Seven Samurai, Nos. 4 - 8 (1979 - 1993)

Seven Samurai remakes pepper the recent past like discarded underpants after a major shindig. Let us consider the many random, obscure efforts I have lamentably been unable to find…

The third Seven Samurai remake provides examples many things I severely wanted out of the unimpressive second, Kill a Dragon: It is a non-American take on the story. Furthermore, it is a genuine wuxia effort. It is Liu he gian shou (1979), itself an incredibly minor part of the overall ‘70s kung fu craze. What little info I can dredge up suggests it involves seven masters with seven different styles (well naturally!) banding together to defeat a greater single master with a greater single style. No word on if there is a village in need of defense, and “a multitude of fighters with unusual styles” is common enough in kung fu cinema (see Five Deadly Venoms).

Then we move ahead one year, to the ‘80s [dad dum dum!] and reach Battle Beyond the Stars…


You have no idea how much it pisses me off that I cannot find a copy of this movie! This is the one I most wanted to see! Consider, it’s the sci-fi version of Seven Samurai, meaning there’s a healthy dollop of Star Wars influence, the highest budget (at the time) motion picture ever produced by filmmaking uber-legend Roger Corman. That’s the same Roger Corman who practically invented independent cinema in the post-monopoly days of Hollywood, whose cheapo exploitation flicks paved the path indirectly for directors such as George Romero, and who more is directly responsible for creating the careers of (among many others) Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, John Sayles, Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovich, Curtis Hanson, Ron Howard, Jack Hill, etc. ad infinitum. The man whose no-budget productions include cult classics Piranha, Death Race 2000, Boxcar Bertha, Rock ‘N’ Roll High School, Galaxy of Terror, and about 500 other movies, including the recent trash that is Sharktopus! Damn I wanted to see his take on Seven Samurai!

I mean, we’re talking the movie which created James Cameron’s big break in film, doing special effects with almost zero money (a low budget, James Cameron?!), in service of a sci-fi pulp pastiche to rival Flash Gordon or Buckaroo Banzai. A mighty top drawer entertainment, by Corman standards, boasting a score by James “Aliens” Horner, a screenplay by John “Lone Star” Sayles.

The story is as purely Seven Samurai as possible…in space! Just replace “village” with “space planet,” “bandits” with “space mutants,” and “samurai” with “space mercenaries from beyond the moon.” Such a fantastical setting surely allows a playful approach to the set-in-stone scenario, as now every universal detail can be altered for maximum strangeness. So we have, apparently, a gruesome mishmash of robots, reptilians, alien clones, and a character actually called “Space Cowboy” (he’s a trucker)! And Robert Vaughn returns from The Magnificent Seven to play Gelt, a perfect updating of his old Lee character – an aging assassin looking to lie (Lee) low.

Reverence to its past doesn’t stop there. Battle Beyond the Stars christens its planet Akir, as in Akira Kurosawa. As a pulpy space opera, other names and concepts sound equally foreign: Shad, Sadodr, Malmori, Stellar Converter, Zed, Nell, Kalo, Tembo, Hephaestus, Nanelia, Planet Earth, Nestor, Mol, Cayman of the Lambda Zone, Saint-Exmin, Zymer, Quepeg. Sybil Danning’s in this, back when she was smokin’. John Saxon’s in it! George Peppard, the guy originally cast for Steve McQueen’s role in The Magnificent Seven, he’s in it!

Damn, I really wanted to see this movie!

Sigh. Moving on…


Okay, now this is getting frightening. The next, 1983’s The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, is a part of the early ‘80s’ peplum revival, along with the same year’s Hercules (with Lou Ferrigno), or ‘84’s Hercules 2 (heh?!), ‘83’s Ator, the Fighting Eagle, and the mightiest and earliest of this set, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian. This is the Second Wave of the Italian-styled sword-and-sandals genre, like those movies I’m taking a break from. Movies from the ‘60s like Seven Slaves Against the World and Seven Rebel Gladiators – and no, those aren’t official remakes of Seven Samurai, so we get to ignore ‘em.

The Seven Magnificent Gladiators is an Italian movie, as evidenced by how awkwardly exploitative that title is. Story-wise, it’s the old village-bandits-warriors situation. As in any of these remakes, it must distinguish itself through specifics, notably the new setting: some generic sword-and-sorcery Neverland. All evidence suggests this is well in keeping with those damned pepla, celebrating lunkheaded brawny idiocy over any of the swifter, cleverer battling shown by the Magnificent Seven – who are undoubtedly being picked up on here, and it seems one could argue many of these Seven Samurai remakes are in fact Magnificent Seven remakes. Oh, and Lou Ferrigno stars in this one too (as “Han”), for he really couldn’t extricate himself from this bizarre little Italian pseudo-movement.

