Gunpowder Milkshake
Notes:
I call these flicks “Neon Gun Fables,” with each word selected to describe what I believe are fundamental aspects of the genre. Neon represents style, and in particular, an urban night-life vibe; bright colors that are in direct contrast with the wet streets and menacing shadows of film noir, which I consider a grandparent of this kind of fare. Gun? Well, that’s obvious. These movies have guns galore and frequently feature the kind of “Gun Fu” that’s one of the hallmarks of John Woo, the auteur whose Hong Kong action flicks have influenced everyone from Quentin Tarantino to the Washowskis. And finally, Fables. These movies all contain a kind of vast, sprawling and often absurd mythology in which their characters, frequently contract killers or agents, are bound by bizarre rules of loyalty and are either members of, or battling against, grand, underground syndicates. There are almost always big bosses that govern over hundreds of disposable henchman as well as some kind of covert medical care that, time and again, appears both more reliable and reasonably priced than the United States healthcare system.
One thing, however, that “Neon Gun Fables” as a phrase fails to capture are the frequently impressive casts these films boast. For instance, “Hotel Artemis” has Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Dave Bautista and Jeff Goldblum. In “Bad Times at the El Royal,” you can find your darling Jeff Bridges alongside Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm and Chris Hemsworth. “Bullet Train?” Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, Michael Shannon and Bad Bunny. Yeah, THE Bad Bunny, pa en VIP, en VIP! And that’s just going back to 2018! Were we to go further back, there’s the John Wick movies, “Atomic Blonde,” “Baby Driver,” “The Kingsman” flicks, and Hell, even “Kill Bill!”
So, there’s a lot of these out there, but then there’s this one. This “Gunpowder Milkshake.” And I gotta know, after all this lead-up and stage-setting, is this flick as much of a shitshow to you as it is to me? Because while it’s a prime example of a “Neon Gun Fable,” it’s a pretty awful film IF you stop to think about it.
1.) how did Navot Papushado get thirty million to make this script? I have never heard of him but he apparently broke onto the scene in 2010 with a somewhat well regarded anrthouse flick And how did all of these stars fall into this mess? Is Hollywood actually this creatively bankrupt?
2.) Karen Gillan – what do you think of her? Have you seen Oculus?
3.) Does Michelle Yeoh just make everything better? And Carla Gugino?
4.) Cercei Lannister as Nebula’s Mom? I’ll allow it.
Bottom Five Gun Scenes
5.) Shatter Dead (1994)
Dir. Scooter McCrae
A no-budget patience-tester for most, “Shatter Dead” is one of my favorite Microcinema films of all time. I’ve mentioned this genre of filmmaking a few times in the past, particularly in our bottom five low budget movies episode that went along with your review of “I am a Ghost/A Ghost Story.” No-budgeters, I probably have a higher tolerance than most anyone for them because I used to make movies this way: zero resources, getting friends and acquaintances to act for free, wearing all the hats ever on every production by being writer, director, producer, actor, DP, caterer, acting coach, psychiatrist… you get the point. Anyhow, Scooter McCrae’s “Shatter Dead” was made way back in 1994, and I probably didn’t catch up with it until ten years later when I was deep into the scene. Holy shit, this movie is dark, bananas, stylish, cheap, surprising and smart. It’s a simple story about a woman named Susan who just wants to get home in a world filled with reanimated corpses. Only the difference here is these are not Zombies – they’re simply dead people who are still alive, many just trying to pass as still living so they’re not maimed by the prejudicial living. Because once you’re injured when you’re already dead, you wear whatever’s happened to you forever. McCrae comes up with all sorts of wild scenarios to explore this concept, but there’s one stand-out sequence that almost everyone who has seen this movie talks about: the scene when Susan and her now-dead boyfriend make love and he… wears a gun as a makeshift strap on. No joke, this happens in a movie and it’s shot in surprisingly graphic detail. I bet you didn’t think gun-fucking would be on this list, Mike, but “Shatter Dead” lands at my number five spot not because it’s a bad scene (although most will argue it is). It’s here because, it’s a scene where a woman is penetrated with a gun. Consentualy, but holy shit… yeah. It needs to be mentioned.
4.) They Live (1988)
Dir. John Carpenter
By 1988, just a short ten years after he’d stormed onto the scene with “Halloween,” John Carpenter’s career had begun to skid out. After the big -budget disappointments of 82’s “The Thing,” which of course in now considered a classic and 1986’s “Big Trouble in Little China,” which also has a pretty rabid fanbase, myself included, Carpenter decided to go back to more indie roots and signed a deal with Alive Films to direct two low-budget pictures: “Prince of Darkness” and “They Live.” Most view this as the beginning of the end of Carpenter caring about his movies, but I quite like both of these movies despite the fact they are very, very cheaply made. And the biggest problem for both arises in the gunplay that’s seen in “They Live” as John Nada, played by wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper, makes his way to the top of the TV station that’s transmitting the alien signal that keeps all of human kind “asleep.” Nada’s snaking his way through tunnels and stairwells, and when he encounters guards, he lays waste to them with a machine gun. But sadly, Carpenter’s budget got so tight they couldn’t afford enough squibs – the fake blood packets that explode by remote to simulate bullet impacts. So instead, for these climactic gun fights we get… dudes just sort of jiggling as if being riddled with bullets and then falling over. It looks silly, and it, along with a lot of the last ten minutes of “They Live” is part of what makes me think Carpenter simply lost his passion for movies after “Big Trouble.” Any movie scene that shows the piss has been stolen out of one of the most beloved genre filmmakers of all time certainly belongs on a bottom five list, and those final TV station gunfights are exactly that, so I have no problem placing the great “They Live” on my bottom five gun scenes.
