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

Get it at Amazon.

When we last left karate expert Masutatsu Oyama (Sonny Chiba) in Karate Bullfighter, he was ripping the horns off a charging bull. With such strong chopsocky powers, whaddaya do for an encore? Ladies and gentlemen, may we present the Toei Company’s immediate sequel, Karate Bearfighter.

From Wolf Guy director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, it plays like two movies in one. In the first half, Oyama does little more than make a sake-and-meat soup, whore himself out for some freelance bodyguard work, ignore the woman who loves him and anger some karate students. But when some of his closest friends are killed, he’s thirsting for revenge.

Onto the second half, where Oyama befriends a little boy who steals his suitcase. The boy, Rintaro — Japanese for “runt,” I assume — lives with a boozehound father. As Oyama teaches the tot the skill of catching fish with one’s fists of fury, news arrives that Rintaro’s dad has been smashed by a falling tree, and without a costly operation, will die.

Someone agrees to pay for the operation, so long as Oyama can kill a bear with his bare hands — hence the title. (Try this tactic with the next spam call you receive: “Yes, I’ll sign up for your auto warranty service … if you slay a grizzly in return.”) Thus begins Karate Bearfighter’s best scene: Oyama battling to the death with a live bear. Or, as is painfully obvious even with the animal obscured by weeds and whatnot, a guy in a bad bear suit.

Where does a Chiba movie go from there? Having him kill some dudes who come at him flinging chains and spears, that’s where. Oh, and poking a guy’s eyes out for dessert. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

At the height of Jackie Chan’s U.S. box-office bonanza, he was set to star in an update of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but with the little people swapped for shaolin monks. Two decades later, the project has yet to start — a shame, if not for the existence of Thrilling Bloody Sword. From Taiwan and Kung-Fu Commandos director Chang Hsin-Yi, the wild wuxia film already had beaten Chan to the fairy-tale punch.

On the cusp of giving birth, a queen’s womb is hit by a comet. With one yelp of pain, a slimy, pulsating oblong of meat pops out. Exercising a pro-life-until-birth policy, her highness’ royal subjects send the abomination down the river in a basket; within seconds, it’s found by the seven dwarves of Happy Forest. What to do with this mysterious “flesh ball”? Eat it raw and serve with a salad, obviously. Upon stabbing it, the dwarves are alarmed to find an infant girl inside. They name her Yaur-Gi, instead of Brunch.

Years later, when Yaur-Gi is grown-up (and played by Fong Fong-Fong), it’s mutual love at first sight for her and Prince Yur-Juhn (Lau Seung-Him). Unfortunately, timing is bad, because the kingdom is beset by monster invasions of the crazy kind, starting with a rampaging cyclops tearing up the multistoried rice and wine restaurant appearing in every martial arts period piece. Who can slay such monsters? Without so much as a résumé, “woman exorcist” Gi-Err (Elsa Yeung Wai-San) is hired to protect the palace, but her assistance is all a hoax to dethrone and usurp. That’s why she turns the prince into a bear, albeit one with a smashed face that resembles Bell’s palsy.

To cure her love, Yaur-Gi and the dwarves seal Prince Yur-Juhn in a wooden hot tub filled with herbs. (Every couple of minutes, a new rule like that comes spouted from the movie’s Tinkerbell equivalent.) After returning to his rightful flesh, the prince acquires a magic cloth and “thunder sword” to help him defeat not only Gi-Err herself, but all types of creatures. Thrilling Bloody Sword has no shortage in that department. If it’s not a nine-headed dragon, it’s a set of giant chattering teeth (just like the wind-up toy, if fanged) or quacking frog things (clearly people with rubber swim flippers on all fours). The thunder sword also works well for stabbing thy enemy in the anus and then lifting him up above one’s head.

By the time of the movie’s all-out monster mash, Yaur-Gi becomes next to incidental in the story department, ceding the spotlight to the prince. The dwarves fare no better, not that it matters much, as they’re barely treated as individuals. One is dressed like Baby Huey, while another is outfitted like Robin Hood, right down to the curlicue mustache. Still another sports a mohawk that leads into a scorpion-style tail and wears a necklace of bagels. If the Three Stooges hadn’t already made their own Snow White parody, Thrilling Bloody Sword’s dwarves could step into their slapsticky shoes.