Even given The Seven Magnificent Gladiators’ status as an Italian second-generation peplum from the ‘80s, even then it sounds horrible. Credit, if it so may be called, goes to the directors, Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei. Mattei is the “real” director here, a feared figure even amongst Italian genre makers (and I love a lot of Italian genre fare), a man whose car accident-style cult mostly focuses upon travesties such as Zombis 3 and 4, which ignores other equally terrifying works such as SS Girls, SS Extermination Love Camp (see a theme?), Mondo Erotico, Violence in a Women’s Prison, Caligula and Messalina, Virus: Hell of the Living Dead, Scalps, Robowar, Strike Commando, Strike Commando 2, Shocking Dark (aka Terminator 2 – whaaat?!), Killing Striptease, Killing Striptease 2, The Jail: A Woman’s Hell…you know, nothing but the classiest of cinematic masterpieces.

Oh, let us not discount Claudio Fragasso, who is perhaps a far greater contributor to the wonderful realm of the terrible Z-movie, who bested (or worsted) Mattei’s claim as the “Ed Wood of Italian filmmaking” in a single, stunning bound….Fragasso wrote and directed Troll 2. Haven’t seen that beast yet? Go get drunk, stoned, and surrounded by friends and watch that NOW.

And Sybil Danning is in this one too!


It’s amazing, seemingly once a property has entered the realm of cheapo, exploitative genre fare, it cannot extricate itself. The next remake comes from 1990, and filmmaker Ciro H. Santiago – who is somehow not Italian, though his filmography would suggest otherwise. Rather, here’s another erstwhile director/producer of any and all potentially profitable niche fare. Movies to his credit include Pistolero, T.N.T. Jackson, Vampire Hookers, Caged Fury, Naked Vengeance, Silk, Future Hunters, Demon of Paradise, The Expendables (no, not that one), Silk 2, Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom (but somehow not Caged Heat), and this year’s upcoming (surely on DVD) Road Raiders. It’s clear I just love picking out the most sensational titles, and listing ‘em. I could do likewise for the things Santiago has merely produced, but I’ll spare ya.

Dune Warriors takes the Seven Samurai routine and applies it to a Mad Max/Road Warrior rip-off, when in 1990 those things were surely on the way out. Well, seeing as these post-apocalyptic desert epics are really just redressed westerns (as is Seven Samurai, let us not forget), the new details are solely cosmetic. Again, bandits are now mutants. Some dreaded swords-and-sorcery nonsense somehow remains, as the solution to this problem (apart from the standardized seven warriors) involves a magical sword, once held by none other than mighty Achilles – No, wait, I’m actually thinking of The Seven Magnificent Gladiators here.

Either rate, the casts continue to showcase only the best that genre fare can afford. Headlining Dune Warriors is the late David Carradine, American martial artist spanning a career from TV’s “Kung Fu” to QT’S Kill Bill (he’s Bill). This means we can again add a certain wuxia flavor to the mix, surely the sort of desperate gambit a late-period Mad Max wannabe would tout.

No more Sybil Danning, sadly. But Luke Askew’s in it, and he was in The Magnificent Seven Ride! That’s how far we’ve fallen from Battle’s Robert Vaughn.


Dikiy vostok, the last remake I didn’t bother to watch (because I couldn’t) is another international epic, though you’d never guess which nation…

Kazakhstan!

In researching this one, brainchild of Soviet director Rashid Nugmanov, there is absolutely no way to improve upon the plot summary found on IMDb. So here it is:

“The Solar Children, a group of dwarves who left the circus, are trying to start a settlement in the Kyrgyzstan wilderness just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but are harassed by a gang of bikers. With their meager savings, they hire a ragtag group of heroes to drive off the bikers.”

Midgets…er, dwarves? Mongolian biker gangs? Damn, here’s another one I’m pissed off I didn’t see!

…Hell, it sounds like an early Werner Herzog movie, specifically Even Dwarfs Started Small, with a bit of Kaspar Hauser, Fata Morgana and Aguirre for flavor. Apparently, all international distribution of Dikiy vostok (aka The Wild East) highlighted its status as a sheer oddity. And in the early years following the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., apparently this is how filmmakers lashed out against their overlords’ former stringent restrictions. The one other thing Dikiy vostok is apparently noted for follows that pattern. ‘Tis a quote, about the Soviet Union: “There is no sex in our country.” Hmm, today’s internet culture begs to differ (link not provided).

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That nearly wraps it up for Seven Samurai remakes. There is one more official remake, China Gate, which I will get to see. (There’s a little more to top off this tale, also to be seen tomorrow). In the meanwhile, I have intentionally neglected certain films which clearly use Seven Samurai and its ilk as inspiration, but are not direct enough to be counted as remakes. These are mostly comic efforts, as broad as ¡Three Amigos!, A Bug’s Life and Galaxy Quest. What’s interesting is how they all use the same comic conceit: The “warriors” are entertainers, mistaken for real heroes. This in itself would make for an interesting exploration, but that’s beyond this blog’s mission, so we’ll leave it be.

