Quint

Tarantino's favourite zombie film, where the zombies are not actually zombies, but irradiated people with mud on their faces, axes and machine guns in their hands, driving around in cars, cutting telephone cables and ripping off the shirts of extras. Said to be the first zombie film where zombies run around and show signs of intelligence, but this was far more playfully or cleverly sketched out by other, later zombie films (Return of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later and Land of the Dead). Still, there are a few memorable scenes, such as the zombies invading a live broadcast of a typical 80s dance show or their visit to a surgery room.

One of the most visually impressive (late) spaghetti westerns, with polished widescreen compositions that even Leone himself would envy. A pleasantly atypical western with avant-garde editing (ingeniously combining past and present), an almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere of a dusty city decimated by plague (the night scenes lit by torches are reminiscent of the Middle Ages), religious symbolism and a charismatic Franco Nero with the visage of Jesus. It's a hodgepodge of everything from Shakespeare to Bergman to Peckinpah, but surprisingly it works as a whole. The only thing that throws it off is the bizarre soundtrack, with its whiny ballad songs in which two singers comment directly on what's happening in the film.

This obscure ninja version of Star Wars and Robocop only came to me in Japanese with Italian subtitles. The fact that I don't speak either of these languages added to my feeling that the film was made on a completely different planet. It was produced by video game developer Namco, presumably to promote their eponymous video game. And the result does indeed look like a full-length video game commercial. The bland fight choreography is overshadowed by hallucinogenic visuals, eccentric costumes and “video game” effects. It's set in a world that looks like feudal Japan, only here they have hologram maps, walking and flying fortresses, laser guns whose beams turn into ninja stars on impact, and robotic ninjas running around with their arms outstretched as if to mimic an airplane. There are a lot of absurd, albeit imaginative, ideas, like something cut out of an arcade video game, that don't make the slightest sense. Fortunately, the film is aware that it is not supposed to be longer than 70 minutes.

There were a lot of ninja movies made in the 1980s (Godfrey Ho alone made about a hundred during that time) and most of them are completely interchangeable. But Ninja III: The Domination is unlike anything else. Whereas in other films of this subgenre, the ninjas are mostly just a bunch of guys in costumes going for a beating from the protagonist, the titular ninja in this film has extremely tough roots. This is evidenced by the very opening action sequence, which escalates from one ninja attacking a few golfers into a duel between the same ninja and an army of police officers arriving on motorcycles, in cars and in a helicopter. This set-piece is taken to such an extreme that it is unmatched by any other in the film. But the fun doesn't stop there. The filmmakers, fueled by unbridled fan enthusiasm, figured that the next ninja movie from Cannon would take a completely different path than the previous ones, and no sense of logic or reason would stand in their way. The film thus stands out for its loss of any creative inhibitions. Absolutely crazy spontaneous ideas pile on top of each other unstoppably and know no boundaries. What if there was a cave next to the golf course with magical ninja weapons? What if a levitating ninja sword could transfer the soul of a dead ninja into the body of an aerobics instructor? And what if she'd been hypnotized by laser effects from a video game machine beforehand? The result is a delightfully incongruous crossover of ninja movies with the MTV and fitness culture of the time, dance movies and even exorcism horror films. All in the crudest 1980s fashion (neon garish colors, smoke effects, workout leotards, hair fans and synthesizer dance music). It wasn't as successful as Cannon's previous ninja films. Perhaps that's because there's basically no hero for teenagers to admire and whose posters they would plaster on their bedrooms. The protagonist (Lucinda Dickey, the breakdancing starlet from Cannon's hit dance hits Breakin' 1 and 2) can fight, but only when she's in the power of the evil ninja spirit, her boyfriend is a complete wimp, and Sho Kosugi makes only a brief appearance as a good ninja. Maybe that's why Cannon then tried his hand with Michael Dudikoff, and kept it more low-key in subsequent ninja films as well. Too bad.

While American Ninja is just a routine 80's B-movie that entertains only with bad acting, Sam Firstenberg's action-packed first feature Revenge of the Ninja is a glorious plethora of amazing WTF ideas and the craziest ninja weapons or traps you'll ever see on screen. The peoiple behind this film certainly didn't hold back and let their boyish imaginations run wild. The ninjas here do just about everything you could imagine ninjas doing. This makes it a far more stylish and entertaining film than the unimaginative cannon-fodder ninja debut Enter the Ninja with Franco Nero, who is playfully upstaged by his adversary played by Sho Kosugi, here rewarded with the lead role. Moreover, the transfer of ninja fights to ordinary American locations (streets, office buildings, tennis courts or playgrounds) adds a nice visual touch to the film. The final fight, taking place on the roof of a skyscraper in front of the impressive Salt Lake City skyline, is a feast for the eyes. Sure, it's all incredibly goofy and far-fetched, but if you want to see a ninja climbing a skyscraper, a ninja in a hot tub, a ninja child fighting a busty blonde, or a ninja grandmother fighting a ninja with glowing eyes, then you definitely won't be bored. Of Firstenberg's filmography, only the later Ninja III: The Domination surpasses this.

