Brunch with H.G. Lewis – BLOOD FEAST

Last week the world lost a true visionary, Herschell Gordon Lewis.  He wasn’t the most well-known, or prolific, directors.  He wasn’t the most talented director.  In truth, he was pretty terrible at directing.  He was a brilliant marketer, though.  More than Roger Corman or Russ Meyer, H.G. Lewis was the embodiment of exploitation cinema.  He knew what the audience wanted, sometimes before the audience itself knew, and he delivered in full.  Known as The Godfather of Gore, Lewis was the first director to drench the screen with blood and usher in a new era of horror with 1963’s aptly named BLOOD FEAST.

The Capsule:

There is a killer on the loose in Miami who is leaving a trail of hacked up women in his wake.  The police are baffled because they are complete idiots.  Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold), a local caterer of indeterminate age and accent, is responsible for the carnage.  He plans to resurrect the ancient goddess Ishtar by creating an Egyptian Feast; a cannibalistic spread of random body parts and organs.  Victims are easy to find, but Fuad needs a special sacrifice to finish the ritual.  He gets a lucky break when oblivious socialite Dorothy Fremont (Lyn Bolton) hires him to cater her daughter Suzette’s (Connie Mason) birthday party.  Can Suzette’s 40 year-old cop boyfriend, Pete (William Kerwin), put together the incredibly obvious clues before his young honey is offered up to Ishtar?   

Even compared to other regional, low budget indie horror movies, BLOOD FEAST is a bit of a mess.  For instance,  there is the old-standard cost cutting trick of shooting day for night, but this is the only film I’ve ever seen that shot night for day.   When one character says “we’ll leave when it gets dark”, it’s clearly the middle of the night.  Other characters talk about—and gesture to—things that are not there.  They were just as loosey goosey with the sound effects.  There is a pool party overlaid with the sound of the surf.  Close enough.  At least the actors don’t flub their lines, though the dialogue is so bizarre it would be hard to tell.

You have to hand it to Lewis for coming up with a more ambitious plot for his shoe-string budget splatter film than “psycho killer likes to chop up women.”  Fuad Ramses is on a lofty mission to resurrect a goddess, by way of chopping up women.   Mal Arnold has the honor of playing one of the greatest terrible villains ever.  With every weird line delivery and wild eyed stare, Fuad practically shouts “I want to play with your organs.”  I’m surprised he doesn’t end each sentence with maniacal laughter.  How he is perceived by the townsfolk as charming and exotic rather than “escaped mental patient,” is a testament to the peculiarity of Florida.  It is never explained why he is so fanatically devoted to Ishtar, or the golden spray painted mannequin that is supposed to represent Ishtar.  He might be an immortal acolyte, or he might just be a blithering nutbag.  Since he [SPOILER] never finishes the ritual of the Egyptian Feast, we will never know.

Side note:  Ishtar is a Babylonian goddess, not Egyptian.

Additional side note: Wouldn’t it be funny if this was a prequel to the Kim Cattrall movie MANNEQUIN?  

Suzette’s mother, Dorothy, is one of the peculiar Floridians Fuad charms – and hypnotizes.  You would think hypnotism would be an incredibly handy skill to have when you are stalking ladies for ingredients, but this is the only time he uses it.  He didn’t even need to use it in this case.  Dorothy is already enthusiastically on board with Fuad’s idea to serve an Egyptian Feast for her daughter’s birthday party, even though he practically admits it’s made of people. She is so lost in her own world of genteel Southern manners that in the end [SPOILER] she is only mildly disappointed to learn her daughter was almost sacrificed and her party guests nearly became cannibals.  She’ll just have to serve hamburgers, instead.  

