BONUS REVIEW: Jewel of the Gods

Noel

Unlike the last few films, where my problem with following them came from subtitle/dub issues, I have very little clue what was going on here because the sheer blandness of this movie was projecting a bubble of disinterest that kept pushing my gaze away. I looked at my phone, the clock, books on my shelves, paged through some manga, alphabetized a stack of DVDs. Not even a nude Abe Vigoda with a leaf blower aimed at my eyes could have succeeded in keeping me from looking at the screen more than Jewel of the Gods did.

BONUS REVIEW: The Gods Must Be Crazy 5 (aka The Gods Must Be Funny In China)

Noel

First off, we're right back to the subtitling problem I had with Part 3, where it's white, borderless text which completely vanishes whenever a scene is brightly lit, or people are wearing white, or somebody sets a white sheet of paper on a table in the middle of a big exposition scene. Add to this an awkwardly written translation and the titles flying on and off at a rapid-fire pace, and there's a good third of this movie I'm just straight up not able to read. So there's parts of this story where I'm only guessing what happened based on visuals and performance alone, and aside from N!xau and a rotund man nick-named Fatty, I don't have a clue what any of the character's names are, and the string of blanks on IMDb shows that nobody else does, either. At least there's no narrators who go completely untranslated this time around.

BONUS REVIEW: The Gods Must Be Crazy 4 (aka Crazy Hong Kong)

Jak

Yikes, is this ever a terrible movie.

Where Part 3 at least had a basic understanding of Uys's style and comedic sense, 4 appears to lack any understanding of comedy at all. The wretched dub doesn't help matters, but I doubt that even A-list voice actors could save this mess.

BONUS REVIEW: The Gods Must Be Crazy 3 (aka Crazy Safari)

Noel

Despite being heavily into Hong Kong films of the 80s/early 90s during my teen years (there was a local theater that would double feature them every Friday at midnight), I don't recall ever before seeing anything from the Jiangashi subgenre, that of Chinese hopping vampires. Poking around a bit online, it really only seemed to become a thing when Sammo Hung made Encounters of the Spooky Kind in 1980 and Mr. Vampire in 1985, setting the trend of playing such vampires for comedic laughs amidst supernatural kung fu action. I really need to check both of these out. Anyways, it started a wave of sequels and spinoffs and ripoffs, and I see that Lam Ching-Ling, featured in the film I'm covering today, had became a well-established genre mainstay as the stern Taoist priest dealing with both the vampires and comical sidekicks who always get in his way.

Episode 9: The Gods Must Be Crazy 2 (1989)

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Jak's pick for the month is The Gods Must Be Crazy 2 (1989). IMDb. Wikipedia.


Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.

Episode 8: Disorderlies (1987)

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Noel's pick for the month is Disorderlies (1987). IMDb. Wikipedia.


Check out Jak's complete song "Waking in a Mass Grave" from the album Action Packed Self Destruction.