Fists of Steel (1991)

PLOT: A former boxer and Vietnam veteran is called into action after a terrorist group executes his father. The head of the group is hiding out in Hawaii, under the assumption that the prohibitively expensive airfare and living costs will keep away federal investigators.

Director: Jerry Schafer
Writer: Jerry Schafer
Cast: Carlos Palomino, Henry Silva, Marianne Marks, Kenny Kerr, Sam Melville, Robert Tessier, Alexis Arguello, Rockne Tarkington

PLOT THICKENER

So many b-grade action films of the 1980s and ‘90s have featured professional kickboxers as the lead stars, but few of them attracted strict practitioners of the sweet science. One might think that some of boxing’s finest trash talkers -- from Roy Jones Jr. to James Toney -- would have made the transition to acting in droves, but that was not quite the case. Marvelous Marvin Hagler starred in a couple of Italian b-movies (Indio, Indio 2, respectively) and Ken Norton broke into movies in the late 1970s with Mandingo and its sequel, Drum. Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini was prolific in supporting roles throughout the ‘80s, and Sugar Ray Leonard appeared in the 1997 Gary Daniels film, Riot. With more than 30 acting credits to his name, though, few boxers had the dramatic seasoning of former welterweight champion of the world, Carlos Palomino. With massive and loyal fan bases in Mexico and Southern California, he was well-positioned for a move into Hollywood. Filmed in 1988, tested theatrically in 1989, and finally released to video in 1991, Fists of Steel was his foray into action movies as a leading star.

Carlos (Palomino) is a former boxing champion, a doting father to a little girl, and a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War. He’s also a complete unknown within the American national security apparatus and its adversaries, which makes him the perfect candidate for a dangerous mission. His veteran pal at the C.I.A., Bobby Breenberg (Melville), reaches out to Carlos after his team comes into possession of a videotape that depicts Carlos’s father being killed at a terrorist camp run by Shogi (Silva), a sadistic drug kingpin and terrorist mastermind currently hiding in Hawaii. Due to information leaks and Shogi’s apparent familiarity with agency personnel, no one has been able to disrupt his activities or infiltrate his network. Every agent who got close shared the fate of thousands of innocents, and got killed. However, as an outsider, and compelled by vengeance for his father’s murder, Carlos may be the right man to cut off the “head of the snake.”

In addition to his military background, peak physical condition, and hand-to-hand combat prowess, Carlos has another ace up his sleeve: his hands were reinforced with steel, giving him exceptional knockout power (as Breenberg awkwardly dubs them, his “puños de acero”). In looking over the file on Shogi and his number-one assassin, a former KGB agent, Katrina (Marks), Carlos disregards any illusions about a quick and efficient termination of his target, stating that “[Shogi’s] gonna die slow, and mean, and hard.” His only other demand of Breenberg and his C.I.A. unit is that he work alone, with his own trusted group of friends from Los Angeles.

One of these friends puts Carlos in contact with Girl (Kerr), a big-haired singer who seems to know every shade of questionable character in the nightlife scene, including drug dealers like Saylor (Tessier). Carlos’s hope is that by scoring some narcotics, he’ll have a ticket into the supply chain, and he can then work his way up the ladder to Shogi. Will he be able to infiltrate the madman’s defense and put a stop to the senseless killings? Can he trust Girl and the other people he meets in the Aloha State? Will he be able to quickly and frequently traverse the island given the cost of gas, or instead be forced to ride a bicycle to get from one location to the next?

Hold onto your butts, this is a wild one. From the opening scene, the Henry Silva performance we failed to get in Trained to Kill is here in all of its bizarre splendor. Shogi kicks off the film with a trio of odd killing scenes. In the first, he dresses up in a baseball uniform to pummel an informer to death with a baseball bat (but only after turning on a lively dance track, and activating a disco ball and fog machine to liven things up). In the next scene, he dresses in a dentist’s outfit and drops hydrochloric acid into an agent’s open eyes. And in the final scene to cement his status as the film’s lead antagonist, he oversees the daytime stabbing of a man in a public park from the comfort of his limo. As a refined evildoer, Shogi likes death in high volume, and his booze at exactly 78 degrees fahrenheit. 

In a 1988 Sports Illustrated article published after production wrapped, Palomino and Jerry Schafer both had high hopes for how Fists of Steel would impact the theaters and the Mexican-American self-image. Palomino noted his character was “saving the youth of American from drug runners,” and Schafer believed it would “do for middle- and upper-class Hispanics what ‘The Bill Cosby Show’ did for similarly situated blacks.” Sadly, the film never saw a proper theatrical release and if its rarity on the VHS resale market is any indication, it quickly fell out of circulation on home video.

Its obscurity is exacerbated by a strangely simple issue: the title. Efforts to find it using your favorite search engine on title keywords alone will most likely lead to the 1993 Dale Apollo Cook and Cynthia Khan team-up, Fist of Steel (also known as Eternal Fist). But it could also lead to this Time-Life book about the Third Reich or even this box set of Chuck Norris movies -- yikes! These cases of mistaken identity seem appropriate for a film interested primarily in themes and issues of identity. Carlos is a Vietnam vet who gets coaxed into a covert operation by the Caucasian friend with whom he served, but once he takes the assignment, he refuses any direct help from that friend or the institution that employs him. Instead, he relies solely on his network of Mexican friends based in Los Angeles. The subtext is that for Carlos, his ethnic and social identity as a Mexican man trumps his experiential identity as a military veteran; he finds more trust and security among social peers than his operational cohorts. 

Kerr prided himself on his ability to impersonate famous women, from Cher to Barbara Streisand and more. He was a trailblazer and pioneer for the art of drag performance, and a huge star in Las Vegas, but did not identify as a woman. It’s more difficult to find that line of distinction with his character, Julie “Girl” Darcel, though. Virtually every character in the film refers to Girl with the pronouns of “she/her” and while it’d be nice to think that Shafer & Co. were attempting to strike a progressive blow for transgender equality in an era that frequently and woefully mishandled certain gender expression as deviant or evil, that good will is almost totally eroded by an unnecessary reveal in the last act of the film. Nuanced questions around gender identity on a blog about b-grade chopsocky films is a rare commentary, I’ll grant you that, but if the topic makes you uncomfortable you can always watch some Steven Seagal movies for a macho safe space. Regardless, Kerr is really good in this role, and his tense interrogation scene with Silva was a high-point for me. 

