The Incredible Camp

inspired by "whatever happened to baby jane," william castle approaches joan crawford to star in his ax-swaying camp classic "straight-jacket" which accidentally turns into the muse for christina crawford to write "mommie dearest"(which tina shows to joan one year before she dies that leads to the nullification of tina and christopger's heritage.) as well as its faye dunaway's movie adaption.

admitted by crawford herself, except "night gallery," every flick after "baby jane" stinks, and she does them for boredom and the urgent need of money. and in 1964, movie theater actually dispatches card-board ax to the audience with a slyly smirking humor. if one pays attention, the comlumbia lady's head is chopped off in the end sequence.

the story is predictable, crawford plays lucy harpin who chops off her husband and his mistress's heads with an ax after discovering his infidelty on bed, then lucy is inflicted with maniac insanity ever since for twenty years. lucy returns home when her daughter grows up as a young lady. then several decapitated murders occur, suddenly lucy is in the tainted spot of suspicions again.

unknown to most, the script is actually created by the classic writer of hitchcock's "psycho", robert bloch. you might find the remnant cheese of "psycho" in it: the perversion of oedipus complex, transvestite schizophrenia and the titilating suspense before the murder.

as for crawford's performance, it's sheerly campy fun to the maxium since castle requests crawford to go full throttle, and she does. crawford shifts from the timid mom in plain matron suit to floral-dressed trampy brunette with a vulgar bang. one moment, she's fragile and coyly demure, next moment she tries to behave flamboyantly with a sedative wink, teasing her daughter's boyfriend with fingers upon his lips, flirting with a man young enough to be her son by attempting to place her fingers into his mouth. that is astounishly jaw-dropping, lighting off a matchstick by scratching the gramophone record. simply classic!!!! but when she shifts to the state of norm, her frailty seems genuine and there's an residual of elegance in her when she combs her hair neat to bare the contour of her well-proportioned profile.

"straight-jacket" is hilarious and the beheading looks so laughably fake, and it's designed for those hard-core crawford likers and aficinados who appreciate camp horror and william castle.

"torch song" is joan crawford's first thorough flick in technicolor as well as her first feature in mgm production after her departure for almost a decade. to re-join the league of mgm where she has the gayest time in her youth, crawford turns down the role in "from here to eternality" (later it goes to debora kerr since crawford has some difficult wardrobe insistance. could you imagine joan crawford being kissed by buffy burt lancaster in the smoldering beach sequence, huh? crawford shows regrets in her elder years.) and the studio pairs her with british michael wilding who just marries elizabeth taylor who also has some grudges with crawford on the set. but the major problem is could joan crawford dance and sing again after 25 years (she was a chorus girl in the roaring 20s)? in the premiere projection, some critics simply say why the studio has to hire some actress who cannot sing and dance as the broadway superstar? supposedly, only steel-willed joan crawford could pull it off with hardship despite the whole show ends up as another celebration of CAMP.

crawford plays jenny stewart who is a domineering brittle broadway superstar who rules everyone under her mighty woman power. tough jenny is actually lonesome in private, guarded with defense until she meets the blind pianist tye (wilding) who admires her in his own unique way. it forms a odd picture of strange romance about a man who carries the torch of his crush before he loses his sights and a woman who melts under a blind man's idealization of herself.

crawford delivers some histrionic lines which are literarily designed as her self-revelations. sometimes she growls, she glares, splashing a glass of water as defiance, tripping over her parter in the duo dance....in spite of all those poises of toughness. she weeps under her blanket when she confronts her solitude at night. obiviously this movie rips and recycles crawford's larger-than-life persona to sell some some tickets since all these senarios are all self-referential.

the pinnacle of camp would definitely be the musical of "two-faced woman" in it, it is awkwardly startling to watch crawford smear black paint to darken her complexion doing the black-face ministrel show, then she tosses her black wig off in a rage then her flamy hair bares that is simply jaw-dropping. that part worths the ticket becuz of its camp value!

all the songs are dubbed by professional singer except in one scene crawford sings "tenderly" along the gramophone in her own voice which is not bad, husky and magnetic. pleasantly this sequence is reminiscent of her singing "embrace me" in 1947 "humoresque".

