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

Nine Deaths of the Ninja (1985)

PLOT: A bus full of tourists in the Philippines are kidnapped and held hostage by a group of terrorists. Will an elite trio of special operatives be able to stop their evil plans, or at least delay them, no doubt causing annoyance and perhaps even a complete deferral of the evil plans until the next financial quarter?

Director: Emmett Alston
Writer: Emmett Alston
Cast: Sho Kosugi, Brent Huff, Emilia Crow, Blackie Dammett, Regina Richardson, Vijay Amritraj, Kane Kosugi, Shane Kosugi, Bruce Fanger, Sonny Erang, John Ladalski

PLOT THICKENER

Most ninja movies lie to us. They tell us that ninjas can fly, or burrow underground, or multiply in seconds. Few would accept it if cinema were to repeatedly depict Celtic druids with flippers or Egyptian warrior queens as fire-breathers who wore denim jumpsuits, but we turn a blind eye to the errant ninja mythology that continues to warp the historical record. Very few ninja films portray their human subjects all that closely to what they were (the Shinobi-no-Mono series is a fine place for that) but the American film scene couldn’t give a damn their origins as covert spies who waged guerrilla warfare. (We can reasonably debate whether lasers and smoke bombs fall under that umbrella, but I digress).

Apart from this historical deception in ninja film, though, there’s a completely different subcategory of ninja film that pulls an active bait-and-switch in an effort to dupe you into viewing what you think will be an awesome movie featuring ninjas. This might manifest as misleading cover art, some clever chicanery in the film title, or the casting of someone known to frequently portray ninjas on film. Directed in 1985 by Emmett Alston, Nine Deaths of the Ninja, would purport to depict at least nine instances of ninja death, but instead pulls all of this aforementioned shady-ass marketing bullshit. I ain’t mad though.

Unlike a lot of teams assembled to conduct covert overseas missions in dangerous situations on behalf of the U.S. government, the DART team is comprised of just three people. Steve Gordon (Huff) is a smooth-talker who fancies himself a squad leader but would honestly rather be sitting poolside while slugging beers or shamelessly hitting on women. Jennifer Barnes (Crow) is the group’s resident communications expert and the logistical heart of the team. Rounding out the trio is Spike Shinobi (Kosugi), a former practitioner of ninjutsu, a certified lollipop addict, and the best name ever for the hero in a 4th grade story writing assignment. The trio is the most elite in the world at counterterrorism operations, and their expertise is needed desperately after a kidnapping in Manila.

Somewhere on the list of Southeast Asia travel risk factors, between outdated vaccinations and back-pocket wallets, is riding a tourist bus in a 1980s action film. Alby “the Cruel” (Dammett) is a wheelchair-bound, Nazi-sympathizing terrorist responsible for not just a massive drug operation but also a mischievous pet monkey. On his orders, his second-in-command, Col. Honey Hump (Richardson), leads a team of mercenaries to kidnap a bus full of tourists visiting the Imus Cathedral in Manila. In exchange for the safe return of these hostages, Alby’s group demands the release of their terrorist pal, Rahji (Erang) from government prison, and the complete expulsion of American DEA agents in Southeast Asia. On paper -- a pretty good deal!

Poor Alby probably should have read the terms and conditions, though, because local useless government guy, Rankin (Amritraj), folds an unspoken sweetener into the transaction: a search-and-destroy rescue mission by the DART team! (This is the part of the film where my best guess at the meaning of the team’s acronym, “Don’t Answer Rankin’s Texts” went to shit). The trio lands in Manila and hits the ground running, faster than you can say, “Hey Sho, maybe don’t cut that watermelon so close to that kitten while blindfolded!”

While Gordon is frequently at the hotel bar, or trying to woo the local ladies with his special brand of douche vibes, Spike is doing the real spy work by donning all manner of silly disguises -- from “harmless old man” to “self respecting guy in a speedo” -- to infiltrate Alby’s dangerous network of affiliates and hangouts. Can the team work together to find the hostages and destroy Alby’s gang of mercenaries once and for all? How is Col. Honey Hump able to reconcile her feminist perspective with her colleagues’ propensity for sexual assault? And who the hell is dubbing Sho Kosugi’s voice in this movie -- Alex Trebek?

Before we can discuss what this film is, we need to mention what it is not: a straight martial-arts ninja film where Sho Kosugi plays a ninja. Can you watch this film’s opening -- fog machine, interpretive jazzercise, Kosugi kata demonstration, and all -- and expect a serious ninja film afterwards? Nah. This is definitely more of an action-adventure with a focus on the ensemble cast and some broad comedic touches. Among all of its obvious nods to the James Bond series and action-adventure spy films in general, none is more on-the-nose than the casting of Vijay Amritraj, a former tennis star who also appeared in the Bond film Octopussy. Unfortunately, most of this gimmickry comes at the expense of Kosugi and his usually reliable cinematic ninja hijnks. If Revenge of the Ninja was Kosugi dressed in a $5,000 suit for a critical business negotiation, this movie is Kosugi working from home on his laptop as a part-time consultant, dressed in sweatpants and an Oakland Raiders hoodie. It is stained with spaghetti sauce.

