Sword of Heaven (1985)

PLOT: An ancient sword forged by Zen monks from a meteorite falls into the hands of a paramilitary madman. Can a police trainer based in Los Angeles recover it, or will he be too busy Googling the differences between comets, asteroids, meteors, and space rocks, to get the job done?

Director: Byron Meyers
Writers: James Bruner, Britt Lomond, William O’Hagan, Joseph J. Randazzo
Cast: Tadashi Yamashita, Mel Novak, Gerry Gibson, Mika, Joseph J. Randazzo, William Ghent, Wynston A. Jones, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, Gerald Okamura, Karen Sheperd

PLOT THICKENER

Among the actors who played villains opposite some of the biggest action stars of the 1970s and 80s (e.g., Chuck Norris, Michael Dudikoff, Jim Kelly, Bruce Lee) there are few who loom larger than Mel Novak and Tadashi Yamashita. (Bolo Yeung is one of those few). Both actors played important foils to heroes in major studio films, but they also have a tendency to get lost in the shuffle when discussing the era, in part because neither of them got major leading roles as a point of differentiation. The 1985 film Sword of Heaven attempts to rectify that by casting one man opposite the other, thereby dooming one of them to the inescapable fate of playing evil men ad infinitum, despite his possible wishes to star in a comedy or a cheery musical.

Hundreds of years ago, a meteorite fell to earth and zen monks forged a sword from the remains. The custodial family for the sword was the Kobiashi family, and their modern day descendants include Toshiro (Gent) and his daughter, Satoko (Mika). However, the sword was recently acquired illicitly by a self-proclaimed “collector” and former special forces soldier named Dirk St. John (Novak). These days, he runs an extortion ring in Los Angeles that targets the well-off rather than the super-rich, because it tends to attract less attention from the authorities. If the targets don’t pay, Dirk’s weapons of choice are a knife or his trusty garrote. As he tells his army of paramilitary trainees, these close-range weapons inspire fear, and “fear is our greatest weapon.” As he repeatedly demonstrates, though, knives and garrotes are also great weapons.

A Japanese police trainer and motorcycle enthusiast, Tadashi (Yamashita) works with the Los Angeles Police Department and educates them in the martial arts. One of his students and friends on the force, Patrick (Gibson) is investigating the recent spat of killings, which leads him  to a brothel where Satoko works as a prostitute. During a lunch stop in the middle of the woods where he rides his bike, Tadashi crosses paths with Toshiro, who finds him sufficiently samurai to be chosen to retrieve the sword from St. John and his gang. All these random threads end up converging in the misshapen cable-knit sweater that is Sword of Heaven.

This was a weird one. The first half-hour or so is a bit of a mess and it was difficult to tell where things were going. The first three scenes alone were randomly sized pieces from completely different puzzles. A meteorite falls to earth, monks turn it into a sword -- scene. A woman goes to her sports car and gets strangled by a creep in the backseat -- scene. A mysterious figure is motorcycling all over an endless landscape of sand dunes -- scene. Stick with it though, because a bounty of strange treasures awaits. As the plot develops, the pace really picks up in the second act and the film finishes quite strong, with solid fight scenes (e.g., Bill Wallace vs. Tadashi Yamashita) and a climactic sword fight in a shallow river bed.

Mel Novak is certainly the best actor in this cast and he plays a fine villain -- he’s both intense and capable -- but he’s not even the most treacherous jerk on display. That would be Cain, the sadistic one-gloved pimp, played by screenwriter Joseph Randazzo. By pulling double-duty as both the scene setter and the character, Randazzo gives himself some of the most cringe-worthy lines of dialogue in the film, almost all of which involve a misogynist, homophobic, or racial slur. (Because apparently it wasn’t enough to throw a wheelchair-bound nun off a cliff, or terrorize the prostitutes in his employ and keep them under the constant threat of being forcibly shot up with heroin). By any standard, this sleazebag is extra sleazy and deserving of his fate.

