Film Year: 1974
Genre: Action, Crime
Director: Al Adamson
Starring: Timothy Brown, Alan Tang
CT Number: 8
The Movie
"Directed by Al Adamson...a phrase that will live in infamy..." Indeed it was, as us riffing enthusiasts found out that Adamson directed movies much stranger and more inept than this, The Oozing Skull and Carnival Magic. East Meets Watts would have been the best?
Originally titled Dynamite Brothers upon original release, East Meets Watts is a rather labored attempt to combine two niche genres of the 1970's: blaxsploitation and kung fu imports. Just knowing that it's easy to assume this movie is about a cool black man teaming up with a fast moving Chinese martial arts master to fight bad guys, and this was years before the Rush Hour franchise made millions on that same premise, mind you. And when a Brett Ratner movie does things more competently than your film then you might have to admit your film has issues.
I could probably go more in depth with the movie but it mostly seems futile. It's stuff about searching for a missing brother, fighting a drug ring, and sleeping with mute girls. The movie mostly rides very hard on the idea that those who watch these sort of genres will most likely see them regardless of quality. There's little effort to tell a story here, but rather to look hip pretending you have a story. There are fist bumps, high kicks, and a lot of racial slurs (including that little known "N" word).
What can I really say about it? It's not very good. It's poorly shot, features stilted acting, and even the action doesn't really have much pizzazz behind it, and I enjoy kung fu movies. Blaxploitation I don't enjoy quite as much, though I have to believe there are far better movies in that genre than East Meets Watts. If there weren't then the genre probably wouldn't have existed in the first place. East Meets Watts is more like the toilet paper of two genres that weren't really respected all that much in the first place.
The Riff
East Meets Watts was Cinematic Titanic's first filmed live show, after retiring its series of studio productions. They had been putting on live shows for quite some time mind you, but they had deduced that making the live format their primary focus owould have made their efforts stand out compared to MST and Rifftrax. Neveryoumind that both had done live shows themselves and Rifftrax offered them on DVD as well. I personally preferred the studio releases (or at least I felt the riff scripts on the first seven were stronger than the ones for the live show releases), but I didn't mind live shows in general. I think my strongest issue against CT's live shows were that I already had Rifftrax's live shows as a comparison and there seemed to be more to them. We were given skits and shorts and just more of an effort in general to make it a whole event. Cinematic Titanic's live shows were just the movie, in and out, with no side dishes. Now the impression I get is that when they were performed lived there were opening acts and even points where the Titans got on stage to warm up the crowd, but alas none of that is on the DVD. We get a movie with the benefit of live laughter, and the fun host segments are tossed out. While live interaction is fun, I never saw this as a step up because it was so bare minimum.
"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your street name! And the honkeys are all to blame!"
But moving on to the riff itself, East Meets Watts gives us two genres we've never really seen a lot of in any riffing project. Blaxploitation in general might prove to be something of a thin line to tread given how racially charged those films in general are. Kung fu on the other hand is a genre I've always been surprised hasn't been featured more in shows like this, what with bad dubbing, poor stories, and wild, expressive action at the center of each one. There's so much untapped potential there.
As such, East Meets Watts seems like a tale of two different riffs. The riffing on the parts that lean on blaxploitation tend to be very cautious, sometimes pushing ahead to a big laugh but always calculated on when the right time is. Mary Jo seems to be pressed a few too many of the edgier lines here, for when the audience reacts with an "oooooh" instead of laughter Frank gets mock angry at her, yelling "MARY JO!" prompting audience applause instead. It's an interesting back door out of riskier jokes.
When the movie goes full kung fu the Titans cut loose and give it everything they've got. The first two acts of this riff are amusing though rarely something special, then our riffers charge forth into the action packed finale and leave us grinning from ear to ear as the entire show ends. It's somewhat manipulative to pack so much funny material in the final twenty minutes, almost tricking the audience into thinking the entire show was like that (it's my theory as to why MST's Godzilla vs. Megalon is so popular), but I have to judge the experience as a whole. East Meets Watts is solid and the best jokes are worth watching it for, but the riff as a whole is good but not great.
Good
The DVD
Like most of Cinematic Titanic's output, East Meets Watts was originally released on DVD through their original website of cinematictitanic.com. Video and audio were good, there were no special features. Shout Factory later released the show on their Complete Collection set, where it shared a disc with the proceeding non-live show Blood of the Vampires.
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