Knights (1993)

PLOT: Humanity’s last hope for survival against a horde of blood-sucking cyborgs is an orphaned kickboxer with long, kinky hair and ample quadriceps. Surprisingly, that kickboxer is NOT Gary Daniels!

Director: Albert Pyun
Writer: Albert Pyun
Cast: Kathy Long, Kris Kristofferson, Lance Henriksen, Gary Daniels, Scott Paulsin, Vincent Klyn




PLOT THICKENER:
So, your funding just came through and you get to make your movie. Not only that, but you get to film your movie in the highly cinematic Utah regions of Monument Valley and Moab. However, it’s not enough to do a movie in Utah, you need some stars. Your quality screen presence comes in the form of veterans Lance Henriksen and Kris Kristofferson. The acting chops are nice, but you’re filming an action movie, so you need some quality fighters. Answering the bell are kickboxers Gary Daniels and Kathy Long. All this action and drama are nice, but you need some wacky costumes. You get the wacky costumes, plus some horses. Wait, why are people riding horses? Oh, it’s after the apocalypse. Why did the apocalypse happen? Nevermind that, because the cyborgs are running this shit now, and oh, by the way, the cyborgs need to extract human blood to stay alive, so they’re vampire cyborgs. These are the elements that kept Albert Pyun awake at night during the filming of Knights, released in 1993.

Real-life Aikidio/Wing Chun/kickboxing/Kung Fu San Soo dynamo Kathy Long plays Nea, a woman orphaned during her youth after a group of cyborgs led by the treacherous Job (Henriksen) slaughtered her village and her family, save for a younger brother. As the tribe of cyborgs move across the region’s remaining human settlements, their objective is to obtain as much of the red stuff as possible to achieve immortality.

During one such raid years later, the now-adult Nea is shot with an arrow by human mercenaries and left to the cyborg, Simon (Paulsin), a lackey of Job. However, a hooded rider (Kristofferson) appears on the horizon and immediately takes out a group of bandits before settings his sights on Simon. After disposing of the wise-cracking cyborg and then getting Nea to safety, we learn that this savior, Gabriel, is also a cyborg, albeit programmed with an entirely different objective: destroy the other cyborgs within his one year life-cycle. Following training that will show her the cyborgs’ strengths and vulnerabilities, Nea is going to help him do just that.

Tough and rugged ladies of action are few and far between. Those who immediately come to mind include Sigourney Weaver in the Alien franchise and Linda Hamilton in T2. Knowing her experience and capabilities, I want to put Michelle Yeoh in that group too, but her actual look doesn’t necessarily scream “tough chick.” In Knights, though, Kathy Long looks the part of a nomadic kickboxing warrior who’s less dolled-up than dirtied-up. In fact, I don’t know that you could put anyone else in her spot while preserving the same level of plausibility. Karen Sheperd and Kelly Gallant are possibilities but neither has the same essence. Cynthia Rothrock might be a popular choice, but in addition to being more petite, she lacks that visually tough look. So while Rothrock certainly can fuck you up, Long can and will fuck you up.

When the action sequences in Knights get rolling, the sparks literally fly. Pyun adds plenty of smoke and sparks to the various sword-fights and cyborg kills and it’s a welcome touch without it being overstylized to the point of being illogical. While no one fight scene sticks out due to the repetitious but passable choreography, there are plenty of impressive stunt falls and jumps strewn throughout to visually exaggerate the impact of blows received by the combatants. Gary Daniels, as cyborg henchman David, breaks up some of the monotony with excellent kicking displays during his limited but effective screen time.

Beyond the unique action sequences, the two other major visual boons are the shooting location and the costumes. Pyun maximizes just about every frame in using the Utah landscape as a stand-in for the wasteland of his cyborg-dominated universe. Lots of wide shots help to establish the size and scope of this barren existence and the deep oranges and reds are a nice change from the yellows and browns of most other post-apocalyptic action films (I’m looking at you, Cirio). While his location scout should have received a generous bonus for his or her efforts, the costume designer also deserves a nod. Most of the humans are decked out in the requisite rags and fabric scraps, but the cyborg army is decked out in flowy blue and red ensembles that seem almost Moorish in origin.

Even though his best film work came during the 1970s with titles like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Convoy, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Kristofferson is fairly solid as Gabriel, the cyborg with a heart of gold. He acts as the guide through this unique Pyun universe for both Nea and the audience as he back-fills a lot of exposition when not training his prodigy on the finer points of killing cyborgs. The tone of his performance is rather interesting. He’s either: a) purposely mechanical because he’s a cyborg; b) stoic, in order to provide a grizzled and world-weary quality that evokes his experience in Westerns; or c) dry and squinty because he was really annoyed to be filming an Albert Pyun movie in the middle of the fucking desert. Even if it’s option C and Kristofferson wasn’t pleased with the production, it couldn’t be any worse than working on the set of A Star is Born with Barbara Streisand.

