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Our
movie begins along the foggy coast near
San Francisco, where just offshore, the
crew of a Chinese
junk (affectionately known as a
boat here in the States) hastily
loads their latest shipment into a large
cargo net. And the cargo in question is
strictly human: Oriental women --
kidnapped and brought to America to be
sold, at auction, for opium. Rendezvousing
with another boat, they brutally dump the
women over the side onto the other ship's
deck. As the junk turns to leave, it
explodes! I think (I
rewound it several times and I’m still
not sure.) On
the other boat, the prisoners are chained
together and rowed ashore. When they reach
the beach, the slave-traders are
bushwhacked by another group. While the captive
women try and escape during the confusion,
at this point, we’re not sure if this is
a rescue -- or just an attempt to hijack
the merchandise. One of the girls, who
will we come to know as Lotus (June
Kim), almost escapes. She's
recaptured, but, in the first of many
bizarre scenes, is saved by a white horse
that knocks the evildoer off a cliff. The
slavers are routed, and this proves to be
a rescue, so the girls are safe -- for
now. (He said ominously.)
The
scene shifts to San Francisco’s
Chinatown, where the police hurriedly
cordon off that section of the city and
won't allow anyone to enter. We find out,
through a midget newsie, that a Tong war
is about to erupt between those who run
the human auctions and those who oppose
them. Enter Gilbert DeQuincey (Vincent
Price). Ignoring the barricades, he
dodges a falling seagull(?) and cautiously
makes his way into no man’s land. As he
makes his way along
the deserted, wind swept streets, he
enters the antique shop of his contact --
Chin Foon (Phillip Ahn).
DeQuincey
reveals his tattoo of the Moon Serpent,
signifying that he and Foon are loyal to
the mysterious recluse, Ling Tang. No one
knows for sure how old Tang really is.
Tang, who is in charge of the human
auctions, hasn’t been seen for over a
decade.
Plot
point! And is this plot sounding
familiar to anyone else?
DeQuincey
is a mercenary. Hired by Ruby Low (Linda
Ho), Tang’s second in command,
Foon says he is to recover one of the
girls lost at the beach -- and the girl in
question is Lotus. DeQuincey finds
Ruby at the funeral of George Wah (Richard
Loo). Wah was a newspaper editor
who spoke out against the auctions, and he
did more than just write about it, he was
killed at the beach while trying to save
the abducted women. Curious as to why
she's attending the funeral of her enemy,
Ruby explains with Chinese Proverbs -- and
it almost makes sense. (Come to
think of it, half the dialogue in this
movie came straight out of a fortune
cookie.)
As
soon as they set foot outside the funeral
home, the Dragon Flag is dropped -- the
signal that the Tong War is on, and all
hell breaks loose. Ruby ducks into secret
passage, leaving DeQuincey behind. Dodging
the violence, he makes his way to the
Chinese Gazette where Wah worked. Inside,
DeQuincey finds a secret room where Wah's
people have Lotus hid. Suddenly, a
sizeable chunk of Ling Tang's Tong
(-- Hee-hee. Say THAT five times fast --) break
in and find them. DeQuincey grabs the girl
and escapes to the sewers -- via another
secret passageway. (Wait a second.
Which side is he on?) The
Tong catches up and snatches the girl back,
and DeQuincey is knocked into the water. Left
for dead, he wakes up, hanging from a hook
snagged by his coat. Chin Foon and a
mysterious masked man confront and accuse
him of treachery. DeQuincey admits to
playing both sides to double his money.
After Chin and his buddy vanish in a puff
of smoke, DeQuincey manages to free
himself. Somewhere in the catacombs
beneath Chinatown -- and a strange place
it is (and
is all this reminding you of Big
Trouble in Little China
too?), he finds a room full of
suspended cages, filled with half starved
women. It seems that if a husband grows
tired of his wife, and doesn’t want her
ghost haunting him, all he has to do is
lock them in a cage and let them starve to
death, and then his conscious is clear.
He
frees Lo Tsen (Caroline Kido)
and Baby Doll (Yvonne Moray),
a midget who tires of her husbands
quickly, after they agree to show him
where the auctions take place. They take
him to a warehouse, and while the girls
distract the guards, DeQuincey
finds Lotus, suspended in a cage, but the
guards recover and chase him off before he
can free her. Taking refuge in a bathroom
-- but not just any bathroom, the
toilet triggers a door that leads straight
into an opium den. DeQuincey buys himself
a pipe, lights up, and drifts off to la-la
land. We’re then treated to an extended
montage of twisted imagery, meant to
represent the power and influence of the
poppy -- complete
with Bert I. Gordon stock footage of big
spiders, gators and lizards. (No.
