Reeling Backward: "Big Trouble in Little China" (1986)

A goofy doof of a movie -- part martial arts flick, part fantasy, a little bit Western, a lot '80s -- "Big Trouble in Little China" damaged a lot of careers in the short run, but made a lot of long-term fans. Now a remake starring Dwayne "Don't Call Me The Rock... OK, You Can Call Me The Rock" Johnson is in the works.

I remember my friends just raving about the movie when we were in high school, but somehow I never got around to seeing it. I'm a mite disappointed now that I have. While amusing at times, it looks like a cheap and schlocky flick that can't quite decide if it's in on the joke or not.

It's best to take it as a silly send-up of different genres, a fun adventure undertaken for its own sake. The scary stuff is never very scary, unlike, say, the Indiana Jones movies, which preserved the horror elements of its throwback inspiration. I make that connection because this film, like others from the era such as "King Solomon's Mines" and "High Road to China," were clearly thematic imitators.

This tone is set by Kurt Russell, who's playing a prototypical 1980s cinematic action hero -- muscle-y and smirking -- yet is continually sabotaged by comedic imperatives.

For instance, he waltzes into the inner sanctum of the villain near the end to deliver a typical defiant "go to hell" speech -- except his face is covered in bright pink lipstick, having finally gotten that kiss from The Girl. Or, at the start of the massive final brawl between the good and evil gangs, he shoots a chunk out of the ceiling and gets conked on the head, and goes sleepy-time.

Indeed, the film's enduring achievement is featuring a bunch of actors of Asian descent with a generic white guy figurehead as protagonist. 

Originally conceived as a Western by fledgling screenwriters Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein, the story was completely redone by W.D. Richter at the behest of the studio and director John Carpenter, who wanted a modern setting (and a lower budget). There was quite a tussle over credits, with the rookies ultimately getting the screenwriting nod, while Richter got an "adapted by" credit and Carpenter, who made his own alterations, received nothing.

Carpenter was just coming off one of the finest directing runs of popular entertainment movies in Hollywood history -- "Halloween," "Elvis," "Escape from New York," "The Thing," "Christine" -- and the commercial failure of "Big Trouble" laid his career low. He's sort of bobbled on the edges ever since, an admired icon associated with the indie/horror field, but couldn't get his mainstream projects greenlit.

The plot is essentially one long chase, and takes place in very close to real time.

Russell plays Jack Burton, driver of a tractor-trailer hauling pigs which he dubs the "Pork Chop Express." He likes to ride around and yammer away on the CB radio to anyone who'll listen, stories about his life and pronunciations of his creed. He's a wanderer with friends in every port of call.

Among them is Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), a young Chinese immigrant who runs a restaurant in San Francisco's Little China. He's excited because his betrothed,  Miao Yin (Suzee Pai), is arriving from his homeland for their wedding. She's got green eyes, which are highly prized by the Chinese (at least in the movie's telling). This is the only attribute the screenplay bothers to give her, barely speaking or emoting throughout the film.

Here jade peepers raise the attention of David Lo Pan (James Hong), an ancient and evil sorcerer who's been relegated to a ghost-like existence due to an old curse. He needs to marry, then murder a green-eyed woman to lift it. It's never made clear why he wants to become mortal again, since he's essentially invulnerable to attack.

Of course, I've never been withheld from a woman's gentle touch for 2,000 years. (Even if it sometimes felt like it.)

Leading the forces of good is Egg Shen (Victor Wong), a crotchety and benevolent magician. His favorite trick is throwing little balls of light that blow up his enemies. Kim Cattrall plays Gracie Law, a white attorney who often defends Chinese clients, and gets sucked up in to the action and, inevitably, tossed into Jack's arms. Turns out she has green eyes, too, so Lo Pan decides to go for a twofer.

Neither actress actually had green eyes, so they had to wear uncomfortable 1980s colored contact lenses during production. Also, if the bride doesn't need to be Chinese, I'm not sure why it took Lo Pan two millennia to find a woman.

There's also a reporter (Kate Burton) and best friend (Donald Li) who really serve no purpose in the story, and are conveniently forgotten about for long stretches of the film.

Lining up on the bad side are Lo Pan's three main henchman, all gifted with super powers tied to the elements. Thunder (Carter Wong) is all muscle and snarling attitude; Rain (Peter Kwong) is the resident swordsman and pretty boy; Lightning (James Pax) can project energy and even levitate. All three of them wear oddball straw hats that literally cover them down to the neck; one wonders how they fight effectively without having to tilt their heads.

Lo Pan also has a beholder-like creature, a circular blob with eyes and little tentacles, that acts as his scout. It's a cheap-looking and silly effect, even for 1986.

