What movie are you viewing at the moment?

[Sir Honkers]

The Little Prince. A French animation film about the importance of never losing touch with your inner child.
Thank god for Rotten Tomatoes Best Movies list, otherwise I'd never see a lot of these gems.

[Oh hi Mark!]

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil





As I stated in my Die Hard review, I plan on watching movies that have some Power Ranger connections, just so I can talk about the show some more, as I already covered the 3 feature full length motion pictures of the franchise. This movie has some Power Ranger connections, which one wouldn't be able to guess looking at the title, the premise, even clips from the film. By “connections,” I meant having actors or even writers/directors that worked on Power Rangers. This movie has two former Power Ranger actors, which I didn't realize until one of them brought it up in a Q&A panel. That person being Sasha Craig. She was Kelsey, the Yellow Ranger in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, the 8th season. She brought it up in making a point about the Power Ranger actor world being really small. It is, as so far there's been over 100 cast members from the show. That sounds like a lot, but put that number against the total amount of actors, in Hollywood alone, it's really small. Thus, it becomes a rarity that more than one Power Ranger alum just so happened to be in the same movie. Sometimes, as is the case of one particular movie I'll try to watch soon, it's intentional. The other actor Mrs. Craig was referring to was Brandon Jay McLaren, who was Jack Landors, the Red Ranger in Power Rangers SPD, the 13th season. I had just finished that season, so with that fresh in my memory, the time to watch this movie was appropriate. Looking at the end credits, I could pull out more loose connections to Power Rangers, one of the actors' surname is Sutherland, which is the same as the second ever Pink Ranger, Catherine Sutherland. Katrina Bowden, who played Allison, same first name as the two Katrinas from Power Rangers Ninja Storm, one of them staying on for the season after that, Dino Thunder, with a different role. Another actress has the surname of Laing, which is the same shared by someone I'm starting to pick up on. John Laing, who has directed a couple episodes of SPD and the season after that, Power Rangers Mystic Force. Moving on, when looking at the Power Rangers alum that grace this movie, one might wonder why they are in the movie. For McLaren, it's simply because he's the token black character of these group of college kids. Technically, token black man, there's a token black woman as well. For Craig, an actress who hasn't gotten as much work, it turns out that she's married to the co-writer and director of this movie, Eli Craig. Her role is still small, but it is an important one. Now, I have seen this movie once before, about 3 years ago, and surprisingly, I remembered a good chunk of it. I think because it's such a unique movie inasmuch that it puts a twist on the horror movie villain archetype. That's the biggest thing to take away from the film, and how they play with that and build a whole story around it, pretty much solidifying this film as something of a classic.


Of course, such praise would have to be earned. Just because it has a really nice concept, doesn't mean it's great. It would have to be executed very well, there's been movies with a great concept, that had terrible execution (in my opinion, It Follows is a great example of that). The concept is that the horror movie villain was created by the college kids, and it was all based on misjudging the two title characters, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine). While the former is probably most known for Firefly, I know him as Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball, while the latter was the drunk Pittsburgh Steelers fan from Zack & Miri Make A Porno. So, we got some funny guys here. Anyways, these two play hillbillies, stereotypical, but Dale in particular has a big heart, suffering from shyness and a low self esteem. It's a common buddy story aspect where one has those traits, while the other acts as a motivator of sorts and tries to help. Tucker acts as that kind of person. The horror movie villain turns out to be someone else, and how they reached to that conclusion was very nice, and satisfying, because the villain is someone you really want to die.


I did say Mrs. Craig's role is very important, so I must discuss it. She appears in the first scene of the movie, as well as one of the last scenes of the movie. They are set in the same time period, as the first scene takes place 3 days after the event of the same story. The last scene with her takes place just as that story finishes. Basically, the very first scene of the movie, is the epilogue. It's interesting because just watching the movie proper, you don't get a good look at the person who ruined her attempt at getting some exclusive story. After watching the movie, I went back to the scene, and it's much more clear. You still need to pause at the right time, but that first scene pretty much spoiled who the killer would be. Again, it takes watching the whole movie to realize that, from the start, I don't think anyone can realize that it was essentially a spoiler. Despite the brevity, one can tell what Mrs. Craig's character is. A TV news reporter that wants to get an exclusive, and pulls in her cameraman to a location she should not have explored, and she paid for it, along with the cameraman. That sets up the movie.


Judging by Mrs. Craig being Canadian, assuming Eli Craig is of the same nationality, and just how common a location it is, I believe this film was shot in Canada. I bring that up since this movie centers around the term “hillbilly” and does everything in its power to characterize the two main guys as that term, but it's an American one. Tucker, for example, loves Pabst Blue Ribbon and fishing. That's what he brings Dale for, hanging out at a vacation home that he bought, which serves as the typical “cabin in the woods” kind of horror trope, and they go fishing, they bring the dusty house to living conditions, and they do hillbilly work. Using a wood chipper, sawing down branches, digging a shit hole for the outhouse, they're roughing it. All they have is generic beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon being one Tucker loves. The hillbilly stuff is on the nose, but it's very entertaining, and the actors are made to look like hillbillies quite convincingly. Tucker is the sensible one of the two, while Dale doesn't have all his ducks in a row, if you know what I mean. He explains that in a later scene.


Now we come to the college kids, which is good that they are labeled as that, because they are way too old to be high school kids, even McLaren, who played a “teen” in SPD. In that show and in here, he's sporting some cool dreadlocks, much more of them in this movie since this is 5 years removed from SPD and he kept them growing. Unfortunately, he has since shaved his head, probably to get roles. It did work out for him, he's currently on a CBS show, Ransom. Good for him (no, I don't want to watch it). You have the token black characters, you have the vain blonde bimbo, the stoner kid, the douche male leader who either has a girlfriend among these people, or is trying to score one. I think it's more of the latter, there's a scene where he's trying to get all up on Allison's business. By the way, she is hot! She's hotter than the busty bimbo, just a slim lady, beautiful face, you can basically tell that she's Final Girl material. There are other guys, but they don't have much character. One of them wears an orange shirt, and is only important in that his father is the one that let them use the SUV. It's interesting, looking at the SUV, I spotted some dust. If you're trying to paint these kids as basically preppy, well off, at the very least, upper-middle class, I don't think a dusty SUV helps in convincing the viewer that. Anyways, yeah, the other male characters, whatever. I forget about them throughout the movie, and keep being surprised at how large the number of college kids were in this movie, how they could all fit in the SUV. Doing a quick count from that first SUV scene, I got 9 kids, only 3 women. Going back to the SUV again, I think there's a crack on the windshield! What the hell? I can't believe I haven't noticed these imperfections. Anyways, their first contact with the hillbillies was in their first scene. They're driving, talking about...young people stuff, when Tucker and Dale pass them, giving them creepy facial expressions. In a way, the movie's giving an impression that these guys are bad news, but quickly show who Tucker and Dale really are. So, the early assumptions manifest more in the judgmental minds of the college kids. That's essentially what dictated everything that followed in the movie, preconceived notions by the college kids, with the douche lead being the strongest offender. He's a douche based on his blue collared shirt alone. The collar is popped up, and it stays like that throughout the movie, even during the most tense times, almost as if it was necessary for that collar to stay up and look the way it did, not messed up or improperly set up, flawless basically. So, douche all the way.


The two parties crossed paths right after their first scene in a gas station. The kids are freaking out over not having beer for their party, and Tucker and Dale are picking up some stuff, which I think includes beer as well. The creepy looks continue from both guys, Dale in particular runs away when Allison spots his stare. There's the old hand on the shoulder trope in horror movies, which typically doesn't make any sense, but let it go. Dale's wearing a hat that says “Giv'er” which is pretty funny. It makes sense if you take out the apostrophe, he is a giver, a nice person. With that apostrophe, it gives the impression that he would say things like “Let's giv'er a spin,” which would mean trying on some kind of machine or appliance. Of course, one can take it sexual, and use a line like “Let's giv'er one.” Hehehe. One of the items Tucker gets are pickled eggs, Long John's Pickled Eggs. Funny, I thought Long John was a seafood joint.


Tucker is smitten over Allison, Dale tries to get him to talk to her, but he is too timid to do that. Much like the college kids having preconceived notions about the hillbillies, so does a hillbilly himself, Dale. Making generalizations about college girls and that he'd be one that would fix their toilets, not go out with them. Tucker convinced him to talk to the blonde, and he does so while holding a big scythe. Not really a good way to have a conversation, it fuels the young minds of the kids, especially the douche (Chad is his name, but still, douche). Chad threatens him with some white boy martial arts hand gestures, which got Dale to back off.


A sheriff has Tucker and Dale pull over. It looks like they think it's because of Tucker's drinking and driving, Dale trying to get a rag to help clean up the evidence, looking like he's giving Tucker a blowjob, and he's shirtless. That doesn't impress the cop. It was actually because of a busted turn signal light, with the sheriff also filling in the old doomsayer trope in slasher movies, where an older man warns of danger. In this case, Morris Lake, where the two are going, and where the kids are not too far from.


Something that kind of bothered me was how these college kids aren't in a vacation home themselves. They rough it out by having tents. I find that a bit odd, it would've been more indicative of their status if they got a vacation home. I thought they had one, but it was never seen, however, I was too blind to see the tents behind them. They don't spend a lot of time in their own area anyways, it quickly goes to them descending upon the area of Tucker and Dale's vacation home. Chad gave a spooky story about two hillbillies that killed some young people 20 years ago around these parts. This movie came out in 2010, I assume the year was 1990, and with the song “Pump Up the Jam” playing, that indicates 1990 as well. The story gives viewers the first glimpse of the kills in this movie being really impressive. One of the hillbillies throws some round saw-like object at the geek of the group, catching him in the forehead. A woman gets a machete to the neck, more of a CG deal. That leads me to having to point out that the CG in this film is very minimal. I think the only other clear example of it are the bees later in the movie, Tucker sawing through wood and intruding on a bee hive. Nothing is over the top in that sense, meaning practical effects essentially rule the land here, which is very nice.


One of the kids suggested skinny dipping, and it's bullcrap because none of them are fully naked. The men in boxers, the busty blonde did go topless, but that's all the nudity and skin you get in this movie. Allison gets scared and it's all Chad's fault, this was before the skinny dipping. It's this scene that sets Chad apart from typical douche leaders, him being very paranoid. He had an ax in hand, it looked like he was joking, but it turned out he drank too much beer and got drunk, telling off Allison about her thinking she is superior (which he got wrong). This kind of state does not end, it builds, and one gets a good deterioration of sense by this one man. His hair got messy in that scene, another visual indication of him starting his path to going off the deep end.


The Pabst Blue Ribbon appeared in the skinny dipping scene, Dale letting Tucker have it, which didn't sit well with the latter since it involved the former submitting and being his timid self. The skin starts to show, Tucker has himself a peak, Dale is not about that, they argue, Allison heard it and falls off a rock, face first into the lake. I thought she died. This goes into my memories of the first time viewing. I forgot that she stuck around for the rest of the movie. I just seemed to remember the kills and Chad being a grade A douche and something else that goes into spoiler territory. However, I forgot her, shame on me.


It is a shame because it fuels the kids' suspicion of the hillbillies. They see Allison being taken from the hillbillies, thinking they have malicious intent, when it was really Dale caring for her. They react in fear, when all this could've been resolved if they went to the hillbillies and retrieved an unconscious Allison. Chad didn't go skinnydipping, he was busy throwing an ax at a tree. Douche. They really made the house to look creepy, there's a perpetual small mist that is in front of it, so anyone looking at it will feel scared. Inside though, there's not much indication of it being home to killers, there were board games in it, for example. There are some skulls of some animals, but board games man. There's a rickety support beam, that plays a huge part later in the movie, but that's about it, the house looks fine, all things considered. Oh yeah, Tucker and Dale have a one-eyed dog, Jangers, if I got the spelling right, a big marshmallow as Dale said. Also, I should mention that they do have scary background music to fuel the belief of Tucker and Dale being scary guys, which is a bit funny. To describe an example, Allison sees Dale exit a room, holding a tray, you see his silhouette, and then as he approached her, she screams, thinking he's going to finish the job of killing her. Music accompanies that, but no, he was offering her breakfast. The conversations between these two begin, and it builds an unlikely relationship. Dale being a bit of a goof in the conversation, but he's trying, it's the most he's gotten to talking to a woman. The preconceived notions of college girls come up as well, their first chat having him say how the house isn't really up to code according to college girls. Going back to their first conversation, really indicating a friendship brewing, she told Dale that her “friends” call her “Allie.” Why would she say that to someone she felt she wouldn't like? It just shows that she's the least judgmental of the group, and an explanation for that is actually given later. That being she is majoring in psychology and wants to be a therapist, makes sense that she isn't so judgmental.


The board games come up as Dale suggested they played a trivia one. It's there that the viewer realizes that Dale is actually very smart. It's basically a form of Will Hunting's genius ability, remembering things extremely well. For Dale, it's seemingly random things, like who the 5th President of the United States was. Or what ingredient in Chamomile tea can cause a wicked allergic reaction, I mention that for good reason. The college kids are scared to approach the home, after some stalling, the stoner kid gets the deed of going over there. To give off the horror vibe, despite the hillbillies being innocent, there is a crow near their place, and the stoner kid passes by it. As mentioned earlier, there was the bee hive, Tucker saws into that, and they all come out, stinging and swarming him. This is while he held an active chainsaw, he runs from behind the house, swinging the thing around, fueling the fear of the stoner kid and the rest of the people. Mass hysteria, like dogs and cats living together, Tucker is running, the college kid is running, but one of them runs right into a sharp stump, leading into impalement. Is that realistic? I'm not sure, the death itself I mean. A kid running without paying attention to what's in front of him? Maybe not realistic, and he paid for that. There's a shot of a bee on the guy's nose, so maybe he realized that Tucker was running because of bees, but he couldn't live long enough to make that clarification to his friends.


Tucker returned home with big bumps on his face. I realized that he got the shit end of the stick. Even though he didn't die from any of the things that happened to him, he got to be in worse shape as time went on. It turns out that Dale got off with no wounds or scars, and it dawned on me that it's because he stayed inside. He minded his own business, did his thing, did not get into any dangerous act that would land him in trouble until the end. Tucker was doing some sawing, using a wood chipper, those are risky in nature. He had a handle of them, less so the sawing, but still. Dale's manual labor only made it to shoveling, which he was doing just fine on his own. When Ally wanted to help him, that's when it became a bit risky, and that was proven not long after that, her accidentally being knocked out by Dale's shovel to the head. Yeah, she's just unlucky, but she herself made it out relatively spotless in the end, a true Final Girl. Backtracking a bit, when Tucker and Dale agree to go out and inform the kids that they have Ally, she warned them that they could be a bit judgmental. That's an understatement.


Something funny happened in the following scene. Not the kids discovering stoner boy's body, not that they believe the body was left there deliberately as a message from the hillbillies. I'm talking about the cellphone the busty blonde had! Oh my goodness, this was 2010, smartphones were just starting to hit, and here she was with her flip phone! Also, a flip phone that presumably has no signal out in the woods, Chad said this and used his ax to destroy it. That was stupid. Chad would rather bring the fight to hillbillies, “Us against Them” rather than go to the road and get some help. They hide, Tucker and Dale talk about the latter owning Ally in the trivia board game. The choice of words in this conversation made the kids think they're talking about killing Ally, “Finish her off.” Uhh, that could mean something sexual too, hehe. Dale gets the hatchet Chad left on the tree, allowing him to carve a message on a log. A message that they later saw and thought that it was a warning, but it wasn't, “We got ur freind.” That's verbatim, haha!


Ally grew up on a farm, very convenient for the shithole digging she helped Dale with. This and Tucker working on the wood chipper sets up some more unintentional deaths, which was also pretty damn good. The nobody boys getting it. One of them was named Jack, which is funny because that was McLaren's name on Power Rangers SPD. McLaren's name here was Jason, which was also the name of the original Red Power Ranger (Austin St. John, whose birthname is...Jason). I spent too long without referencing Power Rangers, so, I had to. Anyways, whoever was Jack either got that earlier death with the tree stump, or one of the following: another impalement through a makeshift wooden spear, or jumping into a wood chipper. The former, in hindsight was a bit redundant, the setup was different. The guy tried to go after Dale with it, Ally tried to push Dale out the way, got a shovel to the head, as mentioned earlier. Dale falls into the shithole with her, college dude trips and falls on his sword, so to speak. Meanwhile, the other guy, having a much weaker weapon, looking like a pen, runs at Tucker, who conveniently moves out the way, leading to the boy jumping into the wood chipper, making for a lot of blood splatter, which was awesome. The busty girl getting some blood hitting her face and cleavage. After the wood chipper turns off from being jammed, Tucker asked if the kid was okay. Haha! I don't think so. Tucker returns to the house just after Dale does with an unconscious Ally, and it's hilarious how they come to the conclusion that the kids made a suicide pact, and that they're trying to kill Ally. They all have to die, fuck the world or whatever. Nobody would do that in 2010, nobody would do that today, unless they're part of some fucked up cult. They sure don't look like cult members. Dale suggested the police, but Tucker knows better. It's not about what actually happened, but what looks like what happened. I'm quoting Tucker there, and it does look like they are the killers. They have blood on their bodies, the corpses are around their house and general area, they have an unconscious woman in their house, it doesn't paint them as innocent people.


Given my reasoning to watching this movie, I think someone reading would wonder why I haven't spent some time specifically on Brandon McLaren's character. He survives close to the climax of the movie, which is a pretty long time, as indicated, he doesn't fall into the slasher trope of being the first one dead on account of him being black. I'm saving it until the end, but I will give a little comment, he told the blood covered busty blonde not to smoke, it's bad for you. It's funny because that's really the least of her worries. One thing I kept wondering about was how come the kids didn't leave the area with their big SUV. I didn't realize that it was because one of the kids, Chuck, was sent off to get help, so naturally he had to take the car to make it to town. Even so, all of them should've just said “Fuck it” and leave, except Chad was not about that, it's revealed that he suggested this little vacation in the first place. So, all of this is his fault. Being looked at as the leader, he did nothing to quell the mass hysteria, he fed into it. If he suggested they just approached the hillbillies for Ally, nonviolently and calmly, none of this would've happened. However, such a situation probably wouldn't arise after the man made his first impression on the hillbillies by threatening Dale with some white boy martial arts in that gas station scene. Going all the way back to that scene, he should've calmly pushed Dale back, but instead he was very confrontational. With him being the most judgmental, and the others being easy to persuade and not being very contemplative (as opposed to what college kids actually are), he is the cause of all this crap. At least the backbone, the kids that died themselves, are to blame as well, stoner kid for not paying attention to what's in front of him, other impaled dude for not being careful, and the other guy for being so damn hasty in leaping to his target. Also with later kills, which I'll get to.


Back to the movie, Chad called everyone pussies, said the murders were “tiny,” it's all about “Us against Them,” having the chance to truly live, no rules. If you can't handle that, you deserve to die. Jason, my Power Ranger bro, said...





I agree. Chuck did his job, here comes the sheriff to the rescue, the same guy that pulled Tucker and Dale over. The two almost run into the bloodstained blonde, which certainly helped fuel the sheriff's suspicions, swaying in their favor. The kids hop into his SUV, except for Chad, chastising the kids for doing this. He's far off the deep end at this point, and it becomes clear that he's the horror movie villain. He fits the mold already. The words he spewed out border on the words of a sociopath, and later, he does cross into psychopath territory. Tucker and Dale got the body out of the wood chipper, all that remained was the bottom half of the body. The sheriff comes during this, they're caught red-handed, so to speak. Tucker and Dale give their side of the story, the sheriff not really buying. Really, who would? The movie kind of acts as a reflection of most people's own preconceived notions. This is more laid out to the viewer to an extent towards the end of the movie with Ally playing therapist, mediator of both sides. A word I didn't really grasp until going back to the scene, during this part, Dale said that he figured the cop would be “open-minded.” Yeah, that's basically the theme here, what could've led to everyone's safety, being open-minded, and in the case of Chad, sane. The open-minded status requested though is a major stretch, but the movie shows why it's something that should've been taken, at least here. It's just like The Room. Yeah, I have to reference the best movie ever. The Room is a reflection of life, it really is. It makes you see yourself and learn about yourself, discover yourself. It's real American movie. This movie is just like that, except it's not American, it's Canadian, the values instilled are the same. Of course, I'm just joking, I have to reference The Room much like I have to reference Power Rangers.


So the sheriff struggles to understand their story, and Dale didn't help with saying they have a girl inside, and that he knocked her out with a shovel, and that she is in his bedroom. It kind of seemed like he was turning around in Tucker and Dale's favor, noticing that Ally isn't brain-dead or anything. He did go into chastising them about going to this area when he warned them about it. I forgot to mention that in Tucker and Dale's house, there are newspaper clippings talking about the murder case that ended up being the story Chad shared earlier, the “Memorial Day Massacre.” I just now realized that the house must've belonged to those hillbilly killers, and it would explain how Tucker was able to afford it. Who would buy a house that belonged to a pair of murderers? The sheriff said Tucker and Dale could be facing a couple counts of involuntary manslaughter, if that. Would they? Hmmm, I don't think so, but it'd be hard to convince a court otherwise. The sheriff was asked if they looked like psycho killers, he said it was hard to say, that looks can be deceiving. Yeah. Throughout all this, I'm now surprised the saying “Don't judge a book by it's cover” wasn't said. That would've made things much more on-the-nose, so it was probably a good thing that wasn't said. Anyways, the sheriff puts his hand on that troublesome support beam and suffered from it. The kids are further scared, Tucker and Dale argued about who should've fixed the beam. Chuck with his popped up orange collar comes out, gets the sheriff's gun, threatens to shoot, but the safety is on. The fucker showed his handle of a gun being so poor and it led to his own death. From that, do the kids think that Tucker and Dale caused it? They weren't holding guns, so, did they think the hillbillies are supernatural? They can project gun bullets from out of nowhere? They didn't outright said that Chuck accidentally shot himself, they screamed after it was done, I guess they thought that the hillbillies caused it. Whatever the case, another one bites the dust, Chad comes out guns blazing. Well, he picked up the gun, safety being off, and he fires away. I just realized that Jason's collar was not popped up. That's my man, throughout the movie I wished he didn't die. I don't believe I had that same sentiment the first time viewing, I just saw him as a stereotype. He still is, but he has the edge of me knowing him, and being fond of him, as his season of Power Rangers was great.


Tucker and Dale retreat back to the house, lying on their backs to avoid being hit by the bullets, and they argue some more. Tucker raises a good point, if Dale didn't act like a good Samaritan, none of this would've happened. At the same time, why leave a helpless woman unconscious in a lake? Dale then countered about how none of this would've happened if they had not have gone fishing, Dale revealing he hates it. Tucker is taken off guard from that. Aw, it does go into Dale being so submissive and not speaking up about this, indulging Tucker in his love of fishing. By the way, I don't think they even caught any fish. Dog barks during the gunshots lead to concern over Jangers, it turned out that Chad has that gun pointed at the poor mutt's head! Oh, I kind of got fired up from this, I don't like dog violence and deaths. Having a dog myself makes me more sensitive to this stuff. Tucker breaks out a nail gun, allowing Dale to create a distraction while Tucker goes out from the back to make the save for Jangers. Dale shoots at the sheriff's car, him actually sounding like a madman, a killer basically. Chad ran out of bullets, but he acted like he didn't to be threatening to Dale. Tucker got the job done, but he ends up being the hostage instead. They chased after him first, the busty blonde wearing stripper heels, so she's the slowest. With Tucker pleading to not be harmed, and Chad standing over him, hatchet in hand, the visual is really strong in showing who is really the antagonist of the film.


Tucker wakes up to being hung upside down, a trap being set for Dale. Tucker tried to calm things down by offering them a cooler full of beer, but nope, he gets two of his fingers chopped off by Chad, who looked like he was having an orgasm from that. Wow. Head case Ally wakes up, Dale tries to explain what's happened to Ally. He asked Ally if their friends take medication, and that perhaps they forgot to take it. It's possible, college kids always doing addictive stuff like drinking and drugs. Ally offered to be the voice of reason, exits the home to see a couple dead bodies, and a wrapped up message to Dale. In it were Tucker's bowling fingers and a paper saying that they have Dale's friend, come and get him. The wrapping was part of Tucker's shirt. Ally said she and the kids thought they looked creepy, but Dale explained it was his nervousness to women. Judging without knowing someone, it doesn't often lead to good things, I think today's society could learn from that. Dale shifted the blame to himself, that if a guy like him talked to a girl like Ally, someone would end up dead. That's a bit extreme, though in hindsight, that's kind of what happened.


Dale goes to Tucker, falls for the trap. Well, he almost did, a wooden spear that launched for his privates, but missed just barely. Good thing he isn't “hung like a bear.” That gives off an unsettling image, but ah well. Tucker said “That kid's got some serious issues.” Yeah, beyond the asthma. I forgot to mention, mainly because it's only shown a few times, one of them being very crucial at the end, Chad has asthma and uses an inhaler.


Things come to a head in the house at night. Something I questioned was the liquids that were in jars, as those played a part later in the scene. I had to go back to see what they were. One jar has turpentine, the other, paint thinner. Chad and the black girl kind of break into the house, the former saying it's where evil lives. Or people who didn't remove newspaper clippings and hanging skulls of whatever. When Ally spots the two and told them not to whisper since there's nobody else there, you can see that there is gasoline near the door. Hmm! I didn't realize that and the jars of fluids were foreshadowing tools. Well, the gasoline being more obvious because Chad goes for it and dunks it around the house. Ally tries to explain things, Chad doesn't buy it, and the fucking black girl said that Ally has Stockholm Syndrome! Chad then asks if Ally is falling in love with “him,” I'm assuming Dale. She doesn't answer the question, Tucker and Dale come busting in. Dale asked “Ally” if she's okay, Chad takes exception to him using that nickname. I'm not familiar with Stockholm Syndrome, it sounding pretty unrealistic, but I guess it's just a conclusion one gets to when all else fails really, hope for escape for example being gone. It's still strange to me.


Ally offers to make tea, Chad asking if it was Chamomile, because it fucks with his asthma. Nope, Earl Grey. That's important to note. Ally has them give their side of the story, but Chad goes into an origin story of sorts, basically explaining his hatred of hillbillies. I'll go into spoiler territory for the rest of the story. I want to talk about it anyways.


SPOILER. It turns out that the Memorial Day Massacre story Chad shared earlier, involved his parents. They were two of the victims, his dad being the last to die. His mom escaped, while she was pregnant with Chad. By the time he was born, his mother was institutionalized, the story of all this was shared by his grandmother. Meanwhile, Jason and busty blonde arrive outside the house, trying to sneak in. A plan by Chad, they come in “guns blazing,” despite not having a gun, if 50 minutes had passed and he and black girl are not out of the house. Jason said the best line of the movie, which is me being bias over the actor: “Dammit woman, don't argue with me.” YEAH! They look at a window and see that they are having tea, which Jason spins it as Chad and Ally being trapped. Back inside, Dale apologizes for what happened to Chad's parents and that he had nothing to do with it. Chad said that it still involved his kind, hillbillies. Dale said he couldn't even hurt a fish, as evident in his aversion to fishing. Ally thinks progress is made, but Jason busts in, saying “It's showtime, freaks!” He has a fucking weed wacker, open lawnmower thing, and goes after Tucker. He misses and gets the black girl's face! Busty blonde gets more blood splattering her face and cleavage! Distraction, Chad takes advantage and goes on the offensive, Jason questioned why the black chick didn't duck. Yeah, right?! Chad has Dale pinned down under the table, he smacks Ally away from him, he's committed. He should be committed as well. Tucker comes for the save, Chad throws a lantern at them seemingly, it hits an area soaked in gasoline, leading to Jason's shoe and pants catching a little fire. The busty blonde made it worse by throwing some of the fluid, either turpentine or paint thinner at Jason's inflicted area. The fire grows and consumes my man Jason, killing him, sadly. The deaths in this house clearly show that Tucker and Dale are not to blame, but I guess it was too late to put 2 and 2 together, that Tucker and Dale didn't cause those previous deaths outside the house. Fucking busty chick has a cigarette, surrounded by flames, I guess accepting her fate. Chad tries to go after the three protagonists, but is stopped by the black chick, pleading for help. Chad is not down to help a “nasty bitch,” but he doesn't escape in time. The house blows up! Tucker and Dale are sad about the cabin, Ally thinks she's a terrible therapist. Hey, she tried, Dale says as much and compliments her, as he should. Sweet talk was over, here comes Chad, looking like Two Face from The Dark Knight. There's no helping Chad, so they run away. Dale though did the same thing the stoner kid did, not looking at what's in front of him. The difference is that he was driving, the stoner kid was running. Not only driving, but doing so with Tucker and Ally as passengers, it leading to them hitting a tree. Dale wakes up to Ally being kidnapped, Tucker being sat against a tree, struggling. It turns out that he got some bloody mark under his chest, indicating that Chad struck him with the hatchet, as he tried to stop Ally from being kidnapped. My memory of the movie being a bit off, I thought Tucker dies from this. Dale said Tucker was right, that he should've never talked to Allison, that people like him and people like her just don't mix. Tucker though relays a story about how when they were kids, Tucker and Dale competed in frog capturing. Dale won, Tucker said back then he let Dale won. That wasn't the case, the truth is Dale won all by himself, he was simply better than Tucker in that, indicating that Dale is much better than he thinks of himself as, and Ally sees that. Tucker gives some encouraging words to Dale, pumping up the man to get into some action. Best friends forever. With the help of Jangers, Dale finds where Ally and Chad are.