One final thought: In evidently every Seven Samurai updating, the bandits gain status as visible villains, with a leader to match wits with the head of the seven. Compare that to the unseen force of nature in Kurosawa’s version. Which approach is stronger? Draw your own conclusions.



RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Seven Samurai (1954)
• No. 2 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 3 Kill a Dragon (1967)
• No. 9 China Gate (1998)

Seven Samurai, No. 3 - Kill a Dragon (1967)

To return to a tired point, Seven Samurai has so many remakes because its story is universal and omni-applicable. Peeking ahead at the titles of these remakes, one (i.e. me) assumes each “entry” is from a different nation, each one readapting the Seven Samurai tale to local conditions. Hence the U.S. made The Magnificent Seven as a western. The second remake, Kill a Dragon, then appears to be a martial arts, kung fu variation…if you squint hard enough.

My assumption that these movies would all hail from different nations turns out to be very wrong, for a mere magnificent 7 years after Magnificent Seven, the U.S. made another remake, without even the decency to outright own up to their inspiration. Kill a Dragon IS a Seven Samurai remake, but that’s not all there is to it.

Allow a characteristic detour. In 1973, not quite 7 years after Kill a Dragon, Enter the Dragon was produced. It is a major milestone in the history of the martial arts movie, for many reasons. It is the last complete performance of legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, and represents what many consider the first joint film production between the U.S. and Hong Kong. This was in response to a general renaissance in China’s film output starting in the late ‘60s, not only Lee’s own Fists of Fury and his other Fists of Fury, but also the concentrated efforts of the Shaw Brothers. Wuxia movies flourished domestically, and once they traveled abroad to American audiences, the ‘70s and ‘80s were awash in the subgenre, even in light of Lee’s bizarre death.

How does this relate to Kill a Dragon? Well, though it is clearly a Hollywood product, it was itself filmed in Hong Kong, with significant help from the Chinese behind the camera. But let’s not for a single minute falsely think Kill a Dragon might be decent, as it plays rather like an American impression of what a Hong Kong movie might be like, without ever having seen one. So while the filmmakers may have known about China’s emphasis upon the fight scene, they respond with some truly uninspired fisticuffsmanship of the stagnant American variety. Oh, and the whole thing is a vaguely xenophobic bit of Oriental exoticism, with a “mighty whitey” subtext. Really, it’s almost like what Enter the Dragon would be like if you removed Bruce Lee…and John Saxon…and Jim Kelly…and Robert Clouse…and just about everything else that makes it a classic.

As a nascent Hollywood bastardization of Asian wuxia, there’s even a funky theme song! Actual lyrics: “Psychedelic, let’s get swirly. Whoooooooooo! Kill a dragon!” That is the best part of the movie.


Oh right, and there’s that Seven Samurai connection too! That provides the framework for the plotline, how an impoverished Chinese island village off the coast of Hong Kong is under siege by the assuredly villainous smuggler Nico Patrai (Fernando Lamas, from TV…oh God, I’m sensing a trend!). First up, Patrai invades the hamlet, and issues an arbitrary 3-day deadline before he promises to kills ‘em all outright, indirectly suggesting that the village go and acquire some protectors on those 3 days.

Now…I’ll address this early. The reasons for this village-related terrorism are astoundingly foolish. Patrai wants a…something which the villagers are hiding. We later learn it is his latest “cargo” – this vague term persists for half the film, making me think the innocent townsfolk were hoarding heroin or opium, their eyes fixed on a fix. Well, it eventually turns out to be nitroglycerin, which is a way to justify Third Act explosions – but not enough explosions, considering… Anyway, the villagers want to sell Patrai’s inexplicably lost nitro, which is legally his (good guys!), and they’re willing to risk village-wide devastation to do this. It’s not even portrayed as, say, a financial necessity. They’re just being greedy, and this isn’t even the sort of film to make an asset out of its contradictions. It’s just that thick-headed.

Three villagers – I could guess as to their (and the actors’) names, but the Chinese are treated with so little dignity it hardly seems worth the effort – row out to Hong Kong to seek succor from, um…whomever. Sorry about all this vagueness, that’s a problem of the movie. Patrai is watching the island, so he immediately knows about this, and instantly sends some off disposable mooks. And with the “innocents” guileless in their quest, they completely at random stumble into the sexnasium junk of expat Rick Masters (Jack Palance, whose surprisingly decent career in no way suggests headlining this mess) – and the name “Masters” is surely an unsubtle hint that this guy ’ll be leading the eventual group of warriors.


