The Master Demon (1991)

PLOT: One master demon. One severed hand. Ranchera music. One mesh half-shirt. Eight gallons of blood and make-up. Blend until smooth and then bake for approximately 81 minutes, or until set.

Director: Samuel Oldham
Writer: Samuel Oldham
Cast: Eric Lee, Gerald Okamura, Sid Campbell, Steve Nave, Ava Cadell, Kay Baxter Young, Tony Halme, Art Camacho

PLOT THICKENER

Among vampires, zombies, and men who are also wolves, demons can get lost in the horror movie mix. Cinematic representations of demons have ranged from frothing (Lamberto Bava’s Demons), to possessive and Assyrian (Pazuzu in The Exorcist), and even slapstick (The Evil Dead series). In his 1991 film, The Master Demon, director Samuel Oldham sought to expose a few of the traits conspicuously absent from the demon’s cinematic lexicon, freakishly high cheekbones and the ability to levitate gardening tools among them.

Centuries ago, there existed the White Warrior (Lee), a swordsman with an incredible mane of hair worthy of lead guitar duty in Motley Crue or Warrant. His primary adversary was the Master Demon (Okamura), a hideous underworld martial artist with a mastery of black magic. During a bloody mano-a-mano confrontation as part of the “Dragon Wars,” the White Warrior severed the Master Demon’s hand, disappearing him back to the world from which he came. The White Warrior, near-death from his wounds, brought the hand to a nearby monk, who performed some incantations and placed it under lock and key in a wooden box. To ensure the Master Demon never regained his powers, he couldn’t be allowed to become whole again.

Many years later, the White Warrior has been reborn as Tong Lee, a great martial artist but otherwise regular guy who likes mesh half-shirts and Mexican food. Similarly, the Demon Master walks among the living as shipping magnate (and art collector), Kwan Cheng. After a thief makes off with a certain ancient wooden box on exhibit in an art gallery, the two are drawn back into conflict. While reading from a sacred book, Cheng inadvertently conjures up the powerful Medusa (Baxter), another force from the underworld, who admonishes him for allowing the remains to be stolen before fatally breaking his neck. She tracks the wooden box back to a private investigator named Cameron Massey (Nave) who randomly received it from a crooked art dealer with a knife lodged in his head. (Who put it there? Medusa, of course!) The resulting scrum at Cameron’s apartment draws the attention of not only Tong Lee, but also the cops! Investigating detective Wayne Besecker (Campbell), Cameron, and Lee, are suddenly thrown together as humanity’s last hope against a resurgent Master Demon, Medusa, and an army of fighters.

Umm… where do I start? How Oldham pulled together this cast is a great mystery; it’s one of the more off-the-wall supporting casts I’ve ever seen, even for a low-budget martial arts film. Before he was a pro wrestler, politican, and recording musical artist, Tony Halme was just a 300-pound Finnish dude looking for film work, and he’s perfectly cast as a henchman who can’t be trusted with any dialogue. Ava Cadell -- most famous for her work as a sex and love therapist -- appeared in many bit parts in film and television in the 1970s and 80s, but has a fairly prominent role as Jan, Cameron’s secretary. (Her first scene involves quitting her job as Cameron’s secretary). The romantic pairing of Jan with Besecker felt like an odd choice -- their goofy, drawn-out love scene is a record needle-scratch moment -- but her quirky line delivery adds occasional humor to the story. Among all of these personalities, the most consistently imposing figure is cut not by the martial artist leads, but by female bodybuilding pioneer, Kay Baxter Young, who tragically died in a car accident in 1988. How her character of Medusa fits into the film’s mythos is never really explained, but when she can demolish an entire building with a single punch (this is a thing that happened), that level of detail is inconsequential.

The fight scenes are not so great, but they’re also not really why you’re watching this sort of film. Eric Lee and Gerald Okamura are both talented martial artists and they’ve done better action sequences in other films. The film features fighting book-ends involving them both, a scene where Lee flying through a window from the *outside* to jump-kick a guy in Cameron’s living room (awesome!) and a fat section in the middle of the film where the Master Demon’s army rumbles with our heroes in a parking lot. From a logistical perspective, this sort of dynamic (15+ fighters) can be a mess to manage. Oldham tries to break it down into digestible chunks by following each hero separately through different fights of roughly equal length, but the scene overall felt long as a result. It was also difficult to take Cameron seriously as a fighter due to his “Butte Police” shirt.

The director made some interesting choices in this film, some probably influenced by budget, and others probably influenced by a lack of time. YouTube has become a sanctuary for direct-to-video productions, and it’s the easiest way to watch this particular one, but I’d like to see how the original home video release compares to what I watched. In the version Oldham has made available on his YouTube channel, the title credit graphics and even some of the special effects reflect production technologies that appear a lot newer than the film’s 1991 release date. Was Oldham trying to improve on whatever was there originally? More specifically, there are some odd effects that occur when the Master Demon incurs a battle wound; instead of spurting blood or cutting to a gory close-up, laser-like tendons emerge from the injuries and they look like they came from some consumer-grade video editing program from the early 2000s. Curious choice, but perhaps the director felt a need to tinker after the fact.

Oldham’s other uses of horror elements are more effective. Some are traditional -- think smoke machines and strobe lights -- while others are garish, such as drill-torture and a quick cutaway to a bloody, faceless, skull. A scene in which Lee encourages his comrades to drink his blood to gain some of his powers features a convincing bloodletting effect not fit for the squeamish viewer. These visuals fit the film’s WTF aesthetics perfectly, and serve the director’s larger objective of a true genre mash-up. Also true to the horror film formula are the make-up effects used on Gerald Okamura’s demon; they range from dark, grotesque blobs to facial protrusions that would look right at home in your favorite Troma film or an art-rock album cover from Annie Clark and David Byrne.

VERDICT

If you were on board for 1985’s Furious and enjoyed the weird mix of martial arts and kitchen-sink aesthetics, this film might be the closest thing to its cinematic spiritual successor. That said, this film has a brand of try-hard charm that won’t vibe with some viewers, and it can be hit-and-miss. Personally, I really dig when young or first-time directors throw a lifetime of influences at the wall to blend it into a single film -- especially when they include horror, action, and Highlander-esque story elements -- and Oldham’s attempt is admirable.

AVAILABILITY

Amazon, YouTube.

3.5 / 7

Blood Ring (1991)

PLOT: An American fighter in Manila is forced to put down the bottle and take up arms (and fists) against the evil fight promoters who killed his friend. Bad timing too, because he just signed up for a mail-order membership to a “Godawful Cheap Vodka of the Month” club.

