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

Fist of Feature: The Year in Search

A burgeoning area in the world of Internet marketing, search engine optimization is not something to which we pay much attention here at Fist of B-List. However, in my annual review of back-end web analytics -- coincidentally, conducted about 15 minutes before writing this feature -- I discovered a number of interesting searches that led users here during the 2012 calendar year. I’m consistently amazed that anyone besides me actually reads this stuff, so I just wanted to highlight some of the more unique starting points. In no particular order, here are the ten most unique searches which brought users to this blog in 2012.

“shower sex”
A 2008 study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that an estimated 234,094 nonfatal bathroom injuries were treated in the U.S., making shower sex a risky proposition. A major disparity in height can make sex in the shower terribly uncomfortable. Hard water can cause painful losses in the body's natural lubrication. Arguments can arise out of the differences between preferences in water pressure and temperature. None of this stopped the filmmakers behind 1992's Talons of the Eagle from featuring a shower sex scene between Jalal Merhi and veteran actress Priscilla Barnes, because it looked pretty good on VHS. This was the most popular search leading users to this blog in the past year.

“don the dragon wilson is a doctor”
Is not! He’s a martial arts actor and former kickboxing champion!

Oh. I stand corrected.

“just want a list of movies made about fucking highschool movies where a janitor teaches the new kid how to defend himslef”
Sometimes you want to find out what’s coming out on the Criterion Collection label in 2013. Other times you want to know the best movies of 2012. Other times you just want a list of movies made about fucking high school movies where a janitor teaches the new kid how to defend himself.

“fridays with tadashi yamashita”
If nothing else, the obscure 1980s late-night sketch comedy show Fridays was famous for a staged melee involving Andy Kaufman and future Seinfeld cast member Michael Richards. But who knew that American Ninja actor Tadashi Yamashita was the host?

“my wife beat me”
Sorry to hear that. Maybe you should stop spending so much time on the Internet and learn how to properly defend yourself.

“b-rated martial arts actor with blond hair and a black belt in martial arts in the 1980's”

 

 Oh, OK. That narrows it down.

“why you shouldn’t smoke weed”
...and Fist of B-List comes up in the search results.

“does the billy blanks movie, back in action, have any rape scenes”
Nope, only murder, drug trafficking, and Canada’s McNamara brothers. Hope that helps!

“bolo yeung get in the soup”
Come on, Bolo! What are you waiting for?

“lost hacky sack”
Maybe you shouldn’t have smoked all that weed.

Any strange turns of phrase that brought users to your blog or website recently? Share them in the comments below.

TC 2000 (1993)

PLOT: The earth is dying a slow and terrible atmospheric death. The elite have retreated underground, leaving the rest of us to choke on the aftermath. The inconvenient truth is that this is the straight-to-video martial arts movie Al Gore wishes he had invented.

Director: T.J. Scott
Writers: J. Stephen Maunder, Richard M. Samuels, T.J. Scott
Cast: Billy Blanks, Bolo Yeung, Bobbie Phillips, Jalal Merhi, Matthias Hues, Kelly Gallant, Harry Mok, Ramsay Smith, Bill Pickells

PLOT THICKENER:
While many will knock the glory days of straight-to-video American martial arts films as inconsistent, campy, or mostly bad, no one can say there was a lack of variety in the genre’s stars. You had the quick and kicky fighters like Jerry Trimble, Cynthia Rothrock, and Loren Avedon, wily workhorses such as Don Wilson, and underutilized talents like Keith Cooke and Kathy Long. Another prevalent subset of talents were oft-glistening strongmen such as Matthias Hues and Billy Blanks. Throw in the original Chinese Hercules, Bolo Yeung, and you’ve got yourself a party with 1993’s TC 2000. Someone definitely spiked the punch with whey protein.

