According to this Lee-alike flick, before he died, Bruce Lee wrote a book about how to kill people using only your fingers. Like the ghouls they are, the criminal underworld wants a copy of it so bad that they go as far as to kidnap Lee’s ex-girlfriend.
It’s up to a young martial artist — luckily named Bruce Le — to not only find the book, but rescue the girlfriend as well. He does this using not only public domain (?) clips of Lee, but masterfully by going from San Francisco for five minutes and then switching to another movie in Hong Kong after the credits and then to another one in, I think, Taiwan. With plenty of fights in open fields and courtyards, the book … is never really discovered.
I guess no one noticed that black-and white composition book peeking out from under the couch over there?
While Bruce’s Deadly Fingers really is, for the most part, your standard Bruce Lee death-curse rip-off flick, the one area of true maliciousness where the scummy nature of the film shines is when the assorted mob types torture the various girls who don’t wish to hook their bodies, including one mildly graphic scene with a deadly snake. It’s a scene where I could’ve used Bruce’s deadly fingers to poke my own eyes out. —Louis Fowler
Cüneyt Arkın, one of the proud futuristic freedom fighters from Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam — also known in the States, rather dumbed-down if you ask me, as Turkish Star Wars — is back on the small screen in a rather good-looking print of 1975’s Kiliç Aslan or, for the sake of argument here, The Sword and the Claw.
In this bargain-basement flick, a king with a birthmark of a lion on his back is killed by his sleazy mustachioed rival. When his concubine, pregnant and on the run, has his baby in the woods, said child is kidnapped and raised by lions, mostly done through a quick vignette of a small child feeding an equally immature lion some raw meat, which couldn’t have been safe, but the kid and the lion look like they’re having fun.
As the child grows up into strapping vine-swinging man Arkin, he immediately runs afoul of the same corrupt leader and, for his troubles, has his hands burnt black, Cajun-style. Thankfully, an old man forges a pair of new unwieldy metal hands — lion’s claws, if you will — and, in the last 10 minutes of film, rips out the throats of the supreme leader’s army and, of course, the big boss. Roll credits.
That seems simple enough, right?
A prime example of the popular Turkish costume dramas of the time, The Sword and the Claw has choppy editing, uneven music and the worst dubbing in history, but damned if it isn’t an entertaining flick, with Arkin jumping off the screen, somersaulting into every fight scene, with particular abandon being given to the bloody finale and his angry lion-face.
If memory serves me, I vaguely remember the VHS box for this movie when it was called Lionman, always overlooked and gathering dust. Still, the American Genre Film Archive’s Blu-ray — from the only 35mm print in existence, natch — is the nicest I’ve even seen of a Turkish film of this ilk, a genre usually reserved for 10th-generation burns.
As a bonus feature, the AGFA disc includes the kung-fu foible Brawl Busters starring Black Jack Chan, produced by the “Official Chinese Black Belt Society.” Yep, that sounds totally legit. —Louis Fowler
Finally, one of mankind’s greatest mysteries is solved by the film DOA: Dead or Alive: What would happen if a ninja princess, a leggy cat burglar and a star-spangled-swimsuit-clad pro wrestler were invited to join a high-stakes martial-arts competition on a hidden island?
The answer: Kicking.
Based on a video game franchise, the Maxim-rific DOA sat on the shelf for a number of years before quietly receiving a theatrical release. That suggests the flick is unwatchable; in truth, it does exactly what it sets out to do: titillate.
Kasumi (Devon Aoki, Sin City) is the aforementioned princess who leaves her Asian homeland to avenge the rumored death of her brother. Because she abandons her people, she is pursued by an assassin with pink hair.
Christie (Holly Valance, Taken) has just pulled off a lucrative heist when she’s questioned by police in her hotel room. She manages to fight them off while naked, simultaneously grabbing a falling gun as she puts on a bra.
