Monday, May 10, 2010

TUF E NUF FILM BUF - SHANGHIGHED

Confessions of an Opium Eater is a 1962 film, based on the the 1822 novel by Thomas de Quincey, starring the great eyebrow archer Vincent Price. Confessions grabs you by the pipe right from the beginning with the opening sequence. A white horse runs across a strange and misty beach, a corpse lies half buried in the sand, Price narrates over eerie music about a strange ship carrying "human cargo for sale in Chinatown".


We soon find ourselves in the San Francisco chinatown of the 19th century where a midget newsie (remember those?) squeals the headlines about a Tong war and the police section off the district. Danger looms and a fucking seagull drops straight down out of the sky, NO SHIT, presumably from an OD. Quincey (Price) walks into a chinese antique shop (the kind of place you buy a mogwai) and shows the shopkeeper a dragon tattoo, which scores him some secret info, laying the path for intrigue. He exits through the back where a man with no legs wheels past him on an ancient Chinese skateboard. Right-away you know this movies owns. Quincey navigates his way through the secrets of a Chinese underworld like a Kurt Russell of an earlier, more debonaire, era.

Here is our hero chasin' the dragon.


Here's a photo taken in a San Francisco opium den in 1889. Chillaxin'.


Do yourself a favor and pull your internet rickshaw over to Cinemageddon
and download this gem.

DVD-R version

MPEG version

Asian babes in bamboo cages, midget dragon ladies, wall scaling assassins, purposefully broken engrish, and Vincent Price. Perhaps made even better while smoking opium on a bean bag chair. Who knows, I don't have a bean bag chair.

More historical fun!



A San Francisco police brigade fresh off a den bust.



After busting hella dens the SF police burn hundreds of pipes and other paraphernalia. Hat required!



"Remember that time we...oh dude I fucking love this song"

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