Stoner (1974)

[Drunk Monk]

What's the best possible movie role a man could get? Bond, James Bond. Imagine being Bond, then getting a chance to do a huge Warner project with a bright rising star named Bruce Lee. Imagine signing a contract only to have Lee die two weeks before filming starts. Warner pulls out and you're left to the mercy of some Hong Kong director. Now you have to fight Sammo Hung, a young Sammo, in his youthful prime, who just faced off with Lee in his last film. You have an allergic reaction to some Hong kong shampoo and all your hair falls out, so you have to fight all these crazy Chinese in a godawful hairpiece. The fake moustache is so bad that you have to shoot a scene where you shave it off, as if that's going to make a big white dude in a wide-lapelled disco suit blend in Hong Kong. You also have to shoot a scene where a blackmailer shoots your bare ass on top of Betty Ting Pei, the same woman who actually discovered Lee dead on her bed. Imagine you have to play another scene where you;ve been dosed with Happy Pills, a drug that drives people in sexual frenzy, and you're locked in a cage with Angela Mao, one of the early kung fu queens (Lee's suicidal sister in Enter the Dragon).

This is Stoner. And it was Lazenby, George Lazenby, who suffered through it. I'd only recommend this to the most hardcore kung funk fans. cranefly might like it. El Dingo might like it. The rest of you would probably be bored by it's badness.

[cranefly]

I think I watched it twice back in the 80s. The second time was with lady cranefly shortly after we got together. I was trying to show her the coolness of the martial arts. She only watched part of it.

Later, by other means, she discovered the coolness of the martial arts.

I suppose Stoner is a guilty pleasure for me. Not a very good movie. But Angela Mao has such an intensity to her facial expressions. Even though it's been 20 years, I still recall vividly Angela and Lazenby locked in that cage, unable to see each other (though we can clearly see them), and they keep reaching out, feeling for the other. When contact is made, there's a flurry of fighting. This goes on for 5 minutes.

And yeah, aphrodisiac subplots always kick butt (though maybe not Angela's; she's too fast).

[Drunk Monk]

Never fear, dear cranefly, you're not alone. Stoner is a guilty pleasure for many of us. The shaolinrasta who lent it to me is so into it that he's been searching for vintage posters on Ebay. Angela is great in this - one of kung fu's earliest kung fu babes. She's sooo petulent, and we love her for it. George is so freaking awful he's an embarrassment to the brotherhood of Bonds. No wonder he only Bonded once. Sammo is great too. Sammo is always great. He's like Queen Latifah, totally outside the celbrity 'mold', forging his career to the best of his ability. He struggles to make George look good in the fights, and even though George is a good head taller than Sammo and strapping, Sammo could just whup his ass any time, any time at all.

I think you're mixing up two scenes - when George & Angela are drugged in the cage, they can clearly see each other. There's another scene when they are both sneaking into the temple and it's supposed to be dark, fighting each other as an unseen foe. Interestingly enough, that's an homage to "Night fight" (not sure of the actual title) but it's a classic comedy/martial arts routine that's stage in Chinese Opera. It's great to see live performed by true Opera stars - captivating, humorous, a brilliant fight scene. A lot of the plot quirks of kung fu movies stem back to the roots of performance martial arts - opera and street theater - as well as pulp fiction - George & Angela's night fight was a perfect example of this.