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Hong Kong Fooey: Bill Milling’s ‘Vixens of Kung Fu (A Tale of Yin Yang)’

Poster Art for Vixens of Kung Fu
 
Who doesn’t love a great combination? Whether it is Dolly Parton with Porter Wagoner or peanut butter and chocolate, a meeting of two good elements can be a beautiful thing. But what happens when you take two separately intriguing ingredients and yet, when they meet, you get a whole lot of head scratching muck? Welcome to The Vixens of Kung Fu (A Tale of Yin Yang).

The Vixens of Kung Fu is a film that I had heard about for years. Mind you, never from anyone who had actually seen it, but it was noted in cult film circles as the 70’s sex film with kung fu. It’s fantastic on paper, with two titanic fringe film subgenres meeting in the middle, complete with a classic adult era cast that includes C.J. Laing, Bobby Astyr, Jamie Gillis and Bree Anthony. Nudity, martial arts and cinematic ridiculousness—it’s the ultimate dreamsicle but like the old adage goes, be careful what you wish for.

Title Screen for The Vixens of Kung Fu
 
The film begins with some fortune cookie narration, including lines like “..he would conquer the land, the sea and the dragon.” Well, it’s certainly good to be ambitious! Somewhere in what looks like rural upstate New York, a dark-haired young lovely (Bree Anthony) is hiking when she encounters a group of brain damaged and unfortunately randy hunters (Astyr, Gillis & according to the semi-reliable IMDB, Douglas Wood.) The woman manages to flee but it’s a bad day to be in the woods since the head goon possesses an “anesthesia gun,” which looks exactly like a regular pistol. The key difference is that instead of killing or maiming someone, the bullets are basically roofies. You can put two and two together on what happens next. Inexplicably, the soundtrack goes from Chinese buffet to Hee-Haw to eerie silence and then to some stunningly inappropriate notes of whimsy. The one good thing about that, though, is that between the wonky soundtrack, Astyr’s insane giggling and Anthony’s questionable acting, the scene is more goony than creepy. And guess what? It’s only going to get more goony.

A lithe kung fu Master (Laing) is holding court outdoors with her students, lecturing them on how “Yin and Yang are the principles of Heaven and Earth.” They look mildly confused but appreciative, in a Valium-laced sort of way. Master ends up taking a peaceful walk on the beach and discovers the passed out, nude form of the woman. Taking a cue from the Linda & Abeline school of rape counseling, the Master gives her an oily massage. Learning both about the assault in the woods and the woman’s former career as a prostitute, she promises the woman to teach her kung-fu, so no man ever uses her again. The Master proclaims that “We women can hold up half the sky” before seducing her. As far as seduction lines go, it’s a little weak but it does get the job done.

The Master & her students meet up
 
After that, The Master and her students take part in some nude deep breathing exercises that results in smoke emitting out of their quims?!? That is maybe the last orifice you want smoke coming out of, but it is definitely a striking visual. The soundtrack, keeping with the pure spirit of randomness, switches to experimental sounding synth music. Finally, around the forty minute mark, we finally get to see some kung fu moves with the Master and one of her students finding a monk clad in yellow, wandering around the woods. They fight him, poorly, capture him and then the rest of the ladies have their way with him. This would be zero of a problem for most people that are into lovely, amorous female martial artists, but this event propels the Monk to seek out higher learning.

The Monk seeks help…in the kitchen.
 
He travels to a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall, which is kind of fabulous. The place, House of Wong, has the female Master of “Golden Dragon Raising Head,” Ha Tien Sau (Peonies Jong), who is working covertly as a short order cook. He begs her to teach him this mythical form of martial arts and in the end, she agrees and has him meet her, where else? In the woods. They begin their training, which as far as I can tell, mainly involves him breathing hard, flailing his arms and ultimately, spanking it. There must be a legion of dudes out there who are masters of Golden Dragon Raising Head and don’t even know it.

This Monk is the Yang to the former prostitute’s Yin, resulting in the two matching one crappy martial arts form with another until they end up both practicing the ancient art of boots knocking. The film then ends with Yin’s Master approaching Ha Tien, asking her for guidance and then leaping in the air with a high kick. Does Yin get to avenge her rape? Do the two dubious Masters get to have the epic battle of who is worse at their chosen martial art? Spoiler alert, we never find out, leaving the viewer slack jawed and wondering who dosed their kool-aid.

The Vixens of Kung-Fu is so nonsensical that it borders on the transcendent, but is neither self aware nor completely over the top enough, to quite cross over. The story and pacing plays out like someone got incredibly baked, watched some Times Square quality chop-socky flicks and then got suddenly aroused. The best thing about this film is the highly creative editing implemented during the fight scenes. Presumably the fast cuts were used to enhance the puce belt level karate antics, but they are entertaining.

Yang practices.
 
Thanks to the hard work from the folks at Vinegar Syndrome, Vixens has never looked better. The picture quality is gorgeous, with the early Autumnal woods looking postcard lovely. They have paired this title along with director Bill Milling’s (billed here as Chiang, seriously) superior Oriental Blue. (The latter was made around the same time and features most of the same cast.) When you think of Vixens of Kung Fu, as I know you will, think of fortune cookie dialogue, the most random musical soundtrack ever and creative character decision making.

