Fight to Win (1987)

PLOT: After a humiliating loss, an arrogant fighter must relearn his craft from a new teacher who has a romantic past with their common enemy. It wasn’t very serious though -- they only got to second base before she called it off.

Director: Leo Fong
Writers: James Belmessieri, George Chung
Cast: George Chung, Cynthia Rothrock, Chuck Jeffreys, Richard Norton, Juan Chapa, Hidy Ochai, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, Ronnie Lott

PLOT THICKENER

The early members of the West Coast Demo Team included founder Ernie Reyes Sr., Ernies Reyes Jr., Margie Betke, Cynthia Rothrock, Tom Callos, Scott Coker, Belinda Davis, Gary Nakahama, Dayton Pang, George Chung, and Soo Gin Lee. We can’t blame you if you don’t recognize more than a couple of those names -- few went into the film industry at all -- and no one would dispute that Cynthia Rothrock is the most prolific among them. Yet 1993’s kid-friendly Surf Ninjas, which featured the most involvement from the former demonstration teammates, didn’t have Rothrock at all. Who, then, of her West Coast Demo brethren, did the Blonde Fury actually work with in film? If you guessed George Chung, give yourself a gold star. It’s shiny and gluten-free, though I wouldn’t recommend eating it.

About a year before Leo Fong cut a car-roof-shaped hole into our collective hearts in Low Blow, he directed Rothrock’s brief appearance in her first film, 24 Hours to Midnight. Not long afterwards, she would trek overseas to Hong Kong for Yes, Madam! and another trio of films on her way to becoming a bonafide action star. Fast-forward to 1987, where Fong brought her back into the fold in a supporting role. This time, however, she’d be joined by West Coast Demo teammate George Chung, her 24 Hours… co-star Juan Chapa, and martial arts superfriends like Chuck Jeffreys and her Magic Crystal co-star, Richard Norton. Given her upward trajectory at that time, it’s more than a bit puzzling to see her playing second fiddle to Chung in his first film role. I’m going to go out on a limb and call it a friendly favor. Or maybe she needed beer money.

Ryan Kim (Chung) is a cocky but skilled martial artist who helps out at his master’s dojo by occasionally teaching teenaged Valley Girls private lessons in self-defense while his pal, Jerry (Chapa) teaches youth classes. We find him fending off the angry, burly brother of his latest trainees before he meets with a Harvard archaeology professor who shows up to facilitate the requisite plot exposition. It turns out that Ryan inherited one of three priceless statues that were awarded to the winners of a martial arts tournament arranged by an eccentric art collector years ago. Ryan’s Sensei (Ochai) owns another and an Australian fighter named Armstrong (Norton) owns the third. The professor believes they have mystical properties and encourages Ryan to consider donating them them to a museum, noting, “when you do nice things, nice things come back to you.” Of course, Ryan’s not hearing that shit.

Following a successful team exhibition, Ryan and Sensei are confronted in the parking lot by Armstrong himself. He proposes a fight between Ryan and his top student -- Tankston, played by Bill “Superfoot” Wallace -- with each man’s statue on the line. After Sensei has a health scare and Ryan fails to adequately train himself, Sensei calls in a favor to Lauren (Rothrock) to become his primary teacher. As the only fighter to vanquish Tankston and someone who knows Armstrong from a previously failed relationship, she’s uniquely qualified to push Ryan to the next level. What follows is a phased tug-of-war for possession of all three priceless artifacts. Ryan experiences a crisis of self-confidence. Frequent ball-busting from his friends Jerry and Michael (Jeffreys) doesn’t help, and he and Lauren bicker like teenagers. And then San Francisco 49ers defensive back Ronnie Lott shows up because 1980s action movie reasons.

