Ninja Demon's Massacre (1988)

PLOT: This is a Godfrey Ho ninja movie from 1988. That is the plot.

Director: Godfrey Ho (as Tommy Cheung)
Writers: Sally Nichols (dialogue), Harold Owen
Cast: Edmund Morris, Ken Ashley, Ted Brooke, James Lear, Stuart Smith






PLOT THICKENER:
Now for something slightly different. We’re getting into the holiday spirit by reviewing a film sent by Kevin from Wtf-Film.com as part of the inaugural Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit Secret Santa. His gift to us was the 1988 Filmark International release, Ninja Demon’s Massacre, allegedly directed by Godfrey Ho under the pseudonym, Tommy Cheung. As it turns out, I love ninjas and bad movies, but especially gifts, so this is right in my wheelhouse. Thanks Kevin!

During adolescence, a friend and I started making movies using an 8mm camcorder. In the editing process, we’d intercut our nonsensical, improvised footage with carefully selected scenes from our favorite films of the day. The crown jewel was a mash-up of us acting “drunk” in my kitchen and then diving for cover as Dolph Lundgren’s character from Red Scorpion proceeded to shoot up a bar. Crude, yes, but entertaining (to my little brother). Unknowingly, we’d stumbled upon the “cut-and-paste” technique, where filmmakers will splice together unrelated material from various sources in an attempt to create a re-contextualized whole. In the world of action films, this method might be best epitomized by the output of Filmark and IFD, production companies that hung their respective hats on low-budget ninja films.

The biggest of these hats were worn by producer Tomas Tang and Godfrey Ho, a director who apprenticed under accomplished action luminaries like Chang Cheh and John Woo, yet found his bread-and-butter in making grainy mix-and-match 1980s ninja films which failed to live up to their awesome titles. Unlike Ho’s more narratively cohesive efforts -- specifically, Undefeatable and Honor and Glory -- his ninja-themed movies from the 1980s are the cinematic equivalent of one of Ralph Wiggum’s DIY costumes: household items haphazardly fastened together for a few cheap laughs.

Ninja Demon’s Massacre is not unlike the majority of these films: whiteboy secret agent adventuring abroad while ninja footage occasionally interrupts some obscure 1970s Southeast Asian action-adventure. Conspicuous by their absence are Ho regulars like Mike Abbott and Richard Harrison, but Stuart Smith fills in admirably as the somewhat central gwailo Interpol agent, Robinson Collins. According to a painfully dubbed and poorly lit scene in the early-going, Collins has been pursuing an Asian gang leader named Willy, who gets his rocks off selling confidential U.S. military information to the Soviets. After handing over his file to the local Thai authorities, Collins and his covert brethren agree that an agent named Max should be on the case going forward. As a Thai, Max (Sorapong Chatri, according to Critical Condition), is better equipped to blend in and infiltrate the gang. Along for the ride are Jack and Julie, two agents going undercover as tutors for Willy’s children in his ex-wife’s home.

It’s at this point in the movie where the poorly dubbed world of covert agents and ninja attacks takes a backseat to the poorly dubbed world of bar brawls and pistol duels in the Thailand countryside. One rainy night, Max marches into a local watering hole overrun by Willy’s thugs and instills fighting spirit in a wimpy clientele more concerned with cheap whiskey than pride. As Jack and Julie gather information on the inside, Max works the periphery and reveals himself to be something of a total dickhead in the process. During a duel, he plays possum, only to shoot his adversary in each appendage, then convinces the crippled thug that he’s lucky to even be alive. Earlier, Max overcharges a thug who breaks a bunch of liquor glasses to the tune of $350. Even when adjusted for inflation and the exchange rate, this is unreasonable. Did I mention he always wears a flannel shirt with a denim jacket? Max is but a moustache away from Williamsburg hipster douche.

Ninja Demon’s Massacre encounters the same issue that any movie in the cut-and-paste mold does: the disparate story threads can never coalesce onscreen in any meaningful way. I can get past the fact that this movie is pretty much free of both demons and massacres, but the other huge misstep is that the ninja-free Thai gang war footage gets the lion’s share of screen time in a film with ninja in the title. While 2009 Karl Brezdin wants to retort “epic fail” to that, near-2012 Brezdin proclaims that kind of reaction is played out (before updating his MySpace profile).

Perhaps that uneven distribution is for the best, though. The ninja action in this movie, save for some smoke bombs, tree-climbing, and self-detonating ninja corpses, is subpar by most standards. The fights include the requisite sword clash effects and the much-loved “zips” of swords slicing through flesh, but the skirmishes are largely bloodless. In a move that probably did more harm than good, we also get a clunky voice-over describing the relationship between Robinson Collins and the golden ninja who keeps saving him from black ninja onslaughts, but there’s no other explanation given for the presence of ninjas in the story, for whom they work, or even why they’re impervious to gunshots. It’s pretty much ninja-as-visual-accessory, and while I recognize I’m a total crank for complaining about ninjas in a fucking Godfrey Ho movie, a little context would have been appreciated.