Keeping with the theme of strange choices, Yamashita joins the ranks of Bolo Yeung and Chris Ramsey as actors in martial arts b-movies who used cross-dressing as a not-so-subtle disguise. In this particular case, Tadashi attempts to infiltrate the “Pink Poodle” rock club -- with a live performance by an actual band called The Ninja -- to locate Cain as a way to get to Satoko. Tadashi neglects to bring a change of clothes and remains in the dress for a good amount of time after this scene, even fighting off some enemies. Could he have done all of this without dressing as a foxy brunette in a red cocktail dress? We’ll never know.

There’s an air of mystery around this film, and not just because it features a mystical glowing sword. IMDb lists this film twice, with one title stub for 1981 and another for 1985, each with the same director and cast. The 1981 version has no release date and lists LD Video as a distributor. The 1985 release was put out the following year by Trans World Entertainment. If I may put on my librarian’s cardigan for just a moment to discuss information integrity, there could be lots of reasons for this. The main one is bad data; IMDb is somewhat ambiguous about the sources of their information, but it tends to be a combination of “official” data feeds but also site visitors like you and I. A VHS distributed by LD Video is listed on Amazon with a release date of *1991* so we might just chalk it up to an input error and a source/user ignoring or overlooking the existing title stub on IMDb for the 1985 version. I had gotten my hopes up that this film was initially made as a short just four years earlier, but that’s simply not the case. All of this is a long way of saying: trust no one.

The enigmatic fog around the film persists. She’s listed in the credits as “Valley Girl Patient” but I can neither confirm nor deny whether Karen Sheperd actually appears in this movie. Why any filmmaker would cast a world-class martial artist only to have her playing a bit part without any fighting is beyond me, but this is similar to the situation with 1984’s Furious, where Loren Avedon was listed in the cast but was all but absent in the actual film. Four years prior, Yamashita pulled Sheperd into the production of 1981’s The Shinobi Ninja when she was looking for film work, and that may have been the case here as well, but I can only conclude that her scene was left on the cutting room floor. Sad! That’s your cue to start writing your “Karen Sheperd as a martial arts Valley Girl getting evaluated for strep throat” fan fiction.

In putting Yamashita in a dress, leading bad guys on violent motorcycle chases, fighting tons of recyclable enemies, and pairing him with a stereotypical Irish cop simply for the high comedy of it all, this film was trying to portray him as a well-rounded action star who could do a little bit of everything. He doesn’t succeed in every area equally, but it was a fine effort that demonstrated he was every bit as deserving of a lead role as other martial artists of his era.

VERDICT

As is the case with any film that’s difficult to find in a watchable format, you need to put a figure on how much time, money, and energy you’re willing to expend to see it. Sword of Heaven is most certainly something for which you could find a torrent, and that might be the way to go if you can’t find a reasonably priced hard copy (VHS versions run in the $30-$40 range). Here’s what I’ll say: it features some decent villains, a cool sword gimmick, and solid fights towards the back-end. It also has a handful of those nutty, WTF kitchen-sink moments I find myself raving about so often. Worth a watch if you stumble into it.

AVAILABILITY

Hard to find on physical media; VHS or grey market DVD only.

4.5 / 7

Operation Golden Phoenix (1994)

PLOT: A security expert transporting a rare medallion is violently betrayed by his partner and set up to take the fall for the theft of this and other Middle Eastern treasures. Looks pretty dire, but it’s nothing that a clever disguise of a hat and moustache can’t fix.

Director: Jalal Merhi
Writers: J. Stephen Maunder
Cast: Jalal Merhi, Loren Avedon, James Hong, Karen Sheperd, Gary Foo



PLOT THICKENER:
Depending on where your interests lie, Operation Golden Phoenix is either a preparedness exercise conducted in California with special attention given to emergency events like earthquakes and terrorist attacks, or Jalal Merhi’s 1994 directorial debut. In either case, you’re dealing with a potentially disastrous scenario.

