Jim Kelly, and Enter the Dragon, 1973

A forgotten actor and his cameo in a cult movie is this week’s focus for Tuesday’s Overlooked Films at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

"I broke down the colour barrier. I was the first black martial artist to become a movie star."

One of the segments I look forward to watching at the Oscars and Golden Globe awards is ‘In Memoriam’ where pictorial tribute is paid to artists who have died over the past year. At the Academy Awards this year, many luminaries like Shirley Temple and Philip Seymour Hoffman were honoured. And, as so often happens, some were left out, notably writer Tom Clancy, which was odd since his senior contemporaries Elmore Leonard and Richard Matheson were part of the celebrity montage. However, there are bound to be hits and misses in an event of the scale of the Oscars.

Among the many entertainers who made it to the posthumous list was Jim Kelly, the American actor and martial arts exponent who died on June 29, 2013. He was 67. Not many would remember him.

Born James Milton Kelly, the actor brought his 6' 2" frame and beehive hairdo to bear upon one of the most popular martial arts movies of all time—Enter the Dragon. In doing so, Jim Kelly left a permanent imprint on the cult film whose most famous star was Bruce Lee. Kelly had his task cut out for him, for not only did he have to work in the shadow of the legendary martial artist but he also had to contend with the suave actor John Saxon. While both Lee and Saxon had already established themselves, this was only Kelly's second film and probably his most notable cinematic work.

In Enter the Dragon, director Robert Clouse brings Lee, Saxon, and Kelly together on an island off Hong Kong considered as the hotbed of vice, mainly opium and blood trade, run by Han, a master criminal with a claw hand. It is Bruce Lee's task, as an informal undercover agent, to investigate the suspicious happenings on the island and report to his agency. But Lee has an agenda of his own: avenging the death of his sister. The man responsible for it, O’harra (Robert Wall), is on the island and in Han's payroll. Old friends Roper (Saxon) and Williams (Kelly) accompany Lee to the island to escape from their own problems.

John Saxon and Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon.

On the island the three men find the ideal cover in a do-or-die martial arts tournament organised by Han and refereed by his beefy henchman Bolo (Bolo Yeung) who requires no introduction. Men must fight men, sometimes until death. Lee, Saxon, and Kelly prove their worth as martial artists though Han never pits them against each other (in fact, I think he tries but they refuse). In one memorable scene, Lee faces O’harra. Before the start of the fight, O’harra picks up a board and smashes it to convey a point to Lee who retorts in his trademark clipped voice, “Boards don't hit back.” Lee has his revenge.

The film ends on a predictable note: Bruce Lee and John Saxon take on Han and his inexperienced men and liberate hundreds of innocent civilians held captive.

This was Jim Kelly's only well-known film and he was eliminated in the first half. Fans of martial arts films continue to ask why. He deserved to remain until the end.

There are many Bruce Lee takeaways from this film, like his "taming" of a venomous snake, his high-pitched shrieks during fights, his skill with nunchucks, his flying kick, and his final battle with Han inside the deceptive room of mirrors. The one thing Lee doesn't bring to this film, not that he was expected to, is humour. Director Robert Clouse leaves that to Jim Kelly who is the funny face of Enter the Dragon.

Although Clouse lays out the red carpet for Bruce Lee, and John Saxon to a lesser degree, Jim Kelly brings his own charm and style to the film, be it with his fists and arms, his wisecracks, betting on fights and making a neat pile, a toss of his head, or his ridiculing of Han.

“Man, you come right out of a comic book.”

After Enter the Dragon, I never saw Jim Kelly again, in spite of being a gifted actor. But, after hearing his name and seeing his face at the Oscars, I looked up his filmography and found that, in 1974, Robert Clouse directed him in Black Belt Jones, described as an "American Blaxploitation action film," and in Golden Needles.

More than these two films, I hope to see Kelly in action film Three the Hard Way (1974) alongside Jim Brown and Fred Williamson; the western Take A Hard Ride (1975) with Jim Brown, Lee Van Cleef, and Fred Williamson; and another action movie called One Down, Two to go (1976), again opposite Brown and Williamson, and Richard Roundtree.

Jim Kelly has left behind a bigger legacy than I thought he'd.

Reading Habits #6: Reading on the railway

8.20 am: I miss the 8.15 local by a few minutes. I am on platform No.2 at Andheri station waiting to board the 8.23 local to Churchgate in the south. I remove my earphones and my tablet from my bag—do I listen to music or do I read? As I make up my mind the loudspeaker crackles to life and I hear a familiar but depressing voice: “The slow train arriving on platform No.2 at 23 minutes past eight has been cancelled. Inconvenience caused to passengers is highly regretted.”

