American Streetfighter (1992)

PLOT: A successful businessman leaves the lap of luxury to save his estranged younger brother from an underground kickboxing ring. Unfortunately, the airline screwed up and he’s really pissed about having to fly coach along the way.

Director: Steve Austin
Writer: David Huey
Cast: Gary Daniels, Ian Jacklin, Gerald Okamura, Roger Yuan, Tracy Dali, Kent Ducanon, Andrew Cooper




PLOT THICKENER
“Youth is wasted on the young,” said George Bernard Shaw, a man I once believed to be a curmudgeonly dickhead. It wasn’t until I turned into one myself that I discovered he was totally right! Young people have boundless energy and opportunities but spend most of their days finding ways to fuck it up. The bubble of youth is the best time to make those mistakes, though. American Streetfighter, a 1992 Silver Screen movie starring Gary Daniels, explores this idea of youthful indiscretion and the relationships that suffer as a result. It also answers the age-old question: is a funeral parlor a good setting for a samurai sword fight?

As evidenced by his tassled leather jacket, acid wash jeans, and poor decision making, Jake Tanner (Daniels) is a young punk mixed up with the wrong crowd. After he and his fellow gang member, Ito (Yuan), rig up a jukebox with explosives to damage a local business, they realize innocent people were inside! They run back to save them, but the hapless potential victims are packing heat and open fire. Jake escapes with his life, but Ito is shot dead. To be more accurate, Jake drives off after Ito is shot, but still alive. Because Jake drove off, Ito is stuck waiting around to be shot again.

Years later, Jake has moved on to bigger and better things in his new life in Hong Kong. Leather jackets and unkempt locks have given way to power suits and a greasy ponytail. His shitty getaway car has evolved into a shitty office with a drop ceiling and poor lighting. Dead business deals have replaced dead friends. During a late night at the office, he receives a troubling phone call from his mother: Randy is in trouble. Wait, who’s Randy? Oh right, the younger brother in the picture Jake is now holding.

Randy (Jacklin), is a rising star in the world of underground fighting. When Jake arrives after his latest fight to discourage this behavior, Randy rejects the advice. After all, Jake ran away following his own transgressions and left his sibling alone to fend for himself during his formative years.

A shrewd businessman if there ever was one, Jake approaches the fight circuit boss, Ogawa (Okamura) and asks to buy out Randy’s contract. When Ogawa rebuffs, Jake instead offers to take Randy’s place as a fighter-by-proxy. For reasons known only to screenwriter David Huey, Ogawa totally goes for it. Jake gets his ass handed to him in his first competitive fight -- even suffering the indignity of being repeatedly whipped with a car antenna -- and retreats to the home of his master’s daughter, Rose (Dali), to lick his wounds. While there, he goes through a rigorous rehabilitation program under the supervision of Rose’s adolescent son, whose martial arts knowledge is informed by his rabid Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom. Once he’s fully healed, Jake is joined by his master, Nick (Ducanon) and they take the fight to Ogawa’s gang.

If you know his work, the involvement of Expert Weapon’s director, Steven Austin doesn’t inspire much confidence. In fact, if the films I’ve reviewed were holiday desserts, King of the Kickboxers is a delicious pecan pie at the high end of the spectrum, whereas Expert Weapon would be a pile of stale-ass pizzelles or plum pudding. (For continued debate around weak-ass holiday desserts, please leave your thoughts in the comments). This film isn’t nearly as rough as the aforementioned Ian Jacklin joint, but it lacks technical polish -- the soundtrack appears to have been lifted from a mix of 80s porn and an SNK fighting game ported to a 16-bit console -- and the pacing is fairly wonky. Fight circuit backdrop: plastic sheeting and gaudy light colors. The action: occasionally competent but weirdly edited and choreographed. The dialogue: just nevermind, OK? The movie definitely gets points for the feathered locks of Gary Daniels but I don’t think we should give Austin credit for that. (Unless he did hair and make-up. I’ll need to consult the production credits again to confirm).

Out of at least three Daniels films, this is the third in which he’s been drugged or otherwise had his mental acuities compromised. While Daniels needs to keep a better eye on his drink, I suppose putting your martial arts hero on drugs is the logical extension of the “drunken master” trope popularized and codified by Hong Kong kung fu cinema of yesteryear. That said, what drugs would make for the best martial arts movie? Weed would turn any serious fight film into a stoner comedy, so that has crossover appeal. Heroin is too prone to overdose. I’d have to think that something like meth or crack cocaine would yield the best product. If the hero in "Return of the Supreme Crackhead Master" seems too invincible, just put all of the bad guys on bath salts and have them eat the master’s face for the inciting incident. This shit practically writes itself.

