After our newest addition (and immediate champion) became viral the time has obviously come to review some of the most ill conceived and poorly executed movie deaths in cinema history!
05.SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON (2002)
Evil white shark from Shark Attack 3 is so freakin’ big that it doesn’t even have to make an effort to eat people, it just appears out of nowhere with it’s jaws wide open and people fall in by themselves!!! Just look at the evil dude at 0:55, he used his epic evil laugh a little too soon… and now he will never use it again.
04.UNDEFEATABLE (1993)
American action cinema always had a thing for impaling (maybe my psychologist friend can explain me a thing or two about that) but this one took that concept and run with it… all the way to the moon! The mere defeating of the opponent was not an option for our heroes, no… they had to spinning back-kick him head first into a hook (he lost an eye in the process) and while the machine that the hook was attached to was dragging him away (still screaming in agony) they had to taunt him with such godawful one- liners as “we’ll keep an eye out for ya” and the immortal ” yeah, see ya”.
03. SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW (1978)
Jackie Chan’s beak-out vehicle is like most of his later filmography, thing to be avoided at all costs. It has everything going against him including poor production, confusing plots and all the random nonsensical fight choreography you can take! Pinnacle is of course young Jackie’s disposing of a bearded westerner made possible by incredible sequence of techniques- clawing the head (while making cat noises) fallowed by a back-flip and a two handed palm strike to the groin… did the said westerner die from the technique or from pure embarrassment we will never know…
02. ENTER THE NINJA (1981)
Beside the fact that the dude’s acting out slow- mo with a fan working in the background at completely normal speed, he even stops and shrugs his shoulders as to say “fuck it, I shouldn’t have messed with those Ninjas anyhow” Ninja remains silent (although clearly confused as to what the hell did he just witness).
01. KARATECI KUZ (1974)
In this “fabulous” Turkish production of Karate Girl we find terrible, agonizing and also seemingly never ending death of a strange villain with even strangers mustaches… he took more bullets than Robocop but damn he kept screaming all the way to the grave! Movie immediately ends after his last breath, director rightfully deciding to finish it on high note.
As the title suggests Black Gestapo is a Blaxploitation Nazi film… yeah, you heard it right- a film whose protagonists are BLACK NAZIS!!!Hitler would be rolling over in a grave, if he had one… Someone obviously had spare Nazi uniforms and some black actors at his disposal and made the best of it. And boy did he!
*best opening sequence ever
It all starts kinda slow as we see kinda peaceful Black Panther -like organization “People’s Army” who works to help the community. That includes Black Che aka General Ahmed and his girl- the nurse who work in Detoxification Unit 2 (founded by none other than People’s Army). But General Ahmed also has an evil Colonel Kojah by his side ( as good people often have a need for an ultimate baddie by their side).
Some white folks in suits with ridiculous mustaches (mafia enforcers) cause some ruckus, attack the nurse chick and beat up some of the panther dudes (almost killing one of them in the process). After that the good leader decides that enough is enough and allows the evil dude to train dozen of his man to fight , so they can protect the neighborhood better. As you guessed everything goes downhill from there. Interestingly his girl warned him not to trust the evil dude (even though she was saved of possible rape by that same man).
Soon enough things get going, black people start doing karate and judo and soon enough the new-crowned General Kojah has his army. Their ranks grow as their expertise and almost peaceful black pride organization morphed into something far more dangerous… A BLACK GESTAPO!!!
There action start with brutal vengeance on mafia (including a nasty castration scene) and even though Mafia Boss (ridiculous bold man) tried his best to contra- sabotage them, clever usage of tactics, explosives and some boobs as a bait resulted in horrible death of mob enforcers.
Uschi Digard, one of the legendary Russ Meyer’s Vixens, evil general’s aid- aids the death of some idiotic mafia enforcer
Ahmed royalty menages not to notice the complete change of his organization until it’s too late and when he finally confront Cojah he is beaten half to death by his minions. Somehow he manages to get to the city all the way from the desert and the nurse girlfriend despite their recent disagreements finds the time to nurse him back to health.
Breaking every possible record in modern medicine he gets better in day’s time and then peaceful Ahmed decides to stop being so peaceful and all kind of ass- kicking ensues. He breaks out alone into the the premises of Black Gestapo- taking down soldiers one by one using his soul- brother kung fu skills until there is no- one between him and the evil Kojah. If he showed this kind of fighting expertise before he wouldn’t need an army and this whole mess could be avoided.