The lifeline of Mumbai.

© Prashant C. Trikannad

8.25 am: The next local is at 8.36 am. Will it be on time? Is it even scheduled today? My fingers are crossed. I put away the earphones and open the tablet and tap on the book reader, to page 42 of A Noose for the Desperado by Clifton Adams. I read about 19-year old rebel gunman Talbert ‘Tall’ Cameron's daring takeover of a band of outlaws in Ocotillo, a shady town in Arizona, and his plan to ambush a train smuggling silver across the Mexican border. The loudspeaker crackles again, this time with a repetitive public warning—“Overhead wires are charged at 25,000 volts. Travelling on rooftop is highly dangerous. Passengers are requested not to travel on rooftop.”

8.41 am: The 8.36 enters the platform. Even as it comes to a halt, commuters rush into the train and occupy all the seats. When the dust settles the arriving passengers get off the local and rush to the staircase. I enter the coach and stand in the aisle with my back to the stainless steel partition. As the train pulls out at 8.45, nine minutes late but early for once, I hear the loudspeaker intone, "The slow train arriving on platform No.2 at 57 minutes past eight has been cancelled. Inconvenience caused to passengers is highly regretted."

8.48: I look around the compartment. I spot a couple of known faces and we nod at each other. A few commuters are dozing off. Some are reading newspapers. Still others are fiddling with their mobile phones. Two people are reading books, one Dan Brown's Inferno and the other the Indian epic Ramayana. I put away my tab and listen to music; I plug into Elvis Presley. It will be some other singer on the return journey in the evening.

Inside the first-class coach of the 9 am Bandra-Churchgate local.
© Prashant C. Trikannad 

8.57 am: Three stations later, the train pulls into Bandra. I alight and walk across to the other side of the same platform and hop into the 9 am Bandra local. It is almost empty. I find a window seat. I open a book, AN.AL – The Origins, by Indian writer Athul Demarco and read the last chapter so I can review it. Some people get in and I look up and acknowledge their greetings. Only two men are reading anything at all; the rest are doing nothing, looking nowhere, in particular.

9.09 am: At Dadar, a major station, scores of transit commuters with haversacks and shoulder bags crash into the first-class coach and stand in the aisle so they can get off at the next two stations, the city's new business districts. After just two pages of Demarco’s novel, I lose interest, not in the book but in reading further. I reopen the tab and play a game of chess with alien software; I lose badly. 

The local leaves Marines Lines.

© Prashant C. Trikannad

9.35 am: Marine Lines, the last station before Churchgate. Before I alight I put away my book and my tab safely. I step on to the platform, walk out of the station, and proceed to my office a few blocks away, with Losing My Religion by REM playing in my ears.

And I wonder why I don’t read enough books every month.

5 movies I didn’t know I had

Here’s another unconventional route to Overlooked Films at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Hop over and read some real reviews of classic films over there.

Spring-cleaning unearths stuff you didn't know you had in the first place. It can be a tiresome task, but sometimes it pays off. Last weekend, on cleaning up the house, I found five movie CDs I had forgotten about. They were new and still wrapped in cellophane. The CDs are at least a few years old. I must have bought them on a whim, as I did books, films, and music in those days. Fortunately, these are the only CDs I haven't seen yet. By comparison, I have nearly a hundred unread books, mostly used paperbacks.

The five movies in question are...

1. South Pacific (1958)
2. Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)
3. How the West Was Won (1962)
4. Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
5. It Runs in the Family (2003).

It's likely that I have seen films 2 & 3 on cable, on the erstwhile TCM channel.

As I arranged and rearranged the other movie CDs into folders, most notably a precious collection of Laurel & Hardy and Charlie Chaplin, I thought about these films. Why did I buy them? Let me see.

I remember picking up South Pacific because a colleague strongly recommended it along with that other musical Oklahoma! (1955) which also I have yet to see. He had nice things to say about Mitzi Gaynor. I have enjoyed musical comedies ever since I first saw My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), and Victor Victoria (1982). Julie Andrews was paired off well with Christopher Plummer and James Garner in the last two films.

I can think of at least three reasons why I must have bought Judgement at Nuremberg—multi-star cast, WWII film, and Maximilian Schell and Richard Widmark. People were in awe of these two fine actors. I haven't seen them in many films but I have read about them in film reviews on various blogs.

The epic scale of How the West Was Won probably got me interested in this multi-actor film. Besides, I'm curious about anything that is even remotely connected with the frontier.

I'm quite sure I purchased Everyone Says I Love You only because it was a Woody Allen film. I knew people who swore by his acting and direction. Personally, I have found his films to be rather boring. I can take only so much of dialogue. Considering the star lineup of Julia Roberts, Alan Alda, Edward Norton, Drew Barrymore, Tim Roth, Goldie Hawn, and Natalie Portman, this one might yet prove me wrong. Would you call his films esoteric?