tragically michael wilding's career doesn't revive since his performances are quite woodened, even the marriage to elizabeth taylor doesn't help him to archieve the hollywood stardom he dreams, at last taylor abandons him for the stronger michael todd. wilding fades into oblvion ever since.

perhaps crawford is more adequate to star in a peculiar picture like this instead of the highly romanticized steamy "from here to eternality" with burt lancaster, nowadays anyone would deem it weird. and "torch song" would probably be the last hollywood movie which contains a black-face show.

but admirably, crawford still remains in a nice shape when she's almost 50, shining a brittle glamour in helen rose's vivid costumes. even million dollar mermaid esther williams compliments crawford's well-preserved figure but willaims also comments that it is sad that she gets drunk and talks to herself on the set since she seems so lonely.

a classic camp with jaw-dropping plot twist which is so seamlessly pulled off. even it's not something made with great sophistication but the outsetting 30 mins is adrenlinizingly tense with the rapid chopping knife from a ferociously lunatic female. and it's mounting with gradual sickening pressure of sustaining danger then takes you by utter shock of the mostly unexpected transvetite ever in cult horror history. despite it might rip off some of core from hitchcock's psycho but embellished with plenty enough whimsical delustions to remain your interests throughout the movie.

the introvert message within vincent price's camp classic "the fly" would be a resistant technophobia against the conceited omnipotence of technopoly who believe thru science, utopia is attainable. "the fly" got remade again in the 80s by david cronenberg who is also a fervent advocater against technophiles, considering cronenberg's series of work criticizing the technopoly, like 1999 "eXistenz" starring jude law, and its main target was the disturbing immersion between reality and visceral illusion while "the matrix" commercialized virtuosity to dominate the box office. back to original track, "the fly" does have a poignant tone against the exploration of science by condemning the idealistic scientist into a de-humanized creature of deformity, THE FLY.

it's a story about a scientist who invents an integrator which could transfer things thru wiring effect by disintegrating the atom of things in one spot then compounding all the atoms back to transmit toward another spot. he's aspired to solve the poverty and famine by conquering the geographical obstacles thru this super-machine. BUT unfortunately a careless fly joins the process of his own disintegration, then laughably he becomes a monstrous being adopted partially of the fly genes. inevitably he has to obliterate himself to avoid this catatonic revelation to others.

from the technical aspect, "the fly" might be scorned as cheesy since its stunts are so primitive that it's just a man wears a fly head. the campiest moment would naturally be the human-headed fly trapped within the spider web in the garden while exclaiming "HELP ME!" but it does have an endearing touch of human maneuvers and it also preserves an odd aestheticism of its own as filmmakers then had to be manually creative enough to transcend a cinematic concept with limited resource (without the patronizing cgi)

the script conveys its ruminations of science ubiquitously, due to the scientific enthusiasm, the scientist sacrifices the life of his cat and violates his humanistic principle of "no experiment on animals"..it might also reflect the mistrust of scientific revolutions at its time as if it's telling you, see how disastrous those experiments could be, content with the facilities you could utilize now, don't be fanatic with exploratory ambitions. perhaps the phobia toward scientific omnipotence could be the product inspired by the fright of atomic bombs among american commoners during 1950s. now it's just a cheer of camp for cinephilic aficionados.

mommie dearest is one of the classic camps which is so legendarily awful that it could be called "phenomenonal"...lol.

the notorious tales of joan crawford's evil maternality has been widely known already thanks to faye dunaway's overacting in "mommie dearest" that could be considered one of the most successfully excercised disparage ever in cinematic history. it's so malaciously achieved that i must announce that christina crawford herself is evil, draining the essence of the dead from the graveyard of her "adopted mother".

crawford had a reputation of being brittle and hard-boiled to the bone, but she was also a glamour queen before the 50s, just reminiscent the fashion icons she had built with her stylish idiocyncracy, and her husky tone of voice which provokes defying sensuality thru her bold brazen attitudes. obviously none of those advantages is transpired in faye dunaway's caricature of crawford. dunaway's campy performance obliterates every remnant of crawford's beauty in audience's memories. each move she had made in it looks grotesquely clumsy, and her contorted face appear lunaticly horrorsome with each line of her wrinkles over carven in her complexion.

of course, i must complain to the cosmetic apartment about dunaway's crawfordian eyebrows which seems really dramaticly exaggerated just to mock the dated fashion then, but even joan crawford herself didn't look so "twisted"...dunaway attempted to lower her vocal into the low-pitch smoldering smoker sound which was popular sign of glamour for movie stars then, dunaway did nothing but growl like a crude beast. if you view those old crawford flicks, she did have her unique way to deliver those lines with punctured shrewdness.