Masters masters the mooks mercilessly (but not magnificently), with fight moves that are more “barroom brawl” than “kung fu craziness.” Which does not jibe at all with the over-generous travelogue style applied to the Hong Kong setting. Seriously, Kill a Dragon plays as though Americans had just discovered Hong Kong (and China as a whole), and could be sated with nothing more than overlong shots of junk yards (i.e. boat neighborhoods). Hell, they even repeatedly employ a sickening technique where a travel guide leads mouth-agape Caucasians throughout Darkest Orient, complete with unironic dialogue about the “ancient, mystical culture,” and other such condescension.


That tour guide winds up being one of the jerks Masters coerces into action – their job not quite being village defense, as one would expect, but rather a nitro salvage operation. Though that will indirectly necessitate village defense anyway, so I don’t know why they’re trying to create a less interesting scenario out of all this. This tour guide is Vigo (Aldo Ray – wait, wasn’t that Brad Pitt’s character in Inglourious Basterds?!). See anything here? Eh, probably not in type. I’ll spell it out: These guys are all white! Why, in all of China, no one is more likely to help out an impoverished village than almighty Anglos, guys whose estimation of this “impenetrable” culture boils down to referring to Confucius and fortune cookies again and again. I’m serious. God DAMN IT! [Slams head on desk.]

Amongst the rest of the team Masters musters, we somehow go even whiter, with genuine British stereotype Ian (Don Knight). But to round out the diversity just a tad, included free with Ian is an honest-to-goodness Asian, Jimmy (Hans Lee, of…nothing else). And because it’s 1967, no points for assuming that not only is Jimmy the first to die, he’s the only one to die. Minority and all. But that’s an idiotic moment to come.

And…that’s it! There are no other teammates, just those four. That’s…variation, I guess, to intentionally under deliver on not just Seven Samurai, but the whole “men on a mission” subgenre. There’s not even any genuine characterization for most of these guys…eh, except for Masters, and then I can’t even get a bead on what his personality is. But we’ll get to that later as well…

Meanwhile, we can claim 7 heroes, if we count the three villagers who did the recruiting. But this is such funky bookkeeping, just to satisfy a point Kill a Dragon doesn’t seem particularly concerned with.


It takes a long time for these 7 – or 4 – to make their goddamned way back to Unspellable Island. The recruitment section is quite leisurely paced, which is in keeping with the source material. But to no end, as there’s no content. Director Michael Moore – no, not that one – this Michael Moore was – Holy crap! – he was assistant director on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (well, all three Indiana Jones movies – yeah, I’m not counting Crystal Skull), along with several other notable blockbusters (also Ishtar). So he clearly got better at directing, for his approach here is static and languorous to a damningly huge degree, as if the 90 minutes of interminable running time couldn’t fill themselves out. This means lotsa cutting back and forth between the same two shots repeatedly, filling out scenes with no dialogue, no action, no nothing (there’s a nitro loading scene later on which particularly suffers from this). I’m actually amazed Moore later did decent work, because this movie sucks.

Anyway, we’re on the island now. Masters starts up a romance with a local, because all other such movies have done likewise. There is no understanding of the why of anything in Seven Samurai. Kill a Dragon doesn’t even know how to work on a basic dramatic level, creating tension out of struggling to prevent imminent attack from Patrai and his goons (never mind the fact they could just give Patrai the nitro he BOUGHT).

I’m not really sure what the thought process is for a single character here. The villagers and Masters’ minions all just want to smuggle away the nitro, and sell it. This ignores the fact Patrai will explode their island (oh yes!) if they do so. Nope, no thought about defense is ever evidently considered. Patrai, meanwhile, has the entire island under surveillance, and blockaded, but still not a single one of his henchmen notices when the islanders all obviously load the nitro onto a junk (below). (Oh, and attempts to create “suspense” via nitro ala The Wages of Fear? They don’t work.)


Of that blockade, and I realize I’m skipping around as it interests me, but so be it. When the 4 (or 7) make it to the island, they get past this impenetrable blockade – through cross-dressing! Yeah, Vigo puts on a drag outfit less convincing than Eddie Izzard, and apparently Patrai’s underlings are horny enough to fall for it! This is another of the more successful sequences, which is just flabbergasting. You’d think at least watching Seven Samurai would yield better moviemaking than Kill a Dragon boasts.

Another random observation: The title. Repeatedly, Chinese villagers compare Masters to St. George, who slew the dragon. Oh sure, that’s something all isolated, dirt poor Asians know, right? This seems all like more Anglo adoration.

