Meat Loaf Tribute – Roadie

Last week saw the passing of renowned rock musician Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday), who shot to fame with the release of his 1977 debut album Bat Out of Hell – an album whose worldwide popularity transcends its deceptive cover’s promise of a more hard-edged metallic sound (a promise which, I must confess, has left me constantly disappointed by the sound of his musical output). His success as a singer, however, has somewhat overshadowed his surprisingly extensive career as an actor – a body of work which, to my mind, is far more interesting. Most people called upon to name a film in which he’s appeared would likely latch on to his cinematic debut as Eddie in the cult classic musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). If pushed, they might recall his cameos in Wayne’s World (1992) and Spiceworld (1997), or his supporting role in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999). But I’ve yet to meet anybody familiar with his starring role in the rock & roll comedy road movie Roadie (1980), an obscurity I first encountered years ago buried amongst the late night/early morning programming on some commercial TV station or other. Revisiting it for the first time earlier this week with some trepidation, I was pleasantly surprised to find that – while it’s definitely not without its flaws – it stands up to repeat viewing better than I’d expected.

Roadie opens, appropriately enough, with a road – a stretch of open highway on which multiple armadillos are gambolling away. (I mention this not because the armadillos have any wider significance – I just happen to be inexplicably charmed whenever I happen across an armadillo onscreen, especially when they turn up outside any sane context such as in the original 1931 Dracula.) Playing over the top of this arid scene is Cheap Trick’s theme tune “Everything Works If You Let It”, whose title and lyrics act as an effective mission statement for what is to come – a fairly simple plot taking place against a series of loosely associated incidents which also serve to showcase a cross-section of American rock music.

Travis W. Redfish (Meat Loaf) is a Texan good ol’ boy truck driver who makes a living delivering Shiner beer with his best friend B.B. Muldoon (Gailard Sartain). In his spare time he helps out his father Corpus C. Redfish (Art Carney) with the family business, a salvage company which repurposes all sorts of random detritus into various Rube Goldberg-like lash-ups. En route to Austin for their latest delivery, Travis and B.B. happen across a broken-down tour bus. On any other day they would have driven past without a second thought (other than to laugh at the helpless city slickers) – but on this fateful occasion, a smile and a wave from a pretty girl (Kaki Hunter, better known for the Porky’s trilogy, playing the improbably named Lola Bouilliabase) brings Travis to a screeching halt. No sooner has he finished repairing the vehicle than Lola has charmed him into driving them the rest of the way into Austin, where Hank Williams Jr. and The Bama Band are waiting for their equipment. Setting up in record time, Redfish earns the admiration of big-time music mogul Mohammed Johnson (a pitch perfect performance from Don Cornelius, the creator of the hugely influential music showcase Soul Train [1971-2006]). Determined to retain the services of his “lucky white man” (but constitutionally incapable of getting his name right), Johnson leans on his jealous subordinate Ace (Joe Spano, shortly to become a series regular on Hill Street Blues [1981-1987]) to ensure his presence at their next gig, and Ace in turn leans on Lola to exert her charms.

Careening from one musical performance to another, Travis swiftly earns himself the title of “the greatest roadie that ever lived” – a reputation which means little to him since he doesn’t have a clue as to the identity of most of the people he meets and has very little interest in their music. The closest he comes to expressing any interest is with Hank Williams Jr. – and even then, only because Redfish is familiar with the work of his long-deceased father Hank Williams Sr. Lola, on the other hand, is all about the music – so much so that she’s developed the psychic ability to know what’s currently playing on any radio station. Lola’s ambition is to become “the greatest groupie who ever lived”, with the more specific objective of making her way across country to meet Alice Cooper – who, she claims, has promised to have dinner with her, although her refusal to provide further details casts some doubt over her veracity. Despite her stated goal, it’s clear to the audience that she’s fallen just as hard for Redfish as he has for her, although it takes her much longer to realise this – just long enough for the traditional separation and reconciliation plot beats to play out before the film’s end. Unfortunately there’s one aspect of Lola’s character which does not stand up at all well today (and must, I would hope, have seemed a little squicky even at the time the film was made) – she’s only 16 years old (albeit played by a 24-year-old). Although the writers make it clear that she’s still a virgin and doesn’t have sex with any of the musicians they encounter, this is still a film in which the happy ending revolves around a man in his 30s hooking up with a 16-year-old girl – and I can’t really fault any viewers for whom this plot element is a dealbreaker.

