Blood Hands (1990)

PLOT: When his loving parents are murdered by a gang of kickboxers, a young fighter must choose between avenging their deaths or listening to his girlfriend and allowing police to handle the investigation. Will he take matters into his own hands or continue to walk around with his balls in his girl’s purse, nestled somewhere amongst her Burt’s Bees chapstick, a paperback copy of The Hunger Games, and her emergency tampon?

Director: Teddy Page
Writer: Nothing to see here
Cast: Sean P. Donahue, Jerry Beyer, Ned Hourani, Jim Gaines, Jim Moss, Christine Landson, Nick Nicholson

PLOT THICKENER:
As a premise, the home invasion unfurls a plethora of engaging narrative possibilities. Filmmakers might set the stage for a kid-friendly slapstick opus (Home Alone), an exercise in sadistic aggression with social commentary (Funny Games), or a rumination on the relationship between masculinity and brutality (Straw Dogs). It’s used primarily in horror and thriller films as of late, but the device is somewhat underutilized in the action genre. In Teddy Page’s 1990 film, Blood Hands, a home invasion is used as the impetus to hurl its central character into a protracted feud with a gang of kickboxing baddies. I’d be remiss if I didn’t send a special thanks to the very awesome Australian behind the Explosive Action film blog for facilitating my viewing of this film. He also has a review up containing some hilarious screen-caps as well as a fight scene clip. Be sure to read it here for another angle on the film.

Up until finding the lifeless bodies of his mother and father at home, Steve Callahan (Donahue) was having a pretty good day. His girlfriend, Tracy (Landson) professed her love, it was his birthday, and while sparring at his kickboxing school, his coach and prospective father-in-law nodded in something that resembled approval. A giant wet blanket comes in the form of his violated home and pummeled parents left for dead. What kind of animals would do this to such gentle people? Tigers or great white sharks are good guesses, but the most likely culprits are humans.

The leader of the guilty party is champion kickboxer James Clavel (Hourani). After a drunken celebration with his homeboys which accidentally left a convenience store owner dead, the crew stumbled upon the Callahan home to get fresh water for an overheated car radiator. As luck would have it, Diane Callahan just happens to be Clavel’s ex-squeeze, and even though she’s moved on to a new marriage, his old feelings come rushing back with such force that he ended up breaking her neck in a jealous rage. When doting husband Edward (Nicholson) returned home with a birthday cake for his son, the gang greeted him with a fatal beating. The lesson here? Drinking and driving can lead to death, even if you’re not in the car and especially when you fail to monitor the temperature gauge on the thermostat.

The only clue left behind at the scene of the crime, not to mention the biggest one the cops overlook, is a championship kickboxing medallion torn from the neck of Clavel’s buddy, George (Moss). Tracy brings it to Steve while alternately begging him to take it to the police instead of trying to chase clues on his own. While the medallion gives Steve a solid lead on the perpetrators, they’re also on the hunt to recover it and the respective pursuits lead to more trouble than Steve bargained for. All the while, Tracy begs for her love to quit this path of vengeance; he’s no murderer and she doesn’t want to see his hands “stained with blood.” However, seeking justice requires you to occasionally get your hands dirty. Sometimes you need to get your hands stained....with BLOOD.

We’ve previously covered director Teddy Page’s film, Blood Chase, and despite its confusing structure, the plot dealt with both protagonists and antagonists pursuing the same objective while alternately pursuing each other. There’s something similar going on in Blood Hands, but it’s more streamlined and easier to follow. Is the inciting incident believable? That depends on how much stock you place in the ability of cheap beer to cause homicidal behavior. So while the story’s not perfect, or even that logical, it’s engaging to watch unfold.