Blackie Dammett’s performance of Alby the Cruel might be a top-five, all-time strange villain performance in the history martial arts b-movies. Between his half-hearted and cartoonish German accent, loose riffing on Peter Sellers’s ex-Nazi Dr. Strangelove, the pet monkey, his Tom Waits haircut, and wardrobe choices that scream, “saxophonist in a late 1970s no-wave band,” Dammett really went all out to make this a memorable character. How many of these character ticks were in the script, we’ll never know, but Alby was (for me) the highlight of the film. A number of reviews have noted some sort of homosexual overtones in the relationship between Alby and Rahji, but I’ll have to admit that I didn’t pick up on this at all.

VERDICT

Nine Deaths of the Ninja is not a good ninja movie, nor is it an especially good Sho Kosugi movie (and it's not even his best film from 1985). That said, it’s better than its 3.4 (out of 10) user rating on IMDb would lead you to believe. It’s a weirdly paced adventure film with some referential try-hard humor that occasionally lands a glancing blow to the funny bone. Kosugi completists will want to clear 90 minutes in their watching schedules but most of you can move along if this doesn’t sound like your jam.

AVAILABILITY

On DVD at Amazon or eBay.

3.5 / 7

American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt (1989)

PLOT: A martial arts champion travels abroad for a fighting tournament, only to be sidetracked by a dangerous scheme involving ninjas, terrorism, and virus engineering. Because he failed to purchase travel insurance, he’s unable to recover any of his money.

Director: Cedric Sundstrom
Writer: Gary Conway
Cast: David Bradley, Steve James, Michele Chan, Marjoe Gortner, Calvin Jung, Evan J. Kissler, Yehuda Efroni, Mike Huff, John Barrett

 

PLOT THICKENER

There’s no shortage of talented people who hated the practice or products of their exceptional gifts. Before a Paris gallery showing in 1908, Claude Monet destroyed more than a dozen paintings in his infamous “Water Lilies” series; this sort of purge was a pattern for him. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle grew to despise his popular Sherlock Holmes character so much that he killed him off in a story and stayed away from Holmes for the next eight years. Not even the chopsocky genre is immune to this sort of self-directed grumbling. In American Ninja 3, Curtis Jackson, played by Steve James, is sick and goddamned-tired of fighting ninjas, despite his innate ability to wreck shop. This is like penicillin complaining about being a great treatment for bacterial infections.

All bellyaching aside, this would mark the first film in the series in which which director Sam Firstenberg and star Michael Dudikoff sat out to make room for new talent. Taking over the director’s chair is South African filmmaker Cedric Sundstrom, who did a few features after this and then (for better or worse) moved on to television. To replace Dudikoff -- at that time, a male model with decent screen presence but limited fighting chops -- the Cannon Film Group enlisted David Bradley, a practitioner of shotokan and kempo (kenpō) karate. His screen presence at this point consisted of an upbeat fighting style and a barely perceptible Texas drawl, topped with a shaggy coiff that would make Sho Kosugi proud.

Bradley plays Sean Davidson, an American who trained in ninjutsu as a youth under the tutelage of his murdered father’s master, Izumo (Jung). Sean is recruited for a lucrative fighting tournament in the fictional banana republic of Port San Luco, Triana, where he befriends a fanboy named Dex (Kissler) and U.S. military strongman Curtis Jackson (James) who’s probably on vacation to get the hell away from his co-pilot in the first two films. Little does the trio know that the tournament was hatched by the evil Cobra (Gortner) to ensnare one lucky participant for more nefarious purposes. Through his East Bay Laboratory enterprise, he hopes to use viral engineering to control fighters for more precise and efficient terrorist operations, and sell this product to the highest bidder. His colleague and the head trainer of his ninja outfit (and a hensōjutsu master at that) Chan Lee (Chan), has pre-selected Davidson for evaluation in the test pilot. What might happen if Sean is infected by the Cobra’s evil virus? Superhuman strength? Complete ambivalence to pain? Mood swings? A burning sensation while urinating?

The prevailing opinion among chopsocky heads is that this is the sequel where the American Ninja franchise officially went off the rails and straight into the crap bin. I don’t buy into that narrative. Here’s the harsh truth, y’all: these films were not good. Sure, the first one had lasers, Tad Yamashita, and that cool girl from Weird Science and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. The second one had beach fights and Body Glove wet-suits and the continuing Dudikoff-James bromance. Were they more “fun” than this one? Maybe, but that’s all subjective. Any perceived drop-off in quality between the second and third entries is splitting hairs, if you ask me; we’re not debating The Godfather versus Air Bud here.

The most problematic difference between this film and its predecessors it is the direction. Cedric Sundstrom may be a capable director in some regards -- he made the saxophonist-vengeance trash gem The Revenger the same year -- but his first installment of American Ninja is a stale, messy regurgitation of old plot points. The first two films saw the heroes taking down ninja terrorists, before fighting a villain called “The Lion” who ran an experimental ninja program, respectively. Sundstrom’s film has a villain named “The Cobra” who runs an experimental viral ninja program to benefit the world’s terrorists. Yeah -- tomayto, tomahto. There are plenty of other story miscues, from the abandoned fight tournament plot point, to a goofy and protracted motorized hang-glider scene. The East Bay Laboratory’s high-tech inner lair is just fluorescent lighting and a bunch of colorful, steamy liquids bubbling in beakers. For reasons that elude me, the lab station is surrounded by half-naked dudes on pedestals who are button-activated into ninja mode at the end of the movie. This is the kind of stuff that you might dream up after eating a hash brownie before bed, but it’s not something a rational person should commit to film (even in the 1980s).