Comedically the film is all over the place. Much of the stronger material revolves around Travis and Lola – the two actors have good chemistry with other, and Meat Loaf is surprisingly effective at playing both the physical and verbal aspects required of him. Particularly well crafted is the scene in which Travis and Lola are obliviously trying to do their laundry with a detergent box full of cocaine. A surprisingly streetwise old lady (Lenore Woodward), diagnosing the difficulty and spotting an opportunity, swaps her box of laundry powder for theirs just before the cops turn up to arrest them. An exquisitely timed exchange of crossed dialogue ensues, with the two pairs carrying on completely unrelated conversations which accidentally intersect, before one of the cops samples the goods and runs screaming from the launderette (last seen with soap bubbles pouring from his nose and mouth). Less effective are the scenes back home in Texas with the Redfish family which punctuate the film. Beloved American comedian Art Carney (who would no doubt be appalled that I mainly know him from The Star Wars Holiday Special) is clearly having fun as Travis’ father, spending most of his time in an electric wheelchair surrounded by gadgets. Unfortunately he’s paired with a badly written and grotesque performance from Rhonda Bates as Travis’ sister Alice Poo. Bates apparently made a career out of this sort of role – the tall, skinny hick who will go to any lengths to secure her man (in this case Travis’ best friend B.B.). To be fair to her, I have no doubt that she achieved exactly what she was aiming for in her performance – but it’s something that I found indescribably painful to watch.

Amongst the many luminaries of the rock & roll world to be found here, only two stand out for their ability to act as well as play – Blondie’s lead vocalist Deborah Harry and Alice Cooper (coincidentally the same two individuals whose presence led me to set the VCR for this film all those years ago). Deborah Harry takes the unlikely role of Lola’s romantic rival, beginning her flirtation with Redfish with some sexual innuendo about power cords before performing a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”. After a scene in the back of Blondie’s limousine provides definitive proof of the complete lack of acting talent among the rest of the band, their potential love connection over dinner is disrupted by a food fight with fictional band Snow White (invented for the film) which results in Debbie leaving with their singer. (Snow White’s membership is made up entirely of the short-statured. There are seven of them. Yes, that’s right. Add one more tally in the “reasons to be offended” column.) Harry herself was no stranger to acting, having already appeared in four films prior to this. Having recently played the lead role in Union City (1980), her next film saw her playing a significant part in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and she’s continued to pop up sporadically in all sorts of acting roles ever since. Notable cameos in this section of the film include the actual Mayor of Austin, Carole McClellan, as a sheriff come to shut down the gig; and Marcy Hanson (Playboy‘s Playmate of October 1978) as a groupie who admires Lola’s look. (Marcy had previously co-starred alongside Rhonda Bates in short-lived 1978 sitcom The Roller Girls.)

Alice Cooper proves more than willing to puncture his shock-rock image by showing the viewer the man behind the makeup, a mild-mannered politely-spoken happily-married man who always keeps his promises and is visibly uncomfortable at having to wear his full leather-and-live-snake ensemble for his dinner with Lola and Travis. Although his acting CV is less extensive than that of either Deborah Harry or Meatloaf, by this point he had already been part of the much-derided Beatles-without-the-Beatles film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) and would next turn up as the lead in horror movie Monster Dog (1984) – although I know him better for his cameos as Street Schizo in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness (1987) (in which he stabs somebody with half a bicycle) and as Freddy’s father in the previously reviewed Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991).

Other musicians appearing include folk singer Ramblin’ Jack Elliott; Roy Orbison (who joins Hank Williams Jr. onstage for a crowd-calming duet of “Eyes of Texas”); Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys; Rick Crow and Asleep at the Wheel; Todd Rundgren’s band Utopia (standing in as Alice Cooper’s backing band); and Peter Frampton. The most memorable performance comes courtesy of new wave band Standing Waves, appearing here as the fictional punk group Spittle who refuse to play without their cocaine rider until Redfish goes apeshit and dumps them unceremoniously onto the stage. Roaming between band members with a menacing look in his eye, he keeps shoving the singer away from his mike stand in order to carry on a shouted conversation across the club with Lola – an exchange which proves so enthralling to the audience that the band improvises an on-the-spot accompaniment using their dialogue as the lyrics.

