Nightmaster (1987)

PLOT: A group of high school students gets their kicks by competing in ninja-themed, capture-the-flag games at night. Coupled with their sunrise martial arts practices, this hectic pace leaves most of them snoozing in class during the school day. The result? They have no time to plagiarize homework or smoke dope behind the bowling alley.

Director: Mark Joffe
Writer: Michael McGennan
Cast: Tom Jennings, Nicole Kidman, Vince Martin, Joanne Samuel, Craig Pearce, Doug Parkinson, Laurence Clifford, Jeremy Shadlow, Alex Broun

PLOT THICKENER

As the competition for university admissions grows more fierce, the high school students of today must be more well-rounded and active than ever before. In addition to being a star athlete and successful academic, a student also needs to play a musical instrument, write for the student newspaper, and volunteer time outside of school if they hope to attend a top institution. The students in Mark Joffe’s 1987 film, Nightmaster, have a similar dearth of leisure time. Playing ninja dress-up and staying after school for kendo practice might not be pre-requisites for getting into elite colleges, but they provide discipline, improve cardiovascular conditioning, and teach you techniques for beating up drug dealers (if needed). These are life skills, people!

Every high school has their stereotypical cliques: the jocks, the nerds, the burnouts, the art kids, etc. Somewhere in that mix are kids who practice martial arts together. As students in Mr. Beck’s (Martin) before-school martial arts course, Amy (Kidman), Robby (Jennings), Simon (Shadlow), Brian (Clifford), and Henry (Broun) are one such crew. After then sleepwalking through a day of classes, they sharpen their skills at night by participating in an elaborate game of capture-the-flag at an abandoned factory. Gamers are cloaked in black hoods and garb and supplied with maps and various paintball-slinging devices; be the first one reach the “sanctuary” (a bell) without any paint on you, and you win. Losers who get marked with paint during the game are forced to wear it to school the next day as a badge of incompetence. Aside from all the mental exercise, physical exertion, and lack of sleep, it sounds like a good time.

The reigning champion in this game is Robby, and his advanced skills are the result of grueling, one-on-one instruction with Beck, a former military man and the only surviving member of his platoon. Lately, however, the intensity of the training has made Robby negligent in his schooling and his primary instructor, Ms. Spane (Samuel), believes that the influence of Beck (her former love interest) is having a negative effect on the the gang of martial arts misfits, Robby especially. Amy grows jealous over Spane’s concern for Robby, because she harbors romantic feelings for him. The school’s sleazy drug dealer, Duncan (Pearce), has his eyes on Amy and enjoys antagonizing Robby, but he also hangs around the martial arts practices for unknown reasons. Is Beck such a bad guy? Will Amy confess her true feelings to Robby? Are any of these people even ninjas?

Nightmaster is not a prototypical ninja film, and it may not qualify under most circumstances. The word “ninja” isn’t uttered by anyone during the film’s 87-minute run-time. The martial arts class curiously focuses more on gymnastics, and the only identifiable martial arts style depicted in the film (save for some kickboxing) is a kendo sparring match between Beck and Robby. Outside the night games, no one really dresses like a ninja or employs common ninja tactics or weapons (e.g., smoke, grappling hooks, shurikens). To put it in a modern context, these high school kids are cosplaying as ninjas, and Joffe is appropriating the ninja archetype to use it in a very specific way: masks and black garb make it easier for the gamers to slink around a dark factory at night. He’s evoking what viewers know about ninjas (cinematically speaking) but any connection to ninjutsu or ninjas is flimsy, at best. So, if it’s not much of an action film and not really a ninja film, what are we left with? A teen drama! ... *shudder* ...

