Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies (1986)

Film: Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies (Doragun bôru: Shenron no densetsu)
Release: 1986, theatrical
Starring: Colleen Clinkenbeard, Monica Rial, Jeremy Inman
Directed by: Daisuke Nishio
Next in the series: Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: In the mountains, a boy named Son Goku lives in total seclusion until one day he meets a young treasure hunting girl named Bulma - meanwhile in a small kingdom, the king has grown cruel and greedy in the hunt for the highly valuable Blood Rubies.

Hans' thoughts:

For kids all over the world, Dragon Ball has played the role of their first introduction to the shounen manga genre. The tale of a young boy, his friends and their action filled hunt for the legendary seven dragon balls that can fulfill any wish has proven to be such a popular genre the the series has spun off several video games, four cartoon shows, a slew of merchandise and of course a long line of movies. This time we're looking at the very first Dragon Ball movie, Curse of the Blood Rubies. The movie is centered around a small kingdom ruled by a king that has recently grown malevolent and has a extreme hunger he believes can only be removed by the magic of the dragon balls, he sends out his two elite soldiers to find the remaining balls he needs, meanwhile the movie also retells the first four or five chapters of the original series as we get the origin of Goku and Bulma's meeting, as well as a re-introduction for Master Roshi the turtle hermit, Yamcha the bandit and Oolong & Pool the two shapeshifting animals. As far as the retelling goes, I have to admit that while I perfectly understand their reasons for doing so I had far preferred they'd kept the origins out of the movie. The original stories the introduced the characters were pretty heavily grounded in the raunchy comedic nature of the show and some of the best moments have been left out - most likely due to the perceived age-rating of the film. However to their credit the writers of the film has managed to keep the spirit of the series very much alive and all the characters have their personalities intact. It should also be mentioned that this film has a running time of a meager 47 minutes, so it doesn't outstay it's welcome at all.

If you're familiar at all with the show, you know pretty much the standard fare for what you're in for. Goku is our super strong but fairly naive and stupid hero that saves the day with the help of his more world-weary cynical allies that are pretty much only in it for themselves. As far as Dragon Ball movies go, the storyline for this one is pretty good - Dragon Ball is a very action heavy but also storyline oriented series so trying to make something that fits somewhere into the story can be pretty trying - most of the time, the movies will mix up who were alive and had what powers at a certain point of the series. That's probably why they initially decided to make the movie take place at the very beginning of the story, making this some sort of alternative plotline. The actual big bad of this plotline in the series was the vindictive Prince Pilaf, who is nowhere to be found in this movie.

The villains have very simple designs compared to almost all other instances this series has ever seen, a low amount of color and more focus on body type is also a witness of how early on in the run the movie was made. Our main villain is kept in shadow for most of it, and does look interesting one he's finally revealed but the villains we spend the most time with are just two people in uniform. It's simplistic, but in the context of the story it works very well. By this time in the series, we had yet to be introduced to the major science fiction aspects the show would later encompass, and as such the film as much more of a medieval fantasy feel to it with Bulma's Capsule Corp. technology being the only real reminder of the shows setting most of the time. The animation of the movie is also very simplistic, I imagine it was done on the same budget as the show as it makes high use of still-frames to tell it's story. While mostly good, there is the case of the character of a little girl made especially for the movie, she's the films main character outside of the series mainstays and while she has a simple and cute design very akin to the iconic Akira Toriyama art style, the animators decided to animate some of her hairs separately and that unfortunately gives off the effect of her looking like a glorified Raggedy Ann doll.

I watched the Funimation version of the film, so I was treated to the English voice cast. While it's certainly apparent that the cast has become much better since it actually turned out to be a decent enough dub. Of course at times the difference in sound level between the high quality microphones used for the dub and the background music did become fairly obvious but never to the point that it took me out of the experience. There exists some very horrible voice-overs of Japanese animation out there and you can do far worse than the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball that as to some people become neigh iconic and a preferred choice. That's the boat I'm in, as I have never been a big fan of especially Goku's original voice, while it's standard fare for women to voice main character in japanese animation, in the case of Son Goku I felt the actress let him be way too high pitched. As I said however, this version had the Funimation voice cast and they do a well enough job of conveying the characters and their emotions. 

Superior quality of the original series aside, this movie holds it's own among the dragon ball animated movies and is a fitting start for what would become one of the most popular animated series in the genre. A mix of a sweet and simple story, some nice comedic moments and a fair quality of the series staple of martial arts action scenes. Curse of the Blood Rubies may not be the greatest Dragon Ball story out there but it manages to be a fun animated kids movie and an entertaining nostalgia trip for long time fans.

Asterix in Britain (1986)

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Film: Asterix In Britain
Release: 1986, theatrical
Starring: Roger Carel, Pierre Tornade, Graham Bushnell
Directed by: Pino Van Lamsweerde
Previous in the series: Asterix Versus Caesar
Next in the series: Asterix and The Big Fight
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: Britain has been invaded, and Rome has declared marshall law. In a small village, the only free britains try to hold off the legions. The warrior Jolitorax is sent to his cousin in Gaul for help.

