Manhattan Chase (2000)

PLOT: A former hitman for a drug gang is recently released from prison, and must put his life together, raise his estranged son, and help a victim of drug violence evade his former cohorts. Can he find an apartment in the Five Boroughs for less than $1200 a month so he has decent place to sleep in between all this stuff?

Director: Godfrey Ho
Writer: Lisa Cory
Cast: Loren Avedon, Cynthia Rothrock, Steve Tartalia, Nicol Zanzarella, Roberto Gutierrez, Robin Berry, Ron Van Clief

 

PLOT THICKENER

As many New York City visitors can attest, walking its streets can feel like walking through the set of a movie. From Juice and West Side Story to Mean Streets and Annie Hall, some of the greatest films in the history of cinema were filmed in New York City, the biggest city in the world (if you ignore the rest of the world). Countless critics have astutely pointed out that the Big Apple itself often serves as a character in the films in which it appears, and in no film is that more apparent than 2000’s Manhattan Chase, where NYC plays an innocent urban landscape terrorized by a low budget Godfrey Ho film production.

Loren Avedon plays Jason Reed, a former drug gang hitman who gets released from prison after serving a six-year sentence for attempted murder. He’s not about that life anymore, though, and he attempts to leave behind his checkered past so he can raise his estranged son, Tommy (Berry). But only *after* having his former gang cohort, Keith (Tartalia), give him a lift home from prison. Because who’s keeping track, amirite? Keith mocks Jason for his likely employment options with his criminal record (e.g., K-Mart), and his continued refusal to return to the gang fold. Part of raising his son will require some semblance of financial stability, and in that regard, Jason is entering an uncertain future rife with risk (and either a bike messenger gig or dressing up as a knock-off Batman in Times Square).

Jason’s attempted reconciliation with Tommy is strained, at best (as is the dramatic scene that depicts it). Despite his private wishes to have his father in his life -- which the audience learns from his telepathic monologue with the wish-granting sea gulls of Coney Island -- Tommy offers only a cold shoulder upon his dad’s return. Had Jason simply noted the current year, he could have avoided at least one major misstep. Gifting your child with a decade-old handheld gaming device like the original Gameboy is not usually the best method to getting back into the good graces of a surly kid. Just last year I got my 11-year-old cousin a game for the PS3 and he tried to gut me with a cake cutter. Kids grow up so fast!

As fate would have it, circumstances beyond Jason’s control add another roadblock to his attempt at responsible parenting. After her wicked stepfather’s stash of heroin goes missing, Jennifer (Zanzarella) escapes her home after the rest of her family is gunned down in a brutal drug-killing led by Keith. During her desperate sprint from the killers -- they want their drugs back, naturally -- she ends up on the hood of Jason’s moving vehicle (!) and is driven to safety. Jason is hesitant to help her after that point, but Tommy convinces him otherwise, and they find refuge at the apartment of Victor (Gutierrez), Jason’s old prison buddy. Let’s recap: ex-convicts, the lone survivor of a drug hit, a gang in hot pursuit, and an 11-year-old? This should end fine.

To complicate matters, Jason’s ex and Tommy’s mother, Brenda (Sweeney), is back in town after sobering up in California. After running into her cop sister, Nancy (Rothrock), during a purse snatching (don’t ask) we get a huge lunch-time exposition scene with all of the gory details. Did I mention that Nancy was the cop who arrested Jason during an attempted hit six years ago and put him in prison? I didn’t? I must have been distracted by all of these shiny, wild coincidences!

Following Undefeatable and Honor and Glory, Manhattan Chase was the third and final film in an unofficial trilogy of late-cycle Godfrey Ho films that were: a) filmed in the U.S.; b) featured mostly American casts; and c) strangely coherent with no traces of Ho’s trademark cut-and-paste technique. Of the three, this might be the most violent and nihilistic among them, and given that Undefeatable featured a serial-killing kung fu rapist, that’s saying something. The drug violence throughout the movie is quite grisly, and the climax contains a character death that may legitimately surprise viewers.

All that said, the film suffers from the absence of a colorful and equally unlikable main heavy. Tartalia as the gang lackey, Keith, is the closest thing to a real villain, and he has the necessary fighting chops to gel with both Avedon and Rothrock (though he only fights with the former). However, the character lacks the over-the-top qualities of Stingray from Undefeatable, the pompous presence of Jason Slade from Honor and Glory, and the sustained screen-time and narrative focus of either character. Tartalia made a career playing the evil gwailo, so I’m not totally sure why he didn’t get top baddie billing here. He does have a protracted and curiously graphic and out-of-place sex scene, though, so maybe it was in his contract?