SPOILER. They're at a lumber mill, Chad is tying down Ally to a log that is close to a large saw. Chad said he went through a lot to rescue Ally, which is funny because he has her tied down, it's not rescuing at all. He then kisses her, EW! Remember, Two Face, half his mug is burnt to a crisp, it's nasty seeing his whole face during this kissing part. He licks her too, more grossness. He heard some rumbling outside, it's Dale entering a tool room, and suiting up for battle. Chainsaw, welder's mask, work gloves, a huge waist belt, his ankle area sporting some big nail, ready for war. Dale busts in to where Ally is, she's scared, showing that his battle gear was intimidating, as was his intention. That being established, he tries to untie her, Chad turns on a PA system and speaks. He said Dale is wrong in thinking he will win, and Ally should not have betrayed him, so he turns on the saw. Dale tried to use his chainsaw to break the ropes, but Chad comes in. They fight, Chad's leg gets spiked, Dale gets the hatchet, throws it at the rope, finishing the chainsaw job and breaking Ally free just in the nick of time. It's Chad's metal rod against Dale's chainsaw, the former never giving way to the latter, which is a bit surprising. That must be a powerful rod. Anyways, Dale throws the chainsaw at him, buying the two protagonists some time. They head to the second floor, bolt down the door with boxes and a plank of wood. Dale finds some Chamomile tea, Ally finds a newspaper article about the Memorial Day Massacre killer being found. They both realize the resemblance this man has with Chad. Bombshell, Chad's dad is the killer from 20 years ago. It wasn't two men, it was him. Also, the lone survivor was tortured and raped, and had to be institutionalized, that was Chad's mother. He's a rape baby, his father's a murderer, genetics, his mother being in the loony house, pretty much the seeds of a future serial killer. The movie basically argues about genes, nature, rather than nurture when it comes to a person's future, who they turn out to be. Chad mentioned his grandmother, one can assume she raised him. Not knowing of his sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies, one can tell he was raised just fine, though he still turned out to be a douche. That's his own fault. The genes though come in and take over when he was put into the situation he kept describing and relishing over, “Us vs. Them,” survival of the fittest, these primal instincts that veered into murderous intentions. I'm giving a lot of analysis for a movie that's a very simple viewing, not challenging at all. Still, it's fascinating to delve into a bit. Whether the movie deliberately calls for analysis like this is up for debate. It's less of a debate to say that I'm just padding this review.


SPOILER. Chad said in that story before that his dad's body was never found. In the visual depiction of the story, it shows a man being put into a furnace, burning alive, so one would assume it's his father. That turned out to be false, his father was the lone killer. Chad chainsaws through the door, the final confrontation is about to commence. Dale stops with showing the newspaper article, showing Chad that he's part hillbilly. Chad is obviously taken aback from this, and that gives Dale some time to strike. Ally tried to explain why this truth might have been hidden, but he said everything is a lie. He charges at them, Dale hits him with Chamomile tea. The allergic reaction kicks in, Dale explains the science of that, showing his intelligence. He said it'd be fine if they got him his inhaler. Too late, dude falls back, breaking open a closed-off window, and falling to his death. Or was it his death? Back to the scene of the deaths, you see Sasha Craig's reporter character getting ready to give the news, and then her doing it. As that happens, it's shown to be broadcast, a TV being shown in a hospital room. It's Tucker, alive and somewhat well. She said that what appeared to be mass suicide, turned out to be the work of a deranged killer, whose body hasn't been found. So, that wraps itself at the very beginning of the movie. That person who killed her and the cameraman, was in fact Chad. Not so much a happy ending since he's not dead, though the rest of the movie wraps up in a happy ending fashion. Dale pays Tucker a visit, the latter's fingers got sewed back in. Well, one of the fingers was his, the other was...feminine looking. My guess is it was the bimbo's. If you listen closely, beneath Dale and Tucker talking, the reporter is saying that the killings here just so happened to occur on the 20th anniversary of the Memorial Day Massacre. Coincidence? Dale gifts Tucker with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and a bendy straw for him. There's more cans for the guy. I guess hillbillies love Pabst Blue Ribbon. Tucker asked if Dale got Ally to go out with him. No, that disappointed Tucker, but Dale elaborated that Ally just so happened to be a good bowler. This woman is so talented, training to be a therapist, grew up on a farm, is a good bowler? So many convenient things that serve the plot of the movie. That little line from Dale about Tucker's severed fingers being his bowling ones foreshadowing what happened right at the end. So Tucker and Ally bowl, with some old skinny hillbilly named “BJ.” He said Ally has a great set...of bowling fingers. She has small boobs, trust me. Anyways, Dale then acts like Tucker and motivates BJ to go after what he wants, exactly as Tucker told Dale. He tries that, and crashes and burns. He tries to hit on a nearby female bowler, while Dale gifts Ally a pink helmet. HA! I get it. It's funny how she's prone to head injury, and she wants to help people with their heads, mentally speaking. They talk some more, more like Dale talking a lot, and she pauses that with a kiss. Their intimate moment is interrupted by BJ accidentally knocking out a lady. Never mind that, more kissing, which gives hope for fat, greasy looking men such as myself. I'm not a hillbilly, but still, it gives me hope that I'll nail a woman like her. The End.


Looking at the end credits, the cameraman in the first scene was played by Eli Craig, the co-writer and director of the film, as well as Sasha Craig's husband. Huh, that's interesting. Alright, as promised, I'll dedicate a section to Brandon McLaren and his character.


There really isn't much to say, me knowing him now doesn't change the fact that he's the token black character. He doesn't do anything stereotypical to a black person, he's basically one of the guys, skin color doesn't matter in the end. The fact he survives until the last house scene indicates that he's not the dumbest man of the lot. Given the deranged tendencies of Chad (I should've named the actor before, Jesse Moss), Jason is actually the smartest person of the group. The black woman, who I now caught her name, Naomi (Christie Laing), knocked herself out of contention when she suggested Stockholm Syndrome afflicted Ally. That is ridiculous in my opinion. Jason, though he didn't offer any suggestions to show that he's smart, he didn't do much to prove that he's dumb. Okay, what happened to Naomi, I don't really count, she should've ducked. As far as lines, the guy had some funny lines. “Dammit woman, don't argue with me” being the best one. Halfway through the movie, when Chad chucks that hatchet to the tree, missing Jason, he said that Chad almost got his face, which was funny how he expressed that. The way the writing is, in the end, Jason is not so much a standout character. The viewer has to stop and think about him and realize that he has a couple things going for him, beyond just the fact that he's black, and he has awesome dreadlocks. Again, if I didn't know of McLaren's Power Ranger past the way I do know, I wouldn't really give so many comments to this character. I don't regret it though, it just helps in remembering the person more, even though it takes an outside influence like Power Rangers to get this out of me.


With that being said, I can talk about the actor and what he did on Power Rangers SPD. He was the Red Ranger, which in that show and the Japanese original, Super Sentai, they are typically the leaders. This particular season stands out in that its serialized style presented these Rangers as always having to work up a ladder. First, it starts with three of them. Since I named McLaren's character, I'll do so for the rest. Sky Tate (Chris Violette), Bridge Carson (Matt Austin), and Syd Drew (Alycia Purrott) are B-Squad cadets at Space Patrol Delta's training academy. When the A-Squad Power Rangers are deployed to a far away planet and Earth is in need of defenders, the B-Squad cadets are given morphers to become Power Rangers. Sky Tate in particular aspires to be the Red Ranger, as his dad was a Red Ranger, and he idolizes his father. He gets true blue instead, and that eats away at him. They meet Jack and Elizabeth “Z” Delgado (Monica May), who are Robin Hood style thieves, stealing clothes and giving them to the poor. The year is 2025, which is not far away from now, though we will definitely not reach the milestones this show depicted by that year. The biggest being aliens living amongst humans in harmony, 99% of them to be exact, the 1% being criminals, SPD on the call to take care of them, think Men In Black, only without the secrecy. Jack and Z were able to fight off the B-Squad cadets, but when they are eventually caught and arrested, the commander of the SPD Earth Base, Anubis “Doggie” Cruger (John Tui in a great big anthropomorphic dog suit with the head being an animatronic), sees potential in them and recruits them. Okay, hai dogeee. There, reference to The Room taken care of. Surprisingly, I never thought that while watching the season, it took a video review where the person made that reference, for me to realize a missed opportunity from myself. Anyways, the common thread of these teens is that they all have special abilities. Jack can walk through objects, Z can make holographic copies of herself, Bridge can read energy sources from beings, Sky can make a defensive force field, Syd can turn her hands into whatever material she touches. So, if she is holding a steel rod, her hand turns into tough steel. Because of this and how the two thieves were able to handle the three cadets, Cruger gets them to join B-Squad. Z is eager, Jack, not so much, and it takes a bit to get him on board. The colors: Jack, as I said, becomes the Red Ranger, much to the chagrin of Blue Ranger Sky; Bridge becomes the Green Ranger, Z is Yellow, Syd is Pink. The main villain is Emperor Gruumm of the Trubian Empire, who has already conquered most of the galaxy, and has his sights on Earth. There's a lot more to discuss, but I'm reviewing Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, not this show. It's a great season, I think even for non-Ranger fans, because it kind of sets itself up to not be like most seasons. It has a serious tone to it, there are themes of betrayal, loyalty, respect, revenge, redemption and friendship. Story wise, it's fantastic, the principal flaw though is more on the technical side, the overuse of explosions, these labeled “Kalishsplosions.” The executive producer of Power Rangers between 2005 and 2008 was Bruce Kalish, so...yeah. Technically, he didn't make the explosions himself, it was action director and fellow executive producer Koichi Sakamoto, but Kalish had final say on everything, so, Kalishsplosions it is. I love me over-the-top explosions, but these were exaggerated to death. That and the action overall being lacking, and a show that is 75% action? Yeah, so the storytelling, writing, and acting HAD to be good to forgive something that on paper is unforgivable. That's just how good SPD is. Anyways, on McLaren himself, he was great! His character was very good, most of them were given serious character development, with Sky and Jack being the biggest ones in particular. Though both have different personalities, when analyzing them, they are kind of similar in many ways, at one point someone in the show even says they are more alike than they care to admit. They have different ambitions though, but both work together and work to improve themselves. Like any good TV show that is serialized, you want character development and storytelling that doesn't spin in circles. Power Rangers SPD offers that in spades, and Brandon McLaren was a huge part of that. As far as being a Red Ranger, how he ranks with all the other ones I have seen, it gets a bit muddy. That's more to say about the Red Rangers before him, most of them really, having towering legacies. So far I've seen 15 Red Rangers do their thing, Jack included. He easily makes it into the top 10. Granted, I still have 11 more seasons, almost that amount of Red Rangers to experience, so the ranking is not complete. I'm confident though that Jack will end up being in the top 10, if not, top 15. A great Power Ranger overall, a satisfactory leader, an amazing character. If you're going by Power Ranger rankings by them as characters and not as leaders or whatever Ranger-specific roles they have, then Jack is an incredible character, a much easier top 10, as close to top 5 as possible I'd argue. So, that's a testament to the writing of that character, as well as the acting of Brandon Jay McClaren, who was also very charismatic and charming in the role.


My Power Rangers discussion quota being met, I might as well be fair and talk about other key characters from this film quickly. I think my plot breakdown says a lot, but I'll bring it all together.


Dale, to kick things off, is really the main guy of the movie. He's billed first in the closing credits, the story greatly involves him, whereas Tucker would've been just fine doing his thing. Dale on the other hand, had more obstacles, more character development, basically more to do, making him easily the lead of the whole film. As such, Tyler Labine does a really good job making this character exceptionally lovable. I want him to win in the end, he's just a big old teddy bear. You want to give him a hug and get the girl in the end. If the character was written poorly and/or the actor did a bad job in portraying the character, then this movie certainly would've suffered big time, and it wouldn't be as great as it was. That Labine and the writing came together to make Dale a fun character, pretty much secured this film's placement among the greats in modern horror and horror-comedy.


Tucker, despite being the first name on the movie's title, isn't so much the lead, but rather the direct support to the lead. Though he leads Dale in this vacation home idea, fishing, giving ideas and whatnot, it becomes clear rather quickly that Dale is the center of attention here. While this is not like Steve the Pirate, it does show Alan Tudyk to be a great comedy actor, and just actor in general. Moreso on this viewing than my first one, I do want to keep an eye out for other movies he did. Maybe even watch Firefly and the sequel movie Serenity, I don't know. He's funny, definitely more of a hillbilly than Dale, and basically was the guy who was at the wrong place, at the wrong time. While both he and Dale suffered, Tucker suffered a lot more, he has two fingers to prove that, as well as a face that got stung by bees. He made it out alive though, that's more than be said for other characters.


Allison, fuck, she was hot. Yeah, typical American blonde, skinny, long hair, picture perfect face. It all makes for a classic slasher movie Final Girl, with her personality not being unlikable, separating her from most supporting girls, dead victims basically, in horror movies. She's not an extraordinary character in a long line of Final Girls, but she is very serviceable, and in my opinion, likable enough to where there's not really any room for criticism. Solid, that's the one word for her. Hot, okay, that's two words. You get the idea. So, good job by Katrina Bowden, I wish she showed her boobs though...


Chad. Seeing as how my last movie was Die Hard, I'm open to the douchebag character type. It's hard to praise the actor, because I just see the character first, and how unlikable the person is. However, in the grand scheme of things, acting like that is a sign of talent. Being so good at being so bad, that is talent, and Jesse Moss exhibited that. I think the outfit helped, that annoying popped collar. I thought everyone had that popped collar, but no. Collars all around though. Chad, Chuck, Dale was wearing a flannel shirt, Jason has a button shirt from top to bottom, though his collar wasn't popped up. The guy who jumped in the wood chipper had a green t-shirt, but his douche status was affirmed by a necklace, sleeves short enough to show off his muscles, and somewhat spiky hair. The stoner had a buttoned up collared shirt as well, though it wasn't popped up, and it looked like a gas station attendant shirt. The other dude, hooded sweater, underneath was a white t-shirt, but he wore a hat, maybe trying to be all gangster? I don't think so, but I'll call him a douche by association. Back to Chad, I think why he worked so well was because he did turn out to be the villain of the movie, the guy you hated and wanted something bad to happen to him. The unique thing about the movie was that there was no slasher that you want to do the deed, and how the movie makes up for that, is rather smart, though to discuss that further goes into spoiler territory, which I already did, what his fate ended up being. I just thought of the tool from the 2009 Friday the 13th movie, and how he was a very memorable butthole, which is a sign of talent, but I think Chad edges him out due to his elevated status within the story of the movie. The point is, slasher movies can have very memorable unlikable characters, and, ironically, one can like them for it. That does take a long time though, I hated the kids from that Friday the 13th movie, I hate most of the kids from that whole franchise, but that one in particular at least stands out for being good at the job, he also had some funny lines. Anyways, Chad, yeah, he got was coming for him, thank goodness. Well, to an extent. Great stuff by the actor though, and the writing of course, he's the bastard child of Ellis and Thornburg from Die Hard. That makes no sense, but Die Hard's still on the mind, so fuck it.


There's really nothing else to the other characters, I don't need to give them dedicated sections. Naomi the black girl, how she came to the Stockholm Syndrome conclusion is based on her taking sociology class. College stuff, but that's still a load of crap. It's surprising in hindsight how low the nudity count was, only one pair of boobies, in a far away shot. Not even a sex scene. This further paints this movie as being unique, as it didn't fully follow the slasher movie rules. I don't think there was much drinking, if any from the kids. There was a lot of drinking from the hillbillies, the kids were smoking, pot I think, but that's it. The kids' greatest sin wasn't sex, drugs, or alcohol, it was being judgmental, and to their detriment. The biggest strength to this movie is how it twists the common slasher movie tropes and works it into their favor, basically saying that signs are really made up by the people and how they are interpreted. To be fair, most of the time, they are on the money, other times, they are dead wrong, as this movie proves. More simpler lessons are still shared here, the biggest being “Don't judge a book by its cover.” Also, for me, college kids suck.


There really is nothing I could nitpick in regards to this movie. It's just right, that's a big compliment in my estimation. It offers up a great slice of horror, but coming from a different source. It does pull from the well, but the final concoction is something pretty unique. Despite it being 8 years old, it's still pretty modern, and rather fresh for me. A very high replay value, and with it being centered on Memorial Day, I believe I found something to watch every Memorial Day, as I don't think there's any movie associated with it. The greatest strength is its unique concept of killers being labeled by characters, rather than being that of nature, as written in by the mighty pen, or keyboard. The execution is done through the comedic medium as well, and it's done ever so greatly. It's a very funny movie, as well as being soaked in blood, and coming out at the right time. Far removed from 80s horror, and coming out after the 90s changed the slasher game, arguably for the worst (ahem, Scream). Before I really embraced horror movies, I embraced horror-comedies. The Scary Movie franchise served as my compromise in accepting horror movies, and a long time after came Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland, before I crossed into true horror, first with Evil Dead, and then into slasher movies of the 80s and the classics from before, during, and after. Tucker and Dale came after getting through a couple classics, and re-affirming my love of horror-comedies. I'd say it beats out all the Scary Movie films, and is around the level of Zombieland, just beneath Shaun of the Dead and Gremlins. That's a pretty high enough level. I think it's a bit better since my second viewing, as I got to think of how everything came together so well, and appreciating the performances from the main characters a bit more, with a bonus being the Power Rangers tie-in with two of the actors involved. At around 88 minutes, it's a very quick viewing, one that keeps moving at a good pace to where you simply can't be bored of it. As much as it is funny, the kills and horror elements are very strong, thankfully being seeped in practical effects and makeup rather than CG. A modern horror and comedy classic in my opinion.


9/10


PS: As a quick aside, clarifying my reference to Scream. I believe that movie, despite being really good, was also really bad for slasher movies. Telling all the secrets and essentially making it to where slasher films could no longer be taken seriously, nor could they really measure up to a high standard. It's a case of breaking the fourth wall too much and being too meta, which I believe Scream is. I enjoy the movie because it still offered a decently captivating story with memorable characters, as well as a newfound joy in seeing Rose McGowan getting murdered, but it did damage an important subgenre in horror movies. At the very least, comical slashers have an easier time, and Tucker and Dale fulfilled the duty of being a comical slasher film.


My internet was down for over a week, which was total Hell. I was able to find some productive things to do on the computer. Three big ones: sorting through my hard drives, deleting some porn and movies I know I'll never watch again, as well as making folders and putting files in their designated locations. I caught up on making GIFs for the anime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which I started back in November of last year. Procrastination and priorities took over. Lastly, pertaining to this thread, watching movies. I did watch a whole season of Power Rangers in 2 days, but not having any season after that downloaded, movies became the ideal avenue to travel during this time. I saw 7 movies. I don't feel like giving full reviews to them all, so I'll be quick. I just got my internet back, don't have time to go all out with all these films. They're in order of viewing, that's to clarify straight away the placement of one movie and its sequel.


No Retreat No Surrender





I did review this movie before, noting how wacky and insane it is. I don't recall commenting on how the score in this movie is pretty random. During dramatic scenes, these musical stings that accompany them don't really fit at all. If the scenes involved someone being killed or raped, any kind of psychological damage, whether physical or not to add on to, the music would definitely fit. Maybe to make it simpler, it's like soap opera music, that accentuate dramatic scenes way too much and put a lot of attention to things that are greatly exaggerated. For example, when Jason's dad yells at him and tells him to go to his room, he angrily does, and the music that goes with that sounds like a soap opera scene where a woman discovers her man was cheating on her. In a movie, such a scene would be peppered with a more somber score, not this one. I laughed at the music choices so much, and it's something I don't think most fans of this movie ever comment on. I think I'm the only one. Other commenting points have been done a lot, the random storytelling, which was a result of the script being written as they went on with filming. The characters are all very exaggerated, Jason the lead gets his ass kicked so many times that his victory at the end comes off as really out-of-character, despite the half hour or so of training montages and training sessions with the ghost of Bruce Lee, played by a man who doesn't look like Bruce Lee at all. It's the same guy who played him in Game of Death in the footage shot after Bruce Lee's passing.


RJ is hands down the most over-the-top black man in film history. His first scene, all you have to do is throw a basketball to the street and the guy rolls up on his bike, picks it up, and dribbles while playing 80s hip hop on his little ghetto blaster. He covers all kinds of black stereotypes. The basketball, the Michael Jackson worshiping, the curly hair that was typical to black men during that time period, and the color preference of purple. I feel like that is something non-blacks think black people love, the color purple. Furthermore, it really brought to mind grape soda, a major black stereotype. He's pretty much a stereotype up to a very high point. The tip of the iceberg would've been him eating fried chicken and/or watermelon. I'm surprised now that didn't happen. Also stereotyped to death was Scott, the fat bastard who looked like an all-grown up version of Eric Cartman. His first scene shows him eating a bunch of junk food, including having a half of a cake on his arm, the ice cream ones you get from a supermarket. He's later seen destroying a large burger, and like a stereotypical fat man, does all this in public, gets really messy with various food stains, and in a more dated fashion, he's a total bully. Nowadays he'd be the bullied one.


The one legitimately good thing about this film is the fighting. Jason was played by Kurt McKinney, who was a talented martial artist. Frank, a black man that wasn't overly stereotyped, was played by Pete Cunningham, who has an incredible kickboxing record up there in Canada. The hairy white man who played Ian Reilly was also a notable martial artist. I'll also give the Devil his due, Jason's dad was not too bad, for the one scene where he was fighting before he spent the rest of the film as a total bitch. Other unnamed characters were pretty good as well. Of course, the crown jewel was Jean-Claude Van Damme. Here he was, dancing circles around the people he fought, though likely that's down to the choreography. However, looking at his style compared to others, he was totally the alpha male of the group. Don't get me wrong, I've grown to appreciate the martial arts talents of the people involved, but JCVD, come on man! First time viewing, I was not happy at how he got defeated in the end, but now I've turned around on that big time. The comedy aspect of the movie, unintentional with these kind of films, was always appreciated, it just took a while to embrace the fighting when it wasn't done by JCVD.


Anyways, I'm typing more than I expected here, this is a movie I can spend hours talking about, it's so damn entertaining. It's part of my Fave Five of bad movies, so the rating I give it notes that distinction. I've now committed to watching it once a year at least, having seen it 3 or 4 times so far. It became a coincidence that this wasn't my only foray into Corey Yuen (director of this movie) during this particular internet drought. More on that coming up. Like The Room, I highly recommend watching this movie for a gut-bustingly funny time. One last thing, pay attention to the girl with the skimpiest bikini during the pool scene, you can't unsee her boobs. I'll end this part of the review on a picture of her.





11/10


Undefeatable





This started a little kick around Cynthia Rothrock. I've seen a couple of her movies in 2015, and after reminding myself of this particular one, I wanted to watch a couple of her films again. The ones I still had in my computer at least, there were some I shamefully deleted that I wanted to watch. One being Honor & Glory, which is related to this film because both were directed by the infamous Z-movie director, Godfrey Ho, who goes by the name of Godfrey Hall in this film. This man is notorious for making the cheapest movies in the world. Most of his career saw him taking footage shot for a particular movie, and splicing in footage from lost and/or incomplete films, even films that were completed and had the full release run and stuff, and basically making a movie out of all this. He is a cross between Victor Frankenstein and Mr. Krabs, a cheap bastard who created things using various parts, to monstrous results. With Undefeatable and Honor & Glory, the man tried to make movies outside of Hong Kong and in the United States. On the plus side, you get a full movie, all the footage being original. On the downside, you still get a Godfrey Ho movie, the cheapness is still there. When it comes to his films, he's very hit and miss. You either get a really boring mess, or a really hilarious mess. I find that these two American movies he made are the biggest hilarious messes in his career.


The fighting for the most part was great, as you had some legit martial artists in there. Two I know by name, Don Niam and the amazing Cynthia Rothrock. The latter, I recently learned she's from Pennsylvania, and as a resident of the state myself, that makes me very happy. With that, she is the second greatest export from PA, the first still being Will Smith. Anyways, she plays a gang leader whose sister got killed by Don Niam's character, a deranged man that was tipped over the edge by his wife leaving him, so he hunts for women that look like her. He was an abusive man to the woman, in their first scene together, he rapes her! Yeah, this movie is very over-the-top, the acting from him and pretty much everyone else but Rothrock, is so exaggerated that it's nuts. Rothrock though gets put into ridiculous filming conditions, typical of low budget films. In an interview, she said that in the scene where she has to identify the dead body of her sister, the actress for that had to leave set for her day job. With nobody to look at, Godfrey Ho took action by having Rothrock look at his hand as he made ridiculous hand gestures. It's the most emotional scene of the movie, the acting had to be great in order to nail the drama, but poor Rothrock gets something so funny that the scene is just ruined. There's also an instance where she had some dialogue with another person, who couldn't remember his lines, so a piece of paper containing them were taped to Rothrock's forehead. It turns out that most of the people in this movie weren't even actors, they were strays picked up by Mr. Ho. There's some nudity, which is always nice, though the women are in great distress, so it's a mixed bag.


The viral sensation spawned from this movie was the final fight scene, which unfortunately didn't have enough Rothrock. Her character had an injured arm, so she couldn't do much. It just exposes the wacky nature of the fighting as Don Niam goes up against this cop who conveniently knows martial arts. This guy also played the villain in Honor & Glory. What you get is a lot of screaming, lots of crazy facial expressions, some violent bits that sees Niam's character lose both his eyes, and topping it all off are two of the worst puns ever said in movie history, with Rothrock unfortunately having to deliver one. Most of the fight scenes before this were very good, but then again those same scenes had Rothrock all day. I feel like Godfrey Ho took control of this particular fight scene and that's why it turned out to be the fascinating beast that it is.


The laughs from this movie are caused by typical stuff from the well of so bad it's good films. You have bad acting, low production value, ridiculous action scenes, insane dialogue, bad dubbing, flubbed lines, everything most people would pick up on from films like The Room or Troll 2, this film has that in spades. I think what really makes this a more special beast is the martial arts, it ventures into the No Retreat No Surrender territory, which is occupied also by Raw Force and Miami Connection. What separates this film is Cynthia Rothrock, and feeling sorry for the shit she had to go through. She's not particularly proud of this movie, but takes it for what it is. Compare it to her Hong Kong films in the 80s, it's night and day. Still, watching this film reminded me of her great presence (and body) on the screen, as well as easily gravitating towards her. There's really not a lot of badass women in films, so when one comes on the screen that I feel is legitimately a hard lady, I get into them big time. Most of the time it comes from martial arts films and generally films made outside of the United States. This country either doesn't try in making badass women characters, or you get really ham-fisted ones. There are exceptions, like Ellen Ripley, but they are few and far between. You're better off watching B-movies as there's a deeper pool of badass women there than the Hollywood stuff. Cynthia Rothrock pretty much was a B-movie queen, especially in the 90s, coming back from a strong run in Hong Kong, given movies that all have quirky and ridiculous things about them, not really giving her full justice, but it beats having her being wasted in an “A-movie.” Undefeatable, for all its faults, at least has many examples of Cynthia Rothrock being a badass. Combined with the absolutely crazy nature of this movie, it's something I highly recommend, especially coming off of No Retreat No Surrender. I have a feeling a script wasn't fully complete during filming of this movie, it just goes in some really random directions.