This film nips around the edges of some solid and trashy action, but it comes in drips and drabs. The underground fight scenes are comical -- Ian Jacklin’s youthful arrogance is characterized by him flexing his muscles with exaggerated grunts after he strikes (“flex fighting”) --  but also slow and awkward. The same can be said of the stunt work. During a climactic scene involving henchmen on dirt bikes, we see one of the most disproportionately cruel and protracted retaliations by a hero in the history of cinema. After a snazzy dirt bike entrance, a henchman is tossed from his bike, pummeled to the ground, covered in gasoline, and then set ablaze via Zippo by the grizzled, eyepatch-wearing Nick. The whole scene transpired over what seemed like hours and would be right at home in a Videodrome telecast. Then there’s that funeral parlor sword fight, which is plodding despite the inspired mise-en-scene. Remember kids: not even a samurai sword can make a short-sleeve shirt and tie combo look cool.



VERDICT
American Streetfighter is a fight film made on the cheap and punctuated by occasional quirks. The choreographed violence is frequent and often over-the-top (see: aforementioned funeral parlor sword fight). There are curious character ticks galore, a totally hamfisted subplot about dead kickboxers, and more socially awkward moments than at a food packaging convention. (I have no proof, but I’ve always assumed this industry is full of weirdos). The movie works as a cinematic curiosity, but is probably for Daniels and Jacklin completists only.

AVAILABILITY
Amazon, EBay, Netflix.

3 / 7

Capital Punishment (1991)

PLOT: There’s a new and dangerous drug in town, and a secret group of government agents needs the help of a kickboxer to bring down the trafficking ring. See? The road towards a sound federal drug policy is not paved with large-scale crackdowns or even legalization, but with guys like Gary Daniels.

Director: David Huey
Writer: David Huey
Cast: Gary Daniels, David Carradine, Mel Novak, Tadashi Yamashita, Ian Jacklin, Mark Russo, Linda Lightfoot, Scott Shaw, Ava Fabian

PLOT THICKENER:
While drugs appear pretty regularly in action movies, it’s rare to see the drug experience itself mapped out on the screen. We’ve seen heroes get drugged before or during a big showdown and been treated to first-person blur-vision to share in the character’s perspective. However, it’s uncommon to the action genre to have the experience of the drugged character closely match the experience of watching the movie unfold. In only his third film, David Huey manages to accomplish this with 1991’s Capital Punishment. I guess what I’m really trying to say is that only someone on drugs could have made this movie.

James Thayer (Daniels) is leading a simple life as a fighter working the grueling restaurant-lounge circuit. After tossing his latest opponent through a table of two-for-one appetizers, he gets jumped in the locker room area by a pair of stooges and tazed into blackness. He awakens in an office run by a secretive branch of the DEA investigating the mastermind behind a new and popular street drug called “kick,” which causes heightened euphoria and temporary immunity to pain. The only ill effects are debilitating pain during withdrawal and genetic mutations in the offspring of users. No biggie. While watching an organized but extremely boring slideshow called “Project Kick,” Thayer is shocked to learn that the mastermind is his sensei, Kenji Nakata (Yamashita). The secretive unit, led by the creepy Mason Dover (Novak), wants to use Thayer to bring his old mentor and father-figure to justice, but they may have other motives as well.

Thayer must not only contend with Nakata’s thugs, covert double-crossers, and a kickboxing toolbag played by Ian Jacklin, but he’s also drugged at random throughout the movie with the very drug he’s grown to abhor. DEA agent Nikki Holt (Lightfoot) is disgusted by the corruption within her own ranks and wants to help Thayer, but his experience with the alternate worlds of undercover work and being high as a motherfucker may prevent her from showing him the way. A normally trusting human being, he has confidence in nothing, believes no one, and punches and kicks everyone in his path towards the truth. Can Holt and a doctor versed in Eastern medicine help Thayer to erase the druggy fog preventing him from dispensing justice? Or will everyone be content to just sit around eating Cool Ranch Doritos and laughing uncontrollably?

The combination of "slow and sloppy" can have positive connotations when you're referring to cooking pulled pork or having sex, but when it comes to film fights, it usually spells doom. Capital Punishment contains some of the most hastily put-together fight scenes I've ever seen (and I watched For Hire)! One fight featuring Daniels and Jacklin appears to have been secretly recorded without the actors' knowledge as they worked on blocking out the moves at half-speed. The stunt teams in Filipino productions tend to be reliably solid, but it looks like Huey required a history of faulty vestibular systems as well; these guys make the Shockmaster look coordinated.

