Enter the Dragon

I must confess that I've seen only one other proper kung fu movie in my life, Kung Fu Hustle (2004), which I remember liking a lot. But I have to admit that kung fu isn't my genre of choice. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Enter the Dragon (1973), which is by many accounts one of the great kung fu movies. It's certainly iconic, thanks to Bruce Lee, whose charismatic presence imbues the picture with a kind of mythic enchantment. Bruce Lee seems to wander through this movie like a man in search of his destiny. The picture in some ways happens around him, and he shows up at important moments to either display his impressive ass-kicking skills, or move the plot along (which usually involves the ass-kicking skills).

The film is mostly set on an island near Hong Kong which is inhabited by a man named Han (Shih Kien), who is some kind of rogue kung fu master. Han has departed from the principles of the masters that trained him, much to their chagrin and embarrassment. Not only is Han something of a megalomaniac, he's also a killer. Many young women have ventured onto his island never to be heard from again. Enter Bruce Lee, who is sent to ostensibly take part in Han's big tournament--which he hosts on the island every three years--but really to uncover one of the missing girls, an agent named Mei Ling (Betty Chung), and any information he can get his hands on.

Lee is joined by two other martial artists who are also being enticed to the island, for different reasons: they're played by John Saxon and Jim Kelly. The three of them never form what you might call an official trio, but they do share some common bonds, and as such, you're rooting for them as a group. Plus, John Saxon and Jim Kelly have their own screen presence. Saxon has a funny scene early in the film where he outsmarts three bodyguards on a golf course, and Kelly more than anyone looks like he's having a really good time.

I must admit there were moments in Enter the Dragon where I grew restless. Director Robert Clouse and his editing team could have cut the movie by ten minutes for a more compact picture. But as it goes, Enter the Dragon is a pretty enjoyable piece of bubblegum, and better-made than most of its kind. What impressed me most were the film's sets and the admittedly astonishing staging of the fight choreography, by Bruce Lee. There is one scene in particular that stands out: it's when Lee sneaks out of his room at Han's giant compound and searches the place, eluding multiple guards and fending off several of them. He's lithe and subtle and incredibly deliberate in every physical action he makes. It's really a fascinating scene to watch. (And what about the scene where he captures the cobra and uses it to scare off some guys in a control room?!)

Enter the Dragon is certainly worth seeing, especially if you're interested in furthering your appreciation for genre films of the 1970s. There's something about them that feels so much more authentic and fun than the films that imitate them today. One of the drawbacks of having all these fanboys making movies today is that they're so busy paying homage to the films they loved that they forget that what made those films special was (at least partly) their originality. Nowadays, it's like every genre piece is making some kind of blustering "meta-commentary." Sometimes I just want my films to be films. So thank you, Enter the Dragon, for falling into that increasingly more endangered category. With Ahna Capri and Robert Wall. Sadly, Lee died shortly before the film's release. ★★★

Black Christmas

Black Christmas (1974) takes as its inspiration that old urban legend about the madman terrorizing the babysitter with taunting, malicious phone calls that are in fact "coming from inside the house." It's a nasty but surprisingly effective shocker from director Bob Clark, who had made two other genre pieces before this one, the schlocky zombie-cheapie Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) and the laughable but slightly more intelligent Deathdream (1974), about a dead Vietnam vet who comes back to life a la "The Monkey's Paw." In Black Christmas, the setting is a sorority house at Christmastime, and the hormonal coeds are feeling rattled by the obscene phone calls of a psycho killer, who happens to be cloistered in the attic. Filmed in Toronto, Black Christmas feels like a bad 1970s youth drama--there's even a subplot about one of the sorority sisters contemplating an abortion--interspersed with violent murder set-pieces to ratchet up the tension. Strangely enough, it's effective, perhaps because of how crudely conceived it is. The script by Roy Moore dares you to live with the uncertainty of the killer's identity, and the dreary sorority house feels like Death itself with all its creaking floorboards and dark hallways. You find yourself drawn to the familiarity of the film's conventions, and its perverse method of turning the Christmas season into a time of dread and horror is chillingly done. (Clark himself once pointed out how many suicides there are during the holidays, just in case anyone thinks they're blissfully happy times for everyone.) With John Saxon as the police chief, Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder (who's brilliant as the brash, boozing member of the sorority), and Andrea Martin as three of the coeds, Keir Dullea and Art Hindle as two of their boyfriends, and Marian Waldman as the amusing alcoholic housemother, who hides bottles of booze all over the house. Released in America as Silent Night, Evil Night and later Stranger in the House, but it was not initially successful in this country. It has since become something of a cult classic. ★★★

