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Sex and the Central movie
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Sex and the Central (Review)

January 25, 2011By

Sex and the Central


2003HKMDB Link
Directed by Dick Lau Tin-Sze (credited as Angel Lau)

A Hong Kong take on Sex in the City, except entirely in Cantonese with no subtitles, except Chinese subtitles with the only English being the characters’ names (and they couldn’t even get that right!) Not that you need subtitles in this film, basically the girls try to make their way to the top by bumping uglies with any male boss that comes along. This all gets thrown on its ears when the bosses are tossed out and a new unseducable boss comes along. Beasts are made with two backs, fluids are swapped, and babies pop out and look at you. And that’s just the redeeming qualities. We don’t need no stinkin’ subtitles on TarsTarkas.NET, so let’s have at it!

Gobby (Gobby Wong Ga-Ying) – A virgin, who due to her virginitude dresses awkward and non-sexy. Because that is how it works. Is named May in the incorrect Chinese subtitles. By the end of the film she is no longer a virgin AND a snazzy dresser!
Sophie (Sophie Ngan Chin-Man) – Sophie is the leader of the hip group of office girls who use their bodies to get promotions and get into pillowfights at her place. Sophie Ngan Chin-Man has been in such fine films as Naked Poison, Beauty and the Breast, and Quest of the Sex: Rumble in the Women’s Empire. Whoever hired her for this one didn’t want to pay the extra money to get her to take off her bottom, so we got sex scenes where she’s clearly wearing underwear thanks to shoddy camera work.
Carman (Carmen Yeung Ga-Man) –Girl #2 from the group, tries to be the high class one who is also into spankings and dressing as a schoolgirl. Not paid enough to get naked. Incorrectly called Gobby in the Chinese subtitles, but we will ignore the subtitles because they are wrong.
Dao (Dao Hwang) – Girl #3 of the group In fact, only one girl was paid enough to strip off all her clothes, going all full-frontal on you! Actually, on Simon, but whatever. They manage to call her Carman in the incorrect Chinese subtitles, which leads to much confusion.
Simon (Eddie Lam Kim-Fung) – The new boss who comes to shape up the company because the previous bosses were too busy getting it on to get any work done. Simon seems immune to the advances of our Sex and the Central crew, but can Gobby seduce where so many girls have failed? Eddie Lam Kim-Fung has been in scores of Category III films, he is gunning to be the next Elvis Tsui Kam Kong!

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.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

The Eighteen Jade Arhats (Review)

December 1, 2010By

The Eighteen Jade Arhats

aka Shi ba yu luo han

1979
Directed by Cheung Git

The Eighteen Jade Arhats goes by many many many titles besides its original Shi ba yu luo han. You might find in on video under titles such as Eighteen Claws of Shaolin, Eighteen Deadly Arhats, or The Eighteen Jade Pearls. We’re watching a widescreen print released somewhere that speaks Spanish, where the film was titled Bruce Le y El Secreto del Saolin. Someone overlayed the widescreen print with the English dubjub by that company that dubbed hundreds of Kung Fu films (so you’d recognize many of the voices.) Why would we watch such a weird hybrid? Because, at the time, it was the best way to see it. It might still be, I haven’t kept up with the latest DVD releases of 18 Jade Arhats, but I don’t know if there is a good widescreen print in English or Chinese.

My first experience with the film was still pictures from the book Deadly China Dolls that featured Polly Shang Kuan battling some sort of multi-armed statue. That was awesome so the film jumped way ahead in my search queue. Too bad for me the actual statue fighting happens for less than a few seconds, and is just a flashback and an immobile statue.

Director Cheung Git only directed two other films, and I haven’t seen them, so I can’t tell if this is a typical Cheung Git film. Maybe one day…

“What the hell is an “arhat”?” I hear you asking. Well, guy who can’t use Google, an arhat signifies a spiritual practitioner who has realized certain high stages of attainment. The Chinese word for arhat can be written as “Lo Han” which become Lohan when subtitle people are at work. And thus, the Lindsay Lohan jokes that will be in the film, because if I don’t do it some commentor will. But now I probably will prevent all potential comments! That’s what I get for shooting myself in the foot…

Polly Shang Kuan is awesome enough we’ll give her a better biography when reviews of some of her weirder films are completed. As the time of this reviews publication, there are four other films of hers in my review pipeline, showing how I just get reviews 90% done and then wander off to watch something else. She was a queen of action cinema during her day, and some of her films are too awesome for words and are just experiences you have to have.

Sing Pei Pei (Polly Shang Kuan Lingfeng) – Sing Pei Pei is in search of the 18 jade arhats/Lohans that we stolen from her family, and the thief murdered her entire family. She gets involved in the search for a killer because it will lead her to the man who killed her family.
Kung Chin Ya (Lee Jan-wa) – Kung Chin Ya is a guy who wanders around China getting into adventures or something. He really has no real motive except he wanders around. I guess he’s out to fight for justice or something, but it’s not like he says it. It is more like he’s just running around slicing up bad guys because it is more exciting than making noodles.
Hu Ying Pao (Lo Lieh) – The accused murderer of Wong Chun Wei, who is innocent and eventually proves his innocence when people try to kill him to silence him. Lo Lieh was previously seen here in Lady Iron Monkey
Wong Chun Wei (Chang Yi) – He’s dead, so most of the film is people trying to figure out who killed them. Boy are they wasting their time! Uh.., SPOILERS! Chang Yi was one of the baddies in The Thrilling Sword.

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