Give Kick to Death: Death Kick this: It tells you upfront redundancy and ineptitude are afoot. What it doesn’t tell you: Prepare to see one man’s ego deep-tissue massaged as his apparent sexual fantasies are enacted. I speak of former St. Louis cop Michael Hartig, credited as the movie’s writer, main producer and lead actor. Considering this marks director William Patrick Crabtree’s lone IMDb entry, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were Hartig’s pseudonym.
Although he looks more like a toupée model or someone who must knock on doors to inform you he’s moved into the neighborhood, Hartig plays kickboxing attorney Adrian Lane, who’s pissed off too many clients: five, to be exact. So two of them, Robert (Chickboxer’s Jesse Bean) and Teal (Earnest Hart Jr., “Four Time World Kickboxing Champion” according to the opening credits), organize quite the revengefest by kidnapping Adrian — while what sounds like a rejected B-side to Alannah Myles’ “Black Velvet” cassingle warbles on the soundtrack — and tying him up in a federal safe house located in the back of a tile store. (Hardened criminals never purchase tile, right?)
All attractive women, the three other clients plunk down $50,000 apiece for a turn torturing Adrian with drills and spray-can flames before a hired fighter kicks his ass — to death, if we’re to believe that title. Instead, the ladies tease him with their nude bodies, which is an unusual play, but we’re in the Show-Me State, after all. With an oddly specific sexual kink repeated throughout like a spank-bank deposit committed to film, his narcissism makes that of attorney-at-law John De Hart — and his respective vanity project, GetEven — look tame. Death Kick plays like the Craftsman power tools catalog accidentally printed a rambling missive from Letters to Penthouse.
A choice exchange of dialogue between captor and captive as “Revenge time starts at 9”:
Robert: “I have a plan.”
Adrian: “The best laid plans of mice and men.”
Robert: “What? What? Shut up! Fuck the mice and fuck the men! You’re going down!”
Up first, a redhead (White Palace stripper K.C. Carr, reading her lines like a 45 record run at 33 1/3 speed) is so angry about losing custody, she unhooks her bra, straddles Adrian and says, “If I had spurs, we’d go for a ride.”
Sexier by a mile, a wealthy blonde (frickin’ gorgeous one-timer Corinne Malcom) in a purple leather suit walks in heels so slowly that she looks in fear of forgetting the foot order required for the act of walking. Upset because post-divorce, she no longer gets invited to the right parties, she and her sizable bust put on a “private fashion show.” In between changing four outfits, she wavers between complimenting Adrian’s “tight ass” and threatening, “I’m gonna eat from your eyes.”
Speaking of eyes, a literal tear is coaxed from Adrian’s by the exposed breasts of Matty (Deborah E. Loveless), whose Taco Tico wrapper-patterned blouse screams “PTA treasurer.” In between these teasing faux seductions, the aforementioned freelance tuffies force Adrian to:
• spar with a hired stickfighter in genie britches (Terry Cramer, “American Kumite and Kata Champion”)
• trade blows with a guy in an ill-fitting Everlast shirt (Michael Stocker, “North American Light Heavy Kickboxing Champion”)
• and nut-punch a sweaty, coked-up mullet man (Greg Oldham)
Are you not entertained? Because Robert also saws a board in half, then roars through gritted teeth, “JIGSAW PUZZLE, ANYONE?” At the end, everybody fights everybody else while Adrian’s noosed, presumably to give him time to go flaccid. Naturally he escapes and quips, “Whaddaya think — is it too late for med school?” Fade to the rest of your life.
The last two and half minutes of credits have no actual credits, because Hartig lets the song he paid good money for play out, by gum. Since Kick to Death: Death Kick kicked its way into, I dunno, maybe 14 or 15 VCRs nationwide, Hartig hasn’t appeared in front of a camera — a damn shame, especially if you’re sitting on a script for a John Astin biopic. —Rod Lott