When games of paintball and gymnastics routines are more frequent than fight scenes in an action movie, you’re gonna have a bad time. The personnel is more than capable -- Mad Max: Fury Road stunt players Rocky McDonald and Guy Norris are among the stunt performers here -- but the film fails to carve out enough space for any interesting action scenes for the stunt team to execute. The ninja games have some visual flourish with the misty factory and the neon colors of the paintballs, but the scenes aren’t edited in a way that builds any tension. The kickboxing scenes are a messy blur, and the kendo fight and a rooftop battle in the climax are the only fight scenes worth writing home about. To blame screenwriter Michael McGennan’s story or Mark Joffe’s direction would be speculative; there are a lot of reasons for why films handle action poorly. Regardless of the factors, the net effect of this failure of imagination is a dull pace that nearly sinks the film.

Perhaps the only reason anyone would know about this film in the first place is that Nicole Kidman is in it. She’s cool here -- likable with a good amount of screen presence despite being stuck in the “secretly fawning friend of Robby” role. She doesn’t get much screen-time in terms of the action scenes, though the epilogue references a development that puts her on equal competitive footing with her crush. Watching her early-career films like this one offers few clues about her future success, or the fact that she would one day urinate on Zac Efron. Sometimes you get hints of that glimmer in a star’s early performances, but this is not one of those cases. The rest of the cast is serviceable. Tom Jennings, of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome fame, is decent as a lead; his character ranges from arrogant to pissy and eventually humble, and he’s up for playing all of those tones. The real revelation, if there’s one at all, is Vince Martin channeling his inner Martin Kove to do his best John Kreese impression. He strikes the right balance between taskmaster and chummy and charismatic teacher, while letting some internal conflict bubble up at the appropriate times. I found myself engaged with his arc above the others despite some pretty ham-handed foreshadowing in the beginning of the film. Taken in total, the dramatic performances are the best part about the movie.

VERDICT

Well-acted chopsocky films are few and far between, and those without much martial arts may be even more rare. This combination makes Nightmaster a bit difficult to evaluate. On the one hand, it’s an overly talky film that plods along while lacking either the narrative weirdness or pace of action to make it compelling viewing. On the other hand, the acting is a lot better here than in most films of its ilk and it offers a mildly interesting subversion of the master-student dynamic. That alone makes it different a different brand of ninja film, though not one I’d go out of my way to recommend.

AVAILABILITY

Streaming on Amazon Prime! DVD on Amazon, eBay.

3 / 7

Blackbelt (1992)

PLOT: A rising pop singer harassed by an obsessed stalker hires an ex-cop and martial-arts expert as personal security. As with most pop female vocalists, she’s kinda hot so her terrible music is tolerated by all involved.

Director: Charles Phillip Moore, Rick Jacobson
Writers: Paul Maslak, Don Wilson
Cast: Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Matthias Hues, Alan Blumenfeld, Deirdre Imershein, Richard Beymer, Jack Forcinito, Timothy D. Baker, Bob McFarland





PLOT THICKENER:
When I was about 13 or 14 years of age, the Spice Girls were just beginning to break through in the U.S. They were annoying. Their music was awful. But for whatever reason, I had a thing for Ginger Spice, she of the reddish hair and reasonably big cans. Like all teenage infatuations, it faded and I moved on. However, there are those out there incapable of getting over these kinds of fixations. Pop starlets from Tiffany to Britney Spears have had brushes with stalkers, and this seedy byproduct of celebrity status was popularized as a cinematic plot device with 1992’s Kevin Costner thriller, The Bodyguard. It turned a good profit at the box office and gave us Whitney Houston’s smash hit ballad “I Will Always Love You.” Earlier that same year, the Don “The Dragon” Wilson vehicle Blackbelt was released to the U.S. video market and gave us a new film to gather around with large groups of friends and larger amounts of whiskey.