Given that this was an obscure and narrowly distributed film, critical coverage is pretty thin. Our pal the Direct to Video Connoisseur was entertained by its “really good 80s bad action” but I couldn’t find another standalone review out there that gave it a thorough look. Opinion from the Letterboxd crowd is decidedly average, which is peaches and cream compared to the savaging it’s received from the desolate wasteland that is the Amazon User Review-verse. Perhaps the most disparaging among them -- claiming “there is nothing left in this movie that will cause memory retention upon any accidental viewing” -- was written by the film’s own screenwriter, James Belmessieri! Apparently, the fact that most of his re-write -- from the expository dialogue to his “story development scenes” and “thoughtfully developed characters” -- didn’t end up on the screen left him with sour feelings. Uh, did James know he was supposed to be writing a chopsocky movie and not a historical drama? We want fight scenes, some quotable lines, a few montages with an upbeat rock or synth track, and a visible boom mic or two. So, if this movie didn’t resemble the one Belmessieri wrote, that might be for the best. (The boom mics were definitely visible).

The humor in the film -- much like the fight scenes -- prove to be rather hit and miss. Can any 80s action film resist the low-hanging fruit of the “we’ve got company!” line? This one certainly didn’t. This is somehow more surprising than the protagonist’s obsession with the fact that a woman -- yes, a woman with different hormones and a few different body parts! -- is trying to train him in the martial arts. (I’m not sure whether to give or deduct points for the movie limiting itself to just one menstruation joke). Didn’t homeboy watch Come Drink with Me?! It gets worse. In the film’s climax, some of our supporting heroes pretend to be aloof but well-dressed homosexuals in order to fool Armstrong’s guards about their intentions on his sprawling property. You consider all of these shallow jabs intended to be humor alongside its 1987 born-on date -- not exactly the most progressive era for identity politics or equal treatment -- and somehow all of this stuff seems typical, if not forgivable. On the other hand, the humor that works really well can be found in the heroic group’s banter, some of it ball-busting, some of it self-deprecating. Sensei’s confusion over American slang (“What is dicknose?”) is reasonably funny. The trope of Ryan repeatedly getting hit in the nose by his enemies is amusing, if a little overused. And the dynamic between Ryan and Lauren is also engaging, because she believably (and consistently) shows him up or puts him in his place.

Without giving too much away, the last 20 minutes of the film come out of left field. It rapidly morphs from a whimsical story about discarding one’s ego and opening oneself to learning, to a violent men-on-a-mission home invasion set-piece with fatal consequences. I frankly never saw the climax taking this form based on the story’s trajectory. It was as if the filmmakers stumbled upon a pile of cash and free guns during the final weekend of shooting and decided to throw everything at the wall in a mad dash to the finish. A lot of people are going to be more confused at my mention of Ronnie Lott than this plot derailing, but I assure you it makes total sense. (Chung worked with the 49ers during the 1990s and put Lott in his other film, Hawkeye, aka Karate Cops).

VERDICT

While I won’t sit here with a straight face and try to sell you on Fight to Win as an above-average fight film, I will say that it entertained me more than other films with more production sheen but less of an inclination to cut loose and get silly. All too often, American chopsocky films try to play things serious and end up looking ridiculous for it (there’s value in this approach too). Humor often doesn’t work in action films when it’s forced, but a lot of the quips here arise from the ball-busting banter between real-life pals. That sense of enjoyment translates on screen and no amount of visible boom mics or awkward insert scenes can undermine it. Ready-made for fans of Chuck Jeffreys and the original members of the West Coast Demo Team ... or NFL Hall of Famer, Ronnie Lott.

AVAILABILITY

Try your luck on YouTube or go with the tried and true method of hoarding VHS copies off eBay. Tough to find.

3 / 7

Karate Cops (1988)

PLOT: Two Las Vegas cops -- one a straight-laced teetotaler, the other a rule-breaking redneck -- are assigned to solve a gang murder. Troy Donahue plays the mayor… Ronnie Lott makes a cameo... it was released in 1988. Um, I think that’s about it.

