Project Terrible: Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace

There's a joke an otherwise good friend of mine was telling everyone a few years back, that goes something like this (note that this is extremely abridged). A kid on an errand from his mother picks up a purple flower for her and takes it back home. When he shows it to her, she gets mad and throws him out. An old lady hears the commotion and finds the crying boy later and asks him what's the matter. He tells her he was just trying to give his mom a present and shows her the flower, and she also suddenly gets mad and chases him away. The joke goes on (and on, and on), with the kid getting chased by a policeman too and whoever else the joke teller wants, until finally the joke teller sees that the listener is just about to fly into a boredom-fueled rage and commit murder. Then it ends like so: the boy crosses the street and gets hit by a vehicle. The moral: look both ways before crossing the street.

Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace (coming to me suggested by Mondo Bizarro) is exactly like that joke: pointless, overlong, and not in the least bit funny.

Welcome back to Project Terrible.

Bad comedies are the worst kind of bad movie, because they basically ruin the entire point of watching bad movies. I watch bad movies to be amused by how terrible they are, but bad comedies are bad at being funny, and therefore I can't really derive any amusement from them. Harry Knuckles demonstrates this point amazingly well. There were about two points in this film that amused me a bit, and I can only remember one of them: a bit where Harry spends a little while training, with a suitably Rocky-esque (but terrible) song accompanying, and then goes to meet the villains and gets kicked and knocked out. The film immediately cuts back to him doing more training, with the song's lyrics starting up again with "should've been stronger" or some such. That got a little chuckle. So for the rest of the review...if something I mention sounds funny, trust me, it wasn't. Harry Knuckles is filled with jokes that are far too old or unfunny to have any chance, and the few jokes that do have some potential are destroyed by extremely poor delivery or just by the audience's annoyance at how much the movie thinks it is funny.

Everything the movie does is inept. The camerawork is terrible, the fighting is beyond awful (aside from one brief bit involving two Asian girls who can actually put on a good fight, making me--as ever in cases like this--wonder why the good fighters were used so little), the acting is wooden and filled with unnatural...pauses, and just about every scene in the movie is at least twice the length it should be. I can't count the number of times I sat there yelling "move on!" at the screen! Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace is an utter waste of time and, while not actively offensive like certain other films I've had the misfortune of watching, was a real trial to get through. I do not recommend it to anyone.

Aww...but I like the kukri!

I'm not going to do a full recap here, in part because the movie was boring and long enough that I'd be struggling to remember everything, and in part because I'm trying to get out of the habit of writing near-total plot summaries in reviews as honestly that isn't the best way of reviewing something (aside from perhaps films like Ninja's Creed, where you pretty much have to recap the film to explain just why it is terrible)...but here's a few examples of this movie's overwhelming stupidity. Keep in mind that anything on this list that sounds like it might have been funny (and there will be quite a bit, particularly if you are--as I am--a fan of ridiculous ideas) most definitely was not.

The whole plot is set in motion by the theft of a radioactive necklace from Nagasaki or Hiroshima. The culprit? A cyborg Bigfoot. The reason, which we find out much later in the film, is that the cyborg Bigfoot needs the necklace to power itself. Never mind that it somehow has enough power to steal the necklace in the first place. (The fact that this film somehow made a cyborg Bigfoot boring is astonishing.)

Harry Knuckles is supposedly some sort of super-agent, but not only do the people that hire him show him up as they beat a couple guys in seconds when Harry's been fighting them for what felt like hours but was probably just a couple minutes, they actually beat up Harry himself in seconds too later in the film. Twice. (I should also note that Harry survives being stepped on by the cyborg Bigfoot and can still fight, but is knocked out in seconds first by a baseball bat to the skull and then by a simple kick to the stomach.) In a film that could easily have pulled all sorts of insane and illogical stuff to show why Harry is regarded as a legendary hero, you instead end up questioning why he's even needed. Now, Harry does fight and defeat several people (in several awful fight scenes filled with obvious misses, awkward pauses, and generally clumsy fighting moves), but you never really get a feeling that he's some kind of super fighter (and the actor playing Harry is by far the worst fighter in the film, with even the two evil scientists putting on a faster and more capable fight scene than him). Even his "brother" Santos (an extremely...large...man dressed as a luchadore) has a more dominant fight scene than him.

"Smells like fish...tastes like pain." Yes...that's actually a line from the movie.