Merhi plays Marc Assante, a private security expert charged with escorting a recently unearthed bounty of rare and ancient Middle Eastern artifacts. His partner is Ivan Jones (Avedon), an affable kickboxer with a competitive streak (surprise!) The film opens with the two partners embraced in an intense arm wrestling match before Jones gets a call from Mr. Chang (Hong), a greedy criminal mastermind. Based on the cryptic tone of their conversation, there’s no guesswork about their intentions.

Later that night, Assante and Jones are driving a van full of shiny knick-knacks when they find their first checkpoint blocked off by a group of cars. After mostly failing to ram through it, Assante leaves the vehicle and starts shooting dudes and squinting a lot. A group of fake cops appear on the scene and before Assante is knocked out for resisting arrest, he sees Ivan gunned down. When he regains consciousness, the van has been blown to bits, the treasure is gone, and he’s under arrest.

As Assante spends the next several hours getting grilled by cops about the missing artifacts and beating up other inmates in his holding cell, Mr. Chang and Jones are celebrating their incredible coup. The crown jewel of the haul is a rare medallion which, when combined with its counterpart, shows the way to an even greater stash of loot in Lebanon. It doesn’t take long for a phone call to ruin their high spirits, however. Mr. Chang lambastes his partner in crime for leaving Assante to the cops instead of leaving him for dead. Only seconds after being denied bail, their patsy outmuscled his captors and fled into the crowded and eerily polite Toronto landscape.

Just after he escapes police custody and needs to flee the country, Assante happens to have a girlfriend who works as a wig (and mustache) master at a location theater production company. A little too convenient, but in a career full of bad turtlenecks, ponytails, and banana hammocks, it leads to the silliest look Merhi has ever sported: a gray moustache, a big mop of salt-and-pepper hair, and a fedora. Had he simply rolled with it for the rest of the movie, this could have been a pantheon film. Did I get a screen capture of this amazing get-up? Alas, I did not, for you must experience it for yourself (i.e. I can’t currently do screenshots for VHS titles).

As the principals leave Toronto and the focus switches to the pursuit of treasures and vengeance in Beirut, we begin to understand the purpose of this film: it’s a tourism commercial. Footage of the country's exciting car rallies, ancient landmarks, and bikini-clad beach-goers paints it as a popular destination for world travelers in search of exotic luxury. While it’s an obvious love letter to Merhi’s home country, it's also a giant middle finger to the audience. The story introduces characters of no consequence, Assante behaves in completely illogical ways, flaky double-crosses commence, and the action escalates in frequency, if not quality.

As one might expect from a movie in the Film One catalog, the action is hit or miss depending on who’s involved. The inciting incident where Assante is set up is notable for the heavy usage of slo-mo, squibs, and even a rare and vaunted vansplosion. All good signs. During that same scene, however, the stunt driving is done by a middle-aged man in a baseball cap. Loren Avedon was not that man. This lack of effort is redeemed by a scene later on in the film where Ivan Jones fights off a group of surprisingly well-conditioned archaeologists, one of whom challenges him briefly in a rare shovel fight. The scene ends rather hilariously as a man screams after getting kicked off a high wall, but only falls about three feet to the ground. We get the requisite close-up of his crumpled body anyways.

The climactic fight scene between Avedon and Merhi might actually be the latter’s best screen fight ever. That’s not saying a lot, but Avedon sells his offense admirably and throws some decent kicks as well. The fight is less about the choreography than the environment though; they do battle at a sprawling temple complex in what I believe to be the Great Court of Baalbek which houses some of the best-preserved ruins of the Roman period. Even if the editing isn’t so hot (it isn’t), the shots for this scene are composed really well and it’s rare that we see structures of this size and scale photographed this nicely for a martial arts b-movie. In that sense, it’s unique and legitimately interesting from a visual standpoint.

Following a string of popular lead hero roles, this marks the very first lead villain role for Loren Avedon. Despite not having much to work with on the page, he does a fairly good job with the Ivan Jones character. Perhaps because he lacks the brawny physical stature to play a more menacing bad guy -- Matthias and Bolo come to mind -- Avedon brings conniving and sleazy qualities to the role and they fit the character to a T. The film’s opening arm-wrestling scene sets up the rivalry between Ivan and Jalal, and the former’s reluctance to actually kill his partner despite numerous opportunities suggests competitive advantage more than cold-hearted malice as his initial motivation. His misdeeds from that point only escalate in treachery, so it was a decent character development to watch unfold. Mild, but it was there.

