KILLING MACHINE (2000)

  This seemed like something made for a film class at first but it then gets pretty sleazy with the sex and violence. The tender story of a high school hooker(ANGEL anyone?) who ends up getting sawed in half and then returning as a cyborg assassin to take out the scum that did her in. Pretty simple stuff done with a super low budget. A nice short hour long runtime, sadly the opening and closing credits take up about a quarter of that time but I still managed to have a good time with this weird little obscurity.  

 Also known under the longer(allegedly the longest title in Korean movie history!) but way more descriptive title TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKRO.

MANTIS UNDER FALCON CLAWS (1983)

  A princess gets captured by some bandits then one of her retarded servants ends up in a Shaolin temple learning kung fu to get her back. The bad guy uses the Falcon Claw and our hero learns Mantis style hence the title. Lots of comedy with dumb sound effects goes on and a good chunk of the movie is incomprehensible. AKA MANTIS VS. FALCON

SNAKE FIST OF A BUDDHIST DRAGON (1979)

  Also released under the title of NORTH SHAOLIN and SNAKE TEMPLE this kung fu flick is very light on plot(I know it has something to do with Manchus vs. Chinese, which I always thought were the same thing but I guess that wasn't always historically the case. If you can figure out any more of the plot you're better than me at paying attention to some nonsensical crap!)  and very heavy on various fight scenes that appear to be taken from other films and clipped together. There are some comedic moments and some more serious elements which isn't all that unusual in martial arts films but it does make things a bit hard to follow here. The might be one of the worst examples of a competently dubbed kung fu movie out there, which is really saying something! 

 There seems to be some misinformation online about where this movie came from(either South Korea or Taiwan) and who actually directed it with some sites saying it was our old buddy who was responsible for a million clipped-together ninja movies in the 80s, Godfrey Ho. Apparently though he only had something to do with the story, which seems like at best he came up with 2 sentences! It was released by IFD Films which were the spliced-together movie masters for a long time so that makes sense. 

WOMAN CHASING THE BUTTERFLY OF DEATH (1978)

  This here is one of the weirdest things I've seen in a while. It starts off with a gal trying to trick our main protagonist into committing a double suicide. From there we get a guy who apparently can't be killed spouting off some philosophical nonsense about how important a person's will is like some kinda Korean version of Coffin Joe. He then ends up as a skeleton still philosophizing until he finally turns into dust and blows away. Then some chick from 2000 years ago shows up looking for a human liver to eat until things finally start to settle down and it becomes a bit of a dull drama for a while. This section involves some goth lady, who wants nothing more than to kill herself, and her weirdo dad who collects skulls(is he an archaeologist or a mad scientist?) that are obtained by a couple of decapitating nuts including one who dresses like a superhero(Butterfly Man?). There is a butterfly necklace involved in all of this but I'm not sure one viewing is enough to decipher what any of this is supposed to mean. At almost 2 hours some editing could have been done to speed things up in the middle parts but overall a standout as far as weirdo cinema goes. AKA KILLER BUTTERFLY and LIVING DEAD GIRL

I'm not sure if this is an actual trailer but if it is it seems like the exact inverse of most trailers which feature the most action-packed scenes possible since it seems to feature the dullest!:

SEVEN SWORDS (2005)

 This one is a very epic Wuxia martial-arts flick. While it looks great and was obviously director well by Tsui Hark I can't say it was all that engrossing and at over 2 and a half hours that can be a bit of a problem. The story deals with kung fu being banned by the emperor and then our 7 heroic swordsmen(or is it swordspeople since one of them is a lady?) have to save a village. It starts out pretty cool with decapitations and limbs flying everywhere but then settles into pretty predictable territory. I've read that it was inspired by THE SEVEN SAMURAI but I don't see much in comparison to the Kurosawa classic. 

BEASTS CLAWING AT STRAWS (2020)

  There are quite a few characters in this Korean thriller concerning a lost and found bag of lots of cash to keep track of. Luckily they do a pretty good job of tying everything together by the end so it all makes some sort of sense even if the conclusion is a bit too happy for my liking. The closest thing you can compare this to is, of course, PULP FICTION, with the time-jumping narrative and multiple story-lines. It does manage to not seem like some trendy 90s retro-piece though like so many Tarantino-wanna-be's have done over the years. They also don't really skimp out on the violence with people being sawed into pieces and a character that apparently likes to eat all kind of intestines.  Pretty impressive work for a first time director, Kim Yong-hoon. 