Luckily for Fuad and his ham fisted killing spree, the entire Miami police department (consisting of two people) is stunningly incompetent.  Frank, the police chief, talks about the killer like he is a mastermind who leaves no trace of evidence at the murder scenes.  It seems like an inappropriate description of Fuad, whose M.O. is usually just to tackle women and chop them up where they fall.  Perhaps Frank’s idea of evidence is the killer’s driver’s license and selfies of him committing the murders.  Det. Pete Thornton is also having a hard time sorting out the case, even though he just went to a lecture on ancient Egyptian rituals that basically spells out exactly what is happening.  

In addition to being half the police force, Pete is also Suzette’s boyfriend.  The attraction is obvious.  What young woman can resist a puffy, oily middle-aged guy?  He’s a like a dreamy sebaceous cyst in a sports coat.   

The one truly notable thing about the movie is the gore.  Looking at it now, it is laughably amateurish and obvious.  It is composed almost entirely of animal organs, cuts of meat, and gallons of dime store fake blood.  When Fuad pulls a woman’s tongue out of her mouth, it is clearly two times the size of a human tongue.  They are not exactly concerned with anatomical accuracy, either.  Eye sockets are filled with raw steak rather than eyeballs, and I think Fuad pulls a heart out of a woman’s head at one point.  It’s all so ridiculous.  At the time however, it was astonishing. No one had ever done anything like it before.  There were moments of shocking violence on the screen before BLOOD FEAST, but they were quick and mostly suggested.  There is absolutely nothing suggestive about BLOOD FEAST.  It is awash in bright red splatter.  Lewis’ gimmick worked.  BLOOD FEAST made four million dollars (an unheard of amount for a cheap, independent feature) and single-handedly ushered in America’s bloodlust for gore.  

The effect wasn’t immediate.  The only films to follow soon after with comparable splatter were Lewis’ own (2000 MANIACS in 1964 and COLOR ME BLOOD RED in 1965).  Once NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD came along in 1968, however, combining gore with a compelling script, marvelous performances, and talented cinematography, graphic violence was a recognized draw in cinema.  Plenty of people did it better, but H.G. Lewis was the first director with the guts to throw guts in the audience’s face.

BLOOD FEAST also ramped up horror’s uncomfortable relation with the mingling of sex and violence, especially as directed against women.  Again, it wasn’t the first movie to introduce this concept.  Movies had put women in danger since the silent era, tying them to the railroad tracks, making them helpless and prone below a menacing, moustachioed bad guy.  The titillation became more overt over time.  It was common to see women tear their blouses and have their bras revealed at strategic moments while being attacked by killers or monsters.  Even world renowned classics like PSYCHO used this tactic.  No one can watch the infamous shower scene without acknowledging the not too subtle sexualized violence.

Lewis was no Hitchcock.  His approach to the shower scene (or bath, in this case), was as hilariously clumsy as it was blunt and (at the time) disturbing.  His secret weapon was excess.  Routine scenes of murder where turned into grizzly blood drenched spectacles, almost always involving women.  I doubt he had any malicious intent.  Listening to his commentaries, it seems like he was a genuinely friendly guy with no animosity towards women.  I don’t think he meant to ratchet up the misogyny in horror movies, he was just looking for (and found) the next big thing.  BLOOD FEAST was as evolutionary for Lewis as it was revolutionary for cinema.  He came from directing Nudie Cuties; silly, innocent little “adult” films that were really just an excuse to see bouncing boobs.    In transitioning to horror, Lewis simply tried to replace the boobs with gore.  Even though there is very little nudity in the film (very slightly concealed nipples in the bathtub scene), Lewis’ salacious focus on women’s bodies is still up front.  This is most evident in the scene where he does a slow pan down the length of a dead woman’s body.  All the butcher shop gory bits are around the torso, her legs are just haphazardly smeared with red, but the camera continues down.  It’s neither shocking nor erotic, it’s just habit for Lewis.  Linger on the skin.  In this context, though, it’s creepy.  Whether it was the intent or not, BLOOD FEAST set grisly new standards on how women were treated in horror, and those standards were quickly topped.

