Deadly Bet (1992)

PLOT: A drunken, degenerate, kickboxing gambler must overcome his vices to regain his self-esteem, his money, and the woman he loves. But mostly, his money.

Director: Richard W. Munchkin
Writer: Joseph Merhi, Robert Tiffe
Cast: Jeff Wincott, Steven Vincent Leigh, Charlene Tilton, Michael Delano, Mike Toney, Ian Jacklin, Gerald Okamura, Ron Hall, Gary Daniels

PLOT THICKENER

I’ve only been there once, but I can say from experience that when Las Vegas puts its hooks in you, it can be hard to break free. One minute you’re walking around on the casino floor, slack-jawed and overstimulated, and the next minute you’re $2,000 in the red, wondering where it all went wrong and why you’re wearing mismatched sneakers. (Don’t ask). Director Richard Munchkin and PM Entertainment honcho Joseph Merhi originally met in the City of Lights, so it’s no wonder that Vegas was often featured as a setting in many PM films. In 1992’s Deadly Bet, it’s also the antagonist.

Angelo (Wincott) and Isabella (Tilton) are a young couple on the verge of a move, trading the neon of Las Vegas for the natural wild of Colorado. This particular night finds them exchanging a hearty goodbye with Isabella’s lounge-singer brother, Frank (real-life entertainer Jerry Tiffe) before Angelo announces that he needs to settle a debt of $1,000. The creditor in this situation is Rico (Leigh) a suave fight promoter and fighter who gives Angelo the chance to settle the debt by taking a new bet on two fighters currently in the ring. Angelo’s fighter wins! The couple celebrates over drinks! A steamed Rico finds them later in the evening and challenges Angelo to a fight for even more money. This time Angelo not only loses, but made the foolish mistake of putting Isabella up as collateral. She begrudgingly goes home with Rico, but not before slapping Angelo in the face for his dumb deeds and broken promises.

Broken, alone, and flat-broke, Angelo must decide between two paths. One: cease gambling, get sober, and win back everything that he’s lost. Two: get shit-faced, owe more people even more money that he doesn’t have, and act like a total asshole. As you can probably guess, he spends a lot of time in this story stumbling down path #2 before he reverses course to take the first one. Along the way, he bets on college basketball, drinks whisky, sniffs the clothing Isabella left behind, and is forced into working as muscle for a bookie named Greek (Delano), who oddly decides not to go by "The Greek," perhaps because he's not really Greek. Neither was The Greek though!

This wasn’t Wincott’s first time at the chopsocky rodeo -- see Martial Law II -- but it would mark his first time as the leading actor in your standard 1990s kickboxing tournament feature. It also marked his last time in this sort of movie, which might demonstrate that you can only go so far working in that sub-subgenre. Much to my surprise, this was also the first of only two films he did with PM Entertainment, the other being 1996’s Last Man Standing, which I maintain is one of their top three films ever. This is just further evidence that unlike a lot of chopsocky stars who stay in their lane, Jeff Wincott is full of surprises. He attended the prom in Prom Night. He did a romantic comedy with Adrien Brody. He even beat up Dave Matthews. Not surprisingly, Wincott is the best part about this movie, and I say this as someone who is perversely obsessed with Zubaz pants and poorly lit action scenes.

The action scenes are fine by PM Entertainment standards, which is to say, 'poor' by 1980s Hong Kong standards and 'borderline genius' by 1960s Star Trek episode standards. For me, there were two stand-out fights worth mentioning. The random alley confrontation between Angelo and a group of thugs led by stunt stalwart Art Camacho is punctuated by some humorous dialogue where Angelo details his losses from that day before fighting off his would-be muggers. It made sense in the context of the plot and added a light, self-aware touch to the hero’s circumstances. The other fight of significance is the climactic blow-off between Rico and Angelo. It has drama, some blood, and decent kicks that make both fighters look competent, but the fight is also preceded by one of the most blatantly homoerotic pre-match stare-downs I’ve ever seen. Apropos of nothing, Angelo decides to jump up on the top rope in his corner in a split-legged position while flexing, and Rico’s face lights up like he just got served a plate of filet mignon after two months of forced Tofurky dinners. While the tone is not exactly foreign to a genre where muscular dudes beat the shit out of each other, it was a weird moment.

We’ve seen some wacky tournament fighting before, but the tournament featured in Deadly Bet stretches the laws of time, fashion, and even spelling. Greek tells Angelo it’s a 50-man tournament. OK then. The tournament then unfolds over the course of a single night. I hate to drop math on you guys, but assuming it’s a single elimination tournament, 50 fighters means 49 matches. How the hell are you going to get through 49 matches in one night? The sartorial choices add further confusion to the proceedings. Some of the fighters, Angelo included, don the unfortunate combination of bike shorts with white cross-trainers, giving this tournament the appearance of uncool dads fighting each other to exhaustion. And last, one of the people keeping tabs on the brackets spells Rico’s name wrong on the whiteboard. Whoever organized this tournament (hint: it was Rico) performed no quality control whatsoever, and really should have hired an event planner.

Regardless of the significance of their roles, there are plenty of faces in the film that will be familiar to fans of action b-movies. Gary Daniels shows up for a brief, non-speaking role as the fighter who wins Angelo a bunch of Rico’s money to set the plot in motion. Ron Hall took a small part as a tournament fighter. Ian Jacklin shows up as a shaggy bartender who tangles with Angelo over unpaid debts to Greek. And even Gerald Okamura (listed in the credits as his Irish doppelgänger, Gerald O'Hamura) gets in the ring for an underground fight -- and wins!  Didn’t catch James Lew or Al Leong anywhere, but there *was* a scene where Isabella visits a hair salon. Maybe they were getting their hair did.

VERDICT

Deadly Bet is one of several love letters from PM Entertainment to the city of Las Vegas. But instead of affectionate words, the letter is actually just a 47-page storyboard of Jeff Wincott repeatedly kicking motherfuckers in the face. The boozy, sin-soaked Vegas kickboxing film seems to be an actual THING (recall To Be the Best) and I’m going to chase down more movies like this one.

AVAILABILITY 

Amazon, eBay.

4 / 7

Fight for Honor (1992)

PLOT: In order to improve her skills, a struggling martial arts student must dedicate her time to either her vapid booze-hound friends and her discouraging booze-hound mother, or a pizza delivery guy she hit with her car and may or may not contact her insurance company.

Director: Sam Um

Writer: Sam Um

Cast: Stacy Lundgren, C.K. Kim, M.G. Lee, Mark Kay, Stephen Wong, Bill Johnson

PLOT THICKENER

The act of tape scavenging -- or whatever VHS approximation on cratedigging the kids are calling it -- has changed dramatically over the past two decades. In the winter of 1994, I went into my local Blockbuster Video with a paper gift certificate and took a chance on a mysterious, early Jean Claude Van Damme movie. To say nothing of its poor acting and plentiful continuity errors, it ignited a life-long obsession with low-budget American chopsocky films and the joys of viewing those films with friends. 

