HARD ROCK ZOMBIES (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

I don't know how I never stumbled across HARD ROCK ZOMBIES. I certainly didn't avoid it because it had a bad rep; I've seen many worse flicks, including those in the "heavy metal horror" subgenre. I only sought it out now when I noted that it had "monster mash" elements, but I still wasn't expecting much. To my (mild) surprise, ZOMBIES-- directed and co-written by one Krishna Shah-- is one of those oddball movies that deserves the label "so bad it's good." That's not to endow it with any sort of profundity, for it's still a stupid movie that appears made up on the fly. But it's never dull, like a lot of lesser dreck. 

Shah does at least set up some of his horror with an attention to detail. Before we meet the rockers who will be our viewpoint characters, sexy blonde hitchhiker Elsa (Lisa Toothman) cadges a ride from a couple of young males on a country highway. She guides them to a pond and persuades the guys to do some skinny-dipping. However, in the nearby bushes are a tuxedo-clad guy with a camera, along with two dwarves, one of whom wears a gargoyle mask. The full-size fellow takes photos while Elsa drowns both guys by holding them under the waters, apparently by main strength. Then Elsa and her buddy cut a hand off one of the victims.

After that, we meet the four rockers, but no one should worry about their names, since only the leader Jessie (E.J. Cursio) is more than a placeholder. From the band's conversation with their manager, we learn that the musicians are due to play in some California town at a rock concert named Grand Guignol, and that they hope to impress some record-company bigwig who's supposed to attend. The manager then gets some publicity photos as a bunch of fan-girls fawn over the players-- all except for Jessie, who excuses himself. Stepping outside, he runs into a lone fangirl, Cassie (Jennifer Coe). She tells Jessie not to attend the concert, because certain elements in town don't want the band there, including Cassie's father. All of which sounds a little like the previous year's hit FLASHDANCE, except that in FLASHDANCE, the local girl who warned away the musicians was not fourteen-year-old jailbait. Also, Cassie's warning begs the question: if powerful elements didn't want a rock concert in town, how did anyone get the permits required to stage one? 

En route to the concert in a van, Jessie experiments, riffing on a tune he found in an "old book." No one in the band notices that every time Jessie plays the tune, a fly, despite having been squashed by the manager, keeps coming back to life. Then the van stops for a hitchhiker-- guess who-- and the toothsome blonde invites the guys to reside at her family's mansion. We see again the photographer, the two dwarves, a wheelchair-bound granny and a grandfather who-- okay, I'm just gonna say it. Grandpa is a ninety-something Adolf Hitler in disguise, while Grandma is Eva Braun. Oh, and Grandma turns into a werewolf at one point, so I guess she was one of those "werewolf commandos" one hears about.

The film takes a break from THE OLD DARK HOUSE to dispose of its FLASHDANCE emulation in a town council meeting that shows the locals to be both petty and perverse, though it's not clear if most of the townfolk know that the occupants of the mansion are Nazi maniacs. But soon enough, we're back to Fuhrer-fear. While the band's rehearsing on their electric guitars, Elsa or someone nearly electrocutes them all, but they survive to perish individually. 

Jessie doesn't twig to the band's peril, but he does figure out that his new musical riff can bring dead things back to life. He suspects bad things on the rise, so he records his ditty on a cassette for insurance. Sure enough, one rocker's killed by Elsa in a shower (with copious PSYCHO references), and another by Were-Granny. But before Jessie's meets a humiliating death by a weed-whacker, he passes his cassette to Cassie. After the rockers are dead and buried in a local grave, Cassie plays the song-- and the rockers arise to take vengeance on the Nazi maniacs. However, for some reason I didn't follow, the power of the resurrection music spreads and brings the Nazis back to life too, even though I don't believe anyone's continuously playing the music at the time. The undead rockers don't hang around town after killing the Nazis but drive their van to the not-yet-opened concert site. No one's there except the record-company rep and Cassie, the latter having followed the rockers, and the two of them give ear to a song Jessie wrote for Cassie with the significant line, "For you it's new; there's so much that I've been through." Director Shah even provides a romantic slo-mo video showing Jessie and Cassie together-- their only clinch-scene in the movie, which may or may not be something imagined by undead Jessie.   