On a positive note, I think the trend is on the decline.  In the early days of horror, sex and violence were two societal no-nos.  Mixing them together could create a giddy, transgressive thrill, especially on a subconscious level.  I don’t think very many (sane) people ever thought dead girls were sexy, but sex and violence have similar elements.  Both have a buildup and a release.  Since this is the very nature of suspense (and excitement), it’s easy to see how all the elements could get twisted together.  As sex became more acceptable and the status of women in society rose, the depiction of women in horror, especially as victims, has become more complex.  Women in horror today are often the (much abused) heroes, or at least one woman out of the batch will be.  The male to female victim ratio is still skewed female, especially sexy female, but the bloody playing field is starting to level off. It’s this progress that allows me to stomach the less positive depictions of women in horror.

H.G. Lewis ground out dozens of movies after BLOOD FEAST, ranging from horror, drama, crime, sexploitation, and kids films (seriously).  Pretty much all of them were terrible in different ways, and in many of the same ways.  All of his movies (the ones I’ve seen, at least) were filmed with a sense of humor that made the gruesome pill easier to swallow.  He was mostly out of the movie game after 1972, but returned in 2002 with BLOOD FEAST 2, and he remained active until his death at 90.  His films may have been goofy, crude, and disreputable, but horror would not have been as much bloody fun without him.

C Chaka 

Hold the Logic - I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

I generally prefer my epicly bad movies to be vintage, 1995 or earlier (sweet spot, '75 to '85). The best, most enjoyable bad movies are the ones that don't see themselves as bad movies.  They were created in earnest, with passion and the desire to create something of quality.  They fail, but they often fail in spectacular, innovative ways.  To paraphrase Donald Trump, we've seen quality before, it's boring. (Wait, that might have been a direct quote.)  Contemporary films tend to be too self aware to really capture that magic.  There are exceptions, like THE ROOM, but most "bad" movies today seem to be aimed at the people who want to ironically enjoy a movie just so they can laugh at it.  I hate that pandering, winking, "isn't this the worst?!?" kind of attitude.  I watch a bad movie to be surprised, baffled, charmed, and then to laugh at it.  In an admiring way.  So mostly I stick to the older movies for my fix.  Every once in a while, though, I come across an oblivious, tone deaf modern masterpiece.  Welcome 2007's I KNOW WHO KILLED ME to the pool.
 

The Capsule:

Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan) has the perfect teenage life of being a piano prodigy, an aspiring writer, and giving her attentive jock boyfriend blue balls.  All this changes when she is nabbed by a serial killer who likes to lob off the limbs of his captives.  After a not very exhaustive manhunt, she is found in a ditch, minus an arm and leg.  The only thing is… she’s not Aubrey, but Dakota Moss, a skanky stripper from the wrong side of the tracks.  Both the cops and her doting parents think she’s delusional, creating Dakota as an alter ego to escape the trauma.  Dakota knows who she is, though, and with the help of her fancy new bionic limbs (!), she very, very slowly pieces together what is really going on.  The truth will be more stunningly ridiculous than anyone could imagine.  

On the surface, I KNOW WHO KILLED ME didn’t seem that crazy.  It was a stylishly shot mystery with a hot young star playing a duel role.  There are ambitious (and heavy handed) nods to De Palma and Lynch.  Seemed like a perfectly reasonable studio thriller.  Go a little deeper, though, and it becomes a one way trip to a color drenched crazyland.  


I guess this would be a SPOILER, but there is no way to talk about this film without revealing the underlying premise.  Dakota and Aubrey are stigmatic twins, separated at birth.  The deal with stigmatic twins is that when one is injured, the other sympathetically feels the pain.  Nothing new there, we’ve seen this bullshit in plenty of movies and TV shows before.  I KNOW WHO KILLED ME takes it up a notch, though.  Dakota doesn’t just feel Aubrey’s pain, she gets the physical manifestation of the injury as well.  As in, “oh crap, my arm just fell off for no reason.”  Like the best bad movies, it plays this preposterous concept totally straight.  A little bit of awareness does creep in when Dakota doesn’t tell the doctors or the cops because she knows they won’t believe her.  When she does tell Aubrey’s dad (Neal McDonough), though, he just goes along with it, instead of saying “Wait, that’s literally impossible.”