Then Ahmed vs Kojah gets going and damn it’s fireworks! Kojah fails to finish captured Ahmed and even menages to kill one of his own troopers- with a freakin’ old school razor-blade none the less!!!
BE CAREFUL WITH THE RAZOR!!!
Then they start throwing each other, kicking and screaming and destroying everything in their path (some table and chairs I guess) until they end up in the pool… and as we all know when two black persons enter the pool- only one can get out. We hear a sound of a GUN FIRING UNDER WATER (???) and it’s all done, evil Kojah is dead and less radical leader has won- using radical methods but we won’t really hold it against him!
Verdict: loaded with over the top violence (castration scene and repeated extreme violence against the hooker), sex and all- around craziness Black Gestapo is one of those rare movies that are completely absurd while being absurdly fun every step of the way.“So bad that it’s good” is an category that’s abused left and right these days but if one movie deserves a place in there BLACK GESTAPO is that movie! Hitler might not have approved but WORSE MOVIES approves it all the way!
This movie has the honor of being the first (and probably the last) Western/Vampire/Cyborg/Kickboxing flick EVER. Our old friend Pyun sure knows how to make them!
The film starts with an old fashion caravan- only they are ambushed by a bunch of… Cyborgs? Hell Yeah! Who want to drink their blood??? Ok, this is something else. Young Nea runs away with her baby brother in her arms while the rest of the travelers get massacred rather quickly. She returns after a while, sees all the bloodshed and then the flashback ends. Next thing you know, it’s 10/15 years later, Nea now full grown woman (you can tell it’s her because of her silly blond, fluffy hair) is being approached by and old soothsayer who predicts grand things for her but she just shrugs it off. Then out of the blue, an evil Cyborg and some assistants appear and… massacres all the people. Again! Not whole 10 minutes from the last one! Well at least things move pretty fast in this film, different than some of the other garbage that we watched. She somehow survives initial attack, fights a little- gets hit by an arrow, survives a fall, then survives some silly rant of a Simon the Cyborg (great name!) until a mysterious stranger arrives (cue in the Western sound effects here).
Stranger is non other than famed country musician Kris Kristofferson ( how appropriate). Kristofferson aka The Gabriel (notice the non-subtle Biblical reference there) startsunleashing hell, some dudes fall from a cliff (common theme in this movie) and then he has a showdown with Simon… and Kung Fu Wuxia ispired sword fight!!! This movie pulls no punches, really!
He easily defeats Simon but Simon plays dirty and tries to blow him ’till Kingdom Come with his rocket launcher arm
thingie but Nea interferes (but why would you human, help a cyborg?) and Simon is no more.After that Nea is in shock that ther’s a good cyborg in this world too but she still fallows him. Soon enough we get to inevitable question and although Gabries claims that “Only Cyborg can kill a Cyborg” he accepts to train her in the ways of Cyborg- killing Martial Arts Mastery. And yeah, and you can only kill cyborgs by shooting/ stabbing them in forehead– whoa, never would have guessed it! Then we have the thing that kinda disappeared from the movies these days and is sorely missed- A TRAINING MONTAGE!
It’s painfully obvious that Kris Kristofferson is the one who should be a student (he is doubled by a much younger stuntman every few seconds) but he at least looks cool and seems to take this whole movie as a joke so you can easily sympatise with the dude. Kathy Long seems to be a complete opposite. Despite being a prolific martial artist( Aikido, Kung Fu blackbelt, 5 time World Kickboxing Champ ) Kathy Long can’t act or even speak properly for the life of her!Not one sentence had the conviction or diction to stop my inevitable laughter every time she openes her mouth.
And stereotypical 80s surfer girl look wasn’t helping either. Like I said- you can marvel at her back flips, kicking and takedown combos … and that’s about it. Try to ignore her when she’s not hitting anyone, you’ll enjoy this movie a whole lot more!
Anyway ,she and Gabriel swordfight, stickfight and kickbox trough the desert and everything is fine until she has an emotional outburst witch leaves me completely in shock. I have never witnessed a lack of talent of that magnitude in my life!Why the hell is she trying to express her deep emotions in a film about a cyborg killing cyborgs and girl who eventually kills even more cyborgs? I’m stupified.
