"Way of the Dragon"(1972)d/Bruce Lee

We haven't even gotten to the big yearly day of L-tryptophan intake, and I've already irresponsibly slacked most of the month away, but I assure you, folks, it's only because I'm busy beating on your mother's uvula with me yahzick.And so we come to the very first Bruce Lee review here at the Wop, skipping over Big Boss(1971) and Fists of Fury(1972) just to get to his third film; the global box office record breaking 'fish out of water' martial epic as written, co-produced, overdubbed, directed by, and starring the Little Dragon himself.Hell, he even helped compose the soundtrack with Joseph Koo.Is there anything that Lee, the single most familiar martial arts icon in the world(don't listen to these 98 pound weakling sand-grilled nerds with their played out Chuck Norris crap on the interwebs tubes), born Lee Jun Fan in San Francisco on November 27th, 1940, couldn't have accomplished, had he not suddenly perished on that fateful July 20th in 1973?From a martial artist's perspective, few things get the adrenaline flowing like one of Bruce's cat-like kiais that accompany his powerful techniques, almost too fast to be caught on camera, if you can believe that, and though kung fu movies have long since evolved into a more intricately choreographed ballet of brutality, Lee remains no less impressive with age, some forty years down the line.For his directorial debut, which was released in the U.S. as Return of the Dragon in 1974 to cash in on the success of his Enter the Dragon(1973) effort, Bruce enlisted the skills of Hapkido grandmaster Whang Ing-Sik, heavyweight kickboxing champion Bob Wall, and his sensei, eighth degree Tang Soo Do black belt and middleweight karate champion, Chuck Norris, in his acting(ahem) debut.Rounding out the cast here are Lee regulars, Nora Miao, Wei Ping Ao, and Bruce's lifelong friend, Unicorn Chan.

Insert risotto allo zafferano con petto d'anatra here.
Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) arrives in Rome(I swear this had no bearing on the Wopsploitation rating) to aid his friend's niece, Chen Ching Hua(Nora Miao), whose restaurant has been singled out by local mafiosi who've been using intimidation to try and force her to sell out to them.Chen, expecting one of her uncle's lawyers instead, is initially unimpressed by the naive bumpkin from the country, who's wary of banks and having difficulty with expressing himself in Italian and English to the point that he can barely order food or resist the advances of local prostitutes.At the restaurant, the workers clumsily practice karate out back to pass the time, since the gangsters continually frighten off potential customers, and even they don't think too much of Tang at first, or see how this small yokel could possibly improve their predicament.That is, until the thugs show up to do some more bullying in his presence, forcing him to take them out back, and humble them with his Chinese boxing.All comers are quickly immobilized by the the little man's fists, feet, bo staff, and dual nunchaku, from the obligatory soul brother to the Roman version of Wolfman Jack, amidst the cheers of his former detractors and skepticism of the unfortunately named Uncle Wang(Wang Chung-Hsin).The mob boss(Jon Benn), not a man easily swayed by speed-of-light spinning hook kicks, gets his flamboyantly garbed, effeminate lieutenant, Ho(Wei Ping-Ao), to send a gunman to dispatch the restaurant's new hero, but Tang nullifies his gun with wooden throwing darts and breaks his neck for his efforts.Tang warns the boss that he'll get serious if the thugs don't leave his friends alone, to which the boss responds by sending a message that he'll have Tang killed if he doesn't leave Rome pronto.Tang is unwavered by the criminal's empty threats, of course.

When wielding nunchaku in Rome, Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) knows the importance of malocchio.A good wifebeater doesn't hurt either.
The earlier gunman, now sporting a nifty neckbrace, is sent to Chen's apartment to snipe Tang, but receives more comeuppance from the proud Chinese.Chen gets kidnapped by the goons, but Tang and the boys quickly arrive on the scene to rescue her, with Tang jump kicking a ceiling light(!) and cracking his massive knuckles in the boss' face to illustrate his previous point.Ho calls on two of his friends, an American(Bob Wall) and a Japanese(Whang Ing-Sik), both of whom are martial experts, to handle the syndicate's problems, but their language barrier escalates into a fight that's only broken up by the arrival of Colt(Chuck Norris), the karate champ from America that happens to be the other American's sensei.Tang and company are lured to the country nearby to the Roman colosseum by Ho, where they are set upon by the two foreign experts, neither of which proves much of a match for Tang.While Ho goads him to give chase, the other workers exhaustedly fight the two karatekas until Uncle Wang surprises them with a knife to the kidneys, explaining that the boss had paid him well for his treachery.At the ancient arena, Tang encounters Colt instead of Ho, and the two men warm up together, achknowledging that they will battle to the death, with a small feral kitten watching in the wings.At the outset, Colt's powerful strikes overwhelm the small fighter, who increases his own quickness and fluidity to best the American, breaking his arm and one of his legs in the process.When Colt refuses to give up, Tang snaps his neck, sadly draping his gi over his battered, lifeless body out of respect, turning, and once again giving chase to Ho, who tries to sneakily escape.Meanwhile, Uncle Wang, who's shanked up all his nephews for cash, tries to shiv Tang, but gets shot along with Ho by the angry don, who arrives by car, only to see that his latest plan is another failure.Before he can shoot the tiny Chinese bane of his criminal existence, the authorities arrive and take him into custody.At the graveyard, Tang and Chen pay their last respects to their dead friends before the young man bids her adieu, finally returning home.Waaaaaaaassssssssaaaaaa!!!