Director: Teddy Page (as Irvin Johnson)
Writer: Ron Davies
Cast: Dale Cook, Don Nakaya Nielsen, Andrea Lamatsch, Ned Hourani, Jim Gaines, Nick Nicholson, Steve Tartalia, Cris Aguilar

PLOT THICKENER

As a huge fan of Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood, the 2008 documentary that blew the doors open on Australian exploitation film for the mainstream, I was really looking forward to his 2010 follow-up that focused on the Philippines, Machete Maidens Unleashed. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the film reached the end credits with nary a mention of the important part that the chopsocky subgenre and its many stars played in the Filipino film industry of the 1980s and early 90s. Everyone from Richard Norton and Jerry Trimble to Loren Avedon and Don Wilson went for at least one go-round in Manila, and in a sense, starring in a Filipino actioner as a Westerner meant that your star power had reach and cachet.

Or, more simply: you were an accomplished kickboxer. The Filipino film industry -- particularly filmmakers like Cirio Santiago and Teddy Page -- loved kickboxers of every stripe. Dale “Apollo” Cook, who started kickboxing professionally in the late 1970s and saw his fight career last nearly two decades, was one of the few American-born stars whose film work (nine movies in all) was almost entirely limited to the Philippines (save for one part as a jerkward foreign devil in the 1992 Hong Kong film, Deadend of Besiegers). Cook may have lacked the dramatic chops or swagger to make it as an action star Stateside, but he had an easygoing, American-as-apple-pie vibe that Filipino action films, for whatever reason, seemed to really dig. 1991's Blood Ring was just his second film and the first of four films in which he would star with Teddy Page in the director's seat. It was also the film title most often confused for a sausage product.

In the world of underground Manila kickboxing, tickets may be cheap but life is even cheaper. (The beer is still expensive). Promoters use up and discard their fighters as often as they change their t-shirts. Max Rivers (Cook) is your typical burnout drunk, fighting and throwing fights in exchange for booze money from his sleazy promoter, Dingo. When Max’s fighter pal, Philip (Tartalia), goes missing, his girlfriend, Susan (Lamatsch) brings the news to Max, hoping that he can help. Philip has been trying to get out from under the thumb of his own promoter, the evil Caruleo (Nielsen), by betting on himself to lose fights. In exchange for these efforts, Philip gets “released from his contract” which is a formal way of saying that Caruleo beats him to death. (Wouldn’t you know it? Caruleo is a kickboxer too).

The reach and cruelty of Caruleo’s gang spreads far and wide. His main hatchet man is Stevens (Gaines), a coke-addicted creep in molester glasses whose enjoyment of violence is matched only by his love for nose candy. While Caruleo oversees many expert fighters -- including a beefed-up weirdo in a mask called D’Executioner (Aguilar) -- his most prized subject is Madigan (Hourani), a kickboxer with bountiful chest hair who can’t be trusted with any dialogue whatsoever. As Max gears up to infiltrate and destroy the gang who killed his friend, he’ll not only need to defeat each of these mini-bosses on the way to Caruleo, but he’ll also have to fight his raging addiction to booze on the road to sobriety.

There is little to no production sheen to Teddy Page’s films, and Blood Ring is no different. You can’t go into Filipino action films from this era with any expectation of technical mastery because you’ll walk away more disappointed than Steven Seagal after the food court Cinnabon has closed for the day. (Not fatshaming here, BTW -- Seagal just really loves Cinnabons). The plot here is simple, if stale, but the bad blood between the hero and his enemies is sufficient to carry us through the film. If you’ve seen a few of these early 90s Filipino chopsocky films -- Fighting Spirit and Blood Hands in particular -- you’ll recognize not just the filming locations, but also the cast of faces. The Jim Moss-Nick Nicholson-Jim Gaines triumvirate is back and in full effect -- all three have supporting parts -- but it was interesting to see Gaines get the baton as the baddie with the most screen-time. As the drug-addled rapist flunky, Stevens, he’s pretty good at capturing his character’s cowardly and sleazy qualities.

If Billy Blanks is the “casual Friday” of chopsocky b-movie stars with his denim ensembles and button-up shirts, then Dale Cook and his plain-tank tops or polos with sweatpants is definitely the “working from home” model. It’s not something exclusive to his character in Blood Ring, either, because he was rocking similar threads in American Kickboxer 2. You might remember from our conversation with Loren Avedon that on the chopsocky film set -- when you’re kicking, punching, and stunting for up to 12 hours a day -- comfort is key. So, maybe there’s a method to Cook’s sartorial madness, as plain and borderline sloppy as it might appear. Or maybe he was decades ahead of his time, as evidenced by the uptick in high-end sweats worn to premiere events and basketball games by everyone from Drake to Bieber. Oscar Isaac spent pretty much all of his screen time in Ex Machina wearing sweatpants and getting shitfaced. If it’s good enough for a tech genius in a top 10 film of the year, why isn’t it good enough for a kickboxer running around Manila and beating the shit out of crooked gangsters and fight promoters?

The real question though: do the sweatpants make a difference in the quality of the fight scenes? Beats the hell out of me. Cook moves well, and you can definitely tell he’s a pro fighter. The training montage in the back-half of the film finds him doing full-extension kicks in waist-deep water -- athletically speaking, that’s insane. He looks best when paired with other legit fighters (e.g. Hourani) as opposed to the standard stunt players, and his climactic fight with Nielsen (himself a former pro kickboxer) is pretty solid. The choreography is simple and the camerawork is average, but the atmosphere -- dark arena, ropes wrapped in barbed wire, and cavernous echoes -- is a cut above your traditional “two dudes kickfighting in a boxing ring” showdown. There’s a lot of blood, a pretty gruesome ending, and even Susan gets in on the action by swinging through the air (she’s tied up per the “damsel in distress” trope) and delivering a timely double-kick to the bad guy. Again, none of it will necessarily blow you away but I appreciated that they put some custom touches on the formula.

VERDICT

It’s undoubtedly cheap and occasionally sleazy. It’s plenty of other excessive adverbs combined with adjectives typically associated with Filipino exploitation films -- take your pick, man. It’s got all the customary markers: subpar acting, doofy plot, poor lighting, crazy stunts, and a library music score. Does Blood Ring rise above it all and deliver the goods in spite of itself? It sort of depends on your threshold for technically unsound cinema and your appreciation for Oklahoman kickboxers. Fortunately, I have both in spades, so I thought it was a breezy 90 minutes. Solid pick for those Saturday afternoons when you don’t want to change out of your tank top and sweatpants.

AVAILABILITY

It never made the jump to DVD (R1 anyway), so used VHS copies on Amazon or eBay are probably your best bet.

3 / 7

Fearless Tiger (1991)

PLOT: When his brother overdoses on a new designer drug called nirvana, a fresh MBA graduate must choose between the stable pursuits of marriage and a burgeoning family business, or traveling to Hong Kong to fight drug dealers.

