Year after year, warriors from the world over go for the gold — “a thousand taels,” to be exact — in a competition called the Five Poison Trials. These entail booby-trapped events with badass names like Malevolent Scorpion, Prideful Centipede and Suspicious Cicada.
Sounds cool, but Death Game, the Chinese period piece depicting these anti-Olympics, manages to make the most unusual tourney a real snore. That shouldn’t be the case when participants must navigate a maze while avoiding crossbows and snakes, or run up stairs while big ol’ boulders roll down and spears spit from the walls, yet this movie succeeds only in dropping the ball.
Had Death Game been made in the kung-fu craze of the 1970s, it likely would rock hard. That’s because the filmmakers would be forced to use ingenuity, not every CGI tool in the software package. Imagine watching blindfolded characters attempt to swordfight their way across a bridge over a treacherous canyon; here, they look like they’re doing so within a cartoon. Because the surroundings don’t appear the least bit realistic, the stakes never feel real, either.
Don’t even get me started on how the old rich guys running the thing are able to comment on who’s winning when they’re removed from the area of gameplay. It’s not like imperial China had monitors, much less, y’know, electricity.
This brief exchange puts it best: “Your skills are impressive.” “You are disgraceful.”
Pay no attention to House of Traps’ opening narration, which throws more names at viewers than its actors hurl metal darts and spears. The multigenerational mishmash of backstory gets spewed so quickly, not even Rain Man could keep up.
Ultimately, this is all that matters: • House of Traps indeed features a house of traps. • It’s a Shaw Brothers production.
At the heavily guarded House of Traps, a stolen jade horse is hidden alongside other purloined treasures of the imperial court. Everybody wants to get their hands on that horsey booty. To do so, they “only” need to ascend the levels of the foreboding abode, so named for such automated amenities as — ADT, take note! — floor spikes, razor stairs, swinging blades, sliding walls, pop-up jails and something called the “deadly copper net trap,” which might send a rush of blood to Jigsaw’s crotch.
Speaking of cocks, one gets slammed onto a bed of nails. Speaking of animals, the fighters all have cool names like Black Fox and River Rat. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether a character stands on the side of good or evil; if a voice sounds in urgent need of a deliciously soothing Luden’s, that’s a telltale sign for “villain.”
With martial arts movies, I’m most drawn to those with unique concepts. From that standpoint, House of Traps is tough to beat. From Crippled Masters to Five Deadly Venoms, director Chang Cheh made this style his bread and butter. While generously demoing the lethal devices throughout, he saves the bulk for the third-act showdown. Needless to say, it’s a real ass-kicker!
As usual, characters dine at a restaurant where wine is kept in what may as well be an outdoor planter, and there’s also an old man with a beard so uncomfortably long and wispy, it could double as a crumb duster. Unique to this film, he’s terrified by comedy and tragedy theatrical masks, as well as acts of turtle magic. —Rod Lott
One-Percent Warrior — you just know Warren Buffett favors that nickname in krav maga class at the club — isn’t your ordinary martial-arts movie. It’s meta meta meta. And fortunately in a fun way.
Played by Tak Sakaguchi, Toshiro is a has-been action hero whose trademark of “assassination jitsu” has aged out of audiences’ favor. I don’t know why, because the guy’s so quick and agile, he literally can dodge bullets!
Toshiro longs to make a “100% pure action film” — none of this choreographed, 15-takes bullshit. (This must be a nod to Sakaguchi and director Yudai Yamaguchi’s recent single-shot epic, Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1.) A decade after his last hit, Toshiro enlists his new apprentice, Akira (Kohei Fukuyama, TV’s Mob Psycho 100), to shoot his comeback vehicle Soderbergh-style (on a smartphone), on an island housing nothing but an abandoned zinc factory.
Call it an ideal location for limb dislocation. Because at the same time, not one but two heavily armed yakuza gangs swarm the isle, thanks to a secret stash of 2 tons of cocaine.
The 20th (!) collaboration between Sakaguchi and Yamaguchi, One-Percent Warrior finds them moving away from the silliness of their past (Meatball Machine, Battlefield Baseball, et al.) and growing up. It’s for the better. Unable to rest on slapsticky laurels, Yamaguchi comes alive via frenetic camerawork, sweeping and surveying the action unfolding throughout the locale.
It’s nice to see Sakaguchi do his thing free of gimmicky trappings or cartoon gore. A high point finds Toshiro in the dark, subduing his opponents with flying fists and a disorienting strobe flashlight, all scored to George Gershwin’s sublime Rhapsody in Blue.
Had this Japanese flick starred Jackie Chan (instead of name-dropping him) and came out post-Rumble in the Bronx, it would’ve killed at the box office. Instead, it’s set to stream on the little-seen and largely unheard-of Hi-YAH! channel. Give it and Sakaguchi a chance, because One-Percent Warrior has might and a mind. —Rod Lott
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
Also known as The Big Brawl, the not-set-at-Kellogg’s-HQ Battle Creek Brawl represents Jackie Chan’s first — and ill-fated — attempt to break into American cinema. Although it shows signs of his trademark humor and acrobatics, it’s not a fitting vehicle for his talents.
In 1930s Chicago, which looks every bit 1980, Chan’s Jerry Kwan protects his father’s restaurant from the neighborhood mob — a premise lifted wholesale from Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon. Scraping to get by, he and his sexy American girlfriend, Nancy (Kristine DeBell, Meatballs), enter anything-goes roller-rink contests to score quick, easy cash.
Liking what he sees, local goon Dominici (José Ferrer, Exo Man) kidnaps Nancy, forcing Jerry to participate in Texas’ annual Battle Creek free-for-all street fight — a “brawl,” if you will — in which he must punch and kick his way through a succession of burly men. This includes the ever-dreaded bald dude with a handlebar mustache and the fright-inducing, knee-quivering name of Kiss (H.B. Haggerty, Hollywood Vice Squad’s Tank).
Decent action sequences exist, from the aforementioned roller-skate madness (making for a crazy 10 minutes) to an early scuffle in which Jerry tries not to fight, but fails (trust me, that makes sense when you see it). Despite that, this Brawl doesn’t benefit from an utterly cheap look and color palette limited to every shade of brown. Can you believe director Robert Clouse is the same guy who gave us a martial arts all-timer in Enter the Dragon?
You sure can, if you’ve seen Clouse’s in-between work, like Force: Five, Golden Needles and/or The Ultimate Warrior. As Battle Creek Brawl stands — and wobbles — it’s a most minor entry on Chan’s filmography, yet not the all-out disaster its nil impact may have led you to believe. —Rod Lott