From Dusk Till Dawn

George Clooney gives a dynamic performance as a professional thief who's on the lam with his crazy brother (Quentin Tarantino). They're headed to Mexico, and on the way they meet up with an ex-preacher (Harvey Keitel) and his two teenage kids (Juliette Lewis and Ernest Liu). The fugitives take the family hostage and make it across the border, stopping to kick back and drink at a seedy bar. But soon they realize the place is crawling with vampires. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) is a paean to exploitation horror and action films, and it certainly delivers the goods. But you can feel writer Quentin Tarantino and director Robert Rodriguez patting themselves on the back for their cleverness, and after a while it becomes mind-numbingly repetitive. With Tom Savini, Fred Williamson, Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, John Saxon, and Kelly Preston. 108 min. ★★

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Actress Dee Wallace once called me a wimp (I met her briefly at a horror film convention) for saying that I hated it when her character is killed off in Wes Craven's 1977 horror film The Hills Have Eyes. But I don't care. I'm sticking by my statement: I can't watch The Hills Have Eyes after that scene where the crazed mutant family kills several members of a mundane Ohio family en route to California. It's too gruesome, too callous. Wes Craven had directed another film prior to Hills, called Last House on the Left (1972), which is an unwatchable exercise in cruelty. This is the common denominator of just about every one of his horror movies: they demonstrate an unmitigated sense of cruelty toward the innocent victims by the various murderers and monsters.   

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), which remains one of Craven's most commercial thrillers, is no different. In it, a group of teenagers are all terrorized by a maniac in their dreams. That maniac is named Fred Kreuger. He's memorably adorned in a dirty red and green striped sweater and a fedora, has a burnt, scarred, hideous, face and wears a makeshift contraption on his hand that gives him knives for fingers. (He's like a homicidal Edward Sciossorhands.) Kreuger, who's played with a convincing amount of gleeful deviousness by Robert Englund, is the chattiest of the unstoppable killers of the 1980s. (This admittedly small club of franchise horror movie villains includes the imperturbable Jason Voorhies and the monomaniacal Michael Myers.)

One of the few redeeming things about A Nightmare on Elm Street is the charming chemistry between Nancy, the heroine (played by Heather Langenkamp), and Glenn, her boyfriend (Johnny Depp, making his film debut), who lives right across the street from her. Nancy is a valiant heroine, and Langenkamp has a likable gaucheness. She doesn't seem that experienced as an actress, but this isn't necessarily a negative. In a horror movie, you need a certain level of "natural" acting from the lead girl. It makes her seem like a regular person, not a star. Craven's whole movie seems determined to give Nancy a bad time, and that's an unpleasant feeling, but Nancy doesn't let it defeat her. She's a determined protagonist. 

Craven, who also wrote the screenplay, apparently got the idea for his movie by reading about a boy who was plagued by bad dreams, and eventually died, presumably of exhaustion. The idea of dreams--which are so fascinating, so mysterious--becoming places of doom in real life, is certainly interesting, and the film does tap into that fascination, but it's not pleasurably exciting. There's not much fun here, except the kind that's had at the audience's expense. It fills you with dread. 

With John Saxon and Ronee Blakley as Nancy's divorced parents, Amanda Wyss and Nick Corri as her friends, and Charles Fleischer in a small role as a dream specialist at a scientific institute. ★½