Director: Ron Hulme
Writer: Steven Maunder, Jalal Merhi, Ron Hulme
Cast: Jalal Merhi, Sonny Onoo, Lazar Rockwood, Bill Pickells, Bolo Yeung, Glen Kwann, Lawrence Mayles, Monika Schnarre

PLOT THICKENER

Martial artist. Producer. Director. Fight choreographer. Jeweler. Disembodied floating head. These are just some of the roles that Jalal Merhi has occupied in his career. By his own admission, he wasn’t much of an actor but did quite well as a producer and director with Film One Productions, the company he founded in part by selling his jewelry business. I’ve always found Merhi to be a bit enigmatic given how many hats he wears and pies in which he puts his fingers during his film productions. With all this hat-wearing and pie-fingering, you’d assume he wouldn’t even have time to act in his own films, but time and time again he appears alongside at least one reasonably big name from the martial arts movie world. If there’s a movie out there in which he performed, but *didn’t* produce, direct, or distribute it, I haven’t seen it. (Or smelled it, despite Merhi’s penchant for innovative scratch-and-sniff VHS boxes).

His debut film, 1991’s Fearless Tiger (aka Black Pearls), was the film that began this strange pattern. Merhi, at this juncture, was an unknown commodity, cinematically speaking. So, with just a couple of scenes in what I’d assume was no more than a day’s work, Bolo Yeung automatically became the “name” star that drove rentals and purchases of the film in the direct-to-video market. He plays a sage “master on mountain” who is completely divorced from the core plot and couldn’t be less critical to the resolution of the central conflict; his near-top billing status is every bit as strategic as it is disingenuous. Yet Bolo was the martial artist who broke the door down for others to do Film One gigs, because Merhi spent the next two decades working out of Toronto with everyone from Cynthia Rothrock and Lorenzo Lamas to Loren Avedon and Billy Blanks. (How fellow Canadian Jeff Wincott escaped the 1990s without working with Merhi, we’ll never know).

Lyle Camille (Merhi) is on top of the world, and not in that “studying polar bear mating habits in the Arctic” sort of way. A lot of graduates fresh out of business school might bum around Europe for the next six months, but Lyle has more practical plans. He’s sitting on an executive offer from his father, Sam (Farr), to run the family business and is also just months away from marrying his artist sweetheart, Ashley (Schnarre). But when his party-boy brother, Lance, overdoses on a hip, new drug called nirvana (think snortable paprika), everything changes.

The executive position at the family business? "Take this job and shove it." The prospective wife and creative soulmate? "Somebody that I used to know." The rest of the track listing for Lyle Camille’s epic mixtape of songs in response to hypothetical questions about his life is unknown. All we do know is that he dodges most of the typical benchmarks for adulthood so he can train at an elite dojo in Hong Kong to elevate his kung fu skills -- he recently lost in a tournament to a stout bald dude named Boh (Kwann) --  and eventually confront a gang called the Black Pearls that’s making and dealing the drug that killed Lance.

Despite his very personal stake in the Pearls’ demise, Lyle is completely unaware that the Pearls’ leader, Saalamar (Rockwood) has recently struck a deal with the shady Jerome (Mayles) to start a North American operation. Before they can do that, though, Saalamar’s chemists must transcribe the highly complex chemical formula behind nirvana to computer disk. This is a lengthy process for which Saalamar would very much like his science nerds to hurry the fuck up, even though he’s totally ignorant of Lyle’s arrival in Hong Kong on an urgent rampage for revenge. In this endeavor, Lyle joins forces with a tournament buddy, Peng (Onoo) who just happens to be the Hong Kong cop investigating a string of drug murders, but has come up empty so far.

My first brush with this movie was a television airing some time in the mid-1990s during TNT’s Saturday Nitro umbrella series of obscure action films. Between the strange acting -- Merhi is green, Mayles is hilariously intense, and Rockwood is downright bizarre -- and prevailing pattern of characters feeling around in the dark until bumping into each other for convenient conflicts, I was intrigued and entertained but under no illusion that this was a good film. With the central conflict of a man who chooses the dangerous and uncertain life of adventure over marriage and a favorable position in his family’s business, the film is oddly autobiographical in reflecting Merhi’s own trajectory. When he sold off all his assets to make a movie and start a production company, was there a girlfriend at home who made funky art and was also taller than him? Did he have a screw-up brother? Is he a real-life computer programmer, per his character writing a crude program on an Apple IIe to mock his adversaries with a cartoon character defiantly showing his bare ass? Just when you think you’ve got all of the answers, Merhi changes the questions.

In the annals of slimy and odd-looking chopsocky villains, Saalamar (at one point referred to as “the Mongolian Prince”) wouldn’t even be identifiable to most b-movie fans, let alone a favorite. Yet, I have this strange fondness for him that I can’t quite articulate and I feel warrants closer inspection. Maybe it’s the ridiculous ADR that makes him sound like a hardass despite his feeble, grandfatherly frame. Perhaps it’s his authority over a dojo of fearsome monks despite no obvious fighting skills, or his command of a lab full of drug chemists despite no understanding of science. Or his classic character-actor face that suggests equal parts Billy Drago, Kermit the Frog, and the hair of 1970s Peter Frampton. And let’s not forget those headbands! You put anyone other than Yugoslav-Canadian actor Lazar Rockwood (Beyond the 7th Door) in this role and they’re an afterthought. With his weird facial ticks and screen presence, it’s a performance demanding of attention and I daresay, celebration.

If you want a movie that has fast-paced, creative action choreography you should really go watch a Yuen Woo-ping film. But if you’re in the mood for something with sleepy tournament fighting, a guy getting choked unconscious with a toilet seat, and a clumsy fight in the back of a garbage truck, Fearless Tiger has you covered. While there are some great martial artists in the film -- sport karate champ Richard Plowden among them -- the most prominent one, Yeung, doesn’t do any actual fighting and the choreography is otherwise bland and unfulfilling, like artificial butter on white bread or tofu on a rice cracker. In fact, the movie’s best (i.e. most amusing) action scene isn’t really an action scene at all -- it’s the most hilariously random aerobic-martial-arts dance party you’ve ever seen. It’s amazing, I loved it, and this scene alone added a whole point to my final score. Unfortunately, this replaced the whole point I deducted for the garbage truck fight. Sometimes breaking even is the best you can do.

VERDICT

Despite the lack of polish, major co-stars with consistent screentime, or creative fight scenes, I have a strange admiration for Fearless Tiger above all of Jalal Merhi’s other films. The plot is far-fetched with shaky character motivations, the supporting cast is a mix of oddball character actors and total non-actors, and the film continues the proud action b-movie tradition of a protagonist with an unexplained accent that differs sharply from everyone around him. While obviously lifting from blueprints set by better films, Merhi’s debut is a kooky but entertaining mess-mash of ‘splosions, kung fu, and cringe-worthy dialogue.