Sundstrom’s command of the action elements is equally suspect. Outside of a single car-splosion, there are really no elaborate stunt sequences in the film, but the audience is treated to a fight scene once every 15 minutes or so. That’s a fine pace, but the film’s lead martial artist and its choreography (via Mike Stone) are frequently betrayed by poor shooting angles and coverage. This leads to a few scenes dogged by choppy editing that exposed plenty of strikes revealing too much space. (If you watch enough of these films, you can probably forgive the lack of quality control). Despite his character’s objections to the contrary, Steve James is having a good time cracking heads and throwing around stunt dudes in ninja garb. He has a scene in the film’s climax where he wields double swords and hacks and slashes his enemies to pieces, with all of the correlating sound effects ... but none of the visual bloodletting. Like a lot of other things, it wasn’t in the budget, I guess.

The supporting cast features a couple of interesting choices. Gortner was a controversial Pentecostal preacher from a young age and his biggest cinematic claim to fame was the Academy Award winning 1972 documentary Marjoe, which tracked his rise on the tent revivial circuit to televangelism and his final revival tour. Considering his history of blowhard behavior, it was a big surprise/screw-up to see him so subdued here. As the ninja leader with a conscience, Michele Chan is pretty good and has amazing rockstar Jem & the Holograms style spiky hair. These days, she pursues philanthropy and is married to billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, a co-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. I’m sure she credits this film for most if not all of the great things in her life.

VERDICT

To reiterate, this is an uneven ninja film where the star spends all of about 20 seconds in a ninja suit. On balance, though, the film gets one point for David Bradley’s debut, another point for Steve James being awesome in a “Shalom Y’all” shirt, and a third point for Michele Chan’s incredible mane of hair. After that, your mileage will vary. If you enjoyed the 80s cheese of the second film in the series, this one cranks the funk up a few notches, but pure action aficionados are likely to turn their noses up at this one.

AVAILABILITY

YouTube, Amazon, Netflix.

3 / 7 

Night of the Kickfighters (1988)

aka Night Raiders

The month of March found the members of the Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit trading guest posts, podcast appearances, and in a few cases, illegal imported cigarettes and throwing stars! Our compadre, Denis from The Horror!? was kind enough to watch this 1988 AIP film and write a review for us. He's really earned that complimentary pair of Zubaz pants and the denim vest with the dragon patch on the back!

The company of Carl McMann (Adam “the gosh-darn Batman” West) has developed a shiny new laser cannon ideal for blowing away motionless jet models located on cardboard-looking pedestals. The technical innovation also includes a wondrous microchip that can recognize allied soldiers by their “eye prints”, cleverly even when they have turned their backs towards the laser cannon, though not while they are wearing sunglasses; nobody involved cares about civilians, it seems. However, as it always is when SCIENCE is making the Free World™ better at killing, those evil terrorists are there to mess things up.

Evil terrorist Kedesha (Marcia Karr) takes valuable time off from her various family friendly sexual perversions and lets her henchmen – among them the mandatory weird-looking big strong guy in form of Ponti (Carel Struycken) and his inspired grimaces – kidnap McMann’s daughter Kathy (Lisa Alpert). McMann gives out the data about the laser Kedesha wants from him, but he also hires international man of adventure Brett Cady (Andy Bauman) to find Kedesha, save his daughter and blow the complex (aka a series of grey corridors located in the desert) they’re in as well as the laser data to kingdom come.

Because Brett already had his ass kicked by Ponti once, he goes the seven samurai way and calls in a troupe of friends and business associates as his own private kick-fighting strike force. With a team consisting of computer wiz Clea (Phyllis Doyle), mandatory person of colour Socrates (Fitz Houston), hairy explosives and gadget man Bomber (Michelangelo Kowalski), and “British” stage magician Aldo (Philip Dore), all ready for a stealthy night assault on the Mexican base, evil terrorism won’t stand a chance.

Initially, the main claim Night of the Kickfighters had on my interest was the fact that it was distributed by the glorious Action International Pictures (still the only company I know which actually wanted to be confused with Arkoff’s and Nicholson’s AIP), the finest purveyors of direct-to-video nonsense. Now, after I’ve finally seen it, I’m quite a bit more focused on the film’s adorably silly mixture of low cost Eurospy stylings, Men’s Adventure pulp novel fixations, and part-time martial arts adventure. It’s the sort of thing I can’t help but describe with words like “adorable” and “charming”, because, while it certainly won’t thrill anyone with its exciting plotting, its poetic fight choreography or its brilliant acting, Night is a film very eager to please, putting all its negligible money and talent right on screen with verve and a sense of excitement that just doesn’t care how silly everything going on here actually is.

So how silly is it? Well, there’s a scene that sees Kedesha (and her oh so brilliant accent) dressed down to what might be very sparkly underwear or an equally sparkly bathing suit, writhing on a couch while cuddling with a snake, getting a foot massage by a nameless henchman, and being fed grapes by Ponti, which not only demonstrates how far out of its way the film goes in presenting her as of dubious sexual proclivities (she also likes to play with blood) while still keeping the movie breast-free, but is also one of the more inexplicable things I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time, unless the aim of the scene was to fulfill some producer’s very particular fetish wishes. During the course of the movie, we also encounter nunchuks that shoot bullets, a microwave glass tube for humans, blow-up dinosaurs, a heat-seeking explosive crossbow quarrel, and henchmen making a prescient impression of being time-travelling henchmen out of later stealth based video games, only lacking big yellow exclamation points over their heads; the line “must have been rats”, alas, is missing too.