In general you can say that about the entire film. Other than one big set-piece for Lo Pan's sanctum santorum, which has some impressive statues, the whole movie looks like it was shot on a back lot. Most of the characters don't even change clothes. One battle has Wang dueling in the air with Rain, and it's an embarrassing collection of obvious wire shots and tilted cameras.

Compared to the elegant swordplay of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," it's positively archaic.

The budget for "Big Trouble" was $20 million, hardly chump change at the time -- about $44 million in today's dollars, but this was before the era of gonzo-sized budgets even for special effects spectacles. Consider that the magnificent "Aliens," which came out the same year, cost $2 million less.

An overpriced mess, this film doesn't even deserve the cult status it has today.

Reeling Backward: "Prince of Darkness"

It's Week 3 of my John Carpenter retrospective, and I'm very happy to say that "Prince of Darkness" was a huge leap for the better over "They Live." Last up for next week is his remake of "Village of the Damned."

(Incidentally, all four films are collected in a new DVD, "John Carpenter: Master of Fear" that's now out. Zero extras, but for a suggested retail of a mere $16, it's a great buy.)

As you might guess from the title, "Prince" is about the end of the world and the return of Satan to rule over the Earth. It's a quite entertaining bit of sci-fi/horror apocalyptic claptrap, with Donald Pleasance and Victor Wong leading a group of scientists trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together before Old Scratch takes over.

Deep in the bowels of an old church, a mysterious canister is filled with swirling green goo. It was only discovered after an old priest died clutching the key to the chamber. Pleasance, a mainstay of Carpenter's movies, plays an unnamed priest who attempts to pierce the mystery. He enlists the aid of Professor Birack (Wong), a brilliant if esoteric scientist whose work straddles the line between physics and metaphysics.

Birack brings along a small army of students to camp out at the church and study the canister, where they are slowly converted one by one into Satan's zombies. The evil spell is passed by vomiting the green goo from a zombie's mouth into a human's. It's unclear if they're actually dead, although two reanimate after they died as humans -- one memorably so by slitting his own throat with a piece of broken banister.

For grad students, they're a suspiciously old-looking bunch. Jameson Parker, best remembered as the blonde guy from TV's "Simon & Simon," was 40 when this movie came out in 1987. I guess this bunch took a rather laissez-faire approach to their studies. At the rate they're going, they'll be collecting Social Security by the time they make the adjunct faculty list.

Pleasance always seems to have at least one great speech in every movie he's in, and he delivers a whopper here. After being confronted with a 2,000-year-old book that states that Jesus and Satan were extra-terrestrials and the dark one was merely banished, not defeated, the old priest does not engage in a delusional defense of his faith. Rather, he sagely takes thousands of years of religious doctrine, including his own life's calling, and pitches it in the ditch:

"Apparently a decision was made to characterize pure evil as a spiritual force -- evil within the darkness of the hearts of men. That was more convenient. And that way Man remained at the center of things -- a stupid lie. We were salesmen, that's all. We sold our product to those who didn't have it: A new life, reward ourselves, punish our enemies. So we can live without truth, substance, malevolence. That was the truth: Asleep, until now."

One of the female scientists is branded as the chosen one to be the receptacle of Satan's will. She's transformed into a gooey creature covered with sores. At first her belly swells, and we think it's going to be a nasty demon-birth thing, but then it subsides and she rises, bent on finding a mirror so she can reach through the portal to bring the horned one through to this plane of existence.

The image of her gnarly, bloody fingers peeking through the reverse side of the mirror pane is quite striking. Another very brief but haunting image is that of a pigeon that has been caught and crucified on a tiny cross.

In one great scene, one of their colleagues who has been killed speaks to the survivors in a strange quavering voice. He opens his coat to reveal a chest of beetles, and indeed his entire body has been eaten away from the inside out by a plague of insects. Just before he collapses into a heap of empty clothes, he tells them, "Pray for death." Cool stuff.

"Prince of Darkness" was not well reviewed when it came out, but it's grown in stature during the ensuing years. It's notable for the presence of rocker Alice Cooper as the leader of the zombie horde gathering outside the church. When a computer dweeb tries to escape, Cooper takes half an old bicycle frame and runs him through with it. Cooper even appears on the cover of the DVD reissue, despite not having any lines and a total screen time of perhaps three minutes.

If the film has a weakness, it's the romance between Parker's character and a colleague played by Lisa Blount. Their relationships is given very short shrift by the screenplay -- they have one conversation and soon after they're in bed -- so it doesn't carry much weight when Blount's character sacrifices herself at the end to save him (and the rest of the world).

3 stars