Cynical Cinema

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing an impressive box set on November 4th. It is a set that impressed me when I first saw it, and I’m certain it will impress my dad when I re-gift him with it at Christmas time. The Wild Wild West Complete Series is massive. There were four seasons of this show, which are packaged together on 27 DVDs in a huge, appropriately western-looking box. Once the box is opened, the inside is less impressive, with some weird cardboard cases full of DVDs and not much else. But then, I assume my dad won’t actually look inside this box for several years, and so he will be impressed on Christmas morning, and that alone is what counts.

Actually, I hope my dad does open this box set. Because The Wild Wild West was a really cool show. A really cool show with which most of us are familiar solely because of that Will Smith - Kevin Kline movie from 1999 that might be the worst pile of garbage ever put onto the silver screen under the guise of being a “western”. That film was so memorably bad that…well…I still remember it. That in itself is a knock against it. And it made me think that there was a good chance that the TV series upon which it was based could not be much better. But it is. It is much better. In fact, the TV series is so much better than the movie, that the TV series could actually be considered good. It’s that much better.

The Wild Wild West is, in fact, a western series. It is also a science fiction series, a spy series, a cops-and-robbers series, and has a real sense of James Bond-style slickness to it. James West (Robert Conrad) is the slick, Bond-like agent who has gadgets in his shoes and guns in his hats and exploding snooker balls and knives in his canes. All of which is very cool, but not as cool as Artemis Gordon (Ross Martin) who is the genius who makes gadgets and creates masterful disguises. The combination of the two is one of the great screen pairings in TV history. Appearing throughout the four-year run of the series is the delightfully-named Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless, who serves as a nemesis to West and Gordon. He appears first in the third episode of the first season, The Night The Wizard Shook The Earth. You know he’s evil because his name starts with Dr. Also because he’s a dwarf. As Murdoc was to MacGyver, so is Dr. Loveless to this clever duo.

The Complete Series contains some cool extra features - introductions to the episodes by Robert Conrad are particularly neat, if not always interesting. But the best extras in the box set are on the 28th, bonus disc. Two made-for-TV Wild Wild West movies are included. The Wild Wild West Revisited, from 1979, is a movie that features Paul Williams as Miguelito Loveless Jr., the son of the pair’s former nemesis. And More Wild Wild West, from 1980, sees a villain planning world domination through some kind of invisibility formula. The TV movies are terrifically campy, and while the series itself can be taken either straight or with a small wink and dose of camp, the TV movies are camp, straight-up. Mostly a relic for the people who were alive in the era where they would have been fans of the show, The Wild Wild West: Complete Series is worthwhile for all fans of campy science fiction western action espionage. And I know those people are out there.

Come Drink With Me is an absolute classic of the martial arts genre, filmed in 1965 and released on DVD tomorrow, June 24th, by Alliance Films. It stars Cheng Pei Pei, a legend of Chinese kung-fu films, who might be familiar to modern artists as Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Crouching Tiger, incidentally, is a film that owes a lot to Come Drink With Me, not just the involvement of Pei Pei, but also in tone and in the concept of the high-flying wire stunts that make up so much of the action. While it isn’t as visually incredible as Crouching Tiger (it WAS filmed in 1965), the costumes and set design were first-rate.

This really is one of the best kung-fu films ever made. Cheng Pei Pei is gorgeous, and incredibly skilled and convincing as a fighter, much like Zhang Ziyi today. She plays Golden Swallow, a martial arts expert and bodyguard for the royal family (who also happens to be the daughter of the king) who sets out on a mission to rescue her brother from the clutches of a group of bandits led by an evil kung-fu abbot. Along the way, she finds help from a local drunken beggar named Fan Da-Pei (or, Drunk Cat). His character is one that would become a staple of the Hong Kong martial arts movie industry - the old drunk who’s always singing and sloppy and messy and gross, but is secretly the leader of a lost clan of martial artists, and a ridiculously proficient fighter when push comes to shove. I think it likely that in the Hong Kong of the 1970s and 80s, it was quite likely that people left the drunks in the bars alone, for fear that hassling them might provoke a lethal barrage of kung-fu kicks and punches. And the drunks are always the good guys.

As the movie progresses, it relies on an impressive series of wire-aided fight scenes between Golden Swallow and the bandits, culminating with her showdown with the bandit leader Whiteface, while the drunken master takes on the evil abbot who is also his brother. Throughout, the film is part comedy, part musical, part drama, part romance, and all action. The story is very straightforward, while underlying themes run through the narrative. The major one, of course, is female empowerment. But it also touches on the idea of corruption through religion. This film is widely considered, in Asia, to be one of the best Hong Kong movies of all time, and it made a star out of Cheng Pei Pei and her drunken co-star, Yueh Hua. Their stars would continue to shine brightly in Hong Kong for years to come, and this film is as good today as it was when it was released.