Today’s movie is one I discovered a while back while part of a movie group on Facebook based on a shared love of gross and trashy movies. One day someone posted an image of a DVD cover for a movie titled Centipede Horror, and the name combined with a crude drawing of centipedes crawling out of someone’s mouth and all over their face had me doing some Google and eBay searches until I found it. It was easy to track down, and since I bought it I’ve watched it a few times. Why? Because I enjoy gross and trashy movies.
Centipede Horror is a Hong Kong horror movie from 1982 featuring lots and lots of centipedes. The movie starts with close-ups of centipedes skittering around while a voice-over tells us how gross and dangerous they are. The danger is, of course, overblown, but it’s a good and creepy way to start the film. The story follows a man named Kai-Lum Pak as he tries to track down the cause and reasons behind his sister’s death. His sister died after coming down with a mysterious illness after a trip to the ambiguously referred-to location of “Southeast Asia,” and after she died centipedes started crawling out of her body. The focus of the movie is on the mystery behind her death, so I won’t spoil the story any more than that if you by some chance want to watch Centipede Horror, but I will say magic is involved. Lots of great and gross magic.
Centipede Horror uses loads of live centipedes in a few particularly skin-crawling scenes, so if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, you’ll maybe want to skip this movie. I have to commend the actors for their dedication. They allow themselves to be covered with live centipedes, and at least one actor has to put some in her mouth (which is the scene the crude DVD cover drawing is based on). There’s also a scene where a shaman performs a kind of exorcism on a young woman which forces her to vomit up blood and live scorpions. The scorpions are revealed in a cutaway, so they weren’t actually in her mouth thankfully. But yeah, I’m sure by now you’re getting the idea about what the main draw of the movie is. Bug stuff. Or, I guess, arthropod stuff, but that doesn’t sound as fun.
Beyond the bugs, another big draw is the magic. Kai’s investigation meanders a bit, but many different magical guys get involved to try to harm or protect Kai and those around him. At certain points this leads to dueling shamans who are trying to out-magic each other from afar. It’s kind of silly, and it’s great.
There is a lot of downtime while we’re following Kai, so the movie does drag in places. The backstory is interesting enough and involves a grudge that goes back generations, but when there aren’t any bugs or magic on the screen, I just kind of want to get to the next scene. The final third of the movie is paced well though, so overall it’s well put-together.
I think I’ll skip the recommendations on this one, because if you’ve read this far then you already know if you’re ever going to watch it or not (and fair warning, the trailer below shows a bunch of what I talked about above). Me? I’m sure I’ll watch it again at some point.
The awesome Boris Vallejo poster for Barbarian Queen.
Earlier today I came across a poster for the movie Warrior Queen. I’ve never seen the movie, but the poster features artwork by the fantastic fantasy artist Boris Vallejo which immediately got me interested. As someone who grew up reading my dad’s old Conan comics, many of them with Boris Vallejo covers, I have a soft spot for Boris’s style of epic fantasy art. Now, I understand that many of the sword and sandals/sorcery movies that came out in the wake of the Conan the Barbarian movie in 1982 are cheaply made and often cheesy and/or trashy, and the fantastic poster artwork in no way represents what the actual movie is like, but I don’t care. I like cheap, cheesy, and trashy movies, so it all works out. With that in mind I headed over to Tubi to see if I could find Warrior Queen. I did find it, and I found a handful of other movies with similar artwork and similar writeups. With so many choices I had the thought of maybe watching a few of them, so instead of starting with Warrior Queen which was released in 1987, I chose Barbarian Queen which was released in 1985 (and also features Boris artwork). And if you were wondering if I was right about Barbarian Queen being cheap, cheesy, and trashy, I have just two words for you: Roger Corman.
Apparently Roger Corman produced a series of films in Argentina in the 80s, ten of them if Wikipedia is to be believed, and Barbarian Queen was one of his earlier Argentinian productions. If you know who Roger Corman is, then you might be familiar with the quality of many of his produced films. His name has been attached to many, many cheap genre films which are often very fun in the campiest of ways. Barbarian Queen is no exception to that rule.