The visual aspects of the film reinforce the narrative’s mishmash approach. The director of photography, presumably Christopher Doyle, should be commended for sourcing the visual elements of Japanese chanbara films in a barrage of poorly framed shots that leaves the heads of performers cut in half or otherwise decapitated. The outlier is a properly zany fight scene that recalls Maria Ford’s “one against many” brawl from Angel of Destruction where she fought in nothing more than a high waist thong. Standing in for her ample figure is the gangly frame of Stuart Smith, adorned in nothing more than dark aviators and an electric blue speedo during a fight with a group of ninjas on a public beach. Fortunately, there are no flop-outs visited upon the viewer’s eyes during the scene. I invite you to undertake slow-motion analysis to confirm for sure though.

VERDICT:
I’ve not seen too many films of this ilk, so it’s difficult for me to gauge where Ninja Demon’s Massacre fits in the Filmark/IFD landscape. For all my complaints, there were elements I enjoyed. The dialogue is quite hilarious at times -- “your boss will kill you if you bring me back raped,” was the most notable laugher -- but the move away from the “ninja vs. covert agents” narrative thread that kicked off the proceedings left me a bit cold. That said, this is a suitable friends-and-beer type of movie: a breezy 90 minutes of ninja fights, bar brawls, and bad dubbing. In essence, a solid movie for some holiday season viewing.

2.5 / 7

American Ninja (1985)

PLOT: Long before haughty military leaders were up in arms about gays serving openly in the military, they were up in arms about amnesic American ninjas serving openly in the military.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writers: Paul De Mielche, Avi Kleinberger, Gideon Amir, James R. Silke
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Tadashi Yamashita, Judie Aronson, Guich Koock, Don Stewart, Nick Nicholson


PLOT THICKENER:
This space is a little over a year old and I’ve yet to make any Internet enemies, so I’ve resorted to inventing detractors in my head. These medieval dickweeds often pose the question: how can you dedicate your content to Western martial arts b-films and not cover American Ninja? I’ll admit that ignoring it up to this point was a conscious choice. We try to cover movies wallowing in straight-to-video obscurity, not a Cannon Films picture that scored $3.2 million in its opening weekend. Our preference is for real martial artists giving the acting thing a go, not a model-turned-actor who had no real martial arts credits prior to filming. Last, I may have ignored it on a subconscious level out of pure shame. Before watching it for this review, I’d never even seen American Ninja. What’s that high-pitched wheeze? Oh, right: the sound of my tattered Internet credibility disappearing into the ether.

After a string of small parts in films like Bloody Birthday and Bachelor Party, Michael Dudikoff was handed the ball for American Ninja and told to run with it. (Secretly and under the cover of smokebombs, of course; this was a ninja movie). Ninjas had done some Entering and Revenging at the box office, but never American-style, and Dudikoff was the handsome (white) devil of Cannon Films producers’ dreams. He plays Army Private Joe Armstrong, a soft-spoken amnesic military truck driver stationed in the Philippines who has a penchant for effortlessly beating the shit out of people. That’s right. Without American Ninja, there would be no Jason Bourne films. Ignore the fact that The Bourne Identity novel was written in 1980, and that quip is a lot funnier.

During an ambush on his unit that leaves several fellow soldiers dead, Armstrong survives using a mix of unique fighting skills (punching) and improvisation (a screwdriver and tire iron) to fight off a group of ninja attackers. Instead of getting the hero’s treatment for saving the daughter of Col. Hickock (Koock), Armstrong is reprimanded and shunned by the entire base. They all seem to think his aggression caused a lot of unnecessary deaths. Armstrong seems to think that being a giant pussy is no way to act around ninjas.

Tough-as-nails corporal and fighting expert Curtis Jackson (James) wants to make an example out of Armstrong because no one likes a “glory boy” when it comes at the cost of teamwork. Instead, Jackson gets his ass handed to him in front of his peers and underlings. He’s not so much embarrassed or angry as he is curious about where Armstrong picked up such advanced skills, and they become pals. Theirs is the latest in a long line of action movie friendships forged during the act of trying to beat the piss out of each other.

Armstrong is going to need all the help he can get, because he stumbles upon a devious arrangement between the local American military leadership and a black market arms dealer named Ortega (Stewart) that could blow the roof off the establishment. In order to get the guilty parties, he’ll have to go through an army of ninjas led by Ortega’s main hatchet man, Black Star Ninja (Yamashita). No one actually calls him this by name, but he has a cute little black star tattoo on his face. Could have been a birthmark or a mole, I don’t fucking know.

American Ninja is definitely a movie I would have loved as a nine year-old burgeoning martial arts student. Which is not to say you can’t dig this as an adult, because the action moves at a great clip and the ninja-heavy climax cuts loose and properly zany. Brandishing more than two screenwriters is usually a clue that the resulting film will be a fucking mess, but unlike a lot of other projects with a Frankenstein crew of scribes, it manages to keep its head above water for the most part.

In what amounts to his first real leading role, Dudikoff is reasonably OK. He doesn’t bring much charisma, has little emotional conviction in his line delivery, and is a neutral element in some otherwise entertaining fight scenes. I don’t doubt that he honed his craft and improved over the course of the franchise and his career, but he doesn’t do enough on either the action or dramatic fronts to carry the film, nor is he bad enough to be laughably entertaining. The real star of this affair is Steve James -- the man is an absolute bad-ass and unlike the fresh-faced Dudikoff, he looks the part. Fortunately, he supplies enough personality and screen presence for the both of them. And of course, by personality and screen presence, I mean an awesome “helicopter explosion by way of rocket launcher” scene.