The imperiled townfolk are played for laughs. One guy gets the idea that because zombies (he calls them "ghouls") are anti-intellectual, they'll be repelled if faced with the images of heads. So the citizens try to drive off the zombies with big pictures of celebrities-- which seem to work, until they don't. Then another fellow gets the idea that they can drive the zombies back to the graves by setting out a virgin for the zombies to both defile and devour-- and to her misfortune, Cassie flees the concert and runs back to town, just in time to find herself elected for the position. By this time, the undead rockers, having finished the set they wanted to play in life, have gone back to the graves. However, the band's manager passionately exhorts the musicians to arise and play their resurrection-song, which diverts the Nazi zombies from Cassie, allowing the manager to save her.

And the big conclusion? Well, before Hitler gets killed, he explains to a flunky his plan to take over the US using gas-weapons that he stores in a cave outside town. By the way, said gasses are stored in "ovens," sort of a belated acknowledgement of the Holocaust in a junk-flick about undead Nazi freaks. The band's music forces the evil zombies into the cave, where the gas destroys them. Why? Well, it's not just because of poetic justice, because the four rockers join the Nazis in the gas chamber, thus rendering all the undead dead again. However, a coda suggests that death itself may not impede the Cassie-Jessie romance.

Since there was no substantive reason in the script that Cassie could not have been a totally legal romantic interest, either Shah went in a forbidden direction because (a) he was indulging a private fetish, or because (b) he was making some point, however badly. The script of ZOMBIES does not offer firm support for either position, but I could argue a bit more for the latter just because all the ZOMBIES characters are pretty perverse. Had the Jessie-Cassie romance been more normative age-wise, they would have been the only normal characters in a morass of weirdness. As it is, no character condemns the relationship-- even Cassie's father only objects to all the musicians because they're rock-and-rollers-- so *possibly* Shah is counting on the audience to see the irony implicit in playing the romance straight. All that said, the movie's biggest source of perversity is certainly the Nazi maniacs, so they get the nod as being the "starring monsters" of the story.

                 

                  

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE FINAL CONSPIRACY (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Forget: "final conspiracy"-- it's finally the end of this awful series, at least for me. I've watched a shit-ton of subtitled Japanese movies and TV shows, and I've never seen such a complete lack of storytelling talent as I behold in the NINJA VIXENS series. The writers and directors of this series of TV-films seem to be positively in love with talking-head scenes that essentially SAY NOTHING. The actors for that matter communicate the same indifference to their material, and the series doesn't even succeed as simple sex-and-violence offerings.

There are two scenes that engaged me a little, though they seem to be unrelated to the rest of the film, which is again just a lot of blah court intrigue. One of the lady ninjas-- Gincho I believe-- has two encounters with a demonic-seeming fellow who can perform two marvelous-seeming feats. First, he can project his head off his body, so that the head can attack victims with biting teeth. Second, the fellow can send a pair of separate arms burrowing through the topsoil, holding a sword in the hands-- possibly a variation on the "burrowing ninja" seen in some earlier flicks. But though these scenes are technically better than anything else in all three telefilms, they're no explanation as to whether the magician-guy has real powers or is faking his stunts. So even the two scenes that are a little arresting also manage to be disappointing. So based on the mediocrity of the authors, I'm gonna guess there was some BS "uncanny" explanation for these miracles.

Avoid avoid avoid.   

 

THE NINJA VIXENS: VEIL OF ILLUSIONS (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

In my review of the previous NINJA VIXENS installment, I scoffed at Kagero's power to call up cartoon butterflies. However, VEIL could have used them, or something comparable, to keep from being even duller than SQUAD. The phenomenality here just barely enters the uncanny domain, through one ninja girl's use of a thrown needle to kill someone and the not-quite-Edo-period outfits the Vixens wear.