Barbarian Queen is a story about revenge. In a small barbarian village, Queen Amethea is getting prepared to be wed to Prince Argan. Then, in a plot point that seems to happen in most of these types of movies including Conan the Barbarian, a troop of fighters led by the nefarious Lord Arrakur invades the village. Nearly everyone is either killed or taken prisoner, and the entire village is burned to the ground. Amethea manages to survive and avoid capture, and she and a handful of other female barbarians set out to rescue the remainder of their village including Argan and Taramis, Amethea’s younger sister.
What starts out as a fun adventure movie with Amethea and her crew slaughtering bad guys in bloody fashion turns into almost a women-in-prison film. Amethea and her companions are captured after sneaking into Arrakur’s city, and they end up getting entangled with a plot to overthrow the evil leader. How that mostly plays out though is through threats, arguing, and torture. Amethea has to find a way to escape imprisonment which leads up to the climactic final battle with Arrakur and his forces.
For its cheesiness and trashiness, I enjoyed Barbarian Queen. I would have preferred more fighting in the middle parts of the movie, but the movie is only about 70 minutes long, and I was never bored throughout the run-time. This is one of those movies where the director found every opportunity to remove people’s clothing, and I can imagine, for that reason more than most, this was a decent money-maker back in the days of VHS. For someone watching it today, it was a light and easy viewing, but there are many movies just like it out there. Barbarian Queen didn’t really stand out, and I probably won’t revisit it any time soon, but I enjoyed it for what it is. That said, the best part of the movie is absolutely the poster.
The King of Fighters (2010) – A Movie A Day 2021 #18
KOF DVD cover/poster
I love video games, but I’ve never really gotten into fighting games. I understand the appeal, and I’ve tried to get into certain fighting game franchises over the years, but at a certain point I always get bored and put the game away forever. Even the initial Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat crazes that happened when I was young couldn’t instill a love of fighting games within me. So for me, a movie based on a not-as-popular-but-still-probably-good fighting game franchise such as The King of Fighters holds no nostalgia value nor any particular affection for the characters. To me, The King of Fighters might as well be any other low budget martial arts/action movie, and as such, I think it’s pretty okay.
The thing that really drew me to want to watch The King of Fighters is the cast. Specifically, seeing Ray Park and Maggie Q on the cast list made this an easy decision for my daily movie. I’ve been a fan of Ray Park since he first appeared as Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, and I’ve been watching more and more Maggie Q movies over the past year as I become a bigger fan of hers as well. The rest of the cast is good and fine, but I’m glad Maggie Q and/or Ray Park were in nearly every scene.
As I understand it, the The King of Fighters game series is based on a fighting tournament. I’m sure the various characters each have their own background stories that play out as you, the player, progress through more and more fights, but at its core the game is about a tournament. That sounds like an easy enough premise for an action movie, but it’s also a premise that has been done countless times. I suppose the makers of the The King of Fighters movie wanted to add more originality to their story, so what we get instead of a tournament is a sci-fi/fantasy adventure with a man named Rugal (Ray Park) trying to take over the world. At least, I think that’s what he’s trying to do. Regardless, Rugal is bad and must be stopped.
Let me back up a bit though. The main character of the movie is Mai Shiranui (Maggie Q). When we first see Mai, she uses a Bluetooth-style headset to transport herself to another dimension where she fights some guy in some friendly competition (judging by their banter). This is the King of Fighters tournament. Mai wins the fight, and she touches a glowing orb which transports her back to our dimension where almost no time has passed. We don’t learn about the alternate dimension stuff right away, and the rules regarding traveling back and forth remain unclear for a very long time, but that’s what’s happening in that opening scene.
Mai’s first fight is technically the only tournament match we see in the entire movie. After that, Rugal steals some ancient artifacts which are tied to the alternate dimension, and he attempts to use the artifacts to summon Orochi, an ancient being of unlimited power represented on-screen by a floating ball of snakes. Rugal’s plan is put on hold when he realizes he lacks an artifact needed to take Orochi’s power. Rugal’s backup plan is to lure other tournament fighters into the alternate dimension so he can take over their minds and use them to help him get the final artifact. Meanwhile, Mai is also on the trail of the artifact, and that leads her to Kyo Kusanagi, the last in line in the legendary Kusanagi clan and the key to defeating Orochi.