Through narration that recalls equal parts Peter Falk in The Princess Bride and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, we learn the lay of the land from Jason Storm (Blanks). In the not-so distant future, the earth’s atmosphere has rebelled after years of abuse and pollution. The rich have moved underground and safeguarded their resources with high-tech security, while the less fortunate scrap away for survival on the surface world. These poor souls huddle around oil drum fires, refuse to brush their teeth, and battle over bags of drinking water in underground fights held above-ground. It’s best not to figure out the logic there.

Storm and his partner, Zoey Kinsella (Phillips), are security officers called trackers who respond to security breaks in the ruling class’s underworld emporium of food storage and boiler rooms. As of late, sabotages have skyrocketed and the head of operations, the Controller (Smith) is none too pleased with the attacks. Zoey suspects that the tracker patrol schedules are being fed to the aggressors, The Controller’s right-hand man Bigalow (Hues) thinks that Jason is a punk bitch, and Jason thinks that the recipe for mussels and pasta he got from Epicurious is absolutely delish.

Meanwhile, The Controller and his head scientist are working on a secret cyborg prototype called the TC-2000 X, but they need a dead body to get the project rolling. Where the fuck are they going to get one of those with so many healthy, breathing people walking around? As they say, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade and mix it with Robitussin and Jolly Ranchers, then set up a lethal hit on one of your own people.

The cyborg born out of the Controller’s scheme immediately makes contact with the recent saboteurs, the Picasso Gang, led by Niki Picasso (Merhi). A clunky alliance is forged and Picasso has designs on a full-scale overthrow of the underworld. Only after listening to some vinyl, though, because his crew is comprised of high-fashion hipsters dressed to the nines in leather berets and faux furs. Admirably, Jason strikes out on his own to put a stop to the hipster takeover, but discovers that he alone can’t compete with their knowledge of obscure post-punk and ironic facial hair. Teaming with a surface world martial arts master named Sumai (Yeung) is the only chance he has to squash their ambitions.

Technically speaking, this is one of Film One’s slickest productions given the limited budget. The trackers wield laser stunners which exhaust both enemies and 90% of the post-production budget with electrocution effects. During chase scenes, viewers are treated to intense close-ups of Billy Blanks’s face, intercut with Terminator-esque first-person perspective utilizing “tracker view” overlay graphics. The locations are mostly well-scouted and integrated, and the film is thankfully short on generic warehouse scenes. To compensate, it beats you over the head with “people in lab coats frantically pushing buttons in a control room” scenes. Last, it was nice to see some thought and care went into the costume designs for the Picasso gang, even if they look the same as every other post-apocalyptic gang of thugs trotted out in leather, fur, and unnecessary face paint.

What would an early 90s DTV martial arts flick be without some hilarious missteps? There’s visible boom mics and crash mats aplenty, an incredible man-on-fire scene, and heaps of awful dialogue. Just when you thought you’d seen the last of villains consulting a watch before telling the heroes, “it’s time to die,” along comes TC 2000 to get your leather pants all swampy with cliches. Worse yet, Jalal Merhi gets not one, but two scenes where he makes out with the beautiful Bobbie Phillips, because mashing tongue with the female lead is in his contract. Cue the jealous angry fist-shaking now.

We’ve been harsh on the way fight scenes are often handled in Film One productions, but this film gets the viewing angles and editing correct more often than not. First-person and over-the-shoulder perspectives are used sparingly and fights are well-paced without too much reliance on fighters standing around while huffing and furrowing their brows at each other. The choreography is mostly substandard, but there are plenty of funny fight screams, grimaces, and sweaty embraces mid-battle between Yeung, Hues, and Blanks.

VERDICT:
TC 2000 cribs freely from the buddy-cop formula, Demolition Man’s reanimated-corpse-as-troublemaker, and science-fiction film’s general fascination with cyborgs. These elements alone are cause for concern. However, the story keeps its focus on the right elements for the most part. In stepping to the side as a supporting player, Jalal Merhi manages to deliver what is arguably his best (or least wooden) performance. While TC 2000 isn’t fantastic by any objective stretch of the imagination, it’s a pretty serviceable 90 minutes of goofy sci-fi action fun, and an upper-tier entry in the leg-sweeps-and-lasers subgenre.

