'You Don't Own a Man Until You Control His Heart'/'Go After Him With the Laser': My F-ed-Up Film Friday.
In an attempt to relieve the tedium of my day-to-day existence, I decided
today to watch Mr No Legs (Ricou Browning, 1981) (or as it's more commonly known in the UK, The Amazing Mr No Legs). It's a strange little movie, a cross between an episode of a 70s TV cop show (minus the seemingly omnipresent moralising) and an uncomfortable freak show, featuring as it does a hitman with no legs (*gasp*: I guess the title says it all, really).
There's an extended car chase that, let's face it, seems to go on forever whilst going nowhere in particular, and a crazy barroom brawl/catfight. There's also an overuse of slow-motion, seemingly inserted at random. Unlike, say, Peckinpah's use of slo-mo, the slow-motion in Mr No Legs serves no function: it doesn't add to our understanding of the action or of the mentality that drives the characters involved in the violence--most of it is simply there to add to the carnival side-show aspect of the movie.
The highlight of the movie by far is the sequence in which Mr No Legs takes on his former employer's goons by a swimming pool. He does a sort of flying kick (yes, it's in slow-motion) and wrestles/pulls one of the goons to the floor before squeezing the life out of him.
What's the movie about? I hear you ask. Well, I'm not really sure, to be honest. It had something to do with drugs: a girl got murdered, and her brother--a down-at-heels honest cop (played by Richard Jaeckel, who has a brilliant freeze-frame at the end of the film) tracks down the guys who killed her. Mr No Legs works for a drugs kingpin named D'Angelo (Lloyd Bochner), and at some point D'Angelo decides to get his goons to kill No Legs--I think it's
because No Legs is seen as inefficient, which kind of suggests that he isn't as 'amazing' as the UK release title suggests. But the narrative isn't important: as in most of these movies, it's simply an excuse for a series of middling action setpieces.
What's most disappointing about the movie is the fact that Mr No Legs is only in it for a short period of time; and let me tell you, he isn't that 'amazing', either. Yeah, he's got guns attached to the sides of his wheelchair, and he can kick the butts of guys who look like they should be extras in a 1970s porn movie (and I bet most of them were at one point extras in porn movies), but he's not really that special. My great-grandfather had no legs--admittedly, his knowledge of martial arts was more limited than that of Mr No Legs himself, but I bet in a fair scrap, my great-grandad could hold his own against this supposedly 'amazing' limb-challenged hitman. But then again, my great-grandad didn't have blonde beauties surrounding him, who would do his bidding without argument; Mr No Legs does! He's one cool motherfunster.
It's a bad, bad film. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. Now, having suffered through this movie, I'm going to press it into the hands of all of my friends.
Do you want to watch a guy with no legs do push-ups on the arms of his wheelchair? Do you want to see 70s style facial hair and pudding-bowl haircuts? Do you want to see a disabled man kick all kinds of ass? No? Then what the heck is wrong with you?
They certainly don't make 'em like this anymore!
And then, after the movie madness that is Mr No Legs, I decided to sample Sergio Martino's Mani di pietra/Hands of Steel (1986).
Now this is another movie whose plot didn't seem to hold together--but that's no surprise, really. It's about a cyborg with the unlikely name of Paco (Danuel Greene), who is sent to kill a scientist but suffers conscience pangs before going on the run, falling in with Janet Agren (who I've never cared for much--but then, she's a blonde and, as anyone will tell you, I don't go for blondes), scrapping with George Eastman (or Luigi Montefiore), and finally engaging in a showdown with John Saxon himself! Yes, and John Saxon gets to deliver one of the film's finest lines: 'I can't bear to see him escape. Go after him with the laser'. Positively Shakespearean, isn't it. By the way, one of the cowriters is Elisa Briganti, the woman behind the script for Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (1979).
This movie is often lumped in with the post-apocalypse movies that were popular in Italy during the 1980s; but unlike Martino's 2019: After the Fall of New York or Enzo Girolami's Bronx Warriors films (which I highly recommend, by the way), this film isn't set in a post-nuclear wasteland. It's set in 1997, as many of these movies are (e.g. Escape From New York). Ironically enough, 1997 was the year I had my heart broken: maybe there's some significance there... Probably not, however: but these are the types of thoughts that run through your mind whilst you're watching movies like this.
This movie is one action setpiece after another, from the prerequisite barroom brawls to chases with lorries and helicopters, to a final shootout in an abandoned warehouse. There's some good action too, from Daniel Greene punching through the visor of a bad guy's motorcycle helmet and breaking the guy's face, to Greene's final standoff with Montefiore/Eastman. And it's all capped off with one of the greatest closing lines in film history (note the irony in this statement): 'You Don't Own a Man Until You Control His Heart'.
If I had the energy and zest for life that I used to possess, I think I would sit and mull over the film's 'deep' ending, but at a certain point in life you realise that these attempts at 'deep' endings really don't require an awful lot of thought--thinking about them too carefully may well cause some sort of mental malfunction. And then where would you end up? Probably running around the Arizona desert, thinking yourself to be a malfunctioning cyborg. You might just hook up with Janet Agren, and I guess all the stress would be worthwhile if you could engage in a showdown with John Saxon.
A macabre and somewhat disquieting piece of trivia: one of the movie's costars, Claudio Cassinelli, sadly died in a helicopter crash during the shooting of this movie.