"mommie dearest" certainly does a good job at defaming joan crawford, further more, it's sinister uglification to a tough surviving woman who exerts herself literarily to her tombstone. but i gotta admit the axe-swaying scene which is blandly stolen from crawford's 50s camp "strait-jacket" is absolutely hilarious. maybe gutsy females are easy targets to attack, even after her demise, you could still snatch her corpse out to whip it, for your private indulgement as well as your angst toward contemporary cultural effemination.

could you imagine rhet butler's favored blonde prostitute belle walting in "gone with the wind" impersonating a chinese dragon lady? that would happen under the directional trademark of josef von sternberg.

ona munson plays the casino-owner mother "gin sling" in shaghai of china, and she schemes to claim her retribution upon her primary past fued from the new-arriving official sir guy charter. meanwhile she ensnares a young beautiful dame who calls herself poppy smith(a still burgeoning gene tierney) into the allure of the arabian giglo-poet omar(victor mature)....maliciously she intends to corrupt the girl into further deprivity by the thrills of gambling and sexual slavery. gin sling proceeds her conspiracy with resourceful levels to settle her so-called former debts.

gene tierny luminates with brightful glamour in the outset with her flighty manners, and you could forsee a future major star then while ona munson endeavors herself at her perverse chineseness with her stuck-out cheekbones and the twisted slanted eyes contorted by her straight-lined raising eyebrows. the cosmetics of mother gin sling is literarily a grostesque from caucasion's stereotyped image upon a dragon lady magnified over a thousands times to create an imaginary monstress. maybe it's really histrionic but it's certainly attention-grappling and definitely not dull to watch. a ultimate realization of the best camp!

the background sceneries appear engrossingly campy with all the absurd chinese exotica as if von sternberg collects all the eccentric antics of china to dispatch them together to conjure up an aura of lush nightmarish foreign land with creeps and living wax figures of "caucasian chinese"....and the script is written upon the occidental concepts of some incomprehensible chinese conventions as if it's strutting its enormous knowledge on chineseness, such as the elder china-man with five wives who flaunts his acquired conceptions upon women(another white chinese imatation with types on his eyelids) or gin sling's remark of filial piety....and gin sling likes to speak with her sentence began as "we chinese...."

but is "shanghai gesture" derogatory to chinese? apparently not. how could it form any harm to the china image since it's so obviously fake? just like the mythical theme of arabian nights, you could gallope wild in your most wanton fantasies of exoticism. contrarily, it's well-depicted pulp fiction of the raging sound of minority races in a very idiocyncratic way since it's a getting-even tale of a grudgy chinese woman who battles her conscienceless caucasian lover who tramps her with severe exploitations. some might criticize the asiastic villainy in early hollywood cinema was uglifying those oriental races, but under another spectacle, it's more aloofly characteristic to be raw and untamed....the contemporary asian castings as user-friendly adapters to the occident is lackluster and characterless in comparasion with the ancient edginess of recalcitrants since asiastic races were still considered mean, insidious people in 18th century novels....on the other hand, what's so cool about chineses (or asiastic) being dosmeticated as the meek ones like nowaday trends of globalization?

apparently "basic instint2" is far from its ancestor, a legend built by the trio of michael douglas, paul verhoeven and of course sharon stone. but in a way, it is slightly underrated. most people overlook one thing: it is a campy parody of the original basic instinct despite campiness is not what ambitious sharon stone expects from her cinematic comeback.

the story goes like this: catherine trammel (stone) is the criminal novelist who lives on verge of adrenal stimulations of blood-thirsty promiscuity. now she is accused of intentionally drowning a black sportsman inside the car while they're having sex. to rinse off her suspicious spot, she's got to consult a psychiatrist for her mental diagnosis. but now she is entrapping her psychiatrist into a snare of murders and jealousy. spoiler: she maliciously drives him into schizod insanity.