It does bring up the question of how these twins managed to avoid any serious injury up to this point.  Dakota doesn’t seem all that surprised by sudden, unexplained wounds, though, so I guess Aubrey is the clumsy one.  It’s just another perk to Dakota’s wonderful dirtbag life.  When her finger splits open and starts draining pus in the shower, she reacts like it is a nasty hangnail.  Even when her finger falls off, she just sews it back on and hopes for the best.  No reason to go to the hospital, because, as she says, hospitals are for rich people.  That’s exactly what I think when I’m in the Emergency Room lobby at 2am.  Too many damn rich people.  Hey Rockefeller, can you pass me that six month old copy of Woman's Day? 

I wonder if Dakota was ever up nights trying to figure out why the hell she keeps getting tennis elbow.  Also, if Aubrey gets her eyes dilated at the eye doctor, does Dakota get blurry vision?  If Dakota takes drugs, does Aubrey get a bonus high?  The questions are endless.

Other films have had concepts that make no sense in reality (looking at you, THE PURGE) but turn out to be reasonably good movies.  Luckily, I KNOW WHO KILLED ME does not rely on a single wacko premise.  Once the movie hits its crazy stride, the director goes all in.  Dakota gets a robot hand and leg, because why not?  At one point, she suddenly turns into Clarice Starling, searching the room of a former victim (not a smart Clarice Starling, though, since she doesn’t pick up on the clue that a four year-old would get).  There are prophetic dreams with animated tattoos.  Near the end, she and Aubrey turn into full-on telepaths.  She even has a vision straight out of a HARRY POTTER movie.  

I do like how they work in the title of the film.  Upon figuring out who kidnapped her twin, Dakota dramatically tells Aubrey’s dad, “I know who killed me.”  The dad rightfully points out that she is, in fact, not dead (and using the movie’s crazy logic, neither is Aubrey).  Like everything in the film, it sounds cool, but it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

The movie also scores points for its wonderfully impractical, amputation obsessed serial killer.  First of all, he makes all of his weapons and torture devices out of glass, because nothing is more intimidating than an extremely fragile knife.  He actually has a glass hatchet, which convinces me he didn’t think things through.  I suppose it’s better than making deadly instruments from egg shells or soap bubbles.  

Second, his method of choosing victims is ridiculously specific.  Technically this would be a spoiler, but the guy practically has a neon arrow blinking the word “killer” over his head when he is first introduced.  It’s the piano instructor, and he only abducts (1) his own students, (2) who have won a certain award, and (3) have decided to quit piano.  I’m surprised he didn’t publicly give them gifts of one glove and one shoe before the abductions.  It’s a good thing for him that the cops and the FBI are so astoundingly incompetent.  Otherwise they totally would have found his torture dungeon, also known as his unlocked basement.

As far as his motives go, your guess is as good as mine.  I kept waiting for some flashback or grim exposition.  Maybe his overly strict piano playing mother had a wooden leg, or he had some weird psycho-sexual trauma tied into the blue stained glass in his boyhood bedroom window.  A couple of times it seemed like he was about to go into it, but then nothing.  Just as well.  It gives you the chance to make up your own motives.  The backstory I created was that this freak was way, way too into THE PIANO, especially the part where Holly Hunter gets her finger chopped off, and he always fantasized about it being more extreme.  

The closest it ever gets to explaining anything is one bizarre line about the color blue (Aubrey) being first place and red (Dakota) being second place, and second place is not good enough for the killer.  Not only does this not really make any sense, but it comes dangerously close to having a character acknowledge the thematic motif of the movie.  It’s like Laurie Strode saying that the events in HALLOWEEN really mirror her conflicted feelings about sex.   