From one fantastical scene to the next, using presumably every color in the visible spectrum, Thrilling Bloody Sword has a lot going on. If it looks like Hsin-Yi has stolen costumes from Dino De Laurentiis’ garage sale, it’s quite possible, given he’s pilfered unlicensed needle drops of The O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money,” TV’s Battlestar Galactica theme and Dave Grusin’s sappy Electric Horseman score. If little makes sense, that’s probably because there’s no room for it, what with all the flambéed demons, rotating heads, independent appendages, rooster puppetry and the awkwardly translated subtitle of “Let me imitate the voice of cock!” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

The older I get, the more I realize that I’m doomed to watch these dumb young kids get all the good dumb action movie roles; it’s like babysitting a kid who knows how to punch and kick — a job I really don’t want or need. So maybe that’s why I absolutely loved The Paper Tigers so much.

Capturing three 40-something men who are stuck in the dire pit of utter mundanity and near hopelessness, they claw their way back above ground with the help of remembering their martial arts upbringing and the man that taught them. That’s an idea and execution I can fully get behind and support.

Danny (Alain Uy) is a failing insurance salesman who has long put his kung-fu training behind him. When his old ramshackle teacher is murdered by a pupil, he hooks back up with his long-lost friends — a disabled Hing (Ron Yuen) and MMA instructor Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins) — to track down the killer, who happens to be working as an assassin using a secret method that was never taught to the now-aged men.

And while the fight scenes are definitely enjoyable to watch, the film never backs away from the realities of getting old, from the slower stamina to the years of absolute regret that can build up. As the trio face these realized difficulties, they take on a trio of young upstarts, a rival school’s comedic underling and other martial arts tropes that drive the point home, especially in its railing against the mental blocks that stop most people dead in their tracks.

The Paper Tigers has such a good heart — not to mention moments of total action and relatable comedy that only people our age could possibly understand — it feels as though writer and director Quoc Bao Tran has been put through his own paces as well, with the cast charmingly fulfilling it with humor and pathos, something that’s typically missing from many martial arts flicks, especially these days. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Bruceploitation veteran Charles Bonet (Fists of Bruce Lee, et al.) graduates to his own vehicle in the modern-day Death Promise as — now here’s a stretch — Charley. The young Puerto Rican is living his best life in the worst of Manhattan when the landlord of his shitbox apartment tries to force out all the tenants; when shutting off the electricity, gas and water doesn’t work, a dusty box of rats let loose in the halls is Plan B.

As Charley’s Pops (Bob O’Connell, The Sting II) learns, the blame is on the “landlord syndicate” dba Iguana Realty. With a multimillion deal at stake, Iguana needs to level the place. Pops pushes back, saying they’ll only be able to demolish “over my dead body” — a proclamation the syndicate takes as an open invite. After consulting his local dojo master, Ciabatta Shibata (Thompson Kao Kang, The Black Dragon), on next steps, Charley vows to take out all responsible for Pops’ murder.

With the help of his bell-bottom jeans and his best pal, Speedy (Speedy Leacock, he of the monogrammed karate uniform and an Afro somehow parted down the middle), Charley makes a list and checks it twice — five times, actually, as his targets include:
• a Cameron Mitchell-esque, cigar-chomping archery buff (Tony De Caprio, Wanda Whips Wall Street)
• a judge by day and philatelist by night (David Kirk, Putney Swope)
• your garden-variety sleazeball, complete with disgustache (one-and-doner Thom Kendell)
• a smack dealer (one-and-doner Abe Hendy)
• and their Hal Holbrook-ian, cane-wielding figurehead, Alden (Vincent Van Lynn, Fuzz), who, until he’s felled by ninja stars seemingly cut from a cardboard box in the alley, takes orders from a Blofeld-ian mystery man — complete with kitty cat

The only movie directed by one Robert Warmflash, Death Promise is dirtier-than-dirt cheap. From its look, sound and vibe, you might think it were made by Fist of Fear, Touch of Death crew members on a potty break. And yet, the martial arts performed by Bonet, the Latin Panther, are impressive. His inevitable showdown against Bob Long (The Super Weapon) and others is especially satisfying because of the feral, crazed noises his foes emit, and because Warmflash isn’t one to move the camera much, that inexperience actually plays as a strength since we can clearly see each fighter’s moves.

In other physical news, many scenes include two- and even three-man walking hugs. Take it as the urban trash classic’s harbinger of charm. As the catchy, soul-infused theme song bellows, it’s gonna blow your mind — that’s a promise! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.