AVAILABILITY

Grab a DVD or VHS on Amazon or eBay.

3.5 / 7

Karate Cop (1991)

PLOT: John Travis is the last known honest cop stuck in a futuristic, post apocalyptic America while trying to retain some order in whatever is left in his god forsaken town.

Director: Alan Roberts
Writers: Denny Grayson, Ronald L. Marchini and Billy Zide
Cast: Ronald L. Marchini, Carrie Chambers, Michael E. Bristow, D.W. Landingham and David Carradine.

PLOT THICKENER: In a broken-down society where it's every man for himself, there's only one man who can instil order and that man is John Travis AKA Karate Cop (Marchini). And while he is instilling this so-called order, he saves a young woman named Rachel (Chambers) and learns that she is the leader of the 'Freebies'. You may be wondering what the hell are the 'Freebies'? -- and no, it isn't that cheap toy you get in a Happy Meal (that might be better). The 'Freebies' are a group of kids who resemble The Goonies or the lost boys from Peter Pan if you covered them in mud, dirt, and anything else that can be found in a post apocalyptic wasteland (or your backyard). Essentially, they're  freedom fighters. In exchange for hot food and a motorbike, John takes on the neighbourhood gang run by Lincoln (Landingham). His gang of fighters and roughnecks make the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story look like actual badasses. Sure, they may look muddy, ugly and all that is required to be in a gang, but they're just, well...lame.

Is there good fight choreography in this film? It's okay, but I think it's below average. Maybe it's because of the editing, or that they were just trying to make all the fighters look like brawlers.  I felt a little underwhelmed by the quantity of the fighting too, I was actually hoping for a lot more. With "Karate" in the main title, I was hoping for actual Karate-ing. Instead, I got dialogue that didn't need to be there as well as dead pan acting. Okay, okay -- I didn't go into this thinking I was going to get decent acting...but at least TRY! I find these kinds of films a ton more entertaining when the actors make an honest attempt at drama. I will take my hat off to Landingham, though, because while his character was annoying, you can tell he was really trying to get involved into his role despite the fact his costume was probably pissing him off more than anything.

I think the most interesting things in this film were the set pieces. The whole time I was watching this, I was thinking of all the different film sets it reminded me of, and which films I'd possibly seen them in. After a while, I stopped actively paying attention to the plot... oh wait, what plot? But the set pieces were kind of interesting as well as funny, because they reminded me of an old amusement park which closed down crossed with those really bad film sets that look like the same tiny room. So, they use the same set over and over again and move props around to make it look different. You're not fooling anyone, guys.

If you're a big fan of the low-budget action films out there and you've seen this, you would have definitely noticed that the music used throughout the film is used in hundreds of other films out around the same time. Whenever I heard the music, different fight scenes from other films came into my head and again distracted me.

VERDICT
Over the years Karate Cop has produced a cult following, especially since it's a slight rip-off of better post-apocalyptic films like 1990: Bronx Warriors and Escape from New York. But while those two films have charismatic performances, some hilarious dialogue and exceptionally badass scenes, Karate Cop was below average. It doesn't have the 'schlock' vibe that I look for in these kinds of films. It was on the right track in terms of the look and you can see the budget constraints, so I understand that. However, almost everything else fell flat, and overall it was dull experience.

AVAILABILITY
Amazon.

1 / 7
 

Kickboxer 2: The Road Back (1991)

PLOT: David Sloan is a former kickboxing champion who owns a run-down gym but along the way meets some shady characters trying to get him out of retirement...and they will do ANYTHING it takes do so.

Director: Albert Pyun
Writer: David S. Goyer
Cast: Sasha Mitchell, Dennis Chan, Peter Boyle, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Michel Qissi, John Diehl, Vince Murdocco, Heather McComb.




PLOT THICKENER

Here we have David Sloan (Mitchell), the centrepiece of this film, and not to mention Eric and Kurt's younger brother. But as you have probably realised by now, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Alexio won't be making a quick cameo in this sequel. Why, you ask? Well, it's simple--they were murdered. Yep, the Nok Su Cow and the paraplegic former kickboxing champ were gunned down by none other than the deliciously evil Tong Po (Qissi). David also has an up-and-coming fighter named Brian (Murdocco), who is one ass-kicking away from being a douche-bag of a fighter with a greasy slicked back pony-tail. He believes he's ready to turn professional despite David's advice on him being far from it. An argument starts, forcing Brian to turn to the dark side of the force by running into the arms of dodgy fight promoter Mr. Maciah (Boyle).

David is forced out of retirement by the same sleazy fighting promoter to fight their current champ, and what do you know guys? Their paper champion loses to David. Not only that, but David announces after his win to an arena full of people that these promoters are crooked. Humiliated, embarrassed, and downright pissed, they respond the only way they know how: setting fire to his gym, the one place he finds solace in the world...those bastards. Beaten, burnt, and broken, David is stuck in hospital and feeling disheartened, upset, and angry, but it's going to be okay because we can insert the philosophy and comedic timing of Uncle Xian (Chan) from the previous installment. Xian can see David is out on his luck so he decides to retrain him using simple techniques to help him rehabilitate.

Now that we have the positive chi pumping, the film is going to teach you a lesson on 'Deliciously Evil Fighting Plans 101', and what better teacher to have than Sanga, played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa? He knows that Maciah is trying to train Brian up to be a champion, all with the help of aggressive trainers and steroids (you may have flashbacks to a certain training montage from Rocky IV on that one). But Sanga also knows that Brian will be a perfect guinea pig in his plan on winning back the honour of disgraced fighter Tong Po.

Brian is now feeling the roid rage, you can see he is so close to getting that greased up pony-tail and the cockiness (which was previously shown by Eric Sloan) is in full swing so let's see Brian kick ass...oh but wait! Sliiiiiiight change of plan in his first professional fight -- his original opponent has pulled out but he has a replacement. Our new contestant loves kicking down cement pillars with his bare legs, paralysing fighters to give them a reality check or to kill them (whichever's easier at the time) and he has a strong fashion sense when it comes to long braids and red Muay Thai shorts -- please welcome Tong Po.

Now the question is: who will win? Brian, who is pumped full of so many steroids that he actually thinks he can kill Tong Po? Or Tong Po, who has a track record for killing, paralysing and violating anything that comes into his path? That was a dumb question wasn't it? So, Tong Po humiliates Brian and to be honest, I am kinda glad he did -- we now have once less douche-bag in the cinematic universe. And who can resist seeing Tong Po give a good beat down to some arrogant prick? I know I can't!