Jack Dillon (Wilson) is a no-nonsense guy who has dedicated his life to cleaning up the streets of his American city which shall remain nameless. As a cop, he fought societal filth with a badge and a gun. These days, he fights scum with nothing more than his fists and his boots. In a dark urban alley, an aggressive pimp with an aggressive mullet is using his pimp hand on a reluctant sex worker when Dillon discovers them. After smashing the pimp’s face and laying waste to his undercarriage, Dillon coolly remarks that “the broken nose is for the girl, the vasectomy’s free” before returning the tearful girl to her mother. Not only is Jack Dillon a retired cop and martial-arts expert and teacher, but he also gives out free vasectomies! You should look him up if you’re done having kids, though your insurance might not cover him.

Rising pop star Shanna (Imershein) is accustomed to a chaotic lifestyle as a foxy touring live act with a rabid fanbase. But following her latest performance, she and her assistant make a grisly discovery in a box of long-stem roses left in her dressing room. No! It’s not the tacky inclusion of Baby’s-breath. It’s a severed female finger. Her manager and boyfriend Bobby (Forcinito) is basically nutless, and her mob-connected label owner Eddie D’Angelo (Twin Peaks’ Richard Beymer) kinda hates her, so Shanna goes outside her circle of handlers for help.

When a bratty pop star shows up to his martial-arts class looking to hire a bodyguard, Dillon is resistant; he doesn’t do that kind of work. As it turns out, Shanna could care less, because she doesn’t like cops anyways. Unwarranted speeding tickets? No. Her dad was a cop. So? He raped her. Ohhhhhhh..... awkward. In any case, she was only following up on a recommendation from Dillon’s old partner, Detective Will Sturges (Blumenfeld). Rather coincidentally, Sturges calls Dillon to consult on a crime scene at that exact moment.

Awaiting Dillon at a nearby hotel is a complete massacre. Five men, all armed, have been left dead in a hotel room with trauma to various vital organs. Due to the nature of their injuries, Dillon rightly suspects a martial-arts expert. As a counterpoint to this mostly bloodless execution, there’s a body left in another room which looks like a victim straight out of 1980s slasher film. Enough blood was spilled for the killer to spell out “SHANNA WE’RE GOING TO THE CHAPEL” on the wall. Not enough blood was spilled for grammatically correct punctuation, apparently.

Shit just got real, so Dillon decides to take Shanna on as a client. As he chases clues, he eventually discovers what the audience knew a half-hour ago: the killer is a former Special Forces member named John Sweet, played by Matthias Hues. Like any good serial killer, he has a raging Oedipal complex and a poorly lit secret hideout. I couldn’t help but notice that Sweet also bears a passing resemblance to the Stingray character from Undefeatable. Beyond their deep-seated mommy issues, they both collect trophies from victims (Sweet prefers fingers to Stingray’s eyes) and have amazing manes of hair.

What he lacks in fantastic hair, character actor Richard Beymer more than makes up for in acting chops. There are two things he does extremely well as an onscreen performer: act sleazy and eat food. Whether it’s the pasta and salad of Blackbelt or the brie-and-butter baguette sandwiches from Twin Peaks, Beymer has an effective way of eating that makes me want to join in. On that note, it’s time for pancakes.

As Jake Dillon, Don Wilson keeps it simple. He kicks ass and delivers some occasionally well-written lines with true aplomb, with the aforementioned vasectomy one-liner as the highlight. I can’t say that Wilson and Imershein have much chemistry together, but some of that has to do with the dick-punching turn-off that is her character’s awful music. Even by early 1990s standards, the attempts at pop songs are quite heinous and could take a lot of viewers out of the film completely. To his credit, Dillon treats Shanna’s music the same way he treats her celebrity status -- with complete indifference. Which is, of course, in sharp contrast to the way he (eventually) treats her lady parts -- with fumbling teenaged zeal. We’ve covered only two Don “The Dragon” Wilson movies so far, but in those films he’s batting 1.000 in getting his onscreen love interests to disrobe for sex scenes. Good show, Mr. Wilson!

