revenge of Lady Fighter was also the team behind Batwoman and Robin and Batwoman and Robin Meet the Queen of the Vampires, two films considered holy grail lost films of Filipino cinema (though Tony Cayado directed Meet the Queen of the Vampires). Before watching Lady Fighter, I assumed these would be dumb comedies with little to no action sequences, along the lines of Alyas Batman en Robin. Instead, now I am picturing them as a fun-filled action romps, making the fact I will probably never see them stinging even more.

Director Jun Aristorenas was born Juanito Aristorenas in 1933 in the Philippines. By the late 1950s he was a regular on the Filipino vaudeville circuit (known as Bodabil), which lead to a few walk-on roles in films. By 1965, he was a headliner, starring in flicks such as Dugong Tigre. In 1967, he started his own production company – Junar Productions – Junar being his nickname and the name he is credited as director of this flick.

Jun Aristorenas was nominated as best actor for his performance in Elias, Basilio at Sisa (1972) by the Film Academy of Movie Arts & Sciences (FAMAS). His 1970 film Dimasalang scored him the Rajah Soliman award for Best Director at the 1970 Manila Film Festival. He became a regular in western films such as Johnny West (1966) and Dimasalang, but also starred in other action genres such as war or even samurai films like Samurai Master (1969) and The Samurai Fighters (1969). Cult movie fans might recognize him from She Devils in Chains (1976) Jun Aristorenas continued to act in films up to his death in 2000, his last appearance being 2000’s Pag Oras Mo, Oras Mo Na.

Aristorenas married female action star Virginia (aka Virginia Gaerlan then Virginia Aristorenas) who then starred in several of his films. By the 1970s, Virginia had assumed the mantle of the Action Queen of Filipino Cinema, the successor of 1950’s action queen Celia Fuentes. Virginia debuted in 1971’s Ang Mababangis and started out doing dangerous stunts from the start. She appeared in films such as Bandolera (1972), Apat na Bagwis (1972) – “Three men and a woman, undercover agents, blast the hell out of Devil’s Island”, Kumander Erlinda (1972), and The Panther (1973). Two of their sons, Robin and Junar, also appeared in some of the films. In fact, Robin Aristorenas played Robin in Batwoman and Robin and Batwoman and Robin Meet the Queen of the Vampires along with a long career as a child actor. Virginia has passed on, but I have been unable to find out when and why.

Lady Fighter suffers from being a film of the 1970s and thus has some of the flaws of the era, including long drawn out scenes that would be cut much tighter now. Is someone walking up to a village? Well, we’re gonna see every single step he takes. Yay!!! Uh…

Rosa (Virginia aka Virginia Aristorenas) – Rosa is quested by Ming to retrieve the medallions he gave the townspeople who are now using his martial arts knowledge for evil instead of good. She has to learn kung fu all by herself and then beat up everyone since the few cops are all useless.
Ming (Ernie Ortega) – Ming is a local kung fu master who is a legend, which we know because we’re told so. He teaches the town kung fu on the condition they will use it honorably, but once the genie is out of the bottle the townspeople smash that bottle over the heads of the villains and kill them all. Ming is ticked off, but even more ticked off when he is killed.
Nardo (Rolando Gonzalez) – The local bad guy of the town, who becomes the big bad guy once he gets the taste of karate power. Rolando Gonzalez was the Karate King of Philippine Movies. The son of Latino Gonzalez, known as the Father of Philippine Karate. Gonzalez starred in a string of action films in the 60s and 70s, but near the end of his life was broke and begging his old acting buddies for money. He died in 2009.
Lewel (Fred Galang) – Lewel is the only non-comic relief guy in town who isn’t a murderous drunk. Depending on who dubbed what part, the guy’s name is either Lewel or Noel. Fred Galang was a much lauded actor in the 1960s and 70s. A biography of Fred Galang I found that looks auto-translated mentioned that at one point he joined “occult, ESP mind power and drugs”. Eventually he became a born again minister.
Curian (Palito) – Curian might be named Rulen, depending on whoever wrote up the dubbing script that week. We’re going with Curian because that is the one used more. He’s one of the comic relief guys and helps Rosa train for her mission. Palito translates to stick, and he was a hard-working comedian who was making films until 2007, enduring the ups and downs of the Pinoy film industry. Notable films include Darna at Ding, BoboCop, James Bone, and Sheman: Mistress of the Universe. He died in 2010.
Other Comic Relief (Teroy de Guzman) – The other comic relief guy doesn’t even get a name! He manages to get a medallion and joins the bad guys as they go off to form a gang due to being forced to go with them. At the end, Other Comic Relief helps rescue his buddy Curian. A Bodabil alumni, Teroy was a member of the famous singing and dancing group Crazy Corporation with Panchito, Ading Fernando and Bayani Casismiro. He was also part of the dancing trio The 3 Hot Shots with fellow comedians Dolphy and Rene Pangan in the 1950s. He continued to work through the early 1980s in TV and the best estimates for his death is sometime in the 1990s.

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