There's definitely a Godfrey Ho smell to it, but the meal prepared is something different, and really, better than the shit he did in Hong Kong, seriously. Watch Ninja Terminator, or any fucking ninja movie he made, they are pure garbage. Some being funny, but this film is funny all the way through, and it's not boring or annoying. Other Ho films are either annoying, boring, or both, this is none of them, while still having the entertaining garbage that Ho can put on display sometimes. Honor & Glory, I don't remember much of, which speaks of how memorable Undefeatable is, and how it's the better of the two. I hadn't watched either in 3 years, and yet this film still was easy to remember, to an extent. Honor & Glory though, needing to re-watch it, is still a fun time, and it's most notable for having a young Robin Shou, someone who I feel is a very underrated martial arts film actor. Unfortunately I can't point to many movies where his fighting skills are on full display. I'd have to go to Hong Kong for that, and the late 80s classic, Death Cage, that's where he really lets it rip, and is not filtered through a Hollywood system, like he was in the Mortal Kombat movies and Beverly Hills Ninja (they are entertaining in various degrees though). He's a supporting character in Honor & Glory, so there's a limit there. In Death Cage, he's the lead, kicking ass, killing people, and it's also pretty hilarious at times. Talking about it, thinking about it as well over the last week, makes me want to watch it now, let me hold myself back.


Speaking of Robin Shou, once again, I found out shortly after watching this the first time that he was in Undefeatable. I had to research this again for confirmation because this was years ago and I'm prone to remembering things incorrectly. I was right, it was hard to find confirmation because the source that pops up first is Youtube. On it, there's a Hong Kong version of Undefeatable that cuts down Don Niam's presence and has a subplot involving Robin Shou's character, something about his father, a retired police officer. Its title is “Bloody Mary Killer,” the tone of the dialogue and soundtrack are supposedly completely different from the American version. Given that this implies Godfrey Ho's trademark tactic of splicing different sources of film footage together being used, it's something I'd like to give a try. I think my cautiousness in remembering this was that Honor & Glory also had an extended edition with extra footage from a different source spliced in, and that was easier to find confirmation on. So it wasn't just 1 of them, both had these. I'd have to watch those, but also watch the American version of Honor & Glory to refresh my memory on that one. All this means is watching lots of Robin Shou and Cynthia Rothrock, so I welcome it.


This is a high quality film that is truly so bad, it's good, and since I mentioned the viral video this spawned, I may as well share it to end this part of the review. Behold, Godfrey Ho at his finest.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxkr4wS7XqY


9/10 – So bad they're good movies are kind of rated differently. I need to come up with official names, let's call the 9s as A-Tier, the 10s as AA-Tiers and then the 11s, which are my Fave Five, the S-Tier of bad movies.


Shanghai Express





Of all the movies I've seen during my internet drought, this one is a first time viewing. This continued my Cynthia Rothrock kick, as this was one of her first Hong Kong movies, I believe this was her second film in that run, the first being the incredible Yes, Madam, which unfortunately I deleted. I really wanted to watch that film again, but there's always the future. Anyways, this sees director Sammo Hung making an amazing hodgepodge of Western, martial arts, and slapstick/physical comedy. He, along with Jackie Chan, are masters of blending comedy and action into a perfect mix. Another special thing about this movie for me is that I watched it twice! That's right, I loved it so much, I watched it a second time. First on July 27, and then two days later on the 29th, with the second viewing having audio commentary. My spelling is probably wrong, the guy who did the commentary was Bey Logan out of Dragon Dynasty, who put this film out on DVD. The commentary is pretty dated, I don't know when it was made, but if I had to guess, mid-2000s. There's one comment where he mentioned Ultraviolet as a recent film, and that is over a decade old. I'll discuss the commentary later.


I'll establish things I picked up on the first viewing, and things I gathered from the second viewing with commentary. The audio from the movie was dubbed in Chinese with English subtitles, which are not really that great. Some grammar errors, words that should be plural being spelled out as singular, wrong pronouns used. I assume it's from the DVD as this is a rip from it. For the most part though, I got what was said. I try to go for subtitles first, and English dubbing later. This file has an English dub track, so it just gives me a good excuse to watch it for a third time.


The story involves Sammo Hung's character, Cheng, who escaped from captivity of Russians and then a bounty hunter named Laifu, played by Kenny B (spelling, I'm going by the audio commentary, by ear). He makes it back to his hometown of Hanshui, and intends to repent for his criminal past by doing some shenanigans that would lead to a bunch of wealthy people aboard a train to stay at this little Western style town, gamble, buy up a hotel room, basically pour money into a struggling economy. It's made worse when the security chief of Hanshui, along with some people that were hired to protect and serve the city, end up robbing the lone bank of everyone's savings, making everyone dirt poor. During this time, Yuen Biao's character takes charge and becomes the security chief. He, above everyone else, has beef with Cheng and doesn't really trust him. Meanwhile there are some well-dressed thugs that plan to steal a map that's in the possession of three Japanese people, this being the MacGuffin of the film, having a lot of worth to whoever owns it. Subtitles making it hard to fully grasp it, I got map of “Terracosta” Soldiers, something along those lines. This had to be during the Japanese occupation in China, Shanghai, my history knowledge being exposed here. I had a tough time dating this film, as the Hanshui location, which was in the Hong Kong badlands, had working sets built on this barren land. Everything you see in that location was built for the movie, which is just amazing, especially how some of it got set on fire, allowing for some incredible stunts, Yuen Biao doing one where he jumped off what had to be a 20 foot building, all the way to a designated, softened spot. Mats or not, he fucking jumped off a building! It's at the same level of awesomeness as Jackie Chan's famous clocktower stunt from Project A. I'm getting sidetracked, my earlier point was about the period this film was set in. I thought it was set in the 1860s, at least, since that's where Westerns typically are set in, generally the late 1800s. However, the train being more advanced, the clothing from a lot of wealthy people, and the fact there are Japanese people in China, it makes me think 1930s. The audio commentary didn't really give an exact time period, so my best guess is the 1930s.


The overwhelming feeling I had for this movie is that Hong Kong action films are fucking awesome. They're really my bread and butter, and following the two previous martial arts films, I became more committed in watching films in this style during this internet drought. It had been a long time since I really immersed myself in Hong Kong action movies. The one exception was last year, when I watched A Better Tomorrow. However, that's just one movie, I specifically mean a bevy of these films in succession. Growing up on Jackie Chan movies, and being an adult who is gradually learning about the other icons of Hong Kong cinema, it simply expands my overall desire to watch Hong Kong action movies. It's not just Jackie Chan, I've come to my realization. He is without a doubt, a movie hero of mine, but later in life, it's become more of appreciating his contemporaries and colleagues, as well as the man himself of course. Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao being major icons that I've grown to appreciate more now, the former of which not only acting in some martial arts classics, but directing them as well. Yuen Biao, the baby of the group (relatively speaking), seems like the one that just goes for it. This is hard to describe, they all have their own styles, and Yuen Biao definitely has his. They all attended the Peking Opera School together, which produced a generation of amazing main stars, stuntmen, and supporting characters, a lot of them gracing this film. Yuen Biao, trying to describe his style, I think it would be similar to a loose cannon, a wild bullet just going from point A to whatever and always hitting the mark. Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung were more comedy oriented, the former getting into insane stunts, the latter getting into insane situations. They interchange though, Chan in insane situations, Hung doing some crazy stunts. I'd need a lot of time to think about this, and incidentally, that was afforded in a later viewing, which I'll get to. Even so, I still need more time, so, I'll just move on. Trust me, they are three unique beings that coexisted together in various movies, some of which had all three of them. To put it simply, they're gods of martial arts movies in general, action films as a whole, I dare say.


Two of them being in this movie, you're just guaranteed for a good time. This movie is so much fun, and it has a Die Hard effect (though that came years later), where it's filled to the brim of supporting characters that are awesome. Die Hard made that a unique aspect in Hollywood action movies, but it was definitely more of a theme in Hong Kong martial arts movies, made by the wonderful Golden Harvest. That's something I should've mentioned earlier, whenever that classic Golden Harvest title card comes on, to me, it's the sign of a great Kung Fu film, they are a seal of quality. Or at least were one, not sure what they're up to these days. You have a bunch of cameos, most of them I didn't realize featured big names in Hong Kong films, one I needed confirmation on, and I got it in the commentary. Bolo Yueng! That's right, a man who co-starred in two of the best martial arts films of all time, Enter the Dragon and Bloodsport. He's only in one scene, as a chicken farmer of sorts, being scolded by his skinny, old looking wife. I'll go into more detail of specific roles later.


The movie's greatest strength is the pacing. At 1 hour and 41 minutes, you get a master class in comedy and action, some being the same thing, going into the brilliance of Sammo Hung (Jackie Chan doing this himself as well). There are a lot of physical comedy gags that were inspired by silent films, various characters falling in hilarious and wacky ways. There was one where the former security chief is on the shoulders of an associate and makes him run after the train, and they both fall on their faces. There's one where the bank robbers hook a railroad wooden cart on the back of the train, and when the rope is fully pulled by the truck, it sends the cart forward with intensity, while the guys just fall out of the cart, not expecting that. There's a part where Yuen Biao's character chases a motorcycle-and-side-seat driving Cheng with his horse, and he gets launched out of his saddle by a catapulting tree branch. Then they switch, Cheng on the horse, Yuen Biao trying to work the motorcycle, but failing and flying back from it! The gags and action just keep coming and coming, you never feel bored. There are some somber moments, mainly ones where Sammo Hung is either reminiscing of his childhood or talking to a woman he struggles to commit to. This woman, “Big Sister,” has, I guess, younger sisters that are with Cheng on this scheme. The leader of that group seems the more decent one, while the others are silly and a bit mischievous, I don't want to say they're whores though. One of the ladies was Rosamund Kwan, who I didn't pick up until the commentary made it clear. A lovely actress who appeared in a slew of Hong Kong films from the 80s and 90s, one that was named, Twin Warriors with Jet Li, it's been ages since I saw that.

Oh man, all this time, I haven't mentioned the grunts, the foot soldiers of these villains. They don't ride in the train, they ride in horses, they were meant to intercept the train at one point, but go to Hanshui instead. What happened was Cheng blows up part of the railroad, forcing the people on board to leave and follow him into Hanshui, his scheme working. These horseback riding thugs are lead by legendary villain in Hong Kong action movies, Dick Wei. Again, commentary pointed this out, but he was the pirate king in Project A! I knew he looked familiar, he wasn't sporting facial hair though. Anyways, Cynthia Rothrock is part of that group, along with another legendary star in martial arts movies, Richard Norton. They're billed as Americans, even though Norton is Australian, and are just randomly part of this organization filled with Hong Kong people. Dick Wei though is Taiwanese I think. The interesting thing about their dialogue, few and far between, is that in the subtitled version, it's their voices, speaking English. In the English dub, they are looped over by random people, which is a shame. Cynthia Rothrock wasn't in a movie where her natural voice could be heard until the later part of the decade, or so I thought. It turned out that technically, this is her first movie where you could hear her voice, even though she only says 2 words, “Yes, yes.” The fighting sounds, her kiyahs, that's definitely her as well. In the 90s when she came back to the States, that's when all her movies featured her voice.


So I described all the parties involved, they eventually converge in Hanshui, the lavish building was restored from a dusty and abandoned location by Cheng and crew. That set is incredible, it was a working exterior and interior set, there's one scene where one of Yuen Biao's men jumps off the building gracefully. He jumps off the top roof, lands on the balcony, jumps off that, all the way to the dirt. These people are crazy, and the camera work, my God, it's so lost in today's action movies, where the camera just stays still and catches everything, it moves steadily when needed as well. Those building jumps were wide shots and one take, so you saw everything. Other stunts were pieced together by brilliant editing, making for very smooth scenes. Simply put, the editors and cinematographers in these movies were top notch, the ones that worked on this film included.


There's a big finale where it features great fight scenes. Yuen Biao and Dick Wei, Cynthia Rothrock and Sammo Hung, two security team members against a hard-to-kill guy, the ladies even get into some action, Richard Norton goes up against one of the Japanese guys, the lone Japanese lady slicing through a bunch of people, and eventually poor Norton's genitals, ah man, it's beautiful. Admittedly, it does end on a less-than-stellar fight scene where Biao and Hung go up against the hardest Japanese person of the trio, but the commentary reveals that it was cut for time. Ah well, the movie's final shot was funny, Big Sister holding onto Cheng's arm, the other ladies having a piece of Yuen Biao, lucky bastard. The bounty hunter Laifu also enters the fray towards the climax, posing as an Interpol agent, and coming out of the story with something very valuable.


I'll go into the audio commentary, it basically fills in a lot of blanks I didn't know were present. Not left by the movie, left by myself. Not having internet, I couldn't look up the movie, trivia on IMDB. The commentary did that job, as well as really explaining how big this movie was. Despite being so into Hong Kong Kung Fu movies, the commentary showed that I'm not as hardcore as I believe myself to be. This guy, Bey Logan was so well-educated, and he describes his background in detail, so he definitely knows his shit. He explained that the movie was filled to the brim with cameos that I didn't realize were that, and who the luminaries are that graced the film. I picked up on familiar faces, people that were in Golden Harvest films with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, but I couldn't place names on them, and I still can't. The guy gave a shit ton of information that I wish had subtitles alone, just so I could absorb it a bit better. He was basically a talking Wikipedia and IMDB on Hong Kong action films. He really put into perspective how much of a legend Sammo Hung is, essentially being an industry of himself in Hong Kong. In general, how a lot of Hong Kong luminaries had so many talents and did a lot of different things. He mentioned various actresses that were also TV personalities and game show hosts, male actors included as well. The sister group filled with Miss Hong Kong winners, beauty pageant ladies. Bolo Yueng, I got the confirmation on. The guy who played Han in Enter the Dragon was in this, as Master Sek. His rival was someone I thought was Jackie Chan's dad in Legend of Drunken Master, he really looks like him, but it could be down to the identical clothing. The commentary explained about the “Wong Fei-Hung films” which apparently are movies that star this legendary character, maybe mythical? This character has been played by a bunch of legendary Hong Kong actors, including Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Think of it like James Bond, not really a franchise of sequels, but series where there are many movies of this character, played by different people in different periods of time. This particular actor was a replacement, the guy who was originally supposed to play Wong Fei-Hung backed out because he didn't feel his character would get due respect. This other actor was the current Wong Fei-Hung of that era, so that must've been seen as a notable loss. Although this guy did a great job. I have to apologize, I couldn't pick up on actor names completely, and I don't want to try and guess and spell names horrifically wrong.


One name I sure won't get wrong, Corey Yuen. Yeah, the same man who directed No Retreat No Surrender, was actually a prolific character actor, doing more movies there than as a director. I didn't know that, and he had roles in Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan movies, among others, and he's here as one of the well-dressed thugs! Corey Yuen is probably most famous for directing The Transporter with Jason Statham, so, this guy has had a rather dubious career. Notable actors also include a man who I thought was the main villain of Dragons Forever, but...it's complicated. Basically, the guy I was thinking turned out to be two different men. It's similar to me thinking Dan Castlenetta (Homer Simpson) was this guy in all sorts of 80s and 90s films such as No Holds Barred, The Running Man, Ghostbusters 2, when in fact, it was Kurt Fuller. Castlenetta was only in The Pursuit of Happyness, they just looked so similar. So, same sentiments with these two. One of them played the cheating husband of a big fat woman in this movie, he was also in a bunch of Chan and Sammo Hung films, notably Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, and I believe Wheels on Meals (one of the mental institution patients). The other, Yuen Wa (again, spelling could be wrong), he was the guy in Dragons Forever, I thought it was the other man. Another frequent co-star in Chan and Sammo Hung movies, he was also the landlady's husband in Kung Fu Hustle! I took a peak of that movie just now to see, and yes! Man, they just look similar. His look in Kung Fu Hustle resembled the cheating husband actor in Shanghai Express, so, forgive the mistake. Yuen Wa also attended the Peking Opera School with Chan, Hung, and Biao.


The size of this movie was explained, the huge pool of acting talent brought in, was actually a staple of Chinese New Year movies. I wasn't aware of that, so during that time period, I guess every year (this was released in January of 1986), you'd have comedic and/or action movies that had a shit ton of cameos. I would equate this as the Hong Kong equivalent of the Summer blockbuster season in the United States, you'd have huge action and adventure movies that are made to rope in a lot of money. This movie did that, being the second highest grossing film in Hong Kong in 1986. Number 1...A Better Tomorrow. The commentator also mentioned John Woo, and something I didn't know was that before he became the master of gunfighting action movies in the late 80s and 90s, he was most known for comedies! Wow, I know one of them from the 70s had Jackie Chan, Hand of Death, which I have not seen. Taking a glance at IMDB, it's not a well-received movie, I'd have to see for myself.


The commentator addressed a rumor that the character of Laifu, played by Kenny B, was originally for Jackie Chan, but scheduling conflicts prevented that from happening (he was making Armor of God at the time). That would've been very very interesting, but given Laifu's presence in the movie, I don't think it would've had a huge impact. Laifu doesn't get into martial arts fight scenes, he's just a shotgun holding bounty hunter with some ulterior motives, I guess Jackie Chan would've pulled that off, but without the action, stunts, and more good guy persona Chan exuded, I'm not sure if it would've been the perfect fit. Again, it's a rumor. Kenny B did a great job with this character, not knowing about his history, which includes being part of a pop group, with acting coming from that. The commentator mentioned that Laifu had a fight scene that was cut out, but I doubt it was martial arts-filled, Kenny B wasn't a martial arts exponent (I like that word, the commentator kept using it). Apparently, this film had a lot of scenes cut for time, and there are multiple versions of the movie. It's a case of trying to satisfy different Asian markets, some versions had scenes that showed the ladies in unflattering situations (such as implying that they're whores or doing some mischievous and dirty things) cut out. Things that would appeal to the sensibilities of countries like Thailand, which was a shooting location for the train exterior, horse and motorcycle riding scenes, and the railroad stuff. Malaysia, Singapore, those countries were also mentioned. The version I got is basically the official final version. Scenes that were cut for sensibility purpose are in this movie, the only cut scenes are those due to time constraints. Unfortunately, the cut scenes are either insufficient in quality to splice into the final film, or they're just plain lost or destroyed. Judging by the commentary, most of the cuts came at the expense of the train section of the film, certain characters were cut from the movie entirely as a result, one of them being a screenwriter for this movie. Watching the movie at first, I couldn't tell where cuts were made, but the commentator made it clear where these scenes were removed. It became a bit easier to see, in particular the one where the sisters are in a chase and try to squeeze through a window opening. That scene originally had them go through a bathroom before transitioning to that part of the chase scene. Other scenes were rewritten due to time, such as the final confrontation between Biao/Hung and the Japanese guy, who is actually Korean. Yeah, I had a sneaky suspicion that these Japanese people were not Japanese at all, but I was proven wrong, only that lead guy isn't Japanese, the rest are. To be fair, the Korean actor was raised in Japan for a while before immigrating back to his homeland. Going by the dialogue, he says very basic Japanese things, including the classic “Nani?” which means, “What?” The other two spoke longer Japanese, and the woman in particular actually had experience in a particular art of samurai sword play. Knowing that makes her sword stuff in the movie more worth paying attention too, as it's very well done.


In the end, the spirit of the movie, its integrity, was not really compromised at all with these cuts. The commentator didn't say how long the film is with those cut scenes added. It makes me wonder. If I could take a guess, 2 hours. I can see why it was cut for time, most Hong Kong action movies in that time didn't cross beyond 1 hour and 45 minutes. Most of them are between 90 and 100 minutes long, to be a bit more exact. I can't remember if I ever saw a Jackie Chan movie that is over an hour and 45 minutes, let alone 2 hours.


The commentator gave some interesting trivia about Richard Norton. Something I need to pay attention to in the future, is Norton saying “Painful?” It's apparently a catchphrase of sorts for the man, and when the commentator said that, I tried to think back to Mr. Nice Guy, whether he said “Painful” there. I have a feeling he did. The commentator's stepfather apparently was Norton's master, and he considers him family, so that's really interesting. Also, Norton apparently pulled a muscle or something during production, so he couldn't do a lot of kicking in his big fight scene. Listening to a Cynthia Rothrock interview shortly after this (podcast I downloaded years ago, clarifying in case questions regarding my internet came up), she said that she had a knee injury before Shanghai Express. So, she and Norton, the foreigners of the cast, bonded over leg injuries, and since then, they've been in almost 10 movies together. I've seen them in the two China O'Brien and Rage & Honor films, so that's 4, there's this, making it 5. There's another where Norton was the bad guy, but for the life of me I cannot remember the name. It was shot in the Philippines I think. Or Thailand, fuck, definitely not America. It might have been Lady Dragon. Norton also appeared in My Lucky Stars, I think that's what the commentator said. That surprised me because that film I remember had Jackie Chan, and Sammo Hung, maybe Yuen Biao. I haven't seen it in ages though, so I must've simply forgot Norton's role in that. It's a shame, because I know Norton and Chan worked on City Hunter and Mr. Nice Guy, I thought that was it. I was wrong. You got all these combinations, but the one I most wanted, never happened, Cynthia Rothrock and Jackie Chan. She was supposed to be a villain in Armor of God but Jackie Chan had that frightening tree stunt that almost killed him during production of that movie. Rothrock was moved out of that picture, get her work and not let her wait for Chan to heal up. That was their only chance to fight, and it didn't happen. Apparently Rothrock was in movies that Jackie Chan produced, but that's the closest one is going to get with these two. However, you never know, both are still making movies.


Something the commentary mentioned was that Corey Yuen studied under someone with “Yuen” in his name, I think it might've been Yuen Woo Ping, but the commentator would've gone on about that legendary figure in action movies. Anyways, someone with “Yuen” in his name, the point is that it's apparently traditional for students to take the name of their master as a stage name. So, definitely Corey Yuen did that. There's just a wealth of knowledge shared during that commentary, that it took over actually watching the movie. The man did comment on everything in the movie, all the scenes, key bits of dialogue, but he also managed to cram a lot of trivia down one's throat. There's not much silence, as in breaks between comments, which usually happen when people are only talking about the scenes, they're talked about in detail, or not, but all the time, quickly. Here, they're talked about quickly, and then the silent time would be filled with trivia. This Bey Logan is obviously an educated man, he's worked on film sets, talked to luminaries of the Hong Kong cinema world, it makes me want to see what other movies Dragon Dynasty handled. I did watch this amazing video on Youtube about Jackie Chan, “How to do Action Comedy” by Every Frame A Painting, and there was a clip of the Project A audio commentary. I heard a British voice doing it, and that might be Bey Logan's, as he is at least part British. If that's him, I'd like to find that version of Project A. I have 3 versions, in 2 files. One having two versions, subbed, and British-dubbed. The other was the dub I heard on Spike TV when they aired Project A, I thought it was exclusive to them, but nope, it was apparently handled by Dimension Films. That version was the first I saw, and it had Jackie Chan dubbing himself, and the character of Fei (Sammo Hung) was called “Fats.” Good times. I just found out that I have that version, I hadn't really looked at it since downloading it back on my birthday in 2016. I have files downloaded all the way back to early 2015, it's ridiculous. I'm such a hoarder.


Sidetracked again, so, yeah, the commentary is awesome, very informative. You can see my review is longer because of it, and being able to note the locations better, name some actors, make more references, all that. I should note that the train interior was the only major section shot on Golden Harvest's backlot, they didn't have a lot of studio space, so this movie lived and breathed on actual locations, hence the empty area in the Hong Kong badlands as the premium spot for Hanshui. Also, needing to film in Thailand, as well as Canada. Yeah, Hong Kong apparently had a working relationship with Canada, I assume because of the British ties. The first section with the snowy mountain was shot in Canada, which makes sense, because I kept wondering if it actually snowed in China. Thailand had apparently become fertile filming ground for Hong Kong filmmakers, which I definitely didn't know before, so the movie has an international reach in terms of production, not just with the cast including two white martial artists. In fact, and I forgot to mention this, there were some white extras. You see them more in the hotel/casino scenes, I spotted one white blonde man at least. Apparently tourists would be invited on set to be extras, so, lucky them. Oh, and to illustrate how much of a multi-talented man Sammo Hung is, he sang the end credits song. I know Jackie Chan sings in some of his movies, such as the end credits theme of Armor of God, but I didn't know Hung did that as well. Good on him. There are instances in his movies where Sammo Hung sang, but I mean an actual full length recorded song, that's news to me.


I really need to wrap this up, this post is getting massive. I could keep going and going with this movie, but I think I typed enough. It's fantastic, one that I'd like to watch once a year, it's that good. Well, I already broke that by watching it twice, but you know, at least once a year, how about that? Next time, I'll give the English dub a try, it may explain certain plot points more, but I got the gist and storytelling of the film anyways. I understood what was going on, and I definitely understood the fighting and stunt work, which were both incredible. This film is like Project A and some other Jackie Chan classics that had the perfect blend of comedy and action, but whereas Project A was its own period piece, this film touches on the more familiar Western movie genre and did a great job of paying tribute to that. It makes the movie quite a unique entity, one that has so many layers of entertainment, and one that had to be a labor of love. The labor paid off, I love this movie.


10/10


No Retreat No Surrender 2





Still on my Cynthia Rothrock kick, I decided to give this movie a second shot. I watched this on July 28, a day before I re-watched Shanghai Express and learned of Corey Yuen being in that movie. So, connections abound, Corey Yuen directed this film, as he did for the first No Retreat No Surrender movie, and the third one, which I still haven't seen.


The first time I watched this, my main bone of contention was that I hated how Mac (Max Thayer) treated Cynthia Rothrock's Terry character. The comments were very sexist, and not even funny, as his delivery wasn't any entertaining, and the comments themselves are pretty lame. Stuff such as her not having an eligible vote, some shit about cooking and cleaning, really archaic stuff. I've become less annoyed at it on a second viewing, and felt that it wasn't as regular as I remembered it being, meaning that he doesn't make those comments every single minute that he and Loren Avedon's Scott Wylde is with her. Another thing I wasn't keen on was the lead's fighting ability. I thought Loren Avedon wasn't a legit martial artist, but according to IMDB, he is a national Karate champion. Going back to the film, I think my judgement was clouded by how annoyed I was at the sexism going on that I didn't give Avedon a fair shake. Knowing that he's also in the third movie, and I'll likely be watching that one day, there's a sense of coming to terms with this man. So here it is, he is definitely a very good martial artist. I didn't give a fair shake to Jason from the first film in this apparent trilogy either, but I've since learned better.


Yes, this is a trilogy, only by name, because this has nothing to do with the first film. The first film is...insane, while this movie is much more grounded, it was shot in Thailand and I guess Cambodia and Vietnam, while the first movie shoved in your face that it took place in Seattle (Kingswood area to be exact). The first film tries to rip off a lot of things and is this weird entity, while this film seems to just rip off Rambo: First Blood Part 2. The running and gunning in the jungle has been done before Rambo did it, but I always just go back to that particular movie since it really pushed that kind of action movie to the mainstream, and movies that followed that style were essentially ripping off that film. It's a mix between that and a martial arts movie as there are fight scenes, but most of it is just Rambo style action.


Being more lenient on the annoying parts of the movie and correcting myself on certain other judgments, I came out liking the movie a bit more than I did previously. I enjoyed the explosions, which are typical 80s over-the-top goodness. Coming out of the Power Rangers seasons during the Disney era, I thought I became desensitized to explosions because those seasons took it to an annoyingly extreme end. With this, the funny thing is that in comparison, the ones here and in other movies, make sense. What really bothers me about the “Kalishplosions” from Power Rangers, as I explained in my Tucker and Dale review, is that they just happen all the time, and for no reason, as well as being recycled ones used many times. Also, I'm pretty sure the explosions are mostly fake, digital editing placing explosions, one over the other to make them look more massive than they are. One reaches sameness with these, especially as I binge watch the series, it's sad when you can pick out certain explosions and be able to see how they are used again and again. This movie at least varies, no explosion looks identical or are edited in post-production. Here, they are real, they are massive, they reach ridiculous levels sometimes. There's one instance where an explosion occurs because Scott fired an arrow that had a grenade attached to it. Who fires a grenade with a crossbow? Scott Wylde does.


