First some housekeeping: for those hearty souls who read this post (<5), you’ll be excited to learn that I’ve begun my annual read of Rose by Martin Cruz Smith, number 15 by my count. Feel free to check it out for the first time.
With that bit of smug superiority out of the system (or is it a sad admission?), let us turn our attention to today’s blogpost, a relative quickie…
For a while there in the 1980s, John Carpenter, the low-budget auteur behind such shockers as Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980), started working within the studio system. The result? Four movies in five years, including a remake of The Thing (1982), an adaptation of Stephen King’s Christine (1983) and the film Columbia Pictures (to its everlasting regret) decided to produce instead of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the lost-alien-just-wants-to-go-home weeper, Starman (1984).
Of course, all deals with the devil come with consequences—those bigger budgets and studio marketing muscle meant less artistic control. Disillusioned, Carpenter swore off the studio system and returned to his low-budget roots with 1987’s Prince of Darkness (briefly discussed here) and hasn’t looked back. (With the exception of 1992’s steaming pile of dog feces, Memoirs of an Invisible Man.)
The studio project that pushed Carpenter over the edge?
Never heard of it? Well, that’s one of the reasons Carpenter left the studios. He didn’t think 20th Century Fox gave the film, which he feels is among his strongest work, the sort of marketing love it deserved. Not that it was a particularly easy sell. Let’s face it: a mashup of eastern mysticism, martial arts, tongue-in-cheek comedy, complicated practical and visual effects, Perils of Pauline action and a doughy young Kurt Russell playing a truck driver isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Which is too bad because it’s a hoot and indeed among Carpenter’s best work, a rare bit of levity in a filmography filled with dread and gore.
Synopsis
How does one even begin to explain this film?
Former Disney favorite son Kurt Russell plays Jack Burton, a blowhard who quickly finds himself in over his dim-witted head when his good buddy Wang’s (Dennis Dun, who had quite a run in the 1980s, landing solid roles in Camino’s Year of the Dragon, Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and the aforementioned Prince of Darkness) girlfriend, Miao Yin, is mistakenly abducted by the Lords of Death, a Chinese street gang.
Now, before you go thinking this sounds grim, please note the scene that follows, one in which Burton and Wang track the gang to a skinny back alley in Chinatown but instead find themselves in the midst of a tong war (look it up), goes something like this…
As I said earlier, Carpenter is clearly having some fun scratching a (supernatural) martial arts itch as the turf war is interrupted by “The Three Storms,” ancient warriors with the power of thunder, rain and lightning, and their boss, Lo Pan (played by the indispensable James Hong), a powerful wizard currently cursed and in need of a green-eyed girl to restore his corporeal form.
Flummoxed by events in a uniquely blockheadish way that plays wonderfully across Russell’s face, Burton’s confusion is ratcheted to 11 when local magician Egg Shen (the equally indispensable Victor Wong) explains the supernatural Chinese history behind Lo Pan and company.
While all that’s fine and good, Burton simply wants his truck back. Ditto for Wang in terms of his fiancé. To accomplish both ends, the group attempts to rescue Miao Yin from a brothel connected to the Lords of Death but she’s whisked off by The Three Storms…
It seems Wang’s girl has green eyes, which makes her the perfect sacrificial lamb for Lo Pan.
Our heroes, now joined by Egg, Miao Yin’s friend Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall, before she became the obnoxiously unlikeable Samantha Jones on HBO’s Sex and the City) and a motley crew of others, travel to Lo Pan’s lair, a cavern beneath Chinatown. In short order, Burton and Wang are captured…
…Lo Pan discovers Gracie also has green eyes and takes her, too; a giant floating blob with dozens of eyes keeps entering the frame…
…Burton knocks himself unconscious by shooting the ceiling, which dislodges a chunk that falls on his head; a strange wedding ceremony almost takes place…
…and Wang gets to show off his kung fu chops….
In other words, 30 minutes of strangeness that appears to have sprung from the addled imagination of a 19-year-old exhaling bong hit number four. Maybe that’s why it tanked at the box office.
Final Thoughts
But don’t let the impenetrable synopsis or my snark put you off the film. Big Trouble in Little China truly is a gas. Like Roadhouse it only gets better with multiple viewings. Credit screenwriter W. D. Richter, he of the zaniness that was 1984’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, for taking the original concept (more serious, 1880s setting) and adding heaps of silliness. And while comedy isn’t exactly Carpenter’s forte, he obviously has fun here dabbling in a different genre. And then there’s Kurt Russell, who I’d forgotten had such strong comedic chops. Between his John Wayne line readings, general cluelessness, and inability to realize he’s nothing but a supporting player in what’s unfolding, he steals the show.
Here’s the trailer: