You know you’re
in for an embarrassing treat when the opening scene of a movie features
Burgess Meredith sticking acupuncture needles
into James Mason, both of them made up to look vaguely Chinese. When
the movie then reveals that your narrator for the tale about to unfold
will
be none other than Buddha himself, the possibilities for outrageously
offensive farce are practically endless.
Sweet mercy, does
the movie deliver on that promise.
A meandering espionage fantasy in which Eastern philosophy combines with
homosexual blackmail, topless dancing, James Joyce and a secret laser
weapon, from start to end The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go is a cringingly
terrible beatnik spin on the “yellow peril” adventures of
yesteryear.
In place of Fu Manchu we have Mr. Yin Yang Go, a half-Mexican, half-Chinese
crimelord played by the resolutely English actor James Mason. Luckily,
thanks to the magic of the movies, some false teeth and a dab of spirit
gum to make his eyes slanted is all it takes to create the illusion of
such an exotic heritage. Yes, it’s a clumsy and outrageously racist
illusion but let’s not get too picky. We’ve got a long way
to go yet.
Go’s latest project is the theft of an experimental laser defence
system which he plans to build for himself and then sell to the highest
bidder. To do this he needs to get hold of the blueprints, and to do
this he needs to find a way to squeeze Professor Bannister for information.
As luck would have it, who should come knocking at Go’s door but
Nero Finnegan, played by a young Jeff Bridges, all tousled hair, patchy
beard and love beads. An American Army deserter with aspirations to being
a great writer, Nero needs money to keep his girlfriend, Tah Ling, happy
and offers his services to Go. The lisping supervillain is delighted
at the prospect, as Professor Bannister is gay and Nero – rough,
rugged and ever so poetic - is just his type.
Nero is secretly filmed enjoying some “rough trade” with
Bannister, all of which is recorded in trippy Seventies-o-vision, and
features Nero lasciviously pouring a bowl of what is hopefully water
over the prone scientist’s naked form. With the boffin duly blackmailed,
Go is free to begin building his device.
Of course, the CIA is also on the case – in the shape of another
fun stereotype, a boozy Irish agent by the not-terribly-Gaelic name of
Leo Zimmerman. It doesn’t take long for him to get the truth out
of Nero, by pretending to be a publisher and taking him on a whirlwind
tour of Hong Kong’s titty bars, and this means that Go is forced
to remove Nero and his girlfriend from the equation – permanently.
As they fly to their doom in Go’s helicopter, we’re treated
to one of the most mind-boggling plot twists ever used in the spy genre – Buddha
opens his Third Eye and hits Go with a beam of magic light. In an instant,
Go changes his outlook on life and becomes a good guy. Why does Buddha
do this? According to the voiceover from the lardy enlightened one himself,
it’s basically something he occasionally does for random giggles.
Kind of like a karmic Candid Camera.
Go promptly betrays his criminal cohorts and helps Nero save Tah Ling
from the clutches of a predatory lesbian henchwoman called Zelda – an
endeavour that naturally involves exposed breasts and a harpoon gun.
Go fakes his death, and uses the eulogy at his funeral, read by Nero,
to offer up the plans for the laser defence system to every nation on
the planet – thereby bringing about world peace by making all nuclear
missiles redundant.
The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go is a remarkably ill-conceived movie, made
with the apparent aim of getting jaded western hippies into Buddhism
via the cunning and self-defeating use of appalling oriental stereotypes.
As for Jeff Bridges (or Jeffrey, as he’s billed here in his first
movie role), he makes for a particularly lousy action hero. Nero is pushed
and pulled through the story by the other characters, and he spends most
of the time either drunk, stoned, strumming his guitar, carousing with
topless prostitutes or complaining that his girlfriend isn’t around
to cook his meals. While this is probably a rather accurate portrayal
of the typical Seventies beatnik at large in Hong Kong, it does also
make him something of a wanker.
Need to know: Burgess Meredith must take the lion’s share of the
blame for The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go. Not only did the actor co-write
and direct the film, he co-starred as The Dolphin, an underworld snitch
with an even more egregious “ah-so” accent than Go himself.
He also took rather obvious inspiration from his time as The Penguin
on the Sixties Batman TV series, as many of the fight sequences in Mr.
Go are carried out with the same psychedelic sensibility, accompanied
by the lilting sounds of light jazz trumpet. For more bizarre Burgess
performances, see: Christopher Walken, Tony
Curtis.
Honourable mention: Bridges also played the marginally less hairy lead
role in the 1976 remake of King Kong, battling to save Jessica Lange’s
blonde bombshell from the clutches of the giant ape (portrayed in this
much derided version by special effects maestro Rick Baker in a monkey
costume).
Availability: Unavailable on DVD, you’ll need to track down the
out of print VHS release if you want to savour the sweet and sour taste
of Mr. Go.
