QT5: Revenge Night: Joe Don Baker's FRAMED, William Devane's ROLLING THUNDER and Bruce Lee's FISTS OF FURY!!!

REVENGE NIGHT

"Welcome to REVENGE NIGHT, as if every night of this festival wasn’t revenge night, but this is the real deal!"

Tonight was a line up of Joe Don Baker’s FRAMED, the classic revenge film ROLLING THUNDER and the original Cantonese print of FISTS OF FURY (more on this later).

"One of the biggest hits of last year’s QT Fest was the WALKING TALL trilogy. When the first WALKING TALL was released it was a huge hit, so the majors recruited the original team behind WALKING TALL… Phil Carlson, the director, Joe Don Baker, the star and the producer and screenwriter to make a big studio film. What they made was FRAMED which is sort of a country Jim Thompson story. It feels like a crime pulp paperback… one of those short crackerjack kick your fucking teeth in stories. Now, a couple of nights ago Harry reviewed the trailer, THE BLACK CONNECTION: RUN NIGGER RUN and said that it had one of the best FAT MAN battles in film history. You ain’t seen nothing yet… FRAMED has the best fat man fight of all fat man fights! Joe Don, who was a mighty fat man faces off against a deputy in a no holds barred mulling tulling big fat belly fights ever… For viciousness it’s right up there with last years dog fight from THE CHINESE MACK, everything save the ripping off of a haunch!"

He then ran down the cast list, Gabriel Dell is in this, whom vintage movie fans will recognize from his days as an EAST SIDE KID, DEAD END KID and BOWERY BOYS… He’s all grown up in this one. Then there was Conny Van Dyke, who Quentin called "an interesting bird… a country lass." She apparently made an appearance long ago on MATCH GAME, which Quentin caught. As Quentin said, "She’s lightly charming."

Then from the BIG BRAWL, H.P. Haggardly, "The Poor Man’s William Smith!" Which I just love that phrase.

"Now just hang on, this is just an appetizer preparing you for ROLLING THUNDER!!!"

There was 45 minutes of trailers, but I covered this trailer reel two days ago. So instead of going over the same material… I will venture forth into my thoughts upon FRAMED!

FRAMED at times feels like a by the numbers remake of WALKING TALL… Only without the weight of being TRUE. It’s a story of a habitual gambler, who upon hitting the big time, winds up in the eternal Wrong Place Wrong Time situation, has a vast conspiracy of cops, politicians, hit men and legal bastards that are out to put him down like a rabid 2 year old.

But they don’t know that they are dealing with JOE DON BAKER… On film at this period there is an aura of rural badassness to this man that is just undeniable. He is the literal bull in a china shop. No, not a bull, more like a Minotaur feeding upon the flesh and bones of backwoods beer swilling Greeks. Something of legend. In a perfect world Joe Don would have played Paul Bunyan… (or at the very least Bo Svenson)

However, the film belongs lock, stock and barrel to Gabriel Dell as a card shark / hitman du jour… He has the best line of the entire film with:

"I don’t like to drink alone in a broad’s apartment, makes me feel like an impatient pimp!" – Gabriel Dell – aka Vince.

Also of note is the great John Marley, who plays the Obi Wan Kenobi of the numbers racket, is wonderful in his supporting character role. You might remember him as being CAT BALLOU’s Father or as the man sleeping with a horse’s head in THE GODFATHER.

Also, Brock Peters, the man accused of rape in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, is wonderful as a local deputy that… ‘seems’ honest.

Overall I’m still far more in love with the original WALKING TALL and that trilogy over all.

Next Quentin took the stage proud as a papa to be presenting a film that’s been one of his faves for a long long time. "When I was a kid, I made a list of my favorite films and ROLLING THUNDER was Number 7, Number 6 was ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13… It’s funny, I can’t remember what 1,2,3 or any of those others were, but 7 was ROLLING THUNDER and ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 was 6!!!"

"It was at the OLDTIME MALL in Torrance, California. My mom, her boyfriend at the time and I all went to see a double bill of ENTER THE DRAGON and ROLLING THUNDER."

At the time Quentin was attending an all black school and swears up and down that he was the only kid that hadn’t seen ENTER THE DRAGON.