As in all his films, Page keeps the action flowing almost non-stop and everyone is up for the task. Based on their martial arts training, Hourani, Donahue, and Jerry Beyer as henchman Diego are the best-equipped to execute the fight choreography but the efforts of non-fighters like Nick Nicholson, Jim Gaines, and Jim Moss are also admirable. What really stuck out for me were the awesomely cheesy sound effects. Plenty of whooshes and the repeated thwack of baseball bats hitting heads of lettuce are up for consumption, and they’re synced reasonably well with the on-screen strikes. Some people hate that shit, but in a movie of this grade I think it’s an absolute necessity. Last, I really dug that Page went with a “mini-boss” style of climax that saw Donahue fighting a mix of random dudes before tangling with Clavel. Pair all that with some grisly deaths and I’m skipping toward the closing credits a very happy camper.

This is yet another notch in the belt for a group of actors that includes Nicholson, Moss, and Gaines, among many others. One or more of these guys made appearances in pretty much every Filipino kickpuncher from 1985 to around 1995. Conspicuous by his absence is Mike Monty, but the brother had five film credits to his name in 1990 alone, including two Black Cobra sequels. In keeping with the Rat Pack, the Frat Pack, and the Brat Pack, this collective of mostly American actors adventuring in the Filipino action film industry during this era really begs for a unifying nickname. My offering: the Expat Pack. (Hopefully it sticks because I had several thousand t-shirts printed with plans for a limited edition series of Trapper Keepers and lunchboxes).

Looking at the VHS cover, you might be disappointed to observe that while there is blood on our star, it’s on his face and chest. Conspicuously absent from his hands? Blood! So what gives? The fucking movie isn’t called Chest Blood and Denim (awesome title, btw). Fear not, though -- I’m happy to report that Blood Hands is a rare b-grade action film that actually delivers on what its title promises and its box art fails to convey: actual blood on actual hands.

One of the quirks we often encounter in watching these movies is the appearance of film posters from other properties in which the film company holds stake. In Showdown, some characters walk by a Breathing Fire poster in a movie theater (the distribution and/or production of both films involved Imperial Entertainment). In the climax of the PM Entertainment joint, Rage, Gary Daniels tosses a half-dozen motherfuckers among the shelves at a mall video store and the walls are plastered in posters of PM Entertainment flicks. Something similar happens in Blood Hands. Keep in mind that this was filmed in the Philippines, which apparently allowed the filmmakers to flout any semblance of licensing or copyright protocol and slap a poster of the JCVD classic Kickboxer on the wall during a scene where Steve visits the office of a film producer. A bit egregious, but they covered themselves legally using the “absurd superimposed handlebar moustache” loophole.

VERDICT:
From what I’ve seen, this is probably Donahue’s most concerted effort at doing a straight martial arts film and the results are solid. The plot is hardly original and the script is practically non-existent, but if you like your kickboxing with a heaping side of bad acting and terrible dialogue, Blood Hands fits the bill. While it doesn’t reach the heights of the previously reviewed Parole Violators, it’s still a fun romp and a good starting point to observe how Donahue’s early exploits in fight-heavy Filipino actioners paved the way for his batshit-insane stunt antics in his later films.

AVAILABILITY:
Extremely difficult to come by. Even non-R1 copies in circulation seem to be few and far between. Cross your fingers and happy snagging.

5 / 7

Blood Chase (1989)

PLOT: A wife drags her husband on a dangerous cross-continental journey to find the truth about her father’s death. Not quite the ideal getaway but it’s better than another trip to Disney World.

Director: Teddy Page
Writer: Jeff Griffith, Teddy Page
Cast: Karen Sheperd, Andrew Stevens, Jerry Beyer, Ian Senzon, Jim Moss, David Light, Mike Monty, Tony Chang




PLOT THICKENER:
I can’t tell you much about the evolution of the Filipino film industry or why so many resources from the West -- both human and financial -- went into making exploitation b-films there. Go here or here for that and a whole lot more. What I do know is that a lot of American martial arts actors went into the sweltering heat of Southeast Asia during the 1980s and 1990s to make action movie magic. That trend continues as we follow Karen Sheperd to Manila, where she worked with Teddy Page to create the somewhat compelling but mostly confusing 1989 action-mystery Blood Chase.