The fights are actually pretty good -- quickly paced with good striking and blocking combinations -- and it’s always cool to see Hong Kong action choreography to go along with some familiar American faces with experience. Avedon runs with that ball for most of the film, and Rothrock’s fight scenes are unfortunately minimal. The pair of NRNS2 alumni is kept largely separated for the majority of the film, which feels like a major missed opportunity (though not as egregious as Ron Van Clief’s 120-second appearance as a mini-van kidnapper).

VERDICT

Manhattan Chase is not a “good” movie in the traditional sense, but I think there’s enough happening here to keep you -- rabid and unpretentious b-movie chopsocky fan -- engaged throughout the run-time: upbeat fight scenes, quirky dialogue, a sincere Loren Avedon performance, and enough squibs to fill a bucket typically used to hold acorns. It’s a shockingly coherent capstone to a unique filmmaking career.

AVAILABILITY

Streaming on Amazon Prime.,YouTube.

3 / 7

Excessive Force (1993)

PLOT: After a gangster goes free, a cop on the edge wages battle against organized crime and internal corruption while also repairing a romantic relationship, playing jazz piano, avoiding death, and kickboxing with his friends. Can he focus on a single task long enough to actually complete it?

Director: Jon Hess
Writer: Thomas Ian Griffith
Cast: Thomas Ian Griffith, Lance Henriksen, James Earl Jones, Charlotte Lewis, Tony Todd, Burt Young, Tom Hodges

PLOT THICKENER

He was a rich industrialist presiding over a company that illegally dumped toxic waste. He freely used racial slurs in reference to an elderly Asian man. He deployed twisted Machiavellian tactics against a young and virtuous martial artist. Despite it all, there was something strangely likable about Karate Kid III’s pony-tailed prick, Terry Silver. The primary reason for this perception was the performance of Thomas Ian Griffith (truly the best part about the film). When you’ve conquered the Mountain of Cult Action Movie Villain Status, there’s only two ways to go: total obscurity, or the Valley of Aspirational Lead Action Star Roles. Starting in the early 1990s, Griffith rattled off starring roles in a dizzying series of action films, of which 1993’s Excessive Force was just one. The title alludes to the film’s action quotient and the inciting incident of police brutality, but also the Herculean effort required to turn the former Terry Silver into a respectable hero.

Chicago cop Terry McCain (Griffith) has been pursuing ruthless mob boss Sal DiMarco (Young) for over three years, and on three separate occasions within that frame of time, DiMarco has slithered away from formal charges. The latest legal case -- following a sting operation and a botched drug deal -- has been thrown out by a gutless judge due to Terry’s physical coercion of a potential witness. Worse yet, DiMarco thinks that the $3 million lost by his dealer in the chaos ended up in the hands of the cops. This means that Terry and his partners Dylan (Hodges) and Frank (Todd) are in the criminal’s cross-hairs. Soon-to-be Captain Devlin (Henriksen) is doing his best to steer his boys in blue away from the danger, but gangsters have a habit of doing gangster shit when money is concerned.

If you like action, romance, and 17-year gaps between a film’s worldwide release and when it got released in Belgium, this is the film for you, gentle reader. The story, written by Griffith, allows his skills (and hair) to shine in a gritty Seagal-esque urban cop role, and no amount of expository dialogue, turtlenecks, or red scarves could have tied him down (despite sartorial efforts to the contrary). He surrounds himself with a strong supporting cast up to the task of playing colorful support characters. Henriksen is forceful and occasionally chilling as Devlin. Tony Todd, with limited screen-time, plays Terry’s ball-busting partner and the two have a natural chemistry. The same goes for James Earl Jones, playing the elderly jazz bar owner and saxophonist, Jake, who’s trying like hell to steer Terry away from the streets and towards his passion for jazz piano. Lewis, despite not having a hell of a lot to do here other than act like a fabulous model and irritated ex, delivers the best line of this or any 1990s action film: “so you just break into my house, get drunk, and feed your cat?" If you disagree, feel free to fight me on the Internet.

Excessive Force is chock full of action film tropes, from big themes of corruption and redemption to more minor details, like cops moonlighting as jazz musicians (see: clarinet-playing Chow Yun-fat in 1992’s Hard-Boiled). The action packs plenty of firepower overall, but because the film fails to build up an opponent as Terry’s physical equal, it hurts the audience’s investment in the outcome of each fight scene. Nor is there any context given for why Terry uses martial arts at all; there’s some kickboxing near the beginning of the film with Frank, but it’s framed as nothing more than friendly competitive exercise between friends. They might as well have been jogging or doing Bikram yoga. Did we need a scene with Terry talking to his dying master or educating the members of the force on the practical application of kenpo karate? Not necessarily, but it would have helped the story to acknowledge that Terry’s fighting skill was dangerous. Instead, he’s painted as an emotionally unhinged, jazz-playing, kickboxing cop, and while these are all cool qualities in isolation, they don’t really make any logical sense as a whole.