In the meantime THE CYBORGS PLAN TO RAID THE LAST GREAT HUMAN CITY- TO MAKE EVEN MORE CYBORGS! The fact that you need even more blood to feed all those fresh additions to the ranks or the funny thing that people obviously serve Cyborgs for years in hope of their mechanical gift and others get it for free seams completely retarded.
Couple minutes later they finally start putting some hurt on the cyborg asses but Gabriel ends up showing human emotions towards Nea, and that costs him half his body! Interestingly most of the cyborgs wear some Arabic inspired robes that cover all but eyes which lead me to believe that the same five people were killed over and over and over again (congrats to stuntmen for doing all the extra work).
Nea continues fight alone, infiltrates the Cyborg Camp, and earns a right to fight for the gift of becoming a cyborg! Oh, yeah, she also finds her long lost brother there- just like that! Somebody refused to put any kind of effort when he was scripting the damn thing but that’s how things work in Pyun-land.
Leader of the cyborg camp, Lens Henriksen’s character Job (cyborg with a freakin’ giant robot arm, who looks incredibly like some discarded Moebius sketch) decides that she is worth of the gift… he receives the arrow as a reword. Also, I have to notice that Job is quite fascinating character, the only special power that he exhibited in the movie is his ability to spit incredible amount of liquid, I mean incredible! Ok, his mastery with whip is impressive too but you don’t really need any technological advancements to learn to do that.
I want to suck your bloooood!
So, Kathy proceeds to kick ass and take names, killing about 100 people in the process, combined forces of about 20 cyborgs and their human underlings. They all die in all sort of interesting/ funny/ ridicules ways that will definitely keep you interested. Even the good old Cyborg who kills cyborgs- Gabriel patches himself somehow (by stealing legs from some other poor half- mechanical soul).
Evil mastermind, Master Builder finally appears, does nothing for a while and than steals Nea’s brother. Gabriel and Nea come after him presumably to the fabled Cyborg City, her monologue narrating all the incredible adventures they will have but the movie ended up being a flop and none of the planed sequels ever found their way into production.
Verdict: in the fighting/martial arts department film delivers and delivers with flying colors- and that is main redeeming feature of this film. Also if you like explosions, things explode in abundance here, just wait and see! Cinematography is also actually rather beautiful (thanks to George Mooradian who latter found fame working on TV series like “According to Jim” ), desert of Moab, Utah provided perfect backdrop for this unique kind of adventure. On the flip side acting is atrociously bad, especial miss Long, script doesn’t make any sense and editing is godawful, most of the scenes look cut up and without the natural end.Music sounds like something out of National Geographic, not Western/Vampire/Cyborg/Kickboxing movie Knights is. Anyway if you really have nothing better to do with your life , go watch some cyborgs explode, it’s still better than The Kardashians!
This is one of those movies where you just don’t know where to start, since it’s so damn horrendous from start to end, one can get confused from all it’s messiness and absurdity. Oh well, since we have to start somewhere, let’s first point out that this movie was directed by John Frankenheimer, known for for filming some very good movies, such as Grand Prix, Fixer and Ronin, and started Talia Shire (Godfather, Rocky) in main female lead. Looking back now, almost 35 years later, it’s safe to say this move killed both of their careers…
Anyways, movie kick off as your classic horror flick, where two lumberjacks are mauled to death by “something”, and thus local authorities issued a call to Dr. Robert Verne (Robert Foxworth), and his wife Maggie (Talia Shire), both of them some sort of environmental pollution specialists, since it’s perfectly logical to call them instead of police in these kind of situations.
Our heroes sniff around local paper mill to find out that plant is producing some kind of illegal mercury mutagen that causes birth defects, which the plant spilled into the lake and, naturally, caused all surrounding wildlife to turn into a monstrous abominations bent on killing everything in their site.
Couple of boring minutes later, and movie finally “grace us” with a presence of a mutated bear, with so hilariously horrendous costume, that I’m pretty sure it inspired the infamous “man bear pig” South Park meme. Nevertheless, the bear starts it’s killing rampage by praying on a family who were hiking in the hills. What’s interesting about one of it’s first victims is that it’s actually a young boy, something very unusual for horrors of the time. But, man, the way that boy died… What ensued was definitely the “pissed myself laughing” moment of the film, as the poor kid went off in the blaze of glory… or feathers for that matter…
In the meantime, our heroes meet with the rebellious, but righteous young Indian, played by now legendary Armand Assante (yeah, sure as hell looks like Indian to me too…), and together they agree to stop the bears killing spree.