There are other identity-focused story threads as well. The C.I.A. operatives mention that Shogi is a man of ambiguous Middle Eastern origin, but Silva makes no effort to play the part in that way. As Katrina, Marks’s vaguely Russian accent comes and goes. In a scene that was clearly designed to offend as many people as possible, Breenberg dresses in brown-face and women’s clothing in order to surprise Carlos as a hotel maid, solely for the purpose of nudging him into a vacant room for a mission status report. All of this adds up to a wildly paranoid tone that presumably tries to demonstrate that things nor people are ever as they seem. The only exception is our hero, Carlos, who is definitely Mexican, undoubtedly a former boxing champ, and presumably a guy with steel joints and knuckles: “puños de acero.”

VERDICT

Fists of Steel is a surprisingly original film that stands out from the pack due in large part to the strengths of its performances. Kerr’s performance is terrific and he consistently steals scenes throughout the film. Palomino is a likable lead star capable of carrying the movie on his back, and Silva alternates between suave and unhinged as only he can. Throw in an unpredictable script, solid action, two completely bizarre book-end scenes, and you’ve got a cinematic gift that keeps on giving. 

AVAILABILITY

Difficult to find on official physical media. Seek the gray market, my friends. This film is worth it.

5 / 7

Raw Force (1982)

PLOT: A group of martial artists from a California karate club board a cruise ship destined for Warrior’s Island, a remote stomping ground for undead martial artists. Will they make it to their destination or be forced back to port on account of a norovirus outbreak?

Director: Edward D. Murphy
Writer: Edward D. Murphy
Cast: Cameron Mitchell, Geoff Binney, John Dresden, Jillian Kessner, Rey Malonzo, Ralph Lombardi, Mark Tanous, John Locke, Hope Holiday, Carl Anthony, Jennifer Holmes

PLOT THICKENER

The martial-arts-horror film is a difficult cinematic feat to pull off convincingly. The action needs to be done well enough to satisfy the chopsocky crowd, but the horror needs to have the right set-up and scares. That’s not always the most natural fit. Imagine, then, also trying to squeeze in the silly and salacious antics of a sex comedy, all set aboard a cruise ship. On paper, this shouldn’t work! On screen, it sometimes doesn’t! On a toasted bagel, it’s delicious! To hell with our pre-conceived notions, though, because filmmaker Edward D. Murphy had a vision for 1982’s Raw Force (a.k.a. Kung Fu Cannibals) that I can only assume was informed by the consumption of late-night spaghetti, Love Boat re-runs, and psychedelic drugs (in reverse order). Let’s dig in.

On an island somewhere in the South Pacific, the souls of disgraced martial artists throughout history -- some are samurai, others are Shaolin monks -- are doomed to an eternity of fantastic weather and drinks served out of a coconut. A group of evil monks living on the island (led by Filipino acting legend Vic Diaz) has determined through trial and error that by sacrificing females and eating their flesh, they can actually conjure up the island’s undead and deploy them to do their bidding. (Eating fish just made the undead twitch slightly and go back to sleep) . But while the island has plenty of undead martial artists and pure jade, it completely lacks women. An opportunistic German with a Hitlery moustache named Speer (Lombardi) employs a hippie named Cooper (Tanous) and his pals to kidnap sex workers on the mainland and fly them to the island in exchange for the monks’ precious jade. If you ever forget how the laws of supply and demand work, this is a good example to mention in your Economics class.

Outsiders have dubbed this spooky, isolated corner of the world, “Warrior’s Island,” and a niche tourism industry has sprung up around it. Ship owner Hazel Buck (Holiday) and her ship captain, Harry Dodds (Mitchell) operate a leisure cruise liner for which Warrior’s Island is a port of call on the voyage. The latest round of curious tourists includes a few handsome dudes from the Burbank karate club, Mike O’Malley (Binney), John Taylor (Dresden), and Gary Schwartz (Locke). Joining them aboard are the usual tourists, like married couple Ann and Lloyd Davis (played by Holmes and Anthony, respectively), and a couple of secretly great fighters -- Los Angeles SWAT team bad-ass, Cookie Winchell (Kesner), and a friendly guy named Chin (Malonzo).

Dodds steers the ship while squabbling with Hazel, the booze flows without pause, people pair off for random sexual escapades, husbands step out on their wives for unfaithful excursions, and everyone is having a grand old time. But when a couple of the passengers encounter Speer and Cooper on the mainland during one of the kidnapping operations, all hell breaks loose. The baddies follow them back to the ship with reinforcements and board the ship with bad intentions that have nothing to do with abuse of the buffet service. Will the cruise goers be able to fend off these party crashers? Will our heroic tourists make it to Warrior’s Island to take in the sights? Better yet, will the boat run out of ice or rum?

If you like your cinema weird and wild with a musty grindhouse stank, this is the flick of your dreams. Despite trying to stamp this flick with so many hallmarks of the exploitation cinema of the day, and doing none of it especially well, Murphy still manages to wrangle all the elements together for an enjoyable movie. It’s flawed but fun! Raw Force fell right in the middle of Cameron Mitchell’s prime check-cashing run (some will say it lasted a couple decades) but he’s motivated to steal scenes and has good chemistry with Hope Holiday, his then-girlfriend. The ship’s cast of characters are a good mix, but I can’t lie: I couldn’t tell the Burbank karate bros from each other at all, making the presence of Kesner and Malonzo -- and their high usage rates in the fight scenes -- all the more essential. The villains are mostly good. The monks are creepy, cackling, and lecherous. Speer is a terrific shit-bag villain. The weak link in the coalition, believe it or not, might actually be the army of undead martial artists. They have a decent look (dirty with the blue hue of the Dawn of the Dead zombies) but they turn out to be rather terrible and unthreatening fighters.

Before “fight choreographer” became a standard crew credit in action films, there was the catch-all “stunt coordinator” position, occupied here by Mike Stone. (Most will remember him as “Tojo Ken” in American Ninja 2; he did fight choreography for four of the films in that franchise). Outside of Rey Malonzo, I’m not sure how many members of the Raw Force cast were serious martial artists before they got to this film set, but the fight scenes are enjoyable for what they are -- energetic without being especially technical. Case in point is the cramped cabin fight between a thug wearing a helmet with a swastika while throwing around gasoline -- let's call him Gas Nazi -- and an unusually vociferous guy who will just not stay down no matter how beaten up he gets. His persistence becomes almost comical as he screams and kicks his way through the bathroom door behind which Gas Nazi is hiding out, and stuffs his head into a toilet. Did I mention there’s a nude woman strapped to the bed the entire time this fight takes place? Again, this is a strange movie.

VERDICT

I’ve made no secret about my admiration for the kitchen-sink film, that rare work of cinema that throws everything at the problem of filling a solid 80-90 minutes of screen time -- planning, money, and logic be damned. I'll even admit I have a tendency to overrate them, but I love what I love. Raw Force is yet another example of that wacky witch’s brew previously seen in films like Devil’s Express, Furious, and Demon Master, and it has just enough spooky stuff for you chopsocky heads looking to get that seasonal fix. Recommended.

