Category Archives: Capsules

Capsules

CAPSULE: QUEER (2024)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Drew Starkey, ,

PLOT: The arrival of an enigmatic young man in 1950s Mexico City disrupts William Lee’s dissolute routine with the promise of companionship.

COMMENTS: Queer begins with a character sketch in the opening credits. Static shots of a small apartment reveal a cheap mattress, and a series of things—the first being a scuttling centipede. There are rumpled blankets, pairs of glasses, cigarettes (both stubbed-out and fresh), books, a passport and visa, a camera, a ViewMaster, and an array of pistols. Seven of them, to be precise, all nicely arranged. By the end of the opening credits, you know the character pretty well, even if you’re unfamiliar both with the author William Lee facsimulates, and the book the movie is based upon.

William Lee is an obviously intelligent but woefully uncharismatic fellow approaching or already in middle age. He has difficulty keeping still, and the camera mimics his erratic physicality by cutting from micro-shot to micro-shot as the protagonist bumps through his alcohol-fueled days and nights. It’s hot, and we can feel it alongside the array of gringos who’ve set up a little gay community in a borough of Mexico City that seems comprised exclusively of cheap bars, cheaper apartments, and by-the-hour hotels. We are there, with Lee, and can feel him either about to crack from his own tension or melt away into a puddle of boozy-Beatnik soup.

Queer, the film, has two halves: the first is a (very) awkward romance of sorts, wherein Daniel Craig’s Lee clumsily attempts to woo a young cypher named Eugene. We never learn too much about the guy, which is apt, in that one of the few things we do learn concerns his involvement with army intelligence during World War Two—and the staggering amount of lies he was tasked with sifting through. The second half involves a desperate Lee seeking an ancient drug in the Ecuadorian jungle to overcome his communication deficits, having—despite his self-perceived lack of persuasive powers—convinced Eugene to be his semi-paid companion. Surrealistic touches season the goings-on: disorienting flares of television static; a giant Lee looking in on a tiny Lee through a mock-up of an apartment building within his apartment room; and even a jaunt to see Cocteau’s Orpheus.

Guadagnino confronts the challenge of translating an incomplete Burroughs novel for the screen, and acquits himself well. I’m inclined to be forgiving toward the movie, as adapting any of Burroughs’ word-bursts (be they novels, anecdotes, memoirs, or otherwise) into semi-coherent narratives requires making difficult choices. Craig is a delight as the author, Starkey maintains a tight balance of charm and impenetrability, and Guadagnino keeps the look and feel on course even as the subject matter becomes increasingly slippery. With unrequited love (but plenty of sex), gallons of sweat (despite chills from junk withdrawal), and a time-bending soundtrack, Queer is an pleasing experience, even as it often crossed my mind that a man this addled shouldn’t be carrying around any firearms—much less seven of them.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Kuritzkes and Guadagnino diverge from their source material in making Lee’s quest for psychedelic fulfillment successful. Queer has a vein of David Lynchian surrealism (RIP) that starts with the inky, oil-painting cinematography of the nocturnal Mexico City scenes and grows more pronounced in the third act, when Lesley Manville does a darkly hilarious turn as a botanist living deep in the jungle. Without spoiling: Things get weird.”–Margot Harrison, Seven Days (VT)

Queer [Blu-ray]

Queer [Blu-ray]
  • Daniel Craig
  • Drew Starkey
  • Jason Schwartzman
  • Lesley Manville
  • Luca Guadagnino
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Capsules

CASPULE: NINJA TERMINATOR (1986)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Jack Lam, Jonathan Wattis, Jeong-lee Hwang

PLOT: Three renegade ninjas each capture a part of a golden statue that will give them magical powers; they frequently call characters in a completely different movie who, through the magic of re-dubbing, deal with assassinations and kidnappings that appear to tangentially involve ninjas.

