Thank God for Black and Decker

 FORCE: FIVE (1981)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Robert Clouse's "Force: Five" is so darn funny for the first half-hour that it is hard to say if it was meant to be "intentionally" funny. I almost thought it was a parody of karate and/or kung-fu films and I thought I was right when Master Bong Soo Han (who was beautifully cast in the parodic "The Kentucky Fried Chicken Movie" playing the same role) appeared playing a Mr. Han-type villain who masquerades as a spiritual cult leader (to the cinematically uninformed, Mr. Han was the main villain in "Enter the Dragon"). The laughs almost continued when I saw a giant bull inside a maze chasing helpless victims. Tedium set in quickly after a man is pulled apart by ropes attached to a couple of vehicles, and this type of kill was later utilized rather tastelessly in 1986's "The Hitcher." Except for a few moments of alleged humor towards the climax, "Force: Five" feels like somebody hit the snooze button.

The main sticking point with an "Enter the Dragon" clone like this is that the five martial-arts fighters are not the most charismatic group (their introductions barely elicit a specific character trait.) Joe Lewis (in his film debut role) can punch and kick like no one's business yet he doesn't hold the screen when he starts talking. Neither does Benny Urquidez who does perform a few flying kicks. What's worse is that these fights are not staged very well and the timing is sometimes off. Worst sin of all is that this movie is directed by Clouse who helmed "Enter the Dragon" - geez, even his "Golden Needles" was superior to this and had a snappier pace. We get some unexciting fight scenes on an island that looks like an unspecified camping site. Most notable is the presence of Amanda Wyss as a senator's daughter whom Force Five is trying to rescue from this island - she has a vivid personality and sticks out from the rest of this amateurish cast. "Force: Five" is fatally hampered by its own mediocrity and lack of "intentional" humor.      

You've got to have attitude

 A FORCE OF ONE (1979)

A Look Back by Jerry Saravia

It is easy to confuse nostalgia over critical thinking. "A Force of One" was the first Chuck Norris flick I ever saw in theaters and I was about 7 or 8 at the time when I saw it. My father took me to see it because he wanted me to learn karate and become a Black Belt. This movie did not inspire me but I was more than taken by Bill "Superfoot" Wallace's high kicks and spinning back kick. He stood out from the rest of the film's largely unmemorable characters. So I went to karate school and I failed miserably - I couldn't deliver a kick nor could I jump over a wooden pole. Let's just say that "A Force of One" and "Enter the Dragon" inspired my father's interest in karate (who was already a major Bruce Lee fan) more than me. 

Just the other day I decided to watch "A Force of One" for the first time in 40 plus years. My reaction: it is a standard-issue karate thriller with little to no imagination. The serial killer known as the "Karate Killer" is killing undercover cops who are getting to close to the truth regarding the sale of angel dust. Most of the movie seems like a TV police thriller with the focus on Jennifer O'Neill as one of the cops and there are reliable pros like Clu Culager and Ron O'Neal (who may be a dirty cop) but the thinner-than-loose-leaf plot is, for its time, right out of an episode of "Adam-12." Chuck Norris is not too wooden in his role but he had improved his choice of roles with later films like "Code of Silence" and "Lone Wolf McQuade." The fight scenes are adequate though there is a reliance on slow-motion during the epic fight between Bill Wallace and Chuck Norris that looks a mite silly. 

"A Force of One" is adequate enough though often boring during the police procedural segments. It is an uneven blend of karate and police thriller genres and Jennifer O'Neal and good old Chucky have little to no fireworks between them. Actually there are sparks (no pun intended) between Bill's character "Sparky" and Jennifer in one short scene. Looking back, the movie is nothing special but it holds a place in my heart for introducing me to Chuck Norris, so I can thank my father for that and for introducing my young self to karate. The karate didn't work out yet like this movie, we both tried.      

Acid-infested monster in space

 ALIEN (1979)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Ridley Scott's "Alien" is a sensationally scary and completely riveting space monster movie. It is an update of all monster alien pictures of the 1950's yet it does it with distinction, personality and some gooey special effects and an iconic monster courtesy of H.R. Giger whose mouth could cut through you with acid. Sure, it is more gooey and gory than those movies of yesteryear but it also contains a nervous energy from practically the first scene to the end.