On the flipside, I can only guess that Karen Sheperd just really wanted to go to Beirut for a few weeks of fun in the sun. She’s not given a whole lot to do here and her character, the sister of a princess who owns another medallion, felt like a late addition to the story. She does have a fight near the back-end of the film, so it’s made to feel important, but it has none of the visual impact granted to the Merhi-Avedon battle and it didn’t appear that her opponent was a trained martial artist. Certainly not one of her better roles.

The film’s shaky ambitions on “epic-ness” is best encapsulated by the trailer and its uniquely awful voice-over. I won’t embed it here but I’d invite you to check it out on YouTube and behold the incredible amounts of random SAT words and cliches apparently strung together during the throes of a peyote binge. If, by some unholy miracle, the nonsensical priest from For Hire and the guy who wrote this voice-over copy met and collaborated, the output would tear a wormhole in the cosmic fabric of this world that would consume and destroy all meaning in the English language. Books would burst into flames. People would be forced to communicate through a crude Morse code of grunts and drool. It’d be worse than Sarah Palin and George W. Bush trying to answer Google interview questions.

VERDICT:
Some things in life are consistently obvious. The sky is blue, water is wet, and Jalal Merhi stars in vanity projects and surrounds himself with more talented actors and martial artists. As evidenced by his Lebanese descent and the choice to shoot a good portion of the film in Beirut, Operation Golden Phoenix was obviously a labor of love. To Merhi’s credit, the footage of his homeland is composed fairly well. Dramatically, he isn’t completely atrocious here -- though he comes pretty close -- and the film as a whole is much more ambitious than his usual work. Overall though, it struggles to find any real rhythm or momentum, and the action isn’t done well enough to elevate it above below-average action film fodder. For Merhi, Avedon, and Sheperd completists only.

AVAILABILITY:
At this time, VHS only. And for you serious film freaks out there, Laserdisc.

3 / 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

Mission of Justice (1992)

PLOT: A down-on-his-luck cop named Kurt Harris infiltrates a secretive organization dedicated to peace, order, and the election of a six-foot tall Amazonian mayoral candidate. What he discovers will possibly be incriminating but definitely be on VHS tape.

Director: Steve Barnett
Writers: George Saunders, John Bryant Hedberg
Cast: Jeff Wincott, Karen Sheperd, Brigitte Nielsen, Matthias Hues, James Lew, Billy Williams, Tony Burton



PLOT THICKENER:
It’s not often that I make personal disclosures in this space, but I’ll start off with one here: I went nearly three decades without watching a Jeff Wincott film. I’ll pause now for the collective gasp and screams of “FRAUD!”

He was never an actor I purposely avoided (*cough* Lorenzo Lamas) but since I was elbow-deep in Lundgren and Van Damme films during my prime direct-to-video years, Wincott never crept onto my cinematic radar. But much like other important milestones like sex, ice skating, and rigging live bait, the longer you go without watching a Jeff Wincott film, the harder it becomes to really start. So I pegged his 1992 film Mission of Justice as my jumping-off point.

Police officer Kurt Harris (Wincott) is a cop with a total respect for the rule of law to match his propensity for using whatever force is necessary to bring criminals down. When an abusive informant kills his girlfriend after being released by the department’s sergeant, Harris wigs out on his dickhead superior and earns a two-month suspension after punching him out. His partner, Lynne Steel (Sheperd) wants to see cooler heads prevail but Harris’s belief in the system is all but destroyed, remarking that as cops, they’re “supposed to stop the bad guys, not process them.”

To blow off some steam, Harris visits his old friend and boxing trainer and champion Cedric Williams (Burton) at his gym. A veteran of all six Rocky films, Tony Burton has carved out a nice career for himself by getting typecast, which is really not all that unusual considering he was an actual boxer. Harris and Cedric pump some iron and work out together, but the latter’s strange mood isn’t lost on Harris. Although he refuses to discuss the issue with his friend, Cedric is piping mad because a local mayoral candidate named Dr. Rachel Larkin (Nielsen) has been using his name and image to promote her campaign without his permission.

