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King Kong India
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

King Kong (1962 – Review)

February 18, 2012By

King Kong


1962
Written by Vishwanath Panday, Pandit Mathur, Mastji, and Majrooh Sultanpuri (lyrics)
Directed by Babubhai Mistry

Not that King Kong, there are no giant apes in this movie, though there are guys who sort of look like giant apes when you squint, or at least fat blogs. Nope, this is 1962s Indian epic King Kong, starring the great Dara Singh in his first starring role. You remember Dara Singh from Samson right? The Infernal Brains Podcast about Dara Singh? Well, if not, you now have a bunch of extra listening and reading to do! For the rest of us, this is an entry in the MOSS (Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit) Conspiracy Big Muscle Tussle, featuring dudes and chicks with muscles doing muscular things in muscular ways. Said muscular ways usually means punching many things. Click on the MOSS Page to see many more entries, as long as your roid rage is low enough you won’t Hulk Smash all our webpages. As for King Kong, let’s just say that there is a giant monster in the beginning of the film, but it’s all downhill from there!

Dara Singh was born in 1928 in the Punjab village of Dharmuchak. He wrestled in local tournaments while growing up, but went to Singapore to seek employment as a laborer. He ended up learning East Asian wrestling techniques – in addition to the Indian (and surrounding regions) technique called Pehlwani – and returned to India. With his brother Randhawa, the two became professional wrestlers and soared through the ranks. By the 1970s, Dara and his brother were the highest paid wrestlers in India, earning 30-40 times the going rate for bouts. Dara was also the “world champion” in the local circuits.
King Kong 1962
Prior to his lead role here, Dara Singh had been relegated to stunt work in films like Sangdil (1952), Pehli Jhalak (First Sight) (1955), and Jagga Daku (1959). In King Kong and many of his later films, Dara helped do the fight choreography, as he thought the usual Indian choreography didn’t look real enough. As Dara Singh comes from a lower caste, there was often trouble finding leading women who would appear with him. Besides Kum Kum from this film, his usual partner was Mumtaz (seen here in Samson) Dara’s lower caste status helped instill him as a hero of the common man, though his films usually had him suddenly discover his noble roots (as this one does.) After his movie career slowed down, Dara Singh gained a new generation of fans when he appeared in the 1980s tv series Ramayana playing Hanuman.

The movie’s title King Kong is even taken from wrestling. Though a reference to the giant ape, King Kong became a wrestling title, one which Dara Singh soon claimed, winning it off of stocky Hungarian wrestler Emile Czaja – who often went billed as King Kong (including his appearance in this film!) Dara winning the King Kong title gave him enough fame that director Babubhai Mistri decided he would be bankable as a leading man. The added fact that it was cheaper for people to buy movie tickets than to pay for wrestling tickets was just gravy. Due to distribution politics/drama, low-budget stunt films like King Kong were usually exhibited in rural areas, often with the director or star in attendance presenting the film.

Director Babubhai Mistri did effects work at Wadia Movietone, and directed many mythologicals in the 1950s (mythologicals being a genre of Indian cinema that does stories from the religious texts.) by by the 60s was unable to direct big picture films, thus he turned to the B movie circuit and making Dara Singh a star.

Like most surviving Dara Singh films, King Kong is available on badly encoded unsubtitled vcd with the craptastic video quality you expect. And the vcd has commercials on it..in the middle of the film! Luckily, a few Dara films have started to migrate to DVD, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll get some of his awesome stunt films on DVD soon…

As this is the inaugural Dara Singh starring flick, they didn’t trust him to headline the picture by his lonesome, so they threw in another character, the handsome swashbuckler type Badal (played by Chandrashekhar) There is also a comic relief sidekick for Badal. Comic relief sidekicks were so in vogue at this time, the evil warrior character Evil Guy also has his own comic relief sidekick. As you have probably noticed by some of the names, I haven’t figured them all out yet.