VERDICT

All of the right pieces were in place for a great film -- a solid cast, plot twists galore, and mainstream polish -- but after you tally all the points, Excessive Force feels a little conventional. There are good supporting performances and Griffith has the right amount of leading man swagger. However, the story is a bit weighed down by the struggle-juggle of too many plot points and character quirks. Good, not great, but still good.

AVAILABILITY

Amazon, Netflix (disc only).

4 / 7

Hard Justice (1995)

PLOT: A grief-ridden ATF agent goes undercover as a prison inmate to find his partner’s killers. Will he have time to close the case between shower beatings, prison yard basketball games, and the gastrointestinal issues caused by cafeteria slop?

Director: Greg Yaitanes
Writer: Scott Nicholas Amendolare, Chris Bold
Cast: David Bradley, Yuji Okumoto, Charles Napier, Vernon Wells, Jim Maniaci, Benita Telles, Clabe Hartley, Alon Stivi

PLOT THICKENER

Almost nothing in life is easy. Not microwaveable macaroni and cheese (I own a toaster oven). Not Sunday morning (what if you have a hangover)? And certainly not the year 1995; if you want proof, a whopping five films containing the word “hard” were released. One of them was Hard Justice -- a film that combines the directorial chops of Greg Yaitanes, Hong Kong-style action pieces, 40% of the plot from Van Damme’s Death Warrant, and American Ninjalumni David Bradley. “How can I handle all these awesome things at once?” you ask, crying in your microwaveable macaroni and cheese. What -- you thought justice would be easy? Ha! Justice is hard, dummy.

Nick Adams (Bradley), is an ATF agent hot on the heels of gun-running jerkwad Jimmy Wong (Okumoto). After a sting operation goes chaotic, Nick and company are able to bring Wong into custody, but the hostage at the center of their confrontation loses her life. To make matters worse, ATF gal-pal Hannah (Telles) informs Nick that his partner, Manny -- an agent working undercover as an “inmate” in the state penitentiary --  has been knifed to death by unknown assailants. Fueled by guilt, he demands that Chief Dickerson (Hartley) puts him on the same deep cover assignment so that he can root out Manny’s killers.

Once inside, Nick’s struggle to survive is all too real. He becomes fast friends with his rapey cellmate, Mr. Clean (Maniaci), but only after a brutal slug-fest for claim to the top bunk that ends with a discovery of their shared Marine Corps credentials. Nick’s fresh meat status also attracts the unwanted attention of Warden Pike (Napier) and his vicious subordinates. The beatings come swiftly, and due to his anti-authority posturing, his stays in solitary confinement are frequent. As Nick begins to uncover a deadly plot within the prison walls, his old nemesis Wong begins his sentence, and he alone can reveal Nick’s true identity and potentially turn everyone against him.

This film was the tits. The bee's knees. The manatee’s balls. Whatever anatomical euphemism you have for things you find awesome will be uttered during the film’s lean 88-minute runtime. I wrote down the phrase “Hard Justice ain’t fuckin around” four separate times in my viewing notes. While I’d always heard in b-movie action circles that this was not just David Bradley’s best film, but also one of the best action b-movies of the DTV era, I was still surprised by how much I dug it. A big reason for that is the pacing and the plot elements, which Yaitanes juggles well to keep the viewer engaged in what’s happening on the screen. He strikes the right balance between dialogue to move the story forward, and action scenes that help to raise the stakes for the characters.

And those scenes are quite fantastic. From a stylistic standpoint, the action is fun in that melting pot sort of way, when American productions shamelessly ape the blueprints that 1980s Hong Kong flicks provided for both martial arts fights and brainless Western-style shoot-outs. The opening scene of the film owes a lot to the first warehouse gunfight in John Woo’s 1992 film, Hard Boiled, with Nick dropping into the scenery like Chow Yun-fat, and concludes with enough spent shotgun casings to fill a swimming pool. (This is not a complaint; it was a great way to kick off the film). Until the gun-crazy climax, the prison is the backdrop for a number of fights featuring hand-to-hand combat. For me, there were two big stand-outs. Nick and Mr. Clean have their epic disgruntled roommate throw-down and later on, Adams has a brawl in the shower with a gang of thugs that finds him using a towel to counteract their over-aggressive strikes. Does his own towel remain firmly in place despite constant, violent movement? Perhaps to the disappointment of Bradley fangirls and fanboys everywhere, it does.