Do I enjoy the end fight scene? Yes, I do, but I feel that there should have been a bigger pay off. They had an entire arena practically to themselves -- no crowd, no reporters -- so why not go all out? I feel that the ending was rushed, and I can understand that they probably didn't have a bigger budget since the main star from the first film wasn't appearing in this. But fans of the original definitely would have all rented this film in the 90s, without a doubt. I know my mum let my older brother and I rent this...great parenting, right?

VERDICT
Overall, I enjoy this film, as it does pay homage to the first but it definitely has its own look. While the film does seem a tad bit rushed at the best of times, I can't deny that I enjoy it.  Even though this film is somewhat funny at times, you cannot deny that it does have heart, and that is what makes me appreciate it. I really wish Sasha Mitchell could have been in more films, because I do like his acting style -- it's very light, it's not trying to be overly serious, you can see that he knows his strengths and he makes the most of what he has. I also love that they included Dennis Chan in this film, as he brings a lot of depth to the film as well as great comedic timing; his cheeky demeanour really does light up the screen. And what does one say about Michel Qissi's performance as Tong Po? He is still badass, the less talking he does, the better. His menacing look is enough to make you want to run and hide; that is what makes a great villain. It does have decent choreography but I wish they really could have showcased that a bit more -- you can definitely see the director was trying to concentrate more on the story than the violence.

And special mention must go to the opening song 'My Brother's Eyes,' by Eric Barnett. I loved that this is what the film opened with, because it gives you a taste of what is expected to come with the film's core. And not only that, as the song is playing it pans across David Sloan's gym and you see photos of him and his brothers...yep I'm a sucker for that stuff.

AVAILABILITY 
Amazon and Ebay.

5 / 7

Capital Punishment (1991)

PLOT: There’s a new and dangerous drug in town, and a secret group of government agents needs the help of a kickboxer to bring down the trafficking ring. See? The road towards a sound federal drug policy is not paved with large-scale crackdowns or even legalization, but with guys like Gary Daniels.

Director: David Huey
Writer: David Huey
Cast: Gary Daniels, David Carradine, Mel Novak, Tadashi Yamashita, Ian Jacklin, Mark Russo, Linda Lightfoot, Scott Shaw, Ava Fabian

PLOT THICKENER:
While drugs appear pretty regularly in action movies, it’s rare to see the drug experience itself mapped out on the screen. We’ve seen heroes get drugged before or during a big showdown and been treated to first-person blur-vision to share in the character’s perspective. However, it’s uncommon to the action genre to have the experience of the drugged character closely match the experience of watching the movie unfold. In only his third film, David Huey manages to accomplish this with 1991’s Capital Punishment. I guess what I’m really trying to say is that only someone on drugs could have made this movie.

James Thayer (Daniels) is leading a simple life as a fighter working the grueling restaurant-lounge circuit. After tossing his latest opponent through a table of two-for-one appetizers, he gets jumped in the locker room area by a pair of stooges and tazed into blackness. He awakens in an office run by a secretive branch of the DEA investigating the mastermind behind a new and popular street drug called “kick,” which causes heightened euphoria and temporary immunity to pain. The only ill effects are debilitating pain during withdrawal and genetic mutations in the offspring of users. No biggie. While watching an organized but extremely boring slideshow called “Project Kick,” Thayer is shocked to learn that the mastermind is his sensei, Kenji Nakata (Yamashita). The secretive unit, led by the creepy Mason Dover (Novak), wants to use Thayer to bring his old mentor and father-figure to justice, but they may have other motives as well.

Thayer must not only contend with Nakata’s thugs, covert double-crossers, and a kickboxing toolbag played by Ian Jacklin, but he’s also drugged at random throughout the movie with the very drug he’s grown to abhor. DEA agent Nikki Holt (Lightfoot) is disgusted by the corruption within her own ranks and wants to help Thayer, but his experience with the alternate worlds of undercover work and being high as a motherfucker may prevent her from showing him the way. A normally trusting human being, he has confidence in nothing, believes no one, and punches and kicks everyone in his path towards the truth. Can Holt and a doctor versed in Eastern medicine help Thayer to erase the druggy fog preventing him from dispensing justice? Or will everyone be content to just sit around eating Cool Ranch Doritos and laughing uncontrollably?

The combination of "slow and sloppy" can have positive connotations when you're referring to cooking pulled pork or having sex, but when it comes to film fights, it usually spells doom. Capital Punishment contains some of the most hastily put-together fight scenes I've ever seen (and I watched For Hire)! One fight featuring Daniels and Jacklin appears to have been secretly recorded without the actors' knowledge as they worked on blocking out the moves at half-speed. The stunt teams in Filipino productions tend to be reliably solid, but it looks like Huey required a history of faulty vestibular systems as well; these guys make the Shockmaster look coordinated.

The standout sequence would have to be a bar fight between Daniels and Floridian martial arts champ and veteran of No Retreat No Surrender 3, Mark Russo. His beard is just as epic but his part here is even smaller than his small henchman part in NRNS3. The two trade strikes and a long exchange of wrist-lock takedowns in a nod toward the future of film fights by incorporating grappling and MMA tactics. It ends rather memorably with a death-by-pool-cue, but the fight is still marred by crummy shooting angles and a lack of consistent sound effects. Still, you have to take what the film gives you and next to the climactic fight scene between Daniels and American Ninja's Tadashi Yamashita, this is probably the best of the offerings.

David Carradine appears as a behind-the-scenes order-barker and all of his scenes are filmed in a dimly lit office or a big-rig truck interior. He was almost completely wasted here and his character felt tacked-on to what was already a total mess of a plot. Along with Mel Novak, he’s the most actorly of this bunch but he’s rarely afforded the chance to guide this group of mostly inexperienced performers to more watchable dramatic scenes. You don’t necessarily need Carradine to fight either, but he and Daniels share no screen time whatsoever so I’d have to regard this as a wasted opportunity on all fronts.

Capital Punishment is a strange film because its anachronistic narrative both fails and works at the same time. In one sense, it's no different than the hundreds of films like it which ignored any semblance of logic and flauted the rules of escalating action and tension. In a vacuum, by these traditional measures, it falls short. But given the druggy experience of the film's protagonist, the disjointed and often surreal tones actually work pretty well to throw the viewer off-kilter as they try to navigate the film's events. Was this the intended effect by the filmmaker? Probably not, but since I regularly take tremendous satisfaction when receiving credit for unintentionally positive results, I imagine director David Huey would too.

VERDICT:
The story is convoluted and confusing, the characters who aren't assholes are uninteresting, and the fight scenes are mostly lackadasical and poorly shot. Yet, despite all of the elements that snowball to make Capital Punishment a forgettable film, there's something about it I still enjoyed. Part of it was Yamashita as a somewhat hilarious villain, but it's also an early Gary Daniels joint where you can see him honing his screen presence and learning how to carry a film in the face of so many other problems, technical and otherwise. There's something admirable about that and you can't really quantify it, but it's present here. However, I can't honestly recommend this to anyone but Daniels completists or action trash enthusiasts who've exhausted all other options.

