Superfights (1995)

PLOT: After the local news media airs footage of his fight with a group of thugs, a young martial arts enthusiast uses his new fame to join Super Fights, a popular fighting organization. What a self-serving dick.

Director: Siu-Hung Leung
Writer: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Brandon Gaines, Keith Vitali, Kelly Gallant, Chuck Jeffreys, Cliff Lenderman, Patrick Lung-Kong, Brian Ruth, Feihong Yu, Jim Steele, Rob Van Dam



PLOT THICKENER: 
In terms of future careers, kids have a tendency to dream big. Many aspire to grow up and enter practical fields like medicine or education, while others dream of odd or completely unrealistic jobs: penguin milker or mermaid supermodel. The protagonist in 1995's Superfights falls into the latter group. Probably with a much louder thud than the other kids, because he’s roughly 20 years old.

By day, young Jack Cody (Gaines) works a boring job as a clerk in a sporting goods warehouse.  By night, he’s a lifelong fan of a fighting organization called Super Fights. The competition could best be described as the love child conceived during a drunken night of fun between WMAC Masters and pro wrestling. The fighters have colorful costumes and unique personalities. The live events feature martial arts battles between heroes and villains in front of packed crowds. Jack is so enthralled with the sport that he spends the majority of his work hours going through training drills with an elaborate system of pulleys and mannequins. This is not so unusual. When I worked at American Apparel, I rigged up a similar system to simulate heated confrontations with people in overpriced v-neck shirts who had nothing interesting to say.

During a contemplative night drive, Jack notices a girl being mugged at an outdoor ATM and makes the save. Sally Wong (Yu) is only the latest in a long line of young women who failed to avoid using the cash machine at night in a poorly lit area. (They're called "best practices" for a reason, Sally). The resulting media blitz piques the interest of Super Fights president Robert Sawyer (Vitali) and he sees dollar signs. Not because he’s on LSD, but because the young media hero represents a great business opportunity.

Sawyer extends Jack a lucrative offer -- an American flag-themed costume and a roomy townhouse -- and the one-time superfan joins the ranks of his idols as a competitor. He finds himself brushing shoulders with guys like No Mercy Budokai (Lenderman) and Dark Cloud (Jeffreys) in the locker room and the gym. He hones his skills in a high-tech training center under the tutelage of Sawyer's right-hand lady, Angel (Gallant), herself an active Superfighter. Throughout the film, you can cut the sexual tension between Jack and Angel with a knife, because the sexual tension is room temperature and easily spreadable on bread. Kelly Gallant side-boob has that effect on things.

To balance out the friskiness of this mentor-student relationship, Jack occasionally trains with Sally's grandfather (Lung-Kong). A Tai Chi master, Grandpa Wong doesn't think much of Jack's fighting skills, his new gig as a famous fighter, or even his townhouse. The elder is right to be suspicious because things in the world of Super Fights are not as they appear. The fighting roster is encouraged to gargle down an odd vitamin cocktail and selected fighters regularly cruise around in a white van and leave a trail of destroyed restaurants and crippled drug dealers in their wake. What are they up to? Why doesn't Jack close the deal with Angel or Sally? Why did the filmmakers dress up Chuck Jeffreys like a Jamaican Jack Sparrow?

As stated in the past, the real sweet spot for American DTV martial arts movies is that holy intersection of a zany premise, good fight sequences, and hilariously bad acting. The latter element here, while hammy, isn't consistently awful enough to be funny, but the premise, characters, and fantastic fight sequences in Superfights make this a delicious slice of action cheese. In his American directorial debut, Siu-Hung Leung took a bit of a risk by relying on a first-time actor in Brandon Gaines to carry the film, but Gaines hits most of his character’s notes to perfection. He's enthusiastic to the point of obnoxiousness and naive to the point of stupidity, which makes the journey into his passion's sleazy underbelly all the more compelling. Or ridiculous.

