According to Curtis Bush, star of Psycho Kickboxer: The Dark Angel, his dream project almost didn’t happen because a conman skipped town with a chunk of investors’ money. Nevertheless, he persisted.

Dude, that was the universe trying to tell you something — most likely something to the effect of, “Curtis, my boy, open a 401(k) instead.”

A four-time world kickboxing champion (the DVD cover says five), Bush plays Alex Hunter, an amateur kickboxer in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. with a colorful Cosby vest and a serious girlfriend named Julia (a woman wisely going uncredited). One thing he doesn’t have is a knack for romance:

Alex: “Um, I wanna ask if you’ll marry me.”
Julia: “Yes, I will.”
Alex: “You would.”

Cue the sax.

Bliss is short-lived. After a celebratory meal at Hot Tuna Bar and Grill with his police-chief father (George James, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka), the three are kidnapped by muscleheads working for crime syndicate boss Hawthorne. This Hawthorne fellow is supposed to be über-intimidating, but as played by Tom Story (1990’s Metamorphosis), he seems threatening only to the shrink wrap of a Barbra Streisand CD.

Anyway, Hawthorne’s goons brutally murder Dad and Julia, but Alex survives. He’s nursed back to health by Joshua (Rodney Suiter, Blind Vision), a Black vet in a wheelchair who growls chicken-soup lines like, “Control the animal! Or it will destroy you” while chewing a stogie.

Alex becomes a vigilante whom the press dubs “The Dark Angel” due to his decision to dress in all-black, ski mask included. Most of his crimefighting exploits are shot in broad daylight so we can see them. Who knew Hampton Roads, Virginia, was such a hotbed of felonies? And a majority committed by guys with mullets and mustaches?

Bush may be (and is) the real deal in kickboxing circles, but it’s tough to take his skirmishes seriously — on the street or in the ring — because the filmmakers dubbed every punch and kick with a soundboard limited to three or four buttons. It’s like listening to a video game at the arcade. The effect for broken bones is, I swear, a cluck of the tongue.

This picture’s so dire, it ends with a freeze-frame of Joshua and Alex mid-high-five. I would have recommended instead a replay of the Troma-esque gore scene of a guy getting flattened by the wheels of a car he tried to steal from a woman in a grocery parking lot. I also would have recommended to actress Kim Reynolds, as a sassy reporter sniffing out the Dark Angel story, not to go full-frontal for a movie so inconsequential. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Italy is neither the first nor fifth country that comes to mind for exporting martial-arts movies, yet that’s hardly stopped director/co-writer Gabriele Mainetti (They Call Me Jeeg) from crafting an epic one with The Forbidden City.

From China, Mei (Yaxi Liu, 2024’s Second Life) arrives in Rome to look for her missing sister, potentially forced into a prostitution ring. Her search puts restaurant cook Marcello (Enrico Borello, Netflix’s Supersex) on her radar. Not coincidentally, Marcello’s father also has disappeared. The setup for — and connections among — each runs deeper than your patience would have for print, so just know this: Mei tells Marcello, “I must have revenge.”

And boy, does she possess the skills to back that up. In lightning-fast skirmishes with gangsters from two crime bosses, Mei uses feet, fists and anything else that catches her fancy: cheese graters, floral arrangements, boiling noodles, market-fresh fish and music CDs cracked into jagged halves. Liu’s main career as a stunt performer makes all the difference in presenting Mei as an imposing threat.

Mainetti could stand some restraint; at 138 minutes, The Forbidden City starts wearing thin. But at no time does his film not look like the proverbial million bucks, applying his country’s bold giallo coloring to the backdrops of Liu’s lively feats of acrobatics. Providing excellent support are The Great Beauty’s Sabrina Ferilli, ACAB’s Marco Giallini and iRobot’s Roomba. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Doctors shouting orders. Patients tired of waiting. Hospital administration being total assholes. Gratuitous intubation. Gotta be HBO’s ER-esque hit, The Pitt, right? Yes! But it’s also The Pit: Emergency Room, highly obscure DOA drivel in no danger of gracing HBO or hitting anything but an aversion to watch.

In this vanity project, writer/director/producer Jon W. Fong casts — who else? — himself as Dr. Paul Qi, “PQ” for short. Our supposed medical superstar of Ocean Coast Hospital somehow is able to check out a woman’s stubbed toe without removing her shoe. In surgery, his main concern isn’t the patient’s life, but the rib spreader tool: “Who last oiled this thing?”

His enemy is Ocean Coast’s underhanded, overweight administrator, Kramer (Lee West, 1995’s Powderburn), who looks like Kevin from
The Office. Kramer’s scheming to sell the med center for personal gain. (The place may be in serious financial trouble, judging from the break room’s dot-matrix printed signs and banners.) Kramer’s plan entails drugging PQ’s mentor (David Jean Thomas, The Crow: Salvation) into a coma, thereby quashing a dissenting vote at the upcoming board meeting. One problem: PQ holds his mentor’s proxy power, so now he, too, is marked for death.

Prescription: kicking. PQ thwarts attempt after attempt on his life through kung fu. The Pit holds one thing for sure over The Pitt: Unlike Fong, Noah Wyle never disguised himself as a custodian to infiltrate security and whoop bad guys with a mop handle. (Maybe season 2?)

Meanwhile, no one bats an eye at the professionally suited Kramer openly conversing with some rando in a Mötley Crüe tee.

Because Fong was an actual emergency physician in California until his untimely 2017 passing, PQ and company spout “doc talk” with the best of them. But with every other element … well, it’s a good thing Dr. Fong didn’t quit his day job. My prognosis is you’ll never see another medical-themed feature in which:
• hoodlums attack a doctor and then perform chest compressions on a Resusci Annie doll
• alone, a valet loudly narrates his thoughts in real time: “OK, call 911 and start CPR!”
• a comely lady doctor miraculously performs stand-up comedy at the club without a microphone
• a prologue with thieves swallowing diamond-stuffed condoms full of grace

Stem to sternum, this botched-recipe omelette of martial-arts revenger, medical thriller and corporate espionage drama is so lacking of competence, you might not believe Fong’s expertise earned him an 11-year stint as technical adviser to NBC’s venerable ER. From all accounts, he was a terrific human, but based on The Pit: Emergency Room, I just wouldn’t have trusted him to make sound creative decisions, let alone examine my stubbed toe. —Rod Lott

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.” 

—Rod Lott

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

Get it at Amazon.