Making his performance debut under the band name Meat Loaf Soul in 1968, Meat Loaf made his pivotal breakthrough as part of the original L.A. Roxy cast of The Rocky Horror Show in 1973, leading to his reprisal of the role of Eddie in the 1975 movie. The year of the film’s release saw him begin work on debut album Bat Out of Hell (with supporting musicians including members of Utopia), whose release in 1977 made a permanent impression on the musical landscape. Although appearing in a wide variety of roles since then – both serious and not-so-serious – Roadie remains, as far as I’m aware, the only film in which he played the lead role. His final screen appearance was as one of the main cast of the Syfy Original paranormal action TV series Ghost Wars (2017-2018), appearing in 7 out of 13 episodes.

If you were to ask me to program a Meat Loaf double bill, my unquestioned – and completely unironic – choice would be… Spice World! No, wait, hear me out. Really. The most obvious connection between the two films is that in both films Meat Loaf plays a roadie – truck driver Travis W. Redfish in one, bus driver Dennis in the other (almost certainly a conscious homage). But there’s another link to one of Roadie‘s stranger plot elements, a part of B.B.’s backstory which is alluded to briefly in passing and then forgotten about entirely until it re-emerges in the final genre-bending scene. A plot element which, it could be argued, is also homaged in the Spice Girls’ own uncanny roadside encounter. True, Spice World owes more to A Hard Day’s Night (1964) than to Roadie… but I think pairing it with Roadie would be more fun.

Roadie is hardly a lost masterpiece – its sense of humour is wildly uneven and it relies on a core plot conceit which may be irredeemably compromised to some viewers. But the material which works holds up better than I expected and (to my mind) outbalances the less successful elements. Anybody with an affection for Meat Loaf, Blondie and/or Alice Cooper should find something here to entertain them – at least enough to justify a single viewing out of curiosity.

Lynch, Maddin, Strickland, Phạm – Four Short Films

I had no idea what I was going to write about this week. None of the movies I watched struck enough of a chord to inspire me to share them with others. I’ve had much better luck with my choice of TV viewing – but for a blog with the word “eclectic” in the title, I feel like I’ve spent far too much of the last year simply defaulting to writing up yet another K-drama. So in an attempt to better meet my own brief, I spent this morning diving into a more or less random selection of short films and have picked the most interesting four to share with you. Featured here are three of my favourite directors – David Lynch (Eraserhead), Guy Maddin (The Heart of the World) and Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio) – plus, for a bit of variety, a Vietnamese director I’ve never previously encountered.

Stump the Guesser (2020) is a typically delirious work from Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, whose oddities derive from a divergent celluloid history in which the style and techniques of early 20^th century cinema never went away. Maddin lovingly conjures the more fantastical elements of Soviet cinema to tell the tale of The Guesser (Adam Brooks), a carnival worker with an uncanny knack for guessing the answer to any question he’s asked, such as the age of a man of ancient appearance (41) or the number of fish concealed upon the person of a fishmonger (Randy Unrau) who is temporarily triumphant until, much to his chagrin, the Guesser pulls a tiny flapping minnow from his trousers. All is well for the Guesser until one tragic day he is confronted by a man (Greg Blagoev) who asks no question but simply stretches forth a dangling pocket watch. Frantic at the discovery that someone has finished his last bottle of Guessing Milk, the Guesser’s performance swiftly unravels after the Pocketwatch Man spontaneously vanishes into a puff of smoke. Before long he has fallen in love with his own long-lost sister (Stephanie Berrington) and had his Guessing Licence revoked by the Guessing Inspector (Steven Black) – with an additional demerit for incest. A chance encounter with dodgy Soviet geneticist Trofim Lysenko (Brent Neale) leads the two to join forces, as the Guesser seeks to help him prove his theory that genetic heredity is a myth so that he can marry his own sister. Needless to say, things don’t work out quite as he would wish – or, indeed, as anybody not occupying Maddin’s headspace might expect.