One other note: Judie Aronson plays Patricia, Armstrong’s love interest and the Colonel’s daughter. As I did, a lot of people will remember her from Weird Science as Hilly, the eventual love interest of Wyatt Donnelly. That film featured prominently in my youth, and I thought it was important to mention that even as an kid, I thought she was the hottest chick in that entire film, which is a little odd because the whole point of the movie is to give you a giant hard-on for Kelly LeBrock and her cosmic abilities and sexy outfits. Also, Steve James had an uncredited role in Weird Science. How’s that for some full circle shit?

VERDICT:
American Ninja ranks very favorably in the canon of 1980s American action films. No one in their right mind is going to confuse Michael Dudikoff for Sho Kosugi or even Leo Fong in terms of actual martial arts skills, but the filmmakers manage to hide his lack of training through a delicate balance of pace, editing, and absurdity. Might this have been a better action effort with a young Jean Claude Van Damme in the lead role? Perhaps, but the world wasn’t quite ready for American Ninja with a Belgian Accent.

AVAILABILITY:
Wide and large.

6 / 7

Sakura Killers (1987)

PLOT: Two Americans are tasked with recovering a highly sensitive tape stolen by a secretive sect of ninjas. This is very unfortunate for the ninjas. Not because the Americans are a big threat, but because people who carry secrets tend to have higher rates of influenza and hypertension. When will ninjas learn to take better care of themselves?

Directors: Dusty Nelson, Wang Yu (as Richard Ward)
Writers: Dusty Nelson, George Tan, David Marks
Cast: George Nicholas, Mike Kelly, Chuck Connors, Mark Long, Cara Casey, John Ladalski, Manji Otsuki, Jack Long

PLOT THICKENER:
What is a ninja? History (i.e. Wikipedia) says that it was a covert agent in feudal Japan which utilized unorthodox methods of warfare. Real Ultimate Power would have you believe that ninjas are mammals that fight all the time and their purpose is to flip out and kill people. Ninjas in film run the gamut from the seriously awesome (Shinobi No Mono and Ninja in the Dragon’s Den) to the awesomely bizarre (Ninja Wars and Mafia vs. Ninja). Because the 1980s had a hard-on for all things oversaturated, there were a lot of piss-poor ninja films produced worldwide to fill the gaps around the aforementioned extremes. I don’t know how the fuck we’ve gone a year without covering a proper ninja joint and one would think that by this point I’d at have drunkenly stumbled into a review of an American Ninja film. Anyways, 1987’s Sakura Killers teaches us that ninjas should be regarded as one thing and one thing alone: murdering bastards.

The film opens with a group of ninjas utilizing their full bag of covert tricks -- spring boards, garrote wires, etc. -- to break into a high-security facility and steal a beta tape. What’s on the tape isn’t important unless you think THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE is important. Even if you don’t, others do, and some of those others are Americans, and one of those Americans is The Colonel. The Colonel is played by The Rifleman, who happens to be Chuck Connors. As a semi-retired veteran of covert operations, The Colonel is trying to chill out on his ranch and improve his golf chipping technique but a group of ninjas has other plans. Unfortunately for them, their plans did not include knowing who the fuck they were dealing with, because The Colonel reaches into his golf bag and serves up swift death through the business end of a loaded shotgun.

The Colonel's jazzercising companion on the ranch, Karen (Casey), informs her superior of the tape theft that occurred the previous night. He knows just the guys they'll need to get it back. The Colonel calls on his trusted operative Dennis (Nicholas), a swinging bachelor, exercise freak, and owner of a vanity license plate labeled "PUCHOK." (Who the fuck knows). Through some shoe-horned exposition, we learn that The Colonel has set up a front for Dennis to lead a "fitness club" in Taiwan, where he'll win the trust of the locals before making contact with his partner. What this really means is that George Nicholas gets stuck in the worst kind of mustard-yellow duds in the history of awful 1980s athletic apparel.

After Dennis is visited by his old partner and friend, Sonny (Kelly), the two embark on a fact-finding mission that starts in the most logical place possible when you’re pursuing a dangerous enemy cloaked in shadows: a Benihana-style teppanyaki Japanese restaurant. Only after watching what I suspect was a dazzling array of cooking theatrics, they single out the restaurant’s hostess as a shady character who might provide the information they need. She plays coy when asked about a mysterious emblem left behind at the crime scene, and then tips off her boy-toy Ohtani that the Americans have come sniffing around.

Played by Mark Long, Ohtani isn’t just some primped and proper mustachioed lothario. As Dennis and Sonny eventually learn, he’s also the leader of a group of thieving ninjas called the Cold Snow Association, a division of the Sakura Organization. While the Sakura fancy themselves businessmen, they’re not much different from any other corporation that uses ninja treachery to gain a competitive advantage (*cough* Whole Foods). The group’s underhandedness makes them extremely dangerous and our heroes are ill-prepared for their tactics. Sonny and Dennis can both fight, but before they can even think about recovering the tape, they must use the help of their friends to learn the ways of the ninja.