Director: George Chung
Writer: George Chung
Cast: George Chung, Chuck Jeffreys, Stan Wertlieb, Hidy Ochiai, Troy Donahue, Elizabeth Frieje







PLOT THICKENER
Take a good, long look at the VHS cover for Karate Cops, or as it was known in Spain, LAS VEGAS, 2 SUPERPOLICIAS (2 SUPERCOPS for you gringos). Not too long, though! The 1988 film’s original title of Hawkeye -- a titular nod to the character played by George Chung -- didn’t provide an adequate amount of deference to the character played by Chuck Jeffreys, so they went with something more encompassing and less likely to be confused for a member of Marvel’s Avengers. A lot of folks have noted that Chuck Jeffreys’s cadence and line delivery bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Eddie Murphy. No one would confuse the two in a visual comparison though. So who exactly did the Spanish distributors think they were fooling with this video cover? Perhaps the better question is: was the cover artist a racist prick who thought all black males in the 1980s all looked the same? Perhaps the best question is: was this movie any good and was there any nudity? In no particular order, maybe and perhaps.

George Chung plays Alex “Hawk” Hawkamoto, a renegade cop, former non-baseball Texas Ranger, and burgeoning black belt in Las Vegas. After a botched negotiation with a group of bank robbers in which Hawk punches a hostage in order to knock out the captor behind him and then leads a violent shoot-out, his superiors and the mayor (Donahue) are in an uproar. In order to put him back in line, they pair him with Charles Wilson (Jeffreys), who just happens to be the city’s most decorated cop. Eager to create a foundation for a lasting friendship, Hawk makes a horribly racist joke and the pair trades punches. INSTANT BUDS!

The reluctant partners have plenty in common: they have girlfriends, they’re cops, and they’re martial artists who enjoy jogging. The reluctant partners are so different: Wilson doesn’t drink, Hawk hates sushi, Wilson abstains from eating red meat. However, they’re united in the mission to solve the murder of a shady middle-man who fell into some bad company. Was he snuffed out by gang leader Sakura (Ochiai)? Was he set up by mob boss Tony (Wertlieb)? What happens to stolen drug money after the police take custody of it and take their requisite 20% skim?

This is probably the greatest film in the history of cinema that uses Comic Sans font during an opening credit sequence shot on VHS. The first 30 minutes of the film contains a botched drug deal, our hero taking a black belt test to honor his YMCA instructor, a bank heist by a femme fatale and incognito Ronnie Lott, expensive vase shooting, racist jokes that would make Don Rickles blush, and a random hostage punching (by the hero). Amazing stuff, but perhaps this pace was unsustainable. Maybe Chung ran out of ideas. Maybe my expectations for “lost” genre gems are unrealistic following the renaissance brought about by movies like Miami Connection. Whatever the reason, the film grinds to a halt as the reluctant partners then attempt to detangle the loose threads of a half-baked police procedural plot. I say “attempt” because I’m still not sure what happened or why characters were doing what they were doing. I do know, however, that the main characters didn’t do nearly enough of what they should have been doing: fighting.

Jeffreys and Chung get to show their action chops in a few isolated scenes, but they’re few and far between. A shoot-out on the Las Vegas strip feels like too little, too late. There’s not really any stand-out stunt work of which to speak, though some of the gun-play is marked by healthy squib usage. I came away feeling really underwhelmed by the action in this action movie, and part of the blame lies with Chung as a director, and Frank Harris as the director of photography. The over-emphasis on comedic and dramatic elements may have been the byproduct of Chung having too many production roles, a lack of willing stunt people, or even Chung using this film as a showcase for his acting skills instead of his action skills. However, what action is on the screen doesn’t flow that well and looks washed out, with poor composition from shot to shot. Some may recall that Harris collaborated with Leo Fong on at least two drab action films in the mid-1980s, and went on to squander a stacked cast for the post-apocalyptic Aftershock (1990). Lo and behold, Fong is an executive producer on this very feature! I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here other than Harris and Fong working together screams “bad juju!” like that creepy antique doll whose eyes follow you around the vintage store when you’re digging for Al Green vinyl.

