Tag Archives: Action

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CAPSULE: THE WAVES OF MADNESS (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Jason Trost

FEATURING: Jason Trost, ,

PLOT: Agent LeGrasse is charged with investigating a distress signal from an ocean liner which has veered off course into the center of the Spacecraft Cemetery.

COMMENTS: A throwaway line at the start of The Waves of Madness reveals a great deal in hindsight. Ambling drunkenly to the bar on a massive ocean liner, a passenger seeks a final drink for the night—some Scotch—and is mistakenly served rum. No matter, he assures the embarrassed bartender, “It’s all going to the same place.” Little does our tippler know: it is indeed. Every single passenger, all of them doomed.

Jason Trost wastes no time laying down the story and style in The Waves of Madness, a tight little bit of Lovecraftian adventure that appears to be the launch of his next recurring movie universe. We quickly meet Agent LeGrasse, a professional working under the direction of an unspecified global organization. “The Elders of the Sea” (an ominously christened vessel if ever there was one) has an emergency—one so dire that its distress signal explicitly advises against anyone coming to the rescue. Despite this, LeGrasse boats over, docks his craft, and explores the floating derelict with nothing but his handgun, a few flash-bang grenades, and backpack stuffed with “Plan B.”

Anyone familiar with survival horror video games and  side-scrollers will immediately observe Trost’s inspiration. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen lateral camera movement packed so densely anywhere else. Trost nails ‘game logic,’ too, adding to the experience. LeGrasse discovers an in-g̶a̶m̶e̶ -movie clue about how light can stop the menace, and before a pivotal bit of actioneering, counts aloud to determine how many seconds he has to enact a tricky maneuver. There’s even what appears to be a escort mission (and like most gamers, LeGrasse wants nothing to do with that); but this ends up being part of an underlying ambiguity explored more thoroughly through the three timelines that concurrently unfold as our jaded agent delves deeper into the mystery.

Trost knows his roots in the gaming world—and has now provided evidence beyond the delightfully ridiculous foray into epic levels of DDR in his FP saga. The Waves of Madness isn’t groundbreaking. We’ve seen most of these pieces before: lost cruise ship, strange cult doings, mysterious eldritch entities, hard-boiled gunman, and so on. But the director (and screen-writer, and producer, and one of the soundtrack musicians…) has distilled his various inspirations into a pleasingly particular experience, which will click on all the nostalgia switches for many viewers—and hopefully inspire others to investigate what it is Trost is celebrating.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…as the strong-jawed, eye-patched, laconic Legrasse wanders through this seaborne hellscape as though he were trapped in a Thirties horror adventure or a surreal noir – even though he comes with technology (mobile phones, digital downloads, a portable ‘nuke’) very much from our own age – his own past, present and future become similarly confounded…The highly mannered nature of Legrasse’s experiences on the ship has the viewer too constantly questioning their reality… this is hokey retro fun, turning one man’s trauma into genre-bound pandemonium, and reinterpreting cinema’s fantasy worlds as (un)safe spaces for drifitng pyches [sic] to explore.”–Anton Bitel, Projected Figures (contemporaneous) 

The Waves of Madness

The Waves of Madness
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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: LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Rose Glass

FEATURING: , Katy O’Brian, , Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco,

PLOT: In a small Southwestern city, Lou (Stewart) manages a gym and generally keeps her head down, keeping an eye on her sister, Beth (Malone) and her abusive husband, JJ (Franco), while keeping distance from her dad, Lou Sr. (Harris), a major player in the local crime scene. When Lou meets Jackie, who’s temporarily working for her dad while saving money for a body building competition in Vegas, sparks fly, setting off a conflagration which threatens to burn everything to the ground.