Posted by Heather Drain
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09.02.2013
09:38 pm
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Kill the Pigs or How I Stopped Worrying and Took a ‘Punk Vacation’
07.25.2013
11:32 pm
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New Cover Art for Vinegar Syndrome's Punk Vacation
 
There is something so delirious about punks (of the DIY-art-music-outsider variety, not the prison-wagon-train variety) being depicted in cinema. Some filmmakers got it close enough, like Penelope Spheeris with both Suburbia and the very-underrated Dudes coming immediately to mind. But for every Suburbia, there have been a LOT of interpretations of this initially diverse alternative culture that have been straight up from Mars. The way “punks” started popping up in movies and TV in the 80’s was akin to the whole juvenile delinquent craze in the 1950’s.

This trend was already starting to fade by 1990, but there was at least one more film to tackle this, creating a strange hybrid between The Wild One and your typical revenge flick with a splash of the great outdoors. The result? Punk Vacation. A title that instantly makes me think of Johnny Thunders’ “Sad Vacation,” the film begins in pastoral, small town California. Deputy Steve Reed (Stephen Fiachi) is target practicing with some old Pepsi cans when he gets a call to check an alarm at a nearby gas station. It ends up being a false one, but it gives Steve a chance to scoop on his old flame, Lisa (Sandra Bogan). Her little sister, Sally (Karen Renee), thinks it sweet, while their gruff dad glowers in the background.

While Steve gives Lisa a lift home, Sally notices a young man outside, wigging out and wailing on their already battered looking soda machine. Everyone has an anger trigger and for this particular freakazoid, Billy, it is the twin combo of no orange soda and having his change devoured. Unfortunately, Sally and Lisa’s dad is kind of a reactionary redneck and immediately greets the young man with a rifle. Seems a bit extreme and sure enough, Billy is a punk rocker and the rest of his friends, led by the fierce Ramrod (Roxanne Rogers), arrive for some revenge. After some friendly car windshield destruction via baseball bat, things get decidedly nasty. By the time Steve finally arrives, Dad is dead and Sally is near-catatonic. Everyone but Billy leaves the scene, with the latter getting hit by Steve’s police vehicle head on.

What emerges from there is Lisa wanting vengeance for her father and little sister, Steve and his fellow officer Don (Don Martin) trying to do the right thing despite their hugely incompetent co-workers and Ramrod and company plotting on how to get Billy out of the hospital. The culmination ends up being the “punks” versus the “rednecks,” including the uber-dumb Sheriff (played by former Warhol actor Louis Waldon?!?) and his crew of future Tea Party members, with Lisa and Steve separate from the two herds.
 
Ramrod & Co
 
Punk Vacation is one fascinating film. On one hand, there are all these non-campy elements. The editing, of all things, is subtly creative and lends a serious tone to the proceedings. The whole brutalization of sweet Sally is certainly no fun to watch either. Then there’s the whole semi-nihilistic angle. The punks are all prepped up to be the villains, but then with the Sheriff, who is loud-mouthed and constantly ranting about “fascist communist pinkos” and his rogue gang of ball-scratching, gun club touting merry dumb asses, the lines become blurred. One punk takes the time to fasten his newly dead comrade’s metal studded wristband in the middle of a life & death chase. All of which is interesting since there is this whole earlier build-up of the punks identifying heavily with Native Americans, giving you this false illusion of some kind of metaphorical old West battle. Instead it ends up being a more anti-climatic rumble between the young, restless and ignorant and the middle-aged, inbred and idiotic. Not quite the epic moral battle, but really, isn’t more interesting that way?

On the other hand, there are some really goony things here. For starters, there is some of the more cherry dialogue, with my personal favorite being “I think he looked like Gomer Pyle’s Grandfather,” uttered by one of the punkettes regarding the man they killed the night before. Even better is that she utters this like it’s a positive thing. Speaking of the punks, holy hell, about 90% of these cats would be devoured at any hardcore punk show of your choosing. They range from looking like extras from the nightclub scenes in Purple Rain to college dudes scuzzing it up. The girls fare a little bit better with Ramrod and her French girlfriend looking very punk meets goth. That said, the other women are one article of clothing away from New Wave Hookers, so there you go. And for the record, what was it with so many movies and TV shows making “punks” look like some kind of New Wave/heavy metal mutant? It’s so strange, not to mention most punks are not going to kill your father and terrorize your sister. If they’re like some of my friends, your 12 pack of Natural Ice and copy of Black Flag’s Who’s Got the 10 ½? might be in danger, but your family will probably be fine.

The absolute best bit of weirdness is the premise itself. The idea of these street gang punks, complete with faux-hawks, leather and ripped fishnets, taking some time off from LA living to go fishing and camping a hundred miles away from the city, is definitely novel. It’s a literal punk vacation.

Vinegar Syndrome
have done a fantastic job of taking this fairly obscure title, that had one VHS release, to my knowledge, on Raedon Video back in the day. The print looks very good and there are some nice extras on the DVD version, including some funny interviews with star/producer Steven Fusci and producer’s assistant/stuntman Steven Rowland, a gallery and Fusci’s earlier action film, Nomad Riders. Wisely, they also changed the artwork to something way more striking and less Gouda. (Anyone that has seen the Raedon Video cover, which looks like a Betsy Bitch cover-band from Hell, understands.)


Punk Vacation
is an entertaining hybrid, capturing a moment in time where punks were depicted as the nastiest of JD’s, with lots of fuchsia eyeliner, hairspray and character names straight out of a Class of 1984 name generator.
 

Posted by Heather Drain
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07.25.2013
11:32 pm
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