I don't think I ever had a negative opinion about the big boss of the film, Yuri, played by Matthias Hues. Even though he plays a USSR general, he didn't hide his German or Austrian accent, it's really funny. This was his very first movie actually, which is hard to believe because he didn't show any greenness apart from his camouflage attire. Standing at 6'5”, he towered over everyone, so his look really carries him. Consider also that this was a Hong Kong production, shot in different parts of Asia, you have really short natives, as well as a mid-sized white man in Avedon, a 5'3” box of dynamite in Cynthia Rothrock, and the only relatively tall person not named Hues is Max Thayer, who is probably 5'11” at best. There are scenes where Hues talks to Cynthia Rothrock and you can see the size discrepancy, and also note that they fight. The fact that Rothrock holds her own against this giant is really impressive and speaks highly of her fighting ability. To be fair, Matthias Hues got some fighting style to him as well, he doesn't play around.


The basic plot is that Scott Wylde flew to Thailand to be with his fiance, this Vietnamese girl named Sullin. Her father's a rich man who was originally a refugee from Vietnam. There was some operation, some order to kill off people like her father, and so her whole family was executed, except for him, he managed to escape. She gets kidnapped after a date night with Scott that leads them to his motel room (which the building is the dirtiest brothel in Thailand). Before he even met up with Sullin, he went to a gym Mac used to work out in, pay his old buddy a visit. He hadn't been there for a while, instead he meets Terry, Cynthia Rothrock. They have a little exchange of words, and in that, you know that she's not a fan of Mac, I'm not either. Eventually Scott finds Mac, he persuades him to help in getting Sullin. There's a scene where Mac drinks this really thick looking beverage. Two shots, one from a normal sized shot glass, the other from something smaller. It's snake's blood! There's apparently a scene where it shows a snake's head being cut off, and the blood being poured into those glasses. It was cut, and in some versions, the scene wasn't included at all, him drinking it. They apparently did that drinking scene 4 times, each of which did have Max Thayer drinking that shit. Good on him. In my version, it cuts as soon as you see its head get close to a noose. So cut from there to Mac having shots, it indicates him having some snake blood.


They fly out of Bangkok, out of the grasp of the local police (Scott was charged with murdering Sullin's family, obviously a false accusation), and working the helicopter was Terry. She's hesitant at first to work with Mac, the feeling being mutual, but she eventually agrees, being more friendly with Scott, and they laugh sometimes at Mac's expense, which I liked. So you have that, scenes showing Yuri's badassery, which strangely included shooting a prisoner in the leg and then in his ass area. Not so weird, the victim ends up in a crocodile pit, eaten alive. Eventually the two parties meet, with Terry being captured, which bothered me the first time viewing, my woman Cynthia Rothrock being reduced to a damsel in distress role, even though she kicks ass. There's scenes of her kicking ass, she puts up a fight against Yuri before she is reduced to that damsel role. It's more annoying typing it out than it was watching it on this second viewing. Sigh, and also sad to note, Rothrock's dialogue is not really that good. She gets saddled with some really stupid lines such as “Eat shit and die.” This is a case of the writers not knowing how to write for a female.


An interesting bit of trivia I just gathered from the credits. The producer of this film is Roy Horan, I didn't pick up on that. In the end credits, you see he's credited as “American consular.” That's the American guy in the interrogation scene after Scott is arrested. I didn't catch the name, but I recognized his face. He's the same guy that fought Jackie Chan in Drunken Master from 1978, the scene that ended with Jackie Chan doing some hand strike to the guy's genitals. A classic death scene, seriously. Okay, going back to the opening credits, Roy Horan had another role, he was a co-writer! Damn, along with Keith W. Strandberg, who wrote the first movie (I use the term “wrote” loosely) and Maria Elena Cellino, a woman! What the fuck? So how the hell did Cynthia Rothrock get those bad lines? Returning from the first movie also is Ng See Yuen, who was a producer in that film, and executive producer on this one, not sure if he's related to director Corey Yuen. They both came up with the story of the first movie, and I even use that phrase loosely, what story?


Anyways, some surprising trivia there. So, a big rescue mission is conducted, it featured some interesting strategy where machine guns would be fired with just some string mechanism and no human controlling it, allowing for the human factor, in the form of Mac and Scott, to maneuver around and get an upper hand. It actually reminds me of First Blood, how Rambo was able to use stealth and his intelligence to outclass the local police. So, more Rambo ripping off.


SPOILER: The scene that still makes me sad is the death of Terry. I think it's the only instance of Cynthia Rothrock dying, at least that I've seen so far. She does kind of save one of the guys from being shot, but she gets it instead, a lot of bullets and squibs on her, sad to say.


As I mentioned in my Shanghai Express review, I thought this movie was the first instance of hearing Cynthia Rothrock's natural speaking voice, but it turned out she does say one line in Shanghai Express and isn't dubbed in the subtitled version. Neither was Richard Norton for that matter, but he only has about 2 lines. Technically that's her first English speaking role, but I think this still counts because she has lots of lines. Even though they're mostly badly written ones, she tries her best to deliver them, and at least you get a sense of her charisma in this movie.


The final fight scene between Yuri and Scott was really funny, some classic facial expressions by both guys, looking like they're constipated, and the camera gives these wide shots that accentuate what you see on the screen. It ends in a crazy way, basically this behemoth Yuri, pulls the jeep that Scott was in, that Yuri himself is tied to the back end with a rope, in order to get Scott in the pit of crocodiles with him. The jeep does come down, but Scott's not in it, he fires off a shot at the jeep's exposed gas tank, and BOOM! The one drag about that scene is there were no flying body parts. There were previous instances of flying limbs and bodies from a few explosions in this movie, which to me is a nice way to show some realism, even though the explosions after those became so over-the-top. Once they leave Bangkok, that's when the explosions reach insane levels. Speaking of Bangkok, there's that dating scene that features Scott and Sullin having dinner. It's just like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a display of food that the natives love, but the foreign audience and the character, sees and are absolutely repulsed by it. One of the dishes...tiger balls. Yeah, tiger testicles, Charlie Sheen may have tiger blood, but he doesn't have tiger balls in his stomach. There's one part where Scott loves this soup, but then Sullin said it's monkey brains, and he spits it out. That kind of thing happens a lot, something tastes good until you learn what it actually is, that's kind of unrealistic, right? I don't think I've ever been in that situation, so I can't speak from experience. Even so, he was right to spit that out, monkey brains are horrible for humans to eat, as it can lead to a form of Mad Cow Disease, I learned that recently.


Anyways, this movie is pretty action packed, good pacing, not much of a bore. Just for that, it gets a pass from me. The over-the-top aspects, from the explosions to the final fight scene, they add to the movie and making it above average. The things that annoyed me at the first viewing, still annoy me, though not as much. It all comes together to make a solid viewing. However, coming out of the movies I watched before, in hindsight, it was not a good choice to watch this, because it's such a major comedown from some entertaining romps of differing kinds. It's definitely a movie that you shouldn't watch right after No Retreat No Surrender, it's such a comedown even from that, it's shocking. They are only related by name only. An alternative title for this was Karate Tiger 2, though I think the first film had an alternate title of Karate Tiger. There's a subtitle to this film, Raging Thunder. Does it live up to its name? Yeah, to an extent, but again, it's best watched when far removed from classic martial arts movies, or action movies in general for that matter.


8/10 – My original rating, based off the first viewing, was 7.5/10. A minor improvement.


Dragons Forever





There are three famous Hong Kong martial arts movies that featured the talents of its three main stars in full, those actors being Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao. The movies are: Project A, directed by Jackie Chan; Wheels on Meals, directed by Sammo Hung, and this film, also directed by Sammo Hung. With this internet drought bringing forth a desire to watch martial arts films, it was only a matter of time before I watch one with my god, Jackie Chan. Compared to the previous movies in this unofficial trilogy, this is one I've only seen probably twice before, this being my third time. Project A, I saw that loads of time, as I mentioned earlier, it was aired on Spike TV many years ago, I think 2008, and I DVR'd it and watched it a lot at that time, and later with it subtitled. This viewing of Dragons Forever is the first time I watch it subtitled. In hindsight, it's not so much a big deal because the dubbing was pretty alright on these movies, this was all done during the British occupation of Hong Kong, and I doubt these movies would've been dubbed if that period didn't happen, as these movies weren't hitting the United States, making me think there was a demand in the UK for these. Whatever the case, this movie is actually the most violent of the three classic trio films, despite this still having a very healthy balance between action and comedy. I think by 80s standards, it would be rated R, but now, probably PG-13, while the previous two films are a hard PG in my opinion. There's a fair deal of blood and death, in fact the first scene, if someone saw that and not the rest of the movie, one could make an argument for an R rating, as it features the big boss, who I now know was played by Yuen Wa, killing some other boss character. Well, he didn't kill him, his henchmen did, they made a point about that.


This big boss stands out in a rather comical way. I mean, he is evil, serious stuff going on with him, but he's always smoking a big cigar, and has a huge pair of glasses, it kind of gives the impression that he's a comedy villain, which he isn't entirely. He wants to take control of a fishing pond that this MILF, Miss Yeh owns. Owning it would allow him to pollute the waters in order to make his narcotics, which that particular bit isn't publicly shared, the polluting was something gathered by Miss Yeh, and she takes issue with that of course. She refused to sell, and planned on making an injunction against the big boss, Hua. This would stop his operation and he of course doesn't like that. Jackie Chan plays...Jackie, which is surprising because in the dubs, he's typically called Jackie, but this is the subtitled version, the original Cantonese audio. You can see the lip movements if you can't buy the audio, people are saying “Jackie,” it's very interesting. So Jackie is a lawyer, a womanizing one, and they show that in great detail in one scene, him asking out a bunch of girls in succession, despite having a lovely looking assistant, who he never makes any move on. He takes a particular liking to an expert witness on this Hua vs. Yeh case, Miss Wen, who works for some health organization and would testify about how Hua's operations are truly affecting the fish pond's water. It turns out that Wen and Yeh are cousins.


Sammo Hung plays Fei, which was his name in Project A, not the Dimension Films dub where he's called “Fats.” Fei is first seen trying to sell weapons to two thugs but ends up kicking their asses. He and Jackie are friends and he enlists him to move in as Yeh's new neighbor and basically seduce her into dropping the case and selling the land, in exchange for a piece of the commission Jackie would get if he wins the case. He's down for it, but along the way, he gets some legitimate feelings for Yeh, which in this viewing, I became jealous of. I'm not sure if in my previous viewings I felt any kind of attraction to Yeh, but now I totally do. It's why I called her a MILF. Though not explicitly stated, it's easy to see that originally Jackie intended to seduce Wen to downplay her findings, probably even falsify them to favor Hua and make the injunction unable to be filed. You also have Yuen Biao, as Tung Te-piao, definitely a loose cannon character here, bringing my earlier attempt at describing his style to a more favorable light. He's just a friend on call basically, willing to help out Jackie just because they are buddies. He shares some rather philosophical and strange thoughts, like how fish are the symbol of capitalism, birds are the symbol of communism, and how they can't get along. It's a bit strange, and I'm going by the subtitles. The subtitles are not so great, they appear too slowly, sometimes not at all during certain points in scenes. I still understood everything for the most part, but the translation definitely left a fair bit to be desired. Tung is funny in how he sneaks into various locations, including his own home, for really no logical reason. He said in a later scene that you can never be too cautious, but he's doing all these unnecessary jumps and hiding behind walls when he could've just walked straight for longer than a second before hiding when he's doing stealth stuff. That and his weird personality really makes him a very unique and memorable character in this movie. The others are easy to understand, you get their motivations and character developments, Tung is the wildcard basically, making him a valuable part of this story. Jackie at first needed his help to bug Yeh's house. This leads to Wen and her finding out about him and having beef with him, leading him to spend a night in jail. He's definitely not a ladies man, not a sociable fellow either.


With all the characters described, one's left with the vast amount of action scenes. Jackie Chan's letting it rip in a bunch of scenes, different locations. He's fighting in an outdoor restaurant, on a yacht, outside Yeh's house in a classic 3-way battle between himself, Biao, and Hung, also, the big finale, the chemical plant scene where all three end up fighting. Jackie Chan has his rematch against Benny “The Jet” Urqiduez, who first fought him in Wheels on Meals. In between these action scenes, you get a lot of character stuff involving mainly Jackie and Fei, and their relationships with Wen and Yeh respectively.


Jackie and Wen's stand out for taking a long time to really get off the ground. At one point, every time they had a meal together, it resulted in it being cut short due to some fighting. The first time was when Tung and eventually Fei enter his home, the former through his bedroom window, the latter simply using the key under Jackie's welcome mat. Trying to hide Fei, dealing with Tung calling him on the phone and eventually stopping the two from fighting, ruined that particular dinner, but made for some comedy gold. Fei and Tung had beef because the former caught the latter trying to bug Yeh and Wen's home, interpreting it as attempted burglary, and Fei acted as a heroic neighbor, which started a spark between himself and Yeh, even though in an earlier scene, Fei was eavesdropping with some wacky looking listening device and heard Yeh saying she'd take any man as long as they don't have a pot belly, which puts Fei out of the running. It takes until their rematch in Jackie's bedroom for them to learn that they have a mutual friend in Jackie. The second time they had a meal together, was the yacht fight scene, which sucked because Jackie definitely spent some money to make that thing look perfect, but it was ruined by thugs. These thugs are not Hua's though, they work for Miss Yeh's attorney, unbeknownst to her. Similar to Jackie having some people do certain things for him, this guy tried to get these thugs to kick Jackie's ass. They first tried this during a bar scene that had them originally target Hua, who was there, but turning their attention to Jackie later. Dick Wei was part of that group, it feels good to be able to name him now thanks to the commentary on Shanghai Express.


Things turn around in the Jackie and Wen relationship when they finally have an unimpeded meal together, at a public restaurant, it had to be there. Meanwhile, Fei and Yeh's relationship has a rocky start, with the latter resisting Fei's advances, which in hindsight, are extreme. I forgot how ridiculous they were, and I thought that if this was made today, these scenes would be cut out, Fei would be a victim of the Me Too Movement. The scene that proves this is when he invites Yeh to dinner, but she said no. However, he's confident that she'll show up to a particular restaurant that he goes there and waits for her. She pops up outside the restaurant, hesitant to go, she takes a look and sees Fei there. After a few minutes, having an unplanned chat with some guy who wanted to use the phone, her occupying the phone booth to spy on Fei, she takes a second look at Fei. He's gone, but turns up right in front of her, with a fucking megaphone! He basically makes a public scene, trying to win her over. Seriously, this could only happen in a movie, if this was real life, people would think he was a stalker. She keeps resisting, but she eventually takes his words to heart and their relationship kicks off. The people who see this scene are happy, again, this makes for a nice romantic comedy scene, but in real life, just, no way. With these two relationships kicking off, a montage comes in, showing their relationships getting stronger like Rocky. It becomes clear that the ulterior motives Jackie and Fei had faded away from their minds, they were fully committed to their respective lady. The montage shows some funny and cute bits with both couples, I think Fei and Yeh's edges out in seriousness, as there's a pivotal scene with them at her fish pond. It's there that she explains her attachment to the pond, and even shares a secret with Fei. This comes after Fei proposes to her, along with suggesting that she sells the fish pond and move with him to Australia and they can have a dairy ranch, and it's that her father noted in his will that the fish pond would belong to his son-in-law. During that proposal, Fei does do a little song and dance, showing off even more talents from the amazing Sammo Hung. When Fei learns of this secret, he fears that knowing it would be a huge burden, but she was able to persuade him that it's now his secret too. It's funny that Yeh's dad implied sexism by requesting that a future owner of that pond to be male, as if that's nexessay.It's in this scene where you really can tell that Fei's not about swindling Yeh, because the scene that follow this would've had him party it up, brag about it to Jackie on the phone, whatever, show his ulterior motives being strong. That's not the case.


Things come crashing down though, not coincidentally during a scene where Jackie is about to cook dinner for himself and Wen in the latter's house. The power goes out, a burglar enters, but it's actually Tung. It's so crazy, it's implied that he intended to kill Wen, and that goes back to I guess the scene where it looked like he was burglarizing Yeh and Wen's house, when he was trying to plant that bug. Conveniently, Yeh and Fei make their way to the house, and with all 5 main characters in one scene, Tung just spills the beans of the nefarious plot by both Jackie and Fei. Of course, that was old news to them, but Tung decided to make it new again, resulting in some squashed relationships, and then a great fight scene between the 3 men. The funny thing is after that's all done and the guys are all out of jail (it seems like they all got arrested for their little noise outside), Tung and Fei shake hands. Jackie thinks that's good, but it turns out they're friends with each other and not Jackie, giving appropriate hand gestures to make that known. Not the middle finger by the way.


Fei's overbearing persistence in trying to be in a relationship with Yeh comes back in a scene where he stands in the middle of a road, forcing Yeh, with Wen riding shotgun, to pull over. Eventually what turns Yeh back around to him is when she smashes his head with a wrench, blood coming down from the top of Fei's head. He no-sells it, showing that true love conquers all, they basically kiss and make-up, it's beautiful actually.


Jackie fails in his attempt. It's funny because the camera makes sure to note Jackie's car is a Mitsubishi, which I'm sure was a sponsor for this movie. If you watch a bunch of Jackie Chan movies from his 80s Golden Harvest days, apart from period pieces, you will definitely spot the Mitsubishi logo somewhere, namely in a car. They also seem to make a point that Jackie looks cool in this scene. Though it doesn't include him exiting his Mitsubishi, you just imagine that he is, wearing this Canadian Tuxedo. That's a term I learned from the 80s Picture House podcast, it means an all-denim outfit. A denim jacket and jeans, Jackie is stylin' and profilin', I don't think that really impressed Wen. This was right after the previous scene, showing Wen, Yeh, and Fei exiting the car, going to their place. Out of the former's door was Tung, trying to beg Wen to withdraw her lawsuit against him. No need, she won't sue him, as long as he stays away from her. Easier said than done, as it turned out.


Still not down with Jackie, Fei and Tung agree to infiltrate Hua's chemical plant, where they learn of narcotics being made there, and the taste tester being Benny The Jet, who is wearing eyeliner for some reason, and has his trademark little ponytail, it's a...unique look for the man, but he kicks so much ass, I dare not insult him to his face. Fei gets caught taking pictures of the drug making going on, and he gets a powerful kick to the gut by Benny, that makes everyone collapse around him, over a dozen guys! It's crazy, really them trying to show how much power this guy has. Also, this scene featured some slow motion work that flavored the final act of the film, giving one a taste of what's to come.


A pivotal court scene happens where it's finally Yeh vs. Hua, with Jackie too distracted to think about the case, having a lady in his mind. He uses the court setting and its rules to get the witness on the stand, Wen, to answer if she truly loves him or not. The man who played the judge in this movie was Roy Chiao, who played Tanaka in Bloodsport. Nice to see him, I now know his name thanks to Bloodsport and can now make the connection to this film. He basically supports Jackie's attempts at winning back Wen, and when she truthfully answers “Yes,” at the risk of perjury, Jackie persuades the judge to postpone the case, as he withdrew himself as Hua's lawyer on the grounds of personal connections with witnesses being conduct unbecoming. Essentially, sticking it to Hua, showing his true intentions to Wen. Hua's not happy, it seems to be a total victory, I was a bit bummed out because I remembered incorrectly that Jackie and his assistant would hook up after Wen tossed him out. She's a nice looking lady, it seems that Jackie couldn't see that unless she stopped wearing her glasses. That's just my guess, she hardly eve removed the glasses, I just imagined that if she did long enough, he'd be all over her. That's not really flattering towards bespectacled people such as myself. Anyways, everything seems happy until Tung comes along and informs of Fei's capture. So he, Jackie, and an insistent Wen, storm the castle and try to rescue him. Randomly Jackie had Wen wear a pair of blue pants that he took from a nearby tack in the chemical plant. He doesn't really explain why she needed to wear that and not just be in her long dress. My theory is that so she wore something that a stuntman could wear. There's a part where Hua throws her through a glass window, and she flies and hooks onto some bars, hanging a couple feet in the air, where her only landing would be this grossly red liquid, I guess the pollution from drug making. I kept looking at that scene and conclude that a stuntman did that, and if they had him do it without the blue pants, it would probably expose the masculine legs, and also wouldn't be as comfortable if he went for it only wearing a dress. Her fall from the bar, I think that was also a stuntman, though there are shots where she is clearly hanging for dear life, and she is shown struggling on that shallow water path. She does a kick during the finale, and pants apparently assist in that over a dress. That could be the story reason, but the real reason is easier to figure out.


Anyways, that was part of the big final act, where all the protagonists get into a big fight with a bunch of men. To be specific, Tung and Jackie take care of almost all the grunts, Wen takes care of one, big boss Hua enters the fray a bit by annoying Jackie with distracting kicks at the start of his big one-on-one against Benny The Jet, all the while smoking his cigar. Tung gets knocked out by Benny, Fei spends most of the scene out of action. I forgot to mention that they forcefully injected drugs into his system, so he was in real bad shape during this scene, but he popped back up to poison Hua, and they have a fight scene, where Hua shows that he's not just about throwing annoying kicks, the dude kicks ass. Unfortunately for him, that doesn't last long, and whatever product Fei gave him, worked and forced him to take a dive to the red water, and dying from an overdose. This just leaves Jackie vs. Benny. I think their fight scene was incredible. The downside though is that since this is a blu-ray rip, it's easier to spot stunt doubles. The commentator in Shanghai Express mentioned that with a higher quality video, you can spot stuntmen and some cable wires, and plus he spoiled where stuntmen were used. Not having this kind of commentary, but having an even more high quality video (Shanghai Express was a DVD rip I believe), it's easier to spot doubles. Both Jackie and Benny had doubles, but I think the former only got doubled with a certain wicked kick to Benny's double's gut. It's one they play twice, first in slow motion, second time in regular speed. I can buy that being a double because Jackie wouldn't do that kind of kick, it looks more contemporary, like Tony Jaa or someone from that generation doing that. Anyways, this doesn't detract from that fact that Benny and Jackie were going to war. The same highlights from their Wheels on Meals bout are evident here, tremendous slow motion, the speed of both men on full display, the power as well, especially from Benny. This man was a kickboxing champion, a legitimate ass kicker. Jackie Chan is also one as well, even just by taking what Benny delivered on both occasions, that alone earning him his badass card. Add on his entire legacy, his toughness is just unquestionable. The whole scene had amazing slow motion, and amazing camera work. Staying on the actors, but changing up angles, low ones, high ones, an overhead view even, shown when there is a slow motion backflip done by Yuen Biao. The henchmen all taking incredible bumps, landing on hard surfaces, breaking through glass. I believe it's like Police Story where the prop glass was twice as strong, heightening the risk of injury. The sound of glass breaking is just so powerful in this whole movie, and this particular scene shows that. Two words to describe this finale, organized chaos. Everything looks chaotic, but all under intense choreography and supervision, the handling of true professionals, it's just beautiful to watch. Kid me loved the action of these kind of scenes, adult me still has that particular love, but add on appreciating the work to put this together. Filming it, performing it, even editing it, all these facets coming together make amazing art. Anyways, ass-kissing aside, it concludes with an epic kick from Jackie to Benny's face, and he goes flying!





Capping off this masterpiece was the reunion of Fei and Yeh, that led to the former tossing aside an unconscious Tung. It ends the movie on a funny note.


I got so engrossed with reviewing this movie that I basically gave a general plot synopsis. Woops, but ah well. It does indicate how fresh the movie is in my mind compared to the previous ones, as well as watching it a couple times before and knowing the bare bones about it. This viewing helped put some things in perspective, having more of a laugh and thinking more during a couple scenes of just dialogue. The impact of the action never changed, I always loved it, I can just talk about it more since I'm thinking more about how it was all put together, and seeing the people behind the action being legends, and not just kind of taking the action for granted and absorbing it as a simple minded child, even though it can easily turn me into one. With that said, this movie is just pure candy from start to finish, one where I didn't get sick of it, but rather enriched from its taste. Going back to the final fight scene, I do like the Benny/Jackie fight from Wheels on Meals more, if going by just their pairing in this movie. Taking the entire scene as a whole, including the stuff before, the involvement of Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung, then it's the best of this apparent trilogy. Wheels on Meals split the guys up more inasmuch that they are in different locations, though in the same building, and they come together briefly at the end to have a funny little fencing moment with the main villain. In Project A however, that's when they really work as a trio, as they all go up against the pirate king. So, if you want the best fight scene with these three working together, in the same scene, same shots, same opponent, then Project A is the way to go. For the brief comedic part, and more for watching them kick ass in more separate scenes, there's Wheels on Meals, plus seeing Sammo Hung facing off against the main villain in a fun fencing match. For the brutality, Dragons Forever. Take your pick, you really can't go wrong. As for me, I'd go specifically for the Benny/Jackie fight from Wheels on Meals, but in terms of an entire final act, where everyone's fighting, then definitely this is the best, in my opinion.


Despite my kick in Cynthia Rothrock, discovering a classic in Shanghai Express, and laughing my ass off in No Retreat No Surrender, Dragons Forever is without a doubt the crown jewel of my movie watching experience during this period of no internet. It's the epitome of Hong Kong martial arts cinema courtesy of Golden Harvest and Sammo Hung, along with Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao. All these guys are at their best here, not just in being badass on-screen fighters, but also as characters. Very funny, very interesting, just entertaining. The ladies as well, none of the main actors, including Yuen Wa as Hua, were a weak link, everyone did a fantastic job. When you have everyone clicking on all cylinders in a movie, the following rating is just so fucking easy to give. I'll give it anyways, a true action movie classic. Also, it was released in 1988, so incidentally, I'm celebrating its 30 year anniversary.


10/10


On Sunday, July 30th, I had decided to reward myself for finally finishing GIFs from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Something I started in November of 2017 and put aside for months on end. I had already completed the GIFs from the first season and the first half of Stardust Crusaders, which is season 2. However, I finished the second half of Stardust Crusaders, but needed to add text to a couple GIFs, which I procrastinated on. I moved onto season 3, which was part 4 of the overall series, Diamond Is Unbreakable. I had many hard stops in that particular series, the most recent being at the halfway point, and that was back in May of this year, but even that was 3 months removed from my last serious attempt at completing this huge backlog. Well, after a couple days, I finally finished, and that included making the GIFs, adding text to all the ones I planned on, and in the process, finding more moments to make GIFs out of. A grand total of 1366 GIFs from the second half of Stardust Crusaders (24 episodes) and all of Diamond is Unbreakable (39 episodes), I also had to scale them all down so I can upload them to Chaturbate (they have a 1MB/80px in height limit). I do share GIFs in a certain chatroom, so that had to be done, which probably took longer than making all the GIFs and adding text to a bunch of them afterwards. With that, already doing my file and folder sorting through my hard drives, basically all the “work” completed, I wanted to reward myself. Rather than watching porn offline, I watched the following two movies back to back.


Day of the Panther / Strike of the Panther





This is a pair of movies I had thought about revisiting for quite some time now. That desire was multiplied recently when I listened to the 80s Picture House episode where they covered the sequel, Strike of the Panther. That episode got me into those movies in the first place, and now it essentially got me back into watching it as a top priority. I told myself, as a motivation to finish my GIF work that this would be the reward. I succeeded and reaped the benefits, with the only cost being that I watched these movies late at night, starting at 11PM. It became a problem during Strike of the Panther specifically because at the 1 hour mark, I started to get tired. It wasn't the movie's fault at all, I was just becoming sleepy, I had been up since 6AM that day. I was able to get a second wind at the tail end of the movie, just enough to be up for an hour after finishing this double feature. As a result, I had to go back to a certain part of the third act, as I completely missed it, more on that later. I'll split this section into two, to indicate which film I'm talking about. Before I do, it's important to note that while this is a duology, both films were shot at the same time. I believe so, looking at the main cast, nobody's looks changed, they were released on the same year, 1987, and the second movie happens immediately after the first one, so I imagine it was two movies made during one production schedule. Same crew as well, same writer, director Brian Trenchard-Smith, same fight choreographers, which were a bunch of people, including Jim Richards, who played Baxter, and Edward John Stazak, who played the hero, Jason Blade. They were billed together as fight coordinators in the opening credits, but in the ending one, more people are mentioned. Also, both movies have the same general content of over-the-top scenes and super solid, very entertaining martial arts. They're two of the same movie essentially. There are some differences to bring up, and if you go into detail, they do stand on their own individually, but on face value and when stripping away the particulars, they're the same.