In an attempt to relieve the tedium of my day-to-day existence, I decided
today to watch Mr No Legs (Ricou Browning, 1981) (or as it's more commonly known in the UK, The Amazing Mr No Legs). It's a strange little movie, a cross between an episode of a 70s TV cop show (minus the seemingly omnipresent moralising) and an uncomfortable freak show, featuring as it does a hitman with no legs (*gasp*: I guess the title says it all, really).There's an extended car chase that, let's face it, seems to go on forever whilst going nowhere in particular, and a crazy barroom brawl/catfight. There's also an overuse of slow-motion, seemingly inserted at random. Unlike, say, Peckinpah's use of slo-mo, the slow-motion in Mr No Legs serves no function: it doesn't add to our understanding of the action or of the mentality that drives the characters involved in the violence--most of it is simply there to add to the carnival side-show aspect of the movie.
The highlight of the movie by far is the sequence in which Mr No Legs takes on his former employer's goons by a swimming pool. He does a sort of flying kick (yes, it's in slow-motion) and wrestles/pulls one of the goons to the floor before squeezing the life out of him.
What's the movie about? I hear you ask. Well, I'm not really sure, to be honest. It had something to do with drugs: a girl got murdered, and her brother--a down-at-heels honest cop (played by Richard Jaeckel, who has a brilliant freeze-frame at the end of the film) tracks down the guys who killed her. Mr No Legs works for a drugs kingpin named D'Angelo (Lloyd Bochner), and at some point D'Angelo decides to get his goons to kill No Legs--I think it's
because No Legs is seen as inefficient, which kind of suggests that he isn't as 'amazing' as the UK release title suggests. But the narrative isn't important: as in most of these movies, it's simply an excuse for a series of middling action setpieces.What's most disappointing about the movie is the fact that Mr No Legs is only in it for a short period of time; and let me tell you, he isn't that 'amazing', either. Yeah, he's got guns attached to the sides of his wheelchair, and he can kick the butts of guys who look like they should be extras in a 1970s porn movie (and I bet most of them were at one point extras in porn movies), but he's not really that special. My great-grandfather had no legs--admittedly, his knowledge of martial arts was more limited than that of Mr No Legs himself, but I bet in a fair scrap, my great-grandad could hold his own against this supposedly 'amazing' limb-challenged hitman. But then again, my great-grandad didn't have blonde beauties surrounding him, who would do his bidding without argument; Mr No Legs does! He's one cool motherfunster.
It's a bad, bad film. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. Now, having suffered through this movie, I'm going to press it into the hands of all of my friends.
Do you want to watch a guy with no legs do push-ups on the arms of his wheelchair? Do you want to see 70s style facial hair and pudding-bowl haircuts? Do you want to see a disabled man kick all kinds of ass? No? Then what the heck is wrong with you?
They certainly don't make 'em like this anymore!
And then, after the movie madness that is Mr No Legs, I decided to sample Sergio Martino's Mani di pietra/Hands of Steel (1986).
Now this is another movie whose plot didn't seem to hold together--but that's no surprise, really. It's about a cyborg with the unlikely name of Paco (Danuel Greene), who is sent to kill a scientist but suffers conscience pangs before going on the run, falling in with Janet Agren (who I've never cared for much--but then, she's a blonde and, as anyone will tell you, I don't go for blondes), scrapping with George Eastman (or Luigi Montefiore), and finally engaging in a showdown with John Saxon himself! Yes, and John Saxon gets to deliver one of the film's finest lines: 'I can't bear to see him escape. Go after him with the laser'. Positively Shakespearean, isn't it. By the way, one of the cowriters is Elisa Briganti, the woman behind the script for Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (1979).This movie is often lumped in with the post-apocalypse movies that were popular in Italy during the 1980s; but unlike Martino's 2019: After the Fall of New York or Enzo Girolami's Bronx Warriors films (which I highly recommend, by the way), this film isn't set in a post-nuclear wasteland. It's set in 1997, as many of these movies are (e.g. Escape From New York). Ironically enough, 1997 was the year I had my heart broken: maybe there's some significance there... Probably not, however: but these are the types of thoughts that run through your mind whilst you're watching movies like this.
This movie is one action setpiece after another, from the prerequisite barroom brawls to chases with lorries and helicopters, to a final shootout in an abandoned warehouse. There's some good action too, from Daniel Greene punching through the visor of a bad guy's motorcycle helmet and breaking the guy's face, to Greene's final standoff with Montefiore/Eastman. And it's all capped off with one of the greatest closing lines in film history (note the irony in this statement): 'You Don't Own a Man Until You Control His Heart'.
If I had the energy and zest for life that I used to possess, I think I would sit and mull over the film's 'deep' ending, but at a certain point in life you realise that these attempts at 'deep' endings really don't require an awful lot of thought--thinking about them too carefully may well cause some sort of mental malfunction. And then where would you end up? Probably running around the Arizona desert, thinking yourself to be a malfunctioning cyborg. You might just hook up with Janet Agren, and I guess all the stress would be worthwhile if you could engage in a showdown with John Saxon.
A macabre and somewhat disquieting piece of trivia: one of the movie's costars, Claudio Cassinelli, sadly died in a helicopter crash during the shooting of this movie.
Original text: ©Paul A J Lewis, 2005
posted by Paul A J Lewis at 12:20 am
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