I would be amiss not to mention another delirious aspect of the film: Lindsay Lohan is the worst stripper in the history of cinema.  Predictably, she follows the tradition of high profile actresses playing strippers who do not actually strip.  She can’t even be called an exotic dancer, because nothing she does during her performances can be construed as dancing.   It’s more like staggering away from a car accident.  Was she specifically instructed to move as slowly as possible and avoid even the hint of rhythm?  She is so lethargic that I expected part of her routine to be laying down for a nap.  It makes Grace Jones’ striptease from VAMP look like an erotic masterpiece.  The crowd in that part of town must be hard up for adult entertainment, because they go crazy for her.  Maybe the club caters to necrophiliacs.  Look how little she’s moving.  That’s so hot. 

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME was not a rousing success when it was released, or any time since.  Perhaps it was too torture porny, a trend waning in popularity at the time.  Perhaps the baffling stupidity rubbed people the wrong way.  Perhaps America wasn’t ready to see the squeaky clean Disney nice girl Lohan as a drugged out mess.  Lohan was clearly ready, since she continued her string of bad behavior into the movie’s unofficial sequel, LINDSEY LOHAN’S LIFE, including many guest appearances in police mug shots and rehab clinics.  (Don't worry, she outgrew that phase and is back to acting, fashion designing, and designing spray-on tan products.)  Director Chris Sivertson didn’t become a household name, except in the house that held the Razzie awards.  He’s still active in films, but with much smaller scale projects, like co-directing ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE with indie horror prince Lucky McKee.  Writer Jeff Hammond went on to do nothing in cinema ever again, at least under that name.  It’s a pity, I would have liked to see what other works of inspired lunacy he could have created.  I KNOW WHO KILLED ME was an ambitious failure.  It reached for the stars, didn’t see the curb, and fell into the gutter.  And then was peed on by a drunken hooker.  It was a trainwreck, but I’ll take that over boring and predictable any day. 

C Chaka   

It's All In the Name: DEVIL’S EXPRESS

Sure, some movies may have a bigger budget.  Some movies may have better dialog and a lucid script.  Some might have much, much better acting.  Better everything, really.  But do they have an actor named Warhawk Tanzania?  1976’s DEVIL’S EXPRESS does.

The Capsule:

Kung Fu master Luke (Warhawk Tanzania) and his shifty student Rodan (Wilfredo Roldan) go to China for physical and spiritual training.  While Luke is meditating, Rodan gets bored and swipes an amulet from a nearby cursed cave.  The cave turns out to be the tomb of an ancient demon that has been trapped there for over 2000 years.  Now freed, the demon follows Luke and Rodan back to New York City in search of the amulet.  Being a simple country demon, it is not used to life in the big city and takes refuge in the subway.  Meanwhile, Rodan's gang, the Blackjacks, are having a beef with the Chinese Tongs gang.  The police think the mutilated bodies they keep finding in the subway tunnels are related to the gang war, despite the fact that gangs rarely tear people open from the inside out.  Luke tries to de-escalate the gang tension and uncovers the truth of the demon under the streets.  New York’s only hope lies with Luke’s badass skills as he challenges the demon to a Kung Fu battle to the death.  Note: this was the original ending for THE EXORCIST, but they decided to go high brow at the last minute.

Technically speaking, DEVIL’S EXPRESS is a bottom of the barrel Blaxploitation/Kung Fu movie.  It did have a full crew (including 5 screenwriters!), which is more than some of these movies can say, but that didn’t do it any favors.  Dialog fades in and out almost arbitrarily, even though the actors are clearly speaking.  It’s always covered by music, so maybe it was an artistic choice, though it seems more like the audio guy forgot to press record on the sound equipment.  Sometimes the camera can’t keep track of the actors during sudden movements.  The focus puller can be more of a focus guesser.  And while their Kung Fu is strong, their choreography isn’t.  Punches and kicks often come nowhere close to the actors, who react to them all the same.  I guess it’s the thought that counts.  It’s pretty close to DOLEMITE levels of rudimentary filmmaking, but without the charisma of Rudy Ray Moore.  