Can’t argue with that…
Two mutated bear cubs found, and one helicopter malfunction later, and our heroes (along with a couple of Indians) find themselves deep into manbearpig’s territory, stalked by manbearpig it self! Thus, the game of cat and mouse begins… In the next half of hour or something, we learn that bear is capable of rolling trucks while standing still and showing up out of nowhere in the same time, mercury mutagen makes you breed underwater, and nursing a mutated bear cubs is good for your health! Couple of mauled bodies later and the final showdown commences in the abonded shack. Assante tries fighting bravely with a bow, but gets roflpwned by the manbearpig, thus leaving our main protagonist, Dr. Robert, with no other alternative but to engage the bear into a wrestling faceoff.Couple of wrestling moves later, and arrow finds it self in the manbearpigs eye, ending it’s rampage and this horrible movie.
Heed the advice folks…
In the very end, film abruptly switches to to Dr. Robert and Maggie safely flying home, while another manbearpig shows it self in the forest, hinting at the sequel, which, thankfully, never happened, since this laughing stock of a movie was a commercial and critical flop…
200 years in the future. Entire Earth’s population had been wiped out in a rebel war. Human race is in deep shit. And that’s what you are watching in this movie. 90 minutes of pure shit.
David Bradley is staring in another disaster created by Phillip J. Roth. He and his company will try to save the universe by traveling back through time. His company consists of stereotype black man, ugly, ugly, ugly military chick and Brian Faker. But no, they don’t do this because they have noble intentions. It’s their only choice between this and death penalty they’ve been sentenced to. Apparently each and one of them is responsible for real massacre on some planets. Anyway, let me start from the beginning.
First 20 minutes of movie are half-decent space fights between “The Bridges” and rebellions. The bridges are political party that controls all Earth colonies. Later in the movie, we’ll find out that that party got a name by writer of ” The Universal Being” book John Bridges. Apparently that book is responsible for all shit that happened in last 200 years. Space stage of film is ended by some 2 random guys in small space ship going through time warp. So, after 20 minutes of half-decent space fight we got David Bradley and his company to travel to Earth back to 1998 (probably because entire budget has been spent onto previously mentioned fights). Their mission is simple – finding John Bridges and stopping him from writing his book. And to make things even harder they have only 40 hours to do this since nitro implants have been implanted into their necks and will explode after that time. Why 40, why not standard 48 hours, you might ask? So did we. But we got no answer. Anyway, they lost 3 hours after transition to Earth. It’s interesting how despite using all hi-tech gadgets none of them actually knows how to drive a car. One of those gadgets is military chick’s (who gets uglier in every scene) all-purpose calculator. There isn’t a thing which that calculator can’t do. Ok now, back to the plot. Congressman Jerry has to be stopped as well since he used above mentioned book to form a political party which will rule in future with new kind of totalism as new world order thus which will lead to a global war of epic proportions. Also, two FBI members with interesting names (Agent Smith and Agent Wesson; sounds familiar?) have had their part of a role and they did absolutely nothing. We fail to see their exact purpose here. Let’s not forget two guys from the beginning of the movie who also have traveled back to time. First thing they did when they arrived is destroying their space ship so they couldn’t go back (?!). Of course, mission wouldn’t be successful without help of writer’s ex-wife. David Bradley was about to plow her in the end but he got distracted by one tiny little detail – his head got blown up by nitro implant. You have to admit that that’s not really romantic. Long story short, the only person that ended up with a head on it’s shoulders in the end of the movie is ugly, ugly, ugly military chick. She was the only one who managed to live through to see fixed future and Earth existing in some kind of new modern, sterilized order. Makes you wish for war to start all over again.
Talon, a mercenary with a three- bladed sword born of royal heritage gets recruited to help a princess save her brother and the whole kingdom from the evil tyrant who conquered their land. Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds, maybe even more so. Directed by none other than our old friend Albert Pyun (Nemesis, Cyborg) it represents one of the earliest examples of the Barbarian Craze of the 80s, interestingly enough it was released before Conan in the US, but after Conan’s premiere in Spain.