Amongst the film’s many visual highlights, the sequences in which the Guesser applies his brain stand out for their inventive range of techniques. Operating at the height of his powers, the camera zooms in on the Guesser’s forehead to reveal a duplicate of his own head in miniature. When trying (less successfully) to guess the eye colour of his yet-to-be-identified sister, an iris-like halo radiating from their two heads shimmers with alternating sprays of colour as each prospective option temporarily disrupts the black & white image. The Guesser’s final mental exertions result in a sequence reminiscent of the hallucinatory climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as astronaut David Bowman descends into the monolith.

By focusing solely on Maddin I’m being unfair to his collaborators Evan & Galen Johnson, who have shared writing and/or directing duties with Maddin on all of his works since 2014 – but while I’m sure that they were an integral part of the creative process, it’s difficult for me to say much more about their specific contributions as Stump the Guesser is very much of a piece with Maddin’s solo work. I’ve written more about a selection of Maddin’s work here, which includes Seances (2016), an experimental online work to which Evan Johnson contributed some story elements – although since Seances is a project which randomly generates a new story every time you watch it, it’s impossible for me to say whether I previously encountered any elements of his work there!

Many of Peter Strickland’s short films can be seen as companion pieces to his feature length works, experiments in form which have the purity of focus of a short story exploring themes which, in a longer work, are of necessity are merely part of a more complex whole. Strickland’s last feature, the previously-reviewed In Fabric (2018), was heavily influenced by the phenomenon of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos – an element on which Strickland elaborated for his short film Cold Meridian (2020). GUO4 (2019) is a precursor of sorts to his next feature, which he has said will explore homosexual male relationships in a similar way to his exploration of a female couple in The Duke of Burgundy (2014) (if “similar” is at all an applicable term to an artist whose works are quite distinct).

Paying homage to the homoerotic photography of Bob Mizer, GUO4 is constructed entirely from a montage of still images. Focusing initially on the harsh metal cabinets and flaking wood of a men’s changing room, the rattling discordance of the soundtrack by experimental noise duo GUO foreshadows the violent interchange to come. The appearance of the two naked male protagonists (Csaba Molnár & Gyula Muskovics) heralds the beginning of an ambiguous interaction which sees them first sizing each other up before beginning to shove each other back and forth – but whether this is the aggression of rivalry or simply a rough form of foreplay is obscured by the inability to hear their voices or to see anything other than disjointed montages of still images, suggesting movement while eliding the details that link each image to its neighbours. The choice to keep switching the focus to their swinging genitalia suggests there’s something more sexual going on here, but aggression dominates the imagery – and while the two men end up joined together horizontally on a bench, it remains impossible to tell whether either man is actually enjoying himself – their wide yet silent mouths conveying an impression more like yelling than moaning.

Although the ambiguous nature of GUO4 is clearly deliberate, I found it hard to latch onto what Strickland was aiming for beyond an experiment in filmic narrative technique. While there is clearly an escalation in the interactions between the two men, it felt to me like this particular Strickland short just stopped after 3 minutes without reaching a conclusion. It’s possible that the forthcoming release of Flux Gourmet (2022) will throw some light on what role this film plays in Strickland’s development, but for now I’ll have to go with the assessment: “reasonably effective but puzzling.”

The Unseen River [Giòng sông không nhìn thấy] (2020) from Vietnamese director Phạm Ngọc Lân is a gently-paced meditation on interrupted journeys, dwelling on the moments of indeterminacy in two human relationships. At one end of life we have lo-fi indie pop duo Naomi & WEAN playing an unnamed couple in their 20s, visiting a Buddhist monastery in search of a solution for WEAN’s insomnia. Although everyone they know insists that they belong together, including the young monk (Hoàng Hà) with whom they consult, they don’t yet know where their relationship is heading. At the opposite end, an older woman (Minh Châu) visiting a hydroelectric plant has a chance encounter with an old flame (Nguyên Hà Phong) from a relationship that never quite happened due to the vagaries of life taking them in different directions – although the ghost of a connection remains in the presence of the man’s dog (Gilmo), the offspring of a puppy given to him by the woman long ago.