This time they're investigating a smuggling operation on behalf of their shogunate patron, However, as in the previous story the ladies are also acting to avenge some criminal deed against one or more private citizens, just so the Squad doesn't seem like cops. This time the older male ninja of the team doesn't appear often, and some of his screen time may've gone to a hot new female member, name of Gincho. The added femininity, though, doesn't mark any improvement in the underwhelming fight-scenes, while the seduction sections are just as vanilla as in the previous TV-film. Cast info is spotty online, so I'll guess that the names "Misa Shimizu" and "Kaori Yuki" might go with the actresses playing Gincho and Akane, but then, they might belong to two other actresses. Both actor-names do appear in the IMDB credits for the third movie, though.

Once again, the makers spotlight lots of lame talking heads and very little sex or violence, and the villains are even duller this time. There is one henchman of the bad guys who wears white makeup and whips a captive ninja-girl briefly, but he's quickly offed.

Possibly someone somewhere made an exciting film about the crime of smuggling, but this isn't one. Avoid.

        

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE KAGERO SQUAD (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

There may be as many as nine films in this cheapie series of TV-films, but only three are currently streaming. KAGERO SQUAD, named for the leader of the ninja-team, might be the first in the series, but if so, its creators didn't feel any impulse to provide an origin.

Kagero (Hiromi Takagawa) has on her team just two other ninjas, a female named Akane and an older man who sometimes wears a puppet on one hand. The trio receives word of a plot by an Evil Clan (not sure of the name) to usurp power in a particular domain of the shogunate, so the squad informs their superior, a woman highly placed at court. The squad then initiates attacks on the Evil Clan for the rest of the movie.

The court-intrigue story is very talky, and the action scenes are poorly staged. There's no strong villain-- just an enforcer-guy with a neck-brace and a redbearded foreigner who practices black magic. Speaking of magic, Kagero has one of the goofiest ninja-powers of all time: she can sic big yellow butterflies (crudely animated) on her enemies.

The Land of the Rising Sun has produced lots of junk, but usually it's at least lively junk. Avoid.

             

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL ("THE MONSTER ON MOON RIDGE," 1959)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

It's no great tragic thing to remain a child. Theirs is the best age. Their world is mysterious, wonderful, half real, half make-believe. Mr Bella, the world we live in is not always so pleasant. -- Paladin, "Monster of Moon Ridge"

 

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL stands at the pinnacle of a small category that might be called "intellectual westerns." Most if not all of the half-hour episodes were framed as dramatic exercises, in which the cultured gunfighter Paladin (Richard Boone) accepted troubleshooting missions on behalf of his clients. Rather than passively doing what his clients wanted, Paladin applied his own strong ethical principles to suss out who among the parties he met were or were not meritorious. TRAVEL's writers wore their intellectual credentials on their sleeves, as Paladin seemed to have a literary quote for every occasion. So those scribes clearly understood how to frame moral problems on the didactic level-- but for my purposes, did any of them succeed on the corresponding mythopoeic level of meaning?      

The script for "Monster on Moon Ridge" might have been compromised by the length of the episode, making it impossible to shake out some of the fuzzy spots. From his base in San Francisco Paladin is summoned to Moon Ridge, Colorado, but even before he leaves, there's a newspaper item alleging that weird events have happened in the town, centering upon one Emily Bella. Paladin's client is rancher Dan Bella, who wants to get to the bottom of the rumors about his daughter and some sort of "monster" dwelling in the barren mountains. At least the yahoos in town believe there is one, claiming to have seen tracks that are neither animal nor human.

Paladin meets Emily Bella and finds that she acts like a child in a grown woman's body. Dan explains that ten years ago an "epidemic" ravaged the area, and that its legacy was that some of the afflicted became mentally childlike (thus prompting Paladin's remark above). Dan too has seen the mysterious tracks. and though he doesn't believe in monsters he knows that Emily wandered off for a week earlier, and he suspects she's been beguiled by something in the mountains.