Dr. Larkin is not only a statuesque blond capable of ripping apart lobster tails with her bare hands, but also a philanthropist and public safety hardliner. Through her organization, the Mission of Justice, she’s recruited a task force of fighting experts dubbed the Peacemakers to supplement the municipal law enforcement in their crime-fighting. Why would Cedric ever consider aligning himself against such a virtuous cause? His terminated association with the Mission of Justice points the way.

After Harris leaves for the evening, Dr. Larkin and her head goons, Akiro (Lew) and Titus (Hues) pay Cedric an unexpected visit. At first, she tries simple persuasive language to bring Cedric back into the fold at the MoJ. When that doesn’t work, Cedric and her brother, Titus, have an impromptu fight in the ring which the latter wins handily through established Western boxing techniques like elbows, cheapshots, and breaking the opponent’s hands. After Cedric’s continued dogged resistance to Larkin, everyone decides to depart amicably without further conflict. That is to say, Larkin knifes him to death.

Harris is devastated when he discovers the news about his friend. After the chaos at the crime scene dissipates, he breaks into the gym and discovers little left other than a single flower buried in the sand of a slashed heavy bag. He’s not alone, however. Lynne figured he might come snooping around the crime scene, so she comforts her friend and partner by sharing the grisly details of Cedric’s death, driving Harris to sob and probably snot and drool all over himself.

Later at home, he makes a critical connection the way most of us render logical conclusions: while watching an old spaghetti Western on TV, drunk as shit. A Larkin campaign commercial airs and the decorative bud on her lapel suggests a reasonable facsimile of the flower he found at the gym. Instead of sharing his hunch with his fellow officers, he pursues it at the source by enlisting in the Mission of Justice the very next day.

After going through a brutal combative gauntlet to earn his stripes (a pinky ring and a free t-shirt), Harris joins a regular patrol of Peacemakers to keep the streets safe. His search for the truth about the organization continues through election day, where the conflict comes to a glass-shattering, knife-pulling, hand-breaking head.

If the quality of a film’s action were to be described in terms of 8-bit video games instead of superlatives, Mission of Justice would have been Rampage (pretty good) if not for two terrific set pieces that elevate it to Mega Man 3 (really good). The first, in which Wincott’s character is put through a gauntlet against dozens of Peacemakers to prove his worth, manages to be both well-choreographed and visually striking. Harris and the trainees are all equipped with fighting sticks and fight choreographer Jeff Pruitt gives the various techniques room to breathe without sacrificing any of the visceral impact. The mat in the corridor is a bright red, which contrasts nicely with the trail of black-clad fighters in various states of disrepair that Harris leaves in his wake. Even more impressive? According to an interview with Stack of Dimes, Wincott had no prior experience with fighting sticks or the many techniques endemic to eskrima and other weapon-based martial arts like it. He learned 45 minutes before the scene was shot. The other main course might not have the same visual sting as the gauntlet scene, but still manages to deliver the fun. I’ll avoid spoiling too much, but it includes action movie tropes like stunt-falls and wire-work, and creative choices in weaponry, like chainsaws and light tubes.

Director Steve Barnett pulls decent performances out of his actors and weaves the action and mystery elements into a tight, well-paced 84 minutes. When a film is bookended by characters getting smashed through windows, I have a hard time finding faults. I was a little disappointed to learn that screenwriter George Saunders was not the same George Saunders who writes awesome and hilarious short story collections, but it wouldn’t be fair to use that as a mark against the film. One oddity worth mentioning is that in addition to checking the financial records of its applicants, the Mission of Justice also used something called a “bio-feedback” machine on them. I like thinly-veiled jabs at Scientology as much as the next guy, but I thought the cultish elements in the screenplay could have been better explored.

