Angelfist (1993)

PLOT: When her kickboxing covert agent sister is mysteriously murdered in the Philippines, an American cop heads overseas to bring the killers to justice. Contrary to popular belief, justice is not a hip upscale Manila restaurant, but rather a fair and reasonable application of law.

Director: Cirio Santiago
Writer: Anthony L. Greene
Cast: Cat Sassoon, Melissa Moore, Michael Shaner, Roland Dantes, Cristina Portugal, Tony Carreon, Henry Strzalkowski, Joseph Zucchero, Jim Moss






PLOT THICKENER
There are few performances in film that can be described as truly chameleonic. Few characters are conceptualized in such a way as to grant us access to the various layers of their personalities. Denis Lavant’s Monsieur Oscar in Holy Motors comes to mind, as does Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. After viewing the Corman-produced, Santiago-directed 1993 action film, Angelfist, I think we can add Cat Sassoon and her character of Kat Lang to that same elite group. Over the course of roughly 80 minutes, she encompasses a wide variety of flavors and colors. She’s a cop, she’s a kickboxer. She’s white as a sheet, she’s tanned to the color of an indoor basketball. She’s dressed in her Muay Thai best, she looks like a backup dancer for Paula Abdul.

A rugged and experienced cop, Kat is cleaning up the mean streets of Los Angeles when she receives word that her kickboxing sister, Kristie (Birzag) has been murdered in Manila. Kristie captured the murder of a U.S. military man on film, and a terrorist group called the Black Brigade responded a little harshly. One airplane transition later, and Kat is knocking down doors and beating up random Filipinos in a search for answers. The local Manila police are useless and paranoid, and the U.S. embassy is no help at all due to constant protests and pressure from the local population.

With the assistance of a shallow himbo nicknamed Alcatraz (Shaner), Kat talks her way into a meeting with her sister’s former fight trainer, Bayani (Dantes). Only after winning his respect during a sparring contest is she able to set the wheels in motion for a break in the case. In order to uncover more solid leads to chase, she enters the local ladies karate tournament in which her sister took part. Upon joining their ranks, she not only catches the attention of her sister’s friend, Lorda (Moore), but also last year’s champion and secret brigadier, the standoffish, Bontoc (Portugal). Will Kat avenge her sister's death? Who are her true enemies and allies? Why do the fight organizers call this thing a "kubate" instead of a "kumite?" And why does Kat's skin tone vary so wildly by time of day and lighting? 

So, about those action scenes. The tournament fighting is marked by extremely repetitive strikes and an almost complete disregard for defense and blocking. Moore and Sassoon, in particular, are guilty of awkward fight stances in which they curl their arms up close to their bodies while kicking, almost in an effort to conceal something -- a strange choice given the sheer amount of toplessness throughout much of the film. Cirio makes sure to combine said toplessness with an actual fight, putting Kat in the crosshairs of would-be assassins who raid Alcatraz’s apartment as she’s fresh out of the shower. In the absence of technical sheen, the stunt players sell HUGE for Sassoon and others. Enemies go screaming and flailing through walls and tables. Any piece of furniture that isn’t nailed down gets incorporated and smashed to pieces.

Sassoon gets all of the bits to put her in position to win our hearts and look awesome. Our introduction to the Kat character involves her jumping through a window with an uzi to waste a bunch of drug dealers. She wins the respect of Bayani by whooping him in an eskrima sparring match. She also takes a three-story fall from an apartment window that sees her smash through multiple levels of scaffolding to the street below. No one will ever mistake her for Moon Lee or Karen Sheperd in terms of ballsy action scenes, but I’ll put it this way: I’d wear a t-shirt with the visage of a growling Kat Lang for virtually any occasion. Even if it was a tank top!

It’s impossible to discuss this film without noting the untimely death of its star. Sassoon had a purported five-picture contract with Roger Corman, but was unable to see it through (I’m still anxious to see her Bloodfist franchise appearances). Discarding the minor transgressions of occasional duckface and dated wardrobe, most would agree that whether it’s an awkward love scene, a rompy fight, or long shots of her smoking a cigarette, Sassoon brings a palpable zest to the film. She’s clearly committed to this role and she got the memo about its tone; that effort is observable and lasting. Given the timing of her death in 2002, it’s difficult to say whether she would have weathered the erosion of the DTV action market that affected so many other stars in the early 2000s. Still, Angelfist is a unique time capsule that features Sassoon at her best, which is to say fierce, tanned, and mysteriously shiny.

Knowing that Corman took an active interest in creating “feminist exploitation films” -- using female protagonists as both asskickers and objects of lust -- I’m interested to know if viewers feel that Angelfist achieves this odd label. I’m undecided. The ladies here fight and snarl and save the day, but they also stand around awkwardly and navigate detachable shower heads over their nude bodies during inexplicable transition scenes. They’re terrorized by captors and pushed bare chest-first into blocks of ice, but they also deliver dialogue that earns the film a passing grade on the Bechdel test. Is Bontoc considered a villain because she’s part of a terrorist network, or because she never disrobes? There’s some serious contradictions at work here and I’m frankly not intelligent enough to sort it out. Maybe the Internet’s first aspirational expert in the subgenre of nude kickboxing movies, Keith over at Teleport City, can render a decision on this. Inquiring minds want to know.

VERDICT
Despite its flaws -- acting and originality among them -- Angelfist is a very entertaining film. It observes the loose but effective “action beat” rule where *something* interesting happens approximately every 10 minutes. (Even if it does nothing whatsoever to push the story forward or distract us from the arbitrary nudity). Despite her limitations as a peformer, Sassoon is ferocious and convincing as an action movie heroine, and the stunt team makes everyone look good. A fine effort from Cirio Santiago and something of an unheralded gem from the Concorde-New Horizons canon.