The Nostromo spaceship houses a few distinct personalities on board including Tom Skerritt as Captain Dallas; Sigourney Weaver as the by-the-book Lieutenant Ripley; Ian Holm as Ash, a geologist and Science Officer who has an agenda that nobody had bargained for; John Hurt as an executive officer with a slight stomach problem and Veronica Cartwright as navigator of the ship. Finally there's Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton as engineers who wonder about their financial shares. They have all been in a 10-month sleep hibernation and awaken to find that the Nostromo (which they refer to as Mother) had intercepted a signal of "unknown origin" (this ordinary phrase became the title of a 1983 monster flick). Well we know what that means - an alien signal from some distant moon. Rather than head home, they investigate what may be an alien species. Other than the slowly-developing duplicitous nature of the Science Officer, they couldn't have bargained for a moon where a massive ship exists, an interior of a human melded to a turret and some existing organism, and a cavernous underground of unhatched cocoon-like eggs! You guessed it, it is a disgusting alien form in those eggs! Pray it does not hatch.

"Alien" is still mentioned as the phenomenal sci-fi monster picture that has not been beat for sheer claustrophobic terror using the vacuum of space and an enormous ship as its settings. Though I admire some of the sequels, "Alien" did it first and did it better because its got Ridley Scott who has far more skill and imagination and works well with actors. Yet this movie is not nearly the gross-out that other sequels or its legion of imitators have managed - it has elegance in its structure and moments that make you scream or at least shake you out of your chair. The movie moves at a deliberate pace and with Jerry Goldsmith's sneaky and melodic music score that gives you goosebumps when least expected, it is elevated beyond anything that was released prior to it. 

I'd be hard-pressed to find much insight into its characters and that may be "Alien's" one minute flaw. The crew is a colorful, brash group who worry about concerns that everyone can relate to (the food quality, sexual innuendoes, fear of the unknown) and it is their strong personalities that give the film an ounce of purpose and urgency. I must mention the feeling of urgency especially in Veronica Cartwright who looks as nonplussed, exhausted and scared as she did in 1978's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Like any horror film, even one set in space, you have to sympathize with the characters and care about their plight or else the inevitable horror is diminished - it is sheerly amazing how often horror imitators have gotten this wrong. In "Alien," we care about this motley crew because they are human in the way they interact, joke and finally determine their own control of this perilous situation. Sigourney Weaver comes into her own as the strict Ripley who wants to follow protocol - her antagonist is the peculiar Ash. Though we think she might be killed by the alien sooner than most, she turns out to be the most sensible of the group. Well, if she weren't, she would not have been the fan favorite to have appeared in three sequels. 

Another plus is that Ridley Scott and writer Dan O'Bannon do not reveal the creature too early on - the full-sized iconic Alien itself that spews acid is only seen in glimpses towards the end. Then there's the singular moment that made film history - the chestburster moment where the baby alien growls and tears itself out of John Hurt's chest. That moment is still horrifying enough to give you nightmares. "Alien" is the true nightmare space horror film where no one can hear you scream except in a movie theater. 

Don't call 911 if you are bored

 THE AMBULANCE (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A happy-go-lucky comic-book artist, Josh (Eric Roberts), tries to pick up a brunette (Janine Turner) on the streets of New York City. She is clearly charmed and then collapses on the street because, you know, she is a diabetic and had a three-martini lunch! A creepy guy in a limo (Eric Braeden, no less calculating than his eternal role on "Young and the Restless") witnesses the event and calls someone after she is picked up by the ambulance. Of course, this is no ordinary ambulance because it travels to an unnamed hospital that is not in the yellow pages. Braeden is the top-level surgeon who tells the brunette that she will get an implant of brand new pancreas from a pig and then her diabetes will be cured. After that, he will kill her! Say what? Oh, yes, to sell the body to research centers. Okay.