Jingu (Dara Singh) – A local warrior who lives with his mom, who has nicknamed him King Kong. His father is the disposed king, and he has a missing brother.
Radhi (Kum Kum) – The Princess’s maid and Jengu’s love interest. She does almost all the singing. This is Kum Kum’s lone Dara Singh co-starrer that I know about, she starred in B films and used that to get starring roles in big budget pictures.
Badal (Chandrashekhar as Chandra Shekhar) – Badal is the local handsome guy who hangs out with a Goofy Guy and crushes on the princess. He’s also the secret lost brother of Jingu.
Princess Rajkumari (Parveen Choudhary) – The Princess who falls for Badal when he saves her from slavers.
King Kong (Emile Czaja as King Kong) – The prior King Kong who is tossed out of the roll when Jingu proves himself the better man. Seeks revenge for his failure.
King Hingoo (Uma Dutt) – The evil king who disposed the prior king and now does evil stuff which is totally evil. Of course, we don’t actually see him doing much evil stuff, he just has some jerks working for him. But the dialogue probably mentions evil things that we don’t see…
Smoke Monster (Men in suit!) – YES!! The Smoke Monster is awesome, we demand more Smoke Monster! Too bad he dies five minutes into the film and the rest is people running around not fighting monsters. BOOOO!!

InBad, Movie Reviews

Golden Skeleton (Review)

January 22, 2012By

Golden Skeleton

aka Jin ku lou aka 金骷髏

1967
Written and directed by Wong Fung
Golden Skeleton
Josephine Siao Fong-Fong kicks butt in this crazy awesome groovy 60s spy conspiracy Jane Bondish thriller! Despite a slow start and a confusing last minute, Golden Skeleton has become one of my favorite female spy films because the villains are just so weird. The leader Golden Skeleton is a guy in a gold skull mask, his henchmen have space cadet uniforms and masks, and Golden Skeleton is seldom seen without a pair of babes in midriff-baring hot pink catsuits flanking him. Just what evil is Golden Skeleton up to? Does it matter? What matters is cool things happen. Just go with it and enjoy the spectacle. We don’t need no stinking subtitles. Okay, fine, I did a bit of Googlin’ and found some plot points not explained by watching and making up things.
Golden Skeleton
Director and writer Wong Fung helmed 88 films, including How The Ape Girl Stole The Lotus Lamp, Blonde Hair Monster, Midnight Were-wolf, The Lady Killer, Blue Falcon, and a whole host of the Wong Fei Hung films (which he wrote even more installments than he directed!) Born in 1923 in Guangxi, he began writing films in 1950, and directing in 1959. Wong Fung joined Shaw Brothers in 1973, and retired in 1980. He passed on sometime in the 1990s. The cinematography was done by Lee Maan-Git, who also worked on Bruce Li in New Guinea.
Golden Skeleton
The soundtrack is 100% jazzy jazz. It is interesting how the all jazz soundtrack makes everything seem cooler and cooler. I should use jazzy jazz to soundtrack my life, then I’ll live in a constant cool high that will come crashing down around me when my iPod runs out of batteries. Hopefully I won’t be near any tall buildings to hurl myself off of! Just kidding, I’d totally kill myself by feeding myself to lions at the zoo, not tall buildings.
Golden Skeleton