Largely dialogue-free, much of the film’s running time consists of peaceful contemplation of the river and its surroundings, with the soundtrack dominated by gently rippling aquatic sounds. These sounds are complemented by the multi-mirrored columns of the Buddhist temple, breaking the imagery up into strips of light and colour in a visual echo of the ripples of light and sound generated by the river. The few dialogue-based scenes are formal in their writing and mannered in their delivery, with the older couple’s scenes in particular registering as two people moving around independently of each other while reciting speeches with which they have no emotional connection – and yet somehow they work, as if the serenity of their surroundings is allowing them to tap deeper into themselves to bring forth words they didn’t know they contained. Although the juxtaposition of the two pairings might suggest that the older couple provide a glimpse of the younger couple’s future, the film shies away from making any such connection and I suspect that this would be too simple a reading – the overall meditative tone sits more comfortably with a focus on an indeterminate now in the middle of life’s flow, an invitation to live in the present without undue concern for the outcome of things which can’t be guessed.

What Did Jack Do? (2017) is a film noir vignette which sees director David Lynch playing a homicide detective interrogating a suit-wearing capuchin monkey (“Jack Cruz”) at a train station. The surreally disjointed interrogation plays out as a mixture of cliched noir dialogue, a protracted series of bird metaphors which are more literal than usual in the genre, and some typically Lynchian non sequiturs which seem less deliberately obstructive and more like two sides of a conversation which don’t entirely occupy the same reality as each other. Out of the confusion forms a relatively straightforward noir tale of suspected infidelity leading to murder – although in this case the femme fatale is a chicken named Toototabon.

As is usual for his acting roles, Lynch plays a version of himself with little interest in making any effort at delivering naturalistic dialogue, utilising his lack of performative range to underline the strangeness of the encounter. Jack’s dialogue is delivered through a set of human lips smoothly superimposed over the capuchin’s own mouth – although no human performer is credited for his side of the exchange, my guess is that the voice is either that of Michael J. Anderson (Twin Peaks‘ Man From Another Place) or, more likely, Lynch himself speaking through a slightly slowed audio filter. Jack even gets the opportunity to burst into song towards the end, an original composition by Lynch in collaboration with sound mixer/editor Dean Hurley which crosses the lyrics of a Julee Cruise song that never was with the style of a faded crooner. Also making a brief appearance is Lynch’s wife Emily Stofle as a waitress delivering two steaming cups of coffee with a side serving of exposition, preceding a short but pivotal cameo from Toototabon herself (the least of the performers – I suspect nepotism).

Whether or not you’ll like What Did Jack Do? will depend entirely on what you think of David Lynch’s work in general. If you’re a fan like me, you’re already on board; if you don’t get what other people see in him or his work, this short film is unlikely to make you a convert. It’s pure Lynch in whimsical mode, doing his best to dump the experience of living in one of his dreams directly onto the screen for those on a similar wavelength.

Hong Kong Double Feature – The Twins Effect

What’s in a name? Knowing only the genre – Hong Kong action with fantasy elements – what would you expect from a series of two movies named The Twins Effect? Would you, as I did, expect a plot in which two siblings (probably estranged) must come together to discover a shared supernatural power which enables them to overcome some sort of great evil? Would you make the (quite reasonable I thought) assumption that the second movie builds on the world established in the first? And how surprised would you be to learn that they were in fact two entirely unrelated stories designed as star vehicles for a Cantopop girl group named Twins?

On the lookout for a local equivalent to J-pop duo KinKi Kids, Emperor Entertainment Group signed up part-time models Charlene Choi (already a budding actress) and Gillian Chung to form bubblegum pop band Twins in 2001. The following year saw the release of their first album and their appearance together in two lightweight comedies. The Twins Effect [Qiān jī biàn] (2003) is their third outing together, a martial arts vampire comedy which takes itself seriously for the first 10 minutes – a massive fight scene which sees two vampire hunters and a horde of the undead demolishing a train station (plus a train or two) – before tossing away all pretence and flooring the accelerator for silliness.