AVAILABILITY:
AmaBayFlix.

3 / 7

Street Soldiers (1991)

PLOT: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is written mostly in iambic pentameter and includes puns, sermons, and sonnets. The writing in Street Soldiers includes the lines “I know about spitting snakes!” and “WHERE’S MY BITCH?!”

Director: Lee Harry
Writers: Jun Chong, Spencer Grendahl, Lee Harry
Cast: Jun Chong, Hwang Jang Lee, Joon Kim, Jeffrey Rector, David Homb, Johnathan Gorman, Katherine Armstrong, Jude Gerard Prest



PLOT THICKENER:
Just when you thought it was safe to stop combining a tired Shakespearean narrative with poor writing and unimaginative martial arts, along comes the 1991 film Street Soldiers. This is our first review of a film from Jun Chong, who penned the screenplay in addition to his acting duties. It’s also the second appearance on the site for Korean superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. We'll never know why he chose this movie as his real splash in the American market, but he shouldn’t feel too badly. Everyone is prone to taking bad career advice.

The unnamed American city in this story is but a canvas for the violent artistic expression of two competing gangs. The Tigers are a group of popular high school kids with good hair, steady jobs, girlfriends, and matching jackets. They play stickball and hang out at swap meets. While they don’t necessarily go looking for trouble, it seems to find them, most often in the form of the JPs. Unlike the Tigers, this crew consists of haggard misfits and cast-offs of various ages. Recently, a truce has held the tension between them to nothing more than a simmer. When the JPs’ de facto leader, Spider (Prest) stabs one of the Tigers to death during a skirmish, it doesn’t turn up the heat on the rivalry so much as it knocks the fucking pot off the stove.

When the group’s original leader, Priest (Rector), rejoins the fold after serving a prison sentence, he immediately reasserts his authority. Enraged by the broken truce, he dominates Spider during a knife-fight in front of the rest of the gang and forces him to beg for his life (“You’re gonna bleed like any other chicken!”). Jeffrey Rector is nothing short of a revelation in this role and he knows exactly what kind of movie this is. To call his performance hammy is inadequate; Rector decides to deliver all of his lines in a raspy whisper that falls somewhere between Demi Moore and an early Goldust promo.

Though his violent and unreasonable actions indicate otherwise, Priest is more than just a crazed convict. He has a thoughtful and sensitive side too. When a random prisoner named Tak (Lee) helped him during a jail fight and somehow lost his tongue, Priest invited him into the gang on their first day out of the joint and gave him the gift of a toy cobra that spits water. He also longs for his ex-girlfriend, Julie (Armstrong), the teenage love with whom he got a matching star tattoo on his hand. I mean, he doesn’t long for her so much that he’s unwilling to arrange and participate in the brutal gang rape of a hated rival’s girlfriend. But he does wear protection when going first … and last, according to the unfortunate victim.

The Tigers don’t appear to have a main leader, but the closest thing they have is Max, played by Johnathan Gorman. He was there to hold his dying friend in his arms when the truce was broken and understands more than anyone that the JPs must be shouted down in the only language they understand: violence. Max’s closest friend, Chuck (Kim) is slow to come around to this realization, but a brawl at a school dance expedites this change of heart. During the tussle, an associate of the Tigers named Troy (Homb) assists Chuck during the melee. Noting his unrefined but effective fighting skills, Chuck brings Troy to a martial arts dojo run by his uncle Han, played by Jun Chong.

As if the burning hatred between the gangs didn’t have quite enough kindling, Troy and Julie have the hots for each other. Priest flies off the handle and the violence escalates to cause additional deaths, drawing the attention of the police. Following the precedents set by equally violent gangs like the Bloods and Crips, Max refuses to involve the authorities. He instead wants to involve Master Han to teach the Tigers how to fight. Initially reluctant, Han eventually relents and the guys learn his special brand of asskicking, which consists mostly of montages where they break boards and get tossed to the floor.

Jun Chong has put together some decent fight scenes when paired with the right talent, as in previous efforts L.A. Streetfighters and Silent Assassins. On paper, there were no reasons why he and Hwang Jang Lee -- both taekwondo experts -- could not have had a terrific fight. As happens so often though, the direction and editing fail to live up to the skills of the performers. The shooting angles and choppy editing are bad enough, but Lee Harry also opts to interrupt the fight with shots of Troy looking around in the darkness of a warehouse and shots of Priest and Troy gazing at each other during a climactic stare-down.

The acting for the most part is quite poor, but Rector’s overacting and some competence from Joon Kim and Johnathan Gorman manage to carry the story to watchable heights. Not only does he bear more than a passing resemblance to a young Paul Rudd, but Gorman might also be the embodiment of what would have happened had Paul Rudd’s career gone horribly wrong.

If viewed with a critical eye -- please, don’t strain yourself -- this film represents Jun Chong coming full-circle in his acting career. In Street Soldiers, he’s a mentor to a group of young punks with misplaced aggression; in 1985’s L.A. Streetfighters, he was one of those young punks. In the latter, he was virtually the only “kid” in his high school capable of growing a moustache, which invited disbelief about the appropriateness of the actor’s age relative to his character. By the time Street Soldiers came around, Jun Chong was the perfect age to play a socially awkward uncle who teaches kids how to maim and kill people.

VERDICT:
There are many reasons to avoid Street Soldiers. The direction is inept, the acting is subpar, and the fight scenes have little creativity and even less focus. However, it’s the only film to combine Hwang Jang Lee’s only appearance in an American-made film with Hwang Jang Lee’s only appearance prancing around in designer clothes with a fake cobra hanging around his neck. If there’s such a thing as Jun Chong completists, it’s worth seeking out to see his only film of the 1990s and the only one he wrote. Thrown in for no additional cost, you get an epically hammy performance from Jeffrey Rector as Priest, who instantly makes a case for a spot in the Mesmerizing Martial Arts B-Movie Villains Hall of Fame (not a real place … yet). Be forewarned though: this is the weakest of Jun Chong’s output and not a good martial arts film by any stretch.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS or YouTube.

4.5 / 7

For Hire / Lethal Ninja (1991)

PLOT: A desperate mayor hires an American ninja to clean up the streets of AnyChinatown, USA. The job becomes more complicated when the ninja realizes who’s behind the mayhem. Unfortunately, it’s not David Lo Pan.