The supporting cast here was spot-on, with colorful and occasionally strange characters. I could watch Napier bark at subordinates pretty much all day, and he has an especially hammy line while firing twin uzis during a prison riot that had me rolling. Vernon Wells is in prime check-cashing form as the barely lucid prison sage with a Mike Tyson face tattoo, Galaxy 500. Yuji Okumoto, who most will remember as Chozen from the Karate Kid II, is dastardly in that fun movie villain sort of way -- you can tell he’s having a ball in his role. Even the faces I didn’t know were convincing in their characters. Jim Maniaci is amazing as Mr. Clean. Clabe Hartley is an actor about whom I know very little, but he’s apparently moved on from his acting career to work as a successful restaurateur in Venice, California. Somewhat famously, he was involved in separate violent altercations at his restaurant with homeless locals in 2015 -- one bit off part of his finger, and another, just six months later, concussed him with a chair. Who knew the L.A. restaurant business was more dangerous than a David Bradley action movie?

VERDICT

Before I watched Hard Justice, I thought I had all the answers. That I’d already had my fill of chopsocky prison films. That another Charles Napier prison warden role was one too many. That I didn’t need Vernon Wells adorned in a bad face tattoo with a name ripped off from a Boston-based dream-pop band. Hard Justice showed me how bitter and close-minded I had become as an action movie fan. It's over-the-top in a way that so few action films attempt at all, and it bears its influences without a whiff of self-awareness. Very hard recommend.

AVAILABILITY

Netflix, Amazon, eBay.

6 / 7

Private Wars (1993)

PLOT: An inner city neighborhood is being destroyed by the colluding forces of greed and violence. Can a burnout ex-cop and a community organizer with dreams of the White House save them? (Not Barack Obama, but that’s a good guess).

Director: John Weidner
Writers: Ken Lamplugh, John Weidner
Cast: Steve Railsback, Dan Tullis Jr., Stuart Whitman, Michael Champion, Holly Floria, James Lew, Vince Murdocco, John Salvitti, Art Camacho

PLOT THICKENER

One could say that lately, I’ve been on the fence. Wishy-washy. Running hot and cold and feeling like the title of Natalie Imbruglia’s only American hit single, which if I remember correctly, was “No Scrubs.” In any case, when you’re trying to fix your critical eye on a cohesive theme -- in this case, martial arts films of the 1980s and 90s with Western actors -- your approach can erode quickly if you’re not careful. One Van Damme movie here, a Jet Li movie there, and before you know it, you’re just another dude on the Internet bitching about Michael Bay movies and the glory days of Steven Seagal and DMX team-ups.

So it’s with some trepidation that I roll out a review of Private Wars, a 1993 PM Entertainment film directed by Ring of Fire and Deadly Bet editor John Weidner. It features James Lew as a main bad guy, Art Camacho, Vince Murdocco, and even Donnie Yen’s bro-ham John Salvitti in a guest role. All the stars would appear to be aligned, so what’s missing? A martial arts hero to rule them all.

Which is exactly what the Jackson Heights, Los Angeles neighborhood at the center of our story needs. No more than a half-dozen gang members pretty much run things. They terrorize business owners, destroy bodegas with grenade launchers, and worse yet, they blare generic golden-age rap music from boomboxes with complete impunity. Community organizer Mo Williams (Tullis Jr.) is fed up with the violent behavior, and tries to rally the locals to take back their neighborhood.

They feel helpless though. They’re average citizens and they’re not trained for this kind of effort. Instead, they’re fleeing the violent neighborhood in droves, which is exactly what evil land developer Alexander Winters (Whitman) wants. By financing the local gang to terrorize the locals, he’s paving the way for the replacement of residential property with a massive expansion of commercial space. Since we can’t have a DTV action movie without police corruption, Police Chief Carter (Champion) is also on the Winters payroll.

Out of options and presiding over a terrified citizenry, Williams turns to the one man he knows he can trust -- Jack Manning, played by veteran actor Steve Railsback. Unfortunately for the community of Jackson Heights, Manning is a shell of his former self. After being framed by dirty cops eight years ago, he was booted from the police force for his unorthodox undercover work. He’s replaced his tools of craft and cunning with Jack Daniels and Jim Beam, and now works as an unreliable alcoholic private investigator. Can Manning flip the switch and clean up the community? Or will he continue to drink himself to death while firing his gun at rats crawling over his day-old donuts? (Not trying to spin a metaphor -- this actually happened).

This was a pleasant surprise. PM Entertainment built its brand on a workmanlike approach to action scenes, and Private Wars is but another example of its capacity for bombast on a budget. The sequences here range from creative to insane to completely zany. One sequence finds a garbage man chained to the front of his truck and driven a through the streets at high speeds. In a brief scene from his days on the force, Manning slams a surveillance van through a newstand, then a fruit stand, then a telephone booth... with a police officer hanging on his hood. In possibly the most cringe-worthy scene, a gang member is forced to eat chili peppers at gunpoint. That the gang retaliated by destroying a bodega later that night almost seems reasonable when considering the pepper’s likely effects in the gang member’s bathroom.