Josh chases this brunette but never finds her. Of course, in due time, he discovers through a nightclub that the ambulance is bad news. In one incredibly funny scene, Josh get sick in his apartment and vomits in the hallway. Later he finds that dreaded ambulance outside of the New York Post building! This is after he has been admitted to a hospital and runs into a fellow patient (Red Buttons, who gets to swear) who was a former photo journalist, I think. Can everyone follow this movie because if you understood it, please email me.

Writer-director Larry Cohen has occasionally filmed screenplays of varying degrees of quality that sometimes made sense (His directorial debut "Bone" is still his best). There is no sense to be made from "The Ambulance" which is billed as some sort of comedy thriller and works as neither. Spirited cameos from James Earl Jones and Stan Lee makes the picture come alive temporarily. Eric Roberts tries his damnedest but comes across as some hopelessly romantic fool. Only Megan Gallagher has the right tone and attitude playing a police detective who hopes to shoot male suspects and is smitten with Josh (she also appeared as a police officer in the 1980's TV series "Hill Street Blues"). But the whole movie doesn't work as satire or comedy nor is it especially thrilling - it drags after a fairly funny half-hour. A perfunctory affair. 

No good memories can come from this

 BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is a wonderful concept for a sequel to one of the great visionary masterpieces of all time, the one and only 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner." The idea of a replicant "blade runner" (are you happy now, Mr. Ridley Scott?) seeking the clues to a bag of human bones purported to be that of a replicant that gave birth to a child is something to ruminate on. It begs for further introspection and aims for a different set of rules and creative ideas established by the original film (and the Philip K. Dick novel). "Blade Runner 2049" unfortunately has the concept but not the delivery or execution. This colossal bore of a movie is overlong and extremely unappealing to the eyes and ears and bears little imagination. A shame because buried in this sequel is something possibly brilliant that never comes to the surface.

Ryan Gosling is Joe or more appropriately K, the stone-faced replicant blade runner, essentially no different from Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard from the original film except he really is a replicant (no footage of unicorns this time). K retires ("kills") a replicant in the astounding opening sequence where he finds a farming station and the sole tree in the barren environment held by ropes. K also finds a box buried next to the tree containing the skull and bones of Rachael (Sean Young), a female replicant who went in hiding with Deckard. It turns out she had a caesarean birth to a part-replicant child which nobody in this future world deemed possible. K also investigates his memory implant of a tree-carved dog figure he kept near a furnace in the orphanage he thought he belonged to. When K discovers the truth, I was still there for the film wondering where this might lead, and the possibility of discovering Rachel's kid. Wait, is it K? Does he think he's the replicant child? 

There are some fascinating tidbits involving K and his holographic girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas), a hologram that we see advertised everywhere. K also flies a spinner around town and the outskirts of L.A. and eventually finds good old Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford, back and sorta, kinda there) who wants nothing to do with K or his questions. Deckard explains he and Rachael were hunted and they had to hide their child, and that is as exploratory as the film gets until we find that K is being hunted too. Getting to Deckard takes roughly 2 hours, and it is a chore to sit through this extremely slim, bare bones plot of a movie while we wait for Deckard's appearance.

The Tyrell Corporation of the original film went bankrupt and was bought by the blind Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), who is insidious in his beliefs about a whole new line of replicants he has created (He also has some pretentious ideas about human pain). One of the replicants Wallace has created is the fastidious, bodyguard replicant type named Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) who can kill someone easily just by striking at the neck area. Yet none of this resonates and Jared Leto looks like some sort of replicant cult band leader - give him a guitar and a mike and he might sing some sad bastard songs. These characters are unappealing from the start, but then so is most of the cast. Gosling seems to be sleepwalking, intentionally or not, and there is not much presence there (even when he does hand-to-hand combat, he looks like he's taking a nap). Only Ana de Armas as Joi expresses any real emotion, and she is only a hologram! (Are the filmmakers trying to deduce that holograms are more in league with their emotions than humans or even replicants?) As far as genuine emotion, I'd say I was quite moved by Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) who is auto-immune and lives in a spacious room that has its own 3-D hologram design of memory banks (this is the most stirring moment in the entire film that feels germane to the original and builds on its foundation since she creates memories for replicants). Finally, Ford himself has a few choice moments but too few to really care overall about Deckard (though his last scene is touching).