In the spring of 2015, I traveled along a dirt road in the northeastern U.S. to comb over shelves in a massive shed full of used VHS tapes in the hopes of finding some gems. I purchased, in cash, a similarly unfamiliar movie in the hopes that it would invigorate a life-long obsession with low-budget American chopsocky films. That film was 1992’s Fight for Honor (aka Kickboxer Kid), which instantly earned the distinction of the most poorly documented film I’ve ever watched and reviewed.

Perhaps one of the reasons for its relative obscurity is its Texas origins. We’ve seen plenty of movies produced and based in California, New York, Seattle, the Philippines, and even Torontoyork City! These places were hotbeds for chopsocky activity. Austin, Texas, however, is known more for its lively music scene and DoubleDave’s Pizza than its martial arts film history. Add in a cast and crew of first-timers and an equally obscure distributor (York Entertainment) and you might see why it's been relegated to the VHS tape barns of history. 

Crystal (Lundgren) is a struggling taekwondo student. Her dedication is mocked by her friends and maligned by her mother. Her dojang master (Johnson) emphasizes competition victories over personal growth and self-esteem, which only bruises her ego more. Worse yet, a meathead classmate (Kay) sexually harasses her on the regular. 

Min-Suk (Kim) is a struggling pizza delivery boy who’s learning taekwondo from his grandfather at home. His chosen vehicle, a bicycle, is mocked by his boss at DoubleDave’s. His grandfather emphasizes personal growth and self-esteem over competition victories. Worse yet, Crystal hits him with her sports car while he’s out on a route, destroying his pizzas, his bike, and any chance he had at keeping his job.  When Crystal meets Min-Suk’s grandfather after driving him home, she learns of his taekwondo mastery and their ongoing training. Citing her disappointment in her dojang’s methods, she tries to convince the wise elder to take her on as a student. Initially resistant, he eventually relents, which pisses off Min-Suk, because SHE HIT HIM WITH HER FUCKING SPORTS CAR. 

Odd, yet fitting that a clumsy traffic accident would bring these two people together. Despite their grievances, insecurities, and weaknesses, they’re forced to train side by side. And by train, I mean that they run on land, try to catch fish bare-handed in a river, and also run in the river. And break the occasional board. But mostly running. What will the rewards be for these efforts? Renewed sense of self? Free, awesome Korean food? Perhaps even victories in the upcoming state-wide taekwondo competition? Logic would dictate that they’d probably just get better at running, but it could be all of these things.

I didn’t quite know what to make of this one. Outside of the grandfather’s scrum with some local drunk jerks, and Min-Suk’s wet and wild rumble with the taekwon-douchebags from Crystal’s class, there’s not much action here. The focus, similar to College Kickboxers, is instead on various training methods. When executed well, these sorts of scenes can provide a visual call-back when the protagonist faces difficulty in physical conflicts later on. Need to block an aggressive fighter? Lean on the ol’ paint-the-fence training. Mystery powder got your vision blurry? Rely on lessons in blindfolded defensive tactics and table-setting. Unfortunately, none of the training methods here are logically recalled during the tournament fight scenes during the film’s climax. Had there been a scene where the arena was under attack from a giant blob, and the pair quickly ran to safety, it would have tied the bow perfectly.

While this was the only film to director Sam Um’s credit, it is undoubtedly his best. That might seem like a backhanded compliment, but I would never backhand him because he’s a taekwondo master. He trained Willie Nelson to his first-degree black belt. How many country music legends have you trained? How many films have you directed? If your answer to both of those questions is “zero,” then Sam Um is beating you at life. While there’s not a lot of technique in this film, you have to appreciate that Um was in charge of getting a lot of non-actors to act. Of particular note is M.G. Lee, who struggled mightily with the lion’s share of dialogue despite English being his second language. Underscoring the onscreen drama is a dark, evocative score akin to Tangerine Dream’s work on 1978’s Sorcerer. Just kidding -- there’s lots of generic drum tracks with synthesized shakuhachi noises. It sounds like Keyboard Cat doing a cover of Paul Hertzog’s Kickboxer soundtrack.

Last but not least, we need to talk about Crystal’s mom, played by Shannon Sedwick. She stands out as the worst cinematic mom since Kirsten’s Mother from 1989’s Elves (a woman who drowned her daughter’s cat in a toilet). She hands over her credit card to Crystal’s friends, constantly rags on her daughter for pursuing martial arts, and has a weird obsession with her daughter’s friend, Dirk, an insufferable weenie of epic proportions. Where’s the father? Why is she day-drinking in a jacuzzi? Her childrearing is so terrible that I have no doubt that the offspring of Crystal’s mother and Jason Stillwell’s father from No Retreat, No Surrender would have been one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Bad chopsocky parenting up in this movie, y’all.

VERDICT

This is not the sort of movie for which viewers are going to pull the “lost gem” card on the scale of a Miami Connection or Undefeatable. Instead, it’s a charming if amateurish critique of the 1980s and 90s suburban McDojo craze and meathead misogyny. I’ll fault it some for leaning on the grandfather's Magical Asian stereotype, but fans of meager production values and non-actor acting may find it enjoyable.

AVAILABILITY

You might be able to snag a used VHS copy off EBay, but this is a tough one to acquire. Happy hunting.

3 / 7

American Streetfighter (1992)

PLOT: A successful businessman leaves the lap of luxury to save his estranged younger brother from an underground kickboxing ring. Unfortunately, the airline screwed up and he’s really pissed about having to fly coach along the way.

Director: Steve Austin
Writer: David Huey
Cast: Gary Daniels, Ian Jacklin, Gerald Okamura, Roger Yuan, Tracy Dali, Kent Ducanon, Andrew Cooper




PLOT THICKENER
“Youth is wasted on the young,” said George Bernard Shaw, a man I once believed to be a curmudgeonly dickhead. It wasn’t until I turned into one myself that I discovered he was totally right! Young people have boundless energy and opportunities but spend most of their days finding ways to fuck it up. The bubble of youth is the best time to make those mistakes, though. American Streetfighter, a 1992 Silver Screen movie starring Gary Daniels, explores this idea of youthful indiscretion and the relationships that suffer as a result. It also answers the age-old question: is a funeral parlor a good setting for a samurai sword fight?

As evidenced by his tassled leather jacket, acid wash jeans, and poor decision making, Jake Tanner (Daniels) is a young punk mixed up with the wrong crowd. After he and his fellow gang member, Ito (Yuan), rig up a jukebox with explosives to damage a local business, they realize innocent people were inside! They run back to save them, but the hapless potential victims are packing heat and open fire. Jake escapes with his life, but Ito is shot dead. To be more accurate, Jake drives off after Ito is shot, but still alive. Because Jake drove off, Ito is stuck waiting around to be shot again.