Director: Stefan Rudnicki
Writer: Seriously?
Cast: David Heavener, Kamar de los Reyes, Chris Ramsey, Bambi Swayze, James Hurd, Chance Michael Corbitt





PLOT THICKENER:
The first act is absolutely critical to films. It’s an opportunity for the director to set the plot and tell the audience who characters are and why they’re important. More specifically, for the martial-arts film, it’s a limited window in which to grab your audience’s attention through physical spectacle and define the film’s stylistic approach to action. Failure to do these things effectively within the first 25 to 30 minutes is a huge misstep from which a film rarely recovers. Despite its weird charm, the 1991 David Heavener film For Hire is a 90-minute roundhouse misstep to the balls.

Our film opens with a group of extras shuffling awkwardly to live golden-era rap music in a dance club. A dangerous gang of three people make their entrance and start pointing at various dancers in the crowd. As they start beating up random people for no reason, the featured rappers continue to pop and lock, as if shit like this happens every night. The other members of this same dangerous Chinatown gang run every play in the criminal handbook: they snatch purses, rob apartments, steal cars, deal drugs, pimp out runaways, and kill cops with glee. They also perform complicated group Tai Chi exercises at night-time on the city’s quiet rooftops.

Long story short: the criminal activity in Chinatown is escalating and the city’s police department doesn’t have the resources to do anything about it. The police commissioner informs the mayor with the unpleasant news under the most appropriate of circumstances … at a sweet 16  birthday party for the mayor’s adopted South Asian daughter, Corrine. Also in attendance is J.D. Makay (Heavener), karate instructor to the mayor’s young son Will (Corbitt). For no particular reason, he’s disguised as a waiter.

This is where the confusion begins to take hold. Rudnicki cuts away from the party to the aforementioned Tai Chi gang demonstration, then to footage of the mayor finding a “For Hire” business card in his limo, then to the police commissioner’s office, where the commish tells the mayor he’s pulling all police presence out of Chinatown. Then back to the birthday party, where the mayor’s 10 year-old son is chatting up Makay about helping his dad. While no American martial-arts film is complete without some sort of studio ballad (usually paired with a training montage), For Hire flips the script by having Corrine dedicate a tone-deaf song to her dad during her birthday party with her other adopted sister, Rachel (Swayze) accompanying on piano. Thankfully, Rudnicki breaks up the monotony by cutting away to a sex worker smoking crack and then approaching some police officers. Then back to the awkward ballad. It’s hard to tell whether this mess was the result of the filmmakers making an honest attempt at non-linear storytelling, or the DVD authors putting the scenes in the wrong order. I was so confused. It’s a stunning example of why you shouldn’t smoke weed while making, editing, or watching DTV martial-arts films.

The leader of the gang, the gang violence, and probably the shitty editing is Sonny, played by Kamar De Los Reyes. In the credits he’s billed on a first-name basis only, maybe so he could put this mess behind him in a play for legitimacy. (It almost worked, but it’s tough to hide behind similar credits for East L.A. Warriors, Ghetto Blaster, and the Jeff Speakman film, Street Knight.) His primary rival on the streets of Chinatown is Zeke Wild (Ramsey), another gang affiliate. The trash talk between them eventually turns physical, and by that I mean violent, not sexual. I’m as straight as they come, but the latter probably would have been more interesting. I’ve seen better fight scenes in Karate Champ.

Between a decaying Chinatown, an unhelpful police force, and an impending re-election, the mayor is in a tough spot. After his marketing strategy of leaving “For Hire” business cards everywhere the mayor looks, Makay sneaks past security and arrives at the mayor’s mansion to make his pitch. For an affordable fee of $1 million, he offers a three-pronged plan of attack. For most ninjas, this would include smoke bombs, shurikens, and a trusty katana blade. In Makay’s own words, this means he’s going to “go in,” “spread some havoc,” and “work the snake out of the woodwork.”

Makay’s special brand of havoc includes stealing Zeke Wild’s car, indiscriminately karate chopping people, blowing cocaine away from people trying to snort lines off the sidewalk, and getting beat up by girls. The aggression has the Chinatown gang on edge and it’s only a matter of time before the “snake” is revealed as Sonny. We come to find that he and Makay trained under the same master in their youth, sparring in Zubaz pants, chasing the same girls, and playing basketball. I say this not to spoil the “Big Reveal” but to reiterate that the fight skills of Sonny and Makay are equally boring to watch; their master was clearly a hack.

The climax is a blend of funeral, shoot-out, foot chase, cross-dressing, and an art auction showdown. Psh … typical. This is probably the best stretch of the film but that isn’t saying much: the fight choreography is uninspired overall and it looks like everything was done on the first take. I'll single out the mayor’s head of security, Saint Elmo (Hurd), for praise though; his hilarious expressions and atrocious line delivery are some of the film's highlights. Heavener is also good in his unique way: amazingly fluffy mullet, great outfits, and an attempt at a smooth and laid-back demeanor that screams “substitute gym teacher” more than “action hero star.”

Even with all these points working against the film, the worst offender is still the script itself, which includes some of the most poorly hatched dialog in human history. You know how the songs of Wesley Willis are entertaining and hilarious because they’re mostly just obscenity-laced streams of absurdist consciousness? For Hire is a lot like that. At worst, it’s a hurricane of verbal diarrhea that destroys everything in its path; at best, it’s a bunch of random cliches strung together with no regard for comprehension. Lines like "names don't mean much. What you do is what you are, and what you need is action." Uh ... the fuck? Or how about this winner: "I can do this. I won't say don't worry, but I will say that I won't come back without Will. And I will be back." Brilliant.

However, nothing in the film comes close to touching the film’s rousing eulogy scene, which I’ve transcribed here in its entirety if for no other reason than I’ve run out of terrible things to say about this film. Would you let your pastor spout this guilt-ridden, contradictory, nonsensical shit at a funeral?

"I did not know [her]. How many of you think you did? How many of you think you had nothing to do with sending her to her end? She had no family. What family she did have are all present and accounted for right here. People who loved her, cared for her, gave her shelter and work. Gave her a reason for living. Did anyone really know her? How could anyone know her better than that person who gave her a reason to die? In the midst of life, it is said we are in death, and unless we see in our loved ones the skull beneath the skin, the soul beneath the sheath. The very moment of their deaths, we know nothing about them. We can only be strangers to them in this life. Accept your guilt then. Your complicity in [her] death, the knowledge that your love, your care, led her to this pass or pass on indeed in the full knowledge that not only did you not know [her], that you will never know anyone again in this life."

VERDICT:
For our Canadian neighbors to the north, For Hire was released as Lethal Ninja. I think most would agree that the superior title would have been Lethal Ninja For Hire, even though Heavener isn’t much of a ninja. Then again, this isn’t much of a movie. But if you’re itching for a Z-grade film featuring horrible dialog, David Heavener, Patrick Swayze’s adopted Korean sister, and a bunch of people who never made another movie, For Hire is a soothing cream with anti-itch properties.

AVAILABILITY:
Netflix, Amazon, EBay.