 

Still from love lies bleeding (2024)

COMMENTS: It’s reductive to call Love Lies Bleeding just a queer neo-noir, but that is basically what it is. It hits all the right noir notes: shady characters mired in shady dealings for questionable reasons. The setting (New Mexico, 1989) brings the “neo” to the noir, along with the fact that the star-crossed protagonists are a lesbian couple instead of the usual heterosexual pairing. And at first glance, it seems that, interesting and entertaining as it is—performances are good all around, as well as Glass’ direction—there’s nothing truly “weird” about this, at least not in the way we at 366 Weird Movies define the term.

However, as an A24 release, it’s at least atypical: it ain’t no Bound, for sure. For one thing, the setting allows for Glass and co-writer Weronika Tofilska to make some cultural commentary. There’s a solid background of violence always hovering about, and Lou Sr.’s club/shooting range is always packed with people eagerly exercising their Second Amendment rights, evoking specters of the wild west. There’s also the gym rat culture: intimidating motivational slogans and steroid use, which is a major plot point in the story.

The weird elements aren’t exactly subtle, but they are startling and metaphorical: a massive ravine in the landscape that reads as rather vaginal and several instances of ‘roid rage. At the bodybuidling competition, Jackie vomits up a full-grown Lou. The climatic confrontation between Jackie, Lou, and Lou Sr. has been called “the most A24 ending of A24 endings.” It works well, as long as it’s not taken literally, and it doesn’t detract from the denouement, which isn’t afraid to put the worm in the apple, as noir endings go. It may not be “weird” in the full sense, but there’s enough weird to notice in this hot, queer neo-noir.

Still 2 from Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Currently streaming on several platforms like Max, Hulu, and Sling, the film is also on a Region-free Blu-ray with a commentary by Glass and Tofilska, two featurettes—“In the Land of Guns and Muscles” and “Sex, Steroids and Codependency”—and an image gallery. A 4K UHD will be available in January 2025.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… an exciting, instant classic that will hopefully usher in a new era of unapologetically weird lesbian cinema.”–Jourdain Searles, Autostraddle (contemporaneous)

Love Lies Bleeding | Kristen Stewart | Region Free

Love Lies Bleeding | Kristen Stewart | Region Free
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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ENDGAME (2000) / OPERATION: ENDGAME (2010)

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The second highest-grossing motion picture of all time—the product of a little indie shingle that hit the jackpot, called Avengers: Endgame—is also by fiat the highest-grossing motion picture of all time with the word “endgame” in the title. That’s not as easy a title to grab as you might think; IMDb lists several dozen features, shorts, and TV episodes that have relied upon the handy term for the final moves of a chess match, most of which preceded Marvel’s grand finale. So it’s probably the law of averages that put two different Endgames on our reader-suggested review queue within spitting distance of each other. Aside from their titles, these two films share exactly two common elements: they both use hurtful language with reckless abandon, and they are both shot on film. Beyond that, you couldn’t ask for two similarly titled stories to be further apart in style, tone, and subject matter. What makes them both worthy to bear the standard of games that end? Let’s dig in.

ENDGAME (2000)

DIRECTED BY: Conor McPherson

FEATURING: , , Charles Simon, Jean Anderson

PLOT: In a barren house at the end of the world, a blind and decrepit old man lives with his parents (who occupy a pair of rubbish bins) and his hobbled servant, who is contemplating a departure.

COMMENTS: Let’s give a warm welcome back to Samuel Beckett, previously seen round these parts waiting for a friend. Another entry from Irish television’s epic “Beckett on Film” cycle capturing all the great writer’s stage works on celluloid for posterity, Endgame is here to deliver the author’s vision of a bleak and doomed future for the human race, precisely according to the author’s wishes. The set is an almost-empty room, devoid of any decoration or furnishing that isn’t occupied by an actor for the duration. Beckett was notoriously allergic to anything ornamental (as with Godot, he originally wrote Endgame in French to curb any tendencies toward florid vocabulary), so what we see and hear is not just what matters but all that matters.