Even in the absence of a logical context for martial arts, Weidner finds a way to place his martial arts actors in positions where they can show their skills. In limited but significant screen time, street toughs played by Murdocco and Salvitti tangle with Manning during their shared time in a jail cell. Our hero not only beats up both men, but he wins their respect and their help in the story’s climactic confrontation with Winters’s goons. Above all others, though, James Lew’s turn as the villainous Obata gets the most exposure. He’s built up throughout the story as Winters’ most fearsome asset, and his look, particularly in the final scenes, is superb. Some villains might opt for ill-fitting suits or generic denim as they head into battle. Obata? He goes with a silk shirt and a black leather trenchcoat because he’s going to get a high-end steak dinner afterwards. It didn’t turn out that way, obviously, but points to Lew for positive thinking and snazzy dressing.

Steve Railsback is no Loren Avedon, but he fits in comfortably as the hero of the story. His character arc from the gutter to redemption is nothing original, but it inspires the necessary sympathy to invest in the larger story. More than that, Railsback has the dramatic chops to play each aspect of his character convincingly, especially the extremes. When we see him get hit in the stomach, vomit on the attacker’s shoes, and then slam his head through a table in response, we buy it. When Manning pieces his life together and starts cleaning up the streets, we believe it. When he puts the moves on the attractive younger sister of a deceased shop owner, we accept it but only because it’s a fictional movie.

VERDICT

It doesn’t feature any of PM’s tried and true leading martial arts stars on the level of Don Wilson or Gary Daniels, but Private Wars still brandishes a cadre of recognizable faces from the glory days of DTV action. Weidner and company achieve some really cool visuals during the action sequences, Railsback heads up a solid group of memorable performances, and the film even packs some light comedy for the kids. Is it a martial arts film, per se? Probably not, but PM Entertainment was known for blurring the lines in the name of accessible action entertainment. If you’re looking for an underseen gem from their vaults, this is recommended viewing.

AVAILABILITY

Netflix, Amazon, EBay, YouTube.

5 / 7

Psycho Kickboxer (1997)

PLOT: After a kickboxer gets engaged to his girlfriend, the couple’s plans for matrimony are derailed -- not by lousy choices of the catering service or wedding band, but by homicide. Will he take vengeance on the crime boss responsible? Better yet, can he get his deposit back from the wedding venue?

Directors: David Haycox, Mardy South
Writers: Kathy Varner (screenplay), Danny Dennison (story)
Cast: Curtis Bush, Kathy Reynolds, Rodney Suitor, Tom Story, Rick Clark





PLOT THICKENER:
Following in the footsteps of those before him -- Don “The Dragon” Wilson, and Jerry “Golden Boy” Trimble included -- Curtis “The Explosive Thin Man” Bush swapped out his gloves and shin guards for acting in 1990, when he played “Poacher/Ninja” in an obscure Canadian kickboxing movie called Dragon Hunt. After a few years of supporting roles, he graduated to star performer in 1997’s Psycho Kickboxer. While it’s true that we’ve failed to cover anything in the Best of the Best franchise, any of Jeff Speakman’s output, and not a single fucking Lorenzo Lamas movie, I guess I’m a sucker for box art depicting a ninja kicking a dude’s head off his body with blood spurting out.

A kickboxing Virginian named Alex Hunter (Bush) has his world turned upside down when both his new fiancee and his police chief father are murdered by goons working for Hawthorne (Story), the foppish crime boss Papa Hunter was trying to lock away. Shot and left for dead, Alex awakens days later to find that a handicapped homeless war veteran named Joshua (Suiter) has taken him in, healed his wounds, and nursed him back to health. While grateful, Alex laments the lost opportunity to protect his loved ones, recounting the terrible event with all the raw emotion of an elderly man reading letters off an eye chart. It turns out that Hawthorne is a common enemy for both men; Joshua reveals that he was paralyzed by Hawthorne’s gang. He wants Alex to act as his legs and warns that their vengenace hinges upon Alex “controlling the animal." Whatever dude.

Among other activities, controlling the animal consists of Alex hitting the heavy bag, doing sit-ups, running along a beach, and dressing up like a ninja while stopping petty criminals from committing everything from armed robbery to grand theft auto. He also scares some children from spraypainting the side of a warehouse, an act which experts agree is either a gateway crime to more violent deeds or a good way to break into the art world. His completely unoriginal brand of vigilante justice earns Alex the moniker of "The Dark Angel" in the media and catches the interest of private investigator Jack Cook (Clark) and a character named Cassie Wells (Reynolds) who may or may not have been a journalist, but definitely had a topless scene.

