THE LAST DRAGON (1985)

Leroy Green, known around town as Bruce Leroy, is a peace-loving young man who has dedicated his life to being the best martial artist in the world.  In his spare time, he works at his dad's pizza place.

One day, while hanging out at an incredibly crowded movie theater that's showing a Bruce Lee film, Leroy is relaxing and eating popcorn with chopsticks when in walks Sho'nuff (the self-proclaimed "The Shogun of Harlem") and his minions.  Sho'nuff is boasting loudly that he's the baddest mofo in town when somebody yells out that Bruce Leroy could kick his ass.  This doesn't go over too well with Sho'nuff.  Bruce escapes the riot, but now he's on Sho'nuff's radar.

That is a great start to the film and honestly the only story the film needs (besides some romance), but for whatever reason the filmmakers decide to make the main story about a local crime lord who wants his girlfriend to be a popular singer!  What the fuck?  So now instead of enjoying the adventures of the highly entertaining Sho'nuff trying to kick Bruce Leroy's ass, we're mildly entertained by this goofy crime dude and his boring henchmen.  At the same time, Vanity is the hostess of a popular music program.  The crime dude kidnaps her as part of his plan to do whatever the hell it is he's doing...or something.  I didn't care.

THE LAST DRAGON is a good film, but it's kinda depressing to think about how much potential it had to be a totally awesome film!  The character of Sho'nuff is fantastic and should've had twice as much screentime as he did have.  To do so, the secondary story about Leroy's little brother and his boring friends should have been cut completely and replaced with the Sho'nuff and his crew kicking ass.

As it is, THE LAST DRAGON is still a fun film with some really good scenes and a number of totally worthless scenes.  Sho'nuff alone is worth the price of admission. Double-feature with BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.

GLEN OR GLENDA (1953)

"Pull the string!"

Padded with 14 minutes of random stock footage and numerous scenes of Bela Lugosi talking about god only knows what, GLEN OR GLENDA is the so-awful-it's-awesome story of a Police Inspector who, after investigating the suicide of a cross-dresser (who killed himself while wearing women's clothing), goes to a doctor who tells him two different stories.  The first is about a straight guy who likes to wear women's clothing and the second is about a dude who has a sex change operation to be a woman.

That sounds pretty straight-forward, but what makes GLEN OR GLENDA such a legendary film is Ed Wood Jr.  The guy might not have had much talent, as far as filmmaking goes, but his passion and honesty is abundantly clear.  That's not saying GLEN OR GLENDA is a good movie...cause it's not, but it is unique.

Fake-looking sets, amazingly bad dialogue, less than stellar acting, a 13-minute dream-like montage sequence right in the middle of the movie that features everything from Satan to bondage, camera shadow, Glen literally throwing a cigarette inside a store (at 27:20), quick pace, tons of surreal moments, bison running, a woman pronouncing automobiles as "ought-tow-me-bills", the narrator claiming that 7 out of 10 men are bald because of tight-fitting hats.

There is so much going on in the weird little film that one viewing just isn't going to cover it.  You're gonna have to watch it at least 3 or 4 times.  Recommended for fans of bad movies.