Pink Bomb aka Agent SAA9 (Josephine Siao Fong-Fong) – The secret agent on the case against Golden Skeleton and his goons. She’s relucently forced to accept help from Agent Guy SAA6 under her boss’s orders. Spends as much time fending off his clumsy advances as she does kicking the butts of Golden Skeleton’s goons. Pink Bomb’s real name is Jenny Lin. See more Josephine Siao in How the Ape Girl Stole the Lotus Lamp and The Furious Buddha’s Palm.
Agent Guy aka SAA6 (Cheung Ying-Tsoi) – Agent Guy is our James Bond wannabe. He spends most of the film clumsily trying to seduce everything he meets. Sometimes he almost makes it! He’s also bumbles away from attempt after attempt on his life, having the luck of fools. You cannot stop Agent Guy, because he’ll trip over his own shoelace and find a code to save the world.
Chen Ho aka Agent SAA10 (Gwan Jing-Leung) – Agent SAA10 is also on the case, even though he seems to be more of a third wheel who can’t save the day himself. But he’s good to have along to absorb blows until Pink Bomb gets around to punching out the guy he’s fighting. Gwan Jing-Leung is a former Peking Opera actor (he trained under Yu Jim-yuen, father of Yu So-Chau and trainer of the Seven Fortunes (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and all them.)) Golden Skeleton was the first film produced by Gwan Jing-Leung, who also did the fight choreography. He produced a few more films before focusing on stunt work.
Agent SAA5 (Go Fung) – It’s yet another agent! This guy is totally not suspicious at all…
Golden Skeleton (It is a mystery!) – Who could the mysterious Golden Skeleton be? He runs a giant criminal conspiracy that does…something. And he has lots of people in high places at secret agencies, because he has people everywhere! Golden Skeleton knows that having his followers dressed in ridiculous outfits is the way to go, along with having hot babes standing beside you. This is real supervillainry, folks!

Golden Skeleton

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Banglar King Kong (Review)

January 16, 2012By

Banglar King Kong


2010
Directed by Iftekar Jahan
Banglar King Kong
The movie. The myth. The legend. Banglar King Kong! Yes, folks, we have an awesome treat for you today on TarsTarkas.NET! Straight from the heart of Bangladesh comes this Kong-tastic take on everyone’s favorite giant ape. The story of King Kong is timeless, and Kongs have appeared throughout the world, some more official than others. Is Banglar King Kong licensed and legal? Hell no! But it exists anyway and mirrors the plot of the King Kong films so closely that even without subtitles, you know exactly what is going on. The tale of King Kong will be one of those things that people 300 years from now will know. In future digi-hologram movies, Space Kong will climb to the top of the Space Elevator and toss around Starship Enterprises, and you know things will play out just like the 1933 classic. And it will be glorious.
Banglar King Kong
Unofficial King Kong knockoffs have existed in foreign markets since 1933’s Wasei Kingu Kongu (和製キング・コング aka Japanese King Kong), which along with the 1938 King Kong Appears in Edo (江戸に現れたキングコング aka Edo ni Arawareta Kingu Kongu) are pre-WW2 tales that have not been seen since their initial theatrical runs. As we all know, Japan made two real King Kong films much later. Giant apes and Kong-ish story lines appear in such cinema classics as India’s Shikari, the Korean film A*P*E, the farcical Queen Kong, and the microbudget The Mighty Gorga. There might even be one in India’s 1953 film Gorilla. As far as I know, this is the first giant ape in Bangladeshi cinema.
Banglar King Kong
The costume for Banglar King Kong is among the worst ape costumes ever put on film. I say among the worst, because there is no doubt a low budget Indian horror film (probably by Harinam Singh) that will have a worse ape costume. But it is by far the worse King Kong costume that ever existed. From the sneering mask to the visible spaces for socks, the whole thing is a Halloween disaster. Though I do give them props for the blinking eyes, that was a nice touch and made the ape have some actual feelings on display. We give credit where credit is due on TarsTarkas.NET.
Banglar King Kong
The director Iftekar Jahan has directed several other films, of which I can find little information thanks to a billion sites copying the same Banglar King Kong article and clogging up Google. The actors is even a bigger mess, despite some of them having names spelled different every time I saw it typed out, I can find little information on any of them. What we do know is that Banglar King Kong was produced by Sharmin Osman for the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (BFDC), the main government body that overseas much of Banglar cinema, so this is some government funded B-grade fun! TarsTarkas.NET has encountered Banglar film once before, the actionfest Banglar Hero. And one of the stars of Banglar Hero, Tubby Buddy, has a role in Banglar King Kong playing another comic relief character. I still cannot figure out who is playing him. Of the cast list: Munmun, Danny Sedak, Shamim Osman, Afzal Sharif and Kazi Hayat, I was only able to identify Munmun as Milly and Kazi Hayat as the lead female tribeswoman Tubby Buddy pairs up with.
Banglar King Kong
When you watch Banglar King Kong, try to keep in mind this film was made in 2010. But between the scratches on the print, the mistimed dubbing, and the blue screen effects that fan films put to shame, you could swear up and down that this is a product of 1961. Only the musical numbers, which were shot with some sort of HD camera and with professional lighting, look modern. But even those snippets are transferred from a film negative, and have scratches – though not nearly as much as the rest of Banglar King Kong, which looks like the print was shot up by helicopters and dumped off the top of a random tall building.
Banglar King Kong
The non-singing soundtrack is 100% stolen. I recognized the themes from Gladiator, Empire Strikes Back, James Bond, King Kong 1976, Last of the Mohicans, and 2001 among those that were playing. I’m guessing they weren’t banking on an international release… The vcd must have been encoded by the anipal monkey Buntoo himself, because it is rife with errors and digital trash. The images suffer as well, with this 2 1/2 hour film compresses to just two vcds. I did my best to get clear shots, but as you can see, there is no refined BluRay clarity. Sometimes the discs have sounds problems so bad we might as well be getting the audio from the next theater over!
Banglar King Kong