The standout sequence would have to be a bar fight between Daniels and Floridian martial arts champ and veteran of No Retreat No Surrender 3, Mark Russo. His beard is just as epic but his part here is even smaller than his small henchman part in NRNS3. The two trade strikes and a long exchange of wrist-lock takedowns in a nod toward the future of film fights by incorporating grappling and MMA tactics. It ends rather memorably with a death-by-pool-cue, but the fight is still marred by crummy shooting angles and a lack of consistent sound effects. Still, you have to take what the film gives you and next to the climactic fight scene between Daniels and American Ninja's Tadashi Yamashita, this is probably the best of the offerings.

David Carradine appears as a behind-the-scenes order-barker and all of his scenes are filmed in a dimly lit office or a big-rig truck interior. He was almost completely wasted here and his character felt tacked-on to what was already a total mess of a plot. Along with Mel Novak, he’s the most actorly of this bunch but he’s rarely afforded the chance to guide this group of mostly inexperienced performers to more watchable dramatic scenes. You don’t necessarily need Carradine to fight either, but he and Daniels share no screen time whatsoever so I’d have to regard this as a wasted opportunity on all fronts.

Capital Punishment is a strange film because its anachronistic narrative both fails and works at the same time. In one sense, it's no different than the hundreds of films like it which ignored any semblance of logic and flauted the rules of escalating action and tension. In a vacuum, by these traditional measures, it falls short. But given the druggy experience of the film's protagonist, the disjointed and often surreal tones actually work pretty well to throw the viewer off-kilter as they try to navigate the film's events. Was this the intended effect by the filmmaker? Probably not, but since I regularly take tremendous satisfaction when receiving credit for unintentionally positive results, I imagine director David Huey would too.

VERDICT:
The story is convoluted and confusing, the characters who aren't assholes are uninteresting, and the fight scenes are mostly lackadasical and poorly shot. Yet, despite all of the elements that snowball to make Capital Punishment a forgettable film, there's something about it I still enjoyed. Part of it was Yamashita as a somewhat hilarious villain, but it's also an early Gary Daniels joint where you can see him honing his screen presence and learning how to carry a film in the face of so many other problems, technical and otherwise. There's something admirable about that and you can't really quantify it, but it's present here. However, I can't honestly recommend this to anyone but Daniels completists or action trash enthusiasts who've exhausted all other options.

AVAILABILITY:
AmaBayFlix.

3 / 7

Expert Weapon (1993)

PLOT: An illiterate convict is sprung from death row and undergoes training to become an assassin. As it turns out, learning the finer details of killing people covertly is a hell of a lot easier than those prison GED programs.

Director: Steven Austin
Writer: Steven Austin, David Huey
Cast: Ian Jacklin, Sam J. Jones, Mel Novak, Joe Estevez, Julie Merrill, David Loo, Judy Landers




PLOT THICKENER:
If you chart the career trajectory of a randomly selected marital arts actor who started his or career in the late 1980s or early 1990s, you’ll notice one of two themes. The actor’s filmography either fits on a postage stamp, or it contains a long and winding road of bit parts and stunt work that may or may not have paved the way for lead roles. Examples of the former include actors Rion Hunter and Brad Morris, both of whom turned in great lead villain performances but never again returned to the action genre. On the flipside is a guy like Billy Blanks. He played uncredited henchmen or mini-bosses before graduating to main villain in The King of the Kickboxers and finally settling in as an action lead during his prime DTV years in the 1990s. After several supporting roles in films with Gary Daniels and Don “The Dragon” Wilson, former kickboxer Ian Jacklin answered a similar call for 1993’s Expert Weapon. Did his early film work prepare him for the burden of carrying a film? Um … we’ll get to that.

Jacklin plays Adam Collins, a disrespectful street tough who gets his jollies from carjacking with his partner, Rex (Loo). They botch their latest attempt so badly that the car never leaves its parking space and the duo is forced to flee the police on foot after Rex shoots the car’s female owner in the back. Collins doesn’t appreciate the cruelty of his partner’s methods; after all, he took a nicer approach by only punching her in the face. During the ensuing stand-off with the cops, Collins struggles with one of the officers over a gun and guess who gets shot in the process? No, not Carrot Top. Why would you say that? Random.

While waiting in prison on death row and contemplating the next day’s usual onslaught of high-fives and extra pudding cups as a branded cop-killer, Collins receives a visit from a kindly middle-aged priest who wishes to pray for his eternal soul. The hardened convict responds by whipping out his member and unleashing a weak stream of urine on the priest’s Bible. While most priests might show forgiving disappointment toward this act of disrespect, this man of the cloth kicks Collins in the pills and starts raining blows on him before telling him that he has a choice: come with him, or die by execution. Collins isn’t about to go anywhere with some creepy priest, so he chooses the latter.