By 1987, after a half-dozen Sho Kosugi movies and the Chuck Norris film The Octagon, there was no one left on the planet who didn’t know what a ninja was. Except for the characters in this movie. Early on, Karen asks the question: “What are ninjas?” to which The Colonel replies: “The best trained killers in the world.” After his first scrape-up with the Cold Snow gang, Dennis laments that “guys in black pajamas jump out and attack us. Who were they?!” After confirming that the guys in said pajamas were ninjas, Sonny answers the question with a question: “Do you know what ninjas do? They kill people.” As a movie-going ninja, it must have been maddening to be pigeonholed by this film as nothing more than a killer. Ninjas do other things besides kill, and they really aren’t much different from you or I. They ride bikes, eat ice cream, they even roller-skate.

To say that the acting is bad and the dubbing is atrocious is akin to saying getting hit in the back of the head with an iron skillet is better than getting hit in the back of the head with a cactus; both are painful in their own special ways. The heroes are likable, if not a little dim, but there are plenty of odd characters to enhance the downtime in between fights. Hong Kong film veteran John Ladalski shows up as hired muscle to grimace, grumble, and show off his butterfly knife skills and an impressive skullet that would make Hulk Hogan flex in envy. Undoubtedly the best actor in the lot, Chuck Connors grounds the story where he can but even the former Rifleman’s scenes run a bit goofy in a film swimming in action cheese. The cream of the crop has to be a brief scene where a Sakura member confronts Ohtani with important news while the latter is getting his hair did at an upscale boutique. This harkens back to the theme of secrecy in ninja films; no one would expect the leader of a ninja gang to be out in public getting his mop tussled at some high-class hair salon. Is it possible that one of the deleted scenes in Revenge of the Ninja had Sho Kosugi getting a bikini wax or having his nails done? I suppose, but the Internet would have sniffed that out by now.

From the opening ninja theft scene to the glorious ninja climax, the action scenes in Sakura Killers are enjoyable and deliciously over the top. All of the performers are capable martial artists and the oft-frenetic pace of the fight scenes is captured nicely by the filmmakers without sacrificing too much to the Altar of the Overedited. The audience also gets a robust cross-section of ninja techniques: smoke-bomb costume transformations, burrowing and tunneling underground, and the requisite flipping repeatedly in the air with laser sound effects. The stunt team sells everything quite well and all of the principals show fluidity in their movements and look really at home with the pace of the fights, the American stars included.

Though this movie was technically a U.S.-Taiwan co-production, you can add Kelly and Nicholas to the list of American martial arts actors whose skills have been maximized by a quicker, Hong Kong style of fight choreography. It’s a bit of shame that neither guy had a long career in these types of films -- Kelly’s last role was a Referee in a Mighty Ducks sequel and Nicholas capped off his career in a 1992 Dennis Farina PM Entertainment joint -- but purely from an action perspective, Sakura Killers is a good piece of work upon which both actors can hang their respective hats.

VERDICT:
Here’s some real talk: you need to throw on a Hazmat suit and sift through a mountain of petrified crizzap to find good 1980s ninja movies. The combination of American studios and distributors trying to cash in on the craze, and the cut-and-paste production methods used by directors like Godfrey Ho and Joseph Lai flooded the marketplace with subpar films featuring the archetype. While it doesn’t quite carry the torch for the ninja film genre, Sakura Killers is several grades above those types of efforts and a recommended watch.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS or all-region PAL DVD.

6 / 7

BONUS!

Karl Brezdin and Matt-suzaka cover Sakura Killers on the Midnite Ride podcast.

No Retreat, No Surrender 3 (1990)

PLOT:
Two brothers are forced to put aside a bitter sibling rivalry when their father is murdered by a lethal terrorist syndicate. While each follows a different path towards an inevitable showdown with the villains, they both manage to fuck up in equally illogical ways.

Director: Lucas Lowe
Screenwriter: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Loren Avedon, Keith Vitali, Rion Hunter, Joseph Campanella, Wanda Acuna, David Michael Sterling


PLOT THICKENER:
When the day comes to finally retire, I plan to walk away from the world of business fully cashed out with no loose ends. I will grow a wily and unkempt beard, live somewhere deep in the woods, and brew my own mindbending moonshine. Retirement is a difficult proposition that, for some, leads to part-time consulting or inspires an outright refusal to quit. For those involved with the dangerous world of covert operations, the concept doesn't appear to exist at all. The field is a dangerous web of death and deceit that never fully relinquishes its grip from those who partake in the madness.

John Alexander (character actor Joseph Campanella) is a classic case of the former workhorse who can't walk away from the game. He keeps former agency cohorts as social buddies and his son, Casey, is deeply entrenched in the "Company" work as a hard-kicking field agent. Portrayed by Keith Vitali, Casey leads a quiet and modest life. A carousel of smoking hot ladies, a shiny performance sportscar, and designer suits at least two sizes too big are a few of the luxuries in which he indulges on a regular basis. Having followed in his father's footsteps, he is regularly lauded by John and his CIA friends as he consistently farts excellence as a model of covert greatness. Very quietly, of course.