Once Paladin ventures into the mystery area, he's exposed first to a hideous witch, and then to a hairy beast that overwhelms him. The gunhawk awakes to find himself chained to a wall in a cave, not far from a black bear, similarly chained. The witch appears and uses flash powders to make it look like the bear transforms him to a man. But Paladin has gone beyond the make believe of childhood, and though he's a little thrown for a bit, he quickly recognizes that the witch wears a mask and has been counterfeiting the monster-tracks, while the "were-bear" is her grown son, who like Emily was mentally impaired by the epidemic. The trickster, one Maria, was forced to leave the town because the yahoos tormented her retarded son. But as she had no money, she set up a cabin on the mountain and tried to scare away the yahoos with her witch-act.

One detail omitted from the rushed script: why did Emily leave her father's house for long periods of time? Surely Maria would not want to encourage that behavior, given that it resulted in more publicity than she would want. The narrative's broad implication is that somehow Emily befriended Maria's similarly limited son Clairy, for they're seen laughing and playing with Maria's trained bear. Still, the script rushes past those details-- including the whole utility of Maria's deceptions-- to put together a happy ending, in which Dan takes a shine to Maria, implying that he will extend his male protection to her and her son, making feminine trickery unnecessary.             

"Monster" was one of 24 TRAVEL scripts written by Gene Roddenberry, who in my estimation is one of the few toilers in the TV medium who succeeded at making mythopoeic scripts, mostly in the series STAR TREK. "Monster" is not as good in the myth-department as the best TREK scripts (which Roddnberry reportedly always rewrote, no matter who was the credited writer of each episode). However, underneath the routine contrivances of "the rational Gothic" pattern followed by the episode, Roddenberry invokes a folkloric motif that I'll term "the demon lover." In some iterations, the motif takes the form of some demon or devil luring innocent girls-- who may or may not be "special" in some way-- into assignations. Maria admits that she patterned her witch-act on MACBETH, but in the symbolic sense Emily's the true witch-woman. Because she's a child in a woman's body, she suggests the possibility of sexual transgression-- which here could be one involving intimacy with a man-child. Maria's trickery can't keep that from happening, but a strong father like Dan Bella can. Together Dan and Maria can not only keep away the bothersome town yahoos, they can also ensure that Emily and Clairy are never more to one another than de facto brother and sister, and so never produce any "monsters."

A minor point: though Paladin does not dispense justice this time using either his fists or guns, he does so on many other occasions. Therefore the episode is a combative drama because so many others in the series have been in the combative mode.

                

GENERAL INVINCIBLE (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

I'd never seen GENERAL INVINCIBLE before, nor did I know that it was one of the last movies to feature the Chinese kung-fu diva Chang Ling. To my surprise, I only found one substantial review of INVINCIBLE: this detailed post by the late Todd Stadtman. I was very intrigued by Stadtman's assertion that this film was pretty much the "final star turn" for the Taiwanese actress.

For me the greater question, though, was whether it was either (a) a fun but somewhat ephemeral chopwacky, like WOLF DEVIL WOMAN,  (b) a dull formula outing like DARK LADY OF KUNG FU, or (c) that rarest of rarities, a mythopoeic Asian kung fu film, like MIRACULOUS FLOWER. 

Well, INVINCIBLE is not another MIRACULOUS FLOWER-- though there are a few times where it feels like that's what it's trying to be. It's definitely not just a chopwacky, because such martial movies always seem the results of harried writers pulling anything and everything out of their asses in order to keep the audience entertained. One vague reference suggested that the movie might have been an adaptation of some other work, so that *might* explain why INVINCIBLE seems to be shooting for some metaphysical truth that the film's scripter couldn't articulate.

That metaphysical truth, in this fictional context, feels like someone trying to adapt the complex confluence of Chinese faiths and folklore regarding "the search for enlightenment," which in this fictional universe can also lead one to become a peerless martial artist. There's also a slight suggestion of a familiar western homily that might be phrased as, "What shall it profit a woman to win the martial arts world, if she loses her only shot at romantic love."

It's ancient China again, and a new emperor has just succeeded his late father. The new ruler gets wind of an assassination conspiracy directed at him by an unscrupulous Chief Justice, one Lu Ruh-Ti (Tien Feng). The emperor sends for the four dukes of his empire to serve as his protectors, but Ruh-Ti just compensates by putting out hits on the dukes. Only one, "Duke Philip," concerns us, for he's the father of our heroine.  