AVAILABILITY

Raw Force is streaming on Amazon Prime with a Shudder subscription, but do yourself a favor and pick up the Bluray from Vinegar Syndrome.

4 / 7

Guyver: Dark Hero (1994)

PLOT: A young man possessed by weaponized alien armor known as the Guyver travels to a mysterious archaeological dig site that may hold the key to explaining its origins. It may also hold around 800 million barrels of salted caramel, a candy lover’s dream.

Director: Steve Wang
Writers: Steve Wang, Nathan Long, Yoshiki Takaya
Cast: David Hayter, Kathy Christopherson, Christopher Michael, Bruno Patrick

PLOT THICKENER

You know that old saying about how “clothes make the person?” Somewhat true! Certain articles of clothing can make you feel cool and confident. Yet other outfits will make you feel like a bargain-bin Mayor McCheese on a casual Friday. Somewhere between these two ends of the fashion spectrum is the sort of clothing that can make you feel like you can jump really high, perform lethal martial arts moves, and shoot lasers out of your chest. But what if this clothing -- hell, let’s call it armor -- couldn’t be removed at all? What if it was actually part of your body and you were merely hosting it? This is the premise of Bio-Booster Armor Guyver, a Japanese manga series from the 1980s and 90s that was adapted for the American film screen twice by filmmaker Steve Wang: first in 1991 under the title, The Guyver, and again just three years later as Guyver: Dark Hero.

Sean Barker (Hayter) keeps waking up violently in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. Night terrors? Consuming sugar too close to bedtime? Yeah, close. Some time has passed since the Guyver, an alien bio-armor, took over his body. It has a mind of its own and activates at random, turning Sean into a lethal fighting machine. Sure -- it was useful when he was battling the Cronos Corporation, a nefarious group trying to locate the Guyver for its own evil means, but now it’s just cramping his style. On the one hand, it lets him fight large criminal enterprises with relative ease, but on the other hand, he can’t go to the grocery store to shop for soup ingredients without worrying about the Guyver taking control of his faculties and blasting the produce section to a pulpy mess.

While watching a local news story about some mysterious killings near a covert dig site, Sean notices footage of cave paintings that correlate to the notebook sketches he’s been compulsively doodling in his waking hours. He takes a taxi to a general store -- like most of us did before Google Maps -- seeking help to identify a non-specific location he’s curious to visit. Once there, he meets Cori Edwards (Christopherson) a researcher buying a case of cheap beer for her archaeological dig team. Initially reluctant because of potential stranger danger, she finally agrees to take him there based on the intrigue of his notebook sketches. She fibs to the dig organizers on his behalf and Sean is suddenly lending a hand in their efforts.

In time, he begins to discover the objectives for the dig, the shadowy sources of its financing, and the various intentions of some of the so-called “researchers” on the project. The mysterious killings, previously attributed to wildlife or even a werewolf, may be the work of Zoanoids, the monstrous shape-shifting battle forms that comprise the Cronos Corporation. Will Sean find the source behind the Guyver? Can he defeat Cronos and the Zoanoids and rid himself of the Guyver once and for all? And will the persistent lower back pain he experiences after consecutive hours of shoveling respond better to a heated pad or deep tissue massage? Maybe a little of both?

The last few Octobers, I’ve made a concerted effort to focus on movies that feature some sort of monsters, spooky elements, and schlocky gore. Prior to watching it, I had no idea that Guyver: Dark Hero would satisfy all these criteria. While I’ve never seen the first one -- by all indications, this is the stronger of the two efforts -- the sequel stands on its own as an enjoyable romp that requires little pretext or understanding of the source material. At its core, this is a film about a man who is unable to control his body and the misdeeds that result from its strange powers. Anyone who has eaten at Chipotle can probably relate.

The creature design of the various Zoanoids might seem familiar to those viewers who have watched any number of Kamen Rider or Power Rangers episodes, but what threw me for a loop was the amount of blood and gore during the fight scenes. It was a minor but effective touch that upped the shlock factor and raised the stakes within the story (who wants to see a vanquished enemy dissolve out of a composite shot?!) The spectacle of violence may even make you disregard the fact that the action scenes are unevenly distributed and the fight choreography is a bit inconsistent.

The fight scenes are quite good for the most part, even with the obvious performative restrictions of bulky costuming. Fight choreographer Koichi Sakamoto and his Alpha Stunt Team certainly deserve credit for that. There’s some goofy stuff -- surprise wrestling moves, a plodding splash-fight in the water, and Guyver killing an enemy with his random laser titties -- but all of it is forgivable in the context of this cinematic universe. What can’t be ignored is staging your climactic fight in a cave with a bunch of stalagmites and stalactites and not incorporating them into the choreography at all. Friggin’ Cliffhanger got it -- why didn’t this film?

Even with all the fun stuff Wang puts in the mix, the film’s excessive run-time -- over two hours -- was nearly a deal-breaker. It drags quite badly in spots and the narrative gets bogged down by attempts to translate what I assume were frequent panels of Sean’s internal monologue strewn throughout the series. It’s chatty to a fault and the script tries to juggle too many secondary plot points and character motivations.  Fans of the original manga series or the initial anime adaptations might appreciate it, but I think viewers approaching the film without that context may risk becoming disengaged. There’s a better film somewhere in here if the filmmakers had left around 20 minutes of narrative fat on the cutting room floor.

VERDICT

If, like me, your introduction to the pairing of Sakamoto and Wang was the non-Gosling Drive (1997) your expectations might have been set artificially high, but the cool stunt shit is here along with plenty of wacky visual touches. The acting performances are serviceable but you’re watching this movie for dudes fighting in elaborate creature suits. They’re aren’t many American tokusatsu (“monster”) films out there, even fewer good ones, and Guyver: Dark Hero might be the best.

AVAILABILITY

• DVD or VHS (Amazon, eBay)
• Streaming via Amazon Prime

3.5 / 7

The Master Demon (1991)

PLOT: One master demon. One severed hand. Ranchera music. One mesh half-shirt. Eight gallons of blood and make-up. Blend until smooth and then bake for approximately 81 minutes, or until set.

Director: Samuel Oldham
Writer: Samuel Oldham
Cast: Eric Lee, Gerald Okamura, Sid Campbell, Steve Nave, Ava Cadell, Kay Baxter Young, Tony Halme, Art Camacho

PLOT THICKENER

Among vampires, zombies, and men who are also wolves, demons can get lost in the horror movie mix. Cinematic representations of demons have ranged from frothing (Lamberto Bava’s Demons), to possessive and Assyrian (Pazuzu in The Exorcist), and even slapstick (The Evil Dead series). In his 1991 film, The Master Demon, director Samuel Oldham sought to expose a few of the traits conspicuously absent from the demon’s cinematic lexicon, freakishly high cheekbones and the ability to levitate gardening tools among them.