#ALIVE (2020)

 My favorite thing about this new Korean zombie flick is that it's not 3 hours long like a lot of new stuff from Asia that I've been watching.

 God knows the world doesn't need anymore zombie movies but Korea has been doing a pretty good job at putting somewhat unique actiony spins on them with this and 20016's TRAIN TO BUSAN both being entertaining offerings. This one deals a nerdy gamer millennial who is pretty inept at fighting off the walking(or in this case the running) dead and has to figure that crap out. Not overly cgi-heavy, which is a good thing. The opening third is a lot more interesting than the rest but at least it has that. 

NEW WORLD (2013)

 Modern Korean movies are all way too long and here's another example of that. There's a lot of talky talk parts that could probably be cut down quite a bit to help this. Saying that though I did find this one to be a pretty engaging epic of Korean mafia action. There are some pretty brutal scenes including a guy who gets his head sawed off by a large knife(offscreen) and a poor undercover lady cop who ends up in a barrel. One scene in particular, which takes place in an elevator with one quite tough guy vs. a whole bunch of knife-wielding fellows determined to finish him, is reminiscent of the hammer fight bit in OLDBOY. Of course also reminiscent of OLDBOY is it's star(Choi Min-sik) who has a pretty big role here and is great as an aging policeman. All the acting in this thing is topnotch and the mobsters vs. undercover cops story is done very well so I'll let it's lengthiness slide. There is a weird ending involving a flashback which does feel sorta unnecessary though and seems added on just to test my endurance. For a modern film though this beats pretty much anything made recently in the cesspool of Hollywood. 

5 PATTERN DRAGON CLAWS (1983)

 This is one of the few films credited to director Godfrey Ho that isn't a hodge-podge of 2 or 3 other films mixed into one and follows a fairly coherent story line. Apparently that was due to it being co-directed by some Korean fellow named Kim Si-Hyeon who worked with star Dragon Lee on a few films. It's all pretty simplistic stuff here about a Buddhist temple being taken over by an evil fighter who uses a lightning kick to beat his opponents. There's some backstabbing and a lot of Buddhist monks getting offed before the big final battle. One weird scene has a guy wearing what appears to be a Mexican wrestler mask for a little bit, besides this not the most memorable outing. AKA THUNDERING FIST
 MARTIAL MONKS OF SHAOLIN TEMPLE is another film from this same year directed by these two with a very similar cast and plot that seems to get mixed up with this one often.

THE MAN FROM NOWHERE (2010)

 I'd first watched this Korean martial-arts flick right after watching this other Asian fight-filled extravaganza called MERANTAU. While I felt pretty lukewarm over that one in general, this MFN managed to restore my faith in more modern day cinema from the far east. While also boasting a long-ass 2 hour runtime, this never felt like a drag to me. The story, involving an innocent little girl getting kidnapped by some mobsters thanks to her shitty parents and then her attempted rescue by our highly-trained title character, moves along briskly enough to avoid boredom. The main man, Won Bin, has a sorta THE CROW/goth-rocker-vibe going on and is a pretty sympathetic fellow to side with in this violent spectacle thanks to his horrific backstory. The closest thing I would compare this to is something like OLDBOY except this is not quite as pervy as that Korean classic. I've also seen this compared to those TAKEN series of films but I wouldn't know because I try and stay away from newer Hollywood cgi-filled action crap. Speaking of which this one seems to be predominantly done the old-fashioned way with actual stuntmen and choreography and not just video-game designers so that gets extra credit in my book. Even though the posters all look very generic I would recommend giving this one a shot for some dramatic action thrills.


 

CAPTAIN OF COSMOS (1983)

                                     "How can you bite a lady's rear-end like that?"

 This Korean animated(and pretty badly animated at that!) feature came out originally in 1979 but the dubbed version wasn't released until the 80s. Most of the film is fairly typical stuff with a hero battling some evil alien-types(including a huge green-skinned robot that looks like a Frankenstein monster). The one thing that did stand out to me is our hero's sidekick who is a little boy robot who bites ladies on the ass if they refer to him as a mechanical being and not a real boy. Sadly this only happens once and the rest is rather dull space battles and people getting zapped with disintegration rays. There is some really odd dubbing in the English version which is good for a few laughs if nothing else.
 There are supposed to be references to the MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM show where various characters are just recycled but I've never seen that program so it's all new to me. There were a few bad guys that looked like various SPIDER-MAN or DAREDEVIL villains from the 70s comic books to give this thing a real international rip-off flair. AKA JOHNNY DESTINY: SPACE RANGER and JOHNNY DESTINY: SPACE NINJA(The producer of this, Joseph Lai, was also responsible for a gazillion of those cheap-ass retitled composite ninja VHS movies throughout the 80s like GOLDEN NINJA WARRIOR , NINJA THUNDERBOLT etc.)