Instead, it has Warhawk Tanzania.  He might not have the moves of Jim Kelly, the cockiness of Fred Williamson, or the style of Richard Roundtree, but he does have the name Warhawk Tanzania.  A name like that gives you a badass pass for life.  I’m guessing it’s a stage name (I don’t know the Tanzania family personally, so I can’t be sure), but even so, it takes balls to carry that title.  Comparatively, his character’s name of Luke is pretty boring.  Perhaps he feared his role of the smooth talking, demon hunting, cop dissing Kung Fu master would be too over the top awesome for the average moviegoer if he used his real name.  

Unfortunately, he’s not in the movie that much.  He’s there in the beginning and the end, but disappears during the middle (after a weird, wordless montage of him hanging out with his wife or girlfriend and playing stickball with the adoring neighborhood kids).  He does show up for a great “telling off the cops” moment, even if the dialog is kind of odd.  “Look, Jim [note: the character’s name is not Jim], you don’t come on to my turf talking about busting ass.  You got to bring some to get some.”  Um…bring some ass?  How do you respond to that statement?

In Warhawk’s absence, the movie primarily follows his shady pal Rodan and his gang and their tension with the rival Tongs gang.  Thankfully, it’s not really about racial tensions.  The problems all stem from a dice game disagreement/hold-up that Rodan and one of the Tongs were a part of.    Then the Tongs rip off Rodan in a drug deal (see, shady).  After that it’s on.  Full scale gang battles ensue, complete with classic foley effects (each punch sounds like someone hitting a phone book).  Even with the less than convincing fight choreography, there is some decent mayhem on display.  There are rumbles in alleys and basketball courts.  No throwing stars involved, but there are nunchucks, and one of the Blackjacks pulls a full sized katana from his jean jacket.  A gang member spits blood like a fountain.  It’s got so much gang warfare, in fact, that following the success of THE WARRIORS a few years later, it was re-released as GANG WARS.  From what I can tell, it’s exactly the same cut of the film, but the trailer takes out all references to the supernatural or horror.  I imagine anyone going in expecting a straight forward gritty urban tussle left a bit confused.  I don’t think THE WARRIORS opened in China, 200 BC.  

There’s even a little bit of a police procedural rolled in as the cops try to figure out who or what is responsible for all the mangled corpses in the subway tunnels.  In this kind of movie, the cop parts are usually a slog to get through since the cops are either complete morons, or racists, or both.  The detectives in this one are a delight.  Cris is a street-smart veteran and a student of Luke’s dojo.  Sam is a smiling doofus who looks fresh from the country club (he’s shocked that Cris doesn’t play tennis).  Cris’ theory is that the bodies are due to the gang war.  Sam, who has a degree in criminology, thinks it is all due to mutant animals from the sewer.  There is a great scene where they go to a bar in Luke’s neighborhood for information.  Cris goes into the back room to talk with Luke, leaving Sam to order a Coca-Cola with a squeeze of lime from the bar and flash his “hi fellas!” smile.  Everyone stares at him like he’s a honkey from outer space.   You expect terrible things to happen while Cris is away, but when he comes back, everyone in the bar is sitting around captivated by Sam’s hypothesis about monster alligators and giant rats.  He has cut through the racial tension by being a totally oblivious goof ball.