Centuries ago, there existed the White Warrior (Lee), a swordsman with an incredible mane of hair worthy of lead guitar duty in Motley Crue or Warrant. His primary adversary was the Master Demon (Okamura), a hideous underworld martial artist with a mastery of black magic. During a bloody mano-a-mano confrontation as part of the “Dragon Wars,” the White Warrior severed the Master Demon’s hand, disappearing him back to the world from which he came. The White Warrior, near-death from his wounds, brought the hand to a nearby monk, who performed some incantations and placed it under lock and key in a wooden box. To ensure the Master Demon never regained his powers, he couldn’t be allowed to become whole again.

Many years later, the White Warrior has been reborn as Tong Lee, a great martial artist but otherwise regular guy who likes mesh half-shirts and Mexican food. Similarly, the Demon Master walks among the living as shipping magnate (and art collector), Kwan Cheng. After a thief makes off with a certain ancient wooden box on exhibit in an art gallery, the two are drawn back into conflict. While reading from a sacred book, Cheng inadvertently conjures up the powerful Medusa (Baxter), another force from the underworld, who admonishes him for allowing the remains to be stolen before fatally breaking his neck. She tracks the wooden box back to a private investigator named Cameron Massey (Nave) who randomly received it from a crooked art dealer with a knife lodged in his head. (Who put it there? Medusa, of course!) The resulting scrum at Cameron’s apartment draws the attention of not only Tong Lee, but also the cops! Investigating detective Wayne Besecker (Campbell), Cameron, and Lee, are suddenly thrown together as humanity’s last hope against a resurgent Master Demon, Medusa, and an army of fighters.

Umm… where do I start? How Oldham pulled together this cast is a great mystery; it’s one of the more off-the-wall supporting casts I’ve ever seen, even for a low-budget martial arts film. Before he was a pro wrestler, politican, and recording musical artist, Tony Halme was just a 300-pound Finnish dude looking for film work, and he’s perfectly cast as a henchman who can’t be trusted with any dialogue. Ava Cadell -- most famous for her work as a sex and love therapist -- appeared in many bit parts in film and television in the 1970s and 80s, but has a fairly prominent role as Jan, Cameron’s secretary. (Her first scene involves quitting her job as Cameron’s secretary). The romantic pairing of Jan with Besecker felt like an odd choice -- their goofy, drawn-out love scene is a record needle-scratch moment -- but her quirky line delivery adds occasional humor to the story. Among all of these personalities, the most consistently imposing figure is cut not by the martial artist leads, but by female bodybuilding pioneer, Kay Baxter Young, who tragically died in a car accident in 1988. How her character of Medusa fits into the film’s mythos is never really explained, but when she can demolish an entire building with a single punch (this is a thing that happened), that level of detail is inconsequential.

The fight scenes are not so great, but they’re also not really why you’re watching this sort of film. Eric Lee and Gerald Okamura are both talented martial artists and they’ve done better action sequences in other films. The film features fighting book-ends involving them both, a scene where Lee flying through a window from the *outside* to jump-kick a guy in Cameron’s living room (awesome!) and a fat section in the middle of the film where the Master Demon’s army rumbles with our heroes in a parking lot. From a logistical perspective, this sort of dynamic (15+ fighters) can be a mess to manage. Oldham tries to break it down into digestible chunks by following each hero separately through different fights of roughly equal length, but the scene overall felt long as a result. It was also difficult to take Cameron seriously as a fighter due to his “Butte Police” shirt.

The director made some interesting choices in this film, some probably influenced by budget, and others probably influenced by a lack of time. YouTube has become a sanctuary for direct-to-video productions, and it’s the easiest way to watch this particular one, but I’d like to see how the original home video release compares to what I watched. In the version Oldham has made available on his YouTube channel, the title credit graphics and even some of the special effects reflect production technologies that appear a lot newer than the film’s 1991 release date. Was Oldham trying to improve on whatever was there originally? More specifically, there are some odd effects that occur when the Master Demon incurs a battle wound; instead of spurting blood or cutting to a gory close-up, laser-like tendons emerge from the injuries and they look like they came from some consumer-grade video editing program from the early 2000s. Curious choice, but perhaps the director felt a need to tinker after the fact.

Oldham’s other uses of horror elements are more effective. Some are traditional -- think smoke machines and strobe lights -- while others are garish, such as drill-torture and a quick cutaway to a bloody, faceless, skull. A scene in which Lee encourages his comrades to drink his blood to gain some of his powers features a convincing bloodletting effect not fit for the squeamish viewer. These visuals fit the film’s WTF aesthetics perfectly, and serve the director’s larger objective of a true genre mash-up. Also true to the horror film formula are the make-up effects used on Gerald Okamura’s demon; they range from dark, grotesque blobs to facial protrusions that would look right at home in your favorite Troma film or an art-rock album cover from Annie Clark and David Byrne.

VERDICT

If you were on board for 1985’s Furious and enjoyed the weird mix of martial arts and kitchen-sink aesthetics, this film might be the closest thing to its cinematic spiritual successor. That said, this film has a brand of try-hard charm that won’t vibe with some viewers, and it can be hit-and-miss. Personally, I really dig when young or first-time directors throw a lifetime of influences at the wall to blend it into a single film -- especially when they include horror, action, and Highlander-esque story elements -- and Oldham’s attempt is admirable.

AVAILABILITY

Amazon, YouTube.

3.5 / 7

Devil's Express (1976)

PLOT: A New York City martial artist and his protégé travel to China for a retreat that will sharpen their skills and minds. When the student lifts a shiny souvenir from a mysterious cave, the unleashed bad juju threatens to destroy them all.

Director: Barry Rosen
Writers: Barry Rosen, Niki Patton, Pascual Vaquer, CeOtis Robinson, Bobbi Sapperstein
Cast: Warhawk Tanzania, Wilfredo Roldan, Larry Fleischman, Aki Aleong



PLOT THICKENER
No pairing of city and era was as versatile and evocative for a genre movie filming location than New York City in the 1970s. Its dilapidated tenements were perfect for a post-apocalyptic near-future. Need a seedy area to situate your drug-dealing and prostitution morality play? Times Square is your place. If the mise-en-scène for your crime-thriller needs to suggest the hidden dangers of traveling alone, pick any subway platform or public park on the map. Alleys, basketball courts, and dodgy underpasses: the list goes on. Director Barry Rosen got plenty of mileage out of NYC for 1976’s Devil’s Express -- originally released as Gang Wars but known as Death Express in the UK and referred to as Phantom of the Subway during production -- where it somehow doubles as both ancient China and modern-day Hong Kong. Young filmmakers, take note: access to an urban botanical garden goes a long way in your storytelling.

