Bare Knuckles is a L.A. shot 70s grindhouse/drive-in picture. So, a good kind of picture. Robert Viharo stars, he's probably best known for being in Valley of the Dolls. It co-stars former child-star Sherry Jackson, Gloria Hendry (from Live and Let Die) pops up too. Helping Viharo along the way is John (Black Shampoo) Daniels as, uh, a character named Black. Even my man George "Buck" Flowers is in it, so you really know it was shot in L.A. It's got a pure-paperback-plot. Viharo is Kane, a bounty hunter on the trail of a kung-fu serial killer who's targeting women using his own martial arts skills. Yeah. Radical, right?
Writer/director Don Edmond had a brief directorial career in the 70s, directing this, but most notably Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, its sequel and a handful of other movies. So, he's got some trash credentials. And he made a pretty fast-moving picture with all the things a drive-in audience would want in 1977. There's nudity, there's sexism, racism, a slight hint of giallo and plenty of sleaze. But most importantly there's plenty of action, both in the fist-fightin' and a you-know-this-was-too-dangerous car chase where Kane drives a bitchin' 1968 Plymouth Road Runner and hunts a guy on a motorcycle. This chase goes on forever and morphs into foot chase and then into the climatic brutal fight scene between Kane and the evil Kung-Fu Killer, who unfortunately for the movie, looks like a buffer Rick Moranis.
Low-budget 70s filmmaking hits different. They were shooting in dingy places, on the street without permits and the whole thing just has a dangerous vibe. Half the fun of these kinds of movies is checking out the surroundings, seeing long-lost artifacts on the street of a time long gone. There's a scene that takes place outside an old Pizza Hut and you can't buy that type of nostalgia. There are times where really feels like one-step above porn-level filmmaking, but that's charming to me at this point. Also, the picture looks pretty good which isn't surprising because this an early D.P. credit for Dean Cundey who shot Halloween (1978) and a lot of other John Carpenter films. Carpenter's early partner Debra Hill even served as script supervisor. It's funny how things like this happen.
But this is primarily a book blog, right? Yep. I'm getting there. First off Bare Knuckles is one of the closet films to really capture the seedy vibe of a 70s Leisure/Manor/Canyon paperback. It could have been a story from the pen of someone writing as Bruno Rossi, Len Levinson on vacation to Hollywood or a tale someone paid William Crawford to drunkenly write for the movies. And with Kane albeit brief partnership with, uh, Black there's minor shades of Ralph Dennis's Hardman books. I'm surprised there was never a really long going Men's Adventure series about a bounty hunter. It seems like a no-brainer. Tough crime stories, nasty villains on the loose, tough guy hero, seems simple. Alas it never was. But we have Bare Knuckles to show us what we missed.
But wait, wait there's more! Lead actor Robert Viharo is the father of private-eye writer Will Viharo who's first book, Love Stories Are Too Violent for Me is minor classic. Viharo's an interesting cat, living a Tiki-fused life with side gigs as a film programmer and hosting Thrillsville a burlesque/film show. He continues to write novels, but now openly experiments with the private eye novel form with added science fiction, horror and other gonzo touches. He's a great writer. Will talking about Bare Knuckles at some point got me to be on the look-out and eventually watch it.
So, if any of that sounds good to you, check it out. It's free on Tubi, the best place to find every movie you forgot about and tons you've never heard about.
No comments:
Post a Comment