Years later, Jake has moved on to bigger and better things in his new life in Hong Kong. Leather jackets and unkempt locks have given way to power suits and a greasy ponytail. His shitty getaway car has evolved into a shitty office with a drop ceiling and poor lighting. Dead business deals have replaced dead friends. During a late night at the office, he receives a troubling phone call from his mother: Randy is in trouble. Wait, who’s Randy? Oh right, the younger brother in the picture Jake is now holding.

Randy (Jacklin), is a rising star in the world of underground fighting. When Jake arrives after his latest fight to discourage this behavior, Randy rejects the advice. After all, Jake ran away following his own transgressions and left his sibling alone to fend for himself during his formative years.

A shrewd businessman if there ever was one, Jake approaches the fight circuit boss, Ogawa (Okamura) and asks to buy out Randy’s contract. When Ogawa rebuffs, Jake instead offers to take Randy’s place as a fighter-by-proxy. For reasons known only to screenwriter David Huey, Ogawa totally goes for it. Jake gets his ass handed to him in his first competitive fight -- even suffering the indignity of being repeatedly whipped with a car antenna -- and retreats to the home of his master’s daughter, Rose (Dali), to lick his wounds. While there, he goes through a rigorous rehabilitation program under the supervision of Rose’s adolescent son, whose martial arts knowledge is informed by his rabid Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom. Once he’s fully healed, Jake is joined by his master, Nick (Ducanon) and they take the fight to Ogawa’s gang.

If you know his work, the involvement of Expert Weapon’s director, Steven Austin doesn’t inspire much confidence. In fact, if the films I’ve reviewed were holiday desserts, King of the Kickboxers is a delicious pecan pie at the high end of the spectrum, whereas Expert Weapon would be a pile of stale-ass pizzelles or plum pudding. (For continued debate around weak-ass holiday desserts, please leave your thoughts in the comments). This film isn’t nearly as rough as the aforementioned Ian Jacklin joint, but it lacks technical polish -- the soundtrack appears to have been lifted from a mix of 80s porn and an SNK fighting game ported to a 16-bit console -- and the pacing is fairly wonky. Fight circuit backdrop: plastic sheeting and gaudy light colors. The action: occasionally competent but weirdly edited and choreographed. The dialogue: just nevermind, OK? The movie definitely gets points for the feathered locks of Gary Daniels but I don’t think we should give Austin credit for that. (Unless he did hair and make-up. I’ll need to consult the production credits again to confirm).

Out of at least three Daniels films, this is the third in which he’s been drugged or otherwise had his mental acuities compromised. While Daniels needs to keep a better eye on his drink, I suppose putting your martial arts hero on drugs is the logical extension of the “drunken master” trope popularized and codified by Hong Kong kung fu cinema of yesteryear. That said, what drugs would make for the best martial arts movie? Weed would turn any serious fight film into a stoner comedy, so that has crossover appeal. Heroin is too prone to overdose. I’d have to think that something like meth or crack cocaine would yield the best product. If the hero in "Return of the Supreme Crackhead Master" seems too invincible, just put all of the bad guys on bath salts and have them eat the master’s face for the inciting incident. This shit practically writes itself.

This film nips around the edges of some solid and trashy action, but it comes in drips and drabs. The underground fight scenes are comical -- Ian Jacklin’s youthful arrogance is characterized by him flexing his muscles with exaggerated grunts after he strikes (“flex fighting”) --  but also slow and awkward. The same can be said of the stunt work. During a climactic scene involving henchmen on dirt bikes, we see one of the most disproportionately cruel and protracted retaliations by a hero in the history of cinema. After a snazzy dirt bike entrance, a henchman is tossed from his bike, pummeled to the ground, covered in gasoline, and then set ablaze via Zippo by the grizzled, eyepatch-wearing Nick. The whole scene transpired over what seemed like hours and would be right at home in a Videodrome telecast. Then there’s that funeral parlor sword fight, which is plodding despite the inspired mise-en-scene. Remember kids: not even a samurai sword can make a short-sleeve shirt and tie combo look cool.



VERDICT
American Streetfighter is a fight film made on the cheap and punctuated by occasional quirks. The choreographed violence is frequent and often over-the-top (see: aforementioned funeral parlor sword fight). There are curious character ticks galore, a totally hamfisted subplot about dead kickboxers, and more socially awkward moments than at a food packaging convention. (I have no proof, but I’ve always assumed this industry is full of weirdos). The movie works as a cinematic curiosity, but is probably for Daniels and Jacklin completists only.

AVAILABILITY
Amazon, EBay, Netflix.

3 / 7

Lethal Ninja (1992)

PLOT: When his microbiologist wife is kidnapped by an evil rich white dude, an art therapist and former “company man” must rely on his ninja training and the help of his kickboxer friend to find her.

Director: Yossi Wein
Writer: Norman Coombes
Cast: Ross Kettle, David Webb, Karyn Hill, Norman Coombes, Kimberleigh Stark, Frank Notaro




PLOT THICKENER
The martial arts b-movie genre has a problem with traditional naming conventions that occasionally borders on full-blown identity crisis. A few years back, we covered a David Heavener film that was titled For Hire in every country except Canada, where it was called Lethal Ninja. As the coup de grace for this year’s Ninjavember, we’re covering the 1993 South African film, Lethal Ninja. However, if you saw this film in South Africa, it was probably called American Ninja 5: The Nostradamus Syndrome. This causes the star of the *actual* American Ninja 5, David Bradley, to cry bitter tears of brand confusion and lost royalties. That’s right. United States copyright law makes shotokan and kempo practitioner and former movie star David Bradley weep openly.

Somewhere in Africa, a group of biochemists is working frantically in a makeshift tent laboratory to determine why a freshwater lake is growing lethally acidic. The scientists are ambushed by a group of ninjas backed by the perpetually grouchy and borderline transluscent industrialist, Kray (Coombes). No one is left alive except a statuesque blond named Dominique (Hill). Will she be held hostage in a darkened cell with no access to food, sunlight, or Internet? Nope, she’s held hostage in a luxury hotel suite with fresh produce, a great view, and dial-up access to Prodigy bulletin boards because it’s 1993. Kray intends to exploit her knowledge of microbiology for nefarious but non-specific purposes.

Unfortunately for Kray and his goons, it’s only a matter of hours before Dominique’s husband comes looking for her. As he leads his students through an outdoor meditative hippie-dippie art class in San Francisco, Joe Ford (Kettle) is roused from the sleepy lesson by a visit from a former “company” associate with some bad news about his wife. When Ford demands to know what the “company” plans to do about it, the colleague reiterates that “company” men only do what the “company” brass tells them to do. And Dominique’s rescue isn’t on their checklist. (If you guessed that the “company” is just movie-speak for “C.I.A.” you’d be wrong. The “company” referenced here does catering and party entertainment).

Abandoned by his former employers, Ford seeks help from the one man upon whom he can rely: kickboxer and moustache enthusiast Pete Brannigan (Webb). The two pack a few bags full of  crossbows, ninja gear, and clean underwear before heading for the unnamed-and-imaginary African country where Ford's lady love is trapped against her will. Can they rescue Dominique before her knowledge is put to evil use? Could Kray’s chemical factory be related to the toxic lake water? And why is hotel proprietor Mr. Osman (Notaro) such a greasy fucking creep?