These moments and little flourishes of reality-deprived nonsense run through nearly every scene of the film, with little happening in Night of the Kickfighters that actually makes sense going by our human logic or the rules of the real world (place of horrors), resulting in a film that can’t help but entertain through the sheer power of its willful imagination, and the absolute shamelessness it shows in putting it on screen, with no thought spent on yawn-inducing nonsense like “ironic distance”.

Surprisingly enough, the action itself is comparatively copious, and decently filmed by first-time (and only-time) director Buddy Reyes. At least, Reyes knows enough about filmmaking to keep his camera moving, giving the film a lively, if messy and cheap feel. Because we demand that sort of thing, there are a handful of explosions, two car chases (the first one rather awkward thanks to the inclusion of a luxury limousine as the chased vehicle), and some mild martial arts fights that do indeed have a kick to punch ratio of 5:1, just as the film’s better title promises.

On the acting side, I found myself rather unimpressed with Andy Bauman’s impression of a moving wooden doll, but Struycken’s truly inspired grimacing and Karr’s all-around impressive scenery-chewing that seems to interpret “femme fatale” in ways oh so patently right in being patently wrong, more than make up for this minor matter.

The resulting film is a beautiful, inspired (by drugs, alcohol or just the unbridled human spirit) thing, lacking even a single dull second. Or, to quote our dear friend Bomber: “Fuckin’ A!”

-- Denis Klotz

The Horror!?

Honor and Glory (1993)

PLOT: A team of sisters, one an FBI agent, the other a television news reporter, attempts to bring down an insane kickboxing bank executive before he can acquire a nuclear arms trigger. Wait, is this a bio-pic about disgraced former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis?

Director: Godfrey Ho
Writer: Herb Borkland
Cast: Cynthia Rothrock, Donna Jason, John Miller, Chuck Jeffreys, Robin Shou, Gerald Klein, Leo Rocca, Richard Yuen, Yip Yim Hing


PLOT THICKENER:
The rich, white man might be the most overused villain archetype in the history of action movies. I won’t bore anyone with a laundry list of past examples, but trust me that it’s as redundant and uncomfortably long as a gag on Family Guy. For 1993’s Honor and Glory, Godfrey Ho assembled a cast of principals with which he’d double-dip later in the year for his American masterpiece, Undefeatable. As you’ll recall from our coverage of that film, Cynthia Rothrock was teamed with an unreasonably sweaty John Miller, but Honor and Glory finds them on opposite sides of the law. For my money, the result of this villain casting has become the stick by which all other rich white man villain roles should be measured.

Not everyone shares our enthusiasm for rich, white, male villains, though. Hotshot television reporter Joyce Pride (Jason) has staked her career on digging up sleaze and truth, and she’s just turned her sights on local bank executive Jason Slade (Miller). His shady business practices and alleged physical intimidation of investigators and regulators have made him a very controversial topic in the news media.

He’s a martial arts practitioner and a raging dickhead, but Slade still feels the need to employ an army of bodyguards headed by Jake Armstrong (Jeffreys) a well-dressed kung fu and boxing expert. Jake is constantly attached at his boss’s hip to assure that pesky, scandal-seeking reporters and photographers are put in their place. You know, the place where people in the news media get beat up for asking questions and cameras are smashed on sight (China, and occasionally, the Michelle Bachmann campaign trail). Jake has never really pondered the implications of Slade’s business activities but a recent flurry of media inquiries and assassination attempts has him rethinking the ethical value of his gig.

What’s a maligned financial figure to do when regulators are knocking at the door, assassins are around every corner, and a driven reporter is sitting on video testimony detailing the fraud you committed to the tune of $1 billion? First, you clear your calendar and cancel your prayer breakfast with ex-President Ronald Reagan. Then blow off some steam by angrily practice kung fu weapon forms on your back patio. But you want to stay productive, so you acquire a stolen activator to a nuclear weapon from an Arab businessman in a deal arranged by a white street pimp named Silk (Klein). Makes sense, right?

The latter point has drawn the attention of federal agencies, and Joyce’s FBI agent sister, Tracy (Rothrock) has come back from an assignment in Hong Kong to sniff out the stolen and extremely volatile goods. For most, black-market nuclear espionage would be enough on your plate but Tracy also uses her time at home to play peacemaker between her younger sister and their semi-retired workaholic covert agent father. Joyce resents her Pops for sending her to live with her mother while Tracy resided with her father following their parents’ separation. In itself, it’s not such a terrible thing unless you conclude that the living situation led her to pursue a career in a dying journalism industry, while Tracy probably got to learn about cool shit like waterboarding and handgun recoil management.

The film juggles its loose ends all the way to the finish line (no easy task) and while you won’t be left scratching your head, you might be left palming your face. This is a Godfrey Ho movie, after all. Things come to a head in a warehouse of all places, and you might be equally surprised to find that the climax is comprised of three different climactic fights intercut together! Ho breaks out all the stops: cardboard boxes, confounding cargo nets, and Jason Slade in a tracksuit drinking a Heineken while also handling a pair of Chinese meditation balls.