"I’d seen the FISTFUL OF YEN sequence from KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, I’d seen the paperback, I was disappointed in ENTER THE DRAGON. All the kids at school had pretty much reported every little twist and turn of the film to me, so there wasn’t much left for me to discover. However, ROLLING THUNDER played next, and as far as I’m concerned it kicked ENTER THE DRAGON’s fucking ass. ROLLING THUNDER, I just love. It’s a character study and an action film. The first half was getting to know Charlie Rane and the second half was pure revenge. In the first half we find out about how Charlie Rane was a P.O.W. for 7 years. How he suffered through the camps, tortured, malnourished, beaten… the whole time telling himself that once he got back home everything would be o.k. Just get me back home. That life would be good. That he’d have his wife and his son and everything would be happily ever after. He comes back, finds out that his wife is going to marry another man. That his son doesn’t even know him. And just as he’s coming to grips with that, they’re both killed and he loses his hand to thieves searching for a bunch of silver dollars. Everything is not ok. Everything is fucked up" - Note: This was very hard to catch because Quentin is in full machine gun mode delivery. Repeating half repeating… very excited about the film… My notes are good, but not complete.

"Now there were a lot of folks trying out for the role of Major Charles Rane. Joe Don Baker was considered. Even David Carridine, but it was fate that landed William Devane in what is the best role of his career."

"Tommy Lee Jones went basically straight from JACKSON COUNTY JAIL into ROLLING THUNDER, although there was this TV thing he did where he played Howard Hughes"

"However, THE performance of the film for me is Linda Haynes as Linda Forchet! She was in one of the sleepers for the first QT fest THE NICKEL RIDE, she was in Pam Grier’s COFFY… she was the girl that reaches into Grier’s afro when she has the razors in there and ‘aaaahhhh’. But Linda Forchet is my favorite female character in a Paul Schrader movie. She looks like she’s been left out in the rain one day too many. She has that look that Ava Gardner got, you know blousey, but it took Ava years to do it, and Linda Haynes just did it naturally. And I mean that in a good way."

"James Best, my old acting teacher, plays the main sonuvabitch in the film"

"Now the thing was at the time when Schrader’s script was nearing production, a young writer that had written a really hot non-produced script at the time was brought in to work on it. His name was Heywood Gould. His script was FT APACHE THE BRONX"

Quentin believes that Heywood wrote the film he likes best. And credits Gould with bringing in elements that really made the film work all the way across the board for him.

So… What did I think of ROLLING THUNDER?

Well, I thought it ruled pretty dang hard. I’ve seen the trailer for going on 12 years of my life thus far… and ever since being introduced to the QT-taste buds for film, and knowing he loved this film enough to name a company after it… My expectations were fairly dang high.

From the beginning of the film I could tell this was something intelligent and deliberate. You get that feeling sometimes when watching a quality flick. I remember sitting in the theater watching SILENCE OF THE LAMBS that first time and that Tak Fujimoto tracking shot alongside Jodie Foster’s head and shoulders as she jogged… there was something mesmerizing about it. The same could be said with the setting up of the welcome community in San Antonio, the private jet of ‘heroes’ returning from captivity in Vietnam… Tommy Lee Jones’ fears, William Devane’s confidence… It was utterly hypnotic and foreboding. There’s just an air of wrongness at the beginning of the film. Too much jubilation for those that don’t want it, but do for those that need to cheer.

Then there is the disintegration of his life. Devane plays Charles Rane as an internalized disciplined MAN (all caps). He doesn’t cry for others, doesn’t despair for others, doesn’t become tormented for others. He bottles all his emotions save love for his family and pride.

He isn’t the sort of guy to take a swing at an insult, but rather retort with a story to give you nightmares or to demonstrate his pure strength of will and determination through self-degradation. He is as scary as they come.

The revenge version of Charles Rane is another animal all together. It is as if he never got to torment or kill those that tortured him for all those years imprisoned. He didn’t need to, his revenge was to live happily ever after while those bastards rotted in grass and bamboo huts in Vietnam. But here… when what happens to him happens. No, he knows jail is too easy to survive for these bastards. He knows that it would become a lifestyle they could endure, and that… he could not endure. He must kill these people badly.

Then there’s Linda Forchet… I agree with Quentin, she is a marvel in this film. I love her dearly based on a single viewing. She has, what I like to call… ‘Comfortable Beauty’. What I mean is this, today… so many actresses working in Hollywood films are just plain gorgeous… they have that unapproachable perfection about them. They seem like dolls to keep mint behind glass that you dare not touch. There’s almost a fear to become intimate for fear of breaking the illusion. And there are women like this walking the earth we walk on every day. ‘Comfortable Beauty’ is a state of loveliness that you instantly want to engage in conversation, drinking with, watching films with, living with, spending time with. You can see no harsh lines, but an ability to adapt and swing with in life. There is an openness and ease to Linda Haynes’ Forchet that is absolutely entrancing to me. I believe I fall deeply madly for her when she picks up the revolver and shotgun and begins telling stories about her being the tom boy of the litter. She’s that girl, and that’s my favorite type.