Given his easygoing demeanor and a serious lack of vocal gravel, one could argue that Keith Vitali was a poor casting choice for the Robert Sawyer character. However, I’d make the case that these traits, in some ways, enhance his Sawyer’s veneer of warmth and generosity. Such a personality guise made Gaines’ buy-in all the more plausible. Furthermore, his fight scene at the back-end of the film is one of the better scenes you're likely to find in Stateside martial arts output. It’s shot competently, the choreographers make good use of the physical environment, and the performers move with that elusive mix of speed and fluidity.

The film’s appropriately titled theme song, “Superfighter” is an inventive exercise in lyricism. Most action film songs would be content to pair thematically relevant cliches with a few killer guitar licks. Instead, the song “Superfighter” makes direct references to training techniques, the deceptions at the story’s center, and even specific character names. It is both endearing in its absurdity and completely awesome in its literalism. Yes, of course you can find it on YouTube with subtitles.

 

VERDICT:
For fans of both the martial arts genre and offbeat action, Superfights represents the colored, overlapping portion of the Venn Diagram. There are certainly better uses of your time than creating logical visualizations of related film genre concepts, but I just spent three hours writing a rundown of a chopsocky/wrestling movie. I’m not here to judge. If you like your plots zany, your characters bizarre, and your martial arts fast and technically proficient, Superfights fills all three of your needs. Also, side-boob.

6.5 / 7

TC 2000 (1993)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.5 / 7

Talons of the Eagle (1992)

PLOT: Two cops -- one from Canada, the other from New York -- train in the specialized martial art of Eagle Claw in order to enter a fighting tournament organized by Mr. Li, a Toronto criminal overlord. As they penetrate Li’s inner circle, they must gather evidence, avoid suspicion, and hook up with as many foxy ladies as Li throws at them.

Director: Michael Kennedy
Writer: J. Stephen Maunder
Cast: Billy Blanks, Jalal Merhi, James Hong, Priscilla Barnes, Matthias Hues, Eric Lee, Harry Mok, Kelly Gallant, Qingfu Pan 










PLOT THICKENER:
What do you get when you add 10% worth of martial-arts actors, 10% of James Hong, 20% of Priscilla Barnes, and 70% of blue lighting gels? You get 1992’s Talons of the Eagle. And yes, I realize the aforementioned percentages add up to 110%. But you’ve failed to account for the fact that Billy Blanks always gives 130% and Jalal Merhi only gives about 80% and Canada has the metric system. I’m no math major, but I’m pretty sure you’re not either, so let’s move on.

In brandishing a golden cavalcade of b-movie martial-artists -- Billy Blanks, Harry Mok, Eric Lee, Jalal Merhi, Kelly Gallant, and Matthias Hues -- Talons of the Eagle is something of a dream cast of action talent. Throw in character actors James Hong and Priscilla Barnes, some gratuitous nudity, a silly early 90s score, and you have what should have been an action trash classic. Unfortunately, the elements of the film don’t quite coalesce the way they should.

FoBL favorite Billy Blanks stars as Tyler Wilson, a tough NYC narcotics cop. His counterpart across the border is Michael Reed, played by ponytailed former jeweler Jalal Merhi. Within the first five minutes of the film, each of them manages to botch drug stings in riveting fashion, except that Reed’s fuck-up leads to DEA cops getting killed. Tyler is sent to Toronto by his superiors to partner with Reed and infiltrate the gang held responsible.

The easiest route for access is a martial-arts tournament put on by the gang’s leader, Mr. Li (Hong). But before entering the tournament, they need better training, so they seek out an Eagle Claw academy. Real-life asskicker Qingfu Pan, who once trained Hong Kong police cadets in fighting techniques, plays the school’s master. His acting doesn’t quite leapfrog Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, but he’s here for his fighting widsom and his grizzled knuckles tell the story: he’s either punched a lot of people or has a gnarly bacterial infection.