Understandably, Cynthia Rothrock gets top billing but this is more of an ensemble piece with emphases on the Joyce Pride and Jason Slade character arcs. As the chippy news reporter, Donna Jason does an admirable job and both her acting and fighting skills are more than competent. Also along for the ride as visiting Interpol agent Dragon Lee is Robin Shou but his scattered inclusion feels like he might have just been killing time before a red-eye flight. Ho juggles the characters as best he can, but it often takes away from the best elements of his movie: the action, and the villain.

John Miller really only had two big film roles in an otherwise brief career, but he should be thanking his lucky stars for the silver platter handed to him in Honor and Glory. He’s equipped with some of the best lines ever written for a martial arts villain. After Silk expresses his displeasure at Slade’s inclusion of an outside expert for their nuclear trigger deal, Slade coolly replies: “Do you know an atomic trigger from a Bulgarian dildo? Because I don't.” Pressed both internally and externally to step down from his post during his company’s scandal, he repeatedly screams: “only death can retire Jason Slade!” If you thought Warbeck from Expect No Mercy had the market cornered on megalomaniacal monologues in martial arts b-movies, think again. Slade reminds a second-guessing business associate that: “I have arrived at the top of the world. No man has control of more money. No man can fight me and live. No woman can share my bed and not be mine for life. I am like a god! I piss on you, from a great height.” Seriously, who writes this stuff? Oh right, “Herb Borkland.” Definitely a real person. No matter the creative source, Miller hits the role out of the park and it’s a welcomed change from his unbearably wholesome performance in Undefeatable.

Is it possible to discuss a movie featuring Chuck Jeffreys without mentioning his similarities in cadence and line delivery to Eddie Murphy? Well, shit -- I kind of just undermined myself so I guess not. With the Murphy factor turned down to a tawdry 4, Jeffreys is engaging as usual, and despite not getting a properly climactic fight, he still brings terrific athleticism to his action scenes. Director Godfrey Ho even hints at some martial artist romance between the Jake and Joyce characters in a scene where they lock chopsticks while battling over a lunch of green beans. HOT.

Similarly to Undefeatable, the fight choreography is above-average for an American martial arts film. Nothing here is as goofy and unhinged as that film’s sweaty basement fight climax, but the action moves at a good clip and everyone gets an opportunity to show their skills. For an obvious low-budget film, Ho makes decent use of different fighting locations and talent, but I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that the climax in Honor and Glory is a bit too abrupt and way too clean. I blame my inflated expectations on the protracted eye-trauma carnage of Undeatable, but I would guess that Slade’s comeuppance is fitting when you consider that most white-collar crimes are forgiven after nothing more than hefty fines and early retirement.

VERDICT:
While it doesn’t reach the same levels of camp and absurdity that audiences saw in Undefeatable, Honor and Glory makes a damn fine companion piece. You get a bit less Rothrock (bad), but a lot more Chuck Jeffreys (good) and villainous John Miller (incredible). It’s a bit of a shame that Godfrey Ho is better known for his cut-and-paste ninja shenanigans than (somewhat) original films like this, because he had the capacity to create an enjoyable action romp. Give it a watch, or risk having your “testicles peeled like grapes.”

AVAILABILITY:
Stuck in Save purgatory on Netflix, but pick your format poison (VHS or DVD) on Amazon and EBay.

5.5 / 7

Enforcer from Death Row (1978)

PLOT: A terrorist syndicate based in Manila has been using to ninjas to murder intelligence operatives from the World Organization for Peace. Even worse, they threaten to wipe out the population of the Philippines using a biochemical agent. Even worse than that, the biochemical agent consists of powdered Tang and Tab Cola.

Directors: Marshall M. Borden, Efren C. Piñon
Writer: Leo Fong
Cast: Leo Fong, Darnell Garcia, John Hammond, Cameron Mitchell, Ann Farber, Booker T. Anderson


PLOT THICKENER:
While this is our second film from the Philippines in the last three weeks, and third overall, Enforcer from Death Row is our first film from the 1970s as well as the first starring Leo Fong. Yes, it all adds up to a lot of random digits. Some people find numbers to be fun (dorks, geniuses), but for the rest of us, we have this 1978 Filipino action trash romp to rely on for our chuckles.

The 1970s were a trying time for peace. While the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Cold War was at what Julia Child might call a rolling boil. The Arab-Israeli conflict kicked off in 1973 with the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanese War started in 1975. Coups, terrorist operations, and dictators dominated the headlines and strife was at levels unseen since that time they outlawed a nifty little cough suppressant called Heroin.

Just as war produces heroes, so does peace. T.L. Young (Fong) is an innocent man on death row in a San Francisco prison. Fortunately, for the World Organization for Peace, he’s a rare candidate with experience and physical tools they desperately need. All of their intelligence operatives based in Manila have been killed off by a terrorist group called NOMAD, which now threatens to wipe out the population of the Philippines using a biological weapon unless they receive $45 million in cash. Since the organization would rather take their chances on a disposable convict than pay the money, Young is tapped as an “outside man” for his unique set of skills: martial-arts mastery, firearms expertise, and a choice moustache. Like every good action hero, he comes correct with his own titular theme song: “Outside Man,” the funkiest orchestral-soul track this side of Shaft.

After Young’s execution is staged for the prison warden and members of the press, his body is taken to a nearby hospital and revived. After regaining consciousness, he’s greeted by a member of the peacenik organization and told in the vaguest terms possible that a special assignment awaits him at headquarters in Arizona. His response? “How much money, and who do I kill?” Points for being direct and concise.