As he later watches noxious vapors fill the gas chamber on the day of his execution, Collins falls unconscious, only to awaken in a state of confusion on a cot in a darkened room. So ... there’s a Hell? And you have to sleep on rickety cots? No, actually. Collins has been transported to an underground facility run by Janson (Flash Gordon’s Sam Jones) and his co-pilot and priest impersonator Frank Miller (Novak). They’ve selected Collins for training in a shadowy program designed to turn ruthless and undereducated killers into elite assassins, and Miller has six months to shine this rough stone into a lethal gem.

Is six months enough time to create an elite assassin out of a convict who can’t read or write? When you’ve got the right mix of drama training, computer classes, and karate lessons, it’s apparently more than enough. From the waking hours through the end of the night, Collins is exposed to a smorgasbord of highly specialized training. A drama class is run by the sultry Lynn (Landers) to teach recruits how to perform undercover roles convincingly. A computer class teaches recruits how to hack networks. On the violence front, a course in firearms is taught by the hammy Joe Estevez, and Miller handles the fighting instruction by teaching students karate.

After Collins executes his preliminary assignments and later eliminates a mafia narcotics dealer, he becomes conflicted about the welfare of the kingpin’s blind widow, Vicky (Merrill). In an effort to wipe away the sins of the carjacking which left an innocent woman dead, Collins takes the widow into his care and they go on the run.

So, yeah, this isn’t a good film. In most cases, having a man on fire appear within the first three minutes of your film is a good sign, but the training scenes are pieced together haphazardly and the film gets excessively talky once Jacklin’s character turns into Hitman with a Heart of Gold. It would be all too easy to hang the anchor of blame for this movie’s failures around the neck of Ian Jacklin; after all, he’s the star and gets the lion’s share of screen time. However, I think the combination of a bad script and Jacklin being too green dramatically to carry a film is ultimately what sinks this. Like many martial artists thrust into the cinematic spotlight during the golden age of American DTV films, Jacklin was a kickboxer first and dramatic actor second. I'm not sure you could expect him to convincingly perform dialogue like “Screw you, nobody tells me what to do. I'll see you in hell!” Are there any actors who could? OK, fine ... any actors besides Nic Cage? Jacklin delivers most of his lines with all of the wooden disbelief you’d expect out of a twenty-something non-actor betrayed by poor writing and direction.

The pairing of bad acting and poorly choreographed martial arts can lead to magical, off-kilter cinema, but Expert Weapon isn’t awful enough on either front to embody the kind of reckless DIY spirit typified by films like No Retreat, No Surrender or even City Dragon. The action is pedestrian with poor camera angles on the fight scenes and a lack of imagination in the choreography. The actual techniques of Jacklin’s offense look good, but the filmmakers fail to make his moves flow together and these scenes have a stilted vibe. The wooden staff fight near the end of the film between Collins and an old crime partner is a cut above the rest, but it’s below-average even when compared to similarly below-average films.

As far as mentors go, Mel Novak’s asthmatic karate instructor Frank Milller is pretty good. It’s somewhat interesting to note that his initial appearance in Adam’s jail cell as a priest wasn’t such a stretch dramatically; Novak has apparently been involved with prison ministry for many years. Whether or not he kicks pestilent inmates in the balls and recruits them into secretive assassination squads, we can’t be sure.

While the film overall is rather poorly written and acted, the filmmakers make a genuine attempt at contrasting the Miller and Janson characters. Janson is the brash drill sergeant, always chewing on a stogie and referring to underlings as maggots. When he’s not sucking on his inhaler, the asthmatic Miller attempts to instill flimsy facsimiles of Eastern philosophy during martial arts training sessions. Performance-wise, Jones and Novak are the best parts of this movie, but even their collective dramatic competence isn’t enough to offset the film’s various technical and narrative flaws.

VERDICT:
The only condition under which I could recommend Expert Weapon would be if someone asked me what movie might cause a spouse to withhold sex indefinitely. It’s a rough watch. There are a few small morsels of hokey violence and unintentional humor to savor, but not enough to satisfy a healthy craving for either element. For a kinder and gentler experience with the work of Ian Jacklin, try Death Match or his wigged-out turn as main villain in Don Wilson’s Ring of Fire 2.

AVAILABILITY:
Netflix, Amazon, EBay.

2.5 / 7

Fighting Spirit (1992)

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

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

PLOT THICKENER:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon or EBay.

5.5 / 7