"Your-ah Chinese Boxing is ah-squashing the ravioli!", says Chef Boi Ahr Di(Wang Chung-hsin).
It should also be noted that Yuen Biao also makes an early cameo here as one of Bruce Lee's whipping boys.Lee would go on to star in Enter the Dragon with Nora Miao again, ironically, his last completed motion picture before dying the same year.Unicorn Chan, who also appeared in Fists of Fury with Lee, would also meet a tragic end in a 1987 car accident in Malaysia, while Chuck Norris would again play a villain in his next movie, 1973's awful Slaughter in San Francisco, which is often packaged as a starring role for the wooden Irish/Cherokee actor of little renown, instead of the terrible Don Wong vehicle it really is.Norris wouldn't get his marquee turn until four years later with Breaker! Breaker!(1977).Lee's only directorial effort is an even-handed affair, with nice cinematography and excellent pacing that leave one pondering what he would have gone on to do should he have lived a longer life.On the scale, Way earns three solid Wops, and deserves its place on woprophiles' shelves as an exciting kung fu exercise and cult classic.Recommended.

...And with four rapid-fire kicks to the facepiece, Bruce Lee makes a Chuck Norris joke out of Chuck Norris.

"It's Alive"(2008)d/Josef Rusnak

To the the wake that includes the two sequels that followed Larry Cohen's minor horror hit, It's Alive(1974), you can now add one pretty bad remake, courtesy of the man who was a second unit director on the legendarily pungent 1998 American Godzilla.Cohen himself gave the Rusnak production a seething review, saying, "It's a terrible picture. It's just beyond awful.".He ain't just whistlin' Dixie, either.Besides the little homicidal mutant, there's little discernible common ground between the movies save for the inconsistency that plagues both productions, with this one played completely straight with no comedy...or at least no intentional comedy therein.The imdb listing for Bijou Phillips, who's the female lead here in case you were wondering, calls the actress "multi-talented" and I'm gonna go out on a limb here in guessing her equestrienne, singing, and modeling skills far outweigh her acting chops.I honestly can't remember her in her other genre roles in Hostel:Part II(2007) or the Wizard of Gore remake(2007)(Okay, I haven't bothered with the latter one to date, sue me).Director Rusnak doesn't do much to hoist the production out of the gutter, generating no suspense whatsoever with his pedestrian style, further hindered by a mutt of a script that chucks logic and reasoning out the nearest open window.As much as I openly despise the vast majority of horror remakes the industry has been otiosely churning out in recent years, I really wanted to dig this one, but everything about it sucks like getting arrested the day after Christmas, and uh, yeah, I've experienced that, too, for those of you out there keeping score.Downward.

Safe to say, Shane MacGowan wasn't suckling at this particular teat.
Somewhere in New Mexico(or Bulgaria, if you happen to be paying attention), pregnant collegiate Lenore Harker(Bijou Phillips) skips out of her classes before the semester's end to have her baby with architect/beau Frank Davis(James Murray) and his invalid brother(Raphaël Coleman) at his disjunct little bungalow in Larkspur(again, Bulgaria, for anyone with eyes), amidst the protests of her bestie, who figures she's just gonna drop out of school once she's immersed in child rearing.After an abnormally rapid prenatal growth spurt and one strawberry preserves-splattered delivery room full of mutilated neonatologists, obstetricians, and nurses later, the unsuspecting parents take their new bundle of joy(deformed monster in some shots, completely normal looking toddler in others) home amidst the bustle of clueless investigators and police dogs.When the snaggletoothed little bastard isn't perforating his mammy's tits while breastfeeding, he's sneaking out of his crib off-camera to hungrily hunt, kill, and devour a pigeon.Even after Lenore catches him feeding on a cat, she throws the battered carcass into the trash and reprimands the baby for his predatory bloodlust like he's crayoned up a wall or something.It's only a matter of time before little Daniel re-expands his food chain to include eastern bloc extras with names that end in "ova" and "eva" who've had their voices ADR'ed to sound more American.The wheelchair-bound Chris returns books to the school library and interacts with classmates in head-scratching subplot sequences that look to have been mostly excised and left on the cutting room floor.What purpose does he serve in this movie, again?