The first thing that struck me about Lethal Ninja was its flippant approach to ninjas in general. They’re not terribly important to the story and receive no explanation or context. Why are black-clad ninjas running around the orange and brown backdrop of the African grasslands cutting people to pieces in broad daylight? We get katanas, but there are no smoke bombs. No shurikens. No flying. Not even Ford’s ninja wardrobe or tactics get a proper backstory. Yossi Wein basically comes to the table with a confused look on his face and says, “ninjas?” No thank you, Yossi. Just give me the check so I can leave now.

The action is very hit or miss. The fight sound effects are occasionally amusing but the application is uneven. There’s a car chase between two vehicles I wouldn’t be caught dead driving in the 10th grade, and it’s set to PIANO MUSIC. There’s a showdown between Ford and Kray’s head ninja where the former blocks an overhead katana strike with his bare fucking hands, but things are otherwise pretty uninspired. (Aside from the electrified “see-saw” contraption for the requisite “shirtless heroes torture scene” -- that shit was pretty cool). On a very positive note, Brannigan spends at least half of the climax in unabashed “cheat mode” by haphazardly using exploding arrows with his crossbow to solve all of life’s problems. The final damage tally was like 42 buildings and two humans. I would love to see how that guy shovels his driveway during the winter because you know the crossbow is coming out if it’s more than four inches of snow accumulation.

If anything, the legacy for this film will be a classic YouTube-ready scene where the hero is accosted in a poorly lit warehouse by a group of rollerskating ninjas. The roller skates themselves have shiny, retractable blades and the ninjas have choreographed a nice little synchronized skating number to accompany the deadly confrontation. (No waltz music, but it’s still good). This scene alone elevates the film to rarified air; the only other movie that I can recall to feature the ninjas-on-wheels trope was Godfrey Ho’s 1984 cluster-eff Ninja Thunderbolt. Great cinematic minds think alike, or something.

VERDICT
While I enjoyed the dynamic between Kettle and Webb, and Wein’s attempt to merge espionage, ninjas, and industrial wrongdoing in a sub-Saharan setting, this didn’t quite put its hooks in me the way I’d hoped. Wein and company jumped on the ninja bandwagon well after the craze had crested, and didn’t inject enough originality to make it a compelling film. For cinematic exploding arrow enthusiasts only.

AVAILABILITY
Used copies can be had on Amazon for the price of shipping and handling plus one U.S. penny! Also on YouTube.

3 / 7

Final Impact (1992)

PLOT: The light heavyweight kickboxing champion of Ohio seeks out his hero for training before a major tournament held in Las Vegas. Can the young upstart save his drunken master from his demons?

Director: Joseph Merhi

Writer: Stephen Smoke

Cast: Michael Worth, Lorenzo Lamas, Kathleen Kinmont, Jeff Langton, Mimi Lesseos, Art Camacho, Gary Daniels, Ian Jacklin, Frank Rivera

PLOT THICKENER

The majority of opening title sequences in direct-to-video fight films are so bland that even the slightest deviation proves compelling. Had 1992’s Final Impact featured two minutes of arbitrary text touting the professional accomplishments of the film’s kickboxing stars over some generic rock track, I wouldn’t have blinked. I may have fallen asleep. I may have started doing semi-nude poom sae along to the beat of the generic rock track. Who the hell knows. It doesn’t matter, because Joseph Merhi gives us something different. In close shots with careful lighting, we get random hands oiling up random bodies. Hands wrapping hands in tape. Hands lacing up bikinis. Fists punching into palms with powdery impact. Hands applying lipstick. Hands tying shoelaces. I thought all of these hands belonged to the same rugged but sensual kickboxing lady, so I was pretty stoked.

It was all for naught, though, because there is no foxy kickboxer with equal attention to proper hand wrapping and well-blended cosmetics. This is the story of Nick Taylor (Lamas), an alcoholic kickboxing ex-champion and his new student, Danny Davis (Worth), a promising youngster in need of mentorship. Their paths cross in what might be the most amazing bar in the history of cinema. Women in nothing but oil and bikinis wrestle each other on one side, while sweaty brutes kickbox the daylights out of each other in a ring on the other side. (Thus, all the random hands in the opening). In between these two attractions, people dance, drink, and socialize. I didn’t see any skee ball or tabletop shuffleboard, but I’m sure they had them in a side room.

Danny is disappointed to find that his kickboxing hero has turned into a drunkard only three years after his title loss to arch-rival Jake Gerrard (Langton). Still, after proving himself through a short exhibition against Gary Daniels during his immaculate ponytail phase, Danny convinces Nick to take him on as a pupil. He spends time training at Nick’s home, in the patient company of his girlfriend Maggie (Kinmont), and she’s suspicious of her boyfriend’s intentions. Is Nick using Danny to win fight money? For a self-esteem boost? Or to take out his rival, Gerrard, and regain his past glory?

If you’ve been following this site for a while, you’ll notice that this is our first foray into the work of Lorenzo Lamas. For fans of American chopsocky, this might constitute an egregious omission but at this point, I have Lorenzo-phobia deep in the bone. First, I hated the Renegade television series. Hated it. There was also a fairly well-documented incident in which Lamas broke Avedon’s nose during a shoot for the former’s self-defense video and didn’t handle it with much professionalism. (Considering the results, it was for the best that he removed himself from the production). Avedon has great stories, and he’s been a class act in all of my interactions with him. He was one of the best screen fighters of his era, and I like the guy. If you’re a huge fan of Larry Bird, can you also be a fan of Bill Laimbeer? Dr. J? If you’re being real about it, probably not. To be fair, if Lamas could dunk a basketball from the free-throw line, I might feel more conflicted. Few actors other than Michael J. Fox can get that kind of hang-time.

That said, his involvement in the film’s pivotal restaurant scene is cinematic gold. Boozed to the gills, Nick stumbles over and confronts Gerrard (and the ex-wife his rival married, played by Mimi Lesseos) during a contentious altercation that leaves everyone feeling weird. Everything about this 50 seconds of the film is brilliant, from the bolo tie and Gerrard dressed in an outfit straight out of Night at the Roxbury, to Nick’s apparent self-satisfaction after calling his ex-wife a whore during a totally childish exchange. And what is the mythical Neon Graveyard to which Gerrard refers? (For the record, we find out later). Watch below for just a taste.

As the old cliche goes, the enemy is within. To be clear, Jeff Langton does his best to play Jake Gerrard as an obnoxious Jersey-tinged meathead, but he simply doesn’t have enough screentime or good lines to cement himself as a memorable villain. His fighting is vicious at the appropriate times, but Langton also lacks the look and physical stature to provide the audience with any sense of awe about his skills. We know the role of Gerrard is pivotal in Nick’s story arc because of the alcoholic tailspin that results from their fight. Thus, the real villain in this story is Nick’s rampant alcoholism. This character flaw makes him selfish, volatile, and visibly hammered for the vast majority of the film. We’ve seen the alcoholic mentor trope plenty -- in everything from King of the Kickboxers to Breathing Fire -- but Merhi really pushes it front and center as a major story element. Tequila with a chaser of blind vengeance is an especially dangerous mix.