Hans' thoughts:

50 B.C. All of Gaul has been overtaken by the Roman military machine. All? No a small village - oh whatever you know this part. It's Asterix. If you for whatever reason don't know who Asterix is by this point, you must've lived under a rock for most of your life. Having been represented in video games, childrens books, cartoons and of course comic books Asterix has become one of the most iconic characters when it comes to the European comic book industry.

Released in 1986, this is the 4th time Asterix has been brought to the silver screen and the 3rd adaptation of an original Asterix comic book adventure. Actually, I like to call this movie the second in the "Asterix globetrotting adventures". The first one being Asterix and Cleopatra (1968) with the third and fourth ones being Asterix in America (1994) and Asterix and the Vikings (2006). I might be the only one that feels this way though. With the exception of the latter two, none of them were released back to back.

My weird habits aside, this is one of the better Asterix movies. It's arguably the one that's aged the best, most of the Asterix movies being very grounded in the period it was made. This has resulted in some strange occurrences (such as Justforkix owning a cellphone pidgeon in Asterix and The Vikings from 2006). 

This movie also does a lot better animation-wise. Grounded, the former movies (especially Asterix and Cleopatra) had very good, imaginative pictures. However, this movie has better colouring, better backgrounds and the characters stay much more on model than in former installments. This looks like a big budget movie. Though I have to say the shading is very sparse, the artists instead choosing to make the colors flat a lot of the time. This leads to some of the scenes feeling very flat, it feels like you're watching a movie and that is a problem. It's a bit weirding seeing as Asterix Versus Caesar from the prior year had fantastic shading. 

This is a fun movie, it doesn't allow you to put much thought into what's going on and instead just throws 90 minutes worth of laughs at you. The cheese factor is high in this one, so if you're picky about history you might want to turn off your brain for a bit. It allows for a lot of silly explanations for real world things, such as why tea is so big in England. This story is a jestful mocking of neighbours from the French, not feeling mean spirited in any way.

Korkusuz (1986)

Film: Korkusuz
Alternate title(s): Rampage, Turkish Rambo
Release: 1986, theatrical
Starring: Serdar Kebapçilar, Hüseyin Peyda, Sümer Tilmaç
Directed by: Çetin Inanç
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: When a wealthy businessman is captured by a gang of mountain bandits, the only one that can save the day is the war veteran Serdar - His only goal, to live honorably!

Hans' thoughts:

Sometimes, a movie comes along that is just so crazy that it's really hard for me not to have at least a slimmer of affection for it. No matter how absolutely ridiculously bad it is. This is such a movie.

This movie is actually harder to describe than I thought it would be, In essence it's a pretty blatant rip-off of the Rambo movies but with a original plot. Serdar is some kind of commando/war veteran that gets blamed for the kidnapping of a wealthy businessman. He's sent to jail, and makes a deal with his cellmates to help break them out if he can join the mountain bandits that did the kidnapping in the first place. Throughout the movie, Serdar himself doesn't really speak a lot of dialogue. Instead he just stares at the camera. 

Had this been a better movie, less would have been more. Serdar is obviously not all that good an actor - this is visible even through the dub. Making him be mostly silent could have been a very good choice. Unfortunately, the camera work of the movie is just not strong enough to convey what the actor can't so instead the characters motivation become sort of vague. Why is he doing this? Why is he doing that? I found myself getting kind of distracted by looking around the room to pass the time because I barely understood any of what was going on, on screen.

While the other characters motivations are definitely clear, their actual personalities are barely existent. This is a shame because some of these actors seem like they could have done a very good job with a better script. Instead the villains are dimensionless and the heroes are kind of, wooden. A lot of the henchmen also do a lot of laughing for no apparent reason. The movie seems to try and set up Serdar as this patriotic, family oriented hero. At one point he saves a family from a gang of mountain bandits and while it could have been a very fun little scene, it feels kind of forced.

As for the actual action, it is what you would expect from a low budget production. The weapons act kind of off, although the explosion work is actually pretty good. Unfortunately, the main source of action in this movie is hand-to-hand combat. The hand-to-hand combat in this movie is one of the most ridiculously over-the-top spectacles I have seen on screen for quite a while. I've seen student projects with more believable combat than what this movie provides. On top of that, the stage falls have this kind of unprofessional delay, sometimes with a whole second after the cause between the falls. Indeed, even the death-scenes are kind of awkward, as the actors in question seem like they tried to make their falls as comfortable as possible, or are just careful not to damage equipment. An old man in this movie clearly puts his walkietalkie neatly to the side before lying his head down on the ground, dead. 

Speaking of the walkies, if you're going to use toy-walkies for your movie, here's a hint: Do not zoom in on the logo saying "Junior". The walkies even looked very believable, so the choice to zoom in on them just baffles me. I have to say though, props for sticking to your guns and straight up roll with it. I'm guessing the budget was the cause of using children's toys, but other film makers had tried to hide that fact as to not kill the audiences suspension of disbelief.

All in all, this movie was a neat little piece of history, a testament to how utterly strange the world is sometimes. I have to say though, this DVD will most like not be seen again in my household for quite a while. Until such a time comes, it will sit on my shelf as a fun little oddity alongside Reptilicus. I'm not saying that I regret I saw it, I probably just won't revisit it.