Shall we compound how…unclear everyone’s motivations are? Oh, let’s! Patrai heads on over to the island, doesn’t see the nitro there in the big boat in the harbor, and invites Masters for a casual chat. There is, on top of uninformed wuxia mimicry, a bit of low key James Bond navel gazing – another similarity between this and Enter the Dragon – with the Masters/Patrai meetings being the “dinner with the villain” bit. Or trying to be. It seems Patrai is fascinated – fascinated – with Masters’ mindset. I’ve seen nothing to warrant this. He calls Masters “complicated,” which he’s not quite. “Incomprehensible,” yes, not “complicated.” Same as “Finnegans Wake.”

Patrai offers Masters a deal – give Patrai the nitro, and he’ll give Masters 1/3rd of the “profits,” whatever those are. Hell, it’s the exact same deal Masters has with the villagers. He equivocates, but will eventually turn Patrai down. This is all because Masters suspects Patrai would just as well kill Masters as pay him – and we’ve seen no evidence Patria might be treasonous. Masters is just arbitrarily calling the villagers “good” and Patrai “bad,” because God forbid there be any depth to this shit.


Now, for even more reasons I cannot fathom, mastermind Masters mentors moving the nitro yet again, this time to a busted up and beached boat with a hole in it. Why?! Seriously, why?! Eh…it’ll be “easier” to smuggle this way. Okay, sure, whatever. And now Jimmy dies, not at the hands of Patrai et al, oh no, but due to simple idiocy. He lays underneath the unstable boat in order to patch it; it crushes him. Huh? You know, it’s hard to route for Masters here when the only “good guy” death is due to his own ignorance of OSHA guidelines, and all the other deaths to date are random goons he’s murdered in cold blood. I’m talkin’ “shot in the back” cold blood. And again, with no irony of self-consciousness to any of this. Our heroes!


Then Masters has another meeting with Patrai. I am completely beyond trying to parse out what I see on screen anymore. The last time they debated, Patrai proposed a casual, friendly game of Russian roulette. As you do. The hell?! They equate pointless suicide with bravery, which – Hey, there’s a Japanese idea Seven Samurai neglected! Well, this time Masters returns the suicidal favor, and proposes, um, shooting a six-shooter six times at a box of nitroglycerin a full three feet away. This is like Russian roulette with a landmine. With one bullet in the chamber, Patrai finally stops Masters after five attempts. Would that a statistician could say how much of a risk of death Masters ran there already, to prove an inexplicable point about being a hardass or some such.

Oh, and there was no trick either. There was a real bullet in the chamber, and it was real nitro. Masters shows Patrai so much, exploding the local sea life with it instead of themselves. So…I guess it’s a metaphor for the apparently imminent final showdown, but I dunno.


That final showdown has the same degree of inexplicability. It isn’t even remotely engaging as a ‘60s action sequence, surely not to anyone familiar with The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare or any of the more kickass examples. And Patrai lives, somehow OK with his being taken hostage, and with the murder (coldblooded) of countless undeserving goons. We simply have to accept he won’t go back and kill off the whole village later for the sheer hell of it. Actually, Patrai allows Masters to sell the nitro, profit from it alone, then simply congratulates him for a game well played. Again, not “complicated,” “incomprehensible.”

The end.

There’s not much greater observation to be gotten from Kill a Dragon. It offers no new insights into Seven Samurai, surely not in the way the classic Magnificent Seven did. It doesn’t cleverly recontextualize the story, and the whole nitro thing is too awkward to qualify. There is no clever treatment of the human condition, of the setting, nothing Seven Samurai excelled at – and perhaps unfairly I’m holding this disposable late ‘60s entertainment to the lofty standards of international cinema’s shining star.

But even in the unrelated wuxia argument, Kill a Dragon is a wash. It works almost wholly in that context as a curiosity, a little bit of context for Enter the Dragon. Actually, I’m done here; I’m gonna go randomly watch Enter the Dragon now, and then not blog about it.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Seven Samurai (1954)
• No. 2 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• Nos. 4 - 8 (1979 - 1993)
• No. 9 China Gate (1998)

The Gods Must Be Crazy, No. 3 - The Gods Must Be Crazy III (1991)

Okay, now where were we? Ah yes, The Gods Must Be Crazy had received its automatic sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, an abortive, nine-years-later cash-in – this pretty much spelled the premature end for The Gods Must Be Crazy (TGMBC) as a franchise. Enter Hong Kong, whose own film industry was nicely prospering throughout the 80s and 90s, effectively building off of wuxia martial arts culture. A large part of their film style, with its emphasis on the physical, ended up becoming greatly comic – see the slapstick antics of Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow and Sammo Hung.

These efforts are heavily influenced by American comic actors of the 1920s, notably Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. This ancient era was also a strong influence on the TGMBC movies, so it makes a certain roundabout sense that the Chinese would wrest control of the flailing Africomedy series. Besides, the comic-physical emphasis TGMBC boasted was incredibly popular among Hong Kong audiences, so future entries made by them, for them just could work.