When we first meet John Hayes (Stevens), he introduces himself as “Peter Boyle” to a group of toughs led by Nick Nicholson, who have stopped to unload a stash of drugs hidden in plush unicorns. They seem unconvinced. After Nicholson’s character fails to intimidate this unwanted presence, the aforementioned Boyle launches into action and punches and kicks the gang into submission. His covert status not only requires expertise in the fighting arts but apparently that he also masquerades as one of the great character actors of the 1970s. He’s not the only one leading a life of crimefighting; his wife, Cheryl Anderson (Sheperd) is a police officer too.

Despite her successful career and loving marriage, Cheryl has a dark secret. No, it’s not herpes. During her surprise birthday party, planned ever-so covertly by John, she receives flowers from a mystery sender. Did she get the herpes from cheating? No, and to reiterate, she doesn’t have herpes. The flowers are from a former “business associate” from her deceased father’s past. Doting dad Ross Anderson was one member in a group of thieves; their last job on an armored truck -- seen in the very beginning of the film -- went swimmingly up until the post-robbery meeting to divvy up the winnings. The crew’s ringleader, Eddie Nichols (Light), gets arrested during a set-up, along with his henchmen Diego (Beyer), Stillwell (Senzon), and Hopper (Moss). Missing from that equation is Ross, who allegedly made off with the loot but later died in a carsplosion.

With the help of a crooked cop, Nichols and his crew bust out of the clink and start stalking Cheryl and John in an effort to locate the stolen money. Random cars with tinted windows appear outside their home. A gang attacks them in a public park during a morning jog. Cheryl gets kidnapped and then escapes on several occasions. None of it will stop unless Cheryl and John explore her father’s past, his death, and what remains of his links to the treacherous gang.

The details of the plot aren’t so much mysterious as they are sloppy and confusing. The passage of time between the robbery and the present day is never explicitly stated until Cheryl’s expository monologue later in the film. While I’m not the biggest fan of the “X AMOUNT OF YEARS LATER” title card, it would have gone a long way to clear this up. It didn’t help that my DVD copy of the film skipped forward by about 10 seconds a dozen times over the course of 90 minutes, but that might have been a really fucking important 120 seconds of dialogue that I missed. All this said, it should surprise no one that this was Jeff Griffith’s only screenwriting credit. The various plot developments seem to get in the way of the story itself and from a narrative perspective, this gets a bit grating.

Fortunately, the action itself is quite good. While less prolific than his Filipino directorial brethren Eddie Romero or Cirio Santiago, Teddy Page is a solid action director and easily the best filmmaker with at least five films to his credit with the word “blood” in the title (Blood Debts, Blood Hands, Blood Chase, Blood Ring, and Blood Ring 2). Since his cast consists largely of martial arts actors, he emphasizes hand-to-hand fights but peppers the story with plenty of shoot-outs, splosions, and chase and pursuit sequences.

The dynamic among Nichols and his crew is mapped out with a reasonably well-defined pecking order. Nichols is the brainy taskmaster while everyone else acts as the qualified but bumbling muscle. (In reaction to a failed shakedown, Nichols scolds his boys in stating “You two couldn’t piss a hole in snow.”) Jim Moss is a face you’ll find familiar when watching these Filipino action efforts, and he’s quite good here. As Diego, Beyer is his usual awesome kick-happy self, though he opts for a tight and cropped ‘do in lieu of the flowing mane he sported in Fighting Spirit. The real surprise is Ian Senzon as Stilwell. While a bit stiff as an actor, he’s a fairly competent martial artist and he and Sheperd have one of the better fights in the film. Unfortunately, this is his only film role.

Despite chain-smoking like a character out of Good Night and Good Luck, Andrew Stevens is more than competent in his fight scenes as well. It’s really hard to gauge his proficiency in this aspect of his performance because he didn’t do a whole lot of action roles aside from this. He’s probably best-remembered for his early work in Brian De Palma’s The Fury and the Charles Bronson joints Death Hunt and 10 to Midnight. That said, his acting breathes life into a pretty flat character and helps to ground the film, and he and Sheperd play well off each other as a convincing husband and wife team.