Day of the Panther


These plots are so basic. Jason Blade and his partner in some Hong Kong special task force, Linda (Linda Megier), have been inducted into a secret order of martial artists, thanks in part to their mentor, Linda's father, William Anderson (John Stanton), the Order of the Panthers or something along those lines. The first scene features that ceremony, Jason Blade branding himself with some symbol. I don't think you even see the symbol after that scene, so you forget that he did that, they don't make a point of showing it after the scene anyways. The young guns have to get some evidence on a drug deal going on between this bastard Baxter (Jim Richards), and some Triad boss. Looking at the end credits, Baxter's first name is Jim. How creative, Linda Megier playing Linda Andereson, Jim Richards playing Jim Baxter. Anyways, they get some evidence, but are busted, and as they escape the Chinese restaurant where this deal was going down, Linda loses the evidence. This leads to your first look at Edward John Stazak kicking ass. I don't think I really thought heavily about his martial arts ability. I took what I saw and had a good time. Now it's different, I think more on this viewing than the first viewing, which was about 3 years ago, I appreciated and admired his fighting ability. He's fucking good, it's a shame he only did three movies, the Panther films, and a 1991 movie, Black Neon, which I have never been able to find online. It's a holy grail movie, as it stars Stazak and Jim Richards, is written by both guys, and is directed by Richards. I could only imagine how crazy and awesome it is, but alas, not available anywhere. I even tried to find it online for purchase, no luck.


Anyways, you see Jason Blade, which is a cool name actually, kick some Chinese ass. Linda even kicks some butt as well. Stazak's style is not too flashy, has a lot of substance, he goes to the well a lot with beautiful spinning high kicks, but he shows in many scenes that he's a very potent puncher, knows how to use his elbows, can do some take-downs and throws, and can even work with stick weaponry. His build is pretty similar to Jean-Claude Van Damme, though his style is not as flashy, but he certainly means business.


A long time removed from this particular movie really made me forget a lot. Strike of the Panther is a different story because I heard the 80s Picture House podcast episode about it several times, and they go through the whole movie, but also the movie just has certain parts that you just can't forget. It's a shame with this movie because there are some amazing things I just forgot. The biggest one between both movies is Baxter. I forgot what he looked like, I kept remembering as an old white man, which was what William Anderson was, but that guy can fight, it's proven in this movie in particular. The older white villain was Damien Zukor (Michael Carman), Baxter was basically a somewhat bulky guy in his 30s. Still, I thought of him as “That bastard Baxter,” since I remembered him as an asshole. I didn't remember particulars, but just that he was a jerk. I can finally give examples thanks to this viewing.


With this film I totally forgot this very long sequence where Linda goes to some abandoned warehouse. I think she was trying to find the drugs that Baxter was trying to sell. Glancing at the times now, this entire sequence lasted 11 minutes! Both movies are barely 84 minutes long, and despite the short run times, have some scenes that last a long time. The thing is, it's not a bad thing! It's surprising to say, because scenes that long would easily lead to boredom, you want it to end, you just know it either ends 1 of 2 ways. In this case, Linda makes it out alive, or she gets killed. Not remembering this scene, I actually got very invested in it, to the point where I wanted Linda to survive, and it was surprisingly captivating. It's just shocking to say that this movie was gripping. I think it has to do with Linda being a female, and coming off Cynthia Rothrock, there's a great sense of wanting to watch a female badass come out on top. Also, there's a sense of wanting the people chasing her to fail. There are only three of them, and they are so persistent. They're thugs wearing masks, randomly, with the more muscular of the three wearing a pig mask, of all things! The one with a baseball bat decorated with long steel nails had some skull as a mask, and the third guy had an ugly old man head as a mask. It's funny that among the graffiti stained walls, there's one that says “Dirty deeds.” That had to be a reference to AC/DC, these movies are Ozploitation films.


This long sequence featured Linda fighting off these three men and trying to run away from them. It sounds simple, and yeah, 11 minutes of that sounds boring, but somehow they were able to make it work. There's just a great deal of tension to it, and yeah, there are some interchanges between this sequence and the arrival of Jason Blade. There was a scene before where he told Linda to wait for him to fly out of Hong Kong and arrive in Perth so they can move in on the bad guys together. She couldn't wait that long, even though it was just a day. There are bits where Blade is in the plane, makes his way through the airport in Perth, and you're introduced to two bumbling Aussie cops. You have that lighthearted stuff juxtaposed to the darker sequence where Linda is fighting and running for her life. I really did want it to end, not because it was boring, but because I wanted Linda to come out on top, the longer that was delayed, the more I thought she wouldn't make it. She fights off these guys but they are so annoyingly persistent. Fair play to them, the two skinnier ones did a backflip, for really no reason, off a roof and all the way to the floor. It had to be at most a 10 foot drop. Helping to fuel the belief that she was going to make it though was the fact that she disposed of the bad guys gradually. The old man mask wearing one got a kick to the chest and landed on a metal pole, impaling him. The one with the pig mask got knocked out by a big plank of wood. Finally, the man with the bat, who did strike her in the arm, got kicked out of the top floor of a building all the way to a ground. I'm not sure what the drop was, maybe 20 feet, there were a bunch of cuts to that scene, unlike the beautiful wide shots, 1 take deals in Shanghai Express. Still, the man died, hooray. He was unmasked, but you saw his face painted white, so, still a freak on the inside. She finally escapes these fuckers, only to run into Baxter, who kills her off screen. That's a sad ending, but there's always Jason Blade. I'm sure if I watch this scene again, now remembering it, I'll still enjoy it, but the unknown element really helped in making this scene really gripping. Whatever the case, it's a highlight of the film.


Back to the cops, they are just horrible at surveillance, they just stand close to an escalator, they are clearly looking at Blade, and there's a shot where Blade is clearly noticing them looking at him. They are fucking awful, not even noticing Blade spotting them, which should've led to them hastily trying to escape his sight, hide for fuck's sake. It's funny to an extent, but a bit annoying. Jeez guys, can you be any more incompetent? They kind of do a 180 in the sequel, though one of them isn't prominently featured in that movie. Their job in this movie was to tail Blade, them believing a story that Blade is an enforcer for the Triad. That turned out to be false, their superior knowing about that fake story. Blade explained in a scene with that superior that it was a favor from the Triad in order for him to keep his cover and his plan to infiltrate the Zukor organization, which Baxter works for, specifically as a second-in-command of sorts to Zukor.


Oh, small thing, but interesting to note, there's a scene where Jason is practicing his forms on rocks, the ocean crashing against them. I'm pretty sure that's the same location that the planet Phados was filmed in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. They looked similar at least. Too long passed since referencing my flavor of 2018.


Okay, a major bone to pick with these movies is William Anderson. I forgot that this had a little example in the first movie, but was much more prominent in the second one. Apparently, William has some random psychic link to Jason. The one little example I forgot, even as I started this review, was when Blade first makes contact with Anderson in Perth, William's seen doing some meditation. Jason stands over a bridge, watching him, and then from his mind, William says that they'll talk inside. I caught that while watching the movie but forgot right after, only to remind myself of that during this review. My bone to pick with that aspect is that it really doesn't help in any way, it just takes the film in a crazy direction. It was already going in random places with the crazy masks those hoodlums in that Linda scene were wearing. Both movies have a bunch of wacky elements that clash with some serious martial arts coolness, and this competes for the most absurd one. I think there's a particular scene in the second movie that is its only competition, which I'll get to later. Briefly, I'll explain more in the second movie, but that psychic link could've been gone, and Blade would've done everything exactly the same, it looked like Blade didn't even catch what he said, nor did he respond accordingly. The only instance where it's clear that he responded to this communication was in this scene in Day of the Panther. Even so, it looked like he just went inside naturally, without being told what to do. It doesn't help that Jason Blade doesn't communicate telepathically in return, so you don't get a sense of this trait of William's being actually legit and acceptable. It's instead like he's thinking to himself and Blade just does whatever, and the movie makes you think William's telepathic ability had something to do with it. I do find the idea of this hilarious, it's a case where complaining about something that's bad, that's absolutely stupid, is actually very entertaining that you appreciate the movie for making this mistake. It's kind of like The Room, though the love for its faults are much more transparent and doesn't involve complaining so much.


Compared to how the psychic communication comes up in the second movie, I will say this seems more realistic, again, in comparison. He's in deep meditation, one can assume that brings him to some higher plane of existence, and with Jason being trained under this Panther style like William, it does imply that these guys can communicate on a telepathic level. Think Beverly Hills Ninja, only you have to reach the conclusion by yourself in this film, at least that silly and fun movie explains itself.


Moving on, in times of reflection after Linda's death, enter Gemma, played by Paris Jefferson. This woman is quite the character, and it's mostly down to her facial expressions and acts she does in both films. Before I go on with that, she is introduced as William's niece, and becomes Jason's love interest. Note that he and Linda never hooked up, they were just partners, associates, teammates, no intimate relationship. So it's not Jason dropping one girl for another. It sounded like at first that William doesn't want revenge, but later it's shown that he clearly does, the meditation and zen stuff he was going off of in this scene only lasted for so long, he just throws himself in the fray towards the end.


Back to Gemma. Well, straight away, she's better looking than Linda, not to shit on Linda at all, she's a nice looking lady. Despite these two being cousins in the story, they do have this similar hold on me with their eyes. Linda wasn't making goofy facial expressions, so this hold doesn't last long, plus she dies at the 21 minute mark. Gemma on the other hand, introduced in the 24 minute mark, has a whole hour to make this interesting impression on me. As far as dialogue, there's nothing much to say about her, her charm really is in those facial expressions, they just grab me as being funny and quirky. Personality, yeah, she's very loyal, that's nice, very horny on Jason too, that's more evident in the second movie, which makes sense chronologically, longer time as an item and whatnot. Oh yeah, auburn hair, so, redhead, ginger, that already qualifies her as a pretty quirky person. In both movies, she does have love scenes with Jason, but unfortunately she does not show nipples, you see more of Stazak's skin than hers, oh yeah.


Going into the main operation by Jason Blade, he tries to infiltrate Zukor's organization, trying to be his bagman, almost like a partner or sidekick, essentially trying to pull the rug from underneath Baxter, who is none too pleased about it and doubts his motives. In trying to prove his worth to Zukor as well as sticking it to Baxter, Jason Blade gets into some entertaining fight scenes. The first one being at a boat shop that Zukor owns. He gets Zukor's attention in that, and his success in impressing Zukor brings to light this charisma that Jason Blade has, and in turn, the actor has.


It leads me to being really puzzled as to why Edward John Stazak didn't do more movies. He could've been a major star in Australia, leading the charge in a strong martial arts film stronghold in that nation. Hong Kong filmmakers went to Australia, especially in the 90s, with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung making movies over there. So imagine Stazak having made a bigger mark in the late 80s and early 90s, that he would be a big star by the time Chan and Hung made movies down there. Edward John Stazak vs. Jackie Chan in, let's just say, First Strike? Mr. Nice Guy? What if he went to America and Canada with Chan and they worked on Rumble in the Bronx together? All these classic 90s Jackie Chan movies, Edward John Stazak could've brought in a fresh bag of martial arts expertise to the film. Those movies didn't really have martial arts villains, just some thugs, some smart bad guys, but people that wouldn't get into the trenches and fight with Chan. The closest was Richard Norton in Mr. Nice Guy, but their one exchange had him beating on a tied up Chan. There was the gang leader from Rumble in the Bronx, but he wasn't the main villain. Edward John Stazak could've totally filled in for these movies as a lead henchman, a heavy. Hell, a partner of Chan's. That's easier to imagine since Stazak seems so comfortable playing an action hero. Also, just starring in more movies in general. What happened? Was it who he worked with? Brian Trenchard-Smith? That man is a very prolific Australian filmmaker, so it couldn't be him. I would assume Smith would've kept doing movies with him, Ozploitation films had a major footing in the 80s anyways, but Stazak only did 2 movies in that decade. Was he just dedicated to martial arts, whatever his life was? According to the 80s Picture House podcast, there's a possibility that Edward John Stazak works at weddings as a trumpet player. I looked into it a bit and found another website that reviewed the movie and made similar claims. The group do not only play at weddings though, but this review is really old. Red Dash Black is this quartet, and there's a picture online of them, but it's so damn tiny, I can't make out Edward John Stazak's face in it. Granted, this podcast episode came out at the end of 2013, almost 5 years later, who knows if that's even accurate now, let alone if it was in the first place. I'm not being funny, I legitimately think Stazak could've been a major force in martial arts films, a great alternative to the field that was absolutely ruled by Hong Kong at the time, especially Golden Harvest, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung. The United States during that time had a growing stronghold in the martial arts film world, with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal coming up. I don't know man, it does make me cling to these movies, not wanting to delete them, and watch them a bunch of times, because they're really the only ones where I can see Edward John Stazak kick some ass, and just wonder what could've/should've been. Hell, I don't know if the man ever gave any interview to address this, I don't think people bothered to hunt him down and ask him in Australia (let alone if people even know the man's film past), so, I don't know, the world may never know. Knowing about Black Neon being the only other example of Stazak in a movie, it makes me want to hunt that down, so badly. Anyways, I have to move on.


Right after that first Zukor scene, you see Blade showing that skin, swimming in a speedo. Jesus, with a body like that, you can't be mad at him for doing that. The two bumbling cops try to spoil this sexy moment, Gemma talking to Jason as well, and it leads to her sticking her tongue out at the cops. Again, the face she made was really something.


Something I totally forgot was Baxter actually being a good fighter. I thought he was just a butthole, but he can actually fight. Again, the actor, Jim Richards, helped choreographed the fight scenes in both movies, so he knows his stuff. He also did stunts for movies after this. It does make me warm to him more, but he's still a jerk. After Zukor buys the story about Blade being an enforcer for the Triad, and being impressed with his fighting at the boat shop, he invited Blade over to his pool party. Baxter escorts Blade there, and you see how much of a douchebag he is, as he randomly shoves a girl into the pool. All she did was give a little look to Blade, and the fucker just pushes her to the pool. What a dick. Also, with how he's dressed in that scene, a blazer over a black muscle shirt that shows his chest a bit, come on man. It's funny that he dresses like that, yet doesn't go all the way in showing his upper body, Jason Blade has no such limitation. Zukor by the way has a pair of sunglasses where the lens can be lifted up, that was funny.


Zukor's first mission for Jason was to trade a pack of drugs to some guys for a briefcase of money. That goes south, with the guys going after Jason. They get their asses kicked. Funny thing is I think two of them appear in the second movie, playing different thugs. One of them has long curly hair and a pencil-thin tache, so it's easy to spot him, and the other is a tall and lanky pale white boy, so, yeah. They're in a scene in the second movie where they are hanging at Jason's car, which doesn't please the Blade. One thing about these fight scenes is that they tend to take place in a large area, a warehouse, a boat shop, a power plant in the second movie, a basketball gymnasium later in this film. I think it allows for action to be done without hitting anything by accident, a bit more freeing when you have space to do your thing. Plus, there is plenty of scenery interaction, in this particular scene, Jason's fighting on huge bags, he's jumping onto a hood of the car, in the previous fight scene he broke some walls in that boat shop. A lot of these fight scenes also have this one musical piece, which I consider to be the theme music of the movie. I like it, it's a driving, 80s-appropriate rhythm. Not so likable are the bumbling cops, who tried their damnedest to enter that warehouse and end up using a forklift, to disastrous results. Before that, there's one moment where Jason throws one of the goons off the hood of the car, I caught a little smile on Blade. I imagine the actor had a fun time shooting the movies. All the more devastating that he didn't do more than 3 films! Back to this scene, the forklift ended up crashing into the car in the warehouse, really making use of what was at that location, what was put there. Anyways, fun scene.


Blade's car was pretty nice, white one...uhh, I don't know the model, it looks cool. He drives some big red car in the sequel, I like the white one more. Anyways, leg up! Right after that warehouse fight, Blade returns to Zukor's boat, now knowing that the drugs he was supposed to deliver were fake, and the money in the briefcase was also fake, essentially a test for Blade. During that scene, Baxter, for all his faults as a bastard, does get points for having his leg up, on a part of the boat. That's a classic 80s thing, and naming the 80s Picture House again, they brought that trope to my attention, and I now love it. Zukor tries to make certain that Baxter and Blade work together for the good of Zukor's organization. The perfect end to that scene was Zukor saying “If you'll excuse me, it's time I got laid.” HAHA!


It then goes into absolute silliness. There are montages in these films, and the ones that come up the most involve Gemma dancing. She's in the aerobic wear that was all the rage in the 80s, and she basically does these dances to seduce Jason. Blade is someone who doesn't really try to get women, he doesn't need to, they try to get him, as Gemma tried to do in the first instance of her dancing. William just so happened to own a gym, that mostly is empty, as Gemma and Blade are the people that work out there regularly. I think there's one time where it's a busy place and that's in this movie, otherwise it's just a large space, for only a few people. During the first dance, Jason is working out his arms, you see his upper body all sweaty, while this woman basically gives a lapdance without being on his damn lap. I mean, you watch this and want to be Jason Blade! I think the only hang-up with Blade is his long nose, but that obviously hasn't hindered him, here's this horny redhead trying to hop on his blade, which I imagine to be big, this guy is just blessed. The guy never gets sad either, he only has the emotions of angry or happy, sadness is a form of weakness. Jason Blade has no weaknesses!


There's a scene where Baxter and Blade go to some amphitheater, where the drugs are located, as well as being a battleground for an apparent martial arts tournament that Zukor holds, Baxter being his champion. During this scene, Baxter notes that Zukor has his weaknesses, and how much worth he is to the organization. It really paints him as more of the lead villain than Zukor, especially knowing that he's the top bad guy in the second film. After this, William explains to Jason about this martial arts tournament over dinner with them and Gemma, then Jason and the lieutenant have some words over Jason being too involved in this case. Don't tell Blade to stop, he's Jason Blade!


Something that gets under Baxter's skin is an idea Blade suggested to Zukor. Basically, they spread a rumor that Baxter got owned by Blade in a private match, the odds are not in Baxter's favor. They bet on Baxter, Blade throws their tournament fight, they make a lot of money, simple. Baxter makes it clear that Blade doesn't have to throw the fight, this guy being too cocky. Meanwhile Jason Blade is just confident, because he's fucking Jason Blade!


Oh yeah, there's a scene where Gemma dances, Jason not being there. So, this lady is just a dancer, it's like her way of getting off before actually fucking Jason. Baxter confronts Gemma, who tries to convince Baxter that she doesn't know Blade. The guy said Gemma gives a piece of her body to Blade, which makes her mad. Baxter strong-arms her, uncle William comes to the save, and it's funny how he wants to just get into a fight with Baxter immediately. His form of removing his belt to show that he means business is taking off his shoes! Oh shit. It was a brief fight, William got punched in the ribs, and that was it.


Jason and Gemma have some wine, the latter shares her concern over Jason, he said she doesn't want her involved in all this. She only responds with “But I am involved,” they smile, cut to them having sex! Jason Blade, all he has to do is smile, and he gets laid! But yeah, they make a point seemingly to hide Gemma's boobs, Jason's muscly body pressed against them. As much as you can see, you can tell that she's got some big ones. D sized, maybe C, I'm being really perverted now. Their sex scenes just have them kissing naked, that's it.


As I mentioned earlier, there's that one gym scene where there are people in it. I think there's only 6, one of them being the taller bumbling cop, failing at using a weight machine. Meanwhile William comes, saying he wants in on Blade's action, obviously the scuffle Baxter got into with Gemma and then him fired the man up. The scene ends with William saying they'll kill Jason if they know who he really is. Jason said you never know who is following you around, cut to that bumbling cop, and them laughing, as everyone should when they see this fucker.


With the cop noticing William and Jason talking, the scene that follows this where he relays that information to their superior, leads that superior to revealing who Jason Blade really is, though still wanting these two clowns to follow him. Because they were doing a great job before. Baxter paid off some people to take care of Jason, soon after it's made to look like it was Baxter trying to beef up Blade, so that the odds would be more in his favor, and thus Baxter winning would lead to bigger money. Whatever the case, it led to a pretty cool fight scene. There were shots of shadows moving, which was some artsy attempt at making the fight stand out, which is pretty funny that a movie like this would try that. It does stand out because of it, as well as Blade using sticks to knock some heads. Zukor scolds Baxter on this attempt at Blade's head, but it turns around when he got Baxter's real plan of beefing up Jason, if that really was his actual plan. Zukor instructs Baxter to keep working with Blade unless he finds anything substantial to suggest that Blade is tricking them both.


Next scene, he does. Gemma and William leave their house, unattended, the doors were locked, but given their prior scuffle with Baxter, it's pretty bad of them to just leave the house with no security system. Maybe there weren't any good ones in the 80s. Anyways, Baxter snoops around the house, finds the smoking gun, a picture of Blade with Baxter and Linda, the blonde he killed. This leads to Jason in the basketball stadium, Zukor knowing of Blade's deception. It does feature some ingenious ploy from Jason where he made it look like he escaped from the back when he was really hiding in a dressing cubicle. Less people for him to handle. Gemma and William learn of their house being trashed, Baxter knowing the truth, they come to Jason's aid, mowing down two guards, but Blade don't need no aid! He's dressed in white, getting' paid! Seriously, Blade looked like a pimp in that scene, his attire generally consists of dress pants, a blazer, shoulder pads galore, and either a buttoned shirt or a t-shirt underneath, the man is so fashionable.


The three heroes make it to the amphitheater before Baxter, the males finding the drugs. This leads into the final act of the movie. The bad guys make it there, Baxter has his one-on-one fight with Jason, Gemma tries to escape from some mesh shirt wearing doofus with a curly hair, and William has to fend off some random goon with a gun, Zukor sits and watch the fight of champions. Well, Baxter and the champion of this movie, Jason Blade. Zukor though gets involved in William's business after the goon's gun goes off, William successfully taking care of this dude. It ends with him throwing him at a distance, and this hilarious 4th wall break.





During Gemma's section, a snake slithers across her collarbone, which was pretty nice, real snake and all. She gets the guy chasing her with a wooden branch, knocking his ass out. Anderson gets Zukor's gun, turning down his offer of smack, which is funny how he just pleaded with drugs, as if Anderson would suddenly turn to the drug or even sell it. He lets Zukor run for his life, of course the cops end up getting him.


All that out the way, I can focus on the final fight scene. These three scenes interchange during the final act, though chronologically, the Baxter/Blade fight finishes last. It gets pretty bloody, and finally shows Baxter to be a very competent fighter. Blade though has those beautiful kicks, and is able to do a rapid succession of punches which are really nice to see. There is a weapon involved, a big spear that cuts up Blade. There's even some wrestling! Being a former wrestling fan, I did like the use of a vertical suplex from Baxter. Blade has some big cuts on his body, making me think this was filmed last during production of both films. Compare it to the last scene of the second film, where Jason's wounds aren't as numerous or large, it does feel like this was the final scene shot. Also, I have to say, it's better than the final fight scene in the sequel, as this is purer in martial arts, while their rematch in the second film, though having some great fighting, ends in a silly way. The movie ends with the cops coming in, Gemma and Jason reunited, and Anderson on voice-over saying evil has a way of reaching up and dragging a good man down, which makes no sense because it seems to imply that any good person would turn. That didn't happen, the good people stayed good, the bad people stayed bad. Maybe he talked about Baxter and Zukor, implying they were good before, but turned evil. I don't know, it's pretty silly regardless. There's text that says Jason Blade will return in Strike of the Panther, which again, came out the same year as this film. I wonder if they were released on the same day,


I'll hold off on final thoughts on this movie and just include that with the closing thoughts on the sequel. Let's jump straight into that film.


Strike of the Panther – Despite this movie being a sequel, it does stand on its own for various reasons. The one that pops up immediately upon viewing this film is that it recaps Day of the Panther, through a clip show narrated by William Anderson. Essentially, it says that you don't even have to watch Day of the Panther, because this movie does a full-on recap of the film. It's only 10 minutes long, so it's not as bad as Silent Night Deadly Night 2 where half the damn movie was a recap session. It just means having these movies as a double feature probably requires you to skip the first 10 minutes of the sequel. I didn't. I will say that during this section, Anderson said Blade and Baxter fought to the death. Uhhh, not really, Blade even resisted killing Baxter, so, whatchu talkin' bout Willis...I mean, William? He did give an epilogue about Zukor and Baxter, sentenced to life in prison. The charges weren't mentioned, so, fuck it, life in prison.


The movie more properly begins with Jason doing katas at a beach, and Gemma watching, making another silly facial expression. Now that I think about it, she upgrades to hand gestures in this movie, as she made one in this scene. I assume that's her martial art. After the events of the first film, Jason was asked by the police to start and train a special task force, which Gemma joined. It's funny because most of these guys don't appear after these training bits. The only ones that appear are the bumbling cops, no longer bumbling. In fact, the tall one doesn't appear until later in the movie, so I'm only guessing that he was part of this task force, I almost thought he just doesn't appear in the movie. Michael Carman as Zukor doesn't, so the idea of some cast members not reprising their roles in this film did become a realistic one. The older bumbling cop, again, they aren't bumbling anymore, but I can never catch their names, and I can't be bothered to find out. He ends up tagging along with Jason in a bunch of scenes, including an infiltration of a high-end brothel, and being with him almost every step in the way in the Baxter mission. Essentially, he has a bigger role in this film than he did in the previous one.


Gemma, though being part of the task force, doesn't fucking do anything apart from training in that one scene! She just continues to be Jason's arm candy, and being more of a nag for them to settle down and take the next step. It's funny how she asked if she'll be able to do that task force stuff for real. Well maybe she would if she didn't just stick to being some dedicated wife-to-be for Jason Blade! She immediately goes into asking if something goes wrong in her task force missions, if that's why Jason won't commit to her. He said yes, straight away as a main reason, but I'd add that it's because she's way too focused on this relationship, and not trying to be an actual member of the task force. She'd just rather be in bed with Jason, while he has a plate of cherries on his lap! I'm serious, that scene has him with a plate of cherries on his lap, and he eats one! That's some serious porn there, not the naked woman covered up with a sheet, but the topless hunk of man meat having a cherry! And what is this bitch saying? She said that when 40 people try to attack Jason, the man is fearless, but he falls apart when she tries to get close to him. NO! Are you mad, woman? He's a very driven man, how can that be interpreted as him being weak-willed when it comes to her needs and shit? Don't question Jason Blade! I'm joking mostly, but if you take all the stuff she said seriously, I believe it makes one want to pull their hair out over the stupidity of this lady. Maybe it's just a guy thing, me easily siding with Jason. The scene ends very awkwardly when Gemma said that she's accepting of the possibility of Jason never coming home, meaning that he was killed. Jason though replied that she may never come home herself. With how he delivered that, it sounded like he had a firm idea in his mind that Gemma would possibly die, and he's come to grips with that. This is where Stazak's acting does hit a wall, he should've been more dramatic, saying those words should've meant him really saying a kind of scenario that frightens him. Then again, Jason Blade is fearless, so he ends up sharing that line kind of woodenly, and you're left with an awkward ending. It's something I noticed more as I typed this review. Sometimes you take scenes for what they are and let them go, and it takes a while before you stop and think of it. I did that here, though it just means padding this monstrous review even more.


I didn't share my favorite scene from Day of the Panther, which would be consistent to me sharing my favorite scene from this film. I'll do it, my favorite scene from Day of the Panther was every fight scene with Jason Blade. Yeah, it's kind of hard to choose one. Take that out, easily the Linda chase scene since it was very gripping, but the difference is that luster may fade, while I'm sure the Blade fight scenes won't. Got that out of the way, now, my favorite scene from Strike of the Panther was this following scene.