The film’s opening credits and marketing materials boasted what was apparently a fighting cast full of decorated championship talent (one of whom you may remember as the hilarious dad from No Retreat, No Surrender). Unfortunately, none of these fighters is provided with a unique character to make their screen time particularly noteworthy. Compounding the issue is that the action set pieces from fight choreographer Paul Maslak are utilized to do nothing but make the film’s hero and main villain look strong ahead of their climactic showdown. It seems the primary role of anyone else involved in the fight scenes was to look as good as possible while getting their ass kicked. The generous helpings of blood and sweat during the final fight are a nice topper to a solid film, but if you’re going to offer up the numerous accolades of your fighters as a selling point, it would help to give them a little bit of room to shine.

VERDICT:
While I’m certainly no expert on the cinematic exploits of Don Wilson, I do feel that Blackbelt is as good an entry point as any into his filmography. This was the film that really cemented my fondness for the “kung fu killer” as a compelling narrative device, if only for the bizarre ways in which the main villain is characterized and portrayed onscreen. Due in large part to great selling from the stunt performers, Hues comes across as a real monster in his short but dominant fight scenes. However, it’s his character’s sleazy back-story which puts the film into favorable territory for me. In order to strike a sharp contrast with Dillon’s wholesomeness, writer Charles Philip Moore deserves a bit of credit for going into some dark and weird places in creating the John Sweet character. This and the Richard Beymer performance were the highlights for me in what I found to be a fairly serviceable DTV action movie.

AVAILABILITY:
Netflix and Amazon.

5 / 7

Undefeatable (1993)

PLOT: It’s a race against time as a mulleted martial-arts killer named Stingray is pursued by police and a street-fighting waitress avenging her sister’s death. How long will the carnage go on before Stingray is stopped? Only 90 minutes, because that’s the runtime of the film.

Director: Godfrey Ho
Writer: Steve Harper, Robert Vassar, Tai Yim
Cast: Cynthia Rothrock, Don Niam, John Miller, Donna Jason, Sunny David, Gerald Klein

PLOT THICKENER

The cost of attending college has steadily risen each decade for the last 30 years. Grants and scholarships can help, but the supply for these financial gifts is limited. As a result, many students and their families take out huge loans in order to pay for tuition. Those who can’t absorb that kind of debt might instead attend community college, or in some cases, forgo higher education entirely. Still, others pay their way through school by working part-time.

In Godfrey Ho’s 1993 epic Undefeatable, pre-med student Karen Jones can’t be bothered to get off her ass and get a fucking job. Instead, her older sister, Kristi, battles in underground Baltimore street fights for her tuition money. (Street fighter ranks #3 on experts’ annual list of jobs for easy college cash, sandwiched between library assistant and stripper). Kristi’s involvement in the world of street fighting is certainly not without its hazards. The money is dirty and fights are organized and overseen by mobsters. The fighters are often desperate men dressed in accessories culled from yard sales. Worse, the cops are always on the hunt to break up the illegal throwdowns. After all, it’s not like there are worse things going on in Baltimore.

It’s during the latest of these fights that Kristi crosses paths with Nick DiMarco. Martial arts enthusiast, homicide detective, basketball fan, and overpriced coffee lover, DiMarco is a straight-laced cop who sees nothing but dead ends in Kristi’s choice of thug life. After arresting her for fighting and then pocketing her winnings, he encourages her to reject the horrible cycle of violence and quit her gang, the Red Dragons. Like the Bloods and Crips before them, the Dragons are fond of leather jackets, aren’t enrolled in college, and are comprised mostly of Asian guys. Despite protests from DiMarco and her sister, Kristi doesn’t want to quit fighting only to die poor and feeble. In her mind, waitressing and fighting in the streets fit together to form a Voltron of financial stability.

