Furious — Furious(Blu Ray)

This is a sidetrack from my usual viewing, but a good one; Furious (1984) is here given the Blu-ray treatment by Visual Vengeance: one disc, a slipcase, a poster, some stickers, and a throwing star shaped ‘thingy’ designed to be hung off something. The film itself is short at 73 minutes, but the disc comes loaded with numerous extras, covering a wide range of material.

The plot of Furious is very simple, without spoiling anything: Simon, who runs a Kung Fu school for children, seeks the help of a martial arts master after his sister is mysteriously murdered; the master sets Simon a quest to collect parts of an amulet, and the story unfolds from there, with odd sci-fi and fantasy elements which I won’t ruin but rest assured they’re zonked. So, whilst I mentioned a plot, the film is really a breathless series of fights, with a fair amount of a-to-b-ing between those events; this is not a film for those of you into character development or subtext, but if you want to watch martial arts action, you’ve hit the jackpot. Furious is quite an oddity, really. The most significant aspect of this is that it has hardly any dialogue: there are very few scenes of extended conversations between the characters; initially this feels wonky and cheap, but over the length of the film it becomes a neat device - though also the reason for lots of comic overdubbing and sound effects. The dialogue that does grace the screen is pretty awful - though as the disc extras explain, the film was played as a comedy. The soundtrack for the most part feels like classical music grafted on, constantly working away in the background. The visuals are grainy and 80s-esque, and revolve around a limited set of locations, though one of these, a mountain of sorts, is an effective backdrop, most notably for a fight scene on the top filmed from a helicopter.

Furious is not my usual fare, but it was engaging enough, and the low-budget qualities added a joy, passion, and inventiveness that could be felt; it is, with hindsight, also incredibly funny in places, though many of these moments blur the line between ‘so bad its good’ and genuine comic effect. The most endearing, and inspiring, aspect of the film is it’s punky diy nature - something that very much comes out in the extras.

There’s an illuminating commentary with co-director Tim Everitt, which details the guerrilla filmmaking approach; it was shot in just six days, with only enough resources for first takes, and was initially intended to be a children’s film, but essentially much of the film was made up as it went along. The lack of dialogue was deliberate, for practical reasons, and also in the hope of selling the film to overseas distributors; Everitt and his fellow director Tom Sartori dubbed all the voices in the film. Everitt explains how some of the fight scenes weren’t even choreographed, and indeed, that one of the actors, Howard Jackson - the world kickboxing champion at that point - did not get on with Simon Rhee, the lead actor. It’s a humorous and informative commentary, which brings out the absurdity of the shooting process and the comedy of the film. This is further complimented by a second commentary with Justin Decloux of The Important Cinema Club and Peter Kuplowsky of the Toronto International Film Festival; they discuss Furious and the wider scene around it, championing low-budget films. They also bring out the social and community aspects of such film making; these ventures are often labours of love, and again there’s that diy ethic. High Kicking In Hollywood is a thorough interview with co-director Tom Sartori, where he discusses Furious, and his history and career. Despite sounding like a dry subject, he breaks down the budget discussions and practicalities of making the film in a very insightful and interesting section. Completed on a shoestring, the film really only had crew, so Sartori and Everitt invented numerous names for the lengthy credits, to give the film an air of legitimacy; he also details how they screened the film for several major studios, though with none of them snatching it up… There is another interview with Everitt, The Kung Fu Kid, where he states that the film was essentially made purely because martial arts films were popular - a couple of years earlier and they’d have made a slasher. He also explains that the recurring chicken elements of the film came about because they borrowed a chicken for a week, and decided that if the scene started to become boring they’d just chuck the chicken it; this is spectacularly perfect in one of the larger fight scenes. He also recounts how they dropped one scene near the start of the film: most of the stunts were performed with no fakery - people jumping off buildings and then landing on cardboard boxes, for example - but a planned scene that had an actor throwing themselves off a 200ft cliff onto a landing mat (on a windy day no less) filled Everitt with so much dread that it was canned. There’s also a further interview with Everitt, from a 2013 podcast which retreads a lot of ground but does have the gem of an admission that he and Sartori knew nothing about martial arts films essentially before they made Furious, which he casts as an advantage since they weren’t attempting to mimic anything.

There’s a fascinating little video essay from Justin Decloux called North American No-Budget Martial Arts Cinema Primer; this enthusiastic exploration of low-budget efforts is compelling and gave me a list of things to check out - The Deadly Art of Survival (1979) and Death Promise (1977) to start with. It’s a really great little introduction to the genre, and precisely the kind of thing that makes me appreciate Furious more and want to check out similar things. Decloux also contributes an insightful overview of the Rhee Brothers’ careers; Simon and Phillip played the lead good guy and villain respectively, and both went on to have long careers in the film industry: Simon as a well-considered stunt co-ordinator on many major films, and Phillip as a writer, actor, and director. In that regard Furious is important as the early steps of now recognised talent. The disc supplements all this, chaotically and very much in the spirit of the film, with music and live footage from 80s bands featuring Everitt and Satori. Furious itself features one of the duo’s new wave bands in one scene - possibly called The Duhs (?) - and the extras feature Super 8 footage from this scene, as well as a 1987 E.P. from Scorched Earth Policy, and a 1986 concert from Cinema Face, neither of which I’ve managed to find out much about. The disc is finished off with various trailers for Furious, as well as shorter works from Sartori: some 1980s music videos and some Super 8 shorts; these shorts aren’t hugely engaging but oddly Hong Kong Flew is one of the more compelling pieces on the entire disc. I say ‘oddly’ because its just stuttering, sped up footage of Hong Kong - but it works.

Taken as a whole, this is a great release, and an insight into low-budget 80s filmmaking. At the risk of dismissing or ignoring Furious’ qualities, the real story here is people wanting to make movies regardless of challenges or obstacles, and that’s endearing and inspiring. I definitely have a tendency to treat these kinds of films with a degree of disrespect, and this has reminded me that such films have a beauty of their own that Hollywood productions can never grasp or present. Recommended for martial arts fans and people who are just as interested in what happens behind the camera.