Unsurprisingly, I need to talk about that fight scene too. One of the plot points involves Santos falling in love with one of the evil scientist ladies, and the two decide to get married. Santos wants to get married in a wrestling ring, complete with ringside commentary. It's a trap, though, and Santos is assaulted by an evil luchadore dressed in a wedding gown (yes, it's a he, and yes, he still wears the mask). 

And then by the priest. And then by a long series of other characters, including the aforementioned two Asian girls who manage to put about 30 seconds of good fighting in the film. The entire thing probably takes a good 10 minutes or more, concluding with Santos beating up the commentator. It's the sort of scene that would be highly amusing if it weren't so long and if anyone involved (other than just the two girls) could fight convincingly at all. Instead, it ends up a slow, plodding mess with (surprise!) obvious misses and some of the worst wrestling moves I've seen in my life (and I'm a huge Botchamania fan), including a couple stunts with chairs and ladders that are botched so horribly I wouldn't be surprised if you told me someone ended up crippled or dead. And those are the versions that ended up in the film. Harry isn't there at that fight because he's finding out information from "the Man in the Hat" (Lloyd Kaufman, head of Troma, who overacts up a storm in his brief role), via getting completely plastered and passing out. So yeah, he missed his friend's wedding (even if it didn't end up going to plan) to go get drunk. Santos isn't bothered by it, though.

I've heard of shotgun weddings, but chainsaw weddings?

Additionally, I would like to ask filmmakers to please realize that simply having a wrestler character use the term "tag team" when teaming up with or marrying a character is not in and of itself humorous. You have to work a little harder than that.

Rock on, Santos my friend. Rock on.

There's a very lengthy sequence after Harry is knocked out with a baseball bat where we're forced to endure watching Santos try to awaken Harry from a catatonic state by trying to feed him different foods and then inexplicably smashing a bunch of food on the floor and stepping all over it, until finally he gets a reaction by feeding Harry his favorite, bananas. The film lingers on this concept for far too long, and even once Harry starts to recover we spend a while with Santos pushing him about in a wheelchair and buying him art supplies. There really aren't even any jokes (even by this movie's standards) in this sequence, making me wonder why it even exists.

Our resident evil scientist and/or museum employee ladies. The one on the left has some good in her. The one on the right is pure evil. You can tell because she has kung fu sound effects dubbed in when she adjusts her coat.

Inexplicably, there's a continuous party going on in Harry's house for the entire movie. Apparently people started celebrating his birthday and just never stopped. 

There's an entirely unnecessary sequence in which Harry stops for gas at a station run by the Unknown Comic (an obscure enough reference that Al from Mondo Bizarro had to explain it to me). Some nuns pull up in a car, but the Unknown Comic finds a man dressed in a diaper and bondage gear (ew) tied up in their trunk, and Harry ends up fighting the evil S&M nuns to save the man, who turns out to be his driver. Who turns out to have paid for the experience. In one of those images that will be forever burned into my mind despite my best efforts to forget it, the diaper/bondage-clad, pacifier-using driver starts teabagging the unconscious evil S&M nuns before Harry leaves and the movie mercifully moves on. I would just like to reiterate that this amazingly offensive, disgusting, and enraging scene is also entirely pointless and has no relation whatsoever to the film's already pathetic attempt at a plot.

Yes. Very convincing.

Several jokes are swiped entirely from the Naked Gun/Police Squad series (which this film rather obviously wants to be, though it falls far below that standard), among others, but still utterly ruined by the cast's complete lack of adequate comic delivery. It's kind of like having someone try to tell you a joke they overheard while they were out getting sloshed the night before (while passing it off as one they made up). They can barely remember how it goes, they stumble over things and make it hard to follow, and they're busy giggling to themselves about how clever the joke is while you pretty much just get bored and give up.

There are a few scenes in which Harry fights with a ninja, except this ninja is a somewhat anorexic-looking woman wearing bright colors and a red scarf around her head. 

Bright red is the most stealthy of all color choices.

The ninja's dialog is rather irritating, consisting entirely of what I think might be haiku...however, in finding a creative way for the woman to speak, the filmmaker's utterly forgot to make her dialog comprehensible. Nothing she says makes any sense. It's like watching Narcosys, except that mercifully the complete nonsense dialog is confined to one character this time.

Princes (or Princesses) of the universe?

The main villain turns out to be Harry's secret evil twin brother, Fuzzy. As this was revealed, I was struck with the terrible revelation that the ending fight was now guaranteed to be the worst fighter in the film vs. the worst fighter in the film. Fuzzy, by the way, is distinguished from Harry by wearing a different color and having a tiny moustache. 

