"Big Trouble In Little China" at 40

Just listen to the ol' "Porkchop Express" and take his advice on a dark and stormy night, alright? When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, looks you crooked in the eye, and asks you if you paid your dues; you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have you paid your dues, Jack?" "Yes, sir, the check is in the mail."

Apparently this week marks 40 years since the release of one of the greatest films ever made, Big Trouble In Little China.

From the previews, I'd been mildly interested in what I saw, and then saw the flick featured in a movie-FX magazine I leafed through in B. Dalton at the mall (did I buy the magazine?  I did not).  Probably they were discussing the big red ape monster and the eyeball guy, and maybe some lightning FX, and that was enough of a sale for me.

So, within a week or so of the film's release, Steanso and I hit the Showplace 6 in North Austin and watched the movie.  

I was also a kid who thought Buckaroo Banzai (also seen in the theater) was a perfectly reasonable movie for a kid to love.*  I saw They Live in the theaters twice.  So apparently a certain kind of movie that would become a cult film was unironically on my radar.  But I was also happy to go see *everything* for a long, long time.

I knew the movie was breaking movie rules in that it *felt* weird.  But that disconnect made me laugh. Our muscle-bound action hero was incompetent, our villain was kind of goofy and pissy, and the sidekick was clearly actually the hero.  I very much understood Gracie Law as a Lois Lane-type that the movie showed a certain self-awareness with that I found very funny.

At the time, the name John Carpenter meant nothing to me.  That would come when JAL showed me Halloween when I was 14 or 15.  And I suspect this movie is where the whole Kim Cattrall thing originated, because I doubt it was from Police Academy, which I saw way, waaaayyy too young.  And I'd not see Mannequin til the last decade.  But you can't convince me Gracie Law is anything less than an ideal romantic interest.

The supporting/ co-lead in Dennis Dun's Wang Chi was straight up cool, if a little dorky about love (which circles back and becomes cool).  He was clear the cool-headed leader, and paired with weirdo mystic Egg Shen (80's movie staple Victor Wong) made for an en excellent guide for Kurt Russel's Jack Burton as he enters a world us big, dumb guys were not prepared for (but we are happy to help a pal in a pinch).  

Of course James Hong - one of Hollywood's most versatile talents - killed it as David Lo Pan, in both modes.  

I loved Jack Burton as a kid, but REALLY appreciate him as an adult.  I don't know that I had properly seen a movie where the lead was so out of their depth before, and where it was played for laughs. 

I'm not saying I've been everywhere, and I've done everything. But I do know this is a pretty amazing planet we live on here. And a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we're all alone in this universe.

The movie has magic, and martial arts, its own mythology, monsters, iffy FX, and was, to me, plenty funny.  What's not to dig?  And it's just this side of being what you expect it keeps your attention.   I remember friends complaining Jack knocked himself out in the final fight, and I was just like "yeah...  that's...  that's the joke, man."  But it was also a real bellwether of whether people grokked the movie.

There were a number of years between when I'd watched it over and over on VHS and then someone in college bringing it up, and me saying to Jamie "you've never seen it?" and making her watch it.  Not sure she's ever taken to the movie in the same way.

I am well past the point of being objective about Big Trouble in Little China.  If the movie is *good* or *bad* is purely a matter of taste and probably when you first watched the flick.  I've seen it an alarming number of times, and it's one of those movies that if I put it on cable, I'm in through the end.  

But, by gum, it gave me the hero I needed.

*I was in college doing research for a film school class before I found out how horribly that movie had done at the box office.