4.5 / 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

Shootfighter: Fight to the Death (1993)

PLOT: Two young fighters become live bait for an epic showdown in the dangerous world of full-contact martial-arts known as shootfighting. Unlike actual live bait, they can defend themselves and don’t live in dirt. Like live bait, they are covered in mucus and glisten in the sun.

Director: Patrick Allen
Writers: Larry Felix Jr., Judd Lynn, Peter Shaner
Cast: William Zabka, Michael Bernardo, Bolo Yeung, Martin Kove, Maryam D’Abo, Sigal Diamant, James Pax, Hakim Alston, John Barrett, Roger Yuan, Kenn Scott


PLOT THICKENER:
The “tournament” as a major plot device in martial-arts films began in earnest with 1973’s Enter the Dragon, was polished by 1978’s Master of the Flying Guillotine, and popularized by 1986’s Bloodsport. Countless imitators of the latter would follow in the late 1980s and early 1990s, few of which had distinguishing features to set them apart from the pack. The 1992 feature Shootfighter: Fight to the Death, the first and only directorial effort from Patrick Allen, is the result of three screenwriters with three distinct ideas about the film’s premise. The first writer’s concept: “It’s like Bloodsport, but with weapons.” The second said, “It’s like Bloodsport, but with a lot of gratuitous gore.” The third said, “It’s like Bloodsport, but not as good.”

Just as France is known for wine and cheese, Hong Kong is apparently known for underground full-contact fighting tournaments and that’s where our story begins. Shingo, played by the eminently badass Bolo Yeung, has just capped off his latest victory. He and his buddy, Po (Yuan) are stoked because they’re on the verge of meeting in the finals for a respectful contest between two masters.

Before that can happen, Po needs to defeat Lee, played by Martin Kove. I’m sure he’s a nice guy in real life but onscreen, where it counts, Kove is a mean motherfucker. After a sweaty slo-mo beatdown, he rips out Po’s throat. This goes over like a fart in church and everyone stands around bewildered at Lee’s lethal faux pas. He’s all “what gives? Only a fight to the death can determine a true champion!” and the referee (character actor George Cheung) does him like a moderator does a troll and bans him for life.

Years later, Shingo has left the memories of shootfighting behind in Hong Kong to train a student named Ruben (Zabka) for sanctioned fighting competitions in the United States. It was a little strange to see Chong Li and Johnny Lawrence, two of the most prolific martial-arts film villains of the 1980s, leaving their dickish typecasts behind to join forces as good guys. Shingo brings the stoic wisdom and Ruben is a sympathetic and mostly likeable character. He has a loyal girlfriend Cheryl (D’Abo), his own martial-arts school for children, and a teeming pile of debt. After all, children aren’t made of money, they’re made of boogers and ear infections. Those don’t pay the bills, at least not until the dollar collapses.

 

After finishing up at class one day, the brother of Ruben’s girlfriend, Nick (Bernardo), makes a surprise appearance after what Cheryl claims was a long absence. This is given no real explanation and for all we know he could be coming back from a sex change operation, but we know for sure that he’s a restless spirit because he rides a motorcycle and has a ponytail. While not as domesticated as Ruben, Nick shares the same love for martial arts and their bromance resumes without having missed a beat.

Nick is not only the brother of the girl Ruben is porking, he’s also Ruben’s best friend and confidante. Ruben reveals to Nick that the school isn’t doing well and a group of rednecks keep trying to shake him down for debts owed. While he’s not desperate enough to offer massage services on Craigslist, he’s in a serious financial hole. Since the organized competitions in which Nick and Ruben compete only offer medals and rankings as prizes, it will take a golden opportunity for them to turn their kickpunching trade into a more lucrative venture.

Awaiting our heroes just a short ride south is the solution to all of Ruben’s problems: Tijuana! No, they’re not drug muling or trafficking prostitutes (though there’s good money in both). They’re fighting. Lee has left the disgrace of his shootfighting ban behind him in Hong Kong to start a full-contact fighting circuit to compete directly with Tijuana’s full-contact strip clubs and full-contact donkey shows. After sending one of his scouts to a karate competition to entice Nick and Ruben with a promotional VHS tape (à la Total Gym Pro) they agree to participate.