We should probably start off with the good. Curtis Bush has a solid moustache and you can tell that he's a legitimate fighter; he’s athletic, his strikes are crisp and his kicks in particular are delivered with great form. However, sabotaging Bush’s display of physical skills is the usual three-headed Ghidorah of pedestrian choreography, poor camera angles, and amateurish editing. Some unusual touches brighten up this blueprint on occasion. Alex dons his ninja gear to fight a pair of gangbangers donned in Zubaz pants in the middle of the day on the Virginia Beach boardwalk as beachgoers observe with confused restraint. In a scene that recalls Lady Snowblood’s unique combination of cinematic violence and serene snowfall, Bush’s character kicks a bag of cocaine in the air and covers two violent drug dealers in Colombian Marching Powder before beating them unconscious.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the ridiculous amount of gore strewn throughout the film: a gruesome headshot in an ode to Tom Savini’s work in Maniac, a crushed head beneath a car tire, and a chopped hand during a tense gang meeting are some of the highlights. I counted one instance where chocolate syrup was substituted for blood, and it honestly would’ve been better used on ice cream or mixed with bourbon, as I often do when lacking more suitable mixers.

On what was, no doubt, a shoestring budget, directors David Haycox and Mardy South prove occasionally capable. While Haycox won’t get any comparisons to Christopher Doyle or Dean Cundey for his camera work, he frames a few good shots throughout the film but the frequent use of steadicam was nauseating. There’s no major technical faux pas on the level of a visible boom mic or crash mat, but the film looks really washed out and poorly lit overall. That can be forgiven considering the budget, but a better effort in this area alone could have elevated the content. The directing duo’s attention to gore is both curious and gratuitous, so I obviously loved it. In a kickboxing movie filled with shit lighting and SNES-level music, I appreciated that they flouted most tenets of technically sound filmmaking to focus on executing not one, but two exploding head scenes. Perhaps to the film’s benefit, they leaned on a lot of footage of a pair of radio DJ personalities talking about The Dark Angel's deeds to pad out the running time. While grating, they provide an element of quirk to the story which, outside of the Joshua character, the film sorely lacks.

VERDICT:
If you got through the trailer for this movie and thought anything other than “I’ve been waiting my entire life for a movie that combines video-quality production values, kickboxing, campy gore, and on-air banter from Virginia radio DJs” you are going to be sorely disappointed by Psycho Kickboxer. I think a weak script left Curtis Bush vulnerable to some fairly awful moments -- screams of despair and dialogue that exposes his discomfort with emoting come to mind -- but he acquits himself reasonably well during fight scenes. At the end of the day, this is a quirky slice of movie-making best enjoyed amongst friends. Forgiving, non-judgemental, extremely stoned, possibly unconscious friends.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

3.5 / 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

The Dynamite Brothers (1974)

PLOT: For the first ten minutes, it's like that movie Fled where two dudes on the run are chained together. For the next seventy minutes, it's like that blaxploitation movie where all the white cops are racist and the heroes just can't catch a break. For the final ten minutes, it's like that martial arts movie where EVERYBODY FUCKING DIES.

Director: Al Adamson
Writers: John D'Amato, Marvin Lagunoff, Jim Rein
Cast: Alan Tang, Timothy Brown, Aldo Ray, James Hong, Don Oliver, Al Richardson, Carol Speed, Richard Lee-Sung



PLOT THICKENER:
This week, we have the distinct pleasure of being included in Lost Video Archive’s Week of Hong, a cooperative effort between several exceptional blogs to cover over a dozen films from the distinguished filmography of Hollywood veteran James Hong. We’re no stranger to the Hong around these parts, having previously covered his contributions to martial arts movies such as Talons of the Eagle and Operation Golden Phoenix. We can argue about the quality of those and other low-budget films in which Hong has made appearances, but one thing is undeniable: Hong’s efforts are a consistent and steadying presence in every film he makes.

Around the same time Hong was cutting his teeth as a supporting player in Roman Polanski’s sprawling 1974 noir Chinatown, he was also putting in a few honest hours’ work as a ruthless crime boss in Al Adamson’s chopsocky-tinged blaxploitation film The Dynamite Brothers. This type of juxtaposition is Exhibit D for why the 1970s was and continues to be the best decade in American film history.