Jason gets a rescue mission, take this prostitute out of a high-end brothel and reunite her with her father, who is about to be elected as a judge. Also, do this before a journalist snoops around in that brothel and finds the judge's daughter there. The daughter is addicted to heroin, it would've been nice if they referenced Zukor in this. That it was smack she got from Zukor's supply before he got arrested. The location is pretty nice, mostly white interior. Jason Blade walks in with a full suit and tie, and a pair of glasses! He's still looking sexy despite the Clark Kent disguise. So Jason selects that daughter off the menu, and it's hilarious when the head lady, the pimp, said that you can pay on the way out! That's right, no upfront payment! That's such a flawed system, you can get Johns that flee after a lay, and they don't pay at all. Sure there's security, but they're pretty shit, since Jason Blade ends up making short work of them. They also accept major credit cards, that's even worse! Not cash only? Are high-end brothels really like that? Jeez, looking at the women in this scene, I'd pick the head lady, hot cougar! She scolded Mandy the judge's daughter earlier about her drug addiction and how it shouldn't be made known to the clients. Yeah, these rich guys don't want to fuck a streetwalker, which Mandy looks like, yikes. Jason was able to persuade her, quite easily that he's here to take her back to her father. All it took was a letter from her father. You don't know what the letter says, but they cut to her crying, so, it obviously worked. Her crying looked ugly, strange acting there, not sure if it's bad or what. Also, what the fuck, the doors don't lock? The head lady just comes in with white towels and leaves. I don't want to go to this place now! If just for the head lady, absolutely. Then the head lady just turns on some intercom thing, that allows her to listen in on rooms, and she hears Jason and Mandy (real name apparently Julia) talking about her drug addiction, basically turning to this prostitution thing to pay for the drugs. When rehab and getting her out of here was heard, the woman got security, only for them to be whipped by Jason.


That's all fine and dandy, what makes this scene my favorite are the absolutely random cameos in it. There's one where a bad guy goes through a door, and in that room is a woman with her John, who is completely covered in head to toe...in a chicken suit! He fucking makes chicken noises too! All Jason said to that was “You're sick.” WHAT?! That was so random, it's hilarious though. It doesn't stop there, when Jason takes the fight to the first floor, some guy runs out of his room, dressed as Angus Young from AC/DC...as in a fucking schoolboy uniform, and clings to Jason's leg, asking for Jason to hit him!!! What the hell?! Jason said to piss off, he runs back into his room, with his prostitute spanking him on the way back. Before this, the head lady tried to punch Jason, but he has abs of steel! She hurt her hand doing that. Back in Julia's room, she rummages through her closet and throws out a fucking blow-up sex doll! You just know the thing was going to be used in this scene. And it does! After she gets a whip and whips it good to bearded security wanker, he tries to protect himself with the blow-up doll! He closes the door on it for fuck's sake. It ends with Jason and Julia escaping the brothel, the older formerly bumbling cop saying that he's Batman and Jason's Robin, that he taught Blade everything he knows. Bullshit, he and Julia ride off, while the camera comes up to Jason's topless body. One thing about this movie is that there are more topless shots of Jason Blade, and overall more skin from Stazak. Oh, and the fucking head lady yelled out for Jason, asking if he wants a job, these things cap off a classic scene that sums up both movies. The impressive martial arts fighting from Edward John Stazak clashing with some absolutely absurd bits. If you can't be bothered to watch both movies, or even just this one, find this scene, it's amazing. Not only does it sum up this duology, but it just sums up B-movies, I absolutely love it for that reason.


I can't actually say that it goes downhill from here, the movie reaches some other peaks. The funny thing in the scene following that classic is that older cop saying that the trainees are pretty ready to head out to the field for actual action, which never really happens! Again, these clowns in that training scene don't appear after. There is a young blonde guy who is with Blade and crew when they try to get some goon in for questioning in a later scene, but I didn't spot him in the training section, so I'm not sure if he's part of the task force. I'll just assume he is, just to give that thing some credence.


This scene also introduces Lucy Andrews, the new cast member who has a major role in this film, played by Rowena Wallace. Going back to this scene, I finally caught the name of the bumbling older cop. Colin, thanks to the end credits, I get the full name of Colin Flinders, played by Zale Daniel. So there you go. It's interesting to note this when one of the goons they try to bring in for questioning is called “Collis.” The variety in naming characters is interesting. Anyways, in the 80s Picture House, which I can reference more in this part of the review since they covered this film specifically, they differed in opinion on what Lucy looked like. One said Brigitte Nielsen, the other said Dame Judi Dench. What do I think? I don't know, both? Brigitte Nielsen towers over this lady, and yeah they have that crew-cut hairstyle that is colored white, but that's it. Judi Dench, both are short, both are old, though Dench is more visibly wrinkled, this lady was probably in her 40s at the time of this film. I don't know, it was funny that they mentioned the ladies anyways. Oh, while I'm mentioning the podcast, they loved that brothel scene too, so, it's not just me.


Lucy plays a big role as she is a criminal psychologist, and helps out Jason and Colin in this Baxter case. During this scene, Colin fluffed up Lucy as some badass woman, adding on to her being a psychologist. Just date the woman you fool. He mentioned how she worked in various places around the world, and how she trained with Israeli intelligence. Okay dude. She does come in as being involved with the Julia case, she mentioned how she was doing in rehab, and then basically implied that she's eager to work with Jason and company. That scene ends on a funny punctuation mark, Colin and Jason Blade just exiting the shot in the opposite direction of each other.


Sigh, cut to Gemma doing what she always does, dancing. Showing some stomach and a bit of legs in this mostly black aerobic outfit, and with it being see through in the pants, you get a good look at her butt. Not too bad! This turns into a montage, with her goading Jason into dancing with her, and then a scene of them kissing on a park bench, her seemingly coming down on Jason's face doing a split, but she stops short a couple inches, fucking tease. They're walking and talking at the park, they're dancing, cut to them in the bedroom kissing, sadly no nipple action from Gemma, Jason's muscled up body pressing against those boobs, acting as a bra for the lady. What was the point of that montage? Just to show that they are alright, everything is good in the hood...


But outside of that hood, Baxter escapes from prison, shown just climbing down via rope from an 8 foot wall. That's it, so fucking easy! He runs off to his ride, and he's back in business. They later say that he killed some guards, but they don't show that, and it doesn't change the fact he got away so easily, it's funny. Why didn't Zukor join him? Maybe he was too busy getting raped.


Gemma apparently asked off camera for them to live together, other stuff asked in a way to test their relationship. All the while I am fixated on her eyes, those damn facial expressions again, those big wide eyes. Jason then gets a page! Fucking pager, and what the fuck is up with her asking if they can get away from the task force for just one minute. Who is “we?” Dammit woman, don't argue with Jason Blade! Jason goes to a phone, she makes another silly facial expression and hand gesture, this lady man, I can write an entire essay on just this woman. She is a pretty fascinating case. These were Paris Jefferson's first movies, meaning Day of the Panther was her very first one, she got an “Introducing” credit in the first movie. For such an early role, she really stands out, for better or worse. Tying in the director, another woman really stood out in her debut film. The movie, BMX Bandits, the actress...Nicole Kidman. Yeah, isn't that crazy? Curly red hair, totally different from what she looks now, she was 16 I believe when that came out. She's aged...interestingly, it's a bit hard to go into, and I already get sidetracked enough in these reviews. Just compare her in BMX Bandits to now, it's crazy.


Jason Blade gets the call about Baxter escaping, uh oh, he returns to his table with Gemma having already left. Trouble brewing...but it's squashed after a scene that comes between the dinner and that scene. This transitional section having Jason doing dead lifts! Day of the Panther had some shots of Jason working out, but I think this movie surpassed that amount considerably. He's doing two-finger push ups as well! Two fingers on each hand I mean. Fuck man, and why did this guy not do more movies?! He's sexy, talented fighter, ugh, man.


So Jason comes home, thinks someone is trying to rob him, but it's Gemma coming out of the shower. She apparently gave Jason back her key to his home, so the question becomes how she was able to break into his home. She just said she used a dubious skill that she learned from Jason. You fucking criminal! This woman, seriously, she is a trip. The 80s Picture House guys don't spend a lot of time on her, which is fine, people notice and comment on different things. My focus on Gemma probably wouldn't be shared by other people. That's fine, but I have to point out how much a head case this woman is. Watching both movies back-to-back, her impact overall really strikes me. Making this review, I can put these thoughts into screen. So yeah, she broke in Jason's home. Gemma brought up Jason, made a clawing hand gesture and went down Jason's body with that, they essentially make up. That took no time at all! That's what I was trying to get at, their little time apart, is just that, little. Movies that have romantic angles always have periods where the couple breaks up, only to get back together. It happened in Dragons Forever, referencing that recently reviewed movie. It's a trope I don't really like, but that film at least made it work. This film couldn't be bothered to make it substantial, so it begs the question of why try in the first place? Gemma just accepts Blade for who he is, what he's about, and she doesn't try to persuade him to commit. That does come naturally, arising out of Baxter kidnapping her. So really, Baxter did more to advance their relationship than Gemma in her intentional attempts. That...is funny when I think about it.


I have avoided the elephant in the room, which for someone not in Australia, it's the accents being all over this movie. I was going to save it until the end, but I went back to that make-up scene, and kept playing Gemma saying “Ah yeah.” That sounded so Australian, it makes me laugh now! I mean, they don't say anything stereotypical to Australians such as mentioning kangaroos, shrimp on the barbie, all that. I think that “Ah yeah” is the closest to being stereotypical Australian. The 80s Picture House guys had a field day with the Aussie accents, saying stuff in their attempted Aussie voices. It was hilarious. I would also mention “That bastard” in reference to Baxter, Jason saying that in a scene in the first movie, and in the kidnapping scene in this film. That sounded really Australian to me. For the most part, I was able to tune myself into this foreign accent, and not just laughing all the time at it. I do wonder if I showed this movie to some family members, if they would laugh at the accents, then I'd end up laughing with them. Anyways, another sex scene, same deal, Jason's body covering up Gemma, though it's a closer shot of the lovemaking, where you see Jason really going to town on her in the kissing department.


Meanwhile, Baxter shacks up in a power plant, preparing an explosive, which he later reveals is “C-14.” Yeah, that's deadlier than C-4.


Oh fuck, here it comes. So Jason and Gemma roll up in Jason's beetle car, whatever it's called, going to the gym. The outfit Gemma wears is what she stays in for the rest of the movie. This was her kidnapping scene. William's inside working out. Gemma's outfit, I couldn't tell because of the video quality if she was wearing skin-colored leggings or not. I hope not, because it would be her skimpiest outfit to date. The two crooks, which included the earlier mentioned Collis, knock out Blade and roofie Gemma. William hears what's going on, puts his hands over his head, which made me think he was getting a damn psychic connection. During this viewing, I laughed out loud at that part, remembering about the psychic link angle with Jason. He storms out the gym, tries to stop the car that had Gemma, one of them opens their door, forcing William to spin around, go over the hood of a white car, and fall on the pavement. This shouldn't put him in a hospital bed for the rest of the movie! That's right, and the doctor said he had three broken ribs and possible lung damage. Just for being hit by a car door, going over a car hood, which didn't look intense, and landing on the pavement, again not looking intense. I'd probably get bruised ribs, and just cuts on my arms and face, with that landing on the pavement. I'm a fat bastard (I didn't say that in an Aussie accent), William's a pretty fit old man, that shit shouldn't cause that kind of damage. That damage is also minimized to zero when the doctor said that William mentioned that he willed himself not to feel pain. Jason's response, “He can do that.” So...why keep him in the hospital? He's not in pain, let him fuck off. It did dawn on me that with William out, it basically allowed for Lucy to swoop in and play a role in the action packed finale. She had her own role in that, I don't think William would've done exactly what she did, but still. It's evident that this movie seemingly tried to snuff out some previous co-stars, namely Gemma and William, to make room for this new character, Lucy. It also puts into perspective that Day of the Panther never put Gemma in this damsel in distress position. She was restrained, but she fought back. In this movie, where it shows her kicking some trainee ass, training to be part of this task force, for her to be kidnapped easily and barely try to fight her away out of the power plant really contradicts and negates her strong character. I get into it hard about her being very quirky and a bit of a bitch, but it turns out that the criticisms on the latter are more focused on this movie. So with that and how much she got reduced to a damsel in distress role, Day of the Panther actually does her more justice. Typing all this up really helped in putting a wedge between the two movies, noting a difference that I hadn't done so previously.


On the flipside, yeah Lucy fills in for Gemma as a strong lady and William as a helpful partner to Jason in arms, the movie sacrifices one female character's strength for another, balancing each other out. However, Gemma's already an established character, it just negates the development she got. Wait a minute, I'm talking about character development in this film, I'm getting ahead of myself. I explained enough anyways, I'm kind of doing this just because I like making up a discussion like this. It entertains me. I think there's some legitimacy in it, which is weird how back and forth I am with Gemma, but again, she's a fascinating case study, I never would've said any of this coming out of my first viewing. I simply would've been all “This movie is just dumb, funny, and action-packed.” It can take another viewing to be more analytical, especially to bad movies with high entertainment value.


Anyways, Blade said he wants to marry Gemma, and William has to be there to give her away. That just begs the question of where Gemma's parents are. Remember, William is her uncle. I guess they died. Blade also said William's been in tougher situations than this. Okay, so why did they keep him in the hospital? My guess is budget, shoot a lot of his stuff in one location, which means they were nearing the end of production during the time this scene was shot.


I mentioned earlier about some goons from the first movie returning in this film. That happens after the hospital scene. I'm definitely sure at least the long haired shirtless guy returns, he's dressed similarly enough as well as wearing his hair the same way. Jason kicks their ass with no trouble, I don't know why they bothered hanging at his car. After that quick beatdown, Jason gets a message on the radio about Baxter shacking up in the power plant, Gemma being held hostage there.


Cut to Jason talking with Colin about all this, and you see SWAT team bozos. It's funny that they get some shine and not Jason's special task force, they just want you to forget about them. Apparently the power plant was welded up and shut down, nobody can really break in, but yet there's an active phone line, Colin said possibly for maintenance. So how was Baxter able to break into the power plant in the first place? Who knows? Baxter wants Jason to come to the plant at 6PM, or else he cuts Gemma's fingers off one by one. Colin said he stalled by saying Jason got a concussion from a blow to the head, and is in the hospital. That's ridiculous. As if the person who knocked out Jason in that kidnapping scene was powerful enough to hospitalize the great Jason Blade. I guess Baxter bought it? If he really did, then he's a freaking idiot, especially after all he's been through with Blade. They're arch enemies, for him to buy that story is insulting. Jason suggested tracing Baxter's location through the phone, to which Colin said the building has 8 extensions throughout the building. What? Okay, whatever. Jason suggests breaking in at night, but Colin said that place is just filled with dead air, any sound made could be easily heard by Baxter. Right. All this talk was pointless, as Colin said Baxter is armed and that he'd shoot Gemma if they tried anything on him. I guess that scene was made for padding purposes, they already filled in 10 minutes with a recap section. There are shots of plant's interior, showing nothing being turned on, but there's smoke coming from one area. What was that place anyways? It just implies that the power plant is not totally decommissioned. Baxter's grand plan I think was to blow up the power plant and either pollute all of Perth or just be a destructive bastard. Those motives interchange anyways.


Colin fails to get Baxter to move the deadline, Lucy is brought in as a negotiator. This woman is also that, not just a psychologist and a trainer of Israeli intelligence. So many talents, and she's replacing William and Gemma in action. I put “in action” because William does have a particular role in this film...oh boy.


During the scene where Baxter tells Gemma about the C-14 plastic explosives, I took a harder look at Gemma's outfit. She was wearing leggings, they really match her skin color, or it's just the really low quality of this video. I don't think these movies were ever given a legit DVD treatment. They were out on video, I think on DVD in a blank disc kind of way (meaning VHSrip on the disc), and that's it. Lucy first tries to make contact with Baxter, fails pretty quickly. She ends up succeeding in pushing the time to 8AM the next morning, this was done in a later scene, so she's not just all talk, she does get results, but Colin still bragged about her too much. The action comes back with Jason, Colin, random blonde guy, and the return of that tall, formerly bumbling bloke, trying to get Bradford, the skullet member of the kidnapping duo from his trailer. As they do, the other guy involved in the kidnapping, Collis, spots this and escapes on foot, with Jason going after him. Pretty unique to this movie is a foot chase with Blade. While there was a foot chase of sorts with Linda and those 3 hoodlums from the first movie, this one differs a fair deal. It features both guys scaling a building by using the balconies and bars, like a ladder. It looks very risky, dangerous, but these guys do it very well. I can get Jason doing it, but tache-wearing Collis being so good at it is pretty surprising. It kind of was negated because it just ends up with Collis taking an elevator to the bottom of the building, Blade running down the stairs, so they just go up and down the building. Collis tried to escape by commandeering a car, Jason was able to make it and hang off the car as the man tried to drive and force him off it. Jason falls off when the car stops, takes a tiny spill on the pavement. He gets back up to continue the foot chase, which ends with Collis getting hit by a car, in a bit of slow motion. They made it look like he died from that, even though he did the cautious thing of jumping as the car was about to hit him, hitting the windshield and lessening the damage he would've taken if he just stayed standing still. Freezing on the driver, it looked like he was smiling! Yeah, because hitting people with a car is fun. He was wearing sunglasses too, shady fucker. That was a nice little scene. It did dawn on me that there was a period of no action in this movie that was longer than the previous downtimes in both movies. At least it made up for it with a really nice chase. It was interrupted a bit with Lucy's calling of Baxter, and that followed up the chase scene with her trying again. The previous time had her talking with Gemma a bit, who basically tells some stuff Baxter wants her to tell. Again, she does get Baxter to crack and move the deadline. It happens after a little scene with Colin, and he gets called away to Blade. She basically gets Baxter to crack by speaking more aggressively, basically reversing the roles, though you don't hear Baxter's responses to this. Damn, this woman is so talented, it's as if they're trying to have her compete with Blade. A foolish endeavor, Jason Blade rules over all! That scene ended with a shot of her looking up to her right at something. What, the cameraman, the director? That'd be funny if that was actually a 4th wall break, since that happened in the first film.


Blade, dressed like he did in the brothel scene, minus the glasses, interrogates Bradford with Colin there as well. They use some strong arm tactics, including Blade doing something really underhanded to get Bradford to talk. He gives some information, Baxter having them not only kidnap Gemma, but buy up some martial arts weapons (the way he said “martial arts” was funny), contract some fighters, and that's it. He said they set up a jail break, making me think they helped Baxter escape. I don't know, they don't hang on that point. Jason promised to set Bradford free if he gave information. When the interrogation was over, Blade asked Colin to book him. So what did Jason do?





Jason Blade did a great tribute to Arnold Schwarzenegger there. I don't know if that was intentional, but certainly Blade made that line work. The chief inspector from the first movie finally appears in this scene where he gives some info on what's about to go down. Jason enters through the front, Lucy and “a” task force comes in through the back. I put “a” in quotations, because the man doesn't reference Blade's own task force. I want to assume that to be true, just so I'm right in how useless that task force of Jason's was. Jason would rather go in alone, but there's no argument on the matter. Gemma is seen trying to break the rope with the metal wheel thing she is tied to. So, not a total damsel, she was actively trying to escape, though it took a long time to get there, granted, Baxter was there with her a lot. No rape scene though, but Undefeatable took that idea.


There's a scene where Jason Blade, still in his lovely suit and tie, pays a visit to William, whose eyes roll in the back of his head. Okay, so is he healthy or just insane? Is he channeling his telepathic communication superpower? Gemma does escape, but is stopped by the sight of a man, dressed in black, wearing a hockey mask. No, it does not look like Jason Voorhees, but yeah, these fighters that Bradford mentioned are all clad in black, and wear masks, not the Halloween ones that the hoodlums wore in the Linda chase scene in the first movie, but still masks that give off a strange horror vibe. Given that Trenchard-Smith came out of Dead End Drive-In right before this movie, probably explains the little horror touches in both movies with masked fighters. Oh, Baxter does tell Gemma that after he cripples Jason, he'll make him watch her be “entertained” by Baxter, and that she would enjoy that. Okay, rape, that's just pleasant. Spoiler, it doesn't happen. I probably would've liked it, if it meant seeing Gemma's boobies.


William awakes moving his right hand around in a certain motion, I want to think it's him finishing the channeling process of his apparent superpower. Also, he said he can't be with Jason tomorrow, he can't help him...ugh, I touched on it earlier in Day of the Panther, but I'm holding back. He told Jason to fight cold, no emotion, and to go to the gym and work out all the tension. Jesus! He basically told Jason to sweat and offer more porn for the ladies and the men who like those kind of guys. So Jason is working out, hitting the bag, and then motherfucking William communicates with Jason telepathically. It looked like he could feel Jason fucking up the sandbag, and he tells Jason to stop. Okay, Jason seemingly responds, but going back to my point in Day of the Panther, Jason would've done the same thing without any mention of William's power, any use of it. It was a natural comedown anyways, hit the bag a few times, lashing out, calm down, William's words were not necessary at all. It's just absolutely weird to slot this in, because for all intents and purposes, both movies are serious films. The wackiness comes from basically the things that distract from the main story. Day of the Panther, take down a drug lord, serious stuff, but it has men in Halloween masks persistently chasing a woman, a ginger that loves her dancing and seducing of the hero, these things that distract from the path the movie lays out. Strike of the Panther, the brothel scene, I could end there, but then comes this damn William part. It's like the writer had serious intentions, while Brian Trenchard-Smith had ulterior motives, because I feel like this is his doing. Given his history as a prolific B-movie filmmaker, I imagine he'd pull this stuff off in his other movies. I remember BMX Bandits being wacky in its own right, though it's been a couple years since I saw it. I now intend to watch Dead End Drive-In soon, in order to see if my point has weight, if Trenchard-Smith does go into these silly scenes. I believe so, and while all the other ones are mostly funny, William's telepathic link with Jason is just downright baffling. I do admit to laughing at it, but it is a serious point of contention. Once again it comes back with William, saying in his mind, for Jason to wake up. Okay, Jason wakes up after that, but again, fucking guy could've done the same thing naturally, all you have to do is mute the movie, close your eyes for a few seconds, bam, he gets up on his own. If they were really going to put this superpower of William's to good use, they might as well give it more range, more varying examples rather than telling Jason shit he just does naturally.


Anyways, Jason wakes up, cut to the ultimate porn for people who love men, Jason taking a shower, and there's a shot of dat ass!





Gemma, no nudity. I wonder if Paris Jefferson refused nudity. I bet she did, hence the concerted effort in covering her up. If that's true than dammit woman. Oh, funny thing I never picked up, Blade's hood ornament on his car is a panther. So that's why he picked that car over the white one from the first film.


The stage is set for the third act. This scene in the power plant lasts for 26 minutes! That includes how Blade and company enter the power plant, all the way to the end of the movie. Baxter welcomes Jason inside, telling him to close the door and padlock it. By that point, the task force, who are wearing “SWAT” on their outfit storm the castle. So, let's say that task force is SWAT. Jason's task force, though never given a name, is not SWAT. So, HA, that's not Jason's men, so that part of Jason having his own task force, a waste!


The bodies drop like flies anyways, a few minutes into their entering, one of them gets sliced by one of the killers in a hockey mask. William throughout the scene gives Jason words of wisdom telepathically such as saying the same shit he said earlier, to fight cold. Also, be steady, all these things Jason doesn't need reminding. HE'S JASON BLADE! Man, this is so annoying, and it's so like William. He first tries to move on after Linda's murder with a zen response, but then when Gemma was threatened by Baxter in the first movie and he takes off his shoes to get into some action, the man goes a 180 and wants to be at the front lines of Jason's offense. Despite being put in a hospital in the second movie, the fucker still wants to be up there in front, trying to have the damn spotlight, all he did this time was use his mind. It's ridiculous. There's an instance of a SWAT member shooting a killer, but that's about it, Jason takes care of the rest, the SWAT team except for Lucy just get picked off one by one.


Back to William giving his sage advice to Jason, to watch out, above him is a killer. Too late psychic, and then he said to let the killer take him, note this was when he had a thin chain around Jason's neck. Sigh. “Remember the teaching, remember the teaching.” Even if Jason actively follows William's words, none of them really hold any weight. They're either very generic or just unnecessary inasmuch that Jason could and would do this crap without his involvement. Hey, he beat on all kinds of people before this scene, in both movies, including Baxter. Yeah, these are masked killers, but that doesn't mean papa William is the right man to guide him. Blade doesn't need guiding, he's Jason Fucking Blade! Damn you William, old fucker, he's probably dead now. Jason takes care of that strangler pretty easily anyways. As the third act continues, Jason gradually gets wounds from the killers and their swords, ripping his shirt more and more. This just really foreshadowed him getting the whole shirt off, which Baxter did in their final fight.


The highlight of this entire sequence was when a masked guy, with a baseball bat, does some flashy things with it, trying to intimidate Jason, and I guess the viewer, but totally blowing it when he did this. It was so funny, and would've made it my favorite scene in the movie, but again, the brothel scene is a classic.





When Lucy is the only member of the task force left, she becomes the one to disarm the bomb with wire cutting. Yeah, this woman has so many talents, that apparently also include disarming bombs. As Jason is in control, beating on two masked men, Williams said “Doing well.” That was so unnecessary, let the viewer say that. Before Lucy makes it to the bomb, she does get slashed on the arm by a killer. By the way, apart from going after Jason, these guys just come in and out of sight, being like ninjas. That's pretty cool, but with Jason, fuck that, just try to fight him only to get whipped by him. Back to Williams, I did laugh when a nurse asked him why he's sitting up, and he said to “Shut up, woman, I'm in the middle of a fight.” Stupid, but funny. Jason does use the weapons his enemies tried to use, including that baseball bat from the moonwalker, a sword, and of course, nunchucks. It's not at the level of Bruce Lee, but he still does a damn good job at it. Jason does kill some of these guys, which is the first instance of Jason having an actual body count. I just realized that, and really, who can blame him? Between Baxter, a kidnapped Gemma, and the annoying old man in his head, he was just pushed to this extreme. The latter came up again, sweating, eyes closed, saying the grandmaster would be proud. What, the old Asian guy who sat Native American style in that Panther induction ceremony? The same guy who only appears in that scene and never again? Alright.


Jason makes it to Gemma, Baxter stops that from leading anywhere, leading to the big final fight. One word to describe this, Commando. It takes place in some industrial location, it's not brightly lit, moreso dark here, and it features the villain being electrocuted. However, Bennett from that movie kept on fighting after that, Baxter on the other hand didn't. That's a shame. I preferred their first battle. They did everything in their power to make this rematch different. Whereas the first battle took place in a wide open space, during the day, this one took place in a dimly lit, closed-off location, where it might as well be night. Whereas the first fight didn't involve use of the surroundings, mostly just hand to hand combat, save for Baxter using a spear in that first fight, this rematch has Jason for example shoving Baxter's head against a support beam. The actual fighting though is still of high quality, featuring some kicks and punches, wrestling holds that made this into a varied beast. Gemma escapes and tries to help Jason, only to get hit by Baxter. That pushed Jason to kill, leading to some kicks that pushed Baxter to be electrocuted. Baxter's death sounds are really lame, making that scene have an off-climax. It's a bit funny though as he just stays being electrocuted, nobody tends to him, you could imagine him being just left there until the power goes out or something. Oh, and Lucy disarmed the bomb, she kind of celebrates by jumping over the dead body of her colleague, and whistling. That's just weird given that's happening near a dead SWAT team body! Also, bitch couldn't help but steal the thunder. I honestly would've had Gemma say this, definitely Jason, but Lucy says it...





Sigh. Anyways, Jason said he doesn't want to live with Gemma, instead, let's get married. Uhhh, okay, so they're going to be married and live in different places? Not like that's maintained, all their love scenes take place in Jason's home. Though her home's not shown in the second movie, in the first film she's seen living with uncle William, so it's possible that still carries over. Anyways, shirtless and wounded Jason, whose wounds looked darker and closed up, which is inconsistent to them being fresh scars, walks off with Gemma. I'm thankful for that, if Lucy popped in, or even William with his telepathy shit, I would not be happy.


While I did complain a lot during this movie, this is coming from reviewing the film, putting my thoughts together and realizing there are a lot of things to complain about. As I said earlier, there's a joy in complaining about movies like this, and that just adds on to me actually loving this film, as well as Day of the Panther. I think my discussion of that film makes it clear that I love it, but here, among all the complaining, I do feel the need to make it clear that I still highly enjoy this movie.


Really, if you cut out the recap from the beginning of Strike, you can easily join the movies together and you'd have a mostly non-stop 2 and ½ hour blast. The two words to describe these movies, “a blast.” They aren't boring at all, they are wrought with very silly things, but they are so funny that you let them slide. The acting is either a bit hokey or wooden, the dialogue is very simple and pretty stupid at times, the music is limited to a few tracks, but you just can't beat that driving beat that carries through the fight scenes in both movies. Despite complaining about Gemma, Lucy, and William, the fact that they have a lot of character traits and quirks is very fascinating. Movies like these would focus on the main hero and only touch on supporting characters briefly. This film series didn't get that memo.