Shot the same year as Jaws, but unlike that film, the sharks here are almost always visible and real, but all the underwater scenes with them are so unstressful and haphazardly plotted that instead of worrying about the main characters, you'll wonder how many harmless-looking (not very big) sharks were killed for the sake of the film. And the dialogue in between, on the boat, puts you perfectly to sleep. Only for hardcore fans of Cornel Wilde, who apparently made the whole thing just to show what a physical presence he still had at the age of sixty-three.

1965 was a very rich year for adventure survival films from the African wilderness (The Flight of the Phoenix, The Naked Prey). Sands of Kalahari is the least known, the strangest, and perhaps the best of them all. Six people crash a plane into the desert. This time, however, the focus is not on the heroes' efforts to save themselves and get the plane working again (as in The Flight of the Phoenix), but on their survival in the desert, which gradually turns them into savages. The main setting is the territory of the fearsome baboons, with whom they begin to share a rocky oasis, but where there is not enough food for everyone. Then we just watch social Darwinism in action. Of course, the film wants to be an allegory about the line between civility and savagery, and it's a little too literal in places, but it's extremely engagingly made for its time, even for today's audience. All the exterior scenes were honestly shot on location without the need for inserts from nature documentaries. That is, in the natural habitat of the baboons, who are believably set in a shared shot with the actors (or rather, the actors are set in a shot with the baboons). An unusually unsentimental and depressing adventure film that manages to keep you in constant suspense about what happens next. The final confrontation between the two alpha males is a must-see.

An unconventionally anti-heroic war actioner about a dysfunctional team of soldiers made up of vicious psychopaths who never learn to pull together. Play Dirty openly disregards genre conventions, is delightfully unpredictable and cynical to the bone. It isn't afraid of long wordless scenes and manages to build tension brilliantly even in seemingly routine moments. The Dirty Dozen, British style.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, Christopher Lambert, Mike Tyson, and The Mountain from Game of Thrones in the sequel to Kickboxer? That doesn't sound bad at all. At least to a certain group of fans. What could go wrong? Unfortunately, everything. The whole point of arena fights is that you just have to root for the protagonist. You can't do it without that. For it to work, it has to win your sympathy somehow. Alain Moussi may have a good physique, but he lacks Van Damme's charisma and distinctive style. That was the basis of the first Kickboxer, which was extremely dilettantishly shot but had its charm thanks to JCVD. While Kickboxer Retaliation constantly tries to visually stun you (a fight in a prison in one long take, a fight in a mirrored room lit up with ultraviolet light, a fight on the roof of a moving train - there are, god knows, two of those!), it fails to captivate you. The characters are bland and unmemorable, the action is devoid of juice, tension, emotion, escalation and proper timing – instead of living it, you rather survive it. The final fight with The Mountain is so drawn out that I almost fell asleep during it. The non-action scenes are confusingly narrated and oddly edited. It can be appreciated only by hardcore MMA connoisseurs, who can be satisfied with seeing their favourite fighters on screen. Better watch Brawl in Cell Block 99 instead. It has a very similar plot and is the best exploitation film of the year.

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning accomplishes exactly what I love about B-movies. Thanks to its low budget, it doesn't have to try to please as many audiences as possible, and you'll find things in it that would never pass muster in A-grade films. This almost arthouse action flick will kick the backside hard of anyone expecting conventional Hollywood action entertainment. The plot is fairly straightforward (outwardly a classic revenge story), but at times psychedelically disorienting and with unexpected horror elements. There are moments when you feel like you're watching something by David Cronenberg, Michael Haneke or Gaspar Noé. It lets you peer into the darker side of the soul of the robotised universal soldiers, depicting the protagonist's gradual plunge into the “heart of darkness”, at the end of which he is met by a modern-day Colonel Kurtz, played by a bald Van Damme, who is this time (from a reversed perspective) portrayed as the villain. And surprisingly, it doesn't come across as the least bit ridiculous. The film is uncompromisingly cynical and super-serious, absolutely devoid of humour, pathos and romance, and no sympathetic characters or flashy gimmicky attractions. As it happens in DTV (direct-to-video) films, the main and supporting cast are not great actors (which is easy to hide in the roles of cold, emotionless killers), but they really know how to fight. And their contact fights, with their extreme fierceness and brutality, beats even John Wick's “gun-fu”. The film also exists in an NC-17 version, which is quite unusual in this genre today.