Milly (Munmun) – An actress recruited to be in a film on a tropical island. Her father Rakul accompanies her on this journey, though he is killed on the island. She herself is kidnapped by the natives and given to King Kong, who falls in love with her. When Kong is kidnapped and displayed in Bangladesh, she tries in vain to save him from his predestined fate. Munmun is an actress of B-cinema in Bangladesh. One of her bigger roles was in a film called Moron Kamor.
Rocky (???) – Rocky is a famous film star and we can’t believe how lucky the film crew was to score him for their weird nature documentary. But there you go. Rocky takes and immediate shine to Milly, and when she’s Kongnapped he does numerous rescue attempts in between musical numbers.
Tubby Buddy (???) – Tubby Buddy is back and as wacky as ever! Goofy banjo music announce his entrance. Tubby Buddy works on the movie shoot and helps recruit Milly into the film.
Captain Ashool (???) – The ship captain, who along with first officer Mr. Jones, take King Kong back to Bangladesh and put him on a stage show. This works as well as it does in all the other versions of King Kong, and Captain Ashool is soon squashed. Once the Captain goes evil and kidnaps King Kong, he’s suddenly wearing black!
King Kong (Man in Suit!) – The King. He’s Kongtastic. The Great Ape. The King of Skull Island, or whatever island this is. He’s fought airplanes, Godzilla, mechanical doubles, helicopters, giant snakes, tyrannosauruses, all sorts of ugly things. But now he fights his greatest battle: $0 budgets!
Buntoo (A monkey) – Buntoo is the film’s anipal, betraying the influences of Indian cinema on this Banglar film. Like all anipals, Buntoo helps the hero and is used to save the girl and to steal tickets to the King Kong stage show. I think Buntoo is the same word that Milly calls Kong, but thanks to lack of subtitles I can’t find the exact word.

Banglar King Kong

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Revenge of the Zebra Miniskirt Police (Review)

December 28, 2011By

Revenge of the Zebra Miniskirt Police

aka Zebura Minisuka Porisu no Gyakushuu aka ゼブラミニスカポリスの逆襲

2010
Directed by Nishiumi Kenichiro

Revenge of the Zebra Miniskirt Police is a spinoff prequel to Zebraman 2. In the future of 2024, Tokyo is a crime-ridden cesspool, but Governor Kouzo has just come to power and has turned the town into Zebra City. He’s formed Zebra Police to clear the streets of criminals (and anyone else) with lethal force during Zebra Time, and just because we need to get 1000% more fascist, now Governor Kouzo is setting up his personal bodyguards, the Zebra Miniskirt Police!