Still from ninja terminator (1986)

COMMENTS: Pity poor Jaguar Wong. He just wants to be a too-cool-for-school ass-kicker rescuing, then bedding, hot chicks, but he keeps being interrupted by telephone calls coming from another movie entirely from disinterested ninja Richard Harrison. Adding insult to inconvenience, the incoming calls are made from a Garfield phone! That’s right, Godfrey Ho is at it again, taking an undistinguished ninja-free catalog film (in this case, Korean chopsocky The Uninvited Guest) and adding newly shot footage to make an all-new movie all about then-trendy ninjas! Or at least, that’s the idea. As always, the plots of the two badly-fused movies make about as much sense as an owl’s head stitched onto a turtle’s body.

I have watched this film multiple times and am still not 100% certain how the theft of the ninja statue is supposed to fit into the Korean guys’ plotline1. I just know that Richard Harrison telephones the good guy (on a Garfield phone) and Jonathan Wattis telephones the bad guy (not on a Garfield phone; Garfield phones are reserved for good guy ninjas). But most of the time, Jaguar Wong just does his thing, and the ninjas do their thing. From the viewer’s perspective, it’s like flipping back and forth between two UHF channels showing competing martial arts flicks on a Saturday morning in 1986.

Absolutely no one is watching Ninja Terminator for the plot, anyway. They’re watching for the action scenes and for the bizarre directorial decisions that continually crop up. And the film disappoints on neither score. Of all the Godfrey Ho cut-and-pastes, Ninja Terminator may have chosen the best fighting to paste in. Jack Lam has a Bruce Lee (or at the very least a Bruce Le) quality about him. He fights effortlessly, moving as little as possible, letting assailants waste their energy before knocking them down with a standing kick to the head. No one’s a match for him until he faces endboss Jeong-lee Hwang (Drunken Master, a fighter so legendary that it is said he once killed an attacker with a single kick to the temple—in real life). All the fights are athletic spectacles, and the final battle is both epic and ridiculous. (Meanwhile, the ninja battles are athletic enough but look more like gymnastic exhibitions, with ninjas doing a lot of pointless cartwheels in the middle of combat). As far as strange touches go, take your pick, from the infamous Garfield phone to toy robots delivering messages from the evil ninja empire to a crime boss in a blond Prince Valiant wig to ninjas slicing watermelons for target practice to a random domestic crab attack to ninjas who wear more eyeliner than J.D. Vance. To top it all off, the film is scored by Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Ennio Morricone, and others (without their knowledge, of course—Ho’s musical taste greatly exceeds his scruples).

Ninja Terminator is the rare movie that’s impossible to recommend—yet everyone should see it.

Ninja Terminator sits in an odd situation regards our Canonically Weird List. Ho’s work is already represented there by Ninja Champion, which lacks the wind-up toy robot but has a shot of the iconic Garfield phone along with other highlights, such as ninjas who wear headbands reading “Ninja” and dialogue that is absurd even by Ho standards. Terminator, however, is probably the best-known, best-loved, and overall most-watchable of Ho’s ninja franchise. You can substitute Terminator for Champion in a pinch and still earn full credit on your weird-movie transcript.

Cauldron Films’ 2025 Blu-ray edition of Ninja Terminator has all Ho fans could ever want and more, including two (!) commentary tracks and interviews with Godfrey himself.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an incoherent mess that someone manages to engage and entertain throughout.”–Michael Den Boer, 10K Bullets (Blu-ray)

1. Wikipedia actually does a good job of reconstructing the plot, but, inspired by the spirit of Godfrey Ho, the summary includes nonsensical sentences like “Meanwhile, Ninja Master Harry and Ninja Master Baron, each the other has already tried to assassinate them.”

Ninja Terminator [Blu-ray]

Ninja Terminator [Blu-ray]
  • Years after being assaulted, a young woman (Juliet Chan) seeks bloody revenge on the five men responsible.
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Capsules

CAPSULE: FRECKLED MAX AND THE SPOOKS (1987)

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Pehavý Max a strašidlá

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DIRECTED BY: Juraj Jakubisko

FEATURING: , , Ferdinand Mayne, Gerhardt Karzel, Martin Hrebeň, Barbara De Rossi, Jacques Herlin, Mercedes Sampietro, Flavio Bucci, Milan Lasica, Julius Satinsky

PLOT: Orphan Max ditches the traveling circus and ends up at a castle just as Victor Frankenstein is preparing to animate his new creation, “Albert”; Count Dracula, water and fire spirits, Igor, the White Lady, and the Wolfman also haunt the premises.

