Miami Connection

The year is 1987. Motorcycle ninjas tighten their grip on Florida's narcotics trade, viciously annihilating anyone who dares move in on their turf. Multi-national martial arts rock band Dragon Sound have had enough, and embark on a roundhouse wreck-wave of crime-crushing justice.

And that, according to www.miamiconnection.org, is the plot of one of the greatest best-worst movies ever made.  However after watching the film myself, shown last week on the roof of the Oh Yeah Music Centre, I’m not sure I noticed too much of that plot in action.  I’m not entirely sure what I saw – I just know it was awesome.

First of all, the bad guys in this movie are motorcycle ninjas.  Have you even heard of motorcycle ninjas before?  Have you?  Of course you haven’t.  It’s ridiculous.  It’s genius!  I mean, even ninjas face transportation problems – especially ones who deal in “stupid cocaine”.  Do you think they’re going to drive a battered Ford Fiesta?  You’re a fool.  They’re going to drive motorcycles.

As for the good guys, they’re a martial arts rock band called Dragon Sound.  A multi-national martial arts rock band.  Consisting of five orphaned men.  Who are also college students.  Who live together.  And constantly walk around their house half naked.  Enough said.  Well, I say rock band...they mainly seem to sing good natured synth pop songs about being friends forever while performing tae kwon do on stage.  You know you would go to that gig.

And, hey!  It turns out our heroes aren’t all orphans!  One of the gang, Jim (Maurice Smith), discovers – and here’s a great big spoiler warning, film fans – that his father (“a black American”) is still alive!  While the rest of Dragon Sound are initially disappointed to learn their orphan connection has been broken, they eventually share in Jim’s squealing happiness, hoisting him aloft on their shoulders, all shirtless as usual.  It’s a beautiful thing.

In amongst the touching male bonding, though, we get several action packed tae kwon do scenes to enjoy.  I was particularly impressed with a montage in which Mark (played by writer/actor/tae kwon do expert/motivational speaker Y.K. Kim) demonstrated how the humble foot can be used as a deadly method of martial arts face control.  Or something.

The tae kwon do scenes get more ridiculous as the film progresses, and by the end band member John (Vincent Hirsch) is basically just running around a park with his shirt off, covered in the blood of his enemies and screaming.  It’s rousing stuff.

If shirtless men engaging in hand to hand combat doesn’t grab your attention, there is at least a touching love story for the more sensitive viewers to enjoy.  And just like Romeo and Juliet, our young lovers belong to two rival camps.  The aforementioned John is deeply in love with Jane (Kathy Collier), but Jane is the sister of Jeff (William Ergle) – and Jeff is the second in command of the motorcycle ninjas!  It’s OK though – John kills Jeff in battle, and Jane is refreshingly cool with this.  This may not be exact dialogue from the film, but their deep and meaningful talk about the killing basically goes like this:

John:  “Yeah, sorry about killing your brother and stuff”

Jane:  “Whatevs”

And then they kiss, while Jim leers over them thinking about his daddy.  

There’s just so much going on in Miami Connection, I couldn’t possibly blog about it all.  I mean, I haven’t even touched upon the scene in which another band member hilariously sexually harasses bikini clad strangers on the beach.  Or the scene in which Mark playfully force feeds grapes to his still half naked house mates.  And who could forget the touching scene where Jim buys a new suit in which to meet his long lost daddy, his friends in the changing room with him, caressing his new threads lovingly and calling them “beautiful”?

If I haven’t sold you on this film by now, there is no hope.  All I can do is leave you with the same powerful message Miami Connection leaves its viewers with, and trust you all to do the right thing.  Love your friends, listen to synth pop, and stay away from stupid cocaine.  Peace, guys.

The Tingler

“At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don't be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you've got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember - a scream at the right time may save your life.”

We’ve all experienced it – that tingling sensation down the spine in moments of terror.  The fear you’re being followed home down a dark street, strange noises heard in the middle of the night, the realisation otherwise sane human beings actually vote for UKIP – that sort of thing.