first of all, none of the characters in "basic instint 2" are realistic in flesh and blood, the most contrived charater is undoubtedly stone's catherine trammel who could survive from a high-speed automobile crash while she is having orgasm with a stoned black sportsman. and her mere comment to the police interrogation would be "oh! i'm so traumatized that i'm afraid i can't cum!" which is also an outrageous one-liner with the almighty witch attitude. second of all, the psychiatrist played by david morrissey is wimpish and easy to manipulate. let's put it this way, morrissey is no volcanically masculine michael douglas (when he was young) to emulate a burgeoning fresh-faced sharon stone (again, when she was young!) what's the fun to watch a gender guerilla when you're already aware who's gonna win? in the original, you cannot help but wonder if the dubious hard-boiled copper could tame this snobbish tramp in the end, and their sex looks thrilling with titilating animosity. but now morrissey's psychiatrist is a masturbator who peeks at trammel's picture while he's having intercourse. laughable? i guess so.

it is a dreadfully tiresome caricature of feminism, and it also reflects men's misogynism toward the self-conceited blonde who is mannishly castrative, destined to scatter doom upon men. and her victim is also the grotesque of such fatal attractions, broadcasting the cliche that the evil blonde woman is not to be trusted.

in the original, stone flashes her crotch for a second while her hair is combed behind with lofty poise under a white robe, lighting off a cigarette. that is a stylistically cool image of dominatrix. undeniably verhoeven chooses style over substance, but at least it's a sheer icy-cold style with higher class. now in its inferior sequel, stone's wardrobe seems like being inspired by samatha in "sex and the city", the urbanite sex-hungry tigress looks with the sluttish bang despite stone still remains physically attractive in her middle age. but the sexuality is rendered tastelessly blatant without a bit of subtlety that you could sense while she opens her crotch (again!) behind the chair, uttering crass lines like i know you wanna do me, and i may wanna do you, too.

eventually "basic instinct 2" also exploits the frequently devised plot gimmick in contemporary cinema when scriptors run out of ideas to write: schizophreniac. ignore its obivious flaws and appreciate them as the camp, "basic instinct 2" would be an entertaining trash novel you read to kill time in the airport, a classic CAMP.

the 1983 "scarface" is brian de palma's hommage to howard hawks and ben hencht who innovate the myth of "scarface" in 1930s, and de palma marks his admiration by "dedicated to howard hawks and ben hencht" in the end credit of the movie. ironically this dedeication overshadows the original masters by its pompous poise.

the storyline is basically similiar to the original with paul muni and george raft, and only several moderations made to fit into the 80s aura, and the soundtrack is literarily the trashy pastiche of 80s pop music, disco and techno dance. the symbols of the original still exist, such as the sign of "the world is yours". pacino's tony montana is still obsessed with wealth and american dream as well as his boss' mistress. of course, that includes his quintessential incestuous desire over his nymphmaniac sister who loves his best friend.

one noteworthy credit would be oliver stone's script which does provide lots of sharp sarcasm which borders upon smirky cheesiness. such as "how you got that scar on your face? by eating puss?"(when he encounters the immigration department) "your womb is so polluted that you cannot have babies for me!...say good night to bad guy!"(mockery upon his mistress) "say hello to my little friend!...i take bullets!!!" (end sequence) it is the quibs of oliver stone's make the legend of scarface primarily. of course, al pacino's impetuous overacting is hard to ignore. it's so campy that it is unforgettably legendary.

concisely speaking, the 80s scarface is a matter of "style over substance" which is embraced with cult worship for its flaulent machismo. as the essence of postmodernism, everything becomes a token eventually for the mental consumption. 80s scarface would be a good example in pop culture, toni montana transforms into a signifier of phallic icon just as andy warhol commodifies art into merchandise.

