Last Man Standing

1996 gangsta flick

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Yojimbo but with guns and fedoras and Bruce Willis instead of swords and kimonos and Toshiro Mifune.

This gangster film, apparently shot on a used but abandoned B-Western set, is a convoluted rehash of the "Man with No Name" idea, most recently rehashed in Sukiyaki Western Django and Lucky Number Slevin with none other than Bruce Willis, stolen thirty years ago with Clint and Leone for A Fistful of Dollars, and first used in Kurosawa's excellent Yojimbo even though he borrowed imagery from the American Wild West and a central character from Dashiell Hammett. So as the kids are saying today: It's all good. This nearly works but I kind of got lost in the plot, probably because there are far too many gangsters and none that I really cared all that much about. By the time Christopher Walken rolled in, I had already gotten to the point where I was checking my watch, the same point where I realized I didn't even have a watch on. It was probably shot off my wrist by one of the characters in this movie during one of the gangster's dozen (same amount as a baker's dozen for you squares out there) scenes where there's nothing but a flurry of gun fire mayhem and thick dust. There are a few times when characters are shot and fly backward fifty feet, some of them disappearing onto the set of Yojimbo where Kuwabatake Sanjuro looks at him in confusion before trying on his shoes. I know even less about physics and guns, especially firearms from the Prohibition Era, than I do about movies, but it seemed a bit ridiculous. Good thing they didn't have their backs to me because I'm not sure my trash guys will take dead bodies. They won't take old furniture! I like movies with beat-up, dusty towns like this and Bruce Willis, although he looked a little fatigued, was just the right guy for this, but this doesn't have nearly the character and voice that Kurosawa and Leone had. And unfortunately, it's just begging to be compared to those films.

I bought this for fifty cents early in the "man" movie challenge. It was probably worth that much.

Trouble Man

1972 blaxploitation flick

Rating: 11/20

Plot: There's trouble for Mr. T when he's hired by Chalky and Pete to stop the masked men who keep showing up with guns and robbing the participants of their craps game. There's a lot more than meets the eye for this suave, ultra-cool private detective as he finds himself in the middle of a gang war. Oh, snap!

This is a much better movie than the Dolemite movies and probably Cleopatra Jones. Mr. T, this one sans mohawk and extraneous jewelry and "I pity the fool" catch-phrase, isn't nearly as much fun though. T's as smart as he is cool, and although the plot was convoluted and gummy, I enjoyed the ride when the character was strutting around trying to put pieces together with the help of his gigantic polyester ties. However, other than the titular detective, you don't get a single other engaging character, and no real bad guys to latch onto. The majority of this is low-grade shoot-'em-up stuff, and Trouble Man's just too straight to make it worth the trouble.

Creature from the Haunted Sea

1961 monster and gangster comedy (I guess)

Rating: 5/20

Plot: "The most astounding adventure ever afflicted upon man." At least that's what the narrator told me. American gangster Renzo, for reasons that I never completely understood, finds himself on a boat with his posse and a handful of Cubans and the Cuban National Treasury. He decides to unload the Cubans one-by-one and blame it on a sea creature that, according to legend, roams the waters. He doesn't realize that a very real muppet is roaming the waters and helping him in his task.

Another Corman picture, one in which Roger really takes the piss. There was no way they worked on this for more than a week, probably while they were still writing the script. I knew I was in for something goofy while watching the animated credits during which a ridiculously harmlesss sea thing runs comically across the screen. But I still didn't realize this was even a comedy until it just got to the point where it was too ludicrous not to be one. The gangsters meet the Cubans in a rainforest after they drive to the destination in a convertible, a limo, and a Volkswagon bus. For about five minutes, I couldn't figure out what was going on because I couldn't understand what anybody was saying thanks to bad sound and thick accents. I did catch a character say, "Do you understand?" which made me answer back "No, not at all." I really need to stop talking to the movies I watch. Then some things happen and a Volkswagon bug comes along and there's a chase scene through the jungle that makes that chase scene in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull look like high art. I was still clueless, but then they ended up on the boat and everything calmed down a little bit. I had to pause the movie to take a breath. Dopiness abounds in this one. Nothing about the plot really makes that much sense. You have a CIA agent (also the narrator) working undercover with the gangsters, but he never seems to be invited to their meetings. He listens at the door, narrates that he can't understand anything that they're saying, and then is seen listening at the door anyway for several subsequent scenes anyway. He also says, "But my real name is XK150," at one point which is interesting because I almost named one of my children that. Another enlightening bit of narration: "It was dusk; I could tell because the sun was going down." None of the other characters make sense either. Renzo is pretty much a low-budget Bogart, something like a Humphrey clone that went horribly wrong and was discarded in a dumpster outside the laboratory but Corman came along and decided to use him anyway. Speaking of Bogie, there's a gang member called Happy Jack Manahan who is supposed to perpetually smile because of muscle spasms from too many Bogart pictures. I don't even know what that means, but I do know the character doesn't even smile that much in the movie. The most nonsensical character, and the character who represented the moment when Corman's tongue actually penetrated his cheek and wiggled freely in the air, was a guy whose dialogue was mostly animal imitations including "the mating call of the Himalayan Yak." The characters forget each other's names, run into each other, and butcher their lines, all things that would make an ordinary director yell "Cut!" But Corman is no ordinary director! The excellent Fred Katz (Little Shop of Horrors) provides some interesting music that at times clashes with what you see on the screen. And I haven't even talked about the frightening monster yet!



Hell yeah! I would have expected this thing to steal my cookies rather than feel in danger because of it, and I don't know how the actors kept from laughing. Maybe that's why most of the creature's appearances involved it sneaking up on the characters so that they wouldn't see him and start laughing. There were some great underwater scenes with this thing, a lot of them blocked by large fish that would swim in front of the camera. 5/20 might be a little high for this film; however, it is a comedy that made me laugh. Maybe my grade is even a little harsh. Regardless, this deepens my appreciation for the great Roger Corman.