Fist of Fury (1972)

For this blog's five hundredth review the first martial arts film i ever saw, it was life changing...

Enter the Dragon was the breakthrough hit for Bruce but Fist of Fury remains the classic martial arts movie, and the classic Bruce Lee film. The story is fairly simple and nationalistic in parts and seldom subtle. Set in Shanghai before the Second World War, the teacher of a Chinese kung fu school is poisoned. His star student Bruce Lee returns home to investigate what happened to his teacher and doesn't have to look far to find out it is the evil Japanese led by Mr Suzuki (Chikara Hashimoto) who have killed him...

The story plays heavily on the racial prejudice the Chinese suffered in Shanghai in the early twentieth century. Bruce is set on revenge and is willing to pay the ultimate price to achieve it. Therefore the story is pretty predictable. But this is not a film for story telling it is a film for action.

The action is out of this world, the fight scenes in the Japanese bushido school are quite simply perfect examples of martial arts action. Perfectly paced and truly explosive. Scenes such as Sick Man of Asia at the start and Bruce fighting with his nunchakus have become iconic. It is a great film but incredibly violent as you might imagine.

It was the first martial arts film I ever saw, I started with one of the best.

Treasure of the Amazon (1985)

A rough jungle exploitation film that rips off the likes of Indiana Jones quite shamelessly at times.

Gringo (Stuart Whitman) is a semi-crazed adventurer who once went into the jungle with his friends to find treasure and returned years later unable to remember his own name and with the shrunken heads of his friends in a bag.

But naturally he now wants to return to the jungle with a group of fellow adventurers and others after the loot including former Nazi Klaus (Donald Pleasence) and Barbara (Ann Sidney) who has found some diamonds but doesn't seem to have found the correct accent to use...

The film isn't very good to very honest. The narrative jumps around all over the place and is often shamelessly exploitative for example including scenes with naked native women wrestling and another one where a native eats a tarantula! It also has massive amounts of gore and violence. The sheer disjointed awfulness however makes it fairly entertaining.

Helen's Babies (1924)

Harry (Edward Everett Horton) has written a book on raising children, although in reality he doesn't have any and doesn't really know anything about it, in fact he doesn't really like children! Unfortunately for him he gets put in charge of his two young nieces while their parents are away. Cute antics to follow.

Harry does have some help though in the form of local girl Alice (Clara Bow). The two nieces (Baby Peggy and Jean Carpenter) soon get into trouble as they are pretty wild. Harry soon gets to love the chaos though but maybe loves Alice more...

It is a cute little comedy, a bit insubstantial and twee at times. The cast are great though and put in good performances across the board.

Paradise Island (1930)

A rather dated and uninspiring early talkie. Ellen (Marceline Day) arrives in Tonga to get married but finds her husband (Roy Armstrong) to be is a hopeless drunk. As Ellen is the only white woman on the island she soon finds herself the centre of attention from a number of men...

They include Dutch Mike (Tom Santschi), whom Ellen soon finds cannot be trusted, and adventure seeker Jim (Kenneth Harlan). Ellen finds herself to be the prize in a poker game between Dutch Mike and Jim but Dutch Mike has marked cards...

It is light froth which ends in a largely clumsy fight (more like a shapeless brawl) and has a few songs along the way. The film is OK but rather dumb.

Dick Tracy's Dilemma (1947)

Superior comic book adaptation as Dick Tracy battles The Claw...

The Claw (Jack Lambert), a criminal with a hook, has stolen some furs. However Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd) knows that he is just a violent murderous thug so someone else must be the mastermind of the robbery. So begins a complicated case for the super detective assisted (in theory) by Pat Patton (Lyle Latell), Tess Trueheart (Kay Christopher) and over-the-top thespian Vitamin Flintheart (Ian Keith).

It is all very pulpy and trashy but that is the point. The Claw steals the show with his sinister super villain act. At times quite noirish.