Not all of the senior Alexander's clandestine genetics were passed onto his progeny though. His younger son, Will (Avedon), stands firmly against everything his family's employers do. He refers to the lot of them as babykillers and has no qualms about rocking a swanky Soviet-inspired denim jacket at his dad's birthday party with scores of CIA employees in attendance. He ain't no fairy peacenik, though, working as a karate instructor by day and ... probably something in retail at night. Despite his ambiguous academic credentials, he lives the grimy undergraduate lifestyle. His wheels: a used VW Bug. His meals: loaves of bread and cola in the can.

Will is not unlike many younger siblings in feeling overlooked and underestimated due to his older brother's stature. The source of the tension between the two brothers isn't explicitly stated but we can infer it has something to do with Will being a stubborn nancy and Casey being a cocky prick. Papa Alexander recognizes his sons' unique differences but wants nothing more than for the three of them to spend quality time together. His silly insistence on investigating a terrorist syndicate sorta puts an end to that aspiration, because they show up to his pad after his birthday party and give him a surprise present: a Rolex! Ha, kidding. It was actually a violent and bloody death.

Leading the group of assholes-for-hire is the devious Franco, played by Rion Hunter. A veteran of action television with few film roles under his belt, Hunter more than holds his own in this early and rare role as main scoundrel. Other than a trademark deathblow, the cardinal rule for any martial-arts villain is a striking visual presence and Franco nails it in every conceivable way. His signature look forgoes sinister for stylish -- an incredible bottle-blonde mullet paired with a rotation of turtlenecks and stylish jackets with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. It's Miami Vice meets Dynamic Dudes on Don-Niam-as-Stingray Boulevard and it works to great effect. His deathblow is equally memorable: a bird-sized metal dart launched with expert precision.

Not only does Franco walk the walk, but he talks the talk with several great lines. He remarks at one point that singed human flesh smells much like roast pork, and while this is a precarious assertion at best (I'm in Camp Grilled Chicken) he sounds confident saying it. Throughout the film, Franco's line delivery boils over with a relaxed arrogance befitting a terrorist leader who has consistently evaded capture and while neither he nor his minions appear to have any concrete political beliefs, they definitely have demands. We never learn what those demands are, but Franco insists that they definitely have some. Furthermore, the group is based in that most fiendish cesspool of terrorist strongholds -- Florida. My guess is their list of demands begins with a better hangout in a different state.

Most of the second act follows Will's adventures in planning and executing an infiltration of Franco's gang and Casey's attempts to prevent his brother from getting in over his head. Throughout this process of push-and-pull, the energy normally reserved for hating each other is instead used to fuel their collective thirst to avenge their father's death. I'm not sure what that says about the human condition, but I can say that the net result is a lot of fucking kung-fu. Among the three entries in the NRNS franchise, Blood Brothers has the slickest action choreography and highest volume of hand-to-hand fight sequences by far. That being the case, it also has the highest amount of visible stunt doubles and the most ridiculously convuluted plot in the series. And while I sincerely feel the original NRNS set the bar for technically inept American martial arts filmmaking, the boom mic here makes so many onscreen appearances it should have been given an acting credit. I'm not sure how director Lucas Lo managed to overlook this most egregious set of errors but I have a feeling he was too busy shooting technically proficient fight scenes with visible stunt doubles.

The film culminates with several kidnappings, an incredible showdown inside an airplane hangar, and even a cameo by a certain 41st President of the United States. Also: buckets of drool, sweat, blood, and slo-mo, though I'm not sure if it's possible to place slo-mo in actual buckets. While Avedon is rock solid across all categories and Vitali's fighting skill barely manages to overshadow his atrocious (though amusing) acting, Rion Hunter shines through as the overall prime performer of the bunch. His Franco is the best creation of villainy in the NRNS franchise and while that might not seem like the biggest compliment, he's one of the best villains in the history of Western martial-arts film, though that doesn't seem like such high praise either.

VERDICT:
Marked by great fight choreography and even better late 80s hair and fashion sense, Blood Brothers is the final official sequel in the No Retreat, No Surrender trilogy. This subtitle is fitting since the central characters -- much like the three films in the NRNS franchise -- have nothing in common with one another but find a way to work together because of the bond to the person who created them. As mentioned, it has the best fight scenes of the three films and much of it is on par with most Hong Kong output during the same era. It's a shame Rion Hunter didn't do more villainous film roles, but given the sheer volume of random black belts who won tournaments getting film roles during this period, it's no great surprise he didn't have long-term traction in the genre. A certain must-see, if not a must-own.

7 / 7

No Retreat, No Surrender 2 (1987)

PLOT:
American kickboxer Scott Wylde travels to Thailand to visit an old friend and his college sweetheart. When she gets kidnapped, his vacation sorta goes downhill. With the help of friend Mac Jarvis and a kickboxing helicopter pilot named Terry, he must save his woman from an evil Soviet force based in Cambodia.

Director: Corey Yuen
Screenwriter: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Loren Avedon, Max Thayer, Cynthia Rothrock, Matthias Hues, Hwang Jang Lee


PLOT THICKENER:
Romantic love can make you do strange things. It can make you drive eight hours to spend four hours with someone. It can make you cook an elaborate meal, or write thoughtful notes and leave them around the house as surprises. For Scott Wylde (Avedon), love means busting out of police custody, killing 40 people with arrows and bullets, and climbing up a fucking waterfall. As much as you may love your spouse or partner, you will never love anyone as much as Scott Wylde does.