 Oddly, though Chang's character Sparrow is the star of the show, first we see the love-interest she's doomed to lose, "Mean Red" (Adam Cheng). Red is seen washing out of a martial-arts test given an imperturbable teacher, "The Old Master," and after being kicked out of the Master's school, Red seems more than a little perturbed.

Then Duke Philip's killed, and Sparrow-- who passed her tests with the Old Master (but evidently never met Red) -- is called upon by her retainers to go after her father's killer. But even though the courtiers call Sparrow "general"-- a title that really means nothing to the plot-action-- she's a retiring type who doesn't like politics. She's also prone to epileptic fits, though this only comes up three times in the movie and never has much importance either. Still, one of the courtiers embarrasses Sparrow by taking his own life to force her to act. So she takes her mute slave (called only "slave") and seeks to find the one-armed killer of her father. (FUGITIVE jokes are taken as a given.)

She does eventually kill the killer, who puts her on the trail of the evil Chief Justice. But Sparrow's more significant encounter is with Mean Red. She pretends indifference to Red's flirtations, but she allows him to join her quest once she learns that Red used to be a student of the Old Master. He, however, despised the Old Master's high-flown devotion to transcendence of human emotions and his utter lack of compassion. (Maybe that's why Red is "mean?") However, if I followed the choppy script, Red is also a servant of Ruh-Ti, and ALSO may or may not also go by the name of Swift Thunder. 

So yeah, this is one of those chopsockies where new character-names are thrown out with wild abandon, and the English translators don't manage to follow it all. Early in the film Ruh-Ti references some mysterious ally named "Red Sow" and the dubbing says it's a "she." But when the character appears late in the film, it's a male-- and by any name, the character's not important to the movie. (Possibly this was some book-character shoehorned into the crowded story.) The Stadtman review asserts that a female martial artist named Ruh Yuh (played by Lin Dang) is one of the Chief Justice's allies. However, she spends most of the film trying to persuade Mean Red to join her in her own domain, so I felt she might've been intended as an independent player. Certainly she's tries her utmost to seduce Red away from Sparrow, and, to my surprise, she wins the romance contest.

The film's greatest appeal is that the credited author (who has just four IMDB credits) seems, in a very confused way, to filter a lot of real Chinese metaphysical concepts into this opus. The Old Master appears in a lot of flashbacks, uttering weird pithy observations like "nothingness leaves the door of transcending." And after the defeat of Ruh-Ti, the Master shows up to engage Sparrow in mystical combat, apparently just because he really wants to be sure Sparrow's fit to succeed him-- somehow, I never quite figured out what he wanted her to do. There's a flashy power-battle, the Master loses. Yet he doesn't die, but just walks away with a strange downbeat conclusion. Ruh-Ti, by the way, wasn't just content to knock off the emperor and his supporters. He's conspiring with Persian scientists (!) to create crystal knives which are somehow going to help him conquer the world. 

The upshot is that though INVINCIBLE seems like an issue of DOCTOR STRANGE that Stan Lee wrote for Chinese investors while dropping acid, at least the movie's never dull. It ends with Sparrow, sitting in lotus position with a rainbow in the sky, and that's not the worst image with which Chang Ling could (more or less) conclude her diva-career.

              

    
   

MEATBALLS 2 (1984), MEATBALLS 3 (1986)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor*, (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I've only seen all three MEATBALLS films once before, but I decided to revisit 2 and 3 simply because both, unlike the first film, boasted a little metaphenomenal content.