Perched atop the higher end of the underground fighting circuit is Paul, better known by his street name of Stingray. While his life would appear to be pure bliss -- big paydays, Plymouth minivan, no children -- his wife, Anna, has been seeing a therapist and spilling the beans about her hubby’s increasingly violent behavior. Flowers in hand, he returns home after his latest fight to find his wife cooking steak for dinner. But Stingray’s in the mood for something entirely different: random and horrific sexual violence. During the entirety of the assault on his wife, Stingray reminisces about pummeling a recently vanquished opponent while the steak burns in the background. Only a director of Godfrey Ho’s skill would dare offer this kind of visual commentary on violent misogyny and overcooked food. What's the significance? I DON’T KNOW!

 

This was apparently the tipping point, however. Stingray arrives home the next night to find his favorite meal of veggies and steak carefully arranged at the dinner table. After an angry search of the residence, he finds a letter from Anna declaring that she’s left him for good. Just like his mother years earlier, his wife has abandoned him. As one might expect, he’s devastated and tosses everything on the table to the floor with a violent swipe of his forearm. But prior to that, he picks up the slab of cooked meat and throws it against the wall; the allure of beef is apparently gone. 

After spray-painting red streaks in his hair (a la Rufio from Hook) Stingray gasses up the minivan and departs on the "Illogical Rampage of Murder, Rape, and Eye-Gouging ‘93." DiMarco and his bumbling partner investigate the string of homicides and eventually deduce that the killer targets petite white women with long, reddish hair: i.e. girls that look sort of like Stingray’s ex-wife. Unfortunately, Karen Jones fits this bill and becomes a card-carrying member of the victim club. Because it’s a martial-arts film, Kristi vows revenge, and DiMarco and Jennifer, Anna’s former psychiatrist, join in the hunt. She also knows martial arts. Obviously.

  

The fight scenes throughout the film fall within the range of uninspired to average but it’s somehow very watchable by early 90s American action standards. The obvious crown jewel is the now-infamous climax between Stingray, DiMarco, and Kristi; on-screen fights rarely get as sweaty, screamy, and drooly as this one. (Braveheart comes close, but didn’t have nearly enough drool.)

There are a few things at work that really distinguish it from similarly crafted B-grade action pictures from the same period. As many martial arts films utilize vengeance as a major theme, audiences are accustomed to seeing the roots of a protagonist’s journey to right the wrongs. Ho and the film’s writers flip the script by injecting the villain’s backstory with some bizarre semblance of pathos. Stingray has mommy issues on steroids with a crystal meth chaser. The few flashbacks to his childhood allude to abandonment and while I’m not a psychiatrist, I’d guess this would lead to relationship trouble later in life. In the case of Stingray, I’m not sure how it led to a propensity for rape, murder, and eye-gouging, but hey -- different strokes, different folks.

Don Niam really makes the Stingray character his own: he has a gloriously puffy mullet, plays scenes completely over the top, and is a capable martial artist who can hold his own during fights. Rothrock is generally solid, and even gets a grieving/crying scene to show off her ability to emote awkwardly while staring at a fake dead body. The Nick DiMarco character is almost instantly unlikeable because of his wholesome righteousness, and while John Miller is a good fighter, his performance vacillates between wooden and a little goofy.

VERDICT

Undefeatable may be the most enjoyable “so bad it’s good” martial arts film I’ve seen. The star of the show is obviously Stingray -- this is a character that should inspire fan fiction. Little kids should be dressing up in denim vests and puffy mullet wigs for Halloween. And give me a Stingray t-shirt with “ANNA!” in bold print underneath. But all of the film’s elements coalesce beautifully: the convoluted serial killer plot is a trip to watch unfold; the early 90s fashion staples of leather jackets, Zubaz pants, and denim vests are on full display; and the climactic fight scene is one of the most incredible things captured on celluloid.

AVAILABILITY

There are actually two versions of the film on the market: the U.S. print reviewed here, and a version for the Asian market that features scenes with Robin Shou and Yukari Oshima. Netflix carries the former and Amazon offers both versions.

7 / 7