This leads into differences. The similarities are clear in that most of the actors are in both movies, the sequel follows right after the first film's story wraps up, Jason Blade's kicking ass and taking names, looks sexy doing that, had a relationship with Gemma, William helps out in whatever way, generalizing things make it seem like both movies are really similar. Really though, there's a bunch of differences separating the films, but they still end up being two peas in a pod. You have a stronger sense of death in the second movie, the first film had a slightly purer display of martial arts, William's different roles in both movies, Gemma's strong showing in the first movie in comparison to being almost a complete damsel in distress in the second movie. The final fight is an a wide open space in the first movie, the second movie having it decided it a smaller, more walled area, and the location is too dark. That's one little nag about the movie, and the video quality really didn't help, this scene was too dark. There are more scenes in the first film, despite the Linda scene taking place for over 11 minutes. I feel like here, they really put a lot of focus in the power plant that it just eclipses Laura's long scene.


Basically, digging into the movie reveals a bunch of differences, but both films really complement each other, to the point where I'll make it a necessuty to double feature the movies. I don't believe I did on the first viewing. The only thing I'd change is doing it much earlier, like during dinner. Still, both films are Ozploitation shenanigans with lots of martial arts, and should be watched together. They're definitely essential B-movies to watch, getting a taste of what was going on down under. I came out of this really loving Edward John Stazak and being so sad that he didn't do more movies. He really should've, he had a charm about him, a presence, a smile that could light up the room, and a body that is a convincing weapon to see on screen. Would I have him do dramatic movies? Hell no, not even most comedies, the man's niche was in martial arts films, and it was something that should've been explored more. I also came out remembering the side characters, the villains, everyone basically, much more than I did in the past. All I remember from the first viewing was the name Baxter, the man that is Jason Blade, the name Gemma, the telepathic crap with William, though it was much crazier than I remembered in actuality, and Lucy's Brigitte Dench Nielsen look. The fact this review is so long really showed how much this movie got out of me, which I'm actually thankful for. It's just really stupid fun, with some really kick-ass action.


The question then comes up on which one I like more. Well, it's hard to say. Even though I complained a lot on Strike of the Panther, again, doesn't mean I disliked, I still enjoyed it big time. I think Day of the Panther made me more impressed with the martial arts, while Strike of the Panther made me more impressed with its bouts of insanity. Day of the Panther has a lot of insanity though, Strike of the Panther has a lot of action. I think both movies have a dominant factor, despite having the same main two ingredients, and it just falls under preference, a dominant martial arts presence or a dominant insanity presence. Given the movies I watched before and even the one after this, it would be consistent for me to say Day of the Panther. However, that brothel scene. That one scene is my favorite out of both films. I'm torn, The 80s Picture House said Strike of the Panther is better, mentioning the recap portion making it almost unnecessary to watch the first film, and its overall zaniness making it surpass Day of the Panther. I would agree with those points, but with that, Day of the Panther does attract me as it's more grounded...relatively speaking, than the second film, and it's like the underdog, and I gravitate towards that. I gravitate towards martial arts, which that film edges out in quality in that department over Strike of the Panther...but that brothel scene! Moonwalking killer with a baseball bat! Telepathic super old man, William! That bastard Baxter being killed, “Shocking.” Man, it's so tough. Going by a more complete package, for now, I'll say Day of the Panther is better. Still, I highly recommend both movies, you can't go wrong with either, they're a blast, and fun to take the piss out of, which I did, more than I expected actually. Yeah the movies have a “so bad it's good” appeal to it, but with me being legitimately impressed at the martial arts stuff, I'd say the movies are varied beasts, thus making them more worth viewing. I'll end this, undoubtedly the largest portion of the internet drought movie reviews with the following statement.


All hail Jason Blade.


10/10 – for both films. Again, for now, my favorite of the two is Day of the Panther. To clarify, the ratings are on overall enjoyment. Giving this a 10/10 doesn't mean it's a flawless masterpiece of cinematic art. It's just the maximum in entertainment value. Also, the rest of this paragraph was typed after getting my internet back. Sigh, Paris Jefferson was born in 1970, these movies came out in 1987. Do the math, so my desire for her to get naked and other comments on her body are much more lecherous. I assume the legal age though is lower than 18, and since there are love scenes with the lady, and she's put in scenes where she is highly sexualized, then that must mean her being 17 and doing these things is just fine in Australia. Still, it makes things really awkward and I won't bother editing out my previous comments on her. Better to leave things in the open than trying to hide them. Well, at least in this case. Moving on...


Death Cage





As I said way back in my Shanghai Express review, the more I talk about Death Cage, the more I want to watch it. I did it just enough to really want to see it, and it was something I wanted to do for a while anyways. It came from recently watching Q&A sessions with cast members from the Mortal Kombat movies and being reminded how much a gem Robin Shou is. Robin Shou in hindsight played a part in my childhood because he was in two movies I enjoyed in my youth, Beverly Hills Ninja and the first Mortal Kombat movie. I did see Mortal Kombat Annihilation a bit later and at the time I liked it, but now it's a different story, liking it more for it being awful, and even so, there's a lot of bad stuff in that I simply haven't been able to like or laugh at. As a kid, it was definitely on the grounds that he was the only good guy doing really nice martial arts, him being Chinese, I just latched onto anyone that fit the bill, coming out of my Jackie Chan fandom. It's why I gravitated towards Jet Li for example. I still loved my Jackie Chan, but with martial arts movies airing on TV, it eventually became like being a kid in the candy store. That candy store though was nothing like it is now, because back then, if it wasn't Jackie Chan, it was Jet Li. If it wasn't Jet Li, I guess it was Robin Shou. As an adult, the appreciation for the man stems from being sad that he didn't break America, and feeling like he didn't have the best career path. I don't know his personal story, so I'm just left wondering what could've been. The Q&As I mentioned did give more insight into the man himself. I didn't pay attention to the credits on the Mortal Kombat movies, but Shou choreographed some fight scenes in both films. Looking at both movies, I can see why he was tasked to do it. Despite loving the first film, it's not really a paragon of martial arts, and good choreography was needed to really accentuate strengths and hide weaknesses, especially for one Bridgette Wilson, who didn't know any martial arts, one look at her and you can see that she had no physically strong feature. However, she did her fights and stunts without using a double, committed, had a good fight coordinator (Shou specifically choreographed the fight scenes shot in Thailand: Johnny Cage vs. Scorpion and himself as Liu Kang vs. Reptile), and kicked ass. With Shou's own contribution, I can now thank him for making the Cage vs. Scorpion fight scene one of the best in the movie, second only to Liu Kang vs. Reptile, which Shou himself choreographed. That means he's the person to thank for the best fight scenes in the movie. This level of respect and admiration sprung up during my last viewing of the Mortal Kombat movies, which was 3 years ago. From there, I tried to find other movies that he did, and unfortunately he hasn't done a lot, especially some movies being risky ones, that I've avoided, namely Dead or Alive. He was in the Death Race movie that starred Jason Statham, but he didn't do any martial arts in that, and his role wasn't so big. I watched Honor & Glory, and it was like killing 2 birds with one stone, I was able to watch the second American Godfrey Ho movie he made, and I got to watch this man kick some ass. When I picture Shou though, I picture him with the long jet black hair that looked like something a rocker from the 60s would sport. That was what he had in the Mortal Kombat movies and Beverly Hills Ninja. In Honor & Glory and Death Cage, he had much shorter hair. He still has his hair like he did in the late 90s, though shorter in length.


Death Cage came up after watching Honor & Glory, and wanting to watch more Robin Shou. I wanted to find a movie specifically where he was the lead, where his martial arts was given the main spotlight. In Honor & Glory, he played a supporting role, which was great, but I wanted more. I discovered Death Cage on IMDB, but could not find it anywhere. During that time, I was constantly downloading from Rarelust, who posted downloads of porn films, softcore movies, horror, martial arts, mostly genre movies, not mainstream stuff. Given my affinity for the non-mainstream, old porn films and softcore movies, I downloaded a lot from this site. There was a request form, I haven't been there in a while, I assume it's still there. I filled out the request form for Death Cage. This person was able to fulfill that request, and unless I'm mistaken, Rarelust is the only source now to download Death Cage and watch it. Not only that, but it's a high quality DVDrip. I reviewed Death Cage here years ago, but that's enough time to kind of do a full review again, especially since I don't even remember what I said about it before. I'd probably end up repeating myself, but whatever.


Death Cage's IMDB shows the poster having the image of Joe Lewis in the titular location. I had to look again, and it did have Robin Shou, but he occupies such a small portion of the poster, I forgot he was in it. I assume that the marketing for the movie was centered around Joe Lewis, similar to how they marketed a 70s movie called Karate Cop, changed it to Slaughter in San Francisco, and put Chuck Norris on the cover, and not the titular character. It fools people into thinking they're the protagonist or even the lead character. Chuck Norris is the villain in that movie, but appears as much as a villain in that kind of movie does, which is nothing close to how much screen time the protagonist has. It's the same with Joe Lewis, who played Mr. Hunter in this movie. He is the main villain, but he doesn't get a lot of screen time, as the story is more focused on the training of Nam See Hon, played by Robin Shou, among other things. Also, Mr. Hunter isn't any special as a bad guy, other than the guy playing him being a veteran martial artist. He just sits or stands, watching the fights, and runs some gambling organization that relies on the fights. He's a mobster of sorts, and in the end, takes matters into his own hands, which does separate him from most mobster villains since that means he gets into a fight, and not just using a gun or whatever. My point is, Joe Lewis should not have been plastered on a poster like that, the lead is Robin Shou, he should've at least shared the poster with Mr. Lewis. Even better, half the poster showing the good people, which are See Hon's godfather, his...god-sister (I really don't know what to label her as, and it's very vague if they have an intimate relationship, I'll just say no), his uncle and cousin, and you can throw in his buddy Michael. Just to clarify, Michael is Chinese, it's a strange name to give someone of that nationality. Meanwhile one of the villains is a white man named Pi Gum. I'm not joking. It's pronounced “Pee Goom” but I just say “Pie Gum.” I guess the proper way is more vulgar since it involves saying “pee” but that's just immature to consider that...moving on. The other half of the poster would then have the villains, which would be Pi Gum, Mr. Hunter, and this Thai boxer with crazy looking hair, a bit of it died yellow-ish, throw in some random Thai hoodlums, and of course the pair of female assassins. Nam See Hon would thus be in the center of the poster, wearing a muscle shirt, since he doesn't go topless, and I wouldn't show him in his fighting gear. I'll get to that later.


The IMDB page at the time didn't have any description of the movie. I can't remember if there was one and if it was just insufficient, or there was just none at all. The blurb that you see next to the poster and underneath the title, the plot synopsis, that needed a change, and there was no short summary which is down the page. I added those, so if you go to the IMDB page of Death Cage, you'll see my words on it. Reading it, I do need to change it. I'll just quote the synopsis.


Nam See Hon represents the Wa Chai Gym in pro Chinese Boxing matches. See Hon sharpens his abilities to survive high profile fights. The owner of the Kents Gym controls local gambling and pressures the Wa Chai Gym in violent ways.


Corrections, Wai Chai Gym, not Wa Chai. They were Thai Boxing matches, the movie was shot in Thailand and is set there, my ignorance showing there. See Hon does sharpen his abilities to survive high profile fights, but at first, because of his godfather, the Wai Chai Gym doesn't compete in matches. This leads into the last sentence, Mr. Hunter, as the owner of Kents Gym (subtitles say that, it probably should be “Kent's Gym” but I'm going to stick to the subtitles for consistency as I do for other things in this film. They use apostrophes properly in other situations.), who does control the local gambling, specifically on the fights, he does pressure the Wai Chai Gym in violent ways, with thugs sent to persuade them to fight. I know there's a character limit with these synopsis submissions, so I might've had to cut some corners to make that as succinct as possible. I still made some errors, but ah well. Also, I may be misled by the subtitles, which is why I won't bother editing the character names. For example, IMDB says “Lan Si Han” instead of Nam See Hon, though just going to a scene that has his name on the poster, missing it until now, it's “Lan Se Han.” I don't want to change it based on that, I'll just go with Nam See Hon, it sounds more Vietnamese, and his biological father did fight in Vietnam, and his godfather looks Vietnamese. Or Chinese, sorry, ignorance. Joe Lewis is credited as Mr. Kent. Subtitles call him Mr. Hunter, which is a better name, so I'll use that. The dubbing, which was Chinese, Cantonese maybe to be more specific, didn't indicate what his name was. Either that or I just never was able to spot the uttering of “Kent.” Then again, I haven't heard “Hunter” in that movie. Kents Gym, Mr. Kent, makes sense, he owns that gym. However, I'll still call him Mr. Hunter. You can see how this movie is just a mystery in terms of what's really “canon” and what's not. I'm basically sticking by what the subtitles say, again, since I had to add a synopsis/summary on IMDB, that really shows that there's no 100% on all the details of this movie. I wish Robin Shou would talk about this, maybe I haven't found an interview where he does. Also, IMDB has the title as “Zhan long,” but the poster says “Death Cage.” Going for English, I went with Death Cage. Google translate offers no result, I clicked on a suggested correction, and it's only in the Chinese characters. Translating that to English reveals the possible title of “War Dragon.” That's a cool name, but I think Death Cage fits more with the story, since they do fight in what's described as a death cage in the end of the film. “Zhan long” could simply be a misspelling.


Back to how mysterious this movie is, the release year is a bit weird. When I googled it, I got 1990 and 1988. I think 1988 is the official year, because the movie has a lot of 80s elements to it, and IMDB has it as 1988, and since it's 2018, I incidentally celebrated its 30th anniversary. 1990 is more or less regarding the year it was released in Hong Kong, so it's possible that it floated around for 2 years before its Hong Kong premiere. That is a bit important to bring up because this was a Hong Kong production in Thailand. Coming out of Shanghai Express' audio commentary, I've learned that Hong Kong filmmakers would shoot in Thailand. I don't know why I missed out on the Thailand setting, its people, the fact that they are doing Thai boxing matches, on my first viewing. I believe it's because I got wrapped into the movie's insane use of blood (squibs) and me making comparisons to Mortal Kombat. As much as I love the 1995 movie, the biggest complaint people have against it is the fact that it's PG-13, didn't have the brutality of the original video games. I was perfectly fine with that, but if you want to see Liu Kang make people squirt blood from just simple blows to the body and head, this is the movie for you. Liu Kang in the sense that it's the actor who went on to play him, which was perfect casting, he's how I pictured Liu Kang. If you want an actual Liu Kang character kicking ass, breaking bones, and killing people in a a more faithful rendition of the source material, watch Mortal Kombat Legacy, that's an awesome little mini-series, that unfortunately has not been finished, and probably never will.


I gave a lot of preview talk and discussion surrounding the movie, how about actually diving in?


The description I supplied IMDB pretty much spells what happens, and it's what I remember along with the movie being Squibmania, but I had forgotten some things, and they mostly center around the 80s elements this movie delivered. More on that soon.


To expand upon the IMDB description, it all starts when Nam See Hon kicks goes up against the leopard print wearing Thai boxer representing Kents Gym. I bring up the outfit because the wardrobe the fighters wear during matches is so weird, they look like they come from a video game. Not necessarily Mortal Kombat or even Street Fighter, something less serious. It kind of takes me out of the movie because they are so ridiculous. Pi Gum and See Hon are the biggest offenders. The latter's outfit here is kind of tame in comparison to what's to follow. A blue muscle tee and shorts, one look at them, and you think he's going to go for a swim, but no, those are his fighting clothes. He has a hard fought match against the Thai boxer (the one with the yellow hair patch), and he wins fair and square. Well, it looked like it was a victory, but they let the match go on I guess, because they seem to indicate that Wai Chai Gym lost this match. What happened was the Thai boxer pulled a pro wrestling heel move, pulling out brass knuckles from underneath the canvas, and messing up See Hon's leg with it. You get sweat flying off See Hon's bobbling head as an amazing reaction shot. Amazing in that it's so ridiculous, yet funny. See Hon's godfather, who I couldn't catch his name, went in to check on his pupil when the opponent comes back with the brass knuckles and messes up his leg as well, making him wheelchair bound for the rest of the movie.


Going back to the indication that they lost, despite cheating, the next scene shows students of the Wai Chai Gym leaving, and their business shutting down as a result of it. When Godfather (I'll just call him that) talks to Lin Da, his daughter, about this, he said that it's human nature that losers are interpreted as always being in the wrong. Mind you, I'm going off subtitles that could be a bit off, which has been a theme for a couple of my movie viewings during this period. Since they are losers, the students want nothing to do with Wai Chai. Their best student, See Hon, lost, it's all about students wanting to learn the best Kung Fu. Since Kents Gym won, that becomes the hotspot now for people to learn Kung Fu, in Thailand, randomly. There's no explanation for them being in Thailand, these mostly Chinese people, but ah well. Mr. Hunter, the owner of Kents Gym has thus purchased the Wai Chai facility, and with that comes Pi Gum making his debut in the story. It's really strange that the guy's named Pi Gum when he is a white person. Then again, it's strange to hear these American people dubbed in Chinese, but that's beside the point. Benny The Jet in Dragons Forever was dubbed in Cantonese, despite being from Spain. So Pi Gum, another white guy, and a bunch of Asians, maybe Thai natives, trash the Wai Chai banner, and Pi Gum makes short work of Wai Chai student and friend of the family, Michael. They relocate to a garage, and have a little car repair shop. That place always looks dusty and never cleaned up, but they spend a lot of time there. Given what the movie gets up to, it's a wonder that there wasn't some montage of them fixing up the place.


After settling there, we meet Tong Chuen, who is Godfather's brother-in-law. That's what the subtitles say, they also say that Godfather's sister married him, so I think that justifies the brother-in-law tag. I'm pretty dumb on those terms, so, I'll go with it. Siu Chu tags along, who is Tong's daughter. A joyous family reunion that leads into some backstory on how they came to know each other. Godfather was a soldier, I'm not sure for what army, possibly Vietnam, they say “Guerrilla troops” in the subtitles, I'm assuming that means the Vietcong. Godfather must've been the opposing army, stopping those “Guerrilla troops.” Tong Chuen was someone who wasn't in uniform, he helped to hide the soldiers, and have them ambush the Vietcong. A bloody battle ensues, and See Hon's father dies in it. His final words, to Godfather, was for him to raise See Hon. Looking at the younger Tong Chuen, that might be the same actor, just with his hair dyed black, and his tache shaved off. Or hell, it could be like old school martial arts movies where actors would be aged older, their hair turned gray, and they play older fighters. Before that trip down memory lane, Godfather reveals that with him getting older, he feels less brave, so he's not pursuing revenge for the Wai Chai gym being disgraced and whatnot.


As I mentioned earlier, there was confusion on my end over what See Hon and Lin Da's relationship entailed. Whether it was a sibling one, or one where they're an item. The confusion starts during this scene, as she enters the repair shop, asking See Hon to take her to the movies. Then again, siblings can do that, and this lady seems more into having a companion to hang out then someone to have a romantic relationship with. Then again, they're “god siblings,” not related by blood, so they can screw and it wouldn't be biologically wrong, but I imagine that since they grew up together together, presumably as siblings, it would thus be taboo for them to get into a romance. Whatever the case, I'm just putting too much thought on it. The point of Lin Da's involvement in that scene was to prove Godfather's point about her being out all day and basically being kind of a spoiled brat. She's complaining to See Hon to take her to the movies, when the man has to work at the repair shop, she's being selfish. Uncle Tong though calms everybody down and tells See Hon to just take her to the movies. Even though these movies are more about the action, you do get some likable characters along the way, some good writing to show that to be true. Tong Chuen thus is a good character. He's much more of a willing teacher than Godfather, who takes more of a position as a father to See Hon rather than a teacher. As such, he is the source of See Hon sharpening his abilities, as my IMDB description said.


Next scene featured Mr. Hunter having his students practice some strikes and forms. It's very brief, but I point this out because you see two women in the background of that. Those are the female assassins, and they are characters I totally forgot. It took until their first fight scene to realize what I noticed the most about them, that being the black girl looked like Sasha Banks, a WWE wrestler. Anyways, little wrestling reference there.


With these white people being dubbed in Chinese, it became hard to really connect with them, it was just too strange to see that being done. I am Latino, and I have an easier time seeing Spanish dubs, and the voices for that don't really match the actors. I kind of go with it, especially since I don't actively watch Spanish dubbing of movies, shows, whatever content. With Dragons Forever, Benny The Jet only had less than 5 lines, so I didn't mind the Cantonese dubbing on him, plus the man's actions spoke louder than his words. With these white antagonists and even a white protagonist (Jesse, some doofus who comes in and out of the movie and is a friend of See Hon's family and a student of their gym), it's hard to take them seriously. Pi Gum has that damn name, when he really should've been given an American-appropriate name like Mr. Hunter. When I see Mr. Hunter flip out, the body movements are funny, but the voice is so off, I just can't warm up to him as a noteworthy bad guy. Like Benny The Jet, actions speak louder than words, and it's when he and Pi Gum fight, that I care about them more. It's a setback when watching these kind of movies, but it's not something that happens all the time, white people that talk in Hong Kong films was a rarity anyways, and when they do speak, it's not for any substantial amount of time. Here, it's substantial, hitting a brick wall. It certainly doesn't ruin the movie, but it's something to bring up.


The next scene involved Mr. Hunter again, basically accepting a money offer from some guy wearing sunglasses. The deal was getting people from Wai Chai gym to fight. Apparently since their absence in fights, business has been down, not many people coming to see the fights. I find that interesting, it's as if Nam See Hon is their Hulk Hogan, another wrestling reference for you. That means he is the big draw, without him, business goes down. Hulk Hogan in his prime, I think business is just fine without a 65 year old fucking dickhead bastard buttfaced idiot. Yeah, I don't like Hogan.


My IMDB description of See Hon being pressured into fighting starts in this scene where some Thai thugs try to mess up the repair shop. They don't really tell him to compete, so without that previous scene with Hunter, you would've thought that they are just hoodlums wanting to cause chaos. See Hon is held back by Godfather. There's a part where See Hon gets some rod or something hitting his bicep area. Looking closely, it appeared that it left a little red mark, showing that the weapon did do some damage. Fast forward a few seconds, the mark is gone, probably indicating that this was shot a while after the strike was first delivered. Oh, analyzing a little thing, Lin Da was seen smacking Michael with her purse, indicating that they hung out. So, it could be that Lin Da just wants to hang out, not necessary that she's trying to have a boyfriend or something. Later actions kind of dispute that, but I still settle on the general companion theory. They were outside the shop and had then noticed the thugs causing trouble.


There's a funny part you have to pause at the right time to see. One of the Thai thugs breaking the fourth wall, he's looking right at the camera here!





Alright, having to correct myself a bit, at the end of this, they did mention Kents Gym, and that Lin Da should practice there, they are practicing there themselves. So, not telling them to fight, but planting that seed in their mind. That sounds very subtle, and the movie's not one for subtlety, so, who knows?


Although I mentioned the willing attitude of Tong Chuen to train See Hon, he does offer sage advice like Godfather, the thing is that he's more proactive. At the same time, Godfather's handicapped, so, kind of limited to what he can do anyways. He gave some advice of endurance to See Hon, and you see Godfather nod his head in approval. See Hon asked what about if a knife is pointed to his neck. Well, it depends on the angle of the knife, good point.


Next scene shows people training in Kents Gym, and most of them look pitiful, they just nabbed any Thai person off the street to fill in that facility. Mr. Hunter informs his crazy haired Thai boxer to convince Wai Chai gym to get back into fights. The next scene, you'd think that man would do that assignment, but instead here comes that goon Pi Gum, who arrives in the garage with some sort of car problem. I'm not sure if he was lying about it, as it quickly went into Lin Da entering the scene and arguing with See Hon about him not being with her at some place. A good excuse, he's occupied, he has a fucking job, this woman, man. She needs someone to go to a dance with her, Pi Gum raises his hand, figuratively speaking, and she's totally fine with it, and then when See Hon resists, thinking the man is shady, she says that he's just jealous. Woman! Sigh, so she goes out with him, and they have a little relationship, which I'm sure makes everyone on See Hon's side unhappy, I don't blame them. Pi Gum really dressed like an 80s douchebag with his loafers, white socks, and some all green ensemble that looks like some silk cloth. Oh, Pi Gum's last name is Son. Pi Gum Son. Jesus, if I can make that into an American name. Pete Gumdry Sons, or Sonberg.


Tong Chuen, who has a character feature of smoking with a cigarette holder, sees See Hon training at night. The next day, he gives See Hon and Michael a lesson. Now, I don't know if the movie is inspired by iconic films from the past, or it's just a coincidence, but Tong's training methods here remind greatly of Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid. It starts with See Hon showing Tong how fast he can polish the roof of a car. He does it in a minute and 15 seconds, which I didn't bother timing myself, it was as quick as that anyways. Tong showed him up by polishing a car door in 55 seconds, again, I'll take their word for it. He moves around in a particular motion, with his hands kind of doing a more fluid version of the “Wax on, wax off” thing that Miyagi did. It impressed See Hon enough that he requests for Tong to train him in his Kung Fu style. Continuing on with using working tools for training, he takes them to some thing that holds an object in place, I don't know my car repair shop lingo. It has a metal rod that your spin around to tighten or loosen the grip this tool has on something. He then does a weapon demonstration using parts from a fender. A dolly is then used as a training object. These things pretty much enhance the movement of their limbs, making them more fluid, at least that's what I gathered. There are scenes where See Hon does splits, and the earliest example saw him using the dolly to help do this. The subtitles call it a dolly, it's a thin, flat piece of wood on wheels. During that demonstration and into the next scene of See Hon training, one is introduced to the rather interesting main theme of this movie. I assume it's the main theme because it plays a bunch of times in the movie. I don't know what it's called, but it has an upbeat quality to it, which really makes one forget that the movie has some violent scenes and it's blood drenched when a majority of fight scenes come on. The music would fit in a scene where people are frolicking in the park, it's just so lighthearted and warming to the soul. As warm as blood...


Mr. Hunter is drinking alone at the bar while his people are in the middle of the place talking about how there hasn't been a fight in a long time. In between him and his people sat a bunch of middle aged white guys and some Asian girl. The men are complaining about Kents Gym pretty much draining the fight system, casting away their best challenge in Wai Chai Gym. As a result, nobody is betting, and Mr. Hunter's all about the gambling, as well as just being the best martial art. Mr. Hunter overhears all this, it doesn't make him any happy. Pi Gum interrupts the men to try and correct them, but their point is that the boxing matches are just boring without Wai Chai. I would have to agree. This goes into my favoritism for Robin Shou, I think he's a kickass fighter, and this movie really showcased his ability. It could be helped by the fact that this movie isn't rooted in traditional martial arts, and is closer to Bloodsport, which had different kinds of martial artists competing against each other, not to mention it being brutal and more visceral. Robin Shou, with his more showy and wowing martial arts style, it buckles down and fits quite nicely to this film's attempt at being more hard-impact. It leads me to finally mention that some alternate title to this, probably made up as a cheap way to sell the movie years after its release, was “Mortal Combat 2.” Yeah, using the fact that Shou hit it big with Mortal Kombat, I assume international markets tried to capitalize, and whoever had this movie in their hands, probably gave it that name after the first Mortal Kombat movie and before the sequel, to sell it. Given that the fights reach crazy levels of bloodletting, I'd say that while it is shrewd, it does kind of make sense. How I'm going over the plot, it doesn't sound like it's a violent movie. Well, again, the fights show that. I didn't comment so much about the action in the opening scene. Before See Hon's first fight in the movie, you see quick bits of previous fights. It's there you get little examples of the bloodshed, one guy gets a strike to the neck and just upchucks blood from his mouth. A taste of Squibmania, more will come. Anyways, Mr. Hunter closes the scene by laughing with drink in hand, which I interpret as having an idea.


That idea being shared in the next scene, which I guess was his advertisement for See Hon's return to competition. This is where the “Lan Se Han” name is shown on the poster. The thing about that scene that just grabs me is that it's implied that Mr. Hunter drew up those posters himself. He said he had them designed, and they look alright...if you're a kid. All it involved was colored worlds drawn on colored construction paper, and a cutout picture of See Hon wearing boxing gloves glued to it. It's very basic, and doesn't really come off as some kind of fancy poster, a kid can make that. Mr. Hunter is just so happy about it, and there's another scene where he shows off more posters, and Jesus man. It's ridiculous how invested he was in them. I never picked up on this fascination on my first viewing, at least I don't remember. It's funny. Anyways, the point of that scene is to mention to his goons, which include that Thai boxer, who was oddly dressed in a blazer, collared shirt, tie, and slacks, like putting a suit on Tarzan. He just says they need to find a way to get See Hon to return to fighting.