Still from Freckled Max and the Spooks (1987)

COMMENTS: At first glance, the clunkily-titled Freckled Max and the Spooks hits all the marks as more-than-decent family entertainment, with a plucky orphan who falls in with a bevy of misfit monsters, leading to wacky adventures. Those of a certain age (OK, 60+) may be reminded of the Saturday morning show “Monster Squad” where the “Love Boat”‘s Fred Grandy solved mysteries with Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman. Young Frankenstein and 1972’s The Girl on a Broomstick are also similar in tone. Freckled Max‘s comedy isn’t quite as broad as those, but there is a fair amount of slapstick, mainly involving Martin Hrebeň’s monster Albert, in a performance that’s sort of a proto-Jason Segel. A slight element of European bawdiness intrudes from time to time, but the characters have an underlying sweetness—as well as a bittersweet sadness, notably in the backstories of Igor and The White Lady. As Count Dracula tells Max, “When someone ends up alone, he turns into a ghost.”

Freckled Max is stacked with a cast of stellar actors: Lindfors, Constantine, Mayne (who also played a vampire in The Fearless Vampire Killers), and familiar faces from Italian (De Rossi and Bucci) and Czech cinema (Lasica and Satinsky) cinema. If there’s one criticism about the film, it’s that you wish that you could spend more time with the characters. Freckled Max is a drastically reduced theatrical version of a 7-episode Czech miniseries, “Frankenstein’s Aunt” based on a book by Allan Rune Petterson. That it holds up as a satisfying viewing experience even in its truncated version is a testament to the skill of everyone involved.

Juraj Jakubisko was an acclaimed director (1969’s Birds, Orphans and Fools) who, like most of his contemporaries who remained in the country after the post-Prague Spring crackdown, fell into disfavor. When allowed to make films, their projects skewed towards non-problematic fare: documentaries or family-friendly subjects like fairy tales. Jakubisko did a magical realist miniseries, “The Millennial Bee” (1983, based on a novel by Peter Jaroš), which also got a reduced theatrical version, and the feature The Feather Fairy (1985, based on the Brothers Grimm tale “Mother Hulda” and starring .)

Restored by the Slovak Film Institute, Freckled Max gets its first ever U.S. Blu-ray release via Deaf Crocodile in limited and standard editions. Extras include a commentary by Samm Deighan and a visual essay “Frankenstein’s Faster” by Ryan Verrill and Dr. Will Dobson. Deighan digs into the differences between the mini-series and movie while Verill and Dobson examine the source material. The disc also includes interviews with director of photography Jan Duris, assistant director Petra Galkova, and director of the Slovak Film Institute Rastislav Steranka; a short (5 minutes) behind the scenes featurette; and “Portrait of a Film Director,” a 45 minute documentary about Jakubisko. The limited edition comes in a slipcase with art by Beth Morris and a booklet with essays by writers Walter Chaw and Stephen Peros.

The full miniseries got a DVD release in Germany (“Frankenstein’s Tante”), but with no English subtitles. It is not currently on any streaming services. However, the curious, motivated, and bilingual might find a Spanish language version (“La Tia de Frankenstein”) out on the interwebs.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a surreal fantasy film that’s reminiscent of Federico Fellini and Terry Gilliam.”–Michael Den Boer, 10K Bullets (Blu-ray)

Freckled Max And The Spooks [Blu-ray]

Freckled Max And The Spooks [Blu-ray]
  • Director Juraj Jakubisko's Gothic horror comedy about an orphan who hides out in Frankenstein's castle with a lovable rogues' gallery of monsters
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