The movie is full of quirky characters like this.  A put upon waitress turns out to be a karate expert and wipes the floor with two belligerent drunks. Speaking of the belligerent drunks, one minute they are trying to kill each other for some unspecified debt, and in the very next scene they are best pals again.  It could be a continuity error (one of countless), but I prefer to think this is just how these guys roll.  This happens every week with them.  Probably the most random thing in the movie is the sudden appearance by German comedic weirdo Brother Theodor.  He’s sort of the less violent Klaus Kinski.  I’m not sure if someone persuaded him to be in the movie or if he just showed up and started doing his thing because he saw a camera.

Then there's the unnamed, vaguely defined demon.  Obviously none of the five writers could agree on the exact nature of this creature, so it changes scene by scene.  In the beginning, it’s something like a mummy.  In order to get to New York, it possesses the body of a Chinese businessman.  You can tell he’s possessed because he stumbles around and has gigantic eyeballs.  The effect is super cheap, just painting big white eyes over the actor’s eyelids.  It’s silly, but surprisingly effective and even creepy when the guy flexes his eyelids.  Mostly silly, though.  When it first senses the amulet, the demon messily tears itself out of its host.   Then it seems to forget about the amulet and just kill random people, including one it lures into the tunnel with a distressed voice that sounds like Siri.  There is a nice scene where a crazy bag lady walks through the subway car loudly complaining to herself and hissing at passengers until the sight of a headless lineman shuts her up.      

It’s actually the Tongs who figure out what is going on once they snatch the amulet from Rodan.  They broker a peace with Luke (after he kicks most of their asses) and take him to their ancient leader, who like all elderly Asian characters in cheap exploitation movies, is a young guy in unconvincing old man makeup.  He actually looks a bit like a hairier version of Lando Calrissian's copilot from RETURN OF THE JEDI.  This unnamed old guy describes the myth of the unnamed demon.  If it can destroy the amulet, it will be unstoppable, free to cause havoc in underground mass transit stations all over the world.  Luke will have to fight the demon and force it back into the amulet (or something like that, he’s vague with the details).  Even though he can’t physically help Luke, the old guy says he will join minds with him.  I think this is just his mystic bullshit way of saying “my thoughts are with you,” while he stays safe in his apartment.  

The Demon V. Warhawk fight is the film’s biggest moment, of course.  There is little doubt who the victor will be once Warhawk shows up wearing form fitting, gold crushed velvet overalls.  The demon should have just crawled into the amulet at the sight of such glory.  Luckily for the audience, the demon evils up and we get our epic Kung Fu against Magic (and editing tricks) finale.  Just as the old man warned, the demon can take the form of people Luke cares about.  This means Luke has to fight against his wife/girlfriend/woman he had sex with in a montage, twin brothers from his Army unit in ‘Nam (totally made up that backstory for two random guys we’ve never seen before), and Rodan.  The old guy failed to mention that the demon can also stop time, become invisible, and throw ghost trains at Luke.  Add all that up with the completely different lighting in each shot and you have the most baffling yet awesome fight sequence ever.  

It is with great sadness that I report this was Warhawk’s last film.  His first film, BLACK FORCE, was released one year prior.  It is reported to be even worse than DEVIL’S EXPRESS, which means I have to see it.  Warhawk Tanzania did put out some ambient/noise recordings on Bandcamp in 2010, though I can’t confirm whether this was the man himself or just some guy who thought Warhawk Tanzania was an incredible name for a band (it is).  He was not, contrary to Rotten Tomatoes, in the 1994 documentary GANG WAR: RUMBLE IN LITTLE ROCK, proving that Rotten Tomatoes is, in fact, worthless.  Barry Rosen turned out to be a terrible director (he only did this one and THE YUM YUM GIRLS, made in the same year), but a fairly successful TV producer.  Some of his work includes such low shelf syndicated series like Highlander, Zorro (which I didn’t know was a thing), and Police Academy (which I really didn’t know was a thing).  He’s still working today on things I’ve never heard of.  

Even though is time in cinema was brief, the world should feel blessed to have witnessed Warhawk Tanzania face kicking a demon while wearing gold velvet overalls.  I certainly do.

Warhawk Chaka