Too bad the movie doesn’t look this good
So let’s get down to business. Evil king Cromwell has an evil need to rule one of the neighbor kingdoms too, so he travels to a deserted island to find a corpse of Xusia the evil wizard. He sacrifices some witch to awaken Xusia from his death and than naturally partners with him to conquer the lands of good but incredibly rich (that goes together right?) King Richard.
With the help of the devilish wizard armies of good are easily defeated, all 15 soldiers (it seems Richard was spending his money elsewhere) are lying dead of the battlefield. Then Cromwell unprovoked decides to kill (already dead!) wizard who singlehandedly won him the fight by stabbing him and then throwing him down the cliff in one of the more ridiculous scenes in this movie. As you can guess that kind of ungratefulness and pure stupidity will come back to bite him in the ass later.
When his father fails to come back young prince Talon goes after him (with a triple sword none the less). He finds a battle already lost and arrives just in time to witness his father Richard’s execution. Not only does he fails to stop the death of his father, he even managed not to save his Queen mother (it really wasn’t his day). Then, to top it all he almost died himself when Cornwel’s soldiers came after him, but henarrowly makes his escape and then flees the Kingdom.
“Accurate representation of medieval combat styles”
Some years later Talon returns to former Kingdom of his father but now as a grizzled veteran, a warrior and a leader of a wild pack of mercenaries. He also wears a cloak made of wolf- skin which makes him look big and muscular (things he is most certainly not- as we see later in the “grand” finale of the film). What happens next is quite confusing. The twins- rightful heirs to the Throne get attacked and a brother Mikah ends up being kidnapped by military adviser Machelli and his soldiers. Sisters seeks help and offers the only thing she can- herself to the “handsome” mercenary Talon– who as I remember should be THE TRUE HEIR to the Throne. How the hell are those too claiming the rule of the same kingdom – are they his lost lost brother and sister never menchened until now?!) – apparently not because he accepts the dangerous mission and the sex that will inevitably fallow it!
“Getting ahead of our-self, aren’t we?”
Things of course get a bit complicated, the first plan falls apart and as he frees prince Mikah but his sister Alana ends up captured instead. Talon narrowly escapes as always but he gets to kill a couple of dudes in the process so it’s all good. After that failure he FINALLY gets down to business devises a plan, gets his soldiers (who were hiding in the whorehouse) and ultra- dramatically crashes the weeding of Alana and the Evil Titus Cromwell(he like any other villain with good publicity has to force a girl to marry him). Some over the top battling in the main whole ensues and than the the King runs away with the bride to be- straight into Catacombs (never a smart thing to do) – Macelli intercepts them and the truth is FINALLY revealed!!! Military adviser Macelli is in fact even more sinister dead wizard XUSIA!Yeah, he had nothing better to do for freakin’ 11 years than to pretend he is an ally of Cromwell and wait (???) for his revenge. He would probably wait some more (22 years for example) if it hadn’t been for Talon trying to take what’s his.
Instead of acting like a rational human being and fleeing with the girl (he is a master at running away, is he not?) Talon somehow manages to end up in the middle of Cromwell/ Xusia battle, terrible hand drawn effects, glowing fingers and all!
On the plus side Princess Alana looks incredibly like Sister Hyde aka Martine Beswick
Although Cromwell tries to fight back he proves to be no match for the sorcerer, but Talon finds himself able to resist Xusia’s magic just long enough to send one of his trademark projectile sword right into the heart of a demon wizard. Xusia dies for a third time, comes back again for an extremely short period of time before being stricken down by Talon (hopefully really for the LAST TIME). Talon then saves the princess from mutated Boa- Constrictor snake for a good measure and procides to take his reword– and we must agree he earned it fair and square!
Something like that
Mikah has no problem with Talon plowing his sister ’cause he gets the Throne and everyone is happy as a bunch of pigs in a mud. Talon leaves with a big smile on his face into some brave new adventures… that we thankfully won’t have to watch.
Verdict: Cheesy as Hell, gets boring after first 20 minutes or so but picks up with a ridiculous ending! Anyway it won’t top The Beastmaster as my main go- to B Movie Barbarian flick but at least they tried.