I remember, the father-son duo of Kirk and Michael Douglas was the only reason why I picked up It Runs in the Family, a film said to be so-so.

Now there's my stack of films for the summer holidays. 

We talk about unread books and TBR piles all the time. What about the unseen and forgotten movie CDs and Blu-rays in your trunk?

Footpath libraries

On October 21, 2013, in a post titled Of old books and dying telegrams, I wrote about the famed secondhand bookstalls of south Mumbai, located about 2 km (1.25 miles) from my office and 20 km (12.40 miles) from where I live. The following pictures are of more of these bookstalls situated outside American Express Bank at Flora Fountain, or Hutatma Chowk (Martyrs' Square). So far the municipal corporation has left them alone. Dozens of others on opposite footpaths were not so lucky; they were evicted a few years ago. 

The booksellers don't read books but they know their books—ask for a title and they'll most likely have it. If they don't then they'll get it for you.

One of the good things about these footpath booksellers is that they also lend books on a library basis. For instance, you can borrow an Agatha Christie or a P.G. Wodehouse for Rs.100 ($1.60) and keep it for a month. Upon returning it, the bookseller will repay Rs.70 and pocket the balance Rs.30 as reading price. Prices vary depending on the book you borrow. However, before lending you the book, he makes a small notation on the last page, a sort of identification, so he knows you borrowed it from him. He will scribble 100 - 70 = 30 and put his initials next to it. There is no limit on the number of books you can borrow. In case you don't ever return the book, then he keeps Rs.100 as the actual price of the book. In fact, books are lent on the selling price on the assumption that you won't return them. 

The famous St. Thomas Cathedral Church located a few metres away. Built in 1718, it is the first Anglican church in Mumbai (then Bombay). The nearby Churchgate station, the beginning and end of journey for office-goers and local commuters, gets its name from this church.

I seldom buy books from these sellers. If they know their books well, they know their prices even better. I have found other places, especially in the suburbs where I live, where good used books can be found much cheaper. The two John Gardner's James Bond novels I wrote about in the previous post would have cost me at least Rs.50 each (nearly a dollar) as opposed to Rs.20 (less than half a dollar) that I paid in the suburbs. 

© All photographs by Prashant C. Trikannad

John Gardner’s James Bond novels

What do I review for FFB at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase this week? I had a choice between two detective short stories, a few vintage comic books, and a hardboiled crime fiction. I read them all. However, since I didn’t have the time to sit down and review any of them, I decided to write about the two novels I purchased recently from a secondhand bookstore—John Gardner’s James Bond novels—Licence Renewed (1981) and For Special Services (1982). I haven’t read them yet.

It’s always easier and quicker to write about books you haven’t read.

While I have read books by Gardner, I have never read any of his adaptations of Ian Fleming’s master spy. I am aware that Gardner is one of many authors who continued Fleming’s legacy through both novels and short stories. Other worthies include Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), John Pearson, Christopher Wood, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Charlie Higson who introduced the Young Bond series.

I was delighted with my new acquisitions for two reasons—the used paperbacks are in good condition and cost me Rs.20 each (less than half a dollar) and the titles are Nos. 1 & 2 of the over a dozen 007 books Gardner wrote. In fact, I think he wrote a book or two more than Fleming did.

In Licence Renewed, James Bond makes a comeback 15 years after Ian Fleming wrote his last two novels, Octopussy and The Living Daylights, in 1966. He challenges a “dangerously deranged opponent bent on the destruction of the western world in a nuclear holocaust.” And, in For Special Services, 007 is on loan to the United States government and takes on an old enemy, the legendary SPECTRE — the Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

I’ll be reading both these novels but I’ll not be reviewing them. Gardner’s Bond novels are already popular and written about more than a bit.

Meanwhile, the crime fiction I mentioned above reads like a cross between an Ed McBain and John D. MacDonald novel. It’s gritty and hardboiled and paints a realistic picture of police procedurals and jurisdictions as well as the very ordinary lives of police detectives and state attorneys. I was struck by the starkness of the style, the story, and the characters. Review to follow soon.

The two stories I read earlier this week were A Warning in Red and The Affair of the Corridor Express, two delightful mysteries by English clergyman and author Victor Lorenzo Whitechurch (1868-1933). The stories deal with a murder and a kidnapping, respectively, and are set around trains in England. They are written clearly, precisely, and concisely.