There are very few actors featured on this site who are as decorated in the world of real-life as George Chung. He was a founding member of the vaunted West Coast Demo Team. He’s a five-time world karate champion. He earned a Super Bowl ring as a martial arts trainer for the 1994 San Francisco 49ers. Currently, he serves as Chief Content Officer for Crunchyroll and has served executive functions for several media companies. Any one of us would be lucky enough to have accomplished one of those things in our lifetimes, yet Chung has compiled all of those accolades and more. He has an easygoing charisma here and while he doesn’t carry the weight of the film, I can imagine he’d have an enjoyable wise-cracking presence in an ensemble cast. That said, he has his fair share of awkward emotional moments, so maybe we’ve discovered the one thing he isn’t good at. Take THAT, wildly successful George Chung!

VERDICT
It’s hard to do action and comedy really well. There are plenty of films and franchises that have made the combination seem easy as pie, but executing either genre element well individually is a feat in itself. The comedy in Karate Cops -- both intentional and unintentional varieties -- is given much more run than the action scenes, often to the detriment of the film. That Chung and Jeffreys were in their physical primes makes the low quotient of action scenes all the more puzzling. Add in a clunky plot and you have a recipe for meh, or maybe blah, depending on where you live. Karate Cops is a rare curiosity for those itching for deep cuts from this subgenre and these actors, but ultimately it can’t overcome its narrative shortcomings and low budget.

AVAILABILITY
To my knowledge, this only made it as far as VHS, and it's a pain in the ass to find. Happy hunting!

3 / 7

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

Enforcer from Death Row (1978)

PLOT: A terrorist syndicate based in Manila has been using to ninjas to murder intelligence operatives from the World Organization for Peace. Even worse, they threaten to wipe out the population of the Philippines using a biochemical agent. Even worse than that, the biochemical agent consists of powdered Tang and Tab Cola.

Directors: Marshall M. Borden, Efren C. Piñon
Writer: Leo Fong
Cast: Leo Fong, Darnell Garcia, John Hammond, Cameron Mitchell, Ann Farber, Booker T. Anderson


PLOT THICKENER:
While this is our second film from the Philippines in the last three weeks, and third overall, Enforcer from Death Row is our first film from the 1970s as well as the first starring Leo Fong. Yes, it all adds up to a lot of random digits. Some people find numbers to be fun (dorks, geniuses), but for the rest of us, we have this 1978 Filipino action trash romp to rely on for our chuckles.

The 1970s were a trying time for peace. While the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Cold War was at what Julia Child might call a rolling boil. The Arab-Israeli conflict kicked off in 1973 with the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanese War started in 1975. Coups, terrorist operations, and dictators dominated the headlines and strife was at levels unseen since that time they outlawed a nifty little cough suppressant called Heroin.

Just as war produces heroes, so does peace. T.L. Young (Fong) is an innocent man on death row in a San Francisco prison. Fortunately, for the World Organization for Peace, he’s a rare candidate with experience and physical tools they desperately need. All of their intelligence operatives based in Manila have been killed off by a terrorist group called NOMAD, which now threatens to wipe out the population of the Philippines using a biological weapon unless they receive $45 million in cash. Since the organization would rather take their chances on a disposable convict than pay the money, Young is tapped as an “outside man” for his unique set of skills: martial-arts mastery, firearms expertise, and a choice moustache. Like every good action hero, he comes correct with his own titular theme song: “Outside Man,” the funkiest orchestral-soul track this side of Shaft.

After Young’s execution is staged for the prison warden and members of the press, his body is taken to a nearby hospital and revived. After regaining consciousness, he’s greeted by a member of the peacenik organization and told in the vaguest terms possible that a special assignment awaits him at headquarters in Arizona. His response? “How much money, and who do I kill?” Points for being direct and concise.

In exchange for a cool $100,000, Young will assume the new identity of Albert Lim and begin working undercover to take down NOMAD. Upon arriving in Manila, he has to touch base with a series of different contacts. Given no instructions other than to “have fun and stay sober,” Young, errr.... Lim, jets off to the land of chicken adobo and Manny Pacquiao.