                                                                 Ass-biter!:

The Southern California Motion Picture Council must've had a bad year: 

TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016)

 While it's true that the world doesn't really need anymore zombie movies in it I figured I would give this one a chance since I am generally a fan of modern Korean horror flicks. I'm glad I did because this one is a pretty entertaining watch. There are some highly unlikely scenarios including people fist-fighting their way through gangs of zombies and surviving similar impossible scenarios but that's what can happen when you mix high-speed action movie with horror. They manage to make you care for the passengers on this train through zombieland and there's a couple of nods to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD(the big one being that the main asshole character is named Mr. Coo in homage to NIGHTS' Mr. Cooper). One detriment, which seems to be mandatory with these newer Korean films, is the length of seems a bit long while viewing it but at least they kept it at only 2 hours so it coulda been worse. If you can deal with modern action and some zombie antics that might remind you of that stupid WORLD WAR Z(which is actually a movie I've never even bothered to watch but I have seen the dumb-looking trailer and that was enough!) give it a look.

        

A BETTER TOMORROW (2010)

 Pretty unnecessary remake of the John Woo action classic and Mr. Woo is a producer here.
 While this a good movie, done really well, with excellent acting and lots of crazy gunplay towards the end I would still say the original tops it. For one thing there's no one as charismatic as Chow Yun-Fat here, for another, like most of these modern Korean action flicks, it's over 2 hours long with a lot of dramatic downtime in-between gangster fights and explosions. Still if you're a fan of the original and aren't disgusted by the very idea of a remake this one does Korean-ize things and change some stuff around. There's also a pretty nihilistic ending which is something I'm usually a fan of though I don't think it worked all that well here. As usual stick with the original formula.

SNOWPIERCER (2013)

 This futuristic/apocalyptic sci-fi film is an American/Korean co-production. This gives the whole movie the oddball feeling of a perfectly decent Korean sorta-artsy environmentalist-message-film with a stupid American action movie shoe-horned into it. I would say overall it's probably worth checking out if you dig Korean films but there are quite a few stupid cringe-worthy elements here also. The plot, which is based on a French graphic-novel, is engaging enough but some of the characters are really annoyingly dumb and some of them don't make any sense at all. The sassy heavyset black lady, for one, has to be one of the most illogical things in the movie. How she could exist on a train full of people so desperate for food that they resort to cannibalism and yet remain an overweight stereotype is incredible. Besides her though the main character, played by some American Hollywood-type who's apparently not a very good actor, is pretty grating. Fortunately you get Kang-ho Song, who was also the star of the great SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, in a bad-ass role to make up for this shortcoming. Also this was directed by Joon-ho Bong, who previously did the cool giant-monster flick THE HOST, so it has a fairly cool style to it. Just don't expect everything to make perfect sense and you'll probably enjoy this a lot more. Or you could go the other way and just look at it all as a big metaphor for society where the illogical stuff is there because it's commenting on some aspect of humanity which I think is kind of a cop-out but whatever works for you.

THE SUSPECT (2013)

 Caught a free showing of this Korean action flick last night. While I'm not the world's biggest action movie guy this was OK and being free always makes things a little better. This is about a spy from North Korea who defects to the south and gets accused of murdering a politician. From there it's a bunch of standard chases, fights and gun-play and double crosses. This has a pretty big cast of characters from different groups with competing interests with a kinda complex plot that left me a little confused at first but everything wraps itself up pretty logically by the end. The one complaint I have with this and pretty much every modern action film is that the fight scenes are shot and cut in such a way that you can't really tell what the fuck is going on during most of them. Also, as is typical of most current Korean films, it's a little long at over 2 hours but is probably worthwhile for fans of movies where a lot of stuff happens at a quick pace.
 There are a lot of comparisons with this movie and those Bourne films but since I generally detest new films I haven't seen any of those. 