In ancient China, a group of holy men are out picking berries in the forest or something when they realize they’d totally forgotten about the sacred blood ritual scheduled that day. They place an amulet on the heavy wooden crate they’ve been lugging around before setting it below the ground in a spooky cavern. While their lower backs might be thanking them, their arteries are not. The lead holy man strikes down his friends before offing himself and following all of THAT, a cryptic title card announces to the audience that yes, Devil’s Express is a Phantom Production. You’re goddamn right it is!

Fast-forward several hundred years later to modern-day New York City, where a martial arts master named Luke (Tanzania) is training a friend from the police force. Don’t be getting any funny ideas though -- Luke is a righteous dude who trusts the police as much as he trusts gangs or undershirts (i.e. not very much). When his hot-headed student, Rodan (Roldan) starts talking vengeance after his crew’s latest gang rumble, Luke tries to chill him out -- the pair is scheduled to travel to Hong Kong for advanced training in both meditation and combat. The body and mind won’t work well if the spirit is in conflict.

Unfortunately, Rodan’s stress carries over into Hong Kong and Luke picks up on it and chides his student for the unnecessary distraction. Rodan gets his ass handed to him during sparring, and is jumping out of his skin during an isolated meditation session. Channeling his inner whiny teenager, he takes off into the woods and stumbles upon a spooky cavern. As Luke is deep in meditation, his student is stumbling around in the cavern’s darkness before finding the ancient amulet. He pockets it and gets defensive with Luke before they return home via transition airplane insert shot. Unfortunately for them (and the greater NYC area) whatever is inside the crate is adept enough to hitchhike on a cargo ship to follow them. Before too long, the bodies begin to pile up below the subway, and Luke might be the only one who can stop the force that his student has foolishly unleashed.

Call your immediate family members. Send your friends a text message filled with the happiest emojis. Send an updated meeting agenda for your annual performance review to your employers. Because you all need to have a conversation about Warhawk Tanzania. Your grandparents will fall in love with Warhawk’s deliberately enunciated dialogue about righteous behavior. Every one of your ex-lovers will go apeshit for the skin-tight gold-lamé overalls he wears for the final act of the film. All of your afro enthusiast friends will take careful notes. He’s no Jim Kelly on the charisma scale, but he should have been in so many more blaxploitation films with a martial arts bend. It’s kind of a shame so little is known about him. (Was his birth name really Warhawk? Is he still alive? What’s his favorite omelette? These are the top three questions in my Excel file full of them). Sure, he’s not a great actor, but every second of this film when he wasn’t on-screen, I felt like screaming into a loaf of rye bread shaped like a pillow. Warhawk Tanzania gets me pretty emotional, you guys.

Do you long for the days when gangs could rumble in alleys and public parks while attracting nary a glance from law enforcement or civilians? This film captures New Yorkers, young and old alike, at record-high levels of DGAF as stunt players and martial artists rough each other up in various city locations. Throughout it all, there are random daytime passerbys pounding the pavement in the background of just about every shot the filmmakers captured. I’d imagine that the 1970s NYC population was pretty numb to the presence of film crews at this point, but the solid fight choreography here should have undone their indifference.

For such a low-budget film, the fight scenes are quite solid, highlighted by a steady rough-and-tumble quality in different settings. We get loads of alley fights, a fight in a bar between a female bartender and a male gang member, and a fairly entertaining man vs. monster climax that will have you doing double-takes from the choppy editing and supernatural overtones. It appears that Barry Rosen, whose only directorial credits were this film and 1976’s non-action movie The Yum Yum Girls, wisely turned things over to his on-set martial artists. Many of them appear to be students of various skill level, but there’s some observable technique and combinations at work.

 

If you can believe it, Devil’s Express was the brain-child of at least five different screenwriters. I have no idea how they collaborated, but I’d like to think that the genre influences were delegated one per writer; one person injected the scary stuff, another handled the martial arts, and so on. Five different people each throwing a delicious homemade recipe at the same wall to see what sticks. Usually, films with this many cooks in the kitchen are a goddamn mess. Does that make any of those dishes any less delicious? Even when eaten off of a wall? Of course not! If the food slides off the wall and onto the floor, we’re having a different conversation, but all of the cinematic elements work fine individually and become suitably wacky when combined. People are out there eating Mountain Dew & Doritos donuts for fuck’s sake. There are bigger problems in the world than a blaxploitation-chopsocky-gang-war-whodunit-monster movie.

VERDICT
If you’re a fan of trashy genre hybrids like Raw Force and can tolerate a flimsy plot and a lack of technical polish -- and if you’re here, you clearly can -- Devil’s Express is up your spooky, poorly-lit alley. The great thing about films like these is the madcap pastiche: martial arts, blaxploitation, gang warfare, police procedural, and man-in-a-suit monster movie tropes all live comfortably side by side for a tidy 82 minutes. The end result is a bouillabaisse of 1970s independent exploitation filmmaking that will have you hunting down a pair of gold-lame overalls faster that you can say “Warhawk Tanzania!” A recommended if uneven curiosity.

AVAILABILITY
This one is available on YouTube under one of its many titles (I’ll leave it to you to find your way) but I’d advise you to track down the Code Red DVD release. Their high-definition release made use of the original negative and the film looks miles better than what you’re likely to find on any streaming service or grey market copy.

4.5 / 7

Dragon Fury (1995)

PLOT: In the future, a mysterious disease is wiping out the human population. A violent, fascist medical dictatorship is making millions in profit despite their completely ineffective cure serum. One brave warrior must travel backwards through time to undo their misdeeds. Based on the epic GlaxoSmithKline fan-fiction novel of the same name.

Director: David Heavener
Writer: David Heavener
Cast: Robert Chapin, TJ Storm, Richard Lynch, Chona Jason, Rick Tain, Chuck Loch, Sean P. Donahue


PLOT THICKENER
Cinematically speaking, time travel is a tough subject to pull off. There are almost always plot holes or flimsy layers of scientific logic that beg explanation but can’t be adequately articulated on screen without coming off as ham-handed or expository. The universe of Back to the Future handled it well enough, and 2004’s Primer was an interesting exercise in how the fabric of the universe could be bent on a micro-budget. David Heavener’s 1995 film, Dragon Fury takes a slightly different approach by skirting any question you could have about the logic underpinning its science fiction elements. When you ask how the time machine works, someone gets topless. When you ask why characters are behaving in a particular way, someone gets decapitated. When you ask how time travel will affect people and events, this film hands you an aspirin for the future headache that will occur from going into the past. Of course.