3.) Batman (1989)
Dir. Tim Burton
We recently discussed Burton’s “Batman” ’89 during a game of kick-two, pick two where I unceremoniously gave it the boot, so it probably doesn’t surprise anyone that it came to mind when forming this list of bad gun scenes. In this case, though, it’s simply a case of going too far with the phantasmagoria. Yes, I can believe a man becomes a superhero in a bat costume because he hates criminals due to childhood trauma. Sure, I can buy a supremely devilish mob boss who wants to run an entire city’s criminal enterprise. OK, I guess it’s fine that millionaire Bruce Wayne would dig Vicky Vale despite how vapid she seems. But, let’s be real. The Joker whipping out an 36″ hand-cannon and firing off a single shot that takes down the Batwing? Come the fuck on? Are we serious right now? Batman unloads missiles and two turrets-worth of bullets and the Joker doesn’t even flinch. But then, he withdraws this comically foolish gun and squeezes off a single shot that forces Batman to crash his coolest toy? Nope. Even at age 14 when I thought “Batman” ’89 was a four-star film, I dropped one full star for this bullshit with that gun and the batwing. What a load of hot garbage. Comic book or not, in retrospect I’m wondering if I should have ranked this foolishness further on my list.
2.) Karate Girl (1973)
Dir. Orhan Aksoy
Director Orham Aksoy managed to have a very long and distinguished career in his native Turkey directing melodramas, action movies, musicals and romances. But perhaps what he’s most known for by Western audiences is his 1973 debacle, “Karateci Kız” (KaraTE ge-cuz) or “Karate Girl.” You may not have seen the entire movie, but there’s a solid chance you’ve caught this death scene online and it absolutely belongs on anyone’s list of Bottom Five Gun Scenes. While perhaps not as well-known as the head-smash from “Rikki O,” this insanity went viral in 2012, racking up 17 million hits before getting pulled by the copyright holders. It features the heroine of the film, Zeynep, getting the better of one of her nemeses, the evil Ferruh who, along with some cronies, killed both her father and some years later, her police-officer husband. Hilariously, the Karate is just as bad as the gunplay in this ludicrous fight, with Zeynep beating the villain back to the point where he tries to surprise her by pulling out a pistol. As with the entire scene, she’s one step ahead of him and, blammo, she pops a cap into his stomach. That’s it, right? End of story? No… no, no no. Zeynep, Karate Girl, she’s now Gun Girl. And as Ferruh reacts to his punctured gut by squeezing a bag of blood over his abdomen IN SLOW MOTION, she shoots him again. He recoils, again, still in slow motion, his mouth and eyes comically wide as the second bullet works its way through him, presumably with the speed of a minute hand on a clock. So, she shoots him again, but every time she shoots, she is in regular speed. And when he’s hit AGAIN, he’s still in slow motion, stumbling over a to a bureau in hilarious agony, his back to her. So, of course, she shoots him again in normal speed and HE’S STILL IN SLOW MOTION, now splayed against the wall with his hands leaving bloody prints. His back turned to her, yep, she shoots again! And in slow motion he falls to a bed, perhaps dying, or perhaps being shot again and again, I cannot recall. This scene, maybe it never ends. Maybe she’s still shooting him to this day and he’s still grimacing with the most goofy expressions this side of a cartoon. The whole movie is a hoot, for sure, but by God, if you’ve never witnessed this scene, look it up on DailyMotion. But note this: the original version of the scene doesn’t have a ludicrously bad dubbed-in scream. That was added by some clown on YouTube and isn’t sanctioned by the late, great Orham Aksoy!
1.) True Lies (1994)
Dir. James Cameron
I began this list with a movie that probably had an entire budget lower than the cost of the catering for one day on the “True Lies” set. Now, I end it with “True Lies” a movie that hasn’t aged well, but really wasn’t all that good back when it was released, if we’re being totally honest. This was Cameron at his zaniest, before he got all prestige with “Titanic” but after the mega success of “T2.” He was giving zero fucks here and everything was big, loud and completely off-the-wall. As he’d never done a comedy before, unless you count “Terminator 2’s” characters and plotline, Cameron experimented with goofy coincidences and shenanigans in this remake of a French film about a secret agent played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who suspects his wife, memorably portrayed by a very fit Jamie Lee Curtis, is having an affair behind his back. One of the most notorious of the films sequences was the incredibly dumb scene which finds Jamie Lee Curtis’s character Helen, mishandling an Uzi during an escape from the terrorists’ lair and the gun, somehow, falling down a flight of stairs and firing with each step it hits, killing about 12 hostiles in the process. It’s idiotic, even for a comedy, and considering the huge amount of money and talent involved, the seemingly limitless resources the production had at its fingertips, this was how they get themselves free from capture? It’s lazy and unfunny, and it lands firmly in my number one spot as a testament to the wastefulness and complete lack of care for audiences that big-budget Hollywood has always had.