The Affair of the Corridor Express is one of 15 stories in Thrilling Stories of the Railway featuring the eccentric detective Thorpe Hazell. John Norris, a keen reader and writer of vintage fiction, has reviewed the short story collection at his blog Pretty Sinister Books. He has also reviewed Whitechurch’s The Robbery at Rudwick House.

Note: The two covers are replicas of my novels.

We Are the World by USA for Africa, 1985

I haven't done a post on music for a while now, so here's one on a very popular song of the eighties, for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.

The mid-eighties (1984, 1985 & 1986) was a productive year for music makers and music lovers. The period saw hundreds of hits by singers who became household names overnight. Michael Jackson topped the impressive list. Kenny Loggins’ foot tapping number, Footloose, was a rage. The namesake album contained some fine songs like Let’s Hear It for the Boy by Deniece Williams, Almost Paradise by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson, and Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler.

Back then I was in college and my friends and I used to listen to the songs on our radios, cassette players and walkmans, and sometimes watch the videos on state-run television. A local publisher capitalised on the music craze by bringing out booklets of the songs with lyrics and pictures. We collected them for a while.

Several of these popular songs won Grammy Awards during this golden period. The songs, belonging to various categories, included Thriller, Beat It and Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, Every Breath You Take by The Police, Flashdance...What A feeling by Irene Cara, Chaka Khan by Chaka Khan, A Little Good News by Anne Murray, Love Is A Battlefield by Paul Benatar, What's Love Got to Do with It by Tina Turner, Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me now) by Phil Collins, Ghostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr., Caribbean Queen by Billy Ocean, Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen, Saving All My Love for You by Whitney Houston, Nightshift by Commodores, Freeway of Love by Aretha Franklin, and Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, among others.

There was one other song, a special song for charity, which won four Grammys in 1986 and became a big hit everywhere—We Are the World. It was performed by nearly two dozen contemporary solo artists, a veritable who’s who of the music world, and supported by a fine chorus comprising the likes of Dan Ackroyd, Harry Belafonte, John Oates, Bette Midler, Jeffrey Osborne, Bob Geldof, and Smokey Robinson. The song was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, produced and conducted by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian, and recorded by USA for Africa in 1985. Geldof and Belafonte were the spirit behind the charity single in aid of famine relief in Africa. The idea for 'USA for Africa' came from the 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' project by Band Aid in the UK. You can read the colourful history behind the event right here.

Today, 'We Are the World' is one of the most popular music videos on the internet. It’s a song that appeals to both old and new listeners. It has a great lineup of singers and musicians, each of whom lends his or her distinct voice to a worthy cause. The meaningful lyrics are put to rich and varying music. Over the years I have seen the video many times and have come to recognise most of the singers in the order they sing—Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, James Ingram, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Al Jarreau, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Steve Perry, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Kim Carnes, Bob Dylan, and Ray Charles.

You may click here and watch the video of the song that has been labelled as sentimental stuff by many. To me, it’s just a wonderful song.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Do you have a favourite Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando

Not such a tough question, is it? Well, I don't know...I'm still thinking. I liked the Austrian-born actor in many of his films like The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Collateral Damage, The 6th Day, Commando, End of Days, True Lies, Eraser, Total Recall, Junior, Kindergarten Cop, Red Heat, Last Action Hero, Predator, Twins, Raw Deal, and Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer.

I might also have seen Red Sonja and The Running Man but I can’t say for sure. I didn’t care for The Expendables 1 & 2. Schwarzenegger looked too old, as did Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude van Damme. Who let the geezers out of the old-age home?

For me, Schwarzenegger is more than just an actor; he is also a huge entertainer. I can watch his films without my thinking cap on. I prefer him as an action hero rather than as a comedian with a stupid grin. Watch the final scene in Jingle All the Way where he is holding up the last of the Turboman dolls for his son. I wonder if he felt silly later. 

In Conan the Barbarian, Schwarzenegger is crucified to a barren tree in the middle of a desert, the nails hammered right into the centre of both his palms and feet. The vultures are moving in. Schwarzenegger plays dead and when one of the ugly birds attacks him, he turns and seizes its neck with his teeth, bites hard until it goes limp in his mouth, and spits it out. Soon after, he sees one of his men running towards him and Schwarzenegger launches into a bout of insane laughter. He looks almost freaky.

Coming back to my question (do we even need a favourite?), it’d be a toss-up between Commando and Predator. I loved the two films. If I’m forced to pick any one, I’d choose Commando for all-round entertainment—an equal dose of action and humour with plenty of one-liners that Schwarzenegger has honed into an art. Here's a popular one...

Major General Franklin Kirby (James Olson): Leave anything for us?
Matrix (Schwarzenegger, after killing hundreds of men): Just bodies.

He can deliver lines, deadpan.