In exchange for a cool $100,000, Young will assume the new identity of Albert Lim and begin working undercover to take down NOMAD. Upon arriving in Manila, he has to touch base with a series of different contacts. Given no instructions other than to “have fun and stay sober,” Young, errr.... Lim, jets off to the land of chicken adobo and Manny Pacquiao.

Evil doesn’t stop and throw its legs up on the ottoman while Young is getting acclimated to his new surroundings, though. The thugs at NOMAD are sewing seeds of instability at every turn: cooking up epidemic bacteria and viruses, stealing documents, killing informers, and lubing deals for massive arms caches.

I couldn’t tell you who played Spencer, the leader of the terrorist group, and no, that’s not because I’m unable to tell the difference between Filipino people. Assholes -- why would you suggest that? It’s because neither the credits nor the IMDb entry list the cast and characters. For that reason, I’ll be referring to the Darnell Garcia character as Rego, because that’s sort of what it sounded like when other characters addressed him. As the head hatchet man, he trains the syndicate’s squad of ninja assassins when he’s not having threesomes with busty women or torturing people using snakes, rats, or power tools. Or was it torturing busty women and have threesomes with snakes, rats, and power tools? Either way, it’s pretty sleazy behavior, but not as bizarre as the group‘s other muscle, a 300-pound black man named Monster. What he lacks in fashion sense -- he wears a filthy half-shirt which exposes his beer belly -- he makes up in his propensity for doing bumps of coke after completing tasks.

You could nitpick about a lot of things in this type of movie, but for my money, the misappropriation of the ninja archetype was the most egregious. In Enforcer... the only characteristics which NOMAD’s ninjas share with their brethren are masks and throwing stars. Sure, they drop randomly from ceiling panels every so often, but they also run into traffic in the middle of the day and toss Molotov cocktails from moving trucks. Resourceful, sure, but there’s nothing particularly stealthy about that.

The fight scenes have an unrefined but energetic and rompy style to them, highlighted by a brawl between Young, Rego, and a group of ninjas in a burning chemical laboratory. During Young’s early training, we also see a free-flow stickfighting drill with eskrima Grandmaster Angel Cabales. While there’s no shortage of action, some of the bigger action set pieces are terribly slow to develop. During a dramatic chase scene which finds our hero driving perilously toward a cliff, Young escapes his convertible by latching onto a rope ladder lowered by a moving helicopter. This would have looked pretty bad-ass had the car not been traveling 8 miles per hour. There’s also some really poor night shots that failed mightily to incorporate action as well as a glaring continuity error where a moustache appears suddenly on Leo Fong’s previously clean-shaven face when he looks up to react to an explosion. These aren’t terrible gaffes, and I might even regard them as charming, but they did take away from the action scenes a bit.

For the uninitiated, Fong was born in China, moved to Arkansas at the age of five, and learned boxing as a teenager and martial arts in his 20s. He sparred with Bruce Lee and wrote or directed over 20 films. Best of all, he has a fairly pronounced Southern drawl, which some have mistaken -- at least in this film -- as a bad dubbing job. While an Asian guy with a Southern accent should equal cinematic gold, Fong’s rich mahogany dramatic style and age may have held him back. He was around 50 when this was filmed and only grew older through the American action boom of the 1980s. Still, Fong carved out a good niche for himself and worked with everyone from action stars like Richard Norton, Billy Blanks, and Reb Brown, to dramatic actors such as Stack Pierce, George Cheung, and Cameron Mitchell.

Splitting the duties at director are Marshall M. Borden, who would never again helm another film, and Efren C. Piñon, perhaps most famous for the 1983 horror-fantasy The Killing of Satan. Perhaps the more notable production credit is Frank Harris, listed as cinematographer. He’d go on to direct Fong in Killpoint (1984) and Low Blow (1986), both of which will be covered in the coming months.

VERDICT:
There are no great surprises here. You get exactly what’s coming to you: Leo Fong in a low-budget late 1970s Filipino action movie. There’s bad dubbing, random gore, random nudity, rape, the stunts are often slow to develop, the plot is convoluted, the villains are sleazy, and most of the production is sloppy as all fuck, but somehow it’s still an entertaining ride when you’ve come out the other side. In other words, Enforcer from Death Row is like 80% of 1970s Filipino action movies. If you like that type of thing, have at it. If you don’t, go watch The King’s Speech. I heard a lot of people over the age of 60 really liked it.

AVAILABILITY:
Netflix and Amazon.

4 / 7

Scorpion (1986)

PLOT: Have you seen Bullitt? If yes: Scorpion has virtually the same plot as Bullitt. If no: go watch Bullitt.

Director: William Riead
Writer: William Riead
Cast: Tonny Tulleners, Don Murray, Ross Elliott, Robert Logan, Billy Hayes, Ross Elliott






PLOT THICKENER:
A brief gaze at the poster for 1986’s Scorpion shows a mustachioed action ace willing to smash through glass and scuff his aviators to take down the bad guys. The actor behind the shades and flavor saver is Tonny Tulleners, a Holland-born karate black belt and winner of the 1965 International Karate Tournament in the middleweight division. Like so many real-life martial-arts champions before and after him, fighting expertise naturally guaranteed a movie deal. Also like other martial-arts champions who were guaranteed movie deals, he never did another movie after this one.