Trivia: The film even spawned a short-lived production line of plastic swords in resemblance to Talon’s sword. Yes, you heard it right, somewhere there’s a possibly disturbed individual who played with a three- bladed sword as a child!
This movie makes no sense even in 60s when there was so many fresh and crazy ideas floating around. Ok, we know digital technology and other fancy stuff didn’t exist back then but that’s not excuse for putting 0 effort in filming. Follow me now in my step-by-step manual of how to avoid watching this abomination. You’ll thank me later.
It’s about some rich old lady who doesn’t want to give her fortune to anyone so she funded a mad scientist in his research to develop a machine that will be able to transfer her brain into a body of young and hot girl. Scientist had some experiments before that with freshly buried bodies which he has personally stolen. First of those was putting a wolf’s brain into his apprentice so he ended up making some kind of brain damaged werewolf. Oh yes, and he named it Monstrosity. How original. Anyway, being encouraged by that his following experiments are cadavers of 2 young girls. No one explained how so many young women died at all but i guess directors didn’t find it relevant. First girl became a zombie (not an evil zombie unfortunately), and second one became a crippled cat- lady ( her body has been merged with the brain of scientist’s favorite cat). Those two last experiments made scientist to come up with conclusion that cyclotron ( yes, that’s the machine name) is ready for it’s evil use so selection of victim can finally start. To make long story short, one perfect girl had been selected to host a brain of some old geezer. Now, here is a twist! Are you ready? The chosen girl seduced old lady’s servant named Viktor (as in Viktor von Frankenstein) who is even older than his master and was occasionally used to sexually satisfy the old rich bitch. Oh, did I mention that every single person in this movie had to do same thing (even the Monstrosity; especially the Monstrosity) ? I didn’t ? Oh well, call me a spoiler guy. Viktor got afraid that in case of successful transfer his master won’t require his sexual services no more and that he’s gonna lose his job. So he made a plot with young girl to screw up old lady and share her fortune between themselves. Details of that plot remained unknown and no one had spoken about it again. The savior of the day was no one else than scientist himself who decided in very last moment to spare a girl and put a brain of old lady in his already used cat (no point in wasting a perfectly good material). Reasons for this decision also remains the mystery to us so we only can take a guess. Did he fall in love with young girl or he just wanted to do a right thing eventually? It turned out that that wasn’t a smart idea since cat managed to kill him while he was cleaning a cyclotron (?!). The girl ran away followed by a cat with plans of revenge on her mind. How scientist managed to put human brain into cat’s small head is another mystery of this movie. Ah so many mysteries.
Sinister looking cat.DO NOT PAT!!!
Another thing that adds an extra smell onto this garbage is lack of dialog. Over 80% of movie is a pure narration! As if actors were too dumb to learn a script. Or too ashamed to speak. If a reason is number 2 then I can’t blame them at all.
The fact of the matter is: In 1971 Bruce Lee pitched in a treatment for a series called The Warrior, about a martial artist (Lee himself) in the American Old West. After rejecting his idea with famous “world is not ready for an Asian lead” AKA “we are a bunch of racist fucks” they decided to blatantly steal his idea, name series Kung Fuand instead of a famed and revolutionary martial artist that was Bruce Lee cast David Carradine who: 01. Is not Asian 02. Closest thing to martial arts he ever did was dancing.*
Without any disrespect to Carradine who proved himself to be a competent actor on rare occasions when he was cast in a substantial, well written role- he was catastrophic choice for the part of Kwai Chang Caine yet he built his careeron that 70es martial arts show (even spawning a sequel series and a movie). So how does he pays tribute to the man he (at least indirectly) screwed over? Well… by buying his unused script for Silent Flute, putting it into production AKA by screwing the man again (even after his death!). Classy thing to do man, for sure…
What was planed as a first Bruce Lee‘s big American movie, 20th Century Fox’s Silent Flute was to be fascinating, martial arts epic full of Lee’s unique philosophy– touching upon everything from eastern mysticism to personal liberation. Script (or more accurate a draft) was written by Bruce Lee, James Colburn (planed co- star, and a central figure of the movie) and Sterling Silliphant, veteran Hollywood writer and Lee’s close friend (they collaborated on Silliphant penned Marlowe and Long Street series). 20th Century Fox reluctantly agreed to finance it, providing that it had to be shot in India. Unfortunately studio and the power trio came into disagreement over the locations of filming and after unsuccessful scouting for locations in India the project fell trough. Bruce would have to wait for Enter the Dragon to see his dream of being the first Asian lead in a American production see the light of day and even that was a bittersweet victory because he died from a brain edema just days before Enter the Dragon premiere.