Then the buggy-eyed rubber baby bumped her...
After growing increasingly concerned about Lenore when all her attempts to call her go unreturned, Marnie decides to pay her old friend a visit, earning her a CGI-baby fist punch through her facepiece after she discovers her boyfriend's remains in the back of a pickup truck full of Christmas trees(He eats hot baby-powered CGI death just off-camera during a smoke break).When Lenore stumbles upon the carnage, she merely hides the corpses in the basement before her husband, who seems disinterested in any of the goings on(or maybe he's just not a good actor), gets home.After Sgt. Perkins'(Owen Teale) investigation leads him to take a deputy out to the Davis place, getting to meet the pint-sized purveyor of polishing off face-to-face while in his unofficial-looking squad car.Not only equipped with a ravenous propensity for flesh n' blood, Daniel can also apparently shrink to the size of a pea, saving the effects team a lot of unnecessary headaches in trying to depict the child's fiendish murders, which greatly resemble a Tazmanian Devil cartoon whirlwind.Somewhere along the line here, Lenore confesses to Frank that she took an abortion pill upon becoming pregnant, but the guilt of her actions led her to pray that the baby somehow survived, despite it.Some acting would have helped here.After a tensionless square off in the darkened basement, Frank manages to trap Daniel in a garbage can(!), but after dragging it off into the woods, he can't bring himself to shoot the infernal thing, and when he pulls the lid off, his son makes minced meat out of his labonza for the effort.Lenore fetches her child and returns to their burning house with it, as Frank and Chris marvel at the horrendous CGI flame effects from outside.Eighty minutes?Felt like two eighty, ferchrissakes.

CG-Ay yai yai.
As you may remember, we stamped a single Wop upon the Larry Cohen original, while the remake with the 'advantage' of all the advances in technology and filmmaking techniques that have come in the past thirty-four years still somehow manages to earn the same marks as its predecessor.Deceiving really, since the Cohen movie is infinitely more entertaining with its grindhouse charms and muddled effects than this recent puddle of abysmally-paced sludge, showcasing some unapologetically lazy cgi(whether you're talking the continuity-defying creature effects or greenscreened scenery outside moving vehicle windows, it's all pretty rotten) and lifeless acting performances whose 'suck' is intensified by some flaccid dubbing that rivals an early eighties Godfrey Ho production.It's a pity, too, because, in the right hands this one could've improved upon the original, instead of existing as yet one more crappy remake that insults the intelligence of horror fans worldwide.As promising as monster babies may seem for genre freaks, you're gonna wanna abort this one in the first trimester, folks, trust me.

"I warned you about building a diversified portfolio, but you didn't listen to me!"

"Female Trouble"(1974)d/John Waters

Tonight we'll focus on the 1974 cult classic from the filthiest people alive, as directed by he of the pencil moustache and Kleenex box shoes clan, John Waters.After forcing audiences to leave the theater ranting and raving about his prior movie, Pink Flamingos, which ends as Waters' reverse sex symbol, Divine, scoops up a steaming dog turd and pops it into his/her/its mouth.Hard to top that kind of climax, I'm guessing, but somehow, he did just that a mere two years later with another salaciously uproarious excursion into the bowels of poor taste that he originally titled "Rotten Mind, Rotten Face", and dedicated to imprisoned Manson family member, Charles "Tex" Watson, who made a wooden helicopter(!) for the director that appears in the opening credits.As is always the case with a Waters movie, the dialogue is a fucking scream(Waters wrote, edited, produced, directed, and handled the cinematography himself) and the meretricious set pieces and makeups ably handled by Dreamlanders Vincent and Ed Peranio, Van Smith, Chris Mason, and David Lochary, respectively.Speaking of Dreamlanders, this would be the last time that all of the original coterie of Baltimore-based creeps would be assembled for a non compos mentis Waters production, as male lead David Lochary would overdose on PCP(!!), allegedly falling on a glass and bleeding to death(!!!) in his New York apartment just three years later at the age of 32.Oh God, how heartwarming.The original 89 minute 35 mm print was later restored to include an extra eight minutes, as the film had been seen in Europe all along, with a remixed stereo surround soundtrack, for release as a double feature dvd, paired with 'Pink Flamingos', though this package has long since gone out-of-print and isn't easy to find.Onward!