Shortly after arriving in Thailand, he makes a visit to a Muay Thai kickboxing school frequented by his old friend Mac (Thayer). He instead finds a bunch of guys who don’t speak English and a sassy American named Terry (Rothrock), who rocks an Esprit workout shirt almost as hard as she busts heads in the ring. On his way out, Scott drops a snide “your mother” joke which pisses off a Thai fighter and leads to a quick kickboxing scrum. After all, mom jokes are universal and kickboxing is the only logical resolution to such differences of opinion.

After a sweaty day of backpacking, Scott checks into a hotel haunted by the constant moaning of either whores or ghosts. He phones his Asian fiance, Sulin, to arrange the night’s plans and they end up going out for a dinner of fried bugs and tiger balls, dishes she insists he try in order to impress her father.

If the mustachioed man leering at them from afar during dinner wasn’t a bad enough omen, Scott brings Sulin back to room #13 at the hotel. After sex that we can only assume followed the slow-motion removal of their clothing, the couple is attacked in their room by a group of thugs. They carefully wrap Sulin in blankets to prevent damage during transport and two others stay behind to kill loverboy. He counters their blades and poisonous syringes with asskickery and jets over to Sulin’s family’s house to break the news that their daughter has been kidnapped. They have bigger things to worry about though -- they’ve been murdered! The police are suspicious of Scott’s presence at the house and take him into custody. Missing from the crime scene is Sulin’s wealthy father, who watches from behind closed doors as Scott undergoes a very sweaty interrogation back at the station. Roy Horan, who co-wrote the script, makes a cameo here as the American consular who mandates that Scott be deported to Singapore. As you might have guessed, Horan does not fight Bruce Lee in this film.

As protagonists tend to do, Scott escapes police custody the next day (thanks a fucking lot, Roy Horan). He tracks down Mac at a go-go dancing/arm-wrestling bar and to escape the heat of cops and bounty hunters, they head to a low-key restaurant outside the city. For an extra layer of cover, Scott wears a hat with a big floppy brim, perfect for a day of laying by the pool if you’re a girl. A group of bounty hunters are unswayed by this clever disguise and demand that the two come with them or die. Scott schools the baddies with acrobatic strikes and Mac utilizes his bad habits to great effect. He burns one guy’s face with a lit cigar, and wastes precious food by smashing eggs and melons into enemy heads. For his final act, he tosses a cobra at a gunman who Scott recognizes as one of the kidnappers from the night before. During a brief interrogation, they learn Sulin is being held in Cambodia at place called Death Mountain. It’s quite majestic between September and February but the weather’s a bit on the mild side.

At Mac’s warehouse of weaponry (he’s a black-market arms dealer) our heroes load up on enough firepower to fight an army and expel enough exposition to kill a horse. Mac posits that the Soviet-North Vietnamese forces have kidnapped Sulin to exploit her father, who is funding an anti-Khmer Rouge resistance movement. The two embark on their trip early the next day, but not early enough to evade the Thai authorities camped outside. A helicopter arrives just in time to fly them to safety, but the pilot turns out to be Terry, the wise-cracking kickboxer. Apparently, she and Mac have an intense history of sexy feelings and constant bickering. Mac is annoyed by her presence, Terry is frustrated by the assignment, and Scott is again very sweaty from the oppressive Thai humidity.

Shortly after their arrival in Cambodia, they make contact with a local resistance force to whom Mac has sold arms in the past. The colonel agrees to help them locate the Soviet camp, but only after Mac agrees to trade a battle tank for opium. To put this in perspective, it looks a lot like an F-16 worth of psychedelic mushrooms. Without warning, the camp is bombarded with explosives from above. The crew evades certain death by diving into a pond but their prospective guides have been blown to bits. With Plan A firmly in the shitter, they turn to Plan B -- wandering the jungles of Cambodia without the benefit of maps or a compass.

The Soviet camp where Sulin is held captive is run by a brutal general named Yuri, played by Matthias Hues. In a display of cruelty, he challenges an injured prisoner to a fight and dangles the promise of freedom as incentive. After inflicting punishment in the form of internal bleeding, Yuri lets him limp towards the exit for about ten feet before shooting him in the leg and ass. He then throws him into a pit full of crocodiles. While laughing hysterically. Following this comical turn of events, he turns to Sulin and assures her that he won’t harm her. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, our heroic trio is trudging through the jungle without the benefit of sunscreen, insect repellent, or moisture-wicking clothing, because it hadn’t been invented yet. They come upon a riverside camp of Buddhist monks, which reveals their deeply ingrained prejudices about non-Western religions. Mac doesn’t “trust people who don’t eat meat” (true, they don’t). Scott thinks they “sing and shake beads all day” (not entirely true). Terry states that “they’re harmless” (demonstrably false). The “monks” attack them and what follows is a legitimately great fight scene involving some slick rope work and gruesome kills. Though it must be said that for a guy purporting to frequent a Muay Thai gym, Mac doesn’t do an awful lot of kickboxing. After the scrum, Terry tries to start up a motorboat for a getaway but gets captured by a group of Yuri’s rogue military men and is whisked away upriver.

