Back in the ’80s, grade-Z movies gained hipster cred when a
pre-Mystery Science Theater 3000 vogue of hunting down,
viewing and snarking at such films became a mark of cinematic
sophistication.
Of course, like all good things, this was eventually co-opted by The
Man, first in the frat-boy-ized Buckaroo Banzai, then in the
“take it easy; we’ll do it for you” format of MST3K, and finally
in Quentin Tarantino’s attempt to make A-list versions of Z-grade
movies.
But at the same time, the tradition of the Z-movie continued, mostly
unnoticed by the co-opters. Horrors like Time Barbarians,
N.Y.P.D. Mounted (starring Dennis Franz and a very unhappy
horse) and Menahem Golan’s ouvre—including such gems as 2000’s
Escape to Grizzly Mountain, in which Dan Haggerty basically just
says, “Fuck it; I basically do grizzly movies”—were still made,
ignored, sent directly to video and marked down to $6.99 for sale at
the impulse-buy rack at the drugstore.
So there were basically two tracks of Z-dom: the ironically
self-conscious version, wherein people viewed these films as a joke or
a source for more elevated art, and the unironically unselfconscious
version, wherein people with no discernible talents were given the
opportunity to display that indiscernibility.
And then there’s Crank: High Voltage. This is a full-throated
Z-movie, with no higher pretentions, which nonetheless is completely
aware of its Z-ness. It revels in it, but does not betray it to the
frat boys, snarkers or sophisticates. Choosing to have its cake and
blow it up and then have sex in it, Crank: High Voltage simply
strings together a video-game-inspired theme (someone has stolen Jason
Statham’s heart, and he must constantly jolt himself with electricity
to stay alive while he hunts for it) with some graphic sex (thank you,
Amy Smart!) and a seemingly endless series of racial slurs and
stereotypes.
It is not a good film, in the moral sense of “good,” but it might be
an entertaining film, and is in many ways an innovative film. For
example, this is the first time I’ve seen “massive homo cunt” in the
subtitles to any movie. I also can’t recall ever seeing another film
that used the word “slantard” as a slur for people of East Asian
descent. And, in keeping with the film’s need for constant speed and
action, it includes the inter-title “9 seconds later,” which I think is
the briefest unit of time ever expressed in an inter-title.
So kudos to cinema pioneers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who
co-wrote and co-directed this film, for coming up with these
innovations. And also for their refusal to refuse to pander. For
example, the film contains a scene in a strip club. The problem with
most strip-club scenes is that they contain nudity, but not
blood-spattering violence. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s
just say that, if you want to see what it looks like when a bullet
passes through a silicone-enhanced chest, you might just want to check
out Crank: High Voltage.
Also, Neveldine and Taylor understand that very few films have had
the courage to deal with one of the most pressing issues of our time:
the fact that Chinese crime lords want to steal the organs of white
people—specifically, the heart, because the white man’s heart is
like that of a lion, and the penis, because the white man’s penis is
girthy and rich with history.
Or at least that’s the story on Jason Statham’s penis, which, sadly,
doesn’t appear in the film, though some video blurring of his crotch
region during an intimate sequence indicates that it wanted to appear,
but contractual difficulties made it impossible. I was surprised and
frightened to learn that Chinese gangsters wanted to steal white
penises, so I asked my Korean friend Soyeon, who saw the movie with me,
if it was true. She said, and I quote, “I don’t know. The Chinese are
very different from Koreans.”
Z-movies are very different from A-movies. There’s no effort at
social redemption here, no sense that the “hero” deserves to win
(mostly, he goes around committing a series of public-service murders
that have a very high collateral-damage count) and no strong concern
with realism. (At one point Statham recharges his electrical heart by
“skin-on-skin friction,” which seems unlikely, although visually
appealing.)
Further, Crank: HV is one of the most racist, sexist and
violent movies I’ve ever seen. It’s not, for all that, a bad film,
except, again, in the moral sense of bad. It’s even occasionally funny,
if you think gay black bikers with guns are funny.
I was sort of amazed by the racism, though, and the fact that so
many Asian actors were willing to speak in corny chop-socky accents.
The most racist part is that of gang leader “Poon Dong,” who’s played
by David Carradine. Carradine is largely thought of as a white guy,
though he’s no stranger to putting on the yellow face. The performance
is slightly less offensive than the one Mickey Rooney gave in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and certainly more aware of its own
racism, but I don’t think Carradine or the film will be getting any
awards from the Anti-Defamation League.
Still, it’s nice to see that a couple of guys with consumer-level
video-cameras (a Canon XH-A1 and a Canon HF10, total cost less than
$4,000) can convince a bunch of semi-famous actors (including Dwight
Yoakam, Corey Haim and Bai Ling) to demean themselves for 96 minutes of
socially irredeemable instant gratification, and still get nationwide
distribution.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2009.