Mason (Chapin) is a rogue warrior in a near-future dystopia who trusts no one but his girlfriend, Regina (Jason), and his close friend, the eccentric doctor, Milton (Loch). The latter has recently uncovered an evil plot from the past that explains the dire state of the present. And he has the brittle newspaper clippings to prove it! Apparently, an organization called the AAMA manufactured some disease in some lab some time in the late 1990s and killed a whistleblowing doctor before the truth got out. Since that time, they’ve been making serious dough by distributing a placebo serum that does nothing to curb the spread of the disease. These big-pharma buttholes are led by “chief medical dictator” Vestor (Lynch) and his band of merry men called the Dragons. Mason was trained as a Dragon and managed to escape before being completely brainwashed, but their treachery haunts him on the regular.

After some intense discussion (<5 minutes) Mason wants Milton to send him to the past to fetch the real cure to save humanity. Milton obliges, gives Mason an aspirin for the post-trip headache, straps his homeboy to some tubing, and sends him through space and time to late-90s Los Angeles. We know this because there are strobe lights, smoke, and occasional screaming, then a jump cut. Regina follows suit, but unfortunately, Vestor shows up shortly thereafter with his head goons. He forces Milton to send Fullock (Storm) and Henchman #2 back through time as well, and the chase is on. Will Mason locate the cure by the time the time portal re-opens? Will he be confused by the past's untorn shirts? The large cell phones? The startling lack of hoverboards?

For a quick and dirty list, here is what the post-apocalypse of Dragon Fury has to offer: fog, disease, torn t-shirts, sword fights, dirty robes, motorcycles, chokers with cock-rings, expensive bread, undercuts, and homing devices that turn into swords but look like vibrators. Here’s what it doesn’t have: adequate lighting, readily available firearms, oil drum fires, endangered water supplies, studded leather, lasers, or decent healthcare.

Beyond his brief cameo as a nerdy newlywed, David Heavener also contributes as the film’s director and writer. This is his sixth film, and I would shudder at any insinuation that this is his best effort. The post-apocalyptic costumes are lame even by b-movie standards, the villains are undercooked, the plot is meandering and silly, and the fights lack any sense of drama or danger for the most part. Some of the stunt set pieces, both large and small, are fairly competent though. Take a look through the credits and you’ll see the name of Parole Violators star, Sean Donahue, who served as the film’s stunt coordinator. He dons silly wigs, falls down flights of stairs, and does all of the little things that great stunt work ethic encompasses. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him the MVP of the film, but you could argue that he served the cinematic equivalent of James Posey on the 2008 Boston Celtics: a valuable role player without whom a championship would not be possible. In this case, that championship is The Best 1995 Film Bearing the Name “Dragon Fury.” (This film went undefeated).

Frankly, I was a little surprised to find that T.J. Storm had made so few appearances in films we’ve reviewed thus far. It *seems* like the dude is in everything. That said, the man best remembered around these parts for getting tricked into painting a garage and getting punched by Bolo Yeung during a solo dance sequence, is featured here as the main heavy, Fullock. Heavener seemed to have a clear idea that he wanted the character to be an Arnie-aping, man-of-few-lines, T-800-esque automaton. Storm is a little goofy at times, but I can’t blame him for the lack of engaging characterization. He’s hulking, throws some intense glares, and carries himself well during fight scenes. Seriously big hair, too.

Even if a film’s plot is silly and the sole ownership of acting chops resides with Richard Lynch and his ~72 hours on the set, not all is lost. Great or even good film fights can go a long way in raising the quality of the overall product. Lack of urgency notwithstanding, the fights here were okay, though it’s certainly a case where the energy level outstripped the choreography. The sword fights were bloodless duds, but Storm in particular looks good during his hand-to-hand fight scenes, and he and Chapin have a nice chemistry together. The fight settings are not particularly varied, though. Underpasses, L.A. concrete, parking garages, and warehouses are (once again) the most dangerous places around if you’re trying to avoid a martial arts fight.

VERDICT
The vast majority of b-level martial arts films have steered clear of time travel, with good reason. It can be a heady scientific story element probably best left to polished science-fiction genre filmmakers like Robert Zemeckis and Shane Carruth. However, I’m glad that Heavener decided that the ethics and philosophy of time travel could be conveniently discarded as long as you had plenty of tubing and strobe lights at your disposal. Fleeting moments of enjoyable absurdity or lively fights, but mostly forgettable.

AVAILABILITY
For hard copies on Ebay or Amazon, VHS is your only format option. The film is also freely available through Troma’s channel on YouTube.

3 / 7 

Ninja Warriors (1985)

PLOT: Document-stealing killer super ninjas are up to no good. A more robust and secure records management system could have discouraged such behavior.

Director: John Lloyd
Writer: John Lloyd
Cast: Ron Marchini, Mike Monty, Nick Nicholson, Paul Vance, Romano Kristoff, Ken Watanabe





PLOT THICKENER
Do you know how many movie titles containing the word “ninja” were released in the 1980s? The answer, according to this quick and dirty IMDb search, is 80. (Take a moment to appreciate the irony of that). In 1985 alone, nine English-language “ninja” films were released. Of those movies, three were directed by Godfrey Ho, two starred Sho Kosugi, two starred Alexander Lo, and one was the first American Ninja movie. The lonely remainder was the 1985 Silver Star film, Ninja Warriors. Not only is this the raucous debut film from Fighting Spirit director John Lloyd, but it’s also our first feature film starring Ron Marchini. He knows karate or something!

Cinematic representations of corporate espionage vary wildly in tone and form. The fact that a steely thriller like Michael Clayton can sit at the same thematic table as campy horror fare like The Stuff and a visual sci-fi feast like Inception is a testament to that. Clinging to the underside of that table, unseen and undetected, is Ninja Warriors, which opens with a ninja siege at a high-security corporate office.  The target: a bunch of classified documents. Collateral damage: a rather unfortunate security guard set ablaze. The music for all this: what sounds like Morricone’s theme from “Death Rides a Horse.” Nevermind that Sakura Killers ripped off the opening scene just two years later. If every movie started off like this, the world would be a better place.

The ninjas stole the documents to support a criminal syndicate pursuing a highly-protected formula that will aid them in controversial scientific experiments. Their objective: to create a superhuman ninja. Meanwhile, the authorities are clueless and can’t even get a proper handle on the criminal element with which they’re dealing. Capt Marlowe (Monty) is skeptical that ninjas are behind the break-in, despite the protests of underling Lt. Kevin Washington (Vance) and his assertion that shurikens at the crime scene are their calling card. He knows from reading Encyclopedia Britannica -- there was no Wikipedia at that time -- that ninjas comprise a secret society and “those who succeed in the arts, are said to be powerful -- very powerful." Actually, Kevin, people who have degrees in the arts are twice as likely to be unemployed as their peers holding technical or science degrees. Not very powerful at all.