Let's get this out of the way: this film basically sucks. The opening five minutes and the climax are the best stretches of the runtime and by no small coincidence, that's where James Hong gets the most play as the villainous crime boss, Tuen. Alan Tang plays the Hogan to his Andre as Larry Chin, a heroic transplant from Hong Kong searching for his brother. Chin is picked up by the police for illegally entrering into the country and gets lumped into a squad car with Stud Brown (Brown), a laid-back dude picked up for what we can only assume was a charge of breaking hearts. Or maybe public lewdness, because he can't seem to keep his shirt buttoned up. Jaywalking? Loitering? How the fuck should I know? Don't sweat the details (the writers didn't).

As heroes are want to do, the pair makes a quick getaway and flees to Los Angeles to chase a tip on the whereabouts of Larry's brother. Along the way, they encounter helpful motorists while hitch-hiking, a kindly crime boss named Smiling Man, and a lot of foxy women concealing unkempt pubic hair, in keeping with the "big" hair style of the era. Unfortunately, few of these interactions are of any consequence. You know where the story is going within the first ten minutes of the movie and it's really just a matter of how much fighting, fucking, and continuity errors Adamson can jam in between points A and B.

The director was going for an interesting cross-cultural dynamic between Chin and Brown, but there's no tension or disagreement whatsoever between them. Instead, they're utilized as a punching bag for a bunch of racist one-liners courtesy of drunken whiteboy thugs and a corrupt detective played by Aldo Ray. Some of this can be forgiven as an artifact of the genre, but if that's not offensive enough for you, the film also features a romantic subplot between Stud Brown and a mute girl who lacks the ability to express her thoughts or feelings. Ironically, she's basically the only female character who keeps her top on. Positive feminist icon?

It's not all bad though. The title sequence included an interesting visual mix of action shot silhouettes and psychedelic colors over an incredibly funky opening track by soul jazz organist Charles Earland. Tang and Brown are decent as the heroes, though neither has the acting chops to carry the film on their own for any considerable length of time. In a case like that, one might assume the director would lean on his best actor to buoy the story, but Hong is barely on-screen and probably not as devious as he should have been. When he's present, however, he's consistently solid, and gets some appropriately incredible outfits for his troubles. Plaid jackets, polyester suits, and incredible white turtlenecks are all on the table. This film might also have the best Hong-stache he's ever sported.

Adamson is quoted on his IMDb profile as having said that he was "a better action director than anything," which is rather curious since the majority of fight scenes here are tawdry, neutered affairs. The one shoot-out in the movie is very poorly lit, has no squibs, and consists of intercutting between close-ups of guys squinting defensively as their guns go off. However, the film earns a bit of goodwill back with a zany finale that sees insane stunt falls, a car driving off a cliff, and a grisly scalp mauling. That there are no visible crash pads whatsoever will either warm your cinematic heart or really piss you off to end.

VERDICT:
This was my first experience with an Al Adamson film, and though it pains me to say this, it probably won’t be my last. While the majority of this movie is forgettable and hackneyed by most critical measures, it’s not nearly as sloppy as expected and works fine as junk food cinema. (Admittedly, it helps that he directed two Jim Kelly films, an actor I've yet to cover). As is something of a welcomed pattern, James Hong acts circles around the rest of the cast and if only for short bursts, he elevates the film well above its source material. For Hong completists and Adamson acolytes only.

AVAILABILITY:
Netflix, Amazon, YouTube.

2.5 / 7

Click the banner for your next hit of Hong! No, you can't overdose! Yes, he's addictive!

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

Rage and Honor (1992)

PLOT: An Australian cop and a public school teacher team up to bring down an amazing mullet with a ruthless criminal mastermind. Yes, his misdeeds are, in fact, secondary to the crime against nature that is his hair.

Director: Terence H. Winkless
Writer: Terence H. Winkless
Cast: Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Brian Thompson, Terri Treas, Stephen Davies, Patrick Malone, Peter Cunningham, Kathy Long, Roger Yuan



PLOT THICKENER:
Despite fast getaways with Corey Haim and treks through jungles with Loren Avedon, none of the team-ups in Cynthia Rothrock’s films are as consistently fulfilling as those with Richard Norton. Armed with a chemistry perhaps born out of the collective experience of cutting their teeth as bad-ass gweilos in 1980s Hong Kong films, they’ve enjoyed at least 10 on-screen collaborations, more than a half-dozen of which have been released Stateside. The 1992 Terence H. Winkless film Rage and Honor is their first proper team-up, having left Keith Cooke and his Native American biker character behind in the universe of the China O’Brien franchise. No doubt, before peeling away in their car, they threw beer bottles all over the ground as a single tear rolled down Cooke’s face.

This is not a film in which the punny title contains nouns which are also the surnames of the main characters, but Rothrock does play a public school teacher, so I’d have to guess that she’s the “Rage” in this equation. As Kris Fairchild, she channels said rage in the most productive manner possible as a martial arts guru who gives regular lectures about “the art of martial science.” One of the guests for her latest demonstration of applied concepts is an Australian cop named Preston Michaels (Norton). As an observational guest of the local police department, he’s under strict orders not to blow his cover by doing any actual police work.