"the lost boys" is joel schumacher's 80s occult classic before he steps into the rehash of "batman forever" which demystifies the batman legend (previously composed by tim burton) with his overdosed commercial gayety.

the flick begins with the backset tone of "people are strange" which is a classic the doors song, and this bizarrely ethreal tune anchors the idiocyncratic atmosphere of "the lost boys"...jason patric plays the loner kid michael who gets entrapped into the snare of vampires when his family moves to santa carla in california. it barrows the scenario of james dean's "rebel without a cause" that a bunch of mistrayed young motorcyclists indulge in the thrilling abandon of violence and adventures while our rebel protagonist is longing for the girlfriend of gang lead, trying to snatch her attention away by passing the daring ordeals proposed by the gang as a lost boy in search of peer identification. a disorientated ground for kids with hippie parents as one character's name is star.

the story background fits well with the theme of "people are strange" and peculiarly the vampire shell does have a portrait of jim morrison as their spiritual guidance. a group of lost boys dive into the recognition of stylistic dissonance on their metal outfits, spiky hairdos and leather jackets. (my compliment belongs to kiefer sutherland whose hairdo is the coolest. and jason patric somehow resembles jim morrison with his shaggy hair.)

"the lost boys" is well foreshadowed with the pastiche of an adolescent delinquency and hard-core vampirish goth, but it goes campy when the story starts to get involved with the frog vampire-slaughtering brothers in the comics store. then it flops into a brass celebration of nerds and geeks, especially the scene of "death by the stereo" is particularly juvenile and corny.

the 80s was the dacade when jason patric and kiefer sutherland still possess some potentiality of supernova with their boyish looks and edgy spunk. unfortunately director schumacher chooses style over substance, so "the lost boys" ends up being a excellently shot two-hour music video with the epitome of 80s pop culture. but somehow it's worthy of praises for its campy value. and the song "people are strange" divulges as the sour implication of vampires with a sardonic kind of black humor.

the second featurette of roger moore's long-term career as james bond. undeniably sexism and racism are permeating outrageously in this flick just like the vices of chauvinistic complacency in the typical bond in 70s.

as routine, 007 always has the mostly effective opening sequence in its first 15 mins, flamboyant action stunt then intriguingly rhythmic theme song. it commences with the golden gun thug's death-dueling gimmick which encloses with the villain demonstrates his hostile determination to surpass bond by shooting off the fingers of bond's board model that is utterly testicularly tensed. then you hear lulu sings "the man with the golden gun" alongside with the animated sihouettes of a bunch of butt-squirming voluptuous chics from various regions that is absolutely carnally gaudy just as james bond always is. you cannot help but wanna giggle as the woman shakes her butt like a motor as the rhythms lulu utters as if she declares "i'm a sex machine, ravishing lad"...then you could forebode "the man with the golden man" buttoms up for its reek of chessiness.

the playground of this episode is in south asia, bangok, hong-kong and macao. it shifts from scene to scene on those exotic surroudings which is a great eye-candy of oriental landscapes to feast the viewers, even all the asiatics in it are all stereotyped flat characters based on how occidental people perceive them with their fixed stubborn-ness. such as the greedy mogul who longs for eternal blissful life, the avaricious murderous midget as golden gun thug's assistant, bond's hong-kong sidekick and his karate-proficient counsins who punch mugs in school uniforms at that particular scene roger moore even stays aside lumpishly observing those two girls practicing kong-fu.(was he too bored at being bond? what else he could do anyway.) they are all hilariously laughable.

as for how bond treats his women? how could you expect from the existence of a character named "good night"? how blatantly silly you could dub a name for a brainless chic? bond's womanizing climaxes at the scene goodnight hides in the closet as bond is performing his utmost mission by copulating with his rival's mistress. eventually goodnight is arranged as bond's destinated trophy by sexing with bond as he imperiously hangs up another gratitude phone call by remarking "good night" while he's topping goodnight.

christopher lee has the sinister presence as bond villain, ruthlessly shrewd with a paranoid fetish for gold which reminiscences the early classic villain goldfinger. but the plotline deployments are sorta too cartoonish for him to effuse his evil charm. another strategy of composing asians as ferocious villainy is stale but chimerically comical, such as bond's task to transpass the labyrinthed garden sequence which abounds more than enough oriental eccentricities. i cannot help but bewilder "is orient that bizzarely screwy in the eye of occident?" and also the idiotic showcase of the american red-neck copper is out of bond flick's so called "pride of the britain" which might be deemed as an infuriating insult to some amerian compatriots.

the concept of james bond itself is a ridicule of phallic reveries, and it needn't be taken seriously. despite all those politically un-righteous behaviours, "the man with the golden gun" could be considered a shameless rejoice for its boisterous campiness.