Although the opening sequence would have you believe that vampire hunter Reeve (Ekin Cheng) is the protagonist, he quickly takes a back seat to his female co-stars – his younger sister Helen (Charlene Choi) and his new apprentice Gypsy (Gillian Chung). Helen is a hot-tempered young woman with an impressive set of lungs whose ability to scream should be registered as a deadly weapon. Enthralled by her public confrontation with her cheating boyfriend (Chapman To), pretty boy goth Kazaf (Edison Chen) immediately falls for Helen and offers his shoulder to cry on. But Kazaf isn’t just any goth – he’s a vampire prince who refuses to suck blood, living instead off a supply of bottled blood sent by his father. Kazaf and his entourage, led by his loyal retainer Prada (Anthony Wong), have set up home in a large church in the middle of Hong Kong so that Kazaf can spread his wings away from the boredom of court politics – which is fortuitous since in his absence the evil Duke Dekotes (Mickey Hardt), last seen battling Reeve in the opening sequence, has been killing off the royal family to accumulate plot tokens which will allow him to achieve some vaguely defined ultimate power.

But don’t worry too much about the plot framework – it only really exists for two reasons: to provide an excuse for the action scenes; and as a backdrop against which Helen and Gypsy can pursue their romantic goals while becoming BFFs. Their relationship gets off to a rocky start when Helen discovers that Gypsy has used some of her toothpaste, leading to a protracted fight sequence which escalates to ridiculous proportions, similar in tone to the comically endless battle between Roddy Piper and Keith David in They Live (1988) over whether or not to wear sunglasses. Gypsy’s determination to impress Reeve almost gets him turned into a vampire, while Kazaf’s determination not to let Helen down forces him to wear dark clothes and masses of sunscreen on their midday wedding-crashing date. Of the two romantic pairings, the Helen/Kazaf relationship is far more engaging and occupies more screentime – a particular highlight sees Kazaf showing off his pimped-out coffin, complete with fur-lined upholstery, electric lighting and a kicking sound system.

The film is rife with cameo performances, most notably from Hong Kong action legend Jackie Chan. Making his first appearance as the groom at the wedding to which Helen invited herself, he turns up again at a crucial moment as an ambulance driver just as Helen and Kazaf are escaping from the bad vampires. This provides the perfect excuse for a Chan speciality, a Buster Keaton-inspired comedy fight sequence which allows a character with no fighting skills to pratfall his way to victory (or at least safety) against all odds. Chan’s high-kicking bride is played by Karen Mok (A Chinese Odyssey – reviewed here), a Cantopop legend with 17 albums and more than 40 film appearances to her name. All three members of short-lived girl group 3T can also be seen here in smaller roles: Mandy Chiang has the largest role as Momoko, the estate agent who brokers the deal with the vampires and catches the eye of Prada; Maggie Lau takes part in the ambulance chase as Nurse Maggie; and Yumiko Cheng appears as a wedding guest.

The Twins Effect II [Qiān jī biàn èr Huādū dàzhàn] (2004) jettisons the modern day for an indeterminate historical fantasy setting ruled by the evil Empress Ya Ge (Qu Ying), whose response to the perceived betrayal of her paramour High Priest Wei Liao (Daniel Wu) was to outlaw love and to turn all men into slaves – all except for the High Priest, who castrated himself. Spring (Charlene Choi) is a slave dealer with no ethical qualms about her livelihood, while Blue Bird (Gillian Chung) is one of the Empress’ elite agents. This time around the theoretical hero of the piece – improbably named Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in tribute to Ang Lee’s wildly successful film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Wò hǔ cáng lóng] (2000) – is played by Donnie Yen, the action director of the original The Twins Effect, who provides an appropriately brooding heroic presence. If this were a conventional wuxia adventure, Yen’s character would dominate proceedings as we follow his heroic journey to find the magic sword and overthrow the evil Empress. By now, of course, we know better than to expect any such thing – and he remains largely in the background, only coming to centre stage for an impressively staged battle with Jackie Chan (playing the reanimated terracotta warrior Lord of Armour Wei Cheng) which, while being a thing of beauty in itself, serves no other narrative function than to keep the “hero” busy while the real main characters get on with the story.