The Zebra Miniskirt Police are three chicks in identical miniskirt uniforms that are way more fetish-driven than the normal fascist police military industrial complex uniforms used by the rest of the Zebra Police. Their black skirts are so short you see their white panties when they kick, because the black uniforms with white panties are zebra stripes…I guess. It’s hard to say that it’s symbolism, because Revenge of the Zebra Miniskirt Police is way more black and white than Zebraman 2 (pun both intended and not intended), but the uniform designs are probably from the parent film Zebraman 2 and not this spinoff. In any event, I’ve mentioned white panties often enough I’ll probably get some weird Google referrals. Hello, pervos, welcome to the site!

This is an origin film for the Zebra Miniskirt Police, because that is a story that demanded to be told. By someone. His name is Jerry. Go bother him. The three actresses chosen to star got the roles through a reality television series where Zebraman himself, Show Aikawa, choose the three women from 776 applicants. Thus they are mostly unknown models who have done little and will probably continue to do so.

Being a low budget direct to video affair, it shows blatantly. The makeup and production values are not up to par to the original film. The video even looks different, as it was shot on a different type of camera. Most of the money seemingly went into the action choreography, which is never a bad thing. The film is helmed by Nishiumi Kenichiro – Miike’s assistant director on Zebraman 2, but while Miike could have turned this low budget affair into something fun and excessive, Nishiumi Kenichiro plays it more straight and similar to a lot of the low-budget Japanese flicks I’ve seen in tone and in content. I don’t know if that was the order, or if Kenichiro just hasn’t learned enough from Miike. It basically turns into one of the hundreds of direct to video Japanese films produced each year for specific fetish audiences, this one for those who like seeing women beat up and have large bruise makeup all over them. That’s the only reason I can figure for the excessive bruise makeup. The tone is a mix of the depressing Cool Dimension and the blatant exploitation of Sukeban Fighter Misaki.

And once again, at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!

Yumi Kisaragi (Miki Inase) – a former rebel cell member, whose group fought against the Governor’s power grabs. She lived as a poor girl in the slum with a bad attitude and computer hacking skills. Before all that, she had happy parents who were killed by the Zebra Police
Risako Yuki (Sayoko Ohashi) – Zebra Miniskirt Police recruit who is out to revenge a friend. Sayoko Ohashi is a model best known for appearing in the video game Need for Speed: ProStreet.
Yu Maki (Yuko Shimizu) – Zebra Minkskirt Police recruit who gets almost no characterization at all. And I can’t find any information on Yuko Shimizu, because she has the same name as the lady who created Hello Kitty!
Governor Aihara Kouzo (Guadalcanal Taka) – The crazed governor who converts Tokyo into Zebra City. Dresses like every day is Halloween!

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Jakkalan (Review)

December 1, 2011By

Jakkalan

aka This Girl Is Bad-Ass aka จั๊กกะแหล๋น

2011
Directed by Petthai “Mum Jokmok” Wongkumlao
Jakkalan
Everyone who reads this site regularly (all four of you!) knows that TarsTarkas.NET has been following the career of Jeeja Yanin Vismitananda (or however her name is spelled this week!) From Chocolate to Raging Phoenix, we’ve watched her kick people in the head again and again. And now, with Jakkalan, there is more kicking of heads. But not that much more. And mostly weirdo Thai comedians being weird Thai comedians. So, it is disappointing, to say the least. A waste of time, to be more wordsmithy. Something to actively avoid, to be long-winded. That’s not really that long, but you get the idea.
Jakkalan
With the overseas name This Girl Is Bad-Ass, the distributors are obviously capitalizing on Jeeja’s popularity in the West as a cult female action star. The problem is most of the film is barely about her. I am not sure how this is going to get cut for overseas, because besides the lack of Jeeja and lack of fighting scenes, the rest of the film is Thai comedy, and that rarely translates well to Western audiences in the best of films. In Jakkalan, it’s mostly dialogue comedy, which translates even worse, and beyond worse if you’re watching with no subtitles like I did (at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!) What is weird is I am against cutting foreign films for American markets just on principle, so I’m technically against the only thing that could save Jakkalan. It’s like Sophie’s Choice! Jakkalan’s Choice.
Jakkalan
Jakkalan tries to do too much while also wandering around and not doing much of anything. Director Mum threw in so many random comedians who all get screentime, screeching the film to a halt as everyone acts goofy and does goofy things. That’s great and all, but we came for the fighting! But we’re inundated with goofy costumes and goofy voices as every comedian in Thailand has an excuse to run wild playing a gangster.
Jakkalan

