The Beat February 2003

Big Trouble In Little China
Director: John Carpenter

In the early 1980‘s, VCRs became a household item and the Hollywood studios were bought out by huge multinational concerns. Just when the late 60‘s-early 70‘s directors‘ movement had finally succeeded in bursting the bubble of our collective innocence with ethically conflicted anti-heroes like Taxi Driver, The Godfather and A Clockwork Orange, the industry was overrun by a bunch of MBAs seeking huge profits from “blockbusters” like Jaws, Star Wars, Rocky and E.T. They reasoned that people wanted stories where good conquers evil decisively, one person can make a difference, and viewers walk out feeling clean and absolved. According to the box office totals, they were right.

But in a classic example of overkill, corporate Hollywood began manufacturing safe, formulaic movies that were quick and disposable in the hopes of creating a steady stream of profits through the chain of distribution. Nudity and violence, shock and rebellion, rapping Shakespeare and animals in hockey suits were all aimed at capturing our attention for 3-5 weeks at the box office. After that, movies moved downstream through the industry outlets (pay-per-view, cable, new vid sales) until reaching the mouth of the river – being dubbed and sold to a Korean video store.

Korean video stores are ground zero for the movie industry. If they dropped a bomb that eliminated good movies and left the shitty ones, every video store in the world would look like a Korean video store. I offer as evidence this actual row of titles at the front of the video store near my house:

Ernest Goes To Jail. Cobra. The Muppets Take Manhattan. The Making of Forrest Gump. Stone Cold. Leprechaun 3. Mermaids. Shreck. Ghost Dad.

This is known locally as the “new” movie shelf. I am not making this up.

Large number theory dictates that some classics must emerge from the oceans of puke on video shelves here in Korea. We give these treasures a new moniker – Cable Classics. You‘ve seen them on HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime hundreds of times. Now they live somewhere in the netherworld between USA network, OCN and the video shelves. Cable classics are often an equal serving of explosions, tacky one-liners, and gratuitous tit/bush shots. The credits read like a casting call for retreads, old sports stars, animals, and rap video girls.

With this classic harvest in mind, almost any Korean video store is ripe for the picking. You must be patient, but for every dozen Cory Feldman movies, you‘ll find a diamond in the rough like Big Trouble In Little China.

Big Trouble In Little China is to the Hollywood kung-fu genre what The Beastmaster is to action/adventure, Tron is to sci-fi, Scanners is to horror and Top Secret! is to comedy: In a word, it‘s cheesy. The unhealthy, fried bologna sandwich kind of cheese. Or movie nachos cheese.

To start with you have John Carpenter directing. He earned his chops making Halloween, Escape From New York, The Fog, Christine, and a killer remake of the cold-war classic The Thing, which still delivers twenty years later. He also made films like Elvis-The Movie and another timeless cable classic, Starman. That‘s as eclectic as it is successful. The point is that John learned how to make great films along genre lines that normally were niche performers aimed at profitable demographics; Great movies with a solid following that made decent money and stayed true to the idea that films can be fun and well-made at the same time.

But in ‘86 when the studio marketed this as “A rousing big-budget action affair,” people went in expecting Commando or Rambo and were confused to the BeJesusbelt by Jack Burton, the bumbling, loud, overstated American fool with a big gun, a big truck, but no plan whatsoever. Big Trouble was originally written as a western with some Asian magic and kung fu mixed in and apparently Carpenter had balked at making the film until he saw Tsui Hark's film Zu: Warriors of the Magi, which inspired him to make his own wacky flying fighting people movie.

So he made it and voila! It was critically panned, ignored by audiences, and fired out of theatres without ever coming close to finding its audience.

Much like Blade Runner, Time Bandits, and The Road Warrior, the audience it failed to garner in the theatre was eventually found on cable and video. Critics had claimed it to be a "comic book-like" film, completely missing the fact that Big Trouble was supposed to be a comic book-like film. Remember – it wasn‘t until the 90's that comic adaptations, "Hong Kong" cinema, postmodern sensibilities, Eastern philosophies and martial arts all became en vogue in Hollywood. Given that it was made at the heart of the Arnold and Stallone, one-man army, shoot-and-ask-questions-later film movement, it was easy to miss the satire.

Big Trouble stars Kurt Russell, who was already a cult movie hero after playing Snake Pliskin in Escape From New York and had also worked with Carpenter on The Thing. He showed a lot of confidence casting Kurt as Jack Burton, the first serious comedic role he‘d had since Kurt was making Disney flicks in the early 70‘s. And if you‘re wondering how in the hell a Western with Asian mysticism and kung fu could be a comedy, try this on for a storyline:

Jack Burton cruises into San Fran in his truck, The Pork Chop Express, and falls into a vile plot involving green-eyed women, a tour bus driving shaman named Egg Shen, kung-fu streetfights, a 1000 year-old fleshless demigod, an underground labyrinth called Vault of the Dead Trees where “the black blood of the earth flows,” and a ton of angry flying magic bad-asses.

Along the way to recovering The Pork Chop Express, Jack also rescues the nosy lawyer (Played by Kim Cattrall who was the mannequin in Mannequin and currently plays the old, ugly, slutty one on Sex In The City) from the clutches of evil Asian sorcerers, David Lo Pan - The Godfather of Little China, orange monkey creatures and lots of guys running around with lampshades on their head shooting electricity out of their fingers. (Matrix, eat your heart out.)

Here‘s the bottom line - What makes cable classics so eminently watchable and eternally entertaining is the spirit in which they were discovered. They were off the radar and cast into the pit with all the other refuse but somehow, someway, they emerged all the stronger from the struggle. The producers and directors of these films were accountable to a bottom line but still managed to have fun playing with cameras, actors and audiences. Using the former three elements as a yardstick, I suggest Big Trouble In Little China has no measurable peers.

Note 1: Ever wonder where they got the idea for those guys in Mortal Combat? Here‘s your answer. Raiden, the guy with the psi knives, even that big multi-armed dude you had to fight last were all in this movie.

Note 2: Here‘s a tidbit from Jack - "You just listen to the words of the old Porkchop Express and take his advice on a dark and stormy night when the lightning is crashing, the thunder rolling and the rain falling in sheets as thick as lead. Just remember what Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, the poison arrows fall from the sky and the pillars of heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton looks that big old storm right in the eye and he says: 'Gimme your best shot pal, I can take it...”