Despite a capable fight choreographer in Eric Lee, I had low expectations about the action scenes in this film considering the long history of humdrum depictions of legitimate kickboxing tournaments. For the most part, there’s nothing here that you haven’t seen in dozens of films just like it. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the use of genuine psychology in the fighting itself. Several of the fighters have distinctive styles -- Gerrard is a roughneck brawler who aims for vital organs, and crowd favorite Jacky Clark is a flashy show-off -- and Danny is positioned as the well-rounded fighter who can effectively counter each of them. During breaks in between rounds, Nick relays his thoughts and then Danny deploys the strategy to successful results. I’m not sure what the correct countermove was for Gerrard’s signature “trap opponent in corner, pick up both of his legs and start headbutting him in the pelvis” attack, but Danny avoids it entirely.

This is the second time in three PM Entertainment films that Michael Worth played the trainee to a mentor on the hard sauce (see, To Be the Best). In that film, he got lost in the shuffle due to a large ensemble cast. Here, both his character and his performance are more interesting and layered. Worth captures Danny’s alternating streaks of cocky and naive convincingly, and he brings a palpable energy to the fight scenes. More than that, his engaged demeanor provides a nice counterbalance to Lamas’s cool and detached line delivery. Which is to say, sort of drunk. 

VERDICT

While not exactly an original work, Final Impact is a tournament fight film with decent in-ring action, a couple of good performances, and a lot of alcohol consumption, all under the bright lights of Vegas. While this was marketed as a Lorenzo Lamas film, it works better as a solid debut vehicle for Worth, playing a character trying to overcome his selfish mentor’s self-destructive bullshit. Recommended for fans of Lamas who would rather watch him drink than fight.

AVAILABILITY
Netflix, Amazon, YouTube.

4 / 7

American Samurai (1992)

PLOT: Years after learning the ways of the samurai as an orphan in Japan, an American journalist travels to Turkey to investigate a murder. To add to the international intrigue, he occasionally wears a Canadian tuxedo and his favorite snack food is Swedish fish.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writer: John Corcoran
Starring: David Bradley, Mark Dacascos, Valarie Trapp, Rex Ryon, Melissa Hellman, John Fujioka, Douvi Cohen



PLOT THICKENER:
Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Michael and Fredo Corleone. Alex and Chad Wagner. No, these aren’t the names of recently married couples in Maine and Maryland. They’re a few examples of cinematic sibling rivalries arranged in ascending order of fight scene quantity. And what better example of this convention than a film where the brothers in conflict share a pittance of screen time and aren’t even biologically related? Nearly 20 years before Warrior made “brother vs. brother” cool again, director Sam Firstenberg made it tepid and really bloody with 1992’s American Samurai.

Following the success of the American Ninja franchise, Firstenberg focused on another combative member of feudal Japanese society to Americanize without shame. He narrowed it down to two choices: the samurai warrior class ("bushi") and belligerent street merchants yelling at passerbys about tea. Fortunately for star David Bradley, Firstenberg went with the first idea. The duo would go on to make three more films together -- Cyborg Cop, Cyborg Cop 2, and Blood Warriors -- and Bradley starred in three American Ninja sequels after Firstenberg handed over the keys to director Cedric Sundstrom. If Firstenberg was Scorcese, one might say that Bradley was his De Niro.

The film begins as most critical masterpieces do: with a violent plane crash in the Japanese countryside. There's only one survivor, and wouldn't you know it, it's the most physically fragile and adorably squishy thing on the plane: a baby named Andrew. The unbreakable boy is raised and trained by a Japanese man (Fujioka) skilled in both the ways of the samurai and speaking impeccable English. Over time, the samurai master's own son, Kenjiro, grows envious of the skill of his adopted step-brother, who eventually achieves the elusive "sixth sense." In the world of the samurai, this means being able to cut air-born apples in half with a sword while blindfolded. It's great at parties too. When his father passes down the family sword to Andrew, Kenjiro loses his shit and reveals his awesome Yakuza tattoo before vowing vengeance and leaving home for good.

Only five years later, older Andrew (Bradley) is working as a successful journalist in Los Angeles. Not so successful that he's able to afford an adequate home security system though, because burglars break into his apartment in the middle of the night, steal his sword, shoot him in the stomach, and leave him for dead. Having the "sixth sense" also includes the ability to extract bullets with your fingers and just sleeping it off, because Andrew is feeling fine the next day. Who knew gunshot wounds to the abdomen were so treatable? If Mr. Orange had trained as a samurai, Reservoir Dogs would have been 20 minutes long.

After his boss assigns him to investigate a murder in Turkey, fast-healing Andrew and a sassy photographer named Janet (Trapp) are on a plane. If you guessed that their relationship goes from frosty and contentious to naked and sexual at some point during the film, give yourself an oversized plush pink gorilla. If you also guessed that Andrew’s investigation pulls him into an underground death match tournament that eventually leads to a confrontation with a key figure from his past, give the oversized plush pink gorilla back. There are no winners in the carnival game that is poorly conceived tournament subplots.

American Samurai is a film marked by odd choices. What could have been an interesting intersection of investigative journalism and martial arts action -- something like The Mean Season by way of  American Ninja -- instead devolves into a tired exercise in cliches and genre conventions. To his credit, Firstenberg tries to color the tournament participants with unique strokes -- one competitor has a blade hidden in his ponytail, another dresses like a goddamn viking -- but it all comes off as gimmicky artifice and only serves as a distraction from what the film’s characters probably should be doing. Andrew could have followed clues and chased leads and fought his way out of run-ins, while Kenjiro, as the villain, might have had more than 20 total minutes of screen time.

Firstenberg uses some trippy dream sequences to periodically illustrate Andrew's anxiety about his step-brother, which, for the sake of convenience, leads to Janet inviting him to sleep with her. You know where it goes from there, but it was interesting to note that the filmmakers used a noticeably doughier and hairy-legged double to pair with Valarie Trapp during the love scene. If this was by her request, we are left to conclude that Bradley hit the catering line a bit too hard while filming in Turkey and loaded up on extra garlic sauce with his manti and lamb kebab.

Despite the meager screen time, Mark Dacascos is enjoyable in his first major film role. His martial arts skills are muted substantially by the fight choreography, but he has the wild-eyed samurai face down cold. It could be described as either Toshiro Mifune by way of Carrie, or Zoolander's Blue Steel on cocaine and Kurosawa movies. It's steely and over-the-top, indicative of an actor still feeling out the dramatic ground beneath him, but it's a memorable element of performance for a sadly underwritten villain. It took a while to finally touch ground on a Dacascos joint, and it should be mentioned that this isn’t the best place to start with his filmography. Seeing as though the non-Gosling Drive is in the top three American martial arts films of all-time, we’ll certainly be returning to his work in the future.