Before the (terrible as expected) fight scene, the two engage in an amazingly long chase through the streets of the city. There really aren't any jokes during the chase, either, which again leads one to question why the sequence exists in a comedy.

They spend a good 15-30 seconds filming this pose from different angles.

There's a sequence early in the film where Harry gets a virtual reality dating game as a present, and ends up having to fight the virtual girl because the thing is a trap set by the Leopard Lady to get the map to the Bigfoot (I think) from Harry. 

Harry beats the Leopard Lady and cuffs her to the bed. And that's the last you see of her in the film. She is never mentioned again. Big-Lipped Alligator Moment? Maybe not quite, but it gets pretty close. I guess it is in some way related to the plot, though...barely.

I swear this isn't what it looks like.

There's a bagpiper following Harry around for the entire film, which of course leads up to a "it's time to pay the piper" joke towards the end. I should note that the piper shows up pretty much right at the beginning of the movie, and thus the audience not only sees the joke coming, they see it coming about two hours before it actually happens. And yes...this film does clock in at just about two hours. I can't believe it either.

As a side note, this appears to be a sequel to Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy, which from IMDB's records clocks in at only 27 minutes. I wish Al had given me that one instead! It might not be any better, but at least it would have been short.

The somewhat worrisomely-thin ninja girl shows up in a bikini to break Harry's hovercraft. (What is it with this movie and reasonably cool-looking weapons?)

The ending is entirely unsatisfying even given the film up until that point. I'll explain why, but I do have to talk about the ending to do so, so if you don't want to have that spoiled, skip down to "Spoilers over," below. Basically, here's the thing. Harry is trying to save the Bigfoot by disarming a bomb on it and delivering the necklace it needs for power. But Harry's also been poisoned by Fuzzy, and Santos arrives with the antidote. Harry disarms the bomb, so the Bigfoot's lying inert, and Santos offers him the antidote. For no reason whatsoever, Harry refuses until he's put the necklace in, instead of just chugging the antidote and then popping the necklace in. So, instead of both Harry and Bigfoot living, Harry dies. Look, if they'd said something like "Bigfoot's going to go critical anyway if we don't restore his power source now!" I'd be okay with it, but there's no reason given as to why Harry has to delay taking the antidote, so I guess they just wanted him to die so they could have a drawn out funeral scene and show the Unknown Comic with tears drawn on his paper bag mask. The film ends with Fuzzy getting out of prison and deciding--again, inexplicably, as nothing in the film has shown that Fuzzy has any inclination to be redeemed, and indeed he killed Harry--to take on Harry's identity and become a hero. Even in a cheesy comedy, you really have to justify things, especially when it involves massive character personality changes!

As another side note, Netflix freaked me out by glitching up after the end credits sequence and claiming there were 45 minutes left in the movie, making me briefly fear that I had just watched a false ending and had a massive amount of film left. Fortunately, I fast-forwarded and found that it was just a glitch.  I don't think I could've taken much more. O_O

Spoilers over.

Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace is not the worst film I've seen (that honor still belongs to Kill the Scream Queen on the days that I decide to even refer to it as a film), but it definitely ranks right up there. It is long, boring, and nearly completely lacking in any sort of comedic value. It is filled with over-the-top and bizarre ideas that would work wonderfully in a strange comedy if not for the huge host of problems with acting (especially the acting, which is usually awkward, hesitant, and wooden), pacing, and direction. Again...this movie somehow managed to make an evil twin, a cyborg Bigfoot, evil S&M nuns, an ambush at a wrestling event marriage, a virtual reality battle, and many more concepts of equal insanity boring. This could easily have turned out more like the Naked Gun series or even stranger comedies like Pani Poni Dash, but weird ideas alone are not enough to get it there. It is a film filled with good concepts that just aren't executed well enough to hold any interest at all, and so sure of its own hilarity that it forgets that it takes more than just the idea of a joke to be funny. Performance matters, and honestly that's by and large where Harry Knuckles falls flat. The pacing problems are pretty severe at times (I cannot emphasize enough the sheer length of some of the sequences, particularly the wrestling sequence and the Harry/Fuzzy chase), but I could deal with those if the acting and fighting were at least decent. As it is, though, the film just has too many problems to be watchable, and though it has some wonderfully strange ideas, it ends up not being any fun at all.