"the good earth" is the earliest massive hollywood productions for oriental epic in exclusion of fu manchu series. it has great ambition to interpret the national spirit of china, its farming business under a bunch of stagy performances from caucasion yellow-face. and the issue has no relevance of its chinese authenticness but how old america views china.


it is a story about wang lung the farmer(paul muni), who marries a slavegirl in the big house named o-lan. and together they strive for their rocky future with mettle with their conventional chinese virtues. they've been thru harvest prosperity, drought, famine and the revolution of republic china as well as wang's illict affair with courtesan lotus.

mostly it depicts the condescending perspect of man's derogatory viewpoint on women which is actually true in ancient china, and women are merely usable products who help men to plow the rice fields and bring them extensions. without that, a woman could be considered worthless, and the dichotomy of benevolent saint and malevolent siren reflects on the two major female characters: o-lan, the slavegirl turning to the farmer's wife; lotus, the insidious temptress who drains men's wealth. eventually the conclusion would be good woman is like earth which provides everything with endless flourishments.

the earliest chinese star then anna may wong was keen to obtain the role of virtuous o-lan to alter her dreary image of malicious sirens in a bunch of negative orient-themed movies where she has to die "a thousand times" in the end. but the studio refuses to grant her that becuz of the racial segregation principle then: a caucasion male cannot make love or pair licitly with a oriental female on screen (so asian women are neither mistresses or villainy on screen), even as roles of yellow face. even the temptress lotus goes down to another actress with approved ethnicity despite the role lotus is literarily inspired by the oriental femme fatale image in wong's early silent pictures.

the point of making "the good earth" itself is a campy articce, so why bother to use a real chinese or not since the story won't present the real china anyway? as for anna may wong, she is thorough america-nourished american except her ethnicity, and she doesn't even conform to the corny chinese virtues of obediency or dependency on man anyway, further more she has never been with a chinese man for all her life at all. so in exclusion of her chinese outlook, there's not really any that much of traditional chineseness in her. so it won't be really a shame or a pity for her abscence as o-lan in this piece, but she would probably make an adequate lotus.

the title song for "the good earth" would be "the jasmine song" which has nothing to do with farming but a common folk song praising the beauty of jasmine flower in spite of its melodius smoothness. and in the scene of new infant birth, it's accompanied with the song celebrating the feng-yang drum which is my father's regional folk song in old china. so it would be highly phony to deem "the good earth" as a chinese epic, and even pearl s. buck who writes the original novel might have some bias for china. but it does bare some worthwhile process of collecting crops from the rice fields which i have never paid attention before. and the photography has its contrived oriental aesthetism under the helm of four directors, including victor fleming from "gone with the wind".

so allow me to put it this way, the pleasure of "good earth" would be the brass flatulency of vintage caucasion hollywood's eccentric perception on "the inscrutable orient". ABSOLUTE CAMP!

brendan fraser's the mummy franchise is obviously the assailing target for movie snobs, and it's been nominated by razzie award already. but surprisingly, roger ebert gives it praise and affirms that it's the best among the series. "the mummy: tomb of the dragon emperor" is certainly reminiscent of the old hollywood's interpretation of the inscrutable orient which i refer in a positively cheer of camp! (again.) it is permeated with cheese but definitely fun.

one amazing item is that this flick has actually some base of authentic chinese history of the first emperor who unifies the nation and is eager to seek the secret of immortal life since he dreams of world-domination. it IS true. and he did build a mighty grave with millions of soldiers to await his promising future to come. it is an intriguing premise to utilize that to associate with the mummy mythology.

but in the cinematic version, the emperor died of the sorceress' curse becuz he doublecrosses her by murdering her lover. then he and his army turns into statues.

