Bluebottles (1928)

Bluebottles is a charming comedy short starring Elsa Lanchester, one of three stories written for her by H.G. Wells and with a small cameo from her future husband Charles Laughton.

In the film Elsa plays an innocent happy-go-lucky girl who gets drawn into a cops and robbers gun battle by accident and also by accident ends up the heroine. The film is often quite surreal and often in the vein of a comic strip, the robbers for example all have stripey jumpers - all they needed were bags over their shoulders with "Swag" written on them!

While everyone else in the film is drawn as a fairly conventional and one dimensional stereotype Elsa displays a whole range of expressions and emotions and the overall effect is quite amazing. A very enjoyable little film.

The Shootout (1992)

A movie in that very HK specific genre : slapstick comedy ultraviolence.

This time starring Aaron Kwok as a pretty boy / pretty useless young cop who gets caught up in a case involving violent armed robbers and thus gets assigned to Lau Ching Wan's team. Then he falls in love with a KTV singer (Fennie Yuen) but of course she turns out to be the criminal boss' (unenthusiastic) girl... et cetera.

That makes it easy to find the criminals of course, which is just as well as the cops don't really seem to do any police work. Their idea of investigating seems to be following a suspect into a brothel and then singing badly in a karoke lounge.

The final showdown takes place in a police training area, why and how the bad guys got there isn't explained but it makes for a good action setpiece to end the film. Jackie Chan produced and his hallmarks are here : fast, imaginative action.

It's not a film for plot but a film for big guns and bigger explosions. Sometimes thats just what you want.

Killing American Style (1990)

In many ways this is the prototype to the cult classic Samurai Cop with Amir Shervan directing the legendary Robert Z'dar in a slice of 80s action cheese.

Killing American Style isn't as good as Samurai Cop though, it has the latter's violence, gratuitous nudity and bizarre characters though lacks a bit of charm. Its still well worth a watching if this kind of trash is your thing. If you are like me basically...

The plot is ridiculous (of course). Z'dar leads a gang of bumbling hoodlums which includes the very strange Lynch who literally is a man who thinks with his penis. Luckily for Z'dar and company the cops are equally as useless.

Unluckily for Z'dar he tangles with a long haired hero (hmm that sounds like another film) who is also a kickboxer...

Mantrap (1926)

Clara Bow was one of the biggest box office draws in the 1920s. This was one of her many silent movies, a comedy set in the Canadian backwoods in a place called Mantrap.

The film can basically be summed up as: city girl is charmed by the country life and her backwoods husband, then get bored and is seduced back by to her city ways when a couple of NY guys (Percy Marmont and Ernest Torrence) arrive on vacation. Clara flirts with everyone and there is a bit of a menage a trois (all in a chaste 1920s fashion of course) but it all ends very well and everyone goes home happily for tea.

Clara was made for this film with her bubbly ways. The plot is a bit obvious but the film has plenty of charm.

Masterblaster (1987)

"What is this film about?" "Paintball gone wrong." "OK good - what did you just say?"

A paintball tournament (and this is for pros not people on a work away day messing about) is held in the USA starring a motley collection of character stereotypes. There is a decent cash prize for the winner. Only the problem is someone has switched their paint gun for real weapons and is starting to waste the competitors for real. Well someone is taking the tournament just that little bit too seriously...

Ex-Vietnam vet Jeff Moldovan looks to save the day and hunt the bad guy down. Although the film is rather poor in many ways it does have some reasonably good action scenes and the ending (and thus the unmasking of the bad guy) was decent in keeping you in suspense.

Raped By An Angel 3 : Sexual Fantasy Of The Chief Executive (1998)

With a title like this you know its probably not going to be a philosophical work, especially as the notorious Wong Jing is behind it...

This film can be best described as a softcore porn crime thriller in that it involves a candidate for the position of HK Chief Executive (Alex Fong) who is also a successful businessman but in his office building women working alone at night get raped yet this somehow does not affect his election standing...

The fact he keeps seeing naked women while out on the campaign trail doesn't affect him either or the fact he likes a bit of rumpy pumpy on his desk though he does go and see old-flame turned psychologist Angie Cheung who suggests he cut himself off from the world for 24 hours.

When the 24 hours are up, and he scarcely remembers what has happened in that time, he finds out one of his office staff, Pinky Cheung, has been raped and he is the suspect. By an amazing coincidence though Pinky's brother is the cop assigned to the case. So no clash of interests there.

To be fair to the film the story is not that bad though not very original and you can see the twist coming a mile off. Gratuitous use of female nudity and writhing bodies of course but an entertaining little film for all it's faults. The film may have been inspired by President Clinton and his legendary libido.

Snake Eater (1989)

Snake Eater stars Lorenzo Lamas as an ex US Marine special forces soldier and now a cop. He has to use his skills and experience to track down the people who killed his parents and who have kidnapped his sister...

All of which sounds great, the problem is Lamas' character is fairly inept as a soldier and cop. The film chronicles his mis-adventures tracking down a stereotype band of inbred rednecks in the woods. He gets there in the end but gets trapped or beaten up a lot.

Well that's not the only problem with this film, everything else about it is also fairly inept though you don't watch these films for the acting or original storytelling let's face it.

The film is redeemed by some amusing and interesting scenes such as the trap to catch criminals early in the film and the action is not just endless shootouts and explosions. However it's not a film you'll be desperate to see again anytime soon.