Evil doesn’t stop and throw its legs up on the ottoman while Young is getting acclimated to his new surroundings, though. The thugs at NOMAD are sewing seeds of instability at every turn: cooking up epidemic bacteria and viruses, stealing documents, killing informers, and lubing deals for massive arms caches.

I couldn’t tell you who played Spencer, the leader of the terrorist group, and no, that’s not because I’m unable to tell the difference between Filipino people. Assholes -- why would you suggest that? It’s because neither the credits nor the IMDb entry list the cast and characters. For that reason, I’ll be referring to the Darnell Garcia character as Rego, because that’s sort of what it sounded like when other characters addressed him. As the head hatchet man, he trains the syndicate’s squad of ninja assassins when he’s not having threesomes with busty women or torturing people using snakes, rats, or power tools. Or was it torturing busty women and have threesomes with snakes, rats, and power tools? Either way, it’s pretty sleazy behavior, but not as bizarre as the group‘s other muscle, a 300-pound black man named Monster. What he lacks in fashion sense -- he wears a filthy half-shirt which exposes his beer belly -- he makes up in his propensity for doing bumps of coke after completing tasks.

You could nitpick about a lot of things in this type of movie, but for my money, the misappropriation of the ninja archetype was the most egregious. In Enforcer... the only characteristics which NOMAD’s ninjas share with their brethren are masks and throwing stars. Sure, they drop randomly from ceiling panels every so often, but they also run into traffic in the middle of the day and toss Molotov cocktails from moving trucks. Resourceful, sure, but there’s nothing particularly stealthy about that.

The fight scenes have an unrefined but energetic and rompy style to them, highlighted by a brawl between Young, Rego, and a group of ninjas in a burning chemical laboratory. During Young’s early training, we also see a free-flow stickfighting drill with eskrima Grandmaster Angel Cabales. While there’s no shortage of action, some of the bigger action set pieces are terribly slow to develop. During a dramatic chase scene which finds our hero driving perilously toward a cliff, Young escapes his convertible by latching onto a rope ladder lowered by a moving helicopter. This would have looked pretty bad-ass had the car not been traveling 8 miles per hour. There’s also some really poor night shots that failed mightily to incorporate action as well as a glaring continuity error where a moustache appears suddenly on Leo Fong’s previously clean-shaven face when he looks up to react to an explosion. These aren’t terrible gaffes, and I might even regard them as charming, but they did take away from the action scenes a bit.

For the uninitiated, Fong was born in China, moved to Arkansas at the age of five, and learned boxing as a teenager and martial arts in his 20s. He sparred with Bruce Lee and wrote or directed over 20 films. Best of all, he has a fairly pronounced Southern drawl, which some have mistaken -- at least in this film -- as a bad dubbing job. While an Asian guy with a Southern accent should equal cinematic gold, Fong’s rich mahogany dramatic style and age may have held him back. He was around 50 when this was filmed and only grew older through the American action boom of the 1980s. Still, Fong carved out a good niche for himself and worked with everyone from action stars like Richard Norton, Billy Blanks, and Reb Brown, to dramatic actors such as Stack Pierce, George Cheung, and Cameron Mitchell.

Splitting the duties at director are Marshall M. Borden, who would never again helm another film, and Efren C. Piñon, perhaps most famous for the 1983 horror-fantasy The Killing of Satan. Perhaps the more notable production credit is Frank Harris, listed as cinematographer. He’d go on to direct Fong in Killpoint (1984) and Low Blow (1986), both of which will be covered in the coming months.

VERDICT:
There are no great surprises here. You get exactly what’s coming to you: Leo Fong in a low-budget late 1970s Filipino action movie. There’s bad dubbing, random gore, random nudity, rape, the stunts are often slow to develop, the plot is convoluted, the villains are sleazy, and most of the production is sloppy as all fuck, but somehow it’s still an entertaining ride when you’ve come out the other side. In other words, Enforcer from Death Row is like 80% of 1970s Filipino action movies. If you like that type of thing, have at it. If you don’t, go watch The King’s Speech. I heard a lot of people over the age of 60 really liked it.

AVAILABILITY:
Netflix and Amazon.

4 / 7