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[Beanie Recs] Bring on the campy action


Ahoy, Beanies! It’s time to gather your collective genius for a recommendation series that features you and your drama knowledge. Each week we’ll drop a drama conundrum and leave it up to you to provide a drama rec, and the appropriate rationale behind it, be it long or short. Respond below!
 

So, I might be in the minority, but I absolutely love the campy action element in Island. While I’m waiting for the conclusion of the series, I was wondering if you know of any other dramas with a similar vibe? It doesn’t have to be fantasy, I just dig the overall campiness. (I blame all the Sci-Fi (SyFy?) channel shows I used to watch back in the day!)


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When I think of "campy" it means over-the-top, outrageous humor. I would recommend PEGASUS MARKET.

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Not a drama, but there’s this Korean movie called Quick that is a straight-up campy action parody. Zero seriousness, all ridiculousness and silliness. If you like that sort of camp and humor, give it a go, especially with friends. Probably the most I’ve ever laughed while watching a movie!

It’s really dumb. But really funny.

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Quick is hilarious, highly recommend as well

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As someone who also totally enjoyed/am enjoying Island, I hear this! Action of any kind is right up my alley, but campy action is just fun.

Purely in the drama space, I think the one I’ve seen that fits this the best is Bad Prosecutor. People had a lot of shade to throw at this drama, but as I’ve said before, if what you’re looking for is an extended action film, it totally delivers. The action is fun, campy, and very clearly there because it looks cool. Two others that lean campy rather than serious are Man to Man and Cafe Minamdang, but in both of these cases, the FL sort of ruined the whole thing with her annoyingness. Such a shame. Proceed at your own risk.

On the other hand, there are so many K-movies that fit this so well. The Pirates comes to mind immediately, also a great Kim Nam-gil vehicle! But also Rampant, which you should definitely watch while placing bets on who will survive until the end. I don't remember how campy the action scenes in The Swordsman are, but I do remember really enjoying it and that the villain is pleasantly one-dimensional (and that there's a really wild woman with a snake at one point, so I'm adding that to the camp-factor). Kundo: Age of the Rampant (surprisingly not a zombie flick) is a great example of the campy-action genre, and has strong Robin Hood vibes, but much more violent. I’d also recommend The Outlaws (and probably pretty much anything else Ma Dong-seok has done - here is a man who understands action comedy), which has one sequel already and another coming out this year. Can you tell that Korean action movies are what I can get my partner to watch with me? 😀

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Curious I know the Pirates is on Netflix but are the rest of the movies you mentioned on Viki? I have a hard time accessing Korean films

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I actually watched The Pirates on Viki, and it doesn't look like it's on Netflix in the US. The sequel is on Netflix, but it's not a continuation of the same story, it's a separate and similar one. I haven't seen it but I've heard good/hilarious things!

The Outlaws, Rampant, and Kundo: Age of the Rampant, are all also on Viki, at least in the US. I'm not sure where The Swordsman is streaming right now (I think it's on Netflix in some regions) but there is often a site that will let you watch movies like this free with ads - I find these by searching on my tv or Amazon Prime will often list ways to watch. Good luck!

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Thanks!

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I found The Swordsman on Hoopla, which is a free library streaming service in the U.S. You can check to see whether your library card gives you access to the service.

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Thanks! I don’t live in the U.S. but that’s helpful information for other U.S. beanies! I have a VPN,, which I use sometimes to access Viki’s U.S. only content
Looking forward to watching some of these movies :)

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Don’t think I have seen such dramas. Especially action.
I can think of the movie ‘Pirates’ (both old and new movie) which was over the top funny with action. It was ridiculous but fun.

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ZOMBIE DETECTIVE is kinda camp, it’s genuinely funny at times but there are quite a lot of gruesome and graphic stuff, which makes sense since we are dealing with a zombie. I haven’t finished it tho

FIERY PRIEST: it starts of quite camp, and some of the side characters are fun and over the top. The action was my favourite, there were some really good martial arts fight scenes imo. It gets more serious in the second half

(Tho, I will say while it did have good critique about the corruption of the prosecution and the police force, it lacked critique and was blind to the corruption of the Catholic Church).

VINCENZO is from the same writer and the cast is also quite camp and over the top, but very endearing. Even the villains I’d say are kinda camp

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I absolutely love Zombie Detective and Fiery Priest! Would totally recommend both. I've got to watch Pirates. I have a hard time with movies but KNG! must watch.

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Lawless Lawyer - it never really loses its campy roots (even during angst-ish latter episodes!) and chemistry between pretty much everyone in the cast is amazing. Don't try to treat a plot seriously and you'll have 16 hours of pure action comedy fun.

Along With The Gods movies, maybe? Pretty close genre and theme-wise to Island, but MUCH better executed. First one is on the lighter and more comedic side compared to everyone-cries sequel, but both are the crazy mix of everything. Good kind of crazy I mean.

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Oh wow, I can't believe I forgot all about Lawless Lawyer! Perfectly fits this request - it really leans into the ridiculousness especially with the former loan sharks. Sometimes I was pretty sure that Seo Ye-ji was there to be a proxy for the audience so that Lee Joon-gi and friends were not just constantly breaking the fourth wall.

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LL is tragically underrated - both here on DB and overall. It should've had ratings and buzz that Again My Life had... Ex loan sharks were the cutest)))

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Vampires are usually camp, and Blood and The Scholar Who Walks the Night have campy action. The Scholar Who Walks the Night is a blemish on Lee Joon-gi's career, but I really enjoyed Blood. The drama was such campy fun, and I adored Jung Hae-in's character, which had been the first time I had seen him.

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I love Blood. It's objectively terrible but so much fun in how terrible it is. I'm pretty sure Jung Hae-in is quietly removing it from his CV as we speak.

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I mean Arthdal Chronicles had some seriously campy action sequences (and just sequences in general) going on, but I'm not sure it was intentional . . .

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Oh, and while I confess I didn't make it all the way through this one, if you want the truly ridiculous, you could check out Sword and Flower.

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Queen of the Office (a.k.a. God of the Workplace) stars Kim Hye-Soo as an ultra-competent contract employee who has certificates and licenses in over a hundred different occupations. Oh Ji-Ho (sporting the perm of all perms) plays an egotistical co-worker who is determined to prove that he’s more accomplished than she is—but she runs circles around him every time. Both actors give truly campy, over-the-top performances!

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I watched some clips of The Queen of the Office's funny moments on Youtube, and they didn't disappoint 😂 The writer put Kim Hye-soo in wacky scenarios which involved body humor, but she pulled them off as the comedy queen she is.

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Perfume's execution was quiet campy which was fitting for a fantasy premise. Shin Sung-rok was really the man to portray his character Yi-do's eccentric and curious nature and colorful imagination. Maybe a tad too spoiling, but to illustrate, there was a scene when Yi-do was fuming with jealousy when he learned that the female protagonist Ye-rim (Go Won-hee) went to the home of the second male lead Min-seok (Kim Min-kyu) at night during their fake dating phase (Yi-do doesn't know that it's all pretend). So he imagined that they would already get busy with having children, and Ye-rim in Yi-do's imagination said she wanted 11(!!!) children (because she likes soccer and a soccer team is formed of 11 players? LOL), and yep that was the justification needed for Yi-do to barge into Min-suk's house 😂

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