Honest!) And then the
film starts to gets really weird (but
wasn't weird enough already?!) When
DeQuincey wakes up, he finds himself
surrounded by Ling Tang's men. Still under
the influence of the opium, a bizarre, and
eerily silent, slow-motion chase scene
ensues as he tries to get away. He
doesn’t make it.
DeQuincey
awakens in the presence of Ruby Low who
reveals that she, too, has been playing
both sides. While embezzling money and
munitions from Tang, she's been having a
love affair with George Wah. DeQuincey
almost escapes her clutches, but is
knocked unconscious, again. This
time he wakes up in a suspended cage with
Baby Doll, and the guard reveals their
gloomy fate by sliding a panel open,
revealing a tank of water. A drowned woman
floats silently, with a stone tied around
her neck (I think it's Lo Tsen).
The guard torments them further by opening
another peek-hole, revealing that the
auction is about to take place just on the
other side of the wall. As the auction
begins, we get to watch a bunch of old men
ogle a cache of nubile young women who
they force to dance before they'll open
the bidding.
DeQuincey
and Baby Doll manage to escape and head
for Ruby Low’s secret stash -- along
with her stolen loot, her vault is full of
fireworks, munitions and gunpowder.
Breaking open a keg of power, DeQuincey
begins to spread it all over the rest of
the explosives.
Back
at the auction, one of the old coots
discovers that the latest girl is bald.
This causes a massive snit because the
merchandise is damaged. They all demand to
see Ling Tang. Only his personal assurance
will prove that the auction is on the
level, so for the first time in ten years,
Ling Tang finally makes a public
appearance. His old features hidden behind
a mask, he calms everyone down and
introduces Lotus -- the prize lot of the
auction. The old badger who doesn’t like
bald chicks wins with the highest bid, but
it’s quickly discovered that the opium
he uses for payment isn’t real. The old
man then removes his disguise, revealing
that he is really George Wah -- back from
the dead.
At
almost the same moment, DeQuincey
blows the explosives in the vault. Turns
out he and Wah are old buddies and had the
whole thing planned from the beginning. (Huh!?!)
Fighting their way outside, they escape
to the streets. Too exposed, their only
chance for escape is down through the
sewers. Wah, Lotus and DeQuincey
make it down the manhole but Baby Doll is
killed. In the sewer, Ling Tang himself
confronts them. The sharp eye will notice
that Ling Tang is sporting a nice pair of
pumps, and as DeQuincey
and Tang tangle, allowing George and Lotus
to escape, he knocks the mask off --
revealing that Tang is really Ruby Low.
The old guy actually died a while ago and
she just assumed his role. (Uh,
okay.) They
both fall into the sewage water and are
swept away -- locked in each other’s
embrace. As they tumble off toward the
unknown, DeQuincey ponders whether his
current predicament is fate, destiny, or
just a drug-induced dream.
The
End
Have
you ever had one of those films where
you’re not sure if it’s the booze or
the movie that’s dragging you into a
hallucinogenic quagmire? Believe me, by
the end of this one, you yourself might be
confessing to have hit the pipe a few
times too many. It’s that weird. Based
on Thomas
DeQuincey’s sort of biographical book of
the same name, in the film Vincent Price
plays his sort of biological son,
Gilbert. And I say "based on" in
the same way the old AIP Poe
pictures were based on the author's works.
I
don’t know where to begin to try and
decipher all the strange imagery and
symbolism in this film. I mean, What’s
the white horse all about? And the dead
seagull? The best and most startling
images comes from DeQuincey's attempted
getaway while under the influence of the
opium: Albert Glasser’s electronic score
drops out, a talking bird is shot and then
brace yourself for the scene in the
butcher shop and the decapitated pig’s
head. Again, what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks
was that all about? And the only real
problem I had with the film was the
ending. It seemed a bit contrived and was
really disappointing after such a great
build up.
Vincent
Price almost seems out of place as an
action hero, but handles it rather deftly.
Anything this guy does is good. I’m
also convinced that this film helped
inspire John Carpenter’s Big
Trouble in Little China.
This is not a slight to Carpenter's film.
No sir, I enjoyed the heck out of that
movie, too, but there are just far too
many similarities to deny the obvious.
I
taped this film about ten years ago off of
TNT late night. It was part of a
triple feature with The
Giant Behemoth
and The
Hypnotic Eye. Does anyone else
remember when TNT would show movies
instead of the NBA and Wrasslin’
24-hours a day? I mean, Monstervision
is dead, and 100% Weird is missing
in action. So I have to ask, Mr. Turner,
on behalf of the B-movie Brethren
everywhere, what happened? Did Jane get
all the weird movies in the divorce
settlement or what?
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