VERDICT:
To be blunt: my desire to love Blood Chase exceeded the actual level of enjoyment I got from watching it. In the annals of really fun Filipino action films starring American martial artists, Blood Chase is nothing more than a solid entry. It’s not on the level of a Live by the Fist or even the hot mess that is Fighting Spirit, but the action scenes were enough to keep me engaged. This is a great credit to Teddy Page, who keeps the affair reasonably well-paced despite the collars of a very clunky script, and Karen Sheperd, whose skills for executing choreographed violence can’t be overstated.

AVAILABILITY:
Extremely tough to track down. Your best bet for a DVD copy is either the gray market or an out of region seller.

4 / 7

Fighting Spirit (1992)

PLOT: After his sister is injured during an attempted gang rape, a young kickboxer can’t afford the medical bills so is forced into underground street fights by a sleazy crime boss. As the danger reaches a fever pitch, the only prescription is his best friend, David.

Director: John Lloyd
Writer: Rod Davis
Cast: Loren Avedon, Sean P. Donahue, Greg Douglass, Ned Hourani, Jerry Beyer, Michelle Locke, Mike Monty, Nick Nicholson

PLOT THICKENER:

You might be saying “hey Karl Brezdin, why the fuck are you calling this post Fighting Spirit when the cover art says King of the Kickboxers 2 and oh by the way, I got here by searching for Fighting Spirit anime torrents so where’s episode 7 ‘The Destructive Force of 1 cm?’” Well, hypothetical run-on question, allow me to explain.

Between 1986 and 1990, the original No Retreat, No Surrender and its two proper sequels were released. In Europe and other regions of the world, these films formed the Karate Tiger franchise (1-3.) Around 1991, King of the Kickboxers was released but was billed as Karate Tiger 4 in Europe and some other regions of the world. Then in 1992, American Shaolin was released as American Shaolin in America, but Karate Tiger 5 in Europe and elsewhere, but also as American Shaolin: King of the Kickboxers II on VHS by Academy Home Entertainment. That same year, Fighting Spirit was released under its original title in most places but eventually became King of the Kickboxers 2 when it was released on DVD in the United States. Pretty straightforward.

Fighting Spirit is the story of Billy (Donahue), a nice guy who made bad career choices and finds himself trying to make ends meet as an amateur kickboxer. While training with his coach (Nick Nicholson in a brief but hilarious cameo) he forgets to pick up his sister, Judith (Locke), following her shift at a local bar. When he finally arrives, she’s unconscious and about to be raped by a group of thugs led by Tony (Douglass), a gun dealer with an opinion of women equally as terrible as his terrible haircut. After Billy sends the thugs scurrying, a stranger appears out of nowhere and offers them a ride to the hospital. Unbeknownst to Billy, the stranger is Tony’s older brother, Russell (Hourani.) He watched the events unfold and has decided that Billy is worthy of a small investment.

After Judith’s insanely funky trip to the hospital -- director John Lloyd pairs the rush to the operating room with an orchestral disco beat -- Billy finds out that she needs an expensive surgery to save her eyesight, but he doesn’t have the funds to cover the procedure. Instead of accepting an offer of help from David (Avedon), his kickboxing friend and businessman, Billy takes money from the weird dude he just met an hour ago.

Unfortunately, there are strings attached. Billy quickly finds himself sucked into a filthy underworld where fighters compete in abandoned warehouses while rich assholes place bets and a funky wah-wah guitar track plays. Seeing unpolished potential, Russell pairs him with a fighting trainer named Murphy (Beyer) to hone his skills. While Murphy becomes something of a mentor to Billy, David is suspicious of the arrangement from the jump and encourages his friend to walk away and allow him to pay off the debt owed to Russell. Unfortunately, Billy’s pride won’t allow it.