What’s a good cop to do when his dickhead captain won’t listen? Washington goes outside the system and turns to his friend, Steve (Marchini), a mysterious loner who lives in the woods. Having spent some time in Japan, Steve knows that anything involving ninjas is serious business, because they’re “masters of deception.” Few are so well-prepared for their sabotage and treachery. Steve keeps his skills sharp by doing martial arts forms, extends his endurance by jogging in a ratty hooded sweatshirt, and simulates the effects of alcohol intoxication by balancing on a tight-rope while blindfolded. When the throwing stars and flaming arrows start to fly, Steve is ready. There's virtually nothing he can't handle.

The ninjas in this film are a deadly pestilence, like norovirus or combination Taco Bell-Pizza Hut locations. Crime boss Kuroda (non-Inception Ken Watanabe) and his partner, Jansen (Nicholson) are terrific, strutting around in tailored suits and looking self-satisfied as they toss around vague cliches about business success and science experiments. Filipino action fixture Romano Kristoff overcomes a terrible character name, Tom, as the de facto leader of the ninja underlings. I would be shocked if this particular gang hadn’t shattered the world record for ninja smoke-bomb exits, and even more shocked if Guinness failed to track that particular statistic because Guinness is usually on their game.

Seeing Nick Nicholson on the screen is always a welcome treat, but between his handsome suits and rugged beard, he brought it to another level here. My own beard has generated unsolicited compliments from complete strangers on a few occasions, but I don’t have shit on Nicholson. Why did he opt for just a moustache or a goatee in so many other films when his potential was so grizzly? He’s a goddamn Wolf Man!

Apropos of nothing but how amazing would a 1980s Filipino werewolf movie starring Nicholson have been? DREAM FUCKING PROJECT ... The space in which that ellipsis resides is the same space in which I imagine Wolfman Nicholson in combat fatigues running around the jungle and shredding commandos with his teeth and claws. Mike Monty is there. Jim Gaines. Exploding huts. Cirio directs. If we can get a holographic Tupac onstage at Coachella, surely we can get Nicholson in Wolfman Commando.

It’s somewhat rare that one watches an 80s ninja film for the masterful choreography. Hong Kong fare like Ninja in the Dragon’s Den or Five Element Ninja are among the elite, and Sakura Killers was an enjoyable effort, but ninja films are more typically known for the spectacle of their fight scenes and not the choreography itself. Ninja Warriors is no different in that respect; it wins points on scale (lots of ninjas), cunning (different traps), and strange behavior (group abdominal exercises, breaking into houses through the chimney).

It’s always interesting to observe the various ways that ninja films from different eras and countries extend, subvert, or otherwise challenge traits of the ninja archetype. Whereas Sakura Killers demonstrated the ninjas’ “burrowing-and-tunneling” behavior, Ninja Warriors gives us a peek behind the curtain in an opening scene where the ninjas dig themselves into holes before presumably tunneling at a later date. How do you presume they dug said holes? Ninja magic? Nope, they used shovels. (Ninjas operating backhoes would have been silly, don’t you think?)

VERDICT
What happens when you marry the wacky spirit of Filipino 1980s action with the zany vibe of a 1980s ninja film? You get a lot of angry guests because the wedding favor is a shuriken to the face, but you also get a 1985 film called Ninja Warriors. The action is serviceable, the plot is ridiculous, the ninja scenes are plentiful, and Marchini shows that even your stone-faced heroes can wear the same ratty sweatshirt every day of the week.

AVAILABILITY
The film movie made the jump to DVD, but you may be able to find the VHS release on Amazon or EBay. At a maximum of $20 for a used copy, you’re better off depending on the kindness of YouTube users.

4 / 7

Deadbeat at Dawn (1988)

PLOT: A gang leader tries to give up the thug life to be with his woman, only to have his rivals kill her. Desperate and vengeful, he has two options: kill the gang that killed his girl, or go to community college to get an associate’s degree in nursing.

Director: Jim Van Bebber
Writer: Jim Van Bebber
Cast: Jim Van Bebber, Paul Harper, Marc Pittman, Ric Walker, Megan Murphy, Bill Stover



PLOT THICKENER
Plenty of folks will see this title pop up in their feeds and say, “why the hell is my favorite 1980s cult-psych-gang war-druggie-based-in-Ohio-gore fest getting play on Fist of B-List?” On its face, Deadbeat at Dawn is not the kind of movie that jumps out as a logical candidate for inclusion on a site focused on golden-age DTV martial arts films. There are no martial arts actors in the cast. Woo-Sang Park didn’t direct it. Art Camacho didn’t do the fight choreography. There’s no Zubaz whatsoever and not a stunt mat in sight. What this film does have, however, is the kind of zany, independent fighting-and-filmmaking spirit that we dig around these parts.

In the interview featurette on the movie’s Dark Sky release, director Jim Van Bebber concludes by saying that it "never aspired to be Kafka or Shakepeare -- it's a simple revenge kung fu movie." I’m not sure many folks will watch the movie and immediately think “kung fu” in the same way they’d watch Chinese Connection and think “kung fu,” but it’s a definite nod to the genre with some unique flourishes informed by a young-and-hungry cinematic vision. It also has the greatest goddamn nunchucks-training-in-a-cemetery-scene ever filmed.

New York City’s roughneck landscape in the 1970s nor Detroit's post-boom dystopia can hold a candle to the urban decay of Dayton, Ohio in the 1980s. Crumbling tenements separate seedy adult video stores, and in the alleys between buildings, itchy drug dealers sling crank, the local drug of choice. Elderly women pack heat in their car consoles, and if the police force is even visible, it's totally impotent. The economy is in the tank and gangs of masked maniacs run wild in the streets.

Well, two gangs, anyways. The Ravens are led by Goose (Van Bebber) a fearsome punk whose love of martial arts and knife-fights is equaled only by his love for his girlfriend, Christy (Murphy). Goose’s exploits as a gang leader have given the couple a degree of independence -- they share a decent apartment with a kitchenette! -- but Christy wants her guy to make a clean break from gang life so the couple can join the Peace Corps and assist African villages with access to clean drinking water. (Kidding, I think they wanted to move to Chicago or something).

The Ravens’ rival gang is a collection of misfits and speed freaks known as the Spiders. Their murderous ways and sartorial choices -- leather, flimsy masks, tighty-whities worn OVER their jeans -- are a clear signal that these guys give no fucks. Main muscle Bonecrusher (Pittman) captures the gang’s credo during an amazing drug-induced rant, screaming “I just fucking hate people.” That brand of hatred is on full display in every frame of shared screentime between Goose and the Spiders’ leader, Danny (Harper). Cinematic heroes are only as good as their villains, and Danny is as dickish and devious as they come. He’s the overlap portion of the Venn Diagram between moustaches and the products of fatherless homes. He attempts rape, screws over allies, and orders a hit on Goose that leads to Christy’s horrible death. As a tearful Goose lowers the bloody corpse of his love into a trash compactor during a de facto funeral scene, the audience will be clamoring for payback. Vengeance is sure to come, but at what cost to Goose? To the Ravens? To the good people of Dayton, Ohio?