Henriksen appears to be having a grand old time playing the villainous Job. While my favorite performance remains his excellent and over-the-top turn as Emil Fouchon in John Woo’s Hard Target, this is as quirky and memorable a role as he’s ever had. What few scenes aren’t accented by him drooling as if he’s been overmedicated before an invasive dental procedure, instead find him doing equally odd things like wearing new-wave sunglasses while kissing a parrot. Making a concerted effort to steal every scene in which he’s involved, Henriksen cut loose and went to a lot of fun and weird places with his character. I can’t say I envy Lance though, because the comically oversized cybernetic hook-arm he drags around for the entire film no doubt gave him terrible hip and lower-back pain. Shit looked uncomfortable.

VERDICT:
Despite the occasional pacing and narrative flaws, I rather enjoyed the 90 minutes I spent in this world of drooling, blood-sucking cyborgs parading around the state parks of Utah. Knights is Pyun operating at an 11 on the Pyun scale of campiness: we get a silly plot, zany action sequences, twisted humor, clunky Biblical undertones, and majestic wide-angle shots. It’s a film that knows exactly what it is and just about everyone got the memo on what it wasn’t, so no one overreaches. I’m not the most well-versed of Albert Pyun scholars out there, so I won’t be so presumptive as to say it’s one of his best, but I’d have to think that good or bad, this ranks as one of his most entertaining. Take that as you will.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS only.

4 / 7

 

Heatseeker (1995)

PLOT: A human kickboxing champion is forced to participate in a cyborg fighting tournament when his girlfriend and trainer are kidnapped by the evil corporation organizing the event. That is to say, his girlfriend and trainer are the same person. Why is that weird? Weren't Little Mac and Doc like ... together?

Director: Albert Pyun
Writers: Albert Pyun, Christopher Borkgen
Cast: Keith Cooke, Gary Daniels, Thom Matthews, Tina Cote, Norbert Weisser, Tim Thomerson


PLOT THICKENER:
It’s been nearly a year of Western martial arts b-movie reviews on Fist of B-List, and we’ve somehow overlooked the work of Albert Pyun entirely. I feel like I should have my niche film genre Internet criticism card revoked. Thankfully, no such identification exists so I’ll try to make up for my sins by covering his 1995 movie Heatseeker. This is one of several Pyun-helmed cyborg kickboxer movies set in the future, which should probably make him the undisputed king of “spin-kicks-and-science” films. So is Heatseeker a classic of the sub-genre that I completely made up?

In the year 2019, Chance O’Brien (Cooke) is the most dominant kickboxer in the sport. After vanquishing an opponent named Xao (played by Gary Daniels), and a more recent challenger during a match in Rome, O’Brien is on top of the world. His girlfriend and trainer Jo (Cote) agrees to marry him and their future appears to be nothing but sunshine and roses with some occasional spin kicks and elbows to the face.

However, during a post-match press conference, Jo and Chance are confronted by Mr. Tung, the douchey director of marketing for the Sianon Corporation. Behind the scenes, Sianon has rebuilt Xao as a cybernetically enhanced kickboxing machine and Tung believes that the best way to market the company’s technology to the masses is to hold a fighting tournament. By putting Xao up against other cyborgs from various corporations in a Pepsi Challenge of sorts, Sianon will be positioned to dominate the market for … I don’t know what. Without the participation of the biggest kickboxing draw on the planet, their contest won’t be nearly as successful. Tung does what he can to goad Chance into competing, but the champ thinks that fighting robots is a waste of time... i.e. his girlfriend thinks it’s a waste of time.

So what do the Sianon cretins do? They kidnap the girlfriend to give Chance an incentive. Rather than take the opportunity to play the field, he gives chase to New Manila, where the tournament is being held. New Manila is just like Old Manila, but with relaxed public nudity laws. Seriously, Cooke shows so much bare ass in this stretch of the film, you’d assume it was contractual. He eventually finds clothes, goes to tournament orientation, and makes friends with a fellow fighter played by Thom Matthews. Jo, meanwhile, is under mind control that could probably be put to more nefarious use to assassinate a world leader or rob a bank, but is instead used to train Gary Daniels. Can Chance beat the baddies and break the cybernetic spell on his main squeeze?

