aka Shen tan guang tou mei
Watched May 15, 2014
1982
Starring: Bruce Baron, Mandy Moore, James Barnett, Frances Fong
A year ago, a royal family was killed in a plane crash. Now the remaining member, Princess Rawleen (Mandy Moore) is about to ascend to the throne. The Princess goes to visit some good friends in China on the way back home to be crowned. She spends the night there while supposedly under the projection of her security team. While taking a bath, she is kidnapped by some ninjas.
Her security teams hires Jack Sargeant (Bruce Baron) to rescue the princess. But he can't do it alone, he first needs to meet up with Dragonforce, an elite team of fighters. Just to find Dragonforce he has to follow an insane series of steps, including fighting two guys in a dancing dragon puppet, a lady with a flute, and a guy on some floating logs. Once he has proven himself he is brought to the leader of Dragonforce Tan Lung ( Bruce Li) who shows Jack why he is leader with some excellent stick fight skills.
With the team assembled they begin the search for the kidnapped princess. In a castle they have a run in with some ninjas and Jack is hit with a poisoned throwing star. They taking him to a floating hospital, which is just a boat, and he is treated with a cobra that sucks out the poison.
Meanwhile we see the Princess, she was kidnapped by General Marushka (James Barnett) who wants to use her as the puppet so he can be the real ruler of her country. In the ritual to gain control over the princesses mind, she sits naked while they shave her head. They paint ancient symbols all over her naked body, then they use acupuncture needles to gain control over her.
After some goofy scenes involving members of the Dragonforce trying to get closer to General Marushka's men they find the princess and save her. There is lots of crazy action scenes including some orange clad sunshine ninjas. The dubbing is confusing since it does seem like the words line up with the movements of their mouths but doesn't quite fit. Once I looked up the movie on IMBD I realized it was made for a cantonese speaking audience to the audio track was recorded separately. Jack's has a super fit fighting body but his teeth are really gross, so it's rough when he opens his mouth. The music is really over the top, when things are supposed to be light they throw in a really goofy track. There is a scene where Dragonforce fights another group of training ninjas and a guy gets thrown though a ring of knives and doesn't make it out the other side. If you like action this movie delivers.
Watched April 29, 2014
1998
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, N'Bushe Wright
A preview for Blade popped up at the beginning of a movie we watched a couple of weeks ago, which prompted Jen to picked up a VHS copy when she was looking for other action movies. I definitely saw this when it came out in 1998 but I didn't remember many of the details and I was happily surprised at all the crazy things that happened.
A couple moves past hanging slabs of meat to the entrance of a club. Once inside the rave, the guy is stared down by all the revelers, something must be wrong with him. Everyone is wearing white and he is wearing colors. The guy gets into the party, then the sprinklers pop on and start spewing blood, the dancers love it but he is distraught. Something must be wrong here, the guy realizes he must not be with his kind as all other ravers descend on him. Blade (Wesley Snipes) shows up and starts destroying the vampires. As soon as he hits them with his sword they vaporize. Blade runs into a vampire he knows Quinn (Donal Logue) who he sets on fire. All the other vampires are either killed by Blade or run away. By the time the cops show up it's just the one non vampire guy left huddled in fear.
In a flashback, we see that Blade's mom gave birth to him right after she was bitten by a vampire, he survived but was made half vampire. Since he was a vampire he grew super fast while trying to make it on the streets, ultimately he was taken in by Whistler (Kris Kistofferson) and together they work together to destroy the vampires of New York City. Blade takes a serum to control his blood thirst and since he's only half vampire he can be outside during the day.
Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) is a feisty vampire who approaches the vampire council with a crazy idea. The vampire council is like the mafia, they have some set rules that they follow to be able to feed on humans but not arouse suspicion. Deacon wants the vampires to rule over the humans as the superior beings. He's been using a computer to try to decode the ancient vampire scrolls. He think that stored within them is the instructions to resurrect an ancient blood god. The vampire council doesn't want to shake things up so they dismiss Deacon's idea.
After the blood rave, Quinn's charred body was taken to the morgue. Karen (N'Bushe Wright) is a hematologist who tests his blood to help determine cause of death. Quinn comes back to life and bites Karen's co-worker (and ex-boyfriend!) but she manages to escape because Blade shows up. After throwing Karen out of a window onto another building, Blade takes her back to the hideout where Whistler is making new vampire destruction gadgets. Karen is super freaked out as Blade doesn't explain anything, but luckily Whistler is there to set her straight on the vampires.
Blade and Karen infiltrate the computer room where the ancient scrolls are being decoded. There they find an morbidly obese pile of vampire who is just sitting around farting, I can't tell what the purpose of that gross vampire is. Blade gets an idea of what Deacon is trying to do with the scrolls. Ultimately Deacon decides that he needs the half vampire body of Blade to host the resurrected blood god. Deacon kidnaps Blade along with all the vampire council to play parts in the ceremony. All the old vampires are set into the chamber in specific spots. Blade is tied up and bled, his blood begins the ritual. Luckily Karen is there to help Blade escape but not before Deacon is filled with the blood god spirit. Blade fights Deacon and cuts him in half, but super strong Deacon's blood grabs the two halves of his body and pulls them together. Ultimately a neat blood bomb concept developed by Karen destroys Deacon.
The late '90s CGI doesn't completely hold up but they used it to do such ridiculous things that I didn't mind. Blade has barely any lines and is pretty much a robot but delivers on the action front. I was really glad that there wasn't a love story between Blade and Karen because it wouldn't have made any sense. I was blown away when Deacon's blood held him together, it was nuts. It was great and I want to watch the two sequels.
