Kelly WandNaked Killer
September 1st 2006 02:22
Whilst that does sound like a pretty bad joke just waiting to happen, he seems to prefer to go under the name Clarence Ford and has bought you such cinematic wonders as “Dragon From Russia” and “The Iceman Cometh”. (The latter bears no resemblance to Eugene O’Neils play unless I missed the scene where the flophouse was visited by swordsmen from ancient China.). I’ll be straight with you. Virtually every frame of “Naked Killer” is crammed with impossibly gorgeous women doing things that make you worry about going blind if you keep watching.
If they’re not cartwheeling through showers of bullets, killing and maiming (though not necessarily in that order) their opponents or diving out of exploding buildings, they are flirting, kissing or playing with themselves, each other or strangers they meet on the street.
And still, I have the affront to sit behind this keyboard and call this a good film. No, I’ll go further. I’ll call this a great film. I’ll call this an excellent film. If I was one of these tossers who hand out stars at the end of a review, I’d open up my star bag, tip them out on to the table and say “You can have whatever’s here.”
Clarence is clearly a man who loves movies. To watch his films is to see a parade of influences. Besides the more obvious influences of Hong Long Cinema, with “Naked Killer” you see flashes of Luc Besson’s “Nikita” along side touches of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”. You see a frame out of “Basic Instinct” with the kind of colouring and style that Paul Schrader used to dazzle us with in the nineteen eighties.
But, to make a great movie, you need more than just a love and understanding of film. If that was all there was to it, every would-be Tarantino in town would be churning out masterpieces just like their hero. Well, that never happened, did it? Clarence Ford knows how to put a film together.
Frame composition. Set design. Costumes. Action sequences. Just stunning. Even the bad taste joke involving the severed penis and the sausage… Well, I laughed.
And the editing? Man, do I have to rave about the editing. As someone who has sat for more time than he cares to admit fitting scenes together, I was left in awe. If I told you how many times I’d played the film’s Tokyo Nightclub scene just to marvel at the way the thing has been cut…
(No, really. It had nothing to do with the women. I’d tell you. I swear.)
Unfortunately, my copy doesn’t tell me who the editor of the film is. Well, it probably does but, as my knowledge of Cantonese is piss poor, I really can’t help you there. God like genius. That’s all I can say.
You know, I watch a lot of films. I like some films that have the pacing of paint drying and sometimes I can love them too. I’m sure I’ll tell you about them soon. This film, however, is a good time, trashy romp but it is an excellent trashy romp. A lot of people who write about film have no time for flicks like this. They sneer like they have found something bad stuck to their shoes.
The thing is, you wouldn’t want to hang with someone like that, would you? You wouldn’t want to go around to their house and listen to them extol the virtues of the kind of film that they think you should like. They turn their noses up at you when you say you don’t like Lars Von Trier’s “Dancer in the Dark” and make out like you are too stupid to grasp the deeper meaning of the work.
Sorry, I did. Von Trier is a misogynist, misanthropic hump who lives in constant peril of vanishing up his own rectum. I do get that. I just don’t want to watch him do it, that’s all. Bring on the Naked Killers. That’s what I say.
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