"Blade Runner 2049" is creatively designed by several art directors including Paul Inglis and it is well-made by director Denis Villeneuve yet it mostly sits there on the screen - I was never engaged by it and, after two viewings, still found it uninvolving. There is much to savor in terms of magnificent cinematography by the hellishly good DP Roger Deakins (the desert landscape of Las Vegas with sand sculptures of women is something to see) but that is all. Unless there is a close-up of practical Spinners landing, the Spinners seen flying through the air do not rivet our attention the way they did before. The music score by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch is a thunderous assault on the soundtrack yet hardly memorable unlike Vangelis' original score. Maybe too much time has passed between these two films or maybe too many have tried to duplicate what "Blade Runner" had accomplished far too well less than 40 years earlier. I sincerely doubt that "Blade Runner 2049" will be remembered in 2049. 

Tears in Rain

 BLADE RUNNER (1982)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

Some films grow on you like vines grow and spread on the outside facade of a house. "Blade Runner" continues to grow, to fester in my consciousness, to kind of suggest that there is more than meets the eye. I have seen all three different versions of 1982's "Blade Runner" and each version has its own spectacular need for existence. The 1982 theatrical version is not the first version I saw - I saw what is known as the International Version which was shown on cable and much later on VHS and that is an exceedingly violent vision of the 2019 future (which now, in 2022, is the past). No matter what version you see, the film itself is a sci-fi masterpiece, a vision of a futuristic world that never came to pass and I suppose we can be thankful for that. It is a vaguely dystopian future and yet it is also a grim, despondent one where humankind is almost irrelevant, and there is no Big Brother watching as is true with most dystopias (if there is one, it may exist in the framework of its futuristic setting yet it never emerges unlike say "1984," "THX-1138" or "Brazil"). In fact, the replicants who are illegal on Earth and have a 4-year lifespan are just as irrelevant - nobody seems to care and everyone marches to their own drum. 

In terms of "Blade Runner's" influential look of a rainy city overwhelmed by cables and technology and lots of neon signs, it is sheer amazement to watch. Just looking at "Blade Runner" proves its worth with visual punch and imagination - the story is the look of it. We see busy streets that are dirty, grimy and trashy. The city of L.A. is overpopulated and not many can be bothered by someone shooting a female replicant in the back! The stunning introduction of Pris (Daryl Hannah), a replicant and pleasure model type who can do backflips, as she walks through the L.A. streets near the Bradbury Building also shows newspapers and trash flying about. Older, antique cars drive by amidst the flying police cars, the Spinners, which seem to be the only flying cars in L.A.. A lot of the characters wear 40's style clothing, some wear red blinking sunglasses and chic fashion accessories and lots of fish nets. Retired police detective and blade runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), wears a dirty brown trenchcoat that would seem strange in a 40's noir tale (his apartment is also littered with papers on the floor and somehow overstuffed). He loves Chinese food and keeps to himself until he is required to hunt down and kill replicants who have escaped from the Offworld colony (a place outside of Earth "of opportunity and adventure" where replicants worked as slaves). Deckard's boss is Chief Bryant (M. Emmett Walsh) who knows that tracking these replicants and killing them is not a job anyone wants, not even Deckard. 

"Blade Runner" has a seemingly thin plot that my father once said could be made into a half hour flick. Only this movie is too extraordinarily dense and packed with visual details and suppressed emotions to only last a half-hour - it is too serenely beautiful in its look of a city where it is always nighttime and raining cats and dogs and the film is best experienced as a poetic dream of a world that never existed. More than that, "Blade Runner" examines emotionally bankrupt humans, like Deckard, and how they stand in contrast with the replicants' own emotional responses. When the emotions threaten to explode, they are sadness, tears and savage violence. The replicant that Deckard identified via a Voight-Kampff test, the glamorous 40's-type  Rachael (Sean Young, who looks like a brunette version of Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity"), is aware she has been identified and confronts Deckard with her childhood photos. Deckard plainly tells her they are implants, someone else's memories. This particular scene hits you like a ton of bricks because Rachael knows it is the truth and can't bear it (Dr. Tyrell as played by Joe Turkel designed and created these replicants and, in the case of Rachael, gave her these memory implants that belonged to his nieces. Exactly why this scientist and a corporate entity himself did this is never explained).  