While the underworld of caged fighters, screaming crowds, and dirty money is exciting at first, the glossy veneer is scrubbed away as the rules are changed and the stakes are raised. The resulting turmoil will challenge their friendship, their skills, and their ability to sweat profusely before even fighting. Lee hasn’t brought Ruben and Nick aboard just to fill out a fighting roster, he’s specifically chosen them to lure Shingo back into the ring so he can take his vengeance.

While Shingo is integral to the plot and is undoubtedly the central character tying the Lee and Ruben arcs together, Bolo Yeung's involvement is classic bait-and-switch and he's by no means the star. Despite being the best actor, even Zabka lacks the necessary screen-time to claim that title. Instead, the overstuffed action cast and unfocused screenplay pretty much require that Shootfighter functions as an ensemble work -- sort of like a b-grade, early 90s American martial-arts version of The Expendables.

The cast of familiar faces is substantial. Kenn Scott (Showdown) makes an all-too-brief cameo as a reluctant fighter, Hakim Alston (Bloodmoon) is featured prominently as the reigning Tijuana shootfighting champ, and John Barrett (American Kickboxer 1) plays a downtrodden and desperate fighter named Mongoose. Perhaps best of all, Lightning from Big Trouble in Little China (James Pax) shows up as Lee’s chainsmoking errand boy, Teng. Unfortunately, the filmmakers fail to maximize the returns on this great collection of talent.

Gory death blows aside -- and there are several good ones -- the action in the film is nothing spectacular. Part of it is due to the timid choreography from Pat E. Johnson (the Karate Kid and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, respectively) and Brandon Pender (sword fight choreography on The Ice Pirates … not kidding). Their attempts to incorporate weapons and contrast styles feel arbitrary and look fairly clumsy. As an example, the guy who supposedly does “snake” style simply gyrates a lot and licks a boa constrictor before his match starts. Instead of a genuine snake fist practitioner, he comes across as a creepier, bestial version of Jake Roberts. Goofy caricatures aren’t the biggest issue here, though.

The main culprit is the way Allen shoots the action. Setting the majority of the fights in a cage presents some unique challenges, which Allen literally rams straight through more often than not. So while shots taken from inside or above the cage are clear, others are interrupted by a blurry chain-linked fence in the foreground. Even more distracting: Allen and his editor are incapable of getting through a fight without a minimum of six cutaways to the screaming crowd. This really hindered the flow of action and just about every fight felt heavily padded as a result.

On the good side, Shootfighter does have a few choice moments of cutting loose. One scene finds Bolo Yeung practicing Tai Chi while inexplicably surrounded by a gaggle of geese. Zabka freaks out on a mugger who ruins his burrito meal after pulling a knife. Not to be outdone, Bolo and Bernardo play a quick game of H-O-R-S-E with an eight year-old kid and get thoroughly schooled. And in a breathtaking fit of rage, Martin Kove chops the top off a pineapple with a samurai sword.

VERDICT:
Due to equal parts Billy Zabka nostalgia and Bolo Yeung fandom, Shootfighter has gone through a bit of a renaissance in enthusiasm over the past few years. While it’s not a terrible film, the final product doesn’t fit the hype and this is unfortunately not the definitive Bolo Yeung film. I usually grimace when I see more than one screenwriter listed and my worst fears were realized: just about everyone is underdeveloped and the dialogue is more “atrocious and I don’t want to hear it again” than “atrocious and a lot of fun to mimic repeatedly among friends.” The fights themselves are passable but gimmicky and could have looked better with a steadier hand directing it all. Still, if you like your tournament fighters with grimy gobs of gore, Shootfighter fits the bill.

AVAILABILITY:
Your best bet is a used VHS on Amazon or EBay. Or *cough cough* YouTube *cough cough*.

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