The film's fight scenes are passable, and made slightly more memorable by liberal amounts of blood and gore. We get arm dismemberment, cheek biting, knife throwing, ponytail cutting, and at least one decapitation. There are apparently several versions of the movie floating around, one of which was heavily edited to remove this type of fun, so be mindful of what you're acquiring. Unfortunately, what should have been the best fight scene in the film was one of the worst; the climax is marred by poor choices in camera angles and rough editing. If you see a few cuts from completely different fights during this stretch, your eyes have not deceived you. Either Firstenberg failed to get the proper shot coverage for transitions, or the editor was lazy, drunk, or an unpaid intern. Possibly all three.


VERDICT:
Dropping American orphans into martial arts training in the Far East was all the rage back in the 1980s and early 1990s, and American Samurai is yet another example of what was, by this point, a tired trope. Maybe Firstenberg thought lightning would strike twice after the success of the American Ninja franchise, but Americanizing this particular archetype failed to stir audiences in quite the same way. The rivalry between Bradley and Dacascos is underwritten, the fight scenes aren't shot particularly well, and the tournament set-up felt like a diversion from what could have been a really entertaining film. Still, it offers a nice cinematic touchpoint for fans of Mark Dacascos and David Bradley and will please those who like their fight scenes gory.

AVAILABILITY:
Wide! Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

4 / 7

Rage and Honor (1992)

PLOT: An Australian cop and a public school teacher team up to bring down an amazing mullet with a ruthless criminal mastermind. Yes, his misdeeds are, in fact, secondary to the crime against nature that is his hair.

Director: Terence H. Winkless
Writer: Terence H. Winkless
Cast: Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Brian Thompson, Terri Treas, Stephen Davies, Patrick Malone, Peter Cunningham, Kathy Long, Roger Yuan



PLOT THICKENER:
Despite fast getaways with Corey Haim and treks through jungles with Loren Avedon, none of the team-ups in Cynthia Rothrock’s films are as consistently fulfilling as those with Richard Norton. Armed with a chemistry perhaps born out of the collective experience of cutting their teeth as bad-ass gweilos in 1980s Hong Kong films, they’ve enjoyed at least 10 on-screen collaborations, more than a half-dozen of which have been released Stateside. The 1992 Terence H. Winkless film Rage and Honor is their first proper team-up, having left Keith Cooke and his Native American biker character behind in the universe of the China O’Brien franchise. No doubt, before peeling away in their car, they threw beer bottles all over the ground as a single tear rolled down Cooke’s face.

This is not a film in which the punny title contains nouns which are also the surnames of the main characters, but Rothrock does play a public school teacher, so I’d have to guess that she’s the “Rage” in this equation. As Kris Fairchild, she channels said rage in the most productive manner possible as a martial arts guru who gives regular lectures about “the art of martial science.” One of the guests for her latest demonstration of applied concepts is an Australian cop named Preston Michaels (Norton). As an observational guest of the local police department, he’s under strict orders not to blow his cover by doing any actual police work.

That arrangement lasts all of about five minutes and Michaels finds himself in hot water after seeing some crooked cops deal drugs and trying to bust them for it. The woman in charge, Rita (Treas), shoots one of the bumbling lawmen and plans to pin it on Michaels, but she overlooks one critical rule: you shouldn’t kill cops if there’s a high-school AV-nerd skate punk on the roof filming the entire thing with a Hi-8 camera. OK, fine. Sorry, you fucking nerds -- TAPING.

The nosy videographer just happens to be one of Fairchild’s students, and after taking him to a hospital, Michaels goes to her dojo for help. Before getting his ass kicked by the other crooked cop, the student apparently left the tape in the hands of a homeless friend who lives in an alley … because where else would you leave something that important? For Michaels, finding the tape means exoneration for the murder for which he’s now being sought by the authorities. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones looking for it.

Desperate for assistance, Rita has reported back to her full-time peen and the criminal mastermind behind the drug-running operation, Conrad Drago (Thompson). He believes that killing Michaels -- the first-hand witness -- is more important than finding the tape. That’s arguable, but whatever he might lack in judgement, he makes up for in turtlenecks and long, ratty, glorious mullet hair. Despite the festive vibes given off by his mop, Drago harbors a dark and terrible secret. Yes, I know what it is. No, I will not tell you. It is simply too dark and terrible for this review.

Throughout most of its 90-minute runtime, Rage and Honor feels more like a loosely connected web of weird moments and wacky characters than a cohesive film. There’s definitely a plot here, but some of the motivations and events are so half-baked that it seems obvious the writers were just trying to move our heroes from one fight scene to the next. I don’t necessarily have an issue with that strategy, especially because of the can-do, kitchen-sink energy they use to do it. One scene finds Roger Yuan and Peter “Sugarfoot” Cunningham dressed to the nines and shaking down a sex worker for money, while another finds Kathy Long as one of several Amazonian glam-rock female assassins trying to kill Michaels. You get drugs, splosions, and even character actor Stephen Davies as a stockbroker-turned-junkie leading our heroes through the criminal underworld.

However, if you’re going to skimp on plot and logic for the purpose of ramping up your action quotient, those scenes need to be stellar. Outside of one good scene where Michaels and Fairfield are forced to fight each other by a ruthless gang of Vanity 6 rejects, the fight scenes are pretty straight-forward by DTV action standards. The fighters’ forms on their strikes are good and the selling is reasonable for the most part, but the fights are marked by a stilted feel that prevents any one from really sticking out from the pack. There is one kill that deserves special mention, where a character’s finger trigger is manipulated via pressure points and the end result is a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Pretty cool stuff, but my favorite action sequence in the film wasn’t a fight or a kill for that matter. During the back-end, Peter Cunningham’s character gets a hold of the incriminating tape and runs for the fucking end zone as Michaels gives chase. It wasn’t anything spectacular per se, but there’s something hilarious and sort of dangerous about pursuits where both characters are in ill-suited footware, like cowboy boots and dress shoes. I am a simple man.

In terms of characters, Rage and Honor is a bit unusual in that the teacher displays greater street smarts than the cop, ignoring the fact that Michaels is from Australia and very likely puts beets on his hamburgers. This gave the story a fish-out-of-water element but it was run into the ground by having every other character that Michaels meets make a crack about kangaroos or boomerangs. Just perform a terrible imitation of his funny accent and be done with it.

With Brian Thompson’s portrayal of Drago, we’re treated to one of the more awe-inspiring villain introductions in martial arts b-movies. After holding his palm over a lit candle, he struts across his tiny apartment and smashes to pieces a block of ice roughly the size of an adult sea turtle. All while listening to opera. You could almost hear him thinking aloud, “Yes, all of this is terribly impractical but smashing blocks of ice is very cinematic and oh, by the way, I’m really classy and rich as fuck.” Thompson tows the line between intellectual pontificator and crazy-eyed psycho but his behavior isn’t nearly as unhinged and maniacal as his hair. I’m going out on a limb here: it’s the most ridiculous mullet in cinema history, and by ridiculous, I mean amazing.

