CAPPADONNA'S IRON FIST PILLAGE (2001/DVD/Skypilot) Review

The "comedy re-dub" formula is shamefully simple: take a film, strip the soundtrack, record hilarious dialogue, accept death knowing that you've achieved your artistic zenith. Respected television scribe Chris Hayward's Fractured Flickers show was one of the first to utilize the concept, using silent film clips as a foundation. Three years later, Woody Allen lit the wick on his directorial career by reappropriating two films from the Japanese International Secret Police series into What's Up, Tiger Lily? The thing that makes the idea so attractive simultaneously serves as its own Achilles' Heel: it's so cheap that anybody can afford to do it. This being the case, many have followed Hayward and Allen's lead, but few have been as successful.

Shanghai Ink™

Meanwhile, somewhere within Staten Island's Chinatown, the Wu-Tang Clan's neglected stepchild Cappadonna dozes off in a weed-induced haze and dreams of himself, more fit and way more Chinese, getting a shitty tattoo of a butterfly on his chest. Gangland kingpin and father figure Smitty loses his life and his one wooden testicle to a surprise hit, despite the blade-slinging prowess of both Cappadonna and dapper, phlegmy Stays-High. Double-crossed Cappadonna takes the heat and the jail time while double-crosser Cain* turns the crew's studio over to strictly producing "show tunes and bullshit." Suddenly all the girls are offering up oily handjobs, an aging man loses his world-record shot at sitting in a chair, and a P-Diddy bullshit-ass poster gets ripped in half. It's serious business, but Cappadonna is the only one taking it seriously. Occasionally, an exciting, bloody fight will bust out, but I can't pay attention. I'm too busy thinking about the fart jokes.

Silent but deadly

Somebody go wake up Cappadonna and tell him he did it. Re-dubbing a rough-looking print of Chang Cheh's Duel of the Iron Fist so that it plays out like a street drama filled with junior-high bathroom humor is the best thing he's had his name over the title of ever since the RZA stopped making his beats.

"Ohhh, I haven't laughed this hard since Paul Lynde was center square!" Me either, nose hair guy.

*Squish Stalinsky, if you're out there, I want you to know that you deserve to somehow retroactively win a 2001 Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe. I've already got five signatures on my petition. Well, four right now, but my mom promised she'd sign it too.)