Indeed, three more TGMBCs were rapidly made within the Hong Kong sphere, headed by producer Charles Heung. Here’s the man responsible for the careers of Chow Yun-fat, Jet Li, Stephen Chow…no slouch! (His Triad background doesn’t hurt.) Teamed with famed Hong Kong screenwriter Barry Wong (to whom John Woo dedicated Hard Boiled – no slouch!), Heung set about creating Crazy Safari.

Well…Crazy Safari is but one of the names enjoyed by The Gods Must Be Crazy III. The Gods Must Be Crazy III is another of those names, along with N!xau the Bushman and Vampires Must Be Crazy (I’ll ignore the zaniness inherent in that last title for now…).

(All in all, Heung’s TGMBC follow-ups count as the official licensed sequels. That means I must ignore the spuriously-named cash-ins – oh yes, people spent the early 90s cashing in on a 1980 South African comedy – such as Yankee Zulu and Jewel of the Gods. For what it’s worth, these were South African attempts, taking advantage of the combined success of the Hong Kong movies and the Indiana Jones series, and are to TGMBC as Transmorphers is to Transformers.)

So…TGMBCIII (the official sequel we’re here to consider). A Chinese response to a South African response to old American movies…This oughta be pretty bizarre. But let’s give it a chance. At the very least, let’s review a plot synopsis, and see how long it takes for something out-of-place to pop up…

Xixo’s village is beset by a hopping vampire as –

[Comical record screech.]

A what?!


Hopping vampires, or Jiang Shi, are mythological creatures from Cantonese folklore. According to legend, when a poor family member died far away from home, a Taoist priest was hired to take the body back to familiar ground, where it could rest in peace. Like some sort of Chinese Monty Python routine, the priests would transport whole rows of corpses along on bamboo sticks, which caused the cadavers to bounce up and down as though hopping. They also rang bells to warn people the dead were jumping. These fearsome beasts became a common fixture of 1980s Hong Kong comedies, especially the Mr. Vampire series (which I’ll get to some day).

What does any of this have to do with The Gods Must Be Crazy?!

It has nothing to do with it. It’s a bizarre mash up, pure and simple, in hopes to capitalize on two inexplicably popular things (The Gods Must Be Crazy and Mr. Vampire), no matter how it’s less chocolate and peanut butter and more open wound and salt. And the sense of humor has shifted accordingly, as we lose Jamie Uys’ occasional exactitude for director Billy Chan’s humor-by-way-of-flailing. Characters just shriek, yell and mug for all its worth, which I believe in the past I’ve compared to college sketch comedy troupes. Oh, and the vampire hops, which is meant for about 50% of the komedy.


Sotheby’s, London (though not by that precise name) has a hopping vampire up on the auction block, which I’m sure is a common occurrence. Comically inept buffon Leo (Sam Christopher Chow) acquires the beast, under the tutelage of his Taoist priest, Master HiSing (Ching-Ying Lam, a different Taoist priest in Mr. Vampire – ooh, typecasting!). (Also, the vampire is played by Lung Chan – or Chan Lung, depending on naming convention.) The vampire, a 15th century Chinese nobleman turned hopping amusement, is Leo’s ancestor, and is due back in China soon. To control the monster, a yellow card must be affixed to its forehead (shades of golem rustling); for it to hop towards you, ring a bell. Now you have your very own domesticated blood-sucker. (Establishing early on this film’s abhorrence for reality, we even see the Jiang Shi presented alongside an irascible European vampire.)

Our heroes are transporting their prized vampire back east, when their airplane (going from London to Hong Kong) gets extremely sidetracked – that is, it gets lost somewhere over Botswana. That’s about 5,000 miles off course! Eh, reality, schmeality. So by this inexplicable comic mishap, our heroes are deposited in the Kalahari Desert (I assume, as it’s never spoken – in English). Their vampire even parachutes out, having hopped its vampiric way right out of the airplane! And separated from its masters – it’s just like the story of a boy and his dog.

On the ground are familiar bushmen, again accompanied by a detached and wry narrator – Stephen “Kung Fu Hustle” Chow! Sadly, I watched the Cantonese version (seeing as there’s no Region 1 version of this thing), meaning…well, I pretty much didn’t catch any dialogue. So I’m going off of visuals, mostly, and the surprising excess of dialogue in English.

Anyway, the bushmen confront a mass of obviously villainous white folk, spearheaded (as it were) by Ilsa-esque blonde militant hippy Susan (Michelle Bestbier). This token, card-carrying villain has aims on Xi’s tribe, as it exists over a natural deposit of diamonds – it occurs to me villainy in Africa is oft predicated upon this fact. And oh yeah, Xi! Superstar franchise headliner N!xau is back, exclamation point and all! (This whole movie is one huge exclamation point!) So props to Heung, for maintaining purest sequel continuity. Lord only knows what N!xau, the Namibian subsistence farmer suddenly headlining an international film franchise, made of all this, or what he even understood!