And Tina (Jaime Pressly, Torque) is a beer-guzzling redneck wrassler who’s just defended her yacht from a band of pirates.
All three lithesome ladies are recruited — via electronic throwing-star invitations, naturally — to be among a handful of combatants in the winner-takes-all “DOA” competition, which promises a $10 million prize. No one said this makes any sense, but it all happens over the course of the film’s first 10 minutes, so at least it wastes no time.
On the island, a squeaky-voiced roller skater introduces them to Dr. Victor Donovan (Eric Roberts, Sharktopus), the mastermind behind the games. Yes, he’s evil, with the sport merely a cover for his greedy, misguided machinations.
With snot-slick visuals and leaden attempts at slapstick comedy, DOA: Dead or Alive plays like a marriage — or at least a one-night stand — between Mortal Kombat and TV’s Charlie’s Angels. It’s the kind of movie that keeps cutting away from a karate-laden fight scene to a women’s beach volleyball match because … well, hey, bikinis!
At least DOA wears its T-and-A intentions on its thong strap, not pretending to be anything but a made-for-cable-level exercise in action and eye candy. The DOA logo even appears full-screen at several points, handily suggesting where commercials could be inserted for airings on Spike TV.
It’s mindless, sure, but it cannot be accused of being boring. The actresses are easy on the optical orbs, and up to all the upskirt wire-fu that director Corey Yuen (The Transporter) has in store for them. For the viewer, that also means bright colors, quick cuts, slow motion and other shiny things to keep you entertained while dissuading you from applying logic.
If the shenanigans leave you in the mood for a much smarter film centered around three lovely ladies who know how to throw a punch, rent 2002’s So Close, also directed by Yuen. It may not have a wisecracking black guy in a shark-fin mohawk, but you can’t win them all. —Rod Lott
Kung fu and horror movies go together amazingly well. From the Shaw Brothers/Hammer Films coproduction The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires to 1980s classics like the Chinese Ghost Story series, nothing quite scratches the itch of ancient evil like a kick to the face. It’s even better when you mix in broad slapstick comedy, and 1985’s Mr. Vampire did everything so well that it created a whole genre of sequels and rip-offs featuring jiangshi, Chinese hopping vampires/zombies. It’s also a case study in how sometimes actors can make some serious coin if they lean into typecasting.
Set in a sleepy small town that looks nothing at all like the towns in all of Golden Harvest’s other ’80s movies, Mr. Vampire stars Ching-Ying Lam (Mr. Vampire II, Mr. Vampire III, Vampire vs. Vampire, Magic Cop, Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2) as our main hero, a Taoist priest named Master Gau who also knows a kung fu or two. And of course, he’s got some bumbling, but earnest assistants, played by Siu-Ho Chin (Vampire Cleanup Department) and Ricky Hui (The Haunted Cop Shop, the guy who goes “Whaaa?” for comic relief in, like, 50 other movies). Everything seems to be going pretty good for Gau: He’s rolling through life, hanging out with dead bodies waiting to be hopped back to their hometowns for burial — you know, normal shit. Yeah, maybe his assistants go a little too far messing around with the corpses, but who’s going to know?
Everything goes sideways when Gau is hired by Mr. Yam, a wealthy local merchant (those guys are the worst) played by Ha Huang (A Chinese Ghost Story). Richie Rich wants Master Gau to relocate his dad’s body to ensure good fortune for Yam’s business. Yam’s daughter, Ting-Ting (Moon Lee, Fighting Madam), also hangs out with her dad a lot, which is weird, but whatever. Oh, also there’s a funny bit where Master Gau’s assistants think Ting-Ting is a prostitute, which is an hilariously embarrassing situation!
Anyway, they dig up Yam’s dad, but here’s where things get bad. The corpse hasn’t decayed. At all. And everyone knows that’s a surefire sign of Impending Undead Evil High Jinks. If Gau doesn’t make with the rituals and quick, Yam’s dad is totally going to turn into a kung-fu vampire (Wah Yuen, Mr. Vampire Saga).
