Should you happen to find a basket floating in the river containing a baby with no eyes, arms or legs, don’t freak out — it’s probably just Hyakkimaru! As created by manga master Osamu Tezuka (Black Jack, Astro Boy) in the late 1960s, Hyakkimaru is a samurai whose real flesh was stolen by 48 demons. With each one he kills via the blade that subs for a left arm, he gets back some of that skin and those limbs, one piece at a time, be it an ear or the liver. Don’t ask — just go with it.

Fully grown, Hyakkimaru (Satoshi Tsumabuki, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) roams the countryside with wisecracking sisterly sidekick Dororo (Kô Shibaski, One Missed Call), looking for demons to slay. Among those they find include a spider-crab creature, girls who morph into oversized caterpillars, a woman who turns into some sort of witch butterfly, a living lotus tree with stretchy neck, something akin to those damned flying monkeys, a pair of talking monster dogs and one hopping devil on horseback. Our heroes gain an ally in a giant ghost baby.

Most of these beasts are all-CGI, but some come in the preferred form of dudes in rubber suits. Given the source material and the country that created kaiju cinema, I much prefer the latter. Regardless, the monster-slaying portions make Dororo quite a kick, but the more Hyakkimaru questions his origins, the more Akihiko Shiota’s epic slows considerably, eventually staying stuck in a 20- or 30-minute lag.

Even today, Tezuka’s Dororo enjoys a page-turning pace; this often-too-serious adaptation could have done that by ditching the dramatic introspection that wasn’t so heavy in the books and stick to the ghost-busting. It’s overlong at two hours and 19 minutes, and ends with no true ending, as Hyakkimaru has two dozen hellions left to stab. If a sequel gets made, I’d certainly like to see him do his thing, but I hope Shiota drops the music score that sounds like you’re being serenaded by a mariachi band in a Mexican restaurant while you’re trying to apply just the right amount of honey to that sopapilla. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

It’s hard to hate a movie whose first scene depicts a tough guy trapping a Filipino midget in a phone booth and throwing it into the bay. As the box goes splash, the film freeze-frames to announce its awesome title: The One Armed Executioner. That’s so promising, I forgive it for not including the hyphen it so sorely needs.

Said title refers to Ortega (not related to the taco shells), a man who seems to have it all: a job with Interpol, a good head of hair, both arms, and a blonde American wife (Jody Kay) who writes children’s books, sleeps with a doll and basically acts as if she’s been kicked in the head. Yes, for Ortega (Franco Guerrero), life’s a pretty sweet fruit. Then coke-dealing, Caucasian crime boss Edwards (Nigel Hogge) wants his diary back from the cops, and orders Mrs. Ortega dead; his pantyhose-masked minions stab her fatally, then take Ortega’s left limb just for shits and giggles.

As spoiled by that title, Ortega isn’t about to take his handicap lightly. Trained by the Philippines’ equivalent of Tommy Lee Jones, he becomes a ruthless warrior, albeit one with a sleeve flopping around. Ortega then goes hunting for Edwards (“What balls!”), whose boat bears a swastika and who keeps a henchman on staff whose sole purpose is to act as a human thesaurus. (His lone African-American henchman is dubbed by a redneck.)

In this thrilla from Manila, everyone points and looks greasy sweaty. On one hand (pun not intended), it isn’t exploitative like, say, Hong Kong’s infamous The Crippled Masters, because in real life, Guerrero doesn’t park in handicapped spots. On the other hand (pun still not intended, pinky swear), one wishes it were, so it’d be a ton more fun. As is, it’s just a-little-more-than-passable fun. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

From the box: “Fighting Life is a remarkable film rejoicing the spirit of life. It is the dynamic tale of two brothers who overcome immense physical and emotional handicaps, and become vital members of society. The two stars of the film are both physically handicapped and truly prove that everyone can make it. Starring: All Star Kung Fu Cast.”