Our noble bushmen (who are now represented more as “ooga booga” spear-chuckers now the tact-challenged Chinese are running things) are nearly done for, when ol’ hopper falls from the sky and promptly gives the evil Caucasians what fer. Losing its protective forehead paper, the cadaver leaps about in a most bunny-like manner, with generous application of wire-fu. It torments everyone, in purest Mario fashion, until Xi quells the beast with its paper – Xi is a remarkably quick study to the specifics of East Asian mythological monsters. And because the tribal peoples of Africa apparently wear bells at all times, in Hong Kong’s assessment, the vampire obediently follows them home.

Leo and HiSing are our fish out of water today, taking to savannah life much like their white predecessors – that is, with comic incompetence. And to give a sense of how this comedy is played, let me transcribe some of the non-diagetic sound effects we’re graced with: “Vroop vroop vroop boing dwoink splat!” That is a direct quote. Yeesh, this are FX the Looney Tunes wouldn’t’ve used! (And in their travails against the standard TGMBC wildlife footage, another erstwhile franchise constant makes itself known – the unbelievably fake rhinoceros.)


Realizing (after an encounter with baboons) that they have to locate their missing vampire, HiSing rides an ostrich. (Today I am going to write so many sentences I myself cannot believe.) Leo is dragged along behind the bird, gaining altitude via parachute. By this means, Leo locates Xi’s distant tribe. Parking their ostrich, the Asians decide to trek there.

At the village, the vampire has taken the stead this series once held for Coke bottles – that is, it is a new work tool for our bushmen. Just picture it, the culture clash between bouncy Chinese corpses and Botswanan aborigines! It’s the original Odd Couple! (Actually, it’s damnably abstract, equally arbitrary, and as far from Uys’ foundations of social satire as these films can get.) And just how does one utilize a vampire-qua-tool? Well, you could have it bounce into a tree repeatedly, thus shaking out its fruit. One could also…er…um…actually, that’s all they came up with. Methinks this not the greatest crossover of all time.

Ultimately HiSing and Leo greet Xi and his pals, and are graciously welcomed into the tribe. HiSing also has an extremely terrifying non sequitur encounter with a freaking gigantic snake (the length and thickness of a fire hose). In any other movie this would count as a Big Lipped Alligator Moment – only we’ve just scratched the surface of wackiness served up by TGMBCIII.

Individual segments of silliness chronicle the culture clash between Xi and HiSing – now this is what TGMBC movies are about. The most amusing bit involves HiSing’s sudden realization that he needs T.P. and a private place to squat. And who doesn’t love a 7 minute-long routine about a Taoist priest struggling to defecate all throughout a Botswanan village? (That this too must climax with a snake – a cobra – suggests director Chan has a certain obsession. Then HiSing uses the cobra as a nunchuck (!!!).)

Also, HiSing teaches Xi the art of kung fu, in the worst orange filter I have ever seen.


But throughout all these adventures, our heroes never once run across their beloved vampire – because it seems searching the huts is out of the question (and the beast is simply in a hut). Instead, HiSing performs his black Taoist magic in another hut, by means of – Okay, is Voodoo related to Taoism? (Okay, I guess Voodoo is sorta nondenominational…maybe.) Because HiSing uses a goddamned voodoo doll to control the vampire’s every move. And if you’ve somehow thought this movie was so far lacking in overt wakka wakka nuttiness, well, today is Christmas. The vampire, under HiSing’s command, proceeds to act out every single physical action the off-screen wire guys can think up. It spins, leaps, twirls, beats up countless natives, and goes on an all out rampage. They even play that crazy Russian sword dance song whose name I cannot place. By the end, the entire village is decimated, because there’s nothing funnier than rendering subsistence farmers homeless.


Sadly, there must be an end to wackiness, in the heartfelt, tearful reunion of Taoists and vampire. Prized corpse back in their possession, HiSing and Leo attempt to take their leave. Xi has other ideas re: vampire ownership (oh, so now he understands ownership – see previous entries). Xi and HiSing go all Dueling Bells, vampire in the middle like a confused puppy. Then HiSing tells the vampire to KILL – it is only stopped at the last moment. But having made his Taoist point, HiSing (and Leo) lead their monster hopping away.


With them gone, Susan can come in with the full force of her evil native tribe. (Imagine the worst misinterpretation of the Zulu, with a little Polynesian inexplicably thrown in – What is this, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls?!) She shrieks in purest Ilsa fashion about the diamonds, and is even ready to commit Jeep-assisted infanticide (comedy, folks), when –

Vampire to the rescue! Vampire (I really wish it had a proper name) returns to fight for honor and save the children. They all hug is rotting leg in adoration, as HiSing comes to an understanding with Xi. But then – da dum dum! – an evil bokur arrives to sic his ginormous voodoo zombie on the vampire. … Let me repeat that: It’s now zombie versus vampire! This is nutbars!