Special agent Steve Woods -- code name “Scorpion” -- is number one and the best in the field of clandestine operations and asskickings. We open with the juxtaposition of an old man leading a donkey through the quiet streets of a Spanish town and a cherry-red sportscar bombing into the parking lot of a cantina. Woods is trying to enjoy an afternoon cerveza and the rustic ambiance when an obnoxious drunk ruins the mood. Our hero goes into Scorpion mode and beats the shit out of the wino and his friends before leaving the bar, his beer unfinished and abandoned. He heads straight for a pay phone to touch base with a contact in Amsterdam, then with his agency superior based in the U.S. Within the first eight minutes of the film, Riead establishes Scorpion as a trilingual auto-enthusiast who has a habit of leaving beverages unfinished and won’t hesitate to put the hammer down if you’re being socially abrasive.

 

Scorpion works for the cleverly named D.I.A., and his latest assignment finds him in a hijacked commercial jet trying to thwart some unreasonable folks with olive skin and vague accents. The baddies have threatened to kill passengers if anyone from the opposition boards the plane with a weapon, so Scorpion dons some white short-shorts to prove that he’s not only unarmed but also the spitting image of Larry Bird. The terrorists discover in short time that the most dangerous weapon of all is beneath Scorpion’s clothing... his legs, you sick bastard! He kicks the shit out of them and saves the day.

The next morning, Scorpion is chilling on his house-boat and nursing what appears to be a hangover as his colleagues read the morning news and play annoying wind instruments. Scorpion is hailed as a hero in the media but they reveal his real name and his covert status is blown much like the aforementioned wind instrument. In the fallout of the attempted hijacking, Scorpion and his colleagues are also tasked with providing police protection for a material witness named Faued. An American lawyer played by Don Murray believes Faued will help the government bring down the Terror Network, which presumably consists of more evildoers with olive skin and vague accents.

As it also occurs in Bullitt, this entire set-up goes to shit and several characters needlessly die. The rest of the film follows Scorpion as he figures out the details of the botched assignment and the film takes on many of the characteristics common to the police procedural: crime scene investigations, autopsies with medical jargon, attempts at tension, chasing leads over the phone, etc. Taken individually, these components are handled well enough but on the whole, it was like an adult film directed by Michael Bay in his trademark blur-o-vision: I never figured out who was fucking who, and why or when.

This overemphasis on the investigative aspects of Scorpion’s work comes at a terrible cost: the action. One would think that a film starring a guy who beat Chuck Norris three times in actual karate competition would have a lot of fighting. With his side-swept hair and bushy moustache, Tulleners even looks like Norris. But a funny thing happened on the way to the end credits: Riead only includes about three total minutes of hand-to-hand combat. Given Tulleners’ fighting pedigree, how could they have possibly flubbed this? I’m tempted to point to Riead’s background as a TV documentary filmmaker and journalist, and Tulleners’ experience as an undercover cop with the Pasadena Police Department. Lousy do-gooders.

As Scorpion, Tulleners is serviceable. Not exactly good, but not wildly incompetent enough to be so bad he’s good. To his credit, he’s got the moustache-and-aviators theme down cold and he gets to rock some hilarious 80s fashion, including short-shorts and some high-waisted bell bottoms that do well to accentuate his freakishly long legs. You know, the ones he uses only sparingly to kick people in the face.

Despite the lack of fistkicking action, it’s worth noting that legendary Hollywood stuntman Dar Robinson worked on the film as stunt coordinator and most of the action is competently shot and edited. Scorpion features a decent helicopter vs. speedboat chase, and an excellent roof-to-roof leap that doesn’t end so well for the jumper, who lets off a familiar girly scream as he loses strength in his arms and plummets to his death. I say familiar because I used to do the same thing in college, when I failed to lift myself up to the top bunk during drunken stupors. Probably explains why the girls left the room after that.

Perhaps no 80s action movie is complete without a ham-fisted metaphor, so I wanted to mention the clumsy subplot involving one of Scorpion’s deceased colleagues and his childhood dream to push over a statue. Only after the dust settles is Scorpion able to realize that dream in his friend’s stead. What Riead attempts to shoehorn into the film as an emotional and poignant moment is instead a reminder of the issue of defacement of public property in our nation’s parks. One would think that a government man like Scorpion would know better than that. 

VERDICT:

I’m not entirely unsurprised that Tulleners joined a long list of lead action actors who went one-and-done. Scorpion does very little to accentuate his fighting skills, choosing instead to focus on rehashed and poorly-realized plot points from other films. As a straight martial-arts film, I can’t recommend it at all because the fight quotient is so low. However, as a crime-thriller with action elements, Scorpion is fairly solid. It’s well-paced, you’ll dig the antiquated clothing, and it has more moustaches than you can shake a stick at.

AVAILABILITY:
I picked up my Scorpion in the Maximum Action 10-disc set put out by BCI, which you can find on Amazon for under $5.

3.5 / 7

No Retreat, No Surrender 3 (1990)

PLOT:
Two brothers are forced to put aside a bitter sibling rivalry when their father is murdered by a lethal terrorist syndicate. While each follows a different path towards an inevitable showdown with the villains, they both manage to fuck up in equally illogical ways.

Director: Lucas Lowe
Screenwriter: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Loren Avedon, Keith Vitali, Rion Hunter, Joseph Campanella, Wanda Acuna, David Michael Sterling


PLOT THICKENER:
When the day comes to finally retire, I plan to walk away from the world of business fully cashed out with no loose ends. I will grow a wily and unkempt beard, live somewhere deep in the woods, and brew my own mindbending moonshine. Retirement is a difficult proposition that, for some, leads to part-time consulting or inspires an outright refusal to quit. For those involved with the dangerous world of covert operations, the concept doesn't appear to exist at all. The field is a dangerous web of death and deceit that never fully relinquishes its grip from those who partake in the madness.