After they do some fancy tournament fighting and break up an attempt on Li’s life, Tyler and Reed catch the gang-leader’s eye and he brings them into the fold as muscle. The bossman’s main lady, Cassandra (Barnes) acts as their guide but Li’s existing henchmen Khan (Hues) and Niko (Mok) are a little perturbed by the new help, with the former being particularly suspicious. The rest of the film follows Tyler and Reed trying to collect evidence under the gang’s watchful eye while carrying out Li’s orders and performing poorly-acted martial artist love scenes with female cast members.

As Mr. Li, James Hong is mostly excellent. The businessman-as-evildoer is nothing new in this genre, but Hong’s performance walks the line between sleaze and sophistication and it acts as a cohesive superglue that prevents an otherwise poorly made film from completely falling apart. He gets to show a fair amount of range too: he’s suave, he jokes with glee, he flies off the handle, fires off glocks, and looks mad cool while ripping through about seven packs of Pall Malls in the 97-minute runtime. Hong can and does act circles around everyone else in his scenes, but he also plays off them well enough to make their stiffness believable in the context of an aged criminal ordering around the hired muscle. Though for all his infinite criminal wisdom, he should have known better than to light a fucking cigarette in a tiny storage room full of C4 explosives.

 

While lacking speed and creativity, the fighting sequences during the climax still win points on settings and death blows. In typical martial-arts film fashion, characters pair off for individual battles which, for obvious reasons, vary wildly in quality. With Master Pan and company rushing in for the assist, we get a decent little weapons battle between Pan and Eric Lee. It’s rare you get an on-screen fight between such decorated real-life fighters, so it’s a bit of a bummer that the fight is short, slow, and like most of the fights, poorly shot and edited. Pan’s student, played by Kelly Gallant, gets an brief and boring fight that underscores how poorly utilized she was in the film.

Tyler and Niko have a pretty good scuffle in a restaurant kitchen with Niko bringing out his nifty giant-fucking-knife technique, which Tyler tries to counter with every piece of kitchenware he can find, up to and including the very same mesh strainer my wife has been asking for since last Christmas. It is not customary to see any man fighting someone off with a mesh strainer, nevermind a black-belt and fitness-craze inventor. Perhaps worse, he actually throws fistfuls of salad to fend off his attacker. Nay, TOSSES SALAD.

The real crown jewel of the fights is a battle between Blanks and Hues in a parking garage. Shit starts off with Hues walking into frame with an oil barrel raised over his head screaming like a maniac and we know from the jump that it’s on like Donkey Kong. Because of the barrel, see? Both guys are shirtless and bathed in the omnipresent blue light that plagues 90% of the film and all of this would be cheesy enough were it not for the delicious saxophone music that accompanies the throwdown.

During all of this, Reed is fighting Mr. Li on a roof. Keep in mind that Hong was on the wrong side of 60 at this point in his career and was using a folding fan as a weapon. How is it then plausible that a cop and martial-arts master in his physical prime needs more than 60 seconds to beat an elderly businessman using eight ounces of bamboo and paper to fight? Errrrrr?

While dramatic performers are often underutilized in films like this, it’s not always the case that they’re humiliated for their efforts. Not only is Priscilla Barnes subjected to an attempted rape scene, but she’s also forced to act alongside Jalal Merhi while he’s adorned in a ghastly Jockey banana hammock. And this is before they have random shower sex in which Merhi kisses her as if he were eating mashed potatoes with his hands tied behind his back. So not only does Barnes now have “Three’s Company replacement cast member” on her resume, but also “poorly acted martial artist shower sex.” She really does deserve better.

VERDICT:
You expect films like this to be poorly produced but there’s always a potential for choice moments that somehow elevate it above average fare. They’re few and far between in Talons of the Eagle. Outside of some lines from Hong, there’s very little quotable dialogue and Merhi and Blanks make a poor pair and their dynamic isn’t conflictual enough to be interesting. Worst of all, director Michael Kennedy and his editing team do a huge disservice to the fighting talent because the hand-to-hand action didn’t look so hot. The constant blue lighting was also a huge and distracting negative. While you get a decent villain performance from James Hong, this is probably only for Blanks completists.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, Netflix, bargain bins.

3.5 / 7