What we can see is definitely a surreal nightmare. All four characters are stricken with various invalidities. Hamm, the apparent lord of the manor, doesn’t enter so much as he is unveiled, and when he speaks it is to declare himself the center of the universe. “Can there be misery loftier than mine?” He is immobile, and thus relies upon the assistance of a crippled man who is himself unable to sit down. The apocalypse has obliterated everything outside of this room. (“Nothing on the horizon?” Hamm asks. “What in God’s name could there be on the horizon?” Clov replies.) And then there are the upstage trash cans that Continue reading THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ENDGAME (2000) / OPERATION: ENDGAME (2010) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: DESPISER (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Phillip J. Cook

FEATURING: Mark Redfield, Doug Brown, Gage Sheridan, Frank Smith, Michael Weitz, Tara Bilkins, Mark Hyde

PLOT: A near-death experience pulls a down-on-his-luck artist into Purgatory, where a rag-tag team are waging a losing battle against the Despiser.

Still from Despiser (2003)

COMMENTS: Phillip Cook loves action: gunfights and explosions abound. He also loves metaphysics: purgatory is real. He loves, too, hearty doses of ambiguity: is this death-world really purgatory, or just another dimension? Most of all, though, he loves his CGI: its delineations, its vibrancy, its rudimentality—its ubiquity. Despiser will cater to any number of genre enthusiasts, but if you’re not on board with his late ’90s, classic-Windows era aesthetic, you should just keep walking.

Personally, I was fully on board with watching the action-machinations of a gang of do-gooders, who exhaust any amount of bullets, burn any amount of tire tread, and quip any amount of one-liners, as they careen through an uncanny world of angular churches, Day-Glo lava, and boxy sports cars. Despiser‘s backdrop is an odd and exciting one, contrasting greatly with the humdrum doings in the living world of our reluctant hero, Gordon: unmotivated painter, failed graphic designer, and, in the end, savior. His dreams—and a near-death experience or two—may be a flashy, dark, and stripped-down nigh Hellscape, but that sure beats his (and our) ho-hum, beige existence. The visual clash is bold, as observed by Gordon himself: “This place doesn’t look real”, he muses upon arrival. And no, it does not. Thank goodness.

The plot twitches along from action set-piece to action set-piece, with religious overtones not quite saturating the atmosphere. The gun-toting team of righteous actioneers who take Gordon into their fold is led by a wisecracking, scripture-quoting Army Ranger from the turn of the 20th century: Carl Nimbus, who never met a Bible passage he couldn’t twist into a badass threat. Despiser almost comes across as something of a gotta-be-cool Christian movie, but Phillip Cook has it both ways (indeed, he has it several ways). Just when the God-and-Thunder motifs threaten to show their hand, Cook deflates them, most notably when Carl quotes, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—Psalms: 23”. Gordon rejoins, “We’re on a highway to Hell. AC/DC: 1980.” This is not a movie to take entirely seriously.

But the characters do, and that’s key for us being on board with the imaginative nonsense which unravels, re-ravels, and ultimately ends up as an entertaining crochet of in-your-face foolishness, bullet-flying fantasy, and desperate characters going to desperate measures to thwart the titular Despiser. (A being so evil, it could only have been properly voiced by author/producer/director Phillip Cook.) I spent two bucks renting this diversion, but golly if I’m not tempted to buy the modestly priced super-duper Blu-ray. Not to sound too religious here, but it’s a small blessing that this singular cinematic extravaganza (made for video though it was) came around the first time, but also to be released in tip-top form on a disc featuring all the great love for the material that makes Despiser the funtime oddity it is.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… weird, convoluted, all around dumb and yet completely fucking awesome…. [Cook’s] bizarre fetish for low quality CGI and green screens spreads through his entire work history and you gotta respect a guy for sticking to his guns. If you want low budget action that’s determined to be itself and be refuses to take itself anything less than seriously, you’ll love what the guy has to offer…” — Mikey Ward, Mondo Exploito

Despiser [Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition]

Despiser [Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition]
  • Collector's Edition
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