That arrangement lasts all of about five minutes and Michaels finds himself in hot water after seeing some crooked cops deal drugs and trying to bust them for it. The woman in charge, Rita (Treas), shoots one of the bumbling lawmen and plans to pin it on Michaels, but she overlooks one critical rule: you shouldn’t kill cops if there’s a high-school AV-nerd skate punk on the roof filming the entire thing with a Hi-8 camera. OK, fine. Sorry, you fucking nerds -- TAPING.

The nosy videographer just happens to be one of Fairchild’s students, and after taking him to a hospital, Michaels goes to her dojo for help. Before getting his ass kicked by the other crooked cop, the student apparently left the tape in the hands of a homeless friend who lives in an alley … because where else would you leave something that important? For Michaels, finding the tape means exoneration for the murder for which he’s now being sought by the authorities. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones looking for it.

Desperate for assistance, Rita has reported back to her full-time peen and the criminal mastermind behind the drug-running operation, Conrad Drago (Thompson). He believes that killing Michaels -- the first-hand witness -- is more important than finding the tape. That’s arguable, but whatever he might lack in judgement, he makes up for in turtlenecks and long, ratty, glorious mullet hair. Despite the festive vibes given off by his mop, Drago harbors a dark and terrible secret. Yes, I know what it is. No, I will not tell you. It is simply too dark and terrible for this review.

Throughout most of its 90-minute runtime, Rage and Honor feels more like a loosely connected web of weird moments and wacky characters than a cohesive film. There’s definitely a plot here, but some of the motivations and events are so half-baked that it seems obvious the writers were just trying to move our heroes from one fight scene to the next. I don’t necessarily have an issue with that strategy, especially because of the can-do, kitchen-sink energy they use to do it. One scene finds Roger Yuan and Peter “Sugarfoot” Cunningham dressed to the nines and shaking down a sex worker for money, while another finds Kathy Long as one of several Amazonian glam-rock female assassins trying to kill Michaels. You get drugs, splosions, and even character actor Stephen Davies as a stockbroker-turned-junkie leading our heroes through the criminal underworld.

However, if you’re going to skimp on plot and logic for the purpose of ramping up your action quotient, those scenes need to be stellar. Outside of one good scene where Michaels and Fairfield are forced to fight each other by a ruthless gang of Vanity 6 rejects, the fight scenes are pretty straight-forward by DTV action standards. The fighters’ forms on their strikes are good and the selling is reasonable for the most part, but the fights are marked by a stilted feel that prevents any one from really sticking out from the pack. There is one kill that deserves special mention, where a character’s finger trigger is manipulated via pressure points and the end result is a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Pretty cool stuff, but my favorite action sequence in the film wasn’t a fight or a kill for that matter. During the back-end, Peter Cunningham’s character gets a hold of the incriminating tape and runs for the fucking end zone as Michaels gives chase. It wasn’t anything spectacular per se, but there’s something hilarious and sort of dangerous about pursuits where both characters are in ill-suited footware, like cowboy boots and dress shoes. I am a simple man.

In terms of characters, Rage and Honor is a bit unusual in that the teacher displays greater street smarts than the cop, ignoring the fact that Michaels is from Australia and very likely puts beets on his hamburgers. This gave the story a fish-out-of-water element but it was run into the ground by having every other character that Michaels meets make a crack about kangaroos or boomerangs. Just perform a terrible imitation of his funny accent and be done with it.

With Brian Thompson’s portrayal of Drago, we’re treated to one of the more awe-inspiring villain introductions in martial arts b-movies. After holding his palm over a lit candle, he struts across his tiny apartment and smashes to pieces a block of ice roughly the size of an adult sea turtle. All while listening to opera. You could almost hear him thinking aloud, “Yes, all of this is terribly impractical but smashing blocks of ice is very cinematic and oh, by the way, I’m really classy and rich as fuck.” Thompson tows the line between intellectual pontificator and crazy-eyed psycho but his behavior isn’t nearly as unhinged and maniacal as his hair. I’m going out on a limb here: it’s the most ridiculous mullet in cinema history, and by ridiculous, I mean amazing.

VERDICT:
This was a mixed bag. The positive components included the chemistry between Norton and Rothrock, a fun performance by Brian Thompson, and a seemingly endless parade of random b-movie martial artists in small roles. However, the story still manages to drag for stretches and the action is often overedited and shot from poor viewing angles. So what nudges Rage and Honor towards above-average territory for me? Hmm...let me think on it...

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, EBay, Netflix.

4 / 7