THE NEIGHBOR ZOMBIE (2010)

 
 I caught a free showing of this last night and I wasn't really expecting much since it's a new zombie movie, the trailer is kinda crappy and it has a pretty stupid title. Fortunately it's from Korea and supposedly Korea's very first zombie film and since I can't think of another one off the top of my head I'll go with that. The movie goes the anthology route and consists of six shorts stories which is a good idea since that doesn't leave a lot of time to get bored. The other cool thing about this is that each segment has a different tone so we go from bloody/comedy type stuff, to gore to action movie territory with some kung-fu fighting thrown in and you even get some more dramatic elements with a story of a lady who keeps her zombified mom chained-up in the spare room and another one about a couple of zombies in love. The movie was shot for about $18,000 so you don't get any epic battle scenes and the FX work is pretty minimal but the clear effort and enthusiasm you can see that went into this makes up for that, once again proving that if you want to see something new that's halfway decent all you have to do is look outside the U.S. 

YONGARY, MONSTER FROM THE DEEP (1967)

 Korean version of GODZILLA which you think they would have maybe made sooner since the original GODZILLA came out 13 years earlier but whatever. Yongary itself is just Godzilla with a horn on his nose that shoots laser beams. There's a scene where a little boy hits the monster with an itch-ray and he dances a little jig while some 60's surf rock plays. Besides this and few other scenes of dumb rubber-suit monster activities there's not much that makes this any different from your typical GAMERA movie of this era and like those this is equally good for a cheap laugh. This was remade in 2000 as YONGGARY which was released here in the U.S. on DVD as REPTILIAN. Unfortunately it employed a bunch of computer-generated fx and sucked.

I SAW THE DEVIL (2010)

 Similar to the movies of Park Chan-Wook, this Korean horror/serial-killer movie is a really well done and well-acted film about what happens when revenge becomes all-consuming and turns a victim of a crime into what may be the equal force of evil in combating it.  It features Choi Min-Sik(who was also the titular star of Chan-Wook's OLDBOY) as our psychopathic/rapist/all-around deviant fellow and he's perfectly creepy in that role.  While I wouldn't say this is as good as Chan-Wook's films I think it works great as a revenge story that mixes horror elements along with more standard Hong Kong-style action bits and is worth a watch.  I also felt that this plays like a great bloody Asian version of The Punisher story but with more knives and kung fu and less guns.
 The Korean censors made director Kim Jee-Won cut about 10 minutes of gore footage from this to get a release and this theatrical version is the one I've seen.  A longer cut played at festivals and is supposed to be super graphic but that would bring the total run-time up to over 2 and a half hours which seems a little excessive for a story that I think could have played out in a shorter form pretty easily.

THIRST (2009)

 What you get here is a story of a priest who gets a blood transfusion and becomes a vampire. It's a Korean horror film by director Park Chan-wook who also did the awesome OLDBOY and the even more awesome SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE. Like those movies it has an amazingly stylish look to the film and and some disturbing visuals. Unfortunately like those movies it also suffers a bit from a long run-time(over 2 hours!). Unlike those this one goes off into the supernatural realm with the whole blood-drinking, super-hero-powered vampires thing. There's a love story thrown in also that I imagine could remind some people of TWILIGHT(but a TWILIGHT not made for brain-damaged 12 year-olds complete with slit wrists, fountains of blood, boobs and a naked fat man in a coma getting a not-so-sexy sponge bath). I feel overall Park's movies are worth checking out and I always enjoy them while watching them even if I can't see myself sitting through them more than once since unlike these vampires my lifespan is not eternal.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD (2008)

 If you took THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY and remade it in Korea then threw in a large helping of INDIANA JONES and action sequences from a Bugs Bunny cartoon you would have a close semblance of this.  More of an absurd all-out action movie than a spaghetti-western really.  It just uses the basic outline of the Clint Eastwood predecessor and the basic trappings of that genre.  It does give a weird glimpse into how another country takes something foreign and morphs it into its own entity.  Worth seeing just because of its weird amalgamation and uniqueness.   I've heard it compared to Takashi Miike's SUKIYAKI DJANGO WESTERN but they both feel pretty different.  I would say that movie went for a deliberate weird vibe while this one feels more slapsticky and concerned with keeping its energy levels at their highest throughout.  Is it a good movie?  It's just O.K. but uniqueness counts for something too in my book.