AVAILABILITY
Angelfist is at the ready on DVD or VHS.

4 / 7

One Man Army (1994)

PLOT: A martial arts instructor returns to his hometown after the death of his grandfather only to find that corruption has taken root. Will he dispense vigilante justice and let the heads roll, or run for public office and get a shiny sheriff’s badge?

Director: Cirio H. Santiago
Writer: Daryl Haney
Cast: Jerry Trimble, Rick Dean, Melissa Moore, Dennis Hayden, Paul Holmes, Yvonne Michelle, Nick Nicholson, Jim Moss, Ned Hourani









PLOT THICKENER:
Before 1973’s Walking Tall was remade into a middling action vehicle for Dwayne Johnson in 2004, its premise had already been ground into dust by knockoffs and mimicry. 1980’s Defiance borrowed a bit from the Joe Don Baker classic and Robert Clouse cribbed from it rather liberally for 1990’s China O’Brien. Not to be outdone by some rinky-dink outfit like Golden Harvest Company, Filipino action auteur Cirio H. Santiago went back to the same well to make 1994’s One Man Army. He trades one blonde for another by reuniting with Jerry Trimble, and that’s not Jerry Trimble of Jerry Trimble Helicopters, but rather Jerry Trimble, the PKC WORLD KICKBOXING CHAMPION. Sorry for the all-caps text, but the box art and opening title sequence really got into my head.

Trimble plays Jerry Pelt, a martial arts instructor who receives a phone call so urgent that he takes it on the red phone in the dojo’s inner office. The news is terrible: Grandpa Pelt, the man who raised him, is dead. Continuing in the proud tradition of martial arts teachers driving total shitboxes, he packs up his rusty Volkswagen Bug and departs for his hometown. As soon as he crosses the county line, a group of boozehounds in a pickup truck run him off the road, damaging his car. He rectifies the situation only a few minutes later in the greatest gas station action sequence since The Jerk, and we’re off to the races.

Upon arrival to the sad and poorly attended funeral, he’s greeted by an old flame: high-powered attorney Natalie Pierce (Moore). Against the backdrop of this misery, though, Jerry re-establishes some old connections. He and Natalie share some dessert that night, his grandfather’s German Shepherd, Hank, is still barking up a storm, and old friend and local roughneck Eddie Taylor (Hayden) arrives with an invitation to catch up over a few rounds of brew.

During his night out on the town, Jerry discovers that things aren’t the way they used to be. He and Eddie arrive at the local watering hole to find it overrun with topless prostitutes cavorting with clients out in the open. In the bar’s backroom, bets are placed on unsanctioned full-contact fights. How did things get this bad? Not without a certain local sheriff named Pat Boze (Dean) turning a blind eye and a crime boss named Sharperson (Holmes) giving him a cut of the profits.

After a string of suspicious incidents involving arson, assaults, and human trafficking tunnels, Jerry decides to run against Boze for sheriff and clean up the town for good. With Natalie’s legal expertise, Hank’s knack for biting and disarming potential gunmen, and Jerry’s ability to rally crowds during montages with patriotic music, the campaign is well-equipped for the political meat grinder. It won’t be easy, though. Sharperson’s influence runs deep, and Boze and his crew are coked out of their minds with easy access to firearms.

While the plot points are tired and silly at times, I ended up enjoying One Man Army quite a bit. The film’s pace sucked me in immediately and the solid cast kept me engaged. Similar to Live by the Fist, this checks in under 80 minutes and Santiago wastes no time in establishing his hero with the gas station fracas around the five-minute mark. With his laid-back manner and easygoing delivery  -- he hails from Kentucky -- Trimble is a good fit as the righteous local hero. Character actor Dennis Heyward was cast perfectly as Jerry’s grizzled friend, and B-film veteran Dean is both intense and menacing as Pat Boze.

No stranger to the action genre -- she was the unfortunate victim of a bacon grease torture by Robert Z’Dar in Samurai Cop -- Melissa Moore is pretty solid, sharing most of her screen time with Trimble. While I’m not going to complain much about topless scenes, 66% of her nude scenes are completely (and hilariously) out of context. For instance, during a conversation about the sheriff’s race during a windy and overcast picnic, Natalie suddenly strips down and goes skinny-dipping to test Jerry’s courage. When he follows suit and jumps in, we know we’re dealing with a bad-ass motherfucker. He didn’t even wait for a full hour after lunch before swimming.

In Live by the Fist, Santiago did well to match Trimble up with a few legitimate martial artists at the back end of the film, escrima practitioner Roland Dantes among them. Dantes is absent from this production, and unfortunately there was no one to really take his place in what should have been the best stretch of fight scenes in the film. I spotted who I believe was an uncredited Ned Hourani fighting Trimble on a rooftop but the fight lasts under a minute, and no one else in the story is built up as a physical threat to Trimble’s character. This was a missed opportunity, because Hourani can hold his own during extended fight sequences, as evidenced by his work in Blood Hands and Fighting Spirit. The choreography is cookie cutter, but Trimble lives up to his reputation as one of the best kickers of his sport and the stuntmen sell pretty well.

VERDICT:
If you enjoyed Live by the Fist, this is another enjoyable Filipino action romp from the same actor and director duo. The amount of heroic dog scenes with the German Shepherd are on par with the Benji and Rin Tin Tin franchises, so this might be something you can watch with the nieces and nephews. Just be sure that you get them to sign affidavits forbidding them from telling their parents about the voluminous amounts of cocaine use, boobs, gunfire, and kickboxing they’ll see in the rest of the film.

4 / 7