The film’s tournament fight scenes are not much different from most below-average American martial arts movies from this era, but there are a couple of components that make them visually interesting. First, look at the size of that fighting ring. It’s a goddamn football field. The dimensions and openness don’t exactly force the action between competitors. It was a notable touch if only for the strange lack of logic, but more important than the fighting space is the actual roster of fighters.

To counteract the sameness of his fighters’ muscular physiques, even tans, and scorched-earth policy toward body waxing, Pyun spruces things up in the wardrobe department. In the year 2019, the American Apparel brand is alive and well as evidenced by the fighters’ multicolored legging ensembles. Reimagining the combatants as Alphabet City hipsters beating each other to cyborgy pulps made the fights slightly more palatable, so I’m glad Pyun included the flourish.

There are three things that I’ve found Pyun often does well as a director: he frames landscapes beautifully, he makes Vincent Klyn look bad-ass, and he builds unique cinematic worlds. In Heatseeker, the first strength is a moot point because the locations and the emphasis on interior shots aren’t conducive to the type of sprawling compositions endemic to films like 1993’s Knights. Vincent Klyn sat this one out so there’s another missed opportunity. The cinematic universe of enhanced human-cyborg hybrids battling it out in a tournament sponsored by villainous corporate overlords is a fun action genre idea and to have a lone human as a serious contender is an added bonus. However, this component of the film is never fully realized.

The nameless and faceless in-match commentary really sinks this film. It's a risky device regardless, but the first misfire is not having a two-man team play the parts of color commentator and play-by-play man; as a result, the commentary lacks variety and any real drama. The second issue is that the commentator spends too much time describing the effect of the fight outcomes on corporate stock prices, the various technologies of the cybernetic enhancements made to the fighters, and the backgrounds and records of each fighter.

All of this information is pretty much superfluous because the fights are thoroughly average and we don’t see any techniques that might be the result of cybernetic skill-sets. Sure, give me fighters getting kicked into the upper deck of the arena. Give me gymnastic dudes flipping and twisting around the mat. Hell, crank the camera and give me an E. Honda-style Hundred Hand Slap. The film relied too heavily upon the commentary as the primary device to put over the superhuman skills of the fighters, and the only visual indications the audience receives that these guys are even cyborgs are some post-match close-ups of metallic make-up effects. How are we supposed to buy into Chance’s underdog status if his competition is so thoroughly human?

The cast of Heatseeker is pretty solid, though not everyone is maximized to the full extent of their talents. Pyun mainstays Tim Thomerson and Norbert Weisser are terrific as the corporate Sianon baddies. Weisser actually gets the majority of screen-time and is provided plenty of scenery upon which to chew. As one of Sianon’s “elders,” Thomerson doesn’t have quite as much in the way of dialogue, but his look is unforgettable: a shock of red hair and what appears to be a single, conspicuous cocaine finger nail on his index finger. Bloodmatch veteran Thom Matthews also deserves special mention; he’s pretty good on both the dramatic and action fronts as the cocky and conflicted fighting CEO Bradford.

The film gets into trouble with its principals, however. Daniels is decent as the main fighting villain but he only fights twice during the actual tournament and neither of the scenes are particularly well-constructed. His training scenes with Jo have a glimmer of tension to them but you never really get the sense that Jo is teaching him anything of substantive value. As Chance O’Brien, Cooke does pretty much everything asked of him and his kick-heavy offense looks great when the editing and shot selection stay out of the way. Despite his charisma, I never quite felt that this was Cooke’s movie though.

For a hero-driven conflict of this length to work, the primary focus needed to be on the central character and his journey. Pyun generates plenty of sympathy for his protagonist with the early plot points, but the film then gets bogged down with Weisser hamming it up in the board room and flaky training sessions with Xao and Jo. I’m not sure if there were more scenes of the hero left on the cutting room floor due to studio interference, but despite his lead status, Cooke isn’t quite afforded the opportunity to carry the film.

VERDICT:
This review probably read like I hated this movie, but I ended up digging Heatseeker a bit more than I’d expected. It’s a lesser Pyun film, but it still has a number of campy and enjoyable Pyun imprints. The main problems -- the staleness of the fights, the lack of narrative focus, and the commentary annoyance factor -- were big roadblocks to a true trash gem and it checks in at just below average. It’s unfortunate that this role remains Keith Cooke’s only leading performance. The guy is a terrific screen fighter and has genuine charisma … when he keeps his clothes on.

AVAILABILITY:
Currently streaming on Netflix Instant in the U.S. VHS hard copies available via Amazon and EBay.

3 / 7