VERDICT:
This was a mixed bag. The positive components included the chemistry between Norton and Rothrock, a fun performance by Brian Thompson, and a seemingly endless parade of random b-movie martial artists in small roles. However, the story still manages to drag for stretches and the action is often overedited and shot from poor viewing angles. So what nudges Rage and Honor towards above-average territory for me? Hmm...let me think on it...

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, EBay, Netflix.

4 / 7

Mission of Justice (1992)

PLOT: A down-on-his-luck cop named Kurt Harris infiltrates a secretive organization dedicated to peace, order, and the election of a six-foot tall Amazonian mayoral candidate. What he discovers will possibly be incriminating but definitely be on VHS tape.

Director: Steve Barnett
Writers: George Saunders, John Bryant Hedberg
Cast: Jeff Wincott, Karen Sheperd, Brigitte Nielsen, Matthias Hues, James Lew, Billy Williams, Tony Burton



PLOT THICKENER:
It’s not often that I make personal disclosures in this space, but I’ll start off with one here: I went nearly three decades without watching a Jeff Wincott film. I’ll pause now for the collective gasp and screams of “FRAUD!”

He was never an actor I purposely avoided (*cough* Lorenzo Lamas) but since I was elbow-deep in Lundgren and Van Damme films during my prime direct-to-video years, Wincott never crept onto my cinematic radar. But much like other important milestones like sex, ice skating, and rigging live bait, the longer you go without watching a Jeff Wincott film, the harder it becomes to really start. So I pegged his 1992 film Mission of Justice as my jumping-off point.

Police officer Kurt Harris (Wincott) is a cop with a total respect for the rule of law to match his propensity for using whatever force is necessary to bring criminals down. When an abusive informant kills his girlfriend after being released by the department’s sergeant, Harris wigs out on his dickhead superior and earns a two-month suspension after punching him out. His partner, Lynne Steel (Sheperd) wants to see cooler heads prevail but Harris’s belief in the system is all but destroyed, remarking that as cops, they’re “supposed to stop the bad guys, not process them.”

To blow off some steam, Harris visits his old friend and boxing trainer and champion Cedric Williams (Burton) at his gym. A veteran of all six Rocky films, Tony Burton has carved out a nice career for himself by getting typecast, which is really not all that unusual considering he was an actual boxer. Harris and Cedric pump some iron and work out together, but the latter’s strange mood isn’t lost on Harris. Although he refuses to discuss the issue with his friend, Cedric is piping mad because a local mayoral candidate named Dr. Rachel Larkin (Nielsen) has been using his name and image to promote her campaign without his permission.

Dr. Larkin is not only a statuesque blond capable of ripping apart lobster tails with her bare hands, but also a philanthropist and public safety hardliner. Through her organization, the Mission of Justice, she’s recruited a task force of fighting experts dubbed the Peacemakers to supplement the municipal law enforcement in their crime-fighting. Why would Cedric ever consider aligning himself against such a virtuous cause? His terminated association with the Mission of Justice points the way.

After Harris leaves for the evening, Dr. Larkin and her head goons, Akiro (Lew) and Titus (Hues) pay Cedric an unexpected visit. At first, she tries simple persuasive language to bring Cedric back into the fold at the MoJ. When that doesn’t work, Cedric and her brother, Titus, have an impromptu fight in the ring which the latter wins handily through established Western boxing techniques like elbows, cheapshots, and breaking the opponent’s hands. After Cedric’s continued dogged resistance to Larkin, everyone decides to depart amicably without further conflict. That is to say, Larkin knifes him to death.

Harris is devastated when he discovers the news about his friend. After the chaos at the crime scene dissipates, he breaks into the gym and discovers little left other than a single flower buried in the sand of a slashed heavy bag. He’s not alone, however. Lynne figured he might come snooping around the crime scene, so she comforts her friend and partner by sharing the grisly details of Cedric’s death, driving Harris to sob and probably snot and drool all over himself.

Later at home, he makes a critical connection the way most of us render logical conclusions: while watching an old spaghetti Western on TV, drunk as shit. A Larkin campaign commercial airs and the decorative bud on her lapel suggests a reasonable facsimile of the flower he found at the gym. Instead of sharing his hunch with his fellow officers, he pursues it at the source by enlisting in the Mission of Justice the very next day.

After going through a brutal combative gauntlet to earn his stripes (a pinky ring and a free t-shirt), Harris joins a regular patrol of Peacemakers to keep the streets safe. His search for the truth about the organization continues through election day, where the conflict comes to a glass-shattering, knife-pulling, hand-breaking head.

If the quality of a film’s action were to be described in terms of 8-bit video games instead of superlatives, Mission of Justice would have been Rampage (pretty good) if not for two terrific set pieces that elevate it to Mega Man 3 (really good). The first, in which Wincott’s character is put through a gauntlet against dozens of Peacemakers to prove his worth, manages to be both well-choreographed and visually striking. Harris and the trainees are all equipped with fighting sticks and fight choreographer Jeff Pruitt gives the various techniques room to breathe without sacrificing any of the visceral impact. The mat in the corridor is a bright red, which contrasts nicely with the trail of black-clad fighters in various states of disrepair that Harris leaves in his wake. Even more impressive? According to an interview with Stack of Dimes, Wincott had no prior experience with fighting sticks or the many techniques endemic to eskrima and other weapon-based martial arts like it. He learned 45 minutes before the scene was shot. The other main course might not have the same visual sting as the gauntlet scene, but still manages to deliver the fun. I’ll avoid spoiling too much, but it includes action movie tropes like stunt-falls and wire-work, and creative choices in weaponry, like chainsaws and light tubes.

Director Steve Barnett pulls decent performances out of his actors and weaves the action and mystery elements into a tight, well-paced 84 minutes. When a film is bookended by characters getting smashed through windows, I have a hard time finding faults. I was a little disappointed to learn that screenwriter George Saunders was not the same George Saunders who writes awesome and hilarious short story collections, but it wouldn’t be fair to use that as a mark against the film. One oddity worth mentioning is that in addition to checking the financial records of its applicants, the Mission of Justice also used something called a “bio-feedback” machine on them. I like thinly-veiled jabs at Scientology as much as the next guy, but I thought the cultish elements in the screenplay could have been better explored.

If you’ve ever longed to see Matthias Hues dressed in a white turtleneck under a sportscoat, or wanted to see him scream “NOW I’M CHAMPION OF THE WORLD!” while wearing a massive championship belt under said sportscoat, this movie is the answer to your totally fucking random Matthias Hues fantasies. As he does so often, Hues brings a screen presence befitting of a main villain despite being cast as a supporting character. His blond locks and towering stature make him a natural choice to play the brother of Brigitte Nielsen’s character in this movie ... or any movie really.

