Low Blow (1986)

PLOT: A religious nutjob has just accepted the latest confused member into his isolated cult. However, her rich father is willing to pay any price for her safe return (within reason). Before long, a martial artist private investigator is in hot pursuit, racking up parking tickets, moving violations, and mangled fenders along the way.

Director: Frank Harris
Writer: Leo Fong
Cast: Leo Fong, Cameron Mitchell, Troy Donahue, Diane Stevenett, Akosua Busia, Stack Pierce, Woody Farmer, Billy Blanks


PLOT THICKENER:
Few things are as irritating as mealtime interruptions. Whether it’s phone calls from telemarketers, a hilarious text from a friend, or the sudden onset of food poisoning, these disruptions can turn that Sunday roast into a cold platter of unwanted leftovers. Some of us have a greater threshold for this phenomenon than others, making the good deeds of Leo Fong’s lead character in the 1984 film Low Blow all the more admirable.

Fong plays Joe Wong, a down-on-his-luck private investigator hired by a rich square to save his daughter from the clutches of a new age cult. Director Frank Harris illustrates our hero's prowess in the early-going, as Wong awkwardly interrupts a diner robbery by checking on the status of his ham sandwich order. Instead of paying the cashier, he unloads his revolver on the unsuspecting robbers and as it turns out, he was just kidding about the sandwich. Really, Joe? We thought you were serious about the cooks slaving over a ham sandwich as you risked the lives of everyone around you with your itchy trigger finger. His risky behavior isn't just relegated to eateries. Any time he parks his rusty shitbox, he coasts into dividers and concrete barriers without fail. Or lots of fail, depending on whether your minimum requirements for bad driving include slow-moving collisions or necessitate civilian deaths.

As evidenced by his Indian bindi, his Jewish Star of David tattoo, and his raging Christ complex, the cult’s leader, Yarakunda (Mitchell) is confused at best, and at worst, drunk. Karma (Busia) is his mostly sober right-hand lady, whose fondness for conniving power plays is matched only by her love of sugary circus peanuts. She runs point on every last detail of the cult's compound, from the brown-bag lunchtime lectures, to the fruitless gardening of its arid fields, to the muscular and heavily-armed security staff, headed by the menacing Guard (Blanks). Not only does this movie feature the worst character name ever bestowed on Mr. Blanks, but also the worst utilization of his talents. More on that later.

While the action quotient is high, the fight choreography in Low Blow is below-average, and that’s being generous. Most of the stuntmen sell the strikes decently enough, but the pace of most fights is stilted and the editing and camera angles do nothing to help matters. Leo Fong isn’t the quickest cat in the room, but he holds almost legendary status in the off-screen martial arts world and was 58 years-old when this film was released. For evidence of his better action work, check out Enforcers from Death Row, which includes a lively serrada free-flow drill with Grandmaster Angel Cabales.

My guess is that Fong had slowed down considerably by this point and Harris and company made a conscious choice to eschew the technically slick for pure camp in the fight scenes. A group of enemies attempting to escape in a car gets an unexpected tune-up as Fong pops the hood, pulls out an important-looking car part to stall it, and dons safety goggles before a protracted removal of the car roof using a metal saw. He is smiling the entire time because he loves amateur auto maintenance. However bizarre that scene may have been, the crown jewel might be Leo Fong angrily stomping what appears to be a pile of mashed potatoes disguised as a human head. In other words, it resembled Thanksgiving 2006 at the Brezdin household after I discovered that mother used instant mashed potatoes.

The filmmakers had a golden opportunity to make the most of the film’s top two fighting talents in Fong and Billy Blanks. The Blanks character is built up as the cult’s physical enforcer and the story wisely keeps the two separated physically for the majority of the film before saving their encounter for Joe Wong’s night-time invasion of the cult’s compound. How long might you expect this fight to go? Ten-plus minutes? No dice, this isn’t 1980s Hong Kong. Maybe a healthy five? Optimistic but unlikely. This fight goes for about 35 seconds. Most of the scene is oriented around the Blanks character spitting two variations of “I’m going to kill you,” quiet posturing, and viewing angles positioned behind the fighters. And forget about a grisly death -- Blanks is rendered unconscious by an arm take-down and a jab to the mush.

VERDICT:
I’m not sure if Frank Harris and Leo Fong meant for us to laugh at all the surreal moments in Low Blow. Yet, I can think of no more appropriate response for vanquished enemies waking up in piles of puppies, protracted auto body metal saw attacks, and Leo Fong driving a car like a drunken senior citizen. On occasion, martial arts flicks strive for a certain tone in between the fight scenes, but end up realizing something completely different. Intentional or not, Low Blow is one of those movies.

AVAILABILITY:
For DVD options, it's included as one of ten movies on Navarre Corporation's Maximum Action set. Also available on VHS through Amazon and EBay.

4.5 / 7

Scorpion (1986)

PLOT: Have you seen Bullitt? If yes: Scorpion has virtually the same plot as Bullitt. If no: go watch Bullitt.

