Though it’s unlikely to knock Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, or the like out of US box-office supremacy here, 2024 may not see a better action movie in terms of sheer kinetic physicality than Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, which arrives three months after its home-turf release. In Hong Kong, it has already become the second-highest-grossing domestic feature of all time. It’s set in the late 1980s, when Kowloon Walled City—a six-acre former military fort site that had already spent decades as a haven for refugees from the law and immigration authorities—was on the verge of being demolished. Fleeing there after an altercation with triad boss Mr. Big (Sammo Hung) is Lok (Raymond Lam), a stateless, orphaned man who eventually realizes this anarchic yet close-knit community may be the home he’s spent his life searching for.
Directed by Soi Cheang, this long-aborning project (apparently in development for decades) wastes nary a moment between terrific if frequently over-the-top street fighting scenes. It does get more melodramatic and humorless for a while once Lok realizes his previously-unknown heritage tangles him in a mortal grudge between criminal factions. Still, this is a big, colorful, busy, and likable entertainment, with terrific production design—apparently the rabbit-warren-like slum sets built for the film took up about as much space as the real-life “walled city” itself, which was razed in 1993. Twilight opens in US theaters this Fri/9.
Several other male loners cause a stir in other movies getting released or revived locally this weekend. Though not the medium’s first cowboy star, William S. Hart became one of the biggest of the silent era’s screen attractions—even if his career (eclipsed by changing fashions and new genre kingpin Tom Mix) was over by 1925, well before “talkies” arrived. Already a veteran stage actor, he had almost immediate success upon entering the movies at age 50 in 1914. The Return of Draw Egan, which is showing at the 4-Star this Thurs/8 (more info here) was a typical vehicle with the long-faced, hawk-nosed star directing himself as “the most sought after man along the border,” a notorious bandit who manages to successfully escape a posse.
Surfacing pseudononymously—as “William Blake,” no less—in a rough frontier town whose less rowdy citizens want it tamed, he improbably manages to get himself appointed marshal. But that respectable gig is endangered once a member of his old gang (one with “a streak of yellow as wide as a barn door”) turns up, threatening to expose his past. These brisk, scenically impressive 50 minutes demonstrate Hart’s attention to authenticity and his vinegary panache as a performer—though expect some latterday comedic irreverence, as the film’s intertitles have been rewritten by comedian Mac Blake. It will be also accompanied live by Justin Sherburn of Austin’s indie chamber music group Montopolis, playing a score drawn from Morricone soundtracks.
Another uninvited stranger coasting into many a town is the subject of Dominic and Nadia Gill’s Planetwalker: The Inner-Magic of Dr. John Francis. An African American Philly native who moved to Point Reyes when it was a rural hippie enclave, Francis was appalled when two oil tankers collided in 1972’s San Francisco Bay, the nearly one-million-gallon spill wreaking havoc. He took this “environmental insult” to heart, first deciding to stop using oil-fueled vehicles, then to stop talking… for nearly two decades.
His mute, on-foot “pilgrimage” across the US and beyond spread a message of ecological mindfulness–though as a lone Black man in rural areas, he also experienced a few hairy moments of open hostility. Voluntary silence somehow did not prevent him from earning a BA, then a PhD, or even lecturing (with chalk and gestures). Still active, and once again vocal, he will appear with the filmmakers for Q&A sessions after nightly 6pm showings of this half-hour documentary at the Smith Rafael Film Center, Fri/9-Thurs/15, more info here.
The peacemaking vibe Francis radiates is not at all echoed by the main figures in some choice guilty-pleasure revivals at local theaters this coming week. Next Wed/14-Thurs/15 the Balboa Theater have 70th anniversary screenings—in 35mm and 3-D, no less—of Creature From the Black Lagoon (more info here), arguable king of all 1950s “guy in rubber suit emerges from surf to kidnap beach babes” movies. Though not among 1954’s top box-office performers, the B&W Universal release spawned two sequels, innumerable imitations, and an upscale de facto remake as 2017 Best Picture winner The Shape of Water.
Of course Guillermo del Toro’s critter was more sympathetic than his inspiration, a prehistoric “Gill-Man” (played by two actors, 6’5” Ben Chapman on land, watershow veteran Ricou Browning in the studio tank) who climbs out of the Brazilian Amazon to harass visiting scientists. Its frequent appearances greeted by Henry Mancini’s shrill trumpets of alarm, this amphibious beast of course wants Beauty, in the person of beetle-browed Julie Adams. Directed by the era’s sci-fi specialist Jack Arnold (It Came From Outer Space, The Incredible Shrinking Man), it remains an above-average B movie with a slick look and pace if few ideas.
Other two-legged freaks figure in a couple even campier selections at the Alamo Drafthouse, both playing next Wed/14. There’s On Deadly Ground (more info here), in which the inimitable Steven Seagal was rewarded for the success of his prior action vehicles by being allowed to write and direct this one—something that would never be allowed to occur again. This flabber-ghastly 1994 pseudo-mystical pro-environment arse-whupping extravaganza may be the single most memorable screen achievement for “The Great One” (a supposed nickname one suspects he gave himself), at least in terms of unintentional comedy. Also starring: Michael Caine.
A decade earlier, Faye Dunaway—one of the few stars said to be routinely capable of stirring Seagal-level emotions from beleaguered coworkers—played the villainess in Supergirl (more info here). Witchy Selena sets herself up in world-dominating opposition to Helen Slater’s titular figure, Superman’s cousin, who disguises herself as a boarding school student after arriving via intergalactic journey. Brenda Vaccaro plays Selena’s sidekick, and her comments on that professional experience (to be found on YouTube and elsewhere) are at least as entertaining as this big, silly, juvenile action-adventure. It retains the distinction of being the only Man of Steel-related movie to lose money.