"Blade Runner" is tinged with sadness and regret and only the replicants are more in touch with their emotions than the humans (most of them have that dreaded four-year lifespan). Gaff (Edward James Olmos), another cop who resents Deckard, merely smiles at Deckard though he speaks Cityspeak, which sounds like gibberish and some sort of lingo that only L.A. cops know. Deckard seems to live a solitary life of drinking and playing the piano while watching the spinners make their way through the concrete jungle that includes ads for Atari and RCA. Supposedly he is a replicant, according to director Ridley Scott, and the Director's Cut and the Final Cut show an image of a unicorn that looks like it emerged from Scott's "Legend" (it didn't). Amazing image though it is hard to say if it proves much of anything (other than the connection to Gaff's origami paper figures including a unicorn). I am not sure I buy that Deckard is a replicant because he is an emotionally empty man - the other replicants are brimming with emotions and are in touch with their feelings. I recall my psychology professor back at Queens College indicating that Deckard is probably a replicant because only a replicant could fight and survive against other replicants. Still not buying it but it does make you wonder nonetheless. Harrison Ford plays a man who is good at what he does, yet we don't celebrate him as a hero for killing the replicants. Deckard genuinely feels bad for them and any level of heroism for his actions seem mute.

The final astounding sequence where the formidable Batty (Rutger Hauer) confronts and saves Deckard's life and describes in vivid detail what he saw in the Offworld colonies is touching and stays with you ("Those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.") You shed a tear for Batty and we can see Deckard feels it too. The replicants care about their existence and have emotions and memories they cling to. They want to be human and don't seem to notice that humans have forgotten how to feel. 

"Blade Runner" is fantastic, astoundingly immersive filmmaking that pretty much influenced everything dystopian and cyberpunkish that came after it. It is so unique in tone and style and so powerfully rendered that it stands tall as one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made. There was "Metropolis" followed by "2001: A Space Odyssey" and now "Blade Runner." A cinematic triumph in every way. 

Bronson country in shambles

 COLD SWEAT (1970)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Released in the U.S. several years later due to being a French production, "Cold Sweat" is one of the dumbest Charles Bronson action flicks made during his prime in the 1970's. That wouldn't matter much if it was even a tenth thrilling to watch but it is laborious and hardly exciting through 9/10 of it.

Bronson is Joe Moran, a happy-go-lucky guy living in Southern France with his clueless wife, Fabienne (Liv Ullman), who wishes he spent less time playing cards with the guys, and her 11-year-old daughter (Yannick de Lulle). Joe rents boats off the harbor to presumably all sorts of clientele. One day he gets a phone call asking for a Joe Martin and he hangs up angrily. Of course, all hell breaks loose when it turns out be a criminal from Joe's shady past, which Ullman was unaware of. The criminal breaks into the house and Joe snaps the guy's neck and throws him over a cliff. Now he and his family's life are in danger, leading to other criminals from Joe's former crew of thieves to appear. You see, Joe is a former soldier who abandoned these fellow soldiers during a robbery. Now they want payback. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a Bronson thriller, and you'd be wrong.

We get moments where Joe confronts these guys, leaves with one soldier to recover the loot owed or something, leaves one for dead, comes back to the crew who threatens his family, leaves with another solider, and then it turns out the one Joe left for dead is alive, and so on. The interminable climax involves an irate, greedy soldier who wants the briefcase of cash while chasing Ullman and the daughter over some rocky cliffs. It goes and on and on past the point of tedium. It could be a comic farce but as directed by Terence Young, it is a yawner. You'll be yawning through most of this picture, especially at the usually charismatic James Mason as Captain Ross imperfectly using a Southern accent. Ross suffers a mortal wound and points his gun at one soldier while getting pale faced and passing out - not one of Mason's finest moments. If not even the usually dynamic Jill Ireland can keep you awake, you know the filmmakers have left Bronson country in shambles.