So last week, we watched a disappointing giallo and followed it up with a surprisingly-good Sammo Hung movie. This week, we watched a surprisingly-good giallo and followed it up with a disappointing Sammo Hung movie.

On the giallo front, our expectations were low — even the generic title didn’t sound promising. (When I was trying to figure out which movie we were on, I asked my wife if we’d seen The Suspicious Death of a Minor and her answer was “three times at least.”)

But as soon as we started it, we’re in classic, stylish Italy listening to a theme that isn’t by Goblin but could have been; we leaned back into the giallo vibe, which this delivered well. But it also gave some humor that was unexpected — there was a slapstick car chase (for instance: they hit a bicycle, and the front of it breaks off and the guy on the bicycle is now riding a unicycle — that’s not how bicycles work, but it’s a great visual gag and also doing that without CG seems tricky; later in the chase, they kinda knock a guy out of the way and he does a breakdance-like move of spinning on his head in the street), there was a face-off with the killer in an amusement park where people are shooting at each other from cars on a roller coaster, there was a running gag about the protagonist breaking his glasses.

And yet that humor didn’t detract from the fundamentally giallo nature of it, either. There was all the throat-slashing, the (medium-complex) investigation, the sex workers, the running up cool staircases. Putting it all together, this was a genuine top-notch trashy-fun giallo, right up there with New York Ripper. Strong recommend for anyone who likes the genre and is good with some light humor.

We then moved onto My Lucky Stars, a Sammo Hung action-comedy that also has Jackie Chan in it, on the basis that if it was as good as the last one and also had Jackie Chan, it should be amazing. It starts out promising, with a great car chase with some impressive stuntwork and then an amusement park scene with also impressive stuntwork. (Which also gave us two movies in one night with roller coaster action scenes and stunt-laden car chases.)

But then it got to the “comedy” part and hoo boy: We’ve got a crew of six criminals who are trying to solve a crime, and the cop that’s embedded with them is a woman, so we now get literally 45 minutes of sexual assault comedy. Is it hilarious when they break into her bedroom while she’s in her nightgown, and then fake a robbery and tie her up with one of the guys so they’re pressing against each other and he keeps trying to kiss her? No? Well, what if we do it five more times, will it get funny then? (It will not.)

And while this is mostly just light sexual assault, there is the scene a bit later where the crew is getting riled up and plans to gang-rape her (this is not teasing out unintended implications; the subtitles literally use the word “gangbang”); Sammo Hung tries to stop them, but they rush her bedroom… at which point she uses martial arts to lay one of them out and they all back down. Ha ha, that’s hilarious!

This just goes on and on. And even when it gets past that, there’s more unfunny humor, like a scene where they don’t know Japanese and have to mime food to a waiter, which has a dick joke as a punchline. The movie finally ends in another action sequence that’s reasonably good (although not as good as the opening), but it’s not enough to make up for suffering through all this.

I’m generally pretty forgiving of terrible attitudes in movies from other times and places — but like, it’s one thing when a murderer kills a sex-worker in a giallo and you’re like, well, that’s kinda misogynistic and even more unpleasant than it was intended to be. It’s another thing to have that misogyny presented as humor that you’re supposed to laugh at for a very, very, very extended sequence.

Not recommended, and a real disappointment after the last one.