So, what happened to the script? It ended up in the hands of none other than David Carradine who was incredibly eager to make it a reality. So, Silliphant and Stanley Mann dusted it off and finished the script and in the process killed some of the explicit and most intriguing scenes, be it incredibly brutal fight that has Lee’s character (literally) crushing opponents balls, scenes of tantric sex, fantastic ambiguous ending and even a big chunk of Zen inspired philosophy that underlines our hero’s journey. Name Silent Flute was also scrapped and replaced with bad-ass sounding but meaningful Circle of Iron.They also changed the location from real world to “a land that never was and always will be” and decided to shoot it in Israel (decision that for a change makes sense because Israel gave the movie an exotic and mystic backdrop that it so desperately needed).
Number of people were approached for the lead role of Cord including ex- karate and kickboxing champion Joe Lewis, (who had trained under Bruce Lee for at least a year) but he declined. He eventually did show up just as they were finishing up the film… fight scenes ended up being so idiotic that he agreed to shoot some additional martial arts scenes and double the main actor in few instances.
In this version the lead, rebel “martial artist” Cord, (Jeff Cooper – Carradine’s friend who didn’t run away from the role like all the others did) embarks on a quest for the Book of Enlightenment, kept by mysterious and possibly evil Zetan (played by none other than great Christopher Lee) and in his journey is confronted by three trials.
All the trials of course educate him in Zen philosophy and he runs across a string of bizarre character including but not limited to Ah Sahm, a blind flute player, a human- monkey hybrid, Death himself and a leader of a tribe of Gypsies . All are of course played by David Carradine (including almost bare- ass monkey man). It’s always fascinating to see Carradine in action, he has no speed, no muscle and no moves… and even worse he obviously gave some lessons to Cooper because he fallows the same “style” to a T.
“Only thing about me is the way that I walk…”
Anyway, Cord’s trials strange as they are involve combat, riddles or deep conversations- like the one with a man (Eli Walllach) who has been sitting in a barrel of oil for 10 years in an unusual attempt to remove the lower part of his body, namely his genitals. Ah Sahm helps him often by reciting different wise words (some directly lifted from the original script) but you can hear it in his voice that he doesn’t really understand one word that he’s saying and considers it nothing more than some hippie new- age mambo- jumbo.
“Dissolving in oil I see, how’s that working out for you?”
Eventually Cord passes the tests (including a stupid sex scene and a death of a said girl) and reaches the Zetan. When he finally opens the book he discovers that each page of the book is a mirror, showing him that the secret to enlightenment was within him all the time. After that he returns to the world, maniacally laughing and credits start rolling with Carradine playing his flute in his honor.
Remake or should we say a new interpretation, with a post- apocalyptic edge is in works for possible 2013 release date.China’s National Film Capital will co-produce it. For now the only confirmed casting is Gina Carano (ex- Muay Thai and MMA fighter and a friend of Bruce Lee Legacy foundation ) as Tara. The fact that Tara in the original film did nothing but sleep with the main protagonist and subsequently die because of it (via crucifixion none the less)– will probably have to be changed a bit. I’ll just have to presume that producers are not imbeciles who would waste world class fighter on a role of a bimbo.
Concept art for a new version of the film
Anyway we’ll have to wait and see will the justice FINALLY be done to the original Bruce Lee’s vision (’cause it’s about time) or is it all just wishful thinking.
*Here you can marvel at Gruner as he demonstrates his kickboxing skills on a bad stop- motion Terminator rip- off.
One of those films that start kinda gritty Cyber Punk-ish with a possible promise of good innocent fun and then… goes absolutely nowhere! Director Pyun (somewhat rightfully claimed to be a Hawaiian reincarnation of Ed Wood) wanted to make a film with a dystopian , almost William Gibson SF atmosphere and every time he got close to nailing it he found a new way to royally screw things up (adding women with big muscles in the scenes has been known to do that.) It takes somewhere around a half an hour to set up our story and after that he just trows it all away the same moment our hero Rain (Olivier Gruner) gets to the island and fists start flying/guns start blazing.