That’s just about enough plot setup. I think you get the idea of where this is headed. Mai ends up assembling a group of people to fight Rugal, then they all end up battling in a climactic, multi-layered fight sequence. The big final battle is very entertaining in a lot of ways, but the trek to get there isn’t nearly as fun. Everything I explained above is only part of the complicated story that unfolds in the first hour of the movie. There’s a lot more going on, mostly interpersonally between Mai and her group, and a lot of it feels unnecessary. That feeling was confirmed for me when I ended up enjoying the final thirty minutes of The King of Fighters. What that tells me is there should have been less mystical mumbo jumbo and more punching and kicking.
To be fair, there are fight scenes sprinkled throughout the first hour of the movie, and they’re mostly a good time. Ray Park is fun as an over-the-top villain, and he can absolutely fight. There’s a lot of goofiness in Rugal’s personality, but that’s fine. As long as he beats people up and it looks cool, I’m fine with it. All that said, the action doesn’t really kick off until just past the hour mark. By then you might have given up on The King of Fighters, but if you’ve stuck around, then you’re in for a treat. Well, maybe not a treat, but you are in for a neat series of fights.
One thing I thought was kind of funny is just how much this movie feels like it should have been made in the nineties. And I’m not even talking about the special effects which are just okay. A lot of what I’m referring to has to do with the way nearly every scene was shot. I don’t know if the film crew lost their tripods or what, but it felt like there are almost no level shots in the movie (except near the end when they decided to mimic to look of two fighters squaring off in one of the games). The King of Fighters has Dutch angles for days, and you might find yourself tilting your head in response to the near-constant angling of the camera. And yeah, I know Dutch angles aren’t exclusive to the nineties, but those combined with the cheap effects and fast-motion pans just gave me that feeling.
But now I’m just looking for stuff to pick apart. Overall, The King of Fighters isn’t a great movie, but the final fights were fun. I don’t know how closely the movie sticks to its video game source material, so fans of the games may have a much more extreme reaction than I had to it. I understand that Kyo is quite popular and is one of the main characters from the games, but the way the movie is structured really made me feel like Mai was the main character. I guess Kyo had to be the one to rise up in the final battle and become the focus, but for me, not being a fan of the games, I felt a little cheated that Mai took somewhat of supporting role in the end. But that’s another nitpick. Maggie Q and Ray Park were good, so I was happy enough to watch the movie.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare – A Movie A Day #91
This movie. Oh man. What do I say about Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare?
Well, for one thing, I’ll be saying a lot about this movie on the podcast I do (calledThe Last Theater). My best friend Joey and I watched this in preparation for that show. The show will go up sometime in April, and it’s part of a retrospective we’re doing on the entire A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Freddy’s Dead, as the sixth movie in the series, will be episode number six out of ten. So, check though out for some lengthy thoughts, but here are a few brief thoughts that may or may not make it onto the episode.
Joey and I had both seen Freddy’s Dead before, and neither of us had super great thoughts about it. I think Joey thought a lot better of it than I did though. I mostly remembered the cameos, one of the death scenes, and the horrendous 3-D section of the movie. I can usually take or leave 3-D, even in modern movies. It works well for blockbusters like Star Wars or a lot of big comic book movies, but for the most part, I have no preference about watching something in 3-D or not. Thankfully the blu-ray release of Freddy’s Dead that we each have doesn’t have 3-D capability, but unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to be extremely obnoxious about how they incorporated the 3-D effects into the movie. I won’t go into detail here (because this will be a teaser to go listen toThe Last Theater), but yeah, I hate the 3-D in this movie. This is the movie I cite as an example every time I talk about terrible uses of the third dimension. This and the yo-yo from Friday the 13th Part 3. But at least Friday 3 had a fun/dumb theme song.
Freddy’s Dead is not very good. There are fun parts to it, and Robert Englund is great as always, but it leans hard into the campiness that had grown throughout the series. It definitely had potential with the basic story, and I think that’s what makes it even more frustrating for me. Freddy’s Dead could have been really scary, but it just lets me down at every turn. But hey, at least it was fun watching it with Joey on his birthday.
Is it my least favorite in the franchise? I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to listen to episode 10 of out Nightmare franchise retrospective over atThe Last Theater. That will be our wrap-up episode where we talk about the series as a whole and rank the movies in order of preference.