Then there is Tommy Lee Jones. In a great many ways he’s the lynchpin of the entire film. He’s the mercury switch for the inevitable big bang, and when he’s turned on, he’s alive for the first time in the film. He is just a thing… an inanimate object being pulled through life by things he just doesn’t understand or really cares to comprehend anymore. He has become a jigsaw piece from a different puzzle that the world is trying to place in a picture he’s no longer a part of. But when Devane comes along with his problem, well, that’s the right puzzle, and he instantly knows it. Probably my favorite Tommy Lee Jones character. I love his work in LONESOME DOVE, but this… This character is a marvel.

This is a film worthy of being right beneath ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, in otherwords… it is one of the coolest flicks around.

Up next was a film I’ve seen maybe 70 times, but never quite like this.

FISTS OF FURY (read explanation)

Quentin had to explain what we were watching very carefully because this is a film that isn’t as simple as the title.

"When Bruce Lee made his first film over there, it was called THE BIG BOSS and it was huge, bigger than anything in the tradition of Hong Kong cinema. They quickly ramped up production on his second film FISTS OF FURY, and that was gigantic, a complete phenomenon. Hollywood quickly bought both films, but they came out with THE BIG BOSS first, but they didn’t like that title, so they decided to call that film FISTS OF FURY, then when they brought over FISTS OF FURY they called it CHINESE CONNECTION, what we’re watching tonight is the real FISTS OF FURY, which Hollywood turned into CHINESE CONNECTION. What I have here is the original FISTS OF FURY in Cantonese, so you will be hearing Bruce Lee’s Actual Performance, plus this is UNEDITED, so it plays out a bit differently from the version most of you have seen!"

Duuuuuuude, fucking A!!! Jesus, Quentin has a damn Cantonese print of FISTS OF FURY!!! God I hope this print is great! "This film is a HUM FUCKING DINGER!!! Bruce Lee is the Living Embodiment of Fucking Revenge in this Film! When Bruce Lee’s Chen Zhen unleashes with that Japanese School Ass Whipping, it was a big deal in China. You see that sign at the beginning of the fight says THE CHINESE ARE A WEAK & SICKLY PEOPLE, you don’t know that, but that’s what it says… and when Bruce turns to them after the fight and says, PERHAPS NOW YOU WILL KNOW ALL CHINESE ARE NOT WEAK AND SICKLY, the theaters went APE FUCKING SHIT!!!"

Oh man, getting jazzed, watching Bruce Lee on the big screen… BIG SCREEN, Bruce Lee… I felt like a little kid again.

I remember the first time I ever cried for the loss of a star was when I was a kid, and I came out of the Capital Plaza theater having just seen ENTER THE DRAGON and I looked up to my parents and said, "I want to meet Bruce Lee!" and them telling me that "Bruce Lee Was Dead". I think that was the first time in my life where I realized that the beings on screen had mortal coils that could sputter and die.

Bruce is simply, for me, one of the most astoundingly powerful and charismatic performers in the history of film. He didn’t just kick ass. He wasn’t ‘just a martial artist.’ We wasn’t "merely human." Bruce Lee made me believe that one man was unstoppable. Not through special effects, not through wires, not through any of the modern tricks of the trade… It was how he tensed his whole self when pissed. He had this, "I am now granite" look about him… He knew exactly where every foe stood, the exact length of his limbs and precisely the speed needed to take their heads clean fucking off. He also had this strange superhero muscle wing that popped out from behind his ribs that created that upside down triangle physique that just said… DON’T FUCK WITH ME EVER!

Then there was the fact that he HATED killing even his greatest enemy. There was always a look of sorrow… Like when your grandfather takes you hunting that first time and you kill that deer… When that happened for me, I remember a sense of emptiness. Sure I would enjoy the meat, but something had life and I had destroyed that. And Bruce conveyed that look better than any action hero in the history of cinema.

FISTS OF FURY is Bruce as a God. He is simply unstoppably cool in this film. He’s overacting to perfection. There is only one flaw in the film for me. I wanted him to kickass in the old man makeup, because man… he looked like such the badass there. Like Lon Chaney if Lon Chaney could kick a tank from one side of the Panama Canal to the other.

You’ve all seen CHINESE CONNECTION, but the great differences in that and the original FISTS OF FURY are the opening and closings and some of the anti-Japanese work in between. I’ve never seen the scene where Chen Zhen throws himself upon his master’s coffin. And I never knew that Chen Zhen was shot to death in mid-flying kick at the end. I was stunned…

This print is an absolute JEWEL… Miramax, fuck releasing these modern films, fucking rerelease the original Cantonese version of FISTS OF FURY and remaster those dang Bruce Lee Animal sounds in ungodly great Digital THX pierce your chest plate sound!

This is a film that bruises you to watch!

In the morning… It is the Children’s Matinee… and in 9 hours.. the all night KUNG FU Marathon Begins!!! YES!!!!!