Director: William Riead
Writer: William Riead
Cast: Tonny Tulleners, Don Murray, Ross Elliott, Robert Logan, Billy Hayes, Ross Elliott






PLOT THICKENER:
A brief gaze at the poster for 1986’s Scorpion shows a mustachioed action ace willing to smash through glass and scuff his aviators to take down the bad guys. The actor behind the shades and flavor saver is Tonny Tulleners, a Holland-born karate black belt and winner of the 1965 International Karate Tournament in the middleweight division. Like so many real-life martial-arts champions before and after him, fighting expertise naturally guaranteed a movie deal. Also like other martial-arts champions who were guaranteed movie deals, he never did another movie after this one.

Special agent Steve Woods -- code name “Scorpion” -- is number one and the best in the field of clandestine operations and asskickings. We open with the juxtaposition of an old man leading a donkey through the quiet streets of a Spanish town and a cherry-red sportscar bombing into the parking lot of a cantina. Woods is trying to enjoy an afternoon cerveza and the rustic ambiance when an obnoxious drunk ruins the mood. Our hero goes into Scorpion mode and beats the shit out of the wino and his friends before leaving the bar, his beer unfinished and abandoned. He heads straight for a pay phone to touch base with a contact in Amsterdam, then with his agency superior based in the U.S. Within the first eight minutes of the film, Riead establishes Scorpion as a trilingual auto-enthusiast who has a habit of leaving beverages unfinished and won’t hesitate to put the hammer down if you’re being socially abrasive.

 

Scorpion works for the cleverly named D.I.A., and his latest assignment finds him in a hijacked commercial jet trying to thwart some unreasonable folks with olive skin and vague accents. The baddies have threatened to kill passengers if anyone from the opposition boards the plane with a weapon, so Scorpion dons some white short-shorts to prove that he’s not only unarmed but also the spitting image of Larry Bird. The terrorists discover in short time that the most dangerous weapon of all is beneath Scorpion’s clothing... his legs, you sick bastard! He kicks the shit out of them and saves the day.

The next morning, Scorpion is chilling on his house-boat and nursing what appears to be a hangover as his colleagues read the morning news and play annoying wind instruments. Scorpion is hailed as a hero in the media but they reveal his real name and his covert status is blown much like the aforementioned wind instrument. In the fallout of the attempted hijacking, Scorpion and his colleagues are also tasked with providing police protection for a material witness named Faued. An American lawyer played by Don Murray believes Faued will help the government bring down the Terror Network, which presumably consists of more evildoers with olive skin and vague accents.

As it also occurs in Bullitt, this entire set-up goes to shit and several characters needlessly die. The rest of the film follows Scorpion as he figures out the details of the botched assignment and the film takes on many of the characteristics common to the police procedural: crime scene investigations, autopsies with medical jargon, attempts at tension, chasing leads over the phone, etc. Taken individually, these components are handled well enough but on the whole, it was like an adult film directed by Michael Bay in his trademark blur-o-vision: I never figured out who was fucking who, and why or when.

This overemphasis on the investigative aspects of Scorpion’s work comes at a terrible cost: the action. One would think that a film starring a guy who beat Chuck Norris three times in actual karate competition would have a lot of fighting. With his side-swept hair and bushy moustache, Tulleners even looks like Norris. But a funny thing happened on the way to the end credits: Riead only includes about three total minutes of hand-to-hand combat. Given Tulleners’ fighting pedigree, how could they have possibly flubbed this? I’m tempted to point to Riead’s background as a TV documentary filmmaker and journalist, and Tulleners’ experience as an undercover cop with the Pasadena Police Department. Lousy do-gooders.

As Scorpion, Tulleners is serviceable. Not exactly good, but not wildly incompetent enough to be so bad he’s good. To his credit, he’s got the moustache-and-aviators theme down cold and he gets to rock some hilarious 80s fashion, including short-shorts and some high-waisted bell bottoms that do well to accentuate his freakishly long legs. You know, the ones he uses only sparingly to kick people in the face.

Despite the lack of fistkicking action, it’s worth noting that legendary Hollywood stuntman Dar Robinson worked on the film as stunt coordinator and most of the action is competently shot and edited. Scorpion features a decent helicopter vs. speedboat chase, and an excellent roof-to-roof leap that doesn’t end so well for the jumper, who lets off a familiar girly scream as he loses strength in his arms and plummets to his death. I say familiar because I used to do the same thing in college, when I failed to lift myself up to the top bunk during drunken stupors. Probably explains why the girls left the room after that.

Perhaps no 80s action movie is complete without a ham-fisted metaphor, so I wanted to mention the clumsy subplot involving one of Scorpion’s deceased colleagues and his childhood dream to push over a statue. Only after the dust settles is Scorpion able to realize that dream in his friend’s stead. What Riead attempts to shoehorn into the film as an emotional and poignant moment is instead a reminder of the issue of defacement of public property in our nation’s parks. One would think that a government man like Scorpion would know better than that. 

VERDICT:

I’m not entirely unsurprised that Tulleners joined a long list of lead action actors who went one-and-done. Scorpion does very little to accentuate his fighting skills, choosing instead to focus on rehashed and poorly-realized plot points from other films. As a straight martial-arts film, I can’t recommend it at all because the fight quotient is so low. However, as a crime-thriller with action elements, Scorpion is fairly solid. It’s well-paced, you’ll dig the antiquated clothing, and it has more moustaches than you can shake a stick at.

AVAILABILITY:
I picked up my Scorpion in the Maximum Action 10-disc set put out by BCI, which you can find on Amazon for under $5.

3.5 / 7