Event that could be forgiven (often enough SF is just a backdrop for a classic action fest) if those same action scenes made some kind of impact but there are just cartoonish violence at it worst. Incoherent story gets completely lost in translation really fast while bizarre bunch of characters kill/fuck/or save one another almost randomly. At some points you have to ask yourself did those people follow a REAL SCRIPT and soon after you start doubting that the script even existed. Perhaps they had a 10 page treatment… for the beginning of the movie and then they improvised from there. That would explain a lot of things. There is also a hilarious moment when a gun packing grandma starts unleashing hell, it is absurd as it gets, but at least it’s fun and you can’t say that for the rest of this picture.
THIS. IS. BAD.
Olivier Gruner ( our cyborg ex-government agent) is karateka/ ex- kickboxing champion and he demonstrates his skill here and there (in-spite of the laughable choreographed fight scenes ) but he’s acting is so woden that after a while you start appreciating all the subtleties of Schwarzenegger’s performances and that is never a good sign. On the + side (if there is one here) he gets to fight a crazed robot, terminator style stop- motion monstrosity that explodes for no apparent reason and takes his arm with him!*
One of his sidekicks (the only one that actually survives) is irritating teenage girl who becomes extremely important character out of nowhere in the last half an hour of the film– against all common sense. His dog at the beginning of the film had more character and a hell lot of more story potential than she ever had!
Legendary “Cary” Hiroyuki Tagawa (Sheng Tsung himself) makes an appearance as the crazy Yakuza boss in a Hawaiian shirt but not even his devilish charm can make this crap watchable.
Verdict: If you have to watch an Albert Pyun film watch his eulogy of Cannon Films in the form of Van Damme’s Cyborg, Cyber- Punk angle is better realized and despite the fact that JCVD wasn’t much of an actor back then/ or much of an English speaker back then he always had a ton of charisma, the thing that Gruner sorely lacks.
Trivia: Pyun is doing a (joint) prequel of both Nemesis and Cyborg. Unfortunately he discovered digital technology/ CGI (nobody told him that you need some money to make it work) so his movies are now worse than ever. Here’s a trailer for Cyborgs: Rise of the Slingers so you can remember to avoid it if you have the bad luck of seeing it somewhere.
You can actually find better special effects (and acting!!!) in Porn these days .
You find that ninjas are cool? That’s OK. You find that Chuck Norris is cool? That’s OK too. But what happens when you put those 2 things together? I’ll tell you what… You get complete garbage which sends the studio which made it into bankruptcy! Tho I have no doubts that American Cinema was already hanging by a thin thread.
In this movie Chuck Norris is a ninja sent by ninja to destroy a band of terrorist ninjas. Sounds fun and simple, right? Well there are a couple of things that make watching this monstrosity a good bit harder. First, echo monologues inside Chuck’s head. Every fucking 3 minutes we are getting his echo saying “Ninjas, Ninjas”. You would think that he finally got insane after couple of those monologues. But no, that’s just the way Chuck thinks…
Second, his Japanese brother Sakura. Yes, you heard well, Japanese!!! How the hell he’s got a Japanese brother it was never explained. Nor I think it would be possible to explain without questioning the honesty of his mother (and we’re smart enough not to go there). Oh yes, did I mention that his brother is a leader of international band of terrorist ninjas against whom Chuck is fighting in this movie? I didn’t? Oh well, some families are just weirder than others.
Chuck is also a bit of a ladies man in this movie. The fact that one of the ladies gets brutally killed and he doesn’t really mind, and finds himself a next one ( a raven haired agent chick) in a mater of minutes would be impressive if it wasn’t so damn awkward and nonsensical. But that’s Chuck for you- he can do anything, I mean ANYTHING but act!
“We can all guess who’s that man, can’t we?”
One more thing… Legendary Lee Van Cleef (of The Good, the Bad, the Ugly fame) was also in this movie. It remains a mystery to me how he managed to remain a true professional and play it completely seriously until the end of filming of this brain-raper! My hat is off to him.
Verdict: If you have a strange need to see some ninjas throwing it down with the Chuck watch this clip, Norris and Richard Norton (in his first film role) make the final fight entertaining enough to watch. Everything else- AVOID AT ALL COST IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR SANITY!
Worsemovies 