AGFAugust: Magic BMX

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.
AGFA is currently fundraising to raise money for new 35mm prints. Terror Tuesday and Weird Wednesday ticket sales for the month of August will go to support that cause. To donate separately, click here.

Weird Wednesday-ites were in for a real treat at the 8/9 screening. The long-running Alamo Drafthouse series has dedicated August to raising funds for the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) with a batch of mystery films—the audience doesn’t know what they’re getting into basically until the lights go down.

Programmer Laird Jimenez introduced the evening’s film as so rare it is practically unseen—never released on video, never streamed, no Ebay VCDs, just this ultra-rare print. My cinephile antennae shivered when Jimenez clarified that this was not an AGFA print, but one from Quentin Tarantino’s personal collection that would later be shipped back to L.A. This conjured mental images of a cavernous film vault packed with priceless, ultra-rare celluloid, similar to the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Finally Jiminez introduced the film, referring to another Spielberg classic: we were about to watch “some kind of E.T. rip” from Taiwan called Magic BMX. The lights went down and we tapped in. The print was fairly worn and scratchy, with the distinctive purplish-amber patina aged film acquires over decades of storage. The credit sequence featured eerie horror soundtrack synthesizers that wound up being far from the story’s vibe.

Released in 1983, Magic BMX follows a dorky youngster named An Zuo struggling to make friends in the new town his family has just moved to. The family must be rich because he is driven around by a goofy chauffer, waited on by a maid, and tutored in Spanish and violin by a couple of grumpy white dudes.

Within the first few moments, the “E.T. rip” element of the story becomes obvious: some kind of glowing space creature has landed in the backyard, driving the dog crazy. But An Zuo doesn’t notice the intruder until much later—he’s too busy following a rebellious bike gang composed of older teens who ride small-wheeled BMX trick bikes. The gang is led by the ice-cool Black Wolf, but An Zuo focuses his attention on the lone cute girl in the group.

Meanwhile weird stuff keeps happening in the back yard, achieved by charmingly lo-fi special effects. Eventually the space invader enters the story proper: an obnoxious human toddler with a devil lock, a shiny jumpsuit and a taste for mischief. An Zuo names him Magic Brother. He’s cuter than Spielberg’s lovable alien but very mean-spirited, and An Zuo is forced to deal with his shenanigans as he struggles to learn the ways of BMX.

Then suddenly, with Magic Brother’s help, our hero is doing X Games tricks and tearing up the bike track like nobody’s business. The plot eventually settles into a back-and-forth between An Zuo suffering Magic Brother’s pranks, and the intense rivalry between the Black Wolf bike gang and a more intense gang led by the mute, black-jumpsuit-clad Black Knight.

The main reason to track down this film would be the BMX sequences, which are unique and beautifully done. There are Busby Berkeley-esque shots of rows of bikes popping wheelies, and some truly hair-raising stunts that appear to be performed by kids—if not the actors themselves, they are definitely not adult stunt performers. There are many painful shots of youngsters eating shit on the BMX course, and a delirious training montage in which An Zuo attempts to ride a half-pipe, his little body bumping over the handlebars like a rag doll. One particular shot, with bikes zooming across a street and a near-miss by a fast-moving car, actually freaked me out a little. These scenes are exciting but also pretty unhinged, like the car chase in The French Connection but involving actual kids.

That said, the film is very well made, with a real sense of visual poetry. Director Ming-Tsan Wang creates beautiful wide compositions and high-energy tracking shots to complement the bike action throughout. While the influence of E.T. (a massive hit the year before) is obvious, Magic BMX is definitely its own thing, and the filmmakers were self-aware enough to include some cheeky visual references—an actual E.T. poster on An Zuo’s bedroom wall, a scene in which one of the members of the gang wear an actual E.T. mask.

The final act features a riff on Bicycle Thieves as the gang are forced to free their wheels from a trio of bumbling thugs, which is followed by the inevitable BMX showdown between the Black Wolf and Black Knight gangs. Magic Brother wears out his welcome with An Zuo, who nevertheless can’t seem to bear it when his strange space friend disappears. The actor playing An Zuo (online credits for this one are sparse) is fantastic and delivers some intense emotions for a kid’s sci-fi fantasy.

Magic BMX was just what I wanted from a Weird Wednesday screening—a one-of-a-kind blend of sentimental coming of age flick, action spectacle, and sci-fi buddy comedy. Recommended if you ever get the chance to watch it, which just might depend on how tight you are with Quentin Tarantino.