What a film. The fight scenes lack a certain technical sophistication -- Van Bebber practiced martial arts and I have no idea if he would self-identify as a martial artist -- but the ebbs and flows to the fight scenes have a rompy tone to them. The filmmaker also performs a number of impressive and dangerous stunts. He jumps into reservoirs, lowers himself down the side of a multi-story parking garage, and hangs out of a moving car by his arm as it speeds through a tight alley. Did I mention the robbery scene where he tosses the most comically-sized throwing star in the history of cinema? It’s the size of a damn Frisbee.

Some of the final blows are brutal and lively (think loud thwacks and crimson gushers) and Van Bebber uses the one-versus-many convention with aplomb. The circumstances surrounding Goose’s exit from gang life and new lone wolf status are hammered home in the dynamics of the fight themselves. In the climax especially, we buy the hopelessness of his situation, and his desperate antics -- from his near-decapitation of a thug with nunchuks, to ripping out an enemy’s throat with his bare hand -- seem an appropriate response to his dead end.

The film might also seem an odd choice for the month of October given that the prior review of Night Hunter was an intentional attempt at being seasonally spooky. Though it wields some of the aesthetics and budgetary marks common to exploitation film in a general sense, Deadbeat at Dawn is not a horror film in the traditional sense of the word. However, the creative vision of this menacing industrial gangland where trash compactors comprise funerial proceedings and drug-fueled nihilism reigns is indeed a nightmarish proposition.

DANNY! (SUBMITTED WITHOUT COMMENT)

VERDICT
With films like this and Fighting Spirit, I have some trouble articulating why I love them so much. Both bear a grimy, gritty, violent, and slightly shoddy quality, yet far surpass martial arts b-movies that tried to create a slick technical sheen only to fall flat on the enjoyment factor. Deadbeat at Dawn knows what it is: an indie exploitation fight film fueled by vengeance, leather, narcotics, mesh, and nunchucks. Recommended.

AVAILABILITY
Wide. Amazon, Netflix, EBay, YouTube.

5 / 7

Enter the Indies: Sins of the Dragon (2013)

PLOT: Two honorable warriors traverse the wilderness, pursuing a violent maniac hell-bent on killing as many dragon masters as possible. Will they stop him and eventually get back to the car? Or will their cell phones die and doom them to a life of backwoods vagrancy?

Director: Joey Corpora
Writer: Kale Sweeney
Cast: Kale Sweeney, Shannon Lee Haines, Marty Frankenfield, Joey Corpora, Brennen Dickerson, Connor Corpora


PLOT THICKENER
We’ve watched plenty of martial arts films on shoestring budgets over the years, but only a few could be described as truly independent. Almost all of them were the products of companies that specialized in the direct-to-video market. As technology has evolved to allow filmmakers of all genres to produce and distribute their own short movies and feature films, small outfits have sprouted up to occupy a new and exciting space. While The Stunt People out of San Francisco, CA are arguably the measuring stick in the martial-arts-on-a-microbudget movement, there are a number of collectives across the United States combining their love of filmmaking with their martial arts training. With their 2012 action-fantasy short film Sins of the Dragon, the gang at Platypus Underground has set a high bar for themselves. We were thrilled to watch it as the first film in a more regular review series of independent shorts influenced by martial arts b-movies.

When I wander aimlessly in the woods, I’m usually afraid of bears, poison ivy, meth labs, and Ted Nugent. Apparently, I should also be on the look-out for masked martial arts psychos who kill you, steal your soul, and absorb your abilities. Portrayed by Marty Frankenfield and voiced by Brennen Dickerson, the treacherous Caligo is the villain at the center of the story. Flanked by a private army of ninjas, he intends to kill every dragon master in his path to gain their powers. This character is on some Bane-level shit, delivering sinister dialogue without the benefit of the full range of human facial features. In any case, he sports a very interesting look, melding some wardrobe out of a Shaw Brothers production with a Shredder-lite face guard.

At some point in the past, Caligo & Friends destroyed an entire village, but failed to account for at least one occupant: the noble and capable Cunri (Sweeney). The son of the village’s resident martial arts master, he’s also stubborn as hell; motivated by vengeance for his father’s death, he travels the countryside, seeking a fatal confrontation with Caligo. His only friend on this journey, Kaia (Haines) -- a student of his father -- hopes to convince Cunri that his single-mindedness is a dangerous path towards his potential downfall. Doesn’t mean she won’t help a brother out by kicking the shit out of ninja assholes along the way, though.

As one might expect with any first-time filmmakers, there are some missteps. At times, the fight choreography is a touch slow and seems too deliberate; I wanted something a bit more frenetic. The ability and creativity is definitely there, though. As Sweeney -- who directed the fight scenes -- and the fighters become more experienced with each other and grow into more of a true stunt team over subsequent productions, I’d expect that the pace and intensity of their fight scenes will increase. Equally important, the filmmakers chose the camera angles well and got all the coverage they needed for editing. The trope of characters coming to a curious stop in the shot’s foreground after completing a move was a nice flourish that we’ve seen a lot in recent action cinema, but it’s a tad overused here and has the effect of slowing down the pace.

One of the biggest surprises in the film was the amount of blood. There were instances where the practical fake variety looked a few shades too light and could have benefited from a tried and true Karo Syrup recipe. The digital gushers, however, would make the folks at Sushi Typhoon proud; they were fairly well integrated with the visual environment. The special effects otherwise were a mixture of both practical and digital: swirling leaves, flaming fists, and some excellent illustrated scene transitions were all highlights. I got the impression that Corpora -- consciously or otherwise -- is putting his video game and anime influences on display with this piece; that he was able to capture some of the more fantastical elements given the budgetary constraints is admirable. The fantasy bend certainly makes Platypus Underground stand out from the pack, but I’d be anxious to see what they’d accomplish with a simpler setting.

VERDICT
On a limited budget that would otherwise net you this backpack bike and a 40-inch HD television, the filmmakers behind Sins of the Dragon have created a professional-grade short that knocks the teeth out of your mouth, the wind from your lungs, and the pomade from your expertly sculpted pompadour. This team is definitely one to watch.

AVAILABILITY
Currently traveling the film festival circuit. You can catch a screening on August 20, 2013 at 6 pm as part of the 9th International Action on Film Festival in Monrovia, CA. Additionally, you can head over to the Platypus Underground website to purchase the 28-minute short on DVD or as a digital download.