If you’ve ever longed to see Matthias Hues dressed in a white turtleneck under a sportscoat, or wanted to see him scream “NOW I’M CHAMPION OF THE WORLD!” while wearing a massive championship belt under said sportscoat, this movie is the answer to your totally fucking random Matthias Hues fantasies. As he does so often, Hues brings a screen presence befitting of a main villain despite being cast as a supporting character. His blond locks and towering stature make him a natural choice to play the brother of Brigitte Nielsen’s character in this movie ... or any movie really.

VERDICT:
I had no pre-conceived notions about what type of martial artist Jeff Wincott would be, so the biggest element of his skill-set that surprised me was his acting. This guy has legitimate chops. I’m not sure where Mission of Justice ranks in his filmography, but I was really impressed with the overall effort and the roster of talent. Highly recommended for Wincott virgins and loyalists alike.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS or Region 2 DVD.

6 / 7

Terminator Woman (1993)

PLOT:
Two American cops take on a ruthless and wealthy industrialist. Surprise -- he’s not an old white British dude! And he’s not played by James Hong. He deals in everything from gun running to white slavery and he’s looking for a hidden stash of gold and will stop at nothing to find it. Will the cops stop at nothing to stop him from stopping at nothing?

Director: Michel Qissi
Writers: Jeannette Aragonoff Qissi, John S. Soet
Cast: Jerry Trimble, Karen Sheperd, Michel Qissi, Ashley Hayden, Ted Le Plat, Siphiwe Mlangeni

PLOT THICKENER:
While it’s fairly common for martial arts directors to step in front of the camera in minor acting roles, it’s somewhat rare for martial arts actors to helm productions from the director’s chair. With a bevy of directorial efforts between them, Hong Kong veterans like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung are obvious exceptions. However, output from figures on the American martial arts scene runs painfully thin, like a boring soup or Shawn Bradley’s entire body.

Steven Seagal threw his hat in the directorial ring with 1994’s environmental action picture On Deadly Ground. Jean Claude Van-Damme stepped on Seagal’s hat in 1996 with the tournament-style snoozer, The Quest. Preceding and trumping the shit out of both these efforts was Michel Qissi’s 1993 film, Terminator Woman. Famous for his role as Tong Po in the first two Kickboxer films, Qissi not only directed, edited, and performed in the film, but also choreographed its many fight scenes. His wife at the time also co-wrote and co-produced it. Will the married duo’s level of involvement be a boon to the film or the Qissi of death? Sorry -- couldn’t resist.

Qissi plays Alex Gatelee, a wealthy industrialist based in South Africa. Similar to Art Vandelay of Vandelay Industries, Gatelee is an importer-exporter cloaked in mystery. Unlike Vandelay, Gatelee is not the product of George Constanza’s incessant lying, but is instead a ruthless motherfucker with a giant scar across his face. He throws his workers out of windows for weak apologies and tears out their mullets for baseless lies. When not maiming the help, Gatelee is searching for gold hidden somewhere along the South African coast, and the only person who knows its location is a material witness recently escorted back to the country by two American detectives.

In a non-traditional pairing that turns the buddy cop formula on its ear, Jerry Trimble plays a sassy blonde cop named Julie and Karen Sheperd plays her macho partner Jay Handlin. Actually, I think Sheperd plays Julie; she just has a butch haircut. Beyond their partnership, these two have a martial arts rivalry marked by underpinnings of sexual tension what with their incredible fighting prowess, frequent flirting, and interlocking genitalia. While Jay’s feelings are made clear by behavior like leering at Julie’s ass and booking a single hotel room with only one bed during their stay, Julie makes it known that she finds Jay to be both “unoriginal” and “sexually amoral.” They have a reasonable amount of chemistry and their dynamic is a nice change of pace from the old/young, gruff/fast-talking, black/white/Asian/Bavarian combinations we’re used to seeing in action films. So it’s unfortunate Qissi decided to keep their characters separated for the majority of the film.