also in the 1940s, brendan frasher's son raids the emperor's grave, then some royalty-crazed milirary man schemes to use his discoveries to ressurect the emperor. later frasher and his wife happen to deliver one secred gold egg (which also happens to be the key to unlock his curse) to shanghai. then the egg is robbed so the emperor lives! surely he's gonna mess around the world and shake it upon his palm!

there're several goofs in it, especially its casting. first of all, it is inappropriate for brendan frasher to be the father of a son who looks like his brother and the husband of a wife who looks older than him. second of all, there're times those chinese actors should have talked chinese to each other in some intimate scenes with subtitles but they forget. highly un-natural. third of all, luke ford is absolutely lame as frasher's son, and his chinese stinks! there's no word he utters is recognizable, and the way he flaunts it sucks. and also, he has the worst conversations of interracial flirtations in the film history. "oh, i like guns, but you like knives, so you're not my type" then they kiss?! forth of all, the incarnation of the emperor is apparently an oriental dragon, but the cgi simulates the mid-century flame-spitting dragon.

"tomb of dragon emperor" has every cliche of yellow face stereotype in vintage hollywood times, such as the orient as the villain, dragon-robed chic as the sexually compliant love interest to feast the western hero despite her seeming facade of kung-fu vixen ,and of course the western interference to maintain a better world without eastern egomaniac depotism. but the humorous taunting of brendan frasher and john hannah makes it highly watchable. man fights in chinese battlefield, then he tries to clarify his friendly stance by "could you speak english?" then he starts to shout a name of the sorceress awkwardly to dodge the hostility. this flick has its drawbacks but still a feasible banquet of imaginary journey to the orient with its boyish mischievousness.

roger ebert puts it in a better way:
""Now why did I like this movie? It was just plain dumb fun, is why. It is absurd and preposterous, and proud of it. The heroes maintain their ability to think of banal cliches even in the most strenuous situations. Brendan Fraser continues to play Rick as if he is taking a ride at the Universal Studios Tour""

"satan met a lady" is a typical example of how you could ruin a ballistic novel by whimsically twisting it into a slapstick comedy. "satan met a lady" is based upon the well-reputed novel of danshiell hammett "maltese falcon" which had made a legend of humprey bogart as sam spade in early 40s. "satan met a lady" is destined to be forgotten (which i wouldn't call a doom) for its misguided adaption. there's no hard-boiled grit which is the essential attribute to "maltese falcon"...and the primary question would be: why bother to make it tough task by farcial attempt? is that a joke on hammet? sure, a forgotten joke.

names of the protagonists are all changed. william warren is the womanizing detective shane who toys around with dames, and bette davis is the femme fatale who doublecross shane for a precious "flute" instead of the phenomenal black bird. then the rest follows along the fixed storyline of maltese falcon. an obese rich dame and her also overweight tepid assassin united together against davis while shane observes with smirks. warren william does have an idiocyncratic sense of ridicule, a surviver from the silent movie days in transition to talkies, and he's tall, dashing and suave with a profile which could rival john barrymore. unfortunately, william's charisma is soon to be dated after the 30s. william is the ideal personification of leading man in pre-code hollywood, and he's the only one who could blend elegance with cynicism without vulgarities but a refined sort of decadence. every player in "satan met a lady" seems playfully abscent-minded to deliver their lines, laughing flirtatiously on the script dispatched to them. it's the least noirish movie made upon american detective novel ever, and even more frivilous than william powell's "thin man" which has been turned into a screwball comedy of success.

warren william's physiques do fit into sam spade by the novel but he's a reluctant sam spade who doesn't wish to be sam spade. he ain't so bitter like spade. how about davis? the only worthwhile moment she employs is her feministic assertation of asking a man to hold his hat high while being threatened with a gun because she's a LADY in presence. there's no female ferocity she expresses in "human bondage", no dubious sexuality but a girlish poise of mischief as she remakrs to william at the end "you would regret turning me in because you cannot find any other woman who is as smart as you"...so? is that a desire to be so obviously cute??

generally, the value of "satan met a lady" is its campiness, the campiest version of "maltese falcon" ever! no actor involved is really paying a heart to pull it off, and the whole set of cast is literily mocking themselves. and the treasure is a flute? so, you're gonna blow it off soundly, i suppose.