Back at the Ruskie Ranch, Terry is forced to fight Yuri’s second in command, an officer played by the legendary Hwang Jang Lee. After a brief show of skill by both fighters, Yuri steps in and asserts his authority. For reasons I’ll leave undisclosed, he decides that both she and Sulin will be executed by overly elaborate means the next morning. However, Mac and Scott have discovered the camp and set a number of overly elaborate traps, bombs, and self-firing machine guns under the cover of night.

Yuri decides to kick off the morning with an crocodile feeding, with both hostages suspended over the pit with nothing to counterweight them but a pair of sandbags. Terry remains defiant, remarking that Yuri would be a “big hit at the circus” (oddly prescient since Hues played “Oscar the Liontamer” in Big Top Pee-Wee just a year later). Scott and Mac awake to Sulin’s screams as both women are lowered into the pit. Before unleashing their bag of goodies, Scott and Mac share the first on-screen fist bump I can recall and the chaos commences. Bombs send soldiers flying, gunfire splatters the camera lens with blood (in 1987!), and arrows pierce flesh with pinpoint accuracy. And the girls are saved! Sort of.

Scott and Yuri battle hand-to-hand all over the compound in a climax filled with screaming and flag desecration and crocodiles. The fight is gloriously over the top and might be the best of Hues’ career. After the bloodshed and multiple ‘splosions, Scott cryptically speaks, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Intentional or not, I’d like to think this 1980s martial-arts actioner was dropping some subversive commentary on the military presence of the United States in Southeast Asia with this last bit of dialogue. But I also cracked up at the “Thanks To” credit to Mike Miller at the end of the film, because I pictured the Miami Heat shooting guard:

VERDICT:
While a sequel in name only, there’s something for everyone in No Retreat, No Surrender 2 and it’s probably the best in the series. The kills are plentiful, the action is well-choreographed and well-shot, and there are reasonably good performances from all the principals. What really held it together for me was Thayer’s screen presence; as a real-life military vet and star of several Filipino action/war films of the 1980s, he’s a natural fit and seems very comfortable as the grizzled arms dealer. I’ve seen him comparatively positioned in other reviews as a Han Solo type and I’ll echo that sentiment here as well. In the first of his three-picture run with Seasonal Films, Loren Avedon is damn good; his acting, while raw, still has personality, and his fighting is excellent. Rothrock plays cocky reasonably well despite some grating dialogue, and Hues is good as the heartless Russian monster despite a fairly obvious German accent. You may be able to find this on Youtube in its entirety but action aficionados will want to acquire the readily available import for their collections. Followed by No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers.

7 / 7

No Retreat, No Surrender (1986)

PLOT:
Ostracized by his peers and estranged from his father, a teenaged Bruce Lee fanatic struggles to fit in after moving to Seattle. Following a series of misfortunes, his idol crosses into the living world to teach him how to harness his chi and stir shit up. With this newfound wisdom and a burgeoning friendship, Jason confronts a looming threat and learns the true meaning of “No retreat, no surrender.”

Director: Corey Yuen
Writer: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Kurt McKinney, Jean-Claude Van Damme, J.W. Fails, Tim Baker, Kent Lipham, Dale Jacoby, Ron Pohnel, Pete Cunningham, Tai Chung Kim

PLOT THICKENER:
Throughout their time in Los Angeles, life was good for the Stillwells. Tom Stillwell, played by Timothy D. Baker, owned and operated a karate school in Sherman Oaks. His son, Jason (McKinney), was an overeager martial-arts trainee with an unhealthy obsession with Bruce Lee.

Their lives are forever changed when the senior Stillwell is paid a hostile visit by well-dressed goons following a karate class. After refusing to join their evil syndicate comprised of three people, Tom attempts to defuse the tension, stating, “karate is not to be used aggressively.” The baddies reject this moralist plea and come out swinging. Ivan the Russian, naturally played by the Belgian-born Van-Damme, breaks Tom’s leg then pie-faces our young hero with all the force of someone pushing an actual pie into an actual face. Jason has designs on revenge, but the attack reduces his father to a quivering bag of cowardice. Fearing for the safety of his loved ones, he abandons his dojo and moves the family to Seattle.

While unpacking during the move, Jason befriends the charismatic R.J. Madison. The chronic multi-tasker can dribble a basketball while riding a bike and skateboard while listening to rap music. But only moments into one of R.J.’s freestyle raps/break-dance routines, Jason learns of his horrible affliction—anytime he performs advanced dance moves or falls from a shelving unit, he turns Caucasian.

In each other, R.J. and Jason find a reflection of their common awkwardness; while one uses jokes and rapping to cope, the other uses a karate style looser than MC Hammer pants. And so the credo, “no retreat, no surrender!” becomes their battle cry. They use it before having rumbles outside of burger joints and after late-night talks about the fleeting nature of curfews. Does such liberal application of the slogan render it meaningless? Probably.

