Category Archives: Movies

Adam Chaplin: are the 80s and 90s back?

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Adam Chaplin is a blood soaked independent horror/action movie fresh out of Italy. It uses a technology the creators call Hyperrealistic Anime Blood Simulation, or H.A.B.S. for short. I picked it up because of the clear Fist of the North Star influence, made even clearer by the concept art included in the DVD extras.

The violence and gore in this movie is most reminiscent of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, a Hong Kong film adaptation of the Riki-Oh manga by Tetsuya Saruwatari. While The Story of Ricky is a cult hit, its tacky special effects fail to live up to Saruwatari’s drawing style.

Adam Chaplin doesn’t suffer from that complication. It’s an original property created by Necrostorm, a company which proudly boasts “80-90’s are BACK” on every page of their website. This nostalgic sentiment is matched by nearly all aspects of the movie’s production, including the melodic guitar soundtrack, impressive practical effects, and spartan plot.

Adam Chaplin is a man who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for immense physical strength. He walks an ugly world filled with crooked cops and mutated freaks, seeking revenge on the deformed psychopath that burned his girlfriend alive. As Adam murders his way to his goal he punches people in half, kicks their faces off, and lets loose buckets and buckets of blood.

I don’t keep up with all the latest horror films, but I’m pleased to have seen this one. It’s gratifying to support a bunch of crazy guys creating crazy stuff halfway across the world. Necrostorm has loads of projects in the pipeline, including Death Cargo, a fighting game offering the gory violence found in Mortal Kombat, except in photographic detail.

Related videos: Trailer, 5 Minute Excerpt
Click here to purchase.

Japan, stop reminding me of things I don’t have (and how far you’ve fallen).

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First Japan released an Ashita no Joe live action movie in February, then they started working on a Tiger Mask one. Does this officially count as a trend?

These are two archetypal sports manga that debuted in 1968, with anime adaptations that followed soon after. Neither has been licensed in the United States in any form (save for an Ashita no Joe compilation DVD Tai Seng released in 2009, which is definitely worth buying).

Casting pretty boy actors to play these roles makes good marketing sense, since it opens up the demographic outside of the fifty year old men who watched the cartoons growing up. But Eiji Wentz playing Tiger Mask is going too far. He’s supposed to be a professional wrestler, for chrissakes. It seems like an unintentional joke at this point. How are they going to top themselves next?

Uh, forget I said anything.

Like Gandhi said: hate the acting, love the actor.

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Where do you stand in relation to the 1995 live action Fist of the North Star movie? Most (if they’ve even seen it) agree it’s awful. I fall in that camp, but I go a step further: I go out of my way to try and not think about it. As you know, when something is bad, there’s no shortage of geeky, over-the-top commentary which dwells upon it incessantly. If something is shitty, I try to give it a wide berth. But that’s just me.

So why the hell am I writing about this now? FlickeringMyth.com interviewed Gary Daniels on Thursday, and color me surprised at one of the films he mentioned when asked what he’s most proud of:

Oh, I hate that question! You know what? It’s a good question for me to answer because when I’m asked that, for me, it’s not always about the finished product. There are so many different reasons that I’ve enjoyed the films I’ve made. It could be the location, or the actors I’ve worked with, the director, or the experience I had while making the film. If you’re talking about the finished product, then there’s a few I guess, but one of my favourites was a film called Spoiler. It didn’t have any martial arts action in it, so it was more of a drama. I loved that film. It wasn’t accepted that well by the buyers because it didn’t have any martial arts, or me kicking ass, and I guess at that point in my career, buyers had come to expect a Gary Daniels film to have me kicking ass in it. I also enjoyed making Fist of the North Star. It didn’t exactly turn out the way I expected it, but I’m still proud of it. Recoil was another I enjoyed.

Gary Daniels played the role of Kenshiro in the Fist of the North Star live action movie. Well, “played” may be an inaccurate word, as it implies behavior which we commonly associate with acting.

But I’m not writing this to pick on Gary Daniels. I’m writing this because after I read his words, I was forced to admit to myself I bear no grudge towards anyone that worked on this movie. In fact, if there’s anything endearing about it it’s the cast. Gary Daniels is a beloved B-movie martial artist. Chris Penn was in there. So was Malcom McDowell. Even MELVIN VAN-FUCKING PEEBLES found his way into that shit.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is I still hate this goddamn piece-of-shit movie. But if Gary Daniels enjoyed making it and he’s proud of what he did, that’s fine with me.

Dolph Lundgren vs. Drug Dealers From Outer Space

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This is Dolph Lundgren’s greatest film, known as I Come In Peace in North America, but finally put to R1 DVD last month using its international title, Dark Angel.

It’s regrettable because tons of movies and television shows also use that title. If you ask the average American what Dark Angel is, they’ll probably say it was a TV show created by David Cameron in which Jessica Alba’s blowjob lips desperately wage war against a dysotopian cyberpunk future. I might be a little off on the details; I was 13 when that aired.

I Come In Peace is a 1990 science fiction action movie. Like a lot of science fiction, it articulates our ambiguous human response to the latest advances in technology and the issues therein: in this case, the life-threatening danger inherent to compact discs.

I’m not lying! But it’s better left unexplained.

This film sees Dolph Lundgren as a laid back cop, which is unusual considering he’s best known for more stoic roles like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Dolph deserved a higher profile career than he got, especially when you compare him to contemporaries like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s a karate champion, speaks relatively clear English, and can behave in a way which resembles acting. I’m not knocking Schwarzenegger or JCVD, I love those guys. But Lundgren got overlooked in his prime. He proves he’s leading man material in this movie.

In I Come in Peace, Dolph Lundgren stars as a Texas cop who tracks down an alien drug dealer that’s come to earth in order to harvest the endorphins released by the brains of his human victims and synthesize them into a product he can then sell on his home planet. It’s a rather grounded science fiction story despite the presence of aliens, which I quite liked. More a buddy cop movie tinged with SF than the other way around.  All in all, it’s good classic R-rated fun, the likes of which is hard to come by nowadays.

You may be wondering: why was the American title I Come In Peace, anyway? The pedantic answer is it’s the phrase uttered by the antagonist before murdering his victims. The honest answer is it’s a setup existing solely to make Dolph Lundgren even cooler. The trailer spoils it. I recommend watching the movie to find out.