Tag: 1980

Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #52

A copy of the DVD I now own for $1.

After being forced to stay indoors for the better part of a week because of terrible weather, I got out over the weekend and visited one of my favorite places: a used DVD store. I browsed for a while as usual, but I ended up mostly just raiding the $1 table. Apparently someone off-loaded a bunch of cheap kung fu DVDs recently, and some of them ended up on the dollar table. So, of course, I grabbed them, and the first one I chose to watch is titled Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards. The title immediately brought to mind Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master from 1978, and even though Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards isn’t as polished as Jackie Chan’s film, I quite enjoyed it.

Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards follows a young man named Chang Fung who works with his cousin and uncle at a noodle shop. Chang Fung goes away for a month to learn drunken kung fu from a master, Wu Sing, but when Chang Fung returns home, he discovers that his teacher has many dangerous enemies. When Chang Fung uses his newly-learned skills in public, his style is recognized, and he becomes a target for the many people who want to kill Wu Sing. Chang Fung’s life and family are in danger, and he has to fight his way through a series of deadly encounters before he can find peace.

The movie isn’t necessarily a comedy, but it is a fairly silly and funny movie. I think the nature of drunken kung fu makes it nearly impossible to make a movie featuring it without being at least partially a comedy. Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards may not be especially noteworthy when compared to countless other kung fu movies that came out around the same time, but it’s a lot of fun. The story meanders from scene to scene with the plot lurching in different direction just to get to the next action sequence or comedy bit, but that’s one of the reasons I love these kinds of movies. The characters and fights are fun, and that’s all I really need.

I started watching lots of cheap kung fu movies in my teens, and I definitely have a certain aesthetic I enjoy which is based on some of those movies I saw during that time. This was back in the days of VHS, and tons of kung fu movies were available on poorly produced tapes. That’s what I love. Poorly dubbed, full frame, grainy pictures and all. If I can get the movie on VHS now, that’s even better, but the handful of movies I picked up the other day are clearly just dumped onto a DVD from a bad VHS copy. You can even see a few tracking problems when the movie is starting up. I love it.

Of course I’ll watch kung fu movies in full widescreen with nice picture clarity and subtitles, and I prefer that for a lot of the better kung fu movies out there, but for late-night movie to relax to, cheesy and poorly distributed kung fu movies are a go-to choice for me. I have four more movies I picked up, so don’t be surprised if you see them pop up in some future write-ups sooner rather than later.

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Alien Dead A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Alien Dead (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #40

Alien Dead art used on the limited edition Blu Ray I have.

When I’m not sure what I want to watch, a good genre standby for me is a zombie movie. More often than not I’ll be able to find something to enjoy about a zombie movie regardless of the quality. And really, although it’s not an exact formula, the cheaper the zombie a movie is, the more I might be inclined to like it. There are huge exceptions to that rule on either end of the budget spectrum, but I’m just trying to convey the fact that I can love a zombie movie even if it is, by all normal standards, a terrible movie. That brings me to today’s movie of the day, Alien Dead. 

Alien Dead is the second feature written and directed by low-budget maestro Fred Olen Ray. “Maestro” might be generous, but Ray has produced, written, and/or directed tons of movies over the past 40-plus years, and he’s still working to this day. He’s inspired many, many filmmakers in that time, and it’s safe to say he is very well respected in the filmmaking community. I haven’t seen a ton of his movies, but the ones I have seen absolutely stick with me. My dad had a VHS copy of Ray’s third film, Scalps, when I was a kid, and I made sure to save it when he down-sized his tape collection years ago. Scalps is laughable in many ways, but I enjoy it unironically for its many endearing qualities. Alien Dead, the movie Ray made right before Scalps, fits into that same category for me. 

Alien Dead takes place in the swamps of Florida. We follow a small-town news reporter, Tom Corman (who I’m guessing is named in reference to Roger Corman), as he attempts to solve the mystery of a local woman’s disappearance. The town sheriff, played by Buster Crabbe who is probably most famous for playing Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the 1930s, is disinterested in, well, pretty much everything, and he blames alligators for the woman’s death. As Corman digs into the story though, he discovers that the swamp’s gators have disappeared. Unknown to Corman and the sheriff, mysterious human-like monsters are rising out of the waters of the swamp to kill and sometimes eat people. So basically, Alien Dead is about water zombies. I guess I could have said that first and saved a paragraph.

There’s really not much more to the story than that. The zombies attack and kill people, and by the time Corman and the group of like-minded people he collects along the way realize what’s happening, it’s too late to do anything except fight for their lives. The plot is simple and straightforward, and the way its presented is fun if you like super-cheap, no-budget horror.

The zombies vary wildly in design. Some have full rubber masks, some of which you can plainly see where the mask stops around their neck. Other zombies just have gray makeup applied. Then other zombies have kind of a combination of the two with makeup appliances haphazardly smooshed onto their faces. It’s great.

The zombie attacks are equally unbelievable. There are many moments where there will be a wide shot with no zombie, then it cuts to a close-up where the victim is suddenly surprised by a zombie that appears just off screen. It makes no sense, and I love it. And the biting is mostly just the zombies rubbing their mouths on people while drooling blood. Many takes hold long enough so you can see that they aren’t actually biting anything.

Speaking of takes being long enough to catch stuff that probably shouldn’t be shown, there were more than a few times when it seemed like the cuts were too early or too late. People would be perfectly still during a crossfade then suddenly start acting as if is some just yelled “action” (which is probably exactly what happened). Other times the camera will hold on someone too long and they’ll look directly into the camera as if to say, “are we done?” 

I could probably go on, but you get the idea. Alien Dead is a bad movie, but it’s also great. What I mean to get across when I say that is not that I love it because it’s bad, just that I love it and it’s bad. Nothing I’ve written is meant to make fun of it. I genuinely enjoy the movie for what it is. To me, Alien Dead is an example of someone who wanted to make a movie and did what they had to do to get it done. It has an endearing quality that I love, and I’ll absolutely be watching it again at some point. 

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