In reality, Fighting Life is a decent film rejoicing in the fact that they got the two stars of Crippled Masters together again for a couple hundred yen. It is the generic tale of two brothers who drive around in a specially built vehicle that looks like a combination of Fred Flintstone’s car and a Rube Goldberg contraption. The two stars of the film are both physically handicapped and truly prove that moviegoers can only take so much of the one guy’s Thalidomide flipper-nub flapping around before they get visibly ill. Starring: Two Guys I’d Be Hard-Pressed to Name, Other than “Dude with No Arms” and “Dude with Almost No Legs.”

Sometimes found retitled as Crippled Masters 3, this isn’t as good as the original Crippled Masters because — and I hate to say this — it’s not as exploitative. Instead of graphic scenes of blood and gore, you get elongated employment searches. If you’ve seen one kung-fu flick with Frankie Shum and Jack Conn — real-life guys who get all the best parking spaces — you’ve seen them all. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

As expected, Jackie Chan is hardly in Jackie Chan’s Crime Force. But it doesn’t matter — the movie succeeds in being entertaining in its own plotless, over-the-top manner without him.

Known in some public-domain circles as Golden Queen’s Commando, it’s a crazy-Asian female version of The Dirty Dozen, minus five protagonists. The opening sequence introduces us to each of the felonious females, including the eyepatch-wearing Black Fox, the tattooed Amazon, the fright-wigged Black Cat, the pickpocketing Quick Silver, the whore Sugar, the pyrotechnic Dynamite and some alcoholic chick whose name I didn’t catch because the titles are poorly framed and cut off.

Upon her arrival in prison during World War II, Black Fox (Brigitte Lin of Chungking Express and Police Story) double-crosses each of the girls so they’ll all end up in the hole together. There she hatches an escape plan, and while it does gets the movie rolling, it denies us the usual women-in-prison clichés to which American renters are so pruriently accustomed (subbing a ballet-like basketball game and Keystone Kops-esque food fight instead).

Once they flee on horseback, Black Fox reveals they’ve been recruited to help her infiltrate an evil warlord’s chemical weapons plant. In a booby-trapped forest, they encounter the usual dangers — nets, spikes, sword-wielding skeletons — and are soon captured, but are allowed to go free when they beat their enemies at their own games — namely archery, blindfolded balloon shooting and noodle-eating.

Following a brief interlude in haunted woods, the girls finally arrive at the cat-stroking warlord’s Enter the Dragon-ish secret cave lair. Said warlord is portrayed for all of about two minutes by Chan. This is the best part, however, because the chicks shoot a lot of minions and do flips. You get all this plus severed limbs, a rat pierced with a chopstick and a fat guy named, well, Fatty. Arguably it’s the silliest thing Chan’s ever done outside of Fantasy Mission Force, yet still a better career move than The Medallion. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

I’ve never seen anything quite like Game of Death II, in which the late Bruce Lee unwittingly reprises his role as Billy Lo from the misbegotten Game of Death. Like that 1978 turd, this is a Bruceploitation film, utilizing as much Bruce stock footage as they can get away with, and creating an illusion that he’s the star by shooting a double from the back, from the side or obscured by household items. But whereas that film was a chore to sit through, this hack job is a hoot.

If there’s a story to it, I sure didn’t catch it, but Billy fights his way through several colorful opponents before tragically dying at the film’s midpoint when he falls from a helicopter. For the second half, his brother, Bobby (Tong Lung), enters and becomes the main character, seeking revenge for Billy’s death.

That’s when things get crazy. Like my favorite scene, when Billy is sucking face with a fully naked skank. She tries to kill him, the lights go out, and a lion (obviously a guy in a suit) bursts through the wall and chases them around the room. Read that sentence again and let it sink in. I also dug the finale, which takes place in the underground “tower of death,” a high-tech, booby-trapped, spy-type lair that suggests the film is a cut-rate Enter the Dragon impostor. There Bobby takes on several henchmen and a guy in a Tarzan suit, just because.

Although the film itself is pretty funny (not on purpose), the martial arts on display in Game of Death II are pretty serious stuff, courtesy of fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Matrix; Kill Bill and just about everything else that rules. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.