The writers followed the same "battling kids' camps" as the first film, but with two new camps that share the same lake and a more overt concentration on absurd farce. Richard Mulligan runs a more or less normal camp, while Hamilton Camp administers a bizarre "military youth" camp. The two have been contending for years in an annual boxing match, and Mulligan invites a tough street-kid named Flash to be the camp's champion. Flash is uninterested until he catches sight of a pretty young thing (Kim Richards), whom he hopes to impress. There's really not as much sex as one might expect of this sort of cheesy sequel. The other camp-girls, borrowing from 1981's PORKY'S, lay plans to expose the innocent girl to her first sight of a "pinky." Also, a couple of randy camp counselors keep trying to hook up, with the female counselor played by Misty "HEE HAW" Rowe. Other thesps include Paul Reubens in four separate "blink-and-miss-him" roles and John Larouquette as a swishy soldier.

The sole fantasy-element is an extremely lame ET swipe, where the kid-alien enters the camp's activities at his parents' behest and bonds with all the younger kids, who are only too happy to have their own ET mascot. The alien, dubbed "Meathead," does a few unimpressive telekinetic tricks and is played by Felix Silla.

By comparison MEATBALLS 3, though also an absurd farce, benefits from jettisoning the whole camp-competition schtick. It starts with porn-star Roxy Dujour (Sally Kellerman, getting a rare shot at a main character since her career took a downward turn). Roxy is apparently having real sex on one of her flicks, and it's so good she bites the big one. She ends up at St. Peter's Gate, where the official there says Heaven doesn't have a problem with sex workers. But still Ms. Dujour (named for the 1967 Bunuel film BELLE DUJOUR?) has to prove herself-- and for some reason, sex-friendly Heaven wants Roxy to help a nerd named Rudy get laid. If Roxy can't do so by a certain time, it's off to the hot place for her.

Rudy (Patrick Dempsey) is seen bidding farewell to his clingy mother as he departs for a new job at a lakeside camp. All the camp's customers are teenagers or older, and one other employee is a girl, Wendy (Isabelle Mejias), who's a nerd like Rudy but whose affection Rudy cannot perceive. Rudy is relentlessly teased by hot girls and guys, though oddly enough, he does NOT make one particular same-age enemy, which happens in most teen sex comedies. Instead, Rudy's enemy is an older guy, a boisterous, middle-aged biker named Mean Gene (George Buza), though this opposition isn't immediately evident. Mean Gene bullies Rudy a little and allows other customers to bully the low-level employee. But everyone at the camp steers clear of Mean Gene, He's noteworthy for keeping a woman-- presumably his wife-- confined in a upstairs room in Mean Gene's domicile, and for going ballistic on anyone who even looks at "The Love Goddess" (Shannon Tweed) longer than Gene thinks appropriate.

 It doesn't take Roxy long to convince Rudy that she's a real ghost, and that she's come into his life to help him score. Roxy's willing to let Rudy do her, but since she's insubstantial, that's not an option. So she gets Rudy to clean up his look and act less like a nerd, and at first she's doing her best to get the youth laid any way she can. But the longer she's in Rudy's orbit, the more Roxy starts to care about him, and to notice that the age-appropriate Wendy would be the best match. So she uses her power of telekinesis to cock-block the boy when he tries to get it on with another age-appropriate girl (but one with a loose attitude) and also with an older female. Rudy gets tired of her interference and tells her she's just like his mother, which pisses Roxy off. She gets summoned back to Heaven for a reminder of the fate that awaits her if Rudy doesn't get his cherry popped.

Independent of Rudy, a bunch of raucous teens learn that Mean Gene's going to be away for a time, so they make a huge party out of inviting a famous "stud" to seduce the Love Goddess. Rudy, fed up with Mean Gene's bullying, attempts to take the stud's place. This leads to a goofy fight when the biker comes back, though I'll give away one schtick: the Love Goddess is not Gene's wife but his married sister, and so he's simply an overprotective brother. The Goddess intervenes on behalf of Rudy by conking Gene with a baseball bat, though of course she doesn't have sex with Rudy either.

In the end, Roxy does return to Earth to help Rudy hook up with the still-willing Wendy. Apparently, even though Rudy does not get laid by movie's end, apparently Heaven lets Roxy off the hook, since she does get into the Pearly Gates and everyone's happy. Though it's a dopey teen comedy, I did feel the main characters played Kellerman and Dempsey had good chemistry and made the movie more fun than it would've been without those actors.