Deadly Kick is the greatest Sonny Chiba film Sonny Chiba never made. Five Fingers of Death’s Lo Lieh directs and stars in the over-the-top fight film as an alcoholic loser with a wispy mustache. His name sounds like Marion, so we’ll just call him that. As the movie begins, he’s drowning his sorrows in drink after discovering his wife turning tricks. When he sees her being roughed up by whom I presume are her pimps, he holds up his hands like they’re monster claws and starts doing all sorts of animal-style kung fu, complete with sound effects and quick cuts to the animals — tiger, eagle and snakes — going apeshit on human flesh.
Through a flashback, we learn why Marion is so fucked-up: He fought his rival for the hand of their karate teacher’s daughter in marriage, and lost. Naturally, he responds by raping her … and then poking out her eyes immediately after orgasm! Back in the present day, the violence continues, with a man losing his forearm to a ninja star and another burning to death in a car. A semblance of a plot forms, involving $10 million, a nuclear bomb and a gray-haired kingpin in a gold lamé suit who has an underground headquarters accessible via mine shaft.
Plot schmot — Marion’s too busy making it with his new girlfriend. Sniffing her newly removed panties, he proclaims, “Smells better than whiskey!” One frame-filling sequence has him milking her nipple without using his hands, and he refers himself as “king of the nether regions.”
But they get into trouble, too, finding themselves chained to his-and-her guillotines. They’re saved by Marion’s rival, for reasons not well explained, but not necessary for your enjoyment of the film. In fact, the complete ludicrousness enhances it. To further complicate things, the woman Marion blinded comes back after five years to settle the score. She’s been practicing kung fu with the help of a little girl who jumps around with bells on a string as some sort of code to let her know what’s what and where. Marion doesn’t like getting his ass kicked by a blind chick, so he kills the kid!
Meanwhile, Marion’s true love is tied up naked in the bad guy’s lair, whipped and vagina-sworded all to the laughing delight of a dinner party. Marion busts in, pulls out an adversary’s intestines, throws them in the face of another and then chokes him with it. Then, rather anticlimactically, he pushes the head villain through a wall, which leaves an exact outline of the poor old guy, arms in flailing position and all.
With all the bad guys dead, Marion and his rival have to settle their festering differences, which is where the weirdo supernatural leaf-blowing aspects of the film come into play. Marion learns why the movie is called Deadly Kick. Then they go snow-sledding. —Rod Lott