On top of the vampire threat, one of Gau’s assistants falls in love with a spectral bride played by Siu-Fung Wong (New Mr. Vampire), who hops on the back of his bicycle one night while a creepy song called “Ghost Bride” is sung by a children’s choir. And things really go downhill from there. But amid all the kung-fu slapstick horror laid down by this masterpiece (which is even better on the recently remastered limited-edition Korean Blu-ray that I have, but you know, not everyone appreciates Film like I do), Mr. Vampire serves up some important life lessons:
• Jiangshi have to hop everywhere, so take the stairs! It’s hilarious.
• These monsters are allergic to sticky rice. (As a side note, you should note that sticky rice costs more than regular rice, so beware unscrupulous merchants who might try to cut the sticky rice they sell you with regular rice. Again, merchants are the worst.)
• Like all of us, they’re repelled by mirrors. Are you not?
• They track humans by their breath, so keep a big bamboo tube by your bed as a vampire snorkel.
The first draft of this review had tons of explanation about the mythology behind jiangshi, but you’ll figure it out. I’m serious about the vampire snorkel, though. —Ryun Patterson
Based on a story and screenplay by action star, martial artist and Tostitos spokesperson Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lionheart casts Bloodsport’s Belgian bruiser as Leo, a serviceman in the multinational Foreign Legion and stationed in the fun-to-say Djibouti; he’s one lone, stone-cold warrior surrounded by a bunch of comical Col. Klink-style Germans always riding his ass for something or another.
When his brother is gruesomely immolated by drug dealers, Leo uses his high-kickin’ feet to say goodbye to his superiors (and his superiors’ faces), hitchin’ a ride on a 1930s steamship to New York City where, as soon as he gets off the boat, in a moment of prescient critique, he harshly compares and contrasts the drug-abusing homeless dudes on the ground with the wholly porcine moneymen in their glass towers — to which he shakes his head and dismissively says, “America!”
Good burn, JCVD.
Leo soon hooks up with Joshua (Harrison Page, Carnosaur), a jive-talking fight manager whose profanity-rich dialogue would be moderately offensive if the guy wasn’t putting his heart and soul into this mildly racist character. Together, after beating up the cast of Beat Street, they make it to Los Angeles and, in between helping his sister-in-law and her adorable 5-year-old, he manages to get into one high-paying blood brawl after another, knocking out the best Frank Dux-choreographed stuntmen in parking lots, racquetball courts and the near-empty pools of the rich and famous.
Lionheart does a good job in casting Van Damme as the ultimate good guy: a nice, caring man doing everything through excessive violence to help his friends and family, all the while eschewing the continuous advances of a rich benefactor who is unsubtly letting him know she’s looking for a good-ish time, and I do mean sexually.
But he’s having none of it, instead choosing healthy alternatives such as constantly jogging around his neighborhood, eating bean burritos and outrunning the bulky Foreign Legion goons looking for him. (Although, to be fair, he does gratuitously preview his well-buffed buttocks for the ladies, although I’d really like to meet the woman who fell in love with this flick, Jean-Claude Van Damme and action films in general simply because of three seconds of tightly toned foreign ass.)
I’m not giving away any well-guarded secret by saying there’s a final fight with a ’roided-out Paul Stanley look-alike, but make sure to stay for the final scene, as JCVD and his friends and family enthusiastically hug and laugh maniacally as the camera pulls back and the credits roll. You’ll instantly feel pretty bad about yourself and your life if you’ve never had one of those tender moments in your non-Lionhearted existence. —Louis Fowler
According to this Lee-alike flick, before he died, Bruce Lee wrote a book about how to kill people using only your fingers. Like the ghouls they are, the criminal underworld wants a copy of it so bad that they go as far as to kidnap Lee’s ex-girlfriend.