"Won't you join us in a carol before we open our gifts?""Oh, Mother..."
We're introduced to Dawn Davenport(Divine), an overweight juvenile delinquent and shit-kicker with dreams of fame, as she receives failing marks in Geography at an all girls' school in 1960's Baltimore.The rotund troublemaker passes notes, lies, cheats, and fights in class, when a decent girl who's only looking for a good education(!) rats her out for eating a twelve inch meatball sandwich right in front of her terrified classmates.When she receives the wrong pair of shoes for Christmas("What are THESE?!!!"), she throws her own mother into the Christmas tree and sobbingly runs off to hitch a ride from a balding, overweight scumbag named Earl Peterson(also Divine) in an Edsel, who proceeds to fuck her out on a skeevy mattress on the side of the road(!!).After Peterson tells her to get the hook, Dawn is forced to give birth to her daughter alone in a fleabag motel, severing the umbilical cord with her teeth(!!!).We follow Dawn in a late sixties montage through her career choices: waitress, go-go dancer, streetwalker, petty thief.Her daughter, Taffy(!), is an eight year old brat who incessantly repeats nursery rhymes while jumping rope in the house.Dawn does what any good mother would do, first beating her with a car aerial, then chaining her in the attic with the help of her two cohorts, Chiclet and Concetta(Susan Walsh, Cookie Mueller).She soon finds herself amorously bound to a hairdresser named Gator, who's Aunt Ida(Edith Massey) is an obese old fag hag that dresses like a dominatrix and pleads for him to be a homosexual("Oh honey, I'd be so happy if you'd turn nellie.").Gator works for the Lipstick Beauty Salon, as owned by the Dashers, Donald(David Lochary) and Donna(Mary Vivian Pierce), a haute couture couple who inject liquid eyeliner for kicks; Donald pays a fortune for his wife's clothes, while Donna rarely eats any form of noodle.It's not long before the flamboyant pair enlists the criminal mind of Davenport for an artistic venture that begins when their flashbulbs bathe Davenport as she breaks a chair over her daughter's back in a fit of dysfunctional rage and poses atop her unconscious frame like a victorious big game hunter.

Dawn Davenport(Divine)-1, umbilical cord-0.
When Dawn divorces Gator and has him fired from the salon after catching a young hippie chick riding his face, he goes to Detroit to be close to the auto industry(!), sending Ida into a vengeful tizzy, as she splashes our heroine in the face with disfiguring hydrochloric acid.The Dashers convince Dawn her hideous face is the embodiment of true beauty, abducting Ida and imprisoning her in a giant birdcage in Dawn's new digs.As Davenport chops off the elderly woman's hand, the Dashers feverishly snap away, paparazzi-style.Meanwhile, Taffy(Mink Stole), not content to spend her mother's money playing car crash with bloodied mannekins in the living room anymore, has grown into an annoying Hare Krishna after avoiding both Gator's and Earl Peterson's sexual advances(she stabs the slobbish perv/birth father to death with a condiment-stained steak knife), and selflessly giving Ida a hook for her bloody stump.Dawn strangles the shit out of her until she's dead for her spiritual awakening.With exhibitionism flowing through her veins, Dawn puts on a filthy stage show for a cheering seedy backalley crowd where she deep throats a fish, and flops clumsily around in a playpen before exclaiming excitedly, "I blew Richard Speck!" then opening fire on the crowd and killing her fans for art.On trial for murder, she soon finds all of her former entourage willing to testify against her to save their own skins.Finally, she's walked to the electric chair, delusional to the very end, treating her own execution as the ultimate press opportunity.Bzzzzt.The end.

"Let me out of this cage, little Taffy...and I'll give you a cookie!"
Waters, who almost smokes as much as this guy over here, would follow this one up with 1976's Desperate Living, a deliriously twisted fairy tale, before moving on to more mainstream friendly fare like the Odorama epic, Polyester(1979) and Cry Baby(1990).For those who've championed the Earl of Puke from his humble 8 mm backyard beginnings in the mid-sixties, his current Hollywood acceptance is especially satisfying, and though his newer films may not revel and frolic in bad taste as they once did, you can usually catch a quirky line of dialogue or two that reminds you that he hasn't forgotten where he came from, either.Personally, I think tonight's review might be my favorite John Waters movie of them all, at the very least, an excellent introduction for novice filth mongers looking to get acquainted with his disturbed, side-splittingly hilarious cinematic visions.On the scale, Trouble scores a perfect four Wops as it proudly strangles its viewers in a finely-woven noose of filth, for art's sake.Highest recommendation.

"They say I'm a skank, But I don't care... Go ahead, put me In your el-e-ectric chair!"