The zombie roars like a Hong Kong King Kong. The vampire hops on its zombified head for a bit, then switches up and throws the zombie into the clouds. [Dusting off hands.] And that is that.

Only the craziness hasn’t been fully wrung out of this thing yet. HiSing battles the bokur, necromancer versus witchdoctor. They each cast spells to the fullest extent of 1993 optical Hong Kong low budget SFX capability. Then, for apparently no reason, the bokur battles a baboon – He lives in the Kalahari, why is this a threat to him?! No matter, such a fight is loud and chaotic, which is “good” by Billy Chan’s standards. And when the baboon is killed (oh yeah), HiSing goes on to –

Okay, get a grip. Maybe it makes sense in China. Maybe there, this is a natural fallout of the hopping vampire premise. HiSing transfers the baboon’s soul into Leo! Leo now shrieks and capers, and handily bonks the bokur. Victory achieved, the monkey’s transparent soul floats up to the heavens – Oh…kay.

But now Xi is in trouble! (Geez, this is like a sugar rush story a child improvises.) Leo has his latest left field solution, as his pockets are full of “The Heroes of the East.” It’s actually just a bunch of photographs of Bruce Lee, greatest martial artist of all time, so –

They’ve done it again! Here I thought the movie was already at 11, but nooooo. HiSing transfers the ghost of Bruce Lee into Xi. Well enough, I suppose, that’s normal and all, except…


Oh, poor Bruce. You really are the most over-exploited dead celebrity ever. Unlicensed, strangely rotoscoped footage of “The Dragon” is intercut with the sudden kung fu antics of Bruce Xi. They even employ a (credited) synth bastardization of Lalo Schifrin’s score from Enter the Dragon! They’ve really gone off the deep end here.

Well, nothing will top that, so the movie’s basically over. A helicopter conveniently arrives to take the Asians and their vampire back to Hong Kong. But Xi’s people shall not be deprived of their sudden vampire-shaped void. HiSing has constructed for them a life-size hay vampire effigy, for the Africans to debase themselves before from now on. Verily, a dark new religion has been formed. How’s that for a cultural contribution?

This overall nuttiness is a breath of fresh air, in that it’s among the stranger things I’ve seen in a while. But for how ridiculous TGMBCIII appears to Western eyes, it must’ve been triumphant enough in Hong Kong – two more sequels were made before the franchise was retired. Now, these movies I cannot find anyplace…maybe if I went down to Chinatown, I could find a bootleg entirely without subtitles or anything…but I doubt it. Instead, what scant info can I dredge up about N!xau’s final films?

The Gods Must Be Crazy IV (1993) – Like all good Hong Kong movies, this film takes on a truly staggering number of alternate titles when translated into English. It is known as Hong Kong is Also Crazy, and Crazy Hong Kong. And with the Kalahari Desert having been parched of all narrative usefulness (I mean, once they’ve gone “vampire,” there’s not much else you can do), this series’ setting is switched up for the very first time. (I’m kind of amazed, actually, that TGMBCIII was filmed in Africa.) At last Xi makes it to the big city – Hong Kong – as the fish-out-of-water element is reversed at last. I thought this notion should’ve been the framework of Part Two. Of course, I really doubt the Chinese would have the proper ratio of satire and respect Uys would’ve brought to this notion.

The Gods Must Be Crazy V (1994) – Also known as An African Superman or The Gods Must Be Funny, TGMBCV sees Xi (or possibly he’s now just called N!xau, if IMDb is to be believed) stranded in China once again – but apparently rural China. You know, when you’re forcing his collision with one distant nation thrice in a row, things get a little strained. Wildlife footage seems to remain, pandas now fulfilling that role. They’re also a poaching target, hence the villains. And all reviews I find lambast the film for an overreliance on the wackiness and cartoon sound effects the franchise is known for – and apparently they’re actually increased tenfold for this entry. Oddly enough, it seems Jamie Uys made a triumphant directorial return for the finale, teaming up with Chinese director Kin-Nam Cho.

Here was the end of the franchise, all filmmakers worldwide deciding they’d exploited their bushman star long enough. For a series that was pretty “woogie woogie” right out of the gate, it seems things descended straight into extreme juvenilia. And of course the more niche you make a series, the less audience for it there is. Money had been made, time had been wasted, and it was time for everyone to go their separate ways.

Star N!xau returned home to Namibia, foregoing his life as an actor to resume a humble life as a farmer. N!xau spent his final years harvesting corn, pumpkins and beans, and herding no more than 20 cows – seeing as he couldn’t count beyond that. He passed away in 2003.


Related posts:
• No. 1 The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)
• No. 2 The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989)