Despite some initial success, Billy is still consumed by vengeance and begins to track down the people responsible for his sister’s attack. This lack of focus leads to a defeat and the relationship with Russell quickly turns sour. No slouch on the fighting front, David is forced to seek out Murphy for help to salvage what little remains in a desperate situation. The film’s villains do their part to make sure that no one goes unscathed. Russell is pure, hairy-chested sleaze and the glee with which Tony performs violence borders on childlike. No villain-filler here though, because both actors can fight reasonably well.

The action in this film is bonkers and the stunt team deserves a lot of credit for killing themselves to make Avedon and Donahue look great. Since their respective filmographies are so limited, I can’t say much about action directors Tao Chang and Ping-Po Chin, but almost every scene is painted with generous helpings of blood, sweat, and dust. Most of the decisive blows are given tight, slow-motion close-ups and props are used frequently and liberally.

Among several high-quality fight sequences, the standout scene for me was a pool hall brawl. Billy and David roll into the local billiards spot looking for one of the dickheads responsible for Judith’s injuries, and all hell breaks loose. The performers lay absolute waste to the set by smashing windows, liquor bottles, shelves, and every breakaway piece of furniture in sight. Avedon also incorporates some comedic touches by alternating between running his hands through his hair, standing idly with his hands in his pockets, and using props like pool cues, racks, and balls to ward off enemies. Is there an out-of-place disco beat blaring over this? Yes, there is a disco beat.

To say nothing of the awful dubbing, the terrible soundtrack very nearly derails the entire film. The music and onscreen action frequently form wild mismatches in tone, from the dramatic disco-hospital combo to the energizing disco-fight scenes and the requisite disco-training montage scene. I doubt composer Larry Strong wrote and performed these songs specifically for this film; it seems more likely that he got an arbitrary credit when John Lloyd mined a box of studio music marked “BEST IF USED BY 1982.”

The film’s gritty feel is further underscored by some visceral tones and the brutality of some of the kills. Some people get thrown from rooftops, one gets tortured in a dingy basement, others get bloody strangulation, and Avedon scores an all too-rare Martial-Artist Vomit Scene when identifying a body at the morgue. There’s even a scene where a character has each arm tied to the rear bumpers of two different cars and is dragged at high-speed before splatting face-first into a stationary car. Sleazy kills, rape as a plot point, and low production values? Cirio-sense tingling...

While no filming location is listed on the film’s IMDb page, it’s safe to assume that based on the heinous music and risky stunts that this was filmed in the Philippines. The other critical indicators include cameos from Filipino action veterans Nick Nicholson, and Mike Monty as an obnoxious drunk. While Fighting Spirit was the last of four films directed by John Lloyd, his directorial style is timeless: keep the plot loose, the violence frequent, and everything in between as unintentionally hilarious as possible.

While most of the film’s accidental comedy comes from poor dubbing and the odd music selections, Michelle Locke’s performance as the vision-impaired Judith is gut-busting. Is it ever permissible to laugh at blind people in films? Usually no, because a good script and a well-trained actor won’t give you reasons to do so. Shintaro Katsu of Zaitoichi fame or Morgan Freeman in Unleashed weren’t flailing their arms in pools or tripping over dead bodies. These are mishaps that deserve a hearty mocking even if the character can see. So it’s OK to cackle at a first-time actress trying to pretend to be blind. If you laugh at a blind person crossing a street with the assistance of a seeing-eye dog, you’re a fucking degenerate.

VERDICT:
If enough people stumble across it, Fighting Spirit has the potential to become something of a cult classic in martial-arts film circles. It must be said that for every element the film gets right -- the fight scenes and sleazy villains among them -- there are three or four other things that go dreadfully wrong (the music, the script, dubbing, set lighting, etc.) The result doesn’t make for a poor viewing experience though. On the contrary, the film’s underlying charm comes directly from its grit, grime, and random technical warts. There’s no shortage of crazy Filipino action movies out there, but for those who likes their sleaze-and-cheese with an extra helping of chopsocky, this one is worth every cent of your viewing dollar.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon or EBay.

5.5 / 7