Outside this bio-dome of good vibes, a pack of snarling Johnny Lawrence wannabes awaits. There’s Dean “Shooting Star” Ramsey [Dale Jacoby], Seattle’s most underappreciated assistant karate instructor and total jerk. The crew's resident obnoxious oaf, Scott [Kent Lipham], has beef with Jason because of his Bruce Lee freakdom and with R.J. because of ... I'm actually not sure. When he’s not eating cake off the hood of a car, he’s eating chips while window-washing and buying friendship with burgers. The running theme: Scott makes poor nutritional choices. Both of these scrubs play second fiddle to the pack’s alpha dog, Ian “Whirlwind” Reilly. He would seem to have it all: abundant chest hair, his own karate school, championship glory, and the admiration of the entire Pacific Northwest. While his plastic trophy marks him as a champion, his oft-furrowed brow says, “as a child I was forced to participate in Satanic rituals.”

Scott and Dean are constantly harshing Jason’s mellow, starting with the latter's failed attempt to join Reilly's karate school. While Ian is away on a championship kickboxing tour, Dean is performing his duty as assistant instructor. While initially amenable to this newest applicant, he becomes enraged by Scott's news that Jason has been talking shit about Seattle-brand karate. So he employs Frank, his most advanced student, to fight the outsider during an exhibition in front of the whole class. Racial differences not withstanding, what follows looks a lot like the Globetrotters versus the Generals; after a thorough schooling, Jason runs out the school with R.J. in tow. Some might say that they surrendered, then retreated.

However, the worst example of Dean's treachery occurs at a birthday pool party for Ian’s sister Kelly, who just so happens to be Jason’s main squeeze. This relationship proves the latest thorn in Dean’s half-shirted side. When he discovers the two kissing after Jason presents her with a birthday rabbit (?), he and Scott scheme to humiliate him. It should be noted that Jason's the only weirdo in a shirt and tie at a pool party, which is humiliating enough. And he's wearing cowboy boots. To add to the misery, Scott throws fabric-staining punch on Jason’s shirt and flings frosted cake at him. When our hero tries to retaliate, Dean beats the crap out of him. Thoroughly emasculated, Jason storms out as an angered Kelly slaps Dean and chases after her knight in shining cowboy boots. Infuriated by what he perceives as a set-up, he peels away in his wood-paneled station wagon and leaves Kelly in tears.

Instead of abusing drugs or writing bad poetry like a normal teenager in turmoil, Jason deals with this latest trauma by going to Bruce Lee’s grave and crying for help. When he returns home, his father denounces his son’s brawling ways and lack of punctuality. Jason challenges him on his lack of manhood and Old-Man Stillwell gesticulates repeatedly at the ground, his house, the garage, the station wagon, and even himself while shouting parental decrees. (When preparing for the level of rage required in this scene, Baker, no doubt, thought of his measly paycheck).

The conflict culminates with Tom tearing Jason’s Bruce Lee poster cleanly in half. Instead of fighting back against his tyrannical father, he whimpers like a child on his way to the doctor's office for an afternoon of inoculations and blood work, and runs off into the night.

After jogging for about three miles to R.J.’s house for help (still in cowboy boots), he sets up what remains of his training equipment in an abandoned house and falls asleep. During his slumber, the ghost of a guy that vaguely looks like Bruce Lee to those who can’t tell the difference between Asian people crosses over into the material world and offers his services. In a promotional placement Diet Coke would probably rather forget, Lee favorably compares his knowledge of the martial-arts to the superior flavor of the popular cola. Over the coming weeks, Jason learns many techniques useful for both fighting and training montages.

The first test of Jason's freshly buffed skills comes against a band of alcoholic thugs who've been harassing his father at the local watering hole, where he works as a bartender. (Bartending and karate licenses are interchangeable in most states.) The booze-hounds quietly lurk in the parking lot as Tom leaves after his day shift, and commence the beat-down just as Jason arrives to pick his father up from work. He easily dispatches the uncoordinated winos and sends them scurrying into the streets, where their search for hooch resumes. The display of self-sacrifice helps Tom finally understand that fighting is a necessary life skill, like personal finance. With their relationship upgraded from angry and cold to emotional and awkward, father and son walk off in pursuit of the challenges that lay ahead.

And wouldn't you know it. The same syndicate that attacked the Stillwells in L.A. now threatens to take over Reilly’s Seattle karate school. The criminals agree to a team fight to decide the fate of the Evergreen State’s karate legacy. Team Reilly includes Dean and Frank, with Scott on strangely homoerotic massage duty. The opposition relies upon just one man: Ivan the Evil Russian. He makes short work of Frank and beats the living daylights out of Dean. Reilly manages to put up a fight, but in a stunning reversal of the Deep Blue computer vs. Kasparov chess match, this time it's the Russian who cheats.

As Ivan chokes Reilly with a chain, Kelly attempts to save her brother by clubbing his attacker with a wooden stool. The Russian grabs her by the hair, prompting a furious Jason to burst from the packed crowd and enter the ring to fulfill all of our teenage martial-arts film dreams. I would hate to spoil such an obvious ending, but you know where it goes from here.

VERDICT:
No Retreat No Surrender will be remembered as an artifact of pure 1980s cinematic cheese. It's also Jean Claude Van Damme's American film debut, and this is significant; his very next role in 1988's Bloodsport launched him to stardom. It's packed with poor editing, glorious 80s clothing, and some bad line delivery, but it also marked the first genuine attempt by a Hong Kong action director to translate that style in a Western production for American audiences. Followed by No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder.

6.5 / 7