Jakkalan (“Jeeja” Yanin Vismitananda) – Jakkalan is a tomboy bicycle messenger who beats up bullies and crushes on a rocker guy with a secret that was obvious even without subtitles. Despite being the title character and the entire focus of the marketing, she’s only in like half of the film and there are just three fights.
Uncle (Petthai “Mum Jokmok” Wongkumlao) – Jakkalan’s uncle, who raises her from a baby while struggling to also run his video store business. And is caught in the middle when all the gangster stuff happens. Mum Jokmok also directed the film, and is a Thai comedian, thus all the other comedians in the flick.
Suitor (Akhom Pridakun) – This man with the great teeth spends most of the film pursuing Jakkalan, who doesn’t have time to even look at him. Was saved from a bully by Jakkalan as a child, thus his crush.
Schoolgirl Fighter (Alisa Sonthirot) – It’s a schoolgirl because we need to make someone Jeeja fights slightly memorable! Slightly. The only info on Alisa Sonthirot is where I got her name from, WiseKwai’s site.

Jakkalan

InBad, Movie Reviews

Lady in Black Cracks the Gate of Hell (Review)

November 19, 2011By

Lady in Black Cracks the Gate of Hell

aka The Hell’s Gate aka The Black Musketeer (part 3) aka 女黑俠威震地獄門

1966HKMDB Link
Directed by Law Chi

Lady in Black Cracks the Gate of Hell is different than the other two Dark Heroine Muk Lan-Fa films, because there is less Muk Lan-Fa in it. Sister Muk Sau-Jan takes much of the spotlight for the first half of the film. I don’t know if actress Suet Nei was busy (she had several other films out that year), or if the studio decided it wanted to focus more on Law Oi-Seung and try to make her a bigger star as well. If so, it didn’t quite work, as her film output never reached star levels and she faded away to obscurity, to be only mentioned by guys with websites.

Lady in Black Cracks the Gate of Hell is also different because it looks more low-rent. The scale seems smaller, the plot more confusing, the stakes are less severe, and the villain dies in one of the lamest (but realistic) ways ever. But it’s still some good Jane Bond. And worth tracking down if you’re into this sort of stuff. Once again, the only available formats is unsubtitled vcd or DVD. And as we all know, at TarsTarkas.net, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!

Muk Lan-Fa (Suet Nei) – Cracking the gates of Hell is child’s play for the Dark Heroine at this point. So let’s give her a real challenge: punching Cerberus through the gates of Hell in one punch. Dark Heroine Muk Lan-Fa has 24 hours to complete this task.
Muk Sau-Jan (Law Oi-Seung) – Dark Heroine’s sister spends most of the film starring in the film as Dark Heroine is MIA for a huge chunk of it. And then she gets kidnapped again and again and again. It’s crazy!
Ko Cheung (Kenneth Tsang Kong) – Ko Cheung is the cop with the mop. Wait, that makes no sense. And now I’ve screwed up this whole cast bio! Dang it. Move on to the next guy…
Sing Sam Long (Fung Ngai) – The Fat Bad Guy in charge of this latest gang, whose name I didn’t catch because it isn’t in the title nor do they have their own company letterhead. As a mastermind, he’s pretty lame, and he gets foiled rather easily and dies like a jerk. A jerk!

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