John Alexander (character actor Joseph Campanella) is a classic case of the former workhorse who can't walk away from the game. He keeps former agency cohorts as social buddies and his son, Casey, is deeply entrenched in the "Company" work as a hard-kicking field agent. Portrayed by Keith Vitali, Casey leads a quiet and modest life. A carousel of smoking hot ladies, a shiny performance sportscar, and designer suits at least two sizes too big are a few of the luxuries in which he indulges on a regular basis. Having followed in his father's footsteps, he is regularly lauded by John and his CIA friends as he consistently farts excellence as a model of covert greatness. Very quietly, of course.

Not all of the senior Alexander's clandestine genetics were passed onto his progeny though. His younger son, Will (Avedon), stands firmly against everything his family's employers do. He refers to the lot of them as babykillers and has no qualms about rocking a swanky Soviet-inspired denim jacket at his dad's birthday party with scores of CIA employees in attendance. He ain't no fairy peacenik, though, working as a karate instructor by day and ... probably something in retail at night. Despite his ambiguous academic credentials, he lives the grimy undergraduate lifestyle. His wheels: a used VW Bug. His meals: loaves of bread and cola in the can.

Will is not unlike many younger siblings in feeling overlooked and underestimated due to his older brother's stature. The source of the tension between the two brothers isn't explicitly stated but we can infer it has something to do with Will being a stubborn nancy and Casey being a cocky prick. Papa Alexander recognizes his sons' unique differences but wants nothing more than for the three of them to spend quality time together. His silly insistence on investigating a terrorist syndicate sorta puts an end to that aspiration, because they show up to his pad after his birthday party and give him a surprise present: a Rolex! Ha, kidding. It was actually a violent and bloody death.

Leading the group of assholes-for-hire is the devious Franco, played by Rion Hunter. A veteran of action television with few film roles under his belt, Hunter more than holds his own in this early and rare role as main scoundrel. Other than a trademark deathblow, the cardinal rule for any martial-arts villain is a striking visual presence and Franco nails it in every conceivable way. His signature look forgoes sinister for stylish -- an incredible bottle-blonde mullet paired with a rotation of turtlenecks and stylish jackets with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. It's Miami Vice meets Dynamic Dudes on Don-Niam-as-Stingray Boulevard and it works to great effect. His deathblow is equally memorable: a bird-sized metal dart launched with expert precision.

Not only does Franco walk the walk, but he talks the talk with several great lines. He remarks at one point that singed human flesh smells much like roast pork, and while this is a precarious assertion at best (I'm in Camp Grilled Chicken) he sounds confident saying it. Throughout the film, Franco's line delivery boils over with a relaxed arrogance befitting a terrorist leader who has consistently evaded capture and while neither he nor his minions appear to have any concrete political beliefs, they definitely have demands. We never learn what those demands are, but Franco insists that they definitely have some. Furthermore, the group is based in that most fiendish cesspool of terrorist strongholds -- Florida. My guess is their list of demands begins with a better hangout in a different state.

Most of the second act follows Will's adventures in planning and executing an infiltration of Franco's gang and Casey's attempts to prevent his brother from getting in over his head. Throughout this process of push-and-pull, the energy normally reserved for hating each other is instead used to fuel their collective thirst to avenge their father's death. I'm not sure what that says about the human condition, but I can say that the net result is a lot of fucking kung-fu. Among the three entries in the NRNS franchise, Blood Brothers has the slickest action choreography and highest volume of hand-to-hand fight sequences by far. That being the case, it also has the highest amount of visible stunt doubles and the most ridiculously convuluted plot in the series. And while I sincerely feel the original NRNS set the bar for technically inept American martial arts filmmaking, the boom mic here makes so many onscreen appearances it should have been given an acting credit. I'm not sure how director Lucas Lo managed to overlook this most egregious set of errors but I have a feeling he was too busy shooting technically proficient fight scenes with visible stunt doubles.

The film culminates with several kidnappings, an incredible showdown inside an airplane hangar, and even a cameo by a certain 41st President of the United States. Also: buckets of drool, sweat, blood, and slo-mo, though I'm not sure if it's possible to place slo-mo in actual buckets. While Avedon is rock solid across all categories and Vitali's fighting skill barely manages to overshadow his atrocious (though amusing) acting, Rion Hunter shines through as the overall prime performer of the bunch. His Franco is the best creation of villainy in the NRNS franchise and while that might not seem like the biggest compliment, he's one of the best villains in the history of Western martial-arts film, though that doesn't seem like such high praise either.

VERDICT:
Marked by great fight choreography and even better late 80s hair and fashion sense, Blood Brothers is the final official sequel in the No Retreat, No Surrender trilogy. This subtitle is fitting since the central characters -- much like the three films in the NRNS franchise -- have nothing in common with one another but find a way to work together because of the bond to the person who created them. As mentioned, it has the best fight scenes of the three films and much of it is on par with most Hong Kong output during the same era. It's a shame Rion Hunter didn't do more villainous film roles, but given the sheer volume of random black belts who won tournaments getting film roles during this period, it's no great surprise he didn't have long-term traction in the genre. A certain must-see, if not a must-own.

7 / 7