That’s not to say Trimble and Sheperd don’t get a decent amount of screen time together. It’s just not enough to make their relationship the strong dramatic element it should have been. They have an early tandem action scene while escorting the witness in which they’re run off the road by Gatelee’s thugs, and then decide to leave the car to flee on foot. Why? Because you can’t have Trimble and Sheperd kicking ass in hand-to-hand combat if they’re stuck in a car chase! While Trimble’s kicking is always fun to watch, the highlight of this early skirmish is Sheperd’s mid-air double-scrotum kick, killing two birds with one stone. Scrotum birds.

After the two are forcibly separated, Jay teams with a local South African boy named Charlie (Mlangeni) to track down Gatelee and his missing partner. Charlie acts as Jay’s guide and logistical maestro and is even a bit of a smart-ass at times, which allows for some engaging back-and-forth between the pair. To Mlangeni’s credit, Charlie doesn’t approach Short-Round levels of annoyance and brings out a charismatic aspect of Trimble rarely seen. Best of all, Charlie throws some choice fist pumps during a dirtbike chase scene that sees Jay kicking thugs off moving vehicles and leading them into a dangerously busy retail parking lot.

Julie spends most of the second act hitting enemies in various vital regions, but mostly in the balls. One of the all-time great onscreen female fighters, Sheperd is joy to watch in action, in great part because of her incredible skill, but also because of her wardrobe. The filmmakers were somehow able to convince her into wearing an embroidered top with a built-in push-up bra for 80% of the movie, and her cleavage isn’t so much distracting as it is violently confrontational. Thankfully, the writers worked in a nightclub scene to explain away her unique choice in attire. Unfortunately, this also paved the way for Sheperd to perform the most hideous dance moves this side of Elaine Benes. Full body dry-heave indeed.

While the film’s misfires are numerous, the first worth mentioning is the cover art. It depicts a cold and unforgiving stare in the background with Julie’s character in a leather jacket and tights doing a split in mid-air while handling a bow-staff and screaming her face off. On first glance, it looks like she’s also wearing either heavy make-up or a mask over her eyes. All of this looks kinda cool. But upon closer inspection, it looks like the artist lost all concept of perspective when illustrating the character’s eyes, because they’re halfway down her head and bulging out of the sockets. She looks like Brian Peppers if he had ample cleavage and an Indigo Girls haircut.

Second: this film has a ton of flowing blonde mullets, but not one of them belongs to Jerry Trimble. Fail.

As lead villain, Qissi is quite menacing as Gatelee. He has a good look and does some truly dickish things to enhance the villainy of his character. After the aforementioned mullet-ripping, he even hands the tuft of hair to another henchman, as if to say: “Please take this hair away, it’s greasy like a KFC drumstick.” All of this serves as an effective counterweight to Gatelee’s horrendous fashion sense. When he’s not wearing silk shirts covered in floating heads, he’s wearing burgundy Cosby sweaters. It’s 1993, so this misstep is somewhat forgivable.

As a director, he’s a bit hit and miss. The action scenes are edited well for the most part, but some sound effects were misplaced and in certain cases, entirely absent. He also had a few curious camera placements, including a blatant upskirt shot of a supporting female character that I’m not going to complain much about. A little weird, though. There’s solid stunt work throughout the film and Trimble and Sheperd are two of the better onscreen fighters that one could have casted. While isolating their characters prevents them from building upon a fairly engaging chemistry, it also helps to showcase each of their unique fighting talents. Qissi also employs a good variety of fighting locations -- caves, narrow hallways, and a speedboat among them -- and while each environment might be underutilized with respect to the choreography, it’s nice to see something other than alleys and warehouses as backdrops.

VERDICT:
Terminator Woman is a slightly above-average B-movie action film. Sheperd and Trimble are both in good form as the leads and any completists will want to check this out. As a first effort, Qissi’s direction is decent despite some miscues, none of which sink the film in any meaningful way. To his credit, he keeps the downtime to a minimum and also finds a way to work in some ‘splosions and a grisly stalactite death scene. Or stalagmite. I always get those confused.

AVAILABILITY:
While intenders will find VHS is the easiest bet, those with all-region players might luck themselves into a used DVD via EBay.

5 / 7