VERDICT:
I had no pre-conceived notions about what type of martial artist Jeff Wincott would be, so the biggest element of his skill-set that surprised me was his acting. This guy has legitimate chops. I’m not sure where Mission of Justice ranks in his filmography, but I was really impressed with the overall effort and the roster of talent. Highly recommended for Wincott virgins and loyalists alike.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS or Region 2 DVD.

6 / 7

Tiger Claws (1992)

PLOT: A trail of murder victims with distinct scratch marks left on their faces has New York City on edge. Two cops reluctantly team up to search for the elusive killer.

Director: Kelly Makin
Writer: J. Stephen Maunder
Cast: Jalal Merhi, Cynthia Rothrock, Bolo Yeung, Nick Dibley, Bill Pickells, Robert Nolan, Kedar Brown, Michael Bernardo


 

 

PLOT THICKENER:
Training one’s body to be a killing machine can be a tiresome process, both physically and mentally. One of the better cinematic depictions of this concept is in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, where the fragile Leonard Lawrence goes off the rails after verbal abuse and hazing during military training. Not to be outdone by some lame-o 1970s Vietnam war classic, Canadian filmmaker Kelly Makin -- perhaps best known for the Kids in the Hall feature-length film -- brought the martial arts thriller Tiger Claws into the fold in 1992. This story about the consequences of extreme training and the failure to keep one’s nails clipped raises many important questions, none of which will be answered by this review.

The thankless hours of spending her shifts dressed like a sex worker to catch johns isn’t cutting it for Linda Masterson (Rothrock). She wants serious police work. Fortune smiles upon her as a series of victims pile up with no visible trauma aside from peculiar claw marks left on their faces. Since the stiffs were all martial-artists and they died from internal injuries, Masterson suspects a highly-trained fighter. Despite the solid hunch, her department chief wants to pair her with someone to work on the case, dubbed internally as the “Death Dealer” murders.

While he’s hostile to working with a partner, vice cop Tarek Richards (Merhi) doesn’t have a choice. Right after demanding a $25,000 increase in his undercover budget, he botches a sting operation and get suspended. This, combined with his ponytail, houseboat, and his wife leaving him, apparently makes him some sort of loose cannon. (Most would conclude he’s just a screw-up on a major tailspin). After looking at Masterson’s evidence, Richards believes the killer is using a rare version of Tiger style kung-fu.

Following some field research -- i.e. walking through Chinatown and going to a martial arts tournament -- Richards thinks he has a lead, but he’ll have to go undercover in order to chase it. This basically means that Cynthia Rothrock sits in a van doing surveillance while Jalal Merhi gets to have all the fun training in Tiger style. He’s done this once before, but this variation is so intense it can drive a man mad and it’s the real reason why his wife left him... not his ponytail. During his tenure, he befriends some trainees and meets a harmless interior painter named Chong, played by Bolo Yeung. Hmm, that’s weird. Why does the harmless 260-pound interior painter have a giant shrine with all these stolen martial arts weapons?

I’m not sure to what degree they should be held accountable for the way the fight scenes are shot, but as tandem fight choreographers, Steve Lucescu and Jalal Merhi do little to sway me with how they’re staged. The climactic fight involving the male principals lacks drama and is made watchable only by Bolo’s facial expressions and the fact that they crush more cardboard boxes than a trash compactor. Much of the combat is slow to develop and hurt by a lot of over-the-shoulder, first-person perspective shots. Since this was Makin’s first and only foray into the action genre, one could make the case that his team was favoring “feel” over “look” with this style of shooting, but they fail to achieve either effect.

There is some gold swimming in the garbage though. All of Chong’s kill scenes have decent build and execution, and the victims do a good job of selling Yeung’s strikes. Cynthia Rothrock creatively uses rope and a kayak paddle as weapons, and she has two fights with Yeung toward the back-end of the film which are paced a few beats quicker and incorporate their differences in size and speed. Most of the “Tiger” training portions are visually interesting and well-shot, and Bolo is made to look positively bad-ass in scenes where he displays his bastardized version of the training. One sequence has him dunking his hands in scalding water before splashing it on his face and drinking it, while another finds him making kung-fruit salad by squeezing apples to a pulpy mess.

In the area of performances, there’s not much to love. As Masterson, Rothrock is decent but her role is diminished, and Bolo is menacing as Chong but the character is underdeveloped. The best part of the movie is any scene involving real-life Canadian master Bill Pickells. I briefly participated in Tang Soo Do as a youngster in the early 1990s, and was thus exposed to a handful of martial-arts demos where middle-aged white guys with mullets and wonky facial hair would scream while breaking boards or waving swords. The insanely goofy Bill Pickells Karate Show featured in Tiger Claws brought all of those memories back. Even better is that Pickells plays an egotistical jerk who berates his production staff and complains that the set’s potted plants make him look short. We’ve covered several films with the martial-artist-as-serial-killer plot device and each of the antagonists was memorable for different reasons. As a counterpoint to that, Pickells earns the distinction of being the most memorable victim -- he’s hilarious in short minutes.

Despite attempts to paint his character as such, Merhi isn't especially adept at playing the dark, rough, and brooding type. I appreciate that screenwriter J. Stephen Maunder positioned the Tiger training as emotionally taxing and physically extreme; the case of a practitioner snapping and killing as a result of the grueling training is a believable and compelling dramatic device. The dialogue which describes the training process is another story, though. The total lack of emotive qualities in Merhi’s line delivery really makes him an unideal fit to play a “man on the edge.” A better dramatic actor like John Barrett or Jeff Wincott could probably pull this off more convincingly, but whether he’s striking down “NO SWIMMING” signs at the beach, or wearing his hair down and looking like a haggard version of Balki Bartokomous, Merhi isn’t quite that actor for the way this role is written. 

This was the first film released under Merhi’s Film One Productions banner, and it’s one of their better efforts. We often poke fun at Merhi around these parts but it’s all in good fun. He built a 15-year career on Torontoyork City martial arts movies teeming with big-name talent like Rothrock, Billy Blanks, and Loren Avedon, and for that longevity, he should be commended. That he seems to consistently elevate his own parts over those of his costars has always seemed curious to me, though. Maybe he’s just a really persuasive guy.

VERDICT:
I first caught this film as part of TNT’s action-oriented “Nitro” programming over a decade ago and at the time, I regarded it as nothing more than a barely-average fight film. The recent rewatch has done little to change my opinion but I did find some likable elements that 14 year-old Karl might've overlooked. The film is nicely paced and rarely drags. Bolo is convincing as the story’s monster and while not at the level of Chong Li in Bloodsport, he’s used more effectively here than in bit parts for other American films. I found Rothrock was underutilized but she did have some decent fight scenes and gets to show off her burgeoning fashionista side. Despite the occasional bright spots, the film is crippled by some awful dialogue and acting, and poorly-composed fight scenes. That said, it launched two sequels and is one of the better Jalal Merhi action vehicles.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS copies can be purchased on Amazon or EBay.

4 / 7