4 / 7

Breathing Fire (1991)

PLOT: Michael Moore is your normal single dad juggling the balls of life with both hands: raising two teenage sons, being an awesome kickboxer, coping with memories of ‘Nam, and organizing bank robberies.

Directors: Lou Kennedy, Brandon Pender, Brandon De-Wilde
Writers: Wayne John, Raymond Mahoney
Cast: Jerry Trimble, Jonathan Ke Quan, Eddie Saavedra, Bolo Yeung, Ed Neil, TJ Storm, Drake Diamond

PLOT THICKENER

If you’re one of the millions of people who’ve pined to see Bolo Yeung dressed in full drag and later fight Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, then 1991’s Breathing Fire is here to make your filthy fantasies come true. The film is not unlike a fine jambalaya or any entree where you have free range to throw as much random shit in as you want. When cooked down and allowed to thicken, Breathing Fire is one of the most slapdash absurd action movies you’ll ever see.

Case in point, the film starts off with a shadowy figure seated at a table full of hundreds of fake plastic foods. Using a knife, he saws off a fake pepperoni from a fake pizza and kisses it.

Right.

Jerry Trimble stars as the villainous pepperoni-kissing Michael Moore. Calm down, conservatives: he’s not lampooning the populist documentary filmmaker. By day, Moore is a dedicated father to his adopted son, Charlie (Ke Quan) and his preferred son, Tony (Saavedra). After dropping the kids off at their latest karate tournament, he transforms into the leader of a gang of bank robbers.

After donning a clever disguise consisting of a moustache, a walking stick, and dark sunglasses, Moore and his friends launch into action. Each of his other four partners plays an crucial function during the operation, perhaps none more important than Thunder (Yeung), who stands in line with the customers while dressed as a mild-mannered 250-lb. Chinese grandma. Despite a firm warning, the teller goes for the alarm but gets punched for his efforts, the customers freak, people get fucked up, and the mayhem gives Thunder an opening to rip off his lady wig and rip out some poor banker’s hair.

Bolo is an absolute fright dressed as a woman, and I don’t know why his character opted for granny attire. The other disguises required nothing more than a moustache or a sports-coat. Thunder either lost a bet or just feels more liberated beating people up in a dress.

On the periphery in this latest burglary is Moore’s Vietnam combat buddy, Peter Stern (Diamond). As the bank’s manager and Michael’s tenuous insider ally, he’s a reluctant participant but offers up the vault’s code when Thunder pays him a visit in the men’s john. For this valuable contribution, Thunder slams Peter’s head in the bathroom door and then dunks his face in a toilet bowl of his own urine. That’s what you get for letting the yellow mellow, hippie.

The gang stashes the loot in a vault at a steel refinery, and we then discover the reason for the fake plastic pizza. Moore uses it to make an imprint of the vault’s keys on the underside of the pizza, destroys the originals, and then distributes each pizza piece to the gang members. Only after things have settled down and and the group reconvenes will everyone get their share. Most will find this plot device not so much clever as it is indicative of fake foods being easy props to come by for a low-budget film production.

That night, Peter returns home to his wife and daughter and they react in horror to his facial welts and urine odor. He’s like, “whatever, just another Wednesday” and retires to his study to pack away his piece of fake pizza. He gives his daughter, Annie, an envelope and tells her to go mail it and gives his wife the pimp-hand when she suggests they call the police. On her way to the mailbox, Annie is distracted outside by wandering swans in bow-ties and party hats and is luckily absent when Moore’s gang pays a visit to the Sterns’ front door. Not surprisingly, they kill Peter and his wife. Did I mention this all happens on his birthday?

 The intended recipient of the aforementioned envelope is David Moore, an alcoholic mechanic who sleeps under newspapers at his workplace and drives around town in a 1988 Ford Molester Van (S Series). When Annie visits him to drop off the letter, he’s puzzled by the piece of plastic pizza and the plot thickens when a few goons posing as cops stop by and ask for Annie. Action ensues and the flood of danger prompts Dave and Annie to drive off to a safe-house: his brother Michael’s pad. (Dun dun dun!)

Michael and David, via clumsy flashback, reminisce over their Vietnam days and we see how Michael came to adopt his Asian son. Apparently, if you killed someone in combat, it was common decency to adopt their orphaned children and bring them back to America. After spending his tour of duty fighting Viet Cong enemies, Michael thought it appropriate to name this Vietnamese boy “Charlie.”

At any rate, the teenage brothers are excited to finally meet their Uncle Dave and express interest in mooching off his fighting wisdom. In time, he begrudgingly teaches them how to punch phonebooks and watermelons and sweat a lot while having their shins hardened by bottles and bricks. Among other quality opponents, they test their new skills against some dwarf bartenders and a fat, clumsy gang member living with his blind mother. (Tony and Charlie can be real assholes).

As all of these unstable elements collide, Michael gets increasingly paranoid and evil, Charlie goes through a brief identity crisis, Dave gets progressively drunker and more suspicious of his brother, and Thunder stands around killing life with his cold stares and pectoral flexing because he’s Bolo Motherfucking Yeung.

The action scenes in Breathing Fire are fairly good. The fights are fast, fluid, and choreographed well. While horrible editing usually sinks these scenes, it somehow enhances them here. Bolo is fantastic, Trimble is his usual kick-happy self, and Ed Neil was a really pleasant surprise. Apart from the great climax, there’s a hokey but enjoyable dance-club brawl, two little people who clearly studied the book on Comedic Midget Wrestling Moves, and no less than ten people flying through glass panels or breakaway tables.

 

The film was helmed by three directors, and while this might be a clever way to disperse the blame for a shoddy production, it’s an efficient way to divide up the day’s work. Kennedy: you take the scenes with the robotic line delivery where the actors fail to emote properly. De-Wilde: you film the scenes where someone is getting thrown through glass. Pender: shoot the oily training scenes and the unnecessary tournament fights in the middle school gymnasium. Of the three, only Pender would continue a career in film production, and with credits like UWF Fury Hour producer and Steele Justice sword fight coordinator, it’s not hard to see why.

VERDICT:
While Breathing Fire is dogged by poor production value, it’s easily the best film to utilize random movie props clearly stolen off a studio lot. The unintentional comedic highs of the movie are among the best ever filmed in the American martial-arts genre; in an ocean of schlock, this is no easy feat. All the requisite trademarks of a fine Gruyere punchfighting film are here: bad editing, weak writing, visible mats, training montages, cardboard boxes, a random dance/exterior painting scene from TJ Storm, awesomely bad line delivery, and convoluted plot points. This film is an absolute rip-roaring treasure of action cinema. Go queue this up now, put the beers on ice, and invite over all your friends.

AVAILABILITY:

Amazon, Ebay, Youtube, Netflix.

6 / 7