What if that tingling wasn’t just a mere feeling?  What if it was caused by a living, parasitic creature that exists in all of us, feeding on your fear then growing and crawling up your spine, even potentially killing you in the process?  That’s the idea behind William Castle’s The Tingler, shown last week as part of the Belfast Film Festival.

The Tingler stars Vincent Price as pathologist Dr William Chapin, who discovers the horrible creature’s existence.  He dubs it ‘the Tingler’ due to the sensation it produces in down the spine and because, as his assistant David proclaims: “since we don’t know what it is yet, we can’t give it a Latin name”.

Fortunately, the Tingler isn’t undefeatable.  The creature can be stopped by simply screaming – letting rip with all you’ve got, indeed. 

Dr Chapin gets the chance to examine a real life Tingler after the untimely death of Martha, the deaf-mute co-owner of a silent movie theatre who is literally scared to death due to her inability to scream.  Realising news of the Tingler would cause untold panic among the public, Chapin decides to hush up his discovery and return the creature to Martha’s body, brought back to the apartment above the movie theatre she had shared with her husband.

But of course, things don’t go quite to plan and the Tingler gets loose, wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting film goers below with terrifying (and unintentionally hilarious) consequences.

William Castle loved to break the fourth wall with various movie gimmicks.  When the movie was first released, this was the point his latest gimmick was deployed in the form of ‘Percepto!’ – basically, electrical buzzers attached to the underside of some chairs in the cinema.  On screen, the Tingler gets into the projectionist’s booth, the silent movie being screened breaks down and the creature crawls across the screen.  It was at this point in the real life cinema the lights would get turned off and ‘Percepto!” would get switched on, giving some unsuspecting cinema goers a jolt as Vincent Price warned them not to panic but to “scream! Scream for your lives!”

Obviously, the Film Festival’s beanbag cinema wasn’t quite able to attach electrical buzzers to the underside of the beanbags.  However they did their best with some large speakers on the floor and the bass turned all the way up to eleven, causing the beanbags to shake and the spine to tingle, well, sort of.   During the shorter scenes this technique didn’t really have enough time to work, but it was most effective during two of the longer set pieces where Dr Chapin embarks on a memorable acid trip in the name of Science, and when poor Martha gets scared to death.

Another technique Castle used when The Tingler was first released was to employ screamers and fainters to attend the film screenings and, well, scream and faint in the theatre.  There were no fainters present among the beanbags, though as most people were watching the movie in a horizontal position it would have been hard to tell anyway.  Pleasingly though there was a screamer present, but of course, she could have just been genuinely unable to cope with all the horror onscreen.

And there is plenty of horror onscreen, though most of it unintentional.  The Tingler hasn’t earned itself the title of camp classic for nothing after all.  Some truly terrible dialogue is coupled with some truly terrible acting for full fearful effect.  “Well, everyone can scream!”, Dr Chapin’s sister-in-law exclaims.  “A deaf-mute can’t scream”, David replies ominously.

If you wanted to look deeply enough, you could probably find something interesting in the film’s subplot involving marriages gone wrong – Dr Chapin’s relationship with his wife is full of adulterous behaviour and matching attempts to kill each other, while the unfortunate deaf-mute Martha is also killed off by her ineffectual little husband.  Unfortunately, the characters are all so one-dimensional that this is never really developed.

The film doesn’t exactly advance the portrayal of women on screen either.  Dr Chapin’s wife is a drinking, smoker adulterer who attempts to kill her husband and possibly killed her father, too.  On the other hand, her sister is a virginal, clean living girl who cheerfully rolls her eyes when the men go off to discuss their highly important men’s work.  And let’s not forget Martha, a deaf-mute bundle of OCD and nerves who gets scared to death by things worthy of the ghost train in a particularly low-budget amusement park.

However, critiquing the plot points of a movie like The Tingler feels a little bit pointless.  It’s b-movie fluff, and highly enjoyable for what it is, especially when it’s a Friday night, you’ve had a glass of wine and are watching the movie from a beanbag, for example.  If you’re a fan of Castle, Price or just campy horror in general, watching The Tingler is a fun way to spend an evening – just as long as you don’t panic and remember to scream.  Scream for your lives!