Montage number 2, there's a lot of these in this movie. This is the biggest instance of my sniffing of the 80s in this film. Typical 80s montage, with closeup shots of See Hon working out, so close that you see the sweat on his back! They do cut to the Thai boxer from Kents Gym training a few times, but it's still all about See Hon here. He's doing pushups, pullups, jump rope, just looking all sweaty and fit. It's weird that this is the most skin you see from See Hon, given that these professional fights would spring to mind topless men going to battle. Nah, they just wear really silly looking suits that cover up their man meat. Pi Gum wears an outfit that just looks like a poorly made Halloween costume, minus the mask, the dominant color being yellow, which just looks ridiculous on him. The montage scenes last for quite a while, and you get that same musical piece to accompany them. By the end of the movie, I became addicted to that piece. Not knowing what it's called and how to find it, I might as well watch the movie montages and some other parts of the movie to hear this. See Hon does some other workout things, the one I liked the most was his limbs being tied to the back of a a cart thing, with Tong driving it, and he just does some punches while he jogs along with the cart. I would imagine that's a hardcore routine that just tests a lot of different muscles in the body and I haven't seen something of that level before. In general, doing some workout while being tied to a moving vehicle or a bike, yeah, it's been done plenty of times, but I just liked how it was done here.


Uncle Tong said he has to go away on call from the “Command Unit.” That part of him receiving a message from them appeared for only a half-second, you have to pause to read that subtitle. That sucks. Anyways, the point is still clear, he has to leave for a bit, Godfather suggests he settled down and find a different job. From the mention of “living under bullets,” it must mean that Tong is part of some military service. Tong said he will retire, so that's coming up. Pi Gum brings his ugly self to the scene, picking up Lin Da. Then in the next scene, all of a sudden, there are people at some bar, rave, whatever, talking about the fight between Nam See Hon and a mysterious boxer (it's Pi Gum). So wait, they're going to fight? With these people talking about Kents Gym offering to give back the Wai Chai Gym facility that they took for themselves, it seems that Mr. Hunter's way of persuading them to fight again was that deal. They didn't make that clear, I had to gather from the subtitles. What's actually clear is Pi Gum, in Mr. Hunter's house (assuming it is because it's the only home he does shit in), giving Lin Da a white powder medicine, “Lotus Powder” to her, so she can give it to See Hon. He basically described it as a performance enhancing drug, a winning potion of sorts, and this bitch just accepts it straight away. She's trusting to the man, but come on, white powder, it's obviously some kind of drug, probably an opiate, heroin, whatever. He calls it medicine, but it's still a performance enhancing drug he's lying about. It should be illegal, but there was no rule apparently against the brass knuckles that would disqualify that Thai boxer. So, giving an opponent a miracle potion is just fine apparently. Again, it's obviously some opiate. What does Pi Gum want in return? Take a guess. He's a horrible kisser, and there's no nudity, they cut in the middle of his slobbering on her face.


Mr. Hunter never watches these fights among the crowd, he's always in a separate location, trying to show the audience that he's a man of high status. He's just in some sky box of sorts, this scene where See Hon returns to fighting, he's in a fenced off area with the female assassins, an old phone, and a bottle of Pepsi (Thai labels, but the logo obviously indicates it to be that brand), with a straw in the bottle. Wow, such a boss. Lin Da pours some of that “Lotus Powder” in the water. She didn't even tell See Hon she was going to do that, so for all the audience knows, See Hon was not told about that powder. She is such a case man. Not similar to Gemma, but I've just developed this eye and ear for questionable women in movies thanks to recent viewings. See Hon's outfit, jeez man, it's like a bodysuit, covering everything but his hands, neck, and head. Blue with a white stripe on its sides, a large black belt, he looks like he's wearing a motion capture suit. I had to go back to this scene to finally catch the Thai boxer's name, the one who loves wearing leopard skin leotards, Lai Chai. The announcer did say See Hon's full name, and now I hear it as “Lan Se Han,” but fuck it, I'm still calling him Nam See Hon.


Given the lighthearted main theme and some other moments, it is a bit weird that it's in a movie that gets very violent. Then again, I watched Dragons Forever recently, and that turns it up to 11 despite some goofy antics. I think it's because that features experts in that field, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, but here, a different crew of people from Hong Kong, it's strange. Not strange in a bad way, as long as the action kicks ass, it's pretty acceptable to me.


And the action does kick ass. The first full fight of the movie comes here at the 40 minute mark, as Lai Chai and Nam See Hon fight. During this particular fight, I randomly gained an admiration for the arena. I just imagine the air, the smell, the atmosphere being a foreign delight, something I'd like to experience. Sitting among Thai people and watching people kill each other. I did think of Rambo 3's opening scene, and wanting to be among those people as well, watching Rambo beat someone in stick fighting. The fighters use the top turnbuckle, which does remind me of wrestling, Lai Chai for example attempted a moonsault, but had to convert it into a landing when he spotted See Hon's attempt at countering it. Lin Da's big mistake takes its effect as See Hon gets all loopy and struggles to keep consciousness. He gets his butt kicked, but what makes him rise up, or “Hulk up,” to coin a wrestling term and unfortunately reference that scumbag Hulk Hogan, a scene plays in his mind of Tong giving motivational talk, including not to lose your spirit in life, martial arts, and even these boxing matches. If you lose your spirit, you lose the fight, and the enemy will never have mercy. Mercy is for the weak...oh sorry, wrong movie. See Hon comes up, screaming, making these intense facial expressions, which is a special feature he does in the fight scenes, you know he's about to kick some major ass. He does, and that's when the blood flies. The bullshit part of this though was Lin Da now thinking the Lotus Powder worked. Uhh no, See Hon was just able to fight against that. All it took was a knee strike to the face, and blood just sprays out of Lai Chai's face, presumably his nose. One punch the head, forehead gushes out blood, the camera really picks up on these moments and gives a little slow motion to them so it's like art. There are some unrealistic parts, as if the blood spurting wasn't enough. In one bit, See Hon jump kicks Lai Chai's head and he just flies several feet in the air, over the top rope, out of the ring, spinning too. Taking things further, Pi Gum enters as See Hon's next opponent, and throws the referee, giving him the same airtime as Lai Chai. It's hilarious.


Correction, there's a lot of brown in Pi Gum's outfit, but that's the worst colors for a man. Yellow and brown? Piss and shit, seriously. Fair play to Pi Gum, he's not a bad fighter and definitely does some nice stuff, but it's been a showcase for Robin Shou. I forgot to mention that Shou was a stuntman in Hong Kong. There's nothing on IMDB to show that, but stuntmen in Hong Kong may have gone uncredited during his time. Plus he said he was a stuntman, and I'm not going to call bullcrap on it. Back to the bloodshed, I may as well show a GIF to prove this kind of fighting that reminds of Mortal Kombat. This is a good clear shot, so here.





That's just a taste, these fights just get crazy with blood, especially the final two fight scenes. See Hon does a combo of moves and knocks out Pi Gum. I just so happened to have made a GIF of the knockout blow, so here you go.





That main theme also plays during these victory celebrations, as it does here. There are lyrics to this as well, I forgot to mention. Something pissed off audience members do is throw piece of paper onto the loser, as they did to Pi Gum here. I assume that's their gambling receipts, and I guess they bet on him, he failed, so fuck him.


The Wai Chai gym is back in business, though that doesn't make them close down the car repair shop. When they cut to that garage after this scene in the gym, it threw me off guard because I thought they just stuck with the gym. Ah well. To show how sketchy the subtitles are, when Jesse returns in this scene, he said he wants to learn the best “material art.” I get what he said, but it's an apparently running theme in these viewings of some imperfect subtitles. Regardless, the point is, this white guy who only appeared once before this scene, comes back. See Hon allows for him to take part in the gym. There's a more somber scene in the gym where See Hon comforted Lin Da, who felt guilty about what she did, and I guess anxious that nobody's mad at her for it, she's not being punished. I get why she feels that, but woman, get over yourself.


Not as somber, Mr. Hunter flipped out at Pi Gum for his defeat. He forces him to train and basically punished him like a child, grounding him. No girls, no hanging out, just train you bad boy. That sounded perverted, sorry. Mr. Hunter apparently lost millions of dollars in that fight, so he intends to get it back. I assume he meant winning it back in a match? There's no scene where the hoods sent try to steal from the Wai Chai people, then again there's no telling what they got money-wise for See Hon's victories, all you know is that they get the gym back.


Once again, Thai thugs come in to crash the garage, the head of this group, who wore sunglasses and had a big mole on his chin, wanted to kill Tong. I guess because word got around that he trained the victorious See Hon, so let's ice him. He wasn't present, so this guy sicked these Thai hounds at See Hon. All of them had swords and went after See Hon with them. Despite the man's noble efforts and perseverance, it was not enough, See Hon ends up being a bloody mess. Just in the nick of time, Tong and Siu Chu return, and the former has a little fight against the boss of this group. He shows some impressive ability, but old age and experience conquers over youth and vigor. With a blood covered See Hon, he has to go to the hospital. I should've mentioned earlier that when Lai Chai attacked his leg at their first fight, it resulted in him having to use a crutch. That is barely shown though, so they just fast forward pass that. I simply forgot about it, especially since it's more prominent that Godfather had to be in a wheelchair, so he was worse off. Tong said that See Hon will stay in the hospital for 2 days. Lin Da though is not in the scene, turns out she got kidnapped. Tong got the phone call, and without telling Godfather the truth, he heads to a brick shop to rescue her.


This leads to the debut fight scene of the pair of female assassins, one being white, the other, as I said, looking like Sasha Banks. My description of her though while watching the movie includes that comparison, but also the belief that she looks more “ratchet.” My ghetto talk, I mean that she's uglier, she looks like a downgrade from the lady, as awful as that is to say. At first, Tong kicks the asses of a bunch of Thai thugs, I think the same ones that fucked up See Hon, judging by their matching attire. Lin Da is set free from her restraints, but Tong has to do battle with the assassins. Now that I think about it, they kind of remind me of the women from Armor of God that kick Jackie Chan's ass at first. Just a bunch of ugly witches doing some martial arts, and being pretty good at it. These women are no different. I love badass women that can also fight, see my love of Cynthia Rothrock for an example. Thus, these girls get an easy pass for me. During this, See Hon returns from the hospital, not wanting to be there for 2 days, I don't blame him. He also said he feared something wrong was happening, so he returned. Well, what do you know, he was right. Tong fighting these female warriors. It goes back and forth, and lasts a good amount of time to show the talents of the three involved, the white woman even getting bloodied. Tong got the advantage at the last quarter until the girls do some pro wrestling style cheating to get the advantage. It leads to cat-like scratches from Sasha Banks girl, and ends with the poor Tong getting impaled by bamboo sticks.


The sadness comes through from everyone, Lin Da entering the house, I guess she was just wandering the streets trying to find her way home. This tragedy fires up Siu Chu, and there's a montage at night of her doing an amazing set of katas, showing that she's very capable of kicking ass. The music that plays though is not that lighthearted main theme, oh no, it's something much more serious. It's safe to say that this movie does justice to female fighters, though that leaves Lin Da as the weakest character of the bunch. Someone has to fill that damsel role, might as well be this person.


Mr. Hunter informs Pi Gum that they had Tong Chuen killed, and the man assures that he will not lose again. To show how rigorous Pi Gum's training was, they go the montage route. Some of it looks fine, and that's mainly when people throw him around and show what to do, including Lai Chai. One thing I never understood was him kicking vases. I can kick vases. His first try, he can't break it, so the film wants you to think these vases are really strong, but I'm not buying it. It would've been more convincing if he was doing the classic wood board breaking, or even bricks, cement blocks, a lot of things other than vases. What also ruins this guy's montage is this funny bit...





I don't know why he did that! He was most impressive when doing katas. He did do jumping kicks to the vases, but the kicks are the cool parts, breaking a vase is not cool at all. Just to be clear, that montage does not have the lighthearted main theme, of course.


Again with Mr. Hunter loving advertisements for the fights. This one though, I have to correct myself, that scene with the posters before, that indicated more that he made those. Here, according to the subtitles, Lai Chai designed these fliers. Are you kidding me? That crazy hair wearing guy? I bet the subtitles are lying, Mr. Hunter must've designed those. There was another white goon there, so maybe he was addressing both of them, but that still involves Lai Chai. Look at him, does he strike anyone as someone with an artistic bone in his body? No! That's just weird. Same desire comes up, making See Hon fight, finding a weakness to really get him in the ring with Pi Gum.


So a white goon walks into the Wai Chai gym and challenged them to a fight. It leads to a one-on-one with See Hon. There's one part where I keep questioning if Robin Shou really did this. I tried to think back to Mortal Kombat, and in one of his fight scenes if he did that. I don't believe so. I'll just say he really did this, the man can do splits at the level of Cynthia Rothrock, and she's famous for her own kick like this, only the foot comes from behind and not from the front. Here's the kick.





There was a Chinese guy that was with the white goon, and he jumped in to fight See Hon. Big mistake. It was another quick fight that led to the two bad guys working together. No problem for See Hon, this guy is the Asian Jason Blade. Well, not really, but I just wanted to reference Jason Blade, he's awesome. Even though See Hon can handle this kind of pressure, Godfather tells him to go “inland” and lay low for a while. That means...


MONTAGE TIME! And the lighthearted main theme plays during this. See Hon dazzling with some forms, a lot of splits, and then an impromptu sparring session with some guy who I guess practices Monkey Fu? Some funky music plays during this funny match. He throws See Hon off for a bit, but See Hon can handle ridiculous things at the level of Jason Blade (I had to). I think Monkey Fu man wore himself out acting like a monkey, as See Hon gradually maintained his cool and was able to do a classic jumping high kick ala Bruce Lee...or Liu Kang, and win the little fight.


Speeding through this scene, Mr. Hunter is with his people, basically saying that the best way to get See Hon to come out of hiding and fight again is to kidnap Godfather. Going through the movie again in sessions to get the review looking accurate, I finally caught Godfather's name. Shame on me for not using it at the start...it's Wai Chai. I just thought that was the name of the gym, the style of Kung Fu, but no, it's also his name. It sounds Chinese, which throws off my theory that he is Vietnamese. In the end, it doesn't matter, but because I got used to the name, I'll keep calling him Godfather.


So a bunch of goons dressed as soldiers, along with the female assassins, succeed in kidnapping Godfather, but the girls don't make it out of the house, as they get challenged by Siu Chu. Early into this fight, Windows '95 Sasha Banks does her cat scratches to the wall to show that she means business. All that did was make Siu Chu put 2 and 2 together, realizing that those girls killed her father. Revenge! It could be considered surprising that Siu Chu knows martial arts, but since her father was a master in fighting, it stands to reason that rubbed off on her. The thing is that she never showed her skills until her father passed away. Up until then, she was basically what Lin Da should've been if she didn't go out much, and that's being a caring and attentive family member during Godfather's road to recovery. Whatever the case, she takes the fight to ladies, and it's a very good scene. Even though the movie probably would be most known for the boxing matches that feature loads of blood bursting out from relatively simple blows, the movie does offer a great deal of variety. Trying to count all the fight scenes prove to be a bit of a daunting task, and thus I come to the realization that this movie is just filled with fighting. The story is very simple enough to where it doesn't meander and remove one for too long from the fighting scenes. Given the quality of fight scenes in this movie, it's really easy to lap it up and not worry about some odd things such as the dubbing for the white people, the very liberal usage of squibs and some other little things. Really, it's hard to criticize this movie. It obviously knows what it's doing, knows what to deliver, and does so extremely well. I'm giving concluding thoughts too early, have to get back on track.


The bad ladies do some nice teaming up, Siu Chu was able to fight in a style resembling her father, and did so more successfully than him. Going back to variety, this scene took place in the Wai Chai household, so it's a more close-quarters setting compared to a big garage, a big square ring, or even a wide open field like the previous See Hon fight took place in. There's a lot of maneuvering around what would block their ways, and of course the use of props is prevalent here, namely a vase that Pi Gum didn't break. Yeah, Siu Chu gets a shard from it and kills MS-DOS Sasha Banks. That was definitive, easy to tell that she died. For the white girl, I don't know. Siu Chu breaks her leg, has her hanging over the staircase rail, and she just delivers some hammering punches to a certain body part. She spits out blood and is out cold, but it could mean she died. I couldn't make out where she was hitting the assassin, my first guess was her vagina, or a bit north where her ovaries are. I don't think that leads to death, but, I'll take it, satisfying fight anyways.


So a couple white people are talking in the bar, saying how See Hon is back, and willing to fight, this time in the titular Death Cage. It's basically an egg-looking shaped arena that is designed solely with sharp bamboo wood. With a bunch of bamboo sticks jutting out, it's a fight to the death. See Hon and Pi Gum agree to this, with them inking their fingerprints on a contract to make this legally binding. During this prep period, that main theme plays! It's a bit oddly placed, something more foreboding of the danger that's to come should've been used instead, but I don't mind. Godfather hadn't been returned until this scene, and it seems that he wasn't tortured in any way. They just held him somewhere, and released him when Mr. Hunter gave the word. He makes ringside (for lack of a better word), and the fight is about to begin. The guys are in the cage, warming up. There's a shot of the crowd, and I totally missed this, there was a section of white people watching this, extras I guess. Everyone else is Asian. Okay, I forgot about Pi Gum's outfit here, and it makes me actually correct on saying he wore an all-yellow getup, I just got the wrong scene. It's here, there's some red bands on his wrist area and around his wait, but everything else on that outfit is yellow. So he got out of the shit color and just stuck to piss. I suppose that meant he upgraded, that he's a better fighter that he was in that last fight. I guess that's proven to be true, he has a stronger showing here anyways.


See Hon's outfit is pretty silky and looks shiny in its all blue design. The man must love blue because his previous outfits in these matches were blue. This one looked more like the first outfit, lighter blue though, and again, shinier looking. That said, I conclude that his outfit during the Lai Chai and Pi Gum double feature battle was his most ridiculous suit, and that was the skin-tight one.


Going back to this scene...sigh. I missed this, but there's a couple shots where Pi Gum is played by a stuntman. I don't know why I missed it before, but it's easy to see. Pay attention to his hair, the stuntman has longer hair in the back, while Pi Gum's is cut short. Was Robin Shou doubled? I couldn't tell, and I'll settle on the answer of “No.” There are plenty of shots of the Pi Gum actor fighting, it's just a handful of shots show it not to be the case. I'm more disappointed in myself for missing it, not that the man was doubled. Moving on, the fight is mostly just clean martial arts with some instances of each fighter avoiding contact with the bamboo sticks' jagged ends. When blood is first seen in this fight, that's when See Hon channels Tong and does the limb movements he learned from him. Blood starts coming out of Pi Gum like no tomorrow, his yellow outfit stained red, his face stained red. See Hon got the blood stained knuckles of victory, and with a perfect chance to kill Pi Gum, he doesn't.


Mr. Hunter does that. Yeah, he's the final boss battle in this movie. He storms in, kicks Pi Gum, sending him to a bamboo stick, impaling him. To add insult to injury, when Pi Gum is launched out of the cage, a bunch of people throw their gambling receipts at him, which is kind of funny and sick at the same time. To them, he's just a piece of disappointing meat.


Again, I don't know about Joe Lewis. Giving a quick look at his IMDB, he was born in 1944, passed away in 2012. This means he was in his mid 40s during this movie, and it really shows. He looks like a middle aged man that hits the gym quite regularly. It becomes a bit of a tough task to really follow up the fighters in this movie, most of them being significantly younger, and the actor who played Tong being much more fluid in movement and doing more of a Chinese style of martial arts. Joe Lewis brings his Murkah style, which I simply don't prefer. I love my martial arts Chinese, I'm a Kung Fu film fanatic. Of course, I do enjoy Asian martial arts in general, have to give nods to standouts from other countries such as Tony Jaa of Thailand and Iko Uwais of Indonesia. American, it's a bit of a mixed bag. I do love me some Chuck Norris, and the American fighters from the No Retreat No Surrender films are legit, but ehh. I think because in later years the art form got soiled by Hollywood in various ways, that I just preferred the good ol' days, especially Hong Kong back in the 80s and 90s. Anyways, my point is that Joe Lewis, being given this final battle slot, does very well, but I wish someone else got the shot. Who? I don't know, someone new, and Joe Lewis would get his before this. There's no carrying of course, Robin Shou doesn't have to make him look good, and the fight is not bad at all. It's just a bit of a downturn from a string of very entertaining fight scenes. It's like going from 10s and 9s to an 8, or maybe even a 7, if that makes sense. There was some blood spill in this fight, which definitely helped in making it impactful. See Hon in all these fight scenes is cheered on, he's the babyface, to use yet another pro wrestling term. As I kept saying, the bloodletting was really unrealistic, but this scene had instances of it where the wounds that caused these, particularly on See Hon, were just ridiculous. Both times he gets impaled by bamboo sticks, one through the back, the other through the stomach, and the man kept on fighting. You'd think he was actually taking a performance enhancing drug for this battle. Let's just call it running on pure adrenaline. Mentioning Pi Gum being doubled, I suspect Joe Lewis was doubled, but there's no obvious shots of that happening, which is a positive. Mr. Hunter would remove a bamboo stick and use it as a weapon, but it wasn't enough to stop See Hon, and the man got the job done.





Yeah, the facial expression is funny. Everyone celebrates, See Hon gets carried off by a bunch of guys wearing white, which flashed me back to a hilarious bit in No Retreat No Surrender where these bums wearing white shirts and blue jeans act as cheerleaders for Jean-Claude Van Damme as he made his entrance for his series of fights in the end. The movie has no end credits, just a “The End” message in Chinese.


Having already delved into my final thoughts in the Siu Chu fight scene, I'm basically going to repeat myself. This movie's biggest strength is offering a crap ton of fighting scenes that cover a lot of bases. You have the raining blood affair in the form of the boxing matches and the Death Cage battles, as well as the gang assault on See Hon in the second half of the movie, as well as Tong's death. All that makes up a majority of the action in this movie. Digging a bit deeper, I appreciated more the fights that were not in that vein. I absolutely loved those blood-friendly fights, but I can now say that the fights that differ from that are really good. Siu Chu's fight scene, See Hon's bloodless battles that are pretty brief, the matches where Tong dominates his opponent, no fight scene is lacking, no fight scene sucks. They all range from good to awesome. Add on some wacky and fun elements such as the 80s montage trope being used a lot. I did say there's a lot of fight scenes in this, but they don't drag on for long periods of time. I say that to be clear and not cast any surprising reactions when I say that this movie is only 92 minutes long. With how much I commented about it, it sounds like something longer. Nah, I just got long-winded. They fill in the 92 minutes very well. The little scenes at the bar, other transitional parts, do offer breaks from the action, so I can't complain about them. They don't compare to the action and the funny non-action parts, but they don't have to anyways. The montages are just so 80s and fun that they've grown on me to be a major part of the movie and a big reason for the entire film being entertaining. Come for the blood spill, the...Mortal Kombat, stay for the laughs and generally entertaining pace and storytelling. It's a simple story, but it's at least decent to watch. Also, given that it comes off as a B-style film, there are lots of things to take the piss out of, which is another reason for this being a fun viewing.


I'm so happy I discovered this, and hopefully I pursue more Robin Shou films, as I truly think the man is underrated, and I would like more examples to show that. Mortal Kombat, again, is a fun film in my opinion, but it's not the best thing to show someone in trying to argue how awesome Robin Shou is in martial arts, neither is another fun movie, Beverly Hills Ninja. The gold standard, based on my limited viewing is this film. Now, he was a stuntman, and this movie is all about fighting, so there are no instances of him doing any major stunts. So perhaps the mission for me is to find a movie where he does a lot of stunts, just so I can praise him in another department. Anyways, in conclusion, this is some badass, funny, all-around entertaining stuff. The quality of that makes it not worth nitpicking or trying to pick out any major flaws. It's just a blast to watch. With internet back in my life, my movie viewing is going to slow down again. Maybe I'll watch a movie very soon anyways, but to end this streak of martial arts movie excursions with Death Cage was a very good choice on my part. I'm happy.


9/10


Yeah...sorry for this being really long. I got so into typing about this movie journey that I ended up talking more and more on each movie. If I went 100% on all of them, this probably would've been a 100 page post. The page count comes from OpenOffice Writer. For example, I'm on page 63 at this time. A major part of this was that I typed it while I still had no internet, but with an appointment coming of getting internet back in my home. I needed something to occupy my time since I finished my massive JoJo's Bizarre Adventure GIF project. So, typing movie reviews became that thing, with a desire to finish that pretty much kept me from really enjoying the return of internet in full, as well as delaying a huge task I have to do, which is uploading all the GIFs I made over the last week and a half. I'll offer a a summary of my reviews, just by listing them with ratings as a form of apologizing. I don't think I'll review this many movies again, since I don't even believe I'll watch this many movies again in relatively quick succession. So, you better hope I don't lose my internet again. I enjoyed myself anyways, so, I think that's most important.


Tl:dr


Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil – 9/10
No Retreat No Surrender – 11/10
Undefeatable – 9/10
Shanghai Express – 10/10, two viewings, second viewing with audio commentary
No Retreat No Surrender 2 – 8/10
Dragons Forever – 10/10
Day of the Panther – 10/10
Strike of the Panther – 10/10
Death Cage – 9/10

[MaxJoker]

Originally Posted by jehuty34

Saw this today.

A very good fun movie 8/10.

Heeeeeeey do you mind

Spoiler alert much jehuty

Some of us might not have seen it yet

Although as for this ,



I advise all Fellow Forum Fellas don't bother ,



True the acting is bloody fantastic throughout ,



Atmospheric too ,




Story itself is beyond the cusp of dull arsed though and sort of cheesed me off from the thirty nine minute onwards ,



A lone thumb only and it gets that due to me thinking Anya Taylor-Joy otherworldly beautiful

[randomname08]

Carry On Doctor because it never fails to bring a smile. And Anita Harris as a nurse fueled more fantasies in the young me than I can remember.



Trailer.

[victor meldrew]

The Last Jedi

A roller coaster of a film good, bad, ugly and some what's this all about bits.

I enjoyed the film overall, but perhaps its time to move on and make some new films, rather than wait for episode 741.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/?ref_=nv_sr_1

[Sir Honkers]

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. A 1989 fan film, made as a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Using the original film's screenplay and score, it principally starred and was filmed, directed, and produced over a seven-year period by three teenagers. It's freaking amazing! Spielberg should have got them to make the last one for him.

[neo2008]

Gotti was pretty bad not even worth giving a full review.Travolta and Stacy Keach try to give it their all but most of it reminded me of the crime re enactments on
the show I Almost Got Away with It
Scale of 1-10 a 2

[Wendigo]

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5095030/


I'm a big Marvel fan so have been looking forward to this sequel for ages, it brings together the best elements of the humour and action from the first film and ties in with the current MCU, especially the last scene.
Bill Foster is there, and Goliath is name-checked, Ghost has been re-imagined and is not the industrial espionage specialist from the comics, a minor character in the comics Sonny Burch is elevated to the front row here. Michael Pena as Luis again steals every scene he is in.

The film largely concerns an attempt by Hank & Hope Pym to bring Hank's wife back from the Quantum realm where she disappeared to when she shrank to microscopic size to disarm a missile.

There is also a brief Stan Lee cameo.

Next up Captain Marvel and the not as yet titled Avengers Infinity War sequel both of which are due out next year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6cC79V79T4




Thank you Marvel for doing this whilst I am still young enough to enjoy them.

[Wendigo]

Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7086706/


A remake rather than a sequel set in a research facility using bull sharks to use their DNA but you know it will end in tears.
Lots of scenes lifted and altered slightly from the original, it's OK but nothing really special so 4/10-ish territory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SMfPFFtcjQ&vl=en

[Sir Honkers]

Frankenweenie. A black and white film about how a little boy name Victor mourns the death of his dog Sparky and decides to do something about it...and while he's at it win the Science Award. Tim Burton at his best. And the poodle next store ...I had to explain the joke to my missus who, believe it or not, has never seen Bride Of Frankenstein.