As with The Twins Effect, the focus is on the adventures of Choi and Chung’s characters as they pursue their respective beaus-to-be. Spring has been commissioned to find the missing amour of the corpulent Marshall Edo Bowman (Xie Jingjing), mistakenly interpreting her infuriatingly vague description as referring to escaped slave Blockhead (Wilson Chen). Blue Bird has been despatched on a mission to retrieve a map, stolen by master thief Peachy (Edison Chen), which has ended up in the hands of his two friends – Blockhead and Charcoal Head (Jaycee Chan). Whilst following the map to its destination, the two women fall in love with their respective lunkheads – one of whom, it turns out, is the rightful King who will claim the sword and lead his people to victory. Amongst the supporting cast, Fan Bing-bing – one of China’s most prominent actresses – stands out in an early career performance as Blue Bird’s rival Red Vulture, adding a nuance which hints at the stronger roles to come in films like I Am Not Madame Bovary [Wǒ Búshì Pān Jīnlián] (2016) (reviewed here). Providing the obligatory music-industry cameos this time around are Steven Cheung and Kenny Kwan of boy band Boy’z, who play two of the nameless slaves.

Similar in tone to its predecessor and featuring action sequences which are arguably superior to the original, The Twins Effect II is unfortunately weighed down by tired tropes of stereotyped male and female behaviour. The film’s matriarchal society is an ugly caricature and the prophecy of the Empress’ fall is framed in terms of restoring the balance by having a man take over. Although the filmmakers scramble frantically at the end to make it clear that the heroes will be establishing a society based on equality between the sexes rather than male dominance, it’s too little too late. There’s also a painfully unfunny character played by Tony Leung Ka-fai (an otherwise talented actor) whose attempts to masquerade as a woman are so wince-inducing that they verge on transphobia. Add that to the decision not to examine slavery as anything other than a comical trope and you have a film riddled with problematic elements which run the risk of outweighing its more enjoyable aspects.

Choi and Chung have good chemistry with each other, as you’d hope for a duo who collaborated to create 16 studio albums between 2002 and 2012. Of the two, Clarence Choi gets to have more fun, quivering with frustration in the first film and luxuriating in casual venality in the second. Gillian Chung is more contained in both, occupying more of a “straight man” role with touches of the conventional female romantic lead. They would appear together in 14 films (and one TV series) between 2002 and 2007, eventually living up to their band name by playing competing sets of good and evil twins in the far-more-accurately-titled The Twins Mission [Seung ji san tau] (2007). Both performers have continued to appear separately, with more than 50 other roles each on their respective CVs.

The Twins Effect was co-directed by Dante Lam & Donnie Yen – although to my mind Yen, who doubles as action director, makes a far more significant contribution to the film’s success than Lam. Donnie Yen is one of the action movie genre’s most prominent performers, and while his name may not be familiar as that of Jackie Chan or Jet Li, his face is likely to be just as familiar – indeed I recently saw somebody online confidently identifying a picture of Yen as Jet Li simply because they recognised his face and knew he wasn’t Jackie Chan. Yen won Best Action Choreography at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards for his work on The Twins Effect and I’ve talked about him at greater length in my review of Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen [Jīng wǔ fēng yún – Chén Zhēn] (2010).

The Twins Effect II was co-directed by Corey Yuen & Patrick Leung – and once again it’s the action director, in this case Corey Yuen, whose contributions are most crucial. One of the Seven Little Fortunes (whose more famous members include Jackie Chan & Sammo Hung), he’s worked extensively in both Hong Kong and Hollywood action cinema. To select just a few highlights, he was martial arts director on the wild fantasy romp Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain [Xīn shǔ shān jiàn xiá] (1983); action director for John Woo’s Red Cliff [Chi Bi] (2008-2009); and solo director on the Jet Li-starring Fong Sai-yuk [Fāng Shì Yù] (1993) and its sequel.

If you’re looking for intricate plotting and nuanced characters, then boy have you been reading the wrong review! The Twins Effect movies are lightweight pieces of fluff hung on a loose plot framework which they will happily jettison if it gets in the way of the fun. Some viewers will find the movies funnier than I did, while others will find the humour to be gratingly annoying – but even then, fans of Jackie Chan should at least enjoy his appearances. I doubt that I’ll ever watch either of these films again, but I’m happy to have seen them.

As a special bonus for the curious, along with the usual trailers (which make the movies look more serious than they are), I’ve included a promotional clip for the theme song from the first movie, recorded by Twins with guest vocalist Jackie Chan.